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September 28, 2007

Friday Brainteaser: The hardest logic puzzle ever

Last week's brainteaser has been updated with the answer. This week is a logic puzzle that was devised by "puzzle-master" Raymond Smullyan and has been deemed one of the hardest ever. The puzzle:

Three gods A, R, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, R, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for "yes" and "no" are "dam and "ja," in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Some hints:

I'll go ahead and post a link to the answer, but I haven't checked it yet so please don't post the answer in the comments if you've already looked (but feel free to guess).

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

40% of Americans have never lived without a Bush or Clinton in the White House

I recently came across an article claiming 40% of Americans have lived their entire lives with a Bush or Clinton in the White House. I've written about the two-family dynasty before, and because the original author didn't offer any verifiable evidence (and the website was a dedicated anti-Hillary site), I checked out the claim using Census data just to be certain.

Sure enough, about four in 10 Americans have always lived with a Clinton or Bush in the executive branch (myself included). Reagan was sworn in, with George H.W. Bush as his vice-president, in 1981. So roughly anyone 26 and younger fits into this category. That's around 111,000,000 people according to 2006 data. The total population then was about 299,000,000, giving us 37.5%.

If Hillary wins the 2008 election and serves two terms, nearly half of the population will fall into this category. Am I the only one bothered by this?

Let me clarify, I think she's very competent and capable, and I prefer her over any of the current Republican nominees (yes, even Ron Paul). If Hillary wins the nomination, I will vote for her in the general election, as long as she doesn't do something inexcusable like vote to give Bush authority to attack Iran.

But is she leading in polls because she's the best candidate for the job right now, or because of name recognition and a well-oiled political machine? What does it say about the gullibility of the American public if we constantly complain about our lack of choices but continue to vote the same two families into power?

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 26, 2007

"Worse than Abu Ghraib"

That's how a senior U.S. military official is describing the aftermath of a September 16 incident in which "private security forces" (i.e., mercenaries) working for Blackwater USA killed between 11 and 20 Iraqi civilians. Witnesses have said the shootings were unprovoked. Here's the full quote from the Washington Post:

"This is a nightmare," said a senior U.S. military official. "We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we're trying to have an impact for the long term."

These mercenaries don't operate under military rules of engagement, and the U.S. granted them immunity from prosecution immediately after the invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi government should have the authority to revoke that immunity now, but they haven't yet.

So what happens when you put private mercenaries in a war zone with no oversight? More soldiers weigh in:

"They are immature shooters and have very quick trigger fingers. Their tendency is shoot first and ask questions later," said an Army lieutenant colonel serving in Iraq. Referring to the Sept. 16 shootings, the officer added, "None of us believe they were engaged, but we are all carrying their black eyes."

"Many of my peers think Blackwater is oftentimes out of control," said a senior U.S. commander serving in Iraq. "They often act like cowboys over here . . . not seeming to play by the same rules everyone else tries to play by."

Since 2004, the company has received nearly $1 billion in contracts—$833,673,316 from the State Department and $101,219,261 from the Defense Department. Oh, and remember the U.S. weapons that ended up in the hands of a known terrorist group (the same group that has been provoking Iran)? Blackwater may have sold the weapons to the group.

Blackwater is completely undermining any military progress being made in Iraq. And why wouldn't they? The longer the region remains unstable the more money they stand to make.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Global poverty

A little perspective: If you make just $10,000 a year, roughly the 2007 federal poverty rate for one person living in the U.S., you're earning more than 5.8 billion people (there are currently 6.6 billion people in the world). That doesn't take into account cost of living and relative poverty, but it's still interesting to think about. Here are some more comparisons:

The more interesting piece of information is that, while the population has grown by 150,000,000 people since July 2005, the wealth gap has increased by roughly 600,000,000 people, according to Justin Gardner at Donklephant.

"Long story short, the poor are indeed getting poorer."

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 21, 2007

Friday Brainteaser: A riddle

Last week's brainteaser has been updated with the answer. This week, as short riddle:

A woman gave birth to two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same year but were not twins. How is this possible?

ANSWER: The answer is posted below in white text. Highlight the area to see it.
She had triplets.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Congress betrays us

This is politics at its worst: Yesterday the Senate wasted time voting on an amendment condemning the MoveOn.org ad that referred to General Petraeus as "General BetrayUs." The statement of purpose read:

To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

It passed 72-25, and now many right wing pundits and bloggers (I'm not going to do them a favor by linking to them) are using the vote to accuse Democrats who voted against it of being unpatriotic, not supporting the troops, etc. And extremists on the left are doing something similar, attacking Obama for skipping the vote and failing to support MoveOn.

Good for Obama. This amendment was designed to be a political wedge. Passing it will not help the situation in Iraq and it will not help Petraeus do his job better. It was introduced to turn the discussion about Iraq from substantive issues about success and failure to a meaningless argument about who supports the troops more.

This is why Congress has an approval rating of 11%, lower than Bush's. We're not paying them to waste time setting political traps. They're unable to collectively pass a bill restoring habeus corpus, but they can pass this garbage?

And the kicker? It seems that the "General BetrayUs" nickname came from the troops themselves, rather than MoveOn. Petraeus started out as "Colonel BetrayUs" before he was promoted.

UPDATE: Here is a portion of the actual text:

It is the sense of the Senate--
(1) to reaffirm its support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, including General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq;
(2) to strongly condemn any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and
(3) to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.

Catch that second bullet? That's dangerously close to first amendment territory. Obviously they're not actually restricting speech because the resolution is nonbinding, but they are coercing it. If the Democrats were politically savvy at all they would reframe this debate to be about the freedom of speech. It isn't Congress' place to tell people what they can and cannot say in a public forum.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:27 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 20, 2007

An open letter to the mainstream media

Dear Media:

Please shut the hell up about O.J. Simpson. There are so many more important things going on in the world right now than whether or not a washed-up celebrity stole sports memorabilia that may have been his in the first place.

I know, there is an underlying issue of race in America tied to the story. Or at least there was the first time he made headlines in the 1990s. But if you really want to tackle that issue, take a look at what's happening in Jena, Louisiana. As many as 50,000 demonstrators are marching on the town of 3,500 today over a case involving six black high school students who are on trial for beating a white student involved in hanging nooses from a tree on school property.

Do you know how many items a search for "Jena" on Google News brings? 3,910. A search for O.J. Simpson has 14,140 results right now. Here are a few other important stories being overshadowed by your sensationalist obsession with the Simpson case:

That's just based on a quick search of Google News and doesn't include the cable news programs, which tend to be more superficial and sensationalist than newspapers and online publications.

I could have easily addressed this letter to the American public instead of you, the media. We continue to consume this information and encourage your sloppy reporting, after all. But you're the ones with something to lose. Your credibility is at stake, which isn't good when you're already losing readers and viewers to blogs and other new media outlets (I won't get into the numbers, but a Google Blogsearch returns many more results for Jena than for O.J. Simpson).

I know it's easier to cover a celebrity scandal than something substantive because you get an immediate ratings boost without doing much research or actual reporting. But many people don't care as much as you do about the latest exploits of Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton or O.J. Simpson.

You're more willing to report on an inconsequential act committed by a celebrity than something extremely consequential with no personality to attach to it. I don't mind when celebrities take up causes like environmental protection or genocide in Darfur, because lately that's the only way you'll really dedicate airtime to those issues. News has become indistinguishable from entertainment, and you've devolved into a conglomerate of unprofessional tabloids.

At one time the press was considered more than a business. Thomas Jefferson, for example, put the press on a pedestal and considered it the greatest asset of a free nation. He said, "Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."

You have let that light burn out.

Sincerely,

A former reader/viewer

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 19, 2007

Headline of the day

I saw this headline in the video news feed in the right sidebar and thought it deserved its own entry:


Oh, it's pronounced poo-ket. Never mind.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The case against God

Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers has filed a lawsuit against God. He says his intention is to make a point about frivolous lawsuits and illustrate how anyone can file a meritless case without serious consequences.

The lawsuit accuses God of "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent." The suit also seeks to hold God accountable for "calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction."

Among the catastrophes God is being accused of:

Senator Chambers seeks an injunction against God and claims he can file the suit in the Douglas County since God is omnipresent. He says he's tried to contact God several times but has gotten no response.

I don't think the accusations of genocidal wars will hold up in court (we shoulder the blame for that one), but otherwise it seems like an open and shut case.

(On a serious note, Chambers' main objection is "that the constitution requires that the doors to the courthouse be open to all." While I can understand his frustration with frivolous lawsuits, I don't think the answer is to start categorically banning certain types suits.)

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 17, 2007

Executive excess: CEO pay out of control

Every Labor Day, the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy release a study on the growing CEO-worker pay gap. I know, I'm a few weeks late on this one, but the results are worth revisiting. (Click here to view the full report, "Executive Excess 2007." Thanks to Carla Murphy for sending the link)

The most interesting finding is not the growth in the gap—it has been widening for so long that it barely makes the news anymore—but the comparison between CEO pay in Europe and the U.S. In 2006, the 20 highest-paid European corporate managers made only one third as much as the 20 highest-earning U.S. executives, even though they led companies that generated $19 billion more in sales revenue.

Defenders of skyrocketing CEO pay often claim that the compensation is justified because of the value a top CEO can bring to a company. But the Executive Excess report provides evidence, as if any was needed, that CEOs of U.S. corporations are paid well beyond their value to the companies they run.

Additional findings:

According to the report, CEO pay began to get out of control in the 1980s when "tax rates on America's richest tax payers began to plummet." The researchers offered six proposals for change, mainly focusing on eliminating perverse tax incentives, such as loopholes that allow corporations to deduct bloated CEO pay as a business expense.

Even suggesting that corporations or the top income brackets should pay more taxes usually brings out the tax-cut brigade, repeating their mantra of "Tax cuts are good for the economy!" But anything beyond a cursory review suggests this economy isn't doing that well. Half of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck (I've seen estimates ranging from 40% to 70%), and Alan Greenspan predicts inflation will double within the next few years.

That isn't good news for those of use outside the C-suite.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 15, 2007

Greenspan: Bush let politics drive policy

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, has written a new book in which he recounts his relationships with six presidents and assesses how each handled economic policy:

Greenspan's harshest criticism was saved for the current president: Greenspan accuses Bush of basing his economic agenda on politics instead of sound policy, with little concern for future consequences. From Bloomberg.com:

``Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences,'' he wrote.

Greenspan also expressed disappointment in Bush's reluctance to antagonize then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional Republicans by vetoing spending bills. ``There is a remedy for legislative excess,'' wrote Greenspan, ``it's called a presidential veto.''

Greenspan's frustration extended to Congress, which let spending get out of control, he said. ```Deficits don't matter,' to my chagrin, became part of the Republicans' rhetoric,'' he said. ``The Republicans in Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.'' The Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in the November 2006 elections.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 5:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 13, 2007

Friday Brainteaser: Burning rope

The answer to last week's brainteaser was posted in the comments section. This week, burning rope:

There are two lengths of rope.
Each one can burn in exactly one hour.
They are not necessarily of the same length or width as each other.
They also are not of uniform width (may be wider in middle than on the end), thus burning half of the rope is not necessarily 1/2 hour.

By burning the ropes, how do you measure exactly 45 minutes worth of time?

ANSWER: The answer is posted below in white text. Highlight the area to see it.

Simultaneously light rope #1 on both ends and rope #2 on just one end. The burning ends of rope #1 will meet in the middle in exactly 30 minutes. At this point, rope #2 has 30 minutes of burn left. Light the second end of rope #2 to cut that to 15 minutes.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 11:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"It's a mediaopoly"

SNL nails it with this episode of TV Funhouse.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 12, 2007

The State of the First Amendment

I wrote a few weeks ago about a survey suggesting many Americans can name more judges on American Idol than rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. Well, the First Amendment Center has released its annual "State of the First Amendment" report, and the results paint a similar picture.

The survey (available here) started by asking participants to name specific rights protected by the First Amendment. The most common one people named was "freedom of speech," which 64% identified. It goes downhill quickly from there:

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have gotten all five if put on the spot (I probably would have lumped the right to assemble and the right to petition the government together). But 3% on the last one? That's lower than the report's margin of error.

And that's just the first question in the report. Later questions moved beyond basic knowledge and measured respondents' opinions about various rights. The most widely reported finding was that the majority of Americans (55%) believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Half also say teachers should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class.

Thirty-seven percent also think the media shouldn't be allowed to "freely criticize the U.S. military about its strategy and performance." Other notable findings:

That last point is interesting. The good news is that the public is backing away from restrictive attitudes that followed 9/11. But it's strange that 25% think the First Amendment goes too far, when the first question suggests that many of those people don't even know what rights are protected under it.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 11:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 10, 2007

Petraeus Report: Crisis in Confidence

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 3:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 7, 2007

Friday Brainteaser: "Live above a star"

Last week's brainteaser has been updated with the answer. This week, a riddle:

I live above a star, and yet I never burn
I have eleven neighbors, and yet none of them turn
I am visited in sequence, first, last or in between
PRS (& sometimes Q) are my initials
Now, tell me what I mean.

I'll post the answer next week.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 6, 2007

Dead Certain: Bush talks about his presidency

Author Robert Draper has succeeded where most journalists have failed—he's convinced Bush to go on the record and open up about his presidency. Over the course of six hour-long interviews, Bush discussed some of his past decisions, his personal feelings about holding public office, and his plans for the future. Draper's book based on the interviews, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, came out today.

The New York Times has a good review, but what I find interesting are some of the direct quotes from Bush. Some reveal his human side and remind me that, regardless of how much I disagree with his decisions, his job is one of the hardest in the world and the last few years must have taken a toll. Others, such his belief that Iraq had WMDs as late as 2006, add to the evidence that this administration is incompetent, blinded by ideology, and reckless. Some quotes are below:

On his plans for after he leaves office

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers. I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75 [thousand dollars a speech] Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

“We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. "I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

On his hopes for the surge

“I’m playing for October-November." His goal is "to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, “stay longer.”

On the stress of his job

“I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that. Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency. This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”

“Of course I do [have a shoulder t cry on], I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot. I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count as president.”

“That guy who said if you want a friend in Washington get a dog, knew what he was talking about.”

On leadership and unpopular decisions

“I made a decision to lead. One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”

On the war in Iraq

“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution? I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 5, 2007

Agathidium bushi

Two U.S. scientists have named three species of slime-mold beetles they recently discovered Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi, and Agathidium rumsfeldi—after Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

Apparently, this wasn't a joke either. The entomologists considered this an honor, and one said he admired all three men for "having the courage of their convictions" and standing up for freedom and democracy.

UPDATE: This is really old news, I just didn't pay attention to the 2005 date on the BBC article the first time I read it.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack