Happy Fourth of July

I made it to the White House and the United States Capitol for the first time earlier this year.  I was traveling with my family for a long weekend to Washington, D.C.  I must admit that I was pretty taken with the imagery and architecture of the seat of our republic.

I had been to the city once before, but not to those two buildings.  I had seen and entered all of the memorials on the National Mall and stood in awe of the American Ebenezers to Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, all under the watch of the Washington Monument, of course, and the reminder of what kind of men built this country -- and the missteps along the way to get here. 

It was the right time for me, though, because I was consuming a lot of media about history, in particular the American and French Revolutions.  When considering the historical context of what political theory was like in Europe in the 18th Century, the United States of America is a gigantic human leap forward.  The mission statement captured in the Declaration of Independence set a goal for us all to strive for -- that all of us are equal and made that way by powers greater than any earthly institutions and any governments that interfere with those rights are illegitimate.  It was, of course, also fraught with internal contradictions.  Just like all of us still are.

Without that historical context, it is easy to overlook how significant the articulation of these ideas were.  The American Revolution was revolutionary in many senses of the word, since the major powers on the European Continent were still ruled by monarchs invested by divine right (and so were those across the world in Asia, for that matter).  The failures of the French Revolution that looked to ours and reached out for the same liberty we now enjoyed showed how fragile those ideas are and how lucky we were to have the men named on the Mall.  The expression "the Revolution eats its children" comes from this period in France.  The sins of America were different ones than the French, but our guiding principles at least identified a North Star for us (and those for whom the promise of the Declaration was cruelly and immorally excluded) to sail towards.  There was no Reign of Terror to devour our own.  At least, not in the same way.  Our Reign of Terror was an issue of our ideals not being shared with all of our sons and daughters; France's was about which ideals should actually count.

There are two places on the National Mall that made me cry both times: the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial.  The Lincoln Memorial stands as a testament that this project, imperfect in execution as it was, is worth preserving, at the expense of blood.  Engraved inside the classical temple are Lincoln's two greatest speeches -- among anyone's greatest speeches -- defending the virtue of republican self-government and advocating magnanimity to the enemy, our own countrymen, at the conclusion of the bloody surgery of exorcising part of America's fallen nature.  The moral stain of slavery was not completely cleansed after the conclusion of the Civil War, but the sails of the ship of state tacked closer to Jefferson's North Star.

The Vietnam Memorial is different.  While the Lincoln Memorial is theoretical and high minded, the Vietnam War Memorial is clinical in its groundedness. It is a relentless reminder of just what war costs as after each step the names just keep coming, the wall getting taller, and deeper.  It is taller than you are before you reach the halfway point.  It also serves the aching realization that there is no Second Inaugural Address, no end of slavery, no clear hard won prize purchased with the dearly spent lives.  It is a reminder that "progress" does not necessarily trend in a one to one ratio with the axis of time, as much as our optimism (and etchings on our hero's monuments) wants it to, without effort.  The arc of the moral universe is long, but there is no gravitational center without principled people bending it.

At the same time our states were warring against themselves, France had slipped into a Second -- Second -- Empire; their republican ideals did not stick.  Let us not forget this Fourth of July what we have been bequeathed by our forefathers.  It includes all of us, of every ethnicity, creed, and sex.  All men, endowed by our Creator.  It is our birthright.  Those values are worth preserving.  They are worth advancing.  They are rare.  And they are easy to lose.

Stop Children, what's that sound?

After watching How I Met Your Mother reruns tonight on WGN, the Chicago news came up, covering the ongoing protests of the NATO summit there.  The reporter asked the protestors what message they were trying to send and she had to go three deep before anybody had anything meaningful to say: complaining about the Afghanistan War, which was part of the summit's mission anyway.  (The first said she was there to hang out because the leaders were having dinner and "we weren't invited" the second guy literally said nothing.)

I don't really sympathize with protestors now, so when I look back at the protestors 50 years ago, like the Freedom Riders and civil rights leaders, I kind of wonder if I'd have been on the right side then.  I hope I would have.  Looking now, though, I find it hard to believe that history isn't going to look at these people as jokes, if it remembers them at all.

It feels like a disappointment that these people are getting this kind of news, thinking they're changing the world, yet they don't know what they're changing from or to.  My generation is awesome.

I know I shouldn't use the R word

I was reading a couple of NY Times articles online recently (this and this) and, while the content was troubling, the fact that these are online added a new wrinkle to bring all kinds of other trouble: comments.  This could very easily be a self-defeating topic since this blog has a label "comment-whoring" since like all narcissists who write these things, comments are like money, crack and Reese's cups all rolled into one.  (I love Reese's cups, by the way.)

The comments in the two stories kind of remind me of the reaction to the Halftime in America ad, which I'm pretty sure you've seen already.  People saw what they wanted to see in it, regardless of response.  I know I myself am not above bias, so I do that too.  But, being an engineer, I also know that data is important.  I want to point you towards this link of of Confirmation Bias and Hostile Media Effect, both are cognitive biases that I think are relevant.  (There are probably more, but who are we kidding?  You're not clicking those links.)  For example, the Depression and Post WWII eras are cited by both Keynesians and anti-Keynesians as justification for their positions.  The same data yields wildly different conclusions.  How?  Those biases.

Another example: last week, the latest unemployment numbers came out, and they declined and currently sit at 8.3%.  To quote from Businessweek, "While the unemployment rate has declined 1.4 percentage points over the past 24 months... the population-to-employment ration hasn't budged, holding at 58.5%..."  Both supporters of the president and his opponents have cited the unemployment decline as a vindication, as an improvement of the statistics on the one hand on the one hand, and a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of his policies on the other. 

In each case, they both can't be true at the same time.  Yet, the folks who leave comments on those articles assert each position with such verve that the other side must be stupid or deceptive to disagree.  I'm not sure that deception is entirely out of the question in some cases, but really, a lot of this is driven by confirmation bias and seeking out data that supports your established position, rather than looking for real data.  Data is, after all, boring.

Sometimes, though, finding legitimate data is a challenge.  For example, who is a credible source on climate change?  (Honestly, I don't believe either side.  I don't think anybody understands the science to nearly the degree they say they do.)  Or, if you saw Meet the Press on Sunday, Mitch Daniels asserted that a lot of the stifled business climate is a result of excessive government regulation, to which Michael Bloomberg later agreed.  However, neither really said which regulations.  It's just a mantra that people say.  Then again, there are plenty of people think that the business climate is the way it is due to insufficient regulation.  They can't both be right at the same time.

Many comments in the first NY Times link talk about how the Constitution is both obsolete and hard to change and, just like Daniels, don't really talk about why.  There is also a sense that the stagnation caused by the Republicans as an opposition party is somehow contrary to the intent of the document is a rather sever misunderstanding of its purpose.  An active government was not considered a positive by the authors of the Constitution.  Additionally, it being hard to change is by design.  That is a problem, though, for people who think that government should be more active regardless of how they feel.  On the other hand, it is venerated as a sacred document by those who think it is from the hand of God, and any desecration is blasphemy.  They both can't be right at the same time.

I frequently call these discussions, especially on public pages like that as arguments between retards on the internet, so I don't know how seriously I should take them.  I feel bad about calling them retards, though, because it's not a nice word.  It carries a weight, though, that I think is hard to convey otherwise.  How can I imply that same weight without being offensive? 

A grain of an argument

My girlfriend and I recently had an argument. Naturally, she could not be more wrong, and as far as I know, she has no blog with three readers to dispute my claims. She made the heinous suggestion that wild rice is the worst rice. The only way this could be more wrong would be if the claim at hand were to say that the Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones movie. Everyone knows that Raiders is best, followed closely by Last Crusade. We will just ignore that stupid one with that kid with the weird name. (Similarly, Empire > Jedi > New Hope, ignoring that stupid new trilogy.)

Here's the skinny on rice: Yellow is the best. Yellow rice is the America of rice. No one denies this. It is flavored with saffron, of course, which is superexpensive. Every time I eat yellow rice it's like I am eating gold in every bite. That is incredible, and untouchable by anything else that rice has to offer. Next, though, is wild rice. Wild rice is Great Britain. She is implying that it is like Cameroon. No way. That's like white rice that you cook too long and it's like a paste.

White rice and I have had our problems, though. It is kind of bland and I don't have a rice cooker so I would make a poor Asian and when you boil it, the rice water that spills over the pot is really gross. How much superexpensive herb is involved with white rice? None. Step up your game, white rice. At least the Thais put jasmine in theirs to make it taste like something. White rice is the Cameroon of rice. At its best, it is really just a vehicle to put other things on. Lots of upside there. You can make gumbo with yellow rice, I'm sure, and it would be glorious.

Broccoli cheddar rice is Germany. It has no glaring weaknesses, brings a lot to the table, and doesn't try to be something it's not. You're not putting sweet and sour meatballs on it, but if you have it next to roast beef you are having a heck of a meal right there. I haven't had brown rice in like 35 years so I don't really have anything to say about it.

The moral of the story, though, is that wild rice is great and those that disagree need to be convinced. I would suggest you help convince in the comments section, but I don't think she reads the comments. Or the posts.