Posted 2:10 PM

"distracted-driver" personality type

Via Gizmodo, this article suggesting that people distracted by using cell-phones while driving are the sort who are likely to be distracted anyway.

..According to an analysis by the USA insurance company, Response Insurance of their national driving survey, people who use cell phones when driving are more likely to be distracted from the road even when they are not talking on a phone. The results indicate there may be a "distracted-driver personality" type behind the wheel.

The Response Insurance National Driving Distractions Survey compared attentiveness of cell phone users to non-users when not talking on a phone. When asked a series of questions about different topics that might take their attention from the road, people who use cell phones were significantly more likely to be distracted when thinking about every-day issues and concerns than drivers who do not use cell phones while driving...

Not too terribly surprising. Using a cell phone does distract one while driving. But the focused driver will try hard to minimize this. And the other drivers...well, they're just drifting along in a daze anyway...

Posted 12:01 PM

depends on the meaning of 'usually"

From a NYT editorial, The Scramble for Hard Money

...The latest tallies from last year's Congressional elections show this Republican advantage paying off handsomely, perchance temporarily, now that the era of unlimited "soft money" donations from corporations, unions and individuals has been ended by the McCain-Feingold law. With its superior donor base, the G.O.P. attracted almost 50 percent more contributors than the Democrats and showed a commanding edge among lower-budget donors who gave less than $200 apiece. Sixty-four percent of them gave to the Republicans, versus 35 percent for the supposed party of the people, according to a detailed study by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

The public may be surprised to learn these results, but Democratic Party leaders are not. In getting behind the badly needed drive to end soft money as a device for buying candidates and favors, the Democrats knew they would have considerable catching up to do to broaden their base for the new campaign world of limited hard money...

DID they know it? I haven't followed this stuff closely, but I remember stories, after CFR passed, of Democrats suddenly and belatedly realizing that they were in trouble... By the way, though I'm a Republican, I still thing CFR is unconstitutional, and I'd scrap it in an instant...

...The sad reality is that election costs jumped by nearly a third in just four years, to $2.2 billion. And Congressional candidates who outspent opponents won a stunning 94 percent of the time, usually via 10-to-1 edges in financing.

That last sentence is interesting. The first half, the part you usually hear, implies that a candidate with just a little more money is almost sure to win. The second half implies that "usually" these wins are due to a huge disparity in funds, with races where the disparity is small presumably having much more even chances...

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Posted 7:15 PM

slippage and false starts

Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh writes

...The proper response to the task facing Washington in Iraq is not to over-plan, to trust in the self-proclaimed expertise of "experts"--no matter how well-meaning, but to be flexible, to give local personnel on the ground flexibility to adapt to different conditions. No one knew how the war was going to turn out, how exactly the post-war balance of power in Iraq would calibrate itself--to have drawn up an elaborate plan would have been absolute hubris.

Now, we probably could have used more planning than was actually done, but it's better to err on the side of flexibility in situations like this, and to also accept a good deal of slippage and false starts. And to trust in the common sense of low-level American soldiers. They know what we're aiming for in Iraq, we're aiming for what they grew up with. They know they're not supposed to shoot people indiscriminately, loot Iraqi civilians of their food, etc. Washington needs to set the basic boundaries for everything, but much of this whole effort will have to just ride on the common sense of the average Civil Affairs officer or company commander.

Which means, of course, that there will be plenty of first-rate screw-ups. Which is why we should avoid giving twenty-five year olds all this responsibility unless there is a compelling security issue in play.

The security issue here is the compellingist. If the Ba'athists take over (which may be what's going on) it would undo all the good results of invasion. We did the right things, such as the decapitation strikes, but may have missed the #1 snake. c'est la guerre. So now we do it the slow way.

And the slow messy way is often best. I was long ago impressed with an argument in BH Liddell Hart's excellent book Strategy, on the futility of "lightning victories." The enemy who is defeated before he really begins to fight doesn't really believe he has been defeated. He thinks his loss was a cheat, and is likely to strike back savagely at some later date. Examples are the French defeat in 1871, which led to a burning desire for revenge not satisfied until WWI. Or the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese imagined that defeat might lead us to negotiate a compromise, but in fact the hit-while-we-weren't-looking nature of their strike made it certain that we would spend unlimited lives and treasure to crush them.

The advantage of a victory won with difficulty is that people believe it really happened, that it wasn't some sort of slight-of-hand. It tends to stick. And for the Iraqis, the good side of all the disorder they are suffering is, that if they finally win through to a condition of order and prosperity, they will value it. They will be thoroughly disenchanted with anarchy, and willing to work hard to keep it at bay.

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Posted 9:29 AM

It's so true, so painfully true that...

There's one in every discussion group

OT No need to have a cow, but President Bush is a fascist pig who is ruining this country. Here's a link to indymedia.com and democrats.org that proves it. No need to respond, I know this is a (guitar/acting/humor) discussion group, back to your (guitar/acting/humor) talk. Anybody who disagrees with me, on or off the list, is just a humorless hateful right wing tool who's trying to ruin the (guitar/acting/humor) discussion for everybody. Dibs on political speech on the group, no dibs-back double dibs no talk backs. As one of the few remaining thinking people in the United States of Amerikkka, I just had to get that off my chest.

(Thanks to Dean)