Good News, Everyone!

It appears that a terrible crisis has been averted. The Toronto Star is reporting that "Futurama cast members ink new deal with Fox":

LOS ANGELES–The Star has learned exclusively that the voice cast of Futurama has just signed a new contract with Fox after weeks of intense salary negotiations.

As late as last week, the network was threatening to replace the original voices of Matt Groening's cult-hit cartoon, to the point of actually announcing a casting call for voice actors to replace them.

The compromise agreement, with the studio paying more and the actors accepting less, comes after the announcement of a 26-episode pick-up here by Comedy Central. Futurama also airs internationally in syndication, has produced four bestselling straight-to-DVD movies (later cut into episodes) and an upcoming feature film.

A Fox spokesman, reacting to this story, insisted that only two of the cast have so far signed the deal, but later added that they expect to have the matter resolved by the end of the day.

It looks like we can breathe easier now. Hopefully.

Awesome

And they say watching markups on C-span isn't fun.



"I dare you, I double dare you [muthafucka]!" Put up or shut up. A message for all the anti-public option Republicans out there.

By the way, check out this link (it's a PDF) for some interesting numbers.

Less than ten ET civilizations?

There's a new post up on the arXiv blog (a blog that scours the arXiv physics pre-print server for the most interesting physics papers being put up) that's relevant to one of our recent topics of discussion. It concerns the Fermi paradox, which asks why we don't see signs of ET civilizations if they're actually out there. Here's part of it:

Cotta and Morales take a different tack by studying how automated probes sent ahead of the colonisation could explore the galaxy. Obviously, this could advance much faster than the colonisation wavefront. The scenario involves a civilisation sending out 8 probes, each equipped with smaller subprobes for studying regions that the host probe visits.

This is not a new scenario. One previous calculation suggests that in about 300 millions years these 8 probes could explore just 4 per cent of the galaxy. The question that Cotta and Morales ask is: what if several advanced civilisations were exploring the galaxy at the same time? Surely, if enough advanced civilisations were exploring simultaneously, one of their probes would end up visiting the solar system. So that fact we haven't seen one places a limit on how many civilisations can be out there.

The numbers that Cotta and Morales come up with depend crucially on the lifetime of the probes doing the exploring (and obviously on the number of probes each civilisations ends out). They say that if each probe has a lifetime of 50 million years and that evidence of them visiting the solar system lasts for about a million years, there can be no more than about 1000 advanced civilisations out there now.

But if these probes can leave evidence of a visit that lasts for 100 million years, then there can be no more than about 10 civilisations out there.

Of course, we may not have discovered the evidence yet. And when we finally find the black obelisk on the Moon, the paradox will be resolved.

It seems to me that the last sentence is the key bit. Finding an alien probe--assuming one were present in the solar system--would be hard: it's the ultimate needle in a haystack. If it were just somewhere on earth, perhaps buried in some deep layer of rock or something, that would be hard enough. But if it could be anywhere in the solar system you could easily never find it. It could be on our moon, as in 2001, or it could be on one of the other scores of moons throughout the solar system. Or it could be on another planet, perhaps having fallen into the clouds of Jupiter millenia ago. Or perhaps it's just floating in the asteroid belt. Or orbiting outside of it somewhere else in the solar system. Frankly, I can't see how this study could make any sense, given these practical points. Though, in an abstract way, it's a very interesting use of brainpower.

An Awful Waste of Space? (Part 2)

It seems somewhat obvious to be amazed by all the history that has brought mankind where it is today. Ambitious (or bored) scholars and enthusiasts have attempted to compile lists of all the momentous inventions and discoveries over the millennia. However, while we struggle to fathom the gravity of everything that has brought us where we are today (and for the topic at hand, everything an alien civilization would have to achieve to contact us one day) we tend to overlook just how utterly amazing and immensely complex each individual accomplishment really was.

Iron technology is a prime case study, both for its importance in the history of man and for the complexity of the smelting process. Awhile back I had a debate at a forum with a guy about this practice (as an aside, the guy sparked my interest in the intricate process of smelting, however I was somewhat less impressed by his argument that the only way man could have ever figured it out was if aliens told us). Now I don't claim to have any kind of in-depth knowledge of iron working (and I don't want to intrude in the territory of our resident technologist); however I do know that it requires a lot of chemistry to occur and that there is a procedure to making quality iron that must be followed during the process. Obviously when man discovered how to make iron he did not understand the chemistry behind it, and the procedure could only have been worked out after tedious practice. As a result, smelting must have taken an unbelievably long time to perfect. Constant trial-and-error and tinkering with the process (I'll never understand how we figured out tempering) over a very long period of time finally led to an in-depth knowledge of iron. However, given the mindset, immediate needs, and lack of other technologies at the time, it always amazes me that man ever figured it out.

If we consider this process of trial and error in regards to the “big picture” (for example, everything on that list I linked in the beginning), the amount of thinking and time involved becomes more than impressive. The example is cliché, but for a single invention such as the light bulb, Edison claimed "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (or something along those lines). Even abstract ideas such as democracy, which arguably is not a vital discovery for the Drake equation but bear with me, have essentially been slowly perfected over the course of 2000 years and running.

Now I do not follow whatsoever the paradoxical claims that aliens or some super-ancient human civilization taught us everything we know. However the trial-and-error history of man's discoveries leads me to my main argument. I believe that one thing history has consistently proven is that thanks to certain aspects of human nature, even the sky is no longer the limit for mankind. Furthermore, by extension at least one of these qualities, if not all of them, would be necessary for alien civilizations to expand as far as we have. The most important to my Hobbesian, state of nature outlook on life is competition. This quality generally tends to play out in violence, but I mean competition in general. It comes as no surprise that we generally see a spike in new technologies during and shortly after war and conflict. The "Gunpowder Empires" of the 16th century clawed their way to the top by adopting and furthering the latest technology, then they fell to later empires after failing to keep up. The American Civil War developed or progressed a number of inventions, such as repeating rifles, land mines, telegraph systems, and locomotive transportation. And as everyone knows, the Cold War had one of the greatest influences in history on advancing technology and scientific discoveries. Mankind's affinity for finding better ways to blow up or out-compete each other has been essential to our advancement. Hell, in relation to the Drake Equation we even compete to be the first scientist/nation/organization to contact an alien civilization, just like we competed to be the first one on the moon.

Curiosity is another seemingly innate characteristic that has been a driving force in human history. It's impossible to say for sure, but going back to the iron analogy I imagine that some of the steps were discovered entirely by someone saying "I wonder what would happen if I do ____ during this process." In this case, the results aren't really predictable and thus one could hope for little competitive edge to result from it. To me, what pushes discoveries such as these is simply curiosity. Drawing on what we discussed at Mike's a few weeks ago, things such as our mission to the moon or terraforming Mars are often driven little by immediate results (they can actually be more detrimental sometimes) and are generally more concerned with relatively elementary questions. Historians are another great example.

Related to curiosity but somewhat deserving of its own analysis is creativity. I don’t want to dwell on this topic too long (this might fall under Andy’s sphere of knowledge anyway), but it seems that in general man tends to have a very active imagination. We tend to believe in the quote “If you can think it, you can do it”, and often we are driven to great feats because we wish to “rival the Gods”, or because of aesthetics, or simply because we can. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was a great example but in terms of SETI breakthroughs such as string theory and cloning also seem to fall under this category. Perhaps our creativity ends up having practical results, such as cloning and GMOs, but the drive often seems to be there regardless and the first objective is always if we can do this. Maybe this is splitting hairs too much, but whether it’s a computer programmer fiddling with code, the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, or today’s string theorists, historically man seems to be driven by the idea of what we can create and understand.

Maybe these are just abstract ideas on human nature, however without these qualities I think it is safe to say that man would have only advanced as far as it took to make life comfortable and safe. And rarely do people who simply coast through life without struggle or without any kind of intellectual curiosity accomplish great things. Ideas such as the Drake Equation take into account intelligent life and technology, but there’s an assumption made between f_i and f_c in the equation about the personality (for lack of a better word) of an alien civilization. If they develop intelligence and technology, but not competition/curiosity/creativity or traits similar to them, then the civilization is effectively irrelevant in terms of the Drake Equation or SETI. Anyway, I guess this post is a long way of essentially stating the obvious, but I feel history can contribute to the search too, and these traits that have historically lead us to great things may be basic but they are also essential.

New widget(s)

You guys may notice that I've added a new feature under the "Recent Comments" feed. It's a widget that tracks the progress of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill. I was thinking of maybe adding to it in the future so that instead of "Status of Health Care Reform" it would be something like "Stanek's Bills of Interest" or just "Bills of Interest," etc and it would track a handful of different pieces of legislation. I would only put up major stuff that I think is interesting (don't want to get too cluttered on the side) like the health care bill, maybe the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill to bring down carbon emissions, and stuff like that.

What do you guys think? If I'm the only one interested in this stuff it seems a bit self-indulgent. Do you like or dislike this idea?

Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?

If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well? -- Barack Obama

You believe it is the year 1945 1974 1993 when in fact it is closer to 2009. I can't tell you exactly what year it is because we honestly don't know.

Anyway, the biggest story in policy and politics today is (once again) health care reform. We have a president who seems willing to leave it all on the field in fighting for universal coverage, unlike the last Democratic president, who chose to expend much of his political capital on his budget and NAFTA. But right now we have some disarray in Congress. Three bills exist: one in the House of Representatives, one in Ted Kennedy's Senate HELP Committee*, and one in the Senate Finance Committee. The House bill, while largely done, is reportedly being held up in the Energy and Commerce Committee by conservative Democrats (called "Blue Dogs") over cost concerns. The HELP bill has already been voted out of committee but the Finance bill is getting bogged down by bipartisanship and hasn't been released yet.

Although Speaker Pelosi insists that she has the votes to pass the House bill now and despite the rumblings from her office that the August Congressional recess may be delayed until that happens, it looks like the House is going to go home next month without having passed the bill. There doesn't seem to be any suspense in the Senate: they're certainly going home next month without voting. My concern is the vast amount of misinformation being spread about these bills. If it's working on the public, Congressmen returning to their districts for the summer recess are going to get an earful from hordes of angry constituents. The danger, of course, is that any momentum health care reform has right now will be stalled. So for now we have to hope that the misinformation isn't taking root in the public consciousness. And drop your Congressman and Senators a line stressing the importance of getting this done.

I'm sure we'll be talking about the politics and policy of this issue a lot in the next few weeks and months (not sure if the SETI thing is still going to happen?). Stay tuned.

*Note: Sherrod Brown sits on this committee.

To join or not to join...

Before I contribute to our SETI topic, I wanted to post about something that I've been deliberating over the past week or so. Recently, my med school email account has been flooded with emails asking me to join the American Medical Association (AMA), not to be confused with the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), which I'm a part of. Needless to say, I've done a lot of research about the organization, and the information I found was pretty interesting. I thought I would share some of this info, as well as how they are trying to entice me to join as a med student, since I feel like this is only the tip of the iceberg with regards to organizations/companies trying to get the support of med students and doctors.

The AMA was founded back in the mid 1800s, and it was basically established to improve medical education, promote public health, advance medical science, and create a standard set of ethics for doctors around the country. Today, they claim to be the largest medical association in America. I was shocked to find out that less than 20% of doctors are actually members of the AMA, and about 30% of the members are actually medical students, residents, or fellows--not practicing, licensed, physicians. I think it would be accurate to say that most Americans believe that the AMA is the spokesperson for the beliefs of all physicians, but this is clearly not the case from these statistics. This is an important point. The AMA does not speak for the majority of practicing physicians in the U.S. However, they are seen as having tremendous political power, acting as the lobbyist for the entire medical community. The President of the United States makes it a point to speak at AMA meetings every once in a while, and Obama was relieved that the AMA accepted the House Health Reform Bill not too long ago. The AMA also performs charity work on national and international levels, contributing money and physicians for public health improvement.

On to my dilemma.

The emails I have gotten about the AMA have all been incentive-oriented. Here's the basic layout of all these emails:

Hello, and congratulations on being accepted to _______ School of Medicine! I know how hard the first year of medical school can be, which is why I would like to invite you to join the largest support group of medical students in the nation. Because the AMA helps create policy, you can make a difference in the issues that matter most to students like us: expanding coverage for the uninsured, medical school loan debt relief and reasonable resident work hours. You also receive complimentary subscriptions to a number of AMA publications, most notably the Journal of the American Medical Association, to help keep you informed on these and other issues. We are currently offering a 4-year membership, which is $68, and free Netter Flashcards, a $35 value, which are essential for Human Structure. If you happen to already have the flashcards we also will have very nice dissection kits that you can choose instead, also a must have for Anatomy. Join the AMA today and start making a difference.

As much as I like flashcards and dissection kits, I wanted to know what the real benefits were of joining the organization. What better place to look but their website, where they detail the top 10 reasons for joining. I won't spend too much time on them here, since you can read them for yourselves, but a good number of their reasons for joining are again these small incentives: flashcards, online subscriptions to their journal--which incidentily every medical student should have access to through their school, a residency search tool--which again everyone has access to (if you're a member, you can print mailing labels!), access to certain health policy internships in D.C. (politics isn't really my cup of tea as a med student...I rather spend the extra time doing something to increase my abilities as a physician, and worry about politics later), networking through conferences and meetings (networking as a med student should not be one of your highest priorities, in my opinion), and a web-based forum (now that's cool!--sarcasm intended), and other misc. leadership opportunities/advocacy benefits. To be honest, I still wasn't persuaded to join or not to join at this point. I had to do more fishing around on their website, to get a clear idea of what they stood for ethics-wise.

Now, before I get into specific ethical stances, I want to discuss how the AMA works. Essentially, the AMA is a union. Doctors get benefits, and they agree to abide by certain rules and regulations of the union--otherwise, bad things happen. The code of ethics is basically the AMA's set of rules, and, as I understand it, members have to agree to the code to become members. What can the AMA do to doctors who don't abide by its rules? Well, the networking structure that the AMA has can be a blessing or a curse, depending what your standing is with them. For example, they could effectively cut off your referrals from other AMA members, making it harder to get patients. Word of mouth is an untamed beast, especially in medicine. Ultimately, they could kick you out of the organization for numerous violations of their code, which would not look good to anyone reviewing your CV. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) they do not have the membership that they once had, so dissenters of the AMA have much less to worry about than they used to.

Conveinently, the AMA has their code of ethics section right on their website. I found a couple of entries in this code to be contrary to what I deem is ethically correct. The AMA believes that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are absolutely wrong in every case, and that performing these acts is "incompatibile with the physician in a role as healer." It's interesting, then, that palliative sedation is deemed ethically permissible by the AMA. If euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are not allowed, why should palliative sedation be any different? Along these lines, I feel like the role of a physician is not only that of a healer, which seems to run counter to the very ideologies that the AMA holds. In the role of a healer, physicians treat diseases. They fix pathological issues in the body. Of course I do not disagree with this statement...this is what doctors do! But I feel that doctors should be treating illnesses, which encompass much more than the disease itself. Illnesses affect the patient, their families, and their psychological, social, and physical issues. Doctors have a responsibility to care for the entire patient, something that I feel is lost in our culture of attacking diseases and waging wars against pathogens, etc. End-of-life care is as much in the doctors realm as is giving a vaccination to a child.

I also find objection to the AMA's stance on gift-giving by companies. While they do take a stance that is mainly anti-gifts, they do allow for companies to take physicians on trips and provide meals, etc. that are "for the ultimate benefit of the patient." I believe that under no circumstances should a doctor become entangled with the companies that provide them with medical supplies and equipment. The act in itself is not beneficial for the patient, as it may persuade the doctor to give medication or perform a procedure that is ultimately unnecessary or not in the patient's best interest.

Finally, I am not one to let others make decisions for me, which would essentially be the case both with advocacy in Washington and in providing care for my own patients if I became a member of the AMA. Members are finding this hard to swallow in recents weeks, with the AMA's support of the House Health Reform Bill. The former AMA president as well as various AMA regional groups are in strong opposition of the AMA's support of the bill, since it will decrease physician salaries and allow for less physician control in the care of their patients. They are finding out the hard way that only a select few people have a tremendous amount of power in the organization, determining organization-wide policy endorsements when there is considerable divide in the organization itself. That's a shitstorm that I will happily avoid.

So, in the end, I decided not to join the AMA. I felt that surrendering my ethics to the AMA was too high of a cost, not to be outweighed by the promise of professional networking and a nifty set of flashcards. As much as I appreciate their efforts to get higher salaries for physicians, money won't make me a better doctor. Having a good set of ethics will.

Jim

An Awful Waste of Space?

Nearly thirty-two years ago, a giant radio telescope in Ohio working on a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project made a curious discovery: an unidentified signal that remains to this day the best candidate for a genuine ET transmission. This discovery—dubbed the Wow! signal due to the enthusiastic scribblings of its finder—was a spike in radio emissions to over 30 times the natural background levels coming from somewhere in the constellation Sagittarius and possessing the “expected hallmarks of [a] potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin.” Moreover, it came at a frequency of about 1420 MHz, the so-called “water hole” of the radio spectrum—-likely the most natural frequency for members of the galactic radio wave-transmitting community to favor. Unfortunately, despite repeated searches for it, the signal was never detected again and remains unexplained to this day.

But how likely is it to have been the product of an extraterrestrial intelligence? To even attempt to answer this—and the bigger questions of how likely there is to be someone out there to transmit and how likely SETI is to someday be successful—requires a very large range of scientific and social knowledge. That’s why this will be the first of several posts on a range of subjects germane to these cosmic questions and supplied by each of the contributors to this blog (in our first collaborative effort). Posts sharing their unique expertise should trickle in over the next week or so.

I’m going to open up the discussion with a very brief overview of a staple of any SETI discussion: the Drake equation. Astronomer Frank Drake launched SETI in 1960 with Project Ozma, a search for ET radio signals emanating from two nearby Sun-like stars. (On a geeky sidenote, I’ve seen up close the telescope Drake used—an 85-foot radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.) A year later, Drake devised the equation that bears his name to help organize the discussion at the first conference held to discuss the nascent SETI. Though the Drake equation ostensibly yields a value for the number of radio-transmitting civilizations in the galaxy, it is far from being a hard-and-fast formula; rather, it is a tool for sharpening our understanding of what factors are key to the existence of civilizations like ours. The Drake equation is a chain of reasoning, from the physical to the biological to the social, in which each new link of the chain cuts down our estimate of the number of civilizations in the galaxy. Let’s break it down:

● The Physical Factors. We start by considering the rate of star formation in the galaxy (or, more simply, the total number of stars). Now, what percentage of stars have planetary systems? And, in those systems, how many planets (on average) will be physically capable of supporting life?

● The Biological Factors. Once we’ve zoomed in on potentially life-supporting planets, we face the hardest question yet: what fraction of those go on to actually develop some kind of life? And once we’ve estimated that: what fraction of those life-sustaining planets go on to eventually develop intelligent life?

● The Social Factors. Now that we’ve gotten this far, we need to consider what percentage of planets with intelligent life go on to develop civilizations that eventually create radio telescopes or something similar. The final factor is to consider is how long such civilizations last, either in terms of actual longevity (i.e. do they destroy themselves?) or in terms of a communication window bounded by the technological point where ETIs are undetectable to us in our SETI efforts.

Each of these steps is a discussion unto itself and each is crucial. Solutions to the Fermi paradox (put simply, if the naïve assumptions that humans are typical and that life like us is common in the universe are correct, why have we seen absolutely no trace of anyone else?) can be found by making a very pessimistic estimate for virtually any of the factors found in the Drake equation. The simple and inexorable logic of the Drake equation has guided discussions on SETI for the past forty-eight years. So shall it guide ours as we post our thoughts on different aspects of the problem over the next few days.

Who's Gonna Save Us?

There is a point in Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (in a chapter called "The Coming Revolt of the Guards") where he writes:

All those histories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crises everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions.

The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves. But from time to time, Americans reject that idea and rebel.

There's plenty of fertile ground in there for discussion but for now I'm interested primarily in the form of hero-worship that infects politics. More broadly, I'm talking about the need for Good Guy vs Bad Guy story lines. In some sense that tendency seems to be rooted in human nature. We sympathize with a particular side or find one side to be more in line with our stated values (be they freedom, democracy, liberalism, or whatever). I can't claim to be immune to these impulses. I've elevated certain political figures to hero status, overlooking their many shortcomings and giving in to the urge to demonize their political antitheses.

Two events in the past month have helped to bring this issue into focus for me. The first is the upheaval in Iran following the disputed presidential election there. Discussions of the events with a few friends and readings of select prominent liberal blogs reveal a certain romanticization of the situation similar, I suspect, to the way we romanticize our own country's revolutionary beginnings. This is not to suggest that some immaturity or naivete exists on the part of anyone; rather, it reflects a more general tendency to identify with a side and, for lack of a better term, "root" for them. This does, however, seem to be done often with imperfect knowledge of exactly what it is one is rooting for.

My knowledge of Iranian politics and history is somewhat general and limited but I nevertheless found the Iranian protests last month to be fascinating. My sense from the beginning was that the mere existence of dissent and anger--regardless of how intense it may be--need not lead to large and lasting change. Massive urban unrest has occurred without (arguably) leading to large structural change in stable nations like the United States. Political change in the United States is usually incremental by virtue of the political system's design: legislation has to make its way past a bicameral legislature and a president, making it subject to crucial "pivot points" like the Senate filibuster and the presidential veto. Political change in contemporary Iran, on the other hand, can be nearly impossible, also by design. Legislation passed by the Iranian parliament--the Majlis--must be approved by the Guardian Council, a group of 12 clerics that also must approve all candidates who wish to run for president or for a seat in the Majlis. So even when a reformist candidate is elected--like Mohammad Khatami was in 1997--and reform-minded legislators manage concurrently to win a large majority of seats in the parliament--as was the case when the Sixth Majlis was elected in 2000--large changes can still be blocked by the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader. A likely fraudulent presidential election in 2009 is merely a symptom of a political system in which elections fail to be meaningful.

For this reason I was wary of the Iranian protesters' (apparent) decision to rally around Mousavi (though several protesters also carried signs with the picture of Mohammad Mosaddeq on them). Though he is evidently reform-minded, he was only a candidate in this race because he was approved by the Guardian Council. He may wish to change it but he is undeniably part of the political system in Iran. In the United States, we often lament that our candidates are "chosen" by differential media coverage or corporate donations and we accept that political changes will be incremental, not only because of the design of our institutional features mentioned above but because politicians have a stake in preserving the current power structure that so benefits them. The difference is that most of us believe that the current system is an imperfect one that must be constantly tweaked not a fundamentally flawed one that must be overthrown. If Iranians want free and meaningful elections, they will have to change the very way that their government is structured. And, despite the recent anger over the presidential election, I don't know how much support exists for such a radical move. Rather, I think this illustrates the point Howard Zinn was making in the quote I posted above: many of the political "heroes" we honor and idolize, particularly in the wake of crisis situations, do not seek to pursue large changes that may be called for by the situation or by the masses. Instead, these heroes use their considerable political acumen to pacify the popular will and return them to a state of complacence with a flawed status quo. It is for this reason that I find the excitement and admiration heaped upon Mousavi (no matter how "good" his intentions may be) by American bloggers to be potentially misplaced.

The second event I alluded to above is the ongoing political turmoil in Honduras. This situation is one I know virtually nothing about but it seems that President Zelaya engaged in activities "ruled illegal by Honduras' Supreme Court, attorney general, top electoral body, and human-rights ombudsman" in pursuit of a referendum to potentially extend his stay in office. Zelaya was then arrested and exiled by the military, apparently on the orders of the Honduran Supreme Court. In reading comments on a story about this on a prominent liberal political blog, I was again struck by the need for every political story to have a clear-cut Good Guy and Bad Guy. The consensus seemed to be that Zelaya was the Good Guy by virtue of having been elected to his office; as Americans, it seems, we don't support the deposition of political leaders unless we question the legitimacy of their form of government.

Perhaps, as I speculated above, this sort of black-and-white thinking is ingrained in our psyches but I can't help but wonder if our educational system's habit of building a mythology around all "great" political figures contributes. We stress the need to think critically and along multiple dimensions, yet rarely fail to identify a Good Guy and Bad Guy in every war, nay, every conflict, be it military, political, or even economic. Certainly, I'm not immune to this phenomenon. It's easy to slip into the habit of considering domestic political opponents to be enemies or the liberal Western way of thinking as the only valid political philosophy. But it isn't up to me to decide what form of government is right for Iran; even suggesting that it's up to the Iranian citizenry to decide for themselves betrays a Western liberal bias, with its emphasis on personal liberty and equality, self-determination and consent of the governed. I can only offer a somewhat Darwinian (or perhaps Machiavellian) view: if the Iranian government values self-preservation and throws enough pittances at its angriest citizens to pacify them, it will likely survive in its current form (indeed, for the time being, this is the outcome that seems most likely). If it fails to retain legitimacy (as the Shah's Iran did three decades ago), it will fall. In short, what will happen will happen. Making the value judgment of what should happen would require either a focus on Realpolitik (what would most benefit the United States?) or a more presumptuous reliance on the conviction that one's own political ideology is best for everyone.

The point, from which I seem to have strayed, is that blind hero-worship of a redeeming political figure (e.g. a Barack Obama) or even simply choosing to read a political situation while operating under the assumption that some leader (a Zelaya or a Mousavi) must be "the Good Guy" is dangerous and misguided. Things happen for complex and sometimes obscure reasons. We currently have four bloggers here--a policy scientist, a historian, a medical student, and an engineer (aspiring, all)--and each of us can attest to the veracity of this fact in our respective fields. Identifying political actors as good or bad (/evil) and thus "explaining" their motives is often a shortcut that fails to illuminate the reasons things played out as they did.

Note: The title of this post was taken from the politically-charged song of the same name.

The Curse of 2012--Who's Next?

What a year it‘s been for virtually any Republican who has been thinking about running in 2012. It‘s like the Carter expedition that went into King Tut‘s tomb. What‘s going on here? -- Chris Matthews

First, Bobby Jindal introduced himself to the American public by responding to Obama's speech to Congress with his best Kenneth-the-Page impression. Soon after, Jon Huntsman was shipped off to China and swept off the American political landscape. Then Newt Gingrich stuck his foot in his mouth and his middle finger in the face of the growing Latino community when he began tweeting unequivocally that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Next John Ensign and Mark Sanford, defenders of the sanctity of marriage and condemners of President Clinton, were exposed as adulterous hypocrites. Now we may have the latest victim of this insidious, Republican-smashing force.

If you follow the news even a little, you've no doubt already heard about the political bombshell dropped on this holiday weekend's Friday news dump: Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. This lipsticked pitbull has been champing at the bit to start the 2012 election season for months now, so the fact that she's opted not to run for re-election in 2010 should come as no surprise to most political junkies. As Rudy Giuliani found out the hard way last time around, Iowa and New Hampshire are what count when it comes to making presidents. And Alaska is a long way from both.

The obvious question is why on earth she would resign as governor 30 months into her first term, particularly if she wants a promotion. As noted, it makes some sense not to seek re-election because the long commute times entailed by simultaneously governing Alaska and campaigning in the heartland simply make the whole thing infeasible. But throwing in the towel now doesn't make much political sense. Viewers hoping to see some glimpse of a rational thought process at work behind this decision by watching Palin's press conference today were disappointed. The only apt way to characterize it is to paraphrase a wonderful rebuke from Billy Madison:

Mrs. Palin, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Dont-cha-know.)

Let's muse a bit to try and figure out what she's thinking. The working assumption here--given Palin's continuing efforts to endear herself to the Republican base and stay in the news cycle--is that the soon-to-be former governor desperately wants to run for president in 2012. Since the 2012 Republican field looks to be even more anemic and laughable than the last one, this plan isn't a horrible one. But why resign now?

● Scandal. This one doesn't make any sense if Palin still intends to run for president; what good would resigning her governorship do? If (and certainly this a big if) there were some scandal she'd prefer never sees the light of day, resigning and fading out of the public spotlight might work. But since I doubt she plans to really leave the limelight any time soon, we're either about to be treated to something juicy in the next few weeks or this is just a far-fetched interwebs wet dream.

● Campaigning. Maybe she wants to get started early and spend more than three years campaigning. If this is really her reason, she must have the worst political instincts of her generation. This move makes her look like even more of a lightweight than she already did (no small feat) and nudges her even closer to irrelevance.

● Disinterest. By far the most alarming prospect is that she simply doesn't feel like governing or dealing with legislators anymore. It wouldn't be particularly surprising if Gabby Gimmick just got tired of the difficult and thankless task of, you know, doing her job. The fact that she might then want to go on to run for president would be funny if it wasn't so sickening.


In fairness, in her press conference Palin indicated that she didn't feel lame ducks should be collecting paychecks (no word on per diem reimbursements) and, since she doesn't intend to run for re-election, there's no place for her in Juneau. Of course, the logic of that doesn't really make any sense but we'll let that slide. Maybe she's really just throwing in the towel and giving up the political game. If so, she'll likely be spared further retribution from the Curse. If, however, she continues on the path to opposing Obama in the next election, the Curse may well strike down upon her with great vengeance and furious anger. She could end up becoming an elected official in Wasilla again.

Anybody have any thoughts on why she's quitting? Or who the Curse will go after next?