Quotulatiousness

May 11, 2012

Britain’s government websites under attack

Filed under: Britain, China, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Perhaps I’m just cynical, but I had expected that any government website would need to be “hardened” against attack. The British government’s many official websites have indeed been undergoing attacks for quite some time:

The British Ministry of Defense has admitted, for the first time, that it is under heavy attack by hackers. It was also revealed that some of these attacks had succeeded. The good news is that the military is becoming more aggressive and imaginative in dealing with Cyber War defense. China was not directly accused of being behind any of these attacks, but it was mentioned that there are now discussions underway with the Chinese on the matter. All this is an old problem.

Last year, Britain went public to report a higher number of Internet based attacks. The report noted that the emphasis was now on economic assets. This included technology and business plans. For example, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was under heavy cyber-attack for several months, apparently in an effort to obtain secret details of government plans and techniques for supporting British exports. Government Internet security officials were making all this public to encourage British firms to increase their Internet security.

All this was nothing new. Two years ago Britain’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, went public with numerous charges of Chinese Internet based espionage. MI5 accused China of using both agents and hacker software, to obtain secrets from specific companies and government organizations. This approach had Chinese personnel approaching specific British businessmen at trade shows, and offering gifts, like a thumb drive loaded with hidden hacker software that will load itself on to the victim’s PC and seek out valuable information. Internet based attacks, traced back to China, continue to send real looking email that has an attachment containing another of those stealthy hacker programs that seek out secrets, or even quietly take over the user’s PC. Three years ago, MI-5 sent alerts to major corporations warning them of similar attacks and advising increased security of their data.

May 10, 2012

Megan McArdle on “eyewitness” accuracy, bullying, and the failures of human memory

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, Science — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

In a fascinating series of Twitter updates, Megan McArdle discusses the inherent problems we encounter when we depend on eyewitness testimony, especially long after the event. This is a long series of separate entries starting with this one:

It’s heartwarming to see all these journalists and twitterers who never did anything morally wrong in high school.

I mean, most of the high school students I knew were pretty much selfish and immoral herd beasts. But maybe things were different elsewhere.

[Responding to a comment from @jbouie] No, just saying that it’s not really backed up. You and I both know what the quality of eyewitness evidence is when given . . . immediately, and by the time it’s 50 years old and delivered in re a presidential election . . . the Swift Boaters had more . . . eyewitnesses who corroborated that Kerry was “lying”. Wouldn’t exactly be surprised to find that those who remember . . . Romney as ringleader were maybe not planning to vote for Mitt Romney.

I don’t think they’re lying as much as motivated cognition plus memory from 50 years ago is not reliable. Dito swiftboaters.

I don’t even think that’s only explanation; just think I can’t reliably distinguish from “they’re remembering accurately”

Note: I actually watched lots of formerly bullied girls become bullies themselves in girls’ camp when social dynamic of cabin . . . shifted for some reason. In most cases difference between bullied and bullies was group support/encouragement, not . . . some fundamental difference in their character. I never saw a bullied girl turn down the opportunity to bully someone else.

[. . .]

[in response to @pjdoland] I am sure that many of my bullies have forgotten it. I don’t think they’re sociopaths. I think they’re humans who grew up.

All the research on memory shows that it’s incredibly unreliable, and very easy to create factitious memories . . . that seem perfectly real. The odds that either Kerry or the Swift Boat vets accurately recalled what happened are zero.

And people who come out of the woodwork decades later with memories that impeach a presidential candidate are almost . . . certainly, either individually or as a group, altering those memories in ways that help the candidate they like.

. . . or they are embellishing memories. Seriously, this is a huge problem with eyewitness testimony, particularly in old trials.

If you tell people what happened, they will report it as if they recall it–they will in fact recall it.

A personal example: my mother was in hospital for an undiagnosed abdominal ailment that turned out to be appendicitis.

I spent the worst 13 hours of my life in the ER with her and would have sworn that it was seared—seared!–into my memory.

But as it happened, I kept a record of what was happening in RT, in case I wanted to write about it. (Fucking journalists, right?)

Three weeks later, I’d forgotten most of the stuff on the list. Some of it came back to me when I read it.

Some of it I still have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. (I googled snoring? Why?) Memory is not what we think.

It’s a narrative that is constantly being recreated as we tell it, not a record.

The malleability of memory is something that none of us particularly want to face up to: we like to think of ourselves as reliable witnesses to our own lives, yet the evidence is that we are very much not. Some of us are a bit better at accurate recollection, while others consciously remember things as they should have happened instead of how they actually happened.

This, of course, should require us to move the entire “history” section over into the “fiction” part of the mental library…

British aircraft carriers to be equipped with F-35B in policy reversal

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

The two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers being built for the Royal Navy were originally to be equipped with F-35B model which can operate in VTOL mode (like the Harriers used on HMS Ark Royal up to her retirement). This was deemed to be too expensive, so the British government ordered the carriers to be retro-fitted with catapults and conventional landing equipment so the RN could use the (relatively) cheaper F-35C.

The plan has now been revised back to the original:

The Ministry of Defence is to abandon plans to buy the preferred fighter for the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers, in an embarrassing U-turn for David Cameron.

The prime minister personally endorsed the decision to equip the over-budget carriers with “cats and traps” so they could catapult and recover a version of the F-35 joint strike fighter (JSF) from their decks.

But the cost of converting the carriers has already reached £2bn, and the JSF model Downing Street wanted has been beset by delays and technical problems.

The aircraft will now not be ready until 2023 at the earliest, forcing the government to revert to Labour’s original plans to buy the less capable jump jet model.

Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, is due to make an announcement in the Commons on Thursday explaining the about-face, which was approved by the National Security Council on Tuesday.

It should be no surprise at all that Lewis Page is ready to call this decision idiotic (and he’s almost certainly right):

It’s well known that the F-35B will cost a lot more to buy and more to run than the F-35C catapult version: and it’s also well known that the main cost of aircraft carriers is not the ships but the planes. So, right out of the gate, we can see that this is a foolish decision.

In fact it’s a lot worse than it seems, as the contest in real life was not between the F-35B and the F-35C: it was between the F-35B and — for the immediate future — one or another cheap, powerful, modern carrier jet already in service. This would most most likely have been the F-18 Hornet as used by the US Navy and many other air forces around the globe, but possibly the French Rafale instead of or alongside Hornets.

In fact the UK will not be able to afford either the F-35B or the F-35C in any large numbers any time soon. Both planes are, after all, brand new supersonic stealth aircraft — only the second make of supersonic stealth aircraft ever built, in fact, and the first ever which can land on ships. They are brand new, bleeding edge kit and will cost accordingly. Both planes are still in flight test at the moment, in fact, and the F-35 programme as a whole has suffered serious cost and time overruns. This has led to delays to US orders, which have in turn pushed up costs for other early purchasers. Production is still at a low rate only.

Thus, if the Royal Navy had managed to get its hands on a catapult carrier, it would have been compelled (very happily!) to buy or lease an interim carrier jet to tide it over until a reasonable number of F-35Cs could be bought for a reasonable price — probably at some point in the 2020s. There would be no need for a full force of F-35Cs any sooner than the 2030s, by which point they would be affordable and there might be a real need for their stealth and other advanced capabilities.

The Vintner’s Kwality Approximation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:15

Michael Pinkus expresses the feelings of a lot of Ontario wine drinkers:

There has been a lot of talk by media-types lately about VQA … about how the VQA symbol is finding its way onto inferior wines; inferior, bland, uneventful, non-descript wine blends — the latest culprit in this category are whites … a growing segment of the LCBO market. These white blends seem to encompass the kitchen and the sink … everything is fair game in them, from Chardonnay Musque to Viognier to Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc (just name a white grape and it’s in there) and of course there’s always some Gewurztraminer thrown into the mix. I find myself on this topic after reading Rod Phillips’ musings, [who] went so far as to accuse the Ontario wine industry and the VQA of dumbing down wine — actually regressing us back to a time when Ontario wine was the laughing stock of the wine world.

[. . .]

Let’s get back to VQA … I’m gonna let you in on another highly guarded secret: VQA is NOT, repeat NOT a sign of quality … it’s a symbol of origin. That’s’ right, according to executive director, Laurie MacDonald, whom the Wine Writers’ Circle of Canada members had a meeting with back in 2011. She was adamant the VQA was all about origin — not quality … so why is the word “Quality” in the acronym? Good question … to which I would hazard a guess there is no really good answer besides it sounded good at the time; but I also offer you this: it sure sounds better than Questionable?

I’m sure, in the past, that you have tasted a wine with a big VQA symbol on it and thought “this is some nasty-ass sh*t … how did that pass VQA?” Yes there’s a tasting component to the process, but I have been assured by many a winery that they just think it’s cash grab by the VQA. It costs a winery $265.50 a shot to run tests through the VQA lab and get authorization to use the symbol on their bottles and a wine can be submitted up to 3 times.

I usually check any Ontario wine for the VQA symbol, and almost always put back any that don’t carry the “stamp of approval”, but I’ve certainly bought more than a few wines carrying the VQA symbol that were unpleasant drinking experiences.

In fairness, I’ve also bought more than a few French wines with AOC designations that failed to live up to expectations, and even more Italian DOC wines that were a waste of money. Wine, by its very nature, can’t be as consistent as other products, so things like the VQA/AOC/DOC are only guideposts, not destination markers. You still have to exercise judgement and roll the dice now and again.

Reason.tv: Ron Paul’s young voter fanbase

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:36

Eight years of blogging

Filed under: Administrivia, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:02

In the fast-paced world of blogging, where sites go dark in mere weeks or months, a blog reaching the venerable age of eight is a bit of an achievement (if only of persistence). Why do I still do it? Damned if I know … but if I haven’t published at least a few posts by mid-morning I feel like I’m slacking. It’s certainly not for the fame or fortune: it’s probably harder to become rich and famous through blogging than in many other fields, but to compensate it requires less talent.

Eight years ago, a fellow writer set up his own blog and invited me to set up my own blog on his site. Jon stopped blogging (far too soon, in my opinion), but allowed me to maintain my blog on his site for over five years and still graciously hosts the archives from that period. I probably wrote more and quoted less in the early days, but it’s now hard to remember what I did online before I became a blogger.

I did a retrospective round-up of the first year for the 2010 anniversary, and I collected the “best of 2005” for last year’s anniversary post. I guess this year requires a look at what I posted in 2006 (and may still have some relevance or interest):

(more…)

May 9, 2012

Misreading the European electoral tea leaves

Filed under: Economics, Europe, France, Government, Greece, Italy, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:19

Brendan O’Neill points out that there’s something lacking in the analyses of all the recent electoral upheavals in Europe:

Great claims are being made in the wake of the local elections in Britain, the presidential elections in France, and the legislative elections in Greece. Britain’s Labour Party may have secured the votes of just 12.5 per cent of the eligible electorate, but it came top in the local elections, and so we’re told that ‘Labour is back’. The victories of Hollande in France (where he won 51.63 per cent of the vote to Nicolas Sarkozy’s 48.37 per cent), and of SYRIZA in Greece (the anti-austerity, radical left coalition which won 16.78 per cent of the vote), are being talked up as a ‘new dawn’ for European social democracy. According to a Guardian editorial, we have witnessed a ‘stunning victory… for the left in Europe’.

These observers urgently need to take a reality check. Because in truth, the most striking thing about the recent elections in Europe has been the utter absence of any matters of doctrine, of principle, of ideological outlook. In England, France, Greece, Italy, no doctrinal matters whatsoever have been raised, far less contested. These elections are best seen, not as a new dawn for social democracy, but as an unfocused emotional reaction against things — against Sarkozy, austerity, Brussels. Actually, it’s worse than that. Where once the left was concerned with creating a new reality, one based on systems and values quite distinct from those of traditionalists, today’s emerging left is obsessed with avoiding reality, with hiding away from the harshness of economic life in 2012 and simply saying: ‘Be gone!’ The problem with the newly successful left movements is not just that they’re attracting shallow protest votes, but that they’re extraordinarily infantile, blinkered outfits.

The only ‘doctrine’ uniting the various movements against austerity in modern Europe (both the left-wing and right-wing ones) is the doctrine of responsibility aversion, of shirking seriousness in favour of emotionalism. What the cheerleaders of these movements fail to realise is that being anti-austerity without positing an alternative route out of recession, without any serious proposals for stabilising economic life in Europe, is mere gesture politics. In fact it’s an act of irresponsibility, of wilfulness, where the key aim is to insulate oneself and one’s supporters from the harsh realities of our recessionary times rather than face up to those realities and potentially transform them. The new anti-austerity posturing, to quote an old communist, is an infantile disorder.

Stephen Gordon explains that Dutch Disease is merely “economic hypochondria”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Politicians and newspaper columnists have a fetish about manufacturing. In the Globe and Mail Economy Lab, Stephen Gordon explains why it’s not the crisis we’re constantly being told it is:

The appreciating Canadian dollar has little to do with the decline in manufacturing; employment has been declining worldwide for decades. Changes in relative prices are more important. Producer prices for manufactured goods have increased by about 15 per cent since 2002, while the Bank of Canada’s commodity price index has more than doubled. Any attempt to promote manufacturing exports by depreciating the dollar is doomed to fail, since a lower Canadian dollar will also benefit resource exporters. Capital and labour will always move from sectors where prices are soft to sectors where demand is strong, regardless of what the exchange rate is doing.

But what about those 500,000 lost jobs? An underappreciated fact of the Canadian labour market is the size of the flows in and out of employment. More than 100,000 workers are laid off every month, and even more are hired. Before the recession, the fall in employment manufacturing was largely the result of attrition — workers who quit were not replaced. The loss of 500,000 manufacturing jobs since 2002 has been more than offset by the creation of 2.5 million jobs in other sectors.

[. . .]

Penalizing exports of raw resources could create processing jobs, but those gains will be more than offset by losses elsewhere. If processing in Canada were profitable under world prices, no government intervention would be necessary. The only way policy can generate significantly more processing jobs is by forcing producers of raw materials to accept lower prices or by forcing provincial governments to accept lower royalties. This would be a simple redistribution of income if production is held constant. But it is much more likely that producers would respond to these lower prices by reducing output. Total output and income would fall.

[. . .]

The shift away from manufacturing is part of a process that has increased incomes across Canada. “Dutch disease” is not a problem that needs solving.

Incrementally privatizing the space program

Filed under: Space — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Bishop Hill outlines the Yamal deception

Filed under: Environment, Media, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

At the Bishop Hill blog, the twisty-turny story of the bristlecone pine temperature reconstruction effort:

The story of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. Steve McIntyre’s research into the other reconstructions of the temperatures of the last millennium has received less publicity, however. The story of the Yamal chronology may change that.

The bristlecone pines that created the shape of the Hockey Stick graph are used in nearly every millennial temperature reconstruction around today, but there are also a handful of other tree ring series that are nearly as common and just as influential on the results. Back at the start of McIntyre’s research into the area of paleoclimate, one of the most significant of these was called Polar Urals, a chronology first published by Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. At the time, it was used in pretty much every temperature reconstruction around. In his paper, Briffa made the startling claim that the coldest year of the millennium was AD 1032, a statement that, if true, would have completely overturned the idea of the Medieval Warm Period. It is not hard to see why paleoclimatologists found the series so alluring.

Yamal saves the day

Some of McIntyre’s research into Polar Urals deserves a story in its own right, but it is one that will have to wait for another day. We can pick up the narrative again in 2005, when McIntyre discovered that an update to the Polar Urals series had been collected in 1999. Through a contact he was able to obtain a copy of the revised series. Remarkably, in the update the eleventh century appeared to be much warmer than in the original — in fact it was higher even than the twentieth century. This must have been a severe blow to paleoclimatologists, a supposition that is borne out by what happened next, or rather what didn’t: the update to the Polar Urals was not published, it was not archived and it was almost never seen again.

With Polar Urals now unusable, paleclimatologists had a pressing need for a hockey stick shaped replacement and a solution appeared in the nick of time in the shape of a series from the nearby location of Yamal.

A call to ban college football

Filed under: Economics, Education, Football, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

This Wall Street Journal piece by Buzz Bissinger is guaranteed to stir up controversy:

In more than 20 years I’ve spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.

That’s because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today’s times.

[. . .]

Who truly benefits from college football? Alumni who absurdly judge the quality of their alma mater based on the quality of the football team. Coaches such as Nick Saban of the University of Alabama and Bob Stoops of the University of Oklahoma who make obscene millions. The players themselves don’t benefit, exploited by a system in which they don’t receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn’t benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone.

If the vast majority of major college football programs made money, the argument to ban football might be a more precarious one. But too many of them don’t—to the detriment of academic budgets at all too many schools. According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs.

The other big beneficiaries of the college football system is, of course, the NFL. Unlike baseball or NHL teams, it doesn’t have to maintain a “farm team” league or leagues to provide training and play opportunities for would-be professional football players. This burden, instead, is carried by the taxpayer as part of their share of higher education.

May 8, 2012

Absurd meme of the month: that European countries have imposed draconian fiscal austerity

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

For all the gasping about the impact of fiscal austerity on weakened European economies, it’s hard to detect from the actual numbers:


(Image from the Mercatus Center)

See all those coloured lines dropping precipitously? Me neither.

Veronique de Rugy asks where the “savage” spending cuts can be seen:

Austerity is destroying Europe, we are told. In fact, this “anti-austerity” slogan was a big reason for the victory of newly elected socialist François Hollande to the presidency of France. Interviewed in The Economist a few weeks ago, Hollande’s campaign director said “We are not disciples of savage spending cuts.”

But then, I look at the data and I am asking: What “savage” spending cuts?

Look at [the chart above]. It is based on Eurostat data which you can find here. Following years of large spending increases, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece — countries widely cited for adopting austerity measures — haven’t significantly reduced spending since 2008. As you can see on this chart:

  • These countries still spend more than pre-recession levels
  • France and the U.K. did not cut spending.
  • In Greece, and Spain, when spending was actually reduced — between 2009–2011 — the cuts have been relatively small compared to what is needed. Also, meaningful structural reforms were seldom implemented.
  • As for Italy, the country reduced spending between 2009 and 2010 but the data shows and uptick in spending 2011. The increase in spending represents more than the previous reduction.

In addition to failing to curb spending, several governments have raised taxes (which has a negative effect on growth in the economy and can — contrary to popular wisdom — actually reduce the total tax collected as people and companies change their habits to minimize the impact of the tax change).

“If this drought continues much longer, we’re going to run out of umbrellas”

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:40

Rob Lyons on the amusing juxtaposition of a “hosepipe ban” in the south of England and the wettest April since record keeping began:

It never rains but it pours scorn. That must be how many of England’s water companies feel as millions make fun of them. Having just declared a hosepipe ban and spent a fortune on posters declaring ‘WE ARE IN DROUGHT’, the heavens have opened. Result? The surreal combination of drought restrictions on water use going side-by-side with the wettest April since records began in 1910.

It is as if the declaration of drought were a latter-day raindance. Comedian Jimmy Carr quipped what everyone was thinking: ‘If this drought continues much longer, we’re going to run out of umbrellas.’ The combination of dramatic flooding in some parts of the country that are under drought restrictions caused one friend of mine to coin the term for our current water status: ‘flought’. Pictures of Thames Water’s bus adverts juxtaposed with people in the street huddling under brollies made newspaper front pages.

Yet, while the current situation is bizarre, the water companies do have a point. If the current storage sites are running low of water after two years of well-below-average rainfall, then we need to start preserving stocks. One month of heavy rain is welcome, but unless we have a particularly sodden summer and, more importantly, a damp-and-dreary winter, supplies could start to look very sparse indeed. That’s particularly true in the south and east of England, which depend on underground aquifers to store a large proportion of water supplies. The levels in these aquifers rely on winter rain to drip through the rocks above. Summer rain tends to run off, evaporate or get absorbed by growing plants. A quick look back to February and the warnings coming from Thames Water and others show how serious the problem had become before the deluge.

Now available for download: License to Work

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

The Institute for Justice has released a new study, License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, which shows the negative effects imposed on (especially) poor and minority workers across the United States:

The report documents the license requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations — such as barber, massage therapist and preschool teacher — across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It finds that occupational licensing is not only widespread, but also overly burdensome and frequently irrational.

On average, these licenses force aspiring workers to spend nine months in education or training, pass one exam and pay more than $200 in fees. One third of the licenses take more than a year to earn. At least one exam is required for 79 of the occupations.

Barriers like these make it harder for people to find jobs and build new businesses that create jobs, particularly minorities, those of lesser means and those with less education.

Hayek and Keynes

Filed under: Books, Economics, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:32

Brian Lee Crowley recounts some of the interactions between F.A. Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in the National Post:

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Friedrich August Hayek, the Viennese-born Nobel Prize-winning economist and philosopher, who led the intellectual equivalent of the D-Day charge against central planning in the postwar era. His lessons are worth remembering in 2012, especially now that left-wing politicians in France, Greece and elsewhere seem intent on forgetting them.

Hayek’s great adversary was John Maynard Keynes, whose faith in the ability of government economic planners to “correct” the operation of markets inspired generations of disciples in government and academe. In the long run, Hayek got the better of the argument with Keynes. Indeed, his ideas contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and continue to influence economic thought to this day.

Hayek and Keynes were punctilious professional colleagues and scholarly rivals. Yet for all the correctness that characterized their relations — Hayek was, for example, Keynes’s guest when the London School of Economics fled the Nazi bombings to the relative safety of Cambridge — the Austrian could not shake a profound distrust of Keynes.A brilliant economist, captivating teacher, witty conversationalist and bon vivant, Keynes seemed to almost everyone who knew him a Renaissance man and one of his country’s most powerful minds. Hayek found Keynes glib and superficial, but it was Keynes’ intellectual dilettantism that most appalled him. When Keynes wrote A Treatise on Money in 1930, Hayek spent a year carefully analyzing it, and then wrote a devastating review. At their next meeting, Hayek was outraged when Keynes airily said that he now agreed with Hayek, having long since changed his mind. Hayek always regretted that this incident led him to neglect replying to Keynes’ next book. By the time Hayek was alive to the danger, it was too late.

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