afanesvoltaje

According to my OB...

2009-03-17T00:01:24Z

...as of my appointment this afternoon, I am 2cm dilated.

This doesn't mean the baby will necessarily be particularly soon - it could be weeks still - but it does mean that the risk of something going wrong / ending up with a C-section is now much lower. In particular, if for some reason the baby is induced, my risk of a C-section will be no higher than in the absence of induction.

And it makes it seem at least a little bit more possible that the baby might really be here pretty soon....

Exciting!

How we react to shocking things, and why, in an example that matters.

2008-05-20T12:12:55Z

This may be the most fascinating and important look at how both members of the military and of the public have reacted to the military scandals of the past several years that I've ever read.

I find myself almost distracted by the skill with which so many different ways of looking at an event are drawn together to achieve an actually meaningful and important conclusion... except, of course, that it's not just a show piece, it's in and of itself a critically important issue.

(Mrs. Scarborough, I'd be particularly curious to hear your reactions, if any jumped to mind...!)

very slightly alternate world

2007-10-20T19:45:54Z

I just spent a few moments incredibly frustrated that my keyboard wasn't working at all - several times in a row, I hit "Shift-1", but instead of the roman number "I" that I wanted to see appear, all I got was a stupid symbol ("!"). What was wrong with the capital numbers?!

Reminds me of elementary school, after we'd first learned cursive, when I kept explaining to my mother that they'd left something out, when were we going to learn cursive numbers? She explained that there weren't any, but I was pretty sure she had to be wrong, because it just seemed so clear that there ought to (and there for must!) be.

My news!

2007-06-17T02:38:48Z

For those I haven't talked with yet, with apologies for not calling directly...!

afanesvoltaje @ 2007-05-28T09:25:00

2007-05-28T14:52:45Z

Well. Just before the it's-been-a-year-I-guess-it's-officially-over mark, I figured, hey, what am I doing? Without a blog, I might have no identity left! It could happen. I heard it happened to this one guy, one time, that my friend's neighbor knew....

Two thoughts, then:

1) In general, life is good.

I'm painting my place 3 square feet at a time, and it's unbelievable how much trouble I have committing to paint colors, but it sure does look better. Those 9 square feet I've done so far, I mean.

I'm reading Freud's views on religion (thanks, Uchenna and Brent!), which is surprisingly delightful. The man is actually funny! He has conversations with himself, where he asks himself a question: "...would you care to elaborate on this?" and then answers it: "With pleasure! In fact, I was only waiting for the invitation...."

What with going to Home Depot so often to buy new paint colors since I as soon as I put one on the wall I realize I hate it and need a new one, I've gotten sucked in to the mad spring rush and put plants on the deck. Only edible ones, though, so it's still managing to be political, sort of, rather than domestic. I hope. Anyways, it's bizarre how much I like having them there. I mean, really really weird - I am stressed and anxious, and I go out and sit on the deck, and look around, and I can feel my breathing start to change. I'm starting to think those people who write about how green things and bodies of water convey subliminal messages that things are ok were actually on to something. Or perhaps it just helps me feel like I'm back in the green, green city of my birth? Either way: wow, I love fresh basil!

2) It's memorial day.

In honor of memorial day, here's an article that made me stop and think. It's by Andrew Bacevich, a professor of History and International Relations at Boston University, a vet, and a well known, long-standing vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. His son, who enrolled in ROTC in college, was killed earlier this month in Iraq. The article itself is about his duty as a citizen vs his duty as a father vs his son's duty as a soldier.

Best wishes on the holiday.

VOTE!

2006-08-08T18:50:53Z

St. Louis locals: remember to vote today! So far, turnout is incredibly low. In general not a good thing - but means your vote will really count! Important issues on the ballot include whether or not the small tax that is the primary source of income for keeping up all St. Louis parks will be renewed for another 10 years or allowed to expire, as well as a pretty contentious race for the 4th district missouri senate position (the one Jeff Smith is in).

Also, sorry for the loooong gap with no posts. Will get right on that. Um, soon. -ish. I hope.

JASON: this one is for you....

2006-07-11T05:05:32Z

Jason, there are two things lately that I've read and thought of you:

1) A terribly annoying article in Time or Newsweek (I can never keep them straight) that I read at the gym about "Why don't we have a Voice of Our Generation for Our Generation?" If you want to be annoyed, you should read it. Oh, wait - I found it with a quick google, in case you actually DO want to be annoyed: it's here.

2) I just came across a quote I thought you might appreciate:

One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that
perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position.
Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. -John
Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)

(Why, the general reader may be asking, am I making this a post rather than an email? Well, I thought perhaps other people would enjoy the quote, too. Also, I can't find Jason's email address.)

Ok, back to my own life now....

the most amusing quote from this morning's news

2006-07-06T13:58:20Z

" 'George is not an overly introspective person,' his wife, Laura, once said with dry understatement... "

(from nytimes article on Bush's 60th birthday)

dead birds

2006-07-05T13:47:18Z

In the past two weeks I have, I think, seen more dead birds scattered about the city than in the past 10 years combined. It's possible that it's chance - eg, I just happened to see two close together in time and then became hyper-alert to dead birds and noticed many more I would have missed - but I kind of doubt it.

Makes me wonder if we'll start seeing "new west nile strain hits st louis" headlines or something popping up soon.

some good things.

2006-07-02T21:58:48Z

I thought I'd post some good things I've learned of of late:

* You know that new pseudafed that replaced the old pseudafed in an attempt to combat meth? You know how it doesn't work at all? Well, I finally learned the other day that you don't have to settle for it - you can still buy the old pseudafed if you just go to the counter and ask for it!

* Although I worry a lot lately about the decline of the US economy and social security and fear for a future where the dollar is worth little but investments also provide small returns and the elderly are destitute... and although I tend to translate those worries into behaviors like investing in paying off my mortgage rather than investing more in mutual funds in my IRA... well, I finally set down the other day and calculated what my investing history is at this point: despite having started investing in April 2000 just before the entire market crashed, I have during my entire investing history averaged 12% annualized returns over the 6 years since this time. I'm still pretty pessimistic about the future, but... I also think I should spend more time being glad for the extent to which things still currently are good, at the same time.

* The most recent supreme court decision (that Bush's declarations of military tribunals are illegal) makes me really very happy. When my father and I discussed it, he mentioned reading about the reaction of the actual client to the verdict, which was total shock - almost as if this entire time it had just never occurred to him that he might actually be able to sue the president and WIN. And we shouldn't overlook this shock - because as much as I'm frustrated by what seem to me like recent failings in our system, it IS still amazing that it works at all. As his lawyer said, "It is a source of pride for the American court system that a man like Salim Ahmed Hamdan can sue the president of the United States in the highest court of the land without having to fear for his life." Now, we can add to that "and win!"

minimum wage

2006-06-24T18:24:53Z

Today in the nytimes I read this letter to the editor:

-------------
To the Editor:

Re "Afflicting the Afflicted" (editorial, June 23):

I'm stunned that Congress, controlled by Republicans for most of the last decade, has been able to keep a minimum-wage increase at bay. If it is so convinced that $5.15 an hour is a livable wage, I propose a constitutional amendment setting representatives' salaries at the minimum wage.

If it's good enough for the rest of the country, it's good enough for Congress.

Henry Woronicz
Bloomington, Ind., June 23, 2006
-------------

Here's what I don't get: why is there this implicit assumption on the part of pro-minimum wage and pro-living wage people that if for whatever reason the work you can do at this point in your life isn't worth enough to anyone for that person to pay you enough money for you to live somewhat comfortably on then it's better if you just give up and don't work for pay at all? It doesn't make any sense.

portraits

2006-06-19T12:26:00Z

The nytimes has an interesting article about a series of paintings of burn victims. They're worth looking at.

ok, I can't leave it on a good note, I'd be confused about my identity all day....

2006-05-22T13:53:49Z

Well, now that I've started I can't stop again. Check out this quote from the New York Times' article Gonzales Says Prosecutions of Journalists Are Possible:

----------
"Mr. Gonzales said that the administration promoted and respected the right of the press that is protected under the First Amendment.

"'But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity,' he said. 'And so those two principles have to be accommodated.'

"Mr. Gonzales sidestepped a question concerning whether the administration had been reviewing reporters' telephone records in an effort to identify their confidential sources."
----------

Say what? It's "can't be the case" that the first ammendment protection still applies if it gets in the way when the government wants to pursue something it thinks could count as criminal activity? It seems like Gonzolas must have missed the part of 5th grade where we learned what "rights" were supposed to be about (and the bits about the point of the revolution and all).

And if you want to read something that will REALLY make you simultaneously depressed and furious at our government's incompetence and the disastrous consequences that are currently resulting, even if you think you already know roughly what's going on in Iraq, Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police will still leave you aghast.

Good news?!

2006-05-22T11:34:10Z

I haven't posted in a long time. Mostly because I'm lazy.

But, I was so startled by this, I thought I'd finally break the no-posting streak and see what people thought of this:

Report: Ozone Hole May Disappear by 2050

Is this possible? There's actually hope that working together as a species to reform our behavior is actually potentially going to repair something that's been a threat since I was in elementary school? Maybe I've been more cynical lately than I'd realized, because I find the very thought amazing!

jerusalem, day 1....

2006-03-30T05:10:27Z

Well, I'm officially in Israel now. I arrived yesterday morning sick as a dog, hacking and sniffling with hot and cold flashes. I found a hostel (none of the ones listed in my book that I looked for seemed to exist anymore, but it wasn't hard to find another) and dumped my stuff, went and got some food (I have no idea what I ate - some sort of Arabic food, with I think gyro meat - but boy, it was good!), and then tried to sit at a cafe to read... but I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Literally. So I came home and went to bed - at 4:30pm. I just woke up a little bit ago, at about 6:45am, and I'm still sick, but much less so - yay! Now I'm waiting for the hot water to come on (7:30am) to take a shower - and in the meantime I have the hostel's one computer all to myself! I might just get up this early every night!

Things I noticed from yesterday... hmmmm.

First off, I took this winding route into the city from the airport, which was actually nice, because I got a tour of a lot of random suburbs. They look just like Jordanian suburbs. Like, if it weren't for the occasional Israeli flag, or the men walking around with tophats and sidelocks, I probably couldn't have told you I wasn't in Jordon.

On a related point: while the orthodox men look very different from Muslim men, it's also interesting to me that the orthodox women in some ways dress and look very similar to Muslim women - keeping entirely covered, including hair (although you're allowed to wear a wig instead of another hair covering, I am realizing).

I had to buy a new alarm clock yesterday (the one task I managed before collapsing into bed), since the one I'd brought with me inexplicably completely failed to work. I just got a cheap plastic $5 one from a watch-and-jewlery store a couple blocks down (my hostel is on Jaffa street right where King George street breaks off of it, so I'm right in the middle of a lot of stuff going on - and where my book's characters walk several times a chapter!), and the man who sold it to me was so nice... he took it down, and opened it up and showed me all the features (how to set the alarm, how to turn the alarm on and off, how to turn the little light on, how to snooze it...) and very carefully set the time for me and then put a battery in it from his store of them before sealing it all up again for me. I can see how if this is what you are used to, buying something at Target or Walmart can be a bit of a frustrating, saddening experience.

There's a woman at my hostel who's been here for a month - she is from Jerusalem, but lost her job (?) and had to give up her apartment, and so moved in here while trying to find a new job & apartment. She did find work, and starts Sunday, and says she can't wait to have enough saved to get an apartment. Apparently, apartments here are expensive - $500-600 for two rooms (note that this is NOT two bedrooms). I guess this might not seem quite as outrageous for you Seattlites, but coming from St. Louis prices it's a lot - and given that you can find hostels for $8-15 a night, and a meal for $3, so I'm guessing salaries are not comiserately high.

Ok, I'm hungry. To food!

Odds and Ends

2006-03-22T10:37:18Z

I realized the other day that although I entertain myself rather frequently while walking around or working or waiting for the bus or whatnot with thoughts about what witty and insightful and fascinating tidbits I will soon put into my livejournal, I rarely actually get around to typing them out for real.

At a meeting at the mayor's office last week, with lots of people in nice cloths looking very serious, I was struck by how often the word "task" is used as a verb by some people: as in, "Our committee was tasked with examining the implications of the potential policy shift under consideration...."

My work looked briefly to be going better, but then took a sharp turn for the worse last night. It's disturbing how much my mood & general outlook on life tends to swing along with it. Need to stop that.

Israel has fallen back out of the news, making me calmer about the fact I'm supposed to be there in less than a week (yay!!). Although I did have a long and stressful dream last night about having missed my flight and then after spending 20 hours waiting in various lines at the airport trying to get onto other flights being told that it was utterly impossible. The dream felt about 20 hours long, and I had trouble shaking my frustration / disappointment when I woke up. Also, I haven't even started making the poster I need to print out in time to take with me to present there. That's bad. I need to do that. But, I need to get some data to put on that poster, first....

I learned last night that the state in which I live (Missouri) has the longest running history of voting for the winning Presidential candidate of any state, having made only one deviation (Adali Stevenson - which is understandable, I think, seeing as he was pushed by Truman, our hometown man) since 1904. I also learned that St. Louis city has significantly more women than men, has the 5th largest medical center in the world (the one I work at), and is a majority-african-american city. (Thanks, wikipedia!)

Sometimes I sit and repeatedly hit the refresh button on bloglines around this time of night, waiting for the new Dilbert to be listed. Is that a bad sign?

And in a new first....

2006-03-05T02:33:22Z

Last night, I actually played two songs at an open mic night with two other people (another guitarist and a fiddle player) from my class. We were all rather terrified, and I'm sure it showed. I was dreading it for hours (these things really scare me), but there were no disasters - I even got through my solo part fine! - and when it was done I was elated, out of relief if nothing else. I called and told my grandmother, who was highly amused.

Guitar

2006-03-02T22:28:39Z

My guitar has shipped. It is due to arrive Saturday. I am very. very. excited.

Also, I am set to play guitar semi-publically on two separate occasions this month. I'm a little confused. This is so unlike me. What's going on? Why am I inflicting my terrible playing upon innocent bystanders? I keep telling myself I'm just trying to help those I'm playing with sound good by comparison....

my favorite joke!

2006-02-07T07:21:50Z

I just stumbled across my all time favorite joke from my childhood. Well, after the year or so it took me to get over the hilarity of "So, a man walks into a bar, and says 'Ouch!'" - which is strange, given that I was like 8 and had no idea that "So, a man walks into a bar" was actually a standard start to a joke. Perhaps that's why I was finally able to get over the oneliner for one at the opposite end of the spectrum: The Clown Joke. Oh, how funny I thought this joke was!! The hilarity!

The version my brother and I told each other was a bit different than this one (our punch line was worded very very slightly differently, but far superiorly, for example... oh, and most of the middle is completely different, and longer, too. Well, and the beginning, also.), but otherwise, the structure's pretty much the same!

You know, I still find it pretty darn funny, actually....

new phone!!

2006-02-01T20:09:20Z

It's official. I have a new fanciest-ever cell phone / tiny little computer.

Two weeks ago, my cell phone died. Well, not quite - but it fell apart to the point where it had to be held together with a rubber band, which made things like, oh, say answering it rather difficult. Since I only use a cell phone, and I give the number out as both my home and work number, I needed a replacement fast.

For months, I'd been toying with the idea of getting a PDA phone - in part because I just love gadgets, in part because I want constant email & google access for no good reason, and in part because I have over the past year developed a new skill: I can actually concentrate on one thing for long periods of time. Now, in some ways, this is great! For example, I can get a lot more work done. But it seems to have come at the cost of having shut off that little circuit in my head that checked back every couple of minutes, asking, "Is there anything else I need to be doing right now? What else do I have scheduled for later today? What's my next deadline, anyways?" Which meant that for the first time in my life, I was becoming one of those people who was regularly missing meetings, or double booking myself, or just forgetting all about what I'd promised someone months ago I'd do. Anyways, it had occurred to me that a PDA phone could deal with at least some of these problems. And so as long as I was being forced to get a new phone fast... and sprint has a deal where if you get a new phone you can try it for 14 days and see what you think of it and still return it if you want for your money back... and my contract was up already, so I would get the full contract-signing discount on whatever I purchased... I decided to leap. I got: the new (well, within the last couple of months) Sprint Pocket PC PPC-6700. You should follow that link. It's so pretty!

Anyways, it has some drawbacks - it's clunky, and it's hard to dial quickly with one hand, and sometimes its windows OS does funky things - but, after 2 weeks I'm already having trouble remembering very clearly how I existed without it. It's screen is huge (for a phone); it can switch between wi-fi, the EvDO network, and a regular cellular line; I can get unlimited data transfer with sprint's $15 a month plan; it can talk to my computer or an earpiece or a fullsized keyboard with bluetooth; it has a 1.3 megapixel camera (that I used last week to take pictures of my rig to send to someone designing me manipulator equipment)... it can even record a copy of each of the songs we learn in my ensemble class, so that I can remind myself of the melody or even play along with it while I'm practicing! I have started taking notes on it on the seminars I'm attending - which I can then log and move to my computer, where they will be searchable for evermore. Basically, it's making me a better person in every way.

So, I am going to let the 14 day line pass without returning it.

PPC-6700, welcome to the family!

new lupus treatment

2006-02-01T11:48:45Z

A procedure in which a sample of a patient's immune stem cells are removed from their bone marrow and preserved while the patient undergoes chemotherapy to destroy the remaining immune cells so that they can be regenerated from the stored stem cells seems to have dramatically improved the condition of 50% of advanced lupus patients. Potentially, they may be completely cured. The same technique may be tried for a wide variety of other severe autoimmune diseases.

This is fantastic news!

(link)

EDIT: I thought the difference between, say, the Chicago Sun Times' headline on this story - "New lupus treatment delights patients, docs" - and the Chicago Tribune's headline regarding the same finding - "Setback for Lupus Therapy" - was kind of interesting.

pretty

2006-01-29T16:27:46Z

Maybe it's just because I've been awake for too long, but I really like this collection of photos of doors from around st louis, arranged by color. Especially the red ones. And, the blue ones. And... um, well, just go look at them!

Add-ons to my reading list

2006-01-15T19:34:21Z

In case I didn't have a long enough reading list already, here are the new additions I learned of at the conference I was just at:

Regarding religion....

* In Gods We Trust by Scott Atran: As I understand it, this should be a good introduction to the ideas of commitment theory as it is used to explain the prevelance of religion in human societies.

* Theological Incorrectness by Jason Slone: Jason Slone is a Webster University professor with whom I was speaking at the conference. He seemed the least disturbed by the ideas that I was sharing. I also introduced him to the existence of the St. Louis Folk School, which makes me feel better about having trapped him into listening for a good 10 minutes to my totally uninformed ideas about everything his field is doing wrong at the moment. The book is about the distinctions between what religions teach in their theology, and what people in practice seem to actually believe (or act like they believe).

* Why Would Anyone Believe in God? by Justin Barrett: The book represents (as best I understand it so far) the other major thread (besides Commitment Theory, which is the subject of the first book on the list) in the current cultural evolutionary explanations of religion, which I think of as sort of the 'parasitic' theory (I may have to change this as I actually understand it better). In theory, I think this approach is supposed to be understanding the aspects of human cognition that predispose 'religious' ideas to be well-received, well-remembered, and preferentially passed on to other humans. In practice, I think that this approach may focus almost exclusively on the supernatural elements of religious thought, and that almost every explanation may focus on how different aspects of human cognition which are actually useful in one context also have the unhappy byproduct of also happening to predispose us to believe silly religious ideas, too. We'll see what I think once I read it.

* Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer: Pascal Boyer is a professor at Wash U, and was the organizer of the conference. As best I've picked up so far, his explanations of religion follow the 'parasitic' pattern just described, but with more inclusion of discussions of ritual and such. Either way, if I'm going to criticize this area, I'd better get a better idea of what it's actually saying first!

* Religion Is Not About God by Loyal Rue: I'm excited about this one way out of proportion to how much I actually know about what it covers.

Unrelated to Religion...

* Mad Travelers by Ian Hacking: The subtitle of the book - Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses - is probably sufficient to explain my attraction to it. Also, it was endorsed by one of the conference attendees I really liked.

In honor of the new year: A special, NO RANT post!

2006-01-02T08:41:23Z

Had lovely new year's eve. In addition to seeing gobs of old friends and meeting some new people, I got to eat dinner at Mama's Mexican Kitchen in Belltown (a neighborhood of Seattle). In addition to being a kitch-filled good-time kind of place (the walls are packed top to bottom, for example, with Elvis memorabilia), I was left in awe of the fact that this random little restaurant, that's not part of any chain, actually managed to snag the domain name "www.mamas.com". I mean, wow! Someone was on the ball there, back in the day! Aw, Seattle....

Maybe y'all should stop using my real name, or your real names, or anything approximating any of our

2005-12-27T07:43:18Z

I've been following this whole NSA spying story with the sort of rapt attention usually saved for train wrecks. That occur directly in front of you, and also happen to involve 2 cars. And a van full of children. And the president. Seriously, I've been rather fixated on the subject. My brother and I stayed up for hours Thursday night trying to figure out what the real reason for avoiding warrants could be - we convinced ourselves it just HAD to be a TIA-style large-scale data-mining thing. Which, it was declared in headlines the next day, was right on. Sadly, the smidgen of satisfaction brought on by seeing headlines that essentially said "Your brother? He was, like, RIGHT ON!" was overwhelmed by my unhappiness at actual implications of this news item.

Now, I think this story has two somewhat separate issues tied up in it: first, whether the president acted in a way that is in direct conflict with both the constitution and the laws of our nation, and second, whether such a program should actually be allowed. Although I'm clearly not really qualified to judge the first issue, I am having trouble understanding how it could be legal. It seems like the fourth amendment is fairly clear to begin with, and how it applies to issues of warrants and wiretaps was clarified both in court and in law in the 70's, when FISA (for shorter explanation, see bottom of this page) was being passed. The extent to which FISA explicitly forbids warrantless spying on Americans even for a "wartime president" is discussed in this post on the American Constitution Society blog. Tom Daschle also wrote a nice (and very short) piece in the washington post arguing that, contrary to the administration's arguments, there is nothing in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda to alter this situation, and that that was by intent - that he is "confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance."

I'm still not clear on what happens now, though, on this front - supposing Bush really did push through an illegal, non-constitutional program, what will the consequences be? I've heard it suggested that really, there's no way short of impeachment to punish this kind of breech - and that impeachment is very unlikely. It seems strange to me that there is not a more clear cut strategy for making sure the president obeys the law, but I certainly don't know as much about how government actually functions as I should....

The second issue - to what extent data-mining of vast troves of electronic data is ok - is a difficult one, but one for which I think it is important that we attempt to explore in a fairly generalized national dialogue. It's the kind of issue that is much too important to be left up to the people who have vested professional interests in certain kinds of outcomes. So, I've been trying to think, as honestly as I can, about what the pros and cons really are. Here's what I've come up with so far - but I would love to hear more input.

Also, I should admit at the outset that to my mind, it's really not clear to what extent a lot of this really is restricted to calls/emails/etc that cross outside the US border. I think it is plausible that the actual reading-of-transcripts-and-emails-and-such-by-a-person is restricted to communications that involve at least one party on non-U.S. soil, but that the anonymous-data-mining involving things like who emails who when (and with what keywords?) may still turn out to involve entirely domestic communications. I mean, the administration and pentagon clearly thought this kind of a program was legal when they proposed TIA, right? This possibility has of course been pointed out by others, also. Furthermore, if it's not in place now, it seems almost hard to imagine it might not soon be. So, be forewarned that the discussion below treats this part of it as part of the overall issue.

Pros:

So, I have to admit: in some ways, this kind of a program is really pretty cool. I love the concept of data-mining. Really, that's what a lot of neuroscience comes down to - you collect a lot of data, which at the outset looks like random noise, and then you set about trying to figure out what kinds of patterns you should even be looking for in it, with your primary guide being "what interpretational scheme produces some knowledge/information out of all of this noise?" The more I know of it (which is embarrassingly little at this point, but I have hopes that may change!), the more I want to apply it to all sorts of random things in my life. I think it's a really powerful way of looking at the world. And if I were in an office somewhere, and had been charged with the task of "predicting terrorist attacks so that they can be prevented", it's sure what I'd want to try! From that perspective, then, it's almost hard to imagine not pushing for a program like this one.

And, in many ways, the costs to a program like this one are less than those associated with traditional spying. Both the literal costs in terms of actual dollars spent to run and maintain the program (the fewer humans you need the better - especially for tedious work that must be kept secret!), and in terms of the obvious costs for those being spied upon. My brother pointed out that part of the motivation for the fourth amendment was that search and seizure has a long history of having been used as a tool for political embarrassment/manipulation - that even if you're innocent, having your home searched is a way to make you look like you're under suspicion - and that part of the purpose of the fourth amendment is to avoid this kind of misuse of search capabilities. This kind of issue is avoided by the kind of anonymous surveillance we're talking about, and to this extent, the spirit of the fourth amendment may not apply.

Cons:

As best I can tell, there are two big areas for concern, of which one is receiving more attention than the other. First, there is the possibility that once such systems for massive electronic surveillance are in place, they can easily be misused. To the extent that these activities currently are restricted to cases of domestic-to-international communications, it seems clear that both by accident and by intent it will be oh-so-easy and tempting for them to spread to entirely domestic communications. To the extent that this surveillance involves access to and perhaps storage of vast amounts of data regarding individuals' personal communications, it provides an opportunity for that information to be misused for political purposes. This administration has already proven, like many others (DeLay, anyone?), that it cannot be trusted to resist the temptation to leak personal/confidential information when it is to their political benefit - and if this can be a very powerful weapon. Although there look to be many reasons to be upset with the former FEMA chief, stupid comments made during stressful days in random personal emails don't really strike me as one of them - and yet, those emails have become a great source of embarrassment for him. Can you imagine what the consequences woud be if 20 years from you you were running for some public office and your opponent's staffers had access to all your private emails, in order to comb through and find the most stupid, embarrassing, low-brow, ignorant messages you ever typed - and could then leak them to be quoted, massively out of context, in the general press the week before the vote?

The other broad issue at hand, here, I think, is the question of what the consequences really are even if this kind of a program (here in particular I am supposing that it is made to include anonymous textual/pattern analysis of domestic communications) is never abused, and always used for exactly its purpose: preventing any threat on the american people or american government from being carried out. Now, at first glace, this would seem to be a good thing. But our constitution and bill of rights were written with careful concern regarding this issue for a reason - people were thinking very carefully about how to limit the power of government to a point where if that government should turn tyrannical, the people would be able to fight back. Although we have a tendency to fight over it so much in the context of gun-regulation that we forget the real significance of it as it was intended, that was the point of the whole right-to-bear-arms idea. And although in this age of tanks and fighter planes and stealth bombers it's hard to imagine that individuals having guns in their houses is as much a bulwark against oppression of a tyrannical government as it may once have been, it is easy to imagine that (1) the ability of individuals to maintain secure communications, and (2) the ability of individuals to distribute information freely are, now, critical components of this bulwark. Seriously: we designed our government with the express idea that the people would retain enough power that no tyrannical government could arise without the possibility of revolt to keep its tyranny in check and/or actually overthrow it if the threat of revolt were not enough. And I think there are enough examples throughout history of more open governments becoming tyrannical when they gain too much power to make this point one that shouldn't be forgotten.

It seems to me, then, that the current NSA data-mining concepts provide a threat on this front in two different ways. First, it could make the government literally too effective in identifying people who oppose it and are planning to act on this opposition. This concern regarding the NSA is an old one, and was a large part of why the extreme restrictions on NSA spying on american citizens were instituted to begin with. A nytimes article discussing the issue explains, "Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned. 'That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people,' he said in 1975, 'and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.' He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. 'could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.' "

The second issue is that I worry - without having a clear enough understanding of the actual mechanisms of a lot of this to really know for sure - that it is hard to have a government that is able to watch vast amounts of information passing through the communication infrastructure without that government then having the ability - or the opportunity to obtain the ability in very short order - to actually control that information flow. How big a step is it from a government that is able to automatically monitor all of your emails to a government that is able to automatically monitor all of your emails - and prevent the ones that trigger flags to never reach their sender? And it seems clear that that kind of power in the hands of the government is certainly a disaster.

Next steps:

So... where does one go from here? Aside from (1) discussing this stuff to make sure one's views are clear and well thought out, and (2) doing standard things like writing one's representatives and such, to what extent would it be reasonable to... start using encrypted email programs? Maybe I've just read cryptonomicon too recently, but I'm really considering finding a way to encrypt emails so that only the recipient could view them. Even if only like two people I knew would actually use it, I almost feel like it's worth doing just on principle - just to encourage the existence of such techniques.

Thoughts?

[Edit: another discussion of the legal issues that I liked.]