2006 — Yearly Archive
Great 24 Double Episode Yesterday
To the immense relief of Dave Barry and thousands of other 24 fans who wondered if he was getting mellow, Jack returned to fine thigh-shooting form last night. Me, I never doubted him for a minute.
India, US sign Nuclear Deal
The US and India sign a deal that gives India access to US nuclear technology even as the inevitable critics speak out:
“It will set a precedent that Iran will use to argue that the United States has a double standard,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a leading opponent of the deal. “You can’t break the rules and expect Iran to play by them, and that’s what President Bush is doing today.”
Of course, Iran signed the NPT and India did not, but India’s case does not rest on technicalities, nor is the notion of ‘discriminating’ in favour of a particular nation anything new in the non-proliferation game:
The deal’s opponents also like to argue that, in order to be fair and equitable, the same agreement must be extended to all other declared nuclear states that have remained outside the NPT—namely Pakistan. That assumes that treating all non-NPT states in the same way would somehow make the regime more legitimate. In practice, though, the nonproliferation regime’s survival has depended on discrimination. Japan is allowed to reprocess spent fuel and stockpile plutonium, but South Korea is not. South Korean scientists secretly enriched uranium to weapons grade, forged uranium metal from imported fertilizer, and secretly reprocessed plutonium—yet Seoul was not reprimanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), even though Iran is facing sanctions for similar activities. Discrimination “in favor” of India, then, is not an unprecedented act that necessitates immediate redress by extending a similar deal to Pakistan. And if the larger point isn’t clear enough, consider that the United States is being condemned for an agreement on civilian cooperation with India, whereas there is no discussion of the impact of Chinese nuclear weapons designs transferred to Pakistan (from which they have traveled to Iran, Libya, and North Korea).
It is somewhat bemusing to see perfectly intelligent men like Rep. Markey cling on to the very-60s notion that a country can be kept from developing nuclear weapons by force of a treaty (and the implied threat of sanctions) alone. Today, nuclear technology — especially almost-as-devastating ‘dirty bomb’ technology — is dispersed enough that non-state actors can get hold of it. The NPT is about as useful in this world as farriers are on an autobahn. Most leaders recognize this and know it makes sense to co-opt India, with its clean record on proliferation — hence the visits by Chirac and Bush in quick succession to New Delhi. Yet the world will have to suffer a last dance by the non-proliferation dinosaurs before a new order emerges out of the unworkable present.
(Updated 3 March) I think this comment on Daniel Drezner’s blog best captures the discomfiture of the non-proliferation faithful. Essentially, to them this deal is a moral hazard:
… you miss the point. The point is that there are procedures for things in this world and when you bypass all precedants and procedures and render them meaningless, you may get the thing you want, but you are also fundamentally changing how the world works, particularly if you keep ignoring procedure over and over again or only half-heartedly go through its motions (as in the case of the start of the Iraq war).
(Italics mine.) The problem, of course is that the procedures were never much good anyway — all it did was allow a declared weapons power (China) to covertly arm Pakistan and North Korea, and an undeclared power (Pakistan) to atomize nuclear tech to the world’s hotspots (North Korea, Iran). Like it or not, the world has changed and the comfortable world the NPT envisages looks increasingly out of sync with reality. Here’s hoping some of the nuclear idealists take off their blinkers long enough to realize that.
Blondes are an Endangered Species
Blondes are an endangered species: too few people now carry the gene for blondes to last beyond the next two centuries. A study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202. I suspect gene therapy and designer babies will make the problem moot by then.
Prejudice
It is interesting to compare Bush’s statement on the Dubai Ports World affair that
I think it sends a terrible signal to friends around the world that it’s okay for a company from one country to manage the port, but not a country that plays by the rules and has got a good track record from another part of the world can’t manage the port.
with Chirac’s surly responses re Mittal Steel’s Arcelor bid. On the other hand, the US hasn’t been entirely free of the sort of knee-jerk reaction I would normally expect from India’s Communists: Hillary Clinton is planning to introduce legislation that bans the sale of ports to foreign governments (Dubai Ports World is an UAE-goverment enterprise, not quite the same thing) and Baltimore Mayor dramatically declares
…turn over the Port of Baltimore, the home of the Star Spangled Banner, to the United Arab Emirates? Not so long as I’m mayor and not so long as I have breath in my body.
While Patrix notes that many conservatives are up in arms about the deal, from where I stand the opposition seems to be bipartisan, clueless and reflexively believe that enterprises based in the Middle-East are somehow a terrorist risk1 (as a wag pointed out — Madame Tussauds is owned by a Dubai holding company now; can we expect bombs embedded inside wax statuettes next?). It is especially ironic that so many Democrats — normally up in arms against racial profiling — are rushing to judge a company on the basis of its origin rather than its record.
1A belief that Muslim/Arab companies (and possibly governments) are more vulnerable to being compromised by terrorists is a more understandable one. However given that the ownership by a Dubai firm does not change the day-to-day running of the ports (or Madame Tussauds, for that matter), I consider it unlikely that ownership alone can present a security risk.
The Christian, the Muslim and the Jew
Belmont Club: “The code-poem he wrote and gave to Violette Szabo on her wartime mission is a memorial to a time when a Muslim, Christian and Jew could find it in their hearts to fight Hitler with one word upon their lips: Liberte.”
Movie Trailer Mashups
Movie trailer mashups are going to be the next big thing after Photoshop contests. Check out the hilarious Sleepless in Seattle recut as a horror movie and Back to the Future inspired by Brokeback Mountain.
SmallWindows, Open Source Exposé for Windows
SmallWindows is an excellent open source Exposé-workalike for Windows. It’s still in beta and has some some rough edges, but it’s a snap to download and use. Recommended if you (like me) have 20+ windows open most of the time. (via)
Irrational Exuberance re GOOG
Amr Awadallah: 22% sequential growth for a $1919M Q4 is still very impressive, but it missed the expectations and it certainly does not justify the $500 to $600 stock price targets that some analysts are setting. To put things in perspective, Microsoft with a marketcap of $300B did $11B in sales last quarter, that is almost double what Google made for the whole year, so how can Google get a marketcap of $150B (at $500 price target). I think Greenspan had a word for this, let me try to remember, ah, he called it “irrational exuberance”.
Chaoszone Now Features Asides
The format of a weblog dictates its writing. I’ve tweaked my software so that I can write shorter posts and not feel compelled to Write Substantial Articles every time I want to update the blog.
Google Talk now supports XMPP Federation
Google Talk users can now connect to other Jabber/XMPP users.
