KG to Boston - implications

It's done, with Boston emptying most of its bench, and KG waiving his trade kicker in return for a 3-year extension. But Vegas still doesn't make the Pierce-Allen-KG Celtics the favorite in the east, with the Heat still having better odds than the Celtics to make the NBA Finals in 2008. I will need to think about it some more first, but my first blush opinion is to agree - I don't think the Celtics have enough yet. We'll see if the owner is willing to keep spending well above the luxury tax - they need another PG and a 4/5, and they still have their midlevel exception of $5.3 million to spend - if the owner is willing to do so.

KG to Boston - or Lakers?

KG to Boston is alive, although not exactly as reported by ESPN – they left out KG’s trade kicker, so Boston would have to trade all of Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff, plus at least Tony Allen and Brian Scalabrine, just to make the money work. That leaves them with next to no roster. I wonder if instead Boston would go for the following deal that sends KG to the Lakers – KG, Minnesota, and the Lakers presumably all would, as KG prefers LA to Boston, and Minnesota still gets everything they want from Boston, plus offloading two more contracts. Boston wouldn’t get KG, but they would get a good player at the same position in Lamar Odom, plus an excellent prospect in Bynum to make up for the one they’re losing in Jefferson, plus another badly needed rotation player in Radmanovic. This seems to me better all around…


Minnesota Timberwolves -Incoming Players
Gerald Green
Salary: $1,440,960 Years Remaining: 1
Sebastian Telfair
Salary: $2,562,426 Years Remaining: 1
Al Jefferson
Salary: $2,480,885 Years Remaining: 1
Kwame Brown
Salary: $9,075,000 Years Remaining: 1
Theo Ratliff
Salary: $11,666,666 Years Remaining: 1

Outgoing Players: Mark Madsen, Kevin Garnett, Marko Jaric

Boston Celtics - Incoming Players
Andrew Bynum
Salary: $2,172,000 Years Remaining: 1
Vladimir Radmanovic
Salary: $5,632,200 Years Remaining: 4
Lamar Odom
Salary: $13,248,596 Years Remaining: 2

Outgoing Players: Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff

Los Angeles Lakers- Incoming Players
Mark Madsen
Salary: $2,420,000 Years Remaining: 3
Kevin Garnett
Salary: $22,000,000 (plus 6.75 million trade kicker) Years Remaining: 2
Marko Jaric
Salary: $6,050,000 Years Remaining: 4

Outgoing Players: Andrew Bynum, Vladimir Radmanovic, Kwame Brown, Lamar Odom

My favorite trade yet!

As long as we’re dreaming…. Shaq and Kobe reunited, plus Lamar Odom (and Smush!); KG and Wade invade Hollywood!

Los Angeles Lakers - Incoming Players:
Dwyane Wade
Antoine Walker
Kevin Garnett

Outgoing Players: Andrew Bynum, Kwame Brown, Lamar Odom, Kobe Bryant

Laker rotation: Mihm, KG, Walton, DWade, DFisher; rotation subs Turiaf, Cook, AWalker, Radmanovic, Evans, Farmar/ Crittendon

A deep team, with a nice blend of youth and experience. Eating Walker's contract and losing Bynum is worth it to upgrade longterm at 2 and 4 and rid themselves of the Kobe headache. I could easily see this team threatening the Texas threesome and Phoenix for West supremacy.

Minnesota Timberwolves - Incoming Players:
Dorell Wright
Andrew Bynum
Jason Williams
Michael Doleac
Kwame Brown
2 Miami #1 picks

Outgoing Players: Kevin Garnett

Minny gets young prospects and expiring contracts and future picks. Just what they want for KG.

Miami Heat - Incoming Players:
Lamar Odom
Kobe Bryant

Outgoing Players:
Dorell Wright
Dwyane Wade
Antoine Walker
Jason Williams
Michael Doleac

Miami rotation: Shaq, Haslem, Odom, Kobe, Smush Parker (who already signed with them); rotation subs are Zo, Simien, Quinn, plus whomever else they sign with rest of midlevel…. if they could swing JC Navarro or some other decent PG with what's left of the exception, they could have the most fearsome starting 5 in the league, plus the best backup center in Zo. If they stay healthy, an obvious favorite to come out of the East and play in the Finals.

Faith and confirmation bias

The fallacy called confirmation bias occurs when we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs (or what we want to believe), and ignore, discredit, or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence - evidence that goes against what we wish to believe. Confirmation bias is one prominent example of the phenomenon called 'wishful thinking', and when taken to an extreme results in 'subjective validation' - becoming so irrationally certain of one's beliefs (through confirmation bias) that one cannot even entertain any doubt that one could be wrong - even though you are!

It turns out that a reseracher at my alma mater, Emory University, named Drew Westen led a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that shows where in the brain the confirmation bias arises and how it is unconscious and driven by emotions. In Scientific American, Michael Shermer explains and expands upon the study, which revealed how the brain suppresses the rational, reasoning portion of the brain in favour of emotions that reinforce confirmation bias. As Shermer puts it:

"During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, while undergoing an fMRI bran scan, 30 men--half self-described as "strong" Republicans and half as "strong" Democrats--were tasked with assessing statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry in which the candidates clearly contradicted themselves. Not surprisingly, in their assessments Republican subjects were as critical of Kerry as Democratic subjects were of Bush, yet both let their own candidate off the hook.

The neuroimaging results, however, revealed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning--the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was quiescent. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in the processing of emotions; the anterior cingulate, which is associated with conflict resolution; the posterior cingulate, which is concerned with making judgments about moral accountability; and--once subjects had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable--the ventral striatum, which is related to reward and pleasure."

Westen's own summary went as follows:

"Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

In other words, faith - in the form of confirmation bias - is emotionally rewarding and hence comfortable for us humans; seeking the truth, with its uncomfortable possibility (indeed, probability, for the usual human) that we could be wrong about what's important to us, that our foundational beliefs could be all wrong, that what our parents and society and pastors and friends have all proclaimed for years and years could all be wrong - no, it is most certainly not a recipe for short-term emotional well-being.

But in the long run, it's the truth, and nothing but the truth, that shall set us free - and so we must resist the soft seductions of faith. Advertisers, politicians and other charlatans take advantage of our limited rationality, with its confirmation bias and other cognitive imperfections - all these ways in which we are closer to the rest of the animal kingdom, rather than appealing to what is highest and best in us. If we last long enough, one day this too shall end - the truth shall set us all free.

IF we last long enough....

Unintelligent Design

This post's title is taken from a solid book by Mark Perakh attacking the ID movement. The topic is the design or teleological argument for the existence of god, particularly the biological version; one common form of the argument goes:

The Biological Design Argument
1 Living things evince design
2 Design requires a designer
3 Life could not have designed itself
So a Designer of all life must exist - God

The problem: Natural selection and survival of fittest can explain apparent design without a conscious Designer - that is, random variation/ mutation, combined with nonrandom selection through differential death based on relative fitness, quickly "designs' organisms better and better fitted to their ecological niche, by making them more numerous and their lesser competitors less numerous. Hence, premise 2 (or 3, depending on an ambiguity in the term 'design') is false.

Logic, however rationally compelling, often leaves people cold. So let's use some examples to help. An omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent Designer would create optimal designs (or else would lack at least one of those 3 attributes). So simply showing that biological organisms are suboptimally designed would refute the existence of such a designer.

One of the simplest examples of such suboptimal design is the very feature that traditional creationists often appealed to as evidence of god's ingenuity, the human eye. (And not only Christians are bewitched by the "irreducible complexity" of eyes - stupid Muslims use the same arguments.)

So how dare I impugn the optimality of the design of human eyes? Well, for starters, I'm typing this while wearing glasses. That alone should be plenty of evidence! But for those who need more argument, read the following wonderful synopsis:

"The retina is the 'screen' at the inside back of each eyeball, onto which is projected the incoming light. It is made up of lots of photoreceptor cells with their associated out-going nerves, and the blood supply to them. The problem is, the photoreceptors are in backwards, pointing away from the incoming light: the 'cable' from each cell is therefore in the way, and trails across the eyeball's inside surface to exit the retina at the correctly-named 'blind spot'.

Now, the brain compensates for this, so we don't usually notice it. But a design that needs compensatory mechanism for some aspect of it, is not a good design.

But to make matters worse, this design actually causes unnecessary problems. The photoreceptors have delicate, hairlike nerve endings, which means they cannot be cemented firmly into place. Instead, they are loosely joined to a layer of cells called the retinal pigment epithelium. This absorbs stray photons that would otherwise blur the image, and contains the retina's blood supply. But the connection between the retina and the epithelium is so fragile that the retina can detach, either due to a blow to the head, or often, spontaneously. Starved of their blood supply, the retinal cells die, causing blindness.

Strangely, the creator was able to put retinas the 'right' way round... in those pinnacles of His purpose, the octupus and squid. Not only do their eyes, which are basically the same design as vertebrate ones, have their photoreceptors pointing towards the light, and so lack a blind spot; with the nerves training behind them and embedded in their blood supply, the cephalopod eye is far less prone to detached retinas."

That's right, the octopus and squid don't suffer from detached retinas or a blind spot as we poor humans are prone to; the positioning of their photoreceptors and blood supply also means they suffer from blurry vision and blindness less often as well, ceteris paribus. In short, our single most dominant sense, the one so dominant that an entire theory of knowledge (now convincingly argued to be false) depends on thinking of ideas as like visual images - that sense is suboptimally designed in comparison to another species alive right now. What kind of a fuck-up would've done that?

The short answer: a satisficing historical process called evolution, not a perfect divinity. For those who like reality-based rather than faith-based thinking, it's time to let go of religion and embrace reality - our future may depend on it.

Arguments against the existence of God

I'll begin with the argument from religious experience - I'll deal with other kinds of arguments about god in a later post, but the most common way in which people attempt to justify their belief in god is personal - they have experienced god, they have a relationship with god, so of course god exists.

Let's formalize this claim:
Argument from religious experience:
1 many people have religious experiences, which they interpret as experiences of God;
2 people’s own interpretations of their experiences are trustworthy;
thus, God exists.

The problems with this argument abound - here's a few: for premise 1, which tradition/ history of experience are we referring to? Different religions and different believer's claimed experiences make numerous conflicting/ contradictory claims, with many different incompatible theories of God proclaimed - leads to doubt that one single thing could be so multiply interpreted. At most one is right. If many are wrong, why not all?

Premise 2 is fairly obviously false - the mere having of religious experience obviously doesn’t guarantee God exists, or more to the point, guarantee that one is an accurate interpreter of one's own experience. We misunderstand what is happening to us all the time. Take, say, schizophrenia and the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God tells Abraham to kill his son... what would you say to someone who walks up to you on the street and tells you - 'God told me to kill my family'. Would you take that as proof of the existence of the divine? Or is a mental disorder a more likely (and more parsimonius) explanation?

Are there any other ways to explain religious experience other than real God? Yes –

Other arguments against existence of God - Let's start here by formalizing that first problem above:

Inductive argument from diversity of religious experience versus God:
1 many people have religious experiences, which they interpret as experiences of God, but their accounts conflict;
2 there are 10000-plus different religions, all relying on claimed experiences of the divine, all of which accounts conflict in at least some detail (or else they would be the same religion!);
3 hence, most religions and their claims about the experience of the divine are untrustworthy in at least some details about God, as at most one could be entirely right;
4 there is no rational way to decide that one faith-based claim about god is more defensible than any other (analytic, from the definition of faith)
5 hence, there is no rational reason to think any particular religion is more likely to be entirely correct than any other
6 But logic dictates that (almost) all religions make false claims about god – at most one could be correct - so (almost?) all religions make false claims about god
7 Given there’s no rational basis for choice and the vast majority are known to be false, then inductively, the only reasonable belief is that all religions and personal experiences are wrong about God - that indeed, all religions make false claims about god
5 Occam’s razor – so we don’t need true beliefs about God to explain religious belief
thus, God doesn’t exist.

Another argument versus God- Argument from Simplicity:
1 Occam’s razor/ principle of parsimony/ simplicity - don't multiply entities beyond necessity, don't believe in the existence of things that are not required for explanations
2 we don’t directly experience anything that corresponds to concept (definition) of God (cf apple, or the color orange)
3 we don’t indirectly experience anything whose best explanation is that it must be caused by God (cf electron, proton)
4 So God is not required to explain any experience we have
So no need for God’s existence – so by Occam’s razor, God doesn’t exist

And another - for the simplicity argument is connected to ‘God of the gaps’ argument:
1 we believe in a supernatural God because It explains what natural science cannot
2 so God’s attributes are traditionally given in terms of what science cannot explain – god is defined by the gaps in science
3 But the history of science shows that science progressively explains more and more things formerly attributed to God
4 Inductively, there’s no reason to think that science will not eventually explain everything that can be explained
5 So God explains nothing – and so has no attributes
So God does not exist

Compare the problem of evil (POE): argument against God from concept and consequences
1 God is 3 omnis (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) and creator of the universe
2 Evil exists
3 God, if existing, would not allow evil (If God is 3 omnis, evil would not exist; i.e., God and evil are incompatible - (God would know how to, want to, and could prevent all evil).
Thus, God does not exist

I better publish soon...

Because Gott's version of the Doomsday Argument has been updated to something near to mine, and has even been discussed in the New York Times.

Briefly, Gott's version hypothesizes that there is a 95% confidence level that we are in the middle 95% of the lifespan of any phenomenon we randomly observe. Manned spaceflight began 46 years ago, so Gott reasons there's a 50% chance it will end within 46 more years, and uses this as an explanation of the Fermi Paradox - we don't observe other alien civilizations because they never left their home planet. So Gott believes we need to colonize Mars, sooner rather than later, if we want humanity to have a long future.
My argument is a bit more sophisticated, but largely agrees with Gott's. More to come...

Are the Spurs the real champs?

Your 2007 NBA champs, the Phoenix Suns....

Most of the people who believe in such a counterfactual history think the Game 5 suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were the key to the wrong team winning the Spurs-Suns series. Now, it turns out Game 3, with calls missed so badly that the play by play announcers had to comment, was called by... Tim Donaghy. As Bill Simmons points out, this is the league's nightmare, and it won't end any time soon. The reality that the league champ might be so through ref malfeasance was broached by Simmons in the 2006 Finals, and he now appears prescient. Unless David Stern manages to make the refs more accountable, their evaluation more transparent, and their temptation to cheat less profitable (presumably by paying them a great deal more), the league may have a credibility problem that will eventually make it the inferior of pro wrestling.

The poison of faith

William Lobdell of the LA Times has written a wonderful article about why he is leaving his post as their religion writer - he covers the hypocrisy of the Catholic bishops over their coverup and assistance of pederasty, the horrors of the 'prosperity gospel', and details how the lawyers of the Church make sure their profits are not imperiled by going to the poor and needy - even when a Catholic priest creates more of the poor and needy, by impregnating them themselves!

When faced with morally bankrupt yet powerful forces of evil, angry invective is sometimes warranted. Christopher Hitchens is right about the vast majority of organized religion - it poisons everything - as he jeers that the Catholic motto should be "no child's behind left." Those who bid moral actions and cloak it in religious language are fooling themselves, and others, in ways that have repeatedly shown to be dangerous, because of the credulity and irrationality of the mass of humanity. Rational religion turns out to be an oxymoron, and the Brights realize this. But their influence, while growing, remains minuscule, and the danger increases far more rapidly.

So, I am exceedingly pessimistic about our future, because that credulity and irrationality - that faith - is increasingly tied to more and more potent weaponry, and ere long will be tied to Doomsday weaponry - most likely nanotechnology or bioweapons, I fear. Like the religious, I imagine Armageddon will happen soon (within 40-80 years), but without trumpets of Christ or Heaven - just death, for us all. And I expect that our collective demise will likely be brought about by those who think that Death brings us to a better place, as long as we believe their fantasies - and if we don't believe their fantasies, then they will make our lives a living Hell, for eternity - starting now. Even the most rational of the religions, Unitarian Universalism, refuses to abjure such fantasies entirely.

Religion indeed has similarities to an opiate, but its effect is far more insidious and harder to crack, because the addict will sober up periodically and realize their plight; whereas religion systematically disables the critical mentality needed to subvert it. It tells us faith is the key to morality, not the enemy of morality; that murder, torture, rape and pillage are fine if one's god so demands; and so on. The true enemy of religion is philosophy, in the broadest sense - the search for truth. Once that becomes your goal, you realize there is no need - indeed, no room - for faith; because faith, by its very nature, is inimical to a search for truth. Faith is belief without justification, without argument, without knowledge - faith is belief unsupported by the evidence. Only when one renounces such blandishments and seeks the truth and nothing but the truth, can one finally become free of the evil that is organized religion. So I must say I'm sorry to tell my friend Dan the apparently unwelcome news - for Dan blogs:

"Maybe my blogging friends will explore more deeply the psychological and philosophical implications of all of these matters (yes, SI and KA, if you’re reading this, that’s an invitation). For my part, I’ll just challenge you to go out and prove that the best antidote to bad religion is not no religion, but is in fact good religion."

I'm afraid I have to disagree that there is, in fact, any good religion. If our world can get to a place in which we can accept that ethics has no need of God, as contemporary philosophers like Derek Parfit and Kai Nelson argue, we will all be much better off. Hamas and Orthodox Jews cannot claim divine sanction for their mutual land grabs and murder - or Shia and Sunni in Iraq, or Protestant and Catholic in N. Ireland, or... the list never ends. But you cannot persuasively argue their wrongness by substituting their fantasy with some other one. You can only win that argument by rejecting fantasy for reality completely - by giving up every single jot and tittle, every minute iota of faith.

So, rejecting faith as a legitimate answer to any moral questions is one key to the human species having a long future. Again, sadly, I don't believe it will happen in time....

More to come. Civil comments welcome.

NBA conspiracy and other news

Good news first: the Lakers apparently are willing to pay the luxury tax next season after all, as they sign not only Derek Fisher, but also the rehabbed Chris Mihm. Without such a willingness, further trades for KG, Jermaine O'Neal, or other high-priced help are a fantasy.

Speaking of which, it seems safe to officially drop Phoenix from the KG sweepstakes now - as reports that owner Robert Sarver mandated dropping $7 mil off payroll to avoid the luxury tax came true today, as they dealt the contract of Kurt Thomas to Seattle, plus 2 future first round picks, for a second-rounder next summer. The incentive for Seattle is obvious, given they're rebuilding; but Phoenix continues to deal away potential bench pieces and draft picks in an attempt to keep their top 6 together without paying the luxury tax. A KG trade is now essentially impossible under the salary cap, and certainly impossible if Sarver isn't willing to pay the tax. More and more I think there are only 3 possible destinations for KG this summer - Lakers, Dallas, and Miami. Most likely is that KG is still a T-wolf to open the season.

Finally, the conspiracy theorists have a field day today, with news that the FBI is going to charge NBA ref Tim Donaghy with point-shaving. Rumor (and let's be clear, only rumor at this stage) has it that he has a gambling problem, got in hock to the Mob, and shaved points in games he reffed to pay off his debts. What's a fact is that he was one of the refs at the infamous Brawl Game, and was a major figure in Rasheed Wallace's longest suspension. I haven't yet heard whether he was involved in any other of the most notorious playoff series in which ref bias is commonly alleged, like the Dallas-Miami 2006 Finals, or the Lakers-Sacramento 2002 Western Conference Finals, now best remembered for Robert Horry's winning 3-pointer at the buzzer in game 4.

Napa Valley A's?

The Oakland baseball club may not be having quite as good a season as usual - could it be because their leading oenophiles are gone or hurt? (Huston Street, their closer and subject of this wine interview, has been on the DL, and Scott Hatteberg and Barry Zito have moved elsewhere).

Well, perhaps the lack of wine-lovers is not the cause of their demise, but the A's quest to find a new home might do better in Napa Valley than the current quest to relocate 25 miles south in the town of Fremont, in a development led by Internet networking business Cisco Systems. If they want to move upscale, why not associate with wine instead of routers?

As for me, let's see if I can find a Silver Oak cabernet for cheap now...

Nuclear doomsday breaking news

Update: Putin has Russia suspend/ withdraw from an arms control treaty with NATO, whose spokesman said: “The allies consider this treaty an important foundation of European security. This is a disappointing move in the wrong direction.”

Putin obviously believes the West is encircling Russia with anti-ballistic missiles as preparatory to an attack, and is ratcheting things up. He believes Bush left behind the old logic of deterrence with his withdrawal from the ABM treaty and his ongoing attempt to build the 'Star Wars' missile defense, making America invulnerable (if it worked, which it doesn't). We have the increasing distrust that can lead to a major conflagration. If Bush gets us into a nuclear war with Russia, he really will have the worst President in history title - for eternity, perhaps.

Nuclear doomsday, continued

My last post detailed the deteriorating relations between the US and Russia and the threats made by Putin about 'weapons of mass destruction'. It remains foolhardy for the Russians to initiate a thermonuclear exchange with the US, because US nuclear capabilities are more impressive than ever, despite having fewer numbers of warheads in absolute terms. That's because the weapons have greater power, greater invulnerability (particularly our submarine-based missiles) and most especially, greater accuracy, with the advent of GPS and inertial guidance systems. Nukes were sloppy weapons that has as little as a 1% chance of success against their intended targets in the 1950s and 1960s - but that would now approach 100%, argues this "counterforce" expert, who claims that as a result, nuclear war with China has grown increasingly likely.

Why? Because this US "counterforce" dominance changes the usual logic of deterrence. If China ever put its missiles on alert (say, over a brouhaha over Taiwan declaring independence, a scenario that appears increasingly likely over the next decade), the US military commanders quite conceivably would place almost insurmountable pressure on the US President to launch a first strike - because we could effectively wipe out China's nukes at one blow, and assure next to nothing from China would hit the mainland US - but only by striking first. If we waited for the Chinese to strike first, China could still be largely obliterated by a US counterattack, but many (most?) American cities would be incinerated. The old logic of the Soviet-American mutual deterrence through mutually assured destruction (MAD) no longer applies - with our new weapons and China's relative paucity of ICBMs, if tensions rise, the logical thing for the self-interest of the US to do would be to launch a preemptive strike that takes out all Chinese capabilities to attack the US mainland. If the Chinese know that, their logical course of action would be to launch a first strike as well, with no warning. After all, if they allow the US to strike first, they would certainly be obliterated.

If that isn't scary enough - consider: would Russia sit idly by as the US turned its southern neighbor into a smoking pile? Or, with a near-totality of US nukes headed to Chinese targets, would Russian missile command seize that chance to launch a third strike - against the US? It would no longer be quite so completely suicidal in the short term if the US had just used most or all of its arsenal on China, and given Russian paranoia and world-historical ambition, can one be sure they would not try? The resulting 3-way nuclear holocaust might be enough to cause the 'nuclear winter' that Carl Sagan foresaw in 1983, in a study that concluded: "...the possibility of the extinction of Homo Sapiens cannot be excluded."

Have another nice day!

An old model of Doomsday

All-out nuclear war - unthinkable now that the cold war is over? Not so fast. Most people worried about nuclear war nowadays concentrate on 'rogue states' like Iran or North Korea firing off a missile or two, or some non-governmental terror group like al-Qaida sneaking a nuke into a city center. While horrible, such events would have no direct impact on the vast majority of humanity, and in no sense presage a Doomsday scenario.

The US and the Soviet Union were the only countries ever armed with enough weapons to plausibly cause a real worldwide Doomsday; and despite mutual reductions since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, both the US and Russia maintain nearly 6000 warheads (estimated) capable of use, with over 1000 on 'high alert', ready to fire within a few minutes. Both countries also have many more warheads in storage, capable of being hauled out and used within a relatively short period of time - the Russian estimate in storage is up to 16,000.

During Vladimir Putin's presidency, relations with the US have grown progressively frostier, with Putin in a speech on Victory Day (May 9th) rhetorically comparing the US to Hitler's Third Reich, and promising “The victory once again will be ours.” Perhaps even worse, at a conference in Munich on February 10th, Putin delivered a venomous speech directly addressed to an audience that included US defense secretary Robert Gates, Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other international heavyweights.

In his February 10 speech, Putin asserted all of the following:

“Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions [by the US] had caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension.” [The world] is witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force, which was plunging it into an abyss of permanent conflicts. ... the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way, exhibiting a greater and greater disdain for international law."

Putin then claimed that the US actions were the cause of a new arms race, and the cause of some countries acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Despite such rhetoric, most observers think Russia is unlikely to launch a nuclear war with the US, and the US likewise will not launch a first strike on Russia. (Of course, how many of these same observers predicted the demise of the USSR in 1991? Kremlinology is a notoriously imprecise science). But there is a more fearsome scenario, in which Russia joins in a nuclear confrontation that it was not originally a part of - and such a three way nuclear war might actually cause Doomsday, or come close. The third party - China. More to come...

The sting of truth about the bees

Alien visitors are going "to abduct the smartest organisms on the planet, and they've picked the honeybees." As explanations for the disappearance and death of bees (the so-called "colony collapse disorder", or CCD) that have occurred since October 2006, May Berenbaum's isn't exactly the most plausible; rather, she is among the entomologists enjoying their 15 minutes of fame by overhyping this crisis - or as she puts it, "a crisis on top of a crisis".

But a far more reasonable - and less alarmist - piece compares the bees to cows, in that they occupy an artificial ecosystem and would've long ago been wiped out without intensive human care, and opines that their passing will be no big deal. Heather Smith points out that the varroa mite decimated native honeybee populations between 1987 and 1994 in the US, and farmers since have trucked the remaining bees around the country and doused them with antibiotics in order to keep them humming long enough to pollinate their crops. Yet such practices have done nothing to stop the incipient demise of the native honeybee, merely weakening it for whatever other pathogens are involved in CCD.

Smith further points out that the demise of domestic honeybees will hardly mean the end of agriculture, even the farming that currently relies on bee pollination:

...the California Almond Board two-timed the honeybee with osmia ligneria—the blue-orchard bee: Despite CCD, they had a record harvest.

In short, much like the killer bee scare of two decades ago, in which we all "learned" that killer bees would unleash a spree of death by stings as they crossed the Rio Grande and made mincemeat of American flesh by massive attack and allergic reaction, the uproar over CCD is much ado about little. One should save the Doomsday talk for more realistic scenarios - some of which are to come...

Houston loads up...

The Rockets got Jackie Butler and the rights to Argentinean star Luis Scola in a trade with the Spurs, giving up a future second round pick and a guy who's not coming back to the US, Vassilis Spanoulis, who had already said he was homesick and wanted to remain in his native Greece rather than play in the NBA. So why did the Spurs do it? Simple - cap room, particularly the chance to offload Butler's contract. And the Spurs are better than anyone at recognizing a mistaken contract and getting rid of it - just ask Isiah about Malik Rose. That's why they, despite winning multiple championships, will be well under the cap and significant players in next summer's free agency, when some real players should be available.

What about Houston? Obviously they hope Scola can come to terms and give them some offense at the 4, as the trade of Juwan Howard for Mike James opened up an opportunity. And Butler looked promising a couple of years ago - who knows, he may still have something left. Houston's new GM looks like he may know what he's doing.... and the Rockets become an even more scary contender next season.

D. Fish back to the Lake show

It's not quite official yet, but no one's bothering to deny it - Derek Fisher will return to the Lakers, reportedly for about $4 mil a season, almost all of the midlevel - but leaving the Lakers *just* shy of paying the luxury tax next season. Which, unless I miss my guess, means no more significant additions to the Laker roster for next season. Kobe at least gets one veteran added to the team, and if Lamar and Luke (and even Kwame) can stay healthy, the Lakers should be an easy playoff team - though the second round in the loaded West still seems too much to ask. Derek gets a city with specialists for his daughter, and a starting position and familiar system to play in (Phil's triangle) - it all makes too much sense not to happen. Javaris Crittendon and Farmar can now battle for backup minutes at the point - Crittendon has played better than expected in summer league, but that and $30 can buy you a cup of civet shit coffee. As Bill Simmons pointed out, both Kedrick Brown and Brandon Hunter are among the many busts that were named 1st-team All-Star in the summer league.

NBA free agent movement - it's NOT fantastic!

When the big news still to be decided involves Milwaukee and Mo Williams, you know it's not a banner free agent offseason. Grant Hill took what's left of his athleticism to Phoenix, where at least he can play point forward in an offense suited to what's left of his gifts - I wonder if Boris Diaw is on the block as a result?

Chauncey Billups re-signed in Detroit, Rashard Lewis got an absurdly huge deal in Orlando, and as forecast, that resulted in Darko going elsewhere - to Memphis!? He and Gasol might co-exist on offense, but this doesn't help their interior D at all. Darko can block shots, though - they should definitely play zone D in Memphis next year and tell Darko to work on his jumper.

Other overpays: Luke gets way too many years in LA, Kapono's limitations will be revealed in Toronto (how is he an upgrade over MoPete?), Andres Nocioni gets a lot for his post-peak seasons in Chitown. It looks like Derek Fisher will return to LA, although if they're really going to pay him the midlevel (or close), then their decision to let him go years back (for the midlevel then!) was indefensible. Live and learn, eh, Dr Buss?

As noted, the main speculation left seems to be whether Mo Williams will take the midlevel for Miami, or if they have to go to their fallback, Steve Blake. No wonder teams are trying to preserve cap room for next summer - this summer's crop of free agents are hardly impressive. As things move along, it looks less and less likely that either KG or Kobe will be dealt before the season starts - though I do expect some terrible KG deal to occur close to the trade deadline next February. Even Isiah may have little left to do - especially if he isn't going to trade the only player other teams actually want, David Lee.

The other names outstanding and still available mostly consist of injured has-beens or never-wases (like Chris Webber, Stevie Francis (a Clipper to be?), or Chris Mihm) or prospects who have starred in Europe who may finally come over (Luis Scola, Juan Carlos Navarro). Honestly, the latter are more attractive than the former, but require trades - Scola's rights are owned by the Spurs, Navarro's by the Wiz. The Clips would be better off with Navarro than the self-deluded Stevie Franchise, but that's not the way they think....

So not much so far has occurred that would change the power structure of the end of last season. Roughly, the good teams should stay good, and the bad teams mostly haven't improved much - unless Darko suddenly erupts and turns Memphis back into a playoff team - pretty damn unlikely. And Orlando, despite a max contract for Rashard, probably remains what they were - a fringe playoff team in the East.

Outsourcing prayers to India

The Vatican has been doing it for a few years now - outsourcing mostly to churches in the state of Kerala. As of 2004, the Vatican would apparently charge $5 to Americans (less for others) to have a priest pray for you, and then outsource it to priests in Kerala. The most common requests outsourced involve saying Mass for "special intentions," or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers - at least says the NY Times.

Purgatory has always been good business - remember those sales of indulgences, the ones that got Martin Luther hot under his clerical collar? I wonder how long governments will continue to ignore the fact that religion is a multi-billion dollar business, and should be regulated and taxed appropriately? Of course, like lots of big businesses, religions are quite skilled at lobbying governments to preserve their ability to use taxpayer dollars for their own purposes...

The Original Doomsday Argument

First, some versions of the original Doomsday Argument – in a later post, I'll add my original (and even more ominous) Revised Technological Doomsday Argument.

The simplest Doomsday Argument:
Physicist Richard Gott’s simple Copernican Principle proposes to compute prediction intervals for the future duration of any randomly observed phenomenon. Gott's method hinges on the "Copernican assumption" that there is nothing special about the particular time of your observation, so with 95% confidence it occurs in the middle 95% of the lifetime of the phenomenon. If the phenomenon is observed to have started A years ago, Gott infers that A represents between 1/40 (2.5%) and 39/40 (97.5%) of the total life. He therefore predicts that the remaining life will extend between A/39 and 39A years into the future. (Given Gott's assumptions, this is simple algebra: if A = (1/40)L where L is the total life, then the future life is L - A = 39A.)

Gott’s version of the Traditional Doomsday Argument is relatively simple to articulate: if I consider myself a random sample in my observation of X - e.g. the USA is 231 years old, and let’s assume that I live at a random moment in its history – that is, this moment is a random time within its existence, and I have no further knowledge that would render this moment non-random with respect to its longevity - then there is a 95% chance that the USA will last between 6 and 9009 more years.

The relevance for humanity’s future can now be stated: The naïve Doomsday argument would follow Gott, and reason that if one’s birth occurs at a random time in human history (and given that the origin of Homo sapiens was approximately 100,000 years ago), we should expect there’s a 95% chance that the human species will persist for between 2564 and 3.9 million more years. Or, a 97.5% chance we have at least 2564 years of future. That doesn’t sound so bad.

But the birth rate has dramatically increased in the last few centuries of human history, so from a sheer numbers perspective, this reasoning has a flaw. One better way to think about this argument is in terms of the total number of humans born. My (or your) rank-order among all human births is approximately 70 billion – approximately 70 billion humans have been born before me – so using the Copernican Principle, there’s a 95% chance that between 1.8 billion and 2.73 trillion more humans will be born. If birth rates continue to rise, or even just hold steady (estimated at approximately 130 million a year now), that could mean doom relatively soon – a 95% chance that the last human will be born between 14 and 21,000 years from now!

But this approach is too simple, however. Philosopher Nick Bostrom develops a more sophisticated version of the Doomsday Argument. He first formally clarifies the assumption Gott is making, which Bostrom calls the self-sampling assumption:

(SSA) "Observers should reason as if they were a random sample from the set of all observers in their reference class."

Bostrom’s version of the Doomsday Argument can be explicated using Bayes Theorem, which can be stated as follows:
P(H|D) = [P(D|H)P(H)]/[P(D|H)P(H)+P(D|H')(1-P(H))].

Here’s a way of explaining Bayes theorem - I call it the 10 and 1000 room hotel example. Suppose you arrive at a conference and you’re the first person to check in. The clerk is in control of 1010 rooms reserved for conference attendees – the first 10 rooms (numbered 1-10) in one hotel, and the first 1000 (numbered 1-1000) in a second hotel. As you’re the first person to arrive, he decides to flip a (fair) coin to decide which hotel to put you in, and then has his computer randomly assign you a room in that hotel. He flips the coin, then checks the computer, and hands you a room key – room #7 – but doesn’t mention which hotel you’re supposed to go to! What are the odds that you are in the first hotel?

At first blush, many people answer 50% - after all, he flipped a fair coin to decide which hotel to put you in, so isn’t it 50/50 as to which you got?

No, it isn’t – because you have an additional piece of information – you were randomly assigned room #7. Of course, there are two room #7s, one in each hotel – so how does that help? Well, it helps because (assuming the process is random) you are far more likely to be randomly assigned room #7 in the first hotel, rather than the second. In fact, it’s 100 times more likely!

How’s that? Think of it this way: suppose you repeated this whole process of checking in first at the conference 2000 times. You would then expect, given the coin flip, to stay in each hotel 1000 times. In the 1000-room hotel, you’d then expect to stay in each of its rooms exactly once – including room #7. But the first hotel has only 10 rooms – so if you check into that hotel 1000 times, you’d expect to stay in its room #7 fully 100 times. So if you have a key to room #7, it’s 100-1 odds that you’re in the smaller hotel. (The clerk probably expected you to realize that – or maybe he was just being forgetful!) With only the additional information that you're in room #7, the epistemic odds of being in the smaller hotel have risen from 50% to over 99%.

(Doing the math - Prior: P(H) = 50%, P(D|H) = .1, P(D|H') = .001, so the posterior probability P(H|D) > .99)

So a Bayesian analysis enables one to reason consistently about apparently random events with some prior expectation about their frequency, and to update that reasoning in a consistent manner once more information is learned.

Now to the Bayesian version of the Doomsday Argument – suppose you are optimistic about the future of humanity, so you think the probability of ‘Doom soon’ is very low – say 5%. That subjective antecedent probability is called the ‘prior’ in Bayesian reasoning. But the force of the Bayesian version of the Doomsday Argument is to see that even such optimistic prior assumptions about the future of humanity are overwhelmed by the realization of our place in human history, and it becomes rational to believe (the ‘posterior probability’) that given our evidence, there’s an overwhelming probability that humanity has not much longer to survive. Unless we have some special knowledge about the antecedent likelihood of a long human future, it looks as if we should expect Doom relatively soon.

Or as Bostrom puts it:

"Classic Doomsday - Let a person’s birth rank be her position in the sequence of all observers who will ever have existed.
h1: = “There will have been a total of 200 billion humans.”
h2: = “There will have been a total of 200 trillion humans.”

Pr(h1) = .05, Pr(h2) = .95 are the posterior probabilities of h1 and h2 after taking your low birth rank into account: Your rosy prior probability of 5% of our species ending soon (h1) has mutated into a baleful posterior [probability] of 98%."

Bostrom actually argues a more accurate analysis would require a stronger self-sampling assumption:

(SSSA) "Each observer-moment should reason as if it were randomly selected from the class of all observer-moments in its reference class."

The result of the SSSA would be to make the Classic Doomsday argument even more ominous – because not only are birthrates increasing, but human lifespans are getting longer and longer – and so including more and more moments. The result: it would push the rational expectation of Doomsday even closer than a mere counting of the number of births does. Given the SSSA, we might estimate the total number of years ever lived by human beings up to now at 2.75 trillion. That would give a 95% chance that the total number of years left for us all is between 70 billion and 107 trillion. With a current average worldwide longevity of 65 years, that would give us a 95 % rational expectation of between 1.07 billion and 1.65 trillion more births, far lower than the simple SSA forecast. If the birthrate merely remains at 130 million a year, and longevity at an average of 65 years, that means there’s a 95% chance that human births come to an end somewhere between (only) 8 years and 12519 years from now! (And it’s even worse if birthrates continue to rise and/or average lifespans continue to increase). Extinction would presumably follow within at most a century or so afterward – if not simultaneously. Perhaps some science fiction movies aren’t as implausible as they seem.

Bostrom's articles on his website include valuable discussion of most of the objections raised to the Doomsday Arguments above, and counterarguments to those objections. Suffice it to say that some versions of the argument are still held to have force. In fact, I have a novel contribution to the debate, and in it I have some bad news - unless we act quickly, I think our likely future is even shorter than these estimates would imply. My Revised Technological Doomsday Argument will come soon… hopefully, soon enough!

seeing weddings on 7-7-7

Michelle (my gorgeous wife!) and I had a nice day at the beach on Saturday, wandering around, eating at a Mexican/surfer bar restaurant called Zorro's (!) in Pismo Beach (or maybe it was Shell Beach? - near the border, anyway), and standing on a little promontory over the crashing waves below, enjoying the view and hoping the seabirds didn't come in for an attack - many of their "Guano Rocks" (as I like to call their small outcrops of boulders rising above the surf and with a rich whitish topping) were just offshore, so we saw at least hundreds of them resting comfortably and contributing their nitrates to the environment.

As we looked out from our little clifftop over the beach below (beware, those afraid of heights!), there were various little beach inlets, with natural walls where the cliffs went out almost to the water, then receded again to form another beach. The first couple of mini-beaches had the usual - women tanning, kids playing, a black Labradoodle swimming around with a stick in its mouth - but in the third one over, closest to the stairs down to the beach, we saw a bunch of women dressed in vaguely hideous hot pink bridesmaid outfits, and using my immense powers of induction, I surmised there was a wedding going on. When we saw various guys in tuxes with hot pink vests, well... you be the judge.

Upon return home and getting back on what Keith Olbermann likes to call 'the internets', I see that many folks thought 7-7-7 was a mighty lucky day to get married. (Vegas must have had a banner day, and I'm sure the slots were full of customers.) Of course, Tony and Eva were one such couple, as I'm sure even casual NBA fans are aware. I wonder if such weddings will actually beat the odds, as it were? To operationalize this query, let's ask: do people who get married on days they consider particularly propitious get divorced at a lower rate than the average population? Sociologists and anthropologists of the world, a new research question!

In the meantime, I'll stick with other statistical arguments. More on doomsday soon...

The KG sweepstakes

Rumor by other blogs that seems grounded in reality has 8 teams with offers for KG and 6 of them being serious.

The Laker offer begins with Kwame Brown (expiring contract), Lamar Odom and Bynum, and unless the Lakers can find some way to sweeten it (trading Odom for something more appetizing to Minny, or giving them multiple first round picks?), it doesn't look too plausible.

Dallas apparently is offering Keith Van Horn (re-signed but expiring contract - only 1 year guaranteed), Austin Croshere (another re-signed but expiring contract- only 1 year guaranteed), DeSagana Diop, Josh Howard, and Jason Terry. Dallas would have to pay Croshere and Van Horn some serious coin to make the deal work under the cap, and Minny conceivably wouldn't even bother asking them to actually show up, which would account for their willingness to be a part of the deal. If Minnesota could get Devin Harris instead of Terry, or a high pick like Yi (perhaps by trading Harris to Milwaukee? - it would explain one odd draft-day rumor), things might look better for Dallas. (Minnesota apparently really wanted Al Horford, but that doesn't seem to be plausible anymore.) Dallas wants to keep Stackhouse (and Stack doesn't want to go to Minny), so he won't be part of any deal.

The plausibility of Phoenix's bid apparently depends on their willingness to include Amare, which will become financially easier after his base year compensation penalty goes down in the next few weeks. (Given his guarantee to opt out if traded there, Minny wants Shawn Marion even less than Lamar Odom). I still find it hard to believe the Phoenix owner will countenance adding a $28.75 mil player, especially as it likely makes the luxury tax unavoidable. Would KG waive his $6.75 million trade kicker just to go to Phoenix? I doubt it, especially as it's likely he's going somewhere else where he'd get it.

Chicago is supposedly still a player, though that would require not only Noah, Gordon, Thomas and perhaps Nocioni, but also PJ Brown agreeing to be another re-signed but expiring contract with only 1 year guaranteed - and that one year is with Minnesota. By all accounts Brown isn't keen on that and is already negotiating a contract with Dallas. I suppose 3-way possibilities would exist, but none seem plausible in getting KG to Chicago - and they don't want to be a tax payer either.

The Knicks of course make offers for KG, but without expiring contracts I can't imagine how they could actually land KG - no matter how many unprotected draft choices Isiah offers.

Similarly, Miami is likely in the bidding, as they clearly have a 'win-now' mentality - but while Jason Williams is a nice juicy expiring contract, Udonis Haslem is about all they could offer of any actual value - and that ain't much. If I were them, I'd still offer multiple unprotected draft picks and go for it anyway. A healthy Shaq-Wade-KG triumvirate looks like a near certain Eastern conference champ next season - and their title aspirations are quickly closing otherwise.

The last team clearly in the bidding is Golden State - they can offer Al Harrington, Patrick O'Bryant, Sarunas Jasikevicius (expiring), Adonal Foyle, and some part of the combo of Pietrus, Biedrins, and Monta Ellis. The problem is the lack of expiring contracts - but they have a large trade exception from the JRich deal and could offer to also take on Troy Hudson or Marko Jaric in a separate deal. But they don't want to move Biedrins, and that still leaves Minnesota with a lot of longterm money (esp Foyle and Harrington) coming back.

So, if I had to handicap it right now, I think Dallas is in the lead, with the Lakers second (by desperately concocting some 3-way involving Lamar), and Phoenix and Chicago possibilities only if both the right players are offered AND their owners are more spendthrift than expected. Golden St would move up if they figure out some way to get some expiring contracts. Most likely, I suspect: Kevin McHale is his usual incompetent self, and KG begins the season as a Timberwolf.

Clippers plans, part 2

Let's assume Donald Sterling returns to his penurious ways, and wants to cut salary by next summer. Then he will have no interest in re-signing Elton Brand or Corey Maggette, both of whom have player opt-outs next summer and will presumably use them to seek further raises (unless they are injured or have a horrid season.) In that case, there's a deal with the neighbors that makes perfect sense for both teams:

Elton and Corey to the Lakers, for Andrew Bynum, Vladimir Radmanovic, Brian Cook, and Kwame Brown

For the Clips, building around their core/ long-term contracts of Kaman, Livingston, Tim Thomas, and Cat Mobley, it's a great deal: Kwame's big contract expires next summer and Bynum gives them another young post player, who can either play alongside Kaman, or they can showcase one and trade whichever they prefer. Radman and Cook help space the floor, a problem when Kaman and Brand played together. The team would still be competitive, which is all I think Sterling really requires - so it can get salary cap relief without giving up their future or becoming so horrible that people stop buying tickets.

Meanwhile, Kobe gets a pacifier in Brand plus his pal Maggette, a skilled slasher. The Lakers would still be in the market for a PG, but would also have the option of going huge by pairing Kobe and Corey in the backcourt, which would be tenable with good passers like Luke, Odom and Brand in the frontcourt. And Brand is good enough in the low post to routinely need to be doubleteamed, the key requirement for having the rest of the triangle spacing becoming lethal. The Lakers would become a championship contender, without even giving up Lamar!

I say - make it so.... opinions?

Oden counterfactuals?

In this article in the Oregonian, Jason Quick obviously had inside access to Kevin Pritchard as the GM went through the process of deciding to draft Greg Oden with the #1 pick. The really interesting parts of the article are where he relates conversations Pritchard had with other GMs and his own player. First, a "prominent player" apparently told Pritchard the team had to trade Zach Randolph. By process of fairly simple elimination, that had to be Brandon Roy. Obviously, Pritchard listened! (It also reinforces my doubts that Zach will do well in the combo of the nightlife of NYC and the nightmare that are Isiah's Knicks).

But the real shockers are the trades offered by other GMs. Quick reports that a team in their division (Northwest) offered a Hall of Famer and a hyped rookie for the 1st pick - again, simple elimination tells one Minnesota offered KG and Foye for the pick. Even more shocking, Quick claims that another GM from a "Western Conference power" offered a "first-ballot" Hall of Famer for the pick. I don't think the Lakers count as a power, so that could only mean the Spurs, fresh off their championship, offered to trade Tim Duncan! (Unless you think Dirk qualifies as a "first-ballot Hall of Famer" - I do, but I doubt the speaker thought so.)

It turns out Pritchard and his brain trust decided there was only one player in the league for whom they'd trade the pick - LeBron James. I wonder if you folks agree? I do - but then, like Pritchard, I think very highly of Oden.

The news from free agency - Derek and Rashard

Rashard Lewis is going to Orlando for an extremely large contract, and Derek Fisher has been released from his contract by the Utah Jazz so he can move to a city which has specialists for his daughter's treatment.

Fisher first: I'm not sure of the salary cap implications of this move, but Fisher did NOT say he was retiring (although he's 'thinking about it'), and seems amenable to playing in one of the few cities with specialists in his daughter's rare cancer. The Jazz lose a major rotation player and 'glue guy', but are well positioned to survive the blow, especially if his salary comes off their books, or at least is reduced. Selfishly, I hope Derek continues to play and returns to the Lakers - he is revered in LA by the fans and it is always good to have a player you feel like rooting for on the local team - as opposed to, say, Kobe.

As for Lewis, his move to the Magic kingdom signifies at least these two things: Grant Hill is not returning to Orlando, and neither is Darko Milicic. Grant wouldn't come back to sit the bench (and as blogged before, has several other offers), and they will need to renounce Milicic's cap hold of $6.8 million to make Rashard the offer. The only real question is whether Seattle will try to get Darko or something else back from Orlando by making it into a sign and trade, or whether he leaves for nothing. (Darko should have some suitors, but only a few teams, such as the Hawks, will have the cap room to offer him over the mid-level exception - he may not get quite the payday he was expecting). Rashard should help Orlando spread the floor, but he's a bad defender, indifferent rebounder, and unless Dwight Howard refines his post moves, I don't expect this to make Orlando significantly better.

In Seattle, the obvious plan, from trading Ray Allen and losing Rashard, is to blow it all up and start over, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if they don't simply let Rashard go (and save the cap space, rather than taking on a big contract in return). It's certainly beginning to look like Kevin Durant will be playing on a terrible team his rookie year - but he shouldn't have to fight anyone for shots! Unless new Seattle GM Sam Presti has some tricks up his sleeve, it sure looks like Durant may score more, but win a whole lot less, than Greg Oden for the foreseeable future.

Impeach Cheney?

The Washington Post ran a four-part series this past week that has thoroughly documented the vice president's dominance over various functions of the executive branch (and indeed over the president himself - one of the few issues Bush apparently stood up to Cheney on was the Harriet Miers nomination, and we know how that played out.)

Now, many in the blogosphere (see this collection of articles) are discussing an article by self-described conservative Bruce Fein that explicitly calls for Cheney's impeachment. A single quote from Fein sums up his argument nicely:

"As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify."

Fein's indictment includes the following charges, among many others: Cheney's various methods of disregarding his proper role under the Constitution, including creating line-item vetoes (in the form of signing statements) that the Supreme Court had previously denied; forming military commissions that thwart normal judicial procedure; his contention that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil (if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida - so if Dick Cheney decides (or merely suspects) that you are a terrorist, he believes that the military may shoot you on sight next time you enter an airline terminal); his disregard for constitutional amendments delineating the respective powers of the president and vice-president, and under what circumstances the vice-president should assume presidential powers; and of course, Cheney's latest twist of reality - his farcical assertion that the vice-president is not a member of the executive branch, and is exempt from the Constitutional checks and balances placed upon the executive, and indeed from executive orders regarding the executive branch itself.

So, anyone within shouting distance of a 'strict constructionist' view of Constitutional interpretation would be forced to conclude that Cheney has flagrantly disregarded the document he has sworn to uphold, and hence there are ample grounds for impeachment. Should Congress actually do so? After all, prosecutorial discretion means that even if a crime has been committed, charges do not have to be brought. Some crimes do not deserve prosecution. Cheney's do, however; for his latest transgressions strike at the very heart of what Congress could do to discipline his excesses in the normal way - by exercising congressional oversight of his activities. But he has claimed the extralegal right to keep secret even what he is keeping secret - a meta-secret, if you will - and hence is essentially, by his own admission, acting unchecked by any other branch of government - even the executive! We fought a war to get rid of a tyrant named George III. Let's hope Congress can depose this one peacefully.

Luke still a Laker

Luke Walton is re-signing with the Lakers - no surprise, except that it takes away one possible sign-and-trade piece in a potential KG trade. But I think Minnesota and Walton had no mutual interest anyway. More relevant is the list of Grant Hill suitors - Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, San Antonio and Orlando. Grant apparently wants a chance to play for a ring and is willing to take less to do so - but the Lakers are nowhere on that list. If Phoenix somehow gets Minny to go for Marion instead of Amare and actually pulls off the KG trade (losing James Jones and possibly Barbosa and/or Diaw in the process), Hill would be a natural fit at the 3. Miami is losing Kapono, and no doubt would love to get Grant to play 3 as well. The Spurs might even move Bowen to the bench (or keep Ginobili there) and offer Grant a starting spot. Unless he just can't leave Orlando, I suspect one of those 3 places will have him, and he could be an underrated piece of a contender next season.