Virtue ethics and the best candidate for President

From the perspective of virtue ethics, the worst moral dilemmas arise when people of virtue find themselves caught in situations in which the institutions in which they play their assigned roles are themselves corrupt; so that acting virtuously in your role, doing what you ought to be doing for the good of the institution, nonetheless detracts from the good of society. That is, what is good for you and the institution that defines your role, is simultaneously bad for the larger society in which you and your institution play a role.

Everyone understands this when we say that being a deadeye shooter helps one function excellently as a hitman for the Mob, but nonetheless your excellence in that role is not virtuous for the larger society. But the Mob is widely perceived as an illegitimate institution (Tony Soprano notwithstanding!), and so this is not a true moral dilemma. A truly calamitous moral situation is when an institution widely seen as moral, or the guardian of public morality, occupies such a negative role in the health of the body politic. And so the most grievous institutional evil is the moral failure of government - to have a government so wedded to corruption and pursuing its own agenda at the expense of the commonweal that even its virtuous members find themselves constantly tempted to do things that will advance their personal fortunes, but be terrible for society at large. Horribly, this now describes the US government. A true leader will face this and identify it as the crucial problem to be solved - the rest is all details.

One man running for President has done so; one is brave enough to say the following:

"Real change starts with being honest -- the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They'll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are -- not for the country, but for themselves."

That man's name is John Edwards. You should read the entire speech, recently given in New Hampshire; and then you should write him a check and tell him he has your vote. Those in power don't wish you to think hard about the culture of corruption, not when they benefit from it so much.

They also wish to trivialize the campaign and make nonsense of the true concepts of hypocrisy and concern for the poor. They wish to use the tools of media manipulation, fear, and false and mendacious advertising to twist you away from the truth - that their corruption continues only as long as you don't notice and don't put up a fight.

A real 'candidate for change' will have to be one who refuses to allow the accumulation of power and money by those in Washington upstage the search for truth and accountability. He or she must be one who can say (and act upon) the following:

"Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming.

Instead of serving the people and the nation, too many play the parlor game of Washington -- trading favors and campaign money, influencing votes and compromising legislation. It's a game that never ends, but every American knows -- it's time to end the game.

And it's time for the Democratic Party -- the party of the people -- to end it."

Only one candidate is willing to say this - John Edwards. Please support him.

Facts, values, and ethics

Query: Is there a clear distinction between facts and values? Do we have a world of hard facts about physical objects on one hand, and a wealth of intangible, fuzzy claims about 'values' on the other? Can 'values' just be whatever we want, or can they be different for different people?

Let's ask this a different way: Are value-statements clearly true or false (a view called cognitivism)? Notice this is a separate query from that of whether or not we can ever know that a value claim is true or false – you must answer the first question in the affirmative to have any chance of answering the second affirmatively.

The belief in an objective morality – involving a confutation of ethical relativism – depends on answering the first query in the affirmative. In other words, it depends on (at least) some values being facts. Hence, an inquiry into objective ethics already assumes a position in what’s called meta-ethics – the process of deciding between different ways of justifying moral judgments, which are made on basis of reasons.

The belief in an objective morality normally corresponds to a metaethics of moral realism (the idea that moral claims correspond to an external moral reality, independent of the individual or society). Here are some other possible metaethical views: Nihilism is the view that no way of justifying moral judgments is possible, because moral facts don’t exist. Contrast that to moral relativism (moral facts are relative to the individual (subjectivism) or a society/ culture (cultural relativism). Or emotivism – moral claims are simply disguised emotional attitudes/ outbursts. And so on.

Ethics is not merely an intellectual tool; its use (and misuse) informs many roles and jobs in our society. There are 4 basic types of moral investigation, or applying reason to morality:

Social Scientists – usually engage in descriptive ethics, describing the moral codes of a group, usually without passing judgment on their rightness or wrongness – e.g., a sociologist, or anthropologist, or some psychologists.

Casuists – apply ethics to concrete situations, usually to attempt to achieve some goal; they offer adjudication, defense, advice, enforcement, and a whole host of other activities related to a moral code for specific situations. Such casuists obviously include lawyers, but also judges, police, social workers, psychiatrists, therapists, teachers, and others.

Moralists/ Hortatory specialists – these people specialize in exhorting/persuading people to adopt certain moral rules or codes, or to adopt a certain way of life as better than others – they include ministers, politicians, and advertisers.

And finally, there’s what I do (and am doing right now), the:
Ethical theorist – who engages in critical examination and evaluation/ invention of ethical theories; they specialize in meta-theorizing - judging which systems can best render rational moral judgments. They evaluate the rational defensibility of various theories of ethics, and hence primarily engage in metaethics, or act as a philosopher of ethics. The primary focus is not directly on what one ought or ought not to do, but how to rationally justify whatever claims are made about what one ought or ought not to do. Of course, if the most rational ethical theory is the correct one, an ethical theorist will also have considerable practical information about what one ought to do, as one means of testing the metaethical virtues of competing theories. But the focus is on whether particular ethical theories (such as virtue ethics or utilitarianism) are true or false, and not on the practical issue of whether or not you should, say, give to charity.

So what ethical theory is the best – the truest? Or is it all relative? Stay tuned…

More on church-state separation

While on the topic of the separation of church and state, the concept has the potential to be a panacea for many other problem issues besides gay marriage. Here's one: Taxes.

You see, unlike any other charitable organization, churches are allowed to engage in religious discrimination, political fundraising, private education, and a host of other activities that are banned from receiving tax dollars (or sometimes even legal permission) for any other type of organization. A non-profit organization that engages in hiring discrimination based on religious beliefs, tries to instill those beliefs in impressionable children, and serves as a fundraiser for one political party would never be allowed - unless it called itself a church.

Most egregiously, these churches receive tax dollars both directly (under Bush's 'faith-based organization' slush fund for his supporters) and indirectly, by having their revenue stream be tax-free; in fact, their income qualifies as tax-deductible for those who fund it!

The separation of church and state, properly enforced, would acknowledge that churches are a business, with income, and should be taxed like any other private business and legislated like any other private business. That would include a legal responsibility against hiring discrimination in any non-BFOQ endeavors - i.e., they cannot discriminate against non-members when they hire teachers or janitors or cooks or accountants. They could only discriminate towards their own religious beliefs in a BFOQ situation - say, when hiring a new minister.

I am in favor of school competition and a limited voucher system experiment, but only if there is an exclusion for religious schools - no tax dollars should go to support a religion and the inculcation of its doctrine in young minds. In practice, as most schools receiving vouchers are Catholic or evangelical Protestant, that would effectively undermine all current programs - and just as well, as the teaching of religion is persuasively argued to be a far more insidious and important form of child abuse than the better known molestations by Catholic priests.

Gay marriage - a political solution

Gay marriage is one of those contentious issues in which one side feels strongly, but has no philosophically trenchant argument for their position - but it conforms to tradition, so is widely heralded. Whereas a significant minority make a compelling philosophical argument based on equality of rights, but are seen as undermining the established order and spreading immorality!

So how to finesse it? In some ways, it is like the civil rights movement - rational ethicists know what we should do, but how to sway public opinion to do the right thing? (This is aside from the further parallel with laws against mixed-race marriages that were one of the many Jim Crow laws the civil rights movement overthrew. As a further aside, the ability to get people to do the right thing when it is unpopular is a fair preliminary definition of leadership).

Ultimately, most people do want to do good - or at least have others perceive them as good - and so this is an issue in which moral suasion is required; thus, moral philosophers have an immediate role to play, in presenting convincing arguments for gay marriage and refuting the lame counterarguments that are raised.

My friend Dan has blogged about an old idea of mine (which he independently raised) for solving the problem; I thought I would enlarge on our shared idea here, with specific suggestions for how a politician could successfully frame it in these contentious times. The short version: make marriage an exclusively religious ceremony, and make civil unions an exclusively governmental function; so civil unions are the only thing recognized by the state, and are required for the state to recognize a legal union. Of course, this already de facto occurs in the requirement of a 'wedding license' for a marriage to be valid. As a matter of equal rights, any couple - gay or straight - would be eligible for a civil union, whereas it would be up to individual churches whether or not they wanted to perform the private ceremony of marriage for a couple.

Here's the way a politico could frame it:

'I am in favor of upholding the constitution, which this Administration has done so much to harm and subvert. A key principle of our constitution is the separation of church and state. Religious tolerance is a principle that goes back to the Founding Fathers, and our government is supposed to make no law respecting the establishment of one religion, or its peculiar emphases, over all the people; while simultaneously allowing any such private religion to flourish, according to the convictions of its own adherents, without thereby becoming the law of the land.

Gay marriage is an issue in which the separation of church and state has failed. Some churches (such as the Southern Baptists) refuse to allow gay marriage; others (such as the Unitarian Universalists) wholeheartedly endorse it. As a sacred institution, I wholeheartedly endorse the ability of any denomination to decide for itself whether or not to allow gay marriage. No church should be forced to endorse or officiate a ritual it finds repellent. But the religious divide on this issue also means that to legislate either the acceptability or non-acceptability of gay marriage is immediately to offend one religion or another.

As marriage is primarily a sacred, religious institution, the solution is simple: Get government out of the marriage business. The state has an interest in furthering the integrity of families and encouraging the good of its citizens, especially children; it also has an abiding interest in guaranteeing the equality of all citizens under the law. Gay couples are allowed to be parents, and repeated studies have shown that having two committed parents in the home helps children. Hence, the state has an interest in providing for legal civil unions for all couples, with full legal rights - and responsibilities. The state in fact has an obligation to provide such opportunity for civil unions for all its citizens, under the duty of equal treatment under the law. Hence, the existing system of requiring a wedding license for legal union should be turned into a federal requirement of the availability of civil union for any couple, gay or straight, regardless of religious affiliation. It would then be an entirely private religious matter whether or not any particular church wished to supply an accompanying religious ceremony of marriage to commemorate and sanctify the legal bond. '

Or in slogan form: "Marriage for the the religious, civil unions for all"

Some polls indicate civil unions would already be somewhat popular, dependent on how the issue is framed; but (to my knowledge) no one in the mainstream discourse has framed it as above. Why can't Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John Edwards say this right now? Spread the word!

The Guvernator's 'fiscal conservatism'

A program that has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless people avoid the cycle of hospitalization, jails and street life - a program that more than pays for itself in saved prison and hospital costs, to say nothing of the lives it enriches - is cut from the California budget.

What's saved? A tax break for yacht owners, that costs almost as much. After all, Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman owns a yacht... and we all know who the state should help more, yacht owners or the mentally ill homeless.

And make no mistake - this was a line item veto by Arnold. He knew well what he was doing. Any hope he would be a centrist force for the general welfare, as opposed to yet another captive of Republican special interests, further disappears. He fits right in with the national Republican party's movement to loot the public treasury of our hard-earned tax dollars for their own enrichment.

Perhaps it's time for another recall.... yea, even a Total Recall!

Libertarians - becoming Dems?

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that property and liberty are the only fundamental rights, and those are to be interpreted as negative rights: they merely require others not to interfere with one as they choose to exercise the right (or not); they never require the active assistance of others. A libertarian thus believes helping others is not a duty, but charity. Your duty is not to interfere with others as they use their property, as long as they don't interfere with you. Robert Nozick's 'night watchman' state is perhaps the best known development of this philosophy in the 20th century.

Libertarians accordingly value very small government, believing most taxes are simply the theft of one's property by the government. They are anti-paternalistic; they would abolish the government agencies that tell us what to do or restrict our liberty to use our own property. So the FDA, the DEA, the Department of Education, the Department of Transportation, etc - all would disappear under a consistent libertarian regime. If you want to drive, pay for the roads yourself; if you want to use drugs, you're free to do so (as long as you don't harm others); if you want to engage in dog fighting with Michael Vick, go right ahead (as long as you use only dogs you properly own).

Libertarians have traditionally joined the Republican Party when they seek actual power (they have their own party, but it holds no high elected office). Ron Paul is probably their best known politician - a libertarian who joined the Republican party so he could get elected to Congress, and is now running for President - and has appeared on both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, so breaking through into a modicum of the popular consciousness.

Libertarians have usually joined the Republicans because traditionally that was the party of smaller government spending and power - the party that emphasized, as traditional conservatives did, that government, like all humans, is flawed and is liable to abuse the power it holds, so it's best not to give it any more than necessary, in order to preserve liberty.

Reagan talked this way in 1980, but in fact considerably raised government spending. Much of that was due to a defense spending spree, and libertarians can countenance that, so many swallowed Reagan's increases; but they were not happy, and led the charge to ensure that Gingrich's ingenious plan to recapture Republican control of Congress, the 1994 'Contract With America', would trumpet smaller government and cutbacks in federal spending, as well as balancing the budget.

Gingrich's Contract was successful in getting Republicans control of the House, but once in power, the Republicans soon proved even more adept at deficit spending than Democrats, effectively lying to their libertarian supporters. Clinton presided over balanced budgets and even a surplus, but as soon as Republicans gained control of both the legislative and executive branches in January 2001, deficit spending soon hit all-time highs. Much of this (as under Reagan) was supposedly justified by defense spending (especially after 9/11), but in fact the Republicans have turned this into a partisan kleptocracy and plutocracy of the highest order. And the war in Iraq, a clear violation of libertarian principles (Ron Paul opposed it from the start), is simply the best means for the widespread looting of the federal treasury by criminals with Republican connections, aided and abetted by the current administration.

Libertarians value social liberty as well as the economic liberty of laissez-faire capitalism, so they have always co-existed uneasily with the religious fundamentalists within the Republican Party. So, those libertarians who actually want to have power and/or vote for a winner, look at the two parties and ask: which is now closer to my ideals - the party which has always emphasized social liberties and is the last to actually achieve balanced budgets and opposes military conscription and corruption, or the Republicans? The result: many libertarians are becoming Democrats - and the change in 2006 election results shows it. In the libertarian-leaning West, the Democrats made significant gains in traditional Republican strongholds - as e.g., Jon Tester, running on a largely libertarian-friendly platform, won election to the Senate from Montana - as a Democrat.

As the nation as a whole grows richer and markets better regulated and personal freedoms more precious than the question of where the next meal is coming from, I suspect libertarianism will become more and more popular as an ideology. The party that embraces it more thoroughly should thereby gain and retain power - and at the moment, that looks like the Democrats.

Yum!

Today Michelle and I ate again at the Art Cafe and Bakery, on the edge of downtown SLO in the Creamery. Next to an art gallery, the place is quirky and fun, and the owner and chief baker, Donna Nozzi, was an engaging proprietor. I had a scrumptious roast beef and cheddar sandwich on an absolutely divine horseradish Parmesan bread, which also comes with delicious fresh fruit; Michelle had the house specialty, the 'O'riginal curried chicken sandwich, and a large salad including shaved almonds and fresh greens.

Why make note? Well, it is one of our new favorite places to eat, and there's a backstory - it almost went out of business a few years ago, until Oprah found out about it, deemed the curried chicken sandwich the best ever, and wrote a check that saved the business. And so a tale was born - the place now boasts a large painting of Oprah on one wall - and lots of other art as well. Last year the original owner, Margaux Sky, finally quit, but Donna Nozzi took over and keeps using the same recipes.

So if you come to SLO, the Art Cafe is one great place to go. Who knows, you might even see Oprah herself... but don't count on it. Now, I wonder if Lindsay Lohan ate there when she was in town... nah, probably not; I didn't see any cocaine residue!

Torture of American whistleblowers in Iraq

The war in Iraq has hit its latest in the "I don't believe it" category: Navy vet Donald Vance, working for a reconstruction contractor in Iraq, witnessed illegal arms sales (helping us understand how over 190,000 weapons could go 'missing'), and reported the crimes (with documentation) to an FBI office in Chicago, because he didn't know who in Iraq he could trust.

The result: the US military detained and tortured him, for 97 days.

WTF? Why isn't George Bush, Congress, EVERYONE outraged and busy doing something about this? Why is the Justice Department refusing any investigation or even comment? Why are the criminals running things? And what will we do about it?

This war has eroded the moral capital the USA has built up ever since the fine words of Thomas Jefferson et al. in 1776. It may prove a turning point in the long-term recruitment of terrorists who will soon have access to true WMDs. For we have undermined the kind of international cooperation among many different nations that will be required to prevent biological and nanotechnological weapons from spreading. And so they will spread, and people will act on their grievances, with ever more sophisticated technology.

I suspect it is the beginning of the end - of us all.

Idiocy, taken for granted

'No child left behind' is the mantra of the Bush education program - an emphasis on simple tests (with the inevitability of teachers being evaluated thereby 'teaching to the test') and a simplification of the learning process, taking both the joy and the rigor out of it.

That tendency is bad enough, but the real problem is the way in which standards and expectations are being dumbed down to give an appearance of success - while failing to challenge the above-average students. In the desire to make sure that 'no child is left behind', we have made school too easy for the talented kids, and ignored the overwhelming power of peer pressure on learning. Our 20th century economical prowess was based only partially on widespread literacy - many other countries have it as well. The prime mover was our intellectual elite - American universities and their students as the best in the world. Between increasingly onerous immigration policies and the dumbing down of American primary and secondary schools, our intellectual leadership may soon be a thing of the past, with horrible consequences for us all.

Don't believe me? To quote from Newsweek:

"... why did the federal government quietly decide last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts?

The study, called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, measures how high-school seniors are doing in algebra, geometry, calculus and physics with students taking similar subjects around the globe. In the past, the American results have been shockingly poor. In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries—Cyprus and South Africa—scored lower than U.S. school kids."

The short answer: we pulled out because we are likely to do even worse in the next round. We lag our developed countries in math and science because excellence therein is not rewarded, and having kids who kick ass in math and science is no longer a priority - at least, not as much as making sure many have a mediocre grasp of the subject, soon to be forgotten.

To become a world leader in educational attainment, we must get the incentives right, for both teachers and students. When our educational establishment/ government (and teacher's unions) reward those teachers with subject mastery who demand a great deal of their students, and when we as a culture decide our educational institutions should lionize those students who have high academic achievement (as opposed to, say, athletic achievement), then our schools will become great again. Otherwise, look forward to a world in which intellectual and physical capital - and hence power - moves increasingly to Asia, and the US becomes one more faded empire of history.

Trade Kobe, now

KG's in Boston, Jermaine O'Neal is overrated and not coming anyway, and Kobe still wants out of LA.

So, let him. It seems clear that if the Lakers wait a year to deal him, they will get less - re the Iverson and KG trades, in which teams traded too late and got less back. And keeping an overrated ballhog who doesn't want to play with his teammates and can force his way out in a year strikes me as disastrous.

So here's a trade that works under the salary cap (as of August 27) and I think the Bulls would make: Kobe for L. Deng, Ty Thomas, J. Noah, Ben Gordon, and T. Sefolosha. The Bulls would still still start Hinrich, Kobe, Nocioni, Joe Smith, Ben Wallace, with C. Duhon, V. Khyrapa, Adrian Griffin, Jameson Curry, Aaron Gray, and others they could still pick up - there are more than the usual number of cheap free agents left - off the bench. They would vitiate their depth, but their starting 5 would be fearsome.

The Lakers get multiple great pieces for a bright future. As a matter of fact, I think the 2007-8 Lakers will have a significantly better record if they make this trade than if they keep Kobe - to say nothing of further down the line. It's time - trade Kobe!

Best argument for the existence of God

The best argument for the existence of God -- from maximal creativity and ethical requiredness

suppose God is maximally great and creative, and supplanting POE and other counters as follows.

And suppose we have free will in sense of being able to cause things which god foresees but cannot stop – god must either create the universe which contains those things, or not create it, but once created, cannot interfere further.

Next, assume aggregative utilitarianism is true – the act is morally best which maximizes utility, where utility is understood as the balance of good over evil; more precisely, utility= total good minus total evil produced by the action

Then it follows that to be good Itself, God logically would choose to create all PWs in which good outweighs evil, to maximize net good in the multiverse.

So, God would create the BPW, but also many other PWs in which evil exists, down to those in which net good-evil is barely above zero. (Details of measure theory and how to determine smaller and smaller positive but non-zero measurements are interesting here, but don’t crucially affect the overall argument).

Accordingly, we could in fact choose differently, but in every case in which our actions did not tip the cosmic scale to net evil, another universe would have been foreseen and created by God – cf. the MWI of QM. So no surprise (re measure theory?) to find ourselves in a universe in which considerable evil exists – the majority of universes within the mutiverse are like that, and very few have little or no evil. It apparently remains meaningful to attempt to act so as to change things – that’s part of better universes which God will have created, and if we did not so act, it is possible the universe could have a negative utility and so not exist. (Problems with fatalism and choice may undermine this, but it has certainly seemed plausible to many theodicists).

So, we have a timeless or hypertime multiverse in which all our decisions are already foreseen but not directly caused, except for concurrent creative activity – i.e., those which led to net evil were never created and so are non-actual. This is the best attempt to account for free will, real evil, and rebut the problem of evil (POE) and still have a morally defensible and powerful, creative force as God.

Objections: this is not real free will/ morality, because of fatalism/ causal impotence; or a timeless god is unintelligible. Or there is no evidence for other universes, so belief in them is a gross violation of Occam’s razor.

But the most weighty objection to the argument in my mind is the assumption that utilitarianism is true – and in particular, the aggregative utilitarianism that presumes that it is better to make a multiverse with much evil contained therein, as long as the total good outweighs it, versus making a single universe with no evil whatsoever. The total good would be less, no doubt, than in the multiverse; but aggregative utilitarianism violates a rule that I think a truly omnibenevolent Creator must obey: first, do no harm.

More objections to aggregative utilitarianism as an ethical theory in a later post….

Doomsday and Bostrom's Simulation Argument

Many futurists believe that we will soon enter a ‘posthuman’ phase of civilization (often called, somewhat misleadingly, the 'Singularity', although it has nothing to do with black hole physics). Becoming posthuman will have profound implications for us all. These futurists typically assume that the phenomenon called Moore’s Law will continue for the enhancement of computing speed for the medium-term future, and also assume a philosophy of mind that makes strong AI possible – involving the belief that minds are simply incredibly complex algorithms, and minds are ‘substrate-neutral’ or 'substrate-independent' – that is, those algorithms currently run on hardware called ‘brains’, but in principle could run on other hardware, such as a computer. If these beliefs are true, it is clear that computers will be capable of human-level minds within the next 20 or 30 years, and will have minds that dwarf our ability to comprehend them a short while afterwards. These computer superminds will even be able to simulate reality; and a good enough simulation, given substrate neutrality, is indistinguishable from reality itself.

So we will become posthuman at some point in the coming century. What does that mean? Well, let’s define a ‘posthuman’ civilization as one that is able to simulate an entire world in a way largely or entirely indistinguishable from reality. That is, for posthumans, the distinction between virtual reality and ‘real’ reality begins to disappear. The computing power required for this is truly stupendous, but it is a finite number, and if the futurist assumptions are correct, our civilization will have such powers in well less than one hundred years!

The philosopher Nick Bostrom has advanced an argument that we have good reason to believe we actually inhabit such a simulation right now. His argument is a few years old, but its publication in the NY Times has made it far better known, so I’ll give just a quick recap:

Bostrom argues that one of the following three propositions is almost certainly true:

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) or, any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary (‘world’) history (or variations thereof – ‘ancestor-histories’);
(3) or, we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

Bostrom indicates that under certain plausible assumptions, option 3 is the most likely. Unless our posthuman descendants are much more ethically circumscribed than us, the desire to run ‘ancestor-histories’, or counterfactual histories, will be great – just imagine the historians wanting to see what would have happened if the Nazis won WW2, or even you just wondering what would have happened if you’d married that high school sweetheart (or not, as the case may be). The temptation to run a large number of such simulations thus strikes me as overwhelming.

Further, if our universe is a simulation, it explains several oddities nicely – for example, why relativity and quantum mechanics can’t be meshed (QM because there must be some lower level of granularity in the simulation, relativity for making things flow smoothly within the simulation – though both can’t be ‘real’).

And it explains the strange applicability of the anthropic principle well – the idea that so much of what we observe, particularly the otherwise inexplicable physical constants such as the fine structure constant, the ratio of the gravitational force to electromagnetic forces, and so forth – why they all appear to be "rigged" so as to create conditions favorable to the origin of life in general and we humans in particular. They are so rigged because the universe is a simulation designed with us in mind!

But then, why were things that way in the original universe, which we're now simulating? Was it a simulation, too? There’s an infinite regress problem, one that we simulated beings could never solve. After all, who knows what things are like in the fundamental level of reality… whatever that is.

But there’s a problem – or two. First, one of Bostrom’s other options is that all intelligent civilizations self-destruct before they become posthuman. That, unfortunately, is completely compatible with all our evidence. In particular, it would explain Fermi’s paradox – if ETIs exist, where are they? Perhaps we’re in a simulation that didn’t bother with aliens – but why not? It wouldn’t be much more expensive to add them in. So, Occam’s razor suggests that any intelligent aliens that ever existed never made it to posthuman stage.

Worse, suppose we are in a simulation. In that case, we are well on the way to becoming posthuman ourselves – being able to run our own ( let's say third-level) simulations, within our own second-level simulation. But simulating even a single posthuman civilization looks to be extraordinarily expensive in computing terms. If so, unless our upper level simulators have nearly infinite resources, then we should expect our simulation to be terminated when we are about to become posthuman – that is, when we are about to become simulators ourselves.

So, either we are doomed never to reach the posthuman stage – in which case it’s Doomsday soon – or our simulation will be terminated as soon as we do so – in which case, it’s Doomsday soon. Either way, this simulation argument brings us depressingly closer to the conclusion that it’s Doomsday soon. I think the best counterargument actually claims that philosophers like John Searle are right and the futurists are wrong about the philosophy of mind underlying strong AI and posthumanism. If they’re right, I think it’s Doomsday soon. If not Doomsday by simulation shutdown, perhaps it will be by the rise of the machines – superhuman robotic intelligences, who supersede and destroy us. Stay tuned for the next Doomsday installment….

Team USA vs Team CSA?

I love historical counterfactuals – what if Europe had not appeased Hitler in 1938? (Or given Germany a less onerous treaty ending WW1?) Or what if Britain had won the American revolutionary war?

Or, what if the Confederacy had won the Civil War (or as some in my home state call it, the ‘War of Northern Agression’!) The usual counterfactual studied is something along the lines of – how long would it have been until the CSA abolished slavery (common guess – 1890s/ early 1900s). But in keeping with this blog, I have a very different counterfactual in mind – what would Team USA in hoops look like, if it didn’t have any players from the 11 states of the Confederacy?

That is, let’s compare a hypothetical Team CSA to a remnant Team USA. To qualify for Team CSA, I’ll say you had to be born or play high school ball in one of the 11 Confederate states – college doesn’t count. And we can start with the actual Team USA to begin – it turns out 12 members of the penultimate squad practicing in Vegas this summer don’t hail from the Confederacy, so we can make that our hypothetical Team USA:

Carmelo Anthony (Denver Nuggets); Shane Battier (Houston Rockets); Chauncey Billups (Detroit Pistons); Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles Lakers); Tyson Chandler (New Orleans Hornets); Kevin Durant (Seattle SuperSonics); Kirk Hinrich (Chicago Bulls); LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers); Jason Kidd (New Jersey Nets); Mike Miller (Memphis Grizzlies); Tayshaun Prince (Detroit Pistons); Michael Redd (Milwaukee Bucks);

Starters: Chandler, LeBron, Melo, Kobe, Kidd
Bench: Battier, Durant, Miller, Prince, Redd, Hinrich, Billups,

Not much size, so for the 2008 Olympics, they would no doubt sub Elton Brand (team member, but currently hurt) for Durant. Otherwise, this appears plausible.

For Team CSA, there are 4 current Team USA members that would thus be part of our hypothetical Team CSA:
Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic); Amaré Stoudemire (Phoenix Suns); Chris Bosh (Toronto Raptors); Deron Williams (Utah Jazz).

To fill out the roster, I add these players who hail from the Confederacy, and have been on Team USA in the past, or were invited to Team USA tryouts this year:
Joe Johnson, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Shaquille O’Neal, Vince Carter, Josh Howard, Shawn Marion

That gives us the following team:

Starters: Shaq, Amare, KG, TMac, Deron Williams
Bench: DHoward, Bosh, Marion, Joe Johnson, Josh Howard, Vince Carter, C. Paul

The take-home: I think the CSA team would crush the USA, particularly off the bench. If the old Shaq is around, the CSA would be unstoppable on offense, and even if he barely plays, the other bigs on the CSA easily trump the USA bigs (and that’s without guys like Jermaine O’Neal or Ben Wallace even making the squad!). Kidd is a great distributor, but no one else is for Team USA – and Chris Paul and Deron Williams give the CSA a great young 1-2 punch at PG. Kobe, Melo, and LeBron may be the three most overrated players in the league – I fear the real Team USA may lose this summer or next because of their inability to share well. TMac, Joe Johnson and Josh Howard have shown in their NBA careers that they can be ideal complimentary players, however. In short, team CSA looks like a better team.

So while in reality the South will not rise again, if they ever split for basketball purposes, the South would kick some ass, methinks.

Biological doomsday

The odds of the extinction of the human race occurring because of biological warfare (or accident) grow each and every day. Why? Because research and development of potentially lethal viral and bacterial pathogens continues, and the political and social conditions contributing to their release get worse and worse, not better.

Consider the fall of 2001; not long after the terror attacks of 9/11, there were the anthrax mailings that nearly paralyzed the postal system and killed a few people. The FBI investigated, they terrorized a scientist, Stephen Hatfill, who worked for USAMRIID (in Fort Detrick, Maryland) on circumstantial evidence, and even drained a pond in which he was alleged to have stashed the evidence in the end, and found ... nothing. In the end, they arrested... no one.

Why? Some conspiracy theorists believe it is because the anthrax terrorist could not be prosecuted, because the terrorist was a government official with evidence of US violations of the 1972 Convention on Biological Weapons, which states that it is illegal to "develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire" such weapons.

Some of the alleged violations include the very weaponized anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, which were identical to a military grade and may have violated the biological weapons convention. Other alleged violations include the army's

"plan to test live microbes in "aerosol chambers" at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, also in Maryland. So does its development of a genetically modified fungus for attacking coca crops in Colombia, and GM bacteria for destroying materials belonging to enemy forces."

The upshot - either the US military, or some other government organization, continues to carry out biological warfare research, on organisms with potentially massive lethality. Compare that to known Soviet violations - in 1992 Russia made an official declaration of its past biological weapon activities, including work was done at Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) and other cities on mass production and dispersion as a weapon of biological agents. At the Sverdlovsk facility, the lab screwed up containment of their weaponized anthrax in April, 1979, with a result of (admitted) deaths of nearly 70 people downwind, and dead sheep for a distance of 50 kilometers. And non-state terror groups are willing to attempt biological warfare as well; Aum Shinrikyo wished to do so, but found sarin gas easier to use.

Now, with al-Qaeda and other terror groups discovering the power of asymmetric warfare, it seems only a matter of time until a member of such a group finds that biological warfare is one of the easiest means of attaining their aims. The technology for doing so becomes cheaper and more accessible all the time, and all that would be needed is someone with the appropriate training. And we know al-Qaeda can recruit doctors, so recruiting a research virologist shouldn't be much harder.

Making things worse for both state and non-state actors is the rise of genetic medicine made possible by the Human Genome Project. Before long it may be possible to genetically engineer pathogens that attack only certain genomes - making ethnic/ genetic 'cleansing' all the more plausible. But a counterattack, or a mutation, could make such an organism lethal not only to one's enemies, but one's own tribe/ oneself. And, through malice aforethought or accident, it seems inevitable that, if research on highly contagious and lethal organisms continues, it will eventually be let out. A bioweapons doomsday is extraordinarily plausible; to stop it will require overwhelming surveillance and/or ethical controls on primary research. I rank it second only to nanotechnology as an existential risk to humankind.

Have a great day!

Fixing the NBA, part 1

The NBA had extremely poor ratings for its marquee event, the Finals, and has had a tumultuous offseason, with the specter of organized crime and thrown games or at least point shaving / adding - and the possibility that more refs or even players were involved - hanging over the Tim Donaghy scandal, at least until all the facts are out.

So the NBA is in dire need of a makeover. KG and Kobe trade rumors will divert attention from the underlying problems for only so long, after all. And the man in charge, David Stern, seems to have lost some of his luster; one of his biggest fans, Bill Simmons, who used to write that Stern should be President, now compares him to a near-senile Red Auerbach, and says if the summer brings no changes, then it's time to '[take] away the car keys.'

So how to fix the NBA? Let me start with just one problem, and address others in later posts. First, the draft:

The very idea of the draft strikes me as immoral - the kind of thing that should be illegal. Aside from the odious connotations of slavery raised by elderly rich white men 'owning' young black men, determining their working conditions, their pay, and indeed their opportunity for employment in their chosen field, there's more to dislike: it violates the right to choose one's employer, taken for granted in labor relations in all other businesses besides professional sport.

Imagine you, a hotshot young med school grad, knowing there are numerous places around the country that would love to employ you - and being told instead that your 'rights' were owned by, say, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN - and if you didn't want to move to their nice little burg and endure their godforsaken winters, well, you can just forget about being a doctor. Oh, and previous doctors likewise forced to labor there have bargained away any ability for you to determine your pay - you can accept what the Mayo Clinic is offering, or you can forget about being a doctor. At least, a paid doctor.

Naturally, there would be an uproar, marching in the streets, protests over the injustice involved; surely the defenders of free market capitalism would be apoplectic at so many of their most cherished principles being annihilated. Funny, then, the silence over sports league drafts. Certainly the athletes are well compensated despite being denied their most elementary bargaining rights - is that it? I doubt it; well-paid doctors would still scream bloody murder if this system were instituted. No, residual racism and an undue respect for tradition seem the more likely culprits.

But change involves the art of the possible; so while I think the draft should be abolished (and replaced with free agency for all, every year, doing away with both trades and long-term contracts), I will stick with something that could actually happen in my suggestions here. Just remember, for me what follows is a distant second best.

Given that the draft will continue, the most serious problem with it is the phenomenon of early entry, in which 22 year old (or older) seniors are drafted alongside callow 18-19 year old freshmen, making comparative evaluation an even trickier business. Allowing youngsters into the NBA also hurts the league in two other ways (at least): it weakens benches, in that youngsters who are 'projects' and whom the team control for 4 seasons are drafted and kept, over older players who have less 'projection' but are better players NOW. So the quality of play is hurt by early entry, at least as it exists now. The introduction of the minor league NBDL and the ability of teams to option players mitigates this, but only partially.

The second way it hurts the league is through compensation issues - players know they hit their large, long-term paydays only after they have been in the league long enough to qualify for free agency, so they have every incentive to begin that process as early as possible, both to get to free agency at a younger age and to maximize their number of opportunities at free agency throughout their career. Teams hence have to pay major cash to players at young ages, or lose them, and hence are making mammoth money judgments under far more uncertainty than would be the case if they could wait a bit longer. Suboptimal asset allocation results - in layman's terms, busts get a big payday too often.

Given my preferred solution is a non-starter (no draft, free agency for all every year, with Bird rights to go over cap to re-sign players who had been with their team 3+ seasons - to help with continuity) - well, what's second-best?

Here's my suggestion: Make the draft eligible to anyone (removing possible legal problems that deserve a suit by some 18-year old soon). But dictate that anyone who enters the league before they are 21 (or their college class graduates) is ineligible for a multiyear contract or slot money - they must be paid as a free agent, and are automatically free agents again after one season. But they cannot sign a long-term contract until they are 21 - no matter when they entered the league.

This rule, if put into force, would greatly reduce the undergraduate 'project' early entry problem. An early-entry player would be like a one-year 'street' free agent, and the team would have no additional incentive (in terms of keeping that player for the future) over a similar veteran. Indeed, less, for the vet could sign a multiyear contract if he exceeded expectations. A LeBron could still declare straight out of high school, but he would be property of the team that drafted him for only one season. Hence, he would only be drafted if it was worth it for that year, not because of future expectations for his greatness.

The result: better benches and players in the league, and the free publicity (and scouting, with attendant diminution of risk) that the NCAA hype machine provides would likewise make rookies far better bets, and far better known and loved, once they actually entered the league. And the few exceptions, like a LeBron, would engender even more publicity as teams vied to acquire his services a season at a time, especially as he entered his age 21 season and the prospect of signing him long-term.

In short, this would be a remedy for much of what ails the draft process. Mr. Stern, I wish you were listening....

Ranking NL offenses by road scoring

Perceptions in baseball are funny things; pundits on Baseball Tonight look at the Padres and see their pitching is ranked first in the league, but their offense is near the bottom, and say that the Pads need offensive help, and their great pitching is the key to what winning they do. Trades are endlessly discussed to remedy these perceived shortcomings, as the talking heads assert the Pads need to pick up a hitter, whereas the young Diamondback offense is coming along, and they need more pitching to stay in first.

The pundits seem to be oblivious to park effects, alas. As a result, most of what they say is stupid, and even flat out wrong. The best way to show this is to find a way to eliminate park effects - there are a number, but the simplest quick one is simply to look at road scoring. Park effects are almost entirely washed out over the course of a season on the road, so much fairer comparisons of team strengths and weaknesses can be gleaned from such data.

So without further ado, the NL team road scoring, in runs per game, through August 9:
(Gaps are an attempt to indicate the relative differences between teams – the top 2 are much better than #3, which is much better than #4. But #s 9-11 could easily change in a single game, they’re so close).

1 Philadelphia 5.39

2 Atlanta 5.25


3 NY Mets 5.03


4 Florida 4.79

5 San Diego 4.71


6 Milwaukee 4.52

7 Colorado 4.46

8 Cincinnati 4.43

9 LA Dodgers 4.39
10 Houston 4.38
11 St. Louis 4.38

12 Chicago Cubs 4.35

13 San Francisco 4.28


14 Pittsburgh 4.05

15 Washington 3.95

16 Arizona 3.83

Lessons: Arizona looks like a decent offense only because of their home park, which is a hitter’s paradise; they actually have the worst offense in the league, but (contrary to reputation) the best pitching in the division, and Brandon Webb is making a persuasive Cy Young case. They need help with hitting, not pitching, to stay in first!

Conversely, the Padres actually have a solid offense, 5th in the league; Petco serves to disguise just how good their offense is (and likewise makes their pitching appear much better than it actually is). They may regret trading away part of their bullpen in Scott Linebrink, perhaps mistakenly believing their pitching is better than it actually is.

To a lesser extent, the same overvaluing of their pitching is true of the Giants and Dodgers – but the Dodger offense truly has become woeful as well, and trading Betemit and keeping Nomar at 3b may keep them out of a playoff berth.

On the other hand, the top 4 offenses are all in the NL East! Again, this is disguised by Shea Stadium and Dolphins Stadium being severe pitcher’s parks, and Turner Field being mildly so, but these offenses can rock! The addition of Teixiera to the Braves and the loss of Utley by the Phils may presage a change in the top 2 spots. Now, if Atlanta could only find some bullpen help, they could easily be the favorite to win the East title yet again…

And Milwaukee is (slightly) the best of a sad bunch in the Central. But despite ROY Ryan Braun, they are trending the wrong way. But the Cubs lost Soriano, and the Cards offense has sunk to Astros level - yikes! Jim Edmonds is about done, and Scott Rolen looks unlikely to ever return to all-star status. (But at least Pujols is heating up, Cards fans - behold the next Stan Musial). Nonetheless, the Central remains a sea of mediocrity or worse - and I still maintain that 6 teams from the NL East and West will have a record at least as good as the Central winner. (Not that that will stop them from perhaps winning the World Series, as the 2006 champion Cardinals can attest!)

More NBA flashbacks...

Is it 1995 all over again - Shaq and Penny together in Florida? Yes, it seems - the Heat have signed Penny Hardaway to play for them next season. Perhaps Pat Riley has been channeling Danny Ainge too much, or simply got desperate when Mo Williams, Michael Pietrus, and the other guards targeted this offseason failed to sign. But it can't be exactly a ringing endorsement of the free agents available when retired, washed-up vets are signing contracts in front of them.

Say, is that Michael Jordan working out in Chicago? Who says three retirements is enough....

The poison of faith, continued – AIDS and faith healing

It is well known that the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, has been a vocal proponent of the view that HIV does not cause AIDS. A very few researchers in the field agree, although usually not for the reasons Mbeki claims. (Peter Duesberg is probably the most prominent.)

From the perspective of most AIDS organizations and specialists, this tiny minority of HIV skeptics, also called HIV/AIDS dissidents, spread false hope and false cures – bad enough – but crucially are an ongoing and worsening menace to public health in undermining attempts at prevention through regular condom use. For, if AIDS is not sexually transmitted, but is caused by contaminated needles from drug use or a lack of certain herbs, then why use a condom?

And the continent most afflicted by AIDS is home to the most bizarre of the dissidents. That of course is Africa, in which a horrifying 24.5 million adults and children (estimated) were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2005. In that single year, an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS. The epidemic has left behind over 12 million orphaned African children. Thabo Mbeki’s South Africa leads the way, with current estimates cresting 6 million – 1/8 of the population – with AIDS, and no sign of the increase slowing down.

What has this to do with the poison of religion? Well, Thabo Mbeki has nothing on the president of Gambia. From the Economist:

“PRESIDENT YAHYA JAMMEH, who took power in a coup 13 years ago, claims to have outstripped the scientists and discovered a cure for HIV/AIDS. His secret concoction of seven herbs can annihilate the virus, he says, within three days. Gambian state television repeatedly shows the diminutive president applying his remedy to patients' heads, as he recites verses from the Koran.”

Yes, Islamic faith healing (and herbs!) will cure you of AIDS, if administered by the nation’s most powerful faith healer! And Jammeh isn’t content with AIDS; every Saturday he claims to cure asthmatics, and next up will be a day for diabetics. All they need are herbs and prayers.

When a UN health official dared question the efficacy of Mr Jammeh’s health policy, she was summarily forced from the country, and denounced as “an illiterate who does not know anything about medicine”. Muslim fundamentalism and tribal witch doctoring work hand in hand to repress the forces of truth and modernity. How can the poor and sick be expected to know any better when their spiritual and temporal powers are fused in such a denial of reality?

Just to make things clear, after protesting a new law muzzling the press in late 2004, the editor of an opposition paper, Deyda Hydara, was shot dead, presumably by the government. Mr Jammeh has discussed ruling for four decades; in the past, he has given warning that anyone “disturbing the peace or stability of the nation” would be “buried six feet deep”.

That is, if they don’t die of AIDS first.

Ainge's brilliance... not.

So with the help of his old friend and teammate Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge traded for KG, after already acquiring Ray Allen and keeping Paul Pierce, and suddenly the Celtics look possibly formidable in the weak East next season. The problem - trading away almost half the team for KG left them with youngsters Rondo and Perkins as the other starters, and a bench of the unathletic Brian Scalabrine and the youngster Leon Powe at 4, the hobbled Tony Allen at 2, and ... rookies. And not first round rookies.

So depth is a problem. What does Ainge do? He wastes part of his midlevel exception on the execrable Eddie House, a no-D gunner who doesn't pass, and fits with Pierce and Allen like a raw tenderloin steak at a vegan convention - nobody wants it, even if it's in prime condition - and House's career is past its sell-by date.

Rumor has it that Troy Hudson, so bad that the T-wolves bought him out, may be next - and he's an inferior version of Eddie House! To add to the laughter, Ainge brings in the player far better known for his haircuts than anything ever done on the court, Scot Pollard. If he's an opinionated goofball who can string two sentences together, he can aspire to be the Jack Haley of this bunch.

And now, rumor has it he's trying to entice Reggie Miller out of two years of retirement. You may remember Reggie from his last playoff appearance, in which he had nearly a halfcourt lead on Tayshaun Prince for a layup and still got it blocked. And again, he's been retired for two years since! Miller was an excellent scorer 10-15 years ago, but by the end could only get open looks by running around multiple screens and counting on lazy defenders who wouldn't switch or chase. Whatever their other virtues, Ray Allen and especially Paul Pierce aren't going to be setting screens. This is roughly as farcical as Sir Charles announcing a comeback. (Or Charles Oakley). But when there are GMs as delusional and enabling as Danny Ainge, who can blame the players of yesteryear for dreaming of their lost youth?

In short, while the rest of the offseason needs to play out before I make my predictions official, it looks mighty bad for the Celtics, as Ainge's incompetence at finding role players may submarine the chances of a talented core. (Although I don't like Pierce and Allen together that much either - I'd trade Paul Pierce in a heartbeat for a good return, but the Celtics owner loves him). Briefly, I'd hold off on those Eastern Finals banners, boys, and don't even get too sure of a playoff spot. Not when Eddie House, Troy Hudson, and Scot Pollard may be playing crunchtime minutes...

Doomsday continued: supervolcanoes

Ordinary volcanic eruptions, like the one at Mt. St. Helens in 1980 or the famous eruption of Vesuvius that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii in 79, or one about to go off in Indonesia any time now, are hardly any threat to human civilization, however horrible they are for the people living nearby.

But supervolcanoes are a whole different phenomenon. They erupt when a massive underground magma pool builds up over hundreds of thousands of years, raising the ground below until a caldera tens or hundreds of miles across suddenly explodes (over a matter of a few days!) and rains debris across continents, even the entire globe. The famous geysers, like Old Faithful, at Yellowstone National Park are not simply a tourist attraction - they are more akin to a hole in the lid of a huge boiling pot, one about to boil over and explode.

Here's how Livescience describes a Yellowstone supervolcano:

"Geologists in the United States detailed a similar scenario in 2001, when they found evidence suggesting volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park will eventually lead to a colossal eruption. Half the United States will be covered in ash up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep, according to a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone," says Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the possibilities in separate work. "And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there.""

Everyone in the surrounding regions and downwind across most of North America would die almost immediately. The resultant horrific weather, akin to the worst nuclear winter scenarios, might do the rest of us in. At the very least, it would destroy our economy and likely the economies of most of the other developed nations. As the author puts it:

"Earth is plunged into a perpetual winter, some models predict, causing plant and animal species disappear forever. "The whole of a continent might be covered by ash, which might take many years -- possibly decades -- to erode away and for vegetation to recover," Sparks said."

The last supervolcano on record was not at Yellowstone, but at Lake Toba (in current day Sumatra) about 74,000 years ago. Genetic studies indicate that at the same time, Homo sapiens went through a 'genetic bottleneck' - for despite having far more members of our species alive right now (almost 7 billion and counting) than any other large mammal, genetic surveys indicate our species evinces far less genetic diversity than any of our relatives - for instance, genetic surveys of chimps

"reveals an almost four-fold higher diversity and a three-fold greater age of the most recent common ancestor of the chimpanzee sequences. Phylogenetic analyses show the sequences from the different chimpanzee subspecies to be intermixed ... These data, as well as preliminary work in the other great apes, indicate that the human genome is unique in carrying extremely little nucleotide diversity." [bold in original]

Unless there is a tremendously unlikely coincidence, the cause of our lack of genetic diversity appears to be the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. It reduced the total membership of our species to a few thousand survivors, and every one of the 7 billion or so of us alive today are descendants of those hardy few. A Khoisan tribesman and you are almost certainly more genetically alike than two chimps from the zoo.

And it could happen again - the wonderfully named Armageddon Online has a survey of the main extant supervolcanoes. So yes, volcanic eruptions may wipe us out, just as some researchers think the tremendous vulcanism of the Deccan Traps in India 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs - and not the comet that hit the Yucatan about the same time.

Either way, we have one more reason for terraforming Mars (or the Moon or even Venus - more on that in a future post), before it's too late.

Cheers!

Bad news, Clippers fans

Their playoff chances just went to zero, even before the season starts, as Elton Brand has ruptured an Achilles. Having Shaun Livingston out indefinitely was bad enough, but now the Clippers have absolutely no shot of making the top 8 in a loaded West. Minnesota, Seattle, Portland, the Clippers, and probably Sacto - those are the teams with no chance, and I'm not even sure about Sacto - if Artest stays and plays great, and Bibby begins hitting shots again, who knows? Memphis apparently will get JC Navarro, and with health and maturation, they have an outside shot at the playoffs - and the exact same thing can be said for the Hornets. The other 8 - the playoff teams from last season - all look to be at least playoff contenders again, and some (like Houston) have made moves that should yield significant improvement. The Clips had looked to be the top contender to break into the top 8, but that is but a dashed hope now. And the main reason to watch any Clipper broadcasts just evaporated. The early reports seem to indicate that Brand could be back in as little as 6 months, but the tales of recovery from ruptured Achilles are bad omens - from Dominique Wilkins to Voshon Lenard, those who suffer them never seem to be the same when they come back.

A sad, sad day for Clippers fans.

Boston's roster

The Celtics entire roster now looks like this:
Starters: Kendrick Perkins, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo;

bench is Brian Scalabrine, Leon Powe, Brandon Wallace, Tony Allen and two second rounders, Gabe Pruitt and Glen Davis

If healthy, Tony Allen should be a good wing defender. Leon Powe has a small amount of promise as an undersized PF. The rest of the bench is raw at best, or simply worthless. They desperately need a PG to back up Rondo, and could use a C as well. The only player making much more the minimum is Brian Scalabrine; if I were Boston, I'd offer Brian Scalabrine and Glen Davis to the Hawks for Salim Stoudamire and one of either Lorenzen Wright or Anthony Johnson or Tyronn Lue- and if I were the Hawks, I'd take that deal. I think Davis will become a stud, but Boston needs rotation players NOW. And indications from Marc Stein are that the owner will only sign minimum salary players because of the salary cap. So, trading Scalabrine plus a prospect is the only way to address their needs.