Math and Computing
Paul Graham, writing about Lisp:
“So the short explanation of why this 1950s language (Lisp) is not obsolete is that it was not technology but math, and math doesn't get stale.”
I'll make the same claim about the relational model, which is just an application of set theory and first-order predicate logic. Fabian Pascal puts it this way:
· a database is a set of axioms;
· the response to a query is a theorem;
· the process of deriving the theorem from the axioms is a proof;
· a proof is made by manipulating symbols according to agreed mathematical rules;
The proof, of course, can only be as sound and consistent as the rules are. That makes the DBMS a deductive logic system: it derives new facts (query results) from a set of user asserted facts (the database). The derived facts are true (query results are correct) if and only if:
· The initial assertions are true
· The derivation rules are logically sound
The sad fact is that none of the above is true of commercial SQL DBMS's. They're just stale technology - because they ignored the math.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Dolphins
We saw a group (school?) of dolphins this morning at the beach. I saw 4 together, but S. says she counted 8 total while I was trying to get a picture (I didn't; need a better camera and a better photographer). They tend to swim parallel to the beach just past the surf line, their fins bobbing up and down. I usually see them from October to April, but I've never seen them before in August. From the descriptions I read, I'd guess that they were bottlenose dolphins but they could also have been Pacific White-Sided Dolphins. Doesn't matter; either way, it's a striking reminder that we live right next to one of the greatest concentrations of marine life in the world.
We saw a group (school?) of dolphins this morning at the beach. I saw 4 together, but S. says she counted 8 total while I was trying to get a picture (I didn't; need a better camera and a better photographer). They tend to swim parallel to the beach just past the surf line, their fins bobbing up and down. I usually see them from October to April, but I've never seen them before in August. From the descriptions I read, I'd guess that they were bottlenose dolphins but they could also have been Pacific White-Sided Dolphins. Doesn't matter; either way, it's a striking reminder that we live right next to one of the greatest concentrations of marine life in the world.
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Follow ups
IBM countersues SCO, following Red Hat and SUSE. Apparently triggered by SCO's attempt to sell SCO Unixware licenses to Linux users, which, BTW, is a violation of the GPL. Bruce Perens points this out, and also points out the danger of patents to Open Source, which is worrisome given that part of IBM's countersuit alleges patent infringement.
So this is more of a mess than ever. I still don't believe there's any real merit to SCO's claims. But the FUD spewed by all this is a terrific smokescreen for more serious attacks on Open Source - namely, patents and other manipulations of IP protections.
What's the situation in Iraq? Depends on who want to believe. All I know is that two more U.S. soldiers are dead in an attack and more than 10 Iraqis died in a car-bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. Read Salam Pax for an insider's view.
Winning? Losing? The peace, that is.
IBM countersues SCO, following Red Hat and SUSE. Apparently triggered by SCO's attempt to sell SCO Unixware licenses to Linux users, which, BTW, is a violation of the GPL. Bruce Perens points this out, and also points out the danger of patents to Open Source, which is worrisome given that part of IBM's countersuit alleges patent infringement.
So this is more of a mess than ever. I still don't believe there's any real merit to SCO's claims. But the FUD spewed by all this is a terrific smokescreen for more serious attacks on Open Source - namely, patents and other manipulations of IP protections.
What's the situation in Iraq? Depends on who want to believe. All I know is that two more U.S. soldiers are dead in an attack and more than 10 Iraqis died in a car-bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. Read Salam Pax for an insider's view.
Winning? Losing? The peace, that is.
Monday, August 04, 2003
Life
This is the time of year when the Amaryllis blooms. The local variety are a startling pink, gay and profuse. They seem to bloom overnight; you look up one day at the beginning of August and notice them everywhere. It's interesting that they choose to bloom at the least likely time - when the morning fog no longer rolls in and the sun beats down all day and it's bone dry. And they seem to grow best in empty lots, quiet corners, and other forgotten or ignored places. They only last for a few weeks and then they're gone. That, combined with the time of year, when summer peaks and then declines into the autumn, makes them very poignant to me; I feel summer's glory and passing all at once.
I also notice that the leaves on the Japanese Maples in front of Gault Elementary school are starting to turn red, getting ready to blaze with color and fall at the feet of the children when they return to school in just a few weeks.
I know neither the Amaryllis nor the Japanese Maple are native varieties, but I can't help but love them anyway.
This is the time of year when the Amaryllis blooms. The local variety are a startling pink, gay and profuse. They seem to bloom overnight; you look up one day at the beginning of August and notice them everywhere. It's interesting that they choose to bloom at the least likely time - when the morning fog no longer rolls in and the sun beats down all day and it's bone dry. And they seem to grow best in empty lots, quiet corners, and other forgotten or ignored places. They only last for a few weeks and then they're gone. That, combined with the time of year, when summer peaks and then declines into the autumn, makes them very poignant to me; I feel summer's glory and passing all at once.
I also notice that the leaves on the Japanese Maples in front of Gault Elementary school are starting to turn red, getting ready to blaze with color and fall at the feet of the children when they return to school in just a few weeks.
I know neither the Amaryllis nor the Japanese Maple are native varieties, but I can't help but love them anyway.
An Abrupt Hiatus
I can't believe that I haven't blogged for a week. There's a lot of things I want to write about, but just haven't had the time; I've had to work on some critical customer issues at my new job and was also working on a little programming contest we had staged. Alas, I came in third. The winner was our intern, who used a friggin' Mergesort as the basis of his solution. Oh, the ignominy! At least I beat my boss and a couple of the other senior programmers.
I can't believe that I haven't blogged for a week. There's a lot of things I want to write about, but just haven't had the time; I've had to work on some critical customer issues at my new job and was also working on a little programming contest we had staged. Alas, I came in third. The winner was our intern, who used a friggin' Mergesort as the basis of his solution. Oh, the ignominy! At least I beat my boss and a couple of the other senior programmers.
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Breakfast
Strawberries and Raspberries from Cortez Farms in Santa Maria. English Shelling Peas from Swank Farms in Hollister. Beef Bacon from Corralitos Meat. Co. All courtesy of the Cabrillo College Farmers' Market. Plus an Almond and Cherry granola bar.
Strawberries and Raspberries from Cortez Farms in Santa Maria. English Shelling Peas from Swank Farms in Hollister. Beef Bacon from Corralitos Meat. Co. All courtesy of the Cabrillo College Farmers' Market. Plus an Almond and Cherry granola bar.
Software - An Interview with Richard M. Stallman
I don't always agree with RMS, which is why Chrysalis uses a BSD license. But you gotta love this exchange:
GSMBOX: Therefore, you refuse the term piracy when speaking about unauthorised copies?
RMS: Piracy means attacking and burning ships and this is very very bad. But sharing copies of any information technology product over the computer for most of us is a good act, it is social cooperation. The idea of making a connection between these two acts, one absolutely immoral and the other very moral, is completely wrong. It is a term of propaganda and I do not intend to participate in the propaganda of publishers.
He also notes that "Free software is neither to the right nor the left". Is the tie to my previous post coincidence or synchronicity? Read the whole interview, courtesy of OS News.
I don't always agree with RMS, which is why Chrysalis uses a BSD license. But you gotta love this exchange:
GSMBOX: Therefore, you refuse the term piracy when speaking about unauthorised copies?
RMS: Piracy means attacking and burning ships and this is very very bad. But sharing copies of any information technology product over the computer for most of us is a good act, it is social cooperation. The idea of making a connection between these two acts, one absolutely immoral and the other very moral, is completely wrong. It is a term of propaganda and I do not intend to participate in the propaganda of publishers.
He also notes that "Free software is neither to the right nor the left". Is the tie to my previous post coincidence or synchronicity? Read the whole interview, courtesy of OS News.
Friday, July 25, 2003
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Social Darwinism
In the midst of a wonderful article on Saving the Net in Linux Journal, Doc Searls makes this tangential observation:
“Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media). Yet the reason is simple: they love winners, literally. They like to reward strength and achievement...As George Lakoff explained in Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't (University of Chicago, 1995), conservatives consider strength a "moral value". Strong is good. Weak is bad.”
Put another way, Success=Morality. This is what some of the Calvinists believed. There's a name for this point of view when it's taken to a certain extreme. It's called Social Darwinism. The last great heyday of Social Darwinism was in late 19th-Century Great Britian. Thanks to Herbert Spencer, English imperialists found a philosophical justification in their drive for empire. Some historians have made the argument that the abandonment of what had made England great - trade, commerce, and a grand strategy dedicated to maintaining the balance of power - in favor of hegemony and expansion is what led to the eventual decline of the British Empire. There's also direct connection between Spencer and the National Socialists in Germany less than a century later. In his Survival Guide to the New Renaissance, W.R. Clement posits that the current rise of Social Darwinism among Western elites is both a reaction to the rising tide of change in human society and a justification for establishing an dominant oligarchy. He also derides Social Darwinism as a dangerous, stupid, and short-sighted world view doomed to failure.
I am not equating mainstream conservatism with Social Darwinism. That's as absurd as equating mainstream liberalism with communism, or libertarianism with anarchy. My point is that Social Darwinism is a pernicious trap that elites, particularly conservative elites, are prone to fall into.
In the midst of a wonderful article on Saving the Net in Linux Journal, Doc Searls makes this tangential observation:
“Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media). Yet the reason is simple: they love winners, literally. They like to reward strength and achievement...As George Lakoff explained in Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't (University of Chicago, 1995), conservatives consider strength a "moral value". Strong is good. Weak is bad.”
Put another way, Success=Morality. This is what some of the Calvinists believed. There's a name for this point of view when it's taken to a certain extreme. It's called Social Darwinism. The last great heyday of Social Darwinism was in late 19th-Century Great Britian. Thanks to Herbert Spencer, English imperialists found a philosophical justification in their drive for empire. Some historians have made the argument that the abandonment of what had made England great - trade, commerce, and a grand strategy dedicated to maintaining the balance of power - in favor of hegemony and expansion is what led to the eventual decline of the British Empire. There's also direct connection between Spencer and the National Socialists in Germany less than a century later. In his Survival Guide to the New Renaissance, W.R. Clement posits that the current rise of Social Darwinism among Western elites is both a reaction to the rising tide of change in human society and a justification for establishing an dominant oligarchy. He also derides Social Darwinism as a dangerous, stupid, and short-sighted world view doomed to failure.
I am not equating mainstream conservatism with Social Darwinism. That's as absurd as equating mainstream liberalism with communism, or libertarianism with anarchy. My point is that Social Darwinism is a pernicious trap that elites, particularly conservative elites, are prone to fall into.
Databases - My Brilliant Career Tuning SQL
One of the first things I did when I started my first real job, way back when GWB I was prez, was to try to tune a bunch of complex SQL statements. My first task in my new job was to try to tune a bunch of complex SQL statements. So what's changed in 15 years? Well, the databases are much larger (hundreds of GBs vs. hundreds of MBs), we're now up to Oracle Version 9 (it was v5 then), PL/SQL and Java came along to change how we write programs, the net came along to change the kind of programs we write, Larry Ellison is even richer, etc., etc.
What hasn't changed? The basic nature of the problem. Conceptually, there has been no real progress. I'm still doing essentially the same thing - figuring out what the database engine should do and then finding a way to make the engine do it.
Yes, it's all bigger-faster-better, and yes, I don't have to ensure that every single statement is optimized like I did in days of yore. But the growth in the size and complexity of applications effectively cancels out whatever other progress has been made. And so I find myself back where I started. But I'm not alone. The whole database industry has the same problem.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. What was supposed to happen was that the database engine's optimizer would be able to always figure out the optimal execution plan for you. It would do this using the statistics collected in the database catalog together with a variety of expression transformation algorithms to produce the best possible access plan. No intervention required, and on to the next level of abstraction. But we haven't gotten there. And it's not looking like we will anytime soon.
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that SQL tuning has been very, very good to me. It's one of the reasons why I receive a handsome salary. While I consider it one of the lesser talents that I bring to the show, making something run several orders of magnitude faster than it did before I performed my magic tuning act certainly impresses the masses. And the semi-arcane knowledge required seems plenty daunting to the uninitiated. It does requires a certain feel or intuitive sense, but so do lots of other things. In short, it's an overrated skill.
But the application of said knowledge and instinct ought to be completely unnecessary. Back in the early-to-mid '80's, database researchers and gurus were just about sure that the need for manual tuning could be eliminated. And indeed it can be, in a relational database system. Because in a relational database system, every query could be reduced to a set of canonical relational algebra expressions. Potential access paths could be analyzed by looking at the statistics captured in the system catalog and the most optimal ones chosen. The set of expressions could then be sequenced in the most efficient order, and the statement would be executed. All with no human intervention required. So the effort previously devoted to manually optimizing physical data access could now be devoted to figuring out how to make applications and systems work better for the people who used and depended on them - a small example of the general way in which human progress is made, i.e., formerly labor-intensive tasks are automated, allowing us to move to the next higher level of abstraction.
And for one brief, shining moment this was actually achieved. A 1988 article in Database Programming and Design showed a comparison of several different database management systems (Oracle, Sybase, Ingres, etc.) each executing a variety of SQL queries. The twist was that all of the SQL statements were semantically equivalent - i.e., they meant the same thing and produced the same results. But due to the redundancy of SQL syntax, the same 3-table join could be expressed in a variety of different ways. So the article measured how fast each DBMS executed each variation of the statement. Ideally, every statement would take the roughly the same time to execute - because the optimizer would produce the same execution plan, and the only variable would be how long it took the optimizer to figure out the access plan.
Well, it didn't work that way. The variation in execution times ranged from about .1 seconds to over 1000 seconds. Oracle, which at this time had a syntactically based optimizer, produced both the fastest and slowest results. But the others weren't much better.
With one exception - Ingres. Every query got executed in about 2 seconds. No significant variations. A bit slow, perhaps - every other DBMS's best time was better - but almost perfectly consistent. Why? Because the Ingres optimizer produced the same execution plan every time. The other DBMS's produced different plans for different formulations of the same statement. How? Well, the secret was that Ingres originally used a different query language - QUEL - instead of SQL. QUEL was much closer to the relational calculus languages that Codd originally proposed. Consequently, it was much easier to optimize - because every QUEL statement could be transformed into a canonical relational algebra expression. Ingres was eventually forced to support SQL, but they were able to apply what they'd learned about optimization of QUEL to SQL (originally, in fact, they translated SQL to QUEL and then optimized it. By Ingres 7.X, they eliminated the translation step and optimized the SQL directly. It didn't work as well as optimizing QUEL, but it was better than what anyone else was doing).
So it can be done. Ingres was slow, but making it faster was an engineering problem, not a research problem. Engineering problems, in my definition, are ones that can be solved incrementally. Making cars more fuel-efficient is an engineering problem. Research problems, on the other hand, deal with bigger, more fundamental issues. Fusion power is a research problem. Nanotechnology is a research problem. Research leads to conceptual breakthroughs. Engineering takes those breakthroughs and produces viable, usable products. Like a relational database management system (DBMS) with a reliable optimizer. It can be done.
But it won't be, at least not by our present crop of DBMS's. That's because they use SQL. And guess what? SQL can't really be optimized. Why not? Because it breaks so many of the fundamental rules for a relational language that it can't be systematically and unambiguously optimized. One of the rules of relational algebra is that an arbitrary set of expressions can be evaluated in any order and still produce the same result. However, because SQL allows duplicates, this isn't true. Different orders of evaluation can yield different results. Further complicating this is the syntactic redundancy mentioned earlier - making the task of transforming expressions into a canonical form even more difficult. An optimizer that is unable to always transform equivalent expressions to a single form and that is unable to always arrange those expressions in the most optimal manner is not going to be an optimizer that is always able to produce the best (or even an acceptable) execution plan.
And so here we are, still hand-optimizing complex SQL queries instead of solving problems for people and businesses. One of the prevailing myths of this society is that progress moves in a straight, smooth path from one technological triumph to the next. But it doesn't. The path isn't uninterrupted, it's full of ruts and dead ends, and we seldom know where it will lead us. Sometimes, we even lose the path completely for a time. That's why Western philosophy didn't advance much beyond Aristotle and Plato for over 1000 years, that's why we're still using the internal combustion engine 150 years after its invention, and that's why we don't have real relational databases.
One of the first things I did when I started my first real job, way back when GWB I was prez, was to try to tune a bunch of complex SQL statements. My first task in my new job was to try to tune a bunch of complex SQL statements. So what's changed in 15 years? Well, the databases are much larger (hundreds of GBs vs. hundreds of MBs), we're now up to Oracle Version 9 (it was v5 then), PL/SQL and Java came along to change how we write programs, the net came along to change the kind of programs we write, Larry Ellison is even richer, etc., etc.
What hasn't changed? The basic nature of the problem. Conceptually, there has been no real progress. I'm still doing essentially the same thing - figuring out what the database engine should do and then finding a way to make the engine do it.
Yes, it's all bigger-faster-better, and yes, I don't have to ensure that every single statement is optimized like I did in days of yore. But the growth in the size and complexity of applications effectively cancels out whatever other progress has been made. And so I find myself back where I started. But I'm not alone. The whole database industry has the same problem.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. What was supposed to happen was that the database engine's optimizer would be able to always figure out the optimal execution plan for you. It would do this using the statistics collected in the database catalog together with a variety of expression transformation algorithms to produce the best possible access plan. No intervention required, and on to the next level of abstraction. But we haven't gotten there. And it's not looking like we will anytime soon.
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that SQL tuning has been very, very good to me. It's one of the reasons why I receive a handsome salary. While I consider it one of the lesser talents that I bring to the show, making something run several orders of magnitude faster than it did before I performed my magic tuning act certainly impresses the masses. And the semi-arcane knowledge required seems plenty daunting to the uninitiated. It does requires a certain feel or intuitive sense, but so do lots of other things. In short, it's an overrated skill.
But the application of said knowledge and instinct ought to be completely unnecessary. Back in the early-to-mid '80's, database researchers and gurus were just about sure that the need for manual tuning could be eliminated. And indeed it can be, in a relational database system. Because in a relational database system, every query could be reduced to a set of canonical relational algebra expressions. Potential access paths could be analyzed by looking at the statistics captured in the system catalog and the most optimal ones chosen. The set of expressions could then be sequenced in the most efficient order, and the statement would be executed. All with no human intervention required. So the effort previously devoted to manually optimizing physical data access could now be devoted to figuring out how to make applications and systems work better for the people who used and depended on them - a small example of the general way in which human progress is made, i.e., formerly labor-intensive tasks are automated, allowing us to move to the next higher level of abstraction.
And for one brief, shining moment this was actually achieved. A 1988 article in Database Programming and Design showed a comparison of several different database management systems (Oracle, Sybase, Ingres, etc.) each executing a variety of SQL queries. The twist was that all of the SQL statements were semantically equivalent - i.e., they meant the same thing and produced the same results. But due to the redundancy of SQL syntax, the same 3-table join could be expressed in a variety of different ways. So the article measured how fast each DBMS executed each variation of the statement. Ideally, every statement would take the roughly the same time to execute - because the optimizer would produce the same execution plan, and the only variable would be how long it took the optimizer to figure out the access plan.
Well, it didn't work that way. The variation in execution times ranged from about .1 seconds to over 1000 seconds. Oracle, which at this time had a syntactically based optimizer, produced both the fastest and slowest results. But the others weren't much better.
With one exception - Ingres. Every query got executed in about 2 seconds. No significant variations. A bit slow, perhaps - every other DBMS's best time was better - but almost perfectly consistent. Why? Because the Ingres optimizer produced the same execution plan every time. The other DBMS's produced different plans for different formulations of the same statement. How? Well, the secret was that Ingres originally used a different query language - QUEL - instead of SQL. QUEL was much closer to the relational calculus languages that Codd originally proposed. Consequently, it was much easier to optimize - because every QUEL statement could be transformed into a canonical relational algebra expression. Ingres was eventually forced to support SQL, but they were able to apply what they'd learned about optimization of QUEL to SQL (originally, in fact, they translated SQL to QUEL and then optimized it. By Ingres 7.X, they eliminated the translation step and optimized the SQL directly. It didn't work as well as optimizing QUEL, but it was better than what anyone else was doing).
So it can be done. Ingres was slow, but making it faster was an engineering problem, not a research problem. Engineering problems, in my definition, are ones that can be solved incrementally. Making cars more fuel-efficient is an engineering problem. Research problems, on the other hand, deal with bigger, more fundamental issues. Fusion power is a research problem. Nanotechnology is a research problem. Research leads to conceptual breakthroughs. Engineering takes those breakthroughs and produces viable, usable products. Like a relational database management system (DBMS) with a reliable optimizer. It can be done.
But it won't be, at least not by our present crop of DBMS's. That's because they use SQL. And guess what? SQL can't really be optimized. Why not? Because it breaks so many of the fundamental rules for a relational language that it can't be systematically and unambiguously optimized. One of the rules of relational algebra is that an arbitrary set of expressions can be evaluated in any order and still produce the same result. However, because SQL allows duplicates, this isn't true. Different orders of evaluation can yield different results. Further complicating this is the syntactic redundancy mentioned earlier - making the task of transforming expressions into a canonical form even more difficult. An optimizer that is unable to always transform equivalent expressions to a single form and that is unable to always arrange those expressions in the most optimal manner is not going to be an optimizer that is always able to produce the best (or even an acceptable) execution plan.
And so here we are, still hand-optimizing complex SQL queries instead of solving problems for people and businesses. One of the prevailing myths of this society is that progress moves in a straight, smooth path from one technological triumph to the next. But it doesn't. The path isn't uninterrupted, it's full of ruts and dead ends, and we seldom know where it will lead us. Sometimes, we even lose the path completely for a time. That's why Western philosophy didn't advance much beyond Aristotle and Plato for over 1000 years, that's why we're still using the internal combustion engine 150 years after its invention, and that's why we don't have real relational databases.
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
War and Peace
I would rather have seen Saddam's sons captured and tried for crimes against their people instead of killed. The equivalent of the Nuremburg trials for the Ba'athists would set a good precedent for the importance of the rule of law in a newly democratic Iraq.
Will their deaths help to end the insurgency? That sounds more like a wish from the administration's spin machine than anything else. If the present insurgency is nothing more than a series of guerilla attacks by Saddam's supporters, then it wasn't really much of a threat because it obviously lacks popular support (proof: the celebrations in the Baghdad streets upon confirmation of their deaths). But if it's something more - like a slowly growing popular rebellion against a foreign invader - it isn't going to make any real difference.
I would rather have seen Saddam's sons captured and tried for crimes against their people instead of killed. The equivalent of the Nuremburg trials for the Ba'athists would set a good precedent for the importance of the rule of law in a newly democratic Iraq.
Will their deaths help to end the insurgency? That sounds more like a wish from the administration's spin machine than anything else. If the present insurgency is nothing more than a series of guerilla attacks by Saddam's supporters, then it wasn't really much of a threat because it obviously lacks popular support (proof: the celebrations in the Baghdad streets upon confirmation of their deaths). But if it's something more - like a slowly growing popular rebellion against a foreign invader - it isn't going to make any real difference.
Proposition 13
Proposition 13 was passed in 1978. It cut California property taxes by 30 percent and capped the rate of increase in the future. It still arouses strong passions for and against, but the pro and con viewpoints seem to me to miss the most significant effect of Prop 13. That effect was identified by the Santa Cruz City Manager, Richard Wilson, who wrote, "In 1978 Proposition 13 reconstituted the financial structure of California's public sector. The result was system change, from one in which the State, counties, cities, special districts, and school boards all made independent financial decisions to one in which the State is the only financial decision maker of any consequence".
This is the reason why all of California's municipalities are in trouble along with the state. Since the passage of Prop 13, the state has increasingly taken revenues historically dedicated to local government for itself. During the boom, an adequate amount was returned to municipalities. Now, with the bust and concomitant deficits, that money won't be returned and local governments will be forced to make significant and painful budget cuts. So we should expect local services and infrastructure to decline noticeably in the next few years.
Yet another example of the law of unintended consequences. It's why good policy - the wonkish, obsessed with both minutiae and outcomes, boring-as-hell kind - is so important and so critical. The devil really is in the details. California's rising property taxes and spending did desperately need to be reined in the late '70's. But Prop. 13 wrecked California's school system and transferred fiscal control from local to state government. It's worth analyzing what went wrong and what better approaches could have been taken, because those lessons could be applied today. Maybe we could find a better way to hold down property taxes, revoke Prop 13, and even transfer control over local collected funds back to the localities where they were collected. It's never too late for good policy.
Oh, and the idea of deficits being concomitant with the bust isn't quite true. Our huge state deficit can't be blamed on just the economic downturn. Good policy and realistic planning would have ameliorated the effects of the bust. Unfortunately, our Governer and the Legislature elected to go on spending as if the boom would continue forever. I'd like to oppose the recall initiative because it's just a ploy by the Republicans to get Arnold into office two years early, but Gray Davis fully deserves it. Too bad there's no way to recall the legislature as well.
Proposition 13 was passed in 1978. It cut California property taxes by 30 percent and capped the rate of increase in the future. It still arouses strong passions for and against, but the pro and con viewpoints seem to me to miss the most significant effect of Prop 13. That effect was identified by the Santa Cruz City Manager, Richard Wilson, who wrote, "In 1978 Proposition 13 reconstituted the financial structure of California's public sector. The result was system change, from one in which the State, counties, cities, special districts, and school boards all made independent financial decisions to one in which the State is the only financial decision maker of any consequence".
This is the reason why all of California's municipalities are in trouble along with the state. Since the passage of Prop 13, the state has increasingly taken revenues historically dedicated to local government for itself. During the boom, an adequate amount was returned to municipalities. Now, with the bust and concomitant deficits, that money won't be returned and local governments will be forced to make significant and painful budget cuts. So we should expect local services and infrastructure to decline noticeably in the next few years.
Yet another example of the law of unintended consequences. It's why good policy - the wonkish, obsessed with both minutiae and outcomes, boring-as-hell kind - is so important and so critical. The devil really is in the details. California's rising property taxes and spending did desperately need to be reined in the late '70's. But Prop. 13 wrecked California's school system and transferred fiscal control from local to state government. It's worth analyzing what went wrong and what better approaches could have been taken, because those lessons could be applied today. Maybe we could find a better way to hold down property taxes, revoke Prop 13, and even transfer control over local collected funds back to the localities where they were collected. It's never too late for good policy.
Oh, and the idea of deficits being concomitant with the bust isn't quite true. Our huge state deficit can't be blamed on just the economic downturn. Good policy and realistic planning would have ameliorated the effects of the bust. Unfortunately, our Governer and the Legislature elected to go on spending as if the boom would continue forever. I'd like to oppose the recall initiative because it's just a ploy by the Republicans to get Arnold into office two years early, but Gray Davis fully deserves it. Too bad there's no way to recall the legislature as well.
Iranian Blogs
Discovered a relatively new blog called Iranian Truth, written by two Iranian women living in Cairo and Los Angeles, respectively. In addition to being interesting and well-written, it also has plenty of links to other Iranian blogs and news sources. It's good to have the opportunity to read authentic voices talking about their country and their people instead of trying to discern the truth through the haze of ill-informed and ideologically-driven Western news sources. It's a pity that Afghanistan's infrastructure is so ruined and lacking that it's impossible to get first-hand information like this from there.
Discovered a relatively new blog called Iranian Truth, written by two Iranian women living in Cairo and Los Angeles, respectively. In addition to being interesting and well-written, it also has plenty of links to other Iranian blogs and news sources. It's good to have the opportunity to read authentic voices talking about their country and their people instead of trying to discern the truth through the haze of ill-informed and ideologically-driven Western news sources. It's a pity that Afghanistan's infrastructure is so ruined and lacking that it's impossible to get first-hand information like this from there.
Monday, July 21, 2003
War and Peace
Strategic Forecasting has a story that's crystallized my thinking about this Administration's grand strategic vision (or apparent lack thereof) in the war on terror. Key quote: “Lurking in the shadows is the not fully articulated perception that the Iraq war not only began in deception but that planning for the Iraq war was incompetent -- a perception driven by the realization that the United States is engaged in a long-term occupation and guerrilla war in Iraq, and the belief that the United States neither expected nor was prepared for this.”. The deception, by itself, isn't fatal - the real problem, according to the article, is that “what bothers the American public is the idea that the lying is not designed to hide the strategy, but to hide the fact that there is no strategy.”.
And that's what one of things that's bothered me all along. I have not heard any believable or even coherent formulation of "this is how we win". Because I think the real key here is not winning the battles - that's been ridiculously easy - but winning the peace. Winning the peace is the province of grand strategy. And we don't seem to have one.
The consequences of not having an overarching and achievable grand strategy are pretty severe. Here's what B.H. Liddell Hart says in his seminal book, Strategy: “They did not look beyond the immediate strategic aim of "winning the war" and were content to assume that military victory would assure peace - an assumption contrary to the general experience of history. The outcome has been the latest of many lessons that pure military strategy needs to be guided by the longer and wider view from the higher plane of "grand strategy"”
Liddell Hart was talking about the outcome of World War II, which led directly to the Cold War. He could have just as easily been talking about the outcome of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles led directly to WWII as well as to many of the other ills of this century. Among those was the somewhat arbitrary redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which has had a wide variety of direct and indirect consequences - one of them being the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991. We won that war and then failed to win the peace, which ultimately led to our invasion of Iraq early this year. And so here we are.
I think we need the notion of Hart's “Indirect Approach” to strategy now more than ever. The neo-cons, unfortunately, are the direct heirs of Kissingerian RealPolitik and so suffer from the same ills of short-sightedness and ethically challenged expediency. Put another way, they're content to try to fix problems with sledgehammers and then immediately walk away. You can criticize their approach on all kinds of grounds, but the very worst thing you can say about it is that it's unlikely to decisively win this conflict. And we need to win; the alternative is that the Middle East and Africa succumb to a post-industrial Dark Age and drag the rest of the world down with them.
Now, I'm only an amateur student of history and politics. But it seems to me any approach at the level of grand strategy should deal with root causes and not just our immediate circumstances. Since this is a war on terror the grand strategic goal should be to remove the underlying causes of terrorism. Have we really asked ourselves what those underlying causes are? And if we identified them, how would that shape our grand strategy? What is the longer and wider view?
I have my own answers to those questions, but I'll save them for another post.
Strategic Forecasting has a story that's crystallized my thinking about this Administration's grand strategic vision (or apparent lack thereof) in the war on terror. Key quote: “Lurking in the shadows is the not fully articulated perception that the Iraq war not only began in deception but that planning for the Iraq war was incompetent -- a perception driven by the realization that the United States is engaged in a long-term occupation and guerrilla war in Iraq, and the belief that the United States neither expected nor was prepared for this.”. The deception, by itself, isn't fatal - the real problem, according to the article, is that “what bothers the American public is the idea that the lying is not designed to hide the strategy, but to hide the fact that there is no strategy.”.
And that's what one of things that's bothered me all along. I have not heard any believable or even coherent formulation of "this is how we win". Because I think the real key here is not winning the battles - that's been ridiculously easy - but winning the peace. Winning the peace is the province of grand strategy. And we don't seem to have one.
The consequences of not having an overarching and achievable grand strategy are pretty severe. Here's what B.H. Liddell Hart says in his seminal book, Strategy: “They did not look beyond the immediate strategic aim of "winning the war" and were content to assume that military victory would assure peace - an assumption contrary to the general experience of history. The outcome has been the latest of many lessons that pure military strategy needs to be guided by the longer and wider view from the higher plane of "grand strategy"”
Liddell Hart was talking about the outcome of World War II, which led directly to the Cold War. He could have just as easily been talking about the outcome of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles led directly to WWII as well as to many of the other ills of this century. Among those was the somewhat arbitrary redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which has had a wide variety of direct and indirect consequences - one of them being the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991. We won that war and then failed to win the peace, which ultimately led to our invasion of Iraq early this year. And so here we are.
I think we need the notion of Hart's “Indirect Approach” to strategy now more than ever. The neo-cons, unfortunately, are the direct heirs of Kissingerian RealPolitik and so suffer from the same ills of short-sightedness and ethically challenged expediency. Put another way, they're content to try to fix problems with sledgehammers and then immediately walk away. You can criticize their approach on all kinds of grounds, but the very worst thing you can say about it is that it's unlikely to decisively win this conflict. And we need to win; the alternative is that the Middle East and Africa succumb to a post-industrial Dark Age and drag the rest of the world down with them.
Now, I'm only an amateur student of history and politics. But it seems to me any approach at the level of grand strategy should deal with root causes and not just our immediate circumstances. Since this is a war on terror the grand strategic goal should be to remove the underlying causes of terrorism. Have we really asked ourselves what those underlying causes are? And if we identified them, how would that shape our grand strategy? What is the longer and wider view?
I have my own answers to those questions, but I'll save them for another post.
Saturday, July 19, 2003
Two American Success Stories
An interesting article in Good Times, one of SC's weekly alt-mags, on Swanton Berry Farm. Swanton owner Jim Cochran was the first commercial farmer to grow strawberries organically (in 1983), after watching the effects of the toxins used as pesticides on the field workers and on himself (he got pesticide poisoning several times). "It was less of an issue about consumers than about workers" says Cochran. After learning how to grow strawberries organically and convincing people it was worth the higher price, he now says "We're not only successful, we're successful paying good wages". Good organic strawberries are now easy to find around here; but Swanton's are reputed to still be the best.
The best place to get your oil changed in the Bay area is 9 Minute Oil Change, just off Page Mill Road on El Camino Real in Palo Alto. These guys are amazing; you pull in and a team of four immediately goes to work and is usually done in about 5 minutes or so. It's like pulling into a pit stop, and it totally puts places like Quick Lube or Jiffy Lube to shame. I mean, it's fast, it's easy, and it's kind of cool to watch. It seems to be run by an immigrant family who I would guess are Eastern Mediterranean/Middle Eastern. This is the kind of thing that, to me, makes America great - you come up with a better idea, you work hard, and you build a great business. I'm sorry I work farther down the Peninsula now, because it's time for another oil change and I don't want to go anywhere else.
An interesting article in Good Times, one of SC's weekly alt-mags, on Swanton Berry Farm. Swanton owner Jim Cochran was the first commercial farmer to grow strawberries organically (in 1983), after watching the effects of the toxins used as pesticides on the field workers and on himself (he got pesticide poisoning several times). "It was less of an issue about consumers than about workers" says Cochran. After learning how to grow strawberries organically and convincing people it was worth the higher price, he now says "We're not only successful, we're successful paying good wages". Good organic strawberries are now easy to find around here; but Swanton's are reputed to still be the best.
The best place to get your oil changed in the Bay area is 9 Minute Oil Change, just off Page Mill Road on El Camino Real in Palo Alto. These guys are amazing; you pull in and a team of four immediately goes to work and is usually done in about 5 minutes or so. It's like pulling into a pit stop, and it totally puts places like Quick Lube or Jiffy Lube to shame. I mean, it's fast, it's easy, and it's kind of cool to watch. It seems to be run by an immigrant family who I would guess are Eastern Mediterranean/Middle Eastern. This is the kind of thing that, to me, makes America great - you come up with a better idea, you work hard, and you build a great business. I'm sorry I work farther down the Peninsula now, because it's time for another oil change and I don't want to go anywhere else.
Monday, July 14, 2003
Random Thoughts on Bastille Day
It's Bastille Day, which makes it a good excuse to dis the French. But not here. Read what Molly Ivins had to say on this subject. For those who disagree, I'll be glad to take any spare bottles of Bordeaux or Beaujolais off your hands.
I used to live in Milwaukee - a very pleasant city, if you've never been there - where they had (and still have) a great Bastille Day celebration. The last (and first) time I was in France, S. and I met an English couple who'd lived in Milwaukee (and loved it). They lived in what had been the old Blatz brewery before it got converted to condos - close enough to walk to Jefferson Square and the Bastille Day celebrations, which they did every year they were there. I once heard my uncle Joe say that some of our ancestors where French soldiers who settled in Poland to become farmers during or after the Napoleonic wars. Now the French army is apparently the least feared in Europe and the Germans have become pacifists. Although as Ms. Ivins points out, 16,000 French and German soldiers are helping to try to keep the peace in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Just another example of the gap between the memes of the ideologically-driven and reality.
On the other hand, I still find "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" hilarious. I never can manage to be politically correct.
It's Bastille Day, which makes it a good excuse to dis the French. But not here. Read what Molly Ivins had to say on this subject. For those who disagree, I'll be glad to take any spare bottles of Bordeaux or Beaujolais off your hands.
I used to live in Milwaukee - a very pleasant city, if you've never been there - where they had (and still have) a great Bastille Day celebration. The last (and first) time I was in France, S. and I met an English couple who'd lived in Milwaukee (and loved it). They lived in what had been the old Blatz brewery before it got converted to condos - close enough to walk to Jefferson Square and the Bastille Day celebrations, which they did every year they were there. I once heard my uncle Joe say that some of our ancestors where French soldiers who settled in Poland to become farmers during or after the Napoleonic wars. Now the French army is apparently the least feared in Europe and the Germans have become pacifists. Although as Ms. Ivins points out, 16,000 French and German soldiers are helping to try to keep the peace in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Just another example of the gap between the memes of the ideologically-driven and reality.
On the other hand, I still find "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" hilarious. I never can manage to be politically correct.
Friday, July 11, 2003
Disk Storage
Jim Grey is mailing disks and computers because it's a faster way to move gigabytes of data than sending it through the net. A fascinating interview with JG and David Patterson (co-inventor of RISC and RAID) at ACM Queue.
Key quote: “We have an embarrassment of riches in that we're able to store more than we can access. Capacities continue to double each year, while access times are improving at 10 percent per year. So, we have a vastly larger storage pool, with a relatively narrow pipeline into it. We're not really geared for this...the fundamental problem is that we are building a larger reservoir with more or less the same diameter pipe coming out of the reservoir. We have a much harder time accessing things inside the reservoir”.
The excess of capacity versus access is already having some interesting second-order effects, not the least of which is providing the raison d'etre for my new employer. I have to send this to some of the folks I work with. The implications are just huge. Among other things, I hope this is what will end the retrograde directions we're seeing in the database world.
Jim Grey is mailing disks and computers because it's a faster way to move gigabytes of data than sending it through the net. A fascinating interview with JG and David Patterson (co-inventor of RISC and RAID) at ACM Queue.
Key quote: “We have an embarrassment of riches in that we're able to store more than we can access. Capacities continue to double each year, while access times are improving at 10 percent per year. So, we have a vastly larger storage pool, with a relatively narrow pipeline into it. We're not really geared for this...the fundamental problem is that we are building a larger reservoir with more or less the same diameter pipe coming out of the reservoir. We have a much harder time accessing things inside the reservoir”.
The excess of capacity versus access is already having some interesting second-order effects, not the least of which is providing the raison d'etre for my new employer. I have to send this to some of the folks I work with. The implications are just huge. Among other things, I hope this is what will end the retrograde directions we're seeing in the database world.
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Music and Poetry
The thing that gets to me
is how you're never free.
Though the spirit yearns,
the body is a prison
Neil Finn, Astro
Throw armfuls of emptiness
out to the spaces
that we breathe -
maybe the birds
will sense the expanded air
flying more fervently.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, First Elegy
The thing that gets to me
is how you're never free.
Though the spirit yearns,
the body is a prison
Neil Finn, Astro
Throw armfuls of emptiness
out to the spaces
that we breathe -
maybe the birds
will sense the expanded air
flying more fervently.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, First Elegy
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Iran and Afghanistan
Today is the 4th anniversary of the Iranian student protests in 1999. Iranian student leaders called off demonstrations today after being threatened with violent reprisals, but it appears that some protests went on anyway. Worldwide protests in support of the Iranian demonstrators were held today. Some are predicting the imminent fall of the regime.
USA Today has an article on progress in Afghanistan. This is in contrast with a story about the Pakistani embassy getting trashed by protesters in Kabul over alleged border incursions by Pakistan. As always, it's difficult to get a real sense of what the situation in Afghanistan really is.
Today is the 4th anniversary of the Iranian student protests in 1999. Iranian student leaders called off demonstrations today after being threatened with violent reprisals, but it appears that some protests went on anyway. Worldwide protests in support of the Iranian demonstrators were held today. Some are predicting the imminent fall of the regime.
USA Today has an article on progress in Afghanistan. This is in contrast with a story about the Pakistani embassy getting trashed by protesters in Kabul over alleged border incursions by Pakistan. As always, it's difficult to get a real sense of what the situation in Afghanistan really is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
