The recent murders of an American doctor in his church, and of an American security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC stand out as two examples, although depending on who you listen to, they’re seen as examples of different things.

One camp says that these are tragic examples of crazed and depraved lone gunmen. In this line of argument, the murders are acts of violence that could not have been prevented since there’s no way to fathom the depths of the mind of someone bent on murder. In this view, the killings were isolated instances, each occurring because of the design of a single perpetrator, in the absence of any broader social or political context save for that which each of these murderers made up to justify their horrific acts.

The other camp claims that these are tragic examples of domestic terrorism. In this line of argument, the murders are acts of politically-motivated violence that could possibly have been prevented since the social forces that allow some fringe groups to justify murder are reasonably well understood. In this view, the killings are connected to a broader social context in which the election of the nations first African American president, and a broader acceptance of more socially liberal policies and norms is threatening to some of our American brothers and sisters – and with adequate provocation – some of them will act out in order to make a political statement.

I wonder if just one of these lines of argument is correct, or even if there are alternative ways to view these violent acts. More than that, I wonder if our description of them would be different if these were not examples of American on American violence, or if we didn’t have a double standard when it comes to blaming the victim. If James von Brunn, the white supremacist who is accused of murdering Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum had been a Saudi, Iranian, or Palestinian, headlines across the country would have been splashed with the word “Terrorism” in bold type and accompanying exclamation points. It doesn’t matter that Scott Roeder believed that his murder of Dr. George Tiller was justified because doctor Tiller performed abortions – because Roeder’s goal wasn’t just to kill Tiller – it was to send a message to all Americans that people like him will try to kill you if you have the misfortune to require or provide legal abortions – so you better stop.

Daniel D. Novotny said, “An act is terrorist if and only if (1) it is committed by an individual or group of individuals privately, i.e. without the legitimate authority of a recognized state; (2) it is directed indiscriminately against non-combatants; (3) the goal of it is to achieve something politically relevant; (4) this goal is pursued by means of fear-provoking violence.”

I think we have to look very closely at ourselves in the mirror – because I suspect some of us will see terrorists staring back.

Welcome 2009. I thought I’d comment on something that doesn’t seem to be getting a great deal of play in the media just now.

During the landmark 2008 US Presidential Campaign, Republicans across the US took a strong, wrong-headed stand on energy. What was their proposed solution to soaring gas prices? Simple – open previously off-limits areas around the US coastline to oil exploration and drilling. They even had a three syllable catch phrase that started at the GOP convention and was repeated at rallies across the country as the general campaign wore on. “Drill baby, drill”, they chanted, with the same wild-eyed conviction that a mob chasing the Frankenstein monster might have as it cried, “Kill, kill, kill.”

But then the bottom fell out of the US economy as the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst and investment firms on Wall Street lost billions in the blink of an eye. What may end up being the worst financial crisis in US history began. The US Treasury was granted enormous power as a $700 Billion (that’s $700,000,000,000.00 if you’re interested) bailout of various corners of the financial world was passed in congress. But within this turbulent storm of a fiscal meltdown, there was, to me at least, one interesting thing.

The price of oil began to fall.

And fall.

And fall.

In July and August 2008, one of the biggest features of the US consumer economy was an ever-increasing domestic demand for oil, combined with the fact that we import over 40% of that oil from foreign sources. By October and November, the economic pain Americans felt translated into cost cutting, and we began starting to drive and fly less often. By mid December, unleaded gas fell to $1.50 per gallon in some areas of the country. Cheap gas was here at last.

Interestingly, it wasn’t an increase in domestic supply that caused the worldwide oil price drop. Similarly, the difference wasn’t the “signal” that Republicans had wanted to send to the countries that “don’t like us very much” of our intent to drill off the outer continental shelf, and thereby increase domestic supplies.

Nope, in that crazy dance of energy supply and demand, the current economic crisis has shown us one thing most clearly: Demand drives energy prices at least as much as supply. Americans on a large scale were forced to conserve due to tough economic times, and oil prices plummeted to compensate for the decreased demand. Now that gas is cheap, Americans are starting to buy more. In response, the prices have begun to creep up again.

Drill Baby, Drill? That may be something to consider once the supply of oil begins to dwindle, but in late 2008, we saw what can happen when we conserve instead. The main problem is, however, that mobs don’t get wild-eyed over responsibility and clunky slogans like, “Conserve Baby, Conserve.”

Obviously YouTube views aren’t really votes, and it’s not really clear how, or even if, they’ll somehow translate into votes. Obama’s success on YouTube does, however, illustrate the fact that Obama, much more than McCain, has an effective strategy to leverage social media sites like YouTube and Facebook to get his message out, and that very well could translate into more votes come election day.

Take, for example, Brian Stelter’s interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the new media strategy of the Obama campaign:

The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. “If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

What we see here is that the Obama campaign is doing more than just taking the internet seriously. They’re making it an integral part of their media apparatus. They’re staffing their web team with savvy professionals, and funding it as if victory depended on it. If this trend continues, and if the Obama campaign can somehow translate all the social media juice into tangible action in the voting booth, you can expect every future campaign to learn the lesson: Rather than simply a tool for poking your friends or for niche marketing, social media outlets can play a key role in selecting the President of the United States of America. And to me, that prospect is simply amazing.

Some links from the youtube post are here for support:

Assault on free speech in the Netherlands

Islam can no longer be criticised at the UN Human Rights Council

Novelist could face hate crime charge for despising Islamism

You can download an audio version of this video at http://patcondell.libsyn.com/

A political moderate is a person who holds values that are considered traditionally conservative as well as some that are considered traditionally liberal. Are you for a strong national defense and for good public education? Do you value the environment while you also value the need to provide decent jobs? Do you believe that it’s wrong to discriminate against people for housing or employment because they belong to some minority or religious group? What about voluntary prayer in schools?

We like the idea that moderation in politics more than some amorphous non-position. Instead moderation is a position that blurs the traditional lines of political parties, and recognizes that our ideas and ideals are sometimes complex.

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

The point that Anderson is trying to make is that now that we have such an overabundance of data, we don’t really need science anymore. We don’t need to worry why things happen, only that they do happen, and that’s good enough.

The problem with this sort of thinking isn’t just that it mistakes correlation with causation, but that it elevates the role of data in our thinking about natural phenomena to an undeserved level. As I mentioned before, scientific reasoning begins with data – it doesn’t end with it. In Anderson’s world, there’s some level of data at which we can stop asking why. He claims that the more we learn (that is – the more data we have) the farther we are from having good theoretical models that account for the facts.

That’s an interesting position, but it’s wrong. Even in the cases he uses, such as theoretical physics, the volume of data isn’t what threatens our mental models – nor does it need to fundamentally alter how we go about creating those models. As he correctly points out – data without a model is just noise. To go from that truth to a conclusion that boundless vistas of disconnected data are somehow more than noise is quite a conceptual leap.

More data doesn’t change – and certainly doesn’t obsolete – good scientific reasoning from facts toward organizing principles that account for those facts. Instead, new mountain ranges of data provide the possibility of new discoveries and challenges to existing theoretical structures that simply cannot explain them. We’re not facing some data-driven obsolescence of the scientific method.

Instead, we’re probably looking at an acceleration of it.

The average American worker toils from January 1st to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. Most of what’s taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs. As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.

There are a few things that are troubling and misleading about Dr. Williams’ suggestion. First, to raise the specter of slavery is no trivial thing, and it becomes even less trivial if the subject is raised by an African American. Also, to consider arguing with an African American within the context of a discussion that raises that specter can be difficult, since doing so invites charges of racism and insensitivity. Troubling as that may be to me, to ignore the wrongheadedness of Dr. Williams’ claim simply because he’s African American and he’s talking about slavery would be worse than having to deal with false accusations if my meaning is misinterpreted.

Americans have a dilemma: We are required to pay taxes, but we hate to do so. Republicans play on this dilemma quite effectively, saying, “We’re the party that will lower your taxes and those dastardly Democrats want to increase them.” To this Dr. Williams now adds, “Taxes go to other people, and that makes taxpayers slaves.” The clear implication is that Dr. Williams believes that the Democratic party will increase your taxes, and thus, is the pro-slavery party.

It’s good to be the Republican, because you get to promise to do more with less, to make us safe and secure and not ask for anything in return, to wage perpetual war and lower our tax burden, to keep America #1 while cutting the education and basic research budgets, and now, most importantly to promise a way to keep Americans from being slaves!

Democrats don’t have it so easy. We tend to know that doing more with less usually means borrowing against your future, that safety and security play second fiddle to our basic freedoms and inalienable rights, that you can’t be #1 without a well educated populace, and most importantly that every citizen has a responsibility, a patriotic duty, to contribute to the general welfare of this great nation.

For some of us, that means putting on a uniform and making others die for their beliefs. For others, that means entering public service at some level. For everyone, however, it means that we invest a portion of our hard earned income back into our nation through taxes. I was talking recently Political Science Professor and commentator Dr. Darrell Hamlin, and who made an analogy that I’ll paraphrase here:

We need to think of paying taxes in the same way we think about providing food and clothing for our children. Only criminals shirk the responsibility they have to their own children, and fail to guarantee they have shoes, or enough to eat. As parents, we have a sacred duty to them, because as difficult and inconvenient as it might seem to hold up our end of the bargain, they could very well perish or be taken from you if you don’t.

The responsibility to pay taxes is like that investment parents make in their children. It’s hard, inconvenient, and we hate doing it sometimes. But taxes aren’t a form of slavery. They’re an investment in your country, and America could very well perish or be taken from us if enough people believe otherwise.

The Collective Thoughts blog is about Social Media. Social Media to me is about using interactive elements of a website to get your proposed message across. What better way of getting into someones head then to let them see a little bit into your own mind. It is all about how you build your rapport.

Mark then goes on to request readers to imagine their own favorite flower, to reconnect with why it’s their favorite, and to then write a review of his post on stumbleupon. Yeah, I did all that, but what would motivate me to actually take time out of my increasingly busy life to review this guy’s post?

The answer is quite simple – he didn’t just ask for a link. Instead – he gave me something of value first. It might be that his simple effort to actively connect with his readers made me stop and think for a moment: What was my favorite flower?

And there it was – all internet marketing copywriting wisdom rolled up into one simple concept: write something sincere for your readers, and they might do something for you. He wasn’t asking me to buy anything, just imagine my favorite flower – and that’s all it takes to plant the seed in someone’s mind.

BTW, I really like sweet olive blossoms – they’re so tiny but smell amazing.

The Alabama House of Representatives approved a bill on Tuesday that would allow the sale of “Gourmet Beers” that contain higher levels of alcohol than currently allowed by law. A group of beer enthusiasts calling themselves Free the Hops lobbied for the change, saying that without such a law, Alabamians would only be allowed to buy cheap, tasteless beers in the state.

Under the new bill, which passed by a slim margin of 48-42 in the House, beers with an alcohol content up to 13.9% could be legally sold in Alabama. Supporters of the bill say that such beers are sold in most states, and that making such beers available in Alabama would be good for state tourism. Opponents claim that the bill would kill Alabama’s children:

“We are killing our young people,” Rep. Richard Laird, D-Roanoke, said.

Arguments like this completely miss the point. Critics suggest that kids will “find a way” to drink the more expensive beers if they’re available, all the while ignoring the fact that kids don’t need beer to escape their pathetic, angst-ridden lives anyway. Instead of worrying about underage drinkers beer preferences, our lawmakers should try to remedy the social forces that drive children to drink in the first place, while improving enforcement of existing laws against underage drinking.

Beer drinking is not only legal in all 50 states, it’s a celebrated part of our culture as well as a booming industry. Underage drinking is already illegal, so increasing the menu of beers that the underaged cannot choose from shouldn’t have a large impact on underage drinking rates. Instead, providing good beer in Alabama improves the choices available to law-abiding patriotic beer drinkers throughout Alabama.

You know who you are, representative Laird.