Hezbollah’s Strategy

Saturday, July 22nd, 2006

Hezbollah’s Strategy as reported in The Battle Joined:

Hezbollah’s strategy appears to be threefold. First, force Israel into costly attacks against prepared fortifications. Second, draw Israeli troops as deeply into Lebanon as possible, forcing them to fight on extended supply lines. Third, move into an Iraqi-style insurgency from which Israel — out of fear of a resumption of rocket attacks — cannot withdraw, but which the Israelis also cannot endure because of extended long-term casualties. This appears to have been a carefully planned strategy, built around a threat to Israeli cities that Israel can’t afford. The war has begun at Hezbollah’s time and choosing.

Israel is caught between three strategic imperatives. First, it must end the threat to Israeli cities, which must involve the destruction of Hezbollah’s launch capabilities south of the Litani River. Second, it must try to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure, which means it must move into the Bekaa Valley and as far as the southern suburbs of Beirut. Third, it must do so in such a way that it is not dragged into a long-term, unsustainable occupation against a capable insurgency.

Hezbollah has implemented its strategy by turning southern Lebanon into a military stronghold, consisting of well-designed bunkers that serve both as fire bases and launch facilities for rockets. The militants appear to be armed with anti-tank weapons and probably anti-aircraft weapons, some of which appear to be of American origin, raising the question of how they were acquired. Hezbollah wants to draw Israel into protracted fighting in this area in order to inflict maximum casualties and to change the psychological equation for both military and political reasons.

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What Does It Take to Win?

Saturday, July 22nd, 2006

Demimasque asks, What Does It Take to Win?:

In fact, the international system as it currently exists tends to support the underdog blindly. In some case, this may be good, if the underdog was attacked (Bosnia, Kuwait, and Egypt in 1956); in others, it’s probably not good, if the underdog is the aggressor (the occasional incursions by Pakistan). The only exception to this rule is that when Israel is the underdog but not the aggressor, it is not supported (1967, 1973).

A system which applies pressure for war to cease before a workable peace is possible merely buys time for the side that was about to lose. This is not to say whether that’s good or bad, but at least in the case of post-1967 Israel, we’re not talking any longer about states rubbing up against each other, jostling for land and/or resources. No, we’re talking now about an enemy that intends for the complete and irrevocable eradication, not only of the Jewish state, but of any Jewish blood in the Middle East. Against that backdrop, a system that does not allow one side or the other to win is actually a way to lengthen the conflict, not to ameliorate it.

We go to great lengths to say that we want the war to stop because innocents are getting killed. But what we end up doing is forcing the parties to refight the same war every few years. When you add it up, the civilian casualties turn out greater than if we were to let the parties have a free-for-all, last man standing.

If you don’t mind keeping the conflict simmering, then Israel is “overreacting”. But keep in mind that essentially what you’re supporting in this conflict by limiting Israeli options is the continued existence of Hezbollah.

If you want a real end, let Israel do what it must, and punish it later for its excesses.

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Piglets with Ice Lolly

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Today’s does of cute comes from Pinky and Perky:

Pinky and Perky two four week old miniature piglets cool off at Pennywell Farm and Wildlife centre near Buckfastleigh, south western England Wednesday July 19, 2006 in this photo provided by the centre. The piglets were keeping cool with a huge lolly packed with carrots and other vegetables. ‘The recent heatwave has been exhausting for everyone and animals are no exception,’ said Catherine Tozer, assistant manager of the farm. ‘All the animals have been struggling with the heat so we have just tried to do everything we can to make them more comfortable. ‘After the initial shock and a bit of investigation, the ice lollies went down a real treat,’ she said.

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Have You Hugged a Hummer Today?

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

Have You Hugged a Hummer Today?

Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date – dubbed “Dust to Dust” — collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an “energy cost per mile” figure for each car (see here and here).

Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids’ energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid.
[...]
As for Hummers, Spinella explains, the life of these cars averaged across various models is over 300,000 miles. By contrast, Prius’ life – according to Toyota’s own numbers – is 100,000 miles. Furthermore, Hummer is a far less sophisticated vehicle. Its engine obviously does not have an electric and gas component as a hybrid’s does so it takes much less time and energy to manufacture. What’s more, its main raw ingredient is low-cost steel, not the exotic light-weights that are exceedingly difficult to make – and dispose. But the biggest reason why a Hummer’s energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars.

It is not possible to do this with a specialty product like hybrid. All in all, Spinella insists, the energy costs of disposing a Hummer are 60 percent less than an average hybrid’s and its design and development costs are 80 percent less.

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How a statistical formula won the war

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

The lastest Gavyn Davies does the maths column in The Guardian explains “how a statistical formula won the war” — or how statisticians estimated the number of tanks the Germans could produce when the spy network couldn’t directly observe factory output:

The statisticians had one key piece of information, which was the serial numbers on captured mark V tanks. The statisticians believed that the Germans, being Germans, had logically numbered their tanks in the order in which they were produced. And this deduction turned out to be right. It was enough to enable them to make an estimate of the total number of tanks that had been produced up to any given moment.

The basic idea was that the highest serial number among the captured tanks could be used to calculate the overall total. The German tanks were numbered as follows: 1, 2, 3 … N, where N was the desired total number of tanks produced. Imagine that they had captured five tanks, with serial numbers 20, 31, 43, 78 and 92. They now had a sample of five, with a maximum serial number of 92. Call the sample size S and the maximum serial number M. After some experimentation with other series, the statisticians reckoned that a good estimator of the number of tanks would probably be provided by the simple equation (M-1)(S+1)/S. In the example given, this translates to (92-1)(5+1)/5, which is equal to 109.2. Therefore the estimate of tanks produced at that time would be 109.

By using this formula, statisticians reportedly estimated that the Germans produced 246 tanks per month between June 1940 and September 1942. At that time, standard intelligence estimates had believed the number was far, far higher, at around 1,400. After the war, the allies captured German production records, showing that the true number of tanks produced in those three years was 245 per month, almost exactly what the statisticians had calculated, and less than one fifth of what standard intelligence had thought likely.

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Public Choice Television

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

I never got into HBO’s Deadwood, but I may have to revisit it after reading Eric Crampton’s Public Choice Television:

Deadwood is the best television series I’ve seen. I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon’s work, but this surpasses it. Read Mancur Olson on stationary and roving bandits, then read some Tullock [founder of public choice theory], then watch the show.

Al Swearengen, who owns the town’s bar and first brothel, essentially serves as Olson’s permanent bandit. Self-interest rules and he’s not above sending out a thieving party to rob a wagon coming into town if it suits him. But, he’s far more a permanent bandit. His success depends on the security of the gold claims, constraining rivals like the Hearst combine, on the growth and prosperity of the town, on keeping the hooples from acting up, and on ensuring that the rent-seekers from Yankton don’t take everything during the town’s accession to the Union. Swearengen invests in public goods, like getting a smallpox vaccine into town when a plague happens along. Cy Tolliver, a roving bandit, makes no such investments: instead, he extracts as much as he can as quickly as he can and works to set up the Hearst interests in place of Swearengen, calculating that life as lap-dog to Hearst is more lucrative than that of roving bandit in opposition to Swearengen.

Deadwood takes anarchy seriously. There’s no backdrop of the state to provide law and order, only the threat of possible future accession to the Union. In The Sopranos, by contrast, Tony is only able to operate because of the existence of the State. He earns rents due to his willingness to use violence and cut around the law; absent the law, he’d not exist. He’d be out-competed on every margin of his business. Without state prohibitions on gambling, what would happen to his numbers rackets? Normal rate of return only. Without state protections of unions, what would happen to his pension fund rackets and no-work contracts? Gone. Al Swearengen thrives because of the absence of government. Town needs law and order? Hire a sheriff who’s beholden to nobody and who can’t be bought. Hiring a corrupt sherrif would have you in a perpetual bidding war with Cy Tolliver; hiring one instead that cares about the best interest of the town ensures prosperity where you’re the residual claimant. Doc Cochran feels for the town and cares about what’s best, but Al gets the job done, expecting (and generally receiving) naught but the derision of the soft-hearted. The hoople mob cannot be trusted to govern itself; it needs to be guided lest it fall victim to Cy’s rumour-mongering on behalf of Hearst.

The Wikipedia entry for Mancur Olson explains his notion of stationary versus roving bandits:

In his final book, Power and Prosperity, Olson distinguished between the economic effects of different types of government, in particular, tyranny, anarchy and democracy. Olson argued that a “roving bandit” (under anarchy) has an incentive only to steal and destroy, whilst a “stationary bandit” (a tyrant) has an incentive to encourage a degree of economic success, since he will expect to be in power long enough to take a share of it. The stationary bandit thereby takes on the primordial function of government — protection of his citizens and property against roving bandits. Olson saw in the move from roving bandits to stationary bandits the seeds of civilization, paving the way for democracy, which improves incentives for good government by more closely aligning it with the wishes of the population.

For more on Tullock and public choice theory, I recommend The Fundamentals of Rent-Seeking and the Wikipedio entry on Public choice theory.

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Kiwiana

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

Eric Crampton is guest-blogging from New Zealand for his friend Bryan Caplan, who’s on vacation in California. As he has recently taken up a position at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, he is in a wondeful position to share some Kiwiana:

  • The safety nuts haven’t yet taken over here. You’re still free to injure yourself in interesting ways. Mountain roads to ski fields are exhilirating and terrifying; occasionally, cars fall off of them. The Department of Conservation might warn you against doing something particularly stupid, but you can feel free to ignore them. When folks win Darwin awards as consequence, there’s no hue and cry for stricter safety regulations.
  • Politics is more relaxed. The Prime Minister lent her voice to an episode of BroTown, a cartoon that sits somewhere between Simpsons and South Park. The leader of the ACT Party spent a few weeks on the NZ version of Dancing with the Stars.
  • The Broadcasting Standards Authority is a good deal more relaxed than the FCC. Free to air broadcast television includes South Park, Deadwood and the Sopranos. In response to complaints, the BSA is far more likely to tell folks to stop whinging than it is to levy fines.
  • Society failed to implode after the legalisation of prostitution and gay marriage (civil unions).
  • I haven’t had to worry about the terrorism alert status since I got here.
  • It’s an easy 25 minute commute from beach to school.

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Car Fuel Efficiency Gains Used For Speed And Size

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

Randall Parker notes that car fuel-efficiency gains get used for speed and size, not for reducing fuel consumption:

6 speed transmissions, engines that turn off some cylinders while cruising, hybrids, new lighter materials, and other innovations plus the big rise in oil prices were not enough to change the average fuel economy of new cars. Attempts to increase efficiency get undermined in at least 3 ways by consumers:
  • People choose bigger cars and SUVs.
  • People choose models that accelerate more rapidly.
  • People drive more miles.

As Brett Bellmore points out, all this is perfectly predictable, given that,

  1. the price of gasoline isn’t that much higher than historical levels, when adjusted for inflation, and
  2. it today represents a smaller fraction of most people’s incomes.

In fact, this is known as Jevons Paradox:

In his 1865 book The Coal Question, Jevons observed that England‘s consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen‘s earlier design. Watt’s innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to increased use of his steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn made total coal consumption rise, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell.

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Flesh Trade

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics) “weigh the repugnance factor” in Flesh Trade:

How’s this for a repugnant situation? Take someone you love, perhaps your spouse or your sibling, and find a stranger who will accept a really big bet that your loved one will die prematurely — and if indeed that happens, you pocket a few million dollars.

This, of course, is how life insurance works. And most Americans don’t find this idea repugnant at all. They used to, however. Until the mid-19th century, life insurance was considered “a profanation,” as the sociologist Viviana Zelizer has written, “which transformed the sacred event of death into a vulgar commodity.”

Obviously we’re not above all such irrational repugnance today:

In the space of just a few decades, transplant surgery has become safe and reliable (to say nothing of miraculous). But success breeds demand: as more patients get new organs, more patients want them. In 2005, more than 16,000 kidney transplants were performed in the U.S., an increase of 45 percent over 10 years. But during that time, the number of people on a kidney waiting list rose by 119 percent. More than 3,500 people now die each year waiting for a kidney transplant.

To an economist, this is a basic supply-and-demand gap with tragic consequences. So what can be done to increase the supply of organs?

The obvious answer — put organs up for sale — is repugnant, so we need a clever solution:

Alvin Roth, even though he is an economist, is smart enough to realize that repugnance will keep Americans from embracing a true market for organs anytime soon. So, along with several other scholars and medical personnel, he has helped design a clever alternative, the New England Program for Kidney Exchange. Imagine that you have a wife who is dying of renal failure, and that you would give her one of your kidneys, but you are not a biological match. Now imagine that another couple is in the same bind. The kidney exchange locates and matches the couples: you donate your kidney to the stranger’s wife, while the stranger gives his kidney to your wife; the operations are performed simultaneously to make sure no one backs out. Although this system has yielded only a couple dozen transplants so far, it illustrates an economist’s understanding of incentives: if you can’t get someone to give an organ out of altruism, and you can’t pay him either, what do you do? Find two parties who are desperate to align their incentives.

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England’s apartheid roots

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Mark Henderson explains England’s apartheid roots:

When the Anglo-Saxons reached Britain from what is now Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, between the 5th and 7th centuries, they were outnumbered by indigenous Celts. The Anglo-Saxon invaders numbered between 10,000-200,000, compared with an estimated 2 million natives. Within just 15 generations, however, Anglo-Saxon genes had so multiplied that they accounted for more than half the male DNA in the population of what is now England. In the modern population the DNA is even more heavily Germanic in origin.

A new study led by Mark Thomas, of University College London, has shown that this remarkable spread of Anglo-Saxon genes probably was accomplished by a form of institutionalised racism, not dissimilar from the apartheid system of 20th-century South Africa.

A computer simulation that tested several scenarios found that the best fit for the spread of Anglo-Saxon genes was one in which the dominant but outnumbered ethnic group was banned from intermarrying with their British subjects and serfs. Dr Thomas said: “The native Britons were genetically and culturally absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons over a period of as little as a few hundred years. An initially small invading Anglo-Saxon elite could have established themselves by having more children who survived to adulthood, thanks to their military power and economic advantage. We believe that they also prevented the native British genes getting into the Anglo-Saxon population by restricting intermarriage in a system of apartheid that left the country culturally and genetically Germanised. This is exactly what we see today — a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language.”

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Phone Whores

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Scott Adams (Dilbert) explains Phone Whores:

In case you are not familiar with a term that I just made up, a phone whore is a woman who goes to the airport with no magazines, laptops, books, puzzles or other means to entertain her. All she has is a phone, and she’s going to use it, no matter how many people are annoyed.

To be gender fair, every flight I’ve been on has at least one man who needs to bellow away on his phone until the flight attendant starts slapping him with a rolled up in-flight magazine. But that guy isn’t a phone whore. He’s a phone asshole. It’s a subtle difference.

The phone whore is motivated by the desire to talk with people. The phone asshole is motivated by the need to have everyone on the flight know he’s negotiating important business deals and that he has staff members that must receive his wisdom. The phone asshole sounds like this: “ALLEN, THIS IS BOB. LET’S NAIL DOWN THAT AJAX DEAL EVEN IF WE HAVE TO THROW ANOTHER TEN MILLION AT IT. REMEMBER THAT QUALITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PRICE. THAT’S SOMETHING I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TEACH JOE, FRANCINE, AND ERIC, WHO ALL WORK FOR ME IN CASE ANYONE LISTENING ISN’T ALREADY IMPRESSED WITH MY HUGE BARREL CHEST AND UNNATURALLY DEEP VOICE.”

The phone whore sounds more like “Hi, this is Mindy. How’s your new kitten?”

See? Completely different.

Within seconds of sitting, the phone whore starts dialing. I don’t know if she’s calling people in alphabetical order or what, but she’s six calls into it, and it’s obvious there will be no end. I could move to another seat, but I like my seat, and I suffer from an irrational form of optimism that tells me she “only has a few calls left.” Surely I can endure a few calls.

But rationally, I know that her only options for the next two hours of waiting for our delayed flight are:

  1. Stare straight ahead
  2. Annoy the living piss out of me by blabbing on her phone

To make matters worse, a crazy-talker just sat on my right. This one is a guy with a laptop, traveling alone, who feels the need to express astonishment and disgust at whatever the hell he’s looking at. It’s an invitation to converse, but I’m doing my best Helen Keller impression and hoping the Pakistani guy on his other side takes the bait.

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Stephen Colbert on Late Night with Conan O’Brien

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

I admit that I enjoy it when Stephen Colbert geeks out with a D&D or Lord of the Rings reference, but on Late Night with Conan O’Brien a few nights ago, he really geeked out.

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Customer subdues robber with applesauce

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Customer subdues robber with applesauce:

A customer at a city grocery tackled an armed robber and beat him with a can of applesauce when he refused to drop his gun, police said.

The suspect shot himself in the head during the struggle, and passed out after the 66-year-old customer administered four blows to the head with the Mott’s applesauce.

‘Finally, the guy passes out,’ said Det. Curtis Matthews. ‘There’s blood everywhere — on the floor, all over.’

About 15 customers were in Gomez Grocery in the city’s East Germantown section when the gunman walked in Sunday afternoon, jumped atop a small freezer and pointed the gun at store owner Eddie Gomez, police said.

Customer Thomas Santana, who is 5-foot-4, grabbed the 6-foot-1 gunman from behind when he was on the freezer, and with help from Gomez knocked him down.

The suspect, 23-year-old Thomas Reyes, was in stable condition at a hospital, and was expected to be charged with attempted murder, attempted robbery and other charges, authorities said.

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"Robert, they can’t eat you!"

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Bob Parsons, founder and CEO of Go Daddy — which is famous for certain Super Bowl ads — has compiled a list of rules that he lives by. In “Robert, they can’t eat you!” he shares those rules — after giving some of his personal history:

I started a successful business division for a company called LeaseAmerica. During the four years I was involved with this business, it grew to 84 employees and wrote over $150 million dollars in small office equipment leases. Its success helped redefine how business in that industry is now conducted.

Not long after I started the division for LeaseAmerica, I started a software company in the basement of my house. I started it with the little bit of money I had, and named it Parsons Technology. I owned this business for 10 years, grew it to about 1,000 employees and just shy of $100 million a year in sales. Eventually, we sold Parsons Technology to a company named Intuit. Because my then-wife and I were the only investors, and the company had no debt, we received the entire purchase price.
[...]
Retirement wasn’t for me, so after the mandatory year passed, and using the money I had from the sale of Parsons Technology, I started a new business. This business eventually became The Go Daddy Group. I started this business from scratch, did it without acquisitions, and developed our own products. In the process, I came spooky close to losing everything I had, and actually made the decision to “lose it all” rather than close Go Daddy. Today, Go Daddy is the world leader in new domain name registrations, and has been cash flow positive since October 2001 (not bad for a dot com). As of this writing, I continue to be the only investor in Go Daddy.

His 16 rules:

  1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”
  2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.
  3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”
  4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”
  5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”
  6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don’t look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.
  7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
  8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
  9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.
  10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.
  11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.
  12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.
  13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks. You’ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).
  14. Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”
  15. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.
  16. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: “We’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time.”

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Find a Niche: ‘The Long Tail’ of Sales

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

NPR’s All Things Considered interviews Chris Anderson in Find a Niche: ‘The Long Tail’ of Sales:

The future of our culture — and most business — lies in niches, according to author Chris Anderson. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Anderson’s new book, references a statistical trend to suggest that the market for items that are not “hits” will always be larger than that for the most popular items.

Anderson’s position is that the Internet’s ability to offer consumers a near-limitless choice of goods and information — and archive it all cheaply — will change how business is conducted. While “hits” will always exist, in Anderson’s view the far larger number of products that fit a particular market or audience offer more opportunities.

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