There's no doubt that the response to Katrina came far too late and too ineffectively, and that the Federal Government bungled it's part of it badly. Few debate that.
What's really annoying me at this point is that there are people who are making this a case for limited government. I agree that nobody should look at this situation, and take faith in this big government on its account, but I don't think it represents an inherent failing of the strong government response.
The reason we can say this, is that we have few complaints about the handling of the rounds of epic disaster that occured during the Category 4 Hurricane Hugo or the vast Mississippi floods. The people in Clinton's FEMA knew that their job was taking care of business, and they did so, and won bipartisan praise for that.
The myth about Democrats and Liberals like myself is that we love bureaucracy. In all actuality, we love results, and bureaucracies of appropriate size to maintain them. To suggest that we go to the state and local officials (or even private businesses) to bear the greatest burden of disaster response, is to ignore a crucial aspect of disasters of such scale- their overwhelming nature. That is not to say that local and state officials should not put their plans together, nor prepare supplies and whatever else is needed to deal with the worst of a disaster's onslaught. That is not even to discourage the open cooperation of businesses in helping disaster victims. That is to say that we should not count on ourselves to be that lucky, to expect the resources for preparation and recovery to survive disasters locally.
To use the negligence and unprofessional behavior of FEMA and other disaster handlers who were supposed to help the victims of Katrina as a excuse to pull back the federal government from supporting locals in these hard times is to justify laziness on the basis of irresponsibility, as well as add grave insult to grave injury.
I think the worst thing about these attitudes towards Federal government in today's world is that it creates an atmosphere of low expectations, coupled with an internal culture of negligence that develops because those inside the still existing government Bureaucracy don't feel the need to do their jobs right. Why, if you don't believe it's supposed to work, why make it work? This disrespect for the business of government becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People must at least believe in the responsibilities they are given, if not not the decision to have those given to them. America may or may not need a government of our size, but it does not need half-hearted government from those who seek their offices, knowing they won't give it their all.
Friday, September 23, 2005
An Object Lesson in Chaos
A couple day ago, Houston was in the bullseye, and the hurricane rated a Category 5.
A week ago, Rita did not exist, even as Tropical Depression 18.
And now, the Hurricane rates a Category 3 and it's hooking its way towards Texas/Louisiana Border. There are probably some news viewers who are tearing out their hair at the imprecision. They shouldn't actually. The Weather services are doing the best they can.
Some observant viewers will take note of those segments where the Weatherfolks show a "spaghetti tangle" of possible storm paths. These maybe the more intellectually honest of the storm prediction. But people ask, why so many different possible paths?
Prediction is a funky game with the weather, and even funkier for phenomena like hurricanes. The famed Butterfly Effect has its origins in a program meant to model the weather, and for good reason. I guess what we have here is what we could call dense history, and what matters and what doesn't is often unclear.
It's not a matter of direct causation, though. It's more like being in a crowd where everybody's jostling everybody else towards some threshold, and which gate or exit one ends up depends on who one bumped into, where, when, and in what order. If you could find that out, you could predict where the person would end up. What if, though, you were incapable of working out that complete of a history, or that history involved not individuals, but groups within that crowd? Your perspective would blur, and actions beyond the scope of your ability to observe would be able to throw monkey wrenches into your predictions.
It gets even more interesting when organization becomes involved. Let's say some people in that crowd were sent randomly in, and then given instructions to stay in sight of each other. In nature, intelligence is not necessarily needed for organization, just physics. Thunderstorms sustain themselves by drawing in most air from below, which augments their organization, The rules complicitly act together to take what's unlikely on the atomic level, and change the odds, allowing complex behavior to result from these simple rules.
Hurricanes are emergent phenomenas that the laws of physics conspire to make not only self sustaining, but also a strong influence on their environment, to the point that they seem to act with volition. Getting back to the crowd, those people given instructions, if clearly marked, might seemed to be acting by an external intelligence, somehow moving in one direction or another by a collectively made decision, even though they are only working from a simple, basic rule. It is in this way that bird flocks can be simulated with a few rules with astonishing realism.
Emergence is the key word. Life is a common form of emergent behavior. Despite all the talk of a unique animating force in this culture and others, we acknowledge in common sense one profound truth about man's existence: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Emergent phenomenon are a direct result of the combination and configuration of substances and energies whose presence cannot be reduced to the simple consequence of any one part.
The motion the crowd takes in it's flow, as far as the details are concerned are not spelled out in any one individual. However, the context of a crowd's movement (that is, each person's physical presence, their range of their stamina, their speed of travel, and their own sense of self preservation and purpose, among other things) all contribute to an overall behavior that seems organized by intelligence, rather than the traditional laws of physics.
I guess the point people should draw from what I write here is this: Our world, if it can be described mechanically, runs with great complexity, and though we are just beginning to understand these phenomena, in many ways, we will always have the disadvantage of imperfect observation and ability to process that information.
Will our ability to model these storms improve? Well, meteorologists and other scientists studying these phenomenon continue to discover the peculiarities and ideosyncrasies, and those can help us refine our models. But if there is any lesson to be drawn, it's that our perception has its limits, and that we should allow for that. What does that mean? We plan as if things won't necessarily go our way because the next time, we may be the unlucky ones. It is a gift not to be in the way of nature's wrath, and nature is not always that generous.
A week ago, Rita did not exist, even as Tropical Depression 18.
And now, the Hurricane rates a Category 3 and it's hooking its way towards Texas/Louisiana Border. There are probably some news viewers who are tearing out their hair at the imprecision. They shouldn't actually. The Weather services are doing the best they can.
Some observant viewers will take note of those segments where the Weatherfolks show a "spaghetti tangle" of possible storm paths. These maybe the more intellectually honest of the storm prediction. But people ask, why so many different possible paths?
Prediction is a funky game with the weather, and even funkier for phenomena like hurricanes. The famed Butterfly Effect has its origins in a program meant to model the weather, and for good reason. I guess what we have here is what we could call dense history, and what matters and what doesn't is often unclear.
It's not a matter of direct causation, though. It's more like being in a crowd where everybody's jostling everybody else towards some threshold, and which gate or exit one ends up depends on who one bumped into, where, when, and in what order. If you could find that out, you could predict where the person would end up. What if, though, you were incapable of working out that complete of a history, or that history involved not individuals, but groups within that crowd? Your perspective would blur, and actions beyond the scope of your ability to observe would be able to throw monkey wrenches into your predictions.
It gets even more interesting when organization becomes involved. Let's say some people in that crowd were sent randomly in, and then given instructions to stay in sight of each other. In nature, intelligence is not necessarily needed for organization, just physics. Thunderstorms sustain themselves by drawing in most air from below, which augments their organization, The rules complicitly act together to take what's unlikely on the atomic level, and change the odds, allowing complex behavior to result from these simple rules.
Hurricanes are emergent phenomenas that the laws of physics conspire to make not only self sustaining, but also a strong influence on their environment, to the point that they seem to act with volition. Getting back to the crowd, those people given instructions, if clearly marked, might seemed to be acting by an external intelligence, somehow moving in one direction or another by a collectively made decision, even though they are only working from a simple, basic rule. It is in this way that bird flocks can be simulated with a few rules with astonishing realism.
Emergence is the key word. Life is a common form of emergent behavior. Despite all the talk of a unique animating force in this culture and others, we acknowledge in common sense one profound truth about man's existence: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Emergent phenomenon are a direct result of the combination and configuration of substances and energies whose presence cannot be reduced to the simple consequence of any one part.
The motion the crowd takes in it's flow, as far as the details are concerned are not spelled out in any one individual. However, the context of a crowd's movement (that is, each person's physical presence, their range of their stamina, their speed of travel, and their own sense of self preservation and purpose, among other things) all contribute to an overall behavior that seems organized by intelligence, rather than the traditional laws of physics.
I guess the point people should draw from what I write here is this: Our world, if it can be described mechanically, runs with great complexity, and though we are just beginning to understand these phenomena, in many ways, we will always have the disadvantage of imperfect observation and ability to process that information.
Will our ability to model these storms improve? Well, meteorologists and other scientists studying these phenomenon continue to discover the peculiarities and ideosyncrasies, and those can help us refine our models. But if there is any lesson to be drawn, it's that our perception has its limits, and that we should allow for that. What does that mean? We plan as if things won't necessarily go our way because the next time, we may be the unlucky ones. It is a gift not to be in the way of nature's wrath, and nature is not always that generous.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
AAAAAAAUUUUGH!
That's better.
Having learned that Rita was going to strike right at us, I was feeling like it was the end of the world. CAT 5 hurricanes, of course, are no joke, and we have no illusions about how strong our house is or how snarled the traffic is (We live close to I-45, the main route of evacuation for Galveston). Even now, going to a shelter is our likeliest course of action, if the storm's course sticks close to us.
So there I was, feeling like the world was dropping on my head, like there was no escape. The news was going on about this being the Third-Worst Hurricane In The Atlantic Basin. I remember being terrified about the Absolute Worst, our old friend Gilbert when I was a kid.
Then suddenly, I realized it was still just Wednesday night, and this thing was going to make landfall early Saturday morning. I broke out laughing, relieved and embarrassed at how panicked I had become. I don't know what God has in store, but whatever happens, it's not going to do much good for me to fear a threat I'm not directly faced with. We'll see what we can do here to stay out of the way of the worst, most damaging effects of this storm, but I'm not going to curl up in the face of all this.
Having learned that Rita was going to strike right at us, I was feeling like it was the end of the world. CAT 5 hurricanes, of course, are no joke, and we have no illusions about how strong our house is or how snarled the traffic is (We live close to I-45, the main route of evacuation for Galveston). Even now, going to a shelter is our likeliest course of action, if the storm's course sticks close to us.
So there I was, feeling like the world was dropping on my head, like there was no escape. The news was going on about this being the Third-Worst Hurricane In The Atlantic Basin. I remember being terrified about the Absolute Worst, our old friend Gilbert when I was a kid.
Then suddenly, I realized it was still just Wednesday night, and this thing was going to make landfall early Saturday morning. I broke out laughing, relieved and embarrassed at how panicked I had become. I don't know what God has in store, but whatever happens, it's not going to do much good for me to fear a threat I'm not directly faced with. We'll see what we can do here to stay out of the way of the worst, most damaging effects of this storm, but I'm not going to curl up in the face of all this.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Sorry for the change of address.
Well, what is this blog about? Nothing in particular, and I like that. Science, Religion, Technology, Psychology, The Nature of Truth, the Nature of Storytelling. If it sounds profound, it's not. it's going to be essays that wouldn't feel right on my other blogging home, Watchblog.
I'll see about having something to y'all by tomorrow. Rita's going to come in, and things are going to get pretty interesting around here.
I'll see about having something to y'all by tomorrow. Rita's going to come in, and things are going to get pretty interesting around here.
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