Yes, the snow has struck again. Hopefully we could get up to 8 inches of the fluffy white stuff. I'll hold my breath...but it would be great if it continued to fall at this rate throughout the evening as temperatures fell. I've got some decent gossip to discuss, as well as the state of my worn-out body (I got slaughtered at an indoor soccer game last night)...but I'm running late as it is so it'll have to wait until I'm home this evening. Until then, enjoy the flakes!

Dana strikes again! This juicy article not only serves up the morsel that Karl Rove may have perjured himself, but expands on my post from yesterday about the Blue-Chip Economists who didn't appreciate Bush lying about them. Best part:

On Thursday, Bush implied that the private economists who participate in the "Blue Chip" forecast had based their estimates on his tax plan, saying his proposal "makes sense when analyzed by the economists behind the Blue Chip forecasts."

The survey's editor, Randell Moore, called the White House to complain that Bush "made it sound as if Blue Chip economic forecasters had endorsed his plan." The economists had assumed only that some generic stimulus would pass.

Newsday ran a headline shouting, "Editor: Bush Cited Report That Doesn't Exist." Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said Bush is "making up imaginary supporters."

Yesterday, Bush softened his claim. "These economists predicted in the Blue Chip forecast that the economy would grow at 3.3 percent if Congress responded to a stimulative package," he said.

Moore proclaimed himself satisfied, adding: "Sometimes our president has a difficult time speaking."

You tell 'em Milbank.

On the This Must Be A Farce front, two quick links. The first is to a wake-up call to the administration: stop lying about things! When you say a group endorsed your proposal when they did no such thing, you risk turning people like Greenspan against you. Bad idea.

Second on the front is this terrific website which has been "Helping Americans prepare for fiery death" since a few days after the real ready.gov website went live. Since the real chance of dying is correlated strongly to panic, this humorous site could actually save lives. You've got to see it to believe it.

Good ole Stop and Stop fell down hard today. You'd think that companies would start to pay attention to their accounting practices. You'd think that the whole purpose of the business would be re-examined. Imagine if, in the wake of the death of the girl with the heart transplant, doctors at universities all over the country revealed that they never regularly checked blood type before doing a transplant operation. There'd be a cry from coast-to-coast to institute reforms of such a error-plagued system. (Fortunately, this isn't a problem.) Yet this is exactly what hasn't happened in accounting firms, or in the government designed to oversee these businesses. The result? Investors are basically gambling that companies aren't lying to them when they issue financial reports, or pulling out altogether. And, as one can tell, it's not just American companies, it's all over the world. Until someone steps in and cleans up this mess, the economy will continue to keep sliding down.

Yay! I just finished my taxes, and soon my envelope will be dropped in the mailbox. The process was fairly straightforward this year, although, as always, I'm disappointed that I can't file my federal taxes online. DC, on the other hand, has a great online system that stores all of your information until you submit it. So weeks ago, when I received my DC tax form, I went online and changed my name (they had mispelled it) and then ran out of time. So I logged out.

Last night I logged back and was pleasantly surprised to find all the info I had entered was still there. (No, it wasn't cached on the client side...in case you wondered if I was an idiot.) Even better, after going through the process I figured out I owed DC some money. Knowing this was wrong, I went all the way back to the beginning of the process, realized I had answered one question incorrectly (which led me down the D-40EZ path instead of the D-40) and changed it. I then had to go back and alter some information, but the mere fact that I could roam around and update my info in real time was nice. Kudos to the DC coders who let me do everything without paper.

And two thumbs down to the IRS for giving in to the tax preparer lobbyists who want the IRS to stay out of the online tax preparation business. It could be easily done, and save countless sheets of paper and time and energy, but the idiots over at H & R Block want to keep their portion of the pie, so the IRS is forced to only allow the very poor to file online. You can tell they're more than capable of setting up the system, because using telefile (as I used to do back in my collegiate days) is a great system that ensures a quick return. I still remember the day I realized that the amount of money I earned disqualified me from using telefile. Man, was I steamed.

Hopefully this year I won't receive a choice notice from the IRS saying that I messed something up. Two years ago I submitted my forms properly, in January, only to receive a letter in April, that's right, April, saying that they needed another piece of paper. All this despite the wording on the 1040 itself which declared that if all 3 of the conditions it described were met, I didn't need to file the paper in question. Even now, as I look at the latest 1040 instructions, it's quite clear:

Line 13
Capital Gain or (Loss)

If you had a capital gain or loss, including any capital gain distributions from a mutual fund, you must complete and attach Schedule D.
Exception. You do not have to file Schedule D if all three of the following apply.
1. The only amounts you have to report on Schedule D are capital gain distributions from box 2a of Forms 1099-DIV or substitute statements.
2. None of the Forms 1099-DIV or substitute statements have an amount in box 2b (28% rate gain), box 2c (qualified 5-year gain), box 2d (unrecaptured section 1250 gain), or box 2e (section 1202 gain).
3. You are not filing Form 4952 (relating to investment interest expense deduction) or the amount on line 4e of that form is zero or blank.
If all three of the above apply, enter your total capital gain distributions on line 13 and check the box on that line. Also, be sure you use the Capital Gain Tax Worksheet on page 36 to figure your tax. Your tax may be less if you use this worksheet.

Fairly cut-and-dry if you ask me. And none applied at the time. But I didn't want to get in a lengthy letter battle over the issue. Plus, by delaying until April, the IRS ensured that any dispute would mean I'd have to file for an extension as well, which meant even more paperwork than filling out the stupid Schedule D in question.

But the important thing is, I'm finished. And I feel great.

Hooray for Bugsplat! The best line in the whole piece, of course, is the immortal "This enables commanders to fine-tune attacks and, in some instances, can embolden them to order bigger bombs than they would have employed relying on less sophisticated modeling methods, the officials said." Uh, huh. In the middle of a war, who says "um, well, we can't use that bomb because it's too big..."

Regardless, lowering the number of civilian deaths has to be a good thing. One day we'll wake up and hear the news (not in this Administration, of course!) that all the evil people in North Korea have been removed and no civilians were scratched. Surgical strikes, that's what they call them. Hell, we've already reached the point where sometimes moving soldiers to the battlefield (troop transports, helicopters, etc.) has become more dangerous than the actual fighting. Next thing you know people will be angry that 2 soldiers and 2 civilians died in a war. And you know what? They'll be right. The goal should be zero deaths on all sides. How we achieve this I leave up to you.

Let's just hope that "bugsplat" doesn't have any bugs in it. We don't want any more accidental embassy bombings.

Over at calpundit there's a little debate going on about genetic manipulation. Lately it's moved on to the subject of race. I definitely come down on the nuture side of the nature/nuture debate, so I thought I'd post my letter to calpundit here.

Murtaugh seems to be making the following logical connection:

Because race is determined by genetics, and intelligence may be determined (partially) by genetics, race may be a good indicator of intelligence. Or the two could be related.

In his own words "there are likely to be some important genetic differences from one race to the other."

1) We first have to group people into 6 "races" which correspond to geographic ancestry, not the concept of race we have today. Under this scenario, traditional ideas tying race to ethnicity are turned around because the Hispanic community would become part of the Eurasian group. People from Africa north of the Saraha wouldn't fall into the traditional African group. And god knows what happens when the ever increasing number of mixed heritage people are lumped together. As the study itself shows, populations that are isolated from other ones (the pygmies, for instance) tend to show the greatest differences. Populations that are highly connected to one another tend to bleed together. For this reason, as time goes on, differences between people will tend to equal out. And unlike the lengthy environmental/mutation circumstances that might cause changes in genetic structure, the lowest common denominator would result in people of mixed heritage rapidly losing their unique status. (An example: recessive eye coloration. If blue eyed people were only produced by two blue eyed parents, in any given system of blue and brown eyed people, random mixing would dictate that after a few generations, hardly anyone would have blue eyes anymore. Thus, the processes that resulted in different iris pigmentation that might have taken hundreds of years to take place could be swept aside in a few generations.)

2) Because of #1, the utility of identifying people descends rapidly. Combined with the 95% rule (95% of variation occurs within a particular group, with only 3-5% of genetic difference between groups) I would have to say convoluted statements like "5% of white folks are smarter than 97% of asian people". On a case by case basis, then, such a theory is nigh well useless.

3) The medical issue is supposedly the lynchpin of the whole argument. Because different ethnicities can result in different responses to medication, determining one's genetic background is an important task. If it's important to determine one's "race" for medical purposes, clearly it has to impact intelligence, right?

Unfortunately, tying intelligence to a body's drug response is a large leap. It'd be like tying intelligence to eye color. Surely, you might be able to make general claims about large swaths of the population, but as soon as you do so the other variables begin to crowd things out. Let's say for the sake of argument that someone does a study that shows that race affects intelligence, directly, by 2%. So one racial group is smarter than another by a clear 2%. Now stack this up against one's parents, or whether a mother drank during pregnancy. Unless the disparity is significant, other factors will surely overwhelm such a low percentage. If the "eurasian" group is less intelligent than the "oceania" group, but "eurasians" tend to make less money, live in less affluent surroundings, get worse education, etc. then might this not be a better indicator?

We're back to the nature-vs-nuture debate, one that won't end anytime soon. Saying something "could be related" implies that the relation is significant. Lead in the water is significant. Drug use is significant. I'm not that convinced that one's ancestors years ago is a significant factor.

Of course, if it's genetic manipulation that's the argument, I'm all for it. I don't think that gene manipulation will arrive quicker than nano-technology, however, so I'm not that worried that rich people will be able to make their children super-smart anytime soon. (And nano-technology seems to be oriented to health conditions like blood pressure and cholesterol, not for intelligence.) Intelligence is tricky: it will be easier to manipulate simple genetic markers (like the ones coded for certain diseases) than to go for the whole "intelligence" area. Hell, even eye color will be easier than brain power. Who's going to fund research into determining which genes make people smart when you could find which ones cure a specific disease?

That said, creating a bunch of super-smart kids with rich parents could only do wonders for this country. Maybe they'll be less hateful, more rational, and able to vote for the right person for a change.

Genetic manipulation is much farther off than people realize, for anything of value. Sure, you might be able to touch up a few things, prevent some diseases, etc. But intelligence is not on the first set of priorities. Or the second. As for strength, that might be more easily achievable, but it's still a long way off. Specific appearance improvements might be easier still, like eye color or hair color. Nanotechnology, on the other hand, once it's perfected, has the ability to increase both strength and appearance. You don't get the added benefit of passing it on to your children, but you would be able to combat health problems now, in real-time. Who wants to wait for their attractive kid to grow up when they coult lower their cholesterol, burn off excess fat and get in shape overnight? American's don't want to wait 20 years for gratification, they want it now. Genetic manipulation won't offer that to them. So bring on the nanites.

So let me get this straight. The DoD is requesting an increase in the number of polygraph tests (see under the Expansion of the CSP Program section) because of...the Internet? That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Any system with classified material on it should be isolated on a network not connected to the internet.

That said, the polygraph report contains a nice list of people caught using the technique. Of course, with over 5,000 tests on the DoD side alone, you're bound to get a few:

During a CSP examination, the examinee admitted that he had improperly stored classified materials outside of government control, so that he could complete work assignments at home. He denied that any of the materials had been compromised. The examinee surrendered the classified information to investigators. The examinee then favorably completed his polygraph examination.

...routine, right? Here's the good stuff:

A supplier to the DoD shipped counterfeit and gray market copier cartridges instead of new cartridges that had been purchased directly from the brand-name manufacturer. The supplier provided a letter of authenticity to the DoD, certifying that the cartridges were purchased directly from the brand-name manufacturer. The employee of the supplier who provided the letter of authenticity was interviewed by investigators, and agreed to submit to a polygraph examination to confirm that he did not alter or counterfeit the letter. After a deceptive polygraph examination, the employee admitted that he had altered a genuine letter of authenticity using his office computer, and submitted it to the DoD. The employee also implicated the owner of the supply company in the scheme.

Okay, using generic printer cartridges instead of new ones probably saved the government some money. But it's still illegal. I don't know why it'd take a polygraph to determine this...but behind door number two there's a couple things:

A polygraph examination was administered to a military member implicated in the death of a co-worker. After a deceptive examination, the suspect confessed to killing the victim, and slicing the victim's wrist in an attempt to make the death look like a suicide.

*****

The skeletal remains of a military member missing since 1990 were found concealed in a chimney, located in Germany. An autopsy of the victim could not determine the cause of death, but foul play was suspected. During the course of the investigation, a former military member who had been stationed in Germany at the time of the incident was identified as a suspect. The suspect was interviewed and denied any involvement in the death. A polygraph examination administered to the suspect was evaluated as deceptive. The suspect then admitted that he and four other soldiers had beaten the victim to death and concealed his body in the chimney.

Damn. Of course, if you substitute "We harassed" for "A polygraph examination was administered to", each example still makes perfect sense. Maybe the DoD should stop paying lip service to developing a new technique and actually get some real science behind them. Otherwise they're just blowing smoke. It's in people's faces, to be sure, but it's still just smoke and mirrors.