Yessir, Yessir, Three Bags Full

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We've got to stop meeting like this

In what has become a biennial celebration, the San Francisco Giants once again are baseball's world series champions. The three championships have been structurally very different. In 2010 it was a starting staff led by Tim Lincecum that really breezed through the playoffs without much of a challenge. In 2012 it was all adversity, all the time, as the Giants faced no less than SEVEN elimination games en route to an easy world series sweep. In 2014 nobody expected anything, as the Giants faced overwhelming odds in trying to win it all from the second wildcard position.

There is some (not altogether unreasonable) talk of a San Francisco "Dynasty", as no National League team has won as many as three world series in five years since the '40s, when MLB was more like AAA ball because so many players had joined the military to fight in WW II. Whether or not the Giants are a dynasty is subject to opinion, but there is no doubt that they have developed the successful strategy for baseball teams to emulate in the post-steroid era. Everything you thought, it turns out, is wrong.

The LEAST important factor in winning MLB championships is offense. There's a very simple reason for this. More than ever before, today there are two very distinct seasons. The regular season is a grind. It takes physical, mental and emotional endurance to get through 162 games in 183 days. Luck is a huge factor in winning - the single greatest determining factor is injuries - and therefore depth. There are 25 active players on a 40 man roster, and superstars represent a single point of failure. In the place of the offensive superstar of yore, you now have to build a strong, effective, flexible bullpen. Albert Pujols and Giancarlo Stanton are much less important to winning it all than Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez. The goal is to structure a team that can make the playoffs, even if they don't dominate the regular season, and then has the right pieces to win three series that are utterly unlike any series played before the post season.

The first very smart thing the Giants did is they recognized the strengths and weaknesses of their home park. A team plays 81 games at home, so it makes sense to build a team that can be expected to win in that environment. There was a time when the Giants fans bemoaned the team's inability to get big-time free agent hitters to come to SF because their power numbers would suffer so greatly. Finally, the front office has figured out that's a feature, not a bug, and builds a team accordingly.

Teams built on pitching need to emphasize defense, because pitching is always a closely-run thing, and giving a team more than their allotment of 27 outs is a sure-fire way to lose games. So the Giants built a team around a big park, a strong starting rotation, a lights-out bullpen and well above average defense. Sure, runs are often very hard to come by, but somehow that hasn't prevented the team from winning those three championships.

And therein lies the lesson. Baseball is not an offensive game. PEDs concealed that fact from us for a generation, and we collectively forgot why baseball is the interesting, exciting game that it is. Teams resisted this recognition for years - how's that working out for you, Anaheim? - but the Giants can no longer be considered a fluke. Third time may or may not be the charm, but going into the playoffs as the bottom seed, the second wildcard, and winning it all convincingly is a lesson that other teams will overlook at their peril. Couple that with 2012's ridiculous two-week run of consecutive elimination games, and the lesson is clear: Build baseball teams that are good enough to make the playoffs, but specifically structured to win in the post-season, and remember how important great coaching and team chemistry can be when the other team is better and things are looking dire.
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Whither the Senate?

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And everybody gets a share

The most accurate poll aggregators are broadly consistent in their expectation that the Republicans will take a slim majority in the Senate next week. I'm not a political scientist, and the underlying reasons why such an unpopular party should win control of the entire US Congress are not, to me, the basis for a particularly interesting discussion. Instead, I'm going to take a few minutes to think through the ramifications of such a loss.

One important thing to realize is that we very likely won't know who controls the Senate just because the election is over and the votes are counted. Both Georgia and Louisiana will likely result in run-off elections, and Louisiana's would not take place until January 6th.  But even then, we may no know the real results until the new Senate is sworn in, as those new Senators elected as Independent or non-party aligned candidates will only then announce which party they would caucus with.

Which means the Lame Duck session might be important. If you want to see people suddenly cast off the shackles of party rhetoric to suddenly speak their mind and act their conscience, the right moment is when they are on their way out the door. Whether any actual legislating gets done, you can expect some high drama and head-turning rhetoric.

One of the important products of the Senate majority is who becomes the Majority Leader. The Senate Majority Leader is a political leadership role with outsized importance, controlling not just the Senate agenda and rules but part of the larger day in and day out political and ideological conversation. Along with the President, the Vice President, The Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority leader can speak with sufficient volume to make his or her voice heard over the background noise. And should the Republicans take the Senate, the number one topic will be Senate Rules.

The current Senate under Harry Reid made some changes to the rules regarding a filibuster against Presidential administrative and judicial appointments. The conventional wisdom is that let the genie out of the bottle, and now every time the Senate majority changes hands, the rules will be changed to suit the party taking power. Despite claims that he would restore the original rules, it seems highly unlikely that a Majority Leader McConnell would actually return additional power unnecessarily to the Democrats. So the open question is whether he would eliminate the filibuster altogether, rendering the Democrats a helpless minority, or merely leave things the way they are right now. Certainly the more radical 'tea party' wing of the Republican Senate Caucus would want to maximize their power to force President Obama to veto bill after bill passed by both houses of Congress, while the more moderate - or perhaps cautious would be a better word - Republicans will recognize that they are likely to be back in the minority in as little as two years. 

The bloodiest fight will come if a Supreme Court vacancy opens up before the end of Obama's term. The Republicans will refuse to allow a vote on ANY nominee in hopes of just running out the clock, but that's the shortest route to a true constitutional crisis imaginable. If we end up having that fight, the outcome may well determine the future of American democratic governance.

Which brings us to the question that will provide the most entertainment over the next couple years. Will a Republican-controlled Senate be able to find common ground with the significantly more radical Republican-controlled House of Representatives? There will be many times when the House passes bills so radical and prima facie ludicrous that not even Republican Senators will vote for them. Remember, even if they win the majority of seats, it will be a very narrow majority. If no Democrats vote for a given bill, they won't be able to sustain more than a couple defections.

The real question about effective legislation in a divided government environment where Republicans control both houses of Congress is just exactly how onerous will a bill have to be before our famously 'moderate' and bi-partisan President vetoes it? He certainly won't sign Obamacare repeal, but how hard will he fight to protect social welfare programs and a common-sense regulatory regime? And if the Republicans put unpleasant right wing conditions on every bill, will Obama eventually just sign them in order to 'govern'?

Stay tuned. It's gonna be a bumpy ride....
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Quality is Great, Right Up Until You Really Need Quantity

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This is great. Until you need a LOT of them

Humans like quality. When it comes to manufactured goods, we prefer better fit and finish, more elaborate functionality and little touches that make something 'better' in some tangible sense, even if those touches aren't necessary to the basic function. And we aren't put off by increased complexity if it results in something that we value to a greater degree. In cars, in lawn mowers, in computers, and - yes - in guns, elegant design, beautiful fit and finish and luxury accouterments serve to identify 'quality', and we'll happily pay more for goods we perceive as somehow 'better'.

But it's a funny thing about guns. In peacetime, we love our elaborate, high-quality weapons systems. But when the wolf is at the door, they're suddenly too expensive and too slow to manufacture. We want a whole bunch of guns and we want them NOW. In the early 1940s the Western allies found themselves in such a position. In the UK they feared an iminent German invasion. In the US, fears of imperial Japan were realized at Pearl Harbor. In Canada and Australia they were mobilizing large armies, and they knew they needed to somehow produce enough modern weapons to equip them.

One of the key weapons of the time was the submachine gun. There were no intermediate cartridge assault rifles then, and battle rifles fired a big, powerful round and were incapable of effective, accurate full auto fire. Machine guns were heavy, crew served and unable to maneuver with the platoons on the line. The bridge was the submachine gun - a small, light machine gun firing a pistol cartridge. High levels of firepower over short ranges, it was desirable to have a couple submachine guns in every infantry squad. In other doctrines - notably German and Soviet - a much greater concentration of submachine guns was SOP. So a way to manufacture and deliver a very large number of these weapons in a very short time was a high priority.

What is a gun? At its most basic, it is a bolt, an operating mechanism, a trigger mechanism, a chamber and a barrel, all in some kind of housing with controls for the user. There is a nearly infinite number of ways to design and produce these components, but many of these design decisions are preferences, a more elegant or more aesthetically pleasing way of doing something that could also be done in a cheap, crude manner. Cost and complexity come from machining parts out of solid steel. If you can stamp, or bend, sheet steel and replace some of the more expensive parts, use welds instead of pins and screws, and reduce the use of wood and other aesthetically pleasing 'furniture', you could produce an ugly, functional submachine gun without a special factory for a few dollars.

Unsurprisingly, most governments at the time arrived at a very similar conclusion. But as one of the classic examples of its genre, let me introduce you to the M-3 'Grease Gun', a .45 ACP submachine gun produced at GM's Guide Lamp division in Indiana - a headlight factory.

I suspect you can guess how it came to be called the 'Grease Gun'.  Everything is stamped, welded, folded, and bent. Wire stock, welded magazine, a knurled, threaded cap, inspired by plumbing, to retain the removable barrel. Because of all the welded sheet metal, it could be a little fragile. The flip-up dust cover over the ejection port functioned as the safety. It loaded 30 rounds of .45 ACP from a similar welded sheet metal magazine. It was 22 inches long and weighed ten pounds loaded. It was full-auto only, but fired at the relatively slow rate of 450 rounds per minute, allowing an experienced user to squeeze off single shots, or three round bursts. But the main reason for a gun like this is that it is fast, easy and cheap to manufacture. Three quarters of a million were produced, at a cost at the time of less than $20 a copy.

The M-3 was used in all theaters of WW II, and went on to see action in Korea and even Vietnam. And it was part of a long heritage of stubby, ugly, all metal submachine guns that became stalwarts of the world's infantry.

There was the classic British/Canadian STEN:

 

 

The infamous German MP-40 'Schmeisser'

And the Russian PPSh-41 'Burp Gun'

We can - and probably will - have endless debates around the relative values of form and function, and we will always be attracted to what we perceive as higher quality goods. But, when the time comes to end the debate and go into production, it is external conditions that will decide what it is we produce. And when one finds oneself staring into the dark abyss, one loses all interest in elegance and luxury, and demands function and quantity. And in those desperate moments, those are all the virtues required.

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Teller Ulam - Rube Goldberg Meets Doomsday

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Surprisingly, the inner workings of an atomic bomb are not terribly complicated. There's the 'gun design', where a 'bullet' of highly enriched uranium is fired with conventional high explosive into a matching 'target'. On high velocity impact, the Uranium becomes a single, critical mass and a fission explosion happens, because physics. Sure, adding some neutrons with a polonium/beryllium initiator is nice, but assembling a weapon like this isn't rocket science. And just like that, you lose a city like Hiroshima. Alternatively, if you can get your hands on 20 kilograms of Plutonium-239, the design is even simpler. You cast the plutonium in a sphere, surround it with high explosives, set fast detonators all around the sphere, with timers configured so it all goes boom at the same instant. The plutonium is compressed to critical mass, and once again you get fission, a few grams of matter is converted to energy and, once again, you lose a city, this time Nagasaki.

What you may not realize is that nobody uses these designs anymore. Atomic bombs are SO fifties. Even as the rubble in Japan was still cooling, physicists were looking for a more powerful, energetic weapon. If fission is good, then adding a little fusion to the mix must be even better. Virtually every nuclear warhead deployed today is a thermonuclear device patterned after the original "Teller - Ulam" device. And good lord, it's the scientific equivalent of a madman's ramblings on full yellow legal tablets. Except, to the best of our knowledge, the damn thing seems to work.

The details? Where to start? Teller Ulam is a multistage weapon. It starts with a conventional explosive that initiates a fission explosion. And that's where things get dicey. The fission explosion, even if it is a 'boosted' fission explosion, isn't enough. So the goal is to use that initial fission bomb to create a fusion reaction. The challenge is that from the moment that fission is initiated, you have only milliseconds to create your fusion reaction before the whole thing is vaporized. You are essentially creating a complex chain reaction inside an atomic bomb in the process of detonating.

The idea is that you use a typical first generation atomic bomb (as crudely described above) to focus a blast of X-Rays on a 'secondary' - a target that, under the right conditions will initiate nuclear fusion. You focus the x-rays, you reflect them with a 'tamper' and you enhance them by surrounding the secondary with a fissionable shell. If all goes according to design, for a very brief moment you get nothing short of a miniature star - a hydrogen fusion reaction. Of course, to understand the engineering challenge this represents, you have to go back to the very first step. The whole process was kicked off by detonating an atomic bomb. And everything that happens afterward, the whole complex set of steps and processes, all happens inside the casing of the warhead in the microseconds before that initial atomic blast vaporizes the whole kit, kat and kaboodle.

The part that nobody outside of the nuclear weapons community is clear on is precisely the mechanism by which the secondary is compressed enough to begin a fission reaction. We know that the X Rays from the primary are somehow 'focused' across the 'interstage' section of the weapon, and by some process (there are several competing theories, any or all of which may be in use), those X Rays initiate a fission reaction in the secondary. The most likely method is one where a very secret formula 'foam' surrounds the secondary, and the X Rays from the primary convert the foam into a highly energetic plasma that compresses the secondary, which fissions and compresses the Lithium Deuteride fuel to thermonuclear temperatures, initiating the fusion reaction.

The term 'hydrogen bomb' is a bit of misnomer. It's true that the entire device is designed to produce hydrogen fusion, but most of the energy released is from good old fission. The fusion reaction's primary purpose is to add enough energy to greatly enhance the efficiency and output of the fission reactions. The original bomb designs were less than ten percent efficient - that is, they needed to contain a large amount of fissile material so that getting 10% of it to fission before the whole thing was vaporized would result in a large enough yield.  Now, despite the unlikely complexity of the modern thermonuclear device, you get much more energy out of a given amount of fuel than you did before. Which is ironic, because the modern warheads such as the W-88 are designed to have a maximum yield of just a few hundred kilotons, while the earlier weapons often yielded 10 megatons or more.

There's a few lessons to take away from all this. First, even though the first Teller - Ulam device was tested in 1952, and despite it's rather unlikely design, nobody has figured out how to improve on it or replace it. There's also a lesson here about letting the physics and math dictate the engineering. In order to make something work in the real world, you sometimes might have to compromise on the most elegant applied science to get the desired result. But most of all, it's kind of bizarre to consider that human culture could be ended for all time by these goofy, Rube Goldbergian bombs.
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Sing For Your Supper

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What is a song worth? How much should a consumer expect to pay to listen to a specific song? How much should the artist expect to be paid when the consumer listens to one of their songs? A few years ago, this was a question with an easy answer. You bought a cassette, or a CD, for $15 or $20 dollars. A dozen or so songs, widely varying in quality and even genre, on a flimsy plastic playback platform. Everyone had a sense that this was way too expensive, but the alternative was listening to the radio. Sure, that was free - you had to listen to the commercials, that was part of the deal - but you had no control over what was played, and when.

Then came the 90s, the internet and Napster. Now there was an alternative - not only was music suddenly free, but you could get just the songs you wanted. For the next decade, the record labels fought their customers tooth and nail for the right to make millions from music sales. And eventually, just as the download model killed the CD, streaming services (mostly) killed the download model. Whether subscription based or ad supported, streaming services pay the labels and the artists a great deal less than they made in the days when music consumers had no choice but to buy that $15.00 CD, even if they only liked one song on it.

Artists should definitely be able to make a living making music - the question of whether they would quit making music if they couldn't get paid at some level, as is often suggested, strikes me as the wrong question to ask, and unlikely in any case. But how much should any musician realistically expect to make? Prior to the rise of rock n roll in the late 1950s, musicians made a living. They could devote their lives to making and performing music, and in return they could expect to be paid. It was a blue collar, working class way to get by, but for people who felt the need to make music, it was a perfectly fair deal. Then came Top 40 radio, gold albums and sold out arenas, and at least a subset of artists (and their record label partners) became fabulously wealthy. They were millionaires with their own airplanes and an unlimited supply of drugs and groupies. Even if you weren't in that rarefied company, every rock n roll band knew they were just one number one hit away from paradise.

But is that what music is worth? Does it make sense that a band should make millions? It seems that we've been through an anomalous period in time when the limits of the distribution format allowed music to be artificially priced at irrational and unsustainable levels. Successful bands will always make a lot of money - in a tightly connected world where anything can go viral in 24 hours, the demand for a 'hot' band or performer will provide nearly instant wealth. But the system, the music industry, the streaming sites, the $0.99/song downloads, internet and terrestrial radio - these distribution formats have to work in such a way as to support the vast working class mainstream of musicians, singers and songwriters. The record labels have lost their cash cow, but they were never necessary to the process anyway. They were the parasite, sucking much of the lifeblood out of a relationship between artist and fan. That they should end up with nothing is a particularly satisfying form of justice.

There is a kind of free floating assumption that because musicians have become unimaginably wealthy in recent decades that this is some kind of norm, one that we must find a way to preserve. But that seems almost certainly wrong to me. So let's start with this - median household income in the US stands at a little over $50,000/year. I don't think anyone would begrudge a performer making 50K. Is there some reason that performer should expect to make MORE than that? How much more? More than a welder, a truck driver, a software engineer? Are musicians so much more valuable to society that they should expect to make twice the median income? Four times?

I don't know the answer. My gut tells me a musician with a decent following is going to make at least a hundred grand, and that's very much as it should be. I can't for the life of me understand why a musician should expect to make tens of millions of dollars anymore - the market can no longer generate that much cash. In looking around today, it looks like the whole system is settling into a functional equilibrium. Some viable mix of ad-supported streaming, subscription streaming, paid downloads and live performances, along with the other commercial opportunities available to talented artists, should make it possible for a musician to make a decent living doing what he or she loves to do, and while the era of the millionaire performer might be fading, that's still a pretty good outcome.
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Right to Exist

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Sounds good. What's it mean?

One of the primary political/diplomatic debates of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the discussion around Israel's 'right to exist'.  This is a curious construct, and one that deserves a great deal more consideration than is typically given. There really isn't this kind of debate over any other nation. Even in the case of controversial nascent nations such as Kosovo or South Sudan, there is no question of their 'right to exist' - merely a question of international recognition of that existence. Indeed, what entity can even grant a nation such a right? And wouldn't a Palestinian nation have a similar 'right'?

But Israel isn't appealing to some international body to vouchsafe its right to exist - it demands that its adversaries - Palestinian groups like Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah and regional nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia - concede simply that it has such a right. But the belief in a nation's right to exist is influenced by all manner of external and domestic political considerations. Did Great Britain believe the United States had a right to exist in the early decades of the 19th century? China certainly doesn't believe Taiwan has a right to exist. Does Kurdistan have a right to exist? How about Azawad?

To further complicate matters, a nation's right to exist in no way conveys any kind of protection, or guarantee of longevity. There was no real question of the Ottoman Empire's right to exist, right up until it ceased to exist and its territory and holdings were gobbled up by other powers. And all the years of my life, right up until that day in 1991 when it no longer existed, I never heard anyone question that the Soviet Union had a right to exist. Indeed, it seems that the reality of a nation's existence - along with the political, diplomatic, economic and military strength required for enforcement of said existence - is all that is required for the international community at large to assume that a nation has such a right.

One must assume that the goal of the Israeli leadership is to create a condition where their adversaries are not officially committed to Israel's ultimate destruction. And that would certainly make negotiations simpler, even if it makes no sense for an advanced, modern nuclear power to take seriously the aspirational goals of the decades old founding document of a ragtag rebel paramilitary. But when considered in broader terms, it seems an odd demand for the Israeli leadership to make. If, for example, Hezbollah was to announce tomorrow that they would accept Israel's right to exist, but continue to resist the occupation, does anyone for one minute truly think that would change anything? Would Israel accept that statement as Hezbollah's true goal? Iran has insisted for a decade, from every level of government and clergy that they do not want and would not develop nuclear weapons, and yet Tel Aviv has disregarded these repeated statements as lies and attempts to 'buy time' to develop nuclear weapons. For better or worse, they are not prone to take seriously any claims from their adversaries that run counter to their own institutional beliefs.

So to summarize. It's hard to understand what a national 'right to exist' might even mean. There is no body that can grant such a right. There is no effective way to deny that a nation has a right to exist. Some new nations don't receive universal recognition or diplomatic relations, but their existence is never discussed in terms of a right or lack thereof. A nation's existence itself constitutes its right to exist - that right is not granted by other nations or organizations acceptance, the right to existence is contained within existence itself. If it was any different, then we would be having this discussion about more than a single nation.
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Sweden vs. the Submarine

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Not the Loch Ness Monster

OK, nobody knows much, and what they do know they aren't saying, but this is just too good to pass up.  A few days ago the Swedish navy overheard a distress call - in Russian - from a vessel in the waters off Stockholm. The immediate assumption was that the vessel in question was a submarine, probably involved in some sort of of clandestine intelligence gathering mission. In the days that followed, the Swedish government claimed there had been at least 3 'credible sightings' of foreign underwater activities offshore, including the now infamous photo of a submersible craft on the surface taken by a civilian on the shore.

During the cold war, it was very common for the Soviet and Swedish navies to play a deadly game of cat & mouse in the waters of the Baltic Sea between Stockholm and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in Southern Lithuania. The Swedes were not know for playing around, and made liberal use of depth charges as they chased these subs from around their shores. In case there is some doubt about what the Swedish navy was seeing, in 1981 a Soviet Whiskey class submarine loaded out with nuclear weapons was stranded on a bar off Karlskrona in southeast Sweden, causing a massive diplomatic incident. After more than a week of tense negotiations, Swedish surface ships towed the submarine into deeper water where it was permitted to go free. More recently, a pair of Russian SU-24s penetrated Swedish airspace in what was seen as an intentional probe of Swedish air defenses. The Russian fighters were intercepted and escorted back to international airspace.

What would a Russian submarine be doing in the Baltic off Stockholm? Nobody's saying anything, but the unspoken assumption is that the major powers use specially equipped submarines to tap underwater fiber optic cables in order to intercept digital telephone and internet communications. The US has famously been doing so since the USS Halibut took part in Operation Ivy Bells in 1971.

At this point, if the Swedish navy hasn't found anything, they probably won't, but it's clear that some foreign entity is operating intelligence gathering submarines in the Western Baltic for purposes that the Swedes find suspicious or downright hostile. While all the indications - and the history - indicate that this is Russian activity, there are other nations, particularly the US and UK that could be operating in those same waters for the same reasons.
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And Then There Were Two

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The Giants Win The Pennant

Steroids stopped mattering in Major League Baseball in 2009. In 2010, baseball began to adjust to the post-steroid era. If you no longer can have a couple of sluggers who will hit 40+ home runs, what would the game look like? Some teams thought a return to team speed was in the offing. But they never noticed that team speed never really mattered either. What would replace the PED imbibing muscled up home run hitter? Surprisingly, it turned out to be the bullpen.

A few things have remained constant over the years. Starting pitching, solid defense, and depth. But when every team is effectively even, what wins games? Previously, it was the guys with the PEDs and the muscles and the giant heads who could hit balls out of any park in prodigious numbers. Take that away, and teams needed to figure out how to build, not just for the 162 game regular season, but for the short, brutal sprint of the post-season.

The operative assumption is that fewer runs will be scored. Games will be closer, and balls in play start to matter a great deal more. Conventional wisdom has to go out the window - you don't want to see a lot of pitches and get deep in the count. You want to put the ball in play, use the whole field and put pressure on the defense. Giants hitting coach Hensley Meulens preaches it every day - a flat swing that stays in the zone a long time, taking what the pitcher is giving you, using the whole field. It's not about a bloop and a blast, it's about a bloop and line drive and a bunt and a fly ball.

But assuming decent starting pitching, the real fight is the bullpens. The bullpens give managers the tools to neutralize rallies, and to shut down the big hitters. Relief pitchers have become professional specialists, and the weapons that managers use to negotiate the late innings and either hold a lead or keep the game close. And even better, we've learned that a disastrous start doesn't have to mean a loss, as a 'long man' like Yusmero Petite or Tim Lincecum can give you six innings and give the team a chance to win that game.

So now we have the very first true post-steroid era World Series. You have the Giants, looking for their third championship in five years. A team built as a reflection of their home field, a place where it's hard to hit home runs. A team built on pitching, defense and a "keep-the-line-moving" offense that feeds off of putting the ball in play and running the bases with intelligence and bravado. And you have the Royals, a team that built a decent starting rotation, a lights-out bullpen and a huge surfeit of team speed. Offenses will be fun to watch, with the Giant's 'ground attack' against the Royals speed on the bases. The Giants probably have the advantage in starting pitching, but the Royals bullpen might offset that. The Royals suffer when they come west, as they'll lose a hitter and have to bat their pitcher. The Giants in KC will have a natural DH for the first time in the last couple of post-seasons, with Michael Morse a natural power hitter off the bench.

The formula for both teams will be to score early and hold that lead. The nightmare scenario is a tie late and long, long extra-inning game like the crazy 18 inning game the Giants played in DC. But just as the real strength of both teams is their bullpen, it will only take one bullpen meltdown to tip the series irrevocably to one side or the other. Live by the sword, die by the sword. This has the potential to be the most intense, exciting world series in recent years. The 2010 series against the Rangers had some hope, but the 2012 sweep of the Tigers was fun, but it wasn't particularly fun to watch. This might very well be something altogether different.
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Centrifugal Force

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Well I certainly feel better

The nuclear negotiations with Iran went quite well for a long time. Then, like negotiations tend to do, they hit an impasse when the few really hard-to-resolve questions became the only questions left unresolved. In this case, those questions revolve around two issues with large ramifications. The first is around Iran's right to the Uranium fuel cycle. That is, how and how much Uranium Iran is allowed to process and enrich, to what level, and how large that stockpile should be. Much of the negotiation is around a limit to Iran's enrichment capacity, intended to slow down the time required to produce weapons grade fissile material. The problem is the guiding foundational document, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) doesn't include any legal limitations on the fuel cycle. It is assumed that all nations have the right to process and enrich uranium. The NPT deals in detail with the product of that process, fissile material. How it's handled, stored, managed and accounted for is the whole point of the document. So any agreement around Iran's right to the uranium fuel cycle would be outside the purview of the NPT, and should therefore be part of a separate multilateral treaty. But Iran doesn't have any obligation to agree to those provisions, and indeed would be setting a dangerous precedent if she were pressured economically to accept them.

The second unresolved set of issues are around missile research and development. Again, this is not an issue that is addressed by the NPT, although there is precedent for nations agreeing to limit missile capabilities, range and deployment. It is, however, a bit of goalpost-moving by the P5+1 in what was originally intended to be a treaty limiting Iran's nuclear program. There are a lot of different kinds of missiles, and a lot of reasons for countries to build them. At one end of the spectrum they are artillery, while at the other end they are space vehicles. In between are tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and strategic ballistic missiles. In the case of Iran, the concern, to whatever extent it's real, is nuclear capable missiles, and that's problematic on a number of levels. First, the problem of building a nuclear weapon small enough to be mounted on a missile is one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history. In theory, building a 1st generation nuclear weapon isn't particularly difficult, but those early generation weapons tend to be very large, very complex 'devices' that can barely be carried by the largest bombers. The first American atomic bombs weighed ten thousand pounds and were ten feet long. A nation has to have been building nuclear weapons for a number of years before they can achieve that level of miniaturization. And more importantly, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to separate the research on launching an orbital spacecraft from the research necessary to build an ICBM. It just isn't ok to tell a modern nation that you will strangle them economically over their space program.

So - two questions, two answers. First, take the missiles out of this treaty - if you want to do a missile treaty, especially around missile technology proliferation, do that under a separate agreement. Then you can talk about whatever limitations on enrichment and the fuel cycle you want, but you're not going to get to zero, and you shouldn't. Just make sure you are monitoring the fissile material and forget about the centrifuges - they don't matter.

The key point, which the P5+1 pretends not to understand, is that the current monitoring regime is wholly sufficient to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapons - something all evidence indicates they don't want to do anyway. From the Supreme Leader on down, they have stated repeatedly and unequivocally that they don't want nuclear weapons and aren't going to build them. Now clearly, even so, they would very much like to have the strategic deterrent that those weapons would provide them, but without the the difficulties and complexities that actually trying to build and test nuclear weapons would create for them. The goal is what's called 'breakout' capability - having the fuel cycle, the R&D and the applied engineering in place so that if a nuclear deterrent becomes necessary, it is a short sprint to build one. But here's the thing - in order to start that sprint, they'd have to kick out the IAEA inspectors and abrogate the NPT, just like North Korea did. So the whole world would know if they decided to build a weapon, and there would be plenty of time to decide what, if anything, to do about it.

Now, much of the negotiation has been around preventing this 'breakout' capability. I think that's clearly counterproductive and shortsighted. As long as Iran is comfortable with her capabilities under the inspection regimen, the status quo is a win. No new nuclear powers, very limited proliferation risk. And if that breakout capacity prevents Israel from unilaterally starting another war, then it has actually served US interests in addition to Iranian interests.  The US should accept the centrifuges, sign the deal, and end the sanctions. The additional crude on the market would further depress oil prices, improving the US economy while further punishing Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and, ironically, Iran. You end up with a diplomatic win, reduced regional tensions and an improved economy.

This just doesn't seem so hard to me.
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Calling the Balls and Strikes - Literally

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Honestly. He has NO idea what he's doing

It's playoffs season again in MLB, the best part of the most entertaining sport available. The regular season is its own special challenge, 162 games in 183 days throughout the spring and summer months. Then comes the playoffs - 1 elimination game, 1 best-of-five series and 2 best-of-seven series. The first team to win 11 games (12 for the wild card teams) is the champion. It becomes all about pitching and defense, every run is precious and as the fall weather descends home runs become ever more scarce. And more than any other time, the pressure is on the umpires to get the calls right, because one bad call can change the whole outcome. Which brings us to instant replay.

Replay in baseball has been a mixed bag. The whole challenge system is deeply flawed, and will ultimately have to be replaced.  But it has worked out well on the bases, where it's hard for an umpire to detect the very short time intervals between the arrival of the ball and the foot on the bag, and even harder to see precisely where and when a player is tagged. These things are good, because they make certain that the calls are correct, and they force the game itself to abandon lazy assumptions like the area play, where the second baseman need only be 'in the area' of second base, and the assumption that if the throw clearly beat the runner, the runner is out, even if the tag play was ambiguous. But there is one key area that is the greatest source of frustration, of consternation, and even ejections, and that area is absolutely, fundamentally off limits from replay. I'm speaking, of course, about balls and strikes.

The most egregious part of the game of baseball is balls and strikes. There are two fundamental problems with using humans to call balls and strikes. First is they refuse to enforce a standardized strike zone. That's unbearably ludicrous in and of itself. What if every football referee had a different end zone? And second is the wide difference between umpires. The rulebook defines the strike zone, but absolutely NO umpire calls strikes based on the legal zone - note that if they did every hitter would be ejected from the game by the third inning - and EVERY umpire has a different zone. To the point where part of the scouting process before a series is to study and document the way the various umpires on a given crew call balls and strikes.

What strikes me as most odd about this situation is the near universal insistence that calling balls and strikes remain the exclusive province of the umpire, even as an automated technology is on display every day and night on virtually ever game broadcast. Using nothing more than cameras, they can display the precise location and trajectory of every pitch. And if you wanted even more precision, it would be simple to put an RFID chip in the ball and sensors in the ground between the mound and home plate. In other words, the most perfected technology available is precisely the one that is universally rejected, in favor of a disastrous and chaotic human factor.

The point is simply this. The single best thing you could do to improve the quality and consistency of MLB games is to let modern robotic systems call the balls and strikes. Hitters would be able to learn a single zone, pitchers would always know where the 'black' was on the plate, and there would be no more tedious arguing and tantrum throwing over the strike zone. For me, that would make the games much more interesting.
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Righteous Wrongs...

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It might feel good, but it's still wrong

Here in America, we are to a very large extent safe, wealthy and healthy. Compared to much of the rest of the world, our experience is not of violence, death, hunger and disease, but a life so luxurious and sheltered that we routinely blow small annoyances up into major personal problems, only to have someone point out - correctly - that these are 'first world problems'. Rather than dealing with grinding, subsistence level poverty and disease, our number one health problems - obesity and related chronic conditions - stem from comfort and abundance. And situated geographically in North America, we have been completely free from invasion and military attack for well over a century.

Unfortunately, this can, and often does, lead to a twisted, insufficiently nuanced understanding of the choices and aspirations of billions of people around the world, people so desperately poor and helpless we can't even begin to imagine their lives. We end up overlaying our first world beliefs and priorities over the immediate needs and dreams of people whose lives are so utterly alien to our experience. In some cases this kind of cultural arrogance and experiential ignorance leads to doing stupid and counterproductive things, and in many cases it leads us to insist that things WE perceive as 'wrong' must be stopped, without the capacity for understanding that the people we see 'suffering' from these activities are wildly grateful for them. Let me provide a few examples.

First, there are 'animal rights'. Ludicrous on the face of it, the basic human value of not injuring or hurting another living thing for no reason but the hurting itself is broadly understood across cultures and is entirely sufficient to prevent the most egregious acts of inter-species cruelty. Sadistic behavior is by definition inhuman, and the laws and norms we have in place in our society are sufficient to prevent what are, by their very nature, aberrant behaviors.

But in our comfort and certainty, in our deep love for our pampered pets and our fantasy Disney-esque view of nature in situ, we have created another category altogether. No longer should animals be treated well because of who WE are, but now they must be treated well because to do otherwise would violate their rights. RIGHTS? How does a living thing that cannot communicate, that does not understand itself, or its place in the world - how does that creature have rights? How are they defined? Enforced? Litigated? And how universal are these rights? Is it just for the higher mammals? Is it somehow dependent on brain capacity? Does the 'cuteness factor' have any bearing on the decision?

Hunting is often mentioned as something that people 'shouldn't do'. As if those plastic wrapped chunks of meat appeared in the refrigerator in Safeway immaculately, as if nothing had to die and nobody actually killed an animal for your Applebees Ribs. People going out into the wilderness and stalking and hunting an animal are somehow perceived as cruel and destructive, no matter how often they might fail to ever fire a shot. Indeed, hunting is often conflated with endangered species and extinction. Lets be very clear - extinction is based on habitat destruction, pollution and toxins and disruption of the food chain. Ask these people who rail against rich hunters taking exotic game in Africa if they understand how the game preserves, conservation programs and anti-poaching organizations are funded. Almost certainly, they'll be unaware that it is the hunters themselves, particularly the rich ones, who provide virtually all the financial resources to protect and manage global wildlife populations. Why do they do that? Incentives. Unlike those who post pictures of hunters posing with their trophies on Facebook and call them names, hunters know they have to actually step up and invest in wildlife conservation if those species are to be their for their children and grandchildren to hunt. But, as Americans, we don't like complexities, and we struggle to think through nuance. We like a nice, black & white narrative where we know who the bad guys are because they ALWAYS wear black hats.

Similarly, we here in wealthy, comfortable America are always ready to rail in spittle-flecked outrage at another third world sweatshop. We demand they pay a better wage, and treat their employees better, or that they be forcibly closed down. And in all our self-righteous anger at a system that allows a few people to make millions on the sweat and suffering of these helpless, illiterate employees, we never seem to notice one key factor. The people in these third world nations flock to work in these sweat shops, because the money they can earn in a regular manufacturing job is life-changing, not only for them, but for their entire families. It's the difference between indoor plumbing, basic nutrition, clean water and even rudimentary health care, and the previous generations of rural hardship, disease, lack of basic sanitation and early death.

It's true - it's not a good life, or even a decent one. It is hard, cruel and unfair. But the key factors that are so easy to miss from a soft sofa in front of a flat screen TV is that, first, it's a huge improvement, even for those who are working in the sweatshop, and second and most important, it is the first step toward a better life for their children. The process is always the same - manual labor manufacturing jobs flow to where labor costs are lowest, but then those manufacturing centers attract investment, and knowledge workers, and more complex manufacturing jobs, and local support services, and higher wages. A middle class grows where before there was only subsistence level agriculture, and the low wage manufacturing jobs move on, seeking new places to start the virtuous circle all over again. Of course it's about greed, but it's the harsh truth that the people never receive higher wages until there is a consumer economy, and just like democracy, that depends on institutions and processes that must be built over time. You can't just demand they exist today.
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Where in the World is Kim Jong un?

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Hey, she's his sister. I'm sure he can trust her.

Yesterday was National Day in North Korea, the anniversary of the founding of the Workers Party. In a shocking break with tradition, in the annual midnight visit to the Kumsusan mausoleum in Pyongyang, the delegation of North Korea's highest ranking political and military leadership did not include the rotund dynastic leader of that secretive nation. It has now been 40 days since he has been seen in public, and even the state media has described him as being 'in discomfort', fueling all manner of speculation about the goings-on behind the scenes in the most opaque government in the world.

The speculation falls into two categories: The state of his health and the state of his government. Due to his weight and lifestyle, many have speculated that he suffers from related chronic conditions from gout to diabetes. There has also been some indications that he recently required surgery on a leg or ankle. Those seem quite plausible, but none of them should prevent him from making a public appearance if he wants to - however stage-managed it might be.

The other concern is some type or level of coup or change in practical or official leadership. Several names are routinely mentioned. Hwang Pyong-so is a General that has risen through the ranks of Kim's advisers and, primarily based on his leadership of the North Korean delegation to the closing ceremonies of the 2014 Asian games, has been seen as either a top adviser or perhaps a direct challenger to Kim and the leadership. Interestingly, there is also talk of the increasing power and importance of Kim's younger sister, Kim Yo-jong. She appears to be a truly trusted adviser, and speculation has run the gamut, from her running the government during Kim's medical recovery to her replacing him as a viable dynastic successor, as she is the daughter of Kim Jong-il.

The greatest challenge to a military coup is the longstanding cult of personality built up around the Kim family. Five generations have been fed a steady, endless diet of the greatness of their leaders and the necessity of having them running the state - surrounded as they are, on all sides, by existential threats. It would be one thing for the military to take power - they are by far the most powerful and wealthy organization in North Korea, and the troops under their command know the costs of hesitating to follow orders. So once they took power, the challenge would be to present a figurehead that wasn't a member of the family that could exercise power with credibility. Working to their advantage would be the fact that the people have been indoctrinated to never question the edicts from the capital. And in a perfect world, if Kim were to die - without ever re-appearing in public - a grieving Kim Yo-jong could assume the reigns of power - tightly controlled by the Generals and party leadership - as the direct descendant of Dear Leader I.
 

Why does it matter?

There are two issues around North Korean leadership - one immediate, and one further down the road. The immediate issue is, not to put too fine a point on it, war. Tensions are fairly high, with a recent exchange of fire across the border, and despite some indications of some openness to negotiations, no one is sure which direction relations are going. In addition, no one knows who wants what - it could be that Kim wants to improve relations with the west and the Generals don't, or it could equally be that Kim wants to order more provocations and the Generals are afraid he's going to start a war that will destroy them.

The future concern is the stability of North Korea as a nation. It's an economic basket case, with insufficient agriculture, no real manufacturing capacity, no international trade and no consumer base. Massively militarized, deeply corrupt and dependent upon China for basic viability, North Korea is one destabilizing shock away from utter collapse. And collapse would be chaotic and ugly in the extreme. The Generals and Party leaders would grab the hard currency and liquid assets and run for it. There are also nuclear weapons and weapons grade fissile material that would be impossible to secure.  Millions of refugees would flood across the border into Southern China and northern South Korea - bad anytime, but horrific if it happened in a harsh Northeast Asian winter. And just as the reunification of Germany destroyed the German economy for a decade, the costs of normalizing and stabilizing a suddenly unified Korea would be staggering. Not even to mention that China would have to be a partner, and the last thing they want is a prosperous, western-allied Korea on their southern border. It's hard to guess what kind of Frankenstein's monster nation will emerge from that inevitable collapse.
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Hatred is a Much More Dangerous Disease than Ebola

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From over here in fortress America, we watch large portions of the world tearing itself apart over the same old tribal, racial, ethnic, sectarian, linguistic and nationalist hatreds that have driven generations to kill their neighbors for - well, for generations. We watch the death and destruction, the inexplicable atrocities and the irrational madness that grips entire societies and makes it impossible for them to live together in peace. They are locked in a seemingly eternal dance of bloodletting so bizarre and convoluted it's necessary for their leaders to tell them simplistic stories of magic and betrayal to make the children follow their parents into the charnel house. And we sit on our couch, clicking over to CNN to see today's bloody images and cluck in our superiority and diversity, seldom even noticing when we equate inhumanity with sub-humanity. "The world is a crazy place" we say to each other. "Sure, we have problems over here, but surely we'll find a way to work them out without resorting to industrial scale murder". And with that we click over to "American Idol", smug in our reassurance that we are a better, more rational, peaceful people, and eventually we will prevail over the madness.

There's a hoary old saw about not being able to see the forest for the trees. It's a useful metaphor for describing the inability to truly see a problem that one is party to.  About being so close to chaos that it looks like stability. When you think about it, for all the ultimate irrationality of the madness in places like Syria and Gaza, there is at least an inherent internal consistency to it. Those people are NOT like us. They DON'T believe what we believe. It's THEM that hate us - we're just fighting for our survival here.

Now look at the budding civil conflict in America. Based on nothing historical, nothing even real, we have created two 'sides', each 100% invested in the destruction of the other. Each side developed an ideology, originally a framework for public policy debates, but now growing into something larger and uglier - an identity, a community, a belief system, an entire self contained worldview that increasingly cannot even tolerate the existence of the other side. With typical American inability to grasp the concept of irony, and with the American's passionate embrace of crude marketing-speak, these tribes have chosen the names 'Liberal' and 'Conservative'.

Now, of course you're saying 'but mikey, it's those right-wing fascists who refuse to compromise, who won't allow any governance that doesn't further their radical agenda', and, of course, you're right. But that doesn't change the calculation - if there are two sides, and one refuses any kind of compromise, not matter how one-sided, is that functionally any different than if BOTH sides embraced that same doctrine? The problem here is not that one group is wrong and one group is right. Go ask the Sunnis, the Shiites, ISIS, al-Assad, General Sisi, Bibi Netanyahu, any of them who is wrong and who is right. There is NEVER anyone in a tribal conflict that will say upon a moment of reflection "y'know, those other guys have a point, we're really being assholes here, but that's the way the world works".

The point I'm trying to make here is we have, as Americans, created this imaginary tribal structure out of public and economic policy arguments, and instead of solving them the way nations always do, we have built out an entire cultural identity around these disagreements. And one of the key premises to these tribal identities is that the other side represents an existential threat to 'our' way of life and 'we' cannot live alongside them, they must be destroyed. Now ask yourself: How does this story end? Is there a path back to an America where elections mattered and leaders governed? Perhaps I lack imagination, but I can't see it. We're one, or perhaps two, triggering events away from widespread bloodletting. You see it in conservative rants against 'socialist libtards', but rest assured, there are many liberals who quietly nod their heads, load their magazines and mutter "bring it on, bigot".

When it happens, due to the unnecessary and destructive 2nd amendment, it will be loud and bloody. But there will have been no logic to it. No historical basis, no linguistic basis, and while ethnicity will have been a factor, it won't be the basis for the civil war. The basis for the civil war will be a set of lies, assumptions and beliefs that were allowed to build themselves into something seen as utterly worth killing one's neighbor over. And a century later, historians will still be struggling to explain how we let this happen.
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