The Futurist

"Nobody Who is an Immigrant or the Descendant of Immigrants has any Business Voting Republican. Nobody."

I was wading through some blogs, and it appears that someone named Brad DeLong has made the extraordinary statement above.  Read the link for context, of course, to be entirely fair.  What makes this sentence worthy of examination is that he is a Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, and was even Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury.  A brilliant economist to be sure.  And yet :

"Nobody Who is an Immigrant or the Descendant of Immigrants has any Business Voting Republican.  Nobody."

Saying immigrants are often better served by Democrats is one thing, but saying something this absolute is quite another.  As someone who is a US-born child of immigrants from India, I hope Professor DeLong can provide guidance to help me decide how to vote in the future, by answering the following questions :

1) Aren't over 90% of Americans the descendants of voluntary immigrants?  Don't almost all of those Americans have ancestors that immigrated after the Civil War?  Does Professor DeLong wish to amend his statement in any way to be more specific?

2) Given the first question, does that mean that immigrants and descendants of immigrants should not vote for even moderate Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani, or John McCain, under any circumstances?

3) If I believe in low taxes, and I support both Clinton's tax cut on capital gains in 1997 and Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, am I wrong to do so?  Isn't that a moderate position if both Clinton and Bush have cut taxes?

4) Why are Indians so supportive of George W. Bush?  Are they just uninformed, or is this position consistent with their cultural identity and socio-economic value system?

5) There are Republicans in congress who are the children of immigrants, such as Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American.  Is his decision to be a Republican uninformed, or can his choice be respected as a well-considered one, given that he is a Rhodes Scholar as well? 

6) I was a swing voter in the 1990s, but the events of 9/11/01 are what turned me into a supporter of Republican candidates.  Issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc. don't inspire me to come out in support of either side, so I am primarily a single-issue voter.  Why, given my background, is my choice to vote Republican the wrong one?

I request that Brad DeLong answer these questions, and engage me in a polite debate on these points.  I might learn something, and Brad DeLong might too. 

Virtual Touch Brings VR Closer

Scientists have created a touch interface that, while smooth, can provide the user with a simulated sensation of a variety of surfaces, including that of a sharp blade or needle (from MIT Technology Review).

By controlling the direction in which pressure is applied to the skin when a user's finger is run across the smooth surface, the brain can be tricked into feeling a variety of pointed or textured objects where there are none.  Essentially, this is the touch equivalent of an optical illusion. 

While this technology is still in the earliest stages of laboratory testing, within 15 years, it will be commercially viable.  By then, it will find many uses in medicine, defense, education, entertainment, and the arts.  Examples of practical applications include training medical students in surgical techniques, or creating robots with hands that can perfectly duplicate human characteristics. 

This will be one of the critical components of creating compelling and immersive virtual reality environments, and the progress of this technology between now and 2020 will enable prediction of the specific details and capabilities of virtual reality systems for consumers.  A fully immersive VR environment available to the average household has already been predicted here, and now one more key component appears to be well on track. 

Update : More from Businessweek

Terrorism, Oil, Globalization, and the Impact of Computing

Three things have happened in the last few years, which are now converging with a fourth inexorable trend to make major changes in consumer behaviour, mostly for the better. 

1) September 11, 2001 showed the world the destruction that a small number of terrorists could cause by hijacking unsuspecting passenger planes.  The subsequent increase in security almost did not stop 10 other UK to US flights from being exploded above the Atlantic by British-born terrorists disguising liquid bomb ingredients in soft-drink containers.  The terrorists will continue to get more and more creative, and will eventually destroy an airliner in an act of terror.  This fear now hangs over all passengers.  At the same time, security at airports is increasing pre-flight periods to up to 3 hours in duration.  Multiply this by the millions of business passengers per year, and the loss of billions of dollars of productivity is apparent. 

2) Oil at $70/barrel is making air travel more expensive for cost-conscious businesses.  I happen to believe that $70/barrel is the optimal price for oil for the US, where the economic drag is not enough to cause a recession, but the price is high enough for innovation in alternative energy technologies to accelerate.  Nonetheless, economic creative destruction always has casualties that have to make way for new businesses, and airlines might bear a large share of that burden. 

3) At the same time, globalization has increased the volume and variety of business conducted between the US and Asia, as well as between other nations.  More jobs involve international interaction, and frequent overseas travel.  This demand directly clashes with the forced realities of items 1) and 2), creating a market demand for something to ease this conflicting pressure, which leads us to...

4) The Impact of Computing, which estimates that the increasing power and number of computing devices effectively leads to a combined gross impact that increases by approximately 78% a year.  One manifestation of the Impact is the development of technologies like Webex, high-definition video conferencing over flat-panel displays, Skype, Google Earth, Wikimapia, etc.  These are not only tools to empower individuals with capabilities that did not even exist a few years ago, but these capabilities are almost free.  Furthermore, they exhibit noticeable improvements every year, rapidly increasing their popularity.

While the life blood of business is the firm handshake, face-to-face meeting, and slick presentation, the quadruple inflection point above might just permanently elevate the bar that determines which meetings warrant the risks, costs, and hassle of business travel when there are technologies that can enable many of the same interactions.  While these technologies are only poor substitutes now, improved display quality, bandwidth, and software capabilities will greatly increase their utility.

The same can even apply to tourism.  Google Earth and WikiMapia are very limited substitutes for traveling in person to a vacation locale.  However, as these technologies continue to layer more detail onto the simulated Earth, combined with millions of attached photos, movies, and blogs inserted by readers into associated locations, a whole new dimension of tourism emerges. 

Imagine if you have a desire to scale Mount Everest, or travel across the Sahara on a camel.  You probably don't have the time, money, or risk tolerance to go and do something this exciting, but you can go to Google Earth or WikiMapia, and click on the numerous videos and blogs by people who actually have done these things.  Choose whichever content suits you, from whichever blogger does the best job. 

See through the eyes of someone kayaking along the coast of British Columbia, walking the length of the Great Wall of China, or spending a summer in Paris as an artist.  The possibilities are endless once blogs, video, and Google Earth/WikiMapia merge.  Will it be the same as being there yourself?  No.  Will it open up possibilities to people who could never manage to be there themselves, or behave in certain capacities if there?  Absolutely.

Related :

The Next Big Thing in Entertainment

100 Mbps Broadband for $40/month by 2010

Who Does America View Favorably?

Earlier, I had written an article titled Who Hates America?, discussing how America is perceived by various countries, and then drawing corelations between the nature of these societies themselves and their likely opinion of American society.  The chart of opinions on America constructed by the Pew Research Center is included again here for easy reference.  This article continues to receive heated opinions on both sides of the debate across the blogosphere.

Now, I present the exact reverse of that article, in assessing how America perceives other countries in the world.  A survey conducted by Angus Reid Consultants asks Americans if they feel the relationship the United States has with particular countries is favorable or not.  Many of the same countries queried in the Pew survey are also queried here, allowing for easy cross-comparison.  Anti-Americans will be irritated by the notion that Americans could even have the right to judge other countries, what with moral equivalence and all, which makes this examination even more worthwhile.

It seems that the countries that view America favorably have a strong corelation with those that Americans view favorably, and vice-versa, deepening the evidence that these opinions may be based on the same basic dimensions of innate psychological traits of cultures, and thus more deep-seated and well-informed rather than merely fashionable.  Americans consider Britain to be their strongest ally.  This is unsurprising, given Britain's near-unconditional support of US military efforts for the last century.  Beyond this, other favorably viewed countries are fellow democratic, secular members of the Anglosphere like Canada and India.  Given that India was the most pro-US country in the Pew survey, the jump in American favorable perceptions of India from 52.1% to 54.8% from just March to June 2006 indicates a warming of Indo-US ties in both directions.  This is of massive significance on political, economic, military, and ideological levels.  The large drop in how Mexico is perceived by Americans is also evidence of the Mexican government treating their practice of dumping their unwanted citizens into the US as an entitlement.  The American people are that much closer to getting fed up with Mexico's abuse of America's accomodative stance, and they should be very careful about pushing the generosity of the American public too far. 

Also unsurprising is that nations that view America unfavorably are also the ones that Americans view unfavorably.  These tend to be communist countries, dictatorships, or terror-sponsoring rogue regimes.  A core anti-American shibboleth is that 'the rest of the world hates America'.  Indeed, the undemocratic regimes that the anti-Americans tacitly support do indicate this, but democratic, liberal societies do not.  This complies with the anti-American opposition to the success of democracy in general throughout the world (siding with Hizbollah against Israel, Pakistan against India, North Vietnam against South Vietnam, etc.).

Remember, be judged by the character of those who like you, but also those who dislike you.  By this measure, America's moral standing looks quite robust. 

Why is Bush Becoming Soft?

One of our fears has appeared to come true - the tradition of a second-term President to move to the 'middle'.  When Bill Clinton moved to the middle in his second term, it was an improvement, and he passed a tax cut on capital gains in 1997.  However, Bush moving to the middle has been the opposite of the majority of the country had hoped for, and is a contributing factor to his approval rating being much lower than in 2003 and 2004.

Why might this be?  Is it because Bush has not continued the same aggressive tactics in the War on Terror that he took in his first term, despite the expectations of those who voted for him on his prior strength on this issue?  For example, he has not taken as tough a line on Iran that he took with Afghanistan and Iraq, despite Iran's provocative actions of meddling with the US in Iraq, and support of Hezbollah against Israel?  Many Americans recognize the danger that Iran's nuclear weapons program poses to many democratic countries in the world, and 52% of Americans support military action to disarm Iran.  These Americans are dismayed at Bush's passivity, despite the fact that we have Iran in a vulnerable position, effectively fighting a two-front war, with the added distraction of US and NATO troops present in neighboring Afghanistan. 

This does not mean I am advocating a full-scale war with Iran, but it is important to note that their bargaining position is much weaker than ours is (despite our ongoing campaign in Iraq).  For all the media hype of Iran being a powerful nation having 3 times Iraq's population, note that during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran was unable to overcome a stalemate with Iraq even after 8 years of fighting from 1980-88.  A conventional war against Iran (not regime change) would be no less one-sided than Gulf War I. 

Cox and Forkum always says it best.  President Bush has gone from this (March 2003) :

To this (2006) :

Lieberman Loses : The Democratic Party Moves Further From Electability

Joe Lieberman, the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000, and who nearly won, has lost the Democratic Primary for his Senate Seat in Connecticut.  A tremendous amount of funding and campaign effort was donated to his far-left opponent, Ned Lamont.  Lieberman will now run as an Independent in the November general election, and probably win.  The net result will simply be the loss of a seat for the Democrats and the addition of one more Independent seat. 

More importantly, this has moved the center of gravity of the Democratic party leftward.  Essentially, any Democrat that supports the Iraq War and Israel in its war against Hizbollah is unwelcome by the left wing that now dominates the party.  This, despite the fact that the most powerful Democrats of them all, the Clintons, supported Lieberman in his primary campaign.  Make no mistake, the events of today make Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid vastly more difficult, as the far left will seek to discredit her as well.

Think about which politicians are considered to be near the middle of the ideological spectrum in America today.  Names that come to mind are John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Joe Lieberman.  Of these, three are comfortably in the Republican Party, and two are serious Presidential candidates.  By contrast, the only one who was a Democrat has been pushed out.  Which party has the bigger tent that covers the middle?  Remember, the party that controls the middle is the one that wins elections.  No matter how vocal the extremists are, they cannot gain a majority of the vote. 

An eloquent essay from the Irish Trojan narrates the decision of a moderate to finally part company with what the Democratic Party has become. 

One last thought comes to mind, however.  For 6 years, extreme Bush-haters have failed to come to terms with the results of the 2000 election, insisting it was 'stolen' and that Joe Lieberman was the rightful Vice President.  Now that the same extremists no longer like Joe Lieberman, does this mean they are no longer angry about Florida 2000?  You can ask : "You are still upset that he did not become the VP six years ago, but you don't even want him as a Senator?"

Be sure to ask this to the next extreme leftist you meet, it should be funny.