Let me start with a brief story.
The Biggest Guy flew back from Virginia yesterday, and because I’m a cheap bastard, his flight took him through three airports and two airlines (thanks Orbitz!!). When I picked him up, of course his bag was nowhere to be seen.
So we walked over to the United Airlines baggage office, and walked up to the counter where three bored-looking, seemingly inattentive staff members waited. We got Angela, who took the information, and noted that the bag didn’t seem to exist in their computer system, and then walked away.
I put myself into ‘deal with hostile bureaucracy’ mode, and waited for her to come back, with the ‘we can’t find it, it’s not our problem’ response, and readied myself for a painful escalation up the bureaucracy.
Instead, she came back, said that she’d confirmed that the bag hadn’t made the Chicago-LA flight, and that it was probably with US Air. But she’d called US Air, hadn’t been able to get to the baggage desk, had called the front desk, and a supervisor was headed over to the baggage office. She had us fill out a form, and said she’d stay on it and make sure the bag was chased down; United would take responsibility and they’d see that it was delivered to my house.
And this morning, it’s in our house, sitting in the foyer.
And the reason is that the person responsible for dealing with the customer had the initiative and flexibility to pick up the phone and chase something across airlines, rather than explain ‘not in our system, never got on our plane’, which is what I expected.
One approach to the War on Terrorism is to built giant formally structured security systems, backed by massive, centralized technology, and as the complex, ‘wicked’ world keeps asking questions the system can’t ask, add pages and pages to the three-ring binders of regulations and policies the minimum-wage front-line employees must follow. You can hire and retain them based on their ability to follow the rules, even when it means taking the wire clippers away from a uniformed Special Forces soldier—who has his mouth wired shut because he’s wounded, and needs the cutters to cut the wires in the event he has to throw up. Or who want to take away the Congressional Medal of Honor from an 80-year old man flying to give a speech at the Air Force Academy.
It will involve a massive investment in machines that will be rushed into production and still be obsolete long before we have finished paying for them.
I obviously don’t think much of this model in this application. I think it is based on old, Taylorian models in which you attempt to break the process into a finite series of discrete steps, and train the human portions of the system in performing these exact steps as precisely and efficiently as possible. It also removes the necessity for any kind of judgment or expertise on the part of the employee.
I’ll suggest that there is an alternative model, based on the kind of flexible, adaptive model I am talking about here.
One of the benefits of doing this in public and slowly is that sometimes people finish your thoughts for you.
Bill Whittle, another Angelino, first slagged me – ‘My God, man! What color is the sky on the strange planet where you live?’ and then made my blogging weekend. (The non-blogging part was made over dim sum by my sons, fiancée, brother and mom) I can’t imagine a better feeling from doing this – well, I could get paid – than to trigger a perfect expression of one an idea you’re struggling with in someone else.

Rather than issuing today’s color of anxiety warning, how much better would it be to offer some realistic training and intelligence to normal citizens so that the defenses are everywhere. If United 93 taught us anything, it’s that the American sense of self-reliance, determination, courage and patriotism has not been bred out of us after all. We are the white blood cells. Remember that pilot who told his passengers a few days after 9/11 that once the cabin doors were shut, no one could help us but ourselves, so get to know the person sitting next to you? That is exactly the kind of mindset I am talking about.
I’m a little short on time here, but I feel that you don’t fight a nanobot invasion with the Great Wall of China.
Okay, so I’m starving and metaphorically challenged at the moment. But that is to say that a monolithic Office of Homeland Security is ill-suited to defend against such low-signature infiltrations. What we really need is a system as decentralized and flexible as Al Qaeda’s, one that is so diffuse and interwoven into the American fabric that it can detect intrusions much as an immune system can. Such a network of private citizens could then call in the airstrikes (FBI, etc) when they get a solid hit on the detection network. Furthermore, it seems that such a diffuse, low-power system would be far less prone to abuses since the amount of power concentrated would be small.
I am NOT talking about armbanded Nazis who previously sat on Condominium Associations being deputized to snoop on neighbors. God knows that China has shown what a horror these neighborhood snitches can be. But surely raising the awareness of the public and inculcating a spirit of action when a threat is detected could do us nothing but good.
-Bill Whittle, via email

I doubt that I could say it better. ‘you don’t fight a nanobot invasion with the Great Wall of China’.
So what does this mean? We need to find models that rely on the intelligence and abilities of the Angelas of the world. She didn’t let me down, and it is the folks like her…not remote administrators creating inflexible policies…who have the best chance of defending us.
Next, I’ll talk about how a ‘liberal’ set of policies could work in the same ways, and over the next week, I’ll try and make concrete policy and tactical suggestions.

Apologies, if you’re looking for parts 2 and 3 … I forgot that today was Father’s Day, and my sons didn’t. Blogging will resume when eating and gameplaying stop.

John Derbyshire, in the NRO, talks about the issues of culture and development in the Middle East and Africa. (thanks to Kathy Kinsley)

Meryl Yourish defends reading, here. All three of my sons read a lot; partly because we have no broadcast TV in the house.
The Littlest Guy, who is 5, read himself to sleep last night with ‘Barney and the Dinosaur’; when we went in to turn out his lights, he was asleep with his head on the book. Biggest Guy was just assigned reading as a part of his honors program at UVA, where he’ll be a freshman next year. ‘Ender’s Game’, which he read when he was about 12, and wrote papers about in high school (hint: I think he’ll do well with the book). Middlest Guy is talking about writing his own RPG.
They aren’t geniuses; they just have the habit of reading.
Kill your TV. It’s the best thing you can do as a parent.

OK, I’ve chatted off and on about ‘a new kind of liberalism’, and from the email I’ve gotten, most of what I think I’ve engendered has been confusion. Part of that is probably because I’m confused myself, and just working these ideas out, in a public playing field. So it’s time to stretch a bit and see what we can do.
Here’s some background on what I’m talking about, and I’ll warn you that I’m about to get academic on your ass.
Everyone has heard of ‘chaos theory’, ‘emergence’, and the such at this point. James Gleick wrote a good book on the subject, as did John Holland. I was blessed to have studied with the guy who I consider to be the unsung founder of the discipline, Horst Rittel. He wrote a series of papers on the subject in the early 70’s, several along with Mel Webber, that I believe really opened the door.
The key concept they introduced was that of ‘tame’ and ‘wicked’ problems. I have the monograph somewhere, and so will quote from memory, which I hope to improve when I dig it out. ‘Tame’ problems are those which can be accurately modeled in a repeatable fashion in limited, closed systems…a classical physics experiment, for example. Millions of different labs all over the world can do the ‘rolling ball down the ramp’ experiment, and the results will be essentially the same. All of modern experimental science is founded, fundamentally, on the concept that physical phenomena can be reduced to tame experiments.
‘Wicked’ problems, on the other hand, inherently cannot be modeled in a reductive fashion, and cannot be simplified into models which can be readily analyzed in an isolated environment. In effect, to model a wicked problem, you have to completely reproduce the thing modeled, much like Borges’ famous map.
Problems in street traffic analysis, economics, weather prediction are ‘wicked’ problems.
Advances in math applications and computer science, however, have enabled us to come up with ways to predictively model wicked systems, and that, I’ll argue, is the foundation of ‘chaos theory’.
Much of the modeling today is done with what are called ‘cellular automata’.

Cellular automata (CAs) are dynamical systems that are discrete in state, space, and time. In the simplest case, a CA consists of a one-dimensional lattice of identical cells, each of which can be in one of a number of states. Again in the simplest case, let’s say each cell can be either white (0) or black (1). At each time step, all cells in the lattice update their state simultaneously by using a fixed update rule which is the same for each cell. This update rule takes as input the local neighborhood configuration of a given cell (i.e., the current states of the cell and its r neighbors on either side), and returns the new state of the cell depending on this local neighborhood configuration. Thus, this update rule can be represented as a lookup table which lists all possible local neighborhood configurations together with the corresponding new cell states.
Different update rules (or lookup tables) give rise to different kinds of CA dynamics when this update rule is iterated over time, ranging from fixed point or simple periodic behavior to highly complex or even “chaotic”. The particular behavior of a CA can be visualized in a space-time diagram, in which the CA lattice configurations are plotted over time, usually starting with a random initial configuration.

What we’re doing here is modeling highly complex systems by assuming that they can best be represented by a large number of autonomous actors and a set of rules governing their behavior and interaction.
Wolfram, in his new book, seems to be making the argument that this isn’t just a representation, but the real underpinning of much of modern math and physical science (note: haven’t read the book yet, would love to hear from someone who has).
I’ll argue that it provides a great metaphor for understanding human behavior and social systems, and right now in looking at the appropriate response in the WoT.
Lots of us are reaching for that metaphor, including the Gedankenpundit and Oxblog, in their discussion. Joe Katzman is tying it to technological changes in his discussion of 4th Generation warfare
Instapundit says:

In this, as I’ve said before, the learning curve, and the ability to learn and act faster than the enemy, is the key. American civilians, using civilian technology and their own inherent ability to self-organize, were able to neutralize the terrorist plan in 109 minutes, as Flight 93 demonstrates.

I talk about it here.
You can start to see where I’m going with this; think of flexible groups of autonomous individuals, rather than tightly structured drill teams.
I’ll try and get some time this weekend to link this to a new conception of liberalism…I’ll call it ‘engineered’ liberalism, in honor of all the engineerists out there. But here are some of the concrete concepts to play with. I’m sure folks who know this better than me will chime in, and I welcome comments and corrections.
It’s late, I owe a bunch of links in this, I’ll fill them in later…
Some useful definitions.

Just finished Suspects, a novel by film critic David Thompson.
It’s not well-known, but it’s brilliant if you’ve a patient mind. The book is in the form of a series of interconnected fictional capsule biographies (3 adjectives!!) of film characters. It begins with Jake Gittes, of Chinatown, ends with George Bailey, and in the arc between perfectly describes a view of America as a giant dysfunctional family.
Not only a fun read, but my Netflix queue just got filled waay up.

If you don’t read anything else on the web today.
Robert Pirsig’s ‘Cruising Blues and Their Cure’, originally printed in Esquire magazine in 1977.

From Fly Over Country:

Some people, and I mean liberal in the current defintion, think they can dream up the way it supposed to be, snap their fingers, and the whole world will be remade over in their image. Fishing allows me to not fall into that mindset. Fishing, like hunting, allows me to plug in on the ground floor of a market economy and begin to piece together the relationship between what I get from the grocery store and the forces it took to get it there. Running cattle offers the same sort of insight, only it is a lot more messy and the potential for getting hurt is exponentially bigger. But, that is for another time.

It’s not just liberals, folks. Conservatives, stupidly, believe the same thing.
It’s a whole way of governing, it doesn’t work very well, and we’re living with it. It needs to change.
Robert Pirsig (‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’), wrote a brilliant essay called ‘The Cruising Blues’; I need to find a copy right about now…

Meryl Yourish, new Virginian (go Hoos!!), shows how ‘dethphicable’ the WoT has become.

Brian Linse, another confused liberal, writes about the practical, as opposed to legal, gun show loophole here.
In effect, what is happening is that the law allows private individuals who are not in the business of selling guns, much like private individuals who are not in the business of selling cars, not to comply with a bunch of regulations designed in the case of cars to defend consumers, and in the case of guns to regulate who can buy and how.
Now, on paper, this distinction is just fine, and perfectly clear, as has been pointed out ad nauseum by, among others, The Professor. I’m a private individual, and should I decide to unload…er, sell…a gun, I can do so to a private individual and not be in violation of various laws.
Personally, unless I knew the individual I was selling to, I’d run it through a dealer and make the buyer go through the background check anyway; I’d feel pretty crummy sitting on the witness stand after my buyer did a drive-by. And my insurance would be kinda bummed as well. But that’s just me.
And, practically, I have to give one to Linse, because I’ll bet there are people who make a living selling guns at gun shows, but do not register as dealers, just as I’ll bet there are people who make a living selling cars and not registering as dealers, or running ‘permanent’ garage sales. They’re cheating, breaking the law, and in our society the fact is some people get away with it.
On the other hand, in my experience, at the gun shows at Pomona, Ventura, and Orange County, I have never interacted with a seller who wasn’t going to run me through the paperwork and waiting period, and wasn’t going to act like a dealer…whether they were or not, I can’t say because I never asked for a copy of their FFL.
And politically, I have to wave my hands in the air and go “are you kidding??” THIS is the important public safety legislation you want to waste your time and my money on?
In other words, I think that “closing the gun show loophole” legislation is symbolic, probably unnecessary, and generally useless. And I oppose it, flatly.
Why? I’ll tell you simply; because it has little to do with gun crime or violence, and everything to do with legislators who confuse passing laws with solving problems.
Look, there are probably a hundred million guns in circulation in the U.S. The genie isn’t going back into the bottle. I won’t get into what kind of regulation of firearms I could or don’t support…my mailbox isn’t that big. But I am abso.damn.lutely clear on one thing.
Most of the gun laws that are passed…and they probably are a good proxy for most laws…have little to do with solving the problem, and everything to do with the sociology of electoral and administrative politics in our day and age.
The reality is that if I want to buy an illegal weapon, I probably just have to ask my son in high-school. Give me 5 benjamins, drop me in MacArthur or Will Rodgers Park here in L.A., and I’ll come home with a gun.
But the fact that it will have no impact doesn’t matter. The fact that that there is a regulatory loophole simply infuriates those who look for intellectually solid, completely realized regulatory programs. (note, in case you haven’t figured it out: I believe that liberal goals are better accomplished in other ways)
The gun show loophole crisis is like the .50 caliber rifle crisis. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t doubt that some guns are sold at gunshows to people who couldn’t get them at a traditional dealer. Some being a very small number, near the limit of statistical measurement. I don’t doubt that someone has, or likely will, commit a crime using a .50 caliber rifle.
But in terms of impacting the overall level of crimes using guns in this county, we’re looking at something less than rounding error.
And, simply, it’s time to stop passing laws because a) they give legislators something to say they did come re-election time; and b) because they sound good on TV. You want to propose gun laws?? Make a convincing argument, not based on anecdote, but on statistically valid research, that it will have an impact. And, best of all, convince me that the laws you are passing aren’t simply turning up the heat under the frog.
When someone proposes a package of gun legislation that a) has some reasonable likelihood of measurably reducing crimes where firearms are used; and b) has some built in, irrevocable, defendable baseline guarantee of my right as a noncriminal citizen to arms, I’ll look really hard at it and probably support it.
It’s all just re-election posturing until then.