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.

One of the bloggers who got me into this (along with The Prof) was The Sarge.
Well, it looks like he’ll be a mere hundred or so miles away, on his Beers Across America tour on June 24, which Outlook says is a Monday.
Hell, I used to go to Bakersfield for country music concerts…who’s with me on this?
Pinto? Flounder? D-Day? (was that him in ‘Sum of All Fears’? Note: Yes!! I need to go to IMDB…)

The Bleat covers the Muslim Brotherhood like a worn-out keffiya. Be careful where you drink your coffee, I say.
And someone was explaining why there wasn’t really a clash of cultures?…