No Fence Required

Oklahoma's tough new immigration law has gone on the books, and the effects are starting to be felt. This will be interesting. With laws like this actually in place, the actual, rather than hypothetical, effects can be judged, and then people can make more rational decisions about immigration law, and how many people the United States should be allowing in, and under what circumstances. But this does prove one point that people have been making for years – dry up access to jobs, and the migrants go elsewhere. No fence required.

Sounds Good

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer added reader forums to their website some time ago, and for the most part they are a waste of time, bandwidth and disk space. For any conversation that goes longer than a dozen posts, the common fate is that it becomes a politically polarized shouting match between a some bunch of yahoos that drone on and on and on and on and on about how moronic, immoral or hypocritical liberals are (yet seem to have nothing better to do to than read a fairly liberal newspaper in a fairly liberal market and then write screed after pseudo-conservative screed in the reader comment forums) and some bunch of self-proclaimed liberals who seem to have nothing better to do than feed the trolls.

But this particular SoundOff is actually enlightening. One of the posters, thezorg, is a lawyer (Given that its effectively an anonymous forum, and I don't know who thezorg is in real life, he could be lying and just slept at a Holiday Inn last night. But I'm actually fairly certain he's the real deal.), and offers some really good information on the process, and the thinking that goes into it, that's missing from the newspaper article that people were responding to in the first place. He quickly manages to hijack what was quickly turning into dueling ignorant screeds, and turned it into a very informative question-and-answer session.

It is also, in my opinion something that could be made into a model for web-based newspapers. I have no idea how much server space the Post-Intelligencer has devoted to its innumerable staff and reader webblogs. But I suspect that some of those resources could be re-purposed into providing contextual depth that is currently lacking in many stories. thezorg fills in some really big gaps in the background of the story that readers needed to lower the sensationalism value, and make the piece really educational. Written as a single piece of prose, it would make an excellent companion piece to the article (and could even take the place of some of the Associate Press filler on the website). This strikes me as the sort of thing that actually provides value to the newspaper reader, and could even be worth paid subscriptions.

Election Season

One of the nice things about living in Washington State is that the this year's presidential primary is pretty much considered a non-event. Everyone expects that the nominees will be pretty much decided before we get around to our caucuses and primary (yes, Washington has both - it's bizarre). Which means that it's safe to walk up and down the street without random reporters coming up and asking you who you want to vote for. Over and over again. For months. I don't know how people in New Hampshire do it.

Instinct

One item that I had originally overlooked when thinking about Evolution is that fact that Natural Selection operates on behaviors, as well as the physical structures of an organism. (Of course, here the discussion is limited to animals - as plants to not have "behaviors" in the same fashion.) I suspect that this is due partially to the fact that I don't own any pets or working animals - and therefore have lacked the experience of watching an animal exhibit a complex behavior without having had the opportunity to learn that behavior from an older animal.

Like I said, I'm not trying to write a book report, so I'll refrain from a page-by-page retelling of the chapter. But there is some interesting stuff here, if you ever get around to reading it yourself. The basic gist is simple - certain inborn behaviors show grant a population of animals a competitive advantage of some sort, and is therefore retained. As further modifications that amplify the effect appear, they are retained, and the behavior is effectively reinforced. Again, domesticated animals are a useful model here - intentional selection has created a number of working dogs that show very specific behaviors (and, at the same time, lack others).

The trick with demonstrating the action of natural selection on behavior isn't much different that with an organism's physicality, although it is more difficult. The fossil record can show us certain physical traits of an animal - but is commonly mostly (if not completely) silent concerning behavior - witness the back-and-forth over whether or not Tyrannosaurs were predators or scavengers. In The Origin of Species, Darwin, with the help of the naturalist community is able to track down several variations on specific species (like cuckoo birds), and from their differing behaviors, put together a simple narrative on how the instincts may have evolved. It's not often a very complete picture, but it does illustrate how Natural Selection works on instinctive behavior, and broadens the scope of the Theory beyond the simply physical.

Quick Cash

Coburg, Oregon generated about 30% of its general fund budget from from traffic fines and bails in 2006-2007, down from nearly 50% previously. The town had become such a notorious speed trap that state legislation was enacted to deal with the issue. According to Coburg Police Chief John Bosley, the city has a legitimate safety interest in patrolling the freeway. And it's hard to argue that point.

On the other hand, state Senator Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene) says it's poor policy to rely on tickets as a source of revenue because "the city's need to pay salaries," can become the driving factor in the decision to issue citations.

Senator Prozanski makes a good point. Ticketing is often at the discretion of the officer, and it would be preferable to have that call made in the interest of public safety, rather than revenue generation. And this touches on what for me is an important point. When a municipality comes to rely on fines and bails for a significant portion of their overall budget, in effect, they create for themselves an interest in lawbreaking. If everyone decided tomorrow to scrupulously observe the speed limit along Interstate 5, the town of Coburg would find itself in dire financial straits. And this then creates an incentive for the city to oppose measures that would lead to less speeding. (There was a similar case in Florida, some years ago. The highway department was painting lines across the expressway, spaced so that they created the illusion of acceleration. Drivers would then let off the gas, slowing down. Several municipalities sued the state to have the lines removed, as the initiative cut into their ticketing revenue. Similarly, several municipalities have made it illegal to feed other people's parking meters, as this also cuts into citations, and the revenue they generate.) The town's financial interest and its safety interest are at odds with each other. This is not to imply that Coburg is so corrupt or callous a place that they'd prefer carnage on the roadways to being broke - and since a world without speeding is a pipe dream, to some extent, this is a moot point. But in so many other areas, people are sensitive to even the appearance of a conflict of interest, and there certainly is an appearance here.