Sunday musings

This story in the Salt Lake Tribune about the Utah Supreme Court overturning a conviction because of the judge's refusal to allow an expert to testify about the dangers of eyewitness testimony caught my eye. This followed an episode on the PBS newshour looking at the man in Florida who was released after 35 years in prison based on DNA evidence. A group of advocates have overturned many convictions. The biggest culprit in the improper convictions was eyewitness testiimony. Humans are fallible even in perception, but much more so in our perceptual memory. And because we are so convinced by what we think we saw, we convince juries. Another episode in the story of human folly.

This story in the NY Times today reminded me of the superficial way that our mass media reports international news. This ayatollah had to die before anyone in the West heard about him. Our tendency to see the world in simplistic terms is astounding. There are many divisions of opinion in Iran and our perpetual focus on unimportant events, like the current dispute over an oil well, plays into the hands of the conservatives in Iran who are now rampantly abusing its citizens and quashing speech and democracy.

On the note of misunderstanding the Middle East, I have been very much enjoying Eugene's Rogan book The Arabs. But now I am at the point after World War I where the British and French are dividing up the remains of the Ottoman Empire for the own empires. Sorry Niall Ferguson, this colonialism is disgusting and has led to a number of unintended consequencs that we deal with today. Wilson was in favor of self-determination for these peoples. Why didn't that happen?

Finally, here is a good article on politics. The shrill debates about Obama are becoming very tiresome. Of course, those on the right who have been bashing Obama from the beginning for various reasons, such as the birthers, are silly but totally predictable. The bashing from the left is also predictable. What did you think was going to happen after we elected this one guy? He can't change Congress.

On that note, Ezra Klein is doing some good blogging about what is in the Senate health bill. Let's pass the bill and get on to other problems, like the banksters. It does some very good things but it is only the beginning. We can make improvements later.

And finally, the article on politics came from this interesting website which talks about some of the powerful ideas of conventional economics. I think these are very powerful ideas which contain deep insights into the world. I know some of my lefty friends will argue with some of them, but this is a good presentation in terms that are understandable by a person without an economics degree.