There were no 0 zero proposed answers to the Monty Redux problem.

I give my answer below. New bits are in ** old bits are in "".

Recall

"Monty Redux

Recall, the Monty Hall paradox from “Let’s Make a Deal” an old game show. The last step in the game show was guess which of 3 boxes contains a big prize. There are three large boxes, box 1, box 2 and box 3, one contains a very valuable prize, the other two contain prizes of small value. The contestant guessed a box. The assistant (Carol Marol or was she on truth and consequences) opened one of the other two boxes showing that it didn’t contain the big prize. Monte Hall offered the contestant the chance to switch to pick the remaining unopened unselected box.

Now all contestants must have noticed the pattern that the assistant always opened one of the boxes which had not been chosen and that box always contained a small prize. "

*This, I think is the, often unstated, assumption that makes the problem such a dread dinner party troll. If there is no information that a box with a small prize is always opened, there is no way to solve the problem. It might be that a box is opened only if the contestant guessed right the first time (so better to not switch and win for sure ) or only if the contestant guessed wrong the first time (so better to switch and win for sure) or anything in between. It was clear on the show that a box was always always opened.*


"I am going to add another assumption to make the assistant follow a well defined rule. I assume that the assistant opens the box which 1) has not been chosen by the contestant 2) does not contain the big prize and 3) has the lowest number of boxes satisfying 1 and 2.

Now consider a case of the game. Contestant guesses box 2. The assistant opens box 1 showing that it contains a small prize ? The contestant is allowed to switch and guess that the prize is in box 3. Should the contestant switch ? Does it make any difference for the probability of winning ?"

*In this the chance of winning is the same (1/2) whether the contestant switches or not. Given rule 3 stated above, box 1 is opened whether the big prize is in 2 or in 3 so no information is revealed.*



"How about another case of the game. Contestant guesses box 2. The assistant opens box 3 showing that it contains a small prize ? The contestant is allowed to switch and guess that the prize is in box 1. Should the contestant switch ? Does it make any difference for the probability of winning ? "

*here given rule 3, opening box 3 means the big prize must be in box one so the contestant should switch. The point (if any) of the new puzzle is that it the other case which shows that it can sometimes be costless to switch (a knife edge result).*
.

Giovanni Vecchi is interested in poverty in Yemen

Finally someone commented on this blog by writing to rjw88@hotmail.com.

OK OK so it was my mom commenting on "right plan wrong pills". My mom
Katharine Waldmann MD used to take care of people with HIV as her job. Now that she has retired she does it as a volunteer. She explains to me that the WHO proposes 3 drugs not including protease inhibitors for medical reasons not because they respect patent law (which they appear willing to ignore)

Katharine Waldmann writes

"I was told by a drug rep from the company that makes Viramune that the talk of a three drug pill(zerit, Epivir (lamivudine) and viramune) is based on the plan to buy from India where this is made--patent violation of course.

Protease inhibitors are very potent but besides expense they have problematic side effects--diabetes, lipodystrophy, high blood lipids. They are big capsules to take (not hydrophilic so large doses needed to get enough absorbed)and usually need to take many a day: Viracept ten a day (just started making tabs where one neede to take only two twice a day), Fortovase six or eight twice a day.
What helps is that ritonavir (Norvir) interferes with the metablism of most of the others, so 100 mg of ritonavir makes it possible to reduce the number of other capsules and has enabled shifting from three times a day dosing and meal restrictions. Kaletra is a capsule with ritonavir plus lopinavir in one capsule.

There has been a big push to avoid protease inhibitors as first line treatment. Trizivir has three NRT's but usually a fourth has to be added. Efavirenz (Sustiva) is very effective and a once a day program is possible--Sustiva 600 mg, Epivir 300 mg, and Viread 300 mg.

Capsules don't keep well in heat and humidity. So I don't think it is only or even mainly the cost of PI's, but some of these other issues.

Your Blog is very interesting!! keep it up MOM "


Well, at leas my mom likes my blog.

Another locally realistic violation of Bell’s inequality ?

I am thinking about the EPR experiment. I am actually thinking about the experiment as proposed by E P and R, not the experiment as performed. There are four basic but very weird points to remember in order to understand the proposed experiment. One is that electrons spin around sort of like little globes but that the absolute value of the angular momentum is always hbar/2 no matter from which direction you look at them. This is not like, say, the earth which spins around the North-South axis so the angular momentum is less if you look down another axis. The second strange fact is that you can’t measure the angular momentum of one single electron around two different axis (one version of the Heisenberg principal). This can be understood as measuring around one axis changes the spin around another axis. This makes sense in terms of comprehensible things like macroscopic magnets because the way to measure spin is with a magnet and a magnet does change spin. The third strange fact is that sometimes you know that the spin of two electrons around any axis is opposite. This is true if the two electrons are in what is called a singlet state. This means that even if you can’t know which way (clockwise or counterclockwise) each electron is spinning around both the North South axis and the East West axis you can know that the two are spinning in opposite directions around each axis. The fourth strange fact is that, according to quantum mechanics the correlation between “spin is clockwise around the North South axis” and “Spin is clockwise around the North-East South-West axis” is greater than one !!! that is the probability both are clockwise is greater than the probability that the spin around the North South axis is clockwise and the spin around the other axis is whatever and unmeasured. I won’t be able to explain this so that it makes sense. It is clearly crazy. It is also an experimental result not just a theory. I am sure I will never understand this, so I can’t explain it. Trying to grasp this fact, and it appears to be a fact (see below) is like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Now the point of EPR is that Heisenberg shmeizenberg you can use the singlet state fact to test the quantum mechanical correlation greater than one by measuring the spin around N-S of one of the electrons and the Spin NE-SW of the other. They were very sure that the experimental result would disprove quantum mechanics. After some decades the experiment was finally performed (with light not electrons) and quantum mechanics was confirmed. I gave up.

Then I heard about the work of Luigi Accardi and Massimo Regoli. They have an argument that you can reconcile the experimental result with a locally realistic theory (one that makes sense as correlations are less than or equal to one) if the singlet state is a statement about measuring spin around one magic axis (NS say). The quantum craziness comes from treating electron 2 is counterclockwise around NS as equivalent to electron 1 is clockwise around NS AND electron 2 is counterclockwise around NE-SW as equivalent to electron 1 is clockwise around NE-SW. What if the singlet state had to do only with the N-S axis ?

An objection is that the singlet state fact has been tested for many directions and always works.

I have a slightly modified version of the Accardi Regoli story (which is probably in one of their working papers which I haven’t read). Here the experiment is we have electrons that were in the signlet state flying out of a source each one through an electromagnet which can be oriented NS or NE-SW. If both electromagnets are oriented the same way, the spins are opposite. If the experimenter moves the electromagnets so they are not oriented the same way, the electrons see this and don’t act like singlet state electrons at all anymore. This means that the EPR experiment result is not equivalent to a correlation greater than one.

OK so the little electrons are spying on the experimenter. There are two things. Which way does he point the electromagnets and are both turned on (measuring) or not. If they are oriented on the same axis then the measurement of electrons going through magnet 1 does not depend on whether magnet two is turned on and the measurement of electrons going through magnet 2 is always opposite. If they are oriented in different directions, then the measurement of electrons going through magnet 1 depends on whether magnet two is turned on. This is an effect of an event which took place a long time ago (by flying electron terms) so there is nothing impossible about it.

Did the Republicans manage to overestimate what they could get away with ?

I was amazed to read in a Fox news poll (yes a Fox news poll) that slightly more polled registered voters (31%) think the Medicare bill will be bad for senior citizens than think it will be good for senior citizens (30%).

Now the general view in the blogosphere is that this was a bad bill compared, at least, to equally cheap bills with fewer favors for insurance companies. I assumed that it would be politically popular. So it seems did Paul Krugman and the Republicans on speaking terms with him.

"The prevailing theory among grown-up Republicans — yes, they still exist — seems to be that Mr. Bush is simply doing whatever it takes to win the next election."

If the medicare bill is unpopular, it would be part of whatever it takes to win the next election.

The Washington Post reports that Washington DC is going to distribute free condoms in public buildings. This seems to me to be an excellent idea. One of the explicit aims is to fight embarassment about condoms.

Of course the post has to follow the standard of balanced coverage. The HIV virus refused to comment, so the con position was taken by monomaniacal advocates of monogamy. I think the work monomaniacal is fair, since even the advocate did not claim that any marginal effect of condom distribution on promiscuity was relevant. Instead the argument was two false statements combined with a blatant fallacy.

"I'm not aware of any evidence that that sort of activity has a positive effect," said Robert E. Rector, a family-issues researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The number-one determinant of whether a person will catch a sexually transmitted disease is the number of lifetime sexual partners. We seem to go out of our way as a government and a nation to avoid telling people that, but we hand out a lot of free condoms."

Well I guess that Rector might not be aware of it, but their is strong evidence that AIDS prevention efforts stressing condoms have been succesful in Uganda and among gay men in the USA. I suppose it defendes on how you define "that sort of activity". It is hard to prove that condoms are the key to success because Rector's second claim is absurdly grossly false as he must know. He boldly asserts that the Bush administration goes out of his way to avoid telling people that abstinence or monogamy would reduce HIV transmission. Where do they find people like that ? The man is clearly out of touch with reality. Why didn't he criticize the DC government by contrasting it with the Bush administration which follows a policy closer to the views of people like him ?

The logical fallacy is the claim that the number one determinant of .... This is like saying the number one reason that people catch AIDS is the AIDS virus and it would be better to have no aids virus than to hand out condoms. The issue is what is the best public policy. Not what would be nice if you could magically convince all people (or HIV particles) to do what you think best. Saying number one, then acting as if you said only is a logical error so extreme as to be extremely rare.

Then we hear from the Bush administration

"Tom Coburn, a physician, co-chairman of a presidential AIDS panel and former Oklahoma congressman, called condom distribution misguided because, he said, condoms fail 20% of the time
"We used to think condoms were fairly effective," he said. "If used perfectly, they are probably 94 or 95 percent effective, but we're human, and we don't use them perfectly. . . . The city would be much better off spending its money getting people tested, treated and counseled not to give the virus to others."

Coburn deliberately confounds two issues. One is do condoms fail, the other is do couples who plan to rely on condoms actually use them. It is homicidally misleading to tell people that condoms are no good, because other people didn't put them on.

94 or 95% success seems to me shockingly low. I personally have never experienced a condom failure .In fact, itis indeed the low end of results from studies which show 1 to 5% failure.

Such true condom failure does not correspond, as asserted by Coburn, to using "them perfectly". In fact it is clear that some people have much more trouble with true condom failure than others which implies

"Most condom failure occurs as a result of the behaviors of the user, not due to a faulty device. Some user characteristics are also related to condom failure. Hence, understanding which behaviors and characteristics are most strongly associated with condom failure is critical to improving the effectiveness of condoms through public health messages and counseling."

This is clear because failure rates are significantly different for different couples. To avoid blaming the victims I should notel that this could be due to anatomy not behavior. It seems that a large penis could be a risk factor which might explain my 100% condom success rate reported above.

Indeed.

"Research is less clear about which behaviors lead to condom failure. Behaviors that may be related to failure include opening condom packages with sharp objects, unrolling condoms before putting them on, using oil-based lubricants, having lengthy or intense intercourse, and practicing anal intercourse or vaginal drying"

I think that, to be true to his Hypocratic oath, Dr Coburn should not be reporting misleading statistics on condom failure but rather should explain to people not to open condom packages with sharp objects, unroll them before putting them on or use oil based lubricants. In fact, I think that men who really care about fighting AIDS should be willing to be videotaped while putting on a condom according to proper procedure.

Finally, the true condom failure rate due to breaking or slipping overstates the AIDS blocking failure rate. The reason is that spermacide kills HIV. Thus in an actual experiment (ugh) it was shown that there was no then measurable HIV released from spermacide treated condoms filled with infected semen and pressed with e plunger even though the experimenters had pricked a hole in the condom with a pin. I forget the cite and this was detectable a long time ago before PCR was used.

Well it's decided. The US is willing to compromise with Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani on little issues like separation of church and state so long as we get our way on one man one vote electoral democracy (which we oppose).

The alleged issues are the absence of a census of subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship where everyone had ration cards and the risk of tyranny of the majority. To me the first claim is patently absurd. It's not like the Ba'athist regime didn't keep track of people. It is true that separate lists are needed in the Kurdish mini states, but I would be surprised if they didn't keep track at all.

If one is planning on introducing democracy eventually (as the Bush administration still claims) one has to confront the risk of tyranny of the majority eventually. I have already written that this can be done with a not democratically written constitution to be approved or rejected by referendum.

Now I wonder about how to avoid tyranny of the Shi'ite Arab majority. This should not be hard as they are 60% of the population. I think that in a first past the post system electoral districts can be designed so a Shi'ite Arab sectarian nationalist party could not obtain a majority. I mean Bremer works for a Texan Republican, he should have access to good advice on gerrymandering.

I agree with the Bush administration on a controversial issue. The supreme court is deciding if Washington State can deny a scolarship to a student because he declared theology as his major.

The high court seemed deeply divided over the case of Joshua Davey, who lost a state merit scholarship when he declared theology as his major. The Bush administration backs Davey, arguing that states cannot discriminate against religious education.

This seems to me a blatent case of discriminating on the basis of religion. I am not at all thrilled that a ruling in Davey's favor will inevitably lead to law suits demanding equal funding for creation science and genuine evolutionary biology etc. However, the case seems clear to me.

I hasten to add that I am not moved by religious sentiment. I am an atheist and always have been one.

Right Program Wrong Pills

Still at the Washington Post. The WHO is trying to get 3000000 HIV infected people under anti-retroviral therapy by 2005. I guess this is partly a response to more money from Bush (first praise of Bush in this blog) and partly because it is clear that you can't get people to get tested for AIDS if diagnosis is just a death sentence. The thing that bothers me is

"An expert panel assembled by WHO recommends four drug combinations, out of about 35 available. The one likely to be most popular contains stavudine (d4T), lamivudine (3TC) and nevirapine in a single pill. None of the four combinations includes a protease inhibitor. Drugs in that class are generally more expensive. In many places, including rich countries, they are often held back and used only if first-line treatment fails. "

My impression was that protease inhibitors were necessary for multidrug therapy to work. Now why are they expensive ? Not, I think, because they cost that much to make, but because they are under patent. Now with some billions to work with couldn't the Bush administration buy in bulk at a huge discount. I don't mean a normal volume discount. I mean a discount negotiated by any means necessary. As in
"gee you like the medicare benefit plan but you know some people think we should have medicare bargain tough with you. However, I will veto that if you sell us protease inhibitors for 3 million people a year at cost. Oh they are under patent ? Hmm we haven't looked at patent law reform in years."

Not like Bush but I doubt anything like that would be necessary. It's not like pharamceutical companies are making money out of treating AIDS in the third world now anyway. The only risk is re-importation. I don't see why they can't make the pills a different color size and shape to hamper smuggling them back.

I really don't see why that hasn't been done some how.

Right decision for wrong wrong reason


The Washington Post reports
"The Bush administration has decided to repeal most of its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products exported from politically crucial states,"

I thought they were at least supposed to pretend they cared about the public interest not just winning elections. The whole article with many quotes from administration sources contains no hint that they care about foreigners (no big surprise) or people who live in non-swing states. Now if the people in solidly pro Bush states were a bit more alert they would become swing states now that that is clear.

I'm not surprised, of course, but I am dismayed by the brazenness

hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue - (I forget who said that).

Update: I learn from Patrick Nielson Hayden that I was quoting La Rochefoucauld )

Millions for defence but not one cent of tribute (to Virtue)

T. Jefferson modernized

No answers to Monty Redux below (also because few people have been here)

More on the Monty Hall paradox. This written on April 7 2003.

Monty Redux

Recall, the Monty Hall paradox from “Let’s Make a Deal” an old game show. The last step in the game show was guess which of 3 boxes contains a big prize. There are three large boxes, box 1, box 2 and box 3, one contains a very valuable prize, the other two contain prizes of small value. The contestant guessed a box. The assistant (Carol Marol or was she on truth and consequences) opened one of the other two boxes showing that it didn’t contain the big prize. Monte Hall offered the contestant the chance to switch to pick the remaining unopened unselected box.

Now all contestants must have noticed the pattern that the assistant always opened one of the boxes which had not been chosen and that box always contained a small prize. I am going to add another assumption to make the assistant follow a well defined rule. I assume that the assistant opens the box which 1) has not been chosen by the contestant 2) does not contain the big prize and 3) has the lowest number of boxes satisfying 1 and 2.

Now consider a case of the game. Contestant guesses box 2. The assistant opens box 1 showing that it contains a small prize ? The contestant is allowed to switch and guess that the prize is in box 3. Should the contestant switch ? Does it make any difference for the probability of winning ?

How about another case of the game. Contestant guesses box 2. The assistant opens box 3 showing that it contains a small prize ? The contestant is allowed to switch and guess that the prize is in box 1. Should the contestant switch ? Does it make any difference for the probability of winning ?

Now I stress, I think this is a change from the standard problem. Please send proposed answers to rjw88@hotmail.com. If someone convinces me they got the right answer (whether or not it is the same as what I think now) they get applause here in front of an audience of 5 or 6 visits a day.

Blinkered perspectives

On April fools day 2003
(the day before I originally posted this which was in a Blogspot archive which died) I saw attending a very interesting seminar by Alberto Bisin presenting joint work with Jess Benhabib. Roughly he presented a model of impulse buying with the idea that to avoid the temptation to buy people have to devote some of their limited attention to saying “be thrifty be thrifty” to themselves. I am pleased that economists are talking to psychologists and neuro-biologists (and listening to what they say). I’m not the only one. The seminar was one of the biggest hits I ever saw (ended with applause !). I have some thoughts

“say to themselves” is meant almost literally. In particular, I was taught in a freshman introductory psychology course 25 years ago that short term memory is very limited and verbal. Very limited in that we seem to have only 7 file handles (files = 7 in config.sys for people old enough to remember an operating system which was comprehensible). Verbal in that people make errors confusing things named by words that sound the same even if the information is presented with pictures and recollection is illustrated by pushing buttons.

It is true that to over-ride an impulse (well to try to over-ride an impulse) I talk to myself. One of the great bits of evidence from the psych literature is that overweight people can resist nibbling if they are remembering a 3 digit number but not if they are remembering a 7 digit number (see the magic number 7). They had to remember for 5 minutes or so. They weren’t warned that they would be tempted with food.

The guess is in the heads of the 3 digit non-nibblers is “’6’’4’’7’ don’t eat ’6’’4’’7’ don’t eat ’6’’4’’7’ don’t eat ’6’’4’’7’ don’t eat“’6’’4’’7’ don’t eat …” while in the heads of the the 7 digit nibblers was “6 4 7 3 5 2 4 ; 6 4 7 3 5 2 4, 6 4 7 3 5 2 4 , hey why is my stomach full ???”.

Another interesting analogy was between dynamically inconsistent time preference and perspective. That is things seem much more important if they are in the very near future just as things seem larger if they are close to us. The idea is that, as we evolved (and as we grow up) we learn to correct for this. Bisin had an interesting example of how his young son didn’t believe in perspective.

This reminded me of Inevitable Illusions : How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Piattelli Palmarini likes to describe the systematic biases which influence people’s reasoning about probability as cognitive illusions. That is, these biases are similar to optical illusions in that they are virtually universal, systematic, persist even among those who consider them to be errors and can be fought only with concentration.

Now a typical optical illusion is not the fact that far away things seem smaller. This does not confuse adults anyway. They are the opposite -- Automatic over corrections for perspective. A simple experiment is to stare at a bright light. This temporarily exhausts the rod cells in a spot on the retina. This creates a blurred image which for me switches from green to purple as I blink. Now look at something close and at something far away (it helps to rapidly blink to see the spot). The spot seems bigger if it is superimposed on something far away. This is an image which corresponds to a constant area on the retina, because it is a constant area of the retina. The correction between geometric perspective and subjective distance is instant, effortless and automatic. It does not involve a voice in our head saying “that’s not small it’s far away”. In contrast, to avoid falling for optical illusions based on this feature of our non-verbal brain, we (or at least I) think “watch out it’s a trick” and force ourselves to measure.

This brings us up to 3 struggling mechanisms
1. something very automatic, for vision our eye and light following the rules of optics.
2. Something almost as automatic involving our brain but not requiring attention which corrects for the bias do to 1.
3. Sometimes something learned which involves a voice in our head and requires concentration to correct for 2 when it leads us astray.

Now back to time preference. I suggest that the very automatic process is that future rewards seem less important than immediate rewards. This is not as simple as light in an eye but it is clearly ancient and automatic. I suggest that the second automatic correction mechanism is the set of biases noted by Kahneman Twersky and followers. I think we are not up to 3 yet.

But how do I get from time to probability and back ? Piattelli Palmarini’s star example is “the Monte Hall paradox” from “Let’s Make a Deal” an old game show. The last step in the game show was guess which of these 3 boxes contains the big prize. The contestant guessed one. The assistant (Carol Marol or was she on truth and consequences) opened one of the other two boxes showing that it didn’t contain the big prize. Monte Hall offered the contestant the chance to switch to pick the remaining unopened unselected box. No one ever did. I admit I watched this show and agreed with the contestants. We all made a mistake.

The chance of winning guessing and sticking is, of course, one in 3. The chance of winning guessing and switching must be 2 in 3. This follows from Bayes formula. Say the contenstant picks 1 and they open 2. The prize is in 1 or 3. If the big prize is in 3, the chance they open 2 is 1 since they don’t open the box with the big prize. If the prize is in 1, the chance they open 2 is ½ as they chose which unguessed box to open at random. Bayes formula says chance of winning by staying is 1/3 by switching is 2/3. For some silly reason Bayes formula is not taught in elementary school, but it is simpler to see they should switch, since it is clear that one can always win either by staying or switching and the probability of winning by staying must be 1/3. So why didn’t anyone switch ?

A pseudo explanation is that we fear regret – to have had it and given it away. To me this is like saying morphine causes sleep because it has a dormative virtue.

Maybe we make the Monte Hall blunder because there is an automatic don’t change horses in midstream, stick to your guns, many other clichés mechanism which has evolved or been learned to help us fight dynamic inconsistency. That is, we have all decided to do something involving effort or abstinence in the future, all noticed that it seems a bad plan when the time for effort comes, all learned to be firm in our purpose. Perhaps even without learning we have evolved a no backsliding reflex. Now on “let’s make a deal,” the temptation to switch is not based on dynamic inconsistency. The (evidently weak) temptation is based on new evidence. Still there is the reflex don’t switch as if there were a voice saying “don’t give in to temptation to stray from the path you have chosen “ but which evidently require neither such a voice in our head nor conscious self control.

Some of my archives appear to be missing. I think Pyra labs has solved the problem (based on an announcement) but the content seems to be lost. Thanks to Michael Froomkin who pointed this out to me. I am trying to figure out which posts are unavailable and repost them.

Well looks like the Bush administration has finally met an authority it can't push around or ignore -- Ayatolla Ali Sistani. It seems that the plan for the future of Iraq lasted two whole weeks. I didn't like it to begin with.

Very odd the link to the plan in the CPA web site is no longer working. Has the plan gone down the memory hole ?

The Bush approach is to decide what to do then make other people agree. Works fine with the IGC but does not work with Sistani. The reaction to his pronouncements makes it very clear that he has the power of veto. It is reasonable to respect his veto given his presumably high standing and relative reasonableness (I mean you democracy does have something to do with elections you know). However, two public about faces in two weeks mean that his great power is now enormous.


I still think that it would have been better to try to discuss things relatively quietly with, among other people, Sistani. Then to publically announce things acceptable to Sistani. I don't mind at all saying I told them so two weeks ago.

I don't see why it should be impossible to agree with someone who thinks elections are an essential part of democracy. The problems are

1) Some Iraqis will vote for Ba'athists and moslem fundamentalists.

Certainly true but only a reason to delay elections if you are confident that the vote will be better later. I think it's past time to temper optimism a bit.

2) There is a risk of tyranny of the Shi'ite majority.

Certainly true if a constitutional convention is elected and a simple majority can pass a constitution. As I said before this can be handled two ways. Requiring a big majority for approval or writing the consitution undemocratically and having a referendum.

3) Sistani wants the constitution to say that the State can't do anything inconsistent with Islam (which means that he will have a permanent veto and his successor after him). Well that is a problem. He does seem to have a veto already so not such a huge loss. I'm afraid that some vague declaration of respect for Islam will be necessary. Anyway, if Iraq is democratic, it will respect Islam. I mean the risk that something might be interpreted as giving Sistani a veto, isn't that horrible since he clearly has one already.

Now More on writing a democratic constitution in an undemocratic way then having a referendum.

I saw a headline I really liked (but didn't save)
"Tribe reflecting on Iraqi constitution" then I read the article and found out that "Tribe" was not Lawrence Tribe but, well, a tribe. I think they should just call in Lawrence Tribe, Have Bremer act as a go between between him and the president of the ICG (won't be Talibani for long) and have the president consult with Sistani (and others) but really listen to Sistani. Then a referendum.

We have some experience with constitutions which prevent tyranny of the majority. I think a bill of rights, a federal constitution considerable regional autonomy, a bicameral legislature and proportional representation would prevent tyranny of the majority. Of course that might leave the prime minister (or president) so weak that everything would collapse.

Anyway, I don't think any democratic or semi democratic process would do as good a job as Tribe. Not to mention I don't recall the constitutional conventions of Japan or Germany which turned out OK and I do recall the Costituente Italiano which wrote a document with some problems.

Of course, if the Bush administration decided to subcontract writing a constitution they wouldn't hire Tribe and I doubt that I would like the constitution much but I'd accept it to avoid further bloodshed and I bet almost all Iraqis would too.

I disagree with Matthew Yglesias. This is big news for me because it is the first time it has happened since I started reading his blog.

It is about Bush's trip to Baghdad. He is slightly more cynical than me about the balance between improving the troops morale and the uhm voters morale. However, he even seems to object to the secrecy of the trip, discussing political reasons for secrecy.

Come on Matt it's almost all politics all the time, but the guy cares about his life too. I think the trip had to be secret for genuine security reasons. I mean Bush landed in an airport where a plane was hit by a surface to air missile recently. And (as I noted) given my view of the vice president I hope Bush remembers that discretion is the better part of valour.

Whew Bush is still with us .

I am not a big fan of Bush but just saying president Cheney drives chills up my spine. My sincere honest reaction to the news story was fear when I heard he had gone their and relief when I heard he made it out alive.

I actually think it was a good idea for him to eat turkey in Iraq. I am not thrilled at the thought of how this will help him with his chickenhawk problem, since, unless I am mistaken, he never entered a war zone with rank less than commander in chief. Still I think it is good for the morale of the troops and might convince a naive Iraqi or two that he cares about them.

Iran's unelected supreme religeous guide Ayatollah Khamenei gives a lesson in Democracy .

"In free elections the majority of the Iraqi people will choose those who will not allow the Americans to stay one more day in Iraq, "

Now I can see why Khamenei is eager to talk about future Iraqi elections not past Iranian elections since, in each of the last 3 national elections, about 70 % of Iranians have made it very clear that they want change and that means change from rule by Khamenei.

But oh the shame for a citizen of the worlds oldest established (large scale) democracy to feel the need to trade barbs with a theocrat.

The comment

''The Americans are so desperate that they are bombing an occupied country..." really stings.

I found about the sermon from Juan Cole

Shop at Amazon and support Atrios by going there with this link. Costs same to you and he (or she) gets some of the money.

"Men who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made" Otto Von Bismarck
[quote added on November 29]

Omigod they don't do stuff like that here in Rome. Amazingly I only just learned that a majority of representatives voted against the medicaire reform bill
"an absolute majority of the House -- 218 of the 435 members -- had voted no,". I honestly would have assumed that this means the bill is voted down. I am amazed to leard that the speaker of the house could (and did) keep the vote open untill two members could be convinced to change their votes. Amazing. Appalling. Precedented but not very.

I stress that I am not holding the Italian parliament up as a model of fair play. It's just doing something outrageous that they don't do here is a very impressive accomplishment.

Of course I learned about this from Atrios .