re the Drew Pearson Fallacy

This was pretty funny, perhaps only to me, back then:

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-my-essays.html

One good thing about a cat, or a dog, rather than, say, a parrot, or a journalist, is that with the cat or dog, you can curse them out, and they don't later quote you.

The cat has the added advantage, over the dog, that they don't even know, or if they do know, they don't care.

The parrot has the advantage, over the journalist, that although it too can quote you, it does not know that it is doing wrong.

re WHAT I NOW CALL THE DREW PEARSON FALLACY

An old rant on the topic:

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-mr-paterson-editorial-same-old-media.html

Unfortunately, people like Snowden are not an appropriate
' antidote ' for the fallacy.

OR WHY NOT RATHER THAN MONGOLIA

The 'greatest good for the greatest numbers' airfield, in extremis,

Casablanca.

RE bbc AUSTRIA PLANS THIRD MAN MUSICAL

A classic opportunity for the third man, otherwise known, alternately, as Robert Macaire, my Thurston character, the Maverick Executive (my versions and iterations), and others.

Could be set in, say, Mongolia.

See this site re the Briton who sold faux bomb detection devices to Iraq and others. A locus classicus of the Maverick market capitalist third man entrepreneur in action.

Term search: many terms, here.

RE DK's site

Zosima's comment, a very nice capsule summary:

"Even though I majored in history and politics, it took me decades to realize the true nature of the US system. Alfred Stepan says on NPR (6-28-13) that the US has the most difficult to change constitution of any democracy on the planet. Justice Ginsburg says she would not recommend our constitution as a model, and countries that have recently adopted new constitutions have all agreed with her. It’s many essentially undemocratic features reinforce the status quo, thwart change, and fragment responsibility so that no one can be held responsible. America stagnates for decades on end until the greed of the plutocracy results in some kind of crisis that causes a super majority of people to temporarily gain power and implement some reforms, like the New Deal. But the required super majority cannot be maintained for long and the reforms are whittled away over time until the next crisis. It is quite ominous and depressing to realize that America is stuck in this endless cycle of stagnation and crisis, but we are. Thanks to our constitution, the small moneyed segment of the population that benefits from the cycle need only convince 20-30% of the population to go along with them and they can thwart change indefinitely. Read some of the many critics of our constitution, I recommend Daniel Lazare’s, The Frozen Republic."

I would just point out that some manner of Plutocracy was functioning even during the New Deal.

The important point is that events, processes, and agendas, move in important directions, around and within the country, even while the American political system, and its international political system institutional progeny, themselves, churn frostingly on.  

Term search: Nevins, drift.

re NYT After Ruling same old structural problems different day

Diverging state laws.............................

The ruling is not really ' the point '.

Could be any ruling, really; any 'issue politics' issue.

Most people go around with their issue blinders firmly on.

Term search: your state.

Snowden needs to seek sanctuary in the laissez faire market state of

Wikipedia. 

All information is free there.

He might also try Shangri La.

re Bobbitt Terror And Consent

I said here: 
"If everyone were willing to more or less give up their privacy anyway, for internet working identity,
they may have reasoned,
what does privacy really mean, anyway?"

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/06/re-snowden.html

I guess I have to read Terror And Consent.  (I am not that eager, having already spent time reading Shield.)

I opened to this Terror passage tonight:  "But neither do I believe that there is a God-given right to not be burdened with carrying an identity card, or to not disclose to the government information we have
                                                             24
gladly given to private corporations    or that they have collected with our consent." 'Conclusion', p. 541.

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A GOOD PURGATIVE FOR NEOCONS RE ONLY GOV AS BAD ACTOR

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/hobsons-choice-privatizations-versus.html

THIS WAS A GOOD ONE GOING FORWARD INFLATION DEFLATION

There are some economists, it seems, whatever their
' credibility ', within their little economists' bailiwick,
who agree with me.....

If you are fricking yourself,

who really cares

whether it is inflation,

deflation, 

both,

or neither?

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/inflation-and-deflation-both-economist.html

RE THEY LIKE THIS

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/mise-en-scene-of-previous-post.html

Just the other day bought a copy of Harlequin, an old theatre history book,....

RE MORTGAGE SECURITIES AN OLD POST AND REFERENCE

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/re-mortgage-backed-securities.html

RE NYT A BILL ALLOWING MORE FOREIGN WORKERS STIRS A TECH DEBATE

Too late, my friends.
Game over.
Smell the coffee.

By about forty years.

Never, in the history of human conflict, has so much been given away to so many, by so few, for so little, so quickly,

without really even knowing it was happening.

The last phrase is really the ' biggie ' here.

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THE CHINESE WALL

Not to worry, private firms always have Chinese walls when they think they need them.

It's the honor system.

Great idea for a cartoon.

Where is Barry Blitt when you need him.

RE BOOZ ALLEN NYT IS THIS ENOUGH LAISSEZ FAIRE PPP SMUGGLER CARTEL ECONOMY FOR YOU OR NOT

Outsourcing nation. PPP has been around for a longish time now. Booz Allen.....smelling the coffee a little late really.

Snowden.

Lazy fare.

Why not make Hong Kong the next state?

A truly open global economy is a pure smuggler economy.

You don't have the rule of law so much as the rule of the highest, or lowest, bidder, where bidding is allowed; or the highest patronage plutocracy.

audience today really big Latvian readership who knew

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RE BBC EU US BIGGEST EVER TRADE DEAL THE MENU

Hard to get ahead, proverbially delivering similar pizzas to each other, isn't it?

' Endive?
' No, I'll have only anchovies. '

re China's 12 year plan nyt

The quote of the day a must read.

They would have been better off where they were, going forward; trust me.

Think back to Stalin's agricultural initiatives, as well as those even before.....going back to Lenin.

What an unmitigated fiasco.

Hoover went over and helped out with food aid, after WWI, but it seems like Kennan pointed out that the Bolsheviks turned him down.

Archer Daniels Midland, proud of trying to feed 7 Billion plus.

re stevefw's comment this part needs to be quoted

Re Syria, etc.:

"... is it realistic to expect the Military Industrial complex to NOT open another market to sell into?"

Great point. 

They are, after all, like others one can name, too big to fail.

re bbc Hong Kong protesters back Snowden

As W, and Woodrow Wilson, said, to paraphrase:  

These ' principles ' are right for all people everywhere.

Maybe the Earl of Shaftsbury said something like this, when he, and Locke, each fled to the Continent?

I kind of doubt it.

RE HAUNTED WOOD AND MITROKHIN ARCHIVE

The Haunted Wood was especially enlightening, had to use that word.

I believe that some Americans should take a look at these, some time.

Most policy makers are generally clueless, and I suspect should remain so.

The OSS was largely a Soviet led secret organization, same with Treasury, way back when.

Most Americans would not believe this, if you told them, even now.

A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF THE DREW PEARSON FALLACY RE PATTON

See Wikipedia (which site I detest, but hey) articles on Drew Pearson, and Ernest Cuneo.

RE THE DREW PEARSON FALLACY

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-mr-paterson-editorial-same-old-media.html

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SIREN SERVERS WILL BE CALLING ULYSSES SNOWDEN HOME

Term search Jaron.

I am not a great friend of free and open markets, free trade, free knowledge (such as Wikipedia, and other things discussed here recently), or free and open borders, generally, for most people.

I favor the nation state, rather than the globalist party of Davos state;  am neither an adherent of the socialists, such as Faux, likewise critics of Davos, but who are not nationalists.

I am not a friend of Snowden, or his ilk, for those reasons, and others.

I am not a special friend of Hong Kong, for example.

I don't particularly like Singapore.

The list goes on and on.

I am not thrilled by Indonesia.

SEE RE BBC SNOWDEN ETC

As one might assume, as I mentioned in the post above, the big privates tend toward the big publics.

Here the BBC reports some details:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22916329

I pointed out this would probably happen, long ago, here.

Term search eg Facebook.

Remember the Russian, nyt, prior post noted, who took a giant stake in Facebook?

RE SENDING US COAL TO CHINA NYT TODAY

Call it just helping good ole cap and trade.

China can now cap and trade within China. (recent article, see blog entry)

Why didn't we think of that,

and cap and trade here,

within even small places, like say within Detroit?

See Klaus Hubacek 's comments, in a prior BBC article, re labor costs.

DETROIT CREDITORS DESERVE ZERO CENTS ON THE DEVALUED DOLLAR

Detroit is far from too big to fail, the test for bailability.

The really big boys, not cities like Detroit,  used to say, 30 or 40 years ago, they had to merge to get big enough to compete in global markets.

Once they got that big, fattened up so to speak, they were then too big to compete in global markets, if competition meant failure.

THE VITAL CENTER OF THE UNENLIGHTENMENT

RE making ignorance chic:

There have been left or right leaning economists, as well as politicians.

There were, unfortunately, certain issues on which both politicians, and economists,

each leaning either way, really,

erroneously agreed,

call it the vital center, after one liberal apostle of the concept, E. J. Dionne:

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/04/cf-also-how-nations-fail-editorial-and.html

On the one hand, it is hard for me to call such a process, system, or result, the product or expression of Enlightenment ideas or institutions,

on the other hand, it is hard to call it anything else, really.

Call it ' The Unenlightenment ' or ' The Endarkenment '

RE MAKING IGNORANCE CHIC BLAST FROM THE PAST

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/cinderella-three-penny-opera-marilyn.html

RE BBC LOOKS LIKE GILLIGAN'S OR CATALINA ISLAND

a great place for the Gay 'Lobby' (gross understatement) in the Vatican:

RE BBC NEWS TODAY SNOWDEN

"Former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has made new allegations that the US government has been hacking computers in mainland China and Hong Kong for years."

I would have thought that any idiot nowadays, any common or garden Jaron, say, any siren server jockey, really, without any inside information, would have assumed that such a course of conduct has long been under way.

RE MERKEL TELLS YOUNG EUROPEANS TO MOVE TO FIND WORK

Where should they move, East?

What, then will Putin, and others farther East, when the young Europeans get over there, tells their folks, "move West"?

RE SOME LIKE IT HOT an old 2010 post for the summer

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/re-krugman-today-mortgage-morass.html

RE CHINA AND COLOMBIA BUILDING RIVAL TO PANAMA CANAL THROUGH NICARAGUA

Who could be against a nice, large, Chinese canal down there?

It's not a bomb, after all. Call it a sort of a physical siren server.

It's not another ' Cuban Missile Crisis ' or anything drastic like that, certainly.

You don't want to do anything that might result in a negative impact on, or even slow the growth of, all that good democratic trade.

Smelling the democratic coffee here. Trading, and appeasing oneself away.

Steingart had called it, in The War For Wealth, after a Microsoft marketing campaign appropriately enough, Soft Power. 

THIS WAS RATHER FUNNY

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/maverick-executive-outlaw.html

I HAD A NICE STRING OF POSTS BACK IN 2010

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/re-sherrod-brown-for-our-china-trade.html

NYT RE ATONING FOR THE SINS OF EMPIRE CALL IT AN ATLANTIC MUCKRAKER TRADE VERSUS BBC

What a ridiculous position for a so called historian to take. A journalist, of course, one can more easily rationalize it.

I would suggest doing some atoning for the sins of journalism here. His.

Not that I am an apologist for the likes of Ferguson, etc.

Nevertheless, re the British Empire, warts and all, I would say:

Just look around you, and ask yourself, going forward:
Compared to what?

RE THE ENLIGHTENMENT WAS AT BOTTOM BASED ON MISTAKEN ANALOGIES

How shall I put this concept? One of the dilemmas of the Enlightenment tradition it seems to me is this.

The enlightenment idea itself was based, in some ways, on what the later Wittgenstein, or someone like him, might have called (a series of) ' mistaken analogies ', which themselves then, over time, coalesced together.

It wasn't mainly religious ideas that were at work in this Witches' Brew (yet they played some part), but preponderantly newer scientific ones, from Newton and others, astronomical discoveries,  the Scottish Enlightenment, and state bureaucratic innovations.

These innovations had relatively little to do with commercial applications, for some time, and certainly started out more mercantilist than what one would now call capitalist.

FOR THE HAMILTONIANS OUT THERE A PROPOS LIBERTY AND EQUALITY AND JEFFERSON FOR ALL

From a prior post:

"In a similar vein, the ideas of the Founding Fathers, as Bailyn has pointed out, owed more to radical Protestantism, and the common law, (one could also add commercial self interests, including, preponderantly, smuggling, tax evasion, and slavery) than to enlightenment ideas per se."

Re Jefferson's commercial interests, in particular, not that they were especially exceptional, I would refer readers to a nice, short, article, (for the attention challenged), in Smithsonian Magazine, Henry Wiencek, "Unmasking Thomas Jefferson", October 2012, p. 40.

RE WUTHNOW'S DISCUSSION OTHER FALLACIES RE ENLIGHTENMENT AND CAPITALISM

"A new vision of the future certainly emerged, but its apostles were to be found among both  nobles and bourgeois---of the famous Philosophes of the Enlightenment most were either born or bought themselves into the nobility---and the first people who tried to translate the enlightenment ideas into practice were members of the government, all of whom, apart from Necker, were nobles."

Communities..., pb, p. 532, quoting C. B. A. Behrens, Society, Government, and Enlightenment: The Experiences of Eighteenth Century France and Prussia, p. 9.

RE FALLACIES ENLIGHTENMENT POPPER WHIG PEARSON ETC

Terms search such terms as:
Why Iowa, your state, Lorch, state and local government, free press, how interesting a state,  speech,  press 

BBC RE CAP AND TRADE CHINA OUTSOURCING WITHIN ITS OWN BORDERS

This has to be the end of the line, so to speak, 

for this ridiculous ' liberal ' environmentalist initiative....

a late stage in global market capitalism's race to the bottom.

Never, in the history of human conflict...........

RE BBC SNOWDEN

It has been a long time coming. Say 30 years.

If everyone were willing to more or less give up their privacy anyway, for internet working identity,

they may have reasoned,

what does privacy really mean, anyway?

The West and the East converge, from different directions, so to speak,
the one from totalitarian authority,
the other monopoly laissez faire convergence.

Either way, ultimately, they end up at the same point, so to speak.

Large (unfortunately global) private telecom and internet companies have been developing government-like powers, and information, for a long time now.

Why not harvest them, they may have reasoned, now, while the harvesting is still relatively good,

and the access is, ostensibly, not yet for sale,

so to speak, to the highest bidder?

The dark secret, the endgame, so to speak,  of monopoly laissez faire, is a managed totalitarian economy and society,
where the newer, M & A, entities (financial and otherwise) are, now, ' too big to fail '. 

The government siren servers, so to speak,  felt, right or wrong, they needed to step in now, in the West. 

A pivotal moment shall we say.

RE CLEMENT MERIC FRANCE MOVING RAPIDLY IN A DIRECTION CHARTED BY THE NAZIS THEIR ERSTWHILE ENEMIES

Nuf said.

Who can blame them?

They, the French, and most other Europeans, were sold up the river by the EU (US) long ago. 

Pretty soon, the Chinese will be telling them when to go to the bathroom, in France, and elsewhere.

old post Kennan quote re China

Kennan (1960s re 1900 ish): 


"Out of all these ingredients there was brewed the curious view of China that seems to have animated American statesmanship during the war; the picture of a helpless, deserving nation, for whose virtues we alone, among the great powers, had understanding, whose interests we had to sponsor in the face of Japanese enmity and British callousness, and whose grateful support in the postwar period we could take for granted as a mainstay of the world position we hoped to occupy.  China was, in fact, and on this we insisted with a most extraordinary vehemence, to be one of the future great powers--- one of what F.D.R. called the 'four world policemen'"


"In this highly subjective picture of the Chinese, there was no room for a whole series of historical and psychological realities.  There was no room for the physical ruthlessness that had characterized Chinese political life generally in recent decades; for the formidable psychological and political powers of the Chinese people themselves; for the strong streak of xenophobia in their nature; for the lessons of the Boxer Rebellion; for the extraordinary exploitative talent shown by Chinese factions, at all times, in turning outside aid to domestic political advantage."

"It was this idealized view of the Chinese, rather than any illusions about the relationship between the National Government and the Chinese Communists, which was most damaging to our Far Eastern policy.  We did, to be sure, underrate the depth of the antagonism between these two elements.  Our memories of what had transpired in 1927 were certainly shorter (if they existed at all) than were those of Mao and Chiang and Stalin.  There also seems to me to have been a certain naivete, but nothing worse, in our efforts to bring about a political compromise between these two factions, and to induce Stalin to join us in this effort....".  Russia and The West Under Lenin And Stalin, p 374.

RE WHY OLDER GENERATIONS WERE NO MORE HIGH ACHIEVERS THAN BOOMERS OR LATER GENERATIONS

All of them, over here, rather than over there, were, mainly, just lucky!

Our recent graduates, children of Boomers, have, so far, been lucky, too.

See Michael Lewis' Commencement Address to the graduating class at Princeton a while back.

Kennan has a few poignant passages, about the world over there, after each of the two world wars, for those many millions who survived, but were not so lucky as those then living over here, or, later,  their children, or their children.

See A kindred spirit

David Kaiser's post, some time ago, re Soros, etc.

This was my favorite quote from Soros (in Kaiser's post):
 "Popper’s hidden assumption that freedom of speech and thought will produce a better understanding of reality is valid only for the study of natural phenomena. Extending it to human affairs is part of what I have called the 'Enlightenment fallacy.'"

A great insight. Commenting on Kaiser's current post, one might also call it the Free Press Fallacy, or even, say, The Drew Pearson Fallacy.

I would just call it The Karl Popper Fallacy, and let people wonder how far I mean to go on that.

I would add, to the elements of Soros' Enlightenment Fallacy, a faith in free, open, Smithian, (and eventually global), markets.

Yet, this addition sets me off from Soros and his, otherwise, and in other contexts, quite globalist tendencies.

Most liberals are not nationalists, deep down, but rather anti nationalist globalists, nowadays. It was not always so.

Let's put it this way, the Nazis gave nationalism an unnecessarily ugly rap.

(The Bolshevics somehow avoided this type of bad rap, largely because of the gross ignorance and naivete of Western regimes, and their conservatives, and their liberals.)

I would just advert, momentarily, to a great small book by Butterfield, in the enlightenment context, The Whig Interpretation Of History. (Maybe I'm just stuck, Tory like, on Regius Professors of History, or just stuck on Regius anything.)

In a similar vein, the ideas of the Founding Fathers, as Bailyn has pointed out, owed more to radical Protestantism, and the common law, (one could also add commercial self interests, including, preponderantly, smuggling, tax evasion, and slavery) than to enlightenment ideas per se.

Term search, if so inclined eg: Popper, Lorch

THE EU NEEDS TO DISINTEGRATE RATHER THAN ENLARGE

These are generally not good candidates, with the exception perhaps of Iceland,  even for nationalism, much less EU ism.

Call it Austro Hungarian Empire ism. We all know how that turned out, EVEN THOUGH, AS KENNAN POINTED OUT, it was nevertheless better than anything that has come after......

FRANCE JAPAN UK SWITZERLAND AUSTRALIA CHINA etc etc

Divide and conquer.

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BBC TRADING PLACES NOW TRADING FACES HOLLANDE

Verbally confuses China and Japan.

Quite understandable.

This can't hold back a good France Japan trade deal.

BBC RE UK CHINA TELECOM DEALS SECURITY RISKS ETC ETC

Question: "Why would anyone in their right mind do this?"

Answer: "Western liberal democracies have been making these kinds of decisions for decades now."

RE THE BIG SHORT

The same banks, mostly, which created mortgage backed securities, now own the houses.

Because they originally ' lost money ', (but were then bailed out), Michael Lewis had suggested that they were the so called 
' dumb money ' on Wall Street.

If you get bailed out, and then later inherit the collateral anyway, plus claims for deficiencies against the prior home owners, plus much higher interest (judgment rates), compounded, than market interest rates n your claims, and attorney fees and court costs claims,

are you such dumb money after all?

RE BBC NY SUING HSBC ATTACKING LOW HANGING FOREIGN FRUIT

While giving the biggest bank creditors here a pass, re foreclosing now on their investments, based on securitized instruments which they themselves feloniously created

see eg:

The Big Short

See also

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2013/06/re-related-articles-its-beautiful-life.html

CHINA AND JAPAN NEED TO CLEAN UP AFRICA

Here is a good example of the kind of situation where they are needed to step in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21126533

"France has opened the gates of hell [and] has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia”

referring sites audience today

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RE BOGUS CHARGER FOR APPLE BBC

I presume their, Lau, Jang, Song's, (these Robert Reich ian symbolic analyst Asians are so smart about this...)  work,

has already been stolen, hacked this hack device's details, 

and is even now going into production in Asia, momentarily.

Call in Jaron, or MZ.

Never, in the field of human conflict, has so much been given away to so many, by so few, for so little, so quickly. 

RE RELATED ARTICLES IT'S A BEAUTIFUL LIFE

' Behind the rise in house prices, Wall Street Buyers '

BBC RE ABE HAILS AFRICA AS GROWTH CENTRE KEEPING UP WITH THE CHINESE

The Japanese, just as the Chinese, are about as uninterested in Africa, racially, civilizationally, as it is possible to be.

RE BBC REPLACE I LOVE PHILOSOPHY WITH COGITO ERGO SUM

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/11/mise-en-scene-maverick-executive-free.html

FOR THE COGNOSCENTI

RE ARE THE LIGHTS GOING OUT?

See David Kaiser's topic.

Having  been looking at some passages in Wuthnow, have to say that ' Enlightenment ' has usually been misunderstood, including by me.

RE BBC WHY DOES FRANCE INSIST SCHOOL PUPILS MASTER PHILOSOPHY

Good question.

RE RELATED ARTICLES TODAY

' China reaping Iraq oil benefits ...'

' Obama's covert trade deal ...'

' China's bid for pork linked to Wall Street ...'

Never, in the field of human conflict, has so much been given away to so many, by so few, for so little, so quickly. 

RE GERMANY AND RUSSIA

It has become traditional here to blame Germany for the ills of the 20th Century.

I rather prefer to blame the liberal democracies, imperial and otherwise, which sat back, dazed, during WW I, and allowed not only this war to run a disastrous course in the West, but did little to dislodge the Soviets from their takeover, and then permanent retention, of the largest nation state empire on the planet. 

Not only did the United States not act against the Bolsheviks, then or later, but actually considered their takeover of Russia a good thing, and the main reason for entering the war.

Hitler was only allowed to emerge, really, against the spectre of the USSR to the East. They both knew their pact was temporary.

WWII presented a similar sorry spectacle.

a little heritage from WW I today:

' The Syrian civil war is setting off a contagious sectarian conflict beyond the country’s borders, reigniting long-simmering tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, and, experts fear, shaking the foundations of countries cobbled together after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. '

I would put this slightly differently: Usually, these
' countries ' were created by the winning Western democracies out of a butchered Ottoman Empire, as punishment for being on the losing side.

The article makes it sound like we were doing them a favor in 1919, by cobbling something together.  We were cobbling things apart.

it's only laissez faire CHINA TO BUY LARGEST US PORK FIRM the menu

RE SPECIALIZATION COMPARTMENTALIZATION ETC

A PROPOS David Kaiser's current post.......

One of the problems which advanced societies, and their citizens who are forced to specialize, face, is that few if any of us specialists can get a perspicuous view of other important and relevant fields, as they evolve and transform;

fields which, in a sort of blind hurly burly,  profoundly direct the zig zag course of events in advanced societies.

One of the watershed developments, it seems to me, was the breaking off of politics and economics, into separate disciplines in the nineteenth century.

Similarly, various social science disciplines, including notably sociology and psychology, developed in a similarly disjointing fashion.

Business administration, and things such as journalism, developed out of practical life, but were pulled, ultimately, into the specializing and fragmentizing university system in the 20th century nonetheless.

The sociological social scientists seem to have been the first to have looked at the problem.

Wuthnow, in Communities of Discourse, which amid other projects I am still trying to finish, has a good discussion of some problems along these lines.

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