Since you are so bright, you probably have at least two you can articulate. Send me two laws based on your empirical work and observations you would not mind having tagged with your name. Stick to science and to those scientific areas where you have expertise. Avoid flippancy. Remember, your name will be attached to your law.

There are a number of really insightful "laws" here. Although, this does not contain "Decius's Law":

Given a set of similar products, the one which is least technologically sophisticated will be the most successful in the marketplace.

I can't think of anything to top that right now.

What's Your Law?

Here is a direct link to the recent Gallup results on American opinions about the Iraq war. What you think of those opinions probably has a lot to do with how closely they resemble your opinions. The exception is the one Ryan pointed out... Do you think Sadam was involved with the 911 attacks? He wasn't and this is a simple factual measure of how confused you are about what is going on.

The rate is as high now as it has ever been. A slight decrease in the number occurred in September when Bush said he wasn't involved, but now its right back up again, proving that the only thing worse then our grasp of the facts is our attention span.

Campaign finance reform attacks the symptom and not the disease. We don't need campaign finance reform, we need voter clue reform. As long as so many people remain completely incapable of independent thought they will always be the victims of big marketing budgets.

Gallup Poll Analyses - Americans are clueless

] Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his
] colleagues propose a simple modification of random
] vaccination that is more effective, according to their
] computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose,
] say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one
] acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances.
] Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of
] acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at
] least once, the researchers found. On the other hand, the
] super-spreaders are so few in number that the random 20%
] of individuals is unlikely to include many of them.

Vaccinate Thy Neighbor

] The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble.
] The dominant position the United States occupies in the
] world is the element of reality that is being distorted.
] The proposition that the United States will be better off
] if it uses its position to impose its values and
] interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly
] by not abusing its power that America attained its
] current position.

] Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating
] situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test
] that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce
] the trend.

This piece by George Soros really hits the nail on the head.

It appears that the Bush administration is doing exactly the opposite of everything I believe makes an entity a leader in a network.. That is if you consider sovereign states to be nodes in a network, their links things such as the trade (of both goods and ideas). George Soros shares that view, (economics in general share that view) and expresses it way more eloquently then anyone else I have read or seen recently, including our current crop of presidential candidates. (I fully agree with both Decius and Jeremy on that point. The current candidates are doing a really lousy job of saying why the Bush Administration sucks, in a high level way. At this point, none of them has yet won my support.)

He makes a good argument that seeking American supremacy via unilateral action as a primary piece of our security and foreign policy strategy, isn't going to get us supremacy. Not abusing our position of power has given us supremacy. Not being secretive has what has given us supremacy. Being an open society has been what has given us supremacy. Et cetra. This is a call from Soros to not flush these elements of our society and government down the toilet, and break the bubble before it breaks us.

However reasonable this may be, the neocons are sure attack this stance, and they will have an easy job doing so. The obvious troll to this is "you think america should be weak!" and "you appeaser you!".. All things that will work very well in that Bill O'Reilly kinda context where its all about being strong and right.

We may be uncovering another one of the 42 great true lies.

The Bubble of American Supremacy

... Tons of foreign technology is imported, but it's never really internalized ...

Tom Friedman on Arab society in the Sunday New York Times.

Courageous Arab Thinkers

] In the case of physical property, we take it for granted
] that the ownership right should have the potential of
] persisting as long as the physical object itself. In the
] case of an idea, however, we have chosen to strike a
] different balance in recognition of the chaos that could
] follow from having to trace back all the thoughts
] implicit in one's current undertaking and pay a royalty
] to the originator of each one. So rather than adopting
] that obviously principled but unworkable approach, we
] have chosen instead to follow the lead of British common
] law and place time limits on intellectual property
] rights.

I'm rerecommending this. I've read it now. Greenspan explains the changing nature of the situation just as I have in the past, and this talk offers itself as a good reference for such an explanation, as people usually don't want to take my word for it. :)

Intellectual Property is broken. You heard it here from the guy that runs the economy. So don't tell me I'm being silly.

Of course, Greenspans perspective on how to fix it is probably 180 degrees from mine.

FRB: Speech, Greenspan-Market economies--April 4, 2003

] "My goal was to say farewell to 20th-century Korean
] journalism, with the concept that every citizen is a
] reporter," said Mr. Oh, a wiry, intense man whose mobile
] phone never stops ringing.

Oh my the South Koreans are blowing the American's doors off. They rocketed from Agrarian to Industrial culture in about 20 years, and they haven't slowed down. If you want to know what MemeStreams will become, this is it.

Online Newspaper Shakes Up Korean Politics

] Walters, the U.S. drug czar, says he has talked with his
] Canadian counterparts about the pitfalls of pot
] legalization and harboring of American drug fugitives.
] "If Canada wants to become the locus for that kind of
] activity," he says, "they're likely to pay a heavy
] price."

This is a really good article. I would not be suprised if Canada legalized pot. If they did, then this will segway with current conservative anger about the open border (thank you Bill "no spin (yeah, right)" O'Reilly). The result will be a very strange border situation, with major hassles involved in crossing one direction, but little trouble crossing the other direction... If this impacts the rate of trade, or if there are trade restrictions, then both sides will feel this in their wallets and their markets. The US may try to screw with the trade situation betting that it will hurt Canada more then the US. Of course, the US will have to contend with domestic pressures, both from the pot brigade, but also from corporate america and wall street...

So basically, this is worth paying attention to because it is certainly possible that there is a situation developing here that could have serious economic and policy implications. If this situation worsens rapidly this could prolong the recession.

The Drug War Refugees

If you agree with Thompson's perspective on America, and you're looking for a worst case scenario, you could do worse then to read this book. Its a psycho analysis of the reasons that people establish totalitarian states. This is what fear does to societies.

Amazon.com: Books: Escape from Freedom

] Proponents of the machines assert that any invasion of
] privacy is not alarming because there's not much privacy
] left to invade. Grocery stores already track customers'
] personal information with loyalty cards, for example.

Bars in Northern California start collecting your detailed personal information in the process of doing an age check. The arguement above is particularly disturbing.

SacTicket // Nightlife // Taking license