A Ticking Time Bomb is Not Justification

I recently saw new interview clips of Dick Cheney and he once again tried to justify torture with the “ticking time bomb” scenario: when you know a suspect has information that can prevent an imminent, serious threat. The theory is that this possibility is so compelling that we should allow torture to be legally permissible. My view of this line of reasoning is that if the circumstances are so dire, so terrible, that the person charged with extracting the information shouldn't care that torture is outlawed and that they will face legal consequences. If they still have concerns about such matters, then the event they're trying to prevent isn't sufficient justification. We need the illegality to act as a barrier to such behavior, especially since torture's effectiveness is not without doubt and we would increase the likelihood of our captured troops facing similar mistreatment. The argument is to prevent the unthinkable by allowing the unthinkable, and the unthinkable should never be sanctioned by law.

Well Regulated Militia

Flawed though the test may be, the takeaway is valid.

I have previously blogged about crowd shootings and even touched on the topic of this post, but feel it warrants expansion. While I am choosing for the purposes of brevity to ignore increased regulation of access and storage of firearms and also improving our mental health system, I wish to make it clear that this is not because I discount them. When tackling complex issues, one should consider all the available tools. What I am choosing to focus upon is the frequently mentioned notion that having more armed individuals will somehow reduce deaths from gun violence overall. This concept is usually accepted uncritically by gun advocates and rejected as unrealistic (based on statistics showing a small number of justifiable shootings relative to accidental ones) by proponents of greater gun control; what I wish to consider is what it would take for this to actually be a credible notion.

What seems to be frequently absent from such conversations is proper emphasis on the need for training; just carrying a weapon will not make you a competent combatant. The ability to keep calm and accurately engage an armed opponent, let alone several, is extremely demanding, necessitating a high degree of training. That is true even in a home defense scenario, and if one considers the context of public defense, the difficulty is magnified many times. Your opponent may well have superior firepower (and other equipment) to what you can reasonably have with you all the time and the safety of bystanders is vital. Indeed, there will be some situations where no responsible armed option by a lone individual is possible for fear of injuring others. Gun owners who seriously intend to act in such a capacity need to have training on a par with police and it needs to be ongoing since such skills are perishable. This would be a significant commitment, which would seem at odds with the number of individuals required so that their presence would significantly add response capacity; if they can’t respond appreciably quicker than the police, it makes little difference. So we'd need a large number of highly trained, certified, armed citizens for it to make much of an impact. This sounds very much like the "well regulated militia" the second amendment references (save for the for the fact that they would usually be acting alone) and would represent a great departure from the status quo of often casual gun ownership. One could argue that dedicated security guards might fulfill this role, but that gets away from the idea of armed citizenry and thus is beyond the scope of this post.

It would be easy to interpret my observations as an outright dismissal of the entire prospect, but that is not the case: while all options should be considered, there is no value in unrealistic schemes. The ratio of good actors to bad would have to be very high for it to be a significant net positive, which makes improvements in the other areas I mentioned in my introduction vital for any such possibility, as it takes virtually no training to attack unarmed civilians and accidents do happen. Human lives are not like a Wikipedia article: you cannot simply undo the damage of a malicious few with a well intentioned many (especially if they’re not qualified), and even Wikipedia must impose barriers to access from time to time.

Ills of the Nuclear Family

The nuclear family is a very recent development and a comparatively isolated model of child rearing. The rise in single parent households, lessened extended family involvement, and increased mobility have compounded this deficiency, leading to some unfortunate consequences. This post examines the shortcomings of the stereotypical nuclear family paradigm, as that is overwhelmingly what is held up as desirable in this country. Note I am not asserting that family structure alone is responsible for the following issues, merely that it is often a contributing factor. Of course in practice there are an almost unlimited number of variations on the nuclear family ideal, but delving into them all would be a massive undertaking. Similarly, I will not attempt to suggest possible remedies, nor explore how existing structures might, and often do, mitigate some of the limitations. Those will be possible subjects for the future.

• Crowded childbearing window: The best years for bearing children are also critical ones for obtaining an education and beginning a career. The demanding nuclear family system makes balancing these three difficult and has contributed to the drastic increase in maternal age and associated health problems, as well as declining birth rates amongst the better educated. The fact that having a child in your teens is such a huge barrier to success when biologically it is an entirely suitable time frame highlights the current disconnect.
   

• Identity loss:
  At the moment it can be hard, especially for women, to both have a family and achieve. Many adults are forced to abandon much of their own pursuits and ability to make new social contacts, which can result in feelings of isolation and frustration. Even when their children are grown, the effects are still felt, such as the popularized "empty nest syndrome" and lost opportunities generally. By sharing the burden of child rearing, these issues could be lessened.
   

• Little diversification of parental failings: Children are exposed a great deal to the flaws of their parents. Greater care redundancy softens the impact of personality disorders, income inequality, and more reliably brings neglect or abuse to light. This is the same principle behind the common practice of diversification when investing, so that a single bad stock won't ruin your portfolio.
   
• Personality conflicts:
  Our media drives us to expect an almost magical closeness with our progeny. If that fails to materialize, disappointment and parental attempts to foist unreasonable expectations on their children can occur. Significant exposure to a greater number of adults would allow them more opportunity to find those they have things in common with. It would also help diminish the practice of infantilizing young adults.
  
• Reduced stability:
  
  The narrow scope of the modern family unit exaggerates issues surrounding parental rights, divorce (or marriage for that matter), death of a parent, or adoption. A broader base would ensure greater continuity, softening the impacts of these disruptions.
• Inefficiency:
  The nuclear family often neglects gains that can be made through economies of scale, increasing use of resources and labor. Housing costs, electricity, transportation, child care, cleaning, maintenance, food (both purchasing cost and effort of preparation), and clothing are some areas affected, with young parents being the most impacted. Health care also bears mentioning, as our employer based models currently focus on the nuclear family as their basic unit of coverage. Some of this waste is also impacted by our cultural trend towards sole ownership of items even if they are infrequently used; a practice reinforced by the isolated model the nuclear family ideal espouses.
   
• Marginalization of the elderly: The mobile nature of individuals today can often result in parents being isolated later in life if their children relocate. A less punishing, more interconnected system would allow more personal development during parenthood as well as providing more opportunities for cross generational bonds (not necessarily just with relatives) to be made. The simultaneous problems of marginalized seniors and a lack of affordable day care are especially telling.

Programming Languages Should be Unnatural

I have always thought that the notion of making programming languages more like natural ones is absurd. Without a truly formidable amount of artificial intelligence, practical natural-like programming languages amount to eschewing symbols for words, which more adds inconvenience than clarity (I'm looking at you, Applescript). If anything, I feel natural languages should be made more like artificial ones than the other way around. In very technical disciplines, this is actually done after a fashion: they adopt a precise specialized jargon to help combat the inherent ambiguities and limited vocabularies of context dependent natural language.

How bad can the electoral college be?

I was curious as to how poorly the electoral college could reflect the popular vote, so I whipped up a program to compute it (assuming only two parties). Below you see the map as it would need to be for the red candidate to win (yeah, yeah, I notice I'm showing the Republican candidate as winning unfairly, but that was just random). The best (or should that be worst?) answer involved all the districts of Nebraska and Maine voting together so I didn't need to split their electoral votes in the picture, although the program did explore those options. While there are some odd states voting together, for expediency I'll ignore that detail since it's not impossible demographic or political shifts could lead to such a result. In order to carry the red states with just over 50% in each, only 21.61% of the popular vote would have to be obtained (21.3% if you count the US territories which currently aren't represented in the electoral college). You can see many of the least populated states are chosen, maximizing the error. I knew the electoral college was bad, but this is astounding! To have a candidate defeated who had more than 78% of the vote would simply be unacceptable.


To force a tie you need just a slightly smaller percentage of popular vote: 21.52% (or 21.2% if counting the US territories).


Next I took the election results for each of the past three presidential races (the last three all used 2000 census data) and changed my program to look for the minimum subset of the electoral votes actually carried by the winner that still ensured victory. All three required less than 25% of the popular vote for victory (the 2004 minimum solution required 271 electoral votes, not just 270). We can also approach the inherent unfairness of the electoral college another way, by assuming each state's electoral votes per percentage of population is the same. This makes all states more equal, but the very "all or nothing" nature of the system would still allow victory with (270 / 538) * .5 = 25.09% of the popular vote, since you only need just barely over 50% of each state to win all its electoral votes. For this last calculation I ignored the proportional vote system of Maine and Nebraska for simplicity. The rough bottom line is this: a candidate for president can win 75% of the popular vote and still lose the electoral college.

2008: winner is in blue
270 electoral votes
24.0566% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)


2004: winner is in red
271 electoral votes
24.33% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)


2000: winner is in red
270 electoral votes
24.575% of popular vote actually required (includes US territories)

The Failure of U.S. Representative Democracy

There are many bemoaning political gridlock in America, questioning how we will overcome the current dysfunction in order to deal with pressing issues. While I could not agree more, my favorite (if that is the appropriate word) example of the failure of representative democracy in this country comes from an earlier decade, illustrating that there have long been serious problems. It is this: not adopting the metric system. You may wonder why I choose such a seemingly minor event, but while other disasters such as the War on Drugs are loaded with complicated issues, the conversion to the metric system was completely unambiguous in its long term benefit relative to the modest costs involved. The fact that other nations successfully switched around the same time makes our attempt appear all the more feeble. It was a moment for our leaders to lead, rather than to cave to irrational discontent. Things have not improved since, unfortunately, and it leaves me pessimistic at a deeper level than even the Citizens United ruling.

Firearm Misconception

This picture illustrates well the classic human difficulty properly framing dramatic, but rare, events. For example, public perception is that airplane crashes kill more than car accidents, when the reverse is true by a vast margin. Similarly, crowd shootings are very uncommon relative to criminally motivated ones, and both are dwarfed individual unwarranted shootings or accidental ones. Please don't misunderstand me: I am not in favor of outlawing firearms; I own several myself and consider an outright ban to be essentially unenforceable in any event. I am, however, very much a proponent of reasonable requirements both on who is allowed to legally obtain them and also the training and equipment they must have in order to be able to do so safely. This is especially true if your intent is defense, for reacting appropriately in a stressful situation, especially in a crowded area, is far harder than sporting firearm use. Well intentioned incompetents are not a boon when firearms are involved.

Laypeople Cannot Decide for Themselves

The belief that a layperson can examine the scientific evidence and decide for himself is very common and completely wrongheaded. A layperson simply does not have the body of experience to correctly interpret evidence in technical fields consistently. I heard an interview with Stephen Barrett, a retired doctor who now runs the medical fallacy tracking website Quackwatch, who has many examples of people coming to the wrong conclusion using this approach. The right method is to find

credible experts to evaluate evidence for you. This is why a consensus of trained professionals should carry weight. The lone decrier can be right, but almost always isn't. With complex issues, the trend is that over time, the evidence grows stronger if there is a real phenomenon. Take ghosts as a counter example: more than a hundred years of people looking and the state of the evidence is essentially unchanged. Finding one crank scientist who believes in them doesn't count for a whole lot.

I wonder if it is arrogance or simply ignorance that lies behind this notion. Well, first off the layperson is not examining the evidence. Take medical research as an example. To look at the raw studies (just getting the data would be a lot of work) he would need a very good working knowledge of statistics to evaluate the results as well as an understanding of the relevant medicine to judge the assumptions of the experimental structure. A layperson cannot possess all this knowledge by definition. If he did, he'd be an expert. That means that a layperson claiming to be judging the evidence is actually using other people's interpretations of that evidence. If he's not aware of that it's ignorance: check. Once you're at that stage, who you choose to interpret facts for you becomes critically important. Depending on your level of knowledge, you may not have the skill set to even make that decision with any certainty. It is of course true that minority opinions among a body of experts can prove ultimately correct, but the overwhelming majority of the time they won't. For a layperson to think that he can spot those few times more accurately than the trained professionals who specialize in that field is absurd. It makes an assumption that the layperson's largely uninformed opinion is more valuable, allowing him to dismiss the judgements of others. Since arrogance is all about thinking that your abilities trump those of others you have never met (therefore being a form of bigotry), I would argue it fits in this case as well. Arrogance: check.

What about the implications of all this? Does it mean that a layperson is never really entitled to an opinion of their own about technical matters? I guess it depends how you define "technical". If you define it as a complex field that requires a lot of cumulative knowledge, the I guess I'd have to say "yes", a layperson can never have a valid independent opinion. The key phrases I've used in this posting are "for himself", "of their own", and "independent". One option is to simply defer to the opinion of the trained community that studies that subject. You can have a very valid opinion as to the state of consensus within that community, but that is something that's comparatively easy to evaluate. Alternately, the layperson could undertake the study required to become an expert. That would give him an equal voice, however, not a definitive one. The next best thing would be for a layperson to run his interpretations past actual experts in the field. When a layperson rejects the judgments of those significantly more knowledgeable in his area of interest is when there's a problem.

What do I mean by "independent"?

I sometimes come across references to independents that treat them as though they're merely centrists:


I think a more accurate view is of them as outside the typical way the debate is framed, either because they believe there are major issues neither party is addressing or think the system itself is flawed. I count myself among this sort.

This second view is much more flexible because the degree to which you are outside the mainstream view can vary.

What's wrong with polygamy, exactly?

Rick Santorum's comparison between gay marriage and polygamy has me wondering exactly what the rationale is for it being banned. As long as everyone is of age, free of coercion, and none of the marriages are secret, where's the problem? If one actually takes separation of church and state seriously, then marriage boils down to legal agreements (I personally think that religious marriage should carry no legal weight whatsoever). Framed in that way, it clearly is another case of trying to legislate morality. While it pains me to agree with Mr. Santorum on anything, it does follow that if one accepts gay marriage one must also accept polygamy. Of course, he's hoping I'll have some visceral reaction of intolerance at the association. I reserve that sort of response for politicians of his ilk.

Gore Most Likely Would've Prevented 9/11

We know now that the information necessary to prevent the attacks of 9/11 was floating around our various intelligence agencies and it was primarily a lack of cooperation that led to it not being acted upon in time. Had Gore become president in 2000, he would not have have been guilty of the now infamous failure to heed the brief warning of Bin Laden's intention to attack with the U.S. With the president pressuring our agencies to look into this threat, the aforementioned failure to coordinate would most likely have been overcome and the plot exposed in time to prevent it. Of course, had that occurred, we'd probably never have learned about it, but many of the important security improvements (most notably the reinforcement of cockpit doors) would likely still have been implemented. Let this serve as a lesson to those who feel that ability and experience are somehow optional in executive positions.

Violence Should be Violent

I think that sanitized violence is much worse than accurate violence. It trivializes a horrible event and for less sophisticated viewers gives the impression that somehow violence is much less serious than it is. I want to see video games and movies have injuries more like that of Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs: someone gets shot and bleeds like a stuck pig and is scared out of their mind, screaming with pain. People who would find this unwatchable should try avoiding content with violence in it. Someone getting mortally injured should be disturbing!

Proven Social Investments Should Be Exempted From Deficit Spending Limits

If only there were a well known maxim about this...

Originally posted on my private blog on January 25th, 2009.

Politicians have an unfortunate tendency to eliminate social investments in the drive to reduce short term deficits. Whenever you have a social program (or infrastructure investment) with solid scientific evidence behind it that it will yield far more in savings or revenue growth than is spent then it should be exempted from deficit considerations. It makes no sense to build a new school and then scrimp on insulation simply because the larger overall heating cost doesn't occur on this year's balance sheet. What's worse is that the ability to make such misguided cuts allows decision makers to avoid the more difficult, legitimate ones. The standard of proof for such investments would necessarily need to be high as this should not become a form of government wagering.

The Power of Negative Thought

Originally posted on my private blog May 20th, 2008.

This photo reeks of objectivity. Not.

People often talk about the beneficial power of having a positive attitude on ones immune system. The idea is that being upbeat supposedly makes your body more able than normal to fight off disease. I think this is exactly backwards and that it's really that negative thought impedes the immune system, causing it to work worse than normal. Just as cold is the absence of heat, it's that the lack of thinking negatively that helps. Behold, the power of negative thought!

UPDATE:

Since writing this, I've learned that the evidence for the direct effect of a positive attitude on one's physiological health is all basically negative. Indirect effects owing to stricter adherence to treatment regimens and the like would fit in well with my negative thought hypothesis, however, despite its main purpose being satire.

Global Competitiveness Speculation

Arguably, not the most apropos picture, but I thought it was cool.

Originally posted on my private blog March 31st, 2009.

I was thinking about globalization today and instead of going in the anti-consumer economy direction as usual, I decided to confine myself to the existing framework. What can be done to keep enough jobs here in America long term?

1) Create jobs that Americans are uniquely qualified to fill that can't be automated

Other than tasks that require actual proximity to something in America (like caring for aging baby boomers, although in theory (if not likely) the elderly themselves could be cared for abroad), I'm not sure how one could follow through on this one. Service jobs that just involve one citizen selling to another don't add much value and couldn't be significantly expanded. Perhaps an expansion of social support, such as state sponsored financial planning advice or more widespread preventative mental health therapy would be viable. This is definitely an area that is currently under served and could theoretically yield great returns. These jobs could possibly be outsourced via improved teleconferencing, but language and cultural knowledge barriers in addition to the slightly impersonal feel such remote communication adds (a perception that will likely decline with more widespread usage) will give local labor somewhat of an edge.

2) Increase the education level of American workers.

Could work if enough jobs higher up the economic food chain can be produced. That's the path nations are supposed to follow as they develop. Unfortunately, other nations can improve their education as well, so short of employing a time machine to go back and correct all the educational mistakes we made that squandered our significant lead I think we'll have a tough time catching up, let alone surpassing them.

3) Make American labor more cost competitive.

Difficulties in coordination, bureaucracy, language, and transportation do add some overhead to outsourcing. This gives a slight edge to domestic workers, although many of these additional costs will almost certainly decline with time, and presuppose that foreign firms won't eclipse American ones, which is hardly a given. Transportation costs, while destined to grow in expense in energy terms will shift as foreign markets gain in importance and America isn't the dominant destination any longer. To really be cost competitive, Americans are going to have to work for lower wages at some point. We have experienced a very long period of inflation in everyday essentials, where high salaries have allowed higher prices, requiring higher salaries, and so on. As wages in foreign countries have been rising, especially among more skilled workers (making approach #2 even more important), what needs to happen is for our wages and foreign ones to come to an equilibrium somewhere in the middle. That means greater efficiency and less wasteful discretionary spending on our end, and an improved standard of living on theirs. Ideally, someone doing the same work should earn the same wage regardless of where they live.

4) Create enough jobs to give everybody work, worldwide.

With the ever increasing capability of automation, mounting resource competition, and pollution concerns, growing the pie that much isn't likely to be a serious option.

Well, that's about all I've been able to come up with for how to keep American workers competitive and all three of the serious options could be seen to involve shifts in the post consumption direction. If anybody has any other suggestions, please pitch in!

GDP is a Terrible Indicator of Progress

GDP loves a toxic waste dump.

This post is an edited version of one on my private blog February 7th, 2008.

Gross Domestic Product is used as the primary measure of a country's growth. The problem is that it is simply a measure of economic activity (i.e. money changing hands) and makes no attempt to characterize that activity. For more about its shortcomings, I recommend this article from The Atlantic.

This a symptom of a practice which is commonplace in economic theory: if there is a factor that is difficult to quantify or is subjective, economists often will neglect it, thereby assigning it a value of zero. CO2 emissions are probably the best known example of that. If they had been valued fifty years ago, things would be quite different. That particular example would've required a great deal of foresight, and there were powerful special interests at work but it is still indicative of the general methodology.

So, what to do about this? Well, I propose that we admit that economics is, as a general rule, a gross parody of the real complexities that underlie society and we apply high level goal-driven restrictions based on probability to attempt to value intangibles. For example, we can't tell how bad CO2 emissions might be, but it's got to be more than zero, so give it an actual cost now and refine it later. Cancer research is intrinsically more valuable than beanie baby manufacture, so bias things so as to favor such more worthy pursuits. Fast food is unhealthy, so penalize its consumption (or reward the consumption of healthier alternatives). Exercise is lacking, so enact incentives to encourage it. For the free market to have a prayer of working well, it needs to know what direction a positive outcome lies in. This new approach would benefit even the wealthy among us as improvements in the standard of living resulting from technological improvements will always outstrip the short-term increases obtained by amassing more wealth.

I would also propose a new economic progress indicator: the number of hours a week that an average citizen must work to provide a set standard of living (subject to environmental concerns, health impacts, and other constraints) for himself and one child. The goal should be to reduce this number over time. It could include, if desired, bureaucratic barriers that force people to work longer than they need too and of course the standard of living should be updated with time to reflect advances in technology. This is merely a yardstick; someone could always work more than they needed to in order to purchase luxuries. There are other proposed progress indicators, but by making free time the parameter to be maximized it sidesteps the need to assign it an explicit value.

Smart Phone Inspired OS Reform

For a long time the standard for computer applications and operating systems has been "good enough", but mobile device users demand more. More responsiveness, more reliability, more integration, and more ease of use. I am hoping that the emergence of smart phones will result in this demand for increased quality being transferred back to computers in general. Reliability concerns are obvious, so let me give an example of an ease of use issue: change of focus. Frequently when I'm typing in a text field, a program or requester will pop up, changing the focus and resulting in my having to not only hunt for the window I was working in, but also to retype all the text I entered. While arguably a small thing, it occurs frequently and has become a considerable annoyance. This is the sort of easily fixed, idiotic interface glitch that would be unacceptable to mobile device users. Or programs that sit frozen until they have completely loaded. It would be trivial to load enough of the program to allow the user to start working, while the rest of the application loads in the background.

However, I am hoping for more than small improvements. The entire paradigm employed by operating systems is flawed and a legacy of its early days. Right now a file system view model is used, which closely mirrors what's actually going on inside the computer, but is confusing and inefficient for most users. Instead, a greater degree of abstraction needs to be employed. Why is it useful to most users to be able to store their Word documents in strange places anywhere on the drive? The user should neither need to know nor care about such details. Instead of an interface model based on "Here's everything on your entire hard drive, have fun" with some crude tools such as the dock and folders to help organize things, it should be more along the lines of what a smart phone uses: "Here are the top things you do all the time, which would you like?" with a slightly more extended process to access the less common tasks. The user could organize these with an automatic system that tracks their usage habits (although it should never change the interface without user consent). This should be more than a smarter dock, but the primary way one interfaces with their computer, with everything geared towards supporting it. When it comes to using complex systems, less is more. Of course power users will need more advanced features, but they are an extremely small subset and even most of their needs will be met by a simpler, more directed interface. As long as they can step outside of it when required, it should impose no penalty. In general what it comes down to is that comparatively wimpy smart phones have to do more with less, and I am hopeful that the end products of that need will transfer back to general computing.

Sports Questions

I find all spectator sports this interesting.

Originally posted on my private blog April 18th, 2008.

As anyone who knows me is aware of, I am one of those men who doesn’t care for sports. More than that, I don’t get sports. I have some theories, but also questions.

1) How much of sports interest is social, providing common ground with others? Does a lot of that come from being raised with sports?

2) The extreme mobility of players in professional sports makes me wonder exactly what it is that team-specific fans are rooting for (the uniforms?). How does this not undermine morale? Compared to this, rooting for a consistently losing team doesn't confuse me especially.

3) While I understand why getting together and playing a game with some friends would be fun (and good exercise), why is it interesting to watch sports? Is it a vicarious sort of thing? If so, how does that work with players so clearly much better skilled and physically capable (huge basketball stars come to mind)? Or maybe it’s an appreciation of ability angle?

4) Many people have talked about the drama of sports, but to me it’s some people throwing a ball around (or hitting a puck, or whatever). Is it like suspension of disbelief for movies and books?

5) Doesn’t the lack of standardization of equipment in things like car racing bother fans as it muddies the skill issue?

6) When dealing with time differences in sprints and such that are so minute, it’s obvious that if you reran them again a different outcome would probably occur. The Olympics are a prime example of this. I don’t really care who gets the gold and it still makes me squirm. There should be a statistically significant number of trials to determine the best athlete. How does this not bother fans?

Illusionary Light

Yeah, right...whatever. Just say "no".

I have many times seen references in fantasy stories to an illusionist being able to create light, even though it's just an illusion. My attitude is that the illusionist works on the mind, not the eyes, and what he's creating is the illusion of a lit room, not light itself. Therefore, since he can't see in the dark, he doesn't know what the room looks like and therefore cannot "light" it.

Civil Union for Everybody

Originally posted on my private blog June 21st, 2008.

The various efforts to ban gay marriage have me thinking about the issue and I believe the solution is quite simple: strip all legal ramifications away from religious marriage and make everyone have to get a civil union. The marriage ritual is essentially part of the party you choose to celebrate the legal connection you've just entered into and since it's such a loaded word, let's just strip it out of the equation. It furthers the separation of church and state as a byproduct, which is always a good idea anyway. Clearly my atheism has factored into this opinion considerably.