Obviously I'm in very deeply over my head - I am as far from a mathematician as George Bush is from honesty - but I'll try to explain myself better anyway despite the brain pain I endure in trying to figure this stuff out. Like I said, I don't speak the language - I failed algebra twice.

I didn't say, or didn't mean to say, that mathematics or game theory is a cause of human behavior. I meant to say that game theory is used to propound the notion that humans are selfish, greedy and power-mad and that economic theory should be centered around those traits. I think this notion doesn't deserve the name philosophy - I think it's just an appalling rationalization for beliefs held by people who themselves are selfish, greedy and power-mad and so think everybody else must be also. Education in the hands of sociopaths is a dangerous thing.

Nor do I think that all or anywhere close to all mathematicians or game theorists are this type - while they may speak a different language than I, I wager that most of them are decent people who are lucky enough to have found a purpose in life that utterly fascinates and energizes them while creating enormous benefit for "normal" people. The danger comes from the wrong people using the power of this science.

I also said (or meant to, I can't remember and this format isn't conducive to finding your own posts - Salon must think that threaded forums are rocket science) that it's possible or even likely that game theory is being abused by such economists and the politicians and business folk who practice that anti-humanistic thesis.

But that doesn't obviate the point I was trying to make: that too many journalists act as if they subscribe to this cynical thesis - "it's all about me!" - which fact would explain their miserable performance in a profession that by all rights should be based instead in altruism, since there are far better ways to act out one's selfishness, satisfy greed and attain power than by telling the truth and serving as the public's watchdog over government and business.

As for what must be the semantic argument about whether Nash is a mathematician, I don't think there's any doubt that he is indeed. His degree is in mathematics and his dissertation was in a math journal, and he teaches math. This doesn't mean that he couldn't win the economics Nobel - he did. One of the men he shared it with was also a mathematician. This is from the Britannica, which I think is usually a pretty good source:

John Forbes Nash, Jr. American mathematician who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics for his landmark work, first begun in the 1950s, on the mathematics of game theory. He shared the Nobel Prize with the Hungarian American economist John C. Harsanyi and German mathematician Reinhard Selten.

In 1948 Nash received bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two years later, at age 22, he completed his doctorate at Princeton University, publishing his influential thesis “Non-cooperative Games” in the journal Annals of Mathematics....Nash established the mathematical principles of game theory, a branch of mathematics that examines the rivalries among competitors with mixed interests.

If I didn't say so, I highly recommend The Trap, the three-part documentary by Adam Curtis, and his earlier work, The Century of the Self. While the first examines the twisted use made of game theory by some of the world's worst people, the second looks at how similar people have turned psychology, another altruistic pursuit aimed at helping people manage their own lives, into a weapon against self-determination. Unfortunately, both of these will make you convinced, if you weren't already, that the sociopaths are running the world.

Based on past performance, I'd say somewhere between zero and none.

Too bad. This situation is made to order for easy, effective and totally legitimate attacks delivered in the time-tested Republican way, only without the lies and innuendo:

"Why won't Sarah Palin obey the law?

Why is Sarah Palin breaking the law?

Why is Sarah Palin telling her husband and staff to break the law?

What does Sarah Palin have to hide?

What are you afraid of, Sarah?

Just as John McCain would be Bush III, so Sarah Palin would be Cheney III.

I ask the American voters: Is this what you want in your next president and vice president?"

Yeah, too bad. The Democrats are going to avoid this Republican goose and its golden egg. I have to wonder who's stupider: Republicans or Democrats.

(written in hopes that I am totally wrong)

found in the LA Times Sept. 12 - it's no secret. Bobby's just being coy.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan12-2008sep12,0,6177879,full.story

Higher-tech Predators targeting Pakistan

The U.S. drone aircraft involved in strikes against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants across the border have enhanced tracking ability.

...Officials said introduction of the devices coincided with the 2007 U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, and was an important, but hitherto unknown, factor in the subsequent drop in violence in that country...

And this country is a better place (or less worse) because of it. I don't think you can appreciate how much so many people have come to rely on your insight and criticism, both in too-short supply if we're ever going to repair the damage done to our ideals and philosophy, let alone governance, in the last 28, and especially the last 8 years. Because you're giving your all to this, thank you beyond the power of words to express.