In a discussion of the PBS show Manor House on Brad DeLong’s weblog, a reader compared it to Zimbardo’s experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Dr Philip Zimbardo, recruited some volunteers who participated in a prison simulation. Some volunteers played the role of prisoners, others played the role of prison guards. The experiment was so psychologically effective (in that both the prisoners and guards embraced their roles fully) that it had to be ended after only 6 days. The results of the Manor House were similar.

Every time I read about “monsters” like Saddam Hussein and his sons and cohorts, I think about these sorts of experiments. It’s foolish to forget that all people have a varying capacity for monstrous behavior, and indeed for craven submission to the application of authority. To delude ourselves as thinking that criminals, or terrorists, or dictators are somehow fundamentally different from the people we encounter in everyday lives is a dangerous mistake to make.

The original comment on DeLong’s weblog mentioned the Milgram experiment, which is the famous experiment that demonstrated that a large percentage of people would torture other people if ordered to do so.

I just think it’s totally cool that Tomcat 4 Clustering (which is backported from Tomcat 5) uses IP multicast to share session info across multiple servers in a cluster. I think that approach is totally ingenious.

I was reading Jim Henley’s thoughts on whether libertarians are better served by the Republican or Democratic party, and ran across what the Democrats would have to do to win him over (while still remaing true to themselves):

My test is, perhaps, more modest: let the Dems put as much real energy into getting rid of big government they supposedly don’t like as adding big government they do. Campaign on ending the drug war and mean it. Dismantle corporate welfare instead of engaging in it. Restore the personal income tax exemption to its level in 1948 dollars while eliminating all or most itemized deductions. Promise to repeal all or most of the USA-PATRIOT Act, the RAVE Act and the DMCA. Stand as firmly for free trade as Clinton did. A party that did these things would still be very much a liberal party. Hell, it would be a more liberal party than the Dems are now. It would still support regulation and tax policies that libertarians hate, but it would have a credible claim to be Kos’s “party of personal liberty” in the non-economic sphere. If the Republicans did not clean up their own act, it would be a damned hard Democratic Party to say “no thanks” to.

That’s certainly a policy approach that I would appreciate.

In an interview with Democracy Now, Robert Fisk speculates that Saddam Hussein (and family) are in Minsk. He also says he believes that the war in Iraq was about oil, which doesn’t engender much respect from me, mainly because it’s a simplistic and obvious analysis that doesn’t fit very well with the facts.