The changing nature of search

Since the dawn of the web-driven internet, search engines have been largely key-word based. By that I mean the web pages of the world were indexed based on what the words are on that page. How the results are sorted after you hit the Go button is the product of quite a bit of intellectual property, but the big boys in the industry rank results based on popularity as a proxy for relevance.

This is an approach that works well for items that are popular, but not as well for items that are decidedly niche or were JUST published and therefore don't have much popularity yet. Also, really good searches are best thought of logically, and logic is not something most users are trained in. Drilling down into a popular topic into the sub-realm you're interested in almost always requires excluding search terms, or selecting between two. And most people don't get that sort of thinking.

The search engine I used before Google came on the scene in a big way was Alta Vista. That one used actual logical operators for its searches, which pleased the computer scientist in me. When looking up weird stuff sometimes I ended up with searches that looked like this:

((term OR term) AND (term OR term)) NEAR term

I know what that means, and how the parens work in there. But, um, normal people don't, even though it used words instead of & (and), | (or), or ! (not). What 'normal people' expect, is to type the phrase, "How do I tie a half-windsor" into the search engine, and get a handy how-to in the first few links. Most search engines these days will attempt to search the whole phrase, or failing that drop the common words (everything but 'tie' and 'half-windsor') and return what THAT comes up with.

Work has been going on for years now on what's called 'semantic search', which analyzes the query for the concept it is driving at, and returns results that match the concept. This is a much harder way to index, but arguably a more valuable one when it comes to returning valid results. As an example of why this is a good thing, take the term 'bondage'. It has two very different concepts associated with it. One is the Christian concept of the term ("deliver me from bondage", or, "I am in bondage to.."), the other is a bedroom activity that gets filtered by family filters. A semantic search engine should be able to tell the difference between queries using that word, and decide which large sub-set of pages it should return for the search.

This is decidedly tricky, as there is no easy way to automate the process of determining the concepts on a page. It takes MUCH beefier computer power to index a page for sematics and concepts than it does for key-words. Google and other search engines are now taking variations on the search terms and searching on that as a way to deliver more relevant results, but this only goes so far.

The other day I was searching on a non-Google site for a query that had the word "replicate" in it. Results returned by that query had the following words highlighted as keyword matches: replication, reproduction, reproduce. As it happens, I was searching for a term that has rather specific technical meaning and is commonly used in that exact form. Reproduction, while next to replication in the Thesaurus, had absolutely nothing to do with what I was interested in. Happily, this particular search engine allowed me to put in "+replicate" as a way to tell it to not try searching on variants, and that returned me a much better list.

Once Semantic Search is here and works well, it'll out-perform traditional key-word based search for most searches. This will take some getting used to for those of us who understand the Boolean logic behind current search engines. Key-word search won't go away, though it may require special search syntax to invoke it. However, I predict that I'll just plain get used to it and start using sentences in search terms instead of key-words.

Bills of Attainder

A Bill of Attainder is a law that labels a person or group to be criminals, and provides punishment for same without involving the judicial system. The British Crown was fond enough of them to piss off the framers of the United States Constitution, which leads to this paragraph in Section 9, Article 1.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Which is in the main body of the text, between the "Habeas Corpus" section, and, "no direct tax" (since amended) section. An "ex post facto" law is a law that makes existing penalties for a crime to be greater, and applies it retroactively, or changes the rules so it is easier to convict a crime and applying those new rules of evidence to people already in custody or were already cleared of charges on the crime.

The key thing here is the Bill of Attainder. It is flatly unconstitutional in the US to pass them, a point that the US Courts have pointed out a couple of times (most recently in 2003). So why bring this up?

Because President Bush has put out an Executive Order of Attainder.

It isn't a 'bill' of attainder, because:

1. It isn't an Act of Congress.
2. It doesn't create a new crime, it just penalizes a behavior.

Why it is an Executive Order of Attainder:

1. It singles out a specific group for penalty without involving the courts.

What is especially troubling is the broad wording of the executive order.

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

To summarize, anyone who works against our goal of creating democracy in Iraq can have their US assets seized by the Treasury Department. The determination of "working against" is not done by a court of law, rather by Executive agencies. This is a writ of attainder pure and simple.

The scope is particularly troubling. One could argue, and I'm sure many have, that passing a law mandating the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would violate this EO, and thus subject practically every democrat in Congress to having their assets siezed. Hilary Clinton has already received an official nasty-gram from the DOD, saying (without pointing to the EO) that she qualifies for the EO.

As grounds for Impeachment go, this Executive Order is way better than Abu Ghraib ever was. This is action taken by President Bush himself that directly contravenes (the intent of) the Constitution. It is a violation of his oath of office ("I promise to uphold the constitution").

Will an Impeachment motion stick, though? The arguments I raised for Abu Ghraib still stand, even though control of congress has shifted. The Democrats have been having a whee good time in the house passing bill after bill of Bush-Smackdown only to have it ram against the 60-vote wall in the Senate. An Impeachment motion would pass the House, only to follow Bill Clinton by dieing in the Senate. Anything there will HAVE to involve significant numbers of GOP Senators defecting to the 'Anti-Bush' camp, and that will require a MAJOR blunder on Bush's part; a blunder like trying to apply this new EO to a leading Democratic Senator like Ted Kennedy. I believe that Bush is politically savvy enough to avoid the actions that'll lose him the votes in the Senate he needs to keep on his side.

That said, the wording will still be there when the next President is elected. Who knows how the next President will take things, and they won't be held to the same account as Bush, who wrote the EO, would. It is a bad precedent, and needs to be struck down as soon as possible.

Survey Says: Kids come 8th

From the AP.

It seems that in the last 17 years attitudes towards marriage have shifted markedly. Once upon a time, 1990, children were perceived as one of the top attributes of a successful marriage. They're now 8th of 9 identified by the Pew Research Center. Things closer to the top of the list include such items as, equitable distribution of chores, good housing, and a healthy sex-life.

The survey also found that, by a margin of nearly 3-to-1, Americans say the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children."

Which is interesting in and of itself. This really shows how attitudes towards marriage have shifted since I was a wee one. It is no wonder that the current crop of people reaching marrying age is called, "the me generation."

Two weekends ago I was at a family vacation that we'd been doing for 25 years, and many people I grew up with were there as well. Of the three families with kids my age up there, we had seven of us. Ages ranged from 32 down to 23. Of the seven of us, four were married (none younger than 29) and none had any kids. At age 32 all of our parents had at least one child already. Of all the families that had even been somewhat regular to this annual vacation, the vast majority had started families by age 32. This is a demographic that can be described as 'white, well educated, middle class', which is one of the population segments with the LOWEST birthrates right now.

Marriage is focusing more and more on the relationship between the adults instead of the adults suitability to raise the next generation. An interesting quote:

The survey's findings buttress concerns expressed by numerous scholars and family-policy experts, among them Barbara Dafoe Whitehead of Rutgers University's National Marriage Project.

"The popular culture is increasingly oriented to fulfilling the X-rated fantasies and desires of adults," she wrote in a recent report. "Child-rearing values -- sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity -- seem stale and musty by comparison."

As if having a healthy sex-live inside wedlock was a bad thing. When are we supposed to have it? Or are we not supposed to have it at all? Darned puritans.

Anyway, if your idea of good family values includes lots of children and raising them up healthy and intact, this report is bad news. At least if you're just looking at white middle-class america. Things get different when you delve into minority groups (who aren't going to be minority for long at this rate):

But the patterns in regard to race and ethnicity were more complex.

For example, census statistics show that blacks and Hispanic are more likely than whites to bear children out of wedlock. Yet according to the survey, these minority groups are more inclined than whites to place a high value on the importance of children to a successful marriage.

Placing cultural value on having children in marriage would seem to commute to having children at all, even out of wedlock. Minority groups are more likely to have this value than white america. I've also seen separate reports that immigrant groups tend to have much higher birthrates than people who were born here. At some point, and I think I'll live to see it, White America will merely be the largest group in a plurality and concepts of 'minority' will fade.

Another thing that I suspect is contributing to the diminution of child-raising as a golden goal of marriage is the realization of people my age and younger that raising kids is a LOT of work! And liability. Couple that with a growing cultural permissiveness of childless couples and you have a lot of couples taking the easy road and just not bothering to have kids. Awareness of just how much children cost is also taking hold. I covered some of this two years ago (Fertility and Parenthood), but in short the 'window' for having kids has moved from the early 20's to the early 30's and the resultant fertility problems that entails. College costing what it will doesn't help either, and college educations are now seen as 'standard' for a good life. And you want a good life for your children, right?

Lets try an example. I want to have kids. I want to have enough kids to:
1) Try and make up for those my married friends AREN'T having.
2) Have enough that at least one of 'em will give me grand-kids.

So lets call it 5 kids to be safe. That means probably 28 years of raising kids, and 33 years of paying for college in some form or another. The simple fact is that in that time 5 college educations are going to cost well over a million dollars (closer to $2M thanks to inflation in the overall market and the much higher college tuition inflation rate), a megabuck doesn't go nearly as far as it did 20 years ago, so my poor children are GOING to be saddled with .edu-debt. And that assumes an education at a public university. All this doesn't cover health insurance before they even get to college, I had better hope I get that covered through my employer.

That is a lot of work. We've done a good job of showing our children just how much responsibility having children is so they'll put it off to when they can afford it. Is it any surprise that we're having a big fall-off in families with children?

Back to the article:

Virginia Rutter, a sociology professor at Framingham (Mass.) State College and board member of the Council on Contemporary Families, said the shifting views may be linked in part to America's relative lack of family-friendly workplace policies such as paid leave and subsidized child care.

"If we value families ... we need to change the circumstances they live in," she said, citing the challenges faced by young, two-earner couples as they ponder having children.

In my opinion we're a bit too late for that for the current generation. The baby bust is firmly in place right now, and revising workplace attitudes (and laws) to be much more family friendly will take a decade or two to do any good for reversing that. This needs doing. America is currently maintaining its workforce through immigration rather than 'growing our own', so we're not in the same straits as our European brethren.

Increasingly, children are seen as optional. Something to be explicitly chosen, rather than opted out of. This is something that my feminist upbringing sees as a true and wonderful thing, though it does have some negative impacts to senior care when I get to be that age.

In the mean time, a happy marriage seems to be one in which both members perceive themselves to be equal partners, in both chores, bedroom activities, and providing for the household. That's a good thing right there.