What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

Wretchard: "The need to make a case, especially when that case must be made to perfection, was part of the long run-up to OIF. And the case now stands, like a kind of surreal monument, to the day the thinking stopped. In a way, the case became a casus belli in itself."

In information theory, lossy compression is a real problem, where compressing data and then decompressing it retrieves information that may be completely different in meaning. The hope is always to be "close enough" to the original to pass the fidelity criterion.

There is always a limit as to how much you can compress data and still retain original meaning. What is that limit with the information we are dealing with? A speech? An article? A year's worth of research?

I agree that any process that sets out to convince the public of our need would be interesting. Perhaps here is where we can most fully understand the betrayal of the modern media, in its abdication of its responsibility to keep the public up-to-date. It makes the job of persuasion near impossible.

But he has to try, and it needs to begin.