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October 31, 2005

Dilbert Blog

Dilbert, er, Scott Adams, has a blog.

Welcome to my first blog entry.

If you’re reading this on company time, congratulations on beating the system. If you’re reading it on your own time, you really need to find a job where they pay you to do this sort of thing.

"Dangerous Donuts," Dilbert Blog, October 24, 2005

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October 30, 2005

"Onward, Muslim Soldiers!"

SULAWESI, Indonesia -- Muslim warriors scored yet another heroic military victory, this time against a well-trained trio of special-ops teenaged girls from a Christian school.

"Allah be praised for delivering us this magnificent triumph," an unknown brave warrior in a face-obscuring mask announced. "Those 105-pound teenaged girls fought like tigers, using all the weapons and trickery they learned at a Special Forces clinic at the 4-H Club. They also employed advanced martial arts techiques from the legendary fighting form known as 'Jazzercize.'"

The glorious Islamic heroes stated that they identified the co-ed covert operatives by their open display of the famous credo of SOCOM (the special operations command), "N'SYNC = N'STINK."

Having captured the dangerous commandos, the Muslim warriors afforded them with the full panoply of rights granted to them by the Geneva Protocols, including the invioble rights of POW's to have their heads sawed from their still-living bodies, a right which applies only upon capture by Muslims. WARNING: Extremely Graphic Pictures of the International Red Cross-approved treatment of Western prisoners.

The gay-panic murder-cultists of the Muslim world rejoiced that the three operatives had been captured while carrying the weapon most feared in the Muslim world-- vaginas.

"Onward, Muslim Soldiers!" Ace of Spades HQ, October 30, 2005

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October 29, 2005

Pajamas Media

The site, when it launches, won't be called Pajamas Media. And right there you can start to taste the disaster in the air. Reynolds (and the bloggers involved) have been just flogging this beast for months, but when it launches, they're going to throw all that marketing work a curve by renaming it. Why not name it immediately? We don't know, but we have some ideas. Sloth and ineptitude come to mind, but what sticks to the wall as far as we're concerned is arrogance: Readers will just show up, because they can't live without this cabal.

We still like Instapundit a lot, or we wouldn't bother posting. But it is beginning to resemble an online Tonight Show ("James Lileks popped in! Tell us about your new book, Jim!"). And Pajamas Media is beginning to come across as the HuffPo of the center-right. Did we need this?

"Instacrony," mister snitch!, October 26, 2005

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"What's the Difference Between Regular and Discount Gas?"

A joint study done by ABC News and the Maryland State Comptroller's office examined the difference between name brand and generic gasses. Chemists at the Maryland Fuel Testing Laboratory conducted a battery of tests: they verified that the gas was formulated correctly for the season; checked for contaminants like excessive sediments or diesel accidentally mixed with the gas; and they ran the gas through an elaborate engine to ensure that the gas was all the same 87 octane level.

Here's some good news for consumer: Regular and discount gas are basically the same.

"By and large, it's one and the same," said Bob Crawford of the Maryland Fuel Testing Lab. "You will find results will almost mirror each other. There are going to be slight variations but gasoline is gasoline."

"What's the Difference Between Regular and Discount Gas?" ABC News, October 29, 2005

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October 28, 2005

"The Siren Call of Fear"

In one sense, the term politics of fear is a misnomer. Although promoted by parties and advocacy groups, it expresses the renunciation of politics. Unlike the politics of fear pursued by authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, today's politics of fear has no clearly focused objective other than to express claims in a language that enjoys a wider cultural resonance. The distinct feature of our time is not the cultivation of fear but the cultivation of our sense of vulnerability. While it lacks a clearly formulated objective, the cumulative impact of the politics of fear is to reinforce society's consciousness of vulnerability. And the more powerless we feel the more we are likely to find it difficult to resist the siren call of fear.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

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October 27, 2005

Canadian health care

The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.

One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.

"No Time for Kerry's Europhile Delusions," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, October 24, 2004

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Obbie gets this right

Throughout the public evisceration of Harriet Miers, even her critics have tended to concede one of President Bush's main claims: Miers couldn't have been a complete loser to rise to the top of the bar and of her law firm.

Wrong.
. . .
Guess who seeks election to such groups. Not the busiest, in-demand lions of the bar. Instead, it's usually the second stringers, the runners-up in the lawyer game. Real lawyers, for the most part, snicker about "bar weenies"—much as they did about the goofs in high school who ran for class president. Does David Boies spend his $800-an-hour time going to committee meetings and wrangling over the ABA's next convention schedule? Hardly. He might deign to give a speech at a bar gathering if he can fit it into his busy trial schedule. But bar weenies—their slightly kinder name is bar junkies—are the ones holding the Town Car door open for Boies when he arrives at the hotel. And when they're not doing that, they're jabbering endlessly about legal-regulatory policy questions that even most lawyers find stupefying.
. . .
it's even easier to diss the business savvy of a 1990s-era law-firm manager. By the 1990s, when Miers' partners put her in charge, law firms had reluctantly concluded that they were in fact a business. Now that they were thinking outside the box, they had to figure out how to run themselves like businesses. Mostly they failed. Often it didn't matter anyhow. As recession-proof money machines, most firms could wait for clients to seek them out. "Managing" such an enterprise meant divvying up too much money among partners, paying overworked associates just enough to keep them chained to their desks, and deciding whom to admit to the partnership—mostly those who could turn a profit and not those destined to be bar weenies.
. . .
For bar weenies, seeing one of their own elevated to the coolest enclave in law has to be, like, their wildest dream come true. For Miers, it all depends now on a simple question: Is there a Napoleon lurking among her White House handlers?

"Vote for Harriet!!!! The dubious professional distinctions of Harriet Miers," by Mark Obbie, slate, October 25, 2005

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October 26, 2005

Leaks

[T]he most fascinating aspect of the Plame affair is the illustration of how information is used within Washington as a weapon, whether offensively to spread a story or defensively to discredit it; whether to build up the credibility of a source or to cast the gravest aspersions on its integrity. Whatever the power of a 2,000 lb smart bomb in the Outlands may be, it is as nothing beside the whispered word, the glimpsed memorandum, the indictment or the leak in Washington DC. That central fact almost determines the dramatis personae. The confluence of the media, intelligence agencies and partisan politics is not only unsurprising in that context, it is almost inevitable. Who else would be involved in the Plame affair except those whose jobs revolve around the processing of insider information?

And although the Fitzgerald inquiry is ostensibly about stopping leaks, no one actually wants them to stop. An amicus curae brief filed by 36 media organizations including ABC News, AP, CNN, CBS News, WSJ, Fox News, USA Today, NBC News, Newsweek, and Reuters, argued that it would be a bad idea to force journalists to identify the purveyors of confidential information.
. . .
Leaks are used to source stories, to start investigations; leaks are even used to track the progress of investigations into leaks. The only thing in the universe more useful than duct tape or WD-40 is the leak. Therefore even those who hope Karl Rove or Scooter Libby are indicted are praying it will be on grounds of perjury or obstruction of justice, lest the whole show grind to a screeching halt.

"Backstage," The Belmont Club, October 24, 2005

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October 25, 2005

Anger, cynicism, irony

Just as Teenage Depression means you’re sensitive, 20something ANGER means you’re smart. Anger pays little, though, which is why so many choose its hipper cousins, Cynicism and Irony, the Olson Twins of the lazy mind.

"This will be a short week," by James Lileks, the bleat, October 25, 2005

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October 24, 2005

"The way online communities evolve where everyone has an equal voice."

On the Internet the volume of messages posted by idiots plus those posted by morons always exceeds the number posted by well-meaning moderately intelligent people, squared.

Scripting News, October 13, 2005

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October 23, 2005

al-Qaeda "will eventually launch an offensive war"

Since al-Qaeda always makes it clear that its only motivations are to fulfill the teachings of Islam, clearly, if and when the Islamic world is capable, it will eventually launch an offensive war. For the same infallible sources that instruct Muslims to wage defensive war also instruct them to launch an offensive war. Thus if Islam’s ubiquitous apologists tell us that jihadists like al-Qaeda misinterpret Islamic teaching about offensive war, then surely it must misinterpret Islamic teaching about defensive war.

In light of this fact, Westerners should always be cognizant of what al-Qaeda ultimately wants as they consider the long list of alleged wrongs the Islamic world has suffered at the hands of the West. In other words, if al-Qaeda’s demands are met — if Israel ceases to be, if the U.S. evacuates Iraq and Afghanistan, if the West keeps its nose out of the Islamic world’s affairs — will that be enough to satisfy al-Qaeda? Certainly, it would be a start. But based on their words and convictions that all injunctions of the Koran must be fulfilled, it seems that their jihad would merely shift from being defensive to being offensive.

The only reason there hasn’t yet been an offensive jihad is simply because the Islamic World is currently incapable of initiating one — not because they have consciously forfeited the command to establish Islam all over the world by any means necessary. The last time an Islamic people was capable, it fully engaged in conquest, as memories of the Ottoman Empire’s religiously sanctioned invasions and genocides attest.

"Al Qaeda’s Offensive Rhetoric: What Does Al-Qaeda Ultimately Want?" by Raymond Ibrahim, vdh Private Papers, October 5, 2005

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"Christianity was established in Iraq 1,300 years before Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome"

Christianity is not some recent Western import whose proselytizing activities are causing resentment among traditional Muslims. Christianity was established in Iraq 500 years before Britain converted and 1,300 years before Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome. Pre-Islamic Iraq was actually predominantly Jewish and Christian. They were reduced to a minority by their conquerors entirely without reference to the West. Yet so strong is the idea of the West speaking for Christianity that "Church of England bishops are calling for Christian leaders to apologize publicly, at a gathering attended by senior Muslims, for the war in Iraq", without a trace of self-conciousness. The call was contained in a 101 page report prepared by the bishops.

In a preface, one of the four authors, Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries, writes that for many people in the world today, "It is not terrorism, but American foreign policy and what they perceive as American expansionism which constitutes the major threat to peace." Like all major powers in history, he says, America seeks to expand economic, political and military influence. "What distinguishes it from many other empires in history is its strong sense of moral righteousness. In this there is both sincere conviction and dangerous illusion," Harries says. "This sense of moral righteousness is fed by the major influence of the 'Christian Right' on present United States policy."

Within this ostensibly progressive message is a remarkably Edwardian conceit: one which might do justice to a Viceroy of India; the assumption that individuals like Bishop Richard Harries can authoritatively frame the Iraqi debate from the central perspective of a European Christianity. This is probably why the Copts are at pains to emphasize that they are "indigenous" and "pre-Arab". They are fighting for a faith which Western church leaders have no authority to surrender.

"Ex Oriente Lux," The Belmont Club, October 23, 2005

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The Politics of Fear

All advertisers and politicians use similar themes to "sell" things: sex, fear, greed, envy, sloth, pride ...

Although the politics of fear reflects a wider cultural mood, it did not emerge spontaneously. Fear has been consciously politicised. Throughout history fear has been deployed as a political weapon by the ruling elites. Machiavelli's advice to rulers that they will find 'greater security in being feared than in being loved' has been heeded by successive generations of authoritarian governments. Fear can be employed to coerce and terrorise and to maintain public order. Through provoking a common reaction to a perceived threat it can also provide focus for gaining consensus and unity.

Today, the objective of the politics of fear is to gain consensus and to forge a measure of unity around an otherwise disconnected elite. But whatever the intentions of its authors, its main effect is to enforce the idea that there is no alternative.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

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October 22, 2005

The Heart of the Matter with Miers

In their unseemly eagerness to assure Miers's conservative detractors that she will reach the "right" results, her advocates betray complete incomprehension of this: Thoughtful conservatives' highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution's meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure. Such conservatives understand that how you get to a result is as important as the result. Indeed, in an important sense, the path that the Supreme Court takes to the result often is the result.

"Defending The Indefensible," by George F. Will, The Washington Post, October 23, 2005; Page B07

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"Media utters nonsense, won't call enemy out"

I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you're nice about gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti- masochists. And so Islamists who murder non-Muslims in pursuit of explicitly Islamic goals are airbrushed into vague, generic "rebel forces."
. . .
I'm aware the very concept of "the enemy" is alien to the non-judgment multicultural mind: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. But the media's sensitivity police apparently want this to be the first war we lose without even knowing who it is we've lost to. C'mon, guys, next time something happens in the Caucasus, why not blame the "Caucasians"? At least that way, we'll figure it must have been right-wing buddies of Timothy McVeigh.

"Media utters nonsense, won't call enemy out," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun Times, October 16, 2005

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lip synching, web humor, Italian tenors, and VOX ...

mister snitch! linked to a couple of funny videos in "Proving once again that we just don't learn from history" that we had not seen or heard ... even though they have been viewed MILLIONS OF TIMES and been on major network TV shows*

Two Chinese students lip-sync "I Want it That Way". My God, does no one out there remember the Gary Brolsma tragedy?

and this version reminded us of one of our favorites from Joel Veitch of rathergood.com, "Elephants Yeah!!!!!!" (yes, we love to hear Italian tenors (especially Beniamino Gigli); the VOX channel on XM is our current favorite...)

but then we like the VeggieTales Ultimate Silly Song Countdown ... "Larry's High Silk Hat" ... "Endangered Love" ... "His Cheeseburger" ...

oh, and we like jcb, by nizlopi, too ...

* That could be because we don't watch many network TV shows ... except House, Simpsons, Court TV ... OK, so we don't watch those morning and afternoon network TV shows that have this kind of stuff on them ... we're more sophisticated than that ... we watch this kind of stuff on the Internet! ... yeah, that's the ticket ...

... ... ... ...

... ... ... ...

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October 21, 2005

"Let a smile be your umbrella"

Even well-known celebrities generally cave in under the pressure of the moment to conform to stereotype. 'Guilty' or not, they'll fall in line and look guilty for us.

That's what makes Tom DeLay's arrest photo so unsettling to those who want to see the 'mug shot pattern' completed. His smile and calm demeanor is so unusual that it's newsworthy in itself. Simply by refusing to look guilty in his arrest photo, he comes across as a man who's not done fighting.

A smile might not keep you dry. But it's underrated for deflecting a deluge of bad PR.

"Let a smile be your umbrella," mister snitch!, October 21, 2005

Tom DeLay mug shot from Harris County (TX) Sheriff Dept.

Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said the mug shot was the best he's ever seen, noting its similarity to a professional portrait. He doubted it could be used against DeLay politically.

"He's radiating confidence; it may even be bravado," Sabato said. "He was thinking ahead. This could have been a very damaging photo. Instead I think most people will look at this and chuckle."

"DeLay all smiles for photo at booking," by R.G. Ratcliffe and Rosanna Ruiz, Houston Chronicle, October 21, 2005

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"Who does Zarkowi fear the most - France, summiteers, or Marines?"

Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most? A) The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd century

B) The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer

What would you want in this situation? The answer starts with “S” and ends, five letters later, in "T."

So, I get it. We are wrong and bad and stupid and stupidly wrong-bad. We failed to make France act as though it wasn’t, you know, France, a militarily insignificant nation that is understandably motivated by self-interest, and we haven’t convened a summit so we could be castigated for ignoring the extralegal use of Israeli helicopters to turn Hamas kingpins into indistinct red smears. You’d think we nuked Paris and converted everyone to Lutheranism.

Here’s the thing. I’d really like to live in John Kerry’s world. It seems like such a rational, sensible place, where handshakes and signatures have the power to change the face of the planet. If only the terrorists lived there as well.

Who does Zarkowi fear the most - France, summiteers, or Marines?

If the rightness of a cause is measured by the number of one’s allies, would Britain have been right if the US had stayed neutral in World War Two?

And that’s what I felt after 30 minutes of the debate. If I’d stuck around for the whole thing, I think I’d be sleeping in the tool shed tonight, chewing on the old discarded Tiki torches. Now it’s time for a scotch and some TV; see you Monday. And thanks for reading this far. God knows I wouldn’t have. I do go on, don’t I. Alas and alack.

"Two consecutive boring days," Bleat by James Lileks, October 1, 2004

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October 20, 2005

"The Killjoy Nation"

American culture is eventually world culture, and vice versa. Brittle cultures don’t handle it well. Adaptive cultures absorb and adapt–the point of multiculturalism, no? Imagine if the US decided to head off the influence of Indian cinema, lest the next “Batman” movie turn into a chaste historical drama that inexplicably bursts into ornate and endless dance numbers. Imagine if the Feds forbade Bollywood imports. Kids would be swapping the forbidden movies on the internet, just to put a thumb in the censor’s eyes. And that’s what they do now, UNESCO convention be damned. Tunisia, after all, has 800,000 Internet users. If a dozen of them are under 20 and know how to use BitTorrent, well, Central’s “Adult Swim” gets passed around Africa by next Saturday.

In another sense, the UNESCO effort is pointless. No: toothless. More posturing from an international body that convenes to strike pleasing poses, nothing more. But some will see the US position as more American mulishness. The New York Times put it thus: “As with the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, (The US) will likely remain a critical - and perhaps obstructionist - outsider.”

"The Killjoy Nation," by James Lileks, ScreedBlog, October 20, 2005

I don't think he was talking about this ... must be this ... "Cultural Diversity has been at the core of UNESCO’s concerns since the Organization came into being more than 50 years ago." Who knew? ...

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Global Warming and Fear Mongering

Despite the growth of the fear economy, the exploitation of anxieties about potential catastrophes, the promotion of fear is primarily driven by cultural concerns rather than financial expediency. One of the unfortunate consequences of the culture of fear is that any problem or new challenge is liable to be transformed into an issue of survival. So instead of representing the need to overhaul and update our computer systems as a technical problem, contemporary culture preferred to revel in scaring itself about various doomsday scenarios.

The millennium bug was the product of human imagination that symbolised society's formidable capacity to scare itself. But who needs a millennium bug when you have global warming? Today global warming provides the drama for the fear-script. Virtually every unexpected natural phenomenon can be recast as a warning signal for the impending ecological catastrophe. Nothing less than a complete reorganisation of economic and social life can, we are led to believe, save the human species from extinction.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

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October 19, 2005

"Unleash the Dogs of War?" or the Kitty-Cats of Love?

On his blog, Marshall Wittmann predicts that if Karl Rove is indicted, he will "unleash the dogs of war" against Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. "Rove undoubtedly has his operatives in place and prepared to respond if the indictment comes down," Wittmann writes. "The plan of attack has been signed, sealed and ready for delivery at a Fox News outlet in your neighborhood."

"All of the pack that relentlessly pursued Clinton," Wittmann continues, "will kvetch about the 'criminalization of politics.' They will see no irony or hypocrisy in their complaint..."

Now it may be that, if he is charged, Rove will indeed criticize the prosecutor. On the other hand, he might decide, as many defendants do, that there is nothing to be gained by angering the authorities. But whatever happens, we know that, during the two-year Fitzgerald investigation, neither Rove nor his colleagues in the Bush administration have: a) formed an organized crime-style joint defense agreement; b) asserted novel or nonexistent legal privileges; or c) claimed that prosecutors acted unethically or for political reasons. All of that was done by the Clinton defense team in the Lewinsky matter. And all of it was done while the Starr investigation was taking place and before any charging decisions had been made.

"Unleash the Dogs of War" by Byron York, NRO, October 19, 2005

But that wasn't unleashing the dogs of war ... that was unleashing the kitty-cats of love ...

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Abortion and Disabled Children

If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?

I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.

Whenever I am out with Margaret, I'm conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.

Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.
. . .
In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.
. . .
What I don't understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value. I'd like to think that it's time to put that particular piece of baggage on the table and talk about it, but I'm not optimistic. People want what they want: a perfect baby, a perfect life. To which I say: Good luck. Or maybe, dream on.

And here's one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what's driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have.

"The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have: Prenatal testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like "your duty" to abort a disabled child," by Patricia E. Bauer, The Washington Post, October 18, 2005, page A25

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October 18, 2005

The lust for money is the root of all evil - Prom Culture

Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, NY, a Catholic school, cancelled the senior prom.

"I think the prom itself is out of control and it's really beyond reform," Hoagland told "Good Morning America." "These are great kids, we just don't want to put them in harm's way."

In a letter explaining his decision to 489 parents, Hoagland wrote, "It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be. It is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake — in a word, financial decadence."

"Prom Canceled Due to 'Financial Decadence'," ABC News, October 18, 2005

Here's the letter from the President, Fr. Eichner, and Principal, Bro. Hoagland, of Kellenberg Memorial High School (pdf)

We sent the following email to Father Eichner and Brother Hoagland:

Fr. Eichner and Bro. Hoagland, Your September "Prom" letter is a humbling teaching that many in our country, including me, need to hear.

It is depressing what some "Catholic" parents not only allow, but encourage.

I intend to share this with the Head of School at my daughter's school, and will be sharing copies with other parents.

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October 17, 2005

"Hidden snitch codes in color laser prints"

Many color laser printers hide information about your printer's serial number and the date and time of your print job in every job you print. It's believed that this is done to get your equipment to incriminate you without your knowledge. Now EFF has decoded the information-hiding scheme on the Xerox Docucolor series, by getting EFF supporters to print out pages from their printers and mail them to our researchers, who examined them under magnification and special light and cracked the code.

"EFF cracks hidden snitch codes in color laser prints," BoingBoing, October 17, 2005

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We're All Victims

Political debate is often reduced to competing claims about what to fear. Claims about the threat of terrorism or child obesity or asylum seekers compete for the attention of the public. In this way, our anxieties become politicised and turned into a politics of fear. Health activists, environmentalists and advocacy groups are no less involved in using scare stories to pursue their agenda than politicians devoted to getting the public's attention through inciting anxieties about crime and law and order.

The narrative of fear has become so widely assimilated that it is now self-consciously expressed in a personalised and privatised way. In previous eras where the politics of fear had a powerful grasp - in Latin American dictatorships, fascist Italy or Stalin's Soviet Union - people rarely saw fear as an issue in its own right. Rather, they were frightened that what happened to a friend or a neighbour might also happen to them. Today, however, public fears are rarely expressed in response to any specific event. Rather, the politics of fear captures a sensibility towards life in general. The statement 'I am frightened' tends to express a diffuse sense of powerlessness.

And yet, the politics of fear could not flourish if it did not resonate so powerfully with today's cultural climate. Politicians cannot simply create fear from thin air. Nor do they monopolise the deployment of fear: panics about health or security can just as easily begin on the internet or through the efforts of an advocacy group as from the efforts of government spindoctors. Paradoxically, governments spend as much time trying to contain the effects of spontaneously generated scare stories as they do pursuing their own fear campaigns.

The reason why the politics of fear has such a powerful resonance is because of the way that personhood has been redefined in mental health terms. Increasingly, people are presented as individuals who lack the emotional resources to cope with the challenges of life.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

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October 16, 2005

Mainstream ... Compare and Contrast

Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck, both Clinton administration veterans, point out in a recent paper that two thirds of liberals, the dominant force in the party at least in 2004, reject pre-emptive use of military force and want to cut the defense budget, while only one third of the electorate agrees.

"Spurning America," Barone Blog, October, 2005

Press Outraged Over Staged Flagraising

March 3rd, 1945

IWO JIMA (Routers) Controversy has erupted among the press corps in the last few days as news has spread that the now-famous picture of the "victorious" flag raising over Iwo Jima a couple weeks ago was staged. Many believe that, as the huge number of casualties mounted in the ill-fated and pointless invasion of this tiny island, the Roosevelt administration, desperate for a bit of pro-war propaganda, arranged to have the photo taken for dissemination to the world's news services.

It has been revealed that the picture was actually of a "recreation" of an earlier flag raising of a much smaller flag, though even that event has now been cast into doubt by the apparent attempt to mislead the press.

"Press Outraged Over Staged Flagraising," Transterrestrial Musings, October 16, 2005

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"regular smog checks do not automatically a fully-realized human being make"

It takes a certain wisdom to realize that owning things and going through rituals like graduation and marriage and regular smog checks do not automatically a fully-realized human being make.

especially regular smog checks ...

"Express train to the wasteland, thanks," Nonsense Verse, October 11, 2005

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No Che t-shirt

My husband likes to wear this No Che t-shirt to celebrate American holidays like July 4th.

One day he wore it into our very multi-culti local coffee shop, where he really harshed their buzz. They whined.."why don't you like Che??"

He didn't have a list of the reasons on hand, but if anyone asks, via the Babalu Blog, here are the facts behind ten myths about Che.

read the whole thing: "Totalitarian pop," Exit Zero, October 11, 2005

you can buy No Che t-shirts at ThoseShirts.com

After reading Exit Zero, check out this post, and the comments, at The People's Cube: "Cafepress.com Censors The People's Cube," October 11, 2005

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Nobel Prize for ... blindness

The United States may not be their Great Satan, but it’s the devil they know. The bureaucrats and the EU anointed are the priesthood - and the Nobel peace prize is the means of bestowing sainthood.

Which brings us to its latest recipient: ol’ see-no-evil Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is like giving the Surgeon General the Nobel Price for medicine after bird flu depopulates the North American continent. Let’s look at his highlight reel:

Completely whiffed the Libyan nuke program. Failed to notice that Iran had a secret nuclear program going for a fifth of a century. (You can hardly blame them – it was secret, after all. I mean, it’s not like you can barge in and say “what’s all this, then?”) The IAEA also didn’t have a clue about A. Q. Khan, the wannabe Bond villain who ran a nuclear Wal-Mart for rogue states. ElBaradei would have been better off sending Mr. Magoo to ferret out Khan’s network; at least Magoo would have tripped over something.

"Anagram: A Bad Lie, Arab Elide," by James Lileks, October 12, 2005

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October 15, 2005

"Find a question that makes the world interesting."

If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was was when he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell is going on here?

It can take years to zero in on a productive question, because it can take years to figure out what a subject is really about. To take an extreme example, consider math. Most people think they hate math, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name "mathematics" is not at all like what mathematicians do.

The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn't like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting-- only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.

When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.

And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford's great question was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can't defenders score goals too?

"What you'll wish you'd known," by Paul Graham, January, 2005 (excellent advice for young people)

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"TIME Sanitizes Farrakhan"

Just when you thought that this old, wretched bigot had slithered away for good, the noxious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan is back, courtesy of TIME Online, in an item posted tonight.

As befits the end of the baseball season, it seems to be softball time at TIME, with the magazine's brain-dead editors lobbing softball after softball at the double-talking Farrakan, with the latter eagerly portraying himself as misunderstood and as meek as a lamb.

"TIME Sanitizes Farrakhan," Mediacrity, October 14, 2005

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October 14, 2005

ColorBlender

ColorBlender – your free online tool for color matching and palette design!

To get started, choose a preferred color using the color picker below, and a 6-color matching palette (a "blend") will be automatically calculated.

very cool

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Paedophile or Loving Father?

It is not simply the big events like Katrina that are subjected to competing claims on the fear market. Imagine that you are a parent. For years you have been told that sunshine represents a mortal danger to your child, and that you must protect them from skin cancer by minimising their exposure to the sun. Then, this summer, a report is published that raises concerns about the rise of vitamin E deficiency among children who have been far too protected from the sun. So what do you do? The fact is that a growing range of human experience - from natural disasters to children's lives in the outdoors - is now interpreted through competing claims about fear.

Our misanthropic reaction to the catastrophe in New Orleans is reproduced daily in response to far more mundane events. That is why society cannot discuss a problem facing children without going into panic mode. Research shows that when viewers see an image of a child on a TV news item, they automatically anticipate a negative story. So a majority of people who were asked to give their interpretation of a photo of a man cuddling a child responded by stating that this was a picture of a paedophile instead of an act of a loving father.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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"Bloggers 'Probably Not' Considered Journos"

Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon.

Lugar emphasized, however, that debate is not yet closed on how to define a journalist under the proposed law.

"As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," he said in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?"

The bill is necessary to help the United States regain its status as an "exemplar" of press freedom, Lugar told the IAPA. "Even as we are advocating for free press (abroad)... we'd better clean up our own act," Lugar said.

"Shield Law Sponsor: Bloggers 'Probably Not' Considered Journos," by Mark Fitzgerald, Editor & Publisher, October 12, 2005

No word about freedom of speech ...

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"The Battle for the Internet"

Richard Wray of the Guardian writes that the EU says internet could fall apart unless the US yields control of the Internet to the United Nations. "The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the Internet will split apart."

Viviane Reding's warning is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. China, Saudi Arabia and Iran can go ahead with their threat to create a proprietary DNS system and govern the hell out of it, which will guarantee that it will never achieve universal acceptance. All the United States need do to maintain its control over the Internet is simply to leave it alone.

"The Battle for the Internet," Belmont Club, October 14, 2005

so long, farewell, we hate to see you go ...

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October 13, 2005

Capitalism is destroying the world

What caused the Pakistan earthquakes? If you trust Venezuela’s Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez, it was the free market. Adam Smith’s invisible hand, flipping mankind the bird. The "world global capitalist model,” Chavez insisted, “… is destroying the world. The world is in danger. Never has there been such disasters, hurricanes, droughts, torrential rains. Incredible! The world is dangerously off balance."

"Anagram: A Bad Lie, Arab Elide," by James Lileks, October 12, 2005

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October 12, 2005

"Training Camp for Young Muslim-American Men."

During the Beltway Sniper crisis, back in the fall of 2002, a series of articles in The Washington Times described John Allen Muhammad’s conversion to Islam, and his later break with the Nation of Islam (the articles are no longer available, but extracts have been preserved here). Apparently the NOI was not militant enough for Mr. Muhammad, and he left it to become involved with a group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Arabic for “community of the impoverished”), a terrorist organization founded by a notorious Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani.

What drew my eye in the article was the mention of a Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound in Red House, Virginia. Red House?! I know Red House — a small village in rural Charlotte County.

Read the whole thing ... with maps and a pic ...

"Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia, Part 1," Gates of Vienna, October 10, 2005

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"Dead Man Laughing"

Perhaps one day historians will discover that the phrase 'War on Terror' was a misnomer after all; that in retrospect September 11 was not an insurrectionary act, as the Left often pretends it is, but the last attempt of a fading aristocracy to preserve its prerogatives. Then Ground Zero will look to Statue of Liberty with a matching message of its own.

Arise you tired,
you poor,
you huddled masses
and breathe free.

"Dead Man Laughing," Belmont Club, October 12, 2005

Islmaofacism is not revolutionary, it is reactionary ... see Sasha Abramsky ...

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"...human freedom is inextricably tied to a recognition of limits."

Part of what makes Kolakowski’s reflections on freedom and its vicissitudes so fruitful is his understanding that human freedom is inextricably tied to a recognition of limits, which in the end involves a recognition of the sacred. This has been a leitmotif of his work from the beginning. In The Alienation of Reason (1966), he criticizes positivism as "an attempt to consolidate science as a self-sufficient activity, which exhausts all the possible ways of appropriating the world intellectually."

In "Man Does Not Live by Reason Alone" (1991), Kolakowski argues that "mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be ex-communicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone." He shows how the tendency to believe that all human problems have a technical solution is an unfortunate inheritance from the Enlightenment—"even," he notes, "from the best aspects of the Enlightenment: from its struggle against intolerance, self-complacency, superstitions, and uncritical worship of tradition." There is much about human life that is not susceptible to human remedy or intervention. Our allegiance to the ideal of unlimited progress is, paradoxically, a dangerous moral limitation that is closely bound up with what Kolakowski calls the loss of the sacred. "With the disappearance of the sacred," he writes,

which imposed limits to the perfection that could be attained by the profane, arises one of the most dangerous illusions of our civilization—the illusion that there are no limits to the changes that human life can undergo, that society is "in principle" an endlessly flexible thing, and that to deny this flexibility and this perfectibility is to deny man’s total autonomy and thus to deny man himself.

These are wise words, grippingly pertinent to an age conjuring with the immense technological novelties of cloning, genetic engineering, and other Promethean temptations. We pride ourselves today on our “openness” and commitment to liberal ideals, our empathy for other cultures, and our sophisticated understanding that our way of viewing the world is, after all, only our way of viewing the world. But Kolakowski reminds us that, without a prior commitment to substantive values—to an ideal of the good and (just as important) an acknowledgment of evil—openness threatens to degenerate into vacuousness. Given the shape of our post-Soviet, technologically infatuated world, perhaps it is that admonition, even more than his heroic demolition of Marxism, for which Leszek Kolakowski will be honored in the decades to come.

"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005

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October 11, 2005

"Fear has lost its relationship to experience"

Fear has lost its relationship to experience. When confronted with a specific threat such as the plague or an act of war, fear can serve as an emotion that guides us in a sensible direction. However, when fear is promoted as promiscuously as it is today, it breeds an unfocused sense of anxiety that can attach itself to anything. In such circumstances fear can disorient and distract us from our very own experiences. That is why fear has acquired connotations that are entirely negative.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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October 10, 2005

Sandy Berger as the voice of integrity. Uh huh...

When the convicted burglar of classified material is set forth on a long-running television network news program as the voice of integrity, you know the level of contempt that the network has for the American public.

"Kick Me," baldilocks, October 10, 2005

Posted at 05:05 PM   ·  Categories: Stupidity

Islamofascists

[W]hat al-Qaida apparently hates most about “the west” are its best points: the pluralism, the rationalism, individual liberty, the emancipation of women, the openness and social dynamism that represent the strongest legacy of the Enlightenment. These values stand in counterpoint to the tyrannical social code idealised by al-Qaida and by related political groupings such as Afghanistan’s Taliban.

"Whose al-Qaida problem?" by Sasha Abramsky, openDemocracy, October 4, 2005

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October 09, 2005

"Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End"

People's Cube has a great post ... "Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End" ...

"My cabinet and I had long discussions about world troubles, and we concluded that our critics are right - all the troubles can be traced back to us. So, in order to resolve these issues, we felt it would be best to extend our withdrawal beyond Gaza to include the West Bank and Israel proper," Sharon said. "The Gaza pullout was only a test, and the ensuing waves of peace and brotherhood it had triggered in Palestine and beyond, encouraged us to disband altogether. Without us here, people of the world will finally be able, once again, to live in permanent harmony and understanding - just like they all did before Israel's founding nearly sixty years ago."

From Russia to Morocco to Yemen to France, countries are anticipating the arrival of Israelis. In Moscow, an enormous banner was erected that read "Welcome Home, Jews." and erstwhile presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky exclaimed, "I'm going to bake a huge batch of cookies for this homecoming!" And in cities throughout Germany, joyous "Judenfests" were ubiquitous, as local citizens were arranging festivals to celebrate the Jewish arrival.

Read the whole thing ...

Posted at 06:00 PM   ·  Categories: Nihilism

ACLU and Catholic Guy

We saw this image on Don Surber's blog ....

and it reminds us of Chuck Williams' article, "Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?" ...

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October 08, 2005

OU bomber Joel Hinrichs

The MSM doesn't seem to be paying much attention to the possible jihad-related extracurricular activities of OU bomber Joel Hinrichs, but Michelle Malkin and Mark Tapscott are (keep scrolling). OU president David Boren has advised against a rush to judgment.

Southern Appeal, October 7, 2005

More on Joel Heinrichs

• The Jawa Report

• Mark Tapscott, October 8, 2005

• Michelle Malkin, October 7, 2005

• Michelle Malkin, October 6, 2005

• "Is This the Great Ramadan Offensive?", Generation Why?, October 6, 2005

Update: See "The blogs that cried wolf?," The Y Files, October 18, 2005

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Katrina Victim Wins a Million at the Slots

Clareified has a post about a Katrina victim who won $1,000,000 at the slots ...

Now, I know this is supposed to be a feel-good, lift-your-spirits, anything-can-happen kind of Hollywood story...but a homeless woman with $20 to her name stopping at a casino on the way to the grocery, doesn't strike me as the kind of example we should be setting.

"Katrina Victim Wins a Million at the Slots," Clareified, October 6, 2005

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World Leaders Youth Pics

IranDefence.net has an interesting collection of photographs of world leaders ... "World Leaders Youth Pics" ...

Where's ... Bill Clinton ... Richard Nixon ... Kofi Anann ... Margaret Thatcher ... Pope John Paul II ... Pope Benedict XVI ... FDR ...

via Englishman in New York

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We have nothing to fear but fear itself

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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Utopia Will Result If We Would Just Listen to Our Betters and Get Out of Iraq ...

British journalists Robert Fisk, John Pilger, and Tariq Ali, along with British MP George Galloway, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, commentators such as Naomi Klein have all essentially blamed Britain and the United States for bringing the attacks upon themselves. While being careful to denounce the bombers and their agenda, these advocates uttered variations on the same theme: get out of Iraq, bring home the troops from all points east, curtail support for Israel, develop a more sensible, non-oil-based energy policy, and our troubles would dissipate in the wind.

[U]nlike traditional “third-world” liberation movements looking for a bit of peace and quiet in which to nurture embryonic states, al-Qaida is classically imperialist, looking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own, looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image.

"Whose al-Qaida problem?" by Sasha Abramsky, openDemocracy, October 4, 2005

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"Fear Entrepreneurs"

Throughout history human beings have had to deal with the emotion of fear. But the way we fear and what we fear changes all the time. During the past 2,000 years we mainly feared supernatural forces. In medieval times volcanic eruptions and solar eclipses were a special focus of fear since they were interpreted as symptoms of divine retribution. In Victorian times many people's fears were focused on unemployment.

Today, however, we appear to fear just about everything. One reason why we fear so much is because life is dominated by competing groups of fear entrepreneurs who promote their cause, stake their claims, or sell their products through fear. Politicians, the media, businesses, environmental organisations, public health officials and advocacy groups are continually warning us about something new to fear.

"The market in fear: Politics has become a contest between different brands of doom-mongering," by Frank Furedi, Spiked, September 26, 2005

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

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Black Indians, Casino Gambling, Racial Identity

Black Americans who are American Indians ...

The Cherokee kept black slaves until 1866, when an emancipation treaty freed them from bondage and granted them full tribal citizenship. Known as the Freedmen, these men and women were embraced by the Cherokee as equals, and often married the offspring of their former masters. Like Stick, they identified with local cultures, spoke tribal languages, and took part in tribal religious rites.

[Leslie] Ross is just one of at least 25,000 direct descendants of Freedmen who cannot join Oklahoma's largest tribes. Once paragons of racial inclusion and assimilation, the Native American sovereign nations have done an about-face and systematically pushed out people of African descent. "There's never been any stigma about intermarriage," says Stu Phillips, editor of The Seminole Producer, a local newspaper in central Oklahoma. "You've got Indians marrying whites, Indians marrying blacks. It was never a problem until they got some money."

The casino profits and make-good money have increased the standard of living for the recognized members of the tribes who make their homes in some of the poorest areas in the US. Cherokee Nation Enterprises allocates 25 percent of profits to the Cherokee government, which distributes the money in ways designed to help end the cycle of poverty - college scholarships, health care, and low-interest home loans. And the Seminole Nation offers grants for home repairs, which many of the ramshackle structures in Seminole County can sorely use. On the outskirts of Wewoka, the county seat, families loll on wooden porches that seem one gust of wind away from collapse.

And so, in recent years, a rush of Indians has come forward to claim tribal citizenship and get their share of the benefits. In 1980, there were 50,000 members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma; today, there are more than a quarter million. But even as the official ranks of the Five Civilized Tribes have swelled, they've revised membership guidelines to exclude the Freedmen.

[Ron] Graham admits that money is a factor in his crusade: His three college-age sons could benefit from federal scholarships reserved for Native Americans. But he's not just looking for a handout. He seeks recognition as a Creek because that's how he has always identified himself. Graham fondly remembers his late father, Theodore "Blue" Graham, dancing at the stomp grounds near the town of Arbeka, where Creeks in traditional dress would gather for sacred ceremonies. Blue spoke Creek fluently and handed down some knowledge of the language to his son. During one of his citizenship hearings with Creek Nation officials, Ron was shocked to learn that he was one of the only people in the room who could recognize the word for girl written in the tribe's ancestral language. "My nation won't accept me because of skin color," he says, shaking his head.

"Ninety percent of the people interested in Native American ancestry are people who look as European as could be," says Tony Frudakis, chief scientific officer of DNAPrint Genomics, a Sarasota, Florida, genetic testing company. "They think they might have a Native American ancestor three or four generations back. We call it the American Indian Great-Grandmother Princess."

But even the best [DNA] tests have large margins of error. "If you show a positive result of 4 or 5 or 6 percentage points, there's a possibility that it isn't indicating Native American ancestry," Frudakis says. People with these levels of Indian blood may simply have genetic roots in places like Greece or Turkey, whose natives can convey Indian-ness in their DNA. Pakistanis, meanwhile, typically show 30 percent Native American heritage, for reasons that are not yet totally clear to scientists.

But if the young discipline of DNA testing has taught us anything, it's that the very notion of race is fading, at least from a genetic perspective. The world is populated by mongrels and half-breeds. Even those who base their self-worth on being of "pure" racial stock probably aren't. Every family tree has a thousand branches. "The technology will show how mixed we are," Kittles says. "There is no line of distinction you can draw between groups. There will be people who say they have 100 percent African blood. I can show them that they have significant European ancestry, too."

"Blood Feud," by Brendan I. Koerner, Wired, September, 2005

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October 07, 2005

"In Favor of Affirmative Action"

Ace of Spades has a funny post ... "In Favor of Affirmative Action: We Need a Black, Jewish, or Catholic Supreme Court Nominee" ...

Most of the intellectual firepower in the conservative movement comes from blacks, Jews, and Catholics. I could list the names but you already know them. I think there's a reason for that. There's a difference between someone who falls into an ideological position simply because that's the culture he was born into and someone who becomes an apostate from their own given-by-birth political culture to embrace another. Converts, those breaking from the path-of-least-resistance belief systems in which they were raised, don't just "fall into" an ideological system. They first go through a process of rigorous examination of the system they first believed, and then proceed to demolish their previous beliefs through reasoned philosophical inner debate. If they finally do make the break from their old political religion, they have a strong philosophical foundation for their beliefs, each supporting pillar tested and hardened in their own intellectual fires.

George W. Bush is a conservative, but not much of one. He doesn't seem to have a particularly strong philosophical belief in a limited government, for example. Yes, he's Ivy League twice over, but the political culture he grew up in was Yankee Republicanism. Not conservatism, really. Just Rockefeller Republicanism with a bit of West Texas flavor. That's why his instinct is to just tack very liberal whenever he gets into trouble, or wants to garner votes.

Read the whole thing

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Timewaster - Planarity

Here's a simple timewaster ... much fun ...

Planarity, by John Tantalo

via insignificant thoughts

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Islamofascism

Michael Barone says that President Bush's speech on October 7, 2005, did three things:

First, he identified the source of the terrorism we are fighting against. "Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamofascism." (Score one for Christopher Hitchens, who I believe invented the term Islamofascism.) Of course Bush went on to say, quite rightly, "Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam." To the best of my memory, Bush previously has not been willing to describe what we are fighting against as "Islamic" radicalism, presumably out of fear of angering Muslims or of providing fodder for claiming that we are fighting a war against Islam.

Second, Bush provided a narrative framework for what is going on in Iraq. It is not, as the mainstream media tend to portray it, a story of endless and continuous violence against which we have no defense and are prosecuting no offense. On the contrary, our coalition, along with our Iraqi allies, is moving forward with a comprehensive, specific military plan. Area by area, city by city, we're conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces, and leaving behind Iraqi units to prevent the enemy from returning.

The third interesting new thing in this speech was Bush's description of what could happen if we fail in Iraq:

Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. This is a dangerous illusion, refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources?

I am struck by the sublime indifference of most critics of Bush's Iraq policy to the fate of the Iraqi people. They are totally unexultant about the overthrow of a vicious dictatorship and seem to have no interest at all in what would happen to Iraqis if we leave suddenly.

"The president's speech," Barone blog, October 7, 2005

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"Fresher Under Pressure"

[A] new technology may be responsible for increasing demand for avocados - I know it has for my family. The process (see http://www.fresherunderpressure.com/) uses pressure rather than heat to pasteurize foods. This makes things like orange juice (and - relevant to this discussion - avocados) taste fresh and unprocessed for weeks.

AvoClassic (http://www.avoclassic.com/) uses the technology to make their tasty and extremely inexpensive pre-made guacamole. For many years I was a die-hard about making guacamole using only fresh, ripe avocados, garlic, limes, and salt (with an occasional minced chili pepper). But at a price per pouch of fresh-tasting guacamole that is about equal to the price of a single [frequently unripe] Haas avocado, AvoClassic guacamole is responsible for multiplying my family's consumption of avocados over the last two years by 5-10 times the previous rate.

This is almost the entire post of "Trade, Technology, and Avocados," Dynamist, October 6, 2005, but if you want live links you'll have to click through to the post.

As a former grocer, I am still fascinated with grocery merchandising (e.g., Trader Joe's gets merchandising AND marketing in a big way), packaging, sizes, and variety. I had not heard of this technology, although I have eaten the AvoClassic guacamole - it is excellent. We get it at Costco, and the price is incredibly reasonable.

Very interesting technology.

Posted at 06:52 PM   ·  Comments (0)   ·  TrackBack (0)   ·  Categories: Technology

October 05, 2005

Cronyism

Captain's Quarters gets it right:

The GOP knew it had a problem as soon as it got this nomination [Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court], and it still knows it. Harriet Miers has a strong background as a groundbreaking attorney in Texas and a longterm aide to the President. Inasmuch as a nomination to the Supreme Court has no prerequisites other than Presidential approval, she cannot be described as unqualified. However, pretending that she has the highest qualifications for this position insults the intelligence of the people who have consistently supported George Bush, especially those who did so relying on his oft-stated demand for only the best-qualified nominees to this lifetime appointment which has the power to shape so much of our lives.
. . .
If running a law firm as managing partner made Harriet Miers a thoroughly qualified candidate, then Bush had thousands from which to pick -- and I daresay some of those might have shown more Constitutional law energy and experience than Miers.

"How To Tell When A Nomination Has Hit Trouble," Captain's Quarters, October 5, 2005

One of our many concerns with this nomination is: what does a person whose role has been one of giving advice, and doing it so loyally for so long, do when that person must stand on their own? The lack of demonstrated independence is troublesome at best.

Cronyism: Wikipedia | Wordnet | Merriam-Webster

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October 04, 2005

"Global terrorism is not a revolution, but an attempt to suppress a revolution."

The suicide bomb, with the mass terrorism it epitomizes, is the weapon of choice against the velvet revolution. The target is not, as well-meaning critics of terrorism say, indiscriminate: it is exact and precise. The target is any population that might organize a velvet revolution, the potential sovereigns of a democratic state. It is people who are not ideological, who are willing to let others believe what they want, who want to make a living and be independent, and who want a say in their government.

Even in Israel, where it was the citizens of an already-established democratic state that were being attacked, the true target, as we are now coming to understand after the death of Arafat, was the nascent democracy of Palestine. By killing Jews, Arafat could continue to oppress and defraud Palestinians.

Global terrorism is not a revolution, but an attempt to suppress a revolution. What is being defended by suicide terror is not Islam, not traditional moral culture, not the ethnic nation yearning to be free of the colonial oppressor, but the principle of totalitarian rule -- the sovereignty of the dictator or the ayatollah, promoted as national self-identity and independence, or as the will of God. It is the last gasp, historically, of the ancient system by which the huge majority of human beings were ruled since the Neolithic agricultural revolution.

"Velvet Revolutions and the Logic of Terrorism," by Frederick Turner, TCS, September 20, 2005

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October 03, 2005

Rules of Life - 2

Rules of Life, (author unknown)

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from your parents' generation try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

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October 02, 2005

Velvet Revolutions and Suicide Bombers

Part of our difficulty in dealing with global terror directed against civilian populations is that we have not, I believe, understood what it was designed to attack. Some see it as a war between cultural blocs, others as a religious war against infidels, others as a traditionalist reaction to the social, economic, and cultural disruptions caused by globalism, others as a continuation of the liberation of oppressed peoples from colonial imperialism. There may be a grain of truth in some of these explanations, but the counter-examples to each of them are glaring.

. . .

Thirty years ago it looked as if the totalitarian state was solidly established, successful and immortal. Democratic capitalism had been stopped in its tracks. The nuclear-armed socialist dictatorship could not be attacked or defeated; it could at best be contained, and none of its incremental marginal conquests could be rolled back. Marvelously, however, a new strategy emerged, invented by the world's middle-class populations, that could bring down the totalitarian state: the velvet revolution. Totalitarian governments rely on elites to govern and control the people and defend themselves against outside ideas. Those elites must reproduce themselves, creating a property-owning educated class with great power but without the revolutionary ideology of their parents; and to remain economically viable the state must produce a skilled artisan class, like the shipbuilders of Gdansk, with the capacity to unionize. Out of these materials, generated by totalitarianism itself, comes the velvet revolution.

The velvet revolution (also named the orange revolution, the purple finger, the rose revolution, the cedar revolution) has swept the world. In different ways, nonviolent, non-ideological middle-class and skilled-worker mass movements have unseated tyrants and established democracies in an amazing range of countries: Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Bangladesh, South Korea, Indonesia, the Baltic states, Mexico, Serbia, Albania, Georgia, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Lebanon, even Palestine, all fell to the regimes of popular sovereignty. China nearly fell in 1989, with the Tiananmen protest, and will become a democracy some time in the next twenty years. If there is one defining event that characterizes the end of twentieth century political modernism, it is this one.

"Velvet Revolutions and the Logic of Terrorism," by Frederick Turner, TCS, September 20, 2005

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Rock the Vote has an agenda ...Who knew?

No advocacy group has done more to dissuade young people from personal accounts than Rock the Vote. Their talking points and arguments could be mistaken for AARP briefs. Which makes sense, because when it comes to Social Security, Rock the Vote is now working with the country’s most powerful lobby for the elderly.

To get a read on Rock the Vote’s thinking, DOUBLETHINK asked the group’s Washington director, Hans Riemer, a simple question: In light of the demographics and opinion data, shouldn’t Rock the Vote be in favor of personal accounts, or at least be open to them?

No way, says Riemer. You see, privatization is all one big scam. “Young people have been lied to by advocates of privatization and some politicians into thinking that there is going to be nothing there [when they retire] so they’ll go along with a bad deal,” he says. Social Security is “100-percent funded” for 40-50 years. Would he at least be open to allowing somebody from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation to offer a rebuttal to their website? After all, Rock the Vote is technically a nonpartisan organization.

"MTV, The New AARP," by Sean Higgins, DOUBLETHINK, July 28, 2005

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The Left opposes armed conflict?

It is typical of the Left to oppose armed conflict except in cases when they are the ones with the guns and they're shooting people like me.

"Protesting for dummies," by David Freddoso, brainwash, September 25, 2005

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October 01, 2005

"The People's Progressive Truth Generator™"

People's Cube has "The People's Progressive Truth Generator™" ...

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New ThinkPad has built in EV-DO

After reading this article on the new ThinkPad Z line, with built in EV-DO, we're going to start thinking about updating our T20s ... we've been using the Verizon Broadband service a lot more lately ... just renewed our contract at $60 per month per line for 2 lines ... works well in DC ...

"New ThinkPad Is All Work, and Some Play," by David Pogue, NYT, September 29, 2005

Posted at 11:58 AM   ·  Comments (0)   ·  TrackBack (0)   ·  Categories: Technology

wikis

So my experience and my bet is that wikis will take the enterprise by storm. Because they are simpler, easier, and better.

They are proving it already on the web. It's just a matter of time before they do it with even more impact in the enterprise.

Here are two places to start if you want to get a wiki

JotSpot - For consumers and small businesses
SocialText - For larger companies.

Wikis, A VC, September 20, 2005

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there you have it ... racist imagery as a disciplinary bullwhip

"racist imagery as a disciplinary bullwhip" ...

... it is because it has been made only too clear what Democrats have to offer me -- or anyone who might share some of my rather idiosyncratic views. After listing the comments of Dennis Hastert, Barbara Bush and Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) in the earlier entry and the obstacles that they presented to those interested in trying to reach out to just about any non-traditional Republican audience, I thought it appropriate to now turn the tables and see how the rank-and-file black Democrat feels about their GOP counterparts. . . . Consider then the testimony of Mr. Steve Gilliard in his response, "Why Are You A Republican, Bob?" . . . That said, here is Steve's almost exhaustive descriptive catalogue for those black folks that dare line up under the Republican banner: "s-l-a-v-e", "slave", "pathetic clowns," "token...negro," "house negro." How many real, live, actual white racists feel so comfortable in their racism to use these words in public? Steve is obviously not so shy.

Note, too, the use of the diminutive familiar of my name, "Bob." That, too, has a history in the American drama of race. In Jim Crow, the white man didn't show any respect to the "negro," so he never had to call him by any name that would connote any equality.

And, forget, of course, the need to actually know anything about one's supposed inferior.
. . .
Those words, though, were not explicitly racial. At worst, they betrayed a class blindness that has no place in politics. Does their class-ism betray an inner racism? I don't know. They certainly don't go so far as "nigger," which Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) used in a televised interview not too long ago. The one-time Klansman says that his use of the word doesn't mean that he still harbors racist thoughts. If we take him at his word, perhaps the same should be done with the GOP trio. Perhaps they should be given a pass.
. . .
However, none of the words uttered by these GOpers are laced with the overt historically demeaning and racist venom that seeps throughout Steve Gilliard's post. One response is that, "Black people can use these words; we can take them back, just like rappers have taken the N-to-the-I-to-the-Double-G-A slur." Well, on the latter one, there is much debate: Hip-hop has managed re-introduce into everyday language a hateful word that all but the most blatant racist refrained from everr using in public.

Too early to say whether Steve will be successful in sparking some revival in massa-slave linguistics. Perhaps they will only be used in this most narrow of circumstances -- as rhetorical bullwhips to be used on the treacherous black conservatives who need to be made into examples. Responding to a commenter, Steve adds, "[Ohio Secretary of State] Ken Blackwell, [Maryland Lt. Gov.] Michael Steele and the rest of the Uncle Toms will wind up like Alan Keyes, despised by blacks and unelected by whites."

Wow. It takes a pretty drastic "they-all-look-alike" sensibility to lump Blackwell and Steele into the same basket as Alan Keyes. But there you have it.
. . .
And so, the answer on why I'm still a Republican lingers, but Steve Gilliard and his friend help clarify why I'm not a Democrat: A party with members that seem to feel the need to brandish racist imagery as a disciplinary bullwhip, without even attempting to engage an opponent intellectually, has a great deal of problems. Indeed, Gilliard and Company are good representatives of a party that appears to do little to woo supporters beyond "Republicans are Evil/Racist" platitudes.

"Why Am I (Still) Not A Democrat?" Ragged Thots, September 28, 2005

via As I Please

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