A Second Hand Conjecture

Light and infrared targeting devices for games. (Photo by Rob Stradling | website)

Al Qaeda technicians have apparently pioneered the use of electronics in old SEGA game cartridges for bomb detonators. A smaller precedent than the use of the airliner as suicide missile, but no less remarkable as a demonstration of the the transnational terrorist group’s acumen and artistry at the reuse of civilian technology for military purposes.

The West, having derived its military advantages from the possession of advanced technology for centuries, has been preoccupied with the security risks of technology transfer perhaps since the classical Greeks. But the emergence of massive civilian technology transfers from modern to relatively underdeveloped cultures, and the accelerating pace of Western technological advance, presents a new challenge that promises only to expand in risk and complexity.

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Synova wrote a little post that gets halfway to where I would come down on this perennial parlor game of  the John Galt general strike. Sy recognized that to be successful, such a revolt would realistically be a miserable experience for a society, resulting in bloodshed and economic ruin. But she does not depart from Rand in assuming that the eventual outcome would be desirable. I’d advise the ancient wisdom that if the means are clearly evil in a political project, one should become immediately skeptical of the alleged justice of the ends.

We should also be skeptical of the social assumption for Galt, that there is a definable and rigid division among men into a minority of Platonic creative guardians, and an empowered majority of proletarian oppressors and their craven political servants — and that these factions could have accurate self-recognition of their social roles. I would contend that anyone who thinks of the majority of the people as disposable abstracted parasites, under a constitutional order that explicitly derives its governing powers from the majority consent of the governed, is never selling you anything that’s going to arrive in a happy place.

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American Daily

The single most important building block of any nation is her families. Destroy that and you can easily lay claim to a nation’s soul.

I agree. I think we have failed to maintain the nuclear family and lost the fundamental building block. Part of the reason so many folks are enticed by government support (socialism - and why the liberal left is making headway today)is that they don’t have strong family ties and are looking to replace that support structure with something.

Read the whole thing. I don’t agree with his last few paragraphs where he gets religious and I am not as pessimistic but I do believe that our families suffer at our own peril.

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Russian units are on the move again in Georgian territory, apparently in violation of the truce agreement. One Russian soldier in a large convoy shouted an ominous flirtation to a press photographer outside Gori, hopefully in jest or lust:

“Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.”
(AP)

A week in a Caucasian foxhole will make any soldier promise a pretty girl the world, but it’s certainly likely elements of the Russian military leadership wouldn’t mind actualizing his advance.

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Or: What I Learned About the World from Reading Historical Romances.

I learned that sometimes people get *more* uptight over time rather than less.

Victorians, according to custom and any number of novels, were concerned with propriety above all. Certain things were not spoken of and certainly the rougher aspects of life were hidden from young ladies. They were prudes.

Read enough novels and eventually a consumer of these delightful escapes will come across one that isn’t Victorian at all, but set in the Georgian era or earlier, or at the very least has a foul mouthed old grandmother who insists on wearing her wig and powder and scandalizing her adult children with accounts of her wild youth.

What brought this to mind (in a rather random fashion, which is typical for my brain) was this post of mine and what Joshua said about History. (more…)

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There’s a moment in Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, where he relates the truism that we’ve all experienced conversations with a mild-mannered, educated and seemingly rational person from the Arab world, where quite unexpectedly they say something nutty in the most casual way. “Of course the Jews planned 9-11″ for instance. As Steyn notes, when this happens it’s a peculiar form of media and culture-shock, and you’re not quite certain what to say in response. But this strange cultural dissonance can also be experienced between Europeans and Americans just as easily on certain issues.

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18 years ago when I was in the Philippines a somewhat similar song was popular. The song advised, “Not all the World is America.” Well, I figured then that the point made was a good one. It’s a good one now. What I think is significant, though, if you can manage to watch a Rammstein video all the way through, is that this is primarily a song about cultural dominance. “Sometimes war” he sings, but only as an after thought to Coca Cola.

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Byron York has a fairly instructive anecdote from South Carolina on Fred Thompson:

Last night I talked with Cyndi Mosteller, a strong social conservative who headed the Charleston County Republican Party from 2003 to 2007 and who supports McCain. When I asked about Thompson, she said. “He was the most anticipated candidate that I have ever seen. So many people on the ground were ready to run the ball for him, and they showed up in strength, but he didn’t really show up in strength. I think that probably Thompson is more of a private person. I don’t really think he’s cut out for the public run required of public office. I think it’s almost a personality thing; it’s certainly not an ideological thing. It’s like the public energy and the will to run are a little bit lacking there.” Talk to other South Carolina conservatives, no matter who they supported, and you’ll hear similar opinions. Thompson had a huge opportunity here.
(National Review)

The candidate everyone wanted to support, but no one did.

The most troubling thing about the Thompson personality problem is that it would arguably make for a splendid chief executive. We haven’t seen a presidential candidate who is this constitutionally predisposed against the sordid business of retail politics since Dwight Eisenhower. Of course we also haven’t seen someone with as substantial a resume as Ike’s since either. Perhaps our political culture has changed. Or more likely, to have a Thompson or Eisenhower personality on the trail, it helps to have toppled the Nazi Empire.

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Damian Thompson at the Daily Telegraph takes a trenchant look at the peculiar popularity and spread of preposterous conspiracy theories in mainstream modern culture. A development he blames on a Ballardian lust for sensation, the spread of the multiculturalist idea of total tolerance and the wide availability of incorrect information (counterknowledge) made possible by the internet. As he puts it: “A rumour about the Antichrist can leap from Goths in Sweden to Australian fascists in seconds. ” It’s a troubling trend.

HT: ScrewLooseChange

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