A Second Hand Conjecture

Self – Check
Spouse – Check
Kids – Check
Pets – Check
Important Papers – Checks
Satellite Receiver – WTF

The nerve of some corporations!

When this Azola couple got back from their honeymoon, they had about an hour of matrimonial bliss before being forced to flee as their house was engulfed in flames. So you can understand they had some things on their mind other than the status of their AT&T | Dish receiver as they ran for their lives. When they called to cancel service, the customer service rep asked if they had “remembered to pick up the receiver” as they left the house…

After the couple said no, AT&T told them they would have to pay $300 for the receiver and would not put any forbearance on the bill as the couple tried to get their life back together.

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Sometimes information like this makes me sit back and think “whoa” (sounding to much like neo in the matrix.) Not only is this a small world (which we often forget,) but it is becoming an exponentially complex and interconnected one.

The Singularity is Near.

Heck, I read sci-fi, and try to keep up with advances in computers and software, and I am often left open mouthed at some of “magic” happening now. One of my favorite course in college had us OO programming in a language I’ve lone forgotten (SMALLTALK I think.) My project was making a virtual robot move around a virtual world, responding to simple typed commands. Now, you can get a LEGO kit to attempt the same.

H/T to my favorite strategic thinker for pointing this out…

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Still posted first over at The Conjecturer.

Defense & The War

• More on the internal battle over imperial anthropology.

Around the World

• Also have you seen the possibly-NSFW Shaolin ? Basically, they are the world’s greatest fighting force—well beyond the ninja. I already knew this from David Carradine. Now I know this from YouTube.
• Barnett Rubin asks if anyone serious actually agrees with U.S. counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan. The implied answer is “no,” and from where I sit I’m inclined to agree. This comes at a time when NATO is thinking of outsourcing the war in Afghanistan, and the Afghan government is trying to clamp down on PMCs. Expect more from me on this later.
• Joshua Kucera on Tajikistan after peace.
• Fashion Week in Bishkek? Why not?

Back at Home

• Forbes doesn’t get it: the future of music isn’t in finding new ways of selling the same number of albums (though selling albums will never go away), but finding new ways of attracting concert-goers. P2P sharing does that; Radiohead’s model, though not a perfect replication of the “selling discs” model, comes the closest I’ve seen to achieving the album model digitally. It also happens to work off a well-known economic theory about value.

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Or at least, according to what Michael Savage implied last night, she is the harbinger of nasty things to come, if all righteous people don’t rhetorically smite her down. So, what is up with Ann Coulter???

PJ Media has a roundup of blogger reaction.

As for me,

Yeah, what Ann Coulter said was outrageous, rude, and inconsiderate.

Again.

AND???

Of course, missed in a lot of the outrage is the baiting that Donnie Deusch had to do to get her to the point of saying what she did. I mean does anyone really believe she thinks everyone at the Republican Convention were Christians?

I don’t get my shorts in a twist when the left attacks gun owners, white men, rich men, red necks, republicans, conservatives, Christians, or any of the other various groups I might belong to. I’m an individual, and don’t buy into the group/shared identity politics of the left.

I’m not going to defend what she said, just her right to say it.

What do Rush, Savage, Hannity, O’Rielly, and Coulter all have in common??

Media Matters is targeting them all, and very heavily lately. So, I think this push back on her is as overblown as all the previous push backs on her, and various other pundits. They are heavily pursuing the neutralizing of right wing talk radio. Personally, I think it will backfire, since the more the left attacks, the more entrenched and buzzed the right will get about defeating them at the polls that matter.

What’s important for the candidates to remember is to stay above this particular fray.

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Doesn’t this sound familiar…

Islamist radicals in Pakistan have attempted to destroy an ancient carving of Buddha by drilling holes in the rock and filling them with dynamite.

The Buddha, in the Swat district of north-west Pakistan, is thought to date from the seventh century AD and was considered the largest in Asia, after the two Bamiyan Buddhas.

Oh yeah, March 2001…

So, how many people think this is a pre-cursor to a Taliban/al Qaeda major attack? Maybe late March, early April??

Very un-scientific and totally unsupported. So, I’ll take 6 months on the over/under for the next major terrorist attack from those people.

But seriously, what is it those people have against other religions, and cultures?

Pakistani troops have stepped up recent operations against militants in the fertile Swat valley, where thousands of locals are in thrall to Mullah Fazlullah, a rabble-rousing cleric who has called for suicide attacks and holy war. Fazlullah’s men have continued to wage an offensive against what they deem ‘un-Islamic’ activity, last week blowing up dozens of music, video and cosmetics stalls at a market.

Can’t they lead others to their preferred cultural norms through persuasion and the example of their upstanding lives of purity??

Are these the people we need to sit down with, and come to some accommodation? Where in the multi-cultural relativistic realm do these people fall??

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So, who do you trust these days??? Polls indicate that confidence in politicians and the media are pretty low. Of course, you have to trust polls in order to believe in that to begin with.

Frankly, I don’t trust most politicians farther then I can throw them, and assume, if their lips are moving, something foul is afoot.

And the media, I stopped trusting them in the 90’s. Take everything you read or hear in the news with a huge grain of salt. Even more so when politics are involved.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200710/POL20071010b.html

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Wednesday denied that he is conducting or ever planned to conduct a congressional investigation of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin and called on a conservative magazine to retract its report that he asked investigators to compile information on the popular conservative talk radio hosts.

“The American Spectator report about a congressional investigation into talk radio is completely false,” Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement to Cybercast News Service. “There is no investigation.”

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Virginia Postrel makes a point I will be exploring in more detail over the next few months in her latest essay at The Atlantic, the reasons behind the vast disparities in housing prices in our country. More interestingly she notices something I hadn’t really considered, at least not in the way she does. The cultural and political impact on the country of the divide such a situation creates. That impact is surprising, but seems true. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tags: economics, ideology, partisanship, politics, housing, Virginia Postrel, land use controls, regulation

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With all the hub-bub in the last month over the Petraeus report, I hadn’t noticed that the DOD has released the quarterly progress report.

Haven’t read the whole thing yet, but this graphic did jump out at me, which shows that Iraqis are just as prone to local optimism and national pessimism as Americans.

So, like many Americans polled, even though they see their own neighborhoods or situation with optimism, they view the nation overall with some pessimism.

One thing’s for sure, it will be interesting to see these same polls in another 3 months.

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David Brooks offers up some opinions on the state of conservatism in the US. Can’t say I disagree with to much.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/opinion/05brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.

American conservatism will never be just dispositional conservatism. America is a creedal nation. But American conservatism is only successful when it’s in tension — when the ambition of its creeds is retrained by the caution of its Burkean roots.

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One expects a certain amount of BS from anyone about things they may have done in the past. The fish was THIIIIIIIIS big, etc…

But at some point you cross the line from white lie, to lie.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200710/NAT20071005a.html

The federal government is currently conducting more than 60 “stolen valor” investigations of individuals suspected of making false claims about their military records, according to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, and about 30 people nationwide have been arrested in the past year for crimes related to falsifying a military record.

Stolen valor typically occurs when someone falsifies documents or produces medals and awards from the military they didn’t earn in order to qualify for veterans benefits.

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So, how low can they go?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1007/Elizabeth_Takes_on_Limbaugh.html

An Air America producer just sent over some transcript from an interview their Richard Greene (not our Richard Greene) conducted with Elizabeth Edwards, in which she questioned Rush Limbaugh’s Vietnam exemption:

” My classmates went to Vietnam, he did not. He was 4F. He had a medical disability, the same medical disability that probably should have stopped him from spending a lifetime in a radio announcer’s chair; but it is true, isn’t it? If he has an inoperable position that allows him not to serve, presumably it should not allow him to sit for long periods of time the way he does. I think this is a serious enough offense for the people who fund him, who buy ads and allow him to be on the air, need to be asked if this is what they really stand for, do they think it is all right for someone who has never served to denigrate the men and women who have simply because they are expressing an opinion. Frankly, I thought that is what we are fighting for.”

I bet they can go lower. And it’s not just Rush either.

I do know one thing, the more they attack Rush, the more the right is going to gel together and fight the left. Which is a good thing, well, unless you’re a dyed in the wool leftist/liberal/democrat/progressive.

Meanwhile, Mike Pence (IN) is calling for action on a bill that would “prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from setting rules and policies reinstating the so-called Fairness Doctrine.”

“If anyone ever doubted that there is enmity between Democrats and American talk radio, they need look no further than the personal attacks leveled on Rush Limbaugh on the floor of the Senate,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the sponsor of legislation shielding broadcasters from government interference. “I thought it astonishing that members of the U.S. Senate would engage in repeated and distorted personal attacks on a private citizen. It gives evidence of a level of frustration with conservative talk radio that is very troubling to anyone who cherishes the medium.”

Pence, a former professional talk radio host, and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), a radio station owner, on Monday sent letters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) demanding a vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act.

In their letters, Pence and Walden cited broad support for their bill as well as a vote on an appropriations amendment earlier this year showing that many Democrats are wary of angering politically influential radio personalities such as Limbaugh. The Republican lawmakers gave Democratic leaders a deadline of the end of next week.

Update:

Yep, they can go lower… via Hot Air

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A thoughtful look at the story of the Jena Six and the controversy surrounding the case by Steve Coll. The criticisms of Reed Walters are reasonable. Of more interest to me is his point about problems of incarceration rates in general:

It might be of some comfort to politicians, then, if the Jena case, like the disgraceful treatment of displaced African-American victims of Hurricane Katrina, could be rationalized as an isolated, swamp-inspired exception to a more temperate American norm.

The opposite is true, however. In July, the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, released a state-by-state study of prison populations that identified where blacks endured the highest rates of incarceration. The top four states were South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Vermont; the top ten included Utah, Montana, and Colorado—not places renowned for their African-American subcultures. In the United States today, driving while black—or shoplifting while black, or taking illegal drugs, or hitting schoolmates—often carries the greatest risk of incarceration, in comparison to the risk faced by whites, in states where people of color are rare, including a few states that are liberal, prosperous, and not a little self-satisfied. Ex-slave states that are relatively poor and have large African-American populations, such as Louisiana, display less racial disparity.

I have several times pointed out that the left-right, Democrat-Republican, red state-blue state, north-south narratives are incredibly misleading, whether it is on race, gender, or sexual preference. Louisiana actually displays these incongruities and simplified narratives on a regular basis.  Not to claim it is the party of liberal enlightenment on the issues surrounding race, but the most open and disturbing evidence of white racism in Louisiana does not manifest itself amongst Republicans, the same when it comes to sexual preference or gender. The steadiest support for Democrats in Louisiana comes from the African-American population, and it is the most “liberal” in many ways of the various voting blocs. Yet the voting group with the biggest issues and least tolerance for gays is that same group. Nor is it a bastion of what many people see as liberal views on gender. As we see, the results on sentencing above show results which are probably counterintuitive to many northern liberals.

I am making no broad claims of hypocrisy, or papering over difficulties liberals and libertarians should have with conservatives and Republicans on many issues, including in Louisiana. Nor am I denying I hear similar kinds of things from Republicans and conservatives about what conservatives supposedly hold dear, or liberals are guilty of. I am saying I hear a lot of smug, simplistic,  and flatly wrong generalizations about these various divides and it distorts our thinking about these kinds of issues.

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There’s an entire micro-economy based on the pursuit of betterment. The author—58, full-figured, and ferocious in his consumption of cigarettes and scotch—agreed to test its limits, starting with the Executive De-Stress Treatment at a high-end spa.

The heading for Christopher Hitchens’ exploration of the self improvement industry.

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Yikes…

Hollywood star Tom Cruise is planning to build a bunker at his Colorado home to protect his family in the event of an intergalactic alien attack, according to new reports.

The Mission Impossible actor, who is a dedicated follower of Scientology, is reportedly fearful that deposed galactic ruler ‘Xenu’ is plotting an evil revenge attack on Earth.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think a bunker would be a wonderfully good thing to invest in. I’d like to have one myself. Be handy to have in case a tornado hit our house, or even a zombie attack. But an alien invasion, PUH-LEASE. If they have the technology to come here, surely they would have the tech to ferret us out from underground.

A spokesperson for the actor has denied the reports, saying: “This is completely untrue. He is not building on his property at all.”

OK then…

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Some interesting observations about universal health care in Japan. I suppose limiting the amount of care the government provides for is one way to hold down health care costs, but I doubt that is what people have in mind when they hear about plans for instituting such a thing here.

If universal care were the genuine cure-all, the one country where it should work is Japan. They have a homogenous population, healthier lifestyle, eat more fish and soy, more vegetables and far less obesity than here. If universal care does not work there why should it work anywhere?

…

While Japanese patients want American-style treatment, their policymakers are alarmed. With a huge national debt and corporations worried about higher taxes, they say Japan can¹t afford to pour money into treatments that can¹t extend life span by very much.

“America did too much of this and that¹s why their medical costs have grown,” said Masaharu Nakajima, a surgeon and former director of the Health Bureau at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Since Japan enacted universal health insurance in the early 1960s, the emphasis has been on a minimum standard of care for all. People must pay a monthly health-insurance fee, and large companies pay also. Coverage decisions, doctors¹ pay, and other rules are set by the central government.

Japanese doctors complain that they have no time to spend with patients. The experience of seeing a doctor is summarized as “a three-hour wait for a three-minute visit.”

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I’m probably the last one to see this, but this song/commercial is really well done. I especially like the homage to the Beatles.

And I think sums it all up:

why cant real apples sing like that?!?!?!?!?!,

Heh.

As a bonus, here’s the video for that other commercial that’s stuck in my head:

Technorati Tags: “Blue”, The Fruit Guys, Feist, “1 2 3 4″, cool commercials, iPod, Fruit of the Loom

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This is highly amusing…

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paLydon_Thurs_14_Lydon_carcass&show_article=1

Punk legend John Lydon has lashed out at Sting – calling The Police frontman a “soggy old dead carcass”.

The Sex Pistol, also known as Johnny Rotten, poured scorn on the Eighties band’s recent comeback.

Lydon, 51, was speaking as the Sex Pistols prepare for a one-off gig to mark the 30th anniversary of their album Never Mind The B*****ks.

The former punk rebel dismissed Sting as “Stink”, saying: “That really is a reformation isn’t it? But honestly that’s like soggy old dead carcasses.

“You know listening to Stink try to squeak through Roxanne one more time, that’s not fun.

“It’s like letting air out of a balloon.”

Especially after seeing this the other day…

The Sex Pistols have joined the growing list of 1970s bands hitting the comeback trail, after announcing a one-off gig in London later this year.

The four surviving members of the band will take to the stage at the Brixton Academy on Nov 8 to mark the 30th anniversary of their album Never Mind The Bollocks.

Their announcement follows the ticket scramble sparked by last week’s news that Led Zeppelin are to play a charity gig at London’s O2 arena, also in November.

The Sex Pistols – the most celebrated and notorious British punk band – split in 1978 shortly before the death of bassist Sid Vicious.

They last reformed at a poorly-received show in Crystal Palace in south London in 2002.

Frontman John Lydon – formerly known as Johnny Rotten – told music website NME.com that “all of Britain” was welcome to attend the Brixton show, which coincides with the re-release of their first album.

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In inflation adjusted terms Bill Gates isn’t close to the wealthiest American ever. In fact, he comes in 13th(small pdf) and only about 1/6th as wealthy as numero uno. Don’t let your kids read the next fact:

The average net worth in 2006 of Forbes 400 members without a college degree was $5.96 billion; those with a degree averaged $3.14 billion.  Four of the five richest Americans — Bill Gates, casino owner Sheldon Adelson, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen…– are college dropouts.

Of course when students used to bring up Bill Gates as an example of why college wasn’t important I always pointed out they had a better opportunity before they left school. From All the Money in the World — How the Forbes 400 Make — And Spend — Their Fortunes, by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan. More at Marginal Revolution.

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I have not touched on the subject of the often hostile turn our culture has taken towards men, especially when it comes to their relationships with children. It is not that I don’t agree that that is a concern, in fact quite the opposite. I have in deeply personal ways been effected by this cultural distrust. I have had employment denied specifically because I was male and the position involved being around children, I have had to run a business involving children under the constant worry of accusations or potential client discomfort. Thus this short post at Instapundit hit home. Here is the quote from Slate:

My younger, 13-year-old sister is having a slumber party for her birthday, and invited three or so of her 13- to 14-year-old girlfriends to our house. Shortly after, “Sara’s” mother suggested that my sister’s party should be held at “Tammy’s” house. Why? Because Tammy has a single mother. Sara’s mother is concerned that my father will be in his house during the festivities. There is no reason to be concerned about my father doing anything inappropriate to any of the girls (all the parents have met each other), but she is just uncomfortable about the idea of her daughter sleeping in the same house with another nonfamily man. She has also convinced the other parents that a change of venue would be a good idea. Although Tammy’s mother is willing to host the event, my family is offended that the situation has come to this. Since when is it a crime to have a happy two-parent household?

Been there, done that. Dr. Helen has had numerous posts on the topic, with this post being particularly relevant and her request worth considering:

The psychological damage to children of not having men around to interact with because of these scare tactics is never mentioned but something that should be considered by the Virginia Department of Health when they develop such ads. Surely, they can come up with something creative that would help make people aware of sexual predators but would not demonize men in general, most of whom are innocent.

Yes we are. I suffer from a particularly damaging affliction. I love children. I also am a very “physical” person. I am affectionate. I hug, pick them up, kiss, the whole bit. Not to be immodest, but kids like me. Teenagers, middle schoolers, toddlers. They like me. I have been able to get by in life while refusing to have to refrain from being myself, for doing things that a woman is admired for, but from a man are looked at with suspicion. Those traits are part of what I believe made me effective in my former career. I was a male figure who was able to be confidently male, and yet had the courage and position to be empathetic and even affectionate. Still, I had to be careful. While I have a few incidents I could relate, and may yet at some future date, and the issue is not unrelated to my eventual decision to change my career, others have covered that ground fairly well.

What I do think is that some aspects of how we have gotten to this point are somewhat unacknowledged, or rarely remarked upon for they are not born of hostility to men or some other easily identified grievance, but from attempts, often misguided, to accomplish other goals. One is the way modern schooling divorces children from the wider world around them, a world of adults and most specifically men, in favor of a milieu dominated by hundreds of children their own age (and is one reason I chose to home school my own children, to expand their social experience.) It goes beyond schooling however into the entire way in which we make space for children in our society in general. Like many aspects of studying modern life one of the first to really note this was Jane Jacobs in her seminal work from 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

This work, one which every social reformer and policy maker should come to grips with, but few do except to use to justify what they want to do anyway, examines the particulars of city life and how the planning and social theories of the time were foundering upon the actual way that cities and their residents behave. One neglected observation appears on pages 83 and 84 of this great book:

Play on lively, diversified sidewalks differs from virtually all other daily incidental play offered American children today: It is play not conducted in a matriarchy.

Most city architectural designers and planners are men. Curiously, they design and plan to exclude men as part of normal daytime life wherever people live. In planning residential life, they aim at filling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for matriarchal societies.

The Ideal of a matriarchy inevitably accompanies all planning in which residences are isolated from other parts of life. It accompanies all planning for children in which their incidental play is set apart in its own preserves. Whatever adult society does accompany the daily life of children affected by such planning has to be a matriarchy…All housing projects are.

…Men are not an abstraction. They are either around, in person, or they are not…men who are part of normal daily life, as opposed to men who put in an occasional playground appearance while they substitute for women or imitate the occupations of women.

The opportunity…of playing and growing up in a daily world composed of both men and women is possible and usual for children who play on lively, diversified city sidewalks. I cannot understand why this arrangement should be discouraged by planning and by zoning.

It is a shame that in all the discussion of this great work so little of it has been focused on this observation. Jacob’s was arguing against the tendency of reformers and planners to emphasize public spaces and parks, or in modern parlance, “green spaces” as opposed to the actual streets and homes in which children grew up. These public spaces, un-patrolled by people with any personal stake or ownership in the space were typically the most dangerous places in a city. Often denigrated, “the streets” were actually safer. Those streets were owned or supervised by the men who owned the establishments along them. By removing them, and their businesses, in favor of projects filled with parks and other commonly owned spaces amongst the residences, neighborhoods suffered from higher crime and removal of men from the lives of children.

Of course Jacobs’ work deals with cities, not suburbs or smaller towns. And Jacob’s missed emphasizing, as she should have, that it was the sense of ownership of the particular areas of the street which made such an arrangement work, not the mere presence of businesses. The breakdown in the sense that proprietors could say who and who could not occupy the spaces on those sidewalks rendered Jacobs’ observations less relevant. The point about our divorce from men as a regular part of children’s lives is important though. Field trips and mentoring cannot replace it. She describes in detail the shuffling off of children, in ways that are as applicable to suburbs today as they were then, to controlled activities. Scripted play, arts and crafts, athletics, libraries and assorted other activities developed top down to deal with youth that not only destroy much unscripted play, but are dominated by women and the values of women. Things which are more likely to appeal to boys, or involve being around men, are severely restricted. The kind of unscripted play, in the kind of places, which boys are likely to engage in are given the least room. Thus the popularity of The Dangerous Book for Boys. We all recognize this. What we don’t acknowledge is the loss from having the world of children so divorced from the world in which most men live, the world of work and business, in the first place.

I have no grand recommendation to make to fix this, such as reinstating apprenticeship or other traditional forms of workforce training, nor do I wish to encourage such social engineering. Many of the benefits of present arrangements should not be dismissed without thought. Yet the cordoning off of children has a cost, and as her point I put in bold above implicitly warned of, we have made men an abstraction, and it shouldn’t surprise us that it is a scary one.

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After seeing the PM article yesterday (H/T Instapundit) I saw Glenn had linked to Winston Wade over at his blog Game the World.

One other factor that plays into to hesitancy to practice manual skills is that when you make or repair something, you take the responsibility that you have done it right. Responsibility is a dirty word the days. I think that many people find a sort of comfort in the thought that if something goes wrong when someone else does it they can sue. That safety net is gone when you do it yourself. The cynic in me is waiting for the first lawsuit to come from someone botching a home repair after taking one of those classes at Home Depot.

I think both Glenn and Winston hit on the aspects of why people don’t take responsibility for their own stuff. Of course, it’s often a easier thing to have someone else fix that thing. While I know how to do a lot of various things, I also value my free time, and occasionally don’t have the time to do something, like change oil in our cars, or replace 47 switches and outlets in half our new house.

Anyway, I thought the lists interesting enough that I’ve highlighted those things which I’ve done, or have trained to do. Except for plan an invasion, which I’ve done on various strategy games, so not sure if that counts.

These wouldn’t be a bad thing for any person, male or female to know.

The List: How to…

1. Patch a radiator hose
2. Protect your computer
3. Rescue a boater who as capsized
4. Frame a wall
5. Retouch digital photos
6. Back up a trailer
7. Build a campfire
8. Fix a dead outlet
9. Navigate with a map and compass
10. Use a torque wrench
11. Sharpen a knife
12. Perform CPR
13. Fillet a fish
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
15. Get a car unstuck
16. Back up data
17. Paint a room
18. Mix concrete
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
20. Change oil and filter
21. Hook up an HDTV
22. Bleed brakes
23. Paddle a canoe
24. Fix a bike flat
25. Extend your wireless network

Robert A. Heinlein’s original list:

change a diaper,
plan an invasion,
butcher a hog,
conn a ship,
design a building,
write a sonnet,
balance accounts,
build a wall,
set a bone,
comfort the dying,
take orders,
give orders,
cooperate,
act alone,
solve equations,
analyze a new problem,
pitch manure,
program a computer,
cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently,
die gallantly.

1 Comment »

My grief knows no bounds, Michael Jackson, aka “The Beer Hunter” has passed away:

“He was simply the best beer writer we’ve ever known,” said Tim Hampson, chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers. “He told wonderful stories about beer, breweries and far away places. He told the story of beer through people, and he was humorous and erudite at the same time,” Hampson told The Associated Press.

Jackson especially loved Belgian brews. His books “The Great Beers of Belgium” and “World Guide to Beer” introduced them to many export markets, including the United States.

By identifying beers by their flavors and styles, and by pairing them with particular foods and dishes, Jackson helped give birth to a renaissance of interest in beer and breweries worldwide that began in the 1970s, including the North American microbrewery movement.

His TV documentary series, “The Beer Hunter” — which popularized his nickname — was filmed around the world and shown in 15 countries.

He worked as a beer critic for more than 30 years, writing in newspapers and gastronomic magazines, holding seminars and giving speeches, appearing on U.S. talk shows and writing books about beer and whiskeys published in 18 languages.

Jackson knew he would never be as famous as Michael Jackson the rock star, and that was reflected on the beer critic’s Web site. “Hello, my name is Michael Jackson. No, not that Michael Jackson, but I am on a world tour. My tour is in pursuit of exceptional beer. That’s why they call me the Beer Hunter,” it says.

My wife gave me his “Great Beer Guide” to take to England for our honeymoon. I was first introduced to him by our occasional contributor Roby as a senor in High School when he showed me the “World Guide to Beer.” I am reading the first now in tribute while drinking a nice cold one.

You will be missed Michael.

Update: You can find Michael’s website here. I found this news:

Friends of Michael Jackson have begun to plan a national toast to Jackson later this month.

It would be a fundraiser for the National Parkinson Foundation.

Organizers first hoped to hold the toast at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, but realized it would be hard to pull everything together by then. A toast is now tentatively set for Sept. 30.

If you know a brewpub, bar, tavern, ale house, tap house, multi-tap or similar establishment that might participate urge them to do so. Information will be posted at the Beer Hunter website when plans are finalized, participants will be able to register their site and download a poster, and drinkers will find a list of toast sites.

There are also plans for a Michael Jackson Tribute Dinner in Philadelphia in March 2008 at the Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. Jackson hosted tutored tastings there for the past 18 years. That dinner would be part of Philly Beer Week.

Here is a list of sites with tributes to Michael from the website:

• Michael’s last written article, “Did I cheat Morte Subite?” for All About Beer Magazine–read this first. Even the title suggests Michaels extraordinary skill, vision and playful wit.
• HopTalk’s extensive list of links
• The Brewer’s Association of America’s Tribute Page opens with Charlie Papazian and Ray Daniel’s eloquent rememberances–”Michael simply created the beer universe as we know it”–and includes those from many brewers and beer writers. Tomme Arthur: “We’ve lost our Elvis.” You can contribute by sending your thoughts to
• The Guardian Obituary by Roger Protz.
• The Washington Post Obituary by Adam Bernstein
• NPR’s Weekend Edition Obituary includes two audio comments from Michael on Wine and Beer; comforting to hear his voice.
• The Celebrator Beer News Obituary with archival pictures
• Jay Brooks is maintaining excellent links and updates
• We all took something from Michael’s generous education and writing; Tomme Swiped Something from Him
• The British Guild of Beer Writers page of rememberances
• Lew Bryson’s Rememberance and many comment posts on the same topic
• All About Beer Memorial Post Page
• Excellent remeberance with biographical detail by Carolyn Smagalski of BellaOnline
• A few rememberances at Real Beer and Appellation Beer each with comment posts commemorating Michael
• Michael Jackson’s Last Grand Cru
• Drink a beer and think of Michael Jackson
• Custom Google Search for Michael

H/T: E. Frank Stephenson

Technorati Tags: Beer, Michael Jackson, the beer hunter, books

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Shocked I tell you, I am absolutely shocked to learn that some professional wrestlers take steroids.

OK, I’m not shocked, and this is a good move by WWE. Now if we could only get “professional” baseball, and football to go along with this. Or stop the hypocrisy and start enhanced leagues, where anything goes. Steroids, bionics, anything goes.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003560001-2007400628,00.html

IN the most decisive move of its kind in the history of the wrestling business, the WWE have suspended many of their biggest name wrestlers for breaking drug rules.

The action came after the 10 men – allegedly including former world champions Edge and Randy Orton, ECW champ John Morrison, Brit William Regal and rising star Mr Kennedy – were identified as clients of Signature Pharmacy in Orlando.

That company was busted by cops in February for the distribution of steroids and other prescription drugs to clients who had not been examined by a doctor.

It has now been established that their ‘patient’ list included the 10 grapplers.

Former stars Chris Benoit, Brian ‘Crush’ Adams’ and Eddie Guerrero were also clients – all are now dead.

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Thanks Michael for putting that up for me. This site (along with many of my other favorite blogs,) was on the banned list here at work for a while, and we don’t have the internet hooked up at home, having just moved.

The money quote for me is:

“We believe that when you rely on someone else, you’re at their mercy”

One can use New Orleans, and Katrina (or any calamity for that matter,) as a mirror into ones views of life. Here we have two vastly different outcomes and outlooks on life. One positive and the other negative. As they say, “What goes around comes around.” You can blame others for failures in your life, but that doesn’t divorce you from the choices you make.

There is something to be said for that good “old fashioned” American value of self-reliance. Of course, too many progressive/liberal/leftist/democrats, that means one is left all alone, disconnected from anyone else, and must only rely on ones own means. It seems odd that they would depend on faceless,far-away bureaucrats, before they would ask their neighbors for help, or even help their neighbors without any personal gain. To many others, self-reliance is not depending on handouts and being in charge of your own destiny. Asking family, friends, and your community for help, or pooling your resources together, as this Vietnamese community has done, is the perfect example of self-reliance.

The lesson, you can sit around waiting (and complaining) for help to arrive, or you can make do with what you have, and help yourself and others.

With the hurricane season getting into gear, and tornadoes popping up across the midwest, laying in supplies for a couple of days (or weeks if you have the budget and room,) is just the prudent thing to do.

And emergency supplies don’t have to cost a lot.

Popular Mechanics has some good info on this topic.

And surprise, surprise the government even has some good info on preparing yourself, your family, and even your community for disasters. http://www.ready.gov/ has been available since 2002

Two quotes on self-reliance that I try to live by are:

“Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst” and “Prior planning prevents poor performance and panic.”

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I sauntered over to Instapundit today and noticed this story:

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.

Bacteria in a moose’s stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem (more…).

Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year’s moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper

It seems they are busy correcting the problem. Of course, I have noted before that focusing on human emissions or the raising of livestock ignores all the other sources of greenhouse gases that we could conceivably control, and that wildlife needs to be considered. Those hunting numbers tell me Norway may be thinking along the same lines. Therefore, since as a particularly green friendly blog, we are going to engage in a little recycling. For those who missed it the first time around, please enjoy a blast from the past reproduced in its entirety below, and please, fire up the barbecue!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

A Modest Proposal: Butchering Animals for PETA and Green Sex

Glenn Reynolds wants to know where we can purchase “sirloin offsets” since, as Eric Scheie points out the raising of livestock for food may be the single largest contributor to the greenhouse effect:
(more…)

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Defense

• Phillip Carter has some choice things to say of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair: “Anyone who finds Beauchamp’s story incredible merely because it’s upsetting has no idea what war can do… How, then, should journalists tell the story of what happens in wartime? At best, the American public is getting a filtered picture of the battlefield today, and at worst, it’s getting garbage from both sides of the aisle. The American public needs to know the truth about the wars it sends its sons and daughters to fight — even when it’s ugly.” Why, yes, I agree with this.
• Calling Sherlock Holmes: Chinese missiles might target U.S. satellites? Who else might they target? Who else relies on space assets nearly as much, and insists on being hostile toward them?
• Three MRAPs down, 8 to go. Which will get the honored duty of proving just how big insurgents can build EFPs? Stay tuned, I suppose.
• Here’s an interesting big idea: the utilization of noöpolitik in statecraft. Basically a tarted-up form of social engineering, noöpolitik would involve “the role of informational soft power in expressing ideas, values, norms, and ethics through all manner of media.” The authors hold it up in contrast to realpolitik, which is concerned with interstate relations—surely an outdated idea if ever there were one. I must dig into this later.

Around the World

• Self-pimping: in case you missed it, I wrote three big-ish posts yesterday, one following up on the sloppy logic in the right-o-sphere that contends China’s workers in Pakistan are being attacked because of China’s campaign against the Uighurs, one on what I see as a looming tectonic shift in Central Asian geopolitics, and one on how Barrack Obama was actually fairly right and non-controversial in his statements on the misuses of U.S. air power in Afghanistan.
• Interesting, too, is this take on why the political situation in Afghanistan is faltering. The author chalks it up to a fundamental (and deliberate, which is more interesting and worrisome) misunderstanding of “local political dynamics, especially bypassing the Afghan tribal system with its driving force within the Pashtun majority in the country.” Now, I’m no expert on Pashtunwali, but Afghanistanica made the very strong case back in June that it really isn’t as vicious, or necessarily all-powerful, as many non-Pashtuns seem to assume. Of course, the exclusion of Pashtuns from the central government is indeed a major issue (that has interesting echoes of the ethnic situation in Iraq), but I don’t think it matters that much. At least, not if you base your ideas of what policies might be the most useful from what people are actually saying, in the press and in the villages.
• Speaking of which, the Washington Post ran a fantastic op-ed on the dangers of modern day COIN, and how our much-vaunted overwhelming force doctrine doesn’t really play nicely in a modern insurgency. To summarize in relation to my other complaints about policy in Afghanistan, “Reconstruction funds can shape the battlefield as surely as bombs.” Indeed they can. It is telling to contrast this article with a look at the latest secret torture prison in the country, and why and how those sorts of things will slowly unravel our efforts to rebuild the country.
• “I like dogs, fishing, poisoning dissidents, and long walks on the beach.” What’s that? Why, it’s Vladimir Putin’s Craigslist ad, where he trolls for dirty, meaningless gay sex like the rest of humanity. As a commenter noted: “what, no Vlad the Impaler jokes?”

Back at Home

• I’d join in on the indie-bashing, but I think I’ve done enough self-hating this year, don’t you think?
• The complete sham of carbon credits, or, as I like to call them, “transferring the burden of conservation from the rich to the poor.”
• Argh, strung out and waiting for Saturday…

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Double-timed on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• It’s the 1980’s all over again. Not only are we stuck in another Iran-Iraq war, but Russia is buzzing our forward bases with TU-95’s. What’s more, Putin knows, and clearly relishes knowing, that no one can do anything to make him back off.
• Richard Myers, former Chairman of JCS and current “Colin powell Chair of Character, Leadership, and Ethics” at the National Defense University, pushes back against a Foreign Affairs essay claiming he demonstrated poor leadership skills during the runup to the Iraq War. He is partially backed up by Mackubin Thomas Owens, who can never quite bring himself to criticize The Don Rumsfeld for… well, anything, really. It’s not quite the 12/31/01 National Review cover, which featured Rummy coquettishly popping and locking his hips beneath a banner declaring him, at the age of 70, a “stud” (I may dig this up and scan it, as I was a subscriber at the time… and JarJar Nordlinger’s delirious hagiography might be amusing-to-frustrating nowadays). But it’s close. These starry-eyed militarists are balanced by Lawrence Korb, who counters with significant evidence of the Bush Administration’s shameless use of the uniformed military (which cannot legally dissent or disagree with his policies) for a partisan political agenda, including Jesus Petraeus himself, and Michael Desch’s final response. It’s all far too involved to discuss here, but I do highly suggest reading it in its entirety… and kudos to Foreign Affairs for providing such a forum for debate.
• Related: is every small local success Petraeus racks up actually undermining the ultimate reason for the surge? That would certainly match what I’ve seen but never really articulated, but I don’t think we have enough data yet. That is to say, I wouldn’t feel comfortable that the Maliki government’s collapse is because of Petraeus’ surge. At the very least, though, it hasn’t had much of an impact.
• The MoD joins the DoD in gagging soldiers in the field.
• Interesting: “in future events, cyber-conflicts may best resemble guerrilla battles, or even spontaneous riots, in which the general opponents are known, but the immediate attackers are not.” That has rather serious implications for Network-Centric Warfare, and for battling any sufficiently advanced enemy—the insurgents in Iraq included, should they choose to crash NMCI or a similar partially-open military network.

Around the World

• Really, the title says it all.
• The miracle of Uncle Pervy’s continued existence. Pervy, by the way, has backed off his intention to impose martial and law and thus rule foreva… most likely because of a 2 a.m. phone call by none other than .
• In Afghanistan, U.S. SOF have been so deeply counterproductive the local UK commander has asked them to withdraw for fear of permanently losing the Sangin area in the north of Helmand (coincidentally, the Taliban’s heartland, and the source of much of Afghanistan’s annual export of 6000 metric tonnes of opium). This is not a new concept, but it is nice to see a non-blogger finally saying it in the open. Meanwhile, we have to question why the Afghan police have such a hard time getting on their feet, when they’re not only the most targeted by the Taliban (who have learned that undermining support for Kabul is how they’ll win, not by attacking Americans), but are one of the lowest paid jobs in the world. Indeed, salaries are a big missing piece from the development which might drag Afghanistan into maybe at least the 20th century. And, to sort-of repeat an oft-repeated axiom here: money talks.
• Iraq comes together, right now, over me: “On the unruly outer fringes of the Sunni area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death, American soldiers navigate more than a dozen battle zones straddling the fault lines of sect and tribe. Al-Qaeda in Iraq — identified by President Bush and his generals as the main U.S. enemy — is just one of myriad armed groups competing here for influence and authority.” But they have the surge!
• Oh, and all those expensive reconstruction projects we’re funding in the “cleared and held” areas might just be funneling money back to the insurgents. I hope it doesn’t become an echo of Basra, in which the British surge (for lack of a better turn) had the opposite of its intended effect, handing them an embarrassing defeat and turning the city over to the Shiite militias.
• Paul Wolfowitz should be ashamed at how the World Bank ruined everything in Iran. Wait, that’s not it. Oh hell, just read the damned link.
• Meanwhile, the subprime meltdown went global, and it appears a global economic crisis is brewing thanks to our idiotic fiscal policies. Maybe we should all look into moving to China, considering it scored its second highest monthly trade surplus ever.

Back at Home

• Clearly, the one thing holding us back from our rightful place as the world’s unified moralist is another large scale terrorist attack. So, rather than celebrating the world’s seeming decreased danger, we should wish for more destruction, in the hopes those damned liberals will stop all their bitching and “America’s righteous rage” can once again, finally, assert itself.
• Luckily, everything is going so well in this country that Congress wants to revamp Intellectual Property law to include cheap knockoff fashion at stores no one respectable would ever go to! At long last, I am saved from the horrible assault of Forever 21. (Note: I am not forever 21, and I’m actually quite grateful to have moved on from the days of upside-down vomiting off the 3rd floor balcony.)
• Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of watching the Criterion Collection version of Solyaris, a 1972 Soviet film adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem novel about man’s insignificance against the universe. Tarkovsky cracks this grand theme open into the much more human idea of grief and loss (itself a probable inversion of Lem’s original intent)—making a slow, captivating, gut-wrenching descent into what might pass for madness. That a Brezhnev-era film, denuded of a discussion of God by the censors, could achieve such intense depth and impact, is quite literally stunning. I’m almost afraid to see Soderbergh’s 2002 remake with George Clooney; the original Kris bore an unnerving similarity to Reason editor Nick Gillespie (leather jacket and all), and one of the original’s biggest powers over me was the stunning performances from actors I didn’t know from any other contexts. I know I would see Chris in the new version and think of Daniel Ocean—hardly a welcoming backdrop for a torpid meditation on the nature of man’s humanity.

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See, I am too with the new progressive era!

You Are 90% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Dr. Helen tipped me off to this little survey and she has some interesting things to say. I wonder if the fact my first response to the award was the babe with the boxing gloves is smoking hot counts against me, as well as pointing out my problem with question #5:

Women should accept their bodies as they are. Women should not have to conform to wacky beauty ideals.

They obviously found it a good idea to put up a woman who fits a pretty stiff…uh, concept of beauty.

Of course the quiz is silly, and comes from a place with all kind of “non-feminist” quizzes as well. Still, this question does reflect a general issue I have with many feminists who peddle this theme. I answered not sure, but as with all polls my reasons are obscured.

It seems to me women should do what they want. If they want to get as close to smoking hot as possible, it isn’t a “wacky” ideal, though it may be discouraging. Let me say I am all in favor of it. On the other hand, if it isn’t important to them my eyes will be a bit disappointed that having another scoop of Ben and Jerry’s is more important than delighting my senses, but it is their choice. Some feminists act as if it is somehow wrong to care about being attractive, or that not being attractive is a virtue. We have lots of characteristics that I value as human beings, I don’t know why physical beauty need be cordoned off from the list. The same of course goes for men.

There is a notion out there that such superficial matters should be irrelevant, but that is just plain silly. Most things we like about people are shallow. Intelligence? Why is that any less of a shallow trait. Does it make one a better person? Two of my favorite students were frankly not well endowed upstairs (slow was the term parents used, learning disabled the diagnosis of the specialists. Slow was more accurate.) They were however endowed with wonderful character and temperament (and also quite physically beautiful to boot.) Everybody loved them. Conversely I know many an intelligent jerk who attracts many a man/woman. Shallow, but understandable, though personally I think less understandable or praiseworthy than being attracted to a smoking hot model with boxing gloves.

A sense of humor? Talk about shallow, though invariably I hear it listed as what women say they are looking for. Once again, give me smoking hot and don’t pretend either is especially “deep.”

Then let us look at question #1, which is also a staple of much feminist rhetoric:

Women should be economically and socially independent. They shouldn’t rely on men to take care of them.

Uh, why not? Once again, isn’t that what freedom of choice is about? How is looking down on women who make this choice (or men for that matter, I would make it in a second if my wife would let me and made enough money for the lifestyle she wishes to lead. Yes, her lifestyle, not mine. I am pathetic) empowering or showing respect? It also is a bit jarring in light of question #7:

Women should have the right to choose any path in life – from being a stay at home mom to a Fortune 500 CEO.

Cognitive dissonance anyone? Which of course can be dismissed by pointing out that it is a stupid quiz, but in fact I hear both arguments all the time, and often from the same people. I agreed wholeheartedly with #7 by the way.

Or take #4, another silly thing I hear from “feminists” quite often:

Women should take an equal role in dating. Women should ask out people they are interested in and take their turn in paying.

Why? Once again, people should do what they want. Yes, the quiz is silly, but it no sillier than much of what passes itself off as feminism. My main problem with feminism as it is described by activists of course is its claim that left wing based economics is feminist, and so I am glad the quiz didn’t ask about nonsense such as comparable worth. It would have lowered my admirably high score (only one point less than Dr. Helen!)

As my favorite professor, Philosophy and happiness scholar Neera Badhwar, once said when asked if she was a feminist, “Yes, as long as I am not around any.” That pretty much sums up the way I feel about environmentalists, gay rights advocates and anti-poverty activists as well. Sigh.

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As yet another sign of the coming Apocalypse, politicians and political hacks are now channeling their energy (albeit a very small amount of it) into creating video games about politics. Have a look at this article detailing two of the newest games in this field. While the actual interfacing of politics and the gaming world is not exactly fresh news (recall all the Joe Lieberman v. Rockstar Games fights in the past few years [Rockstar, btw are the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series], along with older fights over Doom and even pre-video game era fights over Dungeons and Dragons), the idea of institutions that directly shape (or try to) the political scene in America today making video games is. I am excluding America’s Army since that is a recruiting tool, not an attempt to shape the political process. Notice, however, the number of complaints dealing with the fact that Ron Paul isn’t included in the Pong game. Apparently, the youth of America have suddenly become energetic libertarians. I’m not sure if that says more about them or about libertarianism as a whole. I suppose we’ll just have to see how energetic they really are at election time (the question being : can they tear themselves away from Starcraft II [currently scheduled for a Q3/4 2008 release] long enough to go to the polls to make a difference?).

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Since it is a long weekend, I’ll happily provide some extra geeky goodness for your enjoyment. First, take a look at after the first Death Star was blown up. Then, see Vader having a to heart with Luke. to mess with Star Wars. How about ? Or what happens when reach puberty? In case you haven’t realized, I’ve been spending far too many waking hours watching YouTube videos. I take consolation only in the fact that at least I’m not watching celebrity social faux pas videos. Enjoy!

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Recently, BBC America has announced its plan to air the entire first season (first series to you Euro-types) of Torchwood during its summer restructuring. Despite a fair degree of success in attraction US viewership, the execs at BBCA felt that a radical restructuring of the network’s programming selections and scheduling would boost its moderate ratings to a level capable of competing with general interest US basic cable networks such as A&E, USA, TNT, etc. I’m highly excited about the decision to carry Torchwood, which our own Sci-Fi network seems to have steered clear of. Despite the fact that it is a spin-off series, Sci-Fi certainly didn’t show the same level of caution when purchasing the rights to, for example, Crusade or Angel. Anyway, I’m glad that Torchwood will be available to US audiences (although most likely in a censored format; Torchwood is very R rated for language, violence and some moderately graphic sex scenes [and male nudity]). I’ve already watched the entire first season in HD, uncensored, commercial-free format on various websites (Google it) and, although a bit disappointed by some of the more adolescent tendencies toward cheeseball lines and gratuitous violence in a few of the episodes, most were extremely well written with, “Captain Jack Harkness,” (episode 12) probably my favorite for character development and sheer emotional impact. BBC Three has already ordered a second season of 13 episodes to premiere sometime next year and I certainly look forward to that. If nothing else, the explanation behind Jack’s disappearance and return should be worth the wait, along with the resolution of his “condition.” As a side note, I confess that I’m hugely impressed by John Barrowman’s ability to pull-off the complex character that Jack Harkness is and by his acting ability in general. John was, oddly enough, originally slated for the role of Will Truman in Will & Grace but series’ producers eventually choose Eric McCormack because they felt that John was, “too straight.” This is quite ironic as John Barrowman is gay and Eric McCormack is straight. Eve Myles, whom various newspapers and magazines have named one of the sexiest women in Wales and “Bachelorette of the Year,” has also impressed as the gap-toothed, wide-eyed police constable who provides emotional grounding and a human element to the otherwordly Torchwood team.

In other news, the Sci-Fi channel has indicated that it will be airing season three of Torchwood’s parent show Doctor Who (currently running in the UK) in the late summer or fall of this year. By the little I’ve seen of it, David Tennant is even better this season than last and Freema Agyeman is a much better actress than Billie Piper who, admittedly, is the UK’s answer to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson. So fire your Tivo’s up (those of you who have and are able to operate them), Torchwood hits this summer and Doctor Who in fall. Sci-fi geekdom heaven.

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This lovely angel is Tania Derveaux, the NEE party candidate for the Belgian Senate. Nee is the Belgian equivalent of “None of the Above.”

Tania has a problem with the dishonest and unrealistic promises most politicians make while running for office:

It started with our response to incredible claims that were made by other parties in Belgium, several parties promised new job opportunities in ridiculous amounts. We responded with a parody campaign for which I posed naked and promised our voters 400,000 new jobs.

The response was , how can I say this?….Energetic! The response after many requests, was to give the public what they wanted, as Tania came up with a campaign to express her disdain for “dirty politics” and differentiate herself from the typical politician. Uh, some might find this a bit… “risque.”

(more…)

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The always worth attention Christopher Hitchens has a brief, but interesting, interview in New York Magazine. Many thanks to Lee Garnett for giving me the pointer.

Some choice bits:

And what if one of your children found God? Would that be a problem?
Not at all. My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them. The schools won’t do it anymore. And I even insist, though my wife [who is Jewish] isn’t that thrilled, on having for our daughter a little version of the Seder.

What’s your favorite Bible story?
“Casting the first stone” is a lovely story, even though we’ve found out how much it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with. And the first of the miracles. Jesus changes water into wine. You can’t object to that.

Wine is good, beer would have been better, a good scotch best.

Most likely to surprise both the religious base and those fearing America might become a religious theocracy:

Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?
Well, I don’t talk that much to them—maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

What must Bush make of that?
I think it’s false to say that the president acts as if he believes he has God’s instructions. Compared to Jimmy Carter, he’s nowhere. He’s a Methodist, having joined his wife’s church in the end. He also claims
that Jesus got him off the demon drink. He doesn’t believe it. His wife said, “If you don’t stop, I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids.” You can say that you got help from Jesus if you want, but that’s just a polite
way of putting it in Texas.

A way in which he and I are not too far apart:

Do you consider yourself a hawk?
I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.

So one day we’ll all see just how right you all were about Iraq?
No, I don’t think the argument will stop, perhaps forever. But when it does become the property of historians rather than propagandists and journalists, it’ll become plainer than it is to most people now that it was just. Most of what went wrong with it was that it was put off too long. What a lot of people wish is that the thing could have been skipped.

Or that Bush hadn’t been in charge. You don’t believe that?
No, I honestly don’t. Iraq was in such terrible shape as a society that it wouldn’t have mattered if Paul Bremer had been Pericles.

Just doesn’t mean wise. I agree it will be seen as just. Wise is obviously going to be a tough sell.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, religion, George Bush, Karl Rove, War, atheism, Christopher Hitchens

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Lance was teasing me for not posting this here. I may be mistaken, but my review of Laurence Jarvik’s article on NGOs in Central Asia, which I had posted at The Registan, is re-posted without attribution on the subscription section of a newspaper’s website in violation of our Copyright. More info here.Now, in case any of you wish to draw attention to the spat MichaelW and I had over the property rights of file sharing, know this. Since the Times of Central Asia is a for-profit publication that makes money by stealing—meaning, it is a routine occurrence for them and can be considered part of their business model—and because I specifically don’t mind (and in fact rather enjoy) the copyright on my writing, which allows copies and modifications so long as it’s non-commercial and properly attributed, they’re not the same.

Also, writing and music are not the same—the economics, business models, and property rights involved are totally different (the “sampling” criteria alone, which is limited to three notes in music but paragraphs in writing, is but one example). Besides which, an analogous situation would be me pasting my name on a Rakes CD and selling it under my name, which isn’t at all what file sharing entails.

File sharing is much more akin Lance’s initial treatment of my news briefs, which I am totally fine with and found rather flattering. Like the indie bands who to a large degree enjoy the broader exposure they get with increased torrent downloads (which then translates into bigger shows, which nets them more money at negligible cost), I appreciated (and do appreciate) similar exposure for the same reason, as it makes it more likely that I will get future paid writing assignments (the writer’s equivalent of the musician’s show). Taking my writing and locking it behind a subscription firewall denies me any windfall, thus removing the otherwise compelling argument that more sharing is better for the producer.

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It’s a Very Very Mad World – Gary Jules

As the scapegoating begins, people will quickly loose sight of the solitary person who was responsible for yesterdays tragedy, the shooter. Already the press is filling with misinformation and biased reporting about firearms. Gun control advocates and those who oppose them (including myself) are quickly reacting, Volokh reminds us that our reaction is biased. One is quickly overwhelmed with the magnitude of the tragedy. A co-worker of a friend of my wifes has a child that is a student at VT.

The only thing I really know, and this incident confirms, there are 3 types of people in the world:

Prey, Predators, and Protectors.

One commenter on the Mancow show this morning stated he had heard the shots and it was either flight or fight. Few choose to fight, or even to protect themselves and others. Some will say they had no choice, the predator was armed, they had no way to fight back. The survival instinct comes down to mindset. Do you want to survive? Do you have the will to do what needs to be done to survive? The passengers on Flight 93 didn’t have conventional weapons, but they made due because they had the will to survive. They had the will so they found the means.

I commented on Q&O that it takes heroes to go towards the sound of gunfire. To put your life on the line to save others is the highest sacrifice and the greatest love one can have. Here is the story of one such man, a Holocaust survivor.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3388753,00.html

One of Prof Librescu’s students, Alec Calhoun, who was with him at the classroom when the shooting started, told AP that at about 9:05 am, he and classmates heard “a thunderous sound from the classroom next door, what sounded like an enormous hammer.”

When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, they started flipping over desks for hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of the room.

Calhoun said that just before he climbed out the window, he turned to look at the professor (Librescu), who had stayed behind to block the door.

Of course, it is easy to pontificate here, safely sitting at a keyboard, far removed from any danger.

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I haven’t written about the Imus brouhaha, nor have my blogmates. I was tempted for a bit, though only to express my consternation that Imus was being portrayed as a conservative, which is ridiculous. I was disheartened by this, though only because I felt bad for the girls at Rutgers, who dismantled my beloved LSU Tigers in the Final Four and deserved their moment in the sun. I didn’t feel bad because Imus said what he said (worse is said all the time) but because the media circus made their accomplishment a side bar to our need to feed the media outrage machine. Those girls deserved better than that, from Imus, and the rest of us. I would not have needed to feel bad for them if like me, everybody felt the same way as Roger Simon does here, when we all first heard of his nonsense:

Yes, there is something wrong with America …

And it’s not the war in Iraq, our contribution global warming or the health care crisis.

It’s that we pay one second of attention to the opinions of Don Imus or Al Sharpton.

No more tedious individuals exist on our national landscape, although they are in a certain sense exemplary. They represent the triumph of narcissism over intelligent discourse in close to its purest form. No idea or thought exists free of how it affects them – their fame, their glory and, ultimately, their cash. Every second we spend thinking or talking about these two is a second completely lost from our lives. And I’m stopping now.

Technorati Tags: Roger L. Simon, Don Imus, Al Sharpton, Media, Rutgers, LSU

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Yes, this is completely stolen. (more…)

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(Via: Pajamas) Please watch this. In understanding the world our ignorance is a problem, but greater still are the things which we believe we know about the world that we do not. Luckily for you, this is entertaining. Within minutes you will learn you probably are as well informed as Sweden’s top students and the Nobel Prize committee, but less so than a chimpanzee. I will also first give you a reprise of “Shift Happens.”

Tags: economics, GDP, government, humor, investing, money, socialism, war, third world, developmental economics, technology, statistics, history

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I think that this story and the conclusions it references can be filed under the category of, “see, I told you so.” Or perhaps, “tell me something else that I already knew.”

Let’s look at what took the APA such a great amount of time and resources to “objectively determine,”: the media and advertisers massively contribute to the sexual objectification of women, especially young girls. Um, duh. It seems that everyone on the planet except feminists and APA researchers already figured this one out about twenty or thirty years ago. The behavior being discussed here is an aspect of behavioral psychology (specifically Albert Bandura’s social learning theory) known as modeling. Modeling stipulates that human beings (especially children) will tend to alter their behavior patterns to adapt to the behaviors demonstrated by models that they identify with and respect. To put this into technical (though fairly simple terms) the subject sees a model that he or she respects or identifies with (say a 12 year old girl watching Paris Hilton); the model engages in certain behavior (say Paris Hilton making a sex tape with her boyfriend); the model’s behavior is reinforced by consequences (Paris becomes a star and is mobbed and adored by the media and invited to every trendy party in existence); the subject wants to experience the same type of consequences (reinforcers) so they engage in the behavior that the model demonstrated. ABC theory (Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence). Or to put this in terms a six year old can understand: monkey see, monkey do.

While I applaud the APA for researching and formally commenting on this subject, it’s hardly new territory for the religious. As indicated in the article, the Catholic Church (and most other Christian sects) have been preaching and teaching about the sexualization of women for literally centuries. Orthodox and more right-leaning Masorti Jews and, of course, Muslims, have also been at the forefront of preaching about the dangers of this kind of behavior. Feminists claim that only by embracing the supposed sexual “freedom” that men enjoy can a woman “liberate” herself. I support exactly the opposite conclusion. Only by refusing to be seen as a sexual object can a woman liberate herself. Modesty for both sexes is critical and a key to not only Islamic beliefs, but also to orthodox Catholic and conservative Protestant and Jewish beliefs as well. Many atheists and liberal religious thinkers reject many of the cautions and prohibitions in scriptures (Qu’ran, Gospels, Torah, etc.) as the products of their societies and surely not meant for today’s modern, rational, and much more sophisticated audiences.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but, “Baloney.” God, in His infinite wisdom, gave us rules to live by. These rules were codified and transmitted to mankind by holy prophets: Moses (PBUH), Jesus (PBUH), and Muhammed (SAW). These were not mere suggestions, nor were they meant as sociologically acceptable rules meant to operate only within certain time frames and geographic regions (i.e. the Middle East, circa 3000 BCE to 1000 CE). They are rules that are meant to protect us from the worst aspects of ourselves. Feminists and some atheists cry, “oppression!” I disagree. The rules are liberating, not oppressing. In the context of modesty v. blatant sexuality, consider who is the better in the long run: the modest man or woman who defines himself by his character and his achievements as a person (be they career, intellectual, religious, etc.) or the person who defines himself by his body and his sexual conquests. Even the vaunted APA agrees at this point that modesty is the best policy. Oversexualization as pushed on children and adults (especially females, but men, too) can only lead to a destructive cycle of depression, remorse, guilt, low self-esteem, possible eating disorders, substance abuse, and, ultimately, perhaps suicide. God was wise enough and loving enough to give us a set of rules to protect ourselves from these things. Although they differ slightly from religion to religion, the basic concept is the same. What better person to take advice from than the creator Himself? Put a different way, would you rather take a stock tip from Peter Lynch or the burger flipper at your local McDonald’s?

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Einstein may have had an inauspicious start as prodigies go, but this four year old has gotten a bit of notice.

Technorati Tags: drummer, drums, prodigy

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I admit, this post from Sasha Volokh made me smile:

Wonders of the world:

The Washington Post has a cool photo gallery of candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World. Take a look at the pictures, but don’t pay that much attention to the descriptions.

For instance, apparently the “ancient city” of Machu Picchu was “founded by Yale University professor Hiram Bingham in 1911.” That’s pretty ancient! [UPDATE: This has now been corrected to "found."]

More significantly, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia is “a church that was first built in 537 B.C. as a Mosque when the city fell to the Ottomans.” How many mistakes are there in that one line?

• It was once a church, and it was once a mosque (though it was a mosque only after it was a church, not before), but now it’s just a museum.
• In fact, its construction was more like A.D. 537.
• Not much chance of its having been built as a mosque even in A.D. 537 (to say nothing of 537 B.C.), since Islam wouldn’t even exist for about another century after that.
• And the city didn’t fall to the Ottomans until about 900 years after the construction of the church (and the Ottomans arguably didn’t even really exist as “Ottomans” until around 1300).

Anyway, pretty picture!

Technorati Tags: Washington Post, Islam, Seven wonders of the world, Hagia Sophia

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I am loving my new discovery Jason Forrest (his myspace and his main site here[some pages NSFW]). Well, I didn’t really discover him. I mean, other people were already there, and since I do not have a technological advantage over them (quite the opposite, probably), colonization is out of the question. (more…)

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People who love music sometimes identify a little too closely with the musicians/songs they love, to the point that any criticism of those musicians/songs becomes, in the music lover’s mind, a personal attack. That’s true even if the music lover himself had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the music, which is usually the case.
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Glenn Reynolds wants to know where we can purchase “sirloin offsets” since, as Eric Scheie points out the raising of livestock for food may be the single largest contributor to the greenhouse effect:
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Podcast Follow-Up:

One of the articles that I mentioned in the podcast (which, looking back on it, was only tangentially related to the topic at hand, and only in the kindest sense of the term “tangential”) involved the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle. When discussing how the education industry had over-dosed on boosting kids’ self-esteem, I was reminded of the blatantly anti-capitalist and anti-property social experiment conducted at Hilltop over a bunch of Legos. Maureen Martin described the ordeal at TCS Daily (HT: Ilya Somin):
(more…)

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My wife and I were watching the show “Criminal Minds” last week, which was set in New Orleans. Of course the first thing we noticed was the accent, which was way off. Strangely, it shouldn’t be too hard to sound like you are from New Orleans, which has a number of different accents to choose from, so pick the one you are most comfortable with and go with it. (more…)

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(Lance’s listening notes: I just spent the evening with my wife and a friend at a little bar, in a very little town, Fordoche Louisiana, called the Red Monkey. I loaded up the Juke box with what interested me (no The Jam, Clash or Pixies) which ended up being The Band, Van Morrison, Creedence and Janis Joplin, plus Johnny Cash. Since I have reprised a couple of posts, I thought it would be a good time to bring you once again Robby’s excellent discussion of Sunday Morning Coming Down. Listen at the bottom.)

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One of the most durable traditions in American popular music is the drinking song. Our national anthem’s melody and structure is based on “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an 18^th-century drinking song, a fact that tells me 18^th-century drinkers were far more ambitious than we are today, the melody being much more challenging to sing than “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” I guess that’s why we sing the anthem at the beginning of sporting events, anyway: by the 7^th inning stretch, everybody would sound like Harry Caray. (more…)

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Matt at Malcontent got a letter from the Human Rights Campaign (a GLBT advocacy group):

We have been a bipartisan organization for all 24 years of our existence, and have never sought to hide that. We talk about being bipartisan, and our support for Republicans is in all of our relevant literature, because we believe that makes us a stronger lobbying operation.

It is true that we have supported Republican and Democratic candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and have given them funds from our political action committee. BUT, it is also true that we do NOT give to the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee nor the National Republican Senatorial Committee, nor the National Republican Congressional Committee, nor any state Republican Party or Democratic Party entity and support none of these committees financially or otherwise.

Matt finds that a bit hard to take. In fact, he feels the entire letter is dishonest. Go read his response, but in addition to outright falsehoods he points out this:

The same Globe story said that HRC is “playing down its support for gay marriage” in order to support Democratic political candidates. Meanwhile, in 2006, you supported Democrats even at the expense of defeating moderate Republicans. You even tried to beat Arlen Specter, one of the most liberal, pro-gay Republicans there has ever been.

While the state where I live, Virginia, and Colorado passed gay-marriage bans by some of the slimmest margins yet, HRC walked off the playing field when it was needed most, instead trumpeting “successes” such as electing a Democratic majority in New Hampshire. Are you people serious?

When your executive director was appointed, he began his tenure by writing off only the most liberal of supporters: “This struggle that we’re in in this country right now is not just for GLBT Americans but for all progressives.” I suppose it helps explain why he has gone out of his way to cultivate every variety of far-left interest group, even those that aren’t remotely connected with gay rights.

Lisette, “progressive” is a word that can describe only about 20 to 30 percent of the electorate, at best. It’s not exactly the stuff of coalition-building, to say nothing of “bipartisanship.”

It is sad that the gay rights movement has hitched itself to “progressive” ideals almost exclusively rather than building relationships across the political spectrum. It is sad that they have done so much to make gay rights synonymous with the left. That means we now have people on the left and right insisting it is so. That kind of thing has effects, it makes it harder to influence people whose support they need, but the HRC isn’t about gay rights, it is about the “struggle…for all progressives.” Gay rights are just part of the menu now.

Hat tip: Joshua at The Conjecturer.

Technorati Tags: Human Rights Campaign, GLBT, prgressive politics, Democrats, Republicans

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OK, I haven’t read this anywhere yet, and I’ve got better things to do than go look, but I would place an even bet that someone, somewhere has already suggested it…

Ann Nichole-Smith was murdered by Karl Rove to take attention away from the Scooter Libby trial, and/or Iraq…

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the whole is just a bit ghoulish and circus like. And why it rises to the level of must-see live coverage on all the major networks is beyond me.

Meanwhile, politicians continue to find new ways of

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Well, Amanda has left the Edwards campaign. As one would expect she is a clueless whiner about it: (more…)

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I first was tipped off to this by Alex Tabarrok and went to Edward Castranova’s who sent me to the Synthetic Worlds Initiative. It is there that I read the story about Sony Online Entertainments new study on virtual trade. Daniel Terdiman gives us a summary and Raph Kustra gives us an analysis: (more…)

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