February 2009

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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

-Samuel Smiles

February 28, 2006

Boycotting the Ivy League

"Something is very wrong at our elite universities" says John Fund over at the Opinion Journal. He goes on to say in his article Jihadi Turns Bulldog that:

Last week Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard when it became clear he would lose a no-confidence vote held by politically correct faculty members furious at his efforts to allow ROTC on campus, his opposition to a drive to have Harvard divest itself of corporate investments in Israel, and his efforts to make professors work harder. Now Yale is giving a first-class education to an erstwhile high official in one of the most evil regimes of the latter half of the 20th century--the government that harbored the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

The something that is very wrong with our elite universities is institutionalized Leftism. No mystery here. The American Left has held a monopoly on the mainstream media, Hollywood, and academia throughout most of my conscious life. What we have seen since the Nineties, however, is a slow but measurable release of the stranglehold of Leftism in MSM and Hollywood. But Leftism remains firmly entrenched in American universities and grade schools. It seems that not a week goes by without reading a story such as this.

Armed with tenure, the Ivy League elite Leftists, especially, wield an untouchable swagger. To be fair to Harvard, Alan Dershowitz does that say that the Larry Summers resignation debacle was spearheaded by a vocal few who represent:

[...] only one component of Harvard University and is hardly representative of widespread attitudes on the campus toward Summers. The graduate faculties, the students, and the alumni generally supported Summers for his many accomplishments. [Those responsible include] some of the most radical, hard-left elements within Harvard's diverse constituencies.

Okay fine. But how do we put a end to this instituitionalized - and subsidized - Leftism? How does the free market weed out these most 'radical, hard-left elements,' or at the very least, start to ensure more intellectual diversity at our elite institutions?

For the majority of my career I will be in a position to hire engineers, managers, and, some day, maybe even directors. I see no other solution to this problem than to place universities such as Harvard and Yale on an "Unhirable List," until that time that these institutions stop inculcating a homogenized, group-think education. If enough people in hiring positions begin to make a conscientious decision not to hire from the Ivy Leagues, then the market will eventually correct itself, even if it must be at at the temporary expense of hurting the presumably majority of students who want nothing to do with their professors' politically correct extremism.

My company has taught me to cherish diversity above all else. What better way to celebrate diversity than to only recruit from colleges that offer intellectual diversity?

Posted by Rammage | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Calling out Kip

I was reading Kip's take on all of this fuss over Dubai and our port security, and it got me thinking.

I'm on record as saying the flap over DP World acquiring P&O is not something we should take seriously. In a previous article on the topic, I asked that if any readers have a really good argument against the purchase of P&O by a frim from Dubai, to please let me know. Nobody has taken me up on it, and in fact the only comment is one that highlights the hypocritical nature of the whole controversy. I don't find this surprising, since we are a relatively small blog. That and the fact that there really is no security issue.

So, what are the real issues?

First of all, a lawyer for Eller and Company (the Miami firm that sued to have the deal blocked) says that even if the sale is not a security threat, there's a widespread perception that it could be. And that could scare away customers and hurt business. (see here) In other words, for Eller and Company, this is all about PR. They don't want the public to hold it against them that they are doing business with Arabs. Is that a legitimate reason for all of the fuss? This is what sends Senators running to the cameras? Because this doesn't look good for Eller and Company?

The second issue would be comments like Kip's:

Put the "national security" concerns aside for a moment -- what about the human rights concerns?

Fair enough. Kip has some legitimate concerns about how free the Emirates are. The fact that they are "emirates" (princedoms) says a lot. Kip lists a litany of offenses that I do in fact find egregious. And it would be worthwhile for us to try to infuse the ideals of liberty and justice in Dubai and in every other place on this planet where they are not held in the highest regard. But the US government does not have an embargo against the UAE, and we engage in other trade with Dubai. It is good to be concerned about the issues Kip discusses, but this is not a legitimate reason to block the P&O deal. In the absence of issues of national security, there is no difference between this deal and any other exchange.

Kip is part of a Pundit Roundtable over at Willisms;

I oppose the transaction for a very simple reason. We should not be doing port business with the UAE government because we shouldn't be doing any business with the UAE government.

The best way to advance human rights is not to isolate ourselves from nations who do not live up to our standards, and we would not want to see other nations enact that sort of policy toward the USA. This is simple nationalism and high isolationism, and it stands in the way of the free exchange of ideas and goods that Americans are supposed to believe in. Human rights are not brought about by trade embargoes (Cuba?), and I feel that Kip's argument would lead logically to a refusal to do trade with the UAE.

That would not be a good thing.

Our government is neither obligated nor justified in stopping business deals because of the human rights record of the nation that is home to one of the parties. Among other reasons, there is no obvious place to draw the line. For example, Kip notes that homosexuality is punishable by death in UAE. This is clearly the opposite end of the spectrum from my own libertarian view of how the government should treat homosexuality. But what level of human rights would the UAE need to attain before Kip's objections were withdrawn? If homosexuality were punishable only by prison? Flogging? Would homosexuality have to be completely unpunishable? That certainly brings up a question of whether the United States itself would be acceptable, since same-sex couples are punished by our government financially, and gay servicemembers are punished for nothing more than being gay.

The decision of whether to participate in trade with a company from UAE or owned by the UAE is one that should be made by each of us according to our own conscience. Let the Cokes and Nikes flow to the far corners of the Earth. Let our dollars go there as well, in exchange for Persian rugs and Cuban cigars* that are currently not permitted to me, because you (or Kip) object to some country's policies and you think you know how best to change those policies.

I like Kip's blog, A Stitch in Haste, and I usually agree with his analysis of a situation. And I am flattered that he likes our blog. But the libertarian in me will not let me agree with the take that he and many others have taken on the Dubai ports. (Among the others is Michelle Malkin, who is upset that the UAE boycotts Israel and apparently has blocked her site. Again, not admirable but where is the security issue?) The collectivist commentary from the left does not surprise me, but that coming from the right does. So I am calling Kip out on this, in hopes of changing his mind.

For the record, the human rights cause demands action, but not an authoritarian, isolationist blocking of business deals.

There are a few other issues being discussed on the port deal. For example, The MSM harped today on an unclassified internal memo by the Coast Guard that didn't actually say much of anything. Headlines read "Coast Guard warned of port deal intel gaps", but of course the actual story is a bit less exciting.

There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential [for assets owned by DP World or P&O] to support terrorist operations,

(see here)

That sounds serious. Except, the USCG says it isn't. (Malkin is among those who lept before looking on this one) Taking a few lines from an unclassified document and reading them out of context is a bad way to evaluate security threats. It would be wise to point to the gaps in port security that exist whether the DP World deal goes through or not. But that is a totally separate issue, and it should have nothing to do with allowing this deal to go forward.

One more thing to note; A good point from Media Matters:

An article in The New York Times misrepresented the reasons cited by "Democrats and some Republicans" for criticizing the recent agreement to transfer control of terminals at ports in six U.S. cities to Dubai Ports World. In fact, members of Congress from both parties have accused the administration of flouting the law, which requires a 45-day investigation when the acquiring company is owned by a foreign government and the deal could affect national security.

Media Matters then goes on to paint Bush domestic security adviser Frances Townsend and NYT reporter David E. Sanger as trying to mislead the public on the whole affair. It seems ridiculous to suggest that the Bush Administration would try to hide a disagreement in interpretation of the law, by asking the American people if they agree with decisions that are racist against Arabs. After all, the average American probably thinks even less of Arabs than they do of government lawyers. But the point still stands; Lawmakers have demanded an investigation, not a blocking of the deal. I'll give them credit for that much. I suspect they will get their 45 days. The deal will probably go through in the end, but the flail surrounding it will probably not project an image of America that is very pro-liberty and pro-justice.

* "Don't think of it as supporting their economy. Think of it as burning their crops." - Kinky Friedman to Bill Clinton

Update: Kip is also taking heat from Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of..., who says:

So Kip is right in pointing out the weakness in human rights in UAE, but I’m not sure that punishing them economically is the right course of action. I would also like to point out that if all Middle East countries raised their standards to those of the UAE it would be a vast improvement; so holding them up as an example for their neighbors is not necessarily a bad thing.

Reasonable people can disagree whether or not the lease of several piers at US ports is in the national security interests or not but I think it is a mistake to overlook the incentives that such a deal would create. I don’t believe that having an Arab country with a financial stake in US security is a terrible thing to encourage.

Kip addresses a couple of the arguments in the post (see the comments section), but does not seem to be swayed on the general principle. Hopefully he will expand on this at some point.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 25, 2006

Photo Caption Contest

Photo Caption Contest time! I have a personal like for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I disagree with him on many issues, but I just love his straightforward manner and his lack of patience with stupid questions from the press.

But let's make fun of him anyway. Come on, look at that picture and come up with something!

Posted by Wulf | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

Dubai and the Security of our Ports

I had no intention of writing about the sale of P&O ports management company to a Dubai firm. I really didn't. It just seems so cut and dried - there is absolutely no issue here, and there shouldn't be, and I don't understand what besides ignorance and xenophobia could convince a person otherwise.

But this is just too delicious not to share.

NPR's Adam Davidson:

I cannot think of another story I have ever covered, where what seems to be the facts are so far away from the public debate.

Click here to hear the whole report where Davidson absolutely embarasses and fisks Senators Schumer, Frist, Clinton, and Menedez, along with several House members. Davidson is actually laughing derisively during the report... because it is so, um, laughable. None of the Congressional offices contacted by Davidson were able to put him in contact with a single port security expert who backed their position. Not one!

Of course, NPR is just a mouthpiece of the White House (see previous), so maybe we would do better to get a perspective from outside our own borders. The Economist is a British based paper. Good old Great Britain, they're an ally of ours, so we can trust them. What do they say?

On February 13th, DP World, a ports operator owned by the government of Dubai, a small but economically ambitious member of the United Arab Emirates, paid $6.8 billion to acquire P&O, a British firm which runs a global network of maritime terminals. With P&O came six American ports—Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, New Jersey and New York...

To his credit, George Bush has risen above such populism, reasserting his free-trade principles by promising to veto any legislation that tries to block the takeover. Mr Bush's problem is that, with the exception of Jimmy Carter and John McCain, no prominent politician seems inclined to speak out on his side. With mid-term elections looming in November, Congress may well find enough votes to override the presidential veto...

Underneath all the posturing is one legitimate worry: ports are one of America's weak spots when it comes to national security. Only 5% of the containers that bring 2 billion tonnes of freight to the ports each year are inspected on arrival. That is up from 2% before September 11th 2001, but is still worryingly low. Weapons of mass destruction could be smuggled in and, if the ports themselves were targets, closures or even interruptions would disrupt the global supply chain, says William Daly of Control Risks, a consultancy. This would mean potentially huge consequences for the American and world economies.

But will letting DP World operate there really make a material difference to that risk? Nobody denies that Dubai, though pro-western, is a notoriously porous place, with blind eyes reputedly turned to shipments of drugs and arms. A.Q. Khan's Pakistani nuclear-smuggling network, for instance, was hidden behind a Dubai front. But that does not mean DP World is unfit. It is a globally respected firm with an American chief operating officer, Ted Bilkey, and an American-educated chairman. When Mr Bush nominated an American manager from DP World to a ports post in the Department of Transport last month, nobody objected (though they are complaining now). The company will not own the American ports and it has no incentive to run them badly. Just as under P&O, American coast guards, customs and immigration people will remain fully responsible for security.

The United Arab Emirates is a member of America's Container Security Initiative, which allows American customs officials to inspect cargo in foreign ports before it leaves for America. The employees will continue to be unionised (and presumably patriotic) American citizens. Any Arab employees whom DP World ships in will be subject to American visa approval, no easy matter nowadays.

Alas, America's politicians seem to be in no mood to discuss this issue rationally. So much easier, and more popular, to base policy on the prejudice that every Arab is a potential terrorist.

I'm sure none of this matters to those who are opposed to the sale. But I think it's a real shame. I've been to Dubai, and it was one of the best experiences of my six years in the United States Navy. They were very pro-modernization, with beautiful architecture, huge malls, and a traditional Gold Souk that was an amazing marketplace with fantastic deals and pro-American passers-by. You should see the place. I can't wait to go back.

If you are unmoved, and you have a really good argument against the purchase of P&O by a frim from Dubai, let me know. And you might want to drop a line to Senators Schumer, Frist, Clinton, and Menedez. Because right now they are grasping at straws.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Virginia Keeps Smoking

From the Virginia Pilot:

A proposal to ban smoking in Virginia's restaurants and other public places has been snuffed out.

Frankly, I found it troubling that the ban was considered at all. The fact that it made it as far as it did is evidence that even in the Old Dominion, there are some who are trying to trample the rights of the individual to determine whether to allow the use of a legal substance on their privately owned commercial property. Like our commenter Goose in a previous post, some here in Virginia feel that if you offer your services to the public, it is suddenly acceptable - nay, a moral imperative - for the government to interfere with the parameters of the transaction.

Individuals cannot be trusted to engage in personal or financial intercourse without having a collectivist hold their hands.

"Why do you need a law to protect people when people can protect themselves by not going in" restaurants that allow smoking, said Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax.

Exactly. This is no different from my feelings on private schools, by the way - expressed in the comments section at Right on the Left Coast. This is not a matter of equal opportunities, it is a matter of equal outcomes. And we all know that line of thinking, don't we?

Posted by Wulf | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 23, 2006

Hillary Clinton Opposes Jihad

The video and some transcripts of it are making the rounds on the blogosphere. I was directed to find it at Michelle Malkin, no surprise. You can see it here.

CLINTON: Suppose that you were meeting today to decide who got the vouchers. First parent comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher. Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send, you know, my child to the Jewish Day School. Great here's your voucher! Next parent who comes says, "I want to send my child to the private school that I've already dreamed of sending my child to.' Fine. Here's your voucher. Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist.' You say, 'Wait a minute. You can't send...we're not giving a voucher for that.' And the parent says, 'Well, the way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. And therefore, you gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, gave it to a secular private parent. Under the Constitution, you can't discriminate against me.'
Suppose the next parent comes and says 'I want to send my child to the School of...the Jihad.' Wait a minute! We're not going to send a child with taxpayers dollars to the School of Jihad. 'Well, you gave it to the Catholics, gave it to the Jews, gave it to the private secular people. You're gonna tell me I can't? I'm a taxpayer. Under the Constitution.'

Now, tell me how we're going to make those choices.

The fact of the matter is that this argument - as compelling as some would like to think it is - boils down to a matter of elitism. Wealthy people can choose to send their children to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School, or the Jewish Day School, or the school of the Church of the White Supremacist, or the School of the Jihad (nice ring to that one). But poor parents cannot. How could a Democrat with presidental aspirations ever be making this statement?

The answer is the NEA, of course. The NEA hates vouchers, because they threaten the monopoly we public school teachers currently have and are desperately trying to hold. There's a union, dammit. A union that votes and whose financial support any Democrat with presidential aspirations would clearly need. That is all there is to it.

Incidentally, one of the regular commenters at QandO sets up a nice strawman about how Senator Clinton is just trying to enforce a law that prohibits schools from advocating violence against our nation, and it gets knocked down repeatedly. As I read the comments, it occurred to me that there probably are a lot of people who hear her comments, figure it sounds reasonable (I'm against Jihad, too!), and don't understand why a libertarian minded person would have a problem with it. Thankfully, McQ is patient and tries to explain it again... and again...

Posted by Wulf | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

The Sudoku Craze

I’ll admit it. I’m hooked. Something to do to pass time while I travel I suppose. All I know is, I don’t know whether to thank or slap the person responsible for introducing this to me. The way Sudoku caught fire last year in the States, and everywhere else in the world apparently, resistance would’ve been futile.

According to Wikipedia:

The puzzle was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979. Although likely inspired by the Latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, Garns added a third dimension (the regional restriction) to the mathematical construct and (unlike Euler) presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill in the rest. The puzzle was first published in New York by the specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines in its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, under the title Number Place (which we can only assume Garns named it).
The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru, which can be translated as "the numbers must be single" or "the numbers must occur only once" literally means "single; celibate; unmarried"). The puzzle was named by Kaji Maki, the president of Nikoli. At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku, pronounced SUE-dough-coo; sū = number, doku = single); it is a common practice in Japanese to take only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations which guaranteed the popularity of the puzzle: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32 and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the Asahi Shimbun. Within Japan, Nikoli still holds the trademark for the name Sudoku; other publications in Japan use alternative names.

Now that I got the history out of the way let me explain the phenomenon. It started in November 2004 in “The Times” in Britain after Wayne Gould created a program to develop the puzzles quickly. It caught like wild fire from there, eventually reaching the States in May 2005 when the “New York Post” first published it. Now almost every city’s newspaper features the puzzle. I noticed it began being published in the Continental Airlines in-flight magazine last month as well. The question is, is it a fad? Or is Sudoku here to stay?

A friend of mine thinks it is a phase. Then again, he can complete the USA Today crossword puzzle every day whereas I’m lucky to get 1/3 of it done (I’m really not that strong in vocabulary). He claims, “It’s reached its peak. People will get tired of the lack of variety in the puzzles.” Maybe so. But maybe he’s just jealous that the puzzle is infringing on his precious crossword space in the paper. I don’t know for sure.

I think it is going to be around for quite awhile. Why? Because it is a logic puzzle. The people (like me) that are not linguists can look at this and solve it. You don’t have to know the dictionary nor the silly little puns that these crossword publishers like to use. If you can write the numbers one through nine, you can solve this puzzle. Granted some may take longer to solve, but they can be done. So from me to you…happy solving!

Posted by G-Dawg | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

February 19, 2006

A Letter to Councilmember Phil Andrews

Dear Montgomery County Maryland Councilman Andrews,

Recently a fellow Montgomery County, District 3, neighbor told me that you routinely walk our neighborhood to discuss issues with your constituents. I will assume that, since my neighbor is a registered Democrat and I am not, that is the reason that you have never knocked on my door. This is unfortunate, because my wife and I would very much like to engage you in discussion about your policies towards this county.

However, if you were to, hypothetically, ever call upon any of your non-Democrat constituents of District 3, here are some questions that I have for you:

Since your first agendum on your "Championed Initiatives" bio is to "make all Montgomery County restaurants smoke-free," let me start here. Forgetting for a moment all of the arguments about restaurant employees' health and the dangers of second-hand smoke, do you realize that you have outlawed me from opening a bar that caters to smokers, with me being the proprietor and sole employee? If I have a legal product to sell, and I have someone who wants to buy that product, do you believe the county government genuinely has jurisdiction in preventing me from doing so? Actually, let me take a different direction with this question. Is your main issue with smoking in restaurants the fact that the employees are forced to inhale second-hand smoke, thereby threatening their health? If so, how do the annual deaths of say, roadside construction workers, vary with the annual death rates of restaurant employees and lung cancer? If the former is more, will you fight as ardently for the elimination of roadside working crews?
Montgomery County has some of the most stringent liquor and Blue Laws in the country. The county completely controls all supply and distribution of beer, wine, and liquor, and is now making headway in eliminating the privately-owned stores to become the exclusive retailer, as well. In addition, since beer/wine and liquor and food products are forced to be sold in separate stores, if someone wanted to drink a gin and tonic with a lime, he or she would have to visit three separate stores (and of course, grocery stores are forbidden from selling anything alcoholic). The Democratic Party, as we both know, stands for personal freedoms above all else. The Democratic Party, furthermore, is progressive in its secularism. So certainly these liquor restrictions are not in place as anachronistic Blue Laws, but rather, for economic reasons. My question to you is: do you feel the county government should have any jurisdiction in going into business as Montgomery County's sole alcohol supplier, distributor, and retailer for the purposes of economic gains? That is to say, what reason can you provide to justify why the local government controls all alcohol sales but not for other products such as cigarettes, firearms, iPods, etc.? Do you feel that the citizens of Montgomery County are being best served by the existence of the Montgomery County Liquor Control?
Our county, upon whose council you sit, has purchased the former home of the slave that served as Harriet Beecher Stowe's model in her novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Historic preservation such as this is a wonderful thing, as undoubtedly everyone agrees. However, leaving aside the one million dollar price tag on behalf of the citizen's tax dollar, do you feel that it's the business of the county to engage in historic preservation, especially considering the many private institutions dedicated to doing so? And in fact, if private monies were unable to be obtained for purchasing this landmark, is this not perhaps an indicator of public apathy towards the purchase? If the general public is apathetic to this project, does the county sincerely believe they will be able to turn a profit from this site?
The Strathmore. For years now Montgomery County has been spending money like Imelda Marcos in a shoe outlet mall. I will cover many of the more egregious examples - such as the tens of millions of dollars spent on indoor swimming pool complexes for the wealthy - in Atlas Blogged in the future. But perhaps the largest slap-in-the-face purchase of late has been the Strathmore. This 100 million dollar music hall was half-funded by Montgomery County. Question: While the middle class of this county has been struggling to meet the barrage of various taxes at all levels of government, including the outrageously high county property taxes which make retiring here in the county all but impossible, how do you sleep at night knowing that musical concerts are being subsidized for the rich on the backs of your tax base? Are you feeding a lot of the poor at the BSO concerts at Strathmore? Or has there been an opera-revival among the proletariat here in Montgomery County to which you alone are privy?
You have been one of the biggest opponents of the Inter-County Connector (ICC) highway that would connect northern Montgomery County to I-95 north of the beltway. Just out of curiosity, and leaving all of the environmental nonsense aside, is one of the reasons that you do not want to see this highway completed because you and your councilmembers do not want to see Montgomery County opened up to the largely black community of Prince Georges County, Maryland? I know that you are unable to answer this in a public forum, so if you can just give me a wink and a nod when you come knocking on my door, I'll understand that the ICC obstruction that the institutionalized white liberalism here in the county already has its hands full with the burgeoning Latino population, and cannot handle another minority without affecting the quality of life for the Strathmore-going North Potomac and Silver Spring residents.
Montgomery County and its I-270 corridor had at least a twenty year head start on Northern Virginia and its Dulles Corridor. Does it ever embarrass you that Northern Virginia, despite being developed many years after Montgomery County, has blown past us in jobs, companies, technology, infrastructure, and community? Can you offer me some reasons why you suspect that Northern Virginia has succeeded so well where Maryland has failed so miserably? For example: The company for which I work has offices in both Maryland and Virginia. While looking to do volunteer work for the community, I was surprised to find that the volunteer opportunities in NoVa outnumber the opportunities here in Montgomery County by about 10-1. Why do you suppose that is? (See next bullet)
Montgomery County, despite being a suburb of the capital of the free world, has been and always will be a bedroom community thanks to local government ineptitude. My family has lived here for 40 years, and in that time, a sense of community has never developed. Due to the outrageous taxation and ridiculously abundant lawmaking, most families with whom I am familiar are like mine, biding our time building our careers, waiting for the day to come where we pack up and move to a non-socialist state. What do you suppose will happen to your tax-base when your middle class moves out in droves?
Finally, Montgomery County and you seem to be actively pursuing a collectivist and socialistic agenda. Is this something that you can publicly admit so that it can be openly discussed and debated in a public forum? Are you personally opposed to capitalism and free market, and would you prefer all businesses be run by the county? If we could guarantee that no Montgomery County laws would ever be broken if we adopted a "nanny state" mentality, is this worth, in your opinion, the personal freedoms that would be sacrificed?

I'm sure I'll have many, many more questions by the time you do get around to visiting my house. Stop by and share a Montgomery County Liquor Control Board-approved beer with me some time, and we'll talk.

Sincerely, Rammage-

p.s. - For all my complaining about taxes, the real reason that my wife and I are chomping at the bit to get out of this county and state is so that we can have wine from various vineyards in the U.S. delivered to our home without committing a felony. How petty, ridiculous, and controlling can a government be?

Posted by Rammage | Comments (21) | TrackBack (1)

What is the Value of Algebra?

You will never need to know algebra.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes an open letter to a high school dropout named Gabriela:

The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry in order to graduate. This is something new for Los Angeles (although 17 states require it) and it is the sort of vaunted education reform that is supposed to close the science and math gap and make the U.S. more competitive. All it seems to do, though, is ruin the lives of countless kids. In L.A., more kids drop out of school on account of algebra than any other subject. I can hardly blame them.

Oh, no. Is this guy really going to tell students that one of the subjects we most need to improve in our schools is useless? Why would he do that?

Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column... Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not.

I am almost at a loss for words. The hubris is so thick that it seems like sarcasm... but there is no follow-through. It is not sarcasm. He is serious. He thinks that he never uses algebra. He thinks that it ruins lives to tell students that they have to learn it in order to get a high school diploma.

Part of me really wants to get worked up over this. I'd like to ask Mr. Cohen if he feels any differently about literature, because his column reminds me of those people who drag their child into the bookstore and demand the books that are assigned by the school, and then stare in horror as the books are delivered. "Oh my GOD! She has to read that whole thing? Look at the size of that book, and it looks so boring! What the hell does she need to read this for? Augh!"

But part of me is too tired for Mr. Cohen and his kind. Good for you, Mr. Cohen. There is nothing so satisfying as the casual dismissal of things you do not like, is there? I am sure it makes you feel like Peter Pan to tell the students of this nation that they are wasting their lives away in the persuit of education. But even in this dismissal of learning, Cohen may have taught the careful reader a lesson: One need know nothing more than how to type, in order to get a job as a journalist.

This article is cross-posted at WulfTheTeacher, as are most of my science or education posts.

Mr. Cohen is addressed by many other bloggers out there, including Dave Ex Machina, who failed trigonometry and got a degree in English, only to later rediscover math and pursue (abortedly?) a career as a math teacher. He says;

Don’t listen to Richard Cohen, who failed at something and now wants you to fail as well, so that he can be justified in hating and fearing that which he wasn’t good at. He doesn’t care about your well-being, he simply wants to justify his own beliefs. Don’t let him or anyone else convince you to close a door in your life for no good reason.

A great point. Personally, I failed calculus in high school and differential equations in college. I pursued a degree in history for two years before realizing that I missed science classes. I now teach physics and I feel that the two biggest problems in math and science education are:
1) PR
2) teachers who never struggled with the subject or who never admit they struggled with the subject.

Are these really one problem, stated two different ways?

Another blogger on the topic is Hodges Lab, whose reaction sounds very, very familiar:

Regardless of how he tries to frame it, he really is defending ignorance by defending walking out on education. This makes me wonder how Cohen would react to an engineer telling young students that they don't have learn to communicate effectively in order to get a job.

One is tempted to think that Cohen's article is an attempt at over-the-top satire, like suggesting for the starving to eat their own children. But even after re-reading it twice, I don't think it is...

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February 18, 2006

Science and the Government

Part of the problem with government funded science is that money is the rudder of scientific research. If scientific research is funded by a private individual, organization, or corporation, then the aims of the research are plain, and scientists know ahead of time what they are in for. But with government funding, researchers often believe that they should be given free rein to seek "truth", and the public believes that their findings represent "truth", and often fail to view the findings with the skepticism that true science demands.
Furthermore, the findings of these scientists do not belong to them individually, and accusations of silencing by the government are not hard to find - especially when research is begun under one administration and ends under another. And, in some cases, those accusations might be true... and that might or might not be done with good reason, which makes the situation even more mucked up. The whole enterprise of science becomes a political battleground - something that irks scientists who feel entitled to the funding and the findings.

Consider NASA's budgetary balancing act. The agency is being asked to retire the shuttle fleet and bring on a new generation of launch vehicle over the next decade (see previous), and in order to afford doing so, they are cutting funds to other projects. From the Hampton Roads Daily Press:

Leaders of the House Science Committee launched a bipartisan assault on President Bush's proposed budget for NASA on Thursday, saying the plan makes troubling cuts in aeronautics and science programs to finance a manned mission to the moon and Mars.

Two years after Bush announced his plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020, the initiative is triggering wrenching changes within NASA that are raising alarms in Congress.

NASA's 2007 budget calls for a 30.4 percent increase in space exploration systems over the current year's spending level. Much of that money would go to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle to replace the aging fleet of space shuttles.

But to finance that increase with relatively little new money next year, NASA would have to cut spending on aeronautics research by 18 percent. Langley Research Center in Hampton, which specializes in aeronautics, is expecting a budget cut of about $50 million next year.

While science programs would get a modest funding boost of 1.5 percent next year, lawmakers complained that a new five-year plan calls for a $3.1 billion cut compared with last year's projections. The magnitude of that cut, aides said, could affect things as varied as the Mars robotic exploration programs, advanced telescopes to find planets around distant stars, and programs to observe phenomena such as black holes.

"I am extremely uneasy about this budget, and I am in a quandary at this point about what to do about it," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., the committee chairman, who summoned NASA Administrator Michael Griffin to Capitol Hill to discuss the spending plan.

"This budget is bad for space science, worse for earth science and perhaps even worse still for aeronautics."

We are apparently of the belief that space science would not exist if it were not for NASA, and a cut in NASA science expenditures will lead us back to the dark ages. The answer, I suppose, is more funding - because government spending isn't yet enough, right?

From the Charlottesville Observer:

We're glad concerned NASA scientists and officials have decided to speak out. And we hope President Bush and his political advisers learn a lesson from this whole, ugly affair: Trying to muzzle scientists whose findings are politically inconvenient is a terrible idea. And it usually doesn't work, either.

This is true, but this also assumes that the muzzling is wholly a matter of dirty politicians trying to impose religion over Truth. That is not a safe generalization, even if you believe it to be the case here.

The AP reports that the House Science Committee on Thursday demanded more transparency and scientific openness. It is a noble demand, but it is simply unrealistic. The immediate issue is very offensive; a NASA PR officer resigned...

...after he was accused of trying to limit reporters' access to a noted NASA climate scientist and insisting that a Web designer insert the word "theory" with any mention of the Big Bang.

But not every issue of scientific openness or censorship will be this cut and dry, and government would be well served to stick to research that has direct and legitimate use by government agencies, most notably the military.

To emphasize my point, I direct readers to this article: NASA and NOAA Open Science Policies Not Matched at EPA.

Despite public concerns about Bush administration political interference with science, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is requiring prior headquarters approval for all communications by its scientists with the media, according to an agency email released Thursday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national association of government workers in natural science agencies.

The scientists quoted in this article sound very reasonable - how come NASA and NOAA scientists are told to engage the public in open dialogue, but EPA scientists have to go through their PR department? But the fact of the matter is that every interview that starts with "I work at the EPA..." is one that purports (implicitly or explicitly) to be an official statement of the agency, the government, and the scientific community. The agency is absolutely correct to have a level of oversight in this - the most liberal policy should be one of uncensored access to EPA scientists, but with the agency made fully aware of all interviews and speeches, and able to denounce, deny, or fire the scientist, depending on the content of the comments. It is wholly inappropriate to allow individual scientists (who after all have political agendas of their own) to represent an agency and the people of the United States, without any supervision.

(This article is cross-posted at WulfTheTeacher)

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Microsoft bullied by EU

When I heard the reports last month that Microsoft had opened up the source code of its Windows Server OS (hoping to avoid a possible 2 million euro per day fine from a 2004 court decision), my first thought was that Microsoft had been absolutely bullied by the government, and as with any bully, the EU would only be encouraged to go for more.
"We have now come to the conclusion that the only way to be certain of satisfying the Commission's demands is to go beyond the 2004 Decision and offer a license to the source code of the Windows server operating system," said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. That license to the source code can now be given to any software developer who tells the EU they need it in order to make their software work better with the Windows OS. What about Microsoft's intellectual property rights? Well, screw them, they're a big old mean corporation. Right?

It isn't enough for the bully. Today, Microsoft is in the news again. I did a search of the news nets and found Brussels Journal right at the top, and they have also noted that the EU tactics are familiar to the schoolyard. Over the last six months or so, Brussels Journal has become my favorite for news about Europe, behind only the Economist. From Brussels Journal's article on Microsoft:

The EU Commission swiftly reminded the media and Microsoft that it is the European Commission’s responsibility, and not Microsoft’s, to decide whether it was in compliance. So the EU prosecutor is simultaneously adopting the roles of the judge and jury. In the light of the Commission’s anti-trust and competition policy so far, one can be pretty sure that it will still refuse to acknowledge compliance.
The saddest thing in all this is that European consumers are the real victims of the European Commission’s crusade against companies that serve their customers well.

Well said, Chresten Anderson. And readers, if you think Microsoft is evil, don't use them. It really, really, really is that simple.

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February 17, 2006

Bryant Gumbel Can't Ski

On a recent edition of "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," Bryant finished his show, as he always does, with a parting thought. The topic that he choose for this show? The Winter Olympics. Unfortunately Bryant chose to make his final statement about race, and did so in a most ingorant manner. For those of you that missed his comments (and I am sure that since only about 12 people actually watch that show, this does not surprise me) I will share with you what he said.

Wisdom from Bryant Gumble:

"And finally tonight the Winter Games. Count me among those that don't like 'em and won't watch 'em. In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine said, "These are the times that try men's souls", he must have been talking about the start of another Winter Olympics. Because they are so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like try not to be incredulous when someone tries to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of Blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something's not really a sport if a psuedo-athlete waits in what's called a "kiss and cry area" while some panel of subjective judges decides who won. And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sports writers pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon, and all those other events they don't understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years. Face it, these Olympics are little more than a marketing plan to fill space and sell time during the dreary days of February. So, if only to hasten the arrival of the day they're done, and we can move on to March Madness, for God's sake, let the Games begin."

Now please take a really good look at what he said. I will save you the trouble looking up the word "paucity" by translating it to read "lack of". Bryant has a problem with the Winter Olympics because there are not enough black people in it. Period. And then to compare it to a GOP convention was just too classic. I am assuming that Bryant also hates Hockey, NASCAR, The America's Cup, and Golf. If it weren't for Tiger Woods, then Golf would have a huge paucity indeed.

Now think for a moment about this. What if Rush Limbaugh came on the air on one of his shows and said something like "I am not a fan of the NBA because there are just not enough white people in it. Going to an NBA game is like going to a Democratic Convention. Or worse, it is just like driving down an inner-city street late at night."

Could you imagine the uproar that would hit if Rush (or any other white person) said this? People around the world would actually forget about cartoons for a minute to take time to burn down everything that Rush owns.

Bryant, I do submit to you that there is a paucity of blacks in the Winter Olympics. Discussing the socio-economic factors as to why this is would really not be worth the effort. What you are doing sir, by making this comment, is cheapening to the 10th degree what those kids are accomplishing while performing in the Winter Olympics. When was the last time you saw your toes, let alone were able to perform any athletic endeavor? Do you realize the years of training, of hard work, and of sacrifice most of them make just to get to that point? Do you have any clue as to how much these events mean to them and to their countries?

Now if Bryant had just come out and said he didn't like the Winter Olympics because he didn't get them and didn't appeal to him, so be it. But to play the race card as a reason not to like them is just plain wrong. This is America Bryant, and you can watch whatever you want, and I highly encourage you to do so. However, please don't belittle those that have worked their whole lives for these Winter Olympics just because the color of their skin does not match yours.

The EtherZone opened a forum on it: Bryant Gumbel's racist remarks

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February 15, 2006

Has Bush Derangement Syndrome Infected the LP?

Take a look at the following headlines:

"Bush Evades Constitutional, Legal Constraints to Violate Americans’ Privacy"

"President Bush is Taking America in the Wrong Direction"

"White House Stonewalling Hurricane Katrina Investigation"

"Vice President Cheney Not a Straight Shooter"

Are these the latest ravings of moonbats on Eschaton? The front page of the Daily Kos? No, they're not even headlines in the NY Times. Rather, they are all headlines on the main website of the Libertarian Party.

Every time I get gung-ho about finally taking the plunge and joining the Libertarian Party, a few minutes of perusing their website reminds me that their members still largely consist of disgruntled Democrats whose party wasn't moving fast enough on the drug legalization issue. As a white, male, software engineer falling smack dab in the middle of the libertarian demographic, I appreciate the fact that the LP takes for granted that they have my vote. But by devoting their website to Bush-bashing, the LP convinces me to stay registered as a Republican until the grown-ups can take over running their offices.

That's not to say that I don't appreciate the scrutiny of an administration as spend-happy as this one. And, indeed, this blog has been plenty critical of the Bush Administration (see here). But it was the Katrina article on the LP website that inspired this post.

If I'm on a libertarian website, about the only thing that I would expect to see written on Katrina is how poorly the local government responded to the disaster, and even more importantly, how the federal government had no jurisdiction in usurping the state National Guard. (More here) Instead, the LP article chooses to engage in the same old he said/she said hissyfitting that can be found anywhere left of the Blogosphere's prime meridian. Is the news of the White House stonewalling the Hurricane Katrina investigation helping to promote and educate libertarian ideals, or helping to recruit would-be Libertarian Party voters?

Well, at least not in my case. Not until the Libertarian Party can show me they're cured of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

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A Challenge for Conservative Bloggers

What is this map? Would you believe it is a color-coded display of the international reaction to the Danish Cartoons? Take a look... the red shows countries who have officially denounced the publisher of the cartoons, the yellow shows where riots have occurred. The light blue is where it has been seen as bad form, and the cartoons have not been published. The royal blue is where the cartoons have been published in the name of freedom in the face of religious oppression. And the dark blue is Canada.

Okay, that's not what this map really is. So what is it?

In actuality, this map is how the world responds to homosexuality. Click on it if you cannot read the legend. It says that the dark blue is where same-sex marriage is legal. The royal blue allows same-sex unions. In the light blue, it is not illegal to be gay, but you can't get married or anything like that. Large penalties in the yellow nations, and the death penalty in the red zones.

So, where do you stand? Do you believe in the freedom to stand up to religious strictures and ~~publish cartoons~~ be treated equally before the law, regardless of what lies between your lovers legs? Or are you maybe more the yellow-nation type? Or do you just wish it would all go away? Many people say they don't care if their neighbor is gay, just so long as it is kept ~~in the closet~~ private. But this is hardly a compelling argument for the continued insistence that marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman. In fact, I have never heard a compelling argument for that continued insistence. Be careful, conservatives! Your only reasoning here is based on 1) religious law, or 2) "for the children".

Besides the fact that it is not true that children need a heterosexual pair of parents in order to turn out okay, it is in general an argument that conservatives mock when used by liberals on other issues (like smoking bans, gun bans, seat belt laws, etc.).

Some conservatives may try to sidestep and make this an issue of states rights. A majority of U.S. states have adopted Defense of Marriage Acts, which define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. But fearing that these laws will not be upheld as constitutional in the state courts, religious activists have opted to push amendments to their state constitutions.

Here in Virginia, there is an amendment due for this November's ballot. I caught a piece by NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty this morning regarding the situation (available here). She quotes State Sen. Steve Newman, a Republican;

We're speaking directly to the federal courts, and saying, 'States have a right to define what marriage is for each individual state'

If you would like to know what is going on in your state, click on this interactive map:

Of course, it may be that none of this will be enough to stomp out equality before the law. Whenever something is fought out at the state level, it quickly makes its way to the federal level. I totally agree with Kip, Esquire, who writes:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has announced his intention to hold a vote on the Marriage Protection Amendment, a/k/a the Federal Marriage Amendment, in June (i.e., just in time to make it an election issue). I think that's wonderful. I want senators to go on the record, forever, on the issue of same-sex marriage. I want to see Republicans forced to stand up and declare, openly and unequivocally, that yes, they do think constitutionalizing bigotry is a good idea. I want to see Democrats forced to stand up and stop selling gays out and, for once, vote they way they keep promising to vote.

The problem is, this won't likely benefit the gay community. From Barbara Bradley Hagerty's piece;

Kareem Crayton, who teaches law and political science at the University of Southern California, says the marriage amendments stoked up the culture wars, impassioned the Christian conservative base... and may have played a major role in re-electing President Bush, especially in battleground states like Ohio.
"I think it had an effect on the intensity that voters had for showing up," he says. "So in Ohio, for example, where polling lines were extremely long, you were more likely to stay out in the rain and wait for your time to vote, if you thought this was a major issue and you couldn't just let it pass."

Seth Kilbourn of the Human Rights Campaign talks the personal liberty line for this issue;

"We need to make the case for why marriage for same-sex couples is good, why it is the true measure of equal treatment under the law. That will improve the vote."
If the message is equality, he says, the medium is personal stories.

But even Mr. Kilbourn doesn't have much optimism for this fall. This is a long-term issue, and it will only be longer still if conservatives and libertarians continue to stand against personal liberty. Do you believe that our government serves us best by basing its treatment of a man on the sex of his lover? Do you believe it is desirable that we in this nation continue to enshrine religious sensibilities over freedom?

I challenge the conservatives who stand in favor of personal freedoms to reevaluate the way they view the issue of gay marriage.

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February 14, 2006

That's So Brokeback

One of my administrators gave me the scoop on a nearby high school that made the Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Parents and other interested spectators will have to do the cheering for the Douglas Freeman boys basketball team at tonight's Colonial District basketball tournament quarterfinal.
Freeman's principal, Dr. Edward Pruden Jr., has banned all students from the Rebels' game against visiting Maggie Walker Governor's School. The Rebels won the district regular-season title and are the top seeds in the tournament. The ban doesn't affect Maggie Walker students...
The ban is punishment for an inappropriate cheer during last Friday's home game against archrival Mills Godwin.

Their inappropriate cheer that went unreported in the T-D? Some Freeman students singled out a Godwin player and referred to him as "Brokeback Bobby" all night. The school was concerned about proper public decorum, sexual harassment lawsuits, and general sportsmanship.

Um, especially that part about the lawsuits.

Pruden has expressed in the past that he wants the students to cheer for Freeman and not against the opposition, and especially not to single out an individual player. "We were shocked he banned students from a home game," said Laura Rothenberg, a senior who has been a part of the cheering section for four years. "It has made us step back and see that Dr. Pruden took it to heart and was offended. Once everyone cools down, we can accept the fact that it was inappropriate and come around and start with new momentum."

Pruden has expressed in the past that he wants the students to cheer for Freeman and not against the opposition, and especially not to single out an individual player.

The ban covers one game. The district tournament continues at Douglas Freeman with the semifinals tomorrow night and the final Friday. Freeman, as the district champion, already has earned a berth in next week's Central Region tournament and will have a home game Feb. 21.

But it's not just an issue at high schools, as fans of the Gonzaga basketball team have been in the news lately for the exact same thing. The response there?

...the faculty advisers for the Kennel Club booster group urged students to avoid "inappropriate chants"...

There is no ban of the entire student body. There is open discussion on campus of what is appropriate and what is not. High school students are not too young to be treated the same way. As one of my openly gay students noted to me today, teenagers are more offended about not being treated as mature individuals, and having the entire student body punished for the actions of a few, than by the chanting of words that are used as slang throughout the school anyway.

"That principal is so... brokeback!" he said with an ironic smile as he swept out of the room.

These kids know what is right and what is wrong. It is just that they sometimes need to be reminded of it, and told that wrong behavior will not be tolerated. They don't need to be summarily barred from a school event just so the administration can cover their butts.

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Reduced to a Caption Contest

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Saddam Hussein is now on a hunger strike. This news is lower on the American radar than the fact that the Vice President waited 22 hours to tell the media that he didn't kill anybody.

So let's see what you've got. Give us your best caption for this image... I think it is just begging for a good one.

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February 12, 2006

Eat the Rich

Below are some humorous snippets from P.J. O'Rourke's treatise on economics, Eat the Rich. Incidentally, this book will be included in my "Top 10 Books That I Wish My Liberal Friends Would Read" list. P.J. O'Rourke excels in this book at proving his basic premise: America....it doesn't suck.

On socialism in Sweden, or "Good Socialism":

According to the Swedish Institute's booklet On Sweden, 'The overall aims of the social welfare system are to redistribute income more evenly over each individual's life cycle, narrow the gaps between social classes, and provide everyone with a broad selection of public services.' An American reads that sentence and hears, 'We're putting half your allowance in the bank because you'll no doubt want to buy some Rage Against the Machine CDs and a skateboard when you're eighty.'

On socialism in Cuba, or "Bad Socialism":

Much work had been done, however, painting the propaganda slogans. SOCIALISM OR DEATH appeared on almost every overpass. What if the U.S. government had slogans all over the place? I tried to come up with a viable campaign. My suggestion, AMERICA—IT DOESN'T SUCK.

On brotherly love in Russia:

[...] a socialist society seems to produce solidarity among people. It does so in Sweden. And it does so in Cuba, even if that is a solidarity of suffering and anger. Socialism, however at odds with economic sense, engenders brotherhood.

Or so I was thinking as I arrived in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. The twentysomething Intourist guide who met me at the airport certainly seemed a younger-brother type. Ivor was affable, outgoing, and....

'You'll notice there are no niggers here,' said this product of socialist childhood and schooling.

On Russian fitness:

The World Bank estimated that one-third of Russia's population had an income below the minimum sustenance level; One out of three people was keeling over from hunger. This wasn't happening. Indeed, three out of three Russians could use some time on a StairMaster.

The conditions of a sleeper car on a four-day journey to Siberia:

You can stretch out on these bunks in comfort if you answered the casting call for Tattoo on Fantasy Island. The compartment window does not open, and there's no fan or other form of ventilation, and no window shade. In the summer in southern Siberia, the sun shines eighteen hours a day. If your compartment is on the south side of the train, as mine was, you can use it to bake pies. A few of the windows in the corridor do open, and some relief can be had by sticking your head out and letting your jaw hang open in the breeze. I saw most of Siberia the way your dog sees I-95.

[...] I'd brought my own food along, too, purchased in Irkutsk's Martha Stewart grocery. And when the train made its brief stops, I could go to the market stalls that lines the station platforms and buy fresh bread, homemade pickles, smoked fish, and—even in Ust'-Urluk, on the frontier of Outer Mongolia—Pepsi. I also bought carbonated Russian mineral water. This tastes like Spic-and-Span but I could shake the bottles and use my thumb to direct squirts of household-cleaner-type liquid at the cockroaches eating Hong Kong tea biscuits under my bunk.

On the economy of Tanzania:

Man was born into a state of nature, and nature, I'm sad to report, is woefully underdeveloped in an economic sense. The wildlife herds were sad reminders that there are only two ways to obtain a thing; either agree upon a price for it or take it by butting heads. Wildebeest must depend on the latter method. Due to lack of pockets, wildebeest cannot carry cash or credit cards. Among animals, only marsupials have pockets, and then just to keep their young inside. And there are various difficulties, practical and theoretical, with an economic system based on inch-long blind and hairless kangaroos.

[...] Wildebeest also sleep, but not peacefully. A significant minority of creatures on the African veldt aren't grazers or browsers, or members of PETA.

Still in Tanzania:

[...] Maasai [tribe] cuisine is nothing but, basically, gravy. It would be food suicide for any other people and may cause even the Maasai a certain amount of indigestion. They call Europeans iloredaa enjekat, 'those who confine their farts with clothing.'

In Tanzania's capital:

In Dar [es Salaam], as knowing travelers call it, I was met by a driver named Nzezele (pronounced 'Nzezele'). [...] Buses and taxis bear pictures of Bob Marley. Pedestrians wear T-shirts emblazoned with Rastafarian slogans. BACK TO AFRICA is—confoundingly—a popular slogan in Tanzania.

A quote from John Cowperthwaite, the British officer given credit for Hong Kong's laissez-faire economic success:

[...] in the long run the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.

On the notion of the U.S. opening its doors to Hong Kongese emigrants after the handover to Red China:

Imagine 6.5 million savvy, hardworking citizens-to-be with a great cuisine. What a blessing for America. And how we would hate them. Pat Buchanan would hate their race. The AFL-CIO would hate their wage rate. The NAACP would hate their failure to fail as a minority. And Al Gore would hate 6.5 million campaign contributors who didn't have to sneak pro-free-trade money to the Democratic National Committee anymore but could go right into polling booths and vote Republican.

In summation:

The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, etc. Fair enough. But then there's the Tenth Commandment: 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.'

Here are God's basic rules about how we should live, a very brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end of it is, 'Don't envy your buddy's cow.'

What is that doing in there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose, as one of them, jealousy about the livestock next door? And yet, think about how important to the well-being of a community this Commandment is. If you want a donkey, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't bitch about what the people across the street have. Go get your own.

The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000—to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell."

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The Popularity and Influence of Blogs

Do your friends read your blog? Do all of your friends read your blog? Do you sometimes feel as though the entire world is reading your blog?

We at AtlasBlogged never feel that way, either. Now we know why.

Gallup's annual Lifestyle survey, conducted Dec. 5-8, 2005, finds only 9% of Internet users saying they frequently read blogs, another 11% read them occasionally, 13% say they rarely read them, while 66% never read them.

(emphasis mine, because I find it amazing!)

We really shouldn't be surprised... this week alone I spoke with a half dozen educated, well-read friends who had not seen the Muhammed Cartoons, and had no idea how to find them. Some people just don't visit the blogosphere, and are content to get their news from NPR, CNN, and GoogleNews, though I cannot imagine why.

What I do find surprising is the finding that these numbers are almost identical to last year - the number of people reading blogs in the United States does not appear to be growing.

In a blatant attempt to impress the graph-loving Captain Capitalism, I am including this bar graph, which I found at the story I linked earlier (okay, here):

Commentary from Gallup:

To put blog readership in context, the December survey found that checking online for news and weather is done regularly by 72% of Web users. Fifty-two percent regularly shop online, 40% pay bills, and 28% play games. At 20%, blog reading is on par with downloading music and participating in online auctions such as eBay...
It is important to note it's not just blog readership that suffers from anemic growth: Americans' likelihood of doing most of the other online activities has not changed over the past two years. As reported in a Feb. 6, 2005, Gallup news article, of the nine activities measured in December 2003, the only notable differences are modest increases in the percentages using the Internet for making travel arrangements and paying bills, and a slight decline in the percentage using instant messaging.
Furthermore, the percentage of Americans who use the Internet to any degree has not changed during the past three years -- roughly 75% of U.S. adults say they use the Internet on at least some occasions.

The story also notes that readership is skewed to the younger generation, who might only be visiting My Space or something like that. Not that I want to sound like a blog snob, but come on.

Obviously, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Michelle Malkin might not have the same viewer numbers as the TV show Survivor, but she and other powerful bloggers are able to get the ear of policy makers, and blogs are able to steer the coverage on some news stories. Gallup recognizes this:

Of course many bloggers will argue that the influence of blogs is immeasurably greater than their readership statistics would suggest because of the disproportionate influence they have on opinion leaders, political insiders, and modern news media. That may be true, just as it may also be true that, by providing a competitive and handy marketplace for discount and used goods, online auctions such as eBay -- used regularly by only about a quarter of Web users -- are making a mark on the broader worlds of e-commerce and retail shopping.

I think they just compared AtlasBlogged with eBay.

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Darwin Was Not an Atheist

In recent days, there has been much talk of how important it is for moderate Muslims to step up and denounce the extremists who have made hay of the now-infamous Danish cartoons. Of course, this is good advice for moderates on every issue, because conflicts are only made worse when it is left to extremists to define the debate.

For example, it is important for Christians in the United States to weigh in on the questions of Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Darwinism. It is not appropriate to allow this issue to be shaped by the zealots. Good news was reported in the Chicago Tribune today toward that end:

Nearly 450 Christian churches around the country plan to celebrate the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin on Sunday with programs and sermons intended to emphasize that his theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science... "Evolution Sunday" has drawn participation from a variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches...

I have written previously about the fact that most Christians can find their faith compatible with Darwin's theories. I have also urged scientists not to fear discussions of Creationism or Intelligent Design, so long as they are not taught as science.

Today's events evolved (ba-dump-bump) from The Clergy Letter Project, begun by Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Since its inception in 2004, the project has drawn 10,000 Christian clerics to sign a letter that concludes, "We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."

Says Zimmerman:

The first part was to demonstrate to the American public that the shrill fundamentalist voices that were demanding that people had to choose between religion and science were simply wrong. The second part was to demonstrate that those fundamentalist leaders that keep standing up and shouting that you can't accept modern science were not speaking for the majority of Christian leaders in this country.

If the silent majority would speak up and express itself in the face of zealots and extremists, I strongly believe that most issues of religion conflicting with secular values would dry up. Bravo to Dr. Zimmerman, and all of the clerics who participated in the letter or in today's programs.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin.

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February 9, 2006

The Cartoons Are Symptom of a Problem, Not the Cause

From the Economist: Free speech should override religious sensitivities.

"I DISAGREE with what you say and even if you are threatened with death I will not defend very strongly your right to say it.” That, with apologies to Voltaire, seems to have been the initial pathetic response of some western governments to the republication by many European newspapers of several cartoons of Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper in September. When the republished cartoons stirred Muslim violence across the world, Britain and America took fright. It was “unacceptable” to incite religious hatred by publishing such pictures, said America's State Department. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, called their publication unnecessary, insensitive, disrespectful and wrong.

...the Muhammad cartoons were lawful in all the European countries where they were published. And when western newspapers lawfully publish words or pictures that cause offence—be they ever so unnecessary, insensitive or disrespectful—western governments should think very carefully before denouncing them....

In Britain and America, few newspapers feel that their freedoms are at risk. But on the European mainland, some of the papers that published the cartoons say they did so precisely because their right to publish was being called into question. In the Netherlands two years ago a film maker was murdered for daring to criticise Islam. Danish journalists have received death threats. In a climate in which political correctness has morphed into fear of physical attack, showing solidarity may well be the responsible thing for a free press to do. And the decision, of course, must lie with the press, not governments...

...freedom of expression, remember, is not just a pillar of western democracy, as sacred in its own way as Muhammad is to pious Muslims. It is also a freedom that millions of Muslims have come to enjoy or to aspire to themselves. Ultimately, spreading and strengthening it may be one of the best hopes for avoiding the incomprehension that can lead civilisations into conflict.

This article makes some of the excellent points that I have been meaning to make myself, but have not had the time to write. Of course the cartoons are offensive. Of course it is not necessary or good by the standards of classical liberalism and freedom for people to go around offending others just for the sake of offending others. But that's not what these cartoons are about.

Most of the press on this issue (including some of the commentary here on AtlasBlogged) has focused on the blasphemous nature of the cartoons, and the reaction of Muslims around the world. But it needs to be considered also from the point of view of the cartoonists and the editors who printed them. Due to the very freedoms that Western Europe stands for, it has become a destination for millions of migrants from throughout northern Africa and western Asia. Europeans have found their freedoms and their sense of safety threatened by some of those immigrants, to a more visceral degree than Americans might realize. Tensions between Danes (or Swedes or Britons or French or etc) and Muslim immigrants are greater than any racial tensions the average American knows, and the history and nature of the relationship is completely different from that to which the average American is accustomed.

It is easy for Americans to say that the cartoons should not have been published, or that they served no useful purpose. It is easy for us because we do not have a real sense that our cities and society are becoming more dangerous and violent in the way the Danes do. Most Americans probably did not know that Muslims would consider cartoons of Muhammed profane, but Europeans do know. To Americans, terrorism is overseas. Islamic extremism is overseas. The conflict is overseas. It is not enough to say that we do not understand Islam - we do not even most of us understand the Danes. The cultural relativism must end. Is it objectively acceptable to publish words or images that are inflammatory? Does the reason for doing so matter? If the reason matters, we are criminalizing thought, not actions. If it is acceptable to publish an editorial or cartoon that is inflammatory, then in a free society it cannot matter the reason for doing so - offense for the sake of offense must be as legally protected as offense for the sake of political dissidence.

"Well, sure..." an American might say. "But why incite violence? We can report on and discuss the furor over the cartoons without publishing the cartoons themselves". Yes, we can. But is there some reason to do so, other than the fact that these cartoons are causing a violent furor? If the only reason not to publish is fear of violent reprisals, then the failure to publish is appeasement (at best).

The truth that is known but which we fear to speak or print is the most dangerous truth of all, and the thought crime that is being perpetrated is indefensible.

Islamic extremists in Western Europe try to hold all others hostage with the threat of violence - moderate Muslims and non-Muslims alike; Jews, Christians, secularists, everybody. The publication of the cartoons in question did not represent inflammation for the sake of inflammation, nor even inflammation for the sake of information or entertainment (which is what we experience so frequently in the American media). It represented inflammation of extremist interlopers for the sake of drawing a line and saying, We believe in this. Battle lines have been drawn carefully, with Freedom of the Press on one side, and Religious Sensitivities on the other. This battle could not have been picked with the Catholics, or Lutherans, or Buddhists, or Wiccans. Neither are their adherents prepared to be incited by cartoons, nor is the European public prepared to be incited by cartoons about them. This whole affair has been a carefully placed spark in long-filling powder keg.

Jyllands-Posten's publication of the cartoons is repeatedly called offensive. It should instead be seen as defensive. It would be appropriate to debate whether such defensiveness was warranted, but it must first be recognized as a defensive posture. Do so.

Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal notes,

... to depict the Danes as warmongerers and the fanatical Muslim immigrants who are attempting to impose Islamic law in Europe as victims, is something which so far I have only heard from these extremist Muslims themselves, from Bill Clinton, and from the loony left.

The Brussels Journal has also highlighted Dyab Abu Jahjah, the Brussels-based leader of the Arab-European League, who in a sort of retaliation has started publishing cartoons offensive to some on his website. While I do not agree with all of his statements, I'll defend to the death his right to say them. And there is one statement of Abu Jahjaj that I find instructive:

In our cartoon campaign we do not endorse any anti-Semitic, homophobic or sexist stands. All we are trying to do is to confront Europe with its own hypocrisy using sarcasm and cartoons. We will therefore continue our sarcastic campaign in the days to come and we will not be intimidated by the ridiculous law suite that was filed against us in the Netherlands.

This is exactly how it should be.

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The Winter Olympics About To Begin

We are one day away from the opening ceremonies of the XXth Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Olympics. Like many others, mine probably started with the 1980 Lake Placid Games. I was only a young pup in those days, but I vaguely remember watching those hockey games with my father. Ever since then I have always watched the Olympics in hopes of another miraculous story to watch. I’m hoping this year will not disappoint me.

To give a brief summery of the Games this year, here are some general facts and figures:

• 84 medals will be given over a period of 17 days.
• 2,600 athletes and 2,500 officials from 82 National Olympic Committees will be housed in 3 Olympic Villages: Torino, Bardonecchia and Sestriere.
• Seven sports will be presented: Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Curling, Ice Hockey, Luge, Skating, Skiing
• Eight competition sites: Bardonecchia, Pinerolo, Pragelato, Cesana-Pariol, Cesana-San Sicario, Sauze d'Oulx, Sestriere, Torino, joined by 2 training centres at: Claviere and Torre Pellice
• 650 judges and referees will participate in the Games.
• 10,000 journalists and media operators are expected to cover the Games.

I think the biggest difference in these Games would be the design of the medals. I think it is very ingenious what they did. Here is the thought process behind the design (taken from the International Olympic Committee website):

The Piazza
The medal concept was worked upon by Ottaviani International and the TOROC graphic team, headed by Dario Quatrini. The medal is round with an empty space at the centre, representing the Italian piazza. The medal will be wrapped up in its ribbon, which, unlike in previous Games, will not be sewn to its top. The front of the medal will include the graphic elements of the Games, while the back of the medal will feature the pictogram of the sports discipline in which the medal was won. To highlight the three-dimensional characteristics of the medal, its surface has been carefully made using full and empty spaces, with shiny and satiny textures.

Italian History
Quatrini, who created the design for the medals, incorporated views, ideas and models from Italian history and its tradition of forms and manufacturing: rings, ancient coins and ornaments. The solution of the circle with the space at the centre links all the basic themes and motifs of the Turin Games and embodies the leitmotiv of Torino 2006 – the piazza. The medal is also round like the Olympic rings or a symbolic victory ring and, with its open space at its centre, it reveals the place where the heart beats, the symbol of life itself. The medal is only complete, however, when it is hanging geometrically from the athlete’s neck, lying on his chest, circling and revealing the area near his heart and focusing attention on the athlete’s vital energy and human emotions.

What is also interesting to me is how they group snowboarding with skiing. Sure they both involve sliding down a hill with something attached to your feet. But they are two very different sports. It is my opinion that this should be changed.

I hope you all enjoy watching these Games. May there be no protests on judging, no athletes testing positive for drug use, and any of the other distractions that take away from what these Games really are. A way for the world to be united for a minimum of 16 days

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Alan Dershowitz and Michelle Malkin Don't Get It

After reading an article found on www.michellemalkin.com that features a transcript of an interview with Alan Dershowitz, I find myself realizing that I don't agree with either of them.

Michelle says

"I don't agree with much of what Dershowitz espouses, but on many crucial
War on Terror-related issues he is dead-on--as he is here on the Cartoon Jihad and the
craven media."

So you read that line and you think that Dershowitz is going to have some great points about the whole cartoon controversy. I read the transcript that Michelle provided from his interview on Danish television, and I wish to counter some points that he made in that transcript.

[Responding to a question about his reaction to the Danish embassy torchings:]

"It's great hypocrisy on the part of those doing the burning, because these are some of the same people who read voraciously much worse cartoons directed at Christians and Jews and Americans and Israel. Deeply, deeply, offensive anti-Christian and anti-Semitic cartoons are a staple out of Gaza every week, and suddenly, when Mohammed is offended, they're prepared to burn down embassies and create this kind of havoc. It is extraordinary hypocrisy."

Let me start out by saying that Alan is making a lot of generalizations here, and a touch of hyperbole to make his point. He makes it sound like there are a lot of cartoons produced weekly that would offend us Westerners, and that everyone reads these papers like they are holy gospel. Would this be like someone from Islam saying that every Westerner has seen the Mohammed cartoons and believes that is how Islam works? My issue with his statement is that he is generalizing all the papers that come from Gaza, and how people respond to those cartoons that come from those papers. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Let's look at his next entry:

"...You can't have a story about a cartoon without seeing the cartoon. In fact, when you
see the cartoons published by the Danish newspapers, they are mild in comparison with
what's published every day in Islamic fundamentalists newspapers and in Syrian
newspapers, in Egyptian newspapers, in Saudi Arabian newspapers. So you have to see the
cartoon to get a sense of how outrageous these attacks on the Danish embassy [are] and
the hypocrisy across the Middle East is."

To me, this is where Alan is really missing the point. Understanding that, fundamentally, Christianity and Judaism are very different from that of Islamic religion. I am not even going to pretend to know what would offend other religions and what would not. I do know this though, I don't need to see an offending cartoon if people are
protesting it. To me, the cartoons were very mild, and I saw no reason to burn embassies based on those drawings. Then again, that is just me. I am not a follower of Islam, therefore I cannot speak for how this affects them. I certainly would not be able to justify publishing it even further to continue this cycle of anger. If Newspaper X were to publish a cartoon that thousands of people become incensed over and violence ensues, why on earth would Newspaper Y then print the cartoon again with the story "This cartoon pisses people off to the point of violence so we are going to show you what is causing the trouble." Does that make any sense at all? I don't think that by saying that newspapers publish much worse cartoons daily thus we have the right to publish this cartoon is even close to being right. I can honestly say I have never heard about a protest from Catholics about a cartoon printed in Syria. Ever. Why is this? Do Catholics not care? Are the cartoons secret so we can't see them? Or do we view such things with a much different eye? We as Westerners like to say "We don't protest those cartoons because we respect their right for free speech." Well guess what, not everyone in the world has adopted such a noble ideal. These cartoons have angered these people on such a deep level, they feel that they need to destroy property and for people to die to make their voices heard. And you do hear them, don't you?

As far as the people doing the damage, we need to talk about them, because Alan sure does. We will get to that in a moment, as Alan next wants to take some cheap shots at CNN:

"CNN has shown no courage. It claims it won't publish the cartoons because they're
offensive. But they have published previous cartoons that are offensive. The fact is,
they're frightened. The fact is, that this kind of religious and intellectual terrorism
is working. It is persuading journalists who would otherwise cover this story with the
cartoons to back away--not on ideological reasons or not for reasons of protecting or
preserving integrity or anything of that kind, but out of physical and economic fear.
This is economic, physical terrorism directed at journalists and it is working. They have succeeded in the United States. They have failed in parts of Europe, but they have
succeeded in the United States."

First of all, saying that CNN has the right to publish these cartoons now because they have published other offensive cartoons in the past is beyond absurd. Does Alan not understand how different these situations are? Did CNN publish cartoons of Mohammed in the past that have offended people? I am willing to bet not. Comparing previous cartoons to these cartoons is truly apples to oranges. I find it amusing that Alan calls these protests a form of "economic, physical terrorism". No Alan, these are people whose very core of religion has been violated (in their views) and they are not happy about it. Do you truly think that CNN feels that if they publish these cartoons that all of their offices will be blown up or burnt down? I think that is a bit excessive in those hopes. How about the simple fact that CNN understands that reprinting these cartoons is asinine, and serves no good purpose. The funny thing about Freedom of Speech is that one can automatically assume it to mean you have the freedom to say whatever you want, whenever you want. How about the freedom to not say anything at all? By reporting on CNN that there are cartoons about Mohammed that are causing riots, they are doing their jobs, they are reporting the news. When asked "why aren't you showing us the offensive cartoons?" CNN replies: "Uh, because they are offensive?" Suppose, during the Super Bowl, a group of college students decide to go streaking across midfield. The next day CNN reports "Group of students from local college go streaking at Super Bowl." And then they are asked "Well why aren't you showing us pictures of streakers? How can you possibly report a story without showing us pictures of what happened?" It is possible to understand a story without adding fuel to the fire, so to speak. Don't worry though, the beauty of this country is that if you *truly* want to see the Mohammed cartoons, or you just had to see pictures of the streakers, there are plenty of websites that will provide you access. Don't believe me? Just talk to my friend Google, he will tell you.

Finally, Alan goes to talk about the people who are protesting and burning down embassies.

"...When the burning down of embassies and the fear of fatwas and physical and economic
retaliation are what determines the policy, it means that the terrorists have won."

Whoa whoa whoa. I have to interrupt Alan at this point. The terrorists have won? Is he saying that every single person who is protesting this cartoon is a terrorist? All across the Middle East protests are being waged against these cartoons. Did all of these people go to terrorist camps? Do they go grocery shopping with AK-47s strapped to their backs and belts with explosives around their waists? This is such a horrible generalization
that it is really sad. Alan would have you believe that every protest over this cartoon involves violence. Granted, within the general population there are terrorists. Of any population, that is. Doesn't matter what country or race you are talking about. But what about the rest of the protestors? Normal, average, every-day citizens that get up, go to work, come home, eat, pray, and then go to bed. These people are suddenly "terrorists" because they are expressing their deep anger at what is going on? How many cities in America have had issues with torching when an important sports team wins a national championship? When the University of Maryland won its national title in 2002 the campus was a literal war zone that night. Cars overturned and on fire, vandalism galore, and police in riot gear on campus. So by Alan's definition, all the students that partook in the celebration are terrorists. Please. Thank goodness that was just a celebration and not a protest. You should have seen what happened on Indiana University's campus, the team that lost the national championship to Maryland. It wasn't pretty, I can assure of that. They must have imported people from Gaza to help burn down buildings.

Could you imagine what would happen if the New York Times published on it's front page a cartoon of Jesus having relations of a personal nature with Hitler? What kind of uproar would that cause? Then do you think any other main media outlet would then re-print that cartoon just so people could see how terrible it was? Of course while the controversy over this cartoon is tearing America apart, someone on the West Bank would see the cartoon and shrug. "Doesn't look that bad to me."

Let's get back to what Alan is saying:

"And the United States and other European countries have a policy: Never give in to
terrorism. Well, they're now giving in to terrorism by not publishing these cartoons--not because they're offensive, they publish plenty of offensive cartoons, but because they
are frightened and because they lack the courage to confront this kind of terrorist
threat."

Wow. I mean, wow. Did he really say that? What truly annoys me about this whole situation is how America, yet again, gets dragged through the mud for something we had no control over. Did we create the religion that was offended? We did not. Did we create and publish the cartoons that offended that religion? We did not. In case Alan hasn't been paying attention, but America has got its hands full in the Middle East, and we have been trying to actually make progress in public relations over there. Does he think that by us standing up and saying "Why yes, newspapers over the world should print offensive material to Islam, it is their god-given rights" is going to endear us to those we have been trying to make not hate us so much? As I stated earlier, it is a choice to not publish these cartoons, and this is a choice that, as Americans, we are allowed to have. Some are scared to publish them, others feel that it is wrong, and others realize that if they do publish them they will actually lose business because of doing so. Does it make sense that cartoons are having such an affect? No, to us, it does not. But the reality of the situation is that they are having a huge effect, and to ignore this effect truly makes us no better than those who make offensive cartoons of any nature. To say that we are giving in to terrorism because we are not going to publish these cartoons is wrong. Plain and simple. We do things every day that will invoke retaliations from terrorists (have you been to Baghdad lately?) so saying that we are scared because of cartoons just
doesn't make sense. Last time I looked, here in America there are plenty of places that have printed or electronically published the cartoons. You can't swing a dead metaphor at a blog without having one of the Mohammed cartoons pop up. I am sure there have been newspapers here that have printed them as well. So you can't say that all of America is giving into his "terrorism". Far from it, I would gather.

Please understand, I myself am a huge fan of America, and of Freedom of Speech. I am also a fan of understanding and reason, and these two ideals need to be applied in this situation. These cartoons are angering not one, not five, not one hundred people. Thousands are angered at this. Can you literally tell that many people that they are
wrong and to sit down and shut up? I always thought that the policy of America was to be tolerant of religion, no matter who worships who and where. If you publish the cartoons of Mohammed, even just to tell the story of how they are wrong, you are offending people's religions, pure and simple.

So to Alan Dershowitz and Michelle Malkin, I kindly ask that you take a look at this situation from both sides, and while I strongly agree that burning down anything in a form of protest is not the way to go, perhaps they should be asking why things are being burned down. Please don't lay the blame at America's doorstep, and please don't ask us to make things worse.

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February 8, 2006

When They Eulogize Me, I Hope They Stay On Target

I don't know much about Coretta Scott King as a person. I have no idea whether she would have approved of the political grandstanding that occurred at her funeral yesterday in Georgia. I don't know if somewhere out there, her soul was laughing at President Bush for having to endure the situation. But personally, I don't think it was the time or the place. It was shameful.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter, George Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Michigan congressman John Conyers and poet Maya Angelou, were among the more than three dozen speakers during the funeral. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke directly to the current administration's foreign and domestic policies. "Our marvelous presidents and governors come to mourn and praise ... but in the morning will words become deeds that meet need?" he asked. The mourners rose to their feet in a roaring applause. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor," he said, drawing a roaring standing ovation from the phrase...

Former President Carter was among the speakers who took political shots at Bush, somehow equating FBI wiretaps of the King family in the 1960s to the NSA wiretap controversy of today, and telling the crowd that their skin color matters when a hurricane hits (see previous).

BizzyBlog notes there is also the question of veractiy, because people keep harping on the issue of whether there were WMD in Iraq. The Anchoress notes that the Democratic Party shouldn't be remembered as the party that pushed for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. And these are excellent points. But my primary thought in all of this is... why couldn't this funeral be a funeral? How long was it after the news of her death that these speakers decided to use the moment to grandstand? And is there any corner of their soul where they wish they had been as respectful and reserved (really!) as Senator Ted Kennedy?

Maybe some of the speakers should have read former president Bill Clinton's speech ahead of time.

I don't want us to forget that there's a woman in there, not a symbol...a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments.

When I die, I don't care too much about the arrangements or what is said. But I do hope the people there can at least stay on topic if they decide to give any eulogy.

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February 7, 2006

Class Action Against iPods

What? What? Did you say that smoking is bad for my health? I couldn't hear you over my deafening iPod!

A complaint filed with a California court this week alleged that Apple’s music players were “inherently defective in design” and “not adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss”...“Millions of consumers have had their hearing put at risk by Apple’s conduct,” the complaint said. Apple could not be reached yesterday morning for comment.

(story here)

Well, what comment could they be expected to make? Just like the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, some jackass is digging for cash in the deep pockets of corporate America. I honestly wonder if these people are serious, or if they know that they are absolute flaming morons. I'm guessing they know, but that's just a guess.

The article notes:

The iPod user manual already warns customers about the potential for permanent hearing loss if the player’s earphones or headphones are used a high volume. But the complaint alleged that Apple did not advise users about what constituted a high volume or a safe level of noise.

Well, yeah, but who reads the stupid manual, right? Not that we should have to - loud noises in your ear are not good for your ear, and this is something that nobody should have to tell you. It's no different than burning a leaf and sucking in the smoke. You are free to do so, but it should never enter your mind that your body is prepared to do this regularly and still function at its best.

An interesting observation from the Editorial Board at the Exponent (Purdue University's student newspaper):

The complaintant, however, does not even know if he has suffered any hearing loss because of the product.

Still, the Editorial Board thinks something needs to be done. Their suggestions?
- Apple should be more explicit in their warnings, in order to avoid future lawsuits.
- We should better educate children about the dangers of 100+ dB in our ears.

This is as ridiculous as the lawsuit. Apple should (but certainly won't) tell people where to get off with regard to the volume on the earphones. And children already learn about the dangers of loud noises - the problem isn't a lack of exposure to the facts. It's just that people don't care. It is in every textbook that touches on the science of sound, and even in some preschool books. We all know the real answer to these type of lawsuits. It is amazing that everybody seems to recognize this, and yet they keep coming. Each more ridiculous than the last. "My iPod was too loud, so I am suing." You can't make this stuff up.

As an afterthought, wouldn't it be grand to see Apple's defense boil down to "If it's too loud, you're too old"?

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The So-Called Holocaust

According to The Guardian:

Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirizing the Holocaust.

The Holocaust? I thought that never happened?

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The Future of Space

(Cross-posted at Wulf The Teacher)

Last week saw the anniversaries of three separate NASA disasters that weigh heavily on the future of spaceflight. It is inherently dangerous to strap oneself in at the top of a rocket and travel at the speeds necessary to achieve orbit. It is expected that NASA is doing everything it can to mitigate those dangers. But it is not enough to fix the O-rings and launch away.

When the family car breaks down too many times and repair costs stack up, many people face the quandary of paying the maintenance costs or putting the money toward a new automobile.
But at NASA, officials are trying to keep space shuttles far older than most cars on the road today going until at least the end of the decade, while hurrying to build and fly a new reusable passenger launch vehicle to replace the shuttles. All this, under a virtually flat budget.
Most experts say the agency really has no great options for reliably putting astronauts or large sophisticated cargoes into space over the next 10 years or so.

(story by Lee Bowman, here)

The fact is that the nature of spaceflight over the last 30 years has been relatively boring for the public, who funds space flight but probably does not understand why – especially in the post-Cold War era. Are we racing anybody at this point? Well, maybe China, but I don’t think most Americans actually see it that way.
(Incidentally, I recently found that the Chinese astronauts are called “taikonauts”. See previous.)

Due to safety concerns about the shuttle fleet, we are actually now in a position of having to rely on the Russians, despite our victories over them in the original Space Race and Cold War. Soyuz flights are the only way to replenish the ISS with crew and supplies, and new components for the ISS are not able to be delivered as long as the shuttles sit grounded. Too large to be taken on Soyuz, they highlight our inability to fulfill our promises regarding ISS.

The situation chafes partners like the European and Japanese space agencies, each with sophisticated modules that cost more than $1 billion to build gathering dust until they can hitch a ride.

It may be that the vehicle itself isn’t the biggest problem, since the vehicle is designed around the larger goal. Why are we in space at all? Is it to have an ISS, or to have manned missions and eventually a base on the moon, and Mars?

John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said human spaceflight had never recovered from the decision to build the program around the shuttles and then the International Space Station, maintained mainly by shuttles.
"NASA is attempting now to recover from 35 years that in many ways were a dead end," Logsdon said. "That was not NASA's mistake, but the country's, the national leadership's."
It took two disasters -- the Challenger and then the Columbia -- to shock the White House and Congress into trying to redirect the program, Logsdon said.

(from NYT story carried here)
So what about the next generation of American spacecraft? What is it, when will we see it, and will it be any good?

Current plans have the shuttles flying through 2010 to finish building the ISS, with new lunar-capable vehicles coming on line by 2014. Projected dates vary, but it seems hard to avoid a gap in flight coverage of at least three years. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has recently confirmed that the agency expects roughly 18 more flights out of the shuttle program (no definitive word on whether any will involve repairs to the popular Hubble Telescope), but the cost of these flights precludes other projects and expenditures, including R&D.
From Space.com:

That means other projects have to be canceled, cut back or postponed in order to free money for the shuttle's last missions. A steady trickle of reports in recent months indicate several space science and aeronautics projects are being cancelled or pushed back.

Well, it turns out the next generation of vehicle didn’t need that much R&D. The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is planned to make use of shuttle booster rockets (Solid Rocket Boosters, “SRB”) along with a variant of the shuttle’s huge External Tank. Unmanned and heavy lift missions are being planned with the same concept, with the ability to use extended-length SRBs for more thrust as needed. The general interchangeability of systems is expected to reduce costs, as is the fact that the systems are familiar and already in production.
From SpaceRef.com:

Fairly early in the analysis, planners determined that a new hybrid booster had no particular benefit over a launcher developed from either EELV or shuttle-derived designs. They also determined that cost effectiveness could be achieved if the launch vehicles chosen for CEV systems could yield a higher flight rate by multiple government users, such as the national security community.
According to sources familiar with the launcher section of the so-called 60 Day Study, the future U.S. manned and heavy lift launch vehicle architecture will be based on two configurations of shuttle-derived vehicles.
Cargo vehicle studies using Space Shuttle ET and SRB hardware focused on two major variants: so-called "side-mounted" and "in-line". Side-mount designs hang cargo and/or crew off the side of a large external fuel tank as is currently done with the space shuttle. In-line designs place the cargo (or crew) directly atop a lower first stage as did Saturn launch vehicles.

Manned missions to the moon or to Mars would essentially make use of shuttle components with an Apollo Saturn-style module on top. The interchangeability scenarios shown in the image here practically scream “toy”, but are looking more and more realistic.

In the end, the two ET-derivatives; a side-mount vs. a stacked in-line produced better safety margins for the CEV aboard the in-line mold line.

One of the more interesting developments (read about it at (another article from Space.com)
is the fact that NASA is planning to use engines

fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and methane...
While methane is a less efficient propellant than liquid hydrogen, it is easier to store for long stretches and is readily available on Mars, making it possible for NASA to meet future propellant needs by taking advantage of martian resources.

The use of an Apollo-style module is also desirable with regard to escape options for the crew.

For the CEV crew to escape a launch abort, only the part of the CEV containing the flight crew would be explosively detached from the remainder of the CEV/launcher. This approximates, by comparison, the Apollo launch escape philosophy wherein the Command Module was separated from the remaining Service Module part of the Apollo spacecraft.

Of course, all of this is based on the assumption that it is the function of the United States government to involve itself with missions to the moon and Mars, or even to the ISS. There is renewed interest and even excitement in spaceflight these days, but much of it is in the private sector, with plans to begin space tourism within the next two years.

Within the next two years, billionaire businessman Richard Branson promises to begin suborbital flights from a planned launch pad in New Mexico… Branson has reportedly already sold tickets for future space trips – for $200,000 each – despite the fact he does not yet have a spaceship to market.
The commercial space race kicked off last year when a small company based in the Mojave Desert successfully flew the first privately built aircraft – SpaceShipOne –70 miles above Earth to the edge of space twice in less than a week. The company, Scaled Composites LLC, collected the $10 million Ansari X Prize and captured the imaginations of those who dream of space travel. The company is building SpaceShipTwo and has an agreement with Branson’s company to design a commercial space vehicle for as many as nine passengers.
Congress has decided not to regulate such flights until the industry matures. For the X Prize flights, Scaled Composites received a commercial launch license, the same one a defense contractor needs to launch a rocket.

(Virginia Pilot story here)

But what is the point of going to space? Other than, of course, because it is there. Should this be the interest of the government, or of private agencies? What is the legitimate function of the government, anyway? There are certainly good arguments for government involvment in spaceflight, but they aren't often made... probably because the right questions aren't often asked. (follow-up coming soon...)

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February 6, 2006

My Thoughts on Super Bowl XL

I have been a Miami Dolphins fan since I was about 10 years old, or since the Carter Administration. In that time, I estimate that I’ve watched around 500 NFL games on TV, and probably another two dozen in five or more stadiums. Furthermore, I’ve also watched scores of high school and college football games, both on television and in person.

In all these football games that I've seen, yesterdays was the first that I've witnessed that was completely given away by the officiating staff.

Now, I know it’s a national pastime to criticize referees. But for some reason, I’ve never been all that big into it. I mean, never in my heart have I ever believed that the Dolphins won or lost a game based on a poor referee call. I recognize the fact that I’m emotionally involved and probably not thinking clearly and objectively. When I have seen questionable calls in the past, I recognize that…well…stuff happens. And that—over time—these bad calls tend to balance out. Miami gets screwed one week, but gets away with one the next week. It’s how things work. Never have I ever detected an intentional slant by the officiating crew towards one team.

Yesterday, however, I had no emotional investment one way or the other. I wanted Seahawks to win for Mike Holmgren, and Darrell Jackson, and Shaun Alexander. I wanted Pittsburgh to win for Bill Cowher, Jerome Bettis, and Hines Ward (and the AFC!) . What I did not want to see was the Seahawks lose because of a concerted effort on the referees’ part. I’ve never seen anything like it, and frankly, I’m shocked that it can happen in an organization like the NFL.

I know that I’m talking like a crazed conspiracy wacko, but I think the evidence is overwhelming:

The ludicrous offensive pass interference call on D-Jack in the endzone.
The phantom holding call when Jerramy Stevens caught the long ball on the one-yard line.
The Benefit-of-the-Doubt call given to Roethlisberger’s “Touchdown” run, after the ref had to think about it for a while.
The penalty called on Warrick’s (?) return that made it down to the Steelers' 45 yard line.
The numerous convenient penalties that arose whenever the Seahawks had momentum.

So the question arises: What does the NFL have to benefit from the Steelers winning the Super Bowl that’s worth risking the integrity of the league? Well, lots:

Bill Cowher gets his first SB win.
Jerome Bettis retires a hero.
Hines Ward gets his well-deserved SB win.
The Ben Roethlisberger fairy tale continues unabated.
One of the top 5 teams in selling merchandise gets to sell a whole new slew of “SB Champion” t-shirts.
The AFC gets to continue its dominance over the NFC for another year.
Detroit is spared being lit on fire by all the Steelers’ fans who made the 4-hour trip to Ford Field.

The game, for me, was flat-out embarrassing. And I feel that I was cheated out of seeing these two teams compete on a level playing field.

I think my good friend, Troy, sums it up nicely:

I find that the Steelers fans are saying "Well, the calls were questionable" or "well, the call could have really gone either way." The Seahawk fans are saying... nothing, because I have yet to find one. And the rest of the people I talk to are saying...'wow, those calls were really bad'. I could not believe what I was seeing. I was actually even shocked to see the Hasselbeck fumble reversed, even though I knew that it should have been. With unbiased officiating, this game should have been a tie at worst for the Seahawks. In reality, the Seahawks would most likely have won. I am embarrassed for the league, for the refs, and for the Steelers. I really hope that Cowher or someone owns up to the fact that the game was handed to them. I doubt it will happen, but I can dream.

No doubt.

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February 5, 2006

Incompatibility

It has been said that Islam is inherently incompatible with Western ideals of freedom, democracy, and pork. This is brought to a head by the fact that the politics of the world have revolved around the Middle East since the end of WWII, with the Cold War using the region as one of the primary squaring grounds, and alliances drawn over the region's oil reserves. The issue is exacerbated by Muslim immigrants to Western European communities, which have become cultural battlegrounds. The Danish Cartoon Affair that has hit the American media and the blogosphere this week is just a small part of it.

But, is it true that Islam is inherently incompatible with Western ideals? Must one die for the other to live? I don't believe that, any more or less than it was true that Christianity is incompatible with Western ideals. And at one time, this did seem to be the case. Most Americans today couldn't explain much about the Ad exstirpanda - the papal bull that authorized torture by inquisitors, and the burning of heretics at the stake. But ask about the Salem Witch Trials, and most would recognize that religious extremism and mob mentality has been known to trump modern Western ideals of truth and justice, even within the Christian faith. This does not make Christianity inherently incompatible with freedom, democracy, and pork. The faith still exists today, in fair harmony with these Western ideals.

The reactions to these cartoons in the Muslim world are very understandable, considering that Muslim law demands outrage for any insult or blaspheme. As noted at Window on the Arab World;

it is important to note that this follows logically from Islamic law, which requires the death penalty for blasphemy. This is precisely why the rise of radical Islam, not just terrorism, is such a great threat to freedom.

But radical Islam is not the same as Islam. Those who hold the opinion that all Islam is radical and terrorist, or at least incompatible with Western values, are ignoring reality. It is likely that in the future, the Taliban will be as relevent to Muslims as the Inqusition is to today's Christians. Excluding those who live in medieval Christian papal cults, one has to admit that a level of compatability exists, though it took time, and it required changes in the Christian faith. There is no reason to believe Islam is inherently different.

Now, before you comment (and please do), keep the following in mind.

1) I am in no way advocating appeasement or apologies in the case of the Danish Cartoon Affair, nor in other dealings with extremists of any flavor.

2) I am aware that the Inquisitions differed from Fatawah. I welcome comments that try to educate me further, and for those who do not understand the difference to begin with, I recommend Wikipedia, which notes;

Because Islam has no centralized priestly hierarchy, there is no uniform method to determine who can issue a valid fatwa and who cannot, and upon whom such fatwas are binding. Some Islamic scholars complain that too many people feel qualified to issue fatwas.

3) I love the taste of pork, and every time I taste it, I remind myself that some of my ancestors were prevented from eating it by their religous beliefs. Thankfully, I am not bound by any such religious fears regarding pigs, and I think that in the coming decades and centuries, it is possible (even likely) that some Muslims will disregard this aspect of Islamic teaching, just as other religions have moved away from literal interpretations and strict adherances over time. Think about that the next time you have some bacon.

4) The Monty Python "Spanish Inquisition" skit was very funny, and should be allowed to stand on its own merits. Please do not quote it to me or speak in falsetto to anybody today. Thank you.

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February 3, 2006

Muslim Offense Level: Orange

There are a few things that I have found deeply humorous about the Danish Cartoon Affair. Among them is one of the twelve Danish cartoons - the one with the kid at the chalkboard. My students write a lot of things on my board when I am not looking, but the thought of one of them using the words "reactionary provocateur" - well, that really had me laughing.

One of the other things I have found very funny is the Muslim Offense Level that is kept at The Religious Policeman, and displayed above. The blog is "the diary of a Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment." A full explanation of the five levels of Offense can be found here.

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Cultural Relativism Ends Now

The Muhammad Cartoons.

The time has come for the American Left to make a gut-check to determine which side of this they are on. Because one cannot have it both ways. If we're going to openly mock Christianity and the Judeo-Christian god, then we have to allow for the prophet Muhammad as well. Cultural relativism will only get the Left so far.

Many thanks go out to Michelle Malkin, LGF, and especially Brussels Journal for aggressively responding to and reporting this issue.

Previous: The Brussels Journal

Update by Wulf: Crossroads Arabia on the fact that "there is no room for compromise on either side".
Also, Window on the Arab World discusses whether it requires an extremist to demand the deaths of the journalists... or is that just Islam? Was Muhammed a terrorist? Do Muslims have to be?

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The Brussels Journal

UPDATE (10 Feb): Welcome, readers from the Brussels Journal! We have been seeing quite a bit of visitors from there, and we appreciate it. Please read our articles here, here, here, here, here, and here for our commentary on the cartoons.

I've been asked by several people what I think of the "Danish Cartoons". So I'll tell you what I think: I think Americans are very slow to catch this story, and our press is not doing it justice. Bloggers are in an uproar, but most of them seem unfamiliar with the story other than having read it in the Washington Post this week.

If you want to know about these cartoons, or see them, and see what is going on in Europe and the Middle East because of them, go to The Brussels Journal.

A few key articles:
22 Oct "Jihad Against Danish Newspaper"
and:
27 Oct "Cartoon Case Escalates into International Crisis"
21 Dec "Europe Criticises Copenhagen over Cartoons"
19 Jan "Moderate Muslims Oppose Imams"
24 Jan "European Appeasement Reinforces Muslim Extremism"
27 Jan "Norway Apologizes over Muhammad Cartoons"
31 Jan "Danish Paper Apologizes"
03 Feb "Muslim Radical Defends Freedom of Speech, Deplores Europe’s Hypocrisy"

Kashmir held a province-wide strike over these cartoons back in December (see here).

By the way, if you have read this far, let me just suggest that The Brussels Journal be on your "at least once a week" list. Think it over.

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February 2, 2006

McNabb With a McBlunder? You decide.

I know I’ve mentioned this is the past, but a recent interview has stirred me up again. In his latest interview with ESPN, Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles was asked about the turmoil that Terrell Owens created and their apparent not-so-friendly relationship. I’m only going to bring up one small topic, and that was the “black-on-black crime” that McNabb felt that was committed by T.O. last season.

To give you a recap of what happened last year during an interview with ESPN, T.O. claimed that the Eagles would be better off with Brett Favre as their quarterback instead of McNabb. At the time McNabb laughed it off as T.O. being T.O. We found out that inside it really got to him. In his recent interview McNabb said (taken from ESPN.com):

"In that situation, it was kinda like, 'That's unreal.' That's just like me saying, 'If we had Steve Largent, if we had Joe Jurevicius, we'd be undefeated. He'll now have to answer the question for the whole week about me saying it."

On closer inspection, the two wide receivers that McNabb mentioned are white. This wasn’t an accident.

"It was definitely a slap in the face to me. Because as deep as people won't go into it, it was [a] black-on-black crime. And to say if we had Brett Favre, that could mean that if you had another quarterback of a different descent or ethnic background, we could be winning. That's something I thought about and said, 'Wow.' It's different to say if we had Michael Vick, Daunte Culpepper, Steve McNair, Aaron Brooks, Byron Leftwich. But to go straight to Brett Favre, that slapped me in the face, like what I've done and what I set out to do…"

This is where I have an issue. Hopefully I can say this without causing a ruckus.

I don’t know about you, but McNabb has got to get his head out of his arse. To make this into a racial thing is exactly why we as a country will never be a country without racial tension. Here he is complaining that while being disrespected by his own teammate that he should be replaced in the first place, he is concerned about who the guy was that was mentioned to replace him. Huh? I would think that he should get upset over the fact that his own teammate didn’t want him there anymore. Instead he focuses on the “who” aspect of it.

And besides, if I were to have a teammate say he didn’t want me around anymore, I would certainly want to be replaced by a guy who is a certain Hall of Famer with a Super Bowl ring. Brett Favre is ranked second in the four major passing categories only to Dan Marino. Aaron Brooks? Come on McNabb, think! If you would really want to be replaced by a lesser quarterback because of skin color alone, have at it I suppose. Not me. To think that McNabb finds this a personal attack against all he set out to do as a black quarterback, I think he has as many issues as T.O. Well, okay, maybe not that many. But you get my point.

I understand that race will always be a sensitive issue. I wish it weren’t. I wish we could all get along without passing judgment on a person based on their appearance. In the sports world, if these athletes that we admire for their play would keep us admiring them off the field/court/etc., I think that we could have a healthier society when it comes to the race issue.

I just hope I’m not the only one.

Posted by G-Dawg | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

Toeing the Grammatical Line

In reading the comment sections at other blogs, or in exchanging political emails, or even sometimes just in reading the news, I often encounter accusations that one person or another is "towing the party line".

Folks, it is not "tow the line". The phrase is "toe the line". Please. It's a small matter, but "towing the line" doesn't even make sense. To where do you think the individual is towing it?

If you would like to dispute me, please look it up first. Try Merriam Webster. Or better yet, Wikipedia, where they explain some historical context and usage. Once you understand the phrase, you'll get it right every time.

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