Time waits for no man and it sure as heck waits for no computer. Time has forced me to retire the family's trusty ol' iMac. I didn't want to see it go but it was beyond upgrade.
On the other hand, some things should end their days ASAP. Trusty it was, and reliable, but it never earned the status of pet, or beloved family member. Nonetheless the ol' Presario has drawn about the last of the amps allocated to it. It ain't worth tracking down a link.
We'll see if the replacements earn the same status and begrudging respect.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Can Anyone Tell Me
where the promised hitch in the economy's getalong is supposed to occur this year?
The market hit another high today. Oil prices look like they could crack down through $50 at any time (the OPEC liars club doesn't want to talk about further production cuts). According to the BLS, employment is up, unemployment is steady (or down), real wages are up, inflation is within the target range. Tax receipts continue to surpass projections (cutting the deficit). The only negative to flat spot in the economy is permit applications for new homes and that's been "priced in" for eighteen months now.
I'm betting that the Democrat press organs are going to start printing very positive stories beginning about April 1 - attributing all the "good news" to the "changes in Congressional leadership", of course. The slow fade in "bad news" stories began the week after the election and reporting has been relatively neutral since mid-December. So very predictable.
The market hit another high today. Oil prices look like they could crack down through $50 at any time (the OPEC liars club doesn't want to talk about further production cuts). According to the BLS, employment is up, unemployment is steady (or down), real wages are up, inflation is within the target range. Tax receipts continue to surpass projections (cutting the deficit). The only negative to flat spot in the economy is permit applications for new homes and that's been "priced in" for eighteen months now.
I'm betting that the Democrat press organs are going to start printing very positive stories beginning about April 1 - attributing all the "good news" to the "changes in Congressional leadership", of course. The slow fade in "bad news" stories began the week after the election and reporting has been relatively neutral since mid-December. So very predictable.
Where is Wealth Being Created?
GDP measured not per capita, but per km. Click for a larger view. Some of the details are quite interesting.Monday, January 15, 2007
Active and passive occupations
Just tossing out a passing thought. In looking at the views about the war in Iraq that are becoming prevalent,Glen refers to it as a "sudden ooze of defeatism", I noticed how many analysis of the situation are essentially passive. Things "happen" or things were "screwed up", but there is little talk of actual events, changing situations and adaptation, or proper strategy. In other word, what there is, is passive observation that seems almost remote from ongoing events. So I started to wonder about passive, essentially observational occupations, and active, make things, occupations, and try the experiment of classification. Of course, most jobs are a mix, with observation feeding back into actions. What I mean by active, by the way, is influencing events. Anyway here is a very preliminary first cut.
Passive occupations
Journalism -- Journalists don't make things, they report.
Sociology, english, history -- All examine what others produce.
Theoretical physics -- without experiment it is philosophy.
White collar jobs -- record keeping, responding to regulations.
Active occupations
Farming -- deal with weather, animals, and markets, or else.
Construction -- mostly follow plans, but it has consequence.
Soldiering -- in war, the consequences can be extreme.
Medicine -- misdiagnosis or wrong treatment matter.
I see that what I call active are actually occupations where one's decisions have material consequence for oneself and others. All of us face this in daily life, but for many of us it is not part of the job. I wonder how much difference it makes to the tenor of this country that the number of jobs that "don't really matter" is on the increase?
And yeah, it is easy to poke holes in all this. It is just for fun.
Passive occupations
Journalism -- Journalists don't make things, they report.
Sociology, english, history -- All examine what others produce.
Theoretical physics -- without experiment it is philosophy.
White collar jobs -- record keeping, responding to regulations.
Active occupations
Farming -- deal with weather, animals, and markets, or else.
Construction -- mostly follow plans, but it has consequence.
Soldiering -- in war, the consequences can be extreme.
Medicine -- misdiagnosis or wrong treatment matter.
I see that what I call active are actually occupations where one's decisions have material consequence for oneself and others. All of us face this in daily life, but for many of us it is not part of the job. I wonder how much difference it makes to the tenor of this country that the number of jobs that "don't really matter" is on the increase?
And yeah, it is easy to poke holes in all this. It is just for fun.
Cowboys
From High Noon:
Kane: I sent a man up five years ago for murder. He was supposed to hang. But up North, they commuted it to life and now he's free. I don't know how. Anyway, it looks like he's coming back.
Amy: I still don't understand.
Kane: ...He was always wild and kind of crazy. He'll probably make trouble.
Amy: But that's no concern of yours, not anymore.
Kane: I'm the one who sent him up.
Amy: Well, that was part of your job. That's finished now. They've got a new marshal.
Kane: He won't be here until tomorrow. Seems to me I've got to stay. Anyway, I'm the same man with or without this. (He pins his badge on his vest.)
Amy: Oh, that isn't so.
Kane: I expect he'll come lookin' for me. Three of his old bunch are waiting at the depot.
Amy: That's exactly why we ought to go.
Kane: They'll just come after us, four of 'em, and we'd be all alone on the prairie.
Amy: We've got an hour.
Kane: What's an hour?...What's a hundred miles? We'd never be able to keep that store, Amy. They'd come after us and we'd have to run again, as long as we live.
Amy: No we wouldn't, not if they didn't know where to find us. Oh Will! Will, I'm begging you, please let's go.
Kane: I can't.
Amy: Don't try to be a hero. You don't have to be a hero, not for me.
Kane: I'm not trying to be a hero. If you think I like this, you're crazy.
Blackfive talks about cowboys in general and one cowboy in particular.
When I was young growing up in Oklahoma a cowboy was a good thing to be. That was before the yankees and city slickers decided to make it a bad thing, a reckless and unilateral thing. After all cowboys do not care about consensus or committees or sucking up. Once upon a time Cowboys defined what was best about America.
Kane: I sent a man up five years ago for murder. He was supposed to hang. But up North, they commuted it to life and now he's free. I don't know how. Anyway, it looks like he's coming back.
Amy: I still don't understand.
Kane: ...He was always wild and kind of crazy. He'll probably make trouble.
Amy: But that's no concern of yours, not anymore.
Kane: I'm the one who sent him up.
Amy: Well, that was part of your job. That's finished now. They've got a new marshal.
Kane: He won't be here until tomorrow. Seems to me I've got to stay. Anyway, I'm the same man with or without this. (He pins his badge on his vest.)
Amy: Oh, that isn't so.
Kane: I expect he'll come lookin' for me. Three of his old bunch are waiting at the depot.
Amy: That's exactly why we ought to go.
Kane: They'll just come after us, four of 'em, and we'd be all alone on the prairie.
Amy: We've got an hour.
Kane: What's an hour?...What's a hundred miles? We'd never be able to keep that store, Amy. They'd come after us and we'd have to run again, as long as we live.
Amy: No we wouldn't, not if they didn't know where to find us. Oh Will! Will, I'm begging you, please let's go.
Kane: I can't.
Amy: Don't try to be a hero. You don't have to be a hero, not for me.
Kane: I'm not trying to be a hero. If you think I like this, you're crazy.
Blackfive talks about cowboys in general and one cowboy in particular.
When I was young growing up in Oklahoma a cowboy was a good thing to be. That was before the yankees and city slickers decided to make it a bad thing, a reckless and unilateral thing. After all cowboys do not care about consensus or committees or sucking up. Once upon a time Cowboys defined what was best about America.
I Thought I was Kidding
You can't make this stuff up --- even when you try!
9NEWS - Article - Some residents can’t win battle to keep sidewalks clear: "DENVER – When 60-year-old Cynthia Roberson got a citation to for having snow on her sidewalk, she could not believe it.
And it's not because the disabled woman can’t physically move the frozen-over mess, but because she already paid someone to shovel her walkways.
“It was clean. It was done correctly,” Roberson said.
However, she said overnight Denver city plows scooped the snow back and buried her sidewalks. Now, the city has given her 24 hours to remove the snow or else she faces a fine of $150 for the first offense, $500 for the next one."
Great Moments in Journalism
Hamilton Spectator - News: "Dangling between the legs, that would be a clock."
Read the whole article, it's fascinating --- and not at all what you think.
What no Video?
From Ed Morrisey :
Two of the remaining men on the execution list in Iraq for crimes against humanity in the Saddam Hussein regime were executed overnight, ending speculation on when the Nouri al-Maliki government would proceed with the hangings. The Iraqis forced witnesses to pledge to behave themselves, but one of the defendants lost his head, literally:
American military officials, who had custody of Mr. Hussein, were particularly upset and pushed hard to ensure that the execution of his co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of the Mukhabarat secret police and the younger half-brother of Mr. Hussein, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, who was chief judge of the revolutionary court under Mr. Hussein, was carried out properly.
The government spokesman who announced the executions, which took place at 3 a.m., Bassam al-Husseini, said both the executioners and the witnesses had to sign statements promising to behave in a dignified manner.
In what government officials called a “rare incident,” the head of Mr. Tikriti was severed from his body by the noose as it snapped tight around his neck.
In rare cases, a hanging can turn into a decapitation, which apparently was what happened to Saddam's half-brother. The BBC reported that the news of the decapitation got released by the government in order to head off certain criticism over the incident, which no doubt would have multiplied exponentially if the Iraqis had tried to hide the incident. Barzan ran the Mukhabarat, the secret police that killed, maimed, and tortured hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to keep Saddam in power, and while the decapitation was a particularly gruesome manner in which to die, it shouldn't outweigh the despicable manner in which Barzan maintained his power.
Now the human rights groups will come out and complain about the fate of these men with a good deal more feeling than they ever complained about the fate of their many victims.
Two of the remaining men on the execution list in Iraq for crimes against humanity in the Saddam Hussein regime were executed overnight, ending speculation on when the Nouri al-Maliki government would proceed with the hangings. The Iraqis forced witnesses to pledge to behave themselves, but one of the defendants lost his head, literally:
American military officials, who had custody of Mr. Hussein, were particularly upset and pushed hard to ensure that the execution of his co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of the Mukhabarat secret police and the younger half-brother of Mr. Hussein, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, who was chief judge of the revolutionary court under Mr. Hussein, was carried out properly.
The government spokesman who announced the executions, which took place at 3 a.m., Bassam al-Husseini, said both the executioners and the witnesses had to sign statements promising to behave in a dignified manner.
In what government officials called a “rare incident,” the head of Mr. Tikriti was severed from his body by the noose as it snapped tight around his neck.
In rare cases, a hanging can turn into a decapitation, which apparently was what happened to Saddam's half-brother. The BBC reported that the news of the decapitation got released by the government in order to head off certain criticism over the incident, which no doubt would have multiplied exponentially if the Iraqis had tried to hide the incident. Barzan ran the Mukhabarat, the secret police that killed, maimed, and tortured hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to keep Saddam in power, and while the decapitation was a particularly gruesome manner in which to die, it shouldn't outweigh the despicable manner in which Barzan maintained his power.
Now the human rights groups will come out and complain about the fate of these men with a good deal more feeling than they ever complained about the fate of their many victims.
Constrained?
WASHINGTON (AP) - Digging in for confrontation, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney say they will not budge from sending more U.S. troops to Iraq no matter how much Congress opposes it.
"I fully understand they could try to stop me," Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. "But I've made my decision, and we're going forward."
As the president talked tough in an interview that aired Sunday night, lawmakers pledged to explore ways to stop him.
"We need to look at what options we have available to constrain the president," said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a possible White House candidate in 2008. Democrats remain wary, though, of appearing unsupportive of American troops.
I wonder if Obama would want Congress restraining the executive in time of war if he happened to be Commander in Chief.
There is something wrong, just plain wrong, when a major American political party has a vested interested in seeing America lose a war. Will history blame Bush? Maybe, but I don't think he will be the only one.
I wrote my representatives and asked them to support the President. I think it sends a message to our enemies that we are not only divided but are eager for defeat if we can even manage another 21,500 troops without a tantrum from Congress.
"I fully understand they could try to stop me," Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. "But I've made my decision, and we're going forward."
As the president talked tough in an interview that aired Sunday night, lawmakers pledged to explore ways to stop him.
"We need to look at what options we have available to constrain the president," said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a possible White House candidate in 2008. Democrats remain wary, though, of appearing unsupportive of American troops.
I wonder if Obama would want Congress restraining the executive in time of war if he happened to be Commander in Chief.
There is something wrong, just plain wrong, when a major American political party has a vested interested in seeing America lose a war. Will history blame Bush? Maybe, but I don't think he will be the only one.
I wrote my representatives and asked them to support the President. I think it sends a message to our enemies that we are not only divided but are eager for defeat if we can even manage another 21,500 troops without a tantrum from Congress.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Cult of Steve
Among all the fairy tales, of which I read hundreds to my sons when they were young, my very favorite remains "The Emperor's New Clothes". For, try as I might to grow as a human being, to understand the amazingly convoluted logic of social reality, I am continually struck on every side by the assertion of a plethora of emperors who claim to be wearing beautiful clothes, when I can see none whatsoever. Like many technical people, I am a creature of logic, spending most of my days interacting with machines which will not be cajoled by fine words, no matter how hard I try. If I tell the computer to print 10,000 times (yes, I did that inadvertently on day one of a new job once—oops!) it will in fact print 10,000 times without any consideration of my feeling its pain or anybody else's, or of my having chummed it up in front of the cameras in its home district.
Thus, when I am repeatedly assured that married men in powerful positions taking advantage of their young female employees for sexual favors is "exploiting" them in a "sexist" way known as "sexual harassment", and that dire consequences should properly follow, I am inclined to believe that when I see an example of a married President exploiting his dim-bulb intern for sexual favors that this constitutes "sexual harassment" and that dire consequences should follow. But I am assured that this is not the case by the socially savvier people among whom I live. They have explained to me that in fact in this particular case it was a good thing, not a bad one, because said President supported women's rights and was in fact the country's first woman President. Though said President appears very male to me, there is clearly a logic operating which is far above my limited abilities to discern or calculate.
What's a social simpleton to do? I just have to take their word for it....
...I remember well how, in 1998 and 1999 all of my Democratic friends assured me that only Puritanical Republicans who were still stuck in the Nineteenth Century would ever have a problem with such behavior. One could fairly have written that "Democrats exonerate Democrats" in order to summarize the whole experience.
Similarly, when it has been explained to me carefully by my social betters that it is morally wrong and actually illegal for company CEOs to play financial shenanigans, creating fictitious entries in the accounts in order to enrich themselves and their millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, an example of moral turpitude so dire that as in the case of Enron and Worldcom it requires not only restitution but actual jail time lasting many years, I am inclined to agree.
What do I know? Looks wrong to me, and I just have to take their word for it.
So it is with a sense of deja vu that when I learn that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been performing illegal acts within his financial reporting, creating fictitious and illegal entries, this time in the form of backdated options which net millions of extra dollars for him and his millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, I am inclined to believe that he deserves jail time, running to many years. That just shows what a simpleton I am. I noticed a few weeks ago that there were several articles running through the tech blogs which exhibited some fear on the Jobs news. Apple is their darling. Apple, like Bill Clinton, can do no wrong. Yet here was their hero quite evidently and publically defrauding his own investors. But then Apple came out with a statement that everything was fine, nothing to see here, move along folks, and as The Register put it "Apple Exonerates Apple". At that point, all was sweetness and light once more in tech-land. The fearful articles quickly disappeared, to be quickly replaced with paeans to theiPhone iTouch Mobile. Once again it has been made painfully clear to me what a simpleton I am. It's obvious, isn't it? Repeat after me: Oil Companies Baaaaad, Apple Goooooood.
Similarly, when I read that Apple is bullying bloggers, trying apparently to stop word of Jobs's shenanigans from getting out, I the social simpleton am inclined to think that this is morally wrong; yet I realize that unlike in the case of that evil Microsoft, there is probably a higher logic which, though I am completely incapable of understanding it, makes Apple's actions morally acceptable, or even superior. Likewise, Apple's new attempts with the iTouch Mobile to ensure massive vendor lock-in must be wonderful in a way impossible for people on my lowly level to comprehend. Repeat after me: Microsoft baaaaaad, Apple gooooood.
Silly me.
Thus, when I am repeatedly assured that married men in powerful positions taking advantage of their young female employees for sexual favors is "exploiting" them in a "sexist" way known as "sexual harassment", and that dire consequences should properly follow, I am inclined to believe that when I see an example of a married President exploiting his dim-bulb intern for sexual favors that this constitutes "sexual harassment" and that dire consequences should follow. But I am assured that this is not the case by the socially savvier people among whom I live. They have explained to me that in fact in this particular case it was a good thing, not a bad one, because said President supported women's rights and was in fact the country's first woman President. Though said President appears very male to me, there is clearly a logic operating which is far above my limited abilities to discern or calculate.
What's a social simpleton to do? I just have to take their word for it....
...I remember well how, in 1998 and 1999 all of my Democratic friends assured me that only Puritanical Republicans who were still stuck in the Nineteenth Century would ever have a problem with such behavior. One could fairly have written that "Democrats exonerate Democrats" in order to summarize the whole experience.
Similarly, when it has been explained to me carefully by my social betters that it is morally wrong and actually illegal for company CEOs to play financial shenanigans, creating fictitious entries in the accounts in order to enrich themselves and their millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, an example of moral turpitude so dire that as in the case of Enron and Worldcom it requires not only restitution but actual jail time lasting many years, I am inclined to agree.
What do I know? Looks wrong to me, and I just have to take their word for it.
So it is with a sense of deja vu that when I learn that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been performing illegal acts within his financial reporting, creating fictitious and illegal entries, this time in the form of backdated options which net millions of extra dollars for him and his millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, I am inclined to believe that he deserves jail time, running to many years. That just shows what a simpleton I am. I noticed a few weeks ago that there were several articles running through the tech blogs which exhibited some fear on the Jobs news. Apple is their darling. Apple, like Bill Clinton, can do no wrong. Yet here was their hero quite evidently and publically defrauding his own investors. But then Apple came out with a statement that everything was fine, nothing to see here, move along folks, and as The Register put it "Apple Exonerates Apple". At that point, all was sweetness and light once more in tech-land. The fearful articles quickly disappeared, to be quickly replaced with paeans to the
Similarly, when I read that Apple is bullying bloggers, trying apparently to stop word of Jobs's shenanigans from getting out, I the social simpleton am inclined to think that this is morally wrong; yet I realize that unlike in the case of that evil Microsoft, there is probably a higher logic which, though I am completely incapable of understanding it, makes Apple's actions morally acceptable, or even superior. Likewise, Apple's new attempts with the iTouch Mobile to ensure massive vendor lock-in must be wonderful in a way impossible for people on my lowly level to comprehend. Repeat after me: Microsoft baaaaaad, Apple gooooood.
Silly me.
Instapundit.com and "Reliable" Sources
Instapundit.com -: "Better that the story should be missed, and the country screwed, than that a reporter might look unacceptably friendly to Bush!"
Dinesh D'Souza D'umbs D'own D'obson
Ace of Spades HQ: "It's somewhat unfair to deem a book a cynical attempt at troglodytic pandering without reading it, but I'm comfortable making that call."
Actual Film: Denver Snow Clearing Operations
Click the image --- for some reason Blogger interferes with animated GIFs.
Steyn on the Pelosi Bunch
Mark Steyn does an entertaining column on the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
''Grandma With A Gavel'' was written by hard-headed reporter Ruth Marcus, scourge of Republican Justice Departments for many years, and this column reflected her notoriously sharp forensic skills:
''The images as California Democrat Nancy Pelosi took office last week were striking -- and stirring -- in their unfamiliarity. Pelosi, holding her infant grandson swaddled in a white receiving blanket, as she sat in the well of the House, awaiting her election. Pelosi, with the assurance of a mother experienced at dispensing cookies to impatient toddlers, giving each child his -- and her -- turn with the gavel. Pelosi raising her hand to take the oath as her grandson, at her side, fiddled with grandma's papers.''
Golly. One only hopes the wee ones understand that, post-coronation, Queen Nancy's ascension to the throne might cut into all this quality time. "Gran'ma Got Run Over By Her Reign, Dears,'' as the old song so shrewdly warns. But don't Republicans have families, too? Yes, but let's face it, they creep you out, don't they? If you have the misfortune to be nominated by the Bush administration, your kids get headlines like ''An Image A Little Too Carefully Coordinated.'' That was the Washington Post's Style Section on Chief Justice John Roberts' moppets: They didn't care for ''the 1950s-style tableaux vivant,'' or the ''freshly scrubbed and adorable'' look from ''a Currier & Ives landscape''; they sniffed at the ''seersucker suit with short pants'' of ''towheaded Jack'' and his sister's ''blond pageboy''; they didn't even like the name ''Jack.''
Call me cycnical but when I saw that little performance by Pelosi and the kids I thought what a bunch of crap. And I am a woman. But then again I am a childless woman so I don't count, just ask Barbara Boxer.
I think the thing that bugs me is that when the left is rich, it is a good rich vs the bad rich of right wingers like Dick Cheney. When the left has kids, it is a good even gushy and cuddly thing vs the weird family like [you know] the Bushes. ick.
And when right wingers support a profamily agenda they want to keep the woman down unlike that paragon of women's rights, Bill Clinton, who as we all know really really liked women. yum.
Hypocrites.
''Grandma With A Gavel'' was written by hard-headed reporter Ruth Marcus, scourge of Republican Justice Departments for many years, and this column reflected her notoriously sharp forensic skills:
''The images as California Democrat Nancy Pelosi took office last week were striking -- and stirring -- in their unfamiliarity. Pelosi, holding her infant grandson swaddled in a white receiving blanket, as she sat in the well of the House, awaiting her election. Pelosi, with the assurance of a mother experienced at dispensing cookies to impatient toddlers, giving each child his -- and her -- turn with the gavel. Pelosi raising her hand to take the oath as her grandson, at her side, fiddled with grandma's papers.''
Golly. One only hopes the wee ones understand that, post-coronation, Queen Nancy's ascension to the throne might cut into all this quality time. "Gran'ma Got Run Over By Her Reign, Dears,'' as the old song so shrewdly warns. But don't Republicans have families, too? Yes, but let's face it, they creep you out, don't they? If you have the misfortune to be nominated by the Bush administration, your kids get headlines like ''An Image A Little Too Carefully Coordinated.'' That was the Washington Post's Style Section on Chief Justice John Roberts' moppets: They didn't care for ''the 1950s-style tableaux vivant,'' or the ''freshly scrubbed and adorable'' look from ''a Currier & Ives landscape''; they sniffed at the ''seersucker suit with short pants'' of ''towheaded Jack'' and his sister's ''blond pageboy''; they didn't even like the name ''Jack.''
Call me cycnical but when I saw that little performance by Pelosi and the kids I thought what a bunch of crap. And I am a woman. But then again I am a childless woman so I don't count, just ask Barbara Boxer.
I think the thing that bugs me is that when the left is rich, it is a good rich vs the bad rich of right wingers like Dick Cheney. When the left has kids, it is a good even gushy and cuddly thing vs the weird family like [you know] the Bushes. ick.
And when right wingers support a profamily agenda they want to keep the woman down unlike that paragon of women's rights, Bill Clinton, who as we all know really really liked women. yum.
Hypocrites.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Curly comes out of retirement
They're back! Yeah, its Moe with the gavel, but I think Curly is the better match. I never thought a committee meeting could be that much fun, I mean, this is serious government business. But it's free! Paid for by the good taxpayers of this awesome land.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Rampant historical revisionism
In an effort to manage and dim the public temperament the Police lied with the help of the media. The number of cars torched on New Years’ Eve was initially stated at 301, then 396, up until the number 483 appeared somewhere. Nouvel Obs now reports it to be 683, up from 425 from 2005.
The exactness of the numbers is breathtaking. Not just ~300 cars, no, precisely 301, later revised to 683. That's science for you.
I sure hope the EU addresses this in their new rules on allowable carbon emissions.
h/t no pasaran
Malkin can be a pain
Especially when it comes to Dubai Ports and immigration...but look at this picture from her site.
Different Strokes
I spent some time today talking with a coworker about some results from an instrument he had built. As time passed the conversation drifted to Iraq. Turns out he was an Olbermann fan because Olbermann advocated immediate withdrawal from Iraq. What, you say, another Lefty? Well, this guy had spent 1 1/2 years in Libya as a boy -- oil, I presume, I didn't ask -- and simply despised arab culture in all its tribal glory. He wanted nothing to do with it. As he put it, tribal family values went as follows:
Husband -- da Capo
Boy children -- family fighters
Girl children -- tools for building alliances
Donkey -- useful draft animal
Wife -- free labor and womb.
Hmmm. So I suggested that maybe we should simply set up shop and sell weapons cheaply to everyone. That way we could make a profit and the customers would do the dirty work of wiping each other out. He thought that might be a workable solution. No nation building or democracy spreading for him, in his opinion it was a waste of time and money.
Anyway, just posting to point out that there can be shades of nuance in the anti-war position. And sometimes I think we do forget that many Arabs are not the Fahdil brothers, many are ignorant farmers, herders, and villagers in a world rife with superstition, corruption, and aspiring Capos. How far we want to push the attempt to change the traditional culture is a legitimate question.
Husband -- da Capo
Boy children -- family fighters
Girl children -- tools for building alliances
Donkey -- useful draft animal
Wife -- free labor and womb.
Hmmm. So I suggested that maybe we should simply set up shop and sell weapons cheaply to everyone. That way we could make a profit and the customers would do the dirty work of wiping each other out. He thought that might be a workable solution. No nation building or democracy spreading for him, in his opinion it was a waste of time and money.
Anyway, just posting to point out that there can be shades of nuance in the anti-war position. And sometimes I think we do forget that many Arabs are not the Fahdil brothers, many are ignorant farmers, herders, and villagers in a world rife with superstition, corruption, and aspiring Capos. How far we want to push the attempt to change the traditional culture is a legitimate question.
Breaking News
Two for one:
Two, not one but two missing teenage boys from different places have been found, alive, and the man who was holding them has been charged with first-degree kidnapping.
Mike Nifong has asked to be removed from the Duke "rape" case.
After 5PM Eastern Time on a Friday. Who'd'a thunk it?
Two, not one but two missing teenage boys from different places have been found, alive, and the man who was holding them has been charged with first-degree kidnapping.
Mike Nifong has asked to be removed from the Duke "rape" case.
After 5PM Eastern Time on a Friday. Who'd'a thunk it?
I am a Childrenhawk
From Pajamas Media :
"Childrenhawk:" The NY Post calls a low blow that Senator Barbara Boxer attacked Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman. “Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price,” Boxer said. “My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young.” Then, to Rice: “You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.”
I don't have children. I wanted them, but while a meth addict prostituting herself for her next fix might be able to get pregnant...I could not. It broke my heart.
So now, Barbara Boxer is saying that people like me don't know what it is like to suffer. Well maybe she should pass a law stating that only women who have been knocked up get to vote.
I had this talk with a holocaust denying old bigot once and I told her that Stalin had children, Jesus did not.
"Childrenhawk:" The NY Post calls a low blow that Senator Barbara Boxer attacked Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman. “Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price,” Boxer said. “My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young.” Then, to Rice: “You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.”
I don't have children. I wanted them, but while a meth addict prostituting herself for her next fix might be able to get pregnant...I could not. It broke my heart.
So now, Barbara Boxer is saying that people like me don't know what it is like to suffer. Well maybe she should pass a law stating that only women who have been knocked up get to vote.
I had this talk with a holocaust denying old bigot once and I told her that Stalin had children, Jesus did not.
I couldn't say it any better...
Brutally Honest: "You don't think this man has doubts? You don't think he feels the weight of this presidency? You don't think that the pressure has aged him? You don't think that the deaths of our service members weigh heavy on his heart?
Then maybe you just don't think."
... so I just copied it here to say it again.
President Starts Covert War, Announces It In Prime Time
The Washington Note: "Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.
The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country."
What's the Brit word? Gobsmacked?
Is AJ right?
I saw this over at AJ's:
Secretary of State Rice put both Iran and Congress on notice not to interfere with our new Iraq strategy.
The US stepped up pressure on Iran Thursday with the secretary of state warning that Washington will not stand “idly by” if Tehran disrupts a new strategy to stabilize Iraq hours after US troops raided an Iranian government office in Irbil. …
Rice declined repeatedly to rule out US military action against Iran.
“I don’t want to speculate on what operations the United States may be engaged in, but you will see that the United States is not going to simply stand idly by and let these activities continue,” she said.
I would like to provide a little lesson on the government spending process. The Department of Defense budget for GFY 07 was the only budget to pass last fall before the Reps lost control, and it includes some money to wage the war on terror for some period of time. It definitely contains enough money to get the troops into position for this new offensive. And no budget adjustments passed by Congress will make it past the President’s veto pen.
Can Congress stop Bush? Do they have the constitutional authority?
Secretary of State Rice put both Iran and Congress on notice not to interfere with our new Iraq strategy.
The US stepped up pressure on Iran Thursday with the secretary of state warning that Washington will not stand “idly by” if Tehran disrupts a new strategy to stabilize Iraq hours after US troops raided an Iranian government office in Irbil. …
Rice declined repeatedly to rule out US military action against Iran.
“I don’t want to speculate on what operations the United States may be engaged in, but you will see that the United States is not going to simply stand idly by and let these activities continue,” she said.
I would like to provide a little lesson on the government spending process. The Department of Defense budget for GFY 07 was the only budget to pass last fall before the Reps lost control, and it includes some money to wage the war on terror for some period of time. It definitely contains enough money to get the troops into position for this new offensive. And no budget adjustments passed by Congress will make it past the President’s veto pen.
Can Congress stop Bush? Do they have the constitutional authority?
Thursday, January 11, 2007
No Comment Needed
AccessNorthGa.com - North Georgia's Newsroom: "Fourteen members of an advisory board to Jimmy Carter's human rights organization resigned on Thursday to protest his new book, which criticizes Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories.
The resignations from The Carter Center board are the latest backlash against the former president's book 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,' which has drawn fire from Jewish groups, been attacked by fellow Democrats and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter adviser.
'You have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side,' the departing members of the Center's Board of Councilors told Carter in their letter of resignation.
The 200-member board is responsible for building public support for the Carter Center. It is not the organization's governing board."
Favorite Sentence The Morning
OpinionJournal - Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log: "President Richard Brodhead was, it seems, barely able to recover from the shock of his discovery that a party thrown by male jocks could occasion heavy drinking."
Rest of the article's good too.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
blonde sagacity: Public Storage Sells Out a Soldier
blonde sagacity: Public Storage Sells Out a Soldier: "When Rogalin returned home from Iraq and contacted Public Storage to inquire about the status of his account (that he resumed paying as soon as all this was worked out) he was told that all his possessions had been sold back in June.
Wouldn't you think that once the huge company learned they had sold the only possessions of a reserve soldier after he had already been a victim they would have scrambled to make things right? You'd be wrong...
'...Rogalin said he never received any warning from Public Storage that his account was in trouble. Nor did he get any notice everything he owned was going to be sold.
He's now fighting the company, based in Glendale, Calif., to get appropriate compensation for his clothes, books, electronic gear, furniture, historic magazines and other property it disposed of without his knowledge.
Memo to executive committee: you don't want this publicity. You don't.
Update: apparently they got the memo.
Bush's "Last Chance"?
Having read approximately eighteen gazillion words concerning what the President will say this evening I have to say that the stupidest phrase that I've seen repeated is that the proposed change represents a "last chance" for "success" in Iraq. I'm rather indifferent to debate concerning the situation in Iraq at the moment but I'm put off by suggestions that the President's future actions will be circumscribed by the "success" or "failure" of whatever changes he has decided to make.
President Bush has 105 weeks and 2 days remaining in his term. He no longer has a definitive obligation to party politics. He will never run for office again and I am unaware of any outstanding political debts to individuals. His obligation remains the preservation and protection of the Constitution and in particular the rights and authority that it vests in the Office of the Presidency. He will have many "chances" to act upon that obligation over the next two years, the scurrilously low quality of the opposing party guarantee that fact. I wish him well in his endeavors and remain confident that he will act in a manner consonant with the level of trust which his supporters have given him.
To measure the degree of freedom which the President currently enjoys it is only necessary to contemplate the fact that the decision which he is explaining tonight was taken months ago. The deployments and extensions involving 22,000 troops have already begun and the agreement with Maliki concerning the Iraqi's responsibility in the offensive were probably concluded before the first orders were cut.
It may well be true that this offensive marks the "last chance" for the leader of a country but that country is not the United States and the leader isn't President Bush.
President Bush has 105 weeks and 2 days remaining in his term. He no longer has a definitive obligation to party politics. He will never run for office again and I am unaware of any outstanding political debts to individuals. His obligation remains the preservation and protection of the Constitution and in particular the rights and authority that it vests in the Office of the Presidency. He will have many "chances" to act upon that obligation over the next two years, the scurrilously low quality of the opposing party guarantee that fact. I wish him well in his endeavors and remain confident that he will act in a manner consonant with the level of trust which his supporters have given him.
To measure the degree of freedom which the President currently enjoys it is only necessary to contemplate the fact that the decision which he is explaining tonight was taken months ago. The deployments and extensions involving 22,000 troops have already begun and the agreement with Maliki concerning the Iraqi's responsibility in the offensive were probably concluded before the first orders were cut.
It may well be true that this offensive marks the "last chance" for the leader of a country but that country is not the United States and the leader isn't President Bush.
Popular vs Unpopular
Over at Riehl World View I saw a reference to a poll that surprised me:
Eighty-four percent of Americans clearly support being in Iraq for a minimum of one more year. Now forget the word surge that has been bandied about. The word in itself means nothing.
Ask yourself this, with a baseline of 84% supporting a continued presence in Iraq for a minimum of a year, what do you suppose they would say if you asked:
Given your support for one more year of war in Iraq, what would you say if military commanders felt a relatively small increase in troops could reduce the commitment to ten months and save American and Iraqi lives?
I have to admit I have never been comfortable with the notion of popular war. What war is popular? My Grandmother got a telegram during WW2 from the War Department telling her that they did not know where her son was or if he was alive. Missing In Action. They found him a couple of weeks later in a field hospital where he lay badly wounded. If they had asked her if the war was worth it I doubt very much she would have said it was. No, it is not about popular, it is about determination.
Journalists Are Idiots: Stories from the MSM.
From the Telegraph:
An AC-130 Spectre gunship carried out the strike. This large aircraft, modelled on the Hercules cargo plane, is stuffed with cannon and machine-guns. The AC-130 is designed to saturate a large area with gunfire, hitting every square yard in the target zone with multiple rounds.Heh, that is some aircraft. Fill it with water and it could extinguish forest fires covering whole mountains chains. Fill it with ammo and it is a veritable showerhead of death cleansing the Somalian plains. More at EU Referendum.
So this was the very opposite of a surgical strike. Anyone in the path of the gunship, which departed from the US military base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, would have been killed.
Seize Citgo?
Now this could get interesting. Captainsquarters has an interesting post on Chavez's plan to nationalize the telecom industry in Venezuala.
Verizon and AES face hundreds of millions in losses if Chavez nationalizes these industries. Some analysts claim that Chavez has too much exposure here in the US. Venezuela owns Citgo, and American courts could seize the fuel company's assets to reimburse those losses if Venezuela does not pay market value for the assets Chavez seizes. That implies a rational thought process that Chavez has not always demonstrated, however, and in his zeal to create a Cuba with oil reserves, he may not care about any short-term losses here in the US. With control of monetary policy, he could simply divert more resources from the central bank, if necessary.
Chavez is getting loopier every day. If this is the best Latin America can do it is no small wonder so many of its people live in poverty.
Verizon and AES face hundreds of millions in losses if Chavez nationalizes these industries. Some analysts claim that Chavez has too much exposure here in the US. Venezuela owns Citgo, and American courts could seize the fuel company's assets to reimburse those losses if Venezuela does not pay market value for the assets Chavez seizes. That implies a rational thought process that Chavez has not always demonstrated, however, and in his zeal to create a Cuba with oil reserves, he may not care about any short-term losses here in the US. With control of monetary policy, he could simply divert more resources from the central bank, if necessary.
Chavez is getting loopier every day. If this is the best Latin America can do it is no small wonder so many of its people live in poverty.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
"Mythical"
Mythical. It was an adjective you used to hear and see quite frequently when a national champion in college football was being discussed, but, now that there's a system which produces a game (no matter that the method by which the game participants are chosen seems to change every year,) it's rarely heard or seen.
In 1984, the Brigham Young University Cougars, playing in a second-tier conference, were the only NCAA Division 1-A football team to go undefeated during the regular season and beat a 6 and 5 Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl, to which they were, as champion of their conference, contractually bound. They were voted best in a poll of coaches and in a poll of sportswriters.
In 2006, the Boise State University Broncos were one of two NCAA Division 1-A teams to go undefeated during the regular season. They don't play in one of the six conferences which devised the current and ever-changing system for naming National Champions, but, under this year's rules, they did qualify to play in a bowl game played in 2007—not, of course, against the other undefeated team, but nonetheless a major bowl. A week ago they played and won a game for the ages against the winningest college football program since World War II, the Oklahoma Sooners, in the same stadium where, last night, the other undefeated team looked nothing like itself in a lopsided and embarrassing defeat.
So, hail and farewell to the 2006 Boise State University football Broncos. In mythical times they might have been called National Champion. Today they were called sixth best by a group of leaders of young men and fifth best by a group of recorders of history.
...and so it goes.
In 1984, the Brigham Young University Cougars, playing in a second-tier conference, were the only NCAA Division 1-A football team to go undefeated during the regular season and beat a 6 and 5 Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl, to which they were, as champion of their conference, contractually bound. They were voted best in a poll of coaches and in a poll of sportswriters.
In 2006, the Boise State University Broncos were one of two NCAA Division 1-A teams to go undefeated during the regular season. They don't play in one of the six conferences which devised the current and ever-changing system for naming National Champions, but, under this year's rules, they did qualify to play in a bowl game played in 2007—not, of course, against the other undefeated team, but nonetheless a major bowl. A week ago they played and won a game for the ages against the winningest college football program since World War II, the Oklahoma Sooners, in the same stadium where, last night, the other undefeated team looked nothing like itself in a lopsided and embarrassing defeat.
So, hail and farewell to the 2006 Boise State University football Broncos. In mythical times they might have been called National Champion. Today they were called sixth best by a group of leaders of young men and fifth best by a group of recorders of history.
...and so it goes.
Works and Days: From the Classroom to the War
Works and Days: From the Classroom to the War: "Why when academia is so critical of other American institutions, from the Republican party and corporations to churches and the military, does it ignore its own colossal failures?"
Because they can?
A Smart Hoosier
Neo-neocon has an interesting post up on a new Indiana Congressman, Joe Donnelly. He is one of those blue dogs we heard about. So far Brad Ellsworth, another blue dog is sounding much the same. We will see.
But I have to wonder how these guys would vote on Kennedy's bill to cut funding and manage the war from Congress. If people wanted Kennedy to be Commander in Chief they would put him the White House long ago.
In recent decades it seems that, more and more, each party's leaders tend to come from the more extreme wings of their respective parties. And it's the nature of such politicians to look on any victory as a mandate for their point of view. But--as I've said before--ignore the law of thirds at your peril.
Pelosi may be in the act of making the Newt Gingrich error. Coming on so strong against whatever plan Bush announces for Iraq might not only be counterproductive in terms of the war itself, and the world's perception of our will and our ability to keep our word--but it may even be counterproductive in terms of what Pelosi really seems to care about, victory for the Democrats in '08.
I'll let Donnelly, no Bush sycophant (Donnelly refers to the war in Iraq as a "disaster"), have the last word on this one:
[Donnelly] doesn't support the fixed timetable for withdrawal proposed by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha that Pelosi, 66, has endorsed. Instead, like Bush, he opposes any withdrawal until Iraq is ``stabilized.''
"My goal is to help the president," he said in an interview. "I am not going to rip him to shreds. If he does a better job, then our soldiers can be more successful, Iraq can be stabilized and our troops can come home."
Makes you wonder. Demcorats should realize that what goes around, comes around.
But I have to wonder how these guys would vote on Kennedy's bill to cut funding and manage the war from Congress. If people wanted Kennedy to be Commander in Chief they would put him the White House long ago.
In recent decades it seems that, more and more, each party's leaders tend to come from the more extreme wings of their respective parties. And it's the nature of such politicians to look on any victory as a mandate for their point of view. But--as I've said before--ignore the law of thirds at your peril.
Pelosi may be in the act of making the Newt Gingrich error. Coming on so strong against whatever plan Bush announces for Iraq might not only be counterproductive in terms of the war itself, and the world's perception of our will and our ability to keep our word--but it may even be counterproductive in terms of what Pelosi really seems to care about, victory for the Democrats in '08.
I'll let Donnelly, no Bush sycophant (Donnelly refers to the war in Iraq as a "disaster"), have the last word on this one:
[Donnelly] doesn't support the fixed timetable for withdrawal proposed by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha that Pelosi, 66, has endorsed. Instead, like Bush, he opposes any withdrawal until Iraq is ``stabilized.''
"My goal is to help the president," he said in an interview. "I am not going to rip him to shreds. If he does a better job, then our soldiers can be more successful, Iraq can be stabilized and our troops can come home."
Makes you wonder. Demcorats should realize that what goes around, comes around.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Rough Justice
American gunships attack targets in Somalia. High time. Now I suppose Ethiopia will become the next Israel.
I wonder if Murtha will fall for this?
Good old fashioned propaganda. A video about an antiwar Marine killed after he sends a letter home calling his fellow soldiers rapists and murderers. ala John Kerry. But it seems the soldier is not a Marine, not anti war and not dead. Details. Just details.
Via Flopping Aces.
Via Flopping Aces.
New Jersey may cut 'idiot' from constitution - CNN.com
New Jersey may cut 'idiot' from constitution - CNN.com: "New Jersey is to consider cutting the word 'idiot' from its constitution so that people with some mental disabilities won't be barred from voting. State Senate President Richard Codey introduced a bill Monday that would remove language from the New Jersey constitution that was designed more than 150 years ago to prevent people suffering from mental illness or handicap from casting their vote in national, state or local elections."
No word yet on how this will affect the state legislature.
Replacing Harriet Miers: A Great Pick
According to Time Magazine, Fred Fielding has been named White House Counsel.
I have known Fred since 1979, when he was an officer of a resort condominium association on Sanibel Island which was a litigation client of mine. Fred and I worked very closely together for nearly three years on a very interesting case. He is a first class human being and has a first class legal mind.
Fielding was John Dean's assistant during the Watergate scandal, and was unscathed because he was smart and had impeccable integrity. Later he became White House Counsel for Ronald Reagan. He was also on the September 11 Commission.
Some thought he was Deep Throat, but he denied it, and that denial proved well founded.
At this stage of his career (and you can trust me on this), he doesn't need the work. He has taken this job because he is needed and because he believes in the President for whom he will be working.
UPDATE
In the comments there has been some concern expressed about the ability of the White House to withstand Congressional scrutiny while Henry Waxman, et al are in control.
Here is an excerpt of tonight's NYT article on that subject:
Snip:
Snip:
Snip:
I think the last quote says it all.
I have known Fred since 1979, when he was an officer of a resort condominium association on Sanibel Island which was a litigation client of mine. Fred and I worked very closely together for nearly three years on a very interesting case. He is a first class human being and has a first class legal mind.
Fielding was John Dean's assistant during the Watergate scandal, and was unscathed because he was smart and had impeccable integrity. Later he became White House Counsel for Ronald Reagan. He was also on the September 11 Commission.
Some thought he was Deep Throat, but he denied it, and that denial proved well founded.
At this stage of his career (and you can trust me on this), he doesn't need the work. He has taken this job because he is needed and because he believes in the President for whom he will be working.
UPDATE
In the comments there has been some concern expressed about the ability of the White House to withstand Congressional scrutiny while Henry Waxman, et al are in control.
Here is an excerpt of tonight's NYT article on that subject:
Snip:
Mr. Fielding forged his skills in politically charged episodes like Watergate and the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981.
Snip:
A Republican close to the White House said Mr. Fielding had maintained close ties to Mr. Cheney, whom he has known for decades, and had occasionally been an informal adviser to him.
J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who worked with Mr. Fielding in the Reagan administration and remains close to him, said:
“He has a firm, clear view of executive prerogative, but he also understands as well as anyone in Washington the constitutional need for compromise. He is not someone that takes an absolutist position and then drives the presidency and the branches together off the brink. He has judgment.”
Snip:
Kenneth M. Duberstein, a chief of staff for Mr. Reagan, said because Mr. Fielding had been an aide to two presidents he would not be cowed by the Oval Office or so charmed by the president that he would shy from giving potentially unwelcome advice.
“Fred has an independence of judgment and independence of stature,” Mr. Duberstein said. “He knows how to deliver tough news.”
All the same, Mr. Fielding is clearly being brought in to draw legal lines in the sand.
“He brings enormous credibility to both sides, but he’s the president’s counsel,” said Wayne Berman, a Republican lobbyist who is friendly with Mr. Fielding and whose wife is the White House social secretary, Lea Berman. “He’s not there to represent the views of the Congress.”
I think the last quote says it all.
It Was Bound To Happen...
Pack that many liberals into a confined space and what other consequence would you expect?
Yes, but will they feel the same in the morning?
Betsy has a post up on the chest pounding of the Democrats in regards to the Iranians. Now, if it actually came about that the US blew up a refinery or two or used the military to keep the Straits of Harmuz open would the Democrats {a}stand by what they said, {b} pretend Bush lied to them {c} pretend none of these statements were ever made or.....{d}just say that Bush botched the whole thing whereas if they were the ones running things Iran would look like Switzerland in no time?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Geography lesson
Right after the Blizzard of '06, I got an email forwarded from my mother that went like this:
I looked at it and thought "that looks familiar." A few minutes Googling revealed that it was actually written about a blizzard in North Dakota, right after Katrina. I'm almost positive I got it by email then, although I haven't tried searching my email for it; in any case, it's in itself a bit of an exaggeration, since North Dakota (and Colorado) called out the National Guard, and ND also solicited and got a disaster declaration from the Federal Government. (The link it to a Snopes article; you can find details there.) On the other hand, while it's an exaggeration, it's got a touch of sense to it; there was no sign of the paralyzed dependency that we saw in New Orleans. We bitched about the snow, but we didn't ask where FEMA was to help people stranded in the snow.
But I've got to admit I'm finging it a little annoying now. First, my New York hearththrob Pamela at Atlas Shrugs did it. I posted a correction, and she quickly updated her site.
Then Don Luskin picked it up; I emailed him a correction, and he wrote back saying "ain't the internet wonderful?" or some such, but never noted it on his site. Then Maggie's Farm has picked it up, and gotten a fair comment thread about it. Then Ed Driscoll picked it up.
Dude.
It's kind of interesting to watch it go past. It's very interesting when you think about the "plastic turkey" and similar stories --- it's a demonstration of how a good story, a "meme" propagates.
Like a lot of those stories, too, it carries along its own falsification. This story doesn't make sense on the face of it.
See, Colorado is entirely south of the 41st parallel: that's Colorado's northern border.
Seneca (39.92°N, 105.13°W.)
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.
No Shaun Penn, No Bar bara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families. Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate.
It does seem that way, at least to me.
I hope this gets passed on.
I looked at it and thought "that looks familiar." A few minutes Googling revealed that it was actually written about a blizzard in North Dakota, right after Katrina. I'm almost positive I got it by email then, although I haven't tried searching my email for it; in any case, it's in itself a bit of an exaggeration, since North Dakota (and Colorado) called out the National Guard, and ND also solicited and got a disaster declaration from the Federal Government. (The link it to a Snopes article; you can find details there.) On the other hand, while it's an exaggeration, it's got a touch of sense to it; there was no sign of the paralyzed dependency that we saw in New Orleans. We bitched about the snow, but we didn't ask where FEMA was to help people stranded in the snow.
But I've got to admit I'm finging it a little annoying now. First, my New York hearththrob Pamela at Atlas Shrugs did it. I posted a correction, and she quickly updated her site.
Then Don Luskin picked it up; I emailed him a correction, and he wrote back saying "ain't the internet wonderful?" or some such, but never noted it on his site. Then Maggie's Farm has picked it up, and gotten a fair comment thread about it. Then Ed Driscoll picked it up.
Dude.
It's kind of interesting to watch it go past. It's very interesting when you think about the "plastic turkey" and similar stories --- it's a demonstration of how a good story, a "meme" propagates.
Like a lot of those stories, too, it carries along its own falsification. This story doesn't make sense on the face of it.
See, Colorado is entirely south of the 41st parallel: that's Colorado's northern border.
Seneca (39.92°N, 105.13°W.)
Classical Values :: Putting facts in their proper hysterical context
Classical Values :: Putting facts in their proper hysterical context: "When hysteria becomes powerful enough, laws are passed. Eventually, even disagreement with the prevailing hysteria can become risky. Already, it's a career-wrecker for scientists to express greenhouse gas skepticism, and activists have demanded Nuremberg trials for them. There's a well-oiled movement with a goal of criminalizing disagreement, and a generation of young people softened up with hate speech tribunals is poised to accept it."
Cultural Insensitivity
Dr. Sanity takes issue with the proposed application of punishment competently adjudicated by the lawful courts of the pertinent jurisdiction. The defendant was raised within the jurisdiction and knew full well that her actions were in violation of the law which she willfully broke. Dr. Sanity's lack of respect for another culture's norms, customs and laws - all of which are accepted and practiced within at least fifty countries with a combined population of over 1.3 billion people who support and obey the law and understand the consequences involved when it is broken - can only be interpreted as a repudiation of their right to act as they see fit.
Who is Dr. Sanity to judge the morality of 1.3 billion adherents to laws established some 1400 years ago? Does custom and common practice mean nothing to her? Doesn't she understand that these laws are applied every day within those countries without more than a murmur of dissent from those governed by them? Surely the people so governed would raise a cry if they thought the laws unjust or their application less than merciful? The absence of outcry from within the countries should be evidence sufficient for the Dr. to apply a rule of "silence implies consent" and remain at least neutral in the face of other's time honored customs. It's not as though they were trying to impose their laws on us, is it?
Who is Dr. Sanity to judge the morality of 1.3 billion adherents to laws established some 1400 years ago? Does custom and common practice mean nothing to her? Doesn't she understand that these laws are applied every day within those countries without more than a murmur of dissent from those governed by them? Surely the people so governed would raise a cry if they thought the laws unjust or their application less than merciful? The absence of outcry from within the countries should be evidence sufficient for the Dr. to apply a rule of "silence implies consent" and remain at least neutral in the face of other's time honored customs. It's not as though they were trying to impose their laws on us, is it?
Outsourcing - Continued
MHA's thought provoking post on the outsourcing phenomenon prompted a bit of data mining on my part concerning sector employment. Using data from the BLS and the BEA I came up with the following comparative numbers with 1983 as a start point and 2006 as the end point:
"Production occupations" encompass all of what would have been considered manufacturing jobs during the 'industrial age' and does not address occupations relating to the 'information age' in a manner consonant with an understandable definition of "production". Instead the "production worker" of the information age is booted up to "Professionals and related occupations" or "Management, business, and financial operations". Thus Robert Reich can babble interminably about "millions of jobs lost to outsourcing" while blithely ignoring the many more millions of jobs created through the transition from an industrial (read "Union, Union, Union") economy to an information economy. The GDP number indicates that we are "producing" a great deal more (76%) of something today than we were in 1983 - and that the labor component of that production has dropped sharply as a component of total cost.
While I agree wholeheartedly with the central thesis that outsourcing has become integrated today, I wonder where the workers will come from should more companies come to the same decision regarding opening plants in the US? As Morgan has noted, the workforce cannot grow much further over the next 8-10 years without an increase in the total participation rate beyond historical highs.
ENDNOTE: Did you know that the GDP had grown by 14.6% after eight years when Bubba's Bubble popped while it has grown 13.7% at six years under President Bush's tenure? If it continues to grow over the next two years as it has over the past six it will have increased by 17.9% when President Bush leaves office. Somehow I doubt that the news will make the papers....
"Production occupations" encompass all of what would have been considered manufacturing jobs during the 'industrial age' and does not address occupations relating to the 'information age' in a manner consonant with an understandable definition of "production". Instead the "production worker" of the information age is booted up to "Professionals and related occupations" or "Management, business, and financial operations". Thus Robert Reich can babble interminably about "millions of jobs lost to outsourcing" while blithely ignoring the many more millions of jobs created through the transition from an industrial (read "Union, Union, Union") economy to an information economy. The GDP number indicates that we are "producing" a great deal more (76%) of something today than we were in 1983 - and that the labor component of that production has dropped sharply as a component of total cost.While I agree wholeheartedly with the central thesis that outsourcing has become integrated today, I wonder where the workers will come from should more companies come to the same decision regarding opening plants in the US? As Morgan has noted, the workforce cannot grow much further over the next 8-10 years without an increase in the total participation rate beyond historical highs.
ENDNOTE: Did you know that the GDP had grown by 14.6% after eight years when Bubba's Bubble popped while it has grown 13.7% at six years under President Bush's tenure? If it continues to grow over the next two years as it has over the past six it will have increased by 17.9% when President Bush leaves office. Somehow I doubt that the news will make the papers....
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Outsourcing Shock
There is a familiar pattern by which new ideas become incorporated into our society. First, people are skeptical and resistant. The prevailing forces crush the new idea. If the idea doesn't have outstanding merit, it dies stillborn. Second, the idea starts to pick up followers and advocates. First the early adopters, then the forward looking mainstream, then the mainstream. Third, as the idea starts to have real legs that are obvious even to journalists, the over-enthusiasts take over. The idea begins to be touted as the new hottest thing since sliced bread. Suddenly, one can scarcely pick up a newspaper or magazine without a mention. This idea will be better than any idea ever before. It will get us to the moon. It will cure cancer! Fourth, the hangover sets in. This idea isn't so great. What was I thinking? This idea is awful. Everyone starts jumping off this bandwagon. Fifth, this idea is denigrated. This idea is terrrible. It lost me a pile of money in the stockmarket. Let's not talk about that. The final stage occurs when, in the midst of depression, the proper level, use, or place for the new idea is found, and the idea is no longer new, it is simply part of everyday life.
Such an impulse-response spike is what we have witnessed in the late Nineties with the Internet, or in the Twenties with modern manufacturing techniques. The larger the change the greater the spike. After the initial impulse there is a period of periodic "ringing" which gradually dampens down and blends into the system noise.
Outsourcing is a more recent example of a new idea whose shocks to the system are still being worked out. Starting in the late Nineties, outsourcing was the new idea du jour which was going to transform our economy beyond all recognition. All the manufacturing jobs were going to move to China while all the service jobs migrated to India. What could possibly be left for Westerners to do in such a low-cost world?
At a period seven years later of near all-time-low unemployment, it would appear that the benefits were over-exaggerated and the fears were overstated. Life once again has turned out to be a false hope and a groundless fear. One article writes:
Why is that?
My own company is a good example. In order to produce some things cheaply, we have outsourced the low-wage production to India. This plan had been hatched years ago, when the spike of enthusiasm for outsourcing was very high. It takes a long time for people to respond to changed reality. We've had work done in India for the last year, and it has been good work, but it hasn't been enough. It takes a long time for things to go to India and come back, and it is difficult to control what's happening there from here. So, even though it would cost somewhat more, there's a sudden desire to open a second production process right here in Boulder, right next door. It would give us more flexibility and more control. Saving money isn't always the only consideration. Sometimes getting more is desirable, even though it costs more to get it. Sometimes you can make more money by spending more money, and such is the state right now with our outsourcing efforts.
I'm ready to declare the outsourcing to India idea simply part of the noise right now. It's an idea whose time has not passed, but integrated.
Such an impulse-response spike is what we have witnessed in the late Nineties with the Internet, or in the Twenties with modern manufacturing techniques. The larger the change the greater the spike. After the initial impulse there is a period of periodic "ringing" which gradually dampens down and blends into the system noise.
Outsourcing is a more recent example of a new idea whose shocks to the system are still being worked out. Starting in the late Nineties, outsourcing was the new idea du jour which was going to transform our economy beyond all recognition. All the manufacturing jobs were going to move to China while all the service jobs migrated to India. What could possibly be left for Westerners to do in such a low-cost world?
At a period seven years later of near all-time-low unemployment, it would appear that the benefits were over-exaggerated and the fears were overstated. Life once again has turned out to be a false hope and a groundless fear. One article writes:
The great tide of offshoring that has sent millions of U.S. jobs to low-wage countries such as China and India seems to be slowing. If I'm reading the signs correctly, U.S. workers are facing lower odds this year of seeing their jobs sent overseas in the name of corporate cost-cutting than at any point in this decade.
Why is that?
My own company is a good example. In order to produce some things cheaply, we have outsourced the low-wage production to India. This plan had been hatched years ago, when the spike of enthusiasm for outsourcing was very high. It takes a long time for people to respond to changed reality. We've had work done in India for the last year, and it has been good work, but it hasn't been enough. It takes a long time for things to go to India and come back, and it is difficult to control what's happening there from here. So, even though it would cost somewhat more, there's a sudden desire to open a second production process right here in Boulder, right next door. It would give us more flexibility and more control. Saving money isn't always the only consideration. Sometimes getting more is desirable, even though it costs more to get it. Sometimes you can make more money by spending more money, and such is the state right now with our outsourcing efforts.
I'm ready to declare the outsourcing to India idea simply part of the noise right now. It's an idea whose time has not passed, but integrated.
Townhall.com::Return of the Realists::By Dean Barnett
Townhall.com::Return of the Realists::By Dean Barnett: "THE TITLE OF THE ARTICLE gives you a perfect sense of the mush-minded pabulum that has traditionally passed for “realism” among Scowroft and his ilk. Scowcroft calls his piece, “Getting the Middle East Back on Our Side.”
What a glorious conceit that title implies: When the putative grown-ups like Scowcroft were running things, the Middle East collectively adored us. It was only when youthful rabble-rousers like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz seized the helm of the ship of state that things went awry."
ScrappleFace » Bush Orders Iraq Troop Surge to Find Consensus
ScrappleFace » Bush Orders Iraq Troop Surge to Find Consensus: "The president will reportedly tell the American people that 'the U.S. military is the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen, and therefore I have confidence in their ability to discover a political solution.'"From the rest of this note, I suspect I'm taking Scott "out of context", but I think he's got a good point here whether he meant it or not. At least, it's my observation that there's mnothing like a good military ass-kicking to get a political solution.
Friday, January 05, 2007
A (weird) bleg
Some of y'all here at Flares are, IIRC, medically and/or chemically knowledgeable. I've put some research effort into this and it has not helped advance my understanding much. (Having said that, however, I've just recently discovered and begun exploring the ConsumerLabs site.)
The bottom line is that I'd be grateful for the help of those who know a bit about the use and, in particular, procurement of "dietary supplements".
As far as I can tell there is no good way to judge the quality of sources (or, for that matter, the particular chemical combos that various providers choose) for such items as CoQ10 (see also), Omega-3 (and/or EPA), glucosamine and chondroitin (our vet says he takes Cosequin) and EDTA.
The use of these has been discussed with the appropriate medical professionals and is either advised (or not specifically discouraged) and is not contraindicated in any detectable way. They are all pretty low on the bad side-effects scale (i.e, relatively harmless if not beneficial).
What I cannot get advice (beyond what I can discover for myself which is not satisfactory) about is from where to procure reasonable quality at reasonable price. These sorts of supplements are available most anywhere for a wide range of prices and there is no method I am aware of for determining price/performance.
The bottom line is that I'd be grateful for the help of those who know a bit about the use and, in particular, procurement of "dietary supplements".
As far as I can tell there is no good way to judge the quality of sources (or, for that matter, the particular chemical combos that various providers choose) for such items as CoQ10 (see also), Omega-3 (and/or EPA), glucosamine and chondroitin (our vet says he takes Cosequin) and EDTA.
The use of these has been discussed with the appropriate medical professionals and is either advised (or not specifically discouraged) and is not contraindicated in any detectable way. They are all pretty low on the bad side-effects scale (i.e, relatively harmless if not beneficial).
What I cannot get advice (beyond what I can discover for myself which is not satisfactory) about is from where to procure reasonable quality at reasonable price. These sorts of supplements are available most anywhere for a wide range of prices and there is no method I am aware of for determining price/performance.
Bush to replace 2 top generals in Iraq
What a shock.
The bit at the end about bribing Iraqis with a jobs program (paid for by Americans) is as silly as calling a death cult a religion of peace. Oh well, on a positive note, booting Negroponte as "Intelligence Czar" isn't a bad thing. His successor will have to really work to do less than Negroponte did.
The Ethiopian solution - no prisoners, no problems - seems to be working well.
The bit at the end about bribing Iraqis with a jobs program (paid for by Americans) is as silly as calling a death cult a religion of peace. Oh well, on a positive note, booting Negroponte as "Intelligence Czar" isn't a bad thing. His successor will have to really work to do less than Negroponte did.
The Ethiopian solution - no prisoners, no problems - seems to be working well.
"They have dug huge trenches around Ras Kamboni but have only two options: to drown in the sea or to fight and die."Best of luck to Col. Barre "Hirale" Aden Shire and his men. Hopefully, the sharks waiting for al Queada snacks won't suffer much indigestion.
For Those Who Believe Wishful Thinking Will End War
North Korea's biological and chemical weapons programs.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
This Week
I was in my first quarter (the regular school year was three quarters then) at the University of California, Berkeley (Cal) as 1976 came to a close. My vague career plan was to major in History and then attend Law School. My first quarter would be, in terms of my GPA and what concerns I had regarding it, my best during the four years I was a student at Cal
The football team, one of the best in the country the year before, had not lived up to expectations. It turned out that our All-American quarterback, Joe Roth, was losing his battle with cancer. He died in February 1977. That's not all I remember from that first season of Cal football, but it's almost all that mattered. By a bizarre quirk—my paperwork was misplaced from application to housing (I also lost my wallet for the one and only time in my life sometime in the week before I flew off to college)—I roomed with a member of the basketball team who'd had his housing plans fall through. The first thing we did together was stand in line in a cold rain to buy a student pass to attend football games in Memorial Stadium, which sits to the southeast and above the campus in the mouth of Strawberry Canyon. (Some of the most beautiful views on earth are up there—day and night.) I'd end my days as a student at Cal sitting up on Strawberry Hill with the cannon which was fired whenever we scored. The guy who was in charge of the cannon during those years was in the dorm room next door that fall.
There were two elections that year and events that I watched on television this week reminded me of both. As I mentioned in my last comments here, I cast my first vote for President for Gerald Ford in 1976. I was one of the very few people I knew who did so and, though he won California, President Ford didn't win Ohio and, even then, I knew what that meant.
The other election was for House Majority Leader. Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert of Arizona retired that year and Tip O'Neill was slated to move up to the top job. Phillip Burton of California ran for Majority Leader. Jim Wright of Texas (third after the first ballot) beat him by a single vote on the third ballot. Since that day, I've been watching California Representatives, on both sides of the aisle, and waiting for one of them to become Speaker.
Little could I have imagined for the first ten or so of those years that it would be a woman, and a woman who first came to my attention when she helped Jerry Brown win the Maryland Democratic Primary (something of a big deal in that it prevented Jimmy Carter from securing the nomination before the convention, but not as big a deal as, IIRC, Ronald Reagan's big night in North Carolina and Texas, which prevented Gerald Ford from doing the same), and a woman who would win a special election to fill the seat of the late-Sala Burton who'd originally won the seat in a special election to fill the seat of her late-husband, Phillip Burton, who died at the age of 56. Nancy Pelosi, today, became the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives who represents the people of California. I've known her name and face for thirty years. I've known that no representative from California had ever been Speaker until today (when she was escorted back into the chamber by every member of the California delegation and there were only a couple of faces I didn't know) for even longer and I remember being more disappointed that Phillip Burton lost back in 1976 than I was that Gerald Ford lost. You see, back then I was eighteen and "I told you so" came easily to my lips.
One more thing. Cal hasn't gone to the Rose Bowl since I was eight months old. They've had some really great teams, but there has always been an other—and in this case it's never been Stanford. When I was there the problem was that they couldn't beat UCLA. When my brother was there it was that Washington was the best team in the country. Recently it's been that USC is the best team in the country. Last night, after a President's funeral and another college football bowl game and before the opening day of the 110th Congress, I finally watched United 93. Mark Bingham, member of National Championship Rugby teams at Cal, was on that flight. He enters the movie hurrying through security in Cal pullover and cap as his killers are taking their seats. I knew him, if I did, as a name in University publications. He started at Cal in the same year as my brother and I still knew many people at the University (I worked while a student and then afterwards for a few years for the Alumni Association and then in donor development) so I was there quite often during the years he was there.
Then I was still a well-informed voter and alumnus. Now I'm just a guy who works at home with the television for company and, most weeks, spends a lot less of his time thinking about things he used to know and things he used to care about that he's lived to see— a Californian becoming Speaker of the House—that he still hopes to see— California playing in the Rose Bowl game— and that more and more people who touched his life in ways both big and small aren't here to see.
But I remember us riding in my brother's car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse...
Law School?
Note: Edited because the truth, recalled while I was taking something to my wife's place of work, works even better. My parents couldn't bring me up to Berkeley (I'm the oldest of eight) at the beginning of the quarter. They brought me back and stayed a few days at the end of Christmas break and before second (or winter) quarter began.
The football team, one of the best in the country the year before, had not lived up to expectations. It turned out that our All-American quarterback, Joe Roth, was losing his battle with cancer. He died in February 1977. That's not all I remember from that first season of Cal football, but it's almost all that mattered. By a bizarre quirk—my paperwork was misplaced from application to housing (I also lost my wallet for the one and only time in my life sometime in the week before I flew off to college)—I roomed with a member of the basketball team who'd had his housing plans fall through. The first thing we did together was stand in line in a cold rain to buy a student pass to attend football games in Memorial Stadium, which sits to the southeast and above the campus in the mouth of Strawberry Canyon. (Some of the most beautiful views on earth are up there—day and night.) I'd end my days as a student at Cal sitting up on Strawberry Hill with the cannon which was fired whenever we scored. The guy who was in charge of the cannon during those years was in the dorm room next door that fall.
There were two elections that year and events that I watched on television this week reminded me of both. As I mentioned in my last comments here, I cast my first vote for President for Gerald Ford in 1976. I was one of the very few people I knew who did so and, though he won California, President Ford didn't win Ohio and, even then, I knew what that meant.
The other election was for House Majority Leader. Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert of Arizona retired that year and Tip O'Neill was slated to move up to the top job. Phillip Burton of California ran for Majority Leader. Jim Wright of Texas (third after the first ballot) beat him by a single vote on the third ballot. Since that day, I've been watching California Representatives, on both sides of the aisle, and waiting for one of them to become Speaker.
Little could I have imagined for the first ten or so of those years that it would be a woman, and a woman who first came to my attention when she helped Jerry Brown win the Maryland Democratic Primary (something of a big deal in that it prevented Jimmy Carter from securing the nomination before the convention, but not as big a deal as, IIRC, Ronald Reagan's big night in North Carolina and Texas, which prevented Gerald Ford from doing the same), and a woman who would win a special election to fill the seat of the late-Sala Burton who'd originally won the seat in a special election to fill the seat of her late-husband, Phillip Burton, who died at the age of 56. Nancy Pelosi, today, became the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives who represents the people of California. I've known her name and face for thirty years. I've known that no representative from California had ever been Speaker until today (when she was escorted back into the chamber by every member of the California delegation and there were only a couple of faces I didn't know) for even longer and I remember being more disappointed that Phillip Burton lost back in 1976 than I was that Gerald Ford lost. You see, back then I was eighteen and "I told you so" came easily to my lips.
One more thing. Cal hasn't gone to the Rose Bowl since I was eight months old. They've had some really great teams, but there has always been an other—and in this case it's never been Stanford. When I was there the problem was that they couldn't beat UCLA. When my brother was there it was that Washington was the best team in the country. Recently it's been that USC is the best team in the country. Last night, after a President's funeral and another college football bowl game and before the opening day of the 110th Congress, I finally watched United 93. Mark Bingham, member of National Championship Rugby teams at Cal, was on that flight. He enters the movie hurrying through security in Cal pullover and cap as his killers are taking their seats. I knew him, if I did, as a name in University publications. He started at Cal in the same year as my brother and I still knew many people at the University (I worked while a student and then afterwards for a few years for the Alumni Association and then in donor development) so I was there quite often during the years he was there.
Then I was still a well-informed voter and alumnus. Now I'm just a guy who works at home with the television for company and, most weeks, spends a lot less of his time thinking about things he used to know and things he used to care about that he's lived to see— a Californian becoming Speaker of the House—that he still hopes to see— California playing in the Rose Bowl game— and that more and more people who touched his life in ways both big and small aren't here to see.
But I remember us riding in my brother's car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse...
Law School?
Note: Edited because the truth, recalled while I was taking something to my wife's place of work, works even better. My parents couldn't bring me up to Berkeley (I'm the oldest of eight) at the beginning of the quarter. They brought me back and stayed a few days at the end of Christmas break and before second (or winter) quarter began.
The New York Review of Books: A Mission to Convert
The New York Review of Books: A Mission to Convert: "The reason Dawkins thinks he has something to say about God is, of course, clear: he is an evolutionary biologist. And as we all know, Darwinism had an early and noisy run-in with religion. What Dawkins never seems to consider is that this incident might have been, in an important way, local and contingent. It might, in other words, have turned out differently, at least in principle. Believers could, for instance, have uttered a collective 'So what?' to evolution. Indeed some did. The angry reaction of many religious leaders to Darwinism had complex causes, involving equal parts ignorance, fear, politics, and the sheer shock of the new. The point is that it's far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict between the acceptance of evolutionary mechanism and the belief that, as William James putit, 'the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe.' Instead, we and Dawkins might simply be living through the reverberations of an interesting, but not especially fundamental, bit of Victorian history. If so, evolutionary biology would enjoy no particularly exalted pulpit from which to preach about religion."
The Corner on National Review Online
The Corner on National Review Online: "We have gone from Hezbollah and Dr. Zawahiri referencing Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky to excurses on impeachment from deep thinkers like Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann to Halliburton plots to 'no blood for oil' to 'the world's greatest terrorist' to novels and movies dreaming of assassinating the President to George Soros's Nazi allusions and now to the ultimate trivialization of the anti-war crowd-that the war is a monumental uncool drag, a has-been distraction from more important things like fighting with Rosie or bucking up a naughty beauty queen or staged 'you're fired' poses. Meanwhile somewhere out there tonight there are courageous Marines and Army soldiers who are fighting for a cause they deeply believe in and are assured they can win. They are not cutting off or blowing up anyone's 'arms and legs', but have already ensured that Saddam Hussein will never again do such things and are trying to assure that his terrorist successors can't either much longer."
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
A Portrait in Courage
Or not
The Democrats hold a press conference to unveil their big plans for their first 100 hours and Mother Sheehan brings the whole thing to a screeching halt. And I do mean screeching.
The Democrats hiked their skirts and ran for cover. Rahm was so upset he almost wept, poor baby. The terrorists had better watch out. The Democrats are in charge and they are bad, bad to the bone.
The Democrats hold a press conference to unveil their big plans for their first 100 hours and Mother Sheehan brings the whole thing to a screeching halt. And I do mean screeching.
The Democrats hiked their skirts and ran for cover. Rahm was so upset he almost wept, poor baby. The terrorists had better watch out. The Democrats are in charge and they are bad, bad to the bone.
LieStoppers: Duke To Reinstate Seligmann, Finnerty
LieStoppers: Duke To Reinstate Seligmann, Finnerty: "Citing the 'unwarranted harm' that continued leave would impose on the falsely persecuted young men, Duke University has invited Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty to return to the University for the spring semester as students in good standing. The invitation follows last week's call from President Richard Brodhead for District Attorney Mike Nifong to recuse and explain himself."
Truepeers on blogs
There are exceedingly few individual bloggers with the talent and/or drive to make it worthwhile reading them on a daily basis (and then if you don't go daily it is hard to find the good stuff when you want to read them...). There are some who manage to scrounge what I imagine to be rather few bucks from their readers; but only the true missionaries will keep going year after year unless people stop taking the internet and all the free stuff on it for granted; i see few signs that many will and suspect that a lot of people who spend a lot of time on the net are on relatively tight budgets to start.
So there must be a place for group blogs that can be great while demanding less of the indivudal writer. But I think the idea that there is greatness to be found in some non-traditional, intelligent amateur conversation has its limits. One's freedom is always limited by others' use of their freedom and the intelligent and concerted drawing of these limits is part of any successful enterprise in amateur or th a general sense of a shared purpose is able to adapt and evolve a founding covenant or purpose to the various trials and debates of a shared public life and history. A periodic accounting, through democratic means open to the participation of writers and funders (and the more one gives, the more say one should have, up to a point where democracy is preserved), would create long-term interests, famous and ongoing "historical" conflicts, and loyalties in a way that an undisciplined blog cannot provide. (Take, for analogy, a school where competing camps and ideologies fight over the years, all the while keeping together as a whole from fear of hanging separately with few funds).
Blogs should provide their readers and writers with some kind of ownership stake (whose value can rise and fall with the blog's appeal wither to advertisers, or to readers wanting to have their voice or vote valued). There should be some way to reward the more popular writers with more space and attention. A blog that sees its space as a limitless resource abuses the reality that our readers have limited time, as it buries the good stuff in the not-so-good stuff.
I expect over time that winning formulae for blogs will develop through experimentation with penny stocks of various kinds for readers and corresponding rewards for writers Even when the financial stakes are very small, formal ownership creates interest. But, of course, it only works if bloggers really want to compete for readers and not live with vaguely utopian notions that this is not somehow necessary. Such competition can engender a creative tension, a productive paradox: when you address yourself to readers, and do not simply follow your own blogging heart, you must learn how better to perform for others, but at the risk of compromising your interest to readers who always want to know what really moves someone else for what he or she is. People still want authors and distinctive authorial voices and yet most poeple, i imagine, don't want to read blogs where people are just doing whatever.
________________________
This is another comment on the subject of blogs lifted from the comments section of Meaningless Hot Air's post on blogs, An Army of me and a couple of my Friends .
So there must be a place for group blogs that can be great while demanding less of the indivudal writer. But I think the idea that there is greatness to be found in some non-traditional, intelligent amateur conversation has its limits. One's freedom is always limited by others' use of their freedom and the intelligent and concerted drawing of these limits is part of any successful enterprise in amateur or th a general sense of a shared purpose is able to adapt and evolve a founding covenant or purpose to the various trials and debates of a shared public life and history. A periodic accounting, through democratic means open to the participation of writers and funders (and the more one gives, the more say one should have, up to a point where democracy is preserved), would create long-term interests, famous and ongoing "historical" conflicts, and loyalties in a way that an undisciplined blog cannot provide. (Take, for analogy, a school where competing camps and ideologies fight over the years, all the while keeping together as a whole from fear of hanging separately with few funds).
Blogs should provide their readers and writers with some kind of ownership stake (whose value can rise and fall with the blog's appeal wither to advertisers, or to readers wanting to have their voice or vote valued). There should be some way to reward the more popular writers with more space and attention. A blog that sees its space as a limitless resource abuses the reality that our readers have limited time, as it buries the good stuff in the not-so-good stuff.
I expect over time that winning formulae for blogs will develop through experimentation with penny stocks of various kinds for readers and corresponding rewards for writers Even when the financial stakes are very small, formal ownership creates interest. But, of course, it only works if bloggers really want to compete for readers and not live with vaguely utopian notions that this is not somehow necessary. Such competition can engender a creative tension, a productive paradox: when you address yourself to readers, and do not simply follow your own blogging heart, you must learn how better to perform for others, but at the risk of compromising your interest to readers who always want to know what really moves someone else for what he or she is. People still want authors and distinctive authorial voices and yet most poeple, i imagine, don't want to read blogs where people are just doing whatever.
________________________
This is another comment on the subject of blogs lifted from the comments section of Meaningless Hot Air's post on blogs, An Army of me and a couple of my Friends .
On this day of mourning
On this day of mourning for President Ford, while people here and elsewhere are once again discussing journalism as if it mattered and heroes as if they matter, I thought I'd reproduce an excerpt from the published screenplay of one of the great movies released during the period of time when Gerald R. Ford was President of the United States of America. Only some of this dialogue survived the final edit. It is the first words spoken in an Academy-Award-winning performance and is delivered under narration.
Good evening. It is Monday, September the Twenty-Second, Nineteen Seventy-Five, and, today, a shot was fired at President Ford's motorcade in San Francisco. The President was unharmed. The incident happened late this afternoon, and we still do not have a filmed report. The shot was fired as Mr. Ford was leaving the St. Francis Hotel on his way to the San Francisco Airport. The President was shaking hands with people in front of the hotel when the shooting occurred. Secret Service agents rushed Mr. Ford into his car, and the motorcade went immediately to the airport. Police arrested a man with a six-shot revolver in his possession, although there is some confusion about this. Our last reports indicate the attempted assassination may have been made by a woman. In any event, this is the second attempt on the President's life in eighteen days, and we will have a comment to make about that later in the program. Right now, though, we have a telephone report from Halsted Mayberry in San Francisco. Halsted, are you there?
—Paddy Chayefsky, Network
Paddy Chayefsky was one of my journalism-trained, skeptic of a father's heroes. Rod Serling was another.
The direction immediately preceeding the dialogue transcribed above reads:
CAMERA MOVES IN to isolate. Howard Beale, who is everything an anchorman should be—fifty-eight years old, silver-haired, magisterial, dignified to the point of divinity.
I'm reminded of another fictional journalist of the time:
It all started in a five thousand watt radio station in Fresno, California...
Journalism still mattered then, but its importance was fading and Network identified why that was so—it doesn't pay. I've written before that my father only offered me two pieces of career advise which both amounted to: Don't do what I did. He found military service mostly tedious and annoying and when it wasn't he often wished it were. He thought there wasn't much of a living to be made in journalism if you did it right unless you were an extremely gifted writer. On military service I only doubted him until I was out of his house. On journalism I doubted (and not because I ever thought I was much of a writer) for a good long while before concluding sometime in the '80s that few, if any, really, day in and day out, cared enough about having it done right to pay what that would cost.
That being written, I wish those who are trying to do it right (and make it pay) whatever success they may someday achieve. Wretchard posted The Blogosphere At War last Thursday. It's an interesting read. An absent (lurking?) contributor here asked a good question based, in large part, on the last three sentences of the monograph in the comments.
WRETCHARD:
The blogosphere does not contain any preordained political or cultural bias. Structurally, however, it is extremely hostile to cant and disinformation. The political side which tells the most lies and falsehoods is likely to suffer more at its hands than one which hews more closely to the observable truth.
JAMIE IRONS:
To me the most interesting hypothesis (it still seems to have the epistemological status of an hypothesis) is that the blogosphere tends to favor those parties with more "truth" on its side.
You would think that would tend to extinguish the readership of the hard left blogs, like Kos and Huffpo.
But don't the statistics assert that these still get the most traffic?
WRETCHARD:
Discounting the obvious head cases and filtering out the noise, the blogosphere has been putting out a remarkably faithful signal. That's not to say it is perfect, but only relatively better than the old agenda and access journalism with which we have lived so long.
Perhaps, on good days, but even then that's not saying much. It is, however, what most people focus on and focus on and focus on. I focused on the first two sentences in the monograph.
There is considerable interest in the idea that "blogs" are somehow able to offset the mainstream media's (MSM) ability to sell a given narrative to the public, a power which is of considerable interest in peace and even more so in war. It is widely recognized that molding public perceptions through narratives is nearly as important in war as the outcomes on the actual battlefield.
Whether journalism matters again will, in my opinion, depend on whether this or that medium and message plays and, thus far, the biggest shortcoming of the new media is in its inability to consistantly create and deliver a narrative which engages that huge segment of "the public" which is normally indifferent to or antagonistic towards the interests and views of its creators.
To almost close, two journalists:
Historian: An unsuccessful novelist —H.L. Mencken
History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. —Ambrose Bierce
To, in all ways, better narratives in 2007.
P.S.: I was eighteen in 1976. Gerald Ford, survivor of two assassination attempts, is the first person for whom I voted to be my President on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. May he rest in peace.
________________________________________________
This was a comment by loner. I took it upon myself to make it a post on its own.
Good evening. It is Monday, September the Twenty-Second, Nineteen Seventy-Five, and, today, a shot was fired at President Ford's motorcade in San Francisco. The President was unharmed. The incident happened late this afternoon, and we still do not have a filmed report. The shot was fired as Mr. Ford was leaving the St. Francis Hotel on his way to the San Francisco Airport. The President was shaking hands with people in front of the hotel when the shooting occurred. Secret Service agents rushed Mr. Ford into his car, and the motorcade went immediately to the airport. Police arrested a man with a six-shot revolver in his possession, although there is some confusion about this. Our last reports indicate the attempted assassination may have been made by a woman. In any event, this is the second attempt on the President's life in eighteen days, and we will have a comment to make about that later in the program. Right now, though, we have a telephone report from Halsted Mayberry in San Francisco. Halsted, are you there?
—Paddy Chayefsky, Network
Paddy Chayefsky was one of my journalism-trained, skeptic of a father's heroes. Rod Serling was another.
The direction immediately preceeding the dialogue transcribed above reads:
CAMERA MOVES IN to isolate. Howard Beale, who is everything an anchorman should be—fifty-eight years old, silver-haired, magisterial, dignified to the point of divinity.
I'm reminded of another fictional journalist of the time:
It all started in a five thousand watt radio station in Fresno, California...
Journalism still mattered then, but its importance was fading and Network identified why that was so—it doesn't pay. I've written before that my father only offered me two pieces of career advise which both amounted to: Don't do what I did. He found military service mostly tedious and annoying and when it wasn't he often wished it were. He thought there wasn't much of a living to be made in journalism if you did it right unless you were an extremely gifted writer. On military service I only doubted him until I was out of his house. On journalism I doubted (and not because I ever thought I was much of a writer) for a good long while before concluding sometime in the '80s that few, if any, really, day in and day out, cared enough about having it done right to pay what that would cost.
That being written, I wish those who are trying to do it right (and make it pay) whatever success they may someday achieve. Wretchard posted The Blogosphere At War last Thursday. It's an interesting read. An absent (lurking?) contributor here asked a good question based, in large part, on the last three sentences of the monograph in the comments.
WRETCHARD:
The blogosphere does not contain any preordained political or cultural bias. Structurally, however, it is extremely hostile to cant and disinformation. The political side which tells the most lies and falsehoods is likely to suffer more at its hands than one which hews more closely to the observable truth.
JAMIE IRONS:
To me the most interesting hypothesis (it still seems to have the epistemological status of an hypothesis) is that the blogosphere tends to favor those parties with more "truth" on its side.
You would think that would tend to extinguish the readership of the hard left blogs, like Kos and Huffpo.
But don't the statistics assert that these still get the most traffic?
WRETCHARD:
Discounting the obvious head cases and filtering out the noise, the blogosphere has been putting out a remarkably faithful signal. That's not to say it is perfect, but only relatively better than the old agenda and access journalism with which we have lived so long.
Perhaps, on good days, but even then that's not saying much. It is, however, what most people focus on and focus on and focus on. I focused on the first two sentences in the monograph.
There is considerable interest in the idea that "blogs" are somehow able to offset the mainstream media's (MSM) ability to sell a given narrative to the public, a power which is of considerable interest in peace and even more so in war. It is widely recognized that molding public perceptions through narratives is nearly as important in war as the outcomes on the actual battlefield.
Whether journalism matters again will, in my opinion, depend on whether this or that medium and message plays and, thus far, the biggest shortcoming of the new media is in its inability to consistantly create and deliver a narrative which engages that huge segment of "the public" which is normally indifferent to or antagonistic towards the interests and views of its creators.
To almost close, two journalists:
Historian: An unsuccessful novelist —H.L. Mencken
History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. —Ambrose Bierce
To, in all ways, better narratives in 2007.
P.S.: I was eighteen in 1976. Gerald Ford, survivor of two assassination attempts, is the first person for whom I voted to be my President on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. May he rest in peace.
________________________________________________
This was a comment by loner. I took it upon myself to make it a post on its own.
Revisionism
Instapundit.com -: "They said nice things about Reagan after he died, too, despite hating him in office, and they're already gearing up to do the same thing with George H.W. Bush, who was treated quite unfairly during his term. (See, e.g., the supermarket scanner story). It's as if the only good Republican President is a dead Republican President."
Richard Cohen - Fairness for Lewinsky - washingtonpost.com
Richard Cohen - Fairness for Lewinsky - washingtonpost.com: "Fortunately for me -- and probably this applies to you as well -- my outrageous deeds are known to only a few, and some of those people, after a lifetime of bad marriages and poor investments, have probably forgotten them. In Lewinsky's case, her youthful indiscretion has been forgotten by no one. On the contrary, it's recorded for the ages, in House and Senate proceedings, in the files of the creepy special prosecutor, in the databases of newspapers, in presidential histories and the musty joke files of second-rate comics.
She is a branded woman, not an adulterer but something even worse -- a girl toy, a trivial thing, a punch line. Yet she did what so many women at that age would do. She seduced (or so she thought) an older man. She fantasized that he would leave his wife for her. Here was her crime: She was a girl besotted. It happens even to Republicans.
But she is now a woman with a master's degree from a prestigious school and is going to be 34 come July. Her clock ticks, her life ebbs. Where is the man for her? Where is the guy brave enough, strong enough, admirable enough to take her as his wife, to suffer the slings and arrows of her outrageous fortune -- to say to the world (for it would be the entire world) that he loves this woman who will always be an asterisk in American history. I hope there is such a guy out there. It would be nice. It would be fair."
Thomas Jefferson's Koran
Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts - But It's Thomas Jefferson's Koran! - washingtonpost.com: "Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson."
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
the Strange Untried
I worked today and made my usual stops at my usual clients and all of them were watching coverage of President Ford's funeral.
I was struck by the tradition of service, but I think most of all I was struck by the reactions of people who seemed genuinely moved by the event. There was no snark, no nasty political jabs, nothing of the sort. People were respectful not only of Gerald Ford but his family. I looked at his frail widow and thought What must she think of all this? But she was a trooper. And now she can go home and grieve. She has just lost half of herself. How does one go on after the loss of a partner who stood at your side for a lifetime?
Ishmael:
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried;it is the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery,the Unshored.
Herman Melville {1819-1891} Moby Dick 1851
I was struck by the tradition of service, but I think most of all I was struck by the reactions of people who seemed genuinely moved by the event. There was no snark, no nasty political jabs, nothing of the sort. People were respectful not only of Gerald Ford but his family. I looked at his frail widow and thought What must she think of all this? But she was a trooper. And now she can go home and grieve. She has just lost half of herself. How does one go on after the loss of a partner who stood at your side for a lifetime?
Ishmael:
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried;it is the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery,the Unshored.
Herman Melville {1819-1891} Moby Dick 1851
I dreamt last night
That I was at Manderly again...no, different dream different woman. I am not Daphne Du Maurier. I dreamt I was on the farm.
It was cold. Like in the winter of '82 and everything was frozen. We had to drain the oil out of the vacuum pump and heat it so that the pump would run. The oil had tried to freeze. The cows had frost bite on the tips of some of their teets and so we could not use water. I would rub their udders gently but firmly to bring down the milk and I would watch the cow's breathing make mist and sometimes something like ice chrystals in the cold air. The world was a meat locker.
At night I would lay and listen to the wind blowing outside, rattling the stiff dead limbs of the trees and I would wonder how my animals could survive. Before daylight I would rise from my bed put on my 8 layers of clothes and my insulated boots and trudge [that is the only word for it] down to the milk barn.
First thing, turn on the coffee maker. Sit up the milkers, turn on the compressor and the vacuum pump. Make sure everything was working.
Call up the cows. That was easy. They would follow me to hell and back if I had a five gallon bucket in my hand. In the winter often as not they were still in the barn. The air smelled of cold, manure and ammonia as well as the saw dust we used to bed the stalls. They would stand in the holding pen and there were always the girls that just had to be first. They would jostle each other like impatient children to be number one getting through that big old door into the milk parlor. It was a stanchion set up. That meant I stood on the same level with the cows, unlike a pit parlor.
I fed them in the parlor so there was no problem getting them in there. The problem was trying to get one through the door at a time. Except for the laggers of course. In all things there will be laggers.
I would throw the strap over the backs of the cows. Some people called these straps sursingles. They had eyelets in them from which I hung the old fashioned ten pound milkers. {For years my right arm would be larger than my left.} I would clean the udder and bring down that milk and squeeze out a little of the first milk, dirty from the teet and let it go down the drain. Then I would milk the cow. Every day, neither rain nor sleet.nor blizzard nor death in the family would stop a milking..
In that cold winter the calves suffered most. I kept them in huts facing the southeast. I would take them large bottles filled with warm milk replacer and they would suck hard on that bottle, their bodies trembling with excitement and cold and they would prance. I loved it when they pranced.
I miss them. I never imagined that I would but I do. I will never feel any closer to a human being than I felt to those animals as I lay in bed at night and listened to the winter wind howl and prayed that when morning came they would have survived the long cold night.
It was cold. Like in the winter of '82 and everything was frozen. We had to drain the oil out of the vacuum pump and heat it so that the pump would run. The oil had tried to freeze. The cows had frost bite on the tips of some of their teets and so we could not use water. I would rub their udders gently but firmly to bring down the milk and I would watch the cow's breathing make mist and sometimes something like ice chrystals in the cold air. The world was a meat locker.
At night I would lay and listen to the wind blowing outside, rattling the stiff dead limbs of the trees and I would wonder how my animals could survive. Before daylight I would rise from my bed put on my 8 layers of clothes and my insulated boots and trudge [that is the only word for it] down to the milk barn.
First thing, turn on the coffee maker. Sit up the milkers, turn on the compressor and the vacuum pump. Make sure everything was working.
Call up the cows. That was easy. They would follow me to hell and back if I had a five gallon bucket in my hand. In the winter often as not they were still in the barn. The air smelled of cold, manure and ammonia as well as the saw dust we used to bed the stalls. They would stand in the holding pen and there were always the girls that just had to be first. They would jostle each other like impatient children to be number one getting through that big old door into the milk parlor. It was a stanchion set up. That meant I stood on the same level with the cows, unlike a pit parlor.
I fed them in the parlor so there was no problem getting them in there. The problem was trying to get one through the door at a time. Except for the laggers of course. In all things there will be laggers.
I would throw the strap over the backs of the cows. Some people called these straps sursingles. They had eyelets in them from which I hung the old fashioned ten pound milkers. {For years my right arm would be larger than my left.} I would clean the udder and bring down that milk and squeeze out a little of the first milk, dirty from the teet and let it go down the drain. Then I would milk the cow. Every day, neither rain nor sleet.nor blizzard nor death in the family would stop a milking..
In that cold winter the calves suffered most. I kept them in huts facing the southeast. I would take them large bottles filled with warm milk replacer and they would suck hard on that bottle, their bodies trembling with excitement and cold and they would prance. I loved it when they pranced.
I miss them. I never imagined that I would but I do. I will never feel any closer to a human being than I felt to those animals as I lay in bed at night and listened to the winter wind howl and prayed that when morning came they would have survived the long cold night.
Monday, January 01, 2007
An Army of Me and a Couple of My Friends
I came across blogs some years ago by following Andrew Sullivan, whom I had previously read in The New Republic. From him I was led to Instapundit, who seemed a refreshing new voice in the wilderness of punditry. Someone who has a national following, is not crazy, and believes intelligently in the Second Amendment? This was indeed something new. But though Professor Reynolds possesses a supple and broad mind, it is in the end but one mind, and after a while his incessant harping on the same five or so topics began to bore. One of those five being how great this new thing, blogs, was going to be, and how it was going to unseat the monolith formerly known as The Media. Such a prolific writer naturally wrote a book on the topic, An Army of Davids, extolling the power of millions of little people battling valiantly against the media giant. As with the earlier wave of internet overhype, the dot-bomb era, there were various reasons adduced by Glenn to bolster his case that this time things would be different.
Mind you, I'm as opposed to the Media Monolith as the next guy, for the simple reason that all of these media companies which purport to be channeling different viewpoints in point of fact are all colocated in the same small space within the Northeast Megalopolis known as BosWash, most of them actually a short walk from one another in Manhattan. What might appear to the uninitiated as separate sources of information turns out for the most part to be the product of the same tiny group of people who all attended the same schools, work in the same jobs, have the same history together, and attend the same parties. It's not that they are lying to us, but rather that they merely all agree with each other and, like Pauline Kael's infamous exclamation of skepticism over Nixon, simply cannot believe that intelligent people could possibly disagree with the thoughts of the bright minds contained within their peer group. It's not malicious, but it is a blindness, one which does the country no good, because the vaunted free flow of information it ain't. A country of over 300 million consciousnesses needs more than the thoughts of seven original people as a basis for reasonable policy choices.
So it was with great joy that I first encountered the blogs, hopeful that we were indeed on the cusp of a new better era for information. Yet I soon discovered another serious problem with them. While even the liveliest writers like Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan become boring with time, I can live with that given enough inputs. No, exactly like the traditional media they criticized, these bloggers had produced a model which consisted of them writing and me and all the other Davids reading. In other words, exactly as before, I was relegated to the role of passive consumer of someone else's product. Far from an army, there were only a couple of designated generals, and far from allowing any Davids to join, no visible means of participation or feedback existed. Believing for a while that these writers were sincere in their stated aim of being a new medium for the masses, a couple of emails to each of them quickly shocked me back to reality: meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Far from wanting a new model, these writers simply wanted to be the ones in charge of filling the endless maw that is the anonymous "public". People like me in other words.
But then Instapundit led me to Roger Simon's blog, where there were comments, and the comments weren't garbage; some of the liveliest most intelligent discussion to be found anywhere was found within his comment section. I entered this discussion with trepidation after some months of lurking and participating in that discussion quickly became my chief passion for a few months. Hope again reared its enticing head and with the advent of Pajamas Media, it appeared that a new day was about to dawn for the whole concept of an internet-based amateur-based media service after all. True, PJM got off to a rocky start, with some rather nasty birthing pains (cf. Dennis the Peasant's blog for more information), but the whole concept seemed to be larger than petty squabbles, grander than any particular pair of erstwhile blogging partners whose relationship had come to an ignominious and inharmonious end.
Now, some years on, PJM has had the chance to prove itself. It's a fair time to see what progress has been made. To what degree have they solved the two cardinal problems of blogging, 1) that having only a few writers is boring, and 2) that there is no interactivity?
A quick perusal of PJM shows that problem 1) is somewhat solved. There are a number of writers listed on their blogroll, thirty or so, surely enough to keep a jaundiced reader entertained for at least a while. Poking through the list is rather disappointing though because these writers tend to have mostly the same opinions and to be interested on a daily basis in mostly the same subjects. And thirty or forty is hardly an "army". Up toward the top of the page the real story starts to emerge. When we find the editors and major contributors, it's Gerard van der Leun, it's Roger Simon, it's Glenn Reynolds, it's Victor Davis Hanson—all very fine writers 'tis true, all people who can write rings around me with their laptops closed. Still, bottom line, it's the same tiny set of people that Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon were linking to years ago, the same tiny circle of friends linking to each other, with the little people (the "Davids") in flyover country allowed to read of the shoulders of the self-appointed greats. Is this so much better than the well-known incestuousness of the traditional media? One hardly is persuaded.
And where is the much-ballyhooed interactivity, the mechanism by which the new medium of the internet would transform the world of media to a boiling kettle of innovation, the garage band of the information economy? PJM does possess a comment section, but there don't appear to be (m)any comments. No one is participating, no one is interacting. Beyond the chance to be a distant echo to one of the Army of Good Blogging Friends, there doesn't seem to be any option to create one's own content. YouTube seems to offer superior prospects to me and thee.
I'm afraid the cold light of reality is shining on PJM at this juncture rather harshly. Far from having produced something new and interesting and involving, it seems to consist mostly of half-stale links back to the blogs of the Army of Good Blogging Friends, simply a warmed-over and more expensive version of what Instapundit was already producing in the first place. Where's the gain? Where's the value-added? There aren't many minds involved. There doesn't seem to be much news being disseminated, only opinion, and it's very very incestuous. I remain hopeful that the advent of the internet will indeed lead to a new level of community discussion and debate, a new era of community-based media, but I am sad to conclude that PJM is nothing but an empty shell of its original promise.
Mind you, I'm as opposed to the Media Monolith as the next guy, for the simple reason that all of these media companies which purport to be channeling different viewpoints in point of fact are all colocated in the same small space within the Northeast Megalopolis known as BosWash, most of them actually a short walk from one another in Manhattan. What might appear to the uninitiated as separate sources of information turns out for the most part to be the product of the same tiny group of people who all attended the same schools, work in the same jobs, have the same history together, and attend the same parties. It's not that they are lying to us, but rather that they merely all agree with each other and, like Pauline Kael's infamous exclamation of skepticism over Nixon, simply cannot believe that intelligent people could possibly disagree with the thoughts of the bright minds contained within their peer group. It's not malicious, but it is a blindness, one which does the country no good, because the vaunted free flow of information it ain't. A country of over 300 million consciousnesses needs more than the thoughts of seven original people as a basis for reasonable policy choices.
So it was with great joy that I first encountered the blogs, hopeful that we were indeed on the cusp of a new better era for information. Yet I soon discovered another serious problem with them. While even the liveliest writers like Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan become boring with time, I can live with that given enough inputs. No, exactly like the traditional media they criticized, these bloggers had produced a model which consisted of them writing and me and all the other Davids reading. In other words, exactly as before, I was relegated to the role of passive consumer of someone else's product. Far from an army, there were only a couple of designated generals, and far from allowing any Davids to join, no visible means of participation or feedback existed. Believing for a while that these writers were sincere in their stated aim of being a new medium for the masses, a couple of emails to each of them quickly shocked me back to reality: meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Far from wanting a new model, these writers simply wanted to be the ones in charge of filling the endless maw that is the anonymous "public". People like me in other words.
But then Instapundit led me to Roger Simon's blog, where there were comments, and the comments weren't garbage; some of the liveliest most intelligent discussion to be found anywhere was found within his comment section. I entered this discussion with trepidation after some months of lurking and participating in that discussion quickly became my chief passion for a few months. Hope again reared its enticing head and with the advent of Pajamas Media, it appeared that a new day was about to dawn for the whole concept of an internet-based amateur-based media service after all. True, PJM got off to a rocky start, with some rather nasty birthing pains (cf. Dennis the Peasant's blog for more information), but the whole concept seemed to be larger than petty squabbles, grander than any particular pair of erstwhile blogging partners whose relationship had come to an ignominious and inharmonious end.
Now, some years on, PJM has had the chance to prove itself. It's a fair time to see what progress has been made. To what degree have they solved the two cardinal problems of blogging, 1) that having only a few writers is boring, and 2) that there is no interactivity?
A quick perusal of PJM shows that problem 1) is somewhat solved. There are a number of writers listed on their blogroll, thirty or so, surely enough to keep a jaundiced reader entertained for at least a while. Poking through the list is rather disappointing though because these writers tend to have mostly the same opinions and to be interested on a daily basis in mostly the same subjects. And thirty or forty is hardly an "army". Up toward the top of the page the real story starts to emerge. When we find the editors and major contributors, it's Gerard van der Leun, it's Roger Simon, it's Glenn Reynolds, it's Victor Davis Hanson—all very fine writers 'tis true, all people who can write rings around me with their laptops closed. Still, bottom line, it's the same tiny set of people that Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon were linking to years ago, the same tiny circle of friends linking to each other, with the little people (the "Davids") in flyover country allowed to read of the shoulders of the self-appointed greats. Is this so much better than the well-known incestuousness of the traditional media? One hardly is persuaded.
And where is the much-ballyhooed interactivity, the mechanism by which the new medium of the internet would transform the world of media to a boiling kettle of innovation, the garage band of the information economy? PJM does possess a comment section, but there don't appear to be (m)any comments. No one is participating, no one is interacting. Beyond the chance to be a distant echo to one of the Army of Good Blogging Friends, there doesn't seem to be any option to create one's own content. YouTube seems to offer superior prospects to me and thee.
I'm afraid the cold light of reality is shining on PJM at this juncture rather harshly. Far from having produced something new and interesting and involving, it seems to consist mostly of half-stale links back to the blogs of the Army of Good Blogging Friends, simply a warmed-over and more expensive version of what Instapundit was already producing in the first place. Where's the gain? Where's the value-added? There aren't many minds involved. There doesn't seem to be much news being disseminated, only opinion, and it's very very incestuous. I remain hopeful that the advent of the internet will indeed lead to a new level of community discussion and debate, a new era of community-based media, but I am sad to conclude that PJM is nothing but an empty shell of its original promise.
Koch's hero
Ed Koch has started blogging at the Jerusalem Post and in this entry he talks about his hero:
President George W. Bush, vilified by many, supported by some, is a hero to me.
Why do I say that? It's not because I agree with the President's domestic agenda. It's not because I think he's done a perfect job in the White House.
George Bush is a hero to me because he has courage. The President does what he believes to be in the best interest of the United States. He sticks with his beliefs, no matter how intense the criticism and invective that are directed against him every day.
The enormous defeat President Bush suffered with the loss of both Houses of Congress has not caused him to retreat from his position that the US alone now stands between a radical Islamic takeover of many of the world's governments in the next 30 or more years. If that takeover occurs, we will suffer an enslavement that will threaten our personal freedoms and take much of the world back into the Dark Ages.
Our major ally in this war against the forces of darkness, Great Britain, is still being led by an outstanding prime minister, Tony Blair. However, Blair will soon be set out to pasture, which means Great Britain will leave our side and join France, Germany, Spain and other countries that foolishly believe they can tame the wolf at the door and convert it into a domestic pet that will live in peace with them.
I feel much the same. Bush may not be perfect but between the idiots on the right and left, the malicious press, partisan self serving politicians of all stripes and a bunch of jihadis with delusions of taking over the freaking world..he has done a pretty good job of keeping it together. I doubt if many of his detractors could have managed half as well.
After all sitting in the back seat and saying Are we there yet? every five seconds is a lot easier than driving the damn car.
President George W. Bush, vilified by many, supported by some, is a hero to me.
Why do I say that? It's not because I agree with the President's domestic agenda. It's not because I think he's done a perfect job in the White House.
George Bush is a hero to me because he has courage. The President does what he believes to be in the best interest of the United States. He sticks with his beliefs, no matter how intense the criticism and invective that are directed against him every day.
The enormous defeat President Bush suffered with the loss of both Houses of Congress has not caused him to retreat from his position that the US alone now stands between a radical Islamic takeover of many of the world's governments in the next 30 or more years. If that takeover occurs, we will suffer an enslavement that will threaten our personal freedoms and take much of the world back into the Dark Ages.
Our major ally in this war against the forces of darkness, Great Britain, is still being led by an outstanding prime minister, Tony Blair. However, Blair will soon be set out to pasture, which means Great Britain will leave our side and join France, Germany, Spain and other countries that foolishly believe they can tame the wolf at the door and convert it into a domestic pet that will live in peace with them.
I feel much the same. Bush may not be perfect but between the idiots on the right and left, the malicious press, partisan self serving politicians of all stripes and a bunch of jihadis with delusions of taking over the freaking world..he has done a pretty good job of keeping it together. I doubt if many of his detractors could have managed half as well.
After all sitting in the back seat and saying Are we there yet? every five seconds is a lot easier than driving the damn car.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007
.....To You And To All of Yours....
From the ol' vet and his family.
And a toast to the troops.
From the ol' vet and his family.
And a toast to the troops.
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