Winter Comes To New England

Yesterday we had just our second snowfall of the year worth mentioning, but a wet snow and a calm day gives us that beautiful New England winter frosting.

Theme Of The Day

The brown, gray and black:


WARNING: Adult language.

Just In Time For HDTV

We learn today that Helen Thomas will no longer be seated in the front row at White House briefings:

Every theater-style seat in the White House briefing room, now closed for renovation, had a brass plaque inscribed with the name of a news organization. Only one, in the middle of the front row, had a name: "HELEN THOMAS," it said. The unique assigned seat between the chairs for CBS News and ABC News was reserved for the legendary United Press International correspondent who is now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

The press corps is scheduled to move from temporary facilities back into the spiffed-up, rewired briefing room in May or June. Thomas, who has been questioning presidents and press secretaries for 46 years, plans to be there. But her front-row seat won’t be. Plans call for her to be moved to the second row to make room for a cable news channel – a sign of Washington’s changing pecking order, and of the new ways that Americans get their news.

But They Told Us It Would Be Utopia

Optimistic Signs

It might be sign of my desperation to see signs of hope in popular culture that I'm fixating on a movie I've never seen. On the other hand, on the strength of the trailer, and an unreasoning faith in Chris Rock, I'm prepared to believe that Hollywood is making a grown up movie that takes monogamy seriously.

Sunday Brunch

Why isn't there more internet based remote control?

One Of Life's Mysteries

I don't much mind a car running a red light in order to turn left and scoot through the intersection just ahead of me, and I'm resigned to being stuck, every once in a while, behind an old lady going 25 mph in a 35 mph zone, but an old lady running a red light and scooting in ahead of me in order to go 25 in a 35 mystifies me.

No Free Lunch

Just a quick pointer to this bloggingheads tv dialogue between Megan McArdle (aka Jane Galt) and Henry Farrell. Megan makes the important but almost unmentioned point that global warming is being sold dishonestly. The believers always present the steps to be taken as all being on the supply side. Energy companies, automobile companies, companies in general, will have to sacrifice while normal people will live their lives more or less as usual, except with higher carbon taxes, fewer cars and shorter commutes all made possible by magical new technologies. In fact, as Megan points out, any serious attempt to cut carbon emissions by 20% will necessarily mean a steep fall in western standards of living and comfort. Megan is rightly skeptical that the political and popular will exists to force and endure these changes once the sacrifices involved become clear. For example, if I didn't want to shower daily, I'd move to France.

David's Secret Multi-Media Blog

Apparently, blogs are now supposed to have pictures, too. So I thought I'd illustrate this post at Think of England with my own, personal picture of the mob scene around the Mona Lisa.

America's Favorite Prime Minister

Using the hook of a new statue of Baroness Thatcher about to be unveiled in the House of Commons, the Daily Mail has a very nice article about Mrs. Thatcher's life today. Unfortunately, like her friend Ronald Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher is losing the battle with old age and reportedly has no short term memory. Even worse, she is unsure of her place in British history and in the hearts of her countrymen. Everyone agrees, though, that Americans love her.

The comments are as interesting as the article. The Americans who comment -- true to form -- love her. The Brits are split between those who think she single-handedly saved the country (or, rather, postponed the apocalypse) and those who think she was the apocalypse. If the comments are representative, and my impression is that they are, it seems that the Brits have not come to terms with Thatcherism as we Yanks have come to terms with Reaganism. To use a cliche, Reagan changed the American paradigm. The British, or at least some of them, think that it would be possible to go backwards and reverse Mrs. Thatcher's works.

Have You No Sense Of Decency Mr. Murtha, At Long Last?

I have received the following mass email from the Republican National Committee that is, unlike every other mass email I've ever received, worth passing along:

Dear David,

The Democrat strategy on Iraq is finally clear.

We've known all along that they want to cut and run before the job is done. But they've been afraid to confront President Bush directly. Today, Democrat Rep. John Murtha let slip what he and Nancy Pelosi really intend to do, and it is genuinely frightening.

They call it their 'slow-bleed' plan. Instead of supporting the troops in Iraq, or simply bringing them home, the Democrats intend to gradually make it harder and harder for them to do their jobs. They will introduce riders onto bills to prevent certain units from deploying. They will try to limit the President's constitutional power to determine the length and number of deployments. They will attempt to keep the Pentagon from replacing troops who rotate out of Iraq. They may even try to limit how our troops operate by, for example, prohibiting our armed forces from creating and operating bases in Iraq.

'Slow-bleed' is exactly the right name for this incredibly irresponsible and dangerous strategy. Cutting and running is bad enough. But the Murtha-Pelosi 'slow-bleed' plan is far worse. It is a cynical and dangerous erosion of our ability to fight the terrorists while we still have men and women on the ground in Iraq. It will put their lives in far greater danger, as resources slowly dry up. How can our troops operate without bases? How can they fight without backup?

'Slow-bleed' cannot become law. Luckily, we have an opportunity to stop it. The Murtha plan depended on stealth. Now, however, the press has broken the story. And now we can act.

Click Here to read the full story on the Democrats' secret plan.

Write a letter to your editor today. Spread the word that we cannot abandon our men and women in Iraq. Because that is exactly what would happen if the 'slow-bleed' plan becomes a reality.

Our armed forces are the best in the world. They are serving with tremendous honor and bravery in Iraq. We cannot gradually abandon them. We cannot allow the Murtha-Pelosi 'slow-bleed' plan to happen. So please, take action today.

If this really is the Democrat's plan -- and I remain unconvinced simply because it is so despicable -- it must be stopped. The problem is that you have to fight a war with the political party you have and, supposedly, today dozens of Republican members of the House are going to vote for a "non-binding" resolution second-guessing the surge.

Puppet Pity

I've done my best to avoid our national wallowing in the death of Anna Nicole Smith, but it would be impossible to have avoided it entirely. One theme I've noted, from the wallowers who don't wish to be seen wallowing, is nicely captured in the title of this article, Women as Meat: Reflections on the death of Anna Nicole Smith by Rabbi Marc Gellman. Rabbi Gellman writes that:

Next we must force ourselves to remember that this front-page story is echoed by a thousand untold stories about unknown women who have died or been killed or driven to fatal addictions just because they were pretty. These women died because they were meat on the banquet table of predatory men. Their deaths must not be seen as merely tragic accidents, but as cautionary tales for us all, and particularly for men who are taught to see women as playthings and not as human beings made, as religious folk like me would say, in the image of God.

What's striking about this line of argument is that it does to Anna Nicole Smith exactly what it complains about. It robs her of her humanity. She made a series of decisions, some of which worked out well for her and some of which were disastrous. To say that she was merely meat for powerful men denies her own agency and says that whatever she does is meaningless except for how it effects powerful men.

Sunday Brunch

Can you sense when someone unseen is staring at you?

In Which We Suggest That Government Money Is Not Always Mispent

This is more Skipper's turf (deck? vessel?) than mine, but you can go here for the top twenty Hubble Space Telescope pictures, as rated by viewers at Space.com.

You're Crazy And I Love You

Michael Fumento has a nice article here making a persuasive case that non-embryonic stem cells have greater proven capacity to cure illness than embryonic stem cells. Now, I am no biologist, and I am quite willing to believe that a proponent of embryonic stem cell research could write an opposing article muddying the water beyond my ability to clarify it. (Although his argument that the New York Times, as part of its anti-Bush agenda, is simply lying about the science is probably irrefutable.) Not least, they could argue that it is unfair to restrict research into embryonic stem cells and then point to the lack of research success as vindication. (Please, no comments about how only federal funding was restricted, because (a) I know that and (b) I don't care.)

But let's accept for the moment that non-embryonic stem cells can be teased into doing all the things that embryonic stem cells might be able to do: they can be made to replicate endlessly in a laboratory and they can become any kind of cell. Let's also accept that the resistance to using embryonic stem cells is irrational, as, in fact, it is, and that it is a minority opinion, as it might be. In a democracy, to what extent should we defer to the deeply held irrational beliefs of a substantial minority?

When it comes to stem cells, I share the irrational belief: I think that the inherent dignity of the human being is incompatible with taking stem cells from embryos for either research or treatment. So, I would like the majority to defer to my deeply held irrational belief and, if there really is no obvious benefit from embryonic stem cells, would be insulted if the majority didn't defer to my irrationality. It's my government, too, and it really shouldn't be doing things that I strongly disapprove of -- especially if there's no obvious benefit. But what about issues in which I'm part of the rational majority?

That's a harder question, in no small part because it's depressingly difficult to come up with an issue in which I am both part of the majority and the majority is rational. The only such issue that comes to mind is the Iraqi war. The decision to go to war was rational and popular. The anti-war position strongly believed that going to war was not something their government should do. To what extent was I willing to defer to that belief? I was perfectly willing to hear them out, to treat their view with respect (it was an eminently respectable view, even though wrong) and to let them try to make their case. On the other hand, I wasn't willing to not go to war.

There's also the controversy over teaching Intelligent Design. ID is not rational and I don't believe in it, although I might be in the minority. The smart political position seems to be to say that one personally believes in evolution, but that we should "teach the controversy." I'm fine with teaching the controversy, but it shouldn't be taught in Biology Class because it is not a Biology controversy. On the other hand, if the irrational majority doesn't want evolution taught in their schools, that's perfectly fine with me albeit a different question entirely.

My inchoate sense here is that we owe cheerful, ungrudging respect to the deeply held irrational beliefs of our fellow citizens. By cheerful and ungrudging, I mean something more than just the cold cost/benefit decision to defer to the irrational beliefs of others in return for their deference to my irrational beliefs. I mean something more than the realization that I could be wrong and that prudence thus requires that I not trash an idea I might later be forced to accept. I mean, I suppose, that the mere fact that an idea is imbued with importance by a fellow citizen means that I should give it due deference. How much deference is due? As much as I can spare while not sacrificing anything I care about.

Amazing What You Find While Looking For Something Else II

Today, while looking for something else, I came across this page showing the average age of the population of the OECD nations in 1950, 1975 and 2000. Looking over the table, I was struck by what had happened to Japan during those 50 years. In 1950, Japan was the fourth youngest of the 30 OECD nation, with an average age of 22.3. By 1975, Japan was in the middle, the 15th youngest with an average age of 30.4. The population had aged nearly one full year for every year that had passed. In 2000, Japan was the oldest of the OECD countries at 41.3 years. The United States, by comparison, had moved from 13th oldest to 19th oldest to 21st oldest, and from 30 years old to 28.8 to 35.2.

Amazing What You Find While Looking For Something Else I

Editors Note, "Our Next Great Work", Journal of the American Association of Professional Engineers, April 1, 1954, v. XL, no. 3, p. 3.

The history of the last hundred years has largely been the history of engineering. From skyscrapers to dams, from exploration to the new interstate highway system, human beings, led by engineers, have been changing lives and the very face of the planet. Even our victories in the wars that have plagued us this century have – while taking nothing away from the brave soldiers who have secured our freedom – have relied on the skills of the American engineer. Engineers worked to turn out ships, tanks, jeeps and other materiel in numbers that would have, before the war, been unthinkable. Combat engineers worked to shape the battlefield and to provide the bases from which our armies emerged to defeat the enemy. Most of all, engineers worked next to physicists in the greatest engineering feat of the war – perhaps of all time – as theory was turned into explosive fact and the war in the Pacific was brought to a quick conclusion.

As professional engineers look backwards, we have every reason to feel proud of our contributions to the greater good. As we look forward, however, we do not see the next great engineering challenge. There is, to be sure, unfinished business that we must complete but nowhere do we see the great world-changing achievements that have characterized our professions past.

We need a new horizon.

Some say that our next great challenge will come from helping mankind step off of our planet and take his first step in space. It is true that space travel will come some day, but for now mankind has his eyes firmly focused on our planet; on healing the wounds of the recent war. Moreover, though we by no means intend to suggest that space travel to, say, the moon or Mars will be easy, a space ship is, at heart, simply a special type of gun or ballistic warhead. There is no new fundamental knowledge, no great leap into the unknown, for the space faring engineer.

When, though, that engineer first sets foot on a new planet, he will likely not find it to his liking. It will be too cold or too warm, too wet or too dry, with an atmosphere too thin or too poisonous to breath. Making that world more welcoming will be a fit job for tomorrow’s engineer.

If that (literally) world-changing engineer were then to return to Earth, he would see that his skills are also needed here. Even if we ignore the cooling trend of the last 20 years, likely just the result of normal variation, the fact is that our ancestral home, like many old family homes, is simply too cold and drafty. We propose that professional engineers spearhead a national (indeed, international) project to increase mean temperatures by at least 2º F.

In the pages of this issue, JAAPE explores how engineers could bring us a warmer, richer and more welcoming world and the great benefits that would follow. Bruce Johnson explains how cleaner air would also mean a warmer world. Frank Goldman looks at how European Jews, freed from their sunless ghettos, are making the empty desert bloom. Cyrus White examines the population boom we can now expect thanks to modern medicine, longer life spans and a new stable international order and concludes that new arable land in Canada and the Soviet Union is the only way to avoid the coming Malthusian crash. Peter Nixon looks at how every family can play its part and jokes that we need to confiscate Dad’s car and give every family a truck. Finally, our publisher, John Burke, argues that, given the benefits to be won, a warmer world isn’t merely a good idea but every American’s duty to mankind.

Sunday Brunch

Longer lives, greater wealth and liberal democracy have killed traditional marriage as the dominant paradigm for organizing our personal lives. What's next?

Quick Quiz

Government spending in the US -- Is it in deficit or surplus?

In Which I Commit Law

I'm sure that by now you've all read or seen reports about a "guerrilla" marketing campaign that put small, lighted, crudely animated signs of an obscure cartoon character flipping off the observer. These signs were installed, as far as I can tell without permission, under bridges and next to roads and highways throughout nine cities, including Boston. In Boston, they were reported by a "T" transit worker as suspicious, resulting in traffic being halted while they were removed by the bomb squad.

The two unprepossessing gentlemen who installed or planted the devices, depending upon your sympathies, have been arrested and charged with planting hoax bombs. You may be wondering whether they can be convicted.

The statute in question, Massachusetts General Laws c. 266, Section 102A½ says:

(a) Whoever possesses, transports, uses or places or causes another to knowingly or unknowingly possess, transport, use or place any hoax device or hoax substance with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons shall be punished by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two and one-half years or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

(b) For the purposes of this section, the term "hoax device" shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term "infernal machine" shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words "hoax substance" shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both.

(c) This section shall not apply to any law enforcement or public safety officer acting in the lawful discharge of official duties.

(d) The court shall, after a conviction, conduct a hearing to ascertain the extent of costs incurred, damages and financial loss suffered by local, county or state public safety agencies and the amount of property damage caused as a result of the violation of this section. A person found guilty of violating this section shall, in all cases, upon conviction, in addition to any other punishment, be ordered to make restitution to the local, county or state government for any costs incurred, damages and financial loss sustained as a result of the commission of the offense. Restitution shall be imposed in addition to incarceration or fine; however, the court shall consider the defendant’s present and future ability to pay in its determinations regarding a fine. In determining the amount, time and method of payment of restitution, the court shall consider the financial resources of the defendant and the burden restitution will impose on the defendant.

It seems clear that these two numbskulls put the devices in place. It doesn't seem like all that much of a stretch for a jury to find that these were put in place "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort." The whole point of crudely animated cartoon characters flipping off passers-by would be to épater la bourgeoisie.

So, the question would seem to be whether a person could reasonably believe that these were devices "for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion." Notice that the intent of the accused is not relevant here. If they intended to cause personal discomfort, they don't have to have concluded that the devices could reasonably be mistaken for bombs. I do wonder whether the reasonable person here is a reasonable post-9/11 person who follows the news from Iraq, where IEDs are all too common? In any event, while a conviction isn't a lock for the prosecutors, there is real exposure here.

The Worst Former American. (No, There's No Word Missing)

OJ points us to this profile of Jimmy Carter in Commentary Online, which is well worth reading in its entirety. Carter is probably not a racist, probably not anti-semitic and probably not a conscious traitor. And those are his good points.

"Articulate." Now That's Irony

Senator Biden has apparently noticed that Senator Obama is attractive because "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that’s a storybook, man."

MORE: Now that I've thought about it, isn't it most likely that the thought behind this inartful comment was that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are neither "mainstream" or "clean." As for clean, it was most likely not meant a comment on their personal hygiene, but on their ethics.

Dismisses? What Else Does It Have Going For It

Harper's letter dismisses Kyoto as 'socialist scheme', from the CBC.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper once called the Kyoto accord a "socialist scheme" designed to suck money out of rich countries, according to a letter leaked Tuesday by the Liberals....

The Kyoto Protocol went into effect Feb. 16, 2005, with 141 countries signing on, including every major industrialized country, except the United States, Australia and Monaco.

This really isn't that hard: the US signed Kyoto, remains a signatory and is making more progress towards it's goals than Canada and most of western Europe. I do understand that the fact that we're not even trying is frustrating, but it's no excuse for bad facts.

How To Punish Your Friends While Making Yourself Worse Off

Gregg Easterbrook praises the President for his proposal to aggressively increase US auto fleet CAFE standards. The problems with increased CAFE standards have been well-rehearsed and I won't go into them here. (Well, ok, just a little: increased CAFE standards decrease the cost of each mile driven, which will necessarily lead to people driving more miles.) But one thing Easterbrook says is nuts for reasons not having to do with CAFE standards:

Nothing the United States can do in energy policy is more important than an mpg increase. Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and, until last week, George W. Bush had all refused to face the issue of America's low-mpg vehicles, which are the root of U.S. dependency on Persian Gulf oil and a prime factor in rising U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

First of all, we're not particularly dependent upon Persian Gulf oil. We get most of our oil from the Americas: Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, etc. In the 12 months ended October 06, only 16% of our petroleum imports and 11% of our total petroleum usage came from the Persian Gulf. That's slightly less than we imported from Canada, alone.

Nor can we hurt the Persian Gulf countries through conservation. If we do succeed in conserving enough oil to effect the global market, the effect will be a cut in the price of oil. The Persian Gulf nations, however, are the low-cost suppliers of oil. A sufficient decrease in the price of oil will only shift consumption towards the Persian Gulf and away from the high price producers, such as Canada.

Is This Ironic?

As demonstrated by the "5 Myths" article I posted about below, there is a tendency to confuse clean air laws with a response to global warming. In fact, it is as clear as anything having to do with global warming can be that cleaner air, ceteras parebus, results in a warmer climate than otherwise. More particulates in the air would mean more cooling. Cleaning the air is not part of our response to global warming, it's part of the problem.

The Wrong Track

The Washington Post lost its mind yesterday and published an article entitled 5 Myths About Suburbia and Our Car-Happy Culture by Ted Balaker and Sam Staley. The five myths are:

• That Americans drive too much. In fact, it's not that Americans drive too much but that we are rich and, all over the world, rich people drive more. The Europeans, with their smaller countries, big cities, trains to die for and gasoline at $5.00 per gallon, use cars for 78% of their travel. We use cars for only 88% of our travel, and the Europeans are gaining on us.
  
  
• That public transportation makes sense. Public transportation simply can't be made convenient, cheap and attractive enough to displace driving. Even in New York, only 25% of commuters use public transportation.
  
  
• That cutting driving would improve air pollution. To the contrary, we're now getting improved air quality along with more driving. Even more improvement is locked it, as older cars get replaced by newer less-polluting cars.
  
  
• That we're paving over America. Only 5.4% of the US is "developed," meaning a population density of at least 30 people per square mile (the approximate population density of Kansas).
  
  
• That less driving would lead to less global warming. The Post comes to its senses here and the answer given is not all that convincing. But Kyoto is a joke, the best thinking now is that the costs of global warming will not outweigh the benefits until the temperature has risen about 2 degrees F which is the entire likely rise this century and tying global warming to substantial decreases in driving will only ensure that we take no action to stop global warming.

Sunday Brunch: The Wide, Wide World Of Web

When Cass Sunstein suggested that the web would dangerously narrow the arguments to which people were exposed, I scoffed. Didn't he know that we all read the lefty sites so that we could scoff at them? But now that we've set up an international collaborative of conservative bourgeois individualists, I wonder if he has a point. And yet we do discuss (ad nauseum) issues on which we disagree. The web: home of pornography and viewpoint confirmation, or scene of fertile international argumentation (and pornography)?

A Tale Of Two Irans

After the Iranian revolution, the Shah's government was succeeded by a more or less secular western government. That government allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran from exile and invited him to be the figurehead head of state. He refused. Instead, he started holding court in Qom and setting up Revolutionary Councils under Imams in every Iranian city. These councils became, in effect, a second government parallel to the de jure government. After a year or so, the councils were so popular that they swallowed the secular government. The new constitution kept this bifurcated government intact, so that now Iran has two official governments.

This bifurcated structure has caused the US and the west no end of trouble. The hostage crisis was, from the Iranian point of view, simply part of the power struggle between the secular government and the religious government. It was carried out by the Revolutionary Guard, a quasi-autonomous militia allied with, but not quite answerable to, the religious government. We insisted on negotiating with the secular government, which had no power to end the crisis. The same problem came back to bite us during the Iran/contra scandal and we're still having problems with it today both in Iraq and dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

No one, including the Iranians, quite knows who is in charge of which program. The person making threats or promises today is not necessarily in a position to deliver. The president himself can be overruled by the Guardian Council or the Supreme Leader, but neither the council nor the leader are in control of the minutia of government. Ahmadinejad probably can't launch a nuclear attack without Ayatollah Khameini's permission, but the Ayatollah almost certainly can't stop the government from working to develop nuclear bombs. To some extent, this is simply clever. It gives the Iranians an artificial but real advantage in negotiations in that it binds the two people in the room into a team who have to craft a sufficiently attractive package to convince the decision-maker who is not in the room and not disposed to being convinced. Good cop/bad cop always works.

But, worse, this dichotomy is also a very real problem in the Iranian government. It not only makes Iran more difficult to deal with, but makes any agreement less reliable. Even the Iranians don't always know who has the authority to make a binding agreement because some other part of the government might decide, on its own and secretly, that the agreement does not apply to it. On matters that are sufficiently important, the only agreement that will last might be the agreement that is imposed.

Who Says I Can't Kick Him Around Any More?

John Kerry has decided not to run for President in '08, keeping his tinder dry for the critical 2012 election. In its article bemoaning the absence of this political giant from our ballots, the AP describes John Kerry as "Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who fell 118,601 Ohio votes short of the White House in 2004." Now, this is true as far as it goes: if 59,301 Ohio voters had switched their vote, John Kerry would have been our second minority president in a row, having lost the popular vote by 4 million votes. Kerry can also be truthfully described as the man rejected by the largest number of voters in history. But he will be best remembered by history as "French looking."

Render Unto Caeser

As global warming science leaves its boisterous adolescence behind, we're starting to see the long-expected pull back: Climate scientists feeling the heat: As public debate deals in absolutes, some experts fear predictions 'have created a monster' (Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, 1/22/07). This article rehashes several recent articles prompted by climate scientists starting to confess publicly that their models are less reliable than has been presented and that younger scientists are feeling pressured to make their results conform to the global warming orthodoxy. Ironically, it seems to have been Al Gore's success in scaring people by publicizing the worst possible climate change possibilities that is the immediate cause of the pullback.

The heart of the Chronicle story is not that climate scientists are not actually absolutely 100% sure that we're all doomed. The heart of the story is this:

Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, dismisses the notion of widespread tension among climate scientists on the course of the public debate. But he acknowledges that considerable uncertainty exists with key events such as the melting of Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 200 feet.

"We honestly don't know that much about the big ice sheets," North says. "We don't have great equations that cover glacial movements. But let's say there's just a 10 percent chance of significant melting in the next century. That would be catastrophic, and it's worth protecting ourselves from that risk."

We need scientists to tell us what they believe is likely to happen and to demonstrate that their results can survive a skeptical inquiry. But it is for the government and the people to decide what to do based upon the scientists' report. It is not enough to tell us that the results will be catastrophic. Tell us what the results are and let us decide whether they are catastrophic. The not-at-all hidden agenda of the true believers in anthropogenic global warming is to present the science so that it leads to only one possible choice.

Chargers Finally Beat Patriots

Having won a tough game in San Diego last week, the Patriots simply didn't have the energy to handle a great Indianapolis offense. The Patriots were outplayed by the Colts once they had used up their initial burst of energy halfway through the second quarter.

Congratulations to Payton Manning, Tony Dungy and the Colts.

He Must Be A Really Bad Skier

Prince Charles cancels ski trip to help save planet

Sunday Brunch

We're going to try something new here at the blog that dare not speak its name: a Sunday topic for general discussion not tied to current events, evolution or religion.

Today's topic is a new trope I've noticed wending its way through SF. If we assume that intelligent life is not rare and that faster-than-light space travel is not difficult, then there is likely to be a highly xenophobic space-traveling race. This race will see any other intelligent species as a threat to itself (because it is a threat to any other intelligent species) and do its best to wipe such a race out as early as possible. In other words, our attempts to contact other intelligent beings might be a signpost saying "Hey, kill us next."

I have two questions. First, is this scenario likely assuming, for the sake of argument, that other intelligent life exists? Second, should we change our actual behavior (SETI, space probes with star maps, radiating radio waves, etc.) because of the chance of FTL capable xenophobes?

Did You Ever Notice

How other nations' militaries become "battle-hardened" while our's becomes over-stretched and exhausted?

The Sacred Tragedy Of The Commons

Belated word comes from Canada that it is a sin to drink bottled water. The United Church of Canada (L'Eglise Unie du Canada) has decided that water is a human right and thus must be protected from profiteers and the United States:

Avoid those purchased water bottles--where possible.

The United Church's 39th General Council voted August 17 to discourage the purchase of bottled water "starting within its courts and congregations."

Meeting in one of its three decision-making commissions, the Council also voted to boldly affirm its conviction that "water is a sacred gift that connects all life," and the privatization of water must be avoided.

"Its value to the common good must take priority over commercial interests," said the Council. "Privatization turns a common good into a commodity, depriving those who cannot pay and further threatening local ecosystems."...

It voted to "firmly call upon our federal government to declare water as a human right, support municipalities in keeping water in public control, and resist any attempts by the United States to increase exports of Canadian fresh water under the energy proportional sharing provisions of NAFTA."...

The Council voted to receive for information the report "Water: Life before Profit."

[Emphasis added]

Yes, one can readily see how the decommodification of water will be a boon to the poor everywhere.

Cheap Oil

Oil prices are down about 4% today, with both NYMEX crude and Cushing spot prices below $51.00 per barrel.

We Despise None So Much As Those We Have Wronged

One of life's little pleasures -- one that I owe entirely to the blogosphere -- is reading "Spengler" in the Asia Times on-line. The pseudonymous author, who seems to be New York-based but perhaps not American, has aptly named himself after a German philosopher of a century ago so pessimistic that he was rejected by the Germans for being dour. The original Spengler has the perhaps unique credential of having been a committed but not racist Nazi.

Our columnist, on the other hand, does not seem to be either a Nazi or a racist, though he does present himself as more willing to speak the truth on race than most Americans. In Americans, this always means that the speaker is, in fact, racist: "I'm not racist, but I am brave enough to say what we all know to be true. Blacks are lazy, Jews are money-grubbing, we're at war with Islam and all Mexican babies will grow up to be drug-dealing gang-bangers. You all just can't handle the truth." In someone who is not American, this need not be the case.

What attracted the columnist to the philosopher is clear. The philosopher believed that civilizations have a natural life-cycle and that the decline of the West was inevitable. The columnist is here to chronicle that decline. Yet the columnist is writing for an Asian audience that sees itself as the West's successor in global domination, which gives Spengler's columns a certain bitter-sweet quality. To keep this audience happy, half his columns are wild stories of decline, while half are full of insightful analysis of some troubling situation. It is very hard to tell the two apart.

Take, for example, this column on Jimmy Carter and the Palestinians. Spengler is excellent at explaining how the current state of the Palestinians can be laid at the door of the UN and the Arab states, rather than just being Israel's fault.

Where the Palestinians are concerned, Carter keens the same trope. It is repulsive to think that a people of several millions, honeycombed with representatives of international organizations, the virtual stepchild of the United Nations, appears doomed to reduce its national fever by letting blood. The 700,000 refugees of 1948, hothoused by the UN relief agencies, prevented from emigrating by other Arab regimes, have turned into a people, but a test-tube nation incapable of independent national life: four destitute millions of third-generation refugees in the small and barren territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, which cannot support a fraction of that number.

The project of a Palestinian economy based on tourism and light manufacturing is a delusion in the globalized economy of Chinese-dominated trade in manufactures. The subsistence-farming fellahin should have left their land for economic reasons, like the Okies during the 1920s and 1930s, and dispersed into cities, like a hundred other rural populations of the so-called developing world. Kept hostage for political reasons, they cannot stay, and they cannot leave. They have chosen instead to fight, and if need be to die.

This is good stuff missed by almost all those experts (and Jimmy Carter) who comment so sanctimoniously on the middle east. Our anger at Israel isn't because this mess is Israel's fault. It is much more the fault of the UN, which not only birthed this monster but also nursed it and utterly refused to wean it. But at this point only Israel can solve the problem for us at small cost to ourselves if only at the cost of everything to Israel.

On the other hand, Spengler unconscionably misses an interesting parallel. Hong Kong, like Palestine, is small, overcrowded, isolated and without any natural resources except people. Hong Kong is rich, Palestine is poor. The UN, for all of its many faults, has educated the Palestinian people ("J" is for "Jew"/"K" is for "Kill.") Palestine could be rich, if only the world would let it be.

Why Do Racists Always Mention That Blacks Are Articulate?

Obama's charm lost on America's black activists (Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times, 1/14/07)

Belafonte, who returns to British cinema screens shortly with a small role in Bobby, the new Emilio Estevez film about the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, also cast doubt on Obama’s credentials as a legitimate candidate.

"He’s a young man in many ways to be admired," Belafonte said. "Obviously very bright, speaks very well, cuts a handsome figure. But all of that is just the king’s clothes. Who’s the king?" There were contrasting views on the likely impact on Obama’s campaign of black competition or criticism. One analyst argued that a Sharpton candidacy would "put Obama on the spot" by forcing him to address awkward civil rights issues such as police brutality and racial profiling that he tends to steer clear of. One Democratic blogger argued that Sharpton was "just what the doctor ordered to keep Obama on the straight and narrow".

If we judge a man by his adversaries, that's one point for Obama.

Cheap To The Last Drop

Oil prices fall on weather woes, supply (Madlen Read, AP, 1/11/07)

Oil plunged below $52 a barrel Thursday to its lowest price since May 2005, extending a sharp decline that has been led by dampened heating oil demand, but which could save consumers money on a more widely used fuel: gasoline.

Crude oil has tumbled by 15 percent so far this year in a huge sell-off that was kicked off by investment funds last year, and then stoked by a historically warm U.S. winter that has left supplies of heating fuel barely touched.

But don't worry, $100 gasoline will solve all of the problems caused by cheap oil.

(Interestingly, the oil companies were mostly up today.)

The Next Pele

Adios! Becks Heads For LA (Skynews, 1/11/07)

David Beckham says he is leaving Real Madrid to sign for LA Galaxy.

The former England captain will leave the Spanish club at the end of the season and sign a five-year deal for the US side, believed to be worth £128m.

You can't fool me. LA doesn't have a football team.

Not To Pick On OJ, But

This sentence deserves some sort of award: The President just keeps hitting on long balls while the Right begs him to run the ball into the line to show how tough they are.

A La Recherché du Temps Perdue

Closing up shop last night, I ran across "The Last Starfighter" beginning at 11:00. I was immediately back in the summer of 1984.

The summer of 1984 wasn't the best of my life, but wasn't bad at all. I had finished my first year of law school in June and was a summer associate at a small firm in Boston. I was living with my grandmother in Brookline and commuting to the office on the "T." I didn't know anyone in Boston and, since the firm was small, there were no other summer associates or even young associates to hang around with. I drove home most weekends, but didn't have much to do on weeknights. One Wednesday, I drove to a cineplex and watched "The Last Starfighter." It's the only time I've ever gone to a movie by myself. It was pretty good -- better than I expected -- but sitting in the dark by myself was odd. The standard joke about loners is going to restaurants alone, but I've done that many times and it doesn't bother me at all. (Actually, I kind of like it. Reading and eating while someone else serves me are three of my four favorite things.) But going to the movies by myself was just odd.

Of course I stayed up till 1:00 to watch the movie.

McDonalds Doesn't Love You

James Lileks writes today about the closing of "his" Target.

Daily Quirk: Can you have a relationship with a Target store? (James Lileks, Startribune.com, 1/8/07)

It's hard to say goodbye, unless of course someone just punched you and is walking away. But I must say goodbye to something that's been a part of my life since I moved back to Minneapolis in 1994: the Southdale Target store. It's closing today. Child took the news hard; this was Our Target, and we'd made weekly trips our entire life. I shared her distress: What will we do if I need a TV set, socks and milk at 8 p.m.? Wal-Mart? What do I look like, Pa Kettle? I need a store whose merchandise is finely tuned to confirm my membership in a particular economic stratum! When Wal-Mart carries toilet brushes whose handles were approved by the architect of the Children's Theatre addition, we'll talk.

This was fortunate for me, because I've been looking for a hook for a post, or maybe an informal series of posts, about corporate issues.

Every once in a while at BrothersJudd, a commenter would go off on a rant about corporations, and how they're controlling the world, and shouldn't be treated like people, and need to be fought. The most interesting thing about these attacks is that they are equally likely to come from left or right. Whichever side they came from, they would be astonished when we pointed out that corporations don't actually exist. The idea of the corporation is just a legal fiction that allows large groups of people, even strangers, to own property and do business together. As owning property and doing business was traditionally something done by "people," corporations are considered people to the extent that they do business or own property. That is, they don't have the right to free speech or the right against self-incrimination, but they do have the right not to have their property taken by the government without just compensation -- just like any other property owner. The point being made to the corporation haters was that, to the extent they wanted to silence corporations or punish corporations, all they were doing was silencing and punishing people.

As important as not hating corporations, though, is not loving them. Corporations don't exist and can't love you back. To the extent that you think that Coke is America personified, or Chevy's are tough, or carrying a Smith & Wesson connects you to the cowboys, you've fallen prey to marketing. McDonalds will happily stuff you full of as much food as you willing buy and, simply by offering "supersized" portions is trying -- that is, the people who make up McDonalds are trying -- to convince you that such portions are reasonable.

Now, many of you think this is absurd: who could love a corporation? The Boston Red Sox are a corporation. Manchester United is a corporation. Your church or synagogue, your local diocese, are all most likely corporations. Coke and McDonalds and Disney are all corporations. Except corporations don't exist. All there is is people.

Reason Starts To Break Through

Now that the dystopic religion of anthropogenic climate change is a few years old, we're starting to see schisms. Once we were all damned equally, now certain sects are starting to see that there is also an Elect:


Europe to suffer as the world warms up (Andrew Bounds, FT.com, 1/5/07)

Chilly northern Europe could reap big benefits from global warming, while the Mediterranean faces crippling shortages of both water and tourists by the middle of the century, according to the first comprehensive study of its effects on the continent.

Fewer in the north would die of cold, crops there would boom and the North Sea coast could become the new Riviera, an analysis to be approved by the European Commission next week shows. But the annual migration of rich northern Europeans to the south could stop – with dramatic consequences for the economies of Spain, Greece and Italy.

The headline is necessary to sneak heresy past the Inquisition, but with Russia having long since joined the ranks of the heretics (global warming is here and it is good), can Finland be far behind?

What I Love About Human Beings

A tribe of early humans sits around the communal fire.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea.”
“What’s that, mate?”
“Let’s believe in god.”
“God? What’s that?”
“Hmm, God. Yeah that’s even better. God is the one creator of the universe, who controls everything that happens from outside of time and space.”
“Hey, cool.”
“Yeah.”
“But … why only one. Shouldn’t there be dozens, each one in charge of some natural phenomenon?
“That’s heresy. There’s only one God.”
The heretic leaves the fire.
“While, maybe not dozens. How about three.”
“There’s just one, I tell you.”
“How about three who are one.”
“One-third gods?”
“No, just three that are one.”
“Well, you can believe that, if you can. I’ll stick with one.” The speaker leaves the fire.
“About these three, who are they?”
“Well, one should be a father, and a son and a ….”
“Mother?”
“No. A … uh … ghost. A holy ghost.”
“Oh, sure. But there must be a mother somewhere.”
“Well, the son must have a mother. She’d have to be a virgin. And conceived without sin.”
“She’d have to be a virgin, of course. But not conceived without sin. That’s ridiculous.”
The Catholics leave the fire.
“But, what’s in this God business for us?”
“Everlasting life, of course.”
“You mean we won’t die.”
“Not exactly. But your soul will be saved.”
“Hmm, how does that work? If we do good things?”
“Do good things? That has nothing to do with it. It’s only if God chooses to save you – and He’s already made up His mind.”
“Well, that sucks. I don’t believe in this predestination nonsense.”
The Protestants all leave the fire. The rest of the tribe look at each other.
“What dolts.”
“Wow, how could they believe that?”
“We know that there’s no god.”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘know.’”…

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager

Falsum In Uno, Falsum In Omnibus"

OJ points us to this story on global warming. The story is a complete mish-mash, arguing (I think) that because past global warming was severe and intense while carbon dioxide rose over millions of years, we should expect climate change to be even more sudden and intense now as carbon dioxide rises of the course of a century. Such speculation should be ignored, but I was struck by this sentence:

Over several million years, carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere increased from about 280 parts per million to 2,000 ppm, the same increase that experts expect by the end of this century as remaining reserves of fossil fuels are burned.

[Emphasis added]

What a maroon! If it weren't for the problem of collecting, there would be easy money to be made betting these dolts about whether there will be hydrocarbons for sale in the year 2100.

Car Blogging

Not blogging about your car, but blogging from your car.

Turn Your Car Into a Wi-Fi Hotspot: New technology will soon let car passengers check email, surf the web, game or communicate via any Wi-Fi-enabled device (gizmag.com, 1/4/07)

The era of permanent internet connectivity comes a step closer next week when Autonet Mobile launches its new wireless service that turns any car into a WiFi Hotspot

Residents of Hanover, New Hampshire, were woken today by the sound of an explosion. One resident said that it sounded like a head exploding. The source of the sound has not yet been discovered.

Nontheists?

I'm skeptical that any American refers to himself as a "nontheist." Bring back Bright!

If This Is Global Warming, Count Me In

I've been running around outside in a short-sleeve shirt the last two days and, according to the forecast, we're going to reach the low to mid-50s each of the next four days. It's like living 300 miles south of here.

Of course, because it's so warm, we've been using less fossil fuel. Our heating bill is much lower than normal and we're probably driving less and not running the heaters in our car as much. So one way to limit greenhouse gases is to increase global warming.

MORE: Having lived through a life time of New England winters, I should mention that it is clear that mild winters (e.g., global warming) saves lives.

Next In Our Occassional Series, Making Grown Men Cry

Bystander Pulls Off Daring Subway Rescue: Commuter Jumps Onto Tracks To Save Teen Who Suffered A Seizure (CBS/AP, 1/03/07)

A quick-thinking commuter saved a teenager who apparently suffered a seizure and fell onto subway tracks in Upper Manhattan, by jumping onto the tracks himself and pushing them both between the rails, beneath the oncoming train.

Cameron Hollopeter, 19, of Littleton, Mass., fell onto the tracks at Broadway’s 137th Street station Tuesday. Another subway passenger, 50-year-old Wesley Autrey of Manhattan, was standing on the platform with his two daughters whom he was taking home so he could go to his construction job.

When Autrey saw Hollopeter fall, he quickly took action and left his daughters to jump on the tracks to bring the man to safety as an oncoming train approached.

Barack Hussein Obama

The easiest conclusion for a conservative watching the jockeying for the Democratic nomination in '08 is to conclude that Senator Obama is, at best, a spoiler who might touch up Hillary Clinton on her pre-ordained path to the nomination. After all, the Democrats couldn't possibly nominate a guy who was, two years ago, an Illinois state senator? A guy who was, before running for the Senate, and I mean this literally, a socialist? A guy who has done nothing with his life other than get a Harvard education? A guy who's middle name is "Hussein?" And if they did nominate him, he'd lose easily, right?

Let me introduce you to Governor-elect Deval Patrick.

Now, the comparison here is a little unfair. Governor-Elect Patrick actually has some real world experience, although he's not a manager and has never run anything. His middle name is not Hussein or Khomeini or Adolf (that I know of, at least). Patrick ran in Massachusetts, the most Democratic state in the nation. His opponent was particularly weak and it wasn't a good year for Republicans. Nonetheless, Patrick came out of nowhere, said nothing of substance, has a far-left history and won handily. To date, the only stand of substance he's taken (yesterday) was to -- I swear I'm not making this up -- urge the state legislature to ignore the will of the people, the express language of the state constitution and the state supreme court by refusing to authorize a ballot question on gay marriage.

Nevertheless, the essential similarity is there. Both men are Harvard trained (which is almost irrelevant) and, oh yeah, both are charismatic, attractive black men. As a nation, we would love to elect a black president. It would be a gift to ourselves; proof that we've come a long way (baby) and have put our racist past behind us. Nor is this pull only felt by the left; I feel it myself. Combined with our inner fear of being racist, the threshold for voting against Senator Obama would be higher than the threshold for voting against some generic white man (Senator Edwards) and much higher than voting against Senator Clinton, who we know and dislike.

It's that last point that's the kicker -- we know Senator Clinton and thus wouldn't elect her president. As I mentioned before, Senator Obama is a socialist. In order to get elected, in fact, in order to get the Democratic nomination, he has to hide that fact from us. So the key for Senator Obama is to run exactly the same campaign Governor-elect Patrick ran. Run from substance, run on "bringing us all together" and "together we can" and "healing the nation's wounds." In 2004, the Democrats decided to run exactly the kind of milquetoast, speak-no-evil primary that would allow Senator Obama to scoot to victory without anyone challenging him to stake out actual positions. If they decide to do the same thing next year, I don't see any reason why Obama-fever won't sweep the nation.

Happy New Year

New Year is our chance to start anew. Do something different this year. I'm planning to.

Falling Down

Although I don't often blog about it, I make it a point to keep abreast of the 9/11 denier community. 9/11 denial has a little bit of everything. It is hilarious, it is sad, it is frustrating and it is infuriating. It reminds me of the limitations of reason and rational argument. It even gives me faith: 9/11 denial has been roundly rejected by Democratic Underground, which can even be the source of excellent rebuttals.

Today, I ran across an especially good example of the complete irrationality and lack of insight that characterize the deniers. The blogger at Humint [sic] Events Online is a no-planer. That means that he knows that no planes were flown into the towers. What he's not sure of is how the towers were brought down. He has narrowed it down to five possibilities:

1. the towers were pre-built with demolitions embedded in them for future re-activation

2. the towers were loaded up internally with essentially conventional explosives

3. the towers were taken out by a few extremely powerful bombs, such as mini-nukes

4. the towers were demolished by some external force, such as a directed energy beam

5. the towers were demolished by a combination of the above

What makes this perfect is his reaction to Saddam's execution:

I'm just saying the conspiracy theories will flourish unless extremely good quality video of the execution is shown.

Because of course conspiracy theories are impossible if an event is captured on live video.

Worthy Canadian Initiative

Today, we welcome Peter Burnet and his blog Diversely We Sail to our links and to our list of daily reads.

Come Right In

Last Minute Darwin Award Nominee

Hip-Hop Car Stunt Leaves 2 Dead (Garance Burke, AP, 12/29/06)

"Ghost riding the whip" - a stunt in which a driver gets out of his car and dances around and on top of the slowly moving vehicle to a thumping hip-hop beat - has gotten at least two people killed, led to numerous injuries and alarmed police on the West Coast and beyond.

Apparently, the answer to the question, "If the song lyrics told you to jump off a bridge, would you?" is yes.

A Cautionary Tale

In this December 15 story, the New York Times reported that the head of Morgan Stanley was slated to receive a $40 million bonus for 2006. They didn't report some other numbers of interest: that Morgan Stanley's income had increased 26% to $33 billion, that it reserved nearly $3.5 billion for taxes, that its net income increased by 46% to 7.4 billion, that it spent $14.4 billion on compensation and benefits and that John Mack, its CEO had refused any bonus the year before.

In any event, the Times comment section is now filled with some of the most ignorant commentary on the web, mostly attacking but also supporting Mr. Mack's bonus. Surprisingly, though, the stupidest comment of all is not hard to detect. It jumps right off that page. Less than 90 minutes after the story was posted, "jb" delivered him or herself of this gem:

That’s great! Now he can go out and buy shoes for the maintenance workers’ children. CEO’s should not make more than 10 times the lowest paid worker in their firm!

And we wonder why ten million young muslim men are angry?

This put me in mind of one of my least favorite leftist tactics: that some emergency requires us all to sacrifice by -- what an amazing coincidence -- adopting the preexisting lefty political platform wholesale. (Sometimes we see the right do this, too, but must less often.) This can be seen most clearly when it comes to global warming. To save the planet, we must all sacrifice by nationalizing everything, reducing our population, reducing our economy, etc., etc., etc. Here, the war on terror requires us to limit CEO compensation. It's just happenstance that the left has wanted to do this for decades, anyway.

This is related to the need to believe (as AOG recently noted) that we are in control and our enemies are all ciphers. The Islamists are not committed to our destruction. They're just mad at income inequality. All we need to do is punish some people we hate anyway (CEOs, not murderous barbarians who shoot back) and we can solve this pesky terror problem.

Why Is There A "Their" They're

Does anyone else find, when on a typing jag, that their mind inserts a random "there," "their" or "they're" regardless of which of the homonyms is actually required?

Well Done, Good And Faithful Servant

Gerald Ford has died. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a better man we have treated worse than President Ford. He agreed to take on an impossible situation and we then blamed him because the situation was impossible. (To get a sense of just how badly he was treated, go see OJ's memorial post.) That's not to say that some of the criticisms aren't well taken. In particular, Gerald Ford was part of the go-along-to-get-along permanent Republican minority in the House and never managed to shake the mind-set. Far outweighing these lapses, though, was his service to the nation in pardoning Richard Nixon and then taking the heat for that decision.

It is clearly true that it was President Ford's fate to be a lacuna. Yesterday, we were talking about how there could not have been a President Reagan without the hideous Jimmy Carter. In turn, there could not have been a President Carter without the loathsome President Nixon. But it didn't matter, much, who filled the gap between Nixon and Carter. It was our luck (more evidence of American exceptionalism) that an obscure congressmen turned out to be a decent man.

We should also note that the general perception of President Ford as a clumsy dunce was ludicrous; the first, and most successful, example of the modern mainstream media convincing us that their perception was reality.

American Zionism

OJ points us to a fascinating Michael Oren column posted at Opinion Journal setting forth the history of American Zionism, starting in colonial times. Mr. Oren also makes a point that can't be made too often: in this, as in so much else, Jimmy Carter is unlike his predecessors and successors. How such a limited, delusional, hate-filled man became president is beyond me but the fact that we not only survived but thrived (for without President Carter there never could have been a President Reagan) is yet another sign of American exceptionalism.

Merry Christmas

To those of you who believe in that sort of thing, and to the neo-pagans who don't yet realize that by putting up with the tree and the solstice, the Church will coopt them just as it did their predecessors.

Misguided, But Not Actually Wrong

An Antifederalist essay, from "Montezuma," published in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on October 17, 1787

A CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT IS A TYRANNY

We the Aristocratic party of the United States, lamenting the many inconveniences to which the late confederation subjected the well-born, the better kind of people, bringing them down to the level of the rabble-and holding in utter detestation that frontispiece to every bill of rights, "that all men are born equal"-beg leave (for the purpose of drawing a line between such as we think were ordained to govern, and such as were made to bear the weight of government without having any share in its administration) to submit to our Friends in the first class for their inspection, the following defense of our monarchical, aristocratical democracy.

lst. As a majority of all societies consist of men who (though totally incapable of thinking or acting in governmental matters) are more readily led than driven, we have thought meet to indulge them in something like a democracy in the new constitution, which part we have designated by the popular name of the House of Representatives. But to guard against every possible danger from this lower house, we have subjected every bill they bring forward, to the double negative of our upper house and president. Nor have we allowed the populace the right to elect their representatives annually . . . lest this body should be too much under the influence and control of their constituents, and thereby prove the "weatherboard of our grand edifice, to show the shiftings of every fashionable gale,"-for we have not yet to learn that little else is wanting to aristocratize the most democratical representative than to make him somewhat independent of his political creators. We have taken away that rotation of appointment which has so long perplexed us-that grand engine of popular influence. Every man is eligible into our government from time to time for life. This will have a two-fold good effect. First, it prevents the representatives from mixing with the lower class, and imbibing their foolish sentiments, with which they would have come charged on re-election.

2d. They will from the perpetuality of office be under our eye, and in a short time will think and act like us, independently of popular whims and prejudices. For the assertion "that evil communications corrupt good manners," is not more true than its reverse. We have allowed this house the power to impeach, but we have tenaciously reserved the right to try. We hope gentlemen, you will see the policy of this clause-for what matters it who accuses, if the accused is tried by his friends. In fine, this plebian house will have little power, and that little be rightly shaped by our house of gentlemen, who will have a very extensive influence-from their being chosen out of the genteeler class ... It is true, every third senatorial seat is to be vacated duennually, but two-thirds of this influential body will remain in office, and be ready to direct or (if necessary) bring over to the good old way, the young members, if the old ones should not be returned. And whereas many of our brethren, from a laudable desire to support their rank in life above the commonalty, have not only deranged their finances, but subjected their persons to indecent treatment (as being arrested for debt, etc.) we have framed a privilege clause, by which they may laugh at the fools who trusted them. But we have given out, that this clause was provided, only that the members might be able without interruption, to deliberate on the important business of their country.

We have frequently endeavored to effect in our respective states, the happy discrimination which pervades this system; but finding we could not bring the states into it individually, we have determined ... and have taken pains to leave the legislature of each free and independent state, as they now call themselves, in such a situation that they will eventually be absorbed by our grand continental vortex, or dwindle into petty corporations, and have power over little else than yoaking hogs or determining the width of cart wheels. But (aware that an intention to annihilate state legislatures, would be objected to our favorite scheme) we have made their existence (as a board of electors) necessary to ours. This furnishes us and our advocates with a fine answer to any clamors that may be raised on this subject. We have so interwoven continental and state legislatures that they cannot exist separately; whereas we in truth only leave them the power of electing us, for what can a provincial legislature do when we possess the exclusive regulation of external and internal commerce, excise, duties, imposts, post-offices and roads; when we and we alone, have the power to wage war, make peace, coin money (if we can get bullion) if not, borrow money, organize the militia and call them forth to execute our decrees, and crush insurrections assisted by a noble body of veterans subject to our nod, which we have the power of raising and keeping even in the time of peace. What have we to fear from state legislatures or even from states, when we are armed with such powers, with a president at our head? (A name we thought proper to adopt in conformity to the prejudices of a silly people who are so foolishly fond of a Republican government, that we were obliged to accommodate in names and forms to them, in order more effectually to secure the substance of our proposed plan; but we all know that Cromwell was a King, with the title of Protector). I repeat it, what have we to fear armed with such powers, with a president at our head who is captain- -general of the army, navy and militia of the United States, who can make and unmake treaties, appoint and commission ambassadors and other ministers, who can grant or refuse reprieves or pardons, who can make judges of the supreme and other continental courts-in short, who will be the source, the fountain of honor, profit and power, whose influence like the rays of the sun, will diffuse itself far and wide, will exhale all democratical vapors and break the clouds of popular insurrection? But again gentlemen, our judicial power is a strong work, a masked battery, few people see the guns we can and will ere long play off from it. For the judicial power embraces every question which can arise in law or equity, under this constitution and under the laws of "the United States" (which laws will be, you know, the supreme laws of the land). This power extends to all cases, affecting ambassadors or other public ministers, "and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States; between a State and citizens of another State; between citizens of different States; between citizens of the same State, claiming lands under grants of different States; and between a State or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens or subjects."

Now, can a question arise in the colonial courts, which the ingenuity or sophistry of an able lawyer may not bring within one or other of the above cases? Certainly not. Then our court will have original or appellate jurisdiction in all cases-and if so, how fallen are state judicatures-and must not every provincial law yield to our supreme flat? Our constitution answers yes. . . . And finally we shall entrench ourselves so as to laugh at the cabals of the commonalty. A few regiments will do at first; it must be spread abroad that they are absolutely necessary to defend the frontiers. Now a regiment and then a legion must be added quietly; by and by a frigate or two must be built, still taking care to intimate that they are essential to the support of our revenue laws and to prevent smuggling. We have said nothing about a bill of rights, for we viewed it as an eternal clog upon our designs, as a lock chain to the wheels of government-though, by the way, as we have not insisted on rotation in our offices, the simile of a wheel is ill. We have for some time considered the freedom of the press as a great evil-it spreads information, and begets a licentiousness in the people which needs the rein more than the spur; besides, a daring printer may expose the plans of government and lessen the consequence of our president and senate-for these and many other reasons we have said nothing with respect to the "right of the people to speak and publish their sentiments" or about their "palladiums of liberty" and such stuff. We do not much like that sturdy privilege of the people-the right to demand the writ of habeas corpus. We have therefore reserved the power of refusing it in cases of rebellion, and you know we are the judges of what is rebellion.... Our friends we find have been assiduous in representing our federal calamities, until at length the people at large-frightened by the gloomy picture on one side, and allured by the prophecies of some of our fanciful and visionary adherents on the other-are ready to accept and confirm our proposed government without the delay or forms of examination--which was the more to be wished, as they are wholly unfit to investigate the principles or pronounce on the merit of so exquisite a system.

Impressed with a conviction that this constitution is calculated to restrain the influence and power of the LOWER CLASS-to draw that discrimination we have so long sought after; to secure to our friends privileges and offices, which were not to be ... [obtained] under the former government, because they were in common; to take the burden of legislation and attendance on public business off the commonalty, who will be much better able thereby to prosecute with effect their private business; to destroy that political thirteen headed monster, the state sovereignties; to check the licentiousness of the people by making it dangerous to speak or publish daring or tumultuary sentiments; to enforce obedience to laws by a strong executive, aided by military pensioners; and finally to promote the public and private interests of the better kind of people-we submit it to your judgment to take such measures for its adoption as you in your wisdom may think fit.

Signed by unanimous order of the lords spiritual and temporal.

One Good Carol Deserves Another (But All I Could Afford Was This Dreck).

For Brit, Duck and Skipper:

We three Dunnoist bloggers are;
On Christmas we sit at the bar,
Gin and tonic, so ironic,
Rubbishing Jehovah.

Refrain:

O stars of gases, fusion displays,
Stars, a source of gamma rays,
Nowhere leading, us unheeding,
Wholly natural displays.

Born a primate on Africa’s veldt
Born a monkey without a pelt,
Despite endeavor, die forever,
Even in the Bible belt.

Refrain

Received wisdom I decry,
My own reason I live by.
Prayer and praising, just navel gazing,
Better to worship π.

Refrain

Religions are all the same to me,
Just an excuse for bigotry,
Hating, lying, killing, dying,
Blinding the bourgeoisie.

Refrain

Glorious now behold Us rise;
From the muck we’ve made us wise.
Alleluia, Alleluia,
We deserve the Nobel Prize.

Refrain.

Without The Umbrella, It's Completely Different

David Zucker takes on the Iraq Study Group:

That's Embarrassing

British Lord Stings Senators Rockefeller and Snowe: 'Uphold Free Speech or Resign' (PRNewswire, 12/18/06)

Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists. [Lord Monckton's letter is here]...

Concludes Lord Monckton, "I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer- reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call 'disastrous' and 'calamitous' consequences."

It's not quite the Germans advising us on morality, but it's still embarrassing.

My Skepticism Melts Like Snow In December

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but it is harder to maintain my anthropogenic global warming skepticism when I'm about to go walk the dog in a tee shirt because its 50 degrees F at 9:30 am on December 18.

On the other hand, trying to convince me that agw is a bad thing is just getting harder and harder.

Harry Gives Me A Hanukkah Present

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Harry Eagar left this comment:

As long as there are demands to 'put Christ back in Christmas,' it is obvious that Christmas is BOTH religious and non-religious (or irreligious). It's a free country -- take your choice.

I'm an atheist, but I celebrate Christmas. I like the sentiments that have accumulated around it, even if some (though not many) Christians share them.

Harry's comment drew this comment:

Precisely. As one more data point, my wife and I are both atheists, and we very much enjoy our Christmas tree. It was a pagan holiday before it was coopted by Christians, and for us, it retains a great deal of beauty as a celebration of the arrival of winter and of gift giving.

I couldn't have asked for a nicer proof of my thesis that American atheists are functionally Christian.

Thanks, Harry. I'll try to find a story about mean religious people for you.

That Didn't Last Long

I did want to leave a pointer to this discussion in the Telegraph of what it would take for British Ex-pats to return. I was surprised that so many of those who left appear to be Tories, although that might simply be the Telegraph readership.

Real Life Intrudes

I probably won't be posting here again until Sunday or Monday. Have a Happy Hanukkah, everyone.

And Swimmers Get Wetter Compared To A Control Group

The New York Times Magazine tells us, in its annual Ideas issue, that women gain wait once they've found a long-term male companion:

For every woman who complains about how messy her new live-in boyfriend is, add a new concern: his effect on her health. Dietitians have found that women tend to gain weight once they move in with male partners. "Living with a male seemed to put pressure on females to consume more of the 'unhealthy' choices," Amelia Lake, a research fellow at the Newcastle University Human Nutrition Research Center in Britain, wrote this year in the journal Complete Nutrition, "while females had a positive influence on the diets of the males."

I don't generally object to scientific studies just because they confirm something that has been obvious for centuries if not millenia. After all, even the most seemingly obvious fact can benefit from careful study and some scientific rigor. The real problem with this study (single women are more careful about their weight) is the explanation: men force unhealthy diets on their mates. Poor women, just putty in the hands of men.

The Divine Science

UN downgrades man's impact on the climate (Richard Gray, Sunday Telegraph, 12/10/06)

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.

Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.

Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming....

The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in.

It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun.

New science scares, like any cult, start out with an Apocalypse and end with a whimper, so this was entirely predictable. On the other hand, it warms my soul to know that the direct cause of the current warming has been air pollution laws and anti-CFC laws. None of the warmists, though, will find any relevant lesson there.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

We watched this movie at home tonight, because we both had fond, albeit vague, memories of it. As it turns out, the movie is dreadful. What were we thinking? In order to find out, I went and looked up Roger Ebert's review of the movie. Ebert liked it, but his description might as well be of some other movie entirely. Ebert always gets something wrong about the movie, writing in the dark apparently not being one of his talents. This time, however, he bollixed up the entire film and ends up reviewing a film that was not made. Oddly, the movie as reviewed would likely not have been any better.

Jeane Kirkpatrick Died Yesterday

From the AP:

Kirkpatrick was known as a blunt and sometimes acerbic advocate for her causes. She remained involved in public issues even though she'd left government service two decades ago. She joined seven other former U.N. ambassadors in 2005 in writing a letter to Congress telling lawmakers that their plan to withhold dues to force reform at the world body was misguided and would "create resentment, build animosity and actually strengthen opponents of reform."

It is hard to explain, today, how important Jeane Kirkpatrick was to the intellectual victory of what is now known as Reaganism. Reagan was dismissed as a fool who offered only simple answers to complex questions; as someone who ignored the truths obvious to the smarter, more subtle professionals. Kirkpatrick hit those people over the head with the truth until they said "Uncle."

The sweetest part of Ronald Reagan's funeral, for those of us who were conservatives in the 80s, was the Democrats' pretense that we were all anti-communists together. What greater victory can there be then when your opponents claim to have been with you all the way? The victory was, in large measure, Jeane Kirkpatrick's doing.

A Bullet, Dodged

In a new installment of its informal, never-ending series, "Oh, That Wacky Internet," the New York Times investigates the pressure to be witty when declining an evite:

Just last week Carolyn Fitzpatrick, 32, a retired lawyer from Wollaston, Mass., spent 20 minutes drafting a "no" response to an Evite.

"Twenty precious minutes," said Ms. Fitzpatrick, the mother of a 3-month-old and a 2-year-old. "Do you have children? You don’t understand what 20 minutes to yourself is."

So why bother?

"There’s pressure," Ms. Fitzpatrick said. "You’re on stage."

Her Evite reply had to indicate she was glad to have been invited. It had to illustrate she had good reason for not attending. Most of all, it had to be so witty that invitees she did not even know would find themselves wishing she was coming to the party....

And so she wrote: "With a boatload of in-laws in town, I unfortunately will be doing nice nice in my own home when I’d much rather be doing eggnog shooters at yours. Please keep us on the guest list. With luck, I won’t be pregnant, traveling or hosting extended family who hate me next year! (Bah Humbug.)"

Witty.

Don't You Love It When Jokes Come To Life?

Two Jews were marooned on a desert island. One year later, when they were rescued, the rescuers found three synagogues. They asked one of the Jews why two marooned men needed three synagogues.

"I've got mine, he's got his, and we're both boycotting that son-of-a-bitch on the hill."

Today's New York Times notes that Conservative Judaism has now decided that gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies are legal, and illegal:

The highest legal body in Conservative Judaism, the centrist movement in worldwide Jewry, voted yesterday to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies....

But in a reflection of the divisions in the movement, the 25 rabbis on the law committee passed three conflicting legal opinions — one in favor of gay rabbis and unions, and two against.

In doing so, the committee left it up to individual synagogues to decide whether to accept or reject gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies, saying that either course is justified according to Jewish law.

I come down gingerly on the side of allowing gay Rabbis and commitment ceremonies, although I can't even fool myself into thinking that, by doing so, we are following Jewish law. A Rabbi is not like a Priest or even a Minister. He is a teacher of Jewish law, and a guide to living a Jewish life among the goyim, but he does not mediate my relationship with G-d. Whether he is a sinner (and he is, since we all are) is his business, not mine, other than in how it effects my willingness to take his advice.

Commitment ceremonies, on the other hand, are just flummery. If I thought about it too hard I might be bothered by using our most sacred symbols in this way. But the point of the Temple is to promote a Jewish community and identity within the majority culture, which necessarily involves some flummery. Nothing to see here, people, just keep moving.

[I don't know how odd the Committee's action will seem to non-Jews. It is fairly common in conservative Judaism for the prayer books to contain multiple versions of various prayers, from which the Temple's Ritual Committee or the individual congregant can choose. There are, for example, traditional versions and gender-neutral versions. Mostly, I like the gender-neutral versions better]

From The BrothersJudd Archives: KINGS NEVER HAVE A SECOND INAUGURAL (Via The Corner)

The Left's war on Britishness (Anthony Browne, The Spectator, 7/23/05)

The terrorist attacks of 7 July, as the ludicrous BBC refuses to call them, have raised many questions. We might ask what turned ordinary Muslim youths into mass murderers. Or we might wonder how a religion of peace can inspire people to terrorism across the world.

A more pressing question, however, is: why Britain? Not why was Britain attacked, because the list of countries targeted by Islamist terrorism is growing so fast it will soon be quicker to list those unaffected. But rather: why did Britain become the first country in the developed world to produce its own suicide bombers? Why is Britain just about the only country in the world to have produced suicide bombers who sought to kill not another people but their fellow citizens? Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland were all part of the war on Iraq, and have not produced suicide bombers. The US and Spain had to import their terrorists. For those who think that Muslims in Britain are particularly oppressed and poor, try visiting Muslims in France or Italy. . . .

No, the real answer to why Britain spawned people fuelled with maniacal hate for their country is that Britain hates itself. In hating Britain, these British suicide bombers were as British as a police warning for flying the union flag.

Britain's self-loathing is deep, pervasive and lethally dangerous. We get bombed, and we say it's all our own fault. Schools refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud, and use it instead as a means of instilling liberal guilt. The government and the BBC gush over 'the other', but recoil at the merest hint of British culture. The only thing we are licensed to be proud of is London's internationalism; in other words, that there is little British left about it.

If a society teaches its children that their own culture is bankrupt, that it is built on lies and the blood of the other, that it is selfish and bloated and corrupt, then how does can it object when those children agree?

Obviously, I'm not talking about Britain.

If you read enough about the 50's and 60's, particularly biographies but also fiction, a shared experience emerges. The radical as a child has a pure love for this country, which he learns in school is good and just; the greatest country in history. He then goes on to college and discovers (either through his own brave exploration or with the help of a brave truth-telling teacher) that in fact nothing he was taught in kindergarten was true and in fact our history is stained with sin from conception. Never the same again, he fights the reactionary forces for control of the country in order to establish true justice. Also, he doesn't want to be killed in Viet Nam.

Becoming a radical because history is more subtle than is presented in kindergarten is easy to mock. To teach, in reaction, that America is tainted, unexceptional and hypocritical is not just wrong, but suicidal. Yet we can't ignore our history. The native peoples were destroyed. Many of the Founders were slaveholders. The Constitution is a pact with the devil. There is a different justice for the rich. We are war-mongers.

The trick is to understand that this does not change the essential truth. The United States is the great achievement of humanity. We are the indispensable nation. We are exceptional, just and true. Our history is everything we are taught in kindergarten, and everything we learn afterwards. The United States is the most human of nations, with everything that implies. We need to face that much of what our enemies say about us is true -- which should make us proud and them nervous.

(Originally posted July 22, 2005)

A Market Kind Of Guy

If you follow the link to Paul Krugman's latest column, you run up against the Times Select firewall. It let's you see only the first line of the column: "The odds are very good that 2007 will be a very tough year." The Times hopes that this taste will get you to sign up for Times Select, but, really, what more do you need? 2007 may well be a tough year; I'm agnostic. But Paul Krugman is like the market: he's predicted 8 of the last 2 recessions, including one for each year George Bush has been in office.