People Care What The Voters Think?

All the cool kids are discussing voting and irrational voters and the fact that no single vote ever decides anything. (I once had a law professor who put it this way: My chances of getting hit by lightening while walking to the polling place is greater than the chance that my vote will matter, so voting is suicidal.) These discussions seem to break down into two different positions, both of which I always thought were platitudes: that the people decide things correctly and that the point of voting is to make sure that your point of view wins.

The point of voting is to create and demonstrate the consent of the governed to the legitimacy of the government.

The idea that the people, through voting, can pick out the best policy on some complicated technical issue is just nuts. I believe in the special providence, but I don't think we're supposed to rely on it to that extent. The voters are good, though by no means perfect, at choosing the better person but, more often than not, the issues we think are important in the run up to the election are not the issues that we end up obsessing over during the term. No one asked Bush or Gore what they would do after terrorists flew hijacked airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Immigration was an issue in the 2004, but not much of one. And, as my law professor pointed out, the outcome is going to be the same regardless of whether I vote.

Massachusetts Runs The Experiment

As we argue past each other on immigration, it's worth noting that Massachusetts, and the northeastern states generally, have run the experiment that the anti-immigrationists use for their horror of horrors. We have close to our shore a large population of Spanish speaking people, relatively poor and relatively less educated, who have a right to move freely into the Commonwealth and a right to receive immediately any welfare benefit available to those born in the United States. The trick, of course, is that this population was born in the United States -- in Puerto Rico. Nonetheless, Massachusetts boasts a per capita income higher than the US average and Puerto Ricans in Massachusetts, though they make, on average, less than other citizens in the Commonwealth, make much more than Puerto Ricans still on the island.

So I Can Refer To It Over At The Daily Duck

The yield curve on US Treasuries as of 5/25/07.

This chart shows the 6 month, 1, 2 and 3 year rates daily from January 3, 2005 through May 30, 2007. The inversion first occurs at the end of December 2005, widens throughout 2006 and now seems to be closing.

Two Stories In The News

Scientists create remote-controlled pigeon (Via the Daily Duck)

Bush Hit By Bird Droppings At News Conference

We report. You decide.

Old Arguments

I've noticed on a couple of blogs arguments about Florida 2000. This seems odd to me, unless agents from Gore 2008 have been lurking in blog comments, but what's bothersome is that even the basic facts don't seem to be accepted.

1. Al Gore won the popular vote.

2. More Floridians woke up on election day intending to vote for Al Gore.

3. More Floridians actually voted for George Bush.

This Is Why This Blog Is Secret

I am often asked, as I fantasize about being asked questions about the blog, why "secret." What is secret about the blog? One answer is that I don't worry about whether anyone, other than fantasy interlocutors, care about what I write.

So, what do I think about the immigration bill?

As long time friends of the blog know, I'm pro-immigration. We don't have nearly enough immigrants and should take more by an order of magnitude. In fact, we do -- we just pretend that we don't want them here. The downside of this arrangement is that we don't have control of who crosses our borders. In the midst of a assymetric war in which the enemy purposely targets civilian populations, control of the border would be a nice thing to have.

But here we have completely confused two different issues. We could have much better control of the border with much more immigration, if we spent resources on the border while changing the immigration laws to welcome immigrants. That's the law I want but not the law I'm getting. I would prefer the status quo to the proposed bill, and I might get that. But even if the bill passes, I won't be too upset; it will be a failure and not much will change, but the current illegals will be legal.

Also, it's always worth remembering that the 9/11 terrorists entered the country legally. Perfect control of the Mexican border would have made no difference at all.

Not To Step On Brit's Toes ...

... but "And sniff me out like I was tanqueray" is a ludicrously good lyric.

You Know I’m No Good Lyrics

And I Thought That I Was Good At Procrastinating

When I posted below about US carbon emissions falling last year, I refrained from making fun of John Kerry. After all, what's the point? But his quote from the article has been bugging me and I finally figured out why:

"This is more proof that this President just doesn't get it when it comes to combating climate change," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a statement yesterday. "The house is on fire, and he's trying to douse the flames with a watering can. The science tells us that we need to reduce our emissions by 60-80% by 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic damage."

Now, let's say that you were a United States Senator, your party's last nominee for President and married to a billionairess. If you really believed that our only chance to avoid a "catastrophe" was to up-turn civilization in the next 40 years, wouldn't you, you know, do ... something?

Support Our Moonbats

James Taranto points us to this utterly obtuse comment on the Democrat's cave-in on caving-in by a proponent of a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq:

Some activists had privately feared that Democratic leaders were losing their resolve to stage a protracted fight with the White House over wartime funding. Pelosi had announced earlier that the House would not leave for the Memorial Day recess without a new funding bill, a signal to some of a looming defeat.

"When they put out that deadline, people realized that we were going to lose," said an aide to an anti-war lawmaker. "Everything after that seemed like posturing."

If setting a deadline in Iraq is supporting our troops by getting them out of a war they can't win, what does this mean?

Quotas Can Be Good

Having spent too much time on why quotas for women are not needed and a bad idea, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I strongly favor affirmative action for blacks for the reasons expressed by Richard Posner here. Even so, quotas would be a bad idea. Note that this is consistent with my long-time objection to institutional feminism, which is that it is a tool of white backlash against black advancement.

If Only All Problems Were This Intractable

The government announced yesterday that US carbon dioxide emissions fell last year despite a growing economy. The reasons, according to President Bush:

"We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong economic investment," Bush said in a statement. "New policies at the federal, state, and local levels -- such as my initiative to reduce by 20 percent our projected use of gasoline within 10 years -- promise even more progress." A number of factors helped reduce emissions last year, according to the government, including weather conditions that reduced heating and air-conditioning use, higher gasoline prices that caused consumers to conserve, and a greater overall reliance on natural gas. [Emphasis added]

In other words, global warming results in a more temperate climate that reduces energy consumption.

The Horror

Forget your flooding, your droughts, your famines. Forget your polar ice caps. We now see the real horror of global warming:

Britain's astounding April, the warmest on record, has produced an astounding effect in the natural world, with at least 11 species of butterfly making their earliest recorded appearances this spring in what will be seen as the most remarkable demonstration yet of the effects of climate change on Britain's wildlife.

For several years biologists have been watching warming temperatures affect living organisms, with leaves opening, birds nesting and insects emerging earlier. But what has happened in 2007 with butterflies has been quite exceptional....

Butterfly Conservation's experts are confident that only global warming can explain the changes. "Butterfly data, collected by hundreds of UK recorders, definitely points to climate change," Mr Warren said. "Species are not only emerging early, but several species are extending their geographic range northwards. The small skipper, the comma and the holly blue butterflies have all crossed the border into Scotland in the past few years, very probably as a result of the changing climate."

When will the Sheeple awake to this catastrophe?

Positioning

If abortion law settles down to on-demand in the first trimester for women who are of age, otherwise only with parental consent, and not allowed thereafter except where the pregnancy threatens physical harm to the mother or in cases of rape or incest, is that a pro-life result or a pro-choice result?

Quotas?

Over at Daily Duck, Oroborous has come out in favor of quotas for government employees. The main focus of the post, based upon recent doings in France, is quotas for women. I was going to respond in the comments, but then realized that formatting was involved.

I'm not sure that there's much of a problem here that needs fixing. According to BLS, in 2004 there were 6,365,000 civilian government employees in the US, 45.7 of whom were female. Here's a detailed breakdown:


In 2004, the non-institutionalized, civilian population was 50.7% female and the civilian workforce was 46.5% female. So, compared to the total civilian workforce, women are slightly overrepresented in the government and, compared to the population, they are slightly underrepresented. I just don't see that there's much to be accomplished by quota hiring.

This is especially true since there are at least two costs to quota hiring. First, although there are things that the government must do that the private sector is forbidden (taking land without consent, killing, armed raids into homes, etc.), there isn't a sufficient trade-off here to compensate for having the government discriminate against men. In fact, since private citizens have at least a notional right of association and the government doesn't, having the government discriminate and the private sector forbidden to discriminate is backwards.

Second, quotas in practice mean that the best person is not chosen for each job. Incompetent public servants impose costs on the rest of us. Dealing with the government is unpleasant and costs more. Those costs hit women as much as men. In fact, because women are a greater percentage of the population, they hit women more often then men. So government hiring quotas (like all quotas) will harm those they are meant to aid.

How Many Voters?

Prodded by a comment from Steve Sailer in my Immigration Footnote post, I wanted to look at the number of voters per Congressional district after the federal government was established. I wasn't able to find any pre-20th century election results on-line. The earliest results I could find were from 1920, as kept by the Clerk of the House. In 1920, the population of the US was 106 million and the House had reached its modern size of 435 Representatives. On average, each Representative had 240,000 constituents. In the 1913 reapportionment, each District was meant to have 212,000 constituents.

As one would expect, the number of voters was lowest in the South. I assume that this was due mostly to limits on the franchise, although it could also be that there was no real contest since only Democrats won in the South. In any event, the lowest number of voters came in the Third District of Louisiana, which elected WP Martin (Dem) unopposed (all of Louisiana's Representatives were elected unopposed) with 4201 votes. That is approximately 2% of his constituents.

At the other extreme, Representative Cleveland A. Newton (Rep) was elected from Missouri's Tenth District with 122,100 votes out of 199,729 cast.

Two other 1920 races are worth mentioning. In California's Tenth District, Republican Henry Z. Osborne beat Socialist Upton Sinclair 97,469 to 20,439.

Also, from 1913 through 1923, Pennsylvania had a number of at-large Congressional districts along with its 32 geographically defined districts. I believe, although I can't quite prove, that the top four at-large vote getters, Republicans who got between 1,140,836 and 1,108,538 votes, were elected to Congress from the 33rd through 36th Districts. Frankly, I did not know that a mixture of at-large and geographic districts was possible (it was apparently the result of a refusal or inability to redistrict after the 1910 census). However, this year Democrats are trying to expand the House by two seats, one to be elected from the District of Columbia and the other to be a fourth District in Utah to be elected at-large until the next redistricting in 2012. The bill has passed the House but without sufficient support to overturn a veto. The bill is still in committee in the Senate, but opponents claim that they can successfully filibuster it. The Bush Administration has suggested (but not promised) that it will veto the bill if it reaches the President's desk.

"Dickey: France's Crusading Foreign Minister"

If you ever read Slate, you might have noticed how, in the right hand margin, they have headlines from The Onion, the Washington Post and Newsweek. Have you ever noticed, though, that at first glance it can be hard to tell which headline comes from which source?

Two Good Lessons

Smarter people earn more but aren't worth more:

Pop quiz! What factors help determine how wealthy you'll become in life? ... Ohio State economics professor Jay Zagorsky suggests different factors: "Staying married, not getting divorced, thinking about savings." Wow.

Not only did he not list intelligence, he went on to note that "intelligence really isn't one of the key driving forces. In fact, people at the middle of the smarts spectrum have the fewest money problems."

When I read about his findings from a study of 7,500 middle-aged Americans, I was surprised. It seems that the smarter you are, the more you tend to earn. For each IQ point you have above someone else's IQ, you'll earn between $200 and $600 more. As an example, he noted that someone with an IQ of 130 stands to make (on average) about $12,000 more per year than someone with an IQ of 100.

That's a promising start. We who are smarter than the average bear (I'm including myself and you) would reasonably assume, then, that smarter people would end up wealthier. But that was not suggested by the study. Instead, people with higher IQs and incomes tended to spend more, maxing out credit cards and paying bills late. At the end of the day, those with lower IQs often had a greater net worth.

1. Although we tend to confuse the two (and by "we" I mean those with a hankering for social engineering), income and wealth are two different concepts and are not as related as we think.

2. By intelligence we mean a talent for a few specific pursuits. Those are not necessarily the most important pursuits and they don't necessarily lead to happiness. Just as income is not wealth, intelligence is not wisdom.

An Immigration Footnote

In all the current foofaraw over immigration and whether it favors Republicans or Democrats, there is a point that I haven't yet seen made. The argument tends to focus on which party Latino citizens will vote for. But that is only relevant in the long term. In the short term and probably in the medium term, immigration favors the Republicans and, even more so, conservatives.

The Constitution does not apportion Congressional districts or presidential electors among the state based upon the number of citizens. It apportions districts and electors based upon the total population:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Article I, Section 2. "Free persons" includes immigrants, both legal and illegal but no State allows non-citizens to vote.

In other words, immigration increases the relative power of high-immigrant states without changing the electorate. With the exception of California, the states favored by immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, are Republican states. Moreover, although illegal immigrants count towards apportionment now, counting people legally in the country is much easier and more accurate than counting illegals. So legalization, greater immigration and even continued illegal immigration will necessarily increase Republican power in the federal government in the short term.

The medium term point is more subtle and less certain. Even after newly legalized immigrants become citizens and they and their children start to vote, the Republicans can still benefit even if they tend to vote Democratic. (Obviously, the Republicans benefit if the new citizens vote Republican.)

In the 2004 election, a historically high 44% of Latinos voted for George Bush. (This number is somewhat controversial, but is the best number available.) The Latino split between the parties is all over the place over time, but the Latino Republican vote varies between 20% and 40%. (Interestingly, the two Republican nominees who did best among Latinos are the two most conservative modern candidates, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.) People look at these numbers and think that this means that Latino immigration is great for Democrats. But that's because they don't think it through.

For purposes of this example, I'm going to look at the Texas vote in 2004 and assume that a Republican nominee with any chance at all will receive 40% of the Texan Latino vote. The point I'm making, however, doesn't depend upon the exact percentages and the following calculations can be run for any state and any percentage without changing the point. In 2004, George Bush got approximately 60% of the Texas vote. W beat John Kerry in Texas by 1.7 million votes and, because electoral votes in most states are winner take all, W got all of Texas' 34 electoral votes. Even if there had been 1.5 million more Latino Kerry votes, W still would have won the state and all of its electors. In fact, he would have won it handily, because 1.5 million more Kerry votes implies (assuming our 60/40 split) 1 million more Bush voters and a margin of 1.2 million votes. It's not until we add 7 million more Latino voters, 4.2 million voting for Kerry and 2.8 million voting for Bush, that Kerry even comes close to catching Bush. Very conservatively, 7 million more Latino voters implies 12-15 million new Latino citizens. Now, remember that the states currently get a new Congressional district and a new elector for every 650,000 people in the state. Suddenly, George Bush is not getting 34 electors for having won 60% of the Texas vote. He's getting 50-ish electors for having won just over 50% of the Texas vote. Moreover, because the vote for Representatives is also winner-take-all within each district, it is a good bet that most of the new Congressional districts also have a Republican congressman. If the Republicans can pick up even two or three net Congressional seats in each of the border states, they will have a lock on the House for the foreseeable future.

This specific example is ludicrously favorable to the Republicans. At this point, we've more or less doubled the Texas electorate and increased the population by 50%. George Bush is a Texas native son and did better among Latinos than any other Republican is likely to do for a while. But the general point should be clear: because of the way Congressional districts are apportioned; because of winner-take-all; because the Republican party is strong in the border states, immigration will aid Republicans in the short term and probably in the medium term even if new Latino citizens vote strongly Democratic.

In the long term, of course, we're all dead.

Addenda:

1. I've run the numbers for hypothetical state "T" with a population of 23,000,000, a voter to population rate of .35 that is consistent over all population sub-groups, a current Republican/Democrat split of 55/45 and a new Latino voter Republican/Democrat split of 20/80. In T, the Republicans will still squeak out a victory with an additional 1.3 million Latino voters. That implies a population increase of 3.7 million Latino "persons" and, thus, five additional Congressional districts and electors.

2. Given the country's overall demographics and given that Congressional apportionment is a zero sum game, the new Southern/Southwestern districts will come at the expense of Northern/Northeastern districts. In other words, each new district Republicans gain from immigration will most likely come at the cost of a Democratic district. Even if Republicans don't gain every new seat and Democrats don't lose every old seat, a shift from the North/Northeast to the South/Southwest would likely be a shift from a more liberal Representative to a more conservative Representative, moving the center of Congressional power to the right.

Acting On My Theory That Peter Burnet Drives The Juddosphere

I've posted this at Bryan Appleyard's blog.

You'd Think They'd Have The Decency To Volunteer

Via a comment at Bryan Appleyard's blog, I came to this post at a Canadian blog. In sum, the author proves that there are four or five billion more people on the planet than the planet can support long-term. It seems that there is going to have to be a massive die-off over the next 70 years so that we can get back down to the billion or so that rational people understand to be the proper population. This is not in any way a call to action. The time for action has already passed and, of course, since the carrying capacity of the planet is a scientific fact -- scientific, I tell you -- there's nothing to be done.

It's hard to say what's most endearing about this nonsense. The reduction of human population to a function with just one input (oil) is certainly striking. Apparently, once oil was discovered, the internal combustion engine, miracle drugs, increased food yields, better nutrition, etc., was a done deal.

There is also a certain endearing smugness from the Canadian commenters about the fact that they have plenty of oil and may be the one country in the world below it's carrying capacity. Because being an underpopulated, resource rich nation with no military to speak of situated just north of the United States just guarantees that Gaia loves them.

But the winner has to be how quickly they turn to Darwin for solace over the deaths of most of the rest of us. (Have I mentioned that they're Canadian and thus safe?) This is just the necessary culling of the herd so that the fittest can survive. A shame and all that, but what can you do?

In Which I Coyly Don't Make An Announcement

Over at the Daily Duck, Oroborous posts on college as a financial investment. His conclusion is that college makes no sense except for those who can go cheaply and study practical subjects. The rest of us should just go to trade school.

On the underlying subject, I find myself torn. College degrees are much too common in the States, where college, at least partially, plays the role high school played in the past and still plays in many nations. As we've recently discussed, college degrees are required for jobs where they simply aren't needed. Non-graduates can do the job just as well.

So I'm open to the idea that our high schools should step up and be more substantive. I'm open to the idea that not every child needs to go to college. I agree that a good trade school education could be better for both society and students than the current system. (I think that there might well be a nice analogy with Affirmative Action lurking around here. Not the least sin of AA is that qualified minority candidates get accepted to more rigorous schools than they would if they didn't receive points for their minority status. That is, after all, the whole point of AA. These students, who would do perfectly well in the schools they would have attended absent AA typically have a very hard time in the schools into which they are affirmatively admitted. Similarly, I've met any number of people who show up every day to an office job they hate rather than the trade job they would love. It only adds insult to injury that the trade jobs can be very well paid these days. According to this story, 37 Massachusetts State Troopers made more than $200,000 last year.)

But I am surprised that this argument is made by Oroborous on the Daily Duck. While it is not true of all bloggers, it is true of many bloggers -- and I think that of the entire post-Judd alliance plus OJ -- that blogging is a sympton of insufficient intellectual stimulation in real life. This seems so self-evident as to be almost definitional -- someone who blogs is someone who gets out of blogging something that he or she wasn't otherwise getting out of life. A sense of community, certainly. An opportunity to socialize with others you almost certainly wouldn't meet otherwise. But most clearly, an outlet for opinions that would otherwise be unexpressed and exposure to ideas that wouldn't otherwise be met.

People who blog, it seems to me, are largely people who should also enjoy college. Reading Shakespeare or studying history may be difficult to justify economically; the return on investment could even be negative. But it's a lot of fun and the rewards (although solipsistic) are real. This is the conclusion I've drawn about my own blogging -- it is a symptom of a real lack of intellectual stimulation.

In fact, based upon my blogging and my conclusions about what blogging means, I've turned my life completely upside down and set my life on a course that is, I think, surprising and completely impossible to justify economically.

Nuh, Uh

The New York Times writes about Leonard Nimoy's (yes, that Leonard Nimoy) latest show of photographs at the R Michaelson Gallery in Northampton. Nimoy's last show was of women posing sensually with Judaica, his new show is of fat nudes. In the course of the article, the owner of the gallery

"I am actually amazed at how little negative reaction there has been," said Mr. Michelson. "I attribute this in part to the gallery setting, and the fact that Northampton, Massachusetts, is perhaps the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the nation."

That isn't even close to true. California, Hawaii, Vermont and Wisconsin are probably more liberal than Massachusetts and Amherst and Cambridge are definitely more liberal than Northampton. People are fooled by the fact that Smith is here and that we have a considerable lesbian population. (Boy, that last phrase was a trap. I had to work my way through "large," "big" and "hefty" before I found considerable in the thesaurus.)

By the way, the most interesting thing in the article is that Nimoy designed the Vulcan handsign to mean, symbolically, G-d.

CNN's Freudian Slip Is Showing

It's Not Stealing, It's A Meme

I liked Monix's morning walk post so much, I decided to steal it. Here's my morning walk:


We start by putting the dog on the leash. Doesn't he look happy?

Then we head down the driveway.











Some of us take short cuts.

We then head up the hill,











and past the new construction going up on the site of an old quarry.







(To Be Continued)

A Walk, Interrupted

(We Continue)


We leave the road and head up Turkey Hill.

Turkey Hill is a big rock covered by a thin earth scrim.











This is the upper quarry, which is being decommissioned.

We watch the big machines for a while,











Then we look out over the valley to the Holyoke Range.

When we've had our fill, we turn around and retrace our steps, letting gravity do the work.

Lamb Chops

Pre-heat oven to 500.

Lay out chops in dark baking pan or on broiling pan.

Sprinkle on garlic salt and rosemary.

Turn chops over, sprinkle on garlic salt and spread Dijon mustard.

Cook at 500 for 4 minutes.

Without removing chops, turn heat down to 350 and cook for 15 minutes.

Eat.

First Hiroshima, Now Global Warming Denial

The Faithful Heretic: A Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions (Dave Hoopman, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News, May 2007)

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.

How Little We Know

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.

“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”...

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

It's A Slamdunk

From Meet the Press with Tim Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: You open the book with these words: "Wednesday, September 12, 2001, dawned as the first full day of a world gone mad. As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing, [I] saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, `Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.' I looked back at Perle and thought: Who has [he] been meeting with in the White House so early in the morning on today of all days?"

Perle yesterday sent MEET THE PRESS this statement: "George Tenet tells his readers that on
September 12," "`today of all days' I told him that Iraq was responsible for the attack of" September 11. "This false claim is an obvious attempt to escape the responsibility for the intelligence failures of the agency he headed. But more important, it shows that even five years later he fails to understand that the decision to remove Saddam was based on the danger posed by Iraq, especially Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction--the certainty of which was repeated in every intelligence report and briefing I received from the CIA and other intelligence agencies. I was out of the country on" September 11,
"unable to return until September 15. When I did run into Mr. Tenet at the White House a week later, we had already concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for" September 11. "I never made the remark Tenet attributes to me, or anything like it."

MR. TENET: We, we, we had not concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for September 11. That conversation may have, may have occurred days later. It is the conversation that I--that, that occurred, and I stand by what happened that day.

MR. RUSSERT: He said those words to you.

MR. TENET: Yes, he did. And so for him to say that we had concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, well, I'd like to know who made that conclusion.

MR. RUSSERT: When you say "yesterday" and "today of all days"?

MR. TENET: Well, Tim, I, I obviously--this is a jumbled, very difficult period of time. I may be off by a few days. What he said seems to be corroborated by what he said to another journalist. Mr. Novak has said he was called on September 17, and Mr. Perle said something like, "Well, aren't enough--there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan; let's go to Iraq.' And it's--it also is corroborative of the fact that he sent a letter to the president on September the 20 that mirrors those feelings. So I may have been off on the day, but I'm not off on what he said and what he believed.

Tease

According to my Snapple cap:

Swimming pools in the US contain enough water to cover San Francisco.

And yet will we pull together for the common good?

Has The Media Ever Met Any People?

ABC's Washington Madam story has collapsed, with the network refusing to name names. Conservatives suspect that the refusal is more because not enough conservatives were found in her phone records, but that's neither here nor there. (Note that ABC specifically avoided acquiring her phone records from during the Clinton Administration.)

I am amused, though, that ABC thought that it had a scandal in part because one of the clients claimed to be a senior economist at the White House. In truth, he turned out to be a mid-level staffer at the Office of Thrift Supervision. Men lie about status even to prostitutes. It's enough to make a cynical old conservative smile.

Bush = Conservative = Bad

A surprisingly even handed article in the New York Times (albeit one that should be headlined "Grandstanding Dems Weaken War Effort, Endanger Troops") contains this gem:

The proposal by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to repeal President Bush’s war authorization in October touched off a furious tussle on Friday among Democrats hoping to gain an upper hand with voters who oppose the war. It prompted other candidates to seek an even swifter end to the conflict, which was what some Congressional leaders had been trying to avoid as war-spending negotiations with the White House intensify.

President Bush's war authorization? I guess the nutroots are right. He really has usurped Congress' war powers.

By the way, what's up with "Hillary Rodham Clinton?" Mrs. Clinton has dropped the "Rodham," as she does periodically. Didn't the Times get the memo?

Only I Get To Decide Which Tradition Is Out-Moded

I've been surprised that this hasn't been getting more attention on the conservative blogs. The Anglican Church in Africa is sponsoring some Episcopalian congregations in America that want to break away from the Episcopalian Church because of its acceptance of homosexuality and, in particular, the elevation of Gene Robinson to Bishop.

The American Episcopalian Church objects to this "poaching:"

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent Akinola a letter earlier this week asking him to stay away. His visit would, she said, not only show "division and disunity" but violate ancient church customs which prevent one bishop from poaching on another's territory.

Akinola, in a response published on his church's Web site, told Jefferts Schori the custom she cited was intended to protect flocks from false outside teachings, not the care and concern of another bishop.

"I also find it curious," he said, "that you are appealing to the ancient customs of the church when it is your own Province's deliberate rejection of the biblical and historic teaching of the Church that has prompted our current crisis."

Culture Is Like Soup

You can see someone else's soup and think that it looks good, but there's no way to turn your soup into their soup. Adding matzoh balls to Gazpacho doesn't make it matzoh ball soup.

Has Any One Ever Seen OJ and James Taranto In The Same Room?

From today's Best of the Web: "This offended Dave Lee, a member of the class of 2007 who considers himself an athlete even though he plays soccer."

Also from today's Best of the Web, I couldn't help but laugh at this self-refuting description of NYT publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger: "[W]e talked about making quenelles de brochette. He seems normal enough."

If This Weren't A Secret Blog, I Wouldn't Post This

But since it is a secret blog, I'll post it in full:

The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim

King David, in Birmingham, is a state primary where the children learn Hebrew, recite Jewish prayers, eat kosher food and wave Israeli flags. So how come the majority of pupils are followers of Islam? Jonathan Margolis investigates

The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim

It's infant prize day at King David School, a state primary in Moseley, Birmingham. The children sit cross-legged on the floor, their parents fiddling with their video cameras. The head, Steve Langford, is wearing a Sesame Street tie.

A typical end-of-term school event, then. But at King David there's a twist that gives it a claim to be one of the most extraordinary schools in the country: King David is a strictly Jewish school. Judaism is the only religion taught. There's a synagogue on site. The children learn modern Hebrew - Ivrit - the language of Israel. And they celebrate Israeli independence day.

But half the 247 pupils at the 40-year-old local authority-supported school are Muslim, and apparently the Muslim parents go through all sorts of hoops, including moving into the school's catchment area, to get their children into King David to learn Hebrew, wave Israeli flags on independence day and hang out with the people some would have us believe that they hate more than anyone in the world.

The Muslim parents, mostly devout and many of the women wearing the hijab, say they love the ethos of the school, and even the kosher school lunches, which are suitable because halal and kosher dietary rules are virtually identical. The school is also respectful to Islam, setting aside a prayer room for the children and supplying Muslim teachers during Ramadan. At Eid, the Muslim children are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly, and all year round, if they wish, can wear a kufi (hat). Amazingly, dozens of the Muslim children choose instead to wear the Jewish kipah.

At the prize morning Carol Cooper, the RE teacher, says: "Boker tov," (Ivrit for "Good morning").

"Good morning Mrs Cooper," the children chant in reply. The entire school, Muslims, Jews, plus the handful of Christians and Sikhs then say the Shema, the holiest Jewish prayer, all together.

The Year Four violin club (five Muslims, two Jews) play "Little Bird, I Have Heard". Just as many prizes are being distributed to Hussains and Hassans and Shabinas as there are to Sauls and Rebeccas and Ruths. In fact, if anything, the Muslim children have beaten the Jewish ones. Thus does the Elsie Davis Prize for Progress go to a beaming little lad called Walid, the religious studies prize to a boy called Imran wearing a kipah and the progress prizes for Hebrew, to a boy called Habib and a girl called Alia.

Times being as they are, King David doesn't advertise its presence in a city where its pioneering multiculturalism could raise all kinds of unwelcome attention. There's a discreet signboard outside that reveals little about the school's unique nature. There are watchful video cameras high up on the walls, plus two electronic gates to pass through. Sadly, it is, to a significant extent, says Laurence Sharman, the (Christian) chairman of the PTA, "an undercover school".

The Muslim parents, however, are only too keen to talk in the playground about what might be seen by some in their communities as a controversial schooling decision.

"We actually bought a flat in the catchment area for the children to come here," says Nahid Shafiq, the mother of Zainah, four, and Hamza, nine, and wife of Mohammed, a taxi driver. "We were attracted by the high moral values of the school, and that's what we wanted our kids to have. None of us has any problem with it being a Jewish school. Why on earth should we? Our similarities as religions and cultures are far greater and more important than our differences. It's not even an issue.

"At the mosque, occasionally, people ask why we send the children here, but there is no antagonism whatsoever, and neither is there from anyone in our family. In fact, it was a big family decision to try and get them into King David. This is the real world. This is the way real people do things in the real world. All the violence and prejudice and problems - that's not real, that's just what you see on the news."

Fawzia Ismail (the mother of Aly-Raza, nine, and Aliah, six) is equally positive. "My nephew came here and my brother showed me the school, so it's a bit of a family tradition now. We're very, very pleased with the school. It's so friendly. All the kids mix and go to one another's parties and are in and out of each other's houses. They teach a bit about Israel, but we don't have any problem with that. There are such similarities between our people and our societies."

Irum Rashid (mother of Hanan, nine, and Maryam, four) says that a lot of people in Small Heath are considering moving to Moseley because of King David. "It's a very happy school, the behaviour is fantastic, the food is great - because it's kosher - and so are the SATs results."

But what about learning Hebrew and the Jewish prayers? "I think it's great. The more knowledge, the more understanding," says one of the mothers. "They learn all they need about Islam at mosque school. Actually, the kids often sing Hebrew songs in the bath, which is a bit confusing because we speak Gujarati at home, but I think it's great."

The Jewish parents and teachers I speak to are just as enthusiastic. "You know, in these difficult times in the world, I think we show how things should be done. It's really a bit of a beacon," says one teacher, whose three children all went to King David and ended up at Oxford University.

Parent Trevor Aremband is from South Africa. "In Johannesburg, we have Jewish schools, but they're 100 per cent Jewish, so we were a bit shocked when we first came here. But the integration works so well. It's clearly the way to go in today's world. My son is eight and has loads of Muslim friends."

The most important thing, I am told repeatedly, is that the cross-cultural friendships forged at King David last a lifetime. I hear a conversation about how a Rebecca is going to fly over from the States for a Fatima's wedding. I am told about a pair of lads, one Jewish, one Muslim, who became friends the day they started in the nursery, went to senior school together as well as to university and are now living close to one another with their wives and families and are currently on holiday together.

King David was not designed to be such a beacon of inter-faith cooperation and friendship. Founded in 1865 as The Hebrew School, it was 100 per cent Jewish until the late 1950s.

Then two things began to happen: there was a growth in the Muslim population in middle-income areas such as Moseley, and a shrinking of Britain's Jewish community, especially outside the main centres of London and Manchester. Muslim children started coming to the school in the early 1960s, but the current position, in which they are in the majority (Jewish children comprise 35 per cent, Muslims 50 per cent, Christians, Sikhs and other, 15 per cent) is very new.

"One of the things that surprises people about this school," says Langford, "is that it's not an especially privileged intake. Half of our kids have English as an additional language. But the amazing thing is how well it all works. We have a new little boy here from China, whose only English a few weeks ago was to ask for the toilet. He now speaks English - and can say the Shema perfectly.

"If you gauge success, for instance, by racial incidents, which schools always have to report to the LEA, we have at the most one a term. And that can just mean some harsh words with a racial slant used in the playground. At multicultural inner city schools where I've taught, there will be far, far more than that, possibly one or more a week."

In terms of SATs and Ofsted inspections, King David has also shone. It is rated as good - the second highest possible ranking - in all areas, and Ofsted made a special mention at the last inspection of the integration between children of different faiths and races. In the recent SATs results, the school also came in well above the national average in all subjects.

Steve Langford, a Warwick University economics graduate, is himself a bit of a paradox. He is Church of England on both parental sides and only became interested in Judaism when he worked in a Jewish summer camp in Massachusetts in his gap year. His interest paid off when he got a teaching job a King David. Now he is learning Ivrit at evening classes and goes to Israel for holidays.

The Rabbi of Birmingham's Singers Hill Synagogue, one of the financial backers of King David, is proud of Steve Langford and of the school's extraordinary interfaith record.

"King David School is amazing," says Rabbi Tann. "The reason I think it works well is that racism is engendered entirely by adults. Children don't have it within themselves. Their natural mode is to play happily with everyone. It's only when adults say, 'Don't play with him, he's black, or don't have anything to do with him, he's Muslim, that troubles begin.'

"We never have any racial or inter-faith problems at all. Not ever. In 20 years here, it's simply never happened in any significant way. We teach that if you don't like someone, you avoid them. Don't play with them. Go to the other side of the playground. I believe that if more people followed the lead of King David School, we'd have a much more peaceful world."

The Rabbi's theory is nonsense, but what a lovely story.

Mission Accomplished

Yesterday was, of course, the fourth anniversary of the President's "Mission Accomplished" speech, now much beloved of the anti-warriors. It is useful to read the speech today and see what was said and what was not said. It was not triumphalist, it did not celebrate the new oil fields we had added to the Empire, nor did it assume that all the hard work was done.

But there is another point about that day that I never see being made: the White House's reluctance to give that speech and that, in giving it, they were accommodating the UN. The point of the speech was not (merely) to celebrate a great feat of allied arms. The main point of the speech was to declare the end of major combat operations. The White House was reluctant to make this declaration, the UN was insistent: it would not go into Iraq and take up some of the burden of reconstruction until major combat operations had been declared over.

The legal effect of the President's declaration was to change the United States military in Iraq from an invader into an occupier. The main difference is that an occupier is responsible for the governance of the country as a whole and the welfare of the population. An invader is not. The US felt it was too early to make that shift, but the UN and certain of our "friends and allies" who had sat out the war held out the promise that they would participate in reconstruction but not during the invasion. Of course, at the end of the day the UN and its ilk didn't do much anyway because, in fact, the situation on the ground was not sufficiently stable.

(This is our 350th post. We note that so that you will understand how humbly we congratulate the Ducks on their 500th post.)

The Reverse Advice Column

Has digital camera technology sufficiently matured that it make sense to spend a wad on a digital camera?

This Won't Go Over Well

Listening to Amy slur her way through "Valerie," I finally realized who she reminded me of. She's the female Van Morrison.

His Second Favorite is "A New Hope -- The Novelization?"

Mitt Romney says that his favorite novel is Battlefield Earth? I've actually read Battlefield Earth and it's not awful, but even among trashy soft science fiction novels it's not that good. Romney's favorite book is the Bible (apparently, though, no one asked him "which one?").

This Is Not A Meme

(It's art day here on the secret blog. You might want to read the next post before reading this one.)


I suggest below that, for me, the difference between art and not art is whether I can come to some understanding of the work without knowing anything else about it. A work that depends upon its title or the artist's politics for its impact is commentary, not art.

What, then, are we to do with Magritte's great The Treachery Of Images (La trahison des images 1928-29). Technically, I escape the potential trap, everything that I need to know is contained within the frame: Ceci n'est pas une pipe. That's not even the title, although everyone but the most annoyingly meticulous of us refers to it by that tag. But my theory is that this is the pivotal work of 20th century art because Magritte is putting an end to representational art. The first photograph was taken in 1827, one hundred (and one) years before Magritte started to paint The Treachery of Images and, by Magritte's time, photography was a mature science and a popular hobby. There was no point any more in pursuing the visual arts in order to preserve a record of what things looked like. The Impressionists, the Surrealists, the other modernists and contemporary artists are all reactions to this loss of what had, for millenia, been one of the primary motives for painting. The Treachery of Images is the exclamation point at the end of that chapter.

As this should make clear, the full meaning of a work of art can never be divorced from its context and all works of art are, at some level, abstract. Abstract art (and cubism and whateverism) can be recognized as art today because, as Magritte argued, no painting, however faithful to the original, is the thing itself. A painting need not be a representation of some tangible thing and, even if it is, it can not only be judged based upon how much it looks like the thing it represents. This was not new in 1929. Many seemingly representational pieces were actually representing an abstract concept -- courage or liberty, for example -- even if on the surface they appeared to be accurate renderings of physical things. Some works are more accurate at rendering their subject than others, but the more successful work need not be the more nearly photographic work.

Magritte's work, for example, is art not because it is a good picture of a pipe (though it is that) but because it is a good representation of human perseverance in the face of change. Art is not art that doesn't alter when it alteration finds.

On the other hand, a toilet mounted on the wall is only a urinal.

90% Of Everything Is Crap

OJ links to a Spengler column arguing that no one really likes modern art but everyone pretends to like it because they think that their kids are gods, or something like that. I don't really understand the point and, to the extent I understand it, I disagree. People don't pretend to like modern art because we don't believe in god; we pretend to like modern art because we've lost our critical judgment and are uncomfortable making value judgments. If we're told that something is art, we feel that we have to pretend that it's as good as anything else labeled art. If we were more critical consumers of art, we'd reject 90% of modern art because 90% of everything is crap.

But some modern art speaks directly to our souls.

It's unclear, first of all, what Spengler means by "modern art." From an art criticism perspective, modern art is what we call the art created in the 100 years from 1870 (starting with the Impressionists) through 1970. Art made since 1970 is, generally speaking, contemporary art. There is a lot of great modern art out there and anyone who rejects it all has lost his critical faculties just as surely as if he loved it all.

Spengler might mean that we only pretend to like contemporary art and, if so, he has a better case. I personally don't like much contemporary art -- but I do like some. Of course, Spengler completely ignores the selection bias at work with art from the past. Only the best art from the past has made it into the collections and on to the walls of the world's museums. Old art that we see is much more likely to be good art. New art, and particularly new art created in an art world that has lost its critical judgment, is simply more likely to be crap because it hasn't yet been sieved by history. Spengler's point, if this is his point, is thus much like taking a random book from the "Fiction" shelves of the local Barnes & Noble and comparing it to a random book taken from the "Classics" shelves.

Spengler might also mean to distinguish between representational art and abstract (non-representational) art. Abstract art is usually dismissed by conservatives as being art that cannot be distinguished from a toddler's finger-painting, and much of it is that slight. Other abstract pieces, on the other hand, mesmerize me. With even the best abstract art, however, I find I run up against two problems. First, I have to be in front of the actual piece -- reproductions don't work. Second, I only buy representational works for my own home, even when I set out to buy an abstract piece.

In the end, the only distinction that works is Duck's: I know what I like. But the danger is that "I know what I like" cannot be separated from "I like what I know, and I don't want to know anything new." My own threshold is this: if I see a work and its speaks to me without my knowing anything else about it (title, context, the story of its creation and the artist's politics), then it is art and I might enjoy it. If it is not self-contained -- and almost no contemporary art is self-contained -- then it is commentary and not art at all.

Exactly How Many Amendments Are We Trampling On, Here?

OJ points us to this rather astonishing proposal to turn the US into a police state in order to get rid of guns. Apparently, warrantless searches of our houses and persons are a small price to pay in order to implement a "gun control" regime that a child could outwit.

I have just one question. If, in the course of searching every house and person in the country in order to find every single last gun, they come across, say, illegal immigrants or a drug stash, will the police be allowed to react?

Pop Goes Another Business Model

MIT has fired its Dean of Admissions for having lied about being a college graduate when she was first hired -- for a job that didn't require a college degree -- 28 years ago. Everyone (or at least everyone fit to print in the New York Times seems to agree that she was a good Dean of Admissions, although what the story really indicates is that the performance of the Dean of Admissions is probably irrelevant to MIT.

What I find most interesting is that Ms. Jones' satisfactory performance proves that there is no need to have a college degree in order to be a satisfactory Dean. Requiring a college degree for that job is meaningless credentialism. Does MIT realize that, and is it advanced degree protectionism that requires them to boot her out?

It's Not Gods They Don't Believe In

This thread at Bryan Appleyard's blog proves, once again, that atheism is a Christian heresy.

A Secret Papal Agent?

Christopher Hitchens exposes the ugliness of atheism.

Irony

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this irony lark. I wasn't entirely sure when the nice German lady came up to me while I was watching my son play a shoot-em-up video game and said, "Nice game for your son to play." After all, it was a nice game for my son to play.

But the posters all over the Tube for "Guys and Dolls" starring Don Johnson? That's got to be irony.

One Good Turntable Deserves Another

Brit makes the common-sense point that Frank Sinatra was the greatest jazz singer of all time, and some people have the audacity to disagree. What Sinatra could do better than any other singer is come up with a phrasing that is both unexpected -- almost unduplicable, even if you've heard Sinatra -- and serves both the lyric and melody perfectly.

The best example of this comes in Frank's arrangement of Cole Porter's "I Get A Kick Out Of You," which is almost unsingable for those of us who have heard Frank but aren't Frank. Unfortunately, I couldn't find Frank's best version on YouTube, but this bowdlerized version (apparently, it wouldn't do to admit that someone might love cocaine) isn't bad:
Frank's phrasing makes the "bore me terrif/ically too" lyric. Try to sing along and you'll never quite make it.

On the other hand, in the "Love and Marriage" rendition linked by Brit, Frank does nothing with the singsong melody, other than keep singing it as steady as a metronome. Only at the end, with the second repetition of "Dad was told ... by Mother" does he have any fun with the phrasing at all.

April 15

Reader Participation

So, I'm standing in line at the check-out counter when my eyes stray over to the impulse magazine rack. Cosmo this month has an article on "The Ten Things Guys Crave In Bed."

Choose your snark:

a. I didn't know we were such a mystery. When I think of the years I've wasted ...

b. 10?

c. ________________________.

Peter Burnet

The unacknowledged engine of the blogosphere, or at least our little corner of it.

In Which I Apologize

I just noticed, looking over the blog, that I've become something of a potty mouth over the last few days. I apologize and will make a special point of watching my language going forward.

The Law Be Damned

I've decided just to outright steal from Mark Steyn. If either Mr. Steyn or NRO wishes to complain ... I would be stunned.

National Review's self-loathing Belgian writes [Mark Steyn]

Further to my recent observations on Britain, I have received a significant number of letters along the lines of the following:

Dear Mr Steyn,

I can't help wondering why a Belgium Jew (yes i know you hide it) is so obsessed with the state of England. We don't need your opinions and would be grateful if you would sort out Canada or anywhere else and leave us alone.

I'm not sure whether it's the "Belgium" or the "Jew" bit I'm hiding, or both. But oddly enough, as I had cause to mention in a q-&-a session in New York a couple of days ago, it was the state of England's obsession with a Portuguese Jew that embodied 19th century Britain at its most confident:

In 1847, a man called Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew living in Greece, had his house burned in an anti-Semitic riot. He appealed to the Greek government for redress (the sons of some ministers had been involved) and got nowhere. But he chanced to have been born on Gibraltar and thus was, technically, a British subject. And so he turned to the British government. And, though to most Englishmen's eyes a century and a half ago no one could have seemed less English than this greasy dago Jew moneylender, Lord Palmerston began a naval blockade of Greece—on the grounds that Don Pacifico was a British subject like any other—until the government in Athens backed down. In Palmerston's words, "As the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong." Civis Britannicus sum: that was all Don Pacifico had to say.

Small incidents , whether in Athens in 1847 or Tehran in 2007, capture the big picture. The e-mail above would not have struck Palmerston as the least bit "English".

Fascinating And Beautiful

Flight patterns.

It's 39 And Cloudy

Instapundit points us to an article in the Grand Rapids Press with the heart-warming headline, Snow won't dampen global-warming rallies. In the article, Lisa Locke, associate director of the west Michigan global warming nutcases explains that unseasonably cold temperatures shouldn't stop her protest:

"I think that's [it's freezing outside] an easy excuse, but if we're really reasonable about it, we're not talking about individual weather on individual days," Locke said. "We're talking about something much larger, on a global scale, which science has been tracking for decades."

Ms. Locke's logic is impeccable. (Indeed, saying "decades" rather than "millenia" is down right honest, by agw standards.) Just because it's unseasonably cold today doesn't mean that the globe isn't warming over all. But cold weather is bad for the agw movement nonetheless.

First, marching against global warming in the snow makes them look ridiculous.

Second, cold weather necessarily reminds people of how much they prefer warm weather. It reminds them of the dangers of walking on ice and driving in a winter storm. It reminds them of the pain of shoveling and of the old men killed, every time it snows, by their shovels. After all, the whole world wants to retire to Florida. Why not let Florida come to us?

Third, it simply highlights that, to the agw crowd, any unseasonably cool weather is an outlier, whereas any hot weather, big storm or other unpleasant weather is the harbinger of warming doom.

Who You Calling A Bitch?

I'm OK, Your Life Sucks

An interesting article on the boom in interracial marriages, which now make up 7% of US marriages.

Major Cox, a black Alabamian, and his white wife, Cincinnati-born Margaret Meier, have lived on the Cox family homestead in Smut Eye, Ala., for more than 20 years, building a large circle of black and white friends while encountering relatively few hassles.

"I don't feel it, I don't see it," said Cox, 66, when asked about racist hostility. "I live a wonderful life as a nonracial person."

Meier says she occasionally detects some expressions of disapproval of their marriage, "but flagrant, in-your-face racism is pretty rare now."

Cox—an Army veteran and former private detective who now joins his wife in raising quarter horses—longs for a day when racial lines in America break down.

"We are sitting on a powder keg of racism that's institutionalized in our attitudes, our churches and our culture," he said, "that's going to destroy us if we don't undo it."

This is a rare instance of the thought pattern that more usually manifests as "my school is fine, yours is terrible" and "my Congressperson is responsive, yours is a crook." We generally think that people adopt sweeping generalizations based upon their own experiences, but it seems that, as often, people ignore their own experience when adopting sweeping generalizations. Everyone thinks that their life is better than yours.

Almost Certainly?

OJ points us to this Newsweek article, which starts out as follows:

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true.

We should turn the nation upside down and shake and we can't even be completely sure whether the temperature has really gone up? Next time your talking with (well, being lectured by) an AGW enthusiast, ask what the "mean global temperature" actually is and why anyone should care.

The Talented One

Mark Steyn remembers the Mommas and the Poppas.

Pretty Soon, People Won't Respect Lawyers

A friend, concerned that we're falling into optimism, sends us this story about an 18 year old boy who paid a hit man (actually, a cop) $3250 to beat up his pregnant 17 year old girlfriend enough that the "fetus" would die. He pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit manslaughter and was sentenced to spend 6 years in jail.

His lawyer said that he is an intelligent young man who got bad advice.

"Lighten Up"

Said Dark Heart

Troubling Confirmation

I commented the other day at Bryan Appleyard's blog about how people will believe anything that's written down. Now, along comes a story that Tori Spelling read that she was having a feud with her mother -- and she figured that it must be true.

Focus On Britain

As we mull over American ignorance of Englishmen and foreigners, it occurs to me to wonder whether the British know how popular Tony Blair is in the states. I haven't been able to find anything more recent than this Pew poll from 2005, but at that point he had been thought of favorably by at least 87% of the American people for three years.

He is, of course, unpopular in Britain, although no where near as unpopular there as President Bush.

Sunday Brunch

Your job has gone the way of the buggy whip, your significant other is able and willing to support the family, nothing prevents a radical upheaval of your life.

What do you choose to do?

Divided By A Common Language

OJ points to this article claiming that Atlas Shrugged is the conservative Bible. Now, Americans can rightly be dinged for our isolated ignorance and, in our family, we still tease my sister about the time she asked how far London was from England (she was in high school at the time). But no bit of American ignorance of other countries is even an acorn to the mighty oak of ignorance that is the idea that Ayn Rand is the prophet of the conservative revolution.

And, for the record, the conservative Bible is the Bible.

Interesting Times

I almost never read the New York Times but I did wander in today and found a host of interesting articles.

Wal-Mart is finding new ways to control its employees -- and everybody is happy. The "personal sustainability" program gets the company involved in improving its employee's health and convincing them to do their part for the environment. Exercise, eat right and reduce waste at the stores, all of which are good ideas but, if promoted in any other way, would bring the wrath of the left down on the anti-union, pro-sprawl Mart.

I found most interesting the idea that walking around the perimeter of the store as exercise could be beneficial to people who, after all, spend all their working day walking around the store. My wife tells me that there have been studies showing that exertion undertaken expressly as exercise has more cardiovascular benefit than exertion undertaken at a strenuous job.

We also learn about an odd Japanese real estate tycoon who is letting eight poor native Hawaiian families live rent free in mansions he owns in Honolulu. His motives are unclear and not necessarily creditable. One issue the Times doesn't address is the tax implications. Being allowed to live in a house rent free is imputed income for the families. Shows like Extreme Home Makeover deal with the same issue and have found ways around it. Over all, I'm convinced that there is something nefarious, or at least reckless, going on here, and the Times is being overly credulous.

Next, a fascinating court case as Nutra-Sweet sues Splenda to try to get it to stop saying "Made from sugar." At issue is not so much what the words mean as what they invoke. Everyone agrees that Splenda starts out with sugar (sucrose) although it need not; that Splenda itself does not contain any sugar; and that Splenda is as artificial as any other artificial sweetener. The sucrose used as a starting point in the manufacturing process is changed by adding three chlorine molecules to the sucrose molecule and, at the end of the day, the sucrose disappears. Splenda argues that "made from sugar" is literally true. Nutra-sweet counters that Splenda knows perfectly well that the effect of the slogan is to confuse the public by making Splenda sound more natural and safer. Personally, I prefer Splenda.

There is an interesting regulatory sidelight worth mentioning. Even though Splenda starts with sugar, it can't list sugar as an ingredient because the FDA won't allow the listing of "ingredients" that disappear during the manufacturing process. This is presented as a reason not to allow Splenda to use its slogan. But what if the chemical process started with, say, cyanide? Would the FDA regulation then be presented as a loophole allowing Splenda to market a product made from cyanide?

In a second FDA story, the agency has banned anti-nausea suppositories on the grounds they don't work. The products date from before 1962, when proof of efficacy was first required. Since I would, as king of the world, get rid of that requirement, I find the story slightly troubling. Not nearly as troubling, however, as the idea that people apparently choose to use anti-nausea suppositories. You'd think the very idea would be counter-productive.

There is a very nice article about an observant Jew married to an observant Catholic (for, obviously, a fairly flexible definition of "observant"). This is the story that made me think, as I often do when I read the Times, that it really is the best written paper in the country. The only Timesian nit I would pick is that they aren't satisfied with having a moving, interesting, well-written human interest story. They try, totally unconvincingly, to show that this couple reflects some important general trend. To the editors I say, "It's a nice story. Be happy." I do note that the Catholic husband was under the impression that Catholicism teaches that contemporary Jews are morally responsible for killing Jesus and that Judaism has been replaced by Catholicism, so there's two for Harry. I would have liked to delve more into the psychology of an observant Catholic who believes that Jews are deicides and yet starts to date a Jewish woman, but that's not the story the Times wanted to tell.

Just to prove that the Times and I haven't completely made up, I did read this silly op-ed that used an obscure news hook to completely misinterpret the implications of a psychological experiment. Apparently, the rich are bad.

Blog Babe

What is it about Amy Winehouse and bloggers?

All You Need To Know

Carter backs Pelosi's trip, despite Bush's rebuke

Random Thoughts

Is there anything more aggravating than your email signal going off without your having any email in your inbox?

The Elton John Of Online Magazines

I find myself more and more not reading Slate. Now, of course I don't read lots of things and there are almost as many things that I used to read but don't any more. But Slate is alone in a different category: things I try to read, but fail. More and more, I get about a third of the way into a Slate story, and then my attention starts to wander. Hey, it's snowing outside. Has my monitor always been that shade of black? Where is that email I've been waiting for and how come repeatedly hitting "Send/Receive" doesn't make it come any faster? Before you can say "you snooze, you lose," I'm busy not reading Slate.

But if I can't manage to read Slate, why do I keep trying? Well, I'm usually drawn there to read Kausfiles, which I do manage because, after all, it's usually one snarky sentence. Then my eyes slide over to the right margin, where they put links to other stories on the site, and I get hooked into clicking over, at which point I quickly find myself not reading Slate.

Slate, in other words, masks the fact that their articles are boring and inane with great hooks. Their articles are the prose versions of Elton John songs. Take, for example, this article on Grand Theft Politics: Should Democrats look to video games for inspiration? What a silly article (apparently, the Democrats need more street theater, or at least that's what I gathered before my eyes glazed over). In fact, the article is self-refuting. The hook makes you look, but it can't make you read and it certainly doesn't convince. I'm all for style in the things I read, but substance has a style of its own.

And It Is Tom Lantos

I've been trying, the last few days, to come up with something to say about Tom Lantos and his claim that "We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy." Preferably my comment would be pithy, rooted in American history and constitutional law, and gently point out the Congressman's error in an eminently reasonable fashion.

Unfortunately, every time I start thinking about this deeply stupid statement I boil over. It might strike Congressman Lantos as good clean fun to chip away at the corner stones of our nation but, as he of all people should realize, if you bring down the edifice the first people who will be hurt are those sheltering beneath it. The very idea of a political party acting on a foreign policy at odds with the policies of the government is ... is ... is ...

I give up. It is bad. It is so bad that I can't even say how bad it is.

We've Met The Enemy...

I haven't paid nearly enough attention to Mass. v. EPA, the Supreme Court case holding that EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gases, to have a legal opinion on the merits. I'd be astonished if I wouldn't agree with the minority. But I do wonder about one thing. There is one undisputed contributor to global warming: the reduction in air pollution over the last thirty years. Until this week, "air pollution" largely meant the emission of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Since the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, particulate matter in the air over the United States has decreased by approximately 80%. This reduction is the best established (perhaps the only well-established) example of unambiguous anthropogenic global warming.

Particular matter in the atmosphere raises the Earth's albedo. That is, more of the heat and light hitting Earth is reflected back into space if there is more particulate matter in the atmosphere. In fact, one suggestion for dealing with global warming is to release a relatively small amount of particulates directly into the stratosphere in jet fuel exhaust. Necessarily, reducing particulate matter over the last 30 years has lowered Earth's albedo, allowed the Earth to absorb more heat from the Sun and made the Earth warmer, caterus parebus, than it would otherwise be.

So, thanks to the Supreme Court, one of EPA's missions necessarily works counter to another of its missions. One wouldn't think, in the first instance, that it was the Court's role to balance contradictory policy aims. Too bad that Congress is too busy setting up its own foreign policy to deal with domestic issues.

Must Be Some Other Baghdad

ABC notices that the surge is working, for now.

Never* Again

Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims (Laura Clark, Daily Mail, 4/2/07)

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

___________________________________________________________
* Valid until earlier of the end of the world or forty years. No warranty, express or implied, is intended. Void where prohibited. Civilization cannot be held responsible for uncivilized violation of promise. Any judgment between two or more competing interests must be referred to United Nations for unanimous determination by Security Council. Neither damages nor injunctive relief are available.

Carl Kassell Is Still In Egypt

In this morning's NPR newscast, while reporting on the Supreme Court's refusal to hear appeals from prisoners at Guantanamo, Carl Kassell said that this was a victory for the Bush administration in "its" war on terrorism.

Today, this inevitably reminds me of a portion of the Haggadah, the book setting for the ritual of the Passover seder. The point of the seder is to retell the story of Passover in several different ways. One way is the story of the four children, the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child and the child who is too young to ask. Each asks about the Passover story in a different way and each gets a suitable response. The wicked son asks "What does this ritual mean to you?" and, by saying "you" instead of "us" he has taken himself out of the Jewish people. The response is that "This is the feast commanded by G-d when he took me out of Egypt." The implication is that not only were we personally redeemed from Egypt when our ancestors were redeemed, but that, because he has separated himself from the Jewish people, the wicked son would not have been redeemed.

Similarly, NPR does not see itself as part of the war on terror and, implicitly, as part of the American people.

Thanks For The Advice

I had to have my front brakes replaced this week. When I got the car back, there was a note on my stick shift: "Avoid violent braking for the first 125 miles." I'm not sure if I'm supposed to just drive off the cliff for the next 125 miles, or if I'm free to jam on the breaks just for the heck of it thereafter. I suspect that the ambiguity comes from the translation from the German, where more or less any adjective translates into "violent."

(Also, Google tells me that there is nothing new under the sun.)

Sunday Brunch

Which is better, wanting or getting?