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?

We Interupt Our Blogging Interruption

To point out the comments to this article as one more indicator of what a farce the whole "defying the UN" argument against the Iraq war was.

Connections

This post immediately makes me think of this clip:

We Love A Logical Conclusion

Ann Althouse points us to this article in the Daily Mail about an abandoned polar bear cub in the Berlin Zoo. It seems that when its mother ignored it, the zookeepers stepped in to keep it alive through bottle feeding and cuddling. As it is just about the cutest thing you ever did see, they also started marketing it. Animal rights activists protest that this is not the proper way to raise polar bear cubs, is in fact inhumane and the animal should be euthanized. (There is no explanation in the article as to why the activists aren't insisting that the cub be airlifted to a melting ice flow and left to starve or drown.)

This is the logical conclusion of vegetarianism/animal rights activism. After all, if we all stop eating beef and wearing leather, the fate of millions of docile, tasty herbivores is easy to predict.

Leviathan

From CNN, a story about a computer technician working for the State of Alaska. It seems that one day he reformatted a disk drive. He then reformatted the back-up drive. The back-up tape turned out to be unreadable. The State spent $220,700 to do one year's work in six weeks. What happened to the technician?

Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one got into trouble for the incident.

"Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There was no witch hunt," Corbus said.

Now, I'm all about compassion. Someone makes a mistake, well, it could happen to anyone. But I'm pretty sure that someone who did something similar in the private sector would have been fired. It wouldn't have been the end of his life. This is the sort of thing that makes it somewhat more likely than not that you'll get hired again, since everyone who interviews you will be thinking, "There but for the grace of G-d." The person who set up the tape backup system without making sure that it was and remained reliable should have been fired, and then rehired just so he could be fired again. Now we can see why state jobs are so sought-after. Not only can you not be fired, but your whole department only has to do six weeks worth of work over the course of a year.

Sunday Brunch

This, too, shall pass.

And I Love The Guy

During a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, Dubya is informed that three Brazilian soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Dubya bursts into tears, his head in his hands. The Joint Chiefs are stunned that he is so emotional over the loss of soldiers from another nation. Then Dubya raises his head, wipes away his tears, and asks "Exactly how many is a brazillion?"

From The BrothersJudd Archives: Total Compensation Increases, 2000-2004

Just wanted to stash this comment somewhere I can find it easily:

For years ended March 2001-2006, total compensation for Union workers increased 3.5%, 4.5%, 4.4%, 5.6%, 3.6% and 2.7% due to increases in the costs of benefits of 3.2%, 5.1%, 6.7%, 10.6%[!], 5.6% and 2.9%.

Over the last 8 quarters, blue collar workers, as a group, have had total compensation increases of 1.7%, 1.0%, 1.3%, .8%, .6%, .8%, .6% and .1, for year on year gains of approximately 5% and 2%.

Since 2000, the number of employees with access to various benefits has increased for almost all types of benefits. For non-public employees, those with access to either defined benefit or defined contribution plans have increased from 55% to 63%. Health insurance coverage has stayed flat, 52% to 52%, although the percentage of employees required to contribute to their health insurance has increased. Short term disability coverage has increased from 34% to 39% and employer sponsored childcare has increased from 6% of the workforce to 14%.

Finally, if you look at total compensation for blue collar workers with Level 1 skills -- the lowest level -- you see that average total compensation has gone from $8.02 an hour in July 2000 to $8.97 in July 2004, a 12% increase in 4 years. Total compensation for Level 2 workers increased by 17% over the same period. Total compensation for all workers increased by 14% during the same period. Total compensation for white collar workers with Level 15 skills (i.e., the highest skilled workers with the greatest responsibilities) went from $60.58 in July 2000 to $67.25 in July 2004, an increase of 11%.

In other words, from July 2000 through July 2004, the total compensation for the least skilled workers increased at a rate about as high, or a little higher, than the average employee, and more than the most skilled employees.

(For those who care, go to bls.gov and run series NCU0099572300001, NCU0099572300002, NCU0099570000000 and NCU0099570200015 in the National Compensantion Survey.)

Does Anyone Else Think ...

That Stranger Than Fiction was ruined by its ending?

And You People Say There's No G-d.

Marchers brave nor'easter to highlight need for climate change (Kristina Tedeschi, Daily Hampshire Gazette, 3/16/07)

As a nor'easter arrived in the area, participants in the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue began their trek from Northampton to Boston to stop global warming, an eight-day journey predicted to be the largest of its kind for the environment in the U.S.

Picture credit Paul Grgurovic for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Christian Abolitionism

The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, by Samuel Sewall, M.A. (Boston: Green and Allen, 1700)

Forasmuch as Liberty is in real
value next unto Life: None ought
to part with it themselves, or
deprive others of it, but
upon most mature
Consideration.*

The numerousness of slaves at this day in the province, and the uneasiness of them under their slavery, hath put many upon thinking whether the foundation of it be firmly and well laid; so as to sustain the vast weight that is built upon it. It is most certain that all men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal right unto liberty, and all other outward comforts of life.

GOD hath given the Earth [with all its Commodities] unto the Sons of Adam, Psal 115.16. And hath made of One Blood, all Nations of Men, for to dwell on all the face of the Earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation: That they should seek the Lord. Forasmuch then as we are the Offspring of GOD &c. Act 17.26, 27, 29.

Now although the Title given by the last ADAM, doth infinitely better men's estates, respecting Ames' (1576-1633) book, De Conscientia, et Eius Iure, Vel Casibus (London, 1623)]. GOD and themselves; and grants them a most beneficial and inviolable lease under the broad seal of Heaven, who were before only tenants at will: Yet through the indulgence of GOD to our First Parents after the Fall, the outward estate of all and every of their children, remains the same, as to one another. So that originally, and naturally, there is no such thing as slavery.

Joseph was rightfully no more a slave to his brethren, than they were to him: and they had no more authority to sell him, than they had to slay him. And if they had nothing to do to sell him; the Ishmaelites bargaining with them, and paying down twenty pieces of silver, could not make a title. Neither could Potiphar have any better interest in him than the Ishmaelites had. Gen. 37.20, 27, 28. For he that shall in this case plead Alteration of Property, seems to have forfeited a great part of his own claim to humanity. There is no proportion between twenty pieces of silver, and LIBERTY. The commodity it self is the claimer. If Arabian gold be imported in any quantities, most are afraid to meddle with it, though they might have it at easy rates; lest if it should have been wrongfully taken from the owners, it should kindle a fire to the consumption of their whole estate.

'Tis pity there should be more caution used in buying a horse, or a little lifeless dust; than there is in purchasing men and women: Whenas they are the offspring of GOD, and their Liberty is,

. . . Auro pretiosior Omni [Isaiah 13:12]. And seeing GOD hath said, He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. Exod. 21.16. This law being of everlasting equity, wherein man stealing is ranked amongst the most atrocious of capital crimes: What louder cry can there be made of that celebrated warning,

Caveat Emptor!

And all things considered, it would conduce more to the welfare of the province, to have white servants for a term of years, than to have slaves for life. Few can endure to hear of a Negro's being made free; and indeed they can seldom use their freedom well; yet their continual aspiring after their forbidden liberty, renders them unwilling servants.

And there is such a disparity in their conditions, colour & hair, that they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly families, to the peopling of the land: but still remain in our body politick as a kind of extravasat blood [involuntary resident].

As many Negro men as there are among us, so many empty places there are in our Train Bands, and the places taken up of men that might make husbands for our daughters. And the sons and daughters of New England would become more like Jacob, and Rachel, if this slavery were thrust quite out of doors.

Moreover it is too well known what temptations masters are under, to connive at the fornication of their slaves; lest they should be obliged to find them wives, or pay their fines. It seems to be practically pleaded that they might be lawless; 'tis thought much of, that the law should have satisfaction for their thefts, and other immoralities; by which means, Holiness to the Lord, is more rarely engraven upon this sort of servitude.

It is likewise most lamentable to think, how in taking Negros out of Africa, and selling of them here, That which GOD has joined together men do boldly rend asunder [Matt. 19:6]; Men from their Country, Husbands from their Wives, Parents from their Children.

How horrible is the uncleanness, mortality, if not murder, that the ships are guilty of that bring great crowds of these miserable men, and women. Methinks, when we are bemoaning the barbarous usage of our friends and kinsfolk in Africa: it might not be unseasonable to enquire whether we are not culpable in forcing the Africans to become slaves amongst our selves. And it may be a question whether all the benefit received by Negro slaves, will balance the accompt of cash laid out upon them; and for the redemption of our own enslaved friends out of Africa. Besides all the persons and estates that have perished there.

Obj. 1. These Blackamores are of the Posterity of Cham, and therefore are under the curse of slavery. Gen.9. 25, 26, 27.

Answ. Of all offices, one would not beg this; viz. Uncalled for, to be an executioner of the vindictive wrath of God; the extent and duration of which is to us uncertain. If this ever was a commission; how do we know but that it is long since out of date? Many have found it to their cost, that a prophetical denunciation of judgment against a person or people, would not warrant them to inflict that evil. If it would, Hazael might justify himself in all he did against his Master, and the Israelites, from 2 Kings 8. 10, 12 [killing the king, and women].

But it is possible that by cursory reading, this text may have been mistaken. For Canaan is the person cursed three times over, without the mentioning of Cham. Good Expositors suppose the curse entailed on him, and that this prophey was accomplished in the extirpation of the Canaanites, and in the servitude of the Gibeonites. Vide Pareum [Ed. Note: referencing the analysis of German theologian David Pareus (1548-1635)].

Whereas the Blackmores are not descended of Canaan, but of Cush. Psal. 68. 31. Princes shall come out of Egypt [Mizmim] Ethiopia [Cush] shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Under which names, all Africa may be comprehended; and their Promised Conversion ought to be prayed for. Jer. 13. 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? This shows that black men are the posterity of Cush: Who time out of mind have been distinguished by their colour. And for want of the true, Ovid assigns a fabulous cause of it.

Sanguine tum credunt in
corpora summa vocato
Æthiopum populos nigrum
traxisse colorem.

Metamorph. lib. 2.

Obj. 2. The Nigers are brought out of a pagan country, into places where the Gospel is preached.

Answ. Evil must not be done, that good may come of it. The extraordinary and comprehensive benefit accruing to the Church of God, and to Joseph personally, did not rectify his brethrens' sale of him.

Obj. 3. The Africans have Wars one with another: Our Ships bring lawful Captives taken in those Wars.

Answ. For ought is known, their wars are much such as were between Jacob's sons and their brother Joseph. If they be between town and town; provincial, or national: Every war is upon one side unjust. An unlawful war can't make lawful captives. And by receiving, we are in danger to promote, and partake in their barbarous cruelties. I am sure, if some Gentlemen should go down to the Brewsters to take the air, and fish: And a stronger party from Hull should surprise them, and sell them for slaves to a ship outward bound: they would think themselves unjustly dealt with; both by sellers and buyers.

And yet 'tis to be feared, we have no other kind of title to our Nigers. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matt. 7.12.

Obj. 4. Abraham had servants bought with his money, and born in his house.

Answ. Until the circumstances of Abraham's purchase be recorded, no argument can be drawn from it. In the mean time, Charity obliges us to conclude, that he knew it was lawful and good.

It is observable that the Israelites were strictly forbidden the buying, or selling one another for slaves. Levit. 25. 39, 46. Jer. 34. 8 . . . 22. And GOD gaged His Blessing in lieu of any loss they might conceipt they suffered thereby. Deut. 15. 18.

And since the partition wall is broken down, inordinate self love should likewise be demolished. GOD expects that Christians should be of a more ingenuous and benign frame of spirit. Christians should carry it to all the world, as the Israelites were to carry it one towards another. And for men obstinately to persist in holding their neighbours and brethren under the rigor of perpetual bondage, seems to be no proper way of gaining assurance that God has given them spiritual freedom. Our blessed Saviour has altered the measures of the ancient love-song, and set it to a most excellent new tune, which all ought to be ambitious of Learning. Matt. 5. 43, 44. John 13.34. These Ethiopians, as black as they are; seeing they are the sons and daughters of the First Adam, the brethren and sisters of the Last ADAM, and the Offspring of GOD; they ought to be treated with a respect agreeable.

Servitus perfecta voluntaria, inter Christianum & Christianum, ex parte servi patientis sæpe est licita quia est necessaria: sed ex parte domini agentis, & procurando & exercendo, vix potest esse licita: quia non convenit regulæ illi generali: Quæcunque volueritis ut faciant vobis homines, ita & vos facite eis. Matt. 7.12.

Perfecta servitus pænæ, non potest jure locum habere, nisi ex delicto gravi quod ultimum supplicium aliquo modo meretur: quia libertas ex naturali æstimatione proximo accedit ad vitam ipsam, & eidem a multis præferri solet.*

Ames. Cas. Consc. Lib. 5.
Cap. 23.Thes. 2, 3.
BOSTON of the Massachusets;
Printed by Bartholomew
Green, and John Allen,
June, 24th, 1700.

In Which I Pick Up The Gauntlet

thrown down by Duck in this post. I've decided to blog my response here rather than in his comments, because I've been meaning to blog about this for a while. I've already written about the theory of Inevitable Progress and how invidious it is. Nevertheless, we can see a clear trend of technology and material wealth increasing over time. So much of the human experience has changed and improved that we are tempted to assume that humanity itself has changed fundamentally. As in all things, some of us always succumb to temptation.

And yet it is perfectly clear that we are no smarter now than humans have been throughout recorded history. Certainly we know more. We've had more time to make discoveries. We have more human experience to draw on. But given the same information, the same technology and the same upbringing, there's no basis to say that contemporary humans would do any better than humans from a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.

This is a point that Ms Grabar hints at and which I think it is fair to say that atheists are more likely to ignore than the religious, who live more closely with the past. It is also a point that is fundamental to conservatism: that human nature has no history. When it comes to a subject that is entirely cerebral, theology for example, the present has nothing new to say to the past. All these arguments trotted out to put faith in its place may be tricked out with computerized bells and telescopic whistles, but when reduced to their essence, these questions have been around for millenia.

Hot rods and cute blonds, for example, may be new (or maybe not so new) but the ancients had a lot to say about middle-aged ennui

So Easy And Fun It's Probably A Sin

Reading Ross Douthat's comment on Andrew Sullivan and Dinesh D'Souza, I was struck by this quote from Sullivan: It deeply enrages the liberals whom conservatives now exist to enrage.

It's not that we live to enrage the left, it's just that it is so darn easy and so darn fun. Here are a couple of comments that enrage the left:

• George Bush is a good president.


• The world is not in imminent danger of ending.


• The Iraq war has been too cheap and easy to really impress our enemies.


• Eventually, we're going to have to invade Iran and Syria if their governments don't collapse of their own weight.


• There's nothing we can do about the fact that the Islamists hate us


• Overall, Christianity has been a force for good in the world.

It's really asking a lot to ask us to refrain from such good clean fun.

Free Legal Advice

Always sign legal documents in blue ink.

Well, That's Going To Leave A Bruise

Traditional values or, depending on which side you're on, homophobia win one in France of all places: French High Court Rejects Gay Marriage

France's highest court Tuesday rejected as unlawful the first marriage by a gay couple in France, annulling the union of the two men.

Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier were married in a civil ceremony on June 5, 2004, in Begles, a town in the southwest Bordeaux region. The government immediately said the union was outside the law, and a series of court decisions unfavorable to the couple followed.

In the latest decision, the court ruled that "under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman," backing a 2005 decision by an appeals court in Bordeaux.

My only hope of setting the world back up on its feet is if the European Union forces France to recognize homosexual marriages.

On the other hand, this will make a nice example the next time someone argues that we should bring ourselves into compliance with foreign law.

38pitches.com

Curt Schilling's blog.

Funny Nixon

I assume that everyone reads James Likek's Daily Bleat, but I particularly wanted to make sure that no one skipped today's Bleat and missed the audio of Richard Nixon on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar. Listening to Richard Nixon get applause on the Tonight Show for criticism of President Kennedy is likely the most surreal thing I'll do today.

Have These People Ever Visited A Democracy?

John Derbyshire approvingly quotes some other Brit as saying, about Iraqi democracy, that:

The euphoria of polling day, [Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni politician] points out, eclipsed the fact that the elections were scarcely the informed, rational contest of policies that is supposed to characterise a democracy. Inexperienced in the ways of multiparty politics after decades of totalitarianism, millions of Iraqis voted for the Sunni and Shia religious parties simply because they thought they would go to hell if they didn't. "My own brother told me that the imam in his local mosque told him to vote for the Twaffaq [a Sunni religious party] if he wanted to join Mohammed in the afterlife," said Mr Mutlaq. "And it was the same with the Shias. Their hands would shake with fear if they didn't mark the box for their religious parties."

Political choices were also made in the expectation of jobs for the boys, a legacy of the nepotism that was a hallmark of Saddam's Ba'ath party era. Mithal al-Alusi, another secular Sunni, was convinced he was a hot ticket for prime minister when nearly 100,000 people joined his tiny, underfunded party. When they then scraped just one parliamentary seat, he realised people had only joined up in the belief that a party membership card might come in handy one day. "We had delegations of sheikhs coming up to lend us their support, but they probably went to every other party as well," he said, stirring coffee in his villa in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. "They thought they would get some sort of benefits if we got into power. That's the old way, the Ba'ath Party way, and now the Islamists are doing the same."

The glory of democracy is not that it promotes (or creates out of wholecloth) a disinterested, rational, informed electorate. The next disinterested, rational, informed electorate will be the first. Rather, democracy over time gains legitimacy as a means for sublimating ethnic or religious or class warfare. Jockeying for votes and position replaces open warfare, slavery and dictatorship. Anyone who's even heard of the NEA, Al Sharpton, James Michael Curly or AFSCME and still thinks that Iraqi democracy is differentiated from American democracy by sectarianism or jobs for the boys is simply delusional.

Sunday Brunch

Slate has posted an article by Jacob Weisberg about The Four Unspeakable Truths that presidential candidates won't say about Iraq. Those truths are:

• The war was a mistake;


• Our soldiers are victims;


• Lives lost in Iraq have been wasted; and


• We are losing or have already lost.

Now, some of you are undoubtedly confused. I hear you saying, "David, Jacob Weisberg is a fearless truthteller, but I'm confused. Isn't everyone and his brother shouting these 'truths' as loudly as they can? And, for truths, aren't they surprisingly false?" Indeed, you are right. I don't write for an online magazine, but it seems to me that the real unspeakable truths are:

• The war was the right thing to do both ex ante and ex post

In fact, going to war turns out to have been a better idea after the fact than we could have known before hand. After all, we thought we were attacking a nation with stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, when we were really attacking a run-of-the-mill Arab army with weapons systems degraded by sanctions. Apparently, Slate would think the war a much better idea if we had lost 10,000 troops to poison gas during the invasion.

• Our soldiers are doing what they signed up to do;

I wouldn't try telling the troops that they're victims. Even at this late date, with the entire mainstream media constantly repeating Weisberg's unspeakable truths, soldiers are volunteering for their 3rd or 4th tours in Iraq. A truly unspeakable truth is that American soldiers, by and large, like doing what they volunteered and trained to do. During the 1970s, when the Army in Germany was at its lowest point, with rampant drug use, malingering, insubordination and desertion, everyone perked right up for the annual week or two of maneuvers the Army could afford.

• Lives lost in Iraq have bought us important gains;

This truth mostly overlaps with the next, although I'm not conceding that any life spent in a losing cost is wasted. Some fights are worth fighting even if we lose. But here, the fact of our taking casualties alone accomplishes an important national purpose: it proves that we are willing to take casualties. Obviously, the Democrats and the left are doing their best to disprove this fact, but nevertheless we have stayed in Iraq for almost four years while regularly losing troops to bombs. A rational foe will have to decide whether defying us is worth a long war and is bound to note, regardless of what else is true, that Saddam was dethroned, humiliated and then executed.

• We've already won the war.

Saddam is gone, a new government is in place, the sanctions are gone, Al Qaeda is distracted and concentrating on the middle east and we've given our enemies food for thought by carrying through, not giving up (yet) and doing all this at an insignificant monetary cost.

What other truths do we not dare speak about the war?

The Warrior Princesses

Via Dean Barnett, a photo-essay featuring 18-20 year old women in the Israeli Defense Force.

Read In Unison

I'm tempted by Brit's suggestion of Bryan Appleyard's How To Live Forever. It seems to touch on our favorite issues, but with a different spin -- both of which are important. Also, the chance to drag the author along for the ride doesn't come along every day.

What do you all think?

Making The Tough Choices (Via The Corner)

Hillary Clinton in Selma:

How can we say everything is fine when we have an energy policy whose [sic] prices are too high, who [sic] make us dependent on foreign governments that do not wish us well, and when we face the real threat of climate change, which is tinkering [sic] with God's creation?

If We Weren't Distracted By Iraq...

Alaska Moose Brings Down Helicopter (AP, 3/5/07)

A helicopter is not necessarily a match for an angry moose. Instead of lying down after being shot with a tranquilizer dart, a moose charged a hovering helicopter used by a wildlife biologist, damaging the aircraft's tail rotor and forcing it to the ground.

...We would have long since ended the moose threat.

On Average

Let's say you had a time machine that would take you to some random point during the last 40 million years? How should you dress? On average, this photo represents a warm and balmy day on during the current ice age, which, over the last 40 million years, has seen long periods of glaciation sporadically broken by short warming periods. Now, are people better off with the temperatures we know of from recorded history, or would it be better if world climate was simply stuck at its average point? The question answers itself: there is a reason that recorded history coincides with warm weather. But if we are the beneficiaries of past warming, why do we assume that the next warming period will be catastrophically bad?

[Note: This post has been changed slightly to conform to the facts.]

The Sears Roebuck Is Here

Introducing the Craftsman CompuCarve Compact Woodworking Machine, Computer-Controlled. As the catalog explains, this is a "Compact, computer-controlled, 3-dimensional woodworking machine with an easy-to-use interface. It allows a novice to make a complete project without a shop full of tools.The unique configuration allows it to perform many other woodworking functions, including ripping, cross cutting, mitering, contouring, jointing and routing."

Lives there a man so dead to beauty as to be surprised that the CompuCarve is out of stock.

Oh, That's All Right Then

Drudge has posted links to two articles indicating that perhaps the science of anthropogenic global warming is not settled. First, a French scientist has recanted:

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming....

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l'Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

Second, English tv is going to show a documentary entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle, which argues that "global warming could be caused by increased solar activity such as a massive eruption" and that there is little historical correlation between average global temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels.

None of these skeptics ("deniers" in the politically correct parlance of the environmental left) take issue with the idea that the Earth has gotten warmer recently and might continue to warm. Nothing betrays the essentially political nature of the global warming hysterics that this; once it is shown that global warming is not our "fault" no one cares. What possible difference could that make if global warming was really a civilization-ending threat? That earthquakes and hurricanes aren't our fault doesn't stop us from preparing for them.

The best preparation for global warming is the best answer for almost all the problems that beset mankind: expand the global middle class as fast as we can. As environmentalism and its ugly stepchild, the global warming hysteria, are fundamentally anti-wealth, anti-bourgeios and anti-human, they are committed to preventing us from taking the steps we need to ensure a growing global middle class.

The High Cost Of Global Warming Hysteria

Earlier date for springing forward may lead to ‘mini Y2K’ (Rowena Vergara, Rockford Register Star, 3/3/07)

It’s been compared to a “mini Y2K” — some electronic devices will be confused by the new date for daylight-saving time.

Although it’s more of a nuisance than a catastrophe in the making, older computers, PDAs and DVRs may not automatically update their times when daylight-saving comes three weeks early this year — on March 11.

The date change was established by the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was passed to get Americans to cut energy consumption. The thinking is that less energy will be used toward the end of the day if the sun’s out later.

My wife just got a new Palm TX to replace her old T3. Friday, she noticed something odd: her appointments from March 13 through April 6 were all showing up on her desktop calendar one hour early. Her PDA knows about the change, her desktop software doesn't, and it thinks it's adjusting the appointment time across time zones. The only fix seems to be manual.

The Net: Inclusive Or Atomizing?

Gaywheels.com -- The Gay-Friendly Automotive Resource

Sunday Brunch

WATCHING J&W. FAM DON'T GET HIL TELEGRAPH SCENE. NO REL EXP COMM $$$

For a while now I've been scoffing at our communications revolution by repeating the observation that nothing that's happened recently matches the opening of the Atlantic cable, when getting an answer from London to a question sent from New York went from two weeks to one hour. Now, I'm starting to wonder whether computers and communications (two categories quickly becoming one) are working a qualitative change on human society. One possible effect is that technology is making lawyers of us all. Law schools famously teach students to "think like lawyers," which means the ability to recognize issues in a set of facts and to know where to look for the answers. In an ever more complex world, where the scope of expertise is becoming constantly deeper but constantly narrower, power belongs to those who can tease relevant data out of chaos.

Who does this empower? Young, affluent English speaking white men, mostly. Wikipedia already worries about this bias (they think it's a bad thing). Google, on the other hand, is a tool explicitly meant to reinforce the dominant hierarchy. So, is this a revolution or a counter-revolution? Will technology change the human condition? Is cheap access to the filtered sum of human knowledge a good thing? What talents does such a society reward?

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Britain

Part of the mental machinations that led to the post below were set in motion by my surprise, in reading Think of England and viewing this clip, that the English think that there is such a place as "Britain." Americans, in my experience, don't. We don't think of Wales at all and when we think of Scotland, we either think of men in skirts with blue faces eating shortbread and drinking whiskey or, if we are a particular kind of descendant of the Scots, we think of brave Celts held in bondage by the Sassenachs.

For Those Keeping Score At Home

There is no...

Belgium
Bolivia
bosnia
Britain
Canada
China
Indonesia
Lebanon
Iraq
Morocco
Spain
United Kingdom

My point here is not to yank OJ's chain -- or, at least, not only to yank OJ's chain -- but to point out the hole at the center of his theory that any people who think of themselves as a people is a people. There is no political centrifugal force tearing nations apart into their constituent elements. Nor should we simply concede power to the tribalism that does threaten the nation state. Nations have capabilities that tribes don't have. Certainly, some of those capabilities can be used for evil rather than for good. But they can also be used for good and, when used in conjunction with freedom, can lift men out of their natural lives (nasty, brutal and short) in ways that tribalism simply cannot.

Now We Go Ahunting

As a secret blog, Instapundit is our natural enemy and we wouldn't ordinarily give it even more traffic, but today Instapundit points to a fascinating story in the Economist about why so much medical research is rot. The lead in particularly well-done:

PEOPLE born under the astrological sign of Leo are 15% more likely to be admitted to hospital with gastric bleeding than those born under the other 11 signs. Sagittarians are 38% more likely than others to land up there because of a broken arm. Those are the conclusions that many medical researchers would be forced to make from a set of data presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Peter Austin of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto. At least, they would be forced to draw them if they applied the lax statistical methods of their own work to the records of hospital admissions in Ontario, Canada, used by Dr Austin.

It turns out that, when seeking more than one effect from a database of medical records, scientists forget to adjust their calculations and find causal connections where there aren't any.

The Economist points out that this means we should be suspicious of studies based on databases. But it doesn't point out that we need to be even more skeptical of so-called meta-studies that gather together many studies and tries to tease new relationships out of the agglomerated data. Meta-studies are almost entirely a means of finding a politically correct result. It wouldn't be at all surprising if the designers were also just doing their math wrong.

The Lake Woebegon Track & Field Team

It's hard to believe that Orrin let this pass without comment:

"This is the essence of equal opportunity. Every child, every person ought to get a head start," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who introduced the bill with Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga.

Wha...

Economist.com has published an entirely incoherent article under the title, "We were there for America: But how long will America be there for Europe?" A better title might be "We Hate America Because They're Bloody, Incompetent, Torturing Warmongers, And They Might Not Even Be There When We Need Them."

Walking quietly pass casual mentions of the "disasters" in Iraq and Afghanistan, the coming humiliating losses in those wars and how our torture regime besmirches eastern Europe, the argument seems to be that eastern Europe likes America more than western Europe. As a result of western Europe's dislike, however, America (we're apparently also geographically ignorant) will not come to the aid of eastern Europe when its abandoned by western Europe.

The heart of the argument comes at the end:

Yet, if the Atlantic bonds do weaken, the ex-captive nations will suffer the most. It was America that got them into NATO, and it is America that looks out for them now, much more so than nearer but less friendly countries such as Germany. Any suggestion that the east Europeans can rely on the European Union to stick up for them against Russian bullying is, on current form, laughable.

New radar gear and rocket interceptors planned for the Czech Republic and (probably) Poland will probably not do much to change this, You do not strengthen an alliance by pressing on your allies weapons that their public does not want. Helmut Schmidt, Germany's chancellor 20 years ago, thought that having Cruise and Pershing missiles in western Europe would make America’s nuclear guarantee more credible. Instead, it cast America as the warmonger in the minds of the muddle-headed, and stoked peacenikery throughout Europe.

Barring an unlikely success in Afghanistan or Iraq, the strains on the Atlantic alliance will grow in the years ahead. The rivets have long been popping. Now great girders, such as Italy, are twisting and buckling. It was public anti-Americanism that brought down Romano Prodi’s government last week. Old Kremlin hands who remember how hard they once tried to destroy NATO must have trouble believing that the job is being done so well for them now by the alliance’s own leaders.

Of course, deploying the Cruise and Pershing missiles in the face of demonstrations by the idiot European masses was instrumental in bringing down the USSR. And now that there is no USSR, it's not entirely clear what NATO is guarding against. What crisis would follow today from the US and the EU disbanding NATO that is in any comparable to continental communist hegemony? Exactly why should we care if the EU is subject to Russian (non-military) bullying?

If any commentors can come up with an explanation of this essay that renders it coherent, I would be appreciative. But it seems to me that its incoherence follows from the incoherence at the heart of the European Union experiment. Is Europe one, or is it not? The author here switches paragraph by paragraph -- sometimes line by line -- between the two alternatives. Part of Europe likes America. Part of Europe hates America. America likes part pro-America Europe more than it likes the other part and more than the anti-America Europe likes the pro-America Europe. Because of the anti-American part, America will turn its back on Europe as a whole or Europe, following anti-America Europe, will reject America. As a result, pro-America Europe will suffer more than anti-America Europe.

See what I mean: incoherent.