Real Science -- For a Change

Steven Milloy's stuff at his Junk Science site (now added to my links at right) is always worth reading. Here's his take on some of the numbskulls trying to capitalize on the tsunami suffering -- namely, the always-odious soi-disant environmentalists.

Tsunami Words of Wisdom

Here's an excellent article from the editor of the London Telegraph, Boris Johnson. His best part:

One can see that this is in the spirit of the hysterical precautionary principle that now bedevils our legislation, but it is mad. It may offend our species' sense of self-importance, but when a thunking great hunk of rock comes hurtling out of space, to splat this planet like an egg, it is time to admit gracefully that our number is up.

And here's the always superb Peggy Noonan from the Wall Street Journal. (When I wrote my "No Class..." post, I thought we'd have perhaps just a few sickening examples of people trying to score political points off this unfathomable tragedy. But people never fail to disappoint, and the few have now become the many. But as Noonan says, "Such people are slyly asserting their own, higher sensitivity and getting credit for it, which is odd because what they're actually doing is using dead people to make cheap points.")

A Way to Help... If You're a Geek

For most of us, the only thing we can do to help the poor people affected by the unthinkable tragedy of the tsunamis is to donate our cash (and dozens of other blogs have recommended destinations for this money). Sri Lankan blogger Sanjiva Weerawarana, in addition to having some appalling eyewitness commentary on the disaster, also has a way for computer programmers to help (at least those who "can write some PHP stuff and know Mambo.")

No Class...

It took exactly no time at all for the chattering classes to make political hay out of the enormous suffering in Asia. Lord William Rees-Mogg, whose prediction of a 1990s global depression should recommend his opinion to us all, wrote in today's London Times that the devastation of tsunamis should have us abandoning our conceit of skyscrapers and (of course) getting serious about global warming. I'm left wondering whether, if this unfathomable disaster had occurred thirty years ago, it would have been evidence in support of the drastic steps to prevent the ice age that the likes of Rees-Mogg were predicting back then.

UPDATE 12/28/04: Here's commentary on Powerline about another asshat with this kind of moronic take on this unspeakable tragedy.

Notes on Lori Berenson

I don't know the truth of the Lori Berenson case. Berenson has languished in Peruvian prisons since late 1995 when she was accused of being a member of a Cuban-style revel movement, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). First convicted by military tribunal in accordance with draconian anti-terrorism laws, Berenson was later given a civilian trial after those laws, and the convictions from the courts they spawned, were overturned by Peru's Supreme Council of Military Justice. Sadly for her, the civilian court (which was clearly no model of fine jurisprudence either) convicted her again. Last month that conviction was upheld by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. Berenson will likely remain in jail until 2015.

There can be no doubt that Berenson has been mistreated. But several things are troubling. This website, which documents that mistreatment, completely ignores the fact that part of the house she rented in Lima was sub-let by (according to The Economist) "more than a dozen heavily armed MRTA guerrillas." Indeed, they speak little of the accusations against her, other than to call them "preposterous." The site also claims Berenson was subjected to double jeopardy, a claim that wouldn't be accurate even under US standards of justice.

But therein lies the biggest problem of all. When a well-meaning American moves to another country, even if it's truly to do good, he should go with the full awareness that he is no longer protected by our notion of proper jurisprudence. I truly hope justice is done for Berenson. (Admittedly, though, she's done herself n0 favors with her videotaped outburst defending the MRTA as a "revolutionary movement" in a country that has been riven by terrorism, or with her marriage to an MRTA militant she met in prison.) Perhaps it already has been, and perhaps not; if nothing else, this sad episode should serve as a reminder to those who denigrate American justice that we are truly blessed to have what we have here.

Religion and Reason

In National Review's current issue, Ramesh Ponnuru's cover article had this gem: "Liberals tend to assume, without reflection, that the rational view of an issue is the one that most non-religious people take. The idea that a religious tradition could strengthen people's reason -- could help them reach rationally sound conclusions they might not otherwise reach -- rarely occurs to them."

Those two sentences speak volumes about the lack of deep thinking on the left. I'd go one step further, though. Few of the liberals I know have ever really thought about their beliefs. Most of their deeply held convictions are based not on reason at all, but on pure emotion.

And therein lies the doom of the left. Meaning well is not the same as doing good. Most of them do mean well, but their religion -- and the doctrine of the left is akin to religion, no less faith-based for most of its practitioners than is any godly creed -- calls for ignoring the actual results of putting that faith into practice. It is here that they fall short on the "doing good" part.

Read This

Victor David Hanson's latest is not to be missed.

Worth Searching (and Spending) For

Read this story about one man's quest for toy guns for his boys. As I have a boy on the way, I'm filing it away for reference.

Just one thing is missing here: the beauty of the Internet. A quick Google search, and my first click turned up a site for this stuff.

(Not to wish precious time away, but I'm really looking forward to when my boy's old enough for the real deal...)

Corporate Thoughts #1

Diversity is crap.

I mean that in so many ways. First, because for most people bandying the term about, it's just PC-speak for racism -- oh, sure, racism that's supposed to help victims of past discrimination, but still racism: favoring and disfavoring based on the accident of birth of skin color.

And that whole helping of victims thing rings a bit hollow nowadays. I had an intern a few summers back, a lovely, sweet, bright, witty young lady who has since joined our company. She was a "two-fer" -- the favored sex, and a favored ethnicity. But when I had to make accomodations for her to take her planned summer trip with her family to Switzerland, it occurred to me that we weren't remediating past discrimination -- we were just creating some new discrimination, favoring this young woman who'd had all the advantages that wealth and health and good looks had to offer, over some poor white trash male who was the "wrong" sex and the "wrong" color.

Recently, our HR manager joked about a young man who we had to fire that it was good he was white and male. That should be chilling, but it isn't for most people. It's the kind of thing that leads to the ghettoes and the camps and the killing. Is that where we're going?

The other thing about diversity that rings hollow is that somehow we "need" it to be successful. But the firms in China and India currently kicking our butts, and those in Japan a few years back that were doing the same before being supplanted by even more economical Asian economies, have no diversity at all. At least not the kind usually discussed in our addled conversations here in America.

But there's hope on the diversity front -- the addled conversations may be becoming less so. My company has recently been referring to real diversity -- of opinion, of background, and so on. Perhaps the accidents of birth of sex and color may one day be relegated to the background, where they belong.

The Baby Morons

I've long had a theory that, between the conception and birth of each child, both parents lose 95% of their mental capacity.

Since I'm now in that between-conception-and-birth gap, I've been watching myself closely, like Charlie in the latter half of Flowers for Algernon. So far I seem to be faring well, but perhaps it's because my mind is slipping so badly I can't even see my own decline.

But I can still recognize examples of that decline in others. One of the main bits of evidence since my wife and I announced our forthcoming bundle of joy is the sheer number of parents who seem to think it's either the height of wisdom or the very essence of humor to point out to us that our "lives are going to change." Well... yeah. What is it that compels otherwise seemingly normal people to intone this tautology? Would they say it to someone announcing he had cancer? Or to someone announcing he was moving to Kuala Lumpur?

I've been through many life-changing events, including some very jolting moves across this vast country of ours. Nobody has ever said this to me before. And it's not only what they say, but how they say it, as if to imply that billions of much more idiotic people than us hadn't survived this change!

Steady Earl to earth: I KNOW MY LIFE IS GOING TO CHANGE. I KNOW I DON'T EVEN REALIZE HOW MUCH. NOW PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU SMARMY NUMBSKULLS.

This Guy's Quick Thinking Saved Us All

Via Powerline and Mark McDonald of Knight-Ridder:

Stanislav Petrov single-handedly prevented a nuclear war in late September 1983. He was in command of the Soviet Union's early-warning radar installation when a new satellite array, called Oko (The Eye), indicated a launch of five American Minuteman II ICBMs. While relations between the Soviets and Americans were especially awful at that time, just a week after a Soviet fighter had shot down a Korean airliner, Petrov knew something wasn't right. Why would the Americans start an attack with only five missiles?

He contacted his superiors and told them confidently (though he himself was less than 100% confident he was right) that it was a false alarm. The failure of any of the Motherland to turn to vapor in the next few hours proved he indeed was right, as did the subsequent investigation that showed the satellites had seen not the launch flash of the missiles leaving their silos, but sunlight reflected off some clouds over those silos. Oops.

Stanislav Petrov has not had an easy life since; he lost his wife, and now lives a meager existence in Moscow. While the Soviets acknowledged the problem with their system in the official follow-up reporting, there was no reward for those who prevented catastrophe. Petrov deserves the respect and gratitude of the world he saved.

All Right, Something Positive...

My brother checked out my blog, and said it melted his laptop screen. Okay, so the past few entries haven't been in the Christmas spirit. How 'bout this?

My wife and I were visiting my parents in lovely Upper Michigan when the local news ran the tragic story of the fifteen-year-old girl in Wauwautosa, Wis., who had contracted rabies. Bitten by a bat at her church, she had ignored the problem until it was already a full-blown case of hydrophobia. (Honestly, this is a positive post!) We could only shake our heads at what seemed a sure thing that the poor young lady would die. Only five people ever survived rabies, and they had all had the vaccine.

But she beat the odds. With the aid of a new treatment by the folks at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, where she was put into an induced coma and given a combination of anaesthetics and antivirals, Jeanna Giese survived, and may yet make it home for Christmas.

That's a miracle.

Gun Control Dimwits

Eugene Volokh reports on the gun ban proposed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Following the lead of crime-free cities such as our nation's capital, they aim to make possession of a handgun by anyone but the police or military a crime, and make it illegal to sell or distribute any firearm within their city limits.

For the good people there, who already suffer from the liberal idiocy pervading that place with such things as aggressive bums in their streets, I hope this attempt to deprive them of their constitutional rights falls flat on its smug left-wing thug face. But for those smug left-wing thugs who've been ascendant in that breathtakingly beautiful city, I hope it passes. I've had my visit out there, one I'll always treasure, and I hope my soon-to-be-born son can visit too. But if the numbskulls in charge have their way, they'll soon be assailed by much worse than strident pan-handlers; they'll be terrorized by the wave of crime and murder that always follows these moronic gun bans (just ask England). And my son will just have to visit breathtakingly beautiful north Georgia instead, where the citizens are free to carry a loaded handgun in their vehicles, so long as they keep them in plain view or in the glove compartment. And crime isn't a problem there.

Then and Now

Sixty years ago today, the Germans launched a long-planned counteroffensive against the Allied army in Belgium. Their 500,000 men, who had been secretly assembling in the lightly defended area of the Ardennes forest for weeks, drove a salient into the Allied line in a desperate attempt to reach Antwerp and split the Allied army in two. The Germans hoped to achieve a forced peace on their western front.

The salient -- or "bulge" -- would give the battle its name. The Battle of the Bulge would last the next forty days and be the costliest of the war.

The men resisting the German action would not have a merry Christmas. They fought in snow and bitter cold against a savage enemy; 86 captured Americans would be machine-gunned in cold blood near Malmédy on December 17.

We have men fighting today with the same determination and courage, and facing conditions and and an enemy every bit as terrible, as in 1944. But if the Battle of the Bulge happened today, we would also have a Congress holding hearings to pin blame on political opponents for allowing half a million of the enemy to assemble unnoticed. Brigadier General Anthony MacAuliffe, whose reply of "Nuts!" to the German commander requesting his surrender of the surrounded town of Bastogne is the stuff of legend, would likely be keelhauled before a media even more hostile to our military than the enemy himself. Or thanks to the same perfidious media, we might win the battle but have it portrayed as a loss, as with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

Yes, it is a different world sixty years on from the start of that momentous battle. Time will tell if we will prevail in the great war of our time, but for now it seems that despite a military whose might makes our WWII forces pale in comparison, and despite an American majority who showed in the recent election that it has the will to see it through to the end, we can still look at our nation today and say that we have met the enemy, and he is us.

UPDATE: Here's an excellent article from Investor's Business Daily along the same lines as my post.

Going Nowhere Fast

Hell is an eternity on a stationary bike.

To those of us who love cycling, who have ridden insane distances over even more insane terrain, who have known the unspeakable agony of a bicycle race, who have whiled away a sizeable percentage of our lives perched on a leather-covered two-by-four (on end) turning the pedals, riding the trainer shouldn't be a big deal. Same motion, same narrow saddle, same position -- right? Yes -- but with no variation, and no wind, and no scenery, something we find really enjoyable suddenly becomes absolutely appalling.

Is there anything worse this side of authentic torture? (And by "authentic torture," I don't mean the Abu Ghraib driven notion of humiliation as torture; after all, wearing bike clothes is humiliation.)

You, Of Course, Are a Dope

I have the advantage of having a job where I get to spend a fair amount of time in an office, with an Internet connection at the ready. Given my short attention span, that means that whenever I get bored, I can pop onto my favorite websites and read.

As you'll find, I'm far better informed than you are. (But that's not what makes you a dope.) I get all this information -- what many of my business compatriots call "useless facts" -- from the likes of the sites I have links to over to the right of this post.

National Review Online is always my first stop in the morning after I've quickly checked the news. Their contributors are brilliant, so their blog ("The Corner") is excellent, and their articles always magnificent. (My first click there, if there's a new installment, is Jay Nordlinger's "Impromptus.") Victor David Hanson is always a top choice as well -- even meriting a link to his own website! These guys will truly make you feel intellectually inferior. But hey, you are, so what's the worry?

Steve Vinoski is my sole non-political link thus far. He's a super-geek whose output is usually gibberish to mere mortals, but who also peppers his stuff with cool music and techie toy commentary.

So yes, you are a dope. But check these folks, and my other links out, and maybe you'll pick something up to make you less of one.

University Nonsense

There's been a bit of attention lately to the left-wing tilt of America's universities, along with all the pap (blatant political pressure from professors, ideological indoctrination passed off as "classes," and the like) accompanying that reality.

My question is this: if you're a sensible person -- that is, you find the wholesale exclusion of conservative thought from campuses as odious as I do -- why do you send your alma mater money? Because your school is almost certainly no less guilty than any other of the leftist intolerance (there are a few, such as Hillsdale, that still welcome a range of opinions, but they're so few that they won't enter into our debate). Yet if you're like so many of my friends, you contribute to the annual fundraising drive, and you support the school further with your (fungible) dollars by being a rabid fan of its sports program.

Here's my advice. Cut 'em off: no more contributions, and no more pouring your precious cash into their money-making "amateur" sports teams. The schools will start to amend their ways when they feel the pain in their wallets, and certainly no sooner. They can get all the bad press National Review and The Economist can send their way, but as long as the coin keeps pouring in, they'll change not at all.