Why the break

OK, so it's been almost seven months since my last blog post here, and it's been done on purpose. To be honest, I wasn't sure where I was going with this blob, nor did I recognize myself in it. Looking at it, it seemed it was almost someone else writing it, and someone I didn't particularly like. So I stopped and let it sit while I thought about it for a while.

I'm still not sure where to go with it, but instead of killing it (which I was inclined to do), I'm going to leave it up for historical value (mostly to me) and see what else comes to mind to add to it. In the meantime, I'm going to focus more of my energies on a photo blog of people, places, things I see, the little things of everyday life that make it worth living. I'll post the URL here as soon as I have it ready, probably later today.

Stay tuned, friends.

Don't read this

It would be reactionary, insensitive, possibly racist, maybe even homophobic for you to watch this YouTube video or film trailer.

It would be particularly wrong -- downright offensive and disruptive -- for you to put up this flyer on or near any campus or school.

And heaven forbid you should ever watch the documentary reviewed here, particularly if you're in any way involved in higher education. No, no, no -- bad. Very, very incorrect thinking.

The Lion of Fallujah

The thoughts of Major Douglas Zembiec, U.S. Marine Corps (USNA class of '95):

Be a man of principle. Fight for what you believe in. Keep your word. Live with integrity. Be brave. Believe in something bigger than yourself. Serve your country. Teach. Mentor. Give something back to society. Lead from the front. Conquer your fears.

Be a good friend. Be humble but be self-confident. Appreciate your friends and family. Be a leader and not a follower. Be valorous on the field of battle and take responsibility for your actions.

Major Zembiec was killed May 10, 2007, while leading a raid on a terrorist stronghold in Baghdad. The words above are from his journals, read by his best friend at Maj. Zembiec's funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery on May 17.

Major Zembiec was a true hero, one of that rare species of people whose enormous courage, principles, and sacrifice make it possible for the the rest of us to live safe, comfortable lives. They put their lives on the line fully knowing that their sacrifice will never be fully appreciated, indeed often denigrated by many of the very people they sacrifice to protect.

But even in the company of heroes, Doug Zembiec was something special, a leader whose dedication and amazing courage under fire was chronicled in coverage of the brutal fighting in Fallujah in 2004. Despite being seriously wounded himself, he climbed atop a tank and continued to lead his Marines in street fighting so close and furious that at times grenades were being tossed at a range of 20 feet.

Then-Captain Zembiec was awarded a Bronze Star with decoration for valor for his actions in Fallujah, the citation reading, "On two occasions, Captain Zembiec coordinated the actions of the Marines from atop a tank while rocket-propelled grenades and enemy small arms fire impacted all around him. Wherever the battle raged with intensity, Zembiec could be found inspiring Marines to aggressively repel the enemy's determined assault..."

After his promotion to Major he was assigned to a desk job statesid, but he soon volunteered to go to Afghanistan, later back to Iraq. This was a true man of action, a man who knew the danger and horror of combat but continually put himself in harm's way to protect others. As his close friend Tom Ripley put it, "It's such a loss for our country, but he was doing what he loved. Exactly what he loved to do."

I never met Major Zembiec, but I pass along the above because men like this are to be remembered and their sacrifice appreciated, not forgotten. Read more.

The "fairness" of Fair Trade coffee, and a non-apology

A popular trend in coffee shops and other "socially conscious" retailers is the prominent marketing of Fair Trade coffee. It appeals to a mostly-upscale clientele who fear they're savoring the toil of the exploited poor.

The Fair Trade licensed trademark is an obvious sales tactic, but it's based on a laudable goal and I'm sure the motives are pure. But does it really help the intended poor?

Well, it helps at least a few, though perhaps not all that much. And the rules of the Fair-trade Labeling Organization (the organization that markets Fair Trade coffee to retailers) do seem to explicitly exclude most of those who most need protecting. Colleen Berndt has an interesting analysis at the always-provocative TCS Daily, and Hal Weitzman at the Financial Times suggests some independent oversight may be required.

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A non-apology to English majors: Yes, I split an infinitive. I looked at it for 10 minutes, decided I liked it. So sue me.

Robert Reich's dumb idea

In his May 9 weekly whinatorial on public radio's Marketplace, former Clinton cabinet secretary Robert Reich first complains about large loans many students have to take out to complete their educations. He then bemoans that it makes graduates take up well-paying jobs instead of being able to pursue "what they really want to do," such as taking up painting or archaeology. Reich then seriously proposes a truly silly idea:

Make repayment of government-subsidized loans depend on how much money they earn. Say everyone has to pay 10 percent of their income for the first 10 years of their fulltime work. And then the loans are considered paid off.

My student who's landed that private-equity job would pay 10 percent of his income for 10 years, which would be a hefty sum. My students who go into social work or become artists would pay 10 percent of theirs, which would be far less. The private-equity guy would, in effect, subsidize the social worker and the artist. And why not? This way all of them could follow their callings.

So let's see: We'll create an incentive for people to run up huge college loans pursuing whatever they like for as long as they like, knowing that they won't really have to pay it all back. And they'll be subsidized by those who, instead of pursuing their whimsy, opt to take up well-paying jobs.

Let's also note that Professor Reich teaches at UC Berkeley, where professor's salaries average nearly $130,000 per year, plus a very generous benefit package that likely drives his total cost of compensation over $200,000 per year. That puts him in the very rarified upper percentages of American society. He makes far more than most professionals make, probably more than most university students will ever make. And that's not counting Mr. Reich's other sources of income, such as his aforementioned weekly whinatorials on "non-profit" public radio (though it obviously profits Mr. Reich).

So how about this instead: If those students were not being forced to pay such huge university costs each semester, they wouldn't have to take out such huge loans in the first place. And since much of those huge (and rapidly rising) university costs go to pay the high salaries and lavish benefits of university professors, perhaps the solution to the problem lies with Mr. Reich himself.

So how about it, Professor? Why not address the problem of those big college loans directly at the source, by reducing the cost of a university education? You're very willing to ask taxpayers and less-whimsical students to subsidize graduates who follow their fancies; are you willing to begin by advocating, say, a 20% cut in university salaries? Charity begins at home, yes?

On the conceit of elite and the brilliant Thomas Sowell

From the always-insightful Thomas Sowell, some thoughts on the failings of elites and the wisdom of the masses:

If no one has even one percent of all the knowledge in a society, then it is crucial that the other 99 percent of knowledge -- scattered in tiny and individually unimpressive amounts among the population at large -- be allowed the freedom to be used in working out mutual accommodations among the people themselves.

These innumerable mutual interactions are what bring the other 99 percent of knowledge into play -- and generate new knowledge.

That is why free markets, judicial restraint, and reliance on decisions and traditions growing out of the experiences of the many -- rather than the groupthink of the elite few -- are so important.

Elites are all too prone to over-estimate the importance of the fact that they average more knowledge per person than the rest of the population -- and under-estimate the fact that their total knowledge is so much less than that of the rest of the population.

They over-estimate what can be known in advance in elite circles and under-estimate what is discovered in the process of mutual accommodations among millions of ordinary people.

Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.

The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society's knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity.

The full article is worthwhile reading.

Aside: If you're not familiar with Thomas Sowell, you've missed out on one of the great analytical minds of our time, someone whose wide-ranging writings on race, economics, history, philosophy, and political science will still be studied centuries from now. He's written dozens of books (some have become standard university texts, others more for the public), is currently a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and has received countless awards, including the National Humanities Medal. Whether one agrees with him on any given topic, any read of Sowell's writing always leaves the indelible impression of a brilliant analytical mind and a remarkable gift of clear expression.

For a sample of his popular writings, see this archive of his recent columns. For a list of some of his other works, see a list of his books and some of his most famous quips and quotes.

Coming out of the news closet

If you pick up a newspaper in the U.K., chances are you'll know beforehand where that newspaper's politics lie: the Guardian is unabashedly on the Left, the Times of London more on the political Right (or what passes for the Right in ultra-PC modern Western Europe), and the Telegraph somewhere in between. And they make no bones about it; the politics of each are clear and acknowledged.

American news media, however, refuse to acknowledge their own political biases. Instead they play a little game of "don't ask, don't tell," vociferously protesting any accusation that they have any slant to their news at all. Of course even an occasional reader of the New York Times will be all but bopped in the face by the Times' clear leftward tilt, but the Times itself bristles at any suggestion of anything but lily-white neutrality. Likewise with CBS News, AP, and our other major news media.

I think the Brits have it right -- better to acknowledge one's biases than to pretend they don't exist. So instead of trying to reform our news media to be less biased, perhaps we should just encourage them to come out of the closet and admit their political proclivities. It's worked for others, why not the American media?

On the presidential debates

My complete thoughts on the recent (18 months before the elections) president-wannabe "debates":

If a tree falls in the forest and there are no TV pundits there to comment on it, would anyone care at this point?

That's all.

Islamberg

Ever heard of the little community of Islamberg in upstate New York? Don't try to visit.

They may have visited you, though (see the national map near the end of the story).

Climate-change blog at Nature

For those looking for healthy climate-change debate by people who know what they're talking about, the august science journal Nature has launched Climate Feedback, a discussion blog on climate change. From its title banner:

Climate Feedback is a blog hosted by Nature Reports: Climate Change to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming. The blog aims to be an informal forum for debate and commentary on climate science in our journals and others, in the news, and in the world at large.

Very worthwhile, and even just the first few postings clearly debunk the myth that "the debate is over" about the causes of climate change, as the loudest voices in the media are trying to indoctrinate us to believe. Check it out.

The "Mission Accomplished" speech

What did Bush actually say on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in that famous speech four years ago today?

Well, he never actually said "mission accomplished." That phrase was in the original draft of the speech, but was removed in subsequent edits and was not part of the final speech.

The idea for the "Mission Accomplished" banner came from the crew of the aircraft carrier to celebrate that their mission had been accomplished. (At the time they were approaching port in San Diego from completion of their combat tour in the Persian Gulf.) He did say that "major combat operations have ended," which is true -- it's all been smaller-unit actions since. (Which is harder, not easier, as has been clearly shown.)

Here's more of what he did say:

Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country...

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

See the full text of the speech. Also see additional background from Captain's Quarters blog.

Artillery for your laptop

Well, it's about time. I know I've always wanted to be able to trigger missile salvos from my laptop, but have struggled to find something I could fire from my office keyboard. And I wouldn't want to have to aim it myself, either -- I'd want the launcher to both traverse and elevate (a little artillery lingo there) under remote control.

Well, I've finally found it, and my enemies should now quake in fear. It even fires multiple missiles without reloading. And, best of all, it's only $34.95. Who said military-grade hardware has to be expensive?

Be sure to watch the video clip.

Crickets didn't just chirp...

So with the election still more than a year and a half away, Democrats had their first presidential debate, with a broad range of candidates representing the Left, the Far Left, the Extreme Wacko Left, and Dennis Kucinich. Best quip from coverage of the event goes to Mickey Kaus of Slate.com with the following about John Edwards:

Edwards kind of faded into the background. Crickets didn't chirp--they completed their entire life-cycle during the pause after Edwards was asked to name his 'moral leader.' ...

Yup, that about says it for Mr. Edwards, whose true moral compass always points to his ego.

One of those big ideas

One of the big changes in the auto industry that has gone largely unnoticed by the public is the increasing ability of tiny manufacturers to create, engineer, and put into production completely new designs. Many of these designs, such as those from Saleen, are more advanced than anything yet produced by any conventional auto maker.

This is a huge development. What once took a huge multinational corporation can now be done successfully by small, creative companies with a tiny fraction of the resources but a wealth of new ideas. While we've all been bemoaning the lack of great ideas in the big car companies, the great ideas have gone across the street, set up their own shop, and are turning out terrific new cars like the Saleen S7 and the Pagani Zonda.

The S7 and Zonda are both hyperexpensive supercars, both running well into six figures. But there's a conceptually simple way that this revolution in cutting-edge thinking and creative design could start turning out more everyday cars and provide the kind of worldwide support that regular car consumers expect. I'll have more in a future post.

Tigers on the moon? Not.

I recently watched the BBC's Planet Earth series, one segment of which featured a "DNA bank" which is storing the DNA of endangered species so that if they do go extinct, perhaps someday they'll be brought back to life. Well, that's wonderful -- I hope someday someone can.

But the segment ended by musings about someday repopulating those now-endangered species on other worlds, perhaps even "tigers on the moon." It was all in the tone of starry-eyed science fantasists of the kind you'd find at science-fiction conventions, the folks whose deepest conviction of faith is belief in Science as Omnipotent Savior. That whatever they can imagine, someday Science will make come true.

The curious theology aside, apparently it has never occurred to them that just because something is far-fetched today doesn't mean it'll become a good idea in the future. It's true that time and progress can cure ignorance, but stupid is forever. I mean, the moon is an airless body bombarded by radiation where the temperatures swing from over +200F to below -200F, and hundreds of years from now, when we know much more about science, putting tigers on the moon will still be stupid. Get a clue, people.

"Snow won't dampen global warming rallies"

That's the headline from a news story in Michigan's Grand Rapids Press, which continues:

The weather forecast for Saturday's global warming rallies in Grand Rapids and Holland calls for snow and cold rain and temperatures in the 40s -- about 10 degrees below normal.

For some, this might make global warming a tough sell.

"I've thought of that," said Lisa Locke, associate director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, which is organizing the three Grand Rapids "Step it Up" rallies.

"I think that's 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 is correct: Climate change is about long-term trends, not the daily weather. But be sure to keep those words in mind this summer, too, when every passing heat wave is used as an example of "global warming."

And now for a prediction of my own: In the end, the global warming "crisis" will turn out not to be a lesson on caring for the Earth, but on how science and politics really work.

"I feel pretty"

Do you think John Edwards takes his pretty hair seriously? You have no idea.

The Gospel Accoding to Yoko

Ukrainian writer Oleg Atbashian ponders the roots of modern trendy-Left pop morality:

"But what is the source of a morality that forbids to fight terrorism and views the United States as the enemy? Clearly it isn't rooted in the American tradition. Such a morality manifested itself on a massive scale for the first time in the 1960s. Many of today's protesters admittedly crave to recapture the spirit of those days. Many will be singing John Lennon's "Imagine."

"My research has led me to the excerpts from Yoko Ono and John Lennon's articles published in the 1972 editions of Sundance magazine. Although attributed to John and Yoko jointly, they were written mostly by Yoko who clearly was the one wearing the pants. It should be a required read for everyone who would like to know where their otherwise lazy and cynical leftist opponents get their passionate idealistic convictions from."

Here is a condensed list (the full text is here):
1. A collective hallucination can create objective reality.
2. "The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come." Obviously it's a good thing.
3. Middle America is stupid and "afraid of youth and the future."
4. People work not because they're glad to have a job but because they're being bullied into working by the "tyranny and suppression of the capitalists." (Karl Marx called and left a message).
5. Immature youth are "the aware ones"; traditional education and thought discipline is the enemy.
6. Material reality is evil.
7. "Come together rather than claim independence."
8. "Feel rather than think."
9. Immature and irresponsible behavior is a virtue.
10. Possessions are immoral. "Any possession that is more than what you need belongs to someone who needs it."
11. A worldwide revolution ("progress") is inevitable, and such a future "cannot be anything but brightness."
12. To resist the revolution is immoral because it prolongs people's suffering.
13. A society based on competitiveness and logic produces "hypocrisy, violence, and chaos."
14. A society based on love rather than reasoning will produce "balance, peace, and contentment."
15. To remove evil from this world men must be feminized (if you liked this one you will also like "The DaVinci Code" which is a 500-pages-long regurgitation of this very doctrine).

Absurdities may be a good material for rock lyrics, but presented as a life philosophy they are, well, absurd. Nonetheless, in the absence of logic and reason whose use had been abolished by liberal education, this psychobabble has become Holy Scripture of the new "progressive" religion. John's fame and his unfortunate martyrdom have turned these mind games into unquestionable prophecies. They might as well be called the Gospel of John and Yoko, from which generations of protesters have been religiously drawing their strength and moral fortitude. Can you say, "Imagine no religion?"

While Yoko may not be the original creator of these inanities, she certainly succeeded in presenting them as the original "Instant Flower Garden" combination package. Planted into the heads of faithful innocents, the seeds have grown into the bizarre efflorescence covering the left side of America's brain that we are dealing with today.

Read the whole essay -- there's much more and it's very worthwhile.

A reply in the comments section (from "BBB") quotes erstwhile rock star Alice Cooper in what is probably the most cogent statement ever made about rock-star philosophy: "Anyone who gets their political philosophy from a rock star is a MORON."

Atbashian also quotes the controversial Ayn Rand in one of her most insightful moments:

"The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

I think that sums up very well how we got here. Now how do we get back to reason, logic, and the concept of objective truth?

Will they stop running the "infected PC" ads now?

My, how things change. Apple has gotten much advertising mileage out of its “Virus” ad where the fat PC guy has a cold and the cool-looking Mac guy says he doesn’t get viruses. I haven’t seen that ad in a few weeks; I wonder if they’ve pulled it. If not, they should; it was not only inaccurate, it seemed like foolish inducement to ramp up the hack-the-Mac movement.

And sure enough…

The following was posted yesterday by the Internet Storm Center, one of the global watchdogs for emerging malware and network attacks:

Mac OS X patches
Published: 2007-03-14,Last Updated: 2007-03-14 22:47:42 UTCby Daniel Wesemann (Version: 1)
Well, looks like this month we get more Apple fixes than Windows patches for a change. Mac OS X 10.4.9 is out, and according to US-CERT, this is an upgrade that plugs "arbitrary code execution and SYSTEM level access" type of vulnerabilities. Sounds like a fix even Apple fanboys with lots of faith into the unbreakable nature of their system should consider applying real soon. The same fix covering only the security portion but leaving out the functionality upgrade is also available as Security Update 2007-003, and installs on 10.3.9. More information on both can be found on the Apple Docpage.

Imagine that: A month when there are there are more Apple fixes than Windows fixes. I wonder if that’s going to show up in Apple PR releases. I suppose Apple is learning the hard way that if you wave a red flag in front of a bull, the bull will do exactly as expected.

As a Mac user this trend troubles me, and one can only hope that humility will temper hubris in Cupertino.

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Of interest: A good Wikipedia article on the Mac/PC ad series, and you can view all the ads (in Quicktime format, of course) at the Apple “Get a Mac” site. The British versions of these ads are significantly different, including different actors. You can see them at the Apple UK “Get a Mac” site.

A call for Green Reformation

Al Gore on global warming (read it through, it's not what you think):

There are areas of uncertainty about the greenhouse effect and the dire nature of the ecological crisis we face, which are seized upon as excuses for inaction. This is a psychological problem common to all humanity. If strong responses are needed and yet there is some residual uncertainty about whether you are going to have to make those responses, the natural psychological tendency is to magnify the uncertainty and say, "Well, maybe we won't really have to face up to it."

But the fact that we face an ecological crisis without any precedent in historic times is no longer a matter of any dispute worthy of recognition. And those who, for the purpose of maintaining balance in debate, take the contrarian view that there is significant uncertainty about whether it's real are hurting our ability to respond.

Sounds just like Al Gore the Eco Rock Star, doesn't it? The guy who has become super-rich and super-famous making documentaries and showing his famous PowerPoint presentation all over the world? The guy who, if he could only get in the White House, would redeem America from its evil eco-ways?

Except it's not, or at least not quite. That was the Al Gore of 1988 -- 19 years ago -- and that Al Gore, four years later, did get to the White House and served as Vice-President of the United States for eight years. That was the Al Gore who was the second-highest officeholder in the land in a Democratic administration that came to power with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. It was the perfect opportunity to do what he claimed needed doing, no?

And so it was that four years after his demand for radical action (and, as always, a demand that those who disagree be silenced), Al Gore got his chance. So eight years later when Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton left office, why hadn't they gotten done all the things they said were so critical to do (and that they now rail at Mr. Bush for not doing)?

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Sorry, I get a bit wrapped up in all this. I do think that what we do to our environment is important, and that it's vital that we radically reduce our use of petroleum (for compelling geopolitical reasons, if nothing else). In high school in the early '70s I was the first kid I knew to have an Earth Day sticker (probably would be a collector's item if I'd kept it), loved everything Edward Abbey wrote, and in the '80s read everything Tom Brown wrote and even trekked to the Pine Barrens to attend the Tom Brown School. I was (and am) proud to be on the side of conservation, living in harmony with nature, minimizing damage to the planet.

Today, in middle age, I still cherish the wild places, love the empty desert so much that I moved to brutally-hot Arizona, still believe strongly in humankind's obligation to be the steward of the Earth. None of that has changed.

But in recent years I've also become completely intolerant of the game of political posturing that has become the modern-day "environmental movement." My parting of the ways started with Greenpeace and its playing-to-the-cameras bully tactics, broke wide with the Green Party movement (a shiny green wrapper over moldy old Marxism), and has become open opposition with the rise of Green Chic, the modern pop-culture fad where "green is the new black" and exhibitionist environmentalism has taken on all the trappings (and worst traits of) a self-serving and viciously intolerant neo-religious cult.

Strong words, yes?

And to back those words I bring forward my first exhibit: the Toyota Prius, a harmless little machine that, by any objective measure is a lousy car -- slow, ugly, and handles like a pig -- but has become a Green cult item, not because it's eco-friendly (lots of other hybrids exist and are much better cars), but precisely because its unique ugly shape stands out and proclaims: "Look at me! I'm Greener than Thou!" It's a crap car made famous not for its friendliness to the environment (its fuel economy is far less than claimed, and no one talks about its huge toxic battery packs), but as a form of Green Plumage you can wear in public.

Exhibit Two: The booming industry of those mythical "carbon offsets" that all the Eco-Glitterati buy so they can continue to pollute like bandits but proclaim a clear conscience. So it is that (our handy example) Mr. Gore lives in a huge 20-room mansion, burns jet-fuel hydrocarbons faster than an oil-well fire, runs around in large, expensive cars -- all things that he preaches as evil and irresponsible, though he himself does them. But because he spends a few hours of his yearly income on magical "carbon offsets," it's all OK and he can continue to do all the things he rages against in others.

The whole "carbon offsets" concept is searingly reminiscent of the "indulgences" that the corrupt Catholic Church of the Middle Ages sold to the wealthy as a way for them to continue to engage in sin by paying off their guilt in advance. It was a cynically hypocritical practice then, and it's no different when practiced by politicians and movie stars today.

The plain obvious truth is that if you dare to preach to others, you need to set the example yourself. Walk the talk: You say people should live in modest houses? Then live in one yourself (and only one -- not two or five or ten). You preach that people should use mass transit? Then quit flying in private jets. (The rest of us get by without them, and modern airline security is more than adequate even for a celebrity, no?) You rail against big gas-guzzlers? Then get rid of your limousines and your monster military Hummers (ahem, Mr. Schwarzenegger).

I suppose the measure of how serious we are about finding rational solutions to environmental problems is how quickly we outgrow the shallow, self-centered Chic Environmentalism of the last few years. If this is how the "green movement" continues, we're doomed. We'll drown in holier-than-thou posturing, preening, and politicking, and nothing seriously useful will ever get done.

But if we can regain a modicum of humility, a rational tolerance of other views (including the many serious, thoughtful global-warming skeptics who are currently being tarred as "deniers"), and renounce our addiction to cult-like conviction, then maybe there's hope -- hope that we can close the huge chasm that opened from our arrogance and will only be closed when we regain our humility, hope that we'll learn that when dealing with opposing views we should respect, not revile. Only then will we have a chance to start harnessing the greatest untapped power in the world -- the power of all those we've angered, ostracized, and alienated, but who would eventually meet us in the middle if only we'd quit insulting them.

That would amount to a modern Reformation of a "green movement" gone astray. It was outrage against the corrupt Medieval Church that led to the Reformation and put an end to cynical, hypocritical practices such as "indulgences." And in a similar way I think we need a modern Reformation of the environmental movement to pull it back from its own self-centered, hypocritical ways and its own latter-day "indulgences." But until it does, I think we should withhold our green tithes (the lifeblood of Big Green Chic is Big Green Money) and keep pounding that nail into the door.

Tide turning on Global AlGoring?

"In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism."

So begins part of the lead-in to a news story about Al Gore and how there is an increasing swell of credible critics who accuse him of exaggeration, inaccuracies, and playing fast and loose with the facts. One points out that Gore's famous film alludes to sea levels rising 20 feet or more, inundating many cities, whereas the latest U.N. report (which in itself has been challenged as exaggerated) suggests possible sea level rises of 23 inches, maximum. That's a huge difference, Al -- most places wouldn't even notice a rise of 23 inches.

Of course there have been lots of articles critical of Al Gore and his breathless alarmism, but what took me aback is the source of this article: the New York Times. The NYT is virtually the journal of record of the mainstream Left in the U.S. and has been a long, loud, and consistent cheerleader of Al Gore's crusades and of global-warming advocates in general. For the Times to run a story like this criticizing Gore and echoing many of the things global-warming skeptics have been saying for years is a real shocker.

The story goes on to detail one after another of the criticisms of Gore's claims: Biologists who undercut his claim that global warming is spreading malaria, climatologists who point out the flaws in his claims about increasing hurricanes, geologists who debunk Gore's claim of our warm time being in any way unique or unprecedented, those who object to Gore's claims that global-warming thesis is undisputed, those who angrily resent Gore's charges that those who disagree are only stooges for oil companies.

The writer treats Gore himself with soft gloves, but it's clear that many of those quoted in criticism of Gore are credible, authoritative, and extremely unhappy with Gore's distortion of the facts.

And now that the Grey Lady of the Left has come forward and validated that it's not just conservatives who find fault in Gore's scaremongering, I suspect more such critics may start coming forward, feeling less afraid to speak out about what some say is becoming an embarrassment to the scientific community. Maybe that will help start restoring balance to this important debate that of late has turned into a bare-knuckles attempt by proponents to intimidate and silence the skeptics, even to the point of death threats, ostracism, denial of funding, and name-calling. This is not how science or public policy should be debated, and a drive for balance is way overdue. Let's hope.

Lessons from The Big K

So I was recently computer-shopping for something that would work decently well for high-definition video editing. My little super-light Sony Vaio laptop which otherwise serves my needs well has proven not too great for HD video; it crunches the bits enough (it’s a dual-core Centrino with 2 Gb RAM), but falls down in disk speed, didn’t pass the basic disk-speed test for Firewire capture of streaming HD content. It also got so hot trying to do heavy loads of HD rendering that I thought it was going to melt the coffee cup behind it. So I thought maybe instead of thrashing and shortening the life of a nice little laptop that I bought for its very light weight I should maybe look for a big iron-clanking moster machine with bare-bones options, just a fast CPU, muy grande memory, room for lots of disk drives, but not much else. It could be painted in grey primer for all I care. I bought a machine like that from Dell a few years ago, a WS360 workstation with every option stripped except the fast bus, fast CPU, and lots of expansion capacity. (That machine is still decidedly non-obsolete today -- my son still uses it as a fast gaming machine.)

Alas, no such thing to be found anywhere anymore, and in fact I couldn’t find a single new PC anywhere without Microsucks Vista already on it. Also they all seemed to come with a zillion goombah gadgets already in them, all of which I’d have to rip out by the lungs, and half of those would resist that and end up leaving their vestigial tails behind to clutter the disk and memory.

So on to option 3, build the clanking-iron monster from scratch. I’ve done that before, but unlike pimply-faced 15-year-olds, for me building a PC is just a chore to be done, not an priestly ritual of rapture. But by the time I was done costing it out – Core2 Xtreme quad processor, power supply the size of Hoover Dam, etc. – it was going to be $2500 plus probably many grief units from me (perhaps partly offset by multiple way-coolness units from my own domesticated pimply-faced 15-year-old). At that point someone pointed out that maybe I should just go buy an Apple Mac Pro workstation that would require no grief units, just turn it on and start editing.

So I went and looked at the desktop-workstation Mac Pro, which is sort of the replacement for the former G5, but bigger and badder. It was about 10 minutes from laying on of eyeballs to reaching for plastic. I have to say that I didn’t realize Macs came in such high-horsepower versions: The one now sitting on my desk has quad Xeon CPUs, two terabytes of 3Gb/sec serial-ATA hard disks in RAID 10 configuration (striped and mirrored), and slots to install up to 16 gigabytes of RAM. And it’s virtually built around the concept of content creation -- key ports (including Firewire 800) in both front and back, HD editing and media creation built in, etc. Just minutes after booting it the first time I plugged in my HiDef camcorder (a Canon XH-A1, for vid-geeks), the Mac immediately recognized it, opened the video console, and there it was ready to stream and edit, all in about 3 seconds and with no installation of anything, not even a device driver. As a PC user I had to blink my eyes a few times to realize what I’d just seen. And of course the Mac OS and UI look and feel about 10 years ahead of where Vista is today. If it didn’t weigh 50 lbs and suck down several hundred watts I’d strap this thing to my back and take it everywhere instead of a laptop.

All of which reinforces my ongoing suspicion that Vista will prove to be Microsoft’s Waterloo, the battle that ends its aura of invincibility and begin its slow decline from dominance. When even Fortune-50 corporate IT shops are considering non-Microsuck machines for its everyday users, you know that unhappiness with Microsoft is starting to bubble over the top.

What I’m having a hard time figuring out, though, is what comes after that. What will be the shape of a world where Microsoft no longer dominates? Will Bill Gates be be able to get broadband in Elba?

---

“Big K,” by the way, is the name I’ve given to the Mac Pro whose weight is currently distorting the frame of my desk at home. “The Big Kahuna,” of course.

"It's Bush's fault" -- an indoor game

Awhile back my family and I stumbled on a fun game: Blaming everything on George Bush. Everytime something bad happens somewhere, we now automatically say "It's Bush's fault." Then we try to figure out how whatever it is -- war, pestilence, famine, natural disasters, anything -- can be turned so that somehow George Bush bears, if not total blame, at least part of it. As a sidelight, if Bush does something that would normally be considered good -- promoting conservation, kissing puppies, whatever -- we try to find a way in which it can be considered evil.

For example, if a typhoon kills a bunch of people in Bangladesh, we automatically start with "It's Bush's fault," then see how the blame can be connected to him. That one's easy: Bush automatically does whatever is good for the oil business; oil companies are inherently evil and are to blame for global warming; warming causes hurricanes and typhoons, and therefore Bush is to blame for the death of the typhoon victims in Bangladesh. Child's play.

Now please understand: It doesn't matter whether any of that is true. In fact, very often it isn't, but that doesn't matter. The point of the game is to see how Bush can be blame-connected (even by even the far-fetched means) to everything bad that happens in the world and/or discredited from anything good he does. It's like the concept of "six degrees of separation," but used to connect anything evil anywhere to George Bush.

And now the fun part of the game: Once we've figured out some loopy blame-chain that ends with Bush, we wait to see how long before someone in the news media or at some political entity does the same thing, but for real. Often it only takes a few minutes, typically only a day or two. Watch the news, read the wire services, wait a bit, and in front of your eyes will pop the blame-Bush commentary, editorial, or "news" story.

It sounds silly until you try it. But since we started playing this absurd game we've found it to be an amazing predictor of what will cross the wire services or news networks. It seems there is nothing anywhere that cannot be blamed on George Bush:

• Tsunami kills thousands in the Far East: Bush should have moved aid faster, should have funded more research on tsunamis, should have spent more money on warning networks.
• Hamas fires rockets into Israel: Bush should have applied more pressure on Israel to give up more land, has not done enough to solve the problems in the Mideast, should have stayed out of Iraq, should be friendlier to Iran.
• Inner-city American mom kills her children: Bush should have spent more on welfare, built more parks in inner cities, spent more on teachers to improve urban education, done more to promote population control by promoting condom use by school-age kids and not being opposed to freely-available abortion.

Go ahead -- try it. Once you get the hang of it (doesn't take long) I think there really are no limits to it. You can even start to move the game forward by working out in advance how Bush can be blamed for things that haven't happened yet. Asteroid hits the Earth? Bush should have spent less on wars and more on asteroid-deflection research. Psychopath murders a dozen prostitutes in Cleveland? Bush should have spent more on child psychologists in schools and done more to promote the rights of sex workers.

Really, it's a game of endless possibilities.

But though my family and I are now experienced players, we continue to be in awe of the true masters. A very recent example is renewable fuels: For years the anti-oil advocates have clamored that we need to move toward use of renewable fuels. So one would think that Bush's strong promotion of research and use of hydrogen and ethanol would be welcome, and to his credit. But no, yesterday when Bush was in Brazil to promote increased production and use of renewable ethanol, he faced mass protests in Brazil, criticism from the Left at home (the same folks who have been strongly pushing for renewable fuels), and denunciations that Bush doesn't care about the rainforest. (It should be noted that Brazilian production of ethanol is in its vast grasslands, nothing to do with the rainforest. But never mind -- in this game, anything goes.)

So there you go: an entertaining little game you can try at home. Give it a shot, see what you can come up with, and see what you can predict.

Willowbottom on humanity, Mozart, Bach, and more

My friend and colleague Willowbottom has an interesting post about how, unthinkingly, we risk our own humanity. Worth reading.

Her subsequent post contrasting the musical temperaments of Mozart, Bach, and Schoenberg is fascinating reading and as lyrical as her subject. But methinks it should be set to music somehow.

Me also thinks that while I agree that Bach is so effusive in his musical detail that he leaves little room for the imagination, I for one am very glad of it. The musically talented and educated Willowbottom may be very glad for the room to maneuver, but the musically untalented and uneducated me is very thankful for the ever-ebullient Bach having taken me many places that I could never have gone (or even imagined) on my own.

Stay smart: don't show up

I've always known this.

"We might kill, behead, or do torture..."

From a USA Today story about the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by Iraqi police, a comment by Ahmed Abdullah, a 29-year-old Sunni from Zaiona:

I don't believe that Iraqis will rape a woman. We don't have such a culture. We might kill, behead, or do torture, but rape -- I don't think so.

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. I feel so relieved.

This is just downright mean

Even in murder-happy Colombia, this is beyond comprehension.

SETI finally finds something

After all those years of searching for E.T. and finding nothing, the SETI@Home program has finally found something: A stolen laptop in Minnesota.

This could be the basis for an interesting anti-theft strategy for your PC: Sign up for one of the popular network-computing volunteer programs (SETI@Home, Genome@Home, Protein Folding@Home, etc.). It helps a good cause and, if your PC is ever stolen, just wait for it to "phone home." Like the commercial PC-recovery services (like "Lojack for Laptops"), but free.

Worth considering, at least. And it gives your PC something to do while it's sitting there blinking its cursor, mostly bored all day.

Blame the user

The folks at Time Inc. (a multi-billion-dollar piece of multi-zillion-dollar TimeWarner) boast of "Trusted editing, the best brands in the business," but apparently no one in their image department is talking with their Web server people. I popped on a link to one of their magazines and got the following error message:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@timeinc.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

(Emphasis added, but the huge title font is theirs, not mine. -A)

How's that for a nice friendly customer-facing error message? ("Tell us what happened, and how it's your fault.") Yes, I realize that's probably a default error message on the server, but it's hardly the kind of thing a giant consumer-marketing company should show its customers in this Internet-savvy age. I'm sure Ted Turner would never have tolerated this if he were still alive. (And yes, I know he's still out there writing checks. But the original Ted Turner has been gone for at least 20 years now.)

So here's hoping that somewhere, somehow, some server admin at TimeInc.net gets a bit of time allocated to go script some friendlier messages on their servers. I no longer have a parakeet, so I no longer have any use for Time magazine, but apparently I still have to read their server errors once in a while.

Is Europe doomed to lag behind the U.S.?

Is European culture an increasing drag on its economic performance? An inquiring analysis of why European economies lag behind the U.S., by Edmund Phelps. (Name doesn't ring a bell? He's the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics.)

Cosmic rays, the Sun, and global warming

For the scientifically minded, a collection of research papers on recent findings about the effects of solar cycles and cosmic rays on terrestrial climate, posted at the Danish Space Research Institute.

For those not familiar with this, Space.com has a good layman's background on the theory of solar activity driving changes in Earth's climate, including global warming.

More on AEI, and "how science really works"

More on AEI: A recent article in The Guardian led off with strong accusations against the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank (which, contrary to the Guardian's lead, does not do lobbying, in fact AEI is forbidden to do so). The opening paragraph:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

The Guardian's charges have been widely rebutted, but an interesting perspective comes from David Frum -- columnist for the NY Times, commentator at the liberal-leaning National Public Radio (NPR), advocate of carbon taxes, and since 2003 a resident fellow at AEI. In a recent David Frum's Diary entry Frum discusses what really happens inside the American Enterprise Institute -- how much money comes from ExxonMobil (the company cited by the Guardian in its article), whether AEI dictates policy positions to its scholars, and how outside experts are paid. A good perspective from someone in a place to know.

Meanwhile, on the editorial pages of the London Times, former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder explains "how science really works" and mentions some interesting findings on the effects of solar activity on global warming.

"We've created a monster"

In a new article in The Weekly Standard Stephen Hayward and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute respond to false allegations that AEI, a policy think tank, tried to "bribe" scientists to comment on climate change. The Weekly Standard article also comments on the growing backlash against what Hayward and Green term "the Climate Inquisition," quoting one of the leading global-warming proponents:

"[I]n December, Kevin Vranes of the University of Colorado, by no means a climate skeptic, commented on a widely read science blog about the mood of the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where Al Gore had made his standard climate presentation. "To sum up the state of the [climate science] world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension," Vranes wrote. "What I am starting to hear is internal backlash. . . . None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it's not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we've created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say 'climate change is right here!'""

Dr. Vranes was rather delicate in his phrasing, but President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, always a blunt-spoken man, stated it more plainly in a recent interview. President Klaus expresses his frustration a bit strongly, but at least he's shown the courage to give voice to the sentiment others feel, but have been afraid to state: That we should treat the debate about global warming as just another scientific question to be settled with reason and evidence, not political calculation and social ostracism. Let's hope other thinking people in the public eye find their courage soon.

The ethics of mind-reading

If there were an electronic means of reading people's minds and their intentions, would it be ethical to do so? Should it be legal? According to some neuroscientists, these are questions we may soon have to answer.

This brings up an even more difficult question: If technology is outpacing our ability to develop moral and legal frameworks (and it often looks that way), has technical progress become a game of Russian Roulette, with destruction of society a matter of inevitable chance rather than choice? Is each new technical advance another spin of the revolver's cylinder, not knowing when the bang will come?

If that's the case then our self-destruction is assured. Is there nothing we can do to stop the game before the hammer finds the bullet?

Enforcing "correct science"

Let's say you're a state governor and you're unhappy because the head of the state climate office does not fully agree with your views on global warming. Said climatologist agrees that global warming is going on, but questions how large humanity's role has been in causing it.

Well, if you're Governor Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, you try to have the legislature create a new office of State Climatologist that will allow you to put your own appointee in that role, someone who will hew to all the correct views on climate change. The new appointee will rid you, the governor of the grand state of Oregon, of the terrible embarrassment of a tenured academic (George Taylor of Oregon State University) at a state office questioning one of the tenets of what you consider to be "official state policy" on this scientific question. And the governor's scheme will probably succeed, because many in the legislature are just as outraged as the governor -- they find such deviation from correct belief by a state employee to be an unacceptable blemish on Oregon's green sheen.

As Gov. Kulongoski put it, "I never appointed him. I think I would know. He's not my weatherman."

But no matter what happens, it's clear that the academic Taylor, who has headed the state climate office at OSU since it was created by the legislature in 1991, is now learning how brutal can be the ways of eco-correctness attack politics. An article from the Portland Independent Media Center charged that Taylor "stumps for big polluting businesses," vilified Taylor as "especially dangerous," and quoted the head of Oregon PIRG accusing Taylor of "fiddling while Rome burns." The same article suggests Taylor might be a stooge for Big Oil or Big Nuke and even wonders if the problem is his religious beliefs. Other media pieces have publicly ridiculed him and even called him crazy.

Taylor has tried to defend himself, but his is one voice against a lot of media firepower, and it's virtually certain that Gov. Kulongoski will not only get "his" weatherman, but Taylor's personal and professional reputation will be shredded beyond recovery -- just one more bloody casualty caught in the crossfire of climate politics.

It's getting hot out there.

Go Porsche!

Apropos the global-warming debate:

To the U.S. political Left (and the EU political mainstream), one of the most attractive aspects of the humans-cause-warming hypothesis is that it serves as wonderful justification for a huge new revenue stream in the form of "carbon taxes." A carbon tax is a political diamond: You can claim the moral high ground, collect huge new revenues, and many of the booboisie will feel so morally righteous in paying it that they won't question where it's going. For spenders of public money it doesn't get any better than that.

But even in Europe not everyone is going along. Wendelin Wiedeking, CEO of Porsche AG, has joined several others in the German auto industry in questioning the politics of carbon taxes, claiming the reason France and Italy are so much in favor of such taxes is because carbon taxes favor French and Italian car makers over those in Germany.

As a Porsche owner (968 6-speed coupe) this is yet one more reason to be proud of Porsche. And as an American, I can only hope the E.U. carbon taxes drive Porsche to start manufacturing cars in America. Mercedes and BMW already build cars in the US, why not Porsche as well?

"Lab meat"

A future household term, coming soon to a store near you: lab meat.

Your read it here first.

"Eco-censorship"

In 2006 global-warming advocates (i.e., those who hold that the Earth is getting hotter and humans are the main cause) stepped up the PR campaign against their opponents by declaring that "the debate is over" and dubbing the skeptics as "deniers," explicitly linking them with those who deny the Holocaust. The intent is to end the debate by silencing the skeptics, or at least so discrediting them in the mass media that the doubters will be effectively banished from the public square. There have even been attempts by members of the U.S. Congress and the British Royal Society to pressure corporate contributors to stop funding research that casts doubt on global warming.

It's hard to say how effective this tactic has been. From what I see, the main effect has been to polarize the two sides even further: Those already predisposed to believe in global warming (per my loose definition above) now have fewer qualms about openly ostracizing their opponents, while the questioning skeptics have become ever more outraged about the attempt to silence and denigrate them.

In fact I'm starting to think that for the global warming side this tactic may be backfiring. Though the mantra of "the debate is over" has gotten lots of media play and its emphatic tone has probably swayed some of those who get their news from MTV, it looks to me like its greater long-term effect has been to energize those on the other side, resentful of the attempt to silence them. Examples from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Canada's National Post (the whole 10-part series is worth reading -- see links in the body of the article). Iain Murray provides a good description of what he terms "eco-censorship," and others are busy counter-attacking.

So where is the debate headed? At present the global-warming advocates have the mass media and political momentum going their way. But, in my contrarian mind, I think the tide may soon start running the other way. The next report of the IPCC (the U.N.'s climate-change panel) is due in May and early indications are that in the details (but probably not in its press releases) it will pull back from some of the more extreme views taken in past reports. The famous "hockey stick" temperature-rise graph, now discredited by further analysis of the data, will be gone from the report, and the panel is scaling back its temperature-rise and sea-rise predictions. In the meantime data keeps coming in to indicate that the real culprit may be changes in solar and cosmic-ray activity, which, if validated, would yank the debate from how we prevent global warming to how we adapt to it.

Aside: As one trained in astronomy, the solar- and cosmic-ray-effect hypothesis is of particular interest to me. The idea of solar fluctuations and cosmic-ray flux driving Earth's warming has not been widely discussed in the mass media, but it's been under serious discussion in the astronomy world for quite some time and it's not at all a crackpot idea. At present we don't have enough data to gauge the magnitude of these effects, but the mechanisms proposed are very real and there are some very interesting coincidences that the green-house gas theory does not explain, but solar and cosmic-ray effects do. This is one to watch.

Stay warm.