"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.

---

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)?

---

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.