text:
Of all the major candidates, Hillary Clinton is the one whose presidency is easiest to visualize in detail. No wonder we feel sick to our stomachs. [. . .]
[Barack Obama]'s the most charismatic politician to seek the presidency since Reagan. But where Reagan's priorities were crystal clear, Obama's are obscured by beautiful, meaningless rhetoric. What is the "audacity of hope," anyway? [. . .]
The only thing connecting [John] Edwards' policy switches has been popularity. He was for war when it was popular, against it after it became unpopular. [. . .]
Of all the Democratic candidates, [Bill] Richardson would be most likely to cut taxes. And after Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), he's the most open to reforming drug laws. If the party really wants to make a play for the "libertarian West," it'll nominate Richardson. [. . .]
If — make that when — [Joe] Biden loses badly, he could start hosting his own talk show. There'd be no need for guests! [. . .]
No one in Washington is sure why [Chris] Dodd is running. No one outside Washington is sure who he is. [. . .]
[On Dennis Kucinich:] It's a matter of how much you might enjoy peace on earth and legal marijuana while your tax rates rise to pre-Reagan levels. [. . .]
[Undeclared candidate Al] Gore today is more liberal than the candidate who almost won in 2000, both for better and for worse. [. . .]
[Rudy] Giuliani might be the most socially liberal figure to make a serious run for the GOP mantle since Nelson Rockefeller. He also might be the most personally authoritarian Republican candidate since Richard Nixon. [. . .]
Like Giuliani, [John] McCain comes to public policy from an authoritarian perspective, not an individualist one. He's good on some issues, but his bias is for the executive to take the reins to ram through change and vanquish his foes. That might not be the ideal philosophy to follow eight years of George Bush. [. . .]
[Mitt] Romney has the most impressive management experience of anyone in the race. Unfortunately, the impressive parts came before he entered politics. [. . .]
[Sam] Brownback represents a different shade of the "compassionate conservatism" championed by George W. Bush. But perhaps not different enough. [. . .]
The vision of "compassionate conservatism" promised by George W. Bush was actually practiced by [Mike] Huckabee, with all the flaws that entailed. He's the GOP candidate who'd probably get along best with a big-spending Democratic Congress. [. . .]
It would be nice to live in a world where Ron Paul could actually win. [. . .]
The ascension of [Tom] Tancredo to the White House might so terrify Mexican migrants that they stop coming across the border altogether. In that circumstance, forced to work on other issues, Tancredo might become a fairly libertarian president. This is an unlikely scenario. [. . .]
[Undeclared candidate Newt] Gingrich is more interested in big ideas and multipoint plans than a coherent philosophy for government. [. . .]
Ron Paul aside, [undeclared candidate Chuck] Hagel's stances make him the strongest candidate some libertarians could dream of — especially those whose chief concern is ending the war. But his only constituency might be the media. [. . .]
If he runs, [at the time undeclared candidate Fred] Thompson will be the most pro-Bush Republican in the race; he narrated Bush's bio films at the 2004 Republican convention. If you liked the Bush era but wished the president's voice had a little more bass, Thompson's the one. [. . .]
Nick Gillespie, David Weigel and Jesse Walker, "Presidential Scouting Reports: A libertarian fan's guide to the World Series of politics", Reason, 2007-06
Is it a sign of U.S. cultural decline that the nuts are now leaving California?
Nick Gillespie, "Give al Qaeda an Inch...", Hit and Run, 2007-05-30
I used to work in the Document Management software field, so this little cautionary story rings just so true:
"You destroyed the originals didn't you?" I sigh.
"Of course. What's the point in scanning them if you're going to keep the documents?"
"What was the point in scanning them in the first place?"
"We needed space in the document vault for some new contracts."
"So you destroyed licence documents — some of which are proof-of-purchase, some of which are one-time licences and will not be reissued by the vendor."
"But as you say, they're still in the content management system somewhere. Can't you just do a search on the content management server and find them?"
"Don't be silly — no content management server allows that — or you'd be able to change systems to some cheaper vendor. No, a proper content management system makes it next to impossible to extract your content in any automated manner so that you're forced to use their product and pay their licence fees no matter how crap it is."
The Register reports on a "successful" trial project for greener street lighting in Westminster:
Westminster City Council is doing its bit to save the planet by installing energy-saving street lamps in every thoroughfare in the borough, the BBC reports.
The bold initiative follows a "successful trial" of the £1,000-a-pop Furyo Lanterns on Harrow Road which saved "on an average day", enough juice to light a house for two days and cut carbon emissions on the test highway by 0.28 tonnes over three weeks.
Sounds like a pretty good thing, right? Lower energy costs, no loss in street light lumens, it's a slam-dunk.
Oh, but wait . . .
So far so good. However, the Beeb says that if Westminster replaces all of its 29,000 street lights, it will save "up to £20,000 every year". Since the cost of the new, whale-hugging illumination is £29m, it will therefore recoup its outlay in a mere 1,450 years.
That's not quite an enticing return on investment.
Yeah, that's the ticket! You produce more wine than the market can absorb, and much of it is poor quality. You fix this by: A) reducing output B) improving quality C) both, or D) threaten to resort to terrorism.
In France, apparently D is the correct answer:
A shadowy group of wine activists has issued a one-month ultimatum to Nicolas Sarkozy threatening "action" if the new French President fails to help the industry.
The Regional Committee for Viticultural Action (CRAV) has been known to hijack tankers of foreign wine and dynamite government buildings or supermarkets.
In a pre-recorded message delivered to France 3, a regional television channel, from "somewhere in the Languedoc hinterland", five balaclava-clad men read out a statement addressed to Sarkozy.
Looking more like Corsican nationalists or masked Islamic fundamentalists than winemakers, the "wine terrorists" vowed that if nothing changed and the price they received for their wine had not gone up, they would go "into action".
Samizdata has more.
L. Neil Smith talks about the inexpensive single-shot "Liberator" pistol, designed to be airdropped in mass quantities over occupied Europe in World War II:
The cost of the Liberator, plus its packaging, was a little over two dollars. Inflation being a measure of the greed and dishonesty of politicians, I am ashamed to say that the same weapon today would cost over twenty dollars. Over a million were made, and the idea was to drop them to partisans in sufficient numbers to give the Germans — even those who didn't get shot as the instructions showed — a real headache.
It is about here that the official stories diverge. I had grown up all my life hearing that the Liberators got duly dropped, some were used, the rest vanishing deep into barns and cellars, hidden from the mostly communist governments that came to replace the Nazis. Today, a Liberator in good condition will fetch around $2500 from collectors because most of them, presumably, are still hidden in those barns and cellars.
According to Wikipedia.com, however, most of the Liberators didn't get dropped. The OSS, into whose hands the project was placed, never really understood the idea (I knew a few of those guys when I was a kid, and they were neither brain scientists nor rocket surgeons) and the guns were eventually destroyed. Or given to the Philippines. Or something.
I don't believe it. I think the whole project became an historical embarrassment for an increasingly anti-gun US government. It couldn't have made us terribly popular with various totalitarian bosses in east Europe for whom it would have been a constant thorn in their sides. Yugoslavia's Josef "Tito" Broz would have been an exception. He wanted his people armed so that the Russians couldn't move in on him. At one point, he even had all of the nation's firearms registration records destroyed, making it virtually impossible for an invader to confiscate weapons.
Michael Pinkus posted the new issue of OntarioWineReview last week. This issue talks about the Henry of Pelham winery, the Terroir wine event in Prince Edward County, and a report from the New Zealand Wine Fair.
Clive sent along an amusing link to Harry Potter is actually Luke Skywalker:
Here's a one-page script treatment for the original Star Wars movie pitch, marked up to become a pitch for the first Harry Potter novel and/or movie. Hilarious send-up of mythical tropes that we seem to fall for every time. Joseph Campbell, eat your heart out.
Thanks, Clive. Sorry it took me nearly a week to post it!
Well, it was a good effort, but the Pirates ended up on the wrong end of a 2-1 match last night. The score was tied at the half, both goals on penalties, and both penalties awarded for handball in the goal area.
Whitby Silver had a better passing game, so that they were better able to take advantage of the few opportunities that came along. We're still looking for our first win of the season, although a lack of practice is probably the reason for the low goal-scoring so far. I'm hoping to get a practice field assigned later this week.
First, let's agree that there is no observer of the political scene wiser or righter than the embittered libertarian. He has witnessed the grandest of his dreams sputter out on the launchpad; he has watched his mildest expectations take flight and then explode into a thousand irregular chunks that melt the tarmac. He has watched the Libertarian Party splinter over that epoch-shifting question: Dave Bergland or Earl Ravenal? He has winced as the LP nominated, as its 2004 presidential candidate, the only man in America who could win even fewer popular votes than Ralph Nader in the late, brain-jellying stages of his dementia.
It was an embittered libertarian who told me to fear the Ron Paul 2008 campaign. Early in February, a few short weeks after Paul confirmed he'd be making the run, my source shelled peanuts and slugged beers and waved the red flag of doom.
"It's going to get ugly," he said.
David Weigel, "The Paul Paradox: Can a libertarian only win by losing?", Reason, 2007-05-25
Elizabeth's cousin Susan died suddenly, so blog-related things will be a bit erratic for the next few days. Regular posting should resume by Monday.
Took Jasper to the vet for a heartworm test. Gnat wanted to hold the leash as we entered, but I had to take the reins; you never know when Sheba the Death Mutt is waiting inside, ready to pounce and open throats. There was a Doberman inside, looking, as do all sitting Dobermans, like a living exclamation point. This dog did not like Jasper, and gave him a warning growl that had murder in mind. Jasper turned and walked to the door and looked out the window: I will go now please thank you okay great. But no, I had to drag him over and make him sit in the same room as Killer MacBully. Jasper was already nervous, since I'm sure the vet's room smells like fear and doubt. I tried to distract him with a good chest rub, which has a way of making male dogs zone out, but it didn't work. Some people talk to their dogs as if they understood the exact text: you'll like the doctor! She's nice! Yes you will! Mummy's widdle smuckums. I can't. It's one of the things about pet ownership that breaks your heart: they can comfort you, but you really can't comfort them. They don't have to know your language, but you can't know theirs.
Well, you can, but I'm not going to lick his face to express benevolent dominance.
There's a sentence that's going to get me some hits for all the wrong reasons.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-05-23
Yesterday evening's game was very fast-paced, and our lack of pre-game training sessions showed in the early going. For the first ten minutes after the kick-off, we were desperately defending, not even advancing the ball out of our own end. Our opponents kept the pressure up until finally, almost as an anti-climax, the ball was stroked gently into the lower left corner of our net. Victor, playing keeper for the first half, was able to fend off the other efforts.
After the first substitutions (we have 19 players on the team, and have to equalize playing time, so unlike the pros, we substitute frequently), the team settled down and we started to push into enemy territory. Kory A., working feverishly down the right side, scored the equalizer at about the 25-minute mark.
The last ten minutes of the half were a mirror-image of the first ten minutes, as the Pirates generated plenty of pressure and Whitby Red was unable to clear the ball or move upfield. Kory A. added a second goal to move us into the lead. The score was 2-1 at the half.
During the second half, both teams had opportunities to score, and the ball possession was about equal. About the seventy minute mark, Whitby Red was able to draw level, putting the ball past Tom L. in the lower left corner of the net.
The last fifteen minutes were frustrating for the Pirates, as several goal-scoring chances were fended off, including four corner-kicks.
Overall, a great effort for a team that had never played together before. Matt L., Cory R., Ian S., Micheal H. and Nicolas M. all showed great composure and some very good moves throughout the game. The team decided to call themselves the "Pirates" on a suggestion by Matt L. (our uniform is black and red, no pirate flag or anything like that).
It's a hoot to hear modern kids described as self-indulgent by the generation that created its own culture out of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Talk about a sense of entitlement: When the baby boomers came along, they (we) got the voting age lowered for their benefit. They also demanded that the drinking age be lowered, and it was — only to be raised once they were safely into adulthood. Narcissism? Not for nothing were boomers dubbed the "Me Generation."
Steve Chapman, "Have We Raised A Generation Of Narcissists?: It's 10 p.m. Do you know how big your child's ego is?", Reason, 2007-05-21
The Cutty Sark, perhaps the best-known of all the clipper ships, has been seriously damaged in a drydock fire:
A fire which swept through the famous 19th Century ship Cutty Sark may have been started deliberately, police say.
The vessel, which was undergoing a £25m restoration, is kept in a dry dock at Greenwich in south-east London.
An area around the 138-year-old tea clipper had to be evacuated when the fire started in the early hours.
A Cutty Sark Trust spokesman said much of the ship had been removed for restoration and the damage could have been worse.
Half the planking and the masts had been taken away as part of the project.
The fire-damaged areas are shown in this BBC illustration:
More information is in this article at The Guardian.
Today being a holiday Monday, in token regard for our monarch's notional birthday, posting will be light.
Actually, my U16/U17/U18 soccer team will be kicking off in the first game of the season at 7:00, so there's a bare possibility of either a victory cheer or a losing gripe later in the evening. It would help if we'd had a chance to get some practice in, but the team lists were only distributed last week, and there are so many kids signed up for soccer in Whitby this year (over 6,000, in a town of just more than 100,000) that there are no practice fields available on weekday nights any more.
I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I'm sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they're also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they've also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, "If all we do is hunt and gather, let's make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let's make childbirth kinda weak and shameful." It's a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it's entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women's behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.
It's safe to say that I've snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I've looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I've shorted out. I don't pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I'm not for a second going down the "women are saints" route — that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn't that tradition eventually fall apart?
Joss Whedon, "Let's Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death", Whedonesque, 2007-05-20
This magazine [the Financial Times] recently presented a rather touching portrayal of Ashton Hayes, a village in Cheshire with the aim of becoming "carbon neutral" — that is, emitting no unnecessary carbon dioxide at all, and perhaps making up for all that troublesome breathing by planting a few trees. That will take some work because the villagers' current emissions of carbon dioxide are about 25 per cent higher than the national average. In an effort to cut this to something more respectable, the villagers are urging each other to switch off unnecessary electrical items, insulate their lofts and trade in big cars for small ones.
This is all laudable stuff, so it feels a little mean to point out that the villagers could dramatically reduce their carbon footprints by bulldozing Ashton Hayes and moving to London. Yes, London: the "big smoke", the richest region in the European Union, is a city whose environmental statistics make it look dangerously like some hippie commune.
Tim Harford, "Undercover Economist: Urban neutral", FT.com, 2007-05-18
I had one last thing to tell them, which I didn't say. I intended it to be inspiring, but I just wasn't sure if it would come across that way, so I edited myself and left it out. I'll reprint it here, though, in case any of them stop by to read this:
This is entirely unrelated to writing, but it's something I wish someone had told me when I was your age: High school is a really important time in your life, and what you learn here and how you grow as a person will profoundly impact your adult years. But the social thing? It really doesn't matter, because after you graduate, you never have to see anyone from high school again, unless you really want to. A guy said to me yesterday, "If you win at high school, you lose at life," and that made a lot of sense to me. I'm sure you guys are a creative bunch of people, which means you have a certain degree of sensitivity, something that is usually the object of ridicule in school. Well, don't deny that because you're afraid of being unpopular. It's really not worth it. So stay focused, go to college, and thank me in your acknowledgments when your book is published. It's "Wil" with one "L."
Wil Wheaton, "on writing . . .", WWdN: In Exile, 2007-05-17
Jane Galt's main blog is down right now, and her host's blog is also down. She's got a temporary backup site running at http://janegalt.wordpress.com/.
I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news — car crashes, domestic violence — that you should start worrying.
But that's not the way we think. Psychologist Scott Plous said it well in The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making: "In very general terms: (1) The more available an event is, the more frequent or probable it will seem; (2) the more vivid a piece of information is, the more easily recalled and convincing it will be; and (3) the more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal."
So, when faced with a very available and highly vivid event like 9/11 or the Virginia Tech shootings, we overreact. And when faced with all the salient related events, we assume causality. We pass the Patriot Act. We think if we give guns out to students, or maybe make it harder for students to get guns, we'll have solved the problem. We don't let our children go to playgrounds unsupervised. We stay out of the ocean because we read about a shark attack somewhere.
It's our brains again. We need to "do something," even if that something doesn't make sense; even if it is ineffective. And we need to do something directly related to the details of the actual event. So instead of implementing effective, but more general, security measures to reduce the risk of terrorism, we ban box cutters on airplanes. And we look back on the Virginia Tech massacre with 20-20 hindsight and recriminate ourselves about the things we should have done. In fact, the incident has been used as evidence both for and against gun control.
Bruce Schneier, "Virginia Tech Lesson: Rare Risks Breed Irrational Responses", Wired, 2007-05-17
Unusually, the government did not merge the capital costs and the support costs of the 100 Dutch Leopard 2 tanks when the original announcement was made. Now the total package is estimated to cost C$1.3 billion, not C$650 million. It's not clear from the article why this acquisition was handled differently than other recent military purchases.
Canada's purchase and long-term support of 100 slightly used Leopard 2A6 battle tanks will be $1.3 billion — roughly double the Conservative government's initial public estimate last month.
As he detailed a laundry list of military hardware the Conservative government plans to buy over the next few years, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor surprised the Commons by announcing there will be a 20-year, $650-million service contract attached to the tank deal.
"The capital acquistion is $650 million and the support for 20 years is about $650 million; about the same range," he said in reply to an opposition question during debate over Defence Department estimates.
Of course, even at the higher price, it's still a bargain for top-drawer military hardware.
This is why, despite all the emails I've received urging me to write about Ron Paul's strong performance in the Internet polls, I haven't been covering it. I like Paul, but Internet polls are meaningless as a measurement of anything but the enthusiasm of a candidate's supporters. I don't think, as some do, that Paul's performance is purely a product of cheaters spamming sites with multiple votes. There has been some of that, but the congressman does well even when the multi-voters are ferreted out and their ballots removed from the results. I just don't think it means a lot to win one of these contests.
But I have to laugh when the creators of these unscientific surveys try to find ways to discount Paul's wins without admitting the polls themselves are near-useless. When it became clear that Paul was doing well in Fox's text-messaging poll after the debate Tuesday night, for example, Fox host Carl Cameron suggested the congressman's supporters were gaming the system. He did not pause to ponder the point of offering a system so easily gamed. Nor did he admit that if the votes for Paul didn't mean much, the same was true of the remainder of the results.
Jesse Walker, "What Internet Polls Are Good For", Hit and Run, 2007-05-17
James Lileks covers the third day of their Disneyworld experience:
It's like that all over. The Disney Experience is one of the most psychologically all-inclusive and seductive thing I've experienced in years. After a while you stop thinking outside the possibilities of Disney; it absolutely drives out everything else from your imagination. It hits you from every angle. It works your soft spots and worms in through the cracks; it finds your fascinations and feeds them. [. . .]
[. . .] It's as if Mickey exists both outside time and inside its specific examples. The effect is Total Mickey, Mouse without End.
The old tired Sinclair Lewis quote gets dragged out by the professional hysterics: when fascism comes, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible and etc. Well, friends, this is the Corporate State, right here, a world unto itself, bigger than two US states put together. They control the horizontal and the vertical, and the utility grid. The roads are private. The lakes are private. The control is hardly total — let Disney cease to pay taxes, and watch what happens. But the enormity of the area and the totality of the control is almost unprecedented. Surely it cannot be benign. Right?
James wrote something completely appropriate to finish this thought a few years ago, which I must recycle here: "Imagine, Winston, that the future consists of a boot pressing on a face. Here's the worst part, Winston — inside the boot is" MICKEY'S FOOT!!!
A scary report in The Register about some 100,000 American troops who may have been exposed to low levels of Sarin nerve gas after the 1991 Gulf War:
It is believed that US soldiers occupying an Iraqi munitions depot at Khamisiyah mistakenly blew up a stockpile of gas rockets in March 1991, believing them to be ordinary explosive munitions. Nobody noticed any ill effects at the time.
It was only two months later, when Iraqi chemical weapons facilities were inspected by the UN as part of the ceasefire agreement, that the US began to realise that nerve gases might have been released into the atmosphere. [. . .]
It's perhaps also worth noting that declassified CIA reports suggest that some or all the sarin rounds blown up at Khamisiyah were of binary construction, meaning that they contained not sarin but two precursor chemicals which would be mixed to form sarin when the weapons were fired. Blowing up kit like this wouldn't release large amounts of nerve agent into the atmosphere; just precursors.
If the rockets weren't binaries, there would be an excellent chance of their sarin payload having decomposed to uselessness. This was a major problem for the pre-1991 Iraqi chemical weapons industry.
If you think the Nobel Prize is too stuffy and formal, then you'll probably find this selection of IgNobel Prizewinners to be just what you're into.
The headline bellows "Brawl breaks out in House of Commons", which sure would be big news, right? Our penny-ante politicos, rolling up the sleeves and going for the literal jugular? Kewl. Something reminiscent of Taiwanese political in-fighting, perhaps?
Ottawa MP David McGuinty accused Tory MP Royal Galipeau of storming across the floor and unleashing a tirade of insults. He called the conduct the worst he has seen in his three years on the Hill.
"The member was clearly out of control, using unparliamentary language and in a threatening fashion grabbed my left shoulder and only left my side when several of my colleagues urged him to stop and to leave, but he would not," McGuinty said.
"He was really completely out of control, raising his voice, flailing his arms, gesticulating in a threatening fashion and making wild accusations."
If that qualifies as a "brawl", then I dread to think what they think a real brawl might be like.
Of course, the very best part of the article is here:
Galipeau, who is also from Ottawa, is deputy Speaker and charged with keeping peace and decorum in the Commons.
He must be keeping it in his parliamentary office, then, because he sure didn't display it on the floor of the House!
Guy Sorman talks about the state of China:
The Western press is full of stories these days on China's arrival as a superpower, some even heralding, or warning, that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident of China's economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Investment pours in. Crowning China's new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
But China's success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China's economic "miracle" is rotting from within.
I've had my own concerns about the real issues of the new Chinese economy.
I didn't watch the most recent US Republican candidates debate . . . but that should come as no surprise, because I can just barely muster enough patience to watch our own politicians debate during an election. The non-stop, never-ending campaign for President must be an extra circle of hell — at least, it would be for me. Others, however, with rather more at stake (i.e., American voters) must suffer along regardless.
Among the coverage of the debate, Andrew Sullivan had the most interesting thing to say:
It's also clear that compassionate conservatism is dead. Every single candidate favors reduced taxes and big spending cuts. None, however, is prepared to say that Medicare and Social Security must be on the chopping block. The grand experiment in big-government Republicanism is therefore rhetorically over. Sorry, Mr Gerson — but only one Republican is dumb enough to embrace the bromides of government spending as the cure for all our woes. And he's got a limit of two terms. That's a victory of sorts for those of us urging conservatives to abandon their big spending ways. I say "of sorts" because in practice, there's no sign that any of them, except Paul and possibly McCain, mean a scintilla of what they are saying.
The final clarifier for me was, yes, torture . . .
Some issues really are paramount moral ones. Two candidates opposed it clearly and honorably: McCain and Paul. All the others gleefully supported it - including Brownback. He's a born-again Christian for torture. Giuliani revealed himself as someone we already know. He would have no qualms in exercising executive power brutally, no scruples or restraints. Romney would double the size and scope of Gitmo, to ensure that none of the detainees have lawyers, regardless of their innocence or guilt. That is in itself a disqualification for the presidency of the United States. A man who has open contempt for the most basic rules of Western justice has no business being president.
Couldn't have put that last sentence any better.
Update: David Weigel thinks that Ron Paul's efforts are being wasted:
But did Paul win the debate? As Mitt Romney might say: Golly oh-gosh, heavens no! If it wasn't for the reanimated corpse of Tommy Thompson or Jim Gilmore, the clown costume that walks like a man, Paul would been the obvious loser of the debate. As is, he merely tied for 8th place and will be remembered as "Rudy's pinata." He has less chance of winning the GOP nom now than ever, which is really something. If the other 9 candidates plus Fred Thompson died in a horrific baking accident, the GOP would draft Lyndon Larouche before nominating this guy.
A former Ron Paul aide has decided to toss his hat in the ring against Paul if he doesn't resign his seat. David Weigel says:
Prediction: The overlap between people who thought the Democrats were wrong to purge Joe Lieberman and people who think the GOP would be right to purge Ron Paul will be around 100 percent.
James Lileks continues the tale of the family vacation:
When we ended yesterday's entry, I was stuck in a small, crammed room in the dark at the Haunted Mansion, and remarked that I have been severely claustrophobic for many years. The various references to "the paper" or "my career" concern the trials of my employer, which began a several-year project of feeding jobs into the woodchipper right before I went on vacation. We continue:
The doors were shut and the lights went out and the room began to sink.
This was the test, in a way: the test of whether that evening attack in a movie theater in 1984 had any power left. I had my first panic attack — out of the blue, no hints or omens, ever — during a showing of "Vertigo." Honest. Rapid heartbeat, disorientation, fight-or-flight, the entire suite of symptoms at once. While I had to commend my condition for choosing an apt moment to assert itself, it also meant I had a difficult time convincing the emergency room nurse I wasn't just reacting to a well-crafted thriller. But it happened during the scene in the stable. Nothing was going on. Well, that's the genius of Hitchcock, isn't it? Even the most mundane moments are saturated with dread. Yes, and my shirt is saturated with sweat. Now if you could give me something.
Tulipmania has, apparently, been oversold:
We think we know the story of "tulipmania": the 17th-century Dutch dropped fortunes on tulips, ruined their economy, even killed themselves over the bulbs. In short, tulipmania is remembered as the first market bubble. It has been used as an analogy for subsequent ones, most recently during the dotcom boom. However, Anne Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: "Most of what we have heard of it is not true." For instance, Goldgar couldn't identify a single person bankrupted by tulipmania. In this dense academic work — with longueurs for readers who aren't themselves tulipmaniacs — she tells a new story.
Yeah, sure. Next thing you'll be telling me that Lemmings don't commit mass suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs!
James takes the family to the secular high temple of Disneydom:
It's Disneyworld. The happiest, smiling-est, hottest, sweatiest, standing-in-lineiest place on earth. This year's motto: "The Year of A Million Dreams," which suggests they've completed Jungland: cool! I had a dream in which a large mouse was pulling my brains out my nose, and my brains were made of gold. Doctor, what does it mean? I didn't think it meant I had Disneyphobia, which makes its sufferers treat Mickey as a sin visited upon the world, a demon equalled only by that Dark God of Body-Rot, Ronald McDonald. I've always enjoyed Disney Products™ — I've just never had awestruck melty adoration of all things Mouse-related. At best, total love of this or that. At worst, shuddery dislike of some of its manifestations. For the most part, temperate admiration. I looked forward to this.
Not to spoil the story, but having spent four days in the realm of the Mouse, you could cut my wrists and I'd bleed Disney Kool-Aid. Because that's how much I drank.
Last week, Whitby made the news when a local parent strenuously objected to the Boy Scout badge her son brought home. The Toronto Star had somewhat predictable coverage:
Cale Northey went to a Scouts Canada camp to learn about gun safety. He came back with a "licence to kill."
That's how his parents view the badge the 11-year-old brought home from a target shooting event in Oshawa last weekend.
The badge features an Agent 007-type figure pointing a gun with a red target over his heart.
"I think it's terrible," said Cale's mother, Jane Northey. "We've got kids shooting up everyone these days. What kind of message are we sending them? This badge is a licence to kill sponsored by Scouts Canada."
I thought the whole thing was overwrought, and just another excuse for the Star to run a glib anti-gun article. Until I got a look at the actual badge, and I discovered that Jane Northey had a case:
Could you have designed a badge that was more likely to get up the noses of people who aren't comfortable with guns? This is the intellectual equivalent of a drive-by mooning.
What. Were. They. Thinking?
What part of "responsible gun handling" does this illustrate?
Paul Levinson sent an open letter to ABC.com about the allegations that the site removed pro-Paul comments left on their site:
If this is true, the only justification ABC could have for doing that would be if they have proof positive that the comments were bogus — all or most originating from the same IP or same small group of IP addresses, for example.
Otherwise, ABC.com is guilty of an outrageous, heavy-handed administration of its comment section — so much so that, if the charges are true, ABC owes not only Ron Paul's supporters but the American people an explanation.
I hereby call upon ABC to explain exactly what happened with those comments — if they were indeed removed, why?
When that generated no response, he posted another one:
News media — whether tv networks or their message boards, or search engines like Yahoo which perform like news media, or smaller operations like Pajamas Media — have a responsibility to the American people. Unlike someone who sells shoes or pretzels, who can set store hours, open and close online message boards and blogs — pretty much do whatever they please under the law, as is their right — news media have a special, additional responsibility.
Especially in times of elections, news media must err on the side of being open to all candidates and their supporters. Yes, you must tolerate even an abusive e-mail, for the greater good of keeping your system open to all points of view.
That's why Jefferson and Madison in their wisdom insisted on protecting you under our First Amendment.
While I don't concur with Mr. Levinson's belief that the non-commercial media (like Pajamas Media) are in any way bound to the same criteria as the mainstream media, it's disturbing that PJM, of all groups, is indulging in the sort of strong-arm tactics they rightly condemn when done by the mainstream media.
It's my personal view that Ron Paul is one of the best presidential candidates fielded by either of the major parties over the last 40 years, and I would like to see him treated fairly (or at least as fairly as other declared candidates). He may not win — he's the definition of a long-shot candidate — but he does represent a wider swathe of opinion than other candidates who enjoy much better media access and friendlier coverage.
L. Neil Smith suggests the unthinkable: that the US Libertarian Party boost a Republican candidate:
Ron Paul is — or could be — the Eugene McCarthy of the 21st century.
It is for those reasons that I suggest that delegates to the 2008 Libertarian Party national convention should at least contemplate doing something unprecedentedly decent, courageous, and intelligent, even for them. They should nominate "None of the Above" for President on our own ticket, and then immediately vote to cross-endorse Ron Paul. The endorsement could even state the reservations I mentioned above.
But the point is that it would help put the LP on the map in a very big way, it would help the campaign of the only man (apparently) in a position to salvage the dream of what America was supposed to be, and it would help America and the world by thoroughly repudiating the evil beat-up-and-kill policies of the two-headed Boot On Your Neck party.
You don't get that kind of chance very often.
Nathan Fillion interviewed by Craig Ferguson on the "Late Late Show":
Not much post-able activity this weekend . . . yesterday was a performance of "Taming of the Shrew" by PlayMakers (a few photos may be salvageable), and today was (finally) contacting all the team members for this year's soccer squad. Busy, but not bloggable stuff.
I was surprised that my colleagues on the panel seemed less alarmed by the steady concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. In my view, the greatest guarantor of liberty and good government is an engaged and sceptical populace standing between its leaders and the levers of power, but this is clearly not a universal sentiment.
Akaash Maharaj, "The Friendly Dictatorship Revisited", Akaash Maharaj: Practical Idealism, 2007-05-07
This edition of OntarioWineReview is now online, with a theme of "Spring Fever in Wine Country".
Well, the Star Tribune apparently is immune to common sense, reason, logic, and a well-orchestrated campaign of abusive email from all corners of the internet. James Lileks files his last Quirk column:
Oh, you poor, poor reader. You're busy. You want a laff. And what do you get? Economy-size downer: a columnist's sad farewell. Yes, 29 years after writing my first column for a Minneapolis paper, I'm writing my last.
Three decades! That's a grand run. You can't blame it all on cronyism, union protection and incriminating photos. I credit your patience, and the general suspicion that I might be worth reading the next time, too. That's all we can ask. We're only as good as the next column, after all. And since there won't be a next column, well, whew: Pressure's off.
Mark Perry takes a skeptical look at the much-used factoid about women being paid less than men:
6. Most studies that control for all factors that affect earnings show that motherhood and marriage explain almost all of the "pay gap." For example, research shows that:
a. There is no pay gap among single, full-time workers age 21 to 35, who live alone.
b. Among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had a child, the earnings of women are about 98% of men's.
c. Never-married women in their 30s who have worked continuously earn slightly higher incomes than their male counterparts.
d. Men spend only 1.6% of all potential work years out of the workforce, while women spend 14.7% of potential work years away from work.
e. A woman's lifetime earnings are lowered 13% by having her first child, and 19% by having her second.
Bottom Line: Here is what the AAUW didn't report: Median annual earnings of men and women age 25 to 34 with bachelor's degrees in the same field are roughly equal. In other words, there is no "pay gap," once you control for ALL factors that affect earnings, and compare apples with apples.
H/T to Paul Tuns.
Rizwana Z. sent this link to one of my mailing lists: Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada:
If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do — but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings.
Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due to the crust there rebounding slowly after the end of the last ice age or a deeper issue involving convection in the Earth's mantle — or some combination of the two.
Now, ultra-precise measurements taken over four years by a pair of satellites known as GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) reveal that each effect is equally responsible for Canada's low gravity. The work could shed light on how continents form and evolve over time.
The NCC blog is complaining that the latest Senate reform bill has been delayed:
One year seems like an awfully long time to pass a bill that is only three clauses long. But when the bill in question (S-4) proposes to limit Senate terms to eight years, it is no wonder the dust collectors in the Upper House have pulled out every trick in the book to delay it.
This is one of those "I don't really care either way" issues, as the only real change is to impose term limits. Term limits without other, more radical changes are pretty much a non-issue: in fact, it'll increase the overall cost of running the Senate. Why? Because with more frequent changes in the composition of the senate, there'll be more ex-Senators drawing public pensions. Other than that, this is not a particularly useful change.
Winning WWII was the ultimate joint effort. But if you go to school in America, you graduate with the impression that the United States was 90% of that victory.
Our version paints Great Britain as a plucky and resourceful holdout against Hitler, on the verge of falling. Russia is portrayed as a bunch of hobos with flintlock rifles who got lucky because the Nazis didn't have warm coats. The French are presented as beret-wearing cheese-eaters taking German lessons.
Scott Adams, "Who Won WWII?", The Dilbert Blog, 2007-05-06
Nearly forgot to mention . . . today is the third anniversary of when Jon invited me to set up my own blog on his server.
Of course, this is better than last year, when I missed the anniversary by almost a week. The year before that covered pretty familar topics. And most of the original readers from the first year are still around (and even occasionally commenting, which is to be encouraged).
Also from Wil Wheaton, his review of another Star Trek: The Next Generation episode:
Data, Dr. Crusher, and Tasha tell a story so filled with sci-fi cliches, the ensuing drinking game would put Ted Kennedy into a coma: Tarella was an Earthlike planet (drink!) with technology equivalent to late 20 century Earth (drink!) The Tarellians were very similar to humans (drink!) and ended up in a big old nasty war, just like World War II (drink!) One faction developed a biological weapon (drink!) and unleashed it on the other half, eventually infecting them all (drink!) in a planet-wide plague (drink!) that infected the survivors so virulently, even when they fled the planet, they infected and killed the entire populations of the other planets they attempted to settle (drink!). A few of the more noble infected survivors tried to stay away from inhabited planets, but they were hunted down and killed, anyway (drink, and tip that 40 for the fallen Tarellian homies, yo.)
Wil Wheaton has a bee in his bonnet about the failings of too many parents nowadays:
[. . .] I've recently concluded that there is, in fact, an entire generation of parents, about my age or just a little older, who are substituting technology for parenting. As a result, there's an entire generation of children who are overstimulated and undersocialized, and in some cases heavily medicated, because their damn parents would rather distract them with a DVD or video game than, you know, interact with them.
Is this the new way we're supposed to raise emotionally healthy and well adjusted kids? I must have missed a memo, because these people are everywhere. [ . . . ]
There's a car commercial running right now that is an unintentionally powerful and disturbing commentary on how many people in this generation of parents are raising their kids. It starts in a school lunch room, filled with kids who are jumping and running around, throwing food, and generally raging out of control. A teacher tries to get them to settle down, and is ignored, so he flips down a little display, like you'd see in a car-based DVD player, and the entire room instantly turns into slackjawed, television watching zombies. What's the message here? "If you can't get your kids to listen to you, don't worry, all it takes is a little DVD action to do it for you, so you can get back to the peace and quiet you inexplicably thought you'd enjoy when you had seven f*ing kids."
In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet's rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in "carbon credits" is in formation. Those whose "carbon footprint" is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.
The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution — and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.
Alexander Cockburn, "Is Global Warming a Sin?", The Nation, 2007-05-14
John Scalzi lets the cat out of the bag on how Pluto is feeling:
The funny thing about the demotion is that I never actually wanted to be a planet, you know? I was out here minding my own business and then suddenly Clyde Tombaugh is staring at me. And the next thing I know, people start calling me and telling me I'm the newest planet. And I remember saying, I don't know if I want that responsibility. And they said, well, you can't not be a planet now, Walt Disney's already named a character after you. That's really what made me a planet. Not the astronomers, but that cartoon dog. People loved that dog.
Ironically, I'm a cat person.
I'm not going to sue. Who am I going to sue? You think the International Astronomical Union has any money to speak of? There's a reason the most popular event at an astronomer's conference is the free buffet. [. . .]
One thing about something like this is you find out who your friends are. Jupiter couldn't have been nicer during the whole thing. Saturn's been a real sweetheart, too. And Neptune — well, we go way back. We're simpatico, always have been. But some others, eh. Not so nice.
No, I don't want to name names. They know who they are.
Oh, fine. Mercury. I got into the club, and Mercury was suddenly my best buddy. And I thought, well, okay — we're close to the same size, both of us have eccentric orbits, we've both got a 3:2 resonance thing going on. Similarities, you know? So we hang out, get to know each other, fine, whatever. Then the IAU vote comes down and I haven't heard from him since. Like the demotion might be catching or something. He may be right; he's not exactly a brilliant lane-sweeper himself.
You wonder if he realizes just how accurate he's being here:
"The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation," Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed "Custer's Last Stand".
The sad thing is that enough people will have so little historical understanding that they'll take this at face value: Google/Custer killed by MSM/the Sioux nation. Of course, the Sioux were unable to capitalize on this one victory and the rest of the war went terribly for them, and their descendents still suffer the long-term consequences today. But that's perhaps reading too much into Mr. Parsons' thoughts?
Original article here. H/T to SDA.
Patrick Vera called my attention to the freely downlodable Gutenberg SF CD:
"The Project Gutenberg Science Fiction Bookshelf CD" is a long title for a small thematic excerpt from the wealth of public domain works of Project Gutenberg. 165 SF ebooks have been extracted in all available formats. The base for the CD is formed by the Science Fiction (Bookshelf) page of the Project Gutenberg Wiki. The page is frequently updated by volunteers so visit it once in a while for new ebooks added.
While there are many books in the collection I've never heard of, there are some definite winners:
Frequent comment writer, "Da Wife", has been having issues with the staff at her son's school. She asked if I'd let her rant about it . . . and I was happy to give her some space for it:
Our son is in Junior Kindergarten. Until he started school most of his food knowledge has been from us, his parents. Since he started school, when we serve certain foods, they have been increasingly accompanied by little commentaries from him such as "Cheerios are bad for you" (carbs). "Apples are good for you and make you big and strong". "Peanuts can make you die" (I guess a kid in his class is allergic). These comments are not something he would think of himself.
He has been coming home with many comments specifically about his lunch and snack contents. His lunch and snacks are balanced but do contain little treats such as Rice Crispy Squares. At home we offer good food and some treats too, and in general we do not preach about food causing death. Some gentle inquiries let us know that his teacher and the lunch helpers (from now on referred to as the Food Police) are indoctrinating our son and the other children in his class with the official Food Police views on food. Now remember that these are 4- and 5-year-olds who probably have very limited influence on what is put in their lunch. Aside from making them feel bad, how much good is the lecturing doing? Well it is doing a great job of undermining the parents' authority.
There is nothing quite as successful as undermining the influence of parents to make the children more susceptible to suggestion from other sources, such as the school system.
In February the school board conducted a month-long tally of all students' morning snacks to see if the snacks are balanced and contain the major food groups. Yes, the official government-sanctioned Food Police were out to make sure that the children are eating properly. Yes, our tax dollars are now being spent on digging through kindergarteners' snacks.
In March, I was unpacking my son's lunchbag and saw his sandwich was uneaten. His answer was that his teacher said it was too sweet so he did not eat it. I go to great pains to ensure that my very picky son will eat his sandwiches every day and at the same time ensure they are healthy. The sandwich in question contained 100% whole wheat bread. The margarine was non-hydrogenated 0mg cholesterol and 0mg trans fat with Omega-3. The jam was actually apple butter which — wait for it — is puréed apples and nothing else. But yes, to the eye it did appear that it was a sandwich with butter and jam. Maybe if the teacher actually spoke to me instead of making snide comments she would find out otherwise. This prompted a very angry phone call to the school office and a chat with the teacher the next day. She of course, not wishing to admit that she basically bullied a 4-year-old, said it was all in my son's head and he misunderstood. I left fuming after explaining to her the contents of his lunch and getting it across that her comments are not appreciated. The comments from the teacher seem to have lessened but I still hear that the other kids are still receiving them.
At the beginning of May, we received a "Healthy Eating Newsletter". This is from the same school that has not exactly been stellar on the province-wide standardized testing; maybe they should concentrate their energies elsewhere.
In another neighborhood school, if a child brings something the Food Police consider bad, the child has to take it to the office and trade it in for a piece of fruit. So nice of the school to take away a food that the parents spent their hard earned money on. I do wonder what happens to all these confiscated snacks. The office staff should have regular weigh-ins.
Up until about two weeks ago, we just simply attempted to deprogram our son whenever the need arose, aside from the one sandwich incident. Then came the final blow: after all the lectures, letters home about good eating, and the government-sanctioned snackbag inspections, then came the fundraiser. What do you ask was involved in the fundraiser? Selling apples for a dollar? Selling stuffed animals? Oh no: selling very large chocolate bars! Given out on behalf of the school by none other than Ms. Food Police herself, the classroom teacher!
Obviously the health of our children and our society is only important when money is not involved. The principal boasted about the good cause the money would go to. I was going to have a chat with the principal but then I remembered that he actually believes the themes of the month that involve teaching children about courage, empathy, sharing, etc. instead of the three Rs. As parents are no longer equipped to teach these themes at home, the school system has taken upon themselves the arduous task of teaching these qualities. After all, you hand in a report to your boss; he will not care if you cannot spell. As long as you do it with courage and are munching on a carrot stick.
And I used to think it was bad ten years ago, when we were getting the gears from Victor's school about "acceptable" foods . . .
I dunno, it's not the way I'd have expected 'em to raise money, but you can't doubt that it'll be more lucrative than a sale of old books:
Vienna's City Hall has launched a "sex hotline" to raise money for the capital's main public library, officials said Tuesday.
It's unusual, but it's not particularly raunchy: Callers pay 53 U.S. cents a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.
I can't imagine the same thing working in, say, Peoria, somehow.
Tim Cavanaugh saves you the effort of reading any autobiography by any politician, ever:
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that I was the Natural. I made a pledge, a pledge with teeth, not to carry water for the special interests. In a spirit of bipartisanship I reached across the aisle and found common ground, while building support at the grassroots and netroots levels. With straight talk, I fought as hard as I'd ever fought in my life for working families to keep our children safe.
I was a rising star with a big tent and a clear mandate. While others bogged down in cross-party sniping, I triangulated, working both ends to provide much-needed relief to our vanishing middle class. With a clear road map to real change, I put the pocketbook concerns of the voters first while saying no to the naysayers. The result was a bi-directional win.
Perhaps it was hubris to touch the third rail of American politics. I freely admit my Achilles' heel was that I ignored the elephant in the room. But I could not let a rogue actor continue to thumb his nose at the international community, while handing money hand over fist to the same old tunnel vision and short-term thinking. This is not about politics; it goes to who I am. To understand my decision, you'd have to go back to my recently discovered Jewish ancestor Madam Valdez, who arrived on the Mayflower. Those are the kind of deep roots and local values I brought to the Capitol. At a hastily called prayer breakfast, I consulted my deeply held beliefs, and mistakes were made.
After all that, you'd hardly be surprised to find him as a "goodwill ambassador" for the next 20 years, would you?
Being human means being evolution's bitch. And once you hit 25 or so, evolution thinks survival is a secondary concern to getting those genes back out into the pool.
Jane Galt, "Fitness Cost", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-05-01
An older piece in Reason provided me with all the encouragement to post my favourite parody of the Molson "I am Canadian" ad:
Tabernac, mon esti!
Not being in — or anywhere near — the Minneapolis area, I don't actually read the print edition of the Star Tribune. This might disqualify me from being upset at the latest move on the newspaper's staff: cancelling James Lileks' Quirk column and moving him to local news reporting:
There's been some talk that I might leverage my mad web skillz into a tech beat, reporting on the Internet. But a local beat about the Internet? How many stories can do you about six guys in a loft coding a hot new start-up? And heaven forbid we have to illustrate them, because then you get the inevitable geek-by-the-screen shot. Look! He's customizing the drop-down location menu so it defaults to the United States instead of Afghanistan!
I don't want to write about the Internet. I want to write on the Internet. I'd rather develop content than report about content developers. It's that simple, and it's also a matter of recognizing my failings: I am not Biff Deadline, Ace Reporter. I can do long stories with lots of color, all aslosh with subjective opinions, but writing straight news — clearly, simply, briskly — is a skill I lack, and I take off my hat to those who've mastered that discipline.
My column will end a week from this Friday. (There's a series of pieces I can't wait to write.) After that, it's just-the-facts-ma'am — and I'll no longer be telecommuting, either. This means I will start burning my share of hydrocarbons like a good American. Hell, I may leave the vehicle running all day outside the building just to make up for lost time. Maybe I will put a green roof on the car to balance things out. Some turf, some switchgrass. It's murder on the paint but we all must do our part.
If you're in the Minneapolis area, you might have more opinionatorial weight with the
pointy-haired-powers-that-be at the paper . . . you can contact them here to express an opinion.
A potentially bench-clearing brawl was avoided through careful diplomacy:
A soccer game bringing Muslim imams and Christian priests "shoulder to shoulder" on a field in Norway was cancelled Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part. [. . .]
But when the church decided to drop its female players, the priest team captain walked out in protest.
Just hours before Saturday's scheduled game, the church released a statement saying it had called it off because it was sending the wrong signal.
"We realize now that it will be wrong to have a priest team without women. . . . The reactions we have had today shows us that this is being interpreted as a gender-political issue. This is why we cannot go through with the soccer match."
Well, I'm off to pick up my team list and equipment for this summer's soccer season. I don't expect to be posting much until later today or tonight.
I'm just hoping that the luck of the draw has given me at least one goalkeeper! We can manage just about any other failing, but lack of a dedicated keeper is very tough to overcome. At times like this, I briefly envy the coaches of competitive teams, as they tend to be a bit spoiled for choice. Because I'm coaching house league, it's random chance who ends up on each team.
This is also the first time I've coached players in the upper age groups: we're a combined Under-16, Under-17, and Under-18 division this year, so I'll have players who are old enough to drive and have jobs playing for me. This may make scheduling practices a bit of a nightmare . . .
Update: Well, at least I don't have to spend half the night calling the members of the team . . . because they're adding at least one team to our division (lots of late applicants in our age group), so the team list I have now will be out of date by tomorrow. On the bright side, Victor is very happy with the team uniform. He immediately put on the jersey, once we got outside with our team equipment:
H/T to SDA, with extra trans-fat sprinkles on top. Oh, and the language is a bit NSFW.
This should provide final, conclusive proof that the moon landing was faked on a soundstage in Area 51 by Elvis — who's still alive BTW — and Bigfoot. Then, the CIA shut everybody up. With extreme prejudice. Except Elvis, of course, 'cause even the CIA can't get rid of Elvis.
We do have a problem with the political system. It's been increasingly rigged to favor extremists on both ends. So they're overrepresented and the center is underrepresented. They're not all extremists, but it is clear that the average Republican member of Congress is to the right of the average Republican partisan, who is to the right of the average American. You have the same leaning in the opposite direction in the Democratic Party. Reflect on the fact that until fairly recently, the House Majority Leader was Tom Delay (R-Texas) and the House Minority Leader was Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Just think about how much of the country that leaves out.
That is not a coincidence. The system has been rigged by partisan activists to their advantage. They participate in primaries. General elections don't matter because they've gerrymandered the congressional districts. They have the advantages of energy and being single-minded and they use these wedge issues which they're very good at and which both sides conspire in using in order to marginalize the middle. The result of that is the turnout among moderates and independents is down; turnout on the extremes is up. The parties are increasingly sorted by ideology so that all the liberals are in one party and all the conservatives are in another. That is a new development in American history.
The result of that is you have two quite extreme and narrow political parties talking, for the most part, over the heads of the center. That's greatly exaggerated because obviously the center remains important. We found that out in 2006. The center also gets much more important when you have divided government, which is one reason I'm so keen on divided government. It's the best way, maybe the only way, to force policymakers to notice the middle. You have to pit them against each other.
Jonathan Rauch, interviewed by Nick Gillespie in "The Radical Incrementalist", Reason, 2007-04-20
Perry de Havilland takes a strong position against nanny state would-be meddling by a group called Alcohol Concern:
Parents who give alcohol to children under the age of 15 — even with a meal at home — should face prosecution, a charity says today. Parents who let children drink should face prosecution, says Alcohol Concern. [...] A charity spokesman said: "It is legal to provide children as young as five with alcohol in a private home. Raising the age limit to 15 would send a stronger message to parents of the risks associated with letting very young people consume alcohol." It is illegal to buy a drink in a pub under 18, but a 16- or 17-year-old can drink wine or beer if having a meal with parents.
You know what I would like to see? Whenever someone threatens me with force if I do not modify my social behaviour more to their liking in my own damn home, I would like them get arrested and thrown in jail. And I would like to see them beaten with truncheons if they do not comply with the cops just like they want for others who do not comply with their wishes. Such people are addicted to using force to impose their will on others and so why not "send a stronger message" that threatening people via the political system is really no different to threatening them with violence via some other institution, like the Mafia, for example.
With regard to the holocaust, I have — broadly speaking — two options. I can believe that it did happen roughly as claimed. Or I can believe that it is a gigantic conspiracy of lies maintained since the 1940s in the face of all evidence. Since debate remains free in the English-speaking world, it should be obvious what I am to believe. I believe in the central fact of the holocaust. On the secondary issues mentioned above, where my authorities do not agree, I suspend judgment.
Take away the freedom to argue with or against these authorities, though, and my assurance that they are right must be weakened.
Sean Gabb, "Defending the Right to Deny the Holocaust" Free Life Commentary, 2007-04-24
Well, it took a while, but Jon just let me know that our bandwidth problems are (at least for the next couple of weeks) resolved. This has been the longest outage since I started blogging, and I set up a backup blog at http://quotulatiousness.blogspot.com/, which a few of you may have found while the main site was down.
I'll copy the "missing" posts over from the backup site when time allows.
Visitors since 17 August, 2004


text:
The Jakarta Post
The Corruption Court sentenced a businessman and his lawyer Monday to five and four-and-a-half years in jail, respectively, for bribing a judge.
The entrepreneur, D.L. Sitorus, and his lawyer Adner Sirait were found guilty of bribing Jakarta High Administrative Court judge Ibrahim Rp 300 million (US$32,700) earlier this year to win a land dispute against the Jakarta City Administration.
Both Sitorus' and Adner's sentence terms were one year less than those demanded by prosecutors. In addition to the jail terms, they were fined Rp 150 million each or serve an additional three years in prison.
"The defendant was proven guilty of breaching the corruption law," presiding judge Jufriadi said when reading out Sitorus' verdict.
Sitorus, owner of North Sumatra-based PT Sabar Ganda, said he would appeal the verdict while Adner, who was silent throughout the session, asked for time to make up his mind and so did prosecutors.
Adner was caught red-handed in March giving judge Ibrahim Rp 300 million to help D.L. Sitorus win his land dispute at the Jakarta State Administrative High Court.
Prosecutors said that Adner had contacted Sitorus in March, telling him judge Ibrahim had agreed to take a bribe from him in exchange for a verdict that favored him. It was revealed that initially Ibrahim had asked for Rp 500 million but Adner bargained and they settled at Rp 300 million.
Sitorus welcomed the agreement and asked Adner to collect the money for Ibrahim from the businessman's notary, Yoko Verra Mokoagow.
Adner then met Ibrahim in Cikini, Central Jakarta, and they were caught by Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) officers who followed them when the money changed hands on March 30.
KPK investigators found that the lawyer was representing D.L. Sitorus when he allegedly bribed Ibrahim to declare that the land certificates held by the Jakarta Administration were illegal.
The dispute, taken to the Jakarta State Administrative Court in June last year, was won by PT Sabar Ganda in November.
Sitorus' defense attorney Alfrian Bondjol said that his client submitted the Rp 300 million cash to Adner in "lawyer's fees". "Pak D.L. Sitorus had no intention of bribing judge Ibrahim," he said.
He also doubted the legality of a taped conversation between Sitorus and Adner, which prosecutors used as material evidence.
Judge Ibrahim had already been sentenced to six years in jail and fined Rp 200 million by the same court on Aug. 2. The sentence term was much lighter than the 12 years that prosecutors sought for the ailing judge.
He was found guilty of accepting the Rp 300 million bribe from Sitorus. Judges said at that time that Ibrahim deserved the jail term because the bribery had tarnished the image of the judicial system.

subset: commoncrawl


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United States Figure Skater + Sports Personality + Actor + Lawyer
Born Jul 18, 1929
Richard Totten "Dick" Button is an American former figure skater and a well-known long-time skating television analyst. He is a two-time Olympic Champion (1948, 1952) and five-time World Champion (1948–1952). He is also the only non-European man to have… Read More
View newly released photos of Dick Button.
Feb 17, 20112 Photos
News + Updates
Browse recent news and stories about Dick Button.
Two Insider Books Take On Beauty Pageants And Figure Skating: The New Memoirs Of Dick Button And Kate ShindleHuffington Post - Feb 12, 2015
Brian Boitano Never Planned To Come OutHuffington Post Sports - Jan 10, 2014
For Disgraced Athletes, Wrath Of ZeusWall Street Journal - Jun 10, 2012
Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Dick Button.
1929 Birth Born on July 18, 1929.
1943 13 Years Old In his first competition, the 1943 Eastern States Novice Championship, he placed second behind Jean-Pierre Brunet.
1944 14 Years Old In 1944, he won the Eastern States Junior title which earned him the opportunity to compete at the National Novice Championships. … Read More
1945 15 Years Old In 1945, his third year of serious skating, he won the Eastern States Senior title and the national Junior title.
1946 16 Years Old 2 More Events
At this time, he was also skating pairs, and competed with Barbara Jones in Junior Pairs at the 1946 Eastern States Championships. … Read More
1947 17 Years Old 1 More Event
This win earned Button a spot to the 1947 World Championships.
1948 18 Years Old 3 More Events
1949 19 Years Old 1 More Event
In 1949, Button won the Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. … Read More
1950 20 Years Old In 1950, he performed the double loop-double loop-double loop.
1951 21 Years Old 1 More Event
In 1951, he performed a double axel-double loop combination and a double axel-double axel sequence. … Read More
1952 22 Years Old 2 More Events
At the 1952 Winter Olympics, Button had the lead after figures, with 9 first places, over Helmut Seibt. … Read More
1960 30 Years Old Button provided commentary for CBS's broadcast of the 1960 Winter Olympics, launching a decades-long career in television broadcast journalism.
1961 31 Years Old Button again did commentary for CBS's broadcast of the 1961 United States Figure Skating Championships.
1962 32 Years Old Then, beginning in 1962, he worked as a figure skating analyst for ABC Sports, which had acquired the rights to the U.S. Championships as well as the 1962 World Figure Skating Championships. … Read More
1964 34 Years Old He co-produced "Dick Button's Ice-Travaganza" for the 1964 New York World's Fair, starring 1963 World Champion Donald McPherson, but the ice show lost money and closed after a few months. … Read More
1972 42 Years Old Button later passed on this trophy to John Misha Petkevich following the 1972 Olympics and World Championships.
1975 45 Years Old In 1975, Button married figure skating coach Slavka Kohout, but they later divorced. … Read More
1981 51 Years Old He won an Emmy Award in 1981 for Outstanding Sports Personality – Analyst. … Read More
2006 77 Years Old During the 2006 Games, Button appeared on loan from ABC to once again provide commentary on the Olympics. Also during the 2006 Winter Olympics, USA Network ran a show called Olympic Ice. A recurring segment, called "Push Dick's Button," invited viewers to send in questions which Button answered on the air. The segment proved very popular so ABC and ESPN put it into various broadcasts, most notably the 2007 Skate America, the 2007 United States Figure Skating Championships, and the 2007 World Figure Skating Championships.
2009 80 Years Old In 2009, Button served as a judge on the CBC's Battle of the Blades reality show.
2010 81 Years Old 1 More Event
In the fall of 2010 Button was lead Judge on the popular ABC show "Skating with the Stars" produced by BBC Worldwide, producers of the hit show "Dancing with the Stars".
Original Authors of this text are noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Button.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


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Beverly Hills, Calif.-based RealD (UNKNOWN: RLD.DL ) has already installed its RealD 3D cinema technology in 23,500 theaters around the globe. This week, it announced it's planning to up that total by another 200 screens in Russia.
On Thursday, RealD announced a deal to equip 200 Cinema Park screens with its cinema tech in Russian cities over the next five years. Installations have already begun, says RealD, and the company expects one of its bigger projects for Cinema Park, "LUXE: A RealD Experience" Premium Large Format (PLF) auditorium to be built at Cinema Park's Grand Canyon theater location in St. Petersburg, Russia, to open to the public this winter. The LUXE auditorium includes "floor-to-ceiling RealD Precision White Screen, ultra bright 2D and RealD 3D, enveloping audio and luxury seating," according to the company.
Cinema Park bills itself as the "leading national cinema circuit" in Russia, the biggest chain by both number of screens in service, and also what it calls "pace of digitalization." It operates 281 screens total in 18 Russian cities, with 226 of these able to show 3D movies -- so the majority of these are going to be upgraded with RealD's technology.
Cinema Park is owned by ProfMedia, a subsidiary of the INTERROS financial-industrial group, which also owns stakes in such varied enterprises as real estate firm ProfEstate and metals and mining giant Norilsk Nickel.


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I guess he couldn't lie anymore. The truth must have weighed very heavily on economist Ben Stein when he veered from the usual script over at Fox News and committed "conservative heresy" by admitting that taxes must be raised on America's wealthy.
"I hate to say this on Fox-- and I hope I'll be able to leave here alive—but I don't think there is any way we can cut spending enough to make a meaningful difference. We're going to have to raise taxes on very rich people, people with income like say $2-3 million a year and up and then slowly move it down," said Stein. His co-hosts almost had massive coronaries on air.
All hell must have broken loose behind the scenes after that statement, for the collective conservative doctrine, of which Fox heavily subscribes to, is that the rich do not have to pay a penny more in taxes to help close the huge deficit gap. Kind of "they built it so they should keep it" BS.
In fact presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's budget plan gives $250,000 in tax breaks to the top earners among us, while middle income folks will see a $2,000 increase on their payout to Uncle Sam. (See former president Bill Clinton explain it here:http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13204304-clinton-explains-romneys-tax-plan-in-simple-terms-rich-get-250000-tax-cut-video).
The Republicans' fuzzy math is still in full effect, even if the US economy shows the devastation caused partly by the financial crisis and a bloated budget, which includes more than 10 years of the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. Moreover as numerous economists haves said, cutting entitlements alone cannot fix the deficit; revenue needs to be raised as well.
Even second-graders know if they spend all the money in their piggy banks and don't put any back in, the little piggy would go empty. Simple logic, yet the GOP insists on revenue not being a major factor in balancing a budget.
Romney, his VP Ryan and all the rest of the conservative bunch think they can bamboozle the public into believing their can right America's deep fiscal problems by balancing the budget on the back of the poor while exempting themselves and their rich campaign contributors from chipping in.
I understand why they would want to sell us garbage disguised as goodies, because they all have a personal stake in how this turns out and avarice rules the day. The word "sacrifice" is thrown around only when it's someone else doing the sacrificing. It always stuns me that the party that acts like it has a direct line to God and a close affinity to words like morals, pro-life and family values, would be the ones to advocate taking away from those who don't have and giving to those who have the most. Being judgmental, immoral, unkind and greedy should not be the party mantra.
Like President Clinton said, we have tried the trickle-down economics before; it did not work then and is not working now.
Moreover, top earners are the ones who have benefited in the past, still benefit and will continue to benefit under a Romney-Ryan administration by the failed Bush budget of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. The plutocrats have been slowly and overtly ruling and ruining this country for decades. It just all came to a head during the crash of 2008. Capitalism on steroids resulted in corruption, fraud and greed, having a "menage a trois" that sent the country reeling.
Democracy is dying while its illusionary double is propped up to keep the masses in line. The two party system is a failure--well at least for the people, not for our legislators, who most times seem like just two sides of the same coin.
Our government is now made up of very rich politicians, so when the "one-percenters" are the part of those with the power to legislate, there is a disturbing and dangerous conflict of interest. Power in the hand of the people is merely in name only. We vote, exercise our democratic right and think we are shaping policies, controlling our country, having a hand in our present and our children's future. But do we? Look around you; look at the laws that are being pushed through Congress. Look at those that affect women directly and negatively. Look at the Supreme Court and Citizens United. Look at the election process. Take a good, long, hard look: What do you see?
Meanwhile, some Senators and Representatives continue to cozy up to corporations, special interests, lobbyists, rich campaign donors and Super PACs. For the Bush-era tax breaks to exist and exist this long means both Democrats and Republicans signed on to begin with.
Do you even know what some legislators on Capitol Hill are worth? What their investments are? Where some of their money comes from? Big oil, pharma, Wall Street and too-big-to-fail banks; foreign countries and companies; outsourced companies; abortion-linked companies when they profess to abhor abortions.
Below are the net worth of the top 10 richest folks in Congress as of 2011; the family coffers may have increased as of date. In the top 30, 19 are Republicans and 11 are Democrats. In the top 10, seven are Democrats and three are Republicans.
1. Republican from TX Michael McCaul --$294.21 million
2. Republican from CA Darrell Issa-- $220.40 million
3. Democrat John Kerry from Mass-- $193.07 million
4. Democrat Jay Rockefeller from WV-- $81.63 million
5. Dem. Mark Warner, from VA-- $76.30 million
6. Dem. Jared Polis from $Colo-- $65.91 million
7. Dem. Frank Lautenberg from NJ-- $55.07 million
8. Dem. Richard Blumenthal from Conn.-- $52.93 million
9. Dem. Diane Feinstein from California-- $45.39 million
10. Rep. Vern Buchanan from FL--$44.21 million
See the rest of the top 50 richest list here: The 50 Richest Members of Congress — 112th : Roll Call
If you like writing about US politics and Campaign 2012, enter "The American Pundit" competition. Allvoices is awarding four $250 prizes each month between now and November. These monthly winners earn eligibility for the $5,000 grand prize, to be awarded after the November election.


text: Jason Dunnington Another Democrat to Take OKC House Seat By Michael Cross • Aug 20, 2014 An Oklahoma City House District runoff between two Democrats will decide the new representative for the area with no Republican opponent. KOSU's Michael Cross reports on the upcoming election in House District 88. Former Oklahoma City police officer Paula Sophia and Oklahoma City University sociology professor Jason Dunnington are vying for Kay Floyd's House seat. Sophia, a transgendered candidate, says she spent the past two decades as a part of HD 88.


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Star Tracks: Monday, May 16, 2016 42 years, 2,191 covers and 55,436 stories from PEOPLE magazine's history for you to enjoy
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- April 25, 1983
- Vol. 19
- No. 16
Taking a Bead on Night Life, Designer Fabrice Updates That Old Shimmer and Slither
Sorcery or no, Fabrice is the magic name in splashy, expensive evening clothes. Celeb fans of his glimmering creations, priced from $800 for a blouse to $8,000 for a made-to-order ball gown, include Mary Tyler Moore, Morgan Fair-child, Pat Benatar, Dionne Warwick, Christie Brinkley and Cheryl Tiegs. Top New York post-deb Cornelia Guest hails the way "he combines old-world craftsmanship with young ideas."
Fabrice's trademark is simple shapes—chemises, tunics, slip dresses—adorned with beading in multicolored patterns that are usually crisply geometric and often laced with futuristic squiggles suggestive of some modern art. "Most beading is old-looking, like '20s flapper dresses," says Fabrice. "I make mine totally modern. I start playing with a geometric shape until I get it the way I like it."
Though Fabrice is an immigrant, he was hardly "brought up like a peasant," he points out. One of his grandfathers was a Haitian envoy to France. He was raised "in the French style," as he puts it, in a comfortable Port-au-Prince suburb and went to school with Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, now Haiti's President-for-Life. Thinking that his children would have a better future in the U.S., Fabrice's accountant father brought the family to New York in 1965 and settled in a Haitian enclave in Queens. Fabrice started out as a designer's assistant in a Seventh Avenue textile firm, meanwhile taking courses at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology. Then, weary after five years of doing florals for sheets, wallpaper and women's clothing, he fled to Europe to paint.
"I started going to museums and observed what people were wearing," he recalls. "I began to think how to do dresses." Returning in 1975, he put together five hand-painted frocks. They sold out quickly at Henri Bendel. But Fabrice, who was doing all the designing, painting and sewing himself, couldn't fill follow-up orders. No banks would lend him money to hire help—"They thought I was just another hippie doing hand-painted T-shirts"—so he persuaded his older brother, a textile stylist, to bankroll him for another season. Then his boomlet ended: "Everyone started hand-painting too."
Casting about for a way to be different, Fabrice spotted some beaded trimmings in a store window one day in 1979 and discovered that they were made in Haiti. He called his parents, who had returned home following his father's retirement, to find out who had done the work, then sent one of his blouses to have it beaded. When he brought the results to Vogue, its editors decided to give it a double-page spread. "And so," Fabrice says, "I got into beading everything."
Today his annual sales volume is just over $1 million. While that hardly puts Fabrice in the Bill Blass category, it is substantial in view of the work his designs entail. The intricate beadwork, which is done in Haiti and overseen by Fabrice's mother, takes a Haitian worker 10 days to sew for one dress. Then the fabric is shipped back to New York (by Fabrice's father), where it is cut and sewn into dresses by a staff of five in Fabrice's two-story loft on Manhattan's lower Fifth Avenue. Fabrice's sister, Brigitte Simon, helps him in overseeing production.
In the loft Fabrice has an all-white apartment that doubles as a showroom. "I'll party until very late, get influenced by what I see at clubs and restaurants, then come home and sketch all night." Someday he hopes to take his first real vacation—his Fire Island summer weekends don't count—but now he's absorbed in continuing his evening line while also moving into furs and maybe sports clothes. None of those designs will be derivative. "I'm not really interested in what others are doing in fashion," he says. "I have to satisfy myself first."
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