Belated post

• Bet On America -

  The evidence for our nation's downward spiral isn't sufficient to rule out the very opposite possibility: that the United States will become, in purely geopolitical terms, even stronger in coming decades. The mistake we make is not so much overestimating our problems, but underestimating the problems of our potential rivals. We think we're the only country with decline-and-fall issues.
  
  I'll wager that many of the toughest challenges for Americans in the future won't be associated with our geopolitical decline, weakness or decrepitude. No: Our challenges will be the unimagined consequences of our many successes.

• A travelogue on East St Louis
• Predictions from the year 1900 - a must read
• ASP.net Chart Controls
• The economics of Scientology

RIP Bill Buckley

He passed away while working at home at the age of 82, which I'm sure is the way he would have wanted it.

I saw him speak and started reading his books in my junior year of college. Now that I think about it, he gave a 90 minute speech with style, no notes and no missteps.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about it later, but for now, Rest in Peace.

A civics quiz

I got this from Megan McArdle, it's the Civic Literacy Quiz!

I scored 57 out of 60 correctly — 95.00 %!

How about y'all?

Adventures in profiling

The New York Times wins the saggy pants headline contest with "The Boxer Rebellion". It's about the current mini-craze to outlaw thug-style fashion in some cities. I have no idea why we would want to outlaw this fashion statement. How you dress says a lot about a person, and in this case it says "I'm a ridiculous person who's wasting my time, and I'll probably waste yours". Isn't it better to know that in the two seconds it takes to see a person instead of the five minutes it might take talking to him?

We should be encouraging this sort of behavior instead of outlawing it. This is America, and time is valuable.

A riduculous commentary on America

The most controversial Attourney General in years resigns and the main headline everywhere is an athlete's admission of guilt. WTF?

Wisdom from the Agitator

From his post on America and Life Expectancy

The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. And some countries don't reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates.

The other factor here is that thanks to our access to medical technology, we're more likely to try to save premature deliveries that in other countries would result in stillbirths or miscarriages. So every time an infant dies in the U.S. that would never have been born alive (or counted as born alive) in other countries, it registers as a life that died at the age of "zero." That's a pretty significant downward-tug on the national life expectancy.

...

I'd actually like to see where we rank in average life expectancy from, say, the age of 30 or 35 onward. I couldn't find any such data, but it seems to me that would factor out much of the homicide problem, would negate the problems with how we measure infant mortality, and would probably result in a better showing for the U.S.

All quite true.

Sunday rapid fire

• The wealthiest Americans in history
• Lead exposure and crime - interesting if not convincing
• A preachy CNN.com article on vacations - and why some people don't like them. Evidently any deviation from the middle class norm is unhealthy
• The Battle of Omdurman by the War Nerd
  

A belated Fourth of July post

The Declaration of Independence
translated out of 18th century English and into 20th century American
by H.L.Mencken
from The Baltimore Evening Sun 7 November 1921

WHEN THINGS get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time whichever way he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else. That any government that don't give a man them rights ain't worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of government they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any government don't do this, then the people have got a right to give it the bum's rush and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don't mean having a revolution every day like them South American yellow-bellies, or every time some jobholder goes to work and does something he ain't got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons, and any man that wasn't a anarchist or one of them I.W.W.'s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain't hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won't carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won't stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work. Here is some of the rough stuff he has pulled:

...
Read the whole thing.

An interesting article from Zakaria

It meanders a bit, but Fareed Zakaria makes a good case for optimism in this Newsweek article. One bit that caught my eye was

To recover its place in the world, America first needs to recover its confidence. For those who look at the future and see challenges, competition and threats, keep in mind that this new world has been forming over the last 20 years, and the United States has forged ahead amid all the turmoil. In 1980, the U.S. share of global GDP was 20 percent. Today it is 29 percent.

It's a staggering thought. 20% is a huge chunk relative to population, and for that to increase is massive. It's an interesting tidbit.

We should be more confident; America has never been strong because of political leadership, but the average person here has room to excel. 15 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong!

A belated Memorial Day post.

There have been many, many others like it around the blogosphere today, so I'll just second this one from Scott Kelby.

Thanks.

The wheel turns full circle

Feminists arguing that adult women shouldn't be allowed to make decisions on what to do with their bodies. In this case raising the age of consent to appear on Girls Gone Wild videos from 18 to 21. Oddly, the author supports her argument by pointing out the many lawsuits filed against GGW producers by people who did not consent to be photographed/videotaped. It's a bit like saying Iraq is a horrible disaster, therefore we need to invade Iran.

I suppose the right of women to control their bodies only applies below the waist.

We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something

Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole "They hate us for our freedom" bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we're going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we're going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.

Interesting bits of knowledge

About evolution in this case

Since records on the subject began in the mid-1800s, the average breast size in the US has increased from a 32-B to the current average of 36-C. This may be a result of better nutrition, healthier lifestyle, or the result of the aforementioned sexual selection.

Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest

I read this article on CNN.com

White House taps general for 'war czar' post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.

In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.

and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:

Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.

and this H.L. Mencken quote:

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?

Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it's own principal-agent and knowledge problems.

Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.

Sigh.

An interesting interview

With Charles Barkley

Tuesday Rapid Fire

• Networks, in Forbes
• Tin Can Stirling Engine - really cool, this would go nicely with the passive solar heating system that I blogged about last week.
• Global warming awareness reaches diminishing marginal returns, aptly explained by Instapundit. I'm still waiting for the Shotgun News green issue.
• Gauss vs Pareto, if you understand bell curves, you should read this.
• Robots, Robots, Robots, in Iraq and elsewhere
• An insightful article on internal migrations in the US. By Michael Barone
  

The belated Imus post

I'm not sure whether I said this already in a post or an email, but in any case..

Imus said "Nappy Headed Hos".

The outrage industry sprang into action, because that is their entire job.

The media covered it, because all of the major players were happy to come to them, and news coverage consisted largely of replaying existing footage, or cutting and pasting press releases. This equaled a cheap to produce (in time and dollars) article or news segment, especially compared to the two wars that are going on right now

People liked it because it was widespread and easy to understand. Anyone could shoot his mouth off to anyone else and not get schooled by someone who knew more about the topic. There was also no personal connection to anyone they knew, so no feelings could be hurt.

There is no deep meaning to the "controversy".

Virginia Tech shootings

This is horrible. I just checked the news for the first time all day. 31 people dead?

Your tax dollars at work

In Lilburn in this case:

Shut up and drink, Lilburn bar patrons told
...
Earlier, the city outlawed pool — the game that spelled trouble in the musical "The Music Man" — in its watering holes. Now it's also barring karaoke and just about any other party game from places that serve alcohol.

America is getting ridiculous at an increasing rate. However, my zoning for no-children idea is gaining good feedback in my informal polls.

An interesting movie

I finally finished watching the documentary Bastards of the Party, an interesting history of gang activity in Los Angeles from the 40s to the present day. It's not a balanced take and doesn't pretend to be, which is quite refreshing.

One quibble - the historian explaining the rise of crack traced it back to Iran-Contra and the CIA-crack folklore. I've always found this ridiculous. It assumes that the government was that clever (doubtful) and also that no one else would have thought of taking a commodity that sells for five cents in South America and selling it for fifty dollars in the US.

Beyond that though, well worth watching.

MLK day thoughts

Since it's his birthday, I guess I'll post my impression of MLK. I find it surprising that everyone misses his most singular accomplishment, namely that he he was able to manage a coalition of highly and disparately motivated parties and have them all (more or less) follow a strategy of nonviolence, which is the only strategy that would have worked. As a management endeavor that is staggering.

For more on that, see The Gandhi Game, which explains it all in a game theory sort of way. Put simply, it allows the opposing party to do what you want them to do (usually defined as "doing the right thing", though it doesn't have to be that way) and not suffer any violent consequences. If the Palestinians did that, they would be in a much better position than they are now.

Very sad

Tech journalist James Kim and his family are missing. He was one of the main reviewers from the old TechTV days, lately he's been at CNet.

Thoughts

As it seems Allen is going to concede (in an unexpectedly classy move for him) it would seem that I was wrong on both counts in my predictions.

Quote of the moment, via Instapundit:

The Republicans lost and the Democrats won for the same reason -- they distanced themselves from their base.

I think we'll like divided government. And the anti-Kelo measure passed, which is an unalloyed boon to America.

Two things

Whilst listening to left wing radio today I heard two notable things, which struck me as totally wrong.

• The claim that over 50% of all discretionary government spending is spent on the military. While true, the weaselly use of the "discretionary" modifier makes it meaningless. To declare that some percent of the budget "must" be spent on programs, when they have the full power to change any law making them spend it on said programs is downright silly.
• The left wing (usually uttered by baby boomer types) screed that it is wrong not to show caskets of dead soldiers and marines as they arrive back in the states. This is usually followed by something like "if we could only see the human pain of this war, we wouldn't be there at all." Then it occurred to me that we all watched 9-11 happen and then three weeks later we were bombing Afghanistan, and 18 months later we invaded Iraq. The sight of dead Americans seems to make us more aggressive, not less.
  

The three funniest things I've read today

Both arise from this post by Althouse, entitled Wisconsin, the necrophiliac's playground.

Surprisingly necrophilia is not illegal in Wisconsin. One of the comments is

You're just jealous because you're not dead.

I read the two articles linked, the first of which yielded this gem

Authorities said the three were not acquainted with the woman but had seen an obituary with her photo.

which makes me think they were holding out for a hot corpse.

The other was

Radke said Grunke asked him to help because he wanted to dig up Tennessen's body for sex, the court documents said, and the three had stopped at a store on the way to the cemetery to buy condoms.

Condoms? One would think the necrophiliac crowd would be a bit more devil may care about such matters.

Wow

Police: Nurse, 51, kills intruder with bare hands

The funniest thing I read today

From this article

Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn't want her to know he'd packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey.

So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.

Funny police report

A tale of a daring milk robbery in Ohio.

Choice quote from the police report

"he realized this was no joke when the rotund robbers began pelting him with a flurry of chubby fists"

Yet more reasons to hate environmentalists

I just saw the creator of "Who Killed the Electric Car" on the Daily show. He did not address the problems raised by David Friedman (mainly cost), or any of the range argument. Instead it was the usual anti-corporate spiel.

That's to be expected. What I found reprehensible was his not mentioning the new vehicle by Tesla Motors, or plug in hybrids from CalCars. Too many people in the alt-energy environmental front prefer a great excuse to a modest accomplishment and the director was no exception.

I suppose that's why Solar Towers (CNN article here, WikiPedia here) don't actually exist yet.

It almost writes itself

Somehow I came across the book page for this book "Why Mommy is a Democrat". There is a link to a review from some outfit called "The National Center for the Study of Children's Literature". To quote some of the review

Mommy is a tufted-ear squirrel who embodies and makes visual all the good things Democrats like to think they do, like playing by the rules, treating everyone fairly, and sharing their toys.
...
Little lovable animals inhabit the very finely done colored-pencil illustrations, exemplifying abstract beliefs like tolerance and accessible health care.
...
the representative multicultural-looking down-and-out young man who is barred from an expensive school, sleeps under a tree in the park, or looks in trash cans for dinner

The jokes for write themselves. What I found strangest was the phrase "representative multicultural-looking".

RIP Mickey Spillaine

He'd been writing since the 40s. More details here.

15 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong

Happy Birthday America!

You're 230 today! That's 1,610 in dog years. And over 140 years without a civil war, which isn't that bad, considering.

I'm off to celebrate the day by riding to Alabama and back. If this site isn't updated by this time tommorow, would someone please look for me?

RIP Steve Mizerak

The CNNSI article

I got his "Pool the Master's Way" videotapes in the early 90s, and to date, they were the best instructional investment I've ever made, and I have dozens of instructional tapes and DVD's over the years. They improved my pool game several hundred percent.

Funny line

I was reading part of the transcript of Rumsfeld vs the heckler (who's a moderately well known anti-Bush activist, I've heard him on Democracy Now before) here in Atlanta last week. I came across this gem:

CHILD: Mom, do you have an Altoid?
MOM: Yes, I think so. Look in my purse.
CHILD: I don'’t see any.
MOM: Oh, I thought I had some.
CHILD: LYING BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTER!

I've always wondered how is it possible that people can believe the government, particularly this one, is more capable of a grand conspiracy than a grand failure.

Alex Tabarrok has the line of the day

In this post

Brad just doesn't know right-wing agitprop. My friends walked out, but I exited the theater, pumped my fist in the air and shouted, Wolverines! (That's when I first knew I was a rather odd Canadian - perhaps this was destiny.)

He would later (legally) immigrate to America and taste the sweet air of freedom.

What's great about America

Take a look at some shots from an underground pot farm in Tennessee. They have blast doors, escape hatches, secret entrances, you name it. As CrimeProf (where I saw it) put it "the technology is of batman-villain quality".

And all of this is from America's stoners! Take that rest of world!

Thought and line of the moment

An interesting thought from Jesse Walker at Reason's Hit and Run

But is there anyone in the country who wouldn't be delighted to learn that the forces behind 9/11 are based in Washington, D.C.? That the enemy is not some exotic conspiracy of mysteriously motivated foreigners who speak impenetrable languages and fade easily into an alien landscape, but a familiar group of Republicans with Middle American accents who would be ousted the moment their cabal came to light? The Bush-did-it theory lends itself to a tidy movie ending, a conclusion far preferable to the endless bloody soap opera we've landed in instead.

There are many reasons I don't believe the president plotted 9/11. The biggest is that I'm just not optimistic enough to think the problem could be eliminated that easily.

But the real winner is in the comments (they're quite snarky over there these days) with

... and I think we've 'turned the corner' again, too. Considering how many times we've turned the corner in Iraq, I suspect that the country is shaped like a gigantic four-dimensional dodecahedron.

I think 50 years from now all of this will be seen as a negative function of technology and communications more than anything else.

Tuesday afternoon news roundup

While I'm stuck on some SQL problems (use SQLite only if necessary), here is a quick roundup

• 'American Taliban' Father Urges Clemency - What does it take to lose your citizenship? I would think joining a foreign army should do it fairly easily, but it would seem not.
  

  In the spring of 2001, John Walker Lindh told his parents he was going to dodge the desert heat and spend the summer in the mountains of Pakistan. He did not tell his parents that he planned to cross into Afghanistan and join the Taliban army.
  
  The younger Lindh saw bin Laden speak twice while he was training in Afghanistan, but had no idea that he was involved in terrorism against the U.S., his father said.
  
  On Thursday, Frank Lindh emphasized that John Walker Lindh was involved in an Afghan war, not a fight against the U.S., when the Muslim convert joined the Taliban army to fight the Northern Alliance. He noted that the U.S. once supported Taliban fighters when they were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

  This is either a blatant lie or a remarkably large error. The Taliban formed after the Soviets left and Northern Alliance was mostly composed of anti-Soviet fighters. Leave alone the fact Lindh could attend an al-Qaida training camp (one of whose main reasons to exist (though not it's only one) is to kill Americans) and not know anything about it's goals, let alone it's many public declarations to that effect.
  
• Larry Franklin got 12 years for passing secrets to the Israelis. Seems a bit low to me.
• Maryland's latest anti-Walmart legislation may come back to haunt them. The company may not build a warehouse in one of Maryland's poorest counties.
  
  It's always amazing to me how people think that the way to help people is to limit options, whether it be 12 year olds building toys in Malaysia or 70 year old Walmart greeters. If they had better options, they would take them, why remove the best available choice to them?
• Russians endure, cheer frigid winter - curiously no mention is made of global warming. Since Russia contains one sixth of the earth, you would think this would be significant one way or the other. They certainly do stories about a lot less.
• Patients suspect they've been given tissue stolen from corpses
• Atlanta saves itself from people who would otherwise live in the suburbs. Isn't mandating housing size a strike against diversity?
• Check out the fiddle tune book.
• Home genetic testing - find your true heritage for a remarkably low price.
  

Another community radio station

I've long listened to WRFG's bluegrass programming, and complained about it's political programming, seemingly designed to irritate me. They live up to every stereotype of the hard left and it can be painful to listen to.

Then, while googling Michael Sheuer I came across the Weekend Interview Show with Mike Horton. It's part of a shortwave network I've never hear of before.

Anyway, it's an interesting thing. The host is a libertarian of the Lew Rockwell/Anti-War.com school (paleo-libertarian to take it to too fine of a point) and from what I listened to on their site Horton has mostly authors and pundits of a similar mindset.

After listening to the interviews I was left with the feeling that there are still regional differences in world outlook (American regions, I'm not sure why I came away with that).

On the whole it's interesting how people with similar premises can come to differing conclusions and how different premises can come to similar conclusions.

Ah, my upload is done. More thoughts on this later.

Phil Ochs said it first

The world began in Eden and listed in Los Angeles was one of Phil Ochs' later and unremarkable songs.

That was in the sixties. Now I see these two headlines

• Jihad' prevented in Los Angeles
  
• Mosque bombing plotter gets 20 years

Members of two of the worlds major religions, both getting caught trying to commit terrorism in the same city making news on the same day. Weird.

I like Rehnquist

From CNN

"I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement," Rehnquist said in a statement released through his family. "I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."

He wants to go out on his shield, how cool.