Wednesday, May 10, 2006
US tattling on the Minutemen to Mexico?
It seems the US government has been sending Mexico information about where the Minutemen and other citizen border patrols have been working. Andrew McCarthy in National Review has a detailed article and commentary on this today. My goodness, this is stupid! First, there were the reports that border patrol agents had been occasionally told not to arrest illegal aliens caught by the Minutemen, and later, that they'd been told not to let the number of arrests go up after the Minutemen left. Now, they're actually telling Mexico where the civilian patrols are!
Maybe--maybe--there are good reasons for this, but the consular notification treaty they're using as an excuse doesn't require it, and we're left with the strong impression that higher-ups in border patrol don't actually want the agency to do its job.
Outrageous.
Maybe--maybe--there are good reasons for this, but the consular notification treaty they're using as an excuse doesn't require it, and we're left with the strong impression that higher-ups in border patrol don't actually want the agency to do its job.
Outrageous.
Monday, May 08, 2006
*Another* "Da Vinci Code" suit?!
Ugh. This is unbelievably wrong-headed. A Roman Catholic cardinal (Francis Arizne, who was considered a contender for pope last year) has suggested Christians sue Dan Brown over the depiction of Christ and Christianity in The Da Vinci Code. Great--go ahead and turn us into some twisted combination of Scientologists and radical Moslems!
I read the book, and while the claims in it really annoyed me (I wrote a long page of notes on where Brown got his facts wrong) (although I thought it was a pretty exciting book to read, nonetheless), Brown's got every right to write what he has. He can write things as wrong as he wants. He can make fun of Christianity ("make fun" isn't quite the right phrase--it seems more like he's got a real chip on his shoulder about the religion) all day long.
The response should be exactly what we Christians have been doing for the last few years--writing books and holding lectures showing where Brown went wrong. It's wrong to use the law to try to silence critics--honest critics or dishonest ones. Now, Cardinal Arizne isn't an American, and maybe he doesn't have an appreciation for the freedom of the press. But in our political philosophy in this country, we believe that our fundamental rights aren't creations of the government, to be given or taken away by it, but are natural rights that a government has the obligation to protect. This freedom of the press isn't just something for us Americans, but it is a right of all men, whether it's protected elsewhere or not.
I've never gone for boycotts, either, even for causes I believed in. I don't like the bullying. Let's stick to writing and talking to get our objections across and leave the law out of this. Leave lawsuits to the cults.
I read the book, and while the claims in it really annoyed me (I wrote a long page of notes on where Brown got his facts wrong) (although I thought it was a pretty exciting book to read, nonetheless), Brown's got every right to write what he has. He can write things as wrong as he wants. He can make fun of Christianity ("make fun" isn't quite the right phrase--it seems more like he's got a real chip on his shoulder about the religion) all day long.
The response should be exactly what we Christians have been doing for the last few years--writing books and holding lectures showing where Brown went wrong. It's wrong to use the law to try to silence critics--honest critics or dishonest ones. Now, Cardinal Arizne isn't an American, and maybe he doesn't have an appreciation for the freedom of the press. But in our political philosophy in this country, we believe that our fundamental rights aren't creations of the government, to be given or taken away by it, but are natural rights that a government has the obligation to protect. This freedom of the press isn't just something for us Americans, but it is a right of all men, whether it's protected elsewhere or not.
I've never gone for boycotts, either, even for causes I believed in. I don't like the bullying. Let's stick to writing and talking to get our objections across and leave the law out of this. Leave lawsuits to the cults.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Papal convention
Interesting little protocol detail I'd never heard before. Not that I care that Mrs. Blair didn't observe it.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
More on churches
As an addendum to my previous post/screed on trying to find a decent church in this area, I'll note that maybe this silliness in church services here is a desperate attempt to attract members in a region that's leaking its population. Maybe pastors and the congregations are convinced that people will only come to church if it's a "contemporary service" and there's all kinds of awful modern music and clapping and silly football cheers and high technology. Well, if so, it's not working, and it's turning off not only me, but others who grew up in the traditional Methodist church.
And I have a great counter-example. In addition to my church at home, I'm a member of Lovely Lane Methodist in Baltimore. It was the first Methodist church in this country, the "Mother Church of American Methodism," and the place where the famous Christmas Conference was held in 1784 to organize the newly-established denomination. Well, today a bad part of town has spread across the neighborhood surrounding Lovely Lane. The church can hold hundreds of people, but when so many people moved away to escape the crime and decay of inner-city Baltimore, the congregation dwindled drastically. By the time I got there, there were maybe 40 people on a given Sunday. I was one of maybe two or three people under the age of fifty, and there were no small children. The Methodist Church rotates preachers fairly often, and when the new preacher got there, she encouraged a lot of work on reaching out to find new members. It is working. The congregation isn't huge today, but it's bigger, and there are several families with children now, so we have a regular Sunday school for the kids.
We had long had too few people to form a choir, so we relied on voice students from the Peabody Conservatory. As a result, we got beautiful, classical solos and anthems. The organist is from Oxford (you can tell he's Episcopalian--he plays the music a tad too slowly for us Methodists--but he's good). The service and music are completely traditional. Nobody applauds the anthems and solos, and the hymns (hymns!) are sung from the hymnal, loudly and enthusiastically. It has gotten, in fact, a bit more high-church during this expansion, adding Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday services and such, which were unknown to me growing up in the country. I don't need a high-church service, actually, but such things do interest me. And we've gotten people coming to them. Nobody needed to have things dumbed-down for him to get him into the sanctuary!
Attitudes are different in different parts of the country, admittedly, and up here in Yankeeland, a student told me I'd have to look far and wide to find a church not using these stupid Powerpoint presentations. But I'm not convinced these new trends will help attendance at churches where the population is dwindling, and they might be hurting.
And I have a great counter-example. In addition to my church at home, I'm a member of Lovely Lane Methodist in Baltimore. It was the first Methodist church in this country, the "Mother Church of American Methodism," and the place where the famous Christmas Conference was held in 1784 to organize the newly-established denomination. Well, today a bad part of town has spread across the neighborhood surrounding Lovely Lane. The church can hold hundreds of people, but when so many people moved away to escape the crime and decay of inner-city Baltimore, the congregation dwindled drastically. By the time I got there, there were maybe 40 people on a given Sunday. I was one of maybe two or three people under the age of fifty, and there were no small children. The Methodist Church rotates preachers fairly often, and when the new preacher got there, she encouraged a lot of work on reaching out to find new members. It is working. The congregation isn't huge today, but it's bigger, and there are several families with children now, so we have a regular Sunday school for the kids.
We had long had too few people to form a choir, so we relied on voice students from the Peabody Conservatory. As a result, we got beautiful, classical solos and anthems. The organist is from Oxford (you can tell he's Episcopalian--he plays the music a tad too slowly for us Methodists--but he's good). The service and music are completely traditional. Nobody applauds the anthems and solos, and the hymns (hymns!) are sung from the hymnal, loudly and enthusiastically. It has gotten, in fact, a bit more high-church during this expansion, adding Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday services and such, which were unknown to me growing up in the country. I don't need a high-church service, actually, but such things do interest me. And we've gotten people coming to them. Nobody needed to have things dumbed-down for him to get him into the sanctuary!
Attitudes are different in different parts of the country, admittedly, and up here in Yankeeland, a student told me I'd have to look far and wide to find a church not using these stupid Powerpoint presentations. But I'm not convinced these new trends will help attendance at churches where the population is dwindling, and they might be hurting.
Robert Novak on Romney and "unconstitutional" religious tests
Robert Novak has an article on Mitt Romney's chances for the Presidency and the issue of his Mormonism. Novak is worried that a lot of people would vote against Romney because of his religion. That will certainly be an issue, I'd agree. Although I disagree with Mormonism's theology, I admire the character of so many of its adherents. It seems to build men of solid morals. The theology will still make some people on the Right uncomfortable, of course, just as Mormons' moral stands will put off some on the Left.
But Novak is wrong to call a man's voting decision "unconstitutional," if he bases it on religion. Yes, the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office. But that's a prohibition on making it a legal requirement. We're a democracy, and each citizen can vote his conscience, no matter what he bases the decision on. If one wants to vote against somebody solely on the basis of religion, he has that right. Novak knows better, and he makes a logically sloppy argument.
But I'd still advise people to consider Romney's politics first. It's not bad to consider someone's religious beliefs in deciding your vote. Hopefully, a candidate's religion will affect how he lives his life, and will inform some ideas on his political philosophy. But I doubt that the details of Mormon theology (especially its differences with standard Christian theology or Judaism) are going to put his politics outside the mainstream of the rest of us.
But back on the first hand, again: I can, by the way, think of an example of Mormon theology affecting a politician's political stances. Orrin Hatch's ideas on embryonic stem-cell research are different from most of ours on the Right, and I have read that it's because Mormonism has different ideas about the beginning of life from what we in standard Christianity assume.
But Novak is wrong to call a man's voting decision "unconstitutional," if he bases it on religion. Yes, the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office. But that's a prohibition on making it a legal requirement. We're a democracy, and each citizen can vote his conscience, no matter what he bases the decision on. If one wants to vote against somebody solely on the basis of religion, he has that right. Novak knows better, and he makes a logically sloppy argument.
But I'd still advise people to consider Romney's politics first. It's not bad to consider someone's religious beliefs in deciding your vote. Hopefully, a candidate's religion will affect how he lives his life, and will inform some ideas on his political philosophy. But I doubt that the details of Mormon theology (especially its differences with standard Christian theology or Judaism) are going to put his politics outside the mainstream of the rest of us.
But back on the first hand, again: I can, by the way, think of an example of Mormon theology affecting a politician's political stances. Orrin Hatch's ideas on embryonic stem-cell research are different from most of ours on the Right, and I have read that it's because Mormonism has different ideas about the beginning of life from what we in standard Christianity assume.
Finding a good church
I've spent a good amount of time looking for a good church in this place where I'm temporarily exiled. Not in the sense of a denomination, but in the sense of a congregation. This place has been going through a long-term economic and (I think) population decline, and it shows. There are lots of abandoned buildings in town, and though the city still has a much larger population than my county seat back home, this city is limited in the kind of businesses it hosts, while my county seat is bursting at the seams and has all the kinds of stores I could need. Even though it's a small town.
Similarly, the churches around here are feeling the crunch. There are lots of church buildings, but not all of them are occupied. Those that are are pretty sparsely attended and are feeling the pressure to merge with similar congregations. Several have merged, in fact. I went to one Methodist church when I first got here that was the recent sum of three congregations. Beautiful old building. And then when the service started, they fired up a digital projector and ran Powerpoint throughout the entire service! It was so absolutely cheesy, you can hardly imagine. Little animated text running around to summarize the sermon points. The hymn lyrics splashed up on the screen. Don't we have hymnals? Although the rest of the qualities of this church seemed OK, I was too turned off by the concept of a projector to consider coming back. It was simply ridiculous.
As a follow-up note to this, that church (which didn't come close to filling the pews it had then) has now demolished the century-old, beautiful gothic brick building it had inhabited. A parking lot (I kid you not) will be put on the site, while they have built the new church across the street. It is a block-long, modernistic, steel-frame warehouse monstrosity. The narthex alone is the size of the church across the street from me. And if the congregation is still the size I witnessed, they don't occupy but a tiny fraction of the pews available. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas?!
Oh, and they applauded after the choir anthems. I hate that. People, you are not an audience at a concert. This is not a "performance," for you to applaud the performers. It is an act of worship, and you are a participant. This ugly trend came to my church at home, back around 1990, give or take. As a little kid, well before then, my parents had taught us that were, in fact, specifically not supposed to clap in church. For the theologically-thought-out reasons I mentioned above. So I was brought up in the tradition of the church. We used to have a Christmas Eve service in which members of the congregation who sang or played an instrument would do solos. Really beautiful music, nicely done. And still no clapping.
Then when I was in high school, I and some friends my age started getting asked to do solos, too. Great! And about that time, a handful of people in the congregation started clapping after we'd done our solos. I was actually insulted. I felt like it was a condescending compliment: "Aww, wook at de widdle kiddies! Dey can actually pway music wike de big people! Idn't dat cute?" Sheesh! I wanted to be taken as just a normal part of the service, like any other soloist. I thought about talking to the others my age and seeing if we could get a notice in the bulletin that we'd ask not to be applauded, but I never went through with it. The trouble with clapping, too, is that one person can infect the whole congregation. One clapper can be heard across the sanctuary, and you know how people will clap out of politeness if it sounds like everybody else is, even if they wouldn't start it themselves. Soon after that year, you started getting applause at all of the solos, all of the anthems, all of the special music... Thank goodness they haven't started applauding the hymns! Who knows, maybe they will start applauding themselves eventually.
After that church, I tried the little Methodist church across the street from me. Not bad, just a little small for me, and there was no choir. And it was odd to find a full-immersion baptismal pool (painted blue) up behind the altar. Full-immersion is fine with me, but the pool just stood out a bit much, and the place seemed a little sleepy.
So I tried a third church, in the next town over. This was the product of another recent merger of two Methodist churches, but the pews were well filled here. A good choir. The building was traditionally designed, and there were no projectors in sight. Only drawback was the music. They had hymnals but never (And I mean that literally. Never.) used them, instead bothering to print the lyrics to every hymn used that Sunday in the bulletin. Without the music. Ugh. That wouldn't be so much of a problem (rather than just an annoyance), except that these weren't regular hymns. I'd never heard these "songs" before and didn't know the music. How does anybody know how to sing it, if there's no music printed? Maybe all of them had heard them before, but I started going back regularly and don't think they were repeated each Sunday.
My biggest complaint, though, was that most of the music just wasn't traditional Methodist music. It was this new wave of "praise songs," I think. These can best be defined as tuneless, meaningless ditties that repeat the same four words over and over, endlessly. They strike me as having fake emotion. They try to stir up some emotion in you, but it's so obvious and sappy that they utterly fail, in me. I can tear up, singing "Amazing Grace," which has straight lyrics. But these? They just annoyed me. Jesus already knows his name is Jesus. And our repeating it a half-dozen times in a row drives home a pointless point that was already known to me before I could read.
And this was another church where everybody applauded the music. Ugh.
Still, I had spent so many weeks trying to find a decent church that I just gave up at this point and decided to stick with this one. Then this church built a new building. There was some small leak in the roof of the old one--not exactly a big reason to move, but half of the congregation had been in the next town over and wanted to get back there. OK, fine. And then I found out that the oversized, shallow-roofed warehouse I'd seen being built by the highway was no warehouse at all, but our new church. Grumble. Fine. Inside, it looked OK, though, until I discovered that they'd decided to have a digital projector system built in! Well, they didn't use it during the sermon, at least, unlike that one place. It was just used to flash up the lyrics to the "hymns." Which were also printed in the bulletin.
They also used this opportunity to rid themselves of those stuffy old Methodist hymnals. No need for those silly things: we've got Powerpoint! There are no hymnals anywhere in the sanctuary. At least where the congregation sits. I don't know if the choir has smuggled some of the contraband up there in the choir loft, but I couldn't find any. Still, I'd gotten to know the people there for a while and didn't feel like leaving, just over that. So I white-knuckled it through the meaningless, tuneless ditties (I can hardly dignify them with the word "songs," much less "hymns.") and simply refused to sing them or look at the Powerpoint, and enjoyed the Sunday school lesson afterwards and generally stuck it out.
Until the clowns showed up. A few weeks ago, right before the sermon, they had...clowns... And mimes. Actually, they were clown-mimes. They did some pantomime in clown costumes for what felt like five minutes or more, to an instrumental version of (get this) "Send In the Clowns"! That was the last straw, and my last Sunday there.
Since then, I've found a better Methodist church within walking distance. Tiny, but pretty nice. Beautiful building. Refused to merge, so they're pretty small, with an elderly membership. No choir. Not much clapping, which is a relief. They use the hymnals, but I've begun to notice that it's not that often, really. Most of the music is printed in the bulletin, and it's again these tuneless, meaningless ditties that nobody knows the music to. And almost nobody can be heard singing them! (A direct result of our ignorance of them?) I was ambivalent at that point, but then on Easter was another one of these "last straw" moments. We got to church a little late and missed the first part of the service. Looking at the bulletin, I found, near the lyrics of the unknown ditties we'd missed, that there had first been a football-game-style cheer: "J-E-S-U-S...Jesus!"
Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!
That's almost as bad as the clowns, although it was over more quickly. I think that's my last straw for this one, too. Now what?! I think I've exhausted the churches in town, so maybe it's time to look farther afield. Thank goodness I'm a Methodist, and we're a large denomination. I have friends here who are Presbyterian (PCA), and they have to go to the next state just to find the nearest church of their denomination. If it were a congregation they didn't like, I don't know where they'd have to go to find another!
Similarly, the churches around here are feeling the crunch. There are lots of church buildings, but not all of them are occupied. Those that are are pretty sparsely attended and are feeling the pressure to merge with similar congregations. Several have merged, in fact. I went to one Methodist church when I first got here that was the recent sum of three congregations. Beautiful old building. And then when the service started, they fired up a digital projector and ran Powerpoint throughout the entire service! It was so absolutely cheesy, you can hardly imagine. Little animated text running around to summarize the sermon points. The hymn lyrics splashed up on the screen. Don't we have hymnals? Although the rest of the qualities of this church seemed OK, I was too turned off by the concept of a projector to consider coming back. It was simply ridiculous.
As a follow-up note to this, that church (which didn't come close to filling the pews it had then) has now demolished the century-old, beautiful gothic brick building it had inhabited. A parking lot (I kid you not) will be put on the site, while they have built the new church across the street. It is a block-long, modernistic, steel-frame warehouse monstrosity. The narthex alone is the size of the church across the street from me. And if the congregation is still the size I witnessed, they don't occupy but a tiny fraction of the pews available. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas?!
Oh, and they applauded after the choir anthems. I hate that. People, you are not an audience at a concert. This is not a "performance," for you to applaud the performers. It is an act of worship, and you are a participant. This ugly trend came to my church at home, back around 1990, give or take. As a little kid, well before then, my parents had taught us that were, in fact, specifically not supposed to clap in church. For the theologically-thought-out reasons I mentioned above. So I was brought up in the tradition of the church. We used to have a Christmas Eve service in which members of the congregation who sang or played an instrument would do solos. Really beautiful music, nicely done. And still no clapping.
Then when I was in high school, I and some friends my age started getting asked to do solos, too. Great! And about that time, a handful of people in the congregation started clapping after we'd done our solos. I was actually insulted. I felt like it was a condescending compliment: "Aww, wook at de widdle kiddies! Dey can actually pway music wike de big people! Idn't dat cute?" Sheesh! I wanted to be taken as just a normal part of the service, like any other soloist. I thought about talking to the others my age and seeing if we could get a notice in the bulletin that we'd ask not to be applauded, but I never went through with it. The trouble with clapping, too, is that one person can infect the whole congregation. One clapper can be heard across the sanctuary, and you know how people will clap out of politeness if it sounds like everybody else is, even if they wouldn't start it themselves. Soon after that year, you started getting applause at all of the solos, all of the anthems, all of the special music... Thank goodness they haven't started applauding the hymns! Who knows, maybe they will start applauding themselves eventually.
After that church, I tried the little Methodist church across the street from me. Not bad, just a little small for me, and there was no choir. And it was odd to find a full-immersion baptismal pool (painted blue) up behind the altar. Full-immersion is fine with me, but the pool just stood out a bit much, and the place seemed a little sleepy.
So I tried a third church, in the next town over. This was the product of another recent merger of two Methodist churches, but the pews were well filled here. A good choir. The building was traditionally designed, and there were no projectors in sight. Only drawback was the music. They had hymnals but never (And I mean that literally. Never.) used them, instead bothering to print the lyrics to every hymn used that Sunday in the bulletin. Without the music. Ugh. That wouldn't be so much of a problem (rather than just an annoyance), except that these weren't regular hymns. I'd never heard these "songs" before and didn't know the music. How does anybody know how to sing it, if there's no music printed? Maybe all of them had heard them before, but I started going back regularly and don't think they were repeated each Sunday.
My biggest complaint, though, was that most of the music just wasn't traditional Methodist music. It was this new wave of "praise songs," I think. These can best be defined as tuneless, meaningless ditties that repeat the same four words over and over, endlessly. They strike me as having fake emotion. They try to stir up some emotion in you, but it's so obvious and sappy that they utterly fail, in me. I can tear up, singing "Amazing Grace," which has straight lyrics. But these? They just annoyed me. Jesus already knows his name is Jesus. And our repeating it a half-dozen times in a row drives home a pointless point that was already known to me before I could read.
And this was another church where everybody applauded the music. Ugh.
Still, I had spent so many weeks trying to find a decent church that I just gave up at this point and decided to stick with this one. Then this church built a new building. There was some small leak in the roof of the old one--not exactly a big reason to move, but half of the congregation had been in the next town over and wanted to get back there. OK, fine. And then I found out that the oversized, shallow-roofed warehouse I'd seen being built by the highway was no warehouse at all, but our new church. Grumble. Fine. Inside, it looked OK, though, until I discovered that they'd decided to have a digital projector system built in! Well, they didn't use it during the sermon, at least, unlike that one place. It was just used to flash up the lyrics to the "hymns." Which were also printed in the bulletin.
They also used this opportunity to rid themselves of those stuffy old Methodist hymnals. No need for those silly things: we've got Powerpoint! There are no hymnals anywhere in the sanctuary. At least where the congregation sits. I don't know if the choir has smuggled some of the contraband up there in the choir loft, but I couldn't find any. Still, I'd gotten to know the people there for a while and didn't feel like leaving, just over that. So I white-knuckled it through the meaningless, tuneless ditties (I can hardly dignify them with the word "songs," much less "hymns.") and simply refused to sing them or look at the Powerpoint, and enjoyed the Sunday school lesson afterwards and generally stuck it out.
Until the clowns showed up. A few weeks ago, right before the sermon, they had...clowns... And mimes. Actually, they were clown-mimes. They did some pantomime in clown costumes for what felt like five minutes or more, to an instrumental version of (get this) "Send In the Clowns"! That was the last straw, and my last Sunday there.
Since then, I've found a better Methodist church within walking distance. Tiny, but pretty nice. Beautiful building. Refused to merge, so they're pretty small, with an elderly membership. No choir. Not much clapping, which is a relief. They use the hymnals, but I've begun to notice that it's not that often, really. Most of the music is printed in the bulletin, and it's again these tuneless, meaningless ditties that nobody knows the music to. And almost nobody can be heard singing them! (A direct result of our ignorance of them?) I was ambivalent at that point, but then on Easter was another one of these "last straw" moments. We got to church a little late and missed the first part of the service. Looking at the bulletin, I found, near the lyrics of the unknown ditties we'd missed, that there had first been a football-game-style cheer: "J-E-S-U-S...Jesus!"
Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!
That's almost as bad as the clowns, although it was over more quickly. I think that's my last straw for this one, too. Now what?! I think I've exhausted the churches in town, so maybe it's time to look farther afield. Thank goodness I'm a Methodist, and we're a large denomination. I have friends here who are Presbyterian (PCA), and they have to go to the next state just to find the nearest church of their denomination. If it were a congregation they didn't like, I don't know where they'd have to go to find another!
I'm baaaa-ack!
Sorry for the long absence. Been away from blogging for the last month because of all kinds of family activity to plan and execute. Now that we've gotten to enjoy that, I'm back to work and back to blogging. Stay tuned...
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
House of Lords for sale?
Via Andrew Stuttaford on NRO's The Corner, here's a report from the London Times about a scandal erupting over the new method of naming peers to the House of Lords. Recall that the Labour party eliminated the hereditary lords from sitting in the body, in favor of non-hereditary lords named by the party in control of the House of Commons. Not exactly a check on the tyranny of the majority, is it? And, surprise, surprise: now it seems that one of those nominees made a million-pound loan to the Labour party.
Although I wouldn't want to live under a system of monarchy and nobility as England has and had, I can see that the hereditary lords at least were independent of the House of Commons and could act as a check on majoritarian power. (And, coming from one who doesn't have to live there, I can also see a romantic, historical attraction to the old system.) The new system abolishes some legal priviliges of lords, but it doesn't improve the government. Rather, it makes it worse.
England needs an elected Senate.
Although I wouldn't want to live under a system of monarchy and nobility as England has and had, I can see that the hereditary lords at least were independent of the House of Commons and could act as a check on majoritarian power. (And, coming from one who doesn't have to live there, I can also see a romantic, historical attraction to the old system.) The new system abolishes some legal priviliges of lords, but it doesn't improve the government. Rather, it makes it worse.
England needs an elected Senate.
Good for him
A man in Puerto Rico for the World Baseball Classic held up a sign reading, "Abajo Fidel," or "Down with Fidel [Castro]," from the stands Friday. The top Cuban "official" (whatever that means, in this case) at the games came rushing over to confront the man, but Puerto Rican police, thankfully, came to the spectator's aid and took the Cuban off and explained to him the concept of free speech. Good for this man, and good for the Puerto Rican police!
Cuban TV was carrying a live feed from the games, so Cuban subjects watching would have been able to see the sign, briefly. Ahh, yes, we can't have the chance that the proles would be able to catch a glimpse of somebody in another country criticizing the great leader, now, can we?
Cuban TV was carrying a live feed from the games, so Cuban subjects watching would have been able to see the sign, briefly. Ahh, yes, we can't have the chance that the proles would be able to catch a glimpse of somebody in another country criticizing the great leader, now, can we?
Monday, March 06, 2006
Shelved Pentagon space plane
(via Drudge) Aviation Week & Space Technology is reporting that the Pentagon has shelved a space plane that has been operational since the 1990s. It is a two-stage to orbit system that could be outfitted with a number of different payloads, including satellites and anti-missile (or anti-satellite, I imagine) kill vehicles.
If they've cancelled the program, it suggests that it was either not successful (although this program was reportedly "operational"), was hit by changes in the budget, or was surpassed by something better. I'm hoping for the latter!
If they've cancelled the program, it suggests that it was either not successful (although this program was reportedly "operational"), was hit by changes in the budget, or was surpassed by something better. I'm hoping for the latter!
Sunday, March 05, 2006
A leftist speaks honestly
I was listening to the BBC World Service on the way to church this morning, and they were discussing the situation in Iraq.
There was a caller whose nationality I didn't get, but who spoke with a pronounced accent, who said straight out that he hoped Iraq failed. He wanted the country to fail, so that it would be a defeat for Bush. A defeat that would prevent Bush from invading Syria or Iran.
I cannot call this man a "liberal," because despite the modern usage to mean "left-wing," I still like to pretend sometimes that it has a little of its old meaning left--a lover of freedom. This man is no lover of freedom. He wants the fledgeling democracy there to die. What a wish to extend to Iraq's 20 million citizens.
There was a caller whose nationality I didn't get, but who spoke with a pronounced accent, who said straight out that he hoped Iraq failed. He wanted the country to fail, so that it would be a defeat for Bush. A defeat that would prevent Bush from invading Syria or Iran.
I cannot call this man a "liberal," because despite the modern usage to mean "left-wing," I still like to pretend sometimes that it has a little of its old meaning left--a lover of freedom. This man is no lover of freedom. He wants the fledgeling democracy there to die. What a wish to extend to Iraq's 20 million citizens.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
NASA programs squeezed in budget
The New York Times reports that some research programs are getting squeezed in NASA's budget, as the agency organizes around the manned space program goals of returning to the Moon and going on to Mars. I'm sympathetic to both sides, actually. Some of my fellow astrophysicists moan about their fields getting tight, but a lot of this is a matter of whose ox is getting gored. NASA isn't being slashed; rather, it's bringing in a big, new manned program, and the others are being shuffled around to make room for it.
I've never understood the attitude expressed by some astrophysicists like James Van Allen (discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth) that manned spaceflight is pointless, and we should concentrate only on robotic space probes (and telescopes, I imagine). I've heard similar thoughts expressed by some friends of mine over the years. Never that many people, mind you, but enought that I get the impression it's a more widely shared sentiment than I hear expressed. Generally, though, especially among us youngsters, there's an enthusiasm for manned space flight (I never say that horrible, clunky, and Politically Correct phrase, "human space flight," which NASA has imposed upon itself.). The shuttle program was lately a ho-hum affair, as it seemed our manned program was stalled in Near Earth Orbit. But the goal of reaching to the Moon and planets is an exciting one for lots of us.
Still, I'm a scientist and want NASA to keep the science programs up, too. I think the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope ought to be the primary science priorities, so of course we have to make some compromises elsewhere. I just hope they're not too big or irreversible.
I've never understood the attitude expressed by some astrophysicists like James Van Allen (discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth) that manned spaceflight is pointless, and we should concentrate only on robotic space probes (and telescopes, I imagine). I've heard similar thoughts expressed by some friends of mine over the years. Never that many people, mind you, but enought that I get the impression it's a more widely shared sentiment than I hear expressed. Generally, though, especially among us youngsters, there's an enthusiasm for manned space flight (I never say that horrible, clunky, and Politically Correct phrase, "human space flight," which NASA has imposed upon itself.). The shuttle program was lately a ho-hum affair, as it seemed our manned program was stalled in Near Earth Orbit. But the goal of reaching to the Moon and planets is an exciting one for lots of us.
Still, I'm a scientist and want NASA to keep the science programs up, too. I think the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope ought to be the primary science priorities, so of course we have to make some compromises elsewhere. I just hope they're not too big or irreversible.
Astronomical telescopes obsolete in a half-century?
Well, the BBC starts off saying that, but then you scroll down and find that it's the claim of one scientist who's relying on if trends continue on more than one count and some other speculation and assumptions on others. And he's countered by other scientists. What this fellow claims is that airplane contrails and global warming will make unmanageable amounts of cloud cover over astronomical observatories by 2050 that will prohibit any ground-based astronomy from then on.
Of course, he didn't take into account that for airplane contrails to disperse into broader clouds takes specific atmospheric conditions that aren't always there. And even if one of these clouds blows over your observatory from elsewhere (he says that sometimes contrails blow for "hundreds of kilometers"), a lot of our best observatories are on the Pacific coast--Hawaii, Chile, and California. The prevailing winds are from the West, there. Yes, you have planes crossing the Pacific, but you don't have too many destinations to the immediate West of these observatories.
Of course, he didn't take into account that for airplane contrails to disperse into broader clouds takes specific atmospheric conditions that aren't always there. And even if one of these clouds blows over your observatory from elsewhere (he says that sometimes contrails blow for "hundreds of kilometers"), a lot of our best observatories are on the Pacific coast--Hawaii, Chile, and California. The prevailing winds are from the West, there. Yes, you have planes crossing the Pacific, but you don't have too many destinations to the immediate West of these observatories.
Italian commission finds USSR behind pope's assassination attempt
This article from the AP brings the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II back into the news. After Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk, shot the Pope and was caught, he initially said the Bulgarian spy agency and ultimately the Soviets were at the top of the operation. He changed his story a number of times, but there was other evidence to implicate at least Bulgaria in the crime. Now an Italian parliamentary commission, originally set up to investigate KGB penetration of Italy during the Cold War, has concluded that the Soviets were, in fact, behind the operation.
What's surprised me throughout the years is finding that there are liberals here in America who have dismissed the possibility out of hand. As if a tyrannical regime that killed a quarter of the Ukrainian population, rounded up and murdered entire "classes" of Russian peasants, sent political dissidents to the Gulag in vast numbers, and so on, would never, NEVER have considered offing a problematic pope!
Of course, there are liberals who still claim Alger Hiss was innocent, when the Venona transcripts prove his guilt...
What's surprised me throughout the years is finding that there are liberals here in America who have dismissed the possibility out of hand. As if a tyrannical regime that killed a quarter of the Ukrainian population, rounded up and murdered entire "classes" of Russian peasants, sent political dissidents to the Gulag in vast numbers, and so on, would never, NEVER have considered offing a problematic pope!
Of course, there are liberals who still claim Alger Hiss was innocent, when the Venona transcripts prove his guilt...
Monday, February 27, 2006
The ice has cracked
The cold Canadian model of socialized medicine might be thawing. I don't know that we can cheer just yet, but there's hope, anyway. Their Supreme Court ruled against certain restrictions against private medical insurance recently, and now private medical clinics are opening up at the rate of about one each week!
It doesn't sound like much from our perspective, but keep in mind that Canada had an absolute ban on private medine until now. People were actually dying in waiting lists for medical attention. And that's what prompted the lawsuit that broke this.
I remember a Canadian colleague once telling me that their absolute form of socialized medicine was necessary. That it was right to prohibit anybody from spending their own hard-earned money to get medical attention. Why? Because it would result in the rich being able to do better than the rest!
Well, heck! What about food? Sure, we and Canada both have welfare systems that assist the extremely poor to buy food, but we don't prohibit the rich from buying their own, do we? And this results in a system in which the rich can afford more and better food than the poor. Isn't food more inherently necessary for life than medical attention? I mean, on an every-day basis. Does the Canadian Left have a problem with this, or will they propose socialized food as a remedy to the horrors of inequality at the supper table?
I can hardly imagine somebody coming up with this line of logic, and, despite him being a smart man (an astrophysicist), I suspect he simply repeated some slogans he heard somewhere without thinking.
It doesn't sound like much from our perspective, but keep in mind that Canada had an absolute ban on private medine until now. People were actually dying in waiting lists for medical attention. And that's what prompted the lawsuit that broke this.
I remember a Canadian colleague once telling me that their absolute form of socialized medicine was necessary. That it was right to prohibit anybody from spending their own hard-earned money to get medical attention. Why? Because it would result in the rich being able to do better than the rest!
Well, heck! What about food? Sure, we and Canada both have welfare systems that assist the extremely poor to buy food, but we don't prohibit the rich from buying their own, do we? And this results in a system in which the rich can afford more and better food than the poor. Isn't food more inherently necessary for life than medical attention? I mean, on an every-day basis. Does the Canadian Left have a problem with this, or will they propose socialized food as a remedy to the horrors of inequality at the supper table?
I can hardly imagine somebody coming up with this line of logic, and, despite him being a smart man (an astrophysicist), I suspect he simply repeated some slogans he heard somewhere without thinking.
The evolutionary emergence of blondes
This is interesting. I hadn't thought about it, but have you ever noticed that around the world, dark hair and eyes are predominant in people? That's not as true among Caucasians, where there's quite a variety in hair and eye color. The research apparently shows that this was an evolutionary adaptation from about 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, near the beginning of civilization. In Northern Europe, near the retreating edges of the ice sheet, there were plenty of animals to eat, but not too many edible plants, unlike in regions farther south. So unlike other places, food-gathering was something more dangerous and performed mostly by men. Many were killed in the process, and you had a lot of women competing for the few survivors. Hair and eye color wound up being a genetic strategy to stand out and attract mates. It wasn't as necessary in other parts of the world, so the genes didn't wind up being as widespread.
Now I'm reminded of that line from Big Trouble in Little China, "Chinese girls do not come with green eyes."
I wonder, though, about the ancestors of the Eskimos and other far-northern tribes. Were they also up there at that time, and was their culture subject to the same effects? Eskimos today are dark-haired and brown-eyed. Just curious. Of course, you won't have the same random genetic quirks happening everywhere, so even two populations with the same environmental pressures might not have the same genetic mutations popping up.
Unexpectedly, the article ends by saying the WHO claims that the blonde-haired gene is dying out and should be completely extinct in 200 years. Right. No, I don't buy that. It's around for 11,000 years, and the instant our science matures to the point where we can study such things, we discover it's about to end Right! This! Minute! ?? This should violate some biological equivalent of the Cosmological Principle.
Now I'm reminded of that line from Big Trouble in Little China, "Chinese girls do not come with green eyes."
I wonder, though, about the ancestors of the Eskimos and other far-northern tribes. Were they also up there at that time, and was their culture subject to the same effects? Eskimos today are dark-haired and brown-eyed. Just curious. Of course, you won't have the same random genetic quirks happening everywhere, so even two populations with the same environmental pressures might not have the same genetic mutations popping up.
Unexpectedly, the article ends by saying the WHO claims that the blonde-haired gene is dying out and should be completely extinct in 200 years. Right. No, I don't buy that. It's around for 11,000 years, and the instant our science matures to the point where we can study such things, we discover it's about to end Right! This! Minute! ?? This should violate some biological equivalent of the Cosmological Principle.
Dogs playing calculus
OK, so that title doesn't really evoke thoughts of the "dogs playing poker" painting too well. Nonetheless...
Here's an interesting article about dogs solving a problem in the calculus of variations. Throw a ball for your dog. If he's on the shore, and you throw it into the water at some angle to the shore, then the fastest path is a problem of "the calculus of variations." You can run faster along the shore, but that isn't aiming directly for the ball. If you went straight for it, you'd be moving slowly through the water. So what combination of shore and water gets you there most quickly? Dogs come up with solutions pretty close to the mathematically optimum answer! (Diagrams are on the page.)
Here's an interesting article about dogs solving a problem in the calculus of variations. Throw a ball for your dog. If he's on the shore, and you throw it into the water at some angle to the shore, then the fastest path is a problem of "the calculus of variations." You can run faster along the shore, but that isn't aiming directly for the ball. If you went straight for it, you'd be moving slowly through the water. So what combination of shore and water gets you there most quickly? Dogs come up with solutions pretty close to the mathematically optimum answer! (Diagrams are on the page.)
A Catholic city by Domino's?
I haven't read this in detail, so I'm passing it along without too much comment. The owner of Domino's Pizza, who is a devout Catholic, is wanting to found a city in Florida to be run by Catholic principles. It's not clear from this English newspaper's report exactly how he means it to be Catholic, aside from simply encouraging Catholics to move there, and the details would be important. But as a devout Methodist, I wish him well. I wouldn't want to live there, myself, of course, but it's the kind of thing I'd imagine religious Catholics would enjoy. He's got a Catholic college he's already started on nearby, and they've got 5,000 acres of space (town and city both?).
I dislike deed restrictions of any kind, and I get the hint that that would be one way they might set up the town. The article says that owners of commercial property could impose restrictions on the businesses operating on them, for instance, restricting the sale of contraceptives. Fine enough. They don't say anything about deed restrictions, so I'm merely speculating on that point. I reckon that would be one way of making the town itself have a Catholic character, though not the only.
There's a retirement community a friend of mine has moved to. It's Methodist, although not run by the church itself. Mostly set up for retired ministers. And people have the complete freedom to decide whether they move there or not. Whether to enter into that kind of environment or not. So people should have no problem with a town being specifically set up to be characteristically Catholic. Now, if you already lived there and decided you wanted to live differently, that's another matter, but this seems it was vacant land, or not settled on, anyway.
Actually, I wonder how it would be if you voluntarily moved there, with the intention of being around Catholics and living in the way the town is intended for, and then changing your mind later. I'm tempted to say that's your own tough luck, but at that point it is your own property, and if you're prohibited from certain things (or required to do something) on your own property, I'd chafe at it, even if I had known it moving in.
Anyway, I wish him luck.
I dislike deed restrictions of any kind, and I get the hint that that would be one way they might set up the town. The article says that owners of commercial property could impose restrictions on the businesses operating on them, for instance, restricting the sale of contraceptives. Fine enough. They don't say anything about deed restrictions, so I'm merely speculating on that point. I reckon that would be one way of making the town itself have a Catholic character, though not the only.
There's a retirement community a friend of mine has moved to. It's Methodist, although not run by the church itself. Mostly set up for retired ministers. And people have the complete freedom to decide whether they move there or not. Whether to enter into that kind of environment or not. So people should have no problem with a town being specifically set up to be characteristically Catholic. Now, if you already lived there and decided you wanted to live differently, that's another matter, but this seems it was vacant land, or not settled on, anyway.
Actually, I wonder how it would be if you voluntarily moved there, with the intention of being around Catholics and living in the way the town is intended for, and then changing your mind later. I'm tempted to say that's your own tough luck, but at that point it is your own property, and if you're prohibited from certain things (or required to do something) on your own property, I'd chafe at it, even if I had known it moving in.
Anyway, I wish him luck.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Wisdom from "The Tick"
Sign posted in paleontology lab:
Yep. Wisdom we should all live by.
DO NOT:
Eat in the lab
Burn down the lab
Innovate unnecessarily
Yep. Wisdom we should all live by.
Light blogging
Sorry for the light blogging lately. Lots to do. I'll try to post occasionally the next few days, but it'll be sporadic.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson
Here on National Review Online. Absolutely fantastic article. Makes me laugh and gets me riled up at the same time.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
The award for best astrophysics paper title I've seen...
...goes to Laszlo Gergely and Zoltan Keresztes, for "Irradiated asymmetric Friedmann branes". Click to read it. No, seriously!
Those cartoons of Islam
I've got different feelings about these Islamic parody cartoons out of Denmark. They are critical of Islam, of course, and if I were Moslem, I certainly wouldn't like them. I didn't like Andre Serrano's so-called "art" that made fun of Christianity, nor any of the other countless examples of anti-Christian expressions you'll find throughout the nominally Christian West. I criticize those. I understand and sometimes agree with calls for the publishers of such things to stop it. (I'll note that I never promote boycotts, though.)
So I have no problem in principle with Moslems around the world criticizing these cartoons. I have no problem with them asking the Danish newspaper not to run them, or to apologize for having done so. But there are some problems with how this is being done.
1) Some of the criticism, apparently, is that Islam does not allow depictions of Mohammed (technically, depictions of anything), so the cartoon depicting him is inherently blasphemous. Answer: You can't expect people not of your religion to follow the dictates of your religion. Should I be shocked that Buddists don't keep the Sabbath? That's a task for a long-term missionary project.
2) There are calls not only for the newspapers to apologize but for the Danish government to apologize or officially criticize the cartoons. Worse yet, to legally prohibit the newspaper from printing these. Answer: While the President of the United States, say, will often offer his opinion on cultural matters like this, and I wouldn't mind if he had criticized these, had they come out of the United States, I would object to the idea that the government at any level could apologize for the actions done by private citizens. I would also object to the idea that there could be an "official" criticism of any kind. The President could offer his privately-held opinion of this, critical or not, but it should not be delivered in any official context.
More importantly, there should not, and indeed cannot be any legal prohibitions against such publications in this country, and happily that still seems to be true in most of the European countries caught up in this issue. Britain might be changing, with a proposed law (passed, now?) that while toned down, still might prohibit certain religious criticism.
3) Is it irony or something far less subtle that some have responded with violence to these cartoons (one cartoon shows Mohammed with a bomb for a turban--and the fuse is lit)? There are hostage-taking attempts going on, although I don't know if any have been successful. How many Westerners are hanging around the Gaza Strip these days? Do you really want to make the cartoonist's point by reacting in the very stereotype of a violent Islamist radical?
It's with all of this in mind that I read this article in the Washington Post: "Men Angry at Drawings Surround Gaza Office" The AP writer is Ibrahim Barzak, with a dateline of Gaza City. After describing the aforesaid attempts at finding Western hostages and the surrounding of the EU offices by gunmen, Barzak writes this: "The furor over the drawings, which first ran in a Danish paper in September, cuts to the question of which is more sacred in the Western world - freedom of expression or respect for religious beliefs."
Well, now. The so-called "freedom of expression" (I say "so-called" because there are plenty of modes of expression that aren't permitted in a given society. The writer should have written "freedom of the press.") is a legal matter. Respect for religion is an aspect of the culture and is not a legal matter. (Britain may become a sad exception to this.) Within the legal freedom of the press to publish what it wishes, there is a separate question of whether these cartoons were really a good idea, respectful, or whatever.
Even if one considers them not to be, there is no logical dilemma posed. I believe the writer is trying to raise "respect for religious beliefs" to a legal status it does not have, and I suspect his personal leanings are that these should not be permitted. This is a bit of editorializing at the end of a news article.
Sorry to read that that French paper that reprinted the cartoons this week has now fired its managing editor. Barzak implies that it is in return for this act, but no connection is stated directly.
So I have no problem in principle with Moslems around the world criticizing these cartoons. I have no problem with them asking the Danish newspaper not to run them, or to apologize for having done so. But there are some problems with how this is being done.
1) Some of the criticism, apparently, is that Islam does not allow depictions of Mohammed (technically, depictions of anything), so the cartoon depicting him is inherently blasphemous. Answer: You can't expect people not of your religion to follow the dictates of your religion. Should I be shocked that Buddists don't keep the Sabbath? That's a task for a long-term missionary project.
2) There are calls not only for the newspapers to apologize but for the Danish government to apologize or officially criticize the cartoons. Worse yet, to legally prohibit the newspaper from printing these. Answer: While the President of the United States, say, will often offer his opinion on cultural matters like this, and I wouldn't mind if he had criticized these, had they come out of the United States, I would object to the idea that the government at any level could apologize for the actions done by private citizens. I would also object to the idea that there could be an "official" criticism of any kind. The President could offer his privately-held opinion of this, critical or not, but it should not be delivered in any official context.
More importantly, there should not, and indeed cannot be any legal prohibitions against such publications in this country, and happily that still seems to be true in most of the European countries caught up in this issue. Britain might be changing, with a proposed law (passed, now?) that while toned down, still might prohibit certain religious criticism.
3) Is it irony or something far less subtle that some have responded with violence to these cartoons (one cartoon shows Mohammed with a bomb for a turban--and the fuse is lit)? There are hostage-taking attempts going on, although I don't know if any have been successful. How many Westerners are hanging around the Gaza Strip these days? Do you really want to make the cartoonist's point by reacting in the very stereotype of a violent Islamist radical?
It's with all of this in mind that I read this article in the Washington Post: "Men Angry at Drawings Surround Gaza Office" The AP writer is Ibrahim Barzak, with a dateline of Gaza City. After describing the aforesaid attempts at finding Western hostages and the surrounding of the EU offices by gunmen, Barzak writes this: "The furor over the drawings, which first ran in a Danish paper in September, cuts to the question of which is more sacred in the Western world - freedom of expression or respect for religious beliefs."
Well, now. The so-called "freedom of expression" (I say "so-called" because there are plenty of modes of expression that aren't permitted in a given society. The writer should have written "freedom of the press.") is a legal matter. Respect for religion is an aspect of the culture and is not a legal matter. (Britain may become a sad exception to this.) Within the legal freedom of the press to publish what it wishes, there is a separate question of whether these cartoons were really a good idea, respectful, or whatever.
Even if one considers them not to be, there is no logical dilemma posed. I believe the writer is trying to raise "respect for religious beliefs" to a legal status it does not have, and I suspect his personal leanings are that these should not be permitted. This is a bit of editorializing at the end of a news article.
Sorry to read that that French paper that reprinted the cartoons this week has now fired its managing editor. Barzak implies that it is in return for this act, but no connection is stated directly.
Hghmmmm...
"Alito Splits With Conservatives on Inmate" Up on Drudge right now. Bright red headline.
Hmph. I could see that there are death-row appeals (this is a stay of execution request) that could have some merit, in principle. But the defense "pursued two challenges - claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and that his constitutional rights were violated by a system tilted against black defendants."
Maybe there's something more substantive buried deep inside the request, but on the face, those are two of the most specious challenges to an execution you can come up with. I hope we haven't been hoodwinked by our new justice...
Hmph. I could see that there are death-row appeals (this is a stay of execution request) that could have some merit, in principle. But the defense "pursued two challenges - claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and that his constitutional rights were violated by a system tilted against black defendants."
Maybe there's something more substantive buried deep inside the request, but on the face, those are two of the most specious challenges to an execution you can come up with. I hope we haven't been hoodwinked by our new justice...
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Harry Reid in Trouble with the DNC?
I saw a couple of minutes with Harry Reid last night on FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume. They brought up Howard Dean's statement on Fox News Sunday that any Democrat who'd done favors for an Indian tribe and received money directed by Jack Abramoff was in trouble.
That describes Harry Reid. Minority leader in the Senate. He admits to receiving the money and to writing a letter in support of a particular tribe for some issue, but he says those are unrelated. Could be, but it's worth checking into.
Also interesting was his reaction when asked whom the leader of the Democrats is. I figured that would technically be Dean, right? Reid refused to answer the question! My, that was an odd answer, no?
That describes Harry Reid. Minority leader in the Senate. He admits to receiving the money and to writing a letter in support of a particular tribe for some issue, but he says those are unrelated. Could be, but it's worth checking into.
Also interesting was his reaction when asked whom the leader of the Democrats is. I figured that would technically be Dean, right? Reid refused to answer the question! My, that was an odd answer, no?
Alito confirmed
That's it. 11:09 AM, and Alito has just earned 51 votes. They're still calling the roll, but he's in, now.
Strange, again, about my earlier comment on the Democrats not (apparently) being present when their names were called. That includes Byrd, for instance, who had said he would be voting for Alito. Why's that?
UPDATE: Fox News just noted the same thing. They don't know why, either, but they suggested that some of them might have planned to vote in a second round.
Strange, again, about my earlier comment on the Democrats not (apparently) being present when their names were called. That includes Byrd, for instance, who had said he would be voting for Alito. Why's that?
UPDATE: Fox News just noted the same thing. They don't know why, either, but they suggested that some of them might have planned to vote in a second round.
Liveblogging the Alito vote
So they're voting on Alito right now. Something strange I'd never noticed on an earlier vote. The roll is being called, and all of the Republicans have been present and voting "aye." But until just a minute ago, most of the Democrats were not answering the clerk's call at all. Not present? Now they're up in the S's, and a larger fraction of the Democrats are present and voting "no."
I wish the clerk would call it "nay," though--it preserves a nice tradition.
I wish the clerk would call it "nay," though--it preserves a nice tradition.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Is emigration ethical?
Sure, ummm, unless you're a professional, says the UN. Actually, it's an "alternative proposal" that has come out of the United Nations Development Program and unveiled at the Davos meeting. To prevent the so-called "brain drain" of well-educated professionals from poor countries immigrating to richer, freer Western countries, one proposal is, as the Independent puts it:
So. Let's say you're a Ph.D. astrophysicist from a poor, corrupt, and somewhat repressive country. (Pick any of those three, or in combination.) You see the United States as the beacon of freedom and opportunity, and you want to emigrate from your native land and immigrate to the United States. Good for you! We welcome you in with open arms. But be warned: you are being unethical, according to the UN. Your duty, as a national resource, owned by your country, is to stay put and make do with the rotten conditions you find in your own country. Conditions that Americans, rich or poor, wouldn't put up with. You are not a human being, free to make your own decisions on your future. You are merely an object, something to be added to the national statistics and compared by one country against another.
I propose we let the UN rewrite "The New Colossus," the great and famous poem inscribed beneath the Statue of Liberty. No longer should it read,
Instead...well, I'll have to think about this. I'll come up with something good, later.
ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION: An international code of ethical guidelines overseen by bodies such as the World Health Organisation (for doctors and nurses) to monitor the harm that migration of professionals causes.
So. Let's say you're a Ph.D. astrophysicist from a poor, corrupt, and somewhat repressive country. (Pick any of those three, or in combination.) You see the United States as the beacon of freedom and opportunity, and you want to emigrate from your native land and immigrate to the United States. Good for you! We welcome you in with open arms. But be warned: you are being unethical, according to the UN. Your duty, as a national resource, owned by your country, is to stay put and make do with the rotten conditions you find in your own country. Conditions that Americans, rich or poor, wouldn't put up with. You are not a human being, free to make your own decisions on your future. You are merely an object, something to be added to the national statistics and compared by one country against another.
I propose we let the UN rewrite "The New Colossus," the great and famous poem inscribed beneath the Statue of Liberty. No longer should it read,
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Instead...well, I'll have to think about this. I'll come up with something good, later.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Howard Dean flails on Fox News Sunday
I listened to Fox News Sunday today, replayed on C-SPAN, and all on XM radio. It's nice--I'd gotten to enjoy Sunday afternoons back when I lived in D.C. and Baltimore, driving around after church listening to C-SPAN Radio, as it replayed the Sunday political talk shows. C-SPAN was only on the radio out of D.C. (although they might have gotten some other transmitters recently). And since I'm elsewhere now, the satellite radio really helps.
Anyway, Howard Dean was being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He stayed on-message most of the time, attacking Republicans for corruption, real and perceived and maybe-if-we-dug-around-a-little. And I absolutely agree that the GOP needs to clean up its own house right now. He tried to make the President look shady, because Abramoff had been at a White House event and shook his hand. Incidentally, I've read that Mrs. Carter had her photo taken with John Wayne Gacy, the now-convicted serial killer. Obviously, she didn't know he was a killer then, but it'd be an awfully embarassing photo, and I wouldn't expect the Carter White House to have publicised that picture. Clinton had his photo taken at White House events with a drug dealer. We conservatives made hay out of that in the '90s, but mostly to the point of "what kind of background checks are they doing over there?!" Bush has his picture taken with a political lobbyist. If Abramoff didn't give Bush money, then there's really nothing that can be made from it, aside from an embarassing picture.
Dean went on in the corruption vein for a while. Then Chris Wallace pointed out to him that Democrats had received money from groups associated with Jack Abramoff (half the amount the GOP did, but that's still a lot of money). Dean had tried to deny this last week, then this week he said that that had nothing to do with Abramoff. Abramoff is a conservative, after all, so he never would have directed anybody to give money to Democrats. Right? Wallace told him--I think--that yes, there is evidence Abramoff directed at least some of these donations. That really got Dean flustered. He actually stammered and garbled a couple of sentences before he got it all straightened out. Actually, I don't think he did get it straghtened out. He finally said that any Democrats having done favors for donations would be punished somehow. Well, yeah. But at least he finally started to admit that there was the possibility that Democrats might have some corruption to deal with, themselves. Actually, he didn't really admit that, but...
Before that, Dean made a really bizarre statement. One of the sort that makes us conservatives glad he's the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He criticized the NSA's no-longer-secret wiretapping program, saying that the NSA should have gotten warrants in each case. OK, now I don't have strong objections to the idea that all of these cases should involve warrants. I've gradually come around to the idea that the President does have Constitutional authority to do this without warrants, when and if the calls have at least one end overseas and involve the enemy. But I think this is a perfectly good topic for debate.
That being said, Dean claimed that the privacy of Americans was being violated, even if the NSA only listened to calls made to al Qaeda, because: people don't know it's an al Qaeda number until they dial it and hear what's going on on the other end. Everything following the colon is nearly verbatim.
OK, so Dean thinks that we regular American citizens, people who have nothing to do with terrorists, go around and dial random phone numbers in, say, Afghanistan or Pakistan without knowing whom we are calling! Who does this?! And people should do this, right? and just stay on the line, talking to this mysterious person until we find out if they're in al Qaeda or not. Because, you know, you never know if it's an al Qaeda number until you hear what's going on at the other end.
Ohhh, pleaaaase let Dean keep talking like this!
Anyway, Howard Dean was being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He stayed on-message most of the time, attacking Republicans for corruption, real and perceived and maybe-if-we-dug-around-a-little. And I absolutely agree that the GOP needs to clean up its own house right now. He tried to make the President look shady, because Abramoff had been at a White House event and shook his hand. Incidentally, I've read that Mrs. Carter had her photo taken with John Wayne Gacy, the now-convicted serial killer. Obviously, she didn't know he was a killer then, but it'd be an awfully embarassing photo, and I wouldn't expect the Carter White House to have publicised that picture. Clinton had his photo taken at White House events with a drug dealer. We conservatives made hay out of that in the '90s, but mostly to the point of "what kind of background checks are they doing over there?!" Bush has his picture taken with a political lobbyist. If Abramoff didn't give Bush money, then there's really nothing that can be made from it, aside from an embarassing picture.
Dean went on in the corruption vein for a while. Then Chris Wallace pointed out to him that Democrats had received money from groups associated with Jack Abramoff (half the amount the GOP did, but that's still a lot of money). Dean had tried to deny this last week, then this week he said that that had nothing to do with Abramoff. Abramoff is a conservative, after all, so he never would have directed anybody to give money to Democrats. Right? Wallace told him--I think--that yes, there is evidence Abramoff directed at least some of these donations. That really got Dean flustered. He actually stammered and garbled a couple of sentences before he got it all straightened out. Actually, I don't think he did get it straghtened out. He finally said that any Democrats having done favors for donations would be punished somehow. Well, yeah. But at least he finally started to admit that there was the possibility that Democrats might have some corruption to deal with, themselves. Actually, he didn't really admit that, but...
Before that, Dean made a really bizarre statement. One of the sort that makes us conservatives glad he's the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He criticized the NSA's no-longer-secret wiretapping program, saying that the NSA should have gotten warrants in each case. OK, now I don't have strong objections to the idea that all of these cases should involve warrants. I've gradually come around to the idea that the President does have Constitutional authority to do this without warrants, when and if the calls have at least one end overseas and involve the enemy. But I think this is a perfectly good topic for debate.
That being said, Dean claimed that the privacy of Americans was being violated, even if the NSA only listened to calls made to al Qaeda, because: people don't know it's an al Qaeda number until they dial it and hear what's going on on the other end. Everything following the colon is nearly verbatim.
OK, so Dean thinks that we regular American citizens, people who have nothing to do with terrorists, go around and dial random phone numbers in, say, Afghanistan or Pakistan without knowing whom we are calling! Who does this?! And people should do this, right? and just stay on the line, talking to this mysterious person until we find out if they're in al Qaeda or not. Because, you know, you never know if it's an al Qaeda number until you hear what's going on at the other end.
Ohhh, pleaaaase let Dean keep talking like this!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Feinstein
Feinstein had a really interesting comment. She brought up a case involving a sale of two machine guns. At least, she called them machine guns, but liberals tend to have very little technical knowledge on these matters, so they could have been semi-automatics, for all I know. I didn't hear much of the context of what she said, but she used this as an example to claim that Alito believes that Congress has only limited powers to pass laws. Interstate sales can be regulated under the interstate commerce clause, but beyond that, there are restrictions on non-interstate sales. (I think she was saying this latter part, too--she hinted at it, at least.)
What amazed me is that she professed shock that Alito would argue Congress' powers are limited at all by the Constitution! I think that many liberals believe the Congress can pass any law it wants to, as long as there is not an Amendment of the Bill of Rights explicitly prohibiting it. On the other hand, most Conservatives believe Congress can only pass those laws that are authorized under Article I, Sec. 8, and subsequent Amendments. You know, the whole concept of "a government of limited powers."
Sad that even a United States Senator would feel no embarassment in professing shock that Congress is not all-powerful. More reason to say that "I love my country, but I fear my government."
What amazed me is that she professed shock that Alito would argue Congress' powers are limited at all by the Constitution! I think that many liberals believe the Congress can pass any law it wants to, as long as there is not an Amendment of the Bill of Rights explicitly prohibiting it. On the other hand, most Conservatives believe Congress can only pass those laws that are authorized under Article I, Sec. 8, and subsequent Amendments. You know, the whole concept of "a government of limited powers."
Sad that even a United States Senator would feel no embarassment in professing shock that Congress is not all-powerful. More reason to say that "I love my country, but I fear my government."
Hatch's Comments
Hatch gave an interesting address. He discussed the history of Supreme Court nomination votes and described how Republicans have, even in recent years, voted overwhelmingly to confirm liberal (and, more importantly, anti-originalist) Supreme Court nominees. Unfortunately, the Democrats today are not going to match that record, and they are treating this as a purely political act.
Leahy's comments
Wow. Following Chairman Arlen Specter's comments, the floor went to ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy. My goodness, the guy went off on tangents! Alito was mentioned in passing, but only. Much of his commentary was a list of complaints about President Bush's policies and conduct of the Terrorist War (I prefer this term to "War on Terror") and the Iraq War. Weird. Oh, and he's voting against Alito. Big surprise, that.
(Light) Liveblogging the Alito Vote
...But the Senate Judiciary Committee is too entertaining not to blog about. I've noticed a pattern: the Democrats so far are all against Alito! No, but seriously...the other pattern is that the Republicans are generally starting their statements with, "I will vote to confirm Judge Alito" and then continue with their reasons, while the Democrats start with their harrangue and conclude with, "therefore I will vote against Judge Alito." Why the different order? I assume it's because the Democrats' votes are the only ones in any question, and they want to draw out some suspense as to how they'll vote.
But I don't know how much I buy my own theory. Does anybody think that Leahy is creating suspense as to his vote when he starts off with a bunch of slams against Alito?
But I don't know how much I buy my own theory. Does anybody think that Leahy is creating suspense as to his vote when he starts off with a bunch of slams against Alito?
I'm Back
Sorry for the lack of blogging the past month. The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays gave me a break from teaching, and I felt more like catching up with family than being on the internet all day (go figure!). Blogging will still be light for the next week, though, as the Hubble Space Telescope observing proposals are due this Friday. We're submitting some, one of which might as well involve an entire research program just to make one figure I need. Ugh.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Those wiley Jews!
I finally read Is Paris Burning? last week, at my parents' urging. They'd read it when it first came out and have told me about it my whole life. After seeing the movie version a couple of times, I finally got out the book. Wow! I couldn't put the thing down, and I had it finished in three days. I have a newfound respect for the French Resistance and even some understanding for de Gaulle.
So I went online tonight to look for pictures of Paris under the German occupation. There are photos of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower, for instance. It's such a surreal image--I hadn't thought about Paris under the occupation, back when it seemed like the Germans might actually pull it off.
Serves me right. One of the sites with photos of Hitler in Paris is some pro-Nazi web site, as I found out after scrolling down the page. Apparently, everything was hunky-dory in Paris under the Nazis. The French just loved Hitler. No Jews were harmed during the making of this occupation, etc.
With the sick fascination of wondering where this guy was going with it, I clicked on the links to his page on "The bloodlines of WW2 Leaders." Guess what? Everybody except Hitler was Jewish! Huh. Who would have thought? Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, and even Stalin. Oh, and the Poles started the war, bragging they'd conquer Germany within three days.
Going to the main page on the site, I was intrigued to find that the Jews, and more recently the Mossad, have been behind every major terrorist attack in the past century. Even Kristallnacht itself:
Oh, and then there was that raid on Entebbe:
In basically all of the other attacks, even if it was Arabs who were caught, it was those wiley Jews who had put them up to it, just to make the rest of us pity them. Shame it didn't work, considering that Israel is still hated by the same enemies.
OK, back to reality now. I know I'm being naive here, not having encountered this kind of person before, but how can any sane person really believe that there's such a perfect, grand conspiracy that the Jews have managed to direct all of the events in history? And yet somehow failed to deceive this guy. This is not the work of a stable mind.
Incidentally, If I were Jewish, I'd be proud to claim Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and Churchill, if it were really true. Heck, I'm not Jewish, and I'm still proud that, for instance, the GOP nominated even a half-Jewish Presidential candidate in 1964.
I'm reminded of what one blogger wrote during the forged Texas Air National Guard memo fiasco last year. When the more fevered leftists were starting to claim that if the memos were fake, then Karl Rove was behind them. One conservative responded that if Rove was able to pull off a scheme this elaborate, then the Democrats should just give up and surrender now. He's clearly too much of an genius mastermind, and you'll simply never win.
In a similar vein, if the remaining Nazis in this world really believe that the Jews have been behind all of these elaborate schemes, and have successfully gotten everybody elese blamed for them, then you should just give up and die now. You'll never beat them.
So I went online tonight to look for pictures of Paris under the German occupation. There are photos of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower, for instance. It's such a surreal image--I hadn't thought about Paris under the occupation, back when it seemed like the Germans might actually pull it off.
Serves me right. One of the sites with photos of Hitler in Paris is some pro-Nazi web site, as I found out after scrolling down the page. Apparently, everything was hunky-dory in Paris under the Nazis. The French just loved Hitler. No Jews were harmed during the making of this occupation, etc.
With the sick fascination of wondering where this guy was going with it, I clicked on the links to his page on "The bloodlines of WW2 Leaders." Guess what? Everybody except Hitler was Jewish! Huh. Who would have thought? Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, and even Stalin. Oh, and the Poles started the war, bragging they'd conquer Germany within three days.
Going to the main page on the site, I was intrigued to find that the Jews, and more recently the Mossad, have been behind every major terrorist attack in the past century. Even Kristallnacht itself:
Kristallnacht
When government officials were away, Jewish-paid thugs went on a rampage in Berlin and some border towns.
Nazis were blamed, and world opinion favored Jews
Oh, and then there was that raid on Entebbe:
1976 ... Entebbe
Israel faked a hijacking to Kenya (Idi Imin was an Israeli puppet), and then pulled a rescue, portraying themselves as elite commandos.
Arabs looked like monsters and the Israelis, having suffered countless persecutions, have decided to fight back.
In basically all of the other attacks, even if it was Arabs who were caught, it was those wiley Jews who had put them up to it, just to make the rest of us pity them. Shame it didn't work, considering that Israel is still hated by the same enemies.
OK, back to reality now. I know I'm being naive here, not having encountered this kind of person before, but how can any sane person really believe that there's such a perfect, grand conspiracy that the Jews have managed to direct all of the events in history? And yet somehow failed to deceive this guy. This is not the work of a stable mind.
Incidentally, If I were Jewish, I'd be proud to claim Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and Churchill, if it were really true. Heck, I'm not Jewish, and I'm still proud that, for instance, the GOP nominated even a half-Jewish Presidential candidate in 1964.
I'm reminded of what one blogger wrote during the forged Texas Air National Guard memo fiasco last year. When the more fevered leftists were starting to claim that if the memos were fake, then Karl Rove was behind them. One conservative responded that if Rove was able to pull off a scheme this elaborate, then the Democrats should just give up and surrender now. He's clearly too much of an genius mastermind, and you'll simply never win.
In a similar vein, if the remaining Nazis in this world really believe that the Jews have been behind all of these elaborate schemes, and have successfully gotten everybody elese blamed for them, then you should just give up and die now. You'll never beat them.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Assassination Attempt on President of Iran?
Over at National Review's The Corner, Michael Ledeen says he's heard that the President of Iran is in the hospital after an assassination attempt killed some of his detail and injured him.
From a usually-reliable source, he says, but I haven't seen any confirmation elsewhere yet. This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see up on Drudge soon.
From a usually-reliable source, he says, but I haven't seen any confirmation elsewhere yet. This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see up on Drudge soon.
Douthat on Limbo
Ross Douthat has a well-thought-out article on Limbo in the Weekly Standard. He correctly (in my mind) takes on the excessive and overconfident speculation of the mediaeval theologians who wanted to fill in the details left out of the Bible. It's interesting to me that the name of Limbo is well-known among us Protestants (although we don't always understand what it's supposed to be), even though it's apparently not been an active concept among Roman Catholics for some time. As he says, few tears will be shed for its demise. Well, these kinds of speculations very often have a long life in the popular imagination. Just think of all the details people think they know about angels, most of which comes not from the canonical Bible but from apocryphal books, plus a bunch of later theology. Douthat points out the rampant speculations about the nature of Heaven as a further example.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Astronomers' adventure games
Stromlo: A Cosmological Mystery Or, Zork updated for scientists. Paul Francis, a planetary scientist at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia, has an interesting-sounding game out. It's a text-based adventure game (you type in commands to find out things and move the plot forward). The premise is that you're a bright young astrophysicist at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia, and you are trying to find out how the universe came to be.
You type in commands (like, "ask dr winkle about the telescope") to work your way through the game. As Francis' description states,
At first, I wasn't sure if this was real or a tongue-in-cheek joke. It seemed like a parody of one of these adventure games. (This is basically an "adventure" game that simulates my day at the office!) But now that I've read the whole description, I see the value of this--he means it as a teaching tool for high school or college students, both to show them how astronomy is done (not just what the pictures look like, but the whole astronomy environment) and to teach them the material itself. It's really an ingenious idea.
Huh. I wonder if we could make one for quasar host galaxy research, too? The new character would be a bright, young astronomer (ahem!) newly arrived from NASA as a professor, and you type in commands to prepare your lectures, write observing proposals, analyze data, weasel out of serving on committees, try to convince the travel office that visits to your out-of-town girlfriend were really "observing runs," carry on long discussions on Star Wars at Tea Club when you should be researching, and fall asleep at theory seminars. Slowly you will accumulate clues that should allow you to solve the mystery and win fame, the girl, large research grants, and tenure, but which will probably sit in a growing pile on your desk without having all of the dots connected.
Ooh, I like this one!
You type in commands (like, "ask dr winkle about the telescope") to work your way through the game. As Francis' description states,
You will wander around Mt Stromlo, make observations with its telescopes, analyse the data, chat with other staff members over morning tea, read books in the Stromlo library and attend seminars. Slowly you will accumulate the clues which will allow you to solve the mystery and win the game.
At first, I wasn't sure if this was real or a tongue-in-cheek joke. It seemed like a parody of one of these adventure games. (This is basically an "adventure" game that simulates my day at the office!) But now that I've read the whole description, I see the value of this--he means it as a teaching tool for high school or college students, both to show them how astronomy is done (not just what the pictures look like, but the whole astronomy environment) and to teach them the material itself. It's really an ingenious idea.
Huh. I wonder if we could make one for quasar host galaxy research, too? The new character would be a bright, young astronomer (ahem!) newly arrived from NASA as a professor, and you type in commands to prepare your lectures, write observing proposals, analyze data, weasel out of serving on committees, try to convince the travel office that visits to your out-of-town girlfriend were really "observing runs," carry on long discussions on Star Wars at Tea Club when you should be researching, and fall asleep at theory seminars. Slowly you will accumulate clues that should allow you to solve the mystery and win fame, the girl, large research grants, and tenure, but which will probably sit in a growing pile on your desk without having all of the dots connected.
Ooh, I like this one!
Friday, December 09, 2005
Speaking of thinking of yourself as a liberal first...
Speaking of people who think of themselves as liberals first, there's this report by my overpoliticized Methodist bishops, criticising the war in Iraq and only briefly touching on actual genocide in the Sudan.
It's time for a full-scale revolt within my church. The kind of people who really want to become bishops are overwhelmingly the lefties who spend so much time spouting off on politics. That has to change. We're really a conservative denomination, but the church hierarchy is dominated by people who don't represent us laymen.
Thankfully, Methodism is traditionally not focused on doctrine, and as a result, our bishops don't go telling us what to believe on religion. With this bunch in charge, that's something to be thankful for.
Like the ADL and certain Jewish leaders who spend their efforts shooting their friends and ignoring their true enemies (see the previous post), the Methodist bishops shoot their wad on America's work in Iraq (which is bringing democracy and an end to mass-murder and tyrrany), and they've got hardly anything left to say about anti-Christian genocide in the Sudan. I don't think that our government should be immune from any criticism in principle, but this particular criticism is wrong-headed.
It's time for a full-scale revolt within my church. The kind of people who really want to become bishops are overwhelmingly the lefties who spend so much time spouting off on politics. That has to change. We're really a conservative denomination, but the church hierarchy is dominated by people who don't represent us laymen.
Thankfully, Methodism is traditionally not focused on doctrine, and as a result, our bishops don't go telling us what to believe on religion. With this bunch in charge, that's something to be thankful for.
Like the ADL and certain Jewish leaders who spend their efforts shooting their friends and ignoring their true enemies (see the previous post), the Methodist bishops shoot their wad on America's work in Iraq (which is bringing democracy and an end to mass-murder and tyrrany), and they've got hardly anything left to say about anti-Christian genocide in the Sudan. I don't think that our government should be immune from any criticism in principle, but this particular criticism is wrong-headed.
Julia Gorin on Abe Foxman
Julia Gorin comes down hard on Abe Foxman's anti-Christian comments. This is very strong stuff. You can tell she's peeved about the whole thing, with Foxman and this Yoffie guy slamming conservative Christians who are on the side of the Jews. As I've commented before on this site, Foxman et al. are shooting at their allies.
Well, maybe not. Considering us conservative Christians "allies" would require Foxman and Yoffie and the rest to think of themselves as Jews first, rather than as liberals first.
Well, maybe not. Considering us conservative Christians "allies" would require Foxman and Yoffie and the rest to think of themselves as Jews first, rather than as liberals first.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
The American state of Guyana?
Huh. Here's a website devoted to getting Guyana to join the United States. (Link via Albion's Seedlings)
I don't know how Guayanan Representatives would vote in Congress, but I'm impressed that the website for the movement lists as advantages of statehood:
Interesting. I've got to admire their admiration for us!
I don't know how Guayanan Representatives would vote in Congress, but I'm impressed that the website for the movement lists as advantages of statehood:
1) The people of Guyana would be fully self-governing with their rights secured under the United States Constitution, which would be the the supreme law and have the same force and effects as in other states of the Union;
2) The sovereign State of Guyana would be in permanent union with the United States, and powers not delegated to the Federal Government or prohibited to the States by the United States Constitution would be reserved to the people of Guyana or the State Government;
Interesting. I've got to admire their admiration for us!
The fun of being an academic
My day, now that school's out: Get up late and have a relaxing cup of coffee while watching Fox & Friends and then eat breakfast listening to Laura Ingraham. Get into the office and catch up on e-mail and surfing the web. Dinner with a couple of other professors (lunch dinner, not supper dinner), while discussing philosophy (well, that's going to be tomorrow). Do research and prepare a conference presentation while listening to Rush and Hannity. Interview with newspaper reporter. More research (a breakthrough--woohoo!) while listening to Mark Levin. Decide I'm hungry, so go home and fix supper. Watch TV while reading science books. Ahh, not a bad day! I can't complain about being paid for nine months of the year, when I get to spend the other three like this.
Eminent Domain
Some Florida mayor is on the phone with Sean Hannity right now, defending his move to seize private homes in order to build condos and a yacht club. Apparently last night on Hannity & Colmes, he called some of the poor victims of eminent domain "selfish" for wanting to keep their homes! ARRGGHH!
This issue and gun rights are two things that are guaranteed to bring out an anti-government streak in me. I cannot imagine the callous attitude it must take to be that cold-hearted to somebody wanting to keep his home and property.
TVA provides us with other good examples of this mindset, and for this it is widely hated by us East Tennesseeans, especially by us who live out in the country. Some years ago, when they flooded Tellico Lake, they seized the property of farmers who lived above the waterline. The reason? They didn't want these folks to profit by having a public lake adjoining their property. And then a few years later, TVA sold the land off to developers. At the time, we were absolutely astonished, but with the recent eminent domain fights in the press, we've been treated to countless examples of similar abuses.
This issue and gun rights are two things that are guaranteed to bring out an anti-government streak in me. I cannot imagine the callous attitude it must take to be that cold-hearted to somebody wanting to keep his home and property.
TVA provides us with other good examples of this mindset, and for this it is widely hated by us East Tennesseeans, especially by us who live out in the country. Some years ago, when they flooded Tellico Lake, they seized the property of farmers who lived above the waterline. The reason? They didn't want these folks to profit by having a public lake adjoining their property. And then a few years later, TVA sold the land off to developers. At the time, we were absolutely astonished, but with the recent eminent domain fights in the press, we've been treated to countless examples of similar abuses.
Goldblatt on Goldblatt
More from the article I just linked to:
Heh, heh! Perfect!
Incidentally, that being the goal of so many of us men, I feel extremely fortunate to have found someone who meets those sorts of standards.
I'm roughly Dowd's age and have never been married — a fact I account for not with an anthropological hypothesis but with the rather narrow observation that I've yet to find a supermodel PhD whose standards were low enough to have me.
Heh, heh! Perfect!
Incidentally, that being the goal of so many of us men, I feel extremely fortunate to have found someone who meets those sorts of standards.
Goldblatt on Maureen Dowd
I've never read any article by Maureen Dowd but only see the excerpts her critics enjoy quoting. If her own writing were half as good as her critics', when they're laying into her, she'd be well worth reading. In that vein is today's NRO article by Mark Goldblatt:
Maureen Dowd begins her book Are Men Necessary? with a confession: "I don't understand men." If only she'd left it at that, we could simply add "men" to the long list of subjects into which she has no particular insight: history, psychology, philosophy, religion, economics, literature, art, constitutional law, international diplomacy, and several other topics upon she comments in her twice weekly column for the New York Times.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Smack murder pride
Today I learned a new name for a collection of something: a group of jellyfish is a "smack." Wow--you can practically make an entire sentence out of unusual group names, as I halfheartedly tried to do in the subject line.
The thrust of the article is that there is an unusual rise in giant (and poisonous) jellyfish off Japan, and they're hurting the fishing industry. The odd little nomenclature tidbit is at the very end.
The thrust of the article is that there is an unusual rise in giant (and poisonous) jellyfish off Japan, and they're hurting the fishing industry. The odd little nomenclature tidbit is at the very end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
