Dostoyevsky on civilization and God

I'm working my way through Dostoyevsky's The Demons (slowly...very slowly), thanks to a suggestion from The Rat several months back. A great exchange therein, beginning with an impassioned rant by an atheist, socialist, radical, etc.:

[...] Man now is not the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.

So this God exists, in your opinion?

He doesn't, yet he does. [...] He who overcomes pain and fear will himself become God. Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything new... Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the destruction of God, and from the destruction of God to...

To the gorilla?

--The Demons, p. 115 (Everyman's Library edition)

Possible ricin attack on Senate office

The AP is reporting that an envelope in Sen. Frist's office showed traces of ricin. Ricin is a deadly poison, "twice as deadly as cobra venom." I remember a few stories on al-Qaeda and ricin development back last year, and didn't David Kay say that Hussein had a ricin production project that could have been activated easily enough?

For that matter, I'm remembering something vaguely about (thwarted??) ricin attacks in Europe a year or so ago. Darn, I can't remember enough of the details to fill in here, but this is serious.

Obscure license plate

I saw this vanity plate when I was in Pittsburgh recently,

S1S2U3

(wait...I might have the S's and U's switched...). Anyway, this has got to get an award for most obscure license plate. It's the group-theory representation for one approach to a Grand Unified Theory of physics. The notation is really S1 x S2 x U3.

I remember seeing this in a graduate physics class at Pitt, and whoever was in the car in front of me had to be a professor at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon, but I couldn't see his face. Heh, heh...

Modern use of Latin

I enjoyed this article on, well, the modern use of Latin.

It also gives a reference to the Vatican's new "Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis," which might be nice to get, although it's $116 and translates into Italian, rather than into English. Still, it's just the place to turn to for translating the latest Vatican enciclical, in case you come across the phrase sonorarum visualiumque taeniarum cistellula for "videocassette."

On condition of anonymity...

A friend just passed along this item from the AP wires. Read it carefully:

On Thursday, Blair's official spokesman repeated calls for the
broadcaster to apologize.

"We still want an apology,'' he said, briefing reporters on condition of
anonymity. "The BBC should apologize for broadcasting a false allegation
which was unfounded.''

After I caught the little twist there, I thought this was hilarious. The only thing that could make it more perfect would be if it were the BBC writing this report.

It was ALL ABOUT OIL!!!

...at least for France. The United Press is reporting today that the new Iraqi government has documents showing that Hussein essentially(?) "bribed" various foreigners and foreign organizations into opposing the US-led war. This was bribery with oil, so I don't know exactly how this was set up. I would suspect that it wasn't sending over a free tanker-full so much as letting them in on business deals.
Then again, the list includes some figures I wouldn't think could take advantage of oil contracts per se. The list includes

officials in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria and France, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Russian Orthodox Church?! There's something I didn't expect to see. Now I wonder if an "oil bribe" is just that--a free amount of oil, which the bribee would just resell on the market, maybe not even seeing the physical object there. Maybe that makes more sense than supposing all of these officials were getting business deals.

Interesting, but not surprising. I wonder if heads will roll over this, at least in the Western or more developed countries. Then again, has George Galloway been prosecuted? I haven't heard much about him lately. Part of the complication might have been that a newspaper got the documents on him, rather than the British government getting them, and perhaps he'll say it was all fabricated. But I would think that somebody would be bringing bribery or treason charges or something similar, or at least conducting a criminal investigation, that there would be enough suspicion to start the process with.

A new memorial day: NASA's "Day of Rememberance"

I just got this e-mail. It seems that NASA is instituting its own memorial day to honor the memories of the lost crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. Starting this Thursday, January 29, and from now on, the last Thursday of each January will be NASA's "Day of Rememberance." I've included the e-mail below:

Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 10:51:39 -0500
From: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center xxxxx
To: xxxxx
Subject: Center Director Recognizes Day of Remembrance on Thursday, January 29
Parts/Attachments:
1 OK 62 lines Text
2 Shown 60 lines Text
----------------------------------------

Colleagues:
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has declared that this Thursday, January
29, will be a Day of Remembrance when we in the NASA family will take
time to remember not only the brave crew of Columbia, but also those
aboard Challenger and Apollo 1, and all those who made the ultimate
sacrifice in the exploration of space.
From this day onward, the final Thursday in January will be a Day of
Remembrance for NASA, a day when we pay tribute to these men and women,
so we will never forget them.  On this day, every year, we will renew our
solemn pledge to carry out the awe-inspiring mission of exploration and
discovery that the American people have entrusted to us and recommit
ourselves to doing it safely.

On Thursday, Administrator O'Keefe will hold a special NASA Update from
Headquarters to speak to the NASA family on this first Day of
Remembrance, and take questions from the Centers. I would like to invite
you to join me at 11:30 a.m. in the Goett Auditorium to take part in the
program, which will air on NASA Television. Following the Administrator's
address, I will take your questions and discuss with you what this day
means to us here at Goddard.

As we reflect on the activities of this remarkable agency over the past
45 years, we see shining moments of extraordinary achievement, alongside
moments of devastating tragedy and loss.

We have put men on the Moon and returned them safely to the Earth. We
have taken astonishing pictures of stars and galaxies with the Hubble
Space Telescope that touch our very souls.  The WMAP mission has taken us
back in time and space to the very infancy of the universe. Humans are
living and working in the first international space station.  And today,
our intrepid explorers Spirit and Opportunity are roaming the surface of
Mars.

But our accomplishments have not come without terrible cost.  As we
reached to the heavens, we endured the loss of test pilots, scientists,
technicians along with the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.
They have given what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion,"
in the cause of exploration, knowledge and discovery.

At Goddard, we are proud of our history as a Center devoted to scientific
research and discovery. We are privileged to be able to add to the
Nation's storehouse of knowledge and to make lasting contributions to
mankind's understanding of the Universe and our own planet Earth.

We have much to be proud of, but we know we can do better.  We must do
better.

As the Administrator said in his remarks following the President's
announcement of a new vision for the exploration of the Moon, Mars and
the Solar System, we have been entrusted by the American people to carry
out this mission of exploration and discovery on their behalf. It is a
mission we relish.

Our success will depend on our continued commitment to excellence, a
promise to learn from our past failures, and a pledge from each and every
one of us to do our absolute best. The American public will accept no
less.  I know we expect no less of ourselves.

Please join me on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. with Administrator O'Keefe for
NASA's first Day of Remembrance.  The finest way to honor the men and
women who have given their lives in the cause of exploration is to
continue the journey with renewed dedication and commitment.

A. V. Diaz

I like the idea, and I don't even mind the Lincoln quote.

Would you ever have thought...

Flipping through channels, I just came across (for the first time) Dennis Miller's new show on CNBC. At this moment, he's interviewing Arnold Schwarzenegger on California's budget (coincidentally, at the same time, AMC is showing the original Terminator).

If you had fallen asleep in, say, 1990, when Schwarzenegger was in between Terminator roles and Miller did the Weekend Update skit on SNL, and you'd not woken up until this instant... and the first thing you saw on waking up was Miller doing a real news/interview show and talking to Governor Schwarzenegger about California bond initiatives... would you really believe what you were seeing?

Or would it seem more like an aftereffect of your coma?

Heh, heh...and it's not that I'm making fun of either one of them, mind you, but it's like that game friends and I played in the early 1990s, imagining a Rip van Winkle waking up then and finding out that the USSR had disintegrated ("Republic of Kyrgizwhat?!"), Germany was reunited, and most of the Warsaw Pact had joined NATO.

UPDATE: Miller just had a line I had to think about (not unusual)--"If you go down to the border at night with a pair of night-vision goggles, it's like the start of the Boston Marathonn in ponchos." There was a slight pause, then gradually-increasing chuckles from the camera crew and the governor.

WMD: No, no, no--that's not what he said!

This weekend, I heard former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, on NPR giving his first broadcast interview since resigning a few days ago. This interview is itself making headlines, in part because of his opinion about the existence of Iraqi WMD.

What many, or perhaps most, of the stories about the interview claim is that Kay says there are "no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" (I just heard Chicago's WGN put it this way).

No, no, NO! What he said, more than once, was that he does not believe that Iraq had "large stockpiles of weapons." In fact, he corrected himself to emphasize the adjective "large." He put it exactly this way again, later in the interview.

People in the press have got to be more careful about misreporting these things. Little words like "large" are very important. And they have got to keep straight what all has already been found. After all, the Danes have found actual chemical weapons now. They were old ones (pre-1991), but Hussein was supposed to have destroyed them, and he hadn't.

I enjoyed the NPR interview (now, there's a statement you don't often hear from me!). The interviewer went into detail, and Kay did a great job of answering. The interviewer tried to get him to blame Bush for misleading the country before the Iraqi war, but Kay said that it wasn't Bush who owed the country an apology, but the intelligence services who owed Bush one!

Now, he didn't come down hard on the CIA, etc., in general, emphasizing that after all, we weren't there on the ground, in the country beforehand, and that all of the major countries' intelligence services agreed that Hussein had these weapons.

President Morgan Freeman...

I just finished watching Deep Impact on CBS. I had seen it at the theater when it first came out and really enjoyed it. Morgan Freeman plays the President, and he closes the movie with a good post-disaster speech that includes the lines,

Cities fall, but they are rebuilt.
And heroes die, but they are remembered.

That's not a bad way of expressing things in our current era, either. Deep Impact came out in 1998, I reckon, well before the terrorist attacks.

There is a scene in which people are fleeing the coast in preparation for the mother of all tidal waves (100' high and traveling at Mach 1). There are only hours left, and we see the interstate absolutely jammed for miles. I was reminded of an old political cartoon showing a bunch of military officers and politicians running a Cold War city evacuation drill and looking at a map, saying, "As you can see, the interstates are completely jammed, and traffic is in chaos. Gentlemen, I consider this drill a complete success!" Of course, that probably would happen in any real emergency (hey--think of how hard it is to get out of D.C. at 5:00 on a normal weekday!), so I got a bit of a chuckle out of this scene in the movie. I turned, smiling, to my date to see if she was enjoying this, and she was absolutely in tears! I felt kind of bad about smiling at that point (at least to the extent she could see me). Oh, well, part of the difference between boys and girls, I reckon.

Incidentally, Morgan Freeman is a fellow Tennesseean. I always enjoy finding a compatriot in the movies. I still remember seeing him in "The Electric Company," when I was a kid. It was for some years after that that I hadn't seen him in anything and one day (maybe after seeing Robin Hood?) suddenly made the connection.

Opportunity Knocks (and the Spirit is Revived)

~12:10---Sorry, couldn't help the joke in the headline there. Fox News is reporting now that NASA's "Opportunity" rover has landed successfully on Mars!

12:13--Now I'm looking at CNN. Is that Al Gore in the control room? Yes. Yes, it is. And there's the Governator, as well. Man, I've never seen Schwartzenegger and Gore in the same room together. Not that I thought they were the same man, in a Superman/Clark Kent sort of way... ...hold on a sec...could that really be?! I mean, Gore does have that stiff, Kent-like nerdiness about him, and Schwartzenegger...

Now I see Fearless Leader, Sean O'Keefe, very happily shaking hands in the same room. A real contrast to the last one of these I watched live, the 1999(?) lander mission we lost, when Dan Whatshisname (then-NASA Administrator) was looking really glum in the JPL control room. I was watching that one on the big screen TV at Space Telescope with a good-sized crowd there. Man, what a depressing day.

Oh, and to top it all off, JPL announced earlier today that they've identified the problem with Spirit (flash memory) and have upgraded its status from "critical" to "serious." It started obeying some commands today. Whew!

The first jet airplane

While visiting a Romanian friend, she eagerly pointed out to me some Romanian aviation pioneers, including Henri Coanda. He invented the jet airplane, and I remembered seeing photos of it some time ago. However, I'd misremembered the date, thinking he built it in the late 1920s.

Nope. 1910! Think about this--it was just seven years after the Wright brothers first flew, and we already had a flying jet airplane. It flew only once. With Coanda himself at the controls (I think he was intending only to do a static engine test, but the large thrust pulled the plane into flight), it flew but went into a sideslip, crashed, and burned. He noticed that the (hot) exhaust gases hugged the sides of the fabric-covered airplane, and that might have cause the fire. His later studies of this effect (now known as the Coanda Effect) led to great progress in fluid dynamics and aeronautics.

I've found some websites with photos of this plane, named the "Coanda-1910." Take a look here for two photos, here for a good diagram and stats, and here for some more information.

My reaction to the appearance of the plane is that it's very skinny and looks nose-heavy. At the same time, it makes me think of something out of Jules Verne--a forward-looking anachronism alongside its contemporaries, which look very much as being of their time. The compressor and jet are underneath a fairly modern-looking cowling, so there's a streamlined appearance to the nose. Take a look.

Two ideas for the future

Contributor Jeff e-mails with a couple of good ideas:

Right after Galileo's antenna stuck, I started asking why we don't put a little arm with a tiny camera on it on every satellite. A few million dollars spent developing a "standard arm" that could attach to any spacecraft would have increased the science return from Galileo multifold. Whack the $%^# antenna, and zoom, it opens!

This is what it means to not have any real infrastructure in space. FWIW, my worthless opinion is that a big pile of money ought to be spent to develop "standard buses" for Mars missions, one for orbiters, one for landers, one for rovers. Wanna have a lander on Mars? Fine, it'll look like this, and you're responsible for fitting your instruments on it. We'd not only get a little economy of scale, but we'd have the chance to debug the design over the course of a decade or so. In the end, we'd have what should be robust, dependable designs. When each new spacecraft is a one-off, there's no chance to learn how to optimize a single design. It's the difference between having fun designing new toys every year, half of which break, and having something that you can trust to work.

I think these are great ideas, for exactly the reasons Jeff lays out. If we want to take a "Faster, Cheaper, ummm...Better" philosophy to space exploration, why not save our money by standardizing a few things and gaining the experience with them to make sure they work reliably?

More on Hubble's servicing

Regarding my post immediately below, I should point out that Servicing Mission 4 was probably cancelled not so much because Hubble itself is being phased out (although we are getting closer to the planned end of the mission anyway) but because the Space Shuttle itself is being phased out. Hubble servicing missions are shuttle flights. The astronauts themselves do the repairs and installation of cameras. So since NASA has announced that the shuttle is going to leave service in a few years, and the remaining flights are going to support the space station (I think), then the loss to Hubble is a consequence of that.

I'm still disappointed, but this makes me think that the James Webb Space Telescope, which will require no manned missions to support it, is relatively safe. With all of these sudden shake-ups, let's hope this Moon/Mars idea actually goes somewhere!

Hubble loses out to Mars

The e-mails are flying over the announcement that the Fourth Hubble Servicing Mission (SM4) has been cancelled, due to the restructuring of NASA's mission to support a Mars initiative. For the record, I like the idea of a manned mission to Mars, but Hubble has been an incredibly profitable project for NASA in terms of the science achieved and the public interest it has generated. I think it is a mistake to cut that servicing mission from the schedule. On SM4 would have gone two new cameras, the COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, an ultraviolet instrument) and the WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3, an optical/infrared camera), and the usual maintenance and repairs would have been done to extend Hubble's life.

Still, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, formerly NGST--"Next Generation Space Telescope"--seriously!) is coming up, and I haven't heard that that has been cancelled. Hubble isn't being shut down now; this will just reduce its lifespan. All is not lost, but I'm still disappointed.

Here is an e-mail from the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, announcing the decision:

Subject: SM4
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:56:34 -0500
From: Steven Beckwith xxxxx
xxxxx
To: xxxxx@stsci.edu

Colleagues,

A few minutes ago, we concluded a meeting at which Sean
O'Keefe, the NASA Administrator, announced his decision to
cancel SM4, the next servicing mission to Hubble. It was his
decision alone, and I will discuss the details with your
personally. I will be holding a town-hall meeting in the
auditorium at 3:00 pm today for everyone who is interested to
answer your questions about the decision and talk about the
future.

Steve

Bush's Speech at NASA HQ

The President's address yesterday on long-range NASA goals caused a lot of e-mail discussion at Goddard Space Flight Center. The liberals were criticising him for saying we could use the Moon as a launch site for interplanetary space flights, arguing that it would not provide any benefit over launching them from the Earth. And to be honest, I've been skeptical of such concepts in the past, although there could be a benefit if you were to launch all of the materials separately in smaller rockets and assemble them into a single rocket to take off from the Moon.

However, when you look at this part of the speech in context, it is clear that this is just one part of what I think is a much more sensible plan. The President suggested using a lunar base to give us practice for living on Mars.

I'll look for the text of the speech and post it here later.

Day by Day: Dean and Clinton

Today's Day by Day strip has got to be one of Chris Muir's best:






Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Iraqi Blister-Agent Warheads Confirmed

The apparent chemical warheads uncovered by the Danes the other day have been confirmed as containing blister agents. (Link via NRO.) These are thought to date from before the first Persian Gulf War. However, I've read that Iraq was supposed to have destroyed all such weapons years ago, and Hussein claimed that they had done so. Nope!

Big surprise--Hussein was lying to us.

According to the Fox News report I just heard, the "Coalition Military Authority" (did I get that right?) said that these are not "Weapons of Mass Destruction," just chemical warheads. I don't get that. I thought that chemical weapons of any kind were considered WMD. Nonetheless, these are weapons he was banned from having and that he had lied about destroying.

Thinking of this subject, I ought to say that in 2002, and up until Gen. Powell's UN speech, I didn't think that the then-current possession of WMD was the strongest argument to make against Iraq. Rather, I thought that the greatest danger from Iraq wasn't what weapons they had then but the fact that as long as Hussein or his regime was in power, we would never be able to trust them not to develop such weapons. Hussein's proven untrustworthiness, combined with his proven desire to obtain and use these weapons, meant that we and our allies in the region could never be safe with him in power.

I thought that counts of his existing stockpiles were less important, because those would or could change over time (and mostly, I mean that they might grow), so they didn't tell us predict what we'd face in a long-term or strategic sense. Plus, I wasn't sure how well we knew what he actually had on hand, anyway.

However, Powell's UN speech laid out some evidence and logic that made me think the then-current stockpiles were worth adding into the argument. Principally, he explained how we figured what he had on hand: we had a count of what he possessed a decade ago, and we had a count of what we'd confirmed him destroying. The latter did not add up to the former, and there was no reason to believe that, after trying to thwart the UN inspectors at every turn, he would voluntarily destroy more weapons, in secret, when no-one was looking, after he barred the inspectors in 1998. Thus keeping the sanctions in place, when he could have let the UN confirm the destruction and have them lifted.

So for months, we've been having trouble finding these supposed stockpiles, until, perhaps, now. I, for one, believe that Hussein either had or thought he had the weapons we've accused him of having. It makes absolutely no sense for him to have ordered their destruction when he couldn't take any advantage from it, and to do so in a way that, in fact, put him at an even worse disadvantage. I think the idea that his own weapons scientists were making a fool of him, by keeping the programs in existence only on paper, is plausible. It'll take a lot more digging, both in the sand and through what files exist, to tell whether that's the case or not.

But none of this changes the fact that Hussein's untrustworthiness and desire for WMD provided plenty of argument by themselves. Oh--and the fact that he'd violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. If you're the kind of person who likes "legal" technicalities to be observed in international relations, there's all the justification that's needed. I don't actually care that much, but it's good enough for me, too.

What's going on with the trans-Atlantic flights?

So yet another British Airways flight to America has been cancelled this morning, due to intelligence on terrorism. Oddly, the passengers have been rebooked onto a different flight and will still be able to make their trips, if a little delayed.

As some others have asked, what is the point of cancelling the flight itself if the passengers who are on it simply get onto a different plane? Some have suggested this is a dumb idea, but the fact that it's such an obvious objection makes me think that our intelligence agencies know more about this than we do.

First of all, the question presumes that the passengers constitute the entirety of the threat. If that were the case, then putting all of the passengers on a different airplane wouldn't solve the problem, unless you're giving them extra-close scrutiny in the process (but then why not use the same airplane?). So this suggests that the airplane itself is part of the equation.

What if, as I have suggested below, al Qaeda agents have already hidden hijacking materials (knives, pointy sticks, etc.) or explosives (perhaps plastic explosives without any suspicious electronics attached) on a particular plane? Then the agents boarding these flights for the actual attack could do so without carrying anything that would attract attention. If this were the case, then putting them onto a different airplane would at least temporarily solve the problem.

My suspicions on this are even higher since I heard that the same British Airways flight was cancelled (or tightly scrutinized) two days in a row. There are multiple (three?) BA flights each day, and although we're dealing with small-number statistics, it gives me the feeling that there's something going on with the plane itself.

Thinking more about the idea of explosives on board: it should be noted that the terrorists on September 11 didn't exactly hijack the planes with box cutters. Yes, they did injure or kill some stewardesses with them, but they also told the passengers they were carrying bombs (hinting they'd blow the plane up if anybody rushed them). A man carrying a short knife in a narrow, enclosed space can probably be attacked without getting yourself killed. You can use a seat cushion, food tray, or maybe a stack of in-flight magazines to protect yourself, and the terrorist doesn't have much room to maneouver around you. I believe it was instead the (false) threat of bombs that led to the successful hijackings.

But al Qaeda specializes in coordinated attacks, and what terrorist is going to risk spoiling the entire operation by trying to sneak a bomb on board? Multiple planes, all with smuggled explosives, all getting through security on the same day? Just one being found would ruin the coordination and probably lead to close scrutiny of other flights.

So pre-positioning any explosives would work best. Maybe you could sneak the explosive itself on without being found--no wires, timers, or other such things that would alert the x-ray technician. And after planting it under a seat, then somebody else later comes on board with the electronics. Without any explosives, would a timer or battery make it onto the plane? Maybe. Then at a later date, the hijacker himself gets on the flight, not carrying anything incriminating, and assembles the bomb.

This is just one scenario, but I think it gives an indication of how moving passengers from one plane to another could actually be useful. There's been a lot of this attention to trans-Atlantic flights this week. Let's pray our guys continue to be successful at thwarting these attacks.

Art and Science

I was just reading Tyler Cowen's discussions of art and law over at the Volokh Conspiracy. He came up with some interesting examples of legal-themed art. (Also see his post just below this one.) I've had a similar interest in science-themed art, or how advances in science have influenced artistic expression.

I reckon people are familiar with the influence of atomic theory on pointillism, for instance. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh recently (2001) had an excellent exhibit (jointly with the Van Gogh museum in Holland) called "Light," in which they showed the scientific research on the nature of light and how this led to new styles of painting.

There are some great paintings relating to other science themes I've come across myself. One of the best is Joseph Wright of Derby, who has a number of scienc-related paintings. And I especially like William Dyce's "Pegwell Bay." There are a lot of subtle things in this one. Note the apprehensive expression of the artist's son(?), looking over his shoulder at something out of our ken. At first glance, the family appears to be enjoying a happy day collecting seashells, but we know that they're actually gathering fossils. The great work on evolution was being done at this time, and the implications were unsettling. Pegwell Bay's cliffs were a good place to go to see fossils.

Also note the depiction of Donati's Comet, which isn't really visible in this scan. It comes out a little in some other images, but I'll have to look harder. Comets have the symbolism of ominous portents, although this depicts an actual comet, as well. One commentary I read on this painting describes the vast geological time depicted in the rock strata in the cliffs, and the astronomical time depicted in the comet.

I can't find the original commentary I read online, but here's another useful one.

NPR: That evil Wal-Mart is lowering consumer prices!

Hah, hah... I never thought I'd hear it: NPR right now is interviewing a guy, Charles Fishman (sp?), who is complaining that Wal-Mart continually acts to lower the prices to they charge their customers! Now, he's coming at this from the angle that Wal-Mart's requirement that their suppliers lower wholesale costs by 5% per year, every year (if I heard him right). And it's a defensible argument to make; it might not be possible for a supplier to lower costs by that amount every single year, after all.

But I think his statement that Wal-Mart is pressuring prices downward, in the absence of market pressure to do so, isn't anything that's going to make me mad at the company. Sure, it might create some problems for their suppliers, but we have a free market, and they're always free to sell to somebody else. For my part, this confirms the customer-friendly attitude I've found there, and it's a welcome, detailed affirmation of their advertising claims. Heck, Wal-Mart ought to promote this guy's article!

"Native American" vs. "American Indian"

While I'm still fuming about the whole misuse of "Holiday" to replace "Christmas" in public discourse, it brings to mind another complaint I have (sorry for using Christmastime to complain--so I'll make this short and get back onto it another time), which is the nearly-universal substitution of "Native American" in place of the proper "American Indian."

This really ought to strike people as offensive itself. After all, most of us in this country are truly native Americans, having been born here. A few of us are, in addition, American Indians or have some Indian ancestry. This is true in my case, being part Indian on both sides of the family. I may be only some fraction Indian, but I'm 100% native American.

I noticed recently a plaque on the wall of Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Baltimore, the first Methodist church in the United States. This plaque commemorated the "First Native American Bishop" in the church, I think. The funny thing is, it took me a minute to realize that the ca. 1900 plaque was honoring the first Methodist bishop to be born in America, not the first bishop of Indian descent! It actually used the term properly, and it was just the decades of misuse of this phrase that affected my understanding. Heh, heh...

OK, off the soapbox and back to Christmas cheer...

Goodbye, Iranian Girl

Nuts. "Notes of an Iranian Girl" is ending. I didn't read her blog all of the time, but hers was the only source of inside information I got from Iran, and she kept me up to date on the (originally) hopeful events going on with the student protests and the movement for democracy there.

It was partly as a result of her comments that I wound up attending the Washington, D.C. rally against the Iranian government back this Summer, where I ran into Michael Ledeen (a polite and very unassuming guy, by the way).

I wish her luck.

20,000 Dead in Iranian Quake

Oh, no--I just saw the Reuters story about this on Drudge, the first I'd heard of it. Apparently, a 6.3 magnitude quake has leveled much of the old city of Bam, 600 mi. SW of Tehran. Officials say about 20,000 people are dead, with perhaps around 50,000 others injured.

I don't remember specific numbers offhand, but how long has it been since an earthquake has killed that many people? We've recently seen bigger quakes kill relatively few people (think of the Los Angeles earthquake of a few years ago--wasn't that >7.0?), but then, this one happened to hit the historic district of an ancient city. I presume there were lots of very, very old buildings that just couldn't have been designed to withstand this kind of shaking.

Let's pray the death toll doesn't rise above this already-high number.

Merry C-------- from NASA?

As far as skirting the word "Christmas," maybe this isn't as bad as the sign out front of my old church (see below), but it's pretty bad:

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 14:05:19 -0500
From: xxxxx
To: 600_all@webserv.gsfc.nasa.gov
Subject: Center Closed as of 2:00 p.m. due to Holiday



I just received a call notifying me that as of 2:00 p.m. today, Goddard is
closed due to tomorrow's holiday. You will receive a Center notification
soon; however, this e-mail can be considered your official 600/Space
Sciences notification.

Have a safe and happy holiday.


xxxxxx
xxxxxx
Space Sciences Directorate, Code 600

OK, to bring up the obvious: on Christmas Eve Day, you refer to "tomorrow's holiday"?! Come on people, it's not like it's a secret which December 25th holiday you're talking about!

I've got a funny mental image of these people playing charades or Pictionary, with "Christmas" as the word. They get it down to hints on the order of "it's a holiday that occurs on December 25th" and can't get beyond that.

I ought to send this to Jay Nordlinger...

Wondering about al-Qaeda's plans

I was just reading this article that mentions the guy arrested at the Miami airport trying to sneak in a razor and hacksaw blade in his shoe. Now, he could easibly just be an unaffiliated nut, but what if he were part of al-Qaeda? What could their strategy be?

The MSNBC story also says al-Qaeda is thought to be trying another attack using airliners, and I've read that they are likely to try a coordinated attack. One guy trying to board a plane with a sawblade isn't likely to make for a successful (and coordinated) attack. In fact, the increase in security since 2001 makes sneaking any blades onto a plane difficult to do in any single case and therefore extremely difficult to repeat twenty times in a large, coordinated attack.

What if this guy were for real, but he wasn't meant to be part of a hijacking team?

What if his job was simply to plant the sawblade and razor onto the plane, where the hijackers would use it later--maybe months later?

Al-Qaeda could be trying a hundred such smugglings all over the country, at different times. If they're successful in just a few of them, then they've got that number of planes ready to be used. Then the hijacking teams can board en masse, without carrying any weapons and without suspicion.

So I'm curious--where was that plane headed? Do they tend to use the same planes for the same route over a long period of time?

Michael Jackson--flight risk?

So they've officially charged Michael Jackson today. He's supposedly been given back his passport to attend a promotional tour in Great Britain, and his lawyer is proclaiming that there's no risk he'll try to flee.

I wonder--if he did flee, would he get plastic surgery to disguise his face?

Them vs. 'em--archaic survivals in Modern English

Finishing up my Christmas shopping today, I was flipping through the Oxford English Grammar at the bookstore. I came across an intriguing discussion of the common pronunciation of them as 'em (as in "Give 'em heck!", etc.). I hadn't thought about it much before, but I'd assumed that this pronunciation (which I commonly use) came about by not pronouncing the th- when the word is unstressed.

But the book explains it as the surviving form of Middle English hem, "them," which was largely superseded by them (a Norse form of the word) in Modern English. So the unstressed form lacks an initial h-, not an initial th-. This does make sense, when you compare the unstressed pronunciations of him and her as 'im and 'er, respectively.

I always like finding these archaic holdovers in common use, that we don't normally think about. Oh--another one the book mentioned was the dialects that use hisn and hern for standard English's his and hers. It says these are also archaic forms. I think I've heard these used sometimes, but not often.

Now I wonder about my dialect's pronunciation of once't and twice't for standard once and twice. Hmmmm... Any old forms being preserved there?

"The Holidays" vs. Christmas and Hanukkah

Sorry for the long absence, everybody. State is on a quarter system, so I've got six weeks of vacation until the next quarter, but it's turning out to be a working vacation. Conference poster to get ready, a paper to finish up (I hate this error analysis part...), and a couple of Hubble Space Telescope proposals to do. Or, rather, "redo"--I've got some that were rejected last time around that I can start with.

But on to the first thing on my mind. Jay Nordlinger over at NRO has had a recurring theme of the annoying trend of "Holiday" replacing "Christmas" in greetings, store ads, and public mentions in general. I've got my own story on this--

Last weekend, when I was visiting the University of Pittsburgh for some research work, I attended my old church there in town (I went to grad school at Pitt), First United Methodist. I was shocked to see a sign in front of the sanctuary that read,

Holiday Party -->

I think pretty much anybody would have to agree that it goes too far when a Christian church substitutes "Holiday" for "Christmas" in something like this. Now, this is a pretty liberal church, but to be fair, I doubt they consciously avoided the use of "Christmas." Rather, I suspect that the public use of "Holiday" has gotten so familiar that the person who wrote the sign probably didn't even think about it.

As a committed philosemite, I'm eager to see more explicit mentions of Jewish holidays in the public sphere (with the hope that they not get too commercialized, of course). And I have long suspected that the muddling of "Christmas" was due to a desire not to exclude the recognition of Hanukkah. But why not mention them both? Would it really be that much of a chore?

On the other hand, Hanukkah is actually a relatively minor Jewish holiday, as I understand, yet it gets quite a bit of attention this time of year. Contrast that with the dreadfully little public attention paid to the really important Jewish holidays, like Passover and Yom Kippur. OK, Passover gets some recognition, but I think it's nothing like that paid to Hanukkah. Even my 2003 appointment calendar got the Passover dates wrong, according to my Jewish ex-girlfriend!

And poor Yom Kippur. It's practically invisible to us gentiles, unless we make the effort to keep up with these things. Rosh Hashanna? When was the last time you heard a local TV station put on a "Happy Rosh Hashanna" PSA?

I strongly suspect that Hanukkah has gotten elevated in public importance because of its coincidental proximity to Christmas. And keep in mind that Christmas itself isn't the holiest day on the Christian calendar. That honor belongs to Easter, but you wouldn't know it from the attention paid to each. I think the bigger tradition of gift-giving (and therefore, in our imperfect human minds, of gift-getting) at Christmas is what's responsible for the misplaced priorities.

It struck me just this week that while the close timing of Christmas and Hanukkah (which is entirely coincidental) might be responsible for this obnoxious trend of removing the explicit mentions of either one, somehow the same is not true at Easter, which is necessarily close to Passover. Somehow, stores and other public places have failed to muddy the waters on that one. Why? Passover is a very important holiday (Is it the most important of the Jewish year? I'm not sure.), and Easter is the biggest of the Christian year, but they manage to keep them straight. Does anybody have a clue on this??

Interestingly, the press discovered Ramadan around late 1998, I think, when there was public debate as to whether Clinton should conduct bombing raids on Iraq during that Moslem month. For a while, Ramadan was timed close to Christmas and Hanukkah, and all of a sudden (as I remember it), the TV news felt obliged to have "Happy Ramadan!" PSAs and such.

But the Islamic calendar is very strictly lunar, unlike the Christian calendar, which is solar, or the Jewish, which is lunar but tied to the solar year. So while Christian and Jewish holidays stay generally in the same season from one year to the next, the Islamic month of Ramadan will occur at different seasons in different years. And now that Ramadan has moved on outside of Winter, have you seen anything mentioned in public about it? Does the press simply pay attention only to those holidays that occur in December?!

Astronomy in the Iliad

Keith Arnaud sent me this link to a book on Amazon he thought sounded interesting:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0719557801/guardianunlim-21/202-3754981-1943850

Astronomy was vital to the lives of ancient peoples; they invented
calendars from observations of the sun and moon and used the stars for
navigation. The heavens were also a focal point of their myths and
religious rituals. The peoples who lived in Crete and Greece from 2000
- 750 BC did not have an efficient writing system, and how they passed
astronomical learning down through the centuries has, until now, been
a mystery. This reading of Homer's Iliad reveals how mythology and the
great epic of the Siege of Troy was used to preserve vast knowledge
about the stars and constellations, the Moon and planets and ancient
ideas about the universe.

I'd have to read the book to see just what the author has found, but it's an interesting idea. Certainly there are astronomical references thoughout early literature, but I think this author is wanting to get at something deeper. I'm intrigued.

Opus is Back. Bill Watterson is missing.

I just saw the returned Opus comic strip in the News-Sentinel back at home. I was always a big fan of Bloom County, but I think Breathed has got to get back into the hang of this before he's really funny again. Earlier on, his strips had really great comic timing, and the example I saw Sunday was missing that. Plus, the drawings are a little...grotesque, almost. I like them better when they're simpler and cleaner. Not that I don't like detail, mind you--I'm especially fond of the beautiful, multi-pane color landscapes and dinosaur drawings that Calvin and Hobbes often featured. It's just this somewhat grotesque style that Breathed is doing now that is a little odd.

And there is something to be said for the method of James Thurber, who gave himself only five minutes to draw his cartoons. He actually had a timer. He'd found out early on that people thought his cartoons were better when he spent less time drawing them. But that's not for everybody, and as I said, I always enjoyed the elaborate paintings in some Calvin & Hobbes strips.

Speaking of Calvin, I came across this article on the now-reclusive Bill Watterson. Link via Instapundit.

Northern lights photos online

This time, my photos of the northern lights came out very well. I've posted them online here.

The images were all taken with 200 speed film, usually with 30-sec. exposures. The one labeled "road2" was 2 minutes, and a couple of the fainter ones were done with 15 or 20-second exposures.

For those interested in playing "Where's Waldo?", I've caught four airplanes in three different pictures, and in "road2" there is even a satellite making a longish streak in the center-right of the image.

I couldn't see the colors in any of these aurorae. What shows up here as green was very white to my eyes, although I once got a hint of pale blue-green when it brightened up. And the red regions were completely invisible. Once I could just make out a couple of pencil-thin, vertical streaks that turn out to be the brightest part of the red curtain, but otherwise I had absolutely no clue there was anything else to see. It's especially surprising, since the red clearly dominates many of the pictures, especially the "overlook" set. It's lucky that I happened to widen the field of view enough to catch them, accidentally as it was.

The image I'm showing here was taken from my back patio. I think it's got the best combination of colors of any of the photos.

Christian bumper stickers in Egypt

I'm impressed by this story from the AP that describes how Egypt's Coptic Christians are asserting their religion more publicly, putting those fish symbols on their cars, like many do here in America. There, it's a bumper sticker, rather than the plastic frame I see here, but the same design.

The shocking thing is the reaction from some in the Moslem majority--shark stickers on their own cars! Geez, I thought the atheists' reaction with "Darwin" or "Evolve!" legged-fish stickers was outrageous enough. That was the mocking of a Christian symbol, which is bad enough in its sarcastic intent. And I don't like mocking in general.

The Egyptian case is a bit different. I have little doubt that those Moslems (probably a small percentage) putting the shark stickers on their cars mean it as a joke, rather than a threat. But man, some of the things they're saying go right to the heart of the New Testament's counsel to Christians living under persecution. For example,

"The Christians had the fish so we responded with the shark. If they want to portray themselves as weak fishes, OK. We are the strongest," said Emad, who would give only his first name.

Insert in your favorite NT verse here. Or Old Testament, in many examples.

Kucinich tries out his dramatic reading...

Dennis Kucinich on NPR's All Things Considered right now. The interviewer brings up the Medicare bill and says that the Bush plan might as well have been "drafted on a different planet" than Kucinich's socialized medicine plan (not the interviewer's words, of course). I love Kucinich's reply:

"You're right. The Bush health plan was drafted on a different planet. It's the planet...[dramatic pause]...Greed!"

Oh, boy...this guy provides no end of entertainment.

More on Geuda Springs

Joel, over at Southern Appeal, is still skeptical of the wisdom of the city law mentioned just below, and he's got a point. I'm a conservative, and I don't like the government compelling my behavior over much of anything, even if it is behavior that I think is good and should be encouraged.

But I just thought of something: I seem to remember a comment by George Will (?) a few years ago that, if you read the Second Amendment the way liberals read the rest of the Constitution, keeping and bearing arms wouldn't be merely allowed, but compulsory. Maybe the city fathers of Geuda Springs, Kansas, are just consistent and honest liberals!

Can a city require you to keep a firearm?

There's been a decent amount of coverage recently on the decision by Geuda Springs, Kansas, to require most households to keep a firearm and ammunition. NPR covered it this morning, surprisingly with little editorializing.

Southern Appeal's Joel Foreman asks whether or not this is a requirement that can be legally imposed. For the record, Foreman is a strong supporter of gun rights, but he doesn't think this is a good idea.

I was already thinking about this question, and I believe that this is a legitimate use of legal authority, ignoring the wisdom of the law for the moment. Think about it--what the city has done is perform a partial military draft. The citizenry is (are?) not being mobilized but simply required to keep arms, the means to carry out their job.

Now, some would argue that this is illegitimate because they're not being made to fight an external military enemy. But the National Guard is activated very often without an actual military purpose but rather to maintain order and prevent looting during emergencies. Wouldn't this be essentially the same thing?

True, it is, in theory, a permanent call to duty, rather than for a fixed term. But I don't think that that is a legal objection. We could, if we wanted, require a lifetime commitment (well, an "until old age" commitment) to military service of some kind (reserves or guard for most of that time), and some countries do.

I also have in mind the arrangement of Switzerland (as I understand it), in which the citizen-soldiers keep their arms at home. The benefits of such an arrangement undoubtedly extend to discouraging crime, even though that is not the primary reason.

Furthermore, I was at first worried that this could be an expensive requirement for the poor. A decent modern pistol will probably run you $300, after all. But according to this story (link via Southern Appeal), they explicitly exempt the poor. They also exempt those with physical or mental problems, as well as those with a conscientious objection to firearms.

As some have mentioned, this is reminiscent of a law passed in Kennesaw, Georgia, some years ago, although I seem to remember that that law specifically stated that it would not be enforced. It was more of a strong statement in favor of gun rights, and it was a public rebuke to the city of (I think) Morton Grove, Illinois, which had effectively or explicitly outlawed handguns shortly before.

Thoughts, anyone?

Robert S. McNamara--spin doctor extraordinaire

I don't have a link to this, but surfing the cable channels late Saturday night, I came across Robert McNamara on the History Channel, talking about the erection of the Berlin Wall. According to him, this was a great victory for the Free World!!

Boy, that's some pretty serious spinning! Now, he had an actual argument for this--that the political crisis over the Berlin occupation was building up to war, and our only credible defense was nuclear. Thus by letting the Soviets have a free hand in East Berlin, we defused the situation. And when they built the wall to keep the population imprisoned, it showed the whole world how massive a failure their system was.

Yes, and the world tolerated that imprisonment for nearly four more decades.

I can believe that the Kennedy administration saw this as a victory over short-term, but serious, dangers. But didn't they see what it meant to the people behind that wall? Did they give any thought to what they would endure? This was, I suspect, part of the strategy of "containment"--don't try to roll back the Soviet grip, just keep them from taking more countries captive. Thank goodness for Reagan's (and others') rejection of this pessimistic philosophy.

Christopher Hitchens is glad for the "fading" JFK cult

"Where's the aura?", he asks in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. Hitchens is an iconoclast, I reckon we could say. He enjoys bursting the public image of prominent politicians and others. I don't always agree with him (he's very liberal, overall), but he's got a good article on John F. Kennedy, here.

I've got mixed feelings about JFK. On one hand, I don't think his actions deserve to rank him among our greatest Presidents. One accomplishment would certainly be his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and many or most would argue that saving us from a nuclear war alone makes him deserving of such praise. Quite possibly, although I think there are probably good arguments that he in fact mishandled the situation or invited it by his earlier actions. I don't have a well-developed opinion on this and will have to read more.

But aside from this, I think it is undeniable that he was an inspirational leader. As a friend of mine from grad school noted, you've got an entire generation of (now) little old ladies with plaster busts of Kennedy sitting on their mantles. They adore him! That inspiration came from somewhere. And the idealistic spirit his administration was publicly infused with was probably very catchy. (I mean that in a good way.)

And I'll say this on his behalf, that as a conservative, I can really appreciate his appreciation for low(er) taxes, even while I am turned off by many of his other actions.

Hmmm...certainly several sides of him to consider.

The Day After

NPR's "Fresh Air" last night was talking about the 1983(?) TV movie, The Day After. I never saw it, although I remember the ads on TV at the time. One ridiculous comment from the NPR show was that the effect of The Day After wasn't an unalloyed good, because the big public debate on nuclear war that came from the show might have convinced people that problems were being taken care of, so they didn't need to "act," themselves.

Wait a second--debating an issue is a bad thing? So, the more we debate a contentious issue, the worse off we are, because the less people will get involved in it? Huh?! The logic here astounds me.

Of course, this strikes me as all being argued from the point of view that the public should "get involved" by being in a nuclear freeze protest or some other such silliness.

Aurorae

I got a beautiful look at the northern lights last night. They appeared as white, cloud-like shapes from at least as early as 7:00 (when I first looked) until 9:30 or later. They were arrayed in an east-west line, broken into fuzzy imitations of cumulus clouds. They would fade and brighten and reform over a timescale of about a minute or so, faster than I thought they would.

I saw them for the first time in my life last month, when these same sunspot groups first made their appearance, but the show wasn't all that good here. Then, they appeared as a red glow on the horizon, but this time they were right over my head.

I took several photos, and if they come out, I'll post some online.

WWII: The 60-year war?

According to The Scotsman, there are still Japanese soldiers hiding out in the Philippenes! The last Imperial Japanese soldier to give up returned in 1974, after a long and difficult search for him and a tough time convincing him that the surrender was a valid order.

Now they're investigating reports that as many as four soldiers remain in the jungles. Two of the men searching are veterans themselves, and one of them kept fighting for five years after the surrender of Japan. Now I'm curious--how many Japanese soldiers surrendered more than a year after the formal surrender, and when did they come in?

I've got to say I'm impressed by these guys, in a way. They're an extreme case, but they're definitely tough. Or crazy. Well, even if they weren't crazy to begin with, living alone in the jungle for 60 years might do things to you.

Hmmm...I just realized that this means the Japanese military presence in the Philippenes has outlasted the American military presence!

(via Instapundit)

In a related story, Al Gore refuses to believe the 2000 election has ended...

For the man who has everything this Christmas...

Get him the one-and-only (literally) double-barrel cannon!

The idea was to kill enemy troops more effectively by firing two cannonballs, connected by a length of chain. They'd spread out and cover more area, dragging the deadly chain between them. It's actually a good idea, and this kind of thing was used, principally in naval warfare to cut down enemy rigging. But it found its way into land combat as well, only the standard method was to fire both balls from the same barrel. They'd be placed in with the chain between them. I imagine the trajectory would be a bit unpredictable, and perhaps that's why John Gilleland got the idea to use two barrels.

But the test-firing was a disaster. The trouble is in the timing: if the barrels don't fire at exactly the same time, one ball will wind up dragging the other along, possibly snapping the chain. According to the article in Wired,

Screaming spectators ducked and covered as the twinned, spinning projectiles plowed through a nearby wood and destroyed a cornfield before the chain connecting the balls broke. One of the cannonballs then collided into and killed a cow; the other demolished the chimney of a nearby home.

Well, if at first you don't succeed, don't aim it near my house!

I enjoy Wired's take on this--"It is a monument to every geek who ever had what seemed to be a really good idea at the time." Yes, it reminds me a lot of ideas I sketched out as a kid. And some from last week.

Be sure to check out the nice photos of it on the second page of the article.

UPDATE: I forgot to thank my friend, Charles Danforth, for the story!

Master and Commander, Rupert Brooke, and Richard Halliburton

I just got back from watching the movie Master and Commander. It's just as good as I'd been told it was--exciting and entertaining. There were some very stirring lines in the script. One passage in particular that I can remember has the ship's captain, Russell Crowe, addressing his men, as they are about to face a French privateer during the Napoleonic Wars:

England is under threat of invasion. And though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England.

Even being an American (or partly because of it), I had shivers down my spine then. It reminds me of my reaction from reading Rupert Brooke's sonnet, "The Soldier":

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Not quite the same tone, since the movie line is an encouragement to men before battle to defend their ship, while Brooke's poem is more of a reflection. I remember reading in one of Richard Halliburton's books that Rupert Brooke was his favorite poet. Halliburton was at his heyday in the 1920s and '30s, a decade or two after Brooke wrote this in 1914.

Richard Halliburton was a great Tennesseean (a Memphian, in particular) who deserves to be more widely remembered. Maybe he is, more than I realize. He was a rich playboy (as my dad described him) who decided to occupy his time by having adventures and writing about them. He traced the steps of Odysseus, the Conquistadores, and others, writing about his journeys in several books. I read The Glorious Adventure in college, at Dad's suggestion. About that time I found out that "Halliburton Tower" (in the background of this photo) at Rhodes College (my alma mater) is dedicated to this same Richard Halliburton. It bears a bronze plaque in his memory, describing his death in 1939, lost at sea while on another adventure. Probably the most fitting way for him to go. After all, this was a man who swam the entire Panama Canal, including through the locks. He slept high above the Urubamba River another night, curled around the intihuatana at Macchu Pichu. He swam the Hellespont (imitating Leander...and Lord Byron, later), and he climbed to the top of Mount Olympus, only the third expedition ever to make it. Not a bad life for a fellow Tennesseean!

I've read The Glorious Adventure, in which he follows Odysseus, and New Worlds to Conquer, where he takes the routes of the Conquistadors. Both of my copies are originals, but he's still in print. I still have to read The Royal Road to Romance, which I don't know anything about.

Well, I've rambled on enough, now.

Hussein / al Qaeda connection for real?

The Weekly Standard has obtained a secret memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith sent to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This memo, dated October 27, 2003, details several pieces of evidence, some of them very explicit on this point, that bin Laden and Hussein had a working relationship well before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

I had believed this was possible but assumed that there just wasn't much strong evidence such a relationship actually existed. If our sources on this are good, though, this looks pretty convincing. It will also be a pleasure to watch the reaction of those on the hard-line anti-war side who have taken such arrogant attitudes that no educated person could believe that "fundamentalist" al Qaeda and "secular" Iraq could ever possibly work together!

We still have to weigh the quality of the sources, of course, and see if the memo's conclusions hold up. I don't want to proclaim this as the absolute and final word on the topic, just in case, but it's intriguing.

Kagan on Revolutions in Military Affairs

Frederick W. Kagan has a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal from November 12, with a similar version at The New Criterion.

He gives us a lot of history on the various attempts to impose business or information theory models on warfare (often with tragic outcomes), as well as the concept of "Revolutions in Military Affairs" (RMA). An example of the former includes Robert McNamara and his "whiz kids" approaching the war in Vietnam through game theory. One of the ideas was that (as I understand it) by varying the military force applied to the enemy, you sent him "messages," and from game theory you could predict his response to them.

Kagan is probably correct to be critical of this method. I honestly haven't studied much about the Johnson administration's approach to the war (aside from the problem of micromanagement from the White House), and I know only a tiny bit about game theory. The concept intrigues me, but the problem is that it must be too abstract to apply in real life, with all of the unknown variables there are in human behavior, especially in wartime.

I remember that game theory was also discussed back in the '80s, in the context of Cold War nuclear strategies and the effect of a national missile defense system. What I remember about that came from an anti-Reagan, anti-missile-defense article in a science magazine. Probably Discover.

Kagan gives a wide-ranging discussion of this idea of RMAs--events that so change the face of warfare that everybody has to start over from scratch in figuring out how to fight one. Essentially. The advent of tanks, machine guns, and especially nuclear weapons could all qualify as RMAs. Apparently, the latest nominee to be an RMA is information technology, but Kagan seems skeptical about this. Or at least skeptical of taking the conclusions too far.

He says that the military predominance the United States enjoys in the world today is unlikely to last forever. Those who claim that our technological advantages will essentially prohibit any other state from even trying to challenge us (now or for many years in the future) are forgetting lots of details. Computers are increasingly cheap and can be obtained by even our poorest enemies. Our global positioning system, developed at great cost over many years, could be done today by smaller countries more easily. Because we've broken the technological ground to gain the position we have, we've made it easier for other countries to follow in our footsteps--they don't have to spend nearly as much on R&D, since it has already been done.

I don't have the background to tell if he's right on all points, but he makes a persuasive argument.

Ninth Circuit ruling on machine gun possession

I was happily shocked to read today that the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Congress cannot ban possession of a machine gun under the guise of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. I haven't read up on the ruling in detail, and I imagine that the summaries could miss important points, but this is an encouraging step in restricting Congress' abuse of the Interstate Commerce Clause. I'll note that this only applies to possession itself, and not to sales, even intrastate sales, so I don't believe this ruling goes far enough, but it's a step in the right direction as far as the concept of federalism goes.

Now, the question of whether or not the private ownership of fully automatic weapons is appropriate is entirely irrelevant here. I am only dealing with the Constitutional question of whether Congress can legislate a ban under the guise of regulating interstate commerce.

One further thought before I actually read the decision: Some commentary on this case misstates a critical fact (as I do, above). Congress has never actually banned machine gun ownership. Instead, it has imposed a tax on them. Machine guns, and all fully-automatic firearms, are considered "Class III Weapons." Anyone wishing to own one must pay a one-time tax of...I think about $200 (last time I checked) and fill out a lot of paperwork. But as far as I know, anyone who is eligible to own a firearm (i.e., someone without a criminal record, etc.) is also eligible to own a Class III weapon.

Now, this use of taxes can be an abuse of power when it's done as a way of getting around Constitutional prohibitions. I imagine that if Congress were to impose specific taxes on speech, for instance, that might be ruled unconstitutional by the courts, as well. I'm curious to read the exact reasoning of the court in this case. The Ninth Circuit isn't exactly known as a bastion of logic and careful interpretation of the Constitution, but on the surface, this seems like a correct decision to me.

Eugene Volokh comments on this here.

Alternative meaning of "fisking"?

David Pryce-Jones, writing in the Spectator today...er, actually tomorrow, given the date on their website, gives a definition of "fisking" that I had not heard of: "...the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices."

He is referring to the use of the word on the web, but I only understood "fisking" to mean the process of dissecting, phrase by phrase, a writer's badly-reasoned political screed that was passed off as news reporting.

Either way, of course, the word was directly named for British "reporter" Robert Fisk, whom I first noticed when he visited Afghanistan immediately after that recent war. He was nearly beated to death by an angry mob of Afghans, and he wrote that he understood why they did this and would probably have done the same thing himself, if he were an Afghan. And, of course, it was all George W. Bush's fault.

How do you test scientific reasoning?

We're winding up the quarter here at State, which is just as well, since I think I'm coming down with the flu. Final exams are next week, and I've been teaching two classes this term--Scientific Reasoning and Astronomy. Astronomy is easy enough. I've taught it a few times before and can go through the material without needing much review. And I'm really impressed with how well many of the students are picking up some very difficult concepts, such as the curvature of the universe, the effects of relativity (such as on time, length, and mass), and how black holes "work." I had students staying after class today to debate things like the features of a small, closed universe (everywhere you looked, you'd see the back of your head, magnified!).

The troublesome one is Scientific Reasoning. We're supposed to teach methods, not content, but that's tricky to do and still have something you can grade them on. My approach has been to look at this as a philosophy class, a kind of history of cosmology, since cosmology involves how we look at the entire universe.

But that just makes the testing all the more difficult. I was originally thinking of giving them an oral exam. I'd have in mind some alternative universe, and the student would have to figure out a model for how that universe worked by proposing observations and experiments. I would tell him what he would find in each case. But here again, this could be hard to do without requiring specialized knowledge about astrophysics. And then there's the fact that it would have taken me about 8 hours just to get all of the students through the door, seriatum (as Dr. Taylor would say).

So I've just given them an essay assignment again. Today's discussion was mostly on the "Anthropic Principle" and other ways of interpreting what we know about the make-up of the universe. A critique of this is one option they have for a paper.

Re: Death in Iraq

Sorry to hear about your classmate, E. And yes, God bless them all over there.

Long time, no post!

Hi, E, readers, et al.

Sorry I've been AWOL for a couple of weeks. Thanks for taking up the slack, E! I've literally had Four Weddings and a Funeral over the past five weeks, so things have been hectic. And then a few days ago I was back and ready to post again, but I'd forgotten my login name... Man, I'm getting the absent-minded professor bit down pat.

More fascinating thoughts soon to come...