Funhawg's Follies

2001-12-15T08:20:00.000-06:00

Grounded by an Income Gap "Never has the accident of birth mattered more," Mr. Heckman said. "If I am born to educated, supportive parents, my chances of doing well are totally different than if I were born to a single parent or abusive parents. I am a University of Chicago libertarian, but this is a case of market failure: children don't get to `buy' their parents, and so there has to be some kind of intervention to make up for these environmental differences."
Even Adam Smith, the prophet of laissez- faire economics, had a strong concern for equity if not equality. "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable," he wrote. "It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."

2001-12-15T08:18:00.000-06:00

Grounded by an Income Gap the earning advantage for those who attend college over those who do not has doubled to about 60 percent from 30 percent in the early 1970's.
"Even finishing high school improves your income by about 30 percent,"

2001-12-15T03:56:00.000-06:00

Training Pvt. Evans: 4 Months From a Slacker to a Soldier

2001-12-14T02:41:00.000-06:00

Shouting 'Cross the Potomac I think it was just a classic example of parents taking a perfectly good parenting technique beyond it's rational limits: you're supposed to give them freddom to explore, not abandon them to the wiles of the world. I should add that the traditionalist approach can also be taken beyond rational limits.

2001-12-14T01:19:00.000-06:00

The Rallying Point . I'll agree with Walker's mom that he was brainwashed, but that washing started under her nose and she should have seen it for what it was.
With freedom comes responsibility, and there are many who reject that responsibility and seek direction from some "leader" who says he has a monopoly on "the Truth." If you seek "the Truth," many will say they have it. But really there is no "Truth" with a capitol T other than objective reality, and the sooner we all understand this the better we'll all be.

2001-12-13T19:39:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch Noticing a pattern yet? Reynolds: Public, invigorating; profession, badly needs public scrutiny. Balzar: Public, barely qualified; profession, noble and misunderstood. Another difference you’ll note is that Reynolds, who is a professor and a lawyer, writes better than the lifelong journalist.

2001-12-13T15:21:00.000-06:00

Dynamist.com Here, then, is the basic difference between the valley and the Hub: Viewing the world as predictable and itself as the center of the universe, Boston has encouraged strategies of anticipation. People try to imagine everything that might go wrong and fix it in advance. But in Silicon Valley, there are no certainties. The future is open and subject to upheaval. Resilience is the strategy of choice. People do the best they can at the moment, deal with problems as they arise, and develop networks to help them out.

2001-12-11T07:34:00.000-06:00

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today Mr. bin Laden seemed amused that many of the hijackers in the attacks apparently had not known they were on suicide missions."

2001-12-10T18:16:00.000-06:00

Hearing Aid - Sometimes poetry should be seen but not heard. By Adam Kirsch The poem is always only what the poet wrote down on the page. Everything else is show business.

2001-12-10T03:26:00.000-06:00

Left Behind By Jacob Weisberg If today's anti-war movement is insignificant, why are some supporters of the war so fixated on it? Their reasons vary. Someone like David Horowitz understands everything in terms of the Cold War and Vietnam. Without an anti-American left to do battle against, his life would be drained of all meaning. His fund raising would suffer as well. Other conservatives adopt an embattled posture simply out of long-standing habit, without reference to whether any barbarians are actually at the gates. A furious centrist like Michael Kelly seems to need a treasonous anti-war movement to stir his outrage and generate column inches. A born-again patriot like Hitchens finds it useful in another way. Decrying the left's true believers validates his newly acquired mainstream credentials.
The rest of us, who don't need an anti-war movement for any particular reason, are free to take note of its virtual nonexistence. Those policing the debate are dropping the rhetorical equivalent of daisy cutters on a few malnourished left-wing stragglers. Of course those opposed to the United States defending itself against terrorism are wrong. They also happen to be totally irrelevant.

2001-12-10T03:21:00.000-06:00

Yale Law School What matters for economic growth is what a country does, not what it has. Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Israel have no natural resources, yet they have successful, developed economies; Nigeria and the Congo, with abundant resources, do not. Nor is the availability of capital, by itself, the answer. In many Arab nations, the local rich invest their money outside their own countries and may have good economic reasons for doing so.

Perhaps the most important cause for some countries' continuing to fall behind is the monopolies that many of them tolerate or even create.

2001-12-10T03:20:00.000-06:00

The Rallying Point "When an agnostic dies, does he go to the "great perhaps"?"

2001-12-10T03:18:00.000-06:00

The Rallying Point The growing Libertarian presence may spell problems for the Republican Party if it can't wean itself away from the religious right's insistence on sticking its nose into our private lives the way Democrats intrude in our economic affairs."

2001-12-10T03:07:00.000-06:00

The Rallying Point She kept talking about keeping the economy and food production local, so that in case the distribution was disturbed the people would be fed. Is this really an economic strategy, planning for the breakdown of society?

2001-12-10T01:15:00.000-06:00

| KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | For me, it's personal. I'm tired of these people dirtying the pool for Rational Liberals. They deserve the same harassment and abuse as Jerry Falwell deserves from Rational Conservatives.

2001-12-10T01:09:00.000-06:00

| KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | Just went to the living room to get the paper, and for some terrible reason that "Who Wants a Millionaire" thing was on the teevee. This awful thick-necked woman with dumb little dots for eyes, she's polling the audience. The question is, Which of these bottles doesn't require a corkscrew to open? She has already had two answers removed -- I'm not sure exactly how it works -- so the remaining choices are "Wine" and "Champagne." She is polling the audience for the answer. About 99 percent of them say "Champagne" and she gurgles weirdly and says, "O-o-o-kay, I guess I'll trust the audience and say ... Champagne."
Jesus! What kind of country is this? There's a grown woman on national teevee about to go home with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she's never had a bottle of Champagne or even seen one opened.

2001-12-10T01:08:00.000-06:00

| KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | Some may mock old men like Hunter and Keith. But I see them as Examples for our youth. Yes, children, you too can maintain a constant criminal lifestyle, create wonderful art, make piles of money, live in comfort, and still raise hell in Honolulu in your 60s.

2001-12-10T01:00:00.000-06:00

| KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | It's 2001, and we can Fact Check your ass.

2001-12-10T00:54:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch My daughter grew up in the Bay Area; she's exactly the same age as the Tali-boy. Indeed, she's also planning a foreign study trip -- to Oxford, where she plans to study social behavior and history.

Yet her interest in religion and culture hasn't led her to join a murderous cult. Her critical thinking skills are the kind that enable her to resist propaganda. She could not have “found” herself -- easily or otherwise -- in a “similar mess” because she is not a crackpot. And there are a lot more Bay Area 20-year-olds like her than there are goofballs like Tali-boy. Most of them know they'll be held accountable for their actions; the rest learn that eventually, and usually painfully.

2001-12-10T00:45:00.000-06:00

(LILEKS) James : the Bleat I read another defense of Johnny Walker, the Hairy Taliban from Marin County - this time it’s a column by Glenn Sacks in the SF Chronicle. I know I’m treading the steps of giants here, the real warbloggers who have been taking apart this coagulated drivel with laser beams and daisy cutters for the last few weeks. But I have to step in. This is one of those rare columns that’s actually wrong from the very first sentence. He begins:

“Those willing to sacrifice for their beliefs deserve respect -- even if what they believe in is foolish. “

So, if a man believes he can fly, jumps off a a building and kills a man when he crashes through a windshield of some poor schmuck stuck at a red light, I guess I’m supposed to respect him for his convictions. Sorry. If what someone believes is foolish, his willingness to sacrifice for this fatuity is pitiful at best and contemptible at worst.

2001-12-10T00:43:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch “Consumer society” means a society in which - brace yourself - there are lots of things to buy, and lots of people who want to buy things. And this is just so horrible. […]

2001-12-10T00:37:00.000-06:00

Recovery and the Reluctant Consumer Simply put," said Robert J. Barbera, the chief economist at Hoenig & Company, "a boom in autos and housing is impossible from current levels."

2001-12-10T00:33:00.000-06:00

Taliban Give Way in Final Province Where They Ruled The five-year rule of the Taliban, exceptionally harsh even in a land governed for decades by bloodletting, came to an official end today as the last Afghan province slipped from their control.

2001-12-09T19:01:00.000-06:00

Salon Books | "Wanderlust: A History of Walking" by Rebecca Solnit "something of a pattern: autodidacts who took the trinity of radical politics, love of nature, and pedestrianism to extremes."

2001-12-09T19:00:00.000-06:00

Salon.com Technology | Segway's assault on walking our suburban-commuter lifestyle, where virtually nothing is within walking distance.

2001-12-09T18:04:00.000-06:00

WarLog: World War III We must be careful. We have great power. Power means moral choice. We should feel gratitude that we have such choices. To be powerless is not moral, it is merely powerless.

2001-12-09T10:38:00.000-06:00

Pipe Dreams - The origin of the "bombing-Afghanistan-for-oil-pipelines" theory. By Seth Stevenson Why does the bombing-for-pipelines theory hold such appeal? For the same reason the supporting-the-Taliban-for-pipelines theory attracted so many: There's evidence that points in that direction. Unocal did want to build a pipeline through Afghanistan and did cozy up to the Taliban. Bush and Cheney do have ties to big oil. But theories like these are ridiculously reductionist. Their authors don't try to argue conclusions from evidence—they decide on conclusions first, then hunt for justification. Also, many thinkers are comfortable with the conditioned response that dates back to Ida Tarbell vs. Standard Oil: When in Doubt, Blame Oil First.
What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nope—must be the pipeline.

2001-12-09T09:11:00.000-06:00

JS Online: Running for their lives Young Ho-Chunk marathoners endure tests of willpower to prove they can make it in Hawaii

2001-12-09T08:14:00.000-06:00

The Video-Game Workout Dance Dance Revolution – D.D.R. to the avid teenage throngs who crowd the arcades to play it – is a Japanese innovation that is just now catching on in America. Like a jukebox equipped to judge your dancing prowess, D.D.R. asks players to choose from a selection of booming, beat-heavy dance-club numbers; the players are awarded points for their ability to perform the high-speed techno-tap-dance routine that D.D.R. dictates, step by step, on screen.
Players stand facing the screen on a platform divided into six-inch squares. Then, following the instructions displayed on-screen, the player must start stepping on appropriate squares. Because the steps are coordinated with the beat of the music, a successful player begins very quickly to look like an accomplished disco dancer.

2001-12-08T11:46:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch Here’s an alternative theory, Jacob: People dislike bullshit, regardless of the source, regardless of anybody’s politics. When the country gets bombed by madmen who want to kill all of us, that dislike of bullshit gets magnified several times over, and a whole bunch of silly people who are safely ignored most of the time suddenly feel the glare of 280 million very angry, very smart, very focused Americans. And one thing these newly attentive Americans are particularly weary of is the tired 1990s tactic of assigning malevolent hidden motivations to your demonized political opponents.

2001-12-07T05:09:00.001-06:00

Shedding writer's block | csmonitor.com I have a theory that women escape from home to write, while men I know escape from the world by staying home to write," says novelist Katharine Weber. "I suspect that this is because the dishes and laundry do not call out their name."

2001-12-07T05:09:00.000-06:00

Shedding writer's block | csmonitor.com Proximity to a wood-burning stove is requisite. "It's a handy place for throwing what you wrote that day," says Ms. Hempel. "It's quite satisfying to watch it literally go up in smoke."

2001-12-07T05:01:00.000-06:00

Support The Economy !

2001-12-07T04:21:00.000-06:00

The Miracle of Coltrane: Dead at 40, Still Vital at 75 Four months later, in live recordings on tour with Davis in Europe, now packaged as "Miles Davis in Stockholm Complete" (Dragon), Coltrane turned research into art.
This is a favorite record of musicians: it is the breaking point, the moment when he pulled ahead and left jazz of the 1950's behind.
His Stockholm solos are long and searching, making surging blues figures out of split-tones, turning what were once harmonic convolutions into a sensuous new way of phrase- smearing; it sounded, absolutely, like a new way of speaking an established language. (Not long before this, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter reported, Coltrane had mentioned — apparently in earnest — that he wanted to learn how to speak English backward.)

2001-12-07T04:17:00.000-06:00

Hitting the Trifecta Mr. Bush could try to undo some of the damage, by canceling future tax cuts for the top income bracket. Instead, he wants to accelerate those cuts. That's the moral equivalent of the big bonuses Enron gave to executives just days before it went bankrupt.

2001-12-07T04:16:00.000-06:00

Hitting the Trifecta Whenever they were asked, voters said that the "compassionate" parts of Mr. Bush's campaign promises — securing Social Security, providing more money for prescription drugs and education — were more important to them than tax cuts. But they were assured that there was enough money for everything. Those assurances were false — but the tax cut is sacrosanct, while the rest is expendable.

2001-12-07T04:15:00.000-06:00

Hitting the Trife hortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Mr. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."
Lucky him, indeed. The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliché, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration Enron did so much to put in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don't work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Mr. Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.
Earlier this year Mr. Bush used projections of vast budget surpluses to push through a huge, 10-year tax cut. Most of that tax cut went to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year. Now Mr. Daniels tells us that the budget — not just the budget outside Social Security, but the whole enchilada — will be in deficit through 2004. Since the administration's phony budget math ("fuzzy" just doesn't cut it at this point) gets phonier the further you go into the future, this means that we have effectively returned to a state of permanent deficit.

2001-12-07T04:06:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Kabul In the north of the country, Afghans are starving because Uzbekistan will not open a bridge for relief supplies to cross, since it is worried about security in the area. Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Uzbekistan in the next couple of days and ask it to open the bridge, but the United States refuses to provide the needed security. One can't help thinking that if the Pentagon was asked to bomb the bridge, instead of protect it, there would be no hesitation.

2001-12-06T04:02:00.000-06:00

Today's Daily Comment from American Politics Right wingers, eager to topple the hated United States and replace it with a gleaming fascist dream called "America" (which resembles the United States only without rights or freedoms for the Wrong Types of people) have been eager to support the bizarre notion that we've developed a sudden right to lock people up without trial or even without charges. This is the same crowd, mind you, that spends much of its time whining about how dangerous government is and how we need to get it off our backs.

2001-12-06T04:01:00.000-06:00

Today's Daily Comment from American Politics "We will use every constitutional tool to keep suspected terrorists locked up,'' Ashcroft was quoted as saying, apparently hoping that nobody would notice that he had, to date, used no constitutional tools to keep them locked up.

2001-12-06T03:51:00.000-06:00

Today's Daily Comment from American Politics Perhaps most importantly, Bush has managed to dramatically expand the powers of the same Federal government he and his Republicans have spent so many years denigrating. Those powers now have mastery over citizens' rights as described in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 13th Amendments to the Constitution – those pesky parts about freedom of speech, zealous representation by counsel, security in person, home and thought, and the importance of avoiding cruel and unusual punishments.

2001-12-06T02:58:00.000-06:00

In a Desolate House, Vestiges of a Violent 1999 Hijacking The house, which is being guarded by alliance soldiers but apparently has not been inspected by American intelligence officials, includes a list of trainees' names, home addresses and code names. There were also several copies of publications by American extremist groups that described poisons, espionage, disappearing ink and exploding pens.

2001-12-06T02:43:00.000-06:00

Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry "It sounds to me like it was made for narrow political reasons based on a right-to-bear-arms mentality," he said. "If someone is under investigation for a terrorist act, all the records we have in this country should be checked, including whether they bought firearms

2001-12-05T07:38:00.000-06:00

They Looked, They Clicked, a New E-Mail Virus Conquered Despite extensive warnings, he said, people still open unexpected attachments. "They call and say, `I downloaded it and I clicked on it — what should I have seen?' "
" `Your pink slip,' " he explained in a mock response, " `because you're an idiot.' "

2001-12-03T08:12:00.000-06:00

The Ends of War The United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age. This deserves to be recognized as an achievement

2001-12-03T08:09:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch The American polity is now divided between those who can recognize a new situation when they see it, and those who cannot or will not.

2001-12-03T08:06:00.000-06:00

JS Online: GENETIC PROFILING The enzyme discovery in Dahlberg's lab was patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and licensed to Third Wave in exchange for an equity position in the upstart company. Dahlberg, who became a partner in Third Wave, said WARF's action was a tremendous boon to Third Wave in its early days because the company did not have enough money to pay WARF for the license.
Dahlberg's enzyme discovery works this way: When the enzyme splits gene segments, the chemical reaction sets off a fluorescent glow that indicates patients have DNA sequences that could cause clinical problems.
Third Wave developed test kits that used the enzyme discovery to recognize gene segments associated with certain medical conditions, such as reactions to drugs.
Third Wave can make test kits to detect variations or flaws in virtually any discovered gene sequence.
The advantage of its tests over those of competitors, according to a report by Robert W. Baird & Co., is that Third Wave's tests are quicker, easier to perform, more accurate and avoid having to chemically amplify a DNA sample to get results.

2001-12-02T05:48:00.000-06:00

Plotting Along (washingtonpost.com) While the books of great stylists usually demand a greater commitment from the reader than the No-Style offerings, the literary and artistic payoff can be rewarding. The problem is: No-Style writing, as a whole, sells much better than High Style writing.
Chabon points out that some so-called popular writers -- such as Elmore Leonard and Ray Bradbury -- are also exquisite stylists.
But there are plenty of highly lauded literary artists whose style is difficult to discern. The late John Gardner, author of "The Sunlight Dialogues" and "Grendel," comes to mind. Alfred Kazin once wrote that the trouble with Gardner's writing was that it read like anybody else's writing.
If you were asked to satirize a No-Style writer's style, the way people used to satirize Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, you couldn't do it. It would be like satirizing the phone book.

2001-12-02T05:43:00.000-06:00

Plotting Along (washingtonpost.com) Granted, comparing Hemingway with just about anybody is unfair. But there's a point to be made here. Though Hemingway wrote short, simple sentences, he had style. Nobody sounds like him

2001-12-02T05:39:00.000-06:00

Plotting Along (washingtonpost.com) The No-Style School of fiction makes no apologies. It was founded to procure mass quantities of readers and to entice us to turn pages faster faster faster. The result is a group of outrageously successful authors who are almost indistinguishable, one from another.

2001-12-02T05:15:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile When I saw him speak about his son on TV, despite his unimaginable loss and a few cracks of voice, Mr. Spann was deliberate, articulate, and clear. Between the lines, he did ooze emotion, but it wasn't woe. It was pride. The way he carried himself spoke volumes about the man his son must have been. Even when he had something negative to say, with due cause, he wasn't belligerent (like many are without due cause), he stated his case and moved on.

2001-12-02T05:13:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile "Khaksar said he had no warning about the Sept. 11 operation to crash airplanes in Washington and New York and did not know if Omar or any other top leaders did. But like many Americans, he immediately had no doubt in his mind who was responsible. The day after the attacks, senior Taliban officials, except for Omar, met in a palace in Kabul to discuss what to do. 'I told the other ministers, 'I told you before the guy would do something bad, and now it will have a bad effect on Afghanistan,' ' Khaksar said. 'They told me: 'You're going crazy. You shouldn't speak so much.' They said Osama hasn't done such a thing, but if he has done it, it's a good thing that he did. I told them these civilian people who died and these two buildings, they were God's creation. They weren't military soldiers; they were civilians. God will be angry that this was done.' "
Peter Baker, Washington Post

2001-12-02T05:08:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile "....and now we have allowed our gruesome [EDITOR: please insert an adjective less subjective, um, more professional] militia allies to execute [over the course of three days by returning withering fire from the fort] their prisoners [the ones armed with AK-47's and rocket launchers]."

2001-12-02T05:01:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Stats-O-Mania But this is the most fascinating and amazing thing to me: by rappin' on keys here in my living room in Atlanta, Georgia, I can reach around the world. 25% of my traffic in November came from 71 nations other than the one I live in, including the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (over a thousand hits), Sao Tome and Principe (??!!??), and Turkmenistan, to name but a few.
A mere 6 or 7 years ago, who other than a professional writer might dream that their words (and images) would be viewed in such a variety of places? What relatively unknown photographer might dream that 345 people a day would view his simple Pixel Piles? It still amazes me, to think that some guy in Kiev, Russia, running who-knows-what operating system on an unknown computer can actually read documents I create on my system. That he's allowed to do so. And that he chooses to do so.
It's very easy to take this unprecedented tool for granted, now that we think we've got it semi-tamed. But looking over stats like this points out it truly is a new frontier, a world wide one.
And we are just the first wagon train heading out.

2001-12-02T01:00:00.000-06:00

The Atlantic | December 2001 | Looking the World in the Eye | Kaplan The Soldier and the State constituted a warning: America's liberal society, Huntington argued, required the protection of a professional military establishment steeped in conservative realism. In order to keep the peace, military leaders had to take for granted—and anticipate—the "irrationality, weakness, and evil in human nature." Liberals were good at reform, not at national security. "Magnificently varied and creative when limited to domestic issues," Huntington wrote, "liberalism faltered when applied to foreign policy and defense." Foreign policy, he explained, is not about the relationship among individuals living under the rule of law but about the relationship among states and other groups operating in a largely lawless realm. The Soldier and the State concluded with a rousing defense of West Point, which, Huntington wrote, "embodies the military ideal at its best ... a bit of Sparta in the midst of Babylon."

2001-12-02T00:53:00.000-06:00

Atlantic Unbound | Politics & Prose | 2001.11.07 In fairness to the experts, knowledge, being retrospective, is scandalized by the unprecedented.

2001-11-30T19:01:00.000-06:00

Indeed, while his book is about the past decade, in some sense it gives the feeling that the past two decades have not occurred -- that we are back in a time when the world was a menacing, tragic, and compelling place (instead of an annoying and uninteresting one). In War in a Time of Peace, it's obviously peace that's the anomaly. In a timely fashion, he's rehabilitated war as something of a condition of original sin -- we fight war because we are not good enough to avoid war.
Certainly Halberstam's version of war is much different from, say, Tom Brokaw's (who, Halberstam points out, has never had a posting as a foreign correspondent; likewise, he notes, Dan Rather's tour in Vietnam was "not wildly successful") or Stephen Ambrose's best-selling versions, or Steven Spielberg's big-screen (and little-screen) takes. Those renditions sell a certain nostalgic and noble feeling, whereas Halberstam is the remote father (authority comes naturally to him) whose hallmark is to eschew sentiment and gloss (his verbiage alone kills the fun of war). His version of war isn't, he says, "therapeutic."

2001-11-30T18:01:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch This tendency to see the nation as populated by two peoples—one's own crowd and this other, hostile, foreign, and indeed almost unknowable tribe—has hardened over the years into something close to a permanent piece of conventional wisdom. And this view of the country, it seemed, came to enjoy received status not only in liberal America's view of conservative America but also in conservative America's view of liberal America. When Susan Sontag and Ralph Reed looked out the window, they saw essentially the same country: a society and a culture divided between right-thinking Us and scary Us as Them, with Us as a perpetually threatened perpetual minority.

2001-11-30T09:08:00.000-06:00

| KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | More charming stuff from our Allies in the Middle East, from Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
So you've got a country whose state-sponsored press routinely says things like "The Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, must be destroyed because of following the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and blind fanaticism -- the age of the American collapse has begun." Whose corrupt government brutalizes its minorities, suppresses all but a narrow range of opposition, and keeps its populace in a state of underdeveloped poverty while a small elite of apparatchiks enjoys the fruits of the country's resources. Whose government-controlled schools and mosques are seedbeds of anti-Americanism and whose nationals occupy some of the highest positions in al-Qaeda.
So what do you do with such a country? Why, sell them ultra-accurate surface-to-surface missiles -- and four 199-foot diesel-powered Ambassador-class patrol boats from which to fire them -- in a $400 million arms deal, of course! How could you even consider doing anything else?

2001-11-29T20:22:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile And since the capture of Kabul this week, we have seen little evidence of the widespread atrocities predicted by Pakistan. To be sure, there have been isolated cases of the Alliance meting out rough and violent justice to Arab and Pakistani cadres. But, for the moment at least, Kabul is a city celebrating its liberation with music, kite-flying, and discarded burqas."
Lawrence Kaplan, The New Republic

2001-11-29T09:05:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com this beautiful snippet from Scott Adams' Dilbert newsletter:
My Holiday Message

I've written and rewritten this section a dozen times. My problem is that no matter how much I write, I keep condensing it down to the same thought: This holiday season, as we laugh and eat and shop and enjoy friends and family, our soldiers are in Afghanistan risking everything for us. Some of them won't come back. The rest will never be the same.

Every one of them volunteered. They think we're worth it.

Let's prove them right.
Yes, let's.

2001-11-29T08:55:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com TV sucks, and the Internet hurts viewership not only by competing for people's attention, but also by making clear just how much TV really does suck. Just look at the quality of news and opinion you get on the various warblogs compared to what you see on World News Tonight. Plus, the Internet puts you in charge. TV treats you as a passive consumer of news and entertainment. Lots of people, it turns out, prefer to be in charge. Go figure.

2001-11-28T19:56:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile "Sitting in the bed of a Northern Alliance truck, Mr. Amonullah explained that he had joined the Taliban at the urging of his religious teacher, one Mullah Agha, when he was a student in Ghazni years ago. The mullah, he said, urged him to wage a jihad against the heathens. The heathens, the mullah said, were near Kunduz. 'He told me to fight the nonbelievers,' Mr. Amonullah said. As the taunting grew louder and the truck prepared to take him to an uncertain fate, Mr. Amonullah said he had reconsidered the concept of jihad. 'The Taliban are believers, and the Northern Alliance are believers,' he said. A few words on the evolution of his thinking followed: 'Only I am a nonbeliever now, because I allowed myself to be tricked.' "
Dexter Filkins, NY Times

2001-11-28T19:54:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Winston Churchill

2001-11-28T19:47:00.000-06:00

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war."
Allan Massie

2001-11-28T16:02:00.000-06:00

Daimnation! In "Economics in One Lesson," Henry Hazlitt illustrates this economic principle through the Fallacy of the Broken Window. A hoodlum throws a brick through a baker's window, shattering it. The window must be repaired. This makes the repairman better off, which most people see and acknowledge as a positive thing. But, less noticed -- and rarely discussed -- is that it also makes others worse off, namely the baker as well as those who would have sold things to the baker if he had not had to pay for repairing the window. For example, the baker had planned to buy a new suit, but he is now forced to use that money to repair the window. This makes the suit maker worse off: he will now sell one less suit. And the baker could have had both an intact window and a suit -- now, he can only have one.

If, indeed, the breaking of the window created prosperity, wouldn't we all break our windows? Or to put it another way, if bombing buildings created prosperity, wouldn't we all destroy our own houses? We do not destroy things that have real value (as opposed to things that are obsolete or have otherwise lost their value) precisely because such destruction causes a net loss, not a net gain in prosperity.

2001-11-28T05:25:00.000-06:00

Funhawg comments: I hate to pick on Willie the Madison, Wisconsin bus driver and radio gadfly, because driving a bus in Madison requires not only great skill but also great courage, but it was Willie calling public radio a few weeks ago who compared people like himself to those farsighted folks who opposed the Vietnam war in ’64.

Today (Nov. 27) he’s hosting the Public affairs program on WORT, Madison’s community access station. I catch him sneering at the peanut butter dropped with the emergency food packets “apparently not designed to be dropped from 35,000 feet”. Today’s guest is organizing a quilt drive. The quilts will be baled by Mennonites in Ohio and sent by boat to the Afghanistan Red Crescent. When informed by an alert listener that her relatives from Afghanistan claimed cash would be a useful response since one could obtain blankets in the marketplace in Pakistan for three dollars, she was politely informed that some people prefer hands on help. Winter can wait while we sew quilts.

A caller suggests asking one’s dentist for sample toothpaste and toothbrushes to send to Afghanistan. Perhaps to remove the peanut butter?

If Bin Ladin had called in ahead of time, before he bombed the WTC, maybe we could have had the high altitude Afghani cuisine emergency rations ready to go.

2001-11-27T10:48:00.000-06:00

The New Yorker: Fact Underlying the noble rhetoric about what a valuable civics lesson Madison has witnessed, there's a less noble quality, a failure to acknowledge the self-indulgence implicit in all the carping. The semiotics of the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem and the schoolhouse are abstractions that one has the luxury to dwell upon when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and dense concentrations of grieving survivors happen to be several hundred miles away. "Democracy" is one way to define the dialectic. Other terms apply as well.

2001-11-27T10:42:00.000-06:00

The New Yorker: Fact I can tell you that in Thailand or Laos, if the pledge or the national anthem is being said, no matter where you are you'd better stand up straight and salute. There's a feeling of fear that goes with that, the fear of a government that wants to control every single move a person makes. In Laos you have to have total respect for the government or you will be persecuted. Almost every Laotian teacher and student says the pledge, but does that teach them to be more patriotic? I don't think so

2001-11-27T08:18:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com The only way of overcoming the political fragmentation that is already causing frictions - and might explode in violence - is to reward co-operating local leaders with a flow of aid to their own people, while denying aid to troublemakers. That obviously requires central control of aid to Afghanistan, so that it can be channelled to preserve the peace, as well as to bring urgent help to a long-suffering population.

But if the dozens of competing NGOs now clamouring to enter are allowed in, each warlord will acquire his own supply of food for his men, and also a steady source of cash, by way of protection money.

That is what aid organisations do: to follow the television cameras inside conflicted countries, to obtain the publicity that keeps contribution flowing and the aid organisations in business, they pay off local warlords and mere gang leaders in transactions thinly masked as "escort fees", while feeding their warriors.

When unarmed aid operatives are handing out food and other help, men in arms are bound to be the first claimants on anything going. Aid organisations, in the odour of sanctity, thus serve as the quartermasters of civil war, as they did in Somalia most notoriously.

2001-11-27T08:16:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com Since September 11, we have devoted all of our energies, spending billions of dollars and federalizing thousands of workers, to prevent an exact replica of the hijackings. What we don't realize is the heroes on United 93 already solved that problem for us. Their actions, not our hubristic legislation, dealt the hijacking industry a death blow. Instead of focusing on the ways terrorists could attack next, including an infiltration of ground crews, we seek to reinvent the wheel by attacking yesterday's problem.
Attacking yesterday's problems is a hallmark of "security" planning; it was the focus on 1970s-style hijackings (aimed at TV coverage and usually involving few or no fatalities) that made the system vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks. I keep saying, air security is a joke -- and has to be by its very nature. What's happening in Kandahar right now -- and what happened in Mazar-i-Sharif this weekend -- is doing more to protect us than any number of airline screeners.

2001-11-27T08:14:00.000-06:00

DIANE FRANCIS has an interesting column on the difference between Islam and Arabism. Or maybe I should say Arab authoritarianism. Guess which one is really behind our problems?
The call for a Holy War has nothing to do with the teachings of Islam. Fanatical Muslim Arabs have infiltrated its clergy and offer followers the same dictatorial ruthlessness as exists in Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Kuwait.

Skeptics who feel there is something intrinsically wrong with Islamic theology should consider the following facts.

A businessman friend recently returned from a trip to Indonesia where he met with its President Megawati. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country and there is virtually no support there for bin Laden, the Taliban or other "Arab" causes.

The second-largest Muslim group happens to be the 155 million Muslims who live in India. This massive minority has likewise been totally indifferent to the call for Holy War.

The same applies to Muslims in Turkey and Nigeria and Pakistan as well as the "stans" of the former Soviet Union such as Tajikistan or Turkmenistan, which are part of America's coalition.

Put another way, if this was a pan-Islamic movement, every Muslim country in the world would have exploded with grassroots support for the cause. If this was a pan-Islamic movement, the Afghans would have resisted attempts to unseat the Taliban. Instead, the rapid toppling of that government reveals that the Af

2001-11-27T03:50:00.000-06:00

George Bush asks: "Is it still unpatriotic to criticize me?" Obviously not, because Doonesbury is having a go. This is quite a relief. I don't buy all this guff - put about by Andrew Sullivan and others - about Bush being such a great president. I admire the fact that he's working to a reasonable schedule, unlike Tony Blair, who is running himself ragged. And Bush's policies have been more thoughtful than his critics expected, though that is not hard. And he does seem to delegate well to Cheney, and cabinet members such as Rumsfelt. (Though maybe that is out of necessity.) But, when Americans are crying out for inspiration, he is still wholly uninspiring. #

But whose damn fault is the poverty?
Apparently - I wasn't there - there was one common theme to the antiwar demonstration in London yesterday. Speakers from Bianca Jagger to journalist John Pilger linked the war to global poverty. You know what, I agree. But that begs the question: whose fault is the poverty? And it just isn't good enough to blame global multinationals. Try focusing some attention on Islamic family planning policy, which is some variant of: woman, it's babies back to back or you're moving into the basement. Or the fact that there are *no* Arab countries with working democracies: the region has worse government than Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Far East, even Africa, for god's sake. Could someone explain how this call all be the fault of the2

2001-11-27T03:35:00.000-06:00

Images in a Rearview Mirror Some people never learn, but then some people never intend to.

2001-11-27T03:34:00.000-06:00

Images in a Rearview Mirror He even favored us with the most witless and fatalistic of the recent naysayings, to the effect that if we kill Osama bin Laden then others will rise to take his place. I actually think this proposition is an unsafe one: Bin Laden looks like one of a rare kind to me (and increasingly flaky in recent guest appearances). His deputies are obvious goons and would probably start knifing one another if the holy one stepped on a mine. But leave that to one side--does it never occur to anyone that tens of thousands of people would also rise up to rid the world of bin Laden all over again?

2001-11-27T01:29:00.000-06:00

Baraboo Online Archives Bowman said the figure is based on the theoretical value of residential properties that can't be developed if homes can't be placed on tax parcels.
"It would remove a whole bunch of parcels for possible sale for development," he said. "The half a billion is just a very rough estimate of how much property value could be involved. It's the so-called 'highest and best development' that would be available under the current regulations."

2001-11-27T00:36:00.000-06:00

The Real War "Is single-minded fanaticism a necessity for passion and religious survival, or can we have a multilingual view of God — a notion that God is not exhausted by just one religious path?" asked Rabbi Hartman.

2001-11-26T00:11:00.000-06:00

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Cal Thomas The Johnson tapes should also teach conservatives a lesson. Many anti-war activists love this country as much as those who supported the Vietnam War. Just because someone is of a different party or persuasion does not necessarily mean they are wrong.

2001-11-26T00:00:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch I'm thankful for is the internet. […] Some of my optimism for the future comes from knowing that, from this year on, every major conflict involving a nation connected to the web will have tens, or hundreds, or thousands of warblogs, covering it from left, right, inside, outside, ahead and behind. I don't like to boast, but I'm a bit proud of this: They tore down the World Trade Center, and we responded by creating something new. They attacked us with ignorance, we replied with curiosity and informed criticism. We didn't want to leave the 90's, but we accepted the irreversible, and turned it into something good.

2001-11-25T23:55:00.000-06:00

Matt Welch Knee-jerk anti-Americanism, anti-globalization and anti-fact-checking will continue to be exposed and condemned, mercilessly, by that growing part of the Left that no longer finds it funny. Granted, this is all my wishful thinking, but at least it doesn’t depend on some insulting theory about the stupidity of my fellow citizens.

2001-11-25T18:51:00.000-06:00

Reason magazine -- November 2001, Free Radical: Christopher Hitchens interviewed by Rhys Southan John Maynard Keynes said somewhere -- I think in Essays in Persuasion -- that many revolutions are begun by conservatives because these are people who tried to make the existing system work and they know why it does not. Which is quite a profound insight. It used to be known in Marx’s terms as revolution from above.

2001-11-25T18:02:00.000-06:00

Reason The United States consumes roughly 20 million barrels of oil each day, almost 9 million in the form of gasoline.

2001-11-25T18:00:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com AMERICA: NO BETTER THAN THE TALIBAN! That's because, according to the authors of this piece, "During the 20th century, American culture has dictated a nearly complete uncovering of the female form." So, you see, American women who follow the dictates of fashion because they want to look stylish are exactly like Afghan women who wear burkas because religious police will beat them to death with sticks if they show their ankles!
Whether it's the dark, sad eyes of a woman in purdah or the anxious darkly circled eyes of a girl with anorexia nervosa, the woman trapped inside needs to be liberated from cultural confines in whatever form they take. The burka and the bikini represent opposite ends of the political spectrum but each can exert a noose-like grip on the psyche and physical health of girls and women.
Statements like this have gone unchallenged for years because their absolutely mind-numbing stupidity makes a reply seem almost pointless. This, unfortunately, has caused the people who make them to believe that they must have something worthwhile to say. They don't. In fact, this kind of thing betrays an inability to make simple distinctions that suggests its authors are incapable of critical thought.

2001-11-25T03:05:00.000-06:00

An Alternate Reality As Jonathan Chait points out, there used to be some question about the true motives of people like Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. Did they really believe in free markets, or did they just want to take from the poor and give to the rich? Now we know.

2001-11-25T03:04:00.000-06:00

An Alternate Reality Most political reporting about the stimulus debate describes it as a conflict of ideologies. But ideology has nothing to do with it. No economic doctrine I'm aware of, right or left, says that an $800 million lump-sum transfer to General Motors will lead to more investment when the company is already sitting on $8 billion in cash.

2001-11-25T01:28:00.000-06:00

WarLog: World War III but because it's instructional to remember the extraordinary power of a cult. This devil Jones got people to kill themselves and even their children, for Christ's sake, and with time we have seen that there was no foundation for this horrid act in religion or politics or humanity. He was insane and he made the people around him perform the ultimate insanity. Bin Laden is insane and he manages to get the people around him to perform equally evil insanities; he runs a well-armed cult but a cult nonetheless. It is a mistake to lend him any credibility in terms of religion or politics or humanity to think that there is anything more to him. It's not a movement -- now, finally, Arab leaders are starting to say that -- it's just a bunch of lunatics. So let's not waste breath and bits arguing about whether there is anything worth arguing about behind bin Laden's evil insanity. And let's also not start looking on New York or Washington or America as jinxed or crazy even if the danger is making us act understandably nutty at times. We are the sane ones. He is, to quote our President, the evil one. He is a dangerous cultist who must be stopped before he kills again. It's as simple as that.

2001-11-25T01:10:00.000-06:00

WarLog: World War III This is one of those moments that makes me marvel still at the wonders of the Web. I felt like I did when I was a plain print editor, handing a story to a reporter in a room filled with them: "Welch, see what you can find here." And this Welch would return with the facts and a good story and thus news was made. Now the Web helps do that.
The Web -- and webloggers in particular -- add perspective that rarely could exist in print because newspapers and magazines and TV are all one-way media; editors are all about telling you what they think you should know. But the Web is about listening to the audience; the audience owns this medium. And the audience is smart; they call us in the media when we're wrong

2001-11-25T01:08:00.000-06:00

The Times
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 2001

Death of Bin Laden's deputy: How the US killed Al-Qaeda leaders by remote control

2001-11-25T01:01:00.000-06:00

WarLog: World War III - Christian Science Monitor on what's next after Afghanistan: Trying to find and destroy cells all over the world; hard work. The story concludes: "The best outcome ... might be the establishment of a 'new post-cold-war deterrence,' in which no nation willingly harbors terrorists, for fear of US action."

2001-11-25T00:59:00.000-06:00

Less competition, less cash for start-ups - Tech News - CNET.com Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who want to look on the sunny side of start-ups can focus on Mittelstaedt's parting comment: "In an economy this big, there's always money out there

2001-11-25T00:51:00.000-06:00

Boston Globe Online / Business / Brookstone looks for its better half The average Brookstone store, which tends to be in a mall, has annual sales of about $1.4 million, he said. Larger Gardeners Eden stores could see sales of $2 million per unit

2001-11-25T00:25:00.000-06:00

WarLog: World War III Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian who "believed that men are sufficiently wicked to require tough methods for the preservation of order. Huntington, an Episcopalian, was attracted to what he describes as Niebuhr's 'compelling combination of morality and practical realism.' Though an ardent Cold Warrior, Niebuhr never succumbed to moral triumphalism, believing that history was more profoundly characterized by irony than by progress. Even if the United States were to win the Cold War, Niebuhr wrote in 1952, this outcome might only cause the nation to overextend itself, dissipating its power in an excess of righteousness."

2001-11-24T04:59:00.000-06:00

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today Earlier, the Press Trust of India reported that a pair of Pakistani helicopters had evacuated a group of Pakistani military officers, including two brigadiers, from Kunduz. Indian intelligence officials "said these forces were part of Pakistani army units, seconded to Taleban ranks for command and control operations," PTI reports, adding:
Defence experts in Delhi wondered how Pakistani choppers could have entered Afghan air space and landed in Kunduz with the US Air Force having tight control over the Afghan skies.
They said the operation could not have been carried out without a nod from the US.
"It has to be done with US connivance and, therefore, poses vital questions about America's aims and objectives," they added.

2001-11-24T04:44:00.000-06:00

InstaPundit.Com FRANCE IS SENDING ITS AIRCRAFT CARRIER to the Indian Ocean to help. Hmm. Aside from its rather late-in-the-day nature, this reminds me of what Rommel allegedly said about the Italians joining the Axis: "If they oppose us, we'll need two divisions to hold the passes through the Alps. If they join us, we'll have to send twenty divisions to give them some backbone." (I believe Churchill's remarks on the same subject were, "It's only fair. We had them in the last war.") Given the record of the Charles de Gaulle, we'll probably need to station a rescue fleet permanently in its vicinity as a precaution, assuming it makes it there in one piece.

2001-11-24T04:38:00.000-06:00

JS Online: New car deals load up lots with used vehicles I've been around this business for about 15 years, and I'm trying to remember a time when it was better for the consumer to be in the market for a vehicle," Harris said.

2001-11-24T04:26:00.000-06:00

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

2001-11-22T04:40:00.000-06:00

VPC - Firearms Training For Jihad in America In addition to urging would-be holy warriors to prepare themselves for jihad physically and through martial arts, the pamphlet notes the advantages the United States offers for firearms training and advises readers on how to exploit them:

2001-11-22T04:11:00.000-06:00

Did the Saudi royals or the US have any qualms about arming and brutalising these frustrated young fundamen-talists? Brzezinski had his response to that question ready: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Nowadays, the west is less smug about its interference. It is beginning to realise that the "stirred-up Muslims" may not have finished their upheavals.

2001-11-22T04:08:00.000-06:00

TOMPAINE.com The report makes the argument that political correctness reigns supreme on American campuses today. And the people who do feel inclined to support the U.S. government feel intimidated by the climate of political correctness from giving voice to their true feelings.

And I have to say, looking around me at MIT, this is just complete junk.

2001-11-22T04:01:00.000-06:00

New Sensors Report, 'I Know They're in There, I Can See Them Breathing' The sensing methods have been developed as part of a shift by the Defense Department toward locating distant targets quickly, so American forces get the first shot. Using the element of surprise would make it less necessary to harden the defenses for troops in the field, said Dr. A. Fenner Milton, the director of the Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, in a presentation last year at a conference for military contractors at Fort Belvoir, Va. The goal, he said, is to "substitute information for armor."