Mark Steyn's Constitutional Analysis

The Shia get an acknowledgment that Islam is "the official religion of the state," just as the Church of England is the official church of that state -- though, unlike the Anglican bishops, Iraq's imams won't get permanent seats in the national legislature.

The Kurds get a loose federal structure in which just about everything except national defense and foreign policy is reserved to regions and provinces. I said in the week after Baghdad fell that the Kurds would settle for being Quebec to Iraq's Canada, and so they have.

The Sunnis, who ran Iraq from their days as Britain's colonial managing class right up to the toppling of Saddam, don't like the federal structure, not least because it's the Kurds and Shia who have the bulk of the oil. So they've been wooed with an arrangement whereby the country's oil revenue will be divided at a national level on a per-capita basis.

If you'd been asked in 2003 to devise an ideal constitution for Iraq's very non-ideal circumstances, it would look something like this: a highly decentralized federation that accepts the reality that Iraq is a Muslim nation but reserves political power for elected legislators -- and divides the oil revenue fairly.

And if it doesn't work? Well, that's what the Sunnis are twitchy about. If Baathist dead-enders and imported Islamonuts from Saudi and Syria want to make Iraq ungovernable, the country will dissolve into a democratic Kurdistan, a democratic Shiastan, and a moribund Sunni squat in the middle. And, in the grander scheme of things, that wouldn't be so terrible either.

To be sure, we shouldda done this, and we shouldda done that. Yet nonetheless Iraq advances day by day. The real quagmire is at home, where the kinkily gleeful relish of defeatism manifested by Cindy Sheehan, Joan Baez, Ted Kennedy et al. bears less and less relationship to anything happening over there. Iraq's future is a matter for the Iraqis now -- which, given the U.S. media, Democrat blowhards like Joe Biden and Republican squishes like Chuck Hagel, is just as well.

Relationships in the market place

The previous post and others about the crazy way people are financing housing has consequences for other things we may not realize immediately. For example, the machinists are striking Northwest Airlines because the company has asked them to take a wage and benefit cut so the company can continue to fly. The union called a strike without consulting members and now there is some discord in the ranks. The following shows why some union members are taking actions which continue to weaken the union movement.

Sue Dorr, who has spent eight years as an airplane cleaner in Detroit, said she began looking for work a month ago, anticipating that the union would go on strike. But, Ms. Dorr said, "I'm going to have to take two jobs just to keep my house."

Sue may not be successful in keeping her house and the union may not be able to convince its members that a strike which may lead to not only a job loss but a loss of your home is worth it.

This is pretty scary

New products give homeowners increasing leeway as to how much equity they can tap and how fast they can tap it. Credit cards that allow consumers to draw on their home equity loans are one such device.

CMG Financial Services, a mortgage company in San Ramon, Calif., introduced another tool this summer: a combination checking account and mortgage.

It works like this: Your paycheck is deposited into your account and immediately applied to your mortgage principal. Over the course of the month, as you spend money on food, gas and other necessities, the principal creeps back up. But the result is that your mortgage debt gets paid off more quickly.

That's the theory, at least. Of course, if you're indulgent, you can pay much less of your mortgage — like none. Any shortfall is added on to the principal.

Iraq Sunnis

Sunni Arabs are getting fed up with the terrorism, and lack of order in Sunni Arab areas. The contrast between the poverty stricken Sunni Arab areas, and the peaceful, and increasingly prosperous Kurdish and Shia Arab zones, is growing. Sunni Arab tribes are taking sides, and going to war with each other over this issue. That’s part of the problem with the deadlock over the new constitution. The other problem is that many Sunni Arabs really believe that they represent the majority of the population. Even those Sunni Arabs who know better, believe that the Sunni Arabs deserve more power, and oil income, than their 20 percent of the population justifies. The fact that Sunni Arabs have called the shots for centuries is something the Sunni Arabs just cannot give up, or at least not give up easily. At the same time, Sunni Arabs appear to be clueless when it comes to confronting their blood soaked past, and the fact that they grabbed most of the oil money for the past half century. Too many Sunni Arabs believe that reality does not apply to them.

Read the whole thing here.

This should be fun.

Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for tasks of high complexity, according to the authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn concludes.

They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, typical for people with first-class degrees.

When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Tularemia Outbreak

An outbreak of rabbit fever, or tularemia, a rare dangerous disease, registered recently in the Volga provinces of Central Russia, could have been caused by a leak from biological warfare facilities present in the area, a U.S. Website surmised Thursday.

Earlier this week, Russian news agencies reported on dozens of cases of tularemia registered in Russia since early August. From Aug. 4 as many as 96 people including 15 children sought medical assistance at hospitals in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan.

Mike Yon reports from Iraq

Everyone should read this report of action in Mosul. Absolutely amazing.

Swedes are really strange

The Malmo, Sweden library lets you borrow people to talk to for 45 minutes in an effort to overcome prejudice and discrimination. So, if you are sitting in a bar you can call up and ask for the library to send over a veiled Muslim woman, a gay, a gypsy, a hard-drug user, or whatever. The theory is by asking questions and carrying on a conversation for a while you will won't think negatively about such people in the future. If this catches on in other parts of Europe, some of us may have to go over there and let them talk to us to overcome anti-Americanism.

Mil;itary Enlistments

First time military enlistments are running a bit behind, another product of a burgeoning economy, but re-enlistments, even from soldiers in combat zones, are running ahead of expectations.

What does it mean when the guys in the thick of it, closest to the action, at risk, on the ground and looking at things with their own eyes, decide to stay for another hitch?

They must believe in what they're doing.

From IBD

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court this summer gave New London, Conn., the green light to seize private homes in the city’s Fort Trumbull area and sell them to a private developer. The developer plans to build houses, stores and offices where the homes now stand. The city claims the development qualifies as “public use” because it’ll generate more in local taxes than the homeowners will pay.
This alone is an outrage clearly inconsistent with our constitutional rights and liberties. But the barons of New London aren’t through.
Drunk with the power imbibed from the Kelo v. New London decision, they’re trying to collect back rent from the seven homeowners who fought the seizure, arguing they’ve lived on city property since 2000, the year the homes were condemned.
The New London Development Corp., front group for the city’s shakedown, is also offering buyouts based on the market rate in 2000 instead of present-day value. Given the real estate boom, the difference is significant.
Some say New London’s decrees add insult to injury. Others call them childish vindictiveness. Either way, they’re unconscionably abusive and decidedly totalitarian.
According to the Fairfield County Weekly, some homeowners in this working-class (but unblighted) neighborhood will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back rent. Matt Dery has been assessed more than $300,000. Susette Kelo, owner of the little pink house above, says her rent will be a more modest $57,000. But she’d still have to “leave here broke,” she told the newspaper.
The city also wants any money the homeowners made from tenants who rented their properties. In some cases, the rents are the homeowners’ lone source of income.
We have to keep reminding ourselves this is Connecticut, U.S.A., not Zimbabwe, Africa, where thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe has seized virtually every white-owned farm and pushed the country near starvation.

Our newest grandchild

Jackson Alexander Finley at 120 minutes

This should work

BANGKOK (Reuters) - With Asian tourists still shunning its southern beaches, Thailand is calling in a revered Chinese sea goddess to ward off the restive spirits of the thousands who died in last December's tsunami.

A statue of Godmother Ruby, known as Mazu in Chinese, will be brought to the Thai island of Phuket from the Chinese coastal province of Fujian next month for ghost-clearing rites, said Suwalai Pinpradab of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

"After the tsunami, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Chinese and other East Asians dare not come because they don't want to visit places where mass deaths took place," Suwalai told Reuters on Friday. "It is inauspicious."

Mazu, a Taoist goddess of the sea, has a huge following among fishermen and shipworkers in coastal provinces of southern China and Taiwan.

Thailand's official death toll from the December 26 disaster stands at 5,395, of which 2,436 are believed to be foreigners. Of these, fewer than 50 were East Asians.

Bathing suit in Saudia Arabia

This is from an ad selling bathing suits to Saudi women. My wife and dermatologist would love them.

Smog in California

Standing around chewing the cud, cows don't look especially threatening. But dairy herds in California are the latest livestock to be branded an environmental health risk on account of their flatulent behavior.

This month government regulators issued a report identifying dairy cows as the main source of smog-forming pollutants in the San Joaquin Valley, California.

The announcement highlights growing concern over the global impact of greenhouse gases produced by cattle and other livestock.

A dairy cow annually emits almost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of smog-forming gases known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—more than a car or light truck, according to the San Joaquin Valley United Air Pollution Control District.

Read all about this nonsense here.

China Gas Lines

The picture I put up yesterday showing gasoline lines in China got me to wondering what the problem was and it turns out the problem is fairly simple. China went the Jimmy Carter route. In the 70's Carter put on price controls in an effort to fight inflation. Not only that, he also added a "windfall profits tax" on oil and gas producers. China is doing the same. O.K. now here is the question. If the price of a barrel of oil in China is held $10 below the actual world price, where will the Chinese oil firms sell their oil? Bingo!!!

When Reagan became President the first thing he did was immediately repeal all Carter-era oil and gas controls and the excess profits tax. Oil prices went to their natural market value and through the magic of market forces, production rose, consumption fell and prices began to decline.

Gas lines in China-August 18,2005

I am not sure how much it costs when these drivers get to buy gas, but I am glad to be paying $2.50 per gallon in comparison.

Who would have thought?

Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests.
Read the whole story here

Cleaning up the mess

I should have known better than to call RU-486 a morning-after pill since it is actually a true abortiofacient drug which terminates confirmed pregnancies rather than block implantation of newly fertilized eggs. My main point remains intact, however.

Why I own stock in Syneron

Syneron makes a product called VelaSmooth. It sells for $65,000 and physicians, primarily gynecologists, buy it. They use it on women at a cost of $150 per visit and most women need 16 treatment sessions and then maintenance treatments every 3 to 4 months. Most doctors can generate $22,000 to $25,000 per MONTH with VelaSmooth so it gets paid for in 3 months and then the rest is gravy. Furthermore, the treatments are not reliant on insurance company payments. The women pay after each visit. Why do they do this? VelaSmooth combines radio and laser to reduce the appearance of cellulite. The symbol of this company is ELOS.

Something to keep in mind

During World War II the Japanese military sent 4,000 young, inexperienced pilots up in obsolete aircraft with a 250 pound bomb to perform as martyrs and, similar to today's terrorists, give themselves up for the "cause". By war's end, the U.S. had credited Kamikaze pilots with sinking 34 Navy ships and damaging 368 others. Some 4,900 sailors were killed and about the same number were wounded. The present war started with the greatest Kamikaze attack of all time on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which killed almost 3,000 people. Now we must see if our nation can perserveer as we did in the previous war.

Law suits and adverse drug outcomes

Here is something to watch for in coming weeks. What happens when a drug, approved by the FDA, suddenly has some unexpected deaths associated with its use? Think of Vioxx. This is an antiinflammatory drug taken by persons with painful arthritis and in a few cases patients had heart attacks and died. What happened next is being acted out in a court room where Merck is being sued by trial lawyers for humongous damages on behalf of "victims" and others who took the drug but did not die and are also going to be included in law suits to come.
Now we have a situation where 4 women who took RU-486 out of 400,000 who have taken the drug since 2000 have died of infections which are very closely attributable to having taken the drug. RU-486 has a controversial history since it is well-known as the "morning-after" pill which blocks pregnancy if taken soon after intercourse. The anti-abortion position was that the drug would be misused and was dangerous to women who took it. In fairness, however, they also opposed it on moral grounds as being an abortion pill. Since this was the anti-abortion position, the liberals defended it and got it approved by the FDA. The pro-abortion crowd is now fighting to get it approved as an over the counter drug.
Here is what we need to watch for. Will the trial lawyers yield to their liberal instincts and leave the drug alone or will they yield to their greedy instincts and sue to have the drug be withdrawn and the manufacturer pay through the news?

Report from Iraq

It's been nearly a year since a gang has been able to attack and capture a police station. The cops know how to call in reinforcements, including American ground troops and air support. In response, the gangs increasingly turn to murdering and kidnapping individual police. But this sometimes backfires when the cops go after relatives of the criminals. This is an old Middle Eastern practice. Kill a cop, and the police will lock up your mother until you turn yourself in. The outlaws are at a big disadvantage once the police come to town, build police stations that cannot be captured, and establish the capability to arrest people. Law and order changes the way the war is being fought. The gangsters are increasingly making desperate and spectacular attacks with bombs and ambushes, failing to shake the cops, and then fleeing to the shrinking number of towns without police stations. The Iraqi police are taking more casualties than the Americans, but the cops are winning the war, one neighborhood at a time.
Read the whole thing here.

Mortgage Problems Ahead??

I knew that many folks were taking out adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) which will result in higher monthly payments if interest rates go up--which they are doing at the lower end and long rates should follow. That would scare me, but I recently read of a home mortgage product called an option ARM that would terrify me. With an option ARM, the borrower has the option to make minimal monthly payments which are below what interest only loans would be. This means that the balance of what is owed keeps going up even if rates stay the same. This is called negative amortization. It also means that if interest rates go up beyond what is manageable for the borrower and there is a coincident decrease in home values (don't believe it can't happen), the so-called owner will be forced to sell at a loss or simply walk away and let the lender have the house. If this happens on a large scale, the victims will not only be the borrowers and the lending institutions, but all of us will suffer since Congress will step in and bail everyone out with our money.

Sylvester Graham

This week's U.S. News and World Report has an interesting series of stories about food in the U.S. It makes the point that Americans are fascinated by food and I am a good example of that, I guess. One of the stories described the contribution of Sylvester Graham who invented the Graham cracker. He was a food fanatic of his day and believed that if we ate what Adam and Eve ate, we would be in physiological balance as nature intended. This ruled out meat, shellfish, salt, spices, sugar, coffee, tea, and alcohol. He was especially keen on controlling sexual urges through diet---especially masturbation. He felt that you need to avoid foods that stay in the body for a long time since they become fermented, turned to alcohol and this leads to nervous irritability and eroticism. This lead him to develop his own high fiber wheat flour from which he made his famous Graham cracker and, of course, we have now adopted his belief in high fiber diets even though I doubt many of us are selecting foods to suppress urges.

Australian in Al Qaeda

There was a documentary released last week by the terrorists with links to or in Al Qaeda which differed from others in that at least one segment was in English by a person with an Australian accent. It has now been established that his name is Mathew Stewart and this is his background:

Private Mathew Stewart was patrolling the streets of Dili, East Timor, in 2002 when he was confronted with the full horror of live combat.

The quiet soldier and keen surfer from Queensland's Sunshine Coast stumbled upon the almost unrecognisable body of a Dutch journalist killed by militia.

Financial Times reporter Sander Thoenes, 30, had been shot in the chest and badly beaten. According to his comrades, Stewart was deeply traumatised by the discovery, his first encounter with death on the front line.

He was discharged from the army's 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for psychological reasons a short time later, sending him into a spiral of depression and self-doubt.

While other East Timor veterans looked for a change of lifestyle back home, Stewart began fixing his sights on the war unravelling in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on New York the previous year.

Furious at his perceived mistreatment in the Australian army, Stewart began making plans to fight for the other side.

This makes one wonder about the intelligence communities claim that it would have been impossible to infiltrate Al Qaeda. If an Australian soldier can walk in and join, surely we could find someone to get in there. Or maybe we have.

What happens when you elect a German Pope

WWF International Issues Climate Conclusions

European Union to set tougher targets for emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide.
…
...13 of the 16 cities surveyed were at least one degree Celsius higher than during the first five years of the 1970s, the environmental organisation said.
…
There is a trend of increasing summer temperatures and that is due to global warming.

Certainly urban areas are experiencing climate change. But it’s a micro-climate change due to a well documented phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect.

Air in urban areas is often 6-8 degrees hotter than in surrounding rural areas. The abundance of dark surfaces in urban areas absorb heat and the minimal vegetation limits the shade required to mitigate such effects. The urban heat island effect is blamed for increased energy use, and therefore, increased emissions.

The answer is not to tighten emissions standards and control “global warming,” but to apply common sense urban design. Urban development should utilize to the greatest extent feasible heat reflective materials on surfaces and roofs. The EPA recommends the use of building materials that turn traditional heat absorbing surfaces “cool” or “green.” Not only would urban areas be cooler, but they would be improved aesthetically.

Unions vs. Wal-Mart

Teachers union members are trying to persuade consumers to boycott Wal-Mart. The campaign claims Wal-Mart pays low wages, fails to provide affordable health care, discriminates against women, violates child labor laws and shifts "more than $2.5 billion a year in health care and welfare costs for its underpaid and underinsured workers to U.S. taxpayers," reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Retail employees don't make much money, but presumably they prefer a low-wage job to the alternative. Most Wal-Mart employees work full-time and average $9.68 an hour, the company says. Health benefits start at $35 a month. Wal-Mart gave $45 million last year to teachers and students, in addition to selling low-cost school supplies.

So why is Wal-Mart any worse than any other retailer? Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, said the Walton Family Foundation -- run by the heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart -- has spent about $250 million in the past six years promoting the school-voucher movement and lobbying for tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.

I guess that explains it.

Britain getting smart according to Michael Barone

British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack. Tony Blair has spoken favorably about multiculturalism. But on July 7, he struck a different note. "It is important, however, that the terrorists realize our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause the death and destruction of innocent people and impose their extremism on the world."
Writers in other tolerant countries have been noticing the blowback from multiculturalism. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, "the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance."

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swathes of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

Random Thoughts

My bride and I were in St. Maartens last year and we heard that the airport was on the coast and landings brought the planes in right over the beach. Here is confirmation of that.

1. I am not sure what the mission is for our shuttle program on paper, but it seems like the primary objective now seems to be a launch followed by a long repair process with the hope that the crew can get back alive.
2. I read a good description of the current real estate market in some areas--especially the one I have been playing with the last few months. It is like a flock of chickens. If you put out a pan of big food scraps, the chickens come running and the first ones pick up a big piece and depart quickly...the others see the pieces in the beak, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That is the resale psychology.
   
3. The female teacher in New York who is accused of raping her male students will be prosecuted in the same way as a male teacher would be who raped female students....according to the D.A. Nonsense. In the first place none of the so-called victims in this case filed charges and I doubt any of them would call the experience "victimization".
   
4. My understanding is we need to watch to see if Iraq comes up with a constitution which gives the 3 sectarian sections of the country strong powers with a weak central government or if the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia sections are weak relative to the central government. I am not sure they will be able to avoid a civil war in any event.
5. I admit I am no Brad Pitt, but I am not sure I would give up Jennifer Anniston for one of Billy Bob Thornton's rejects.

Americans With Disabilities

I have always had problems with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is not a very popular position, but I guess I am enough Libertarian to believe that the market would have done the same thing if left alone. Merchants would have provided access to their stores and parking places without the government getting involved and as a result concocting all kinds of ridiculous rules to hamper small businesses in particular. Well, now we are getting ready to have some new laws as a result of a review of existing practices by the Department of Justice. There is a guy named Banerjee who is a paraplegic due to an automobile accident and he is now asking that ALL public golf courses be required to provide special golf carts with swing-out seats which would allow him to swing at a ball while seated. Obviously, this will impose a hugh financial burden to many courses and guess who will be required to pay for the carts which will be seldom if ever used?
There are other changes being contemplated. The blind are asking for ATM machines which have audio capabilities so they can operate them independently. With such a machine a user plugs headphones into a jack and a computerized voice guides the customer through the transaction by pointing out where the buttons are.
Finally, the National Association of Manufacturers is concerned about proposals which would require wheelchair accessible routes even in areas where the public is not permitted--such as the plants work floor.
All this is fairly typical of government gone wild, I think.

Show Us the Scientific Data

The Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is Joe Barton of Texas. He recently requested that three noted climate scientists provide data related to their claim that climate changes and global warming require tens of billions of new taxpayer money. This research, by the way was heavily funded by federal taxes and by other sources which could have had a political stake in the outcome of the researchers claims....namely the U.N. and the Pew Center on Climate Change.
Barton asked Universtiy of Virginia's Michael Mann to share the data and the methodologies they used to come to the conclusion that the 20th Century was the warmest of the past two millenniums and also the source o the funding of their research. This has been called a witch hunt despite the fact that the issue of whether human carbon dioxide emissions cause any significant amount of greenhouse gasses is still the object of intense debate among scientists. Mann's research popularized his theory that shows nearly 1000 years of relatively stable temperatures followed by an abrupt upturn in temperatures in the latter part of the 20th century. This is the well-known "hockey stick" graph. Six teams of scientists published critiques of this work and showed that Mann omitted key data and misinterpreted other data. Mann's team later issued a partial "correction" conceding it had underestimated temperature variations by more than 33% since 1400, but stated the major error did not affect his conclusions. At the same time, Mann's team adamantly refused other, more skeptical scientists the right to review the raw data or the methods they used to arrive at their conclusions. Without that information, it is impossible to determine if Mann's research is valid and Congressman Barton is doing exactly what he should to insist on full disclosure before spending more of our money on such a boondoggle.

Leno on O.J.

In Florida, a judge has found O.J. Simpson guilty of stealing satellite TV and ordered him to pay DirecTV $25,000 in back charges. We are finally getting tough on celebrities in this country.

Were you shocked? I knew he was a murderer, I didn’t know he was a thief. I was stunned.

I just hope this one incident doesn’t ruin O.J.’s reputation.

Howard Dean

This man is really an idiot. Most recently he loudly blamed the widely unpopular Kelo decision which allowed the taking of property by some town in Conneticutt for private developers on Bush. He said it was "Bush's right wing Supreme Court". Not only has Bush not named any of the current court, but the only dissention to the decision were by Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor. You won't read about this in any of the MSM, by the way.

Modern day college football

Here in Evans, Georgia the major universities in the area are the University of Georgia, Clemson University, South Carolina University and Georgia Tech. The rabid fans of each school are numerous and the papers obviously cover them to varying extents. Today, there was an article on the U. of Georgia football team. The coach, Mark Richt, was questioned about the "character" of his players. Since April, 2004, 11 of his players have been arrested and 6 of his 19 incoming players (students recruited to join the school this Fall) are ineligible to play because of poor grades. There could be another one depending on the outcome of an investigation of alleged cheating by another player who also had a charge of battery associated with the cheating incident dropped. Richt says he is unsure what action to take against this player, but he did say his program is under control. This may be true if he compares his program with others in the area. South Carolina has had 12 students arrested since January and the school has admitted to 5 major NCAA violations and 7 others. Tennessee has also had 12 players arrested since February, 2004. Georgia Tech had to dismiss a player because he was the designated recipient of several pounds of marijuana sent through the mail. Tech is supposed to have the most intelligent students, also.
It seems to me the recruiting profiles being used by the coaches needs to be refined somewhat. It makes little sense to brag in February about how pleased you are with the recruiting class if you have to unlock the jails at the end of the summer to get them in pads.

Reports from Iraq

Most of the TV and print "journalists" in Iraq do their work from the Green Zone. The content of their reports consists of passing on reports from the field back to headquarters from the troups out in the field. This might be smart on their behalf, but you can't really get a feel for what is going on up close and personal reporting this way. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one reporter who is actually in the field. His name is Michael Yon. The travels all over Iraq and is now embedded with a group of soldiers from A Company, 1-24th Infantry Regiment. There is an E-mail service he has which will alert you when he has another report. The one I read today is really good and I recommend that you bookmark his site and sign up for the E-mails. You can do all that here.

Urban Outfitters not PC

Urban Outfitters clothing store is once again being targeted for controversial T-shirts that are viewed as racist.

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval and a group of Latino youths will hold a news conference today denouncing Urban Outfitters for selling T-shirts that bear what they deem a "racially offensive'' slogan.

The T-shirts, which read "New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico,'' are inappropriate and "recycle an insulting image of Mexico and Mexicans that the Latino community has fought long and hard against,'' according to Sandoval's office.

Sandoval's office called the store a "repeat offender,'' eluding to a T-shirt sold in 2003 that read "Ghettopoly,'' and bore pictures of marijuana leaves and malt liquor bottles. The store stopped selling the shirts after black leaders protested them.

The store also offended some with a T-shirt it sold that said, "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl,'' which was surrounded by dollar signs. The company eventually altered the shirts and removed the dollar signs.

"Our community is outraged by this blatant display of derogatory stereotyping,'' said Sandoval, whose parents were born in Mexico.

More from Mark Steyn

For four years, much of the western world said, " Bomb us, and we agonise over the "root causes" (that is, what we did wrong). Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace". Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush, Blair and Howard. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "decaf latte with skimmed milk and cinnamon sprinkles".

Read it all here.

Lucky Bush

Politicians thrive when their enemies lend themselves to derision and scorn. Bush, for example, was re-elected in large part because, I think, he was demonized by a big fat slob like Michael Moore. Now I learn that Jane Fonda intends to tour the U.S. this Fall in a bus fueled with vegetable oil to protest the war in Iraq. How could he be so lucky?

What kind of slime did this?

Not even 24-hours after Private First Class Tim Hines's wife and family said goodbye at his funeral, American flags that had adorned their Fairfield yard were piled beneath a car and burned.

Hines' sister-in-law woke up to hear her car alarm around 5:30 a.m. and saw her car on fire.

As firefighters brought the fire under control they discovered a pile of around 20 American flags underneath the car.

Neighbors say Hines' wife's family had flags line their front yard and on the porch.

Those were taken as well as flags in neighboring yards.

Hines was injured in Iraq and flown to Walter Reed Hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, but succumbed to the injuries before he could return home.

Hines' wife Katy is eight-months pregnant with their second child. She buried her husband on Friday.

Katy Hines had just moved back into her parents' home and woke up to find her sister's car consumed by flames.

Military Report from Iraq

July 24, 2005: For thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked for Saddam’s security apparatus, the day of judgment is getting closer. Saddam’s enforcers rarely hid their identities, and many Kurds and Shia Arabs know the names, and faces, of the Sunni Arab thugs that tormented, and tortured them, and murdered their friends and family. These thugs have supported al Qaeda’s terror campaign in Iraq, and participated in some of the non-suicide attacks on Iraqis and foreigners. For the last two years, the enforcers were able to hide out in Sunni Arab towns and neighborhoods that were free of government control. But this provided only temporary refuge, and created other problems. The lack of police meant that criminal gangs, terrorist groups and warlord militias were in charge. These three groups didn’t always get along with each other. But they all left the old Saddam thugs alone. Now, with the government taking control of Sunni Arab areas, the Saddam thugs are in trouble, and getting desperate. These guys have several options. They can leave the country. Many have already done this. But there are no real sanctuaries for former Saddam killers. Syria is safe for the moment, but that is expected to change soon. Eventually, however, these guys can expect the war crimes indictments to catch up with them. If they stay in Iraq, they can either hope for an amnesty deal, or getting themselves back into power. Both of these options are being pursued, which means that violence and peace negotiations are both getting more intense. The problem here is that the Kurds and Shia Arabs are not willing to give a lot of Saddam’s killers a free pass. In response to that, the killers are getting more involved in the violence. Now Arab diplomats are being attacked. The message is clear; make a deal with the Sunni Arabs, or get more reminders of how Saddam stayed in power for so long. Playing it this way only makes more Iraqis determined to join the police and army, and go after the killers where they live, and bring them to justice (often on the spot.) The bullets are going both ways.

Democrats and terrorism

At every turn some liberal democratic senator can be heard declaring that we are not doing enough to fight or defend ourselves from terrorists. We are not spending enough. We are not doing enough to protect our chemical factories. We are not doing enough to guard against terror coming in through our ports. Our protection of trains and subways is not sufficient. We should be doing more to protect our food supply. Our borders are too porous and we should beef up that effort. The brilliance of all this is that when we are attacked again...and it will happen...they will come out and point to prior warnings that were not acted on to a sufficient extent or soon enough. The fact that there is no way we can provide unlimited resources to the effort and no way we can maintain a free society and achieve perfect defense. Bush will be blamed in a blizzard of demogoguery for failing at an impossible task.

Both Bush and Congress deserve blame for not setting any priorities in spending the money we do on home security. The slimy congressmen all insist on getting their "share" of the money even though some small town in Kansas is not a high terror target any more than some blue haired old lady is a threat to our air travel. In many cases, the small towns which do get their money just buy real nice police uniforms with it. Pathetic.

Biological Destiny

For some time now it has been apparent to me that if you have a marathon, for example, someone from Kenya is more likely to win it than someone from an Eskimo village in Alaska. Blacks predominate on NBA teams for a reason beyond culture. Turns out highly successful athletes are subjected to some of the most rigorous testing possible. Lance Armstrong, for example, has a heart 20% larger than normal, produces 1/3rd less lactic acid during exercise, and delivers oxygen to his legs at a higher rate than almost anyone alive. These studies and others suggest that in order to be a truly dominate athlete, one must be a genetic freak. Armstrong, it turns out, does not have one physical factor which distinguishes him from the rest of us, but in fact he has several extraordianry traits which exist in only a few hundred human beings. The odds of all these things being consolidated in one body are probably one in a billion.

Other examples? Michael Phelps, is an Olympic champion swimmer and propels himself through the water with feet that are truly like flippers. They are not only large (size 14), but also outrageously flexible. He can lie down flat on his back, legs outstretched and touch the tips of his toes to the floor. Mia Hamm, the soccer star, in some tests of her famous stamina, was found to produce less than one liter of sweat an hour--25-50% less than normal.

How long will it be before parents begin to test their youngsters to see how suited for the sport they are pushing them toward?

A toxic combination

When you start with bad science and add trial lawyers you really have a potential problem and that is what we see currently with Teflon. This substance has long been seen as a useful coating for cooking utensils, but on July 19th two law firms filed a class action suit on behalf of consumers regarding perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The lawyers claim the substance could be hazardous and they want DuPont to pay $5 billion.If the suit is successful whatever is left after attorney's fees would go to replace everyone's cookware and pay for medical monitoring and more research. Note that nobody has died or is even sick.
What happened is an EPA advisory panel concluded research with PFOA given in massive doses to rodents suggested that the substance was "likely" a carcinogen in humans. The problem is rodents are not just little people and in high doses the chemical probably makes the DNA-repair systems of rats and mice go haywire and tumors result. Be that as it may, the new report has nothing to do with Teflon on your cookware. PFOA is destroyed in the manufacturing process used to make Teflon. Several studies have looked at Teflon with an eye to find PFOA associated with Teflon and have come up empty (even the lawyers can't point to studies showing results to the contrary). This will not deter the slimy lawyers, however. They will only argue that DuPont must show that Teflon is not harmful to their consumers. Take that to some sections of Mississippi and Texas and you just won the lottery if you are a sleezy trial lawyer.

London Bombs

How long will it take subway riders in London to get off the train when someone with a backpack gets on?

Poor Bush

It just came on me today as I was driving along on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Smoky Mountains that the ultra left who considers poor George Bush to be such a bumbling idiot and inept in all previous undertakings is suddenly some raving genius who was able to dip into the pool of available lawyers and pluck out the one stealth candidate for the Supreme Court who will completely reverse all their liberal gains in the past 50 years. The right wing is afraid that he made the same mistake as his Daddy and we will have another Souter. I think the fears of the right are more realistic, but probably not well-founded.

CNN can't hide their position

We are on the road and don't have our usual news sources so we had to watch the press reveal that Judge Roberts was the President's choice for the Supreme Court on CNN. Within minutes they had a crawl under the picture of Judge Roberts which alternated between two facts. First, we were informed that he assisted President Bush in the 2000 recount. Next they informed us that he was a deputy to Ken Starr when he was Solicitor General. That should have been enough red meat for the dems to get their panties in a permanent wad. I predict a fight but not a war, however.

Ebonics is back

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist.

The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions...

Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of Education for approving the policy in June. Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students. Ebonics, a dialect of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate language in 1996 by the Oakland school board.

If Ebonics is all that's keeping them interested, what's going to happen when they enter the real world, where Ebonics won't be the accepted form of communication?

Phthalates not scary?

Contrary to earlier reports, everyday exposure to phthalates -- chemical plasticizers used extensively in household products and in certain medical products -- may not have harmful effects on fertility in young men, a new study shows. Let's call it the Halloween Factor: if research shows even the most tentative risk to health from a chemical, the media will be all over it; but if further research finds that there is, in fact, no risk, then the media will largely ignore it.

Dr. Bosse A.G. Jonsson from Lund University Hospital, Sweden, and colleagues looked for associations between phthalate metabolite levels in urine and semen quality and reproductive hormone parameters in 234 young Swedish men entering the military.

There was "no clear pattern of associations" between any of the phthalate metabolites and any of the biomarkers of reproductive function measured.

In fact, exposure to phthalic acid seemed to be associated with improved reproductive function, as measured by several markers."

Good Week Award

Who had the best weekend in Europe? How about Lance Armstrong pulling ahead of the pack in the race up some mountain in France? Tiger Woods winning the British Open for his second major victory this year? Good choices, but it would be hard for either of them to challenge J.K. Rowling's selling 6.9 million Harry Potter books in 24 hours. May have to read one of her books one of these days.

Ben Stein makes a good point

In a NY Times article, Ben Stein who is on various talk and financial shows made the point that Phillip Purcell was just shown the door at Morgan Stanley, a big Wall Street company, and given a $113 million severance package and his successor who is a loyal friend of his is given an estimated $32 million to take his place. Hedge fund managers are now being reported to make $350 to $500 million each per year. Stein makes the case that the system is really out of whack when the men and women like the Navy Seals who make this good life possible are paid about $1900 per month with combat pay. Here is how he puts it:

Remember that it all depends on the fighting men and women, not on the people in finance. It depends on the guys whose names you will never know, guys who come home and work - not at jobs in which helicopters ferry them to secret-deal meetings in New York or London, but at jobs in places like a car wash in Burleson, Tex., where one of the men who captured Saddam Hussein is working without complaint and with barely mentioning that he was in Iraq.

Petite Party People

As a geezer, I know I know I am out of the main stream in most areas and don't even suspect a lot of what is going on today. This morning I was reminded again just how true this is. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal dealing primarily with the potential scandal of Wall Street brokers being feted excessively by interested individuals. No big surprise there. However, at a party in trendy South Beach in Miami there was a groom-to-be who was entertained on a yacht by at least one dwarf hired for the occasion. It seems there is a real business (see Shortdwarf.com) that rents dwarfs for parties at rates starting at $149 per hour. The owner of the business says some people are just into dwarf entertainment.

Islam Threatened

A statement that has warned against the dangers of allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia was released on the Internet on Friday. More than 100 sheikhs, imams, judges, Islamic scholars, Islamic university teachers, several heads of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice centers in the Kingdom, as well as some teachers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah signed the statement.

The statement said that the enemies of Islam are seeking to destroy the great role women have been given in Islam by corrupting them and hence corrupting the Islamic world.

Small World

Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is the biochemist currently being held in Egypt for chats about his role in the London bombings. British media reported that police had found evidence of the explosive TATP in his bathtub. This is the same explosive which was to be used by the shoe bomber Richard Reid who was affiliated with the same mosque in London. el-Nashar was in Raleigh, N. C. for one semester studying at North Carolina State. The problem is he stayed here for a total of 13 months. We really need to find out what he did during that time an who he had contacts with.

Mars Hoax

I am really disappointed that Mars won't be as big as the moon. It will be big on October 30 or 31 of this year, but not as big as the moon. Here is the link.

London Bombing Suspect Caught

The former North Carolina State student thought to be involved in the London bombing in the role of bomb maker has been arrested in Egypt. Turns out to be a male Muslim. We may be developing a pattern here.

France vs. Great Britan

This is an interesting comparison of the ways in which France and England have supported the U.S. in the war on terror and in Iraq. I have always thought Daniel Pipes knew what was what in the war on terror.

I wish Bush was this articulate

The following is a response by John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, to a question from a reporter:

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, if as you say you can't rule out that possibility that we could have potential bombers right here in Australia, what if today's announcement, this redeployment to Afghanistan and our continued presence in Iraq is all the provocation they need?

JOHN HOWARD: Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

Essay School

If 15-year-old Anna Zvagelskaya were a shoe, she writes, she would be pink, with a very pointy toe, a flared heel, straps and a diamond buckle.

It's five months before the application deadline at most elite colleges, and a year and five months before Ms. Zvagelskaya's application is due at Harvard, her top choice. But on a summer day here at Tufts University, the San Francisco high-school junior and a dozen other teenagers are enrolled in a two-week college-application camp, spending two hours a day in class -- and hours more each night -- crafting the essays that they hope will vault them to the head of the college queue.

"There are so many kids with perfect grades out there," says Ms. Zvagelskaya, who frets over "a few B's" on her transcript. "Your essay gives you an extra push, a chance to shine"...

Ah, that's it. These students aren't writing simple, well-crafted essays; they're writing artsy, confabulated crap in an attempt to avoid having to suffer the ignominy of a state school. Sheesh.

Support for my prediction

As I stated in the previous post on this blog, the response by some in the U.S. to the next terrorist attack will not be pretty. Two minutes after putting that opinion up, I went to Lucianne Goldberg's blog and read the following comment to an opinion piece published by Tony Blankley in the Washington Times. This is probably a very, very minority opinion now, but my prediction is based on the conclusion that his thoughts will be not only more prevalent, but acted upon:

"Things will get progressively worse until we finally get fed up and have the Big Raghead Roundup we should've had right after 9-11. We have all these unused military bases slated for closing- why not put all the Mohammeds in there until we can sort them out. This is a race war and a religious war and the socialists within our ranks are the most dangerous vermin who rot our structures willingly; ally themselves with our dire enemies. We ARE at the Gates of Vienna; where is our Sobieski?"

Terror Response

In the aftermath of the London bombings polls show that the British have widely increased support for a greater and more vigorous response by the government to preempt further attacks. This is a new position since the British have long been reluctant to intercede in a fashion which could be considered heavy-handed and certainly not in a way which could target a specific group such Muslims. I do not find this surprising and I am ready to predict that if the U.S. is attacked again in a small or large way, the reaction will be one where innocents of all religions will be victimized. In the U.S. we differ greatly from the British in that we have weapons and the Muslims who are currently refusing to choose sides in the war will find themselves right in the middle of one. In a way, this will be both unfortunate and fully understandable. Mosques will cease to exist and many Muslims will go to bed and simply not wake up the next morning.

A friend sent me this. Should be cool.

MARS SPECTACULAR!
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is
catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest
approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars
may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on
Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has
not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may be as long
as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within
34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest
object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear
25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

By August 27, Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.


Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the
east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at
nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty
convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded
history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow
progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with
your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS
AGAIN

Alfred E. Newman

Hillary said Bush reminded her of Alfred E. Newman.

Tolerance in Great Britan

Various pundits are commenting on the fact that at least a part of the London bombing foundation was built by the preaching of the Imams or whoever in the mosques in England. The teachings of hate there could well be responsible if the bombings were home-grown as now suspected. I wonder how long the British would tolerate Christian evangelists using their pulpits over there to advocate the murder and decapitation of Islamists?

An interesting take on London bombing

1. I really, really don’t get the point about divorcing the “Muslim” label from the terrorists. The Bali bombing was carried out by radical Muslims from Indonesia. They were home grown and home indoctrinated.

   The Thai Bhuddists are getting their heads lopped off by Thai Muslims who live in the states bordering Malaysia. They are home grown Muslim radicals.

   There are many Indian Hindus who have been slaughtered by homegrown Pakistanis who learned to be radical Muslims in the madrasses of Pakistan.

   Most of these people do not share a common language.

   Our bad luck has been to meet up with the Arab radical Muslim terrorist.

   In every case of terrorism I have cited, the terrorist was not motivated by the ideology of fascism. The terrorist was driven by radical Islam.

   You can slice it and dice it any way you want to sleep better in your politically correct linens, but in the final analysis, the terrorists and suicide bombers are acting out of pure radical Muslim zeal. And if they can blow up a Jew or two, they are that much more delighted. So far as I know, Jews are still a religious classification.

   Comment by David Stacy — 7/9/2005 @ 7:25 pm

Source of Islamic Terrorism?

Sura 4-89: “They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus
be on the same footing (as they): but take not friends from their ranks until
they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn
renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case)
take no friends or helpers from their ranks…”

Sura 9-29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold
that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor
acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the
Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves
subdued.”

Sura 22-9: “As for the unbelievers for them garments of fire shall be cut and
there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in
their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with
hooked iron rods.”

Sura 47-4: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when
you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining
captives”

Muslims regard the book from which these obscenities were taken as the Literal
Word of God. They dare not dissent from that proposition, for that would
constitute apostasy, and Islam decrees that apostates must die.

Judith Miller

It seems almost surreal to follow a blog on Stephen Hawking with this one on Judith Miller. She is the New York Times journalist currently sitting in jail to the profound chagrin of the entire media establishment. She was asked by a grand jury to testify and she refused. So the judge said she would go to jail if she didn't comply and she chose not to based on a reluctance to reveal a "confidential source". The decision of the judge was upheld all the way up to the Supreme Court. The media think this is just awful since she didn't even write anything. Furthermore, it would be just dreadful if journalists couldn't keep those sources which they didn't just make up confidential. My question is why the journalists feel testimony before a grand jury would be revealing since those procedings are supposed to be secret. They may not be, but the journalists already must usually reveal the source to the editor(s), so the confidentiality is not absolute. I am a huge fan of the First Amendment, but my lack of respect for most journalists puts me on the side of those who don't particularly mind having old Judith in jail for failing to comply with the same laws the rest of us have to obey.

Stephen Hawking

This fellow may be the most interesting man on earth. His story is one we should all read. He wrote a book called "A Brief History of Time" which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and there aren't 20 people in the U.S. who read it and even fewer who could understand it. I didn't buy that book, but I did pick up a paperback of his a few years ago called 'Blackholes and Baby Universes" which I promptly skimmed and set aside. I set it aside so well, I just found it again today and started again to try to see what it was he contributed to science. Well, I rediscovered just how stupid I am and how impossible it is for me to comprehend such things as black holes. It is not Stephen Hawking's fault. He writes quite well. Here, is an example of his writing in which he is explaining how a black hole might be created.
"Imagine a star with a mass ten times that of the sun (I can't even do that). During most of its lifetime of about a billion years (say what?), the star will generate heat at its center by converting oxygen into helium. The energy released will create sufficient pressure to support the star against its own gravity, giving rise to an object with a radius about 5-times the radius of the sun (now he has really lost me). The escape velocity from the surface of such a star would be about a thousand kilometers per second (can't comprehend that). That is to say, an object fired vertically upward from the surface of the star with a velocity of less than a thousand kilometers per second would be dragged back by the gravitational field of the star and would return to the surface, whereas an object with a velocity greater than that would escape to infinity ( I have already confessed in a previous blog about my problem with infinity, but how does Hawking know that is where that object is going?)
When the star had exhausted its nuclear fuel, there would be nothing to maintain the outward pressure, and the star would begin to collapse because of its own gravity. As the star shrank, the gravitational field at the surface would become stronger and the escape velocity ould increase. By the time the radius got down to thirty kilometers (can you imagine the math necessary to get him to that measurement?) , the escape velocity would have increased to 300,000 kilometers/second, the velocity of light. After that time any light emitted would be dragged back by the gravitational field. According to the special theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than light, so that if light cannot escape, nothing else can either. "

So there you have it. A black hole: a region of space-time from which it is not possible to escape to infinity. Next time you see Hawking's book on someone's coffee table, that is what it says.

Kyoto Update from G8

Tony Blair took his turn as head of the G8 this year to put global warming and Kyoto on the table--along with an equally idiotic plan to send more money to corrupt nations in Africa. Bush was forced to sit there and listen to all this nonsense for 2-3 days. Here are the facts:
U.N. forecasters see one to two degrees of warming over the next century. Even if every nation that signed on to Kyoto followed it slavishly, the expected warming would be trimmed by less than one-fifth of a degree. Reading the newspapers, you’d think that humans were the sole source of C02, dumping huge amounts into the atmosphere. Not so. Human sources account for 0.3% of the total; the rest — 99.7% — comes from nature. Man simply can't compete with volcanos, for example. But what about all the scientists who have reached a “consensus” on global warming? Well, professor Dennis Bray of Germany’s GKSS Forschungszentrum recently surveyed 530 top climatologists — experts with the most direct scientific knowledge about warming. Just 9.4% strongly agreed that “climate change is mostly the result of (human) causes.” Nearly a third were described as skeptical, while 9.7% “strongly disagreed.” In short, there is no consensus. Not that those who pushed Kyoto were serious about it in the first place. As much as anything, Kyoto was a hypocritical attempt by European nations to impose global controls over the U.S. economy, and regulate it to death.
After excoriating the U.S. for failing to ratify Kyoto, they failed to follow it themselves. The European Union is supposed to cut greenhouse gases 8% by 2010. But the European Environment Agency recently reported that emissions increased 1.3% in 2003, and that 12 of 15 EU members are out of compliance. Nevertheless, the EU’s parliament in May called for trade sanctions against the U.S. for not cutting back its C02 emissions. It is hard to escape the consequences of bad science.

Here it comes, folks.

BIRD flu, which kills more than half the humans that it infects, could be spread to Europe by migratory geese from China, scientists say.

An estimated 1,500 birds died two months ago at Qinghai Lake in western China and survivors could introduce the virus to parts of Asia beyond the Himalayas. There, they would come into contact with birds that use “migratory flyways” linked to Europe, according to a study published by the journal Nature.

The World Health Organisation estimates that that there is a more than 50 per cent chance that the bird flu virus will mutate into a form leading to a pandemic such as the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918 that killed 25 million people.

The Joint Influenza Research Centre of the Shantou University Medical College and the University of Hong Kong said in its study: “Our findings indicate that H5N1 (bird flu) viruses are now being transmitted between migratory birds at the lake.

“There is a danger that it might be carried along the birds’ winter migration routes to densely populated areas in the south Asian sub-continent, a region that seems relatively free of this virus, and spread along migratory flyways linked to Europe.”

Circumcision and AIDS

I didn't wake up this morning intending to make AIDS topic of the day on this blog, but the Wall Street Journal had an article which caught my interest. It seems there is a study just completed by French and South African researchers which clearly shows that male circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS by about 70%. This, of course, reduces the risk in women since their partners would be less likely to be infected. I won't comment on the scientific study itself, even though the approach they took seems valid, but it is interesting to consider what use is or can be made of this information. One problem is circumcision does not make one immune to AIDS so implementation must be accompanied by intensive counseling which would boil down to convincing an adult African man to undergo an alteration of his manhood which would not protect him absolutely. If the education is not completely successful, HIV transmission could actually increase by behavior based on the mistaken belief the operation conferred protection. Another problem is the chance the operation could be performed under less than sanitary conditions which could lead to complications which might set the program back considerably once word gets out. A final problem is that some tribes in Africa practice circumcision and others do not for cultural reasons. So, in order to implement the results of the research, the targets would not be easily convinced to participate. Put me down in the skeptical column. If you can'tconvince them to use condoms, circumcision seems to be a long-shot remedy to AIDS in Africa.

AIDS Drugs

"In previous negotiations, we managed to get the prices of these drugs reduced, but now we want to lower the costs even further". This was the statement issued by Dr. Paulo Roberto Teixeira who is Director of the Brazilian National STD/AIDS Programme. As a result, Brazil is preparing to allow its scientists to steal several pharmaceutical patents and produce their own versions of AIDS drugs developed by U.S. companies. Brazil has the 11th ranking economy in the world and yet it believes that other nations or companies therein owe it a medical version of the free lunch. Washington has no general duty to protect the profits of U.S. firms operating overseas, but we should seriously consider sanctions and other measures to prevent Brazil and other countries from developing and exporting generic substitutes which could destroy pharmaceutical innovation.

Flag Burning

The following observation of Mark Steyn summarizes my view on flag burning here on the 4th of July, 2005.

A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

Vaccines and Autism

Here is another hoax being inflicted on the naive and uninformed Mothers in the U.S. Because of the fact that children get their vaccinations at a time which is shortly before children are commonly diagnosed with autism, the spurious corellation has been made that the two must be related and lawyers focused in on thimerosal. This is a preservative once used in vaccines and even though there was never any evidence that it caused autism, greedy lawyers set about suing vaccine manufacturers for damages and now the mercury-based preservative is no longer used in vaccines. The Institute of Medicine issued a 214 page report which concluded, "The evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." A similar clean bill of health was given by the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization. To those of us who have looked into the biology and chemistry of the relationship, this should be the end of the concern, but it isn't. Idiots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. write error-ridden books and make hysterical claims which fuel the controversy. A big part of the fallacy surrounds his ignorance of ethyl- and methyl-mercury. The former, which comes from thimerosal is metabolized much faster than methyl-mercury and is known to be orders of magnitude less harmful. Ignorance on this subject is made especially clear by the vigor with which fearmongers rail against the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine which never contained thimerosal. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that autism rates have increased after thimerosal use ended and childhood infections should not be allowed to threaten our younger population by withholding needed and effective vaccinations.

Vaccines and Autism

Here is another hoax being inflicted on the naive and uninformed Mothers in the U.S. Because of the fact that children get their vaccinations at a time which is shortly before children are commonly diagnosed with autism, the spurious corellation has been made that the two must be related and lawyers focused in on thimerosal. This is a preservative once used in vaccines and even though there was never any evidence that it caused autism, greedy lawyers set about suing vaccine manufacturers for damages and now the mercury-based preservative is no longer used in vaccines. The Institute of Medicine issued a 214 page report which concluded, "The evidence fravors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." A similar clean bill of health was given by the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization. To those of us who have looked into the biology and chemistry of the relationship, this should be the end of the concern, but it isn't. Idiots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. write error-ridden books and make hysterical claims which fuel the controversy. A big part of the fallacy surrounds his ignorance of ethyl- and methyl-mercury. The former, which comes from thimerosal is metabolized much faster than methyl-mercury and is known to be orders of magnitude less harmful. Ignorance on this subject is made especially clear by the vigor with which fearmongers rail against the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine which never contained thimerosal. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that autism rates have increased after thimerosal use ended and childhood infections should not be allowed to threaten our younger population by withholding needed and effective vaccinations.

Vaccines and Autism

Here is another hoax being inflicted on the naive and uninformed Mothers in the U.S. Because of the fact that children get their vaccinations at a time which is shortly before children are commonly diagnosed with autism, the spurious corellation has been made that the two must be related and lawyers focused in on thimerosal. This is a preservative once used in vaccines and even though there was never any evidence that it caused autism, greedy lawyers set about suing vaccine manufacturers for damages and now the mercury-based preservative is no longer used in vaccines. The Institute of Medicine issued a 214 page report which concluded, "The evidence fravors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." A similar clean bill of health was given by the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization. To those of us who have looked into the biology and chemistry of the relationship, this should be the end of the concern, but it isn't. Idiots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. write error-ridden books and make hysterical claims which fuel the controversy. A big part of the fallacy surrounds his ignorance of ethyl- and methyl-mercury. The former, which comes from thimerosal is metabolized much faster than methyl-mercury and is known to be orders of magnitude less harmful. Ignorance on this subject is made especially clear by the vigor with which fearmongers rail against the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine which never contained thimerosal. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that autism rates have increased after thimerosal use ended and childhood infections should not be allowed to threaten our younger population by withholding needed and effective vaccinations.

Las Vegas for the 4th

If you live in Southern California, say Los Angeles, you are 270 miles on I-15 from Las Vegas and if you would like to spend the weekend prior to July 4th attached to a slot machine, you will have 75,000 others join you on the highway. This trek across the desert starting Friday afternoon takes 8 hours (about 33 miles/hour) and the last portion of the trip can be traversed at the more appropriate speed of 70 miles/hour. On large portions of the trip you are either stopped or crawling along at 20 mph. This trip is across desert with temperature commonly at or over 106 F. Gas stations and restaurants are often 60 to 70 miles apart so "comforts" are really appreciated when you get there. As one might predict, everyone wants to stay in Vegas as long as possible prior to going back to work after the mini-vacation, so the trip back is slower and I suspect the hangovers, lack of sleep and empty wallets make that a real fun trip for some. They really know how to have fun on the left coast, don't they?

The Placebo Effect

When I was 6 or 7 I developed warts all over my hands. Since we lived in little Weatherford, Oklahoma my Mother took me to a dermatologist in Oklahoma City where it was decided to spend a lot of time convincing me that the pills I was to take would make the warts go away. I was encouraged to take them faithfully and this therapy was reinforced by parental encouragement. After only a few weeks of taking sugar pills my warts were gone. This well-known phenomenon is called the "placebo effect" and for many years has been the source of consternation because it has confounded attempts by drug companies to establish the efficacy of new drugs. Now there is some interest in using the placebo effect to treat a "condition" where I think it shows great promise. This is in the so called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Millions of children now take Adderall or Ritalin for this and studies are now underway to see if sugar pills will be at least as effective or maybe serve as "enhancers" which can convince the children that their symptoms will moderate and their "attention" will improve when taken faithfully. I predict success and Mothers should try this first.

Small Mystery Solved

On our last cruise the dinner menu had two entrees which were available every night in case you didn't care for the other 5 or 6 which were offered that evening. One was salmon and the other was "ranch steak". On a cruise based in a foreign country with a chef from France or someplace, I knew I didn't know what a ranch steak was, but I didn't think much about it. If pressed, I would have guessed some form of NY strip. I saw some and that is what they mostly looked like. Now it turns out that the price of beef has risen to the point where some 20,000 restaurants are now offering "new steaks" which are carved from parts of the cow which were heretofore considered less desirable than the classic top loin and filet mignons. Here is a guide to the new menu offerings. A Flatiron or Flat Iron steak is from the shoulder and also called top blade steak. It can be broiled or cooked in a skillet and is said to be the second most tender steak after the filet mignon. One problem is the grocery stores sell a shoulder top blade steak which is not a Flat Iron and you really want the latter. It is recommended you consult the meat manager if confused. The Ranch Steak is a shoulder center steak and it is recommended that you marinate it to improve tenderness. If you see a Western Griller it is a bottom round steak and you gotta marinate strongly or braise (cook in liquid) in order to chew it. We have little round steak-looking cuts of meat where we shop that are nice and lean and they call them "beef tenders" or somesuch which I now learn are from the beef shoulder and despite their name are not as tender as the filets they are cut to imitate. Now I am off to look for some Flat Iron steak to cook this weekend.

The Slingbox

More than likely, this is the first place you will learn about a new device called a "slingbox" which I hope to have by nightfall. As I understand it, you take your $250 to Best Buy and get the little silver box which allows you to control your home TV and digital recorder from anywhere you can get on the internet. It sits between your cable receiver and your home broadband internet connection and then it pumps your TV programs out via the internet. It works with standard Windows PCs running Windows XP. There are no monthly fees or hookup fees of any kind. What is the virtue you might ask? Well, if you are traveling you can get online and watch shows you have recorded on you DVR or you can watch live shows with all the ease of sitting on you sofa at home with the TV remote. Now when I get stuck in a casino hotel which wants you playing slot machines rather than watching Fox News or golf, I can just use my laptop to turn on my home TV. If I am sitting in an airport, I can log on to the WiFi network and watch CNBC live to keep up with the markets. As I understand it, however, things can get sticky if someone is at home watching TV and you start changing channels from afar. Another problem I see is cruise ships don't yet have broadband access and TV on dial-ups at 60 cents per minute would not be satisfactory. Otherwise, count me in.

Journalists to Jail

The liberal elite at the New York Times and Time magazine are all upset that two of their reporters are going to jail rather than conform to a grand jury request that they tell who the sources are on specified aspects of a legitimate criminal investigation. If reporters didn't make up sources so often, perhaps more of us would sympathize. I say throw them in jail.

10 Commandments

It would be difficult to imagine a more ridiculous splitting of a baby than the two decisions handed down yesterday concerning the 10 Commandments. Displaying them in certain places may be a violation of something, but it is not the Constitution which forbids the establishment of religion. The justices must certainly realize this or they would not have contorted their decisions so grotesquely.

File Sharing Ruling by SCOTUS

By a vote of 9 to 0 the Supreme Court huffed and puffed and found that companies like Grokster which provide software which allows internet users to share music and movies can be sued by companies like MGM, Disney and Time Warner. What does this mean for those who share music and movies over the internet? Nothing. Technology will win and the sharing will continue despite all of these legal pronouncements. The reason is the software used by Grokster is easy for anyone to provide and someone will make it available for others to use. They may be in the U.S. or not. They may have assets to sue for in the courts or not---probably not. The content providers should just quit fighting it and learn how to make money off the technology like Apple did to some extent with iTunes. It will not be easy, but reality should be faced by these big companies.

Children in Iraq

I was just reading an E-mail from a soldier in Iraq :

Laurie Strange
Attn: Any Soldier
HHD, Task Force Cerberus
APO AE 09354

She was asking for small toys for the troops to give out in their area. Here is her justification for this request which was accompanied by a picture of a young boy holding a stuffed bear.

This notation is to update my information, this young boy is holding a heart and teddy bear from a nice gentleman and his family from Germany. This gentleman and his family were inspired by my e-mail to your website and decided to write me, I'm tremendously Blessed and I look forward to hearing from other great americans.

The gentleman asked me to give this gift to a child, because another soldier recently served in Iraq, met a child there and had given this child a gift and when the soldier and his convoy was approaching the same area where the little girl had received the bear from the soldier previously. The young girl stood in the street and would not allow the convoy to pass, the soldiers later found out that there was an IED (Explosive) up ahead of the convoy.

That sure sounds like a good reason to send toys to troops. You can do that to the address given above and read about other such requests here.

The Airbus A380

The new A380 airbus has long fascinated me. It should go into service soon and was flown at the Paris Air Show last week. The reviews are in and I am not sure I am interested in flying on it. The plane is really two large planes stacked on top of one another. The thing that I am looking forward to is to see how it is configured by the airlines which buy it. If they put in a bar and piano lounge and double beds and a casino, which is advertised to be in the works, I will be surprised. Here are the numbers. The Boeing 747 can fly 416 passengers and the A380 if generous with passenger comforts can fly 555 passengers. That to me is daunting if you think of getting that many folks on with all the carryon baggage and then think of the lines as you all try to go through customs upon arrival. The big problem is the company will pay $292 million for each plane and the possibility for them to go all-coach and fly 800 passengers will be tempting. That is a nightmare.

More Madness

I really should stop reading this nonsense, but here is another example of education gone terribly wrong.

Philadelphia schools will require all students to pass a yearlong African-American and African history class in order to graduate. In theory, studying "their" history will lead black students, who make up 65 percent of enrollment, to feel pride and will boost achievement and reduce violence in schools.

I guess the idea is that 21st century people should feel proud of what people who looked sort of like them did centuries ago, maybe.

Rove drives them crazy

Boy, the liberals hate Rove more than they do Bush and Delay and that is saying something. Now Karl Rove has suggested that liberals favored a legal response to 9/11 and conservatives wanted something more appropriate. This has brought all the Dems with mouths frothing out from under rocks to demand that Rove take it back and resign and that Bush fire him and maybe even have him executed by firing squad. Let's look at the facts and see whether the Rove statement has any basis in fact which could have justified such a statement. Here is one:

Here is a MoveOn.org petition offered less than 48 hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers (emphases mine):

Petition 1: "We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of the United States of America and of countries around the world, appeal to the President of The United States, George W. Bush; to the NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson; to the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi; and to all leaders internationally to use moderation and restraint in responding to the recent terrorist attacks against the United States. We implore the powers that be to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction."


Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), 10/1/01, Roll Call: "I truly believe if we had a Department of Peace, we could have seen [9/11] coming."

Al Sharpton, 12/1/02, New York Times, on the 9/11 attacks: "America is beginning to reap what it has sown."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 3/1/2003, Toledo Blade: "One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped cast off the British crown."

I think the impetuous outrage now being advanced by the liberals will force us to review what was actually said and that will be just fine with me.

Live Longer?

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article today on longevity and how to achieve it. Since I am getting to the age where it seems prudent to look at how long the future is and how to make the most of it, I read it pretty well. Basically, it says you should avoid stress and maximize control over your life. Of course, the nags always want you to eat right, watch your weight, and excercise. Some of the most important things I learned are as follows:

1) at my age, 66, I can look forward to another 17 years of life on average.
2) only 1/3 of your longevity comes from heredity (I was hoping for more)
3) a waist line over 40 inches produces a dramatic increase in risk for a heart attack (hooray for my current 38)
4) 63% of men 80 to 102 years old are still having sex (that's nice)
5) excercise helps a lot, but only if you like it because if you don't like it, you get stressed
6) married men have less stress and a longer life span than single, but women only need close relationships (guess husbands don't relieve stress much)
7) an active family life and social relationships improve physical health in both man and animals
8) a good night's sleep is very helpful and allows stress to dissipate (hope naps help, too)

One thing not covered in the article is how a man is supposed to maintain any control over his life and be married at the same time. Could that be why a woman my age will live 3 years longer than I will? Probably.

The BiDil Debate

There is an interesting situation developing with the FDA considering an approval of a drug (actally two drugs in one pill) called BiDil which has been shown during trials to be effective in persons who said they were African-American but was not effective in treating congestive heart failure in Caucasians. Several aspects of this are causing controversy. First, there has never been a drug so convincingly shown to be effective against some disease in one race versus another. Some say this is because nobody has looked at clinical trials in that way before. One group of blacks is insisting that some other basis aside from race must be responsible and we should not look for biological differences between races. This position has always been advanced to counter any attempt to suggest that intelligence might have such a genetic distinction. Another group of blacks has reacted to the news as if it is evidence that the medical community for decades has ignored racial differences and failed to consider specific treatments of blacks to the detriment of the entire ethnic group. No wonder the FDA is tip toeing through this minefield and you will have to look really hard to find this situation discussed in the main stream media.

Report from Iraq

More towns in Iraqi's "wild west" are being pacified. The usual drill is not another Fallujah, but a government official meeting with local tribal and religious leaders, where an offer is made. Iraqi and American troops are coming. Neighborhoods that support the government will see little or no fighting as a search is made for weapons, bombs and the like. Neighborhoods that wish to resist will be hit hard. By now, everyone knows how smart bombs work. Increasingly, Sunni Arab leaders are being told, by their followers, that all this violence is not worth it. After Saddam fell, Sunni Arabs continued to believe in fantasies. For the last two years, the collective delusion was that the Americans had no stomach for guerilla war, and the Kurds and Shia Arabs could never get a government together. Today, Sunni Arabs who can get away on a little vacation, go north to the Kurdish north, or south to Shia Basra. In both places you can sit in an outdoor cafe without fear of a suicide bomb going off down the street. The Kurds and Shia have more jobs, more reconstruction and less crime. The Sunni Arabs don't want to live in their own mess any more. They don't want to live in a combat zone, especially while the Kurds and Shia are not.
Read the whole report from Iraq here.