Marc Cooper is a good guy and is right on the basics

While I differ considerably with Marc Cooper on politics, he still is right on the fundamentals of peace and war. He also knows a wingnut when he says one, and he keeps from being one, himself. He writes about Wade Churchill and Christopher Hitchins, today:

I’m on semi-vacation for the next handful of days so I’m inclined to do more linking than writing. Below find a couple of items that caught my attention this morning.

First up is another episode in the Great Ward Churchill soap-opera. I’ve been chided by some for spending too much time on this “issue.” So sue me why don't you? I find it just too much fun to ponder this chap’s psychopathology. I’m also amazed by the inability of some to just outright disown this fellow. It’s one thing to defend the concept of tenure. It’s quite another not to denounce an obvious wing-nut.

In the latest chapter, Churchill is now trying to explain his way out of remarks in Portland this week in which it sure seemed he was suggesting “fragging” of U.S. military officers might be an effective form of anti-war protest. Here’s the phrase now in question spoken by Churchill as reported by the Denver Post

This is the part about Christopher Hitchins:

In a half-hearted gesture of fairness toward you, the reader, I’m offering up a compromise. Now that I’ve made you read something about a guy I love to despise, I’ll return the favor. Danny Postel has a new interview published with Satan Figure Christopher Hitchens. Whatever your jaundiced view, it’s worth a read. Here’s the Hitch describing in piquant terms the turning point he had on the post 9-11 response to the Taliban:

I can tell you exactly when the breaking point came, actually. I was invited by Michael Moore to be his interviewer at the Telluride Film Festival for his awful, baggy, dishonest, boring movie, Bowling for Columbine. In that film, clips about the Kosovo war from Serbian television are used as objective. Moore implies that the bombing of Kosovo might have inspired the murderers in Columbine. You don't know where to start with someone as mentally lazy as this. This was on the anniversary of September 11 terrorist attacks, and he said, "Well, if it's true that bin Laden did this thing in New York . . ." It was early in the morning; just a second, I thought. "Say that again? If they did this?" He said, "Well, if they did this."

A Female Vigilante in Afghanistan

The Belmont Club calls her a "lady detective", but she sounds more like a vigilante, taking action against abusive Muslim men. She drives a pickup truck, carries an AK-47, and wears a burka. She travels around investigating and writing perceived wrongs. Mostly, they are more than perceived. She is doing the Dirty Harry thing, it sounds like. Wretchard writes:

The Sunday Herald has an article on Kandahar's most fearsome lady detective, going up against all manner of Afghan perps, while swathed in a burqa. (Hat tip: MIG).

First her six children are breakfasted, their faces washed and hairbrushed and they are made ready for school. Next comes the firearms check. Malalai Kakar counts bullets into a curved AK-47 metal clip, rams it home into her assault rifle, and makes sure the safety catch is on. ... When these morning rituals are completed and the kids are off to school, Kandahar’s most fearsome woman hoists a blue burkha over her head, climbs into a pick-up truck and heads off to the office; another busy day with murderers, sexual abusers and wife batterers is about to begin.

Malalai Kakar is testimony to Arthur Eddington's observation that "not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine".

Software Theory: Dr Z on "Correctness Proof and Design of Language"

I was interested to read Dr. Z's piece on "Correctness Proof and Design of Language". I have long thought that people who were intent on proving program correctness would be doomed to failure. Now, Dr. Z suggests another approach, using the automobile as an analogy. He writes:

Observing how Egyptians were practicing it, the Greek called it the measurement of land, or geometry. Generally, we only use geometrical measurements and leave the notion of derivation to the followers of Pythagoras and Euclid. But the point is that geometry has two aspects, measurement and derivation.

The most successful measurement theory for software development has been the complexity of algorithms. On the other hand, derivation has not found a footing yet.

He suggests that:

The view of correctness proof mentioned earlier is not about algorithms or the programs approximating those algorithms. It is about the design of a programming language and the role of compiler. For instance, structured programming helps write programs that are closer to the way we think. On the other hand, type checking helps avoid sending incorrect objects to functions. The point is that, it is better to focus on the design of language for correctness proof rather than try to come up with a logic that can prove the correctness of programs in arbitrary languages.

So now the question is, which language do we start with? In other articles I have argued that we should follow an evolutionary path, starting with C, C++ and now Z++. Starting with an entirely new language is like forcing a conquered nation to speak the invader’s language. Furthermore, C and C++ have stood the test of time.

The Fly, at Gene Expression, on AI prospects

The Fly, at Gene Expression, says that we are close to the processing power needed to produce human-equivalent AI. I am less sure, but the sceptics who keep trotting out computability theory to show why AI will not work are surely wrong. The snake oil salesmen of the mid-1980's were also mistaken, in that the toy systems that were possible at that time were a long way from being useful. Still, the government, particularly, spent a great deal on them, before admitting the real situation. The Fly writes:

I used to follow AI closely. I did work in image recognition. I evaluated expert systems applied to automatic configuration and system tuning. I studied the blackboard planning systems used for navigation systems and neural net systems applied to feature detection in photos. Most methods showed early promise but failed to scale when applied to tough problems or were too slow when interacting with real world events or were too brittle when handling unexpected events. At that time a 10 MIP processor with 256 Meg of RAM was considered a powerful AI platform.

Things have changed.

Hans Moravec: “When will computer hardware match the human brain?”

http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm

“matching overall human behavior will take about 100 million MIPS of computer power”

Moravec estimated that such computing power would be commonly available for AI use by 2020. I believe we will reach that point in the next few years.

“The teraflops are popping as IBM's Blue Gene performs 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second running benchmark software.”

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159905509

The Cell processor that will be used in game consoles has: · Peak performance (single precision): > 256 GFlops · Peak performance (double precision): >26 GFlops

It is designed to support large multiprocessor architectures. I expect such cheap, powerful processors to significantly enhance AI application performance.

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

Been Lurkin', you asked for web sites or books on this topic. I’m just starting my search but I found these sites interesting. I don’t yet have a good source for new articles on this topic.

http://www.accelerationwatch.com/

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/26/192639/466

http://adaptiveai.com/research/index.htm

Graham Glass (before he became rich and famous--sort of) had been interested in Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind, back circa 1988. That view, using pretty much brute force methods, seems to be very plausible in 2005. I was sceptical in 1988, but we have seen a lot since then that has changed my view. Look at what has been successful in computer chess, for example. Brute force on a very fast machine works.

Megan McArdle (Jane Galt) on: "Making Markets in he Political Economy"

Megan McArdle (AKA Jane Galt) has a long, wonkish post on the Democratic Party predicament and how the current suggestions as to what they should do will not work. She criticizes the Howard Dean approach as well as the DLC approach. There really are not any other alternatives on the table, either. She writes, starting with a long quote of which this is a small part:

As a business school student, I find this sort of thing intellectually appealing:

Hence the lesson for the Democratic party is that it should prioritize long term gains over short term ones, Jumbo over Dumbo. It’s losing out with voters because they don’t know what it stands for anymore – it keeps on chasing short term advantage (like Boeing in the 1990’s) and sometimes wins temporary gains, but only at the cost of cannibalizing its long term asset of party ID - voters don’t identify with the Democrats because they don’t know what they should be identifying with. Perlstein says that the Democratic Party needs to return to its populist roots, and build a coherent identity out from them.

She concludes:

Now, this is not to sneer at progressives, who believe what they believe as fervently as libertarians or social conservatives or anyone else believes what they believe . . . and out of the same high-minded motives. It is not right to say that "they are out of ideas", as a number of commentators have over the past few weeks. They have lots of ideas about the way the world should be, and a number of policy proposals they think would get us there. What they are out of is ideas that both advance America towards their vision, and appeal to enough voters to get them elected. That's an important distinction--but it's one that must also be recognised by the Democrats who have been saying "We do so have ideas!" if they want to re-establish their hegemony.

We need someone on the left to be able to make some persuasive arguments so that we can have a more productive dialog than is presently possible.

You can't sell cheap gas in Minnesota

In the Democratic People's Republic of Minnesota, you can't sell cheap gas. If you sell below the state-set minimum, you are in trouble. KSTP has the story.

Richard Scrushy was acquitted

Don't you suppose that the prosecution in the Richard Scrushy/Health South case,might just possibly have made a weak case, based on political opportunism, rather than it was because the trial was held where Scrushy was well known and liked? This was another atrocity intiated due to the Sarbanes-Oxley act. The net result has been very bad for business and the economy. Yahoo Finance has the AP story.

Matt Conigliaro says that the decision on filesharing was good

Matt Conigliaro, writing at Abstract Appeal, says that the Supreme Court decision on filesharing was a good compromise:

I'm going to take an ounce of credit. Not much, just an ounce.

The parties in the MGM v. Grokster case decided yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court argued two divergent theories of how the country's copyright laws should operate, neither of which was true to the purposes of the copyright system. On behalf of IEEE-USA, the national arm of an international society of engineers, I and others at Carlton Fields filed an amicus brief that charted a highly reasonable, legally accurate middle course for the high court to take.

And that's precisely the course a unanimous court took yesterday.

Dozens of amici filed briefs in the case. In the end, only a handful proposed a theory along the lines IEEE-USA did. We share in this victory.

And it's the right result.

Razib writes about secularism in Iran

I would be curious to know how widespread this phenomenon is in Iran. Partly, it seems to be the growing awareness of the Persian identity as being more important than a religious outlook. There have also been numerous indications among college students of a modernist orientation and interest in America and a wide range of topics. Razib, at Gene Expression, starts off writing:

Free Inquiry¹ has two articles online, The Next Secular Revolution? and A Secular Student in Tehran Committed to Change, highlighting the situation for secularism in Iran.² The timing is a bit off, juxtaposed against the recent victory of the religious conservative in the Iranian elections, but to some extent this is probably the result of disengagement of much of the youth electorate from politics. Two points struck me about the first article, first, it refers to burnings of Korans³ during Tchahr Shanbe Souri, the traditional Persian fire festival, and second, one of the figures profiled offers that many Iranians are switching from their Muslim names (including Mohammed) to Persian ones. This heterodoxy jives with reports that I read in the mid-to-late 1990s that textbooks about "Eastern" religions sold very well in Iranian college bookstores, indicating that students were buying them for their personal edification as opposed to just for class requirements. A shift toward a more "Persian" (quotes because only 60% of Iranians speak Farsi as their native language) identity seems a common variation of a regular cross-cultural theme, that is, nationalists and dissidents emphasizing one aspect of their history and identity at the expensive of another.

The New Donkey writes that the Democrats can't count on Latinos to save them

"The New Donkey" writes that while the Democrats have counted on a big Latino vote to offset their weakness with white, middle-class people with families, they had better not get complacent. If Latinos improve their situation, they are likely to share the same values as their white counterparts.

One of the things we Democrats use to rock ourselves to sleep at night in these politically perilous times is the hope that demographic trends are working in our favor. And the central source of that hope is the belief that the Latino population of the United States is growing so rapidly that the future shape of the electorate is morphing rapidly in a more progressive direction.

Totally aside from the fact that Democrats would be foolish to assume our current performance among Latinos can be counted on in the future, there's the troubling fact that the total Latino vote is a relatively small segment of the electorate, and will remain so for a while. That's the important and sobering message provided by Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, in today's Washington Post.

Razib doesn't think that the "King of the Hill" viewer ever could rejoin the Democratic Party

Razib writes, at Gene Expression, about the prospect of the "King of the Hill" viewer ever rejoining the Democratic Party. His take is that the elitist Leftists wouldn't left them back, so it is not an issue:

Great article about King of the Hill in The New York Times Magazine, the only point where I would demur is that the "Hank Hills" of the world could ever be part of a Democratic coalition again. The red-meat-eating, Wal-Mart shopping and gun-owning lifestyle induces such a visceral reaction (and vice versa) among a certain segment of the core Democratic electorate that I don't know if an alliance could get beyond the emotional aversion.

A good climate change article

There is a good climate change article at Tech Central Station by Hans Labohm. An unfortunate fact is that our lefty buddies seem to excel at bad science. This article discusses the issues and has some good links. Dr. Labohm (he is Dutch) writes:

It remains puzzling why the man-made global warming myth has become so powerful. David Henderson, former chief economist of the OECD, attributes it to what he calls: global salvationism. According to Henderson the salvationist doctrine has two main strands, which originally were separate but have long since come together to form an influential world-wide consensus. The first strand is developmental salvationism, and relates to the economic fortunes of poor countries. The second strand is environmental salvationism.

In both strands, two elements are combined. One is a relentlessly dark -- not to say alarmist -- picture of recent trends, the present state of the world (or "the planet"), and prospects for the future unless prompt and far-reaching changes are made in official policies. The second is a conviction that known effective remedies exist for the various ills and threats thus identified, remedies which require action on the part of governments and "the international community". "Solutions" are at hand, given wise collective resolves and actions. Global salvationism thus combines alarmist visions and diagnoses with confidently radical collectivist prescriptions for the world.

Henderson believes that in the salvationist picture of the world, the record, sources and lessons of economic progress go unrecognized. Poor countries, whose relative poverty is typically overstated, are portrayed as victims whose progress chiefly depends on empowerment and deliverance from above, while environmental issues are treated almost exclusively with reference to problems, threats, and potential or even imminent disasters.

Ed Morrissey has the story about the negotiations to end the native Iraqi insurgency

As has been reported today, negotiations are going forward with the leadership of the native Iraqi insurgency to end hostilities. Zarqawi is not involved, which is understandable. The native Iraqi insurgents and the Zarqawi-led group have been engaged in combat, reportedly. Ed Morrissey covers the story in his long post:

The Times of London reports this morning that the US has opened negotiations with the native insurgents in Iraq, attempting to find a way to bring the Iraqis opposing the new order in Iraq into the mainstream without violence. Hala Jaber reports that sources within the insurgency have disclosed the meetings and that progress went well enough to stage a second round of talks ten days later and to plan for even more talks

Michael J. Totten on Anti-Americanism

Michael J. Totten writes about the anti-Americanism that is in vogue in many parts of the world. The problem is that much of the world is run by leftists and potential rivals who are aggrevated that we are doing as well as we are. Michael starts off by writing:

In about twenty minutes a friend of mine is going to board an airplane to Belgium. He lives there on-and-off part time, in Antwerp, and this morning he told me he’s dreading going back there. The anti-Americanism gets more hostile and deranged by the week. It’s grinding him down so much he can hardly stand being in Europe.

He isn’t a defensive right-winger who can’t take any criticism of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. He is a leftist who voted for Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary election.

He concludes:

What I find most odd about this phenomenon is that Arab countries (at least Libya, Tunisia, and Lebanon) are a lot more welcoming of Americans than other Western countries are. Arabs are the ones who supposedly hate us the most, but they are vastly vastly more polite and more pleasant to hang out with.

What’s up with that? Is the Arab code of hospitality the only explanation? Maybe it is, but I’m not so sure. Whatever the explanation, the difference in the way Americans are treated in different parts of the world certainly is counter-intuitive.

Jim DeMint's social security plan

David Hogberg, in a piece called "DeMint makes Democrats nervous", tells about Jim DeMint's proposal for social security reform. It is the best thing that has come along, because it answers all the obvious criticisms of President Bush's plan. That is what David Hogberg says is making Democrats nervous. They are likely to have to defend the present feckless system, which is little more than a pyramid scheme reaching the end of the road. David writes:

The basics of DeMint's plan are that it only uses the Social Security surplus to create personal accounts and it initially only puts treasury bonds in those accounts. In early 2008 an advisory board similar to the one that manages the Thrift Savings Plan will start adding other investment options.

Corruption in Nigeria

Corruption is one of the major factors keeping third-world countries from improving their situations. The other factors are things like authoritarian regimes, conservative Islam, Socialism, tribal competition, and superstition. In Nigeria's case, the rulers make Saddam look like a petty thief. Ed Morrissey has the story:

Making Saddam Look Like A Petty Thief

Now that the subject of Africa has re-emerged as a central issue in international politics, especially in terms of how best to get the perennially struggling continent back to self-sufficiency, the question of corruption has become a central sticking point once again. Unfortunately for those of us who would like to find a way to do something effective, the question got a big answer in today's London Telegraph, which reports that the previous leaders of Africa's most prosperous nation stole more than $400 billion dollars over the last several decades:

The New Donkey was not to receptive to Carl Rove

The New Donkey, our DLC friend, has a post about Carl Rove's talk about the liberal reaction to September 11th. What Carl Rove was really talking about were the Michael Moores and MoveOn.orgs of the world, I believe. He is right on, if that were the case. More circumspect and careful Democrats, such as Hillary and the DLC would not have fit what Carl was talking about.

Having spent much of yesterday morning in Constitution Hall watching the happy and inspiring ceremony of my kid's high school graduation, I was brought back to the unhappy and dispiriting realities of contemporary American politics by press accounts of Karl Rove's pithy remarks to the New York Conservative Party the other night.

I want to read the whole transcript (if it's ever made available) before commenting at length. But it sure sounds like a Rove classic, combining his well-known habit of deliberately outrageous behavior designed to obliterate real debate in a storm of polarized rhetoric, and his more specific approach in national security to suggest any criticism of Bush's record in Iraq or anywhere else must reflect a refusal to take 9/11 seriously.

He concludes:

Kerry's right, but I'm sure he's not holding his breath waiting for Bush to cut Karl loose. After all, there's no way W. would be quarterbacking Team America without Coach Rove.

The New Donkey has a quote from John Kerry that is worth reading.

The FDA Approves "BiDil"

Jason Malloy, at Gene Expression has a piece about the FDA approval for BiDil. The controversial aspect is that the drug didn't help white people, but had significant positive benefit for people of African descent.

The drug, which had no effect on a white control group, but reduced heart failure deaths by 43 percent for an African-American control group, was approved by the F.D.A. as a drug for African-Americans yesterday. The New York Times reports that there was some controversy, but it appeared to be mostly between those who cared more about the lives and health of African-Americans and those who cared more about preserving "the greater untruth" that genes don't differ with ancestry

The Civil War may have started in Iraq

Jack Kelly, writing at Irish Pennants, says that something is happening in Iraq that may the start of the "long expected Civil War".

Iraq

Sabrina Tavernese of the New York Times reported Monday that the civil war in Iraq that journalists long have been anticipating may finally have broken out:

KARABILA, Iraq, June 20 - Late Sunday night, American marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: in the distance, mortar and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them.

In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer.

"Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire.

Voter Fraud in Ohio in 2004

Yes, there was voter fraud in the 2004 Ohio Election. It just wasn't Republican. Ed Morrissey has a long post about a Democratic study of the election. The DNC funded a five month study, and just published the results. While one in four voters in Ohio experienced problems, there was no systematic effort to reduce voter turnout by Republicans. Ed has many quotes, of which this is one, and then he concludes:

In March, a group of Ohio election law attorneys conducted a review of the state's election for the House Committee on Administration. It found, among other things, that "thousands of false and fraudulent voter-registration cards had been discovered and became the subject of numerous investigations by boards of elections, actions by local law enforcement and many media reports."

"Overwhelmingly," this report said, "these problems were reportedly traced primarily" to four Democratic political allies who supported Mr. Kerry: ACORN, America Coming Together, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP National Voter Fund.

So, yes, Virginia, there was voter fraud in Ohio. What the Exempt Media wants to keep from us is that it occurred on behalf of the Democrats. The race, unlike in Wisconsin and Washington, wasn't close enough for it to make a difference. For that, Ohioans can be grateful.

Rob, at Say Anything, has a post about the ACLU in New Mexico

Rob, at the Say Anything blog, has a post about the antics of the ACLU in New Mexico. One board member was involved with a Minutemen-like patrol of the border, and the ACLU board president had the board members removed (as he couldn't remove just the one offending member). If you don't follow the ACLU party line, you will be purged, apparently. Rob writes, after a long quote, of which this is a small part:

ACLU New Mexico Board President Gary Mitchell told the Journal: "We’re not going to tolerate anyone depriving anyone of liberty without due process of law, not going to tolerate vigilante groups on the border without speaking out against them, and without monitoring."

Depriving people of liberty? What liberty would that be? The liberty to cross international borders illegally?

I guess the ACLU doesn’t want anyone sticking up for American laws.

Ann Althouse is already tired of hearing about the 2008 presidential race

Yes, John McCain is running for president, along with Hillary. All of McCain's attempts to ingratiate himself with the Democrats have alienated me. I had voted for him in the 2000 primary, and soon was regretting that I had. Ann Althouse writes:

If you want to be the next president, it's time to start running..."

"...unless your name is Hillary Rodham Clinton or John McCain."

According to AP political writer Ron Fournier, now is the brief window of opportunity. Joe Biden "gets it," along with a few others.

McCain and Clinton will [try to] stay out of the fray for months — better to avoid the glare and grind as long as possible.

Seems to me McCain is jumping into the spotlight. He did a whole hour of "Meet the Press" on Sunday and talked about wanting to be President, even as he coyly declined to speculate about who he'd pick for VP.

Laundry list job descriptions seem to be common

I have seen the laundry list job description repeatedly, since I returned to the Dallas job market a year ago. Johanna Rothman writes about her sister and what she is facing from "gatekeepers". I was fortunate to finally get into a position where I could fairly compete and land a spot. The market is such, in the Dallas area, that there are a large number of job seekers for a small number of jobs, at least in IT. That has been the case for the last four years. That has enabled employers to get away with the recipe or laundry list of skills. If they are patient, they will find the exactly right person (seemingly). Johanna writes

So think of what you really want to see in a candidate's experience -- what you want and what you need. And remember that candidates are unique individuals. You might have thought about the job one way, but a great candidate might be stellar in another way. Leave the recipes for baking. You're looking to hire people. You don't have to compromise on the candidate, but you may well have to compromise on the candidate's background. Instead of a recipe, look for experience producing or delivering. Then you'll know you have a good candidate.

At Tech Central Station is Nick Schulz's interview with William Lewis

William Lewis, who is a Democrat and who voted for President Clinton, talks with Nick Schulz about his book The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty and the Threat to Global Stability. What Mr. Lewis found was that it was government which was impeding development in poorer countries. We were fortunate to have had relatively small government in the critical period that we achieved our impressive productivity performance. Mr. Lewis's says that the next step is to study how to fix the problem:

What I am mulling over in the back of my mind is of course where the book left off. Namely, how do you break through the special interests that are holding back development in the poor countries? And if it is rooted, as I argue, in political philosophy, how do you get the spread of this old idea in the West (and in particular in the US) of individual rights and the implication of those rights for consumer rights. How do you get this idea spread around the world better than it has been spread so far? And that's not an economic question. It's a political economy, sociological, political philosophy, almost anthropological question.

Donald Luskin has a good piece about shenanigans in Ohio

Paul Krugman had the poor sense to write about a scandal in Ohio, when Krugman didn't realize that Democrats were at play. Donald Luskin writes on his blog:

Krugman goes on:

We're talking about personal payoffs... MDL Capital employs the daughter of one of the members of the workers' compensation oversight board...

Quite a scandal. But what Krugman seems too ignorant to know -- or perhaps he knows, and he's just too sleazy to acknowledge -- is that the MDL scandal is all about Democrats, all the way.

According to the Toledo Blade's reporting that Krugman cites as his source for this "bigger story," the person who told the CFO to "give MDL a break" was George Forbes, a member of the BWC's Oversight Commission. Forbes is also president of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, former president of the Cleveland City Council, former candidate for mayor of Cleveland -- and a Democrat.

And who's that daughter who's employed by MDL? You guessed it, didn't you -- Mildred "Mimi" Forbes, daughter of the very same George Forbes, Democrat.

The MDL scandal began in the mid-1990s, when Ohio passed an affirmative action law requiring its public investment funds to direct more business toward minority-owned investment managers. It was similar to law passed in many other states during the same era, usually promoted by Democratic legislators. MDL Capital was founded in Pittsburgh by Mark D. Lay, an African-American.

NPR (and PBS) funding

The local NPR affiliate's station manager was appealing for people to respond to the proposed funding cut by congress. My view is that why should my tax dollars fund someone who wants to put out an extremist leftist message? If they want tax dollar funding,they need to provide balance, which is apparently anathema to them. If pressed, they will claim that they already provide a balanced view and that we just don't like the truth. I say, if they want to continue being the broadcast arm of the extreme left wing of US Politics, they need to look for other sources of funding than tax dollars.

Razib writes about "Evolutionary Psychology" at Gene Expression

Razib has a post about an interesting topic, "Evolutionary Psychology". Razib has some doubts on the subject, but he says tthat the subject is worth study, if only to rebut the ideas. Razib has a short post which I have reproduced:

Of late I have expressed some reservations about what I term Evolutionary Psychology™, the model proposed by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, which implies certain theoretical commitments that many sympathetic to a synthetic treatment of human nature that includes biological parameters dissent from. Nevertheless, it is important to understand Tooby and Cosmides' model because it is to some extent the reference point for good faith rebuttals. So with that in mind, I link to Evolutionary Psychology: Conceptual foundations (a lengthy PDF). Also, if you have some time to kill I highly recommend Steven Pinker's So How Does The Mind Work, a rejoinder to Jerry Fodor's harsh critique (later expanded into a book) of Pinker's weighty How The Mind Works.

Michael J. Totten on Starbucks

Michael J. Totten writes about the bogus Starbucks issue raised by our leftist buddies. Michael spends $6 a day, not $3. He says that if Starbucks left Portland, he would follow. He says:

David Adesnik fisks a perfectly silly front-page article in the Washington Post about how Starbucks supposedly ruins college students forever – yes, even into retirement – with their high-priced fancy-pants lattes.

That article is only about Starbucks on the surface. The complaints therein could apply to absolutely any coffeeshop, anywhere, owned by anyone – corporate, independent, or co-op. (No newspaper in the Pacific Northwest would dare publish such a ridiculous piece. That would be like bitching about wine and cheese in France or burritos in Mexico.)

Michael concludes:

Complaining that Starbucks rips off college students and ruins their future financial livelihood, as though it were some nefarious predatory capitalist plot, strikes me as a product of the same reactionary impulse that drives fundamentalism: the fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

If you think three bucks for a latte is a rip-off, fine, don’t buy lattes. But don’t think you can get some hard-hitting investigative journalism out of that little opinion of yours without being scoffed at.

Ace on Senator Richard Durbin

Ace, as usual, has something worth reading about Senator Richard Durbin (Democrat of Illinois). Ace believe that the Democrats are cocooning so much that they don't understand how what they say plays with ordinary people. Ace has a long quote from Mark Steyn, if which I have included just a part.

Steyn on Dickie Durban

It's all good: [Ace says] ...

Judging from the way he’s dug himself in, Dick Durbin, the Number Two Democrat in the US Senate, genuinely believes Gitmo is analogous to Belsen, the gulags and the killing fields. But he crossed a line, from anti-Bush to anti-American, and most Americans have no interest in following him down that path.You can’t claim (as Democrats do, incessantly) to “support our troops” and then dump them in the same category as the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge. In the hermetically sealed echo chamber between the Dem leadership, the mainstream US media, Hollywood, Ivy League “intellectuals” and European sophisticates, the gulag cracks are utterly unexceptional. But, for a political party that keeps losing elections because it has less and less appeal outside a few coastal enclaves, Durbin’s remarks are devastating.

Bill, at INDC JOurnal, doesn't think much of complaining about the price of Starbuck's coffee

Bill has a good post about the absurdity of complaining about the price of Starbucks coffee.

Caffeine Fisk

I'd planned to eviscerate the WaPo's ridiculously patronizing "exposé" on the evil economics of a Starbucks habit, but David Adesnik beat me to it.

And he's quite brutal and thorough. Key graph:

(emphasis mine)

(WaPo:)She just graduated summa cum laude, after three years of legal training that left her $115,000 in debt. Part of that debt, which she will take a decade to repay with interest, was run up at Starbucks, where she buys her lattes.

Part of the $115,000 debt Kirsten Daniels of Seattle incurred to finance law school went toward her regular caffeine fix. The habit costs her nearly $3 a day, and it's one that her law school says she and legions like her cannot afford.

(Adesnik:) My heart is already bleeding for poor Ms. Daniels. To think that she might be only $112,000 in debt if not for the pernicious influence of Starbucks!

Keith Thompson's commentary on Michelle Malkin and Terry Schiavo

Keith Thompson is someone who has come out of "no where" to be a force in political commentary. I think Keith's story has caught the imagination of many people. He writes about what Michelle Malkin has to say about the Terry Schiavo autopsy.

Malkin on Schiavo

The intrepid Michelle Malkin reports on having actually read the 39-page autopsy report: "You do not need a medical examiner's license to see that the report raises many more questions than it answers, though from the (once again) misleading media coverage, we are led to believe that the matters of Terri's life and murder are resolved. They are not." Contrary to the euthenasia movement's spin machine, Terri didn't suffer a heart attack, nor were there signs of bulemia; yet the MSM continues to describe the medical examiner's findings as a vindication for the decision to cause Schiavo's death. Malkin nails it: Terri Schiavo, a profoundly disabled woman who was not terminally ill and who had an army of family members ready to care for her for the rest of her natural life, succumbed to forced dehydration at the hands of her spouse-in-name-only.

The "Downing Street Memos" were retyped copies

Ed Morrissey writes about what has emerged about the Downing Street Memos. Now we find out:

The media and the Leftists have had a field day with the Downing Street memos that they claim imply that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence on WMD in order to justify the attack on Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the memos actually say that, none of them quote any officials or any documents, and that the text of the memos show that the British government worried about the deployment of WMD by Saddam against Coalition troops, Kuwait and/or Israel, the meme continues to survive.

Until tonight, however, no one questioned the authenticity of the documents provided by the Times of London. That has now changed, as Times reporter Michael Smith admitted that the memos he used are not originals, but retyped copies (via LGF and CQ reader Sapper)

Dan Drezner on "How Whirlpool does Globalization"

Dan Drezner has a post titled "How Whirlpool does Globalization".

How whirlpool does globalization

Louis Uchitelle has a nice case study of how one U.S. multinational deals with global sourcing questions in the New York Times:

Globalization is often viewed as a rootless process of constantly moving jobs to low-wage countries. But the issue is more complex, as illustrated by Whirlpool's worldwide operations. What attracts Mr. Fettig and other chief executives is a relatively new form of globalization that emphasizes first-rate centers of production and design in various countries - including the United States.

Marc Cooper "lays it on"

Marc Cooper has a hilarious post about David Paul Kuhn "reporting for duty".

Quote of the Day: “Shrum sees history on the Democrats’ side.”

You know, Bob Shrum. That Great Democrat Visionary and Professional Consultant whose current presidential win/loss record is now a stunning 0-8.

Never mind the stats. Scummy Shrummy shows up as the lead voice in the major national politics piece just written by the new Washington Correspondent of Salon.com, David Paul Kuhn. Kuhn proves the theorem that just because you have three names, you’re not necessarily that smart.

I hope that at least part of the salary being paid Kuhn, the former “chief political writer” for CBS News' website, is being footed by the Democratic National Committee. If not, Salon’s getting gypped. No doubt Kuhn showed up for his first day of work by emulating another recent Democrat Visionary and announcing: “My name is David Paul Kuhn and I’m reporting for duty!”

Kuhn’s piece rests on a heap of self-serving quotes from a host of Democrat hacks. Not just Shrummy, but also Governor Bill Richardson and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi who predicts that very, very soon the Dems will be firmly back in charge of America.

I’ll let you slog through this piece on your own to learn how obstructionism is supposedly a winning policy.

Patrick Belton, of Oxblog, was having fun at the Royal Ascot

Patrick Belton has posted pictures of people at the Royal Ascot race. A feature is the dress and especially the hats. Both men and women had hats, and were dressed. Patrick apparently didn't have a hat, but almost everyone else did:

PHOTOBLOGGING ROYAL ASCOT: I went with OxBlog's Asia correspondent to York to cover Ascot yesterday, and a bit of photoblogging results. I believe there were several races, though any real proof of this was obscured by the rotation of planetarily-dimensioned hats. I personally did not have a flutter, but can nonetheless attest that all the nicest horses won anyway. So I heard from someone wearing a hat.

The MSM didn't say it was BOYS, it said CHILDREN

As always, the MSM tries to minimize the effect of stories of homosexual men molesting boys. Therefore, they always say "Children", not "Boys". Clayton Cramer tells the story of these guys in California who have been doing bad things for a long time.

They won't be able to get convictions for every victim, obviously, but we can fantasize: SAN JOSE, CALIF. - A convicted child molester jailed in California may have committed sex crimes against thousands of victims, police said Thursday after finding computers, notebooks and handwritten lists with more than 36,000 boys' names and codes apparently indicating various sex acts.

Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller, 63, is "one of the most active child molesters we've ever seen," said San Jose Police Lt. Scott Cornfield. Characterizing the case as "horrendous," he appealed for help from the public in identifying more of his victims.

With Schwartzmiller safely behind bars - held without bail on one count of aggravated sexual assault on a child under 14 and six counts of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child under 14, with each count alleging multiple victims - police were trying to reconstruct his movements over the past 30 years.

...

Police have also arrested Schwartzmiller's roommate - another convicted child molester - in the home they shared in a middle-class San Jose subdivision. The beige stucco ranch is a 10-minute walk from at least two elementary schools.

Software Development: Eclipse "lost its mind"

This is a Java development issue with the Eclipse IDE (3.1M5). I added a "System.out.println" in a constructor, before the "super(...)" and Eclipse broke (you could say "lost its mind"). To get a reasonable error message, I had to remove the JREs from all the projects and reassign them. Then, I did a "clean" build on the entire workspace. After that, I got a reasonable error message about the constructor. Prior to doing so, all Eclipse could do was to complain about not being able to find the definition for java.lang.Object!

The Democratic "Leadership" in the Senate are a disgrace

Senator Durbin, from Illinois, is an example to the new lows that the Democrats in the Senate have reached. Ed Morrissey lays out the sad tale.

Durbin: US Operates Death Camps (Without The Death)

The hysteria and historical illiteracy, not to mention irrational moral equivalency, continued on the floor of the Senate yesterday as Dick Durbin equated American military personnel at Gitmo to Nazis, Stalinist thugs, and the genocidal Pol Pot:

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat has compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay with the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, three of history's most heinous dictators, whose regimes killed millions.

In a speech on the Senate floor late Tuesday, Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, castigated the American military's actions by reading an e-mail from an FBI agent.

Ace has Christopher Hitchins on Amnesty International

Amnesty International, under its new leadership has become a disgrace. Ace of Spades HQ has the text of what Christopher Hitchins has to say about it.

Great stuff:

About Amnesty International's disgraceful performance, however, I can tell as well as ask. I was at one point quite close to its London headquarters, and I used to both carry and return messages for the organization when I went as a reporter to screwed-up countries. The founding statutes were quite clear: An Amnesty local was to adopt three "prisoners of conscience," one from either side of the Cold War and one from a "neutral" state. Letters were to be written to the relevant governments and to newspapers in free countries. Though physical torture and capital punishment were opposed in all cases, no overt political position was to be taken. (I remember there was quite a row when an Amnesty "country report" on Argentina went so far as to describe a guerrilla raid as "daring.") By adhering to these rules, AI became a credible worldwide group to which even the most repressive governments sometimes had to pay attention. All honor to its founder Peter Benenson, who died earlier this year.

Karol, of Alarming News, has an observation about NY

Karol, of Alarming News, has an observation about being in NY and being asked "what she does". She replies that "she is in politics". She believes that if someone follows up, they are liberal. A Republican will be afraid that they will found a Bush hater who wants to vent. She asks: "Is it the same elsewhere or is it just because of the demographics of NYC? Are liberals more likely to broach the subject of politics where you live?"

Howard Kurtz on Leftist dislike for the MSM

Amazingly enough, our leftist buddies are all angry at the MSM about how easy they are on the Bush Administration. While those on the right have the same issue, they disagree about the nature of the coverage. From the rabid left, the coverage is too far to the right. From the right, the coverage is too biased to the left. That doesn't mean that everything is fine, if they both are complaining. The problem is that the left got so used to extremely biased coverage that leaned in their direction during the Clinton Administration that any sign of balance causes an angry reaction on the left. Howard Kurtz tells the story. Howard writes:

It's official: The Democrats are fed up with the press.

From the day George W. Bush won the Florida recount, resentment toward the MSM has been building on the left, to the point where it may well match the intensity on the right. Liberal bias? Ha! These journalists roll over for conservatives and beg to have their tummies scratched .

Ed Morrissey writes about the fallout from the French rejection of the EU Constitution

Ed Morrissey has a long analysis of the fallout from the French rejection of the EU Constitution. That has had a greater impact than just the Dutch rejection. Ed writes:

Apres Collapse, France Lashes Out For Relevance

France's failure to support the EU constitution that its leadership had largely pushed and helped write has caused its government to push its failure onto others even as it concedes defeat. The Telegraph reports that France has finally given up on forcing other nations to continue the ratification process, effectively killing the proposed constitution

Ann Althouse says that there was "Reasonable Doubt", so Michael Jackson should have been acquitted

Ann Althouse writes that she was glad that Michael Jackson was acquitted. Based on the case presented, there was "reasonable doubt" that he was guilty.

MSNBC is summing up the evidence, with commentary on how strong the prosecutor's case was. The news anchor breaks in to report that a "large plane" has crashed into a residential neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale. And back to speculation about the Jackson verdict. Fox and CNN are staying with the Jackson verdict.

UPDATE: I'm glad Michael Jackson was found not guilty. As everyone on TV is saying, there was reasonable doubt. I loved watching the press conference with the jurors. It's quite inspiring, how solid and smart and diligent ordinary people are. Quite beautiful, really.

Yes, Michael Jackson got off, scot free

Wouldn't you know it, Michael Jackson got off the hook due to his celebrity (I bet). "Only in California" (ain't it great, Not). Ace has an appropriately vulgar and offensive comment. (Don't look if you would be offended)

Greg Costikyan has a good piece about what it will take to have really interesting mobile gaming (on phones)

Greg Costikyan now works for Nokia. He has built a career in gaming, having attended the first game design workshop at SPI when he was a 13 year-old (as I recall). He was early on involved with programming games, starting with Avalon Hill. He now writes, on his blog, about the current limitations that hold back gaming on mobile phones.

Forget about games for a moment: What makes mobile devices different?

Well, for one thing, they are first and foremost voice communication devices. And they store quite a lot of information about your circle of friends and business contacts, in the phone book. Along with a datebook (which most people don't use, but some do, particularly on higher-end phones where they can hotsynch to an Outlook calendar). They are personalized devices--people add ring tones, screenery, and images of friends so they can see a pic when someone calls. And they're networked--as computing devices, they may be primitive, analogous to (say) pre-Pentium computers, but early home PCs weren't networked until comparatively recently.

From a user perspective, they are primarily social devices, used to keep in touch with friends, family, and business contacts, mainly via voice and texting.

To get a better understanding of Greg's vision for what he calls "Mobile Gaming", it is worth reading the whole thing.

Another search engine that is good: Teoma

Karol, at Alarming News pointed out the Teoma search engine. I had seen it before, I believe, but had forgotten about it during my move from Minnesota back to Texas. The problem with Google has been growing, in that all the things that they put in place to keep people from "gaming the system" have reduced the search quality.

Talk about political influence

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch's daughters got in some trouble last year. An Illinois judge, ignoring the facts of the case, let them off the hook. The Chicago Sun Times has the story, although they don't spin the story the way that I think it should be.

Anne Hatch's 21st birthday party snowballed into a rumble-filled fiasco last year when she and sister Elizabeth were kicked out of the glitzy Crobar nightclub and ended up in jail for slapping two Chicago Police officers.

They had better luck in a drab misdemeanor courtroom Friday.

Judge Colleen Sheehan found the daughters of Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch not guilty of resisting arrest, battery and criminal damage to property, citing inconsistencies between the court testimony of Chicago Police Officers Jeffry Phillips and Timothy Karpiel and the arrest reports they filed days after the March 27, 2004, incident.

I had the impression last year, when I heard about the incident, that Hatch's daughters were spoiled brats who felt that they were above the law because of who their father was. This judge proved them right:

Sheehan didn't believe testimony that the sisters were drunk and attacked the officers, and she described Crobar employees who recounted the chain of events that led to the scuffle as having "selective memory."

Dr. Z has moved on, but I hope that he would write some more

I regret to say that Dr. Z has moved on, but I keep checking to see if he has written more. I would encourage him not to give up on us. He has a great deal of knowledge about programming languages and software design that I hope he will continue to share at C++ Wishlist and Abstract Software Development Language (Z++). We do have his collected writings at ZH Micro LLC, at least.

The struggle to help Muslim women in the Netherlands and Europe

The Dutch politician, Hirsi Ali, who is of Somali descent, has been a champion for the rights of Muslim women in the Netherlands. She is marked for death, of course, by the Islamists. Deborah Scroggins writes in The Nation about her situation and the plight of Muslim women in Europe, in general. This is one of the times when my views are aligned with those published in The Nation, which is generally not the usual situation.

Marc Cooper writes about politically correct suppression of speech

Marc Cooper was involved in the free-speech movement as a young man. Now, he is watching the local politically correct, multi-culturalists suppress free speech. At Cal State East Bay, Richard Rodriquez was to speak, but the local lefties with their own agenda had him removed as speaker. Marc writes about this story, and the sad state things are in, in academia.

Attack of the Knuckle-Head Mutli-Culties!

I couldn’t help but take a moment out of the weekend to lament this story: celebrated Latino writer, Richard Rodriguez was pressured into canceling his commencement address at Cal State East Bay scheduled for today after threats from graduating students that they would boycott or protest his appearance.

Rodriguez, a gay essayist, certainly fits smoothly into the traditional of liberalish public intellectuals. His opinion essays and video essays that have been featured on PBS are always thoughtful, provocative, and are laced with deep-felt compassion.

Rodriguez’ crime, however, is that he’s not acceptably PC. He has written in opposition to bi-lingual education and has questioned the rationale for university affirmative action programs. He does this neither as a zealot, nor as political activist, but rather as an intellectual who grew up tough, made it to Stanford, and genuinely wants the best for others like him. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong. He's certainly willing to talk about it.

Marc concludes by lamenting:

I was remarking to a fellow baby boomer today how damn lucky we are not to be 19 year college students today. I mean, how the hell would we turn out? In the 60’s we fought college administrators for the right to free speech and it was no easy slog.

But where does today’s atmosphere leave young critical thinkers? To their right, Young Republicans who march in lockstep with one of the least compassionate, least competent, and least self-critical administrations in recent history. To their left, gaggles of knucklehead multi-cultis, little tyrants who feel empowered to dictate who should and should not be allowed to be heard. It’s a disgrace.

P.S. here is one interview with Rodriguez. And another. Make sure the PC Police don’t catch you reading this dangerous material!

Robert X. Cringely has a great story about Apple and Intel

Robert X. Cringely has a story about how Intel will buy Apple to beat Microsoft. That is the explanation for the Apple move to Intel processors (he says). He is only half-humorous in this discussion. He is often wacko, for entertainment purposes, but the alliance between Intel and Apple, at least on technology, makes sense. Microsoft has gotten weirder and weirder over time. Of course, they dominate the market, which allows it. How can Intel return to innovation? In partnership with Apple, they can do it.

Dan Drezner on long term interest rates

Daniel Drezner has a piece about how Alan Greenspan doesn't understand why long term interest rates are falling. There are obviously forces at work that we aren't recognizing. We probably won't understand the current situation, until we move out of it, and can see why we did. Dan writes and quotes Alan Greenspan:

When Alan Greenspan can't explain the bond market, I start to get very, very nervous.

Among the biggest surprises of the past year has been the pronounced decline in long-term interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities despite a 2-percentage-point increase in the federal funds rate. This is clearly without recent precedent. The yield on ten-year Treasury notes, currently at about 4 percent, is 80 basis points less than its level of a year ago. Moreover, even after the recent backup in credit risk spreads, yields for both investment-grade and less-than-investment-grade corporate bonds have declined even more than Treasuries over the same period.

Howard Dean: The Devil Made Him Do It?

Ed Morrissey has a good piece about Howard Dean: "The Devil Makes Him Do It?" The Democratic leadership in Congress has decided to "unite around" Howard Dean, and show solidarity with him. They are now blaming the press coverage, not what Howard Dean said. Ed has a quote worth repeating:

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed "the right wing" and elements of the press "in service to it" for repeating Howard Dean's remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion.

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

I like the blaming Fox News part, especially. "It's the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (TM)".

Harold Ford, Jr. shows why is one of the "better sort" of Democrat

I spent about 2-1/2 years in Memphis, from December 1995 until May 1998. Harold Ford, Jr., was obviously one of the up and coming young politicians. Because of my connection to Memphis, I have been paying attention to his exploits. "Mr Minuteman", at "Just One Minute", writes about Harold Ford, Jr's opinion of Howard Dean.

Harold Ford Missed The "Get Behind Dean" Memo

Dems are rallying behind Dean, but Harold Ford of TN missed the memo. From his appearance on Imus this morning:

June 9, 2005

Imus: "On another note here, speaking of the Democratic Party, which you are a member of, how's Howard Dean working for you?"

Rep. Harold Ford Jr.: "(Laughing) I won't have him down so many times in Tennessee on the campaign trail with me. He has made some comments as of late that really speak to a lack of understanding I think, of the country, a lack of understanding of faith and values. I'm a Democrat and I'm a God fearing one. I grew up in church. Christianity is not reserved for white males.

Don Imus remains as one of the "Go to guys" on politics. I miss having him on the radio in my market. He used to be here, but I haven't been able to find him in quite a long time (not that I have looked, recently).

Marc Cooper predicts that Howard Dean will soon be gone

Marc Cooper is not a Democrat, but they represent his views better than the Republicans. Marc has been following Howard Dean's antics and predicts that he will not last much longer.

Howard Dean is trying to dig himself out of the hole he’s gotten himself into. Says the AP:

Dean on Wednesday defended his recent harsh criticism of Republicans, including his observation that they are "pretty much a white, Christian party."

Dean noted that he, too, is a white Christian. But he said the GOP is too narrow in its scope and the Democratic Party is far more diverse. While even prominent Democrats in recent days have distanced themselves from some of his comments, the outspoken Dean, appearing on NBC's "Today" show, said criticism of him is meant by Republicans to divert attention from the country's problems and make him the issue instead.

Exactly, Doctor Dean. Why don’t you button your lip and stop making yourself the issue? Democrats are divided over Dean’s mouth that roars. But this is hardly a left/right issue. It’s a common sense issue.

The fact remains that as distasteful as this administration may be, the Democrats lost the election. Dean’s job and the Democrats’ job, especially at a time when Bush’s polls are heading into the potty, is to put forward a proactive alternative message that goes beyond Daily Kos and MoveOn readers being able to get their jollies.

We would like to see China "just go away" but they are coming after us

All the good intentions in the world will not prevent us from confronting China. It is a crisis waiting to explode. The problem is the expansionist desires in China and the nascent nationalism that is sweeping the country. The attack on Taiwan will probably be the triggering event. Ed Morrissey writes about the attempts in the left side of the intelligence community to ignore what is happening in China.

The Washington Times reports that the CIA has missed the rapid expansion of the Chinese military over the past ten years, raising questions once again about the effectiveness of the nation's intelligence infrastructure. Starting in the mid-90s, the Chinese expansion of their submarine, missile, and other defense technologies has created "surprise" at Langley, a word that has come up a lot lately at CIA headquarters:

A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned.

The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report.

Razib, at Gene Expression, has a good post about strange beliefs, recently arisen

While the title of his post might lead you to believe that it is strictly about Christians, Razib, at Gene Expressions, writes about how people adopt new beliefs, such as in a strict creationism or that to be a good Muslim, at least in East Asia, you must learn to speak Urdu. He writes:

My point is that social issues, even scientific or religious ones, where fact and faith are assumed to be sharp and parsimonious arbiters, are very complex and difficult to parse. But, that should not, in my opinion, lead one to be bogged down in "Post Modernist" thinking, where one simply surrenders and concedes that reality is an insoluble problem. Rather, people should read more, think more and reflect more. A simple clear solution to an arcane and complex problem. There is nothing "inherently more Christian" about the Young Earth Creationist position, there have been debates about how literally to take Genesis since the initial founding of Christianity, and usually (from what I can gather) the intellectuals who fleshed out the details of Christian doctrine tended to lean toward metaphor and morality as the mode of interpretation and the reason being Genesis and the Creation story, not an eye witness account or scientific guide. From the secular perspective of those who wish to assert the reality of the dominance of the scientific theory of evolution within science itself, one must be careful not to oversimplify the "opposition" and simply assume that their talking points are natural outcomes of sincere Christian faith, after all, how could we account for Jay Manifold himself? Ultimately, Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design are simply social-historical movements that have tapped into religious sensibilities. It is not for the areligious to tell the religious what their faith tells them should be, but, it behooves us to consider the process how they do reach conclusions that they think are rooted in the axioms of their religious tradition.

In a footnote, he writes about language and Muslims:

It seems to depend by region to region. In south India the Mappila of Kerala speak the native language, and have a strong literary tradition in Arabic. They distance themselves from the Turco-Persian element that is in the cultural background, at least mythologically, of most Indian Muslims. In contrast, the Muslim population of Hyderabad not too far from Kerala in south India is Urdu speaking, though the surrounding population speaks a Dravidian language. In Bengal many of the elite Muslims once spoke Urdu, but there has been a transition toward Bengali speech for most of them (going three generations up a few branches of my family tree speak Urdu, though they were residents of long standing in Bengal).

I had not picked up that Razib was a Bengali, as is one of my friends.

We let in a wild-eyed, armed, suspected murderer

The Canadians are understandably unhappy with the US letting a wild-eyed suspected murderer across the border into the US. The problem is that he is a naturalized US Citizen. The Globe and Mail has a piece and shows the guy's picture:

On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canada border crossing at Calais, Me., carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Mr. Despres.

Then they let him into the United States.

The next day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Mr. Despres's hometown of Minto, N.B. The decapitated body of 74-year-old country musician Frederick Fulton was found on Mr. Fulton's kitchen floor. His head was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. The body of his common-law wife, who was stabbed to death, was in a bedroom.

Clayton Cramer on falling long term interest rates

Clayton Cramer would like to see long-term interest rates rise, as would Alan Greenspan. Clayton writes that Greenspan theorizes that the falling long term rates have to do with dynamics in international markets.

I've blogged about this off and on, with some irriation, because I really need long-term interest rates to go up way up, at least briefly, so that I can retire. (This really means: so that I can devote my energy to writing and blogging, not maintaining korn shell scripts of insane length.) I am glad to see that I am not the only person who finds the flattening of the Treasury yield curve bizarre

He goes on with a long quote from Alan Greenspan discussing the situation. Clayton, who is based in Boise, also writes:

Except that I can remember the last time that long-term Treasury yields fell below short-term Treasury yields. It was in the mid-1990s, and it was because the declining deficit had caused a lot of bond investors to decide that long-term yields were not going to be so low for a very long time--and they bought long-term Treasury bonds as though they were never going to be issued again--and they turned out to be right, at least in the short-term.

A couple months after that Treasury yield curve inversion, I bought $50,000 worth of Treasury bonds, due in November of 2016. They cost me about $47,000 at the time. They are worth about $62,000 now. They have been paying $3750 a year in interest ever since. (The interest in exempt from state income tax, which makes it worth a bit more than $3750.) I would not be at all surprised if another Treasury yield curve inversion might mean the exact same thing--falling deficits (yes, they are falling) will make long-term Treasury bonds worth owning.

Mickey Kaus on John Kerry's records

Mickey Kaus, at Kausfiles, has a good piece about John Kerry's released military (naval) records. He calls it "Kerry's slow 180 degree turn: he raises as many questions as he answers". He writes:

We want the military things that aren't "even relevant to the record." ... And the diaries! ... P.S.: Kerry also told Imus he delayed releasing his records because he needed to first "get it clarified with the military." Get what clarified? ("I have a stack of different materials they've sent me every time they've sent me something, and I want to know exactly what they're sending." Hmmm.) ... P.P. S.: Would the revelation of Kerry's mediocre grades have been enough by itself to cause him to withhold his records for such an embarrassingly long time? Is he that vain and insecure? I think so! (RCP doesn't.) Plus, as Taranto argues, even a non-vain Kerry may have rationally concluded that much of his appeal "rested on intellectual snobbery" incapable of surviving the mid-campaign revelation of his college transcript.

Ace writes about Kerry and Bush grades, as well

Ace, of Ace of Spades HQ, also writes about Bush and Kerry grades. His take is that the "high born" (like these two) don't generally go to college for grades. Middle class students need to have good grades, but the "high born" go to have fun and network with their peers. Ace concludes:

Our country's nobility goes to college largely to network, establish the social skills that will be their primary skill-set later in life (in business, in politics, in... doing very little except living off trust funds), and, of course, to screw around and have fun. Which is part of why everyone goes to school. But the high-born think they can screw around a lot more than the average student and still walk out of college with a low GPA and yet almost unlimited career prospects, and, of course, they're right.

You wouldn't slam an athlete for deciding his best career path was athletics. (Or at least I wouldn't; it's a rational economic decision, even if a risky one.) Likewise, there's little sense in slamming the noble-born for pursuing the non-academic path through college.

And yet the media did this as regards George Bush. Kerry refused to release his grades, suggesting he was not an A student (I don't see Kerry as the modest sort), and the press did not dig.

IIRC, Bush's grades were not released with his permission but rather leaked. Oddly enough, no one at Yale felt the need to leak Kerry's sub-optimal grades.

Shockingly enough, one of Kerry's highest grades (and yet still not all that good) was in... French.

Yes, it is amusing the President Bush got slightly better grades as an undergraduate then did John Kerry

Jay Tea, writing at Wizbang, discusses the Boston Globe article about John Kerry's records. We can see why John Kerry was not bragging about his undergraduate grades. President Bush did slightly better than he did. The really big story from John Kerry's military record is absent from the story.

In his freshman year, Kerry had a 71 average (a C-). He raised that to a 76 by the time he graduated. Bush's average for the four years was a 77.

It's even more telling that in Kerry's freshman year, his two highest grades were in a political science course (79) and a French course (77). His highest grade over four years was an 89 in another political science class.

Now, if the Glob, who has always been friendly to Kerry has access to Kerry's full Naval record, and they choose to focus on his college grades, what else could be in there?

I've heard some speculation that Kerry held this back because one of his biggest strengths in the campaign was his perceived intellectual superiority to Bush, and this would put a big dent in that image. But I'm wondering if this is just some "red meat" to keep attention away from a REAL smoking gun...

(Update: Doh! I missed the best part of the piece. As Jon Henke points out, go and look at the college-age photos of the two men who sought the presidency back in November -- especially if you need some giggles.)

Bolivia is unraveling

Bolivia is an example of what can happen with business is attacked by leftists who are playing ethnic politics. The Globe and Mail has the story about what is happening in the government and the streets.

The crisis pits Indian and labour groups from the poorer eastern highlands, including La Paz and its poor satellite city of El Alto, against ruling blocks from Santa Cruz in the east and the oil-rich gas fields to the south that are pursuing greater autonomy.

The protests have steadily increased since Bolivia's Congress last month raised taxes on foreign oil companies that have descended on the country to develop its natural gas reserves -- the second largest in South America after Venezuela.

Lawmakers had hoped to calm tensions in a country where anti-globalization anger runs high. But the tax increase touched off fresh demands for the nationalization of the oil industry and a new constitution giving more clout to Indians, who represent about half the population.

Jay Tea, at Wizbang writes: "I'd rather fight than switch"

Jay Tea, at Wizbang, writes about what we are dealing with, post 9/11.

Recently, I was mocked by a commenter who wanted to know if I feared the United States was in danger of being forcibly converted to Islam. I started answering that in the comments, but it started running a bit long, so I figured it'd be better suited to its own posting.

Do I think that the United States is in danger of being forcibly converted to Islam? No. But do I think that is the clearly and repeatedly stated goal of countless Islamists around the world? Yes.

He concludes:

Many "bad guys" tend to telegraph their intentions. Hitler outlined his plans and beliefs in Mein Kampf, over a decade before World War II. Imperial Japan spelled out its vision with the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." And the Soviet Union never made any secret of their vision of worldwide Communism.

We've ignored these warnings to our own great detriment in the past. I'm relieved to see that we're not doing so this time.

The French Socialists

After the former Socialist PM campaigned to defeat the European constitution in the recent referendum, the French Socialist party expelled him. Ed Morrissey has a long post about the situation. Ed concludes:

However, the party voted with a 59% majority in January to support the proposed constitution, and Fabius did not comply in lockstep with that decision. That's the official word from party leader Francois Hollande, who argued that leadership had to remain united and that Fabius had undermined the "democracy' of the group by publicly remaining true to his conscience.

While Hollande intends on enforcing "democracy" by expelling those who practice it, he might be advised to take care in doing so. As it turns out, a majority of Socialists voted against the EU pact in the election, ironically by the same percentage who supported it in January: 59%. In expelling Fabius, Hollande may wind up creating a schism among French Socialists that will not be easily healed. That will only strengthen Jacques Chirac, whose performance polls show him at rock bottom in the mid-20s at the moment. With the Socialist vote potentially split between Hollande and Fabius, though, Chirac could garner enough support to win re-election in 2007.

The Socialists should be celebrating the defeat of the EU constitution, all things considered, instead of tearing themselves to shreds over it. The party's inability to determine what it represents shows that European socialism has become an empty vessel, a shadow of its former power as history increasingly exposes it for the false economic and political philosophy it is. Unfortunately, the stalwarts of Old Europe will be the last to learn that lesson.

Attending a charter school in a wealthy neighborhood is not the same as being in an LA public school

Catherine has a good opinion piece in the LA Times called "Elitist Parents and Their Sappy Delusions". She had been on a talk show with a guy who yelled at her:

This guy managed to cram several levels of nonsense into a few minutes of air time: that the few lucky parents whose kids attend the city's handful of elite public elementary schools affect poll numbers or are typical of California public school parents generally; that bellowing out the name of your small child's school ("Canyon Charter School!") on national TV is a good idea; that charter schools in neighborhoods like this pricey enclave near Santa Monica, where homes typically cost $3 million (meaning property taxes can be more than private school tuition) are, in any practical sense, really public schools at all.

I checked out Canyon Charter: Half the parents have graduate degrees, almost 70% of the students are white and 10% are Asian — not exactly typical of L.A., where most public school students are Latino and poor. Yet on a parent website, happy Canyon Charter families approvingly cited the "broad mix of students of all ethnic and social backgrounds" and "good racial mix." Well, of course they like the social and racial mix, I thought. It's mainly rich white kids.

She concludes:

I generally take a flinty-eyed view of school. But a few years ago, I became caught up in a dizzying vortex of prestigious school fantasy when I tried to get my daughter, then 11, into an elite private girls' school. The screenwriter mom who led our parents tour chatted happily about how her daughter was now exposed to "the real world" thanks to this school: "Her first week here she left her wallet on top of her backpack in the hall and it was stolen!" I thought, "Where's she going with this?" "We have such a wonderful, diverse group of scholarship girls here," the mom explained. "So that was certainly a life lesson for my daughter."

Did I really think we'd fit in at a school so posh that stolen wallets are considered a fabulous extra benefit of diversity? By that point, I was so dazzled by the five years of Latin and glamorous aura of Gatsby-like privilege that I wasn't thinking.

When the rejection letter came, I'm ashamed to confess I burst into tears. My daughter, on the other hand, was unperturbed, although curious to see the letter herself. "Do they stamp a big red 'L' for loser on the outside of the envelope?" she asked excitedly.

She reminded me of my own mother, who never would have cried at such a thing in a million years. No, when it comes to living in a parental fantasy and, we're talking about my generation. And public schools won't improve until even pseudo-populist parents like that TV writer, whose children are somewhat sheltered from bad classrooms and worse teachers, face facts.

I'll be curious to see if there is anything to this: "Europe Collapsing"

Ed Morrissey writes about the situation among elitists in Europe, and how now that there seems to be interest in going back to individual national currencies, among other things. What they are finding is that Europe is diverse enough, that individual countries have differing economic needs. While France and Germany are stagnating, eastern countries are booming. A single interest rate for that group seems like the wrong thing, if you start to think logically about the problem. Ed writes:

In our discussions of the EU crisis today on our radio show, SCSU Scholars' King Banaian made the point that without a viable EU, the euro has become superfluous. Apparently that same argument has occurred to the EU elite, even those who previously championed complete European unity, like the French UMP party. It seems that the rats have begun lining up to abandon the ship even before it starts taking on water -- demonstrating, perhaps, that the EU project had less enthusiasm even among the EU elite than previously thought.

He concludes:

Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens in the next few days, more nations will express a lack of confidence in the union and the euro and prepare returns to national currencies. Without a central government, a central currency makes no sense. (via Instapundit)

Marc Cooper says that the Demcratic Party has turned into a vehicle to elect Hilary

Marc Cooper writes about how "Progressives" have have lost control of the Democratic Party, and now it is just a vehicle to elect Hilary Clinton.

Actually, it’s Hillary’s party. Or at least it seems like it’s her 2008 nomination if she wants it. And it looks like she does.

Ms. Clinton buzzed through town last night in her quest to shake out some Hollywood dough. This is, of course, how real politics are conducted in this country. Take your name recognition, mix in your network of entrenched party operatives, hacks and local elected officials, water it with plenty of campaign cash a coupla-three years out, and eventually make yourself inevitable.

Bewilderment in Brussels

The people responsible for pushing the new European Constitution were bewildered their two election failures, in France and the Netherlands. The reaction of some is to do more of the same, thinking that they just didn't push hard enough. Ed Morrissey has a post about what is happening now. Ed concludes:

The elite's only hope is for a revote in the two countries that rejected the pact. In France, that might work, as the reasons for the rejection had more to do with the leadership of Chirac and his team than the pact itself. For the Dutch, however, it would be out of the question. Their referendum had the highest turnout seen for a Dutch election in years and the overwhelming landslide against the Constitution shows that the Dutch have no desire to integrate themselves any further into an EU that is moving in its current direction. Demanding a second vote -- or worse, ignoring the referendum and having their parliament approve the constitution -- would be political suicide.

It's back to the drawing board, or maybe even a warning signal to EU wonks that entrenched national interests will not allow for the kind of political union that they envision. The EU might need to settle for remaining an economic alliance and give up what appears to be a fantasy of a European political confederacy.

Zephyr Teachout is for the North Carolina moratorium on executions

I don't understand why opposition to the death penalty is such a large part of the leftist agenda, but it is. Zephyr Teachout has the text for OpEd piece about a moratorium on executions in North Carolina. It turns out that she had worked in North Carolina about issues relating to the issue. She writes:

David Neal, my old colleague and great friend, wrote this OpEd in Charlotte News & Observer today. (I spent two years in North Carolina working on The Fair Trial Initiative with David and representing a client on death row, as well as working on other lawyer's cases). If you know people in North Carolina, send them the link to this OpEd -- its a close issue there, and every contact helps

By the way, this is a link to a picture of her.

This is a picture of just her. It is from Christopher Lydon's page at Harvard where he has his interview. She is a leftist activist who "went to Yale as a track star".

Only in Canada would recording incriminating evidence be a problem

We know we are in Canada when we read in the Globe and Mail about how Stephen Harper is having to defend Gurmant Grewal's recording of the Liberal attempt to bribe him with a government position.

"I have to rely wholeheartedly on Gurmant," Mr. Harper said, adding that other Conservative MPs — including Manitoba's Inky Mark — have made similar allegations in the past.

"It's easy to rely on someone who is saying the truth and who is speaking the truth to me."

Separately, NDP said it has asked Commons Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro to look into whether either Mr. Grewal or Mr. Dosanjh breached the conflict of interest code for members of Parliament in the incident.

Mr. Godin said, after receiving a recent letter saying that the ethics commission has the authority to investigate the matter, he has asked that Mr. Shapiro to investigate whether the two MPs involved complied with the code.

Mr. Grewal and Mr. Dosanjh, he said, may have contravened the code of conduct by seeking or offering inducements for Mr. Grewal to change his vote. As well, Mr. Godin cited Mr. Grewal's taping of conversations and the possibility that "Mr. Grewal attempted to entrap Minister Dosanjh into improper conduct" as possible violations.

"I base the above allegations on the public statements made by Mr. Grewal, Minister Dosanjh and Mr. Murphy as well as the transcripts — which have now been made public — of the conversations amongst these three persons," he said.

He also agreed with Mr. Shapiro that a possible RCMP investigation into the situation could result in a suspension of any inquiry by the ethics commission.

Jay Tea (at Wizbang) on Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Jay Tea, who writes at Wizbang, has a good analysis of Star Wars, especially the Revenge of the Sith. He argues that there is more to the story, even beyond what George Lucas understands. According to Jay, Chancellor Palpatine is a "new Sith" whose strategy beats the Jedi because they are still thinking in terms of past conflicts. The "new Sith" are into politics, not just fighting, and Palpatine has a better grasp than his opponents.

The politics of "Star Wars"

Now I've seen all six of the Star Wars movies, and read the novelizations, and I'm starting to fully grasp the politics of the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire. And I am stunned with the sheer brilliance of Palpatine -- and amazed that the same man who gave us Jar-Jar Binks and the Ewoks also pulled this off.

First off, let's tackle the bit about how Lucas intended to draw parallels between Palpatine and the Empire with the Bush administration. The big scene for this is Anakin and Obi-Wan's argument, where Anakin says "you're either with me or against me," and Obi-Wan answers that "only the Sith see things in such black and white." That sticks out like a sore thumb, because both sides engage in a bit of moral relativism. Palpatine tries to persuade Anakin that good and evil are simply a matter of perspective during the theatre scene, while in Return Of The Jedi Obi-Wan rationalizes his lies to Luke about his father "were true -- from a certain point of view." With those two examples, the Obi-Wan/Anakin argument pretty much falls apart.

Jay concludes:

The Jedi made the classic mistake of most great powers: they devote too much time preparing to re-fight the last war, and are woefully unprepared for an opponent who tries a new tactic. It's often said that one learns far more from failures than from victories, and that is exactly the case here.

George Lucas has given us a political saga that could rival The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, but the most amazing thing is in most of the interviews I've seen, he doesn't seem to quite grasp it. He seems incapable of recognizing and articulating it outside of his films.