Searchlight in the Sky

Long, long ago — before my beard was gray, when I was still a spry young chap, 20 or 25 years ago — my wife and I went camping in our local mountains. Just north of Laguna Mountain, to be specific. There’s a long and high escarpment there, with spectacular views to the east, across the desert. We camped at about 5800 feet; a mile or so east of us the desert floor is nearly at sea level. It was a warm and clear summer night, and we pitched our tent just off a dirt track, in some low bushes and short trees just back from the edge of the escarpment. We’d driven to cthis point in our old, beat up Volkwagen Microbus — those things were remarkably agile, lightweight, relatively high clearance, and with a very low first gear to compensate for the pitifully wimpy engine.

Debbie and I were all snug in our sleeping bags, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, when we heard the most awful man-made ruckus coming from somewhere nearby. An engine was roaring loudly; we could hear wheels spinning and people yelling. The noise went on for a while, to our annoyance, but eventually it stopped. With the peaceful atmosphere restored, we fell asleep until the morning light woke us up.

We broke camp and headed out in the Microbus to do some exploring along the rim of the escarpment. This area is all closed to vehicles now, but back then it was wide open. Just a little way down the road, we saw what caused all the ruckus the previous evening: a great big huge American pickup truck, all jacked up, four wheel drive — apparently stuck on a steepish part of the hill. We drove on over to see if we could be of some assistance. I had a jack, some rope, and a shovel; I thought some of that might come in handy. I stopped just downhill from the stuck truck, and walked over. A young man came out to greet me.

You could easily tell he wasn’t happy. He was cussing up a blue streak — not very creative cussing, just a prolific use of the 'F' word. A little spittle dribbled now and then, adding to the atmosphere. He had a big mustache and longish hair, much frazzled — and he was really, really dirty. I asked if I could help, and he said all he needed was a jump start. No problem there; we both had jumper cables. But by this time I was close enough to see his engine compartment, and I was a little surprised by what I saw…

First, there were parts lying about. Not just a spare screw or a not-strictly-necessary dohickey — these were significant parts: the air filter assembly, a belt, some cables, the battery, and more. This was starting to look a little more serious than a jump start to me. So I asked my frazzled fellow just what the heck had happened. As he started to tell the story, his two passengers — young women — joined us.

Now I’ve got to pause for a second to tell you about these three, for looking back at what I’ve written it’s clear I’ve failed to convey something very important to the story. Watching and listening to these folks, Debbie and I knew right from the beginning that we were dealing with people that were a few cards shy of a full deck, if you know what I mean. Plus the light bulbs were clearly of the low-wattage variety. And as if that weren’t enough to make the social interaction a bit awkward, the girls spoke in some language that used English words, but apparently assigned different meanings to them — and the word “like” was heard from them as often as the 'F' word from him. I truly felt like I had been injected in to some kind of low-budget Hollyworld set…

But no, this was for real. As best I could tell from the story the guy told us, they had been trying to go up this hill yesterday evening, but they got stuck. How you could get stuck on such a gentle hill with a jacked-up four-wheel drive vehicle is beyond me, but somehow they seem to have done it. He told us that he backed down several times, and made flying starts at the hill, only to get stuck each time. Finally, on the final attempt, he decided that he was using the wrong strategy (of course he didn’t use any three-syllable words like “strategy"). His new strategy: starting from where he got stuck, rev up the engine as fast as it would go, all four wheels spinning madly. I guess he figured that he’d dig his way up or something.

This was the noise that had so offended us the preceding night.

But fate intervened — the engine caught on fire. I suspect something rather more drastic than just a fire happened first — a lifter or valve gone awry, perhaps. But whatever the actual cause of the fire, he was now sitting in a vehicle with flames coming out the front. Even my frazzled fellow had enough on the ball to know that wasn’t a good thing. Now you or I, were we to somehow find ourselves in this situation, would probably turn off the ignition as our very first action. Ah, but not our super-hero, no, not he. He left the truck running (though he was clever enough to take it out of gear), jumped out, threw open the hood (burning his hands in the process), and observed that the flames were erupting from the air cleaner. Remember, the engine is still running at this point, and flames are shooting from it. I knew he was reasonably accurate about this, because the inside of his engine compartment was a mass of charred and melted plastic and rubber parts.

Of course he had no fire extinguisher, so he did what any lobotomized gerbil would do: he jumped up into the burning engine compartment, unscrewed the wingnut holding the air filter assembly in place, and yanked it off. The flames that had before then been deflected sideways by the air filter then shot straight up — into his face, which explained the charring on his shirt and the red patches on his face.

Now my frazzled fellow jumped down from the engine compartment and surveyed the situation. Let’s see: the engine is running, half the engine compartment is burned or melted, and flames are shooting straight up, spraying along the upraised hood. Obviously (if your intellectual capacity is approximately the same as an earthworm’s) the answer is dirt — scoop up dirt from along the road, and throw it down the throat of the carburetor, that’s the ticket!

Now, to most of us the results of such an action are quite forseeable. But my frazzled friend professed to be pleased with how well the dirt put out the fire, but a little puzzled as to why the engine suddenly stopped running. Once the fire was out, he went back into the cab and tried to restart it (thinking that at last they could resume digging their way up the hill), but alas, the engine wouldn’t start. So he puttered around a bit until it occurred to him to check the spark plugs. He pulled one out, and what he saw triggered about half his complement of 14 neurons, indicating that he might be on to something here: the spark plug gap was completely choked up with a nice aggregate of oiled dirt and sand. Ah, ha! Just a little spark plug cleaning, that’s all that was needed!

So, my frazzled friend pulled out all the spark plugs, dug around with his finger to scrape out the oily mess (he described this as “picking his truck’s nose” — lovely), and cleaned all the plugs with gasoline and a rag. He put it all back together, and darn it, the engine still wouldn’t start. He kept trying, and trying, and trying, but nothing happened. Except, of course, he ran the battery completely down.

Which was why he needed a jump start, of course.

Oh, my. Were you in my shoes, what would you do at this point? What I did was to gently suggest to him that perhaps his problem was a bit more serious than just a battery. I got absolutely nowhere with this line of discussion — he took one look at me, dismissed any possibility that this geek could know the slightest thing about how an engine worked, and just insisted that all he needed was a jump start.

Somewhere in all this story-telling, I asked the girls how they did through the night. And somewhere in their completely incoherent response was one memorable nugget that has stuck in my brain ever since. One of the girls was complaining about how hard it was to go to sleep, because “…there was this big searchlight in the sky, all night, and it never went away!” The searchlight this fine specimen of young female gerbilhood was referring to was, of course, the moon. We had a fine full moon on that night. At the time I heard this, I didn’t believe anyone could really be that ignorant (now, in my dotage, I realize that wasn’t even a particularly remarkable display of ignorance — I’ve seen much better). But at that moment, early in my life, it seemed completely astonishing that someone old enough to drink, drive, vote, and get pregnant could really be unaware of the phenomenon of a full moon. But further questioning of the young lass established two things: that she really was that ignorant, and that I had insulted the gerbils of the world by claiming she was their intellectual equal. This little vignette has stuck in my head all these years, and every time (like this evening) I see a beautiful full moon, I’m transported back to that memorable experience…

My frazzled friend couldn’t get a jumpstart from me, as our ancient Microbus had a 6 volt electrical system, and his truck was a 12 volt system. So I ended up giving him a lift back to the town of Laguna, dropping him off so he could find a mechanic to help him. He insisted on bringing his battery along, as he was still certain that all he needed was to get it charged up, and he’d be on his way. We never did find out the end of his story; all we really know for sure is that his truck was gone the next time we went up to those parts.

Those girls are proabably in their late 30s or early 40s now. Do you suppose it would be fun to somehow find them, and see how they turned out? Or are we better off letting it remain a mystery?

Images of Muhammed

A few days ago I posted the 12 Danish cartoons whose publication (and subsequent carefully orchestrated agitation by a few radical Muslim clerics) has provoked widespread demostrations, rioting, and violence. I published them mainly to make them available for anyone who wanted to see what all the fuss was about, since our lamestream media wasn’t (and for the most part, still isn’t publishing them. They remain posted on my site.

One of the reasons that some of the lamestream media cite for not publishing the cartoons is a claim of sensitivity to the Muslim religion, which prohibits images of Muhammed. Besides the obvious hypocrisy (they’ve never hesitated — in fact, they’ve been eager — to publish images that are highly offensive to Christians and Jews), there’s also this little problem: the assertion that Islam prohibits images of Muhammed is false. In fact, Muslims through the ages have made many thousands of images of Muhammed, some of them beautiful works of art now hanging in the world’s museums — where they’ve been for many years, with no resulting riots.

If you’re skeptical that the lamestream media could get such a simple fact so very, very wrong, here are some resources for you to prove it to yourself. First, this excellent collection of images of Muhammed available online. This collection was made expressly to prove the point I’m making here: that Islam does not prohibit images of Muhammed, and in fact has a history of celebrating them. My favorite out of this collection is the one at above right, which is currently published in the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri (remember, Iran is a Muslim country that is ruled by Muslim clerics — fairly radical clerics who believe in things like wiping Israel off the map, and nuclear weapons as religious tools). Oh, the hypocrisy! Another source of information is the self-styled Cranky Professor, a man with some knowledge in these matters.

From my readings on this issue, it does appear that some radical Muslims — very much a minority — believe that images of Muhammed are forbidden. One of these radical groups you’ve probably heard of: the Taliban. Remember when they blew up the statues of Budha? Their reason was their belief that Islam prohibits any depiction of any living being (including Muhammed); their reasoning being that only Allah could create life. Through the ages, various splinter groups of Muslims held beliefs regarding images ranging from the Taliban-like extreme to much milder forms. This is all true. But it is not true that mainstream Islamic theology — past or present — prohibits images of Muhammed. The previously mentioned collection, and the fact that mainstream Islamic media currently publishes images of Muhammed, would seem to buttress my point.

Interestingly, in the comments on my cartoons post you’ll a mention of this alleged prohibition:

Maybe you don´t know, but muslims NEVER represent Mahoma, in any form. NEVER. Could you imagine that?? I´m sure it is not a matter of freedom, is much more a matter of respect.

This is the only such assertion out of dozens of comments, many of which appear to be written by Muslims (many of whom are quite distressed by the cartoons). The poster either is a member of a Muslim splinter group that holds Taliban-like beliefs, or is impersonating one. I wonder what he or she would think of the links I’ve posted that prove the lie in their assertion?

Supply-Side 101

One of my six regular readers emailed me with a request: to educate him on supply-side economics. This post is my attempt at that…

At the very heart of supply-side economics is an assumption about the way that individuals and companies behave. In almost any system or theory of economics, you’ll find the notion that demand is influenced by price. Basically this says that you’ll sell more of any good or service if you lower the price — the lower the price, the more consumers will make the decision to buy. I don’t know anyone who quarrels with that assertion, most likely because it is everybody’s personal experience.

There’s a related notion that not everyone understands as well: that it isn’t necessarily better for the seller to sell more of something. Perhaps a simple example will make this obvious. Suppose you went into business selling lemonade on the street in front of your house. We’re keeping this very simple, so further suppose that the only costs you have are lemons, sugar, and plastic cups — and that those costs total 10 cents per glass of lemonade. Not knowing what price you should charge, you run an experiment: you try four different prices (15 cents, 20 cents, 25 cents, and 30 cents) for one week each, and record the resulting sales (250 cups, 170 cups, 140 cups, and 90 cups). Which week is best for you? If you do the math, you’ll find that your profit for each week was $12.50, $17, $21, and $18 — so the best price for you (the seller) is 25 cents. You’ll sell lots more at 15 cents, but you make so little per cup that you’re worse off. So as the seller, where do you set the price? If you went into business in order to make money, then of course you’d set it at 25 cents.

If you made it through that, you might be wondering what the heck this has to do with supply-side economics! Well, it turns out that this is the heart of the matter. Most likely, as you read the example above, you accepted the notion that the number of glasses of lemonade you sold varied according to how much your customers had to pay. Of course, right?

This is exactly what supply-side economics says about the behavior of people and companies as tax rates change. If you think about it, from the consumer’s perspective tax rates are just a different price for whatever good or service they’re buying. Let’s take one example to make it concrete: long term capital gains tax. This is a tax on the profit you make by selling any security (e.g., stocks) you’ve owned for over a year. Buy a stock at $10, sell it two years later for $12, and you’ve got $2 in capital gains — which the federal government taxes you on. When you are deciding whether to sell a stock you own, do you take that tax into consideration? Well, you’d have to be pretty darned dense not to! I know that every time I’ve ever sold stock, I paid very close attention to that (blankety-blank) capital gains tax! So doesn’t it stand to reason that if the capital gains tax is lowered (effectively lowering the cost for you to sell stock) that more people will sell stock? Also the converse: if you raise the capital gains tax, don’t you think that fewer people will sell stock? Not only is the preceding common sense, it’s also borne out by experience: every time the capital gains tax has been reduced, stock turnover went up, and every time it has been increased, stock turnover went down.

If you absorbed the preceding, then (in technical terms) you have dismissed the “static model” of tax economics. The static model (which our government still uses for many forecasts!) assumes that nobody will change their behavior because tax rates change. That model seems to me to be just plain stupid. Click on the chart above right to see a graph of this. The red line shows the results of a static model: as tax rates increase, so does the tax revenue. Even as the tax rate goes to 50%, the revenue keeps going up — as if people would really behave this way! The static model’s main advantage is that it gives liberals a reason to screech about tax reductions. This only works if we’re all stupid sheeple. Oh, don’t get me started on this!

A simple alternative to the static model, and one that often comes first to mind when thinking about this, is the “linear model”. In this model, the assumption is that consumer behavior does change as price (or tax rates) change — and it changes in proportion to the change in price or tax rate. In other words, if you drop the price by 10%, then 10% more people will buy. If this was reality in the tax world, then it wouldn’t matter what tax rate you set — the revenues to the government would be the same. How boring is that? The problem with the linear model, however, is that pesky reality. People don’t really behave like this. Let’s take an example to illustrate: suppose that the price of a movie ticket was $10, and at that price 100 people watched the movie at your theater. Now cut the price in half, to $5 — what do you suppose would happen? Most likely, you’d get more than double the number of customers, because $5 seems like a major bargain (by today’s standards, anyway!). Now try the proportional opposite: double the price to $20. Do you think half as many customers will show up? I rather doubt it — $20 is so much higher than the competition that practically everybody will go to them. This is very non-linear behavior, and it’s quite the norm in the real world.

There are many ways to model non-linear behavior, and economists and mathemeticians debate them endlessly. But for the purposes of this discussion, these debates are all details that don’t matter, since all the models have a more complex, “curvy” something like the green line on the chart. The non-linear models (and reality) all have something in common: there’s always a “sweet spot” where the most profit (or tax revenues) will be made; a certain price (or tax rate) where they are maximized. In the example I’ve used, tax revenues are maximized at around a 6% tax rate, considerably lower than the 15% starting point. The sweet spot could just as easily have been on the other side of the current rate, at a higher rate — it all depends on how those tax rates affect people’s behavior.

The premise of supply-side economics, translated into tax policy, is that the government should never set tax rates higher than that sweet spot. At the sweet spot, not only are tax revenues maximized, but it’s a healthy, vibrant economy that’s causing it. Setting tax rates higher than the sweet spot means lower economic activity — not good from anybody’s perspective — and less tax revenue. That’s not good even from a liberal’s perspective, though getting one to admit that is pretty darned hard! Setting tax rates lower than the sweet spot isn’t necessarily bad — while it reduces tax revenues, it encourages economic growth in whatever area of activity is being taxed. This sounds like something a liberal would reflexively reject, and a libertarian reflexively embrace <smile>. For example, suppose we’re talking about the tax on the purchase of solar cells for powering homes, offices, or factories. Suppose the sweet spot on that (for maximizing tax revenues) was 5%. To encourage the adoption of solar power, one might consider reducing that tax, even to zero — despite the reduction’s impact on tax revenues.

Another key element of supply-side economics is what I’ll call the “regenerative effect”. This is another common-sense notion that virtually every economics system or theory embraces: the idea that economic activity has an impact greater than the immediate participants in the activity. For example, if I grow some corn and sell it to you for $10, then you and I have each benefited. But I’m going to take my $10 and do something with it (I’m going to buy a big box of chocolate!). The guy who sold me the chocolate now has $10 to do something with. The same thing is true for companies: the profit they make regeneratively increases overall economic activity, to everybody’s benefits. Liberal interpretation of corporate profits often diverges from this; listening to them, and reading their writings, I get the idea that they believe corporate profits all end up in the hands of evil, filthy rich “capitalists” (voiced in disdainful tones) who, presumably, bury it all in the cellar — because in their view it’s certainly not doing the world any good. This is a remarkably ignorant mindset, so obviously wrong-headed that I presume it to be an article of faith, rather than a reasoned position.

You might also wonder how (for example) outsourcing might affect supply-side economics. Well, really outsourcing is a completely separate issue — except so far as tax rates affect the rate of outsourcing. If you assume (and I most certainly and emphatically do not!) that outsourcing is bad, then as a matter of policy one could lower tax rates in the affected industry to make our domestic suppliers more attractive. But this really has nothing to do with supply-side economics; one could do the same thing even under traditional liberal economic theory…

That’s the lesson for today!

Education Follies

California finally acted to ensure that high school students met some minimum performance criteria before they could graduate — and look what happens:

From the San Jose Mercury News:

A lawsuit seeking to ensure that no high school senior is denied a diploma simply for failing California’s new exit exam was filed Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of tens of thousands of 12th graders who have not passed the test.

The complaint asserts that there are so many inequities in California public schools that some students have not had a fair opportunity to learn the eighth-grade math and 10th-grade English language skills the exam measures. It also states that funding for extra instruction to help students pass has been inadequate.

The plaintiffs will seek an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the exit exam requirement for this year’s graduating class.

According to the article, the basis for the suit (the “angle” they’re using to get the result they want) is that the legislation requiring that students pass the “exit exam” before they can graduate offers no alternative — pass the exam, or you don’t graduate. I don’t understand the legal theory behind this, as I know of no requirement for “alternatives”. But what do I know about creative lawyering?

Some who know me are surprised at my stance on education, as I am myself largely “uneducated” (at least, in the conventional sense) — I graduated from high school, but not from college; my professional education was done on my own. So folks expect me to espouse the benefits of self-education and to dismiss the benefits of a formal education. They’d be right on the former, but dead wrong on the latter.

My concerns about the state of our formal education stem from my politics — and my patriotism. I know that the vast majority of people need that formal education to learn the skills they need to get a job (especially that first one), to contribute to society, and to prepare them for independent adulthood. Because I’ve spent my entire career in high-tech industries, and because I’ve hired many people into the companies I founded or worked for, I’ve had occasion to witness firsthand how well our educational system achieves these goals. And because for the past 12 years I’ve worked extensively with employees in foreign countries (Estonia, Russia, and England), I’ve also had a chance to compare the results of our educational system with that of other countries.

And this makes me fear for my country’s future, folks — because I see the young people of other countries being educated in a manner that is frighteningly superior to ours. The example I’m most familiar with is Estonia (and this includes, to some extent, older Estonians who received all or part of their education under the Soviet regime). I know hundreds of people there, and I’ve worked closely with many of them. For the most part these are software engineers and computer scientists (by our terminology). My general observation: right out of school, the majority of the Estonians have a much better fundamental background in computer science and have far better mathematics skills than the majority of their American-educated counterparts will ever achieve. The only area in my own experience where the Americans have an edge is in the process and management of software development — and even here, the Estonians are catching up rapidly.

But perhaps even more importantly, the Estonians (and other non-Americans) by-and-large have a cultural expectation that what matters for their personal success is results. Not how hard they try, not how they feel about things, but results. In engineering terms, they understand that they need to get the right answer, or to build something that actually works.

This is not to say that Americans all don’t get the need for results — obviously, many do. But it seems to me that our educational system is not helping in this regard. Our system produces graduates — not all of them, but enough for me to be concerned — who really, truly, don’t understand that in order to succeed in their profession, the actually have to get results. The right answer is important; engineers really do have to build things that work. And not all of our high school or university graduates understand this at all.

On many occasions in my career as an employer, I have run into this in fuzzy or indirect ways, where I can only suspect that our educational system has done my employee no favors. On a few memorable occasions I have been slapped upside the head with an incident that unambiguously made the point. One example: a couple of years ago I was running the IT organization for a company with a substantial datacenter and about 50 US employees. One of the guys working for me was a desktop technician; his job was to keep all the desktop computers and laptops that our employees used working correctly. From my observations of his work, I thought he was a mediocre technician — he took a long time to resolve problems, and was unable to resolve far too many of them. In his annual review, I gave him relatively low ratings, and in our discussion about those ratings I explained why. As we talked, I could see this poor fellow getting more and more puzzled, until finally I just asked him why. He said “You’re not giving me any credit at all for working hard! I’ve been working 10 or more hours every day for months!” That led into a (for me) very interesting discussion about this issue, and we finally got to a point where he asserted to me that it “should” be true that someone who worked very, very hard but didn’t achieve the desired would be more rewarded by the company (raises, bonuses, etc.) than someone who achieved all the desired results with little effort. He really, truly believed that, and I could not dissuade him — so I told him he needed to find work at a company with beliefs more compatible with his own. He left shortly after this discussion.

I have never run into this attitude with an Estonian employee.

Back to the article and the lawsuit: the whole point of the exit exam is to prove the student can get results with their education. I support that 100%! That’s exactly what will be expected of them in the careers most of them pursue; most careers (politics, therapy, and few others excepted) demand results — and there is no “alternative” way to succeed. I believe the same thing should be true of our educational system; the only thing that makes me unhappy about the exit exam is how low it sets the bar. I’d like to see similar objective requirements put in place for university graduates. And I’d like to see the bar set high in all cases.

Such objective criteria are but a beginning. Next on my list would be a return to grading systems that actually mean something; where only a few students achieve the top rankings, and they achieve those rankings because they stand out in terms of the results they’ve delivered. But now I’m dreaming…

This lawsuit is unadulterated liberal poppycock. I hope is is summarily dismissed, with prejudice.

Titan Movie

With virtually no public awareness, much less fanfare, the Cassini mission to Saturn continues to return excellent science — day after day after day. Today there’s a new movie of Titan, the intriguing giant moon of Saturn. If you click on the picture at right, you’ll get the large (6MB) GIF movie. It was taken in a combination of the visual and infrared spectrums:

From the official Cassini-Huygens site:

This movie of Titan shows data taken with Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer during the last three flybys of Titan. The flybys took place on Oct. 28, 2005, Dec. 26, 2005, and Jan. 15, 2006.

These false-color images were taken at wavelengths of 1.6 microns shown in blue, 2.01 microns in green and 5 microns in red.

The viewing geometry of the December flyby is roughly on the opposite hemispheres of the flybys in October and January. There are several important features shown by the movie. First, the globe of Titan exhibits two major types of terrain. One is very bright, and a darker one seems to be concentrated near the equator. Titan also has two very bright regions, the large one known as Tui Reggio, and the other as Hotei Arcus. These regions are thought to be surface deposits, probably of volcanic origin, and may be water and/or carbon dioxide frozen from the vapor. The December flyby data show that the western margins of Tui Reggio have a complex flow-like structure consistent with eruptive phenomena. The reddish feature at the south pole is Titan¿s south polar cloud system, which was very bright during the December flyby. During the October and January flybys it is barely visible, indicating that the atmosphere over titan’s south pole is very dynamic.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.

It’s just amazing what this “flying Volkswagen” is doing!

Michelle vs. the Rabbits

For the past few days, my blog has had many more visitors than usual, thanks mainly to a link from Michelle Malkin to my post (along with posts from many other bloggers) of the infamous Danish cartoons. In addition, search engines (especially Yahoo, for some reason) have also referred many visitors to that post. Obviously the controversy over the cartoons has generated a lot of interest in the subject.

But this morning when I looked at my blog’s visitor statistics, I see that things are back to normal after the blogburst over the cartoons: rabbits are on top. Specifically, rabbit photos. People keep finding (usually through Google Image searches) two posts I made last summer (here and here). For months (except for the past few days), these pages have been the number one reason why visitors come to my blog.

And this morning, they’re number one again.

Sigh.

But on a happier note: a big, hearty “Congratulations!” to Michelle Malkin: she will be getting the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute’s Woman of the Year Award on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. And a tip of the hat to the Institute for making such a great choice…

Lamestream Lies

Reading the news this morning (my usual practice, with a cup of wonderul Pannikin Kenya AA coffee in my hand), I came across this startling headline and lead paragraph:

From the (consistently lame) Washington Post: Libby Testified He Was Told To Leak Data About Iraq

Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Now from all I think I know about Libby and Cheney, this is a most unlikely story. So I read on, until I got to the key part:

In a letter written in January and released in court papers filed by Libby’s defense Monday, Fitzgerald wrote that Libby testified that his “superiors” authorized him to disclose information from the National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003.

Just in case it’s not obvious to you what the WAPO has done, let me spell it out. Libby (presumably in response to someone’s request) sought authorization from his bosses (including Cheney) to release the answer — from the already declassified National Intelligence Estimate. There’s no smoke and no fire here, folks — that’s just a bureaucrat doing his job. And the WAPO attempting to twist that into something sinister.

Their headline clearly implies that Libby testified that he was told to deliberately leak some information, presumably for political reasons. But when you look at what he actually testified to, you find that it was something else altogether. This is exactly the sort of thing that occurs when a reporter’s own political agenda runs into the facts: the facts get twisted, stretched, and distorted so that they fit into the reporter’s preconceived notions — and hardly resemble reality any more. You really have to work at it to find out what really happened, instead of what the reporter wants us to believe happened…

How lame is that?

Classic Democrat?

Not to be found on the news anywhere (of course) is this story: former Congressman Robert Livingston (Louisiana) was asked by his Democratic colleagues to join them in criticizing President Bush for exercising too much power in the war on terror — and he refused:

Via (the excellent and essential) PowerLine:

... I have always considered you as a good friend, and I continue to do so. But since you raised it, I must tell you … I am emphatically on the other side of this issue.

The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. He is Constitutionally obligated to do everything possible in time of war to safeguard the American People. This tempest in a teapot about treatment of cowardly un-uniformed mass murderers and terror mongers, as well as restriction of his ability to monitor conversations of potential terrorists is in my view asinine, and I will have nothing to do with any effort that might be used to undermine his ability to keep us free from terrorism.

Indeed, we are at war with a most formidable and intractable enemy. He is insidious, cowardly, and bent on the destruction of all civilized society. Innocent men, women and children are cannon fodder in his eyes, and efforts such as the one you are sponsoring will be unappreciated by practitioners of his cause. This effort would have looked insane in Lincoln’s day, and he was far more intrusive in his practice than anything that has been envisioned today. Frankly, some Members of Congress and self-appointed leakers in the Executive Branch have put this country in grave danger with this very discussion. I have seen no evidence at all that American citizens have had their Constitutional 4th Amendment rights infringed upon (as they were in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon eras). Until such evidence is shown, I shall do nothing to keep this President from protecting American citizens from harm’s way.

PowerLine doesn’t say where they got the copy of the Mr. Livingston’s response, but given its complete absence on the news, I assume one of their readers sent it along.

Isn’t that response just magnificent?

But isn’t it sad that only Livingston, Miller, and Lieberman — out of the entire federal Democratic establishment — understand that the nation’s security is more important than partisan politics?

This leads me to an idea, though… I’d love to see the three of them spearhead a new national political party: the “Classic Democratic Party", as opposed to the “New Democratic Party” of Pelosi, Kennedy, Schumer, Daschle, Reid, Clinton, and Carville. It would be so nice to have a real political debate with serious Classic Democrats such as these three men — and I would worry a lot less about the consequences of a Classic Democratic electoral victory than I do about the consequences of a New Democratic electoral victory…

Deutsch Resigns

In the news last night was this little tidbit: George C. Deutsch, the NASA PR guy at the center of the controversy I posted about a few days ago, has resigned. But not, it seems, because of pressure from his boss for his completely inappropriate behavior. No, young George apparently is resigning because of the discovery that his claim to have graduated from Texas A & M was false.

And this discovery was made by a (very anti-Bush) blogger!

More information here, here, here, and here.

This story is interesting on several levels. There’s the angle that (yet again!) the blogosphere beat out the lamestream media at on-the-ground journalism. There’s the removal of a voice of insanity (from a scientist’s or a rationalist’s perspective) from a position of influence at NASA. And finally there’s the troublesome indication that Deutsch was pressured to resign not because of his efforts to get NASA to present science’s results as a “theory” on equal standing with other theories such as “intelligent design", but instead because of a lie on his job application.

Fraud on job applications is almost unbelievably common; I know this on a personal level from decades of hiring experience. And I do not excuse it in the slightest; I think dismissal for job application fraud is not only appropriate, but should be mandatory policy at any employer. But…inappropriate behavior such as that Mr. Deutsch has displayed should also lead to either dismissal or effective correction. And in the case of something so public as Mr. Deutsch’s transgressions, that corrective action should also be made public, even if just for the reason of reassuring the public that the behavior would not be repeated by the PR flack that replaces Mr. Deutsch.

For now, I feel no such assurance. I can but hope that underlying Mr. Deutsch’s resignation is a realization by NASA that his behavior was inappropriate, and for some reason the NASA brass think their realization should be a secret. Doesn’t sound all that likely, does it?

Hiiumaa House

Hiiumaa is the second-largest of the many islands off the coast of Estonia, in the Baltic Sea. Of the islands I have visited, Hiiumaa is my favorite. It’s still relatively undeveloped (despite the land boom from moneyed Finns), I suspect because of the relatively long ferry ride to get there. The only ferry currently servicing Hiiumaa leaves from Rohuküla, on the west coast of mainland Estonia and over an hour’s drive from Tallinn (the main city and port of entry to Estonia).

Estonia has hundreds of islands, but only four major ones, of which Hiiumaa is the second-largest, at about 300 square miles. At its highest point, Hiiumaa rises only 200 feet out of the Baltic sea; like the rest of Estonia, it is essentially low and flat. It’s located in the far west of the country, about 15 miles off the coast of the Estonian mainland. The western reaches of Estonia, including Hiiumaa and Saaremaa, are on an area of the earth’s crust that is rising at the rate of about 1/8 inch per year. Hiiumaa emerged from the Baltic sea about 8500 years ago (rising as the weight of the retreating glaciers came off), and has been occupied by humans for about 7000 years. The island is basically composed of limestone, with a large number of erratic boulders (mainly granite) deposited by the melting and retreating glaciers.

On this particular trip, after the 90 minute ferry voyage that deposited me in Heltermaa, I headed first toward Kärdla, the largest town on the island. I took the main road at first, then diverted toward Hellamaa to get off the main track a bit. The countryside is very pretty everywhere on the island, with small farms and forests dominating the landscape. Near Kuri I spotted this particularly nice farmhouse, built mainly of granite blocks from erratic boulders. Many of the farmhouses incorporate some erratic boulders, and I’ve seen others that were entirely built of them (like this one), but none quite so fine as this.

These erratic boulders fascinate me, as they look so out of place compared to the rest of the geology of Estonia. You can see a fine picture of a large erratic boulder here, but most of them that I’ve seen are much smaller. They are mainly granitic rock, almost all of them a reddish or pinkish color — very attractive. On my many hikes around Estonia, I’ve run into them just about everywhere — even in the bottom of meteorite craters (another interesting phenomenon of Estonia geology that I’ll write about on another day).

The history of these erratic boulders is really quite simple, once you discover the mechanism. The granite outcroppings occur naturally far to the north, in what is today Finland. During the ice age, when great sheets of thick, heavy ice pushed southward, they scraped chunks of this Finnish granite off. As the glaciers ground their way southward, the chunks were abraded and crushed, forming the rounded boulders we see today. Some of them worked their way up from the bottom of the glacier as the ice itself was crushed and melted as it moved. Eventually those boulders made it to modern-day Estonia, and considerably further south. But when the ice age ended and the glaciers melted, those boulders in or below the ice sheet in Estonia found themselves on dry land there — and untold numbers of them, of all sizes, then littered the landscape.

I’ve read that the distribution of size versus number is exactly the kind of exponential curve you’d expect: there are an extremely large number of small “boulders” (potato size and smaller), and a quite small number of really large boulders (say, a cubic meter or so, or larger). The larger ones in Estonia have all been named; most are in parks or protected areas, and have well-marked trails leading to them. The excellent maps available in Estonia mark the locations of these “erratic boulders", and I’ve visited many of them. Only on rare occasions have I met anyone at one of these boulders (I once surprised a pair of lovers who, I think, never knew I was there <smile>!). But it’s clear from the well-walked trails that they are nonetheless often visited — I’ve never found one that was neglected.

The farmers on Hiimuaa knew a good building material when they saw it, as this handsome house attests. Thankfully there are plenty more boulders in situ, with the largest and most interesting actively protected.

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view…

Absent Decorum

At the funeral for Coretta Scott King, some Democrats took the opportunity to use this public platform for some Bush-bashing (ex-President Jimmy Carter and Reverend Joseph Lowery, in particular). If your main source of news is the MSM, you probably don’t even know about this. The politicization of Mrs. King’s funeral is all over the blogosphere, however.

On the right side of the blogosphere, the commentary is mostly about the lack of decorum displayed by these Democrats. The feeling is that such political discussion was completely inappropriate at a funeral service. I share this perspective — I believe the eulogies and speeches at a funeral should be about the person who died, and the life that he or she lived. When the funeral is for someone of such accomplishment as Mrs. King, someone held in such high regard by nearly everybody … well, then, appropriate remembrances shouldn’t be hard to come by.

On the left side of the blogosphere, by and large the commentary is more like this example:

From the DailyKos:

Is there anything we do that they do approve of? Besides continuing to give birth to self-hating Toms like the Condoleeza Rices, Clarence Thomases, Kenneth Blackwells, and Lynn Swanns of the world?

Someone not Republican in MSOC’s thread said that folks should have “sat down and been quiet”. Clearly we now must also have white funerals if we are to be accepted as equals.

I’ll alert the media.

In other words, flat-out rejection of the idea that Carter and Lowery said anything inappropriate. On other posts you’ll find outrage at the simple presence of President Bush (whose remarks, by the way, were all about Mrs. King) at the funeral — the general notion is that he is a Republican, and Republicans have no right to be at the funeral of a civil rights leader. As best I understand the logic of these posts, that right is earned only by having participated in civil rights marches in the '60s. Or something like that.

I actually watched the funeral service; I suspect (from their comments) that many writers on both sides of the aisle have not. I was moved by most of the eulogies; shocked by one (the Reverend Lowery), angered by one (Jimmy Carter), and thought several others were quite inappropriate for the occasion.

Once again, my overwhelming reaction is one of sadness for our country, and the state of its political conversation. And in this case, of sadness that the family and friends of the good Mrs. King had to suffer through the politicization of her funeral by Carter, Lowery, and others.

Decorum in our public conversation is a very useful device. The absence of decorum has consequences. Mrs. King’s funeral is one example; in my opinion, we’ve lost forever the chance to celebrate her life publicly and collectively — this is a loss not only for her family, but also for the nation she was a proud citizen of. That chance is not likely to be repeated. In other circumstances, the absence of decorum helps polarize people on opposite sides of a discussion, to the point where a useful, civil debate cannot be held. We all lose on this. There are many positions that liberals hold that I find incomprehensible, and I would love to gain an understanding of how they come to hold those positions. I cherish the unfortunately very rare occasions when I get to take a peek into a liberal’s brain — I always learn something, and sometimes I change my own positions as a result. But the uncivil discussions that dominate our current political context, such occasions remain rare. That’s a sad thing.

So I call for some more decorum, please — knowing that it’s almost certainly a futile gesture. If 9/11 couldn’t shock our political debate into more decorous form, I don’t know what the hell could…

Oops!

For decades, nutritionists, doctors, and others have recommended low-fat diets for their health benefits. In recent decades, this community has attributed reduced rates of cancer (especially colon cancer and breast cancer), heart attacks, and strokes to such a diet. Millions of people have tried, with varying success, to follow the (wildly variable and conflicting) guidelines propounded by these people in an effort to improve their health or simply to lose weight.

Oops.

A just-published, $415M, eight-year federal study of 49,000 women concludes that a low-fat diet in fact does none of these things (at least, not with the study’s target audience of 50 to 79 year old women). Women on low-fat diets had cancer rates, heart attack rates, and stroke rates insignificantly different from those of women who ate whatever the heck they wanted to.

Oops.

And it gets worser: the women on the low-fat diets didn’t even succeed in losing weight.

Oops and double-oops.

Lest you think this study was some light-weight, flaky, fly-by-night sort of thing, consider this:

From the New York Times:

"These studies are revolutionary,” said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. “They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."

The study, published in today’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was not just an ordinary study, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. It was so large and so expensive, Dr. Thun said, that it was “the Rolls-Royce of studies.” As such, he added, it is likely to be the final word.

"We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue,” he said.

Oops.

The way that this study turns preceding consensus belief on its head is a great example of the value of the scientific process. Even the combined education, experience, and intuition of a large group of well-informed people can turn out to be wrong — and has, on countless past occasions. We often mock the ancients for their belief that the universe revolved around the Earth — the the fact is that their beliefs were the consensus of the best-educated, best-informed, most-respected people of their time. We’re no different, and their are other recent medical beliefs to use as illustrations. For instance, just a couple of decades ago, the consensus amongst scientists and medical professionals was the stomach ulcers were caused by stress and excess acid. Oops. It turns out that they’re caused by a bacterium, and they are easily treated. Decades of well-informed consensus turned out to be wrong. Looks like they’re wrong again.

One difference with this particular affair, though, is that there is a multi-billion dollar industry with a vested interest in the belief that low-fat diets are healthy. This industry, it’s easy to predict, will do everything they possibly can to impeach this study. The battle will be interesting to watch…

I’ll leave you with the “money quote” from the NYT article (it’s also how they concluded):

But Dr. Freedman, the Berkeley statistician, said the overall lesson was clear.

"We, in the scientific community, often give strong advice based on flimsy evidence,” he said. “That’s why we have to do experiments."

Oops.

Bush and Science

As many of you know, I’m a strong supporter of our President on many issues, most especially on defense, foreign policy, and the war on terror. But there are also many areas of policy and ideology where I am not a Bush supporter — and one of them is in the area of science and technology.

One of my readers (Larry E. — thanks!) pointed me to this article (in the NY Times, sorry) that highlights some of the problems I have with Bush’s science and technology policy (in this case, with NASA).

This particular article describes a pattern of behavior and effects that, taken all together, are rather disturbing to anyone who thinks of themselves as a rationalist. The pattern implies that the administration believes in magical thinking, and doesn’t understand (or accept) findings made by the scientific process. This is, of course, a common phenomenon with people who are devoutly religious. I carefully said “common” there, because it is certainly not universal. Devoutly religious scientists are particularly interesting in this regard; many of them can simultaneously defend both the scientific process and their religion.

Unfortunately, the current administration does not seem to share this capability. Sometimes their missteps in science and technology policy can be traced back to this science-versus-magical-thinking issue (the Deutsch memo discussed in the article is a great example of this). Sometimes it can be traced back to politics, such as the administration’s support for expanded manned space flight, including a return to the moon and an objective of a manned mission to Mars. In general, I find the Bush administration’s science and technology policies (and the resulting budget requests) very disappointing.

In the recent State of the Union speech, Bush outlined an energy plan that reflects muddled thinking and (I suspect) a belief in magic. Really only one element is something I can find some hope in: builing nuclear power plants. As an example of the problems with the rest, consider his ethanol initiative: he’d like to see us use ethanol to help displace foreign oil. The ethanol would be made not only from corn, but also from other bio-material, such as wood chips. Sounds great, makes all the greenies happy, but … the underlying science says there are lots of problems with this approach. The biggest problem is that it takes almost a gallon of oil to produce the ethanol that would replace a gallon of oil. And that’s the most optimistic assessment I could find — most scientists believe that ethanol will take even more oil! Now we can hope for a scientific breakthrough, or we can believe in magic — but it strikes me as sheer folly to start a major program, spending billions of dollars, on that basis. I could support a program to search for that breakthrough, but that’s not what’s on the table…

Well, this is a sort of rambly post, isn’t it? I really just wanted to make the point about where President Bush and I part company: science and technology policies is one of the main ones.

Some other day I’ll dig into another one: immigration and border control.

Blog Problems

Final update: (I hope!) The filters I’ve installed in my router seem to be doing the trick, though I am still occasionally having a minor problem. My site is being attacked (for sure) by the usual suspects, especially the Sasser worm and variants at the moment. But it also appears that my site is getting some DoS (denial of service) attacks that are out of the ordinary, and I suspect related to the cartoon posts. I’m taking this off “sticky” for the moment…

Update 2: Just had a server crash shortly after a new blast of a gazillion bad packets. I will keep this post at the top until the problems/attacks subside…

Update: I put filters in my firewall to block the offending traffic, and for the past hour everything has been working just fine. This is a little bit short of proof of an attack, but it’s darned close to it, and I’m now operating under the assumption that my site is being attacked. Of course I can only speculate that the motivation was the post mentioned below, but I think it’s a reasonable speculation: the links from Michelle Malkin and Captain’s Quarters have greatly increased by my site’s traffic and its exposure. Also the number of visitors to my site from the Middle East has gone up by a factor of 10.

Original post: For the past couple of hours I’ve been having intermittent problems with my blog server. Investigation so far shows heavy traffic from my earlier cartoons post, and a whole lot of bad requests. The heavy traffic is due to links from Michelle Malkin and Captain’s Quarter blogs (and a big thank you for that!). The bad requests may — emphasize may — be an attack of some sort. And the only reason I can think of for that is that same cartoons post…

Ouch!

Don’t you dare call them unpatriotic, but … to many libertarians and Conservatives that’s exactly what some liberals appear to be. In particular, some liberals appear to support positions that are exactly the same positions that Al Qaeda would like us to support: they oppose the NSA wiretaps, they want to arbitrarily end the fight in Iraq and “bring the troops home” (instead of waiting for victory), etc.

Strata-Sphere came up with an interesting notion, fueled by an idea heard on the Rush Limbaugh show. He figures that the Democrats needs a unifying concept as powerful as the Republicans had in the 90s with Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America…

From Strata-Sphere: Contract With Al Qaeda

As Democrat Members of the House of Representatives, and as citizens seeking to join that body, we propose not just to change current policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.

That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print. We call this our Contract With Al Qaeda”

This year’s election offers the chance, after 4 years of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the Nation’s policies towards Al Qaeda. That historic change would be the end of government that is too focused in Iraq, too intrusive, and too obsessed with possible terrorist attacks. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the privacy of all peoples, including members of Al Qaeda here in the US.

Read the whole thing (as someone once said). It goes on to propose eight specific legislative objectives, each of them a clear articulation of recent liberal/Democratic posturings and rants. For example:

SEVENTH, in an effort to demonstrate our sincere apologies for the actions of President Bush towards Al Qaeda, we plan to return the State of Iraq to the despot dictator of Al Qaeda’s choice by calling for the immediate withdrawal of our military forces to the safety of European soil. We encourage Al Qaeda to do what they please with the Iraqi people.

Strata-Sphere is now on my daily read list!

Mars Rocks

From the official Mars Rovers web site:

Hardened Lava Meets Wind on Mars

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit used its microscopic imager to capture this spectacular, jagged mini-landscape on a rock called “GongGong.” Measuring only 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across, this surface records two of the most important and violent forces in the history of Mars — volcanoes and wind.

GongGong formed billions of years ago in a seething, stirring mass of molten rock. It captured bubbles of gases that were trapped at great depth but had separated from the main body of lava as it rose to the surface. Like taffy being stretched and tumbled, the molten rock was deformed as it moved across an ancient Martian landscape. The tiny bubbles of gas were deformed as well, becoming elongated. When the molten lava solidified, the rock looked like a frozen sponge.

Far from finished with its life, the rock then withstood billions of years of pelting by small sand grains carried by Martian dust storms that sometimes blanketed the planet. The sand wore away the surface until, little by little, the delicate strands that enclosed the bubbles of gas were breached and the spiny texture we see today emerged.

Even now, wind continues to deposit sand and dust in the holes and crevices of the rock.

Similar rocks can be found on Earth where the same complex interplay of volcanoes and weathering occur, whether it be the pelting of rocks by sand grains in the Mojave desert or by ice crystals in the frigid Antarctic.

GongGong is one of a group of rocks studied by Spirit and informally named by the Athena Science Team to honor the Chinese New Year (the Year of the Dog). In Chinese mythology, GongGong was the god-king of water in the North Land. When he sacrificed his life to knock down Mount BuZhou, he defeated the bad Emperor in Heaven, freed the sun, moon and stars to go from east to west, and caused all the rivers in China to flow from west to east.

Spirit’s microscopic imager took this image during on the rover’s 736th day, or sol, of exploring Mars (Jan. 28, 2006). The rock lies in the “Inner Basin” between “Husband Hill” and “McCool Hill” in Gusev Crater. Spirit acquired the image while the rock was fully shadowed, with diffuse illumination mostly from the top in this view.

As usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger view of this remarkable micrograph…

Rules for Life

These rules for life come from Charles J. Sykes, author of the book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, Or Add. In emails they are often incorrectly attributed to Bill Gates or Kurt Vonnegut — though they don’t sound like anything either of them would ever say.

Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.

Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)

Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.

Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.

Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

Rule No. 6: It’s not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.

Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4.)

Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)

Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.

Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.

Moonbats with BDS

Are you familiar with Democrats.com? It’s one of the top two or three liberal sites on the web, along with MoveOn and DailyKos. For anyone with a libertarian or conservative mindset, a visit to these sites is like a visit to a lunatic asylum. Rarely do you see any well-reasoned arguments or interesting debates; mainly these are places where liberals go to rant and rave, and to share fevered and fantastic delusions. Every time I visit one of these sites, I come away worried about the future of mankind — and I mean that quite seriously. My fear stems from the apparent fact that people who “reason” like the ones posting on these sites appear to be in the ascendancy in the Democratic Party — one of the two great political parties of this nation. And the leaders of that party don’t seem to be far removed from this crowd (think Howard Dean).

What does that say about our future? I have trouble coming up with any likely good consequences. Mostly, it’s just scary.

If you accuse me of overreacting, I offer you this example, spotted in a visit this morning:

From Democrats.com:

Is Rove Planning a Terror Attack on the Super Bowl?

Submitted by Bob Fertik on February 3, 2006

The White House is being way too quiet today, and the silence is eerie.

Sure, Bush is on the road talking about “competitiveness.” But he might as well be talking about Mah Jong for all anyone cares.

Bad things happen when Bush is babbling about things he cares nothing about - sometimes very bad things.

Remember 9/11? That morning, Bush was babbling about education in a Florida classroom, as if Mr. “Is Our Children Learning?” gave a crap. He learned about the first plane crashing into the WTC at 8:46 a.m. - he twice said he saw it live, which of course no one else did - yet at 9:00 a.m. he walked right into the classroom as scheduled. And right after the second plane hit at 9:05 a.m. - which everyone except Bush saw live on TV - Andy Card whispered in Bush’s ear that “America is under attack.” Yet Bush didn’t flinch; he just kept reading “My Pet Goat” with the kids for another 10-20 minutes. He then gave a horrible TV statement and flew as far from Washington as he could. But a few days later, Karl Rove put him before the cameras with rescue workers on Ground Zero, put a bullhorn in his hand, and instantly transformed him from a clueless coward to a “hero."

...

But security preparations for this Super Bowl are getting a lot less media coverage than the last 3 did.

Which leads me to ask: is Karl Rove planning a terrorist attack during the Super Bowl, in order to set the stage for building towards war with Iran over the coming year?

...

If Rove wants a war with Iran, he will have to manufacture it, because Iran (like Iraq in 2002) is not trying to provoke a war.

And how better to manufacture a war than to manufacture a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl right while the whole world is watching - and blame it on Iran?

Of course, Rove will have to be very creative this time, beyond even painting a U.S. plane in the colors of the U.N. (Perhaps a “Canadian” submarine will float up the Detroit River? Watch it live!) The FBI is prepared for just about anything - Special Agent William Kowalski says “there are no credible threats against the Super Bowl” - and does not want to be humiliated yet again. Rove’s plan would have to be so evil as to justify yet one more farcical White House claim that “no one could possibly have imagined” such a horrendous thing.

I pray that I am wrong. But ever since Karl Rove plucked Bush out of his drunken stupor to groom him for a career delivering speeches fed to him through an earpiece, just about everything I feared has come true.

The ellipses (…) in the excerpt above indicate places where I’ve deleted some content I thought irrelevant. Please follow the link in the header to read the unedited version, as originally posted on Democrats.com.

How far gone with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) does someone have to be in order to actually believe something like this? So far as I can tell, the author of this piece has completely lost his ability to think and to reason. He appears to accept as facts obvious falsehoods, and to reflexively dismiss as false anything asserted by a Republican.

I am certainly not a mental health expert, but I believe it is the case that one of the major diagnostic indications for severe mental disturbance is a disconnection between objective reality and an individual’s perceptions of reality. And that seems to me to be exactly what’s going on here.

The really frightening thing is how many of these folks there are. Visit the three sites I’ve linked to see for yourself. Advice: I find this much more tolerable after a drink or three.

The real ponder: are the inmates on display at these sites going to take over the asylum?

Hillary

An Associated Press photographer captured this image of Hillary Clinton as she greeted people before President Bush’s State of the Union address earlier this week.

I spotted this a few days ago, and saved it. I find myself revisiting it from time-to-time. There’s something about this photograph that compels me to examine it carefully, looking for … what?

I think I’m looking for reassurance that Hillary is a relatively normal human being, and I’m not finding it. We’ve all had many moments where a candid picture would have caught us in an embarrassing or inappropriate pose — so I guard against reading too much into this photo. Nevertheless, as I view this picture I find myself fearing that Hillary really is as unhinged and disturbed as she appears in this photo (and in others before it). And that’s kinda chilling, as she’s one of — perhaps the — leading Democratic candidate for president in 2008. She might win.

That oughta keep you up at night…

Pole Dancer

Isn’t she gorgeous?

<smile>

As usual, click for a larger view…