Term of the Day

applied troglodytics

Used in a WSJ piece by Michael Malone, describing the reaction of the music industry to Napster and the culture of free music downloads.

A Google search for the term reveals only one other use, which appears to be completely unrelated. So I think it’s safe to credit Mr. Malone with the creation of this delicious term…

Fudge Factors

Some people are so interesting that just seeing their name is enough to make me go investigate. Freeman Dyson is one of those names for me — he’s a famous physicist who hasn’t limited his interest or thinking to his own field. When I think of Freeman Dyson, I think of a fine mind, well stuffed with knowledge, romping about the open fields of questions about our universe. Reading his thinking is an adventure.

So yesterday, when I noticed that TCS Daily had published an interview with him, I had to go read it. It’s a very unfocused interview, ranging all over the place. In the middle of it, Dyson said this:

Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details to be sure that they are unreliable. They are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give the right behavior in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

As someone who has created computer models in the past, hearing that they are full of fudge factors is pretty much the same thing as saying they are full of another soft brown substance, one that doesn’t smell so good. What Dyson is describing is a process that every modeler is all too familiar with. It goes like this: first, you study the problem you’re trying to model until you believe you understand it.

Just as an example, suppose you’re trying to model what happens when you throw a ball. Your model tries to predict where the ball will hit the ground. So you study the physics of this motion, and build a model that takes into account the speed and direction of the throw, gravity, the air resistance, the wind, etc. Then you test the model — you put some values in for speed and direction of the throw, the wind speed, and so on. Your model calculates where the ball will land. Then you actually throw the ball to see where it actually lands.

And oops! The ball doesn’t land exactly where your model said it would. Instead, let’s say it lands 2 feet short, and 6 inches to the left of where your model predicted. What do you do now? There are two basic ways to “fix” your model. One way is to say to yourself “Ok, there must be something I don’t understand…", and go back to study the problem some more until you do understand why your model didn’t match reality. This sort of reaction brings deeper understanding of many kinds of physical processes, and models used in this way have contributed much to human understanding of many things. The other way to fix your model is to add “fudge factors”. In our example above, perhaps you multiply the distance predicted by your model by 0.976 (fudge factor one) and the leftward motion by 0.994 (fudge factor two). Those numbers aren’t based on any understanding of why the unfudged model is different than reality; they’re just the factors needed to line the unfudged model up with reality.

The problem with fudge factors is that they mask what’s really going on. To continue our example with the ball, if a scientist investigated the mismatch further, he might discover that the spin on the ball was also contributing to its trajectory — and when he corrects for the spin (by building it into his model), the model can predict the landing point to within an inch. Now this model can be used to confidently predict the landing point of the ball. The model with the fudge factors, though, will continue to perform poorly — because the spin on the ball can be different on every throw.

So Dyson has discovered that the climate models used to predict global warming are full of fudge factors, and he’s as suspicious of them as I am. Knowing what I do about Freeman Dyson, I put a high value on his judgment in such matters. Not only is he possessed of a fine, well-educated mind — he is also possessed of independence, both of his intrinsic spirit and of any connections to the global warming “movement” amongst climatologists. His observations about the fudge factors can be made without any particular expertise on climatology; all one needs to know is the math and the elements of modeling. Both things are elemental tools for any physicist, so Dyson is well-equipped there.

My skepticism on the global warming hysteria just got turned up another big notch…

Liberal Appeasement

Jack Kelly (a columnist) thinks that liberals need to have their heads examined:

Some liken liberal appeasers to those Britons who wanted to make a deal with Hitler after the fall of France in 1940. That’s unfair to those appeasers. Their attitude was not honorable, but it was reasonable. The Nazis then possessed a substantial advantage in military power. Today’s liberal appeasers embrace dhimmitude even though it’s the West that has a huge military and economic advantage.

This extent to which liberals are willing to accept inferior status to Muslims even in their own countries is mind-boggling. In Britain, schools are dropping references to the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims, the Daily Mail reported. In Minneapolis, some Muslim cab drivers reject passengers carrying alcohol, and Muslim clerks in a grocery store have refused to wait on customers who want to buy pork products. In several Western countries, some Muslim cab drivers have turned away blind passengers with seeing-eye dogs. (Many Muslims consider dogs “unclean.")

Liberals are not so much terrified by the threat radical Islam poses as they are oblivious to it. A recent poll indicated a majority of Democrats are more worried about global warming than Islamic terror. While many liberals do indeed need to have backbones surgically implanted, more need to have their heads examined.

Read the whole thing.

I had to stop after reading that last paragraph, just to savor the image Mr. Kelly’s words evoked. If I were to send your typical American liberal through an MRI machine, would I be able to detect either a spine or a brain?

Perhaps not…

Awwwww...

For some completely idiotic reason, Debbie and actually got up this morning at 1:30 AM. Consequently, by the early afternoon we were both feeling a little fagged out. I had to work, but lucky Debbie and the dogs got to take a nap.

Aren’t they cute?

Now that you’ve absorbed the cuteness, I’ll tell you what made me get up and take this photo. It was the snoring! Two of the dogs (Mo’i and Lea) and Debbie were sawing logs like mad — loud enough for me to hear it over all the computer noise in my office across the hall!

When I walked in, only Miki was alert enough to even notice. He’s looking at me here with some very sleepy puppy eyes…

Aren’t they cute?

War with Islam

Tip of the hat to Mike D. for forwarding this interesting piece by Solly Ganor (an Israeli and Dachau survivor). In it, Solly recounts his meeting with a Christian Arab. I’ve excerpted a passage where the Arab lectures Solly about Iran:

“Now is the time to stop them, not only because they are developing nuclear bombs, but because Iran has become the base for all Islamic terrorist. They supply, money, men, and weapons to Islamic terrorist around the world, quite often through their diplomatic mail. Billions of petro-dollars that are pouring into Iran are being funneled into terrorist organizations world-wide. They believe, and perhaps rightly so, that the West will do nothing to stop them in achieving their goals. Is history repeating itself? Are the Iranians making the same mistake that Hitler made when he attacked Poland? Is the situation similar?"

“As a history teacher who studied the subject thoroughly I can tell you that Western victory in World War Two was not all certain. Hitler could have won the war if he would have gone ahead with the atomic bomb development before the Americans. The Germans began working on it in the thirties, and it was Hitler’s decision to prefer building more conventional arms, as he considered atomic weapons sheer fantasy. Hitler made the wrong decision, but had he made the right decision the world would have been a different type of world today, wouldn’t it? The West won the war against Hitler by sheer chance. Very few people seem to realize that.”

I must say that his last words shook me up quite a bit. Had Hitler made a different decision, I would have died in Dachau, there wouldn’t have been a Jewish state called Israel, and most likely there wouldn’t have been any Jews left in the world. The idea that the Western democracies in general and the fate of the Jewish people in particular could have hinged on Hitler’s one decision, is a scenario of the worst nightmare.

Read the whole thing.

Solly’s Arab is much less optimistic than I am about the certainty of our eventual conflict with Iran — but he is just as certain as I am that there will be such a conflict…

So What?

I can hardly believe my eyes — an article in Newsweek (that bastion of liberal, politically-correct thinking) that actually wonders aloud about the Goracle’s view on global warming:

Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down—not up—the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise—a dubious proposition—future increases wouldn’t be as steep as the climb in emissions.

Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world’s average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its “forcing"—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn’t been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

As they say, go read the whole thing.

I’m unreasonably cheered by this (and some other) recent lamestream media pieces that look like the first chinks in the Goracle’s “faith-based science” of global warming…

If This Offends

From the London Telegraph, this illuminating story about the girlie-men in the BBC:

Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain’s forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out.

Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC’s retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster’s alleged lack of patriotism.

"The BBC has behaved in a cowardly fashion by pulling the plug on the project altogether,” said a source close to the project. “It began to have second thoughts last year as the war in Iraq deteriorated. It felt it couldn’t show anything with a degree of positivity about the conflict.

That’s Private Johnson Beharry in the photo, holding his Victoria’s Cross.

While lamestream media stories of the heroism of America’s troops in Iraq aren’t common, they do exist — our media, lame as it is, hasn’t quite been reduced to the politically-correct pablum of the BBC. Not yet, anyway. And the independent outlets (including, most especially, the hundreds of excellent “mil blogs” out there, and the video outlets like YouTube) are very effective at getting these stories out to those who want to read or see them. Collectively, these sites have millions of visitors each day — a cheering fact to those who, like me, expect that some day in the not too distant future we’ll be needing some folks with a positive view of patriotism and heroism.

I hope the movie about Private Beharry finds another outlet; I’d like to see it. And how sad…how pathetic to see a formerly-great institution like the BBC descend to such limp-wristed depths. If you know anything at all about the history of World War II, you know that just 60 years ago the BBC could have been called “heroic” itself. Now they’d probably censor a history about themselves!

Confessions

One particular aspect of the recent incident involving the 15 British sailors captured by Iran has been nagging at me: the way that 13 of the 15 had “confessions” coerced from them very quickly, and without any apparent long-lasting consequences (within hours of returning home, all 15 appeared at a press conference, looking hale and hearty).

This was manifestly different than incidents I remember from the Vietnam war, especially the famous story of Admiral Stockman, but also including many other American heroes. These American soldiers resisted every attempt by the their captors to subvert them — and these attempts included physical torture so severe that many American prisoned died of the injuries sustained, and they went on for years. More recently, I recalled the stories of the U.S. Marines captured when Iranian “revolutionaries” captured the American embassy in Tehran almost 30 years ago. Mark Bowden, in Guests of the Ayatollah, put it like this:

For many weeks, Political Officer John W. Limbert, Jr. had no contact with anyone other than his guards. He began to worry that something had happened. Had everyone else been released? Had he been left behind? Had the others been killed?

Then one day a guard asked him to define some English words that he didn’t understand.

The words were “raghead,” “bozo,” “motherfucker,” and “cocksucker.” Limbert laughed. It warmed his heart. Someplace nearby his captors were still coping with the United States Marine Corps.

It warms my heart, too. I know it would be no different today.

This tradition of brave resistance was one that I thought the British shared. This recent incident indicates otherwise, and makes me wonder what has happened to the famous British grit in the space of one generation. These sailors behaved more like what I’d expect from mainland European soldiers, as the stories of NATO soldiers in Afghanistan reveal.

I suspect the Iranians had this softness — which they would know well from operations inside Iraq — in mind when they selected British targets instead of American targets…

Title

The inimitable Mark Steyn, and his conclusion to a piece about the 15 British sailors and marines recently captured, then released, by Iran:

In theory, they still have the ships, the men and the money, but something intangible has been lost. “Jingoism” is not merely a mindless swagger but a kind of assumed national confidence of which the fleet and the sailors and the cash are merely the tangible embodiment. Take away the confidence, and the ships and men and money avail you nought. You want a diplomatic solution? Fine. But, if you believe (as Europe and half America does) in ''soft power,'' it’s important to remember it depends on the world’s belief that you’re willing to use that power. Looking at the reaction to this incident by the United States, European Union, United Nations et al., Iran will conclude that the transnational consensus will never muster the will to constrain its nuclear ambitions.

Europeans and more and more Americans believe they can live in a world with all the benefits of global prosperity and none of the messy obligations necessary to maintain it. And so they cruise around war zones like floating NGOs. Iran called their bluff, and televised it to the world. In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn’t have much more left to lose.

Most of the lamestream media reporting and opinion pieces (if you can even tell the difference any more!) have declared this entire incident a “victory” for the advocates of soft power. I have not been able to find any way to peer at this debacle and see anything other than, well, a debacle. Mark Steyn — an ex-Brit — seems to hold the same view.

I keep coming back to this: Iran — a third-rate power — has been working hard for years to develop nuclear weapons and to promote radical Islam everywhere they can (but, to be sure, most effectively in their own neighborhood). They’ve threated to eradicate Israel from the map; in their own press they vilify the U.S. (aka “The Great Satan") daily. This underdeveloped, anemic runt of a nation snatches 15 British sailors and marines from Iraqi waters, then starts demanding all sorts of things from Britain (allegedly still a first-rate world power), claims in the face of contradictory evidence that the sailors were in Iranian waters, and then coerces confessions from 13 of their 15 prisoners (two of the prisoners held out).

Pretend for a moment that you didn’t know what has already happened. What do you think should have happened?

Call me old-fashioned, but in my view Iran exhibited outrageous, provocative behavior that is simply unacceptable to the world community. Map that same behavior onto a future Iran with nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, and you’ve got something worse than unacceptable — it’s a real threat. So in my view, the only acceptable response would have been one that punished Iran severely for their actions — some punishment so severe that we could reasonably expect the behavior not to be repeated. This punishment could take any of many forms, only some of which are military. One example of a non-military response: an absolute cut-off of all international trade, until the hostages were returned unharmed and reparations were made.

But instead, what happened? A high-level terrorist commander (euphemistically called a “diplomat” by the Iranians, a description which was mindlessly repeated by the lamestream media) was released and allowed to return to Iran, British sailors and marines were tortured (even if the lamestream media insists on calling it “coercion") into giving false confessions, the President of Iran gets to hold a press conference announcing his “Easter gift” to Britain. And that’s it.

What lesson do you suppose we’ve just taught Iran?

I can only think of one lesson, and I’m certain that they’ve learned it well — because this most recent incident is just one more example in a string of such incidents. That lesson: that they can not only get away with provoking the world’s greatest powers, they can profit by it. Iran accomplished several things with this incident, all of them very good from their perspective — and they have paid no price at all for their gain. First, they got their terrorist boss back. Second, for two weeks they distracted the world’s attention from their ongoing nuclear weapons and missile development programs — and it will take a while for the world to refocus again. Third, they have raised their own status in the estimation of their regional allies and adversaries, for they have tweaked The Great Satan and they got away with it. Fourth, they have scored a tremendous positive public relations coup with a gullible world public and a world lamestream media that behaves as if they were a propaganda machine for the Islamists.

Some might look at these events and worry that all is lost; that we’re doomed to be “conquered” by Iran (or al Qaeda). I have no such worry — I don’t believe for a moment that Iran will, in the end, prevail over the real world powers. What I do fear, however, is that the war with Iran (and the other Islamic powers) will be unnecessarily costly, in blood and treasure — because the non-Islamic world powers (especially the U.S., the E.U., and Japan) will not engage militarily when a victory would be relatively easy and inexpensive. To focus on just Iran for a moment, forcing that country to behave acceptably now would be a far different thing than facing them down when they have nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. To any student of history, this is a very familiar pattern. Most well-known, perhaps, is the run-up to World War II in Europe — but that is far from the only such example.

From where I sit, it looks like we’re on the way to learning that lesson yet again — and the debacle of the 15 British sailors is all of a piece with this, very similar to provocations that Hitler made prior to the outbreak of war. Hitler kept testing and testing, with both increasing bombast and increasing actions, to see how outrageous his behavior could be without provoking an unacceptable response from the rest of the world. This pattern of escalating provocations continued until finally he did something that drove the other nations to war — but only after Hitler had built Germany into a formidable power in its own right. The collective behavior of Iran’s government is strikingly — almost eerily — reminiscent of Hitler’s behavior. Barring some miracle that wakes up the rest of the world fairly quickly, I fear we’re headed to a similar end-game. The cost of “fixing” this problem will only increase as time goes by…

Private Property

We had a strange encounter of the angry idiot kind yesterday, right in front of our home. But first you need a little background:

In front of our property there is a private road, indifferently maintained, that provides access to several neighboring properties. None of these properties are currently occupied, though several of them have construction underway. This road is gated right next to our driveway. This sturdy steel gate is kept locked, with only the property owners, the fire department, and a few neighbors (like us) having a key. The property owners behind the gate share an easement for the road, so that all are guaranteed access. This gated road is an alternative route out of Lawson Valley, so in an emergency (such as a wildfire) someone with a key will open the gate to let people out. This is why we’ve been given a key, as we’re the closest residence to the gate.

For years the owner has been in a pitched battle with people who go around the gate to access the road and his property. When I’ve talked with the owner (and his son), they are not concerned so much with people walking on the road, or even riding horses on the road — but the dirt bikes and ATVs are definitely operating there against his desires. And they’ve been doing this for years.

But yesterday one of the property owners behind the gate decided to do something about the gate-crashers: he installed chain-link fence to block the path the gate-crashers had made through the chaparral around the gate. While he was finishing up the fencing work, a dirt biker — a 20-something man, by appearance — drove up through the open gate, and stopped to see what was going on. Right at that moment, my wife and I were driving by, so I stopped to see if my neighbor needed any help.

He didn’t, but I was “treated” to the dirt-biker’s angry diatribe about how wrong it was for us to put a fence up. Both my neighbor and I tried our level best to explain to this angry young man that the road was private property, and the property owners simply didn’t want him there. His retort was nonsensical, and driven by his rage, but it amounted to this: “It’s a road, therefore it’s public, therefore I have a right to be here, even if it’s private property. Just because you own a piece of land doesn’t mean you have the right to control who travels on that land."

This is far from the first time we have encountered this attitude or belief. Several other trespassers — all young — have asserted much the same thing.

I’m pretty sure that none of the trespassers were themselves property owners. In some cases, I suspect they never will be (can you spell “losers"?). All of them were most likely so angry at being denied access that they weren’t thinking all that clearly. But still…isn’t it disturbing that so many would make the argument that private property owners had no right to control access to their property? It seems so self-evidently un-American, that argument. And it makes me wonder what the hell these young folks were taught in school, not to mention at home.

Private property rights are one of the great principles that form the very heart and soul of this country. I wonder if any of these trespassers have ever even heard about that?

Down, Down, Down...

Nancy Pelosi’s Middle Eastern jaunt, with her visits to Syria and Saudi Arabia, is so full of stupidity that I can hardly believe it. Even the lamestream media — even the left-leaning lamestream media! — has been condemning Pelosi’s arrogant, “ill-advised” efforts. Until yesterday, I thought her misrepresentation of Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s “message” to Bushar Assad of Syria was the worst of it. But then this morning, I read this:

From YNet News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria Wednesday – in which she called for dialogue with Damascus – was “brave” and “very appreciated” and could bring about “important changes” to America’s foreign policy, including talks with “Middle East resistance groups,” according to members of Palestinian terror organizations whose top leaders live in Syria.

One terror leader, Khaled Al-Batch, a militant and spokesman for Islamic Jihad, expressed hope Pelosi would continue winning elections, explaining the House speaker’s Damascus visit demonstrated she understands the Middle East.

Oh, great. Now one of the leading lights of the Democratic party is being openly praised by terrorists — who are calling for her reelection.

Words fail me. Especially when I realize that there’s a darned good chance that the Democrats — the party of surrender — are quite likely to gain the Presidency and maintain control of both houses of Congress in 2008. We can look forward to much more of this, if that happens.

Heard on the Airplane

Sent along by DickF:

1. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude And will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants."

2. Heard on a Southwest Airline flight. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing and if You can light 'em, you can smoke 'em."

3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have."

4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane"

5. “Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride."

6. As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan, alone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!"

7. After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Memphis, a flight attendant on a Northwest flight announced, “Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted."

8. From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest flight 245 to Tampa. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised."

9. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite."

10. Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines."

11. “Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments."

12. “As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."

13. And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Delta Airlines is pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!"

14. Heard on Southwest Airlines just after a very hard landing in Salt Lake City: The flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “That was Quite a bump, and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t the flight attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt."

15. Overheard on an American Airlines flight into Amarillo, Texas, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the flight attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!"

16. Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing: “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal."

17. An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the passengers exited, smile, and give them a “Thanks for flying our airline.” He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking with a cane. She said, “Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?” “Why, no,Ma’am,” said the pilot. “What is it?” The little old lady said, “Did we land, or Were we shot down?"

18. After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the attendant came on the horn, " Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Capt. Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we’ll open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal."

19. Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement: “We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we Hope you’ll think of US Airways."

20. A plane was taking off from Kennedy Airport. After it reached a comfortable cruising altitude the Captain made an announcement over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to flight number 293, non-stop from New York to Los Angeles. The weather ahead is good and, therefore, we should have a smooth and uneventful flight. Now sit back and relax… OH, MY GOD! Silence followed, and after a few minutes, the captain came back on the intercom and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I Scared you earlier. While I was talking to you, the flight attendant accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee in my lap. You should see the front of my pants!” A passenger in Coach yelled, “That’s nothing. You should see the back of mine!"

Moral Absolutism

I picked up a couple of packages at our local post office yesterday, but first I had to wait for 15 minutes or so in a longer-than-usual line. Directly in front of me were a couple of Caucasian women, probably between 25 and 35 years old, deep into a conversation about…well, you figure it out. I’ll call them Jan and Sue, though I have no idea what their real names are; this is my best recollection of the part of their conversation that interested me:

Jan: I just read that British schools are going to stop teaching anything about the Holocaust, because they’re afraid of offending Muslim children.

Sue: Aren’t they worried about offending Jewish children?

Jan: I don’t know. I think maybe they’re scared.

Sue: They’re scared? Of what? Riots because Muslim parents find out that their kids are being taught about how Hitler killed Jewish people?

Jan: Yeah.

Sue: Well, that’s just plain stupid. The Holocaust happened; they can’t just write it out of the history books because some people are offended by it!

Jan: Are you Jewish?

Sue: No! And why should that matter?

Jan: Well … how do you know the Muslims are wrong about the Holocaust?

Sue: Are you serious?

Jan: Well … sometimes I wonder about these things I’ve been taught. And there’s so many Muslims — there must be something to what they’re saying.

Sue: Do you have any idea how women are treated in Muslim countries?

Jan: I’ve heard a lot of awful things. But how bad could it be, really? Their women aren’t leaving…

At this point Sue looked a bit upset, and she and Jan stopped talking. Sue and I had an interesting discussion about our respective experiences with people — Americans — who are extraordinarily ignorant about (and disinterested in) current events, not to mention history. Sue finds one particular aspect — on display with Jan — particularly galling: the (to her) unbelievable willingness of American women to accept the legitimacy (her word) of the Islamic view of women. She has found, through many conversations, that this acceptance is borne of ignorance (predominantly) and the triumph of multi-culturalism over moral absolutism.

By moral absolutism, she meant the idea that right and wrong can be determined “absolutely", without reference to some particular moral framework. Sue used this example: if you’re a true-blue multi-culturalist, you would say (though it might pain you to do so) that it’s ok to hang gay men if your moral framework is Islam, but not if it’s whatever passes for a moral framework in the U.S. But if you’re a moral absolutist, you would say that there exists an absolute framework of right and wrong, independent of any particular (especially religious) moral teaching — and in that sense, hanging a gay man is wrong no matter what moral framework it’s done in.

Normally the conversations in the Jamul post office line tend more toward weather, fire danger (we all live in fear of brush fires here), or the efficacy of goats for brush clearing. This was a very interesting and entertaining change of conversational pace, and Sue and I kept up our discussion for most of the ten minutes or so remaining before we got to the front of the line. We reached no conclusions, and had no brilliant ideas. Jan, Sue, and I all walked out of the post office at about the same time. The rear bumper of Jan’s car had several stickers: “Kerry/Edwards” (no surprise there!), “I (heart) Canada", and “Dean '04”. Sue’s car had one bumper sticker — a military pass, but in her window was a decal for a Catholic church — interesting, for someone defending moral absolutism.

I spent the drive home wondering how much — and how fairly — one can infer about a person from the stickers and decal on their car. Not much, was my conclusion…

Quote of the Day

From Tom Smith, posting on The Right Coast:

I live in Jamul and I’m against this casino because I can do without the visual blight and the reduced property values. And I’m not looking forward to the newspaper story on the first mini-van full of kids slaughtered by a drunk driver coming back from dropping his social security check into the slot, as he sped along the notoriously dangerous Highway 94 that runs through our now rather idyllic rural enclave. Take that as a given. But even if I have to swallow all that, could we please stop chasing Indians off their land with clubs? If you are doing that, it’s a clue you’re doing something wrong.

Well said. Read the whole thing.

Self-Absorbed

Michael Barone is one of my favorite political commentators. His methods and reasoning are those of a scientist — he gathers facts and observations, looks for patterns, and tests hypotheses just as a scientist in the “hard sciences” would do. This sort of rigorous analysis is sorely lacking in most political commentary. But in addition, he is a remarkably clear and lucid writer, with an occasional witticism thrown in just to lighten things up. I’ve often thought that if we could somehow get Mr. Barone and Mark Steyn to collaborate on something, the result would be a marvelous concoction of both rigor and wit.

Today Mr. Barone weighs in on global warming, and not just the political aspects of it. Here’s how he concludes:

Gore and his followers seem to assume that the ideal climate was the one they got used to when they were growing up. When temperatures dropped in the 1970s, there were warnings of an impending ice age. When they rose in the 1990s, there were predictions of disastrous global warming. This is just another example of the solipsism of the baby boom generation, the pampered and much-praised age cohort that believes the world revolves around them and that all past history has become irrelevant.

We’re told in effect that the climate of the late 1950s and early 1960s was, of all those that have ever existed, the best of all possible climates. Not by science. But as a matter of faith.

Now go read the whole thing.

Keeping Busy

Tip of the hat to my mom for passing this one along:

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. Well, for example, the other day I went downtown and went into a shop. I was only in there for about 5 minutes and when I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. I went up to him and said, “Come on, man, how about giving a retired person a break"? He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a “Nazi .” He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So I called him a “doughnut eating Gestapo.” He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn’t care. I came downtown on the bus and the car that he was putting the tickets on had a bumper sticker that said “Hillary in '08."

I’ll add this technique to my file of retirement tips…

I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important to my health.

Bluebirds!

Each spring the Western Bluebirds return, to mate, nest, and raise the next generation. For five or six years we have kept “bluebird boxes” — next boxes of exactly the right size, shape, and hole to attract them.

This afternoon, while walking the dogs, I saw a male bluebird — resplendent — in our front yard, perched on a tree that used to be near where one of our bluebird boxes was attached to the trunk of a pine tree. This particular box had fallen off sometime in the winter, and I had not yet put it back up. In my imagination, that bluebird was reproaching my sloth. So I went back into my workshop and came back with some good, long lag screws and a wrench, and I hung the box back up.

As I walked back to our house, I turned to look for the bluebird — and he was already perched on the bluebird house! I think it must be the same male that was here last year…

Rain and Flowers

Thursday evening we had quite a dramatic display of weather — thunderstorms, lightning crashing all around us, and several periods of very intense rainfall. Downpours are very uncommon here, so when it started really coming down hard on Thursday, we interrupted our activities to watch the show. Lea (our oldest field spaniel) is terrified of thunder, so the poor thing spent an hour or so trembling in fear. We humans, though, were just delighted! My weather station recorded 7mm — just over a quarter inch — of rain in a single 14 minute period. That’s a rate of 29mm (over one inch) per hour — a veritable sky-gusher by our normal standards. I cannot recall such an intense rainstorm in our entire history living in Lawson Valley.

This morning the skies are clear, the temperatures are very pleasant, and the humidity is a very pleasant 30%. Jim Barnick, our friend and neighbor, stopped by for coffee and to ask for some help unloading his gigantic new gas grill. His property abuts ours, and is directly uphill from us. I decided to bring my camera along and to walk back to our house by walking through the chaparral that lies between us. His property is cleared up to (and slightly across) the border with ours. Years ago, I cut a rough road in the upper part of our property; it gets to within 60 or 70 feet of Jim’s cleared section. So “all” I had to do was bushwhack through 60 or 70 feet of chaparral. That took me an hour! Still, it’s always interesting to see what the condition of the chaparral is, and I can’t imagine better weather to do it in (bushwhacking in the summer heat is nearly unbearable).

These three photos are taken from just about the highest point on our property. The rightmost one catches an interesting phenomenon quite nicely. See that bright patch near the center (click on it to get a larger version)? That’s a manzanita, but it’s no different than the other manzanitas all around it. It is bright because those particular manzanitas are where my shadow fell — meaning that the sun, me, and the manzanitas were all aligned. The manzanitas, like many plants, constantly move their leaves so that they expose themselves best to the sun. When things are all lined up like this, that means they reflect a lot more light back toward me than other manzanitas would (because I’m not lined up with them and the sun). This morning the effect was enhanced because we had some dew overnight, and the little beads of water on the leaves also acted like retro-reflectors. The blue flower is a ceanothus that was lit up, but right beside a shadowed rock that made a nice black background. The white flower is a lemonadeberry, which is a kind of sumac. This plant is most notable for always having luxurious green foliage, no matter how severe the summer droughts are.

These photos are all of the same ceanothus that’s in the upper part of our cleared yard. This individual is particularly beautiful this year, and here I’ve caught it from several directions and distances…

California...

Simi L. passes these along…

You know you’re from California if:

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can’t afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child’s 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

6. You’ve been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?

14. It’s barely sprinkling rain and there’s a report on every news station: “STORM WATCH."

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It’s barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists, psychics, personal trainers and cosmetic surgeons.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver’s license. If you’re here illegally, they want to give you one.

Speaking as a 35-year California resident, these are all plausible. A few resonated particularly with me: 1 (except it wasn’t a co-worker, it was a Starbucks staffer I called “Metal Woman"), 7, 10, 14 (several local TV stations actually start special coverage days ahead of any prediction of rain, however slight), 15, and 16.

JAC gets a BB

The webmaster for the Jamulians Against the Casino site dropped me a note today to let me know about the new “bulletin board” he’s now got running there.

I just went up and registered — a painless, 15 second process — and put a post up. Obviously the word has not yet gotten out about this, as there are only a few posts up there now. Having a single place for the community to discuss the Jamul Indian Casino issues is a great thing. I appreciate all the comments I’ve had on my casino-related posts, but…my blog is not dedicated to this one issue, as the new JAC bulletin board is, and my blog would never make a good “community room” — but the JAC site would!

So if you’re a fellow Jamulian, and you’re concerned about the casino, drop on by there, register, and check back frequently. If the word gets out to enough people, we should be able to have a lively discussion there — and hopefully generate some good ideas. It’s also a way for us to coordinate our actions, and I hope the JAC uses it for that purpose…

Suddenly a vision came to me: a collection of scruffy Jamulians (including me!) demonstrating in front of the Governator’s smoking tent. Burning casinos in effigy. Declaring a connection between casinos and global warming. And autism. And clearly that ground is prime habitat for the Hermes Copper! If we can get the Goracle, the science-challenged, and the environmentalist wackos on our side, we’ll win for sure!

See what happens when I post late in the afternoon?