The 13th Storyblogging Carnival!

Check it out here at Doc Rampage's site. Yours truly submitted the 2nd story. Oh, btw, please tell a friend!

Please visit

this site. Take a few minutes out of your day to read about her. Thank you.

Political Spectrum Tests Part 2

This post posited that political spectrum tests are inaccurate because
1. They are written by liberals
2. They use ivory-tower definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative,' and those definitions do not accurately represent voters' working definitions of liberal and conservative.

So I've decided to write my own political spectrum test. It may not satisfy those who believe in the traditional definitions of liberal and conservative, but I imagine it would more accurately foretell an election's result than tests that use those definitions.

When answering the questions below you may find none of the possible answers matches your thinking. The test is designed with that in mind. Just pick the one you lean towards.

1. Do you think Michael Moore is a:
a) Fay lying bastard
b) Crusader for truth
c) A & B

2. Did Ronald Reagan
a) Win the Cold-War
b) Create the homeless problem
c) A & B

3. Is Jimmy Carter an
a) enabler of dictators
b) crusader for democracy
c) A & B

4. Was president Clinton an
a) enabler of terrorists
b) distracted from stopping terrorists by Monica Gate zealots
c) neither A nor B

5. Is Israel
a) the place where Arabs have more civil rights than anywhere else in the Middle East
b) the reason the Palestinians suffer so much
c) A & B

6. Is Democracy
a) an end in and of itself?
b) a means to an end- which is good government
c) overrated

7. Which of the following is terrorism?
a) targeting civilians, even if your people are being systematically killed by a country too powerful to fight any other way
b) killing civilians "accidentally" while atacking so-called "military" targets
c) Both are terrorism- OR c) Neither are terrorism

8. Which of the following is true?
a) Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice prove that blacks can excel in the U.S.
b) Thomas and Powell are Uncle Toms and Condi Rice is an Auntie Tomasita
c) Thomas is a Tom but neither Condi nor Powell should be lumped with him

9. Partial birth abortion
a) is murder, no different than killing a week-old baby
b) is a right, and nobody's business
c) hardly ever happens and should not be an important part of the pro-choice debate

10. Islam, regarding Americans' civil rights, is
a) more dangerous than Christianity
b) less dangerous than Christianity
c) equally dangerous

How to score the test. Right the letter you chose on a piece of paper. Give each "a" a score of 1. Give each "b" a score of 3. Give each "c" a score of 2.

14 and under- you are conservative.
15- 20- you are liberal
21 and up- you are a moonbat.

Thankyouverymuch for taking the test! Please post your score and any comments in the comments section. And check out some related thoughts from Mr. M here.

The Academy Awards

1. I didn't see Million Dollar Baby so I don't know if it deserved the accolades or not. I'm guessing, though, that the Christian-led critics that claimed Million Dollar Baby is little more than a slick snuff film helped garner the movie some Oscars. Hollywood knows how to circle the horses, and Clint Eastwood is a gentelman, an icon, and the manifestation of every midde aged Hollywood actor's dream of their own future.

2. If The Aviator was MDB's biggest rival, then it should have been obvous that MDB would bring home the title. The Aviator features a John Galt like hero, MDB has a young woman who dies. HELLO? Scorcese doesn't get the nod, again, but it's kind of hard to feel sorry for him. He makes movies for a living.

3. My favorite part was Jamie Foxx's acceptance speech. He thanked his grandmother for teaching him how to act: 'Act' like you've been somewhere. 'Act' like you've got some sense... I was also touched that she demanded he become a "Southern Gentleman." Very nice. And then, how refreshing to hear a man say he was beaten by a guardian without crying victim! Foxx was grateful for it, if anything. I loved that!

4. I liked Chris Rock. His actual emceeing wasn't that great- but the montage at the movie theater MORE than made up for it. Chronicles of Riddick and White Chicks- ROFLMAO!!!

Great post of the day.

This post is a must read for anyone who hasn't been to Europe. (Like me.) Below is one of MANY excellent paragraphs, if you want a taste before you go through the horrible trouble of clicking on the link.

In Paris, perhaps one of the most anti-American capitals of Europe, we still found respect. I should know because I wore my "Bush-Cheney" and my "Global War on Terrorism" hats sometimes, as well as talking like the American I am! Instead of experiencing hostility, we were always treated well and we saw just about everything in Paris. If you haven't been there, you might be surprised to know that the legacies of America are to be seen all over the city. Statues of George Washington, streets named after Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and so much more.

The post makes me question myself: If I read in the NYTimes that the sky was blue I'd walk outside to verify it, but when the MSM harps on how Europeans hate America I take it at face value. Why? (Don't answer that- the answer is probably unpleasant.)

I had no idea there were statues of Washington or street names of American presidents. And if I read a million newspaper articles I STILL would have had no idea. The MSM reporters don't have the common touch- details like these are compelling, but only a blogger would understand that, it seems. Let's hope Glenn Reynolds and the other editor blogger kings don't lose the common touch the MSM lost long ago.

Political Spectrum Tests

Let me preface this. In my experience there are two kinds of writing. Prewriting and good writing. You prewrite to figure out what you want to say, then you write it. But it's Saturday and I've got a bunch of stuff I need to take care of, so I'm giving you the raw form below. All the ideas are there, they just aren't said as well as they should be.

I've taken these kinds of tests from time to time. They are easy and fun, get you thinking etc. But they always say I'm center left, left moderate, or something like that, and I'm conservative. So the question is- am I confused, or are the tests confused? I think it's the tests, so I'm going to do a little research.

1. Who makes the tests? If they are primarily made by people on the left, then they are skewed. The left's image of itself is not the right's image, naturally. (I mean who doens't suck their gut in when they pass the mirror?) I think it's reasonable to assume they are primarily made by lefties, since most academicas are lefties, and most of these tests are probably made by academics.

2. Do these tests reflect a true definition of left vs. right? Or do they reflect an accurate definition of left vs. right? By which I mean, if the textbook definitions of left vs. right is, say X vs Y, than yes that is true. The textbooks define it, after all. However, if the accurate defintion, which is to say the definition MOST PEOPLE USE, is Q vs X, so that it is NOT the same as the true definintion, than these tests are flawed. Because if the tests test whether or not someone is left or fight based on the true definition, than they are not testing reality.

Because I am not conservative because I hate Joe Lieberman (a decent man who toes the liberal line), I'm conservative because I hate Michael Moore. And I am not conservative because I think pot should be illegal, I'm conservative because I can't stand hippies.

Today's Post of the Day- Healthy Left = Healthy Right

is here. It is well worth reading. It helped me, among other things, figure out an answer to my wife's quesion. She can't understand why I care about Ward Churchill. I'm white, and she's Hawaiian, I'm conservative, and she's a moderate lefty, so if anybody should be pissed off about someone falsely claiming to be indigenous it should be her.

I guess I'm pissed at him because of the his Eichmann comments, but more than that I'm pissed off because people like him have hijacked the left. The right NEEDS a healthy left, both to counter us when we go too far right, but also to inform us when we overlook things we're less inclined to notice.

Cernig's excellent post is one example of this. Another is this comment, by Salsafighter, from a debate on the Brazlian Jiu Jitsu board I visit.

Pan Africanism has always been interesting to me in the sense that we share some aspects of a common ancestory, but it is an American concept. I don't believe it is particularly relevant to compare the success of a cab driver from Eritrea (sp) to the plight of a black man who has lineage in this country that goes back over 400 years. The cab driver can use the system as it exist today because of the struggle of African Americans who came before him. Without that struggle, you would not even recognize him as a cab driver from Eritrea, you would recognize him as another black man....or perhaps worse.

It is a bit embarassing to admit- but the fact is I never really considered the above. And it is self-evidently true- obvious- the moment you read it. So a thoughtful lefty just opened my eyes to something that, thoughtful righty that I am, I would never have seen. This goes on all over, all the time, I'm sure. But it happens less and less as the left goes more and more crazy.

The Churchill/Michael Moore faction of the left damages the moderate left's ability to win elections and wield influence, but those of us on the right should not be happy about this. Because that faction also seriously impairs the right's ability to wield the power it has wisely.

That's the main reason I hate Churchill. (Let's see if the wife buys it.)

Update: Sasso, from the BJJ board, questions whether or not I'm sure Salsafigher is 'a lefty'. I'm NOT 100% sure Salsafighter IS a lefty, it is an assumption I've made based on some of his comments. He hasn't identified himself as such. Sasso also implies that the main reason I hate Churchill is not as stated above. But it really is. This country once had two serious political parties. Now it has one. People like Churchill are the reason.

Ward Churchill, UnIndian, NonPainter Extraordinaire!

Investigating Ward Churchill is like going through Dante’s circles of hell- the deeper you go the scummier it gets. I’ve already established that he:

1. Lied on his application to Colorado University, and throughout his career, by claiming he was Native American when he is not.

2. Lied about source material in an academic paper.

Now he is busted for selling copied artwork as an original composition, (twice, so far) and for copyright infringement.

This post by Michelle Malkin shows two demonstrable cases of art fraud. Take a look. Now, regarding the ‘Winter Attack’ painting, an LGF reader created an overlay of the original painting and Churchill’s rip off of it, proving the two images are virtually identical mirror images.

When questioned about this by CBS4 Churchill-

acknowledged his artwork was based on the Thomas Mails piece. And, he said he disclosed that during his initial release of the serigraph.

"It is an original art work by me, after Thomas Mails," Churchill said. "The fact that the purchaser was ignorant of the reality of what was perfectly publicly stated at the time the edition was printed is not my responsibility."

Set aside the idea that a flipped original image with a few tinting effects is “original artwork,” and the fact that Churchill feels no responsibility to inform potential buyers that his “original artwork” is little more than a photocopy- is there any reason to believe this proven liar really did publicly state the nature of his “original artwork” when it was printed?

A closer examination of the Churchill piece revealed there is no credit given to the original artist. Churchill also refused to provide CBS4 with documentation that would prove his claims.

Obviously the answer is no. But even if Churchill did provide proof, and even if that proof does pass the LGF Microsoft Word overlay test, it wouldn’t really matter.

But even if it exists, it wouldn't be enough to protect Churchill from copyright infringement unless he had permission from the copyright holder.

Is that likely?

When contacted at his home in North Carolina, Ryan Mails, the son of the late Thomas Mails said the family still retained the copyrights to the drawings of the Mystic Warriors book, and that his father fiercely defended the copyrights.

"My father invested a great deal of himself in his work, and from that he developed a great fierceness in defending his work," Mails' son said. "I cannot imagine he would ever grant permission to anyone to copy one of his pieces."

I can just hear Churchill's defense... "I took an image of indigenous people created by a white man to make money and changed it. Who stole from who? The whites steal our culture and make money from it- I made money from THEIR theft and yet I am accused of being a thief!" Of course that defense rests upon the idea that Churchill is an Indian, which he is not!

Ward Churchill- Champion of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and etc.!!! Maybe tenure is a bad idea. Of course you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater- but what if the baby is a little shit? Well... Certainly a debate regarding tenure ought to be opened up.

Care Package Ready for Shipment

My wife and I packed up a care package for a Marine who inabits my favorite Brazilian Jiu Jitsu forum... He said he likes beef jerkey so we pretty much shoved a dried up cow in a box and threw some peanuts in for variety.

Some other suggestions I found for military care packages, from this site, are:

• Baby Wipes - great for taking a field bath - packets are better than tubs
• Beef Jerky/Slim Jims
• Energy Bars (Power Bar, etc.)
• Hot Sauce (Tabasco, Red Devil, etc.) - wrap glass bottle in duct tape and place in doubled zip-lock bags
• Sunflower seeds
• Peanuts
• Seasoning Salt (Lawry's, etc.)
• Atomic Fireballs / Jolly Rancher hard candy
• Powdered Energy/Electrolyte Replacement Drink Mix (Gatorade, etc.)
• Chewing Gum
• Avon Skin So Soft - great for removing face paint and also reputed to be an effective bug repellant (the latter seems variable based on personal experience and reports)
• AA-cell Alkaline Batteries
• Personal Hygiene Gear: Disposable Razors, Toothbrush and Tooth Paste
• Eye Wash / Drops (Visine, etc.) for flushing dust and sand out of the eyes
• Zip-Lock style Plastic Storage Bags - assorted sizes, heavier freezer style are better
• Copenhagen Snuff in a tin ("Even if the service member doesn't dip snuff, they will be a hero and have more power than the Commanding Officer if they have a 'log' (10 cans) of 'Hagen.' A large percentage of infantry use this stuff and it is hard to get. The stuff they do get comes in a plastic can and tastes terrible. The 'Stateside Hagen' is the most powerful bargaining tool in a field environment!")
• Pre-paid Phone Card so service member can call home

There's a bit of pattern there, yes? If it helps to cure boredom or remove dirt, they can use it.

If you want to send a deployed soldier, sailor, flyer (?) or Marine something, but you don't know any, this site seems pretty good.

Monte Poole and Tim Kawakami = Sad but Funny

This entry is a bit different as it is about football. (For my European readers let me say add that no, I don’t mean the kind of football the rest of the world plays; the one in which players fall on the ground screaming if an opposing player shoots them a dirty look. I mean American football, the metaphor-for-war game in which every one on one match-up makes Achilles vs. Hector seem like a game of paddycake.) So if you can’t stand sports or whatever maybe you should just skip this one.

I’m a true Raider fan. Fan as in fanatic. As in I’m happy when the bye-week rolls around because I almost have a nervous breakdown every time the Raiders play. I’m not a fan of the Bay Area’s sports writers. In fact I pretty much despise them. By and large they are incompetent. I wouldn’t mind if this translated into a pro-Raider bias, but somehow it translates into an anti-Raider bias. Too many of the Bay Area sportswriters confuse anti-Raider bias with objectivity.

Today I’ll fisk two of them, Monte Poole and Tim Kawakami. Why? Because they just make it too damn easy. Kawakami first. Here are some excerpts from this article, from the Mercury News. Basically it says that Randy Moss is talented and has potential but sucks, so he’s a good fit with the Raiders, because the Raiders suck. To further his argument that Moss sucks-

Kawakami says:

The Ravens, who still badly need a big-play receiver, took a look at Moss this time. And passed.

Reality, via-NFL Network today with Tim Ryan

Dante DiTrapano, Moss’s agent, says the Vikings wanted Ravens #1 pick and Ed Reed and Ravens offered Adaleus Thomas and #1.
Lol. Way to be on top of the game Tim. Nice fact checking. (hat tip to BruceLFrank)

Later, Kawakami says:

But this isn't the 1970s, when super talents like Hendricks and Plunkett were discarded for idiotic reasons.

I wonder what COREY DILLON would say to that… How about JEREMIAH TROTTER? How about- I don’t know- RODNEY HARRISON? Rofl.

Okay, let’s move on to Monte Poole. Poole’s article, last updated 02/23/2005 09:41:10 AM includes this tidbit:

Speaking of Moss and his money, they never were a match here, despite rumors to the contrary. Porter's impending return should kill even the remotest likelihood of Moss becoming a Raider.

ROFLMAO- Oh Monte- “Never a match…” “Kill even the remotest likelihood…” In a way it is actually kind of wonderful. You are EXACTLY wrong. You could not be MORE wrong. And you updated the article just before reality came along to show how wrong you are.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. These men are PAID money to write these articles. They make a living doing this. Actually, it IS funny because it is so sad.

ANOTHER Churchill update

Now it appears he didn't say he wasn't an Indian... ugh... and the correction is from the Star Bulletin, the same paper that said he did say he wasn't an Indian, so there's no fisk-ability. Hrff... Hack.... Ugh... The link is here.

Here's the part that somehow got misreported:

"Is he an Indian? We really care. We're trying to protect the rights of Indians to divine for themselves, say this circle of flies in the form of white reporters circling a manure pile like it's of all consequential importance. Cut to the chase on that."

Okay... He later claims he's less than a quarter Indian so he couldn't get full citizenship in his tribe. Except he has NO Indian blood, according to Indians.

This first link http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410335 provides proof of a negative. Specifically proof that Churchill is NOT Native American.

Harjo: Why Native identity matters: A cautionary tale

Posted: February 10, 2005 by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today

Excerpt 1:

“As Churchill has lurched through Indian identities, he has not found a single Native relative or ancestor. He is descended from a long line of Churchills that Hank Adams has traced back to the Revolutionary War and Europe. Adams, who is Assiniboine-Sioux and a member of the Frank's Landing Indian Community, has successfully researched and exposed other pseudo-Indians.

Adams traced Churchill's ancestors on both sides of his family, finding all white people, including documented slave owners and at least one spy, but zero Indians.” (emphasis mine)

So it comes down to who you trust. Churchill or Adams.

Churchill at Manoa...

This links to an article about Churchill's press conference at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He will be lecturing there tonight. My emails, here and here, to Professor Perkinson were apparently useless. Professor Perkinson assured me, repeatedly, that he would look into the allegations about Churchill being a liar and get back to me. He has not, as yet, gotten back to me. Perhaps he decided that the allegations were false, perhaps he decided they weren't proven, perhaps he decided they didn't matter even if they were true. Maybe he never really bothered to look, or maybe, once the invitation was extended it could not have been revoked. Who knows?

Too bad.

Some of you may have noticed I didn't include Prof Perkinson's reply to my second email. I found myself in an ethical condundrum becausae I didn't identify myself as a blogger to Prof P in my first email. A post on Powerline made me wonder if failing to identify myself that way was tantamout to lying by omission... So I basically just shut up about the whole thing. It is kind of hard to pretend moral outrage when you suspect that you have been immoral.

Becaues of this I'm not going to email Prof P anymore or try to publicize this post by linking to anone. I'm going to let it go. Not that my little pebble in the ocean would have made a difference, anyway. But I would have enjoyed venting my spleen a little. This is just another lesson in blogdom for me, I guess.

There's a chance I should email Prof P an apology, but I think shutting up is good enough. Let me know if you think otherwise.

Update! - Churchill has admitted he is not an Indian! So he has admitted to lying on his application, lying when he asked for Affirmative Action set asides and etc... Wow. This is good news on one front- now CU can fire him for his 9/11 comments while using his lies on his application as an excuse. The bad news is that he's now made this an issue of academic freedom as opposed to one about whether or not Churchill is a lying jerk.

How is that bad news??? Er... I dunno. I guess it isn't bad news. Churchill is a proven, and now admitted liar. What separated him from all the other idiots who made statements like his was that he had the status accorded to 1. Native Americans and 2. tenured professors. Now he has lost Native American status, and soon, hopefully, he will lose the status accorded him by his job. Wonderful, wonderful...

Just like that this is a good day.

Another Update! Fearless Critic wonders if Churchill is seeking to be fired to obtain lefty academic martyrdom. (I imagine lefty academic martyrdom involves quite a few, well, not virgins, but...) Fearless Critic may be right but I doubt it. I think too many people had figured out that Churchill has no Indian blood, and he decided the only way to make people shut up about it was to admit it. But this concession will not end the controversy. The question now is not "Is Churchill an Indian?" It is "Should he be fired for fraud?" And/or "Does this mean Churchill's views mean less?" Or, if you are a liberal, the question is "Did Karl Rove plant Ward Churchill?"

4 memes re: the cause of 9/11

There are four principal memes re: the cause of 9/11.

The “Churchill” meme is that America has caused so much pain around the world, and been a force for evil so long and consistently, that 9/11 was inevitable and deserved. Future 9/11 attacks can be prevented by changing America, which is something we should do anyway.

The “Blame Wahabism” meme holds that 9/11 is the climax of the Fox afternoon special: “When Good Muslims Go Bad.” This meme contends that Muslim extremism combined with decades of post-colonial tyranny and humiliation have led the basically decent folk of Pan-Arabia to follow a path similar to that walked by the post-WWI Germans. The way to stave off future attacks is to change the region by liberating it from the evil ayatollahs and strongmen that have dominated it for so long. This meme must not be confused with the “Those Arabs Are Nuts” meme.

The “Those Arabs are Nuts” or “Look Mom, I’m a Racist” meme holds that 9/11 was the result of the fact that Arabs (and don’t give us that ‘we’re not Arabs, we’re Persian’ crap, what’s the difference?) are sub-humans who do crazy shit. This explicitly racist meme claims the way to avoid future attacks is Fortress America. Build a fence. Not a literal fence a la Israel but a Platonic ideal of a fence- nobody bad gets in or near or around the US or any of our people or our property and etc.

The fourth meme, the “Blame Clinton” meme, says terrorists rationally calculated that the US would react to terrorism by giving terrorists what they wanted. This calculation was based on America’s limited reactions to previous attacks, and President Clinton’s decisions to 1.pressure Israel into appeasing terrorist Yasser Arafat, and 2.treat the IRA like a political rather than a criminal movement. Future attacks can be prevented by killing all known terrorists, and punishing the countries that support them, regardless of the legitimacy of the terrorists’ beef, so that people considering terrorism will decide it is a dead end.

Of course people can believe in a combination of all four memes. I’m a
3% Churchill,
20% Wahabism,
O% Racist,
77% Blame Clinton

kind of guy. President Bush, I believe, is about
0% Churchill,
50% Wahabism,
0% Racist,
50% Blame Clinton

guy. Thus we didn’t just destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan, we went into Iraq to change the region. Few, if any, adhere to the “Arabs are Crazy or Look Mom, I’m a Racist” meme, but liberals love to claim that conservatives believe in it whole heartedly.

I suspect my liberal friend Dr. M is a
60% Churchill,
35% Wahabism,
0%
5% Blame Clinton

guy, and I look forward to reading his comments.

What are you?

How Rove baited Rather re: National Guard Docs

Liberals advance the theory that Karl Rove is Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Hitler, Musahimaru (is that the guy who wrote The 5 Rings? I think it is, but he may be the sumotori from Street Fighter 2, who can keep track?) and one of the psychics from Scanners all rolled into one.

I used to think that was funny. But this transcript, discovered by Tim Blair, of a meeting regarding the Rathergate documents, proves me wrong.

RFLMAO!!!

I am a huge Shatner fan... always have been, even when it was uncool, before his current cool incarnation, Denny Green! - so I feel a little bit bad about showing y'all this... but I must. It is work safe, don't worry.


Shatner's Rocketman

Update-. Sorry about the problems with the link. It will now take you to an i-films page. Scroll down a bit until you see Shatner and click on it. Thanx.

No Batteries.

Here's something interesting... if you're a bit geeky. We are ALL a bit geeky. Like the Russian said to Rambo before he turned on the juice: (Okay first he said "You may scream," but that's not the part I mean. The second thing he said was-) "There is- no shame."

2. ZENITH SPACE COMMAND TV REMOTE CONTROL, 1956
Remember having to get up off the couch to change the channel on the TV by hand? Of course you don't, thanks to Robert Adler's stunning breakthrough, the wireless remote control. Zenith had been meddling with remotes since 1950; its Lazy Bones remote (no, seriously, that's what it was called) simply ran to the TV with a wire. The first wireless remote came in 1955: The Flash-matic was basically a flashlight you shined at one of the TV's four corners, depending on whether you wanted to change the channel up or down. The problem: On sunny days, the TV would change channels by itself. In 1956, Adler had a better idea: Use ultrasonic sound to control the TV. His Space Command remote had four buttons that, when pressed, struck an aluminum rod located inside the unit. A receiver in the TV detected the sound, and depending on the pitch, changed channels or muted the volume. No batteries required. Various forms of ultrasonic technology were the standard all the way until the 1980s, when infrared took over.

For the other 99 of the top 100 gadgets of all time, according to Mobile PC, click here.

Please visit this site.

Blogs for Terry Shchiavo-

Earth's Greatest Hero

Reason #5309 that I am conservative.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.

The above is quoted from a letter written by President George Washington, Earth's Greatest Hero, in response to a letter from some Jewish Americans. Go here to read the circumstance that occasioned that letter. It is an excellent read.

Why does that excerpt make me conservative? Because it mentions INHERENT, NATURAL RIGHTS, which echoes the idea that our rights are given to us by a Creator, not devolved upon us by the will of a government or a people. Everywhere liberals take power they grant 'rights.' But rights are not granted nor given- they are either acknowledged or taken away. Conservatives understand this- liberals don't.

I could translate the above to a more modern vernacular- "These days you don't have to thank me or this new country for giving you something- only perhaps acknowledge that we aren't taking what is naturally yours."

Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington, which is to say, the birthday of the man who made the U.S.A. as we know it possible, which is to say the birthday of the man who made the nation which has battled totalitarianism, and spread liberty as no other nation has, which is to say, the birthday of Liberty's Greatest Champion, which is to say, the birtday of Earth's Greates Hero.

What's a friggin' Nano?

The fact is most people wander around having no idea how anything works. Whether you're talking about how computers process info, how television screens show colors, how shirts are made, (woven? sewn? I don't even know the friggin' word?) people know nada. Transplant a medieval serf who made a living bringing out the dead during the plague to today's world, and the difference between him and Joe Shchmo is- Joe Shchmo doesn't CARE that he doesn't know how that technology crap works- and medieval body-gatherer-boy, once the wonder wore off, wouldn't care that he didn't know how that magic stuff works, and, by the way, do you have any dead people you need transported?

Having said that- I like to kid myself that I have a grasp of the general, technology wise, to go along with my mastery of the obvious, political wise.

This illusion was difficult to maintain because of nanotechnology. Upon reading the words nano(whatever, there are like a million of them-nanotechnology, nanobot, nanobudweiser, nanoheineken) my brain shut down like Michael Moore when the buffet closes. Until today, that is. From this article at The New York Times.

Nanotechnology, nanoparticles and all of the other nano words derive from nanometer, a billionth of a meter, or about one 25-millionth of an inch. That is far smaller than the world of everyday objects described by Newton's laws of motion, but bigger than an atom or a simple molecule, particles ruled by quantum mechanics.

A nanoparticle, an object with a width of a few nanometers to a few hundred, contains tens to thousands of atoms and exists in a realm that straddles the quantum and the Newtonian.

...This in-between realm gives rise to an unusual physics where the properties of a material change depending on its size. At the quantum level, one gold atom acts like any other gold atom, and a nugget of gold large enough to hold has the same chemical and electrical properties as another nugget. But two nanoparticles, both made of pure gold, can exhibit markedly different behavior - different melting temperature, different electrical conductivity, different color - if one is larger than the other.

Now you, like me, can feel confident that you know more than Joe Schmo and the medieval body-gathering-serf-boy combined. And it feels good, you know, to have an idea about what makes these Nanos so special. To feel like you can bullchit along with the rest of the bullchitters when nanos come up during casual conversation. Of course we don't really know how the stuff works, but the details are best left to wizards, warlocks, sorcerers etc.

Government Goons..The post of the day

is here. It is excellent. It describes a case before the Supreme Court, involving property rights. Well, you just have to read it, I can't sum it very well. Anyway, I try to stay away from sky-falling predictions but, if the Supreme Court rules against private property rights it will be, er, the suck.

However, what bothers me about this article is that the elected officials of the county decided to take this lady's home, for no particular reason, in the first place. Then some judges decided it was fine. Somebody in the government should have stopped this long before it reached the Supreme Court!!! The written laws of the land cannot stand if the government is full of elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats who are dicks.

The Soviet Constitution made the American one look fascist... but they are just words, in the end. The individuals in government must act in good faith for those words to matter.

A similar situation has evolved here on Kauai. More on this later.

Muslims AGAINST Islamists!!!

Have you felt despair when you considered that CAIR is the Muslim mouth piece in America?
Me too.
Have you felt despair becaue, while everybody says there ARE moderate Muslims, you haven't seen (m)any?
Me too.
Have you felt despair because, considering the above, you thought maybe Muslims are IMMUNE to the American virus? (you know, the virus that makes you respect others' rights as if they are your own- that makes you give up the tribalism and generational grudge holding that made the place you left suck so much in the first place- that virus)?
Me too.
Well, today's post of the day, from Dean's World, will cure what ails you. There ARE moderate Muslims, and they HAVE grouped together to fight fundamentalist Muslims... The MSM likes to feature CAIR, and allows CAIR to frame most issues re. the War on Terror, and Muslims in America, but the ISCA is out there, and so are the Free Muslims Against Terrorism.

Thank God!

Powerline has an interesting take on Churchill

There's a meme floating around the right side of the blogosphere that says Churchill is not:
1. a kook we don't need to worry about
2. just another example of a bad lefty (bad lefty! bad! bad!)
or
3. just a hustler getting his groove on. (this is what I've been thinking)

This meme says Churchill is symptomatic of campus culture. He is, if you will, a pimple resulting from years of collectivist pizza topped with Christianity bashing, Palestine empowerment, and tribalism championism, washed down with kegs of moral relativsim. A good article about this can be found through here- Okay...

So we'll see what Professor Perkinson says. The evidence I've provided him is well-sourced and damning... Will it matter? Or is the Powerline meme correct?

Another Email to Prof Perkinson

I sent this about one minute ago. I need to credit Freerepublic.com, specifically okie01, for help with this. I more or less rewrote what okie01 argued in this thread.

Professor Perkinson,

Thank you for your quick and gracious reply. I believe I’ve found definitive proof regarding the allegations surround Churchill. I understand you are very busy, so I’ve excerpted the following two links. I hope you will make time to read the articles they link to in their entirety.

This first link http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410335 provides proof of a negative. Specifically proof that Churchill is NOT Native American.

Harjo: Why Native identity matters: A cautionary tale

Posted: February 10, 2005 by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today

Excerpt 1:

“As Churchill has lurched through Indian identities, he has not found a single Native relative or ancestor. He is descended from a long line of Churchills that Hank Adams has traced back to the Revolutionary War and Europe. Adams, who is Assiniboine-Sioux and a member of the Frank's Landing Indian Community, has successfully researched and exposed other pseudo-Indians.

Adams traced Churchill's ancestors on both sides of his family, finding all white people, including documented slave owners and at least one spy, but zero Indians.” (emphasis mine)

Excerpt 2:

“Colorado and all universities should respect Native nations at least as much as they respect schools and other employers, but they don't. They frown on people who falsify their written material and wrongly claim degrees they did not earn and jobs they did not hold. But when people falsely claim to be Native, it is seen by some as less serious, less offensive and something anyone besides the Indians ought to decide.”

This second link http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/Churchill1.htm demonstrates that Churchill’s academic fraud extends beyond lying about his ethnicity.

Assessing Warch Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic

Thomas Brown

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Lamar University

Beaumont,TX 77710

browntf@hal.lamar.edu

Excerpt 1 of 1:

“Situating Churchill’s rendition of the epidemic in a broader historiographical analysis, one must reluctantly conclude that Churchill fabricated the most crucial details of his genocide story. Churchill radically misrepresented the sources he cites in support of his genocide charges, sources which say essentially the opposite of what Churchill attributes to them.

It is a distressing conclusion. One wants to think the best of fellow scholars. The scholarly enterprise depends on mutual trust. When one scholar violates that trust, it damages the legitimacy of the entire academy. Churchill has fabricated a genocide that never happened. It is difficult to conceive of a social scientist committing a more egregious violation.” (emphasis mine)

Finally, I have an observation regarding the article you attached:

Lyons wrote:

“At the very least, even the toughest identity police among us will have to admit that, as a United States citizen, Churchill has the right to ethnically self-identify in any way he wants, as is the official policy of the U.S. Census Bureau.”

To which I would reply:

1. The Census Bureau policy is irrelevant. CU's policy is the relevant standard.

2. Churchill lied about his ethnicity to obtain benefits and set asides reserved for certain minorities. Churchill claimed Affirmative Action preference on his application. The application said that the description Native American/Pacific Islander was reserved for persons descended from the original peoples of North America. It didn’t say applicants could claim Native American ancestry because they empathized.

3. Churchill was one of eleven applicants who claimed Native American ethnicity, and one of two who were interviewed for the position. Assuming the other was not a liar, like Churchill, that person may care that Churchill’s lied, regardless of whether Scott Richard Lyons think it was no big deal.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you will decide Churchill can only dishonor UH, and change your mind about bringing him to my alma mater. Anyway, using his case to champion free expression is self-defeating, akin to citing NAMBLA to solicit money for the ACLU, or Lee Malvo and John Muhammad to solicit support for the NRA.

Sincerely, etc.

P.S. I have attached copies of Churchill’s application.

ed.- That's the end of the email. I hope he'll reply. I hope he'll disinvite Churchill altogether. I will keep you posted. (unintentional pun, so I will not apologize, hehehe) My wife, btw, has a slightly different take on this whole thing. Something along the line of- "he's a hustler making a buck- why bother him?" I don't care for ethnic identifcation, Affirmative Action etc, so she's got a point. Er... I guess I'm motivated by the Eichmann thing- I'll have to think about that...

Kudos to Michael Kinsley...

This makes little sense when compared to my the Unbelievable Kinsley series. Or does it? I guess the difference is one of degree- Kinsley's judgement is suspect regarding Dubya, (probably due to haterade) whereas Esterich is a nutball regarding, well, life. Anyway kudos to Kinsley for telling Susan Estrich to STFU.

Professor Perkins Responds to my Email

Prof Perkins appears to be a class act: His reply to my email is below:

Subject
Re: Ward Churchill: I was impressed and want to thank you for the following:

I am aware of these allegations, but I haven’t yet seen any definitive proof. I will review these links, however, as soon as I get a chance.

I’m an avid supporter of academic freedom. I think that public universities should protect even outrageous ideas so that they can be debated, scrutinized, and rejected. So I oppose shutting down someone like Churchill based on the fact that he has made outlandish statements.

On the other hand, academic freedom is not absolute. If professors repeatedly peddle verifiable falsehoods, actively incite hateful violence, or engage in outright fraud then I think they may forfeit the right to as much protection.

So I will try to get back to you on this, though perhaps not for a few days.

Thanks for your info and concern.

--Robert

p.s. By the way, you might want to take a look at this Indian Country Today article putting forth an alternative point of view. It’s attached.

The attached article he mentions can be read here. It calls, no begs, no SCREAMS for a fisking. But today is my one day off. I'll try to get to it tomorrow.

Anyway, I appreciate Prof Perkins response, and I suppose we should trust it was written in good faith.

Ward Churchill at UH Manoa

I graduated from U.H. at Manoa in 1995 after 5.5 years of drunken revelry and sporadic cramming... Nevertheless I am proud to be a Warrior and was disappointed to learn, via LGF, that Ward Churchill is scheduled to lecture there. Click here for the link.

I sent the following email to Robert Perkinson, a professor of American Studies, one of the sponsoring groups of the lecture:

Dear Professor;

I was impressed and want to thank you for the following:

“We figured we better at least signal that, here in Hawai’i, which is a little more open-minded state than some others, we wanted to signal that we really believe in free expression not just for non-controversial ideas, but for controversial ideas, because that’s what free expression is for."

The links below provide compelling evidence that Ward Churchill has fraudulently claimed Native American ancestry for years. And that he has used that lie to further his career and to claim he represents Native Americans. Please consider whether or not you want such a man to lecture on the UH Manoa campus. For some perspective you might ask Professor Trask how she would feel if Ward Churchill, or some other, random haole, had built an academic career by fraudulently claiming he was Hawaiian.

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410335

http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/churchill05.html

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2689334,00.html

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410295

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3519179,00.html

Are you sure you want Ward Chruchill to champion free expression? Surely there are better candidates.

Sincerely... etc. .

I wonder if he'll respond... Professor Trask, btw, is a Hawaiian and a Hawaiian activist- I imagine she would shoot somebody if they tried to do what Churchill has done.

Cryptonomicon- Can you dig it?

About 4 years ago I read somewhere that President Lincoln read deeply, not widely. Basically he read the Bible and Shakespeare over and over. I thought this was fantastic. Since college I'd read widely, hell, you might even say shallowly- zipping through novels whose comprehension required the same brain wattage as your average Three's Company episode. So for about two years I read and reread Shakespeare's plays, taking breaks from reading the plays only to read critics of Shakespeare.

Reading deeply is much, MUCH better than reading shallowly, or even widely. After I'd mastered Shakespeare (hehehe) I began reading widely again, and one of the first novels I picked up was Cryptonomicon. Having reaquired the shallow-reading habit I read it quickly, skimming through the math, not allowing confusion about the chronology or anything else to slow me down. Still, I thought it was great.

But about two weeks ago I decided to read it DEEPLY. Now I think it is great, not like, "Coca-cola is great!" but like "A Catcher in the Rye" is great. The deeper I delve, the more treasure I find. This man is a great writer. I'm going to start putting tiny excerpts from Cryptonomicon in this blog... Just so y'all can dig it like I dig it.

The following simile requires a little setup. It is enough to know that the narrator is describing Goto Dengo's day, and that Goto Dengo is a Japanese soldier during WW2- formerly stationed in Shanghai- currently on a troop transport watching American torpedo bombers destroy his troop trasnport's escorting destroyers.
Take a breath. Okay here we go:

Tiny black things are skip, skip, skipping all over the ocean now, like fleas across the rumpled bedshets of a Shanghai whorehouse.

... like fleas across the rumpled bedsheets of a Shanghai whorehouse... Say the sentence aloud... again, slower... Can you dig it?

Low hanging fruit.

Hat tip to LGF:

Howard Dean accused Perle (and the administration) of ignoring North Korea and Iran—which he identified as greater threats—to go after “the low-hanging fruit” in Iraq.

The goalposts are really moving now! Having changed the standard of success in Iraq at least 30 times, only to see the Bushies meet each of those standards in turn, the Dems are now saying success in Iraq is defined by- ignoring Iraq to go after North Korea and Iran.

Babies and Bathwater

Here is today's post of the day. The article is interesting and worth a read. What really caught my eye is this:

In 1875, food/clothing/shelter accounted for 74 percent of total consumption (including leisure). In 1995, they accounted for just 13 percent of total consumption. For material goods, productivity tends to grow faster than demand, so that a smaller fraction of resources is devoted to them. We see that in the ever-declining proportion of the work force engaged in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing

The above is the reason I am conservative. Liberals tend to look at the flaws of capitalism rather than the benefits. The disparity of wealth between Bill Gates and a homeless person is compelling, yes, but consider that, without capitalism and the wealth it generates the problem wouldn't be too many homeless people, but too many people dying of starvation.

I make an analogous (is that even a word? analogous?) argument regarding socializing medicince. The current system has produced thousands of miracle drugs which have rapidly extended average lifespans and dramatically improved the quality of life for millions. The liberal response to this is to privatize medicine because these drugs are expensive!

Charity and stop-gap safety nets are preferable to fundamentally reworking the system, if the goal is to minimize human suffering.

Cernipundit.

Cernig over at Newshog accepted my nomination re. becoming a leftist Instapundit. He called it Newshoglets. His first entry is up... Argh it pisses me off. You should be careful what you wish for. Or I should. I hope he takes it a little more towards the middle. Yikes.

Part 2. Why are we not fighting the propaganda war?

Part 1 showed (kind of, pretty weak, I admit) that the U.S. is not fighting on the propaganda front of the War on Terror.

Why? I guess because we suck at propaganda wars. Rumsfeld probably doesn’t want to be associated with the following commercial:

Hot chick (we guess, we can’t see her through the chador, but she has a nice voice) next to an oven holds an egg.
“Okay this is you.”
Indicates a hot frying pan.
“This is your local America-hating Imam”
Cracks egg onto pan, it fries.
“This is you hopped up on America hate.”
The camera pulls away from her, farther away, in fact until it is outside, farther, farther yet, until you can see the house she is in. A barely discernible dart falls from the sky.
BOOM. The house and everything within a hundred yards is enveloped with dust.
“That’s what America does to you- and anybody else who fucks with it. Any questions?”

Shoot. That’s probably way better than what the government propaganda machine would come up with. I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, I think we’re not fighting the propaganda war because Rumsfeld thinks the U.S. sucks at propaganda. And yeah, we do. But we don’t have to.

Imagine America’s best engineers designed cars instead of fighter jets. Now imagine our best mathematicians weren’t breaking code for the NSA. Okay. Now imagine our best writers and actors made movies rather than government propaganda. Oh, wait a second…

Part 3 is coming soon!

update:
It occurs to me that blowing up some (plausibly) hot chick in a chador is not likely to make people like the U.S... (what a genius I am!)
So have the lady, at the end, be standing on a hill over looking the blown up house, and er, make the house a compound.
Okay. For those of you who think the ad still won't make people like us- I disagree. Arabs like strength first, and 'niceness' second. It is always easier to make friends wth a bully AFTER you punch him out.

The Propaganda War, Part 1

The War on Terrorism is fought on several fronts. These are, in order of short term importance:
1. Homeland
2. Afghanistan
3. Iraq
4. Europe
5. Pan-Arabia

The Homeland front is basically a police action. And we're winning, in that there have been no major Islamic attacks since 9/11. Afghanistan is a fledgeling democracy. We're winning. Ditto Iraq. In Europe our allies are shutting down terror cells. We're winning there as well. The problem is Pan-Arabia. This front cannot be won through military action or detective work. It is the Public Relations or Hearts and Minds or Propaganda version of The War on Terror, and I'm not sure whether we are winning or losing it.

Today’s posts from Newsisyphus, and the Belmont Club, indicate we have lost for lack of trying. Newsisyphus says that a democratized Middle East will hate the U.S. the way Turkey does, but that that’s okay because, like the Turks, citizens of democracies are too busy making their lives better to commit terrorism. The Belmont Club discusses Rumsfeld’s briefing about the War On Terror and sums up our future PR efforts thusly:

… countering ideological support for terrorism: This war has required not only the vigorous pursuit of known terrorists, but finding ways to stop extremists from gaining recruits and adherents. It is this ideological component, I suggest, that is the essential ingredient for victory.

Newsisyphus is written by State Department bureaucrats, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that it accurately reflects Foggy Bottom’s attitude regarding the PR war. And I would summarize that attitude like this: “They are going to hate us no matter what- why bother trying to make them like us?” Rumsfeld, no friend to the State Department generally, seems to think the PR war is a defensive war. In other words, those who should be developing propaganda feel they cannot make “The Arab Street” like America, so we should either ignore the problem or try to blunt its consequences by isolating extremists…

This is a mistake.

A Clockwork Orange comes to life.

Todays post of the day is here. Greenpeace should beware invading areas populated by young men who wash their caffeine pills down with Red Bull. Plus, these guys work on commission. If they were getting paid by the hour the time lost would have cost the company, and the guys probably would have considered it a second lunch break.

My favorite part was this:

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull.

To my American ears this is as lyrical and charming a the "nasdat" of A Clockwork Orange. I was also impressed by the Greenpeace activists because they didn't really whine. They took their lumps. American protestors would be crying like they were on Oprah.

This site features a glossary of the language in A Clockwork Orange. Worth checking out if you are-
1. my kind of nerd
2. trying to score with hot nerd chicks

Cognitive dissonance graph

This post was inspired by the Post of Day below. I want to create a graph here, labeling different groups and how much cognitive dissonance they suffer. Brief definition of cogdis, for those too lazy to follow the link who don't know: (from Wikipedia)

Cognitive dissonance is a state of imbalance between cognitions. For the purpose of this theory, cognitions are defined as being an attitude, emotion, belief or value, or even a mixture of these cognitions. In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that the human mind tends to adopt thoughts or beliefs so as to minimise the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.

10 equals total wackjobs – 1 equals people whose world view is so accurate that it requires very little rationalization and/or ignorance to maintain.

10. Christians, Jews, or Muslims who take their holy books literally and/or as the literal word of God.
Islamists.
Wahabbists.
Supporters of partial birth abortion.
9. Communists.
8. Black Muslims.
7. Jews who are pro-Palestine.
Castro supporters.
6. Socialists
Most of Continental Europe
5. The MSM
Blair’s Britain
4. Christians, Jews, and/or Muslims who consider their holy books as written by men who had mystical experiences.
3. Neo-cons. Gun nuts.
2. Cowboys (why? from the person who suggested Cowboys:
Have you ever seen a Cowboy on welfare?
Have you ever seen a Cowboy that was not Patriotic?
Have you ever seen a Cowboy that wasn't self reliant)
1.

This is a work in progress. Updates will be made as they occur to me. Suggestions in the comment section are greatly appreciated. Especially by my liberal friends... in fact maybe I'll make two... on from the right perspective and one from the left perspective...

Cognitive Dissonance, Cernig as Instapundit, and More!

Here's a 3rd post of the day. This links to Dean'sWorld.... It is about Terry Schiavo- she's a severely brain damage, bed-ridden woman... Basically her husband has gone to court to starve her to death and her parents and siblings want him to divorce her and let them take care of her. You can see video of her over the net. I once thought she was brain dead, a vegetable, etc. What a bunch of bull****. Go see for yourself. I wish the biggie conservatives would blogswarm this rather than find another Easongate...

Today’s 1st post of the day is here. It’s from New York Metro’s Kurt Anderson. You should read the whole thing, but two parts stood out to me. My favorite part:

… now our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might—might, possibly—have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq.

This reminds me of David Letterman interviewing Maureen Dowd. At one point, after listening to Dowd talk about what a disaster Bush had created in Iraq, Letterman said (paraphrasing from memory)-“But if Iraq is a stable democracy and ally in five years, what will you say?” To which Dowd, of course, had no answer, unless you count a facial expression indicating nausea as an answer.

And my least favorite part:

One day during the U.S. election campaign, President Bush accidentally uttered a plain truth about the war on terror. “I don’t think you can ‘win’ it,” he said, which immediately provoked attacks from the Democrats. A month later, John Kerry inadvertently told the same truth—“We have to get back to the place . . . where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance”—whereupon Bush pounced, saying he “couldn’t disagree more.” Later the same month, the president slipped and retold the same truth—“Whether or not we can be ever fully safe . . . is up in the air”—and Kerry, inevitably, replied: “You make me president [and] it’s not going to be up in the air.”

I can’t understand why Anderson can’t understand the difference between what Bush said and what Kerry said. Bush and Kerry agree that it is impossible to guarantee individual instances of terror will never take place. But what Kerry said- and what Bush disagreed with- is the idea that the U.S. should return to the days when we tolerated a certain amount of terrorist activity.

Terrorists tried, but failed to bring down the Towers? Let it go. It is annoying but let’s not make a big deal about it.

Terrorists attacked the USS Cole? Well, that is annoying, but no reason to go to war or anything. Kerry said our goal should be a return to the pre 9/11 mindset, when a certain amount of terrorism was considered acceptable. Bush said we should never return to the pre 9/11 mindset. (Probably because Bush believes that the mindset indirectly led to 9/11.) The differences between these two stances are self evident to me, and in fact the election hinged on the candidates’ differing approach to the War on Terror. I’m going to email Kurt Anderson about this. I doubt he’ll even see the email, much less respond, but if he does I’ll let you know.

Here is a copy of the comment I pasted (they don't have an email- just a comments section):

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Kudos and thanks to you for When Good News Feels Bad. It was brutally honest. I remember, during the air war against the Serbs, having similar feelings because I hated President Clinton. (That cognitive dissonance is a bitch, ain't it?)

No good deed goes unpunished, however, and I've a bone to pick regarding the following:

One day during the U.S. election campaign, President Bush accidentally uttered a plain truth about the war on terror. “I don’t think you can ‘win’ it,” he said, which immediately provoked attacks from the Democrats. A month later, John Kerry inadvertently told the same truth—“We have to get back to the place . . . where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance”—whereupon Bush pounced, saying he “couldn’t disagree more.” Later the same month, the president slipped and retold the same truth—“Whether or not we can be ever fully safe . . . is up in the air”—and Kerry, inevitably, replied: “You make me president [and] it’s not going to be up in the air.”

I can’t understand why you don't grasp the difference between what Bush said and what Kerry said. Bush and Kerry agree that it is impossible to guarantee individual instances of terror will never take place. But what Kerry said- and what Bush disagreed with- is the idea that the U.S. should return to the days when we tolerated a certain amount of terrorist activity.

Terrorists tried, but failed to bring down the Towers? Let it go. It is annoying but let’s not make a big deal about it.Terrorists attacked the USS Cole? Well, that is annoying, but no reason to go to war or anything. Kerry said our goal should be a return to the pre 9/11 mindset, when a certain amount of terrorism was considered acceptable. Bush said we should never return to the pre 9/11 mindset. (Probably because Bush believes that the mindset indirectly led to 9/11.) The differences between these two stances are self evident to me, and in fact the election hinged on the candidates’ differing approach to the War on Terror.

Hoping for a response,
Theron Marshman
AKA Harkonnndog
http://harkonnendog.blogspot.com/

2^nd Post of the Day:

This links to a post at JustOneMinute called Battle for the Blogosphere. It’s a great read, in which a righty basically tells lefties how to win that battle. It explains the way Daily Kos works:

The largest Lefty blog is the Daily Kos. One must register to enlist there; members can leave comments, or write "diaries", which function as blogs within a blog. In addition to leaving their own comments on other blogs, members can vote on diary entries, to move them up the in-house rankings and call them to other people's attention. So, for a member, the hours can be whiled away, and there is always plenty to do in Kos World.

That explanation alone is worth the price of admission. He goes on to call Kos a hive, as compared to Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit, which uses a methodology which works more like a pack. He says the right doesn’t have a hive and probably can’t have one. (I disagree, btw, I would say Freerepublic is a hive, of course it isn’t a blog, but still it serves that function.) Okay- but what got me was this:

It is unlikely that a major new hub could simply emerge, so one of the big, established lefty bloggers would need to decide that to beat Glenn, he was going to be Glenn. Atrios is already a prolific linker, so let's nominate him for the role. He should do two things.

I disagree. To be an Instapundit of the left you need to be center-left or, at worst, left-center. And you need to have a kind of ‘I don’t need this shit so I’ll say what I like’ attitude. And you need to exhibit class. So I nominate Cernig over at Newshog. Why should I care about the left? Well, a healthy left is necessary for a healthy right, imho.

Who's kookier- kooky Christians or kooky Christian critics?

Condi Rice-
There's been talk of a Hilary vs. Rice ticket in 2008. This article say Rice would be a bad candidate... The article is smart, well-written, concise, and persuasive. Okay, now forget about that article and listen to my reason, which is pretty much its opposite:
The REAL reason Condi is not presidential material is because she is madly in love with Dubya. No kidding. Look at her when she looks at him. Watch her face light up when asked about him. I mean Atlas couldn't resist the force of Condi's crush. With Bush retired to his ranch she'll have lost her lodestone and have to begin anew. No doubt she will. However, she should not be President during the process.


Who's kookier- kooky Christians or kooky Christian critics?
Last night I overheard the following conversation.

"Some people think it is okay to believe in the Tooth Fairy. But then what about believing in other kinds of Fairies? And then other gods, or idols. People don't think about that."

These were my fellow Christians. Of course they are- well- I don't want to be rude, but they are not really my fellow Christisans, any more than a patient in an asylum and their doctor are fellow residents. They are almost comedic figures. They are in fact manifestations of the Left's Christian Caricature. So while I find them funny they also piss me off. Compare the above to these exerpts from a nice discussion I had with a nice Lefty recently:

Hark, it wasn't science that proved Christianity is a hoax.
All thinking people can see that Christianity is a hoax because they have bothered to read the history of Christianity and how it was manufactured by a group of people who wanted to use it as a method of control.
To her credit, when called on it she did recant the No Thinking People Can Be Christians meme... but later she added this:

Hark, there are a lot of Christians who are excellent thinkers, but when it comes to religion they don't think, they accept what they have been told.
When you are indoctrinated with something from a very young age it is very difficult to change your ideas. (The entire debate, and the post that spawned it, are here.)

Which I countered by mentioning Augustine and Martin Luther. So you tell me, is it kookier to believe:
That kids believing in the Tooth Fairy is dangerous?
or
That the majority of Christians are non-thinking, or non-thinking about Christianity?

Personally, I think the kooky Christians are kookier. But it isn't a no brainer... hehehe.


Cryptonomicon is the best novel I've ever read. I used to vet books for my middle school's librarian, no kidding. She'd have me read books before she decided whether to keep them or not. I missed, collectively, at least a full year of classes during high school and college because I stayed home to read novels. Before the net got big I regularly worked 80 hour weeks at a job where 90% of the time I read books, while waiting for a chance to do actual work.

In short, I've read a lot. I read Cryptonomicon about two years ago, just reading casually, and thought it was great. But I'm rereading it, taking notes, dissecting it a bit, now, and I can say quite confidently that it is the best novel I've ever read.

Please read it.

Today's Post of the Day- regards Fallujah and and our decisive victory's consequences. One consequence was a treasure trove of intelligence, part of which established that Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have supplied terrorists and support to terrorists.

It also shows the disconnect the terror networks have with reality. The would-be terrorists from Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia honestly believed the terrorsits were winning until they entered Iraq. And they believed the Americans would never take Fallujah until the Americans decided to take Fallujah, and crushed them.

In the U.S. the left's disconnect with reality is now inconsequential because conservatives are in power. But 9/11 was an indirect result of their belief that appeasing terrorists doesn't encourage terrorism. In the EU the U.S. provided the military support, during the Cold War, and again in the Balkans, necessary for the region to have lapsed into a kind mass delusion about reality. The EU's wakeup call will be staggered, and has already begun with the murder of Theo Van Gogh. Their final awakening, (or reckoning) is probably a single generation away. Hopefully the American left will go to the grave believing what they believe now.

Blogswarm!

The idea just pops into his head, out of nowhere and from nothing.

He breaks into a cold sweat- tough to do while walking along Kauai’s Kaumuali’i Highway- and concentrates. The root beer slushy he’d craved is forgotten, but his legs carry him along until he’s actually inside the 7-11.

Why is he here?

No, focus on the idea. Turn around. Home is the new destination. Focus.

Fifteen minutes later he sits before his laptop with a fully formed and threshed out GOOD IDEA. The beauty of this GOOD IDEA is that it is non-political. The most influential bloggers, the blog-gods, are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Half would not link to pro conservative ideas, and half would not link to pro liberal ideas. But this idea was about the nature of blogs themselves. This idea was about the nature of the blogosphere, and the mind, and intelligence and synaptic connection and influence and heuristics.

He puts on his 1967 AFC Champion Oakland Raiders cap. It was a gift from his father. It is his editor’s hat. His mentor at Kauai Community College taught that writers must separate writing from editing. Writing is a creative process, a building process, a birthing process. Editing is a destructive process, a subtracting process, a killing process. Thus, one cannot write and edit at once. Trying to do so results in Writer’s Block at best, run-on sentences and endless exposition at worst. He took that lesson to heart, to the point where he literally wears different hats while writing and editing.

The Raiders/editor’s hat goes on first because he is pre-writing- writing about what he will write about- discovering what he wants to write by writing. A long time ago he would have put on his Oakland A’s cap, his writer’s hat, and tried to actually write what he was going to write. But lonely experience has taught that 1) pre-writing makes his work 10x better; and 2)re-writing sucks much more than pre-writing sucks, and only makes his work 2x better. Thus, the more prewriting he does the less rewriting he HAS to do, and the better the finished product is.

He types:

The net is the brain- the blogosphere the mind. Every synapse has its own mental mitochondria- its own consciousness of self and its part in the whole- (though its conception of the whole is absurdly inaccurate!!!) and its own AMBITION to wield influence- to create some NOTICE. (Title?)

An hour later he removes the silver and black Raider cap, dons the yellow and green Athletics cap, and begins writing. Half an hour later he is done. It is good. Good is great, though. Lonely experience has taught that when he thinks his own stuff is great, others, inevitably, think that it sucks. Which means it does. But this is good. He puts the Raider cap back on, checks for typos, word repetition, poor sentence structure, derelict diction.

It’s too stream of consciousness, isn’t it? No. That goes with the theme, and parallels the twist. Do it?

Do it.

Ten minutes later he has published. Generally, his site averages 180 hits a day. None of these readers are blog-gods. Few of them even have their own blogs. They are audience and will not push this idea even if they like it. But this idea is too good to let it flame briefly and then fail. He has regularly posted comments on several influential sites. He believes, though he’s never tested the theory, that he has developed some legitimacy with them. He will ask them to go to his site, to read this, and to pass it on if they feel it is worthy. It would be wrong if he didn’t think the idea and the execution were worthy. But they are. They are! He emails away.

The blogosphere is nothing if not quick. Within the hour two blog-gods have linked to his site. Within three hours more than one-hundred-thousand individuals have read his entry. This is success beyond his ambitions, beyond even his hopes. He had hoped for some notice, or influence, but he has in fact created a blogswarm!

The idea pops into her head, out of nowhere and from nothing. This happens more often than you’d think, so she is prepared, even though she is on a chairlift headed up the side of a snow-covered mountain. She de-gloves, unzips parka, retrieves pen and pad from an inner pocket, and quickly writes: IDEA: the net is the brain- the blogosphere the mind. Every synapse has its own mental mitochondria- its own consciousness of self and its part in the whole- (though its conception of the whole is absurdly inaccurate!!!)and its own AMBITION to wield influence- to create a Blogswarm. (Title?)

Post of the day etc.

I don't have a post of the day yet. I just wanted to say-
Great job by Dr Evil last night at the Grammys. Evil's Janis Joplin tribute was kickin'!

The below is cut and pasted direct from Dean's World.
1) While I am no Ann Coulter fan, I have to admit she sometimes gets off a great line. This is a paraphrase, but, "Yeah, religious fundamentalism is the real threat. That's why we're all so afraid of the Amish."
hehehe. gotta remember that one.

Here is the post of the day. It is a debunking of some of the popular conspiracy theories about 9/11. For instance that the planes were military planes. That the building were rigged to explode. That the Pentagon wasn't hit by planes at all... I suggest y'all bookmark this site so it is easily accessible next time a kook tries to convince you 9/11 was a conspiracty between (neo-cons, Jews, republicans, Wasps, Greenspan, Your Choice) and (Saudies, Big Oil, Corportate America, Christians, Your choice).