Shots Across the Bow: 2002-02-17

Time for a break Short posting day, but I have to go pick up a new drill press for my woodshop, then my new computer. I'll post tonight, if I get the thing hooked up in time.

Great minds, and all that Wiliam Sulik commented on Sarah Hughes performance. He links to the judges scorecards.

I know as I watched Slutskya get ready to skate that NBC flashed a graphic that showed Kwan in first, Sarah Hughes in second, and Cohen in third. I couldn't begin to figure out how Sarah would get the gold she clearly deserved. Scott hamilton did say that it was possible, but they obviously don't use the old math where 1+1=2. In any case, the outcome was as it should be. The best skater of this years Olympics walked away with the gold.

Anybody remember The Next Karate Kid? Terminator 3 will feature a female Terminatrix shades of the Borg Queen. (I watch way to many movies!)

I'm betting the female Terminator will be based on the gynoids of Sorayama.

Now here's a shocker! Russia may pull out of the closing cremonies.

This wouldn't have anything to do with their abysmal medal count, would it?

Irina Slutskya didn't make her triple triple, and she bobbled the landing on another triple. Her moves were mechanical, and she didn't skate to her strength. She still performed well enough to beat Michelle Kwan, who fell during her short program. Sarah Hughes skated a nearly flawles program, and deserved the gold.

Give it up, Victor, this isn't basketball, and you can't put more seconds back on the clock.

A judge said she was manipulated. The IOC discounted her, which resulted in a tie. You kids kept their gold, which, based purely on performance, they didn't deserve.

I heard about this last night. The reporter, Daniel Pearl is dead.

``I AM A JEW''

Pearl's death was formally announced late Thursday night.

His body has not been found and it is unclear exactly when and where he was executed.

But in a account of Pearl's last moments, the Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified, said Pearl's last words uttered on camera before his killing were that he was a Jew and his father was a Jew.

``I have been told that the last words uttered by Pearl in the videotape, immediately before his throat was slit, were 'Yes I am a Jew and my father is a Jew','' the official said.

From The Untouchables:

Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of your men to the hospital, and you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago Way......"

We need to send a message that harming an American citizen is the worst idea you could ever have.

My dad owned a business that used to be located on Central Street in the Old City, before the place was bought up and renovated. Just a few doors down was a tackle and bait shop run by a man by the name of Jerry. I never did know his last name. He kept to himself most of the time, but was friendly when you got around him.

But Jerry had a look in his eyes that let you know he was capable of anything, that there were no limits to what he would do if he felt like it. He wasn't a man you wanted to have mad at you.

He was talking to my dad one night, and told him that he used to be a bouncer in a biker bar. These weren't Gold Wings.

"One night," he said, "a group got a little too rowdy, and I had to throw them out of the place. They took it personally, and when I left later that night, their club jumped me, stabbed me, shot me, and left me for dead."

Jerry was in the hospital for several weeks recovering. When he got back out, he didn't go back to work in the bar, but set up just outside it. Over the next year, each and every member of the club that tried to kill him died. They were shot off of their motorcycles, cables were stretched across the road to knock them off of their bikes, some were found stabbed in alleys, but all were dead.

Did Jerry get them all? Probably not, being in a motorcycle gang can be a dangerous life, but no other biker ever messed with him again.

Americans all have a little of Jerry inside of us. We cover it up with smiles, and polite conversation, but push us too far, and Jerry is right there, grinning in our eyes, and ready to cut loose. Seems like it might be time to remind some people of that.

Ethics pt 3 I just completed my third essay on ethics. The conclusion is excerpted below, and the full text is here along with the first 2 installments. Commetns are welcome at the email address to the left.

Altruism, self sacrifice, compassion, patriotism. These are the qualities that raise us from the rest of the animal kingdom. They all involve being able to see beyond our own interest, beyond the interest of our family to the interests of our nation, and maybe soon, our species. This new perspective, unprecedented in nature, demands a new ethic, one which goes beyond "To the victor, goes the spoils."

OK, I get it now. Social commentary, 20 hits a day. Jokes, 700 hits a day. All right then:
A guy walks into a bar.
"Ouch, who put that there?"

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Time to call it a night Thanks to all of you for stopping by.
Hope to see you again. If you have any comments on what you've read, e mail me at the address to the left, and we'll talk about it.

Taking his cues from Todd Beamer Jessica Wehrman, writing for Scripps-Howard tells about a new course to combat fear of flying.

When Don Detrich boarded an airplane a few weeks after Sept. 11, he expected to get some guidance from the airline on how to handle any dangers that might arise during the flight. But no help was offered.

"I did a little research to see if the airlines or government were planning to do that and the answer was no," he said.

Months later, Detrich's company, Flight Watch America of Sacramento, Calif., was training fearful potential passengers how to handle air rage, hijacking, emergency landings and medical problems.

Leave it to the private sector to come up with an airplane protection scheme that will work.

Most of the negative comments in the article dealt with overzealous passengers going too far. It seems to me that given the proper training, that possibility would actually be minimized.

10 Signs you've blogged too much

You insert links into an interoffice memo.
The symbols on your angle bracket keys are worn out.
You're banned from Google for wasting bandwidth searching for yourself.
A mention of your blog by Glenn Reynolds causes you to call your family to brag, to which they respond "What's a blog?"
You require antidepressant therapy when Blogger is down.
You quit your job because one person leaves money in your tip jar.(That's it! I'm a professional now!)
You blog a critique of your child's first play. In realtime. On a laptop you brought to the performance.
You want to name your next child Infapundit.(C'mon, honey. It's perfect!)
Your future ex-wife forces you to choose between her and the blog. (god, I'm going to miss her!)
You write humorous lists in a blatant attempt to draw more traffic to your site. (Err...um.....)

Update Will Vehrs of Quasipundit gave me some new additions to the list, centering on a certain blogger whose endowments have been the subject of much discussion lately

You swoon over a blogger's cleavage when "Celebrity Nudes" is only a click away on your "Favorites."
You start planning a trip to Croatia.
You start thinking that becoming a libertarian might be a good way to meet chicks. (Is it?)

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse I remember the Tony Martin case when Britain convicted and incarcerated for life a homeowner who shot two burglars in his home killing one of them. That was bad enough, but now, courtesy of Samizdata comes this story of a man who was held for two days, and is facing potential criminal charges for stabbing to death a man who broke into his house, put a knife to his wife's throut and demanded money.

John Lambert, 58, of Spalding, Lincs, is understood to have been at home watching television with his wife when Darren Taylor, 29, and another man allegedly broke in and confronted them.

One of the robbers is believed to have held a 12-in knife to Mr Lambert's wife's throat and demanded £5,000. It is thought that in the ensuing struggle Taylor, of Market Deeping, Lincs, was stabbed to death.

Hey England, if you want to know why y'all suck when it comes down to a fight, it's because you are systematically cutting the balls off of any one of your citizens with the gumption to avoid being a victim.

To John Lambert, and any of his country men who share his courage, I say Well Done!

UPDATE:

It seems I have inadvertantly struck a nerve with our friends over the pond. I received this e-mail from Team Samizdata just a few moments ago:

Rich,
Britain did not loose *any* of its many wars in the 20th century.
Suck when it comes down to a fight? I don't think so.

The Samizdata Team

My reply:

Youch! I must have hit a nerve. I hereby apologize to all the nice Brits I offended in my ire over the gross actions I was commenting on.

In my own defense, I did congratulate all who shared John Lambert's courage.

I erred in public, I apologize in public.

NPR means... No Potential Revenue? This article in the American Prowler on the attempt of NPR to go all private reveals what most of us already know.

But the NPR bigwigs got quite a shock from their meetings: "No one thought they could do it. They were told NPR offered literally nothing marketable beyond their current nonprofit audience and sponsors. That says something about the kind of programming they are producing," says the radio producer.

Even more amusing is NPR's reason for trying to go public. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has directed them to be less biased in their reporting.

"There are several CPB board members who clearly are antagonistic toward the current NPR programming approach," says a senior NPR producer for several of its news shows. "[The NPR honchos] are hearing that in return for federal funding, CPB wants 'fair' airing of all sides of an issue, shows that feature equal numbers of liberals and conservatives. These people aren't going to change their programs just because their bosses want them to. That's why they are talking to outside money men."

I nominateKathleen Parker for Undersecretary of State in charge of condoms and their use.

Powell -- because of his natural diplomacy and easy rapport with all ages and races -- may be just the right person to bridge the gap between those who want to hand out condoms with Kiddie Meals and those who seem to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that humans are perfectible.

In that case, Powell didn't go far enough. Once he decided to discuss condoms, here's what he should have said:

"The best defense against disease and pregnancy is abstinence. I'd like to talk about that for a minute. I'm not naive, and I understand the power of sex. I also know that some of you, regardless of what I believe about the importance of postponing sex for marriage, are going to ignore me. Therefore, if you're already sexually active, I urge you to use condoms as minimal protection against disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Read the rest yourself.

How many times do we have to find evidence that the Saudis are deeply involved in terrorism before we admit the truth?

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — NATO authorities who raided a Saudi aid agency last fall found computer files containing photographs of terrorist targets and street maps of Washington with government buildings marked, a senior U.S. official disclosed Thursday.

The October raid of the Sarajevo office of the Saudi High Commissioner for Aid to Bosnia also netted a computer program explaining how to use crop duster aircraft to spread pesticide, and materials used to make fake U.S. State Department identification badges and credit cards, the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Are we supposed to think this is just another coincidence?

Putting N'sync into orbit Lance Bass from N'Sync wants to be the next space tourist.(insert your own joke here)

Can we hope for a one way flight?

Gimme $500 on the Bandit MGM is releasing a couple of movies for download over the internet. They want to discover if hackers can break the encryption which prevent the movies from being copied and only allow them to be played for 24 hours.

Along with Paul Williams, my money is with the bad guys...

He's Back! According to this story by the Associated Press, Al Gore is back on the campaign trail from his home in Arlington VA.

So much for mending fences with Tennessee, eh Al?

Hitler was charming too...Reading this story

At a banquet later on Thursday, Jiang serenaded his guests with the Italian classic ``O Sole Mio'' and danced with three leading U.S. ladies in a display of hospitality unthinkable last year.

``He was kicking up his heels and singing songs,'' said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. ``It really was just a delightful touch.''

Jiang danced with Laura Bush, Condoleeza Rice and the wife of U.S. ambassador Clark Randt as the People's Liberation Army band played such American favorites as ``The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You,'' ``Moon River,'' and other tunes.

reminds me just how weak our news agencies can be. I don't really care about whether the man sings and dances well.
Is he going to keep selling missile technology to folks who want to kill me? Is he going to keep brutally repressing the free expression of religion in his country?

These are the issues that need exposure, and they are buried towards the end of this piece.

If I want puffery, I'll buy People

I have daughters.... A reader sent me the following rules, which I think are perfectly appropriate and reasonable.

Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool.
Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight.
Places where there is darkness.
Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness.
Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat.
Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which features chain saws are okay.
Hockey games are okay.
Old folks homes are better.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch A couple of weeks ago, I entered a discussion of the origins of the Civil War. Both William Sulik and Douglas Turnbull took me to task for claiming that slavery was not the proximate cause of the war. Doug's commentary can be found here, while William's can be found here.

I made a mistake in terminology in making my point, and need to clarify. (Notice I slickly avoid using the words, 'I was wrong?' This is a skill which must be mastered if you wish to survive in punditry)

One of my tasks at work is to perform root cause analyses for incidents and accidents which occur during the performance of a job. If I look at the War Between the States as such an incident, it is apparent that the proximate cause was the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was seen by the South as beholding to abolitionist groups. This represented a threat to the economy of the Southern States, which were already being pressed by the tariff and tax policies, which favored the indutrialized Northern states. Therefore, the threat of forced abolition was indeed a contributing cause to secession, and the war which followed.

However, in accident analysis, the proximate and contributing causes are secondary to the root cause. Correcting either of the first two will not prevent further accidents, although it may mask them. You have to address the root cause. In the case of secession, the root cause was the continuing battle between State Sovereignty vs. the role of the Federal government. This conflict was the dominant force shaping the first one hundred years of our history. We have to remember that secession was a concept adopted by the Southern states, and actually originated in New England, and for similar reasons, although in this case tariffs, not slavery, was the main issue.

It is easy to make the case that the War between the States was actually a war fought between the States and the growing power of the Federal government. Since the end of the war, it is clear that the Federal government is increasing it's power at the expense of the states, to the point where Seward's comment after Appomatox, "State's rights are dead," has come true.

And now, I'm off! But you knew that already.

And another Ken Goldstein, of The Illustrated Donkey has a very informative and entertaining blog, originating just up the road from me.....in New Jersey.

I travelled through New Jersey on my way home after being stationed in Ballston Spa NY. I had heard all about how dirty is was, and how the people were rude and unfriendly. Being from the south, I figured I shouldn't even stop there, but should drive straight through.

Fate had other plans for me though, and my car broke down on the Turnpike right in front of the toll booth in Paramus. I hae to tell you that if you are going to break down, directly in front of a toll booth is the place to do it.
The tow truck was there within 3 minutes, had me jacked up, lashed down and on our way. The driver took my car to his shop, where they discovered I had a bad alternator. The manager told me it would take 2 days to get the alternator and fix my car.
I told him I had planned on seeing NYC anyway, so that wasn't going to be too much of a problem. The manager then took me in his car to a nearby motel, and got them to charge me the local's rate. He then showed me where the bus stop was to go into the city, and told me to call him for a ride back to the shop when I was ready to go on.
I stayed maybe 20 minutes from the Port Authority terminal, in a decent hotel, for about $45 a night for 3 nights. I paid no parking fees, and they only charged me $120 for the tow and the repairs. I figure breaking down on the turnpike saved me about $300.

Don't let anybody tell you anything about the people from New Jersey. In my experience, they're just as nice as people anywhere else, and will go out of their way for somebody in a fix.

The Jersey cops, on the other hand, well, that's another story.

A new favorite. If you check the links section, you will find I've added a new one. I just started reading James Lilek' blog The Bleat and it is a definite keeper. Check out this bit about a radical U of Cal professor:

She regarded all marriages as oppressive to women and bad for children, since they acculturate children to accept marriage as a viable concept for organizing society. We’re not talking about making marriages more equal - who could argue? - no, we’re talking about abolishing marriage entirely. How this would be accomplished, I didn’t hear - as part of my daily regimen of wife-oppression, I had to run upstairs and change the baby’s diaper while making supper, and I was a bit distracted.

As the father of six, I can attest to his authenticity.

"Bitch" about covers it. As noted by William Quick, apparently, Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation, Bitch)is annoyed by the inconvenience of 9/11.

"I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting," Wurtzel told a Canadian journalist last week about her experience being near Ground Zero on Sept 11. "People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."

I hear she has a movie coming out soon. Maybe she should ask Robert Altman about the wisdom of "annoying" your audience.

Cloning pets and kids Charles Murtaugh writes in this piece from the National Review Online that

What the copycat news made me realize is that if given the chance, I probably would have cloned Gina. And in this realization is the silver lining for those of us opposed to human cloning: The very harmlessness of cloning pets throws into sharp relief the evils of cloning children.

He makes the point that since pets are property, cloning them is OK, but since children are not property, cloning them is not OK.

He goes on to say that:

A cloned child, made rather than begotten, is a pet: His or her "breed" picked out for its "unique characteristics" just as a border collie is chosen for its intelligence and a poodle because it doesn't shed much hair.

Does his distaste for a "made" child extend to the eradication of genetic defects through prenatal gene therapy? These potential therapies are applications of the same techniques as cloning. Is a child whose spina bifida is repaired prior to development a "pet?" How about a neonate with sickle cell anemia? Does one genetic repair make him or her a "made" child?
OK, so maybe Charles is willing to make an exception for therapeutic purposes. How about more frivoluos purposes?
The techniques used to repair genetic defects could also be used for selection of specific traits; hair color, eye color, athletic ability, intelligence, shedding(baldness), etc. All of the sudden, we are back to his "pet" analogy, with children being made to order.

Murtaugh's argument would seem to rule out all genetic engineering, which begs the question, if genetic engineering results in a child who is less than human, then why are we pursuing it at all?

His argument fails because it is based on a false premise, that cloning a creature makes it property. Whether a creature is property or autonomous is a function of what it is, not how it was made. The process of selecting for certain characteristics will not lessen a child's humanity, whether done over generations of breeding, ie evolution, or in one generation with the biochemical equivalent of a scalpel. This is what may prevent us from travelling the "slippery slope" that most foes of genetic engineering fear. If humanity comes from what you are, rather than where you come from, or how you were made, then many of the ethical considerations vanish.

So why not just say that and get it over with? Simple. The statement above recognizes an essential humanity inherent in a prenate. I don't need to go into what that would entail for the pro-choice crowd.

In order to avoid recognizing a simple truth, folks will continue to perform feats of logical prestidigitation rivalling that of Oolon Colluphid

Pardon me buddy, but do you have the time? I'm surprised we haven't heard that the world will end at this time.

For one minute Wednesday night, time will stand on its head and we will be in perfect chronological symmetry.
The time and date will read the same backward as forward in the Gregorian calendar....
"A mirror day like this is a good opportunity for reflecting," said Mark Saltveit, editor of The Palindromist magazine.
Palindromes are strings of numbers, words or sentences that read the same backward or forward.
Wednesday evening, the time, day, month and year will align: 8:02 p.m., Feb. 20, 2002.

By the pricking of my thumbs...Something wicked this way comes.

more information on the Palestinian attack from Ha'aretz and an interesting proposal from an unusual source.

This week, Abdullah surprised again. In an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Abdullah spoke of a draft speech he has prepared for the upcoming Arab summit in which he would propose full normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from the territories.

Would the Arabs really keep this promise if Israel withdrew to her boundaries prior to the 1967 Six Days War?
Would the Israelis be willing to trust the Arabs?
Would either side accept peacekeepers to enforce the agreement?

One little rabbit in this hat that the article fails to mention is that Abdullah also requires that Israel recognize the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. This is an issue that Israel cannot afford to budge on, and Abdullah knows it.

Sounds to me like another worthless offer, similar to the ones Arafat has been offering for decades now.

Listening to the radio this morning, I heard Hallerin Hill, the local talk radio titan, ask an interesting question.

"Should gay couples or singles be allowed to adopt children?"

I got out of range of the station before much discussion, but Hallerin was laying out the positions on both sides. On the one hand, he said the kids would be better off when any sort of family than staying in foster homes or an orphanage. On the other hand, wouldn't allowing gays to adopt amount to an endorsement of the gay lifestyle?

Here are my thoughts.

First, homosexuality is abnormal. This is not a religious conviction or a moral judgment, but a statement of fact. The primary function of the sex drive is to facilitate repoduction. When that drive manifests in such a way as to hinder successful reproduction, then it is functionally abnormal.

I know that the 'official' position of psychiatrists is that homosexuality is no longer considered an abnormal psychological condition, but that change in designation was based more on political and pragmatic factors than on science. The sex drive is so integral to our psychological makeup that once it has formed, it cannot be altered without a tremendous effort. The question became whether that effort was warranted. As society became more accepting of homosexuality and the stigma lessened, we reached a point where the treatment caused more trouble than the problem.

OK, homosexuality is an abnormal expression of sexuality.

So what?

The more gay men there are out there, the more women there are available to turn me down for a date next friday. That is the extent of homosexuality's impact on my life.

So, should gays be allowed to marry? Certainly! They are persons and have every right to enter into a civil contract if they want to. Now churches should not be pressured to perform the ceremony, or recognize the couples as married if it is against their beliefs. It's a wall, not a one way street.

Should gays be allowed to serve in the military? Sure!
While I was in the Navy, we had a kid on board who turned out to be gay. I don't think anybody knew he was gay, and I never heard any rumors one way or the other. He was a good watchstander who did his job well, was friendly and well liked.
He was caught in the showers with a partner, and was off the ship within 48 hours.
We were sorry to see him go, but at the same time, knew that he had to go. Not because he was gay, but because he broke discipline. There were rules, and he broke them. Had he told us he was gay, I am relatively certain that 80%of us in the department wouldn't have cared.
My point is that the mere presence of homosexuals in the military is nowhere near as disruptive as it is portrayed to be. There are issues that have to be addressed, but they are mainly issues of personal responsibility. They don't allow men and women to have sex while aboard ship, although it does happen, and the same rules should apply to homosexuals as well.

Should gays be able to adopt children? Yes.

The only question that should apply is this: Which causes more damage to a child; to be shuffled around between orphanages and foster homes, or to be raised by a gay couple?

I don't know the answer to that question. Being bounced around is certainly traumatic and can be punishing to the child, but we also have to consider the impact on the child's sexual development of being raised by a sexually abnormal parent. My gut tells me that a home with two loving parents, regardless of their sexual orientation, has to be a better place than a foster home or an orphanage.

The SupremeCourt pt2 They are hearing a case on school vouchers today. Apparently in Cleveland, where the case originated, the vast majority of the slots are in religious schools. Opponents of the program say that this amounts to government subsidizing of religious instruction.

I have a few problems with these people.

The vouchers are available for any school, religious or not that is willing to meet the state criteria. The fact that most of the schools willing to meet the criteria are religious schools is not an act of the government, but of the schools.
The parents can choose any participating school. They are not limited to religious schools.
The First Amendment does not mandate complete separation of church and state; but does say that the state may not treat one religion preferentially over another. The voucher program passes that test, and should be held constitutional.

As a practical matter, a national voucher program could sound the death sentence on public education. Opponents are telling the truth when they say that once the good students are skimmed off, the public schools will be left with the worst students, and less money. Unfortunately, this is going to happen anyway. Public education stopped being about the kids a generation ago. While spending on education has increased, actual monies spent on students has decreased. More and more of the school budget is taken up with administrative costs, and other overhead. As a result, the quality of education has dropped off dramatically.

I graduated from one of the local private schools, the Webb School of Knoxville. Webb is a college prep school, and there is an increased emphasis on academics there, while maintaining a full spectrum of extra-curricular activities. The required courses were demanding, and exceeded the public school requirements. I am certain that the education I received there was significantly better than what most kids get through public schools. I know that it is possible to receive every bit as thorough an education in a public school as at Webb, but the difference is at Webb, you can't help but get it. At a public school, you have to search it out.

But, when it came time for me to send my kids to school, I went to an open house at Webb. They had a series of letters written by exchange students who had spent a year at Webb, after they had returned home. They were primarily from European countries; if I remember correctly, Denmark and germany were two. The letters struck me as they all contained variations on the same comment. "I chose to participate in the exchange program to experience a different culture. Even though I was behind my other classmates when I returned, it was worth the trip."

Think about that. A private college prep school, one of the best in the region, and these kids were behind their classmates when they returned to their public schools in Europe.

This battle is already over, folks. Public education has become ensnared in politics, and is gone. Let's do what we can to get our kids out of this mess, before we lose an entire generation.

The Supreme Court decided yesterday that it is OK for our kids to grade each others homework.

America is officially senile!

How in the hell did this get to the Supreme Court? We just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over grading HOMEWORK!

Surely our lawyers and our courts have mush weightier issues to deal with.

Who says the Olympics are boring? Certainly not Victoria Liljenquist, who is quoted predicting a UFO flyby sometime today.

"The Brotherhood of Light will make their presence known on Thursday, February 21 over the Olympic city," said Victoria Liljenquist of Phoenix, Arizona.

Since she arrived in Utah a week ago Liljenquist has been talking with scores of reporters -- and anyone else who will listen -- about her prediction of a friendly fly-by of space travelers.

"I pinned them down -- between noon and 5 p.m.," said Liljenquist.

Darn, I'll be at work.

I've added a PayPal button to the left over there, not because I expect to be paid for this, but because if one of you is moved to do so (yeah, right) I wanted to make it easy for you. I've also paid to remove the ad above, more to support Blogger than anything else.

Ain't I a prince?

Shameful This piece of trash appeared in the Washington Post, and refers to a memo writen by Ralph Reed

"We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan," Reed wrote in an Oct. 23, 2000, memo obtained by The Washington Post.

"In public policy," he wrote, "it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."

No comment needed.

And there was much rejoicing! (yea)Shots Across the Bow will soon be faster, smarter, funnier, and all around wonderful.
Why?
I'm finally upgrading my computer. From a P1 @133Mhz to an AMD XP @1.8Ghz From 14.4k to 56k modem. From 2G to 60G hard drive.
WooHoo!

Darwin and ethics pt2 Ananda Gupta responded to my critique in an e-mail. I got his permission to post portions of his response here, as he makes a very good case for his point of view. Fortunately, I make a better case for mine!*grin*

Ananda
"Morality flows from spirituality" appears to be an unargued premise of yours (not that I have a problem with all unargued premises, see below). It is up to you to show that this is a real dilemma, that biology and spirituality are the only possible bases for moral knowledge. Of course I deny that it is a real dilemma. I believe there are moral truths and moral facts, in the same sense that there are mathematical truths and mathematical facts. Yet mathematical facts do not depend for their plausibility or coherence on the existence of a god.
In particular, I think that certain moral statements ("it's wrong to torture children for fun", to take an obvious example) are self-evidently true, and therefore do not depend on interpretation of divine will, biological observation, or anything else.

While I certainly agree it is wrong to torture small children for fun (it should only be done for profit), this position is not axiomatic, but is based on biological necessity. Any species which recklessly wastes its young is destined for extinction, so there is a biological imperative which lies behind "women and children first!"

You say you believe that there are moral truths and equate those truths to mathematical facts. Unfortunately these moral truths are, without exception, either based on biological necessity or cultural biases.
Here is my challenge to you. Present one moral truth which does not arise from biological necessity, and is universal in scope, applying to all cultures throughout history. Even your example of torturing children falls short of this test, as unwanted children have been tortured, enslaved, and killed in many cultures.

Ananda
And, of course, evolution as it is taught today does not deny spirituality. To the extent that religious figures make scientific claims (such as that Jesus had no mortal father), science has something to say, but in terms of purely spiritual claims (such as that Jesus died to redeem our sins), no branch of science will pass judgment. Lots of people believe in God and also believe that evolutionary theory is true.

Science, particularly biology, assumes that naturally occurring processes can explain everything about our world, and that 'supernatural' events, ie 'creation', are not required. My position is that if we are nothing more than highly evolved animals, and there is no spiritual presence, then all behaviors must spring from biological origins. There is no other option available. We are either natural or supernatural. In the first case, our ability to reason comes only from the way our brain is constructed, the way it processes information, which was shaped by natural selection. Therefore any 'higher truths' we come up with are constructed on that same basis, and subject to the same limitations. In the second case, our thought processes are not limited by our animal instincts, as they are also influenced by some supernatural presence. The problem here is that once we allow for the existence of a supernatural presence, we have aboandoned our basic assumptions about science.

Ananda
Note that if natural selection is not a complete explanation for the evolution of man, the conditional above does not establish that there is a higher power (that would be the fallacy of affirming the consequent -- in variable form, it would be: a implies b, b, therefore a)....That doesn't stop people from asserting it, though, when what they really mean is: "If natural selection is not a complete explanation for the evolution of man, then either there is a higher power, or there's another part of the
explanation unrelated to a higher power that we haven't discovered yet, or it's all just a great mystery so we might as well say there's a God who designed us all and call it quits."

And excluding your last sentence, this is my position. Finding flaws in current theory does not mean I reflexively embrace creationism, although I am faced with that charge more often than not. As you point out, disproof of one statement is not proof of its opposite.

Rich
If there are behaviors in the human animal which cannot be explained through the evolutionary process, then that indicates that another process, one independent of biology, is at work. This places the entire foundation of modern biology at risk.>

Ananda
I would say it puts the entire foundation of sociobiology, or evolutionary psychology, at risk. Not the same thing at all.
What you are saying is something like "If there are astronomical phenomena not explained by Einstein's theory of relativity, then that indicates something else is at work, and all of physics is at risk." But of course all of physics is not at risk; just that sector of theoretical physics that holds to Einstein's theory of relativity (as opposed to, say, the Copenhagen interpretation, or of some other theories altogether). Note that I am not equating evolutionary theory with relativity theory -- evolutionary theory is far more grounded and well-supported. Rather I am comparing evolutionary psychology, a field whose claims are much more controversial, with relativity.

If psychology is not based upon biology, then what is it based on? Psychology started as an observation of behaviors, with an attempt to find the origins of those behaviors in life experiences. Once again, I am back to my quandry: If our identity, our self awareness, is nothing more than the product of our biology, then our psychology must also be a product of our biology, and therefore subject to the actions of natural selection, which means that our behaviors are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as our genetics are.

Ananda
Just because people disagree about the answer to a question doesn't mean there isn't one. And moral questions get resolved.

Moral questions do get resolved, but most often at the point of a sword. The 'higher' truth is determined by the group with the most power, the ultimate expression of Darwinism. It's hard to base moral absolutes on the exercise of power.

My companion page, Strafing Runs has a couple of essays on this very point, if anybody is interested in reading more.

My thanks to Ananda for a very stimulating exchange.

A little levityThree little boys were concerned because they couldn't get anyone to play with them. They decided it was because they had not been baptized and didn't go to Sunday School. They went to the nearest church, but only the janitor was there. One said, "We need to be baptized because no one will come out and play with us. Will you baptize us?" "Sure," said the janitor. He took them into the bathroom and dunked their heads in the toilet bowl, one at a time. Then he said, "Now go out and play."
When they got outside, dripping wet, one of them asked, "What religion
do you think we are?"
The oldest one said, "We're not Katlick, because they pour the water on you.
We're not Bablist because they dunk your whole body in it. We're not
Methdiss because they just sprinkle you."
The littlest one said, "Didn't you smell that water?"
"Yes. What do you think that means?"
"That means we're Pisscopalians."

And so we end another broadcast day. God, I love this stuff. If only I could get paid for it!*grin*

Pulp fiction my ass! From Samizdata comes the following quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Sir Alex Frazer Tytler

I first came across this idea in a pulp science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein that my teachers said would rot my brain, cause me to waste my god given talents, and cause hair to grow on my palms.

So they got one out of three right!*grin*

Darwin and Ethics This little puppy is right up my alley! The ubiquitous Glenn Reynolds links to an argument by Ananda Gupta which critiques a piece by Benjamin Wiker in NRO (all these links!) which reviews the PBS show Monkey Trial. His critique is off base because he fails to see the contradiction inherent in Darwin's own defense of the quotes he claims are taken out of context. This could get confusing, but I'll try to keep things organized.

My first problem is that he accuses Wiker of quoting Darwin out of context to support his thesis. In truth, as Wiker's article makes very clear, the author of the textbook which John Scopes used to teach evolution, George William Hunter is the source of the ideas he finds abhorrant. Wiker then provides quotes from The Descent of Man to corroborate Hunter's ideas, and show how they derive directly from Darwin.

Ananda's first example:

"The 'most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.'"

Darwin does say that. In the next sentence, he says:

"Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense."

OK, so Darwin tried to tone down the implications, but let's look a little closer. If natural selection provides the basis for the social instincts, and those socal instincts provide the basis for the moral sense, then natural selection does provide the ultimate proving ground for our moral sense. If that sense provides us with a fitness edge, then we will survive and prosper. If not, we will fail.
Second, Darwin never took the full implications of his theories to heart. Religion has no foundation in a world derived strictly from natural selection. Darwin assumes that there are qualities which separate man from the animals, that 'highest part' which is not amenable to natural selection. What he fails to examine is how behaviors which are readily shown to be contra-survival actually provide a net benefit.

Ananda's next example:

"'We civilized men,' Darwin declared, 'do our utmost to check the [natural] process of elimination [by natural selection]; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.'"

In the very next paragraph of the Descent of Man, Darwin says:

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."

So, in other words, if we were to act according to our baser desires and neglect the helpless for eugenic purposes, we would be "deteriorating" the "noblest part of our nature."

Again, Darwin provides a moral argument for ignoring the dictates of natural selection without providing ANY sound biological foundation. Again, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. We are just animals, but we are other than animals. He never explains the contradiction, and neither does Ananda.

This contradiction is at the heart of Wiker's review of the movie, and the book which Scopes used to teach evolution. It is interesting that Ananda omits discussion of the most damning Of Wiker's Darwin citations:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones which look most like the savages in structure] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope…the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Go ahead, place that into a favorable context.

Ananda's diatribe only examines part of the story, and rejects truths which he finds unpalatable. Darwinism is a racist philosophy at its very roots, and trying to extirpate the racism only leads to the contradictions I've demonstrated above. If evolution through natural selection is the only biological mechanism at work, then racism is the natural state of man. On the other hand, viewing natural selection as a partial theory gives us the ability to determine why co-operative modes of evolution also work. As Darwin himself noted, even though we breed badly, we still thrive. It is evident that evolution has a driver to compliment natural selection. Instead of railing at people who expose the short comings of natural selection, our time would be better spent trying to understand and codify this other driver.

UPDATE In the first publishing of this piece, I referred to Ananda as 'she' when in fact I have just been informed that Ananda is a male name. I apologize for the error.

And they are our friends? Continuing on a theme here, this story exposes the Saudi idea of justice.

Strange bedfellows This article from the Manila Times provides more glimmers of a potential link between Islamic fundamentalists and Timothy McVeigh.

Although Philippine authorities advised American authorities of the alliance between the Abu Sayyaf, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida, and American neo-nazis, the US appeared to ignore the warnings; until Sept. 11. ......

And more...

But even before that, in 1993, when the Abu Sayyaf was in its infancy, the same group met with Nichols and another American—believed to have been executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—at a Dole labeling plant near General Santos City.

Another article published in the Indianapolis Star gives further detail on possible connections.

If there was a legitimate connection between the Oklahoma City bombing and Al Qaida, then things are even worse than they appear. On the other hand, how many home grown neo-nazis really rejoiced, seeing the Pentagon and the WTC trashed? My guess is that the enormity of the act alienated all but the most hard core members, and has limited whatever co-operation previously existed.

Crossroads I had no use for Kid Rock. I don't like his music, and I'm not a fan of hip-hop.
But I just watched a show on CMT (Country Music Television for the uninitiated) which featured Kid Rock performing onstage with Hank Williams Jr, and I have to say that young man is an outstanding musician.

Where most so-called 'artists' have only one sound, the real musicians master them all. They find the rythym beneath the beat, the melody behind the notes, and the song behind the words. It doesn't matter whether the genre is pop, rock, funk, country, or bluegrass. A musician always finds the song and lets it sing. An even better musician finds himself within the song, and lets that sing as well.

Kid Rock has that talent. He sang Hank's songs and made them his own, without compromising the emotions of the originals. He transcended the barriers of hip hop and country, and gave a performance which was true to both, because it was true to his heart.

I still don't like his music, but he is one hell of a musician.

At last! I've found somebody who agrees with Glenn Reynolds on the 'slippery slope' argument!

Dressed in white and with his hair swept up in a small knot, Rael said fears of the human cloning producing "a monster" or "Frankenstein" were unfounded because faulty cells would be discarded in the Clonaid process.

What can I say in the face of such expertise?*grin*

How the mighty have fallen! The British Navy, once the most feared and respected force on the seas, can't even find their way to the right beach.

I guess the sun has set after all.

Big Brother....and then some Richard Eaton has developed software that will record every keystroke, every e-mail, activate your webcam, send all this information to a remote monitor, all without your knowledge or consent, and for the low low price of $99. And he claims to be a privacy advocate.

What's the value of 30 pieces of silver when adjusted for inflation?

Campaign Finance Deform David Broder has a good article in the Boston Globe on the details of the Campaign Finance reform bill being considered in the Senate.

My biggest concern comes from the bill's limitations on issue ads prior to primaries and elections. This is an incredibly broad prohibition which could effectively silence grass roots organizations. I don't see how this provision could get past the first Amendment considerations.

The Trial of Russell Yates is about to begin. Russell Yates has stood by his wife throughout the whole affair. He has staunchly defended her in public, and in the press. He has refused to condemn her, and advertises for her defense fund on a website he created to show pictures of his children. As the trial gets underway, I wonder if her other defenders will stand by him as faithfully.

There are already rumblings within feminist organizations that the murders were actually Russell's fault, and that he was a domineering and abusive husband.

Patricia Ireland has instructed us that Yates was, like other victimized American women, "imprisoned at home with their children."

While feminists have been stepping forward to suggest that all stay-at-home mothers live perched on the edge of child murder, no one seems to have noted the culpability of the father in this tragedy. Who would continue to have children with a woman who goes crazier with each birth? Even if he did not suspect his wife of being capable of murder, what conscientious father would leave a suicidal woman alone with his five children? Suppose she had cut her throat in front of them? (She had tried.) If these were anyone's children but his own, wouldn't he be found at least civilly liable for reckless endangerment?

LA Daily News

more fromOliverWillis.com

Russell Yates: Accomplice to Murder I think the Andrea Yates story is a fairly harsh condemnation of an extreme Christian culture in which the woman submits completely to the husband and becomes little more than a baby factory.

Russell Yates is trying to spin this story as a condemnation of her psychiatric care, and while I'm sure their is some culpability there I think the bulk of the blame lays with him and his wife.

So much so that I think he should be charged as some sort of criminal accessory.

If the insanity defense begins to fail, how long before the defense begins to echo these arguments?

A second thought On the drive back home from the funeral, I had another thought on Christianity, one that I’ve never seen explored before. It occurred to me that the pivotal event in the New Testament, the Crucifixion, is presaged in the Old Testament, when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son. God stops Abraham, but carries through on sacrificing his Son. Apparently God won’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do Himself.

Update A few friends of non-Catholic-but-still-Christian faith have told me that this comparison is a staple of Sunday school. Which makes me wonder if the Jesuits who taught me were really as brilliant as they said they were.

Or maybe I just slept through that part.

I spent the last few days at my grandfather’s funeral, and it gave me a different perspective on religion in general and Catholicism.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I’ve moved away from the church over some doctrinal issues. In fact, I haven’t been to Mass in over 15 years. I thought that Mass represented all that was wrong with the Catholic Church; every week we went through the numbing repetition of the same rituals. The priest said the same things, and we always replied with the same things. Stand up, sit down, stand again, kneel, genuflect, and make the Sign of the Cross.

All just empty ritual, designed to bring comfort through conformity.

But during the funeral, I began to see things differently. Maybe it’s all the New Age mumbo jumbo that permeates our culture now, but I began to see these rites as an invocation. In pagan terms, we were all involved in casting a spell, petitioning for a boon from our God. That’s when it struck me that, despite their attempts to downplay it, the Catholic Church still practices magic. We talk to our God through sacred ceremonies, and ask that he do our bidding. Kind of presumptuous when you think about it, but since He made the rules, who are we to question?

Seen in this new light, the chants, the responses, the rituals, even the positioning of our bodies take on a new significance, and become integral to the Mass, rather than empty motions.

I think the Catholic Church, particularly in America made a grave mistake in trying to remove the supernatural from religion. Religion is primarily of the spirit anyway; to remove or intellectualize the mysticism robs it of its power. Perhaps this is at the root of younger peoples dissatisfaction with established religions, and their acceptance of New Age cults and paganism. They are looking for something that connects with their spirit.

I'm Back! Unfortunately, work has piled up in my absence, so I'll be a little slower than usual.

Shots Across the Bow

Friday, February 22, 2002

Thursday, February 21, 2002

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

Monday, February 18, 2002

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