Unhappy Meals
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: January 28, 2007
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
Uh-oh. Things are suddenly sounding a little more complicated, aren’t they? Sorry. But that’s how it goes as soon as you try to get to the bottom of the whole vexing question of food and health. Before long, a dense cloud bank of confusion moves in. Sooner or later, everything solid you thought you knew about the links between diet and health gets blown away in the gust of the latest study...
very interesting article-
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Democrats Oppose the War ...
... but do they even want us to win?There is an evil, cancerous idea amongst those on the Left™ against the war in Iraq, an idea that conservatives (even those who might oppose the war) don't share. Many liberals want us to lose the war. There are probably several reasons why, but the biggest must be that; if we should win, then their ideological opposition to the war might be delegitimized and President Bush at least partially vindicated.The most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of registered voters showed that only 51% of Democrats want the President's plan to succeed and 31% of Democrats want it to fail. Better to have us lose, American soldiers dead, and the Country placed in grave danger than to allow us to win a war. David Reinhard at The Oregonian has something to say about this,
THE WAR AT HOME
"Anecdotal evidence, yes, but recently some poll results confirmed this anecdotal evidence. The most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of registered voters' views was ho-hum in many respects. Bush's approval rating is abysmal, and a solid majority -- 59 percent -- opposes his plan to send more troops to Iraq. But the pollsters probed further and asked respondents if they personally wanted Bush's plan to succeed.The results were astonishing. Overall, 63 percent of those surveyed said they wanted the plan to succeed. But 22 percent did not. (Another 15 percent didn't know.) American men and women are going off to fight, and perhaps die, and more than one out of five voters wants them to fail. Sorry, this tells us more about their cankered souls than about the war itself. Look beneath the overall breakdown and it becomes clear why Democratic lawmakers sat on their hands Tuesday night when Bush talked about the pursuit of victory in Iraq. According to the Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, only 51 percent of all Democrats want Bush's new plan to succeed. And a full 34 percent of Democrats do not want it to succeed.That's not 34 percent of Democrats who oppose to the plan or think the plan will not succeed. That's 34 percent of Democrats who root for failure. That's the anti-war, anti-victory base that Democrats on Capitol Hill worry about."
... but do they even want us to win?There is an evil, cancerous idea amongst those on the Left™ against the war in Iraq, an idea that conservatives (even those who might oppose the war) don't share. Many liberals want us to lose the war. There are probably several reasons why, but the biggest must be that; if we should win, then their ideological opposition to the war might be delegitimized and President Bush at least partially vindicated.The most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of registered voters showed that only 51% of Democrats want the President's plan to succeed and 31% of Democrats want it to fail. Better to have us lose, American soldiers dead, and the Country placed in grave danger than to allow us to win a war. David Reinhard at The Oregonian has something to say about this,
THE WAR AT HOME
"Anecdotal evidence, yes, but recently some poll results confirmed this anecdotal evidence. The most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of registered voters' views was ho-hum in many respects. Bush's approval rating is abysmal, and a solid majority -- 59 percent -- opposes his plan to send more troops to Iraq. But the pollsters probed further and asked respondents if they personally wanted Bush's plan to succeed.The results were astonishing. Overall, 63 percent of those surveyed said they wanted the plan to succeed. But 22 percent did not. (Another 15 percent didn't know.) American men and women are going off to fight, and perhaps die, and more than one out of five voters wants them to fail. Sorry, this tells us more about their cankered souls than about the war itself. Look beneath the overall breakdown and it becomes clear why Democratic lawmakers sat on their hands Tuesday night when Bush talked about the pursuit of victory in Iraq. According to the Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, only 51 percent of all Democrats want Bush's new plan to succeed. And a full 34 percent of Democrats do not want it to succeed.That's not 34 percent of Democrats who oppose to the plan or think the plan will not succeed. That's 34 percent of Democrats who root for failure. That's the anti-war, anti-victory base that Democrats on Capitol Hill worry about."
Bernard Lewis: Muslims "About to Take over Europe"
Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis doesn’t have a hopeful outlook on Europe: Muslims ‘about to take over Europe’.
Unless, of course, you think that sounds hopeful.
Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday.
The Muslims “seem to be about to take over Europe,” Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent’s Jews, he responded, “The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim.” Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe’s future would be, “Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?” The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements, said Lewis.
Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by “immigration and democracy.” Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.
“Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence,” he said. “They have no respect for their own culture.” Europeans had “surrendered” on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of “self-abasement,” “political correctness” and “multi-culturalism,” said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.
The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.
Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis doesn’t have a hopeful outlook on Europe: Muslims ‘about to take over Europe’.
Unless, of course, you think that sounds hopeful.
Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday.
The Muslims “seem to be about to take over Europe,” Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent’s Jews, he responded, “The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim.” Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe’s future would be, “Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?” The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements, said Lewis.
Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by “immigration and democracy.” Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.
“Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence,” he said. “They have no respect for their own culture.” Europeans had “surrendered” on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of “self-abasement,” “political correctness” and “multi-culturalism,” said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.
The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Who gonna sex Mutumbo tonight?
FeatureMutombo Still Doing Big Things
Former Hoya Leads by Example
By Jamie LeaderHoya Staff Writer Friday, January 26, 2007
When Dikembe Mutombo (FLL ’91) rose to receive the praise and applause of President Bush and Congress on Wednesday, those who have not followed his career may have been taken aback that a 7-foot-2 professional basketball player would be in the audience at a State of the Union address. But to Mutombo’s teammates, coaches, opponents and loyal fans, this most recent recognition is just another fitting piece of praise for a man who has done so much more off the court than he ever has on it.
Mutombo has made a living playing tenacious defense and swatting shots, but when he came to Georgetown in 1987, basketball wasn’t even in his plans. Mutombo received a USAID scholarship to become a doctor so that he could return to his native Congo and help his people. The only sport Mutombo had played in his native land was soccer, but things changed quickly when Head Coach John Thompson Jr. spied Mutombo in a pick-up game.
“He said, ‘Son, I want you on my team.’ I said, ‘Man, this big man is going to be my coach,’” Mutombo recalls. “I was kind of scared of him in the beginning.”
Thompson took Mutombo’s raw talent and used it to mold him into one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history.
“John Thompson, he taught me so much about defense and what defense can do in my life and my game to make me one of the great defensive player that ever played this game,” Mutombo says.
While Mutombo was forced to switch majors and abandon his dream of becoming a doctor, he has no regrets about joining the team. “I don’t have a regret from playing college basketball,” Mutombo says. “I got a chance to help my family — there is not much I can regret.”
Thanks to an average of 15 points and 12 rebounds per game in the 1990-91 season, Mutombo was an all-American honorable mention as a senior. He graduated with a double major from the College and was taken by the Denver Nuggets with the fourth overall pick in the ’91 draft. Sixteen seasons, four defensive player of the year awards and over 3,000 blocked shots later, Mutombo is still using the tenacity he learned on the Hilltop to propel the Rockets’ defense while all-Star Center Yao Ming is sidelined with an injury.
At 40 years old, “Deke” is still effective under the basket. In Yao’s stead, Mutombo has posted an astonishing 13.8 boards in the month of January.
So when Mutombo offers advice in his deep, raspy voice, his teammates listen. Chuck Hayes, a young defensive specialist who splits time with Mutombo at center, praises the big man’s locker room sage counsel. “Experience, leadership and he keeps the guys focused,” Hayes says. “We can learn so much from him.”
From the looming post player to the diminutive guard, it seems every Rocket has something positive to say about the NBA’s eldest statesman.
“When he [is] on your team in the game you know you can get real aggressive and block some shots,” point guard Rafer Alston says.
While Mutombo’s career on the court has been impressive enough to likely join Thompson and other Georgetown greats in the Basketball Hall of Fame, in many ways it has been a footnote to the work he has done in the community.
Mutombo’s $29 million hospital, named after his mother, Biamba Marie Mutombo, and mentioned in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, will open in the Democratic Republic of Congo a month from now. Thanks to Mutombo, it is the country’s first modern facility constructed in decades.
“God asks us, ‘What is our purpose in this planet?’
“It is to make a difference for the next generation to come,” Mutombo says. “To make a difference, not just for my generation but for my children’s and my grandchildren’s.” Countless organizations have praised Mutombo for his work in the community. Another famous Georgetown alum, former President Bill Clinton (SFS ’68), presented his fellow Hoya with a Presidential Service Award in 1999.
Mutombo says his strong emphasis on community service was inspired by the Jesuit ideals that drew him to the Hilltop.
“To get the opportunity to get to be on the same campus as Jesuit teachers, it kind of helped me a lot,” Mutombo says. “It helped me go out and do what I do, helping those that don’t have what I have.”
Mutombo still follows his alma mater’s basketball team as well as one could expect from an in-season basketball player with two young children and a hospital opening in Africa. He has even challenged current Hoyas to off-season pick-up games.
While Mutombo denies having a favorite player on the team, he does admit that he may have a slight preference for “the young man that is wearing my uniform.” That young man, junior center Roy Hibbert, is developing quite the reputation for his shot-blocking abilities. Mutombo believes that Hibbert’s opportunity to develop for four years gives him the chance “maybe to be better than me.”
“His ability to block shots, I think that will make his name and be known and take it to the next level.,” Mutombo says.
Mutombo stays connected to the Georgetown community so that his children can one day follow in their father’s footsteps at Georgetown.
“I try to take them to the Georgetown campus every year,” he says.
A legend at Georgetown for reputedly exclaiming, “Who wants to sex Mutombo?” the big man has kept his sense of humor over the years, and his teammates appreciate his jokes almost as much as his rebounds.
After praising Mutombo’s leadership, Houston’s Hayes is quick to add, “He keeps it a little lighter in the locker room because he’s a big jokester.”
In the Rockets’ locker room before a recent game, teammates joke about who would win in a one-on-one match up between Mt. Mutombo and the monstrous Ming.
“If Deke put his elbow pads on, Yao might have a chance,” Alston jokes, referring to Mutombo’s history of elbowing opponents while grabbing rebounds. “But if Deke doesn’t put on his elbow pads,Yao doesn’t have a chance.”
Hearing this, the jumbo Mutombo leans back in his oversized chair and bellows with laughter.
Mutombo grows serious when a reporter asks him about how his career seems to be drawing to a close.
“I am not done, man, Mutombo is not finished,” he says. “Atlanta thought I was finished, the 76ers thought I was finished. It is hard to kill the snake until you take the head off.”
— Benji Barron contributed to this report.
Former Hoya Leads by Example
By Jamie LeaderHoya Staff Writer Friday, January 26, 2007
When Dikembe Mutombo (FLL ’91) rose to receive the praise and applause of President Bush and Congress on Wednesday, those who have not followed his career may have been taken aback that a 7-foot-2 professional basketball player would be in the audience at a State of the Union address. But to Mutombo’s teammates, coaches, opponents and loyal fans, this most recent recognition is just another fitting piece of praise for a man who has done so much more off the court than he ever has on it.
Mutombo has made a living playing tenacious defense and swatting shots, but when he came to Georgetown in 1987, basketball wasn’t even in his plans. Mutombo received a USAID scholarship to become a doctor so that he could return to his native Congo and help his people. The only sport Mutombo had played in his native land was soccer, but things changed quickly when Head Coach John Thompson Jr. spied Mutombo in a pick-up game.
“He said, ‘Son, I want you on my team.’ I said, ‘Man, this big man is going to be my coach,’” Mutombo recalls. “I was kind of scared of him in the beginning.”
Thompson took Mutombo’s raw talent and used it to mold him into one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history.
“John Thompson, he taught me so much about defense and what defense can do in my life and my game to make me one of the great defensive player that ever played this game,” Mutombo says.
While Mutombo was forced to switch majors and abandon his dream of becoming a doctor, he has no regrets about joining the team. “I don’t have a regret from playing college basketball,” Mutombo says. “I got a chance to help my family — there is not much I can regret.”
Thanks to an average of 15 points and 12 rebounds per game in the 1990-91 season, Mutombo was an all-American honorable mention as a senior. He graduated with a double major from the College and was taken by the Denver Nuggets with the fourth overall pick in the ’91 draft. Sixteen seasons, four defensive player of the year awards and over 3,000 blocked shots later, Mutombo is still using the tenacity he learned on the Hilltop to propel the Rockets’ defense while all-Star Center Yao Ming is sidelined with an injury.
At 40 years old, “Deke” is still effective under the basket. In Yao’s stead, Mutombo has posted an astonishing 13.8 boards in the month of January.
So when Mutombo offers advice in his deep, raspy voice, his teammates listen. Chuck Hayes, a young defensive specialist who splits time with Mutombo at center, praises the big man’s locker room sage counsel. “Experience, leadership and he keeps the guys focused,” Hayes says. “We can learn so much from him.”
From the looming post player to the diminutive guard, it seems every Rocket has something positive to say about the NBA’s eldest statesman.
“When he [is] on your team in the game you know you can get real aggressive and block some shots,” point guard Rafer Alston says.
While Mutombo’s career on the court has been impressive enough to likely join Thompson and other Georgetown greats in the Basketball Hall of Fame, in many ways it has been a footnote to the work he has done in the community.
Mutombo’s $29 million hospital, named after his mother, Biamba Marie Mutombo, and mentioned in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, will open in the Democratic Republic of Congo a month from now. Thanks to Mutombo, it is the country’s first modern facility constructed in decades.
“God asks us, ‘What is our purpose in this planet?’
“It is to make a difference for the next generation to come,” Mutombo says. “To make a difference, not just for my generation but for my children’s and my grandchildren’s.” Countless organizations have praised Mutombo for his work in the community. Another famous Georgetown alum, former President Bill Clinton (SFS ’68), presented his fellow Hoya with a Presidential Service Award in 1999.
Mutombo says his strong emphasis on community service was inspired by the Jesuit ideals that drew him to the Hilltop.
“To get the opportunity to get to be on the same campus as Jesuit teachers, it kind of helped me a lot,” Mutombo says. “It helped me go out and do what I do, helping those that don’t have what I have.”
Mutombo still follows his alma mater’s basketball team as well as one could expect from an in-season basketball player with two young children and a hospital opening in Africa. He has even challenged current Hoyas to off-season pick-up games.
While Mutombo denies having a favorite player on the team, he does admit that he may have a slight preference for “the young man that is wearing my uniform.” That young man, junior center Roy Hibbert, is developing quite the reputation for his shot-blocking abilities. Mutombo believes that Hibbert’s opportunity to develop for four years gives him the chance “maybe to be better than me.”
“His ability to block shots, I think that will make his name and be known and take it to the next level.,” Mutombo says.
Mutombo stays connected to the Georgetown community so that his children can one day follow in their father’s footsteps at Georgetown.
“I try to take them to the Georgetown campus every year,” he says.
A legend at Georgetown for reputedly exclaiming, “Who wants to sex Mutombo?” the big man has kept his sense of humor over the years, and his teammates appreciate his jokes almost as much as his rebounds.
After praising Mutombo’s leadership, Houston’s Hayes is quick to add, “He keeps it a little lighter in the locker room because he’s a big jokester.”
In the Rockets’ locker room before a recent game, teammates joke about who would win in a one-on-one match up between Mt. Mutombo and the monstrous Ming.
“If Deke put his elbow pads on, Yao might have a chance,” Alston jokes, referring to Mutombo’s history of elbowing opponents while grabbing rebounds. “But if Deke doesn’t put on his elbow pads,Yao doesn’t have a chance.”
Hearing this, the jumbo Mutombo leans back in his oversized chair and bellows with laughter.
Mutombo grows serious when a reporter asks him about how his career seems to be drawing to a close.
“I am not done, man, Mutombo is not finished,” he says. “Atlanta thought I was finished, the 76ers thought I was finished. It is hard to kill the snake until you take the head off.”
— Benji Barron contributed to this report.
Born Today
It's the birthday of writer and politician Thomas Paine, born in Thetford, England (1737). With his anonymously published pamphlet "Common Sense," in 1776, he helped start the American Revolution, even though he'd only been living in America for a little more than a year.
Thomas Paine said, "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine said, "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Kerry-Kyoto Bullshit
Here’s John Kerry speaking while sitting just a few feet away from Mohammad Khatami, the former President of the Iranian terror state.
Kerry was asked about whether the U.S. government had failed to adequately engage Iran's government before the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.
Kerry said the Bush administration has failed in addressing a number of foreign policy issues.
"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.
"So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East, in the world, really. I've never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today."
Kerry criticized what he called the "unfortunate habit" of Americans to see the world "exclusively through an American lens."
The Bush administration walked away from Kyoto? Methinks the Senator is revising history:
On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. . . .
The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide). Bush also opposes the treaty because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasizes the uncertainties which he asserts are present in the climate change issue.
It was a unanimous Senate (with five abstainers) as well as the Clinton administration who walked away from Kyoto. The current administration walked away from Kyoto as well, but for the same reasons as the Clinton administration. Kerry himself, in fact, voted for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution to keep us out of Kyoto. Yet here he is now, a decade later, dishonestly accusing the current administration of isolating this country from the world on an issue like Kyoto that Kerry himself opposed for the very same reasons the Bush administration opposes it.
Why should we believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth? It’s bad enough that he’s sitting next to one of America’s enemies bad mouthing his own country, but he’s flat-out lying in what he’s saying as well.
Kerry was asked about whether the U.S. government had failed to adequately engage Iran's government before the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.
Kerry said the Bush administration has failed in addressing a number of foreign policy issues.
"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.
"So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East, in the world, really. I've never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today."
Kerry criticized what he called the "unfortunate habit" of Americans to see the world "exclusively through an American lens."
The Bush administration walked away from Kyoto? Methinks the Senator is revising history:
On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. . . .
The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide). Bush also opposes the treaty because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasizes the uncertainties which he asserts are present in the climate change issue.
It was a unanimous Senate (with five abstainers) as well as the Clinton administration who walked away from Kyoto. The current administration walked away from Kyoto as well, but for the same reasons as the Clinton administration. Kerry himself, in fact, voted for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution to keep us out of Kyoto. Yet here he is now, a decade later, dishonestly accusing the current administration of isolating this country from the world on an issue like Kyoto that Kerry himself opposed for the very same reasons the Bush administration opposes it.
Why should we believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth? It’s bad enough that he’s sitting next to one of America’s enemies bad mouthing his own country, but he’s flat-out lying in what he’s saying as well.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Fuel Grows On TreesBy
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 26, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem.
The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent.
A gas station sign in Honolulu shows the high fuel prices in Hawaii Saturday, Jan. 13, 2007, where motorists continue to pay the highest prices for gas in the nation. (AP Photo/Ronen Zilberman)
And what does this president propose? Another great technological fix. For Jimmy Carter, it was the magic of synfuels. For George Bush, it's the wonders of ethanol. Our fuel will grow on trees. Well, stalks, with even fancier higher-tech variants to come from cellulose and other (literal) rubbish.
It is very American to believe that chemists are going to discover the cure for geopolitical weakness. It is even more American to imagine that it can be done painlessly. Ethanol for everyone. Farmers get a huge cash crop. Consumers get more supply. And the country ends up more secure.
This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert Samuelson demonstrates, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it.
Even worse, the happy talk displaces any discussion about here-and-now measures that would have a rapid and revolutionary effect on oil consumption and dependence. No one talks about them because they have unhidden costs. Politicians hate unhidden costs.
There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.
First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation -- fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017" and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies -- of the kind we have been trying for three decades.
Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 -- with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury -- and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.
No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It's the essence of capitalism.
Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.
We will always need some oil. And the more of it that is ours, the better. It is tautological that nothing more directly reduces dependence on foreign oil than substituting domestic for foreign production. Yet ANWR is now so politically dead that the president did not even mention it in the State of the Union, or his energy address the next day.
He did bring up, to enthusiastic congressional applause, global warming. No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.
What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere.
Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated -- very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn't pollute the atmosphere. At all.
There is no free lunch. Producing energy is going to produce waste. You pick your poison and you find a way to manage it. Want to do something about global warming? How many global warming activists are willing to say the word nuclear?
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 26, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem.
The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent.
A gas station sign in Honolulu shows the high fuel prices in Hawaii Saturday, Jan. 13, 2007, where motorists continue to pay the highest prices for gas in the nation. (AP Photo/Ronen Zilberman)
And what does this president propose? Another great technological fix. For Jimmy Carter, it was the magic of synfuels. For George Bush, it's the wonders of ethanol. Our fuel will grow on trees. Well, stalks, with even fancier higher-tech variants to come from cellulose and other (literal) rubbish.
It is very American to believe that chemists are going to discover the cure for geopolitical weakness. It is even more American to imagine that it can be done painlessly. Ethanol for everyone. Farmers get a huge cash crop. Consumers get more supply. And the country ends up more secure.
This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert Samuelson demonstrates, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it.
Even worse, the happy talk displaces any discussion about here-and-now measures that would have a rapid and revolutionary effect on oil consumption and dependence. No one talks about them because they have unhidden costs. Politicians hate unhidden costs.
There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.
First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation -- fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017" and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies -- of the kind we have been trying for three decades.
Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 -- with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury -- and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.
No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It's the essence of capitalism.
Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.
We will always need some oil. And the more of it that is ours, the better. It is tautological that nothing more directly reduces dependence on foreign oil than substituting domestic for foreign production. Yet ANWR is now so politically dead that the president did not even mention it in the State of the Union, or his energy address the next day.
He did bring up, to enthusiastic congressional applause, global warming. No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.
What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere.
Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated -- very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn't pollute the atmosphere. At all.
There is no free lunch. Producing energy is going to produce waste. You pick your poison and you find a way to manage it. Want to do something about global warming? How many global warming activists are willing to say the word nuclear?
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/
October 11, 2006
History and the Movie “300”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers
(Adapted from the introduction to the forthcoming book trailer published by Black Horse Comics, Inc. to accompany Director Zack Snyder’s new film “300”)
The phrase “300 Spartans” evokes not only the ancient battle of Thermopylae, but also the larger idea of fighting for freedom against all odds — a notion subsequently to be enshrined through some 2500 years of Western civilization.
Even today we remember the power of the Spartans’ defiance. “Come and take them,” they tell the Persian emissaries who demand their arms. “Then we will fight in the shade,” the Spartans boast when warned that the horde of Persian arrows will soon blot out the very sunlight. “Go tell the Spartans that here we lie obedient to their commands” the tombstone of their dead reads.
In 480, an enormous force of more than a quarter-million Persians under their King Xerxes invaded Greece, both to enslave the free city-states, and to avenge the Persian defeat a decade earlier at Marathon. The huge force of ships and soldiers proved unstoppable on its way west and southward until it reached the narrow pass at Thermopylae (“The Warm Gates”) in northern Greece. There a collection of 7,000 Greeks had blocked the way. They hoped to stop Xerxes’ horde outright — or at least allow enough time for their fellow countrymen to their rear to mobilize a sufficient defense of the homeland.
Among the many Greek contingents was a special elite force of 300 Spartans under their King Leonidas — a spearhead that offered the other Greeks at Thermopylae some promise that they could still bar the advance of the vastly superior invader. And that hope proved real for two days of hard fighting. The vastly outnumbered, but heavily-armed Greek infantrymen in their phalanx — taking advantage of the narrow terrain and their massed tactics — savagely beat back wave after wave of advancing Persian foot soldiers and cavalry.
But on the third day of battle, Leonidas’s Greeks were betrayed by a local shepherd Ephialtes, who showed the Persians an alternate route over the mountains that led to the rear of the Greek position. When he realized that he was nearly surrounded, Leonidas nevertheless made a critical decision to stay and fight, while ordering most of the other various allies to flee the encirclement to organize the growing Greek resistance to the south.
Meanwhile the King and his doomed 300 Spartans, together with other small groups of surrounded Thespians and Thebans, would indeed battle to buy the Greeks time. They ranged further out from the pass on this third and last day of battle — at first with spears and swords, finally with teeth and nails —killing scores more of Persians. The last few Spartan survivors were buried under a sea of Persian arrows. The body of Leonidas was found among the corpses, his head soon impaled on a stick as a macabre reminder of the wages of resistance to the Great King of Persia.
The Greeks took encouragement from the unprecedented sacrifice of a Spartan King and his royal guard on their behalf. And so a few weeks later at the sea battle of Salamis near Athens — and then again the next year at the great infantry collision on the plains of Plataea — the Greeks defeated, and eventually destroyed, the Persian invaders. The rallying cry of the victors was Thermopylae, the noble sacrifice of the final stand of the outnumbered Greeks, and especially the courage of the fallen Three Hundred Spartans under King Leonidas.
So almost immediately, contemporary Greeks saw Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture lesson. In universal terms, a small, free people had willingly outfought huge numbers of imperial subjects who advanced under the lash. More specifically, the Western idea that soldiers themselves decide where, how, and against whom they will fight was contrasted against the Eastern notion of despotism and monarchy — freedom proving the stronger idea as the more courageous fighting of the Greeks at Thermopylae, and their later victories at Salamis and Plataea attested.
Greek writers and poets such as Simonides and Herodotus were fascinated by the Greek sacrifice against Xerxes, and especially the heroism of Leonidas and his men. And subsequently throughout Western literature poets as diverse as Lord Byron and A.E. Houseman have likewise paid homage to the Spartan last stand — and this universal idea of Western soldiers willing to die as free men rather than to submit to tyranny. Steven Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire and the earlier Hollywood movie The 300 Spartans both were based on the Greek defense of the pass at Thermopylae.
Recently, a variety of Hollywood films — from Troy to Alexander the Great — has treated a variety of themes from classical Greek literature and theater. But 300 is unique, a sui generis in both spirit and methodology. The script is not an attempt in typical Hollywood fashion to recreate the past as a costume drama. Instead it is based on Frank Miller’s (of Sin City fame) comic book graphics and captions. Miller’s illustrated novelette of the battle adapts themes loosely from the well-known story of the Greek defense, but with deference made to the tastes of contemporary popular culture.
So the film is indeed inspired by the comic book; and in some sense its muscular warriors, virtual reality sets, and computer-generated landscapes recall the look and feel of Robert Rodriquez’s screen version of Sin City. Yet the collaboration of Director Zack Snyder and screenwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon is much more of a hybrid, since the script, dialogue, cinematography, and acting all recall scenes of the battle right from Herodotus’s account.
300, of course, makes plenty of allowance for popular tastes, changing and expanding the story to meet the protocols of the comic book genre. The film was not shot on location outdoors, but in a studio using the so-called “digital backlot” technique of sometimes placing the actors against blue screens. The resulting realism is not that of the sun-soaked cliffs above the blue Aegean — Thermopylae remains spectacularly beautiful today — but of the eerie etchings of the comic book.
The Spartans fight bare-chested without armor, in the “heroic nude” manner that ancient Greek vase-painters portrayed Greek hoplites, their muscles bulging as if they were contemporary comic book action heroes. Again, following the Miller comic, artistic license is made with the original story — the traitor Ephialtes is as deformed in body as he is in character; King Xerxes is not bearded and perched on a distant throne, but bald, huge, perhaps sexually ambiguous, and often right on the battlefield. The Persians bring with them exotic beasts like a rhinoceros and elephant, and the leader of the Immortals fights Leonidas in a duel (which the Greeks knew as monomachia). Shields are metal rather than wood with bronze veneers, and swords sometimes look futuristic rather than ancient.
Again, purists must remember that 300 seeks to bring a comic book, not Herodotus, to the screen. Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot — every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater — the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense. Once at Thermopylae, he adopts the defenses to the narrow pass between high cliffs and the sea far below. The Greeks fight both en masse in the phalanx and at times range beyond as solo warriors. They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies — and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.
But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.
If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.
http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/
History and the Movie “300”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers
(Adapted from the introduction to the forthcoming book trailer published by Black Horse Comics, Inc. to accompany Director Zack Snyder’s new film “300”)
The phrase “300 Spartans” evokes not only the ancient battle of Thermopylae, but also the larger idea of fighting for freedom against all odds — a notion subsequently to be enshrined through some 2500 years of Western civilization.
Even today we remember the power of the Spartans’ defiance. “Come and take them,” they tell the Persian emissaries who demand their arms. “Then we will fight in the shade,” the Spartans boast when warned that the horde of Persian arrows will soon blot out the very sunlight. “Go tell the Spartans that here we lie obedient to their commands” the tombstone of their dead reads.
In 480, an enormous force of more than a quarter-million Persians under their King Xerxes invaded Greece, both to enslave the free city-states, and to avenge the Persian defeat a decade earlier at Marathon. The huge force of ships and soldiers proved unstoppable on its way west and southward until it reached the narrow pass at Thermopylae (“The Warm Gates”) in northern Greece. There a collection of 7,000 Greeks had blocked the way. They hoped to stop Xerxes’ horde outright — or at least allow enough time for their fellow countrymen to their rear to mobilize a sufficient defense of the homeland.
Among the many Greek contingents was a special elite force of 300 Spartans under their King Leonidas — a spearhead that offered the other Greeks at Thermopylae some promise that they could still bar the advance of the vastly superior invader. And that hope proved real for two days of hard fighting. The vastly outnumbered, but heavily-armed Greek infantrymen in their phalanx — taking advantage of the narrow terrain and their massed tactics — savagely beat back wave after wave of advancing Persian foot soldiers and cavalry.
But on the third day of battle, Leonidas’s Greeks were betrayed by a local shepherd Ephialtes, who showed the Persians an alternate route over the mountains that led to the rear of the Greek position. When he realized that he was nearly surrounded, Leonidas nevertheless made a critical decision to stay and fight, while ordering most of the other various allies to flee the encirclement to organize the growing Greek resistance to the south.
Meanwhile the King and his doomed 300 Spartans, together with other small groups of surrounded Thespians and Thebans, would indeed battle to buy the Greeks time. They ranged further out from the pass on this third and last day of battle — at first with spears and swords, finally with teeth and nails —killing scores more of Persians. The last few Spartan survivors were buried under a sea of Persian arrows. The body of Leonidas was found among the corpses, his head soon impaled on a stick as a macabre reminder of the wages of resistance to the Great King of Persia.
The Greeks took encouragement from the unprecedented sacrifice of a Spartan King and his royal guard on their behalf. And so a few weeks later at the sea battle of Salamis near Athens — and then again the next year at the great infantry collision on the plains of Plataea — the Greeks defeated, and eventually destroyed, the Persian invaders. The rallying cry of the victors was Thermopylae, the noble sacrifice of the final stand of the outnumbered Greeks, and especially the courage of the fallen Three Hundred Spartans under King Leonidas.
So almost immediately, contemporary Greeks saw Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture lesson. In universal terms, a small, free people had willingly outfought huge numbers of imperial subjects who advanced under the lash. More specifically, the Western idea that soldiers themselves decide where, how, and against whom they will fight was contrasted against the Eastern notion of despotism and monarchy — freedom proving the stronger idea as the more courageous fighting of the Greeks at Thermopylae, and their later victories at Salamis and Plataea attested.
Greek writers and poets such as Simonides and Herodotus were fascinated by the Greek sacrifice against Xerxes, and especially the heroism of Leonidas and his men. And subsequently throughout Western literature poets as diverse as Lord Byron and A.E. Houseman have likewise paid homage to the Spartan last stand — and this universal idea of Western soldiers willing to die as free men rather than to submit to tyranny. Steven Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire and the earlier Hollywood movie The 300 Spartans both were based on the Greek defense of the pass at Thermopylae.
Recently, a variety of Hollywood films — from Troy to Alexander the Great — has treated a variety of themes from classical Greek literature and theater. But 300 is unique, a sui generis in both spirit and methodology. The script is not an attempt in typical Hollywood fashion to recreate the past as a costume drama. Instead it is based on Frank Miller’s (of Sin City fame) comic book graphics and captions. Miller’s illustrated novelette of the battle adapts themes loosely from the well-known story of the Greek defense, but with deference made to the tastes of contemporary popular culture.
So the film is indeed inspired by the comic book; and in some sense its muscular warriors, virtual reality sets, and computer-generated landscapes recall the look and feel of Robert Rodriquez’s screen version of Sin City. Yet the collaboration of Director Zack Snyder and screenwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon is much more of a hybrid, since the script, dialogue, cinematography, and acting all recall scenes of the battle right from Herodotus’s account.
300, of course, makes plenty of allowance for popular tastes, changing and expanding the story to meet the protocols of the comic book genre. The film was not shot on location outdoors, but in a studio using the so-called “digital backlot” technique of sometimes placing the actors against blue screens. The resulting realism is not that of the sun-soaked cliffs above the blue Aegean — Thermopylae remains spectacularly beautiful today — but of the eerie etchings of the comic book.
The Spartans fight bare-chested without armor, in the “heroic nude” manner that ancient Greek vase-painters portrayed Greek hoplites, their muscles bulging as if they were contemporary comic book action heroes. Again, following the Miller comic, artistic license is made with the original story — the traitor Ephialtes is as deformed in body as he is in character; King Xerxes is not bearded and perched on a distant throne, but bald, huge, perhaps sexually ambiguous, and often right on the battlefield. The Persians bring with them exotic beasts like a rhinoceros and elephant, and the leader of the Immortals fights Leonidas in a duel (which the Greeks knew as monomachia). Shields are metal rather than wood with bronze veneers, and swords sometimes look futuristic rather than ancient.
Again, purists must remember that 300 seeks to bring a comic book, not Herodotus, to the screen. Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot — every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater — the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense. Once at Thermopylae, he adopts the defenses to the narrow pass between high cliffs and the sea far below. The Greeks fight both en masse in the phalanx and at times range beyond as solo warriors. They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies — and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.
But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.
If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.
http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/
Greg Gutfeld
Bio
01.25.2007
New Trend On The Rise: The Patriotic Terrorist
Whenever I visit this lovely blog, I usually run into someone - a "leftist," if you will - who finds pleasure in things that make our country or the President look bad. I suppose I could say these angry types are no better than cheerleaders for terrorism. After all, both entities - the left and terrorists - seem to share the same desire: to put the US, humiliatingly, in its place.
But I would be wrong to say such things. Very wrong. Of course, "dissent is patriotic," and the left is only critical of America because it simply loves our country much more than I do.
That's why calling them terrorists would be intolerant and pretty shameful.
But what about "patriotic terrorists?"
That's kinda neat.
What is a patriotic terrorist?
It is an American who claims to love his or her country while enjoying the enemy's success against said country. It is a person who gets deeply offended if you question their patriotism, while also appearing to share the same ideals of the more spirited folk who like to blow up innocent people.
Patriotic terrorists love America with so much intensity that it appears to the untrained eye that they hate it. But it's actually the most powerful form of "tough love" known to man, woman and Rosie O'Donnell. Patriotic terrorists love America so much that they realize it needs an intervention - and real terror is the only way to enable that intervention. In fact, to keep a mammoth, arrogant superpower like America in check, terrorism is the only thing we've got. Noam Chomsky knew this from the start, making him a patriotic terrorist of the highest order.
This is why he gets the chicks.
Hey, I bet you've probably wondered why Al Qaeda hasn't struck in the US since 9/11. They don't have to. It has its own offshoot franchise here at work already. Patriotic Terrorists.
Think about how much both groups have in common!
-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda want the US to abandon Iraq, for that reveals Bush and America to be monstrous, laughable failures. It does not matter to either group that the withdrawal from Iraq will make post-Vietnam look like an afternoon at Ikea shopping for a Hoggbo innerspring mattress.
-For patriotic terrorists and real terrorists, car bombs going off is music to their ears. It proves that you can't offer democracy to troubled countries, as long as you've got terrorists standing in your way. And that's great news for everyone who believes in checks and balances between the haves and the have nots! (Note: "haves" means the US. "Have nots" means those who hate the US)
-Patriotic terrorists and the more committed terrorists both believe that infractions at Guantanamo Bay are far worse than anything a genocidal dictator could muster, and such horrors possess far more PR potential in denigrating the US than anything involving Ed Begley Jr.
-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda terrorists believe the US desires to control the Middle East, empower evil Israel and expand it's power base at the expense of innocent Arab lives. But both groups also realize that the US is too stupid to achieve these goals - and that makes being a patriotic terrorist loads of fun!
Are you a patriotic terrorist? If you are intensely critical of the US, while tolerating homicidal enemies who condemn everything you previously claimed you are for - human rights, voting rights, gay rights, women's rights, porn - then you're a patriotic terrorist.
If you talk about tolerance constantly - and hilariously tolerate genocide and suicide bombers because those actions undermine your more intimate opposition, the American right - then you're a patriotic terrorist.
The only difference between a patriotic terrorist and a real one? Real terrorists are simply patriotic terrorists who've taken the extra step - choosing to actually die for their beliefs - rather than simply talking about them at Spago. If Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, and their ilk had real cojones, they'd all be wearing cute black vests - but stuffed with more than dog-eared copies of Deterring Democracy.
For hot new recipes and pictures of lamps, don't go here.
Bio
01.25.2007
New Trend On The Rise: The Patriotic Terrorist
Whenever I visit this lovely blog, I usually run into someone - a "leftist," if you will - who finds pleasure in things that make our country or the President look bad. I suppose I could say these angry types are no better than cheerleaders for terrorism. After all, both entities - the left and terrorists - seem to share the same desire: to put the US, humiliatingly, in its place.
But I would be wrong to say such things. Very wrong. Of course, "dissent is patriotic," and the left is only critical of America because it simply loves our country much more than I do.
That's why calling them terrorists would be intolerant and pretty shameful.
But what about "patriotic terrorists?"
That's kinda neat.
What is a patriotic terrorist?
It is an American who claims to love his or her country while enjoying the enemy's success against said country. It is a person who gets deeply offended if you question their patriotism, while also appearing to share the same ideals of the more spirited folk who like to blow up innocent people.
Patriotic terrorists love America with so much intensity that it appears to the untrained eye that they hate it. But it's actually the most powerful form of "tough love" known to man, woman and Rosie O'Donnell. Patriotic terrorists love America so much that they realize it needs an intervention - and real terror is the only way to enable that intervention. In fact, to keep a mammoth, arrogant superpower like America in check, terrorism is the only thing we've got. Noam Chomsky knew this from the start, making him a patriotic terrorist of the highest order.
This is why he gets the chicks.
Hey, I bet you've probably wondered why Al Qaeda hasn't struck in the US since 9/11. They don't have to. It has its own offshoot franchise here at work already. Patriotic Terrorists.
Think about how much both groups have in common!
-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda want the US to abandon Iraq, for that reveals Bush and America to be monstrous, laughable failures. It does not matter to either group that the withdrawal from Iraq will make post-Vietnam look like an afternoon at Ikea shopping for a Hoggbo innerspring mattress.
-For patriotic terrorists and real terrorists, car bombs going off is music to their ears. It proves that you can't offer democracy to troubled countries, as long as you've got terrorists standing in your way. And that's great news for everyone who believes in checks and balances between the haves and the have nots! (Note: "haves" means the US. "Have nots" means those who hate the US)
-Patriotic terrorists and the more committed terrorists both believe that infractions at Guantanamo Bay are far worse than anything a genocidal dictator could muster, and such horrors possess far more PR potential in denigrating the US than anything involving Ed Begley Jr.
-Both patriotic terrorists and Al Qaeda terrorists believe the US desires to control the Middle East, empower evil Israel and expand it's power base at the expense of innocent Arab lives. But both groups also realize that the US is too stupid to achieve these goals - and that makes being a patriotic terrorist loads of fun!
Are you a patriotic terrorist? If you are intensely critical of the US, while tolerating homicidal enemies who condemn everything you previously claimed you are for - human rights, voting rights, gay rights, women's rights, porn - then you're a patriotic terrorist.
If you talk about tolerance constantly - and hilariously tolerate genocide and suicide bombers because those actions undermine your more intimate opposition, the American right - then you're a patriotic terrorist.
The only difference between a patriotic terrorist and a real one? Real terrorists are simply patriotic terrorists who've taken the extra step - choosing to actually die for their beliefs - rather than simply talking about them at Spago. If Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, and their ilk had real cojones, they'd all be wearing cute black vests - but stuffed with more than dog-eared copies of Deterring Democracy.
For hot new recipes and pictures of lamps, don't go here.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
At a London conference on climate change, scientists have identified one of the root causes of terrorism: global warming. (Hat tip: nonic.)
And to support this diagnosis, UK chief scientist John Mitchell cites the studies of the noted environmentalist, Osama bin Laden.
John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain’s Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.
“You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries,” al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 “letter to the American people.”
And to support this diagnosis, UK chief scientist John Mitchell cites the studies of the noted environmentalist, Osama bin Laden.
John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain’s Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.
“You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries,” al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 “letter to the American people.”
Exclusive: Van Halen Reuniting With Roth For Tour
Van Halen's original lineup in the early 1980s
January 24, 2007, 4:20 PM ET
Ray Waddell, Nashville
Sources tell Billboard.com a contract could be signed as soon as today for Live Nation to produce a 40-date amphitheatre tour by Van Halen this summer, with original frontman David Lee Roth back in the fold for the first time in more than 20 years.
As previously reported, guitarist Eddie Van Halen's 15-year-old son Wolfgang has stepped in for original bassist Michael Anthony in the new incarnation of the group, which also features drummer Alex Van Halen.
Van Halen last toured in 2004 with vocalist Sammy Hagar, grossing nearly $40 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. Hagar refused to collaborate further with Eddie and Alex Van Halen after the tour's completion ("I don't get along with Eddie anymore, and that's all there is to it," he told Billboard.com in August 2005), although he has consistently played live with Anthony in recent years. The warring factions may wind up meeting in public in March when Van Halen is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"I see it absolutely as an inevitability," Roth told Billboard.com last May of a potential reunion with his ex-bandmates. "To me, it's not rocket surgery. It's very simple to put together. And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what's-her-name says to what's-her-name at the end of the movie 'Chicago' -- 'So what? It's showbiz!' So I definitely see it happening."
Van Halen's original lineup in the early 1980s
January 24, 2007, 4:20 PM ET
Ray Waddell, Nashville
Sources tell Billboard.com a contract could be signed as soon as today for Live Nation to produce a 40-date amphitheatre tour by Van Halen this summer, with original frontman David Lee Roth back in the fold for the first time in more than 20 years.
As previously reported, guitarist Eddie Van Halen's 15-year-old son Wolfgang has stepped in for original bassist Michael Anthony in the new incarnation of the group, which also features drummer Alex Van Halen.
Van Halen last toured in 2004 with vocalist Sammy Hagar, grossing nearly $40 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. Hagar refused to collaborate further with Eddie and Alex Van Halen after the tour's completion ("I don't get along with Eddie anymore, and that's all there is to it," he told Billboard.com in August 2005), although he has consistently played live with Anthony in recent years. The warring factions may wind up meeting in public in March when Van Halen is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"I see it absolutely as an inevitability," Roth told Billboard.com last May of a potential reunion with his ex-bandmates. "To me, it's not rocket surgery. It's very simple to put together. And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what's-her-name says to what's-her-name at the end of the movie 'Chicago' -- 'So what? It's showbiz!' So I definitely see it happening."
Meth Smuggler Addicted to Fun!
Smuggler uses rocket to ditch drugs in a hurry. Sadly, it appears to not have worked.
gladwell.com
May 29, 2006
Books
When it comes to athletic prowess, don't believe your eyes.
1.
The first player picked in the 1996 National Basketball Association draft was a slender, six-foot guard from Georgetown University named Allen Iverson. Iverson was thrilling. He was lightning quick, and could stop and start on a dime. He would charge toward the basket, twist and turn and writhe through the arms and legs of much taller and heavier men, and somehow find a way to score. In his first season with the Philadelphia 76ers, Iverson was voted the N.B.A.'s Rookie of the Year. In every year since 2000, he has been named to the N.B.A.'s All-Star team. In the 2000-01 season, he finished first in the league in scoring and steals, led his team to the second-best record in the league, and was named, by the country's sportswriters and broadcasters, basketball's Most Valuable Player. He is currently in the midst of a four-year, seventy-seven-million-dollar contract. Almost everyone who knows basketball and who watches Iverson play thinks that he's one of the best players in the game.
But how do we know that we're watching a great player? That's an easier question to answer when it comes to, say, golf or tennis, where players compete against one another, under similar circumstances, week after week. Nobody would dispute that Roger Federer is the world's best tennis player. Baseball is a little more complicated, since it's a team sport. Still, because the game consists of a sequence of discrete, ritualized encounters between pitcher and hitter, it lends itself to statistical rankings and analysis. Most tasks that professionals perform, though, are surprisingly hard to evaluate. Suppose that we wanted to measure something in the real world, like the relative skill of New York City's heart surgeons. One obvious way would be to compare the mortality rates of the patients on whom they operate—except that substandard care isn't necessarily fatal, so a more accurate measure might be how quickly patients get better or how few complications they have after surgery. But recovery time is a function as well of how a patient is treated in the intensive-care unit, which reflects the capabilities not just of the doctor but of the nurses in the I.C.U. So now we have to adjust for nurse quality in our assessment of surgeon quality. We'd also better adjust for how sick the patients were in the first place, and since well-regarded surgeons often treat the most difficult cases, the best surgeons might well have the poorest patient recovery rates. In order to measure something you thought was fairly straightforward, you really have to take into account a series of things that aren't so straightforward.
Basketball presents many of the same kinds of problems. The fact that Allen Iverson has been one of the league's most prolific scorers over the past decade, for instance, could mean that he is a brilliant player. It could mean that he's selfish and takes shots rather than passing the ball to his teammates. It could mean that he plays for a team that races up and down the court and plays so quickly that he has the opportunity to take many more shots than he would on a team that plays more deliberately. Or he might be the equivalent of an average surgeon with a first-rate I.C.U.: maybe his success reflects the fact that everyone else on his team excels at getting rebounds and forcing the other team to turn over the ball. Nor does the number of points that Iverson scores tell us anything about his tendency to do other things that contribute to winning and losing games; it doesn't tell us how often he makes a mistake and loses the ball to the other team, or commits a foul, or blocks a shot, or rebounds the ball. Figuring whether one basketball player is better than another is a challenge similar to figuring out whether one heart surgeon is better than another: you have to find a way to interpret someone's individual statistics in the context of the team that they're on and the task that they are performing.
In "The Wages of Wins" (Stanford; $29.95), the economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook set out to solve the Iverson problem. Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and the like, they've created an algorithm that, they argue, comes closer than any previous statistical measure to capturing the true value of a basketball player. The algorithm yields what they call a Win Score, because it expresses a player's worth as the number of wins that his contributions bring to his team. According to their analysis, Iverson's finest season was in 2004-05, when he was worth ten wins, which made him the thirty-sixth-best player in the league. In the season in which he won the Most Valuable Player award, he was the ninety-first-best player in the league. In his worst season (2003-04), he was the two-hundred-and-twenty-seventh-best player in the league. On average, for his career, he has ranked a hundred and sixteenth. In some years, Iverson has not even been the best player on his own team. Looking at the findings that Berri, Schmidt, and Brook present is enough to make one wonder what exactly basketball experts—coaches, managers, sportswriters—know about basketball.
2.
Basketball experts clearly appreciate basketball. They understand the gestalt of the game, in the way that someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about and watching, say, modern dance develops an understanding of that art form. They're able to teach and coach and motivate; to make judgments and predictions about a player's character and resolve and stage of development. But the argument of "The Wages of Wins" is that this kind of expertise has real limitations when it comes to making precise evaluations of individual performance, whether you're interested in the consistency of football quarterbacks or in testing claims that N.B.A. stars "turn it on" during playoffs. The baseball legend Ty Cobb, the authors point out, had a lifetime batting average of .366, almost thirty points higher than the former San Diego Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn, who had a lifetime batting average of .338:
So Cobb hit safely 37 percent of the time while Gwynn hit safely on 34 percent of his at bats. If all you did was watch these players, could you say who was a better hitter? Can one really tell the difference between 37 percent and 34 percent just staring at the players play? To see the problem with the non-numbers approach to player evaluation, consider that out of every 100 at bats, Cobb got three more hits than Gwynn. That's it, three hits.
Michael Lewis made a similar argument in his 2003 best-seller, "Moneyball," about how the so-called sabermetricians have changed the evaluation of talent in baseball. Baseball is sufficiently transparent, though, that the size of the discrepancies between intuitive and statistically aided judgment tends to be relatively modest. If you mistakenly thought that Gwynn was better than Cobb, you were still backing a terrific hitter. But "The Wages of Wins" suggests that when you move into more complex situations, like basketball, the limitations of "seeing" become enormous. Jermaine O'Neal, a center for the Indiana Pacers, finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting in 2004. His Win Score that year put him forty-fourth in the league. In 2004-05, the forward Antoine Walker made as much money as the point guard Jason Kidd, even though Walker produced 0.6 wins for Atlanta and Boston and Kidd produced nearly twenty wins for New Jersey. The Win Score algorithm suggests that Ray Allen has had nearly as good a career as Kobe Bryant, whom many consider the top player in the game, and that the journeyman forward Jerome Williams was actually among the strongest players of his generation.
Most egregious is the story of a young guard for the Chicago Bulls named Ben Gordon. Last season, Gordon finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting and was named the league's top "sixth man"—that is, the best non-starter—because he averaged an impressive 15.1 points per game in limited playing time. But Gordon rebounds less than he should, turns over the ball frequently, and makes such a low percentage of his shots that, of the ''s top thirty-three scorers—that is, players who score at least one point for every two minutes on the floor—Gordon's Win Score ranked him dead last.
The problem for basketball experts is that, in a situation with many variables, it's difficult to know how much weight to assign to each variable. Buying a house is agonizing because we look at the size, the location, the back yard, the proximity to local schools, the price, and so on, and we're unsure which of those things matters most. Assessing heart-attack risk is a notoriously difficult task for similar reasons. A doctor can analyze a dozen different factors. But how much weight should be given to a patient's cholesterol level relative to his blood pressure? In the face of such complexity, people construct their own arbitrary algorithms—they assume that every factor is of equal importance, or randomly elevate one or two factors for the sake of simplifying matters—and we make mistakes because those arbitrary algorithms are, well, arbitrary.
Berri, Schmidt, and Brook argue that the arbitrary algorithms of basketball experts elevate the number of points a player scores above all other considerations. In one clever piece of research, they analyze the relationship between the statistics of rookies and the number of votes they receive in the All-Rookie Team balloting. If a rookie increases his scoring by ten per cent—regardless of how efficiently he scores those points—the number of votes he'll get will increase by twenty-three per cent. If he increases his rebounds by ten per cent, the number of votes he'll get will increase by six per cent. Every other factor, like turnovers, steals, assists, blocked shots, and personal fouls—factors that can have a significant influence on the outcome of a game—seemed to bear no statistical relationship to judgments of merit at all. It's not even the case that high scorers help their team by drawing more fans. As the authors point out, that's only true on the road. At home, attendance is primarily a function of games won. Basketball's decision-makers, it seems, are simply irrational.
It's hard not to wonder, after reading "The Wages of Wins," about the other instances in which we defer to the evaluations of experts. Boards of directors vote to pay C.E.O.s tens of millions of dollars, ostensibly because they believe—on the basis of what they have learned over the years by watching other C.E.O.s—that they are worth it. But so what? We see Allen Iverson, over and over again, charge toward the basket, twisting and turning and writhing through a thicket of arms and legs of much taller and heavier men—and all we learn is to appreciate twisting and turning and writhing. We become dance critics, blind to Iverson's dismal shooting percentage and his excessive turnovers, blind to the reality that the Philadelphia 76ers would be better off without him. "One can play basketball," the authors conclude. "One can watch basketball. One can both play and watch basketball for a thousand years. If you do not systematically track what the players do, and then uncover the statistical relationship between these actions and wins, you will never know why teams win and why they lose."
Malcolm Gladwell
Books
When it comes to athletic prowess, don't believe your eyes.
1.
The first player picked in the 1996 National Basketball Association draft was a slender, six-foot guard from Georgetown University named Allen Iverson. Iverson was thrilling. He was lightning quick, and could stop and start on a dime. He would charge toward the basket, twist and turn and writhe through the arms and legs of much taller and heavier men, and somehow find a way to score. In his first season with the Philadelphia 76ers, Iverson was voted the N.B.A.'s Rookie of the Year. In every year since 2000, he has been named to the N.B.A.'s All-Star team. In the 2000-01 season, he finished first in the league in scoring and steals, led his team to the second-best record in the league, and was named, by the country's sportswriters and broadcasters, basketball's Most Valuable Player. He is currently in the midst of a four-year, seventy-seven-million-dollar contract. Almost everyone who knows basketball and who watches Iverson play thinks that he's one of the best players in the game.
But how do we know that we're watching a great player? That's an easier question to answer when it comes to, say, golf or tennis, where players compete against one another, under similar circumstances, week after week. Nobody would dispute that Roger Federer is the world's best tennis player. Baseball is a little more complicated, since it's a team sport. Still, because the game consists of a sequence of discrete, ritualized encounters between pitcher and hitter, it lends itself to statistical rankings and analysis. Most tasks that professionals perform, though, are surprisingly hard to evaluate. Suppose that we wanted to measure something in the real world, like the relative skill of New York City's heart surgeons. One obvious way would be to compare the mortality rates of the patients on whom they operate—except that substandard care isn't necessarily fatal, so a more accurate measure might be how quickly patients get better or how few complications they have after surgery. But recovery time is a function as well of how a patient is treated in the intensive-care unit, which reflects the capabilities not just of the doctor but of the nurses in the I.C.U. So now we have to adjust for nurse quality in our assessment of surgeon quality. We'd also better adjust for how sick the patients were in the first place, and since well-regarded surgeons often treat the most difficult cases, the best surgeons might well have the poorest patient recovery rates. In order to measure something you thought was fairly straightforward, you really have to take into account a series of things that aren't so straightforward.
Basketball presents many of the same kinds of problems. The fact that Allen Iverson has been one of the league's most prolific scorers over the past decade, for instance, could mean that he is a brilliant player. It could mean that he's selfish and takes shots rather than passing the ball to his teammates. It could mean that he plays for a team that races up and down the court and plays so quickly that he has the opportunity to take many more shots than he would on a team that plays more deliberately. Or he might be the equivalent of an average surgeon with a first-rate I.C.U.: maybe his success reflects the fact that everyone else on his team excels at getting rebounds and forcing the other team to turn over the ball. Nor does the number of points that Iverson scores tell us anything about his tendency to do other things that contribute to winning and losing games; it doesn't tell us how often he makes a mistake and loses the ball to the other team, or commits a foul, or blocks a shot, or rebounds the ball. Figuring whether one basketball player is better than another is a challenge similar to figuring out whether one heart surgeon is better than another: you have to find a way to interpret someone's individual statistics in the context of the team that they're on and the task that they are performing.
In "The Wages of Wins" (Stanford; $29.95), the economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook set out to solve the Iverson problem. Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and the like, they've created an algorithm that, they argue, comes closer than any previous statistical measure to capturing the true value of a basketball player. The algorithm yields what they call a Win Score, because it expresses a player's worth as the number of wins that his contributions bring to his team. According to their analysis, Iverson's finest season was in 2004-05, when he was worth ten wins, which made him the thirty-sixth-best player in the league. In the season in which he won the Most Valuable Player award, he was the ninety-first-best player in the league. In his worst season (2003-04), he was the two-hundred-and-twenty-seventh-best player in the league. On average, for his career, he has ranked a hundred and sixteenth. In some years, Iverson has not even been the best player on his own team. Looking at the findings that Berri, Schmidt, and Brook present is enough to make one wonder what exactly basketball experts—coaches, managers, sportswriters—know about basketball.
2.
Basketball experts clearly appreciate basketball. They understand the gestalt of the game, in the way that someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about and watching, say, modern dance develops an understanding of that art form. They're able to teach and coach and motivate; to make judgments and predictions about a player's character and resolve and stage of development. But the argument of "The Wages of Wins" is that this kind of expertise has real limitations when it comes to making precise evaluations of individual performance, whether you're interested in the consistency of football quarterbacks or in testing claims that N.B.A. stars "turn it on" during playoffs. The baseball legend Ty Cobb, the authors point out, had a lifetime batting average of .366, almost thirty points higher than the former San Diego Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn, who had a lifetime batting average of .338:
So Cobb hit safely 37 percent of the time while Gwynn hit safely on 34 percent of his at bats. If all you did was watch these players, could you say who was a better hitter? Can one really tell the difference between 37 percent and 34 percent just staring at the players play? To see the problem with the non-numbers approach to player evaluation, consider that out of every 100 at bats, Cobb got three more hits than Gwynn. That's it, three hits.
Michael Lewis made a similar argument in his 2003 best-seller, "Moneyball," about how the so-called sabermetricians have changed the evaluation of talent in baseball. Baseball is sufficiently transparent, though, that the size of the discrepancies between intuitive and statistically aided judgment tends to be relatively modest. If you mistakenly thought that Gwynn was better than Cobb, you were still backing a terrific hitter. But "The Wages of Wins" suggests that when you move into more complex situations, like basketball, the limitations of "seeing" become enormous. Jermaine O'Neal, a center for the Indiana Pacers, finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting in 2004. His Win Score that year put him forty-fourth in the league. In 2004-05, the forward Antoine Walker made as much money as the point guard Jason Kidd, even though Walker produced 0.6 wins for Atlanta and Boston and Kidd produced nearly twenty wins for New Jersey. The Win Score algorithm suggests that Ray Allen has had nearly as good a career as Kobe Bryant, whom many consider the top player in the game, and that the journeyman forward Jerome Williams was actually among the strongest players of his generation.
Most egregious is the story of a young guard for the Chicago Bulls named Ben Gordon. Last season, Gordon finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting and was named the league's top "sixth man"—that is, the best non-starter—because he averaged an impressive 15.1 points per game in limited playing time. But Gordon rebounds less than he should, turns over the ball frequently, and makes such a low percentage of his shots that, of the ''s top thirty-three scorers—that is, players who score at least one point for every two minutes on the floor—Gordon's Win Score ranked him dead last.
The problem for basketball experts is that, in a situation with many variables, it's difficult to know how much weight to assign to each variable. Buying a house is agonizing because we look at the size, the location, the back yard, the proximity to local schools, the price, and so on, and we're unsure which of those things matters most. Assessing heart-attack risk is a notoriously difficult task for similar reasons. A doctor can analyze a dozen different factors. But how much weight should be given to a patient's cholesterol level relative to his blood pressure? In the face of such complexity, people construct their own arbitrary algorithms—they assume that every factor is of equal importance, or randomly elevate one or two factors for the sake of simplifying matters—and we make mistakes because those arbitrary algorithms are, well, arbitrary.
Berri, Schmidt, and Brook argue that the arbitrary algorithms of basketball experts elevate the number of points a player scores above all other considerations. In one clever piece of research, they analyze the relationship between the statistics of rookies and the number of votes they receive in the All-Rookie Team balloting. If a rookie increases his scoring by ten per cent—regardless of how efficiently he scores those points—the number of votes he'll get will increase by twenty-three per cent. If he increases his rebounds by ten per cent, the number of votes he'll get will increase by six per cent. Every other factor, like turnovers, steals, assists, blocked shots, and personal fouls—factors that can have a significant influence on the outcome of a game—seemed to bear no statistical relationship to judgments of merit at all. It's not even the case that high scorers help their team by drawing more fans. As the authors point out, that's only true on the road. At home, attendance is primarily a function of games won. Basketball's decision-makers, it seems, are simply irrational.
It's hard not to wonder, after reading "The Wages of Wins," about the other instances in which we defer to the evaluations of experts. Boards of directors vote to pay C.E.O.s tens of millions of dollars, ostensibly because they believe—on the basis of what they have learned over the years by watching other C.E.O.s—that they are worth it. But so what? We see Allen Iverson, over and over again, charge toward the basket, twisting and turning and writhing through a thicket of arms and legs of much taller and heavier men—and all we learn is to appreciate twisting and turning and writhing. We become dance critics, blind to Iverson's dismal shooting percentage and his excessive turnovers, blind to the reality that the Philadelphia 76ers would be better off without him. "One can play basketball," the authors conclude. "One can watch basketball. One can both play and watch basketball for a thousand years. If you do not systematically track what the players do, and then uncover the statistical relationship between these actions and wins, you will never know why teams win and why they lose."
Malcolm Gladwell
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/
...I can see no connection between Islamic terrorism and poverty, but maybe there is a connection between wealth and politically correct nonsense. Western Europe has enjoyed decades of affluence and welfare state boredom, and is crazier than any civilization before it in history, even paying its own enemies to colonize it and thinking happy thoughts about cultural diversity as it is being wiped out. Is cultural Marxism caused by boredom, which is again caused by affluence created by capitalism? It would be sort of ironic if that is the case.
To quote The True Believer by Eric Hoffer:
“The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring super individual goal which could give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement.”
And later Hoffer points out that “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.”
- - - - - - - - - -
In The Weekly Standard, Michel Gurfinkiel notes that indeed, there are intellectuals “who relish the prospect of a new French Revolution, and welcome the suburban rioters as its spearhead. Nothing is more revealing, in this respect, than the success of a feverish political novel, Supplément au Roman National (A Sequel to the National Narrative), by 28-year-old author Jean-ric Boulin. Published two months ago, it forecasts a ‘social and racial’ revolution in France in 2007. First a wave of suicide bombings in Paris. Then martial law. Then, finally, the great rebellion of the French poor: the native underclass, the Arabs, and the blacks, who unite under the green flag of Islam and the tricolor of France and march on Paris — as a sort of Commune in reverse. Boulin gallantly supports such an outcome.”
Bruce Thornton writes about Robert Conquest’s book Reflections on a Ravaged Century. especially his chapter on Soviet Myths and the Western Mind:
“As Conquest documents, many Western intellectuals and academics were delusional about the reality of the communist threat. For a host of reasons — a quasi-religious faith in utopian socialism, neurotic hatred of their own culture, vulnerability to an ideology that dressed itself in scientific garb, an adolescent romance with revolution, and sheer ignorance of the facts — many professors, pundits, politicians, and religious leaders refused to believe that Soviet leaders meant what they said about revolution and subversion.” Because of this, “throughout the Cold War, the Western resolve to resist Soviet expansionism was undercut by ‘peace’ movements, nuclear disarmament movements, calls for détente and ‘dialogue,’ and claims of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.”
According to Thornton, other parallels between Cold War Sovietophiles and today’s rationalizers for Jihad present themselves. The academic establishment for most of the Cold War “was predisposed to leftist ideology.”
When US President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, after Jimmy Carter had made a mockery out of the presidency and his inaction contributed to the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the massive Soviet military machinery placed medium-range SS-20 nuclear missiles to intimidate Western Europe and split NATO. They also encouraged massive demonstrations and campaigns within the West for unilateral Western disarmament. Yet Reagan chose to up the ante by deploying new U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe. He denounced the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” and engaged the Soviets in a military build-up that bankrupted their fragile economy. Reagan, who dared to challenge blackmail from one of the most brutal regimes in human history, was reviled and ridiculed by the leftist intelligentsia, and is still hated even a generation after the Cold War ended. Yet a man such as Mr. Treholt, who appeased the same regime, is viewed in positive terms.
Sadly, conservatives demsontrated negligence after the Cold War. We never properly denounced Marxism as an ideology as well as discredited those individuals who had supported it, the way it was done with Fascism after WW2. That was a mistake. We had a massive fifth column of left-wingers during the Cold War who sapped our strength and appeased our enemies. These very same groups have been allowed to continue their work uninterrupted, and went straight from appeasing Soviet Communism to appeasing Islamic Jihad.
The West and Westerners in general are treated as the “global oppressive class” by our Marxist-inspired academic elites. From historical experience, in Socialist societies, those deemed a part of the “oppressive class” have at best been deprived of their property, at worst been physically eliminated. Western Leftists really believe their own rhetoric about the West being the cause of most of the problems of the world, and want to “liberate” the planet by bringing down the oppressive class, aka the West.
It is, in my view, impossible to understand Multiculturalism without taking into account this profound influence of Marxist thinking. Marxism states that culture is only of minor or secondary importance, while the primary moving factor is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. This leads to treating cultural differences as insignificant, and thus the conclusion that major differences in performance between groups are caused by poverty and exploitation. This is exactly the picture we are presented by our media as the source of the difficulties in the Islamic world.
Daniel Pipes notes that “Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists’ auxiliary mujahideen.”
Pipes warns that “Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been. Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them.”
In short: You know you live in a Western country when the media is cheering for your enemies, when your schools and universities teach your children that your civilization is evil and when your politicians think it’s a sign of “extremism” if you want to protect your nation’s borders.
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said that “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” Perhaps we will win this struggle for liberty only when Western left-wingers decide that love their children more than they hate Western civilization. If they have children in the first place, that is.
To quote The True Believer by Eric Hoffer:
“The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring super individual goal which could give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement.”
And later Hoffer points out that “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.”
- - - - - - - - - -
In The Weekly Standard, Michel Gurfinkiel notes that indeed, there are intellectuals “who relish the prospect of a new French Revolution, and welcome the suburban rioters as its spearhead. Nothing is more revealing, in this respect, than the success of a feverish political novel, Supplément au Roman National (A Sequel to the National Narrative), by 28-year-old author Jean-ric Boulin. Published two months ago, it forecasts a ‘social and racial’ revolution in France in 2007. First a wave of suicide bombings in Paris. Then martial law. Then, finally, the great rebellion of the French poor: the native underclass, the Arabs, and the blacks, who unite under the green flag of Islam and the tricolor of France and march on Paris — as a sort of Commune in reverse. Boulin gallantly supports such an outcome.”
Bruce Thornton writes about Robert Conquest’s book Reflections on a Ravaged Century. especially his chapter on Soviet Myths and the Western Mind:
“As Conquest documents, many Western intellectuals and academics were delusional about the reality of the communist threat. For a host of reasons — a quasi-religious faith in utopian socialism, neurotic hatred of their own culture, vulnerability to an ideology that dressed itself in scientific garb, an adolescent romance with revolution, and sheer ignorance of the facts — many professors, pundits, politicians, and religious leaders refused to believe that Soviet leaders meant what they said about revolution and subversion.” Because of this, “throughout the Cold War, the Western resolve to resist Soviet expansionism was undercut by ‘peace’ movements, nuclear disarmament movements, calls for détente and ‘dialogue,’ and claims of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.”
According to Thornton, other parallels between Cold War Sovietophiles and today’s rationalizers for Jihad present themselves. The academic establishment for most of the Cold War “was predisposed to leftist ideology.”
When US President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, after Jimmy Carter had made a mockery out of the presidency and his inaction contributed to the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the massive Soviet military machinery placed medium-range SS-20 nuclear missiles to intimidate Western Europe and split NATO. They also encouraged massive demonstrations and campaigns within the West for unilateral Western disarmament. Yet Reagan chose to up the ante by deploying new U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe. He denounced the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” and engaged the Soviets in a military build-up that bankrupted their fragile economy. Reagan, who dared to challenge blackmail from one of the most brutal regimes in human history, was reviled and ridiculed by the leftist intelligentsia, and is still hated even a generation after the Cold War ended. Yet a man such as Mr. Treholt, who appeased the same regime, is viewed in positive terms.
Sadly, conservatives demsontrated negligence after the Cold War. We never properly denounced Marxism as an ideology as well as discredited those individuals who had supported it, the way it was done with Fascism after WW2. That was a mistake. We had a massive fifth column of left-wingers during the Cold War who sapped our strength and appeased our enemies. These very same groups have been allowed to continue their work uninterrupted, and went straight from appeasing Soviet Communism to appeasing Islamic Jihad.
The West and Westerners in general are treated as the “global oppressive class” by our Marxist-inspired academic elites. From historical experience, in Socialist societies, those deemed a part of the “oppressive class” have at best been deprived of their property, at worst been physically eliminated. Western Leftists really believe their own rhetoric about the West being the cause of most of the problems of the world, and want to “liberate” the planet by bringing down the oppressive class, aka the West.
It is, in my view, impossible to understand Multiculturalism without taking into account this profound influence of Marxist thinking. Marxism states that culture is only of minor or secondary importance, while the primary moving factor is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. This leads to treating cultural differences as insignificant, and thus the conclusion that major differences in performance between groups are caused by poverty and exploitation. This is exactly the picture we are presented by our media as the source of the difficulties in the Islamic world.
Daniel Pipes notes that “Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’ attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists’ auxiliary mujahideen.”
Pipes warns that “Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been. Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them.”
In short: You know you live in a Western country when the media is cheering for your enemies, when your schools and universities teach your children that your civilization is evil and when your politicians think it’s a sign of “extremism” if you want to protect your nation’s borders.
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said that “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” Perhaps we will win this struggle for liberty only when Western left-wingers decide that love their children more than they hate Western civilization. If they have children in the first place, that is.
No more $39 Kegs.
Local Liquor Store to Shut Its Doors
Students No Longer Whistling Dixie
By James Hilson
Hoya Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Dixie Liquors on M Street, a popular supplier of alcohol among Georgetown students, will close its doors later this week after more than 50 years in business.
The store’s location near Georgetown’s campus and many off-campus student residences has made Dixie a decades-old hotspot for students seeking alcoholic beverages.
Employees declined to comment on the reasons for Dixie’s closure.
Dave Del Bene (COL ’93), general manager of Clyde’s Restaurant on M Street, said he remembers Dixie as the lifeline of the university’s social scene during his years at Georgetown.
“That was the place to buy kegs if you were having a party,” Del Bene said.
Several students said that they see the store’s closure as an inconvenience, given its proximity to the university.
“It’s a close place to get alcohol,” Meg Benner (COL ’07) said. “I’ll probably just have to plan ahead and go to Towne [Liquors],” which is located on Wisconsin Ave. between N and O Streets.
The closing comes less than a year after another well-established Georgetown business, Sugar’s Campus Store on 35th and O Streets, closed its doors, which engendered a brief student campaign to keep the store open.
Some said that they think Dixie’s closing will have less of a sentimental impact on the Georgetown community than Sugar’s closing did because Dixie is less visible to Georgetown students on a daily basis than Sugar’s was.
“I don’t think Georgetown students get emotional attachments to liquor stores,” Ben Ryan (COL ’08) said.
Clay Keir (SFS ’07) said that although he regrets the loss of a convenient place to purchase kegs, the discounted prices that Dixie is offering in its final days of operations are a benefit of the store’s closure. He said that he saved nearly 50 percent on his most recent purchase.
“I actually bought a ton of stuff today,” Keir said. “It’s really just a great benefit to us all now that we can buy cheap alcohol.”
Chris Lee, manager of Wagner’s Liquor Shop on Wisconsin Avenue, said that he expects business to increase as a result of Dixie’s closure, particularly with regard to keg sales.
Dixie is “probably the number one keg seller in D.C.,” he said.
Dixie, which is licensed under the applicant name M R S Enterprises, has encountered trouble with city alcohol regulations at least once in the past. According to a September 2005 report in The Washington Post, the city suspended the store’s liquor license for 30 days and fined the store $7,000 for selling kegs without proper registration as required by D.C. law.
Jeff Coudriet, director of operations for the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The “Greed” Fallacy
It will get you nowhere.
By Thomas Sowell
In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by “greed.”
Today there are adults — including educated adults — who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives’ salaries as being due to “greed.”
Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates’s — but this greed would not increase my income by one cent.
If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of their own desires — whether “greedy” or not — but because of what other people are willing to pay them.
The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much?
One popular explanation is that executive salaries are set by boards of directors who are spending the stockholders’ money and do not care that they are overpaying a CEO, who may be the one responsible for putting them on the board of directors in the first place.
It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases. What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders.
In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation’s profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want.
If people who are capable of being outstanding executives were a dime a dozen, nobody would pay eleven cents a dozen for them.
Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it — and those few individuals who could probably couldn’t grow orchids or train horses.
In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people’s specialties.
The idea that everything must “justify itself before the bar of reason” goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world.
Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything “justify itself before the bar of reason” means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don’t have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing.
It means demanding that ignorance override knowledge.
The ignorant are not just some separate group of people. As Will Rogers said, everybody is ignorant, but just about different things.
Should computer experts tell brain surgeons how to do their job? Or horse trainers tell either of them what to do?
One of the reasons why central planning sounds so good, but has failed so badly that even socialist and Communist governments finally abandoned the idea by the end of the 20th century, is that nobody knows enough to second guess everybody else.
Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of “greed” and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. There have been more than a dozen investigations of oil companies over the years, and none of them has turned up the collusion that is supposed to be responsible for high gas prices.
Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their “greed”? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like “greed”?
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
It will get you nowhere.
By Thomas Sowell
In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by “greed.”
Today there are adults — including educated adults — who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives’ salaries as being due to “greed.”
Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates’s — but this greed would not increase my income by one cent.
If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of their own desires — whether “greedy” or not — but because of what other people are willing to pay them.
The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much?
One popular explanation is that executive salaries are set by boards of directors who are spending the stockholders’ money and do not care that they are overpaying a CEO, who may be the one responsible for putting them on the board of directors in the first place.
It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases. What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders.
In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation’s profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want.
If people who are capable of being outstanding executives were a dime a dozen, nobody would pay eleven cents a dozen for them.
Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it — and those few individuals who could probably couldn’t grow orchids or train horses.
In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people’s specialties.
The idea that everything must “justify itself before the bar of reason” goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world.
Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything “justify itself before the bar of reason” means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don’t have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing.
It means demanding that ignorance override knowledge.
The ignorant are not just some separate group of people. As Will Rogers said, everybody is ignorant, but just about different things.
Should computer experts tell brain surgeons how to do their job? Or horse trainers tell either of them what to do?
One of the reasons why central planning sounds so good, but has failed so badly that even socialist and Communist governments finally abandoned the idea by the end of the 20th century, is that nobody knows enough to second guess everybody else.
Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of “greed” and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. There have been more than a dozen investigations of oil companies over the years, and none of them has turned up the collusion that is supposed to be responsible for high gas prices.
Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their “greed”? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like “greed”?
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/
"Daniel Pipes spoke next. I also went to his talk on Saturday evening at South Hampstead Synagogue. There he said that in the run-up to the Conference he had received so many emails from London warning him that the audience would be very hostile that he had worked harder on this speech than any other that he had ever given.
It certainly paid off – his speech was outstanding – well-judged, scholarly, well moderated and logical throughout. He began by going back to Samuel Huntington’s original “Clash of Civilisations” paper in Foreign Affairs in 1993. Huntington had warned that clashes between civilisations had become the greatest threat to world peace. He had identified eight civilisations - Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African. But – Pipes said – there were many problems with Huntington ’s analysis. First, the civilisations he cited are not a political concept. Second, the thesis cannot account for violence within civilisations – he cited the Rushdie Affair. Third, it ignored agreement across civilisations. Fourth, it cannot account for changes over time, eg the increase in tension between the US and Europe .
“Can a world civilisation exist?” asked Pipes “No, not as Huntington defined it”. But a world civilisation was possible as a coalition against what he termed “barbarism”. He then defined what he called ‘Ideological barbarians’ – fascists, totalitarian Communists and most recently – Islamists. The great question – he said – is how to oppose the barbarians. The Mayor , he said, proposed multiculturalism. But he – Pipes – wanted to win what he termed a War against barbarism. The UK had become a safe haven for terrorists. David Blunkett had noted that British based terrorists had carried out incidents in 15 countries. President Mubarak of Egypt had denounced the UK for protecting terrorists.
Pipes then focused on three aspects of Islamism. One, it was attempting to extend Sharia law into new areas. Two, it divided the world into two – those who held the right religion and everyone else. Three, it’s totalitarian and anti-modern. Here he cited Tony Blair’s August speech in Los Angeles (“it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it”).
He went on to ask why some elements of the traditional Left (in which he included Livingstone) were so supportive of Islamism when they opposed other forms of totalitarianism. His answer was that they shared the same enemies. Harold Pinter, for example, said that “the US was run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug”. Chomsky had called the US “a leading terrorist State”. He noted that the demonstration in Hyde Park on 16 February 2003 was organised by a coalition of Islamists and the Left. Norman Mailer said about 9/11 “We had to realise that the people that did this were brilliant”. Parts of the Left dismiss terrorism as an irritant and blame it on eg Western ‘colonialism’.
In conclusion, said Pipes, there is no way to appease this ideology. It must be defeated as the Germans and Soviets were defeated. Islamism can only be defeated by a coalition of the ‘civilised’, among whom he cited a long list of Muslim dissidents, for example, Irshad Manji."
It certainly paid off – his speech was outstanding – well-judged, scholarly, well moderated and logical throughout. He began by going back to Samuel Huntington’s original “Clash of Civilisations” paper in Foreign Affairs in 1993. Huntington had warned that clashes between civilisations had become the greatest threat to world peace. He had identified eight civilisations - Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African. But – Pipes said – there were many problems with Huntington ’s analysis. First, the civilisations he cited are not a political concept. Second, the thesis cannot account for violence within civilisations – he cited the Rushdie Affair. Third, it ignored agreement across civilisations. Fourth, it cannot account for changes over time, eg the increase in tension between the US and Europe .
“Can a world civilisation exist?” asked Pipes “No, not as Huntington defined it”. But a world civilisation was possible as a coalition against what he termed “barbarism”. He then defined what he called ‘Ideological barbarians’ – fascists, totalitarian Communists and most recently – Islamists. The great question – he said – is how to oppose the barbarians. The Mayor , he said, proposed multiculturalism. But he – Pipes – wanted to win what he termed a War against barbarism. The UK had become a safe haven for terrorists. David Blunkett had noted that British based terrorists had carried out incidents in 15 countries. President Mubarak of Egypt had denounced the UK for protecting terrorists.
Pipes then focused on three aspects of Islamism. One, it was attempting to extend Sharia law into new areas. Two, it divided the world into two – those who held the right religion and everyone else. Three, it’s totalitarian and anti-modern. Here he cited Tony Blair’s August speech in Los Angeles (“it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it”).
He went on to ask why some elements of the traditional Left (in which he included Livingstone) were so supportive of Islamism when they opposed other forms of totalitarianism. His answer was that they shared the same enemies. Harold Pinter, for example, said that “the US was run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug”. Chomsky had called the US “a leading terrorist State”. He noted that the demonstration in Hyde Park on 16 February 2003 was organised by a coalition of Islamists and the Left. Norman Mailer said about 9/11 “We had to realise that the people that did this were brilliant”. Parts of the Left dismiss terrorism as an irritant and blame it on eg Western ‘colonialism’.
In conclusion, said Pipes, there is no way to appease this ideology. It must be defeated as the Germans and Soviets were defeated. Islamism can only be defeated by a coalition of the ‘civilised’, among whom he cited a long list of Muslim dissidents, for example, Irshad Manji."
That's Kelly Leak!
Jackie Earle Haley
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Jackie Earle Haley
Jackie Earle Haley (born July 14, 1961 in Northridge, California, USA) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor who is best known for his portrayal of Kelly Leak, the motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking little leaguer in The Bad News Bears. Haley has appeared in numerous films, including Damnation Alley, The Day of the Locust, and Losin' It, as well as guest roles on TV. A touchstone performance is that of "Moocher," the hot-tempered runt in the acclaimed 1979 film Breaking Away and later in the short lived 1980-1981 series Breaking Away, which was based on the hit film.
He has made guest appearances on such TV shows as Marcus Welby, M.D., The Waltons, The Love Boat, and Renegade.
While Haley's film career remained dormant during most of the 1990s and early 2000s (during which time he began a career as a successful producer and director of television commercials), he has recently returned to acting, appearing in All The Kings Men, and giving a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated performance as a community-derided out-of-jail sex offender in Little Children, also starring Kate Winslet.
Monday, January 22, 2007
The happiest man in the world?
... and you can learn how he does it, says academic-turned-Buddhist monk
By Anthony Barnes
Published: 21 January 2007
To scientists, he is the world's happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale.
Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a "skill" to be learned.
His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.
But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone's happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.
MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators - who had completed more than 10,000 hours each - experienced a huge level of "positive emotions" in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.
Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard's abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.
"The mind is malleable," Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. "Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time."
Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris's intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.
A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.
Mr Ricard is to publish his book Happiness for the first time in the UK next month.
... and you can learn how he does it, says academic-turned-Buddhist monk
By Anthony Barnes
Published: 21 January 2007
To scientists, he is the world's happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale.
Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a "skill" to be learned.
His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.
But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone's happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.
MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators - who had completed more than 10,000 hours each - experienced a huge level of "positive emotions" in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.
Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard's abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.
"The mind is malleable," Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. "Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time."
Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris's intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.
A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.
Mr Ricard is to publish his book Happiness for the first time in the UK next month.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The Associated Press would never publish a racist word like “gringos” (as the headline, yet!) if it were directed at one of their protected groups: Chavez to U.S.: ‘Go to hell, gringos!’
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez told U.S. officials to “Go to hell!” on his weekly radio and TV show Sunday for what he called unacceptable meddling after Washington raised concerns about a measure to grant Venezuela’s fiery leftist leader broad lawmaking powers.
The National Assembly, which is controlled by the president’s political allies, is expected to give final approval this week to what it calls the “enabling law,” which would give Chavez the authority to pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period.
On Friday, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Chavez’s plans under the law “have caused us some concern.”
Chavez rejected Casey’s statement in his broadcast, saying: “Go to hell, gringos! Go home!”
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez told U.S. officials to “Go to hell!” on his weekly radio and TV show Sunday for what he called unacceptable meddling after Washington raised concerns about a measure to grant Venezuela’s fiery leftist leader broad lawmaking powers.
The National Assembly, which is controlled by the president’s political allies, is expected to give final approval this week to what it calls the “enabling law,” which would give Chavez the authority to pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period.
On Friday, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Chavez’s plans under the law “have caused us some concern.”
Chavez rejected Casey’s statement in his broadcast, saying: “Go to hell, gringos! Go home!”
At City Journal, Christopher Hitchens has a thoughtful criticism of Mark Steyn’s excellent book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It:
Facing the Islamist Menace.
In the prologue to his new book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn sarcastically alludes to two people whom, in different ways, I know well. The first is novelist Martin Amis, ridiculed by Steyn for worrying about environmental apocalypse when the threat to civilization is obviously Islamism; the second is Jack Straw, formerly Tony Blair’s foreign secretary, mocked for the soft and conciliatory line he took over the affair of the Danish cartoons. The dazzling fiction writer and the pedestrian social-democratic politician are for Steyn dual exemplars of his book’s main concern: the general apathy and surrender of the West in the face of a determined assault from a religious ideology, or an ideological religion, afflicted by no sickly doubt about what it wants or by any scruples about how to get it.
I might quibble about Steyn’s assessment—Amis has written brilliantly about Mohammed Atta’s death cult, for example, while Jack Straw made one of the best presentations to the UN of the case for liberating Iraq. But it’s more useful to point out two things that have happened between the writing of this admirably tough-minded book and its publication. Jack Straw, now the leader of the House of Commons, made a speech in his northern English constituency in October, in which he said that he could no longer tolerate Muslim women who came to his office wearing veils. The speech catalyzed a long-postponed debate not just on the veil but on the refusal of assimilation that it symbolizes. It seems to have swung the Labour Party into a much firmer position against what I call one-way multiculturalism. Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed the shift with a December speech emphasizing the “duty” of immigrants to assimilate to British values. And Martin Amis, speaking to the London Times, had this to say:
There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. . . . They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs—well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.
I know both of these men to be profoundly humanistic and open-minded. Straw has defended the rights of immigrants all his life and loyally represents a constituency with a large Asian population. Amis has rebuked me several times in print for supporting the intervention in Iraq, the casualties of which have become horrifying to him. Even five years ago, it would have been unthinkable to picture either man making critical comments about Islamic dress, let alone using terms such as “deportation.” Mark Steyn’s book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.
Facing the Islamist Menace.
In the prologue to his new book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn sarcastically alludes to two people whom, in different ways, I know well. The first is novelist Martin Amis, ridiculed by Steyn for worrying about environmental apocalypse when the threat to civilization is obviously Islamism; the second is Jack Straw, formerly Tony Blair’s foreign secretary, mocked for the soft and conciliatory line he took over the affair of the Danish cartoons. The dazzling fiction writer and the pedestrian social-democratic politician are for Steyn dual exemplars of his book’s main concern: the general apathy and surrender of the West in the face of a determined assault from a religious ideology, or an ideological religion, afflicted by no sickly doubt about what it wants or by any scruples about how to get it.
I might quibble about Steyn’s assessment—Amis has written brilliantly about Mohammed Atta’s death cult, for example, while Jack Straw made one of the best presentations to the UN of the case for liberating Iraq. But it’s more useful to point out two things that have happened between the writing of this admirably tough-minded book and its publication. Jack Straw, now the leader of the House of Commons, made a speech in his northern English constituency in October, in which he said that he could no longer tolerate Muslim women who came to his office wearing veils. The speech catalyzed a long-postponed debate not just on the veil but on the refusal of assimilation that it symbolizes. It seems to have swung the Labour Party into a much firmer position against what I call one-way multiculturalism. Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed the shift with a December speech emphasizing the “duty” of immigrants to assimilate to British values. And Martin Amis, speaking to the London Times, had this to say:
There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. . . . They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs—well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.
I know both of these men to be profoundly humanistic and open-minded. Straw has defended the rights of immigrants all his life and loyally represents a constituency with a large Asian population. Amis has rebuked me several times in print for supporting the intervention in Iraq, the casualties of which have become horrifying to him. Even five years ago, it would have been unthinkable to picture either man making critical comments about Islamic dress, let alone using terms such as “deportation.” Mark Steyn’s book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.
"But no more. The Weather Channel is now engaged in a con job on the American people, attempting to scare the public that their actions are destroying the planet by creating a global warming crisis.
The move away from scientific forecasting of the weather to sensationalized leftist political advocacy is in part due to the influence of Wonya Lucas, executive vice president and general manager of The Weather Channel Networks.
Lucas admitted in a recent interview with Media Village that the reprogramming of The Weather Channel was influenced by her tenure at CNN when that network shifted from presenting straight news to personality-driven programming.
Lucas decided that what was good for CNN was good for The Weather Channel, and the objectivity and respectability of the network has now been thrown out the window. It doesn't matter that CNN's turn to the left has caused their ratings to plummet; The Weather Channel's embraced its model.
Media Village reported that the move by The Weather Channel "is intended to establish a broader perspective on the weather category and, says Lucas, to move the brand from functional to emotional."
Emotional weather forecasting?
The Weather Channel is launching a new website and broadband channel dedicated solely to global warming called "One Degree" and has a weekly program called "The Climate Code," devoted almost entirely to liberal advocacy on climate matters.
The network is running advertisements showcasing scared and confused Americans, including children and senior citizens, wondering about the coming apocalypse caused by global warming. (You can view the ad for yourself here.)
The chief martyr for the new "emotional" approach to broadcasting at The Weather Channel is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who serves as the network's cheerleader for global warming hysteria. Cullen's supposed expertise on climatology includes, among other things, earning a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. One must indeed have to believe in the mystical to accept anything Ms. Cullen has to say about climatology.
Writing for the One Degree blog, Ms. Cullen recently threw a hissy fit that some meteorologists are openly questioning the conclusions drawn by the Greenpeace crowd about the nature, extent, causes and even existence of global warming.
Cullen's diatribe, titled "Junk Controversy Not Junk Science," called on the American Meteorological Society to start requiring all meteorologists to toe the line on liberal interpretation of global warming, or else lose the organization's certification.
George Orwell's 1984 couldn't have concocted a better form of thought control."
The move away from scientific forecasting of the weather to sensationalized leftist political advocacy is in part due to the influence of Wonya Lucas, executive vice president and general manager of The Weather Channel Networks.
Lucas admitted in a recent interview with Media Village that the reprogramming of The Weather Channel was influenced by her tenure at CNN when that network shifted from presenting straight news to personality-driven programming.
Lucas decided that what was good for CNN was good for The Weather Channel, and the objectivity and respectability of the network has now been thrown out the window. It doesn't matter that CNN's turn to the left has caused their ratings to plummet; The Weather Channel's embraced its model.
Media Village reported that the move by The Weather Channel "is intended to establish a broader perspective on the weather category and, says Lucas, to move the brand from functional to emotional."
Emotional weather forecasting?
The Weather Channel is launching a new website and broadband channel dedicated solely to global warming called "One Degree" and has a weekly program called "The Climate Code," devoted almost entirely to liberal advocacy on climate matters.
The network is running advertisements showcasing scared and confused Americans, including children and senior citizens, wondering about the coming apocalypse caused by global warming. (You can view the ad for yourself here.)
The chief martyr for the new "emotional" approach to broadcasting at The Weather Channel is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who serves as the network's cheerleader for global warming hysteria. Cullen's supposed expertise on climatology includes, among other things, earning a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. One must indeed have to believe in the mystical to accept anything Ms. Cullen has to say about climatology.
Writing for the One Degree blog, Ms. Cullen recently threw a hissy fit that some meteorologists are openly questioning the conclusions drawn by the Greenpeace crowd about the nature, extent, causes and even existence of global warming.
Cullen's diatribe, titled "Junk Controversy Not Junk Science," called on the American Meteorological Society to start requiring all meteorologists to toe the line on liberal interpretation of global warming, or else lose the organization's certification.
George Orwell's 1984 couldn't have concocted a better form of thought control."
Friday, January 19, 2007
The Weather Channel Mess
January 18, 2007 James Spann Op/Ed
Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?
I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:
*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.
*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.
If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.
In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.
WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.
I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go.
January 18, 2007 James Spann Op/Ed
Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?
I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:
*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.
*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.
If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.
In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.
WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.
I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go.
HON. GEORGE E. SANGMEISTER
in the House of Representatives
TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 1990
Mr. SANGMEISTER. Mr. Speaker, each year the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and its Ladies Auxiliary conduct the Voice of Democracy broadcast scriptwriting contest. This year more than 137,000 secondary school students participated in the contest competing for the 12 national scholarships totaling $56,000, which was distributed among the top 12 winners. The contest theme this year was `Why I Am Proud of America.'
The winning contestant from each State came to Washington, DC, for the final judging as a guest of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
I am proud to announce that Steven Connor Cortes from Park Forest, IL, was the first place winner for the State of Illinois in the Voice of Democracy broadcast scriptwriting contest. Mr. Cortes is a senior at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, IL. I am submitting Mr. Cortes' speech for the Record so that others may benefit and be inspired by this young man's words.
[Page: E1170]
(BY STEVEN C. CORTES)
I am in love with a lady in New York. We have met only once, yet I am in awe of her. She is beautiful, yet strong, old yet forever young. She is the Statue of Liberty, and she represents the reasons Why I Am Proud of America.
The Statue of Liberty, majestic and beautiful, stands as a symbol of the greatness of America. I am proud of America because America is a great nation, the greatest in the world. However, this greatness is not deprived from our national wealth or prestige. No, America's greatness emanates from its people * * * its spirit. Dwight D. Eisenhower stated it well when he said, `America is great because America is good.' You can see the goodness of America everywhere, in South Carolina, where volunteer groups are helping the victims of Hurricane Hugo rebuild their shattered homes * * * in Northern California, where neighbor is helping neighbor recover from a devastating earthquake. America's goodness is evident in the inner-cities, where volunteers are teaching their fellow Americans to read and write and providing food and shelter for the less fortunate.
I am proud of America because we welcome immigrants from around the world and allow them to share in our opportunity. Opportunity * * * America still is the land of opportunity * * * a country where no dream is too big, and dreams can become a reality. In America's free enterprise system, a person is rewarded and judged by merit, not birthright or status. Because of this opportunity, we have become a nation of vision * * * a bold nation of men and women striving to defy the odds and achieve success * * * such as Walt Disney, who as a boy in Chicago held two jobs to help support his poor family, but through hard work and visionary spirit rose to achieve unparalleled success in the entertainment industry.
The American people are champions of the underdog, this is the country where a man, like Abraham Lincoln, can go from a log cabin to the White House where a poor ghetto kid can become a head of a corporation, and an immigrant can share in the American Dream. I am proud of America because the American Dream is still a reality. The American Dream says that anyone who is willing to work can share in the prosperity that is America.
I am also proud of America because we are free people * * * free to determine our own destiny, free to express ourselves, free to exercise our religious beliefs. We are free from the tyranny and oppression which so much of the world endures. We enjoy these freedoms because we are a democracy, a nation in which the people rule the government, not the other way around.
This past summer, we all witnessed with great admiration the students of Beijing, China, as they raised an effigy of the Statue of Liberty, and quoted Patrick Henry while demanding freedom and democracy from their communist government. Then, we were horrified when the Chinese Army slaughtered thousands of those innocent demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The difference between China and the United States is that those brave Chinese students have no rights. I am proud that in America we have rights to protect us from tyranny. I am proud that in this, the 200 year anniversary of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution still protects our personal liberty.
We owe much of our liberty to the Fathers of our country, men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, patriots who fought and died for our independence and created our government, truly they did pledge, in the words of the Declaration of Independence their `lives,' their `fortunes,' and their `sacred honor.'
In the intervening years and wars, countless brave veterans from Saratoga to Normandy, from Yorktown, to Iwo Jima have renewed this pledge and paid the price for freedom. Often that price was their lives.
The Statue of Liberty symbolizes the goodness, the opportunity, and the freedom of America, I am proud of the United States, and I thank God daily that I was born an American. May we all, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, pledge `our lives our fortunes, and our sacred honor' to defend and advance the cause of mankinds greatest hope * * * the United States of America.
in the House of Representatives
TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 1990
Mr. SANGMEISTER. Mr. Speaker, each year the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and its Ladies Auxiliary conduct the Voice of Democracy broadcast scriptwriting contest. This year more than 137,000 secondary school students participated in the contest competing for the 12 national scholarships totaling $56,000, which was distributed among the top 12 winners. The contest theme this year was `Why I Am Proud of America.'
The winning contestant from each State came to Washington, DC, for the final judging as a guest of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
I am proud to announce that Steven Connor Cortes from Park Forest, IL, was the first place winner for the State of Illinois in the Voice of Democracy broadcast scriptwriting contest. Mr. Cortes is a senior at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, IL. I am submitting Mr. Cortes' speech for the Record so that others may benefit and be inspired by this young man's words.
[Page: E1170]
(BY STEVEN C. CORTES)
I am in love with a lady in New York. We have met only once, yet I am in awe of her. She is beautiful, yet strong, old yet forever young. She is the Statue of Liberty, and she represents the reasons Why I Am Proud of America.
The Statue of Liberty, majestic and beautiful, stands as a symbol of the greatness of America. I am proud of America because America is a great nation, the greatest in the world. However, this greatness is not deprived from our national wealth or prestige. No, America's greatness emanates from its people * * * its spirit. Dwight D. Eisenhower stated it well when he said, `America is great because America is good.' You can see the goodness of America everywhere, in South Carolina, where volunteer groups are helping the victims of Hurricane Hugo rebuild their shattered homes * * * in Northern California, where neighbor is helping neighbor recover from a devastating earthquake. America's goodness is evident in the inner-cities, where volunteers are teaching their fellow Americans to read and write and providing food and shelter for the less fortunate.
I am proud of America because we welcome immigrants from around the world and allow them to share in our opportunity. Opportunity * * * America still is the land of opportunity * * * a country where no dream is too big, and dreams can become a reality. In America's free enterprise system, a person is rewarded and judged by merit, not birthright or status. Because of this opportunity, we have become a nation of vision * * * a bold nation of men and women striving to defy the odds and achieve success * * * such as Walt Disney, who as a boy in Chicago held two jobs to help support his poor family, but through hard work and visionary spirit rose to achieve unparalleled success in the entertainment industry.
The American people are champions of the underdog, this is the country where a man, like Abraham Lincoln, can go from a log cabin to the White House where a poor ghetto kid can become a head of a corporation, and an immigrant can share in the American Dream. I am proud of America because the American Dream is still a reality. The American Dream says that anyone who is willing to work can share in the prosperity that is America.
I am also proud of America because we are free people * * * free to determine our own destiny, free to express ourselves, free to exercise our religious beliefs. We are free from the tyranny and oppression which so much of the world endures. We enjoy these freedoms because we are a democracy, a nation in which the people rule the government, not the other way around.
This past summer, we all witnessed with great admiration the students of Beijing, China, as they raised an effigy of the Statue of Liberty, and quoted Patrick Henry while demanding freedom and democracy from their communist government. Then, we were horrified when the Chinese Army slaughtered thousands of those innocent demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The difference between China and the United States is that those brave Chinese students have no rights. I am proud that in America we have rights to protect us from tyranny. I am proud that in this, the 200 year anniversary of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution still protects our personal liberty.
We owe much of our liberty to the Fathers of our country, men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, patriots who fought and died for our independence and created our government, truly they did pledge, in the words of the Declaration of Independence their `lives,' their `fortunes,' and their `sacred honor.'
In the intervening years and wars, countless brave veterans from Saratoga to Normandy, from Yorktown, to Iwo Jima have renewed this pledge and paid the price for freedom. Often that price was their lives.
The Statue of Liberty symbolizes the goodness, the opportunity, and the freedom of America, I am proud of the United States, and I thank God daily that I was born an American. May we all, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, pledge `our lives our fortunes, and our sacred honor' to defend and advance the cause of mankinds greatest hope * * * the United States of America.
Mystery Visitor at Poe's Grave
A bottle of cognac and three roses are seen ...
BALTIMORE - For the 58th straight year, a mysterious visitor left birthday cognac and roses at Edgar Allan Poe's grave Friday, and he was watched by more onlookers than ever, a faithful viewer said.
Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said 55 people braved a chilly morning to glimpse the annual ritual of the mysterious visitor known as the Poe toaster.
"If I were the Poe toaster, and I saw and heard that crowd, I wouldn't show up," Jerome said before the ceremony.
As in years past, the visitor placed a half-empty bottle of cognac and three red roses at the grave on Poe's birthday, Jerome said.
Once it realized who he was, the crowd rushed to one of the cemetery's entrances to get a glimpse, and the toaster slipped out another way, Jerome said.
He said this year's crowd was large but well behaved, unlike last year when watchers tried to interfere with the tribute.
Jerome said he would no longer describe the visitor or what he was wearing because of last year's unruly spectators.
One onlooker Friday dressed up to look like the Poe toaster had in a previous year, said Jerome, who has seen the mystery visitor every Jan. 19 since 1976.
Starting in 1949, a frail figure made the visit to Poe's grave. In 1993, the original visitor left a cryptic note saying, "The torch will be passed." A later note said the man, who apparently died in 1998, had handed the tradition on to his sons.
Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories such as "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," was born in Boston and raised in Richmond, Va. He died Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.
BALTIMORE - For the 58th straight year, a mysterious visitor left birthday cognac and roses at Edgar Allan Poe's grave Friday, and he was watched by more onlookers than ever, a faithful viewer said.
Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said 55 people braved a chilly morning to glimpse the annual ritual of the mysterious visitor known as the Poe toaster.
"If I were the Poe toaster, and I saw and heard that crowd, I wouldn't show up," Jerome said before the ceremony.
As in years past, the visitor placed a half-empty bottle of cognac and three red roses at the grave on Poe's birthday, Jerome said.
Once it realized who he was, the crowd rushed to one of the cemetery's entrances to get a glimpse, and the toaster slipped out another way, Jerome said.
He said this year's crowd was large but well behaved, unlike last year when watchers tried to interfere with the tribute.
Jerome said he would no longer describe the visitor or what he was wearing because of last year's unruly spectators.
One onlooker Friday dressed up to look like the Poe toaster had in a previous year, said Jerome, who has seen the mystery visitor every Jan. 19 since 1976.
Starting in 1949, a frail figure made the visit to Poe's grave. In 1993, the original visitor left a cryptic note saying, "The torch will be passed." A later note said the man, who apparently died in 1998, had handed the tradition on to his sons.
Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories such as "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," was born in Boston and raised in Richmond, Va. He died Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.
Oliver Reed
He was famous for his excessive drinking, and was once forced to leave the set of the Channel 4 television discussion programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett. On another occasion he removed his trousers during an interview.
Reed's drinking bouts fitted in with the "social" attitude of many rugby teams in the 1960s and '70s, and there are numerous anecdotes such as Reed and 36 friends drinking, in an evening, 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham. He subsequently revised the story that he drank 106 pints of beer on a 2-day binge before marrying Josephine; "The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey about 15 years ago, it was highly exaggerated." Steve McQueen told the story that in 1973 he had flown to the UK to discuss a film project with Reed and suggested the pair go to a nightclub in London. This led to a marathon pub crawl during which Reed threw up on McQueen. Reed was often irritated that his appearances on TV chat shows concentrated on his drinking feats, rather than his latest film.He was happiest in the company of hospital porters and gardeners rather than with the rich and famous,although drummer Keith Moon (of The Who) was a very close friend up to Moon's death.
In latter years, Reed could often be seen quietly drinking with his wife Josephine Burge, at the bar of the White Horse Hotel in the High Street in Dorking, Surrey, not far from his home in Oakwoodhill. He had sold his larger house, 'Broome Hall', between the villages of Coldharbour and Ockley some years previously.
He died suddenly from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, reportedly after drinking three bottles of rum and beating five sailors at arm wrestling at a bar called "The Pub." (The owners have since added "Ollie's Last Pub" to the sign.[1]) His funeral was held in Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland. The song "Consider Yourself" from Oliver! was played at the funeral.
www.joost.com
Joost in time
So what is it? Quite simply, Joost turns your PC into an instant, on-demand TV. No set top box is required.
There's really three parts to the technology. Joost operates a server farm to cache the video, manage seeding, and maintain QoS, but the idea is that much of the content resides on people's own PCs.
Like Bittorrent it takes advantage of your largely under-utilized uplink. The video is received over a proprietary DRM connection, using encryption of Joost's own devising. Thirdly, there's a Mozilla-based client, for advertisers to develop commercials or marketing tools, and software developers to create their on screen widgets. It comes with a chat client, but examples of Joost widgets include giving clips ratings, and noticeboards.
Because it runs on a PC (Windows now, Mac and Linux to come) applications could include anything that's permitted to access the host's services. deWahl cited one example, custom remote control app for a phone, similar to Salling's splendid Clicker program.
From the outset of our demo, it was clear Joost has cracked some fundamentals. TV runs instantly, full screen and at high quality - there's no lag from activating the TV software to getting something to watch.
It runs in a window too, of course, but there's no messy furniture. And unlike Bill Gates' whacky vision of TV, it isn't a split screen with one half taken up by text ads. The on-screen widgets are discreet, alpha-blended overlays created using SVG and HTML.
So right away, this is YouTube done properly. The chat widget takes us into familiar Interactive TV territory -you can rate clips, chat with friends, and so on.
So what is it? Quite simply, Joost turns your PC into an instant, on-demand TV. No set top box is required.
There's really three parts to the technology. Joost operates a server farm to cache the video, manage seeding, and maintain QoS, but the idea is that much of the content resides on people's own PCs.
Like Bittorrent it takes advantage of your largely under-utilized uplink. The video is received over a proprietary DRM connection, using encryption of Joost's own devising. Thirdly, there's a Mozilla-based client, for advertisers to develop commercials or marketing tools, and software developers to create their on screen widgets. It comes with a chat client, but examples of Joost widgets include giving clips ratings, and noticeboards.
Because it runs on a PC (Windows now, Mac and Linux to come) applications could include anything that's permitted to access the host's services. deWahl cited one example, custom remote control app for a phone, similar to Salling's splendid Clicker program.
From the outset of our demo, it was clear Joost has cracked some fundamentals. TV runs instantly, full screen and at high quality - there's no lag from activating the TV software to getting something to watch.
It runs in a window too, of course, but there's no messy furniture. And unlike Bill Gates' whacky vision of TV, it isn't a split screen with one half taken up by text ads. The on-screen widgets are discreet, alpha-blended overlays created using SVG and HTML.
So right away, this is YouTube done properly. The chat widget takes us into familiar Interactive TV territory -you can rate clips, chat with friends, and so on.
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