The Arkham Review

Semantics and the Five-Legged Dog

2004-12-07T19:59:00.000-05:00

I'm still sick with flu - shaking this infernally persistant little bug is like trying to walk off the edge of the world - but in the course of my fevered news browsing on the web I came upon two little items which took something of the edge off my aches and pains. Presented for your approval, via Matt Drudge and the Washington Times, is this report that Terry McAuliffe took the opportunity of the sixty-second anniversity of the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor to issue a statement attacking House GOP members regarding the intelligence reform bill which is now apparently, for better or worse, on the fast track to being signed into law.

While McAuliffe has a well-deserved reputation for bringing in prodigious sums of money for the Donks, his strategies and tactics for turning them into electoral victories for their candidates has taken a rather brutal beating over the past four years. The lack of resolve in fighting terrorism over the eight years of the Clinton administration, including the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, has never been credibly addressed by McAuliffe and his associates. In that time, the perception of Americans as unwilling to take casualties in battle in order to achieve a military objective was exacerbated, and the desirability of US soil as a target of a major terrorist attack was enhanced, by the ill-concieved attempt to capture warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid during the Battle of Mogadishu, which culminated in the US withdrawing its troops from Somalia after eighteen fatalities were sustained in the battle. The reasoning which made showing weakness to an enemy in the face of battle seem like a viable military option safely germinated under the Clinton administration, but came to full flower in the events of 9-11-2001. Criticizing a group of Pack legislators for deliberating how best to prevent a repeat performance of something similar serves to remind plenty of people of the Clinton administration policies which helped it happen in the first place - policies largely shared by McAuliffe and the current Democratic party, and enough people to make McAuliffe's seized opportunity something of a ricin-coated porcupine.

Via Tom Maguire comes this article on the work of a UC Berkeley linguist named George Lakoff, enlisted by the Democratic Party as a savior du jour, who posits the idea that the Donks can recapture electoral success by wrapping the same ideas they've run on for about a decade in new, better language, on the premise that the Packs are winning elections by successfully selling bad ideas presented with superior language - language so good that it regularly dupes about fifty percent of the electorate into believing that the ideas themselves are superior. Missing from Lakoff's analysis is the possibility that the electorate perceives the positions of both Donks and Packs just fine, and somewhat more often than not prefers the Pack's ideas. As a linguist, perhaps Lakoff thinks that the question of whether one idea is better than another all depends on what the meaning of the word is is. The really funny part about that is that it reads an awful lot like what Lakoff is actually proposing.

I'm delighting in all of this. McAuliffe and Lakoff, and likely most of those in the current Democratic leadership are a bit like a marksman who's enamored of using the same heirloom telescopic sight his father and grandfather used. Yet, when he shoots targets with it he regularly gets his shot patterns displaced at about ten o'clock with his crosshairs centered on the bullseye - the same problem his father and grandfather had when target shooting with that sight, but which he'd always attributed to their rifles or ammunition, or maybe to a lack of practice on their part. He thinks his problem has the same origins, so he runs through large amounts of ammo and frequently practices his shooting technique, he buys a succession of better and better quality rifles and cartridges - and still has the same problem. Until he admits to himself that his problem is his skewed view of his targets in the distance, he'll never hit them in the bullseye.

As a partisan Pack, I'm thankful every day that Terry McAuliffe is the head of the DNC, and that they consider people like him and George Lakoff to be master strategists. As an American, however, I believe that the nation is best served by having both sides of the political debate offer up serious, well-reasoned arguments for healthy competition in the marketplace of ideas. When so many of the Donks' offerings are along the lines of "Bush was AWOL!", "Bush stole the 2000 election!", and "Bush will bring back the draft!", the counterpoint they provide is neither serious nor healthy, and lays the groundwork for a third party to assume the role of credible opposition to the Packs.

Reader Jim C. provides this anecdote in a comment on the Tom Maguire article cited above:

As Lincoln said, "How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

So long as the Donks blame their repeated electoral failures on poor presentation of their ideas and the gullibility of the electorate, rather than entertain the possibility that their opponents' ideas were actually better than theirs, and were well-presented to a discerning electorate, then they will remain, in the words of Zell Miller, "A National Party No More".

Let's try this again, shall we?

2004-11-24T10:45:00.000-05:00

As I write this, I'm sitting in front of my computer at home, convalescing from a knock-down case of flu which started hitting me unambiguously yesterday. The attendant aches and pains only trouble me when I sit, stand up, or lie down. The lying down part is what has me sitting in my chair just now.

For the past few months I've been convalescing from a computer programming course taken during work hours. Between making up the hours spent in class and spending even more time on homework, my blogging suffered like Barbra Streisand on Election Day. Also, I simply had a sort of writer's block for a while, and the November elections didn't pique my interest from the standpoint of writing commentary; I felt other people were providing better and more interesting contributitions on that topic than I thought I would have, and I had no desire to present second-quality work on this site.

However, having been approached by one of my co-workers to return to providing, among other things, non-Wally-George-style conservative commentary, I've decided to find some time in my schedule to resume writing here on a fairly regular basis.

Let the games begin - again.

So, I went away unexpectedly again, and...

2004-08-11T21:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry I left without saying goodbye, as it were. I went on vacation about two weeks ago, after which I started taking some of my work home with me; the project is quite interesting, so it isn't a like I'm forcing myself to work on it. I've also started exercising again, since I've got far more potential energy stored subcutaneously that is good for me. All of this takes time, but I'll try to start providing cogent commentary again tomorrow.

Flat Tire On The Road To Reason, or A Cow For Mrs. O'Leary.

2004-07-26T19:49:00.000-04:00

Bill Quick is one of the good guys, a solid citizen of the Blogosphere - perhaps its first citizen, semantically speaking - and regularly offers some of the most cogent analysis to be found there. As his well-reasoned arguments are very much worth examining, so are the occasional derailments of his train of thought. This is just such an examination of just such a derailment.

Bill commented on a recent incident where Hazel O'Leary, a former Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton, was removed from an airliner by a police detail, called by the pilot when she determined that O'Leary had become too disruptive to remain on the aircraft. Bill's premise was that O'Leary had been mistreated by a pilot who acted like a tin emperor, in accord with ridiculous and oppressive air security laws.

I won't extensively rehash the comments on this, but I will excerpt a few of Bill's statements. When I described air travel as a right and not a privilege, Bill replied:

Traveling by passenger aircraft is not a right, but a privilege.
I'm sorry, but that is anti-liberty, "your rights belong to the state" b******t, nothing more.*

Bill Hedrick made a follow-up comment, included at the top of Bill Quick's reply to it:

Frankly I don't give a rat's patoot about this story, but Bill if air travel is a right not a privilege, why do we pay for it?
Sigh. I saw this one coming. I should have shot it down in advance. Bill, freedom to travel is a right. Freedom to set up an airline company is a right. Freedom to operate that company any damned way you please is a right. What is not a right is for the government to step in and tell the airline companies how to run their businesses.

Bronson Yake addressed that last point pretty authoritatively here, so I'll leave it at that. Further along in the same reply, Bill wrote:

Oh, and airline travel is neither a right nor a privilege - it is a service that is bought and sold.

Bill Quick, without intending to, has made the following argument:

1) Freedom to travel is a right.

2) Flying on airliners is a form of travel.

Therefore:

3) Freedom to fly on airliners is a right.

However:

4) Flying on airliners is a service that is bought and sold.

Therefore:

5) Freedom to buy or sell flying (passage) on airliners is a right.

Therefore:

6) Freedom to buy passage on airliners is a right.

and:

7) Freedom to sell passage on airliners is a right.

Replacement of "passage on airliners" by "passage in taxicabs" or most any other commercially available form of transportation results in logically identical constructions.

The right for one person to buy passage on an airliner implies the responsibility of another person to provide airliner passage, which is to say:

8) Sale of passage on airliners is a responsibility.

And here is where the fatal weakness in this argument shines through. A right is a thing which one can exercise, or not, at will. A responsibility is a thing which is compulsory. This is a classic example of a fallacy of conflicting conditions, which is one of the fallacies of definition.

Unwittingly, Bill has argued that private air carriers must sell air passage to persons who can buy it. Since provision of the passage is implicit in it's sale, that would mean that air carriers would have to provide air passage to people who bought it. The aforementioned logical fallacy aside, this line of reasoning leaves no discretion for an airline to deny service to someone who has bought airline passage even if they exhibit disruptive or outright dangerous behavior during a flight, which is ridiculous on its face.

I suspect that even conduct not explicitly proscribed by the law or the airline's own guidelines could be legally acceptable grounds for sanctioning a badly-behaved passenger based on generally recognized standards of decorum; I'll update this post after I consult Bronson for some general advice on this point.

In finishing up this post, I noticed that Bill had made some new comments on his thread, but they're along the same line of reasoning I just critiqued, so I won't address them any further.

I respect Bill Quick, and no personal attack or offense is intended by this analysis, but I disagree with him strongly on this issue all the same. Actually, I found going through his argument to be a most rigorous exercise in critical thinking, and a salutary experience overall.

That said, nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes, and, save for the above-promised update, I think it's time to move on (not .org).

*Asterisks mine.

UPDATE: Bronson and I discussed the matter of sanctions based on generally recognized standards of decorum, and while he felt that my question could have been worded less ambiguously, he stated that such sanctions would likely pass legal muster in most cases.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it. Or is it? Or isn't it?

2004-07-24T13:40:00.000-04:00

While rummaging about the The New Scientist's website I came upon this article from about a year ago describing a Romanian physicist's generation of plasma globules which mimic in several particulars the behavior of cells. These globules were described as being comprised of a bilayer "membrane", with an outer layer of electrons and an inner layer of positive ions, surrounding a core of neutral gas molecules. Such structures are somewhat analogous to the micelles and vesicles I described in an earlier post, but are not what most scientists would consider to be capable of generating life.

Before I go on much further, I should mention that the physicist in question, Mircea Sanduloviciu, claimed that his results were evidence that such plasma-based structures could have given rise to life on the young Earth, and that this conclusion was disputed by a physical chemist at the University of Brussels, Gregoire Nicolis. I strongly concur with Dr. Nicolis on this count. When humans eventually generate artificial life, the first results will almost certainly be similar to the artificial cellular systems I wrote about here.

But is that necessarily the case?

The article claims that the plasma blobs don't rise to the level of life, because they lack hereditary material. But what would constitute hereditary material in a ball of plasma? Would we recognize it if we saw it? What does that mean conceptually, anyway?

Prions are particles of protein which contain no heriditary material that we recognize as such, like DNA or RNA, and yet they are the causitive agents of spongiform ecephalopathies such as BSE, better known as mad cow disease, manifested in humans as so-called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. They manage to alter the conformation of proteins in the brains of those they infect, proteins which are otherwise nearly identical chemically to the prions themselves.

Viruses have no cellular apparatus themselves, but contain DNA or RNA which they introduce into a host cell. Once inside, the host cell's machinery is hijacked by the viral DNA or RNA into producing copies of the virus.

Are prions or viruses alive? Good arguments could be made pro or con for both. While I don't want to seem Clintonian about the matter, I think it really does depend on what the meaning of the word "life" is.

A judge once stated that he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it.

I suppose this serves as convincing proof that life isn't pornography.

In all seriousness, though, this puts efforts to detect life on other worlds, and attempts to create life in the laboratory, into an interesting light. How do we identify living systems if we aren't certain of our criteria?

Bernard Korzeniewski of the Institute of Molecular Biology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, has come up with a definition of life which excludes ants and infertile humans. From my perspctive as a colloid and surface chemist I think Korzeniewski's definition fails to acknowledge the forest for the trees, but it points out that the very definition of life is something that even trained scientists can't come to a consensus on.

My own views tend toward allowing more latitude in recognizing processes as living, but the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the wisdom in the words of the judge I quoted earlier.

But to put the dilemma in prespective, think about how intelligent organisms consisting of collections of plasma globules would assess a terrestrial bacterium like Escherichia coli.

They would observe something with a complex structure which could take surrounding chemicals and convert them to constituents of itself, something which could make copies of itself, and somethng which could transfer chemicals between copies of itself.

But it would exist at temperatures considered by the plasma beings to be too low to support life as they understood it. It would be comprised of an odd form of matter which exists only at very low temperatures, and is very little like the plasma and gas their own bodies were composed of. Would they recognize those bacteria as lifeforms?

Would they recognize us as lifeforms, if they were to observe us?

I think I'll have more to say about this in later posts.

A well-reported story chemistry in the mainstream media.

2004-07-22T23:08:00.000-04:00

Via Fark comes this story about a chromic acid leak on I-15 in Escondido, California. This statement from California Forestry Department spokesman Matt Streck is right on the money:

"You know how on TV somebody gets acid spilled on 'em and it eats through 'em? It's literally that bad," he said.

I've worked with chromic acid in the past, and almost exactly the same sentiments, worded the same in my mind, occurred to me. In fact, I was thinking of what to my mind is the quintessential television-program-acid-eating-through-someone-scene: the scene in Frankenstein: The True Story (which wasn't, by the way) where acid is poured an a crawling, disembodied arm to destroy it.

As an adaptation of a literary classic the movie, shall we say, takes liberties with its source material, but in an absolute sense it's a good story, and well acted, too. And the scene with the arm resonates with me to this day.

And if this post seems a bit odd to you, it's because I don't want to write about Sandy Berger, for a number of reasons, but today I'm not terribly enthused by anything else in the media, either... except for that Fark link to the chromic acid spill story, and the fond memories of a fine piece of television that it brought flooding back to me.

Perhaps something more topical will come along tomorrow and pique my interest.

From C-rations to P-rations.

2004-07-21T23:21:00.000-04:00

The New Scientist (which is going on the blogroll tonight) has this gem of a story about US military research combining dehydrated food with packaging incorporating a semipermeable membrane which excludes bacteria and larger particulates, allowing a hungry soldier to safely rehydrate his food with swamp water - and not quite as safely with water from his own plumbing. From the article:

Hydration Technology of Albany, Oregon, which makes the membrane, says soldiers should only use urine in an absolute emergency because the membrane is too coarse to filter out urea.
The body will not find this toxic over the short term, says Ed Beaudry, an engineer with HTI, but rehydrating food this way in the long term would cause kidney damage.

And in the short term it'll cause disgust. And a tangy taste.

Actually, I should be a little more serious about this since:
a. This is food designed to sustain military personnel in the field; it's emphasis is on portability and nutritive value, not taste.
b. There are probably people in this country who pay good money to eat food prepared with endogenous marinade - and probably not their own endogenous marinade, either.

Postscript: Urine leaving the body of a healthy human is generally sterile, and the semipermeable membrane in the new food packs can't filter out urea, so I doubt it could filter out any other urine components. I think it's a non-issue as far as rehydrating dried rations with eau d'homme is concerned.

My brief weblog vacation has ended.

2004-07-21T00:27:00.000-04:00

I'll write more later today, but for now suffice it to say that an operating system upgrade and temporary chauffeur duty, among other things, were involved in my absence here. I'd write more but my last two posts didn't publish properly, I'm really not up to replacing all that missing prose just now, and it's beginning to look a lot like bedtime.

Once upon a time there was... Wait... You mean this is a story about... How dare you read such filth to the children!

2004-07-14T23:14:00.000-04:00

Jeff Goldstein has a priceless opening to a children's story - the sort of children's story which gets read to kids at night in the bizarre parallel universe where Bill Clinton accepted Sudan's offer to hand over Usama bin Ladin - and was honest, faithful, and an excellent role model for children.

Whoopi Goldberg loses pounds (and dollars) with Slim-Fast.

2004-07-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

In a move anybody not currently living in a cave* should have seen coming from a mile off, Whoopi Goldberg's Slim-Fast ads have been pulled from television** after her act at a fundraiser for John Kerry last Thursday. After word hit the news media about how her routine included an oft-repeated vulgar play on words involving President Bush's surname, While it isn't mentioned explicitly in the Reuters story, Slim Fast apparently received negative feedback from some of its customers:

"Ads featuring Ms. Goldberg will no longer be on the air," Slim-Fast General Manager Terry Olson said in a statement, adding that the company regrets that Goldberg's remarks offended some customers.

Note to celebrities: Extended public displays of lewd wordplay used in ad hominem attacks on a public figure respected by many of the people who buy a product you're being paid to endorse will lead to abbreviated employment in that capacity.

Hard cheese, Whoopi - but not too much of it. You don't want to stop losing with Slim Fast.

*And many people who are currently living in a cave.

**Link via Drudge.

Initial Polish claim of cyclosarin-filled warheads in Iraq most likely in error, but US counterclaim is confusing.

2004-07-12T21:58:00.000-04:00

I wrote earlier about Polish troops discovering cyclosarin-containing warheads in Iraq. This article from the Beeb challenges this claim with an apparent refuation of it from US forces:

But the US military said that while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless.

"These rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces," a statement by the military said.

Another 16 rockets found by the Polish troops were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals, it added, without explaining the discrepancy in numbers with the Polish version.

How come the US military statement refers to testing warheads for sarin, and not cyclosarin? They are different; The Fox nuclear, chemical, and biological (NBC) warfare reconnaisance vehicle used by the US can distinguish between them via mass spectrometry. This is what I would expect. If the Fox's mass spectrometer can distinguish between sarin and cyclosarin, other more sensitive mass spectrometers can as well.

Molecular mass spectrometry of organic compounds involves taking a sample of a the compound in question and breaking its molecules apart into ionized fragments, each with a characteristic mass-to-charge ratio, or m/z. A beam of these fragments is typically run through a magnetic field, which deflects the fragments as it is scanned, the amount of deflection varying with the m/z of the fragment in question and the strength of the magnetic field. Ions passing all the way through the magnetic field reach a detector. The plot of the m/z values of the fragments thus detected is referred to as a mass spectrum, and is more or less characteric for that compound; it's a sort of "chemical fingerprint".

Wikipedia offers a very nice overview of mass spectrometry for those interested in pursuing the subject further.

Now via Captain Ed comes this AP story which quotes "multinational forces" as claiming, regarding the warheads:

"Those 16 rounds were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals," it said.

Yet the article, which discusses sarin or mustard possibly being in the warheads never mentions cyclosarin once, and the statements from the Poles quoted in the Beeb article mention only cyclosarin.

Michael Ledeen's assesment of matters having to deal with WMD in Iraq, and the claimed Polish cyclosarin find is as follows:

Let's say that there were WMDs. Then, in the disgracefully long period between Afghanistan and Iraq, Saddam, knowing he was gonna be overrun, exported some (mostly to Syria and Iran), destroyed some, and hid some.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it for the time being. I'm sticking with it because I know — as Senator Roberts and the committee staff know, because I told them — that there are very credible reports of WMD sites, but the CIA chooses not to go look at them. Since I told my own story I've learned about others, one of which comes from a very high-ranking former official of the American government. I'm also sticking with it because the Polish government insists that their guys in Iraq found warheads with chemical weapons, even though a CENTCOM press release denies it, and because Zarkawi's killers arrived in Jordan with large quantities of chemical weapons. And because I don't believe the Iraqis would have bought all those funny suits that protect you from chemical and biological weapons unless they had such weapons and expected to use them.

That none of the compounds that the US specifically named as absent from those warheads are the chemical the Poles claimed was present in them is very confusing. I'm now inclined to think that the initial cyclosarin claim from the Poles was in error, but the wording of the US counterclaim raises at least as many questions as it answers, from a chemical standpoint.

POSTSCRIPT: In retrospect I probably should have provided some background on Polish chemical weapons detection capabilities. Unfortunately, in spite of doing several web searches, I could find no useful information on the subject. However, I have known and / or worked with Polish chemists for about fifteen years, and through them I have a fairly good idea of what Polish chemical technology is like. One of these chemists, a good friend of mine who's now American, told me that the Polish chemical warfare personnel are among the very best in the world. I didn't ask him about their equipment, but again I would expect that their protection and detection gear are comparable to what our US forces use.

Spine? We ain't got no spine. We don't need no spine. I don't have to show you any stinking spine!

2004-07-12T20:07:00.001-04:00

The Phillipines, in a show of submission, have decided to pull their troops from Iraq ASAP in response to threats from terrorists (and no, I won't say "insurgents" or "militants", either - they're terrorists) in Iraq that a kidnapped Filipino Truck driver will be beheaded if they don't do so a month earlier than originally scheduled. While I understand the humanitarian motivations behind such a gesture, capitulating to this act of terrorism now will only lead to more kidnappings and bloodshed in the not-too-distant future. Playing the terrorists' game only prolongs it; the only way to win it is not to play it.

Earth's magnetic field is collapsing... And The New York Times is there!

2004-07-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

Matt Drudge is flashing a brief excerpt from a New York Times story describing how the collapse of the earth's magnetic field, which has been waning significantly for about 150 years according to the excerpt, has been accelerating recently. I'm waiting for someone to blame this development on Bush's environmental policies. Sure, its ridiculous, but its very absurdity makes me think it'll happen.

Okay, there does appear to be a very modest bump.

2004-07-11T14:05:00.000-04:00

The presidential polling averages taken at RealClearPolitics are today showing an average bump of up to +5.4 points for Kerry-Edwards after that ticket became Kerry-Edwards. Note that I'm presenting the worst-case average at the RealClearPolitics website. I was more surprised by the initial reports of an apparent rise in the polls for Bush-Cheney after Kerry chose Edwards as his running mate. That having been said, my bet from my previous post on this topic still stands.

UPDATE: Via Drudge comes this AP story claiming little or no bounce in the polling numbers of the Kerry-Edwards ticket after Edwards was announced as Kerry's running mate. The article is playing up the silver lining in the numbers for Edwards, similarly to the last AP article I quoted on the subject, but I still think it's only a few atoms thick.

Two points? Two lousy points? Not even two lousy points? Maybe even a net drop?

2004-07-08T21:54:00.000-04:00

Via Matt Drudge comes this report from Zogby International that John Kerry's selection of John Edwards for VP got him a whopping two-point bounce after settling down from immediately after the selection was announced. Drudge now has another story to complement it, the opening paragraph of which is:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has opened a slight lead over John Kerry while regaining the confidence of some voters on the economy and other domestic issues, according to an Associated Press poll with a silver lining for Democrats.

They quote polling data of Bush-49%, Kerry-45%, Nader-3%. I don't think Ron Fournier, who wrote the piece, made a particularly compelling case that there's enough silver in that lining to make it in any way valuable. I'll leave it to interested readers to follow the link to the original story and judge for themselves

Remember Mike Dukakis's 17 point lead over George H. W. Bush in 1988? I certainly do. Dukakis had that big lead right after the Democratic convention that year, and was leading Bush throughout much of that election. Kerry isn't making much headway right now, but I wonder how big and how enduring a bounce he'll get at this year's Democratic convention? How big a bounce will Bush The Younger get after the Republican Convention, and how long will it last?

I'll go out on a limb here and bet that neither Kerry nor Bush get bounces more than five points bigger than the margins of polling error by two weeks after their respective conventions. Time will tell.

Kerry picks Edwards as running mate. Obstetricians buy lumber at Home Depot, build barricades.

2004-07-06T21:12:00.000-04:00

John Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate seems like a much-ballyhooed non-event to me - a dull, colorless pageant masquerading as a political Mardi Gras. Really, I couldn't have been any less excited watching ice melt. But that isn't to say that Kerry's VP announcement had no effect on me.

Edwards is perhaps best known outside politics as a trial lawyer who specialized in suing doctors for allegedly causing cerebral palsy in infants, with a successful track record in court. As the article cited makes clear however, these successful suits were most likely the triumph of courtroom rhetoric over cold reality. As further evidence of this, a guide for caring for people with cerebral palsy prepared by the A. I. Dupont Institute notes that northern Europe, with the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, and underdeveloped countries with very high infant mortality rates show the same rates of cerebral palsy.

I have a special place in my heart for pseudoscience - a dark, dirty place with poor ventilation and a DVD player endlessly playing every episode of Space Rangers* and Cop Rock on a cheap ten-inch color TV. When people can lose reputations, fortunes, and more when folderol gets accepted as fact in a court of law, and when others make fortunes on that account, then my stomach turns sour.

So, while I'm neither surprised nor excited by any of this, it has given me dyspepsia.

Perhaps John Edwards sued doctors who really did cause cerebral palsy in babies, but if you take those odds you're probably wondering why your career as a professional Lotto player hasn't started paying off.

* Notwithstanding the somewhat favorable review it got at the IMDB page I linked to, I actually saw one or two episodes of this series myself, and I assure you it was dreadful - and I mean dreadful.

UPDATE: A comment by one Santhosh Valloppilli, MD in this thread at Stephen Green's site led me to this post by Chris Rangel. Being an MD himself, Chris's evaluation of Edwards' record of cerebral palsy litigation is particularly authoritative.

Declaration of indolence.

2004-07-05T22:12:00.000-04:00

Last night, I went for a walk down 16th Street, from Silver Spring into Washington and back again, to get in some much-needed exercise. The route is an interesting one. From my apartment, the Maryland-DC line is about a ten minute walk away, and takes you past a variety of sights. They are, in approximate order of appearence: A wide variety of homes - some small, some large, all likely prodigiously expensive; Rock Creek Park; Walter Reed Army Medical Center; a succession of churches, and a synagogue; and various foreign embassies. I made something like an eight mile round trip in three hours time.

This was good for my cardiovascular system, but bad for my feet; I managed to blister them quite professionally. Not good. Today, I'm experiencing something of an exercise hangover - something I should have expected when starting to exercise after a significant layoff. I'm currently exhausted. Curiously, though, my only pain is from the blisters.

The take-home message from this mini-travelogue is that I've been too tired today to think cogently enough to write about anything particularly interesting, either here or in comments in other sites. I'll leave that for tomorrow; for now, I'll give myself about half an hour to take care of some menial household chores, and then hit the sack.

Freedom in Iraq is not an afterthought.

2004-07-04T09:49:00.000-04:00

I frequently listen to WABC radio on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and right now I'm listening to Steve Malzberg's show. He was discussing Iraq with terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, and the subject ran to democracy. Malzberg opined that the Iraq War was fought to destroy the Husseini regime to help suppress Mideast terrorist threats to western democracies in general (and I include Israel in this group), and the US in particular. Bodansky replied to this, saying that if that was our intent, our tactics should have been more agressive than they actually were.

I like Malzberg, but I think he's missing an important point here. In the Iraqi theater of the Terror War, victory means democracy; victory means freedom.

At this point in the Terror War, we, the US, in spite of the events of 9/11, dosen't feel desperate. It's reacting using chiefly precision weapons and tactics, selectively destroying enemy fighters and weaponry while trying very hard to spare innocents. From a moral perspective, every innocent lost in this conflict due to US and coalition actions is a tragedy. We are trying to kill the cancer of terrorism and oppression on the body of humanity. When doctors treat cancer in humans through surgery, a margin of healthy tissue is inevitably excised along with the tumor. Other treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy suffer from similar drawbacks. But there are only so many cancer treatments available; just so with methods to fight terrorism.

But if too much tissue is removed, or too heavy a dose of radiation or chemotherapy is used, the patient dies along with the cancer. In Iraq, we don't just want to kill the cancer; we want to save the patient.

A free and democratic Iraq could break the malignant stability of oppressive regimes in the region by encouraging their citizens to transform their governments at home, or to emigrate. The model for this approach is the transformation of eastern and central Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those who discount such an approach on the grounds that that the Arab world has never before produced a democratic government are apparently discounting a priori the concept of innovation. By that line of reasoning, the Wright brothers should never have achieved powered heavier-than air flight because noone else before them had. This is not a sound line of reasoning.

Our approach is not only to kill terrorists and disrupt their organizations, but to drain the swamp of dictatorships in the Mideast which serve as breeding grounds for terrorists, to see them replaced by free democracies. Since free and open societies generally have more stable economies, freer markets, and higher per capita standards of living than dictatorships, their citizens will be more likely to see their lives as things to be improved by hard work than as things to be sacrificed for rewards in the afterlife.

A substrategy in this approach is freedom through intimidation, where state sponsors of terrorism are moved to see the error of their ways and reform by the threat of military action if they don't. An example of this approach may be the change of heart experienced by Moammar Qaddfi in Libya.

A few caveats are in order at this point.

The overview I've presented of US strategy in Iraq and the Mideast in general is of necessity a simplification, but it was not intended to be comprehensive. It does, I think, point out a major component of the grand strategy we are now trying to implement. It's entirely possible that noone alive today will live to see whether or not this approach has had lasting success. The seeds of democracy in Iraq, and by extension the rest of the Mideast, may well take decades to germinate. Finally, there is the possibility that democracy will fail to take root in Iraq and elsewhere, and our approach will fail.

If our efforts fail, I see a few possible consequences, none of them mutually exclusive. One is acceding to the actions of the terrorists, and reacting as they want us to react. This has already been seen in the aftermath of the train bombings in Madrid. Another possibility is a terroristic attack on western or Russian interests with a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon which causes perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps millions of casualties. Still another is the assimilation of one or more European countries by radical Islamists, from whose ranks so many terrorists are drawn; I think France runs a real risk of experiencing this. This would be a terifying prospect, as the world would then have to deal with a fundamentalist Islamic regime with nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles under its control. The fourth possibility is that soon before or soon after the second or third options come to pass, the US, Russia, or Great Britain, or some combination of these three powers, will become so terrified that they will prioritize the destruction of as many terrorists and their state sponsors as fast as possible much higher than sparing innocent people caught in the crossfire, and implement that policy using nuclear weapons - the so-called "sea of glass" option.

It democratization succeeds, we will leave behind a legacy of freedom in the Mideast, and gain new members in the family of civilized nations. If it fails, we will probably end up at the "sea of glass" option sooner or later, which would likely mean millions of casualities for us, and near-genocide for the Islamic world. Failing to even attempt democratiztion would make it essentially a forgone conclusion.

That we may avoid killing or being killed en masse on fantastic scales, let us all keep the necessity of freedom and democracy in the Mideast in mind this Independence Day.

POSTSCRIPT: This post was a essentially a reply to Steve Malzberg's contention that a democratic Iraq was an afterthought in strategy of the Iraq War, so it focused chiefly on Iraq and the Mideast. Almost immediately upon completing it, however, I realized that it probably should have addressed the rest of the Islamic world outside of the Mideast.

I think that to the extent that they are victims of terrorism, they will commit to eliminating it; to the extent that they are sponsors of terrorism, they will be the targets of military actions or economic sanctions, or both; some of these nations probably fall into both categories. However, given its concentration of antidemocratic state sponsors of terrorism, I suspect that the Mideast and environs will probably remain of paramount importance in the push for freedom and democracy in the Islamic world.

A new image of Titan reveals terrain features.

2004-07-03T21:36:00.002-04:00

RedNova has posted an article featuring a new image of Titan which depicts terrain features, made yesterday by the Cassini probe's mapping infrared spectrometer. From the article:

This instrument, capable of mapping mineral and chemical features of the moon, reveals an exotic surface bearing a variety of materials in the south and a circular feature that may be a crater in the north.

Near-infrared colors, some three times redder than the human eye can see, reveal the surface with unusual clarity.

"At some wavelengths, we see dark regions of relatively pure water ice and brighter regions with a much higher amount of non-ice materials, such as simple hydrocarbons. This is different from what we expected. It's preliminary, but it may change the way we interpret light and dark areas on Titan," said JPL's Dr. Kevin Baines, Cassini science-team member.

"A methane cloud is visible near the south pole. It's made of unusually large particles compared to the typical haze particles surrounding the moon, suggesting a dynamically active atmosphere there."

Yesterday I wrote:

Water is something less than scarce on Titan. Or is it? More on that later.

I had no idea that a preliminary answer to this question would come the next day! This will doubtless be only the first of a number of surprises Titan has in store for us.

For those of you who want a wider assortment of new images of both Titan and Saturn about as fast as they're generated, you can find them at the NASA web page devoted to the Cassini mission.

UPDATE: NASA came out with a news release today (4 July) relating more findings from the study of this and other contemporaneous images of Titan (link via Drudge).

A nice new color image of Titan.

2004-07-02T22:54:00.000-04:00

RedNova has an article about and including a nice new true-color picture of Titan assembled from images taken by the Cassini Saturn probe on 10 June 2004.

WMD predictions further borne out by cyclosarin-filled munitions discovery in Iraq.

2004-07-02T20:18:00.000-04:00

Not so long ago, Bill Quick had a thread centered around a discussion of this article by Ken Timmerman describing WMD finds in Iraq. Timmerman relates the discovery of a chlorine plant in Falluhja, barrels of "pesticides", and barrels of cyclosarin.

Bill later had a thread on the discovery of a sarin-shell IED in Iraq (note that the link Bill has to the original story is now dead), in which I provided a (broken, unfortunately) link to a toxicity profile for cyclosarin. That link, fully functional, is provided above in the first paragraph of this post. Cyclosarin is a nerve agent with the US military designation GF; sarin is designated GB.

I did a post on the sarin-shell IED find myself, and another post on the later discovery of more artillery shells filled with mustard and sarin. In that post I wrote this:

To paraphrase what I mentioned on this Daily Pundit thread, this shell was probably not a limited edition lovingly handmade by skilled arab craftsmen. Artillery shells, like other military ammo, generally get turned out on automated production lines - in fairly large amounts. I'd say Ockham's razor suggests that this sarin shell has an extended family lying hidden somewhere in Iraq. While I think that whomever rigged this shell up as a makeshift roadside bomb probably thought they were dealing with a high explosive (HE) shell, now that the word is out in Iraq that it really contained sarin, I fully expect that less-than-friendly-toward-the-US elements in Iraq are now probably trying to track down the source of the shell, in hopes of finding its extended family. Locally in Iraq and environs, sarin-loaded artillery shells could be used by terroristic thugs to murder large numbers of innocent civilians. And for those terrorists who enjoy international travel, the binary sarin constituents drained out of such shells could be used to construct terror weapons better suited for use on western - say, American - populations. I have a grim suspicion that this will not be the last we hear of Iraqi sarin.

Well, it looks like still more of this shell's relatives have been found by Polish forces in Iraq:

WARSAW, Poland — Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin (search) that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's (search) war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.

The article also quotes Polish General Mieczyslaw Bieniek, who states, among other things, that the munitions, which he referred to as "warheads", were "still usable", so apparently these are not more artillery shells, and their contents are still lethal.

Ken Timmerman was right on the money, and eerily prescient with regard to the cyclosarin. I'd say my predictions were pretty close to the mark, too, the distinctions between sarin and cyclosarin being relatively trivial in this context.

I hereby pronounce the "no WMD in Iraq" meme dead.

Life on Titan?

2004-07-01T20:08:00.000-04:00

With the Cassini spacecraft safely seated in orbit around Saturn, I am looking forward to the January 2005 release of the Huygens probe from the main Cassini spacecraft, hopefully to descend through Titan's atmosphere and land on it's surface, or perhaps onto the surface of a methane or ethane sea. As a chemist, I'm intrigued by the chemical reactions that that moon must be playing host to. David Darling provides an excellent synopsis of the physical, chemical, and climatological characterists of Titan, and this BBC article explicitly asks the same big question that I am: Does Titan harbor life?

Both the Beeb and Darling pursue the possibility of such in some detail. Darling's survey is significantly more technical and comprehensive than the Beeb's, and provides what at first sounds like the death knell of possible Titanian life, in the following excerpt:

Apart from the obvious dramatic difference in temperature (Titan is at a chilly -180°C), current prevailing opinion holds that Earth's early atmosphere was predominantly nitrogen and carbon dioxide, whereas Titan's is dominated by nitrogen with some methane and smaller amounts of other substances. It is thought that Titan's methane, through on-going photochemistry, is converted to ethane, acetylene, ethylene, and (when combined with nitrogen) hydrogen cyanide. The last is an especially important molecule, since it is a building block of amino acids. But Titan's atmosphere in the words of University of Arizona's Jonathan I. Lunine is "neutral for oxidation and reduction reactions and does not allow an easy and direct formation of long chains of organic molecules. Some particular circumstances may be required to create them." Although there isn't much carbon dioxide on Titan, Lunine has pointed out, if we see that complex organic molecules are created on Titan, it would be a very important lesson about the early Earth and the environment in which life originated.

Souds pretty rough, right? Well, let me take a more balanced view on the prospects for life on Titan.

Extremophiles are organisms, frequently unicellular, which exist under conditions which are extremely inhospitable to many other forms of life, in some cases existing in environments once thought to be sterile. Not to sound pessimistic again, but even xerotolerant (the name is misspelled in the link) organisms require at least some water to survive.

Water is a highly versatile polar solvent which also supports a rich variety of acid-base chemistries. Water vapor is also a very important greehouse gas. All three of these properties have been critical to fostering the genesis and continued survival of life on earth. Water is arguably the single most important bioinorganic compound known.

Water is something less than scarce on Titan. Or is it? More on that later.

As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere of Titan is thought to be fairly redox-neutral (contains few to no compounds with a strong propensity to donate or accept electrons (reduce or oxidize, respectively) in chemical reactions. By contrast, our atmosphere is, as you might guess, oxidizing. The abundance of oxygen in our atmosphere, and to a lesser extent dissolved in our water, is one of the keys to the current abundance and variety of life on earth.

Titanian life has to obey the same laws of chemistry and physics that life and other chemical reactions anywhere else must obey. But we don't know the composition of Titan's atmosphere, terrain, and seas with complete certainty. Perhaps Titan supports a biosphere using liquid methane and ethane as solvents, and photochemically or volcanically generated compounds which can support redox reactions and some form of acid-base chemistry. Perhaps the cold Titanian environment is not so cold as to preclude chemical reactions which would generate life, or sustain it now. I suspect that life, if it exists at all on Titan, will find a way of conforming to known chemical and physical laws in ways which never occurred to us. The conclusion of Darling's discussion of Titan as an analogue to prebiotic earth summarizes many of these issues nicely:

Some answers to the mysteries of Titan will hopefully come from the Cassini mission and, in particular, from the Huygens Probe when in descends through the atmosphere of Titan in 2004. Whatever molecules are generated in the atmosphere will presumably, over time, be deposited on the moon's surface. The atmospheric pressure at Titan's surface is 50 percent higher than on Earth, comparable with the pressure at the bottom of a 3-meter-deep swimming pool. Titan's thick atmosphere protects the surface and organics from harmful cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation. Particularly exciting would be if Huygen's found any variations in the apparent organic composition that are correlated with impact carters or sites of volcanism. In this case, such sites would earmarked as potential places to visit in the future. Could Titan host primitive life? Some scientists have begun increasingly to speculate about this. One possibility is that microorganisms could exist in Titan's deep interior where liquid water may be available all the time. Another possibility is active water volcanism which would lead to transient water flows and the outside chance of surface biology. Yet again, Titan must be heated occasionally by large impacts. In the early 1990s, Carl Sagan and W. Reid Thompson of Cornell University suggested that impacts on the surface of Titan would melt the icy crust and produce liquid water.1 Finally, it has been suggested that life on Titan might have a fundamentally different basis to that on Earth. See ammonia-based life and silicon-based life.2, 3

I'm not contending that life on Titan is likely; far from it. But life or not, Titan is perhaps the largest organic chemistry laboratory in the solar system. The Huygens probe will be our proxy in that laboratory, and if it lands successfully will doubtless provide scientists with years worth of data to analyze. From my perspective as a chemist, I can hardly wait for the NASA news conference where the first findings from the Huygens Titan data are presented. But good things come to those who wait.

UPDATE: When I wrote this passage above:

As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere of Titan is thought to be fairly redox-neutral (contains few to no compounds with a strong propensity to donate or accept electrons (reduce or oxidize, respectively) in chemical reactions.

what I meant to write was this (with the missing context supplied in boldface):

As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere of Titan is thought to be fairly redox-neutral (contains few to no elements or compounds with a strong propensity to donate electrons to or accept electrons from (reduce or oxidize, respectively) other elements or compounds in chemical reactions.

SHAMEFACED UPDATE: I managed to mess up the UPDATE as well, but I fixed it and it now reads as it should.

A quicker nod to propriety.

2004-07-01T08:35:00.000-04:00

Regarding yesterday's post on propriety, I commented further on the thread at Jay Reding's I linked to in it, and in doing so an interesting point occurred to me: A lot of what many might consider political "dirty tricks", while dirty, don't really violate any laws or codes of ethics. While I might not like some of these tricks, especially when they're used on candidates I support, like the DWI stinger that caught George Bush off guard in 1999, unless they break some specific laws or ethical conduct codes I'm willing to bite the bullet on them most of the time. Politics can be honest and dirty at the same time. Sometimes it's at its most honest when at its most dirty.

Why you can't find Gore=Hitler ads.

2004-07-01T06:19:00.000-04:00

The short answer to this is: I don't think there are any.

I'll elaborate.

Commenter Chet at Jay Reding's site claimed he had found some conservative web sites offering comparisons of their opposition to Nazis on this thread. I acknowledged that my side has made comments like calling Hillary Clinton "Hitlery", but that these are puerile insults which don't further debate much, and we haven't tried to use them as our public face in any advertisements. Yes, I know that the MoveOn.org ads which served as the impetus for the thread at Jay's site were't adopted by any Democrats for use as official advertising. However, they made it through the screening procedures set up for the ad contest MoveOn.org was sponsoring. The screeners considered it to be a competitive submission. Curiously, one of their spokesmen denied that anyone at MoveOn.org knew about at least one of the ads - even though it passed through a screening procedure and was voted on by MoveOn.org members and others on MoveOn.org website.

The fraction of people on the leftist / Democratic side of the political debate are embracing Michael Moore and his views on America in general, and George Bush in particular is substantial, and includes well-known figures from the mainstream of the Democratic party. In the DC Metro subway system, ads from MoveOn.org are commonplace on placards at the train stops. With one ad in particular stating "Congress must impeach the President", accusing Bush of monstrous misconduct in the Iraq War and the events which led up to it, MoveOn.org's acceptance of the the Nazi ads into its competition becomes much more understandable.

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley was quoted on WMAL radio a few minutes ago as having stated that he feels President Bush's policies are a greater threat to this country than al-Qaeda, and that he stands by that assertion. O'Malley is as mainstream a Democrat as you'll likely find, but he still felt comfortable making such a claim. For O'Malley and many others, this is a view of reality which they feel proud to advertise to the world.

Mainstream conservative critiques of the character and policies of people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, etc. are generally much better backed up by hard facts and logic; even the more hyperbolic expressions still have a similarly solid foundation. It simply isn't part of the conservative or Republican worldview that their political opposition are truly comparable to Hitler or any other Nazis. Yes, those allusions sometimes make it into conservative discourse, but they tend to be puerile hyperboles, not expressions of seriously entertained notions. I seriously doubt that the RNC or other conservative PACs would accept their equivalent of the MoveOn.org ads, because it would make them look intemperate and foolish, and because it dosen't represent the views of a significant fraction of their constituency. It isn't what they represent or believe.

I'm not sure the same can be said for those on the other side of the political debate in this country.

A quick nod to propriety.

2004-06-30T20:06:00.000-04:00

In this thread on Jay Reding's site, I had my usual ad hominem-dodging political debate regarding the use of MoveOn.org's controversial ads which essentially equated President Bush with Hitler, which I covered myself here. In the process of wielding my Cluebat, I managed to endorse the idea of the Republican party machinery in general, and the Bush campaign in particular, throwing some support to Ralph Nader's campaign in Oregon. Well, what do I see today but this article on Newsmax. Now, before someone decries me as a mouth-breathing hypocrite who smells bad and is mean to small animals let me make one thing perfectly clear: I have no problem with Bush's campaign or any other Packs trying to boost Nader's stock price through legally and otherwise ethically acceptable means. However, if any of these people committed any legal or ethical transgressions in the course of their activities, they should be punished to the extent called for under law and any other applicable guidlines. That sort of behavior simply cannot be tolerated or otherwise condoned. To analogize, just because I don't criticize driving in general dosen't mean I'd countenance someone stealing a car and taking it out for a joyride while blindfolded, drunk, and unlicensed.

Let this serve as a SCOSU* for barking moonbats, and a friendly FYI for all others.

* Steaming cup of shut up.

A silly body presents some seriously good news.

2004-06-29T22:17:00.000-04:00

Perhaps only in our current social social climate could a report that US and allied operations have crippled al-Qaeda's abilities and throttled its resources be at once be painfully obvious, absent from mainstream media coverage, and still be disappointing on account of the source conveying it. That's because these conclusions are stated in Staff Statement No. 15 of the September 11 Commission, as per the Newsmax.com article cited above. And it's no mistake that, while this story showed up at Newsmax, I've not seen or heard it being covered elsewhere; it lacks that mainstream media appeal.

One of my buddies at work pointed this out to me and Bronson Yake to get our opinion on it. As I stated above, I'm in no way surprised at the findings in the statement. We've all read, viewed, and listened to disparate news stories about terrorists killed in military actions, and terrorist finances under scrutiny and attack by the US and allied nations. Sometimes the mainstream media slip and actually report a piece of good news coming out of the Terror War, but they've not really reported these developments as a coherent whole, since it dosen't reflect badly on the current US administration in general, and President Bush in particular. It dosen't fit with the media-accepted (and conflicting) storylines of America (and Bush) as ruthless oil-drunk conquistador, and as clueless and hamfisted foreign-policy bungler.

Every terrorist killed by US and allied forces is an asset lost to al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers, and fear of being captured or killed has driven many of the terrorists left to expend energies on hiding and evasion which could otherwise have been spent on planning and executing terroristic acts. Our financial efforts have made it much harder for terrorists to fund their operations than before. Fleeing or impoverished terrorists are weakened and distracted terrorists, and nothing beats the drop in effectiveness experienced by terrorists after they've been killed. All of this is good news.

It should also come as no great shock that, coming in a statement from the September 11 Commission, such good news is strangely disappointing. The assortment of political has-beens sitting on the Commission, in grandstanding to boost their egos, cover Bill Clinton's backside, or counterattack the Clinton bottom-coverers, probably fated the Commission to be, in the words of William Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" from the outset.

I don't doubt Commission Staff Statement No. 15, but I think it's a sober, reasoned statement issued from a generally ridiculous body, and doomed to fall on the deaf ears and blind eyes of the mainstream media. Still, it is a bit of good news all the same, providing a bit of balance to the daily onslaught of unbalanced gloom and doom, so I'll just take it as it is and be grateful for it.

UPDATE: Bronson Yake's comment on the same issue is here. Bronson also reiterated to me that this is a Commission staff report, not a report prepared by the the Commissioners themselves. True enough, but it has the imprimatur of the Commission all the same, which gives the otherwise sparkling news in it a tarnish of disappointment.

From new WMD finds in Iraq to the news media, Eric Hoffer explains it all for you.

2004-06-27T17:19:00.000-04:00

Via Donald Sensing comes this collection of links and commentary regarding new finds of chemical weapons shells in Iraq. From the Washington Times article Donald cites, we have this tidbit:

On the chemical munitions, Mr. Deulfer, who replaced David Kay as the head of the Iraq Survey Group earlier this year, said that the group has uncovered 10 to 12 bombs filled with blistering mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.
"We're not sure how many more are out there that haven't been found, but we've found 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds," he said. "I'm reluctant to judge what that means at this point, but there's other aspects of the program which we still have to flush out."

In an earlier post here I wrote this in reference to the sarin-shell IED which was found in Iraq about a month ago:

To paraphrase what I mentioned on this Daily Pundit thread, this shell was probably not a limited edition lovingly handmade by skilled arab craftsmen. Artillery shells, like other military ammo, generally get turned out on automated production lines - in fairly large amounts. I'd say Ockham's razor suggests that this sarin shell has an extended family lying hidden somewhere in Iraq.

Ockham's Razor has provided yet another clean shave. It will come as no surprise to readers of The Arkham Review that more chemical weapons shells have been found in Iraq. Neither will they be surprised that this has gotten almost no coverage in the mainstream media. The media in this country are overwhelmingly to the left of the general populace, and as I mentioned in this post from yesterday:

When basic scientific fact becomes just another relative truth, to be used, falsified, or denied as needed in a debate, you realize that those who do so are not debating in the traditional sense; they are evangelizing. Those on the left tend to evangelize the secular religion of Postmodernism in debates, and one of the tenets of Postmodernism is logical relativism, where truth differs from person to person, from culture to culture, and is just another tool to use and modify as needed to achieve desired goals.

In another context, Fran Porretto left this comment at the Bill Quick's site:

We're into "True Believer" territory now, Bill. On the left, the fringe has begun to absorb the liberal mainstream. Thus, ideology is being given primacy over facts and logic, as facts and logic will not deliver the conclusions the leftists insist on.

Eric Hoffer's little book has never been more relevant to the tenor of American politics. I wish everyone in America with three functioning brain cells cound be induced to read (or reread) it right now.

The original context of this quote was class warfare rhetoric from the left, but it is every bit as applicable to coverage of WMD finds in Iraq by the mainstream media. I replied to Fran's comment thusly:

Spot on, Fran. I first read "The True Believer" a few years ago on the recommendation of a friend at work. I couldn't find anything significant to disagree with in Hoffer's assertions. It brought my view of the world into much sharper focus by bringing together so much cogent social analysis so efficiently. The class warfare schtick practiced by so many on the left looks like it was copied verbatim from the book.

Eric Hoffer's book, The True Believer, is perhaps the premier work on the etiology of groups bound together by fervent, unquestioning belief. The Islamofascistic threat the free world faces in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and the coverage and analysis of the manifestations of that threat provided by leftists in our own and foreign news media, are probably explained no better or more succinctly than in The True Believer. After reading this little book, you will understand the full scope of the Terror War infinitely better than you did before. You will understand that a vital aspect of this war is the battle for control of information, and perhaps the largest front in that battle is right here in the USA.

Compare and contrast - it's so much better than winning elections.

2004-06-26T19:33:00.000-04:00

How many of you remember the infamous MoveOn.org video which had George Bush compared to Adolf Hitler? This article from the AP via Fox News should rekindle old memories. I'll quote this first three paragraphs of the article:

WASHINGTON — Adolf Hitler's (search) image has surfaced again in the White House race. President Bush's campaign contains online video, removed from a liberal group's Web site months ago and disavowed, that features the Nazi dictator.

The Bush Internet video, which was sent electronically to 6 million supporters, intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry (search), Al Gore and Howard Dean with the footage of Hitler.

Democrats want the video pulled from the site. Campaign aides said it would remain.

It's almost like George Soros consulted the three witches from Macbeth, and asked them "Tell me, what type of ad should MoveOn.org sponsor so as to influence the 2004 Presidential campaign?" Soros and his MoveOn.org fellow travelers certainly got what they asked for.

Now, in fairness, MoveOn.org pulled the ad from their site, but only after they had accepted it as a submission in a contest looking for anti-Bush ads. Fairness dosen't help them much, does it? When an organization such as MoveOn.org accepts an ad like that and removes it only after publicly aired opprobrium from without, it makes a statement about its beliefs. Under those circumstances, later disavowal of such an ad looks like nothing more than a tactical measure.

The article quotes a Bush campaign staffer who provides the reasoning their behind the use of the MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad:

"We're using the video from MoveOn.org to show our supporters the type of vitriolic rhetoric being used by the president's opponents and John Kerry's surrogates," said Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Given Al Gore's latest ravings, the remarks of Judge Guido Calabresi comparing the election of George Bush to the Presidency to the installation of Hitler in Nazi Germany (thanks to Bronson Yake for the link), and the people who showed up for the Washington, DC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, including DNC Chairman Terry MacAuliffe and Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Bob Graham, I don't think this level of lunatic vitriol can properly be dismissed as the rantings of a few fringe elements in Kerry's support base.
Anyone who wants a lesson in how irrational hatred in politics can redound to the benefit of its objects would do well to read the information I linked to. Whether such advantage holds through the 2004 elections remains to be seen, but I'm betting against the hatred.

O Trevor, where art thou?

2004-06-26T09:18:00.000-04:00

So where have I been? Well, I've been right here in lovely Silver Spring, Maryland, AKA Suburban Maryland to people who put together telephone directories. But that's not the point here; rather, why did this little corner of the blogosphere go dark for the past month?

Well, I had a variety of experiences last month which came together in such a way as to thwart my budding career as a highly unpaid after-hours writer.

One of them was my in-house course at work, which took up a fair amount of my spare time. Another was refurnishing my apartment (more on that later). And, finally was my overwhelming disgust and ennui over current events reporting in the major media. As an example, day after day of reading that "John Kerry attacks Bush over blah-blah-blah" becomes both unpleasant and uninteresting very quickly.

Now, to my apartment. I had two friends pay me a visit about a month ago, a mother and daughter. I knew that my apartment was sparsely furnished, but I thought that I had enough furniture to maintain a decent level of comfort for any potential guests. I thought that I'd cleaned my apartment up to a fair level of respectability. I thought wrong.

When the mom ended up sitting on a folded quilt - because I didn't have enough chairs - to eat at a foldable pasteboard card table (I'm not making this up, folks) - because I didn't have a proper dining table - it hit me in waves of horror that I was providing my guests with shabby hospitality because I was living like as fine an example of twenty-first century Homo erectus as you're likely to find. Not good.

They started cleaning my apartment under my nose. I was dying of shame.

They counseled me on little things like getting a vacuum cleaner - because my carpet sweeper - when I got around to using it - simply wasn't getting the job done - getting rid of some of my old furniture, and getting some new furniture - like a couch, a real dining table, and some real chairs. They gave me more advice, like getting rid of my bar soap and replacing it with liquid hand soap and "body wash" to rid myself of the scourge of soap scum, which I had thought of chiefly as do-it-yourself geological formations.

Uncharacteristically, I took their advice. I got all of those things they suggested, and then some. I think I've finally joined the family of Man.

But what got me started blogging again was, of all things, Dick Cheney telling Pat Leahy to go eff himself (link via Drudge). I laughed when I first heard about it on the radio. I laughed when I read about it later. I laughed when I read that Cheney is unapologetic about it, referring to it as "long overdue". I laughed about it, period. It reminded me of the incident where a microphone he didn't know was still on captured George Bush referring to reporter Adam Clymer of the New York Times as a "major league a-hole", with Dick Cheney assenting, "Oh, yeah. Big time." No apologies from Bush - or Cheney - about that one either. Heh. I was reminded of Paul Wolfowitz saying "eff you" to Al Franken. I don't remember Wolfowitz being apologetic, either. Heh again. Cheney, Bush, and Wolfowitz said what many of us on the right have wanted to say for a long time - to some of the very people we've wanted to say such to. Okay, it isn't civil, well-reasoned discourse, but we aren't getting much of that from the left, either - see Al Gore's latest excursion into mental illness (thanks be to Drudge, again), for example - and it gets tiresome and frustrating after a while.
For another example of this, check out this thread and this thread on Bill Quick's site, where I deal with a guy who goes by the handle of "Young Goodman Brown", who dismisses cyclosarin (among other things) and elemental chlorine as "roach killer" and "bleach", respectively, and then claims that he really does know the difference between bleach and elemental chlorine (which is so nasty it was used by itself as a war gas by the Germans in World War I). Why anyone who knows that elemental chlorine isn't bleach would try to dismiss it as such in an argument is beyond me; Ockham's Razor suggests that YGB was lying about knowing the difference between the two before it was pointed out to him, and I won't argure with William of Ockham. YGB wasn't being particularly civil in the debates on those threads (I got rather testy, myself). Worse, though, he made arguments predicated on errors in objective scientific facts, and then asserted that he knew what he was discussing all along - even though his factual errors invalidated his stated thesis. When basic scientific fact becomes just another relative truth, to be used, falsified, or denied as needed in a debate, you realize that those who do so are not debating in the traditional sense; they are evangelizing. Those on the left tend to evangelize the secular religion of Postmodernism in debates, and one of the tenets of Postmodernism is logical relativism, where truth differs from person to person, from culture to culture, and is just another tool to use and modify as needed to achieve desired goals.

But I digress.

Anyway, I feel back in full blogging form. I'll post more commentary today if I find more material which piques my interest, and I'll post more in future in any event.

Air America's missing steam revisited.

2004-05-31T10:17:00.000-04:00

Drudge now has a link to a New York Times article about this, which claims that "office politics" is responsible for Air America's current plight, which apparently includes bad financial mismanagement. However, the article tries to make the case that Air America really does have an audience:

Despite the intrigue concerning its management - and the abrupt pulling of its programming last month from stations in Chicago and Los Angeles, in a contract dispute - there are early indications that, where it can be heard, Air America is actually drawing listeners. WLIB-AM in New York City, one of 13 stations that carry at least part of Air America's 16 hours of original programming each day, even appears to be holding its own with WABC-AM, the New York City station and talk radio powerhouse that is Mr. Limbaugh's flagship.

For example, among listeners from 25 and 54, whom advertisers covet, the network estimates it drew an average listener share (roughly a percentage of listeners) of 3.4 on WLIB in April, from 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, according to the company's extrapolation of figures provided by Arbitron for the three months ended in April. (Arbitron, which does not provide ratings in monthly increments, said the network's methodology appeared sound, although such figures were too raw to translate to numbers of listeners.)

By contrast, according to Air America's figures, WABC-AM drew an average share of 3.2 during the same period in April for the same age group. That time period includes the three hours in which Mr. Limbaugh was pitted head to head against Mr. Franken.

Phil Boyce, the program director of WABC , cautioned against drawing conclusions from preliminary data. "If they end up doing that well when the final number is out, which is two more months, I'll give them a congratulations," Mr. Boyce said.

While the network is awaiting the release of similar figures from Arbitron for other cities, KPOJ-AM, the Clear Channel station that carries its programming in Portland, Ore., informed Air America executives by an e-mail message in late April that its ratings appeared to have tripled last month, according to the station's informal survey. (A station executive, Mary Lou Gunn, did not return a telephone message left at her office on Friday.)

The network, which is also carried on the satellite radio providers XM and Sirius, has found an audience on the Internet. In its first week, listeners clicked on the audio programming on the Air America Web site more than two million times, according to RealNetworks, the digital media provider.

"It's clear the audience is there,'' Mr. Franken said.

Call me skeptical, Al, but it isn't at all clear to me that you've got an audience. For example, the good ratings in New York City are from only a single market, albeit a large one, and they're extrapolated figures. The ratings in Oregon tripled last month, from... What? Did they go from ten listeners to thirty, or from one million to three million? And the web audience statistics... How many of these listeners clicked and listened for some significant period of time? How many clicked and ran, not listening to more than a syllable of programming? To put this in perspective, many of the hits my site here gets are from visitors who spend no significant time here; some of those are the result of Google searches. Anyone who wants to find out about my readership can look at my Sitemeter statistics, which are pretty self-explanatory. How are the statistics for Air America's online listenership as cited in the New York Times article computed?

Whether due to bad finances or poor listenership, or both, as I believe most likely, I'm thinking Air America is going to be Hard Vacuum America sooner rather than later.

Please do some remembering this Memorial Day.

2004-05-31T00:13:00.000-04:00

I could spend time coming up with a post about the true meaning of Memorial Day and how it relates to the Terror War, but Bill Quick has already made one, and it does indeed hit home. Please read the whole thing.

When is a shock not a shock?

2004-05-30T23:56:00.000-04:00

Newsmax has this story about a CBS News poll released this week which shows this:

Buried deep inside the internals of a CBS poll released Wednesday was this stunning statistic: Veterans now prefer Bush over Kerry by a whopping 13 points - 54 to 41 percent.

Worse still for Kerry, Bush's landslide among veterans comes from a sample that preferred Kerry overall by a full eight points.

I have to confess, I find this about as shocking as seeing the sun rise every morning. After Kerry's senate testimony in 1971 slandering his fellow servicemen (among other things), I'm surprised that some or another veteran's group hasn't started raising funds by selling rolls of toilet paper with Kerry's visage lovingly reproduced on each sheet.

Air America is running out of steam.

2004-05-30T23:32:00.000-04:00

In an earlier post I had written about Air America, the liberal talk radio network, expressing some skepticism as to there being a niche for it in the media market. It looks like my skepticsm was well placed. Matt Drudge has the following flash on his site currently, which I will reproduce here in full:

FLASH: Al Franken has agreed not to draw a salary at AIR AMERICA, hoping to keep the fledgling talk-radio network afloat... Developing...

Something tells me that the rest of Air America'a staff will soon be giving up their salaries, too.

Today's second Q and A.

2004-05-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

Q: What's worse than being a circus clown arrested for pedophilic activities?

A: Well, it isn't really worse, but being Al Gore is getting pretty grim.

Spanky, we hardly knew ye...

2004-05-27T12:54:00.000-04:00

Q: What's worse than being arrested for pedophilic activities?

A: Being a circus clown arrested for pedophilic activities.

You just can't make this stuff up. (Via Drudge.)

An oldie but baddie.

2004-05-26T23:52:00.000-04:00

So it looks like the sarin shell in the Iraqi improvised bomb that exploded on May 15 was made before the Gulf War in 1991, according to an AP story on the FoxNews website. Interesting, since the Hussein regime never declared any extant sarin-loaded artillery shells, as the article states. I'm sure everyone reading my weblog is, to put it charitably, less than surprised by that little revelation. To paraphrase what I mentioned on this DailyPundit thread, this shell was probably not a limited edition lovingly handmade by skilled arab craftsmen. Artillery shells, like other military ammo, generally get turned out on automated production lines - in fairly large amounts. I'd say Ockham's razor suggests that this sarin shell has an extended family lying hidden somewhere in Iraq. While I think that whomever rigged this shell up as a makeshift roadside bomb probably thought they were dealing with a high explosive (HE) shell, now that the word is out in Iraq that it really contained sarin, I fully expect that less-than-friendly-toward-the-US elements in Iraq are now probably trying to track down the source of the shell, in hopes of finding its extended family. Locally in Iraq and environs, sarin-loaded artillery shells could be used by terroristic thugs to murder large numbers of innocent civilians. And for those terrorists who enjoy international travel, the binary sarin constituents drained out of such shells could be used to construct terror weapons better suited for use on western - say, American - populations. I have a grim suspicion that this will not be the last we hear of Iraqi sarin.

I think I'll forgo discussing Kerry tonight.

2004-05-26T22:28:00.001-04:00

Back at Bill Quick's site today, I put the smackdown on somebody who had previously dismissed claims of dual-use chemicals being found in Iraq (see this post, and especially the links therein, for background) and who was soft-pedaling the recent discovery of a binary sarin artillery shell in an improvised explosive device in Iraq. A few days earlier, I had mentioned that I would blog about another detail about John Kerry which makes him a lousy Presidential candidate. Well, I'll get to it eventually, I suppose, but frankly right now I'm sick to death of even thinking about Kerry, so I'll write about something else tonight in a later post.

Back in the saddle again.

2004-05-26T10:37:00.000-04:00

I've gotten myself back in a blogging frame of mind, I think. My time constraints are also easing up a bit - although that may be more a case of wishful thinking than reality. In any event, let the verbiage begin anew!

I'm back - after a fashion.

2004-05-18T20:09:00.000-04:00

Things have been a bit hectic at stately Saccucci Manor of late, with homework (yes, you read that correctly) and out-of-town visitors I entertained a couple of weekends ago, I've had precious little time of late to post. And, as to the John Kerry post I promised at Bill Quick's site, my apologies. I'll try to get to it tonight. We'll see.

2004-05-03T21:47:00.000-04:00

Blogging Hiatus
Posting is going to run from light to nonexistent for the next few days; I've got an awful lot on my plate right now, some of it I'm way overdue getting to. I'll try to make the occasional short post over lunch, but don't bet your 401k money on it.

2004-04-30T01:15:00.000-04:00

Organophosphate Pesticides And Homebrewed Chemical Weapons: A Brief Risk Assesment
This thread at Bill Quick's site is discussing possible WMD finds in Iraq, which prompted this post from me here. Since I'm a chemist, I commented a bit on the Iraqi WMD thread, prompting this question in this comment from John Moore:

Trevor, could terrorists in a kitchen lab with chemicals which can be purchased without suspicion convert organophosphate pesticides into highly lethal agents?

As I stated two comments further down in that thread, I'm not a synthetic chemist. More specifically, I'm not a synthetic organic chemist, one who deals with making compounds having backbones comprised of carbon atoms. However, all chemists get some training in the four traditional branches of chemistry: organic, inorganic, analytical, and physical. In fact, while I'm a physical electrochemist by virture of what my research in graduate school entailed, I was a student in the Analytical Chemistry Division of the UConn Chemistry Department. My point here is that I can discuss this topic with sufficient authority to support my answer to John's question. That answer is, in short, no.

I was chatting with friend of mine who is a synthetic organic chemist, and he agreed with my assesment. There is a fundamental problem involved with trying to synthesize a dangerous chemical in a kitchen or garage "facility" even if people with the requisite skills set somehow acquire the means to do so: They will likely intoxicate themselves and others unintentionally with their reagents or target product(s). Such unintentional intoxication would likely lead to detection for obvious reasons. If the same people who are synthesizing such compounds are supposed to deploy them as well, they will likely be too incapacitated to do so. Thus, they could well end up being the only victims of the toxic chemicals were producing.

There is also the matter of acquiring the needed chemicals without raising suspicions. With regard to pesticides, the EPA is aware of their potential use as terror weapons and has published security policies for trying to prevent such from occurring, mostly related to sites where large stocks of them are found. The EPA has published similar policies regarding chemical security in college and university laboratories. The FBI and ATF maintain watch lists of chemicals which could be used to produce chemical and biological terror weapons. As an example of a private industrial approach to chemical security, the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA) has been addressing concerns such as recognizing and reporting suspicious chemical purchases since at least October of 2002.

With respect to deployment of homemade chemical warfare agents, professional crop dusters have been on the lookout for suspicious activities in their field since late September of 2001.

In short, it would be difficult to turn organophosphate pesticides into highly lethal agents in a kitchen or garage laboratory, both from the standpoint of acquiring the needed chemicals, and synthesizing the target compound without getting sickened or killed in the process, and very possibly doing the same thing to others nearby. The most obviously effective off-the-shelf delivery systems, crop dusting aircraft, are being monitored by the professionals involved with their use.

Persons who possess the knowledge required to carry out a synthesis of organophosphate nerve agents - or other chemical warefare agents, for that matter - from commercial pesticides and / or other chemicals, are not ubiquitous, but neither are they that difficult to come by. Somewhat more reassuring is considering that the number of people with such knowledge who would be inclined to use it in the service of terrorism is doubtless relatively small. When given facilities and materiel support from state sponsors terrorism and WMD programs, such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and formerly Iraq and Libya (though it remains to be seen how steadfast Colonel Khadaffi is in his commitment to ending Libyian WMD programs), this relatively small latter group can very effectively produce chemical weapons. But working within a country like the US, trying to synthesize chemical weapons agents by trying to use a kitchen or garage as a laboratory, and getting the right types and amounts of chemicals without the raising the suspicions of suppliers and government agencies, is likely to be a fool's errand. This is not to say that there is no threat at all posed by homemade chemical warfare agents. However, the threat of such must be put in the proper perspective, to avoid the misallocation of finite antiterrorism resources. It's probably more practical to smuggle in chemical weapons produced abroad, and I think this is the more likely mechanism by which chemical weapons would pose a domestic threat to the US.

2004-04-28T01:21:00.000-04:00

WMD Finds In Iraq?
Bill Quick is discussing this article by Ken Timmerman, who claims that a number of finds of nerve agents, and factories which produced chlorine and the like, have gone below the radar of the major news media. He raises some good points in the article, assuming his facts are correct. I've already discussed some of the implications of the article in this comment on the thread in Bill Quick's site, so I won't repeat all that here. I will relate a story of a cyanide leak I lived through in graduate school, though.

About ten years ago, while I was sitting in my laboratory in Beach Hall on the UConn campus, someone from a research group sharing lab space with my research group was running a reaction which was, unbeknownst to them, generating hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas. The offending setup sat in a fume hood about ten feet from my desk. That laboratory had a World War II vintage fume handling system, with the contents of the fume hoods being blown out under positive pressure by blowers mounted on top of the hoods, through metal ductwork which snaked along the ceiling inside the laboratory and opened outside. But the ducts had pinhole leaks, as we discovered later.

One of my co-workers noticed a terrible odor; she found it strong and revolting. I smelled nothing; I even went over to the fume hood at her suggestion and took in great draughts of air trying to get a whiff of what was bothering her so much. I later found out from a member of the faculty that only about forty percent of people can detect the telltale bitter almond odor of cyanide gas. I'm in the other sixty percent of the population which can't. Lucky me. And the telltale cyanide odor isn't so telltale that someone who isn't familiar with can identify it for what it is. Not good. Since our laboratory shared space with a couple of organic chemistry labs, we figured it was just another one of the stinky organics which we smelled on a fairly regular basis. These compounds were never particularly toxic, just malodorous.

As time passed, the gas made it's way from way from my lab on the second floor of the building to my research group's other lab (and pretty much everywhere else) on the fourth floor of the building. One of my other co-workers there had worked previously at a metal-plating plant. Cyanide salts are used extensively in metal plating processes, and not only could he smell the odor of cyanide gas, but because of his background he could recognize it it for what it was. To cut a long story short, the cyanide-generating setup was shut down, and Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) inspectors were called in. Even after a half-hour of being shut down, and with the setup being purged with helium gas all that time, 30 ppm (parts per million) of HCN were detected issuing from it. Curiously, our building was never evacuated at any time during this incident.

This story may provide some insight into what would happen if terrorists attempted to use cyanide gas to kill the occupants of a building. The responses of people who could detect some peculiar odor they couldn't recognize, and others who could smell nothing. The spread of the gas through the building. The spread of confusion among the building's occupants - remember, my co-workers and I were chemists, and even most of us who could smell something in the air couldn't identify it; imagine what might happen in a group of laymen. Then, what we fortunately escaped - the deaths...

Let's hope such a scenario remains confined to the realm of the hypothetical. For more information on the health effects of hydrogen cyanide exposure, this reference is a good place to start. Curiously, it gives an upper limit of fifty percent of the population who can smell the odor of cyanide, instead of the forty percent I was quoted by the chemistry professor I mentioned above. May that distinction never become important to you.

2004-04-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

Mirror, Mirror Part 3.
In the dark mirror universe this morning, John Kerry was questioned by Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America about how he threw some of his military decorations over the White House fence in April of 1971, and he answered those questions something like this:

Charlie, I threw my ribbons on the White House steps in 1971, not my medals. And when I say my ribbons, I mean my ribbons - except of course when I mean my medals. And when I say my medals, I mean other people's medals, except of course, when I mean my ribbons...

2004-04-25T14:03:00.000-04:00

Mirror, Mirror Revisited.
In the goateed-Spock universe, John Kerry replied this way when questioned by reporters last Thursday about his ownership of an SUV:

I do not own an SUV. And when I say I do not own one, I mean that my family owns one. And when I say my family, I am referring to myself as well - except of course, when I'm referring not to myself, but rather to my family...

2004-04-22T23:05:00.000-04:00

Circus Of Shame
Via this Power Line post, we learn that Jamie Gorelick, the 9-11 commissioner who sits on the wrong side of the commission, is now being allowed to draft parts of its final report which deal with the so-called "wall" which she created in a 1995 memo which laid down impediments to the flow of information between law inforcement and intelligence agencies from 1995 until after 9-11.

To adapt a line from a Jekyll & Hyde song again:

If I ever needed further justification for my claim that the 9-11 commission has jumped the shark, gentlemen, you have just provided it!

How and why did this endeavor deteriorate into a cheap three-ring circus of Clintonoid bottom-covering and buck-passing, with former Republican *choke* New Jersey *choke* Governor Tom Kean as its clueless and arrogant ringmaster? A Georgia Congressman has the best explanation I've read so far. From the Washington Times article:

And Rep. Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican, said the commission's members haven't impressed anyone.
"The commission is a reunion of political has-beens who haven't had face time since 'Seinfeld' was a weekly show," he said. "In their scramble to make the evening news, they've turned this grave matter into a get-even-for-Monica investigation — a switch the American people see right through."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

2004-04-22T22:23:00.000-04:00

Mirror, Mirror...
In the sinister parallel universe where Mr. Spock has a goatee, John Kerry said this to Tim Russert on Meet the Press last Sunday:

Tim, I have released all of my military records already. And when I say all, I mean some. I will be releasing more of these records soon. And when I say soon, I mean...

2004-04-20T23:16:00.000-04:00

No Deposit, No Return.
After suing it's way back onto the airwaves in Chicago, Air America, the liberal radio network created to challenge the dominant right-of-center programming in America talk radio, will soon go silent there again, and will remain off the air in Santa Monica, until new radio stations who will affiliate themselves with it can be found. These are two pretty big radio markets, and Air America has packed up in both of them after about three weeks. The dispute arose when Air America bounced a check to MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting, Inc., which owns both stations, whereupon Arthur Liu, the owner of MultiCultural, got them yanked off the air and had the locks on the radio station doors changed.

The fact that Air America is paying radio stations to carry them should be a tip off that perhaps their business model wasn't the best. After all, most radio talk show hosts have their programming bought by radio stations for broadcast, since their popularity makes advertisers want to buy ad time during their programs, thereby increasing the net profitability of the affiliated radio stations. In this model, the radio programming is a product, and the radio stations are the consumers of that product. In the Air America model, the radio stations' air time is the product, and the radio programming providers, Air America, are the consumers. As best I can interpret from this article, Air America is trying to eventually turn a profit via its own sales of airtime slots to advertisers. But as of right now, Air America appears to be selling itself short - by two radio stations.

2004-04-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

Polls This Far Out From The Presidential Election Are Meaningless. Let's Look At Two Of Them...
Fox news quotes results from two new polls which put George Bush ahead of John Kerry:

Bush was up 48-43 over Kerry among registered voters, with Nader at 6 percent in the ABC-Post poll. In the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, Bush was ahead 50-44 among likely voters, with Nader at 4 percent.

Over the past few weeks, Bush has wiped out Kerry's advantage on all domestic issues except health care insurance, where Kerry still holds a small lead, the ABC-Post poll found. Bush still holds a double-digit lead over Kerry on the war in Iraq and fighting terrorism.

Fascinating. After the pounding he's gotten from Richard Clarke, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and others, he's actually ahead in a couple of respectable polls. In recent history, Democrats have tended to poll much better than Republican in the lead-up to Presidential elections. The fact that Kerry is trailing in the polls currently should make him uneasy; historically, he should have a good solid lead at this stage of the game. Bearing in mind that the only Presidential polling data that really count are the ones that will be taken in voting booths on November 2, I still find these latest polling data intriguing.

2004-04-18T15:32:00.000-04:00

The Weed Of Multiculturalism Bears Bitter Fruit! Multiculturalism Does Not Pay!
Via Fox News comes this story about a Jordanian policeman on a law enforcement assignment with the UN in Kosovo opening fire on some of his collegues, who returned fire, resulting in a ten-minute gun battle. Fox is claiming this occurred at a detention center; this Reuters story via Matt Drudge appears to disagree with this claim. In any event, the Reuters story says the shootout left two American police officers and the Jordanian police officer dead, and ten Americans and one Austrian wounded. It goes on to provides these bits of information as well:

U.N. police sources said four Jordanian police officers had been arrested in connection with the shooting, but could give no further details on the cause.

A police source said it began with a row over Iraq. Singh said the U.N. was still investigating the possible motive.

I have no more information about this incident that anyone else, but I suspect that this will turn out to have been the proximate cause of this eruption of murder. There is a similar precedent in our own armed forces for such behavior. Remember Hasan Akbar? Just read this snippet from the James Taranto article referenced in the Opinion Journal link:

Reuters calls this an "anti-war attack" and reports that Akbar was "apparently angered by the war against Iraq." (The Associated Press reports that Akbar's mother, Quran Bilal, says he was born Mark Fidel Kools but "she changed her son's name to Hasan Akbar after she remarried when he was a young boy.")

In the original text I excerpted, the Reuters claim was a link to Reuters article; the link currently leads to a blank Reuters page, so I didn't include it here.

In this juxtaposition of events I don't mean to suggest that an incident like this could happen anywhere at any time - far from it. As my variation on the theme of The Shadow's motto in the title of this article states, multiculturalism was most likely at the root of both incidents. The Jordanian cop who started the former incident was most likely a Muslim Arab first, and a Jordanian UN policeman second. Hasan Akbar seems to have been a disgruntled Muslim first, and a US soldier second. UN operations, by the very nature of the organization, put people from often violently conflicting cultural backgrounds together to work toward common ends which may not be so common, after all. Within the US, the multicultural movement seeks to establish the primacy of one's cultural background over one's national identity. The other term for this is Balkanization. Yugoslavia, one of the nations for which the term "Balkanization" was named, shows how people from disparate cultures who fail to subordinate their cultural identities to their identification as citizens of a single nation can create a waking nightmare with no end in sight. Adding disparate national identities and aims to such situations yields UN operations.

I don't believe that people from different cultural and national backgrounds can't live and work together without conflict. But the aims of these different nations must be substantially similar, and the cultural identities of those personnel must not conflict with those aims.

On my father's side of the family my grandprarents, among other relatives, emigrated fairly recently from Italy. They rapidly became friends with people from many different cultural backgrounds, from native-born Americans to recent Syrian immigrants. But my family, and their friends, were all Americans first, and anything else second. My friends run a similar gamut; even those who aren't US citizens and come from a different cultural background share values which cut across cultural lines, and generally don't conflict with my own. The cultural disparity between them and me is not that great, and in that respect one could say that our common morals form a sort of shared culture. Within the context of a single nation, its citizens must remain united under the aegis of a certain secular national values which cut across other religious and cultural boundaries, or fall prey to Balkanization. If those values not good, totalitarianism of the like seen in Germany under Hitler can result, so a unifying morality is no panacea. Within the context of people of many nations working together towards a common goal, they must all share that goal. If their cultural identities prevent them from sharing that goal even though they are tasked with achiveing it, tragedy can result.

The UN is a loose association of nations which thinks that it's a a tight association of nations, whose citizens may find themslves forced into attempting to achieve common ends which they find themselves in mutual disagreement and even hostility over. That is likely what happened in Kosovo on Saturday. Tragedy was indeed the result.

We as Americans should take the lessons of the UN to heart, and realize that our individual cultural heritages, while an important part of the identities of many of us, should not be allowed to come into conflict with or take primacy over our common national identity and values, which I consider to be essentially good from an objective moral standpoint. If we are not careful, we will see the weed of multiculturalism bear its bitter fruit of discord and murder in a bumper crop on our own soil.

In fact, given the multicultural / morally relativistic approach taken by so many in the world community to the rise of Islamofascism, one could say that it already has.

2004-04-18T00:23:00.000-04:00

Abdel Aziz Rantisi Retires To A Warmer Climate
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the bloodthirsty pediatrician (now, how many opportunities does a man get to use the phrase "bloodthirsty pediatrician" without hyperbole in life?) who served as head of Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas for less than a month, was forcibly retired from his post and sent to meet his predecessor, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, by the IDF on Saturday. I wrote about Yassin taking his high-temperature perpetual retirement about a month ago, and at the time I must confess that I didn't think his successor would have had his hard ticket to unemployment punched so soon. For a bit of historical background on Saturday's events, Fox News has reprised an interview with Rantisi by reporter Mike Tobin, done soon after Yassin's appointment with destiny, on its website. Quite presciently, the article is entitled Reporter's Notebook: Dead Man Talking.

Echoing the sentiments in my post on Yassin, I don't ordinarily find solace in the deaths of my fellow humans, but with people like Rantisi, a certain line is crossed in their conduct. To quote a line from one of the songs in Jekyll & Hyde, "A moment comes when a man becomes something else." Rantisi, Yassin, and their ilk had that moment a long time ago. They sacrificed their humanity at the altar of evil, and in so doing became creatures beneath contempt. Those who pride themselves on being Jew killers, who hand out candy when innocent women and children are murdered by suicidal bombers, have chosen to define themselves by the threat they pose to innocents. The fact is that all of these people exist as parasites on the human goodness which favors sparing the innocent while destroying the parasites. Sometimes, the destruction of the parasites must take primacy over the collateral injuries and deaths of innocents; this is one of the unavoidable tragedies of war, for a war is what the Israelis, among others, are involved in. In this latest turn of events, Rantisi and two of his bodyguard were killed, but, sadly, five pedestrians were injured. But the parasites must be destroyed, or the cost in the suffering and death of innocents will be appalling in future.

To that end I wish Abdel Aziz Rantisi a warm reception from Ahmed Yassin, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and countless others of that stripe.

Welcome to Inferno, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Welcome home.

2004-04-15T23:43:00.000-04:00

The Riddle Of Intelligence, And The Man Who Never Was
Glenn Reynolds is directing people to Donald Sensing's site to look around at all the good stuff there. Sensing has a delightful piece on the nature of intelligence - as in information-gathering. The post is interesting in it own right, but my attention was drawn particularly to a reference to a story about one of the great intelligence ruses of all time - the man who never was. During World War II, the British threw off German war operations by planting phony documents on a phony Royal Marine. The catch - the Marine had to be dead, the apparent victim of a drowning at sea after the crash of a courier plane. The corpse of a man who had very recently died of pneumonia was "recruited" by the British military from his next of kin to play convincingly, if posthumously, the role of the dead Royal Marine courier. The body, carrying the phony papers, was deposited at sea off the Spanish coast by a British submarine. Upon being found by the Spanish, the documents found with it were turned over to the Abwehr (German intelligence), where the deception really started to pay off. I won't give any more away details of the story. To me the article illustrated how the military forces of a democracy successfully used cleverness and creativity to fight successfully a fascistic terror from yesterday, and how we in the free world of today are the inheritors of both that cleverness and creativity, and a new fascistic threat from militant Islam in what many have described, and I think rightly so, as World War IV - The War On Terror (World War III being The Cold War). I suspect that this story from the past provides a glimpse of the present that followers of al-Qaeda and other Islamofascistic groups will live - and die - in.

2004-04-14T23:03:00.000-04:00

Liberal *Choke!* Radio
Via Drudge comes the developing story of Two Air America stations being taken off the air by the owner of both stations for non-payment for airtime. The story is also covered by Bill Quick, and by Will Collier here and here (with a nice way of getting to the Chicago Tribune's site), and Stephen Green here. I discussed it before as well; that post was cited by Bill Quick here.

From the Chicago Tribune article:

A Chicago source familiar with the situation said a Multicultural representative showed up at WNTD's offices this morning, kicked out Air America's lone staffer overseeing the network's feed to the station from New York, switched over to a Spanish-language feed, and changed the locks on the doors.

Liu said the same thing happened at KBLA in Los Angeles.

To quote some of Will Collier's commentary on this: Memo to the Moonbat Radio staff: It's not exactly a good sign when they change the locks...

Agree with them or not, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity put in years of hard work in many radio stations in small markets, moving gradually to larger and larger markets over a period of years as their reputations for holding on to large audiences grew, and honing their professional skills every step of the way. They succeeded because they proved over the years that they had loyal listeners who would mean advertising dollars to whomever carried them. Eventually, their professional reputations grew to the point that major radio network executives felt that they could develop a national audience, and they were picked up for national syndication. But at that point, both men were seasoned broadcast professionals, who knew how to make their radio programs work from the get-go.

While Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken, and Marc Marron are seasoned entertainers, they're new to talk radio, and haven't had a chance to build their skills bases for it the hard way. Randi Rhodes and a few others are Air America are talk radio pros, but whatever they're doing dosen't appear to be ready for prime time, if the claim of unpaid bills is to be believed. Like I said before, I think that the market for liberal news and opinion may already be saturated by the news and commentary offered by most of the cable and traditional television networks and newspapers. Most talk radio provides a different slant on news and analysis than most of these more traditional sources because it is almost always well to the right of them. It isn't competing with the traditional sources for audience share, but liberal talk radio is.

Maybe Air America is just experiencing some growing pains; I expect the truth is probably closer to terminal shock, though.

2004-04-14T22:09:00.000-04:00

The Blog Hiatus Has Ended!
Sorry about the impromptu blog vacation, but due to my tight schedule of late, and to my elevated blood pressure from dealing with trolls and demi-trolls in the comments sections of other blogs, I took a brief breather. I'll be cranking out another post a little later tonight.

2004-04-08T00:26:00.000-04:00

Into The Sky, Junior Birdmen! Way Into The Sky!
Via Rednova come two fascinating stories about new developments in the area of spaceflight. The news on the Big Government side is that NASA's recent test flight of the X-43A scramjet was a success. From the article, some of the achievements of this flight:

The milestones included the first controlled accelerating flight at Mach 7 under scramjet power; the first air breathing scramjet-powered free flight; and the first successful stage separation at high dynamic pressure of two non-axisymmetric vehicles.

The flight also set a new aeronautical speed record. The X-43A reached more than Mach 7, approximately 5,000 mph. That was faster than any known aircraft powered by an air-breathing engine has ever flown.

Wow. The scramjet concept, if ultimately successful, would alow such an orbital craft launched from Earth to dispense with having to carry onboard oxidizer, and allow it to use instead the often rarified air along its flight path to burn its fuel. Since our government is going to be running manned space exploration programs for the forseeable future, and will need vehicles to carry astronauts safely to orbit, it is my sincerest wish that such a clever and efficient design is selected as the replacement for our aging fleet of space shuttles, which weren't all they were cracked up to be from the get-go.

On the private side of space exploration, Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites has been granted a license by the FAA to test fly it's binary suborbital spacecraft up to a height of about sixty miles - essentially the edge of space. The binary craft consists of a jet, the White Knight, which carriess the spacecraft proper, called SpaceShipOne, and releases it to continue it's journey to the edge of space on its own. The craft is being developed as a prototype of a vehicle which could carry passengers for a thrill ride to the fringes of space for the cost of a luxury ocean cruise within, perhaps the next ten years, according to a statement on the Scaled Composites website.

The license allows the spacecraft to become eligible for the X- Prize, which is described in an excerpt from the article:

The license is a prerequisite for the X Prize competition, an international space race that will give $10 million to the first company or person to launch a manned craft to 62.5 miles above the Earth, and then do it again within two weeks. The craft must be able to carry three people.

What makes the X Prize particularly neat? Again from the article:

The prize, announced in 1996, is sponsored by the privately funded X Prize Foundation in St. Louis.

Supporters include Dennis Tito, the American who spent $20 million to fly in a Russian craft as the first space tourist; pilot Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of Charles Lindbergh; former astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn; and actor Tom Hanks.

It's a private incentive for entrepeneurial technological innovation, and the private sector is, I believe, where the ultimate future of space exploration and related technologies lies.

Burt Rutan is an aviation pioneer who's been responsible for some highly innovative aircraft designs, including the Voyager, which flew around the world in 1986 without refueling, and a number of amazing small aircraft which were designed to be home-built. He's a professional with a long track record of successful innovation; I suspect that this venture will be, too. I wish him and Scaled Composites the best of luck in their endeavor.

2004-04-06T22:25:00.000-04:00

A Slight Case Of Writer's Block
Sorry about the light posting of late, but I'm experiencing a slight touch of writer's block at the moment. I'll try to break out of this little slump tomorrow.

2004-04-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

Repaid With Interest
Yesterday, a bomb was found underneath train tracks between Madrid and Seville, and safely defused by the Civil Guard. It is not yet known if this bomb was connected in any way to the March train bombings in Madrid. Today, three suspected terrorists from North Africa blew themselves up as they chanted in Arabic in an apartment building in Leganes, a suburb of Madrid, as police closed in on them. Sadly, eleven other people were hurt in the blast, and a forty-one year old policeman with two sons was killed.

I'm afraid that the Spanish response to the March bombings as seen in their election results only told the terrorists that their tactics were effective. It also serves to illustrate that the only effective way to deal with terrorists is to actively fight them, to cripple and destroy them and their networks. I'm afraid that the unwise investment in the future the made by the Spanish electorate in March will be repaid with interest by the terrorists. In fact, it's happening already.

UPDATE: Matt Drudge is linking to a Reuters story claiming that four suspected terrorists were blown up in the apartment building in Laganes - the suspected ringleader of the train bombings in Madrid, a Tunisian named Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, and three of his associates. The article goes on to mention this:

One body which had yet to be identified was wearing an explosives belt of the type favored by Palestinian militants, the minister added. It contained two kg (4.4 pounds) of explosives.

"They shouted 'God is great' or something like that" in Arabic just before the explosion, one of the police officers who took part in the assault told El Pais newspaper.

A further two or three people may have escaped before the explosion, Acebes said, adding that the group appeared to have been planning more attacks.

Police also found 200 detonators and 22 pounds of dynamite, of the same type used in the train bombings and Friday's thwarted rail bomb.

Not good.

2004-04-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

Alright - Move Already!
Via Drudge comes this story concerning Yassir Arafat possibly overstaying his welcome in the West Bank in the worst sort of way in the near future. Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's patience with him is wearing thin. Actually, I should say his patience is wearing even more thin, what with Arafat's involvement in actions which have killed hundreds of innocent Israelis over the years and the like. I wish the IDF would evict this murderous clown the hard way, and move him into new quarters - like a 6" X 2" X 2" windowless apartment six feet underground with no utilities.
SHAMEFACED UPDATE: The hard edge on my commentary was blunted by my putting the dimensions of Arafat's subterranean palazzo in inches rather than feet. The revised dimensions are 6' X 2' X 2'. I will now hang my head in shame.

2004-03-31T00:07:00.000-05:00

Artificial Life in Five to Ten Years?
Via Matt Drudge comes this fascinating article on the state of the art in creating artificial cells. Apparently, the EU has created an entire organization, he Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, devoted to the goal of producing what could only be reasonsbly described as artificial cells, with an aim to using them as little factories for specialty chemicals, among other things. Among the other prodigies described in the article are the development of artificial cell membrands which can reproduce by fission, partially self-replicating RNA strands, and a variant of DNA, called polypeptide nucleic acid (PNA), which has an affinity for membranes. The resultant immobilization of the PNA on the membrane could make it easier to associate membranes and artifical genetic material to make a fully-functional self-replicating cell. As to the size such constructs would likely have, one researcher is quoted in the article as having produced "protocells" which are about ten million times smaller than a bacterium. The article makes a blanket claim of consensus among scientists in this line of research that the development of actual, self-replicating, fully-synthetic cells could be accomplished in the next five to ten years.

In a previous post I provided some background on micellar systems, which are similar in many respects to the artificial cell membranes described in the article. I also mentioned that I've done self-assembly chemistry, and have some familiarity with self-assembling surfactant microstructures, such as micelles and vesicles. From what I gathered in the article, and my own experience, the claimed timeframe for development does not seem farfetched. What I find most intriguing, though, is the proposed use of a chemical other than DNA or RNA to serve as the heriditary material for at least one such synthetic cell. The implications that this holds for examining other planets for life are staggering.

For human beings to demonstrate that a form of life fundamentally different in many ways from naturally occurring organisms on Earth might be, in a sense, providing a glimpse of an alternate pathway to life which the chemicals of the primordial Earth never took - at least, not successfully. In this sense, it could provide models for how life may have evolved on other worlds - perhaps even places like Mars or Europa in our own solar system.

The development of artificial cells will likely be hailed be an accomplishment at least as tremendous as the discovery of naturally-occurring extraterrestrial life, as it should be. And unlike the latter, the former is quite amenable to hard work. At this rate, it is entirely possible that humans may synthesize life before it is found elsewhere in the universe; either way, it'll change the way we view our place in the world and the universe drastically, and forever. No matter whether natural extraterrestrial life or earthbound synthetic life is discovered first; I'll welcome either development with open arms. Here's to witnessing both discoveries - and sooner rather than later.

2004-03-29T23:50:00.000-05:00

Boomerang?
So how is Richard Clarke's aggrieved-voice-in-the-wilderness act playing with the American electorate? I haven't seen any polling data addressed to this specific question, but let's look at Clarke to begin with. Tom Maguire has two excellent posts collating a lot (and I mean a lot) of Clarke-related links, with some analysis.

Two other interesting Clarke-related links come via Drudge: the first details how the calls made by his supporters for Condoleeza Rice to testify before the 9/11 panel come in conflict with the protocol followed by the NSA to not allow it's personnel to testify before congressional panels, citing separation of powers; a signal example of this was an attempt to get an NSA employee to testify before one such panel in 1999. The name of the employee was Richard Clarke. Hmmmm...

The second link from Drudge is only tangentially related to Clarke, and is really more closely related to Kerry. I'll link it via the title Drudge gives it on his only site: CNNUSATODAYGALLUP POLL: BUSH REBOUND. It's polling data on the Bush-Kerry Presidential race taken between March 26 and March 28, and it has Bush's nummbers rising. He and Kerry are still in a statistical dead heat, though. The poll summary makes references to Clarke's specific effect on the Presidential race, but in another file.

The take-home message here is that whatever Clarke, Kerry, and Bush are doing, it appears to be hurting Kerry and helping Bush, and Clarke appears to be engaged in character suicide via the death of a thousand conflicting statements - in his book, on the interview circuit, and in his testimony before the congressional 9/11 panel. To paraphrase a comment I made at Bill Quick's site, I think Clarke is going to end up crying into his cheap, nasty beer with Paul O' Neill after his fifteen minutes of fame are up.

2004-03-25T21:36:00.000-05:00

Light Posting For A Few Days
Due to to other commitments, I'll be be posting rather lightly over the next few days. I'll try to get in a post or two if time permits.

2004-03-24T23:05:00.000-05:00

Passivity In The Face Of Evil
Bill Quick has a thread discussing how Hamas has backed off its earlier assertion that tacit American acceptance of the Israeli assassination of Ahmed Yassin would draw reprisals against the U. S..

One commentor (see this and follow this commentor's later entries down - and I mean down) made arguments which I found so crudely repugnant as to be self-discrediting, and I won't pursue them any further.

The second commentor was was praising the virtues of libertarian isolationism - and passivity in the face of evil when acting against it would establish peace and freedom in the long term.

A telling excerpt from his comment:

My “Libertarian pacifist nonsense” (which is what I’d assume you call well-armed isolationism) has kept terrorists from crashing jets into Geneva sky-scrapers, a continuingly small decentralized government, and was perfectly capable of keeping Hilter from crashing they’re party, while your fascist interventionism isn't keeping us safe, makes those who hate us hate us more, doesn’t buy the love of those we claim to protect (France, anyone?), and is a blank-check for government expansion into every aspect of our lives.

I'll try to keep argumentum ad hominem out of this as best I can, but issues of morality go beyond the cold calculus of rhetoric and logic, and morality is very much a character issue.

What he wrote above is essentially that passivity in the face of metastasizing evil is a virtue, even when action, perhaps violent, would destroy that evil or at least render it less dangerous, and freedom could be created or restored, and maintained as a result.

He considers that trying to kill those who hate us because we're free and prosperous is wrong, because it will make them hate us more. I consider libertarian passivity in this matter to be functionally indistiguishable from cowardice. I don't consider cowardice a virtue.

He also notes that armed neutrality kept the Swiss out of World War II, and considers that a virtue. That not doing anything to provoke the evil that is swallowing your neighbors alive when you could make a difference by military action to keep your neighbors free is a virtue. That not doing anything to provoke the evil forces that attacked one's nation and their allies is a virtue which trumps actively trying to root them out and destroy them.

The actions he lauds the Swiss for taking in World War II, had they been adopted more widely, would have allowed Hitler's Third Empire to flourish in Europe, perhaps even be most of Europe. And yet he claims that fighting the inheritors of the Nazi philosophy in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic world is "fascist interventionism". The irony in that statement is chilling.

I live in the DC Metro area. I saw the smoke rise from Pentagon on 9/11 from a window in my office building, and lived through the anthrax mail attacks. One of the people the Beltway snipers murdered lived in my apartment building, and they killed a few other people not too far away from it as well. I regularly ride on the Metro train system. Whenever possible terrorist plots to gas or firebomb the Metro system are described in the media, they aren't describing hypothetical acts which could affect hypothetical people. They're describing what could happen to me on a very bad day.

But what disturbs me more than the notion of my own violent death is the thought that America would treat national passivity as a virtue; that my fellow countrymen could treat violent action against ravenous evil as an even greater evil itself.

Barry Goldwater once said "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

I'll add this: Passivity in the face of evil is no virtue.

2004-03-23T12:04:00.000-05:00

You Reap What You Sow
Via Matt Drudge we have reports that Yassir Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah may be finding new employment as moving targets for Hellfire missile practice in future, and that the entire leadership of Hamas has now been marked for death by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, not in assasinations retaliating for individual acts of terrorism, but as a matter of standing policy. The Israelis mean to conduct - you guessed it - preemptive strikes. This a pretty effective method of preventing terrorism - killing terrorist leaders so as to destroy the infrastructure of their organization. I hope this comes about with all deliberate speed; with some of the logistics (and human refuse) taken out of Hezbollah's operations in and near Israel, a sizeable chunk of the terror there will be taken out as well.

2004-03-22T22:47:00.000-05:00

Poetic Justice
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and "spiritual leader" of the terrorist organization Hamas, was seriously blown up by three Israeli missiles early Monday. Seven others got their mortal comeuppance in the airstrike, including several bodyguards. Yassir Arafat is worried that he might be next.

Ordinarily, I would say that it's bad to take comfort in the deaths of others, but Yassin was a monster. True, he was old, nearly blind, and a quadraplegic, but that didn't stop him from coordinating the murder of hundreds of innocent Israelis. He served as the brain of a many-bodied monster which would use some of its bodies as living bombs in the commission of mass murders, with new living bombs taking their places in each aftermath. Arafat is cut from the same bolt of cloth as Yassin, except that his particular swatch isn't shredded and burned - for now. I hope Arafat leaves this world on the Israelis' terms, and not his own. He'll be keeping Yassin company in Inferno - sooner or later.

2004-03-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

John Kerry: Slouching Toward The Past
Bill Quick has a post on a New York Sun story about John Kerry's sordid past. A combination of archieved meeting minutes, FBI surveilance reports, and eyewitness place Kerry at a meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) in 1971, where a plan to assassinate various senators was proposed - and voted down. According to several eyewitness, Kerry was one of the people who voted against the plan. Very soon thereafter, Kerry and three of his associates formally severed their ties with the organization.

I'll reproduce my quote from Bill Quick's site here:

I can see the new Kerry campaign slogan now:

A vote for Kerry is a vote against congressional assassinations.

So it comes to this... Good grief.

Commenter Jake on Bill Quick's site provides this observation:

Hearing the planning of a murder and not reporting it makes you a co-conspirator. There are no statue of limitations on that crime. The big question is why didn’t Kerry go to jail or why is he not in jail now?

Good grief indeed.

UPDATE: Bronson Yake discounts the possibility of a conspiracy case against Kerry in the comments in Bill's post.

2004-03-21T21:15:00.000-05:00

The Secular Trinity On Hold This Weekend
I had a lot more activities than I'd planned on having this weekend, including an impromptu Wizards game this afternoon, so I'll have to get to the secular trinity later this week.

2004-03-20T22:25:00.000-05:00

Kerry's Leaders Revisited
Tom Maguire has an interesting thread going on a blast from the past providing a preview of Kerry's claims of endorsement by foreign leaders. The thread has generated some rather spirited comments - many of them mine. The history lesson in Tom's post is... Revealing.

2004-03-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

More On The Secular Trinity This Weekend
I'll post at least the second part of the secular trinity essay sometime this weekend. My exercise schedule has me coming home from the gym late - and really, really tired. It's the sort of post that requires more mental alertness than I've had many nights this week. I should have more time and energy this weekend.

2004-03-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

A Turning Point?
Tom Maguire has posted on The New Republic's "Kerry Motto Lotto" here. In it, he linked to a New York Times article which contained the following John Kerry quote:

"I actually voted for the $87 before I voted against it."

This quote crystallizes Kerry's labile decision-making in a single utterance from Kerry himself. It is of almost Dantean eloquence and power in laying out the man's signal weakness. Karl Rove at his finest could do no better than this. I think Kerry's ill-considered blurt marked a defining moment in his campaign.

I find this quote to be such a damning self-indictment of Kerry that, at the risk of looking seriously foolish in future, I will make a prediction: It will turn out to have been the turning point in the 2004 Presidential race. I know it's early in the game, and there could be a world of change between now and November 4. However, somtimes a game is lost in the earliest stages of play. I think the 2004 Presidential race may well be such a game. Time will tell.

2004-03-17T00:53:00.000-05:00

The Secular Trinity - Part 1
Current events such as the al-Qaeda attack in Madrid and the adoption of an interim constitution in Iraq have sparked much debate about the relationship of religion to government, and what the United States should do to give democracy the best chance to take root there. What are the limits of humans' abilities to influence the world around them, most particularly the opinions of their fellow humans? Why do so many on the left seem to set standards of perfection in the results of endeavors they disagree with, like American management of post-Saddam Iraq, and yet attempt to justify the most squalid and horrendous atrocities in ventures they feel some ideological kinship with, such as the old Soviet Union? Why do they expect government to be the solution to every ill that befalls man? I have an idea as to why. I think that much leftist secular reasoning is based in what amounts to a secular trinity, mirroring the Holy Trinity of Christianity. This will be the first installment of a series of posts which addresses the secular trinity, and its implications and ramifications in modern society.

As best I understand it, the Holy Trinity of Christianity is comprised thusly:

1) God the Father - the creator of the universe.

2) The Son of God, Jesus Christ of Nazareth - the Word of God made flesh and manifest in the world.

3) The Holy Spirit - the manifestation of the Word of God in the hearts and minds of His worshippers. It is that aspect of God which provides guidance to His worshippers on how to lead a good life, in keeping with His laws. The Holy Spirit comforts them when they are distressed, gives them resolve when they are weak, and is their companion and guide when they are alone, so that they are never really alone.

The practice of Christianity has had its ups and downs through the years, as all religions have, although the distribution of ups and downs is definitely not the same for all religions. However, nowadays the influence of Christianity in the world is viewed by most people as positive. For example, one of the driving forces behind the Solidarity movement in Poland was the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy Trinity is a matter of Christian faith.

The secular trinity is as follows:

1) Man

2) Government

3) Philosophy

Man is seen as the great force of intelligent creation in the universe; in a secular sense, man is a "creator" of sorts, who will shape nature as he sees fit in order to make the world a better place for him to live in.

Government is the will of man made manifest in the world. Government is succor and salvation to the masses. Government will relieve suffering and build great artifices. Government will eliminate poverty and provide people with dignity. Government will keep crabgrass from growing in your lawn.

Philosophy is the set of rules man has created to help guide him through life, by providing him with systems of reasoning by which to interrogate and analyze the physical universe around him and the intellectual universe within him, and principles of conduct by which he can live a good life as best he can for himself and his fellows. Philosophy can serve to comfort those in distress and give them resolve when they are weak. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius kept a personal journal during his time in Germany in which he collected his philosophical beliefs, often with concrete examples of how they could be put into practice. In this collection of short philosophical musings, known in English as the Meditations, Marcus frequently seems to be trying to comfort himself by reiterating and rededicating himself to his principles, so as to master, if not banish, the loneliness and isolation of the German frontier.

The secular trinity is entirely analogous to the Holy Trinity. That's its problem.

2004-03-15T02:09:00.000-05:00

So Andy, How Does Your Foot Taste?
According to this article on the Fox News site, Andy Rooney got a record 30,000 pieces of mail in response to his 60 Minutes commentary of February 22, during which he referred to Mel Gibson as a "wacko". The article doesn't state such, but it's almost certainly related to Gibson's latest film, The Passion of the Christ.

Andy Rooney has forgotten more about being funny than he ever knew. He should be ashamed of himself.

2004-03-15T00:52:00.000-05:00

Curmudgeonly, But Basically Honorable
A most extradordinarily article by John Lloyd, linked to by RealClearPolitics, presents a stark assessment of world terrorism and America's role in fighting it. I don't agree with all of his points, but the ones most important to his thesis are pretty well-reasoned. He occasionally comes up with self-contradictory howlers like this one, though:

A curmudgeonly, limited and hard-to-like administration is pursuing causes which liberals have wished to be pursued for decades.

Limited is as limited does, so who is truly limited, here? Liberal European governments which talk much about democracy but do little to actually foster it abroad, or a more conservative American government which chooses to actively fight enemies of democracy and work to establish it abroad in spite of casualties to it's own fighting men and women, and opprobrium from the those same Liberal European talk-much-do-little governments?

However, his assessment of the Bush administration as being abrasive and unlikeable, but stepping up to the plate to shoulder the burden of fighting terror which the Europeans have "politely declined" to do, is interesting as an observation of both European political opinion and Bush's sense of responsibility.

But please don't just read my brief commentary here; I highly recommend that you read the whole article.

2004-03-15T00:19:00.000-05:00

Put Up Or Shut Up
Via Matt Drudge, we have this amusing little story wherein Colin Powell puts the smackdown on John Kerry regarding his claims that he has gotten endorsements for his candidacy from several "foreign leaders":

He was challenged on the issue by Powell, who said on "Fox News Sunday" that "if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."

Ouch!

Charles Hirt and Stephen Dinan of The Washington Times also failed to find any evidence to corroborate Kerry's claims. Charles Krauthammer commented on this matter with charming acidity. The money lines:

It is not John Kerry's fault that he is endorsed by a Frenchman. (Or by Kim Jong Il of North Korea, whose media have been running some of Kerry's speeches verbatim!) But Kerry has made the major -- indeed, only discernible -- theme of his foreign policy ``rejoining the community of nations'' and being liked abroad once again.

Which is why he does not just court foreign support, he boasts about it. ``I've met foreign leaders, who can't go out and say this publicly,'' he told a Hollywood, Fla., fund-raiser, ``but boy they look at you and say, `You gotta win this one, you gotta beat this guy.'''

For the world. For France.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Krauthammer hits something very important on the head with his assessment. Kerry is running for President of the United States of America, not President of the United Nations. He is running for an office where he is expected to look after the interests of Americans first and foremost. That isn't runaway nationalism or "ugly Americanism"; it is in large part the description of the job of the POTUS. Other nations will have interests which may or may not coincide with the interests of the U. S.. U.S. foreign policy should always redound to the benefit of the U. S. somehow. For a very long time U.S. foreign policy has essentially been enlightened self-interest, with emphasis at times of the enlightenment, at others on the self-interest. U. S. foreign policy should never, ever be predicated on whatever gets us liked by other nations. In the instance of the 9-11-01 attacks, a good case could be made that the international "goodwill" Dick Gephardt and others claim Bush "squandered" in moving against Iraq was in large part Schadenfreude, since the "goodwill" seemed to be predicated on our remaining victims and not moving militarily against the state sponsors of those who attacked us, and terrorist-supporter, murderous tyrant, and sometime WMD wielder Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq. No-one who seeks or holds the Presidency of the United States should seek to curry favor with purveyors of such Schadenfreude; it cheapens both the office and the man or woman who holds it.

Kerry and those like him who argure that we should first and foremost not disaffect our traditional "allies" make two errors in judgement: The first is simply failure to define who our allies are based on their actions in the present. The second is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum.

If a moral man follows his own moral compass, and in so doing alienates his friends, they may well have been never been his friends at all, and are in any event certainly not such in the present. If that moral man happens to be the POTUS, and his friends the nations supposedly allied with his own, much the same argument obtains. Foreign governments have their own agendas and interests, real or at least perceived, to defend and advance. To think that they should do so in the present because they did so in the past is to ignore the fact that national interests and agendas change over time. I may present a more detailed discussion of how this is so in a future post.

Ultimately, the POTUS is duty-bound to represent U. S. interests first and foremost. The U. S. should make alliances with foreign powers so as to advance the interests the United States first and foremost. Morality should also be considered an interest of the United States as well. In World War II, this was a double-edged sword; we allied ourselves with Stalin's Communist regime to defeat Hitler and his Third Empire, even though Stalin almost certainly murdered even more people than the Nazis during that time, and his brutal domestic policies killed tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the years before the war. By the same token, we allied ourselves with Great Britain by supporting her with the Lend-Lease program, thereby ending our neutrality and making our commercial ships legitimate targets of Axis forces. In fact, one could say that Hitler was a dictator who oppressed and murdered his own people, who invaded his neighbors, who possessed chemical weapons of mass destruction and was claimed to be developing nuclear weapons, and who had never posed any kind of direct threat to the U. S. mainland (Well... Dosen't this seem familiar?)... Until U. S. involvement on Great Britain's behalf. Remember that the active participation of U. S. forces in World War II began after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And don't forget argumentum ad populum again; surely many in the Axis countries (and sadly, some in America and Great Britain) were thinking "Eighty million Germans can't be wrong..."

As an American citizen, and given all I've written above, I think Kerry should put up and shut up. As a partisan Republican, I think he should keep saying what he's saying; he's doing a better job of killing his own credibility than Karl Rove could ever dream of doing.

Popularity with foreign governments is not and should not be a primary goal of U. S. foreign policy, and any government official who advocates a "go along to get along" approach to foreign relations is abdicating his professional reponsibilities, or worse. If this is the approach to foreign policy favored by Kerry, and it appears to be so, then the Democratic Party may well find itself in terrible shape after Kerry loses the 2004 Presidential election - and perhaps in even worse shape if he wins it.

2004-03-13T11:24:00.000-05:00

The Ringing Sound Of Death
Via RealClearPolitics, this story from The Telegraph relates the thoughts of a columnist on how the full gravity of the deaths in Madrid train bombings was brought home by the ghostly ringing of their cell phones, being called by their friends and relatives who wanted to know if they were alright - friends and relatives whose calls went tellingly unanswered. Please read the whole article; I can't begin to do it justice with my short commentary here.

2004-03-12T22:57:00.000-05:00

Light Posting Day
I got back from the gym late, ran into a buddy from work and ended up having dinner with him. I'm currently as spent as a twenty dollar bill at Caesar's Palace, so this will be it for posting tonight. There will be actual new content tomorrow.

2004-03-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

She's Not Anti-War, She's Just (Allegedly) On The Other Side
One Susan Lindauer of Takoma Park, Maryland, which is right down the road from where I live in Silver Spring, was held fast in the hand of John Law today for, among other things, taking a total of $10,000 in payments from Iraqi intelligence agents between 1999 and 2002. Fox News has more on this story here. A little fair-use excerpt from the article:

Lindauer's work allegedly continued through last month, when she maintained contact with an FBI agent posing as a Libyan intelligence service operative who wanted to support resistance groups in postwar Iraq.

The indictment said she met the agent last July in Baltimore, "and discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support resistance groups operating within Iraq." Acting on the agent's orders, Lindauer left documents at a spot in Takoma Park last August, the indictment said.

Ouch! Another fair-use excerpt:

She worked at Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before going into politics. Her father, John, was the Republican nominee for governor of Alaska in 1998.

She worked for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in 1993 and Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in 1994. She joined the office of Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., as press secretary in 1996. In 2002, she worked for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Here's a pop quiz for you: Name five people who are going to get visits from law enforcement authorities in the near future.

I'm not implying that these people had any nefarious involvement with this woman, but she was on their staffs, and they might be able to provide the authorities with information which could give them a better handle on what makes this woman tick, and perhaps other information as well.

This is going to get interesting soon, I bet.

UPDATE: To be more precise, when I mentioned Lindauer was arrested for "...taking a total of $10,000..." from Iraqi intelligence agents, I should have written "...allegedly taking a total of $10,000..." instead.

2004-03-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

Horrific Bombings In Spain
The worst terrorist attack in Spain's history occurred today. Fox News has more here. There are signs that this may be the work of al-Qaeda or an affiliated organization, and not the Basque separatist group ETA. A van containing detonators and taped Quranic verses was found near one of the bombing sites, and an ETA spokesman has denied their involvement in the attacks. However, the Al-Qaeda and ETA angles are not necessarily mutually exclusive. At this early stage, everything is a jumble. I'll be interested to find out how this develops in the next week. I wouldn't be shocked if the al-Qaeda angle turns out to be true, though.

2004-03-10T20:40:00.000-05:00

Liberal Talk Radio Will Debut March 31
Matt Drudge reports that liberal talk radio network Air America will be hitting the airwaves on March 31. Their anchor on-air talent will be provided by writer and comedian Al Franken. Others involved include Janeane Garofalo, Marc Marron, Lizz Winstead. They're all talented and funny people - although I most likely wouldn't find them funny in this context. Which brings me to my point: I'm not so sure Air America has a market.

Air America isn't going to be competing for my listenership; they aren't going after people who would otherwise listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Dennis Prager, or the like. They're trying to attract people who would otherwise be watching major television news providers like ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, and CNN. They'll be reading newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and so on. Fox, The Washington Times, and the New York Post are exceptions here.

One of the reasons why talk radio rose to prominence was that these major news outlets had a near-monolithic leftist slant on reportage. Talk radio presented alternative, and more conservative takes on the news, which couldn't be found by watching television news or reading left-slanting newspapers.

The Air America people are competing against a market which is already well-served with news and opinion presentations in print and on television, That market may well be saturated. So Air America would be working to pull people away from the television networks and newspapers like the New York Times which are already serving their news and commentary needs.

My analysis may be overly pessimistic regarding Air America's chances for success, but it's no big deal if I'm wrong here. If these guys can find a market and turn a profit, good on them, and my analysis won't amount to a hill of beans. I'm looking forward to seeing how this will eventually play out.

2004-03-09T23:14:00.000-05:00

Newsmax Blues
Charles R. Smith has this article up on Newsmax about "radioactive" missiles being found in Iraq. This missle is roughly the Russian equivalent of the Sidewinder air-to-air missile. The warhead contains 1.6 kg of uranium, in order to send shards of hard, pyrophoric metal into the aircraft it is fired at. Smith describes the metal as radioactive, and relates "U.S. bomb experts" opinions that the design of the warhead is similar in design to that of a so-called "dirty bomb".

I did a number of Google searches on the missile, but couldn't find much information on the composition of its warhead. However, in the absence of any other information, it's likely that the uranium used is depleted uranium, that is, uranium which has been largely depleted by its lighter, highly-radioactive, fissile U-235 isotope. Depleted uranium has almost no radioactivity, and is not particularly toxic. Steven Den Beste has excellent summaries of the facts regarding depleted uranium here and here.

Smith's article notes that Army bomb disposal personnel using Geiger counters have detected radioactivity from the missles. It could be that the Russians didn't purify their uranium that well, and left behind more of the highly radioactive U-235 in the inadequately-depleted metal than is found in well-depleted uranium. In any event, I doubt that the uranium in the warheads poses much of a health risk if the missiles are properly handled and disposed of by trained experts. I should note that that risk drops to essentially nothing if the uranium is depleted sufficiently to be recognized as depleted uranium.

Unfortunately, Smith does not give any of the radioactivity readings from the missiles in his article, so it's impossible to tell just how radioactive they are. However, I doubt that the Russians would knowingly waste significant amounts of valuable and fissile U-235 in the shrapnel in an air-to-air missile warhead. Because of this, I strongly suspect that Smith pushed the uranium angle in his article harder than the facts in the case warranted.

UPDATE: I apparently unwittingly double-posted this. I deleted the earlier post, since all it was was a rough, unfinished version of this post that was never intended to be posted as-is.

2004-03-09T21:15:00.000-05:00

Like School On Saturday - No Class
Via this post by Tom Maguire, we have a link to a story from the Kerry campaign blog describing some of the Kumbaya moments at a Kerry-MoveOn "house party" in San Francisco. I probably didn't need to tell you that the party was held in San Francisco.

It mentions the crass little buttons Kerry's wife has been handing out lately. As far as her husband is concerned, I consider them a triumph of politics over statesmanship. As far as she is concerned, I consider handing them out while John Ashcroft has been in hospital as tastelessness bordering on malice.

By the way, I find it intriguing that someone running for POTUS would want to be as directly associated with MoveOn as he is. Let's just say that if I were running for public office and some of my associates started making little ads where my opponent was shown morphing into Adolf Hitler, while text from some of Der Fuerher's speeches was being displayed, unless my opponent actually was a Nazi, or held equivalent bona fides, like being a Klansman or a former speechwriter for David Duke (hardly mutually exclusive bona fides in that case), I'd jettison the people who came up with the ads like spent solid rocket boosters, and give them a public rebuke the likes of which would leave them with a stamp of shame they'd never live down.

As an historical note, indecorous behavior didn't do Al Gore any wonders in the 2000 election - and much of that behavior was Bill Clinton's.

2004-03-08T23:15:00.000-05:00

This Sounds Familiar...
I had a particularly long day at the office and a no-excuses-can't-miss-it deadline to meet today. I met it, but at the expense of a trip to the gym time to write anything appreciable here. I'm rapidly going into sleep mode, so I'll try posting something tomorrow, earlier on. I'll shoot for something over lunch.

2004-03-07T21:33:00.000-05:00

Where's The Prose?
I realize that the posting here has been as thin as the gruel in a Dickens novel of late. I've been working on the rush job I mentioned earlier over this weekend, so I really haven't had time much time of my own for writing. I'll try very hard to get something at least somewhat substantive posted tomorrow.

2004-03-07T21:11:00.000-05:00

The Best Link Title I've Seen In A Long Time
Foxnews.com has a story on David Crosby's latest run-in with John Law. Here is the link, given with its original title on the Foxnews website: Crosby, Knives, Stash, and Gun.

2004-03-05T21:11:00.000-05:00

Life Chemistries Post On Hold For Now - But A Line On Something Interesting
I just got a fairly rushed assignment at work, which means some night and weekend duty in my immediate future - an no life chemistries post for a while. However, I can give you a quick heads-up. One of the best conservative voices on the airwaves has been Tony Snow, late of Fox News Sunday. Well, now he's coming to a medium ideally suited to his convivial demeanor and quick wit: The Tony Snow Show on Fox News Radio. I'd link to Fox News Radio directly, but the site looks like it's currently for commercial affiliates. I'll chalk it up to Fox being new in the radio business. Check out the site for the show; I'll probably be linking it directly myself soon.

2004-03-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

Still No Life Chemistries Post - But It's Physics, And A Little Chemistry
After a taxing trip to the gym tonight, I took a long phone call, and returned a message on my answering. Translation: No life chemistries post... Again. However, I couldn't rest easily tonight without doing a good science-related post. So, via Glenn Reynolds, we have this story about tabletop fusion.

No, I don't mean the cold fusion debacle of fifteen years ago. That one involved electrochemistry (yes, I know... and it makes me wince a little to this day), with claims that electrolysis of heavy water at platinum electrodes was generating neutrons from deuterium fusion. As a little side note here, the two principle authors of the claim, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, were actually very well respected electrochemists before that foolishness occurred. Pons I remember in particular as being an authority on microelectrodes. Actually, both men have large bodies of still-respected work which predated cold fusion.

The story Glenn links to involves fusion by ultrasonication. I used ultrasonic baths frequently throughout graduate school. Most people have encountered them buzzing away in jeweler's shops cleaning jewelery. In chemistry, they have many uses. They are used to aid the dissolution of slow-dissolving solutes into solvents by the enhanced convection produced by the ultrasound waves; by the same mechanism, they can be used to accelerate many chemical reactions. But they can also be used to carry out other reactions by promoting free radical formation in the one or more of reactants. A free radical is a chemical species which has a lone electron dangling out into its environment, which usually makes it highly reactive.

Ultrasound can break off parts of molecules and turn them into free radicals in a most interesting way. It has been well known for years that ultrasound produces many tiny, rapidly expanding and collapsing bubbles in liquid solutions it is propagated through in a process called cavitation. The cavitation produces by ultrasound results in locally extraordinarily intense energy being concentrated in the regions of the bubbles. The bubbles collapse with such extraordinary violence that temperatures have been known to produce plasma, gas heated so hot that it breaks apart in whole or in part into ions. And here's where it gets interesting.

Glenn (follow the links) linked to this story in 2002 about reports of nuclear fusion of deuterium occuring in an ultrasonicated liquid. The press release from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claims that the experimental results of 2002 have been confirmed with more recent experiments, the results of which will appear in Physical Review E's web and paper editions soon. Physical Review E is a highly respected peer-reviewed journal put out by the American Physical Society; it's no Weekly World News. Nuclear fusion has been held out for decades as a way to generate vast amounts of power cleanly with an almost limitless "fuel" source, deuterium from heavy water.

Not so long ago, research into nuclear fusion was confined to being carried out by means of huge lasers which tightly focus highly energetic laser beams onto a tiny glass pellet containing deuterium, or huge donut-shaped devices called tokomaks, which confine plasmas in a toroidal magnetic field, and squeeze the field in an attempt to squeeze the plasma hard enough to cause nuclear fusion. It is fantanstically expensive "big science", and it has yet to do more than break even with power generation (the fusion reaction releasing as much energy as is required to initiate it). I don't know exactly how much the ultrasound apparatus used in these experiments costs, but ultrasound equipment generally isn't that expensive by the standards of scientific equipment; I'd guess that it probably dosen't cost much more than a fully-loaded Lexus.

What these experiments will have to do with the commercial generation of electricity by nuclear fusion is anyone's guess. Ultrasound-generated fusion reactions could turn out to be no more than a laboratory curiosity. But the possibility that it could open up a low-cost pathway to commercial fusion power generation is intriguing. Assuming these results are what they are claimed to be, I have little doubt that fusion reactions initiated by ultrasound will be a fruitful area of research in the decades to come. And if it does hold the key to commercial fusion energy production, the availability of cheap and effectively limitless electric power would likely transform the world in an Energy Revolution, akin in scope and importance to the Industrial Revolution.

2004-03-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

Alright - I Really Think Tomorrow's The Day
I've been doing a bit of link wrangling for the life chemistries, and it's been taking a bit longer than expected. I really, really should have the post up by tomorrow. Curiously, I learned a few things about silicon chemistry I didn't know before while hunting around the web. Remember - while I'm a chemist, I'm not an inorganic chemist - that is, a specialist in the chemistry of compounds based on elements other than carbon.

I'm going to root around a bit more tonight and tomorrow, and then I think I'll have enough for a nice post.

2004-03-03T21:41:00.000-05:00

John Edwards' Campaign
From Joementum to nomentum.

2004-03-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

Another Light Posting Day
Sorry I didn't get to the life chemistries post as I'd wanted to. I'll try to it tomorrow. For now I'll leave you with this: There was, at least locally and for a time, somewhat persistent liquid water on Mars.

2004-03-01T23:54:00.000-05:00

Microbes on Earth Play Curious and Nasty Tricks
As I'm running a bit late with things right now, the post I had intended tonight, on the likelihood of various chemistries for life on other planets, should show up tomorrow, with luck.

I'm listening to some interesting news while I'm typing this post: According to John Batchelor on his radio program tonight, NASA is going to have a press conference from its headquarters in Washington, D.C. tomorrow, and it looks like it's going to be a big one. I expect I'll have comment on it tomorrow, along with the life chemistries post.

On Earth, microbes are showing they have a few nasty tricks up their sleeves. This New York Times article (yes, you read that properly), linked to by Matt Drudge, describes a number of outbreaks of antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, including one peculiar one in 2002 which took place among several different clusters of people, epidemiologically related only in the strain of Staph. Aureus infecting them. The bacteria did not appear to be of any of the known hospital-generated resistant strains. And they seem to be unusually virulent. From the article:

Did the bacteria simply escape from hospitals, where antibiotic-resistant staph have been a problem for years? A great deal of evidence suggests that they did not, Dr. Jernigan said.

The outpatient strains are biologically different from hospital strains, and the collections of genes that cause antibiotic resistance in the new strains are quite different from those that cause it in the older strains.

Another ominous difference between the new resistant staph and the old hospital strains is that the new staph strains appear far more likely to manufacture a toxin that can destroy the white blood cells that normally fight off infection, allowing the bacteria to eat through human tissue.

Not good. But there is a positive side to this. Bacteria on our own world have developed any number of biochemical strategies to thrive and survive even man-made measures to kill them off; if bacteria can survive so many environmental pressures on Earth, homegrown varieties might just be able to eke out a living on Mars.

2004-03-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Will the Greatest Scientific Discovery of Our Lifetimes Soon be Made on Mars?
In this article linked to by Drudge, Space.com science writer Leonard David relates evidence that Mars had, and likely has, if only in small amounts, liquid water. According to the article, Gilbert Levin of Spherix Corporation in Beltsville, thinks that the results from some of the Viking lander experiments have been interpretedly incorrectly; he does so with some authority. From the article:

Levin is a former Viking Mars lander investigator. He has long argued that his 1976 Viking Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment found living microorganisms in the soil of Mars.

I'll try to cover this in greater depth tomorrow, but I'll leave you with a few little thoughts for now. One of the other hats I wear is that of colloid and surface chemist. While this wasn't the main thrust of my research in graduate school, I did a little bit of work that specifically addressed concerns in that area. A colloid, for my readers who aren't familiar with the term, is a chemical structure somewhere in size between a single molecule of a substance and its bulk form. An example of this would be microscopic structures called micelles, which are structures which can be of various shapes (rods, spheres, disks, etc.) comprised of single layers of surfactant, aligned such that their polar heads are pointed out toward the water they are suspended in. They are formed when a simple surfactant, (i.e., a detergent), is put into water at a sufficiently high concentration on a bulk basis, such that some of it goes into solution and the rest forms micelles (and possibly other microstructures.) Micelles typically form spontaneously in these water-surfactant solutions / suspensions (since micelles in water are considered suspensions, not solutions) at room temperature. They have some resemblence to cell membranes, and similar structures are thought to have played a role in the development of cell membranes in the evolution of life on earth. With water, and some relatively simple molecules, life as we know it could have developed a foothold on Mars. And that foothold could have been maintained to the present day.

This fascinating topic is gathering a critical mass of information which could soon result in the greatest scientific discovery anyone reading this weblog will likely live to see. Keep watching the information dumps from NASA; I will, and I'll keep giving you my take on the findings here on this weblog. If I'm very lucky, I could be writing about something very big very soon.

UPDATE: To clarify and extend what I wrote above, detergents are certainly not the only surfactants in existence. Naturally occuring phospholipids like lecithin, soaps, lower-molecular weight fats, even higher molecular weight alcohols with reasonably well-defined polar head groups and non-polar tail groups are all examples of surfactants.

2004-02-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

To Take Offense, Or Not?
The Passion of The Christ has taken up much of my time of late in contemplation (full disclosure: I haven't seen the film yet), and in an online debate at Roger Simon's site. My friend Bronson Yake has weighed in on this as well here and here. Donald Sensing makes some points here in reviewing The Passion of The Christ, and here on the anti-semitism and anti-catholicism permeating leftism in this country. I'm going to approach this from a somewhat different point of view, however.

My last name is rather obviously italian, as is my appearence. While I'm genetically only half italian, I have graying brown hair, brown eyes, and a light olive tint to my complexion. My father's pigmentation genes were the dominant ones. And I enjoy mafia movies.

Now, before this goes too far, let me state upfront that I certainly don't like all mafia-related movies (or television series - but I watch little television these days.) For example, I can't stand The Sopranos. I caught one or two episodes, and found the stories and characters without nuance, and filled with pointlessly copious amounts of sex, violence, nudity and foul language. I got the impression that all of that was used in lieu of writing or real plots.

But, for example I thoroughly enjoyed the first two Godfather films (I havent seen the third one), Goodfellas, and the Untouchables film by Brian DePalma, and the original Untouchables television series that starred Robert Stack. With respect to the Godfather films and Goodfellas in particular, the writing and acting in these were top notch; watching the stories unfold on screen was like savoring a fine wine. These are in every way high-quality films. Did I feel in any way insulted by the depicitions of italian-extracted characters in these productions? Not at all. What these productions showed were the depradations of mafiosi, who were typically of italian origin. These criminal activities, and those perpetrating them, were shown in a bad light. The chief reason I don't feel insulted by all of this is that, by and large, I don't consider my family to be comprised of gangsters and thugs.

Roger Simon, in this post, uses an odd line:

Do I, a Jew, a supposed Christ killer, have the right to say this?

He wrote this regarding his criticism of The Passion of The Christ. Now, as many of his commentors stated on that thread, modern Christians do not lay the blame for Christ's crucifixion on Jews in particular, but on humanity in general. Mel Gibson himself has said this. Bronson Yake mentions this in the posts I linked to above. The modern Christian view is, more or less, that Jesus died in part on account of the actions of his peers, and his immediate peers happened to be Jews. Christians consider themselves and all humanity to be Christ's peers as well; therefore, everyone is responsible for his death. That Christ's immediate peer group consisted of Jews is therefore purely incidental to the Crucifixion, and little more than an accident of history. Exceptions to this rule, of the sort that Bronson discussed here, really serve to reinforce it.

Additionally, the criticism he and Donald Sensing have of the violence in the film is likely due to their not having been raised in the Roman Catholic religious traditions; Donald Sensing is a Methodist minister. Curiously, Bronson, whose background is not Catholic, seems to grasp this far better than at least one Catholic commentator, Andrew Sullivan, as seen in Sullivan's post here.

Perhaps one of the best summary evaluations of the effect that The Passion of The Christ has on it's viewers was provided by commentor Sonetka:

Just got back from seeing it - the only comment I can agree with 100% percent is that people are going to see what they want to see in it. In a way, it's like a mirror - that can be a good or a bad thing.

I see the mirror as reflecting not necessarily what the viewer thinks of himself in the context of the events portrayed in the film, but reflecting how he believes others will view the events of the film; I see Roger referring to himself as "... a Jew, a supposed Christ killer..." in such a light. There's probably no avoiding the strong emotions embodied by the reactions to the film, but that's often the price we all pay for freely discussing sensitive subjects. I hope that we can tolerate and respect our religious differences without turning them into anger directed toward our neighbors. We should not let our differences in faith lead to uniting us - in mutual emnity. And we should not take offense where no offense is given.

UPDATE: Bronson has seen The Passion of The Christ and has some commentary on it here.

2004-02-28T22:40:00.000-05:00

Today is Another Low-Content Day
I'm still catching up from the sleep deficit due to this debate at Roger Simon's site, so I'm not up to posting much beyond an apology for no other posts today. Tomorrow I'll try to provide a bit more material than usual to compensate for my relatively sparse posting of late. I'll also try to avoid same-sex marriage, as I've covered it more than I've wanted to of late, and try to go easy on the material for The Passion of The Christ; there is, after all more of interest and import going on in the world than just these two stories. I've got some ideas I'll sleep on tonight. Let's see what I wake up with tomorrow morning.

2004-02-27T00:20:00.000-05:00

Much Ado About The Passion of The Christ
I'm a bit drained from the long online debate of a couple of nights ago, and after paying a visit to Roger Simon's site again and reading this, I really got wiped out. I left a post on the thread, which you can read for yourself; I was addressing Roger, and I covered some rather sensitive territory. Roger, like too many others, in my estimation, is claiming that Mel Gibson's film is antisemitic and overly violent. Full disclosure: I've not seen the movie yet, but intend to soon.

I won't go into much detail here, but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic faith as I understand it is built in large part on the pillars of Christ and the saints. Their suffering and almost always subsequent martyrdom serve as tests of faith; in confronting their suffering with their faith they are able to transcend that suffering and become closer to God spiritually even before death. The stories of the saints especially serve as examples to us: That in transcending our suffering by confronting it with our faith that we, too can become closer to God. With Christ, his transcendence of his own suffering was also transcendence of our own suffering, and through it we were brought closer to God along with him. His transcendence of suffering through his faith becomes our transcendence of sin if we choose to accept Him as the Son of God and Savior of mankind.

If Mel Gibson's film seems violent and needlessly sadistic to a non-Christian or even a non-Catholic Christian viewer, it is likely because they do not view suffering and martyrdom the same way the Roman Catholic church does. The stories of the suffering of Christ and the saints are not supposed to soft-pedal the violence inherent in them. The violence is supposed to be disturbing; viewed properly, these stories are not just obligatory histories of good men and women long dead, but accounts of the triumph of faith in God over incredible bodily, and hence also spiritual, torments. To fully appreciate the transcendence, you must fully appreciate the torments. However, as I mentioned earlier, not all Christians, and indeed not all Catholics, agree fully on these interpretations. Caveat lector: I am a man of absolutely no religious faith. However, I think I understand the underpinnings of Roman Catholic doctrine well enough from my upbringing to discuss them cogently here.

A man of strong religious faith, Bronson Yake, covers these topics and much more with far more authority than I have, and probably better than I could dream of doing it, here. He provides numerous citations from scripture which may help the reader better understand some of the violence and unflattering portrayals in the film, and how they relate to modern Christianity. In fact, if you've read my post here and dismissed it as the ramblings of an unqualified crank, if you then read Bronson's post I will consider myself to have done a good job. I'll try to post more about this tomorrow.

2004-02-25T02:38:00.000-05:00

The Ghost of Hamlet's Domestic Partner
I'm laughing as I write this post, not because of its title, but because of its content. I'm a scientist; I was trained as a physical electrochemist, and I wrote a nice, long dissertation which involved a lot of mathematical modeling. The time it took me to get my degree was greater than the mean time between coups in Haiti. Well, maybe not quite that long, but I think you get what I mean. Right now there are two rovers on Mars finding tantalizing evidence of past and possibly present water there. There's a presidential election coming up in a little over eight months, I live just outside of Washington, D.C., and I enjoy politics, particularly as it relates to economic and defense issues. I'm a single, thirty-six year old man who's as straight as the shortest-distance path between two points in euclidean threespace. Same-sex marriage looks, at least superficially, like it's about as far afield from my interests as I am from Mars.

I have been discussing same-sex marriage like a contestant in a charity stay-awake for about the past week.

What a long, strange trip it's been, indeed. Perhaps not so strange, though. The subject of same-sex marriage leads quite naturally into a discussion and analysis of a wide variety of topics I find intriguing, particularly the importance of the rule of law in maintaining a civil society, and the roles that judges and legislators, and the federal and state constitutions, have to play in it.

One of the commentors on what has become a monumental thread at Roger Simon's site was a very earnest fellow who had witnessed some same-sex marriages in San Francisco, and found them very moving. I respect his emotions, and don't dare trivialize them. But what he really wants to see come out of the recent events in San Francisco is legal recognition of same-sex marriages. I think that in acting as a scofflaw, and in his capacity as an elected official, no less, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has likely set back the progress of same-sex marriage advocates by quite a lot.

This fellow wrote in support of Mayor Newsom's action : "This is no time for realpolitik." This amounts to arguing that same-sex couples should somehow expect legal protection for the marriage contracts they entered into illegally under the law - the protection of the law which they couldn't be bothered to follow themselves. Why did Mayor Newsom and his allies not attempt to mount a campaign to legislate provisions to recognize same-sex marriages in the state of California? Why did Newsom break the law instead of trying to make the law provide for those rights which he felt were due same-sex couples? "Realpolitik" is most likely the same-sex marriage movement's only realistic hope of making inroads into achieving the rights they want.

This fellow then went on at length as I mentioned before about how wonderful the marriages were, and how happy the newly married couples were. I'm not trying to be cruel or sarcastic here, as I know he and a lot of other good people have emotion invested in this issue, but at the end of the day, those marriage certificates which were handed out aren't worth any more than what can be gotten for them on e-Bay.

The same sex marriage movement has to ask itself if it's more interested in drawing publicity for itself and accumulating souvenir same-sex marriage certificates, or if it's more interested in putting in the hours of hard work required to attempt to change the law in the ways it wants, to secure the rights it feels same-sex couples deserve under the law - all the while knowing that there's no guarantee that they'll get what they want when all is said and done - like anyone else who pushes for any other laws which may or may not be passed to their satisfaction.

I've said before that I don't consider the lack of same-sex marriage rights to be tantamount to slavery. I say this not just to set the tone for my argument, but also to note that scofflaw behavior more often than not generates a push in the opposite direction from society - think of it as an application of Le Chatelier's Principle to social equilibria. In the matter of abolishing slavery and pushing to abolish the American Apartheid which existed prior to the success of the civil rights movement, actions in defiance of racially discriminatory laws helped to show how a certain segment of our population suffered terrible injustices solely on account of the color of their skin. The same-sex marriage movement has a tougher row to hoe, in that they must convince legislators and the public at large to extend to them a new legal status based on homosexual behavior. And while the practice of religion also involves certain behaviors, homosexuality is not a religion.

I think that recognition of same-sex, and ultimately other non-traditional marriages under the law will be won, if at all, by the hard work of supporters trying to win the hearts and minds of the electorate and legislators. While they could also work to influence the judicial system in the courts, judicial decision has never been the preferred route to securing rights in this country. I fear that senationalist practices like the scofflaw marriages in San Francisco will tend to ultimately backfire and harden legislators and the public into rejecting outright any debate on how best to accomodate the wishes of same-sex and other nontraditional partners to secure their goal of legally recognized marriage rights. And the end of debate may be the end of hope in this endeavor for a long time to come.

UPDATE: In perusing Donald Sensing's site, I found this post of Saturday, Feb. 21 2004 making direct reference to the value of same-sex marriage certificates on eBay. Let me state for the record that as far as I can remember I had never seen that post until now. Any resemblence between the eBay reference in this post and the eBay reference in Donald Sensing's post is purely coincidental.
1:43PM

2004-02-24T13:35:00.000-05:00

I Bet You Didn't See This Coming
Glenn Reynolds is reporting that the New York Times is reporting that George Bush is backing a gay marriage ban. I didn't read the NYT article Glenn linked to, as I don't visit news sites that require me to register with them as a matter of personal policy, but the claim linked to here, which link is from Glenn's post, claims that this is the much talked-about constitutional amendment which would ban gay marriage.

In my own post here I was musing about much the same outcome, but more directly with respect to state and federal legislators amending their respective constitutions. It amounts to the same thing really; the chief executive proposes, but the legislature disposes. Granted, others than the chief executive certainly can propose, and the chief executive can wield a veto under certain circumstances, but I think you get the idea.

I'm not at all certain that such a constitutional amendment would pass at the federal level, but attempting to guarantee by scofflaw actions an outcome which legislators and the public should have debated and brought to a vote has made that outcome considerably less likely, I think. I hope there's still time for reasoned public debate on how best to dispose of the question of gay (and, by extension, other non-traditional) marriages. If San Francisco Mayor Newsom thought that he was going to advance the cause of gay rights by needlessly breaking the law, I suspect that events beyond his control will soon show him to have been woefully mistaken.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has a thread going on this (sort of) here; I've left a comment there (which links back to this comment - it's enough to make your head spin!)

ANOTHER UPDATE: I've left more comments in the Roger Simon thread.

2004-02-23T22:52:00.000-05:00

John F. Kerry - Patriot
John Kerry, taking a page from Wesley Clark's political playbook (which has already taken up permanent residence in the discount bin next to "Kosher Cooking With Shellfish"), has come up with a brilliant strategy to win the 2004 presidential election. From the Associated Press, via Fox News:

NEW YORK -- Democratic front-runner John Kerry (search) said Monday that he considers Republican criticism of his voting record on defense and national security an attack on his patriotism because "that's the game they play."

A bit later in the article, we have the following:

But Kerry, who argued that he has voted for the largest defense and intelligence budgets in U.S. history, said he will not allow questions to be raised about his commitment to defense by Republicans "who never fought in a war."

Let me sum up Kerry's strategic coup as follows:
He's running on his record as a Vietnam veteran, and his record in the senate. But heaven forbid that any Republicans "who never fought in a war" question his postwar protest activities, because he's a Vietnam veteran. And heaven forbid that any Republicans "who never fought in a war" question his commitment to defense vis-a-vis his senate voting record; that would be questioning his patriotism. And besides, he's a decorated Vietnam veteran - who fought in Vietnam.

Assuming that he's the Democratic presidential nominee, he's going to have to debate George Bush - a Republican "who never fought in a war." When Kerry is up at his podium, under the glare of the hot studio lights, being televised nationally, when George Bush asks him about his voting record in the senate, does he really expect to duck having to answer by claiming that it's his patriotism that's really being questioned? I can see it now: Bush asks him a question about a defense program he voted to cut, and Kerry replies: "I'm not going to dignify your question with a reply. You're a Republican who never fought in a war. You're questioning my patriotism. I fought in a war - the Vietnam war. I'm a war veteran. A Vietnam war veteran. Who fought in Vietnam. In the war."

I realize that I'm on the other side of Kerry politically, but I don't think I can be criticized for pointing out that this is not, on its face, a winning strategy. When there is a public debate between two candidates competing for the same political office, the audience expects to see the marketing of ideas, not a psychotic break. If Kerry takes anything like the tack mentioned in the AP article during any of his debates with Bush, he's going to come across as being insufferably arrogant, painfully stupid, or thoroughly crazed - though those three possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Before he starts debating Bush, he'd better drop the puerile posturing with his claims of impugned patriotism, or, if it isn't posturing, seek professional help as soon as possible. Maybe Howard Dean could give him the name of a good psychiatrist.

2004-02-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

The New York Times' "Armed Camp"
Matt Drudge provides a link to a story which illustrates the particular journalistic standards which the New York Times has become famous for. Apparently depending on the fact that for most people Washington, D.C. is a place seen only on newscasts, movie screens, and postcards, New York Times writer Michael Janofsky is apparently disturbed that there are heavy security measures now in place there, with more being added every day. From the article:

Day by day, the nation's capital is becoming a fortress, turning a city known for graceful beauty into a virtual armed camp.

I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, about ten minutes walk from the outskirts of D. C., and seven minutes walk from the Silver Spring Metro station. I take the Metro and go into Washington very, very often. I'm going to a Wizards game there tonight, in fact. Let me tell you from my own experiences that while the security measures, such as metal detectors at the entrances to many buildings, Jersey walls and other barriers and the like are noticable, and that traffic there has gotten noticibly worse on their account (and being able to detect deterioration in traffic management in D. C. is a remarkable feat under any circumstances), that D. C. is hardly an "armed camp". And some people wonder why more people don't read the New York Times.

2004-02-22T15:32:00.000-05:00

Stop Making Sense
Matt Drudge gives a link which he titles "KERRY SAYS BUSH IS USING SMEAR TACTICS...". In the article, Kerry is criticizing Bush's campaign, in the person Senator Saxby Chambliss, of criticizing his voting recording on funding defense and intelligence programs. Chambliss had beated former Senator Max Cleland, a triple-amuptee Vietnam veteran, for his Georgia senate seat in 2002, partly on criticizing Cleland as being soft on homeland defense. One of Kerry's retorts, from the article:

"I don't know what it is that all these Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam are fighting a war against those of us who did," the Massachusetts senator said.

Kerry has campaigned on his Vietnam combat record, which includes three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

Cleland's retort, again from the article:

Cleland, a Democrat, had some criticism for Chambliss.

"For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks," he said.

Finer examples of argument by non sequitur you will never see. Because people who didn't serve in Vietnam are criticizing the policies of some of those who did, they are engaged in a war against them. Because a man has a bad knee which keeps him from serving in Vietnam, he's not qualified to criticize someone who has served in Vietnam on his foreign policy and defense policy record. By that reasoning, I suppose Kerry could criticize some of his fellow Vietnam veterans and others by claiming "I don't understand what it is that all these people who didn't protest the war in Vietnam are fighting a war against those of us who did." Given the character of his own Vietnam war protests, if he did so criticize, I think he would understand the disaffection that those people had with him very quickly.

2004-02-22T12:32:00.000-05:00

To Sleep... Perchance to Dream...
Notice the post I made yesterday. A lesson to anyone reading this weblog: unless you've done your research ahead of time and you've gotten sufficient sleep, don't go writing detailed posts on topics you're not that familiar with. Otherwise, you end up trying to play Mr. Fixit with UPDATES, which themselves require updating, and still only incompletely fix your problem.

2004-02-21T15:34:00.000-05:00

Putting the Cart Before the Horse
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered state Attorney General Bill Lockyer to put a stop to the same-sex marriages being performed in San Francisco. Curiously, San Francisco is now suing the state of California in an attempt to legalize same-sex marriages. This leads me to consider the four methods by which legislation can be practically effected, listed in their order of preference.

First, is passage of a bill by a duly elected legislature, and its signing into law by the chief executive of that legislature's jurisdiction. The second is the amendment of a constitution, state or federal, by duly elected lawmakers. These two methods have the benefit of being carried out entirely by elected officials who answer directly to their constituents for their actions. The third is the reinterpretation or nullification of existing laws by a state or federal judge. This is carried out by a non-elected official who is appointed by the chief executive of the jurisdiction in question, i.e., a governor or the President of the United States. The fourth is not an official method of enacting law; it is the violation of existing laws for a percieved greater good. Those who practice this method are ultimately answerable to law enforcement authorities. Undertaking this is to be avoided at almost all costs; exceptions for such things as the abolition of slavery may be granted, but those who break the law with even the best of intentions do so at their own risk.

One of the risks that the Mayor of San Francisco has run by his actions is spurring on the efforts of state and federal legislatures to hastily enact constitutional amendments restricting marriage to be between one man and one woman in relatively short order. This would be in an effort to stem a possible tide of scofflaw municipalities and activist judges. What would be far preferable to me would be for state and federal legislators consider the implementation and ramifications of same-sex marriage legalization, which will likely propagate well beyond that immediate issue, and then attempt to pass the appropriate legislation.

Bronson Yake pointed out to me in a conversation last week that those same-sex couples who were married in illegal ceremonies were and are now arguing for legal recognition of the fruits of illegal acts which they knowingly participated in. In taking the scofflaw route before pursuing the matter in the court system, San Francisco's Mayor and those same-sex couples trivialized the law in the name of expediency to achieve a legally void end. With luck, they haven't poisoned any number of legislative wells in the process.

UPDATE: To correct one of my statements above, in some states, state judges are elected, in other states they are appointed, and in some states they are both elected and appointed. However, even in the cases where such judges are elected, their terms of office can be longer than those of senators and congressmen. I have also neglected to consider municipal judges in my analysis; state marriage laws come under the penultimate jurisdiction of the state courts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another correction: Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot actually order Attorney General Lockyer to do anything, as Lockyer is an independently elected state official. That being said, he can certainly impress upon him the necessity of a certain course of action.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The headline on the Fox News story I linked to said "Arnold Orders AG to Stop Gay Marriages", so my correction above is likely itself in error.

2004-02-20T14:46:00.000-05:00

A Brief Note on My Editorial Policies
Anyone visiting this site recently may well have noticed occasional corrections of spelling and grammatical errors in previous posts. I don't feel it's unethical to make cosmetic changes in posts ex post facto without announcing them. However, I consider editing out constitutional errors or statements one dosen't like in hindsight from a post ex post facto to be unethical conduct. If in my posts I make any factual errors, or somehow make statements which I find in retrospect I'm not proud of or which could stand clarification, these will stay in. My corrections of such will be published, usually in the form of prominently displayed updates which are appended to the original post, but the original errors themselves will stand.