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September 30, 2006
Boomerang UAV
More cool tech. I want one just to "surveil the 'hood".
When companies self-destruct
Truth to moderate Muslims
180 to 300 million radicalized Muslims. Jaw-dropping. Be sure to watch the video.
h/t Allah
UPDATE:
If we predicate our editorial decisions on what will anger the folks in the above paragraph, haven't we already forfeited that freedom? We can say all we want that we're making the decision, that we're simply exercising restraint because we don't want to stoke the coals, but the fact remains that the criteria for pulling editorial content is someone else's reaction, not our own news judgement. There is much to be said for kindness, moderation of tone, level-headed debate, and respect. I like all of them. There's also much to be said for making a stand, speaking the truth, and being fed up to here with the fact that moderate Muslims aren't saying more and grabbing the reins of their religion back from the devil's coachmen.
September 29, 2006
True, that
The Blogfather with a pungent quote. True dat.
Camel STD's
Filed under YJCMTSU:
From the Sandmonkey....Saudis don't need STD protection, because if anyone engages in STD causing sexual intercourse, it is the foreigners who live there.
So her friend, in order to prove otherwise, did a study on camels to see how many of them have syphlis (I am not joking). The study results showed that 20% of saudi camels do have syphlis, which can only be transmitted from man-on-camel sex. The Saudis, when confronted with those results, argued that it must be the foreigners who are giving the camels syphlis and not the saudi men. So the kid had to conduct another study to show that the camels reside in areas that are only populated with saudis and that are far from the ones where the foreigners reside. He actually sat down and wrote stuff like: On average, a foriegner will come in contact of 1.2 camels a year, while a saudi will come in contact with 5.6 camels a year.
It's so damn funny I want to cry...
September 28, 2006
Wow
"When I left Cuba," he said with tears running down his aged cheeks. "We had nothing and noone. I was scared. And back then, I could never have imagined that one day my son would be a guest at the White House."
I'm speechless.
h/t Bill at INDC
We are Borg
As someone who is processing his third(!) teenager, this does not surprise me at all:
Teenagers are perhaps the greatest menace facing our society. Like the Borg, though, this hive-minded menace are damned difficult to defeat.
First, you attack them:
Police have given their backing to a gadget that sends out an ultra high-pitched noise that can be heard only by those under 20 and is so distressing it forces them to clutch their ears in discomfort. Eventually they can stand it no longer and have to move on. But because the body's natural ability to detect some frequency wave bands diminishes almost entirely after 20, adults are completely immune to the sounds. What is more, shop owners can control the strength of the signal as the problem of loitering youths ebbs and flows - and it does not penetrate indoors.Quickly, however, they adapt, and your weapon becomes useless:
Awesome
You're welcome, Mr. Karzai.
You probably have to follow the SEC to get this
...and no, I'm not talking about the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Anousheh Ansari
A Woman of Mass Instruction. What a wonderful story- brought to you by the Rooskies and the Great Satan.
h/t Rand Simberg.
Heh
NSFW but funny
Even in Egypt...
September 27, 2006
Riots in Brussels, again (sigh)
The lovely and talented Pamela reports...
Eurabia, there you go again!
Road rage
Dr. Helen posits an interesting thought:
So, according to these studies, for women, it appears that road rage is a social response to stress and for men, it is biological due to too much testosterone. Does this mean that medical and behavioral experts should get men off the hook for road rage incidents since they can't help themselves? I doubt that will ever happen (nor should it, necessarily). I do, however, find it interesting that women's problems always seem to be blamed on other people--you know, those people who do not reward them enough at home, while men's problems are always blamed on the man himself, when convenient, or on biology, but only when convenient.
I'll just let that one lie there and speak for itself.
ISS transits sun
This is about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time
Allah sux
This is a sad state for a country to find itself in- though my reserve of pity for the Huns is almost as small as it is for the Frogs. And yes, I'm in a feisty mood this morning. Don't screw with my Beethoven and Mozart, dude...
Ranger or... ?
But if that is too terrifying then there's this
Words have meaning
Yup. Hugo, your words are coming back to bite you. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The local Citgo station here, with the cheapest gas price other than the 'no-brands', stands mostly empty every time I drive by it. (I feel sorry for the local guy who owns it; he didn't ask for this fight.)
Like I said
Clear thinking. It works every time it's tried.
Thanks, Glenn
Ratzinger
I'm really liking this guy. He seems to have a clearheaded take on the world that a lot of people could take a lesson from-
On September 12, Pope Benedict XVI delivered an astonishing speech at the University of Regensburg. Entitled "Faith, Reason, and the University," it has been widely discussed, but far less widely understood. The New York Times, for example, headlined its article on the Regensburg address, "The Pope Assails Secularism, with a Note on Jihad." The word "secularism" does not appear in the speech, nor does the pope assail or attack modernity or the Enlightenment. He states quite clearly that he is attempting "a critique of modern reason from within," and he notes that this project "has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly."
Benedict, in short, is not issuing a contemporary Syllabus of Errors. Instead, he is asking those in the West who "share the responsibility for the right use of reason" to return to the kind of self-critical examination of their own beliefs that was the hallmark of ancient Greek thought at its best. The spirit that animates Benedict's address is not the spirit of Pius IX; it is the spirit of Socrates. Benedict is inviting all of us to ask ourselves, Do we really know what we are talking about when we talk about faith, reason, God, and community?
Of course the usual folk will have the usual take, and what does he know anyway? He's rich and travels in a clear plexiglass Popemobile and doesn't understand "the little peeps" so why should we listen to a damn thing he says?
...
Maybe if clear thinking may actually save our civilization? I'm just sayin'...
September 26, 2006
Could have been
We've been living in a dangerous world for a long time.
Great stories
Queeg (Steel bearings rattle)
"Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers..."
Humphrey Bogart - 1954's The Caine Mutiny.
A new way to read 'em
Via Ace, I've discovered a new way to read blogs- RSS Bandit. It takes the RSS feeds that most blogs offer and aggregates them in a very clear interface that shows you who has posted what and when. What that means is that, from now on, if you don't have an RSS feed it's unlikely I'll read you very often. Not really a problem, excepting Rantburg and Lileks, and I don't understand why they don't. Anyway, check it out. After a couple of days use it will make life in the blogosphere much more tenable.
September 25, 2006
Afghan opium
This is depressing.
Oh boy
What was Bill smoking? (And why oh why would he want all this stirred up?)
Please let's not go back there. Look forward and all that.The Bill Clinton - Chris Wallace interview has brought out the fact-checkers:
Patterico finds that, contra Clinton, Fox News has asked a Bush official the same "connect the dots" questions that were put to Clinton;
Jim Geraghty at NRO pummels Clintons notion that Osama was not part of the Somalia story;
And I will take a swing at Clinton's calim that his problems with Somalia were compounded by right-wing critics:
CLINTON: And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much — same people.They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk down, and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.
Let's cut to the NY Times summary of the discussion in Oct 2003 following the "Black Hawk Down" debacle:
President Clinton and Senate leaders struggled today to beat back a proposal that would require United States troops to pull out of Somalia earlier than the timetable the President has set.
It was a day of lengthy closed-door meetings, deal-making, competing compromises and hints that the White House might speed up the removal of the forces from Somalia.
The arguments heard in the Senate created some of the oddest alliances on Capitol Hill in recent memory. Two of Mr. Clinton's strongest critics, Bob Dole, the Republican leader, and Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, sided with the President to turn back a effort by Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, one of the most partisan Democrats in Washington. Clinton Deadline May Shift
Mr. Dole and Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, worked to win support for a proposal that would essentially grant formal approval to the limited mission Mr. Clinton spelled out last week. The two leaders predicted tonight that they and Mr. Byrd would come to a compromise on Thursday.
...
The Senate leadership is hoping to avoid an embarrassing defeat for the President that they fear would undercut the military in Somalia and in future crises. Mr. Dole argued that if an early date were set, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the Somali faction leader being hunted by the United Nations, could lie in wait and strike as soon as the United States troops leave.
But they conceded today that the strong tide of public opinion against military involvement required some further narrowing of the mission.
Please please please
Billy boy on Fox
I thought I might post about President Clinton's explosion at Chris Wallace this weekend, but I mainly just got a weary chuckle, and realized just how damn glad I am that he's out of office.
I think he gave the Republicans a nice boost though, and I bet Hillary took him to the woodshed after. Heh.
September 23, 2006
High Holy Days
Happy Rosh Hashanah to those who celebrate it. Me, I was raised as an Episcopalian, which at this point means I'm very confused.
September 22, 2006
300
'Way cool. Anybody read Greek?
via Ace
Dictator Chic
September 21, 2006
Oh no
We're doomed
Thanks, fellas
Kinda speaks for itself. Original here.
Thanks, Hugh and Mahmoud!
You've just made it entirely clear why the U.N. needs to go. These two asshats (and I use that word with malice aforethought) have clarified something I have felt, albeit sadly, for years; the U.N. has degenerated into a festering cesspool of hatred and envy against my country. Yep, Hugo- move the whole mess to Caracas. You spend billions supporting it. You put up with the nasty little cockroach "diplomats"- I guarantee you New Yorkers will thank you most full-heartedly.
You came into our house and insulted us. Mayhaps we should return the favor with more pointed resolve. It was a clarifying moment for me, and a lot of my fellow Americans. Good luck in the brave new world you're creating.
September 20, 2006
Whodathunkit
Iranian-born. Woman. Muslim. Wannabe Astronomer. American. Really Rich. And a Looker.
What's not to like? Brought to you courtesy of the Great Satan.
It gets nasty in Virginia
I know it's wrong...
to quote the penultimate statement from someone elses's post, but this is too rich, too nuanced to let alone. RTWT here, but here's a taste:
I may be misreading his remarks, but he strikes me as the sort of fellow who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.
Make us among his followers. This would be akin to President Bush concluding his speech with an appeal for everyone to follow Jesus. The commentariat would fall off their chairs en masse: he’s outPoped the Pope! But Ahmadinejad, I suspect, will get a pass. Not because his kumbaya blather and deliciously naughty anti-empire rhetoric chubbed up the lads at AP and Reuters, but because he’s seen as a vaguely absurd figure. He says the most colorful things. Nice smile, too! Always good for a quote, that one.
There’s something else behind the indifferent reaction, though. Everyone has already accepted the idea of Iranian nukes. I think it’s been factored into our subconscious calculations, where they lie as great red glowing things whose threat is somehow still abstract. They won’t use them. They just want them. The way we all want a big-screen TV, and would keep it in the box once we bought it.
I frequently hear people remark that Iran would not be stupid enough to use a nuke, since they know it would bring about retaliation. But MAD only works if the other guy’s SANE. If the Administration regularly made remarks like Ahmadinejad and the other top-tier leaders, critics in the West would have long ago been dissolved in a puddle of corrosive urine. Imagine the President of the United States addressing a group of supporters and leading them in a chant of “Death to Iran.” Imagine what that might mean.
I really, really want that 50-inch plasma TV, but of course I'll never use it. Yup, that's gonna happen.
September 18, 2006
WooHoo!!
Linked by everybody in the blogosphere.
Is a man still a man if... never mind
LOL funny. And you Yankees laugh at us?
Blunt talk
Woah. John Howard's government in Oz is talking tough-
AUSTRALIA'S Muslim leaders have been "read the riot act" over the need to denounce any links between Islam and terrorism.
The Howard Government's multicultural spokesman, Andrew Robb, yesterday told an audience of 100 imams who address Australia's mosques that these were tough times requiring great personal resolve.
Mr Robb also called on them to shun a victim mentality that branded any criticism as discrimination."We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.
"And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.
"You can't wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others.
"Instead, speak up and condemn terrorism, defend your role in the way of life that we all share here in Australia."
Mr Robb said unless Muslims took responsibility for their destiny and tackled the causes of terrorism, Australia would become divided.
Mr Robb, the parliamentary secretary for immigration and multicultural affairs, said it was important for migrants to learn English.
"I see as critical the need for imams to have effective English language skills -- it is a self-evident truth that a shared language is one of the foundations of national cohesion," he said.
I wish we had more talk like this going on here. That nun's death should not intimidate us; it should infuriate us.The Muslims want to talk about "crusade"? Baby, you haven't seen crusade- but you may yet. Just keep poking that sleepy dog.
via Glenn
September 15, 2006
Ah, the beauty
...of a cool crisp day in Alabama. Tonight-
:^)
First they came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew...
Kathryn Jean Lopez points me here-
We’re living at a moment when hatred of religion and of religious groups is gathering momentum. Perhaps this is a reaction to the global religious revival that has been underway for two generations, but whatever its roots, it is now so common that hardly anyone notices (except, paradoxically, when it’s directed against Muslims). Some attention was given to the singularly intolerant action taken by the local regime in St. Paul, Minnesota, barring public displays of bunnies during the Eastern season. And then, to the near-total indifference of the journalistic hunting pack, in late March the San Francisco City Council, angered by Catholic opposition to gay adoption, unanimously approved a resolution that read:
"It is an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city’s existing and established customs and traditions, such as the right of same-sex couples to adopt and care for children in need."One could almost see the torch flicker at John F. Kennedy’s gravesite across the Potomac, and one had a great impulse to yell very loudly in the fine words of Oriana Fallaci, who lies in pain in Manhattan, snarling back at the cancer that has taken over her body:
How come that, in a country where 85 percent of the citizens say to be Christian, so few rebel to the ludicrous offensive which is going on against Christmas?!? How come that so few protest when your Caviar Left speaks about abolishing Christmas holiday, Christmas-trees, Christmas-songs, the same expressions Merry Christmas and Happy Christmas?!?
That’s the sort of anger that comes from a self-described "religious atheist" like Oriana, who knows that if anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism spread again, it is only a matter of time before they will come for people like her.
It would help if a certain religion stopped poisoning the discourse, but once they are eliminated (or at least totally marginalized)(and yes I think that is the only way) much of the problem will probably die on the vine.
Alien vs. Predator in wartime
An interesting take on war news and knews-
"An event of this consequence is very hard to understand." The event former Congressman Lee Hamilton was describing earlier this week is September 11, 2001. But of course September 11 itself is not hard to understand. They came, they killed.
For many people this is sufficient understanding of 9/11. They believe the job now is simple: Resist and stop more of their killing. However, unlike the proponents of apocalyptic Islam, most normal people in time seek a degree of understanding, even of an enemy who fights by the rules of pre-civilization. Mr. Hamilton, the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, was commenting on ABC's now-controversial movie, "The Path to 9/11." The hard-to-understand path to which Mr. Hamilton alluded is obviously not a single event but the origins and organization of the Islamic terrorist movement that began years back and besets the U.S. and the world today.
One can only agree with Mr. Hamilton. The war on terror is more complex, nuanced and indeed more interesting than the general public has been given to believe.
For instance, one oft-cited benchmark of its progress is the status of Osama bin Laden. That he is presumably still alive and at large is taken to mean that President Bush's offensive against the post-9/11 terrorists has "failed," as John Kerry noted this week on the eve of September 11. The Bush administration, Mr. Kerry told CNN, "failed to capture and kill Osama bin Laden when they had him in the mountains of Tora Bora. And that's why we are more threatened today with an al Qaeda that has reconstituted itself in some 65 countries."
This is the Alien vs. Predator model of fighting terror. Bin Laden himself has picked up on the tendency of our political culture to reduce complexity to melodrama. For 9/11, al Qaeda released a propaganda documentary on al-Jazeera this week, depicting masked men training, while Bin Laden walks among them. The New York Times described bin Laden in the 9/11 tape as "looking almost regal."
Hope he looks regal in his coffin; that is, if we can find enough of him to bury. Seriously, though, I think the networks have a real problem in that in the heat of competition for falling market share the "news" is getting indistinguishable from entertainment, and that is not a good thing.
So sue me
No, I didn't post yesterday. Might not today. My days of idle freedom are waning, and I rolled a Rogue on WoW. I will be back, but am suffering political ennui right now. Free ice cream is not available.
September 13, 2006
Darth Rove strikes again!
This probably should not surprise you, but...
Here's a report on the Middle East, circa 1946. From the prologue-
Ironically, while many academics today would dismiss as culturally insensitive the authors' frankness and generalizations about peoples and religion, the assumption that culture matters holds true. Many of the report's observations mirror those made in recent years by the United Nations' own Arab Human Development Report, which, if anything, is more pessimistic. In 1946, observers of the Middle East still had hope that increasing literacy and ease of travel would lead the region to become more cosmopolitan. While they raised concerns about nascent Islamist movements, they did not foresee just how malignant such groups could become, nor did they envision that oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia would fund extremism rather than regional development.
As important as what the authors do say is what they do not. While it has become trendy in some academic and diplomatic circles to blame terrorism and regional instability on Israel's existence, the War Department's report suggests these problems—and anti-Semitism as well—predated the Jewish state. Many Arab states complained about Jewish immigration to Palestine, but the report's authors suggest local governments cynically promoted such concerns, and Muslims farther afield had different priorities. Well before Israel's independence and the 1967 war, Arab and Islamist groups embraced terrorism, using it for purposes unrelated to Zionism. Accordingly, while the scapegoating of Israel may be fashionable in the foreign ministries of Arab states, the European Union, and the diplomatic parlors of the United Nations, the 1946 report shows that responsibility for the political, economic, and social failings of the region are far more complex and deeply-rooted.
It never hurts to read a little history, which will remind you that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
via Michael Rubin
Tipping points
Dinocrat has trenchant thoughts on oil, and Iran:
There are tipping points in bubbles, political or economic, where, what seemed inevitable only a moment ago, suddenly seems absurd. This may or may not be one of them. But neither $200 oil nor Iran and Islamofascism dominating the globe are carved in stone. Not a bad thing to remember — but certainly no excuse for inaction.
Sometimes today's political discourse reminds me of an old saying, coined by Robert E. Heinlein-
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout"