Saturday, November 30, 2002- - -
Happy Hanukah!
@5:57 PM
Those who are beginning to despair over the delay in attacking Iraq may take some comfort from this closing quote of Condoleezza Rice' in a New Yorker Interview by Nicholas Lemann (October 14 & 21, 2002 edition):
I ended our last interview by asking Rice what she thinks is the proper role of caution in statecraft. The answer she gave, delivered with her usual calm and total assurance, was a sign - one of many - of how far behind, as an exerciser of power, she has left her Morganthau days. "It's important in statecraft to always be aware of the downside of action, and to try to mitigate any downsides that might come into being," she said. "Everyone understands that there are unanticipated consequences. But I think if you go through history you can make a very strong argument that it was not acting, or acting too late, that has had the greatest consequences for international politics - not the other way around. We all live with the spectre of World War Two, and we all live with the fact that the great democracies were not able to muster the will to act even when the handwriting was pretty clear on the wall that Adolph Hitler was unstoppable except by force."
Indeed. It's certainly possible to fail through taking the wrong action, but the only way to almost certainly fail is to fail to act. One can only hope that she's sharing this viewpoint with President Bush.
@5:56 PM
Here's one of the more creative alibis I've heard lately: "Gee Honey, someone must have broken in.."
@8:09 AM
Cry me a river
Okay, everyone out there who isn't a government employee and who received a raise this year, raise your hands.
Yes, just as I thought.
@6:33 AM
In the on-going debate over 'what would Jesus drive?' Ed Quillen of the Denver Post credits Click and Clack with the best answer I've heard:
"A beat-up 10-year-old Ford F-150 pickup, because that's what carpenters drive."
@6:27 AM
Friday, November 29, 2002- - -
cough, choke, wheeezzz!
Nice air they've got down there on the Front Range. Good color, rich body, bold nose. Slightly metallic with overtones of afterburner. Chewy. I feel like I've spent three days in a smoky bar.
@9:07 PM
Tuesday, November 26, 2002- - -
Yes, wouldn't it be interesting if we suddenly turned and gave the Saudis a swift whack? We could certainly make the case that they deserved it.
@5:38 AM
Even the editors at the left-leaning Denver Post are worried about Big Government. Perhaps we are making progress. In a back-handed way.
Notice this, though: "The government's power to create and keep lists on people not suspected of any crime should be restricted. The new Homeland Security Department should write strict guidelines about when such information can be shared with the private sector. The feds must say clearly that people listed should be considered innocent. The agencies also should develop ways people can get their names removed. Businesses that misuse the data should be held liable."
Friends of Big Government to the end, they can't quite bring themselves to suggest that the database shouldn't be created, or even that it not be shared with the world. Only that a few restrictions be placed on its use. And they don't seem to understant that information on everyone will be in the database. There won't be any 'getting your name removed from the list.'
We're off to Colorful Colorado to see mom and eat turkey. Happy Holidays!
@5:12 AM
Monday, November 25, 2002- - -
The real reason I've gotten a new computer. [link good today only, without subscription]
@6:49 AM
I sure feel safer knowing these yahoos are on the job!
@6:42 AM
Sunday, November 24, 2002- - -
Say what?
Jack Anderson questions whether Gore should run in 2004, exploring the case for and against his candidacy.
"The case against Gore: … In 1988, he ran as a moderate Democrat, one of the founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, which was formed to move the party to the center. In 1992 and 1996, he toed the line with Clinton's "third way" politics only to move dramatically left in 2000, a shift that some analysts blame for his failure to garner enough electoral votes to overcome the Florida fiasco. Now he is signaling an ultra-liberal campaign and embracing a single-payer, Canadian-style health care system that most experts think is a nonstarter politically.
"… Gore may think he is more likeable, and he is coming across warm and fuzzy in his interviews. But at age 54, is he really capable of changing?"
Eh? Anderson just said that Gore's chief fault is being a political Gumby, with a posture for every occasion. Then he asks if Gore's capable of changing?
To be fair, I think what Anderson means is, 'can Gore change his wooden delivery?' Because he obviously recognizes that Gore changes his political views as often as he changes shirts.
@4:00 PM
Keep an eye on the small children!
Someone just hit a mountain lion with their car, on South Flat Road right on the outskirts of town. As the drought forces more and more of the wildlife down into the basin I'm sure we'll be having more run-ins with big predators in town.
@9:02 AM
We took the fat black dogs for a long walk in the pheasant thickets out at the Red Dot Ranch yesterday. The bottoms around the ranch haven't been farmed in many years and the place is a haven for wildlife of all kinds. Maintaining the traditions, we rallied at Mini Mart for coffee at oh-dark-thirty, then made one more trip around town to pick up the forgotten gloves, change choke tubes, and gather more warm clothes, giving the rain time to turn to sleet.
By the time we got to the ranch the sun was fully up somewhere above the heavy gray overcast, the sleet was turning to snow and the snow was starting to stick on the brush in all the pheasant thickets. Bean boots and gaiters didn't keep me from getting soaked from the knees up, my beard was stiff with ice, and even the rattly old 870 threatened to freeze up.
But fat black dogs aren't much bothered by bad weather - in fact, the moisture helps them find a scent. The rapidly accumulating snow makes it easy to judge the age of a track and makes the birds sit tight, producing fewer tracks to confuse the dogs. Best of all, the bad weather keeps the dudes inside by the fire, leaving miles of river bottom to us riffraff.
In all a very memorable day, although it certainly underscores what perverse creatures we humans are. All day we congratulated ourselves on having such perfect hunting weather, but if we'd had to be outdoors working it surely would have been one of the more miserable days of our lives.
@8:56 AM
Friday, November 22, 2002- - -
Jay Manifold argues that our energy future isn't nearly as dim as is predicted by the proponents of Kyoto, as technology will make solar voltaic sources much more practical and efficient in future.
I would add that our electric appliances and such are becoming more energy efficient as well. Particularly, I'm very surprised at how well-lit the Land Yacht is by 12 volt DC-powered fluorescents. I've checked into it and for about $200 I can put a solar panel on the roof that will easily keep the batteries charged in the current system. For around $1000 a larger panel and inverter can be had that would also run the TV, microwave, and other 110V appliances. And all of that is available today.
The problem of course, is that this isn't very cost effective when the most we've paid for a month's electricity for the Yacht is about $6. However, the cost of fossil fuels is going nowhere but up and the price of solar is coming down. Hopefully, at some point the cost of solar will become competitive.
Update: I forgot. The TV is 12V, but the satellite dish box needs 110V.
@2:21 PM
The Grouchy Old Cripple runs down this year's Stella awards. All I can say is 'get a rope!'
@10:46 AM
Via Coldfury, this is too funny. And after you're done perusing Limousine Liberal, check out the rest of Flasbunny's site.
Update: That's Flashbunny.
@9:57 AM
Philippe DeCroy, new co-blogger over at the Volokh Conspiracy, expresses dismay at the Pentagon's new “Total Information Awareness” program, and Kim duToit explains how such a database could be used and abused. Their concern is certainly warranted, but: a) the proposed Total Information database would be orders of magnitude larger than a supermarket sales database such as that described by duToit; b) it would be compiled with data derived from many different sources in many different formats - always a recipe for disaster; and c) you can bet the government won't hire anyone of duToit's caliber to run it.
I'll still maintain that general incompetence will do them in.
@9:57 AM
Dang! I'm not banned in China. I wonder what I'm doing wrong??
@9:57 AM
According to this NY Times article, President Bush has ".. reassured Moscow that its economic interests in Iraq would be honored if the United States led an invasion force against Mr. Hussein. "We have no desire to run the show, to run the country," Mr. Bush said in the NTV interview. "We will work to encourage the development of new leadership and protect the country's territorial integrity.""
How interesting. I'd never considered the possibility of simply buying off Saddam's defenders. We should make an offer like this to the French and see how fast they turn hawkish..
Update: Here's more on the same topic from the Washington Post.
@8:19 AM
Thank the war on drugs.
According to this editorial in the NY Times, quite a few innocent people on death row in Illinois are now being exonerated: The investigations into the Illinois exonerations have made it clear how a person who is innocent of a capital crime could nevertheless wind up on death row. Witnesses, from jailhouse snitches to police officers, have testified falsely. Prosecutors, whether out of incompetence or bad motives, have ignored evidence that they were trying the wrong person. Lawyers assigned to represent capital defendants were often not qualified, or failed to conduct investigations that could have cleared their clients.
It's almost impossible to convict someone of a drug crime or other victimless crime without bending the rules a bit at some point, according to an attorney friend of mine. And once started, the habit of testilying, and looking the other way, is hard to break.
There's one good way to put a stop to this sort of thing: If it can be shown that your incompetence or prevarication has sent an innocent person to jail, you should take their place..
@7:58 AM
Now I really do believe the Dems are doomed. Says Spinsanity: This year, with the double-whammy of his best-selling book Stupid White Men and the box office success of "Bowling for Columbine," one of the most financially successful documentaries ever, [Michael] Moore has become the American left's most prominent media figure.
@7:58 AM
I truly dislike the new 'read the rest of this post' facility that is becoming common in the blogosphere. I bet I'm not the only one out here in dial-up land who logs on and downloads half a dozen blogs, then logs back off to avoid tying up a phone line. So if I want to read the rest of the post, or read comments, I must log back on. I wish more folks would do as Bill Quick does: have the posts and comments right up front, available for one quick download.
@7:57 AM
Thursday, November 21, 2002- - -
We have asked our President to fight with one foot in the Democrat's bucket, the yap dogs of Europe tugging on his cuff, and the Damoclean sword of the world's economy hanging from the center ring microphone. Then we criticize his footwork.
Bill Quick urges everyone to read a three-article series (1, 2, 3) from the Claremont Institute debating the efficacy of Bush's prosecution of the war on terror. While this topic sees a lot of pixels out here amongst the blogs and gets a lot of ink from the largely leftist tiny whackers of the mainstream press, I've seen little analysis by anyone of the caliber hosted by Claremont. All three of these articles are well worth the read.
It's been said that there are no 'what ifs' in history - that it is pointless to debate what might have been if history had taken another route at some turning point. However, most criticism of the anti-terror efforts, positive and negative, is necessarily based in speculation - 'what if the Prez had done this?' and 'why doesn't he do that?' If only because we are not and cannot be privy to all of the considerations leading to Bush's actions.
Whenever someone starts playing the 'what if' and 'why not' game, and particularly when the criticism is accompanied by the accelerated beat of war drums, I wish they would take one more step back and consider where we would be in the anti-terror effort if we were thralls of the Prince of Dorkness. Placed in that light, almost any criticism that Bush isn't doing enough fast enough sounds a bit churlish. Certainly many aspects of the anti-terror effort are by turns silly or sinister, but please consider the alternatives.
Angelo M. Codevilla complains that we are making war on an abstract concept, 'terrorism,' rather than going after those Arab regimes that enable terrorism. I certainly share his impatience. If there is an area of the world that more desperately needs to feel the whip hand of the pax Americana I don't know where it would be.
But. We don't operate in a vacuum. Like it or not, a very significant part of the world's industry relies on oil from the Middle East. As the world's leading industrial nation, the US relies on trade with all those other industrial nations. While the argument that we're fighting a war for oil is silly, disrupting the flow of oil would be a disaster. Disastrous for the world's economy and disastrous for the Bush Administration or any administration that caused the disruption. How do you suppose that the elections just past would have gone if all of Europe and half of the US were sitting in the dark? Would the minions of the Prince now be delivering more Gore? Not likely.
There has also been considerable criticism of the US consultation with the UN and NATO. Why are we wasting time consulting these toothless dogs? They can't help and use every opportunity to hinder. But again, consider the alternative. The President must have the support of the US electorate and, by extension, the support of Congress, or face being thwarted at every turn. Remember all the shouts of 'no unilateral preemptive war?' Consultation with the UN and NATO has quieted that chorus considerably. As useless to the effort as this consultation may appear, it solidified support and defused criticism here at home.
The course to passage of the Homeland Security bill is instructive of the progress that has been made. Most of its provisions seem either useless, frivolous, or sinister, the rest are outright pork. There is a hole in the ground in the heart of our greatest city where 3000 of our fellows once worked. Yet, passing any sort of legislation to address that little problem, no matter how bland and ineffectual, was apparently impossible prior to the past elections. It would appear that there is a considerable contingent on both sides of the aisle who will play politics and ignore peril, but at least at present we have their undivided attention.
The past elections kicked off the bucket and the yap dogs have been brought to heel. The sword remains and thus there is a certain part of the ring that must be avoided at present. Nevertheless, if politics is the art of the possible, then President Bush is a master. What appeared simply impossible a year ago is looking more likely all the time. And we're only in the second round.
But make no mistake - this is a fight to the death.
Update: Oof! I've re-read this. Talk about purple prose!
The last thing I would suggest is to stop criticizing or stop pushing for progress in the anti-terror efforts, but all things considered (and quite to my surprise), I think Bush is doing darn well. Rather than foreclosing options, it seems that his every move creates more options and opens up more opportunities. I’m not sure what to make of the UN inspectors’ ‘Oh it will be a year or so before we can say anything.’ Obviously we don’t have a lot of time to waste. But Bush has his ducks in a line now. Quite against the odds, he’s consolidated his power base here at home with the last election, and I think consultation with the UN and NATO was meant largely to defuse that issue during the election. What other purpose could it serve?
Our troops are re-supplied and in position and the climatic window of opportunity is opening. All we need now is for Saddam to do something truly outrageous to provide the seed that will crystallize this mix. I've a nasty feeling that too is part of the plan. We've arrived at a turning point and we'll soon know whether the Prez has the will to take the next step. I pray that he does.
@11:35 AM
Tuesday, November 19, 2002- - -
Sigh. According to this article on ballistic fingerprinting, ".. Manufacturers of an estimated 1 million new guns sold nationally each year -- 100,000 of them in California -- would be required to test-fire their guns before sending them to dealers. Digital images of bullets and shell casings would then become part of the national database similar to one maintained by the FBI for human fingerprints."
One million firearms. Added to what.. 200 million currently in circulation [any figure here is likely to be pretty speculative]? So under the current proposals, at the given rate of manufacture, and discounting wear and tear which would remove some of the weapons from circulation, in about 200 years they'd have 50% of the firearms in the database. Yet the BATF argues that such a national program would be a powerful tool for law enforcement.
Right.
The only way this could be even marginally effective - even if it was technically feasible, and a study commissioned by California Attorney General Bill Lockyear (cited in the link above) says it won't work - is if all the weapons now in circulation could be fingerprinted. It would require what amounts to de facto universal registration of firearms and their owners.
Now do you suppose there might be a certain demographic that wouldn't even consider complying with such laws? How about career criminals? Not to mention terrorist larvae.
(Link courtesy of the InstaPundit)
@9:31 PM
Sand is mostly quartz and quartz is hard. At 7 on the Moh's scale, it's much harder than a weapon's steel.
The Kalashnikov series of rifles are impressively designed small arms. Ultimately reliable, they are capable of sustained fire even when horribly fouled. But firing them, even operating their mechanisms when fouled and corroded, only hastens their wear. The same is true of operating any other weapon, large or small, any vehicle, or any piece of ill-maintained machinery. Only diligent cleaning by motivated troops will keep the sand out of delicate mechanisms.
Saddam's troops have been on various stages of alert all through the brutal Iraqi summer. No matter what their morale six months ago, it can't be so great now. Their equipment is very likely neglected, thus worn, and anything that could break has. Ammunition is very likely in short supply, there's likely not enough for many live fire drills. And repair parts are nonexistent. The only thing they do have in abundance is fuel, which only encourages the overuse and hastens the demise of vehicles. The danger of American invasion is not over and allowing the inspectors to return is certainly an annoyance, and a setback for Saddam's plans.
The troops are exhausted and their equipment needs repair. It's Ramadan and they will be fasting and further weakening themselves when they should be feasting. But surely the Americans won't attack while the UN inspectors are in the country…
Warfare is the Tao of deception. Thus although you are capable, display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When your objective is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby. Sun-Tzu The Art of War
Soon now, I think.
@8:18 PM
Interesting. I'm going through a mountain of junk mail & catalogs trying to find the bottom of the In Basket and I note that every catalog (or at least the ones I bother to open before I toss) has Bison hide jackets, slippers, gloves, bill folds, and you name it. One even had a bison-covered football. Now bison leather can be beautiful and soft, but it's quite thin and not very durable. I wouldn't choose the hide for anything that gets much wear, like slippers, gloves, bill folds, or you name its. You can buy a 2-year-old bison on the hoof for about $500-600, which would be a poor price for beef. It looks like the bison producers are getting desperate. At this rate, maybe we'll even start seeing bison in the meat counter at something approaching a competitive price. Poor Ted Turner..
@2:53 PM
Jim Ryan at Philosoblog says Locke was no libertarian, because he supported majority rule and believed that helping others was a moral duty. Thus, he would have supported taxation for welfare as long as it was democratically agreed upon.
I find these litmus tests of libertarianism most interesting. I too feel that we have a moral obligation to take care of those less fortunate, but I'm not so bloody sure of my own moral superiority that I'd use government's power to take from you and give to them. I support, literally and figuratively, a charity-based answer to this sort of obligation.
However, I'm also pretty pragmatic in outlook and, in situations where the charities can't handle the problem, I'd rather see my tax money going toward supporting people on welfare than see those people forced to commit crimes to survive, at which point they become an even bigger burden on the tax payers through their involvement in the justice system, not to mention the cost in lost and damaged property, extra security precautions, injury to victims, and so on. The downside of this is, of course, the danegelt aspect of welfare - some folks feel downright entitled to our support and get a bit too comfy living on the dole. For which reason, I think these new 'welfare to work' programs are a darn good idea - a safety net is one thing, a rocking chair is entirely another.
And now that we have 'welfare to work' for the unemployed it would be nice if we could come up with a similar program to get some of our government employees out of their rocking chairs.
@9:04 AM
Aha! While perusing Asymmetrical Information, I spotted Joshua Ferguson's comments on this. I've received a couple of emails from Joshua, but he was apparently too bashful to tell me that he too is a blogger. Check out Unfossilized.net.
Hmmm... I wonder if Count Ferguson of Orange could be related to Sir Graham of Cracker. Regardless, into the blogroll with him!
@7:55 AM
Drat! I've finally gotten my head above water on the work front and I'm catching up on correspondence, etc. Ready to do a little blogging. So I blow the time posting comments on Megan McArdle's new Asymmetrical Information blog. But I couldn't fail to respond to this. It's all good fun I'm sure, but I can't help but groan when I see my colleagues lending themselves to this sort of thing. It's far too easy to become viewed as one of the Johnnie Cochran's of archaeology.
@7:47 AM
Monday, November 18, 2002- - -
Don't forget the Leonid meteor shower tonight! I gather that it will be at its peak between 3:20-3:50 MST.
Update: That was fun! Some very spectacular meteors and many, many faint ones. These weren't clean across the sky meteors. Most of them were quite short. What made them spectacular was how broad a swath some painted. I suppose this stands to reason, as they are cometary debris rather than rock/metal and break up very quickly on entering the atmosphere.
@7:19 PM
I've got to try some of this stuff.
@6:28 PM
Run SPOT, run!
Because I'm not at all certain that I'm ready to add 're-boot the refrigerator magnets' to the daily maintenance routine.
@7:20 AM
Sunday, November 17, 2002- - -
As you can see if you look to the left, I've been adding a few blogs to my favorites. I finally decided I wasn't going to run out of room on the roll, and if the occasional link goes bad so be it. One of these days I may even organize them alphabetically, or by cute categories.
Most of these folks are old hands that I read all the time, whom I've never added to the blogroll for some inexplicable reason [laziness] or have dropped off the roll during the occasional Blogger disaster because I hadn't backed up my template [incompetence]. Either way, none should require any introduction. I've made it about 1/3-way through my off-line favorites at this point, so there's still many more to come.
@11:56 AM
From the letters in today's Denver Post (with apologies to Bill Quick who does this much better than I):
Too fat, lazy and spoiled for freedom
As a former Republican turned Democrat, I resent the accusation that Democrats lost the election because they have no agenda. If Democrats were in, we would be talking about alternative energy sources like fuel-cell technology instead of sending our 18-year olds to die in a war over oil.
We would be looking at the causes and treatments of mental illness, instead of building more prisons and filling them with people with mental problems. We would be talking about some kind of sane gun control with teeth, instead of staring inanely at the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control that count gun deaths in 2000 at 28,500! Who needs contraception when we can kill 28,500 human beings per year with weapons of mass destruction?
As for Colorado, it is evident that people here do not love freedom. Instead, we will have Gov. Bill Owens and his gang in the legislature bombarding us with senseless legislation on mandatory school prayer, state-ordered childbirth for the pregnant, waiting periods for divorce, and other bozo bills that "want to get government off our backs." Meanwhile, the state, of course, will run itself, since we don't need government.
No agenda? Hardly. The problem is that the American people have become too fat, lazy and spoiled to worry about anything but tax cuts and where their next new car is coming from. The only good thing about this election is that the unbelievably ignorant newly elected Marilyn Musgrave will now be poisoning the air around the U.S. Congress instead of Colorado.
L. HIGHLAND
Morrison
Okay, L. Highland, I'll grant you your agenda. Let's see. Obviously, our national energy policy is inextricably intertwined with our foreign policy. You propose that we all talk about unrealistic alternative energy sources in between singing choruses of Kumbaya to ward off terrorists. Oddly enough that might work. When we're all shivering in the dark like your heroes in California the Islamists will have far less reason to hate and fear us. And of course, we have nothing to fear from them, because the real weapons of mass destruction are the firearms in the hands of your fellow citizens.
You're darn right there's a lot of people in prison with mental problems - like an inability to grasp the concept that they can't prey on their fellow citizens. Oddly enough, that mental problem seems to be ameliorated by the sight of law enforcement officers and the threat of armed citizens. An odd sort of therapy, but it works.
Instead of mandatory school prayer, state-ordered childbirth, and waiting periods for divorce, we could have mandatory sex education, state-funded abortion, and waiting periods for marriage - just while the mandatory male birth control implant takes effect. Democrat busybodies are obviously preferable to Republican busybodies, and it's all about which parts of your body they want to be busy, after all.
Too fat, lazy and spoiled to worry about anything but tax cuts and where their next new car is coming from? Hmmm. How soon we forget the last administration. You know - the one where the economy was booming, greed was good, and we simply ignored little slights from our neighbors, like bombing our naval ships and military barracks overseas. That was the sort of fat, lazy, and spoiled you meant, right?
Yes, L. Highland, the Dems have an agenda. Thanks for reminding us.
@10:49 AM
Saturday, November 16, 2002- - -
Wyoming has a new Darwin Award nominee.
@1:43 PM
Elk steak for lunch. I wonder what the poor folks are eating..
@10:41 AM
Here's a short article about the UW bone lab, a place I've spent many entertaining hours. I've taken the class mentioned and it was truly one of the highlights of my educational career. What the article fails to mention, and the reporter probably wasn't in any position to note, is the uniqueness of this facility. Most any anthropology/archaeology department will have some boxes of bones squirreled away somewhere, but darn few of those collections are anywhere near as comprehensive as Danny's. Whether you want to see a platypus or a porcupine, Danny has one. He will also have a good story involving the acquisition of the specimen.
One of my favorites involved one of the tigers, bequeathed to the university by the Denver Zoo when it died of old age. The zoo called Danny and asked if he wanted a tiger and of course, he was on the road with a big old university station wagon before they could hang up. At the zoo they slid the tiger into the back of the station wagon and covered it with a tarp for the short ride back to Laramie. But first the old gas guzzler needed a fill-up. At EXXON. Pulling into the pumps Danny put on his best scowl - he scowls well - and collared the manager. Taking him to the back of the station wagon, he opened the rear door and threw back the tarp, announcing in his most aggrieved voice...
"The tiger in my tank died!"
@9:31 AM
Thursday, November 14, 2002- - -
Sigh. I've been terribly remiss in keeping up my favorites list. I was looking it over and realized that I hadn't updated or added any new blogs since MommaBear moved to DodgeBlog. I really do have a broader reading list than you might guess from the blogroll and I'm going to make a concerted effort to add a lot more of you to the roll. Soon, real soon.
I've been tickled by Mitch Berg this evening and he's first in the shute. He coins the term Lutefisk - "the point-by-point attack on a news article by Garrison Keillor." Keillor deserves a slap upside the head with some nice fresh lutefisk and Berg gave him a good one, complete with a parting curse: afterlife at an eternal Lutheran Church basement lutefisk supper. Now that's cold. Make that with extra weak coffee and you've got hell on earth, or elsewhere. Mitch is also a fellow NoDak refugee, and so, doubly deserving.
Update: And I'd barely had this post up for an hour when I wandered over to DodgeBlog and discovered that they're shutting down. MommaBear is moving to Kathy Kinsley's On The Third Hand and Andrew Ian Dodge is moving to Sasha Castel's.
@8:11 PM
Now this is interesting. If you broaden the indictment to include the 'not a dime's worth of difference' dems, Granny D's rant starts sounding remarkably libertarian. Sure, there are a lot of people out there who would use you like a paper towel if it suited their interests. The only part (Okay, the 90% of it) that gives Granny away as leftist rather than libertarian is the condescension, the class war pickup truck, talk radio, and weaker minds bit. The transparent transference of the 'anyone who doesn't agree with me must be an idiot' attitude. Not so sure of their own intellectual grasp and compensating by calling everyone else pin heads, that sort of psychobabble. But as far as there being a lot of people out there who spout cheap poison and use others for their own ends, Granny is spot on. She's only wrong in thinking that those evil ones are all repubs and all in private industry and, as pointed out by Mitch Berg, in thinking that those of us who drive big white trucks are ignorant tools. In her mind, Granny probably thinks of herself as being kind in not accusing us of being evil tools. Nice to think that she thinks we're just dupes and not orcs - but on the other hand, that's the basis of the condescension, isn't it? I bet Granny doesn't take that attitude with the plumber when he's replacing her water heater.
Yes, I drive a big white truck and I voted for Bush II, but I did it with my eyes wide open. I've written here several times that I thought Bush was one devious SOB - but Gore scared hell out of me. He's history, so there's been no point in belaboring that. At the time, I held my nose and voted for the lesser of two etcs (I certainly wasn't going to vote for Butt Weasel Browne).
So maybe there is a God. If so, she's obviously on our side, because, as unbeknownst to us as it was at the last general election, it would appear that what this country needs very badly right now is one devious SOB. The sort of gunslinger that you wouldn't want hanging around gentle company in merrier times. Sans the whole terrorism angle, if the Office of Homeland Security had been created out of whole cloth in peacetime, I'd be caching the guns. I'm still not thrilled with the idea, but I'm less thrilled by the potential for a suitcase nuke in LA.
The InstaPundit argues in his last TCS article that a broadly decentralized citizen-based defense is the better way to defend against terrorism here in the US, and I agree. But I also see the Office of Homeland Security as more black comedy than sinister development - even more so to the extent that any of them think they are being sinister. So I won't spend a lot of time wringing my hands over ineffectual Homeland Security. After all, if a broad citizen-based autonomous defense is best, we certainly don't need to wait for someone to give the order, do we??
@7:25 PM
I knew there was a reason I liked this guy! He's another refugee from the frozen wastes of NoDak. (Although I'm not entirely sure that Minnesota is an improvement.)
@7:19 PM
On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
George Orwell, 1984
The InstaPundit thinks the new Information Awareness Office logo is a bit creepy, and Bill Quick et al. find the whole idea of data collection under the Homeland Security Act more than a little scary.
I certainly agree that this data collection proposal takes bureaucratic intrusiveness to new heights, and the logo certainly takes government insensitivity to new lows, but as for any fears of a belated 1984, I tend to agree with David Gillies’ comments at the Daily Pundit’s: incompetence will do them in.
I’ve worked with quite a few government agencies in developing database applications and I’ve found it very hard to convince most agencies that less data is better. The reasoning is always that if 50 variables are good then 500 variables would be better. Besides, that way you don’t have to apply any thought to what you’re doing, just collect all the data and the computer will sort it out, right?
Well, no. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ is a truism because it’s true. The more data you have and the more variables you’re trying to examine, the more difficult it is to sort the significant factors from the coincidental but irrelevant results and the more that noise from all the irrelevant data masks the sought-after patterns. Searching for terrorists is much like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. If you refuse to use the big magnet—profiling and scrutiny of the most likely populations—you’re going to be sorting that stack one straw at a time—we’ll have the same old ‘face the wall and spread ‘em granny’ routine with computer assistance.
I think we are quite right to worry about the side-effects of having such broad personal data accumulate in the hands of those proven incompetent by their very attempt to collect it. While the utility of the data is questionable at best, the potential for misuse and misappropriation of the data is real. But I’m less alarmed by these seemingly sinister aspects of the Office of Homeland Security than I am by the fact that they appear to be making a real attempt to exceed their buffoonery quotient at every opportunity.
@3:29 PM
EEeeewww! This probably explains the trail of vanilla bottles between the local grocery and middle school.
Update: Jim Gwyn writes:
Vanilla? Phooey!
You might want to take a quick look at the flavorings section next time you're in a supermarket. I just checked the stuff in my spice rack and found orange extract weighs in at 80% alcohol, i.e. 160 proof.
Ouch! I suppose that's still better than huffing starting ether. These things seem to sweep the nation - where do they get started?
@8:30 AM
Wednesday, November 13, 2002- - -
Actually, a cat makes an excellent psychotherapist. The fees are reasonable, you don't have to worry about your foibles becoming cocktail hour conversation, and you can share the couch.
@11:47 PM
Now that's kinky. And in Webster's no less.
@11:13 PM
Well, they do advertise “New Thinking.”
From the Anthro Dept. newsletter at the U. of Wyo. (and I do so hope this was written by an undergrad), it appears that they’ve been excavating at Juniper Cave in the northern Big Horn Mountains:
“The cave contains deposits that probably go well back into the Pleistocene, but contained relatively little evidence of human occupation. This excavation is part of a larger effort to re-study a number of previously-excavated rock shelter sites and in so doing to understand why fluted points, evidence of some of the earliest human inhabitants of North America, are rarely found in caves and rock shelters.”
While the classic fluted points manufactured by Paleoindian peoples aren’t commonly found at high altitudes, contemporaneous occupations are found. The question usually raised is how and if these ‘foothill-mountain’ groups are associated with the better known fluted point-manufacturing Paleoindians—Are they different groups, or the same people employing different technology for a different environmental situation? There is also a lot of environmental information to be had from excavations in dry caves even if you don’t find evidence of human occupation. So the investigation actually does make sense. However, the newsletter blurb makes it sound as if they’re digging where all previous investigations have indicated that they are least likely to find what they seek.
@8:28 PM
Of course, it hasn’t been all work for the last few weeks. It’s pheasant season and VP Cheney isn’t the only one who has a few ‘undisclosed locations’ set aside for this time of year. We’ve seen darn few pheasants—we never had a lot—and I’m not sure why. It could be the drought, although the pheasants mostly hang out around the irrigated farm fields and shouldn’t be too badly effected by the water shortage. I suspect that it could just be that the dude hunting operations haven’t been at it long and they haven’t released too many farm-raised pheasants for the dudes. A good portion of them escape onto the surrounding farms and we see a lot of young roosters in out-of-the-way places through the fall, and a lot more roosters than hens all year, which has got to be attributable to the commercial hunting operations. Shooting pen-raised birds seems about as sporting as a trip to the grocery store, but I suppose I shouldn’t criticize because I shoot them whenever I get the chance, I just don’t pay for the breeding and feeding, and I pay off the farmers in Budweiser.
Ducks and geese are also in season, but it’s been too warm to bring many down the basin yet. When all the out-lying ponds freeze up the ducks and geese will come down to the river, and when it freezes hard in Montana they’ll start coming down in greater numbers, but for right now all we’ve got is the native birds that hang around all year-round. Somehow it seems unneighborly to shoot the locals.
Now I’m really ticked that I didn’t draw an elk tag this year. The guy I usually hunt with shot a 7x7 out of a group of big bulls just down the road from the cabin first thing opening morning. Of course, there was no one else with him who had a license. I haven’t yet seen this monster and knowing these guys it will probably turn out to be a rag-horn who’s gained a little size in the re-telling. It seems the witnesses were all Texans, plumbers, and insurance salesmen, all of whom I’ve known to be prone to strong drink and not above the occasional mild exaggeration.
I suppose I could get my butt in gear and get a late-season deer or general elk license. There will be seasons open one place or another until the first of the year or later. However, between the bumper crop from the garden and a big load of longhorn there’s just not much room in the freezer(s). Besides, everyone else did well and there’s no shortage of meat. Might as well give the wildlife a break, although range conditions are such that I’m not sure starving through the winter is much of a break. I expect the ungulate populations will be way down next year, no matter how much moisture we get through the winter.
@9:57 AM
Ah well, so much for the Alferd Packer Club idea. They'll be eating each other for the next few months and won't need our help.
@8:36 AM
Yeah, right. They've run out of video cameras.
@8:32 AM
I think I’m finally back in business. In betwixt cranking out five reports in the last week the old laptap decided to go toes-up on me. It lasted three years of hard service, so I can’t complain, and I really needed something with more RAM and a larger, faster hard drive. I’d also decided that as handy as they are, the dinky screen makes a loptop a pain as a primary computer. So … the credit card worked its magic and the nice UPS lady brought me a new desktop system. Nothing fancy, but I did go for a nice 17” flat panel. I also upgraded to the newest version of MS Windows Pro, which is proving to be just enough different than the ‘98 edition to be a pain. Ah well, I’ve gotten the reports done, except for one well site that has developed complications, and I’ve mostly got the new computer up and running. I still haven’t gotten my email address list to transfer, either via the ‘transfer wizard’ or by brute force copying of the file—some minor incompatibility I presume—but I’ve got my head back above water work-wise and gotten re-attached to the internet, so it’s finally time to see if Blogger is working this week.
@8:26 AM
Friday, November 01, 2002- - -
Perhaps it's time to reinvigorate the Alferd Packer Clubs, named after the infamous "Colorado Cannibal."
During the New Deal, some exasperated Colorado Republicans formed "Alfred Packer Clubs," with each member promising to dispose of at least five Democrats.
Legend has it that Judge Melville B. Gerry of Lake City, a Democrat, pronounced sentence upon Packer this way: "You voracious man-eating son of a bitch, there was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five of them. God damn you! I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, Dead, DEAD, as a warning against reducing the Democratic population of Hinsdale County. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sentence you to Hell but the statutes forbid it."
Of course, democrats were probably more palatable back then.
Update: Perhaps Laurence Simon could come up with a couple of recipes..
@6:18 AM
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