St Gore the Green

Gore presents yet another case where the very idea of hypocrisy is simply not applicable to Democrats. He lives in a 20+ room mansion that uses 10x the power of the average US family home, and has multiple homes to boot. Of course he is rarely in any of them, but rather traveling around the globe in private jets and running around in SUV motorcades. His "carbon footprint" is the size of a village of average Americans, yet he feels strongly that "the rest of us ought to do something".

If a Republican charges Bill Clinton with infidelity, then any Republican that had an affair in the last 30 years has to be outed as a hypocrite, and we have to point out that Thomas Jefferson may have had an affair with a slave 200 years ago. When Al Gore makes a movie on using less fossil fuel yet burns it in the ranks of the top .001% of Americans himself, there isn't a word spoken.

Here is one link, I'm sure it is "biased", it HAS to be, since the MSM won't touch this story. You KNOW it is true without even thinking about it ... he flys in private jets that burn petrol like a well fire, yet considers himself an environmentalist. Being left means that consistency is not an issue, so hypocrisy is impossible.

Six Frigates

I finished up the subject book by Ian W. Toll this snowy weekend. The book was one of the thoughtful gifts for my 50th B-day last fall from a fishing buddy. I hesitate to figure out exactly how I prioritize my book reading.

The book makes me realize that I need to find more time in my reading diet for history, especially well-written and interesting history as this book was. It opens in 1805 with Nelson at Trafalgar defeating the combined navies of Spain and France, and then backs up to the early 1790s to the origin of the US Navy. The interplay of the Federalists (modern Republicans) and Republicans (modern Democrats) during the whole book is very interesting. A great quote from Hamilton's Federalist #11 is given; "A nation despicable by it's weakness forfeits even the privilege of being neutral". The Republicans then, and the Democrats now seem to believe that weakness is the way to be neutral. The events of of the turn of the 19th century showed the folly of that view and the correctness of Hamilton's, but many people never tire of the belief that fortune really ought favor the weak and wishful, no matter how often the position is proved wrong.

In 1794 the six frigates are authorized. The book includes lots of interesting technical detail on their construction, including the live oak wood that seems to make a huge difference in their durability. In 1799 the Constellation goes to sea and wins the first decisive naval battle for the US against a French frigate that has been helping French Privateers as they take over 300 US merchant ships a year. In that battle a gunner panics and runs, and the officer in charge kills him immediately. It was a different time; the way to insure that sailors do not run is to make the penalty for cowardice death, and nobody has an issue with that standard.

The conquest of the Barbary Pirates is covered in some detail, especially the exploits of Stephen Decatur, a navy officer so handsome that young women regularly fell into a swoon on sight of him. Unfortunately, not one of those problems that I have regularly had to deal with. Of special note during the Mediterranean campaigns, and really through the latter half of the book, is the issue of dueling and "honor". The ideas of character and honor were much more in evidence personally, in battle, and in the dealings of nations in that period. Would it have been possible to retain the focus on character and honor without dueling? At least an interesting question.

A number of naval battles in the period around the War of 1812 are covered in levels of detail including maneuvering, gunnery, boarding, and types and effects of injuries. The Chesapeake's "bad luck ship" history is well covered, and in contrast the, the glory of "Old Ironsides", the Constitution, as it becomes the first US ship to defeat a British Frigate, and the historic significance of that action.

All in all an excellent book that brings to life a critical period in the development of the country, and especially the US Navy.

You Will Lose

Nicely done cartoon showing Congressional support for the troops off Powerline.

The New Business Normal (NBN)

The subject book by Michael W. Wright can be thought of as the executive summary of "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Freidman also here, and here. The Friedman book has become a "standard", but it is quite long, quite repetitive, and short on solutions.

A key paragraph from the Preface lays it out:

The global landscape we have painted seems intractable; we have embraced a the term first introduced into common business use by Roger McNamee, the "New Normal." This landscape is harsh and forbidding, one that will render useless any attempt to palliate through cliche' or dumbing down through generic format. We offer much content along a "how-to" path and cite many examples of successful navigation. But the main mission of the book is to map the scale (size) and scope (diversity) of the landscape. Any organization has to have a clear understanding of its present to divine its future. We we have done is illuminate the time and terrain between today and tomorrow.

The book opens with some key one-liners to remember. Some key ones that stuck with me were:

• The rule of three prevails. This essentially means that in a finite market three or fewer players will own at least 70% of the market share. Think of the top hamburger company in the world. The 2nd? How about the third? No doubt McDonalds was easy, maybe you picked a 2nd, by the 3rd, the basic answer is "who cares"?
• The old comparison is "have or have not", the new comparison is "know or know not". The only "security net" that anyone has in the NBN is knowledge.
• Dual-income households are an econimic necessity. Humorously, the new "trophy wife" is a PH. D. from China with her own business!
• Value has migrated from the product to the experience. Customers what the value of the experience without the responsibility or burden of product ownership.
  
• The basic level of human existence is at a higher level of anxiety for all. Everyone can be both in their own universe and connected all the time (internet, cell phone, iPod)
• Achievement depends on successful integration and marshalling of groups of varied interests.
  
• In the NBN a company will not let anyone get between them and their customer. "Co-destiny" with the customer is potentially the only remaining "business differentiator".
• The cry of today is "What are we good at?". The cry of tomorrow will be "What do we need to be good at?".
  
• Competitive advantage revolves around highly skilled people able to share information quickly and effectively.
• In the NBN, two discernible workforces have broadly taken shape: the under-fifties and the over-fities.
• Knowledge workers will eventually become the largest single group of older Americans in the workforce.
• The NBN for corporations is to innovate and manage the creation, but outsource its execution and administration.
• Asian companies see innovation as a process, not a spark of genius. They see change as an opportunity and are willing to abandon their past to create the future.

I could go on, but I think those are the biggest keys. What it all means to me is:

1. Success has always meant dealing directly with reality, taking risks, being flexible, and making correct moves (changes). The only difference now is that is happening faster and all over the globe.
2. Better communication and transportation means that the playing field is wider. That means greater opportunity and greater risk. Being "the best in the neighborhood or the best in town" is no longer good enough. If the business isn't location dependent (haircuts, dining), then the market is global.
   
3. Loving what you do gets more and more critical since in order to compete, it is critical that the level of professional commitment to the task has to be high.
   

The book is only 126 reasonable print pages long. It is VERY well worth reading on your own.

Ivy League Education

I had one of the best weeks at work ever in my nearly 29 year career. A three day class that started out with Michael Wright, Author of "The New Business Normal" current CEO of Entegris, and veteran of a 25 year career in leadership positions in high tech.

Tuesday was spent with Dr Edward Joyce Associate Dean of the Carlson School of Management on the subject of getting the right information out of cost accounting systems.

Wednesday was spent on a subject that I never enjoyed in school, English and grammer, with Dr Steven Wilburs whose web site is extremely informative.

Every one of the instructors was both extremely entertaining and extremely informative. It made me wonder if I may have experienced a taste of what an education at an "overpriced" Ivy League school may be like? I have no way of knowing, but I've never had days in class fly by to the same extent. I hope to get some time to write a bit more detail, but the workload left by taking 3 days of class has limited my time.

The bottom line was that it is always very possible to get A LOT better at what we do, and there is ALWAYS a lot of opportunity, as well as risk of course. The key is figuring out what you really like and becoming very good at it. Cost Accounting and English would be two areas that I would have thought dry beyond hope of anyone really exuding a contagious passion for, but I was proven wrong in the extreme!

Release Your Anger, And Joy

The events of the past week, along with of all things a couple of little books of wise quotations picked up at the CAR WASH of all places (that is where I got the Franklin quote) have coalesced in my feeble mind. The book "Be Positive" by Wally Amos (The guy that created Famous Amos cookies, among other things) contains this worthy page:

Keep Moving Toward Your Goals: Confucius said. "It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop" Truer works were never spoken. You succeed by not stopping. You are guaranteed to lose if you quit. You never know what will happen if you just keep going. So go as slow or as fast as you need to go, but whatever you do, please do not stop.

Interesting that Wally Amos is black, and most of a  James W. Loewen  talk last Tuesday at "Rochester Reads" was on the horrors of racism in this country and how hamstrung blacks are because of it. No doubt there is a lot of truth in that ... as well as there is in the case of physically and mentally disabled people, people abused as children, those that have less innate motivation --  the list is infinite. To be human is very much about limitation; but being a victim of our limitations will have a completely different outcome than seeing those limits as learning opportunities.

Liberalism is different though. As I watch and listen to the new powers in Washington, I'm often transported to the scene in Star Wars VI, "Return of the Jedi" where Luke is fighting with Darth in the presence of the the Emperor, who tells him to "release his anger" in order to defeat Darth. Since there is no transcendence in the liberal universe, the human condition has to be lofted to deity, which of course it completely lacks the capacity to fulfill. The intellect and reason are as "good as it gets" as the "highest functions", but the emotions are too omnipresent to be ignored. To carry on the Science Fiction motif, Spock might say; "one does not worship logic".

The Democrats spent the whole week on "Give up, it is taking too long, there is no hope, it is like Vietnam ...". "Victory" to the left is when the forces of good give up and the communists, terrorists or just plain criminals win. Even the act of someone "giving up", especially if it is the US is a "win". When anger, hatred, lust, and especially hopelessness can gain, all is right with the liberal universe; no god is in heaven, life (and especially sacrifice) is meaningless, and prospects for hope are dimmed. Hail, Lord Beelzebub, your constituency has had a "positive week".

Harry Reid even released his anger so well that he said that "Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake ever". It would be interesting to know his criteria, I'm thinking that the 57,690 US killed in Vietnam might have a couple of words on that ... US involvement in WWI, Spanish-American, some of the actions in Mexico, Philippines...oh , I don't know, it seems "unlikely" even if Reid and the Democrats manage to make it as big a defeat as they can.

In Sunday School today we discussed Philippians, which is a wonderful set of verses to keep the current events in the right perspective.

4:4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: [and] again I say, Rejoice.

4:5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord [is] at hand.

4:6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

4:7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure, whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.

This week we enter the season of Lent. While those of faith believe that the ultimate victory has been won, we still live in a time where souls have the freedom to choose whom they serve. Adversity is a good reason to be thankful for the plan and the patience the of the author of hope.

Slow Bleed

Whether the actual name for the Democrat / Murtha strategy was actually their own name or not, there has rarely been a better term for a Democrat strategy, indeed, "slow-bleed" tends to come pretty close to an embodiment of a liberal view of pretty much everything.

Last Tuesday night I went to a local lecture by Dr. James W. Loewen, author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me". It is a book that I have not read, but his lecture wasn't much on the book anyway. He pointed out that; "Unless the US is the worst monster in history (and he was not asserting that), then an honest appraisal of past history should be no cause for concern". His other assertion was that "Nobody will believe what we say if we don't point out the faults in our history, nor can we learn from them".

I thought those were interesting thoughts, I wonder if he follows that with his wife?

 "Honey, have you been putting on a little more weight lately? You know I love you very much, but I think you are bit broader in the beam than formerly, and your general presence has a bit more of a "sag" than it used to. Note that I only tell you this because I love you, and I want you to know how honest I am so you will trust me more."

 The thought; "with friends like that, who needs enemies" comes to mind.

Is it "a lie" for a public US school paid for with US tax dollars to give a "positive bias view" of the US? Loewen and many liberals think so. That is in fact the main item that makes Fox news "biased"; they specifically call themselves a US news outlet, and indicate that their bias is "pro-US".

The liberal mindset raises criticism, defeat and even hopelessness to virtues. Indeed, it is a sign of "sophistication" to point out the flaws in all manner of things, especially your own country. Somehow liberals seem bent on "tough love" for their country, but they never see that as a good idea for their children. As Bush pointed out Tuesday, the Senate just confirmed Petraeus 81-0, and he had made it clear that he supported the surge. This past week the House thought it was important to spend the week castigating the surge and then taking a non-binding vote to show they didn't like the surge.

If one had any convictions, would they do everything in their power to hold up a confirmation of a general supporting a strategy they oppose.  No, not if you are a liberal. You seek "cover" behind a "slow-bleed", looking to insure failure in any way you can, but making sure that Bush gets all the blame.

Since it seems that liberals like to claim that being conservative is a mental disorder, it is interesting to turn the tables a bit. Somehow I'm quite certain that the MSM will fail to see a connection between "slow-bleed" and "passive-aggressive" behavior, which actually IS an officially recognized personality disorder. Public Radio has been proudly proclaiming all weekend long that Murtha is going to divert all the funds to "better preparation" so the surge never happens, since what kind of Republican could vote against better prepared troops? The hallmark of "passive-aggressive" is simply delay.

Indeed, if it was "all a game", this kind of arm-chair quarterbacking might actually be more fun, but I have the distinct impression that Iran, North Korea, and a number of terrorist groups around the globe actually believe in what they do. I'm sure they will show us again that while psychological gamesmanship might "look impressive" to the MSM and liberals, the kind of expense incurred is likely to be real bleeding with nothing slow about it at all.

Benjamin Franklin

The following is a little piece of wisdom from Franklin on "happiness".

There are two ways of being happy; we may either diminish our wants or augment our means. Either will do, the result is the same. And it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that with happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be for you to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous young or in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well. And if you are very wise, you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.

I'd argue that what he is really talking about here is being "financially satisfied", which may well not be the same thing as "happy".

As I observe those of the liberal frame, I find they tend to MAXIMIZE their dissatisfaction by picking those with the highest wealth that they like the least, and focusing on how much those people have and how "unfair" that is. They work themselves up into a "wealth of outrage", but a "deficit of wisdom". They lose their way so badly that they tend to vote for those with the MOST "ill-gained wealth" (their standard). Kennedy(inherited), Kerry(married), Edwards(taken from a combination of the public (higher medical costs) and poor to moderate income people(the people filing suit that Edwards took a big cut of their awards), Hillary (recently wealthy on book deals), Obama(recently wealthy on book deals) ... etc.

They arrive at the point where their ONLY "wealth" is outrage. They may not even have any "wants" of their own, other than to see "the wealthy knocked down a peg or two", and somehow they believe that they can vote for multi-millionaires that would somehow shoot THEMSELVES in the foot (pocketbook)? Not a very likely prospect, but the wisdom of a Franklin is converted to the rage of a Marx, and rather than focusing on creating something good for society as a whole, they attempt to tear down others in a vain attempt to reduce the outrage that has become their only "wealth".

Much of happiness is really a factor of how much of our life is focused on PERSONALLY doing something for the benefit of others. For some reason, those in the liberal frame tend to become "outraged" at some set of people that have had financial success, and then subsequently think that their own personal "contribution" can be their "opinion that the world is unjust". They see themselves as somehow "on the side of good" because they manage to have an opinion that they see as "just", even though their ability (or even interest) in actually DOING anything to help others may be quite limited.

The following is by the author of the book "Who Really Gives", an excerpt on the web here.

BUT EVEN after controlling for all other factors, religiosity, measured by the likelihood of weekly attendance at a house of worship, remains by far the most salient predictor of both charitable contributions and volunteerism. Those who attend a house of worship once a week are 25% more likely to give than those who do so never or rarely. And when they do give, they give four times as much. Nor is the generosity of religious people limited to the religious community. They are 10% more likely to give to explicitly non-religious charities and 25% more likely to volunteer for secular groups, such as the PTA.

Unsurprisingly to those that have read Jesus, the liberal lefties that claim the most "righteousness" relative to their generosity and social involvement are actually far LESS likely to "do unto others" than the very people they malign at every opportunity.

Ginned Up

Many folks probably missed the smooth comment by Obama to the Australian PM:

"If he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest he call up another 20,000 Australians and send them up to Iraq."

Seems like the essence of smoothness, maybe there is a good reason Obama seldom says anything off the script. If he had an "R" next to his name, we would hear the endless view of how "poorly he treats allies" or something oddly made up about how "ginned up" could be misconstrued to be something about having too much gin. A conservative can't even say "niggardly" without a racist charge, and that is a real word rather than a slang expression.

Anthropic Principle

I got to hear Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind talk on the subject on MPR via the net. Yet another great feature of the modern world, the net allows us to listen to what we want to when we want to.

I have blogged on his recent book and as I said, really enjoyed it, as I did his talk on the radio. What struck me as I listened was something from "Change or Die", a short little somewhat self-helpish / business sort of book that I picked up and read through recently that ties back to "Frames", ala a series of posts that I made on a George Lakoff book back in December '05 and January '06.

We humans run around with tiny time-delayed models in our heads that are less reliable because everything even manages to be perceived in those models must be filtered through a set of "frames", which are "meta-models" that tell us what conclusions are the most "beneficial" for us to "jump to". "News at 11", all experience is SUBJECTIVE, and "meaning" is even MORE biased!

It is completely unsurprising that a physicist that seems it as a "grave weakness" to "fall into" belief in God and realizes that we are even wired naturally to believe in a "higher power" would seek out nearly ANY explanation to justify how we could just "happen" to live in a Goldilocks universe "tuned" to 10 to the -120th accuracy to allow us to exist.

 The "Anthropic Principle" is essentially Descartes "I think therefore I am" writ large. "We are here and able to comprehend the universe, therefore it is obvious it would have all the parameters for us to be here".

How about folks like me that believe that God DOES  exist?

It is certainly an open issue if a finite brain can even "imagine the transcendent", but **IF** we have any hopes of escaping the "frame" of physical reality, the path would seem to have to lie in that direction. Our ability to have pure thought, mathematics, religion, love and I'd even argue boolean logic and computer programs takes us as close as we can come in this life to "slipping the surly bonds and touching the face of God". To even attempt to envision escape from the models, frames and incompleteness of the material world seems to me to give a HOPE for a "better perspective".

"Near Panic"

CNN Headlines

As I struggle to write cogent prose, it always strikes me as odd when a major media outlet titles something "Trial Shows White House In Near Panic", and then when one goes out to the linked article, there isn't a single thing about any sort of "panic" ... near or otherwise. What would the line be between "panic and NEAR panic"? Where is the line between either of those phrases and "angry because a person hired by the CIA turned out to not be covered by a non-disclosure agreement and has leaked false information in an article". Subsequent testimony BY Joe Wilson himself shows that in fact his own trip ADDED credibility to the "attempt to purchase uranium in Niger"

I held my nose and watched the video. It as amazing orgy of analogy and emotionally laden terms ... have "Tactic" over and over, "Cheney as puppetmaster", "damage control turned to circle the wagons", "Libby was being thrown to the wolves", "one guy asked to stick his head into the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others". No news, just a lot of accusation in prose. Might be decent fiction writing.

The VERY funny part about all of this is that the current media state secret is that this whole trial is WAY more "about nothing" than the Clinton follies ever were. The media COMPLETELY avoids making it clear that any of the supposed intrigue here is completely wasted, since the source of the leak was Richard Armitage, admitted by himself and reported by CNN!

This is one of those stories that would be impossible to make up if one wanted to prove that the MSM is so biased that they make Rush Limbaugh and even Sean Hannity actually seem "unbiased" in comparison. At least those shows will STATE the facts ... although they often slant them once they do. The MSM has decided to just "leave off" the fact that this whole special prosecutor probe has been known to be bogus for 5 months, and all we are left with is a parody of "justice" in an attempt to prosecute a minor functionary for political purposes because he may have gotten a proven to be unimportant date / name wrong under oath.

It is amazing how important "perjury" can suddenly be to the same people that previously thought it was no crime at all.

Late Night Book TV

Stayed up late last night and watched Sam Harris (End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation), Reza Azlan ( No God But God ) and Jonathan Kirsch ( History of the End of the World )
debate on "Religion and Reason" on Book TV CSPAN-2. I ought to have Tivoed it, but it was kind of fun to stay up late for a change on a cold night. I discovered while I was watching that Chris Hedges was going to be on discussing his new book "American Fascists" about the scourge of the "Christian Right" in the US.

So we had a VERY liberal Muslim and a Jew discussing with the guy that wrote "Letter to a Christian Nation" for an hour and 1/2. They were all agreed that ANYONE that believed in the virgin birth, resurrection from the dead, diety of Christ would be "scary and out there" ... but of course according to Azlan and Kirsch, nobody sane DOES believe in that anymore. Religion is a "sophisticated social thing" ... it changes all the time, doesn't really have any fixed morals, so they were able to dispose of Harris pretty well. It had me almost pulling or Harris. I guess the conclusion would have been that at least a religion that isn't really a religion is "reasonable".

None of these folks seem to want to consider what I consider the fundamental question; "Is there a God beyond materialism that wants to be connected with us?". While I was watching, I was reloading my brain on the Knuth "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About" book. Interesting that Donald Knuth is clearly one of those "unreasonable people" that is a practicing Lutheran. Guy Steele, a Fellow at Sun Micro Systems takes part in a panel and sounds quite Christian as well. A REAL discussion would be about the issue of REAL religion, the kind that changes lives and saves souls being "reasonable". At one level, the answer is "of course not". Is love "reasonable"? Beauty? Consciousness? Can human beings transcend their material existence? Harris along with Dawkins would argue "NO, and the price of keeping love, hope, faith, etc is "too high"" ... we "reasonable people" have to throw those items out and worship the material universe only.

Then Chris Hedges got going. I suppose I have to read what sounds like a hate-filled tome that he has written at some point. The bottom line is that one takes the results of massive rates of divorce, promiscuity, abortion on demand, drug use, and lives wrecked by the hoplessness of of the Godless culture, and "blame it on a Republican plot". Then use the "What's the Matter With Kansas" logic to say that the Republicans have "created the "religious right" and moved all those poor folks that they "disenfranchised" into a "magic world outside of reality with virgin birth, 6-day creation and Noah's Ark" on the way to making them "Brownshirts". According to Hedges we are "one more 9-11 short of a facist takeover".

Throw in a bit more conspiracy theory and some "parallels" with Nazi Germany, and you have a "clear and present danger" ... again, it sounds like he doesn't say what REALLY has to be done, but when one is faced with the immenent takeover by "Brownshirts", one would think that almost anything would be justified. In the bookstore discussion, nobody talked for the other side. Could it ever be possible have someone calling people "Fascists and Brownshirts" "hate speech"? Of course not ... I really don't believe in labeling speech like that on EITHER side, but note how unlikely such a thing is when applied to Christians.

The Great Divorce

Having to suffer through Dawkins for the good of Christendom was a bit of a burden, and I felt that I owed my soul a bit of C. S. Lewis, so I dug out "The Great Divorce" that I had first read out west in like the late '90s, and had ended up thinking of and quoting rather badly to others at times. It is a very short little fable, 125 not very dense pages, and well worth the time.

It is a Lewis vision of heaven, hell, earth, and maybe purgatory. "Hell or purgatory" are a somewhat "always nearly dark city" that spreads on to what seems like infinity when you are there, but is really only like a little crack in the "ground" when you are in heaven. You can "get on a bus" and go up to the outskirts of heaven, but in order to enter, you have to accept both sovereignty and grace of God. There is just "no other way" ... without it your soul isn't strong enough exist in the light of ultimate truth.

There are a number of little vignettes when the authors character encounters various souls that are "visiting". One is the classic hard-bitten realist that "has seen it all before" and "knows the score".

"Anyway," said the ghost, "who wants to be rescued? What the hell would there be to DO here?"
"Or there?" said I.
"Quite," said the ghost. "They've got you either way".
"What would you like ot do if you had your choice?" I asked.

"There you go!" said the ghost with a certain trimph. "Asking ME to make a plan. It's up to the Management to find something that doesn't bore us, isn't it? It's theri job. Why should we do it for them? That's just where the parsons and the moralists have got the thing upside down. They keep on asking US to alter ourselves. But if the people who run the show are so clever and so powerful, why don't THEY find something to suit their public?".

How well that captures so many. It is always "the folks in charge", "the big shots". They were given the gift of life, but they abdicated the honor of being responsible for living it to some mysterious "them". Few things are sadder, and Lewis captures the sadness of the inability to move to even a positive eternity because of a life lived not wanting to be "anyone's patsy".

This little gem is worth pulling out of context:

"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words; "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven". There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy-that is to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends."

Apparently, he ran into Dawkins making a visit (according to physics, it is possible that everything that happens is happening all the time and always has been).

There were materialistic Ghosts who informed the immortals that they were deluded: there was no life after death, and this whole country was a hallucination."

It is a tiny book, well worth just picking up and reading. Two of the characters that I especially love are the book-ends of one a moralist, who can't enter heaven because a guy that he knew as a drunken murderer is forgiven and there. The other is a liberal minister that just won't accept the ultimate truth and reality of God. He believes that those that "honestly disagree" have to be saved as well.

Were our society just "balanced", rather than a secular cultural wasteland, C. S. Lewis would be one of those names held up very highly. Another name that I realize that Dawkins somehow failed to mention is that of Donald Knuth, who wrote a book "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About" That oddly enough, I seem to have, and read before I started blogging. Perhaps I need to return to this, and of course such things can always be borrowed. For those of you NOT of exactly the computer scientist persuasion, Donald Knuth is the author of The Art Of Computer Programming which is as close as there is to a "Bible" in computer science.

Somehow Dawkins failed to mention him while denigrating the idea that one could really be "scientist" and believe in God.

Explaining Perjury

Yes, yes, I realize that Ann is almost as bad as Dawkins, but she is A LOT funnier! Oh yes, her wit is full of acid, but she is so darned smart, and a tiny bit cute too, in her own overly skinny blond way. Anyway, ann does a great job of explaining perjury here.

I find it hard to imagine how they can seriously go on with the Libby "perjury" trial at this point, she explains if the only way that it would seem that it can be explained. It is always OK to persecute Republicans, there really doesn't need to be "a reason". Her "what is perjury, what is not" descriptions pretty much restore common sense to the issue, which is actually what I think the law intends.

The law is another one of those things that I know almost enough about to realize that I know nothing about it. I work reviewing invention disclosures at my job, so this weekend I buzzed through a number of those, and am also reviewing the patents at our site from last year for potential extra awards, so I'm looking at "100's" of patents and disclosures this month and next. Other than some odd twists of language; "those schooled in the art", "a plurality of ...", etc a lot of it actually does come rather close to "common sense" at times, although always with enough "mystery and judgement" to keep it somewhat interesting.

Anyway, Ann is wishfully thinking that conservatives are EVER going to "protect their own" like Democrats. The core of liberalism is being amoral, which certainly isn't the core of conservatism. Yes, having the order of when you talked to whomever wrong is really NOT perjury, but conservatives tend to be MORE likely to follow the rules and they don't make exceptions for "their own". In fact, usually they ESPECIALLY don't make exceptions for their own since they view it as "a test", and realize that were they to do so, then they would have no more standards and consistency than the left. We all know that conservatives are just as human as everyone else, so they DO fail, and when they do, that is NEWS! The MSM and the left loves the show of "hypocrisy", but of course one has to have some sort of standard to be a hypocrit! At least that is one thing that neither Bill or Hill will ever be accused of!

Biden is a "D"

CNN covered the Biden remark. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

My view is the only reason that this got covered at all was because he made it to the NY Observer, a conservative outlet, and I don't agree with the "Right Wing Media" (RWM?) making something of it. It seems obvious that nothing was intended by this. To the extent that there gets to be more RWM, they will have the opportunity to be just as awful and unfair as the MSM ... unfortunately, probably the best that we can hope for.

HOWEVER, were he an "R", it would be the complete end of his canidacy. It shows how black Americans have veto power when someone states something that can be taken out of context and "construed" to be racist. If Obama, Sharpton and Jackson responded with; "Well, it raises questions, one has to look at it in the context of the canidates overall actions on programs for minorities and other groups that he works with ...", then the piling on begins.

When you are a Republican, even misspelling "potato" is enough cause to end your career. With the MSM, it is important to "get your mind right", and the only way to do that is with a "D".

Conservatism Is A Disease

Hey, it has all been explained. The good folks in academia have figured out that "being conservative" is really just a personality defect tied to "hard times". I'm thinking that would mean that they would be inclined to not hold it against folks with an "R" next to their name because maybe us poor folks were just "born that way" like homosexuals, pedophile or  murderers. All of those folks have "no control", so what they do shouldn't have any "judgment" applied to their acts.

Conservatives though, as we see below are authoritarian, dogmatic, can't tolerate ambiguity, need a lot of control, are anxious over death, not open to new experience, risk averse, fraidy cats, etc. I guess the problem is that conservatives are just "bad to the bone" and probably "not fixable". It is clear that when it comes down to i liberal standards are quite high!

Say a nice pedophile though that rapes 8-10 little kids and kills them in some horrible way. Obviously, they are more "open, willing to tolerate ambiguity, not prone to any fixed standards, not worried about any sort of dying or certainly not judgment" ... basically good liberal folks that anyone would be proud to know. Sure, molesting and killing kids could be seen as a "mistake" (at least by the "rigid and close-minded"), BUT, since the liberal mind is so adaptable and willing to change, a short conversation with say a therapist, and anybody but someone that has that irredeemably horrible "R" next to their name would say "good to go"!

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure,regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r .50); system stability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification
of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.

We regard political conservatism as an ideological belief system
that is significantly (but not completely) related to motivational
concerns having to do with the psychological management of
uncertainty and fear. Specifically, the avoidance of uncertainty
(and the striving for certainty) may be particularly tied to one core
dimension of conservative thought, resistance to change (Wilson,
1973c). Similarly, concerns with fear and threat may be linked to
the second core dimension of conservatism, endorsement of inequality
(Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Although resistance to change
and support for inequality are conceptually distinguishable, we
have argued that they are psychologically interrelated, in part
because motives pertaining to uncertainty and threat are interrelated
(e.g., Dechesne et al., 2000; McGregor et al., 2001; van den
Bos & Miedema, 2000).

I'm not going to give up hope though. I'm thinking if those brilliant liberals can do this kind of research, then a cure has got to be just around the corner! If we could ALL just be flexible, risk taking, open minded, non-judgmental, easy to get along with, able to handle complexity, etc, then things would be GRAND! Actually, I'm pretty sure that they already have it, they may have just forgot for some strange reason. Something around 6-10oz of Scotch over a fairly short period, and I think almost anyone can think EXACTLY like a liberal!

Edwards House

Do I care that Edwards has a big house? No, not really, but wouldn't one think that the MSM and the Democrats would care? I mean he is one of those "class warfare guys". As long as his "heart is in the right place" it is OK for him to do everything in his power to insure that I remain a tax slave into my 70's while he lives in a 28K sq foot home with millions taken from the medical industry while channeling dead babies in a courtroom?

Let's see, we are supposed to all be up in arms over CEO pay. Why does a guy with great hair making millions off all our medical bills earn the complete respect of the left and the MSM while living like a potentate? I know, I know, consistency isn't an issue. Sometimes it just gets a little glaring though.

Clear Thinking On Iraq

The following is excerpted from Tony Blankley at Real Clear Politics:

Now is a good time for clear thinking and speaking. If we intend to succeed (and it is vital that we do), then we must persist. If the "surge" doesn't work, then more troops and different strategies should be employed.

If we are going to throw in the towel, then we should bring the troops home promptly, lick our wounds and prepare for the inevitable Third Gulf War, which we will have to fight under far worse conditions than currently. Either of those options are at least honest (although the latter is dangerously foolish).

But the current mentality in Washington -- to pretend that there is a third way between victory and defeat -- is morally despicable. Washington politicians of both parties are trying to salve their consciences for the ignominy of accepting defeat by fooling either themselves or the public into believing they are doing otherwise.

Perhaps they can fool their own flaccid minds, but history grades hard and true. And history may enter its ledger with shocking promptness.

The most popular form of current thinking seems to be "wishful thinking". Once we declare defeat in Iraq, then what? We continue to train the world that "we can be beat" ... Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, and if the left has their way, Iraq. The objectives of the other side are very clear, as they were in the days of the USSR. If you want to be an evil empire, the only game in town is world domination, it really doesn't do to have a rich, free, and fun alternative on the globe. Neither gulags or burkas are all that attractive in comparison to living in the US. Be it "decadent capitalist" or "decadent infidels", the proper state that our adversaries approve for us is either dead or obedient, take your pick.

Classic Kerry

Powerline has a great post on Kerry at Davos. Why does anyone ever listen to this guy?

John Kerry disgraced himself yet again earlier today, when he launched a salvo against the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (What is it about Davos that brings out the worst in temporarily expatriate Americans?) This Power Line Forum thread addresses Kerry's latest folly. You could spend a long time taking apart Kerry's attack on President Bush, but let's just focus on one aspect of it:

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

Speaking of duplicity and hypocrisy...Kerry himself has actually had the opportunity to vote on the Kyoto carbon emissions treaty. Forum member ironman administers the coup de grace:

this says it all…

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 105th Congress - 1st Session

Vote Date: July 25, 1997, 11:37 AM

Question: On the Resolution (s.res.98 )

Declares that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997 or thereafter which would: (1) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex 1 Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period; or (2) result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.

YEAs 95
NAYs 0
Not Voting 5

Kerry (D-MA), Yea

Duplicitous and hypocritical: that pretty well sums up John Kerry.

The God Delusion

I finished the subject book by Richard Dawkins this week, it is currently #4 on the NY Times Bestseller list, and has been as high as #2 on the Amazon best seller list. This book talks quite frequently about how the US is very close to a "theocracy", and the "Christian Right" is "the American Taliban".

Yes, the US is so close to all of this that Dawkins can be a best selling author in this awful country with a book that is hostile to religion beyond belief. Lest you think I jest; Page 317: "horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place". Page 318: "I am persuaded that the phrase 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell."

Make no mistake, Dawkins finds Christianity (and all religion) to be a form of child abuse, and while he doesn't DIRECTLY called for children to be taken from their parents if the parents are going to "indoctrinate" them, he does everything but. Page 339: "Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents". Like most liberals, he doesn't say what to DO about this "horror", but it doesn't take much imagination. In the "liberal" world, freedom is never for anyone but those that agree with your point of view.

What Dawkins and Sam Harris have in common is that they see 9-11 as an opportunity to "do in religion". One simply needs to declare all religions the "same" (irrational, delusional, unsupportable, etc) and DANGEROUS. The fault is RELIGION, all religion, and what we need to get rid of is FAITH, and then people will be "rational".

Right off, I'd argue that Dawkins and everyone else has an awful lot of "irrational faith". We have faith we will draw our next breath, clearly a belief that is obviously going to be very wrong in an extremely short period of time on any sort of even a moderate historical scale. We tend to think that the model of the universe running around in our head is "accurate", even though we know it is delayed by an eternity in computer time (what we "see" took at least 13 milliseconds to register in our brain)  and incomplete in the extreme. To the extent that we are "scientists", we have faith that this universe is ordered enough so that measurements and experiments done yesterday or tomorrow can be compared with each other by known principals.

For the believer in random creation, that is a HUGE leap of faith, since all that order "just happened" ... without meaning or purpose. A pure random event.

While on that subject, apparently Dawkins can't even CONCEIVE of anything being "beyond material" or "eternal". God can't be postulated, because he would HAVE to have been formed by something even more complex than the universe we see. Really? It seems very hard to see any basis for that "rule". Why again should there be "something" rather than "nothing"? Since we seem to be agreed that there is "something", then is postulating that there is "something beyond" REALLY that big a leap? Both cosmology with the "inflation theory" and evolution with "punctuated equilibrium" have their "creation spurts", the difference is that they want to be clear that from their POV it "just happens".

1st Corinthians 13:13 "But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.". Page 185, Dawkins "Could irrational religion be a by-product of the irrationality mechanisms that were originally built into the brain by selection for falling in love?". This section of the book makes it clear that Dawkins doesn't find love to to be a good thing either ... a bad piece of evolution that apparently makes us susceptible to religion. How about hope? Well, of course not, that would be "infantile". page 354, ...Jefferson more than once wrote to friends that he faced the approaching end without either hope or fear. This was as much as to say, in the most unmistakable terms, that he was not a Christian.". Yes, Dawkins believes that a better world is a world without faith, hope, or love.

It IS however a world with as much "pleasure" as one can get. The only part of the Catholic church he has sympathy for is the pedophiles. Naturally homosexuality, abortion on demand, and euthanasia are all to be encouraged. He quotes Dr puppy-love Peter Singer of Princeton a couple of times, but doesn't explicitly mention some of Peter's more moral stances (eating meat is immoral, sex with animals is moral, infanticide is moral, killing "unfit elderly" is moral). He views Hitler as more moral than bad guys in history, "Hitler seems especially evil only by the more benign standards of our time". Why even the horror of Donald Rumsfeld is only in comparison to the "enlightened" standards of today; "Donald Rumsfeld, who sounds so callous and odious today, would have sounded like a bleeding-heart liberal if he had said the same things during the Second World War." (p268)

I'm sure that some will ask "why do I put myself though this"? Dawkins sits in a tenured chair at Cambridge. This book is high on the best seller lists and is getting RAVE reviews in the popular culture. The same culture that bleats every day or so about the "American theocracy" that happens to have an openly gay congressman as the chair of the house ways and means committee. Try that in a REAL theocracy (like Iran or Saudi Arabia).

Dawkins won't say it COMPLETELY directly, but it is clear that he is in favor of removal of religious freedom, and the creation of a country without faith, love, or hope as rapidly as he possibly can. Christians need to be aware that the forces that seek to use them as lion food are still afoot.

However, that country WILL have faith -- faith that a "reasonable government" that persecutes Christians (because you have to in order to stamp them out) is "good" ... like the USSR, Communist China, Nazi Germany ... the godless demand that you and your children worship the totalitarian state.

Clipmark of Islam for Peace

As I surf the web, sometimes for just a couple minutes, I run into things that I want to save and maybe blog on later. I installed something called "Clipmarks" into FireFox that allows me to create and save "snippets" or "clips" of the web and to comment and share with others. I've been experimenting with a number of these "Web 2.0 Technogies" over the break and after.

Here is a Clipmark on the subject of "why we fight". It is CNN/MSM, so lefties can trust it. Lots of peaceful sentiments, looks like we we are overreacting in the War On Terror.

At a recent debate over the battle for Islamic ideals in England, a British-born Muslim stood before the crowd and said Prophet Mohammed's message to nonbelievers is: "I come to slaughter all of you."

"We are the Muslims," said Omar Brooks, an extremist also known as Abu Izzadeen. "We drink the blood of the enemy, and we can face them anywhere. That is Islam and that is jihad."

"All of the world belongs to Allah, and we will live according to the Sharia wherever we are," said Choudary, a lawyer. "This is a fundamental belief of the Muslims." (Watch a call for Islamic law Video)

Asked if he believes in democracy, he said, "No, I don't at all."

"One day, the Sharia will be implemented in Britain. It's a matter of time."

Clipmarks clip on religion of peace

"Peace" is always easy, just like with the USSR. We could have saved a lot of defense dollars if we just signed up to be members of the Communist Party and did it the Gulag way. Same deal today, oddly the left seems to be OK with Burkas and stoning Gays as long as a group that is anti-American does it.

Church / State Connection "Chilling"?

I've seen and heard a number of references to Evangelicals signing on to "care for the environment", and going to encourage government and politicians to be responsible with "Gods Creation". Here is an article from the NYT in case you have missed it.

So what gives? I thought that the proper term for any mixing of church and state was "chilling"? We just aren't about that here because we are a "secular country", and any time that church leaders try to get involved with the morality of the nation, or science for that matter, we are "basically a theocracy".

What is up? Can it be that the press is so biased that as long as "the church" is doign what they want, it is just FINE, even so far as referring to the earth as "God's Creation"? Wouldn't that smack of the horrors of Intelligent Design?

Guess not, or maybe they are just 100% factually oriented, and it is GREAT that this is "chilling", because what we are talking about here is global warming ;-)

Race Doesn't Exist

It showed up in the paper last week, and I heard a segment on MPR. You may think that there is such a thing as racial difference between humans, but according to the current politically correct view, that would make you a racist. You just have to get your mind right.

The following captured from the MN Science Museum Exhibit Site.

Everyday Experience of Race
Race is embedded in virtually all aspects of American life. Explore social and personal experiences of race in familiar settings such as home and neighborhood, health and medicine, and education and schools. Discover that race and racism is not inside our heads, but in fact is built into our laws, traditions, and institutions.

The Science of Human Variation
Racial and ethnic categories, which have changed over time, are human-made. We now know that human beings are more alike genetically than any other living species. Scientifically, no one gene, or any set of genes, can support the idea of race. This section focuses on what current science knows about human variation and our species' history.

History of the Idea of Race
Race has not always existed. Sorting people by physical differences is a recent invention, only a few hundred years old. Discover how the development of the idea of race is closely linked to the early development of the United States.

There you have it! You probably think that Kevin Garnett looks differently from Brett Favre for reasons of race, but that just shows that you are prone to racist imposed stereotypes! There is no such thing as race in the real world, it is all a "social construct"!

Kevin Garnett is an oppressed minority, forced to live off $15 Million a year do to the oppressive constructs of our racially charged society!

Does the Press Like Obama?

Let's see, is the Pope Catholic? We know very little about Obama, certainly nothing about where he stands on issues, or much at all about his character or personal life. He is good looking, he is young, he is black, he is a good speaker, he tells us that he isn't "partisan". Are there any "partisan Democrats" according to the MSM? I thought that was another of those things that only applies to Republicans.

I happened to hear on the evil Fox news the other day that he is a "closet smoker", and "nobody has a picture of him smoking yet, and there doesn't seem to be much interest in it". Of course, we all know that "Faux News" can't be trusted, so here it is from the Chicago Trib, they are a nice liberal paper, so it MUST be the truth!

One thing he has tried to do for his children--quit smoking--is among his biggest struggles. "The flesh is weak," he said. "It's an ongoing battle. I have my gum, my patches and all that stuff."

The Obamas moved into a $1.6 million house in June, trading their condo near Hyde Park for a historic home nearby. The royalties from his first book and an advance of nearly $2 million for future books allowed the family to pay off debts from law school and past political campaigns.

Part of the package of being a liberal is that you get to make millions of dollars off book deals as a "public servant", live in a 1.6 Million dollar house, and that is A-OK. It is certainly A-OK with me as well, but I live in the odd world where it ought to be INDEPENDENT of what political party you subscribe to. Odd view of "fair" though that may be.

Smells Like Tuna

Welcome to the new non-critical MSM, we have Democrats in power now. Pelosi decides to exempt American Samoa from the minimum wage hike because it helps Star-Kist out, which just HAPPENS to be in her district. Gee, I wonder if there were any campaign contributions there? Not likely that the MSM cares on that front, those are only interesting when they go to Republicans.

The Gulag Begins

Hard to find in the MSM, but starting to show up in the technical media. The Democrats are back in power, and early in their agenda they would like to control speech with the application of the "fairness doctrine". Along with economic growth, the end of the USSR, and a return to Americans thinking that America was actually a pretty great country, Reagan made the biggest impact on ACTUAL free speech since the revolution by getting rid of the "fairness doctrine" that said that some unionized government bureaucrats would be able to decide it your radio station was "balanced". If you put on Rush Limbaugh, you would likely have to put on Dennis Kucinich for "balance". It was under the control of the FCC and Congress to decide what "balanced" was.

NPR is of course "by definition" balanced. It covers the left and the far left. Forget "free speech and letting the people decide with the dial". That kind of thinking is only for porn! If folks don't like that they can just "vote with the dial". In the case of Rush Limbaugh though, we have something too pernicious to allow the sheep to decide on. They are so much more "rational" on porn than on "dangerous political ideas".

So, two weeks starting down the road to the "USSR lite" version of Government, we have Dennis Kucinich going to work to bring back the bad old days of the "fairness doctrine", or as it has sometimes been called "Hush Rush".

Now of course if the government should get a look at your phone bill, that would be "chilling", and it would be all over the NY Times, NPR, and the rest of the MSM. On the other hand, if Dennis Kucinich is going to decide what kind of information you have avaialble at all? Well, that is JUST FINE, and no doubt it will make our country much more "civil".

Things are much more "civil" in the Gulag, no messy arguments, all the "divergent thinkers" have been "taken care of". Say hello to the "new boss", somehow all the MSM folks warning the sheep about the evil Bush seem to be suddenly quiet. Maybe it is only "certain speech" that they think ought to be free?

Class Warfare

The following is excerpted from an article by the Weekly Standard, but what is REALLY interesting is the source for Stephen Rose, a far left Think Tank called
"The Third Way".

"For Rose, the economic story of recent decades is not one of commiseration but one of dramatic gains for both middle and working-class families. His most striking finding: When you average-out family incomes over 15 years and capture only the peak earning years--from age 26 to 59--fully 60 percent of Americans will live in households making over $60,000 a year, with half of these households making over $85,000. This has meant that more and more workers feel like beneficiaries of the changing economy rather than victims of it--and as a result, feel comfortable voting for the GOP."

Even the loonies understand that the Reagan and onward economy in this country as raised by far most boats, and that the opportunity has been HUGE and unprecedented in history. But of course, that doesn't mean that they have any qualms about destroying it. They lament that people that do better have an unfortunate tendency to vote for the party that brung them, but are happy to point out that by "soft pedaling the social issues and being strong against the war", their beloved Democrats have been able to wrest control of the House from the evil Republicans.

As Dinesh D'Souza proclaims; "I want to live in a country where even the poor people are fat". We have hit a new level, we live in a country where even the lefties understand that the economic policies of the free market help the most people, BUT, that doesn't mean at all that they aren't going to do their best to destroy those policies. As I've said before, being liberal is a lot like being a suicide bomber. You are willing to do anything to hurt "the rich", even if it means that you and the majority of people a injured.

Golda Maier said "We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us". I'd modify that to "Liberals will support economic growth when they care more for the common man than they hate the rich".

Gas Prices / Thought

It never ceases to amaze me how vast numbers of people keep thinking the same set of thoughts over and over that turn out to be demonstratively wrong, yet they never change the way they think. Case in point, gas prices.

As they went up, we heard TONs of "explanations" as to why they were ONLY going to go UP!:
- Bush / Cheney / Republican conspiracy
- Big oil companies
- Chinese demand
- Real shortage due to too much demand / instability / Arab control

So, as they go up we see story after story of hand wringing, gloom and doom predictions, discussions about it being a "new era of short supply, change our ways, smaller vehicles, etc, etc". As they go **UP**, Gas prices are a HUGE story, and everyone talks about them!

This week unleaded went below $2 a gallon in MN. Not much of story. Hardly any discussion. All the tons of media and "man on the street" predictions about "they are going to go up after the election" and such are of course completely wrong.

It was HORRIBLE news when they went up, but is it even marginally good news as they go down? No, of course not ... the MSM and most of the sheep simply don't believe in good news.

Some of this is of course just "human nature". It is well understood that we perceive a loss much more acutely than a gain. If asked to take a sure buck or a 50% chance at $2, almost everyone takes the sure $1 because they don't want to risk the "loss" of not getting anything. In the job world, a lay-off or a plant closing is big news, 100's of people being hired every week at good jobs across a lot of companies is harder to pin down.

In a world of "rational reporting" however, we would take some of that into consideration and try to learn from our past mistakes so we didn't sound so foolish the next time around. Apparently, I'll have to live a lot more years to see anything like a wider set of people that learn from their mistakes.

Not A Smiley Smiley

The following is quoted off Wikipedia and written by Jane Smiley about the 2000 election:

"The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 millions have not...Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states...The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America...The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do - they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable...Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are - they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence."

For "balance", one should take a look at this.

I suppose that the first reaction of folks that haven't heard of her will be to think that I'm just quoting "some crank". That may SEEM obvious, but she is a PHD Nobel prize winner that would certianly fancy herself an intellectual. (I realize that doesn't exempt her from being a crank, but I'll leave summary judgment to others. After reading Jane, one tends to lose their taste for that particular form of arrogance)

She is quite certain of her superiority to millions of Americans, and she doesn't mind bragging about it. Her description of Bush as "an ignorant, dependent, fragile and rigid person" is especially interesting to me. In many ways, it is a pretty good description of the human condition in general. Jane seems to think that one can get OUT of that condition unless they don't desire to be trained? In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood; "A man's got to know his limitations". I suppose Jane would assume that doesn't apply to women. If you are certain you are the biggest, toughest, smartest hombre in the forest, that usually just means that you haven't looked around hard enough. Even if you have, just stand by, you will age.

Why do I waste my time reading such things? Well, there is always that chance that something interesting of a factual nature will be learned, and it is ALWAYS intriguing to see just how "ignorant. dependent, fragile, and rigid" people can really be.

Woot! Motorola

For those of you not familiar, Woot! is the "one day, one deal" site that has a new deal to purchase each day. A couple years back I had noticed the Motorola Homesight system and thought it was pretty cool. However, the base system with the computer hookup and one camera was $250, so a little too rich for my blood. Enter Woot!, for $75 I got the base, two cameras, one remote power control module and a door/window sensor. Just too good to resist, so now I can monitor the kitchen or utility room from my office. Bit-Head heaven!

Wedding at Cana

The scripture at church this AM included the miracle of the water to wine at the wedding at Cana. Since I had happened to be discussing that miracle last night and its special significance to me, and the scripture showed up this AM, I feel led to say a few words.

For those not familiar with the specific text, here is a link. In a nutshell, it is the first miracle performed by Jesus. He is at a wedding with his mother, they run out of wine, she asks him to solve the problem. He is reticent, since it is "not yet time", but she tells the servants that he will take care of it, and he does. Does listening to your mother trump "your fathers plan" even when your father is God? It has to. Christ is FULLY both God and man -- "children obey your parents" in the family of God!

The resulting wine is seen as the "good wine" even though it is late in the evening and everyone had "drunk freely".

The first item of significance to me is that I was raised in a church that proudly called itself "Fundamentalist", and I will be returning to that term a number of times over the next few weeks I suspect. They had "somehow decided" that this "wine" was not alcoholic, because they apparently thought it would be good to extend their definition of being a "Christian" to include required abstinence from alcohol.

I find it VERY hard to imagine how anyone can read this text and not believe that this "wine" indeed contained alcohol. On the spiritual level alone, there is very little "miracle" in turning water into "grape juice"; children do that pretty much all the time with "Kool Aid". The creation of alcohol in the wine is a true miracle, not doable instantly by man even today, but rather one that takes the passage of time and fermentation on the sugars, especially to create "the good wine".

The meaning seems clear enough to me, but I'm not a student of Hebrew and Greek. I thought that this was a good post (other than spelling) on that front for those still doubting.

The miracle is special to me for the following reasons:

1). It gives us a very solid picture that Christ is "fully man and fully God"; he listens to his mother, he helps in a purely social situation that would just be embarrassing, not life-threatening to the people involved. He does something "simple", yet something that is completely beyond the ability of humans. It is "outside of material power". He does "the human thing" but in a way no human can do, AND even though he does it, he has no interest in "credit". It simply looks like the host came up with the good wine to the rest of the people at the party.

2). The question is always Christ. The scripture here is very clear, but it isn't "tidy". A miracle to save embarrassment and provide more wine when it sounds like people may have had plenty already? Much as when Mary the sister of Martha anoints Jesus head with expensive oil that could have been "spent on the poor", and in another case wipes his feet with her hair. Why include such "messy things" in the Bible? Because while Jesus comes to save us, he doesn't have to fit OUR mold of what WE think he should be. His is God, he is Truth. When we make him into the image that we want, we are in danger of missing the message. The Grace of Christ is a SCANDAL. Jesus is not what humans think that God "should be". To those who "live by the rules", Christ is simply shocking!

The essence of fundamentalism, in religion, science, or life seems to be a inability to deal with ambiguity and incomplete knowledge. The human urge for "closure" drives the fundamentalist to "create a model", and then "defend their ground", usually with name calling and judgement against those that don't agree with their model.

For religious fundamentalists, they call what they have "faith", but it is a faith in THEIR model, rather than "true knowledge". Often their position is defended with a lot of emotion and a lot of denigration of those who don't share their model. Something that may seem like a "small issue" ... eg, was it "wine or grape juice", or "was it 6 24 hour days of creation, or does it have to be that precise" become a major stumbling block, and a disagreement is a major breech.

So too for the scientific fundamentalist / atheist. An otherwise intelligent and successful scientist is questioned if they even so much as say something no "worse" than "God does not play dice" on the potential that they have "become weak" and lost the atheist dogma. The fundamentalist atheist materialist scientist can't allow such a statement to go unchallenged, they can't allow any thought that the universe can be other than randomly created to somehow seem to be validated by a person that they thought was a solid atheist.

Our basic models are all "faith based", since we have no proof that we even exist nor that reality is anything even remotely like what we perceive (witness movies like "The Matrix" or the Star Trek "holodeck". We all "live by faith", the issue is only if we have "faith in our perception of the material universe", or "faith in a transcendence beyond matter", we can't "prove" either viewpoint in the scientific sense.

Sandy vs Scooter

In the world of thought and opinion, we have very little in the way of "facts" to objectively test how the various parties in the MSM really think or feel. Our best mechanisms are statistics and comparison. That is what I find so fascinating about the contrast between the MSMs treatment of the story of Scooter Libby, and the story of Sandy Berger. The contrast is even more delectable since Richard Armitage came forward and admitted that the Plame leak was his, not Libbys at all.

The WSJ has an article with a few more details on the strange case of the Berger leak, which is of course of zero interest to most of the MSM. Clearly an ACTUAL case of obviously secret documents being taken for "some purpose" arouses ZERO suspicion if the person stuffing the papers in their pants has a "D" next to their name. Conspriacy theories and finger pointing on "responsibility for 9/11" at the Bush administration who was in office for less than 10 months at the time of the attack have abounded. ANY attempt to ask or conjecture about the Clinton administration that was in office for 8 years prior to the attack (even a fictional one in a TV movie) has been met with howls of protest from the MSM and of course the Democrats.

This is just "partisan MSM politics as usual", but the fact that 9/11 really DID happen, and information as to "why, and how it might be prevented in the future"OUGHT to be something that "rises above politics" makes one wish it were different. We see the effects of the media here. With Republicans, the CHARGE that they did something ("punished" Joe Wilson by outing his CIA wife) is converted into "truth" by constant repetition, even though there was never ANY truth to the entire story. It was completely manufactured. On the Democrat side, the FACT that documents were taken by a very high level Democrat and that while we have tantalizing hints as to "why", no investigation is forthcoming.

The difference in personality types is obvious here as well. Republicans don't really even consider "making up a good story and seeing if they can get it to fly". No doubt that isn't entirely due to "superior morals", since they realize that given the MSM, there is no chance that their fabrication would be successful. Democrats, and indeed the MSM often ASSUME on the other hand that WMD, 9-11 itself, gas prices, off-shoring of jobs, and even the whole Islamic terrorist threat itself at somehow "manufactured by Republicans and the corporate media". Since even in the age of talk radio, blogs, and Fox news, the the "dominant media" is still the NY Times and the major networks, such conspiricy thinking applied to the right still gets some significant creedence.

The Cosmic Landscape

This book by Leonard Susskind is a very well written and very honest account by an accomplished physicist. He subtitles it "string theory and the illusion of intelligent design", but in many ways it is a half-time speech to encourage the weakening physicists to not lose hope, and hold on to their faith that there is no intelligence behind the universe, no matter how grim it may look for the proponents of randomness.

You can tell that there is some bitter disappointment with a few developments of recent years. The worst is that "Einsteins blunder", the cosmological constant, which he added as a "fudge factor" to general relativity since he envisioned the universe as static. When Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding it was assumed that the constant was zero, and Einstein called giving it a value his "greatest mistake".  Unfortunately for the "random crowd", it turns out that it needs to have a value for us to exist, and that value has to be tuned to an accuracy of 10 to the -120. If you believe that would happen randomly, then you are either a regular player of the lottery or a nervous atheist physicist.

It isn't as if this is the only "Goldilocks feature" (not too this, not too that, but JUST right) of our universe. There is the Higgs field, the strong and weak force balances and a host of others. Prior to the late '90s most physicists felt that string theory was going to give them the "grand unified theory of everything" that would allow them to definitively declare that no "watchmaker was needed" (ie. No God or Intelligent Design), but the accuracy of 10 to the -120 was too much for many of them--they either refuse to accept the dead end of string theory as providing the kind of "lack of dependence on special conditions" that would indicate to them that "it just happened", or apparently quietly pray in their closets to prevent guys like Susskind, or worse yet, Dawkins from finding them out.

As Susskind points out on page 355, lest someone think that scientists are "open minded"; "Because as scientists we understand that there is a compelling human need to believe - the need to be comforted - that easily clouds peoples judgment. It is all too easy to fall into the seductive trap of a comforting fairy tale. So we resist, to the death, all explanations of the world based on anything but the Laws of Physics, mathematics, and probability."

Such is the stuff of faith, and indeed, that core decision as to the origin of the universe; intelligent, purposeful, and meaningful? Or random, purposeless and meaningless? is at the core of how humans relate to life, truth and each other. I would argue that a core feature of the human mind, the need for CLOSURE, which drives the need for FUNDAMENTALISM may even be a bigger factor than the random/intelligent divide, one which I intend to go into in the future as I begin to deal with "The God Delusion" by Dawkins.

Susskind's, Dawkins and all atheist positions are fundamentalist ... like the baptists I grew up with, or like the folks that flew into the twin towers. Christ brings freedom if you will have it -- he saves by Grace, allows (even demands!) loving your enemies, and beats up on the fundamentalists of the day -- the Scribes and Pharisees with joyous abandon. Fundamentalists are so fun to argue with since they are so rigid and prone to get unhinged when they find their views questioned in ways they have difficulty defending. Even the religious ones actually have no "higher power", because they fervently believe that "it is all obvious with a FEW easy to understand "facts"" ... just like the scientific or "liberal" fundamentalists. "A small matter of education" and you can be a fundamentalist too!

Susskind pumps up the weakened atheist position by an appeal to the messiness of string theory. He rises to the defense of randomness with the assertion that there are 10 to the 500 UNIVERSES in the "cosmic landscape", so it is really "easy" that we happen to be here. To "strengthen" his position, it looks like such a theory can never be tested, since our universe bubble is expanding near the speed of light, knowledge of the other universes is forever outside our "horizon". Susskind points out that his position is somehow superior to "the God hypothesis", even though apparently not testable, since as he states above, he is beyond that "human need to be comforted".

Apparently he finds the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient being, morally perfect, and beyond material understanding as somehow "comforting". I would imagine that his concept of God would not include the potential for such a thing as "judgment" or "sin", even though given the distance between ours and that of a being that may do fine tuning of the cosmological constant to 120 places of accuracy, it would seem that there would be a slight potential for "differences".

Susskind proudly proclaims with Laplace relative to the idea of God; "I have no need of this hypothesis". Much as he fails to explain why he finds himself beyond human need for "comfort", he fails to explain this leap. Apparently he hasn't figured out yet that he is mortal, and in that, Laplace and Einstein have clearly exceeded Lenny's understanding of their position in the universe. (they know the answer to God)

 He DID write an excellent book that I would highly recommend to anyone that seeks to understand physics. He clearly believes that he has produced a work that will be "no comfort to the intelligent design crowd". That may be true in the sense that most of that crowd share Susskind's fundamentalism (just a small "type difference"), which is actually the most comforting of human delusions ... because fundamentalists believe that they know.

TerrorByte

Sometime in the late 80's I was working with dasd recovery software for a computing system that was in the process of being built, and we had an installation in the lab that had a terabyte (trillion) bytes of storage. We joked about it being "a terror byte", since if some of your software took that machine down, there was some degree of scrutiny since it took many hours to get it back up from a crash.

As luck would have it, part of the code I had produced re-allocated bad sectors on a drive, and it had to be "absolutely fail safe". I attempted to accomplish this by having a "save area" on the drive itself so that if anything went wrong during the recovery (power failure, other hardware or software failure), the proper state was always written out on the drive and when they attempted to bring the system up again, the sector reallocation process would complete as part of that process.

Unfortunately, I made an error in part of the code, so if certain events happened my recovery code would take and exception in a very restricted state of the machine on the way up, the boot would not complete, and the machine would never come back up again. Suddenly, I was in very high demand. Under a good deal of stress I managed to figure out what the problem was, make a patch to the machine and "wala", the monster trundled on through it's boot process to eventual completion and my "programmer humility" went up a bit. Part of the magic of being an operating system programmer is that when you screw up it takes the whole machine down. At that point, I was one of those special operating system programmers that if I made a mistake, your machine would never boot again ... unless you completely re-installed it from scratch and lost all your data. "Power" ... but with stress.

So what makes me think of this? Well, the machine I am typing this in on sitting on my desk officially has 1.1 terabyte of storage! I heard a lot of conflicting stories about how much the lab machine I crashed was worth, but it was certainly "millions". The grand total for the cost on this? Something around $400, and that is only because one of the 320GB drives is last years model and I think I paid $150 for it. There is another $99 320GB EIDE drives in there and two 250GB SATA drives that I picked up for under $80 each. Things really do change in twenty years. From a room full of drives worth millions to a machine under my desk worth "hundreds"!

McCain Surge

The following is off PowerLine by John McCain. As I read it, I'm reminded of the Otto Von Bismark quote "Politics is the art of the possible". I have my differences with McCain, and often find him to be pompous and self-serving, but on Iraq he is at least reasonable, and maybe correct. My personal view is that we would likely kill less Americans and less Iraqis, and have a shorter time to a handover WITHOUT a "surge", but one has to "do what they can do". The "possible" likely doesn't include "stay the course" for longer than a few months, so even if more must die for the left to get their way, that is likely the only "possible" option available that gives us a fighting chance to avoid the cut and run that the left is after.

Debate in recent days has focused on the possibility of “surging” U.S. combat forces in Iraq. Security is the precondition for political progress and economic development, and we need more troops on the ground. But to make a real difference, any surge must be substantial and sustained.

During my recent trip to Iraq, commanders spoke of adding as many as five additional brigades in Baghdad, and one or two additional brigades in Anbar Province. This, I believe, is the minimum we should consider. It would be far better to have too many reinforcements in Iraq than to suffer, once again, the tragic results of insufficient force levels.

The mission of these troops would be to implement the thus-far-elusive “hold” element of the military’s “clear, hold, build” strategy: to maintain security in cleared areas, to protect the population, and to impose the government’s authority. Our troops would work in cooperation with Iraqi forces, and stay in place until the completion of their mission.

The worst of all worlds would be a small, short surge of U.S. forces. We have tried small surges in the past, and they have been ineffective because our commanders lacked the forces necessary to hold territory after it was cleared. A short surge would have all the drawbacks associated with greater deployments without giving our troops the time they need to be effective.

Increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq will expose more brave Americans to danger, and increase the number of American casualties. Extending combat tours and accelerating the deployment of additional brigades is a terrible sacrifice to impose on the best patriots among us, and they will understandably be disappointed. Then they will shoulder their weapons, and do everything duty requires to win this war.

We have made many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed. But from everything I witnessed on my most recent visit, I believe that success is still possible. Even greater than the costs incurred thus far and in the future are the catastrophic consequences that would ensue from our failure in Iraq. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed. Our national security, and that of our friends and allies, compels us to make our best effort to prevail, and to do it now.

On a personal note, I want to thank John, Paul and Scott for granting me this valuable real estate on Power Line to make the case for victory in Iraq.

iPhone

iPhone blows away expectations by ZDNet's Ed Burnette -- Once in a while, the truth can be wilder than the rumors. Such was the case today at MacWorld 2007, where Steve Jobs unveiled the long awaited iPhone.

Wow, Very cool .. the phone, the iPod, the digital camera, and the PDA all in one beaufiful package complete with WiFi and Bluetooth!

How the West Could Lose

Great little SHORT Daniel Pipes piece
on the obvious. He nets it down to 3 points:
1). Pacifism
2). Self-Hatred
3). Complacency
Well worth the time to read it!

Spinning

Somehow taking vacation always seems to get me too much into a "stream on consciousness" where I fall into reading a number of books that I like at the "same time" (currently "Five Frigates" and "The Cosmic Landscape", as well as trying to find the time to make it through my Sons Science Fiction book on the web), as well as a "set" of other things ... trying new technologies on Firefox for bookmarking, blogging, rss feeds ... installing a bunch of new Spyware detection, registry cleaning and virus scanning to see if I can't clean up my XP installation so Windows Update works ... installing Linux on a 2nd machine in the office ... plus getting in over my head on a number of new projects at work right off the bat. Of course, I'm behind the e-mail daemon due to taking a few days off over the holidays. I enjoy it, I know I need to get it under better control, but a new year always makes me realize how short last year really was and I guess that drives me to over-reach. I have a lot of "great ideas" ... for the blog and other places. We shall see if any of them actually get implemented.

2007

Eleven days off work have sped by like a couple of days of work time and today was back to the grind. Time with family and friends, a small amount of travel, too much food, nice gifts, lots of working out, and a reasonable amount of reading, computing of one sort or another, watching movies, and simply enjoying life. It does make one wonder how we are supposed to find time for work, I guess that is why we need to be compensated for that.

As I reflect more on blogging / writing, I realize it is something that I happily do for free, and don't really even care about readership. I'd LIKE if there were lots of readers, but I don't NEED readers, nor am I willing to do much to get more. I could easily spend long days reading books of one sort or another and writing in some form. At some point it would be nice to be able to "make a living" doing that, but it is also nice to just do something that is enjoyed for enjoyments sake. In the "over 50 world", that kind of thinking seems to get more important all the time.

The lovely computer I am writing on seems to have acquired some sort of "spyware / virues / etc" that SEEMS to have ended up with the only "permanent problem" being that I can't do Windows Update or install IE7. Neither of these are "huge" since I have other computers, but it irks me to be a "professional" and not be able to "easily fix it". I realize intellectually that being in the field only means that I have SOME more comprehension of what is going on than the "average person". It would likely take a good long while to get to the "right expert" out of the thousands of folks at MS to get me going ... I've gone through all the forums, searches, etc, and no dice so far. It looks like a clean re-install may be in the offing. Technology is fun, but like anything it can also be frustrating.

My resolutions for this year are pretty much "be positive and keep getting in shape". It would be "nice" if 2007 was "uneventful" in our family, but somehow we don't get to pick that, so being thankful for what God has in store for us seems like the best approach. I had shed 35lbs prior to Christmas, but managed to pile 5 back on even with massive working out and lower consumption than "normal". So, I have 25lbs to go to get to my goal. Life always has some challenges.

I find myself with way more things to do than I have time to do them in, but I've always considered that "managing the right problem". One of my maxims is that "you will always have problems, the best you can hope for is to be able to have some say in which problems you have". Most of the left likes to "have other peoples problems" ... they like to point out how this and that has really "messed them up", or is "so unfair", or "needs to be fixed". They enjoy the fact that somebody else got to pick their problems. It is true that some problems get picked for us. A tendency to put on weight, a broken elbow, challenging business climate, etc ... but we certainly have a "say" in all of those as well.

We don't HAVE to be the "victim" of things that are "out of our control", or "water over the dam". The temptation is ALWAYS there as we face reduced eating, going back to work, lack of snow for snowmobiling, or some other "issue" to believe that it is "unfair / others have it better / insurmountable / depressing" or some other thought that takes us out of control and absolves us responsibility. That usually feels good for a tiny amount of time, but the end result of that kind of thought is that you can end up blaming others and thinking like a liberal. Stick with the mental toughness, it CAN be a Happy New Year!