Recovery from Severe Brain Damage
Required reading for anybody commenting on cases of severe brain damage:
Devastating strokes on both sides of his head drove 31-year-old Mark Ragucci into a deep coma. As seizures swept through his brain like silent electrical storms, his gaze froze. His arms were paralyzed at his sides in a syndrome neurologists call man-in-the-barrel, signaling serious brain damage.
………
A month after his stroke, Dr. Ragucci had recovered somewhat physically, but not mentally. He was still officially in a vegetative state. Six weeks after the stroke his family transferred him to a rehabilitation facility, and that was the last Stephan Mayer saw of Mark Ragucci.
The last, that is, until the day nearly a year later, in late 2002, when Dr. Ragucci walked into Dr. Mayer's Columbia office and introduced himself. The former patient spoke in a monotone and his fingers were tightened into claws, but that was the extent of his disability. "When he walked in, I almost fell over," Dr. Mayer recalls. "It was at that point I realized that we knew absolutely nothing about the recuperative power of the brain."
In related news, the self-congratulation-based community refered to both Terri Schindler Schiavo and her supporters as “brain dead”:
"We're staying here to show our support for Terri," said a born-again Christian protester, who, like Schiavo, is capable of virtually no independent cranial activity.
The term “brain dead” has an actual meaning. In order to be brain dead, all brain function must cease. Terri had a working brain stem and wasn't even in a decerebrate posture. When the term “brain dead” expands to mean other things, especially when combined with the tendency to claim believers in traditional religions are brain dead, such believers can be expected to act as though a target had been painted on them.
How to Defend against IEDs
Use armor made with Silly Putty. It is surprisingly durable.
It might even be useful in constructing hurricane-proof buildings …
New Age Ideology and Helicobacter
It is common for advocates of “alternative medicine” to cite the recent discovery that the bacterium Helicobacter causes peptic ulcers as though it supports them (this is a typical example). On the other hand, the traditional treatment for ulcers (stress reduction and bland diets) was more “alternative” than today's treatments (cruelly persecuting potentially innocent bacteria).
By the way, on earlier occasions when The Establishment was wrong, were the New Agers of the day the people who discovered that?
More on Israeli Euthanasia
After looking into the history of the law in question, it looks like it wasn't supported by some of the more Orthodox political parties:
It was opposed by Degel Hatorah MKs Avraham Ravitz and Moshe Gafni and Agudat Yisrael MKs Shmuel Halpert and Ya'acov Litzman, whose spiritual leaders did not approve of the bill, even though many other rabbis did.
It's worth noting that this euthanasia law does not permit hearsay evidence on whether the patient can refuse a respirator … for now.
Addendum: Chana Meira has a series of posts that make it clear thet we are not dealing with a Clock of Doom striking down patients. The safeguards look adequate. On the other hand, the safeguards that were put in place in the United States 30 years ago also looked adequate …
This Must Be a Mistake
According to the Slut-o-Meter (seen via Dustbury), the promiscuity of hertzlinger.blogspot.com is rated at 56.68% (488 / 861). There must be a bug in their system:
Slut-o-meter evaluates the promiscuity of the subject you enter by comparing the number of Google search results with and without "safe-search" enabled. A complete slut would return unsafe results and no safe results. Alternatively, a clean name should produce the same number of safe and unsafe results.
I find my rating a bit hard to believe.
A Conspiracy Theory I Haven't Seen Yet
What if the wiretapping program was leaked for the purpose of getting the Democrats to oppose it and thereby look weak on national security issues?
Evidence that the Transit Union Knows It's Bluffing
The union leader says pensions are the sticking point:
"Were it not for the pension piece, we would not be out on strike,'' Toussaint said in an interview with NY1. "All it needs to do is take its pension proposal off the table.''
They're anticipating the day when the only transit workers are retired.
By the way, Russia and India have elaborate train networks. New York, by some coincidence, has many Russian and Indian immigrants. The odds are that some of them have mass-transit experience. They can't still find anybody to run the trains?
Addendum: There are plenty of potential scabs available:
The Citizens Budget Commission, a business-funded think tank, released a recent analysis suggesting that transit workers are too well paid and that the MTA should take a strike to restore fiscal order. The commission's analysts noted that many thousands of New Yorkers probably would accept less pay in exchange for transit jobs; 30 people now apply for every train operator's job.
Does the UN Have Anything to Do with This?
New York's Taylor Law has a flaw:
In 1967 the state legislature passed the Taylor Law, making strikes illegal but calling for double-pay fines per day for public employee unions out of work illegally; mandatory firing of workers was abandoned. The union (Transport Workers Union Local 100) has refused arbitration, which the current employer (a change made after the 1966 strike), the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), would accept; mutual consent is required by law.
Run this by me again. Striking is illegal but if you do it, you still have the right to retain the job you aren't doing?
Is this the UN's idea? The only possible responses are sanctions (which can be paid for if the strike succeeds) and pouting real hard.
Jack London on Scabs
A famous Jack London quote on scabs sounds like it was written by a pathogenic bacterium. It could have come from a gangrene germ that was ready to feast on a running sore but was kept from its rightful due by a scab.
In Case of a Transit Strike
Last I heard, New York's transit union has been threatening a strike. If there is a strike, I plan to telecommute (although switching from one program to another by remote control is a bit slow even with a cable modem). I've wondered about some other people's reaction.
For example, what if a strike is called and, as a bus is returning to the depot, some of the passengers refuse to leave? What if the passengers commandeer the buses? After all, just a few months ago, a New Orleans passenger drove a bus to safety while the city government was doing nothing.
Lockouts are a common response to strikes. What if we had an anti-lockout? What if the bus depots were unlocked and any passenger who wanted could come in and start driving? (Taking the bus out of the city would be a no-no. Besides, it's hard to sell a bus on the black market.) This is the age of “a pack, not a herd.”
Explaining the Opposition to the PATRIOT Act in Terms my Fellow Wingnuts Can Understand
Just imagine what a leftist administration could do with the powers involved. For that matter, imagine what leftists infilatrators in a supposedly-conservative administration could do.
There's a possibility they have started doing it:
NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
If they're trying to keep somebody from writing a research paper
comparing Communism to other forms of totalitarianism, they might
be Communists (or ex-Communists) themselves.
Addendum: There is some dispute over whether this actually happened.
Addendum 2: It was definitely a hoax. This makes things harder for an honest, hard-working paranoid loon … unless this was a deliberate ploy to discredit opposition to surveillance.
I Was Suspicious Months Ago
A few months ago, I wrote (about the alleged cloning results from a lab in South Korea):
If most of these overhyped results come from just one lab in South Korea, have they been replicated?
More recently, others have become suspicious:
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2005 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- The validity of Hwang Woo-suk's pioneering human cloning work in South Korea is in question as a former collaborator tries to distance himself from the groundbreaking research.
University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten has demanded that the journal Science remove him as the senior author of the highly publicized report published in June that detailed how individual stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning.
………
Now, Jaenisch and a significant number of leading stem cell researchers are calling on Hwang to submit his cloning research to independent analysts to bolster public confidence, which they perceive as eroding because of the continued controversy over Hwang's work.
Schatten set off the ethics furor last month when he publicly accused Hwang of collecting eggs from subordinate scientists, a practice many consider unethical, and lying about it to him.
But until now, even Schatten has maintained that the main findings of the paper _ that tailor-made stem cells were extracted from embryos cloned from the DNA of sick volunteers _ were valid.
One type of sleaze leads to another.
Loopholes?
Some of the reactions from Christians to the recent Israeli law on indirect euthanasia not only disapprove of the law (okay) but also disapprove of the alleged use of “loopholes” by Judaism (not okay). If God did not want those “loopholes,” He would not have put them in the Law in the first place. (If God knows everything, He could predict what kinds of interpretations the Rabbis would come up with and adjust the Torah to produce the right ones.) If you don't like it, take it up with God.
Avoidance of loopholes can also have unpleasant results. For example, in the Only Testament there is a regulation authorizing the execution of stubborn and rebellious children. In the Talmud it is hedged about with so many conditions (all of them based on the letter/phoneme of the law) as to make it impossible to enforce and, in the discussion, the majority opinion holds that it has never been enforced. This clearly violates the spirit of the law which anybody can see was intended to do in sassy kids.
In this case, the spirit of the law kills and the letter gives life. That should not astonish us, since the spirit of the law is what humans temporarily understand the law to be about whereas the letter of the law is what God dictated.
Good heavens. I'm on the verge of turning into an Orthodox Jew. (How do we wind those tefillin things again?)
I Must Be Slow
I didn't think of the following analogy (about the recent Israeli law on indirect euthanasia) first:
This is weird. I just checked Drudge, and he links to a story that says Israel just passed a law approving the use of machines to euthanize terminally ill patients. The rationale is that Jewish law forbids human beings to kill ("murder" is the correct translation) other human beings, but machines are allowed to do it.
I love that rationale. The person who turns on the machine is totally free of guilt.
I think this logic explains a lot of the episodes of the old Batman TV series. The Joker, for example, puts Batman and Robin in, oh let's say a giant milkshake machine that turns on at midnight, and then he leaves. I always thought those scenarios were written for dramatic effect. It's not very dramatic if the Joker sneaks up behind Batman and Robin while they're sharing a tender moment in the jacuzzi and fires a shot that enters through the base of Batman's spine and exits through Robin's forehead. But if you put them in a milkshake machine and then leave at five minutes to midnight, the drama becomes as palpable as the throbbing homosexual tension.
I always thought that was the idea, but apparently, it's not. Apparently, the idea was that if a machine killed Batman and Robin, the Joker couldn't be prosecuted, and he could go on with his life, perhaps reforming and becoming an interior designer or a choreographer.
Question: Will this same idea be used in Iraq to excuse timed terrorist bombs? After all, it's a well-known fact that Islam resembles Judaism (but, according to an article in The New York Observer, with an extra Y chromosome).
It Has Been Tried
The top loon of Iran says Israel belongs in Germany:
"Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?" he said.
"If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it."
Creating Israel in Germany has been tried:
In Germany, Reform Jews declared, "Berlin is our Jerusalem; Germany is our Fatherland."
That didn't seem to work very well.
Little Lost Bioethicist
The Israeli government recently passed a law that will allow respirators to be turned off in a manner that some people imagine to be consistent with Jewish law:
Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life.
A special timer will be fitted to a patient's respirator which will sound an alarm 12 hours before turning it off.
Normally, carers would override the alarm and keep the respirator turned on but, if various stringent conditions are met, including the giving of consent by the patient or legal guardian, the alarm would not be overridden.
Similar timing devices, known as Sabbath clocks, are used in the homes of orthodox Jews so that light switches and electrical devices can be turned on during the Sabbath without offending religious strictures.
First, the purported explanation makes no sense whatsoever. This is not in the same category as a Sabbath timer as explained by the Holy Hyrax in the comments to the post on respondingtojblogs:
This is so ridiculous to even compare it to a shabbat timer. A shabbat timer is not a problem because you are setting it up BEFORE the Shabbat, which there is no issur.
With this Human timer, there is no issue of a specific time to set it up. Takiing a life is assur at ANY time.
There is no difference with this than with someone throwing a ball towards a light switch on Shabbat and then saying "I didn't turn on the lights, it was the ball."
Instead it might be an example of doing something indirectly. Setting the timer to go off in the first place would supposedly not be classified as suicide since somebody might reset the timer. On the other hand, not resetting the timer would not be murder since it is refraining from an action instead of comitting an action.
I'm reminded of the robot in “Little Lost Robot” by Isaac Asimov (from his collection I, Robot). Normally, Asimov's robots were supposed to obey the First Law of Robotics:
A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The lost robot obeyed a modified version of the First Law:
A robot may not harm a human being.
Such a robot could set the timer for the ventilator to go off. That had some disadvantages:
If a modified robot were to drop a heavy weight upon a human being, he would not be breaking the First Law, if he did so with the knowledge that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before it struck the man. However once the weight left his fingers, he would be no longer the active medium. Only the blind force of gravity would be that. The robot could then change his mind and merely by inaction, allow the weight to strike. The modified First Law allows that.
At first sight, that looks like a standard application of Talmudic hairsplitting, except … there's a common type of equally indirect suicide that's strictly forbidden in Jewish law: Jewish law does not accept a confession in a capital case on the grounds that it is suicide. If indirect suicide were permitted, such confessions would be accepted. There's a loophole in the apparent loophole.
This is one reason I'm reluctant to attach too much importance to Zionism. As I have said before, organizations tend to drift left. This may be an instance.
Something Else to Do with Your DNA
You can find a list of things to do with your DNA here. For some reason it doesn't mention the most popular way to display one's DNA: in a next generation.
Number Crunching in the “Abortion Capital of America”
After reading The Abortion Capital of America, I thought I'd give New York's abortion statistics a sanity check.
I downloaded statistics on abortion rates and the abortion:birth ratio and calculated the total pregnancy rates for the states covered. If the statistics are believable, New York has the fifth highest pregnancy rate of any state covered by the statistics (behind Utah, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona). (Taking account of the number of abortions performed on out-of-state residents did not affect the conclusions.)
I find that a bit hard to believe. For one thing, New York has fewer back seats per capita than other states. Could somebody be fooling around with the statistics? There might be an insurance/medicaid scam waiting to be uncovered by some enterprising reporter.
The Reason for Instant Gratification in Al-Qaeda and Similar Groups
Matoko Kusanagi wrote about the Other Side's habit of instant gratification:
When the goddess Thetis dipped baby Achilles in the pool of invulnerability, she unfortunately had to hold onto him somewhere, so she kept his baby heel from being armorized. I think Al-Qaeda has a similiar Achille's heel, and it will prevent them from ever achieving their goals. And I think that heel is instant gratification.
This has a simple explanation. They are not trying to win. Victory is in God's hands. They are trying to get the credit for God's inevitable victory so they must act faster than other Muslims.
In other words, they are not only murderous scumbags, they are trying to hog credit.
Set Paranoia Bit to On
William Aronstein, a correspondent of Instapundit, wrote:
Remember that the Hajj will take place in January, prime-time flu season. Two million pilgrims --or more-- will be living cheek by jowl in communal tents. A better means for transmitting a virus from Java to the entire world could not by any stretch of the imagination be devised by any human intelligence.
Was that deliberate? A society that emphasizes maintaining routines during epidemics can operate better than other societies when epidemics are more common (at the cost of a few lives, of course). If that religion acts in a way to spread disease, it looks suspicious.
On the other hand, I suppose the Pilgrimage Festivals in Judaism (or the command to visit the sick) also look suspicious …
Addendum: On the gripping hand, maybe this is all hype.
Explaining Kurt Vonnegut
A possibly-relevant quote from Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut:
We become what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be.
It looks like he went from sounding like a nut to actually being a nut.
On the other hand, maybe he was always nuts and “Harrison Bergeron” wasn't a dystopian satire…
Meme Tagging
Idle Mendacity has tagged everybody with the meme of “Quote the Gospel verses of your birthday.” I decided to do the Jewish version and quote a verse from my haftarah:
11 Like a partridge hatching what she did not lay,
So is one who amasses wealth by unjust means;
In the middle of his life it will leave him,
And in the end he will be proved a fool.
If we apply the above to a science-fiction context, we see that truly evil extraterrestrials are unlikely to achieve or to keep space travel, so we don't have to worry that much about alien conquest.
I, for One, Welcome Our New Alien Overlords!
Back Off Government and Moonbattery are critical of Paul Hellyer for, not only being out of his tiny little mind, but also for siding with the extraterrestrials. I disagree. There are reason for siding with the ETs.
First, any resistance movement is likely to resemble the PLO, Hamas, or Al Qaeda. Second, loyalty to Earth sounds entirely too environmentalist. Third, the prophet Jeremiah has assured us that really evil ETs couldn't be that dangerous.
Addendum: I just remembered my earlier proof that the Amalekites are extraterrestrials. Hmmm… Maybe Hamas is needed after all …
Another addendum: The title is a paraphrase of a Simpsons quote: “And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”
Failure of Assimilation?
According to Steve Sailer, the recent riots in France represent the failure of assimilation. I disagree; they represent the success of assimilation. After all, riots are a French tradition …
On the other hand, there's more than one type of assimilation.
Internet vs. Aliens
Is it true that the Internet Killed the Alien Star? On the one hand:
The Internet showed this particular emperor to be lacking in clothes. If UFOs and alien visitations were genuine, tangible, objective realities, the Internet would be an unstoppable force for detecting them. How long could the vast government conspiracy last, when intrepid UFO investigators could post their prized pictures on the Internet seconds after taking them? How could the Men in Black shut down every website devoted to scans of secret government UFO documents? How could marauding alien kidnappers remain hidden in a nation with millions of webcams?
On the other hand:
Paul Hellyer was Deputy Minister of Defence from 1963-67, and later, Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under PM Pierre Trudeau, so he's an important member of Canada's ruling Liberal Party.
He's also convinced that the Bush Administration is embarking on a war that threatens all civilization -- no, not the one in Iraq, Hellyer is talking about the war with the aliens on the moon and Mars and in outer space.
I wonder if High Commander Dick Solomon has anything to say.
More about Godwin's Law …
The sheer variety of people using the Holocaust as a metaphor has had one good effect: It eliminates the ability of Holocaust deniers to plausibly claim that Holocaust histories are a conspiracy on the part of Communist Jews. They have to explain how Jews and Catholics and evangelical Protestants and Moslems are all using the same metaphor. They also have to explain how communists and liberals and conservatives and libertarians are also using the metaphor.
… and its Creationist Analogue
If we try applying this to using Creationism as a metaphor, we can see the same tendency, but it is much less developed. Until a few years ago, there were only two main Creationism metaphors (one of which was divided into two submetaphors):
Belief in central planning is similar to Creationism. (I'm inclined to take this metaphor seriouly, so I'll let others criticize it.) Belief in human uniqueness is similar to Creationism. This usually means that we should apply standard zoological concepts such as the importance of genetics and that animal species are in danger of overpopulation. There are two ways interpreting this:
When interpreted by classical “Social Darwinists,” the importance of genetics meant that we need a society of people with the best genes possible. The danger of overpopulation meant that we had to keep the inferiors from reproducing. When interpreted by modern liberals, the importance of genetics meant that we don't have to make an enormous effort to pass traditions down to the next generation. Crime rates, drug abuse, etc. are independent of nurture. The danger of overpopulation means that we have to keep people in general from reproducing.
In recent years (probably owing to an administration that has no objection to central planning, is not trying keep the inferior races out, and is not supportive of family planning), Creationism metaphors have become a way of all-purpose Bush bashing. I suspect Creationism metaphors will be used for an increasing variety of ever more ludicrous purposes in the future.
On the other hand, at least we'll be able to ignore the real Creationists.
More Self-Administered Lobotomies
In California, parents are pulling their children out of schools that are “too academically driven” (or possibly “too Asian”). Don't those Asians know it is positively Un-American to do any actual studying? How dastardly!
On a serious note, it looks like some Asians are preparing their own self-administered lobotomies. I wonder if American school systems fail, not because students can't learn in them, but because they train students to be the parents of bad students. As long as that is the case, the United States will need immigrants to raise an educated second generation. Given the birth rates in the rest of the world, eventually we're going to run out of immigrants.
On another serious note, the article in question The New White Flight was linked as one of “Today's Headlines” at the Dan Stein Report (an anti-immigration blog) as though it were a reason to oppose immigration.
What Would Be the Equivalent of Godwin's Law?
There's an article on the History News Network comparing Holocaust Denial and Creationism (seen via Orac). I wonder what would be the equivalent of Godwin's Law. Would it be the propensity (of some people) to compare any idea they don't like to Creationism?
Which Conspiracy Is It?
Are The Evil Capitalists conspiring to keep oil expensive (seen via Asymmetrical Information):
"In the four years since the secret Cheney task force met, we have seen gas prices double and oil company profits skyrocket. What went on at these secret White House meetings that may be motivating oil company executives to deny their participation?" Lautenberg said. "Now it appears that some Big Oil CEOs might have lied to Congress to cover up their involvement with the White House task force. What are they trying to hide from the American people?"
or are they conspiring to keep oil cheap (according to a commenter/troll at Armed and Dangerous):
Don’t worry, capitalism will save us from depleted energy supplies! Ignoring the fact that the capitalist system currently prevents any serious public discussion about the problem.
Our current economies depend utterly on reliable supplies of cheap energy, currently oil. To be able to depend less on oil at a rate faster than it increases in price assumes we have another source of reliable cheap energy waiting in the wings. Another source of reliable cheap energy that would work with the current distribution infrastructure.
The belief that Fischer-Tropsch plants could replace oil and would somehow be sustainable is frankly delusional. And before any efforts to use other energy sources will begin, hundreds of thousands of people will die in wars in misguided attempts to protect the current ones. More will die at home in the lengthy compulsory transition.
And no mention of natural gas, the price of which has quadrupled in America since 2002 and is still going up. All this and we continue our relentless suburban sprawl.
Which is it?
Foxman's Charges Sound Familiar
According to Abe Foxman of ther Anti-Defamation League:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaking to the group’s national leadership here last week, signaled a sharp shift in ADL policy by directly attacking several prominent religious right groups and challenging their motives, which he said include nothing less than “Christianizing America.”
………
Although only portions of the survey were available this week, Foxman said some of the results are alarming.
According to the survey, 70 percent of weekly churchgoers and 76 percent of self-described Evangelicals agreed that “Christianity is under attack” in this country — a conclusion that is hard to square with their growing influence in Congress, the White House and the courts, he said.
This reminds me of a news item in Common Knowledge edited by Robert E. Ornstein (a collection of weird news from the late 1960s and early 1970s):
The Criminal Council of the District Court of Zagreb has ordered the destruction of an issue of Glas Koncila published by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Zagreb.
The district public prosecutor said that articles published in the October 22 issue of the paper called for disobedience to the constitution and laws of Yugoslavia and Croatia, and carried false statements about alleged absence of the freedom of the press in Yugoslavia.
A Suggestion on Stopping Riots
Take a car, put a beehive in the trunk, and put it in the path of the rioters.
How Fragile Are Ecosystems?
From Letter from Gotham:
There's nothing wrong with the French model of assimilation. It's worked beautifully with a variety of previous emigrants, which included Arab Muslims and Iranians. The problem is the NUMBERS. You can't assimilate huge amounts of people who speak a different language and worship a different God, especially Allah, a very masculine warrior sky-god. Something's got to give. A society is as fragile as an ecosystem. France will survive...but it is suffering a terrible case of indigestion.
Does that mean the fragility of societies has been greatly exaggerated by would-be dictators?
Judging by Past Experience…
An attempted counterexample to pro-life reasoning comes from John Allen Paulos:
Let's ask ourselves what position opponents of abortion — say on the Supreme Court or elsewhere — might take if two biological facts about the world were to change. The first assumption we'll make is that for some unknown reason — a strange new virus, a hole in the ozone layer, some food additive or poison — women throughout the world suddenly become pregnant with 10 to 20 fetuses at a time. The second assumption is that advances in neonatal technology make it possible for doctors to easily save some or all of these fetuses a few months after conception, but if they don't intervene at this time all the fetuses will die.
The third (unstated) assumption is that technical progress comes to an end.
Judging by past experience with supposedly-intractable overpopulation problems, not long after the above scenario researchers will either find a cure or invent a method of creating basements universes with sharp negative curvatures. (In such universes, exponential growth can be accomodated.) Either assumption is less fantastic than the original.
I noticed, while looking for comments on the above quote, the following from an anonymous commenter at One Good Move:
My right wing friends wouldn't have a problem if the birth rate increased 20 or 30 times. Most of them believe the rapture will occur in their lifetime, so the population explosion would just be a laugh to them.
That's close to my opinion. The Singularity (also known as “The Rapture of the Nerds”) is only decades away.
Do We Want Juries Involved?
A flame war on the Info Theory (start at the bottom and scroll up) and Bitch PhD weblogs has been escalating. (There's a summary here.) Apparently, Paul Deignan, a grad student who writes the Info Theory weblog put some comments on the Bitch PhD weblog that were regarded as objectionable. This caused a third party to e-mail Deignan's advisor complaining about allegedly unprofessional behavior. This, in turn, caused Deignan to threaten a libel lawsuit.
I was on Paul's side up to the lawsuit threat. Can we trust juries to make sense of this? If there is a lawsuit, we can expect the Other Side to use that weapon next time (accompanied by calling anybody who objects a “hypocrite”) and there is a strong possibility we might get a jury as dumb as the first Merck jury.
Defending Defenestration?
In the course of a comment on the Info Theory blog, odanu wrote:
This is not the only valid pro-choice argument in existance, it is merely the one that is the best answer for the natural rights argument, since natural rights theory derived very heavily from the theories of John Locke and were grounded in the right to own property. In this argument, a person's own body is her property. Unless PD is willing to state baldly and openly that the uterus of a woman is the property of either a man or a fetus, in which case he has denied the natural rights of women as humans, he cannot argue against abortion on the natural rights argument.
If owning a piece of property implies the unrestricted right to expel somebody under any circumstances whatsoever, then landlords can expel tenants from upper-story windows even before a nine-month lease is up.
But wait … There's more. In further comments:
Paul, a uterus is not a disconnected entity with a purpose separate from the human being who possesses it. But you have answered my question. In your world, a woman indeed has less civil rights than a corpse. Sharing the same air does not mean I provide you life support, and frankly, that you would use that example suggests that you need to take a course in rudimentary logic.
Once most of the human race has begun inhabiting space colonies, ownership of a residence will go with supplying life support. We're in danger of handing too much power to future landlords.
Since the above violates leftist stereotypes of what us reactionaries think, I leave you with a quote from David Ricardo:
Independently of these improvements, in which the community have an immediate, and the landlords a remote interest, the interest of the landlord is always opposed to that of the consumer and manufacturer.
French Riots and American Riots
It looks like France is having their version of the nonsense the United States went through in the 1960s. A different ethnic group is rioting and the organizers have a slightly-different ideology (but it's also based on being the instrument of the inevitable victory). Judging by the way our riots petered out in the early 1970s, the root cause of riots by people who believe in such an ideology is the belief that the Establishment will back down in response to intimidation. After the said Establishment stopped backing down, the riots declined.
A Common Excuse for Tolerating Abortion
One of the most frequently-mentioned excuses for tolerating abortion is that a large percentage of early embryos are lost (an example can be seen in a comment on this post). That might be true at the present, but in the future we can expect pregnancies to be more reliable. Two thirds of the first three hundred billion hominid conceptions might have been lost but that will be an insignificant percentage once the population gets into the quintillions.
Can Nearly Anything Be Regulated as “Interstate Commerce”?
There's an interesting legal theory at Bitch Ph.D.:
2. He argued that Congress couldn't restrict concealed weapons in school zones. That's right; your kids' right to be safe from gunplay in the schoolyard is less important than the right of 12th graders to carry concealed firearms into school. He also argued that Congress doesn't have the right to regulate ownership of machine guns under the Interstate Commerce Act; apparently he believes that machine guns don't cross borders, people carrying machine guns cross borders.
Apparently, any action involving anything that has ever crossed a state border can be regulated. The Federal government might be able to regulate breathing on the grounds that the air crosses state borders. It could definitely regulate most meals since most food in the United States not only crossed state borders but was even sold across state borders. (I have other disagreements with the post in question, but the above claim struck me as the most inane part.)
Storyline Patents and Crackpots
An author is trying to patent a story line. I noticed that the excuses given resemble the rhetoric of crackpot scientists:
[0013] There is currently little motivation for artistic inventors to innovate new plots, themes, and methods of expression. The value of an innovator's copyright, if he in fact embodies his invention in a particular expression (such as a novel or movie) is far less than the value of the invention itself, because the invention umbrellas every possible embodiment. Further, and perhaps more importantly, the value of his copyright depends on his ability as a performer, not as an inventor. An artistic inventor who invents a fantastically original and compelling plot may not be a particularly skilled writer. He may, for example, have a very limited vocabulary and a poor understanding of grammar. Any book he creates will be avoided by any potential buyer who reads the first paragraph, such that the copyright value of his extremely valuable invention is nil. Any Hollywood producer who sees through the book's garbled sentence structure to the excellent and creative plot beneath the surface may steal the only value the book contained: its inventive plot. The producer may then moderately alter the expression of the plot in a subsequent movie--while keeping the plot's essence fully intact--and obtain unearned financial benefit from the inventor's unrewarded hard work and innovation. If there is any evil that the United States patent system ought to prevent, it is this.
In the above paragraph, the potential storyline patenters use two of the commonest tropes of scientific cranks (12 and 15 here):
I can't tell anybody the details of my marvelous ideas because the Powers That Be will steal them. I don't know anything about the subject I'm revolutionizing but a True Innovator can ignore minor details.
In any case, ideas are “a dime a dozen” and some people are willing to supply the dimes.
There's also the little matter that the storyline in question isn't that original …
Does Elmer Fudd Have Anything to Do with This?
Anti-rabbit?
A Brief Note on Spousal Notification Laws
If information wants to be free …
Prayer for Rain Update
In case anybody was wondering, we said that prayer for rain. Right after that, it started pouring.
Another Self-Induced Lobotomy
A larval journalist is whining about having to learn something (seen via Orac):
I remember complaining about how I'd never use knowledge I gained in the classroom in real life. I regretted all the time I devoted to school because, in the end, I didn't remember the algebraic equations, historical dates, or the periodic table.
A problem exists within the high-school education system: It doesn't prepare students for their careers. When I decided in high school that my major was going to be journalism, I took the only class offered by my school in hopes of learning the journalistic writing style. I didn't learn anything from that class. My teacher was not a journalism teacher; she was an English teacher. We spent every class silent reading instead of learning about the inverted pyramid.
What kind of journalism will she write? Will she try to pick up the information needed from people equally ignorant? If there is a danger from an asteroid strike, will she figure that it's a steroid strike and write about the dangers of steroid use? If there's a terrorist attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, will she realize that it's not near Atlanta? If it's compared to the Gunpowder Plot, will she think the NRA was involved?
It's All Isaac Newton's Fault!
After reading one too many claims that the Holocaust was caused by Charles Darwin, I realized that the 911 attack was caused by Isaac Newton. After all, if you can go from “the unfit won't survive” to “we must make sure the unfit won't survive” (without analyzing what is meant by unfit), you can go from “things fall down” to “we must make sure things fall down” (without analyzing which things fall down).
Addendum: I just realized that the above is an obvious consequence of the Intelligent Falling theory.
One Reason for High Oil Prices
Earth First! has been opposing alternative energy sources (seen via Instapundit):
Mountaintop removal is a new form of coal mining in which companies dynamite the tops of mountains to collect the coal underneath. Multiple peaks are blown off and dumped onto highland watersheds, destroying entire mountain ranges. More than 1,000 miles of streams have been destroyed by this practice in West Virginia alone. Mountain top removal endangers and destroys entire communities with massive sediment dams and non-stop explosions.
I noticed they're suing in Federal court:
Four federal agencies that review applications for coal mines have entered an agreement that would give state governments an option that could speed up the process. The Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service and Office of Surface Mining said that the agreement was intended to streamline the procedures companies go through when applying for permits to start surface coal mines, including those that remove entire mountaintops to unearth coal.1
Environmental groups are beginning to challenge these policies in federal district court. The current program allows the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a general permit for a category of activities under the Clean Water Act if they “will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects” according to federal regulation. Coal companies then also must seek individual “authorizations” from the Corps for the projects for which they have received a general permit.2
Apparently the people in coal country aren't bothered.
I also noticed that I scooped Project Censored on an issue:
There are 15,000 industrial plants in the United States that produce toxic chemicals. According to the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), about 100 of these plants could endanger up to a million lives with poisonous clouds of ammonia, chlorine, or carbon disulfide that could be released into the atmosphere over densely populated areas by a terror attack. Unprotected chemical plants are possible candidates for future attacks by terrorists. These are some of the most vulnerable pieces of infrastructure in America.
I reported on this years ago:
Chemical weapons are often analyzed in terms of numbers of lethal doses. We can apply that to other substances. One possible weapon along those lines is the nicotine bomb. The LD50 for nicotine is 35 mg/kg of body weight. If we take a typical American body weight as 100 kg (a round figure but one which might be typical of Americans), we can see that a lethal dose is a mere 3.5 g. There are roughly 8,000,000 people in NYC. Eight million lethal doses of nicotine is a mere 28 tons—which can fit in a truck.
If nicotine is turned into a controlled substance (as seems increasingly likely), they might try using an aspirin bomb instead. Since the LD50 of aspirin is 1800 mg/kg, the necessary amount is 1440 tons. This is too large for a truck so the “militants” will have to take over an entire aspirin factory. This is an exceptionally humane weapon since the victims will feel no pain.
Of course, this implies that Clinton was completely correct in ordering the bombing of that aspirin factory in Sudan.
Are Republicans or Conservatives Pro-Roe?
Richard Bennett is dubious about whether Dubya wants Roe vs. Wade overturned on the grounds that there might be a backlash against pro-lifers. Well … the fact that Dubya signed the McCain–Feingold campaign finance restriction bill might be an argument that he regards the short-term benefit of the Republican Party as more important than following principle. On the other hand, it is dubious as to whether there will be a backlash.
First, as far as I know there has never been an election where abortion was a major issue that was unexpectedly won by a liberal Democrat. Second, abortion was illegal for over a century with no backlash. For that matter, abortion is less “necessary” than ever considering improved contraception and a richer society able to support “unwanted” children. Third, in my experience most pro-choicers are unwilling to engage in a really sustained debate. Fourth, there has been a long-term decline in the number of abortionists. The people most involved are rethinking their actions. If we make more people think, we can expect more pro-lifers. Fifth, if the attempts to tie the Schiavo case to abortion succeed, there will be recruits for the pro-life cause who are “bleeping terrified” for their own lives and thus cannot give in. (It's worth noting that there were private options in the Schiavo case.)
I suspect there have been other bluffs about abortion. For example, making abortifacients available over the counter is unlikely to have that much of an effect since it will not provide the excuse that it is a medical matter. A doctor is needed to give permission.
This Is Unlikely
According to The Guardian (seen via Reality Carnival), the annointing oil mentioned in the Bible may have included cannabis since one of the ingredients can be transliterated “kaneh bosem.” I find that hard to believe. According to Ezekiel 27:19, kaneh bosem (whatever it was) had to be imported. Cannabis, on the other hand, is a weed that will grow anywhere. In the absence of legal restrictions, there is no need to import it.
I suppose the next claim will be that the Bible commands us to listen to rags since shmata is a continuation of sh'ma …
I Know You Are …
John Podhoretz at The Corner has gotten hate e-mail from an alleged Christian. There are atill handful of anti-Jewish loons remaining on the right. On the other hand, there was a reaction from driftglass that was even more intemperate than the quoted parts of the Christian loons e-mail. If we should avoid alliances with hate-filled people, we should stat far away from driftglass's ideology.
I put the following response to driftglass in a comment:
Speaking as a Jew (and not a Christian), I oppose any attempt to restrict human rights on the basis of membership in a group. That's why I'm anti-abortion.
Also speaking as a Jew, I oppose policies that were invented to keep down Jews. That's why I'm against affirmative action.
While I'm at it, there's a strong possibility that the Nixon-era ban on DDT was instituted for the purpose of letting malaria kill off blacks in Africa. I want DDT to be relegalized. Do you?
Come to think of it, some Jew haters on the right oppose fundamentalist Christianity on the grounds that it's too Jewish.
Another Reason for President Gingrich
As a former history Professor, he'll almost certainly repeal Executive Order 13233:
But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.
Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.
A Poll on the Continuum Hypothesis?
John Derbyshire has suggested the next logical step after polls on evolution:
I await with interest the coming poll on public beliefs about the Continuum Hypothesis.
I'm personally dubious about the Power Set Axiom in the first place.
Dear President Harding …
A slightly-unusual last request (seen via Iain Murray at The Corner:
In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans.
We should obviously only send those letters to people the deceased thought of as typical Republicans.
The Prayer for Rain
Next Tuesday, we Jews are supposed to say the prayer for rain. I think we can skip it this year.
A Disclaimer
After reading Zoe Brain's list of the risk factors for transsexuality, I thought I'd mention that I have no plans on “transitioning” or even cross dressing.
Just in case anybody was wondering …
Addendum: A fascination with model trains is one of the risk factors for transsexuality. Along possibly-similar lines, there's a discussion of the psychosexual issues involved in trains vs. cars at Brothers Judd.
A Driverless Robot Crossed the Finish Line This Time
Unlike last year, a driverless car actually finished the course. I'll repeat my question: If there are driverless robots that can cross 130 miles of desert, how long will it be until we can buy driverless cars?
It Didn't Say That
Boing Boing is discussing an article in EOS and says (about the supposedly-imminent melting of the Greenland ice cap):
The article also says there's nothing we can do to stop this from happening:
On the other hand, the article itself says:
The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global climate warming, and there seem to be few, if any, processes or feedbacks within the Arctic system that are capable of altering the trajectory toward this “super interglacial” state.
In other words, it could be changed from outside … by nuclear winter, for example.
Upon looking at the article, I noticed that the diagram in Figure 2 did not show any strong links between sea ice and terrestrial ice. There is no good reason to assume that eliminating one will eliminate the other.
Lie Down with Fleas? He Wants to Run the Flea Circus
Boing Boing is critical of Microsoft's involvement in Digital Rights Management:
Gates has lain down with dogs and now he's waking up with fleas. Inviting the entertainment industry to design Windows for him was a move of such breathtaking commercial stupidity that it's hard to credit. Where's that monopolist swagger when we need it?
I suspect Gates is relying on the impossibility of effective DRM. If every system is necessarily flawed, he can look forward to selling an endless series of upgrades.
There's a Correlation between Obesity and Expensive Produce
According to a recent study:
The study examined the weight gain of 6,918 children of varying socio-economic backgrounds from 59 U.S. metropolitan areas as they advanced from kindergarten to third grade. Researchers compared the weight gain figures with the price of different types of foods and the number of food outlets in the areas.
They did not examine what the children ate, however.
The results showed that young children who live in communities where fruits and vegetables are expensive are more likely to gain excessive amounts of weight than kids who live in areas where produce costs less. That connection was stronger than the proximity to fast-food restaurants.
In other words, we must: BAN OVERPRICED ORGANIC VEGETABLES NOW!
On the other hand, maybe obesity causes vegetable prices to rise …
A discrepancy in the coverage
There appears to be a discrepancy in covering the other conclusions of the study in question. In the United States it is reported that:
LOS ANGELES -- A new study suggests the price of fresh fruits and vegetables has a stronger connection to weight gain among children than whether they live near fast-food outlets.
It adds more confusion to the muddy picture of what causes youngsters to gain weight.
Advocacy groups have suggested a strong link between obesity and the proximity of fast-food restaurants or the lack of supermarkets stocked with fresh food. But the new study by the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. think tank found little support for that connection.
"You see lots of stories about the poor becoming obese because they're in neighborhoods with lots of restaurants and no access to healthy food," said Roland Sturm, a co-author of the Rand study. "We show that well, maybe those stories don't hold up."
On the other hand, In India it is reported that:
Next time when a convenience store or a fast food joint opens near your house don't feel elated, it could be the reason for your child's weight gain.
The fat filled happy meal or any such junkie may sound "convenient", but they may help explain the growing obesity epidemic among children.
A recent study by US-based RAND found a significant relationship between children's excess weight gain and the presence of many convenience stores, full service restaurants, limited service restaurants (primarily fast food restaurants), or grocery stores near their homes.
………
Roland Sturm, senior economist with RAND, examined the weight gain of 6,918 children from 59 metropolitan areas around the United States over the time the children advanced from kindergarten through third grade. His study found out a relationship between children's weight gain and the density of food establishments and the price of food across the nation.
I suppose they expect the Indian poor to be grateful for being protected from obesity.
I tried using Google Scholar and PubMed to locate the original paper but didn't find it.
Another Terrorist Threat in New York
There's supposed to be evidence of another terrorist plot in New York. The most obvious date for the attack would be on the holy day of Yom Kippur. That way, their propaganda machine would be able to go into action claiming that the Jews stayed home that day.
Something like this may have occurred after the 9/11 attack.
They're Not Just Discriminating against Conservatives
A few months ago, I theorized that opposition to standardized tests was intended to discriminate against conservatives. There are other groups being kept out of Harvard (and possibly other “prestigious” universities):
And the most important category? That mysterious index of “personal” qualities. According to Harvard’s own analysis, the personal rating was a better predictor of admission than the academic rating. Those with a rank of 4 or worse on the personal scale had, in the nineteen-sixties, a rejection rate of ninety-eight per cent. Those with a personal rating of 1 had a rejection rate of 2.5 per cent. When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.” One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears.”
I suppose that's why H. Ross Perot attended Texarkana Junior College and the United States Naval Academy.
I'm beginning to wonder why we still take the Ivy Leage seriously.
There Is a WikiConstitution
I'm sure the people at The Onion thought
Congress Abandons WikiConstitution was far-fetched satire. On the other hand, “WikiConstitution” is an ideal description of what the courts have done with the Constitution. I'm wating for the following to happen:
Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.
My Second Pro-Life Demonstration
I don't have much to add to last-years comments except:
I signed a petition against destructive embryonic stem-cell research … but managed to put my signature in the the wrong box. I wondered if I should register to vote in Florida … Somebody with a star-and-crescent hanging fromhis rear-view mirror stopped by the give us some encouraging words. This time I wasn't the only one there who believes God is One Person.
Organic Fertilizer by Design … Is This a Series?
The latest example of this phenomenon comes from Gregory S. Paul who manages to find correlations between several measures of social dysfunction and several measures of religiosity and did it with just 18 data points. (This is wa-ay too few to draw conclusions … even if we ignore the likelihood that the data have been deliberately selected to prove the intended conclusion.)
This study also ignored changes in both religiosity and dysfunctional behavior. For example, Europe used to be more religious. In the other direction, crime rates in the United States have been declining. The current correlations might be temporary. There is some evidence that religion produces improved societies after a delay.
The real problem is that Creationists will cite the uncritical acceptance of this bullbleep by some evolutionists as a reason to disbelieve evolution in general.
If Information Really Wants to Be Free …
… why wouldn't it include your credit-card number (seen via Boing Boing)?
Memletics is one of those dime-a-dozen companies selling a product it promises will teach "accelerated learning" and how to "remember more." What makes Memletics remarkable is the digital rights management (DRM) scheme it uses on its books. The company's main product is a training manual that explains the "Memletics advanced learning system" -- and if you loan it to a friend, you do so at considerable personal risk. You see, Mimletic prints out your "name, address, telephone number, credit card number, and other information" on every tenth page of the e-book. The truly amazing part is that the company does this with its printed manuals too.
I think they're trying to call a bluff. Are the copyleftists always in favor of freedom of information?
Don't Underestimate Human Beings
I'm sure most of the blogosphere has heard by now that the supposed social breakdown at the Superdome was was mostly nonexistent. Maybe we shouldn't be so eager to assume the worst.
On the other hand, there might have been a deliberate effort to create apparent social chaos. I have already blogged about the possibility that the more senseless looting was intended to make the United States look bad. Maybe we should check to see if it was the same few looters carrying the same TV sets past reporter's cameras. Did the accounts of bodies come from the same few people?
Whatever Happened to …
… James Lileks's Backfence?
In Defense of “Ceremonial Deism”
The Raving Atheist recently posted here and here:
Another problem with your blanket attack on atheism is the fact that you are all yourselves atheists with respect to every god but your own. Unless you’re pandering, multiculturalism relativists, you certainly don’t believe that Jesus, Allah, Ganesh, Zeus or the Wizard of Oz co-exist—you reject most of them as fairy-tale deities. And you certainly don’t believe in the “ceremonial deism” of the United States Supreme Court, i.e., that “we all worship the same God.” Quite plainly, if two Gods hold opposing views on abortion, capital punishment, and social welfare, they can’t possibly be the same God.
If I think George Orwell would have approved of the current Iraq War and somebody else thinks George Orwell would not have approves of the current Iraq War, that doesn't mean we're talking about different persons.
A Bronx Cheer?
A recent headline:
Chávez gets a cheer in the Bronx
has more than one meaning.
Yes, I know it's a cheap shot …
More Organic Fertilizer by Design
According to the alleged scientist Gideon Polya:
I have been researching and writing a book on post-1950 avoidable global mortality. This has involved using United Nations data to calculate the avoidable mortality, (or technically, excess mortality) for every country in the world since 1950. Avoidable mortality is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics.
The post-1950 avoidable mortality has been 1.3 billion for the world, 1 billion for the Third World and 0.5 billion for the Muslim World, a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the Jewish Holocaust or the contemporaneous but ‘forgotten’ Bengal Famine in British-ruled India.
Anyone rational would conclude we must depose the kleptocrats but Dr. Polya has other aims:
When considered country by country, the horrendous post-1950 ‘avoidable mortality’ and ‘under-5 infant mortality’ correlate with impositions of First World countries (principally the UK, US, France, Portugal and Russia) that have variously included colonial occupation, neo-colonial hegemony, economic exclusion, economic constraint, malignant interference, corrupt client regimes, militarisation, debt, civil war and international war.
Translation: the excess mortality is correlated with ignoring a Third-World country, trying to run it, trading with it, not trading with it, deposing kleptocrats, maintaining kleptocrats, lending money, not lending money, … (Can you say “non-falsifiable”? I knew you could.)
The data amount to pointing out that some countries have higher death rates than others and assuming it is all Our Fault.
How to Make Men Live Longer
According to HealthDay News (seen via Ace of Spades (seen via Eternity Road)):
British researchers analyzed rates of female murders and male death rates from all causes in 51 countries in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. The prevalence of violence against women was used to indicate the extent of patriarchal control in each of the countries. Socioeconomic factors were also taken into consideration.
The study found that women lived longer than men in all 51 countries. The study also found that those countries with higher rates of female murders (indicating higher levels of patriarchy) also had higher rates for male death and shorter male life expectancies, compared to countries with lower female murder rates, the researchers said.
The implications are clear. In order to make men live longer, a society must cut down on anti-female violence. The actual evidence shows we must put more cops on the beat, lock up crooks and “throw away the key,” and make sure women are armed. (Since women find it harder to use fists or even knives than men, that means they must be armed with guns.)
That's probably not what the supposed researchers meant …
Were the Delays in the Hurricane Rescue Effort Unprecedented?
There were similar complaints after Hurricane Andrew.
By the way, how effective were the rescue efforts (seen via Radagast)? Those claims look like they came from the sort of press releases that were present this time and appropriately ridiculed this time.
Truly Astounding News
President Bush is a human being.
Until now, I thought he was a robot!
Help Elect More Republicans!
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania (seen via Boing Boing) is trying for a repeat of last year's brainstorm of organizing a pledge drive in which the pledges are proportional to the number of picketers.
I suspect the probable effect is that the self-congratulatory community will have less money to throw down other drains. This could mean less donations to Democratic candidates or even a shortage of giant puppets for the next protest.
The Magic Power of Government
I suspect many of the complaints about the slow rescue effort after the recent hurricane came from people who think that governments operate using the Ever-Evaluating Eye of Surr-Vey, Lord Of Demarcation, He Who Measures And Assesses:
LaMere held the glowing amulet aloft and transmuted a neighborhood of low-income apartments into a semi-wooded, single-family, residential district with an adjoining riverside park.
Though the amulet had long been dismissed as urban legend, a mythical ideal of zoning perfection handed down from city planner to city planner, LaMere became convinced that not only was it real, but that it had been used to lay out the cities of Ur, Atlantis, and Inver Grove Heights, MN.
………
"It's wonderful that someone's finally doing something to revitalize this town, even if it is someone who can commune with church gargoyles," said local baker Wendy Kittner, whose business was mystically placed on the National Register Of Historic Places last week despite being housed in a building erected in 1981. "He frightens me, and my concern is that if I defy him, I may be turned to stone."
………
Added Criclow: "I don't think what he's doing is mere magic. I think it's darkest bureaucromancy."
Of course, if Dubya didn't use the amulet of Fed-Er-Al, that clearly means he had sinister designs.
Meanwhile, the low body count means most people managed to rescue themselves without any bureaucromancy.
Addendum: The link to The Onion is now fixed.
The Obvious Political Consequence of Hurricane Katrina
President Giuliani.
Uh oh.
Maybe It's Too Much to Hope for Sense
When faced with:
An internal 1996 memorandum from Mobil demonstrates the oil company's successful strategies to keep smaller refiner Powerine from reopening its California refinery. The document makes it clear that much of the hardships created by California's regulations governing refineries came at the urging of the major oil companies and not the environmental organizations blamed by the industry.
the reaction on the left is to increase regulations. Never mind that those regulations are responsible for the mess in question.
Apparently, leftists are reading from scripts. When they're reading from the “Corporate Perfidy” script, they call for regulations whether or not said regulations make sense.
Addendum: Deinonychus antirrhopus has a more detailed analysis.
Speaking of reading from scripts …
Some of the reactions to hurricane Katrina might be due to going according to scripts. In the script “Disaster,” the role of human toxic waste calls for looting (even if the goods can be neither used nor sold) and the role of disaster help can only be played by the Federal government.
A Leftist Meme That Might Make Sense …
… but only if they let it.
I'm referring to the meme of: “We have our press corps back.” For most of the past few decades, there was a common assumption that if the government spent the money, the problem was solved. In the course of the past week, the press has been checking to see if the money spent was actually effective and they've even noticed when the government obstructs private solutions.
I don't know if they'll continue checking after somebody they like has been elected.
By the way, last week's leftist meme was: “The state is not your friend … until a disaster happens and you need it.” It looks like the state is not your friend even when a disaster happens and they keep the Red Cross out, stop you from crossing a bridge out of a flooded city, or confiscate your gun but don't protect you anyway.
The Argument from Personal Incredulity
Dylan, a commenter/troll on Wizbang wrote:
This thread of conversation about survival kits is so off-the-wall bonkers that I can hardly believe it is being discussed. There hasn't been a single person who's said "10,000 people wouldn't have died if we'd all gotten some Dinty Moore stew ahead of time."
The call for survival kits in 2002 also called for duct tape, which would have done a lot of good for the victims of Katrina, I'm sure. The arguments about survival kits 3 years ago weren't against preparedness but against the idiotic distraction tactic that they were used for. They seriously were trying to tell us that duct tape and canned food should be procured in case of a suitcase bomb? Give me a break.
And I know this survival kit business seems like a fun thread to keep going, because it allows you to take little jabs at some lefty bloggers. That's fine if you want to concentrate your ire on Kos and Atrios... I'm certainly not in the business of defending other bloggers.... but you are inadvertantly blaming the vicitms of Katrina by saying they wouldn't have died if they'd just heeded the administrations plea to get together a couple of flashlights and some canned goods... give me a break.
In the creationism vs. evolution debate we call this “the argument from personal incredulity.”
Plumbism in New Orleans?
You don't have to be a racist to wonder if there's something wrong with the mental hardware in New Orleans. (For one thing, the political corruption and lack of investment in levees has been going since the days when New Orleans was run by whites.) Plumbism (lead poisoning) might be an explanation. New Orleans was one of the main centers of oil refining back when gasoline was still leaded. As a result:
Over 50 percent (and perhaps even 70 percent) of children living in the inner city of New Orleans and Philadelphia have blood lead levels above the current guideline of 10 micrograms per deciliter [*Note #2]. In contrast, in the concrete "jungle" of Manhattan, where very little of the soil is exposed and almost all apartments and housing contain lead-based paints, only between 5 and 7 percent of children under the age of 6 have been reported to have blood-lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter or higher.
This might also explain the differences between reactions to 911 and Katrina.
But wait, there's more:
Meanwhile, ecologists and social theorists are adding fuel to the fire. In a recent examination of data from the 1900s, researchers found a correlation between the amount of lead released into the environment from auto exhaust and paint, and violent crime, including rape, robbery, assault, and murder. The study was published in the May 2000 issue of Environmental Research, and was conducted by Rick Nevin, vice president of ICF Consulting (a housing and environmental health issues firm in Fairfax, Virginia) under contract to HUD.
According to the study, variations in leaded gasoline sales from 1941 to 1986 correlate with roughly 90% of the fluctuations in violent crime rates from 1960 to 1998. Variations in predicted childhood lead exposure from the use of lead paint between 1879 and 1940 strongly correlate with murder rate variations between 1900 and 1960, possibly explaining about 70% of the change, the study found. A lag effect of 18-23 years--basically the time it takes an exposed child to grow up--was documented, depending on the specific crime.
I'm a bit nervous about continuing. I might start sounding like the anti-mercury activists.
A Berlin Airlift?
The following meme has been underused by the left (only 33 posts on it according to technorati and only 32 threads on usenet):
It took ONE day for there to be a Berlin Airlift. Five days laters peple are still starving to death in New Orelans
Apparently, most leftists are unwilling to use a real historical analogy even when it's superficially plausible.
Of course, back in the real world, the Berlin Airlift started out as the Berlin Trickle:
General LeMay put his logistics staff to work to figure out what it would take to build an air bridge to the city with the aircraft available in the theater. Logistics experts quickly calculated that it would require 2,000 tons of coal and 1,439 tons of food per day to meet the minimum basic needs of the 2 million inhabitants. The normal total tonnage requirement for the city was 13,500 tons daily. But even 3,439 tons flown in each day with the few available C-47s appeared an impossible task.
………
Within four days, a C-47 was landing at Tempelhof every eight minutes to discharge 2 1/2 tons of cargo--well over 150 planeloads a day. The supplies were immediately trucked to warehouses strategically located throughout the western sectors of the city. However, this was only about one-thirtieth of the food, fuel and medicines that would be required.
Come to think of it, the occupation forces were the government of Germany, so this was carried out by the local government.
Gun Control, Zoning Laws, Single-Payer Health Plans, … and Now FEMA
One of the commonest of government activities is keeping private citizens from solving a problem that government is supposedly handling. We see it in gun control (which keeps private citizens from stopping criminals on their own). We see it in zoning laws (which keeps private landlords from providing low-cost housing on their own). We see it in single-payer health plans (which keeps doctors and patients from making their own arrangements). I suppose we shouldn't be astonished that we see the same phenomenon in the rescue effort in Louisiana.
Radagast has a round up of related news items, but it this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
If the Aftermath of Katrina Causes a Malaria Epidemic …
…when are we going to relegalize DDT?
It might be interesting to watch the left accuse the Bush administration of “genocide” (if they tried accusing the Nixon administration they'd have a case) and then try to stop people from saving lives.
Do We Have to Unlearn Some the Lessons of 911?
| 911 lesson | New Orleans lesson |
| Avoid big cities | Avoid small cities |
| Stay close to the ground | Stay high off the ground |
| Don't store fuel | Store fuel |
| Local governments are reliable | Local governments are unreliable |
Addendum: This is embarrassing. I wrote “St. Louis” at first instead of “New Orleans.” (I might have been wondering if St. Louis might be vulnerable to some of the same problems as New Orleans … or maybe Louisiana somehow morphed into St. Louis.)
If the Terrorists Are Taking Notes …
Mark Steyn recently pointed out:
Oh, well, maybe the 9/11 commission can rename themselves the Katrina Kommission. Back in the real world, America's enemies will draw many useful lessons from the events of this last week. Will America?
Lessons they might learn:
Levees and dams are vulnerable. If you attack a city with a high murder rate, many of the residents will do your work for you. (On the other hand, I still suspect somebody was behind the more senseless looting.) If you attack a city with a moderately high percentage of households with no automobiles, many of the people can be trapped. (At a very high percentage of households with no automobiles, there will be enough alternate ways out and, what's more important, everybody will know of the alternate ways out.) Small cities are more vulnerable. It's possible to devastate the entire metropolitan area. In a large city, most of it is likely to be undamaged.
Is your town vulnerable?
Why They Didn't Send in Troops Immediately
The BBC reports:
"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told the Reuters news agency before he left on Sunday.
A body lies face down in water next to the Superdome
Death was everywhere, both inside and outside the Superdome
"A young lady was being raped and stabbed.
"And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them.
"He jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead," Mr Banka said.
Cf. here for more whining.
By the way, has the Federal government ever had a successful rapid reponse to catastrophe? Local governments have sometimes responded rapidly. The Federal government is usually on hand a week later writing checks. That makes sense when the local government is competent.
I recall the clueless response to the 911 attacks. Some of the people killed at the Pentagon were apparently watching the television reports of the World Trade Center instead of organizing a rapid response. For that matter, it took days for aid to arrive after the recent tsunami.
I Confess!
The New Orleans catastrophe was partly my fault. As a New Yorker, I acted in a civilized manner during the 2003 blackout. That clearly contributed to the common belief that we can rely on spontaneous order and wouldn't have to send the National Guard to New Orleans (instead of continuing to patrol New York train stations). If only I had thrown a brick through a window …
Set seriousness bit to ON: Could someone please explain how a disaster that occurred in a Democratic city in a state with a Democratic governor is supposed to be the fault of Republicans or conservatives?
On the other hand, one of the basic principles of conservatism is that people in a region can usually deal with a problem better than strangers. In particular, conservatives usually assume that state and local governments are actually competent (or at least more competent about local issues than the Federal government). The current mess makes that a bit dubious.
On the gripping hand, according to The Federalist Papers, it's easier for a faction to seize control of a state or local government. That may have happened here.
I'd be interested to hear if any of the conservatives who got bent out of shape over the alleged violations of “Federalism” in the Schiavo case have anything to say.
Who Is Really behind the Looting in New Orleans?
I suspect one of the planned effects of the World Trade Center attack was to create a social breakdown similar to what's now happening in New Orleans. After all, according to American movies (where many of them got their ideas about America), American cities were about to explode any moment. The expected riot didn't happen. In 2003, they even tried claiming the nonexistent blackout riot happened. This year, they may have gone for a more active approach.
An Islamofascist terror planner, after noting the near disaster last year of Hurrican Ivan and also noting the persistent lack of preparation for a large hurricane in New Orleans, may have decided to send “wandering shreds of human debris” over to New Orleans in the days before the hurricane struck. Once they got there, they proceeded to disrupt public order in general and the rescue effort in particular. Looting TV sets does not make sense for either desperate people (who will be taking bottled water, etc.) or ordinary crooks (who will steal items that can be hidden or smuggled easily). You can't show up the Superdome or Astrodome with a 50-inch TV set and get away with it. Shooting at rescue workers makes even less sense in the absence of a deliberate plan.
I don't know if anybody actually planned this, but the Other Side has started gloating.
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