Sunday, November 30, 2003
ONE IRAQI'S REACTION
Go see what Omar, a young Iraqi doctor, has to say about the scenes of people trampling the bodies of dead Coalition forces.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 2:25 PM
THOSE WEIRD TRANSHUMANISTS
The Wilson Quarterly has an article entitled Humanity 2.0 that's the latest example of a piece in a mainstream journal about transhumanism. The article is unfortunately not online, but it's nearly identical to ones I've seen before. To save time for those writing such articles in the future, I offer the following:
How to write an article about transhumanism for the mainstream press:
1. Attend a WTA or ExI meeting
2. Make note of how geeky the attendees are, especially that most of them are young, male, lack tans and seem to be socially maladroit.
3. Mention Eric Drexler and Hans Moravec.
4. Describe the most advanced ideas you hear at the meeting, with special emphasis on the fact that the speakers don't spend a lot of time explaining how weird the concepts are. Mention idea futures and Ted Williams as examples of how transhumanists are out of touch with the way most people react to their ideas.
5. Be sure to note the religious overtones of the Singularity, uploading and cryonics.
6. Sneer at the Silicon Valley libertarian politics of many in attendance.
7. Get a quote from a credentialled academic that dismisses the ideas as foolishness.
8. But end by saying that the transhumanists might be on to something after all and maybe someone ought to pay attention.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:37 AM
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?
That's the by-line in SciScoop's article about research developments being announced by a company called TriStem. Here's the heart of the matter:
TriStem founder Ilham Abuljadayel says that by adapting standard culturing methods, she has managed to turn white blood cells into heart, nerve, bone, cartilage, smooth muscle, liver and pancreatic cells. If true, this is a stunning achievement that could lead to diverse treatments ranging from a cure to diabetes to liver regeneration to heart attack recovery to healing spinal cord injury.
If this turns out to be true, it's pretty much the holy grail of tissue engineering. It could eventually lead to realization of the ultimate dream of creating replacement organs from a patient's own cells, thus bypassing all the availability and immunological problems associated with current organ transplantation techniques. It also obviates all the ethical problems bio-conservatives have with using human embryonic stem cells as the starting point of tissue engineering.
Needless to say, the mad scientists I hang out with are intently interested. I'll be watching this item closely.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:05 AM
CHINA'S "CYBER-DISSIDENTS"
The saga of Liu Di and other Chinese online free-speech proponents continues. Liu is a college student who was held for over a year for posting some fairly tame thoughts on democracy. Her case has been dismissed for "lack of evidence," but speculation points to premier Wen Jiabao's upcoming trip to the U.S. as the real reason for "loosening up" on these cases. As Peking Duck points out, though, others have been arrested for organizing online petitions for Liu's release. Orwell couldn't do better than that one.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:38 AM
SO LONG M-16?
Here's an article from the Houston Chronicle about dissatisfaction with the venerable M-16 as the U.S. military's main infantry weapon. It seems that it's too long and bulky to be handled with ease in and around vehicles. Makes sense to me, although whenever I've handled one, it's always struck me how light and well-balanced the rifle is. This article says the M-4A1 carbine, basically a cut-down M-16 is more popular with soldiers who have to work in the cramped confines of Bradleys and Humvees.
Current plans call for a completely new infantry weapon, the so-called Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), to replace (or at least heavily supplement) the M-16 and its derivatives over the coming years. Here's another link on the OICW. (What I want to know is what makes this weapon "objective"? What would a "subjective" gun look like?) The OICW looks like something out of a science fiction movie and some of its capabilities sound like SF: The ability to fire bursts of 20mm exploding ammo that the soldier can "dial-in" range info on is pretty amazing. But there's a price: each copy costs $10,000. That's a lot for something grunts have to carry through mud and sand. And nothing could be more telling than the contrast between that figure and the $50 or so that an AK-47 costs to make these days in the hundreds of plants that make it. I hope the OICW will be as robust as it is expensive.
Speaking of AK-47s, here's an interesting rifle. The SR-47 Stoner looks and shoots like an M-4A1, but is chambered for the 7.62 round fired by the AK-47 and uses AK mags. It's intended for use by Special Forces. The idea, as the manufacturer puts it, is to "enable [Special Forces] to use a sound suppression system, use enemy ammo, carry less ammo, and to leave behind only enemy brass." Good idea.
Surfing around about plans for overhauling the U.S. infantry rifle, I came across some informed commentary that the idea in many planners' minds is to have the OICW as a heavy squad-level "backbone," but make the main infantry rifle be the Heckler-Koch G-36. This looks like a much simpler, cheaper and more reliable weapon to me.
Then there's the whole question of whether the military should stay married to the .223 round fired by all these rifles, but that's another whole story.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:10 AM
Saturday, November 29, 2003
HOLIDAY READING
I'm using the long weekend to catch up on my reading. I finished Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. This is a noir-ish SF novel and, although the technology/society fit has some serious problems, it's quite well written. Meanwhile, my "background" book is Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects by David L. Shambaugh. This got demoted to the status of being the book I'm reading in breaks from other reading because it's really a technical academic book and requires the kind of close attention that its hard to give while I'm doing other things.
Yesterday, I started The Iraq War: A Military History by Williamson Murray, Robert H., Jr. Scales. Even though the main combat phase of the war has only been over a few months, this is an excellent book. The first few chapters are an extremely well-written history of Iraq and its relations with the U.S. and other countries as a foundation for the detailed material that follows. If you're looking for a very good summary history of how Saddam Hussein came to power and how he became the target of the Coalition's attack, the first 100 pages of this book does the job very well.
As usual, you can find more extensive notes about my reading at my reading pages.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:01 AM
Friday, November 28, 2003
SILENCING MODERATE VIEWS IN SAUDI ARABIA
Michael Butler has sent me a couple of items regarding the crushing of moderate viewpoints in Saudi Arabia. From the NYT, here's an essay from Mansour al-Nogaidan, who has been sentenced to 75 lashes for writings critical of Wahabbi extremism and calling for freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. He writes
During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, imams around the country stepped up their hate speech against liberals, advocates of women's rights, secularists, Christians and Jews — and many encouraged their congregations to do the same. I heard no sermons criticizing the people responsible for the attacks in Riyadh, in which innocent civilians and children were killed. The reason, I believe, is that these religious leaders sympathize with the criminals rather than the victims.
Then there's this, from arabianews.org, with more background on al-Nogaidan, indicating that the fatwa against him is from the Saudi "grand mufti, the highest religious authority in the country."
Allah akhbar, dude.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:57 PM
HOLIDAY BLOGGING
I'm taking it easy over the long Thanksgiving holiday and the world seems to be cooperating with relatively little of significance to comment on. Of course, there's Bush's visit to Baghdad, which was, as Instapundit so aptly summarized it, cool. I spent way too long last night reading details of the logistics, which were an admirable mix of tight management and showmanship, and then dipping into the truly nasty commentary at a website called Democratic Underground. For folks who don't spend time sampling the feelings of the left in the U.S., this is a good start.
Meanwhile, something crunched on the International Space Station, but a search couldn't find the source of the one-time sound. You know, that's got to be a bad feeling ... turning to the only other person on the spacecraft and saying "What was that?" and then hours later still not knowing.
One bright spot: This guy has a clue.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:22 AM
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
SHOULD WE GO OR SHOULD WE STAY?
The press has been buzzing over the last few weeks with reports about the Bush administration's decision to accelerate the end of Allied "occupation" in Iraq and turnover of government and security to Iraqi control. Fine. Good idea. But what about the purely military and strategic question? Is it a good idea for U.S. forces to more or less pull out of the Middle East?
I say no. The Middle East is and will continue to be the least stable and most threatening part of the world to U.S. interests and the interests of civilization generally into the foreseeable future. The long-term likelihood of destabilizing war and the growth of Islamic radical influence in the region is not that much less now than it has been for decades. The possibility that the U.S. will have to deploy significant force into the region is higher than at any time. So why pull back to the U.S. all that hardware we spent so much money to move to the area? Especially when there's a near-perfect place to store it?
Where is that? The far western Iraqi desert. The famous "H-1" and "H-2" airfirelds near the Syrian border would make excellent basing sites for up to two divisions of U.S. armored force and as much air power as we could conceivably need. These facilities are surrounded by some of the most empty and least useful land on the planet. No one wants or cares about this land and, better yet, unlike the empty areas of the Arabian peninsula, no one considers this dirt to be "sacred." Muhhamed never conducted caravan raids there, so this region has no special significance to Muslims.
It would be perfectly rational and fair for the new Iraqi civilian government to invite the U.S. to remain at H-1 and H-2. No one would ever see these forces -- unlike the troops and tanks and planes that have remianed in Germany and Japan since the end of World War II, the forces remaining in the empty areas of western Iraq would not be a constant reminder to the Iraqi population -- the vast majority of whom live along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- of American military presence in their country. But at the same time, as the famous cavalary charge up that desert corridor in the Spring of this year proved, the empty quarter of Iraq provides a perfect highway leading to other parts of the region. If necessary, a large fighting ground force based at H-1 and H-2 could be anywhere they are needed in 72 hours, instead of six months.
This is such a good idea, I have a hard time imagining why the U.S. wouldn't do it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:27 AM
Sunday, November 23, 2003
CRUSADERS
This concise essay by historian Thomas F. Madden about the history of the Crusades is well worth reading. It's getting lots of attention, thanks to this mention in Little Green Footballs (which has become a major nexus of Islam-watchers like me). (Yes, I know the essay is at a Catholic website, but my secular credentials should be well enough established that I can post such a link without my readers suspecting that I'm getting soft-headed in my old age.)
This isn't news to anyone who's done even a little study of Islamic history. From the time Muhammed left Mecca, Islam began to expand by violent conquest, and the territory into which it expanded was mostly Christian. Of course the Crusades were a response to that. On the scale of civilizations, the Crusades were a counter-attack, not wars of unprovoked agression.
[I've also always had a soft spot for the name Crusader, since that was what the Navy's F-8 carrier-based air-superiority fighter was called in the late 1950s and early 1960s. My dad worked on that plane when he was employed at its manufacturer, LTV. Here's a page with some "records" for the F-8. Well worth checking out the "Best [Worst] Ejection" item on that page.]
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:31 PM
RING TIME
MSNBC has a nice, long article about Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, the last installment of which will be in theaters soon (news for those who just stopped in from alternative universes). I can't wait. Never has a film so exceeded expectations, never has a studio had such courage to give Jackson the huge wad of cash he needed to do it right. Like most English-speaking homo sapiens of my generation, The Lord of the Rings was an essential part of my adolescence. And its message is as timely now as it was when it was first written: There are good people and bad people and sometimes the good people have to fight the bad people to keep the world from going to hell. There's no cultural relativism in TLotR: No one makes excuses for the orcs, because being nasty, violent monsters is "part of their culture."
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:54 AM
CHINA HOT OR NOT?
Time Asia has an article on the question of whether China’s economy is “superheating” titled Too Much Too Soon? It profiles a car manufacturer in Xian that was a state-owned artillery shell plant just a few years ago. The article goes on to discuss the general rapid growth in Chinese manufacturing, and then sounds the ominous chords of overproduction followed by recession:
The danger, however, is that the government will let the pressure build until the economy is so saturated with excess goods that banks must cut off credit abruptly, pushing the economy into recession. Economies always look and feel great when credit is easy and factories are coming on-line and new developments are in the works. But at some point, all those washing machines, apartments and automobiles have to be converted back into currency. The question hovering over China's economy now: Are there really enough buyers out there?
There’s no question that’s the right question. Over the last 25 years of reform, China has faced a series of qualitative thresholds: privatizing agriculture, separating large state-owned enterprises from the state structure organizationally, smothering the role of communist ideology in society, allowing the internet to blossom with only minimal party controls … the list goes on and on. Up to now, meeting pent-up demand and investing generations of stored capital has been the easy route: once the market switch was turned on, the process ran swiftly, and with it came a cascade of progress on many levels throughout the country.
As the Time Asia article points out, though, the question of what happens when China’s manufacturing economy meets its first equilibrium point with domestic demand isn’t just a Chinese issue, it’s an issue for the whole world, because China has become the whole world’s factory. When a major sector of Chinese manufacturing comes close to meeting China’s domestic demand, the excess will either go abroad, or there will be a recession in China.
The pressures, both domestic and international, will be intense. Domestically, the crony-ish format of “Confucian Capitalism” will result in a strong push to subsidize industrial overcapacity. Internationally, the even greater flood of inexpensive Chinese manufactured goods will challenge every developed country’s commitment to free trade. Policy failure on either front could truly spell a disaster for China and the world.
There’s really only one path out of this that will make sense: China and the world have to “stay loose” to allow continued growth throughout the Chinese economy. Domestically, China’s top rulers will have to allow more and more people to xia hai – “jump into the sea” as it is said, i.e. cut loose from the state-controlled economy and make their livings creating sufficiently broad wealth to absorb the growing supply. Tightening down will only flush the problem upstream into the already-rotten banking system, leading to a real depression, not just recession. With the genie of personal expectations for a better and better life let out of the bottle, that would be the death-knell for the Party. Internationally, throttling Chinese exports will inflame the sullen Chinese nationalism that always lies just below the surface, and would set off a round of trade battles that would kill the global economy.
The only way forward is freedom.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:43 AM
Saturday, November 22, 2003
OSWALD'S BROTHER
Robert Oswald, brother of the man who killed JFK, says emphatically that his brother shot Kennedy, and that it was the act of a troubled man wanting attention. There's a detail I didn't know in this article -- Robert Oswald visited his brother in jail the day after the assasination:
"I was looking into his eyes, searching for some sign," Robert Oswald told NBC. "And he just looked back at me, and finally he said, 'Brother, you won't find anything there.' And he was absolutely correct. there was no emotion. There was no flicker in the eye."
I've been convinced that Oswald acted alone for a long time -- ever since I saw a 3-D computer model of Dealy Plaza that showed how the "magic bullet" actually did line up exactly with all the points it hit. For the rest of the conspiracy garbage, it's just that -- garbage.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:56 PM
NEW DOUGONICS
My best friend in the Solar System, Michael Dougan, has turbocharged and moved his blog, Dougonics. Go there now.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:28 PM
IRAQ BLOG
A number of English-language blogs have sprung up in Iraq. Iraq the Model (?) is one that's begun very recently. This post is an excellent example of the kind of personal journalism that marks the best of blogging -- vital, real, current. Oh, and it gives the lie to the Fiskian whining about "cruel American Imperialism" and "it's all about oil" we hear from the left.
UPDATE: More Iraqi blog surfing led me to this, an article by an Iraqi who runs through all the posited motivations for America's program of libration in Iraq. He reasons that it can't be economic: The U.S. is obviously spending more treasure in Iraq than it could ever hope to get out of the country, nor can it be the oil, since U.S. control over Iraq's oil will be lessened under a non-autocratic regime. It can't be a pro-Israeli policy, since a well-armed Baathist-controlled Iraq was a constant motivator to "Israeli expansionism." He's honestly stumped. But honest. Good man.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:58 PM
Friday, November 21, 2003
HYPERSONIC INTERCONTINENTAL CRUISE MISSILE
Wired is reporting that DARPA is setting about a 6-year program to develop and field a cruise missile that could launch from the continental U.S. and hit a target most places in the world. That's one heck of a bullet. (Via Defensetech)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:58 PM
CHARLES THE MAD
I've blogged before about Prince Charles' pro-Islamist views. He's at it again.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:52 PM
WISE WORDS
Last week the new crop of lawyers in our firm got sworn in. We were lucky to have Judge Ken Wise of the 152 District Court do the honors. Judge Wise is a sometimes skeet/sporting-clays shooting buddy of mine (although not since he's gone on the bench despite our best efforts to schedule it) and, although we certainly don't share many political and cultural opinions, I think he's a fine example of the best of the legal profession. Judge Wise gave a very brief little talk to our new lawyers, the text of which he was kind enough to send to me. here it is:
Good Morning. It is a privilege and a pleasure to be a part of this important day. I thank Kevin Peter for inviting me to be here. It is always an honor to swear in new lawyers but it is particularly special to do so at the place where I began my legal career not that long ago.
When I was sworn into the bar by Judge Hill, before he gave me the oath, he, “laid some words on me.” So I likewise am going to lay some words on you. I have a word of caution, a word of advice, and a word of encouragement.
My word of caution is to never confuse the business of law practice with the profession of practicing law. Too often I have seen lawyers substitute what is efficient for their business for what is effective for their client. Don’t be that kind of lawyer. Don’t ever substitute what’s good for business for what’s good for your client. If you are at all times cognizant of your duty as a professional, the business will come.
A word of advice. Seek the wisdom and experience of older lawyers. When I started my career I was so blessed to be raised in the law by Walter Zivley, John Hill, Jess Hall, Bruce LaBoon and others. Without my even knowing it at the time, they also raised me in life. They enabled me to gain much deeper experience than a mere nine years would normally yield. You, too, must find mentors and regularly seek their counsel. This profession is about judgment and yours will develop much faster and much better with the benefit of the wisdom of those around you.
Finally, a word of encouragement. You are entering a profession that is laden with opportunity. You have the opportunity to prevent problems in the lives and livelihoods of your clients. You have the opportunity to right wrongs on behalf of your clients. You have the opportunity to be part of the very fabric that binds our society together. I encourage you, this very afternoon, to read the Constitution of the United Sates. You will discover that our founding fathers, in what has proven to be infinite wisdom, designed for us a system of laws. That’s what our society was founded upon. As lawyers, you are in a very unique position to not only shape those laws, but to protect the entire system.
Important words for lawyers of any level of experience.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:21 AM
BEWARE THE NEW ATLANTIS
Voice of God's Death Squad
I've blogged before about The New Atlantis, a relatively new journal devoted to the views of anti-progress bio-luddites. I spent a little while this morning looking into the background and other work of the editorial staff, and the result was sadly predictable: It's the religion, stupid.
The editor-in-chief is Eric Cohen. Cohen is supported by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C. and the EPPC seems to be the main sponsoring organization for The New Atlantis. Although you'll find some nice things about "individual freedom and responsibility" in EPPC's description of itself, the important item in their "about" blurb is this:
The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) was established in 1976 to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.
Five of eight items listed in the EPPC's "programs" section deal with religion in a positive way, basically exploring how religious "moral reasoning' can be injected into public life. Two of the four other editors who get a blurb at The New Atlantis get support (presumably financial support) from something called "Project on Biotechnology and American Democracy," which is an EPPC program. Major contributors to the first two issues of The New Atlantis are members of George Bush's stacked-deck Presidential Advisory Committee on Biotechnology, which was created to rationalize the religious/conservative ban on stem cell research that Bush's religious-right backers intended to legislate before the Committee was ever formed.
The New Atlantis aims to become the premier mouthpiece of a religiously-based retreat from technological progress. The high-minded "moral disgust" that lies at the foundation of this position is ultimately a death sentence for millions of people. Why? Because we're supposed to die, that's why. Who says? God, that's who. Now shut up and die.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:53 AM
CHINA TRADE TROUBLE
I haven't posted about the brewing trade skermish between the U.S. and China because I don't know enough to have an opinion. I try to make sure my opinions are based on at least a little knowledge.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:46 AM
WRONG ABOUT THE LONDON PROTESTS
Instapundit is linking to one of the main sources that had been stating that the turnout for the main event of the London anti-Bush protests had fallen short of the 100,000 number organizers had predicted. He was wrong -- there were at least 100,000. As is pointed out, though, this doesn't change the fact that a majority of Britons support the war effort.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:27 AM
Thursday, November 20, 2003
.25 SATURN
Spaceflight Now is reporting on preparations for launch next summer of the Delta 4 Heavy rocket. This is an impressive bird, and one we sure need, but at 50,000 pounds, its payload to low Earth orbit (LEO) is less than one-quarter of what the Saturn V was back in the 1960s... Oh how the mighty have fallen.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:58 PM
RAMADAN CELEBRATIONS CONTINUE
Another deadly bombing in Turkey. Seasons greetings from the religion of peace.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:31 AM
THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG
My antipathy to light-rail urban mass transit programs in modern U.S. cities isn't a secret. The absurdity of trying to stitch expensive rail systems into cities that grew organically around the automobile would be illustrated in Houston, I predicted in a recent conversation, when they turned on the trains in the costly toy system that's just being implemented here: Running at grade level without any kind of barrier between them and the cars, I figured we'd have lots of collisions. The first one happened last night on one of the trains' first test runs. But I should have known it wouldn't be a car that would have the honor of being the first vehicle to get hit. It was an SUV.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:18 AM
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
CHINA and TAIWAN -- AN EAR FOR TROUBLE
CNN is reporting on official Chinese snarling at the latest round of indpendence sounds coming from Taibei. Some simple facts need to be borne in mind here. First, right or wrong, the CCP will never tolerate an independent Taiwan. It's hard for most Americans or Europeans to comprehend how or why this is, and a short blog post isn't the place for me to explain why I think this in detail. Suffice it to say that Taiwan's separation from the PRC in 1949 was so caught up in the founding mythology of the current regime in Beijing that the CCP's core identity is based on unification as an ultimate goal, whenever it may be achieved and however long it may be postponed. The hypersensitive nationalism cultivated by the CCP (and naturally and genuinely felt by the vast majority of Chinese people) focuses on the territorial integrity of "Greater China" in a way that no other major nation in the world today shares. This has nothing to do with Cold War communist ideology -- whether as it actually existed in China or as it was perceived in the West. Nor is it based on the kind of universalist religious jihadism that drives Islamofascist violence in the Middle East and elsewhere. It's much more akin to the kind of nationalistically-driven violence Europe experienced in the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. And we know how that turned out.
Second, Taiwanese political and social culture has become increasingly unaware of just how strong the nationalistic feelings for "Han Unity" and "Chinese strength" run in the PRC. Taiwan is much more like Western countries now, with fairly diverse "cross-cutting cleavages" in society that weakens this kind of old-fashioned nationalism. This is what lies behind the continuing crisis. So long as Taiwain was ruled by the old Guomindang and the GMD fueled the same kind of nationalism in Taiwain, there was a strange harmony, albeit in counterpoint, between the songs sung in Taibei and Beijing. Now Taibei sings a very different kind of music. And the tune doesn't fit with the Beijing opera of a united Greater China.
I don't pretend to know how this will end, but I can see -- and hear -- the causes of the trouble...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:07 PM
LONDON PROTESTS FIZZLING?
Here's some more-or-less on-the-spot coverage indicating that the hoped-for hundreds of thousands of anti-Bush protesters have turned out to be more like hundreds. (Via Instapundit.) Aha -- I see; tomorrow is the Big Day.)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 2:56 PM
C6 COMPLETE PICS
Here are the best pics to date of the new sixth-generation Corvette. The unusual angle of the shots (from below) accentuates the features that difffer from the C5 -- the more pronounced fender flaring and the generally more angular sculpting. I think these elements will be less pronouced in a normal view from above. Interesting view of the brakes -- drilled.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:39 AM
SPACE FRONTIER -- AGAIN?
The Houston Chronicle -- which naturally has some of the best coverage of the U.S. space program -- has a good article this morning about the state of a new U.S. space policy that is getting closer to being articulated. Speculation has been growing that President Bush will make an important statement of that new policy soon.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:07 AM
NPR's SHAMEFUL PARTISANSHIP
The veil slipped on NPR's left-wing, anti-Bush partispanship this morning. Guy Raz is covering the protests and he gave plenty of air time to perhaps the most revered idiot among the speakers at the "kick-off rally," Harold Pinter. Fair enough, Raz's job is to cover the protests. What was absolutely amazing was Raz's repeated references to "English public opinion" as being "against Bush," and "against the war." Even the notioriously rude and partisan English left-wing press has had the good grace to acknowledge a poll taken on the eve of Bush's visit to England, that shows a majority of Labour voters supporting the war effort:
A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's Guardian/ICM opinion poll. The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world. ...
The ICM poll also uncovers a surge in pro-war sentiment in the past two months as suicide bombers have stepped up their attacks on western targets and troops in Iraq. Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters. At the same time those who believe the war was justified has jumped 9 points to 47% of voters.
I hate to engage in reflexive Anglophilia, but maybe NPR could learn from its counterparts in the Mother Country.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:36 AM
Monday, November 17, 2003
STEYN ON THE UPCOMING ANTI-BUSHATHON IN BRITAIN
Mark Steyn's produced a glorious rant about the irrational pathology of anti-Americanism that we're about to see on the streets of London. Every word's a gem, but this is particularly good:
The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist. And even its imperialism is too vulgar and arriviste to appeal to real imperialists: let's face it, the ghastly Yanks never stick it to the fuzzy-wuzzy with the dash and élan of the Bengal Lancers, which appears to be the principal complaint of Sir Max Hastings and his ilk. To the mullahs, America is the Great Satan, a wily seducer; to the Gaullists, America is the Great Cretin, a culture so self-evidently moronic that only stump-toothed inbred Appalachian lardbutts could possibly fall for it. American popular culture is utterly worthless, except when one of its proponents - Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon - attacks Bush, in which case he or she is showered with European awards and sees the foreign-language rights for his latest tract sell for six figures at Frankfurt. The fact that the best-selling anti-Americans are themselves American - Moore, Chomsky - is perhaps the cruellest manifestation of the suffocating grip of the hyperpower.
It's brilliant insight and the language itself is a joy.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:03 PM
MICROSATS
At a mass of only 100 kilograms (a couple of hundred pounds) and described as being the size of "a domestic washing machine", the European PROBA-2 spacecraft marks an operational milestone in the development of microsatellites. Unlike previous micro-sats, this one carries a full suite of instruments to do useful science (instead of engineering material to serve as "proof of concept").
Devices like this represent the future of space exploration. Contrast them with the space probes of the past that weighed thousands of pounds. Then think about the difference in energy required to fling them off the Earth. The physics here is linear: Micro-sats require rockets an order of magnitude less powerful than the rockets used today. Even tasks that require great size -- like the employment of large antennas -- can be accomplished by fleets of micro-sats working in concert to create "virtual instruments."
I'm looking forward to the day when we have "nano-sats" -- devices the size of a cell phone, say, that can be launched with rockets that can fit on a roadable trailer. I envision a day -- not too distant -- when Earth orbit and the solar system is populated with a swarm of such devices, all networked together, that will give us permanent, real-time knowledge about all of our neighborhood in space.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:46 AM
Sunday, November 16, 2003
PJ's WAR
The Atlantic has an interview with P.J. O'Rourke about his time in Kuwait and Iraq during the war in the Spring. Great stuff.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 2:51 PM
NIGERIAN SCAMBACK
This is funny. There's more. This guy is really creative. Well worth a few minutes to look into the humiliating and ridiculous things he gets the scammers to do. I love it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:12 AM
LOATHING BUSH
To get a taste of how the British Left loathes George W. Bush, take a look at this piece in The Independent. Material like this is instigating a firestorm of bad feelings in anticipation of Bush's upcoming visit to London.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:37 AM
1983: THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
I happened across a fascinating site, The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which contains discussion and original documents from a project to coordinate sources from both sides of the old East-West conflict in preserving and understanding the history of the Cold War. One of the most frightening pieces is Did East German Spies Prevent A Nuclear War?, by Vojtech Mastny. It details what Mastney (now at the Woodrow Wilson Institute) claims to be the closest the two superpowers ever came to nuclear war, based on a close reading of Soviet sources indicating that the then-Premier, Yuri Andropov, had become convinced that the U.S. and NATO were preparing for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the USSR. NATO forces had modernized, and Soviet power had deteriorated, to the point that the balance of military power in Europe had shifted, and the Russians knew it. In this climate, NATO exercises in 1983 could have been mistaken for preparations for a first strike by the West. Fortunately, detailed intelligence about the qualitatively new and more effective command structures put into place within the NATO command were either intentionally or mistakenly not communicated to the Politburo by the GRU and KGB. Had they been, Andropov might have felt that he was pushed into a corner without any option but to initiate a nuclear first strike.
Makes you wonder about what's going on these days that we won't find out about for twenty years...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:58 AM
Saturday, November 15, 2003
"LOVE IS A SICKNESS"
The whole sentence runs thus: "Love is a sickness that destroys the heart and leads to evil and immorality." From Islam Questions and Answers. I just can't stay away from this stuff ... I admit I have a morbid fascination for reading this kind of detailed sharia material. If I ever waiver in my commitment to anti-Islamism, a few minutes with the sheik always gets me right back in line...
On a personal note, I don't like the idea of being defined by my enemies, i.e. being an opponent as opposed to being opposed, so to speak. But the more time that goes by, and the more I read about Islam and its place in the world, the more convinced I am that there's no way to avoid the conclusion that there is a war of civilizations and that only one can survive. The irony -- one that our mainstream public culture in the West has not yet come to terms with -- is that the clash is between one civilization that is totalitarian and intolerant (Islam), and one that is open and tolerant (modernity), yet the only course of survival for modernity must be based on a firm rejection and condemnation of Islam: About that we must be intolerant. Until we can find a way to openly state that Islam is a religion of hatred, intolerance and violence, we cannot win.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:25 PM
WAKE-UP CALL TO THE LEFT
Salon has a very interesting interview with William Schulz, director of Amnesty International. In it, Schultz tries to talk sense about the anti-Bush Left's wrong-headed, knee-jerk reactions, and how they drive the Left to miss the true threats to life and liberty posed by terrorism. But the Salon interviewer can't seem to avoid BBC-style baiting in order to appear "tough." As a result, the important message gets watered down.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:59 PM
UH OH
I'm seeing a discussion of this scam, in which someone calls you claiming to be from a "business directory", asks to confirm your address and phone number, to which you answer "yes," after which they mail you a directory containing your name and address and then bill you $300, climing you agreed to pay in the directory. It is said that this outfit uses a recording of your voice saying "yes" as evidence of your assent to buy this "service." I had such a call a few days ago. If I get such a bill I won't pay it. If someone threatens to sue me over it, watch out.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:47 PM
RAMADAN GREETINGS
Al Qaida is celebrating the holiday in the traditional fashion. Any doubts? Here's a translation from a current 11th grade textbook published by the Palestinian Authority:
Islam is Allah's religion for all human beings. It should be proclaimed and invite [people] to join it wisely and through appropriate preaching and friendly discussions. However, such methods may encounter resistance and the preachers may be prevented from accomplishing their duty… then, Jihad and the use of physical force against the enemies become inevitable…
Allah Akhbar.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:45 AM
IRAQ-Al QAIDA LINK
A report regarding a leaked US government memo detailing over ten years of links between Al Qaida and Iraq first reported in The Weekly Standard is being covered in various places in the blogosphere. (Traffic to the Standard's story generated by this blogostorm has crashed their site, but Instapundit's report links to posts that have the complete text of the original article.) UPDATE: This story is generating such interest that one site after another that's hosting the story is going down. Here's another full text.
The intelligence gathered together in one place in the original memo (much of it dating back to work by the Clinton administration) puts the long-alleged meetings between 911 lead hijacker Atta and Iraqi secret intelligence operatives into context and gives the story great credibility. If this turns out to be a story with deep corroboration, it should put all carping about the invasion of Iraq to a complete stop (but of course, it won't). if the level of support given to Al Qaida by the Baathists detailed at length in the report is confirmed, the war in iraq was and is a completely justified part of the U.S. response to the 911 attacks. Period.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:53 AM
CHINA KEEPS GOING UP
China's successfully made another satellite launch. By itself, this isn't news, but some of the details in this story are worth noting. This is the fourth succesful launch China's made in a month, counting its first manned space flight. The LM3 rocket was launched from Sichuan, a different launch facility from the one Yang Liwei departed from. The satellite went into a geosynchronous orbit, ten times higher than the Shenzhou orbit, and weight over two tons. And this was the 32nd consecutive successful launch since 1996. Taken together, the are very impressive facts, and show that China's space program has real depth to match the ambitions that are now increasingly a matter of public presentation. The dragon has truly flown.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:11 AM
Friday, November 14, 2003
CHINA LOSES A TRACKING STATION
China's space program suffered a setback this week when the itsy-bitsy Pacific island nation of Kiribati switched its diplomatic recognition to Taiwan. China had a tracking station on Kiribati. Weird. The only reason I can think why Taiwan would have done this would be to tweak the dragon's tail.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:06 PM
NEW VETTE SPIED
The community of Corvette nuts has been obsessively seeking so-called "spy-shots" of the upcoming sixth-generation Corvette for a long time. Here's a set of the best pictures to date, of the new car's body (scroll down -- they're there without following the link).
I like it. It's only an evolutionary change over the C5 (fifth-gen vette). It conjures some subtle references to the early third-gen vette, the one current in my key early adolescent years (and therefore seared into my libido). And the modifications I've been making to my C5 are all in line with this aesthetic, so it might help me to resist the temptation for a while.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 3:27 PM
Thursday, November 13, 2003
CASSINI PORTRAIT OF JUPITER
Here's a report on a gorgeous image of Jupiter taken by the Cassini probe en route to Saturn. (It's actually a cleverly-reconstructed merging of 27 separate images, but it's still awesome.) This adds to the gallery of Jupiter images Cassini's captured as it used Jupiter as a giant gravity-assist slingshot nearly three years ago in as it headed outward toward it's ultimate goal. My favorite is this one of Jupiter's moon Io against the backdrop of the giant itself. Cassini is now only a little more than seven months away from arriving in orbit around Saturn, having been travelling since its launch October 15, 1997.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:09 PM
CHINA NIXES CHICK PUNKS
"CHINA’s only all girl punk band HANG ON THE BOX have been forced to pull out of the NEW WORLD DISORDER TOUR after the Chinese government deemed their music as 'inappropriate'." (Via Vijay)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:47 AM
NOT LIVING IN CHINA
Burchismo has been added to the Living in China blog participants. I'm honored and hope I can make a contribution from a slightly different angle than many of the other China blogs -- I was "away" from China for 20 years and don't live in China as do most or all of the other participating LiC bloggers. I'm also about 2.7 million years older than what seems to be the average age of the LiC bloggers, so that should bring another slightly different voice to the mix. I've been following the Chinese blog scene with great interest and think it's a unique and potentially very important part of the simmering mix of culture in the new China.
I'm on the run this morning -- I'm participating in a seminar on Sino-U.S. trade for the next couple of days (speaking on enforcement of Chinese arbitral awards in U.S. courts tomorrow) -- and I need to get moving. In the meantime you can find some of my recent China-related posts here, here, here, here, here, and here. There's plenty more from before that, so keep scrolling, if you're interested.
Thanks to Living in China for having me!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:24 AM
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
HAI MEI YOU GUANXI
Yesterday, I blogged about guanxi -- the Chinese web of social connectedness -- and how westerners' failure to detect and understand guanxi helps give rise to a perception of "the mysterious East." Today, I see another good article -- at Lvining in China -- about east/west differneces; this time about how basic differences in grammatical structure between English and Chinese give rise to very different "styles of discourse" (an unfortunatley pomo-ish term, but one that is basically correct). If I keep at this, maybe one day I'll understand it. This is actually something my associate Tom Tong has corrected my Chinese on many times, since I tend to use a kind of "Chinglish" grammar and improperly use an English-style subject-predicate construction when I'm not concentrating hard.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:44 PM
NO LUNAR ICE?
Here's a report on a study done with the Arecibo radio telescope indicating that water ice in concentrated form probably doesn't exist in the permanently shaded area at the moon's poles. This is a let-down, but I have to admit finding concentrated ice on the moon would have been something almost too good to be true.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:25 PM
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
MEI YOU GUANXI
ChinaBiz has a brief little essay about guanxi, that element of Chinese society that so many westerners have such a hard time grasping and dealing with. What is guanxi? That's one of those questions that I feel like I both know too much about and not enough about to even write one word. Technically and in isolation, the word "guanxi" means "relation" or "relationship." In the context used in the ChinaBiz article, it means that network of personal relationships based on some shared experience or family background that Chinese people look to as a web in which to embed trust. "Trust" being the key word -- and the title of the Francis Fukuyama book mentioned in the article I push on anyone who will listen to me for five minutes on the subject of the "culture matters" approach to the world of which I have become a zealous advocate. But guanxi can mean other things, as in the slightly humorous title of this post, literally translated as "it has no relation," but which translates correctly to the English phrase "it doesn't matter," or "never mind."
Guanxi is one of the chief obstacles in the way of western-style social, business and political dealings in China that is interpreted by westerners as opacity and part of the famous "mysteriousness of the East." A westerner doesn't "get it" in a multi-party transaction because there will often be either more or less trust than she expects -- she's missing the workings of guanxi. In the absence of guanxi, things move more slowly than a westerner will expect, while the presence of guanxi will make things happen more quickly than anticipated -- and more "mysteriously."
The much-vaunted "transparency" campaign pushed by the World Bank and IMF in Asia in the aftermath of the Asian economic melt-down of the 1990s was really a war against guanxi. And so far, it's been a losing war. In that, I agree with the author of the ChinaBiz article linked above: Guanxi is alive and well. The workings of guanxi serve many of the same functions that westerners place in a larger, more diffuse and (in some cases) more abstract "civil society," so much so that "cronyism" and "old boy networks" are negative terms in the west, while in Asia, they would fairly accurately describe the workings of the invisible, interlocking networks of guanxi by which the world works. Still today, in Asia, if you don't have guanxi, it doesn't matter.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:28 PM
CHINA PUSHING THE SPACE THING SOME MORE
Space Daily is reporting that, after having been off the media circuit for a few days, Yang Liwei is back in the official media spotlight in China -- including a full front page in yesterday's Renmin Ribao -- People's Daily.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:56 AM
* * * * * * * * * * * *
VETERANS DAY
Today is Veterans Day. I'm reading Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects by David L. Shambaugh, and the book puts me in mind of how fortunate we are in America to have a tradition of professional, non-political citizen-soldiers. We owe our freedoms to our military, but it is a debt that has never weighed on our social or political character in a way that does violence to our liberties. It is a debt that can never be repayed, but which those who hold the note never call.
GB, THHotA
* * * * * * * * * * * *
posted by Greg 6:20 AM
ALABAMA AYATOLLAH
The Alabama Attorney General is moving to oust state supreme court judge Roy Moore -- the 10 Commandments guy -- from office. This is an important step in the struggle against theocracy.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:09 AM
SAUDIS MAKE ARRESTS
CNN is reporting that the Saudis have begun to make arrests in response to the latest bombing in Riyadh. I'm sure there will be plenty of attention to due process and human rights in their questioning. Meanwhile, the BBC has a report on the effect that the bombing is having on attitudes in Saudi Arabia. It's way too early to be hopeful that al Qaida has gone too far and burned its core base of support in Arabia, but the slim possibility exists, at least.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:07 AM
Monday, November 10, 2003
CHINESE COMIX
Dougonics is blogging about comics in China.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:46 PM
PRINCE OF WALES, ISLAMIC SYMPATHIZER
I knew I didn't like Charles. He's a luddite, a widely-held view. That was bad enough. But Allah has turned us on to the fact that "the Prince, a practising Anglican, said there had been a 'loss of meaning' in Western society and cited traditional Islamic culture as an example of how spirituality can be integrated with modernity." (From an article in The Times about Charles' speech regarding Islam in 1996). Here are some choice quotes from the speech:
[T]he danger that the gulf between the worlds of Islam and the other Eastern religions on the one hand and the West on the other will grow ever wider and more unbridgeable is real, unless we can explore together practical ways of integrating the sacred and the secular in both our cultures in order to provide a true inspiration for the next century.
Islamic culture in its traditional form has striven to preserve this integrated, spiritual view of the world in a way we have not seen fit to do in recent generations in the West. There is much we can learn from that Islamic world view in this respect. There are many ways in which mutual understanding and appreciation can be built. Perhaps, for instance, we could begin by having more Muslim teachers in British schools, or by encouraging exchanges of teachers. Everywhere in the world people want to learn English. But in the West, in turn, we need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to learn with our hearts, as well as our heads.
What a crock. First lumping Islam in with "other Eastern religions" is a typically foggy-headed and fundamentally ignorant move by romantic, anti-scientific twits like Charles. Islam has nothing in common with Buddhism. Nothing. To put Buddhism into the same category as Islam is a deep insult to Buddhism. That this moron could make such a statement makes me sick. Then the heir to the throne tells us England ought to have more Islamic teachers in its schools. Right. Brilliant move, Charlie. Let's just eat a big culture of mind-virus -- no, let's feed it to our children.
Oh, by the way, I could care less about his sexual habits, but that seems more important to most people. I suppose that's good, given what a dangerous man his idiocy could make him otherwise.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:14 PM
"WRITINGS" Update
I've updated my "writings" page to include some thing that were't previously catalogued there.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:02 PM
CHINA MOON
Space Daily has an article with details about China's unmanned lunar science plans. (Most of this is a fairly poor direct translation of an original Chinese document, so be ready for "Chinglish".) The key points are that China is now publicly getting behind the previous specualtion that a lunar orbiter is only three years in the future, and that soft landers, rovers and sample return missions are being planned to follow that. All of this seems very plausible. I would expect a Chinese probe to be in lunar orbit by the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a soft lander by 2010 at the latest. There could be Chinese footprints on the moon by 2015.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 1:40 PM
AMERICA the EXCEPTIONAL
The Economist has a special issue devoted to the topic of "American exceptionalism," i.e. the fact that American society, culture and politics are different -- very different -- from the European world (and elsewhere). Arts and Letters Daily links to this item in the issue that contains some very telling graphs showing just how different America is. Well worth checking out.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:18 AM
TERRORIST STRIKE WARNINGS?
Certain elements of the blogosphere are alert to a new phenomenon, fairly specific "warnings" about terror attacks found in Arabic language online message boards. This post at Little Green Footballs is typical. Follow the links to see more specific discussion of the underlying sources.
What to make of these? On the one hand, given the efforts to choke off the means formerly used by the Islamofascist terrorists to communicate with their action cells (cell phones, satellite phones, direct email), this kind of "talking in plain site" form of communication could conceivably be a way that a real network of strike groups could be coordinated and activated. But I'm skeptical. I'm more inclined to agree with those who think this phenomenon is a freelance effort by people not connected with real terror networks. The posting to the message boards is traceable enough that someone in the real intelligence community would know from whence come the posts. (UPDATE: The more I think about it, the weaker this point seems -- posts probably could be made in a relatively untraceable way.) More importantly, I think that the real terror network is still not well enough equipped or organized to carry out concerted or effective attacks against the U.S. Agents who can "pass" in the U.S., but that are sufficiently motivated (i.e. thoroughly infected with the Islamic mind-virus), skillful and intelligent to actually do anything will be quite rare. While there are millions of violently fanatical jihadis, most of them are too ignorant and stupid to accomplish anything in the U.S. without detection. They can sneak into Iraq and fire an RPG at a helicopter, but they can't work their way into the U.S., manage to blend in to American society for a long time and then carry out a sophisticated attack on a coordinated basis.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:33 AM
Saturday, November 08, 2003
THE MONSTERS ATTACK THEIR CRADLE
CNN's reporting that there have been large explosions preceded by the sounds of gunfire in a residential compound in Riyahd. The protection money paid by the Saudi royal family and the support for the Whabbi catachism of hate that has been a fundamental part of the Saudi polity for 50 years is yielding a harvest for those who sewed the dragon's teeth. The absolutist creed of Islamofascism cannot tolerate the double game the Saudi royals have been playing for three generations. They will have only three choices: Join the Islamofascists, help to destroy them or be obliterated. The time for their choosing can't be postponed any longer.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:08 PM
A BOUNTY ON TAYLOR
Here's a story in the BBC reporting on a $2 million bounty approved by the U.S. Congress for the capture of Charles Taylor, the murderous former Liberian warlord, now in exile in Nigeria. Nigearia's president condemned the bounty as a "stone age" step by the U.S. But wait!
The UN's chief representative in Liberia, Jacques Klein, told the BBC he was surprised but delighted by news of the bounty. The reward was unlikely to result in mercenaries going after Mr Taylor, Mr Klein said; the bounty's value was more symbolic. "It's a signal to the African people that your lives are worth something. That we will no longer let regional dictators and criminals brutalise you, murder you, exploit you, and steal the state treasury." At some point Mr Taylor would outlive his welcome in Nigeria and violate the terms of his asylum, Mr Klein said. "They'll eventually probably throw him out and at that point the warrant is valid and the reward is valid."
That must have thrown the BBC's editorial staff for a loop -- someone from the UN praising U.S. "cowboy diplomacy"?!?! Kudos to them for publishing Klein's remark, even if it must have pained them.
I don't normally blog about developments in Africa. It's just too painful. Africa's political, social and economic life is so deeply broken that it's hard to see how any good can be done there.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 3:46 PM
CHINESE TRADITIONAL MEDICINE AND SCIENCE
The Financial Times has an article about attempts by the government in Beijing to develop some standards for "traditional Chinese medicine." The article points out that
... the very attempt to apply a rational and codified framework to treatment could also undermine Chinese medicine's appeal to those who see it as a more natural or even mystical alternative to impersonal western methods. Indeed, some local practitioners feel that Beijing's introduction in recent years of licence requirements and examinations for Chinese healers has been an imposition of western ideas on an ancient eastern tradition. "Chinese medicine is very much about experience, passed from teacher to disciple, father to son or grand-father to grandchild," says Gao Yuchi, a doctor of traditional medicine at a Beijing hospital. "It's not something that you can read in a book or that you can be tested on."
(via Butterflies and Wheels) I think that's exactly right. I'm deeply skeptical about what gets called "traditional Chinese medicine." This body of practices has become closely tied up with ideology and nationalism in China over the last hundred years or so, with each successive dominant political ideology claiming the virtues of a peculiarly Chinese way of approaching medical practice. This has played into the hands of the relativst multiculturalists and purveyors of New Age ju-ju in the West, both groups with a strong antipathy to the scientific method and a tendency to romanticize everything non-Western they encounter. This is not to say that there aren't some effective elements of the practice and pharmecopia of traditional Chinese medicine -- you're going to come across some useful things in 3,000 years of trying one thing and another. But the underlying theories of "yin" and "yang" and "hot" and "cold" elements are no more scientific than the equivalent premodern ideas of humors and essences in the West were, and are no more likely to provide an alternative to the scientific method as a guide to developing effective medical treatments. For a truly skeptical look at the over-all subject matter, here's a lengthy article from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal about its review of traditional Chinese medicine and associated Chinese-style ju-ju. One interesting observation in this piece is the fact that the dispensation of traditional "cures" in China is no less symptom-oriented and no warmer or more "personal" than what was seen in the clinics there applying scientific medical techniques.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:06 AM
"A KIND OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AGORA"
Over at City Journal, Brian Anderson has a superb review of how three things -- cable TV, the blogosphere and non-leftist book publishing -- have begun to have a dramatic impact on the previous hammer-lock the Left had on media and public opinion in the U.S.
The Left’s near monopoly over the institutions of opinion and information—which long allowed liberal opinion makers to sweep aside ideas and beliefs they disagreed with, as if they were beneath argument—is skidding to a startlingly swift halt.
Well worth reading for someone like me who is only intermittently connected to the world of pop culture. I found the discussion of "South Park Republicans" particularly telling, since it described how the new media are expressing a different kind of youthful and more libertarian reaction to the Left in America.
The quote in the title to this post comes from Anderson's discussion of the development of the blogosphere and its increasing impact on public life. A wonderful insight, the blogosphere is in fact the very agora of ideas that the early pioneers of the Internet envisioned.
(via Arts and Letters Daily, which also gets a mention.)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:03 AM
MAO AND JIANG
The Spectator has a review of a new book, CHIANG KAI-SHEK AND THE CHINA HE LOST By Jonathan Fenby. The review consists of a pretty good and very brief summary of 20th Century Chinese history. If you want to get 1000 volumes' worth of knowledge in 90 seconds, this is a good stab at it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:32 AM
Friday, November 07, 2003
RELIGIOUS WISDOM
Clicking links in one of my perambulations through various Islamic sites, I came across this searchable index of a fairly complete collection of the "authoratative" hadiths, or "traditions of the Prophet." These are considered holy texts by all Muslims and are given value just beneath that of the Koran. They relate incidents in the life of Mohammed and describe the sunnah, his sayings and way of life. They are considered revealed truth from Allah.
So, having come across this great resource, I thought I'd give it a spin. I entered the search term, "women" and found a lot of things to warm the hearts of the feminists among the multiculturalists who tell us that Islam is a religion of tolerance and peace. Like this one:
Volume 1, Book 6, Number 301:
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
This is the hadith often quoted by Islamic scholars as the religious foundation for treating women as second-class citizens: Mohammed did it, good Muslims copy the life of Mohammed as much as possible, so we do it."
I encourage those curious about Islam to peruse this database. Regardless of what search terms you put in, you'll find a whole lot of material about menstruation and going to the bathroom, something Mohammed seemed to be very concerned with.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:36 PM
REPRESSION in CHINA and the MUSLIM WORLD
Instapundit is linking to a number of items in the blogosphere critical of the Chinese government’s actions toward free speech on the net, while there’s been a recent flow of commentary remarking on the risks inherent in the world’s increasing engagement with China’s “superheated” economy, like this one and this one. It’s enough to get one concerned about the “yellow peril”
Regular readers will know that I’ve been engaged with China in some way for over 25 years, and friends, colleagues and competitors know that currently a good deal of my law practice is focused on China. All of which makes me humble about striking out with bold assertions regarding what’s right or wrong with China and what’s good or bad about China’s role as a developing society and economy. The reality of China is so big and complex, and the changes that have been happening there during my life as an observer of China are so sweeping, that it’s difficult for me to make straight-forward statements that aren’t bogged down with a multitude of caveats. Nevertheless, I can say that as a matter of principle, repression of free speech in China is wrong. I know the sincere pain that this causes to supporters of the current order who do support free expression in their hearts, but also hold a deep dread of the harm that could come with a collapse of public order if the current regime were to vanish.
Ultimately, I’m hopeful that positive change will continue in China. Why am I optimistic about China and not so about the Islamic world, the other great culture pressing itself onto the world stage? First, although the repression of free expression that continues in China is wrong and painful, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown signs that it can and will change over time to tolerate increasing freedom. Anyone who remembers the horror of the Cultural Revolution and yet sees today’s China knows this. Second, regardless of the thin veneer of Marxist cant that one still finds in official ideology, the fact is that the core of communist faith is steadily eroding at all levels. Neither of these things – or analogies to them – is seen in the Muslim world. The trend in the Muslim world is negative: individual freedom has been decreasing over the last 50 years, and the underlying foundation of irrational religious fervor that drives the theft of freedom is stronger than ever in the Middle East and elsewhere.
With the exceptions of brief periods when the absolutist and totalitarian “legalist” mentality of Qin Shihang have been ascendant, the Chinese people have often expressed a culture of ideological flexibility that is able to adapt and give rise to social structures in which individuals can live comfortably and prosper. Yes, as I’ve written before, the hierarchical nature of Confucian moral precepts and Confucianism's tendancy toward a static world-view are problematic. But there are elements of the rich soil of thousands of years of Chinese culture that reformers can work with to create a modern, open society. Not so those who have Islam to deal with as the raw material for change. In Islam, one has a primitive world-view of submission and terror. The Chinese have always been able to find sly and creative ways for the individual to prosper and grow, regardless of the cultural “superstructure” fashionable at any particular time.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:48 AM
Thursday, November 06, 2003
AIR POWER
I'm an air power military junkie, always fighting an infection of "Billy Mitchellism." For fellow air-power nuts, here's a great interview with Col. Walter Boyne, the retired head of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The interview contains some very insightful analysis of air power throughout the 20th Cnetury.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:36 PM
WHY I AM NOT A "CONSERVATIVE"
The First in a Series
Here's an article by Pat Buchanan in a magazine called The American Conservative that illustrates why I'll never be a "conservative:"
The mega-issues on which the Bushes abandoned conservatism for the Hong Kong values of the Wall Street Journal are free-trade globalism, open-borders immigration, and Wilsonian interventionism.
The important point is that "real conservatives" in America aren't capitalists and don't hold liberty or human life as primary values. They will sacrifice capitalism, liberty and life every time there's a conflict between these values and the fantasy they cherish of a Norman Rockwell past of small-town and small-farmer virtues.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:56 AM
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
APOSTATES
I came across Apostates of Islam, a website devoted to spreading the truth about Islam, created by ex-Muslims. Unfortunately, 99.999999% of Muslims will never encounter this or anything like it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 1:06 PM
VIRUS BOUNTY
What a great idea -- Microsoft is offering a large bounty for info leading to the arrest of the authors of a couple of bad viruses. I think this is a superb concept and ought to be applied to a wider range of cyber crime, including spam.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:13 AM
STREISAND'S WHINES
Barbara Streisand is whining that CBS' decision not to air the movie it made about Ronald and Nancy Reagan "is censorship, pure and simple." No, Barbara, censorship would be if the government had taken some action to stop the network from airing the piece. It didn't. Private citizens did. That's not censorship, that's one group of people influencing another group of people through speech -- just what you want to do. I know you're not very smart, Babs, so this has to be set out very simply for you: "censorship" that means anything requires government action.
Oh, and the movie's going to be shown on cable, anyway. What a whiner!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:05 AM
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
MATRIX REDUNDANT
CNN reviewer Paul Clinton is panning the (mercifully) last of the Matrix movies. I probably won't bother to see it unless there's nothing else to rent at Blockbuster next summer. I made the mistake of wasting 10 yuan on a pirate DVD of the second movie that I watched one wasted night in Beijing earlier this year. Despite having one (or maybe 1.5) good ideas and some truly cool special effects, the first movie was profoundly stupid, in my opinion: batteries? Come on. With the gross, ham-fisted, pseudo-"philosophy" and post-modern gobbledegook mechanically mouthed by the "characters", even the first movie was hard to take. Stretching the whole thing out into three films is painful.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:26 PM
MORE MOBILITY
Back during the run-up to the Iraq war, one of the constant themes of my military commentary was the need for greater global mobility -- strategic agility -- for U.S. forces. Part of the diplomatic problem was the long, drawn-out period of build-up created by the ponderous logistical train that had to be positioned to and prepared in Kuwait. The U.S. military is doing something about it. Here's an article about a new class of ship -- to be operated by the Army -- that will be used to provide much quicker deployment capabilities.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:47 PM
1000-YEAR PEAK FOR SOLAR ACTIVITY
Here's an article about research showing that the sun is at the highest level of sunspot activity it's had for a millennium. I'm sure the Greens will blame the Bush Administration for this, but I haven't yet figured out how.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 12:44 PM
Monday, November 03, 2003
CHINA'S NUKES AND MISSILE DEFENSE
Here's an article reviewing intelligence on China's ICBM and nuke arsenal and plans. I didn't know it but, according to this report's sources, China hasn't so far developed multiple warhead technology (MIRVs). Meanwhile, here's a report on the current state of the U.S. missile defense program and the defense establishment's plans for its further development. Read side-by-side, there's an interesting symmetry here...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:52 PM
WERNER VON BRAUN ON TRIAL
Two recent items have criticized the so-called "von Braun Master Plan" -- the ideas presented to the American public by Werner von Braun in a series of articles in Colliers magazine in 1952, illustrated by Chesley Bonestell paintings (and a few years later, with the same pictures, in books co-authored by Willy Ley). Here's an article in today's Space Daily by Jeffrey Bell and here's a more technically detailed piece in Mark Wade's great site, Encyclopedia Astronautica on the subject.
For space enthusiasts of my generation, these items address one of the foundational documents of our approach to space development. The two items cited above are correct about one thing: the Colliers articles were hugely influential in forming the American public's attitude toward space exploration and development. The ideas and images they communicated were my first exposure to the romance and possible reality of the dream of creating a meaningful human presence off Earth, and they planted seeds in the minds and hearts of millions of people that bore the fruit of the Apollo program and, as the authors mentioned above correctly point out, also have ended up with the problems inherent in the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station as we have them now. And I don't disagree with the technical criticisms of von Braun's plan as it was proposed back in the early 1950s. The question is whether the underlying goals and basic over-all program of the Colliers articles are fundamentally flawed.
Bell answers this question in the affirmative, but he does it mainly by attacking the technical details of a plan developed over 50 years ago and five years before the first satellite was launched into orbit. The few comments he makes about the fundamental question -- whether we should be engaged in manned spaceflight at all -- are deeply flawed. Bell says the Solar System is a "less interesting place" than von Braun and Bonestell and Ley imagined. He's wrong, for reasons I don't have time to get into this morning. He also correctly states that the "foundational documents" of the manned space endeavor were premised on a misconception about the relative value of manned versus unmanned activity in space. About that, he's correct, but he jumps to the conclusion that this negates the basic value of the von Braun "Master Plan." Again, Bell is wrong, because his vision is far too narrow and short. Space development isn't about the immediate benefits that can accrue from things like GPS and weather sattelites. In the long run, space development is about making a sustainable and permanent settlement of the solar system.
I'll write more on this subject soon, but for now, I'm off to work.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:40 AM
THREE GORGES DAM FOR SALE
The BBC is reporting that the Three Gorges Dam is making a domestic equity share offering in China. For someone who's been studying China for over twenty five years, news items like this are so amazing that commentary is difficult. The fact alone stands as a marker that speaks for itself about the gargantuan transformation that China has experienced in that time period.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:12 AM
Sunday, November 02, 2003
CHINESE PROPAGANDA
More or less random link-clicking led me to Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages. This is a sampling of over 50 years of Chinese graphic political and social art and design (almost all of it "official" -- in the service of the Party or some faction). While much of it is in the "Chinese Socialist Realism" style we became accustomed to during the Cultural Revolution, other styles can be found here, including the traditional kiche "nianhua" New Year's pictures, as well as more modern and edgy design from the current era, including a new section with images relating to China's space program. Well worth a visit.
It took me a while to find it, but the third-to-last image on the page devoted to posters celebrating Zhou Enlai hung on my wall for years -- I bout it in Beijing in 1979 when it was new. You Yinglaile Dong Fang Hong!
(Note: The author provides handy English translations if you hold your mouse over the images without clicking in Internet Explorer.)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:47 PM
WHAT NEIL REALLY SAID
After all these years, the truth about what Neil Armstrong really said when he first set foot on the moon.
(Not for those with sensitive ears. I almost coughed up a lung I laughed so hard. Courtesy of Michael Dougan's Dougonics.)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:36 AM
THE REAL WAR
Regular readers of this blog may think I'm obsessed with Islamofascism -- I'm constantly pointing to items about the dangerous craziness in the Muslim world. This item by a Jewish officer in the U.S. Army who served during the initial stage of combat operations in Iraq goes a long way to expressing the thoughts that have led me to this point:
While patrolling the streets of Baghdad, I often got involved in political conversations with secular, educated, and "moderate" Iraqis about the war against Iraq, Israel, the Jews, and America. To my surprise, most of them held wildly irrational beliefs about the world. For example, most of them would swear that Ariel Sharon pressured a reluctant President Bush to go to war against Iraq [or] that the CIA put Saddam Hussein, a CIA agent, in power to allow U.S. forces to take Iraqi oil and impoverish Iraq. Finally, they were convinced that the CIA is an organization controlled by the Mossad and that powerful Zionists dominate Washington, D.C.! In fact, most Arabs in the world believe these absurdities. These beliefs are the product of years of intense brainwashing by their education[al] system, mass media and political and religious leaders. These beliefs turn educated, intelligent Arab family men into hijackers that slam passenger planes into buildings and homicide bombers that murder as may Jews as possible on Israeli buses.
We are not at war against terrorism; we are at war against an ideology. I consider this ideology to be the product of a dangerous mental disease. It is a disease that has infected millions of Arabs into believing that by destroying the enemy -- the Jew, the State of Israel, and the "Great Satan" America -- past Arab pride and glory [will] be restored. This mental illness is slowly but deliberately plunging the world into World War III.
Read the whole article and then ask yourself whether the author isn't right that we are dealing with what the world faced in the 1930s: A dangerous ideology that has the potential to ignite another world war. Then ask yourself whether averting your gaze can possibly be the right reaction to what is happening. In one way, 911 was like lifting a rock and seeing that a nest of poisonous snakes had been breeding in our own backyard.
We can't "eradicate" this problem with force, per se. But kidding ourselves about how dangerous it is will only make it worse. We have to be realistic about what the world is facing: A threat to civilization itself, just as it did from the 1930s to the 1980s with other forms of totalitarianism.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:29 AM
SCIENCE vs. THE GREENS IN THE UK
The BBC is reporting on a letter sent to Tony Blair, signed by over 100 emminent scientists protesting the British government's silence in the face of the Greens' irrational campaign against genetically modified plants. You can see the complete list of signatories here, which is basically a who's who of biology in the UK. Will Blair have the guts to take on the simpering Greens? Mind you, this is a country in which one can find vigorous protests against fly fisherman because of the "cruelty" involved.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:49 AM
READING MATTER
I've updated my current reading page.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:18 AM
Saturday, November 01, 2003
GPCR
Middle-aged China hands like me will recognize that as the acronym for the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (wenhua da geming) of the 1960s and '70s. Surfing China blogs, I came across Morning Sun, a site devoted to the history of the Cultural Revolution. This is a tough subject to approach without strong feelings, but the site does a good job of laying out a mix of contemporaneous documents and images and more recent commentary and explication. I was fascinated by History for the Masses, an essay written in the early 1990s by Geremie R. Barme about the process of looking back at the GPCR that had gone on since the "official" end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978. Overall this site is great resource.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:02 PM
FLYPAPER