Monday, May 31, 2004
PJ ON POINT
P.J. O'Rourke writes a bitingly funny piece suggesting that America should disengage from the world and discusses the results.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:32 AM
Sunday, May 30, 2004
PRIVATE ROCKETS: LEAD, FOLLOW or GET OUT OF THE WAY
Here's a report in the mainstream press about the effort in Congress now to create a regulatory framework for the looming reality of privately-funded, manned space launches. The U.S. government has a golden opportunity here to do with private space access what it did with the Internet: apply a little fertilizer and get the heck out of the way and let a new industry grow under it's own power. I hope Congress has the wisdom to do that.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 12:19 PM
Saturday, May 29, 2004
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND HINDUTVA
Although few in America were aware of it, the BJP party in India, the party just voted out of power in India's national elections, was closely tied up with an ideology known as "hindutva." Hindutva was a mishamash of Hindu nationalism and spiritualism. One of the central tenets of hindutva was the claim that Hinduism, alone among religions, is compatible with the truths revealed by modern science. However, along with this came the claims that such hoodoo as astrology and so-called "ayurvedic medicine" (a favorite of the crystal-power New-Agers in the West like nutcase popular guru Deepak Chopra) were also consistent with and, in fact, proven true by modern science. As a result, during the BJP's rule, departments of astrology and the like were established at mainstream Indian universities.
Here's a good article about the chance that India now has, with the BJP out of power, to take a second chance at reason.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:48 AM
ALLAH'S NUKES
Here's a translation of a report presented to the Iranian "Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening," what amounts to Iran's religious foreign ministry, that pretty clearly sets out the policy of using ballistic missiles to attack western cities.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:53 AM
THE ANTI-ENLIGHTENMENT
Here's a review of a book about the rising tide of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and general anti-science, written from a British perspective. The author
reckons we're living through a counter-revolution against the Enlightenment, that revolution in human affairs when reason was elevated over tradition and superstition to become, in the words of one author, 'the arbiter of truth and the foundation of objective knowledge'. 'The Enlightenment brought us out of the dark', says Wheen. 'Now we seem to be heading back in.' In his book he celebrates the Enlightenment's gains - how it led to the 'waning of absolutism and superstition, the rise of secular democracy, the transformation of historical and scientific study'. The Enlightenment put us centre stage, says Wheen, as the makers of history and destiny. 'Yet now, 200 years later, there are people who believe their Tuesday mornings are determined by the alignment of the planets'.
This book seems to precisely echo the ideas I expressed in this speech I gave three years ago. I've linked to this a few times before here because it remains the most detailed statement I've made to date of my view of where the world is these days. Had I had more time, I suppose it would have become a book; basically the book reviewed at the link listed above...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:16 AM
Friday, May 28, 2004
WHY I AM NOT A CONSERVATIVE
More in a Continuing Series
Michael Totten fisks Pat Buchanan. Don't miss it. Buchanan really appears to be tone deaf to the music that he sings along with the Taliban and the ayatollahs.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 2:38 PM
Thursday, May 27, 2004
THE BIG SLEEP
The two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been doing some of the most exciting planetary science of all time. It's dropped out of the mainstream news, but I check in on them every couple of days at the mission's web site.
There have been challenges. As expected, the charge available from the rovers' solar panels is steadily decreasing, as day by day they collect a coating of Martian dust. Opportunity has a faulty thermostat on a heater on its arm, which has been draining power. Here's a story about a risky new program that's been loaded on the rover to conserve power: Putting it into a "deep sleep" overnight that shuts off all of its heaters. Even if one or more instruments are lost due to this, I'm betting that at least one of the rovers is still ticking along months from now.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:38 AM
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
WHO RUNS THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT?
Here's an interesting website by a Brit who became disillusioned with the antiwar movement in England. The author who was and remains opposed to the Iraq war, devotes quite a bit of energy to the task of showing that the anti-war movement in Britain during 2003 was organized and led by hard-core Stalinists (just as the "A.N.S.W.E.R." group in the US is).
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:21 AM
IRAQI GAS
Presence of sarin nerve gas has been confirmed in the artillery shell that was found in a roadside bomb in Iraq recently. This will be minimized by the anti-war left, of course, but the manner of its deployment indicates that it was part of a pre-existing munition. Where did it come from?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:16 AM
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
LIAR, LIAR
With his disgraceful victory at Cannes, Michael Moore is the subject of some scrutiny right now. Here's a piece at the Observer with some great details from Moore's past and present.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:44 AM
Sunday, May 23, 2004
FLOATING TO SPACE
Here's an article about a project to use airships to get to orbit cheaply. I was skeptical at first, but I followed the links, thought about it... and it seems possible. It's so cheap, why not try?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:39 PM
Saturday, May 22, 2004
MICHAEL MOORE WINS CANNES
I just heard on NPR that Michael Moore's new so-called documentary won the Cannes Film Festifal Palm d'Or award. On NPR they said this was a "surprise." Yeah, right; big surprise. A European love-fest for the hate-America-first crowd and they give disgusting liar Michael Moore a big, slobbery kiss? What a surprise!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:36 PM
IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who took part in the 1995 prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, tells it like it is:
Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a method. You cannot, and you do not, make war on a method. War is made on an identified – and identifiable – enemy.
In the here and now, that enemy is militant Islam – a very particular practice and interpretation of a very particular set of religious, political and social principles.
Now that is a very disturbing, very discomfiting thing to say in 21st-century America. It is the very definition of politically incorrect. But it is a fact. And it is important both to say it and to understand it.
We have a rich and worthy tradition of religious tolerance in America. It is an enormous part of what makes America great. It led our government, within hours of the 9-11 attacks, to announce to the world that Islam was not and is not our enemy.
But we have taken the ostrich routine way too far. A commitment in favor of toleration is not the same as a commitment against examination. We have been so paralyzed by the fear of being portrayed as an enemy of Islam that we've lost our voice on a very salient question: What will be the Islam of the 21st century? Will it be the Islam of the militants, or the Islam of the moderates?
Read the whole thing.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 3:54 PM
Friday, May 21, 2004
CULTURE MATTERS
But some people aren't happy when the wrong people say it in the wrong places. Tough.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:02 AM
Thursday, May 20, 2004
END OF CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY?
Here's a potentially momentous development, from a post at Living in China.
"The one-child policy was never intended to last forever," explained sociology professor Guo Zhigang of Beijing University, predicting that Beijing would follow Shanghai's example within three years and that other provinces would follow
The world's largest experiment in social engineering by government fiat is going to be shut down - and seeing what is happening elsewhere, you wonder how necessary it all was.
She sees this as a profoundly good thing because a.) the ensuing drop in femal infanticide will help correct China's unwieldy gender imbalance, and b.) it will also help eliminate the "population bulge" of Chinese who are now in middle age, ensuring there'll be enough people working to support them when they retire.
Assuming the "prosperity effect" being seen all over the successfully developing world (human fertility naturally decreasing as people urbanize and become more wealthy) applies in China, this may well be a good development on purely biological and economic grounds, as well as being a clear move toward progress in human rights.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:52 AM
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
"NEWS" AS A WEAPON
Check out this well-written article about the role of the mass media in actual military tactics, and the statistical comparisons of casualty figures in the Iraq war to those from previous conflicts.
(I normally try not to just republish links I find at Glenn Reynold's blog, but the last couple of days he's found such good stuff that I can't resist.)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:02 AM
Monday, May 17, 2004
TO CRITICS OF THE IRAQ WAR
Read this. Then get back to me.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 12:47 PM
BELATED BURCHISMO BIRTHDAY
I just realized that Burchismo had its first birthday on May 9. Here's the inagural post.
Thanks to all my regular readers!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:36 AM
BATCAVE UPDATE
This weekend we did some major work to update my home office, affectionately known around my real office as "the batcave." We used parts lying around and a few new components to build a new desktop with the fastest available Athlon chip, and then put together video signal splitters and KVM switches so I can distribute each of the three desktops to either of the two 19" flatscreens on the desk. Here's a picture.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:06 AM
GAY MARRIAGE AND THE "CONSERVATIVES"
This is another in a series of "why I am not a conservative" posts. Consider gay marriage. There's a joke going around that runs like this:
I don't get gays. The two things most men try to avoid, military service and marriage, they're fighting to have!
Like a lot of jokes about social matters, there's an element of ironic truth here. These two issues are close to the hearts of most people that would call themselves "conservative." They think people ought to stand up and serve their country, and that they ought to make long-term commitments to monogamous relationships ... but not gays. To me, that's just bald hypocrisy. I guess I'm with Dennis Miller on this one:
"If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn't care less," he said. "It's their business. If some foreigner wants to blow their wedding up, I want my government to eliminate him."
That pretty much sums up my attitude.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:54 AM
Saturday, May 15, 2004
MORE INSANE CRUELTY
Roger Simon is reporting that an Arabic television network has gotten photos and videotapes of the hideous torture that went on in Saddam's prisons including, presumably, Abu Ghraib. As commentators at his site note, film of Nazi atrocities was released after WWII, and it may have had an impact on how the public judged the justice of the Allied cause. Let 'em roll.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 1:03 PM
Friday, May 14, 2004
SHAME AND INSANE CRUELTY
I've been ruminating for days on the horror and shame of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. How much impact should it have on my support for the war in Iraq?
Then the Zarqawi beheading of Nicholas Berg... It's turning out that Berg's family were opponents of the war and Berg himself was probably a naive idealist and perhaps almost a friend to the Islamists. Of all the people to kill (it seems only for being Jewish) and of all the ways to kill him, Zarqawi couldn't have done more to rekindle my support for the war.
It's disgusting that some of our soldiers did what they did in Abu Ghraib, and justice needs to be done. But Zarqawi did all that was necessary to ensure I wouldn' waver in my support for the war. Here's a piece at Reason magazine that expresses my feelings on the subject.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:36 PM
HIGHER, FASTER!
Burt Rutan's Spaceship One X-Prize entry had its third powered flight yesterday. Initial reports indicate that it reached 200,000 feet in altitude.
Way to go, Burt!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:30 AM
Thursday, May 13, 2004
VICTORY
Yesterday the court granted a JNOV motion for one of our major energy clients in a case we tried in January. To the nonlawyers, this means we won. My partner John Hall, the Atticus Finch of commercial trial lawyers, was lead counsel. I had a smaller part in the trial because I had just finished trying another case the week before and John had been doing the heavy lifting all along. Associates Antroy Arreola, Chris Dove and Jesus Garcia also moved heaven and earth to achieve this victory. Way to go!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:20 AM
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
FREE FALL TO THE BOTTOM -- BUT NOT ON TV?
So the Islamazoids behead an American, putting the video on the web, and that's too gruesome to put on television (except Arabic television). But the world's media have no problem broadcasting the images of American soldiers' idiotic sadism with Iraqi prisoners. What's the deal?
UPDATE: In case my point is too subtle, this makes it clear.
UPDATE: I suppose it's not so obvious to those who have no sense of moral balance. For them, I say go here (where you'll find stills from the beheading video):
Regarding the issue of alleged prisoner abuse, which served as the pretext for this exercise in Islamic justice, I have a modest proposal: no prisoners.
And I curse the prison guards in question, the people in the Pentagon who leaked the photos from the prison, the media who broadcast those images, and the politicians who have used this issue for political gain, all of whom have acted without regard for the consequences.
Nick Berg's blood is on all of them. May they all rot in hell.
I don't agree with this sentiment, but I understand it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:21 PM
HAYEK
Francis Fukuyama reviews a new book about Hayek that sounds very interesting. (When will I ever have time?!?!?)
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:54 AM
Sunday, May 09, 2004
NANCY REAGAN JOINS THE PARTY OF LIFE
She supports stem cell research. The God Squad won't like that!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:23 PM
Saturday, May 08, 2004
ANTHEA'S WEB
After years of saying she had no interest in "computers," my wife suddenly taught herself enough to become dangerous on the Internet. (Ebay had something to do with it ... imagine that.) After getting tired of receiving a zillion emails from her Ebay buddies on my machine, a friend of mine and I got her set up last night on her own machine, a cool, wide-screen notebook (that's got a faster processor than any of the machines here in the Batcave), installing a wireless router for our network connection in the process. Worked like a charm (once we realized that the notebook had a separate hardware on/off switch for the wireless radio on the outside of the notebook -- doh!). She's got her own domain, here.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:59 AM
Thursday, May 06, 2004
THE TORTURE SCANDAL and OUR PLACE IN IRAQ
It's bad and I now feel sure it's going to get worse. We're dealing with a culture driven by honor and shame. How stupid were the people who did this? They took pictures of their idiotic wrongdoing. Thanks a lot! This is worth a couple of nukes to al Quada. The people who did this did a lot of damage to the Western cause. It will hasten the day when it becomes obvious to everybody that "we" can't "impose democracy" in Iraq. We need to do what we can to "stabilize" the situation and get out of the Tigris-Euphrates valley (note I didn't say get out of Iraq) as soon as possible.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:52 AM
Sunday, May 02, 2004
ROBOT TO THE RESCUE (FOR HUBBLE)
Here's a piece about a group that has a very well thought-out proposal to save the Hubble Space Telescope with a robotic mission. The proposal is to build a solar-powered xenon/electric-thruster robot at the International Space Station (ISS), which would then use that power to transit to Hubble, capture it and return it to the ISS for servicing. Once refurbished, Hubble would be replaced into a working orbit with the robot. The robot would then return to ISS, where it's solar power capabilities would supplement the ISS's power needs and where it would also serve as a reboost thruster for the ISS.
This is an ingenious proposal and it can work: it uses proven technology and can be accomplished before the 2007-08 shelf-life NASA has defined for Hubble's current hardware. Best of all, it takes advantage of "the best of both worlds," employing robots where humans can't go and humans to do work that robots can't do. To top it off, it's being designed by a private company with technology from all over the world. What's not to like?
For reasons I'll discuss here in a couple of weeks (after a case I have going to trial in mid-May), I have to make nice with NASA right now, so I'll try to be diplomatic: HEY NASA! DO IT!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:48 AM
Saturday, May 01, 2004
KERRY'S GOT PROBLEMS
It's out in the open now: If the New York Times (official organ of the Democratic Party) says so, then Kerry's not conducting a very effective campaign.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:39 PM
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
I've had quite a bit of correspondence lately about my view that the modern world is in a deep and protracted struggle with the Islamic world. Some of it is here. I thought I'd write some more about this this weekend, or at least post up some more of that existing correspondence on my wesite and link to it here in Burchismo. But Steven Den Beste has done the work for me. I put more stress on the actual theological problems with Islam than Den Beste does, and perhaps less on the military/imperial history than he does in my analysis, but only slightly so. Basically, I think he's got it right.
And basically, this is a very dark view. The Left and most of Europe (i.e. the Left) will blame Bush's agressive policies for what is to come, but it was coming, anyway: We've got years, perhaps decades, of violent conflict with the Islamic world ahead of us. Sooner or later we'll have to realize that the only thing that is making this necessary is our dependence on oil from the Middle East. The culture that is attempting to destroy us is on artifical life support through the money pumped into the Middle East for oil. If that stopped, our enemy would wither and die, or change.
I'll say it as clearly as I can: If we're at war -- and we are -- where is the "Manhattan Project"? Where are our leaders? Why isn't developing technologies that will free us from dependence on oil our number one priority as a civilization?
UPDATE (20040603): Steven Den Beste has made a post on his blog reacting to the "Manhattan Project" idea mentioned here, and I've replied.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:46 AM
