Best of the Century

I’m not a fan of lists. In fact, after the AFI released about a hundred of their stupid “Top 100” lists, I pretty much swore off the things. Without validating the list concept, let’s consider the ASME 20th Century Mechanical Engineering Achievements a collection of interesting stuff. I especially like the reference to the Ribbon Machine, which I’d never heard of before.

Tectonic shift

Yet another “why isn’t this bigger news?” item, hat tip: BlackFive. The Belmont Club reports on Zalmay Khalilzad’s remarks at the CSIS on July 11:

I will give my bottom line up front. I believe Americans, while remaining tactically patient about Iraq, should be strategically optimistic. Most important, a major change – a tectonic shift – has taken place in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community. A year ago, Sunni Arabs were outside of the political process and hostile to the United States. They boycotted the January 2005 election and were underrepresented in the transitional national assembly. Today, Sunni Arabs are full participants in the political process, with their representation in the national assembly now proportional to their share of the population. Also, they have largely come to see the United States as an honest broker in helping Iraq’s communities come together around a process and a plan to stabilize the country.

How dumb is this?

Dear US Government:

I am a church. Please give me visas for my, uh “brethren” Religious Workers.

A report on the investigation, obtained by the Globe, said that instances of fraud were particularly high among applicants from predominantly Muslim countries, and the report raised concerns about potential terrorism risks.

Iran looking for war?

Omar, blogging on IraqTheModel, gives his take on what the axis of evil is up to.

I don’t know for sure what made Hizbollah do what they did this morning but I can make some guesses starting from the fact that Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbollah collectively form one big axis of evil in the Middle East with connected interests and shared goals so the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers looks like an act planned to serve the interests of the members of the axis without the least regard to the harm it can bring upon Lebanon.

The whole thing is worth reading. The sad part is his parting shot:

Those extremists do not understand the language of compromise and they do not believe in negotiating even if they declare the opposite.
They want a war and I think they’re going to get one.

Turning D.C. into England

Tsk, tsk. Seems they’re having to declare a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital.

District of Columbia Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared a crime emergency in the city after Senitt, a volunteer for the potential presidential campaign of former Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, was killed.

The crime emergency declaration allows commanders more flexibility to adjust officers’ schedules and reassign them to high-crime areas.

What a surprize that D.C. is becoming dangerous just like London. Gee. I wonder what they could have in common?

Perhaps they just haven’t considered trying this.

England to outlaw choosing baby’s sex

Here’s a real head-scratcher from Jolly Olde.

Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a “clear and specific ban” on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.

My question for Flint is how exactly do you enforce this without completely outlawing abortion? Not to worry, though. Perhaps you won’t be able to determine your baby’s sex, but whether he and/or she has a dad will be completely optional.

Ms Flint also indicated that rules allowing fertility clinics to block treatment for single women and lesbian couples could be scrapped. Present regulations include the need for a father in considerations of the future child’s welfare – an element the Government considered should go, she said.

Orwell was an optimist.

Don’t Assume the Worst

Skepticism has an honored place in science. But when it becomes cynicism it threatens to do damage to science and, hence, to all of us. Jonathan Adler blogs on the Volokh Conspiracy about why private funding of research doesn’t have to mean a conflict of interest.

There is no question that some researchers may be influenced by their sources of funding. Research protocols may be altered to increase the likelihood that test results please private benefactors or generate government grants. But a given study or scientist’s source of funding does not inherently taint research results. Over time, the scientific process weeds out those results that result from sloppiness or greed. Those who attack private funding of scientific and medical research have sought to don the public interest mantle, but if they are successful, we will all be worse off.

The Courts Get One Right

As reported on arstechnica, a Colorado court has ruled that third parties may not bowdlerize movies, even if they call it “sanitizing”, without the permission of the copyright holders. When I first heard radio ads for Cleanflicks I got dizzy from the simultaneous eye roll and jaw drop. I’m glad they lost this suit.

This a victory for intellectual property rights, and should have been a slam dunk on those merits alone.

I have no patience for people who alter someone else’s work. I think pan-and-scan transfers are an abomination, but re-editing someone’s film is just vandalism.

But I also have a question for the customers of these services: What are you thinking?

Are you so knee-jerk, dim-wittedly prudish as to think that just removing the nudity or swearing from “objectionable” movies automatically makes them OK? So much so that you’ll relegate your responsibility to choose your entertainment carefully to some drone in Utah? And do you really think that all movies with no nudity or swearing are fit for the whole family?

What would Cleanflicks do with a movie chock-a-block full of profanity and vulgarity, but whose plot could have been written by Focus on the Family? And what about one with no nudity or naughty words, but truly ugly ideas?

This is worse, and (ubelievably) even more stupid than letting the MPAA decide what you should see. You have a brain. Use it. And, if you can’t, how about just not watching the movie at all if you fear it’s objectionable? Surely you have better things to do.

Don’t support vandals just because you’re too lazy to make intelligent entertainment choices.

Robots at War

Blackfive posts images of EOD using a robot to destroy an IED. The robot gives his all, thus making EOD people thankful for robots.

Democrats Admit “Gun Control” is a Losing Issue

USA Today reports that someone wised up.

“When we as Democrats are trying to reach out and speak to voters in the center of the country, I don’t think that we can support gun control,” he explains. After seeing Democrats hammered at the polls for voting to regulate guns, many of his colleagues seem to agree. As a result, a number of pro-gun measures moving through Congress will most likely face little opposition, as advocates of gun control increasingly find themselves marginalized and ignored.

Well, a little. Some people are slow learners.

Gun-control proponents should avoid efforts like the assault weapons ban that were more effective at agitating gun owners than at preventing gun violence, says Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. He recommends targeting unscrupulous dealers, and points to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who leads a coalition of over 50 mayors backing a crackdown on illegal gun sales. For backers of gun control, perhaps that’s a start.

Anything Nurse Bloomberg suggests is sure to be a bad idea.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It’s that time of year again. This year’s Bulwer-Lytton winner has been announced:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Emergency Over, Saith the Court

Charles Krauthammer on the Supreme Court’s arrogant power grab in Hamdan:

The court’s wanton overriding of Congress and the president is another in a long string of breathtaking acts of judicial arrogance. But it is fixable. The Republican leadership of the Senate responded to the court’s highhandedness by immediately embarking on writing legislation to establish military tribunals.

The unfixable part of the Hamdan ruling, however, is the court’s reading of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions, which were designed to protect civilian populations and those combatants who respect them, were never intended to apply to unlawful combatants, terrorists of the al-Qaeda kind. The court tortures the reading of Common Article 3 to confer upon Hamdan — and by extension the man for whom he rode shotgun, bin Laden — the kind of elaborate legal protections that one expects from “civilized peoples.”

Old Myths Die Hard

Today’s entry in the “everything you know is wrong” category is a paper which debunks the myth that the Gulf Stream is what keeps Europe warm.

Like many other myths, this one rests on a strand of truth. The Gulf Stream carries with it considerable heat when it flows out from the Gulf of Mexico and then north along the East Coast before departing U.S. waters at Cape Hatteras and heading northeast toward Europe. All along the way, it warms the overlying atmosphere. In the seas between Norway and Newfoundland, the current has lost so much of its heat, and the water has become so salty (through evaporation), that it is dense enough to sink. The return flow occurs at the bottom of the North Atlantic, also along the eastern flank of North America. This overturning is frequently referred to as the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation, or simply the “Atlantic conveyor.” It is part of the global pattern of ocean circulation, which is driven by winds and the exchange of heat and water vapor at the sea surface.

The Gulf Stream indeed contributes to Europe’s warmth, but it is wrong to conflate the climate difference across the North Atlantic with the northward flow of warm water in the Gulf Stream. This erroneous logic leads to such statements as (from The Times of London): “The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt.” Such claims are absolutely wrong.

The interesting part is that it turns out England owes its mild climate mostly to a prominent feature of American geography.

Islam: The Roach Motel of Religions

You’re allowed in. But you’re not allowed out. At least according to this letter from the Dark Ages

Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God.

A missive from the Middle East? Nope.

East Lansing, Michigan.

Meanwhile, over in the real Middle East, kiddies who are too young to be tempted by 72 raisins are lured to kiddie paradise by a music video.

Now tell me Islam isn’t sick.

If the fire is not completely out, it is completely burning

Michael Yon checks in with There be dragons, an update of Afghanistan in the news.

Iraq is not a quagmire and might be a good ally some day, but Afghanistan is a stone-aged disaster.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, even though it’s a long post, just for the analysis of the British press, if nothing else.

Pot declines linkage to Kettle

In the wierd world of the MSM this perhaps passes for “integrity”. Seems to me more a case of “I’m not as bad as that guy, even though I probably would have done the same thing.”

Steiger said he was approached to be part of the Op-Ed last week, but declined to say who made the request or exactly when. “I don’t want to go into details,” he said. “We talked about it and I decided it did not work. I considered it and I decided not to go in because our position was different from theirs.”

Iraqis taking care of business

Add to the list of things that should be bigger news this item from Iraq The Model: The folks in Samarra have put a bounty on the mastermind of the Golden Dome bombing.

The 100 million dinars (~ $ 68 000) is not a lot of money compared to the multi-million rewards offered by governments for similar hunts but when it comes from a single tribe (or even a bunch of them) it reflects the seriousness of these people in what they’re saying and doing.

Supreme Folly

This is a few days old, but make sure you don’t miss it. Mark Steyn scores a bullseye.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now blown a hole in the animating principle behind the Geneva Conventions by choosing to elevate an enemy that disdains the laws of war in order to facilitate the bombing of civilian targets and the beheading of individuals. The argument made by Justice John Paul Stevens is an Alice-In-Jihadland ruling that stands the Conventions on their head in order to give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent. The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U..S Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad — or, if you’re a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman’s right to Jews.

What did al Zarqawi have in common with Paris Hilton?

Hint: it has to do with cell phones.

Not sure I believe everything in that article.

Meanwhile, al-Zarqawi’s wife told an Italian newspaper that al Qaeda leaders sold him out to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Riiiiight.

They already knew the colonists were fed up

Powerline lets us know what would have happened had the NYT been around for the revolution.