Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Email me at my first name, the at symbol, then my domain, which is first name, last name, .com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet!
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Saturday, September 21, 2002
San Francisco: What An Ugly Place It Has Become Instapundit has a link to Joanne Jacob's review of Samantha Spivack criticism in the San Francisco Examiner. I agree. I lived in the Bay Area until December of 2001, and I did my best to avoid San Francisco. In April of 2001, I traveled to New York City to give a speech at Columbia University. I was pleasantly surprised. If I had to choose between living in Manhattan, or San Francisco, I might well choose Manhattan (in spite of New York City's insane gun laws). People in Manhattan were at least polite. Brusque, in a hurry, but polite. San Francisco? You must be kidding. Manhattan was clean. San Francisco? The smell of urine in the city hall area makes me hold my nose whenever I walk through there. Homeless beggars? I don't think I saw more than one or two while I was in Manhattan. San Francisco has armies of them. Big cities really aren't my choice, but San Francisco reeks. You Won't Find Opinion Pieces Like This In San Francisco Bay Area Newspapers! This was published in the September 21st Idaho Statesman:
Friday, September 20, 2002
What Happens When Reality Impacts the ACLU The following news story shows that at least one FBI agent has the ability to predict the future: The unidentified New York-based FBI agent had asked headquarters Aug. 29, 2001, to allow his office to use its "full criminal investigative resources" to find Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of two hijackers who intelligence agents had identified as attending an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. Okay, Too Serious: Here's A Joke My former co-worker Olga Berian emailed this to me. A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died." Kenny replied, "Well then, just give me my money back." The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already." Kenny said, "OK then, at least give me the donkey." The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with him?" Kenny, "I'm going to raffle him off." Farmer, " You can't raffle off a dead donkey!" Kenny, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he is dead." A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?" Kenny, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898." Farmer, "Didn't anyone complain?" Kenny, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back." Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of Enron. Machine Guns And Marijuana Permagringirl isn't happy with my analogy (which you can find here). I wasn't really arguing that the federal government should be enforcing its marijuana laws, but rather arguing that the liberals are being hypocrites for complaining about federal enforcement of the drug laws when they conflict with state and local law. When federal law conflicted with state law concerning segregation, liberals believed in the supremacy of federal law (and with good reason). When federal law conflicts with more relaxed state gun laws, liberals get all twitterpated about it. There is a strong constitutional argument against federal laws such as the marijuana law, but liberals aren't making that argument as a general rule. Instead, they are making an argument based on marijuana being a special case. Oddly enough, while machine guns are potentially quite dangerous, in practice, they are very seldom used in murder in the United States. Even at the heights of the 1980 cocaine trafficking situation in South Florida, Dade County's machine gun murders were about 1.1% of all murders. UPDATE: Steve Quick sent this news item to me. Yes, driving under the influence of marijuana is no different from driving under the influence of alcohol, but marijuana's effects on society, like alcohol, are not completely benign. Permagringirl: I can't find your email address. It makes the conversation really slow! Permagringirl's Take on My Piece on HPV While generally positive on what I had to say about HPV infection problems, Permagringirl went on to argue: And finally, its not quantity that increases your risk of contracting an STD, despite what folks would like you to think. It's the quality of your lovers. The best way to avoid contracting an STD is to be very very picky about who you're willing to sleep with. Who's at more risk of contracting an STD, the teenage virgin who's going to give it up to the most popular jock in school? Or the twenty-something woman who's had a number of boyfriends, all in committed relationships? Yes, the woman who is in a committed long-term relationship--even four or five of them over a several year period--is a lot safer than the woman who is changing sexual partners every few weeks, or whose sexual partner is doing likewise. But here's the problem: 1. Large numbers of teens and young adults are, in fact, treating sexual partners rather like socks, changing them frequently. 2. Shall we say that there is a bit of an honesty problem involving young men and the depth of their sexual fidelity, especially in high school and college, where there is no shortage of sexual partners available with no commitment? All it takes is a six-pack or a bottle of vodka. The other problem is that even if those relationships really are committed, as the number of partners increases over a lifetime, so does the level of risk. This is a combinatorial problem (if I recall combinatorial problems from first year calculus correctly). If 50% of the population is infected with HPV, and you change sexual partners every year or two between your first sexual partner and getting married, what are the odds that one of your committed boyfriends will have HPV without knowing it, and pass it on to you? Pretty high. Photograph of the Weekly Conference Call on World Domination Go here. There are a lot of very entertaining and bizarre pictures at that site. UPDATE: Make sure that you get the instruction guide on CD-ROM, as well. Finally, Boise Weather Is Delightful July, August, and early September have been terribly hot here. It's a dry heat, but even dry, you wouldn't want to walk around in it for long. I'm told that this was an unusual summer--but that all seasons here are unusual. We are now having temperatures in the 70s and 80s during the day, with crisp mornings in the 50s. Beautiful! It reminds me of the only good thing about Sonoma County: the weather. Ignorance of History? The news coverage of the German Justice Minister statement comparing Hitler to Bush is now reporting that she claims that she was misquoted. Well, maybe. If you have ever experienced what happens when a reporter misquotes you, and the completely absurd manner in which they refuse to acknowledge an error, you can at least believe that she was misquoted. Of course, we might also be seeing that wonderful ignorance of history that characterizes most of the left--they know just enough to make political arguments, but not enough to really understand the past. Back when Reagan was President, I worked with a software engineer from the Netherlands. In the midst of the debate about putting neutron bombs in Europe, Reagan was clearly the great evil. This Dutch engineer, a guy with a college degree, compared Reagan to Hitler. Now, I didn't appreciate Reagan as much then as I do now, but I was still taken a bit aback by this. So I asked him, "What do you know about Hitler?" The Dutch guy developed what I can only call a very confused and wary look on his face. "Well, I know he started a war back in the 1930s." To my suprise, this Dutch engineer did not know about the Holocaust. Can We Trust Pilots With Guns? The argument advanced by the opponents of arming pilots with guns is that the pilots should be concentrating on flying the plane; besides, wielding a gun and dealing with hijackers is best left to professional law enforcement. Like this example? I am trying, very hard, to understand what happened here, and it sounds like what would happen if someone with good intentions in enormous fear lost control of their emotions. Thursday, September 19, 2002
Very Disturbing Point From An Aussie What if the inspectors find weapons of mass destruction? He makes a good case that if inspectors suddenly go incommunicado, it's time to start the war--no delay. The City of Santa Cruz Is Now In The Drug Business Yeah, I'm sure that you already know this. There are the predictable liberal defenses of this, such as this San Francisco Chonicle editorial. Imagine the reaction if, say, Salmon, Idaho, started to buy machine guns using its police department exemption from machine gun rules, and selling them to their citizens with some rationalization equivalent Santa Cruz's compassionate help argument. Do you suppose that liberals would be upset about BATF prosecuting this violation of federal law? Another Reminder That Racism Is Alive And Well...In Liberal Controlled Areas Here's a San Francisco Chronicle news story about racial harrassment in San Francisco Housing Authority projects, which the agency treated with indifference, so the U.S. Department of Justice is bringing suit. But San Francisco is such a liberal place! Why would it not care about racial hatred? Because in this case, the racists were black, and the victims were mixed race couples and Asians. If you find this absurd, keep in mind that the left has redefined racism--at least, this is what I was taught in a required ethnic studies class at Sonoma State University: racism is only racism if it is directed from those in power. It isn't racism if it comes from those who are out of power. Reasons Why Drugs Are Bad For You This article about a guy doing bizarre things with a knife while high on amphetamines is a strong argument for just saying "No." Search Strings That Concern Me When you dig through the list of http requests that go to your website, you often find some real interesting search strings. Like this one: Host: 67.36.177.127 Url: /canaries.htm Http Code : 200 Name: adsl-67-36-177-127.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net The article that this search string pointed this user to, of course, doesn't tell you how to make poison. But this isn't the first time that someone has used that search string to get to that article. It worries me a bit. The last time that this exact search string led to that article was the evening of September 11, 2001. The request came from a library computer at the University of Chicago. I informed the FBI about that request, suggesting that they might want to take a look at who was searching for that information. To my knowledge, my detailed description of IP address, location of the PC, time, etc., was just dropped on the floor. I almost wonder if I would be wasting my time informing the FBI again. More Evidence That Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-LaLa Land) Is An Idiot From today's Santa Rosa Press-Democrat: "I truly don't believe our world and our country and our children will be safer if we do this," Woolsey said. "There are weapons of mass destruction all over the world. Saddam Hussein is a horrible person, but there are lots of horrible people around the world. What country is next?" Actually, Congresscritter Woolsey, most countries do not have weapons of mass destruction, and those that do aren't generally run by people who are: 1. Aggressive; 2. Enjoy returning his own Cabinet ministers home in little pieces; 3. Gas their own populations; 4. Hate the U.S. Once again, Woolsey is clueless, and so are most of her constituents. A Very Persuasive Essay About Why The West Must Engage in Cultural Genocide It's here. Den Beste says a lot of sensible things about the problems of the Middle East. You don't have to agree, but it raises some important issues about the manner in which envy drives much of the hatred of the West. UPDATE: Eric S. Raymond's position is much the same as Den Beste's. Let me make a couple of cautious points, however. Raymond is arguing for the revival of nineteenth century imperialism as a way to avoid "the likely alternative is nuclear megadeath, plague in our home cities, and the smell of Sarin in the morning." A few caveats on such a strategy: 1. Part of what brought about the various fundamentalist revivals of Islam was imperialism threatening traditional ways of living. The Shah of Iran's attempts to drag his people out of the fourteenth century played a strong part in putting the mullahs in power. (Dragging them into the fourteenth century with electrical devices attached to their genitals certainly wasn't going to help the Shah's position.) 2. Nineteenth century imperialism was a mixture of simple greed and high-minded idealism; as one of my textbooks in college pointed out, it was as much a Peace Corps sort of idea for some Europeans as the pursuit of resources and political control. This can be a good thing; if you could sell liberals on the idea that such imperialism would be for the purpose of liberating women, educating the masses, and promoting democracy, they could put all their good intentions to work on reforming the Middle East. The bad side, however, is that this is part of what got us into the mess of the twentieth century--local political leaders using our doctrines to argue for decolonialization. In the case of Africa, it's clear that the European powers, having done practically nothing to prepare these nations for modern nationhood, left too early, with horrifying results. 3. Let's not get too confident that the Japanese example of reform is going to work with Arabs. Japan was a culture very deeply accepting of orders and hierarchy. General McArthur came in, took over, and effectively replaced the Emperor as ruler of Japan. The Japanese, being a deference culture, accepted this. It is not at all clear that modern Japan's democracy really works the way that the formal constitution describes. This is a country with >99% confession and conviction rates, and where torture is commonly used by police--while judges simply refuse to see it, even when there are still marks on the prisoner's body. 4. Germany worked perfectly, because the sickness there wasn't very old. It was, in a sense, a recent overlay of totalitarianism on top of a mildly authoritarian culture. We weren't trying to remove centuries of a wildly different culture, as we would be in the Middle East. ANOTHER UPDATE: It occurs to me if the West decided to simply starve out the Arab world by refusing to either buy or sell from them, in very short order, most of these countries would collapse. The Saudis can't eat oil. The difficulty is that such embargoes are very difficult to maintain for any length of time, as was discovered when Libya secretly violated the 1973 oil embargo to the West. Is Multiple Sclerosis Sexually Transmitted? This article examines a recently published paper that makes that claim. There seems to be quite a bit of strong and harsh criticism of this theory. The article mentions the outbreaks of MS that occurred in the Faroe, Orkney and Shetland islands during World War II. Previously, I have seen the claim that allied forces bringing dogs to the islands might have been the transmission medium. I don't have any strong feelings about this particular claim, but it is certainly the case that STDs are a big problem, and the focus on AIDS has tended to obscure the large number of other STDs that are causing serious problems for kids. About ten years ago or so, I was working on my BA. One of my general education classes was a biology class. Professor Benko (an interesting character, a concentration camp survivor) mentioned the research that had just been published that showed that cervical cancer was apparently caused by a sexually transmitted virus called HPV. (To be more precise, some forms of HPV cause cervical cancer; the others cause painful recurring genital warts.) Research done in the early twentieth century had found that Jewish women had much lower rates of cervical cancer than Gentile women. One of the guesses that came out of that work was that circumcision might reduce the risks of cervical cancer. Actually, it now appears that Jewish women at the time were much less likely to have had multiple sexual partners than Gentile women--and thus were at reduced risk of exposure to HPV. Professor Benko then said that as a woman's number of sexual partners rose above three, her risk of cervical cancer rose quite dramatically. You could hear the gasp from the gals in the class. (It is, after all, a sign of liberation, to have lots and lots of different sexual partners. You knew that. Why should girls act differently from drunken irresponsible frat boys?) Anyway, the HPV problem is serious. I am hearing from college kids of a disturbing number of their peers who have already had hysterectomies because of cervical cancer. A whole culture has grown up in which lots of girls (notwomen) are sexually active, with multiple partners, by 14 or 15. Lots of them aren't getting annual Pap smears (which detect precancerous growths on the cervix). I guess it's not surprising that some of these young women are already having surgery in their 20s. It makes you wonder what it is going to be like in another ten years. Condoms aren't completely effective at preventing the spread of HPV, though they apparently help. Men usually show no symptoms; they just pass it on from woman to woman. Try here and here and here and here for information. So why aren't you hearing anything about this serious problem? 1. The losers are heterosexual women--who are of no value to the mass media. 2. It might suggest that both men and women should regard multiple sexual partners as a dangerous thing, and wouldn't that sound reactionary and narrowminded? 3. It would suggest that self-control ("a greatly overrated quality," to quote a political science professor at Sonoma State University) has survival value, and we all know how the left feels about self-control. Why Saddam Hussein Didn't Use Weapons of Mass Destruction in the First Gulf War This article quotes former Prime Minister John Major that we told Saddam Hussein that we would nuke Baghdad if he did, and he claims that the threat has been reiterated. (Okay, it's from the U.K. tabloid the Sun, but it sounds plausible.) At least part of why Japan didn't use chemical or biological weapons on U.S. troops during World War II is that we informed them, through intermediaries, that we had a lot more chemical weapon manufacturing capacity than they did, and if they started using such weapons, we would massively retaliate. It worked. Even a liberal Democrat like Doug Bosco, who used to represent me in Congress many years ago, voted for production of chemical weapons for precisely that reason. Boy, that upset the local peaceniks, who thought they elected Bosco to replace all the guns with flowers, and cause the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Wednesday, September 18, 2002
How Do Clueless People Get Rich? I'm getting lots of questions about how Rep. Woolsey's district in California can be awash in clueless rich people. I will confess, this is one of those depressing discoveries that I made living out there. 1. Not everyone that is clueless is stupid. There are people with strong technical skills who are otherwise surprisingly ignorant about how the real world works. My favorite was one guy that I used to work with. He is a very nice person (other than being a flaming liberal). He is also fabulously rich now, having made a few hundred million on one of the more successful telecom startups. I remember one day explaining that the only way to get the City of San Jose to tow an abandoned car when we lived there in the 1980s, was if someone set fire to it. Otherwise, the typical time for the city to tow an abandoned vehicle was 90-120 days. I would watch cars slowly lose first their wheels, then body panels, then engine parts, until sometimes, all that was left was a frame and scattered fragments. (Of course, sometimes it was just vandalized, and then eventually taken away.) This very nice person had grown up in the Midwest. His only question was, "Why don't you just call the city?" Where he grew up, city government actually tried to do its job, and often did. The notion that city governments exist primarily for their own ends, was beyond him. 2. Some people that are clueless are stupid, and either inherit their wealth, or marry it. Others are not stupid, but so guilt-ridden about having grown up rich that they can't understand anything except through the narrow framework of their guilt. 3. There is a surprisingly entrepreneurial form of New Age irrationalism alive in Northern California. My favorite example of this was in the mid-1980s, when there was a brief movement called "Breathatarianism." The proponent claimed that food was not required to sustain life, and that the belief that it was required was just an illusion. Shortly after getting out of prison, he hooked up with a Marin County gal with a graduate degree who had just returned from pilgrimage to Nepal. She was taken with this new empowering philosophy, and within a few weeks, he was teaching weekend seminars at $250 a head titled, "Becoming Breathatarian." The local TV stations covered this, and they were swimming in money and new students. This went forward very nicely, but eventually, the manager/intellectual pimp for this scam artist noticed that contrary to his claim that he had eaten nothing but air and water for 19 years, he was actually grabbing Barbara Ann sweet rolls on long car trips. She was horrified; these weren't even good whole wheat natural products! His rationalization to her was that they were so nutritionally deficient that they didn't really qualify as "food." She kept her mouth shut for a few weeks, until she started hearing from students who were heading to tops of local mountains for a month to learn to conquer the illusion that they needed food. At this point, her conscience took precedence over her "relationship" with this con man, and she blew the whistle. For other examples, read the Pacific Sun, the Marin County alternative weekly. While much of their coverage is the sort of left-wing politics you might expect in a wealthy area like this, the articles and ads make you realize that much of the political left at least operates on the same plane of existence as you and I. They aren't out getting their chakras tuned, or visiting their shaman. (Yes, Marin County has, or at least had a few years ago, a shamanistic marriage and family counselors association.) The movie Serial is a parody of Marin County, but it does capture much of the weirdness of the place the way it used to be. Remember: if you start out with five million dollars after taxes, you shouldn't ever have to work again. Even at the current disappointing interest rates, if you invest that money in municipal bonds, because that is exempt from both federal income tax and your state's income tax, you will earn about $215,000 a year in net income, with almost no risk. Unless you live very lavishly, most people, even raising a family, will have trouble spending that interest each year. If five million dollars seems like a lot of money--it's not in Sonoma and Marin Counties. Lots of people have net worths well above that range; I can think of five or six people that I know by first name (and vice versa) with net worths in the ten million and up range that live in Sonoma County. I understand that in Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley), it is very common for mortgage lenders to see loan applications with net worths exceeding five million dollars. Just so no one gets the wrong impression: I'm not sour grapes (or at least not very sour). I worked for three startups, two of which were mildly successful, and one still owes me several weeks wages. I did okay, but I still have to work for a living. UPDATE: Just so that there is no misunderstanding about this, let me emphasize that Sonoma County has lots of very rich people who are smart, concerned about their kids and the community in which they live, and are paying attention. A few of them (a very few of them) even see eye to eye with me on politics. They might even be a majority of the superrich that live there--but the clueless left-wing superrich stand out in my mind, because they are so frustrating, and because they played some part in making me unemployable when I promoted the idea in print that being fabulously wealthy includes a moral obligation to help those who are in need. Abuse of Judicial Process Gets Punished Maybe the lawyers out there will tell me that this is typical, but this story seems pretty remarkable to me. An author named Nancy Stouffer claimed that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books plagiarized her books published in the 1980s. Judge Schwartz didn't just find in J. K. Rowling's favor, but fined Stouffer $50,000 for "her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony...." Schwartz also questioned whether [Stouffer] created the "Larry Potter" character before Rowling's series debuted. A title page and other materials supposedly dating back to the 1980s used technology not in existence at the time, he ruled. In addition, Schwartz found that Stouffer had produced invoices for sales that never took place and submitted an advertisement from the 1980s that was later altered to include the word "Muggles." Hmmm. This sounds really, really stupid. Stouffer should know better. Now, if she had been an Emory University history professor, she wouldn't have any problems at all! It Is Always Fun Seeing What The Bay Area Thinks... It makes me grateful to have escaped the Open Ward that is the San Francisco Bay Area. Look at this recent San Francisco Chronicle article quoting members of Congress from the Bay Area about Iraq. My favorite, of course, is the dingbat who used to misrepresent me in the House of Reps, Lynne Woolsey. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Marin, said, "I would vote no. I don't believe our world, our nation, our communities or we as individuals will be safer by going to war against Iraq." Woolsey said constituents' communications with her office were running about 200 to 1 against attacking Iraq. Well, some of that is because many of her constituents are filthy rich leftists (are there any other kind?) who think that 1960s songs about brotherhood, loving one another, and getting high constitute a realistic foreign policy when dealing with thugs like Saddam Hussein. Most of the rest of Woolsey's constituents know that there's not much point in saying anything to what must be one of the least intelligent members ever elected to the House. Back in 1992, when Woolsey was trying to get the Democratic nomination for Congress, I was talking to candidates as part of my responsibilities as legislative officer of the Cotati Rod & Gun Club (now defunct). I spoke to one Democrat who was trying to get the nomination for Assembly, and thus, not a competitor to Woolsey. Bajun's last name now escapes me (he was an East Indian, and his last name had far more syllables than my poor little brain can now remember). We didn't see eye to eye on the gun control issue, but Bajun at least wasn't a raving idiot on the subject, and we ended up discussing Woolsey, who was known to be a bit rabid on the subject. At this point, Bajun told me something that just flabbergasted me. At a candidate forum Bajun and Woolsey participated in, someone asked the Democratic candidates trying to get the House nomination what they would do to solve the deficit problem. "I would reduce the Defense budget," responded Woolsey, in her usual self-righteous way. One of the audience said that this wasn't really enough information. What, exactly, would she cut? "Oh, I'd get rid of all the bombs and things." Unsurprisingly, in her district, she won the nomination. She went on to win the general election, because of the actions of the Republican nominee, a guy named Bill Filante. Mr. Filante had decided to move up from the state legislature to Congress. Filante, being a moderate to liberal sort, might have had a chance of winning the general election. But he was being challenged by a conservative Republican for the nomination. (Very conservative, by Marin and Sonoma County standards, but just conservative out here in real America.) Filante fought the battle ferociously, won the Republican nomination--and then announced within a day or so after the primary was over, that he had inoperable brain cancer. He didn't withdraw from the race, but everyone knew he was going to die so soon that there was no point in voting for Filante in the general election. Filante could have withdrawn before the primary, and at least given a conservative Republican a chance at fighting Woolsey in the general election, but he didn't. This is part of why "liberal Republican" is right up there with "jumbo shrimp" in my oxymoron dictionary. Filante pretty obviously preferred a raving left-wing Democrat to be in Congress over a conservative Republican. Woolsey, however, so well represents the wealthy and clueless who form much of her district that many people I know still stuck in her district think of her as "Congresswoman for Life." I Want To Cheer and Be Depressed at the Same Time This news story suggests that infighting within the Democratic Party is taking on an ugly racial tone. Certain heavy hitters among black Democrats are turning the recent primary defeats of pro-Palestinian House Democrats Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKinney into "The Jews did it!" Of course, Cynthia McKinney's father, defeated in a Georgia legislative race for similar reasons, also blathered on like the worst neo-Nazi about how the Jews control the media. On the one hand, anytime I see Democrats engaged in internecine warfare, I'm pleased. The Democratic Party has become an uneasy alliance of corrupt, mainstream politicians who love America, and a pretty idealistic, reasonably honest bunch of politicians who hate America, and especially hate the ideas of capitalism, racial equality, and Judeo-Christian morality. With both factions at work, they are perfectly capable of bankrupting and destroying America in one operation. So you won't be surprised that I am tempted to get some popcorn, and applaud, when I watch two different factions of the Democratic Party go after each other. At the same time, I am just horrified that the political factionalism is expressing itself in ethnic terms. This is the sort of problem that leads, at its worst, to race wars. This shouldn't surprise us, however. The Democratic Party, because it is so focused on identity politics, has almost made this inevitable. Maryland Used To Take Sexual Morality Very Seriously... You may find this page from Archives of Maryland interesting--proof positive that "buggery" isn't just in old Cheech & Chong recordings: October 21 1681... William Boarman late high Sheriff of St Maries County prays he may be Allowed in the publick Levy one thousand pounds Tobacco for Executing William Sewick who was Condemned to be hanged for Buggery.... Just to Annoy Jesse Jackson... What century did a black man first sit as a member of the Maryland legislature? In the 20th? In the 19th? Would you believe in the 17th century? See this commemorative speech about Matthias de Sousa, and the 1641/2 session, which lists de Sousa as a member. California Schools Joanne Jacobs has a piece that mentions that 1/3 of California high school students won't graduate. She makes some other good points there, but as a California refugee, let me make a point here. These aren't just a bunch of Hispanic and black kids that aren't graduating. I lived in one of those counties that was overwhelmingly white, where a townhouse could be yours for $200,000 (in one of the less pleasant parts of the county). Yet the local high school had some years where only 70% of the students graduated. The problem? Lots of kids who were so chemically altered that school was becoming an obstacle, and lots of parents with so much money that the kids didn't need to worry about ever getting a job. One detestable little creep I knew had multimillionaire parents, and spent all of his spare time pretending he was a DJ because he had people listening to this Internet music feed. Why bother finishing high school? He wasn't ever going to have to work. I am terrified of sounding like one of those nasty socialists, but it is certainly true that too much wealth can sometimes be a great evil to a society. While he didn't grow up in California, another charming example of what too much money can do was David Asimov, the son of the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. David Asimov was convicted on child pornography charges. (This was in the March 29, 2001 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat--one of those papers that makes it difficult to link to the article directly. Go to their advanced search page, put "David Asimov" in the search string, and search through 2001.) Newspaper coverage at the time reported that he had a $3000 a month trust fund income, and thus didn't work. UPDATE: A number of readers took me task for this, pointing out that it wasn't David Asimov's wealth that was the problem, but his father's wealth--and his father didn't do anything wrong. True enough. My point, perhaps to be a little more clear about this, is that there are people that receive great wealth and do something lasting and valuable with it. The science fiction writer Larry Niven made a point of thanking his grandfather, the oilman Edward Doheny, for leaving a pile of money that enabled Niven to complete in two years but most aspiring science fiction writers do in ten, because they are having to work full-time while writing stories. Sad to say, there seems to be a lot more examples like this one above. For those that are interested, see a newspaper article published in 1999 that played some part in making me unemployable in California. I wasn't advocating socialism--just that people 20 or 30 million dollars probably couldn't usefully spend the interest on their money without corrupting either themselves or their children, and perhaps they should consider helping the poor. Shortly thereafter, the telecom industry, largely run by wealthy liberals and leftists, no longer had jobs for people like me. Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Dave Barry on Why Floridians Are The Stupidest People On Earth
The question you're asking yourself is: Does South Florida contain the highest concentration of morons in the entire world? Or just in the United States? The reason you're asking this, of course, is South Florida's performance in Tuesday's election. This election was critical to our image, because of our performance in the 2000 presidential election -- the one that ended up with the entire rest of the nation watching, impatiently, as clumps of sleep-deprived South Florida election officials squinted at cardboard ballots, trying to figure out what the hell the voters were thinking when they apparently voted for two presidents, or no presidents, or part of a president, or, in some cases, simply drooled on the ballot. Boy, This is Depressing
More About Bob Greene's Indiscretions
When Laws Collide Okay, they made this sculpture wheelchair-accessible--but they also violated a provision of ADA to protect blind people from injuring themselves. I'm not sure what my point is, other than that the more laws you make, the harder it is to obey all of them simultaneously. Mass Murder Doesn't Require Guns The developing story from China is a reminder that evil people don't need guns to commit mass murder.
Sprinkler Systems and Home Improvement My friend Brian Reilly has just been crowing about his home improvement project, and mentioned that the rise in do it yourself projects has been a real boon to contractors, who get to come in and clean up the mess afterwards. Yes, I'm sure that this really does work that way. A friend of mine who lived in England for a year tells me that home improvement is commonly called DIY (for "Do It Yourself") over there, but that most Britons assert that DIY really means, "Disaster Is Yours." So here's my little tip about sprinklers. I was smart enough to know that I shouldn't do this myself. We asked for several bids from sprinkler contractors. Based on recommendations we received, we picked one guy. Perhaps I shouldn't have expressed my concern about the danger of dry spots caused by insufficient coverage, because what he put in may qualify for the world's most redundant sprinkler system. In some areas, there are at least three different sprinklers watering a particular patch, and with our soil, this means swamp, not grass. Okay, a good friend of ours is a specialist in hard wood flooring dispute resolution. He walks in and says, "You've got moisture under this floor." It's a brand new house, still under warranty, so we call the builder. He looks under there, and tells us the sprinklers are too close to the house. "They should be at least 18 inches from the foundation." I call the sprinkler contractor, a salty down home sort of guy, and he responds with a statement that civilized norms of behavior prevent me from repeating. (Of course, if I were on cable TV, or a college student, this wouldn't be a problem.) I can't find anything anywhere that says that sprinklers must be at least 18 inches from the foundation, but we pay the sprinkler contgractor to come out and move the heads, and hope that our flooring problem won't get bad enough to require us to pull up the floor. Of course, this doesn't solve the problem of the triple redundant sprinklers drenching the soil. (But hey, our duck loves it.) The real solution is that the Rainbird T-Bird heads can accept several different nozzles. What came in them were 3.0 nozzles (probably indicates a volume of water). The local sprinkler supply store gives me (yes, doesn't sell) a huge bag of replacement nozzles: 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. So I went around and replaced several of the 3.0 nozzles with ones that squirt far less water, and dramatically reduced the amount of time that the circuit with the T-Birds on it runs. Finally, I don't think we graded the yard adequately before the sprinkler contractor came out. Yes, we are partly at fault. We are also a little frustrated that the contractor didn't recognize that we needed a bit less slope to our soil. Bellesiles's Syndrome Spreads
Monday, September 16, 2002
More About Al-Qaida's Funding
Where Are the Civil Libertarians? I see that a French author is being sued for making nasty remarks about Islam. The charge is "making a racial insult and inciting religious hatred." And what hateful thing did he say? He called Islam "the dumbest religion." Now, this isn't a way to win friends and influence people, especially in France, the European country that I think is going to be the first to adopt sharia for their legal code. (Wow, imagine the Eiffel Tower as the world's tallest muzzein platform.) But to make this something that the courts can hassle you about? College speech codes on a national basis! Oh joy. If the charge were insulting Christianity or Judaism, I would expect the liberals to be defending this guy loudly. But Islam seems to have a special place for the left right now, rather the way that any black man charged with a crime in the 1960s became a political prisoner in certain ideology-addled brains. Fly By Wire Isn't All It Is Cracked Up To Be
More Signs That Jesse Jackson is Ignorant... This report about a speech that the Rev. Jesse Jackson gave reminds us of why no one should take him seriously. His claim that only white men had the vote in 1789 isn't correct. It turns out that blacks meeting the property qualification had the vote in New York State until 1821, and as late as 1830, blacks could vote in Pennsylvania (though threats of mob action tended to discourage them doing so in Philadelphia). Even some widows had the right to vote in some counties in New Jersey until about 1800 (though it's not clear that many took advantage of it). Another Gun Control Advocate's Legal Problems... It seems like gun control advocates spend a lot of time dealing with various legal "difficulties." The latest is Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene, for sex with an underage girl. UPDATE: Some reports are saying that she was "barely legal." (Isn't that the name of one of those trashy magazines that appeal to perverts who don't want to get arrested by the FBI, but still want the fantasy?) It still doesn't say much for the moral caliber of Mr. Greene. (It's a bad day when a newspaper columnist lowers himself to the gutter level of a former President of the United States.) Interesting Article About Al-Qaida Activities in Southeast Asia It's from Time magazine, so it's hard to know how much to trust this report, but still very interesting. It suggests that the CIA is finally doing its job, relying on isolation and sleep deprivation rather than crude torture to break al-Qaida prisoners. A Walk To Remember In the 18th and 19th centuries, a common literary genre was the sentimental novel. Some of its defining characteristics were: good guys; bad guys; a moral lesson (sometimes not very subtlely pointed out); and a surplus of emotions, both happy and sad. While a sentimental novel didn't always end "and they lived happily ever after," there was at least some inspirational result--a reminder that in the struggle between good and evil, good would win. The proponents of realism in literature eventually won the day; good doesn't always win in the real world, there are tragedies that taken place and sometimes we don't quite understand why. The next time you want to thank someone for Hollywood's current focus on cannibalism and serial killers, thank the late Victorian realists for their efforts to make literature more real. My wife and I rented A Walk to Remember last night, partly because of the reviews we've seen, and partly because my daughter, who is 18, and presumably is more in touch with the real world of kids this age, recommended it. A Walk to Remember is the sentimental novel for our age. There are good people--but not perfect. The preacher's daughter, played by Mandy Moore, is almost unnaturally good, but we also see her respond to a nasty insult with a witty one. We see her hide the unpleasant truth about her future in the interests of getting a boyfriend. We see her father, who seems at first to be too critical and judgmental of the ne'er-do-well who wants to take her out, soften. The bad crowd are, unfortunately, typical of a much of a generation now (and most of it in Sonoma County). They are in high school, so they get drunk a lot, engage in fairly promiscuous sex, and pull a stunt that nearly kills a young man that wants to be part of their "in crowd." Their language is fairly raw, but nowhere near as horrifying as I am used to hearing from kids much younger in California. Yet like a flower pushing up through a cracked sidewalk in a busy city, there are occasional streaks of compassion and decency. We also get some clues as to why these kids are so destructive of themselves and others; divorce has produced emotionally injured children who find solace in the intoxication of alcohol and sex, and power in injuring others. A Walk to Remember is how the preacher's daughter, who is neither fashionable nor spectacularly pretty, by the example of her life, changes first one young man, and then others around her. Along the way, the battle between faith and disbelief shows up in verbal sparring. There's never more than a few lines of such discussion; it's a subtle script, with occasional flashes of wit and charm appropriate to people of this age. Yet I don't think that many people will watch this film and not be moved by the message it is teaching us. |
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