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How Widely Is Occam's Razor Internalized?
At Bible study the other night, I was explaining about Occam's Razor, and how not just science, but our entire culture has internalized the idea that an explanation of a phenomenon should discard any assumptions that are not required. This is such a fundamental part of Western thought that everyone immediately understood it and agreed with it--but with the exception of my wife, none of the people present had heard of it. (And before you make any assumptions: a big chunk of the room are college graduates, including a couple of other engineers.)
It suddenly struck me as I was discussing its significance to how science deals with the question of the supernatural that perhaps part of the problem that we are having with the Muslim world's bizarre conspiracy theories is that Occam's Razor, the product of an English Franciscan friar named William of Occam, is a very Western concept.
Let's say that you need to explain the poverty of the Muslim world (even in nations sitting on, and exporting vast quantities of oil). If just a few countries that, in the eyes of the Muslim world, are dominated by Jews, had made the leap from medieval to modern, then it might be plausible to see Jews as a factor in that leap. (The rational person might ask, "Maybe Jews have helped the West make the leap--not that they are conspiring against Muslims.") But many other societies have either made, or are starting to make the transition from Third World to First World, such as Japan (already there), Singapore (already there), and India (starting the great leap). Applying Occam's Razor would cause you to say, "Maybe it isn't all an elaborate Jewish conspiracy. Do we really need this assumption to explain our poverty?"
In general, the really great conspiracy theories rely on denying the validity of Occam's Razor. For example, the "Bush arranged to put explosives into the World Trade Center towers to have an excuse to go to war against Iraq" conspiracy is a strong argument for application of Occam's Razor. As I have pointed out in the past, the simplest explanation--that a wealthy fanatic who had declared war on the U.S. in 1998, and had already engaged in multiple terrorist attacks on U.S. interests--is a lot more plausible than the left's favored explanation. Their vast conspiracy would have required silence from dozens of demolition experts planting explosives, dozens to hundreds of military officers who would have known what really happened, and hundreds of civil engineers, who have studied the engineering aspects of the collapse. Which is simpler?
Even where there have been criminal actions by the government, it makes a lot more sense to understand these as negligent or irresponsible behavior that was then covered up to hide criminal liability. Which is more likely the cause of the fire at Waco?
1. The FBI fails to consider that pumping the building full of CS and methylene chloride (which burns nicely) increases the fire hazard. They ram parts of the building with their tanks, which knocks over kerosene lanterns and candles (which had been used for lighting after the FBI cut off the power), and probably at least some of the Molotov cocktails that had been made by the Branch Davidians that morning. These set fire to spilled kerosene and the hay bales that the Branch Davidians had set up in the building as bullet stops. The holes in the building, in the words of the former Dallas fire chief interviewed in Waco: The Rules of Engagement, act like opening the flue in a pot-bellied stove.
2. The FBI intentionally sets fire to the building for the purpose of exterminating everyone inside? (Yes, I know about the incendiary ferret round that my friend Dave Hardy found in the evidence room, but that was one such incendiary round, and if the FBI was evil enough to intentionally set fire to the place, I can't believe that they were stupid enough to intentionally use and leave an incendiary round where it could be recovered.)
Look for the simpler explanation, which is usually stupidity, negligence, and carelessness, because the alternative explanation of conspiracy requires evil intelligence. (There might well be conspiracies to cover up stupidity after the fact, but that's just human nature, "I didn't do it! It was Johnny's fault!") I'm sorry, but I don't see much evidence of intelligence on this planet.
The Things People Do To Run For Public Office
This certainly takes the cake for weird:Marvin “Pro-Life” Richardson has now officially changed his name – to just “Pro-Life.” Richardson went to court yesterday in Gem County and got the change approved. Now, he said, he has no first name – just the last name of “Pro-Life.” It won’t change how he appears on the ballot in his Constitution Party candidacy for governor this year, however. Richardson already is certified for the ballot as Marvin Richardson, and ballots already are being printed.
You know, I can understand someone being "pro-life." I'm sympathetic to their concerns, although I think a bit more work persuading a large majority of this would be more worthwhile first. But changing your name to "Pro-Life" is...a bit odd.
“We’ve made it clear to him since March we were not going to put ‘pro-life’ on the ballot, and that’s still our position,” said Secretary of State Ben Ysursa. “The ballot is not supposed to be a forum for political expression – it’s supposed to be as neutral as it can be.”
Richardson, or Pro-Life, said, “I’m not going back to anything else. I’ll just go the rest of my life as Pro-Life.” An ardent anti-abortion activist who spends his Sundays holding anti-abortion protest signs on busy roadsides, Richardson said he believes abortion is equivalent to murder and he hopes his name change will save a life. “We know that there’s women that pray, ‘What should I do with this crisis pregnancy?’” the 6-foot-5 organic farmer said. “And they see us out on the street holding a sign, or they see my name on a ballot, or a political ad in the newspaper or something, and they take that as a sign from God … and it saves a life.”
My Daughter Is Working On Her Master's in Social Work...
So of course, she's gotten all liberal squishy, such as this recent blog entry about Wal-Mart's new experiment:Amazing Wal-mart!
Somehow, I don't think this is quite what her very, very liberal social work professors were hoping for! Just think: if Wal-Mart (with their enormous market power) starts selling generic drugs for $4 a prescription what this will do for the poorest Americans. I'm expecting many of the liberal Wal-Mart haters to suffer cataclysmic head popping. Would they rather the poor be better off? Or Wal-Mart go under?
I found this article on MSN.com : Wal-Mart to sell generic drugs for $4.
Read this article! It's crazy! Drugs for $4? My husband worries that if Wal-mart started charging only $4 for prescriptions, it would put local pharmacies out of business. My reply? A) I don't care if larger chains go out of business like Rite-Aid and B) as terrible as this sounds, I would put all local pharmacies out of business if it meant Americans could get cheap prescriptions.
I find myself thinking of R. W. Grant's poem, "The Incredible Bread Machine," which imagines how liberals would punish someone who figured out how to get rich by making bread so efficiently that it cost a penny a loaf.
Saul Cornell Is Suddenly No Longer a Partisan on Gun Control
At least, that's what this editorial from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune claims:First, a calming caveat: Saul Cornell doesn't want to take away your guns. He's neither antigun nor progun. He really isn't a gun guy at all. His thing is history.
Any of you who are familiar with Professor Cornell's work can start the insane giggling right now--yeah, he's not really on one side or the other, nor is he trying to disarm the masses.
Cornell, a professor at Ohio State University, passed through town the other day with much to say about regulating guns. Yet his aim isn't to take sides in the modern gun-control debate -- a squabble he thinks has strayed rather off-topic. It's far more interesting, he thinks, to look back to learn what this country's founders actually thought about gun regulation.
Now, the editorial raises some good points, one of which is that gun regulation was pretty common when the Second Amendment was written:"As long as we've had guns in America," says Cornell, "we've had gun regulation." In fact, the Second Amendment's chief purpose is to assure such regulation. Without it, the founders feared, anarchy might take hold.
I'm hoping that they misquoted Cornell. The Second Amendment was not passed out of fear of anarchy. The Constitution was adopted at least partly out of concern that a stronger central government was needed, but the Second Amendment gave no new power to the federal government concerning the organizing of militias. The Constitution already granted federal authority in this area. Art. I, sec. 8 gave Congress authority:
The amendment was born of the founders' desire for "a well-regulated militia." Having opted against a standing army, the Constitution's cobblers determined that every able-bodied man would serve as a member of a local militia -- prepared to respond in unison against invasion. To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
The Second Amendment grants no more authority to the federal government. At best (and this is the argument that gun control advocates such as Professor Cornell used to make), the Second Amendment grants authority to the states to maintain state militias. There is no argument ever advanced through the courts or at the time of its adoption that claimed the Second Amendment gave any more power to the federal government.
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; "It would have been impossible to muster the militia without a scheme of regulation," says Cornell -- and the early Americans had one. "Muster rolls" kept track of militia members and their firearms. And every hamlet in the land had its own de facto gun registrar: the local gunsmith, who knew every gun and gun-owner in town.
Ah, no. Muster rolls kept track of who was a member of the militia, and to the extent that militia members obeyed the law requiring them to own a military weapon, I guess you could say it "kept track" of their firearms. But other than the requirement to own one musket, firelock, or rifle (depending on the year, and whether the 1792 or 1803 Militia Act was in play), the muster rolls didn't tell you if militia members also owned a hunting weapon, a pocket pistol, or even a cannon. If you weren't a militia member, these muster rolls had no such effect. Remember that most Americans were not members of the militia; boys and men over 45 weren't militia members; non-citizens weren't members; free blacks weren't members of the militia (except, oddly enough, in North Carolina, which ignored federal law on this); women weren't in the militia. We know that all of these non-militia members owned guns.
To claim that every town had a "de facto gun registrar" is just wishful thinking. Most towns had a gunsmith, but guns were quite simple back then. There were people who probably never went to a gunsmith. There was no way that Cornell's supposed "de facto gun registrar" could have used his knowledge to confiscate guns.There's one right the Second Amendment wasn't written to confer: an entitlement to take up arms against the government. "The founding fathers drew a distinction between a well-regulated militia, which operates under the authority of the state, and an armed mob," says Cornell. History couldn't be clearer about this point: "Once you have constitutional government," Cornell points out, "you have no right of revolution anymore."
Why, then, did New Hampshire's 1784 state constitution include a right to revolution? [Art.] 10. [Right of Revolution.] Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance ag ainst arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
Now, it is true that if you rise in rebellion against the government, you can't expect them to say, "Oh, that's okay," but in practice, the relatively mild punishments handed out to the participants in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was at least partly because the Framers recognized that even when in the wrong, it was best to err on the side of too little punishment, not too much. As Jefferson wrote concerning Shay's Rebellion in 1786:"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion [Shays's Rebellion]. The people cannot be all, and always, well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each State. What country ever before existed a century and a half without a rebellion. And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms! The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
It just gets more and more "alternate universe" the deeper I read:What Cornell wishes people would understand is that our tradition of gun ownership grew up alongside gun regulation. When this country was young, Cornell notes, the Second Amendment created a climate in which "gun ownership wasn't driven by antipathy toward the government or one's neighbors. It was part of an ethic that knit the community together and bound it to government."
Uh, no. Gun ownership was driven largely by the desire to kill and eat cute furry little creatures. The various militia laws existed because the government wanted the population armed for the defense of the government--and the experience of the Revolution demonstrated that the population needed to be armed for defense from the government. Now, I'm going to quote from an obscure political trouble maker of the time that Professor Cornell has apparently never heard of before, but if he opens his wallet, he'll find a picture of this radical, anti-government sort:An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.
President Washington wrote that in 1790, arguing that a standing army was "hostile to the principles of liberty" and the militia was the only safe alternative. Why? Because Whig political philosophy taught that standing armies followed the orders of the government, not necessarily of the people; militias were the people, and were therefore safer than a standing army. The militia's primary function was external defense--but the alternative, a professional standing army, was dangerous, and the purpose of the militia was to keep the government afraid of the people. I don't know how Professor Cornell could have read much of the primary or secondary sources on this question, Washington's writings, the debates in the 5th and 6th Congresses about enlarging the standing army, books such as Kohn's Eagle and Sword--and missed this important theme.
It is the introduction and diffusion of vice, and corruption of manners, into the mass of the people, that renders a standing army necessary. It is when public spirit is despised, and avarice, indolence, and effeminacy of manners predominate, and prevent the establishment of institutions which would elevate the minds of the youth in the paths of virtue and honor, that a standing army is formed and riveted for ever....
If it should be decided to reject a standing army for the military branch of the government of the United States, as possessing too fierce an aspect, and being hostile to the principles of liberty, it will follow that a well constituted militia ought to be established. [American State Papers: Military Affairs, 1:7.]
Republicans in 1798 saw the standing army as an instrument of political oppression. Representative Albert Gallatin observed that proponents of this enlarged standing army "speak not only of the danger of an invasion, but of the danger of a revolution—-of an oversetting of the Government...” Gallatin suggested that the enlarged standing army would be used in response to "fictitious conspiracies, pop-gun plots, and every other party artifice which has been practiced in England." Representative Joseph McDowell argued that the army proposed would "answer the like purposes to which a similar force had been raised in England and Ireland. And what have they been used for there but to suppress political opinion? The military force is there riding over the people, and dragging husbands and fathers from their wives and children to prison, merely because they have taken the liberty to think." [Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., 1736, 1744-5, 1760.]
That's it: Professor Cornell is visiting us from a parallel universe, where Whig political thought never developed, and no one in the Revolutionary and early Republic periods ever feared governmental oppression.
I'm Not Happy About This Compromise
I haven't been entirely comfortable with "waterboarding" as an interrogation technique--most of the other techniques that the White House wanted allowed don't seem to qualify as "torture" by my standards. Even the Red Hot Chili Peppers' music!
But this compromise, at least the way that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) described it on The O'Reilly Report last night, bothers me, because according to Sen. Cornyn, the actual list of lawful techniques will probably be kept secret.
These are frightening and fearful times, and there are actions that our government may need to take in life-threatening circumstances when confronting dangerous fanatics that I would not want to see use in civilian life. But this I can assure you: the list of what those techniques are should be publicly known. I want to know how far our government is going to extract information. I don't buy Sen. Cornyn's argument that keeping this secret makes it easier to put al-Qaeda operatives off-guard.
Waterboarding bothers me--the distinction between that a torture seems highly subjective. I think every American should be prepared to say, "No, I think that's going too far" or "Red Hot Chili Peppers, sure, but no, not Barry Manilow!" But if I don't know what is on the menu of available techniques, I can't form an opinion about whether the interrogation techniques have gone too far.
Weird
My wife is teaching English composition at Boise State this semester, much to her pleasure--and suddenly, several weeks into the semester, she has picked up another section--and this is where it gets weird.
The department can't find the adjunct who was teaching that other section, and has missed a week's worth of classes. They've left messages repeatedly--no response. We've encouraged the department to contact the police, and see if they have any record of this adjunct being in a car crash, or a crime victim. It is a bit strange to have someone stop showing up to teach classes, and be impossible to contact.
Small World? Or Just a Small Town?
My wife and I went to dinner at El Durango in Horseshoe Bend this evening--and the waitress recognized me from my blog. I'm like, almost a celebrity here!
I've Escaped The Galleys
I've shipped back the changes. This is very demanding work. I found two paragraphs duplicated in a couple of chapters that had to be excised--they made sense in one place, and quite a bit less in another.
There were lots of places where I and my editors missed that "or" and "of" aren't interchangeable. In another place, I had somehow dropped a critical phrase detailing the average value of guns in Connecticut probate inventories. The publishing software they use imported Microsoft Word--but where Word uses specific characters for 1/4 and 1/2, there was now a question mark.
Lots of little details--and I discovered that I referred to Georgia's law mandating being armed at church as passed in 1750. No, it was actually passed in 1770. I only caught that mistake because I was emailing someone a link to the document, and I notice that I had the date wrong in my book.
One more pass to make sure that repagination didn't screw up page references, and I think we're done!
Sentenced to the Galleys
No, I'm not talking about that scene in Ben-Hur. The galleys (which are the typeset pages that the publisher goes to print from), have arrived, and I'm working my way through them. I'm a little disappointed at how many errors ended up in them--almost like the import from Word to whatever program they use isn't very accurate. The 1/4 symbol that Word uses for that fraction--turned into a question mark. A few footnotes on pictures seem to have disappeared. The page reference links that Word has, that automatically update your references to other pages? Those were lost, so I am havin to update those page numbers by hand.
Mostly, however, what I am finding are minor typos, and a few places where I suspect that I scrambled something in Word, and I am just now noticing it. For example, a couple of paragraphs that are present, identically, in two different chapters. I'm hoping that this doesn't complicate getting this to print, since it will screw up the page reference links ("see page nnn").
Dark Star As Epistemology Teaching Aid
My wife and I are leading a Bible study right now concerning evolution, creation, Intelligent Design, and related issues. We are trying to give everyone enough of a grounding in these subjects to understand how evolutionary theory ended up in the driver's seat; the limitations of scientific theory; that there are a variety of different Christian perspectives (theistic evolutionists, such as Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute), Old Earth Creationists (such as astrophysicist turned evangelist Dr. Hugh Ross), Young Earth Creationists, and biologists and biochemists who are Intelligent Design advocates.
We are also trying to get everyone to understand that when scientists reject supernatural explanations, it doesn't mean that they are denying the existence of God--they are arguing that you can't construct scientific theories (which are, after all, suppose to enable prediction of events) with an "M" for "miracle" in a formula.
The discussion will get more excited in the next few weeks, as we discuss the problems of translating yom, the Hebrew word that is usually rendered as "day" in translations of Genesis--but actually has quite a range of meanings, not just "twenty four hours."
Anyway, this evening, to get everyone thinking about epistemology--the study of how we know what we know--I showed the climatic sequence from Dark Star. If you've never seen this film--which was John Carpenter's directorial debut--you should. It was originally a 65 minute student film, and when you look at the special effects, it does show. But it is still screamingly funny--especially the sequence at the end, where one of the humans attempts to reason with a "smart bomb," raising doubts about how much we can trust our senses to arrive at truth. (Oh, and of course, it has the best country & western outer space song ever written. Okay, the only country & western outer space song ever written.)
Oh, and the smart bomb's eventual reaction leads me to Romans chapter 1:21-23:For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools....
Banning Thin Fashion Models
Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Volokh is arguing that the proposals in Britain to follow Madrid's example in banning thin fashion models is the wrong solution, likening it to the Soviet model of everything that was permitted was mandatory.
I agree that this is probably not the right way to solve the problem--but the problem is real. Guys, spend some time reading women's fashion magazines, like Glamour. You will see a contradictory mixture of articles about the dangers of bulimia and anorexia and ads filled with these anorexic fashion models. You will read articles about the importance of women having good self-esteem--and ads that promote the idea that every woman is ugly unless she buys this dress, or these shoes, or wears this perfume.
If there is a single message that I wish our culture could get across to young women it is this: the vast majority of teenaged gals, unless they are very overweight, or frighteningly underweight, are attractive to guys their age. Young ladies can enhance their appearance with appropriate grooming, and good choices of clothing. Good skin care will do wonders for your skin's health and your appearance; the use of spatulas for make-up application is almost always a mistake. A small number of teenaged women may have appearance peculiarities that call for tasteful use of make-up to draw attention away from too large a nose, or some similar unfortunate feature, but these are the exception.
Fashion magazines exist to make young women insecure about their looks--so that their advertisers can sell them stuff that they don't need. It is part of a free market, no doubt, but that is hardly something of which to be proud.
The Politics of the Professoriate
This article in Inside Higher Education reports that a new study suggests that the political imbalance in the academy isn't as severe as everyone assumes:To read the reports that have appeared for a few years now, it’s easier to find an ivory-billed woodpecker than a Republican on a college campus. Studies have compared party registrations of various college faculties, views of members of various disciplines, and political leanings generally. Conservative pundits and David Horowitz have had a field day with these studies, saying that they show a major problem with ideological imbalance in higher education.
I don't find it hard to believe that there has been a shift towards the middle of the road among younger academics. I can certainly see it among the historians (both professors and grad students) that I know who are under 40--there are a lot of them that seem primarily to be pursuing truth, not Political Correctness. This does not mean that the younger historians are conservatives, but the rigidly doctrinaire approach to "scholarly" work that defines much of the Vietnam Generation of historians (Michael Bellesiles, Ward Churchill) seems to be less common.
But what if they don’t?
The journal Public Opinion Quarterly has just published an analysis of professorial politics that offers a dramatically different picture. To be sure, this study does say that there are more liberals than conservatives on college faculties, although the propoportions (while still significant) aren’t as large as those found in some other reports. But most significant, the new study suggests that the most dramatic trend among the professoriate in recent years has been a shift toward the middle of the road. And the trend is particularly pronounced in some of the disciplines that enroll the greatest numbers of students.
Still, when you ask academics to define themselves as "liberal" or "conservative," these labels reflect relative positions, not absolute ones. Law professors that I know who define themselves as "right of center" also argue that sex with animals should be legal, and gay marriage should be implemented by the legislatures, not the courts. Anywhere outside the academic community, those positions would be considered at least liberal.
A bit more useful is this study by Daniel Klein in Critical Review, which instead of asking professors to define themselves as "liberal" or "conservative," asks for their positions on various issues, and then maps the answers onto the various positions. Not surprisingly, they find that professors who call themselves Democrats fit "liberal" pretty well; ditto for professors who call themselves Republicans; they fit "conservative" pretty well. But even the Republicans tend to be pretty skeptical of laissez faire economic policies; professors, regardless of political affiliation, seem to be partial to the government doing things.
When it comes to how professors vote, you can really start to see how dramatically atypical the academic community is: We also asked: “To which political party have the candidates you’ve voted for in the past ten years mostly belonged?” The options we offered were Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Republican, and Other, listed in that order horizontally across the page, with checkoff boxes. Of the academic respondents, 962 (79.6 percent) reported voting Democratic, 112 (9.3 percent) reported Republican, 17 (1.4 percent) reported Green, and 13 (1.1 percent) reported Libertarian. Twenty-nine respondents (2.4 percent) checked two or more responses, 16 (1.3 percent) wrote in an “other” party, 17 (1.4 percent) said they cannot or do not vote, and 42 (3.5 percent) did not respond to the question.
Hmmm. That means professors vote Democrat (either always or so often that they didn't bother mark multiple responses) more than 8x as often professors vote Republican (again, either always or so often that they didn't bother marking multiple parties).
A little political diversity would do a world of good for the academic community in terms of a diversity of ideas.
We Keep Getting Accused of Empire...
Michael Williams suggests (I think in the style of A Modest Proposal) that we start behaving like one:It's obvious that doing good by freeing gazillions of people from tyranny hasn't won us any points with the world, so I say it's time to stop making friends and start making money, Roman style. Rather than freeing all these people, protecting Europe from commies and Nazis, policing the oceans, and saving Tsunami victims, all gratis, it's time to start extracting tribute from every country that has benefitted from American foreign policy. Here's the tribute menu:
A commenters over there named Caethan asks:
- Saved you from Nazis: 10% GDP
- Saved you from Communists: 10% GDP
- Special Commie and Nazi combo: 15% GDP
- Freed you from insane Muslim dictator: 20% oil discount in perpetuity, plus free airbases
- Every time one of your citizens bombs American property: $1 billion cash or 10 times the damage cost, whichever is higher
- Each one of your ships that transports goods without being attacked by pirates, Nazis, or Commies: 10% of the value of the goods
- Rescued your country from a major natural disaster: 10% GDP for the first disaster, 5% each additional disasterDo you really want an American Empire?
Another responds:We are being accused of it from abroad and from the Kerry, Dean, Reid, Pelosi camp. Why not make it offical and send an invoice?
No, We Couldn't Do That
Michael Williams is hopping mad about Iran's president coming to New York City to hold press conferences:If we let Ahmadinejad give a press conference in New York City under the protection of the Secret Service, we're going to look like fools in a few years when we're chasing him through the mountains of Pakistan. We should grab this guy as soon as he steps off the plane and throw him in a deep hole at Gitmo.
Obviously, we can't do that. It would be a serious violation of international law, treating diplomats like that. I mean, Iran might retaliate by taking over our embassy.
Conversion At Swordpoint
Pope Benedict is getting a lot of flak about his remarks quoting a Byzantine emperor concerning the evil of Islam's conversion at swordpoint. Chirac, for example, thinks that the Pope is confused:Pope Benedict XVI’s recent remarks about Islam and the prophet Mohammed provoked the first reaction from a western leader; French President Jacques Chirac warned against confusing Islam with a religion with a radical movement.
I wish that were the case. Conversion at swordpoint, however, is not a peculiarity of "radical Islamism," or a modern misinterpretation of the Koran. Battlefield conversion at swordpoint has been a fundamental part of Islam from the very beginning, apparently commanded by the Koran's "The Cow" 2:190-1. Significantly, this appears only to justify conversion at swordpoint against current combatants; 2:192:
"We must avoid everything that increases tension between people or religions," he said in an interview on Europe 1 radio. "We must avoid any confusion between Islam, which is of course a respected and upright religion, and radical Islamism, which is a totally different form of behavior that is political in nature," he said, according to AFP. But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
suggests that Muslims may not force conversion against non-combatants, or those who are no longer combatants. Pretending otherwise may be good politics for Chirac, but it is historically inaccurate.
Now, some of you may be saying, "Harrumph! The Pope is complaining about conversion under threat of death?" Oddly enough, while you can find a lot of examples in European history where Jews were given a similar choice, this appears never to have been Church doctrine--quite the contrary. I am almost done reading Benzion Netanyahu's The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, 2nd ed., and he has a very relevant discussion on pages 1012-14 of how proponents of the Spanish Inquisition justified its application to the Jewish converts to Christianity who were supposedly "secret Jews":The orders issued on January 2, 1481, contain three such signals, indicating what the Kings had in mind when they launched their inquisitional project. The most telling of these signals was the Kings' description of how the conversos had become Christians. We refer especially to the clause in that description which says that the conversos (or rather their ancestors) were baptized "without pressure or force" (sin premio ni fuerza). Evidently, this formula came to dispose of the claim that the conversos of 1391 resulted from a death threat and hence were "forced," and that those of 1412-1418 were effected under duress (intolerable pressure) and hence were also forced. Juding by the Kings' declarations, then, all these conversions were voluntary.
The reason for this clearly false claim is that [A]n inquisition could deal with heretics and apostates, but the Judaizers [those conversos accused of secretly being Jews] were neither heretics nor apostates. Since their parents were forced into Christianity without ever believing in any of its tenets, their infants and small children could not become Christians by being "baptized in the faith of their parents" which was what it had been--i.e., Judaism. Thus, since these children had never been Christians, they could not have deviated from Christianity (i.e., become heretics) or depart from it (and thus turn apostates). Like their parents, they were forced into Christianity and kept in it against their will out of fear, and thus they, too, must be seen as forced converts, who should be outside the inquisition's jurisdiction.
Now, Netanyahu points to considerable argument about what constituted force, with Boniface VIII arguing that "forced conversion" meant "only when physical compulsion was applied" (but not, "threat of death"), but also that famed authorities like Isidore of Seville and the Fourth Toledan Council, who recognized conversion under fear of death as forced (and hence forbidden by Christian law)....
Netanyahu points to a number of prominent churchmen who shared this view, and points out, [W]ith rare exceptions, all Christian authorities denounced forced conversion and canon law explicitly forbade it.
It would appear that forced conversion was contrary to Church doctrine.
The Death Worshippers
A recurring difference between Islam and the West is that Islam worships death. If you think that I am painting with too broad a brush, consider this recent question of textbooks: As if things weren't crazy enough already in the Middle East, here's the officially sanctioned message in sixth-grade Palestinian textbooks for 11- and 12-year-old kids: "The noble soul has two goals: death and the desire for it."
Unfortunately, it isn't just the willingness to die that makes this so dangerous; it is the willingness to kill innocents as part of this death worship cult that threatens the rest of the world.
The goal isn't to build magnificent skyscrapers or write brilliant novels or to work on cures for the world's most lethal diseases. The noble goal for the noble soul is as simple as strapping on a dynamite belt and blowing oneself into a million pieces in an Israeli pizza shop.
The "death-and-the-desire-for-it" line is from a poem by Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud. Along with other writings that glorify child martyrs, the quote is included in "Our Beautiful Language," a standard text for sixth-graders after the Palestinian Liberation Organization took control over education in the Palestinian territories.
As officially stated, the underlying ethos of the Palestinian curriculum is "built on the principle of breeding the individual on the basis of serving society as a whole." Translated, that means breeding kids who believe suicide and murder are noble, who believe it's noble to create a society where the individual reaches his highest stage of development by extinguishing his own individualism, his own existence.
It's Jonestown, writ large, a cult of suicide for the collective, for Palestine. Israel isn't on the maps in the Palestinian textbooks.
Abdullah Qura'an, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, carried a 13-pound bomb in his school bag into a checkpoint near Hablus. He didn't die, because a cell phone rigged to set off the bomb didn't work. The unwitting youngster was told he was carrying car parts.
Shortly thereafter, a 16-year-old suicide bomber, Amar al-Far, outfitted for self-destruction by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, killed three people in an open-air food market in Tel Aviv.
Said the boy's mother: "Why did they choose my son? He was just a child. It's immoral to send someone so young. They should have sent an adult who understands the meaning of his deeds."
The boy's father told of his last encounter with his son: "I was asleep when Amar woke me up. He kissed me and asked for two shekels, 45 cents. He left the house and I went back to sleep."
A recent article in Rolling Stone, "The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr," tells the story of a 15-year-old captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan after he killed an American Special Forces soldier with a grenade.
"Born into a fundamentalist Muslim family in Toronto," Omar Khadr "had been prepared for jihad since he was a small boy," reports Jeff Tietz. "His parents, who were Egyptian and Palestinian, had raised him to believe that religious martyrdom was the highest achievement he could aspire to. In the Khadr family, suicide bombers were spoken of with great respect."
What is just astonishing to me is how the left, and many liberals, just don't get it. They see George Bush as a greater danger than this crowd that wants women banned from learning to read; that doesn't just refuse to let homosexuals get married--it refuses to allow them to live; that makes the most traditional and conservative Christian denominations look like the ACLU with respect to the establishment clause.
Sam Harris is a flaming liberal and opponent of all religious beliefs. This recent column in the Los Angeles Times makes a pretty good case that liberals are attempting to commit civilizational suicide:TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.
There's a lot in this column with which I disagree. He refers to "members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies." While I've met more than a few people over the years whose "end times" beliefs were used to justify all sorts of bizarre and ridiculous positions, this enthusiasm seems to have subsided--at least among Christians that I know. (Some of this was because Hal Lindsey's many books on "end times" turned out to be considerably less prophetic than he thought.)
This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.
This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
...
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.
Recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of the phrase "Islamic fascism" are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise — Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists — but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
It is a rather strange situation where leftists and many liberals, who should have the most to worry about from the increasing dominance of a fiercely homophobic, male chauvinist, anti-freedom of expression, and religiously intolerant worldview, are clearly more afraid of George Bush and Dick Cheney than they are of our common enemy.
Should Lawyers Agree Not To Be Terrorists?
I mentioned a few days ago the Ohio ACLU's victory in overturning a law requiring attorneys to swear that they are not terrorists, or involved with a terrorist organization--and why I thought that was a bad idea. One of my regular readers took exception to that, and argued that the government should not be involved in any way in regulating relationships between attorneys and their clients, other than establishing a basic competence of attorneys.
A lawyer who is representing a client is an officer of the court. They are obligated by existing laws and the ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility in a number of respects: they agree that they will not knowingly present information that they know to be false; will not knowingly participate in a witness perjuring themselves; and have certain obligations to both their client and the court. (See EC 7-26 through EC 7-28 of the ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibilities for some examples.) There's already a lot of limitations above and beyond requiring "a basic competence" of an attorney.
This is an especially serious matter when there is the very real possibility that a defense attorney may inadvertantly come across information that exposes information about anti-terrorist operations. I've read of too many cases where papers got mixed in that weren't supposed to go to opposing counsel. Yes, we shouldn't rely on the defense attorney to be a protection against the prosecution making these sort of mistakes, but neither is there anything wrong with requiring attorneys to not be actively participating in a conspiracy to murder people.
Disturbing Information About Polycarbonate Plastic
I'm a big fan of plastic--heck, I manufacture goods out of Delrin. I consider the "plastics are going to exterminate us" screeching of the environmentalists to be at best, deranged, and at worst, intentional deception. Still, there are places where I start to be a bit concerned.
One of the worst aspects of the Internet is its ability to propagate nonsense at extraordinarily high speed--hence, the now widespread belief that the U.S. government caused 9/11. My mother forwarded me the following email concerning health risks associated with certain plastics, and asked if it was true--and surprisingly enough, there seems to be considerable truth to it:In June, San Francisco banned the manufacturing, sale, and distribution of child-care products and toys containing certain phthalates and bisphenol A, both hormone-disrupting chemicals found in some plastics that are thought to interfere with childhood development. The European Union has similar bans on phthalates.
Snopes.com didn't have anything about this--but I found a number of at least plausible sources that confirm that bisphenol A is indeed closely related to estrogen, and that while there is controversy about whether the amount of it that leaches out of plastics is a hazard to humans, it is clear that in large doses, it is a real hazard. This recent press release from Indiana University is pretty disturbing:
Bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is found in many polycarbonate plastic products (often labeled as #7), such as plastic labeled as microwavable, eating utensils, linings for metal food and beverage containers, baby bottles, and other products. I believe San Francisco's measure to ban BPA in children's products is justified. BPA is a hormone disrupter, a chemical that alters the body's normal hormonal activity and mimics the effects of estrogen. In mice and rats, exposure to BPA has led to miscarriages, birth defects, and mental retardation, as well as early puberty, breast and prostate cancers, and reduced sperm counts. In laboratory studies, this chemical has been shown to inhibit the formation of connections in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, or memory center.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention detected BPA in the urine of a majority of the thousands of people it tested in the United States. Frederick vom Saal, PhD, a professor of reproductive biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has been researching the effects of these chemicals for more than 30 years and is convinced they're a danger to health, especially for children and fetuses. He and his colleagues looked at human cells and BPA and were astonished at the small amount of chemicals needed to alter the cells. Since then, more than 40 studies have confirmed the negative effect of low doses of BPA on human cells and mouse cells, where they produced an almost identical response. More studies show BPA?s cell-altering effects at higher levels.
I'm concerned about these findings. Normal wear and tear of plastics causes chemicals to leach. "In adults, high levels affect behaviors and the immune system, but babies are ruined for life," says vom Saal. Of particular concern is the abundance of baby bottles on the market containing BPA. Consumer Reports tested hard plastic baby bottles and found that even after multiple washings, they continued to leach BPA. "When you boil them in water, you have an estrogen cocktail," says vom Saal. BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bisphenol A, a common industrial chemical claimed to speed the growth of human breast and ovarian cancers, retains its carcinogenic properties even after being modified by body processes, report Indiana University and University of California at Berkeley scientists in the Aug. 28th issue of Chemistry & Biology, a Cell Press journal.
The press release emphasizes that they don't know that this actually takes places in the body--but that it certainly can take place.
Defenders of bisphenol A's use have argued that its natural modification inside the human body renders the estrogen-like chemical harmless.
"We tested whether this chemical modification -- the addition of sulfate to BPA -- keeps the chemical from being absorbed by breast tumor cells," said IU Bloomington biochemist Theodore Widlanski, who led the project. "We've shown that modified versions of bisphenol A likely to be formed in the body do stimulate breast tumor cell growth in vitro. Enzymes present on the surface of breast tumor cells appear to convert the modified BPA back into BPA."
BPA is a plasticizer present at low levels in mineral water bottles, CDs and DVDs, car parts and other household products. A recent U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention study found trace amounts of BPA in 95 percent of urine samples collected from American adults.
The researchers present a model for the selective uptake of BPA into breast cancer cells by implicating human enzymes that sulfate and de-sulfate BPA.
One of those enzymes, estrogen sulfotransferase, adds sulfate to estrogen, making the molecule water soluble and easily transportable through the bloodstream. Widlanski's collaborators showed that BPA, too, can be sulfated by estrogen sulfotransferase.
Now, the bisphenol A industry claims that recent studies show that low doses aren't a health risk. They might well be right; for some chemicals, there is a threshold below which the body seems to do quite well at dealing with it, and above that threshold, the body can't. A good example is alcohol. A blood alcohol level of .50% is lethal; a blood alcohol level of .05% is not; a blood alcohol level of .01% could probably be sustained indefinitely without damage.
Still, even if the vast majority of people are at no risk from typical levels of bisphenol A exposure, there are going to be some people whose exposure will be much higher, because of increased leaching caused by highly acidic water, repeated cycles of boiling water in bisphenol A containing plastics--or infants, who might be at substantially higher risk because of their small body size, and their developmental stage. The bisphenol A industry claims that a Dutch suggests that the risk is minimal:A common claim is that high levels of bisphenol A migrate from polycarbonate bottles, in particular from old bottles that have been used repeatedly. In 2005, this claim was examined by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in a study that measured migration from 22 new baby bottles (representing 14 brands) and 20 old baby bottles (representing 11 brands).(3) The old bottles had been used for up to three years in households under typical conditions including microwave heating, boiling before use and dishwashing. Consistent with many other studies, no migration of bisphenol A was detected from the new bottles. Significantly, trace migration levels were detected in only three of the old bottles. Contrary to what is commonly claimed, these results indicate that typical use of polycarbonate bottles does not lead to extensive migration.
Sorry, but that's not good for me. I might be prepared to accept these figures for polycarbonate water bottles used by adults, but babies? I think it would be very wise to stay away from polycarbonate baby bottles.
This article from the University of Missouri is a bit more alarmist in tone--perhaps too much so, but it does make me a bit concerned about the use of polycarbonate for anything that involves food:Since their landmark findings in 1997 on low-dosage effects of Bisphenol A (BPA) on mice, vom Saal and Wade Welshons, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, have labored to warn the public and government agencies of the dangers associated with the prevalent chemical that is used in many plastic products, including baby bottles, food-storage containers and toys.
UPDATE: Joe Huffman at The View From North Central Idaho blogged yesterday that Greenpeace Netherlands found that...how to be discreet about this...toys commonly used only by adults (and not even most adults) have also been shown to be strong in phthalates, which are also "linked to hormone and reproductive disturbances."
In May vom Saal presented new scientific evidence about this chemical at the Toxicology and Risk Assessment Conference, an annual conference sponsored by several governmental agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to examine the possible dangers of toxic chemicals.
During the conference near Dayton, Ohio, vom Saal argued that scientific findings in more than 35 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals provide credible evidence that the chemical is harmful to every type of animal that has been studied, and this chemical is thus very likely to produce the same types of abnormalities in humans. These findings are based on independent academic research that has studied the effects of BPA.
...
Bisphenol A is an artificial estrogen, but it is bonded together in a chain of bisphenol A molecules to create the plastic called polycarbonate as well as resins that are used to line cans and as dental sealants. Each day, consumers use several plastic products that contain BPA, a chemical found in the 1930s by a Nobel-prize winning scientist to act like estrogen. In the 1950s, chemists linked BPA together to create polycarbonate material, and companies began using the chemical in plastics production. Today, BPA, one of the top 50 chemicals in production in the United States, generates billions of dollars for the plastics industry, which produces about 2.5 billion pounds of the chemical per year.
Vom Saal said scientists have known for many years that the polycarbonate bond created by BPA was unstable and that the chemical would eventually leach into food or beverages in contact with the plastic. The obvious concern today is that it may leach into food products, ranging from microwavable dinners to baby formula, that are packaged in polycarbonate plastic.
“The idea that this is a strong, durable product is an illusion,” vom Saal said. “The chemists have known that the Bisphenol A chemical is constantly leaching and coming into contact with food or water. It’s going to damage your body.”
Researchers also have known that supplemental estrogens are harmful to animals and people, especially during fetal development. Vom Saal, Welshons and other scientists were particularly interested in BPA because they knew blood proteins involved in protecting against effects of natural estrogens would not protect against the chemical. Thus, this artificial hormone could travel directly through the blood into cells and damage them.
In 1997, the MU researchers published the first scientific article detailing the effects in animals of very low environmental exposure to BPA. Vom Saal and Welshons performed a prostate and sperm count study on male mice and demonstrated that BPA caused prostate hyperplasia — excessive growth of prostate tissue, a pre-condition of cancer. Since then, other studies, both theirs and those from other academic laboratories have shown that low-level exposure to BPA caused decreased sperm production in males, accelerated rate of growth, sex reversal in frogs, early onset of puberty, chromosome damage in female ovaries and a variety of behavioral changes.
Polishing Aluminum
I've been experimenting with using aluminum for some of the parts of the ScopeRoller line that are currently made of Delrin, a black plastic. To be honest, without actually machining every surface, Delrin just never looks that good. I was hoping that switching to aluminum for some of the plates involved would let me produce something that looks a bit nicer.
As I've mentioned in the past, aluminum is slightly stronger (in tensile strength) than a piece of Delrin of the same weight. (The Delrin is half the density, so you need about a 1/4" piece of Delrin to get the same strength as 1/8" aluminum.) The aluminum is far stiffer, however.
So I tried to replace a 1/2" piece of Delrin in one of these parts with 1/4" aluminum. There's no question that from a strength and stiffness point of view, the aluminum is superior. It is harder to machine, of course. I've been using a type of woodworking tool to excavate a .75" diameter .125" deep hole in the Delrin--and while it made the cut in aluminum, I wouldn't expect to see these tools last very long on aluminum. I would have to replace this with a .75" end mill instead.
The biggest problem, however, is finish. To get what I consider an attractive, mirror finish, turns out to be an enormous amount of work! I started using a belt sander with #150 sandpaper. Then #220 sandpaper. Then #400. Then #800. Then #1500. Then I put a polishing tool into the drill press, with some Mother's Mag Polish. In places the results are indeed, mirror shiny--what I was trying to get. But the core problem is identical to what happens when you grind a telescope mirror--you have work your way down through the various sizes of grit very slowly. The transition from #220 to #400 was probably too abrupt, and ditto for #400 to #800.
Maybe I stick with Delrin for this.
Thanks For All The Kind Words About Biscuit
A number of you have lost dogs over the last few months, and understand the hurt. We are fortunate that Dr. Durland, her vet, played very straight with us about the situation. He warned us that while there were heroic measures that could be taken--an MRI to make sure that a disc failure in her spinal column was the cause of the paralysis, and several thousand dollars for surgery to try and correct it--but he thought it was most unlikely that she would ever walk again.
Sad to say, from the stories that some of you have related, there are vets who are prepared to take absurd measures to save the life of an animal, at truly breathtaking costs. There comes a moment with every animal where you have say, "Enough." Not only are the costs astonishing, but any sort of surgery involves pain and recovery.
I've never been comfortable with bull fighting, dog fighting, and other forms of intentional cruelty imposed on animals. It isn't a great deal more justifiable if it is motivated by the desire to "save" an animal that is dying.
Things You Take For Granted With a Dog
1. If you spill anything edible on the floor, it won't require a full cleaning operation to remove it. My wife used to claim that we should have named our dog "Hoover." I was making black cherry Jell-O today, and some splashed out of the bowl onto the floor. Biscuit would have waiting, patiently, while I made it, in the hopes that something, anything, would fall into her grasp.
2. Dogs aren't a perfect substitute for an alarm system, but I will say that the chances of anyone even approaching the house without going into a barking frenzy were pretty small. By listening carefully to the different styles of bark, I was able to tell pretty quickly if Biscuit was simply confused, nervous, or saw a small animal outside. If she saw a human outside, it was a ferocious bark.
It's a Small World--Or I'm Too Famous!
A couple of Fridays ago, my wife and I went out to dinner at El Durango, the finest restaurant in Horseshoe Bend. (We've eaten in all three, so it isn't difficult to make that statement with some level of certainty.) At another table was a couple a bit older than us, with some 20somethings and their kids.
The first thing that I noticed was the older man was wearing a Star of David. Now, in most of America, this is not remarkable. In rural Idaho, well, it stands out. When I looked more closely, it appeared that there was a cross entwined into that Star of David. Again, in many parts of America, this would not be terribly surprising. One of our pastors in California was a Jewish convert to Christianity, and there have been Jewish Christians in a couple of other churches we've attended on the coast. In rural Idaho, this is even more of an oddity.
The second time that I noticed this party, the older man had gone out to his car, and brought in a laptop. Why, I was wondering, would anyone bother to do this?
The third time that I noticed them, the older man came over to introduce himself. "I went to the car to check your website, and make sure that it really was you."
This isn't the first time that a stranger has come up to introduce himself because of my blogging. It turns out that the wife runs Armed Females of America, so we had a lovely conversation in the outdoor patio.
At least I'm not attracting stalkers!
Wikipedia Didn't Knuckle Under
Unlike Google, Microsoft, and other corporations who are intent on proving the truth of Lenin's claim that "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them," Wikipedia isn't knuckling under to what used to be called Red China, but is really, more Black (as in Fascist) China today:The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.
Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.
Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.
His stand comes as Irrepressible.info, a joint campaign by The Observer and Amnesty International for free speech on the web, continues with the support of more than 37,000 people around the world. The campaign calls on governments to stop persecuting political bloggers and on IT companies to stop complying with these repressive regimes.
My Daughter Thought That I Didn't Like Animals Because I Resisted Getting a Dog
But no, it is because I get too attached to them. A week ago Saturday our Australian cattle dog Biscuit was limping and crying. We took her into the emergency animal clinic, and they thought it was a ligament tear on her right rear knee. They gave her some morphine for the pain, and an oral opiate that we gave her for several days--and it helped. Within two days, she was walking on all four legs again, and by the time she finished that medicine yesterday morning, she was back to her old self.
This morning, she was limping on the left hind leg, and whining again. Then, she started defecating in the house--not typical for her. I took her down to the animal hospital, thinking that perhaps she had favored her left hind leg during the time that her right hind leg was in pain--and perhaps another dose of pain killers would get her through this. She's eleven years old, and I wasn't keen on spending lots of money and putting her through the suffering of recovering from surgery since she probably only has a couple of years left, anyway.
By the time I reached the vet, she was not walking on either hind leg. Dr. Durland tells us that she is paralyzed and incapable of feeling any thing in the back half of her body, and there is no realistic chance of recovery. I am a lot more broken up about having to give the euthanasia order than I thought I would be. I don't think I'll be blogging or working for the rest of the day.
Blog Formatting Problems
Several readers tell me that in the last week or so, my blog hasn't been fitting onto the screen when using Safari on Macintosh. I don't know exactly what I changed in the settings, but as a first guess, I am changing the table column width used for the postings from 600 pixel to 300 pixels. Please let me know if this improves your situation.
