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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).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, September 30, 2006
If Iraq Can't Be Won, Where Do We Go From Here? I'm hoping that this can be won, but there is certainly going to come a point where the deaths and cost of Iraq are going to cause enough Americans to change their minds. We were watching CNN's coverage of the Iraq war this evening, and watching the pictures of the U.S. forces killed this week caused my wife to respond, "Those people don't deserve democracy." I explained that we aren't trying to infect Iraq with democracy primarily for the benefit of Arabs (although they will benefit from it), but because it benefits us. A culture that is reasonably free and reasonably prosperous should feel less need to produce suicide bombers. But if the American people decide that the cost is too high, what is the alternative strategy? Leaving Iraq alone right now will lead to full civil war, and probably the crowd that likes to torture people to death with power tools will be back in power--just like the way things were under Saddam Hussein. As the declassified Key Findings of the National Intelligence Estimate last week pointed out, if we lose in Iraq, it will embolden jihadists throughout the world. The reason isn't hard to figure out: it will be perceived that like what happened in Somalia, Americans are weak, and lack the willingness to fight. So what will we do? I can see a number of possible scenarios. I'm not endorsing any of these "solutions"--indeed, some of them are downright horrible. But if we can't make the Iraq Democracy Project work, these other methods of dealing with jihadis are dramatically worse. 1. "Fortress America": We secure our borders against terrorists entering either legally (as the 9/11 hijackers overwhelmingly did), or illegally (as could easily happen across our unsecure borders). But how do we do that? The ACLU (the fourth branch of the U.S. government) already objects to enforcement of the existing immigration laws. The dramatic increase in security to actually make us safe from terrorists coming here would be impossible, unless the ACLU ceased to have the influence in currently enjoys. Along with terrorists, we also have to worry about WMDs. It would not be at all difficult to ship all sorts of nasty weapons into the U.S., either with long period timers on them, or with one legal resident of the U.S. prepared to set off the weapon when it arrived. The current volume of international trade is huge. To adequately secure against the arrival of WMDs would almost certainly cause a dramatic reduction in international trade--with deleterious effects on the U.S. economy. 2. Make al-Qaeda happy. Unfortunately, contrary to the fantasies of the left, it is not enough to withdraw U.S. forces from the Middle East. Al-Qaeda believes that interfering with rape and genocide in Darfur is also a sign of "Crusaders" and it was Australian interference in the gang rape of girls in East Timor by Islamofascists that led al-Qaeda to the Bali bombing. (Yes, feminists, there is a philosophy more oppressive to women than Christianity.) We would have to not only cut off aid to Israel, but stand by while Iran carries out its mission of extermination. Al-Qaeda has also repeatedly stated that conflict is inevitable until all nations are Islamic. I used to think this was so absurd that I questioned this premise of the novel Prayers for the Assassin. With the way that Americans are beginning to take the short view of this matter, maybe this is only very unlikely--not impossible. The next three possible strategies would require enormous will, not only from the U.S., but from our allies. This will does not currently exist. Would it exist if there were a Beslan incident every month? You betcha. Why, even liberals might start to figure out that playing nice with al-Qaeda doesn't work. 3. Treat Muslim nations the way they have treated every other nation. Invade them; occupy; convert their mosques into churches; send in troops with orders to kill anyone that gives them any lip; assess a special tax on Muslims; pass laws that give Muslims less legal rights than non-Muslims, not just in ways that matter (say, a ban on Muslims possessing anything more deadly than a butter knife), but in ways intended to degrade them, like the laws that Muslims nations had prohibiting non-Muslims from riding horses. (Christians and Jews could only ride donkeys.) If we were prepared to do this as vigorously as Islam did to what had been the Byzantine Empire, in four generations, Islam would be a minority religion everywhere our soldiers went. 4. A war not to change hearts and minds, but to humble Islam. Remember last year when Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) suggested that a terrorist nuclear attack on the U.S. might cause us to use nuclear weapons on Mecca? I was horrified that he would say such a thing. The more that I think about it, the more I find myself wondering if it may come to that. At least part of the core problem we are having with Islamofascism is that Muslims believe that they have a specially favored status before Allah--and at the same time, recognize that they are generally poor and miserable compared to the non-Muslim world--in spite of sitting on oceans of oil. These two positions create cognitive dissonance, which can force a rational person suffering it to abandon or modify one of those postions. Now, one rational response would be to solve the poverty problem by modernizing their economies. But unfortunately, Islamofascists seem more intent on destroying the economies of the West, so that this cognitive dissonance ends, because the West is as desperately poor as most Arab countries. (This may also be the reason the left is so sympathetic to al-Qaeda--they can end world poverty by making everyone poor.) That horrifying concept of nuking Mecca? While Mecca itself isn't "special" to Islam, as I understand it, it would be difficult for Muslims to continue to hold on to this belief that they are "special" to Allah if they can't go on pilgrimage to the holy sites anymore. (The pilgrimage to Mecca is something that every Muslim is supposed to do at least once, if they can.) Such a destructive act would have to be thoroughly explained to the Muslim world to clarify its purpose: "You think that you are something special because you are Muslims? Sorry, you aren't. You won't rein in the monsters like al-Qaeda; this is a reminder that you worship a false god. Keep it up, and we'll nuke every significant religious site in the Muslim world." 5. There's one more step, if that doesn't work, and it is far more horrifying than that. Don't stop at nuking religious sites. If you are familiar with Randy Newman's satirical song "Political Science" you may think that I am being fiercely satirical. I'm not. This is a horrifying prospect--but I can see how, if Islamofascism can't be stopped by less barbarous methods, a generation from now this may be the only alternative to living in the Islamic States of America posited by Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin. UPDATE: See here. I may have been mistaken about how dramatically the destruction of Mecca would be for destroying the overweening confidence of the Islamofascists in their righteousness. Labels: Islamofascism, terrorism The Dangers of Literalism in Translation I've mentioned that my wife and I are leading a Bible study at our church about Creation, evolution, and related issues. A reader sent me a booklet by Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati: 15 Reasons to Take Genesis As History (Brisbane, Aust.: Creation Ministries International, 2006). According to the author bios, "Drs Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati are scientists with earned doctorates (in biology/plant physiology and chemistry/physics respectively) who have published in seclar scientific journals." Before considering their arguments, I was curious to see what sort of papers they have had published. It is possible to make strong arguments with no previously published work, of course, but when you make a claim, it is helpful to see if it can be substantiated. Using scholar.google.com, I could find only one secular publication that cited Don Batten--but he does seem to have published several articles in journals such as Tree Physiology and Australian Journal of Plant Physiology. However, the Creation Ministries International web site had a list of Batten's secular journal papers, with links to these journals--and to say that he is a real scientist is not an overstatement. One example: "Ethylene and adventitious root formation in hypocotyl segments of etiolated mung-bean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek) seedlings" in Planta 138(3): 193–8. There are no references to any published work by Jonathan Sarfati in any secular journal that I can find with scholar.google.com, but again, this seems to be more an indication of the weaknesses in scholar.google.com. Creation Ministries International has a list of Sarfati's secular journal articles, with links to what seem to be secular journals, such as "Tetraphosphorus tetraselenide: crystalline and amorphous phases analysed by X-ray diffraction, Raman and magic angle spinning 31P NMR spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry" in Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 188(1-2):93–97. There might be a case that Sarfati, in writing this booklet, is working outside his area of expertise, but he is certainly a real scientist, who has done serious research in physical chemistry. As the title suggests, the booklet contains 15 arguments for accepting the Genesis account as history--and by that, they are careful to emphasize [T]hat belief in inerrancy does not mean wooden literalism (a common straw-man argument). Inerrantists such as us apply the standard, orthodox, grammatical-historical hermeneutic, which recognizes the various forms of writing such as metaphor, hyperbole, etc. In other words, we take as literal history those passages which were clearly intended to be taken as such (including Gen. 1-11). [p. 5]I wish that this were a straw-man argument. While well educated Christians--especially pastors--usually do not fall into "wooden literalism," as they describe it, there is plenty of it out there--and what makes this especially troubling is this literalism is based on English translations of Hebrew and Greek--with all the problems that this entails. Perhaps the most important is the problem of the multiplicity of meanings in Biblical Hebrew and classical Greek. Modern English has, depending on whether you include all the scientific terms, somewhere in excess of a million words. In many cases, we have several different words that have exactly the same meaning--but in many other cases, there are some very subtle differences in either denotation or connotation. This wealth of parallel word choices is not true for many other languages. You may heard the claim before that the Eskimos (preferred term now is Inuit) have 44 different words for snow. I found a weird Mongolian/Eskimo/Russian dictionary in a bookstore in San Francisco many years ago, and sure enough, there really were 44 words for different types of snow! I suspect that the Kalahari Bushmen don't have even one word for snow. Anyway, I've also been told that Biblical Hebrew had only about 10,000 words in its vocabulary. Strong's Concordance, which was published in 1890, shows from what every word in the King James translation of the Bible is translated. There's nothing "special" about the King James Version; the translators who worked on it did the best job that they could, but later translations are more accurate--although the majesty of the langugage (when it is still comprehensible to modern readers)--is still spectacular. (Let me recommend Adam Nicolson's history of the translation, God's Secretaries, published a couple of years back, if you want to know more about this language-defining process.) Strong's Concordance shows 8674 Hebrew words, and 5624 Greek words that were translated to English, so I find the claim that Biblical Hebrew had only about 10,000 words very plausible. So what happens when you translate one language to another? Even for someone who is fluent in both languages, there are going to be times when some very subtle shades of meaning can get lost. Even worse, what if you are translating a language with 10,000 words into a language with 300,000 words? There are serious problems of context with any translation. The verb ratsakh in Hebrew is used in both the sense of "murder" (for example, in the Ten Commandments), but also in the sense of "kill" (such as an animal). When the King James Version was translated, they went for a very literal not but not very accurate translation; modern translations are a bit more careful to catch the distinction, and "You shall not murder" is more correct. Let me get to the point: the Hebrew word used in Genesis's Creation account yom or yowm that is translated as "day" actually has a number of meanings: "from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space of time defined by an associated term)...." To insist that the Genesis account of Creation means only seven 24 hours days is not justified by the evidence. If you bring the assumption to the table that the Earth is very recent, then it makes perfect sense to translate yowm as "day." If you assume that the Earth might be quite old, then it is perfectly legitimate to translate yowm as "age" or "era." There are similar translational issues with the word that the King James Version translated as "begat." This is also the origin of how Bishop Ussher came up with the date 4004 BC--assuming that this word meant "father of." The Hebrew word in the Old Testament is yalad, which according to the dictionary in Strong's Concordance, has a range of meanings: "a primitive root; to bear young; causatively, to beget; medically, to act as midwife; specifically, to show lineage:--bear, beget, birth((-day)), born, (make to) bring forth (children, young), bring up, calve, child, come, be delivered (of a child), time of delivery, gender, hatch, labour, (do the office of a) midwife, declare pedigrees, be the son of, (woman in, woman that) travail(-eth, -ing woman)." Now, some of the Young Earth Creationists get quite insistent that yalad never means anything but "father of": Many Christian leaders also claim there are gaps in the Genesis genealogies. One of their arguments is that the word begat, as used in the timeline from the first man Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, can skip generations. If this argument were true, the date for creation using the biblical timeline of history cannot be worked out.Here's the problem: if yalad really does mean "father of" and only that, there are serious inconsistencies between the genealogies in Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3, and between those genealogies and the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. Atheists like to point to the differences to reject the Bible. You have a choice here: either yalad can mean something other than "father of," in which case the genealogies in Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3 are picking out different important ancestors of Jesus--or it means only that, and two of the Gospels contradict each other, and the Old Testament. I am more inclined to the idea that yalad means "ancestor of," partly because Luke's arrangement of Jesus's genealogy into 42 generations from King David to Joseph (14, 14, and 14 generations) almost certainly a numerological significance, because 14 is twice seven, and seven in Hebrew thought was the number of perfection. If those who insist on sticking with "father of" as the only meaning of yalad are doing so because they believe that the Bible is inerrant, then they are creating a much bigger inerrancy problem with respect to Matthew and Luke. Their insistence on yalad as "father of" is actually just their interpretation of what that word should mean--and if they stick to it, they are denying the inerrancy of Scripture in an area that is not just their interpretation, but the literal meaning of the words in those genealogies. This is already too long. I'll return to a discussion of Batten and Sarfati's booklet--and some problems with their arguments--in a later post. More About Tesla Motors Car and Driver 's October issue also has an article about the Tesla roadster--and does make this rather important point about recharging them: With a 220-volt, 70-amp charger made by Tesla that is hard-wired into your garage, the roadster will go from flat to flat-out in 3.5 hours. The car will be offered with a cord and a conventional 120-volt wall plug, should you be away from home, but charging time stretches to 33 hours. The pack will be warranted for five years or 100,000 miles.Ouch! The reference to "hard-wired into your garage" suggests that this charger requires its own circuit breaker (do the math--220 volts times 70 amps is 15.4 kilowatts). Unless Tesla can figure out a deal to get lots of hotels to buy and install these chargers, these are not going to be practical for anything except daily commuting. The Sky Is About to Fall Car & Driver published a comparison of two sports cars: a Porsche Boxster and a Pontiac Solstice GXP. They clearly preferred the Boxster--but the Pontiac was faster on the race track: Of course, the Pontiac is about 60% of the cost of the Porsche. And no, I'm not planning to buy one, even at the new book sells 200,000 copies. (Maybe at 500,000 copies.) Do Breathe Right Strips Make That Much of a Difference? I completely forgot to put one on last night before I crawled into bed. I slept poorly, and when I awoke from one dream, it was a dream of being suffocated in a pillow. My sinuses are congested, and I am far less energetic than usual. Labels: sinuses Cell Phones Are Useful Tools But if you have filed for divorce, a gun might be more useful: Residents and workers at Idaho State School and Hospital in Nampa said good-bye to Colleen Hubbard late Thursday, gathering around a bonfire and drinking Cherry Pepsi, Hubbard's favorite soda. Guns For Self-Defense: Not Just Against Criminals The vast majority of the accounts on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog involve criminal attacks, but every once in a while, we'll get a news story that reminds you that guns are useful in other situations as well: SINKING SPRINGS, Pa. - When a man and his dog dashed into the house with a rabid coyote on their heels, his wife slammed the door on the coyote's neck. Bringing Justice To The Terrorists I mentioned a few days ago my campaign to deal with wasp terrorists--and a reader informed me that I was assuming that because wasps have stung my son and my wife several times over the last few years that the wasps that are gathered around our new home are also likely to sting us. Yup, I plead to guilty to "racial profiling." The only reason that I am engaged in a genocidal campaign against wasps is because people that I know have attacked family and friends, sometimes in the Cramer Homeland. We haven't been attacked by ants, by grasshoppers (except for the incident with the holes in the screens--our "border defenses"), or by any category of beetle, but wasps are a serious problem. Now, some people believe that the correct response to the possibility of wasp bites is to apply the law enforcement model--wait until a wasp bites someone, and then kill that particular wasp. (We must protect the accused wasp's right to due process, of course.) But I'm a primitive sort--I am not going to wait; if you wear the colors and make the noises of the wasps that attacked my family, I'm going to assume that you are a threat to me. It hasn't been pretty. You can see the dead winged jihadists:  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge We have tried to avoid noncombatant deaths; my wife is very concerned that we don't spray the snake that is living on the east end of the house, or the beetles. But when you are carrying out night combat operations, it is easy to make mistakes, and I probably took out a few innocent beetles and grasshoppers last night; I'm sorry, but this is war. I have declared the porches around my house to be free-fire zones; if I can't make a positive ID, "if it flies, it dies." Fortunately, we are about to deal with the headquarters. I'm not waiting for them to come to me. We are actively seeking them out, wherever they are. My wife and I had not been able to find the nest, and we had some concerns that they might have found an opening into the rafters--and built a nest there. But, as it turns out, while engaging in pre-emptive war against the enemy this morning, I believe that I found the nest. Sorry about the picture quality, but this part of the roof was backlit, and I had to do nasty things to contrast and brightness to bring it out of the shadows:  Click to enlarge Tonight, when it cools down, and the terrorists go torpid, we are going to carry out a raid, using the combined firepower of two of these 20 foot range foam sprayers to soak the nest. In a day or two, we'll repeat the bombing mission, and knock down the nest. It's not a permanent solution, but the price of freedom from wasp stings is eternal vigilance. I've had great fun writing this, but there is a very real difference between jihadists and wasps. The wasps are a darn nuisance, but they do not threaten the life of myself or anyone that I know (unless that person is allergic to wasps). The wasps aren't intentionally targeting humans; for the most part, they get confused, mistaking us for threats. The jihadists aren't confused; they are evil, and their goal isn't self-defense, but the complete destruction of our way of life. They object to women being free to drive cars, and go to school. They refuse to acknowledge the right of people to worship God as they see fit--or the freedom to be an atheist. They do not simply disapprove of homosexuality--they seek to punish it with death. The left criticizes President Bush for having used the phrase "Islamic fascist" to describe our enemies, but it describes them well: they insist on the right to suppress all points of view with which they disagree, and they are not prepared to compromise, or settle for imposing their point of view in countries where a majority shares their views. Fighting wasps is a disagreeable task, but if I drop the ball for a couple of years, it is only to be a little unpleasant. I can stay in the house behind the metal screens, and just not use the porch. If we drop the ball fighting Islamofascism, they won't stop until every woman in America is wearing a burkha--and homosexuals will long for the days when they might be arrested and only jailed for their sexual preference. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) Resigns Apparently because of his explicit sexual discussions with a 16 year male page. Is it that difficult for the Republican Party to find straight politicians? Or at least ones with enough decency to leave children alone? Oh, this is no surprise: Officials with the national gay groups Log Cabin Republicans and the National Stonewall Democrats said they had no immediate comment on Republican congressman Mark Foley’s resignation from Congress, saying they wanted to learn more about the unfolding development.Gee, I wonder why? And he likes them young. What a shock. UPDATE: The more I see on Fox News about this, the more upset that I get. Apparently, this matter had come to the attention of some of the House leadership last year--and they took no action. Now, if they were morally offended by this, at least they should have been concerned about the political consequences of having someone this foolish running for Congress. After the McGreevey scandal, it should have been apparent that having a closeted homosexual in the party--and especially one that clearly can't keep his mind off teenaged boys--was a disaster waiting to be unearthed. If it wasn't this incident, you can be pretty sure that there would have been another incident down the road. To hear some of the talking heads at work on Fox, this could be the final straw that puts the Democrats in charge of the House--not just because of Foley, but because it would appear that Republican Party leadership wasn't prepared to take any action to quietly push Foley out. I suppose if the Republican Party could work up the courage to offend homosexuals, they would point out that they didn't think it was safe to push a member of Congress out for his sexual orientation. Who Is More Frightening? People that torture people to death for fun? Or George Bush? Classical Values points out how since 9/11, a lot of the left has gone overboard in its efforts to take the side not just of Islamofascism, but to give legal preference to anything Muslim: One of the great ironies of the post-9/11 period is that while violent Islamic jihadists attacked this country, there is a constantly growing network -- both organized and unorganized -- of in-place apologists at virtually every level of society all ready to defend them. Criticize jihadists, and people on the left will call you a racist. An Islamophobe. A bigot. I have seen this too many times to count, and the reason I call it ironic is that before 9/11, feminists routinely criticized the veil. Gay activists did not hesitate to condemn Islamic homophobia. Atheists condemned Islam the same way they condemned Christianity. After 9/11, the PC crowd suddenly included a group which they'd previously neglected, and it seemed to me that the 9/11 attacks helped the image of radical Muslims with the left in this country. And in most newspapers, and on many campuses. Bored? In Need of A Sleep Aid? I need about five people to read over my patent application for clarity. I may not be able to get all the way to an issued patent without hiring a patent attorney, but I am trying to get as much of the process done as I can by myself. At least, most of the grunt work will be done. So I need someone to read over my patent application (which is about 3000 words and 18 drawings) to make sure that they understand it. The theory is that a reasonably intelligent person should be able to read over a patent application, and figure out how to make the invention. If you see any inconsistencies between the drawings and the description, anything that you don't understand, that would be very helpful. On the advise of one of my readers who is a corporate patent attorney (and who will probably give me some help on the legal aspects of what are called "claims"), I can't just put this out where everyone can see it. If you can help, email me something like: "I agree to treat this as confidential material, and I will not reveal what it contains, in full or in part, to any other person." I'll email you two PDFs that total a bit under 200K. If you can read these over and get back to me in the next couple of weeks (when said corporate patent attorney returns from vacation), it would be greatly appreciated! Thursday, September 28, 2006
Fighting Wasp Terrorists I mean the things with wings--not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. We've had a pretty amazing infestation of them around our new house. My wife and I have gone out sporadically and mowed them down with long range insecticides--stuff that comes in cans that promise 27 feet of range. Now, the New York Times would doubtless say that building a house here angered them--that if we had left them alone, they would have been perfectly peaceful. I'm not so sure. Would they have been up here stinging cattle instead? I know that one of them engaged in an unprovoked attack in the Homeland on my son a few days ago, who is living in the old house down in Boise. My wife has been attacked by them several times over the last several years in our old house's garage, and in a park in Boise. Of course, I have no proof that the wasp terrorists that we are exterminating here in Horseshoe Bend have any ideological connection or sympathy to the one that attacked my son--but they sure sound, act, and look the same. Perhaps I'm just paranoid. UPDATE: It could be worse. Alabama is suffering what sounds like one of those incredibly bad movies that the Sci-Fi Channel makes: MOBILE -- To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama. The Ten Commandments Fight in Boise In summary, for those of you who don't live here: several years back, Rev. Fred Phelps (the guy who shows at veterans' funerals to claim that they are dying because America is too tolerant of homosexuals) threatened to sue the City of Boise if they didn't either: 1. Remove the existing Ten Commandments monument in one of the city parks. 2. Let him put up his own stone, decrying homosexuality. Phelps is someone who thinks Focus on the Family is in the wrong because they are trying to encourage homosexuals to become straight; Phelps just wants them dead. Other Idaho cities have already struggled with this question, and won approval from federal courts to leave up their Ten Commandments stones in city parks. When Phelps made similar demands elsewhere, the response of the largely conservative, Republican city governments in other parts of Idaho was, "Go pound sand." They don't approve of his hatred, and they weren't going to give him an easy victory. There were conservatives willing to defend Boise from whatever lawsuit Phelps filed, so there would have been no cost to the taxpayers if Phelps had filed suit. But Boise's City Council insisted that it could not afford to defend such a suit (even with others paying all the legal bills) and pulled the Ten Commandments out of the park. (And of course, it turned out that the crowd saying that there was no legal problem were right--the U.S. Supreme Court upheld essentially the same situation involving a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds in Texas.) Nor would Boise City Council allow the voters to vote on it. Democrats were in control of the City Council, and if there is something that bothers Democrats more than Republicans, it is the notion that there are moral laws that can't be overturned with a stroke of the pen. Up and down this case went, and the Idaho Supreme Court told Boise that yes, the voters do get to vote on the matter. Now, one of the arguments used by the Boise City Council to justify removing the Ten Commandments monument was that they were being fiscally responsible, avoiding an expensive lawsuit (even someone though else volunteered to pay for defending the city). So the Keep the Commandments Coalition, which brought the suit demanding that the people of Boise should at least get a chance to vote on it, decided to find out how much money the City of Boise spent fighting their lawsuit. I mean, if the goal was to be careful with the taxpayers' money, then obviously, Boise should have: 1. Accepted the offer of outside counsel to defend the city free of charge. or 2. Not spent money fighting a lawsuit by the Keep the Commandments Coalition. But how much money did Boise spend fighting that lawsuit? According to a press release from the Keep the Commandments Coalition, Boise doesn't know: *City of Boise cannot account for thousands of dollars spent fighting a ballot initiative giving Boise citizens the right to vote on the public display of the Ten Commandments.*I'm not stunned at all. This was never about money. It was about making the ACLU happy. Labels: establishment of religion Torture, Power Tools, And Machining The faint of heart may want to skip this one--there's a picture of my finger, and an unpleasant quote from a history book about Japanese torture. This is a weird posting--a mixture of political commentary and machining. I heard a news report about the increasing number of bodies that are being found around Baghdad that were not just kidnapped and murdered--they were tortured to death with power tools. For those who think that listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers is torture, or having a pretty woman touch you is torture, consider what torture really means. It means someone uses an electric drill. (And yes, I will concede that waterboarding is, to my mind, on the other side of the line that separates torture from aggressive interrogation techniques.) This is a subject of concern to me because of a mishap a couple of weeks back with a power tool. The Sherline vertical mill and lathe that I have are very, very cute. Their motors are also so weak that as long as you don't do something really stupid, the chances of injuring yourself with either tool aren't enormous. I think I've managed to get one cut that bled from using these tools. However, the floor drill press that I bought recently is another matter. It has enough power (one horsepower) that the same level of caution that works for the Sherline is insufficient for this bad boy. I was using an end mill in the drill press to produce a nicely finished edge on a piece of aluminum. The end mill had not come to a complete stop when I tried to knock some shavings off the edge of the aluminum. Ouch! It has been about two weeks now, and my finger has still not completely healed.  Torture as a method of extracting information has a long and not very reliable history; people will say almost anything to stop torture. Even aggressive interrogation techniques need to be focused on obtaining operational intelligence--not something that will be used in a court of law. If operational intelligence can be verified (hopefully, by preventing a terrorist action), it can be justified because of the lives saved. If the use of these techniques doesn't produce any lifesaving information, it serves no legitimate purpose. The Stalinist show trials demonstrated the uselessness of torture as a technique for obtaining material for use in a criminal court. Defendants confessed to crimes that they could not possibly have done. At least partly, the Soviet government's goal on this was not just to extract confessions to justify executing Stalin's political opponents, but also to remind everyone in the country that: 1. We can make you say anything--you won't be strong enough to fight it. 2. We don't care that what defendants are confessing to is ridiculous. It doesn't matter to us that the confessions are completely unbelievable, because we aren't particularly concerned with what anyone thinks of us. I can imagine a few truly horrifying circumstances where the use of torture might be rationally justifiable, and nearly all of them read like scenarios that might be used in an episode of 24: the ticking nuclear weapon, hidden in a big city, and you have someone that you know beyond any reasonable doubt, was involved in placing it. These situations are few and far between, and as I have pointed out in the past, these are so rare that we should not institutionalize such practices. If one of these doomsday scenarios comes about, I'm sure that the security forces will use whatever techniques they deem appropriate to get the information that they need--and they will throw themselves on the mercy of the President for a pardon. If the scenario is truly that extreme, and the evidence establishing that the suspected terrorist has this information is truly convincing, I have no question that such a pardon would be granted. The prospect of it not happening, and the consequent punishment that came from it, should act as a restraint on any decent law enforcement officer. (The others, I'm afraid, aren't likely to be restrained by anything.) But torture isn't just for extracting information. Much of the torture being done in Iraq right now by these death squads involves people who could not possibly have any useful information. Unfortunately, there are people who just like to inflict suffering. David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy pp. 679-80, describes tortures performed simply as part of training others in interrogation techniques: A young Manchurian accused of being a Communist was then brought into the interrogation chamber which served as classroom and beaten up with fists. He was burned with cigarettes on cheeks, lips, and eyelids. A mixture of water and red pepper was poured down his nostrils to give him a taste of burning to death and drowning at the same time. He was hung up and whipped. Attendants burned pits into his privates with their cigarettes. A Japanese doctor of evident education and contempt for the proceedings entered the room bowing and smiling and resuscitated the victim with an injection. The young leftist's fingernails were torn out, then his toenails. Strips of flesh were cut from his body with a knife. His teeth were knocked out. Finally Instructor Kato, "using his favorite tool, the cigarette, methodically burned out his eyes."That injury above was a fraction of second glancing blow from a 3/8" diameter end mill--and boy did it hurt! I have learned, to paraphrase the instructions at Disneyland, "Keep your hands in your pockets until the ride has come to a complete stop." The prospect of someone intentionally using a power tool to inflict pain fills me with rage. If the cut and run crowd of the Democratic Party gets their way, we will be granting control of Iraq to people who consider this not just a necessary evil to obtain information, but people who do this for fun. That is not acceptable. If Your Email is "Nosy" I know that you are reading my blog, but I keep getting bounces when I try to respond. Why I Don't Think Much of the Bay Area If people want to do these things, I don't see that the government needs to step in; STDs and damaged relationships will generally correct this sort of behavior in a far more dramatic way than anything the courts could ever do--and if it doesn't? Some people deserve each other. But this column below doesn't appear in one of those newsrack sex papers; it runs on the website of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner--which are considered respectable, serious newspapers by San Francisco standards: Because I grew up in San Francisco, it makes perfect sense that I should be friends with an Elvis impersonator. Less so than Las Vegas, but it also makes even more sense that he met his girlfriend at an Elvis convention, because she's an Elvis impersonator, too. Of course. And she happens to work at one of the largest, busiest online kinky sex toy stores in the world. This is a perfectly pervy San Francisco love story, except that they now live in Los Angeles. Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Isometric Drawing Program? I need a tool that lets me easily make an isometric drawing of something for a patent application. Right now, I have side, top, and bottom views--but the Patent Office prefers isometric view line drawings of objects. If you have such a program, and can draw a very simple object, I would appreciate it. To give you an idea of the simplicity, see here. UPDATE: Thanks to all who responded with suggestion that I try sketchup.google.com. And thanks to the person who whipped out a beautiful isometric line drawing. For those concerned that the drawing above might create problems for a later patent--they are part of the Provisional Patent Application that I filed last December. This provides the priority required to resolve any disputes about prior art. California Refugees: Will They Turn The Intermountain West Blue? This article from the Los Angeles Times by Ryan Sager, author of The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party (Wiley, 2006) sounds a bit like either wishful thinking or an attempt to scare Republicans into abandoning social conservatives. Sager's claim is that the huge swarm of Californians who have left for places like Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, have the potential turn these states Democrat, because the values of these Californians are largely libertarian or even somewhat liberal. Excuse me while I start to laugh. Californians have been leaving that cesspool of depravity and nice weather for the intermountain Western states since the early 1990s--and the net effect was to make places such as Eastern Washington and Idaho substantially more conservative. Idaho, you know, used to regularly elect Democrats to Congress, to the governor's mansion, and in large numbers to the state legislature. Eastern Washington's House seat was held by a Democrat--the Speaker of the House, until 1994. At least part of what changed was a lot of Californians moved to these places because they were tired of being told that their values were incompatible with the left's agenda. Of course, the Democrats managed to drive out a lot of their blue collar voters here the same way that they did in other parts of America: Many Idaho evangelicals are Republicans from California, who don't share the resource-industry traditions of native Idahoans. Idahoans deserted the Democratic Party in the 1980s because miners, timber mill workers and others blamed environmentalists with strong ties to Democrats for the loss of resource industry jobs.I've talked to a lot of California refugees here in Idaho, and I'll tell you, I've met one that could be characterized as left of center. Far more typical are California refugees who moved here because they wanted to live somewhere where their kids weren't made to feel weird for being Christians. Maybe the situation is different in other parts of the intermountain West--but I find Sager's claim about how different the West is completely wrong for Idaho: Although California's 55 electoral votes have proved impotent to thwart the rise of a big-government-loving, big-religion-thumping GOP, the California diaspora into some of our nation's least populous states is looking like it just might do the trick.That Sager thinks of Mormon as evangelicals shows a pretty comprehensive misunderstanding--but I'll grant that in general, Mormons are as least as social conservative as evangelical Christians--probably even more so. I have to wonder how evangelicals could make up only "29% to 34%" of the population in the eight Mountain West states. Perhaps because this doesn't include Catholics or Mormons--both of which are in much greater abundance in Idaho than I would have guessed before moving here, and both of which, I would guess, are not going to be voting for pro-choice Democrats. (They might vote for pro-life Democrats, but they might also vote for leprechauns, if those appeared on the ballot.) This data suggests that the various conservative religious groups are probably enough to keep social conservatives in the driver's seat: Catholics, Mormons, and "Conservative Protestant" combined come to 82.1%. Now, about half the Mountain West population is categorized as unaffiliated, so these three groups come to about 40% of the population. Obviously, not every member of those three group is a safe Republican vote--and it seems fair to assume that a fair fraction of the religiously "unaffiliated" will vote Republican, even for social conservatives. I also think that Sager's claim about this supposedly largely libertarian West must reflect other states. I have seen very little sign of libertarian anything in this state. There is a segment of Idahoans who are not terribly religious, but they are also pretty traditional. I recall one of the older gay men who spoke before a legislative committee in opposition to a proposed amendment to our state constitution who admitted that even he has some serious problems when he sees a wedding cake with figures of two men on it. I describe some of the things that were common where we lived in the Bay Area to raving liberals that live here, and they are shocked and clearly a bit disgusted. A Discouraging Article About The Failure of Colleges to Teach History Or is it the failure of students learn what they are taught? I'm not aware of any college that doesn't require at least a semester of American history--but the alternative is that students are simply not paying attention: Do our colleges and universities provide their students the American history and constitutional understanding needed to make them strong and responsible citizens?Okay, I'm biased. I would love for the demand for history classes at the college level to rise to the point where I could actually teach history, even just as a lowly adjunct. (For those not paying attention, at most colleges, adjunct instructors are above pond scum in the ladder of status, but below janitors.) UPDATE: A reader informs me it was possible to graduate from Duke without taking a single history course. Even more disturbing: one can be a history major at Duke without taking a single American history class. Perhaps I led too sheltered a life attending Sonoma State University--where no one got out without at least one semester of American history, and one semester of world history. Even more disturbing: this study of 50 of America's best universities found that large numbers do not require an American history class to graduate. Understanding the Conflict With Islam As Tribalism Power and Control has an interesting posting about how what we are fighting is really just an Islamic overlay on top of tribalism. There's really no way to summarize his points adequately, except to point out that the universalism that underlies the Judeo-Christian worldview is contrary to tribalism--and that this universalism is now endemic in the Western world, except for a few leftists who now worship it, I suspect because it isn't Western, and is "authentic" (as the left likes to call all destructive cultural behaviors that aren't white). New York Times: The Paper of Cat Boxes They used to be considered the paper of record; now they are the paper of catboxes. The declassified "Key Judgements" of the National Intelligence Estimate show that the article claiming that the NIE showed the Iraq war has increased the number of terrorists was engaged in deceptive, and out of context quotation. No surprise: this was all about helping the Democrats. We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.Hmmm. This seems to say that cutting and running (the preferred strategy of what calls itself the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party) will strengthen the jihadist movement. Significantly, while it says that the Iraq conflict has become a "cause celebre," and that it has cultivated "supporters for the global jihadist movement," it doesn't say that it made things worse. In 2001, the basis for this resentment by jihadists was U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (at the request of that government). In 1990, it was U.S. support for Israel. What was it in the 1930s, when the Muslim Brotherhood was promoting hatred of the democratic powers of the West--and allied with the Nazis? The core problem of the jihadis isn't the U.S., or Israel, but an unwillingness to face that Islamic societies are poor because of themselves. We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.And of course, the left has aggressively worked to promote "pervasive anti-US sentiment" and opposes "real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms" in Muslim majority nations. Pothead Fanaticism Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler asked a mildly serious question implying that the new federal antidrug ads claiming that marijuana causes laziness isn't really a sufficient reason for marijuana to be prohibited. Not surprisingly, the libertarian crowd piled on in the comments. Now, I've argued strongly in the past for decriminalization of all drugs, on the grounds that the consequences of illegality (high prices encouraging economic crimes, funding gang activity, balance of payments problems with drugs such as cocaine) exceed the social costs of having these drugs legal. Having lived in California when marijuana became effectively legal--and watching the enormous damage that meth is doing in some parts of the country--I am far less confident that decriminalization of all illegal drugs is going to be a net win. Certainly, the opiates might be a good case for decriminalization, but I am pretty sure that having meth available at the corner store would be very bad. What bugs me most of all is the tendency for libertarians to refuse to admit that there are negatives associated with having intoxicants freely available, so I commented: All the comments are very cute, but pothead lazy people still have kids. My brother-in-law is one of those example potheads that many of you don't see as a problem, because you don't know people like him. He's pretty darn smart--but he was drinking heavily and smoking pot by 13. His life ever since has been a train wreck, with two failed marriages, frequent jail time for domestic violence, at least one incident of not terribly severe physical abuse of a stepchild, multiple DUIs, and one memorable incident where he was so drunk that not only did he not realize that he had gone down the wrong way on a one-way street, but he didn't even realize that he had been in a traffic accident (with a police car responding lights and sirens to another crime) until the enraged cop dragged him out of car without opening the door. By his own admission, he only steals from friends, because he lacks the courage to break into a stranger's home.There's a saying that there is nothing more obnoxious than a reformed smoker, but there really is, and that's pothead evangelists--the sorts who are not only convinced that marijuana isn't a problem, but become abusive when you suggest that at least for some significant fraction of people, it is going to be a problem, just as alcohol is a problem for some significant fraction. The proof is contained in this email (which tender eyes might want to skip) from Henrick Levinousky (ruatool@hotmail.com): One only has to see the car you drive to figure what kind of a moron you are. I enjoyed reading your pot post but couldn't find any negative examples of pot use. Everything you mentioned was booze related as are more crimes in this country than all illegal drugs combined, but of course booze is fine. As cigarette taxes zoom, it's been years since anyone raised taxes on alcohol. Why do you think that is. It's the drug of choice of politicians, cops, and the religious right of course, not to mention the power of their lobby. I bet when your brother in law isn't drinking, and just smoking, 99 and 44/100 % of people would pick him to stand next to rather than an opinionated, egotistical idiot like you. Enjoy your your (rich) kiddy car. Can't think of a more uncomfortable ride in my sixty years. Gotta have a real big ass or a kidney belt to ride in one of them for more than a few minutes at a time, which do you have? Really impresses the young honeys though doesn't it? And, of course, it also advertises your financial position. Have a real need to impress people do you? You should fire up a doobie yourself. You'd sell that ridiculous car, buy yourself some decent clothes, and mellow out a little. You need it.I don't even know where to start, except with the factual errors: 1. The "religious right" is generally quite hostile to alcohol--that's part of why about 30% of Americans never drink. Even those of us who don't have a religious objection to alcohol drink very sparingly--I think I average about one to two glasses of wine a year. 2. The Corvette is not an uncomfortable ride. It rides a little more harshly than a luxury car, but not not really that badly. 3. Used Corvettes aren't expensive; I paid $32,500 for mine, when it was still under factory warranty. If anything, it underadvertises my financial position. (I used to get such a razzing from my co-workers about not buying a Ferrari.) 4. Decent clothes? I don't think I've posted any pictures that show what clothes I wear! Like I said: if you want some evidence of the destructive, non-mellowing effects of pot, that email is Exhibit A. Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The Truly Esoteric Patents David Pressman's Patent It Yourself has a discussion of "claims," which are the specific aspects of an invention that you are claiming deserve patent protection. I am only part way through the chapter, but there's a discussion of how to keep each individual claim from being too longwinded--and he gives an example of a claim in a patent that is about as short as a claim can be. The patent is 3,156,523, and was granted to Glenn T. Seaborg, who created a number of elements above uranium: 1. Element 95.I looked it up at the U.S. Patent Office web site (I hope this link still works). The patent covers a lot more than just element 95--such as methods of creating and isolating it--but still pretty amusing. A New Pedagogical Technique Thanks to Different River for bringing to my attention this new and startlingly bold technique for educating our kids: A Stuart Middle School teacher won't be arrested for burning two American flags in his classroom because authorities said his students were not put at enough risk to warrant charges.Like what? Raising the flag every morning? Or is that razing the flag every morning? Stuart Middle School seventh-graders were asked to write about what they saw in their classroom Aug. 18 when teacher Dan Holden burned U.S. flags. Their statements were included in the arson investigation file released yesterday. Names were not included because the students are juveniles. # "In social studies on Friday Mr. Holden took a lighter to the America (sic) flag and he burned it to get a reaction from us. Then he told us to go for homework ask are (sic) parents what they thought."I think it might be time to work on spelling and grammar first, and worry about the abstract concepts of freedom of speech later. Why There Needs To Be Serious Penalties For Abuse of Process My co-blogger at the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog mentioned the original incident quite a while back--and that the district attorney concluded that it was a completely lawful defensive shoot. But being in the wrong is never going to stop a bad guy from filing a lawsuit: The man shot by a Janesville doctor in what authorities think was a burglary of the doctor's home has sued the doctor for negligently using excessive force. |
