Category: Uncategorized

I wonder if all of the fearful conservative water-boarding enthusiasts would be so keen on it if they understood that if it is deemed to be an acceptable government investigative tool, there is no reason it cannot be used for domestic purposes. As, it appears, has already happened in Britain:

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt. The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers.

If waterboarding is nothing more than an accepted means of official inquiry, then the British police officers’ logic is correct and there is no reason it shouldn’t be legitimately used in drug, tax, and other criminal investigations.

Gizmodo laments Apple’s surrender to the class-flatteners:

A leveling of class distinctions in Apple products is going to sting people who valued the affectation of elitism that came with using Apple’s top-of-the-line products. Even subtle differences—like the premium paid for the matte black MacBook over the otherwise identical shiny white one, were signals, beamed out to the others in the coffee shop, declaring who was “da boss.” You know, the guys who wore the white earbuds with pride five years ago.

Since I regard the Cult of Apple with contempt and pay about as little attention to Apple’s products as it is possible to do and still remain technologically current, the angst of those Scalzi describes as “status-seeking beta monkeys” strikes me with a certain sense of schadenfreude. I don’t have any thing against Apple itself, you understand, and I have a tremendous regard for Steve Jobs. I have fond memories of my Apple IIe as well as my original Macintosh, it’s just that Apple now builds its business on certain target markets, none of which apply to me.

It’s not that I’m unaware of the way in which brand identity serves as a method of social communication. I quite enjoy taking my massive Dell XPS M1710 and its glowing cobalt-blue lights that make it look as if it is powered by a nuclear reactor to conferences and sitting down in the midst of a gaggle of weak-wristed executives and their ultra-thin, ultra-light Macintosh notebooks that won’t strain their spaghetti-thin arms. They always look at me with a mixture of fear, alarm, and awe; yes, I am your Notebook Alpha, bitches!

A freaky liquid-cooled Alienware machine would be even better, but Alienware is owned by Dell anyhow, and besides, when I’m asked about my monster – as I always am – I like to pretend that I went with Dell because it’s such a great corporate computer. I can usually get them to buy into it right up until I start playing MAME or Call of Duty…. Anyhow, it’s important to maintain your perspective and keep in mind that using Apple products doesn’t make you a better person. That’s what Linux is for.

John Scalzi, epispherical scientist, provides the lecture:

The vast majority of blogs, in fact, have nothing but the following three posts:

Post One: “Here’s my blog! This is where I’m going to share all my thoughts about life, the universe and everything! It’s going to be great and I can’t wait to tell you all what I’m thinking about everything!”

Post Two: “Hey, sorry I haven’t updated in a while — life’s been crazy. But I’ll be back soon.”

Post Three: “Here’s a picture of my cat.”

And then it’s done.

Clearly what is needed is some general theorist who can provide the intellectual basis for countercyclical fiscal policy capable of rescuing these underemployed bloggers from the curse of the cycle and restore the blogosphere to an equilbrium state of optimal production. And yes, if you must know, I do get a little strange once I’m on the home stretch of a book. But I’m not the only one.

“It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics….”
– John Maynard Keynes

It’s nice to learn that I’m not the only one who felt that Socrates got nothing less than he deserved:

Professor Paul Cartledge has concluded that the trial was legally just and Socrates was guilty as charged. Prof Cartledge said: “Everyone knows that the Greeks invented democracy, but it was not democracy as we know it, and we have misread history as a result. The charges Socrates faced seem ridiculous to us, but in Ancient Athens they were genuinely felt to serve the communal good.”

Setting aside both the absurdity of trans-temporal justice and the particulars of Athenian law, my perspective is that Socrates is most rightly condemned by the doctrine and behavior of his followers. The fact that two of Athens’s worst citizens, Alcibiades and Critias, were his students, and the deplorable totalitarian vision of Plato’s Republic, are more than enough to retroactively damn their instructor. And the flimsiness and dishonesty of his logic make me seriously question the logical capabilities of anyone who is overly impressed by the Socratic method; while it is an effective critical device, it is simply not the effective means of constructing positive conclusions that many people appear to believe it to be.

An intellectually inclined Italian admiral once said to me, the entire history of the ideological war between left and right boils down to Aristotle versus Plato. If this is a reasonable summary, one can’t help but wonder how different the world could have been if the Athenians had had the good sense to put an end to the poisonous philosopher before he sowed his sophistic seeds.

JpH takes the correct approach and asks a question rather than assume he knows the answer:

Do you support anti-Semitism? I don’t mind if the readers voice their opinions, no matter how silly they seem to be at times, but I just want to know if you agree with some of this very blatant anti-Semitism. I don’t assume that you do, but I am curious nonetheless.

In answer to the first question, no, I don’t support anti-Semitism, or Judenhassen, or whatever else you might want to call it. Being a libertarian, I tend to cast a very jaundiced eye on collectivist and group identity notions of every kind. To me, it makes no more sense to condemn today’s American Jews on the basis of the behavior of Jewish Bolshevists in Russia and Jewish Fascists in Italy than it does to hold today’s Romans responsible for the destruction of Carthage. One has to be a collectivist to think in such terms. Of course, because I am a libertarian, I also refuse to play thought police so long as people remain reasonably civil and I am an strong advocate of the Constitutional right of free association.

It’s not possible for me to answer the second question without more information, since I can’t know what JhP means by “this very blatant anti-Semitism” unless he details it. Is he suggesting that it is anti-Semitic to mention that some of today’s liberal fascists happen to be Jewish? Is it really anti-Semitic to provide a link to a video shot in Jerusalem which shows American Jews exhibiting a political perspective that most Americans would consider to be outside the mainstream? The world is what it is, regardless of how we might prefer it to be, and attempting to sweep the uncomfortable facts under the carpet accomplishes nothing.

One need not harbor any ill-will towards anyone to question, as Napoleon did, whether these young Jews are more loyal to their Israeli identity than they are to their American citizenship. Nor should one be surprised if the vast majority of the American people should fail to be anymore concerned about these obnoxious little idiots and their nation than they are about Bangladesh, Latvia, or Mali. Although I don’t support it any more than I support banking bailouts or $787 billion stimulus plans, I have little doubt that anti-Semitism in the United States will continue to rise. History clearly demonstrates that it is unwise and short-sighted for a small minority to attempt to exert significant political and financial power, because no matter how much they manage to accumulate, they will only hold it so long as they avoid sufficiently irritating the majority.

If the arrogance, entitlement and complete lack of awareness displayed by the young American Jews in the Blumenthal video is representative of the American Jewish elite, they would appear to be very unlikely to succeed in doing so. Now, if you happen to believe that someone who warns you of danger ahead and advises you to avoid it is an enemy, not an friend, well, I can’t say I’m terribly concerned about your opinion.

Congratulations to the fifteen women who comprise the Right Wing News’s list of “The 15 Hottest Conservative Women In The New Media.” I may have my differences with a few of the nominees, but in important matters such as female attractiveness, I am capable of complete objectivity.

Because, after all, it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

Voxiversity III kicks off

During the eight years I have written this column for WND, I have received numerous requests for reading recommendations. And in eight years of receiving critical e-mails and blog comments, I have also discovered how poorly read most people who consider themselves to be informed and well-educated actually are. It seems that at some point, “education” became confused with “formal schooling” in the popular vernacular, which is a little bizarre when one considers that more than a few of man’s best-educated, most accomplished intellectuals spent very little time in anything that would be recognizable today as a school.

As well as being liberal fascists… quotes from the Democratic Underground:

I just ordered a TV-B-Gone, for FOX News quarantine enforcement…. It’s a simple device, which looks sort of like a car’s keyless entry remote, with a single button that causes it to emit the infrared “Power off” codes for every brand and model of TV it knows about, which is to say about 95%+ of TVs in existence.

Yeah, it’s time to get aggressive when it comes to people playing FOX News in businesses, doctor’s offices and other public places.

Reading the comments there makes one wonder if it might not be well past time to put Prozac in the the water supplies of certain Democratic states. Democrats have control of the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the ABCNNBCBS cabal, and the New York Times, but the mere sight of Fox News in a public place is enough to send them around the bend.

And speaking of insane liberal fascists:

“I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
–Barack Obama

That’s in the Constitution, right?

VDH offers an allegorical explanation for why Obama’s Chamberlainesque chatterbox approach is likely to cause more international problems than Bush’s bomb-and-occupy method:

One small example of my late coming of age. A rather brutal neighbor (now dead and not to be mentioned by name (de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est)), an immigrant from an impoverished country, a self-made man, veteran of infamous fights and various bullying, shared a communal ditch. We talked and exchanged pleasantries–at first–at the standpipe gate. He lamented how rude my late grandfather had been to him, and even had made unfounded accusations that he was less than honest (he was also sort of playing the race card, remarking about the prejudicial nature of California agrarian culture).

I was shocked to hear that, and assured him that there would be no such incitements on my part on the new age of the Davis farm. No more ‘me first’, no more disdain for newcomers and upstarts. And then after about 3 months of sizing me up (at 26, I confess looking back I was not 1/8th the man my grandfather was at 86) he began stealing water in insidious ways: taking an extra day on his turn, cutting in a day early on mine, siphoning off water at night, destroying my pressure settings, watering his vineyards on days that were on my allotment. Stealing no less! And in 1980!

Here’s how I rushed into action. First, I gave a great Obama speech on communal sharing and why the ditch would not work if everyone did what he did. Farmers simply would perish if they did not come together, and see their common shared interests. He nodded and smiled-and stole more the next week.

I don’t know why, but over the years I have seen how it is extremely hard for normal people to understand how blatantly some individuals can lie to your face. I suspect that only those who have had the benefit of long-term proximity to one of these shameless and habitual liars can understand how completely meaningless words can be in the mouths of some individuals. I’m not afraid to rely upon vverbal assurances, but once it’s become clear that there is a reliable gap between what an individual says and what he does, I simply apply that gap to future pronouncements. But, in the rare case of the sociopaths, whose statements bear no recognizable similarity to their actions, I pay no attention whatsoever to their words.

As for the international policy implications, I believe the best strategy for dealing with Afghanistan would have been John Derbyshire’s shock-and-exit idea. The biggest problem with the Bush approach was that it revealed the practical limits of America’s ability to project force, which has probably encouraged the country’s enemies every bit as much as Obama’s feckless chattercentric strategy will.