Category: Uncategorized

Jason Whitlock, as usual, is one of the few sports reporters willing to tell the truth:

Vegas police were simply overwhelmed along The Strip. They were there solely for decoration and to discourage major crimes. Beyond that, they minded their own business.

I was there. Walking The Strip this weekend must be what it feels like to walk the yard at a maximum security prison. You couldn’t relax. You avoided eye contact. The heavy police presence only reminded you of the danger.

The idea that the police provide the basis for civilization has it exactly backwards. The police are brushed aside and revealed for the frauds that they are any time and anywhere that enough people – far fewer than you’d imagine – decide to ignore them. Just ignore them, it’s not even necessary to oppose them much less seek to destroy them.

This is why police are always on edge and why so many more of them succumb to the pressure, because they are perfectly aware that they can be overwhelmed at any time despite all of their many dictated advantages over any single non-police individual.

Think about it. If civilization was a byproduct of effective policing, then installing it in Iraq or New Orleans would merely be a matter of providing the right number of properly trained police. As it stands, not even one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers suffice for the former, and as we know from New Orleans, the police are at least as likely to be a part of the problem as part of the solution.

I would very much like to see a modern urban community try an experiment with banning its police force and encouraging its citizens to take responsibility for policing themselves. I suspect that the results would be rather better than the total chaos that most people, indoctrinated by decades worth of televised pro-police propaganda, would imagine.

On a tangential note, isn’t it interesting that nearly every television drama lionizes the police, lawyers, doctors and government workers? At this rate, in ten years they’ll have to create new government agencies just so television producers will have something to create a show around.

“Don’t miss THE MEAT, Fox’s stunning new show about the hackers of Homeland Security’s elite Internet corps and their fight to stop denial of service attacks and BSD* assaults by domestic Christian terrorists and a shadowy network of international neo-Nazis. Starring Michael Mustafa as Hassan ibn al-Talib, an agent torn between his desire to peacefully destroy Israel and his anger at the religious prejudice he nobly endures at the hands of the very Americans whose freedom he is defending.

*Blue Screen of Death. In the shocking season finale, Agent al-Talib discovers that Windows system crashes are caused by an evil Christian plot designed to cause people to involuntarily invoke the name of their Lord and Savior.

This sort of thing is one of the many reasons why you’ll never see me shedding a tear whenever there’s news about a police officer getting shot:

One of the most appalling cases occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona, the home of Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America.” In 2004 one of Arpaio’s SWAT teams conducted a bumbling raid in a Phoenix suburb. Among other weapons, it used tear gas and an armored personnel carrier that later rolled down the street and smashed into a car. The operation ended with the targeted home in flames and exactly one suspect in custody–for outstanding traffic violations.

But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog burned to death.

In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it again.

When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times. Filgo himself was never charged.

Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana, equal in weight to a ketchup packet.

The police are not the good guys. Society does not depend on them, it would not fall apart without them and it would be much better off without them. Without any of them. They don’t stop crime, in fact, it is demonstrably provable that they don’t even slow it down.

They are a collective fraud. They bust heads, shoot puppies and haul people off to jail, providing the media with pictures to sell the false idea that they are protecting you. Of course, if they were, they’d have more cops on the rape and murder patrol than collecting the driving tax.

No doubt some readers will have the usual hissy fit that my utter lack of regard for the police means that I’m some kind of liberal hippy. But for those who are inclined to believe that, I’d merely ask: what is so conservative, what is so very freedom-loving, about a police state?

When the police put down the machine guns, stop dressing like Darth Vader in a Wehrmacht-style helmet and start behaving politely against instead of knocking down doors and shooting pets, I’ll be happy to reconsider the issue.

To those who don’t accept God’s existence:

If you accept U.S. dollars in exchange for goods and services, have you not demonstrated a HUGE amount of faith in the non-material? The U.S. dollar, after all, has lacked any inherent value since the abandonment of the gold standard.

And if you believe in the value of the dollar only because everyone else does, then why would you refuse to believe in God’s existence for the same reason?

To his credit, Dick Dawkins mentions this briefly, although I don’t recall him dealing with the matter in a substantive manner. It’s an interesting point, especially in light of the studies which have showed that religious people are happier, live longer and are more successful in an evolutionary sense.

Apparently John Edwards has developed a talent for sticking his own foot in his mouth now:

The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the “I” word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Well, he pissed off the Catholics first and now he’s gunning for the Jews, so perhaps he can leap on the Baptists next or perhaps he should just go right for the Sikhs and those silly knives they insist on carrying around. You know Edwards can’t stand the thought of anyone who would insist on him covering up his beautiful, blow-dried hair with a towel.

In fairness, we all know that Amynda would never have written anything negative about Israel on behalf of Sen. Edwards. Let’s face it, Israel lies pretty far outside her interest zone, indeed, after reading her blog I’m not entirely sure that she’s ever heard of “Canada” or “Mexico”. Had we been so fortunate to have our would-be president promote her to campaign speechwriter, Edwards would surely have been announcing that the greatest short term threat to world peace is penises, white male Duke penises, to be specific.

Can you miss something that never existed in the first place? I just feel this empty sense of an opportunity lost.

The definitive difference:

Agnostic: “I doubt there is a God. Because I haven’t seen the evidence.”

Atheist: “There is no God. Because I’m an asshole.”

No doubt Aardvark will soon have the t-shirts….

Just had my checkup and things look pretty good, all in all. The iris still isn’t fully recovered, but it’s much more functional than it was even two days ago and prospects are good for a complete recovery. There’s still some inflammation, but there’s no more excess blood, the pressure has returned to normal and the vision appears to be around 95 percent of what it was. You certainly won’t hear me complaining about it, anyhow.

It’s going to be eight days before I can work out again, although I can start biking tomorrow, and probably an additional week before I can return to the soccer field. Needless to say, I’ll be picking up a pair of lightly tinted shades – NOT those bizarre sports goggles – before then since I really don’t want to risk going through this again, however unlikely it might be. I was already in the habit of wearing shades during the daytime games anyhow, so this shouldn’t be as much of an annoyance for me as it might be for others.

Hey, it worked for Jim McMahon, right?

Over at Brent Rasmussen’s site, Jim Downey has a hard time understanding why most people would rather vote for a retarded Dachshund of questionable moral character and only three legs for President of the United States than a “generally well-qualified” atheist:

Yup. Bottom of the list. [Gallup Poll indicating 45 percent would vote for an atheist, 53 percent wouldn’t.] Now, someone tell me again how we’re such a threat to the religious.

I can give you three reasons right off the top of my head:

1. Everyone knows an annoying, smarmy atheist who likes nothing better than to tell people how stupid they are for believing whatever it is they believe, almost always without being asked for his opinion. Since most people believe in something weird and supernatural, whether it is the supposedly Christian Rapture or Tarot cards or that George Bush is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, this means that nearly everyone subconsciously equates “atheist” with “boorish asshole”. And this reasonable conclusion is very well supported indeed by most atheist blogs as well as the behavior of the best-known public atheists. At least the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are polite… even the Muslims are more respectful when they’re not occupied with beheading people.

2. The world’s leading atheist has declared that providing religious instruction to children is akin to child abuse. Since most normal people, religious or non-religious, are vaguely aware that children have been receiving religious education for the entirety of world history, hearing this sort of thing makes them more likely to support atheists being put into psychiatric care than into any position of political power. Sweet Darwin, even Daniel C. Dennett confesses to fondly recalling his own childhood religious instruction! But I’m sure a lot of kids scarred by their childhood beatings and molestations feel the same way… you can easily make a better case against public school.

3. When it comes to mass slaughter, atheists are the Ted Williams of world history, batting .400 or thereabouts. Not every officially atheist government has committed astounding quantities of murder, and certainly plenty of non-atheist governments have committed terrible atrocities, but despite the relatively small number of atheist governments recorded, they account for a disturbingly high percentage of history’s most lethal governments. This pattern began with the very first atheist government, the Revolutionary French regime, and continues to this day in North Korea. Atheists can bring up the No True Scotsman logical fallacy all they like but it’s no use; if Catholics had as reliably awful a track record, people would fear putting them in power too. It’s not that atheists are a threat to the religious, they’re an obvious threat to everyone, including themselves.

Speaking of Catholics, the Gallup poll shows how completely out of touch this Downey gentleman is. In an earlier post, he demonstrated that he didn’t understand the basic nature of the obvious need for Amynda’s resignation from the Edwards’ campaign. Perhaps this poll will help him understand that it is utterly impossible to go out of your way to intentionally insult what is apparently the least offensive large political bloc in the country and then expect to win an election.

Or perhaps it won’t. Boorish assholes are usually boorish assholes because they are socially autistic and incapable of applying logic to interpersonal relations, not because they want to be hated. If atheists don’t wish to be personally despised for their lack of belief, perhaps they should consider behaving more politely, or at least in a manner which is somewhat less despicable.

Atheists like to claim that Christians are atheists, we simply believe in one more god than they do. (This is incorrect, of course, but we’ll leave it alone for now.) If that’s so, then I don’t believe in nearly as many supernatural absurdities as the average atheist. But unlike the average atheist, I don’t behave like a boorish asshole on a regular basis, telling every Shinto worshipper or astrology nut I encounter how stupid they are for believing such obvious nonsense. If I am asked for my opinion of their particular lunacy, I will share it, otherwise I keep it to myself.

So do the vast majority of Christians. And even when missions-oriented Christians do volunteer their opinion unsolicited, most people understand that the Christian is usually doing so out of concern for them, out of a desire, however misguided, to save them from a terrible future fate. It’s hard to hate someone like that even if you think they’re completely crazy. On the other hand, most people also realize that the atheist is only sharing his unsolicited opinion with them because he is a jerk and wishes to demonstrate his superior intelligence, not because he cares so deeply that they know The Truth as he understands it.

I mean, they want people to call them “brights”, for crying out loud. Seriously. Talk about social autism… why not simply have done with it and go for “super sex machines to all the chicks”. That would at least have the benefit of being amusingly ironic instead of embarrasingly self-parodying.

A novel theory for relative female failure:

Women—especially high-achieving women—choke under pressure….

It turns out that by at least one measure—the number of unforced errors—men play equally well throughout the match. They make unforced errors on about 30 percent of the most important points, about 30 percent of the least important, and about 30 percent of all those in between. But women show a very different pattern: 34 percent unforced errors on the least important points, steadily rising to almost 40 percent on the most important. That’s almost surely too big a difference to be mere coincidence.

While this wouldn’t surprise me, as everyone’s ability to take risks tends to be significantly reduced as the pressure grows and women are normally more risk-averse from the start, the variable for which there doesn’t appear to be a control here is the age of the player.

Women’s tennis stars are usually a good decade younger than their male counterparts, and although the cluelessness of youth could just as easily exacerbate the difference as account for it, I’d be hesitant to put any weight on this sort of study without controlling for that age difference. One simply wouldn’t expect a 17-year old girl to show the same cold-blooded assassin’s mentality that Roger Federer or Adam Viniateri bring into high-pressure situations.

Of course, since choking is all about emotions, it wouldn’t come as a shock to learn that the sex more given to be controlled by their emotions would tend to choke more. I don’t know if it’s age or sex that might explain why Michelle Wie has kicked off her much-ballyhooed career with both hands wrapped firmly around on her throat, much less if this has any relevance to women in high profile positions in business or government – though that Louisiana governor weeping during Hurricane Katrina suddenly comes to mind – but it will be interesting to see if those noble and unbiased scientists permit themselves the discussion.

I suppose one could never really hope to compete with Me So Michelle:

I’m not so much mad at Fox as sad for us all: It’s sad they do have to do these things for ratings. Michelle Malkin had to do an Anna Nicole segment last night when she filled in for O’Reilly.

Now THAT is truly funny. They’re gen-u-wine intellectuals, they are, these leaders of the conservatariat.

We see her here
We see her there
We can’t escape her anywhere.
Is she on Fox? Now CNN?
That media ho M. Malkin.

From defending internment to discussing dead Playmates… that’s simply perfect.