On Education: A Good Place to Start

As I said in my previous post, I'm not yet prepared to dive fully into fever swamps of education policy in America. But here's a place we can all start: parental involvement. Daniel Akst shares some good common sense in today's Wall Street Journal, namely, that high-performing students tend to have encouraging, involved parents who focus on education as a collective goal of the whole family. He also scratches the surface of a deep cultural problem that I believe will continue to undermine American education for the foreseeable future, namely the indifference and opposition of many parents toward education. We all complain that many parents don't value education, but nobody seems to acknowledge that many parents actively undermine education. They disparage the curriculum, subvert students' respect for their teachers, and lobby for easier workloads and lower standards. Teachers who try to combat these tendencies are seen as engaging in a power struggle against the families. And there most certainly are some educators who are trying to subvert the influence of families on young students, which just feeds the perception of education as a struggle between opposing camps, instead of the partnership it ought to be.

On Education

I've been formally requested, now, to write a piece (or what will probably amount to several pieces) on education. Problem is, I've got to figure out exactly where I stand myself. I've got some reading to do, see. But one thing I am convinced of, however, is that the whole culture of mass education in America is misguided at best. I definitely agree that college is not for everyone. Thing is, I'm pretty sure high school isn't for everyone, either. Or oughtn't be. But I've got some reading and pondering to do before I can get my thoughts into a coherent order on this remarkably convoluted subject.

I Want One: Everything-Proof Convergent Phone

For the inauguration of my "I Want One" category, I bring you the everything-proof convergent phone from Sonim. It's waterproof, shockproof, and dustproof (a huge plus in this line of work), plus it includes such non-standard "apps" as a compass, thermometer, barometer, and altimeter. Which is to say, not only can it survive water, shocks, and dust, but it could also make itself very useful in places where such hazards are to be found. Needless to say: I want one. Apparently the manufacturer is still looking for a distributor, so I might have to wait a bit to get one of my own, but you know I will, if only to show up all those hipster iPhone users. "Ooooh, you're phone goes 'boing' like Mario while you jump up and down? Sweet, but can it tell you the ambient air pressure? I didn't think so."

The Hurricane Has Won

In discussions on the proper prosecution of anti-terrorism strategy the argument often comes up that if we, as Americans, change our behavior or compromise our shared political ideals, then "the terrorists have won", by successfully changing our behavior in what is fundamentally a culture war. So why, after making such a show of maintaining our American spirit in the face of terrorism, have we completely capitulated to a hurricane? Nobody at the Republican Convention can do anything one way or another to prevent damage from Hurricane Gustav to the city of New Orleans. It's not like they're putting their activities on hold so they can all head down and sandbag the levees. But it's a sign of the Oprahization of America, apparently, that it's now apparently insensitive to go about your business when someone (or in this case, someone's property) may be suffering, somewhere. Sensitivity requires us all to put our lives on hold so we can sit around wringing our hands in the face of any incipient potential "tragedy".

Sidenote: New Orleans is deserted. The evacuations were mandatory and thorough. There will be no tragedy. If the city were to sink below the waves, the only people to go with it would be the unconscionably foolhardy. And the reporters. No tragedy. I know it would be pretty hard on all the people whose homes would be devastated yet again, but in light of this world of ours, I can't quite bring myself to get too hung up about a bunch of people losing their stuff.

Un-Wired Weekend

Just got back from a relaxing weekend up in the northwoods, but now I'm realizing how much news I missed while I was fishin' and drinkin' beer among the birches. New Orleans is again threatened by a serious hurricane, which some Democrats find comic, and proof that God is on their side. Also: Sarah Palin. Need to do a lot more reading before I can make any real judgement on that decision, but I do have two observations: Governor Palin is probably the most attractive national-level politician we've yet seen (in this country, anyway, other countries are far more advanced in this particular regard), and secondly, it's so great to hear a nice Northern accent in national politics!

Embed This Ad

While the Obama campaign's busy trying to prosecute political non-profits for saying things they don't like, the McCain campaign has put out a pretty powerful one of their own. Again, this ad focuses on Obama's friends and colleagues, but this time its his friends and colleagues in the Democratic party who take center stage, with all their reservations and concerns about whether Obama could be an effective president in our dangerous and unstable world. Of course, all these clips are from before he became the presumptive nominee, and they've all had radical changes of heart as to his competence and readiness (particularly Joe Biden!). Too bad the videotapes couldn't disappear as easily as their concerns did:

On Vista

I'll either be buying or building myself a new desktop computer sometime in the next month or three, and I'm already debating whether (assuming I don't take the Mac plunge) to install Windows Vista on my new machine, or just stick with good ole' XP. I think Jeffrey Rowland may have convinced me:

I wasn't sure exactly why everyone was so angry at Windows Vista until I actually tried to use it for an actual, real-world reason. This god dang thing sucks, y'all. It's like somebody just took a good-lookin' car that ran good and there was nothing wrong with it, and they came in and screwed a bunch of fancy-looking crap to it and redid the wiring so none of the gauges or lights work. They put some fancy, spinny rims on it but crap gets stuck in them and the tires go flat all the time. And then it assumes you're an idiot so it constant ask you things like "are you sure you want to change the radio station?" Oh look, the cupholder just broke off because the radio is too shiny. Wait, the cupholder came original with the car. Hopefully in a couple of years they'll make a cupholder that I can replace it with; until then I'll hold the beer between my legs.

If you didn't notice the fine-print on the comic, it says "Microsoft Vista was invented because of a bet between Bill Gates and the Pope to see if it could just completely put people off of computers for good."

Obama and Friends

We're seeing some pretty disturbing behavior from the Obama campaign on the one hand, and the Denver police (in presumable cahoots with Democratic party event organizers) on the other.

In the first case, there's a shocking disregard for First Amendment rights inherent in the Obama campaign's demands for criminal prosecution of the leader of a political non-profit which has been running (a fairly effective) attack ad against him, raising questions about his relationship with "guilty as hell, free as a bird", "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" Bill Ayers. Now, I'm no campaign strategist, but it seems to me that when someone runs an attack ad, your best bet is either to counter its claims point-by-point, or to offhandedly dismiss it as slanderous lies, as if it were below your concern. Reacting with outrage while refusing to address the points -- which would be pretty easy to refute, if by chance they weren't true -- then demanding the incarceration of the people responsible for the ad, well, that just strikes me as protesting too much. Besides the, you know, appalling disregard for the First Amendment. (The Obama campaign has released a "factcheck" on the Obama-Ayers relationship. I'm not going to get into whether the editorial pages of liberal newspapers qualify as sources, or whether Ayers' continuing and proud admissions of guilt might not make "he never served time" the best argument in his favor.)

As far as the Denver police go, I just wonder who it was they were so intent to protect from an ABC News camera? Or was it just that someone's getting tired of the public seeing how much good old-fashioned money is behind the Obama campaign?

Seven More Years

Seven years until this girl's dad is fighting off the hordes of soldiers and various gun nuts wanting to marry her. Then again, she could probably hold her own.

http://view.break.com/562090 - Watch more free videos

Remaking the Highway Trinity

Gas, Food, Lodging... and Wi-Fi? Louisville, Nebraska thinks so, but the state disagrees. Mike Elgan of Mike's List says Wi-Fi has become a "universally valuable service" deserving of a position along with the familiar highway trinity of Gas, Food, and Lodging. An increasing number of states are providing free Wi-Fi at public rest stops, with roadside placards advertising the service, so why not mark exits where the service is available? While I've only been in this position once or twice, I can certainly imagine situations where it would be very useful to know which exit had businesses offering Wi-Fi, particularly as the use of Blackberrys, iPods-Touch (I pluralize how I please, thank you very much), and Wi-Fi/VoIP phones continues to grow.

In related news, I noticed on my recent visit to Minnesota that different states have varying protocols as to whether they note coffeeshops on their freeway exit signs. Minnesota lists Starbucks and Caribou on the "Food" signs; I hadn't ever noticed it, but I don't think other states do this. It's nice, since most coffeeshop chains sell enough food for a substantial snack. And it precludes the need to add a "Coffee" sign. To which I, of course, would in no way be opposed.

The Temple Of Obama

This one just speaks for itself.

UPDATE: Behind-the-scenes video of the INVESCO Obamodeon! Skip to around 4:00 for the close-up of the stage.

Amatuer Surgeons and Professional Educators

The indomitable, unmatchable, and utterly irreplaceable Thomas Sowell weighs in today with a typically pithy piece on the failure of central planning of economies. This sort of thing is Conservatism 101, but he illustrates it with an example I thought much of my readership might appreciate:

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master’s degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student — which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12. Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having “professional” expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.

Thank You Kathleen Parker

Thank you for finally acknowledging that the real issue behind last week's Purpose-Driven inquisition of Obama and McCain at Saddleback is not who "won" but rather, why on Earth are our presidential candidates prostrating themselves before Rick Warren as if he were some sort of evangelical Pope? This sort of thing might be appropriate in a nations with historical establishment of religion. It is wildly inappropriate in America.

Olympics

I'm staying with some old friends here in Tennessee, and we've been watching quite a bit of the Olympics. I hadn't really seen anything until now, so I didn't really have much commentary. I still don't have much you haven't already heard, whether it's musing on the age of the female Chinese gymnasts or griping about the problem of incompetent judges. One thing I haven't heard much about is the jarringly bizarre program commentary provided by NBC's Olympic commenters. I'm accustomed to the stereotypically-accented rants of Olympic veterans like Bela Karolyi, but the networks own commenters are hardly more coherent at times.

Now That's Journalism

A Georgian reporter was shot and slightly wounded by a sniper during the recent Russian kerfuffle.  Her reaction is spectacular: she just keeps reporting.

Growing Up

Overheard from a buddy's phone conversation about financial matters with his fiancée on our drive to St. Louis:

Yeah, I'll just talk to my parents. They know a lot more about this than we do... Boy, what my Dad would have paid to hear that 10 years ago.

It's funny how, in the right contexts, relying on one's parents is a sign of maturity.

Trip Update

2,000 miles covered already. I need an oil change, but when I detoured through Asheville to look for a JiffyLube, I realized it's not exactly an oil-changin' sort of town. It's the sort of place where even the McDonald's bears a facade in the style of the Biltmore estate, Asheville's primary tourist trap. All in all, though, it looks like a very classily touristified slice of Americana, the sort of place that might make a really nice family vacation destination. And you really can't beat the mountains around here. By the time I got settled for the evening, everything was closed, and unfortunately I'm guessing most places will be closed tomorrow, so my poor car will just have to deal. Right now I'm staying in a hotel in Knoxville, TN, and I'm really wishing I had researched the city a bit more before I made my reservation here on the edge of town; if I had known Knoxville was such a nice city, I'd have gotten a downtown hotel so I could get out a bit instead of spending a Saturday night drinking Sailor Jerry's rum and blogging in my hotel room. Oh well, lessons learned.

So True

Xkcd nails it again. Now, I'm a solid devotee of Google Maps. I probably have a rather unhealthy attachment to it, honestly, to the point that I feel a shudder of horror at the thought of using something so positively primeval as MapQuest. But it does occasionally have some snafus. Or more accurately, this world of ours doesn't quite live up to the perfect order implied by Google. And of course, Google's employees like to leave little jokes here or there. For a while, requesting directions from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe would direct you to New York harbor, followed by the line "swim the Atlantic", continuing with road directions from Calais. Google's got jokes.

Driving

So friends, I'm noticing that I've got quite a bit of driving coming up in the next month. Like, just shy of 5,000 miles worth (destinations are approximate and unrepresentative, crazy stalker people!):


View Larger Map

So, who's got some tips for enjoying long lonely drives? I'm no stranger to the open road myself, but I've covered most of this terrain before and I'm a bit worried boredom might get the best of me.

Putin Went Down to Georgia

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not the first to make that joke.

I realize I'm uncharacteristically slow to comment on the "situation" developing in Georgia. Namely, you know, the Russian invasion and air campaign against a sovereign neighbor. I seem to think there's a term for a high-speed armored invasion with overwhelming close air support: oh yeah, blitzkrieg. In any case I'm not hugely read up on Russian and post-Soviet geopolitics, much less on Caucasian studies, so it's taken me a few days to pull together enough to make some informed comments.

In light of Russia's bombing of civil infrastructure, and particularly the attempted bombing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that connects the Caspian oil fields to world markets, circumventing Russia's regional petrohegemony, I think it is difficult to see this invasion as anything but blatantly imperial. Russia's transparent excuse to be protecting Russian citizens in South Ossetia from Georgian aggression, well, that one's sort of been used before. True, there's a strong separatist streak in South Ossetia, but the Ossetians in Russia have little more interest in being part of that country, either. So Russia's claim to the moral high ground is pretty difficult to accept.

I'm pleased (and unsurprised) to see Senator McCain's unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression and his support for our Georgian allies. I'm also saddened (and similarly unsurprised) by Senator Obama's refusal to take sides. Initially, his campaign completely refused to place blame: "It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other." This from his foreign policy advisor Mark Brzezinski. Later, Obama toughened his line. He now "condemn[s] the outbreak of violence in Georgia". Well good for you, Senator Obama, give that outbreak a stern talking-to! Maybe invite the outbreak in for talks, or threaten the outbreak with sanctions. Maybe, if push comes to shove, our military strength might be used to influence the outbreak of violence to behave itself. Senator Obama also says that "Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected." Does he fail to realize that this statement is completely meaningless to a party that has disputed what constitutes Georgia's territory since that country's independence? Yesterday, Obama finally got around to sounding a little bit less like a Kremlin stooge and more like an American President, or in this case more like McCain's initial (and impromptu) statement. Taking 48 hours to reach the same position your elderly opponent came to when questioned on the airport tarmac doesn't really engender confidence for the proverbial 3:00 A.M. phone call.

Response to Shane's Response to Lewis

Shane brought up some very good points in response to Cheryl's quote from C.S. Lewis that I posted yesterday. His points and my responses were really far too long to molder in the comments, so I post them here.

I largely agree - I still love reading what the libertarians at Cato are publishing, and generally prefer non-interference in other people's matters. The main thing that still makes me a liberal who thinks that government does have a role to play in pushing health and safety because:

a) current government policies of subsidies and spending promote unhealthy habits (for example, corn subsidies and sugar tariffs have spawned an industry pushing cheap HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup] as sweetener, leading companies like Coca-Cola to make the average serving size from 8 oz to 20 oz, while government subsidizes driving and discourages walking by building highways instead of mass transit and bicycle lanes).

Absolutely. If a government policy (particularly an already dubious one like massively distortionary ag subsidies) is demonstrably detrimental to the health of citizens, I can't see how any reasonable person could defend it on libertarian grounds: "It offends the dignity of my humanity to pay the market price for unhealthful sweeteners!" Yeah, not so much. As for the driving subsidy, that's a tricky one, isn't it? Clearly, building highways is overwhelmingly more popular with the voting public than trains and bicycle lanes, and it's pretty tempting to believe the public just doesn't know what's best for them in this case. It's also tricky in that transit is extremely messy to privatize; there's no way to accurately judge the market for trains where there simply aren't any. So again, in this case, subsidizing mass transit or bicycle lanes or providing kickbacks to pedestrians or what-have-you to provide some sort of counterweight to all the money going to highways doesn't offend my sensibilities a bit, especially when transit availability is such a liberalizing factor in broadening access to job markets and essential goods and services, particularly for the poor. I've got no problem with subsidies per se, so long as there's transparency as to what we're really paying for, and an awareness that any subsidy will distort incentives and have unintended consequences. There are few cases of an unqualified good in public policy, very few win-win situations, and I wish politicians would acknowledge that.

b) In some cases the public is ignorant, misinformed, or outright deceived of some sources of harm. I can't see how the FDA's core functions can be successfully privatized. I also support laws requiring restaurant chains to publish nutrition facts and disclose their usage of trans fats, etc. In most of these cases, I'd prefer transparency over outright bans, though.

True. On the whole, however, I'll take the harm we can do ourselves through ignorance over the harm we can do each other through creeping totalitarianism any day. And no, the FDA probably couldn't be privatized, but its approvals need not be 100% binding, for example by allowing desperately ill people to give informed consent to use experimental and unapproved medications. It of course follows that I'm completely with you on transparency vs. prohibition. To me, the role of government in this situation is simply ensuring that citizens have the information available to make informed decisions.

c) Some issues are just collective action problems, and pragmatically speaking, the government might be the most efficient coordinator of aggregate behavior.

Yes, sometimes. The earlier example of transit is a great one; do the libertarians honestly yearn for a world in which every road and sidewalk is subject to toll and could be closed and opened at the owner's whim? The issue here, of course, just comes down to deciding which issues are best solved by civil and market forces vs. by government intervention.

In summary of this sprawling treatise, I don't take Lewis's quote to be an indictment of collective action in general -- his politics were never so strident as that -- but rather an admonition to always be on guard against creeping authoritarianism, however it may be disguised. Americans are pretty quick to recognize wanton powerlust in its traditional cloaks of nationalism, militarism, and greed (indeed, some tend to see it so pretty much everywhere), but the same motivating force also veils itself as charity, as genuine concern for public health and the environment. For that matter, "national security" falls into the same category and hides similarly insidious dangers. I don't think "liberal" totalitarianism is any worse than the old-fashioned types, I just think it's more dangerous because America today is mostly blind to it.

Hope and Struggle

I just had a bit of a Eureka moment reading Susan's Pendulum reflecting on Romans 8:23-24 :

23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (ESV).

As Susan points out, we will never escape from sin in this life; that's the whole point of this passage. We wait eagerly for that day, we hope for it, because we have not seen it. The Christian life is a daily struggle against the sinful nature, and it is a struggle we daily lose. The frustration that comes of this daily Fall, however, should not lead to despair (and this is what so struck me), for the blessed life free of the burdens of sin is precisely that which we eagerly await, for which we hope but cannot see. Too many voices in our lives tell us that we can achieve this blessedness on Earth, if only we were good enough, faithful enough, self-controlled enough. But there's no chicken-and-egg issue here, these virtues are fruits, not prerequisites. We will never earn them for ourselves, nor can we by willfully practicing them avoid facing the consequences of sin in our lives. Instead, we groan inwardly, we wait eagerly. In short, we hope.

She's Got Jokes

Some cheap geopolitical humor via Thursday's Child:

UN Survey

Last month, a worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure because:

In Africa they didn't know what 'food' means.

In Eastern Europe they didn't know what 'honest' means.

In Western Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' means.

In China they didn't know what 'opinion' means.

In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' means.

In South America they didn't know what 'please' means.

In the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' means.

Shamelessly Cribbed Quote of the Day

Cheryl at A Round Unvarnish'd Tale shares this quote from C.S. Lewis, a good reminder of the dangers of spiraling do-gooderism:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment".

Now I'm no Objectivist, and Lewis certainly wasn't either. I wholeheartedly believe in personal charity, not least because Christ was sort of big on it. But Ayn Rand does hold a sliver of truth in the potential of charity to become tyrannical, particularly charity institutionalized or nationalized. There's a strong streak of Prohibitionism in America these days, and it seems to be getting stronger; Elephant's Child is right to reference Liberal Fascism.

Language Peeve

I'm currently reading Three Cups of Tea, a book which has been recommended to me again and again, and which is pretty much living up to its reviews. The spirit of Midwestern do-gooderism struggling to build schools in the cold shadow of K2 is pure Olaf, really, and it warms my heart a bit to read. What doesn't warm my heart, however, is shoddy transliteration of Muslim (originally Arabic) names, which brings me to today's peeve. Fairly early in the story, we meet a character named Abdul. Popular conception would seem to suggest that the Muslim world is full of men named Abdul; indeed, I'm guessing if you started asking Americans to list five tradition Muslim names, Abdul would be on many if not most of those lists. One problem: no such name is possible in the Arabic language, whence traditional Muslim names around the world derive. The word abd means "servant" or "slave", and while it can be a name in and of itself, it is generally part of a compound name, as in the familiar name Abdullah, abd-Allah, "servant of God". This construction is the source of innumerable Muslim names such as Abdulrahman "servant of the Merciful", Abdulrahim "servant of the Beneficent", Abdulqadir "servant of the All-Capable", Abdulzahrah "servant of the Flower", Abdulrazzaq "servant of the Provider", Abdulaziz "servant of the Powerful". Indeed, any of the ninety-nine names of God could be made into names by this construction. While these phrasal names are separate words in Arabic, the traditional transliterations divide them in the wrong place (i.e. Abdul Rahman), leading to the misconception that there exists such a name as Abdul. This is rather like an Arab noting the vast number of northern Europeans bearing the last name of Son. Correct yourselves, friends, and please correct others. If a space is necessary, it should go before the article al- (i.e. Abd al-Rahman), but since the space just tempts us to read one name as two, let's just agree to leave it out entirely.

Someday I'll dive into my rant on pronunciation of Arabic names and place names. My opinion may surprise you. But today is not that day.

Cherry Jump

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of completing my "cherry jump" with the 82nd Airborne. I'm not finding much online explaining the tradition of the cherry jump, so here goes:

Here in the 82nd Airborne Division (and elsewhere), a new soldier to the unit is known as a "cherry" (I'm assuming you can follow the connotation), and his first jump in Division is known as his "cherry jump" or "cherry blast". While this part of the tradition has now been gutted in an ill-targeted crackdown on "hazing", the cherry soldier used to be given a cherry-red helmet cover to single him out (which would also, to my mind, rather helpfully alert the jumpmasters to his inexperience). The cherry is also given a cherry pie to carry in his pocket during the jump, which he then eats on the drop zone after his landing. Complicating this process, however, are his fellow paratroopers who, through much good-natured punching, ensure he lands with nothing but a charleyhorse and a pocketful of cherry goo.

So that's the tradition, but I missed out on most of it. One of my buddies had indeed bought a full cherry pie (instead of the usual Hostess single-serve pie) for the three cherries in our platoon, but I ended up in a different "chalk" (a single planeload of paratroopers) and so managed to jump without my pocketful of pie. Oh well. I've got that out of my way, and got my first precious scrap of Airborne credibility.

Which is not to say the jump went off without a hitch. After a shockingly early wakeup call and zero-dark-thirty manifest formation, we arrived at the drop zone to find that, in all-too-classic fashion, our unit had failed to procure both parachutes and working aircraft for the day's jump. One could be forgiven for incredulously exclaiming that these are, in point of fact, the two sole necessary elements of an airborne operation. But, you see, you would be applying sense, and the fact of the matter is that, particularly in garrison training operations, the Army rarely makes any. Eventually, though, 'chutes were scrounged and a bird was summoned, and we jumped. And I'll never understand what makes a sky full of paratroopers such a beautiful sight, but maybe I've drunk just a bit of that Airborne Kool-Aid, because this is awe-inspiring:


Next time I jump I'll try to post a good short video of the jumpers coming out of the bird. It's awesome.

All aside, it was a good jump and a safe landing, even if it was a bit harder than textbook. It's well and good to angle your body to adjust for your direction of drift, but they never really tell you what to do when you're falling straight down. Land like a sack o' potatoes, apparently. Oh, and the green patch that looks thick and soft from 200 feet up? Yeah, that's blackberry briar and it's nowhere near as soft as it looks.

Protestant America

Joseph Bottum of First Things shares a fascinating historical perspective on Protestantism in America. Having been educated in the limestone tower of Mainline Lutheran (ELCA) academia, much of Bottum's analysis rings true as things I'd known, without knowing I knew. (And apparently I can simultaneously channel Plato and Mr. Rumsfeld). I really like his analysis of American society resting on the three-legged stool of democracy, capitalism, and religion, and his social and economic analysis of civil religion's role in general. As to where that society can be headed on a two-legged stool none of us can say for certain, but neither politics nor economics has a good track record in trying to fill the role of civil religion.

Cake Wrecks

A new fun blog: Cake Wrecks. A gallery, with commentary, of some truly appalling cakes (and a few totally awesome ones). My favorite is titled I'll Take My Chances. That or the cake-entombed baby. Yeah, you read that right.

Zucchini

Big Doofus reveals the truth behind the Zucchini Conspiracy. Concerned citizens beware.

Priorities

Apparently Obama's got 'em, but they don't reflect particularly well on him, as PowerLine reports. What amazes me more than his preference for sightseeing rather than visiting wounded soldiers in Germany is that -- again -- the allegedly masterful campaigner seems unaware of or indifferent to the sort of message these choices send. We must conclude that is either a) a fool, or b) cynical enough to write off the yellow-ribbon crowd as already lost to him and not worth the trouble of pandering.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a very good book, and its popularity gives me faith in the American book-reading public. I know he made his name with The Kite Runner, and they already made a movie and all, but this book is better. Hosseini's storytelling talent and incredibly, almost painfully honest portrayals of the guts and grit of human relationships, which made The Kite Runner so rightfully popular, are here refined even further. So, too, is the pain and torment, the heartbreak, the devastation of a whole country told through so many devastations of individual lives.

There was a particular point that caught me, though, in the midst of all the terror and destruction wrought by the waves of utopian revolutionaries, Soviet "liberators", counterrevolutionaries, and holy warriors of all stripes whose various crusades all but destroyed Afghanistan. At one point in the novel, a character is standing trial before a Taliban judge, who explains in the sentencing that while the circumstances of the crime tempted him to mercy, he was himself nearing death, and feared that he would be held to account for his failure to uphold God's law. He imagines God standing judgement upon him saying, "But it was not for you to forgive, Mullah". Probably the second-most common Muslim epithet for God is al-Rahman, the merciful. Every letter, every document, every memo in the devout Muslim world is headed by the phrase bismallah al-rahman wal-rahim. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Benificient. Islam hangs all hope of salvation on this, the mercy of God. Does God really then hold a monopoly on mercy?

This point struck me so because it is the complete reversal of a Christian understanding. My God is indeed not merciful, not in the sense of a pitying judge who pardons the truly guilty, for He is just, and justice demands payment for sin. This payment has been made. Our sins are not pardoned out of mercy, they are absolved by Christ's redeeming sacrifice. All of which allows us to leave divine judgement where it belongs, in God's hands. A judge, no matter his personal faith, does God's work when he rules wisely according to the law of the land. We ought not be so bound by the Law that we fear damnation for encroaching on God's mercy, for stepping on His toes.

Back at Bragg

For my four readers who aren't family members or reading this on Facebook, I'm now safely back in the best country on the planet: Not Iraq. Specifically, America. Or 'Murka, if you're Toby Keith. We've been having lots of free time since we got back, which is rather nice. Still waiting to get most of my stuff out of storage and get fully moved into the barracks. It's definitely a different feeling, settling into a place with the expectation of staying a while, rather than just living out of one's bags, waiting to leave again. I haven't gotten internet in my room yet, but there's at least coffeshops and such here I can use, so I'll likely be posting on a fairly regular basis again. I've got a lot of material in my mental queue, so expect plenty of stories and reflections from my deployment.

Classic Moments in Soldiering: Hey, Try This!

This exchange came as we scarfed down the goodies out of a care package that had been handed to us as we sat around the chaplain's tent today. We found a bag of peanut butter M&Ms that was already torn open, spilling some into the box, which I snatched and tossed into my mouth.

Me (chewing): Uh, this bag wasn't sealed and these kinda taste like diesel exhaust.
Sgt D (eating): Yeah, definitely diesel exhaust.
Me: So, uh, you gonna stop eating them?
Sgt D (still eating): Hmmmmm, thinkin' about it.

So we stopped eating, but we definitely didn't throw them away, because we had to offer them to anyone who came into the tent. And it wasn't like we were tricking anyone:

Us: Hey, try one of these. They taste like diesel.
Them: Awesome. (tries one). Gross.
Us: Yeah, ain't it?

It's the little things.

Soundtrack to My Life

Oh, it was getting about time to participate in another silly meme. So here we go, courtesy of IndianaJane.

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...
7. Include commentary

Opening Credits: Zak and Sara, Ben Folds Five.
Pretty good start, to a quirky romantic comedy. Which is not at all what I imagine my life to be.

Waking Up: I Can't Help It, Johnny Cash.
Starting the day with unrequited longing? At least the dragging beat fits my typical morning mood.

First Day at School: Wolverine, Sufjan Stevens.
Fitting: hesitant, understated. "Take it in stride, take it in stride, take it in stride. It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault". I wish someone had told me that then!

Falling in Love: It's Been So Very Long, Plankeye.
Pop-punk's a strange genre for love, but the lyrics are perfect: "It's been so very long, since I've been man enough, to be the kind of man, if I'm'onna hold your hand."

Fight Song: La redecouverte. Yann Piersen (Amelie soundtrack).
The fight occurs in surreal silence behind a lilting waltz of an accordion, a glockenspiel, maybe, what is that, a klavinette? Is that the right name for that? Anyways: Awesome.

Breaking Up: Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
I throw my banged-up guitar into my rusted musclecar and tear off down a dusty country road. Cue montage of me drinking my sorrows away in a series of increasingly shady roadhouses, finding myself down and out in a gutter, pulling out that picture of my girl that I just couldn't let go of, throwing away my fifth of cheap whiskey in disgust (which shatters, because in movies even cheap booze still comes in glass) and climbing onto a bus headed for home.

Prom: Oh, Fugazi.
This soundtrack rather optimistically imagines my high school to have been much hipper to the indie scene than is plausible for rural east-central Wisconsin. Also, you can't dance to this, but it'd be amusing to see someone try.

Life's Ok: This Is Not a Love Song, The Juliana Theory.
This would make for a very bittersweet sort of "Life's Ok" moment. Maybe this is fitting for a Dark Lutheran? "and you're so far away, and I'm sitting right here. It's ten o'clock your time, and it's one by mine".

Mental Breakdown: Take the "A" Train, Duke Ellington.
Hahahahaha. I love it. My soundtrack is so very appropriately surreal.

Driving: Janine, Soul Coughing. This is more than just a trip, this a journey. A journey of self-discovery. Contemplative, mournful, dirty acoustic guitar scratching, and the gonzo touch of a lo-fi answering-machine recording of a woman singing "The Lemon Tree" (tune-and-rhythmlessly) playing in the background through the length of the song.

Flashback: It's a Scientific Fact, Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans (the Singing Science records). Definitely a flashback, but not exactly what we were going for. "It's a scientific fact that there are belts of radiation in outer space that are a hazard for future space travelers to overcome."

Getting Back Together: Lady Eboshi, (Princess Mononoke soundtrack).
Haunting orchestral melody, pizzicato strings opening to an oboe solo, brimming with mournful hope. The past cannot be forgotten or overcome, but the pain strengthens our love.

Wedding: The Colony Room, The Sea and Cake.
Now is the time for something understated and light-hearted. We don't want to overdo anything.

Birth of Child: Amazon, M.I.A.
What better to commemorate the birth of a child than underground Lankan-British trip hop self-produced on a 4-track mixer in a London basement?

Final Battle: The Gash, The Flaming Lips.
The song is about not quitting, as much as any Flaming Lips song is about anything. I suppose that works. I just wish it had been "Fight Test". That'd have been perfect. Oh well.

Death Scene: Narcolepsy, Ben Folds Five.
I guess that works. It's sort of epic-tragic anyway. I'd like to think of my life as more the former than the latter, but you take what you get.

Funeral Song: Cinders and Smoke, Iron and Wine.
"Give me your hand, take what you will tonight. I'll give it as fast, and high as the flame will rise. Cinder and smoke, you ask me to pray for rain, with ash in your mouth, you ask it to burn again." Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

End Credits: Brazil, Grant Green.
(from the Brazil soundtrack, which is something like 17 different versions of the same tune).
A nice electric jazz guitar version of the old standard. A fitting end to the strange movie of my life.

The Face Of Hope

Meet Sheikh Ahmad Fatah Khan al-Rishawi. He and his late brother Sheikh Sittar (assassinated by al-Qaeda last fall) have been architects of the "Awakening" movement that since summer of 2007 has seen Sunni tribes in Anbar province join with each other and with coalition forces to rid their lands of al-Qaeda, and which has become the archetype for American counterinsurgency efforts throughout Iraq. Now he's offered to send his tribesmen as advisors to Afghanistan.

Remember hearing how Iraq's tribes were going to be such a stumbling block? We don't know anything about their relationships, it's a dangerous wildcard, we told ourselves. Seems nobody had the optimism to believe that a social institution that has provided a coherent framework for Iraqi life through millennia of upheaval just maybe could turn out to be a stabilizing force.

And So The Luster Fades

In a few short months, my opinion of Senator Barack Obama has degraded considerably, to say the least. At the start, when I knew nothing of him but what he chose to present of himself, I was suitably impressed. I never thought much of his policies (or lack thereof), but I at least believed in his idealism. When his church was shown to be a hotbed of racial contempt and grievance-mongering I at least admired his willingness to stand by his associates, even while he artlessly dodged the implications of those associations. I lost the last of my personal respect for him when, so soon after defending his pastor of 20 years, he publicly sacrificed the Rev. Wright on the altar of political expedience. Call me old-fashioned, but loyalty still means something to this soldier.

Then came Mr. Obama's autohagiographic commencement speech this past Memorial Day weekend, with its strangely limited conception of service. For Obama, improving the lives of others apparently only counts as "service" when you're an underpaid left-wing rabble-rouser or organ of a maternalistic government bureaucracy. Referencing the economic challenge of India and China, Obama calls for graduates to become not engineers, scientists and tradesmen, but teachers and administrators. He quotes a young man who joined the Peace Corps “because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.” This young man has seemingly never seen an Armed Forces recruitment ad anywhere, ever. And those men and women many of us think of first when we think of "service" -- firefighters, policemen, armed servicemen -- who daily protect Americans from those people and forces that would do them harm? Ironically for a speech on service, "the Service" earned not even a mention from Mr. Obama.

After all that, however, it was Senator Obama's victory speech last night in St. Paul that turned my ambivalence to disgust. There are a lot of things in this speech I could write pages about: Obama's disingenuous mischaracterizations of John McCain; his arrogant naivety in thinking that handing out international legitimacy like party favors counts as "tough, direct diplomacy"; his Obamessianic promise to retrochronically create the fields of health care and employment while channeling King Canute's promise to command the tides (and without the good King's pious intent); his fascistic sanctification of "change", as if we live in the worst of all possible worlds and any change must be for the better; or his adolescent whinging that McCain hasn't given him an attaboy for his (unsuccessful) campaign to get asbestos removed from some Chicago tenements at the same age McCain was having his bones broken in a North Vietnamese prison camp. But I'll leave all that aside for the one unforgivable quote of the speech:

[I]t's not change when [John McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.

Mr. Obama, before now I was thinking that you really need to visit Iraq, to understand the imminent victory from whose jaws you are so intent on snatching defeat. But after that remark, I truly wish you wouldn't visit Iraq -- though I know political expedience will force you to -- because you have no right to stand alongside the Iraqi politicians you sneer at. If you must go, however, I wish their examples might teach you what hope means when it's not just a pleasant buzzword. These men risk their lives daily to build a future for their country; many have had family members kidnapped and killed. We ask nothing?! They risk everything! They risk everything because they. have. hope. Hope for the future and faith in their countrymen. You would present yourself as an expert on hope, but your denial of the courage and determination of these brave men -- and your cynical reliance on the ignorance and indifference of your supporters to the undeniable political progress being made in Iraq -- has made me realize that whatever you mean by that word, it's something I don't even recognize.

Basrah, After

In March the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, with limited support from American and British forces, took back control of the port city of Basrah from assorted bands of smugglers and puritanical thugs under the aeges of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) and Iranian-supported "special groups". While Prime Minister al-Maliki's new-found willingness to confront Shi'a extremist groups closely tied to his political base was a welcome development, at first the rather slapdash execution of the operation rightly made concerned observers a bit nervous. I stated back in April (a bit boldly, in hindsight) that the IA had proven the naysayers wrong, and it seems the center continues to hold as IA and government-aligned civilian militias keep the peace. Basrah joins the majority of Iraqi cities on the path toward a semblance of normalcy, something even the Washington Post can celebrate with a photoessay of life cautiously coming out of the shadows. At the start of the Basrah operation, I called these "dangerous but hopeful times for Iraq". The danger is most certainly not past, and any progress is reversible. But these pictures speak to the power of hope.

Hiatus

Looking ahead at some changes coming down the pipeline, I figure I should give my loyal readers the heads-up that I'll probably be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging. Things are getting busy as we prepare for redeployment in a few months, and at some point we'll be moving into tents to make room for our replacements coming in. Long story short, since I don't know exactly when I'll suddenly find myself without internet access, I'm letting you know now so you don't worry if I stop posting for a month or so.

Camel Spider

I have now truly been to Iraq. I have seen the quasi-mythical camel spider. I say quasi-mythical because the creature soldiers tell stories about and the actual beast are pretty much two separate things. The one I saw was just scuttling alongside the path to the bathroom the other night. It was pretty creepy, but I managed to refrain from stomping it. And I'd still prefer that to a scorpion. Haven't seen any of them yet, surprisingly. I would have imagined this place to be crawling with them.

So let me let you in on a little secret, should you ever find yourself out here in the desert. I haven't actually needed this advice, due to the aforementioned lack of scorpions and seeming rarity of camel spiders in this area, but I figure I'll pass it along. Apparently some soldiers like to pull a fast one over on the new guy by taking bets on a staged battle between a camel spider and a scorpion. After all the horror stories he's heard about them, the new guy will always bet on the larger, more fearsome-looking camel spider. But here's the secret: scorpion always wins. There. I just saved you 5 very hypothetical bucks.

Battle Hymn

For Memorial Day, John Hinderaker over at PowerLine posted a nice recording of his children's school choirs singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I imagine it would be pretty moving except that whenever I hear that tune, thanks to the Airborne brainwashing they play over the loudspeakers every morning in Braggistan, all I hear are the words to "Blood on the Risers":

There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,

Intestines were a'dangling from his Paratrooper suit,

He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,

And he ain't gonna jump no more

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

He ain't gonna jump no more!

The Airborne has ruined me.

Memorial Day Post

Happy Belated Memorial Day.

Forgive me, but I'm 8 hours (at least) ahead of most of y'all and I work nights now to boot. I'm not going to go too in-depth on my thoughts on Memorial Day; I think I wrung most of that out a bit prematurely. But on this (second-?)most patriotic national holiday, I'm struck by how many Americans are confused or conflicted on what constitutes the proper expression of patriotism. A captain I trained with and greatly respect used to rail against the sort of flag-waving patriotism he saw as cheap and hollow. And I think he had a point, to a degree, that patriotism and even "support" for the military can be cheap, when it's nothing but words and flags and bumper stickers. On the other hand, I consider all the soldiers' charities out there that provide real support for wounded veterans our government is failing. I sleep under a camo quilt handmade for me by some very hard-working ladies from my hometown. And my PT score is gravely threatened by all the goodies we receive. Some of these things are weightier than others, obviously, but none is trivial.

Melody of Boots on the Ground has a good reflection on a civilian's patriotic duty:

It's my responsibility... that I value my freedoms enough to fight for them here at home while she fights for them overseas. [My emphasis].

Ain't that the truth.

Lieberman On Obama

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial by independent Democrat (and one still worthy of the name) Joseph Lieberman, adapted from a speech he presented May 18 to Commentary magazine. In it he addresses the (historically aberrant) McGovernite trend in Democratic foreign policy and its unfortunate resurgence in the post-9/11 Democratic party and particularly in the person of Barack Obama. He deconstructs Obama's fallacious historical justifications for the gaffe-become-doctrine of unconditional meetings with foreign tyrants. It's good stuff.

Not-So-Big Oil

Following up my previous comments on the subject, and Melody's question about when people are going to start really getting upset about the price of oil, PowerLine today had a pair of items that really point the finger at those ultimately responsible for the price Americans pay for oil: state oil companies in foreign countries who control 94% of the world's proven reserves, and those politicians in America who have blocked even exploration of domestic oil and near-oil resources, lest Americans come to know exactly how badly they're being screwed. America's oil companies are tiny compared to the foreign state-owned monopolies from whom they are forced to purchase crude. ExxonMobil, America's oil "giant", controls one measly percent of global oil reserves, making it the world's 14-largest by that measure. Only 7% of the worlds total reserves is up for unrestricted bidding by private companies, while almost 75% is completely off-limits, controlled by state oil companies. So who's the big bad wolf?

Orwellian Influence at the BBC

Don't get me wrong. I'm no Holocaust Denier. I am, however, just old-fashioned enough to think that skepticism is the root of science rather than a threat to it, and according to some that puts me in the same camp. I don't even deny the central premise, that global temperatures have risen and that human activity has some connection to that. What needs further study is 1) the strength of that connection and 2) real analysis of the costs and benefits of a warmer world. And I'm with Bjørn Lomborg; we need to think rationally about whether our money and efforts are better used trying to forestall a global phenomenon or simply adapting to it. Meanwhile the tactics of those who ominously insist "the time for debate is over" just get spookier. Jennifer Marohasy's Politics and Environment blog posts an e-mail exchange between a BBC Environment reporter Roger Harrabin and "climate-change" activist Jo Abbess. (HT: Pajamas Media). It seems the reporter's original story on decreasing global temperature, while factually correct according to the World Meteorological Organization, would supply dangerous material to "skeptics" and thus should be edited to fit the activist-established reality. Or, as Abbess puts it, "emerging truth". When Abbess writes demanding he change his reporting, Harrabin initially takes a very reasonable line:

If the [secretary-general] of the WMO tells me that global temperatures will decrease, that's what we will report.

Abbess, however, persists in chilling terms:

Personally, I think it is highly irresponsible to play into the hands of the sceptics/skeptics [for someone otherwise so sure of herself, what's with the indecision?] who continually promote the idea that "global warming finished in 1998", when that is so patently not true.

It is hard to tell exactly what will happen based on historical science. However, the broad sweep is : added GHG means added warming. Please do not do a disservice to your readership by leaving the door open to doubt about that.

The next correspondence only gets more Orwellian:

Your word "debate". This is not an issue of "debate". This is an issue of emerging truth. I don't think you should worry about whether people feel they are countering some kind of conspiracy, or suspicious that the full extent of the truth is being withheld from them. Every day more information is added to the stack showing the desperate plight of the planet.

It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.

And it wouldn't be a clear-cut case of intellectually thuggery without a credible threat:

Otherwise, I would have to conclude that you are insufficiently educated to be able to know when you have been psychologically manipulated. And that would make you an unreliable reporter.

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

In other news, I'm currently reading a book that traces the historical relationship between real, historical fascism (as opposed to the more-common definition" "an idea so bad I don't have to engage it intellectually") and progressive politics. Go figure.

Remembering

Peter, a fellow Ole working in youth ministry in Petrozavodsk, Russia, has a great post on the Russian celebration of Victory Day, roughly equivalent to our Memorial Day. His piece led me to reflect on what led me on the path to becoming a Soldier, a path very far removed from everything I had expected or imagined for myself. I suppose now's as good a moment as any to share the story.

There are all sorts of reasons I enlisted, of course. Such a major life choice doesn't spring from a single motivating factor. When the standard script of military smalltalk gets to "so what brought you into the Army?", I usually mention how the linguistic training I could get in the Army more specifically matched my aspirations than anything available in graduate school. But of course, having almost zero contact with the military sphere, I wouldn't have even learned about what training was available if I hadn't been looking into it. So why, during my senior year of college, with a defiantly impractical Classics degree within my reach, was I considering military service? The moment that first opened the door for me to consider military service was, in fact, lost to me for some time. I had completely forgotten about it. I spent my first year in the Army not exactly remembering what had led me to consider enlistment in the first place.

Then, sometime last year, I remembered. It was the fall of my senior year, while I was circumnavigating this beautiful and tragic world of ours, that I found myself at the battlefield of Al-Alamein on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. I'd been to war memorials before, and never really managed to internalize much of what I saw. This time, it was different. The North African campaign wasn't even a particularly brutal sideshow of WWII. It's celebrated as much as it is precisely because it featured the (comparatively) easy morality of soldiers fighting soldiers in a desert landscape devoid of "collateral damage". That said, when we visited the German mausoleum and the Commonwealth cemeteries, I was overwhelmed. The German monument includes a dedication to the truly unknown soldiers, those whose remains left no clue to their nationality. It is a tribute to the universality of patriotism, and of sacrifice. But it was in the Commonwealth cemetery, with its rows upon rows of simple headstones, where I was convicted. Each stone there bears a name, a rank, a date, and a relationship. I was saddened -- though not shocked -- to see the numerous stones marked "brother" and "son", over men who died at 18, 19, 20. What took my breath away, left me weeping quietly in the desert, were the stones marked "father". Too many young men with young families of their own lay dead on that desert plain. Too many young women, young mothers, received that terrible news. Too many children grew up with a medal and a photograph on the mantle in the place of a father. Yet England knew well that the price her young men paid -- not to mention their widows and children -- was the fair price of freedom in this dark world. It was on that desert plain, wandering between the gravestones, that I was convicted by the sacrifice of all those young fathers. They had so much more to lose than I, so many more depending on them, and they gave it all. Somewhere deep inside I asked myself if I could risk the same.

I left Alamein and promptly forgot all about duty and honor and sacrifice, for a time. I was still in college, after all. The example of the soldiers buried there had opened a door, however, one that never entirely closed again. And here I am.

Something New Every Day

Today, while reading an entertaining piece by St. Olaf professor Gordon Marino on the author David Mamet's fondness for Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I was surprised to find the word transmogrify slipped into a piece of otherwise stolid prose. I, of course, immediately connected this word to Calvin and Hobbes and pegged it for a sly tribute. Not so, according the the Online Etymological Dictionary, for transmogrify dates back to 1656. Go figure.

Reflections on Vengeance

For all those who extol the virtues of traditional, peaceful, aboriginal cultures, unsullied by the violence and greed of technological civilization, Jared Diamond has some reflections on vengeance in the Papuan highlands.

It's been said that the root of conservatism is the heartfelt belief that civilization is both precious and fragile. The Burkean war of all against all is not, after all, so very far removed from our daily lives. It lurks just below the surface, in each dark animal impulse we resist out of respect for morality and law. But those ideals make for a dangerously thin wall, and there are those who continue to dig at its foundations.

Further Reading: Theodore Dalrymple has said much more, and much better, on this topic.

Guess They're All Just Hajji to Him

I'm used to gently correcting fellow soldiers on this point, but it seems even Barack Obama hasn't gotten the news that Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places. Via ABC News (HT: PowerLine and Hot Air), Obama said in a recent speech in Missouri:

Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic.

“We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.”

His campaign put out a nice response to ABC, of the usual "if you consider that I was actually referring to this and not that, you'll see I was right all along" line. Sorry, not buying it. I'm willing to grant that he probably did know -- if he stopped to think about it -- that they don't speak Arabic in Afghanistan, but simply misspoke. That doesn't absolve the issue for me, as mentally conflating two very. different. places. shows a significant lack of depth of understanding either one.

I Want One

Microsoft's former chief of technology has commissioned the construction (for a cool million dollars) of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, what would have been, had it been built in its time, the world's first computer, capable of computing polynomial calculations of over 30 digits. In analog. 8,000 moving parts, which when cranked by hand spool out calculations on paper tape. It's a work of art, it really is, and if any of my readers make it out to Silicon Valley in the next year it's on display, I think it'd be worth seeing.

Preterition

In follow-up to my piece on Hillary's gripe with OPEC and in reference to Necessary Roughness, I was going to throw in my own two cents on the subject of peak oil. But after reading numerous websites declaring that civilization will collapse as a result of, well, commodity speculation, I just lost interest. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've long held that while I don't expect to see civilization collapse in my lifetime, I wouldn't be all that surprised. So I'm sympathetic to the homesteader's mindset of living self-sufficiently, just in case. But there's a big difference in mindset between living a simple country lifestyle and filling your basement with astronaut food. And of all the things I can imagine bringing down civilization, a shock in the petroleum market isn't one of them. So there, Peak Oilers, I think you're wrong, but I just don't care enough to bother explaining why in any detail. More vacuum-packed survival rations for you, I guess.

Bad News from the Sudan

Granted, that's one of the world's more unnecessary headlines. But, no matter how evil and oppressive the Khartoum regime in the Sudan is, rebels on the outskirts of the capital is not good news. As bad as the current government is, I don't want to see Sudan go the way of the Congo.

Windfall Profits Tax

In reference to my previous post on Hillary's gripe with OPEC, I've also got a few excerpts from Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online, on the proposal to tax the "windfall profits" of oil companies:

Imagine this. You've built the better mousetrap... You take your invention and, with your last few pennies, manage to bring it to market. It’s a smash hit. It starts flying off shelves. You earn back the investment in raw materials and maybe something close to compensation for your time. Now you’re ready for the big payoff. There’s just one thing left to do: make an appointment with the regional Reasonable Profits Board to find out how much of your windfall is reasonable for you to keep... members of the Reasonable Profits Board will determine how much of your already-taxed profits cross the “rational threshold.”

“Windfall,” of course, is just another word for “undeserved,” which is why windfall profits are defined as the profits earned by someone other than you.

If you tell oil companies that they won’t be able to keep their profits past a certain point, you know what they’ll do? They’ll make money right up until that point and then they’ll stop. Unlike the guy building the better mousetrap, oil companies aren’t in it for the glory, they’re in it for the money.

Meanwhile, less investment in exploration and efficiency will cause pump prices to rise (less supply = higher prices) and, as in the 1980s, cause us to rely on more foreign oil. But, by all means, let’s do it, because Big Oil is bad and someone — or everyone — has to pay for it.

Hillary vs. OPEC

So Hillary Clinton has decided to direct America's oil-price frustrations at OPEC. It's a reasonable political move, I suppose, since the cartel does perform a great deal of supply-side manipulation of the oil market. It's also a natural progression when you've burnt out on blaming oil companies and their "obscene profits" (which are only obscene in gross; as a percentage of oil companies' massive revenues, they are in fact quite small). I just wonder, what exactly does she intend to do about it? Scold them? Get us into a devastating trade war? She proposes to bring them to court under US anti-trust law, as well as filing a WTO complaint. So yeah, somewhere between options A and B. And, when you get right down to it, I don't blame OPEC. It's their oil, and they can do what they please with it, as far as I'm concerned. When we've pumped our last drop of American oil, and our children are huddled in the cold because we can't afford to heat our homes and OPEC is still refusing to increase production, well, then we'll start to have a moral case against them. Until then, while we still sit on millions of barrels of oil we'd prefer not to pump for aesthetic reasons, the grandstanding rings a bit hollow. They won the geologic lottery, and good for them. They're not even a particularly effective cartel, anyway, as members are constantly producing above OPEC limits, and they only control one portion of a globally-traded commodity.

All in all, I'm getting tired of all the hand-wringing about energy prices. The high price of oil is reflecting how much we need it, and how many other people (read: China, India) want it. Got it. The fact that it is likely to stay this high means that huge amounts of money are now being invested freely in all sorts of alternative energy technologies. Coal-to-oil conversion is competitive with petroleum at around $35 a barrel; last I checked, we're looking at nearly four times that price today. Meanwhile, as the shock of $125 oil filters through the energy industry, all sorts of energy sources will become profitable. Lets all just have a little bit of faith in American ingenuity, and everything's going to be okay.

Paleofuturist Education

Paleo-Future has a great piece for all my home/un-schooling readers, quoting the San Antonio Light of July 8, 1937:

A Columbia university educator, addressing students at the University of California at Los Angeles, predicted that "by the year 2000, we won't send children to school until they are 10 years old." He said that "while they are young, we will keep them busy building healthy bodies in the fresh air". Evidently, he doesn't know the mammas. They want to get their children into school as early as possible. One of the reasons for the development of the kindergarten is to hasten the time when even devoted mothers can get a little freedom from the demands of their children. But the year 2000 is a long way in the future.

The "mammas" have prevailed in public education, even beyond the year 2000, with government daycare school starting earlier and earlier with 4-year-old kindergarten and Head Start and the like. Telling how well the writer predicted that, actually. Wish the piece gave the name of the Columbia educator, because the whole "building healthy bodies in the fresh air" sounds like a great educational philosophy to me.

Rocket Scientists Lean Republican

Michael G. Franc has a great piece on National Review Online using analysis of primary-season campaign contributions data to shatter the still widely-held notion that the GOP is the party of big business while the Democrats represent working-class America:

Through May 1, the Democratic presidential field has suctioned up a cool $5.7 million from the more than 4,000 donors who list their occupation as “CEO.” The Republicans’ take was only $2.3 million. Chief financial officers, general counsels, directors, and chief information officers also break the Democrats’ way by more than two-to-one margins. The Democrats’ advantage among “presidents” is a less dramatic but still significant $7.2 million to $6.1 million. And this isn’t new: In 2004 all but one of these categories of top corporate officers broke just as dramatically for the Democrats.

Not surprisingly, universities offer Democrats a hotbed of support. Professors favor Democrats over Republicans by a nine-to-one margin ($3.7 million to $430,000). The “objective” media — reporters, journalists, publishers and editors — also breaks heavily for the Democrats. But no listed occupation gives the Democrats a greater edge than the unemployed. These presumably idle folks have dropped over $14.6 million into the laps of the Democrats. Their idle Republican neighbors, in contrast, have unburdened themselves of a mere $9,775. Go figure.

Republican presidential aspirants hold a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects, Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers. This trend extends to the saloons, where the Democrats carry the bartenders and the Republicans the waitresses.

So the Democrats have become the party of liberal guilt and the unemployed? It's worth noting this is not polling data or election results, both of which quite frankly reflect large numbers of the uninformed and easily-influenced. Rather, this analysis is based on the self-selected sample of the those politically-engaged enough to be donating to campaigns early in the primaries, and the trends are surprising. Also, Republicans win among rocket scientists. If you can think of a more trustworthy political advocate than rocket scientists... well, it doesn't matter, because you can't.

My Grandfather's Church

I've refrained from commenting until now on this topic, when so many better-informed commenters are writing on it, but I couldn't keep from adding my own thoughts. Those of my readers who aren't confessional Lutherans are probably (blissfully) unaware of the current sturm und drang within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, the church I was raised in and have embraced as an adult. The current round of controversy was set off by the summary cancellation by the Synod -- during Holy Week -- of a popular and theologically-conservative radio show which had at times been critical of the sort of "seeker-sensitive", "purpose-driven", and quite frankly Oprah-fied programs and congregations that are so beloved of the Synod's aggressively modernizing current leadership. The Synodical leadership's responses to the grassroots outcry have only solidified the impression among many that there is a concerted effort among the top leadership to change the face of the LC-MS forever. Indeed, the current president is quite fond of saying, "this is not your grandfather's church."

Why are you so intent on taking my grandfather's church from me, President Kieschnick? I like my grandfather's church, for a host of reasons, but one of which is that it is my grandfather's church. If I didn't like it, after all, there are a great many churches out there that aren't my grandfather's church; namely, every other church in the country. Where will I go, when my grandfather's church has been "improved" into something he wouldn't even recognize?

Eeek

While I was typing just now, a tiny spider just rappelled from the ceiling down to my keyboard, crawled under the keys and disappeared into the depths of my laptop. I hope he finds it inhospitable and leaves before he manages to short-circuit anything.

Eco-imperialism

In response to this Wondermark comic, the Elephant's Child commented:

I'm actually surprised nobody (in which I mean Al Gore et al) has mentioned the astonishingly low carbon footprint of the underdeveloped world.

Oh, they do mention it, indirectly, when they celebrate the "simple, traditional cultures, living in harmony with nature" that are threatened by globalization, westernization, and every other -ization. They have to romanticize Third-world squalor, because eventually people will realize their pet policies will require them to trap about a billion people in that squalor. It's sickening. On the flip-side, I've seen some heartening Third-world backlash against Western environmentalist nannying. Schadenfreude's probably a sin, but I can't help getting a thrill of pleasure when I think of what an environmental activist feels seeing increasingly confident Third-worlders reject their ideas as "eco-imperialism".

Quiet Revolution

In browsing Lutheran Lucciola's links on simpler living, I came across the Quietrevolution vertical-axis wind turbine. VAWTs have been around for a while, but the Quietrevolution helical design solves several nagging design issues with the concept, while making a great aesthetic improvement over previous VAWT concepts, in my opinion. This turbine is nearly a piece of sculpture, don't you agree? I've seen some designs for home-built VAWTs, but none quite as elegant as this.

Working with the Locals

The other day I got a break from my usual job for a few hours by doing "escort" duty while some local nationals (i.e. Iraqis) did some construction work on our building. It's entertaining working with the LNs. The smalltalk always takes the form of an interview following the same pattern:

• "How many kids do you have?"
• None
• [intrigue] "You're married, though?"
• No, not yet.
• [surprise] "How old are you?"
• Twenty-four.
• [shocked indignation] "Twenty-four and no wife, no kids?" [astonished Arabic muttering]. "But you have a girlfriend, right?"
• ...[sigh]

I guess it goes to show you the value these people place on family. That doesn't even express it right, because it's not just that they value family ties more than modern Westerners generally, but that they truly value themselves less as individuals. A person's whole identity is defined by their family, and a man's worth in particular by the number and stature of his children. European family names began as patronymics (witness the proliferation of Andersons, Christiansens, Nelsons, Olsons, and Thorvaldsons with whom I attended college), but Iraqis proudly go through their adult lives being addressed by reference to their children: Abu (father of) Haydar, Abu Miriam, Umm (mother of) Marwan, Umm Zaynab etc. etc. etc. Apparently there's even an unfortunate nickname for an unrepentant bachelor: Abu Gha'ib, father of the absent. And I thought my family's hinting was bad.

But I digress. Apart from being heckled for my childlessness and bachelorhood, hanging out with the LNs is always rewarding. I experienced the legendary Iraqi hospitality when -- despite being right across from the chow hall -- the four workers insisted on sharing their meager lunch with me: a tiffin of boiled chicken, heated up with a cutting torch; another of lumpy sour something's milk; and of course, the flat local bread. Not particularly good, but not bad, and worth it for the cultural sensitivity points.