A Clarification

Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic takes Joe Klein to task for a particular semantic shell-game that is an old pet peeve of mine: the argument that Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic, because they are themselves Semites. Then again, this is probably the first time I've heard this argument made by anyone who wasn't a rabid Jew-hater. It does tell you something about the strange epistemology involved, that many will sincerely argue that this semantic distinction proving they are not Anti-Semitic justifies their aspiration to push all the Jews into the sea:

As I said, the only people who insult Jews by denying the meaning of the term are, in my experience, anti-Semitic. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, told me in an interview once that his organization could not be anti-Semitic, because Arabs were the true Semites, while Jews were simply European impostors. This interview occurred at a time when Yassin's suicide bombers were systematically seeking out large groups of Jews in order to murder them for the crime of being Jewish. By Joe's dangerous new standard, the World War II-era Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, who was a Nazi fellow traveler and a frank advocate of total Jewish extermination, could not be called an anti-Semite because he was Arab. So, really, who's being fatuous?

At the same time, Klein does have a point, which Goldberg supports, that a given person's support for the cause of Palestine is not proof of anti-Semitism. Even calling for the destruction of the state of Israel does not per se have anything to do with one's feelings about Jewry in general. It's just that, in the real world, there are certain correlations.

If The Whole World Could Vote...

...Barack Obama would win by a landslide. So I suppose I'm glad that, for now anyway, American policy is still generally decided by Americans. What fascinates me about this map, however, are the handful of exceptions to Obama's global landslide: McCain is carrying Iraq with 61%, which I think pretty much blows away the typical constructed narrative about what the Iraqi street wants with regard to American policy there (here are some man-on-the-street blurbs in the same vein). Beyond Iraq the situation gets even more interesting, I think. We've got Burma, the Sudan, Big Congo, and Algeria all leaning McCain, though all of their neighbors are overwhelmingly behind Obama. If you're thinking this is where I come out with some brilliant insight into why this would be the case, well, I appreciate the confidence. I don't really have one, other than that, to me, the endorsement of some of the most oppressed peoples in the world carries a whole lot of weight.

Also, it's intriguing to me, in light of the racial undercurrent of this election, that two of the countries leaning McCain are in blackest Africa*. Again, don't have any great insight, just intrigued.

*No really, al-Sudan is Arabic for "the Blackness". The Arabic language hasn't yet been purged for political correctness.

Why I Love Wikipedia

As a young child, a favorite pastime was paging through our family's sets of encyclopedias, reading about whatever article caught my interest. I am confident this early exposure to the broadest possible spectrum of random knowledge is what made me such a voracious addict of, well, random knowledge. So naturally I love Wikipedia, because it's so easy to stumble across something you've never heard of. Ten minutes ago, I never knew there existed such a vegetable as the mangelwurzel. Say it with me, "mangelwurzel". Isn't it glorious?

Joy on YouTube

It's been a frustrating day week month, and I'll admit I've been guilty of consciously stewing in my frustration. But the ultimate cure for serious frustration is to be reminded not of how much worse things could be (why do people always have to say that?!!), but of the immutability of God's loving-kindness and of the exultant joy He offers us. And on the subject of joy, this song brought the first smile to my face today, and it lasted for four minutes. Then I watched the video, and, well, if you can watch this without smiling, then, ah... you're a robot.

Welcome to the Iraq

A poster to the Donovan shares a touch of the surreality that is the Iraq:

• an Iraqi coming toward me with a drawn knife -- is looking to borrow my ceramic sharpener.

• one of my hootchmates chows down on kimchi and peppers drenched in hot sauce and then complains that the bottled water here gives him gas.

• an obscene period of time elapses between the *last* rockets smacking in and the “Take Cover” warble, but mere seconds elapse between a distant clap of thunder and the “Alarm Red” announcement.

• the same lizard that scrambles out of my way on the floor of the sim building won’t even hesitate to scoot up my pants leg the second I sit down at the console.

• right after I spent half an hour outside along the T-walls looking for a camel spider to show the new guy, I found one in the office -- under his desk.

• right after I spent twenty minutes explaining the importance of doing a polarity check on the 220-volt outlets in the office, the new guy fried his laptop because he stuck the adapter into the wall socket without checking the polarity.

• when something cat-sized runs between your legs after dark, it’s a fox -- if it’s fox-sized, it’s a cat.

• there’s a better chance I’ll be electrocuted in the shower than killed by an incoming rocket, mortar, or RPG.

• a twenty-two-year old Iraqi asked me why we’re hunting IED-planters over here when Bill Ayers is still walking loose in Chicago.

Another Story That Won't Break Until It's Too Late

I can't let this go. I know I have to have some readers for whom this blog is their only intersection with the right-wing blogosphere, so there's a chance they haven't heard anything about the Obama campaign website donation situation. I mean, if they follow any of the mainstream media, I'm sure they've heard plenty about how Obama reneged on his promise to take public financing and is reaping a windfall of unverifiable small online donations has raised record amounts from individual small donors. What they almost certainly have not heard is that the Obama campaign's website team must have conscientiously overridden the default security settings that come with every credit-card processing system, allowing donations from foreign countries (illegal), donations from names which don't match the name on the card (potentially illegal), and donations with no verifiable address (facilitating the above). A blog at the New York Times website actually picked up this story, mirabile dictu, adding:

To be fair to the Obama campaign, officials there have said much of their checking for fraud occurs after the transactions have already occurred. When they find something wrong, they then refund the amount.

Okay, good for them, except why on earth would they want to make the effort to investigate fraudulent or illegal donations when they could prevent them in the first place by using the default settings of their credit card processor? Not to mention that most credit card processors charge higher fees to clients who choose to disable these features. We're to believe Obama's campaign is perfectly on the up-and-up in choosing to pay more to allow for less secure donation, which they then have to spend more to investigate after the fact? Nothing smells fishy about that, no sir.

I Want One: Fluorescent Cat

It's difficult to test if a particular genetic change has achieved its intended result if you're not sure whether the gene is even expressing in the first place, so genetic medicine researchers need a clearly verifiable way to determine when introduced genetic material is actually expressing properly. They seem to have found it in a jellyfish gene that codes for the production of a fluorescent protein, which has been successfully introduced into a perfectly healthy (and seriously spooky-awesome) cat named Mr. Green Genes.


If they can make a cat glow in the dark, how long until they can engineer one to be hypo-allergenic?

Robot Awakening Watch: Pentagon Seeks Pack-Hunting Robot Contract

This via WIRED's Danger Room, the Pentagon has put out a call for bids to develop "a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject". And to think, just last night we were discussing a capacitor bullet for anti-robot warfare. Gotta get on that.

One Big Facebook Family

In just the last few days, several... more senior members of my family have taken the plunge and joined Facebook. It made me realize that I've also noticed that a lot of my friends' parents have gotten on in the last few weeks. It was like, all of the sudden, Facebook's not just for twenty-somethings anymore, but I figured it was just sort of a coincidental thing that just seemed sudden to me. Apparently not, as Mike Elgan writes today:

Facebook, which has emerged as the most important social networking site, was originally designed for college students. But people kept using the service after graduation, and it evolved into a social network for young people in general. About six months ago, the walls came down altogether, and people of ages ranging from 12 to 90 started flooding in. There goes the neighborhood.

This change is highlights something strange going on in this Web 2.0 world: Facebook is destroying the nuclear family. And this isn't a bad thing, because the nuclear family is being replaced by the truly traditional family, what we now call the "extended" family:

Nuclear family members are posting pictures, talking about school activities and telling what's going on in their everyday lives, and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and others are tuning in -- and getting increasingly familiar with the rest of the extended family over vast distances. People are sending comments, and chiming in on family conversations. Facebook is bringing extended families together in real and meaningful ways.

Who'd have thought the Internet would be helping people to reestablish, after a fashion, a family structure that broke down half a century ago?

I Want One: Titanium Goggles

And when I say I want them, what I really want is the skill, creativity, resources, and free time to be able to create such a piece of workmanship as these:

Maybe You Shouldn't Introduce Yourself as "Zombie"

I wrote about guerrilla photojournalist Zombie's musings about the unreliability of poll data here. Yesterday, he decided to see for himself by volunteering at an Obama campaign phone bank. His reflections are interesting:

I feel, as I surmised in my essay, that the any polling samples generated this way are potentially way off, and exclude most voters who simply refuse to be polled. The real question is: How do those people intend to vote? Because the “unpollable registered voters” demographic is likely to be the largest demographic of all. And we have no idea how they intend to vote, nor why they refuse to be polled, and if there is some correlation between refusing to talk to an Obama campaign volunteer and refusing to vote for Obama. Could the same principle hold true for calls made by professional polling organizations?

I suspect it probably does, and that the majority of the discrepancy between polls and election-day reality comes down to the fact that Zombie notes here, that the unpollable are probably the most important demographic in the world of opinion polling, which nobody really seems to acknowledge.

No, Really, Please Actually Don't Vote

I don't know how many times I've seen this ad linked by friends on Facebook and what have you. Don't worry, the first 18 seconds or so give you the flavor of it, so you don't actually have to watch nearly five minutes of self-important celebrities.



Typical get-out-the-vote stuff, the type we see every election cycle trying to convince ignorant, apathetic media consumers that their voice is desperately needed in our nation's governance. You know what I say? If it took a bunch of celebrities to convince you that you had something at stake in this election, I DON'T WANT YOUR INPUT. I'm with John Stossel (HT Fear and Trembling):



Our nation is not in desperate need of the opinions of those who otherwise couldn't be bothered to get off the couch. Everyone out there wants to make it easier to vote, and many caterwaul that something as simple as requiring photo ID is an undue burden. God forbid we make participation in government as crushingly difficult as buying booze! I know I'm just feeling crotchety tonight, but if I had my way, we'd all be running through the Eliminator on the way to the voting booth.

Damned If You Do

Randall Munroe paints the bitter truth in XKCD:

"Your Poverty Makes Me Uncomfortable"

Alarming News quotes a disturbing question posed to the "Ethicist" column of the New York Times (registration required). I have to quote this in full:

A woman I hired to do simple gardening comes weekly and, when school is out, brings her kids. While her twin preschoolers play in the shade, her approximately 9-year-old daughter works alongside her. I am uncomfortable watching my 8- and 11-year-old boys kicking a soccer ball as the girl walks past pushing a wheelbarrow. Should I ask the mother to keep her daughter from working? Should I not employ this woman? — JANE E., ALBUQUERQUE

You are rightly dismayed by this situation, but you’ve phrased the question curiously, emphasizing your discomfort rather than a child’s well-being. If you are concerned about the daughter, as you admirably seem to be, you ought not make her life harder, which firing her mother would certainly do. And rather than insist that the mother make the daughter drop that wheelbarrow, you might encourage your sons to invite the daughter to play soccer with them. Her mother will likely be relieved: having a 9-year-old “help out” all but guarantees the task will take longer.
It would be commendable if you could proffer some practical advice. Presumably this woman brings along her children because she has no alternative. Does your town offer inexpensive day-care programs? Are there other social services that might benefit her three kids? A bit of time on the phone or online might lead you to something that helps this family and eases your own mind.
UPDATE: The gardener failed to show up a few times, and Jane “used that as an excuse” to find someone else for the job.

I think this interchange probably provides a pretty strong test case between two very different fundamental orientations on child-rearing, education, and the relation of those things to work. I suspect a great many people will find the so-called ethicist's position reasonable and wise. For others whose orientation is more like my own, it will turn their stomachs. "You are rightly dismayed by the situation."? Really? The assumption that a pair of preschoolers would be better off in government-subsidized daycare rather than playing outdoors under the supervision of their mother and big sister is revolting. The implication that a 9-year-old can be nothing more than a burden to be parked in a kiddie-kennel likewise bothers me. Even assuming the healthiest of day-care options, a private baby-sitter, which better prepares that 9-year-old to be a healthy and productive member of society: watching TV while a bored college student does her homework at the kitchen table, or working alongside her mother to help support her younger siblings?

"Enraged Republican Man Assaults Peaceful Middle-Aged Female Obama Supporter" ...

... would be a major news story. But for some reason, this isn't.

The Death of Federalism

How much does it say about the death of federalism in America that it should seem perfectly normal that we know far more about national races in far-off Washington than about the candidates for positions in our own hometowns. This card from PostSecret says it all:

We don't care about local elections because they just don't matter very much to most of us. Can the anti-federalist ratchet ever be turned back? Is it even possible to devolve power back to the state and local level? It's not very hopeful. Look at No Child Left Behind: everyone agrees it hasn't entirely worked, but nobody's suggested returning its power to the states. You can bet that either a McCain or an Obama administration's "reform" of NCLB would aggregate more power to Washington to regulate education, not less.

The Emperor and the Plumber

Scott Johnson of PowerLine has the best summary of the media's frantic digging on Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher:

Hans Christian Andersen seems to have missed the heart of the story in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Andersen reported that as the emperor strutted before the multitude in his nakedness, the boy cried out: "But he has nothing on!" Andersen somehow omitted to note that the boy was a naughty thumbsucker.

Security Theater

Airport security procedures run by the TSA are a complete joke, and we all know it. It's "security theater", designed to create a perception of security, while being hopelessly indifferent to the real thing. Jeffrey Goldberg proves it (HT Cheryl), traveling around the country intending to raise alarm by carrying tools, weapons, and overtly terrorist literature. All that was ever consficated was a Leatherman and some bottled water. At one stop, during an individual baggage search, Goldberg was found with a full-size Hezbollah flag, purchased from a Hezbollah gift shop in Lebanon.

The officer took the flag and spread it out on the inspection table. She finished her inspection, gave me back my flag, and told me I could go. I said, “That’s a Hezbollah flag.” She said, “Uh-huh.” Not “Uh-huh, I’ve been trained to recognize the symbols of anti-American terror groups, but after careful inspection of your physical person, your behavior, and your last name, I’ve come to the conclusion that you are not a Bekaa Valley–trained threat to the United States commercial aviation system,” but “Uh-huh, I’m going on break, why are you talking to me?”

In a post-9/11 age, it's unlikely terrorists will attempt the same trick. Cockpit doors have been reinforced, and since passengers know the script of airplane hijackings has changed, they will resist, just as passengers on United 93 did. In fact, unless they all had first-class tickets (which would hopefully raise someone's suspicions), I suspect a gang of would-be kamikaze-bombers would have a difficult time even making it to the cockpit door, which they would find to be reinforced and locked.

Of course, terrorists could still try simply to blow planes up midair, as they have long done, but the precautions against this need be no more onerous than the security in place long before 9/11. Bombing a plane is showy, but bombing a train or a rock concert is far easier, and potentially more devastating. Terrorists are, after all, concerned like anyone else with the return on their investment. TSA costs us $7 billion a year which could be going to (still under-staffed and under-trained) offensive counterrorism efforts, rather than passively "securing" our airports. It's well time we started to consider the return on our investment.

That Didn't Take Long

Say it with me, friends: I AM Joe the Plumber.

Classic Moments In Soldiering: Your Buddy's Promotion

A friend in Iraq shares the awkwardness of promotion among peers:

"R just got promoted to sergeant. That's awesome, but kinda weird. Now I have to make sure none of the other NCOs are watching before I hit him."