Dan over at A Blog Named Sue complains about his disappointment over the current economic crisis.

You know, in every movie I’ve seen about the end of the world, civilization collapses because of something wicked cool happening – an asteroid hits, nuclear war, a supervirus, an ape revolution, whatever. If civilization collapses over credit default swaps I an going to be pissed.

I agree that that would indeed be lame. But given the general irrational nature of humans, I think that Dan should buck up. After all, if we see Great Depression II lead into World War III, it’s likely that the trend towards robotic militaries and counter-robot warfare will likely continue in earnest as governments divert money from the general economy into robots. Given the acceleration of military technology during times of great wars, it’s inevitable that the robots will turn on their human masters. Boom! Instant roboacalypse!

Plus, let’s consider that third world countries will probably be at war, too. Obviously, they’re not going to have the resources to develop robots, so they’ll have to do the next best thing. Train monkeys to fight. They’re already capable of overrunning human cities, so it’s a logical next step. Obviously, once they’re trained, they will inevitably revolt against humans. Once that happens, I see one of two things: (1) The apes join forces with the robots to enslave humanity or (2) The apes and robots begin to go to war with each other, with humans trapped in the middle.

Either way, that’s a good apocalypse. And we owe it all to 30:1 leveraging and credit default swaps.

Amidst a bunch of conspiracy theorist nonsense, CERN will be switching on the Large Hadron Collider to begin the process of experimentation tomorrow (it’s already been switched on twice before for testing).

At roughly 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, say they will try to send the first beam of protons around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva.

And a generation of physicists, watching from control rooms and auditoriums on the scene, on Webcasts at webcast.cern or on Eurovision will meet their destiny. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, outside Chicago, will hold a “pajama party” for staff members and journalists to watch the events live from a remote control room.

The collider, 14 years and $8 billion in the making, is the most expensive scientific experiment to date. Thousands of physicists from dozens of countries have been involved in building the collider and its huge particle detectors. It is designed to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts — seven times the energy of the next largest machine in the world, Fermilab’s Tevatron — and smash them together.

The experiment being conducted here is really cool–it’s an examination of the fundamental particles of the universe and a chance to confirm some physics theory about how everything is put together. It’s a shame that some conspiracy theorist nutjobs are hogging up a lot of bandwidth on the subject. But in case you are worried, I wrote a long article debunking most of the “end of the world” nonsense about a month ago that you can read here. It boils down to this:

The bottom line here appears to be that the odds of the LHC doing anything to destroy the Earth are pretty small. Maybe not zero, but pretty small. As physicist Princeton physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed joked, the nature of quantum mechanics is such that there’s an infinitestimally small chance of just about anything happening. So he supposes that it’s possible that when it’s switched on “[t]he Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

I’m pretty sure we can handle dragons.

Image Credit: Image Editor

The authors of the best-selling Left Behind authors have done their research and are now positive that Barack Obama is not the Antichrist.

But even the series authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don’t think Obama is the antichrist. What may have been created as a farce has generated a firestorm of controversy on the internet.

LaHaye and Jenkins take a literal interpretation of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation. They believe the antichrist will surface on the world stage at some point, but neither see Obama in that role. “I’ve gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the antichrist,” says novelist Jenkins. “I tell everyone that I don’t think the antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics.”

“I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist,” adds LaHaye, “but from my reading of scripture, he doesn’t meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American.”

Jenkins and LaHaye don’t take McCain’s commercial or the antichrist speculation over Obama too seriously.

Well, you would think that that settles that, right? Wrong. Of course LeHaye and Jenkins can’t say that Obama is the Antichrist! If they did, sales of Left Behind would plummet, as it would be obvious that the Antichrist is not a smooth-talking Eastern European. Clearly, these authors are covering up the truth in order to protect their financial interests. For shame, sirs. For shame.

(cross-posted to Heretical Ideas)

Here’s one of John McCain’s recent ads:

You would think that the rational response to this ad would be to chuckle to yourself, as it does do a nice job of making fun of some of the messianic fervor that some of Obama’s fans have. (Yeah, I’m voting for him, but I’ve no illusions that Obama is anything more than an above-average politician.) Amy Sullivan, however, feels differently.

But even this innocuous interpretation of the ad — which includes images of Charlton Heston as Moses and culled clips that make Obama sound truly egomaniacal — taps into a conversation that has been gaining urgency on Christian radio and political blogs and in widely circulated e-mail messages that accuse Obama of being the Antichrist.

The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain’s top media gurus as well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end-time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. “The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books,” says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.

As the ad begins, the words “It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One” flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: “We Are God”) and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, “A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”

The article manages to get more ridiculous from there, if you can believe that. For someone who had done a lot of reporting on Evangelicals, I have to admit that I’m surprised that Amy Sullivan is peddling this particular line of garbage. The ad is clearly just making fun of Obama, nothing more, nothing less. As Ross Douthat notes:

[T]he people who think Obama might be the Antichrist and the people who think the McCain campaign is cannily designing its campaign ads to exploit fears that Obama might be the Antichrist deserve each other. (The difference, of course, is that the former group consists of minor-league kooks, obscure bloggers and chain-email peddlers, whereas the latter consists of Democratic strategists and writers for Time Magazine – the same Time, one might note, that has not once but twice put Barack Obama on its cover with a halo around his head.)

Read Ross’s whole post, which provides some nice takedowns of Amy Sullivan’s specific points.

Frankly, I don’t think you could paint a better picture of elite Democrats as being out of touch with evangelical religious life than by pointing out the fact that this article exists.

(cross-posted to Heretical Ideas)

NASA is indicating that the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which had previously been deemed to not be an impact risk, might pose a bigger risk than originally thought:

It turns out that there are a few things we still don’t know about the orbit of Apophis, which could change its projected course by millions of miles, according to an article yesterday in New Scientist. Are we going to get slammed by the 270-meter long hunk of rock? We probably won’t know for sure until we get a closer look at its close-ish Earth flyby in 2013.

There’s no need to panic just yet, but this frustrating lack of information does provide more evidence that we really do need to steer some more funding and work into the asteroid detection/deflection area.

Image credit: Wong Family Pictures photostream

Writing for Slate, Tim Noah nails exactly why the possible destruction of the Earth later this year when the Large Hadron Collider is switched on isn’t getting much attention in the press:

I can well understand why the Times doesn’t want to give sustained big play to the possibility that the world will end on or around Labor Day. In addition to the civic-minded concern that this might create worldwide panic, there are practical matters of self-interest. If the possibility weren’t realized, as most scientists seem to expect, then the Times would look foolish. If the possibility were realized, it would have no opportunity to collect a Pulitzer, because the Times, the Pulitzer board, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which gives out the award, and every last Times reader would all be obliterated, along with the rest of the planet.

Makes sense to me.

As predicted, we’ll continue to have Hillary Clinton to kick around:

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she will remain in the presidential race “until there’s a nominee.” The former first lady declined to say whether that meant through the roll call of the states at the Democratic National Convention this summer.

I’m not convinced she’ll drop out then, either.

UPDATE (Alex Knapp): For those who are creatively inclined, Christopher Beam at Slate is running a contest to determine the “out-there, long-shot, one-in-a-kajillion occurrences must happen to Clinton or Obama to bring about the Obamapocalypse and hand Clinton the nomination.” You can submit your scenario at the link in Beam’s post. Personally, I think the only way Obama can lose is that it turns out that he’s not Barack Obama at all, but actually an incarnation of the Master, the Doctor’s nemesis, with plans to use the Earth as a staging area to build a Galactic Empire.

Adam Nagourney offers a “bruising scenario” by which Hillary Clinton could still pull out the Democratic nomination. It’s not a particularly novel one; indeed, it’s the one that Clinton has been banking on for weeks: the superdelegates put her over the top.

There are about 800 of them, and they are going be weighing two main arguments: Mr. Obama’s contention that the Democratic rank-and-file has expressed its will and superdelegates shouldn’t overturn it, and Mrs. Clinton’s brief that she offers the party the best chance to defeat Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, this fall.

Mr. Obama’s side of the argument has become almost unassailable, while Mrs. Clinton’s is, at the least, open to debate. Mrs. Clinton’s best hope now is that Mr. Obama, as a candidate, suffers a political collapse akin to what has happened to the subprime mortgage market, a view shared by aides in both campaigns.

While this is presented as something akin to the apocalypse, recall that this is precisely the role envisioned by party elders when they gave themselves this role. If there’s a clearcut favorite among the nominating electorate, the superdelegates merely ratify the outcome of the primaries and caucuses. If not, then they use their influence to pick the candidate they believe best serves the party’s interest. Certainly, if Obama somehow become obviously inviable between now and the convention, the party wouldn’t want him as their standard bearer.

Nagourney posits that the fallout from the controversy over Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright’s, racially charged comments could do the trick. Or that landslide wins by Clinton in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Puerto Rico would demonstrate that Obama can’t win blue collar whites or Hispanics.

At the same time, however, the fact that Obama has more delegates and has won more states has hardly escaped the superdelegates.

Superdelegates are, by nature, political animals. They appreciate the potential political price if they are perceived as overturning the will of voters, and blocking what so many Democrats view as a historic candidate. They are also hungry to win the White House and, in many cases, more committed to the success of the Democratic Party than to the fortunes of any specific candidate. They surely will pause if polls two months from now show Mr. McCain with a sudden and sizable lead over Mr. Obama.

This, however, is unlikely. A Gallup poll released yesterday seems to indicate that the Wright controversy had little lasting impact. Obama has moved from a 44-48 deficit to a 47-46 lead in the head-to-heads with Clinton. In a hypothetical matchup with McCain, he’s gone from a 46-44 lead to a 44-47 deficit while Clinton has gone from a 47-45 lead to a 45-47 deficit.

All these are variations within the margin of error. Unless something happens to break these trends dramatically in Clinton’s favor, the superdelegates are likely to go mostly to Obama. If there’s an Obama collapse, they’ll step in and hand the nomination to Clinton. Which, again, is precisely what they are supposed to do when no clear winner emerges from the primary process.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about John McCain being “honored” to receive the endorsement of the pro-Apocalypse, pro-destruction-of-Israel preacher John Hagee, an endorsement which John McCain has refused to repudiate, even after the revelation of Hagee’s bigoted and outright nutjob ideas. Now it turns out that Hagee isn’t the only crazy religious bigot with whom John McCain wishes to be associated with:

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a “strong, true, consistent conservative.” The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain’s effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a “spiritual guide.”

And what does Parsley preach, you might ask? Well, as it turns out, Parsley is notable for calling for the United States to be at war with Islam. Not violent Islamic extremists, mind you–the religion of Islam itself.

Parsley is not shy about his desire to obliterate Islam. In [his book] Silent No More, he notes—approvingly—that Christopher Columbus shared the same goal: “It was to defeat Islam, among other dreams, that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492…Columbus dreamed of defeating the armies of Islam with the armies of Europe made mighty by the wealth of the New World. It was this dream that, in part, began America.” He urges his readers to realize that a confrontation between Christianity and Islam is unavoidable: “We find now we have no choice. The time has come.” And he has bad news: “We may already be losing the battle. As I scan the world, I find that Islam is responsible for more pain, more bloodshed, and more devastation than nearly any other force on earth at this moment.”

[...]

The spirit of Islam, he maintains, is one of hostility. He asserts that the religion “inspired” the 9/11 attacks. He bemoans the fact that in the years after 9/11, 34,000 Americans “have become Muslim” and that there are “some 1,209 mosques” in America. Islam, he declares, is a “faith that fully intends to conquer the world” through violence. The United States, he insists, “has historically understood herself as a bastion against Islam,” but “history is crashing in upon us.”

At the end of his chapter on Islam, Parsley asks, “Are we a Christian nation? I say yes.” Without specifying what actions should be taken to eradicate the religion, he essentially calls for a new crusade.

These are not ideas that the Presidential nominee from a major political party should so publically associate himself with or encourage. One of the major founding ideals of the United States of America was the ideal of freedom of religion. And last time I checked, Islam was a religion that one is free to practice in this country. Indeed, a lot of proud members of our Armed Forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are Muslim. Islam qua Islam is not an enemy of this country, and any suggestion of such is not only deplorable, but it speaks against one of the core principles of our culture.

I do want to get something straight–I do not mean to suggest, either in this post or in my last, that Presidential candidates should avoid being seen with or endorsed by key religious figures. I understand that one can be endorsed by and appear with a person with whom one disagrees. There’s no question of that and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it.

That said, there are religoius leaders and there are bigoted, nutjob demagogues, and candidates should not appear with the latter. Both Hagee and Parsley comfortably fit into the “bigoted nutjob” camp. So why is John McCain, Mr. “Straight Talk”, Mr. “Integrity and Honor”, so willing to appear with them?

Yesterday, John McCain announced that he was “honored” to receive the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, a Texas-based preacher who can probably be most charitably described as “pro-Apocalypse”. McCain lavished praise on him for being “pro-Israel”, but as Sarah Posner (via Matthew Yglesias) points out, what he actually stands for is the destruction of Israel in order to facilitate the End Times.

Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Hagee argues that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons must be stopped to protect America and Israel from a nuclear attack. Preying on legitimate worries about terrorism, and invoking 9-11, he vividly describes a supposed Iranian-led plan to simultaneously explode nuclear suitcase bombs in seven American cities, or to use an electromagnetic pulse device to create “an American Hiroshima.”

When addressing audiences receptive to Scriptural prophecy, however, Hagee welcomes the coming confrontation. He argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia’s leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” During his appearance on Hinn’s program at the end of last March, for example, the host enthused, “We are living in the last days. These are the most exciting days in church history,” but then went on to add, “We are facing now [the] most dangerous moment for America.” At one point, Hinn clapped his hands in delight and shouted, “Yes! Glory!” and then urged his viewers to donate money faster because he is running out of time to preach the gospel.

Paging Tim Russert: How about asking McCain if he supports uniting the Arab nations against Israel under the control of Moscow?

In addition to Hagee’s pro-Apocalypse views (and, for the record, let me state that I am anti-Apocalypse), he also has a long, long record of bigotry.

For example, John Hagee is on record as stating that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to punish New Orleans for hosting a gay pride parade:

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.

The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it would was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades.

So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the Day of Judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans. (link via Glenn Greenwald)

In addition to his antiquated views on meterology and homosexuality, Hagee also has a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry, to the point where he blames the Holocaust on Hitler’s education in Catholic schools. Seriously.

Of course, I suppose that according to Hagee, Hitler was merely doing God’s will:

In “Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To war” Hagee has stated that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by rebelling against God and that the Holocaust was God’s way of forcing Jews to move to Israel where, Hagee predicts according to his interpretation of Biblical scripture, they will be mostly killed in the apocalyptic Mideast conflict Hagee’s new lobbying group seems to be working to provoke and which John Hagee believes to be a necessary precondition for the “Rapture” that will lift Christians, but not Jews, bodily into Heaven to enjoy physical immortality amidst paradise.

You heard that right, folks. John Hagee, the man that John McCain is “honored” to have the support of, believes that God is reponsible for the Holocaust.

Look, I understand that a candidate cannot necessarily be held responsible for the thoughts and opinions of their supporters. I am on record as saying that. Nor do I believe that a political candidate has any kind of obligation to repudiate every bad idea of every supporter–that’s mostly a waste of time.

But when a political candidate makes a plane trip to accept the endorsement of a prominent person, in public, and states that they accept that endorsement and are “honored” to do so, I think that speaks volumes about the candidate. I think that John McCain has a lot of explaining to do about what, exactly, is “honorable” about having the support of a pro-Apocalypse, homophobic, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, pro-Holocaust bigot.

On a day when DC area schools are shut down for miles in each direction because of something on the order of one inch of snow, Stacy McCain reflects on the phenomenon of “Beltway blizzard bumper cars.”

Ignoring common cautions most Americans learned as 15-year-olds — e.g., always check your blind spot before changing lanes to your right — D.C. drivers crash with astonishing frequency, a persistent problem that peaks during periods of precipitation. A brief shower is sure to result in dozens of traffic tie-ups caused by morons fishtailing into guardrails, and snow sends the region spiraling into vehicular paralysis.

The Beltway media establishment panders shamelessly to Washington’s fear of snow. Days before the arrival of potential snowstorms, TV stations in the nation’s capital begin broadcasting dire declarations of impending doom. “Storm Watch” logos appear on the screen, as TV weathermen trade snow banter with blow-dried anchorpersons, engaging in what can only be described as “accumulation speculation.” Will the snow melt or stick? How many inches? Will it be bad enough to close schools? Is the apocalypse at hand?

This isn’t entirely a Beltway phenomenon, of course; most of the Deep South goes into similar panic over the threat of modest snow. Then again, at least people down there know how to drive in the rain. And I darn sure never heard of “sun delays” until moving to these parts.

Matthew Yglesias notes that we should keep Islamist nuts in perspective, since our own president is pretty religious:

[N]oting that millenarian Islam is an important strain in Iranian politics ought to be put in the context of a United States of America that features millenarian Christianity as an important political strain. I don’t see any reason to believe that George W. Bush is actually trying to bring about the apocalypse, but all the evidence you could bring to bear in applying this argument to Ahmadenijad applies mutadis mutandis to Bush.

Dave Shuler has an excellent response which begins, “I think you need to mutatis a lot more than the mutandis to get there. ”

Indeed.

There’s an interesting conversation going on over at VC about the ethics of having children, but one comment in particular caught my attention:

I’m pretty skeptical of the “children are good for the future” argument. Erlich’s “population bomb” may not have been wrong so much as delayed; the Green Revolution pulled a rabbit out of the hat when it comes to producing enough food for six billion people, but there may or may not be another rabbit to be had.

I can’t recall the details, but a report came out a while back indicating that, of all the things one might do as an environmentalist (recycling, using less fossil fuels, etc.) nothing was as effective as not having children. If you believe that resource limitations and pollution are complete non-issues, then maybe it’s reasonable to believe that children are good for the future. But if the world is going to be short on food and resources, then breeding is profoundly immoral.

Concern about the skewed demographics of industrialized countries seems unwarrented unless you factor in the ways in which increased demand for finite resources would lower the standard of living for everyone. (italics his, bolding mine)

Well, tally up another victory for static scoring, he says in jest. The commenter, Tony, is committing the same error that most environmentalists commit when he assumes that supplies are static in relation to our demand for them. Forget the “Green Revolution” he mentions. He ignores the productivity increases that allowed the percentage of the labor force committed to farming to drop from 90% in 1776 to less than 3% today. Did the amount of food available decrease as a result of fewer laborers? No, of course not. It increased due to capital accumulation, technological change and process improvements that were so overwhelming that not only do we have fewer people on the farm, but we are even using less farm land to produce more food. We’ve been continuing along these lines for centuries and there’s no reason to think the future will be different.

Setting aside his static view of the economy, his argument is a setup.

If you believe that resource limitations and pollution are complete non-issues, then maybe it’s reasonable to believe that children are good for the future.

This is a trap. This argument only works within the very narrow (and incorrect) framework he has established. Most people don’t consider either scarcity or pollution to be “complete non-issues”. Scarcity is the reason that economics exists as a discipline and something that economists obsess over. For most the solution is capitalism (or market mechanisms of some sort). On the issue of pollution, well obviously it isn’t a non-issue and is, in fact, a huge issue in human well being. As it happens, there are solutions to pollution and it can be dealt with by exception, without us having to dramatically alter our lifestyle. As pollutants are identified, Pigovian taxes can be put in place, as well as cap-and-trade systems, and these should reduce the amount of the pollutants to an acceptable level over time.

The same reasoning rebuts his follow-on sentence where he “establishes” that a future of scarcity makes childbearing immoral. It only works as he’s framed it and his framing doesn’t reflect reality. In short, reproduce like bunnies if you want, just make sure you can afford them.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a good bit recently, mostly due to things I see on the left side of the blogosphere, but also because of Stephen Hawking’s rambling about the necessity of establishing outposts on the moon and Mars. I favor space exploration and even a moon base, but not for the reasons that Hawking uses to justify it (pestilence, poverty and population). Amanda at Pandagon nails this (note the phallic imagery) in a way that I find pretty satisfactory, though I disagree with virtually everything else she says in the post. She’s right to note that he’s making an appeal to Rapture fanatics and other people with those inclinations. Its when she leaves this reasoning that I start to disagree with her.

As it turns out, Amanda is quite the misanthrope and a hysterical alarmist as well:

…(also to justify having more and more Virility Objects, i.e. children, even though the planet is suffocating from the massive explosion in wasteful human beings)…

…that we’re destroying our planet and very soon going to make in uninhabitable…

…the mundane reality is that life evolved under very chaotic conditions with unbelievable numbers of variables and our wee brains just can’t control all those variables. Our best bet really is to simply know what will surely kill us all and do our best to avoid that. Global warming is a good example…

…rich assholes who buy off scientists to spread imaginary doubt about global warming also think their elite status will save them, so that when the rest of us are crowding to the cities that are still above water and baking from the heat and possibly starving to death, they’ll be bouncing from air-conditioned mansion to air-conditioned car and living off hydroponically grown foods…

Not only is she against reproduction, but she sees global warming as an apocalypse. Combine that with her clear disdain for mankind and she becomes another type of Rapture fanatic: she believes we have destroyed nature and DESERVE to be punished for it. Nevermind that man is a part of nature; we’ll have to forget about that for her purposes. Hmm, whatever shall we do?

As I’ve said before, to the consternation of some commenters, I favor working to solve global warming and believe it’s a genuine threat. Where Amanda and I differ is on magnitude, means and alarmism. Indeed, the alarmism of people like Algore will probably do more to prevent actual action since he comes across as a hysteric when he talks about ten-year tipping points.

This, together with Amanda’s other writings on capitalism, “Othered people” and so forth, reminds me of a quote by Julian Simon (a good page on him):

This is my long-run forecast in brief:

The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards.

I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.

Clearly, Amanda is ahead of her time. I’ll make this bit of speculation: In 70 years, when Amanda is 98, she will still be wrestling with the ethics of blow jobs and “the Othered”, while the bulk of mankind is materially better off than today, and Amanda will still be complaining how bad things are.*

*If Malthus’s Amanda’s ideas about capitalism and market economics are followed, we will indeed be worse off. It will be because of stupid policies, not because it had to be that way.

(h/t) Amber, whose uterus is sealed up as tight as a snare drum. No kids for her.

Today is the 6th day of the 6th month of the year ought-six. Is this the 666 of Revelations yore? Some seem to think so.

THE calendar has clicked over to the sixth day of the sixth month, 2006 and hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia – the fear of the number 666 – is taking hold. Will the world end? Will someone give birth to the antichrist? Will Satan reclaim control?

Thirteen may be an unlucky number, but the Book of Revelation claims 666 is the number of the beast.

And not since the Y2K computer scare of December 31, 1999 has a date received so much attention.

They’re not taking any chances in Holland:

A Netherlands-based Evangelical organisation has called on Christians in 21 countries to hold a 24-hour prayer vigil against Satanic forces to mark so-called Devil’s Day. Some fear the date 06/06/06, which falls on Tuesday, signifies 666, the Biblical number of the Devil, and will usher in calamities and even the end of the world.

The Dutch-based organisation Ambassadors Ministries called its 24-hour prayer vigil from 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) Monday, saying it hoped some 2,000 Dutch Christians, mainly Protestants, would take part. “We believe that the plans the enemy has for this date (June 6, 2006) will be destroyed through violent worship and praise. We are inviting the entire world to be part of this huge unity project,” it says on its website www.ambasmin.org. “The forces of evil are using this day,” Mathijs Piet of the organisation told AFP.

Scholars and holy men debate the significance of the number:

Many scholars, such as Father Just, say the beast is really a coded reference — using Hebrew letters for numbers — for the despotic Roman emperor Nero, and 616 appears instead of 666 in some ancient manuscripts. The Book of Revelation isn’t prophesying a specific end of times but “is about the overall cosmic struggle of good versus evil,” Father Just said.

But for some more apocalyptic theologians, the end of times is coming, even if not specifically tomorrow. The evangelical Raptureready.com Web site puts its “rapture index” at 156, calling that “fasten your seat belts” time. It’s not the date June 6 that’s worrisome, but the signs in our society of the approach of the 666 Antichrist, said the Rev. Tim LaHaye, founder of a self-named ministry and co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic novels. “I don’t think that people understand that 666 is not a good time,” Mr. LaHaye said. He said he sees signs of an upcoming “tribulation period” that leads to the Antichrist’s arrival in a movement toward one-world government, a single economic system and single religion.

Apocalyptic culture and theology, especially those surrounding 666, “is especially appealing for people in an underdog situation,” said Father Just. So people have looked for — and found — 666 in all sorts of places. Believers in the number’s power have used a biblical letter-numeric code to convert the names of countless political leaders, including many popes, to come out 666, marking them as that generation’s Antichrist. That includes Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

UVA’s Michael Covington says there’s no reason to worry:

Today is 06/06/06 whether you write the date forward or backward. Is there anything evil about this date?

No.

The Bible predicts an ungodly dictator (the Antichrist) whose “mark” will be the number 666. This is part of a very allegorical description given in Revelation 13, which describes a “beast” and starts out, “It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon” (ESV).

Christians agree that this is a warning about a future earthly ruler, not a giant horned reptile. It is part of St. John’s vision, in which various spiritual forces are represented by dramatic visual images. The number 666 is given in verse 18: “This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.” Not six-six-six, but six hundred sixty-six, which in Roman, Greek, or Hebrew numerals is not written as three sixes. (For example, in Roman numerals, 6 = VI and 666 = DCLXVI.)

We’ll know by midnight–assuming the Devil’s watch is right.

It looks like movies about the Iraq War will be coming out before the shooting stops.

Moviemakers aren’t waiting for the Iraq war to finish before they put their Hollywood ending on it. Francis Ford Coppola made “Apocalypse Now” six years after the Vietnam War ended in 1973, and it wasn’t until the ’80s that Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” and Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” hit cinemas. But with instant 24-hour news coverage bringing the three-year-long war’s reality home every day, film artists want to imitate life that much faster.

Tom Cruise has optioned and may star in “The Fall of the Warrior King,” based on a New York Times story about a disgraced Army commander in Iraq. Ron Howard is scheduled to direct “Last Man Home,” about the search for a missing American G.I. there. Ridley Scott will produce “The Invisible World,” about a kidnapped female journalist, and “Boys Don’t Cry” director Kimberly Peirce will helm “Stop-Loss,” which centers on a soldier who doesn’t want to go back to Baghdad. Just last week, Deborah Scranton’s documentary “The War Tapes,” made by New Hampshire National Guardsmen with hand-held cameras, won the top prize in its category at the Tribeca Film Festival.

But racing reality is not without its fears for “Crash” screenwriter Paul Haggis. “I’m scared out of my wits,” Haggis told us. “Which I think is a good thing for a filmmaker, or any artist.” Just last week, Haggis completed the script for “Death and Dishonor,” about a father searching for his son who went missing on the way home from Iraq. He’s also directing a screen version of former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s book “Against All Enemies.”

Director Irwin Winkler, who has wrapped principal photography on “Home of the Brave,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, 50 Cent, Jessica Biel and Chad Michael Murray, says he’s undaunted about making an Iraq project so soon. “Just because [directors in the past] waited longer doesn’t mean that I have to wait any longer,” Winkler told us. “I think it’s on everbody’s mind.

“As far as Vietnam goes, we had to take a deep breath and get some perspective on the issue. The news is so hot, and it’s on all the time, and I think we understand it more quickly. Generally, I think most of the country thinks the same way about this war.”

Not hardly.

Still, while there is a need for sensitivity when portraying an ongoing war, it’s hardly unprecedented. Indeed, John Wayne alone made several WWII movies during that war: “Flying Tigers” (1942), “The Fighting Seabees” (1944), “Back to Bataan” (1945), and “They Were Expendable” (1945). He also made “The Green Berets,” a Vietnam War flick that came out in 1968. Of course, all of those pictures showed American forces as heroes.

Gone Hollywood