 ADVERTISERSPOPULAR TAGS
*FEATURED
Africa
Asia
Barack Obama
Bernard Finel
Best of OTB
Blogosphere
Book Reviews
Borders and Immigration
Bureaucracy
Campaign 2004
Campaign 2006
Campaign 2008
Campaign 2009
Campaign 2010
Campaign 2012
Congress
Contests
Crime
Economics and Business
Education
Entertainment
Environment
Europe
Gender Issues
General
Government
Guns
Health
Health Care
Humor
Intelligence
Iraq Conflict
Joe Biden
Late Night OTB
Latin America
Law and the Courts
Media
Middle East
Military Affairs
Movie Reviews
National Security
Natural Disasters
Obituaries
OTB History
Politicians
Politics 101
Popular Culture
Public Opinion Polls
Published Elsewhere
Race and Politics
Religion
Science & Technology
Social Security
Sports
Terrorism
United Nations
US Politics
World Politics
|
Quote of the Day, No Need To Worry About Cannibal Robots Edition
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission.” – Harry Schoell (link via Patrick Appel) Show comments here »Shrinkage
In a classic Seinfeld episode, a phenomenon known as “shrinkage” was attributed to cold water. Now, a study finds that European fish have been shrinking owing to warm water. Go figure. Show comments here »The Biggest Obstacle to Blogging
Megan McArdle reports that she has had a fourth bicycle stolen since moving to DC, all of them locked, all of them at her home, the most recent inside a stockade fence. In frustration, she observes, “I think I’m done with bike commuting. I’d rather just hand out $100 bills to random people on the street; at least I wouldn’t be rewarding theft.” This is followed by a remarkably heated exchange in the comments section, numbering 60 as of this writing, wherein readers lambaste Megan for being a dingbat and each other for various transgressions. Freddy Mercury and company offer some related thoughts: Show comments here »Gates, Hazelton, and Chappelle
Robert Cox passes on the story of Demetrius Hazelton, the 17-year-old son a New Rochelle police detective, who is suing said PD after he was arrested after using a “white racial monotone voice” which police claim is the same voice used by Dave Chappelle “when making fun of white people.” Bob supplies the following Chappelle video, which is decidedly R-rated:
The beginning of the monologue is especially amusing in light of yesterday’s news that Harvard African-American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates was recently arrested for breaking into his own house. Show comments here »Obama: No Pacemaker For You!
Via Megan McArdle, I see that President Obama told a woman whose now-105-year-old mother got a pacemaker five years ago that, under Obamacare, we might just give old ladies a pill: Megan observes, “I don’t know that this is going to hurt the image of healthcare reform. But it probably isn’t going to help.” That was my reaction, too, until I realized that the exchange took place in the ABC News town hall special on June 25 and this was the first I’d heard of it. Of course, the fact that Michael Jackson died the same day might have something to do with that. Show comments here »The Drug War In a Nutshell
Thoreau explains to a friend what will happen to him if he decides to grow a marijuana plant on his property:
The only thing neglected here, as one of Thoreau’s commenters points out, is that the masked men would also shoot your dog. Other than that, that about sums it up. Show comments here »Jimmy Carter Quits Baptists (Again)
Over the weekend, Carter apparently reckoned people forgot about this (and, I must confess, I had) he up and quit again, this time via op-eds in The Guardian and The Age. (The latter was published a week ago but, owing to the confluence of the International Date Line and a lot of famous celebrities dying, nobody in the United States noticed until yesterday.) But I digress. I bring this up not because I much care about Carter’s religion, having neither a dog in the fight nor interest sufficient to warrant exchanging a rodent’s hindquarters for his views on the subject, but rather because of the extraordinarily bizarre explanation given.
Now, I can’t vouch for Plains, Georgia. But I’ve lived in plenty of communities where Southern Baptists predominated. In all of them, prostitution and rape were against the law. Girls went to school and the doctor. Women had jobs and influence. So far as I know, their genitals were intact.
But these aren’t countries run by Southern Baptists. In rural Alabama and Mississippi, girls start and finish school at the same age as boys. Young women now outnumber young men in our colleges and universities. Arranged marriages have never been part of our culture. To the extent “their basic health needs are not met,” it’s because of poverty, not religious dogma.
In Southern Baptist towns in the United States, women show a hell of a lot more than their arms and ankles. They’re required to go to school up to age 16 and are strongly encouraged to graduate high school and go on to college. Women work outside the home at tremendous rate. Rape is abhorred and the rapist is severely punished, often in extracurricular fashion.
A goodly number of Western countries (although, granted, none with large Southern Baptist populations) have women prime ministers and presidents. In the United States, including the South, women governors, senators, and other high office holders were quite common long before Carter quit the Convention (the first time). We’ve had three female Secretaries of State, a woman National Security Advisor, a woman Attorney General, a woman Secretary of Homeland Security. We’ve had two women as vice presidential nominees and one who came close to getting a major party presidential nod. Sarah Palin, despite rather little experience or demonstrated expertise, seems to be the enthusiastic favorite for the Republican presidential nomination among Southern Baptists. There are plenty of reasons to pick nits with the Southern Baptists. But the depredations of radical Islam are not among them. Baptist photo by Flickr users djking under Creative Commons license. Show comments here »Caption Contest Winners
The Mission Accomplished Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over.
Khamenei: Failing the Test
For some reason I don’t find the collapse of Iran’s ruling elite a disturbing prospect. Perhaps I’m not the target demographic. Show comments here »Counter-Insurgency in Afghanistan
I’d like to draw your attention to a new article by Donald Snow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama and authority on foreign policy, international relations, and national security at New Atlanticist on the feasibility of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. I won’t attempt to dissect Dr. Snow’s article but will only say that his observations jibe quite well with my own. I would add, however, that an additional complication of the situation in Afghanistan is that not only is the country large but it has indefensible borders and several of its neighbors have a stake in the outcome there. Also, counter-insurgency is a doctrine invented more than a half century ago by the colonial powers to keep their errant colonies under control. While it may have made sense for the European colonialists, it doesn’t make nearly as much sense for us. We don’t own the territories where we’re trying to practice counter-insurgency and we don’t want to own them. Here are Dr. Snow’s remarks on the relevancy of the Iraq experience to Afghanistan:
They’re also alike in that both have large areas which have never been under the control of a central government, a characteristic common to a swath of territory that runs from the Bosporus to the Indus. Read the whole thing. Show comments here »Jittery About China
I’ve got to admit that these two stories, taken together, have me a mite worried about the economic situation in China. First, a Chinese bank regulator is warning that imprudent loans are causing a credit bubble in China:
Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds On top of that an “econophysicist” has predicted that the Chinese stock market will collapse within the next week:
Hat tip: Steve Antler The authors of the article in Technology Review appear skeptical of the methodology used for the prediction, appropriately I think. I’ve never had much truck with the “China will pull the world out of its economic slump” notion but a serious economic downturn in China would be very bad news, indeed. I’ve long thought that China’s economy was a lot weaker and less stable than it was being credited for and a country of more than a billion people teetering on the brink of poverty going into economic collapse is no laughing matter. DC Most Dangerous Driving City
Aaron Brazell passes along word that DC and Baltimore are the most dangerous driving cities, as calculated by Allstate Insurance. Bengt Havorson has the list:
I’ve lived and driven in Chattanooga and now live in the DC suburbs and commute into the city most days. While I found both aggravating, mostly because constant construction projects added to traffic congestion, there’s not much doubt in my mind that DC is a worse place to drive. Looking at how these are calculated, though, I’m a bit dubious.
Let’s presume that Allstate has representative policy holdings across the states. Wouldn’t “accidents per mile driven” or “accidents per hour driven” by more useful than “years between accidents”? UPDATE: Steve Bainbridge thinks it may be no coincidence that DC is both the most dangerous city to drive in and that “DC also has more red light and speed cameras than almost any metro area in the country. Indeed, DC has nearly 10% of all the traffic cameras in the United States.” Meanwhile, Stacy McCain has some, um, interesting suggestions on how to solve the problem. Show comments here »Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage with Walter Cronkite
Now this is pretty cool: The folks at Kottke.org are bringing Walter Cronkite’s live, real-time coverage of the Apollo XI moon landing as originally broadcast starting at 4:10 Eastern.
Presumably, you can just go directly to YouTube and watch the segments you’re interested in whenever you want. But watching it unfold over the course of hours in real time (give or take 40 years) is cool idea. Show comments here »Intelligence Agencies Claim Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program
It’s somewhat difficult to determine whether this is one intelligence estimate or two. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the same story:
The article goes on to condemn the 2007 U. S. NIE that found that Iran had suspended its program in 2003 in no uncertain terms:
In the light of this report it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hold that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons. I find this story very interesting in the light of several other stories that have come out in recent months including North Korea’s recent missile test, Russia’s repeated statements of its lack of ability to influence Iran to abandon its nuclear development program, even yesterday’s report of a cure for radiation sickness. For one thing, apparently the BND is thinking along lines similar to those I’ve suggested. It may be more appropriate to consider the North Korean and Iranian development programs together rather than in isolation. A dangerous world is becoming even more dangerous quickly. Above Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tours Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Show comments here »Moon Landing Plus 40 – One Last Step for Mankind?
I’m old enough to have been alive for the moon walk but too young to remember it. I admire the adventurism and have a sense nostalgia for it and very much enjoyed “The Right Stuff,” “Moon Shot,” and “From the Earth to the Moon.” I even got enthusiastic about the first couple of flights of the space shuttle. Alas, space flight now has the romantic appeal of commercial air travel. Despite being dangerous as hell, shuttle missions have been ho hum for twenty years; they’re only interesting when they’re tragic. The space station has only slightly more drama than any other scientific laboratory. In the old days, our astronauts were heroic men culled from the ranks of military fighter pilots and test pilots; now, they’re mostly technicians. As rigorous as the selection and training process is — and, again, as risky as actually heading off to space is — most of those who go off to space are the functional equivalent of those of us sitting in the passenger section of a Boeing 777 typing away on our laptops. Space may be the final frontier but, absent some incredible advance in technology, there are no great manned missions in our near future. How much of an advance over walking on the moon would walking on Mars really be? And anything beyond Mars is so far away that it simply doesn’t make sense to try to send human beings there, since it would take years. Oh, and scientists would rather have the money to fund better telescopes and more efficient ways of studying space. Frankly, I’m more anxious for the next “Star Trek” movie to come out than I am for the next big manned space project. Although, if we develop warp technology and the Vulcans initiate first contact, I could change my mind. Show comments here » |
For Advertising Info, write
otb@blogads.com ADVERTISERSOTB MEDIA     ATLANTIC COUNCIL VETERAN'S ALERTIn addition to uncertain healthcare services, economic disadvantages, and finding a place to call home, veterans certainly do not need any more challenges. Unfortunately, the wounds of war can be less obvious than those that we can see. Psychological disorders and sicknesses caused by toxic exposure can be the most damaging aspects of war that veterans bring home. Toxin exposure in particular is of particular concern as previous exposure to asbestos among veterans is causing incidence of the aggressive cancer mesothelioma to rise among former members of the armed services. We must not leave those who risked their lives for our nation in the cold. Our veterans have never questioned the right or wrong of war when it mattered most. They simply did as they were trained. We must now show the same unwavering determination, in all ways we are able, by affording those opportunities to which they are entitled, including financial, medical and emotional support to all veterans.
|
From 
