"Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, Suffer the pain. Your desire must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time, sacrificed."I can think of connections with Jay Manifold's post and the nature of science, the way we live our lives, and of course the religious implications. Use the Comments section to tell us what this fragment means to you.
"The N just stands for 'not M.' People who are not type M are of type N. Type N people have no real mathematical skill." -- "Interesting," she said. "It's more than that," I said. "It is fundamental. People of type N cannot argue science or technology with people of type M." -- "Why?" "Because they always lose." -- "Are you sure?" "Yes," I said. "They lose even when they are right."Read: Jay Manifold's The Two Cultures. Discuss in the Comments section. Optional Extra: Visit Daniel Drezner for his post on trends at Harvard, which links up with Jay's points.
...an outline of 1) Who they think we will get on board that we don't already have. 2) What terms they will demand. 3) Taking into account their stated position on the expansive, ambitious goals we have vs. "stability" in the region.OK, here goes. Typically, when I think about a market, one of the first things I think about is 'the marketing universe'; how much effective supply or demand is out there? In this case, the issue is where is the effective supply of military power? In 2000, the Top 10 looked like this: | 1. China | 2,810,000 | | 2. Russia | 1,520,000 | | 3. United States | 1,366,000 | | 4. India | 1,303,000 | | 5. Korea, South | 683,000 | | 6. Pakistan | 612,000 | | 7. Turkey | 610,000 | | 8. Iran | 513,000 | | 9. Vietnam | 484,000 | |10. Egypt | 448,000 | The numbers are the total numbers of armed forces personnel.
This sculpture is a frieze located above the East (back) entrance to the Supreme Court building. Moses (holding blank tablets) is depicted as one of trio of three Eastern law givers (Confucius, Solon, and Moses). The trio is surrounded by a variety of allegorical figures representing legal themes. The artist, Herman MacNeil, described his intentions in creating the sculpture as follows:Law as an element of civilization was normally and naturally derived or inherited in this country from former civilizations. The "Eastern Pediment" of the Supreme Court Building suggests therefore the treatment of such fundamental laws and precepts as are derived from the East. Moses, Confucius and Solon are chosen as representing three great civilizations and form the central group of this Pediment (Descriptions of the Friezes in the Courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States and of the East and West Pediments of the Building Exterior, p. 9).
For half a century the fanciful tailors of revisionist jurisprudence have been working to strip the public sector naked of every vestige of God and morality. They have done so based on fake readings and inconsistent applications of the First Amendment. They have said it is all right for the U.S. Supreme Court to publicly place the Ten Commandments on its walls, for Congress to open in prayer and for state capitols to have chaplains--as long as the words and ideas communicated by such do not really mean what they purport to communicate. They have trotted out before the public using words never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, like "separation of church and state," to advocate, not the legitimate jurisdictional separation between the church and state, but the illegitimate separation of God and state.For Chief Justice Moore, God ... not in the abstract sense of an all-encompassing Creator, but in the very literal sense of the God of the New Testament ... is at the root of our laws, and more, at the root of the legitimacy of our government which is, after all, founded on and defended by laws.
This Weekly Standard piece by Bob Kagan and William Kristol is worth noting. The authors begin by repeating - correctly - that "American ideals and American interests converge ... a more democratic Middle East will both improve the lives of long-suffering peoples and enhance America's national security." They then applaud statements to that effect by Condoleezza Rice and President Bush calling for a "generational commitment" to Iraq and the Middle East comparable to the U.S.'s commitment to Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. And in this, the security advisor and the president are also indeed applauseworthy: the intertwined task of promoting democracy and pursuing counterterror in the Middle East is as obviously central to U.S. security today as creating a secure, commercially prosperous free Europe was then.
This coming decade has the potential to be the most exciting time in the history of human space travel since the 1970s - maybe ever. All the pieces are there. Will we grasp that opportunity? What will it take?
Space remains more important to the USA than ever, and especially to the U.S. military which is becoming more and more of a "space power" as a natural extension of its naval pre-eminence. Yet other countries besides the USA have a strong interest in space, and NASA may not be up to the job of keeping America ahead.
How could the USA compete on terms that favour its strengths, help to maintain its preeminence, and simultaneously open the benefits and opportunity of space to humanity? What might that new model look like?
"We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don't believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq ... a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds."
At risk of sounding flippant once again, I must admit to having a brief moment with some renegade thoughts. If there is an organization on earth that did more than the U.N. to see to it that Saddam Hussein stayed in power, torturing and filling mass graves to the brim, I'm at a loss to name it. Perhaps the truck bomber was the relative of a recent victim? As the press has told us consistently, Islamic terror organizations would never cooperate with or fight for Saddam. Moreover we were told they considered Saddam an enemy on par with the United States, because he was a secular tyrant, oppressing Muslims. If this was the case, again the U.N. would be a legitimate target because they allowed it to continue, to say nothing of the tragically farcical "oil for food program" administered by the world body, which enabled Saddam to construct lavish palaces while the Iraqi people starved. It's odd that there were no "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" rationalizations in this instance. It would indeed be poetic justice, but the likelihood is that the U.N.'s Baghdad headquarters was targeted because it was easy to hit, a "soft-target" according to the experts.Hummm...so I wasn't alone in my public thoughts about the evil of the U.N. and poetic justice. And Instapundit approved, no less.
The net result of this distrust was seen very clearly in the debates over TIA and the Pentagon's planned terrorism futures market. Americans -- and their legislative representatives -- didn't care how these programs actually worked. They didn't care that academics on the left and right supported such ideas in the abstract. Despite TIA's fate, we still need computerized tools to look for "non-obvious relationships". And a closed-access futures market for experts could have been a great way to quantify collective expert opinion. Nonetheless, the American public answered these programs with a resounding "Enough already!"Go read the whole thing. Michael McNeal has a great compilation post on the health consequences of Depleted Uranium (DU) - often used in U.S. military projectiles (via Volokh). Hint: there don't appear to be any. (changed title)
"This is a case of UN evolution in action. The U.N. requested that American military forces not provide heavy security for political reasons. The UN-icks did not want to "..seem to close to the US" or "...be seen as endorsing US actions." Too bad the Al-Qaeda didn't use a bigger bomb. Posted by: Trent Telenko on August 20, 2003 02:56 AM “Was that over the top? Yes, it was. I apologize for that. It was morally wrong to suggest the U.N. deserved to be truck bombed. What I was trying to say was if the local U.N. people wanted to get a Darwin award that much. The bomb should have been bigger to get the ones working for the award. I was unaware at the time the bombing was most likely an inside job and not one by terrorists. However, that being said, was it “Idiotarian Right Wing Terrorist Supporting? Joe, you or anyone else saying that needs to get a life. It is a documented fact that the United Nations is a terrorist supporting organization world wide. The U.N. in Iraq was a terrorist supporting organization against the Iraqi people. The U.N. staff in Baghdad were mercenary monsters working with the Iraqi state's mass killing monsters to deny food and medicine to the Iraqi people and assist the regime in surviving international sanctions. And this evil was not just limited to Baghdad U.N. offices. The UN High Commission on Refugees knew the size, scope and extent of the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure in the refugee camps it ran and not only stayed silent. It justified it’s silence as a necessary part of doing its job after Israel over ran Jenin and got the goods on UN complicity with terrorism. The U.N. was not only running a sanctuary for suicide bombers attacking Israel in Jenin. Every Palestinian refugee camp it runs is a sanctuary for suicide bomber terrorists.
"I contend that there is a single litmus that does indeed separate the nation and the world into two opposing camps, and that when you examine where people will fall on the countless issues that affect our society, this alone is the indicator that will tell you how they will respond. The indicator is Responsibility."Victor Davis Hanson's "How We Collapse" had a similar thrust, informed by history. Of the two, however, Bill Whittle has the better essay. Now that's saying something.
Palestinian leaders have been promoting the illusion that Islamic radical groups will ultimately transform themselves into peaceful political parties. That fantasy was shattered on Tuesday along with 20 innocent lives when a Hamas terrorist blew up a Jerusalem bus. The bombing occurred at the very moment the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, was meeting with Islamic radicals in Gaza. If anything positive is to come from this latest atrocity, it will be a conclusive realization by Mr. Abbas that organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have no genuine interest in cease-fire agreements or two-state solutions and must be forcibly put out of the terrorism business. Only then will the American-sponsored road map for peace have a chance of delivering Palestinian statehood. ... Hamas described Tuesday's bombing as retaliation for the Israeli Army's killing of one of its militants in June. Hamas is a self-appointed gang of thugs with no right to kill anyone, Israeli or Palestinian. That is how it must be treated by Mr. Abbas and his security chief, Muhammad Dahlan.Hmmmm. I feel the earth shifting ever so slightly under my feet.
Something I've always wondered about, too. Why is Hoover infamous for presiding over four years of Depression, not terribly uncommon in American history, while Roosevelt is much-beloved for presiding over an unprecedented two more presidential terms of Depression, while much of the rest of the world economy was recovering [edit: at a faster pace]?
A suicide bomber attacked a crowded bus in Jerusalem today, killing at least 18 people and wounding scores more, Israeli officials said. Two Palestinian militant groups hastened to take responsibility for the attack, which threatened to imperil the fragile Middle East peace plan. "The suicide bomber blew up in the center of the bus,'' Jerusalem's police chief, Mickey Levy, told Israel Radio, according to Reuters. "We are talking about a big bomb, and there is a large number of casualties, including dead.'' There were conflicting estimates of casualties. The police said at least 18 people had been killed, while the head of the Israeli emergency medical service told reporters earlier that 20 people had died and 105 people had been wounded.My first thoughts, as always, are for those killed and wounded and for their families. After taking a deep breath, my second one is that we're not done seeing this, or anywhere close to it. But for the first time, I can begin to see a path through the problem.
"In the absence of a "peer competitor" — a big, heavily armed adversary — future wars may not require the Army to fight for the survival of the nation as it has in the past. But this is no assurance that there will not be pitched battles and prolonged campaigns. Making the U.S. Army more capable of expeditionary operations will only go part way toward winning future wars. Rather, we need to have forces and capabilities that can turn battlefield success into victory over the long haul. Some of the forces we will need to achieve victory may not be military at all; others may be allied or indigenous forces rather than U.S. forces. The United States needs to focus on how to get these capabilities. Knowing how we are going to win the next war is more important to our soldiers than whether they go to war as part of 5,000-strong brigades or 18,000-strong divisions or fight from 20-ton wheeled armor rather than 70-ton tanks."I have said in several posts that the future of the American Military is PARAMILITARY. It looks to me that this meme is spreading. There is more to war than fighting. The experts see that. It is only a question of moving the US Army brass hats out of the way so this can happen.
California isn't alone...go Google "state budget crisis 2003", in the first three pages, you'll see references to California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.and
I'm thinking about a budget and tax strategy (I don't know enough detail, except in a very few areas, to actually propose tactics), and I'll propose two basic goals: 1. Budget Integration. We need to look at State, county, and city budgets in some integrated way, to deal with the - transfers - between the levels which tend to mask spending and growth in a number of areas. 2) Tax stability. California is mandated to carry a balanced budget. We need to relook at our tax programs to attempt to get a more stable revenue stream for the state. This implies that we shift from personal income to corporate income, sales, and property taxes. This is pretty obviously nontrivial is so many ways...but I'll suggest one point in each of these three areas that could make a difference.The overall issue of the 'structural fiscal crisis' is a major one, and may be worth some thought itself.
"There is a story about a man who went to a dictionary-compiler and asked him why he was interested in money. The lexicographer was quite surprised and said, 'Wherever did you get that idea?' 'From your own writings,' said the visitor. 'But I have only written that one dictionary — that is my writings,' said the author. 'I know, and that is the book that I have read,' said the other man. 'But the book contains a hundred thousand words! And out of those, I don't suppose that more than twenty or thirty are about money.' 'What are you talking about all the other words for,' said the visitor, 'when I was asking you about the words for money?'So tell us in the Comments section, what is this story really about? And what is the dictionary meant to represent?
A member of the Biotic Baking Brigade, a loose network of San Francisco pie-throwing politicos, said Wednesday that he did not believe that anyone from the group was responsible for the pastry flung in the face of Ralph Nader on Tuesday. The brigade tends to target rich oppressors of working men and women and "wouldn't get involved in progressive politics infighting. It's not our bag," said the operative, who goes by the moniker Agent a la Mode.
An important element of the complex, I've often fancied, is a general psychological condition that fetishized and aggrandized ordinary, adolescent rebellion against parental authority, and invested it with universal significance, making it and its concomitant sensations the focus of life and politics, to such a degree that experiences that do not include the sensations are found lacking, unexciting, inauthentic, suspect; the flame of sticking it to the old man had to be kept alive, and neither the absence of an actual old man to stick it to, nor the fact that one has become an old man oneself, has much bearing on the matter.Here, I think, you find the psychological engine underlaying the Romantic attachment to (quoting Berlin) '...wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was.' And what could be more pure than the nihilistic act of terror that denies society's parental power over you and at the same time destroyed the symbols of that power? Only an act that destroyed yourself at the same time. Cody Jarrett, meet Mohammed Atta.
Which brings us to the threat of radical Islam. "You are decadent and hedonistic. We on the other hand are willing to die for what we believe, and we are a billion strong. You cannot kill all of us, so you will have to accede to what we demand." That, in a nutshell, constitutes the Islamist challenge to the West.
"Did Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have access to a U.S. computer tracking program that enabled them to monitor our intelligence-gathering efforts and financial transactions? If so, who is responsible for allowing the program to fall into their hands? And who else among America's enemies might have access to the tracking system? It's an explosive spy software scandal that no one in official Washington wants to investigate."
"I sat at the end of his cot while him and the army general looked up into my eyes as if to say, "Please don't tell me you are leaving". With out hesitation the words "I'm leaving" came out of my mouth. Then there was a long pause as I waited for their response. They both looked at me and looked at each other, simultaneously saying, "This is not good news". They expressed their concern for my safety since I was going to live in Baghdad. They both promised to be there with me as soon as they are released. They vowed to be my shield against any would be attackers and promised to pray for me continuously. Looking through the tent door, noticing the others were gathering outside, I rose to my feet to say goodbye. With tears running down my face I embraced each of them and thanked them for the great example they had been to me and for the many things I had learned from them. They too were crying as I departed their tent, promising to see me again in Baghdad as soon as possible."I've read his blog for a while now, and none of this surprises me. Remarkable - and worth thinking about.
"I knew we were in for a long season when we lined up for the national anthem on opening day and one of my players said, 'Every time I hear that song I have a bad game." -- Jim Leyland, Manager, Pittsburgh PiratesMy blog-mates Armed Liberal and Trent Telenko have been carrying on a running debate here at Winds of Change.NET about the future of the Democratic Party, issues of leadership and foreign policy, and more. Just zip over to our GEO: U.S. of A category archives for a look. For the most part, I've left it alone and covered the rest of the world. Still, there is one angle I'd like to cover. It's about the centrist Democrats who see the importance of the national defence issue, but can't seem to shake some crippling beliefs and behaviours. Untill and unless these habits are examined and corrected, initiatives to reform the Democratic Party and offer a credible voice on national security issues will remain stillborn. Let's begin with yet another demonstration of Jane's Law, on July 4th no less. Democrats for National Security (DfNS) emailed to say:
The Hope Street Group promotes principles and policies aimed at achieving an Opportunity Economy, in part by harnessing the skills, networks and resources of a new generation of business executives and professionals.Sounds pretty good so far. They support what they call the 'opportunity economy', in which market incentives are created and market barriers lowered to ensure that everyone has a chance to participate. I definitely like the sound of that. The details, however, need a bit of work. They have several white papers available online. I'll make one key suggestion for them; following on the excellent usability work of Jakob Nielsen, I'll suggest that presenting multipage papers online only as pdf's is a Bad And Annoying Thing.
Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of one of the most morally contentious events of the 20th century, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands. There has been a chorus here and abroad that the U.S. has little moral standing on the issue of weapons of mass destruction because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said of Americans in a speech on Jan. 31, "Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?"He then goes into the emerging history being uncovered by Japanese historians that suggests that the Bomb did in fact fracture the ruling coalition and create the possibility of surrender. Read the whole thing. UPDATE: Sparkey of Team Stryker adds more historical background.
I sense an opening here for a practical libertarian sensibility coming to the fore, from the grass roots ... from the blogs. What makes this sensibility a moderating influence is the tie that it makes to sensible governance.
News that major U.S. technology companies, among them IBM, plan to export thousands of high-skill jobs overseas indicates that worrisome trends in the U.S. economy will probably strengthen. Optimists contend that such "workforce flexibility" guarantees that something new ... the Internet, biotechnology ... will turn up to create similar high-paying jobs and carry the economy forward. But rather than triggering real economic development, moving white-collar jobs offshore underscores how reliant the U.S. economy has become on inflating high-end wealth and paper assets to compensate for large-scale job losses. If this pattern holds, the next boom may quickly mutate into another unsustainable bubble, further limiting America's industrial options. ...
"A human being is not a human being while his tendencies include self-indulgence, covetousness, temper and attacking other people. A student must reduce to the minimum the fixing of his attention upon customary things like his people and his environment, for attention-capacity is limited. The pupil must regard his teacher like a doctor who knows the cure of the patient. He will serve his teacher. Sufis teach in unexpected ways. An experienced physician prescribes certain treatments correctly. Yet the outside observer might be quite amazed at what he is saying and doing; he will fail to see the necessity or the relevance of the procedure being followed. This is why it is unlikely that the pupil will be able to ask the right questions at the right time. But the teacher knows what and when a person can understand."
"Boosters claim that nanotech-derived products may some day cure disease, slow the aging process and eliminate pollution. But for now, the human race will have to settle for tennis balls that keep their bounce longer, flat-panel displays that shine brighter and wrinkle-free khaki slacks that resist coffee stains. "People are saying, 'Geez, this isn't Star Trek yet; this is just pants that don't stain,' but you've got to start somewhere...."Yes. Large innovations are built on smaller ones. More specifically, the tools that enable large innovations come about from investments that make sense for smaller or more mundane uses. Hence Wilson's "nanoclay" coating inside tennis balls, VailSoft Corp.'s Cerax "racing polymers" for skis, Kodak digital cameras and their "OLED" displays, and special 'nano-whiskers' and natural coatings on synthetic threads. In these examples, we see more than science. We see the genius of a system that isn't centrally planned. The innovations it produces are sensible, small-scale, and immediately useful, because the system forces adaptation to on-the-ground needs as opposed to a planner's grand visions. Indeed, these small-scale innovations are what create the climate, discipline of feedback, proven knowledge base, and sustainable research funding that make the realization of grand visions possible. This is rarely a predictable process, as James Burke and others are quick to show us. It is, however, an extremely effective one. Those who practice it get much more than pants that don't stain - they get wealth that's sustainable. UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on the other half of the new technology development process, with a discussion of Greenpeace's paper on nanotech, safety, and regulation.
"Last week, President Bush announced that the water problem in Iraq would be alleviated in two months... In civil-war-plagued Monrovia, Liberia, two days before Bush spoke, the water supply was taken out in a mortar attack, threatening a cholera epidemic. Bodies are reported to be piling up outside the U.S. Embassy. We may be sending troops there soon, and if so, one of the major concerns of logistics planners will be how to supply them with safe potable fluids."Water is critical. People can fast for several weeks without permanent damage, but a week without water will kill you - and drinking contaminated water can be just as deadly. As Jay notes, however, an astonishing new technology is available that could solve these problems as quickly as a few planeloads of the product - a small "magic" bag with gatorade-like powder in it - could get from here to there. It's called a HydroPack (Hat Tip: Joe Maller), has no moving parts, and combines nano-scale membrane technology with the simple principle of forward osmosis. Just throw it into the dirtiest water you can find, let it fill, then sip from the straw. This is a great water filtration technology that should be rushed into the military and disaster-relief procurement system post-haste. On a larger scale, companies like Zenon Environmental offer containerized membrane solutions suitable for disaster recovery, emergency supply, and even ongoing operations of public water systems. With their lack of moving parts and low maintenance demands, these products offer hope to millions - and their deployment should absolutely be part of the planning for military operations in failed states.
