Great Site Alert

I just discovered this site. It's a hoot, it lets you take pictures of animals and merge them with the heads, legs and tails of different animals. Great fun for your kids (or yourself if you don't have any or even if you do).

Mark Steyn on why the INS gets the award for the most inept and idiotic federal agency this year. FAA, FBI, CIA, IRS, NEA, BATF, FDA, HHS, DoE and the rest of the federal alphabet soup have done their best to compete, but INS managed to roar to victory with half a year still to go. Homeland Security is a favorite for this title next year. Thank God, they federalized airport security.

Victor Davis Hanson on being disliked.

Now parents are suing teachers for failing their kids. This will certainly help with the quality of education in the U.S.

Jonah Goldberg in top form in a piece about the fantasy land inhabited by some European policy wonks:

""Europeans have done something that no one has ever done before: create a zone of peace where war is ruled out, absolutely out," Karl Kaiser, the director of something called the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Affairs in Berlin explained to the Chicago Tribune. "Europeans are convinced that this model is valid for other parts of the world."

Rarely have so many inaccurate statements been crammed into so few words.
...
"This miracle of Europe is underperceived in America," Klaus Scharioth, political director of the German Foreign Ministry tells the Tribune. "Once, we were a continent of borders and of wars. Now you can go from Denmark to Portugal without being stopped once or having to change your money. I think it's a miracle. Why is it that this European miracle is underperceived?"

The answer is simple: Europeans underperceive the fact that while their bureaucrats haggled in their comfortable hotel conference rooms over wine corks, clever cheeses and other Euro-whatnots, the United States was acting as their bodyguard. Americans -or at least the Americans running this administration -believe that the "European miracle" couldn't have happened without an American-led security umbrella. The Europeans have accomplished a great deal, to be sure. But they couldn't have done it without tanks."

How long before this lawsuit is redirected at the real culprits: those evil fast-food companies.

The limits of empathy:

"Few, if any, Israelis rejoiced last week at the news of 14 Palestinian civilians, including nine children, killed together with arch-terrorist Salah Shehadeh in Gaza. There may have been those who felt that the elimination of Shehadeh was worth it, even in retrospect, given the magnitude of the attacks he was planning. But even they were saddened by the loss of life. (I hesitate to use the word "innocent" when referring to those who likely viewed Shehadeh as a hero.)

Not one Jew rushed out into the street to pass out candies, shoot off machine guns, or ululate in celebration of Palestinian deaths. Even upon the death of our most bitter enemies, Jews are instructed not to rejoice (see Proverbs 24:17), and we all grew up removing 10 drops from our wine cups at the Pessah Seder in memory of the Egyptians drowned in the sea.

No medals were awarded in a festive public ceremony to the pilot who dropped the bomb on Shehadeh's house, like the public ceremonies organized by the Palestinian Authority on July 18 to honor the families of suicide bombers and subsequently broadcast on PA TV.

There comes a point, however, where empathy for others becomes something else entirely. When the empathy for one's enemies is stronger than for one's brothers, it becomes unnatural, inhuman. Much of the Israeli breast-beating last week falls into this category. "

The Europeans worry about not getting the maximum taxes out of their citizens also. Except in their case we are the tax haven.

StanleyWorks is dropping their plans to reincorporate in Bermuda to save $30million/yr in taxes. I heard a commentator on the radio say this morning that this was because of complaints that this attempt to pay lower taxes was 'un-American', which is also hinted at through various comments in the Times article:

"I think we ought to look at people who are trying to avoid U.S. taxes as a problem," Mr. Bush said to reporters on Wednesday. "I think American companies ought to pay taxes here, and be a part — good citizens."

Since when is trying to reduce your tax bill un-American? When did paying the maximum amount of tax you can become the hallmark of a good citizen? This country was founded on tax avoidance. When did we become so enthralled with government that trying to pay less tax is considered a vice. Are the honeybee and mohair subsidies that important. Maybe if we weren't throwing $1.2 billion into the Amtrak black hole, giving farm subsidies to Ted Turner and Sam Donaldson, or wasting money in the innumerable ways government bureaucrats and politicians think up, we could reduce tax rates so that companies would not feel the need to reincorporate elsewhere.

Why Gray Davis is like Montgomery Burns. (via Instapundit)

Normally I don't include entire pieces but I don't have a link. I received this today via email without attribution:

TO BE LIBERAL

*To be a liberal, you have to believe the aids virus is spread
by a lack of funding.

*To be a liberal, you have to be against capital punishment,
but for abortion on demand, in short you support protecting the
guilty and you support killing the innocent.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that the same school
teacher who cannot teach your fourth grader how to read is
qualified to teach you fourth grader about sex.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that trial lawyers are
selfless heroes and doctors are overpaid.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that guns in the hands
of law abiding Americans are more of a threat then nuclear
weapons in the hands of the chi-coms.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that global temperatures
are less affected by cyclical documented changes in the
brilliance of the sun and more affected by Yuppies driving
SUV's.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that gender roles are
artificial, that being gay is natural.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that business's create
oppression, government creates prosperity.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that self-esteem is more
important then actually doing something to earn it.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that there was no art
before federal funding.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe the military, not
corrupt politicians start wars.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe the NRA is bad because
they stand up for certain parts of the Constitution while
the ACLU is good because they stand up for certain parts
of the Constitution.

*To be a liberal, you have to believe that standardized
tests are racist but racial set-asides aren't.

A fine short essay on the meaning of liberty:

"Liberty means the right to do wrong. The proper function of government is preventing some from interfering with the liberty of others. Beyond that, individuals are at liberty to make their own moral choices. Liberty does not mandate that one advocates or approves of specific choices others make. Liberty does require the choices be made. On moral issues, free people may do what they can to change other people's minds — they have no right to use the power of government to make up others' minds for them.
...
Liberty will never lead to a utopia – yours, mine or anyone else's. The "perfect" society cannot tolerate the imperfection enabled by liberty. The imperfection enabled by liberty cannot yield a perfect society. A utopia necessarily requires that the liberty of some be sacrificed to the will of others. From Pax Roma to a pure Aryan Germany or a Communist worker's paradise to the Metropolitan Council's "Blueprint 2030," utopian efforts have always been and always will be the spawning ground of tyranny."

Read the whole piece.

What's that Lassie? Timmy's in the well? Let's go girl!

Dogs smarter than previously thought. The news on politicians is not so good.

Related to yesterdays rant about Hitler/Stalin, here's a little quiz Max and I came up with awhile ago:

Please place a '1' next to all the programs/ideas you support and sum them all up. Scroll down to find out which famous world leader you most resemble

__ State sponsored education.
__ Mandatory community service for youth (aka "volunteerism").
__ State support for the arts.
__ State run daycare for all.
__ National health care.
__ Quotas to correct the racial improprieties of the past.
__ Tough gun control laws.
__ Lessen the impact certain financiers have on politics.
__ Vegetarianism on Ethical Grounds.
__ Public Works programs for the unemployed.
__ A cap on corporate profits.
__ Bans on cigarette smoking.
__ Price supports for agricultural products.

(See comments for some scores, feel free to add some of your own)

I have read three reviews of Martin Amis' new book, "Koba the Dread" in the past few days. In the NY Times, NRO and the NY Sun. I have bought a copy of the book but haven't read it yet so I am not going to comment on it. A thread running through all the reviews however is the comparison of Stalin vs Hitler. I have always considered this dichotomy of reputations most strange. I remember one unrepentant French Communist quoted, in the preface to The Black Book of Communism, as saying that the difference was "Stalin killed people out of love, while Hitler did so out of hate" or something to that effect. The problem is that I think a large part of the Left has convinced themselves to believe bullshit like this. In reality there is not a dimes bit of difference between the two. This is a fantasy created by the Stalin (and Lenin and Mao)-loving left. This is not a right/left struggle, it's not clear to me what those terms even mean anymore. The left wants to confiscate your money, the right wants to confiscate your drugs. The left wants to tell you what to eat, drink, smoke (for your own good of course), the right wants to tell you when to have sex, with what type of person and under what circumstances (for your own good of course). The left wants you to do more 'community service', the right wants you the pray more. The difference is in numerous insignificant details, both left and right feel they know what's best for you. And therein lies the real problem with both, the real struggle was and is the individual vs the state, personal freedom vs paternalistic caretaking, personal responsibility vs perpetual victimhood. Folks like Rothbard, von Mises, Hayek, Nozick, Rand understood this clearly, unfortunately most of modern academia hasn't gotten it yet. In Hitler's own mind his goals were as lofty as the Left makes Stalins out to be. He wanted a thousand years of glory for Germany, racial purity, the creation of a race of Nietzchian Supermen and he sought to systematically get rid of everyone he thought was in the way of that goal. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, et.al. each had their own view of what the utopian society should look like and pursued ruthless policies to achieve their goals precisely because they viewed individuals as a non-entities. They were solely concerned with the collective and all worshipped the power of the state and did everything they could to wipe out any sense of the individual. The problem today is that almost everyone agrees that Hitlers race-pure utopia was a psychotic daydream while there are still large contingents that think Lenin's industrial-worker utopia is a noble thing to strive for.

Fine piece by Thomas Sowell pointing out every decision involves trade-offs. There are things we want (or don't want) and their associated costs. We have to weigh one against the other.

" Demanding "clean" air and water is like demanding "safe" sources of power. There are no such things. There is air and water containing greater and lesser amounts of other elements and compounds, some of which represent varying amounts of danger that can be removed at varying costs.

Some of these elements and compounds are dangerous pollutants, which can be removed to a great extent at relatively modest costs. But to remove that last infinitesimal fraction of pollutants means skyrocketing costs to avoid ever more remote, or even questionable, dangers.

Some things that might be lethal in high concentrations may be easily handled by the body's natural defenses when there are only minute traces in the air or water. Unfortunately, such complications do not lend themselves to political slogans or to ideological crusades that can energize zealots in environmental cults or Chicken Littles who demand absolute "safety.""

WSJ op-ed on expensing options with views very similar to my own.

Here is a link to the SEC site indicating which CEO's/CFO's have attested to the accuracy of their financial reports already.

Scientists have managed to split a photon
If a fat man walked into an empty room and then two skinny guys walked out, you might be perplexed. Now physicists have spotted the equivalent result in photons flying near an atom. A group publishing in the 5 August print issue of PRL has identified rare instances in which a single photon splits in two, dividing the original photon's energy between them. [more]

P.J. O'Rourke points out the bright side to corporate corruption.

A few weeks ago after the reports of the gang-rape approved by a Pakistani tribal council and the numerous expressions of disgust in various blogs (including this one) and media pieces, there was a piece I read (I'm sorry I forget where or I would link to it), which said essentially that this incident shouldn't be generalized as a condemnation of the current radical Islamic fundamentalists anymore than specific crimes in the West are condemnations of Western society. At the time, I was going to post a reply to the effect that it was not this specific incident alone but a small part of the general [mis-]treatment of women in multiple Islamacist societies and the Pakistani incident was just one of the most visible and egregious examples. But I never got around to posting it, but this piece in the WaPo, makes the point even more forcefully. I again repeat my question, where the hell are the folks from NOW? This is why I stopped giving them money 15 years ago. They became so wrapped up in leftist politics and idiotic minutiae that they have ignored real, institutionalized suffering by women around the world.

Life for foreigners living among those 'moderate' Arabs, the Saudis, is not a bowl of cherries. The silence about this treatment of our citizens by various Western departments of State has been deafening. [more]

You go girl! Megan McArdle takes on the business/math/science nincompoops who write for most of the nations journals while taking apart a Time cover piece which implicitly assumes the 'Bush is an idiot' mantra so popular in the popular press:

"You do not get through Harvard Business School by exhibiting the kind of ignorance and distaste for capital markets or the fundamentals of economic policy that the authors paint Bush as displaying. The liberal press likes to pretend that attending HBS is pretty much like getting into the right nursery school; come from the right family and your admission and easy passage is pretty much assured. Not quite. Even in those more free-and-easy days, Harvard graded on a forced curve; 10% of the class flunked. 4 flunking grades and you're out. If you're the kind of idiot these Time folks are trying to make out, you will flunk out no matter who your father is (and remember, at the time, his father wasn't even Vice President). It's not like, say, majoring in English. And it's pretty damn rich coming from two reporters who almost certainly couldn't make it through one quarter of business school.

[I am under no illusions about the difficulty of business school as compred to, say, a graduate program in Physics. However, I have been an English major. I have taught GMAT courses to media types. Your average newsweekly reporter couldn't muster the math score -- median averages equate to getting a 720 or 730 on the SAT -- to get into a top-ten business school, much less master the basic calculus and statistics necessary to stay there.]"

A Russian scientist claims to have invented an anti-gravity device. Boeing is investigating the technology. I think this probably belongs in the camp of irreproducible results along with cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, etc. Unlike perpetual motion machines it does have the advantage of not being theoretcially impossible but the method described (superconducting ceramic discs rotating over powerful electromagnets) sounds dubious.

Speaking of which, James Lileks is back with his own Lileksesque piece about summer guests and air-conditioners.

These folks are really trying to demonstrate the meaning of Chutzpah. The Clintons are seeking reimbursement of legal fees for the Whitewater investigation.
To be fair, the article says they are following a precedent set by Reagan and Bush #1 who got part of their legal fees reimbursed. So I guess the bigger outrage is once again the privileged status of elected officials. I wonder how many people ruined by enormous legal fees paid while defending themselves against overzealous prosecutors, out of control IRS agents, ridiculous asset forfeiture cases (how these are not clearly unconstitutional is beyond me, a complete violation of due process protections), etc... ever get any of their legal fees reimbursed.

Fine post on Protein Wisdom suggesting that the motives of the lawyers bringing suit against fast food chains may not be pure along with some comments about *ahem* personal responsability.

We make it to the Blogosphere Ecosystem as Crunchy Crustaceans.