It appears efforts to reduce US dependence on oil and coal are not going too well. According to Reuters US consumption of energy produced by solar, wind and other renewable sources hit its lowest level in 12 years.

Here's a good way to improve your high school test scores. Kick out, er, encourage your underpeforming students to leave or seek GED's.

An estimated 55,000 students were discharged last year, some for legitimate reasons such as cutting school or turning 21 years old, but many were pushed out to keep them from dragging down school graduation rates and percentages of passing test scores, according to Robin Brown, co-chair of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, educators and other children's advocates studying the emerging issue. The critics, including parents, say many students could have remained but were encouraged to seek a general equivalency diploma.

Ridge: New Department Is 'Not What You Think'

(2002-11-19) -- Tom Ridge, soon to be Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the new mega-agency is "not what you think."

"I know a lot of folks think that we're going to be spying on Americans," said Mr. Ridge. "I know that because of all the emails and phone calls from average Americans that we've intercepted." ... (from Scrappleface)

North Korea said that the 1994 nuclear agreement with the US collapsed because of the US led decision to suspend fuel oil deliveries. Gee, and I thought it collapsed because the N. Korean government admitted that they had been producing nukes all along in direct contravention of the treaty. Silly me!

Ilana Mercer has a fine rant on income taxes and why we should overturn the 16th amendment and the income tax with it.

...Frank Chodorov insisted that taxes on income and inheritance were "different in principle from all other taxes." In the seminal work, "The Income Tax: Root of all Evil," he elaborates:

The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide."

Fundamentally, taxes on income imply a complete denial of private property, which is what socialism is in all its permutations; it rejects man's absolute and natural right to his property and vests property rights in the political establishment. The 16th Amendment did just that. When they incorporated the Amendment into the Constitution, Americans said a resounding "yes" to socialism.

More Tax Dollars at Work
A newly disclosed memo from a Los Alamos National Laboratory supervisor said nearly $1.3 million worth of computers, phones and other property was unaccounted for over a yearlong period. Gee, don't they store nuclear materials over at Los Alamos too. Crack security team, just like those new federal airport security folks. If you don't federalize, you don't professionalize.

Our Tax Dollars at Work
The EPA is spending $715,000 to study whether Ozark Oak trees are polluting the air. And if they do, will there be large rallys by environmental groups to pick up the pace of deforestation?

Shopping for Peace

I am shopping - just in case the president doesn't heed my words, just in case the voices for peace are disregarded, just in case war breaks out. I'm shopping for some hope along with items for a Relief Kit for Iraq.
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I pick up a bottle of shampoo and some hope that conditions in Iraq will soften. Life for the ordinary person has been hard. Can human compassion reach across borders and begin to heal the hardships of sanctions?
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I pick up a fingernail clipper and hope we can trim our oil consumption. If we were less dependent on Middle East oil how would our policies change?

I pick up four bath towels and dream that they could wipe away the threat of chemical and biological weapons. Can we find ways to feel safe that don't depend on threatening annihilation?
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I pick up a package sanitary pads and some hope for a new cycle of peace. Life has its cycles and we seem stuck in a violent whirlwind. Can we hope for a new season of reconciliation? (via Best of the Web)

The left gets nuttier by the day. Two constant left themes regarding Iraq are 1) The massive numbers of children killed (by the US) because of sanctions. 2) This is all about oil, and if we only rode our bicycles more we wouldn't be after poor Saddam. We have addressed the fallacies of both assertions many times in this blog, but now I want to take a different tack and perform a little thought experiment.

Assume both assertions are true. Let's follow the prescription and end our dependence on foreign oil completely. *Poof* The great engine that runs on water (that the evil oil companies suppressed in the 1940's) is rediscovered and the global need for oil drops to zero. (Also the price). 95% of Iraqs foreign income comes from oil. They also import almost all their food and medicine. If the world stopped using oil, the economy of Iraq (and most of the rest of the Arab middle east) would collapse since none of those countries have used their oil revenue to invest in new industries or diversify their economic base. The number of children dead from famine and lack of medical care would increase many-fold. So how about this for a Berkeley VW beetle bumper-sticker
"I'm selling this piece of crap and buying a Hummer to save a child in Iraq".

Line of the day

"In Nevada, voters rejected a ballot measure that would’ve legalized small amounts of marijuana. Opponents said legalizing pot would’ve sent the wrong message to Nevada’s young gamblers and prostitutes."
--Conan O'Brien

Two black holes are about to collide. We should be able to see it in about 100 million years. I can't wait.

Hmmm... U.N. sanctions are responsible for all the death and hardship in Iraq since the Gulf War, but Hussein managed to find $3.5 Billion to send to Libya in exchange for safe haven for him and his family according to the TImes of London. He must've searched the cushions of the sofas in all of his 8 palaces to come up with it.

Buzz Lightyear has foiled a theft at a Woolworth in Hereford. While police searched the area, the thief was hiding under a bridge when his cover was blown as the toy cried: "Buzz Lightyear. Permission to engage."

Mugabe continues along his journey toward fascistic crackpotism. His government has legislated that Zimbabweans will not be allowed to utter any words, or make any movement or gesture that might be construed to be offensive to President Mugabe or any member of his escort, when the presidential motorcade passes.

Fred is in top form today as he comments on airport and homeland security.

I had my scuba gear in a shoulder bag. Our highly trained security mechanics pawed at it like monkeys who had found a fruit basket. Great. Kink the hose near a connection and I suddenly don't have air at 130 feet. One of these frauds pulled out my dive computer. He looked as if he wasn't sure whether to inspect it or peel it.

"What is this?" he asked.

"A coconut," I didn't say, or I would still be in jail. I did say, "A dive computer."

He looked at it without comprehension, then asked me again what it was. Presumably he suspected that it might have turned into something else in the intervening two seconds. It's how dive computers are. One minute a computer, the next minute a rainbow-colored unicorn.

Brainless thoroughness complemented thorough brainlessness. They pulled everything out, knowing what none of it was, and stuffed it back in, having accomplished nothing. The exercise was pointless. I had two dive lights containing twelve C-cells. They could have been carefully sealed Semtex. The dive computer could have been full of C4.

And the airlines wonder why people fly less.
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Having reached Guad, I was chowing down on really great ribs at Bruno's when a buddy handed me a printout from the Washington Times. First sentence: "Language tucked inside the Homeland Security bill will allow the federal government to track the e-mail, Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone and bank records of foreigners and U.S. citizen in its hunt for terrorists."
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Once the barrier is breached between governmental and private records, surveillance will grow like kudzu-so that we will be safe. If the government can have access to all existing records to protect us, it will shortly want to create new ones to protect us. At Fort Meade in Maryland broods the National Security Agency, which is not supposed to, and may not, spy domestically. It has phenomenal capacity for intercepting, decrypting, collating, storing. Just the thing for prospecting for terrorists, don't you think? You can bet the Homeland Security people have thought.

Fear not, though. These same Homeland Security people have said that, why no, they would never, ever, do anything wrong, and they even have a Privacy Officer to make sure. What could be more reassuring? Building a system to spy on Americans, the government assures us that it won't use it to spy on Americans, and to protect us against the possibility, the government will provide a Privacy Officer who works…for the government.

Amazon is now listing the Segway Human Transporter for $4,950. Deliveries will begin in Mar, 2003.

Christopher Buckley has a very funny piece in the WSJ about trading stock recommendations for school admissions.

The new SEC unit, nicknamed "Admissions Impossible Squad" will have its work cut out for it. Admissions of children of Wall Street analysts into hard-to-get-into schools have skyrocketed recently. And the Grubman twins have already been accepted into the Buckley School, Groton and Harvard.

An SEC spokesman called the admissions "unusual." Alarms went off when stocks held by the Buckley, Groton and Harvard endowment portfolios rose dramatically after various investment houses upgraded them from "oink-oink" to "must have!" -- Wall Street's highest equity rating.

DARPA is developing cognitive, self-aware weapons systems. If they don't finish Terminator 3 soon, they may have to redo it as a documentary. Actually I think the positive benefits of this technology and related ones far outweigh the risks. It does require some vigilance however. Asimov's three robotic laws built-in from the beginning sound about right.

Good piece by Christopher Caldwell in the Weekly Standard on the anti-globalist movement and the recent gathering in Florence.