The Myth of Media 'Fairness'

I was planning to write about the Orwellianly labeled 'Fairness Doctrine' today--and I will. But first a neat little set-piece with Rupert Murdoch that puts it all in context:

Murdoch isn't a party-line guy. He's a pragmatist. He likes strong politicians and change agents and winners; in recent years he has supported moderates like Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton.

Did the author of the exclusive Time piece (Eric Pooley, also the author of last month's 'The Last Temptation of Al Gore') just call Hillary Clinton a moderate? A moderate socialist maybe, camouflaged in the kind of moderate-sounding slogans she'll need to get herself elected. Or maybe moderately competent at cynical political triangulation--a discipline she would have learned at her husband's knee if Monica hadn't already occupied that particular, um, position. I digress...

...he [Murdoch] has a stubborn populist streak, and his populism finds an outlet on Fox News, a channel that gives voice to angry middle-aged white guys.

As opposed to what, exactly? Calm, youthful, liberal-minded, quasi-androgynous, "people of color" uniquely capable of thinking deeply, comprehensively and fairly about intractable societal problems and coming up with calm, intelligent, forward-looking, government "solutions" that unemployed, gun-toting, vengeance-seeking Michael Douglas caricatures of the broad and enduring conservative impulse in American politics would never ever think of?

Gimme a break. Does rap appeal to "angry young black men"? Whatever the grains of truth ofo such sweeping statements on the margin, it too is a demeaning caricature--yet Poole would get lynched for saying so and he knows it. Middle-aged white men, on the other hand, are fair targets for a deeply self-righteous MSM that's seldom met a liberal double standard it can't cozy up to.

Which is all to say that I think I've been insulted... along with over 60% of the male electorate in this country. (People like Michelle Malkin, LaShawn Barber, Thomas Sowell, Ann Coulter and Condi Rice don't seem to even enter into Poole's world view in which one cannot be authentically and honestly conservative and simultaneously be female or old, or young, or black or Asian or Hispanic or anything else other than a Dick Cheney clone--which should not in any way be interpreted as a slam on the veep, whom I hold in high esteem.)

It's not clear if MSM outlets like Time, and media elite figures like Mr. Pooley are even aware that this kind of sarcasm-dripping, holier-than-thou, finger-wagging editorializing on all things non-liberal (and posing as "objective", "mainstream", "news") is what's making people like Rupert Murdoch fabulously rich, Air America quietly bankrupt and the 'Fairness Doctrine' deeply attractive to a Democrat-controlled Congress unable to squelch the sniping from "angry middle-aged white guys" like me. Yeesh. The Time piece continues:

"CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It's not what they say. It's what they highlight." [says Murdoch] (CNN, which is also owned by Time Warner, hotly disputes this charge.) Then he mumbles conspiratorially, "And if you look at our general news, do we put on things which favor the right rather than the left? I don't know." Has Murdoch just said what I think he said? Has he flirted with an admission that Fox News skews right? If so, he quickly backs away. "We don't think we do. We've always insisted we don't. I don't think we do. Aw, it's subjective. Neither side admits it."

Poole can barely contain his glee at "catching" Murdoch obliquely hinting at bias--a thing which in MSM-land is sort of like catching a pedophile--and then (in Poole's view) stumbling over his response to a deliberately mis-interpreted question. Murdoch is right if incompletely so and Poole completely fails to pick up on it: bias is subjective and neither side admits it.

At least traditional media outlets don't. We bloggers are a good deal more emancipated. Plus nobody is paying us--at least not this blogger. Hewitt is one of the higher-profile media mavens leading this intellectual charge--a view that says all claims to objectivity are false.

Murdoch actually understates the case. Bias is more than just subjective. It's unattainable, illusory and pointless to debate. I take the Weberian view (Max that is): human beings are biased. Full stop. The best we can do is to try to understand and state our biases. Even there however, we will never be able to be completely honest with ourselves, much less with those who consume what we produce.

The best we can do is to admit that we are biased and let the media consumers decide what they want to hear, see or read more of. It's a world view that springs directly from a larger theological view of mankind as being fallen, flawed and lost outside of the saving grace of God through Christ: I'm flawed; he isn't. I'm biased in my own little ego-centric universe; he's entitled to be 'biased' because he's eternally and universally right. (Well that's another post right there. I digress... again.)

The current market for news and opinion is so free, comprehensive and multi-faceted that anyone transported in a time machine from say, 1970 (on my mind because the novel I'm working on is partially set there) could scarcely conceive of it. And it's completely at odds with a government-centric, left-leaning, throwback-static world view in which things must be controlled and legislated and managed (by elites and bureaucrats) in order to produce a socially respectable result... whatever that means.

In a media environment in which channels, stations, reading options, and content-consumption alternatives (think YouTube and podcasts) are proliferating daily (never mind the sheer volume and variety of content on them), it is almost laughable to think that a highly partisan Congress would single out one small but vitally important slice of that beautiful, everyman cacophony (talk radio) and propose that it be neutered because an elite few have deemed its progeny (and potential progeny) to be ugly.

(The eugenic, anti-life echoes contained in this issue are something I hadn't even thought of until just now. Hmm... That may need to be the subject of another post.)

I say almost laughable except that it frightens me deeply (almost as much as thinking about our inability to deal with Iran) that more and more Democrats are coming out with very straight faces indeed and proposing without a trace of shame, irony or awareness of Orwell's warnings, that something called the "Fairness Doctrine" is more about fairness than doctrine.

More fair than peoples' God-given right to choose what to read, who to listen to, and what constitutes bias? I can think of few things more antithetical to the Constitution. I can't say for sure, but knowing the opportunistic ends-justify-the-means cynicism of some of the characters involved, it seems more than likely that those proposing this know so.

They know it's unfair and they don't care because it's unfair to angry, middle-aged white men--their code word for conservative. In their heart of hearts, they'd like to call us rednecks because well, they do at their liberal dinner parties--and (what was that noise on the phone line?) no, I'm not paranoid; I've heard it.

We can only hope that--should it come to it--the Supreme Court would quash such a measure as the Fairness Doctrine (a bad idea way back when; an utterly reactionary idea now). Unfortunately, we might be into a second Hillary term before it gets challenged at that level.

Maybe I shouldn't worry though; with Hillary in office, Iran may get us first. They've got their own version of the Fairness Doctrine. They call it sharia law.

Options on Iran: One of These Positions Is Dead Wrong

John Bolton: "The current approach of the Europeans and the Americans is not just doomed to failure, but dangerous... Dealing with [the Iranians] just gives them what they want, which is more time..."

The She Snake Who Shall Not Be Named: "After initial talks with Iran and Syria on Iraq, the administration says it isn't sure that we need any more discussions with either of them. I think we should keep talking."

Why does it sound like John Bolton's primary purpose is making sure millions don't die as a result of World War III being ignited, while the She Snake's main goal is to belch out sound bytes that differentiate her from the administration and boost her poll numbers with the base?

My one question for her: What if anything would be cause enough for us to stop talking to the current Iranian leadership? It's a question I've asked before of the left in general. I'm still waiting for an answer.

A Daughter's Loving Tribute

Fellow Boston blogger Jill Fallon has penned a lovely and thoughtful three-part tribute to her late mother Ruth, with the emphasis in all the right places: her full life, her 'beautiful' death, her illness. Amazing Grace on the bagpipes... please, someone remember to do that for me when I go...

UPDATE: Speaking of family crises and the need for prayer, The Anchoress has an urgent one.

Body-Slamming Christopher Hitchens With Literary Flair

Ross Douthat, an Associate Editor at The Atlantic (he blogs here) and something of a progressive skeptic himself has written the most devastating, articulate, pointed and fun-to-read take-downs I've seen ('Lord Have Mercy') of Christopher Hitchens' book "God is Not Great" over at the Claremont Review of Books.

It might be argued that the brevity of the book and the amount of ground it covers should excuse the less-than-rigorous fashion in which it advances its more controversial arguments. But the demands of brevity should clarify and hone, whereas Hitchens manages to be both short and sloppy...

The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain...

...in his better moments [Hitchens] plainly is a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.

Ouch. Check it out.

The Middle East Pot Simmers Ever Hotter

Don't miss this excellent reading of the tea leaves out the Middle East over at Kingdom of Chaos. Same old cast of bad actors: Iran, Syria and Russia (where have we heard that line-up before?) plus a host of terrorist groups operating and making mischief in and around Israel--ashamed and in deep, projected denial about why it is thriving while they are decidedly not. Bottom line:

"the Tehran regime takes its slogan, 'death to America,' quite seriously, even if we do not." Big wars start when one side looks weak, and the other side consequently misjudges where the red line is... the Iranians, Syrians and friends are flirting around with something really awful. I wonder if we're much closer to the brink of a blow up then we think?

Required reading, as is this free WSJ editorial from Monday that KoC references. The author (Joshua Muravchik) wisely notes:

Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.

It's not September 10th, 2001 anymore. Or November 3, 1978 for that matter.

Speaking of things Iranian and pre-9-11, I finally got 'round to watching 'The Color of Paradise' (aka 'Rang-e khoda') this evening. It was Iran's submission in the Best Foreign Film category for the 2000 Oscars--one of those "good for you because it's foreign" films that I'm liable to put off watching in favor of something with a good car chase or intricate plot line. (Netflix must think I'm nuts. It's been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for months.)

Filmed in Persian with subtitles, I found myself generally liking it despite that fact, though mainly for the scenery (absolutely stunning: think 'Sound-of-Music' in Southwest Asia) and a funny curiosity about a place so foreign to my experience. The acting is fresh and unencumbered from a cast you've never seen before and probably won't see again.

The plot is slow however--and about as dark as it gets. Worth a gander at 1.5X speed, if only as a reminder that a country and its people--controlled by a complete nutjob who may start World War III on purpose--are not as foreign as we'd sometimes like to imagine.

When Lions Lie Down

"My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions." (Dan 6:22)

I'm reminded of Jim Gilbert's November, 2005 post ("A Modern Day Daniel") concerning Iraqi Christian and former Air Force General Georges Sada which I wrote about here.

The man in the pictures is Kevin Richardson, who came to his avocation by way of some observations on human nature:

A former student of human physiology... Kevin turned to animals ten years ago when he came to the conclusion that he could trust a lion over one of his own kind every time...

More here. Related video here.

What Do Poland and Egypt Have in Common?

A rich if infantile imagination. The Egyptian version. The Polish version.

Encroachment: Fast, Slow and Illusory

You're being chased by a mountain lion... and by a tree. Which is the greater threat?

The mountain lion:

Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces have been spotted by British troops crossing the border into southern Iraq... "It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran -- but nobody has officially declared it." [said an unidentified British intelligence source] "We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us. It is very hard for us to strike back..." ...radar sightings of Iranian helicopters crossing into the Iraqi desert were confirmed... by very senior military sources

The tree:

I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them— none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The metereological community works with computers, simple computers. [We] geologists don't do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it's not the first thing...

If you go around the globe, you find no [sea level] rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it's a problem in one area, it's bene-ficial in another area. But sea level is the real “bad guy,” and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn't exist in observational data, only in computer modeling.

(H/T: Mover Mike)

A Righteous Democratic Mandate

Earlier this week, buried deep in an article which itself was buried deep in the NYT--and over a week after the poll from which it emmanated--it was mumbled quietly that confidence in the current Congress had slipped to 23%. That's the lowest since the mid-70's oil embargo when such things began to be measured systematically. Hang on. It gets better.

Fifty seven other news outlets picked up the story--an absolutely miniscule percentage of what a typical breaking news item will get. Every time the president's poll numbers dip into the low 30's (hardly an unprecedented number) thousands of articles and editorials spew forth.

This week, just nine days after the previous poll, Gallup has announced a slippage from that already very low level to just 14% confidence in Congress. That's completely unprecedented. The response from our national paper of record? The New York Times doesn't even mention it. No articles. No editorials. Nada.

For perspective, illegal immigrants make up 4-7% of the overall population. Of the adult population, they make up roughly 7-10%. If Congress had the support only of illegal aliens, they wouldn't have to convince much more of the legal, voting age population in order to explain the numbers we see. Think about that for a moment.

If this were Britain or Canada or Israel or any number of other places, Congress would be out on its ear. (There are a number of Republicans who deserve to go as well however the Dems are leading. This is what leading entails. You take the rap even when it's not 100% your fault.)

So here's what I don't understand.

How is it in such a climate that Nancy Pelosi feels she has a mandate, and even a responsibility to "bring the concerns of the American people to foreign leaders"? (Those are her spokesman's exact words.) E.g., leaders of Syria and Iran. What message is it she's bringing to our enemies if 86% of people disagree with the direction of the body she purports to lead??

Furthermore, how is it that one of the top party leaders in the other part of the Congress (the Socialist Senator from New York--she-who-shall-not-be-named) feels comfortable with such a non-mandate scheming, (nationalized health-care style) to regulate one of the few media types not already firmly in the grip of Democratic party supporters? (Nine out of ten reporters who give money to political candidates or party coffers give it to Democrats rather than Republicans.)

For an amusing explanation, try this piece in The Nation. It pins the blame for the low confidence in Congress on... you guess it: George Bush. Congress is too much in his pocket--Boxer, Hillary, Pelosi, Reid. Yep. All Bush minions. All of 'em. Oh my goodness, I've just wet my pants laughing... And here all this time I was thinking he was caving to them. Me bad.

It all reminds me of the Beacon Hill based colleague and John Kerry neighbor who used to rail on and on about how much he couldn't stand the New York Times because... they are so conservative, corporate and sympathetic to the Bushes. The mind reels. Jon Sanders over at Townhall offers some perspective on the 14% number:

The previous low was 18 percent in 1991, 1993 and 1994. Those happen to be the last years before the present that the Democrats controlled both chambers – and in 1991 there was also a Republican named George Bush in the White House...

About 19 percent of Americans believe that Elvis is either alive or that there is a chance he is still alive... Sixteen percent (and Rosie O'Donnell) believe that explosives brought down the World Trade Center.

Let me know when it's over. I'm headed back to the Wyoming mountains again this summer where there's no news, no web, no electricity, no phone. Ahh.

Climate Science: Barely out of the Crib

So here's a question: if the earth's climate is so well understood that we can confidently make very long term decisions on how to steer it, then why are so many papers still being published on it? Climate scientist R. Timothy Patterson notes in Canada's Financial Post:

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

If that seems too sweeping, try this, from today's issue of the journal Science.

Measurements of midday vertical atmospheric CO2 distributions reveal annual-mean vertical CO2 gradients that are inconsistent with atmospheric models... northern terrestrial uptake of industrial CO2 emissions plays a smaller role than previously thought and that, after subtracting land-use emissions, tropical ecosystems may currently be strong sinks for CO2.

In other words, as this summary notes:

Previous models suggested that tropical forests were a large net source of carbon (up to 1.8 billion tons per year), due to greenhouse gas emissions released by deforestation and forest fires. However the new study estimates that tropical ecosystems are the net source of only about 100 million tons.

That is, the models used to support the IPCC reports, Al Gore's rhetoric and the entire global warming religion are off by a factor of eighteen(!!) in estimating an absolutely essential piece of the CO2 puzzle.

It's been known for some time that CO2 promotes plant growth and in doing so, that more of it is absorbed. This study puts empirical numbers to it on a macro scale, suggesting the earth is replete with complex compensating mechanisms still to be discovered.

If such a fundamental discovery as this just popped up after years of our being told that climate science was "settled" around a "consensus", why should we believe such assertions next time? Why are thousands of papers still being written in a field where (we are confidently told) there are no new frontiers of understanding needed to spend $553 trillion on a boondoggle project? Good question. Scientist Patterson (see above) has a suggestion:

...we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

Who's anti-science now?

Wednesday Short-Takes

[scroll down for periodic updates throughout the day]
Kyoto-exempt China is emitting more CO2 than the U.S. already... and the Guardian is surprised?

The dictionary definition of moral equivalency. (Hint: he used to grow peanuts.) Jimmy gesticulates: name that caption ("Palestinian terrorists are cute fuzzy bunnieeeeeees.")

Under moral confusion, one could put these two entries: legalisms trumping common sense.

File this one under the heading Really Bad Ideas For Social Organization are a Lot Like Vampires ("To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income.")

More later as the Kmaru outrageometer swings with the news.

UPDATES:

Great post over at Belly of the Beast: "Blood for Oil is a forgone conclusion. The only issue still to be decided is who's blood will be spilled and in what quantity... Oil wealth is the moral equivalent of welfare payments for despots."

Mistreatment of the flag: uber-liberal version; radical Islamic version--only a few miles apart. Collusion? No. Coincidence? Not exactly.

Daily Kos vs. Glenn Reynolds readers square off on environmental action; guess who wins?

Looks like this didn't exactly get front-page coverage in the MSM (only 58 mentions on GoogleNews): Congressional job approval ratings are at 23%--the lowest since the mid 1970s. When Bush's numbers got into the low 30's, we could scarcely escape the news. Just over a week later, the number has slipped nearly ten points further: 14%. The lowest... ever.

Oops. Does anyone have Al Gore's phone number? "...new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales." (I'll blog more about this one tomorrow.)

The Science of Gaydar

Much to ponder; plenty to argue about (for everyone) in this fact-filled piece in New York Magazine. I pass it along without further comment.

...in any family, the second-born son is 33 percent more likely than the first to be gay, and the third is 33 percent more likely than the second, and so on, as though there is some sort of “maternal memory,” similar to the way antibodies are memories of an infection. Perhaps she mounts a more effective immunological response to fetal hormones with each new male fetus. To determine whether the fraternal birth order might also suggest that baby brothers are treated differently in a way that impacts their sexual expression, researchers have studied boys who weren’t raised in their biological families, or who may have been firstborn but grew up as the youngest in Brady Bunch–type homes. In every permutation, the results were the same: What mattered was only how many boys had occupied your mother’s uterus before you... [One] study says that female relatives of gay men may have more children; perhaps the very thing that makes their brothers and sons gay makes them more fertile, an ideal situation with extra babysitters on hand. You can slice this stuff any way you want.

Fair warning: comments will be closely policed.

That They Will Not Be Forgotten...

UPDATE: Photo gallery here.

Windows on Iran

Bret Stephens, a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes in today's Opinion Journal about a "a conference convened late last month in the Bahamas by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies". His editorial nicely frames the key debates, e.g.:

Do Iranians view the nuclear program as a national project or as an instrument for the regime to consolidate its unpopular rule?

"Whatever we say, whatever we do, let us take care not to give the regime the gift of Iranian patriotism," says one of the conferees, speaking under "Chatham House rules," which forbid personal attributions... while the West may think that economic sanctions or military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would be welcomed by Iranians as a blow against the regime they detest, nationalist fervor might outweigh political considerations. Or maybe not.

Sane, balanced and well worth a look.

Speaking of Iran... I was fortunate to be invited to attend a reading last night by award-winning author Andre Dubus III, best known for "House of Sand and Fog" (also a must-see if grimly gripping 2003 movie starring the amazing Ben Kingsley as an expat Iranian general, and the lovely and amazing Jennifer Connelly as, well... go rent it.) Dubus III is not to be confused with his father Andre Dubus, a devout Catholic and Massachusetts resident until his death in 1999.

Among other things, the elder Dubus wrote the short story that got turned into the amazing film "In the Bedroom". The younger Dubus was electric, reading from his recently finished novel--to be released in November (not listed on Amazon yet). It's a fictionalized account of the 9-11 hijackers' lives in the days and weeks leading up to that awful day. I can't wait.

I also note a recent addition to the blogroll: Iranian.com (unfortunate subtitle: "nothing is sacred"). I'm not necessarily endorsing everything there (I definitely disagree with some of it), but it's an interesting window into Iranian culture from a variety of angles. I was tipped off to it by an erstwhile running teammate who has written for them (female, muslim, PhD, living in the U.S.)

The Shifting Battle Lines of the Climate Change Debate

In reference to the ongoing global warming debate (if you can call it that), I wrote on Friday:

There's a point in some kinds of sporting events... where it becomes clear that the momentum has turned... The odds have shifted and the one playing rope-a-dope has finally come out swinging.

The better analogy might have been to a multi-front battle in which many skirmishes are going on simultaneously--some of them highly strategic, others merely tactical--all across shifting battle lines. Back in February I proposed a framework (in the form of ten questions) for thinking about those battle lines. The questions I posed were:

1. Is the planet warming up?
2. Will this forecasted change cause more harm than good?
3. Are we certain that this trend is a long-term one and that it will continue?
4. Can non-human causes be entirely or substantially ruled out?
5. Do we have the means to alter planetary climate?
6. Can we do so significantly, precisely and predictably with current approaches?
7. Will the proposed resources (and opportunity costs) devoted to reducing carbon emissions save more lives than if applied to other problems (e.g., malaria reduction)?
8. Are we certain that investment in research (application of human ingenuity) will not yield more cost-effective means of addressing the problem in the future? (i.e., rather than attempting to tackle it with currently available knowledge and solutions)
9. Should a collectivist solution be preferred over one that relies on free market forces?
10. Should some nations or groups be exempt from contributing to fixing a global problem?

Various commentators (on both sides of the issue overall) have chosen to pick at different parts of this line of questioning at different times. There is something of a hierarchy implied in the above framework but it's not entirely linear. For example, I have focused a great deal of attention on #2 (will warming do more harm than good?) because I haven't seen it talked about much outside of the Gorethodox crowd despite plenty of evidence (e.g., from CDC, NIH, etc. that warming does indeed do more good than harm).

Unfortunately, a discussion of question #2 seems to implicitly cede point #1 (is the planet warming now?) Many other skeptics have also retreated from fighting on that front lest they be labeled "deniers"--tainted evidence notwithstanding. Such a concession may be premature, as this recent piece out of Australia reports:

First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. [which would not be fun]

Sensible people (whose numbers, I remain optimistic, are much larger than many elites would ever concede or suspect) will inevitably and inexorably compare the more hysterical doomsday scenarios from the global warming zealots to what they can observe, read about and think through without the aide of a supercomputer.

Sorta like The Wizard of Oz.

Big Mr. Wizard Man had a fantastic device for instilling fear and mindless obedience; but he was brought down by a curious terrier and his straight-thinking mistress, Dorothy. Her part may be played by Kristen Byrnes. I don't know who plays the dog. Regardless, it's going to be tough to sustain a messianic movement based on a lie as evidence in opposition to it continues to roll in.

Stories With Symbolic Significance

I couldn't help noting the ironic justice in Yasser Arafat's Nobel 'Peace' Prize being stolen and his home being looted so thoroughly that even the water pipes in the walls were removed. On this Father's Day Sunday, I'm remindied of John 10:11:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep...

It's a rather sharp contrast with a life centered around getting other people to blow themselves up in restaurants, busses, discos and shopping malls. Speaking of which, this interview on the Dennis Prager show from May 22nd is worth a listen. It starts out slow and sketchy but gets much better midway through.

One of several gems to ponder: If, after countless generous offers over the years (dating back to shortly after the formation of Israel) that would have given them their own state and 97% of what they asked for the Palestinians still have a legitimate beef with Israel that's worth fighting for, why is it that Palestinian Christians aren't engaging in terrorism? In a related vein: why is it that when many (particularly on the left) in Spain thought ETA had blown up the Madrid trains there were protests in the streets, but when it was discovered that Islamic radicals had done it those protests suddenly ceased? Just asking...

And speaking of leadership, I can't help but find larger meaning in the Jefferson Memorial sinking into the mud. Sometimes it's the little things that signal a broader decline--a pervasive public forgetfulness of the values that made for greatness in the first place.

Friday Afternoon Short Takes

There's a point in some kinds of sporting events--particularly one-on-one contests such as wrestling, boxing, martial arts and even speed-skating--where it becomes clear that the momentum has turned. The opponent is still standing. He may even be looking strong to the untrained eye; but anyone watching closely can tell. The odds have shifted and the one playing rope-a-dope has finally come out swinging. Al Fin has the catch as leftist Alexander Cockburn calls climate modelers corporate tools. (It used to be the skeptics. We all work for ExxonMobil!):

The overwhelming majority of climate computer modelers, the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry, certainly believe in it but not necessarily most real climate scientists...

When I saw this on The Anchoress, I thought: that's nice, but I'm not really an opera fan and I don't like Simon Cowell at all and I haven't figured out how to embed YouTube on my blog yet. I gave it a pass. Then a professional colleague sent me the same link a few hours later. If you haven't seen shy, snaggle-toothed phone salesman Paul Potts (not the late Cambodian dictator and mass murderer) sing Italian opera Nessun Dorma, well... you should. Go Wales!!

Speaking of British musicians, by way of new b'roll addition Bizzyblog, we learn that John Lennon was pro-life. He was also an anorexic--increasingly so just before he was killed. Having been there myself (and at around the same time), I can relate. At my full adult height of 6'1" and a whopping 140 pounds, I was running 70 miles a week and priding myself on my ability to get by on a single piece of dry toast for breakfast and a pint of skim milk and an orange for lunch around the time we heard the news.

Which means I'll never be confused with this other Kobayashi. Nor does it mean that I agree with all of Lennon's music, some of which could have been written by the other Lenin. Still, it's nice to listen to. Except that that opera thing is growing on me...

Hollywood, Hypocrisy and Humility

When will Hollywood stars grasp the idea that--for the vast majority of them anyway--it is only their acting talents (and looks) that are superior to the rest of us and not their judgments on more weighty matters. (Ronald Reagan being the exception that proved the rule.)

Angelina Jolie's true colors came out Wednesday as she promoted a film about freedom of the press and then tried to censor all her interviews... Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite... Her lawyer required all journalists to sign a contract before talking to her...

Sean Penn, where are we when we need you for comic relief from such lawyerly overreaching? (Jolie is ill-served by what must be sycophantic or perhaps cowering advisors and aides. Unless the objective were some ironically counter-intuitive media splash based on the theory that any press is good, I find it hard to imagine a tactic more likely to backfire than the one she used.)

Jolie's needlessly self-immolating move calls to mind a tremendous podcast interview that Hugh Hewitt did with her radically (and sadly) estranged father, actor Jon Voigt, several weeks ago (part one, part two). Hint: Voight grew up and remains very Catholic; he voted for Gore in 2000, Bush in 2004. Wide-ranging, insightful and light. I like him--Voight... and Hewitt too, come to think of it. A fun conversation to listen-in on.

I was struck, among other things, by Voigt's explicit and implicit humility. His tone was centered, mature and appropriately self-deprecating (very un-Hollywood). At one point he balked (graciously) at Hewitt's attempts to draw him into second-guessing current world events, presidential decisions and Congressional shenanigans.

(Hey, I'm just an actor, he noted.)

His daughter should pay more attention to such wisdom. As a father of two of them in their sometimes-rebellious years, I can relate.

CO2 Emission Caps: Calling Everyone's Bluff; Ignoring the Wahabbists

Those Canadians. They just don't understand that half the fun in any political debate (or in any sporting contest) is in the rabid, chest-beating, yelling and screaming for one team--and utter demonization of the other. We Americans, by contrast, are skeptical of moderates who throw reasonable-sounding proposals into the political fight ring--or who smile beautifically as my grandmother once did and laud the wonderful athleticism and sportsmanship of both teams. I'm not really qualified to compare Oakland Raiders fans to Edmonton Oilers fans but if forced to choose in relative terms a safer, calmer venue for my teenage daughters, I'd pick the latter in a heartbeat.

Which is all preface to this article in canada.com proposing a clever and--on its face, in abstract terms--reasonably fair-sounding economic regimen for tying C02 emissions taxes to observed global temperature change according to a distinctive anthropomorphic (human-induced) warming footprint in the troposphere. (No, I don't claim to understand all of that either.) Ross McKitrick, an economist (figures) at the University of Guelph (Ontario), writes:

This tax rate is low, and would yield very little emissions abatement. Global-warming skeptics and opponents of greenhouse-abatement policy will like that. But would global-warming activists? They should -- because according to them, the tax will climb rapidly in the years ahead.

In other words, everyone's bluff gets called. Which is kinda neat. There's just one problem and it's a huge one which few alarmists ever credit in critiques by the other (i.e., our) side:

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome. [emphasis added]

There. Did you catch that? "the regulator"... which would be... who, exactly? The UN? The EU? Some as-yet-unnamed Global Climate Czar with the power of international taxation? And how would enforcement of that work? How would "The Regulator" (it will be in capital letters before you know it) be appointed? (I'm guessing s/he isn't elected by any body that can be traced back to actual individual people.) The idea is clever. The likely route to implementation of it is a socialist bureaucrat's dream. For anyone who found this via Daily Kos: that's a bad thing.

There's another problem with the argument:

The approach is based on two points of expert consensus. First, most economists who have written on carbon-dioxide emissions have concluded that an emissions tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade system. The reason is that, while emission-abatement costs vary a lot, based on the target, the social damages from a tonne of carbon-dioxide emissions are roughly constant. The first ton of carbon dioxide imposes the same social cost as the last ton. [emphasis added]

If the "social costs" are actually benefits, the whole scheme is rather pointless. In addition, for the reasons cited above, the bureaucratic apparatus (or apparati) entailed in putting it in place, administering it and enforcing it would itself by socially dangerous. Bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness seldom die in anything other than a hail of silver bullets and wooden stakes and concerted public exorcisms.

Furthermore, carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant in any meaningful sense until some previously obscure climate modelers declared it needed to be one. CO2 is not even remotely comparable (for example), to fine particulates or ground-level ozone, or sulphur dioxide or atmospherically deposited mercury (a major by-product of coal-burning in China that affects U.S. water in major ways) or nitrogen run-off from lawns and golf courses that messes with local ecologies in serious ways. One might as well tax oxygen.

There's also a sleight-of-hand in the idea that the first ton of CO2 has the same 'social' impact as the last ton. That would arguably be true in social terms if there were a negative social impact--which there's not). It's most definitely not true in warming terms. CO2 has a nearly exponentially diminishing effect on global warming with each additional unit released.

So I have an alternative proposal to build bridges with my warming-alarmist brethren. Let's set aside for a moment that fact that your fears are the looniest set of self-justifying, pseudo-religious, half-baked, politically-motivated demagoguic ideas I've heard in a long time. (Nothing personal; I'm talking about the ideas.)

Get smart on Wahabbism, its influence and how we are funding its roots in Saudi Arabia every time we fill up the tank while spiking any proposal to drill for our own stuff in ANWR. (Repeat after me: responsible drilling doesn't kill caribou, hungry polar bears kill caribou.)

Think hard about how Saudi is helping to drive the growth of radical, jihadist Islam practically everywhere. Get over the fact that criticizing our "friend" and "ally" Saudi Arabia puts us nominally in league with Osama bin Laden's purported justifications for waging terrorist war. Stop sticking your head in the sand like it's 1999 hoping your dot.com portfolio will come back along with a Clinton presidency and that along the way we'll withdraw unilaterally from Iraq, forget 9-11 and everything will be just ducky. Wake up to the fact that a lot of evil people are trying very hard and very patiently to kill or subjugate all of us in the new Caliphate and have been working on that project for quite some time now while we slept in willful ignorance.

Then step back and look in the mirror. (Warning: here's where it gets personal.) Check out that cellulite or belly, or gradually acreting hips or arm flab you've been trying to get rid of (eyouh!). Then pump up the bike tires or strap on your walking shoes and get yourself to the post office or supermarket or bank under your own power for a change. Nobody is forcing you, and I won't think any less of you if you decide to go in your SUV instead. I refuse to demonize your choices, much less set up a bureaucracy to impose others on you.

If someone tries, I'll be right there on the barricades with you, fighting for our common right to make those kinds of choices and trade-offs each as we each see fit. But think about it on the margin dear Gorethodox brothers and sisters--in your own way and on your own time. Maybe next time it's a nice day out and you have a choice, you can think as you get some fresh air about how you're sticking it to the self-righteous psychopaths who forced fifteen schoolgirls to burn to death rather than be seen in their pajamas and will do the same to us given the chance.

As soon as I'm finished I'm headed out to walk the dog. It's a nice June day here in Boston (low 50's, overcast and drizzling... and I was thinking about moving to New Hampshire?!?) Our faithful poochie seems to like riding in the car better. I'm doubt he'll understand the stuff about doing his part to hold off the Caliphate. He'll just have to learn and adapt.

Mr. Maru on a TV Talk Show??

Last week, I reported (in an update to my D-Day post) on a bizarre, slow-motion event I witnessed at my daughter's high school graduation last week:

When the American flag blew over during the Mayor's remarks early on in the high school's graduation ceremonies, someone... could have made it a priority to keep a vital, enduring symbol of our nation’s shared history, sacrifice, aspirations and values in front of several hundred graduating seniors. No one did. Instead, the flag was unceremoniously rolled up and left lying on the ground at the back of the dignitaries’ platform for the remainder of the proceedings. The subliminal message was obvious: it doesn’t matter.
...
On the 63rd anniversary of D-Day... arguably the most important battle in a war in which well over 100 of this city's high school graduates gave their lives to push back tyranny and re-establish freedom—I was ashamed and saddened to think of them looking down and asking: “Did we really die for THIS?”

You can read the rest here. The whole incident was the kind of thing that only makes sense in certain parts of a state that thinks that the New York Times is in the pocket of Rush Limbaugh and that the rest of the country outside of Manhattan and San Francisco is roughly akin to the Taliban or perhaps Ghengis Khan.

The letter got published today in the local paper and was prominently featured. So prominently that my phone started to ring. Net/net: they're talking about the incident on the local cable channel today and a local conservative activist wants to interview me on the show for a half hour sometime soon at my convenience. Hmm... Not sure I'm up for that, but I'm reserving judgment for now. I'm better when I can edit. I'm not sure how many people would be moved. Talk formats often generate more heat than light.

Further context: the other side of town isn't much better than my 10:1 Kerry:Bush zip code. The school administrators there thought it de rigeur to invite Noam Chomsky to talk at the high school last month. They barred parents and reporters--and any taping of the event. (One student tried to do so surreptitiously. His camera was confiscated on threat of suspension.) Friends from out of state ask why I don't move to New Hampshire. Some days I wonder myself.

Anyway, I'm pondering what to do about my 15 seconds of fame. Thanks for all the feedback on the format folks! I really appreciate it (even the Dr. Pepper stuff... still trying to figure that one out.) Special prize to anyone who can guess where the picture was taken. One reader has been there because I was there with him. It's not in Massachusetts.

UPDATE: An oldie-but-goodie on flag desecration from Mark Steyn.: "The problem is not that some people burn flags; the problem is that the worldview of which flag-burning is a mere ritual is so entrenched at the highest levels of western culture."

New Look - Open Thread

So... Whaddy'all think?

Stories That Deserve to be Heard

Jim Gilbert doesn't blog regularly, but when he does, he's always got a riveting true story to tell from his years of traveling to remote, dangerous places and preaching the gospel. Check it out.

We hadn't been there for fifteen minutes when Jaanus pulled me into the hallway and cranked up the old tube radio they kept handy to defeat electronic eavesdroppers. Then, cupping his hands over my ears, he said, "This is probably the last time I'll ever see you," he said in his staccato accent.

I jerked away to look my friend in the eye and rebuke him. But he pulled me close again to explain.

"The KGB took me in a couple of weeks ago and told me that it's already been decided in Moscow. I will be taken to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years hard labor in Siberia. They said they would give me a few weeks to prepare my family to live without me."

Anger Fuels Better Desicions

Yes, you read that right. The implications for the blogosphere are still open to question.

We already knew that gluttony can make people jolly, covetousness induces hard work (sometimes) and theft can make people more financially secure (if they're any good at it). What's next? Murder and adultery improving people's ability to keep secrets? Envy improving people's ability to take standardized tests? Wrath improving people's golf scores?

California vs. Iraq - Eye of the Beholder

I'm two months behind on Victor Davis Hanson. Me bad. This one is a winner.

So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a reporter intent on doing so as a bank rupt, crime-ridden den with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.

Read the whole thing. H/T: SB

UPDATE: A great three-part discussion with VDH on Hewitt's show (one, two, three) back on Memorial Day: Athens, Sparta, Persia, Rome, a Republic fighting itself, too comfortable to defend against real enemies, Islam filling a vacuum left by Rome's fall. The parallels are myriad.

Death Penalty Dilemma

I've never blogged about the death penalty. Beyond this post, I don't plan to start. The subject has tended to generate far more heat than light in public debates over the years and I'm not sure how much more of the latter I can add. That said, this article stands out for highlighting economic data rather than idle speculation. I've been rather fond of data lately.

...a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years... claim to settle a once hotly debated argument - whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer...

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) - what am I going to do, hide them?" ...Among the conclusions [of the various studies]:

- Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

- The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

- Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

My own views have tended towards the 'anti' side pretty consistently. To the degree that I've thought about it at all, I've tended to flop back and forth based on an emotional response (in both directions) to books such as Truman Capote's sadly chilling 1960's non-fiction classic "In Cold Blood"... or to the latest most grisly headlines.

I suspect that much of popular sentiment for the death penalty is bound up in an angry and destructive (if entirely understable) desire for vengeance rather than economic calculation or deep moral reasoning, while much of the sentiment against it naively overlooks some harsh realities of living in a sinful world where evil will romp when given a chance. As Professor Mocan notes, economic arguments needn't drive the entire debate, even as they should not be supressed in order to steer it towards one agenda.

My 'anti-' stance has stemmed not so much from pacifism or religious conviction (the latter highly dependent on one's translation of Commandment #1--'murder' vs. 'kill'--the former being the more accurate, so I'm told) as from two things: 1) disgust at the idea of what amounts to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles endowed with the power to kill you (and chillingly, if infrequently getting it wrong) and 2) a pragmatic sense that it's cheaper and simpler and more potentially redemptive (in the eternal sense) to lock some folks up and throw away the key--if we could ever guarantee that the key was really unrecoverable... which we never seem able or willing to do.

This article brings in a new angle I'll have to reluctantly mull: hundreds of real, innocent people who need not have died as a result of (take your pick) our collective squeamishness and misinterpretation of scripture, the general degradation of morality in society, and/or our unwillingness to make life sentences stick.

Denver, Draconian Legislation and "Global Warming"

The typically trade-off-free, authoritarian leftist worldview wouldn't necessarily accomodate this concern, but among the biggest objections I see to efforts to do something, anything about global warming are the unintended negative consequences and all-too-inevitable (if unpredictable) economic casualties of those efforts. (In a closely related vein, I blog-ranted a few weeks ago about the danger warming hysteria poses in distracting us from more pressing risks). Today's Rocky Mountain News notes:

[Denver] Mayor John Hickenlooper has made the "climate action plan" a centerpiece of his second term in office. More than two dozen people from business and community groups met for several months with city staff to hammer out the plan. Many of them fear Colorado will be slammed hard by global warming, with more droughts and forest fires. "There was a sense we have to be bold," said Beth Conover, director of Greenprint Denver, the city office that coordinated the plan. "What's the cost of inaction to our water supply and tourism industry?"

What's the cost of inaction? That's hard to know. What's the cost of my not eating pizza for lunch today? The answers are myriad. And unknowable. Wrapped up in the question in this context however, is a hubris so vast it defies description. If the IPCC has already concluded that the entire planet acting in concert can't alter the arrival of an inevitable, well-documented and highly regular 1,500-year planetary warming cycle caused largely by the sun (as it has), then Denver sure isn't going to do so its own--even if it becomes a template for others.

In other words, the answer to Ms. Conover's question is: the cost of doing nothing is probably a whole lot less than the cost of doing a whole bunch of utterly useless and costly somethings designed primarily to surf a wave of misguided political sentiment and make people feel better about themselves. (At the root of this is the reasoning behind William F. Buckeley Jr's prescient 1950's plaint that the curse of the conservative mind is to be forever consigned to standing athwart history yelling 'stop!' at every "new" and "progressive" idea that defies the lessons of history, logic, economics and hard-won societal wisdom acreted over milennia).

But let's take it down a level. The article notes blandly that:

...the [Denver] proposal also contains some ideas that may be unpopular, such as penalizing heavy users of electricity and natural gas and basing auto insurance premiums on the number of miles traveled.

Unpopular? Perhaps they haven't read 'Atlas Shrugged'. 'Unpopular' implies a captive audience. East Germany and Soviet Russia had captive audiences... for awhile. Denver, except in the very short term, does not have a captive audience--nor, I suspect, a stomach for the kind of violence necessary to maintain one.

Heavy users of electricity and natural gas (particularly those responsible to their shareholders) will find that moving next door to Wyoming or some other place less enamored of these grandiose ideas will work quite nicely, thank you very much. California discovered this to its dismay after the 2000 blackouts. As did former Governorn Gray Davis who nearly bankrupted the state (and its taxpayers) trying to oppose the markets.

Basing auto insurance premiums on the number of miles driven? Well that's a winner. Some of my best friends are traveling salesmen. They make a lot of money. They buy things. They pay taxes. Most states would be happy to have them. Fewer of them will move to Colorado under a regime such as this.

Never mind the trucks that bring fresh produce into Denver supermarkets in the winter who will have to jack their rates. The prices of some of that fresh, healthy stuff will--on the margin--climb out of the reach of some people living on limited incomes who can afford it now. Poor people lose. My, that's progressive, isn't it?

Or take tourists who rent cars there who could just as well ski in Utah. Or the insurance carriers--free to exit the market (as many have here in Massachusetts) once they do the math and see that developing a special accounting system just for Denver residents doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Drivers lose with fewer choices.

As a non-resident of Colorado, all I can say is: You folks go right ahead. Your loss is our gain.

Butterflies

After a wordy weekend, I'm inspired this morning by 18 Butterflies & Their Color Palettes








Here's the story of another butterfly encounter, almost two years old now.

UPDATE: (and major shift of gears), here's a description from Scientific American of the so-called "butterfly effect" in perhaps its most classic form, dealing with weather forecasting:

Weather forecasters are a frequently humbled bunch. No matter how far their science advances, the atmosphere finds ways to defy prediction. In 1998, for example, sophisticated computer models helped the National Weather Service (NWS) achieve the highest forecast accuracy in its 130-year history. But a disturbing number of meteorological events that same year proved how fragile that achievement was. Take what happened on Thursday, February 19, 1998. The models predicted a stormy weekend in Louisiana. Fortunately, though, meteorologists were flying over the Pacific Ocean for a special research mission and reported one small correction. The jet stream was moving much faster than expected far off the coast of Alaska. Rerunning the models with the new information, NWS meteorologists saw that storms would probably strike central Florida, not Louisiana.

By Sunday at 2 P.M., confident forecasters issued a tornado watch-seven hours ahead of a deadly tornado outbreak in the Orlando area. A little discrepancy in the pattern of air flowing more than 4,000 miles away had made the difference between an accurate forecast and a bust. The change in the winds in Alaska had displaced storms in the southeast by several hundreds of miles-endangering people living near Orlando, not New Orleans. Blame what happened on chaos, the way small uncertainties in atmospheric conditions in one place can produce enormous consequences at a huge distance. Chaos is the bane of weather forecasters because it adds untold complexity to the models they use to make predictions.

And the reason the Gorethodox are so sure of what the climate will look like in 100 years is... what, exactly??

From Russia With Love--Brits Help Iran Generate Electricity

The Sunday Guardian/Observer notes a British-based plot, broken up late last year:

...to supply Iran with material for use in a nuclear weapons programme... a group of Britons was tracked as they obtained weapons-grade uranium from the black market in Russia. Investigators believe it was intended for export to Sudan and on to Iran... A number of Britons, who are understood to have links with Islamic terrorists abroad, remain under surveillance...

Given that Britain is already being given away by Britons under the guise of political correctness, the implication that there are just a few with ties to foreign Islamic terrorists is increasingly silly. Under the UN world government vision, there wouldn't be any need for calling them foreign at all. The next bit is noteworthy for similar reasons: i.e., a surprise only to the kumbaya-singing, blame-the-West for everything, Guardian-reading crowd:

Politically, the allegations hold potentially huge ramifications for diplomatic relations between the West and Tehran... Investigators are understood to have evidence that Iran was to receive the uranium to help develop a nuclear weapons capability. 'They may argue that the material is for civilian use but it does seem an extremely odd way to procure uranium,' said [Roger Berry, chairman of Parliament's Quadripartite Committee, which monitors arms exports].

Well, duh.

It's not clear how this might be connected to the convoluted Litvinenko/Polonium story. That said, it beggars belief that the community of British-based Islamic terrorists seeking nuclear matterials from Russia is so large that the two stories wouldn't be connected somehow.

Handicapping the God Debates

Hugh Hewitt devoted three hours on his radio show earlier this week to something he called "The Great God Debate" (transcript here) pitting chain smoker, British bestselling author, avowed leftist-humanitarian, Iraqi war supporter anti-Islamist and smooth-talking militant atheist Christopher Hitchens against pastor, author, theologian and conservative blogger, Dr. Mark Roberts. I listened eagerly via podcast Thursday and Friday.

James Lileks thinks Hitch won, as do I. That means a lot less than it might seem to.

I saw the whole thing in a Phyrric light (Hitch won the battle; he will lose the war). This has not been the only battle in Hitch's evidently bitter, overreaching and ultimately pointless one-man campaign to demolish not just faith or religion, but God Almighty. (He might consider the fate of others throughout history who have taken on that challenge so directly.) He has lost others.

Hitch seemed to be going for the body-slam at every turn, even as he deflected that impression with his cool air of gentrified British detachment. On the podcast (thanks to rewind features) it was easy to catch all kinds of subtle but deliberate debating maneuvers and dishonest semantic tactics on Hitch's part--none of which got called by Roberts or Hitch. A common tactic: taking a scriptural passage utterly out of context and applying it where the great weight of accumulated Christian theology never claimed it ought to be applied. To their credit as Christian flag-bearers in this context, Roberts and Hewitt pretty much played it straight, searching for common ground even as Hitch was aggressively planting his flag on it.

Hitch threw out such a huge volume of nice-sounding but utterly faulty verbal chaff and circular logic that it would have taken days to debunk any one of his assertions. That forced Roberts to pick his shots and appear to be conceding points. Fortunately, Roberts is diligently taking the days he needed to patiently respond in print where the constraints of radio did not allow him to respond in real-time.

On the show, Roberts missed dozens of opportunities to challenge Hitch's base assumptions and go back on offense. (Jesus never turned the other cheek on false doctrine or hypocrisy). E.g., Hitch kept referring to 'morality' without reference to any enduring, common, authoritative framework for that concept. Whose morality was Hitch claiming to speak for, exactly? How can we determine what is moral? Who says? All were questions Hitch wasn't forced to address.

Listeners could be excused for thinking that Hitch stands for something powerful and righteous and free-standing called "morality" while Roberts stands for something else entirely (religion?) that keeps having to say "yes, but" to every "moral" proposition. It's an old and tired tactic, used by folks like Alan Dershowitz (several years ago--can't find the reference) to cherry-pick the scriptures and claim that he knew better than God when it came to (for example) the whole Abraham/Isaac obedience 'thing'.

Roberts and Hewitt missed many golden opportunities to point out that morality comes only from one source. One may choose not to acknowledge it; that doesn't make it go away. For reasons not clear to me, they also didn't press or even raise points such as God's ways not being man's ways or His being both intimately personal and concerned with working His will through the great sweeps of human history.

They also missed (or chose not to point out) something that's been instrumental to my understanding of the zones that faith and reason ought to inhabit. That is, the word 'faith' as used in the Bible is a translation of the Greek word 'pistis'. It does not mean faith in the sense of "I have faith that it will be sunny tomorrow" or "My niece has faith that the Tooth Fairy is real".

Rather, the word pistis means something more akin to interpersonal trust in the sense of "I have faith that my best friend will show up on time" or "I have faith that my wife wouldn't cheat on me". It is faith in a person's character based on knowing that person intimately.

Left unclarified, Hitch's all-too-common misuse of the word 'faith' may have left many listeners with the impression that Hitch--in opposing God--stands against the forces of unreasoning, baseless Tooth Fairy la-la-land belief in the completely imaginary. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is only through a combination of careful reasoning and subjective discernment that one comes to assess some individuals as being worthy of trust and others not.

It's unfortunate that the debate did not focus squarely on the character of one particular individual who lived and died and lived again in fact and in body and in history. We have plenty of material (both objective and subjective) with which to assess his character. The same mode of assessment can and ought to be applied to other historical religious figures (e.g., Buddha, Mohammed) who also lived and died and left material about their lives for us to evaluate.

A key difference: they kept right on being dead and nobody disputes that fact.

Overall impression: Hitchens is a very clever snake, on a mission that smells disingenuous.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier has more in her amusingly titled post: "Atheism Is Like So Totally Intellectual". Mark Roberts' own blog is also chock-a-block full of responses to Hitch, including one I didn't catch at first in calling the show a Phyrric victory for Hitchens. Roberts writes:

Talk radio, in most cases, is not well suited to careful, reasoned, extensive discourse. It’s much better for soundbites, which Hitchens cranks out in droves. But this makes it challenging to engage in logical discourse, especially when the issues are complex. One could easily win the argument, logically, but lose the war in terms of the impact on listeners... By far the hardest thing about debating Christopher Hitchens is his tendency to throw out a lot of critical claims all at once. I found myself needing to choose which to pick up and which to leave on the table. This was frustrating, since I feared that one might assume I agreed with things I just didn’t have time to refute. My blog will give me the chance to be both clearer and more complete.

UPDATE: Anyone drawn in by Hitchens' suave British accent should take a dose of the Scottish antidote: Allistair Begg's 'Truth for Life' radio show.

Motherhood Fact for Reflection

I post without comment. Read (here or here). Simmer. Think.

All mothers have fetal cells in their body during pregnancy, said Dr. Diana Bianchi, an expert in fetal microchimerism at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

They persist for years. Fetal cells have been found in the bone marrow of grandmothers 51 years postpartum, Bianchi said.

Several studies suggest the cells can survive for decades, and the pregnancies don't have to be carried to term. Women who have had an abortion have high levels of fetal cells in their body.

"Women who have early selective terminations are in fact the most chimeric," said Anne Croy, a professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen's University in Kingston.

In animals, these cells can come to the aid of a sick or ailing mother, helping to repair a diseased or damaged brain, liver or thyroid gland.

"If the thyroid is injured, they turn into thyroid cells. If the liver is injured, they turn into liver cells," Dr. Bianchi said.

This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, she said. Passing on stem cells could help keep the mother healthy, increasing the chances of the child surviving to adulthood.

Expanding Universe, Dark Energy and Limited Wisdom

This NY Times essay on cosmology is rich picking for those who, like me, just can't turn off their curiosity about how science, theology and epistemology intersect:

If you are of a certain science fiction age, like me, you might have grown up with a vague notion of the evolution of the universe as a form of growing self-awareness: the universe coming to know itself, getting smarter and smarter, culminating in some grand understanding, commanding the power to engineer galaxies and redesign local spacetime... it makes you wonder just how smug we should feel about our own knowledge...

The reason we believe we live in a smooth, orderly universe instead of the chaotic one that is... that the chaos has been hidden. According to the dominant theory of the Big Bang, known as inflation, an extremely violent version of dark energy blew it up a fraction of a second after time began, stretching and smoothing space and pushing all the wildness and chaos and even perhaps other universes out of the sky, where they will never be seen.

Paris in a Minute

I was working really hard to avoid the whole Paris Hilton thing. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, just smile while you eat your raw mastadon and admire the stalactites and stalagmites in your kitchen.) But when Al Sharpton weighed in, it became apparent that I would be inexorably sucked inside the event horizon. The gravitational pull of this story is just too strong. According to the New York Times, the Reverend Photo-Op:

"...decried Ms. Hilton’s release as an example of 'double standards,' saying consideration was given to a pampered rich girl that would never have been accorded an average inmate."

Which is absolutely true and I totally agree with it--as does FOXNews with its headline "Al Sharpton is right about Paris Hilton". Only the 'Reverend' Al took the exact opposite position with another rich and famous perp (OJ Simpson) who got away with much much more, namely two innocent lives. The difference? That one was black. As black commentator John Ridley noted in a piece in the Huffington Post last November:

...for Al [Sharpton] or Jesse [Jackson] or any of the other non-elected officials of black America to do what is right, to speak for the true victims, would require them to take a stand that ran contrary to the will of their "people,"... though they accessorize themselves in the cloak of compassion for the victimized, the empathy they display is clearly limited by race... So, when again you see Al or Jesse out bemoaning some perceived racial slight, question whether they would do the same if the situation were reversed, or if their morality only stretches to the end of their personal gain.

UPDATE: New (and long overdue) addition to the blogroll, Dr. Melissa Clouthier disagrees (somewhat) about Paris, but in a way that makes sense to me, pointing out that:

This is a case not unlike Martha Stewart and Leonna Helmsley. Rich, arrogant, white women pay in the American justice system... This is not to say I have any warm fuzzies for Paris. I just think that justice should be status blind... [Paris] seems to be paying for her inability to even pretend at humility.

Teddy Kennedy Speech -- June 7th, 1967

D-Day 2007

[Scroll down for Thursday update]
I was fortunate to be out and about today with my car radio on for a re-broadcast of D-Day speeches by FDR and Ronald Reagan delivered respectively, a few hours and 40 years after the fact. Absolutely riveting and highly recommended. (I seldom use such superlatives.)

Particularly noteworthy to those under the impression that this nation sprang from essentially secular roots, that a few Republican zealots have thrust religion on a reluctant people in the last quarter-century, that church and state must never mix in any form at any time, or that angels don't ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm: in a six-minute national radio address on June 6th, 1944, President Roosevelt spent nearly three full minutes on one prayer, followed by nearly two minutes on a second.

Equally noteworthy: he prays for the eternal deliverance of what he knows are many thousands of American and Allied soldiers dying at that very moment as a result of his weighty and difficult decision to oppose evil. It's difficult to place oneself in that context, remembering that--from our human perspective--the result of that battle, and the war, were anything but certain.

Reagan's two short speeches (at Point du Hoc and Omaha Beach in 1984) are equally riveting--the echoes with current conflicts inescapable and highly germane. His remarks directed to survivors sitting in the audience are positively electric in juxtaposition with FDR's real-time prayer for their success and deliverance.

Just wow. Go listen.

On my way home, I drove past two Jewish temples, parking lots full, holding services for Shavu'ot, the Festival of Weeks. How much emptier they might have been... Sadly, the Jewish people are once again the canary in the coal mine for the spread of evil in the world as an Iranian madman flexes his growing diplomatic and military muscles. Have we not learned?

I returned home to my parents watching the French Open on television. Can you even imagine the tenor of such an event taking place seven decades into a Third Reich covering Europe?

Watch for updates. I will be attending my daughter's high school graduation in a few hours. If the intensely left-wing slant of the place holds true to form, I expect nary a hint or a nod at the historical import of this day. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: Far worse than I could ever have imagined. Here's my letter to the editor of our local paper (location-sanitized for the blog):

When the American flag blew over during the Mayor's remarks early on in the high school's graduation ceremonies, someone had a choice. Someone could have substituted it for the Massachusetts flag that stayed up throughout the ceremony, or held it up until another way was found to re-erect it. Someone could have made it a priority to keep a vital, enduring symbol of our nation’s shared history, sacrifice, aspirations and values in front of several hundred graduating seniors.

No one did. Instead, the flag was unceremoniously rolled up and left lying on the ground at the back of the dignitaries’ platform for the remainder of the proceedings. The subliminal message was obvious: it doesn’t matter.

Until it became clear that the flag would stay down, it had been possible to forgive a stirringly well-sung if unusual anthem referencing “bright stripes and broad stars” in which Francis Scott Key watches the ramparts rather than the flag gallantly streaming o’er them. Or to pardon Principal [X]’s unfortunate decision to cite Ted Kennedy’s remarks from the school’s 1967 graduation. (Commenting on the still hot Six-Day War, the Senator had laid out a moral equivalence argument, obliquely chastising Israel for defending itself against its would-be destroyers.) It was more difficult to overlook the fact that not a single speaker even hinted at the import of June 6th in American history.

In the context of those things, the hasty and disrespectful removal of the flag seemed to fit right in. On the 63rd anniversary of Allied landings at Normandy (aka, D-Day)—arguably the most important battle in a war in which well over 100 of this city's high school graduates gave their lives to push back tyranny and re-establish freedom—I was ashamed and saddened to think of them looking down and asking: “Did we really die for THIS?”

Is That Spinach in Your Teeth or Are You Just an HTML Moron?

It has come to my attention from two separate sources in the past 24 hours (thank you both!) that two features of my left-hand sidebar: the Bible verse of the day from Biblegateway, and Chris Muir's Day-by-Day Cartoon had been failing to scale down for narrower (e.g., columnar) viewing, obscuring the most recent post... which is kinda the main reason for having a blog in the first place. Why did y'all suffer in silence so long?!

Unlike the title of the post, both people who informed me of this problem were tremendously gracious and helpful--which doesn't mean I've figured out how to fix things yet, but I plan to. We've got my daughter's high school graduation and party today so time is at a premium. (Wasn't she just a child? Time flies...)

In the meantime, I've temporarily removed the offending boxes.

I'm reminded of a party I attended recently where, uncharacteristically, I was without the lovely and socially ept Mrs. Maru (opposite of inept, which would describe yours truly). Upon arriving home afterward, I noticed that one side of the collar of my shirt was sticking out of the sweater collar; the other wasn't. I suspect this was true all evening.

I don't think I had spinach in my teeth or lint balls on my pants or random socks stuck to my back with static electricity, but anything is possible. The other image that's come to mind is the first 15 minutes of the typical Queer Eye episode in which the fashion-disaster straight guy learns just how out of it he really is and what a monumental task lies ahead if there's to be any hope of installing a clue.

Which is all to say: I'm experiencing the web equivalent. D'oh!

Other stuff I plan to change (mostly a list to myself but feel free to make suggestions!):

• Banish that insanely offensive retro-Blogger orange header color... forever
• Add a picture or two to set the mood (I'll never compete with blogs like Sisu--much less All Things Beautiful, who has single-handedly defined a completely new media form: the editorial one-woman museum--but it's true; the current wall-o-words is just so... 2005)
• Condense the archives
• Upgrade to a more flexible Blogger template (some clutter and downtime likely)
• Think again about migrating to another platform (every time I get frustrated enough with something about Blogger to think about leaving they improve it; inertia has prevailed)
  
• Add 'best of' and key topic link sections
• Organize the blogroll in a more meaningful way than alphabetically, and maybe even stop doing it manually (apologies for the zombie blogs I haven't had time to clear out)
  

I'll stop there lest I fail to keep even that short list of promises. Again, any other suggestions are heartily welcome. What's that you say? There's something clinging to my shoe? Uh oh...

Axis of Evil... or Antique Violins?

Axis--"the line about which a rotating body... turns... an alliance of two or more nations to coordinate their foreign and military policies, and to draw in with them a group of dependent or supporting powers"

Evil--"morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked... anything causing injury or harm"

Axis of Evil--a crassly cynical, scaremongering myth invented by Karl Rove to unfairly label some UN members as less well behaved than others, all in the interest of manipulating Bushitler into another term in his bloodthirsty quest for oil and money and power

Or not...

JFK terror plot suspect has ties to Venezuela, Iran.

...former Guyanese legislator, Abdul Kadir, was arrested in Trinidad on Friday on a plane bound for Caracas, Venezuela. According to Mr. Kadir's wife, Isha Kadir, he was in the island nation to pick up an Iranian visa...

The NY Sun notes in a separate editorial:

...our attention has been riveted for some time on growing evidence that the Iranian regime has been moving aggressively to gain influence in our hemisphere, and the big surprise in the latest case is only that it took so long for something to develop.

The NY Post summarizes the NY Times' coverage after the incident:

...front-page stories about:

• The debate over the legality of detaining "boy fighters" in the Guantanamo prison camp.
• How the brick laying trade in India is benefiting peasants.
• Proper upkeep for "the most treasured violins."

Violins... a plot to set Queens ablaze... hmm... didn't Nero play a violin while Rome burned? As was true then, this is about far more than just one city. H/T: Powerline

Global Warming - Death Machine or Boon to Humanity?

One of the most important things I see discussed far less often (and less honestly) than it should be in the global warming debate is the net impact on morbidity and mortality of a warming planet. I.e., will more or less people get sick and/or die under a variety of warming scenarios than get sick and die today? The evidence (overwhelmingly) says 'no'. The opposite is true. Warming will be a boon to humanity--as it has been throughout history. Less storminess. Less disease. Greater agricultural productivity. The list is long. Bottom line: fewer deaths as the planet warms.

Yet some high-profile risks--most notably the potential for tropical diseases such malaria to become more widespread--tend to captivate the public's attention. As this CDC paper notes however, the fear that with global warming "malaria will emerge from the tropics and become established in Europe and North America" is misplaced. Instead:

The complex ecology and transmission dynamics of the disease, as well as accounts of its early history, refute such predictions. Until the second half of the 20th century, malaria was endemic and widespread in many temperate regions, with major epidemics as far north as the Arctic Circle. From 1564 to the 1730s—the coldest period of the Little Ice Age—malaria was an important cause of illness and death in several parts of England. Transmission began to decline only in the 19th century, when the present warming trend was well under way. The history of the disease in England underscores the role of factors other than temperature in malaria transmission. [emphasis added]

Another factoid that struck me as significant, from page 204 of Avery and Singer's book:

The worst known [malaria] outbreak was in Russia during the 1920s, with 16 million sick and 600,000 deaths.

Could the Bolshevik revolution possibly have played a role? Not on the radar of the global warming zealots. Liberals like to think of themselves as having a monopoly on compassion. They need to think of global warming as tantamount to an unjust war on poor, brown people in far-off places. They need to feel that they hold the permanent franchise on 'protecting' and 'saving' those who are members of victim classes from exploitation at the hands of cold-hearted imperialists.

The idea that malaria has much more to do with absolute (not relative) poverty--and therefore that globalization, industrialization and economic freedom are likely to provide some of the most important checks on the spread of disease than will draconian recession-creating restrictions on energy use just doesn't fit with their world view.

What? You don't like to think of yourself as part of a class (or group, or race) or as a permanent victim? Think again. The left needs permanent victim classes like McDonalds need customers. Global warming gives them a nearly perfect future scenario 'space' (unproven and unprovable in anything less than a generation) in which to construct victim classes in the public imagination.

Without the support of wild and dire narratives filled with increased death and disease, the entire global warming discussion deflates. Quickly. Without a new class of hyper-violent hurricanes striking every month or so (April through January), without massive malaria outbreaks, without Bangladesh becoming part of the sea, and without the spectre of kindly old ladies dying alone by the millions in their over-heated walk-up apartments, there really isn't much to get worked up about with global warming. Balking at that last example? It's a complete fantasy, as this paper notes:

In cold cities, both high and low temperatures were associated with increased CVD [cardiovascular disease] deaths. In general, the effect of cold temperatures persisted for days, whereas the effect of high temperatures was restricted to the day of the death or the day before. For myocardial infarctions (MI), the effect of hot days was twice as large as the cold-day effect, whereas for all CVD deaths the hot-day effect was five times smaller than the cold-day effect. [emphasis added]

Who, after all is really going to muster sufficient moral outrage to enthrone Prince Al when the talking points boil down to lost revenue for the ski industry? Who's going to get upset about their put options on Carrier expiring in the red? Who's going to fret that farmers have to work an extra month because growing seasons have lengthened? Having successfully seized the moral high ground in the public debate with an utter falsehood--and a narrow, absurd one at that (poor third-world people are going to die if we don't cut CO2 emissions and re-organize the world economy now!)--the Gorethodox are understandably reluctant to cede it.

As I've noted before, I 'do' scenarios for a living. They are powerful things, rooted in story-telling--the oldest and most universal form of human communication. A professional colleague recently remarked to me (can't find the reference right off), that it's been shown that people remember and process stories far better than they do facts. When used cynically, stories can provide the uncritical with an excuse to take a holiday from logic. The simple logic of global warming is this: regardless of how it is being caused, it is likely to benefit humanity.

Yet More Reasons Why Global Warming Hysteria is Silly

Having recently repaired our beloved capuccino maker, I've had to work really hard to stop myself at two double espressos each morning, especially as the typical rainy/cold New England June sets in (it's 50-something and pouring this morning). Thus it was with a smile and jittery typing fingers that the title of this Indiana-based blog caught my eye in perusuing the KM referral statistics: "Rightward Coffee Buzz: christian, conservative, caffeinated". I love it! Started last October, RCB notes in an inaugural post an ability to "...drink four pots of coffee everyday and keep it up forever." Well, OK then. That's just a little rich for my blood but hey, whatever works. Welcome to the blogroll, RCB.

That's a roundabout way of delivering a hat tip for RCB's tracking down the NZ meteorologist's reference I'd noted in passing in my 'Mouths of Babes...' post on Kristen Byrnes last week.

...meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton [NZ] this week [that] man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried...

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said... Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively. "That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.

Again: hard numbers; they're pesky things. So why does the climate jihad persist? For reasons other than the numbers.

Random Statistics and Left-Wing Agendas

This post is inspired by no current headline. Instead, it is offered in the sense in which many "web logs" initially developed: as a rolling, incomplete compilation of factoids, tidbits and in-progress intellectual explorations and analyses to remind the blogger himself what he was thinking about yesterday, last week and last month. (Those under forty may not understand this... yet; you will.) It reflects some serendipitous research I've done over the last few days out of pure personal curiosity. I don't make any claim that the three parts of this are linked.

Sadly, that curiosity has led to some troubling discoveries the further I've dug. I suspect some of this will be old news to many even as it is shockingly fresh to some. There seems to be a back story to the back story to the back story on the first statistic--as well as lots of finger-pointing and specious conspiracy theorizing. That will have to wait 'til another post. For now, I'll try to stick to the facts and a few theories and let readers work out their own conclusions.

Fact number one comes from radio commentator and former Cincinnati Reds pitcher Frank Pastore who writes in a March column:

Between 2001 and 2005, [National Council of Churches] revenue from member denominations dropped 40%, from $2.9 million to $1.75 million. During the same period, non-denomination revenue rose from $800,000 to $2.9 million, a jump of 362%. And in June of 2005, for the first time, outside giving ($1.76) surpassed denominational giving ($1.75), officially making the National Council of Churches financed more from non-church sources than from the people in the pews they claim to represent. [link & emphasis added]

Pastore drew his information from this eye-opening, must-read white paper "Strange Yokefellows"; excellent summary here. Most of the non-church contributors to the NCC are large foundations with left-leaning agendas. Particularly germane to the ongoing discussion here about anthropogenic global warming being a (false) religion are substantial grants from folks like the Sierra Club and the Tides Foundation.

However one decides to assess particular contributors, their agendas and their influence, the macro factoid remains: the majority of financing for an important religious umbrella group is now coming from politically motivated, non-religious groups. For those (generally on the left) who cry 'foul' every time the Judeo-Christian deity is so much as hinted at in a public setting, this fact points to what may be a remarkable case of projection on their part. Who is influencing whom, exactly? And to what ends?

In my professional life, this is the kind of critical "crossover point" event that we look for (and hypothesize about) in developing scenarios for strategic planning in large corporations. For example, a second 'crossover' factoid in an almost entirely separate realm:

In 2009 or 2010 if recent trends continue, the number of government workers who are members of trade unions will surpass the number of union members working for private industry. That is, in 2009 or shortly thereafter, the majority of union members will be working directly for taxpayers.

This is not an easy statistic to find. The Bureau of Labor Statistics--a government agency no doubt partly represented by unions--writes its press releases in percentage terms only. Deep down, one finds that in 2006, 7.981 million private industry workers were members of unions (down 3.3% from the previous year) whereas 7.378 million government workers were union members (down a paltry 0.7% from the previous year). Those trends are hardly new or unique to 2005/2006. You do the rest of the math.

A third, somewhat tangential set of facts that have come out recently (pardon the pun):

According to the [Massachusetts] Department of Public Health, 6,121 gay couples married in the first seven months after gay marriage became legal on May 17, 2004. In 2005, 2,060 gay couples married, and in 2006, the number declined to 1,427, down 31 percent from 2005. Through April 26 this year, only 87 gay couples have tied the knot... Of the 9,695 gay couples that have married in Massachusetts, women account for 6,209, or 64 percent.

I can find no mention of this information on the MA-DPH's website. Equally odd, a local gay rag quotes the New Orleans Times Picayune instead of any local sources. Why would the MA-DPH not publish this on its own website? Who knows. The sharp drop is not being denied by gay activists. Rather it is being 'spun' as a backlog that was bound to trail off. That may well be, but it avoids some other critical questions which I'll get to in a moment. First some context.

I've attended three of these 'events'. All were for homosexual couples who'd been together for some time (two female, one male--roughly paralleling the state statistics)... which is neither here nor there. In each case, I struggled to balance the implicit endorsement of my presence with the basics of civility to and love for close friends and family. It's not a slam-dunk either way. That's emphatically not what this post is about.

Reasonable people can and do disagree on the various layers of this complex subject and how best to respond to it--and more importantly, to the individuals involved. I've sometimes found myself disagreeing with my own views from the recent past. For the moment, I'm just trying to understand the only data we've got on what is undeniably a social experiment.

I find several things significant. First is that the 19,390 people involved in the 9,695 legally joined homosexual couples in this state represent a tiny fraction of the total population: 0.30% to be exact. (The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Massachusetts' total population at 6,437,193 in 2006.)

Out of the total marriage-age population (77.2% of the state is 18 or older), the percentage is a whopping 0.39%. If one were to be generous and exclude the over-65 population (13.3% of the state) for whom the marriage rate tends to be much lower, one gets to a towering 0.47% of the marriage-age population that's tied the knot under the same-sex marriage law here.

That kind of statistic gets tricky in a hurry. Here's how...

Depending on what statistic you choose to believe, the number of people who are married (i.e., conventionally) at any given time is somewhere around 50%, plus or minus 2-3% (state and national numbers are roughly the same). See here (xls), here (xls) or here (pdf) for different takes on the same number, grounded in U.S. Census data.

That either means that homosexuals are less than 1% of the population (a full order of magnitude less than what is generally claimed) or that they don't want to get married in near the same numbers as heterosexuals do. A third theory: that not enough time has passed since legalization for the numbers to reach heterosexual levels is, well... counter to the evidence.

The numbers incidate that the rate of marriage in the homosexual population will never even come remotely close to that of the heterosexual population unless there is a sudden reversal of what is now a very clear and sharp three-year declining trend. Annualizing the reported numbers, the homosexual marriage rate in Massachusetts has dropped as follows:

2004 to 2005: down 79.0%
2005 to 2006: down 30.7%
2006 to 2007: down 81.0%

Other 'spin' theories don't adequately explain that kind of a drop. They include:

- seasonality (tending to inflate the 2004 number and deflate the 2007 to-date number); this might soften the downward trend somewhat; it would not even come close to reversing it.

- harder for homosexuals to find one another (hard to believe in this state, particularly given the number of social venues, organizations and services catering to the gay community here)

- family and social stigmas inhibit some gay couples from tying the knot (again, a factor that may work at the margins; it's hard to credit as a wholesale explanation in this state in 2007)

All of which leaves us with two difficult-to-avoid explanations: 1) the gay population is much much smaller than we've previously been led to believe and/or 2) as a group, homosexuals, given the chance, would rather not commit to monogamy in near the same numbers as heterosexuals do. As the proverb says: be careful what you wish for...

Numbers... they're pesky things.

Three Faces of the Enemy

There are some phenomenally good posts at the top of the Watchers' Council voting this week. The clear winner (and deservedly so) is Dr. Sanity, with this long but not-to-be-missed analysis of Islam's treatment of women [warning, a few bits--mostly from her angry misogynist muslim male commenters--warrant an NC-17 rating] She concludes:

A culture that is viciously misogynistic creates both men and women who are severely dysfunctional in almost every sphere of human activity. Keep those comments and emails coming, boys! They are just more handy evidence of the pervasive psychopathological impairment that the followers of Islam seem inclined to embrace.

Next time I run into a left-leaning female who thinks we're not at war with Islam (or shouldn't be) and/or that she doesn't have a horse in this race, I'm directing her to Dr. Sanity's post. Michael Yon's piece this week ('Brave Men and Demons') is also not to be missed. He writes:

Terrorist attacks on children, while devastating to loved ones and witnesses, often backfire because those attacks so clearly show the true nature of the enemy. ...there is a huge difference between Coalition forces and the wanton, sociopath terrorist with no vestige of honor, who knows nothing but destruction and has no plan for the future other than the subjugation of others while on the path to some psychotic pathology inured by tribal culture and carcinogenic beliefs that will, if left untouched, leave people living in mud huts and slitting throats of historical enemies for another thousand years, or, if slightly more science-minded, leave them seeking nuclear weapons to reach out and destroy the world.

As someone who indulges in run-on sentences from time to time myself, I love his 90+ worder above. Bottom line: Any criticisms of our admittedly ex-post-facto and sometimes ad hoc plans for Iraq cannot exist in a vacuum. They must be compared with the available alternatives.

Joshuapundit takes on another side of the enemy--this one at home. He writes:

Have you ever noticed that people like Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat, Steve Emerson, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel or Robert Spencer rarely if ever appear at America's universities? ...almost every time any of them has appeared on campus, the Muslim students and their Angry Left allies have created a totally threatening atmosphere of intimidation and created such expensive and intense security problems, as well as potential liability for the universities that none of them would even dare allow speakers like that to ever return.

"Totally threatening atmosphere"? Gee, I'm confused. I thought the academic left was against things like intolerance and "threatening atmospheres" and intimidation of minority views and all that and for peaceful "dialogue". I guess those principles only apply when the opinions being expressed are coming from an officially sanctioned minority group or victim of "oppression".

P.S. to the Watchers Council: thanks for the nomination and the 2nd-place tie with Yon (totally undeserved after reading his piece). A better post on global warming hysteria is here.

UPDATE: Make that four faces. Just discovered this gem over at Breath of the Beast.

The Caliphate, by the way, is not the jolly, rollicking world of Walt Disney’s Aladdin. Nor is it even the hell on earth that was Afghanistan under the Taliban or the Insane purgatory of today’s Iran. The world-wide Caliphate is the entire earth gone mad. Women being beaten, hung and stoned to death for no other crime than having been raped by a gang of perverted Caliphists who have been raised to think of women not as human beings but as “meat” or weapons of the devil...

A cursory reading of Islamic history proves that the Caliphate idea deserves to be thrown into the same garbage dump of bad ideas and hideous failures that now holds Communism, Nazism and Manifest Destiny. Would it be peaceful as they claim? Well, we know that the track record is not good. The Prophet Mohammad established a vast and secure Caliphate across a great expanse of territory, yet as soon as Mohammed died people began murdering each other to determine his successor. Right down to the present day, the issue of who the true leader should be (and should have been) is the primary divider in the Islamic world. Shias and Sunnis kill many more of each other than Americans do of either over it; and the Sunni,/Shia divide is entirely derived from the original disagreement about who should have been the first Caliph after Mohammed. Still, some Muslims continue to believe that as soon as they get Israel out of the way and they take over the western governments by demographic means there will be a world-wide peaceful caliphate. That way lies ruin and madness.