If you're considering buying Norton security software (antivirus, antispyware, firewall), read this thread at TechRepublic. My experience with Norton wasn't terrible, but I had enough problems that I stopped using their products.
A 1995 piece both funny and touching from Dave Barry, about his son learning to drive.
Facts hardly matter in the Middle East (for Arabs, especially, facts are too terrible to contemplate). Beliefs trump all else. And tens of millions of Arabs and Persians already believe that Hezbollah's the victor.Israel has got to learn to see the world through the eyes of its enemies.
So have we.
In the next week, we'll learn that the administration has taken significant action against Iran, Syria or both. The action may or may not be military.
I have no evidence to support this prediction, only hope and a sense that the time is right. If it isn't borne out, and Bush and co. really are as feckless as they seem lately, then God help the West.
(Link via Power Line.)
Mark Steyn (temporary link) on a certain New York Times columnist and "Enrongate," from 1/27/02:
Ten days ago, a gazillion paragraphs deep into a butt-numbing roundup of developments in the scandal, the New York Times confirmed that in 1999 its star economics columnist Paul Krugman had received $50,000 for serving on Enron's advisory board. . . . Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton, has been one of the media's most ferocious Bush bashers and, since Enron went belly up, a tireless peddler of Bush-Enron linkage. Indeed, he has written about little else in recent weeks, always interpreting the scandal in line with his long-held beliefs about greedy plutocrats, slavering Republicans on the teats of their big donors, and helpless little guys getting stiffed by both.. . . The man who sneers at the malign influence of Enron money on Republican politicians - or, as he calls them "the people Enron put in the White House"- has received more money from Enron than any member of the House of Representatives. If he were in the Senate, where 71 of 100 members have been endowed with Enron moolah, he would rank in that crowded field as the third biggest beneficiary of the company's generosity.
. . . These days, he scoffs at those gullible chumps who fell for the company's shtick, gleefully mocking Business Week for hailing Enron as "more akin to Goldman Sachs than to Consolidated Edison" - the quintessential old-economy electric company. But, in fact, it was Krugman himself who first compared the company to Goldman Sachs, in a puff-piece for Fortune in May 1999 written while on the Enroll payroll and stopping just short of the full Monica.
Andrew Sullivan, eponymous host of andrewsullivan.com, unearthed the Fortune piece. He and Virginia Postrel (of dynamist.com) have both weighed in on Krugman's arrogant dissembling. But they're principally Internet commentators. What of the massed ranks of print pundits so certain of the corrupting influence of Enron cash on Dick Cheney? As of this writing, the only media columnist to make even a small reference to the story has been Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. Otherwise, from the commentariat, total silence. Objective observers might conclude that media cronyism is at least as big a problem as the political variety.
And they'd be right. . . . For pieces by interested parties, the New York Times usually supplies a helpful biographical note: "Daniel F. Becker is director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program." Why did it never occur to them, with Krugman sniping week in week out at Bush and Enron for two months, that it might be relevant to put at the bottom, "Professor Krugman served as a paid member of Enron's advisory board during 1999"? As it is, on the issue of Enron ethics, Krugman looks like an arrogant poseur and the pompous ethics bores of the Times like sanctimonious buffoons, and they have no one but themselves to blame.
I also like this, from a 1/13/02 piece (same link) about attempts to paint Enron's collapse as a Republican scandal:
[I]n terms of their political investments, Enron had a widely diversified portfolio: 71 of America's 100 Senators got cheques from the company, among them half the Democratic caucus, including Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. . . . In other words, if this is "another Whitewater", it's a bipartisan one: in Monica terms, it's as if, in between oral sex with the President, she was squeezing in bondage sessions with Newt Gingrich and rounding out the day lapdancing with Strom Thurmond.
Mark Steyn, 8/13/00:
It began when Ed Rendell, the National Committee chairman, observed last Saturday that "if Joe Lieberman was Episcopalian, I think he'd almost be a slam dunk" - ie, the Jew thing might cost the Dems a few votes. But then he expanded the thought: "I'm not sure that the people who would vote against us because Joe is Jewish aren't going to vote against us anyway" - ie, all the anti-Semites are Republicans, so, if we do pick Lieberman and people start criticising him, you'll know why.Now, some of us are reluctant to bring up the fact that most on-the-record anti-Semitism from public figures in the last few years comes from the Democratic side - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton - but fortunately we don't need to. On Monday, Lee Alcorn, the president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said:
If we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? We need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money.A white man would have to be insane to say that kind of thing on local radio, but a respected black spokesperson is quite happy to repeat it on national television. Mr Alcorn explained to the cameras that his remarks were "taken pretty much out of context" and reflected "something that is generally known about Jews".
From Walid Phares, on the urgency of Lebanon:
"As soon as a cease fire occurs, the ‘Hezbollah Blitzkrieg' will crumble the ‘Lebanese Republic of Weimar' and install its own ‘Khumeinist Republic' on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The consequences of such a development are far beyond imagination for the region and the world. Hezbollah would have paved the way for Iran to create the mother of all world threats since Hitler."
Also,
"It was terrible how the Lebanese politicians lost all the opportunities provided by the Cedars Revolution," laments Phares, "but it is worse that the bureaucrats in the U.S. and Europe didn't understand what Hezbollah was doing.". . . Phares argues that Washington and Brussels relied too much on a Lebanese cabinet which had been penetrated by Hezbollah.
"How can you have U.S. officials sitting with the Lebanese Cabinet in the presence of Hezbollah ministers and talk about the Lebanese Army disarming this organization? The naiveté' with which Hezbollah's offensive was dealt with is stunning."
The more I look at it, the more I am convinced that the plot in London is indeed connected to the much-discussed August 22nd Iranian "response" to our latest final proposal on their nuclear program. Metaphorically, it fits: lightning bolts in the skies, an epochal, world-changing event, as befits the terrorists' celebration of Mohammed's ride to heaven.. . . I think that other events were and are planned around the same date, in several different countries. Hardly anyone has noticed that the Germans found some bombs on their trains a few weeks ago. And I expect that other allies will either find, or be subjected to, terrorist acts.
Worth reading in full.
Of this sort of statement:
I will grant you that the Iraq war has been characterised, in conception and execution, by blunder after blunder.
That's Gerard Baker, a writer I like, in a column reminding the reader that the worldwide confrontation with jihad isn't the West's fault. I apologize for repeating myself, but: No doubt we've made many bad decisions in and regarding Iraq. Such was inevitable. No one had ever attempted what we have in Iraq, and an enormous, unprecedented undertaking will never go smoothly. Remember World War II?
Blunders were daily occurrences — resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq.
That's Victor Davis Hanson writing in July 2004 (emphasis in original) about a war we won. I'm not arguing that we were right to go into Iraq (I think we were) or that we should stay there (I'm starting to think we should leave). I'm arguing that commentators such as Baker, who cite mistakes but not successes and fail to specify what we should've and could've done instead, often seem smug beyond bearing.
(Baker link via Pajamas Media.)
I am not a member of any political party; I never vote in political elections; and I've long ago lost any and all hope of finding salvation in politics. Politics, in my view, is almost completely responsive to the prevailing public morality and ideology. As I wrote here, the American Constitution really isn't written on parchment; it's in Americans' hearts and minds. My goal is to contribute, in the best way that my modest talents permit, to changing ideas over the long-run.And we would do well to heed the lesson of this observation from historian Richard Pipes (found on page 10 of his book Property and Freedom [Knopf, 1999]): "But men who take pride in their pragmatism often follow trails cleared by idealists."
Left-wing anti-Israel sentiment is not confined to a few odd corners of the academic world; it has become a mass constituency in the Democratic Party.
(Via Scott Johnson.)
Joshua Davis in Wired:
His in-laws thought he’d lost his mind – this is no way to support a family. Foster had what to him seemed a perfectly reasonable rationale: “There are a lot of suckers out there.” And his spreadsheet proved it. Over the course of hundreds of games, simultaneously playing eight of them per hour on PartyPoker.com, he averaged $15 a game. (Despite all the talk of poker bots, his earnings held steady.) If he played 20 hours a week, that $15 per game would translate to about $125,000 a year for a part-time job.
So far he's doing fine.
On the Alzheimer's front:
Animal research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) indicates that apple juice consumption may actually increase the production in the brain of the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine, resulting in improved memory. . . .“We anticipate that the day may come when foods like apples, apple juice and other apple products are recommended along with the most popular Alzheimer’s medications,” says Thomas Shea, Ph.D., director of the UML Center for Cellular Neurobiology and Neurodegeneration Research.
(Via Randall Parker.)
*I don't know why, but it does.
We can't drag the Muslim world into the 21st century. If they want to return to (or remain in) the Middle Ages, they will. Our task is to avoid letting them take us along. One important step is to reduce our dependence on their oil. That's why this sort of article gets my attention:
The answer to the world's energy needs may have been under our feet all this time, according to Jefferson Tester, professor of chemical engineering at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Tester says heat generated deep within the earth by the decay of naturally occurring isotopes has the potential to supply a tremendous amount of power — thousands of times more than we now consume each year.
Lots of skepticism in the comments, but . . . wouldn't it be great?
(Via The Oil Drum.)
(Via The Energy Blog.)
The question of the killing of children in a just war is not the same as the question of the killing of children in an unjust war. It is easy to arrive at moral clarity about the evil done in a wrong cause. A wrong war must be opposed even when no such outrages occur, even when it is conducted with humanitarian diligence. . . . I do not see that one can fairly oppose the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah without asking a state to acquiesce in a mortal danger to itself, and a region to acquiesce in the ascendancy of jihadism.
(Emphasis added.) Diligence is "steady effort" or "attentive care." Israel has consistently demonstrated both; mistakes, even terrible mistakes, aren't evidence to the contrary, and are in fact inevitable in war. What Wieseltier means by "humanitarian diligence" is instead "humanitarian perfection," such as bombing campaigns that kill or wound only enemy combatants. Considering Hezbollah's practice of launching missiles from areas populated by civilians, "humanitarian perfection" is an impossible standard. Wieseltier admits as much. Though I'm glad he understands Israel's dilemma and comes down on the right side, I wish he'd been more judicious in his phrasing.
(Via Clive Davis.)
Hezbollah will be successful if it suffers anything less than destruction of its military capacity. Israel would have no credible deterrent left if it cannot deal with 5,000 Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel without ground deterrence will be a magnet to teeming swarms of Islamic terrorists, sweeping away the relatively restrained, neighbouring Muslim governments as they approach.
However this war turns out, Israel will remain "a magnet to teeming swarms of Islamic terrorists." Radical Muslims rarely choose to build when they can fight, and as long as Israel exists they'll have an enemy to hand.
(Via Pajamas Media.)
