Hugo

Am I the only person worried about what’s happening in Venezuela? Hugo Chavez just got his legislature to grant him almost unlimited personal power — including the power to remove his Constitutional term limits, which of course he’s already talking about.

Hugo is following a well-trod path to dictatorship — precisely the same path followed by a fellow named Adolf Hitler, and very similar to the path followed a few years later by Fidel Castro.

But this time, the newly-minted dictator has been the darling of the American left (which is conspicuously quiet about recent developments in Venezuela) for the past several years. They didn’t stop toasting Hugo until last week, when he started talking about how he was about to nationalize the over $34B in American investments in Venezuela.

Oops. Looks like the left hitched themselves up to another bad boy…I wonder how they’ll wriggle out of this one?

But forget the petty politics for a moment. We’ve suddenly got a rather bad actor not far south of our borders, and he’s no longer got any internal restraints on his behavior. He’s got a lot of oil-generated wealth at his disposal. He has a substantial and modernly-armed military. He has a close and open relationship with Cuba, Iran, and Libya. He openly proclaims his objective of ridding the world of “American tyranny”.

What the hell are we going to do about this wacko on the Caribbean?

A prediction: Iran will build nuclear-capable missile sites in Venezuela.

What will we do about that?

And why aren’t we hearing much about this in the media? Hugo is a clear and present danger to the U.S. homeland — but you’d sure never get that from the news! What gives here?

Ban the Bulb?

Do I still want to live in California?

I actually asked myself that question after reading about the latest lizard-brained idea from Sacremento. One of our liberal, Democrat, environmentalist-wacko, Gore-infected legislators introduced a bill to ban the incandescent light bulb in California. The bill would phase in the ban, which would take complete effect in 5 years.

And the pundits say it’s likely to pass, and almost certain to get the Governator’s signature.

This is completely plausible to me. The sheeple of California (meaning the majority of adults of voting age: left-leaning, uninformed, and apathetic) will likely listen to the bleating about how incandescent bulbs are guilty of wasting an enormous amount of energy, about how compact fluorescent bulbs put out the same amount of light but use much less energy, last longer, and cost less. They’ll hear all that, and then like the unthinking, uninformed, and unobservant sheep that they are, they’ll say “Yeah, that sounds good!” and re-elect those same legislators again — those legislators that are, brick-by-brick, building a nanny state that is removing one freedom after another from us.

"What on earth is Tom ranting about now?", some of you may say. Well, for background, read this. But here’s the bottom line: incandescent bulbs are superior to compact fluorescent bulbs with respect to the quality of the light they emit. To use simpler words: our artificially illuminated world looks better with incandescent bulbs. But if the legislators prevail (as it appears they will), I will be forced to use inferior lamps, or risk criminal prosecution after the “light bulb police” catch me using bulbs I bought from another state.

The right way to handle this would be to allow the market to control the “problem”. Many people already choose to use compact fluorescent lamps — either as a replacement for all their incandescent bulbs, or only for those where the aesthetics don’t matter much. They do it, I’m sure, to save money. I do this myself in my home. The higher the price of electricity (and therefore the greater savings from compact fluorescent lamps), the more people will do this. That’s the right way — let each individual make up their own mind, based on the value of high quality light to them.

For example, when I’m working on my hobbies, the quality of the light is vital to me. Sacremento is going to tell me that I can’t have my halogen desk lamp. That means that I will either have to work on my hobbies only in daylight (doesn’t work well in the winter!), or I will have to become a light bulb criminal.

Or leave.

Enough of this sort of crap, and I am outta here. I wonder which state is the least likely to engage in this sort of nanny-statism?

Anti-Icky-Poo

We just ordered some of this, on the recommendation of an animal trainer who says it works great. If I’d ever stumbled across it before, I’d have ordered it just because of the name!

From their web site:

Whether you spell it with a hyphen or without, its still the absolute best odor eliminator on the market. There are probably more animal behaviorists and veterinarians recommending Anti-Icky-Poo than any other odor eliminator available today.

Whether you have a cat urine odor, a dog urine odor, a human urine odor or any other organic odor, AIP can come to your rescue.

Why wait another day for a solution to your odor problems. Even skunk odor, musk or how about lady bug odors. We had a client call with a problem of thousands of lady bugs that died underneath her deck. With Anti-Icky-Poo the problem was solved in days.

Once we get it and try it out, we’ll let you know if it worked for us…

Quote of the Day

From C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I suspect Mr. Lewis would have made a fine libertarian…

Silly, Silly, Silly...

Today is garbage day — time to load up all the week’s trash into the back of my pickup, and drive it down the hill to where the garbage truck can pick it up. During this chore, I flipped on the radio and listened to the news…and I heard this story, which struck me as a crystalline example of all the silliness and unseriousness of current American politics. The story:

Senator Barack Obama used to be known to his friends and employers as “Barry” Obama. His birth certificate says Barack, but that name was apparently a little too alien to be easily accepted. So Barack turned himself into “Barry", and so he was known for years, as a law professor and as a Senator. Recently, however, “Barack” is apparently striking the public as exotic and kind of cool, so the Senator is transforming himself back into Barack — asking the press, his friends, and his co-workers to refer to him by that name.

There are two “sillies” here.

The first one is that a candidate should think that his name would make any difference at all to his political success. It’s a very loud statement that he believes form matters more than substance. That’s silly. That’s unserious politics. And that is, unfortunately, quite typical for a national-level American politician today.

The second silly is that the candidate is probably right. The American electorate probably does react to someone’s name; there probably is some measurable level of impact to his appeal to voters based on his “new” name. That’s silly. That’s unserious. And that is, unfortunately, all too typical of the American electorate’s participation in the political process.

Decades of dumbed-down schools and lower average achievement, a half-century of television sucking the IQ from our population’s brains, thirty five years of rapid drift towards socialism — we’re reaping our reward now.

If this foreshadows the kind of political discourse we can expect in the 2008 Presidential campaign, I may just tune out all together, and dedicate this site to slide rules!

Update: Just a few minutes after I posted this, I read a news story with this little tidbit: the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has deliberated on a profound problem facing America, and they have come up with an answer. The problem? Representatives coming in for their first term of office were traditionally called “freshmen” Representatives. This sexist, biased, and obviously offensive term. The solution, arrived at after appropriate hearings and debate: newly-elected Representatives are heretofore to be known as “new Representatives.

This is the kind of issue that our legislators think belongs at the top of their agenda. They don’t want to waste their time on issues like immigration, crime, health care, social security, or the war in Iraq. No sirree, our lawmakers are gonna spend their time on important things!

Sheesh. You just can’t make up something worse than the reality…

Six Years

On March 8th last year, Marcos Olguin was driving a van carrying 20 illegal immigrants. The van wasn’t being chased by law enforcement or border control; he was just driving from the mountains to the east toward Oceanside, where he was to deliver the smuggled illegal immigrants.

After driving down Honey Springs Road (familiar to anyone from Jamul), he turned onto State 94 — at 55 MPH, an outrageously and recklessly high speed for that right-angle turn. The predictable result: the van flipped, spewing its human occupants. In the over-stuffed van, the immigrants were mostly sitting on the floor, not wearing seat belts.

One woman — pregnant — was killed at the scene, pinned under the van while badly injured. Another woman died later at the hospital. Everybody in the van was injured; some have permanent brain damage, some are physically disabled, some are blind. “The human toll of the crime is staggering,” the prosecutor (Christopher Ott) said. Indeed.

Yesterday federal judge William Q. Hayes rejected the five year sentence requested jointly by the prosecutor and the defense. Instead, he sentenced Olguin to six years.

Two people killed, over a dozen injured, during the commission of a crime — and the sentence is just six years. Whether the objective of the sentence is to act as a deterrent, or to punish the perpetrator, this is an appallingly lenient (and therefore ineffective) outcome. Listen to the perpetrator himself:

“Sometimes we make wrong choices, not because we don’t know the difference between right and wrong, but because we don’t pay attention to the consequences,” Olguin told a San Diego federal judge.

Will Olguin pay attention to these consequences? Will anyone else?

This is yet another example of a peculiar (to me, anyway) view of accountability we have in our system of justice. We hold criminals less accountable when they cause death and injury as a consequence of intentional recklessness rather than intentional violence. I’ve never been able to understand that distinction myself. We also hold drivers less responsible for the consequences of their recklessness with automobiles than we do with their recklessness with other potentially dangerous behavior. You can bet that if those people had been killed and injured because of any other reckless behavior by Olguin, the outcome would have been different. Again, this is a distinction I’ve never understood. And of course one can’t help but suspect that if the victims had been wealthy, white American citizens that the outcome would also have been different.

As if all the preceding wasn’t bad enough, another twisted bit emerged from this story: Olguin was a meth addict at the time of this crime. He asked the judge to allow him to serve his sentence in a Wisconsin penitentiary — so that he could be with his father, who is serving a 30-year sentence in a methamphetamine conspiracy.

Libertarians (like myself) argue that the restrictions the U.S. has placed on immigration and drugs are (a) contrary to the intent and spirit of our country’s founders, and (b) are the biggest engines of crime in our society. This story amply illustrates those points… If immigration was unrestricted, those people would never have been in the van in the first place. There wouldn’t have been any criminal “underground railroad” to bring them here — they’d have arrived via normal (and safe) transportation systems. If drugs were unrestricted, Olguin wouldn’t be motivated — driven — to high-paying, high-risk criminal behavior to pay for his drug habit. Instead, he’d be in the same boat as alcohol addicts are today — his drug of choice would be inexpensive and legally available, but there would be support mechanisms, help available, as needed, for addicts and abusers. Our society has made an arbitrary and capricious choice to make one drug legal (e.g., alcohol) and another illegal (e.g., meth) — with awful results for our society. And, along the way, restricting an individual freedom…

Unarius Revisited

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the Unarius organization — our local “space cadets”. The photo at right is of Ruth Norman, aka “Uriel", who led the Unarians for many years. That post prompted quite a few emailed questions, the majority of which asked me if this was a spoof (it is not). At the time I wrote it, there was little information available on the web. Since then, much more information has become available. And in my never-ending quest to satisfy my reader’s curiousity, I give you:

A new Wikipedia article about Unarius, written from a credulous perspective.

Three YouTube videos, here, here, and here. You know you want to hear the Unarian choir singing “Spaceship Earth” — not to mention Uriel, er, explaining, um, stuff.

And these two blog posts (here and here) are chock-a-block full of photos that are well worth perusing…

One of the most frightening things about living in Lawson Valley is that these folks own land here. For their spaceport. I’m not kidding.

Friedman Speaks On

Milton Friedman died late last year (November 16th), at age 94. He was an economist extraordinaire and the “intellectual father” of present-day Estonia’s economic miracle. He was active in his profession right to the very end. In today’s Wall Street Journal, an email interview ($) with Mr. Friedman appears. The entire thing is quite interesting, but this particular question and answer leapt off the page:

WSJ: What is the biggest risk to the world economy: America’s deficits? Energy insecurity? Environment? Terrorism? None of the above?

Friedman: Islamofascism, with terrorism as its weapon.

Somehow in all the thinking I’ve done about the “Islamofascist” threat, the economic threat never jumped out at me. But it does make sense — look at the incredible economic impact that 9/11 had. And consider the impact of, say, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, or the closing of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, or, for that matter, a dirty bomb in (say) Washington D.C.

There are days when that last thought seems almost attractive, though…

Political Weather

Via Melanie Morgan, an interesting revelation about recent goings-on at the Weather Channel. Here’s an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:

Emotional weather forecasting?

The Weather Channel is launching a new website and broadband channel dedicated solely to global warming called “One Degree” and has a weekly program called “The Climate Code,” devoted almost entirely to liberal advocacy on climate matters.

The network is running advertisements showcasing scared and confused Americans, including children and senior citizens, wondering about the coming apocalypse caused by global warming. (You can view the ad for yourself here.)

The chief martyr for the new “emotional” approach to broadcasting at The Weather Channel is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who serves as the network’s cheerleader for global warming hysteria. Cullen’s supposed expertise on climatology includes, among other things, earning a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. One must indeed have to believe in the mystical to accept anything Ms. Cullen has to say about climatology.

Writing for the One Degree blog, Ms. Cullen recently threw a hissy fit that some meteorologists are openly questioning the conclusions drawn by the Greenpeace crowd about the nature, extent, causes and even existence of global warming.

Cullen’s diatribe, titled “Junk Controversy Not Junk Science,” called on the American Meteorological Society to start requiring all meteorologists to toe the line on liberal interpretation of global warming, or else lose the organization’s certification.

George Orwell’s 1984 couldn’t have concocted a better form of thought control.

This situation at the Weather Channel is a lovely example of the challenges that face ordinary people who would like to get objective information about a controversial topic.

It’s perfectly reasonable, I think, for people to have a default expectation that a television channel called “The Weather Channel” would supply objective information about weather. Reasonable, but (as Melanie’s story shows) completely erroneous. So a credulous viewer of the Weather Channel can be forgiven for making the assumption that what’s being presented there is either factual, or is the current consensus of meteorology.

But that assumption is wrong.

Like any other commercial broadcaster whose revenues are derived from advertising, the Weather Channel chooses its programming in the manner it believes will maximize the number of viewers (because advertising rates, and therefore revenue, are determined by audience size). What view of global warming would attract the most viewers: (a) global warming is caused by mankind’s activities and disasters are imminent, or (b) we’re not sure if there even is global warming, much less what caused it or what the consequences might be. I’m pretty sure that the answer is (a) — even though that is not the consensus of meteorologists.

The Weather Channel’s best interests are not served by accurately portraying the science of meteorology. Understand that, and it’s easy to be skeptical of anything they tell you.

But it gets worse, as I’ve blogged about before. Meteorology is in a curious state at the moment; a state that is guaranteed to warp the scientific results. The problem is that the majority of funding for meteorologists is going to those who are studying global warming. Especially large amounts are going to those who are building models that can help predict future climate trends and weather events. The scientists who receive these funds are human, and they have a vested interest in having those funds continue to pour into their efforts. Any hint that global warming is a less dramatic process, or that it is caused more by Mother Nature than mankind, is a direct threat to their funding. How do you think they react to that? Of course they are defensive, and of course they will loudly proclaim the value of what they do.

So the science gets warped; always in such situations there is a bias towards that science result that generates the most funding. Right now, in meteorology, that’s global warming caused by (and fixable by) mankind.

You won’t hear that on the Weather Channel, because that doesn’t help them get more viewers.

What’s an average Joe to do? How can any observer hope to sort all this stuff out, and figure out what to believe and how to assess the relative risks? To even more specific, how’s an American citizen supposed to figure out whether it’s more important to spend tax dollars on (say) fixing the Social Security structural problems, or on addressing global warming?

I’ve only found one answer to this: to actively practice skepticism. This implies all sorts of things, but perhaps more than anything it implies a lack of credulity (i.e., don’t just believe what you’re told), an active search for opposing views, and a reliance on evidence and successful prediction.

With respect to global warming, a skeptic will find that the evidence is beyond skimpy. When you read the global warming proponents, you’ll find lots and lots of future projections and darned little solid evidence — and there are plenty of different opinions amongst scientists on the interpretation of what little evidence there is. A little searching on the web will also yield (as I have blogged about before) well-credentialed and respected meteorologists who are skeptical of the validity of the models that support global warming.

In fact, those models suffered a rather spectacular failure this year — and of course this failure was not widely reported in the mainstream media (that’s not the sort of thing that attracts new viewers). Those models predicted a terrible hurricane season this year; as bad or even worse than last year’s. Instead we had a very mild hurricane season. So, in plain English, the models that global warming advocates are relying on to support their case for the disasters that will be visited on us in the coming decades — those models failed miserably to predict something happening six months in the future. Why should we believe those models are correct?

From a skeptic’s perspective, the notion that global warming is caused by mankind’s activities is simply not a proven case. We can’t say with certainty that it’s wrong, mind you — but we for darned sure can’t say that it’s right, either. And I, for one, would like to know that the vast sums of money and resources our government proposes to spend on mitigating global warming would actually have some positive effect before we start spending it. And I’d also like to have a rational public discourse on the relative priorities of the various things the government could spend money on.

There I go, fantasizing again…

Ellison and the Quran

Here’s an interesting look at some history most Americans have forgotten. We’ve been facing a threat from some Muslims for a very long time:

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison’s swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America’s founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson’s Quran because it showed that “a visionary like Jefferson” believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be “gleaned” from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic “Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

Ellison’s use of Jefferson’s Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic “Barbary” states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the “non-Muslim” older men and women as possible so the preferred “booty” of only young women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created “eunuch stations” along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers” — an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled “through the medium of war.” He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the “Dey of Algiers” ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey’s ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea."

It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Jefferson had been right. The “medium of war” was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a “visionary” wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

Tip o’the hat to Dick F…

Saying Goodbye

How a Marine says goodbye.

What could I possibly add to this?

Indian Eviction

Our local Indian tribe is trying to build a casino that will occupy their entire six-acre reservation. Two members — a significant percentage of this tiny little tribe — disagree with the tribe’s majority, and have refused to move off the reservation. So the tribe’s leadership is having them evicted.

From the San Diego Union Tribune:

The Jamul Indian band Wednesday moved to evict the last remaining occupants of this tiny reservation – two dissidents who oppose the tribe and its casino plans.

Going through a regional intertribal court, the East County tribe issued eviction notices to Walter Rosales, 59, and Karen Toggery, 51, who have longtime ties to the tribe but are not officially enrolled.

The tribe wants them off the land so it can start building a $200 million casino that is fiercely opposed by most neighboring residents.

You can read the rest of the article at the link above.

Just over a year ago, I met and spoke with Walter Rosales (and posted about it here). He’s a quiet and soft-spoken man, and seemed confident at the time that he would prevail and the casino would not be built. Their fight is not over, and (the Indian’s propaganda machine notwithstanding) the casino is still not a “sure thing”. But I can’t imagine that being evicted from his home is a pleasant — or hopeful — even for Walter and Karen. It seems so un-American for anyone to have eminent domain used to toss them out of their houses purely for someone’s monetary gain — though in this post-Kelo world, that’s exactly what all homeowners are now at risk of (though Kelo, of course, has nothing to do with Walter’s situation). The salt in this already awful wound is that the money-maker is a casino, and that the evictors are Walter and Karen’s fellow tribe members — people they all know well, for their community is tiny.

At this point I suspect this matter has gone so far that the Jamul Indian Tribe is never going to be able to heal some of these wounds. If the casino is built as the majority plan, they will, I’m sure, lose Walter and Karen — and they’ll be in for a long-term adversarial relationship with the rest of the community in the town of Jamul (where the vast majority of the residents vehemently oppose the casino). If the casino is stopped, for whatever reason, I’d imagine the Indian community will have a hard time reconciling their differences. If nothing else, being evicted from their homes will be a hard thing for Walter and Karen to forget. And I’d imagine the tribal casino proponents will have a hard time forgiving those who killed their dream of casino wealth. Even if it isn’t one of Walter and Karen’s actions that eventually stops the casino, those two will be associated with the effort.

It’s very sad, isn’t it, to see a community torn apart by undiluted greed? Tribal propaganda aside, clearly the only reason to bring a casino to Jamul is to make money. Equally clearly the tribe hopes to make their share of the profits — why else would most of them agree to abandon their own homes? One could make the argument — as the tribe does — that they’re just pursuing the American dream. But one could also make the observation that usually the American dream is pursued by means that don’t require evictions and the alienation of an entire town.

Of course, I’m writing that as though Kelo didn’t exist. But Kelo does exist. And if Hilton decided that my property was the ideal place to build their East County resort, and could persuade the county government of the tax benefits to them doing so — I could find myself on the wrong side of an eviction notice, thanks to Kelo. Because I live so far out in the boonies, I think — I hope — such an event is exceedingly unlikely. But any of you living closer to civilization are much more at risk…

Close The Blinds

Some years ago (more than I want to think about at the moment) I read a book about the propaganda used to influence public opinion. The book covered the period of World War II through Vietnam. One of the examples cited in that book was a piece of American propaganda circulated in the year or so prior to our entry into World War II. The context of the times is largely forgotten by all except students of history. The majority of the American public were opposed to involvement in “Europe’s war", and the Japanese menace seemed isolated to exotic and far away places that didn’t seem important to the average Joe. America’s political leadership had a decidedly more mixed mindset, with a great many American leaders believing it was essential for America to join the fight — essential for our security, as these leaders saw Germany and Japan as looming threats. You may recall that FDR famously (or notoriously) stretched the limits of his authority to the very edge, and pulled all sorts of political shenanigans, to muster support for the Allies in Europe, most especially the Lend-Lease program that proved so vital for England and the Soviet Union.

In that context, a piece of very effective propaganda was circulated in the United States by proponents of America’s entry into the war. I don’t recall whether this was an “official” piece of propaganda, or even if it was of government origin — it may well have been the product of private groups with similar beliefs. The general story line was this: a father stood at a window of his home with his young son, using the neighborhood visible in front of them to explain why it was essential for America to take action sooner rather than later. Hitler, Chamberlain, and the consequences of appeasement were all major parts of the father’s parable.

This morning, my mother sent me an email that’s circulating on the Internet, with a parable that appears to be the direct descendant of that piece of World War II propaganda. Like its ancestor, it features a father and his son, standing at their window, talking about the necessity of active intervention to deal with bad actors on the world’s stage. But this newer version is cast in the present, with Saddam playing the role that Hitler did in the earlier piece, and with the consequences of appeasement and passivity featuring prominently.

Here it is:

The other day, my nine-year-old son wanted to know why we were at war…

My husband looked at our son and then looked at me. My husband and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be honored to serve and defend our country again today. I knew that my husband would give him a good explanation. My husband thought for a few minutes and then told my son to go stand in our front living room window.

He said, “Son, stand there and tell me what you see?"

"I see trees and cars and our neighbors' houses,” he replied.

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the United States of America and you are President Bush."

Our son giggled and said, “OK."

"Now, son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that every house and yard on this block is a different country,” my husband said.

"OK Dad, I’m pretending."

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and pretend you see Saddam come out of his house with his wife, he has her by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are screaming and crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they are kids and they are a fraid of their father. You see all of this, son.... what do you do?"

"Dad?"

"What do you do, son?"

"I’d call the police, Dad."

"OK. Pretend that the police are the United Nations. They take your call. They listen to what you know and saw but they refuse to help. What do you do then, son?"

"Dad....... but the police are supposed to help!” My son starts to whine.

"They don’t want to, son, because they say that it is not their place or your place to get involved and that you should stay out of it,” my husband says.

"But, Dad… he killed her!!” My son exclaims.

"I know he did… but the police tell you to stay out of it. Now I want you to look out that window and pretend you see our neighbor who you’re pretending is Saddam turn around and do the same thing to his children."

"Daddy… he kills them?"

"Yes, son, he does. What do you do?"

"Well, if the police don’t want to help, I will go and ask my next door neighbor to help me stop him,” our son says.

"Son, our next door neighbor sees what is happening and refuses to get involved as well. He refuses to open the door and help you stop him,” my husband says.

"But Dad, I NEED help!!! I can’t stop him by myself!!"

"WHAT DO YOU DO, SON?” Our son starts to cry.

"OK, no one wants to help you, the man across the street saw you ask for help and saw that no one would help you stop him. He stands taller and puffs out his chest. Guess what he does next, son?"

"What, Daddy?"

"He walks across the street to the old lady’s house and breaks down her door and drags her out, steals all her stuff and sets her house on fire and then… he kills her. He turns around and sees you standing in the window and laughs at you. WHAT DO YOU DO?"

"Daddy...."

"WHAT DO YOU DO?” Our son is crying and he looks down and he whispers, “I’d close the blinds, Daddy."

My husband looks at our son with tears in his eyes and asks him. “Why?"

"Because, Daddy… the police are suppo sed to help people who need them…and they won’t help… You always said neighbors are supposed to HELP neighbors, but they won’t help either… they won’t help me stop him…I’m afraid.... I can’t do it by myself, Daddy . I can’t look out my window and just watch him do all these terrible things and do nothing … so ..... I’m just going to close the blinds … so I can’t see what he’s doing . And I’m going to pretend that it is not happening."

I start to cry. My husband looks at our nine-year-old son standing in the window, looking pitiful and ashamed at his answers to my husband’s questions. He says....

"Son....."

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Open the blinds, because that man...... he’s at your front door… “WHAT DO YOU DO?"

My son looks at his father, anger and defiance in his eyes. He balls up his tiny fists and looks his father square in the eyes, and without hesitation he says, “I DEFEND MY FAMILY DAD!!! I’M NOT GONNA LET HIM HURT MOMMY OR MY SISTER, DAD!!! I’M GONNA FIGHT HIM, DAD, I’M GONNA FIGHT HIIM!!!!!"

I see a tear roll down my husband’s cheek and he grabs our son to his chest and hugs him tight, and says.... “It’s too late to fight him, he’s too strong, and he’s already at YOUR front door, son… you should have stopped him BEFORE he killed his wife, and his children, and the old lady across the way. You have to do what’s right, even if you have to do it alone, before it’s too late,” my husband whispers. “THAT scenario I just gave you is WHY we are at war with Iraq. When good men stand by and let evil happen, son, THAT is the greatest mistake, believing that the atrocities in the world won’t affect them. “YOU MUST NEVER BE AFRAID TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT! EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALONE! BE PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN! BE PROUD OF OUR TROOPS!! SUPPORT THEM!!! SUPPORT AMERICA SO THAT IN THE FUTURE OUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER HAVE TO CLOSE THEIR BLINDS…"

In these days of the Internet and “personal publishing", anyone at all could have created this piece of propaganda, and the email list forwarders will do the rest for free. This could be acted, videotaped, and posted on YouTube. It can be repeated on blogs (like this one!). All sides of an issue have equal access. One can easily imagine a similar propaganda parable being constructed from the perspective of someone opposed to interventionism — and that parable, in whatever form, could be distributed equally effectively, for free.

This got me to pondering… What happens to the effectiveness of propaganda when all sides of the issue being propagandized have equal access? In Nazi Germany, the government’s propaganda had nearly exclusive access to the media; the vast majority of the population heard only their propaganda. In the U.S. the access wasn’t nearly as one-sided, but still it was true that pro-government propaganda dominated. Surely in both cases it must be true that the effectiveness of the propaganda was amplified by the homogeneity of the position presented…

Whereas on the Internet one thing you can say with certainty is that the political viewpoints expressed are not homogeneous. I am exposed regularly to leftish propaganda, rightish propaganda (like this one), wacko propaganda … just about any flavor of propaganda imaginable. Surely it must be true that all of the propaganda is less effective in this environment…

I think this is a good thing. This propaganda piece, shorn of its emotional jabs, would simply be a parable explaining the case for interventionism in terms everybody can understand — a good communications tool. With all its propagandistic accouterments, it’s one of the zillions of such pieces “out there” on all sides of just about any issue imaginable — and nowhere near as effective as its ancestral piece was in its own context…

Modern Begging

I’m up in San Francisco at the moment for some business meetings. I stayed at a hotel on Geary Street last night, near the train station at Market and Powell streets. Early this morning I walked down from the hotel to the train station to catch a ride to the office.

Just outside the train station a man in a business suit approached me. He was clean-cut, carrying a briefcase, and at first glance looked like exactly what he claimed to be — a businessman whose wallet was stolen and who desperately needed fare to either get home or get to work. He asked me for $4.25 to get him to work, which was cheaper.

Call me cynical, but something just didn’t seem right about this scenario. In particular, I had a hard time imagining that any mature professional businessman would ever behave the way this guy was behaving. So I took a closer look and noticed that his hands were quite dirty. Then I looked at the police report he’d been waving to validate his assertion about a stolen wallet — and I saw that it was dated in 2004, and was for a vagrancy offense.

So I asked this fellow to show me what was in his briefcase, and that earned me a dirty look. But unknown to this guy, a cop had walked up behind him, and just then he said “Go ahead, Chucky — show him what you’ve got.” Chucky opened his briefcase, and what was inside isn’t what you’d expect from a businessman. Not quite. There were some filthy clothes all wadded up; a bottle of some cheap booze, half gone; a couple of crumpled black plastic bags; and what looked like $20 or so in coin. Chucky left, indignant; I talked to the cop for a moment. He told me that the beggars were getting more and more inventive with both their stories and their props, and Chucky was a completely typical example of this. Chucky has been in this businessman-in-distress role for several months, and apparently it was working fairly well for him. His big error, according to the cop, is it ran his routine at the same train station day after day, so all the commuters using that station knew all about Chucky.

There are no Chuckies in Jamul that I am aware of…

Strange Phenomena

Last night it was unusually cold — about 26 or 27 Fahrenheit at ground level, and this cold was sustained for several hours. The produced a couple of phenomena that we’re just plain not used to out here in Jamul!

One phenomenon was that our bird waterer froze solid. The tray is about an inch and a half deep. The dripper (which runs day and night) creates an almost perfect situation for icicle formation — a steady supply of liquid water dripping onto a surface that’s below freezing temperature. You can see the result — nice, big, long icicles. In Jamul! The birds appeared to be a bit puzzled by the ice — they’re very used to the waterer, and this morning they’re there trying to drink, as usual. They look quite surprised when they can’t drink the ice!

The other phenomenon was orange tap water — bright rust color. Debbie spotted it first, at our kitchen tap; she called out “Tom, something is really wrong here!” After a little investigation, I discovered that it was both the hot and cold water, and after a while it ran clear again. I speculate that the cold temperatures either partially froze our pipes (a short length copper and PVC pipes are exposed to the air outside, and we have 50' or so of copper pipe in the unheated attic), or caused an unusually large shrinkage — and in either case broke loose some of the mineral deposits on the inside of the pipe. But that’s just speculation — for all I know, some plumbing disaster awaits us!

It’s supposed to be just as cold tonight…

Scrap Thieves

A fellow Jamulian wrote me last night with some interesting information. It seems that there has been a rash of thefts of two sorts in the area…

One sort is thefts of metal scrap (primarily copper, I think). In the recent case of Bob Orlosky and the murder of Charles Crow, one of the possibilities raised is that Charles Crow and the other two people in their vehicle were raiding Bob Orlosky’s scrap yard — or that Bob believed they were doing so, accurately or not. Several of my readers commented that there had been other thefts of scrap, including just a few days before the murder on Bob Orlosky’s property.
Now I’ve learned that Robby Ivy (a long-time resident of Lawson Valley, and the fellow who provided the land for the Lawson Valley fire station) was robbed of some scrap metal (copper wire) just this week. Sheriff’s Deputy Brown handled the case, and told Robby that such thefts have been occurring recently all over the Jamul area.
The other sort is thefts of oak wood (for firewood). This happens every winter as the demand for firewood increases; the prices of $200 or more for a cord of wood attracts a certain low class of people with a chain saw and a truck — apparently whether or not they have any rights to the wood. Recently the gate at the base of Hilary Road (a road on private land in Lawson Valley) was torn up so that a truck could get through. The oak thieves didn’t even take the down, dead wood — instead, they cut down some of our beautiful (and threatened) live oaks. These scum make my blood boil…and bring to mind a refrain from a fellow blogger, appropriately modified:

Oak tree. Rope. Oak thief.
Some assembly required.

The floor is open (in the comments) for good ideas about how to address this plague. Meanwhile, I’m cleaning and maintaining my weapons, making certain I have plenty of ammunition on hand, and thinking about how to turn our field spaniels into vicious thief-biters!

Politics

A couple of my loyal readers (in other words, about three quarters of them) have written to ask why my political blogging has virtually stopped, and how I’m feeling about recent political events. I’ll answer with these words of wisdom…

Mark Twain: Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.

Winston Churchill: I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

George Bernard Shaw: A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

James Bovard: Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Douglas Casey: Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

P. J. O’Rourke: Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Frederic Bastiat: Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Ronald Reagan: Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Will Rogers: I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

P. J. O’Rourke: If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.

Voltaire: In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

Pericles (in 430 B.C.!): Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

Mark Twain: No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Anonymous: Talk is cheap . .. except when Congress does it.

Winston Churchill: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Cuyamaca Hike

Yesterday four of us (Debbie, myself, Jim Barnick, and his girlfriend Michelle) took a short hike up the maintenance road from Paso Picacho campground toward Cuyamaca Peak. We didn’t make it all the way up — this was our first hike of the season, and we weren’t quite up to an 1,700 foot elevation change. Also, as we got closer to the top the conditions got icier and snowier (although the air temperature was quite pleasant); we met people coming down bundled up like Arctic explorers, using ski poles to help them stay upright. And we could see footprints of people wearing ice cleats — not a good sign.

We also had Miki the wonder-puppy along for the hike, and he had a wonderful time. He especially enjoyed the snow and ice along the road. There was a puppy “ah ha!” moment along the trail when he figured out that he could eat snow; after that he was happily munching snow and licking the ice all along the trail. And at one point he was carrying around a small snowball on his back. My theory is that the squirrels threw a snowball at him, but I don’t think anyone else was buying that… We saw deer prints in the snow, and we saw deer several places around the mountain — the very first time since the Cedar Fire in October 2003. We’re hoping that this portends a return of the wildlife to Cuyamaca, especially the mountain lions and bobcats (we still haven’t seen any of them since the fire). This past year, and on this trip, we have seen many very healthy-looking hawks — so the rodents must be back in force. It looks like the wildlife is returning…

So we made it up almost to the “saddle", just below the final 500' or so push to the peak, just at the edge of the area where most of the trees were saved from the Cedar Fire (just over three years ago now). The area we walked through was nearly devoid of living trees — it had been an almost pure conifer forest, and except for a few cedars whose tops have survived, they are all burned. On this walk, you’re in a tree graveyard, with skeletons of dead trees still poking into the sky all around. A few seem to have fallen on their own as they decompose; many more have been cut down. The cut trees are being chipped, or harvested for fencing or firewood. If you like forests and trees, it’s a very somber and sad sight…

Jim and Michelle have been “an item” for just a few months now, but they act like they’ve been together for a hundred years. It’s very nice to see our old friend so happy in a relationship, and nicer yet for being so completely unexpected. Michelle basically dropped into his life from outer space; the apparently committed bachelor Jim suddenly has a “serious” girlfriend. They were very cute on the trail, holding hands and smooching…

Miki Report

Miki is almost a year old — still very much a puppy, but also starting to mature into a “real” dog. He’s developing a very sweet personality, too.

Yesterday we took him along on a hike we took (more on that in a subsequent post). He had a wonderful time with all the new smells, and playing in the snow and ice. Whenever there was an icy patch in the road we were walking on (a frequent occurrence!), he’d head for it — apparently to delight in the sensation of slipping and sliding. Something we’ve noticed about Miki is that he seems to really, really hate losing his balance or being flipped over. Our other dogs all treat this as part of playing, but not Miki — he’ll resist any attempt to knock him over, and very effectively, too. This makes his delight in the ice all the more mysterious.

As you can see in the photos, he is developing into a very nice specimen of a field spaniel. About the only “ding” we can see is that his ears are shorter than most field spaniels (a breed noted for its long, droopy ears, accentuated by long, curly hair on them). Other than that, he’s just about perfect…

Ice in Jamul

Debbie came running into my office at daybreak yesterday, telling me that I absolutely had to come see something. I went into the living room and she just pointed outside. A small Italian Stone Pine (pinus pinea) in our yard was covered with ice!

This isn’t quite as crazy as it might appear at first blush. First, what I didn’t show you in the photos is that the ice is very localized to just the bottom branches. Second, what you most likely don’t know is that I have a sprinkler set up to put water on this plant every morning at 4 am. In our hot, dry summer heat, the early morning hours are the best time to sprinkle water. In the winter, however, on those rare mornings when we have a below-freezing temperature, it’s not such a smart thing!

I’ve turned the sprinklers off for the winter…

CFL Rant

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) have been much in the news lately, especially with Wal-Mart’s decision to promote them. Many environmentalists would like to see incandescent light bulbs (the old-fashioned kind of light bulb with the glowing filament) banned outright, because they are quite inefficient — most of the electricity they consume produces heat, not light.

Occasionally mentioned, but mostly in a dismissive way, is that CFLs (or any fluorescent lamp, for that matter) produce light that is quite visibly different than that produced by incandescent bulbs, or by the sun. Personally, I find the light from most fluorescent bulbs to be unpleasant — harsh and color-distorting — though I have seen some fluorescent lighting whose light is less awful than most. What exactly is the difference in the light the various kinds of bulbs put out?

The difference is in the spectrum of light that the bulbs emit. The sun and incandescent bulbs both produce what scientists call “warm-body” light, by which they mean the light emitted when something gets really, really hot. Cooler warm-body light is reddish to our eye, such as the light emitted by a red-hot piece of metal. Hotter warm-body light is bluer to our eye, such as the light emitted by the sun. But in all cases, warm-body light emitters put out some light of every possible color — the difference in their apparent color is caused by the relative intensity of the various colors. So the red-hot piece of metal puts out a lot of red light, some orange light, a bit of yellow light, a small amount of green light, and very little blue or violet light. The sun, on the other hand, puts out a lot of every color — which is why it’s light appears white to our eyes.

CFLs (and all fluorescent light bulbs) work by a completely different phenomenon: fluorescent emission, which of course is how they get their name. The inside walls of CFLs are coated with phosphors — substances which emit light in the visible range of colors when they are illuminated by ultraviolet light. Unlike incandescent light bulbs, the inside of a CFL is not a vacuum — instead it contains (usually) mercury vapor at a very low pressure. There is so little mercury required for this that the bulbs are not dangerous individually. When CFLs are turned on, an arc of electricity flows through the mercury vapor, which then produces high intensity ultraviolet light (which we cannot see). This light strikes the phosphors, which then emit visible light.

But here’s the catch: phosphors emit light of a distinct color. Any given phosphor will emit light of a specific color — green, red, blue, etc. This is very, very different than warm-body light emission. Of course none of us want to light our homes with some pure colored light — so the CFL manufacturers combine multiple phosphors in every bulb to simulate whiter light. It is exactly what happens with stage lighting when spot lights of multiple colors are aimed at the same point, and the colors mix. For example, if a blue spot and a yellow spot are aimed at the same point, we perceive green lighting. With three colored spots (red, green, and blue, for example), we can simulate white light. However, our eyes are being “tricked", and this simulated white light is not the same as the white light from a warm-body emitter. The “harsh” look of such simulated white light comes from the fact that the individual colors have to be much brighter than that same color would be in white light from a warm-body emitter. The color distortion is caused by objects that reflect colors that are different than the colors actually in the simulated white light. With the simulated white light, such objects appear much darker and less colorful than they would under light from a warm-body emitter.

Scientists use an instrument called a spectrograph to measure the spectrum of light. Most of us don’t have access to a “real” spectrograph — but I’ll bet you’ve got many of them lying about your home. These are what I call “dual-purpose” spectrographs: not only can they be used as a spectrograph, but they will also play music or video. I’m talking about CDs or DVDs — the side with the music or video makes a very nice diffraction grating, which is the heart of a real spectrograph. I’m sure you’ve noticed the rainbow effect they produce — that’s the diffraction grating at work.

Grab a CD or DVD, and take it to a lamp that uses an incandescent light bulb (this includes halogen lamps, if you have them). Hold the CD or DVD about chest-height, while you’re standing, and experiment with different orientations until you see a strong rainbow of light. You won’t have much trouble doing this, I’m sure. Now note the nature of that rainbow — because you’re reflecting light from a warm-body emitter (that incandescent light bulb), you’ll see a broad rainbow with every possible color in it — very pretty, isn’t it?

Now take that CD or DVD over to a CFL lamp, and do the same thing. Whoa! Not the same thing at all! What you see now is bright reflected images of the lamp in each of the colors emitted by the phosphors it contains. Most CFLs use three phosphors: red, green, and violet. Better (whiter, “full spectrum") CFLs will use four, five, or even more phosphors. But in all cases, you will see something very different than you see with a warm-body emitter.

Here’s the bottom line: it is not possible to make a CFL that accurately simulates natural lighting from a warm-body emitter. Our eyes evolved to use natural lighting, so lighting from CFLs (or any fluorescent lamp) looks unnatural. The harshness and color distortion can be improved — by using more phosphors — but it cannot be made perfect.

So… If you like the energy savings of a CFL (and who wouldn’t?), and you’re willing to trade off lighting quality to get the savings, by all means go for the CFL. But I’m going for the halogen (a very hot, very white, warm-body emitter)…

Totally Plausible

Tip of the hat to reader RickP:

Three Explorers Are Captured…

A Frenchman, an Englishman and a New Yorker were exploring the jungle and were captured by a fierce tribe. As they sit in a hut, awaiting their fate, the chief comes to them and says, “The bad news is that now that we’ve caught you, we’re going to kill you, and then use your skins to build a canoe. The good news is that you get to choose how you die."

The Frenchman says, “I take ze poison.” The chief gives him some poison, the Frenchman says, “Vive la France!” and drinks it down.

The Englishman says, “A pistol for me, please.” The chief gives him a pistol, he points it at his head, says, “God save the queen!” and blows his brains out.

The New Yorker says, “Gimme a fork.” The chief is puzzled, but he shrugs and gives him a fork. The New Yorker takes the fork and starts jabbing himself all over — the stomach, the sides, the chest, everywhere.

There’s blood gushing out all over, it’s horrible. The chief is appalled, and screams, “What are you doing???"

The New Yorker looks at the chief and says, “So much for your canoe, asshole!"

That is so New Yorker!