Jerusalem Cricket

I found this "cricket" while doing the chores this morning -- it was hopping around on the concrete floor of our patio, looking very lost. The common name for it here is "Jerusalem Cricket"; this particular one is (I think) a Stenopelmatus fuscus, one of several closely related species that are common here. We've seen them many times, especially if we're digging -- these things live most of their life underground. The little guy running around on our patio was probably trying to find some ground he could dig into!

There are all sorts of myths about this creature -- read here, here, and here for more details. In fact they are quite harmless, non-venomous; the worst they can do is give you a good pinch or bite with their strong jaws, and some species can emit a foul stench. But they won't really hurt you...

Consequences of Appeasement

For several years now, Iran has unrelentingly

• spewed anti-western bombast
  
  
• directly threatened Israel, the United States, and (more recently) Europe
  
  
• supplied, aided, and trained the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan -- leading to the deaths and injury of many U.S. soldiers
  
  
• fought barely-disguised proxy wars (through the Iranian financed and controlled Hamas) in Lebanon and Palestine, against Israel
  
  
• actively pursued a nuclear weapons program, while poking a stick in the world's eye by laughably calling it a nuclear power program

None of this is disputed by any serious observer. Even the corrupt jerks in the UN and EU "admit" all of these as facts. For years, "strong statements", "stern letters", "sanctions", "diplomacy", and (my favorite) "negotiations" have been the only action the world has taken to stop the Iranians -- who, by their own boisterous statements, have the intention of killing everyone who is not a Muslim of their liking. That would include me, so I have a personal interest in this fight.

Now comes the claim from Iran that they have 100 kg (about 220 pounds) of enriched uranium on hand. Assuming this is true (a big assumption, given the source of the claim), the Iranians are years ahead of the schedule the IAEA projected just a month ago -- and they have enough materials for several weapons right now. Right now!

The IAEA is, naturally, quite concerned. So concerned that they've met with the Iranians and they've come up with a plan. Thank goodness they've got a plan! Let's see now ... what is this plan?

The U.N. nuclear watchdog director said on Friday he and Iran's chief negotiator had agreed to draw up an "plan of action" within two months on how to resolve questions about Iran's disputed nuclear program.

International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei said he hoped the stalemate of the last weeks could be broken and described the two-hour meeting with Ali Larijani as "quite satisfying".

So ... the plan is to "draw up a plan" within two months. That's it? The Iranians want to kill us all with nuclear weapons, and our plan to stop them is to draw up a plan? I have no doubt at all that the Iranians found this most satisfying -- I'm sure they had trouble suppressing their giggling at the "negotiations".

To anyone who has read of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the run-up to World War II, this is eerily familiar territory. The consequence of that particular appeasement path was that Hitler finally took an action that the rest of Europe couldn't sit back and ignore -- but by the time that happened, he had already built a powerful military and had completely locked down his control of Germany. The Iranians appear to be on that same path, the rest of the world is reacting right out of the same playbook that Chamberlain used.

Except for one oasis of sanity: Israel. They have quietly said, many times, that Iran "shall not be allowed" to become a nuclear power. The U.S. has made similar statements, but somehow I find the Israelis to be more ... credible ... on this point. In the news this week: the Israeli Air Force is training for long-range missions. It's hard to imagine any reason for them to do so other than an attack on Iran. I'd personally love to see a joint U.S./Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, but I suspect I'm dreaming of something unlikely there. We're behaving too much like the IAEA and the EU for us to make such a bold and useful move. Much more likely is that the Israelis will do this on their own, to which I will say "Thank you, my friends."

From New Jersey...

...of course -- where else would the world's ugliest dog come from?

PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) - Elwood, a 2-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix, was crowned the world's ugliest dog Friday, a distinction that delighted the New Jersey mutt's owners.

Elwood, dark colored and hairless—save for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head—is often referred to as "Yoda," or "ET," for his resemblance to those famous science fiction characters.

"I think he's the cutest thing that ever lived," said Elwood's owner, Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey.

Quigley brought Elwood out to compete for the second year at the annual ugly dog contest at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair. Elwood placed second last year.

Most of the competing canines were also Chinese Crested, a breed that features a mohawk, bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue.

Quigley said she rescued Elwood two years ago. "The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell," said Quigley.

"So ha ha, now Elwood's all over the Internet and people love him and adore him."

Beyond the regal title of ugliest dog, Elwood also earned a $1,000 reward for his owner.

Sewell is less than forty miles from where my retired parents live. Yes, they live there -- in New Jersey -- by choice. The explanation for this otherwise inexplicable choice involves a complex mix of the neurological effects of prolonged exposure to air pollution, the effect of corrupt politics on free will, the sense-deadening of the evil smells on the New Jersey turnpike, and the nutritional consequences of radioactive waste sold as tomato fertilizer...

Creating Sheeple...

Some wag a while back coined the term "sheeple", meaning people who meekly and unprotestingly obey "authority". Many since then have observed that Americans (and citizens of many other countries) seem to be turning into sheeple, markedly different from the outspoken, forthright citizen behavior that was the norm in revolutionary times through at least the late 1800s. Remnants of it still exist, mind you -- but vast herds of sheeple tramp through our political landscape. How else could you explain the repeated re-election of Kennedy, Byrd, Reid, Pelosi, etc. ad nauseum?

Breeding sheeple is an objective of the modern liberal movement. Of course they wouldn't couch it in those terms, but that's really what they mean. Consider the notion of "politically correct speech", wherein some "authority" asserts that we should avoid saying things that might offend someone else -- without regard to whether what's being said is true, or is a interesting question. That notion is closely associated with modern liberalism -- and it's really just code for speech control and thought control. There are an infinite number of examples that could be used to illustrate this; I'll use this one: remember last year when the president of Harvard was harassed into resigning -- because he dared to wonder out loud whether there were gender-related differences in ability or aptitude, and asserted that there was good evidence for such? His speech contained a provably true statement and an interesting question -- something you'd hope academics would be in favor of -- and yet he was excoriated for his politically incorrect words.

The Zero Tolerance movement is yet another technique for breeding sheeple, by suppressing speech and action related to some "outlawed" subject -- without regard to whether the speech or action actually harmed anyone. These sheeple-breeding techniques are powerful, and some in the liberal movement talk about them quite openly -- but they use euphemisms like "shaping minds", "ideological introduction", etc. to avoid riling the sheeple herd.

With that context, I read an interesting article about an attempt in Canada to breed more sheeple. A 15 year old high school student named Kieran King was shown a film on drugs. He was curious about the "facts" presented in the movie, and decided to research the subject on his own. He's never used any illicit drugs, he says; the research was conducted entirely with publicly available materials -- much of it provided by the government. He discovered (and this should surprise nobody!) that drug film was basically propaganda -- playing games with the facts, and trying to scare the viewers. This is the behavior of someone with an active mind and a curiosity about the world; good things in my view.

But then Kieran discussed some of his findings with his fellow students, and one of them reported Kieran to the authorities for violating the school's zero tolerance policy on drugs. Uh oh -- a sheeple is wandering off the pasture! Flog him immediately! Kieran was suspended and reprimanded. How stupid is that? Well, if your objective is to breed sheeple, it's not stupid at all...

Colby Cosh, writing at Canada.com, has an interesting take on this. The lead:

What fascinates me about the case of Kieran King, the Saskatchewan high school student who was threatened, punished and slandered by various officials over the past three weeks for talking with some pals about the health effects of marijuana, is that it explodes almost every single utopian cliche about public schools that has been ever propounded by their employees and admirers. It's almost glorious, in a way. Ever heard an educator say "We're not here to teach students what to think -- we're here to teach them how to think"? BLAMMO! "We encourage children to make learning a lifelong process." KAPOW! Poor Kieran didn't even make it to age 16 before someone called the cops.

"Diversity is one of our most cherished values." But express a factually true opinion that diverges from what you've been taught and -- WHOOMP! "Public schools aren't crude instruments of social control, they're places where we lay the foundation for an informed citizenry." BOOM!

I could go on, but I'm running out of sound effects and I really don't have time to fire up an old Batman episode on You-Tube to gather more.

Mr. Cosh is not so much offended by the sheeple-breeding (as I am), but rather by the hypocrisy of the educational establishment. Well, that's true too -- it is hypocritical to prattle about freedom of speech only to shut it down when it offends your sheeple-breeding dogma. And maybe the hypocrisy is an easier thing to attack than the sheeple-breeding...

Imagine...

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a California farmer -- you own a few hundred acres with orange groves. You and your buddies, when you're talking over a few glasses of orange-jack (fermented orange juice), get to talking about the future of orange picking...

Things don't look so good, you all agree. That transient illegal immigrant labor force your industry has depended on for a hundred years really does look like it's about to evaporate. Between amnesty and Z-1 visas, the one thing it appears you can be certain of is that your labor costs are about to go up dramatically. Labor shortages look like a very real possibility.

So what do you do?

You use the collective power of your agriculture associations to fund robotics development, of course!

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.

The robotic work has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, and pushed forward by the uncertainty surrounding the migrant labor force. Farmers are "very, very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future," says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa.

The economics of robots are compelling if you're a businessman (as all farmers are). A $500,000 robot might sound like a very expensive investment -- but that works out to about a $5,500 per month expense, and that's downright cheap for a machine that can pick fruit 8 or 10 times as fast as a human worker, and can work 24 x 7.

When we start seeing these devices in our fields, it's really going to start feeling like we're living in a science fiction story! The implications to our immigration problems are all good, so far as I can suss them out. In effect, converting low-skill agricultural jobs to robotics will remove the biggest incentives -- both for the immigrants and for business -- to the kind of undesirable transient immigration that is hurting us today.

Is anyone surprised to see that a solution is coming from the private sector, instead of the government?