The Anger of Compassion

An Offer Worth Jumping For...

Quite a few of us in the west supported Denmark during the big Muhammad cartoons imbroglio. Now, it appears, Denmark is paying us back.

As the banner to the left says, "No Burka on Free Speech." Delightfully, there is no burka on anything in this Siemens commercial.

Link:

Nope. No burkas here.

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds)

Probability and Successful Arguments in Favor of God

Pretty readable overview here of what's going on these days with arguments for the existence of God and responses to today's "Four Horsemen" of atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris).

And here, Ari Armstrong lays pretty effective waste to the London bus campaign "There's probably no God." Ari asks what probability even has to do with it.

High Infidelity: "...and you have a scar on your knee..."

Just this weekend I discovered this: Richard Dawkins interviewing Derren Brown on paranormal, er, "practitioners." Excellent stuff.

Brown also has a blog, where you can catch this very nice interview in which Orson Welles discusses cold reading.

I know that some Objectivists have a problem or two with Dawkins. I do as well, but most figures that I admire aren't or weren't Objectivists themselves: Richard Feynman, Beethoven, and quite a few others.

And anyway, anyone who can come up with "Blasphemy is a victimless crime" is worth at least a few points in my book.

The Week in Physics: Man-Made Suns

Terraforming is a staple of science fiction (it was one of the premises behind Firefly and its motion picture sequel, Serenity). But consider that in order to operate a planet, you have to find a sun for it.

Or you could build one, which is what scientists in California are attempting to do:

In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy.

At a time when fossil fuel supplies are dwindling and fears about global warming are forcing governments to seek clean energy sources, fusion could provide the answer. Hydrogen, the fuel needed for fusion reactions, is among the most abundant in the universe. Building work on the £1.2 billion nuclear fusion experiment is due to be completed in spring.

Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, nestled among the wine-producing vineyards of central California, will use a laser that concentrates 1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States into a billionth of a second.

The result should be an explosion in the 32ft-wide reaction chamber which will produce at least 10 times the amount of energy used to create it.

So it takes 192 laser beams. Nobody said it would be easy.

(Hat tip: Jonathan Pearce at Samizdata)

Workin' on the chain gang?

Got this from Charles at dustbury, and, like him, my Festivus/Christmas/Boxing Day present (to fellow bloggers, if no one else) is that I'm not tagging anyone. So, without further ado, I present jobs that I've held:

dishwasher in a restaurant
food prep cook (same restaurant)
newspaper thrower (three times, three papers, three states)
language lab operator
manager of a pizza place
sheet metal worker
administrative clerk
counterintelligence specialist
warehouse manager
electronics teacher
(the last four as a member of the Marine Corps...)
trainer in the direct calling industry
field engineer in the defense/aerospace industry

A Marine's Christmas Eve

Imagine the young Americans — soldiers and Marines, mostly, though not exclusively — spending this Christmas away from home, in Iraq or Afghanistan. I’ve never been to either place, but I think I know exactly how things are over there. You see, when I was their age I was a Marine, and I was doing the same thing myself.

For me, the 1983 Christmas season meant Beirut, Lebanon -- President Reagan having decided that the place was “vital” to America’s national interest. As Bill Cosby might say: Riiight. Anyway, I was there as a member of a counterintelligence team, which had, among other benefits, the privilege of mobility (we had to drive around in order to talk with sources).

We lived at the Beirut International Airport, but unlike the infantry guys, we weren’t stuck there all day, day after day. Ultimately, what that meant in terms of vital national interests was that we had more access to Pepsi and chocolate.

The airport operations weren’t impressive, what with only four flights a day, but the mail avalanche certainly was. We paid nothing for outgoing first class mail, and we took advantage of that privilege. I wrote to my parents, of course, and to college buddies, but I also corresponded with novelist John D. MacDonald, U. S. Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida, William F. Buckley, Jr., and others (MacDonald and Chiles wrote back, and Buckley sent me National Review for a year, gratis). I even wrote to the Tampa Bay Bucs, suggesting that they designate a redheaded cheerleader to write to me (puritanical bastards never responded to that one...).

I’ve spoken with clients of mine who tell me that when they were in Iraq in 2003, small DVD players were allowed to be shipped free as well. Of course, we didn’t have that technology in 1983, but I’m glad to hear they’re enjoying the same privileges I had.

Personal mail was delivered to us at the unit, but there was another source of mail: “Hey Joe” mail. Anything at all anonymous fell into the “Hey Joe” category, mail or otherwise, because the Lebanese street vendors called all of us “Joe,” and would try to get our attention by calling, “Hey, Joe!” Where that came from is anybody’s guess — I always assumed that it came from G.I. Joe.

Of course, Marines hate being addressed as “G.I.” to any degree, because we associate that with the army, but I digress...

Hey Joe mail was mail addressed to “Any Marine” or “Any Sailor.” The same thing is happening these days, but it surprised me at the time: radio and television stations, car dealerships, chambers of commerce, or whatever would organize campaigns designed to get people to write to us, since we were stuck in hideously dangerous Beirut instead of enjoying Christmas at home with friends and family. I was surprised, though, because, having grown up during the latter, divisive years of the Vietnam war, I didn’t realize just how supportive most of America can be when it comes to the welfare of its young military men.

And boy, did people respond: by the thousands, in my observation. Our mail was backed up all the way to New York, and mail delivery via helicopter from the U.S.S. Guam to the Marines on the ground at the airport took place twice a day, every day. Yes, every day: Sunday was a mail day. People sent letters, cards, and packages, and they sent a lot of each.

Anyway, the Hey Joe mail was delivered to the chaplain, and there was so much of it that the airport authorities gave him an extra office just to store, temporarily, that mail. We would take a Jeep and trailer, drive to the chaplain’s office, and fill both Jeep and trailer with mail.

If you’ve sent that kind of package — we called them CARE packages, after the relief organization — to Iraq or Afghanistan — or if you sent something to us in Lebanon back in 1983 — then trust me, it was appreciated, whether you ever received a thank-you letter or not. I wrote quite a few such thank-you notes, and so did every Marine I knew.

Those packages were something else. People sent us all manner of necessary items, such as razors, razor blades, soap, shaving cream, toothpaste, envelopes, pads of writing paper, pens — and chocolate. We appreciated all of it — our PX had been closed because of incoming mortar and sniper fire. But damn, we were excited by the chocolate. You name the brand, we got it in the mail: Hershey, Nestle’s, Cadbury. And home-made stuff, too: cookies and brownies and cakes and more. We loved it all.

We didn’t eat the fruitcake, although we got plenty of that, too. Store bought, home-made, we got both, and ate none of it. But we continued to devour the chocolate.

Quite a few of those letters and packages included photographs of young women. We were young Marines, remember, so…well, these photos were highly prized as well, as you can imagine. Especially those containing return addresses and phone numbers. There were no e-mail addresses in those days. I couldn’t believe some of the things women would write to anonymous strangers, but there it was. I imagine that the guys in southwest Asia are enjoying the same enlightenment. I hope so.

The chocolate consumption really got out of hand. I had never eaten so much chocolate in my life, and haven’t since. Chocolate with breakfast — or for breakfast. Chocolate with lunch — or instead of lunch. And throughout the day. Chocolate, without limit. If you have ever fantasized about being on a chocolate diet, I can assure you that it’s been done — the chocolate diet has been tested by active, virile, muscular young men: the men of the U.S. Marine Corps.

But the chocolate diet comes at a price, and that price, was, to me, an unexpected side effect: one evening, while tearing through a mountain of Hey Joe mail as tall as any of us stood, we all did the usual hoarding of soap, razors, shampoo, and so forth, and I heard someone laugh scornfully and say, “What is that, chocolate? Fuck that.”

“Ahh,” I thought, “so I’m not the only one.” I realized that I hadn’t eaten any chocolate for days, and felt absolutely no desire for any more.

Perhaps the guys in Iraq aren’t suffering from an over-indulgence of chocolate. I don’t know. I hope not. And hey, I hope the same for those in Afghanistan. My Christmas season this year certainly includes chocolate.

But I’m sure they appreciate the toiletry items.

I don’t recall what we did for that Christmas of 1983, but I remember my Christmas Eve dinner quite well: After standing duty in the rain, and challenging a general officer to produce his I.D. card, my holiday feast consisted of one bag of cold MRE beans and a few cups of coffee. I think at least one of them was warm.

There was no chocolate.

(Reposted yearly. A slightly different version of this column, commissioned and edited by Jennifer Iannolo, originally appeared on December 24, 2004 at The Atlasphere. It was snowing in Las Cruces, New Mexico as I wrote it, and I was enjoying coffee and chocolate -- but no beans. )

In which the blogger reveals his lack of sensitivity...or hypersensitivity

Or something.

Maybe I'm just too Irish. Or too blue collar. Or too Marine Corps. Or something. But this story really chapped my ass.

This, from His Honor Ed Koch, probably the last mayor of New York City not to regularly roil the stomachs of the rest of the American citizenry:

Recently I conducted a seminar for twelve interns a few years out of college who were sent to me by a foundation that placed them with private firms and public agencies for work experience.

Well.

Normally, I disapprove of the cheapening of the mother tongue by means of the inroads made into its use through email, text "messaging," and whatnot, but I have come to harbor second thoughts on at least one usage item.

Mayor Koch speaks of "interns" who are "a few years out of college," yet are, apparently, in need of "a foundation" to place them "with private firms and public agencies" for, yes, you read that correctly, "work experience."

Work experience.

I hereby bestow my unqualified blessing on "WTF??"

Mayor Koch, and all other enablers of such bovine gaseous releases: shame on you.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are a few years out of college and are still in need of "work experience," I have weeds in my back yard which need pulling -- but I would not hire you for such a task, as it is clearly beyond you, to the extent that I fear I would be unable to trust you with any of the finer details.

Stick with your foundations.

Uh, and Mayor Koch: WTF???

(Hat tip: Kathryn Jean Lopez)

Economics! Get Yer Free Economics Education Here!

So Peter Cresswell posted something about economics, and he included links to where you could read Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson and Gene Callahan's Economics for Real People, online and free. Not long after that, Diana Hsieh asked for some recommended books on economics.

In fact, Peter has an additional post, in which he includes some of what I'm linking to here, plus a few surprises. Of course, I have things here which he doesn't have...guess that's the (transplanted) Texan in me. But you'll still want to check out his post just the same.

Well, I thought, why not ask Henry Hazlitt himself what books he recommends? He'll tell you, in "A Note on Books" at the end of Economics in One Lesson.

The first one he recommends is Faustino Ballve's Essentials of Economics, which appeared on the Recommended Bibliography at the end of Capitlaism: The Unknown Ideal. Hazlitt describes it as "an excellent short book....which briefly summarizes principles and policies." I own this book, and I quite concur. Highly recommended.

Next on Hazlitt's list is Percy L. Greaves' Understanding the Dollar Crisis. It's a series of lectures delivered by Professor Greaves in Buenos Aires and, like Hazlitt and Ballve, is quite readable. I own this one as well, and it gets another recommendation from me.

If you go to the Wikipedia entry on Henry Hazlitt , you can find The Failure of the 'New Economics: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies,, the Hazlitt-edited anthology The Critics of Keynesian Economics, and the short and again quite readable What You Should Know About Inflation. Failure is Hazlitt's own line-by-line critique of Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, and Critics is an collection of short pieces by prominent conservative/right wing economists, many of whom -- years ago -- used to advocate free market policies. The Hazlitt short book on inflation is relevant in that I fear we are about to see some serious inflation come our way.

Nor is that all. Hazlitt also recommends Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, which is available online with commentary here, and Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, which is available online here.

Finally, if go here, you can find George Reisman's Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, along with a syllabus, study questions, and an illiminating bibliography.

All free, and what could be more economical than that which is freely obtained? Of course, this is all nothing but proof of how exploited we all are under a capitalist and hideously oppressive regime.

Get 'em while you can.