That A-10 Again

July 26, 2010 – 10:09 pm

I’ve written before about the A-10 Thunderbolt (AKA “Warthog), the nastiest aircraft ever built. Sure, others may fly higher, or faster, or do a lot of high-tech parlor tricks — but when it comes to sheer pugnaciousness, this snarling airborne Rottweiler is in a class by itself. Here’s another look.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

What A Piece Of Work Is Mann

July 25, 2010 – 10:49 pm

Online journalist and all-around gadfly Scott Ott (a Nittany Lion himself) focused his attention recently upon Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, of “hockey stick” fame.

His account begins:

Shortly after climate scientist Michael “Hockey Stick’ Mann got word that a panel of his Penn State colleagues had cleared him of misconduct in the so-called “climategate’ scandal, Prof. Mann was quoted in the British media as saying he believed that his little graph had gained undue attention.

The “hockey stick’ graph, which purports to show a sudden uptick in global temperatures during the industrial age, should not have become a “central icon of the climate change debate’, Mann told the BBC. And yet it did, thanks to its appearance in Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,’ as well as in the U.N. report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ”” both of which employ it to advance the theory of anthropogenic [man-made] global warming.

With the pressure of Penn State’s internal ethics investigation removed, it seemed like a good time to ask Mann what he meant by the remark. My attempt to give him an opportunity to explain his comments, however, wound up reinforcing the public perception that climate scientists, like Mann, don’t see their tax-funded grants, or public university employment, as making them accountable to the public. It paints a picture of an ivory tower academic slinging mud on the little people down below, even as the tower sinks into the mire.

Read the rest here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Science | Comments (2)

Brer Fox, He Lay Low

July 25, 2010 – 10:47 pm

The United States recently announced a “thaw” in relations with Pakistan, with the US agreeing to burn $500 million to provide the needed warmth. Meanwhile, most observers have for some time now seen quite plainly that Pakistan has been playing a double game, with the all-powerful ISI taking US assistance with one hand and stroking its longtime mujahedeen allies with the other. (Their only real interest throughout, of course, is keeping our good friend India out of Afghanistan, the general threat from India being a cause to which a great deal of that US baksheesh will be diverted.)

Now Wikileaks has released a flood of information documenting this long and duplicitous relationship. The Times has the story here.

How much longer can we tolerate this state of affairs? It is increasingly obvious that we will never build a stable democracy in Afghanistan; we are merely exhausting ourselves to prop up a corrupt regime that meanwhile uses the security we provide to run a lucrative drug trade and make mineral-rights deals with the Chinese.

Last December I wrote:

The problem is that the situation is impossible; there simply are no good options. Never have I felt more pessimistic.

In brief:

If we leave, the Taliban will overrun the country again, al-Qaeda will set up shop as before, and nuclear-armed Pakistan will totter. The world will know, with certainty this time, that America (and the West generally) is a fickle ally that has no real stomach for a fight. As night falls, those in Afghanistan who have put their trust in us will find they have backed the wrong horse, and they will pay. The brave women and girls who have risked all just to go to school, to read a book ”” and who have been, for their trouble, beaten and murdered and burned with acid ”” will be ground into dust.

If we stay, we will never “win’. Afghanistan will be our tar-baby forever. We will never install a functioning democracy there, or a government free of corruption, or a reliable military dedicated to its preservation: these things cannot be done, any more than you can teach wolves to knit, or make butter from stones. We will fight and spend and bleed and die there forever.

Recognizing that we are now of modest means, and so cannot afford to hold our tar-baby forever, we have announced that we will begin leaving in the middle of 2011. This makes things easy for the Taliban, who have all the time in the world; they simply need to harass us patiently for 18 months, and then, as we step back, they will step forward.

We fight an enemy that is utterly unafraid to die, but we, good souls that we truly are, are afraid to kill. Our military is by far ”” by light-years ”” the strongest, best-trained, best-equipped, most sophisticated fighting force the world has ever seen; no enemy on Earth could hope to face us in full-scale conflict and live. But no army has ever won a war this way. Neither will we.

So: We have three options, none good:

A) We can leave now. B) We can stay and bleed forever. C) We can stay and bleed for 18 months, then leave anyway. (The fourth option, to cry “Havoc!’, and unleash our colossal war machine in all its incandescent fury, is not an option.)

We are certainly no better off now than we were then. What shall we do?

Perhaps it is time to do this: if Pakistan wants to be friends with the mujahedeen, then we let them. We leave. We provide no more aid to Pakistan, not a penny; instead we go to the other nations in the region who have, if anything, an even stronger interest in what happens next than we do — Russia, China, and India — and we work out a collaborative arrangement for keeping this Islamic fever-swamp quarantined, a task we will attend to with inflexible resolve. That Pakistan is in possession of nuclear weapons is a frightening complication; even the threat of retributive annihilation might not be much of a deterrent.

This is hardly an attractive proposal. As mentioned above, we have very few options, all bad. The only serious alternative, historically preferred but hard for the modern West to stomach, is the brutal and ruthless application of truly overwhelming power. I don’t think we’ll be doing that.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (3)

The Topography Of Crime

July 23, 2010 – 4:46 pm

Here’s a nice example of the graphical representation of quantitative data, from Adobe Flex guru Michael McClune. It’s a 3-D map of the distribution of various types of crime in San Francisco.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Technology | Comments (0)

Truth Diode

July 22, 2010 – 3:26 pm

An opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof in today’s Times looks at whether, as some have suggested, the modern workplace is better suited to women than men. Mr. Kristof quotes from a “provocative” article:

With women making far-reaching gains, there’s a larger question. Are women simply better-suited than men to today’s jobs? The Atlantic raised this issue provocatively in this month’s issue with a cover story by Hanna Rosin bluntly entitled, “The End of Men.’

“What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men?’ Ms. Rosin asked. She adds: “The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today ”” social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus ”” are, at a minimum, not predominately male. In fact, the opposite may be true.’

It’s a fair question, and others also have been wondering aloud if a new age of femininity is dawning.

Leaving aside that anybody who is just now getting around to wondering “if a new age of femininity is dawning” must have spent the last 40 years in a mine-shaft, what is remarkable about this is that the notion of innate cognitive differences between men and women is suddenly “a fair question”. It certainly was not, for example, a “fair question” when Lawrence Summers asked it a few years ago at Harvard, even though he raised exactly the same point about intelligence distribution that Mr. Kristof does in today’s piece, namely that female intelligence is more clustered in the middle, while there are more males at the high and low ends of the scale:

At the very top, boys more than hold their own: 62 percent of kids who earn perfect 2,400 scores on the S.A.T. are boys.

Actually, it goes much further than that: for instance, according to this paper by Danish researcher Helmuth Nyborg, men with IQs of 145 or higher outnumber women 8 to 1. (When Nyborg published this in 2004 it was, of course, a heretical result, and it led to his entering, as Walter Sobchak might have put it, “a world of pain”.)

Are we now going to be able to speak frankly about innate, quantifiable statistical variation in the cognitive faculties of different human populations? Here’s my bet: yes we are, whenever the data appear to cast Vile Oppressors (that is, whites, males, or, vilest of all, white males) in an unfavorable light compared to some oppressed victim-group (everybody else). It’s fine, in other words, for women to have higher “social intelligence”, “ability to sit still and focus”, and so forth; indeed, you are more than welcome to mention any innate differences you like, as long as they indicate some sort of superiority of the Oppressed over the Oppressors. That’s goodspeak.

Otherwise, mind your tongue, if you know what’s good for you. And Mr. Kristof had better watch out with that SAT stuff. He’ll be hearing about that.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Science | Comments (5)

You OK In There, Wilma?

July 22, 2010 – 1:07 pm

How they made the bed rock in Bedrock.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Sine Of The Times

July 21, 2010 – 9:12 pm

The latest tempest in the media teapot appears to be something called “i-dosing“, in which hellbound teens listen to brain-addling audio signals to get high. From what I have learned so far, it appears that the audio plays various tricks with what we audio weenies call “binaural beats”, a pulsating perceptual phenomenon that occurs when tones of slightly different frequencies are played into each ear (this is the same “beating” that musicians sometimes use to tune their instruments).

It is true that the brain is susceptible to various sorts of rhythmic stimuli: strobe lights, for example, can cause seizures, and binaural beats where the beat frequency is around 10 Hz can resonate with the brain’s alpha waves, with a calming effect. So I won’t immediately dismiss the whole thing as nonsense, but it is almost certainly nothing to get excited about. That hasn’t stopped the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, however, who are calling for the practice to be banned (good luck with that, as it requires nothing more than an audio oscillator, or even two musical instruments recorded just slightly out of tune).

Meanwhile, if you want to try it out for yourself, and don’t mind spending a little dough, you can cop right here. Do let me know how it goes.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Rubbish | Comments (2)

Gets My Irish Up

July 21, 2010 – 11:08 am

On the corner of the block where I live, in the ultra-blue neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, there is an upscale little diner, right beside a busy subway entrance. Outside there stands a little blackboard. On one side of the blackboard the staff lists the daily specials, and on the other there is usually a quotation or pithy aphorism.

In a startling example of how skewed the toleration of racism has become, this morning’s apopthegm asserted the following:

The Irish ignore anything they can’t drink or punch.

Ah, yes, those stupid Micks. Don’t you just hate white Europeans? Sure you do.

Imagine, however, if it had said:

The Mexicans ignore anything they can’t pick or kidnap.

Or perhaps:

Black people ignore anything they can’t shoot or steal.

There was a time when I would have been amazed by this. No longer.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (6)

A Grim Prognosis

July 20, 2010 – 10:10 pm

The influential (and generally non-partisan) think-tank The Cato Institute has published an in-depth assessment of the recent health-care bill. It’s a hefty read, and not at all encouraging. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (0)

Golden Dragon Shows Its Claws

July 19, 2010 – 10:19 pm

While the USA backs away from further production of the F-22 Raptor, deciding instead to rely on the inferior F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Russia, as we noted here, is aggressively looking forward, deploying the impressive Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA.

So what about China? They aren’t sitting still either. The balance is changing. Learn more here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

Do True Scotsmen Have Free Will?

July 19, 2010 – 2:56 pm
This entry is part 9 of 15 in the series Free Will

Here’s a clarifying passage from Daniel Dennett on the idea that the findings of neuroscience prove that “free will” is a fiction:

Recall the myth of Cupid, who flutters about on his cherubic wings making people fall in love by shooting them with his little bow and arrow. This is such a lame cartoonists’ convention that it’s hard to believe that anybody ever took any version of it seriously. But we can pretend: Suppose that once upon a time there were people who believed that an invisible arrow from a flying god was a sort of inoculation that caused people to fall in love. And suppose some killjoy scientist came along and showed them that this was simply not true: No such flying gods exist. “He’s just shown that nobody ever falls in love, not really. The idea of falling in love is just a nice — maybe even a necessary — fiction. It never happens.” That is what some might say. Others, one hopes, would want to deny it: “No. Love is quite real, and so is falling in love. It just isn’t what people used to think it is. It’s just as good — maybe even better. True love doesn’t involve any flying gods.” The issue of free will is like this. If you are one of those who believe that free will is only really free will if it springs from an immaterial soul that hovers happily in your brain, shooting arrows of decision into your motor cortex, then, given what you mean by free will, my view is that there is no free will at all. If, on the other hand, you think free will might be morally important without being supernatural, then my view is that free will is indeed real, but just not quite what you probably thought it was.

Freedom Evolves, p. 222-223

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (2)

Why Be A Religious Moderate?

July 18, 2010 – 6:09 pm

Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella has written a fine post in response to a query from a reader about religious zealotry. The reader’s argument was:

Given that, as most religions claim —

1) There is an afterlife of infinite duration;

2) Those who live in strict accordance with the religion’s requirements and prohibitions will be eternally rewarded in the afterlife;

3) Those who instead violate the religion’s requirements and prohibitions will be eternally punished;

4) The quality of these rewards or punishments far exceeds anything we might experience in our brief mortal lives;

— does it not follow that it is irrational not to dedicate everything in one’s earthly life to the fulfillment of one’s religious obligations, with everything else taking a distant second place?

As Bill’s reader put it:

If this ranking system is correct, it is hard to see how it could ever be rational for one to pursue any set of mortal goods””no matter how well they rank on the finite scale””when one could spend the same time and resources in the pursuit of the afterlife goods or avoiding afterlife evils, which are both endless in duration and of infinitely great quality. If extreme fasts are pleasing to God, and increase my chances of obtaining salvation by a tiny bit, then the rational thing for me to do is to live in such an ascetic state for as long as possible, unless it prevents me from doing other activities that could do even more to promote my own salvation.

The argument given, then, mitigates strongly against religious moderation as a rational approach. Here in the West, where we place paramount value on Diversity, inclusiveness, and religious pluralism, we regard religious “moderates” with far higher esteem than those we consider to be “fundamentalists” or “extremists”. But does this make sense? Given the stakes, why would any rational believer be moderate?

The discussion turns to epistemic limitations. Certainly the polyinfinite goods of the afterlife, if genuine, outweigh the transient goods of this one. But if we cannot know with certainty that the rewards of religious fidelity are real, and are guaranteed, then perhaps they don’t tip the scales against the known pleasures of the mortal world. How is one to balance the two?

As Bill acknowledges, this is a difficult question, and he doesn’t claim to have the answer. But he focuses the inquiry with his usual clarity. One thing that emerges quite clearly is that religious “moderation”, if it is to be rationally motivated, seems to necessitate doubt. Or, to put it another way: for anyone who would make no distinction between his belief and certain knowledge, religious moderation is not a rational choice.

Read the post here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (19)

Governing The Most

July 17, 2010 – 4:57 pm

On September 6th, 1824, at Monticello, the eighty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to one William Ludlow (my emphasis):

…I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports were when [I] was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. You seem to think that this advance has brought on too complicated a state of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it.

Meanwhile, in a recent Times editorial, academics George Lowenstein and Peter Ubel issue a call for the “machinery of government” to be expanded and adjusted to grind a little smaller — because even when properly informed, the citizenry, in an intolerable demonstration of willful insubordination, obstinately refuse to act as their betters have determined they ought.

We read:

Take, for example, our nation’s obesity epidemic. The fashionable response, based on the belief that better information can lead to better behavior, is to influence consumers through things like calorie labeling ”” for instance, there’s a mandate in the health care reform act requiring restaurant chains to post the number of calories in their dishes.

Calorie labeling is a good thing; dieters should know more about the foods they are eating. But studies of New York City’s attempt at calorie posting have found that it has had little impact on dieters’ choices.

Obesity isn’t a result of a lack of information; instead, economists argue that rising levels of obesity can be traced to falling food prices, especially for unhealthy processed foods.

To combat the epidemic effectively, then, we need to change the relative price of healthful and unhealthful food ”” for example, we need to stop subsidizing corn, thereby raising the price of high fructose corn syrup used in sodas, and we also need to consider taxes on unhealthful foods. But because we lack the political will to change the price of junk food, we focus on consumer behavior.

Yes, it’s shameful: allowing free men and women to make their own free choices in a free market, rather than simply instituting new laws and levies to make them do what professors Lowenstein and Ubel know is best for them. What’s the matter with us, anyway?

Well, don’t worry, we now have a new man in charge. Story here.

Wait — what’s that you say, Tom?

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

Oh, you needn’t bother about that any longer. All settled, thanks.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

Raw Comedy

July 16, 2010 – 4:27 pm

In the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, there’s an article (linked to in today’s Best of the Web) about what Peter, Paul, and Mary used to eat on the road. It contained this fishy little morsel from from Noel (Paul) Stookey (emphasis mine):

“Until the ’80s, there was usually the (standard) deli tray backstage,” said Stookey, calling from his home in Blue Hill, Maine, on the Atlantic Coast. “Then we had regular menus — some Polish meals, roast turkey with mashed potatoes, dressing and cranberries — and every once in a while, pizza. The most exciting thing, mostly in the ’60s, if a concert was canceled, we’d be left to our own devices, and we could go out to a movie, or have sushi, perhaps. But that was rare.”

Having gotten to know PPM many years ago, when I mixed two albums for them, I’ll bet you anything that Noel — who is a very funny guy indeed — threw out that last line with tongue firmly, as they say, in cheek. (He might also have added “And once when we were in Japan, we were served whale’s tail – but that was just a fluke.”)

His interviewer seems to have swum right past it.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (8)

Entomology

July 15, 2010 – 10:11 pm

The bottom having fallen out of the recording business, for the past ten years or so I’ve been writing software to earn my daily crust. You probably know that programmers spend a good deal of time “debugging” the software they write (I’ve often felt inclined to refer to the remainder of what we do as “embugging”, for symmetry’s sake, though so far it hasn’t caught on) — but you may not know that, just like their biological counterparts, software bugs have a complex and arcane taxonomy.

Some of the more exotic varieties, in fact, have been assorted according to a nomenclature that maps them onto quantum-mechanical and mathematical exotica and their discoverers. There are, for example, Heisenbugs, Schroedinbugs, Mandelbugs, and Bohrbugs.

Learn about these, and phase-of-the-moon bugs, and more, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

He Will Be Missed

July 15, 2010 – 9:52 am

Yogi Berra, on the death of George Steinbrenner:

“George and I had our differences, but who didn’t?’

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (0)

Куда́ ни кинь, всю́ду клин

July 14, 2010 – 10:17 pm

According to a new study, Russians dwell on gloomy thoughts more than Americans, but are less likely to let it all get to them. We read:

Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy portrayed Russians as a brooding, complicated people, and ethnographers have confirmed that Russians tend to focus on dark feelings and memories more than Westerners do. But a new University of Michigan study finds that even though Russians tend to brood, they are less likely than Americans to feel as depressed as a result.

Not mentioned, it seems, is the obvious explanation: Russians, as far as I can tell, expect the world to be a cruel and pitiless place, and life to be a cold, weary, grueling and ultimately futile struggle — and they don’t have to listen all day long to pop-psych bubbleheads and workplace-fulfillment-counselors telling them how happy they are supposed to be.

I’d be cheerier too.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (1)

There. Doesn’t That Feel Better?

July 14, 2010 – 9:35 pm

As you all know by now, NASA’s mission has been redefined by the Obama administration. The conquest of space having lost its luster, the agency’s new primary objective, as explained by director Charles Bolden, is to make the Muslim world “feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

Our investigative-reporting team here at waka waka waka has acquired video footage of the first operational mission under this new directive. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Stirrings In The Dar-al-Harb?

July 13, 2010 – 10:22 pm

In a heartening development, the lower house of France’s parliament has voted 335 to 1 to ban the burqa. The measure, which is overwhelmingly supported by the French people, will go to the Senat in September.

Reaction was swift, and predictable.

“A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab in public as an expression of their identity or beliefs,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination in Europe.

Amnesty International’s “expert on discrimination” is, of course, spouting nonsense. Given that rights are nothing more than human conventions in the first place, such a ban would not violate this alleged “right”, but would, rather, simply make clear that in France, the homeland of an ancient Western people with a magnificent and deeply beloved culture to protect, this particular “right” simply does not exist. No, if there is a “right” to be considered here, it is the right — which has even been explicitly declared by the United Nations — of an indigenous people to preserve its cultural integrity.

It is gratifying to see that the French, along with much of Europe, are beginning to understand that like any living organism, a culture without the ability to “discriminate” between self and other, between symbiont and pathogen, cannot survive. Perhaps as time goes by all of Europe and the West will become “experts on discrimination” too — expert enough, that is, to discriminate between what nourishes their culture and what destroys it from within. (The Ummah, of course, are already experts in this — as shown, for example, by the warm reception given to expressions of the Christian and Jewish faiths in Saudi Arabia.)

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (21)

Our New Trick

July 13, 2010 – 8:35 pm

Reader JK calls our attention to a post over at InfoDiss: an animated rendering of nuclear detonations around the world from 1945 to 1998. It’s 14 minutes long, and very simply done, but I couldn’t pull away.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Just You Try It

July 12, 2010 – 10:04 pm

Writing in the Washington Post, one Stan Cox, who presumably grew up in the jungles of New Guinea, suggests that we abolish the air conditioner, an artifact of human ingenuity that I consider to be roughly on a par with the invention of the wheel, or the taming of fire.

Mr. Cox (rhymes with “pox”) swoons over the projected result:

In a world without air conditioning, a warmer, more flexible, more relaxed workplace helps make summer a time to slow down again. Three-digit temperatures prompt siestas.

In the emergency room.

Code-orange days mean offices are closed. Shorter summer business hours and month-long closings — common in pre-air-conditioned America — return.

Capital idea! We’ll shut New York and Washington down for a month. Just the thing for turning the economy around. We can make up for the lost productivity with more government stimulus.

After a long absence, ceiling fans, window fans and desk fans (and, for that matter, paperweights) take back the American office.

Well, I do suffer terribly in the heat, but if we could really have paperweights again…

Best of all, Washington’s biggest business — government — is transformed. In 1978, 50 years after air conditioning was installed in Congress, New York Times columnist Russell Baker noted that, pre-A.C., Congress was forced to adjourn to avoid Washington’s torturous summers, and “the nation enjoyed a respite from the promulgation of more laws, the depredations of lobbyists, the hatching of new schemes for Federal expansion and, of course, the cost of maintaining a government running at full blast.”

Of course! The politicians can retire to Jackson Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons, and those left behind can just enjoy Washington’s “torturous summers” au naturel, knowing it’s for a good cause.

Over my dead body, Mr. Cox. All I can say is that when they come for my air-conditioner, I am going to be awfully glad that this proposal came on the heels of the recent Second Amendment ruling.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Technology | Comments (0)

A Sorry Excuse

July 11, 2010 – 10:23 pm

Suppose you were to come round a street corner and almost bump into a person going the other way. Odds are, nowadays, that one or both of you will say “sorry!”.

This is new. Once upon a time we would have said “excuse me.” What changed?

I think it must be that the primary sense of “excuse me” has gone from meaning “please forgive me for being in your way” to “I’m coming through, please get out of my way”. Nowadays people might take “excuse me” to mean “what the hell are you thinking, getting in my way like that??”

Am I right? Has anyone else noticed this? If this is indeed what’s happened, what underlying social change is this symptomatic of?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (4)

Bob Sheppard, 1910-2010

July 11, 2010 – 4:16 pm

We note with sadness the death, at 99, of longtime Yankee announcer Bob Sheppard, and of the era he helped to define.

From his New York Times obituary:

From the last days of DiMaggio through the primes of Mantle, Berra, Jackson and Jeter, Sheppard’s precise, resonant, even Olympian elocution ”” he was sometimes called the Voice of God ”” greeted Yankee fans with the words, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium.’

“The Yankees and Bob Sheppard were a marriage made in heaven,’ said his son Paul Sheppard, a 71-year-old financial adviser. “I know St. Peter will now recruit him. If you’re lucky enough to go to heaven, you’ll be greeted by a voice, saying, ”˜Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to heaven!’ ’

In an era of blaring stadium music, of public-address announcers styling themselves as entertainers and cheerleaders, Sheppard, a man with a passion for poetry and Shakespeare, shunned hyperbole.

“A public-address announcer should be clear, concise, correct,’ he said. “He should not be colorful, cute or comic.’

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (2)

The Way We Were

July 10, 2010 – 11:01 pm

Readers of these pages will know by now that America, along with Western civilization generally, is most likely headed straight down the toilet. But it wasn’t always so. We’ve been focusing so relentlessly here of late on our accelerating collapse that I thought it might be nice to take a look back at a happier time, when a boundlessly optimistic America confidently and unapologetically led the world in progress and innovation.

I will confess that upon seeing this old footage from those “can-do” days, I had to blink back a tear for what we once were, and what we have become.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Technology | Comments (2)

Too Harsh?

July 9, 2010 – 11:00 pm

Living as we do in a world of chaos, crime and corruption, we should all thank Heaven for that citadel of Justice, that beacon of moral clarity, the United Nations — and for the courage and forthrightness with which it deals swift and righteous judgment to the world’s
vilest blackguards, reprobates, and scoundrels.

Just today, for example, the Security Council reacted with lightning swiftness — after an interval of less than three-and-a-half months — to the sinking, on March 26th, of the South Korean corvette Cheonan.

How did they respond? A naval blockade, perhaps, or withering sanctions, or even a multilateral occupation? No, no — given the enormity of the offense, this was no occasion for lily-livered half-measures. It was clear to all that the full weight of the International Community’s wrath must this time fall upon the Dear Leader, and so it did. Putting justice before mercy, the Council adopted a Presidential Statement declaring before all the world that the attack was — we just have to come right out and say it — kind of uncool.

The statement wisely stopped short, of course, of actually accusing the North Koreans of attacking the ship; after all, all the Council had to go by was the report of a major international investigation that concluded beyond any doubt that the Cheonan was sunk by the DPRK. And really, when you think about it, anybody might have torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel in disputed territorial waters at the North Korean border — I mean, it could just as easily have been a bunch of kids or something. And we all know how crazy that Kim Jong Il is; you never know what might make him fly off the handle.

But once again, order is restored, and we can all breathe a little easier tonight. That scalawag will certainly think twice before he tries any more of his shifty little schemes!

Thanks, UN!

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (1)

Squeeze That Lemon

July 9, 2010 – 9:55 pm

Within the IRS is an agency called the Taxpayer Advocate Service. Here’s what it is, according to the IRS.gov website:

The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS whose employees assist taxpayers who are experiencing economic harm, who are seeking help in resolving tax problems that have not been resolved through normal channels, or who believe that an IRS system or procedure is not working as it should.

In its latest news release, the TAS discusses a teeny-weeny Easter Egg buried in the enormous health-care bill foisted upon us by the Democrats earlier this year. It requires businesses to file 1099-MISC forms to all vendors from whom they have purchased over $600 worth of goods during the previous tax year.

We read:

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By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

Call Your Bookie

July 9, 2010 – 2:44 pm

According to a graph-theory analysis of the two teams’ passing strategies, Spain will defeat Holland in the World Cup final. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (1)

Knot

July 9, 2010 – 12:47 am

An unconfirmable truth: the unexamined life is not worth living.

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Apophthegmata | Comments (5)

Knight Game

July 8, 2010 – 10:55 pm

With all the fuss lately about LeBron whatsizname (and some soccer match that has apparently been taking place, I believe, in Africa), you may, like me, have been worrying that one of our most venerable sporting traditions was dying of popular neglect.

Well, worry no more.

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (0)

Class Warfare

July 8, 2010 – 10:39 am

As the Obama administration revs up its lawsuit against Arizona, we learn that meanwhile, across the porous border, schools are now teaching children to dodge bullets.

Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

Bring It

July 7, 2010 – 12:14 pm

The DOJ has now uncorked its long-threatened lawsuit against Arizona for the latter’s audacity in attempting to enforce Federal law to stem the disastrous tide of undocumented Democrats streaming into the state from across the border.

Blogger Ann Althouse examines the suit’s premises here. Her commenter “Mesquito” crisply summed up the seething frustration of a growing number of Americans with the Obama administration’s priorities, as quoted below (edited for typos):

Let me be clear:

A city may defy our immigration laws by declaring itself a “sanctuary” and the Obama Justice Department does nothing. An armed, uniformed member of a fascist, racist organization can position himself at a polling place on election day, and the Obama Justice Department drops the charges.

But a State legislates in harmony with federal law, and it is sued?

Seriously. I want my country back.

You aren’t the only one, amigo.

Meanwhile, another commenter points out that the Federal government is required under Article IV, Section 4, to defend the states against “invasion”. Surely this qualifies, no?

It seems encouragingly likely that the administration is preparing for itself a formidable legal and political petard, with substantial hoisting power. We shall see.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Thrills, Chills, Spills

July 7, 2010 – 11:17 am

Here’s a timely collector’s item, if you can find one.

(Hat-tip to my colleague Yaniv Sarig.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (0)

Getting Hot In Here

July 6, 2010 – 10:53 pm

103° today.

It’s hard to think original thoughts while undergoing massive organ failure, so for tonight I will just add my own to the chorus of voices yelping in indignation over the interview that NASA director Charles Bolden gave to al-Jazeera. Here’s what he said (starting at about 1:11):

“Before I became the NASA administrator, [President Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering…

This is pathetic, absurd, outrageous, insulting, patronizing, insane, embarrassing, foolish, disgraceful… I could exhaust Roget’s and still fetch up short of doing this justice. But I needn’t bother, because others have got there ahead of me.
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By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Jihad | Comments (41)

Back

July 5, 2010 – 9:42 pm

We’re back in Gotham, where, as it does every July (though somewhat tardily last year), the Hell-mouth has opened once again. It will be about 100° tomorrow, with suffocating, hope-crushing humidity. As always, I have begun to panic, to despair, to long to sleep at last in the cold, cold ground.

That said, it was a lovely weekend, and we had a delightful 4th. Although I agree with of my colleagues on the Right that the America of the Founding Fathers is probably doomed, if not already deceased, the victim of an aggressive campaign to vilify, destroy and supplant America’s Anglo-European cultural identity and the principles of individual liberty and enterprise upon which the nation was founded — nevertheless I still see Independence Day, and the bravery and vision of the Founders, and the moral and political genius of Jefferson’s immortal document, as something to celebrate, if only in the way that we mourn and honor our venerated and beloved dead.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Time Out

July 2, 2010 – 8:26 pm

We’re sequestered in Wellfleet, taking a breather for the holiday weekend. Things will probably be quiet in this space till sometime early next week, though you never know.

As usual — thanks as always for visiting, and feel free to give our “View a Random Post” link a try.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

A New Battle For Christopher Hitchens

June 30, 2010 – 10:22 pm

I am startled, and terribly sorry, to hear that Christopher Hitchens appears to have esophageal cancer. Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

Good Lord!

June 30, 2010 – 9:16 pm

Australia has a new Prime Minister. Her name is Julia Gillard, and in a gesture that would be utterly unthinkable here in America, she has announced that she doesn’t believe in God.

Being an atheist myself, it is difficult for me not to be delighted. But recently I’ve come to wonder, as a purely practical matter, whether secular societies are at a competitive disadvantage. In particular, I think they are in conspicuous peril from within when they admit large numbers of deeply religious immigrants from alien cultures.

I’m deeply conflicted about this, as you might imagine; it puts me in the difficult position of accepting that my culture as a whole may benefit from fostering beliefs that I personally believe to be nothing more than persistent, and often horribly destructive, delusions. I’m still brooding over it all, and may be for a long time to come.

But for now I must applaud Ms. Gillard for her brave forthrightness.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Religion | Comments (2)

Your Turn

June 30, 2010 – 5:36 pm

Which way is she spinning? Are you able to get yourself to see her going the other way?

This thing drives me crazy. Sometimes I can reverse it at will, other times it seems quite impossible. Forgive me if you’ve seen it before; it’s been around for a while. I just ran into it again, and thought I’d spread the irritation.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

General Principles

June 30, 2010 – 5:23 pm

What will become of Stanley McChrystal now that he has been relieved of his command? How did this sort of thing play out in a different era?

Here are a few thoughts on the matter, courtesy of the Churchill Centre.

[This item filed under category “General”, of course.]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Partiality

June 30, 2010 – 4:58 pm

Here’s an interesting little item. In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. In their decision they cited a policy report by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). A key phrase in the report said that the procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

It turns out, however, that this important statement wasn’t in the doctors’ original report. (Indeed, the actual report said that the physician’s panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”)

Guess who got it put in there? A name that’s been in the news lately: Elena Kagan.

Why ACOG should have been willing to sign off on this revision is another matter, of course, but it is startling that Ms. Kagan simply went in and altered the language this way. I think we might be hearing more about this.

Learn more here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Straight To Hell

June 29, 2010 – 10:55 pm

This was just a matter of time.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (4)

This Could Really Take Off

June 29, 2010 – 12:20 pm

If you’re like me (which, of course, you are) you’ve been saying to yourself, as you have watched the accelerating march of technological progress these past few decades, “Yes, yes, all very nice — but where’s my flying car?”

Well, according an item in today’s news, it may now be on the way. Have a look here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

P.O.E, Cont’d

June 28, 2010 – 11:36 pm

Kevin Kim continues his discussion of theodicy, here and here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Blurb For Derb

June 28, 2010 – 10:22 pm

John Derbyshire (who, by the way, if he ever finds himself at loose ends in midtown Manhattan at the end of the workday, should get in touch with me because I will buy him a good glass of whisky), aired a particularly snappy episode of his “Radio Derb” podcast last week. Have a listen here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

This Byrd Has Flown

June 28, 2010 – 3:11 pm

Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history, died this morning. I will leave it to others to provide the eulogy.

It’s unclear what will happen to his seat. The state’s Democratic governor will appoint an interim Senator, but whether a special election will be held this fall, or in 2012, when Byrd’s term would have expired anyway, rests upon the interpretation of a vaguely worded law.

More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

…Shall Not Be Infringed

June 28, 2010 – 10:12 am

In an enormously gratifying decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled that Second Amendment rights are binding on local governments.

The decision was close, and split along the usual ideological fissure, but a win’s a win.

Story here, text of the decision here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (12)

Evil: Still A Problem, Apparently

June 27, 2010 – 4:14 pm

Our friend Kevin Kim, whose academic specialty is theology and comparative religion (I recommend to you all his excellent book Water From a Skull), has been involved in a lively discussion about theodicy (also known as “the Problem of Evil”) over at Bill Keezer’s place. Bill’s position is that in order to arrive at a workable answer to the problem, something has to give:

In summary, the theodicic question arises from the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Once one shows that these are inherently contradictory, one must select one to be less than “omni.’ This paper argues that the resolution of the theodicic question is to limit God’s omnipotence.

Kevin, in his initial response, broadly agrees with Bill. They are soon joined, however, by one Roman Dawes, who thinks the circle can in fact be squared, and the fur begins to fly. Read the whole thing here.

There is, of course, another view one can take, rather than selectively to deny God’s omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence — and it is a view that cuts the theodicic Gordian knot at a single stroke. It is simply to deny the existence of God.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (19)

Lightning Strikes

June 26, 2010 – 6:55 pm

I’ll confess I’ve always had a soft spot for the A-10 Thunderbolt. Slow and ugly, loud as hell — they’re about as far from “stealthy” as a 747. But they are the last thing you want to see coming at you on the battlefield, because in just about every case “the last thing you’ll see” is exactly what they’ll be.

Today reader JK sent along a link to a clip of some “Warthogs” in action. Have a look here.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Balance At The NYT

June 26, 2010 – 10:21 am

About a month ago the New York Times ran an aggrieved piece, on its front page, about the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk statistics. The article, clearly intended to tar the police as racists, opened with:

Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested.

At first I thought that they were praising the cops for getting the proportions right (after all, this statistic actually means that their stop/arrest ratio is correctly balanced across racial lines, and means also that if the police stopped whites at the same rate as blacks and Latinos they would only be arresting a vanishing percentage of the whites they stop) — but then I remembered what paper I was reading. The fact is simply that cops go where the crime is — but of course, because it is axiomatic to the liberal mind that any unwelcome systematic differences in life experiences between human groups can only be due to racism on the part of white people or public institutions, the only possible account to be made is that the NYPD is racist. Once the statistics were made public, the charge was immediately taken up by familiar racially aggrieved voices here in Gotham, such as the Times‘s own Bob Herbert.

So when I opened the Times’s Op-Ed page today I was surprised to see that they had printed a rebuttal by Heather Mac Donald in which she argues that the NYPD’s policy is a realistic and sensible one, motivated only by a desire to concentrate police efforts where the crime is. She cites uncomfortable facts that weren’t mentioned in the original report — for example, that blacks and Latinos together committed 98% of all gun assaults in New York in 2009.

The article printed in the Times today was in fact a shorter version of a longer essay published by Ms. Mac Donald on May 14th at City Journal. Having prepared a draft of this post back then, it is from that more in-depth piece that I quote below.

We read (my emphasis):

You cannot properly analyze police behavior without analyzing crime. Crime is what drives NYPD tactics; it is the basis of everything the department does. And crime, as reported by victims and witnesses, sends police overwhelmingly to minority neighborhoods, because that’s where the vast majority of crime occurs””by minority criminals against minority victims.

The Times’s analysis, by contrast, which follows in lock step with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, assumes that policing should mirror census data. The only numerical benchmark that the Times provides for the NYPD’s stop data is the city’s population ratios. According to this analysis, since whites are 35 percent of the city’s population, they should be 35 percent of police stops, even though they commit only 5 percent of all violent crimes. But using census data as a benchmark for policing is as nonsensical as it would be to use census data for fire department activity. If a particular census tract has a disproportionate number of fires, and another census tract has none, no one expects the FDNY to send out fire trucks to non-existent fires in the fire-free census tract just for the sake of equal representation.
…

Given the vast disproportion in the city’s crime rates, you can either have policing that goes after crime and saves minority lives, or you can have policing that mirrors the city’s census data. You cannot have both. If the NYPD responds to the incessant pressure from the Times and the city’s anti-cop activists to conform its policing activity to population rates, the law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods will be hurt the most.

The Times’s radically incomplete front-page story, like so many that preceded it, only makes the NYPD’s job more difficult. It fuels the animosity against the police that makes witnesses less likely to cooperate with officers and suspects more likely to resist arrest. It is crime, not race, that leads to more stops in minority neighborhoods. The crime disparities in the city are deeply troubling, and thus have been regarded as taboo. But until those crime rates are acknowledged, reporting on police activity through an incomplete racial lens will continue to defame the NYPD and mislead the public about its work.

It is greatly to the Times’s credit that they have printed this response, albeit belatedly. The all-too-frequent charge of racism is the most serious accusation there is in what passes for political discourse nowadays, and in their original article the Times provocatively and unfairly assigned blame where it isn’t due.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (0)

Borderline Intelligence

June 25, 2010 – 9:40 am

Here’s Peggy West, Democratic county supervisor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explaining why all right-thinking people should support a boycott of Arizona over SB1070.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)