Boil, pot, boil!
CQ again has a daily step toward the truth in the Able-Danger-Gate story. Mary Jo White's participation is particularly interesting because she was appointed by the Clintons. But she apparently had an instinct for long-term self-preservation and for doing her job.

Does the system work?
Cap'n's Quarters, as usual, is one of the few out front on the Able Danger-gate story. Let's see if the new system (Blogs unearth a story, Fox brings it to the mass media, MSM derides and plays it down, blogs keep it alive, MSM finally caves) works to bring this story to everyone's attention and keep it going. It's only a hundred times bigger than the Joe Wilson moronism. The Sandy Burglar angle is only one of a hundred delicious penumbrae to AD-gate. Now if only Hillary could show up with some relevant printouts that had been "lost" for a few months. Wasn't Jamie Gorelick tight with Hill? Maybe that's just the way I want it to have been.

Ambassador Spyhusband is going to be speaking in Tallahassee sometime soon, BTW, but it will cost $25 to go and I am not going to contribute to further stoking of this non-story.

And didn't the NY Times try awfully hard to get out in front on this story? And where are they now? Something going on there. Maybe they just need a blog. Ahh. Fresh, spicy-smooth bloggy goodness.

So what?

I agree strongly with this column about steroid use in baseball. It pushes every libertarian button I've got:

The main argument against steroids and similar drugs is that they somehow screw with the "natural" abilities of players and disrupt the "level playing field." That is, they give "unfair" advantages to players willing to use them. That's why Commissioner Selig frets over the "integrity" of baseball. Steroids, goes this line of thought, turn an authentic competition into something less...real? But if any of that is true, why not ban, say, weight training or off-season workouts? Or special nutritional regimens that stop short of including certain banned supplements? What should be done about Lasik and other interventions that result in better than 20/20 vision? Or reconstructive surgeries that let pitchers throw faster than before undergoing the knife (just ask Chicago Cubs' hurler Kerry Wood)? All of these things muddy that wholly mythical level playing field.

Exactly. It's a sport, after all, not a religion. It's not like the z-car races, where they give each driver exactly the same car, tuned the same way and they have to use the same fuel. It's as though nature gave some drivers a two-cylinder Citroen and others a Ferrari. And that's ok. But if one of the Citroen drivers has an extra cup of coffee, oh, my! That's not "fair"! I hate that word.

HOW again?

Can someone tell me how taking tax money from taxpayers, filtering it through a federal bureaucracy with the expected deductions and giving it to construction companies, thereby making the money unavailable to the companies from which the taxes are taken, so they have fewer jobs to offer, and spending the money on construction jobs instead of the jobs the market would have dictated should be offered, how exactly does this procedure create jobs??

I found a forum for Ayn Rand fans here. It appears to be quite interesting. I left this comment, among others:

Rees-Mogg, in The Sovereign Individual, assumes that it is impossible to reform a large nation-state so that it protects individual liberties appropriately. He predicts that Internet technology will develop to the point that assets and privacy can be protected cheaply from anywhere in the world. He suggests that a number of mini-states will arise offering citizenship "packages" to wealthy or merely well-off sovereign individuals. He cites Hong Kong and Switzerland as examples of highly efficient, extremely prosperous regimes where an individual can now or soon will be able to purchase the protection he needs from the activities of the welfare/warfare nation-states that dominate the world.

I think he's right in that the project of coming up with a scheme to protect individual rights in a large democracy is a fool's quest. What's important is to develop a strategy to protect one's own interests, as one does not owe anything to others. If one could realize Galt's Gulch, why worry about the rest of the world reeling along on its merry destructive way?

Maybe I can construct my own mini-state somewhere near Trebizond/Trabzon.

Cloned appetizers

This article claims that Koreans are cloning dogs to be "companion animals"! Right. Companion to the kimchee and rice, I bet. I wonder if they've heard of "hush puppies"?

Tiny houses
I'm amazed at the variety of small affordable houses available, such as these. I love the pictures, but the words are all about "saving the planet" and "sustainability" and other stupid nonsense. Darn it, I want a cheap place to live that doesn't take a lot of cleaning and that is easy to heat and cool. Maybe when I get rich I'll add another, or maybe four of them around an atrium with a swimming pool. I am glad there are so many varieties. I also like the idea of trailering one of the itsy bitsies, although the peaked roofs on most of them would appear to make them dangerous to take on roads with overpasses. I wonder if my Peugeot 505 could drag one safely over the Rockies? Maybe one could come up with a peaked-roof tiny house with the loft attic arranged so that it could be folded down for traveling, like a tent trailer. I'm encouraged, anyway.

My latest obsession is with Trabzon, Turkey, where maybe someday I can buy a tiny house. Or maybe buy a boat and keep it in the harbor. Hmm, a houseboat. Now I'm thinking. Tiny house on the Black Sea, duplicating the Argo. Off to find the Golden Fleece and fight the Amazons. Metaphorically!

London duds

No, not the socialists. Futile bombings today in London had an odd aspect. All four attempts at bombings failed to go off properly. The detonators detonated but the explosives didn't catch. In all four. How likely is it that this was an accident? My theory is that the bombing group was infiltrated by agents who made sure the bombs weren't going to work properly. Then the bombs and with any luck the bombers could be captured and mucho intelligence gleaned. Sounds like the only reasonable thesis.

Islam and Communism

For seventy years the civilized world fought the adherents of a collectivist ideology who thought nothing of killing millions to enforce their dogma on the entire world. Then the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet empire broke up and Communism was discredited everywhere except in certain universities.

Now the civilized world faces a similar threat from Islam, a collective dogma of a different kind, but similar in that it advocates the use of limitless violence against those who refuse to accept its ideology and will not cease being violent until its advocates are entirely exterminated or its empire is broken as the Communist empire was. The good news is that Islam does not have military forces that begin to compare with the Soviets. The bad news is that it cannot be defeated by containment or military assault or even internal revolt against a particular regime. It needs to be faced on the battlefield of ideology. But that is an advantatge in some ways. I hope to address this topic further in coming days.

Right about 200 pounds now. Wondering if I can nail that level by the end of April and head lower before 5/17. Personal concerns outweigh political at this point. Is there any doubt about going to Istanbul this fall? How can I not?

Sovereign Individual
Just finished reading Davidson and Rees-Mogg's The Sovereign Individual. Every so often you read a book that changes your view of life. I now look at government power with a more jaundiced eye than ever before. And I wasn't exactly a collectivist in any case! I've been a confirmed objectivist (note the small "o") for some years.

It struck me that a lot of the crises cobbled up by environmentalists and health crusaders have a perhaps not unintended effect. Global warming, for instance, enforces the logic that only national or supernational (not "supranational" - the UN is just a bigger state, not a different kind of state) entities can solve the terrible problems caused by greedy stupid capitalist white men. The same rationale applies to acid rain, the ozone non-hole, AIDS, world hunger and every other putative problem of recent years. Without these problems, we wouldn't need anywhere near as much government power. The Sovereign Individual predicts the decline of the nation-state, as well as the frantic efforts of those who depend on and profit from the nation-state to retain and strengthen its power. It all makes sense now, how the media and the political system work together. Hey, paranoia is when you think you know what's going on, right?

Starving
Funny living in Tallahassee how sometimes national events jump up and grab you. I walk through the Capitol courtyard several noontimes a week, on my way to the library or a restaurant. Yesterday I headed over to the library and bought a book (I never borrow books from the library, but have found it a good source of bargain tomes) on dieting: Kurzweil's rant about low-fat living The 10% Solution. I've tried Atkins and not been able to stay on it, so thought I'd give the much-despised low-fat regimen a try. So I'm heading back to work through the Capitol plaza, thinking about how hungry I'm going to be for the next, oh, thirty years or so. Then I see a couple of "Don't let Terri Schiavo die!" protesters wandering around aimlessly looking for a TV camera or at least a couple of legislators. One of them was holding a sign reading: "Don't starve the living!" So I'm thinking, is this a message for me from the diet gods? But then I realized it was OK. If the low-fat fanaticism turns out to be as painful as all that, I'll never stick with it, anyway, and go back to high living - high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high anxiety and gout all day every day. Now Terri's husband has chosen the ultimate low-fat, low-calorie diet for her. I just wish I knew more about her mental state or lack thereof, so I could get all worked up over keeping her "alive" or letting her die, whichever is more appropriate. The case is an education in how people take sides without having full information. And in these days of blogging, more information than anyone could want is available somewhere. But deciding rationally spoils all the fun. Where are the MRI's, EEGs and all the other brain scans that might prove whether anything's going on in her brain? You would think the educated populace would be clamoring for them. But I guess they're more concerned with soundbites.

The Intellectual Terrorist

Nah little poufters*.
I have stumbled upon the basic misconception (!) that has led to this recent idea that men can or should, in some sense, "marry" men and women can or should "marry" women. This obviously monstrous absurdity can only have come about because some addle-pated "gays" (but I repeat myself) must not ever have been told the facts of life. They must be harboring the fond but biologically impossible hope that after they have whatever they consider an approximation of heterosexual sex, little poufters will suddenly, from some bodily orifice, emerge nine months or so later. Or maybe the new little addlepates will spring full-grown from their heads, like the gods and goddesses used to do. It reminds one of the pathos-soaked cargo cults of the Pacific Islanders, who after seeing US GIs call up on radios and have large airplanes full of trade goods descend, copied the GIs after they left, but with radios made of wood and vines for antennas. Needless to say, no C-47s full of Hershey bars and nylon stockings ever responded to these primitive entreaties.
The idea of marriage - and the fact I have to say this demonstrates the depths to which this discourse has descended - is to have children emerge that display a mixture of the characteristics of the husband and the wife. That is why a man looking for a wife carefully observes not only a woman's physical conformation but her intellectual shape and size as well. Does she have a good sense of humor? Ah, our child may share that. How jolly. Does she have flashing green eyes? Imagine a boy with my muscles and her eyes! He will be a great warrior and a triumphant conqueror of women! Is her mother a scold? Later, baby.
Perhaps it's understandable that those whose sexual "preferences" make it impossible for them to have a biological family would think that by standing up in front of a fake religious figure and going through a fake ceremony and having fake sex they can share some of the juju associated with the most basic relationship of the tribe of Man. But, as they say on MTV, get over it. Ain't gonna happen.
*reference is of course to the Constitution of Australia, which consists of two words: Nah poufters.

Pathetic old yawp
So Hunter Thompson is dead. You know you're dead when Tom Wolfe writes about you in the Wall Street Journal. Thompson of course was amusing, at least the first time you read one of his items. But they all sound the same after a while. Thompson was one of those pathetic ex-hippies who don't think life is worth living unless something weird is happening every second. Reminds me of an old man at a wedding trying to get attention by standing up every so often and shouting incoherently. Regular old boring everyday life isn't good enough for him. So he never had a chance to see deeper. The most ordinary, "conformist" waitress or bank clerk, who had to put up with Thompson's childish tantrums, knew more about real life than Thompson ever was going to find out if he lived another "gonzo" lifetime. Sad.

New word
New term for a comedian: chortlemonger

Lucky me
All this Social Security stuff has been making me think. I'm 56 years old. If Ray Kurzweil is right, there's a good chance that I'll be ready for Social Security right about the time when the scientists figure out how to make people live pretty much forever:

Many experts, including the authors, believe that within a decade we will be adding more than a year to human life expectancy every year. At that point, with each passing year, your remaining life expectancy will move further into the future.

As I understand the present proposals for Social Security, those who are now within ten years or so of retirement will be guaranteed full coverage for the rest of their lives. Now, following Kurzweil, that could be forever. Unfortunately, for younger people, no such guarantee is available, although I can well believe that the personal equity accounts that Bush is supporting will allow today's twenty-somethings to make a lot more money than I ever did on my admittedly spotty SS contributions. But the trade-off there will be no automatic guaranteed government income forever. I may be the last of the complete socialists, able to loaf indefinitely even when, because of medical advances, I could be working. Am I lucky or what?

Schema? Schemata?
I read somewhere on the Web about how a good army allocates its officers. Sorry I can't link to it, because I can't remember where. There are two continua, from Brilliant to Stupid and from Active to Lazy. So, the officers break down into four groups:
1. Stupid but Active
2. Lazy and Stupid
3. Brilliant and Active
4. Brilliant and Lazy
Group 1, Stupid but Active, are very dangerous. These men must be reassigned, transferred, cashiered, whatever. They will get many men killed in battle, or even in training, because they don't have a clue what they're doing and yet are always doing things.
Group 2, Stupid and Lazy, form the mass of the officer corps. They head almost all the field units. They're not dangerous, because, even though they don't know what to do, they do as little as possible. They're not very useful, however, because they can't figure out what to do. They do get along with the masses of soldiers, because they're very much like them.
Group 3, Brilliant and Active: These are the staff officers, who are always having bright ideas and doing things. They can't be successful field officers, because the men - and the Group 2 officers - hate them, because they're always pushing soldiers to do stuff. They're only useful at Headquarters and do most of the work there.
Group 4, Brilliant and Lazy, are the top commanders. These are the guys who can be relied on to come up with good ideas but to delegate the carrying out of those ideas to the Group 3s. Every few months they may make a tour of the front lines, but they're usually relaxing and drinking, like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now or Nero Wolfe, who let Archie Goodwin do all the legwork.

My goal, of course, is to be recognized as a Group 4, even though I'm not in the army. Someone should write a management book using this schema (These schemata?) But I just got a new bottle of gin and it's been in the freezer long enough to be nice and cold....

Straightening out the tangle
I would be even more straightforward than Instapundit or the Goodridge case:

Yes, the creepiest line in the Goodridge case is the one about there being three parties to every marriage -- the couple being married, and the state.

Marriage is not a relationship between a man and a woman, it is a relationship between an individual and the state. Anyone who's ever been through a divorce, or even contemplated one, knows what I mean. The relationship between a man and a woman is called love. You do not - or should not - enter into marriage to get anything from your mate. The bonds of love are your only security with relation to the one you've married. Signing a marriage license application binds you to a certain standard of behavior set by the state, not by your mate. In return, the state guarantees certain financial benefits, including tax relief and inheritance rights. From the state's point of view, the beneficiaries of this relationship are the children of the marriage. The state has an obvious interest in keeping new taxpayers coming along, as without them it would fail.
It's hardly surprising that the expectations that many have of the marriage relationship are often disappointed. When love disappears, the bare framework of legal obligations is frequently insufficient to achieve the state's aims. Any woman who's tried to get the state to force an absent husband to pay child support, and any man who's tried to get a fair shake from the state in domestic litigation knows the incompetence and impenetrability of the state apparatus. These facts form just some of the background that make me shake my head in wonder at "gay" folk who actually expect state certification of their pretend "marriages" to do anything good for them or for the society as a whole.
Which forces an odd conclusion: Since successful results - well-reared children - from a marriage depend on love, and cannot be forced, and the state depends on successful marriages, the state itself depends on love. Who would have thought it?

Peru
OK, today is Peru Day. Here's a website already, now go away. I gotta go to bed.

Europe Day - Silesia
Ah, Silesia! I remember it well. In law school I competed in an international law moot court contest. The Franklin Pierce team's assignment was the International Claims Commission for Silesia after World War I. I only have a vague recollection of the issues - something about compensation for minerals mined while Silesia was under occupation. But I've had a soft spot for Silesia ever since. And in Karpacz there are strangely shaped rocks! Who could ask for more? But there is more - skiing! Look around the linked sites. You will be all prepared to have a lovely time in Silesia, summer or winter.