It turns out that all of those "myths" about snakes may have a firm basis in reality:


OK, so the snake may have actually been as important to human development as the Garden of Eden myth suggests. Whether or not you believe that, this is a powerful notion. Turns out that snakes were likely an A-list predator about the time that primates were evolving their defense mechanisms:
One of the pieces that gets overlooked by people doing evolutionary science is the notion of a feedback loop. Nothing exists in a vaccuum. It's stress and need that force animals and men to adapt and overcome. It's your enemies, in other words, that help define you.

Someone should tell the NEA. And then they should go see "Snakes on a Plane."

ugly isn't the word. It's like watching a dog getting hit by a car

So Aaron Sorkin is making TV about making TV, and he's basing all of the characters on himself, his partners, and other people who he sees as interesting. Because he's the most interested/ing thing out there.

..., "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." The show is a wicked send-up of an "SNL"-esque late-night series on a network that smells a lot like NBC....One astute reporter asked Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, who play Aaron Sorkin and his longtime professional partner, Tommy Schlamme, on "Studio 60," to comment on the fact that their characters bear more than passing resemblance to Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme.

I guess the entertainment press is making a lot of Sorkin and Matt Perry's flippant drug references. I don't see these as a big deal - ex Catholics and ex-smokers make the same cracks (heh). So the entertainment press are a bunch of high-school girls in the business of making something out of nothing.

On the smaller scale, this is a "who cares?" moment - TV eating itself? Old news. TV picking the most bland, banal material? Been watching it since the "Love Boat." But you have to ask, given world events and the rich complexity of America in the world, with the accompanying rich emotional context, if this is the best they could really do.

I'm so proud of him ... finally


Personally, I'm tired of legalistic wrangling in the service of the DNC's politics. It's about time Bush manned up and shut this sort of soft-shoe jockying down.

If the President is in the right, and I believe him and Gonzalez when they say he is, then this foolishness does nothing but lend aid and comfort to an enemy.


It sends the right political message as well. But I repeat myself.


Good on yer, mate.

You know, it's a lot easier to root for a team that goes for it on fourth down every once in a while. I'm not asking for the President to break the law. But it's also clear that GW has acted like a lawyer a lot more than a leader in the last 5 years, at least domestically. At least he draws the line re: getting along when national security is at stake. Now, though, he needs to use the same discretion to pursue the leakers.

This is pretty cool: Animatronics integrated with a security system.


Who hasn't been to the Haunted Mansion at DisneyWorld and thought, "I want a ghost in the chair with me."

Katie Couric is more important than you, than the job, than the news. What do you say?

Do you remember Ernie Pyle? Tom Brokaw reporting from Kuwait? Dan Rather reporting from the tornado (or was it a hurricane?)? What about all of the embeds in the latest Iraq war?

So Katie isn't Ernie or Tom or Dan. I think we all expected that. But did anyone really expect the Perky one to state so clearly and unequivically the basic tenets of limousine liberalism?

1. Do as I say, not as I do.
2. I am not expendable.

In Katie's own words:

I know a lot of you are for fewer SUVs, reduced emissions, and so on. As a conservationist, I more or less agree with that take. What's more, it's clearly an advantage to aggressive foreign governments when the American populace is so dependent on foreign oil. That said, having a family or small business in America is next to impossible without an SUV / minivan. On balance, they bring a lot more value than they take away.

A few years ago, Ford management made a concerted effort to focus on low-emission vehicles and fuel cells. These are two gee whiz technologies that simply have no market. The only thing buying a hybrid car gives you is moral superiority, because it's clear that there's no marked energy-use benefit.

Now, Ford is paying for this decision.


Shrinking sales, downsizing. It's pretty clear that this is going on across all US automakers to a large extent, and a lot of the blame should fall on the unions, health care, etc. But Ford has made a gamble based on junk science and feel-good economic analysis.


More incentives and shrinking sales? Think about that - you've got product that no one wants or can justify. Lower-margin cars? So the stuff that no one wants is costing more to make. I'm not trying to make my whole case based on a single poor showing, but I'd say thte evidence is becoming clearer. Instead of bearing up under the tough conditions, their ship is sinking as fast or faster than GM and Chrysler. I don't know - could be a coincidence.

American companies succeed by acting American - bigger, better, laser-like focus on Americans.

Has anyone else noticed that Israel was at peace as long as conservatives and right of center politicians held sway, but as soon as a moderate comes to power, there's war?

Just sayin' ...

Give hell, Ishmael!

Steyn. The inimitable. It's an old article - I've seen it before, but it's worth reading again.

Worse:

Worser:

Politically, America embodies her pasttime football. We are good for 60 7 second plays, with long breaks in between. Islam can afford to play the game of attrition - in fact the whole prescripted methodology for state craft and religious mission is geared around it. If you're weak, wait. If you're strong, kill (or give the infidels the option of conversion, and then kill).

Over a long enough time frame, the probability of a an unchecked Islamo-fascist regime scoring a big win against America approaches 1. Time is not on our side.

Bottom of the barrel:


You can hate Clinton for saying this, and you can be appalled. But the remarks highlight the mushy sentimentalism that makes it tough for America and her leadership to find the will and take the desired action that leads to victory. It's soft headed, fuzzy, emotional liberalism at its worst. Much worse than the words, worse than the irony is the vicious wrong headedness that leads a President to play to an international crowd with such tripe.

I've been talking to several people / blogs / myself about Net Neutrality. It might be handy to get all of the pieces in one place, in case anyone is interested.

Bruce Stewart at O'Reilly has a brief piece on the opening shots. Sort of a playbill.

NRO has a good editorial which is terse but helpful.

Hillary has weighed (ahem ...) in. 

Ars Technica here and here. These are excellent pieces.

Here is a pretty good wrap up of Senator Stevens speech on regulation vs. non-regulation, with responses.

CNET's search engine on Net Neutrailty - there are 3 or 4 good pieces here on the pro-neutrality position.

My take is this. Net Neutrality is a manufactured issue, aka a solution in search of a problem. It would appear that it started as an effort by AT&T and other ISPs to get legislative protection for their bandwidth. This makes sense: as Michael was saying, the internet doesn't support the kind of nano-economics that are required to siphon money away from end users for users. There's too much content and no way to meter it. The counterattack was an attempt by businesses / freedom activists / internet anarchists to lay claim to other company's infrastructure.

The anarchists are pretty much of the opinion that the Internet is free, or should be free, or is at least free to use, and that the usage trumps any costs (which they only acknowledge in the negative). Google, Amazon, and other companies and individuals who have created successful businesses and have future plans are rightly threatened should the companies that own the pipes begin to restrict them for whatever reason. But of course, the Internet was (and is) not free to build - there was a huge infrastructure cost.

The flip side is this - AT&T want you to believe that the Internet was created out of some altruistic notion that their board came up with over the weekend, and only now are they realizing their mistake. The truth of the matter is that the Internet was the necessary buildout for what are now known as ISPs because they were in the same spot 30 years ago as Amazon is in now. Faced with mediocre revenue models and stellar technological plans to improve communication, they deemed it worthwhile to create their own markets. You can't have VOIP without the IP, you know? The Internet for them is a sunk cost. They opened it up so that government regulators couldn't break up Ma Internet the same way they destroyed Ma Bell, salving the pain of that decision by thinking that they would be near the top of the food chain as the iNterthingy proliferated.

Instead, as so often happens in America, business models and revenue models grew that were a step ahead of the intended target. Where ISPs felt that they were the top of the food chain, companies that were content specific, instead of delivery-driven, sprang up, effectively shortening the usage model. The Internet is an aside to Amazon's business - it could work on a LAN if the LAN was only big enough. So the next round of AT&T execs, faced with falling revenues and a lack of innovation, are trying to put the monster back in the box to attract revenue for the next ten years.

That's not to say that the Internet should be free, and in fact, it is not. No more infrastructure is built that isn't tied to revenue and/or income. AT&T, Qwest, et al make money by delivering the "last mile" (cable modems for the home and business), which is revenue that wouldn't exist without the first 999 models. As router and server hardware has come down in price, the cost of delivering service has consequently fallen, the more so because there is more demand. And, off the top of my head, I can think of three or four other models that are pushed by ISPs that are similarly leveraging their previous sunk cost in building the Internet.

That's where we stand now. So why do I call this a manufactured issue? First, because net neutrality is a shibolleth for both sides to save their business models. Second, because indeed, everyone's revenue models are safe and secure. Third, and much more importantly, this is an issue that the market will respond to. If bandwidth is truly the problem, some megalithic company will come up with a way to make money on increased / dedicated / metered bandwidth. In fact, the stirrings are already out there.

In other words, the government is once again being lobbied to "do something" (hands waving frantically). Now the trick is to make sure they don't screw something up in the drive to take credit.

Budget Deficit is dropping. 296.Billion.Dollars.

That's $1000 for every person in the country. Or $2000 for every person who pays taxes.

Not bad for an economy that the NYT/CBS/CNN/ETC can't bring themselves to praise. And, oh yeah, it's another nail in the coffin for Democratic criticism of Supply Side Economics.

So imagine, if you will, how good it would be if Bush was actually cutting spending.

Have you ever noticed that there are very very few good movies about the Revolution, or the founding fathers? There's The Patriot, which I think is a good movie, but it's not about the Revolutionary or the Revolution. It's about family, honor, and revenge.

My personal opinion is that the Revolution is just too real, too personal to get a good script. If there was a good script, I'm not sure there's a director out there that could take the story with all of its intimacy and tone down the acting and let events speak for themselves. Hollywood only seems capable of dealing with "real" emotions when they are negative or when they are grounded in decay or sterility. Given something so huge, so sweeping, with such consequence as the Revolution, it just seems beyond Hollywood.

I think the same thing is true of 9/11 and of the larger GWOT. It's gonna be tough to get it right.

The thugs who mutilated the soldier's bodies are now saying that it was revenge.

So let me get this straight ...  no soldiers would have died that day if the crime had not been committed? The willing accomplices in the media are only too happy to deliver the message of grievance in exchange for the next manufactured terrorist moment.

A quick reminder: we're at war. Soldiers die. People die. People will die every day, and will continue to die. More people will die if the terrorists come to power because they don't know any way besides the way of the gun.

How do you know you've gone too far? If you're North Korea, it' when the Japanese start rattling their katanas.

Is anyone tracking the two pronged saber rattling between Kim Jong Il and Ahmadmenijihad? It seems awfully convenient that two nations that supposedly have no connections are performing like orchestrated ballerinas in threatening G8 nuclear sovereignty. Why, it's almost like Italy and Germany in the '30's!

Seriously, why do I keep hearing Clint Eastwood's speech in Josey Wales?


UPDATE: I want credit. Turns out the Unilateral American Coalition is already on this.


First Bolton's idea - genius with a genius idea. Second, I am shocked (SHOCKED!) that an organization with no bureaucracy can actually get something done effectively. Both of which support the notion that it is great individuals with great ideas who make a difference. 

Of course, now that there's some publicity, I'm sure Kerry will want oversight post haste. If it ain't broke, let the Democrats form a committee.

Atlas (Pamela) has a great article on the complicit, duplicitous IAEA. They're at it again:

There are several things to point out about this. Iran is clearly engaging in a diplomatic / bureaucratic strategy of stalling for time in their attempt to achive global parity. They do this by manipulating the world bureaucracies because, well, these are the West's primary weakness. Between our intent to play by the rules and and our unwillingness to flex our international muscles to the fullest extent, Iran is gaining a march on us (again and again and again).

But the bureaucracies are not the West's only weakness. It is very clear that behind this wall of "official diplomatic discussions" that Iran is pursuing a clever and dangerous strategy with a single, vital goal.

Consider the determined way in which the bureaucracies are being manipulated. Consider the rhetoric coming out of AHmedmadnadedijihad's mouth. Consider the source. Israel - diplomatically hobbled and internally supporting an unworkable "land for peace" strategy - is a weakness for the West.

Of course, Israel is a weakness that could easily become a strength, but only if the West gets serious. The US must unfetter its only true Middle East friend diplomatically and militarily. In so doing, the US must acknowledge that its own stalling - our waiting for democratic leaders and reasonable regimes iin the Middle East to come forward - is not a strategy but a tactic whose time has passed.

Our belief in the "good" in our enemies is not unfounded. But hoping for our more extreme enemies to realize a national shift towards classical liberalism is not an effective strategy. So the hope that the general unrest and dissatisfaction amongst the populace in Iran will coherently deform the current mullah-ocracy with democratic elections was a good plan, but it's not working. It is working (at least partially) in Egypt. Planning on an enlightened leader to emerge from the oligarchs and leadership in Syria was a good idea whose time has passed. It is working in Jordan. Planning on a population's political emergence to cast off their oppressors is not working in North Korea. Lebanon responded positively. Seeking cooperation from former enemies has had some success (Putin and Khadafi), but we've gotten as far as we are likely to get.

So we are at a crossroads. Bush's positivist strategy has worked to the extent that it will work. To varying degrees, we can count successes in the GWOT in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekhistan, Yemen, the Phillipines, Fiji, Russia, Afghanistan, Israel, Canada, and of course domestically. We've made the friends that we can make, and have influenced them to the extent that we can given the Bush doctrine. We will no longer see threats coming, say, from Kandehar, Beirut, or Baghdad.

As we've reduced our enemies, we have also forced them into different tactical and strategic situations. Even as the media carps to terrorists and the scenes that they orchestrate, it is equally clear that Al Quaeda, Iran, and Syriah no longer consider large scale terrorism as the single strategy that can bring them victory. In other words, the Assymmetrical warfare that characterizes the GWOT has led us to familiar territory - America is at the beginning stages of a cold war against North Korea and Iran. This is characterized by a looming nuclear/WMD threat with global consequences with a host of smaller regional conflicts happening concurrently. Terrorism is still a threat, especially given the increased magnitude of the weapons in the hands of enemies. But the stakes are ever so much higher than orchestrated "made for Television" moments.

The coming 3 months are critical. Bush must implement a new, powerful strategy to insure that his administration leaves the GWOT in a place where America's next President can move it forward. It is essential to consider the 18 month deadline that is looming, for our allies sake as well as our own. Thus, America will either signal a shift in strategy designed to force the issue with those political and militaristic elements still not on board, or we will spiral into a string of global conflicts characterized more by heightened destruction than savagery designed to play on the evening newscasts. As part of this new stance, America must get serious about our domestic enemies - the various treasonous organizations and elements who explicitly or implicitly support the enemy.

A successful shift in strategy will include economic actions against the state actors like Iran and Syria, and military actions to reduce the global threats in place or emergent. We will, in other words, see a shift or see the status quo. And the status quo is a recipe for disaster.

UPDATE:
Regime Change Iran has the Die Welt story that is so instructive.

I was trying to post yesterday, but the three times I tried, TH was down. Still and all, Mary Katherine and her crew have been very responsive in getting the bugs fixed. For those of you who are getting impatient, I'd urge you to just hang in there. They'll get everything ironed out with a little patience and good feedback.

Speaking of which:

+ There needs to be a _Miscellaneous_ topic
+ There needs to be a _Personal_ topic
+ There needs to be a _GWOT_ topic
+ You should be able to c/p raw html into the posting editor. This might require using two "editors" for posting, but believe me, it'd be worth it. The provided editor is expensive in terms of bandwidth and features, and having an alternative will pay off.
+ The Preview is still not working
+ The c/p is still putting text at the beginning of the entry
+ There are formatting issues (see my IAEA discussion)
+ Your tagline should include your preferred name. "Posted by John" is a good bit of information.