When ya lose Big Bird . . . .

Coming on the heels of a betrayal by Bill Maher, this has got to sting.

Why Our Enemies in Afghanistan are Evil Men

Cowards, too. They are so afraid of the words of a girl that they have to kill her, lest others speak.

Yet this valley is a stronghold for them. We controlled it once, and have already withdrawn from it because the population prefers them to the central government enough to let them -- even to help them -- command. That speaks to the poverty of our allies, such as they are, as well as the depth of the ethnic division.

We may hope that these particular men might yet have the opportunity to meet with an appropriate answer. In the end, though, this is the world we are leaving behind.

Nobel

Because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, they sometimes miss an extraordinary achievement that won't bear fruit until later, particularly if the discoverer dies young.  Rosalind Franklin, for instance, might have shared the 1962 prize that went to Watson and Crick for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, but she died of cancer at age 37 in 1958.

Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize not for the theory of relativity (special 1905, general 1911) or the mass-energy equivalence (1905) but for his 1905 work on the photo-electric effect.  I was not aware of the ugly political machinations behind this delayed and arguably misdirected award.  By the time the Nobel committee worked out its resentment of Einstein's Jewish heritage and pacifist tendencies, not to mention the controversy over whether the 1919 Eddington experiment had truly confirmed his work, Einstein had suffered the fate of Achilles:  the honor had been robbed of its value by the arbitrary partisanship of its awarders.

He that fights fares no better than he that does not; coward and hero are held in equal honour, and death deals like measure to him who works and him who is idle.

Einstein didn't return from his trip to the Far East to attend the 1922 ceremony in Stockholm.  In 1933, he renounced his German citizenship and moved to the U.S., where in 1939 he was instrumental in persuading President Roosevelt to make this country the world's first nuclear power.

Nobel Prizes are being awarded this week, so far without controversy.  The medicine award went to two stem cell researchers, one British and one Japanese, whose work involved not embryonic stem cells but the reprogramming of adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.  The physics award went to two men, one from Colorado and the other from Paris, whose work with observing quantum particles may lead to advances in supercomputers.

Romney on foreign policy

From WaPo:

I believe that if America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us.

A few more specific proposals, not that any foreign policy speech is ever very specific:

Restore cuts to military spending; specifically, build 15 ships per year, including three submarines.

"I will implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats.  And on this, there will be no flexibility with Vladimir Putin.  And I will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only 3 of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark."

Organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results, by stipulating conditions to aid.

Reverse the President's four-year failure to sign any new free trade agreements.

Support the many Syrians who would oppose Iran.

More support for Israel.

Other than that, though, what's wrong with Venezuela?

From the WaPo:

According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, even media not directly controlled by the government have been reluctant to report critically on Mr. Chavez.  Many voters, too, are intimidated by high-tech polling machines that read their fingerprints; polls show that they suspect their votes will not be secret.  Those not motivated by fright might be lured by greed:  The government has amassed a list of 3 million people it has promised new homes. There are about 12 million likely voters. 

That Mr. Chavez is in danger of losing in spite of all this is testimony to the havoc he has wreaked in what was once Latin America’s richest country.  At more than 20 percent, inflation is the highest in the region and is accompanied by chronic shortages of food, basic consumer goods and power.  The country’s infrastructure is crumbling:  Within the last two months an explosion at a state oil refinery killed 50 people, and a major highway bridge collapsed.  Perhaps worst of all for average citizens, violent crime has become epidemic under Mr. Chavez.  The murder rate, which has more than tripled, is one of the five highest in the world.  Drug traffickers have made Venezuela a hub for shipments to the United States and Europe with the help of senior government officials, including the current defense minister.

Chavez won his re-election campaign.  Here's a giddy socialist take on the news:

The accomplishments of the Chavez regime over the past 13 years are undeniable.  When he entered office, Chavez took command of an economy that had been ravaged by IMF structural adjustment plans that had devastated most of the welfare subsidies and social guarantees that had been built up by the progressive nationalist regimes of the 1970s.  . . .  [S]ince Chavez was elected President in 1999, unemployment has been cut in half – declining from 14% to 7%.  Increased access to medical care, particularly through community clinics staffed by Cuban physicians, has led to a decline in infant mortality from 20 deaths per 1,000 live births to 13 deaths per 1,000.   Per capita GDP has increased from $4,000 in 1999 to $10,000 today.  And extreme poverty has declined from 23% of the population when Chavez entered office in 1999 to 8.5% today. . . . The election of right wing opposition candidate Henrique Capriles would have meant an immediate end to this process of social transformation. . . .

I guess we'll see.  Chavez is facing another contest that I doubt he'll win.  Whatever path Venezuela takes will have to be without him, one way or another.

A Pithy Commentary on the History of...shall we call it Canaan?

may be found here. Abstracting it to every other part of the human-occupied earth is left as an exercise for the reader. h/t Gene Expression.

Things That Never Cease to Amaze

American society is very strange about its food:

Speaking of eggs, balut is a soft-boiled duck egg, where the embryo is almost fully formed--feathers, bones, and all. The egg is cracked open, the soupy liquid drunk, and the fetus dug out to eat. It's popular in the Philippines, Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries.

What's being done: Thanks to domestic foodie demand, this "snack" is available in the U.S. too. Dekalb Market in Brooklyn hosted its first ever balut-eating contest this summer--and the winner downed 18 embryos in 5 minutes.

What to eat instead: Regular eggs (organic, cage-free, preferably my-farmer-sold-them-to-me eggs, that is) will give you a protein fix without the feathered fetus.

Why should this be a problem? Don't we know from our political debate that there is absolutely no distinction between an egg at day one of fertilization, and an egg about to hatch?

Besides, you'd eat the adult duck, and you'd eat the egg in an earlier state. Why so queasy about eating the almost-hatched fetus? What makes it the one phase that's worthy of protection -- or that makes it the one phase that it is revolting to kill and eat?

Fun with balls

As a way to move balls around to no evident purpose, this struck me as a lot more entertaining than football.

Hey, Shut Up!

This was at Sam Houston State University. I'll bet old Sam would have some choice words to say about that.

We Lost, You Must Have Cheated

One hears this line from little boys who don't like to lose, but it's a little surprising to hear it in the context of a Presidential debate. Still, GWB was also accused of "cheating," so I suppose it's always the default assumption when a conservative whips up on a liberal in a battle of ideas. (After all, we're supposed to be disarmed.)

What strikes me about the charge, though, is that it is flatly incompatible with the other excuse for the Obama loss: that Mitt Romney lied, lied, lied with every thing he said. You don't need to smuggle in a day planner full of facts if you're just going to make stuff up. The only purpose a "cheat sheet" would serve is making sure that you accurately remembered the facts you wanted to cite, so you wouldn't give your opponent an easy out by misquoting something you had mis-remembered.

So which was it? Did he cheat, or did he lie?

America from the Road

Ed Driscoll wants to write something punishing about the 'death of middlebrow culture,' comparing the fall from Lawrence of Arabia to Easy Rider. It's true that the two films don't really compare. Lawrence is a masterpiece, something we often watched in Iraq and when preparing for Iraq -- although Lawrence was leading an insurgency, not a counterinsurgency. Still, in the high days of the Surge, we were almost doing the same thing: leading a counterinsurgency that was really an insurgency, turning the Sunni tribes against al Qaeda and its fellow travelers, because it was their pleasure.





Easy Rider is another kind of story. It has nothing to do with glory. It does have something to do with America, though. John Wayne spoke of America, and why he loved her. His reasons were simple. They had to do with what America was.



It happens that the full version of Easy Rider happens to be available online right now. You'll find a lot of harmony between what John Wayne said, and what you see in the movie. It is about Monument Valley, and the sun shining through the trees along a desert highway, about New Orleans at Mardi Gras and the good life, as it is lived in a little place, where a man draws his living from the ground.



There's something more to be said for this movie than has been said for it. It is true that it is not Lawrence of Arabia, but it never intended to be. It explores the poison of drugs, which is a topic new to the era. But there is still something about the appreciation of the place, of America as it is a place to be ridden through and enjoyed and seen. It's the place that is worth loving, worth defending, worth sacrifice.

Maybe, even after that, the hippies in the movie wouldn't have fought for it. In that way they are wrong just where Lawrence and Wayne were right.

An Outstanding Metaphor

“You may want to move on to another topic,” Obama implored Lehrer, a bit like a motorcycle thief begging a cop to take him into custody rather than let him stay with the surly biker gang that caught him.

No, no. Leave him here. We'd like a few more words.

Strandhögg

You've read the written report, but here's the video of Lars Walker capturing himself a young bride in plain combat:

Funny, That's Not How I Remember It...

Apparently a teacher up in Philly demanded a Romney/Ryan shirt be removed from the body of a girl attending her class, on the grounds that it was like wearing a KKK shirt.

We actually had the Klan show up on the county courthouse square from time to time when I was a boy, so I can see how you'd hate to be reminded of them. Still, as I recall it, the county was a Democratic monolith in those days. Don't remember them being Mormons or Catholics, either.

UPDATE: On the other hand, there's this:

@ZekeJMiller
Romney motorcade just passed a hill flying a large confederate flag in rural SW VA

Clearly, that's demonstrative. I mean, any decent human being would have stopped, turned the motorcade around, and driven however far out of the way was necessary to avoid passing a hill with a Confederate flag on it. (H/t: Instapundit.)

"My name is Khamenei, and I'm building a nuclear weapon. . . ."

He's signing on to a 9-step program to treat his addiction.   The problem?   Steps one through eight consist of the West's reversing the economic sanctions that have led to a currency crisis and riots in Teheran.   Step nine is "a 'suspension' of the medium-enriched uranium production at the deep underground site called Fordow."

We should jump on that deal.

Presidential empathy

From the National Review, an excerpt from Mitt Romney's book "No Apology":

During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts.  Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on an asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant.  I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile. 

One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector.  I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston.  As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me.  It was as if I was invisible.  Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect.  – I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector:  at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever.  Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street.  Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did:  “Nice job, Mitt,” they called.  “Why don’t you find an easier job?”  And then they good-naturedly came down and helped me pick up my mess.

"Dreams of My Father" it's not.  Was Romney just slumming for effect, after living a silver-spoon existence?   There's no doubt his wealthy father helped him get a start in life.  On the other hand, by the time his father died, Romney already had become quite successful himself, so he donated his inheritance to BYU.

Quit giving them ideas

Admiring a Paris bike-sharing program that positively encourages people to ride around without a trace of helmet protection, on the theory that more lives will be endangered by sedentary obesity than by head trauma, New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Rosenthal quotes/muses:

[I]f we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”  The European Cyclists’ Federation says that bicyclists in its domain have the same risk of serious injury as pedestrians per mile traveled.

Or we could adopt the California approach:

In the United States, cities are struggling to overcome the significant practical problems of melding helmet use with bike-sharing programs — such as providing sanitized helmet dispensers at bike docking stations, says Susan Shaheen, director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Right next to the condom dispensers. Helmets are health care too, you know!   We ought to think about mandating them for pedestrians, ladder-climbers, and bathers.  But that bomb-throwing anarchist Rosenthal, she probably ate non-pasteurized cheese while she was in Paris.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

I know what he means

From a 2002 speech by Barack Obama at a Martin Luther King Day memorial service:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence.  Why wouldn’t they be?  They’ve got what they want.

Yep, whenever I decide whether to indulge in violence, my first order of business is to think through whether I have everything I want yet.  If not, all bets are off.

Another viewpoint

Just to keep things fair, Bryan Preston's alternative explanation for the President's abysmal debate performance:  "Obama wasn't just tired or off his game.  He was incoherent because his ideas stink."  Obama issued his usual complaint that he inherited a big deficit, including "two wars that were paid for on a credit card."  Then he suggested "that we take some of the money that we’re saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America and that we reduce our deficit."  Hey, wait a minute, Preston objects:

If the two wars are paid for on a “credit card” as the president says, how then are we going to reduce the deficit by taking that money and just spending it on something else?  Wouldn’t it make more sense just to not spend that money at all?  Since, you know, we don’t have it in the first place?

A commenter chips in:

The way to fix my household budget deficit is to take the money I have already spent on the security system and somehow get it back from the ether and plunge it directly into the toilet.  This doesn’t help keep my family safe and destroys the plumbing.  And, if two wars were costing so much money . . . why enter a third in Libya, then fail to protect the people you sent there to clean up the mess.

Was that a good jobs report or a bad one?

It may have been naive to expected an un-jimmied jobs report this close to the election, but even by the loose standards we've learned to apply, this one is a doozy.  Somehow, we added fewer jobs than are needed to keep pace with a growing population, but the unemployment rate took a dive to 7.8%, the first time in 43 months it's been below 8%.  OK, you can get there by driving a phenomenal number of people out of the workforce, I guess, but the numbers still don't add up.  We added 114,000 non-farm jobs but lost 456,000 unemployed people, while the household survey showed that the number of people with jobs rose by 873,000 (seasonally adjusted) -- the highest one-month increase in 29 years.  It seems that the latter number includes 582,000 part-time jobs accepted by workers who were seeking part-time work but taking what they could get.  Total "multiple jobs holders" rose by 183,000.

Zero Hedge is having some trouble with the numbers.  Here's an interesting coincidence, for instance:  the household survey figure is 873,000 jobs, of which 582,000 are part-time, which is precisely 2/3.  Sound a bit like a plugged number?

I'm totally confused, but I take it that the unemployment number uses the household-survey jobs (873,000) instead of what Zero Hedge calls the "establishment" jobs number, which was the 114,000 figure.  Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has unexpectedly revised upward the disappointing jobs figures for the last three months.

Well, I just hope the jobs picture is turning around, and these aren't simply numbers that will be quietly revised downwards later, per the usual practice.