Just Out Of Curiousity...

...how do you do that?

Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.

So, if you're a man -- and not a male-leaning female-born whatever -- you have to register for the Selective Service at 18. They'd love to automate this process, since the concept is zero-noncompliance. But you actually have to go down to the Post Office and send them a card, or at least I did at 18. I assume there are other options now, but they all require you to do something. Because they assume you won't do it for free, there are significant legal penalties for failing to do it.

Most Americans like to drive. So states everywhere have passed "Motor-Voter" laws, requiring the DMV or MVA or whatever they have in their state to ask you if you want to register to vote while you're obtaining a license. Clearly, this doesn't get everyone because we're still talking about it.

Public libraries serve lots of the folks we are hoping to reach, at least we hope they do. It'd be great if they were taking advantage of free opportunities to educate themselves. So when you apply for a library card in many states, they automatically ask you if you'd like to register to vote. But there's no guarantee you go to the library, and if you do, you only need a card to check out books -- not to use the free computers.

We've chased this concept a long way already, and as far as I know we don't have a good idea of how to do what she's talking about. Maybe someone will ask her how she intends to accomplish what Selective Service, Motor-Voter and the Public Library plans haven't managed to do. Assuming, that is, that anyone is allowed to ask her a question.

The rabbit hole

Better than the Avengers.

Jobs and justice for the non-binary

Roger Kimball reports that Bryn Mawr has taken steps to address the increasingly vexing question of which of its applicants are female.  Some, of course, were "assigned female at birth," so that's smooth sailing.  The university will open its arms as well to "transwomen and . . . intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application." In fact, you can get in if you're a member of that shadowy group known as "intersex individuals who do not identify as male." The gates are resolutely shut, however, against "those assigned female at birth who have taken medical or legal steps to identify as male."

What new opportunities for padding the administration the new policy offers! You may have a dozen deans of diversity, but how many administrators looking into the “legal or medical steps taken to affirm gender” do most campuses have? It is an opportunity for growth at a time when many colleges are facing cutbacks.

The one thing we can be sure of is that Bryn Mawr will continue to celebrate its vital role as a women-only institution.

Science and Humility

Rick Santorum, who is a Knight of the Order of St. John of Malta, expressed an opinion to the Pope to the effect that the Church should leave science to scientists.

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists,” he told the pope. “I think when we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible. And I’ve said this to the bishops many times when they get involved in agriculture policy or things like that, that are really outside the scope of what the church’s main message is.”

Despite what the linked article says, this isn't a stupid point. It's also not limited to global-warming/climate-change arguments. It's a generalized approach to the relationship between the Church and science that isn't foolish. If God is the author of the world, then finding out about the world is a way to know something about God by knowing something about his works. It would be irreligious to bias that process, as if trying to tell God how he had to have set things up.

It turns out the Pope probably agrees with that sentiment: he has a Master's degree in chemistry, and was a working chemist in his youth.

Being a scientist means that you have to embrace the fact that you don’t know everything. That you need to be constantly searching for the truth. It’s hard to stay humble as Pope in the extravagant confines of the Vatican. But from all accounts, the new Pope has humility in spades. He lived in an apartment rather than the Archbishop’s palace. He traveled by bus rather than chauffeured limousine. Humility makes one open to change – and change is something that the Church desperately needs now.

That seems to be the considered opinion of every generation. They forget, or perhaps simply reject, that part of the function of the Church is to restrain passion in favor of proven virtue. If your change is right, it will eventually win the day. But it will have to test itself and prove its rightness against a bulwark of wisdom that has done the same, in its time. Many passionately-believed ideas arise, flourish an hour, and then perish. Many such are flourishing right now. Some of them may prove out, but many such ideas will fade in popularity once their consequences become better known.

Chimp Cookery

Researchers built an oven for some chimpanzees, and the chimps worked out how to cook with it for themselves.

Well, no, but that's what they're claiming they found. What they actually found was that chimps can learn to play games involving trading things they like less for things they like more.

The device was actually just a bowl with a false bottom that held cooked food. The researchers didn't use fire because it could have injured the chimps, and because some chimps might have already seen how humans used it to cook food.

So what we haven't learned is how early man came to control fire, or how he learned to cook -- let alone how he learned to build an oven! Fire's too dangerous for the chimps, and no oven construction is being observed.

Boston Mosque Update

So the FBI's victim, that guard at the local mosque who didn't "regularly" pray there, turns out to be the brother of one of the imams. Jimbo is on the case, along with some video of gun-and-sword preaching from another imam there.

Even for HRC, this is bad PR

Her Inevitableness will take no questions.  The speech will be her interview.

The campaign disavows the expression, but it's too apt not to stick.

Local experiments

My husband argues that, no matter how beastly things look in the federal elections, there's an encouraging red wave at the state level.  I'm skeptical whether that's enough, but he's clearly right about the breakout of some kinds of conservative principles in state houses, many of the sort that probably won't even be overturned by federal courts or Congress.  In Nevada, for instance, the governor has just signed several bills calculated to give Harry Reid hives.  A new school choice program will put 90% of the average cost of public schooling into parents' hands for any educational purpose they choose, including tutoring or private school tuition (the percentage goes to 100% for certain disadvantaged students).  A few other states have programs that venture a bit in this direction, but are strictly limited to students with disabilities or students in schools formally identified as "failing."  Nevada's experiment in school choice is wide open.  My own governor is about to sign an open-carry and campus-carry law.

At the same time, blue cities are revolting against red legislatures, thus setting up an entertaining argument over whether too much local control leads to patchwork regulatory systems, with some conservatives taking the pro-uniformity position.

Don't Be That Guy

So I can understand carrying a rifle to a protest outside a mosque linked to an attack by men with rifles on a gathering you support. That sends a message that anyone thinking they can intimidate the American people into surrendering our basic rights through violence is going to meet some significant resistance.

What I don't understand is carrying a rifle loaded with a 100-round drum magazine to the airport just to make a point. What point? Well, it's not really clear, but he did feel harassed by all the police attention.

Is the Koran Grammatically Correct?

I have no way of evaluating this argument, since I do not know any Classical Arabic, but it seems like it would be pretty explosive if it's true. Supposedly the Koran is the direct recitation of words transmitted to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Perhaps Gabriel speaks in a regional patois?

Obama and American Exceptionalism

A provocative defense.

Blackmail

John McAfee, the same one who invented the McAfee anti-virus software, points out that there is a huge national security problem associated with the Adult Friend-Finder site (and, of course, similar sites).

Of the 535 members of Congress, only 16 congressmen and two senators were members of this adult website. Most were interested in BDSM. Only three were interested in gay hookups. Of the Fortune 500 corporations, fewer than 1,420 executives (directors, vice-presidents and above) were members. Another 230,000 or so rank-and-file employees of Fortune 500 companies were also members – following in the footsteps of their admired superiors no doubt.

Their interests ranged widely. Of the 2,400,000 odd employees of the US Federal Government, we find a measly 120,000 or so who were members.... This tragically fascinating information comes from a well-publicised hack of Adult FriendFinder...

I need to make something perfectly clear. The hacks that reach public awareness are extremely rare. For a hack to reach public awareness, someone has to make a serious mistake, or they are demanding money or some other asset or, in the case of ROR(RG), they have an axe to grind. This is something you need to carefully consider if you are in the world of information security.

So what's the problem for national security, you ask? He is glad to tell you.

Nearly all of these officials are married with children. Imagine what would happen if Russia, or China, got hold of this information. They would certainly not demand money to keep quiet. No –each of these people would be visited by a warm-hearted, well-dressed, kind and empathetic person whose conversation would go like this:

"We are so sorry that you got caught up in this nonsense, and we realise that it in no way taints your character or value as a productive citizen. Frankly, I myself have done far worse. We, in Russia, take a more practical view to such issues. They are not important.

"We have done what we can to keep your name out of this sad affair and can guarantee it will never come to light. That would help no one and we wish to hurt no one. So you have a friend in me and a friend in the country of Russia.

"I believe I could even help you gain power and prestige in your own country. I am privy to much that is happening behind the scenes in Russia and would be willing to advise you on affairs that impact both or our countries. You may call me at any time. In fact, the vote coming up in July is one such issue that I can give you good advice on. Please call me."

Russian operations of this sort were extremely common in the Cold War. I would think way it would go down is slightly different. Important 'Friendfinders' would get visited, on the site, by someone who somehow perfectly matched what they were secretly dreaming about. The conversation would come later, after there were recordings and videos, and would be much less gently phrased.

The Scandi miracle

The Sweden Report, a blog maintained by a Swedish-born American who returned to Sweden, is ending.  Its author is giving up and moving back to the U.S.  One of his readers has decided to stay:

Thanks for your writings. Being born and still living here, well educated, having young children, and seeing the same things I’m still staying. However we have moved out to the countryside. Quite far away. It’s a pain commuting but not worse than living in Stockholm and we love the nature and the people here. Community. People helping each other. Talking to each other. Caring for one another. No loans anymore. Sure, it’s not an idyll, we have our share of misery around here, but when the sh*t is going to hit the fan (because boy, it will) we believe that we’re better off here. Sure, we might have bet on the wrong horse but people out here already have to depend on each other. We already know the establishment hates us. 

It’s not going to be easy. Who knows what kind of looting gangs can come raiding… But. We’ve got tools. We’ve got skilled people who can manage themselves. We’ve got food. We’ve got community. We’ve got morals. Plus. We’re armed. 

Those who are dependent on the system have a hard time ahead of them… If we’re going to go out, let’s go out with our banners held high. I say… let the collapse begin! We cannot avoid it anyway.

Prices and power

From Kevin D. Williamson:

Prices in markets are not arbitrary — they are reflections of how real people actually value certain goods and services in the real world. Arbitrarily changing the dollar numbers attached to those preferences does not change the underlying reality any more than trimming Cleveland off a map of the United States actually makes Cleveland disappear… Free markets are a reflection of what people actually value at a particular time relative to the other things that they might also value. Real people simply want things that are different from what the planners want them to want, a predicament that can be solved only through violence and the threat of violence…

Markets adapt to political changes, and the hierarchy of values that distinguishes between an hour’s worth of warehouse management, an hour’s worth of composing poetry, an hour’s worth of brain surgery, and an hour’s worth of singing pop songs is not going to change because a politician says so, or because a group of politicians says so, or because 50 percent + 1 of the voters say so, or for any other reason. To think otherwise is the equivalent of flat-earth cosmology. In the long term, people’s needs and desires are what they are; in the short term, you can cause a great deal of chaos in the economy and you can give employers additional reasons to automate rote work. But you cannot make a fry-guy’s labour as valuable as a patent lawyer’s by simply passing a law.

It's that tricky word "valuable."  Does it mean what people actually value, or what their betters believe they should value?  Free markets mean letting people decide for themselves.  Planned markets mean trying to decide for them.  I could never have predicted that the messy business of letting a lot of largely ignorant and irrational members of the public decide for themselves would actually promote more prosperity, but oddly enough that's exactly what happens.  I'd love to understand why, but the fact remains indisputably itself, whether I can explain it adequately or not.

Are they doing it on purpose?

The perennial question in highly politicized disputes, in this case Climatism.  From Watts Up With That:

All these issues were inevitable when a political agenda coopted climate science. Two words, “skeptic” and consensus”, illustrate the difference between politics and science in climate research. All scientists are and must be skeptics, but they are troublemakers for the general public. Science is not about consensus, but it is very important in politics. As a result of these and other differences, the climate debate occurs in two different universes.

A major challenge for those fighting the manipulations of the IPCC and politicians using climate change for political platforms is that the public cannot believe that scientists would be anything less than completely open and truthful. They cannot believe that scientists would even remain silent even when science is misused. The politicians exploit this trust in science and scientists, which places science in jeopardy. It also allowed the scientific malfeasance of climate science to be carried out in the open.

Good cartoon, too.

Not good for the Jews

From Maggie's Farm, an American Jew's attempt to understand why the tide is turning against Jews in America:

The unimaginable evil of the Holocaust seemed to kill anti-Semitism, even the polite country-club variety that shows up in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. After the war, Hemingway disavowed Jewish jokes, which, he seemed to realize, were connected, in some way, to what happened. It created a bubble, a zone of safety not only for Jews but for other minorities. It’s no coincidence that the civil right movements came in the wake of WWII. Anti-Semitism still existed of course, but, in America, it became socially unacceptable. It retreated to the bedrooms and parlors, where it was expressed in the way of certain mystery religions, in secret, behind closed doors, so quietly you might think it had vanished.

This is my childhood, the world where I grew up. The horror of the Holocaust purchased us a 70-year vacation from history, though we didn’t know it. We believed the world had changed, as had human nature. Jews remained distinct in the new dispensation, but in a good way—a near-at-hand exotic, a symbol of exile, which we were told was the natural state of modern man. For perhaps the only time in history, you might actually want to be a Jew. Because of the close families and good husbands and yada yada. Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Mel Brooks. To those of us who came of age in these years, the future seemed like it would be more of the same, the present carried on forever.

We were wrong.

Against Sex Changes

A dissident view by the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Paul R. McHugh. He is today University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University.

Privilege

Boy, it's all the rage lately, isn't it?  Schools have got to figure out a way to root out white privilege, like using "white talk": "‘white talk’ is ‘verbal,’ ‘intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented,’ while ‘color commentary’ is ‘emotional’ and ‘personal.’"  Hey, that reminds me of man-talk.  Let's root that out, too.  I've noticed that people who are ‘verbal,’ ‘intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented’ tend to be more successful, which also seems unfair.  What about people who are inarticulate, muddle-headed, and prone to distraction from whatever they're being paid for?  Don't they deserve a living wage, too?  Who are we to judge?

Now, that's what I call architecture

Chand Baori in Abhaneri, India:

The walls are staircases down to a well.  Not suitable to my local geology, unfortunately.

I find it hard to resist clickbait like "20 places you didn't believe could exist."  Here's another, a fairy-home in Romania.  Lately there's been a rash of links to eye-popping waterfalls in that part of the world.  You have to wonder how this one didn't show up in the Lord of the Rings:



China is unimaginably big and various.  If this site were in the West, we'd have been seeing images of it more often than we see the Grand Canyon, but it's a first for me:

Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center

So, a few days ago you probably saw that police and the FBI had shot dead a guy who was carrying a knife. Details were sparse, but it was an intriguing story. Turns out possession of the knife played in to what they were looking for: a conspiracy to behead police officers.

What caught my eye was that the dead man worked for the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center as a guard. (They say he didn't "regularly" pray there.) Now that's a mosque whose name I happened to know, thanks to my old friend "Uncle Jimbo" Hanson of BLACKFIVE fame. These days he's gotten a bit more respectable and is the Executive Vice President for the Center for Security Policy. They put out a video about this mosque just recently.



You can see some of the old "Uncle J" touch at work in the video. I love that he actually had them use the word "subversives," which is the kind of thing that causes McCarthy-era liberals to pop blood vessels. It's hard to argue the point, though, given the immediate follow-up visual.