Thursday, December 31, 2009
INDUSTRIAL INDIA
In 2003, I wrote:
When people think about India, in the context of the global economy, they tend to think mainly about software and call centers...the country that tends to be most heavily associated with manufacturing is China. But some interesting things are also happening on the industrial side of India's economy...and went on to discuss Bharat Forge as an example of a successful Indian company in the field of heavy industry.
This recent BusinessWeek article says that through September of this year, India actually exported more cars than did China...292000 vs 221000. Many of these Indian-made vehicles are being sold in Europe, while Chinese manufacturers tend to concentrate more on their large home market. Volkswagen, Ford, and PSA-Peugeot Citroën are all building/expanding plant capacity in India, and indigenous manufacturer Tata has invested in dealerships in Britain and Italy in order to sell and support its Indian-made products.
India has achieved amazing things in economic development, but it still has millions of very poor people. The growth of a vibrant manufacturing sector is key to the further improvement of economic well-being in that country.
9:53 AM
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
FREEDOM AND CONTROL, IN TEHERAN AND IN WASHINGTON
Large numbers of people in Iran are taking huge risks in an attempt to free themselves from a despicable regime. There are many horrifying reports and images available on the web demonstrating clearly the levels of brutality that the regime is willing to use in suppressing dissident voices: see for example here and here.
Barack Obama's expressions of condemnation for the regime and support for the dissidents have consistently been a day late and a dollar short. He eventually says what he thinks he is expected to say, but there's not much fire in it. He comes across like an IRS official reciting some section of the tax code for the 495th time, or, at best, like a student giving a report on some long-ago historical event that he really didn't want to study study but which was important for his grade. His genuine passion has been reserved for domestic issues.
As Joshua Muravchik has pointed out, the current administration has been much less focused on international issues of human rights and democracy than has any other administration in decades. Why?
continued at Chicago Boyz
7:17 AM
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
ANOTHER GREAT 3-D IMAGE
An 18 gigapixel panorama of Prague...said to be the largest spherical panorama in the world.
via Newmark's Door
6:36 AM
Saturday, December 26, 2009
QUEEN OF THE DRUIDS
I was pleased to see a recent newspaper article that mentioned Jeannie de Clarens, Vicomtesse de Clarens, previously Jeannie Rousseau, aka Amniarix.
Clarens, now 90, was honored for her WWII activities in a ceremony at the Elysee Palace. In her early 20s, she was a member of a French Resistance organization called the Druids--whence her code name, Amniarix. She took great risks to gather information relating to the German V-1 and V-2 programs, thereby providing critical advance notice of the flying bomb and ballistic missile attacks on London. The key recipient of her reports, the British defense scientist R V Jones, was curious about the originator of these documents, but was told only that she was "Une jeunne fille plus remarquable de sa generation," which I think means something like "The most remarkable young girl of her generation." The two only met for the first time in 1973, and immediately became fast friends.
In her introduction to Jones's book, Most Secret War, Clarens writes:
Those who worked underground in constant fear--fear of the unspeakable--were prompted by the inner obligation to participate in the struggle; almost powerless, they sensed that they could listen and observe. During the war, they could but hope that what they did would be of some service, but seldom knew for sure...It is not easy to depict the lonesomeness, the chilling fear, the unending waiting, the frustration of not knowing whether the dangerously obtained information would be passed on--or passed on in time--or recognized as vital in the maze of the 'couriers.'
Shortly before D-day, Clarens was arrested by the Gestapo: by quick thinking, she was able to save one of her companions. She survived three concentration camps: Ravensbruck, Konigsberg, and Torgau. Here is the transcript of the 1993 ceremony at which Jones and Clarens were honored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which gives a fair amount of detail about her activities.
In his book, Jones mentions several other underground agents who helped to gather information on the V-1 and V-2 programs. One of them, Olivier Giran, was executed in 1943 at the age of 21. In his last letter to his parents, Giran wrote:
Among men I did what I thought was my duty--but I did it with joy in my heart. It was war, and I fell, as other did, and as many more must do...I saw them on the Marne, buried in long rows. Now it is my turn--that is all...Yes France will live. Men are cowards, traitors, rotters. But France is pure, clean, vital.
I am happy. I am not dying for any faction or man, I am dying for my own idea of serving her, my country...and for you too whom I adore.
I am happy I love you. The door is opening.
Adieu.
In the very improbable event that Jeannie de Clarens should see this blog post--thank you, for what you and your friends risked and sacrificed and accomplished.
Related stories about WWII underground operations in France:
Noor Inayat Khan
Violette Szabo
5:14 PM
NICELY PUT
The current Barrons (12/28) has an interview with fund managers Kevin Duffy and Bill Laggner, two guys who seem to have a gift for expressing themselves well and concisely. A few excerpts:
Barron's: You've said that perhaps the most redeeming feature of capitalism is failure. Please explain.
Duffy: Any healthy system needs a way to correct error and remove waste. Nature has extinction, the economy has loss, bankruptcy, liquidation. Interfering in this process lengthens feedback loops. Error and waste are allowed to accumulate, and you ultimately get a massive collapse.
Capitalism is primarily attacked by two groups: utopians who wish to impose a more "compassionate" system, and political capitalists who want to enjoy the fruits of success without bearing the pain of failure. They use the coercion of the state to gain privileges, at the expense of everyone else.
continued at Chicago Boyz
4:59 PM
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
CHRISTMAS 2009
A wonderful 3-D representation of the Iglesia San Luis De Los Franceses. Just click on the link--then you can look around inside the cathedral. Use arrow keys or mouse to move left/right, up/down, and shift to zoom in, ctrl to zoom out. (via Pamela)
Rick Darby has some thoughts on the season.
A Christmas reading from Thomas Pynchon.
On December 25, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge was still very much in progress. Here is a contemporary radio report.
The first radio broadcast of voice and music took place on Christmas Eve, 1906. Or maybe not.
An air traffic control version of The Night Before Christmas.
UPDATE: More from Rick Darby.
Silent Night in Gaelic
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Steve Blank
Neptunus Lex
6:58 PM
WORTHWHILE READING & VIEWING
ART: Urban Sketchers defines itself as "a network of artists around the world who draw the cities where they live and the places they travel to. We always draw on location, indoors or out, from direct observation."
FILM: Robert Avrech remembers Brittany Murphy, who worked on one of his films.
MANAGMENT: Steve Blank has a story about a very expensive cost-reduction attempt, involving free sodas, which was initiated by a new CFO.
EDUCATION AND CULTURE: A Babson College instructor says "My 'C,' 'D,' and 'F' students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have - despite language barriers - generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants."
TECHNOLOGY AND WARFARE: As you've probably heard, video feeds from American UAVs are being intercepted by the enemy in Iraq: discussion here.
POLITICS: It has been a very, very good year for lobbyists.
PSYCHOLOGY: The power of magical thinking for children.
Update: MANUFACTURING: General Motors, prompted an by Obama Administration task force," plans to run certain assembly plants on a continuous 24x7 basis. I was curious about what the manufacturing experts at Evolving Excellence would think of this idea--here's Kevin Meyer with an analysis.
7:57 AM
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
INTERESTING (BUT NOT SURPRISING) DATA
Where does all that tuition money go?
More detail, for one specific university, here.
1:18 PM
IMPORTANT READING
Nat Hentoff is a man of many talents--columnist, historian, jazz and country music critic (jazz and country music? that must be an unusual combination)--he is best known as a civil libertarian. As such, he has had his differences with all administrations. But he is particularly concerned about the behavior and attitudes of the current one.
Read this interview for his reasons.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
6:55 AM
Monday, December 21, 2009
HEART OF DARKNESS
Literature professor David Clemens:
Teaching Introduction to Literature, I see a curious new phenomenon: more and more students complain, bitterly, about how dark the readings are. I'm not sure what this new critical term means; I employ a canonical set of works including Hawthorne, Melville, Conrad, Kafka, Sophocles, and newer works by Phillip Larkin, Tobias Wolff, and J.G. Ballard. If such authors do anything, they force us to face existential questions. Once, students went to college to experience just this sort of perennial questioning. Today, questioning is a nonstarter having been replaced by what Phillip Rieff called "the triumph of the therapeutic" and, as he predicted, by students preoccupied only with themselves and with attaining a "durable sense of well-being." This ends any interest in reading about what Victor Davis Hanson calls "the tragic limitations of human existence and how to meet them and endure them with dignity."
I wonder if this is really a common phenomenon, or if there is something atypical about Clemens' students. Certainly, adolescence has been a time at which people (and not only college students) have traditionally felt a strong connection to what Arthur Koestler called "the tragic plane of existence." Has the therepeutic worldview really changed human nature to that extent?
Via Joanne Jabobs, who has a discussion.
6:06 AM
Sunday, December 20, 2009
GERMAN ROBOT PIGS
No, really.
Via Robert Rapier, who is looking at buying a whole bunch of them.
(What is the proper collective noun for a group of robot pigs? A herd? A drove? A passel? A fleet?)
5:03 PM
POWERING DOWN
Here's the great French scientist Sadi Carnot, writing in 1824:
To take away England's steam engines to-day would amount to robbing her of her iron and coal, to drying up her sources of wealth, to ruining her means of prosperity and destroying her great power. The destruction of her shipping, commonly regarded as her source of strength, would perhaps be less disastrous for her.
For England in 1824, substitute the United States in 2009. And for "steam engines," substitute those power sources which use carbon-based fuels: whether generating stations burning natural gas, blast furnaces burning coke, or trucks/trains/planes/automobiles using oil derivatives. With these substitutions, Carnot's paragraph describes the prospective impact of this administration's energy policies: conducting a war on fossil fuels, without leveling with people about the true limitations of "alternative" energy technologies and without seriously pursuing civilian nuclear power.
continued at Chicago Boyz
12:02 PM
Saturday, December 19, 2009
COMPUTERS AND HEALTH CARE
In recent years, there's been a lot of talk about computing technology as a potential enabler of major cost reductions and quality improvements for healthcare.
A recent study by the Harvard Medical School suggests that results with hospital computer systems so far are disappointing, to put it mildly.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
5:35 AM
WORTH PONDERING
"If you would have them be brothers, have them build a tower. But if you would have them hate each other, throw them corn."
--Antoine de St-Exupery, in his philosophical novel Citadelle (published in English under the unfortunate title Wisdom of the Sands)
Previous Worth Pondering
4:57 AM
Friday, December 18, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
EDUCATION: How do they sleep at night?
LITERATURE/FOLKLORE: Perrault's Fairy Tales
MANAGEMENT: Lean management methods should not be oversimplified. Mark Graban particularly disapproves of "experts" who fail to emphasize respect for people as a key component of Lean. Mark also has some negative things to say about a certain practice which is apparently popular in hospital management.
POLITICS: What happens when you rush to a vote.
ECONOMICS: A Greek Bearing Promises. An important point here: "If Greece still had its own currency, it would have chosen, or been forced, to devalue, and thereby gotten a quick boost to competitiveness, albeit at the cost of raising inflation as imported goods would have cost more. But that is not possible within the euro zone."
The more generalized point: When you centralize a system--any kind of system--you tend to make it more brittle, so that failure grow and propagate rather than adjusting themselves on a local basis.
ENERGY: Robert Rapier thinks Di-methyl-ether (DME) may have a lot of potential as a fuel. It can be made from biomass, coal, or natural gas, and Robert says that it would make a great fuel for diesel engines. In this application, it burns very cleanly, without sulphur or particulate emissions.
8:24 AM
Monday, December 14, 2009
BUREAUCRACY vs SUCCESS
...in Afghanistan
The article describes the ways in which bureaucracy and micromanagement are harming the accomplishment of the U.S. mission in that country. (via Neptunus Lex)
This passage:
The red tape isn't just on the battlefield. Combat commanders are required to submit reports in PowerPoint with proper fonts, line widths and colors so that the filing system is not derailed.
..reminded me of something written by French general Andre Beaufre, describing his experiences as a young staff captain in the years immediately prior to WWII:
I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan--but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about..."I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…" Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial.
And we all know how that turned out...
(Beaufre quote is from his important and well-written book 1940: the fall of France.
6:48 AM
Saturday, December 12, 2009
INNOVATION AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Currently reading Turning Points in Western Technology (D S Cardwell, 1972.) The author observes that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, the state of French science and mathematics was very advanced--more so than that in Britain--and asks the question: Why was industrial development in Britain so much more successful than that in France?
continued at Chicago Boyz
9:44 AM
Thursday, December 10, 2009
WORTHWHILE ANALOGY
Imagine that some of our Congresspeople--Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Robert Byrd, for example--formed a professional sports team. Baseball, basketball, football--take your pick.
Would anyone invest money in such a team? Would anyone go to watch it, for any purposes other than mockery? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Well, the average Congressperson probably knows far more about sports than he knows about business. Almost certainly, he watches sports on TV...he may well have played himself in his younger days...whereas the typical Congressional knowledge of business is comparable to a baseball-watcher who doesn't understand the difference between balls and strikes. Yet this Congress, with the encouragement of the Administration, is arrogating to itself the power to micromanage every business in the country in excruciating detail.
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:46 AM
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
EDUCATION: The perfect is the enemy of the good. See also NEA as Grinch.
ENERGY: Refinery closures in the northeast result in a pipeline capacity crunch.
ARCHITECTURE: Brad Pitt very generously contributed money to build replacement housing in New Orleans: some people, however, are concerned that the houses don't fit either 'Awlins aesthetics or the lifestyles of their residents.
INVESTING: Continuing thoughtful coverage of the financial markets, from John Hussman.
ECONOMICS: Eleven recessions compared.
8:01 AM
Monday, December 07, 2009
JOURNALISTS AND ROCKET SCIENTISTS
In 1920, Robert Goddard was conducting experiments with rockets. In an editorial, The New York Times sneered at Goddard's work and particularly at the idea that a rocket could function in a vacuum:
That Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
In 1969...the year of the Apollo moon mission...the NYT finally got around to issuing a correction for their 1920 mistake.
What is noteworthy about the original editorial is not just the ignorance, but the arrogance and the outright nastiness. As the AstronauticsNow post points out, "The enlightened newspaper not only ridiculed the idea that rocket propulsion would work in vacuum but it questioned the integrity and professionalism of Goddard." The post goes on to say that "The sensationalism and merciless attack by the New York Times and other newspapers left a profound impression on Robert Goddard who became secretive about his work (to detriment of development of rocketry in the United States)..."
It appears that some of the attributes of the NYT which make it so untrustworthy and unlovable today are actually cultural characteristics of long standing.
Worth keeping in mind when reading NYT analyses of Climategate.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
12:23 PM
PEARL HARBOR DAY
a date which will live in infamy
Update: Bookworm has a post and a video.
Update 2: Some alternate history.
6:58 AM
Sunday, December 06, 2009
GREAT DEMOS OF ALL TIMES
Product demonstrations can sometimes be useful in convincing prospective customers that your product is a Good Thing, or in convincing prospective investors that your company represents a substantial opportunity. (Although many demos are so badly executed that they do more harm than good)
In business history, there are a few examples of demos that stand out for their dramatic nature and their impact. Here are the ones that come to mind:
1)In the early 1850s, elevators had been invented and were in limited use, but were generally--with good reason--considered unsafe. At the Crystal Palace exposition of 1854, Elisha Otis demonstrated his elevator safety device. He had himself hauled up to a considerable height in an open cage, and then directed his assistant to cut the hoisting rope. The safety mechanism, as designed, clamped its jaws to the elevator's guide tracks and kept it from falling.
2)In the 1890s, most ships were powered by reciprocating steam engines (with commercial sail still holding a pretty respectable share.) Charles Parsons, who had invented the steam turbine in 1884, set up the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company in 1893, with the objective of applying the invention to the propulsion of ships. He built a nifty little ship called the Turbinia, and, after initial trials, brought it unnanounced to the Naval Review for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1893). Turbinia, which had an impressive top speed of 34 knots, raced between the lines of large ships, easily evading a Navy picket boat that had been sent to stop it, and indeed almost swamping the Navy vessel with its wake.
continued at Chicago Boyz
7:53 AM
Friday, December 04, 2009
THE IDENTITY OF THE ENEMY
Chris Matthews of MSNBC, commenting on Obama's choice of a West Point venue for his Afghanistan speech:
"He went to--maybe--the enemy camp tonight)"
(video clip here)
Does Matthews himself consider the U.S. Military Academy to be "the enemy camp?" If a commentator with a strong reputation for neutrality had said something like the above, then we might believe he was stating a conclusion about the beliefs of others, rather than an opinion he himself necessarily agreed with. But it would be hard for anyone to argue that Matthews is "a commentator with a strong reputation for neutrality."
Whatever Matthews' personal beliefs may be, I think his comment reflects the belief of a substantial part of the "progressive" movement which represents Obama's core support. These people are very reluctant to use words like "enemy" in talking about America's terrorist adversaries. They are primarily concerned with instigating conflict within American society itself, and in achieving victory in such conflict--and the American military, along with many other important parts of American society, does indeed in their view constitute an enemy.
Here are some relevant thoughts from Neptunus Lex, which I've previously quoted because they are so insightful:
The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
7:12 AM
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
COOL RETROTECH
Here's a woman who bought a bunch of old ribbon-making machinery (made in Germany in the 1920s), moved it to a new location, and started a factory.
Main company web site is here.
7:04 AM
Monday, November 30, 2009
BRITAIN: HOW BAD IS IT REALLY?
In a week of depressing news items and blog posts, one of the most depressing was this.
A British writer surveyed members of Britain’s WWII generation and asked: Given the way the country has turned out, do you think the sacrifices made in the war were worth it? The most common answer was "NO."
Some of the reactions are probably the typical "things-were-much-better-when-I-was-younger-and-now–everything-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket" common among older people in all times and places. A couple of them sound like narrow-mindedness and xenophobia. But most of the reactions sound very understandable given what I’ve read about the current social and political climate in the U.K.
A couple of questions:
1)Especially for Brits: Are things really this bad?
2)For everyone: To what extent are the factors that have been so destructive in the U.K. also operating in the United States?
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz, where a discussion will hopefully emerge.
9:13 AM
Saturday, November 28, 2009
CLIMATE SCIENCE AND THE INNER RING
It now seems clear that many climate scientists have shown a most unscientific lack of interest in following the data wherever that data may lead, coupled with an unwholesome eagerness to disregard and to disrespect the opinions of anyone outside of a closed circle of "experts."
In comments on a NYT blog (excerpted at Instapundit), someone comments:
"It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science."
This kind of tribalism is by no means limited to "primitive cultures," rather, it is dismayingly common in societies of all types. The phenomenon was astutely analyzed by C S Lewis in his writing on what he called the Inner Ring.
continued at Chicago Boyz
5:48 AM
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
THE RETURN OF CLIPPY
Remember Clippy, the irritating Windows feature involving a paperclip icon which would periodically show up and give you (usually useless) advice about whatever it thought you were trying to do?
Clippy has returned, and it wants to help make the case for global warming.
(Space down about half a page to see Clippy)
12:49 PM
THANKSGIVING AND TEMPORAL BIGOTRY
Stuart Buck encountered a teacher who said "Kids learn so much these days. Did you know that today a schoolchild learns more between the freshman and senior years of high school than our grandparents learned in their entire lives?" ("She said this as if she had read it in some authoritative source", Stuart comments.)
She probably had read it in some supposedly-authoritative source, but it’s an idiotic statement nevertheless. What, precisely, is this wonderful knowledge that high-school seniors have today and which the 40-year-olds of 1840 or 1900 were lacking?
continued at Chicago Boyz
12:37 PM
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A SUPERCOMPUTER SAGA
Why did entrepreneur Steve Blank really, really hate one particular Cray supercomputer?
And why did he buy it?
Story here.
5:55 AM
Monday, November 23, 2009
DRUCKER AND LEWIS ON THEORY AND EXPERIENCE
One of the issues raised in my post Myths of the Knowledge Society, and in the discussion thereof, is the question of formal, theory-based knowledge versus tacit, experience-based knowledge. What is the appropriate scope of use of each of these modalities?
Several years ago, I excerpted some thoughts from Peter Drucker which are relevant to this subject. I think they're worth re-posting here...
Read more »
7:26 PM
Sunday, November 22, 2009
MYTHS OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
Continuing my retro-reading of old Forbes ASAP issues. In the October 1993 issue, Rich Karlgaard, arguing that book value is of declining importance in evaluating companies, says:
Human intelligence and intellectual resources are now any company's most valuable assets.
(Note that word "now"...we'll be coming back to it)
Rich quotes Walter Wriston:
Indeed, the new source of wealth is not material, it is information,knowledge applied to work to create value...A person with the skills to write a complex software program that can produce a billion dollars of revenue can walk past any customs officer in the world with nothing of 'value' to declare.
I think Rich Karlgaard (now publisher of Forbes) is a very smart and insightful guy. (His blog is here.) And Walter Wriston was one of the giants of banking, back when it was possible to use such a phrase without snickering. But in this case, I think they are seriously overestimating the newness of the importance of knowledge in the economy. And such overestimation has continued and increased in the years since 1993.
continued at Chicago Boyz
4:03 PM
Saturday, November 21, 2009
THE RETURN OF THE BLOB
Ever see the 1958 movie The Blob? Commenter George V, at this Neptunus Lex post, watched it during Halloween, and wrote a pretty funny comment.
In the movie, quick-thinking citizens use CO2 fire extinguishers to freeze the outer-space blob which is threatening humanity, after which the USAF flies it to the arctic and drops it on an ice floe, where it will stay forever..."As long as the Artic doesn’t melt" says Steve McQueen’s character.
Today, of course, citizens would never be allowed to react to the threat in such a direct and immediate fashion. Either OSHA or CPSIA..probably both..would object to the use of fire extinguishers in a way not specifically authorized…amateur blob-suppressors would also get in trouble with several unions which would assert blog-freezing as their exclusive territory. Not to mention EPA issues with all that CO2 release.
People would be told to leave the matter in the hands of the authorities, namely Homeland Security...which would tell Congress they needed more money if they were to be expected to add blob-fighting to their mission. Congress would still be debating the matter (especially which extinguishing/freezing agent should be used instead of CO2 and which companies get the enormous fire-extinguisher contracts) when the blob reached Washington DC.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
8:56 AM
Friday, November 20, 2009
AL GORE, SCIENTIST
Talking up geothermal energy, Al Gore said:
the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees
Actually, the temperature at the earth's core is probably somewhere around 5000-9000 degrees Celsius. (Even if we convert the higher number to Farenheit, we still get only about 16000 degrees. So if "several" means "at least two," then Gore is off by--at a minimum--a factor of over 100 to 1.)
As John Derbysire says:
If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was "several million degrees," we'd be a star.
Gore also referred to geothermal energy as "relatively new." According to Wikipedia and a couple of other sources, commercial geothermal production of electricity in Italy began in 1911...which make this "relatively new" energy source significantly older than nuclear power. Going back futher, geothermal was used for district heating in 14th century France.
11:22 AM
Thursday, November 19, 2009
HATIN' ON PALIN
In George MacDonald Fraser's picaresque novel Flashman (which is set in 1839-1842), the hero (actually more of an antihero) marries the daughter of a very wealthy Scottish mill owner. This creates problems with Lord Cardigan, the commander of the fashionable regiment in which Flashman is serving--indeed, Cardigan has insisted that Flashman leave the regiment. Here's Flashman, trying to get the decision reversed:
Just the sight of him, in his morning coat, looking as though he had been inspecting God on parade, took the wind out of me. When he demanded to know, in his coldest way, why I intruded on him, I stuttered out my question: why was he sending me out of the regiment?
"Because of your marriage, Fwashman," says he. "You must have known very well what the consequences would be. The lady, I have no doubt, is an excellent young woman, but she is--nobody. In these circumstances your resignation is imperative."
"But she is respectable, my lord," I said. "I assure you she is from an excellent family; her father--"
"Owns a factory," he cut in. "Haw-haw. It will not do. My dear sir, did you not think of your position? Of the wegiment? Could I answer, sir, if I were asked: 'And who is Mr Fwashman's wife' 'Oh, her father is a Gwasgow weaver, don't you know?'"
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:28 AM
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
BLOG POST OF THE DAY
This post:
On the same day that Obama expressed "dismay" at the building of more apartment buildings in a suburb of Jerusalem (which Obama called for being the "undivided" capital of Israel back when he was trying to get the Jewish vote), Iran has sentenced 5 protesters to be executed. Of course, so far Obama has said nothing about this.
...from Common Sense & Wonder
5:10 PM
MATHEMATICS VERSUS THE BLOB
(...and so far, the blob seems to be winning)
Here's a New York Daily News article on mathematical ignorance among City University of New York students:
During their first math class at one of CUNY's four-year colleges, 90% of 200 students tested couldn't solve a simple algebra problem, the report by the CUNY Council of Math Chairs found. Only a third could convert a fraction into a decimal.
And here's Sandra Stotsky, discussing some of the reasons for poor math performance in America's schools:
But the president’s worthy aims (to improve math and science education--ed) won’t be reached so long as assessment experts, technology salesmen, and math educators—the professors, usually with education degrees, who teach prospective teachers of math from K–12—dominate the development of the content of school curricula and determine the pedagogy used, into which they’ve brought theories lacking any evidence of success and that emphasize political and social ends, not mastery of mathematics.
continued at Chicago Boyz
2:01 PM
Sunday, November 15, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
Who is America's top college professor? Three finalists have been identified in a contest which is focused on teaching rather than on research.
Entrepreneur Steve Blank writes about the difference between motion and action.
Silicon Valley writer Michael Malone isn't very impressed with Tom Friedman's views on globalization--but has some issues with Friedman's debunkers as well.
6:08 PM
Friday, November 13, 2009
WORTH PONDERING
Management Advice from George Eliot
Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessman had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own . . . You would be especially likely to be beaten if you depneded arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.
--George Eliot, in Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
Lots of political leaders and their academic advisors, and also more than a few business executives, fail to understand this point about the kind of "chess" that they are playing.
See also investing advice from George Eliot.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
Previous Worth Pondering
12:47 PM
Thursday, November 12, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
An interesting post by Robert Avrech about F Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood.
Bill Waddell offers a poetic critique of the theory of core competence and the impact of that theory on American business practice.
Here's someone who wasn't very fond of George Bush when he was in office...but has recently been doing some serious rethinking.
6:02 PM
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
POWER: MECHANICAL, NATIONAL, AND PERSONAL
James Boswell is of course best known as the great biographer of Samuel Johnson. But Boswell didn't spend all his time in Dr Johnson's company. In 1776, he visited the Boulton & Watt steam engine factory. Showing Boswell around, Matthew Boulton summed up his business one simple phrase:
I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have--POWER.
Fast forward to 2009. In the United States as in Western Europe, politicians are conducting a vendetta against the energy industry. See for example this, which describes the closure of an aluminum smelter in Montana--because it can no longer obtain affordable electricity--and the probable exit of much of the nonferrous metals industry from Western Europe, for the same reason. (Link via MaxedOutMama)
So, was Matthew Boulton wrong? Have we finally found a group of humans--our present-day political leaders--who are NOT interested in power?
continued at Chicago Boyz
12:45 PM
VETERANS DAY
Neptunus Lex
Bookworm
Video: The war was in color.
8:52 AM
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
BOMBS FROM IRAN: NOW WITH CONVENIENT COMPACT PACKAGING
There is evidence that not only is Iran working on a nuclear weapon--it is making progress with two-point implosion technology, which allows the diameter of a bomb to be reduced so that it can easily fit into the nosecone of a missile.
Nuclear weapons expect James Acton:
It's remarkable that, before perfecting step one, they are going straight to step four or five ... To start with more sophisticated designs speaks of level of technical ambition that is surprising.
continued at Chicago Boyz
8:08 AM
Saturday, November 07, 2009
GANGS OF CHICAGO
There are the Vice Lords, and the Gangster Disciples, and the Black Disciples, and the Four Corner Hustlers. But the gang that does the most harm to the Chicago public schools is--in the view of State Senator James Meeks--the Chicago Teachers Union.
via Joanne Jacobs
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
8:14 AM
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
Asked at what point an attack becomes a terrorist attack (with reference to the murders at Fort Hood) White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replied: "I don't know that I have the theoretical background to answer that. I would pose that to somebody at the FBI."
Theoretical background?
These people are very, very strange.
5:40 AM
Friday, November 06, 2009
DISSING FREE SPEECH
Here's Obama's "media diversity czar," Mark Lloyd:
It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.
[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.
(from his 2006 book)
Mr Lloyd has had some very positive things to say about Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez and his approach to the media:
In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.
The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.
More here about what this "taking very seriously" is doing to destroy media independence in Venezuela.
(link via Ms Ellison)
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:39 AM
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
BUFFETT'S BIG PURCHASE
Berkshire Hathaway is buying the Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $46 billion. (The number includes assumpntion of $10B in debt.) Berkshire already owned about 20% of the railroad's stock and is now purchasing the rest--BNI shareholders, of which I am one, can opt for either cash or Berkshire stock.
Here's Buffett's associate, Charlie Munger, commenting several years ago on the railroad industry:
Railroads -- now that's an example of changing our minds. Warren and I have hated railroads our entire life. They're capital-intensive, heavily unionized, with some make-work rules, heavily regulated, and long competed with a comparative disadvantage vs. the trucking industry, which has a very efficient method of propulsion (diesel engines) and uses free public roads. Railroads have long been a terrible business and have been lousy for investors.
We did finally change our minds and invested. We threw out our paradigms, but did it too late. We should have done it two years ago, but we were too stupid to do it at the most ideal time. There's a German saying: Man is too soon old and too late smart. We were too late smart. We finally realized that railroads now have a huge competitive advantage, with double stacked railcars, guided by computers, moving more and more production from China, etc. They have a big advantage over truckers in huge classes of business.
Burlington Northern's CEO, Matthew Rose (he will continue leading the railroad under its new ownership) has an interesting background. While attending college, he worked in the summers as a brakeman and switchman for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. After getting his BS degree (marketing with a minor in logistics) he joined that same railroad as a management trainee, rising to the position of assistant trainmaster. He then went over to the dark side (as many in the rail industry probably saw it), taking a job with a trucking company. He joined Burlington Northern in 1993 and was named CEO in 2000.
More on BNI and the railroad industry here.
5:58 AM
Monday, November 02, 2009
NO CLASS, NO JUDGMENT
Here's Hillary Clinton, speaking in Pakistan:
I think that, look, we all know that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one that is a very serious and difficult problem that we are working hard also to try to resolve. We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time. The next administration did not make it a priority and did not really do much until toward the end. And unfortunately, we are trying to make up for some lost time, in my opinion.
The endless attempts by the Obama administration to blame everything on their predecessor are getting worn around the edges, and betray a serious lack of class and of executive strength. But even worse: Hillary's formulation puts the blame for the Israeli-Palestinian problem in the wrong place--on the U.S. (and, by extension, on Israel) rather than on the death-cult leadership that has long controlled the Palestinian territories.
continued at Chicago Boyz
4:05 PM
COOL RETROTECH
I was vaguely aware of the Martin Mars, a very large seaplane built in the 1940s for the U.S. Navy...but had no idea that any of these airplanes were still flying in commercial service.
Turns out that two of these planes--the Hawaii Mars and the Philippine Mars--are in regular use as water bombers for forest-fire fighting. Tailspin Tom has a great set of photographs.
Via Neptunus Lex, who notes that the Mars is less a flying boat than a flying ship.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
8:24 AM
ANYONE SURPRISED?
The Democratic health care bill (House version) includes something called "Medical Liability Alternatives," which provides for incentive payments to states which adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. BUT a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys' fees or imposes caps on damages.
So..not only is the Democratic leadership unwilling to seriously address the issues of out-of-control medical liability costs at a national level, they want to use the financial power of the Federal government to prevent this issue from being addressed at a state level.
via Lead & Gold. Full text of the bill is here
6:05 AM
Saturday, October 31, 2009
HALLOWEEN
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye
And the spirits that stand
By the naked man
In the Book of Moons, defend ye!
That of your five sound sense
You never be forsaken
Nor wander from
Yourself with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon
The moon's my constant mistress
And the lonely owl my marrow
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow
I know more than Apollo
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end
Methinks it is no journey
(Not specifically a Halloween poem, but it certainly sets the mood, doesn't it? This is Tom O'Bedlam's Song, dating from sometime around 1600. There are lots more verses, and many different versions.)
11:31 AM
WORTHWHILE READING
Lean Blog writes about interruption countermeasures...actions taken by hospital nurses in San Francisco to reduce interruptions are said to have reduced medication errors by 88 percent. In comments, someone offers an example of similar positive results in warehouse operations for error reduction thru interruption reduction.
What "cash for clunkers" did to the availability of affordable used cars. (via Maggie's Farm)
Don Sensing looks at Obama as a milleniarian.
8:01 AM
Friday, October 30, 2009
NANCY & THE EPICYCLES
The healthcare bill is now up to almost 2000 pages.
Which reminds me of the epicycles.
continued at Chicago Boyz
12:47 PM
Thursday, October 29, 2009
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
In the course of a sycophantic paean to Obama, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts manages to work five errors into a single sentence.
(via Newmark's Door)
5:46 AM
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN DECLINE?
Michael Malone has been writing about the technology industry, and particularly about Silicon Valley, for a couple of decades. This recent article is not very optimistic. Although Malone identifies several emerging technologies as having great potential, he fears that the basic mechanism by which new technologies are commercialized--the formation and growth of new enterprises--is badly broken.
continued at Chicago Boyz
1:24 PM
Monday, October 26, 2009
RETRO-READING
It's interesting to pick up a copy of a business magazine from 10 years ago or more and look at what was then hot and at the predictions that were being made--and how well they stood up with the passage of time.
Forbes ASAP (4/6/98) carried an article by George Gilder, in which he asserts that companies will increasingly compete by understanding that the customer's is a valuable resource--and making it possible to do business with them without wasting it.
The fact is that the entire economy is riddled with time-wasting routines and regimes that squander much of the time of the average customer. Suffice it to say that the concept of the customer's life span as a crucially precious resource, indeed the most precious resource in the information economy, has not penetrated to many of the major business and governmental institutions in the United States, let alone overseas.
The message of the telecosm is that this era is over, as dead as slavery in 1865. These lingering attitudes in established busineses and government offer the largest opportunities for new companies and strategies in the information age.
continued at Chicago Boyz
8:39 AM
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
GULLIVER, MEET THE LILLIPUTIANS
California state officials have been busy writing regulations:
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) just passed a new regulation that requires glazed glass in automobiles that is supposed to reduce the need to use air conditioning. The catch is that the same properties that block electromagnetic sunlight radiation also blocks lower frequency electromagnetic radio waves. That means radios, satellite radios, GPS, garage door openers, and cell phones will be severely degraded. Even more surprising is that it requires this glass even for jeeps that have soft covers, plastic windows, and no air conditioning. Furthermore, the rules are so stringent that they effectively make sunroofs black, even though many consumers use the covers.
Also, the California State Energy Commission is promulgating stringent energy-consumption requirements for flat-screen TVs. At a minimum, these will surely increase prices to consumers (if manufacturers could increase energy efficiency without raising prices, they would have already done it, since efficiency is a selling point) and may effectively ban some size-technology combinations. This is being done on the theory that it will reduce overall electricity consumption and help avoid the need to build new power plants.
continued at Chicago Boyz
3:21 PM
WORTHWHILE READING
Energy blogger Robert Rapier gets a long email from a high school student, with intelligent questions about the idea of "peak oil"--and responds in depth.
Farmer-professor Victor Davis Hanson explains why he is a cultural dropout. Lots of interesting discussion in the comments.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a highy-experienced British officer, explains why the assertion so often propagated at the U.N. and by "progressive" organizations--that Israel commits atrocities against civilians in the course of its military operations--is incorrect and unfair. Be sure and watch the video at Robert Avrech's site.
3:04 PM
Saturday, October 17, 2009
WORTH PONDERING
Live with your century, but do not be its creature.
--Friedrich Schiller
Previous Worth Pondering
7:45 AM
Friday, October 16, 2009
REGULATING ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) just passed a new regulation that requires glazed glass in automobiles that is supposed to reduce the need to use air conditioning. The catch is that the same properties that block electromagnetic sunlight radiation also blocks lower frequency electromagnetic radio waves. That means radios, satellite radios, GPS, garage door openers, and cell phones will be severely degraded. Even more surprising is that it requires this glass even for jeeps that have soft covers, plastic windows, and no air conditioning. Furthermore, the rules are so stringent that they effectively make sunroofs black, even though many consumers use the covers.
(emphasis added)
More here
See previous Regulating Absolutely Everything posts
8:26 AM
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
MONEY AND POWER, CONTINUED
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money
–Samuel Johnson
I was reminded of this quote by something Irving Kristol wrote:
In New York the ruling passion is the pursuit of money, whereas in Washington it is the pursuit of power. Now, the pursuit of power is a zerosum game: you acquire power only by taking it away from someone else. The pursuit of money, however, is not a zero-sum game, which is why it is a much more innocent human activity. It is possible to make a lot of money without inflicting economic injury on anyone. Making money may be more sordid than appropriating power—at least it has traditionally been thought to be so—but, as Adam Smith and others pointed out, it is also a far more civil activity.
continued at Chicago Boyz
9:20 AM
Monday, October 12, 2009
SOME BLOGGERS HAVE AMAZING SOURCES
First, Neptunus Lex somehow obtained copies of a cat's diary and a dog's diary.
Now, Don Sensing has gotten a copy of a Norwegian Nobel Committee press release from 2012.
6:48 AM
Saturday, October 10, 2009
RECOMMENDED READING
About a month ago, Bill Waddell recommended a book called The Puritan Gift, written by Kenneth and William Hopper. Recommended it in pretty strong terms, in fact:
If you want to understand management - especially manufacturing management - how we got here, what has worked and what doesn't - and how to get back on the phenomenal track American manufacturing was on before the wheels started to come off a few decades back, you have to read this book.
and
It is not an overstatement to describe The Puritan Gift as an essential book for manufacturing management. You really will have a hole in your understanding of the art and science of manufacturing until you take the time to let the Hopper brothers fill it for you. It will be the best $20 you ever spent.
(Bill's full post here)
continued at Chicago Boyz
2:03 PM
A REALLY DEDICATED TEACHER
Here's a professor of agribusiness and applied economics who is also a Captain in the Army National Guard. With the aid of the Internet, she's currently teaching micro- and macro-economics to her students back home in North Dakota, from a combat zone in Iraq.
9:20 AM
Thursday, October 08, 2009
CATS & DOGS
Neptunus Lex has somehow obtained copies of a cat's diary and a dog's diary.
6:06 PM
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO US
Here's George Orwell, writing in 1940 about England and the English:
When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pintables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning - all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?
But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillarboxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches in to the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantlepiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.
And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillarboxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side of the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.
George Orwell was a socialist. He wanted to see radical transformation in his society. But in the above passage, he displays real affection for the English people and their culture.
Can anyone imagine Barack Obama writing something parallel to the above about America and the American people? To ask the question is to answer it. Clearly, Obama does not identify with America in the same sort of way that Orwell identified with England.
Why, then, did Obama wish to become our President?
Two analogies come to mind...
continued at Chicago Boyz
12:18 PM
Friday, October 02, 2009
SUPPRESSING SUMMER VACATION
Obama thinks the school day should be extended and the summer vacation shortened.
It won't take me much work to write a post about this, because I pretty much already did it, three years ago...
(August 01, 2006) Stopped at a store while driving through Georgia today, and the man mentioned that this is the first day of school for the local children. Googling around, it appears that lots of Georgia school systems are starting classes sometime this week. And the longer-school-year trend is by no means limited to Georgia.
This is really very sad. Children need time to be with their families. They need time to develop their dreams. They need time to learn things that are not part of any formal program.
Educational "experts" will try to justify a longer school year with the argument that "there's just so much more to know these days." Such claims are highly exaggerated. The truth is, most public K-12 schools make very poor use of the time of their students. They waste huge proportions of the millions of hours which have been entrusted to them--waste them through the mindless implementation of fads and theories, waste them through inappropriate teacher-credentialing processes, waste them through refusal to maintain high standards of performance and behavior.
When an organization or institution proves itself to be a poor steward of the resources that have been entrusted to it, the right answer is not to give it more resources to waste.
Just a few points to add to the above:
continued at Chicago Boyz
7:17 AM
Thursday, October 01, 2009
CAN THIS SHIP BE SAVED?
The SS United States, a fast and beautiful passenger liner, was built in 1952 and operated in commercial service until 1969. She is now in danger of being scrapped.
Lots of pictures in the slideshow at the link; also, some of the comments are interesting.
More about the ship at Wikipedia, and here is an organization which is attempting to save this vessel.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
2:50 PM
OBAMA AND AHMADINEJAD
This cartoon kind of sums it all up.
via Dr Sanity, who has some worthwhile thoughts.
1:50 PM
Monday, September 28, 2009
REGULATING ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING
Two British policewomen are in trouble because they watch each other's kids on a regular basis. The charge is "operating an illegal childminding business."
Lest you think that this is only a British form of insantiy and such things could never happen in the United States...
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:31 PM
Thursday, September 24, 2009
THE WEIRDNESS OF MANUEL ZELAYA
Manuel Zelaya was ousted as President of Honduras, at the direction of that country's Supreme Court, because he was attempting to seek a second term--which is clearly prohibited by the Honduran constitution.
Now illegally back in Honduras, and hanging out at the Brazilian embassy, Zelaya claims that "Israeli mercenaries" are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.
More on this from Robert Avrech. See also Fausta, who posts a report that Zelaya's return was orchestrated by the extreme left-wing, anti-American, and anti-Israel President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.
Manuel Zelaya is the man who Barack Obama wishes to have reinstalled as President of Honduras.
5:14 PM
A LETTER FROM POLAND
...about Obama's recent action regarding ballistic missile defense and the highly offensive way in which this action was announced. Here.
This is painful to read.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
5:08 PM
Monday, September 21, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
Healthcare, Marie Antoinette, Michelle Obama, and organic food...all in a single post. From the always-interesting MaxedOutMama.
5:47 PM
Saturday, September 19, 2009
GREAT PICTURES
A nice collection of sunrises and sunsets.
via Newmark's Door
5:12 AM
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
LEWIS VS HALDANE
J B S Haldane was an eminent British scientist (population genetics) and a Marxist. C S Lewis was...well, you probably already know who C S Lewis was.
In 1946, Haldane published an article critiquing a series of novels by Lewis known as the Ransom Trilogy, and particularly the last book of the series, That Hideous Strength. Lewis responded in a letter which remained unpublished for many of years. All this may sound ancient and estoteric, but I believe the Lewis/Haldane controversy is very relevant to our current political and philosophical landscape.
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:19 AM
Sunday, September 13, 2009
BLACK STORM CLOUDS AND BRILLIANT LIGHTNING FLASHES
Today there are once more saints and villains. Instead of the uniform grayness of the rainy day, we have the black storm cloud and the brilliant lightning flash. Outlines stand out with exaggerated sharpness. Shakespeare's characters walk among us. The villain and the saint emerge from primeval depths and by their appearannce they tear open the infernal or the divine abyss from which they come and enable us to see for a moment into mysteries of which we had never dreamed.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(For those who are not familiar with Bonhoeffer--he was an important leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany. He was executed in 1945.)
I was reminded of the above passage by something Cara Ellison wrote a couple of days ago in discussing the 9/11 anniversary:
I guess I thought they were all gone, those types of monsters, stranded on reels of black and white film.
continued at Chicago Boyz
8:02 PM
Friday, September 11, 2009
9/11 PLUS EIGHT YEARS
(This is basically a rerun of my posts from this day in 2006 and 2007. Some new links added this year are at the bottom of the post.)
I am increasingly worried about our prospects for success in the battle against those who would destroy our civilization. America and the other democracies possess great military, economic, and intellectual strengths--but severe internal divisions threaten our ability to use these resources effectively.
Within days of the collapse of the Towers, it started. "Progressive" demonstrators brought out the stilt-walkers, the Uncle Sam constumes, and the giant puppets of George Bush. They carried signs accusing America of planning "genocide" against the people of Afghanistan.
Professors and journalists preached about the sins of Western civilization, asserting that we had brought it all on ourselves. A well-known writer wrote of her unease when her daughter chose to buy and display an American flag. Some universities banned the display of American flags in dormitories, claiming that such display was "provocative."
Opinions such as these have metastacized to the point at which they are no longer irrelevant to mainstream politics. Former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, along with other leading Democrats, attended a special screening of Michael Moore's movie Farenheit 9/11. Moore is well-known for his outrageous statements about the country in which he lives--things he is credibly reported to have said include: "(Americans) are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," (in an interview with the British newspaper The Mirror) and "That's why we're smiling all the time. You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down" (to a crowd in Munich) and "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." (to a crowd in Cambridge, England.) And about the terrorists who are killing Americans and Iraqis on a daily basis in Iraq, Moore had this to say: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win."
This is the individual who shared Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic National Convention, and who continues to be very popular in "progressive" circles.
Imagine if a former President, in the midst of World War II, had embraced a man who spoke to foreign audiences about the stupidity of the American people and referred to our German and Japanese enemies as "heroes." Imagine also that such attitudes had been openly embraced by a large part of the Republican Party leadership and by many well-known writers and entertainers. Could Franklin Roosevelt have led the nation to victory under such circumstances?
And continuously, there has been the steady drip-drip-drip of moral equivalence. In September 2003, Howard Dean, now Democratic National Committee Chairman, stated that the US should not "take sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Actually, the refusal to draw a bright line against Palestinian terrorism is a major factor that enabled 9/11 and other terrorist atrocities.
Susan Turnbull, Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as murder. Follow this link and you can hear it for yourself. Yes, she corrected herself and changed it to the "bombing" of Zarqawi. However: As far as I can tell, Turnbull is a native speaker of the English language. And I don't think any native English speaker would use the term "murdered" unless they disapproved of what had been done. Certainly, few Americans during WWII would have referred to the "murder" of Admiral Yamamoto (whose plane was shot down after his movement plans became known via communications intercepts) or the "murder" of German war criminals who were executed after the war.
Many individuals, particularly among religious leaders, show a stunning naivete. Annika quotes from a homily at a church in her neighborhood: "What if, instead of bombing Afghanistan, we had dropped food, medicine and education?"
How could anyone with an IQ above refrigerator temperature say such a thing? Even if education could somehow be "dropped," isn't this priest aware that the Taliban specifically denied education to women, and greatly limited the kinds of education that were available to men? Does he think the Taliban's executions at the soccer stadium, or its destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, were motivated by a desire for food and medicine?
People who say such things are so caught up in the catch-phrases they have been taught that they are completely unable to understand the real motivations of the enemy.
Bryan Preston: Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy’s goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn’t the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.
and
Five years on, the illness of replacing an implacable, indeed alien enemy with one from our own civilizational family has spread and metastasized through the majority of one of our two political parties, and may yet claim a majority of the country itself. History has a way of fading out as the day’s current noise rises in volume, and to them 9-11 is either history or a historic lie. The loudest voice, though not always or even often right, is often the one that gets the last word. And the 9-11 deniers and their allies across the left are nothing if not loud.
Five years on, it’s hard to take a positive look at the war because we are failing to comprehend it. The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. Those of us who see the threat for what it is still say that we will prevail because we are right and because we are America, but that’s just letting the others off the hook. If we’re going to prevail anyway, why should they snap out of their fog? And why should we demand that they do? The truth is, we need the denial to end and we need our countrymen to understand and help, but since we’re powerless to cure it with reason we shrug or laugh at it. But it’s eating away at our ability to defend ourselves.
It has to be said: The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. We are not dealing here merely with normal differences about policy that can be debated by rational individuals. We are have in our midst a significant number of individuals who are filled with rage toward their own country, who are highly susceptible to bizarre conspiracy theories, who lack any form of historical perspective, who are increasingly eager to engage in scapegoating.
In 2006, I visited an old industrial facility that has been restored to operating condition. One of the machines there, dating from around 1900, was called an attrition mill. It contains two steel discs, which rotate at high speed in opposite directions, crushing the kernels of grain between them.
I fear that our civilization is caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the terrorist enemy, and the other being the reality-deniers within our own societies.
Links worth following:
Neo-Neocon
Fearless Dream
Roger L Simon
A post byJane Galt, written six months after 9/11, when she was volunteering at the World Trade Center site.
A worthwhile essay at The American Thinker: The Moral Emptiness of the Left. Also see Bret Stephens on some of the roots of the left's confused thinking on terrorism.
Finally, Reflecting Light has some eloquent words.
UPDATE: Lead and Gold has links, excerpts, and reflections, all of which are well worth reading.
Neptunus Lex was operations officer on an aircraft carrier when the news came in. Read the comments, too.
UPDATES FOR 2008: Cara Ellison has pictures and a story.
Here is some very depressing survey data about international beliefs regarding 9/11. In Italy, for example, 15% of the people surveyed believed that the U.S. government was behind the attacks. In Egypt, 12% said that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, while 43% blamed Israel.
UPDATES FOR 2009: Ryan Mauro ask are we getting complacent about terror? Ralph Peters believes that the answer to this question is clearly "yes." (via PowerLine)
Bookworm has thoughts and links.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
5:28 AM
Thursday, September 10, 2009
PAGLIA ON THE DEMOCRATS
Camille Paglia on the Democratic Party and its cheering section in the media. Plenty of shots at the Republicans, too.
(via the Advice Goddess)
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz
8:49 AM
Monday, September 07, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
Cliff May reviews a new book by George Gilder on the importance of Israel:
Israel is, Gilder contends, "not only the canary in the coal mine — it is also a crucial part of the mine." If Americans will not defend Israel, they will "prove unable to defend anything else. The Israel test is finally our own test of survival as a free nation."
(via Maggie's Farm)
Note that Obama's "green jobs czar" Van Jones, who recently resigned after bloggers and others revealed some of his past statements, has said some very negative things about Israel. Following Gilder's logic, Joness's negativity toward so many aspects of American society should not be surprising.
According to senior British officials, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did have advance knowledge of the planned release of the Lockerbie bomber:
'The US was kept fully in touch about everything that was going on with regard to Britain’s discussions with Libya in recent years and about Megrahi,' said the Whitehall aide.
'We would never do anything about Lockerbie without discussing it with the US. It is disingenuous of them to act as though Megrahi’s return was out of the blue.'
(via Betsy)
Svetlana Kunin, who came to this country form the Soviet Union in 1980, writes about capitalism and socialism, envy and greed.
8:41 AM
Saturday, September 05, 2009
HEALTHCARE: THE SUPPLY SIDE
Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose the year is 1902. Automobiles exist, but they are rare and expensive. The assembly line has not yet been invented, and car manufacturing, such as it is, is done entirely by craft methods.
Now imagine that our politicians decide that every American family, as a matter of national policy, should have its own automobile. (Let’s also stipulate that the trades involved in automobile-building–machining, welding, carpentry, etc–are tightly controlled by guilds.)
What would happen?
continued at Chicago Boyz
5:06 PM
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
70th ANNIVERSARY OF WORLD WAR II
Today is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. Here's a rerun of a post from a couple of years ago.
On September 1, 1939, Germany launched a massive assault on Poland, thereby igniting the Second World War.
Britain and France were both bound by treaty to come to Poland’s assistance. On September 2, Neville Chamberlain’s government sent a message to Germany proposing that hostilities should cease and that there should be an immediate conference among Britain, France, Poland, Germany, and Italy..and that the British government would be bound to take action unless German forces were withdrawn from Poland. “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces, then His Majesty’s Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier.”
According to General Edward Spears, who was then a member of Parliament, the assembly had been expecting a declaration of war. Few were happy with this temporizing by the Chamberlain government. Spears describes the scene:
Arthur Greenwood got up, tall, lanky, his dank, fair hair hanging to either side of his forehead. He swayed a little as he clutched at the box in front of him and gazed through his glasses at Chamberlain sitting opposite him, bolt-upright as usual. There was a moment’s silence, then something very astonishing happened.
Leo Amery, sitting in the corner seat of the third bench below the gangway on the government side, voiced in three words his own pent-up anguish and fury, as well as the repudiation by the whole House of a policy of surrender. Standing up he shouted across to Greenwood: “Speak for England!” It was clear that this great patriot sought at this crucial moment to proclaim that no loyalty had any meaning if it was in conflict with the country’s honour. What in effect he said was: “The Prime Minister has not spoken for Britain, then let the socialists do so. Let the lead go to anyone who will.” That shout was a cry of defiance. It meant that the house and the country would neither surrender nor accept a leader who might be prepared to trifle with the nation’s pledged word.
continued at Chicago Boyz
6:48 AM
Friday, August 28, 2009
RECENT READING
Three mini-reviews in this batch:
"Vanity Fair," William Makepeace Thackery
"The Promised Land," Mary Antin
"Metropolitan Corridor," John Stillgoe
I picked up Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" from the shelf where it had lain unread, lo these many years, and spent two weeks utterly immersed in the world of Becky Sharp and her friends associates victims. I'd never read the book before, but did see a made-for-tv movie based on it several years ago...IIRC, the movie was far more centered around Becky herself, whereas the book develops the other characters to a considerably greater degree.
Very funny (once you get used to the dense writing style) and utterly unsentimental: Thackeray called it "a novel without a hero." Those looking for escapism by reading about the elegant lifestyles of the English upper classes should definitely look elsewhere: for all others, this book is highly recommended.
***
"The Promised Land," by Mary Antin, is the story of the author's journey from Polotzk, Russia (a town which was part of the Jewish Pale of Settlement) to Boston, Massachussetts, with her family, in the late 1800s. Antin was a keen observer and a vivid writer--particularly impressive given that she had no exposure to English until she was 13. "The Promised Land" was published in 1912, having been first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly.
continued at Chicago Boyz
8:08 AM
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
WORTHWHILE READING
Business Insider explains why our stimulus programs are so unexciting, arguing that we don't live in the same country that built the Hoover Dam, the TVA and the Mount Rushmore monument.
Sarah Palin says that meaningful healthcare reform must involve legal reform.
Jane Austen analyzes Obama's personality...more precisely, Bookworm seems a strong element of Obama in the personality of Austen's Mr Eliot.
Emotional resiliency and psychological calisthenics...an interesting article by Beverly Eakman. (via Darren)
6:51 AM
Monday, August 24, 2009
BREAKING THE SPRINGS
In 1944, the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery was flying reconnaissance missions with the Free French forces. He was also working on what would be his last book: the philosophical musings of the fictional ruler of a fictional desert kingdom. St-Ex was killed in action before he got the chance to finalize the manuscript, but it was published as Citadelle in French and under the somewhat unfortunate name Wisdom of the Sands in English.
In one passage, the ruler muses that the criminal who has been sentenced to death may well contain an inward beauty of some form...but goes on to justify his execution:
For by his death I stiffen springs which must not be permitted to relax.
I thought about this passage when I heard about the decision of the Scottish authorities to release the Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi, who has now received a hero's welcome in his native Libya.
continued at Chicago Boyz.
6:56 AM
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