Proving...

That not all the idiots are in Kansas: "On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." Mr. Hellyer went on to say, 'I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.'"
Perhaps it's not that Mr. Hellyer is an idiot; perhaps it's just the natural ageing process. Or, perhaps he was once abducted and probed. That can affect the mind. Just ask any of the apparently millions of people, most of them seemingly living in New Mexico or Abu Graib prison, who have been subjected to that unpleasant procedure.
Or, as a friend of mine once said - As we all know, a complete lack of evidence is proof that the conspiracy is working.
There is something here though; I'd be willing to bet that if there were wierd little alien beings flying around in old pietins, George W. Bush's response would be to "bring-em-on".

Rarely...

Breeds In Captivity.I have been trying to write this one for a few months, but just haven't been able to figure out how to present the idea in a coherent way. Some might say "so what else is new?" Well, that to you...


In fact, it appears pretty clear that the reason why Humans "rarely breed successfully" in the developed world is that the environment in which they find themselves is simply not a healthy one. Insalubrious - much like the situation that poor Lion ("King of the Beasts") finds itself. Hardly seems worth the effort to copulate.

Well, not really - for humans, like the lovable but soon-to-become-extinct Bonobos, are always ready for 'recreational sex'. It's just that human children (in the developed world) have become too great an inconvenience! If you watch the animals in the zoo, in many cases (typically where the animal is confined to an artificial, or cubicle-like area), the newborns are like-as-not to be abandoned. Left for the zoo docents to raise. Well and good for the little cute ones - the Pandas and the great cats and such. But bottle feeding a hyena? A Gila Monster (well, but they don't take milk, do they)? You get my point though.
An environment that is too different from that of the unevolved ancestors of Man is an environment in which 'modern' man feels pretty much continual discomfort. When it comes to cubicle life, trust me, I know!
So, the birthrate declines, the demographics change. We acquire more stuff to fill the emptiness of spirit. We (or rather, some of the truly unevolved) rant and rage against the immigrants who fill the empty niches in society - fearing that they are here to steal our 'stuff'. It's actually a fascinating sociological lab experiment. Where will it end up?
Here's some actual numbers;

Fertility Rates country by country.

If you notice (it's hard not to), the highest rates are in the poorest countries, while the lowest rates are in the richer countries. Except for a few very rich countries where they have lots of babies - the countries where they pump a lot of oil. I can't account for it; perhaps it's the symbol of those wells endlessly pumping...pumping...pumping. Perhaps it's the free money and freedom from the capitalist/consumerist imperative we face in the U.S. and similar places. Anyway, if you live in one of the low-birthrate countries you had better hope that there will be plenty of foreigners willing to come work in your country. To make money for your social security system, to fix your house, to give you spongebaths when you're too feeble to do for yourself.
I heard a part of a speech, or a press conference, or somesuch last week, by a Singapore government Minister (Assistant Prime Minister perhaps? - I came in late). The gist, as best I can restate it, is that Singapore society can no longer sustain itself; Singapore must encourage foreign workers to come to Singapore, work and live in Singapore, and raise their children to be Singaporeans. He went on to say that this means that the face of the Lion City will change, and people had best get ready to accept that fact. I was amazed to hear such a clearly stated and honest appraisal. Hard to see a United States politician willing to say something like that, in the face of all the rabid immigrant-bashing going on (perpetrated primarily, one might note, by offspring of recent immigrants). The fact that the Singaporean Minister was stating is the same for the U.S., Europe, Japan; in fact this is the way it is for the 'Developed World', Ready-Or-Not!

I Did Not Think I Would Hear This!

"It's time to bring them home," said Rep. John Murtha.
Congressman Murtha is entirely correct - but I never expected to hear it from someone who has to face an election! In fact, the Bush administration's recent pugilistic attack rhetoric has been pretty much based on the assumption that no prominent politician would be willing to speak the truth that dare not speak its... Well, that's not really a good simile but...
"We have to stay the course..." "We can't abandon our friends..." "If we leave Iraq now, it will descend into a state of civil war..."
Guess what? Iraq is right now in a state of civil war. And so it will remain as long as we are there to prevent it running its course. If we stay six months, if we stay six years, if we stay decades, or - if we leave right now; the only difference is the time at which the immiscible factions in Iraq will be forced to settle their grudges - in whatever way they are going to do. When we leave, of course, though the Iraqis will begin to kill each other in grater numbers, we will no longer be killing Iraqis (and they will no longer be killing us), so the death rate may actually go down. However, it is pretty obvious that Iraq is not going to be that Prosperous Middle East Democracy (and U.S. puppet) so dearly wished for by George W. Bush and his coterie. It never was going to be. It never was going to be. Now, without deposed strongman and brutal thug dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq is bound for a period of chaos and civil strife, until a new strongman takes charge. We can hope the next one will be more statesman than murderer; more philosopher king than opressive autocrat. We however, lack the power to determine this outcome. We always did. It was always just the pipe-dream of a petulant self obsessed accidental Commander-In-Chief, whom even the most ardent United-States-As-The-Only-Superpower-We-Must-Police-The-World advocates are now seeing is not up to the job.

More John Murtha: "Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence," he said. "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

Amen, John Murtha. And thank you.

We Do Not!

"We do not torture"; G. W. Bush
But - if the Congress passes a law against torture, the President will veto it!

Because..., well..., because, as some have said, we can't tie our hands in the matter of defending our nation against terrorism. Some have said sending the greatest part of our military power to Iraq, frittering away a winning position in Afghanistan, making American soldiers targets throughout the Middle East, killing and imprisoning people because they look like Muslims; these things have created a nurturing environment for terrorist violence and a wonderful nightly see-it-live-on-al-Jazeera Islamic Militant recruiting infomercial. Facts are stubborn things (though not, perhaps, as stubborn as George Bush). Bush continues to mistake doing what he wants to do (mainly, attacking Iraq) for fighting terrorism. Here are two famous pictures: Which one do you think the people of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, indeed much of the world now believes represents the real picture of the United States?

We do not torture - that's right. We presume 'Scooter' Libby is innocent until proven guilty. We presume Tom Delay is innocent until proven guilty. We presume the internees in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and those wonderful little Black Holes around the world ("The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have 'disappeared,' like the victims of some dictatorships." -- The Washington Post.) are... What?

How Intelligent?

In the state of Kansas, the school board seems to favor the idea of "Intelligent Design". Meanwhile, in Dover PA, the Intelligentdesignistas (ID-ers) have been summarily dismissed. Always nice to see thse issues being considered thoughtfully throughout the nation.
I personally have some questions to ask. First, and very topically, I read almost daily that we are facing a major massacre, potentially in the hundred-million-plus range, should the H5N1 strain of Avian Flu infect a human-flu carrier and mutate(!) into a human-transmittable bug. Apparently, those shameless viruses (virii?) will swap DNA with anything that moves - absolutely the ultimate in sexual deviancy - no wonder the Godly Set wants such knowledge suppressed!
At last, The Question: Would these good Kansas folk consider this to be an example of ID, or, would they prefer to let Darwin take credit for this particular instance of life-as-it-actually-is?
Yesterday I was chatting with a colleague and the subject meandered onto the topic of inherited (that is, genetic) diseases - the most commonly mentioned being Sickle-Cell Anemia. It's an interesting example of adaptation. It's most prevalent in malarial areas of Africa where, interestingly enough, carriers of the Sickle-Cell gene (allele S) have an immunity to Malaria. If they carry the S allele in one chromosome only, they will generally suvive Malaria, while the Sickle-Cell trait will be largely innocuous. If they carry the S allele in both chromosomes they will (probably) eventually die from the progressive blocking of capillaries by their overly viscous blood. Generally, they will die very protracted and very painful deaths.
Thus, as a professor of mine once described it to me; in the worst malarial areas of Aftica, most adults are heterozygous carriers of the S allele. Because, in the normal course of events, just as shown by Gregor Mendel with Sweet Peas, about 1/4 of the children in these areas die from Malaria, about 1/4 of the children die from Sickle-Cell, and the other 1/2 of the children survive.
Sounds like a pretty intelligent design to me!
My colleague, however, said he didn't think it was very intelligent to kill half of the children just to accord the survivors some protection against Malaria.

Now fine Christian Pat Robertson, an embarrassment to Christians everywhere, says Dover PA is going to suffer The Wrath Of God for throwing Him (God, not Pat) out of the classroom. Thus tipping off the formerly clueless that the Intelligentdesignistas goal really is to replace actual investigation of actual observable facts with, as the bumper sticker says: "God Said It; I Believe It; That Ends It", a prerenaissance sentiment so antagonistic to learning that I think such sentiments should be banned (outside of Kansas). Of course, it has been clear for some time now that Pat is quite demented. Even while reading the script on his teevee show, his mental state is frightening to see.

This Has To Be...

The Understatement Of The Year- Or possibly the decade, or at least the biggest understatement so far in this century: "...Cheney's predictions about how Iraq would play out have proven optimistic." (New York Daily News November 9; Dubya-Cheney ties frayed by scandal by THOMAS M. DeFRANK).
Now, this isn't exactly news, and it was always clear to anybody who ever read a history book that "They'll throw flowers at us" was such a misreading of the possible ways human beings act that, right then and there, Dick Cheney should have been permanently sealed inside his bunker-at-an-undisclosed-location. Alas, it was not to be; as here we see...( A simple but apparently overlooked fact about the way humans are.).
If Mr. Cheney had simply listened to his inner demon, and acknowledged that there are others who respond in ways similar to the way he does (that is to say; subdue, kill or enslave), he would have better understood the dynamic in his chosen vassal country and perhaps been dissuaded from continuing the Vietnamization of Iraq. As Senator, then war protester, John Kerry famously said: "Who will be the last soldier to die in Vietnam (Iraq)?"

What Kind of a Worldview?

So, now there's an indictment - one "Scooter" Libby, a power player of some sort in the administration, backstopping Dick Cheney mostly, I guess. The indictment says he lied repeatedly (and stupidly) to the FBI and to a Grand Jury. There's some speculation as to why he did that. Two possibilities immediately come to mind. One - the lies became the truth in some sort of internal transmogrification. That can happen. Two - "I'm too smart for you to lay a glove on me!"
Well,in the event neither one of those concepts proved out, nor whatever other "interesting" kind of thinking Mr. Scooter actually used.
I'm still bedevilled though. Just what kind of worldview must one have to believe that, somehow, letting it be known that someone's spouse works for the CIA is going to discredit the person??? I'm sorry, I just can't figure this one out!
Now, if you were to tell me that someone's spouse worked at The White House, that would go some ways to discrediting that person in my estimation. But - "Be careful what you write, Joe Wilson's wife works for the CIA." -
sorry, that is just such a huge non-sequitur that it just can't stretch far enough to slime Mr. Wilson. I guess it stretched far enough to slime Mr. Libby, though, huh? So it ended up working to the benefit of the country after all, didn't it?
Democracy is awesome. Sometimes.
I ask again: Has George W. Bush restored honor to the White House yet; as he promised to do in his 2000 presidential campaign?