"What is Memorial Day For?"

That is question I happened to hear put to two twenty-somethings over the weekend. Both were American citizens.

Neither had any idea what the answer was. Both literally just shrugged their shoulders. That's the gesture you make when you not only don't know something, but you couldn't care less what the answer is. If you asked me what molecules could be found in zinc, I would shrug my shoulders. I probably wouldn't even stick around for the answer.

But.... Memorial Day? During wartime?

Feel free to insert your own sad joke about people who don't remember -- or never bothered to learn -- what Memorial Day celebrates. I'm too disgusted to continue this post.

Predicting the Future

A friend alerted me to a piece by sci-fi author Charles Stross that discusses the likely implications of rapid advances in bandwidth, storage capacity, and related technologies. Some choice comments on ...

...Cell Phones:

Now, we're still in the early stages of the uptake of mobile telephony, but some lessons are already becoming clear. Traditional fixed land-lines connect places, not people; you dial a number and it puts you through to a room in a building somewhere, and you hope the person you want to talk to is there. Mobile phones in contrast connect people, not places. You don't necessarily know where the person at the other end of the line is, what room in which building they're in, but you know who they are.

This has interesting social effects. Sometimes it's benign; you never have to wonder if someone you're meeting is lost or unable to find the venue, you never lose track of people. On the other hand, it has bad effects, especially when combined with other technologies: bullying via mobile phone is rife in British schools, and "happy slapping" wouldn't be possible without them. (Assaulting people while an accomplice films it with a camera phone, for the purpose of sending the movie footage around — often used for intimidation, sometimes used just for vicarious violent fun.)

... Storage capacity and "Life Logs":

Today, I can pick up about 1Gb of FLASH memory in a postage stamp sized card for that much money. fast-forward a decade and that'll be 100Gb. Two decades and we'll be up to 10Tb.

10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year — there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream — compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution — of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry — a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send — onto that chip, while I'm awake. All the time. It's a life log; replay it and you've got a journal file for my life. Ten euros a year in 2027, or maybe a thousand euros a year in 2017.

... Ubiquitous Global Positioning:

Right now, Nokia is designing global positioning system receivers into every new
mobile phone they plan to sell. GPS receivers in a phone SIM card have been
demonstrated. GPS is exploding everywhere. It used to be for navigating
battleships; now it's in your pocket, along with a moving map.... In five
years, we'll all have phones that connect physical locations again, instead of
(or as well as) people. And we'll be raising a generation of kids who don't know
what it is to be lost, to not know where you are and how to get to some desired
destination from wherever that is.

Think about that. "Being lost" has been part of the human experience ever since our hominid ancestors were knuckle-walking around the plains of Africa. And we're going to lose it — at least, we're going to make it as unusual an experience as finding yourself out in public without your underpants.

You Should Be Using Spamgourmet.com

I recently discovered Spamgourmet.com, and I simply must help publicize this service.

Don't you hate having to provide your email address in order to register at some website, knowing that most likely you are just increasing the amount of spam you're going to get? Spamgourmet solves this problem completely. It's 100% effective, it's easy to use, there is nothing to install on your computer, and it's completely free.

Spamgourmet is a service that lets you create a disposable email address that you can give out to anybody and any website you wish. You can have this email address forward everything automatically to another email address that remains completely hidden. The Spamgourmet address you create will automatically stop forwarding mail to your protected address after it forwards one email, or three emails, or whatever number you designate up to 20. So even if somebody wants to spam the address you create, you can set it to automatically self-destruct, and the spam will never reach you. Sheer brilliance.

The typical use for a disposable address would be those sites that require you to give an address to register, and then send an email to you to complete the registration. Give them a Spamgourmet address, allow it one delivery for the acknowledgement, and then -- poof! You never hear from that website again.

Spengler Reviews Tolkien's "New" Book

J. R. R. Tokien's son Christopher has assembled some of his father's manuscripts and published a new book called "The Children of Hurin." In a review entitled "Tolkien's Christianity and the Pagan Tragedy," Spengler, the Asian Times pseudonymous writer who focuses on geopolitics, the clash of civilizations, and the "death of peoples," writes:

In The Children of Hurin, a tragedy set some 6,000 years before the tales recounted in The Lord of the Rings, we see clearly why it was that Tolkien sought to give the English-speaking peoples a new pre-Christian mythology. It is a commonplace of Tolkien scholarship that the writer, the leading Anglo-Saxon scholar of his generation, sought to restore to the English their lost mythology. In this respect the standard critical sources (for example Edmund Wainwright) mistake Tolkien's profoundly Christian motive. In place of the heroes Siegfried and Beowulf, the exemplars of German and Anglo-Saxon pagan myth, we have the accursed warrior Turin, whose pride of blood and loyalty to tribe leave him vulnerable to manipulation by the forces of evil.

Tolkien's popular Ring trilogy, I have attempted to show, sought to undermine and supplant Richard Wagner's operatic Ring cycle, which had offered so much inspiration for Nazism. With the reconstruction of the young Tolkien's prehistory of Middle-earth, we discern a far broader purpose: to recast as tragedy the heroic myths of pre-Christian peoples, in which the tragic flaw is the pagan's tribal identity. Tolkien saw his generation decimated, and his circle of friends exterminated, by the nationalist compulsions of World War I; he saw the cult of Siegfried replace the cult of Christ during World War II. His life's work was to attack the pagan flaw at the foundation of the West.

Spengler is always a fascinating read -- although most of the time I come away completely depressed by his conclusions. But with a psuedonym like Spengler, what do you expect?

Brownback vs. Frum on Abortion

Reacting to Senator Sam Brownback's performance in the second GOP presidential debate, David Frum wrote that "surely even pro-lifers must have been revolted by his answer to Wendell Goler's abortion question?" Brownback was asked to defend his position that abortion should not be allowed in cases of rape.

Well, I'm one pro-lifer who thought Brownback's answer was pretty damn good, and showed a lot of courage. His response was only the second time I've heard a politician specifically defend this position in a major debate (the first being former Iowa Senator Tom Tauke back in a senate debate in 1990 I think).

Here is the debate transcript that Frum quotes:

MR. GOLER: Senator Brownback, no one thinks abortion should be available
casually, but there are often very, very difficult decisions to be made in this
case. Tell me, since you've opposed abortion in every instance except to save
the life of the mother, how you would explain to a rape victim, who does not
believe that life begins at conception, why her trauma should be compounded by
carrying the child to term.

SEN. BROWNBACK: That would be a very difficult situation, and it is a very
difficult situation. But the basic question remains. Is the child in the womb a
person? Is it a viable life? And if it is a person, it's entitled to respect.
And is it an innocent person?And I think that's the thing we've got to really
look at here, is, what are we doing? We talk about abortion, but abortion is a
procedure. This is a life that we're talking about. And it's a terrible
situation where there's a rape that's involved or incest.

But it nonetheless remains that this is a child that we're talking about
doing this to, of ending the life of this child. Will that make the woman in a
better situation if that's what takes place? And I don't think so, and I think
we can explain it when we look at it for what it is: a beautiful child of a
loving God, that we ought to protect in all circumstances in all places, here in
the womb, somebody that's struggling in poverty, a family that's struggling. We
should work and look at all life, be pro-life and whole-life for
everybody.

I don't see how Frum can think this is "revolting." Brownback recognized that this is a very sad situation, but that killing the child in no way makes it any better. The right to life for innocent persons, which precedes and makes possible all other rights, must be respected even in the hard cases, or it stands for nothing.

I gather Frum is somewhere between firmly pro-life and firmly pro-choice; I think he's expressed some unease with cloning and embryonic stem cell research, and he certainly understands and respects pro-lifers' place in the Republican coalition. He's also usually a clear thinker; he should see the consistency of Brownback's position. Even hard-core pro-aborts like Michael Kinsely get this, while disagreeing vehemently with the overall pro-life position.

If Frum is looking to be revolted, how about considering Giuliani's blatantly political switch from pro-life to pro-abortion when he first ran for mayor of New York in 1994?

Chris Matthews

I agree with consensus opinion on the first GOP debate: the clear loser was "moderator" Chris Matthews.

If you missed the show, or for some reason need a reminder of how dumb his questions were, National Review has posted a video montage of the silliness.

This Week's Giuliani Abortion Position

In tonight's Republican presidential debate, the candidates were asked about the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. America's Mayor spoke thusly:

"It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent."

He also said that with regard to federal funding for abortion, he supports the Hyde Amendment, which currently bands federal funding except in cases of rape, incest, or the mother's "physical disorder, illness, or injury."

But as recently as April 4th, in a televised interview Rudy said he supported funding, apparently without these restrictions. According to CNN.com:

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes. If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."

That sounds like funding for women who are poor, regardless of other conditions. Note also that his formulation of the question -- that if the government won't fund the exercise of my "right," it is then depriving me of that "right" -- is identical to standard pro-abortion rhetoric on funding.

At least that position appears consistent with a 1989 statement he made while running for mayor:

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

Some pro-lifers are open to supporting Giuliani for president because they think that despite his own preferred policies, he will appoint good judges. I would ask them: does this sound like a man who can be trusted with judicial appointments? Why would a pro-abortion, pro-funding president put judges on the Court who could quite possibly overturn Roe during his term? Would he want that huge upheaval on his watch? What would he say at his presidential press conference the day after Roe is overturned, partially due to the justice(s) he put on the bench?

Getting good judges out of Reagan and Bush I was a crap shoot at best, even when both were firmly committed on the issue as a matter of legislation as well as judicial appointments . George W's appointments seem likely to vote the right way, when presented with the issue in the right way. Giuliani's ambivalence is a serious break with this traditional expectation of our GOP nominees.

"The Da Vinci Code" was utter hogwash, but this Reuters story is pretty cool:

Musicians unlock mystery melody in Scottish chapel

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years. A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them. Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as "frozen music." "The music has been frozen in time by symbolism," Mitchell said on his Web site www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html), which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code. "It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception."

The 15th Century Rosslyn Chapel, about seven miles south of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, featured in the last part of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," the bestselling novel that was turned into a Hollywood film. Stuart Mitchell said he and his father were intrigued by 13 intricately carved angel musicians on the arches of the chapel and by 213 carved cubes depicting geometric-type patterns. "They are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here," he told Reuters. Years of research led the Mitchells to an ancient musical system called cymatics, or Chladni patterns, which are formed by sound waves at specific pitches.

The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were able finally to unlock the melody. The Mitchells have called the piece The Rosslyn Motet and added words from a contemporary hymn to complete it. They have also scheduled a world premiere at a concert in the chapel on May 18, when four singers will be accompanied by eight musicians playing the piece on mediaeval instruments. Simon Beattie of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust said he was delighted to have the mystery finally solved, and was intrigued by the music itself. "It's not something you would want to put on in the car and listen to, but it's certainly an interesting piece of music," he said. "It's got a good mediaeval sound to it."