Battle at Kruger

"A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari."

You gotta see this one.

Benazir Bhutto is Brave

In the face of death threats and now a massive suicide bombing attack on Thursday targeting her transportation convoy, Bhutto is laying it on the line in the Washington Post:

"We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants."


Seeking background and insight into this drama, I was surprised to see no major coverage of this today at either National Review Online or The Weekly Standard. Shouldn't we be loudly trumpeting a major figure in the region who is not only using her voice but risking her life to defy the assorted thugs aiming themselves in her general direction?

I know nothing about the alleged corruption during her two previous terms as prime minister, or what the prospects are for her reaching an accommodation with Musharraf, and how delicate all this is for America's interest and position in the region.

But because Al Qaeda always makes it so "bloody obvious" where they stand, I do know her return to Pakistan is the equivalent of a daring beachhead invasion in the larger struggle against violent Islam. Many millions are watching her courage in the face of death. If this region is to ascend to normalcy, it will be in no small part due to leaders like Bhutto who personally embody the cause of life and freedom, and rally the millions to her side, rather than to the side of the Bin Ladens, who from the shadows send others to die for a doomed cult.

From Here to Eternity

Deborah Kerr, 86, just passed away. She starred opposite Cary Grant in the best chick flick ever, "An Affair to Remember." Here is her Washington Post obituary. RIP

Pulling the Curtain Back on "Peanuts"

If you're about 35 or older, you grew up with Charles Schulz's comic strip "Peanuts." And if you didn't, well,

According to David Michaelis' new biography, "Schulz and Peanuts," by 1971, Schulz had 100 million readers and the fourth-highest sales figures of any 20th century author.

According to Salon's review of the biography, it's a warts-and-all kind of book. Just reading the review is enough warts for me, thank you. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that creator of the first comic strip whose characters had an inner life of existential angst was a -- how do we say? -- "complex" person:

Somehow, without (it seems) actually trying to, Schulz succeeded at making all of his readers think that his strip was about them.

Actually, it was about him. Michaelis reveals that the upshot of Snoopy's brush with campus protest -- a breathless romance with a "girl-beagle" who had "the softest paws" -- was inspired by Schulz's extramarital affair with a 25-year-old office worker named Tracey Claudius. Snoopy's sentimental swooning over his lady love was no exaggeration, either; Schulz inundated Claudius with doting notes and flowers and gifts commemorating each month of their "anniversary." For the straight-arrow Schulz, the affair was a first foray into adultery after almost 20 years in a marriage that, while difficult, produced four kids and underpinned the most productive period of his life. Claudius, who regarded "Peanuts" as "holy," was terrified when he took her to the Tonga Room in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, convinced that the newspaper columnist Herb Caen would spot them and blow their cover. "I would be the one that would ruin his image for the world," she told Michaelis. "God! If I'd found this out when I was reading it, I would have been crushed. Charlie Brown wouldn't be innocent to me any longer."

Some readers may feel much the same after finishing Michaelis' biography. Not, however, about the affair with Claudius, which was heartfelt and, in its own small way, tragic. Schulz was no philanderer, though he was prone to crushes on "distant princesses" (cf, Charlie Brown's little red-headed girl). Rather, it's learning about the depressive, anxious, detached, resentful, self-defeating and self-deceiving personality of the comic strip's creator that's likely to puzzle and sadden some of those who grew up with "Peanuts."

Sure Beats "Boxers or Briefs?"

Rudy took the Alien Invasion question the other day from a young boy. Captured on video here.

Wash Post: "Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled"

The opening line of this Washington Post story should make you want to read the whole thing:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Details on al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI):

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

There appears to be a variety of opinions within the civilian and military leadership as to how damaged AQI is, and whether to actually proclaim victory. But it is heartening that the question is even being asked.

Wikipedia's Growth

From The American comes this this item about Wikipedia's astonishing growth:

There’s ample concern about the quality of Wikipedia, the Web-based encyclopedia which any reader can edit and whose entries top practically any Google search you do. But there’s no question about the quantity. The total database grows by tens of millions of words each month. A fast reader who never needs to sleep, charging ahead at 400 words per minute, would still be unable to read as fast as new content is being created, let alone catch up with the vast amount of text already published. The English-language version alone, at last count, had over 609 million words—more than 15 Encyclopedia Britannicas put together.

Take a look at the graph on this page. While still rising quickly, the English version of Wikipedia now comprises only about one-fourth of the total words in all editions, which include more than 200 languages. Among them: Basque, Arabic, Esperanto, Latvian, Inuktitut (Eskimo), and Cherokee. There’s even a Latin version, with a suitably collaborative motto: Vicipaedia cooperandi opus est.

Identify Much?

This video of a Britney Spears fan tearfully begging the media to "leave Britney alone!" is actually pretty disturbing.

Seriously: the level of obsession and faux identification with a celebrity exhibited here reminds me of John Hinkley's fascination with Jodie Foster (he shot Ronald Reagan to impress her), Mark David Chapman's with John Lennon, and that of Yolanda Saldívar, the president of Selena's fan club, who murdered the "Queen of Tejano music."

But now that I think of it, this deranged fan can't kill her idol, 'cause Britney already died on stage the other night at the VMAs.

"The Rule-Breaking Campaign"

Bill Kristol has a column in Time magazine that nicely summarizes the many new and unpredictable variables that may affect the 2008 presidential race.

Such as:

The leading Republican contenders are a Mormon from Massachusetts, a pro-choice New Yorker and a late-starting TV actor. Some Protestant churches teach that Mormonism is a cult. No pro-choice candidate has been able to compete seriously for the GOP nomination since 1980. No one has gone straight from the studio to the presidency (Ronald Reagan had long ago given up his acting career and had served two terms as Governor of California). This is a very unusual bunch of Republican front runners.

And:

The Democratic front runners are a woman and an African American--the first members of either group to have a good chance to win the presidency. Do the polls accurately reflect hidden support for--or hostility toward--such trailblazer candidates? And the woman in question happens to have as her husband a former President of the U.S. Will the prospect of having Bill Clinton back in the White House help or hurt Hillary Clinton when voters cast their ballots?

Not to mention the war, the accelerated primary schedule, the lack of an incumbent on the ticket, and one that I would add to the list: the growing power of the Internet to make or break campaigns. Certainly a great year to be a political junkie. "Fasten your seat belts...."

Cell Phone Advice for the Technology-Impaired

You might get a kick out of this exchange between Salon.com's advice columnist and a poor guy who's just trying to have a normal conversation with his wife on the stupid cell phone.

You should also read the letters from readers in response, which contain some good advice and information. Such as:

There are actual technical reasons for having problems with cellphones,
particularly the digital variety that are now the norm. The first is the lack of
"sidetone", a playback of your own voice to you as you speak. It not only
confirms the phone is working, but helps you get the volume of your voice right.
Landlines have had this since before most of us were born, and analog cell
phones generally had it. The lack of it often causes people to think you can't
hear them. The results are pauses, repeating, shouting, asking if you can hear
them, etc.

And:

I've seen this before. She's not holding the phone to her ear correctly.
I'm betting the tiny speaker is right in the tip of the phone. Typically this is
the case with flip phones. You have to get this speaker right over the
opening of the ear, in order to hear what's going on. Often people will hold
the flip part of the phone, with the screen in it, flat against the ear. The
speaker winds up somewhere to the back of the external ear. This causes the
exact problem you describe. Holding the very tip of the phone to your ear is
an unnatural feeling for someone who is used to a full size handset.

Man Calls 911 To Save Him From Police

Now this is funny -- from the AP, 7/16/07:

Man calls 911 to save him from police

A 38-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 and told a dispatcher he was surrounded by police officers and needed help, authorities said.

Police officers met Dana Farrell Shelton after being called to investigate a disturbance at a bar on Sunday but had found no problems and told him to move along.

Shelton, who officers said appeared intoxicated, then called 911 to report he was "surrounded by Largo police," according to an arrest affidavit.

"Our officers were standing there scratching their heads. He called, standing there in their presence," Largo Sgt. Melanie Holley said. "It's one of our 'truth is stranger than fiction' cases."

Shelton was charged with misdemeanor misuse of 911. The charge carries maximum penalties of one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.

LA Times Front Page for Rent

Wow -- reporting on itself, the Los Angeles Times says:

Amid a steep decline in revenue, the Los Angeles Times is planning to break with long-standing tradition by selling ads on its front page, Publisher David Hiller said Friday.When it happens, the newspaper will be the largest metropolitan paper in the country to place ads there.

[...]

The ads would be confined to the "brand-and-image" category, he said. As contemplated, an ad would be a 1 1/2 -inch "strip" across the bottom of the page.

[...]

Employees in the Times newsroom circulated a petition Friday exhorting the publisher to reconsider."Page One has traditionally been sacrosanct among American newspapers," said Alan Mutter, a media investor and online commentator who used to be a newsroom executive with the San Francisco Chronicle. But with newspapers facing increasingly stiff competition from Internet-based news and entertainment sources, the industry has been scrambling to cut costs and find new sources of revenue, Mutter said, noting that the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle and numerous other papers have been selling front-page ads for months."It's now become perfectly acceptable, just as not running stock tables in the business section and not having foreign bureaus is acceptable," he said.

I suggest you save a copy of your local newspaper -- soon -- so you can show your grandchildren an example of what people used to read back in the 20th Century.

(Via Howard Kurtz's Media Notes column at the Washington Post)

Ouch

"Family-values" Republican Senator David Vitter (LA) becomes the first pol ensared in the DC Madam scandal.

OK, so a Christian Right politician is exposed as a hypocrite. Not exactly the first time this has happened (and no, I don't think it discredits the Christian Right). But the weird thing is this old quote from his wife Wendy, included in a Salon piece about Vitter:

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like
that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me," - Wendy Vitter, 2000, talking about the Clinton scandal to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

McCain Implosion

Some supposedly inside McCain scoop is reported here by Marc Ambinder in his Atlantic Monthly blog.

Brownback on Evolution

Sen. Sam Brownback recently wrote a good piece in the New York Times explaining his views on faith, reason, science, and evolution. Since the evolution question came up again in tonight's Republican presidential debate, his key points are worth noting.

Contrary to the chaos at the heart of the postmodern worldview, Brownback believes in an order and unity in the universe:

The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different
questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and
the material order were created by the same God.

His direct answer to the question ("Do you believe in evolution?") is more or less my answer as well:

If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes
over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I
believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an
exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place
for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

And here we get to his most interesting statement:

It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the
philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in
excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm
of empirical science.

In other words: there is nothing scientific about the claim that if science can't explain something, it must not exist. Science seeks to discern the laws governing the material world; it is unscientific to assume that only the material world exists.

The long boom in science and technology in Western civilization that began in the Renaissance was built on a presumption that the Christian God was rational, and had created a material world that operated according to discernable and consistent laws of cause and effect. Far from being incompatible with Christianity, the scientific project that has been so instrumental in creating the modern world we take for granted would have been unthinkable without this belief in a rational harmony between "nature and nature's God," and in the ultimate unity of all reality -- seen and unseen.

But at some point the scientific project began overstepping its bounds, and took quite literally a leap of faith in asserting that if a belief or opinion could not be proven using the scientific method, it must be false. This represented a complete reversal of perspective. The original presumption, "God created the world; God is rational; let's discover how the world works," morphed into "Man is the center of all things; we shall use our reason to effectuate what our will desires; and whatever reason cannot comprehend must not exist or can be safely ignored."

The good news is that this materialistic, narcissistic worldview in some ways is being challenged by a renewed interest in the spiritual side of man's nature. People's souls have been starved for too long. The bad news is that too often this new hunger for God is being hijacked by a seemingly infinite variety of banal "spiritualities," most of which seek to substitute a New Age, irrational religion of the Self for the materialistic, rational religion of the Self.

The challenge -- as it always has been -- is to keep alive a sincere dialogue between faith and reason, a conversation that is fruitful only as long as both wings of man's understanding seek the objective truth outside of our subjective experience and preferences. It is ironic that two of the most notable proponents of the role of reason in this dialogue in recent times have been Catholic Popes. Pope John Paul II challenged Communism and the materialism of the 2oth century by insisting on a true understanding of the good of the human person -- body and soul, emotion and intellect. Now his successor, Benedict XVI, has extended this invitation to the Muslim world with his lecture at Regensburg.

We can be thankful that whatever the future holds for Sen. Brownback's presidential campaign, he too has made a contribution to this dialogue by his steadfast and eloquent insistence that "the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God."

"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?