The Blog with No Name

I wish this article (which goes well with the discussion Micah and I are having) was more informative about terrorists motivations, but it is an interesting and quick read about the two camps seeking to explain the motivation of terrorists. Here’s the gist:

For some experts, the attacks - whether in London or Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - are aimed at the West for what it is doing: in other words for its policies, like the war in Iraq. Others insist that the perpetrators are more at odds with the ideals of the West and “who we are.”

For the latter group, this is a war of civilizations or ideologies that the West has no choice but to fight aggressively, because anything else would entail appeasement and imply a retreat from identity and principles.

This is a difficult and often touchy debate. Personally, I just find it hard to believe that our policies only cause Muslims to blow themselves up in some type of violent protest. There’s something truly sick about these people, and the what-we-do explanation is hugely deficient in explaining it.

UPDATE: It occurred to me today that I’m not being thoroughly consistent in my position because there is one American policy that I would admit does incite a gross amount of hatred against us in the Muslim world: our support of Israel. So, a more honest statement of my position is that Al Qaeda and their ilk hate us for who are are as infidels and, to make it worse, infidels who support Israel. And to be even more honest I would have to say that there are times when what we do incites hatred. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me if a man who had his family blown to smithereens by one of our errant bombs would want to pretty much kill as many of us as possible. However, I contend there must be something greater and more sinister that motivates the thousands of Islamofascists who want to destroy our country and the entire culture of the West.

With the recent bombings in London, it’s very easy to fall for the idea that it is our involvement in Iraq which is causing these bombings. In a more honest moment, I’d say even I think that sometime. We want to think that if we leave the terrorists alone, they’ll leave us alone, so maybe we did bring this on ourselves. I want to think this despite all my Calvinistic pessismism concerning the human condition and rabid, jingoistic patriotism. But we must remember the history of bombings before the Iraq war. John Howard, the Australian prime minister, had to deal with this myth when a reporter asked about it while he was in London. His response is dead on and worth a full quote (emphases are mine):

Could I start by saying the prime minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it. My first reaction was to get some more information. And I really don’t want to add to what the prime minister has said. It’s a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here.

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it’s given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq — a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations — when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don’t know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can’t put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I’ve cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

And if that isn’t enough, perhaps a pictorial history (via Instapundit) would drive the point home. And if even that isn’t enough, perhaps the 88 dead in Egypt will be a sufficient reminder that Islamofascists really do want to kill everybody who isn’t one of them. Despite reports that our actions are aggravating the situation, we must remember that it’s likely things will get worse before they get better. When knocking down a hornet’s nest, you don’t expect the number of hornets to reduce immediately.

“And if you know your New York City landlords, and some of you do, there is no worse human being on Earth, okay?” That’s just a small taste of The Donald’s testimony (site has audio too and is via Instapundit) before a Senate committee yesterday concerning the proposed $1.2 billion renovation of the United Nations building. I’m not a Trump fan. I’ve never seen his show, and if I watched TV I’d make a point not to watch it. I’m also dubious of his so-called buiness skillz because it seems to me that it takes a very special lack of skills to allow casinos to go bankrupt. However, I do appreciate Trump for his flair and his hair. He also has the unique quality of an arrogance that is not off-putting. The guy is arrogant, but it’s a funny arrogance. Trump’s testimony before the Senate International Security Subcommittee was as fun to read as it was critical of the UN’s proposed renovation plans.

Trump actually spoke with Kofi Annan and other UN officials back in 2000, when the bill for the renovation was set at $1.5 billion. Trump was called in by the UN to talk about it, and told them that the only way a renovation could cost $1.5 billion was either by “gross incompetence” or “corruption.” He found the people running the show at the UN were naive, ignorant, and prime lunch meat for NYC contractors and builders, and the project itself was going to be a “disaster.” Trump also expressed some wonderment as to why the price tag dropped to the current $1.2 billion when nothing else changed except construction costs, which have gone up. He believes the UN is in “very serious trouble” and predicts the final bill for the project will end up being close to $3 billion. If that doesn’t seem expensive, it should seem that way after Trump basically swears he can do it for $700 million. That’s the meat of what he says, now to the fun stuff.

At one point Trump starts talking about asbestos, and I can’t really understand why but he gets in a good jab at the federal government:

In New York City, we have a lot of asbestos buildings. And there’s a whole debate about asbestos. I mean, a lot of people could say that if the World Trade Center had asbestos, it wouldn’t have burned down. It wouldn’t have melted, okay? A lot of people think asbestos…a lot of people in my industry think asbestos is the greatest fire-proofing material ever made. And I can tell you that I’ve seen tests of asbestos, verus the new material that’s being used, and it’s not even a contest. It’s like a heavyweight champion against a lightweight from high school. But in your great wisdom, you folks have said asbestos is a horrible material, so it has to be removed.

One of the major problems with the UN’s plans is the architect. Trump puts it well:

Now, I listened to one thing, and I’ve seen one thing, and one number that sticks out more than all of the rest . . . the number of $44 million dollars for an architect, is one of the great numbers in the history . . . In fact, I think this man is a genius, whoever he may be, wherever he may be in Italy. I think he’s a great genius. I would like to meet him. He is, without question, the richest architect in the world.

Apparently, the architect ended up only getting $27 million before the contract was terminated, which doesn’t seem so bad until you’re told that the Italian architect has delivered nothing:

So they [the architect firm] got paid $27 million dollars. They haven’t done anything. They don’t even have plans. Nobody even knows what they’re building, and they got paid $27 million dollars.

The architect for Trump’s largest residential building was paid $1.5 million, and residential buildings are much more complicated to design and build than office buildings.

Trump wants to go in, take over the project, and help the UN (he’s a “big fan” of their’s), but his dream for the project is a little, well, odd:

It’s a dream to take the United Nations, and the Senator over here is probably going to go crazy, move it to the World Trade Center as a brand new United Nations. Sell the United Nations site, which is one of the greatest sites in the world, for much more money than the whole thing would cost, and you end up building a free United Nations at the World Trade Center, where I don’t think anybody’s going to want to stay anyway. I think it’s going to be a very, very hard rent up at the World Trade Center.

Now, the idea of moving the UN, an organization I regard as corrupt and nearly useless, to the hallowed ground of the WTC strikes me as stupid. However, Trump has a point I never considered before: who will want to be in the new WTC? I mean, if I had to pick one building Al Qaeda would be dying to knock down it would be a brand new WTC. Considering this, it may be very hard to rent up the WTC, so why not just stick the UN in it? After Trump makes this suggestion suggestion, a Senator makes the comment, ” . . . Got no problem with that. Put Kofi Annan on the top floor.”

Trump concludes his testimony, “Congratulations. You’ve got yourself a mess on your hands.” Sounds just the UN.

Another gorgeous day in Seattle. You really can’t get much better weather than this.

Too bad it looks like it might cloud up a little over the weekend.

My brother and I have acquired some old, doomed furniture from SPU, so now we have plenty of seating in our sweet bachelor pad. I think the next additions should be some animal print wall coverings, some shag rugs, and mirrors on the ceilings. Maybe a couple of disco balls too. Though between work, sleeping, exercise, and video games, we don’t have much time for the disco. Priorities, right?

Bush has named his pick for the Supreme Court. I feel sorry for Judge Roberts, he’s going to be crucified by the left.

Cue filibuster.

Greg has a post about a short column by John Leo about the anti-Americanism of some Hollywood denizens. The new stupidity is from the screenwiter for War of the Worlds (a movie I enjoyed and would recommend):

David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians.

Leo also points out some other instances of anti-Americanism by Hollywood elites and briefly discusses the profoundly perplexing idea of picking Oliver Stone to direct a major 9/11 flick. Frankly, I findn it disgusting that an idiot such as Stone would be allowed to direct a movie which deals with such a sensitive topic. Besides, his last movie Alexander was a huge bomb, are Hollywood execs that dumb? I guess so.

I think the great irony is that those in Hollywood probably exploit our great freedoms more than nearly everybody else in this country, yet they so often use those freedoms to mock, malign, and abuse the country that gives them those freedoms. If Socrates were still alive, I think he’d kick their collective ass.

The NYT reports on a recent survey that found most high school students aren’t being stretched enough. I’m not sure how accurate this survey is, but its findings are encouraging in that high school students want more of a challenge, responding, “they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting.” I see a couple of alternate ways to read this that are less positive. First, the word “interesting” gives the students a lot of weasel room. Who knows what the respondents mean by “interesting”? It may be that to a large majority of them a class is only interesting if they get to watch movies or read comic books all day. My suspicion is if the question asked if the students would work harder if the classes were just more demanding that fewer respondents would answer in the affirmative. Second, this is a survey with no real ramifications for the students. I’m sure it feels good for them to answer they would work harder if they were required to, but they would probably balk at the idea of actually doing more work.

The survey also found that fewer than two-thirds thought that “their school had done a good job challenging them academically or preparing them for college.” This is probably pretty accurate, and I feel fortunate to say that I would have been in the minority with this question. I thought my high school did a superb job of preparing me for college, and I know many of my friends felt the same. Those who dropped out or are considering dropping out gave interesting reasons that are in sync with the rest of the survey’s findings:

. . . only about one in nine cited “school work too hard” as a reason for not remaining through graduation. The greatest percentage of those who are leaving, 36 percent, said they were “not learning anything,” while 24 percent said, “I hate my school.”

I thought this was interesting too:

Mr. Tucker said American schools had been too slow to adapt high school curriculums to the real-life demands of college and the workplace. Except for that small fraction of highly motivated students with an eye toward prestigious private colleges and state universities, many more students, he said, are under the impression that just having a diploma qualifies them for the rigors of college and the workplace.

American schools are slow to adapt, eh? Can’t adjust to the work place fast enough? They just can’t keep up with the job market? Hmmm, what does adjust quickly and is more flexible than monolithic bureaucracies? Private businesses. Oh, but that’s just too silly to work isn’t it?

MacNN reports that Merril Lynch thinks Apple is becoming a “mass market company.” I said this over a month ago (bottom of the post). Merril Lynch would be smart to hire me.

So, I’m blogging at my usual pace again. I tell you what, being in Seattle has re-energized me like nothing else. Even though I’m still adjusting to this insane sleep schedule of going to bed before 2 AM and waking up before 8 AM, I feel much more alive and virile than I ever did in Salem. Also, my freshly cut hair may have something to do with it. My last haircut might have been in November, but I can’t remember for sure. With all that hair gone I feel like Atlas after shrugging off his one vital responsibility. The lady who cuts my hair also showed me a quick way to style it with this crazy foam stuff called mousse. Gone are the days of accidentally chaotic hair and in come the days of purposefully chaotic hair! I’ve been told separating and bringing the hair forward is the new hotness. I’m skeptical, but I’ll know for sure if the ladies come a flockin’.

More will be coming, I have a backlog of noteworthy articles (4 in tabs on this window alone) I’ve read and want to comment on.

So, we’ve gotten some good economic news lately. Unemployment is down to the level it was at 9/11, and new numbers yesterday are just as positive:

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year.

Those tax cuts for the rich? Yeah, they worked.

But this is the NYT reporting, so read the rest of the article for all the doom and gloom that might be down the road for us. After all, tax cuts just don’t make sense. Maybe by the end of the article you’ll be convinced that it’s best if the government just keeps taking more of your money.

Some good news for bloggers. Many have linked to this article about the FEC hearings on bloggers. The FEC is considering whether it should give bloggers the same media exemption that other media outlets have from our currently insanely stupid campaign-finance laws (Thank you, Sen. McCain). To me, it’s a no brainer that the exemption should extend, and fortunately it seems that the FEC commission might agree:

The FEC is now considering whether rules should apply to publications on the Internet. It announced earlier this year that it is inclined to formally extend the exemption to the Web sites of traditional news operations, along with such sites as Slate, Salon and the Drudge Report that exist only online. The panel did not take a position on granting the protection to bloggers, some of whom have incorporated for liability purposes. Instead, the agency asked the public for comments on the issue and held two days of hearings, much of which focused on the exemption question.

I think it is utterly ridiculous that a private citizen, who often does blogging for free and as a hobby, should be subject to campaign-finance laws just because he or she feels passionate enough about the candidate of choice to blog about it.

Some people have concerns about extending this exemption because it might possibly create a loophole:

“If the FEC draws the media exemption too broadly, then it really does run the risk of eviscerating the campaign finance laws,” said Larry Noble, the head of the Center for Responsive Politics. “It would potentially let a lot of corporate and labor activity using soft money, fully coordinated with candidates, to go on the Internet. It’s also possible that once that starts, if the media exemption is drawn broadly that way, questions will be fairly asked: ‘Well, why does that only apply to the Internet? Why doesn’t it apply off the Internet?’ “

My first reaction is “Oh no, we don’t want to eviscerate these stupid laws that would be sooo lame.” I’d like to point out that the internet is a medium that requires a lot action and intent from the user. A website, even with a billion dollars pumped into it by some double-plus-evil mega- corporation, will have absolutely zero influence on any campaign unless people consciously decide to click links, read the site, believe the site, and then act on those beliefs. To assume that this type of political activity needs the protective hand of Big Brother’s regulation is insulting to the intelligence and personal responsibility of the American people. On top of this, many sites require the user to actively search for them, they don’t just leap onto your screen like TV commercials.

The committee is evenly split with Republicans and Democrats and needs a majority to make a decision. It will be interesting to see how the party lines break down. The article points out that only one committe member has already unequivocally sided with the bloggers: Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democrat. Good, I’m glad somebody on the committee has enough sense to see through this BS so quickly. Let’s hope the good sense spreads.

I haven’t been following, nor do I really care about, the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. I only have the vaguest idea of what is going on, but Greg sheds some light on it in a good and pointed post. I guess it’s only interesting to me now because the investigation is checking out Karl “Darth” Rove. Frankly, I just like seeing the people on the left side of the aisle work themselves up into a tizzy trying to bring down Rove. It seems Rove is way too smart to let some stupid thing like this bring him down. But maybe Rove did screw up and did something stupid. Oh well, who cares? Greg concludes:

That said, whoever leaked Plame’s role in sending her husband to Niger on a fact-finding mission outmatched in effort by a 3-year-old’s Easter egg hunt, was completely oblivious to how easily this incident would be misunderstood by a public and press unfamiliar with the bureaucratic labyrinth that is the CIA. I seriously doubt Rove was the prime leaker, simply because he understands PR much better than many of the wonks wandering the White House. There was no way the national-security angle would stay behind the opportunism angle of Wilson and Plame, setting up a flimsy mission to discredit a pending war argued primarily (not completely) on national security grounds.

I have no doubt that Wilson is an opportunistic, lazy little weasel of a former ambassador, whose fame was directly proportional to an enormous PR screwup by someone connected to Karl Rove, but lacking his cunning. Thanks a lot, Anonymous Flunky.

From other stuff I’ve read (for example) and heard, it seems a lot of this whole mess is blown way out of proportion and conveniently twisted by Democrats and folks in the media who want something, anything, to stick on the Bush Administration and especially Rove. Anyway, there’s going to be an investigation, so I guess we’ll all find out what’s going on soon in like 2 years.

Okay, my interest in this has faded for now.

AppleInsider has the scoop (via an IM from Soini). If this report is accurate, and there’s no reason not to think so, then the new Intel based Macs which will be released next year are going to be very nice. Here are some choice quotes:

“It’s fast,” said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel’s Pentium processors. “Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5.” In addition to booting Windows XP at blazing speeds, the included version of Mac OS X for Intel takes “as little as 10 seconds” to boot to the Desktop from when the Apple logo first displays on screen.

What interests me more is Rosetta, the software that allows for current PowerPC applications to run on the Intel-based systems with no recompiles and changes. Rosetta will be crucial during the transition period betwen the PowerPC chips and the Intel chips. So far Rosetta seems promising:

Developers sources say the early version of Rosetta, a dynamic binary translator that is designed to run unaltered PowerPC applications on Intel Macs, is also impressive. “Rosetta is completely 100 percent seamless and nothing like the Classic environment used to run older Mac OS 8 and 9 applications under Mac OS X,” one source told AppleInsider.
. . .
Since the developer version of Mac OS X for Intel offers users the option of running any application under Rosetta, developers have been able to perform rudimentary speed comparisons between native Intel Mac applications and those that must first filter through the Rosetta binary translator.

“Taking a universal binary and timing its startup in Intel native speed versus its startup when opened via Rosetta results in a slowdown, but not as much as one would think,” said another source. “The apps run at about 65 to 70 percent of their normal speed.”

However, some PowerPC-native applications realize little to no speed reductions while running under Rosetta. A source told AppleInsider the current PowerPC version of the popular Firefox web browser loads just as fast under Mac OS X Intel as it does on a high-end dual processor Power Mac G5.

I’m guessing Rosetta will never be able to run high-end games and applications at an acceptable speed, but Apple still has a year to optimize it and get it up to snuff. At this point it seems Apple has a real good thing going.

In other Apple news, Apple is cleaning up financially. Some eye-popping third quarter numbers: 320 million in profits (highest ever), 6 million iPod sold (616% growth over last year), 425% net profit growth over a year ago, a gross margin of 29.7%, and a revenue of $2.01 billion (75% growth).

A couple of days ago Slashdot linked to a NYT article about the Sci-fi Channel’s increased production of B-grade sci-fi films (full text here). As a sci-fi buff I’m quite excited about this. And as a fan of B movies, I’m even more excited. I’m not as keen on Sci-fi’s original films (though they tend to be pretty good) because I prefer the films from the 80’s and 90’s (aged to perfection I like to think). However, I’ll take what I can get. The only problem is I don’t get the Sci-fi Channel right now. Comcast’s cable package is too expensive to justify it. I guess that’s what happens when some company thinks it can gouge customers. Customers don’t buy the product and the business sells less product: everybody loses. Anyway, I’m digressing, back to the article.

The nutshell:

“ATTACK OF THE SABRETOOTH.” “Bloodsuckers.” “The Man With the Screaming Brain.” And, most indelible of all, “Mansquito.”

A combination of outrageous genre concepts, low-budget filmmaking and sensationalized titles like the roll call above are all part of the Sci Fi Channel’s attempt to establish a presence on Saturday nights, when a good number of potential viewers are out, asleep or watching reruns. The programming strategy has been a major success, with numbers that far exceed anyone’s expectations.

However, the producers seem to be a little confused about the purpose of B movies:

People like Ken Badish jumped at the chance. Mr. Badish’s company, Active Entertainment, will have produced nine Sci Fi movies by the end of 2005, high-concept features like “Mansquito” (experiment gone awry creates man-mosquito hybrid!), and “Alien Lockdown” (government science produces horrific slime thing!).

The most important element of a Sci Fi film, Mr. Badish said, “is a topical film that has relevance to our audience.”

“In a film coming up,” he added, “stem cells are key to the plot; in another, it’s mad cow disease. Secondly, there’s a good story. Like we’re shooting a ‘Jaws’-kind of movie featuring a giant squid. We make a reasonable use of C.G.I., because the audience wants that escapist thing. And we add emotional content, so the audience can feel for the characters.”

Topical films can actually be rather annoying and hackneyed, thus making them un-fun to watch. For example, a movie about terrorist attacks would not interest me. A movie about giant cockroach attacks would interest me. A movie about stem cells would not interest me, but a movie about mutant killer zombie cells would interest me. Bradish is right that the audience wants “that escapist thing” but making topical films won’t allow us to escape this world becuase it forces us to think about the very world we’re trying to escape. Also topical movies such as these often tend to get preachy or political, which is always a no-no. Secondly, the audience doesn’t want emotional content or wants to “feel for the characters.” Look, we’re watching B movies. We only want to be entertained by some fantastical tale told with sub-par effects, acting, directing, and writing. I love watching these movies, but I really don’t give a rip if the hero/heroine dies or not. Actually, that would be pretty cool for a surprise ending to a movie. Say it’s an alien attack movie, and at the very end the hero agonizingly reaches for the button to fire the missle that will save the whole world, but before he can press it he is mercilessly and triumphantly devoured by an anonymous alien. Then the whole world perishes. That would be cool. I’d buy the DVD of that movie (if it was less than $15). Mr. Bruce Campbell hits the nail on the head:

“B movies don’t mean bad,” said Mr. Campbell, who starred in the classic “Evil Dead” films. “They’re just operating on a limited budget and are trying to be entertaining. You go to the Sci Fi Channel, you see a high-energy thing.”

And the money quote (haha! pun!):

Shot on budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Sci Fi’s movies are made in money-saving locales like Bulgaria, Romania and Missouri.

In other news, the entire state of Missouri has unsubscribed from the New York Times.

Which movie am I looking forward to the most? “Fire Alien” starring William “I need to rip my shirt off and make out with a hot, green alien chick” Shatner. Now I just need to find a friend who will let me camp out his/her house all day Saturday.

The president of my alma mater is on day 8 of his Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Challenge. From the looks of it he’s doing pretty well . . and is just an ice cream eating machine. I sure as heck couldn’t do that. I’m not a fan of Ben and Jerry and their leftist ways anyway!