What the... Hey!

An interesting article

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:03:07 GMT

Donald Sensing has an interesting article concerning alternative energy. He brings up a very good point: the real issue regarding global warming isn’t whether its real or not (or even whether people cause it or not), it’s what to do about it. Short of extreme hand waving, its a hard problem to fix.

Addictions and other thoughts

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:59:57 GMT

George Bush's comments about our “addiction to oil” seems to be getting a lot of buzz now. Scott Adams, in his blog, said “Let me begin by saying there are lots of good reasons for conserving energy. It saves money, it’s good for the planet, and that’s good enough for me. I drive a small car.”

The way I look at it, if you buy into the whole “people wreck the environment” philosophy, then the best thing for the environment would be the extinction of the human race. I don’t know anybody advocating that (I could be wrong, they could be out there). Frankly, I’m a “people firster”: We should conserve the forest because it’s nice to look at, not because a certain sub-species of owl has so over-specialized itself that it can’t live without it.

That being said, I like Adams’ comments about reducing oil consumption. It would have zero affect on terrorism. Our president has wanted to increase development of alternative fuels for a long time (surprise, surprise), and tying it to terrorism is just his latest attempt at gaining some traction there (remember when the feds were running anti-drug commercials, tying illicit drug use to terrorism?). And, for those naive enough to be surprised that George Bush is pro-alternative energy, keep in mind that we don’t really have “oil companies” anymore; we have “energy companies”. If we do find a commercially viable energy alternative, it’ll be the same guys who are now selling us our oil that’ll sell that too. And we’ll thank them for it (metaphorically speaking, of course).

And, for those who think in terms of “war for oil”, keep in mind that the U.S. didn’t care one whit about the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq (remember that bit of historical fact), until the Kuwaitis were able to get their appeal to Congress televised. The U.S. was perfectly happy to buy their Kuwaiti oil from Iraq, up until the media decided to make it a humanitarian issue.

Will wonders never cease

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:20:59 GMT

And now for something completely different.

John Bolton, the controversial U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize!

I feel like Alice.

For those of you who don’t follow this kind of stuff, last year the Democrats in the Senate successfully blocked Bolton’s appointment to the UN. It was only by the President performing a last minute appointment, when the Senate wasn’t in session, that allowed him to (temporarily) take the position. In fact, he’ll be up for re-approval sometime this year. I wonder how the Democrats will deal with him as a Nobel Peace prize nominee…

A rock and a hard place

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:08:43 GMT

It seems that Israel is caught between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, Israel dearly wants the Palestinians to have their own country. For the most part, this is not due to any altruistic feelings. The Jewish leadership in Israel have come to the realization that the Palestinian (muslim) population is growing faster than the Israeli (Jewish) population. They only have two (rational) choices: “allow” the Palestinians to set up their own government, or eventually turn over the government of Israel to the Palestinians (as happened in South Africa with the end of apartheid). Since there’s no way that their turning over the government, they have to allow the Palestinians to set up their own government and therefore stay out of Israeli politics.

On the other hand, Hamas is now running the Palestinian authority, and the Israeli government doesn’t deal with Hamas (except to fire missiles at their leaders).

So, Israel is now stuck. At this point, almost all of the cards are in Hamas’ hand. What a country.

Fake News

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:20:28 GMT

“Man who shot Pope about to be released”

This is the headline for a story on CNN, but its also playing in all the media outlets. What’s wrong with this?

Well, as it turns out, the man, Mehmet Ali Agca, is not being freed from prison for shooting the Pope. He served 20 years for that in Italy, and was released to Turkey (to serve a sentence for a different crime) 4 1/2 years ago.

The only thing that seems to make this “news” is the headline itself. What does it mean when the media “creates” news by proper working of the headline?

Turning up the volume

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 22:38:15 GMT

Michael Yon has done it again. He received an anonymous WMV of the Iraqi election that has to be seen. I was blown away by this. It’s too bad American elections can’t look like this (minus the election site searches, of course).

Math problems

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:02:46 GMT

Something has to be wrong with my information or calculations.

I’ve been doing some investigation, and, in 2004, the national murder rate in the U.S. was 5.5 per 100,000 people.

According to the CIA, the US population is 295,734,134.

This means that in 2004, approximately 16,000 people were murdered. Is this right? What am I doing wrong? This can’t be right. That’s sixteen thousand people murdered last year.

I can’t believe that this is correct…

What does it mean to be "Tolerant"?

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:11:56 GMT

Michael Barone published an interesting entry on the limits of tolerance. I think that it raises an interesting question: Does tolerance require the tolerating intolerance?

For me, it brings to mind the “fact” (at least I think its a fact) that America’s religious freedom was born out of religious intolerance. Part of the “free expression of religion” that folks like the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America for was to limit free expression within their own group (or even locality).

There seems to be a fine line here.

Unintended Consequences

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:02:29 GMT

According to FuturePundit, through Instapundit, the demand for biofuels is destroying rain forests. As Glenn Reynolds said, “oops”. Apparently, the worldwide market for “green energy” (mainly from Europe) is driving the need for vegetable oils, especially palm and soybean oil. And, this is being met by countries in the tropical climates cutting down their rain forests for farmland.

On the other hand, I keep thinking of the beginning of the last century, when the advent of the automobile was looked upon as a pollution reducer. Imagine a city the size of Manhattan with a horse for every car…

I also remembering someone calling hydrogen burning “non-polluting” because it “just” produced water vapor. Of course, water vapor is a greenhouse gas…

Remember the Kyoto Accords?

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:44:45 GMT

The US (and its current president) has taken a lot of heat for not ratifying the Kyoto Accords. Yesterday, Michael Barone wrote that, in fact, European countries will not meet their emissions targets. It seems that outside of the United States, the developed nations of the world are just paying lip service to the Kyoto Accords, and those two up and coming juggernauts, China and India, don’t even have to do that much. So, it looks like, in all practicality, the Kyoto Accords are dead. It’s time to put together a rational strategy for worldwide environmental protection.

And don’t talk to be about global warming. Groan.

Civics PS

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:20:49 GMT

Now that I’ve finished reading the article, it brings up an interesting point:

The government's position is strongly supported by the former high officials and ex-diplomats, among others. Their attorneys bluntly declared in a brief: "When treaties are at issue, the states disappear and the President and Senate act, in the words of the Supremacy Clause, with the sole 'Authority of the United States.'"

This would imply that, via the Supremacy Clause, the Federal government has the power to “negotiate away” any of our guaranteed rights. Sounds pretty un-American to me…

A Civics conundrum

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:13:12 GMT

An article on SCOTUSBLOG raised an interesting question in my mind, probably core to the issue they’re talking about:

According to the Constitution, the Federal government, through the Executive branch, has the sole power to negotiate treaties. However, the power of the Federal government is limited, and there’s a whole slew of powers that are left to the states and to the people.

What happens if the Federal government signs a treaty that agrees to something for which they have no power to enforce? Who wins?

The short answer, I guess, is this is why we have a Supreme Court. The long (and decisive) answer, I expect, will be forthcoming from them when they hear the case.

As an aside, its official: John Roberts is the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hooray!

This is ridiculous

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:20:47 GMT

This just in, the sun rose in the east this morning.

The AP wire is reporting that Bush has refused to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Now, how is this news? This has been the President’s position since troops first went into Iraq. At some point, people need to just stop pushing their own agendas and calling it “news”.

Now if he did announce a deadline, that would be news!

Where the money is going

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 16:52:56 GMT

Last night over dessert, Kurt brought up an interesting question: Just where is all the money allocated for the war in Iraq going? This surprised me, mainly because it’s been a sore spot with me for a long while. Well, I’ve found a (partial) answer, or at least a way to get at the answer. The U.S. Central Command, who’s running the show in both Iraq and Afghanistan, publish two newsletters, a CentCom newsletter and a Coalition Bulletin, just chock full of information on what’s going on in these two theaters. Frankly, I think that the administration has done a piss-poor job of sharing this kind of information.

Those interested in keeping track of the real progress in the mid-east can subscribe to the newsletters here.

On a more personal note, it was great having dinner with Kurt and Patricia last night. We always have some terrific conversation, something I sorely miss since moving on to a new job.

Michael Graham needs to go back to school

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:45:12 GMT

Michael Graham is one of those talk-radio hosts who likes to shoot-from-the-lip. Until recently, he had a show on Washington DC’s WMAL-AM radio station. On July 25th, he said that “Islam is a terrorist organization” (according to the Washington Post). He said this 23 times (just so that someone would know that this wasn’t just some sort of slip of the tongue). He was then was sufficiently unrepentant that WMAL fired him.

Okay, that’s all well and good. So, why does he need to go back to school?

Well, Mr. Graham has responded, on townhall.com, “The First Amendment and I have been evicted from ABC Radio…”.

I’m sick and tired of people not knowing what their own Constitution says regarding their rights. The Bill of Rights says “Congress shall make no law…”. It does not say that a person can’t be fired for saying something so stupid that it harms the private enterprise for which they work. Congress (or any other branch of the government) didn’t get anywhere near you, Mr. Graham. And, besides, you deserved what you got.

Crackpots

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:25:35 GMT

On Monday, our own, home-grown crackpot, Pat Robertson advocated the assassination of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. President Chavez has responded by stating that Mr. Robertson’s statement is a “terrorist” statement that needs to be investigated by the U.S. authorities.

I must say that I agree fully.

Granted, Mr. Chavez is no friend of the United States (hence Mr. Robertson’s comments). And, granted, Pat Robertson is a grade-A crackpot who has a long history of saying some ridiculous things. However, it should be noted that if a muslim religious leader were to make such a remark about President Bush, we’d be yelling for the same kind of investigation. And, Mr. Robertson is sitting on a big enough pile of money that he could go ahead and follow through himself.

People may want to dismiss Mr. Robertson’s comments as those of a crackpot. But, I wonder how many “crackpots” are there in Saudi Arabia quietly sending donations to Osama Bin Laden. Wouldn’t we want the Saudis to do something about that?

The Religion of Science

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:01:11 GMT

As reported in the New York Times, a student in the audience of a recent scientific conference at the City College of New York asked, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”

To which, Herbert A. Hauptman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry responded with a quick and sharp “No!”. Thankfully, his view is not one shared by all scientists.

More and more, I’ve seen a tendency for the non-religious in the US to adopt a world view where Science answers all questions and is considered “reality”. For those of us who remember our scientific method, we know that this is not the case. Science merely provides a “working model”, that helps to provide answers to questions in a mechanistic manner.

There is no basic conflict between scientific knowledge and belief in God, as many religious scientists will tell you. Now, this doesn’t mean that some religious tenets don’t conflict with current scientific knowledge (i.e. Creationism), but that’s an artifact of religious conservatism, not religious belief.

Marriage with a Twist

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:35:08 GMT

Instapundit reports that two men in Toronto are planning to get married. The twist in this case is that the men are heterosexual. Apparently, they just want the tax benefits of being married. This could be the beginning of the other shoe falling in the whole “gay marriage” debate: if (supposedly) traditional restrictions on marriage are outmoded and gay folk are allowed to marry, then what about all of the other marriage restrictions? What about brothers and sisters? What about polygamy?

For the record (just in case you’re getting the wrong idea here), I’m in favor of gay marriage. I think building strong family ties is good for society, and our government should be supporting it. I just wonder if society (especially those whose support of gay marriage is a knee jerk response to certain right wing groups) is ready for the ramifications.

Michale Barone has a blog

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 16:38:21 GMT

Instapundit.com has reported that Michael Barone now has a blog. This is great news to me; I have a lot of respect for Mr. Barone. Of course, I’d be happier and have more respect if his blog:

1. had an RSS feed (join the 21st century, Mike!)

2. allowed comments

So, I’d like to pass on my impressions to Mr. Barone, in hopes of improving his site, but I don’t even have an e-mail address for him. I guess he’ll just have to do without my insightful views.

Update:

It turns out that Mr. Barone has his own Web Site, that includes his e-mail address (isn't Google wonderful?). I've passed on my comments.

The New Jews?

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 16:15:14 GMT

Via Instapundit.com, I found this interesting blog on immigration and terrorism. Among other things, the article pointed to talks about the treatment that Muslim immigrants receive throughout continental Europe. It seems to me that, in a way, Muslims are becoming the new “Jews” of Europe: a perpetual underclass segregated by custom and religion. I hope that Europeans wake up and realize the history that they’re repeating.