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This via Reuters:
Well, some of our older citizens are not pussies, it seems. I trust and hope that this guy gets a commendation for dealing with these scum in such an exemplary manner. I have taken some lessons with these guys, and I can strongly recommend them for those in decent physical shape (and that does not mean you have to be a big tough bruiser, either. There is something positively encouraging about watching a petite woman throw off an attack by a 6 foot-tall rugby player type). October 23rd, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 October 23rd, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
… is they are all racists, apparently. The paradox inherent in such a declaration might not be lost on Trevor Phillips, were he not now one of the official arbiters of what is and is not forbidden thought and speech in Britain. How extraordinarily coincidental that this line should emerge from a New Labour appointee just before the Home Secretary is due to announce that settlement of Bulgarians and Romanians here will still be controlled after they become EU citizens. October 23rd, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
And the reason? Simple, the USA has banned Vegemite! I expect to see RAAF strikes on US targets by late this evening and Aussie SAS teams boarding US shipping and dumping cargoes of Skippy Peanut Butter into the sea. More seriously, it is just preposterous that the state interferes in the most picayune aspects of life. Next time I am in the US I intend to smuggle a jar in disguised as Marmite and smear it over the door handles of the first US federal government building to see. October 22nd, 2006 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
I believe it was the late Ray Charles who bewailed his melancholy lot in the song lyric, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”. Looking back over the last hundred years or so, one could readily draw the same dismal conclusion about ideas. At one level, this is to be welcomed. The 20th Century was not short of idea, most of them ranging from bad to downright horrific and which have now been defeated, discredited, marginalised or have just plain run out of steam. Gulags ‘R’ not us, thank you very much. Fine, except that it leaves us standing on the other side of the equation with no ideas at all, merely an awful lot of inertia and a dour determination to just carry on from one day to the next. Yes, it’s all very ‘end of history’. In fairness that sort of works but only until the point where that persistent bloody nuisance history starts all over again. In other words, until about now:
I suppose it is entirely consistent that a former communist like Mr. Reid has the capacity to understand the power of ideas, though perhaps his use of the term ‘Al Qaeda’ is entirely diplomatic when what he really means is Islam itself. For Islam is not only an idea, it is a big idea and very powerful one to boot. It is not going to be defeated by Western soldiers traipsing around in the dust of Basra or Helmand provience, regardless of how well trained, armed and motivated they may be. Nor will be it defeated by outright persecution in the West (should that be the next course of action). The Romans tried that in response to Christianity and look where it got them. No, something else is needed though, precisely what, I cannot yet say. I can say that the official UK government effort, which, thus far, consists of this rather feeble outreach effort is bound to go nowhere. ‘Moderation’ is not an idea, merely a temperament. Appeals not to rock the boat are futile when set against a determined plan to sink the boat. Besides, the very fact that it is driven and financed by HMG means that it will almost certainly have the very opposite of its intended effect. If this was a ‘battle of guns’, then we have all the best and biggest guns and there would not be even a trace of reasonable doubt about the eventual outcome. Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, but so bloody what? Mr. Reid is nearly right. This is a not a ‘battle of idea’ it is a ‘war of ideas’ and we are in the midst of that theatre of war completely unarmed. October 22nd, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
If it is to survive, democracy must recognise that it is not the fountainhead of justice and that it needs to acknowledge a conception of justice which does not necessarily manifest itself in the popular view on every particular issue – Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty October 22nd, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Abortion is an issue that is only simple for people at the extreme ends of the debate. Many leftists support abortion (and generally wants it to be taxpayer subsidised, of course) on the grounds it is a woman’s right to choose, which is ironic considering the left is dedicated to reducing personal choice in just about every other sphere. In truth I suspect many on the left support free abortion because so many conservatives oppose it. Religious conservatives oppose abortion because of religious tenets, end of story, and many others oppose it because they feel that it is murder. And that is, of course, the issue. The issue of choice is moot until you deal with the issue of ‘is it murder?’ because we are not free to choose to murder people. The way I see the debate is this: treating the chemical abortion of a cluster of cells a few days after conception as murder is preposterous (the general Christian position) because a potential person is not an actual person, but treating the abortion of a survivable unborn child a few days before delivery not as murder is also preposterous (yet that appears to be position of some Objectivists) . Where does a reasonable person draw the line? I really do not know and upon that basis I think abortion should only be clearly illegal (i.e. murder) if it is late term even though I personally find the entire practice abhorrent. I am simply not prepared to support charging someone with murder unless I am certain a person has indeed been murdered. But how does one define a ‘person’? A two day old blob of human cells may be alive but is it a person? I think not but the devil is in the details. It is not an easy issue and as a result I do not regard my own position as fixed on this by any means. October 22nd, 2006 | 199 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am in Las Cruces New Mexico right now, taking a short break from a heavy schedule to at least let readers know I have been at the X Prize Cup field all day yesterday and also this morning and have the sunburn to prove it. I have also been tied up in National Space Society meetings and doing meet and greets with other members of the society leadership at events of the AIAA and others. Not to mention I am now in the space business myself… something I will leave you in suspense about for the moment. I have only a few minutes right now, after the board dinner and multiple bottles of champagne toasting our Executive Director’s recent wedding, and must prepare for a meeting of my own committee. I will try over the next few days to post some stories and photos from here. In the mean time, Rand Simberg did some live blogging so you can get some immediate gratification if you must. Now I must leave you as the Mexican band turns up the volume in the lobby and my meeting time approaches…  Rand spots a familiar name on the wall. October 22nd, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some odd things have happened with a few recent comments (some garbling and different people’s comment running into each other). Most comments seem to be posting okay however. We are looking into the problem. October 21st, 2006 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The constitution and laws of a State are rarely attacked from the front; it is against secret and gradual attacks that a Nation must chiefly guard. Sudden resolutions strike men’s imagination; their history is written, and their secret sources made known; but changes are overlooked when they come about insensibly by a series of steps which are scarcely noted. One would do great service to Nations by showing from history how many States have thus changed their whole nature and lost their original constitution. – Emmerich de Vattel, The Laws of Nations or Principles of Natural Law, 1758 October 21st, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I wrote two posts for Biased BBC about the BBC’s reporting of President Bush’s “admission” that there were parallels between the present situation and Iraq and the Tet Offensive. The BBC, of course, is neither the only nor by any means the worst offender among the media organisations that have seized on this. Those who think that a clueless idiot can get and keep the office of President of the United States may well be good children or pleasant neighbours but there is no need to take anything they say about politics seriously. Whatever criticisms one might justly make of Bush, one thing he cannot be is a simpleton. For all that there is a kind of truth behind it: Bush is a simple man. As I wrote here, precisely because he is a child of privilege “in important respects his values are more normal than is normal in his milieu.” Poor guy. Of course he had thought about the similarities to the Tet Offensive. Like some prince letting slip that there might be something to this Copernican system in front of his less enlightened bishops, he just forgot for a moment to keep one of the taboos that it is safer to observe when so many of the intermediaries between him and the populace are either ignoramuses or hostile. He forgot that so many of them rejoice that the American media managed to turn that offensive, which General Giap viewed as a failure, into “proof” that the war could not be won. He forgot that so many of them view the conquest of Vietnam by a regime so detested by its own people that thousands of Boat People preferred the mercies of the open sea to enduring it any longer, and the deliverance of Cambodia into the hands of the democidal Khmer Rouge, to be their finest hour. You know, thinking about it, his moment of forgetfulness might make a few people remember these things. It may not do him such harm after all. October 21st, 2006 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
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