Smiley turns 25
September 19, 2007
Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman claims to be the first to use the infamous 
“smiley face,” at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982.
He posted the emoticon (emotional icon) to an online bulletin board during a discussion about the limits of online humor. I sometimes think emoticons are mostly a crutch to avoid the necessity of writing clearly. I suppose in this age of unthinking instant communication they are necessary to avoid online mayhem, but I try to avoid writing anything that demands Mr. Smiley to bail me out.
Dave, :-p (So there!)
The frayed knot
May 25, 2007
As the divorce rate plummets at the top of American society and rises at the bottom, the widening “marriage gap” is breeding inequality, says this interesting article from The Economist.
Marriage in America | The frayed knot | Economist.com
THE students at West Virginia University don’t want you to think they take life too seriously. It is the third-best “party school” in America, according to the Princeton Review’s annual ranking of such things, and comes a creditable fifth in the “lots of beer” category. Booze sometimes causes students’ clothes to fall off. Those who wake up garmentless after a hook-up endure the “walk of shame”, trudging back to their own dormitories in an obviously borrowed football shirt, stirring up gossip with every step.
And yet, for all their protestations of wildness, the students are a serious-minded bunch. Yes, they have pre-marital sex. “I don’t see how it’s a bad thing,” says Ashley, an 18-year-old studying criminology. But they are careful not to fall pregnant. It would be “a major disaster,” says Ashley. She has plans. She wants to finish her degree, go to the FBI academy in Virginia and then start a career as a “profiler” helping to catch dangerous criminals. She wants to get married when she is about 24, and have children perhaps at 26. She thinks having children out of wedlock is not wrong, but unwise.
The idea that differing views on the sanctity of marriage is creating a growing “caste system” in American society is new to me. It’s alarming that God’s opinion and the role of the church on all this is nowhere mentioned in the article, which may also say something about the world view of the media. And our increasingly pagan society.
Dave, quick to point out that “pagan” is not being used here pejoratively, just factually.
The Many Myths of Ethanol
May 24, 2007
Since you most likely already know what I think about Ethanol, I won’t further belabor the point. You can read the article for yourself.
RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Many Myths of Ethanol
I’ll give you a hand with the priceless final paragraph, though.
And it’s good for vote-hungry presidential hopefuls. Iowa is a key state in the presidential-nomination sweepstakes, and we all know what they grow in Iowa [http://www.iowacorn.org/]. Sen. Clinton voted against ethanol 17 times until she started running for president. Coincidence?
“It’s no mystery that people who want to be president support the corn ethanol program,” Taylor says. “If you’re not willing to sacrifice children to the corn god, you will not get out of the Iowa primary with more than one percent of the vote, Right now the closest thing we have to a state religion in the United States isn’t Christianity. It’s corn.”
Dave, loving the entertainment of the presidential race.
Al Qaeda Strikes Back
May 17, 2007
Here is an antidote for all the smoke, nonsense, and obfuscation emanating from the band of presidential hopefuls. If they just knew how silly they are making themselves look as they pontificate on geo-politics! Unfortunately, the antidote requires a larger investment in time and thought that most of us are willing or able to make, but here it is, anyway.
Foreign Affairs - Al Qaeda Strikes Back - Bruce Riedel
Decisively defeating al Qaeda will be more difficult now than it would have been a few years ago. But it can still be done, if Washington and its partners implement a comprehensive strategy over several years, one focused on both attacking al Qaeda’s leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions that allow them to thrive. Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before al Qaeda strikes the U.S. homeland again.
I’m willing to grant that the U.S. went to war in Iraq for all the wrong reasons, based on a naive understanding of the politics of the region, but the principle of sunk costs says that we cut the recriminations and go on from here, whether we like our options at this point or not.
Al Qaeda today is a global operation — with a well-oiled propaganda machine based in Pakistan, a secondary but independent base in Iraq, and an expanding reach in Europe. Its leadership is intact. Its decentralized command-and-control structure has allowed it to survive the loss of key operatives such as Zarqawi. Its Taliban allies are making a comeback in Afghanistan, and it is certain to get a big boost there if NATO pulls out. It will also claim a victory when U.S. forces start withdrawing from Iraq. “The waves of the fierce crusader campaign against the Islamic world have broken on the rock of the mujahideen and have reached a dead end in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a spokesperson for the newly proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq said on November 29, 2006. “For the first time since the fall of the Ottoman caliphate in the past century, the region is witnessing the revival of Islamic caliphates.”
Looking at the presidential wannabes, I wonder where among them is the potential leader who is able and willing to acquire the grasp of the Middle East realities to the degree than Reidel apparently does. Human frailty and egotism being what they are, this may be a forlorn hope, but history does provide examples of such insight, I optimiatically think.
My cynical self whispers to me that Reidel may be just blowing smoke and that, in fact, reconciling our national interest with Mid-East realities is impossible. May be.
In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, the governments have strengthened the secret police and given them carte blanche to strike al Qaeda and its sympathizers. The United States and its allies in Europe have also provided additional counterterrorism assistance to the targeted regimes and stepped up cooperation with their security forces. The lesson is clear: al Qaeda is still too weak to overthrow established governments equipped with effective security services; it needs failed states to thrive.
What a complicated situation this is, and what an unpleasant legacy to leave for future generations!
Dave, who ought to know better than trying to understand such things.
A dangerous climate
April 12, 2007
Thanks to blogger Michael Kruse for this find. Whether you are alarmed or skeptical about global warming, you can benefit from reading this article by a respected (as far as I know) environmentalist.
A dangerous climate | Uk News | News | Telegraph
A dangerous climate
By Bob Carter, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:12am BST 11/04/2007
Page 1 of 3The latest IPCC report, published on Friday, is the most alarming yet: not for its claims of human-caused global warming, writes the leading environmental scientist Bob Carter, but for its lack of scientific rigour
At 4C, it is cold in the storage refrigerator. One needs to rug up well to work here. I am at the US headquarters of the Ocean Drilling Programme at Texas A&M University, studying seabed cores from the southwest Pacific Ocean.
…For more than 90 per cent of recent geological time, the cores show that the earth has been colder than today. We modern humans are lucky to live towards the end of the most recent of the intermittent, and welcome, warm interludes. It is a 10,000 year-long period called the Holo-cene, during which our civilisations have evolved and flourished.
Backwards for hundreds of thousands of years, the core alternations march. Some, metronomic in their occurrence, are ruled by changes in the earth’s orbit at periods of about 20,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years; others are paced by fluctuations in solar output on a scale of centuries or millennia; and others display irregular yet rapid oceanographic and climate shifts that are caused by\u2026 we know not what. Climate, it seems, changes ceaselessly in either direction: sometimes cooling, sometimes warming, often for reasons that we do not yet fully understand.
Similar cores through polar ice reveal, contrary to received wisdom, that past temperature changes were followed - not preceded, but followed - by changes in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. Yet the public now believes strongly that increasing human carbon dioxide emissions will cause runaway warming; it is surely a strange cause of climate change that naturally postdates its supposed effect?
…n the present state of knowledge, no scientist can justify the statement: “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due [90 per cent probable] to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations,” as stated in the 2007 SPM.
The environmental catchphrase of the moment is “sustainability”. It is therefore a good question to ask how much longer politicians, responding to pressure from the IPCC and other lobby groups, can sustain the fiction that dangerous human-caused climate change is upon us.
That climate change is part of our planet’s normal, dynamic behaviour is not in doubt. Nor should there be any doubt about the need for governments to prepare sensible response plans for future climate change, both warmings and coolings. But reflection on recent climatic episodes like the “little Ice Ages” makes it plain that future climatic coolings will cause much greater damage to our societies than will mild warmings similar to that of the 20th century.
advertisementThat 20th-century warming, the most recent of many previous warm phases of similar or greater magnitude, was dangerous or human-caused, or even that the warming has continued after 1998, both yet remain to be demonstrated.
I commend this long-ish article to your reading, if for no other reason than to point out that not all environmental scientists have jumped onto the global warming train.
Dave, who ‘rugs up well’ in the wintertime.
General Pace thinks homosexual practice is immoral
March 14, 2007
Think what you will, but our Chief of Staff’s personal beliefs regarding “immorality” (of any stripe) arguably reflect the beliefs of a majority of Americans. I think it is refreshing that our top military man is unapologetic about his beliefs. He is in good company. If this results in another debate about the role of gays in the military, that is good.
General’s comments boost debate on gays in military - The Boston Globe
Pace said in the Tribune interview that he opposes such efforts as Meehan’s because “I believe that homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”
As many are already pointing out, the military exists to “kill people and break things,” as I believe Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying. But it’s fact. It seems very obvious to me that allowing any form of immorality within the close-knit military community, especially in the infantry, would greatly reduce the probability that a grunt will come out of a fire fight alive.
Unfortunately, the fact that the word “immorality” is so out of fashion in large parts of our society today does not bode well for the national debate.
Dave, who has never been shot at but has a pretty good idea what those who have been in combat would say.
Calling all fathers: Save the girls
March 6, 2007
Thanks to Michael Kruse for spotting this gem. Since I am a father with girls, and since my girls have their own girls, etc., it behooves me to pass this along.
When it comes to figuring out what’s gone wrong with our culture, we can usually rely on the American Psychological Association (APA) to catch on last.
Thus, it came to pass a few days ago that the APA released its findings that American girls are sexualized. And that’s bad.
If you missed the headlines, it may be because of stiff competition from the breaking news that Anna Nicole is still dead and Britney is still disturbed.
Irony doesn’t get to be ironic when it’s that conspicuous.
I urge you to read the whole article. It’s a priceless essay on the … I’m stuck. What can I say without being accused of being an old fuddy-duddy, even if I am? Anyway, continuing on,
The APA report found that girls are sexualized in nearly every medium and product — from ads and video games to clothing, cosmetics and even dolls. Anyone who has walked down an American street the past few years has seen the effects — little girls dressed as tartlets and teens decked in bling, while mom takes pole-dancing lessons at the gym.
“Decked in bling” … “pole dancing lessons”? Good grief! I don’t even speak the language any more!
I’m not a psychologist, but isn’t it possible that wearing a bathing suit isn’t conducive to math testing, rather than that bathing suits made them so unhappy with their bodies that they couldn’t do math? Paging Larry Summers.
If nothing else, I think we can conclude that girls shouldn’t wear bathing suits to take the SAT.
Writer Kathleen Parker has a way with words that I love, but maybe it is my distant fatherhood experience that drives my appreciation.
The APA is calling for more education, more research, forums, girls groups and Web zines to tackle girl sexualization. But my instinctual guess is that getting fathers back into their daughters’ lives and back on the job would do more than all the forums and task forces combined.
Ultimately, it’s a daddy thing.
Daddy Dave, who thinks Kathleen has the right of it.
Reduced to counting Barack Obama’s nose hairs
February 16, 2007
I wish I had thought of that line. Peggy Noonan, while opining about the media’s obessing on the presidential race, says this:
Earlier this week I heard a minister quote a spiritual genius: “All the problems in the world are caused by man’s inability to sit quietly in a room by himself.” We’re restless and need action, which in a modern media world means information. We need the busy buzz–the Internet, TV, instant messages, magazines and newspapers, the beeps and boops and bops. Rudy’s up in Iowa. Hillary’s stuck. We want to be among the first to have this information and the first to share it. And we want it not because it’s crucial but because it distracts us from the crucial. It takes our minds away from what is most important. Who you are, for instance, or what we are about. It’s a great relief not to think about the important. It’s a relief to focus on factoids.
Does this ring true, even profound, with you as it does with me? She hearkens back to the story of Esau, Isaac’s oldest son, who “sold his soul for a mess of pottage” (Genesis 25:29-34). In this case, she says, the wannabe presidents are selling their souls for a “pot of message.” (A little too cute, perhaps?)
About the candidates, she says this:
But it must be uncomfortable to walk around in a skin that isn’t really your own. It must be really damaging to your soul, if you have a soul, and not just appetites, or a rugged, rocky little sense of what you deserve.
Maybe the candidates would do themselves good by leaving the trail a few days and trying to sit quietly in a room, by themselves, with no distractions, and think about big things, such as who they are.
Right on!
Dave, still adjusting to walking around in his own skin.
I’m astonished!
February 15, 2007
In 1956 it was the Cold War, and our national priority was defense, as it should be. Fast-forward a half-century, and my, how our priorities have changed! With the usual caveat that comparisons like this strongly depend on the comparison year selected, consider this:
Anyone who doubts that we are pushing the margin of the socialist envelope should look again. Assuming we are getting a valid comparison, always a good question, the chart begs the questions of whether we are adequately defended and whether our present allocation of national resources is appropriate for the times in which we live.
What do you think?
Dave, getting more worried about the world facing his grandchildren.
Gas Thief Escapes on Tricycle
January 30, 2007
I’m not going to give away the story behind the post title. You can click on the link below to read all about it.
Photo in the News: Gas Thief Escapes on Tricycle
So now you know “the rest of the story.”
Dave, culturally inclined to find the story remarkable.
