Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Oklahoma Head Chopper

September 28, 2014 Rand Simberg 1 Comment

Thoughts from Mark Steyn:

Colleen Hufford was born in 1960. Life is full of grim twists and cruel vicissitudes, but in mid-20th century America it would not have occurred to anyone that one needed to worry about going to work and being beheaded by a colleague. Yet that’s what happened to Ms Hufford on Thursday: She turned up for her job at at the Vaughan Foods food processing plant in Moore, and Alton Alexander Nolen decapitated her.

Why would he do that? Well, as the initial reports were at pains to assure us, it’s nothing to do with terrorism. That’s true, in the sense that Mr Nolen is not a card-carrying member of an officially credentialed state-recognized terrorism-provider such as ISIS or al-Qaeda. It’s true in the sense that he’s not on any official US Department of Homeland Security terror watch list, because, under the geniuses running American national security, that honor is reserved for my fellow Hillsdale cruiser Steve Hayes. And, of course, it’s also true in the sense that Mr Nolen is a recent convert to Islam and, as David Cameron and Barack Obama and many others are ever more eager to emphasize, terrorism is nothing to do with Islam. Mr Nolen had the Muslim greeting “As-salamu Alaikum” – “Peace be upon you” – tattooed upon his abdomen. And he’d tried, without success, to persuade his co-workers at Vaughan Foods to convert to Islam. So he wasn’t just mildly Islamic in the nothing-to-do-with-terrorism sense, he was super-Islamic in the really-totally-no-terrorism-to-see-here sense.

…Salutin’s column was met with near universal derision, but he’s stumbling around in the vicinity of a kind of point. As I wrote all those years ago in America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc), Islam is “the ultimate global gang”. In Oklahoma, Mr Nolen had a rap sheet as long as his knife. In London, Mr Salvatore was a not dissimilar type. All that’s happened in the years since I first made that observation is that ISIS has supplanted al-Qaeda as the brand leader of the sharp end of Islam, and made the gang aesthetic even more explicit. As for Mo3’s comrades, if you’re a Canuck or Aussie or Frenchman or American having fun chopping heads off in Syria and Iraq, how much more fun it would be to go “home” and chop heads off in Toronto or Sydney,Toulouse or Minneapolis. Western leaders may insist that that’s nothing to do with Islam, but, as the “reversions” of Messrs Nolen and Salvadore suggest, not all potential Muslims are willing to defer to Obama and Cameron’s doubtless extensive Islamic scholarship. In the years to come, there will be more beheading, by more “reverts”.

It’s time for a rectification of names.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Why You’re Too Dumb To Vote

September 28, 2014 Rand Simberg 7 Comments

Five reasons:

Miss Dunham, reflecting celebrity culture at large, makes a fetish of voting, and it is easy to see why: Voting is the most shallow gesture of citizenship there is, the issuance of a demand — a statement that “this is how the world should be,” as Miss Dunham puts it — imposing nothing in the way of reciprocal responsibility. Power without responsibility — Stanley Baldwin would not have been surprised that Miss Dunham and likeminded celebrities think of voting in terms of their sex lives. Miss Dunham, in an earlier endorsement of Barack Obama, compared voting in the presidential election to losing one’s virginity — you want it to be someone special. Understood that way, voting is nothing other than a reiteration of the original infantile demand: “I Want!”

As a procedure for sorting out complex policy issues, voting is of distinctly limited value: If you wanted to know whether the compressive strength of a particular material were sufficient to support a bridge over Interstate 20, you would not go about solving that problem by bundling that question with 10,000 other equally precise and complex but largely unrelated questions, presenting the bundle of questions to the least-informed few million people you could identify, and then proceeding with whatever solution 50 percent +1 of them preferred. That would be a bad way to build a bridge — a homicidal way, in fact — and though it is a necessary instrument of accountability in a democratic republic, voting properly plays a very limited role. For instance, we have a Bill of Rights, which could with equal accuracy be called the List of Stuff You Idiots Can’t Be Trusted To Vote On. A majority of Americans don’t like free speech? Too bad, Harry Reid.

But for Miss Dunham et al., this isn’t a question of citizenship — it’s a therapeutic matter. Voting, she promises, will offer “a sense of accomplishment,” knowledge that one has done the right thing, even “joy.” But checking a box is the most trivial accomplishment imaginable; having done so is no guarantee that one has done the right thing, inasmuch as voters routinely make bad decisions for evil reasons; and one suspects that Miss Dunham means something different and less by “joy” than did, say, Beethoven or Walt Whitman. “I wore fishnets and a little black dress to vote,” she writes, “then walked around with a spring in my slinky step. It lasted for days. I can summon it when I’m blue. It’s more effective than exercise or ecstasy or cheesecake.” And that of course is the highest purpose of our ancient constitutional order: to provide adult children with pleasures exceeding those of cheesecake or empathogenic phenethylamines.

It is very depressing.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Neil Tyson’s Latest

September 27, 2014 Rand Simberg 5 Comments

“Hey, you just have to trust me on all that stuff I made up“:

Eyewitnesses are a good thing. And if you believe Neil deGrasse Tyson is your lord and savior, his eyewitness testimony is of course sufficient for verifying, for instance, that George W. Bush quote.

But what about those of us who are not in the Tyson faith-based community? Are we “anti-intellectuals” to not trust in his unverified claims? I suppose that will be the continued approach by many in the media, some folks in the Wikipedia community (whose trust in Tyson puts the most devout religious piety to absolute shame), and the other fanboys.

I’ve never been as impressed with him as those who consider themselves my intellectual superiors have been demanding, but wow, he really is a piece of work.

[Update a while later]

Tyson finally admits that he botched the Bush quote:

Tyson claims to be a man of science who follows the evidence where it leads. The evidence here clearly shows Tyson screwed up. Whether knowingly or not, he regularly repeated a false account in order to cast aspersions on another public figure. The only proper thing to do is recant and apologize. That is what a person of integrity does.

I won’t be holding my breath.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Peter Thiel

September 26, 2014 Rand Simberg 1 Comment

I didn’t link it at the time, but he had an interesting Q&A on Reddit the other day.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Property Rights

September 26, 2014 Rand Simberg 16 Comments

I haven’t read it yet, but this looks like an interesting paper, from Cato.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Eric Holder

September 26, 2014 Rand Simberg 8 Comments

A supercut of his greatest hits.

Also, thoughts on “our first Soviet attorney general,” and more from Nick Gillespie: “Eric Holder’s Legacy: Duplicity, Incompetence, and Obliviousness.”

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society