Satire

Democrats Announce New Diplomatic Policy

WASHINGTON (APUPI) In a new attempt to finally bring a rogue regime to heel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced today that they plan to diplomatically isolate the White House.

In response to an invitation from the president to come to the White House and discuss a troop funding bill, Senator Reid rejected it, saying “We won’t meet with preconditions. We hope that the road to peace lies down Pennsylvania Avenue, but we can’t trust this administration, and they don’t seem willing to negotiate on our obvious need to get the troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, and to lard the funding bill with things like spinach subsidies, despite the fact that we obviously couldn’t have passed it in the form we wanted without them.”

Speaker Pelosi agreed. “It’s one thing to meet with a peace-loving world leader like Bashar al-Assad, or President Ahmadinejad,” she said. “It’s another to meet with a theocratic warmonger like George Bush. If we dignify his illegitimate regime with a negotiation, how will we ever build international pressure against him, and end his imperialistic ambitions?”

Upon receiving the rejection of its invitation, the White House expressed its disappointment. “We are saddened by the decision of the Congressional majority to refuse to discuss this important issue,” said the White House Press Secretary. “The troops should be above politics like this.”

The leadership on the Hill was having none of it, however.

“We know from long experience that we can’t trust this lying government,” said Senator Reid. “The next step, if this doesn’t force them to recognize reality, will be economic sanctions. We’ll move to cut off funds to Halliburton, open up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to plunge oil prices, and cut off mountain bike exports to Crawford, Texas.”

Space

Only Two More Nights

Until Yuri’s night. It will also be the twenty-sixth anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. Unfortunately for me, it looks like the only Florida party is in Cocoa Beach–nothing in south Florida. Or maybe it’s actually not so unfortunate, since I’m not that big on dance parties.

Oh, and if you’re into virtual celebrations, and are a resident there, there will be one in Second Life as well. I might show up to that one, but I’ll remove my avatar’s legs, so I’ll have an excuse. I’ll also turn down the volume on the dance music, which is a nice feature in Second Life that Real Life doesn’t yet offer, short of earplugs.

If so, I’ll probably either be at Colab, or the International Spaceflight Museum.

Political Commentary

Shooting Themselves In The Ballot Box

This seems kind of stupid to me:

The measure would award Maryland’s 10 electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The plan would only take effect if states representing a majority of the nation’s 538 electoral votes decided to make the same change.

State Sen. Jamie Raskin, a law professor and sponsor of the idea, said Maryland is largely ignored by presidential candidates during campaigns, because they assume the Democratic state will vote for the Democratic candidate.

OK, I can understand the misguided desire to have the president be elected by popular vote. I disagree with it, as did the Founders, who wanted us to be a Republic, and ensure that the smaller states had a more level playing field when it came to electing a president. I can even agree that it’s probably constitutional, albeit dumb, since the legislature can use any method it wants to award its state’s electoral votes. But I don’t understand why Senator Raskin imagines that making Maryland’s electoral votes dependent on the national popular vote will make politicians pay more attention to Maryland’s voters.

It seems to me that if you’re going to get Maryland’s (and other states’) electoral votes regardless of how you do in Maryland, and only need to get a national majority, you’ll put all your resources in the most cost-effective media markets in the major cities. Now it might be that this means that you’ll target Baltimore-Washington, because it’s a fairly dense area, but there’s nothing intrinsic about this plan that would make politicians pay more attention to the state of Maryland per se. And of course, it would screw over Wyomingites, who would be essentially disenfranchised if they followed such a strategy (and perhaps even if not, since the methodology would be skewed even if they didn’t sign on).

Is there someone out there who can get into a (presumably) liberal law professor’s mind and explain this to me?

Space

An Optimistic Interview

With Freeman Dyson:

My optimism about the long-term survival of life comes mainly from imagining what will happen when life escapes from this planet and becomes adapted to living in vacuum. There is then no real barrier to stop life from spreading through the universe. Hopping from one world to another will be about as easy as hopping from one island in the Pacific to another. And then life will diversify to fill the infinite variety of ecological niches in the universe, as it has done already on this planet.

If you want an intellectual principle to give this picture a philosophical name, you can call it “The Principle of Maximum Diversity.” The principle of maximum diversity says that life evolves to make the universe as interesting as possible. A rain-forest contains a huge number of diverse species because specialization is cost-effective, just as Adam Smith observed in human societies. But I am impressed more by the visible examples of diversity in rain-forests and coral-reefs and human cultures than by any abstract philosophical principles.

I agree. This is one of my fundamental religious beliefs.

Media Criticism

Repairing The Damage Of Socialism

Iain Murray has some good news on the environmental front–the restoration of the Aral Sea. And as Iain points out, this was unquestionably a tragedy caused by man–not by global warming, but by a Stalinist command economy. And it reminds me of the fatuousness of the Pope’s comments the other day, that “no good came out of the war in Iraq.” (Michael Novak has his own thoughts on that.)

One could probably write a book on the many good things that have come out of removing Saddam from power, but just one is the reversal of another environmental catastrophe, also caused by oppression and a Stalinist-style government–the draining of the Euphrates marshes. With Saddam’s removal, plans to restore them began almost immediately, and the progress has been impressive, if not perfect:

The restoration of southern Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes is now a giant ecosystem-level experiment. Uncontrolled release of water in many areas is resulting in the return of native plants and animals, including rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, and plants. The rate of restoration is remarkable, considering that reflooding occurred only about two years ago. Although recovery is not so pronounced in some areas because of elevated salinity and toxicity, many locations seem to be functioning at levels close to those of the natural Al-Hawizeh marsh, and even at historic levels in some areas.

Nothing good from the Iraq war? Ask a Marsh Arab.

General

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges

Gerard Vanderleun doesn’t think much of O’Reilly’s proposal for a blogger code of conduct. Or of James Woolcott:

The balding little metro-sexual neuter who dispatches his hard-core unemployed in this direction is meanwhile at his home suckling his cats and writing yet another scroll of infinite dullness on “the theater in our time,” or denigrating the endless Yahoos that come to NYC to get in his way when he wants to go. (No matter that it is only because of these Yahoos that New York has a theater still. Then again what sort of grown man of any talent at all makes his living reviewing plays in this day and age anyway?) That Wolcott has no comments on his own page is enough to tell anyone that his decades of playing a beard have indeed left him the blogosphere’s leading white man possessed of an inverted if uninhabited penis.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, maybe I’ll implement Frank J.’s comment policy.

General

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges

Gerard Vanderleun doesn’t think much of O’Reilly’s proposal for a blogger code of conduct. Or of James Woolcott:

The balding little metro-sexual neuter who dispatches his hard-core unemployed in this direction is meanwhile at his home suckling his cats and writing yet another scroll of infinite dullness on “the theater in our time,” or denigrating the endless Yahoos that come to NYC to get in his way when he wants to go. (No matter that it is only because of these Yahoos that New York has a theater still. Then again what sort of grown man of any talent at all makes his living reviewing plays in this day and age anyway?) That Wolcott has no comments on his own page is enough to tell anyone that his decades of playing a beard have indeed left him the blogosphere’s leading white man possessed of an inverted if uninhabited penis.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, maybe I’ll implement Frank J.’s comment policy.

General

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges

Gerard Vanderleun doesn’t think much of O’Reilly’s proposal for a blogger code of conduct. Or of James Woolcott:

The balding little metro-sexual neuter who dispatches his hard-core unemployed in this direction is meanwhile at his home suckling his cats and writing yet another scroll of infinite dullness on “the theater in our time,” or denigrating the endless Yahoos that come to NYC to get in his way when he wants to go. (No matter that it is only because of these Yahoos that New York has a theater still. Then again what sort of grown man of any talent at all makes his living reviewing plays in this day and age anyway?) That Wolcott has no comments on his own page is enough to tell anyone that his decades of playing a beard have indeed left him the blogosphere’s leading white man possessed of an inverted if uninhabited penis.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, maybe I’ll implement Frank J.’s comment policy.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!