2006 July | Hoystory

Archive for July, 2006

Jul

Serious about global warming?

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Categories: Science and Technology

Every two years around election time politicians are faced with the question of whether they want to pass a bill or have an issue in the upcoming election.

It’s cynical, but that’s the way politicians minds work.

Along those same lines, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist has come up with a relatively painless solution to the global warming “problem.”

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is needed.

In a polemical scientific essay to be published in the August issue of the journal Climate Change, he says that an “escape route” is needed if global warming begins to run out of control.

Professor Crutzen has proposed a method of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. The controversial proposal is being taken seriously by scientists because Professor Crutzen has a proven track record in atmospheric research.

A fleet of high-altitude balloons could be used to scatter the sulphur high overhead, or it could even be fired into the atmosphere using heavy artillery shells, said Professor Crutzen, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany.

Personally, I’m opposed to such a plan for two reasons:

First, it’s a waste of money.

Second, I don’t believe mankind is having an appreciable effect on global warming and I don’t believe that Crutzen’s plan would have an appreciable effect on cooling the planet.

However, for the Al Gores and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the world, this presents a real dilemma: Fix the problem, or keep it alive so you’ll have a political issue?

Who will have the guts to ask Al at his next press conference?

Jul

Old leftists run Editor & Publisher

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Categories: Media and Middle East

Greg Mitchell, the editor or Editor & Publisher magazine, has a new column out decrying the fact that American newspapers aren’t decrying the fact that the United States is supplying a Democratic ally in the Middle East with arms.

Simply put: Those are largely American made, supplied, and/or paid for missiles falling on Lebanon today, emerging from jets, tanks and artillery linked to the USA. Much of it could be described as your tax dollars at work — or the best weapons money can buy. In all, Israel has received since 2001 about $10.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) from the U.S., the most of any country, while also spending $6.3 billion on U.S. arms deliveries.

While the U.S. press — and leading liberal bloggers — pretty much ignores this, the media abroad does not, and none of it is lost on those who live in or near the Middle East. In this country we read or hear countless references to “Iranian-supplied rockets” or “weapons provided by Syria” but when is that last time you heard a reference to a particular Israeli jet or missile that was sent over by our country?

The first thought I had was that Mitchell was a whiny old anti-American leftist fool who yearned for the ’60s — except for 1967 when Israel kicked a lot of Arab butt.

The second thought I had was that Mitchell was a whiny nincompoop. Seriously, just imagine Mitchell running E&P 70 years ago. Can you imagine Mitchell’s outrage at the lend lease program? What we send Israel nowadays looks like chump change just in comparison to the number of ships we sent to Great Britain, Russia, China and France.

As much as Mitchell tries to deny it, the facts remain that a democratic ally was attacked by a terrorist organization. It would be criminal of us not to supply the Israelis with more weaponry. It’s also important to note that a lot of the weaponry we supply them with is designed to minimize civilian casualties.

You could try explaining this to Mitchell, but you’d have far more success teaching a rock to swim.

On a related note: DNC chairman Howard Dean missed an opportunity last week to bash the Bush administration on the fact that by building up Iraq’s military forces the U.S. is helping entrench anti-Semitism in that country. Just think of all the pandering opportunities Dean has missed.

Jul

Hoystory reads

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Categories: Books and Photography

I recently got some books in the mail, including Bryan Peterson’s “Understanding Digital Photography.” The book is a pretty good primer for those who’ve gone out and bought a new digital SLR. However, I would suggest that Peterson’s “Understanding Exposure” book is the better buy if you’re only going to buy one book.

Two notes on Peterson’s newest book:

First, I got a little chuckle out of Peterson’s instructions on how to remove dust from your camera’s sensor. Some cameras, notably those made by Olympus (and the new Sony camera, though there are some questions as to whether the Sony version is as effective as the Olympus), don’t require sensor cleaning, because they have a supersonic wave filter (SSWF) that does it for you.

Second, I got repeatedly frustrated with Peterson’s misinformation with regard to the JPEG format. If you’re doing serious shooting, I agree that you probably want to stick with the RAW format. However, Peterson falsely claims that because JPEG is a lossy format (that is, it uses an algorithm that tosses out pixels in order to shrink the file size thereby giving you less dynamic range in your digital images) that everytime you open and close a JPEG file, you decrease its quality.

I’m not reading Peterson wrong, he phrases it the exact same way repeatedly — that opening and closing a JPEG file reduces its quality.

This is false. Every time you make a change to a JPEG file, whether it is simply to rotate or crop the file or a more drastic change like adjusting the hue and saturation, the quality decreases ever so slightly. However, merely opening a JPEG file to view it or print it or insert it into a Powerpoint slideshow, does not reduce the file quality. As long as you don’t change the file, you can open and close it from here ’til kingdom come and you won’t further reduce the image quality.

Frankly, it’s a little surprising that no one corrected Peterson’s error before it got into print.

If you ignore that one bit of technological ignorance, then Peterson’s book can teach you some things.

Jul

Speaking truth to power

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Categories: Democrats

I probably agree with Peter Beinart once every century, so it’s important to note the occasion when it occurs. Yesterday, Beinart laid into House and Senate Democrats for their faux outrage at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

How, exactly, publicly humiliating Maliki and making him look like an American and Israeli stooge would enhance his “leadership” was never explained in the missive. But of course Reid’s letter wasn’t really about strengthening the Iraqi government at all; that’s George W. Bush’s problem. It was about appearing more pro-Israel than the White House and thus pandering to Jewish voters.

While not mentioned in Beinart’s piece, DNC chairman Howard Dean is guilty of the same “crime” and probably even more so. In a Wednesday speech, Dean called a-Maliki an anti-Semite and trashed the United States for freeing a nation of anti-Semites from the tyrannical rule of an anti-Semitic, terrorist-supporting leader.

Of course, you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good — at least Iraq is no longer sending $25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers.

Beinart again nailed the shameless opportunism and dishonesty of too many Democrats today.

Privately, some Democrats, while admitting that they haven’t exactly been taking the high road, say they have no choice, that in a competition with Karl Rove, nice guys finish last. But even politically, that’s probably wrong. The Democratic Party’s single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party’s behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why.

These are not serious people — and they certainly can’t be trusted to run U.S. foreign policy.

Jul

That's gotta hurt

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Categories: Democrats and Idiots

Here’s a couple of d’oh! moves by Democrats this week.

First there was liberal commentator Bill Press’ comment that a Lovenstein Institute study had cofirmed that President George W. Bush is the stupidest president in the last century or so. Of course, this is an old Internet hoax — I was first shown it by a Union-Tribune editor back in 2004 right after Bush’s re-election — but the Internet thing is new to Press.

When he realized that he’d been hoaxed, he resorted to the CBS “fake but accurate” line.

I’ve said this before, but I’ve got a feeling that President Bush is smarter than 99.9 percent of the people who think he’s stupid. It’s the old Mark Twain story about how when Twain was 14 his father was an idiot, but when Twain reached the age of 21, he was amazed at how much his father had learned writ large.

Yes, Bill Press is part of the 99.9 percent.

Next we are treated to a beatdown on Sen. John Kerry by U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton. Yesterday when Bolton was before the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on his nomination, Sen. Kerry (D-Ketchup) took issue with the administration’s handling of North Korea. Unfortunately, Kerry was using the Clinton foreign policy standard.

John Kerry: This has been going on for five years, Mr. Ambassador.

John Bolton: It’s the nature of multilateral negotiations, Senator.

John Kerry: Why not engage in a bilateral one and get the job done? That’s what the Clinton Administration did.

John Bolton: And, very poorly since the North Koreans violated the agreed framework almost from the time it was signed.

Kerry definitely isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

Jul

Pretty scary stuff

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Categories: Abortion and Media

The New York Times yesterday decried the bill that passed the Senate the other day prohibiting people from taking minor girls across state lines for abortions without parental permission as “mean.”

This is not a suprise. Better than 3/4ths of Americans support bills like this, but the Times editorial page is so far out in left field that I’d be surprised if they believe that parents have any say so in how their own children are raised.

What is downright scary is this story [via National Review Online] given during a hearing on a similar House bill.

If that story doesn’t have you enraged, then I don’t know what can get you angry. I hope that some lawyer successfully sued the boy’s family out of house and home. Oh, and it would be a public service if we got this family’s name — they’re definitely people that you want to avoid.

The story also raises a couple additional issues:

First, it is solid evidence for the contention that abortion-on-demand has not freed women from male subjugation, but instead heightened it — at least with some women and some men. Now that there is an “easy way out,” men can put enormous pressure on women to have abortions they would otherwise not have.

Second, it reinforces an idea that’s been floated recently over on NR’s “The Corner”: The key to raising a daughter is making sure she doesn’t marry a loser. (The corollary is that she shouldn’t date a loser either.)

Jul

Heard on the radio

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Categories: Media

I was listening to Hugh Hewitt as I made my way into work yesterday and at 30 minutes after the hour the few minutes of local news and traffic came on.

Among the items worthy of mention at 3:30 p.m. yesterday: That the latest American Idol runner-up appeared on “The View” and sang her version of “Over the Rainbow.”

Who made the editorial decision to include that tidbit? You’ve only got a minute or two for the news and you include that? I must be losing my mind.

Jul

Any idiot can do this job

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Categories: Media

Ana Marie Cox, formerly of the anal sex jokes and Wonkette.com, has been named Washington Editor of Time.com.

Yes, that Time.com.

And the mainstream media continues to wonder why it is losing respect?

Jul

Reassessing the U.N.

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Categories: United Nations

For a long time I was basically of the opinion that the United Nations was merely useless when it came to dealing with war, peace and the other goings-on between nations. I may be a little slow on the uptake, but now I believe that the United Nations is far worse; it is a barrier to peace and a shield to tyrants all the while handcuffing nations that could alleve suffering.

The serious eye-opening moment came earlier this week when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that Israeli forces had “apparently, deliberate[ly]” targeted a U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL) outpost, killing a Canadian peacekeeper and three U.N. observers from Austria, China and Finland. A day later, Annan tried to backtrack by emphasizing the “apparently” over the “deliberate,” but not even the usually sycophantic U.N. press corps was buying it.

The real question is why in the heck was the U.N. peacekeeping force in the middle of a war between Israel and Hezbollah in the first place? Why weren’t they pulled out when the first Hezbollah rockets flew?

The answer is simple: The U.N. is using them as a haphazard shield for the terrorists. The UNFIL was supposed to monitor the border between Israel and Lebanon and oversee the disarmament of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. While they verified Israel’s pull-out six years ago, that disarmament thing just fell by the wayside.

This is really nothing new.

From Rwanda, to Bosnia to Darfur, the U.N. has a habit of standing idly by as tyrants, terrorists and thugs start wars and murder innocents.

Hearkening back to last week’s column by Thomas Sowell that makes the case for peace activists/movements actually encouraging aggression, the U.N. is the world’s largest, most respected and most destructive peace group.

The Security Council passes resolution after resolution against Iraq, then refuses to do anything to enforce them. When the U.S., Great Britain, Italy and other countries take it upon themselves to enforce those resolutions, the world decries an “illegal war” to remove a tyrant and mass murderer.

The kabuki dance surrounding Iran and its nuclear program is another example…

Not to mention North Korea and its rockets…

And don’t even get me started on its “new” human rights panel.

The U.N. is worse than useless, it’s dangerous. It adds to the evil in the world today. It’s a debating society that is incapable of actually doing anything.

Jul

Who works for peanuts?

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Categories: Media

Turns out the answer is journalists. There’s not much in the way of details, but the average first-year reporter made $29,048 last year.

The report on the survey doesn’t say how much I’m underpaid (answer: a lot), but it’s good to know reporters today are making far better than the $8 an hour I worked for my first year out of college.