War with Jihadistan update
The Federalist Patriot, 05-43 Digest:
Al-Qa'ida murdered almost 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil in about an hour back in 2001--almost all of them civilians. The reason no additional American civilians have died in attacks on our homeland is that 150,000 uniformed American Patriots have formed a formidable front on al-Qa'ida's turf, a very inhospitable region of the world. These Patriots are a proud breed--Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen--and they have chosen to stand in harm's way in order to defend their families, their friends, their country.
In doing so, more than 2,000 of these brave souls have been killed.
This week, every mass media outlet took a break from their "CIA leak" promotion to run headlines and lead stories about the Iraq death toll reaching 2,000 (1,567 killed in action since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 19 March 2003)--as if the death of American Patriot number 1,999 was somehow less important. Typical was this headline from The New York Times: "2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, A Grim Mark." But not a whisper in the Leftmedia about the 3,870 Iraqi security forces killed in the last six months alone, in defense of their emerging democracy.
For The Patriot, every death of a member of our Armed Forces is equally devastating, and we mourn each one. Not a day passes without our prayers for both those standing in harm's way, and their families.
The "dezinformatsia" machines promote this "milestone" for one reason only--to foment additional dissent and rally support against the Bush administration's national-security strategy, which is to protect our homeland by taking the battle with Jihadis to their turf. In doing so, the Leftmedia has reduced the sacrifice of these young Patriots to nothing more than political fodder for their appeasement agenda.
On the night of 11 September 2001, President Bush told the nation, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." He set in motion pre-emptive operations, which would become the "Bush Doctrine." Our analysts continue to support the doctrine of pre-emption firmly as the best measured response to the Jihadi threat around the world.
As for those still "Stuck on Stupid", insisting that there were no WMD found in Iraq, here's a partial list of what didn't make it out of Iraq before the invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, thousands of radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc.
As The Patriot noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO estimated that the UN Security Council's foot-dragging provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq's WMD stores, noting, "Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped some or all of its biological stockpiles and nuclear WMD components through Syria to southern Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley."
In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq's biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN's ruse.
To that end, we are deeply indebted to our Patriot Armed Forces, who have prevented al-Qa'ida or some other Jihadi terrorist cell from striking a U.S. urban center with WMD. Make no mistake--Islamofascists want to bring America to ruin, and they will use any means at their disposal to do so. Mr. President, stay the course. [Emphasis added. --R]
Windows: neurotic
Jack Good, mathematician:
"My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic."
It's nominating time...again...
Harriet's out. There will be speculation on whether she acted one hundred percent unilaterally, or if this is just the way the administration is spinning it. It doesn't really matter. Now the contemplation begins on who the President will put forth as the replacement for Justice O'Connor. A common refrain from the Left has been that a woman should be nominated, to replace a woman. I have no problem with that. Janice Rogers Brown is my personal pick. A woman, and a minority woman at that. The Left should be quite happy with that, no? Of course not, because Justice Brown is conservative, and based upon her record, mostly an originalist when it comes to constitutional matters. Obviously, this means she is radically out of the mainstream, and not fit for the robes of a Supreme. It would be fun just to watch the Democrats and their radical left backers fall all over themselves trying to figure out how to disparage a black woman being elevated to the highest court in the land.
It <i>is</i> about time...
With thanks to John for the post title and link: Rich Siegel, of Bare Bones fame, is finally blogging. As if it weren't enough that Rich is responsible for two of the applications I use the most each day, he is a fellow scotch and peanut butter lover. Rich, drop me a line when you're in Dallas; there's 12-year Glenfiddich Special Reserve in the pantry.
The Palestinian descent in to barbarism
Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.
Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.
In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn't hold.
I hope we don't reap what we're sowing
When one pharmaceutical company offered to sell a new pneumococcal vaccine to the government for $58 a dose, the Centers for Disease Control demanded a $10-a-dose discount. Politicians want companies to take all the risk of developing new vaccines, but they don't want the companies to make any money from taking those risks. Then the politicians profess surprise and dismay that there's a vaccine shortage.
And you built it that way why?
It rains nine months out of the year in Seattle. So why oh why would you replace an aging dome with an open-air stadium? Collective stupidity?
Coastal elitism in college football
Or, The case against USC as #1. You can blame the following on my friend Francisco, who got me started earlier this evening during an instant messaging chat. Looking around college football, I continue to be amazed at how USC can be consistently ranked as the number-one football team in the country, given the conference they play in. It is very similar to the 1980s and 1990s, when Miami and Florida State were consistently picked as the #1 team any given year. I have deduced it is a form of coastal elitism on the part of the poll voters, much like the coastal elitism one has found recently in national elections and politics. The majority of your sports media are concentrated on either coast of the nation. Their attention, therefore, is drawn to the teams likewise concentrated on either coast, to the detriment of the quality teams in the quality conferences in between the two coasts, a la "flyover country." These quality conferences are the SEC, the Big 10, and the Big 12. It's very easy to go undefeated in the Big East when you're playing against such powerhouses as Rutgers or Temple. Viz: Florida State K.O.'ed Duke today, and that's worthy of their #11 ranking. At least now we have FSU, Miami, and Virginia Tech all in the same conference, the ACC. Too bad they are the only quality teams in the ACC, which means one of these three will, for the foreseeable future, always win the conference championship and contend for a national title. Miami's presence was the only reason the Big East was ever in the BCS, since they were the only team from the Big East ever contending for the national championship. Now that Miami is in the ACC, the BCS needs to dump the Big East as an automatic BCS bowl-eligible conference. USC is to the 2000s what FSU and Miami were to the '80s and '90s. They are the lone dominate team in their conference, so they go undefeated while beating up on the likes of Washington and Arizona. Then they have to worry about a single tough game at the end of the year, and having been built up by their success over mediocre teams and by the national sports media, they prevail. Looking back at the 2003 season, it is a complete joke that USC, and the national sports media which backs it, should insist on a shared national title with LSU. (Disclaimer: I grew up in Baton Rouge and am a LSU alum, so yes, I'm biased. At least I admit it.) I agree that it was a travesty that USC did not get to play against LSU in the Sugar Bowl. I believe the same national sports media which lauds and supports USC today was also blinded by a declining Oklahoma program, and gave that team more votes than it deserved. Be that as it may, the BCS determined that LSU and Oklahoma would square off for the national title. The BCS used the same polls the national sports media voted in to make this determination. LSU won the Sugar Bowl, and was crowned college football's national champion. But the AP and USA Today poll voters rebelled against the BCS, and anointed Rose Bowl winner USC the number one spot. USC, and the national sports media which voted for them, thus claims a shared national title with LSU, the very thing the BCS was created to prevent. This is despite, counting their respective bowl game opponents, that LSU beat four Top 20 teams during the course of the year while USC only beat two. You can make the argument LSU beat five Top 20 teams, but the BCS doesn't credit LSU's SEC championship victory over Georgia, since that was the second time that year the Tigers were victorious over the Bulldogs. This is despite the fact that Georgia was ranked higher at the time of the SEC championship than they were earlier in the year when they first lost to LSU. Using the BCS's strength of schedule statistic, Georgia was a tougher opponent the second time around, and LSU beat them by a larger margin of victory. LSU also played one more game (the conference championship) in 2003 than USC did. Statistically, LSU was the superior team. They played in the BCS championship game, and they prevailed. The Fighting Tigers of LSU are the sole national champions of college football for 2003. Let us allow, for a moment, that there is a shared title for 2003 between LSU and USC. I, for one, would then like USC and the national sports media to acknowledge a shared national title for 2004 between USC and Auburn. Each team went 13-0. Including their bowl game opponents, Auburn beat five Top 20 teams to USC's three. Again, the SEC team has the strength of schedule argument firmly in its camp. Auburn was denied the BCS shot, just as USC was the year before, by a national sports media still enamored with Oklahoma. You would think USC would have some empathy for Auburn, but no. USC worshippers' argument against a shared title for 2004 is that USC both won the BCS championship game and got the poll votes. My contention is that the poll votes are only useful as part of determining who is in the BCS championship game. After that particular game is over, who cares what else happened in the other bowl games? Hence, my contention that USC has no claim to a shared title in 2003. That brings us to the 2005 season, and the end of week 9. USC is still #1, with Texas #2. (Disclaimer: I am a resident of the state of Texas, though I have no personal affiliation with the University of Texas, other than I would like to see the schools of my home state do well. Again, at least I admit to bias, little though it may be.) Up to this stage of the season, both teams have played the same number of Top 20 teams: three. However, Texas's opponents have been higher ranked, and given those opponents, the wins more impressive. I look at Texas's win over Ohio State as more impressive than USC's win over Notre Dame. Certainly, the win by the Longhorns over Texas Tech today was more impressive than USC's victory over Washington. This is not to say that I think USC is a mediocre football team. I think they are a very good football team. A very good football team in a mediocre conference. If I were voting, and in control of college football rankings, I could easily see a two-way tie for first. USC is neither of those teams. My two-way tie would be Texas-Georgia. USC comes in at #3, with Virgina Tech trailing them, not at their current #3 spot. Looking at the history of college football over the past 30 years, it is consistently harder for an undefeated team to emerge from the SEC, the Big 10, or the Big 12, because a majority of the teams in those conferences are quality teams. Conversely, in the PAC 10, ACC, and Big East, in the past 30 years, a minority of teams in those conferences have been quality teams. Yet there is a disproportionate amount of these minority teams claiming the national title. The PAC 10 is a stronger conference in 2005 than it was in 2003 or 2004. California and UCLA have both stepped up their game, and UCLA holds the same record as the Trojans of USC. (Yet they're ranked down at #9; what does this say about the Trojans' ranking at #1? That it's overrated and undeserved, that's what.) Yet saying the PAC 10 is a stronger conference in 2005 is like saying the ACC is a stronger conference in 2004, when Miami joined to form the championship triumvirate with FSU and Virginia Tech. As conferences, these two are not in the same league as the SEC, Big 10, and Big 12. And that fact should carry some weight when it comes to poll voting. The BCS isn't a perfect system for determining a national champion, and I have admitted as much in the past. Nick Saban, who led LSU to their championship for the 2003 season, stated he would like to see something on the order of "BCS plus one." That would have eliminated the debate over a shared title with USC. (What would have eliminated the debate over a shared title is if the poll voters and the BCS would have gotten it right and put USC against LSU in the first place.) Auburn coach Tommy Tupperville echoed Saban's sentiment a year later, when his team was denied a shot at USC. What is hinted at in this statement is something I have long contended: it's time for a playoff system in college football, the only major sport without one. Rankings can be used to determine seeds, and you can use the bowls as the setting for the playoff games, continuing to rotate which bowl is the championship game. In the end, you have a single team standing, and no one making a claim for a split title.
Hective
Parents can relate:
My favorite portmanteau came from our two-year-old daughter, whose response to the question "How was your day [at daycare]?" was: "Oh, hective, very hective." We assume that it was a combination of hectic and active, but whatever the source in her mind, it remains a wonderfully descriptive word for busy family life. From Anne Beer, on the AWAD mail Issue 183, October 22, 2005. My wife thought this perfectly appropriate to our lives with a two year-old.
Get Retrophisch in your in box
If you care to get Retrophisch posts via e-mail, now you can, thanks to Bloglet. Scroll down, and look for the Bloglet subscription box in the right-side column. Enter your e-mail address, hit the subscribe button, and that's it. Enjoy!
Blimp Captain's Blog
Now if the Fujifilm blimp captains have a blog, what's your excuse for not having one? [Via Six Apart.]
Apple's new iron and bits
So yesterday was the latest in a slew of product announcements from Apple. In just over a month, we've seen the iPod nano, the iPod with Video, the new iTunes Music Store from whence you can download videos and television shows for your video iPod, and now new Power Macs, PowerBooks, and a new piece of pro software. Power Macs The new Power Macs are slower than the ones they replace--from a clock-speed perspective, anyway. And let's be honest: most people don't understand how a dual-core 2.5 GHz processor is faster than a non-dual-core 2.7 or 3 GHz processor. They see numbers. They understand numbers. The higher the number, the faster it must be. So Apple has a bit of education to do for users, who aren't as hip and in-the-know as you or I when it comes to the technobabble, contemplating new Power Macs. Then again, maybe those sorts of people are just better off with an iMac or a Mac mini. Every gearhead, yours truly included, of course is lusting after the dual-core, dual-processor 2.5 GHz Power Mac. This means there are four cores on two chips, and is why Apple refers to this beast as the "Quad." Should you care to shell out as much money for two video cards--the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500, with 512 MB of SDRAM--as the Quad costs, you can drive four 30-inch Cinema Displays from a single box. Every gearhead, yours truly included, is also lusting after the funds to accomplish this. I can barely fathom having two of those 30-inch monsters on my desk, much less four, and I would be in happy-happy dream land with only one. PowerBooks While it's fun to have fantasies about high-end desktop hardware, I was realistically focused on the new PowerBooks. The missus mentioned the possibility of new mobile iron after the first of the year, so I was hoping to see some improvements, given that this may be the last revision of PowerPC-based 'Books before Intel-based hardware ships. I was disappointed that the line-up didn't see a speed bump. It would have been nice to get a 1.8 GHz PowerBook. The added pixels in the 15- and 17-inch models are indeed welcome, though the 15-inch's resolution is now higher than the 19-inch LCD I would normally hook it up to. Right now, my 12-inch PowerBook--with a resolution of 1024x768--drives the 19-inch panel, with its resolution of 1280 x 1024. My normal habit is to run the PowerBook closed, given the extra real estate on the 19-inch LCD. With one of the new PowerBook models, I'm looking at the prospect of reordering my workspace, so the PowerBook could be run in extended-desktop mode with the LCD. This is certainly not a bad thing. John notes the simplified line-up of the PowerBook models, and I concur this is a good thing. I wonder, though, if the simplified product line-up isn't so much a result of Apple's desire for simplification, but rather the aforementioned fact that there are no speed-bumps. Historically, when you saw the different versions of a PowerBook, other than screen size, there was a processor speed difference as well. With yesterday's announcement, Apple killed the slower-speed model for the 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks.That notwithstanding, again, I agree; the simplified line-up is much better. When I went to price a new 15-inch, I only made one change, the hard drive. (I'll buy my 2 gigs of RAM elsewhere and save a few hundred bucks, Apple, thanks.) Aperture Likely the main reason I'm gear-lusting after a Power Mac G5 Quad is because I'm also lusting after Apple's latest piece of pro software, Aperture. Think Final Cut Pro for digital photographers. (I know I read that phrase somewhere, but haven't been able to recall where yet.) I wasn't crazy about the name at first, thinking Tom had come up with a much better one, but it's growing on me. Aperture is a one-stop shop of digital photo post-production, and while it is geared toward--and priced for--professional photographers, as a burgeoning "prosumer," I can see how much I would gain from Aperture's abilities. Alas, none of my current hardware can handle the app, and while I know I will begin pushing the limits of iPhoto in the near future, I'm not there yet. Many see Aperture as a shot across Adobe's bow, and while I'm sure it will steal some screen time from Photoshop, I see the two applications working in complement with one another rather than competition. Given what Aperture brings to the table, Adobe is going to have to look at something other than just workflow solutions for Photoshop. Their flagship application is already suffering from featuritis, with no real room to grow except through the implementation of workflow solutions, so future development should be interesting to watch. Regarding the new Apple hardware, Leander Kahney remarked, "I actually don't like product announcements like this. It makes my 18-month-old PowerBook and G5 look feeble and decrepit." Leander, I'm plugging along on a 4.5-year old Cube and 2-year old 12-inch PowerBook. How do you think I feel?
Founders' wisdom
"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1784)
We'll accept help from everyone, except...
[I]t was not until Oct. 14, six days after Israel had communicated its willingness to help the earthquake victims "in any way possible," that it finally received a formal response. Yes, aid from Israel would be welcome, provided it was laundered through a third party. "We have established the president's relief fund, and everyone is free to contribute to it," a government spokeswoman coolly acknowledged. "If Israel was to contribute -- that's fine, we would accept it." Israel could help save Pakistani lives, in other words, as long as it wasn't too public about doing so. There mustn't be any embarrassing images of planes with Israeli markings offloading relief supplies at Islamabad's airport.
Go Astros!
Some time in the first year to year-and-a-half of my life, my parents moved to Houston. My dad had joined the Navy for a two-year stint, and would be spending nearly one of those on a Mediterranean cruise aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. My grandparents lived in Houston, and would help my mom look after their only grandchild. My grandfather was a regional sales manager for a major tobacco company. He had season tickets to Houston Oiler football games and Houston Astro baseball games. He took clients to games. He gave the tickets away to clients, and if they didn't want them, to friends. And once my dad's time in the Navy was over, he took my dad. And me. I was only three or four, but there are two or three memories clanking around in my noggin of going to Astros games with my dad and grandfather. I remember the night they gave away baseballs. I remember hurling mine, still in the plastic bag, toward the field when the the team came out of the dugout. It was time to play ball, and I guess I wanted them to play with mine. Dad tells me I clonked someone on the head a few rows down, and cried because no one threw the ball back to me. My grandfather would sneak away and get me another one, but he didn't let me know, and he hung on to it. My grandmother tells me it's somewhere in a box in their house. You can understand, then, why I may have a little affinity for the Major League club in the southern portion of the Lone Star State. Someone--my grandmother or my parents--also has the orange Astros ball cap that I had during those years. I need to get that; it would be great for my son to wear. For the first time in their 44-year history, the Houston Astros are going to the World Series. To meet a club that hasn't been to the Series in 46 years. A historic Series, to be sure, and one that I hope is not one-sided in either team's favor. (Okay, maybe a little one-sided in one club's favor.) Biggio and Bagwell, among the last of the franchise players in Major League Baseball, are getting their shot at the championship title, and it's been a long time coming. Eighteen years for Biggio. Eighteen years he's been trying with the Houston Astros. Craig, your loyalty and hard work have been rewarded. My grandfather severely injured his back and one of his legs around the time I was five. It badly disabled him, and I remember climbing the stairs of my grandparents' house to go visit him in his bed. I don't remember going to any baseball games after that. My grandfather retired, and when we moved to Baton Rouge in the summer of 1976, my grandparents followed shortly thereafter. Their other son and his new family were living there, too, and the entire extended family was in one location. Houston is the closest city with a Major League team to Baton Rouge, and you'll find Astros fans throughout Red Stick. We still followed the Astros, but it was mainly through the stories on the sports page than anything else. It took the move in 1998 that brought my wife and I to Dallas for me to discover a love for Major League baseball, but I'll never forget the seed that was planted in the early 1970s by my dad and grandfather. Granddaddy, I wish you were here to see the Astros now.
I'm looking at you, ACLU
"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws." --Walt Whitman
Three-way tie for first
The game before ours this past Sunday was important for us: we were tied with one of the teams playing for first in the league. They lost. Then, so did we. Now, instead of a two-way tie for first, we find ourselves in a three-way tie, because when we handed the win to the gang from Flower Mound UMC, they joined us and Trietsch Memorial UMC at the top of the standings. It was a good game, a lot of back and forth. Both teams were hitting well, both teams made their share of flubs. In the end, we made more flubs, and they hit better, besting us by three runs. I only fielded for half the game, and didn't see much action except for a couple of forced outs at third, and one runner who turned his double in to a triple when the throw to me was a hair too slow. Some of my teammates were upset at the call of safe, but it honestly could have gone either way. I didn't help the team or myself at the plate, going one for three for the second game in the row. I really need to hit the cages again.