Month: July 2006

The Suicide Bomb Morality

RealClearPolitics – Articles –

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live,” Ayn Rand

The worship of suffering is the world’s disease… self-sacrifice is the essence of moral virtue.

The Palestinians show us a society based on sacrifice in its purest, most fanatical form. It is a society built around a single moral model: the suicide bomber, who is lionized on billboards, on television, in popular songs. And this is not just the propaganda of the corrupt Palestinian rulers. One of the delegates elected to the Palestinian parliament in the populist upsurge for Hamas was Umm Nidal, the “mother of martyrs,” who has sent three of her sons to kill themselves in terrorist attacks on Israel, proclaiming that their “sacrifice…makes me happy.”

For the great mass of Palestinians this worship of sacrifice is sincere. By rejecting every chance at peace and coexistence with Israel–breaking every truce and turning down every peace offer–they have lost everything and gained nothing. Taking the suicide bomber as their moral model, the Palestinians seek to emulate his fate: in their lust to destroy Israel, they are willing to accept the utter destruction and collapse of their own society. Continue reading “The Suicide Bomb Morality”

Palestinian suicide strategy

The Region: Palestinian suicide strategy | Jerusalem Post
The things many in the West think motivates Palestinians – getting a state, ending the occupation – are of no interest in their own right.

Fatah and PLO strategy rests on the belief that defeat is staved off as long as you keep fighting. Their only true victory is to continue the struggle. If Palestinians become obsessed with job creation, educational or health systems or a successful economy this makes them satisfied with their lot and less willing to fight and die for the cause.

On Policing the Frontiers of Freedom

Association of the United States Army: Front and Center

This article shows the military learning how to cope with the non-Cold War reality of 21st century conflicts, with frequent references to what the British have learned in Northern Ireland.

How politicians define the problem of a nonstate adversary is an important strategic decision. Not all violent groups have political agendas, and of those that do, some can be tolerated, and even those that might sound dangerous may not represent foes that are truly implacable. Being able to define the problem in terms other than war is a privilege reserved to the strong, and such decisions are profoundly political. Politicians often think their constituents would rather commit to necessary action if they label it war. They forget that, in war, closure only comes when the enemy accepts defeat, and the war continues until he does. Words like defeat and victory often get in the way of good enough solutions. There are some advantages to defining the adversary as a problem rather than as the enemy.

Rorschach test-inspired Music Video

‘boards – Screening Room
A clever Rorschach test-inspired music video for Gnarls Barkley.(Thanks to Randy)

This song was featured on this blog back in April because the oddly named hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley made history in the U.K. with the song “Crazy,” which debuted at No. 1 despite being available only as a digital download. It was the first time a song had reached the top spot without being available on CD, tape or record. A live version, in Star Wars costumes, was featured during the 2006 MTV music awards.

Global warming could devastate U.S. wineries

USATODAY.com – Report: Global warming could devastate U.S. wineries
Areas suitable for growing premium wine grapes could be reduced by 50% — and possibly as much as 81% — by the end of this century, according to a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper indicates increasing weather problems for grapes in such areas as California’s Napa and Sonoma valleys. The main problem: An increase in the frequency of extremely hot days.

A thousand years ago when Viking explorers arrived on the coasts of eastern Canada and New England they named the region Vinland, a designation that has perplexed many historians since grapes are uncommon there now. The weather was warmer then, however.

In Medieval times there were vineyards in England that were later knocked out by a colder period known as the Little Ice Age. Now, wine grapes are being grown in England again.

Scientists Explain How They Attribute Climate-Change Data

WSJ.com – Science Journal
“If you turn up the sun’s energy output, the atmosphere should warm from the stratosphere to the surface,” says Dr. Santer. “That’s contrary to what’s observed. But greenhouse gases do not produce a uniform warming. They warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere.” (See the Data) (And the Report)
Another signature is the pattern of warming in the seas. Some 84% of the total heating of Earth over the past 40 years has gone into warming oceans about 1°. (The 84% comes from calculating the heat needed to melt glaciers and warm air and water; oceans, being so huge, suck up most of the heat.) In theory, a hotter sun could be the culprit. But the sun has increased its energy output less than 0.1% over that time, according to satellite data. That isn’t enough to explain even a few percent of the warming, says marine scientist Tim Barnett of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., who led a 2005 study on ocean warming, published in Science. (More from Woods Hole)

Global Warming’s Real Inconvenient Truth

Global Warming’s Real Inconvenient Truth
From 2003 to 2050, the world’s population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that’s too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world’s poor to their present poverty — and freeze everyone else’s living standards — we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it’s really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don’t solve the engineering problem, we’re helpless. Coal is predicted to have the biggest increase, but there is promising technology , with more here and some questionable ones.

Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part IV

Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part IV: BLOG: SciAm Observations

If you are ready for a patient, scholarly analysis, part of an ongoing blog that was featured here earlier, then read on…

When climatologists run the fingerprinting analysis for different historical epochs, they find that temperature fluctuations prior to the Industrial Revolution were driven primarily by solar and volcanic forcings. In the early 20th century, natural and anthropogenic forcings seem to contribute equally. From midcentury onwards, greenhouse gases rule.

So unless I’m missing something, it seems to me that the case for anthropogenic warming is pretty strong. Is it unequivocal? Well, nothing in life ever is. There might be some low-frequency natural forcing. Plenty of i’s in fingerprinting analyses remain to be dotted. Based on the knowledge we have so far, however, I have to call ’em as I see ’em.