March 2004 Archives

I finally got my home network up and running! I'm running Windows 2000 and was having problems getting the computers on the LAN to see each other. They can all access the internet just fine, but when I'd go to "Network Neighborhood", "Find Computer", or "Computers Near Me" I'd get a big fat nothing.

Having exhausted all the logical possiblities, I decided to try something nonsensical. I went into my network connection properties and added the "NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBios Compatible Transport Protocol" protocol... and voila! Everything's peachy-keen! Just insert a few hours of frustration into the story and you'll get an idea for how exciting my life has been recently.

I could go on and on about the good observations to be found amidst some logical flaws in Dave Sim's anti-feminist rant "Tangent", but I haven't read the whole thing yet and I don't think I will ever have the energy to comment on such a long piece that's likely to have much I agree with intertwined with much I don't (and much that's just plain bizarre). Almost anything I could write would likely be misconstrued, to no benefit for myself or anyone else.

That said, Mr. Sim makes an assertion midway through part one that mirrors my own experience:

It is ridiculous to discuss equality between the genders as anything but a feminist hallucination until women agree to surrender their "right" to alimony. Of course women will never surrender alimony because they are not, contrary to their very vocal protestations, equal to men. A percentage of the female population is capable of providing, for themselves, the basic necessities of life. But it is a small percentage, indeed, when compared with the female population which relies on the largesse of boyfriends, husbands, ex-husbands, fathers and/or the government...

[These hidden, obfuscated transactions - the husband who finances the start-up of the wife's boutique business, the fat alimony settlement which serves the same purpose, the father who co-signs his daughter's car loan or mortgage, who pays all or part of the down-payment - compel self-deluding women to believe that they are self-reliant feminists]

...and of that small percentage a still smaller percentage of the female population is capable of generating surplus wealth - that is, creating employment, creating excess capital which provides not only for themselves but for others. That still smaller percentage exists in numbers sufficient only to make possible banner headlines and full colour photo-spreads of anecdotal success stories in Cosmo and People magazines: anecdotal success stories which are evasive of a central reality: that for every much-celebrated, much-heralded female success story in a given profession, discipline, art or business, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of male success stories in that same profession, discipline, art or business which are unheralded and uncelebrated: which are "merely" the fiscal foundation of our society and the source of our society's - and most feminists' - material wealth.

If this is false, then women are self-sustaining. If women are self-sustaining, then alimony is unnecessary and must be eliminated.

If this is true, then equality between the genders is an hallucination, a cul de sac of delusional societal "thinking".

(He had a lot of italics in there that I didn't reproduce due to laziness.) Perhaps this brief excerpt will serve as an example of how I partly agree with much of what Mr. Sim writes, even though I think he misses many important factors. For instance, many women are not self-sufficent because they do spend a lot of time and energy raising rearing children. Mr. Sim rightly decries publicly-funded daycare, but the most logical alternative (and the one he appears to prefer) is that women do the job, thereby inevitably reducing their self-sufficiency.

Nevertheless, in my experience -- even removing children from the equation -- there are far fewer self-sufficient women than self-sufficient men. Am I wrong? (I'm not particularly interested in how insensitive you perceive me to be for asking the question.)

It's old news by blogosphere standards, but I didn't want to immediately post about the attack on Coalition civilians this morning in Fallujah, Iraq. Why? Because my first instinct was that we should drop a few MOABs on the city and see how much they really like burning corpses. However, I realize that probably wouldn't be the best solution. (Note to the future: if I ever run for President this quote should be presented as suitably hawkish, yet moderated by reason.)

My new thought is to implement a plan similar to Mr. du Toit's suggestion for Africa and Israel's plans for the Palestinians: build a nice big fence, toss in a bunch of guns, and then cut all the water and power. Whoever's left at the end should prove much more amiable. You don't want the CPA running your lives? You want Ba'athist thugs in charge again? Fine, have at it. But just to be fair, this time everyone gets a gun.

Liberal talk-radio network Air America gets off the ground today, broadcasting on five stations in Southern California, New York, Chicago, and Portland. I'll be astounded if they ever seriously compete with Rush Limbaugh's Excellence in Broadcasting network -- which airs on more than 600 stations nationwide -- but we'll find out!

From the article, it sounds like they're half-filling their line-up with B-list comedians.

For example, its midmorning show, which begins tomorrow at 9, will have as its hosts Lizz Winstead, a comedian and a creator of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and Chuck D, the frontman for the rap group Public Enemy.

They will be followed at noon by Mr. Franken, the "Saturday Night Live" alumnus who has evolved into a satirist, and whose co-host is Katherine Lanpher from Minnesota Public Radio. Martin Kaplan, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, will be the host of a one-hour show about the news media in the early evening.

He will be followed, from 8 to 11 p.m., by Ms. Garofalo, whose main experience in radio was playing the role of a talk-show host for pet owners in the 1996 film "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," and by Mr. Seder, who has worked as a comedian, screenwriter and filmmaker.

Eh, come on.

Meanwhile, the sometimes amusing (but often bizarrely irritating) Janeane Garofalo apparently mocks herself by uttering some vitriolic comments and then pontificating on how "nice" liberals are.

Among others, Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Seder poked fun at Mr. Bush's former spokesman Ari Fleischer ("Is he not shoveling coal in hell now?" Mr. Seder asked); Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser and political strategist (said by Ms. Garofalo to be pursuing "the elusive 18-25 Klan demo"); and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. Seder said he felt sure that he could see Mr. Cheney's hand moving Mr. Bush's mouth on "Meet the Press" earlier this year.) ...

"It's not like we're here to say we're going to be as nasty as right-wingers," Ms. Garofalo said in an interview. "On the left, traditionally, you've got a nicer type of person. You've got a person who is more willing to engage in conversations that have context and nuance, who tend to have more educable minds."

I listen to Rush, Sean Hannity, and some local conservative hosts (like John and Ken) for a few minutes here and there while I'm driving, and I've never heard any of them condemn anyone to Hell. They never compare anyone to Nazis or bring up the KKK (except when mentioning Democratic Senator Robert Byrd who actually was a Klan recruiter). I think the reason some people see conservatives as "uncompassionate" is because we don't promise the impossible and then rob other people to try to pay for it.

The International Court of Justice has ordered the United States to review 51 death-penalty cases on the basis that the Mexicans convicted of murder weren't given consular assistance by the Mexican government. I don't know the details of every single case, and I do think foreign nationals arrested for crimes should be allowed access to their nation's embassy staff.

One important question is whether or not any of these death-penalty cases are actually in federal courts. The federal government doesn't execute many people, so it's likely that the majority of these convictions were in state court. It's not clear what steps the federal government could take to halt state executions, other than passing special legislation.

These convicts all have built-in appeals -- regardless of what the World Court says or does -- and they're free to raise these issues on their own standing in state courts. The idea that some group of men in robes in Brussels could impose its will on the American judicial system is ludicrous. If Mexico has a problem with the US then their ambassador should raise the issue with our State Department, not go whining to the ICJ for relief.

Here's the "Vienna Convention on Consular Relations". Go to Article 36 for the relevant passage. My general understanding is that American courts have ruled that as long as there is no demonstrable prejudice against a defendent created by a lack of access to consular officials, there's no reason for any remedy. See this ACLU brief (which I have not read in full).

In their motion for summary judgment, the defendants argued, inter alia, that the right to consular notification and access under the Vienna Convention is not equivalent to constitutional or statutory rights. Sorensen v. City of New York, Defendants’ Memorandum of Law Supporting Their Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, (98 CV 3356), June 17, 1999, at 23. Accordingly, Sorensen was required to show prejudice in order to prevail on her Vienna Convention claim. The defendants added that Sorensen could make no showing of prejudice in the case. “She cannot show that the consulate could have done anything for her that her criminal court attorney did not or could not do.” Id. at 24.

Science News Online has an article about two high school students who each made significant contributions to the study of near-earth objects as a part of this year's Intel Science Talent Search. Both projects have the advantage of being obvious but hitherto undeveloped applications of existing theory to this emerging (and important) field. Go read the article for details.

The usefulness of simultaneous parallax measurements is a strong argument in favor building a lunar observatory. We can currently achieve measurements from earth with a large angular separation by sampling six months apart, but that won't do much good for calculating the positions of fast-moving objects.

(HT: GeekPress.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: political polls taken over the weekend are useless! The recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll that everyone's talking about -- showing President Bush surging against John Kerry -- almost certainly underestimates the President's popularity. Why? Because it was taken Friday through Sunday and more Democrats stay at home during the weekend than Republicans.

So I called one of my old polling friends, Republican Ed Goeas, who worked with me years ago in Christine Todd Whitman's tax-cutting 1993 gubernatorial victory in New Jersey. Along with Democrat Celinda Lake, Goeas publishes the highly-regarded Battleground Survey. He told me to be careful about reading the polls. For one thing, it really matters if polls are conducted during the week or over the weekend. He told me that "political pollsters don't poll on the weekends. They prefer Sunday night through Thursday night. Weekend results are just not reflective of where a given race really is."

Goeas explained that more Democrats are found at home on the weekends, especially blue-collar Democrats. He added that "anyone who spends 20 to 30 minutes during the weekend talking to some pollster is not normal."

Via VC I see that Cathy Young has written an excellent article describing how Rape Shield laws can prevent men accused of rape from presenting the strongest possible defense.

In a much-publicized 1998 case in New York, Columbia University graduate student Oliver Jovanovic was convicted of kidnapping and sexually abusing a Barnard College student whom he had met on the Internet. While Jovanovic claimed that the encounter involved consensual bondage, the trial judge ruled that the defense could not use e-mail messages in which the young woman had told him about her interest in sadomasochism and her S/M relationship with another man. Jovanovic was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His conviction was eventually overturned by an appellate court that held he was denied the chance to present an adequate defense -- a ruling predictably deplored by feminist activists as a blow to victims. ...

For some feminists, the dogma that "women never lie" means that there is, for all intents and purposes, no presumption of innocence for the defendant. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim" -- forgetting that as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and his accuser are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.

Rape is a terrible crime, but even more terrible is a false accusation of rape. If it can be proven that a rape allegation was intentionally false I think the accuser should face the same penalties she intended for her victim.

(More about rape accusations.)

Kim du Toit has an essay titled "Let Africa Sink" from 2002. He was born in Africa and since moved to the United States, and he lists off some of the same difficulties facing the continent that I identified in my earlier "Africa is SNAFU" post -- but unlike me he concludes that the best solution is:

So here's my solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.

He certainly has more experience with Africa than I do, but I'd like to think there's some other way. But, he argues, everything has already been tried, and nothing has worked. Read the essay and decide for yourself.

I have some friends from South Africa and I'm going to email them and see what they think.

(HT: Who Tends The Fires.)

I just watched 28 Days Later for the second time last night, and I enjoyed it less than the first time I watched it -- but it inspired me to write some instructions on how to repopulate the earth, should it ever become necessary to do so. I'll focus purely on the technical requirements and ignore any questions of morality, pleading exigent circumstances.

If you've got more than 50 unrelated people and a decent mixture of men and women there shouldn't be any problems. Don't allow close intermarriages, and encourage later generations to have children with completely unrelated peers as much as possible. Genetic diversity could be strengthened by sterilizing children with serious defects, and this would probably be a wise move. Women should be encouraged to have as many children as possible, beginning at around ages 18 to 20. Women can have children at younger ages, but without proper medical facilities pregnancies for teenagers can be dangerous for both the mother and the child.

If your base population is smaller, your male/female ratio is badly skewed, or there are existing genetic relationships among your base population, things can become much more difficult. For example, in 28 Days the army platoon found by the heroes has nine men and zero women -- obviously a losing combination. Once the heroes arrive they add one man and two women to the pool, but would that be enough to start a self-sustaining population?

Not likely. If each of the two woman has a child by each of the ten men there will be 20 children, but two sets of ten half-siblings (and ten orthogonal pairs of half-siblings, one from each man). Each child would have nine unrelated potential mates. The real problems would arise later: everyone in the third generation would have four ancestors from the base population, and the same two grandfathers, making them all cousins. Even if distinct lines were kept genetically separated during the second generation the same problems would arise in the fourth generation. Inbreeding would eventually concentrate bad genes and it's doubtful that the population would survive.

The number of women would severely limit the number of children in each generation. Two women can only produce two children per year, and age differences among the children could limit the possible mating combinations among the second generation. Men can safely start having children as soon as they hit puberty, but given medical limitations it's not safe for women to do so -- and if a woman (particularly from the base population) dies (or is sterilized) while giving birth to a child her genetic uniqueness is lost. Far better to wait for the woman to fully mature than risk her health with an early pregnancy that could prevent future childbearing.

If the gender ratio were reversed -- if there were ten women and two men -- the population would still be unsustainable but it would grow more quickly. The best ratio for maintaining genetic variation is 1:1 for obvious reasons: five men and five women can have 25 distinct offspring, each with only two half-siblings; two men and eight women can only have 16 distinct offspring, each with eight half-siblings.

Update:
As raina pointed out in the comments, my math on the end there is wrong. Duh. Five men and five women can have 25 distinct offspring, each with eight half-siblings, leaving 16 (25 - 8 - 1) unrelated peers in their generation. Two men and eight women can have 16 distinct offspring, each with eight half-slibings, leaving seven (16 - 8 - 1) unrelated peers.

In fact, no matter what the gender ratio (as long as it's not 100% either way) a child will always have n - 2 half-siblings, where n is the total population. What makes close-to-even gender ratios better than skewed gender ratios is that they allow a greater total number of distinct genotypes for the child generation.

Reader Jim Price emailed and pointed me to an article on WorldNetDaily about an pair of bills in Congress designed to limit the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary by preventing them from ruling on cases "involving government officials who acknowledge God 'as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government.'" The text of the bills reads, in part:

The Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an element of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official personal capacity), by reason of that element's or officer's acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.

If these bills pass each house of Congress the resulting law would be one of the first high-profile steps of public backlash against what many perceive to be a judiciary that is far out of step with mainstream America. By removing this issue from the purview of the judiciary it might also be possible to lessen the level of partisanship involved with federal judicial nominations -- judges with less power over controversial issues won't be as controversial themselves.

I tentatively support such a law, but I suggest that it be designed to expire after a limited amount of time, say 10 years. If it works well I can see the floodgates opening and an imminent era of vastly reduced judicial power as issues that split the "elite" from the "common man" are removed from the judicial sphere one by one.

A second part of the proposed law would attempt to prohibit judges from basing rulings on so-called "international law" and norms.

In interpreting and applying the Constitution of the United States, a court of the United States may not rely upon any constitution, law, administrative rule, Executive order, directive, policy, judicial decision, or any other action of any foreign state or international organization or agency, other than the constitutional law and English common law.

Federal judges would still have to enforce treaties that America agreed to, but the interpretation of our Constitution wouldn't be determined by international organizations (like the UN) or "evolving international law", whatever that means.

I don't know how effective such a law would be because I'm not confident that judges' rulings are always honestly tied to the explanations they give. Judges could still rule based on these un-American factors but simply stop saying so and cloak their reasoning behind more acceptable justifications. Still, it might make their jobs more difficult.

Many Americans may be surprised that Congress has the power to limit the scope of the judiciary -- it's an authority that has rarely been used, like the impeachment authority -- but Article III only grants some limited power to the Supreme Court and leaves the rest to Congress' discretion.

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. ...

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. If the Democrats had control of Congress and the White House, what restrictions would they put on the judiciary? Would any judicial restrictions be possible without a unified government?

Update:
Justin Katz comments and makes a good point I hadn't considered: if any branch of government is going to be over-powered, it should be the legislative. Congress is closer to the people than either of the other two branches, and tends to be the most responsive.

OpinionJournal has a nice little piece about an Iraqi Christian pastor and his church in Baghdad. As I've written before, one of the greatest benefits of liberating Iraq will be the establishment of religious freedom in the heart of the Middle East (excluding, of course, Israel). Iraq's interim constitution provides equal standing to all religions while acknowledging Islam as "a source" of law, and I don't expect the Coalition to approve any final constitution that limits religious freedom more than that.

My pastor quoted some statistics about marriage on Sunday that left me skeptical; he's going to send me a link to the source because I can't find the data online myself. Supposedly:

1. 33% of marriages end in divorce. This sounds pretty much in line with other data I've seen, although I've seen projections claiming that 50% of existing marriages will end in divorce.

2. When counting only marriages solemnized with church ceremonies the divorce rate drops to 2%. I have a hard time believing this, because I'd assume more than 67% of marriages are done in churches (but I can't find national stats on this).

3. When a couple goes to church weekly the divorce rate drops to 1 in 1200. Again, I'm very skeptical. I've seen claims that divorce rates are higher than average in "Bible belt" states, for instance.

I'll post the data once I get it, but I thought I'd post the claims right now and see what you all think. Meanwhile, here's some data on how divorce correlates with other factors, including religion. Apparently, Baptists have the highest divorce rate of any Christian denomination -- higher than atheists and agnostics. (My theory: Baptists may feel more pressure to get married in the first place, and thus enter into unwise marriages at early ages. People who marry young are particularly likely to get divorced.)

Further, here's a page with very poor layout but very interesting statistics on the effects of divorce. For instance:

Divorce and Depression

The National Institute of Mental Health found that women in cohabiting relationships had much greater rates of depression than women in married relationships (second only to those twice divorced). The numbers fall as follows (annual rate of incident of depression per 100):

Married (never divorced) 1.5
Never married 2.4
Divorced once 4.1
Divorced twice 5.8
Cohabiting 5.1

Lee Robins and Darrel Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 64. ...

Pre-Marital Births

The risks for teen births for unmarried women are as follows:

Study Population Two-Parents One-Parent
NLSY 11% 27%
PSID 14% 31%
HSB* 14% 19%
NSFH 20% 30%

* [Adolescent girls who became pregnant in school are less likely to finish high school. This accounts for the smaller disparity between the two family forms in a school-based survey like The High School and Beyond Study (HSB).]

McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994, p. 53.

Does divorce cause all the problems described, or is it merely a coincident effect? I don't know, but I do know that as long as a marriage remains intact there's hope for renewal and rejuvination -- once it's destroyed the damage is permanent.

It's the Monday before Cesar Chavez' birthday and most city employees get a paid holiday. California state employees get 14 paid holidays per year (in addition to 2-3+ weeks of vacation time and "generous sick leave"), compared to an average of 10-12 for employees of private firms.

I've had an unbelievably busy and exciting weekend.

On Friday I took a bunch of my kids from church to Disneyland and didn't get them all home until around 2am. The kids and adults had a blast, and everyone was well-behaved. The kids felt the need to spend every single penny their parents gave them, which was a little annoying considering some of the worthless crap they bought. When I have kids I'm going to give them $20 for Disneyland: get food or plastic baubles, your choice.

On Saturday I worked at church and cleaned out all the gutters on top of the education building and swept the roof. Then I went into work for a few hours. After that I dropped by FedEx to pick up a bunch of new computer components and I started putting together my new Athlon 3000 system -- it's going to totally rock. Plus, it'll let me run my simulations for school a lot faster. I hung out with my brother for a while before...

I went to Hometown Buffet (eh) with my family and then went down to Newport Beach to meet up with some friends. That was a lot more trouble than it was worth, but who knew? There were a lot of beautiful babies at the place we went, but I couldn't shake the feeling they were all total losers.

Today was church in the morning, and this afternoon my friends and I went to the Getty Center to see an exhibit on 13th century stained glass. It was amazing. I didn't take my camera, like an idiot, but the rooms were too dark anyway. They also had a new rotation of illuminated manuscripts on display, some from the 8th century. It's amazing to read words penned by some monk 1200 years ago with no idea that his work would someday end up in a museum. I don't know much Latin, but I do know a lot of Bible verses so I can pick out the Latin words from familiar passages with a little thought. The Getty also has a collection of 5th century BC Greek, Roman, and Etruscan sculpture, and they had a new set on display there as well. There was a room of busts I really enjoyed last time I went, but they weren't out today, unfortunately. I love looking at the tiny chisel marks from 2500 years ago.

Then I came home and finished putting my new PC together, along with my new home network. Unfortunately, the hard drives haven't arrived yet, so I can't really get any further tonight. As this post proves, though, I've got my router working properly and my old computer on the new network! Now I'm going to settle back, watch some L&O and Simpsons, and relax for a few hours before starting another week tomorrow.

I know you all may not care much about these little things, but years from now when I read this again I hope I remember how fun this weekend was.

I'm going to be out most of today.

Booooo! ... Traitor! ...

Calm down. C'mon, it's Friday, everyone goes home from work early so blog traffic is down; what's the big deal?

Commie!

Ok, well if you're so bored that you clamor for this drivel, go watch some of Evan Coyne Maloney's videos. They'll shock and amaze you! Or at least remind you what this election is really about.

Then you can go read SDB's brief explanation of Israel's long-term plan, which is excellent except that (nitpick!) he doesn't mention that Lebanon isn't really a functioning democracy, but rather a Syrian client state.

After that you can read about today in history and get your education on.

Speaking of education, Virginia Postrel explains how teachers unions have compressed wages and ruined public education.

If you've still got time to kill, read a random Wikipedia page. More fun than flipping a coin!

What, you're still here? Well than scroll down a bit and read about Africa or artificial intelligence or how to get all the cool kids to like you. (Hint: don't be yourself!)

Lying Media Bastards points to a horrible atrocity in west Africa and writes:

As is the norm for Africa, this story is getting NO play in the American press.

He's right that the story isn't getting much play, just as the much larger Rwandan massacres of the 1990s (supervised by Kofi Annan, who is now the UN Secretary General) didn't. Why is that?

There are a lot of reasons. As I've written before, Africa is all screwed up and atrocities like this are pretty normal. We've tried sending money, but most of it gets stuck in Swiss bank accounts held by oppressive tyrants rather than spent on improving the lives of the African people. Africa has no democratic institutions and no cultural foundation for concensus-based majority rule.

Much of the economic problem stems from the fact that the average African has no way to make money. Just about all they can do is farm, but there's no one to buy their products because both Europe and America heavily subsidize their farmers and impose large tariffs on the foods Africans could grow, like sugar. Norman Borlaug -- father of the Green Revolution and savior of more than a billion lives -- is convinced that Africa could grow food for the world if its people were politically free to do so.

Aside from the lack of democratic institutions, much of Africa lacks the critical infrastructure required to support a thriving agricultural economy -- much less an industrial one. You probably know that many Africans don't have electricity or clean running water, but many Africans don't even have roads, the most basic and primitive form of infrastructure. Why not? According to Normal Borlaug, again, environmentalist groups routinely object to road construction on the grounds that roads destroy the natural environment.

Borlaug: Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure. For example, you bring fertilizer into a country like Ethiopia, and the cost of transporting the fertilizer up the mountain a few hundred miles to Addis Ababa doubles its cost. All through sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of roads is one of the biggest obstacles to development--and not just from the standpoint of moving agricultural inputs in and moving increased grain production to the cities. That's part of it, but I think roads also have great indirect value. If a road is built going across tribal groups and some beat-up old bus starts moving, in seven or eight years you'll hear people say, "You know, that tribe over there, they aren't so different from us after all, are they?"

And once there's a road and some vehicles moving along it, then you can build schools near a road. You go into the bush and you can get parents to build a school from local materials, but you can't get a teacher to come in because she or he will say, "Look, I spent six, eight years preparing myself to be a teacher. Now you want me to go back there in the bush? I won't be able to come out and see my family or friends for eight, nine months. No, I'm not going." The lack of roads in Africa greatly hinders agriculture, education, and development.

Without roads there's no possiblity for schools, hospitals, electricity, or democracy.

In addition to the lack of democratic institutions, near economic warfare by developed nations in the form of farm subsidies, and little critical infrastructure, Africa also has to deal with political manuvering by its former European colonial masters (and some from America). Europe doesn't like genetically modified crops? Too bad for Africa! Despite the fact that GM products could greatly increase the food supply, Europe refuses to buy any GM food and encourages Africa to avoid the "controversial" technology.

Similarly, Europe and America banned DDT because it tends to soften raptors' egg shells; developed nations can afford more expensive and less effective mosquito poisons and we've all-but-eliminated malaria. Meanwhile in Africa (and Asia) three million people die from malaria each year, and they could be saved cheaply through a judicious use of DDT.

None of these stories are particularly glamorous, but they're the foundation that props up the murderous dictators and warlords who perpetrate the continual rape of Africa. That's the real story that isn't being reported.

John Kerry thinks President Bush's jokes about WMD at the Correspondents' Dinner were out of line (perishable):

If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought. Unfortunately for the President, this is not a joke.

585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded, and there's no end in sight. Bush Turned White House Credibility into a Joke George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's funny?

... but I guess he didn't read the full transcript of the President's stand-up routine. The President ended the traditionally humorous session with:

But I do have a few serious photos to show you, in closing. It's photos like these that mean the most to me. Some of our Special Forces sent me this last picture. The faces are blurred in the slide because they remain in harm's way. The photo hangs in my private study next to the Oval Office.

To honor those who died on September the 11th, and to make a statement of their own commitment to this country's security, these Americans buried a piece of the World Trade Center in a place in Afghanistan where the al Qaeda once ran free. They wrote that they held a ceremony, which was far more emotional than they had expected. The team leader wrote a prayer and a dedication. Let me read you one sentence from that dedication.

"We consecrate this spot as an everlasting memorial to the brave Americans who died on September the 11th, so that all who would seek to do her harm will know that America will not stand by and watch terror prevail."

We will not stand by. The greatest honor being President is leading such men and women. We have the freedom we enjoy tonight because they protect that freedom. And may God protect them.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

The success of Florida's school-choice programs proves that the Public Education Empire is beginning to crumble.

In the past five years Florida has delivered real school choice to more American schoolchildren than anywhere else in the country. Which is no doubt why Jesse Jackson was down in Tallahassee earlier this month calling Governor Jeb Bush's policies "racist." He and his allies understand all too well that when poor African-American and Latino children start getting the same shot at a decent education that the children of our politicians do, the bankrupt public education empire starts looking like the Berlin Wall. ...

Ironically those fighting vouchers may have a keener appreciation of Florida's significance to the voucher wars than those defending them. With national attention having focused largely on Milwaukee, Cleveland and the District of Columbia, it's easy to forget that Florida now has three key programs. The first are called Opportunity Scholarships, which allow children to opt out of failing public schools. Second are McKay Scholarships, which provide full school choice to special-ed students.
But perhaps the most innovative is a corporate tax credit that allows businesses to take a dollar-for-dollar deduction for every contribution to a designated scholarship fund. Certainly in terms of sheer numbers this is the most far-reaching, with 13,000 low-income students now benefiting and 20,000 on a waiting list. Because these corporately funded scholarships are capped at $3,500 per child in a state where the average per pupil expenditure runs around $7,500, each scholarship represents not only a lifeline for the recipient but significant savings for the taxpayer.

And even public schools are benefitting.

And another study, this one by the Manhattan Institute, finds that even kids without vouchers benefit because the competition is pushing Florida public schools to improve.

That's the whole theory, in action. People who complain that school-choice hurts public schools are missing the real power of competition -- when people have options, everyone gets better. Teachers unions and public bureaucrats hate having competition because it often reveals how corrupt, inefficient, incompetant, and lazy they are.

The public, however, likes the idea that their tax money isn't being fed to the gaping maw of special interests but instead being used to educate their kids.

The good news is that despite this all-out effort to frog-march poor kids back into miserable public schools, the genie seems to be out of the bottle. Even the liberal newspapers that oppose school choice had to concede that a pro-voucher rally in Tallahassee attracted more marchers (if not more favorable media attention) than the Reverend Jackson's protest that preceded it. And that's precisely what has them so worried.