August 2005 Archives

Edvard Radzinsky has written an article about the upcoming generation of liberated Russian girls (translated to English from his native Russian). He terms it "the other Russian revolution" and explains how girls who grew up oppressed under the old Soviet system are becoming women set to conquer the world.

MOSCOW--For the greater part of the 20th century, Russia's population suffered from the nightmare of wars, repression and perpetual hunger. There was the famine of the Civil War, the famine of the years of collectivization, and the famine of the Second World War. It almost seems as if the relative prosperity of recent years has engendered a peculiar reaction of the flesh, something almost akin to gratitude. All across the country, a plethora of beautiful girls has sprung up.

With bared midriffs and piercings, they are outwardly very like one another. In fact, there is an immense gulf dividing this throng of beauties. One group is astoundingly uneducated; their lives consist of nightclubs, concerts and narcotics. The other (and these are many) is just the opposite. They are highly educated, and have plunged rapturously into the ocean of literature now being published in Russia--those famous books by which the world lived in the 20th century and which have only now come to us. These women study with merciless obstinacy, hours and hours every day. Each knows several languages. In spite of their youth, they have already visited the great capitals of Europe, as if realizing the dream (so recently unattainable) of their grandmothers and grandfathers.

There's almost no better measure of a society's freedom and liberty than how it treats its women.

When you read that America's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent last year it's important to remember what it actually means to be poor in America, from a report by the Heritage Foundation. The government definition of "poverty" is mostly a scare tactic and doesn't really tell us anything about Americans who may be really struggling.

If poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being “in poverty” by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor. While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity.

The average “poor” person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

- Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or
patio.
- Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
- The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to
those classified as poor.)
- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
- Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
- Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

The main reason people appear to be poor is that they don't work.

In both good and bad economic environments, the typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year—the equivalent of 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year—nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Some people can't work, but I suspect they're in the vast minority. What does the Bible say?

2 Thessalonians 3:6-12

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we [Paul and his companions] command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

I get so much poker spam on this site that I figured I may as well post something that's actually relevant to the game... so, here's the Wikipedia entry about shuffling. Since the whole point of shuffling is randomization, how many times do you have to shuffle to get it?

The mathematician and magician Persi Diaconis is an expert on the theory and practice of card shuffling, and an author of a famous paper on the number of shuffles needed to randomize a deck, concluding that it did not start to become random until five good riffle shuffles, and was truly random after seven. (You would need more shuffles if your shuffling technique is poor, of course.) Recently, the work of Trefethen et al. has questioned some of Diaconis' results, concluding that six shuffles is enough. The difference hinges on how each measured the randomness of the deck. Diaconis used a very sensitive test of randomness, and therefore needed to shuffle more. Even more sensitive measures exist and the question of what measure is best for specific card games is still open.

Here is an extremely sensitive test to experiment with. Take a standard deck without the jokers. Divide it into suits with two suits in ascending order from ace to king, and the other two suits in reverse. (Many decks already come ordered this way when new.) Shuffle to your satisfaction. Then go through the deck trying to pull out each suit in the order ace, two, three ... When you reach the top of the deck, start over. How many passes did it take to pull out each suit?

What you are seeing is how many rising sequences are left in each suit. It probably takes more shuffles than you think to both get rid of rising sequences in the suits which were assembled that way, and add them to the ones that were not!

In practice the number of shuffles that you need depends both on how good you are at shuffling, and how good the people playing are at noticing and using non-randomness. 2–4 shuffles is good enough for casual play. But in club play, good bridge players take advantage of non-randomness after 4 shuffles, and top blackjack players literally track aces through the deck.

So play it safe and shuffle seven times!

I thought I posted about this a while ago, but if I did I can't find the post.

More than 100 varieties of Mexican candy have tested positive for extremely high lead contamination and are unsafe to eat. The OC Register has a special investigation section about these "Toxic Treats" with a lot more information. It's most recent article in the investigation is from April 30th, 2005, and says that despite years of warnings the lead contamination is still a huge problem.

The FDA also issued a warning about lead contamination in Mexican candy last year, and the Department of Health issued an extended warning in 2001. This is an ongoing problem that people should be aware of, especially anyone who might regularly eat Mexican candy.

Wikipedia has more on lead poisoning, and points out that it affects children most significantly and that many studies have shown links between lead poisoning, learning disabilities, and violent tendencies.

JV points to a company called Sound Mind Investing that offers "biblically based investment advice".

HOW CAN SOUND MIND INVESTING BENEFIT YOU?

Biblical Perspective. SMI's biblical perspective runs throughout our content. Our goals are to help you glorify God through good stewardship, and increase your ability to give. It's not just about having more, it's about having more so you can give more. ...

Superior Returns. SMI really delivers to your bottom line, paying for itself many times over. Our investing strategies have consistently outpaced the market during BOTH bull and bear periods. A recent Dalbar study concluded that the average stock investor's return was less than one-third of what the market earned between 1984-2000. Following the strategies laid out in Sound Mind Investing will keep this from happening to you, and help you exchange your investment worries for peace of mind. Are you satisfied with the recent returns from your portfolio? If not, take a moment to review our Performance History page, and see what SMI can do for you.

I've browsed the free sections of the site and I haven't really seen any Bible quotes or anything, though the brochure JV sent in the email was full of them and had some great general investment advice (I'll post a link if I can find one to the brochure on the site). Although the performance history page shows that they've been fairily successful for the past six years, as they point out themselves, most investors lose to the market over time; there's no reason to believe SMI hasn't just been lucky.

I've moved most of my money into index funds to guarantee I match the market. The efficient market hypothesis has convinced me that "it is not generally possible to make above-average returns in the stock market by trading (including market timing), except through luck or obtaining and trading on inside information." Linked to this hypothesis is another which states that the market is a random walk, and that it cannot be predicted. You can beat the market sometime, but over time the best you can do is tie.

Consider some other random processes, such as flipping a coin. If we play a game wherein I pay you a dollar each time you correctly guess the coin flip and you pay me a dollar each time you're wrong, what's your best guessing strategy? It doesn't matter -- no matter what you guess, over time we'll tie. Consider a less mechanical game like rock-paper-scissors. You can beat another human by out-guessing them, but it's impossible to beat a computer that plays RPS randomly because you have no information to use to predict their next move. Against non-random players there are plenty of losing strategies. (For lots more information about rock-paper-scissors, peruse the RoShamBo Programming Competition site.)

The best way I've heard of to beat the market is to get elected to the Senate.

The study found that during the boom years of 1993-98, a majority of US Senators were trading stocks - and beating the market by 12 percentage points a year on average. By comparison, corporate insiders beat the market by 5 percent, and typical households underperformed by 1.4 percent.

Financial experts interviewed for this story say the senators' collective achievement is a statistical stunner, too big to be a mere coincidence.

The Guardian has an interesting interview with crack dealer turned rapper 50 Cent. There's no doubt that many of the greatest rappers are intelligent and cunning, but I can't help but wish that more attention was paid to successful blacks with more moral integrity.

It's a tacit acknowledgement that for Jackson to progress any further, he is obliged to widen the gap between his real life experiences and that of his fictional alter-ego, smoothing off the rough edges. While 50 continues to pander to his audience by rapping about getting high, partying and hitting on 'bitches', Jackson doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs and (according to a source close to the rapper) doesn't even 'do' groupies. Instead, he is intensely focused on one thing and one thing alone: making money. In that sense, Curtis Jackson has redefined Kelvin Martin's maxim to 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'. But he also seems acutely aware that perceptions don't change easily. 'I am a villain,' he admits, albeit reluctantly, 'but that's because I'm aggressive ... But my head is not there. I don't look for trouble. And I don't want the trouble. My past is my shadow. Everywhere I go, it goes with me.'

I suppose it's valuable to cast oneself as a classical anti-hero, who wants to do good but just can't stop being bad.

The best part about the "Reverend" Al Sharpton's speeding incident is how he abandoned his driver and hitches a ride to the airport to avoid missing his flight.

The car carrying Sharpton and two other passengers was clocked doing 110 mph in a 65 mph zone on the interstate south of Dallas, [Chief Deputy] Sullins said.

He said the driver ignored deputies' attempts to stop it and weaved in and out of traffic before state troopers were able to get in front of the car.

Sharpton caught a lift from a passing driver and made his scheduled flight to New York.

That's gotta be good for loyalty. At least this time he didn't falsely accuse anyone of rape or burn eight people to death.

I recently purchased Fate, a role-playing game by Wild Tangent that's designed with the "casual gamer" in mind. The brief description is that it's a Diablo 2 derivative with vastly better graphics, vastly more color, simpler gameplay, and a slightly more cartoony style. But there's more to the game than that.

By saying it's designed for casual gamers I mean that, unlike most modern RPGs, Fate isn't weighed down with a cumbersome storyline and endless subquests that require a detailed journal to keep track of -- in that sense, it's more of an adventure game than an RPG, but stylistically it fits more into the RPG genre. If you're looking for an involved plot full of intrigue and mystery, this isn't the game for you. However, considering that the stories in most RPGs are pretty weak and contrived, I find it quite refreshing to be free from remembering whose cousin in which town has asked me to avenge his wife's death at the hands of which bandits, who turn out to be ogres in disguise, polymorphed by some wizard trying to undermine the mayoral council of a town that's infested by giant spiders. Or whatever. In contrast, the plot of Fate is simple: you go into the dungeon, kill monsters, and harvest treasure. You watch your stats rise so you can kill bigger monsters, so you can get more treasure, so you can kill bigger monsters. You can play for a few minutes or a few hours without having to keep track of what you were doing, which makes the game ideal for people with real lives who can't sit in front of the computer all day. If that sounds like fun, Fate's your game.

Developer/producer/designer/programmer Travis Baldree, who's very active on the forums, added several twists to the Diablo formula, such as giving your character a pet that follows you around, helps you fight, and carries treasure. When your pet is loaded up you can send him back to town to sell the treasure he's carrying and bring back gold, eliminating the need to waste time returning to town yourself every time your inventory fills up. It'll take a minute or two for your pet to return, depending on your depth, but there's plenty to do if you're too scared to fight monsters on your own. For instance, you can upgrade your items with gems you find along the way, or you can go fishing for fish to feed your pet when he returns, each of which transforms him into a different type of monster that can assist you in your journey.

Once you've got the gold, the town of Grove has a myriad of ways to relieve you of it. You can buy mundane items, of course, along with spells and magic items from various merchants. You can gamble for unknown items. You can pay an enchanter to attempt to enhance one of your current items. You can even pay a bard to sing songs of your adventures to improve your reputation. Basically, the game has interfaces to do just about whatever you'd be tempted to do through cheating, but within the game system. It's not all well-balanced, but as you get more powerful you can always go deeper into the dungeon. The main game is designed to be played through around level 50, but the the dungeon goes to 255, and from reading the forums few people can get past 100.

All that, and a price tag of just $19.99. I downloaded the demo and got hooked enough to buy the game, and I don't think you'll be disappointed. From reading the forums I see that the game is easily modified, and many fans are already creating add-ons to expand the gameplay and variety. Finally, you can adjust the difficulty of the game down to a level where even children with basic computer skills could play and thrive without frustration; the level of violence is moderate and not directed at humans, so this would be an ideal game for any little gamers you might have.

Other Reviews:
- GameShark: A+.
- GameSpot: 7.9, but readers gave it an 8.5.

Todd Zywicki has a great post refuting some of the left's explanations for academia's pervasive political divide. He points out that the typical answer these days appears to be some variation of self-selection -- "rightists don't want to work here or aren't qualified". Mr. Zywicki uses statistics to explain why this isn't a likely answer, and then makes a very important observation:

Even if this is self-selection, this [explanation] is not necessarily responsive--when the elite academy is confronted with other examples of "underrepresented" interests, they do not simply throw up their hands and complain of a shallow talent pool. Instead, at Columbia for instance, the diversity committee is "tasked with finding ways to strengthen the pipeline bringing women and minority students into the University's undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral programs" and not merely take what the pipeline produces. ...

In conclusion let me add a thought--it seems utterly absurd that people are still making uninformed armchair speculation about the causes of the prevailing ideological imbalance in the academy. Is it self-selection? Conservatives are greedier? Conservatives are dumber? When it comes to addressing the issue of other "underrepresented minorities" on college campuses, the record overflows with high profile blue ribbon panels of leading scholars and administrators. No stone is left unturned and no penny left unspent to try to determine why women are "underrepresented" in teaching math and science, or the underrepresentation of minorities. I think maybe it is time to take even a small percentage of those tens of millions being spent at places like Harvard and Columbia and perhaps do a study of the causes of the ideological disparity in the academy, rather than simply speculate and pontificate. At the very least, such a study would eliminate some of the more preposterous hypotheses (such as the idea that conservatives generically like money more than liberals or that conservatives lack the intellecutal frame of mind to succeed in academia).

I love economists... maybe that'll be my next degree.

Jay Tea at Wizbang! uses the Muslim community of Lodi, California, as an example to argue that snitching is good.

Over the weekend, I picked up on this story (courtesy Mike Pechar of The Jawa Report), about the militant Islamists awaiting trial in Lodi, California.

It turns out that most of the evidence against the father and son accused of being part of Al Qaeda is tape-recorded conversations, and the local community says that a man who had made himself an integral part of them has now vanished. The locals say that he must have been the FBI informant.

This is exactly why so many people -- myself included -- tend to be suspicious of the average Muslim. Here we have pretty clear evidence of a couple of would-be terrorists in their midst, and they are far more concerned with who ratted them out than the fact that they had a member of Al Qaeda living among them.

It's very normal for groups to want to protect their members from outside punishment, either because they want to reserve the power of disapproval and punishment for their own group, or because don't respect the laws and morality of the greater community.

So when is it ok to snitch? We generally teach children that it isn't good to gossip or be a tattle-tale, but there are obviously many situations in which you'd want your kids to tell on each other, just as there are for adults. Is the seriousness seriousness of the offense the determining factor? Should groups generally be allowed to self-police until and unless they demonstrate inability or unwillingness?

The use of non-violent social pressure to police members of a group is typically very effective, as long as the culture of the group lines up with that of the larger society. Kids can't self-police because their naive culture is barbaric and kids as individuals are incompetent. But adults aren't as limited, which is why when kids break the law their parents are often given a chance to correct the matter, with society only stepping in if the parents are ineffective.

What we see in the case of the Muslims in Lodi is that they didn't exert social pressure to prevent the potential terrorists in their midst from acting in furtherance of their destructive goals. If the local Muslim community had confronted these men and condemned them privately, it's unlikely that they would have continued along the path that brought them to the attention of the FBI. We know they had the power to stop the terrorists, and most likely the knowledge, but they decided not to. Did they agree with the terrorists' goals? Who knows. What we do know is that, as Mr. Tea points out, whoever snitched on them was a hero, not a traitor.

Is the rightness of snitching purely in the eye of the beholder, or can some more objective criteria be established?

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is in trouble with the Chinese communist government for selling black market satellite equipment and programming to Chinese subjects. It sounds like the company is bending the rules to make money, but Mr. Murdoch has made his distain for totalitarian regimes pretty plain:

Rupert Murdoch's relationship with Beijing started on the wrong foot. The Australian-born mogul declared in 1993 that satellite-television networks, like the Hong Kong--based Star TV venture that he had purchased, would pose "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere."

The company still plays ball with the ChiComs because they need to collect subscription fees if they want to make money, but the beautiful thing about satellite television is that the main infrastructure is in space, and can't be regulated by the Chinese. So News Corp. moved into China's extensive black market.

News Corp.'s efforts to climb through loopholes in China were brazen, according to Jiang Hua, a former News Corp. distribution manager in China. Despite regulations forbidding direct sales, Jiang, who left the company 18 months ago after a disagreement with his boss, says he distributed News Corp. channels ranging from National Geographic (in which it has a stake in Asia) to an MTV-like music channel called Channel V. Two former News Corp. executives confirm Jiang's story. Buyers were cable-TV networks from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea. "News Corp. called what I did gray-market distribution," he says, "but it wasn't gray. It was black."

Jiang says payments were channeled through a shell company, Beijing Hotkey Internet, which received nearly $1.5 million a year in illicit payments from cable operators starting in 2002. Jiang and another former News Corp. employee told TIME that cable operators occasionally paid with briefcases of cash.

I see this as a noble effort to bring the outside world into the homes of oppressed Chinese. China is growing fast, and will undoubtedly be a match for the United States in a few decades. It's essential that when that time comes China isn't still under the bootheel of fascists.

I'm 27-years-old, and I've been watching my friends get married for a long time. When I was younger, it was strange watching people my own age getting married, and although I can't remember exactly who was the first to walk down the aisle from my cohort, I remember thinking that the first marriages from my generation were a significant milestone, and they made me feel old.

Now that I'm about to get marrried myself, I'm wondering who of my friends will be the first to get divorced? I have many friends who have been married for five to seven years by now, so it's just about time, statistically, for some of their marriages to start falling apart. I don't have anyone in mind specifically, and I certainly don't want any of my friends' marriages to fail, but it seems likely that some will. I think I'll feel even older when the first divorce rolls around. And then the first remarriage!

DeoDuce has a great quiz up at The Daily Spork: a list of anti-American quotes, and all you have to do is determine al Qaeda or the left? So far, none of her commenters has gotten more than 6 of the 10 correct... can you do better?

Ok, so "profundity" may not be a real word, but you know what I mean. The point is, only an idiot would be impressed by a zoo installing a human exhibit.

LONDON - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled "Humans" at the London Zoo.

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment" read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

The ironic thing is that the humans doing the watching are the ones in their "natural environment". Contrary to the babblings of the stumbling brainiacs quoted in the article, humans have always modified nature into "artificial" forms to suit our needs. Skyscrapers, houses, cars, cities, farms, and zoos are no less the natural environment for a human than a nest is for a bird or a dam is for a beaver.

When visitor Peter Bohn, 42, saw the "animals" juggling, he stopped and had a good laugh.

"It's hilarious," he said. "It turns everything upside down. It makes you think about the humans in relation to the animals."

I'm suspect Mr. Bohn gets a headache every time he considers whether or not a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if there's no one to hear it.

Profound is when I tell my brother that an Army officer saying "hoo-ah" is a mixed metaphor and he points out that that's not a metaphor at all, at which point I say that it's like a metaphor.

Update:
The article above left out this delightful quote from some London Zoo flack:

"We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," London Zoo said.

(HT: James Taranto for the update.)

Chris Harris has an amusing op-ed in the New York Times about why now is the absolute best time to buy a house in Los Angeles.

As an expert in the field - I've spent my entire life living in or behind homes - I can assure you that aside from any moment in the past decade, there has never been a better time to enter the real estate market. Here are two important reasons.

We already experienced the Internet bubble. The crash taught us all that a feeling of invincibility can lead to disaster. Now that we've learned this humbling lesson, there's absolutely no possible way it could ever happen again to us. ...

Q. Are you sure I haven't missed the boat? Housing prices have risen so much already.

A. Actually, if you look at this chart, which is based on my years of research, you'll find that prices have been remarkably stable. No less a man than Winston Churchill put it best: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps [a phenomenal time for buying that starter home you've had your eye on]." ...

Q. I'm still not convinced.

A. Well then, look at these numbers:

Now: 58

Five years from now: 8,472

That's a nearly 15,000 percent increase!

Q. Wow. Wait, what exactly are those numbers?

A. What? What kind of question is that? This is just the kind of foot-dragging that's kept you paying rent on the same roach-infested closet for years while your home-owning friends have gotten fantastically wealthy. Did you know that we homeowners are having Champagne-and-caviar parties every weekend and not inviting you?

(HT: Perry Eidelbus.)

What other blogs do you read and comment on before visting me?

McSweeney's posts a list of "Titles of Sermons to Which Congregants Might Actually Pay Attention". Three, five, and six are probably my favorites.

Here's a long and fascinating article about the biology of sexual orientation that explores many of the potential issues: genetics, in utero factors such as hormones, and post-natal experiences and influences. It's a great overview of the topic, and it's presented without much of an agenda. The author, Neil Swidey, even goes out of his way to point out that most religious conservatives object to homosexual behavior and recognize that sexual orientation is not really a choice. As I've written before, it doesn't matter whether or not homosexuality is a choice; no one can be blamed for the temptations they face, only for giving into them. The same goes for heterosexuals who have sex outside of marriage.

(HT: GeekPress.)

I'm certainly no military planner, but even I can comprehend why the imaginary terror scenarios Peggy Noonan summons to argue against military base closures will never happen.

Imagine they're planning that on the same day in the not-so-distant future, they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die; millions will be endangered. Lines will go down, and to make it worse the terrorists will at the same time execute the cyberattack of all cyberattacks, causing massive communications failure and confusion. There will be no electricity; switching and generating stations will also have been targeted. There will be no word from Washington; the extent of the national damage will be as unknown as the extent of local damage is clear. Daily living will become very difficult, and for months--food shortages, fuel shortages.

Let's make it worse. On top of all that, on the day of the suitcase nukings, a half dozen designated cells will rise up and assassinate national, state and local leaders. There will be chaos, disorder, widespread want; law-enforcement personnel, or what remains of them, will be overwhelmed and outmatched.

Impossibly grim? No, just grim.

Actually, the scenario can be dismissed because it's incredibly impractical. If terrorists had a single nuclear device they would use it immediately, not wait to collect more to set them off all at once. Every day they hold onto a weapon is another day they risk getting caught without being able to use it at all. Steven Den Beste argued similarly last year.

The reason they are organized in cells is to minimize the damage when a cell is discovered. By the same token, they are unlikely to engage in an operation this huge because if it is compromised they lose too much all at once. If they had ten working nukes, they'd start ten totally independent plans instead of one grand ten-attack plan.

But that's not the least of their problems. It is not at all clear they actually have the human resources to engage in a plot of this magnitude. It is now known that the 9/11 attack was launched using their A-team; it required most of their best-quality willing martyrs just for that one operation. ...

I think I can plausibly argue that if al Qaeda had enough fissionables for a single nuke, they'd be working to use it immediately. They would not wait until they had as many as SR and Wretchard describe.

I cannot say that the 30-city scenario they describe is inconceivable but I do not find it remotely plausible. I don't believe that the resources are there, and I don't believe that it's the kind of plan al Qaeda would make even if the resources were there.

No terrorist group, or country, including the United States, has the ability to pull off the kind of attack Ms. Noonan envisions. In actuality, closing unneeded bases will allow us to redirect money towards more useful military endeavors and make us more prepared for the worst.

Republicans are worried about how to spin high gas prices, and they should be. Even though there isn't much the government can do to affect prices, the recent energy bill makes it look like they aren't even trying; plus, the public wants results from the party in power, not excuses. So what should the Republicans do? Why not take Larry Kudlow's perspective and point out that high oil prices will lead to technological advances, new production, and conservation.

Permit me to take a contrarian view on the oil price shock. I say three cheers for higher energy prices. Why? Because I believe in markets. When the price of something goes up, demand falls off (call it conservation) and supply increases (call it new production). We're seeing a tectonic shift.

As Dan Yergin has advised us, energy supplies in the next few years will explode. Now the public is even favoring nuclear power. And the government is stepping out of the way by giving FERC the authority to override localities who oppose nuclear power, liquefied natural gas or other forms of energy. ...

So supply will rise exponentially in the years ahead, demand will slow a bit and we'll all live happily ever after. The moral of this story: markets work if you let them.

Environmentalists should be ecstatic, and Republicans should point out that high prices are the best possible incentive for innovation. Long-time readers may remember that I've been making the same argument for years as I've written about the myth of depletion.

(HT: Instapundit, who thinks the Bush Administration agrees with Kudlow.)

What do the flags headlining Drudge mean?

(Sorry to steal your bandwidth, Mr. Drudge, but I can't post pictures at the moment.)