The Hoot Owl

What passes for journalism these days

2005-09-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

I found this article on the front page of the online edition od the Deseret News. I'll sum it up for you:

Experts disagree about whether or not the snowpack amounts in the Rocky Mountains are decreasing. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the Sierra Club says they are decreasing, and blames global warming. The mayor of Salt Lake City agrees with them. No details are given to show the validity of either claim.

Props to the reporter for at least looking for someone to disagree with the mighty Sierra Club, which is something most reporters will not do. After all, the Sierra Club speaks Truth to Power, which we all know is something that journalists aspire to do in their finest moments.

But in essence, the facts left out speak more then the facts put in. Which expert is more credible? Was either claim peer reviewed for proper scientific and statistical analysis? What are the actual numbers involved?

Here's what we get from the article:

The Sierra Club's press release announcing the news conference says, "Utah's water supply is currently being threatened by warmer winters caused by global warming."
The study says that in the upper basins of four rivers studied — the Columbia, Missouri, Colorado and Rio Grande — human-caused climate change increased temperatures, caused more warming in the winter and spring and reducing the snowmelt.
Snowpack levels were below average in the Colorado River Basin for 11 of the past 16 years, it adds.

Does it seem obvious to ask how much lower than average those 11 years were? And if the other five years were significantly above average? Is it too hard to provide a statiscal analysis to determine a trend for 16 years, and is that even really enough? The opposing expert has 30 years of data. Isn't that a better sample size?

The article also says that this decline threatens the ski industry. So exactly how much less snow is too little to ski on?

I'm not a meteorologist, but I do know a few things: warmer weather means more moisture in the air (due to evaporation and the fact that air holds more moisture the warmer it gets), so how does this translate into drought? And if the winters are, say 5 degrees warmer than normal (and this is being rather generous, I think), then how many less days of potential snowfall are there, really?

The article is balanced in its ignorance, managing to give both sides of the argument without clarifying either.

The Blame Game

2005-09-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

When viewing the aftermath of Katrina, we start thinking about whose fault it is. It seems to be human nature, and certainly embedded in current American culture. Things don't just happen. Someone has to be to blame. So let's consider some possibilities.

George Bush: he has to be considered, because so many are already blaming him for this. But honestly, no matter how bad a president you may think he is, he's one man, who cannot convince Congress to do what he wants, much less the weather.

Satan: according to Christian theology, Satan is the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:1). If a hurricane does not demonstrate the power of the air, nothing does. So for the religious, Satan is a candidate. The proper response then would be to emulate Job.

God: I have heard a lot of talk already that this devastation was a result of New Orleans wickedness. That the city was decadent is beyond doubt. But did God punish them for it? I am not qualified or worthy to guess the mind of God in these matters. Perhaps he allowed Satan to wreak this havoc for His own Purposes. But again, it is prideful in the extreme to guess as to why. Read the whole book of Job.

Allah: Did the prayers of the jihadis bring this storm? Faith is a powerful force, for good and ill. I have no way of knowing if the combined faith of the jihadis is enough to influence Allah. But they have declared war on us, and promised to use every weapon at their disposal.

Fate: This is just as supernatural as the preceding three, but less personal. They don't call it fickle for nothing.

Chance: This is a more scientific (or objective) take on Fate. There are category 5 hurricanes, even though they are rare. The chances of one hitting America could be seen as a statistical certainty. Combine that with the propensity of Americans to build in those areas with the highest probability of being hit, and the conclusion is that a disaster like this was going to happen sometime in this century. Heck, it's likely to happen again in the next 50 years.

For myself, I can only credit the last cause. It was bound to happen, if not now, then later. It relieves nothing, and in fact increases our anxiety.

You mean that this can happen at any time, for no reason at all? Yes, Virginia, it can. But the remarkable thing about us is that we will get through it, restoring order and clearing the wreckage, and then, in the absence of another storm like Katrina, forget all the lessons within 25 years.

Update on the Great Utah Rave

2005-08-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I haven't watched the video. So sue me. I do most of my surfing at work, so it hasn't been real convienient.

But I did visit the Sherriff Department's account of what happened. And a couple of things stand out (boldface mine):

Tickets were sold through a Salt Lake vendor, Uprock, for $20.00. Tickets could be bought in advance and directions to the exact location of the Rave would be provided on the day of the event.

From several previous experiences with Rave parties of this size, a large amount of drug use and underage consumption of alcohol occur. In addition reports of sexual assaults, overdoses, firearm violations, vehicle burglaries, and numerous individuals drive from the party under the influence of alcohol and or drugs.

Utah County Sheriff's Office Detectives interviewed several females that had attended a prior rave party in the Utah county area in the past month that had been sexual assaulted. These females stated that the combination of drugs and alcohol made them fear for their safety due to the groping and sexual assaults that occurred during the Rave party. In the last year alone one near fatal shooting was investigated by Utah County Sheriff's Office at a similar party.

Utah County Major Crimes was contacted to assist with undercover surveillance. Both local and state SWAT teams were called in to control the crowds ( Utah County Metro SWAT, Utah Department of Corrections out of Salt Lake and Gunnison, Department of Public Safety and their helicopter and Provo SWAT) approximately 90 law enforcement personnel combined.

At 9 pm the Rave party began and by 10 pm Major Crimes observed numerous illegal activities. Which included illegal use of drugs, distribution of drugs, and underage consumption of alcohol.

So we have law enforcement, faced with the experience that the illegal aspect of these parties is escalating, waiting until they had all the facts, including accounts from undercover agents, moving in in a way to minimize any possible problems, especially with illegal weapons.

Let's see, this is bad because people have a right to party?

Let's present this scenario: the police appear, in a small group, lightly armed and protected, and 250 people decide to rush them. If someone had been killed, or even seriously injured in the resulting chaos, don't you think that the police would be taking a ton of flak for not being better prepared?

So once again, the police are damned either way. Operate in a forceful way that protects more people than they harm and be called facist, or operate in a weak way that gets people hurt and killed and be accused of being too soft.

It's amazing that we haven't devolved into outright anarchy yet.

Perspective on the Utah rave

2005-08-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

So I've read accounts and opinions from all over the blogosphere about the rave in Utah County, Utah. Most people are on the side of the ravers, or at least against the actions of the police involved, including the great Blogfather.

But there are always more things to consider than just the simple facts that 90 police in combat gear broke up a party of 250 peopl on private property.

First of all, there is a culural element that hasn't been mentioned much, but should. Utah county is very conservative, and very Mormon. It doesn't mean that an organized party can't happen, but calling it a rave conjures images of debauchery that go against the grain of the area that it was being held.

And despite all the Constitutional garuntees in the world, a community always sets its own standards. The result is that what might be ignored as inconsequential in California is scrutinized in Utah.

Utah has some pretty restrictive alcohol laws, too. So the two hour delay before halting the proceedings may have had something to do with the alcohol present, and how it was being served.

These things will be worked out in court, I'm sure.

But the fact remains that the word rave, like so many words in our culture, has a connotation that we react to. If you want to advertise your party as such, then people are going to react to it differently than if you advertise it as an ice cream social. People will show up, looking for different types of entertainment. One gets more scrutiny from the law, no matter how much illegal activity happens at either.

And when you call your party a rave in a place like Utah, well, it's an invitation for that scrutiny. Like holding a church revival meeting across from ACLU headquarters.

For my three regular (or irregular) readers

2005-08-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the light posting recently. Not much has piqued my interest, at least not enough to rant about. And the general intrusion of real life has slowed me down, too.

I knew you'd understand.

Yeah, I'm feeling old

2005-08-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

While at the gym yesterday, I heard The Logical Song by Supertramp. It's a great song, one that I still enjoy hearing, and it wasn't until this morning that I realized that it came out in 1979.

That means that the music that I remember being popular when I was growing up is over 25 years old.

I think I need a nap now, and maybe a cardigan. I'm feeling a bit chilly.

A little about Data Mining

2005-08-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

I heard a story several years ago about how the military was rethinking it's use of public websites. It turned out that seemingly uinrelated sites could have complementary information that, when put together, could reveal classified information through unclassified sources.

I can't remember if I heard about this before or after 9/11.

But it was little things: troop movements being figured out through individual personnell shifts and logistical changes. It didn't take much, just the ability to connect the dots.

You know, just like we failed to do before 9/11.

The situation gets worse. When I was in the Navy, 1992-1998, I remember that we were not supposed to tell about our movements to anyone we corresponded with. Friends, family, it didn't matter. We could tell them what port we were in, but not where we were going next. But it really didn't matter, because they could tell us. Turns out that the information was readily available, not through the military, but through the media.

So here's my take on the data mining that may or may not have identified the 9/11 terrorists: if we can take a mass of data and find patterns in it, we should. Especially any "open source" data, which in reality, means public data. Because I would hate to think that there might be terrorists out there planning their next move based on Freedom of Information documents, but that our Intelligence agencies can't use Google to find the terrorists.

BTW, you know the whole push to protect people's Social Security Numbers? Did you realize that every member of the United States Armed Forces cannot protect theirs? It's their military serial number. And under current guidelines, it is considered public information.

Sometimes the MSM is just plain stupid

2005-08-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the Deseret News is not exactly a bright beacon of the Main Stream Media, but lets face it, any major metropolitan newspaper is eligible.

Background: on Wednesday (Aug 10, for those of you reading this on a Way Back machine), a truck carrying 35,000 lbs of explosives lost control on a narrow canyon highway, and exploded, leaving a 35 foot deep crater. The highway was completely wiped out for a 70-foot length. Yet, miraculously, nobody was killed.

But there had to be a feature piece, a human element article. The Deseret News came up with this:

OREM — The destruction left in the wake of Wednesday's huge explosion in Spanish Fork Canyon liberally injected inconvenience into the daily routines of normal people. And that inconvenience could extend into the weekend.
Price resident Layne Miller is a children's mental health case worker who must travel to Kearns today to visit a client. That trip, usually down U.S. 6, will now be detoured.
"Because of the explosion, I'll either have to go through Huntington Canyon or up to Duchesne," Miller said. "Either way, that's an extra hour tacked onto my traveling time each way."

So a truck explodes, no one is killed, and instead of reporting on all the close calls, or tales of heroism, we get a guy telling us that this is really going to screw up his schedule.

Perhaps, just perhaps, all of our MSM outlets could figure out that all the whining that they tell us is news is really just... a bunch of whiny people. The kind we see all the time. Tell us about the people who transcended all this pettiness! Tell us about those who made a difference!

BTW, the highway in question will be repaired today, Friday, August 12, less than 48 hours after the explosion. Let's hope that Mr. Miller, and all the other normal people, are grateful for the rapid response.

And the article explaining how this happened got it right:

SPANISH FORK CANYON — At midafternoon Thursday, crews were still battling spot fires caused by a massive explosion along U.S. 6.
The 35-foot deep crater in the highway? Nearly filled.
The road will be open this morning, less than 48 hours after the blast occurred.
"I think it's another example of how Utahns can pull together in a crisis situation and make things happen," said Nile Easton, spokesman for the Utah Department of Transportation. "When we get our back up to the wall, we can do amazing things."
About 2 p.m. on Thursday, Easton was standing about a quarter-mile from the blast site, watching as crews hauled dirt up the canyon, dumped it, then removed debris. UDOT officials were first allowed on the site about 4 p.m. on Wednesday. By 10 p.m. Wednesday, crews had begun the tedious process of hauling dirt and removing debris.
Less than 20 hours later, crews were waiting to begin paving operations. In total, about 4,500 tons of gravel were used to fill the crater. About 350 loads were taken up the canyon.
The fact that fill work was nearly done within 24 hours of the explosion, said Easton, is a testament to quick action by volunteers and a joint effort with contractors and the state. When work is completed this morning, it will be permanent, he said.
"What we did is rally the troops from all around the county," said Easton. "We have trucks and crews from Nephi, Eureka, all over Utah County here."

Was the other article really even neccessary?

Military gone soft

2005-08-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

This article, about the head of NORAD changing the names of their operations so as not to offend Native Americans, just makes my head spin. Money quote:

A NORAD spokesman, Air Force Master Sgt. John Tomassi, said "warrior" and other words were changed with Indians in mind. He said, "They have been using these names for quite some time, and I don't know of any complaints."

And this one:

"We did change them because of the references to Native Americans," Sgt. Tomassi said. "And the initiative wasn't U.S. or Canadian. It was just NORAD. We are sensitive to such issues. We don't have a professional sports team like the Washington Redskins. But we still are sensitive to the same sorts of issues that those organizations are. When Admiral Keating arrived, the staff was already in progress, saying this was an initiative we wanted to take on, and Admiral Keating embraced it."

So it's not all the miltary, or even the Canadians. It's NORAD, and their leader, ADM. Keating.

So I'm guessing that the Navy will soon stop using the title of Chief Petty Officer. Maybe we can change it to something that describes them more acurately:

Pissed Off From Being Led By Wusses Petty Officers.

We'll just call 'em Pissed, for short.

Hat tip to The Jawa Report

What do you think they'll get?

2005-08-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Found this while surfing around:

PROVO, Utah – One of four former Brigham Young University football players accused in the alleged gang rape of an underage girl has pleaded guilty to reduced charges and agreed to testify against two other teammates.
Karland Bennett pleaded guilty Monday to dealing harmful material to a minor and obstructing justice. Two counts of aggravated sexual assault were dropped. Prosecutors said Bennett gave them the entire story of what happened in an off-campus apartment complex last August, and he passed a lie detector test confirming his story.

They said Bennett did not take part in the alleged assault, but was involved in showing a pornographic video to the 17-year-old girl and later helped come up with a story to tell the police.

"He wasn't involved at all in any sexual assault, but unfortunately, he was involved afterward in how the investigation went and didn't tell the truth the entire time about what happened," defense attorney Greg Skordas told KSL-TV.

Based on the other case I found, I'm guessing these guys will get less than thirty days in jail. But that's only if the judge expected more from college football players.

Intelligent design

2005-08-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

I think I figured out why so many people are up in arms about President Bush's suggestion to include intelligent design when teaching evolution.

It's because if intelligent design were to be taught in the same manner that evolution is taught, then everyone might think that there is God. You know the same way that evolution is taught so that every kid comes away thinking that there is no God.

Now, I know that evolution works on a limited scale. But postulating it as the origin of life is definetly more theoretical, and should be taught as such. I don't think that introducing the concept of irreducible complexity and the theory of Intelligent Design that arose from it is that far fetched.

So some would use it as proof of God. Fine, let them. It'll just be a small payback for all those times evolution was used as proof that there is no God.

The point is that science is not so hard and fast after all. We constantly have to revise and update our views of the way the world works, and why. So maybe we shouldn't be teaching evolution at all, except in a broad and necessarily vague way. And briefly, like for a half a class. then get back to what we have proved, what works all the time in most situations and under observable conditions.

Science below the college level shouldn't deal with the great theories of life, the universe, and everything. These kids should be taught the basics of the scientific method, the repeatable experiments of chemistry and physics, and biology in a broad sense. The deep questions that science tries to tackle (Where did life come from? Where did the universe come from?) are best approched after the basics of science are learned, not in conjunction with the basics.

Teach the kids how to think, not what to think.

For Ilona

2005-08-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

Because she left me such a nice comment about my other water lily pictures.

Headline: Al-Queda vows more violence

2005-08-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

In related news: the sky is still blue, water is still wet, and fire is still burning people everyday!

More on the attorney who got 90 days

2005-08-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

I am back on this because there seems to be something missing. Information, the way the law works, something. It just seems too strange that a judge would only give this guy 90 days, and imply that he didn't even want to give him that much jail time.

So I found the Deseret News article, which contained this illuminating information:

A Utah attorney who enticed and then had sex with a 14-year-old boy nearly two years ago when he knew he was HIV positive was sentenced Wednesday to probation and 90 days in jail.

Howard P. Johnson, 51, was charged with two counts of first-degree forcible sodomy and one count of a second-degree felony of enticing a minor over the Internet. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges of a third-degree felony of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and a class A misdemeanor of enticing a minor over the Internet in exchange for the dismissal of a first-degree felony sodomy charge.
Court documents state that Johnson used the Internet to entice the 14-year-old boy to meet him at his Salt Lake home in October 2003 to engage in sexual activities. When the teen arrived at the home, Johnson answered the door naked and then engaged in sex acts with the minor.

The minor reported the incident in March 2004, fearing that he might have AIDs or another disease, according to court documents.

Johnson told police officers at his home on March 3, 2004, that he was HIV positive. The officers then searched his home and office computers for the presence of child pornography. Court documents state that the computer searches produced numerous images of naked males engaging in sex acts, but all of them appeared to be adults.

Defense attorney John Caine said that 3rd District Judge Timothy Hanson didn't see Johnson as a predator.

"Mr. Johnson was not out trying to find someone," Caine said. "This young man was equally patrolling the Internet."

Caine suggested home confinement for Johnson instead of jail time because, he said. Salt Lake County does not have work release, which would have been ideal for Johnson during his 90-day jail sentence.

In court Wednesday, prosecutor Paul Amann argued for Johnson to serve one year in jail, which would have been the maximum sentence under Johnson's plea agreement with prosecutors.

Amann said that attempted homicide charges were considered because Johnson knowingly had HIV at the time of the sexual act. They were dropped because the victim took an AIDS test in March 2004 that was negative.

"I think that the judge made his ruling based on all the information that he had, and I'm not in a position to challenge that," Amann said.

Amann said Johnson has been an attorney for approximately 30 years and that his conviction could potentially lead to disbarment.

"If you've committed a felony crime that's considered a crime of moral turpitude, my understanding is that that is grounds for disbarment as an attorney," Amann said.

Johnson was also sentenced to 36 months probation and 100 hours of community service.

"It's going to be a difficult sentence for him," Amann said. "He's in jail for 90 days, he's probably going to be disbarred, he'll have to register as a sex offender and he'll have to go through treatment."

That's actually the entire article. So we have an attorney who had sex with a 14 year old boy, when he knew he had HIV, pleaded down to a lesser charge, but the judge didn't even give him the maximum sentence on that, and the prosecutor thinks that it will still be a difficult sentence.

I haven't found any other information on this case, but it just seems insufficient somehow. I don't care that the man is gay, I care that he had sex with a minor. I care that the judge didn't want to give the man jail time, but figured he had to, because he expected more from an attorney.

If there are any laywers, from Utah or otherwise, who could shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it.

Bolton and Roberts and Bush--oh my!

2005-08-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

I'm a little burnt out over the whole John Roberts nomination. I was burnt out about John Bolton, too, a couple of months ago, and now the whole situation is being debated all over the blogosphere again.

So here's my two cents worth, and I'll be damned if I ever return to the topic again:

Bush is not a dummy. Not even close. What he is, and what drives Congress crazy (all of them, not just the Dems), is that he knows how to play the game just as well as they do, but with standards that have nothing to do with getting re-elected. Especially not now, but I'm not sure if very many of his big moves were ever made with election results in mind. He tends to do what he thinks is right, and then deal with the fallout afterwards.

The result is nominations of people like Rice, Bolton, Roberts, and many others, who were nominated not to please certain factions, but because they were the best people the Bush could find for the jobs he wanted them to do.

And he's got people working for him that probably help him with the big decisions. That's pretty natural. But he's obviously his own man, and a tough one, too. The whole Bolton appointment smacks of political manuverings: force the Democrats to make asses out of themselves, then do an end run around the whole process.

Roberts is another good example. He's a lawyer that was respected by influential members of both parties. That makes any attempts at a filibuster appear just that much more desperate. But I'll bet that Bush grilled him six ways from Sunday about his views on the Constitution, and how to uphold it best. And you'd better believe that he was satisfied with the answers he recieved before he made up his mind (even if the formidable Ann Coulter thinks he's playing with fire).

Bush is hardly perfect, but he plays the Washington game so well that none of his opponents can understand why he keeps beating them. It's because in a town full of professional politicians, Bush has resolve. It's a quality rare enough to make him the One-Eyed King in the land of the blind.

Why the public doesn't really trust judges--or lawyers

2005-07-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

A Utah attorney who knew he was HIV-positive when he had sex with a 14-year-old boy two years ago was sentenced Wednesday to probation and 90 days in jail.

Third District Judge Timothy Hanson said he was not imposing jail time because Howard P. Johnson is gay or HIV-positive, but because he committed a crime.
"There has to be some punitive sanction, and 90 days is about right," said Hanson.

Johnson, 51, who met the boy in an Internet chat room, is not a pedophile or a predator, according to defense attorney John Caine. "But he has had some lapses in judgment."

The judge agreed, saying that when the boy appeared on Johnson's doorstep in Salt Lake City, the defendant should have sent him away.

"You are an attorney. I expect more from an attorney," the judge said.

Johnson was charged with two counts of first-degree felony forcible sodomy and one second-degree felony count of enticing a minor over the Internet.
He pleaded guilty to reduced counts of third-degree felony unlawful sexual activity with a minor and class A misdemeanor enticing a minor over the Internet.

(H/T The State of the Beehive)

It's really hard to know where to begin with this. 90 days in jail for sex with a minor? And having sex with a stranger when you know that you're HIV positive?

And the judge felt some kind of punishment was in order because he expected more from a lawyer?

But it's made clear--by the defense, of course--that this lawyer is not a pedophile, but just has bad judgment. No intrest in underage boys, because, you know, that would be wrong. The article goes on to say that the defendant thought the boy just looked young, but was an adult. That makes me feel better.

And of course he blames the victim as well.

The article also states that the defendant always answers his door naked. I can't wait until he's listed as a sex offender, and concerned parents decide to keep an eye on him. When he answers the door naked for a pizza delivery (which he says he does all the time), I'm sure that they'll be very understanding.

And this type of sentence was handed down in Salt Lake City, which has got to be one of the most conservative metropolitan areas in the United States, if not the world.

Just more proof that we're destroying our civilization.

UPDATE: Welcome Ace of Spades readers! Feel free to look around, although there's not much to see yet. There is, however, an update on this story here.

Water Lilies

2005-07-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

I love to photograph water lillies. They offer such a wonderful mix of elements: round leaves, reflective water, bright flowers. These things are present no matter where you find water lillies, and yet they always draw the eye as though we've never really seen one. They fascinate me, and I always have to take at least one picture if I see them--and I have remembered to bring my camera.

Why American men are turning into wusses

2005-07-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

Because we are suppposed to care about fashion.

Since when? I mean, I can appreciate not putting plaids and stripes together, especially if either involves lime green, but I really don't care about whether or not I am "stylish".

Fashion is for women. And all French people, male and female (which is why the French are such wusses; their men have cared about fashion for centuries). Sure, I can appreciate a well dressed woman, but I could care less who designed her clothes.

And lets face it. Most men don't care about what the clothes look like. It's the naked body underneath that we want to see, and so clothes that reveal, or clothes that flatter, a woman's figure are good for us. The fact that a woman's butt reads "Ambercrombie and Fitch" is not pertinent to us. The shape of the butt under the words is what we care about.

Of course, I speak for heterosexual American men, and definitely not for homosexuals or metrosexuals. As far I can tell, metrosexuals are just heterosexual men who want to have what they perceive as a homosexual fashion sense. And homosexual fashion sense is just female fashion sense.

And female fashion sense? Well, as far as I can tell, most women dress for other women. The proof of this is in shoes.

I own maybe a half dozen pairs of shoes, all with a seperate function: dress shoes, sneakers, sandals, hiking boots. A couple of functions are repeated, but this mostly has to do with my wife buying me more shoes before I felt that the old ones were worn out.

My wife, on the other hand, has shoes whose function I cannot fathom. And many of the same shoe in different colors. Why? Because other women would notice if she wore shoes that didn't match her outfit.

Most guys will not notice whether or not women were wearing shoes at all, much less if they match.

Our women, aided by the cultural trends, want to make us more sensitive to fashion. They want us to use facial moisturizer, too, and have regular pedicures. And a really flattering hair cut, and a different hair color if the one we were born isn't the best for our skin tone.

Most guys just want to throw on jeans and a t-shirt, maybe hop in the shower first if we stink. We don't even want to shave if we can get away with it. We don't care about our hair as long as it sticks around, and more of us are figuring out that we can just shave it all off if it doesn't. It's quick, easy, and doesn't require much contemplation.

When we care about what we wear or how we look it is usually due to something like dress codes at work, or getting ready for church. Or because our women want us to.

But guys who care about how other guys dress? Wusses. Especially if they notice that the other guy is wearing brown shoes with a charcoal suit. And I only know that this is wrong because my wife recoiled in horror when I did it.

The promised Naval gazing

2005-07-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of an UNREP, or Underway Replenishment. This one happened in the Persian Gulf, around 1995. I thought I had more of interest, but they're only interesting to me, I think.

More navel gazing

2005-07-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

So far, I have had less than 250 hits, according to SiteMeter, about half of which are from myself. The good news is that I'm getting more unique hits, mostly of the random variety. The bad news is, even though I know that several people have linked to me, TTLB has downgraded me to Slimy Mollusc.

Since I could conclude that I'm just talking to myself here, allow me a self-indulgent sob.

{SOB}

Sorry, I didn't intend that to be so loud.

Navel gazing over. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some Naval gazing pics. We'll see how ambitious I get between now and then.

Google fun

2005-07-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

It turns out that if you use type the search term "joe wilson+vanity fair" (including quotes) into Google, you only get one hit: this blog. Pretty impressive, don't you think?

Aftershocks of a major attack

2005-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

As Ilona pointed out in the comments, my worst case scenario, with New York City and L.A. both destroyed, would cripple us pretty badly as a country. But as she pointed out on her own blog, there is an American culture that binds the entire nation. It's just that if you destroyed our two largest cities, you would strip away some of the gloss that we have been coating ourselves with.

After all, do you really think that Seinfeld is representative of the American character? Funny, yes. Entertaining, of course. Even representative of a much of New York culture. But is it very deeply American?

Only in its relentless questioning of authority. That's fairly essential. In fact, our government is set up so that we can change our minds about the way things are being run on a regular basis. But we do have a kind of cultural memory that ties us to a pre-industrial age, no matter how many high-tech gadgets we own.

A lot of the rifts we face right now have to do with forgetting our history, and how we struggled to make this nation great. What I forsee is that a major disaster, thousands of times worse than 9/11, would force us to remember that past.

Vietnam doesn't define us. The American Revolution, now that defines us well.

In 1776, we were a bunch of self-interested colonies, fighting amongst ourselves all the time. But we agreed that the British were worse, so we put aside our differences, took on the impossible task of fighting for our independence, and despite the odds, we pulled it off.

Now we appear to be a bunch of whiny, self-absorbed metrosexuals (not just a guy term, you know. That would be sexist) who can't make up their minds about who to vote for on American Idol.

But reduce N.Y. and L.A. to craters, and you'd better believe we'd figure what to do. And it wouldn't involve mourning the loss of reality TV.

Americans, even those not born here, tend to have a knack for doing the hard work it takes to get what we want. That's the American character, and why we have welcomed and integrated so many immigrants. Anyone gutsy enough to leave their home and travel thousands of miles for a chance at opportunity deserves to be a citizen. There are no garuntees. No promises. Just a chance at being better off than you can be anywhere else in the world. Anyone can take the chance, and anyone can succeed. And as a nation, we will succeed.

So if we are attacked again, expect the American citizens, the common people who know how much there is to lose, to start taking up the slack. We started by keeping Bush in for a second term. We started by organizing the Minutemen to show that the border could be patrolled effectively.

We can do more. We will if necessary. We pray that we don't have to.

Oh, the hell with it

2005-07-19T15:23:00.000-07:00

I was going to publish a nice long post about backlash against multiculturalism and Muslims, but I really don't feel like getting into it. Check Mandelinople for a well reasoned rant. Or even this Cal Thomas article.

But the short of it is that popular opinion at some point is not longer going to distinguish between fanatical Islam that is trying to kill us all and moderate Islam that can't bring itself to say how wrong this is. No matter what the PC gurus try and teach us.

The Arabs developed the concept of zero many centuries ago. And I think most people's tolerance for the Muslims who do not actively denounce the terrorists is headed towards that level pretty damn fast.

DISCLAIMER: I do not advocate either violence or religious dicrimination. I'm just saying that humans haven't really changed all that much in the last seven thousand years.

Worst Case Scenario

2005-07-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone is worried about terrorists getting hold of WMD's, and wiping out major population centers. But when they say this, they are often referring to places like New York, and Los Angeles.

And if that happened, the net result would be so much worse for the Islamicists than they can imagine.

Because the rest of the world sees New York and L.A. as the epicenters of America, the places that embody all American culture and represent the rest of the nation in all important matters.

But they couldn't be more wrong.

So lets' suppose the worst, a coordinated attack like what just happened in London, but using WMD. Hundreds of thousands dead, with New York and L.A. reduced to wastelands unfit for normal habitation. How would America respond?

I think that great middle of America, which includes basically every state without a Pacific or Atlantic coastline, would rise up in rage. Armed forces recruitment would skyrocket, and all industry would turn towards the war effort. We would truly go to war, as a nation, instead of just sending our troops overseas. We would make sacrifices and turn all of our production to the defeat of our enemies. And we would describe our enemies in much broader terms than we do right now.

Since we are supposing the worst, I think that all Muslims who did not actively denounce terrorism would be quarantined at the least, and deported at best. And those who did raise their voices against Islamofacism would still find themselves watched very closely.

I also think that citizen militias would re-emerge all across the nation, but especially at the borders. The ordinary citizens, so despised by all political powers, would take care of the nation, whether or not the government sanctioned the actions.

Would there be atrocities committed? Absolutely. Would it be widespread and pervasive? Highly unlikely. Even at our worst, the citizens of this country tend to have enormous self-restraint, in a historical sense.

Would the loss of New York and L.A. signal the end of America? Not even close. Because they may be the face of America to the world, but to our nation, they are merely the jewels that we display. The soul of America is not in a couple of cities, or even all the major population centers. The American Spirit is defined by attitude, not location, and I believe in our ability to overcome even the most horrifying attack upon our nation.

Family Visits

2005-07-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

My wife's great aunts are currently visiting us from New York--Brooklyn, to be precise. One is 78, the other 82. And you're not likely to find two sharper women their age anywhere.

I love listening to them talk to each other. They've been friends probalbly since before I was born, and are related through marriages. But still, they share memories: whose children did what and when, and by the way, do you know where they are now? They can do this for hours, trading back and forth.

I'm in awe. There's a wistfullness about it all, to be sure; these women know that they are old, and they talk of the family that they have buried often. They don't see the future as a distant horizon, but as a fast approaching train. But my awe comes from how they keep themselves going. They don't so much live in the past as much as catalog it, filing things away before they're forgotten, Heaven forbid.

And they love to experience new things. They're eager to go wherever we want to take them, looking at everything, comparing it with everything they've ever seen before, but not in a negative way. Just to find a place to file it away.

I hope that I am as sharp and as active forty years from now.

A Plame Question

2005-07-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what the law says specifically, but if it illegal to "out" a covert operative, does that only apply to the first person to do so? I haven't seen anything to indicate that. So isn't Joe Wilson, Vanity Fair magazine, and basically the entire MSM guilty of the same thing that they want Karl Rove fired for?

Maybe they should start with the White House reporters.

Okay, Dave, here's a link for you

2005-07-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Dave over at Garfield Ridge went blegging yesterday. Since I happen to have him on my blog roll already, I thought maybe by putting up a post, mentioning him and his blog, he would be inclined to return the favor.

And what can I say? I want traffic, too, dammit.

My first bleg post. Next comes the tip jar, membership in an alliance, a mention on one of the second tier blogs, a call in interview with Hugh Hewitt, and then an Instalanche. Fame, fortune, and an impact on the consciousness of the nation.

I'd settle for being a vertebrate in the TTLB Ecosystem, actually.

UPDATE: Score! I'm a Flippery Fish! Thanks to Chris at Dangerous Logic for the link that bumped me up a level. And I'll be reading White Trash Wednesday, just to reminisce.

Terrorism right and wrong

2005-07-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, as promised (even though I seem to be the only one reading these posts so far), here's what I think that terrorists have done right—and wrong—by attacking the United States and England.

First, let's talk a little about what they did right in their attacks. They accomplished major goals of sowing disorder and unease through the populace. They exposed both countries weaknesses, and promised to exploit them again, which increased the fear and angst.

There's one other major thing they got right, but we'll return to that a bit later, mostly because it's hard to tell if it was planned on their part.

Because they got several big things wrong. The first is attacking us on our own soil in the first place. If they had stuck to overseas targets, legitimate or not, they would have caused us to gradually recede from our involvement in foreign places. This is especially true of military action.

You want evidence? How about Beirut, 1983? Kill a couple of hundred Marines, get the rest of the American forces pulled out. How about Somalia? The USS Cole? Loss of American life, especially American military personnel, met with a retreat. This is what Osama learned about us, and had he continued attacking military targets oversea, he could have eventually reduced our military presence all over the world.

But attacking Marines in places most Americans can't find on a map is not anything like attacking New York City, which a lot people believe is the true capital of the United States. And we did not retreat, we counterattacked.

But let's think about this a bit. The targets in America included the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and possibly the Capitol Building. The first was intended to disrupt the economy, evidently, and succeeded in a limited sense. And the last two were valid from a military standpoint.

But the terrorists, who claim to understand us so well, avoided destroying the true symbols that would have energized Americans to unite in a long term struggle. And I don't think that they did it intentionally, since they clearly wanted to rattle our cage.

So they didn't hit the Statue of Liberty. Or the Empire State Building. Or the Lincoln Memorial, or the Washington Monument. Any of these targets would have united us in deeper ways than just being attacked.

But was this not understanding us, our understanding us too well? They attacked targets that united us briefly, but not sustainably. After all, in the political sense, they only attacked the conservatives. The liberals saw it as a sign of just retribution. And so maybe it wasn't an accident that the Liberty still stands, but the symbol of capitalism does not. Maybe the terrorists know at least a part of us very well, and were expecting it to be the part that would guide the nation.

Let's hope they continue to be wrong about how most Americans really are.

Musings on London and the GWOT

2005-07-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

I love Ambra Nykol, and not just because she is smart and sassy, a very sexy combination in any woman. I also love her (okay, it's really her blog I love) because she sees things very clearly and calls people on their BS.

In this post, she talks about the London bombings, and her reaction to both the MSM coverage and the bologosphere reaction. And I agree with her: any use of this tragedy to say, "See? My ideology was right all along" is opportunistic. It reeks of selfishness, and the inability to see the world as anything more than left and right (or liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican, or whatever).

Our enemy does not care about our ideology. I personally believe that the Islamofacists fear conservatives who want to kill them more than liberals who want to get them into a big group hug (who they no doubt mock), but the truth is pretty simple: they want to kill all of us.

It doesn't matter if you are a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, or a secular atheist with multiple academic degrees. To a Muslim engaged in jihad, you are an infidel. And you must die. We seem to be coming to a point where Muslims not involved in the Holy War are also in danger, although they might be asked to move aside for a better shot at the pigs. Then again, they might be shot for just being in the way.

In America, or any Western country, we can argue about how to respond, or even if we should, but that doesn't change the Islamofacists desire to kill us and destroy our culture.

It's not an ideological war, at least, not by Western standards. The terrorists do not intend to stop with London, Madrid, or New York. Even if they completely destroyed these cities, they would not stop. Even if we surrender to them, they will not stop. Because their goal is clear: one world, under Allah, with no other gods tolerated. They want the Caliphate, with Islam enforced with the sword.

In my next post, I'll talk about why they made such a mistake in taking on America.

A little good news about 7/7

2005-07-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

If there is one obvious thing to me about the attacks in London today, it's that Americans no longer say, "Oh, it's a terrible but fairly inconsequential thing that's happening over there."

London has had plenty of bombings in the past. Americans remember none of them. But we will remember this one.

We are all Britons

2005-07-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

On such a day as this, when the worls is stunned by seemingly senseless violence, we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who would defend civilization against the barbarians.

And they are barbarians. There is no excuse for murdering civilians at any time, but when it is the primary goal... whoever is responsible are not revolutionaries. They are not even fanatics. They are murderers. Cold-blooded, brutal, and insensistive to their fellow men.

They are serial killers, taunting the authorities of the world like they were in some cheap Hollywood thriller. Except that the bodies are real, the pain is real, the terror is real. There is no writer to wrap things up neatly, no director to ensure that everything is presented to maximum effect, including the denoument.

I do not care so much who is responsible as I do the response of England herself. Will her people rally to defeat the enemy, no matter that cost and difficulties? Or will there be an outcry of capitulation and surrender?

I hope for the former. I fear the latter. And in the end, I imagine that there will be both, just as there has been in America.

Pray for those who have lost family and friends. Pray for England.

Pray also for those who have abandoned their souls in order to commit these atrocities.

The New SCOTUS Justice

2005-07-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

So far I have seen at least two posts (from Mandelinople and JunkYardBlog) that have pointed out that Supreme Court justices do not have to be judges, or even lawyers. I not only agree, but I have a few suggestions for the picking the next justice:

Requirements:
-Middle aged, middle class, with a family containing at least two children
-High school diploma
-Can read the Constitution, in English, and answer a short quiz on the salient points

Automatic disqualifiers:
-any post-graduate degree
-any B.A degree
-a gross worth of more than a million dollars

Some reccomendations:
-anyone who has worked more than a year as a waiter or waitress
-technicians (as opposed to engineers)
-paralegals (as opposed to actual lawyers)
-nurses (as opposed to doctors)

The reasoning for this is simple. The SCOTUS is supposed to interpret whether or not laws are constitutional. This doesn't require a law degree; it doesn't require any form of scholarly background. It requires the power to read and understand the Constitution.

This is not rocket science, or brain surgery. In fact, the post-graduate disqualification is specifically to keep out people who might be too smart, in the academic sense. We don't need more scholars on the Supreme Court. What we need are people who have good common sense.

Independence Day, belated

2005-07-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

I remember reading a book when I was young, say 10 or 12, about the Declaration of Independence. What sticks in my mind is the uncertainty of the men involved. They didn't know that they were going to agree on a declaration on July 4. It seemed in doubt right up until it happened.

But that's part of the truth of history. The Founding Fathers hoped to create something, but they had no guarantees. They knew the price of failure, both for Revolution and for going with the status quo. They risked their lives, and the futures of all their children. They did not think that they would create the greatest country on earth. They hoped that they would simply create one that worked better than the others they knew about.

We have the benefit of over two hundred years hindsight. We can see what they did right and what they did wrong. And we know that, in the end, they affected the entire world.

But in the stifling heat of the summer of 1776, everything in the future was doubtful. They didn't know that Jefferson would write words that ring with eternal verity. They didn't know that Washington would defeat the British. They only knew that they had to make the effort.

They were men of duty and honor. We salute their grand vision, which has lasted 229 years, despite all that has happened. The Republic may not be what they imagined, but it is still the greatest nation on earth.

Brian William's Ignorance

2005-07-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

So I started reading the blogs this morning, and came across the latest blog swarm about this:

Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.

Okay, so Brian Williams is an ass, obviously, who can't let the oppotunity to show his bias slip by. But the sheer ignorance of equating the American Revolutionaries with terrorists is really amazing.

Don't they teach history at journalism schools anymore? Or is it just the watered down version of history that journalists love to tell, where America is evil, and all other cultures are superior in comparison?

Not all revolutions are equal. And the terrorists who are trying to destroy Western civilization are not even revolutionaries in any normal sense of the word.

People rising up against an oppresive government is a revolution. But it's not people rising up against any old government, but the the government that currently rules them. The Ismamic terrorists do not revolt against their government, they revolt against ours. But that's not a revolution, that's just war.

As for the Iranians--yes, theirs was a revolution. They decided that the Shah had to go, and they made it happen. We may not agree ideologically, but it was a valid choice supported by the populous.

But there is still a big difference between that kind of revolution, where dissidents were executed and assasinated, and the American Revolution, where the goal was a pluralistic society where men could be free to disagree with the rulers with no direct consequence from those rulers.

Why is it so hard to remember how honorable the Founding Fathers really were? George Washington risked everythig he had to lead the Continental Army, and the people loved him so much that they would have given him the presidency for life. He refused. All the other presidents involved with the Revolution had similar honor. All of them feared tyranny, and fought it in their own ambitions as well as for the ambitions of the young nation.

The difference between our Founding Fathers and terrorists is clear. We wanted a different society, and we knew that we would have to go to war in order to have the chance to build it. The terrorists don't want a different society, because they already have one that suits them. They just want to destroy ours, because they don't agree with it.

If they had an army and a state sponsor, they would be called invaders, not insurgents. They claim neither, so we call them terrorists. But never revolutionaries.

Military Service in the Nineties

2005-06-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Read this post over at Mandelinople. It sums up quite nicely the problems that the military faced in the Clinton years, and who knew about it--and when. He also talks about the difference between 1941 and 2001 In the former we were actively ramping up the military. In the latter, we were actively downsizing.

My contribution to the discussion is completely personal: I went on active duty in March, 1992, and seperated in March, 1998. The vast majority of my career was served under Clinton.

When I arrived at my ship in 1994, the concept of drawdown was in full effect. What we saw wasn't a dramatic savings in the defense budget. After all, millions were still being spent to develop new weapons. Instead, the net effect was fewer ships, and a shorter deployment schedule. In other words, when I first got to my ship, a six-month dployment was expected every two years. Within four years, this had shortned to 18 months, and was predicted to get smaller.

From Mandelinople:

He goes on to highlight many of the other changes that the military has instituted from the Navy no longer drilling with rifles, the Army ending running in combat boots, and DI's no longer able to verbally stress recruits. This is top down policy, the direct result of administration goals and planning.

One of my experiences was how little we were allowed to use sidearms. This was probably a good thing for me, personally, and my shipmates, since I was once determined to be the worst shot on my ship, and possibly in the Navy. But it went far beyond not drilling with rifles. We were given about 4 hours of training with a 9mm pistol in boot camp, and that was it. On board a ship, we rarely armed the deck watches, and then only in foreign ports.

Contrast this to the Canadian ship berthed across from us in Puerto Rico. We had two enlisted men to guard our brow, and by extension our entire ship. Neither was armed. The Canadians had two men guarding their brow, each with sidearms, and two Marines with automatic weapons patrolling their decks.

Partially, I'm sure, this was arrogance on our part. We were in an American port, and our Navy is the most powerful on earth. The Canadians were in a (technically) foreign port, and at the time I believe their entire navy boasted four warships.

But it was also stupid policy, like many others. The last year I was in, 1998, our home port became an open base. Vehicles, and even people, coming through the front gate were not challenged except after hours. We had all seen what a truck bomb could do to a building. We didn't really want to find out what one could do to a ship.

When the USS Cole was attacked in 2000, I thought that we would hear about changes in the way things were done. I thought that an attack against a warship would merit a military response. When I found out that the limit of our response would be to haul the Cole in for repairs, I realized that I had hoped for too much. 17 sailors dead, and we did nothing. Clinton proved himself to be a hopeless commander-in-chief.

Thoughts for today

2005-06-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I haven't made any changes to my page yet. It hardly matters since I am the only person who has been here so far.

But I do have a few things to talk about.

The first is a little personal info. I am somewhat leery of making a blogger profile, but I'll put all this in a post, and maybe I'll get a few hits from random searches.

Important stuff, at least to me: I was born and raised in Texas, I served honorably for six years in the Navy, and I am now an engineer (BASEET). Each of those points probably raises different expectations in different people, but let's just say that I am not very stereotypical.

For instance, my wife is half Jewish, half Italian, from Brooklyn, NY. For most native Texans, this would be like marrying an alien. Yes, New York is part of America, but a distant, somewhat disturbing part. Since most New Yorkers feel the exact same way about Texas, my wife and I have had to make some interesting cultural adjustments.

We have two children. My son has recently turned three, and is making up for being a well behaved two year old by driving his mother insane in just the past few days. My daughter is 11. We adopted her two years ago when her mother, my sister, died. She has never known her father.

As you might imagine, she struggles with a lot of things that most girls her age never have consciously considered.

We have three cats, but whether or not I'll give in to the siren call of cat blogging remains to be seen.

I think that's enough for now. More will come, both in content and form. Eventually.

Second post, just to keep things going

2005-06-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

I have to use this post for a couple of things, including several hat tips. The first is to Ambra Nykol, specifically for her Blogging Like a Rock Star series. A good introduction for us beginners, especially in the why of blogging. But for the technical side, I credit the Mudville Gazette. I am using the steps from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Blogging. I'll get it all together eventually, I'm sure.

The second thing is to apologize for the incomplete state of things so far.

Traditional sucky first post

2005-06-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

As the 15 bazzilionth new blogger, I'd just like to say that this post really does suck. But at least it's a start, right?