A Sage in Christendom

Fouad Ajami writes a tribute to Bernard Lewis, a historian who in 1990 wrote an essay entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage":

The rage of Islam was no mystery to Mr. Lewis. To no great surprise, it issued out of his respect for the Muslim logic of things. For 14 centuries, he wrote, Islam and Christendom had feuded and fought across a bloody and shifting frontier, their enmity a "series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests." For nearly a millennium, Islam had the upper hand....

...The great turning point came in 1683, when a Turkish siege of Vienna ended in failure and defeat. With the Turks on the run, the terms of engagement between Europe and Islam were transformed. Russia overthrew the Tatar yoke; there was the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula.... Britain, France, the Netherlands and Russia all soon spilled into Islamic lands.... But Mr. Lewis has been relentless in his admonition that Muslims were under no obligation to accept the new order of things.

Worth reading in its entirety.

A Scanner Darkly

Before the movie Saturday we watched a trailer for yet another movie based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, the sui generis science fiction writer who died in 1982.

"A Scanner Darkly" is set in suburban Orange County, California in a future where America has lost the war on drugs. When one reluctant undercover cop is ordered to start spying on his friends, he is launched on a paranoid journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode. It is a cautionary tale of drug use based on the novel by Philip K. Dick and his own experiences.

Like a graphic novel come to life, "A Scanner Darkly" will use live action photography overlaid with an advanced animation process (interpolated rotoscoping) to create a haunting, highly stylized vision of the future....

I can attest that the audience will not require drugs--the rotoscoping induces lasting hallucinations after just a few minutes.

Legalization in Mexico

San Diego officials are very upset:

Mayor Jerry Sanders and other local officials were astounded to hear that Mexico is close to legalizing an array of drugs--from marijuana to heroin--for personal use.

"I view this as a hostile action by a longtime ally of the U.S.," Sanders said at a City Hall news conference.

Mexico's Congress approved a bill yesterday that would allow possession of small quantities of marijuana, Ecstasy, cocaine and even heroin.

Actually the bill in question makes nothing legal; it only defines how small a fry is too small to prosecute. "Zero tolerance" never makes economic or legal sense and the Mexican Senate at least has the intelligence to recognize that.

The full text of the bill is here. (No wonder there's such confusion--it's written in a foreign language.) Notice that the Mexican Senate can distinguish between narcotics, psycotropics, and stimulants, which is more than you can say for the Congress of the United States.

Real Chicago

The Chicago Sun-Times has put up a gallery of hundreds of black and white photos from 1940s to the 1990s. Real history. Source material, as they say.

Oh, and Steyn's got a column too. About fake history.

Afghanistan Is Open For Business

Ann Marlowe in Opinion Journal:

The recent Yale graduate I was chatting with at a party here spoke Chinese and had lived in China, the seeming epicenter of all things capitalist. "Why did you decide to come to Afghanistan?" I asked. He stared at me. "This is the largest rebuilding and development effort in the history of the world. Who wouldn't want to be here?"

After decades of conflict and the crippling legacies of communism and fundamentalism, Afghanistan is finally open for business. The signs are everywhere, from Kabul's traffic jams to Mazar-i-Sharif's building boom; from the opening of a Coca-Cola bottling plant to the country's first private university, the American University of Afghanistan, offering programs in business administration and information technology....

Writers of a certain ideological stripe whine that because Afghanistan isn't Switzerland, it's yet another sign that the U.S. can't get anything right. But fortunes are being made here by those who think for themselves. And there are few countries where Americans are as welcome. A recent BBC poll reports that 72% of Afghans see American influence as positive, as opposed to just 25% of the French and 21% of Germans.

Ms. Marlowe (M.B.A. from Columbia) has led an interesting life.

Things Are Looking Up

Victor Davis Hanson has a footnote:

I spent recent days recovering from emergency surgery for a perforated appendix in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya. I owe a great debt to the skill and confidence of a general surgeon, Dr. Ayoub, who was roused at 3 A.M., and saved me from a great deal worse, along with Dr. al Hafez who offered his medical expertise and care that allowed me to get back to California. Throughout all this, I did not experience a shred of anti-Americanism, but instead real kindness from Libyans from all walks of life. There is sometimes perhaps hurt and confusion over America's intentions — but also grudging acknowledgement that for the first time in memory there is real hope for something different, something far better in the future of the Middle East.

All in all, he says, just as everyone starts jumping ship, things are looking up.

United 93

I took Charlie and Cody to see an R-rated movie today. Don't worry; no one took their clothes off. We saw no gratuitous violence. We heard no stronger language than you'd hear in 7th grade locker room. What did this movie do to deserve an R-rating? It was too Real, I guess.

The Wall Street Journal has a sampling of the reviews. David Denby of The New Yorker has one of the best:

...once the flight is aloft Greengrass sticks to real time, and the passing minutes have an almost demonic urgency. This is true existential filmmaking: there is only the next instant, and the one after that, and what are you going to do? Many films whip up tension with cunning and manipulation. As far as possible, this movie plays it straight.

The movie built in the last minutes to the inevitable chaotic crescendo and then the screen went black as the strings played their final chord, a dotted half, fading to silence. Dead silence. As people slowly rose and left the theater, no one spoke. Silence.

I've never heard anything like it.

On the Reliability of Wikipedia

An AP article this morning prompted a lively discussion on Lucianne:

"This is precisely why utopian societies do not work. We need rules..."

"When I do a web search I skip the Wikipedia hits."

"When I assign writing/research projects to my university students, I specifically caution them that wikipedia is not a reliable source and is not to be used. Most of them express surprise..."

"Wikipedia gives you a 50/50 chance of getting accurate information. You get to guess which part is accurate."

"...if you mix a teaspoon of crap into a quart of ice cream, you have a quart of crap."

I soured on Wikipedia after reading the hatchet job they did on historian Paul Johnson. They refused to even call him a historian, labeling him instead a "journalist". Judge for yourself. Still, it's a tempting source for quick background on safe topics:

"Wikipedia seems to be OK for topics on language and science and the arts, and maybe for biographies on long-dead historical figures like Charlemagne and Julius Caesar, but avoid any biographies on people who are either still alive or still controversial, and avoid articles on emotional topics."

Even so I find myself more and more reluctant to eat the ice cream.

Mathlete

Charlie won 4th place among the 7th graders in the Pentagames, a one day math competition for 7th and 8th grades. He also took 2nd place in Math-Tac-Toe. Ten schools from the Rogue Valley entered the competition.

Angelina Shrugged

From Variety by way of BureauCrash:

Ayn Rand's most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the big screen after years of false starts.

Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to "Atlas Shrugged" from Howard and Karen Baldwin ("Ray"), who will produce with John Aglialoro.

As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

Artist Nick Gaetano did the cover art for the 35th Anniversary Edition of Atlas Shrugged.

Crossfield Accident Inflight Breakup

On Thursday, the NTSB release its Preliminary Report on last week's accident in Ludville, GA that claimed the life of famed test pilot Scott Crossfield, which follows below. In what is perhaps the report's most significant finding, the NTSB reports wreckage from the accident -- which occurred in IMC conditions near a Level 6 thunderstorm cell -- is "consistent with a low altitude in-flight breakup."

Aero-News Network

The Yellow House

From The Economist's review of The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford:

Two more mismatched housemates than Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin would be hard to find. Van Gogh was unkempt, emotionally unstable and talked incessantly while he worked. Gauguin, a former sailor and businessman, was taciturn, orderly and a loner. Yet from October to December 1888, the two shared a four-roomed yellow house in Arles until, after a quarrel, Van Gogh cut off his ear. Gauguin fled for Paris and the two never saw each other again....

You can view many the paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin online.

Not So Great (Fire) Wall

The Economist looks at China and the internet:

The firewall is porous. Imaginative users can find ways of searching for sensitive topics such as news about Falun Gong, a banned spiritual movement. In Google, entering the words “Falun Gong” will cause the entire results page to be blocked, but “FLG movement” will not. Many Chinese internet-users are well practised in configuring their internet browsers to route page requests through unblocked proxy servers outside China. These help bypass the firewall.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." --John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Pacific Aviation's New 152

Pacific Aviation Northwest has a new 152. Well, new to them, anyway--it's a 1978 model. They also have a Champ, a Skyhawk, and an Apache. Something for everyone at Grants Pass International.

More Than A Bad Hair Day

Earl Pickles:

Sometimes I forget that I'm old. I mean, I know I'm old, but inside I still sometimes feel like I did when I was a lad of fifteen. So occasionally I'll look in the mirror and be surprised to see an old man staring back at me.

Daughter:

Ah, that would explain the shriek I heard coming from the bathroom this morning.

Eaglet Web Cam

In Maine.

The cam's a little slow this morning due to bandwidth problems, but you can view archived pictures here.

It's Thursday...

It's Ann Coulter day.

I would be more interested in what the Democrats had to say about high gas prices if these were not the same people who refused to let us drill for oil in Alaska, imposed massive restrictions on building new refineries, and who shut down the development of nuclear power in this country decades ago.

We all have our favorite images of Miss Coulter. Here's mine.

The Filmmakers Got It Right

David Beamer reviews "United 93":

Paul Greengrass and Universal set out to tell the story of United Flight 93 on that terrible day in our nation's history. They set about the task of telling this story with a genuine intent to get it right--the actions of those on board and honor their memory. Their extensive research included reaching out to all the families who had lost loved ones on United Flight 93 as the first casualties of this war. And Paul and his team got it right.

Christine "Troubled" By I-933

Christine Gregoire, beneficiary of a stolen election, doesn't care much for democracy in any form:

Gov. Chris Gregoire this week announced her opposition to a proposed initiative that would require the government to compensate private property owners when government zoning or land-use regulations infringe on use of the property and decrease its value.

The Centralia Chronicle's all over her:

We’d be interested to know what Gregoire’s ideas are...

Does Gregoire acknowledge that the three-member, unelected hearings boards likely have too much power and ought to be elected so that they can be held more accountable?

Does she realize the state-mandated rural residential development zoning that, contrary to the county’s better judgment, imposed five-acre and above densities for home sites in the county diminishes the availability and drives up the cost of housing in rural areas and is a major waste of the land resource?...

Perhaps it will take the passage of I-933 to get the message across.

More on the Property Fairness Initiative here.

Flogging A Dead Horse

In the days of sail, Isil says, a sailor customarily received his first month's pay in advance. And he customarily managed to spend it all before coming aboard. Consequently for the first month at sea most sailors felt as if they were working for nothing. Admiral William Smyth observed that trying to get wholehearted work out of the crew during the first month at sea was as much an exercise in futility as "flogging a dead horse."

I feel like that now. Uncle Sam has taken my next month's wages and I've lost the will to work.

What's the use? The money's already gone.

How's Your Congersman?

Robert D. Novak in The American Spectator:

Indeed, Republicans may escape catastrophe this year because of what I have called the Henny Youngman Syndrome. The old standup comic often began his routine by being asked, "How's your wife?" Henny replied: "Compared to what?" Republicans seek votes by tacitly urging citizens to forget their faults because the Democrats are much worse. In that sense, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and Teddy Kennedy could be the most valuable players of 2006 for the GOP.

Indeed.

P.S. "Congersman" is a Walt Kelly thing. You wouldn't understand.

Tank You Very Much!

Where's Your Brain? does the math:

The Federal government gets 18.4 cents for every gallon you buy. So if your 8 cylinder SUV takes 20 gallons you just gave your Uncle Sam $3.68. Oh - I forgot to add in that state tax on your gallons. If you live in Oregon, you're paying an additional 24.4 cents - even more depending on the county you live in. Based on the base state tax rate plus the cut for the Feds, here are a few examples of what some states rape you for (Fed. + State) when you buy 20 gallons:

• Oregon: ($3.68 + $4.88) = $8.56
• Illinois: ($3.68 + $3.80) = $7.48
• New York: ($3.68 + $6.38) = $10.06
• California: (($3.68 + $3.60) = $7.28

WYB blogs from Eugene, Oregon

Robo-Back Ride

Boost up the stairs, granny?

A two-legged robot being developed by Japanese scientists could one day carry the elderly and handicapped up stairs or inclines.

Standing 1.28 metres (4 ft), the robot is essentially a seat that walks on two mechanical legs. A person hops on the seat and controls its movements using two joysticks.

Dialogue Won't Cut It

James Lileks on JWR:

Surely a country that spells "Centre" in the English fashion can be reasoned with. Granted, Abbasi has said that "Britain's demise is on our agenda," but it's a cry for respect, really. When a country announces it has 40,000 suicide bombers, and its president announces that Israel is "a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm" and pledges the destruction of America, it's a sign we have to sit down and ask: What's on your mind, really?

Illustration by Cox & Forkum.

Breaking The Habit

Pete du Pont has a three step plan:

First, the president ... must use his rescission authority...

Second... he should veto those spending bills....

Third, the president needs line-item veto authority.

Well first, not in an election year, second, not this guy, and third, dream on.

Slimy Character

Grants Pass, Oregon

Two rare salamanders that live in rocky patches within old growth forests along the Klamath River don‘t need Endangered Species Act protection because existing state and federal protections are adequate to maintain their habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday....

"This denial comes from an administration that‘s provided protection to the fewest number of wildlife species of any administration since the Endangered Species Act was passed," Greenwald said. "We‘re going to sue."

Again, and again, and again.

Simple, Survivable, Affordable

Transformational Space Corporation's working on it:

The t/Space Earth-to-orbit systems consists of three major parts: a crew transfer vehicle; a two-stage LOX-propane launch vehicle; and a launch aircraft.

Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites will build the structure of the CXV, and t/Space and other contractors will integrate the capsule with avionics, life support, on-orbit propulsion and other systems.

Located In The Ghetto

Lacey's having a little trouble with the real estate market:

The other house, my new love, is located in a good part of town, but in order for me to have it, I'd have to sell my firstborn child. And you know, that would be ok with me, but Jasper's not going for it. Actually, it costs $255,000, which is a LITTLE out of our price range at this point in time. I cry.

Roseburg just beats me. I only love houses from the turn of the century, and this town seems to have its fair share. But 95% of those homes are located in the ghetto and smell like pee....

Tear out the carpets and hose 'er down with Lysol, Lacey.

They Let The Old Man Go

Jury for Lodi terror case deadlocked.

SACRAMENTO -- Jurors deliberating the federal terrorism case against 48-year-old Lodi ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat sent the judge a note at 10 a.m. saying they were "decisively deadlocked."

The jury's still out on the terror camper himself, Hamid Hayat.

Update: He's guilty.

Four Dead in Opium Wars

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan

A U.S.-leased plane carrying counter-narcotics officials crashed into a nomad settlement while trying to avoid a truck on a runway during landing, killing two people aboard and two young girls on the ground, authorities and relatives said.

At least 13 people were reported injured in the accident Monday, including some Americans.

The Russian-made, twin-engine An-32 aircraft was landing at Bost airport in Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern province of Helmand, but overran the airstrip after trying to lift over a truck that drove across the runway, a Canadian military spokesman, Maj. Quentin Innis, said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

In case you forgot. Warning: not for those of delicate sensibilities.

Professor Reynolds spotted it first.

LASIK@Home

Tim's wife is going in for LASIK surgery this afternoon.

"Tim," I said, "I'm surprised you didn't consider this."

Offer The Man A Chair

Paul Chesser at The American Spectator read the transcripts.

Spencer: "You wake up every day to destroy the United States, don't you?"
Moussaoui: "To the best of my ability."

Spencer: "It was your choice to accept a suicide mission from Osama bin Laden."
Moussaoui: "It was my pleasure."

Spencer: "You would do it again tomorrow if you could, wouldn't you?"
Moussaoui: "Today."

Chesser suggests we will allow him a short time on death row to "come to Jesus" and then "strap him in the chair, and off to hell he goes."

Orientation and Thought Reform

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has published a Guide to First-Year Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus. At $3.95 from Amazon, it just jumped into my cart.

747% Post-Consumer Waste

The FAA's not thrilled because from the air it looks like a wreck.

Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.

"When I showed it to her in the office, she just started screaming," recalls the architect, David Hertz of Santa Monica. Ms. Rehwald, whose passions include yoga, organic gardening, meditation, folk art and the Cuban cocktails called mojitos, loved the adventurousness of the design, the feminine shapes and especially the environmental aspect.

"It's 100% post-consumer waste," she says. "Isn't that the coolest?"

Greg spotted it first.

Crimson Faced

A 19-year old author with a $500,000 book contract face charges of plagiarism. The Harvard Crimson makes the case. Whatever happens next won't be pretty.

Update: The Harvard Independend did a little dumpster diving and found this blog comment from a former TF:

"I was surprised to learn she had written a book, as her writing was awful...I feel bad for her.... Plagiarizing from chick lit has to be some kind of double whammy against artistic integrity."

Passport in Hand

I have a beautiful daughter.

Here she waits, passport in hand, suitcase packed. In June she will travel to Mexico to build houses for the paisanos. In July she will go to Japan to stay with Yukari, who stayed with us two years ago.

I've never been to Mexico or Japan. Sometimes you have to live through your children.

Horrified

Mark Steyn:

Do you remember that anthrax business just after September 11th? At the height of the scare, Tom Daschle came out and announced that 34 of his staffers had tested positive for anthrax. I was horrified: Tom Daschle has 34 staffers?

In this week's National Review.

It All Seems Rather Hopeless

Ian Shoales is hyperventilating.

Get Zac to where you once belonged

One sentence runs to 212 words. Classic.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Star Clouds.

Probably Not

You could justify buying this week's Economist just for the cover. "Taking on Bush: Can the Democrats get their act together?"

Roberts for Supreme Court

As a charter member of the lunatic fringe, not registered with either of the major parties, I generally have no interest in the Primary Election. This year the Republicans choose one from eight to challenge Governor K.; the Democrats choose from four to challenge Walden. I stifle a yawn.

But in the category of "Nonpartisan Candidates" (an oxymoronic fiction; don't lie to me) we have something unusual this year: A contested race for the Oregon Supreme Court.

Judges matter because in a constitutional republic the third branch checks and balances the other two. When the legislature ignores our rights, and the executive looks the other way, we have no choice but to fight them in the courts. Case in point: On February 21st this year the Oregon Supreme Court upheld Measure 37. Most of us didn't expect that. We have little reason to expect it again, either.

The Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits candidates from identifying themselves as a member of a particular political party, or from taking sides on any issue. This frustrates the voter who must decide between them.

Fortunately in the Supreme Court race we have a pretty clear choice. Virginia Linder, the establishment liberal, has the endorsement of nearly every newspaper in the state. That rules her out as far as I'm concerned. Eugene Hallman runs to her left and Jack Roberts to her right.

Hallman has the endorsement of the Multnomah County Democrats. Blogger David Gulliver calls him "the most dangerous man in Oregon" He's not sold on Linder either. On the other hand Blue Oregon (guess which side they're on) doesn't like Roberts at all and prefers Hallman to Linder.

And if you wonder what Jack Roberts thinks just do a Google search. He posts frequent comments to both Blue Oregon and Jack Bog's Blog.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Mystic, Connecticut:

A five-member team from the Rhode Island Paranormal Research group visited Mystic Seaport on Friday night to spend time on the Charles W. Morgan, a wooden whaling ship where several visitors have reported seeing the apparition....

The visitors said that while touring the ship last summer, they saw a man in what appeared to be 19th-century clothing working below deck. They said the man, who had a pipe in his mouth, nodded at them but did not speak.

When they went returned to the main deck and asked a museum interpreter what the man was doing, they were told that no one was down below and that no one was assigned to be on the boat that day.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles:

TV seance claims to have reached John Lennon

Inconvenient Truth

Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad.

Liberals should worry about Mark Steyn.

Advice For The Decider

After a week of bad advice from seemingly everyone else, some good advice for the President from The Wall Street Journal:

...no president who thinks much of his role as commander in chief will throw the top Pentagon civilian overboard to please officers of any kind. If he did, he would establish the precedent that secretaries of defense serve at the pleasure of their subordinates, overturn the most fundamental feature of civilian control of the military, and neuter his own effectiveness in the conduct of national defense.

If this were Clinton, Dick Morris and Fred Barnes would have already decided it.

Master of Ceremonies

Ira Einhorn, founder of Earth Day--or not. History has a way of getting written and re-written until it's acceptable to all; truth is a secondary consideration. In 1981 police found the corpse of Einhorn's girlfriend stuffed in a trunk next to his bed. He fled the country. Sixteen years later he turned up in France. On October 17, 2002, Einhorn was found guilty of murder. In 1998 members of the original Earth Week Committee wrote a letter denying that Einhorn had anything to do with organizing the first Earth Day.

Judge for yourself.

Bar Fighters vs. Terrorists

Longshoreman Steve Stallone draws some fine distinctions:

"Just because a guy got into a bar fight does not make him a terrorist," said Stallone, whose union represents nearly 14,000 West Coast longshoremen and clerks. "Terrorist acts are one thing. But that you beat up your next-door neighbor? I don'’t think so."

Actually, these are just the kind of guys I want hanging around when some little pencil-necked milk drinker named Mohammed shows up.

Happy Arf Day!

Some of us are more inclined to celebrate Industrial Revolution Day. Consider, for instance, the environmental improvement brought by the invention of the automobile:

In New York city in 1900, according to “The Car Culture”, a 1975 book by James Flink, a historian, horses deposited 2.5m pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine every day. Every year, the city authorities had to remove an average of 15,000 dead horses from the streets. It made cars smell of roses.

The Economist, September 9th, 1999.

Cardboard Thin Passengers

Michael Storch analyzes airplane boarding times using a mathematical model called a Lorentzian metric:

The discrepancy between the infinite and finite population calculations is closely related to the Tracy-Widom distributions for GUE and GOE when passengers are very thin.... When passengers become a bit thicker there is another transition in which previously good airline policies become bad and vice versa. As it turns out, airline policies are implicitly designed for cardboard thin passengers while actual passengers are on the other side of the phase transition.

Thanks to Improbable Research.

Radical Son

Greg loaned me his copy of Radical Son, a book I meant to read eight years ago.

The rhetoric was heated, but by the time I reentered the political battle, I had made a decision to speak in the voice of the New Left--outraged, aggressive, morally certain. I would frame indictments as we had framed them, but from the other side. I wanted equity for those who had defended democracy against the Communist threat. I wanted justice for the victims of our crusades. I wanted my former comrades to be put on the receiving end of accusations like those they had made against everyone else. I wanted them to see how it felt. Evidently, it did not feel good. When I reached the point in my speech where I said "It is no accident the greatest atrocities of the Twentieth Century have been committed by Marxist radicals in power," my words were shouted down and the microphone was cut off.

David Horowitz, "red diaper baby" and charter member of the New Left.

Next up: Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the Sixties

Moving a World of Data

Richard Collins and Peter Garrison write almost half the copy in Flying magazine. If they ever leave, the magazine will fold.

I left the May issue open to Garrison's column on my desk this morning as I started to work. Some time later I glanced at the ad on the facing page. "Pilot Confidence. Individualized pilot training." A man stood next to a business jet. The name caught my eye:

Mark Frajola
Just received his "No Limitation" CE-500 type rating and his pilot confidence on February 11th, 2006.

I worked with Marc at IBM back in 1999 when we both belonged to the Hillsboro Flying Club. He mostly flew the C152 then. I dug out his email address and sent him a note of congratulation.

The email immediately bounced back.

The message you sent (attached below) requires confirmation before it can be delivered. To confirm that you sent the message below, just hit the "R"eply button and send this message back (you don't need to edit anything). Once this is done, no more confirmations will be necessary. This is an anti-SPAM prevention measure.

Cool. A new way to thwart spam: Active Spam Killer. Of course, you have to own the mail server if you want to install it.

I replied and Marc and I exchanged a few more emails. He used to build high-end UNIX servers. Now he mostly just manages them. If you need a server that can withstand an Instalanche, you can't do better than Marc's.

Screaming Eagle Angels

While National Guardsman Aric Catron was working a checkpoint in Iraq a little girl ran up and threw her arms around him.

Our translator quickly explained that he, the father, had been locked in a prison for most of the child's life. He had been sentenced to death for being a Shiite dissident traitor.The man went on to say that soldiers wearing the same patch on the shoulder as I was (the 101st Airborne Division) had freed him shortly after we began the liberation of Iraq. His daughter from then on believed that the famous Screaming Eagle patch of the 101st meant that we were angels sent to protect her family.

Seattle PI via Instapundit

Made Me Feel Sick

Moussaoui's Mother:

It was atrocious. Horrible. I had to look away. I plugged my ears and closed my eyes. I felt faint. Eventually, I left the courtroom. I felt terrible for the families of victims, people who had lost their loved ones in the attacks. What must they have felt?! I even felt bad for anyone else in America who'd be shocked. It made me feel sick for them....

Time via Drudge

First Look For The Letter 'N'

"On April 13, 2006, a message posted in Arabic on an Internet forum explained how to identify private American jets and urged Muslims to destroy all such aircraft," the TSA said in an advisory issued on Thursday and obtained by Reuters on Friday.

Reuters via Drudge.

Truth Revealed at Tuskegee U

Maybe Al Gore invented the Internet, but the iPod is Bush's fault.

By way of the BureauCrash. (Full text here.)

Fred and Barney Smoked Winstons

I have to get one of the kids to show me* how to watch this.

The Fintstones Winston Commercial

Also by way of BureauCrash, as was the previous post.

*Takes something called "Flash" which I refuse to install: I like the Internet to shut up and sit still while I read it.

Good Fences

A recipe for do-it-yourselfers:

Start with a 6-foot deep trench so a vehicle can't crash through; behind it, roll of concertina (coiled, razor-edged barbed wire), in front of a 15-foot high heavy-gauge steel mesh fence angled outward at the top.

Behind the fence will be a 60- to 70-foot wide unpaved but graded dirt road, along with inexpensive, mounted video cameras that can be monitored from home computers. On the other side of the road will be a second, 15-foot fence, with more concertina wire on its outside.

They figure it will cost between $125 and $150 a foot.

Let's see. $660K a mile, 1951 miles...

Crossfield In Fatal Crash

Aviation Legend Scott Crossfield In Fatal Crash

Crossfield, a former test pilot and the first person to fly at both Mach 2 and Mach 3, took off from Prattville, Alabama, around 9 a.m. Wednesday en route to Manassas, Virginia. Atlanta ATC reportedly lost contact with Crossfield near Ludville, Georgia late Wednesday morning, and Civil Air Patrol searchers and others discovered the wreckage of the plane early Thursday afternoon near Ranger, Georgia, about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta.

In the EAA News.

Three Intellectual Giants

In the mail today, the Institute for Justice newsletter:

The wisdom of the Founding Fathers lies at the heart of IJ’s work. However, the insights of three intellectual giants of the 20th century—Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand—provide constant inspiration as well. What makes them so relevant to IJ is that we regularly see their predictions and observations about bureaucracy and government play out in the real world in the cases we take on.

Friedman in this issue; Hayek and Rand to follow.

It's not quite fair to call Milton Friedman "of the 20th century." He's still going strong in the 21st.

Economist on The New Media

The Economist's survey (subscribers only; sorry) this week is on the new media:

...nobody knows whether the era of participatory media will, on balance, be good or bad. As with most revolutions, it is a question of emphasis. Generally speaking, people who have faith in democracy welcome participatory media, whereas people who have reservations will be nostalgic for the top-down certainties of the mass media. Joseph de Maistre, a conservative who lived through the French Revolution, famously said that “every country has the government it deserves.” In the coming era, more than ever before, every society will get the media it deserves.

More when I actually have time to read it.

Goin' Up The Country

Census: Americans Are Fleeing Big Cities

Among the 25 largest metropolitan areas, 18 had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - the three biggest metropolitan areas - lost the most residents to domestic moves. The New York metropolitan area had a net loss of more than 210,000 residents a year from 2000 to 2004.

Later this morning, from Gold Hill, Oregon, I have a conference call with the people I work with in Livermore, California, and their customer in Springfield, Missouri. The guy who actually writes my checks, in Walnut Grove, I've never met. Remind me again why we need cities?

Thanks to Drudge who spotted it first.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport

Walterville wallaby walks:

The Theuses left Xander, a 45-pound, 16-month-old wallaby, alone in his pen on Thursday between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. That's the day they drove to Redmond to buy their second wallaby, 3-week-old Willow, who never got to meet her new brother.

The couple is offering a $1,000 reward if anyone finds X