Tests Don't Always Work

Science Journal:

It can happen that a product doesn't hurt animals, but turns out to be poisonous to patients. That occurred with the catastrophic British trial of an experimental biotech drug called TGN1412, meant to treat leukemia and other diseases. It didn't cause problems when given to monkeys and other species. Then six people took it in a small initial study and had life-threatening convulsions and organ failure.

Worse yet, it sometimes works the other way round: the drug works fine on humans, but the FDA withholds approval because it gives the monkeys a rash.

Play Money

Hong Kong (WSJ):

China's fastest-rising currency isn't the yuan. It's the QQ coin -- online play money created by marketers to sell such things as virtual flowers for instant-message buddies, cellphone ringtones and magical swords for online games.

In recent weeks, the QQ coin's real-world value has risen as much as 70%.

Interestingly enough play money matters.

Economists say virtual currencies work like any other currencies, so long as people trust the institutions behind them. The U.S. dollar, which lost its gold backing in 1971, survives because people trust the U.S. government.

The trouble starts when a virtual currency that isn't backed by a trusted government, becomes linked to a real one that is through an exchange rate. Virtual currency brokers call that RMT, or real-money trade. When that happened to the QQ coin, it effectively turned into a parallel currency operating alongside the yuan, says Yiping Huang, the chief Asia economist of Citibank.

The creation of too many QQ coins, he notes, could, in theory, create a surge in China's total money supply, leading to inflation. While few think a QQ monetary crisis is likely, assessing the economic impact is difficult because Tencent won't say how much QQ coin is in circulation.

Milton Friedman would have enjoyed this.

Pretty Good Material

Thank you, Brian. Laura and I are happy to be here. I'd like to thank the Radio and TV Correspondents Association for providing dinner tonight. And I'd like to thank Senator Webb for providing security.

I'm glad to see everybody here is enjoying themselves. Don't think I haven't noticed all the drinking that's been going on. In my State of the Union address, I said we needed to increase the use of ethanol.

Well, where should I start? A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my Vice President had shot someone. Ahhh, those were the good old days. Sorry the Vice President couldn't be here. He's had a rough few weeks. To be honest, his feelings are kind of hurt. He said he was going on vacation to Afghanistan, where people like him.

You in the press certainly have had a lot to report lately. Take the current controversy. I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you botched it when people sympathize with lawyers.

Speaking of subpoenas, it's good to see Speaker Pelosi tonight. Well, some have wondered how the two of us would get along. Some say she's bossy, she's opinionated, she's not to be crossed. Hey, I get along with my mother.

But between the Congress and the press, there is a lot of scrutiny in this job. Not a day goes by that I don't get scrutineered one way or the other. The press is a lot tougher the second term. It's reached the point I sometimes call on Helen Thomas just to hear a friendly voice.

No matter how tough it gets, however, I have no intention of becoming a lame duck President — unless, of course, Cheney accidently shoots me in the leg. Hey, I have 664 days left in the White House. So technically, I'm a temporary guest worker. Considering what's next — President Clinton, of course, wrote a very successful presidential memoir, with 10,000 pages or something. I'm thinking of something really fun and creative for mine — you know, maybe a pop-up book.

I'm considering a number of titles — which do you like? "How W Got His Groove Back." "Who Moved My Presidency?" Or, "Tuesdays With Cheney"?

—President Bush at the Correspondents Dinner

Needed: Large Torque Wrench

John Tierney's on the case:

The best theory I've come up with so far, after brushing up on von Daniken’s "Chariots of the Gods," is that it's the Hex Nut of the Giants, affixed to the end of a massive bolt that's holding the planet together. I haven't worked out yet how a race of titanic engineers managed to insert the bolt at Saturn's south pole. Nor have I identified the location of their hardware store, but we need to start looking for it right away, because NASA’s video shows that it's swirling counterclockwise dangerously near what looks to me like the end of the bolt. If this thing keeps unscrewing...

Twenty Years Ago In The Economist

The leader asked:

Can either Mr Gorbachev or Mr Deng modernise his country's economy without modernising its politics?

No, because the only way to run a modern economy is to let large numbers of managers make their independent judgments of what the market requires of them on the basis of similarly independent advice from salesmen, scientists, technologists and so on. These are precisely the fields that the apparatus of communist parties has hitherto arrogated to itself. It is by controlling decisions about consumption, production, research and information-exchange that the party man makes his living, and gets his self-satisfaction.

American Survey noted that

The reform of America's 50-year-old and often reviled welfare system seems to be at hand.

And in world business

Mr Michael Eisner, the president of Disney, and Mr Jacques Chirac, the French prime minister, signed a contract for the building of a Disney theme park east of Paris.

But most interesting (in retrospect) was this small item:

The microcomputer industry has produced its first billionaire. He is Mr William Gates, a 31-year-old who taught himself computer programming at the age of 13, and dropped out of Harvard in 1974 to found a software company called Microsoft. Mr Gates owns 11m Microsoft shares (42% of the company), which have recently traded as high as $91—more than four times their price when the firm went public a year ago....

But, with competition in the software business growing, Mr Gate will have to work hard to stay on top.

One of his stiffest challenges will be to create a successor to Microsoft's biggest-selling product: DOS, the operating system of IBM's PC and computers compatible with it....

The advent of Microsoft's "multi-tasking" operating systems will also create a demand for jazzed-up applications software, such as word-processers and databases, which can take advantage of their new capabilities. That could blunt the edge of software standards like Lotus Development's 1-2-3 spreadsheet or Ashton-Tate's DBase III database.

Whatever happened to those old standards?

Rice Up To Her Waist

Lileks is thinking about the VP candidate:

I no longer think it’ll be Rice, since there’s so much disenchantment over her State performance; she sank up to her waist in Peace Process quicksand, and the only reason she hasn’t sunk to her neck is because she’s standing on the shoulders of those who have been swallowed whole before. Besides, people are just sick of the Bush team in general. Then again, I’m starting to think that you could put Godzilla in charge of State, and in two months he’d be four feet tall, breathing perfume, and proposing a Tokyo-reconstruction loan program and a six-point program for getting Mothra to sit down with Gamera.

You can't go from Secretary of State to President any more. The last guy to do it was James Buchanan, who served under Polk and didn't make much a president anyway.

The Ripples of 1979

Victor Davis Hanson:

Jimmy Carter established the Western precedent, amplified by Ronald Reagan in the arms-for-hostages deals, that there is almost nothing a Western government won't do to retrieve its kidnapped citizens. Now we see his ripples, as Iran promises to release the female soldier. If there are any minorities among the 15, expect them to follow as in 1979. Iran has "issues" with plenty of other governments. Why not kidnap a Russian diplomat in protest of cessation of fissionable material? The cynic answers that Russian assassination squads and worse might be turned loose.

Iran is betting that that a guilt-ridden and exhausted British public—scolded for decades over its past in Persia, furious at the Iraq war of "Blair-Bush," having gutted the British military for social programs that bring demands for more rather than gratitude—won't or can't do anything....

First Blogiversary

A year about today I posted my first item; minutes later I posted the second, Testing the Photo Upload. I finished out March with an item on Phil Fake's Nautical Gallery. I was hooked.

In April I practiced forming opinions (What's Mexican for Laissez-Faire?), writing topical items (Lama Sabach Thani), ranting about my taxes (Cheers), and plotting my escape (Where Do You See Yourself...).

In May I got silly (Vickie, Howie, Pierce, and Ruth; All The Humanity!), watched the high-school musical Junestruck, took a Walk in the Woods, and read how some schmoe Broke My Plane.

In June I posted my Summer Reading List, hiked the Mt. Ashland Meadows, bought my first C-O-L-T (actually a Gaucho), and generally thought How Lucky You Are, Boys.

In July we encountered a few mosquitoes (Master of Understatement), said good-bye to that old Chevy (Ribbons of Progress), saw Lizzy Dining Out in Japan, and went to the Mosquito Festival (as if we hadn't had enough already). I also wrote up my first original news item about Josh who was Attacked By Rabid Nutrias. True story.

In August Leslie and I attended Two Gentlemen, Lizzy said Good-Bye at Fukushima Station, and I dropped in on an old friend Twenty Years On. Care for 'Nother Jug O' Dingo Red?

In September we all went to Salute the Cranberry. I noted the fifth anniversary of a day which will Never Be Forgot, posted a footnote about Hurricane Gordon, mentioned Things Worth Buying, and documented Greg's Motherboard Replacement Project.

In October Lizzy and I climbed Mt. Thielsen 9182 Feet, and I took note of something Leslie and I did Nineteen Years Ago Today (best move I ever made). Politics required several rants: Measure 44, Measure 15-66, Allan Jennings, Shut Up, and Where Our Property Taxes Went, followed by the ineluctable How I Voted Part One and Two. Like anyone cares.

In November I got Mark Steyn's autograph In the Mail Today. Woo hoo! Greg and I flew over Mount Ashland. I noted Remembrance Day with a couple of book recommendations. The election wrap-up included Red Oregon, Blue Oregon, The Party of Big Government, and Post-Election Groovitude. Milton Friedman died. I celebrated National Ammo Day and then Thanksgiving. Photo blogging included November Sunrise.

In December Greg sent pictures From The World Trade Center Site, and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick died (jeez this is getting depressing). I crunched the numbers to prove we live in a Temperate Clime, cheered myself up by reading Marley's Ghost and the gospel of St. Luke. Christmas arrived, as usual, in bleakest mid-winter.

The kids had a Snow Day January 6th 2007. I blogged about Burqini Babes and Hercules the cat. I started reading a lot of Haruki Murakami, noted for future reference how Tim made The Deal, the Coos County Sheriff said We Will Not Respond, and Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. The blogging started to feel a little disjointed.

In February the yellow-bellied marmot predicted Six More Weeks Of Winter, I got My Valentine, and Dave sent a blast from the past: It Ate My Quarter! Van Halen, 1979? There were Some Changes At Woof, Inc.

In March there were Changing Notions of Liberty, Changing Notions of Justice, and The Lessons of History. I couldn't help noticing Protection Costs Increase Sharply.

I really can't say where this blog is going. I've introduced a new weekly feature, Twenty Years Ago In The Economist. I'll still occasionally note items of local interest, such as Vandals Caught On Film. I look forward to the day I can ignore Patrilateral Parallel Punjabi Pairing. But mostly I want to concentrate on the trivial things that interest me (and probably only me) as I wander along Looking for the Pillars of Rome.

I've enjoyed the first year. Looking back, I think it's been worthwhile. I wish I'd started five years ago. Ten years. No, thirty.

As Jeff Cooper (another who passed this past year) said:

Did you write it down? If you did not, you should have. This is because only what you have committed to paper has significance. Man's experience is only that which he has recorded. The more you consider that, the more significant it may become. The Heinlein Hypothesis declaims that only the historic record establishes the essence of the human experience. If it was not written down, it might as well not have happened.

Time to make amends.

The Private of the Buffs

More fine English poetry by way of John Derbyshire:

Poor, reckless, rude, lowborn, untaught,
   Bewilder’d, and alone,
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
   He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
   Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him
   Shall England come to shame.

Derb provides some background on the incident.

Secret Site of Fort Lane

The Mail Tribune:

The site of historic Fort Lane near Central Point could soon become part of Oregon's state park system, a designation that could help protect the site from the depredations of amateur artifact hunters.

"It's been looted like mad," said Mark Tveskov, director of the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission recently agreed to accept the 19-acre property from Jackson County and to create a plan for protecting the site and making it more accessible to the public.

Officials have declined to disclose the exact site of the fort to prevent more looting.

Fort Lane was built in the fall of 1853 after a clash between American Indians and European settlers earlier that summer. It was named in honor of Joseph Lane, Oregon's first territorial governor, who also led military campaigns against the Indians in 1851 and 1853.

More information at The Fort Lane Archaeology Project (Southern Oregon University). Previous Mail Tribune article here.

Google map here. (I don't see anything.)
Topo map here.

Looking for the Pillars of Rome

Michael Barone posts today on the subject of "net internal migration," that is, which states are gaining population and which are losing as people move from one state to another, after factoring out births, deaths, and external (to and from the U.S.) migration. He links to U.S. Census Bureau county-by-county data.

What this Oregon misanthrope found most interesting was the list of counties which lost the most population:

        Harney    -721
        Grant     -685
        Baker     -498
        Malheur   -368
        Wallowa   -351
        Sherman   -235
        Union     -185
        Wheeler   -143
        Gilliam   -140
        Wasco      -79

Every one of these counties is in the eastern half of the state and together they form a single contiguous block of beautiful country—desert, mountains, lakes, a little of everything—except civilization.

It's not just old people dying off. In each of these counties roughly as many are being born. It's just people leaving, presumably for a better life somewhere else, somewhere, most likely, more urban.

They can have it for all I care. When my tribulations wind down, I'm selling this suburban money pit and moving into some little shanty back east. There ought to be plenty of vacant homesteads then. Maybe somewhere around Rome.

No Stomach To Fight

But now we are dwindled to, what shall I name?
A poor sneaking race, half-begotten and tame,
Who sully the honours that once shone in fame.
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

Inspired by a post by John Derbyshire noting the difference between Blair and Thatcher.

Quebec Had An Election?

Mark Steyn on the Quebec election:

I was struck by the politically correct torpor of much of the post-mortems: reams of analysis without any discussion of whether the PQ leader's homosexuality had been a liability. Andre Boisclair was a fetching young gay who admitted to doing coke — not back in his student days (as David Cameron did) but while he was a government minister (which is certainly what it would take for me to get through Quebec cabinet meetings). But the minute the gay cokehead became party leader all the papers (French and English) wrote that this demonstrated how Quebecers were the coolest, most relaxed, most progressive folks in North America. Maybe on the island of Montreal, but not in the rural hinterlands, where Quebecers are prone to all the various "phobias" that so distress the liberal mind. I was struck by the number of lifelong separatists who simply resented being subject to Queer Eye For The Separatist Guy and, even by the standards of the ever lamer bluff of Quebec "nationalism", couldn’t buy the idea of a gay hedonist as their founding father. There's something a bit feeble about the media's refusal even to discuss this except through vague evasive allusions to the difficulty M Boisclair had "connecting" with Quebec voters.

Montreal's an island?

Al's Carbon Dream

Beverly Hills Turnover

Famed Hollywood screenwriter David Kahane in NRO:

Nobody likes to talk about it openly, except when they’re celebrating diversity, but Beverly Hills is currently undergoing the greatest ethnic turnover since Harlem went from white to black in the 1930s. Nearly a quarter of the city’s residents are now Iranian, and 40 percent of the school kids. The last municipal election printed ballots in three languages — reconquista Spanish, Upper West Side English, and "Death to the Great Satan" Farsi. What the fall of the shah started, the rise of the mullahs will eventually finish, and 90210 will be just another precinct in Tehran, with the same taste in interior furnishings.

And that's just an aside. It's not even what the column's about.

Stockman Charged With Fraud

New York (AP):

David Stockman, a former top budget official in the Reagan White House, was charged Monday with securities fraud after a probe that focused on possible financial fraud at an auto parts company he headed before it collapsed into bankruptcy.

Throw the book at 'im. (A lot of us have never forgiven him for this.)

Frankenstein

John Harlow in The Australian:

The conventional account of how Mary Shelley, a teenager, came to invent Dr Frankenstein and his monster is of a "waking dream" brought on by a drinking session with some of Britain's most notorious Romantic poets. But a new book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, claims Shelley, an icon of modern feminism, was a fraud who did not dream up the gothic monster in response to a challenge by Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva. The author, John Lauritsen, claims the true credit for the world's first science fiction novel should go to Percy Bysshe Shelley, her future husband, who was present that night.

Vintage Harmony

Ted Keller, Dwayne Ottinger, Bob Robbins, and Ollie Durand. The theme of yesterday's show was "Grandpa's Attic." When they talk about the great sound of "those old 78s" they might have had these guys in mind.

Creeping Sharia

Welcome Mark Steyn to the Orange County Register. The web site's not as user-friendly as the Chicago Sun-Times, but perhaps the links will persist a little longer. (The Sun-Times seems to have a bit-recycling program; in a misguided attempt to conserve our ever-dwindling reserves of natural silicon, columns published on their site disappear after six weeks or so.)

Katherine Kersten in The Wall Street Journal tackles the same topic but a little closer to home.

On Principle

Congressman Greg Walden on why he voted against the Iraq War spending bill, in spite of the generous slab of Oregon-bound pork therein:

“Until the majority Democrats in the House and the Senate work out language in the war supplemental that the President will sign, this measure will not become law and our timber-dependent counties and school districts will not receive the emergency assistance they need. Hopefully, by next week we will have a revised measure before the House that does not include an arbitrary withdrawal date of U.S. troops regardless of the assessments of commanders on the ground in Iraq, is not overloaded with non-emergency spending, and is one that I therefore can support.”

In other words he places the interest of his country ahead of the parochial greed of his constituents. That's why I voted for him.

Good job, Mr. Walden.

(No link: walden.house.gov won't respond—DOS attack?)

De Cat's Meow

Much to the delight of his many fans Dave Handy has emerged from a long winter hiatus and posted four times in the last two weeks, including this fascinating photo documentary of his new entertainment hutch.

Give him a twitter (whatever that is).

Better Do What She Says

Robert Novak:

Close friends of Fred Thompson say his wife Jeri is urging him to take the plunge later this year and run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Many Rights, Some Wrong

The Economist says Amnesty International is stretching its brand:

The organisation is as vocal as it ever was. But some years ago it decided to follow intellectual fashion and dilute a traditional focus on political rights by mixing in a new category of what people now call social and economic rights.

Rights being good things, you might suppose that the more of them you campaign for the better. Why not add pressing social and economic concerns to stuffy old political rights such as free speech, free elections and due process of law? What use is a vote if you are starving? Are not access to jobs, housing, health care and food basic rights too? No: few rights are truly universal, and letting them multiply weakens them.

Homeless Hare

Boing Boing has a calvacade of eminent domain holdouts; people—for the most part—who simply refuse to step aside when the bulldozer of progress comes through.

Inspiring stories every one.

Restructuring Columbia Aircraft

The Bend Bulletin:

Current President and CEO Bing Lantis is stepping down to attend to family matters and other personal interests, according to a company press release.

Longtime aviation industry veteran and Malaysian native Wan Abd Majid will be the new CEO. Columbia first partnered with Malaysian investors in the 1990s, when U.S. investors weren’t interested, company officials have said. Majid has worked with the company since that time, Bolinger said.

In addition they are temporarily laying off 185 employees—on top of the 59 laid off two weeks ago.

Hampton Inn Roseburg

Roseburg News-Review:

A California developer showed off conceptual plans Thursday for construction of an 85-room hotel along the banks of the South Umpqua River at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

Xiao Jin Yuan, owner of a Hampton Inn & Suites in Crescent City, Calif., told members of the Douglas County Fair Board on Thursday that he would like to build a three-story hotel and two-story restaurant overlooking the river. The hotel would be located along the southwestern corner of the fairgrounds property.

Not much there now.

Sea Of Fire

From the new Hinode solar observatory.

Chinese Rat Poison

ABC News has learned that investigators have determined that a rodent-killing chemical is the toxin in the tainted pet food that has killed several animals.

A source close to the investigation tells ABC News that the rodenticide, which the source says is illegal to use in the United States, was on wheat that was imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of dog and cat food....

The chemical is called aminopterin.

Full list of brands affected here (cats) and here (dogs).

Scrapped LA Times Editorial Section

Big soap opera in LA. I don't care who's girlfriend worked for what editor; that's just the excuse. What was the reason? What was in that spiked editorial section?

PR Inside quotes Grazer:

I was surprised and delighted when the Los Angeles Times asked me to guest edit its Current section, because it gave me a chance to work with the L.A. Times and these seven extremely talented writers - Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, Vogue's editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, psychologist Paul Ekman, social scientist Dalton Connelly, attorney Martin Singer, urban planner Sam Hall Kaplan and artist Shepard Fairey.

Working together, we came up with a collection of essays and art that I think readers would have found genuinely stimulating and would have added to our understanding of our ever-changing culture. My hope now is that we can find another way to present the results of our efforts to the audience it deserves.

I won't hold my breath. But what were they planning to write about?

Nikki Finke has the scoop:

Pitbull entertainment litigator Marty Singer wrote a piece about the "power of allegations"; Eric Kandel, the 2000 Nobel prizewinner in psychotherapy and psychiatry, wrote about the "new biology of the mind"; psychologist Paul Ekman who's a facial interpretation expert wrote about the subject of "catching liars"; Dalton Connelly, an NYU professor wrote about "race and gender in politics"; André Leon Talley, an editor at large at Vogue, wrote about "fashion and status"; and, finally, contemporary graphic designer Shepard Fairey created a drawing to illustrate the package.

Just the usual crap, in other words.

I still don't get it. The WSJ tried to explain it this morning, it's all over the blogosphere, and it just doesn't make sense. What's the big deal?

Update: Benjamin Zycherat at Reform Club says:

For all of Martinez' political correctitude, it is a fact that under his editorship the Times' editorials have become far less reflexively left-wing and Pavlovian than was the case for years. On rare occasions they actually were worth reading. And so it is obvious that the army of hard leftists that is the LA Times simply could not abide that; Martinez had to go and this was the opportunity to get rid of him.

Patrilateral Parallel Punjabi Pairing

Stanley Kurtz continues his series on Muslim marriage practices with a look at British immigrants from the Punjab.

Somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of all South Asians in Britain are Punjabis. The Punjab sits athwart the border of India and Pakistan and is home to substantial communities of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. Muslims live almost exclusively in the Pakistani half of Punjab, while Sikhs and Hindus live largely in Indian Punjab. Whatever their religion, Punjabi migrants to Britain have a great deal in common....

Despite these many similarities, the position of Punjabi Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu immigrants in Britain dramatically differs. Ballard focuses his comparison on two immigrant groups: Punjabi Muslims from the Mirpur region of Pakistan and Punjabi Sikhs from the Jullundur region of India....

Now largely middle class, many British Sikhs have abandoned manual labor to start their own businesses, have moved from the inner city to the suburbs, and currently see their children performing academically at the same level as other middle-class Britons. British Mirpuri Muslims, on the other hand, move between unemployment and manual labor, are still largely confined to poor, inner-city ethnic enclaves, and rear children with a limited grasp of English and a notably low level of academic achievement.

What's the root cause? Cousin marriage.

Catch up on parts one and two if you haven't already, and continue with parts three and four. Don't get behind in your reading! This will be on the final.

Vandals Caught On Film

The vandals who destroyed communication equipment at the Tallowbox Lookout on Sunday, March 18th, between 2:30 and 3:00 PM have been caught on film. The Jackson County Sheriff's Department has the photos online, oddly enough in PDF format, and a reward is offered for information.

I have assembled here a montage of each suspect. You can view the original photos at the above link.

The Welfare State

A list circulating in the blogosphere enumerates some of the more outrageous "emergency" spending items included in a "supplemental appropriations bill" intended to fund the War on Terror. Oregon is the butt of the joke (you just gotta laugh) in at least two of these items:

Secure Rural Schools Act (Forest County Payments): Provides $400 million to be used for one-time payments to be allocated to states under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. This program provides a funding stream (known as forest county payments) to counties with large amounts of Bureau of Land Management land, in order to compensate for the loss of receipt-sharing payments on this land caused by decreased revenue from timber sales due to environmental protections for endangered species. The authorization for these forest county payments expired at the end of FY 2006, and counties received their last payment under the Act in December 2006.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Provides $60.4 million for fishing communities, Indian tribes, individuals, small businesses, including fishermen, fish processors, and related businesses for assistance related to "the commercial fishery failure." According to the Committee Report, this funding is to be used to provide disaster relief for those along the California and Oregon coast affected by the "2006 salmon fishery disaster in the Klamath River."

The sinister aim of this innocuous-sounding legislation is to create a permanent dependency—to make Oregon State the Welfare State.

The Mail Tribune and every other newspaper in the state has nothing but praise for the legislators and lobbyists who brought this about. The minority of us who actually pay taxes have no reason to be grateful; the money will ultimately come out of our pockets. I intend to vote against the whole lot.

Twenty Years Ago In The Economist

Packed in that tattered old briefcase:

Nigel Lawson's budget did everything that Margaret Thatcher needs to win another general election.

The Economist devoted seven full pages to Britain's Budget as well as a 72-page survey of international banking, of which, to be fair, 41 were advertisement. Typical issues of The Economist ran about 100 pages.

American Survey noted that:

Alarm about America's impending crack-down on illegal workers is spreading fast. In the past three months, border patrols have picked up only half their usual quota of foreigners trying to make their way into the United States through Mexico.

I'm glad we finally got that taken care of.

Books and Arts reviewed a collection of essays by the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel:

Mr Havel has been asked time and again about the future of Czechoslovakia, the aims of Charter 77 (of which he was a founder) and the strength of this small opposition. These questions, he thinks, are not pertinent. What should be asked is how totalitarian regimes affect people's ordinary lives. Missiles facing each other across an iron curtain are hardly relevant to that question; the power of communist states will be curbed only when citizens confront their own lack of belief, a process which, says Mr Havel, will lead them into open confrontation with their governments.

Another hopeless dreamer, no doubt.

The Big Sister We Can Do Without

Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune:

You want a uniter, not a divider? Clinton has a way of uniting people who ordinarily would be pelting each other with eggs.

That explains the appeal of the new YouTube spoof, modeled on Apple's famous "1984" Super Bowl commercial, which portrays her as a blandly sinister Big Sister on a giant screen, uttering phony platitudes to an army of robotic slaves. It ends happily when a blonde female athlete sprints in and hurls a sledgehammer at the screen, obliterating the image.

Though the ad included a plug for Barack Obama (it has been traced to a now-former employee of a consulting firm that works for him), it would draw equal ovations if it were shown at a meeting of MoveOn or the Heritage Foundation. Which raises the question: If the right regards her as a dangerous leftist and the left regards her as an unprincipled accomplice in the Iraq disaster, who really likes her?

Via Lucianne.

Hateful Sizeist Comments

Al Gore has roughly four times the mass of Ann Coulter. So why doesn't she pick on somebody her own size?

I don't want to suggest that Al's getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, "That reminds me — we have to do something about saving the polar bears."

Ooh, that's good. Hit him again, Ann!

Americans spend an extra $2.2 billion on gas a year because they're overweight, requiring more fuel in cars to carry the extra pounds. So even with all those papal indulgences, Gore may have a small carbon footprint, but he has a huge carbon butt-print.

Don't even want to think about that.

You Already Have

John Backus, R.I.P.

"Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701, writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."

John Backus, the inventor of the FORTRAN language, died in Ashland on Saturday.

Greg sends a link to an interview with Backus's daughters in the Mail Tribune, which I had missed.

Burrowing Dinosaurs Found In Montana

Yeah, we knew about those.

On The Other Hand

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix-area physician and director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy -- a group founded in 2003 to promote moderate Muslim ideas through its Web site (www.aifdemocracy.org) -- told The Washington Times his group will raise money for legal fees for passengers if they are sued by the imams.

—The Washington Times.

Dubai Aerospace

AVweb:

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has proposed a $1.5 billion deal to buy Landmark Aviation, an FBO network with 35 locations, and Standard Aero, a provider of overhauls and maintenance for turbine engines.... DAE is a fairly new company, established in February 2006, with plans to expand into all sectors of aerospace over the next 10 years -- from training to manufacturing to aircraft leasing and maintenance -- investing $15 billion and employing 30,000 workers. It's owned by the state and chaired by Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of the Emirates airline group. Robert Johnson, formerly the CEO of Honeywell Aerospace, was named CEO last summer.

A chain of Muslim-owned flight schools? Sure, what the heck.

Some Kind Of Volution

The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon:

Kris Helphinstine lasted less than two weeks on the job as a new Sisters High School biology teacher. The school board fired him last Monday night on the recommendation of Superintendent Ted Thonstad...

"Actually, I did not teach creationism," Helphinstine said. "That's one thing I did not teach. I understand that's not my job. As far as what I taught. I taught ... natural selection, the effects of natural selection, genetic drifts and allele frequency that's what I taught."

That's not how some parents of students in the class see it. One parent, John Rahm, said his daughter reported that only "one day of 10" was devoted to the study of evolution, with the rest devoted to devoted to "Intelligent Design" materials....

That's a Good Question

Dr. Helen looks at bumper stickers.

Probably Never Saw It Coming

A Piper Cherokee with two men aboard crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Gleneden Beach on Saturday.

So far, part of the nose, fuselage, landing gear, one wheel, a headset and fabric from a seat have been recovered.

A Silverton pilot and man from Woodburn are presumed to have died in the crash. Raymond Mullen, 59, was flying the rented plane, with 61-year-old Larry Underhill as a passenger, when the plane slammed at high impact into the ocean Saturday, Winn said.

Mullen and Underhill took the plane up for a "breakfast fly-in" during the weekend at Siletz Bay State Airport near Gleneden Beach.

Authorities said the plane was rented from a flying club in Mulino. Calls to the Aero Dynamics Flying Club were not immediately returned.

Officials have no idea what exactly happened. "There was some fog in the area on Saturday," said Operations Spc. 1st Class Steven Kent, of the Coast Guard Group North Bend. The wind was calm and the seas were reasonable, but visibility came in and out."

High impact, fog, no instrument rating. You cannot fly by the seat of your pants.

Blue Moon

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Laughing Lab Rats

John Tierney's tickling rats. And the rats are laughing.

Aristotle declared that humans are the only animal to laugh, but then, he never saw this video of Jaak Panksepp tickling rats.

When you play it, you’ll hear the tickled rats chirping — an ultrasonic noise that’s audible thanks to the special equipment that enabled Dr. Panksepp and his colleagues to discover this phenomenon. Young rats make the same chirp when they chase and play with one another, and they like to hang out with other rats who chirp at this frequency (50 kHz). It seems to be a happy sound: rats will run mazes and press levers in order to be tickled, and they’ll emit the same chirp when the dopamine reward circuits in the brain are stimulated.

Film at eleven.

Protection Costs Increase Sharply

I'm Chiquita Banana, and I've come to say
Bananas want no trouble and we're willing to pay.

Chiquita agreed to pay a fine of $25 million, slightly more than half the profits its Colombian banana-growing operation earned during that period. The first payment of $5 million is due at sentencing on June 1.

That's considerably more than they had to pay the AUC.

Chiquita paid more than $1.7 million starting in 1997 to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, a violent right-wing group...

Maybe this violent right-wing group will provide better service.

Two Reports From Kurdistan

One from Michael J. Totten and one from Christopher Hitchens.

If you'd rather just look at the pictures, click on Totten.

Four Years On

"So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?"

Christopher Hitchens answers the question.

21st Century Libertarianism

Virginia Postrel identifies in the American libertarian movement "four distinctive yet complementary traditions, two cultural and two intellectual." She clearly favors the "Hayek-Friedman" tradition:

Most of the libertarian movement’s persuasive and policy triumphs have come from this non-utopian, empiricist approach.

Instead of the Continental quest for certainty, this second intellectual tradition is inspired by the Anglo-Scottish heritage of skeptical inquiry. It is the tradition of Smith and Hume, animated by a love not only of liberty but of the learning, prosperity, and cosmopolitan sociability made possible by a society in which ideas and goods can be freely exchanged. It looks for understanding, for facts, and for solutions to specific problems. Its distrust of grand plans and refusal to embrace the one best way—even the one best libertarian way—made it out of place in the 20th century. They make it essential for the 21st.

For extra credit, read it all.

Free Land In Alaska

CNN:

Anderson, a little town in Alaska's interior, has no gas station, no grocery store and no traffic lights, but it does have plenty of woodsy land -- and it's free to anyone willing to put down roots in the often-frozen ground.

In a modern twist on the homesteading movement that populated the Plains in the 1800s, the community of 300 people is offering 26 large lots on spruce-covered land in a part of Alaska that has spectacular views of the Northern lights and Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak.

And what's an occasional day of 60-below cold in a town removed from big-city ills?

TerraServer map here. Web site here.

And a little more information here.

There's No Excuse For This

Roseburg News-Review:

A Klamath Falls pilot ran out of fuel and crashed into a snow-filled ravine west of Diamond Lake late Friday night, but he survived the crash and was rescued.

Marshall Alexander, 56, of Klamath Falls, was flying alone in a four-seat, fixed-wing Cessna 182 when he crashed around 11:45 p.m....

Alexander reported around 11 p.m. that he was lost and running low on fuel, according to a media release from the Oregon Wing Civil Air Patrol. He was unable to maintain altitude and crashed shortly afterward.

The plane was his: N6462A. The accident report should appear in a week or so.