WHY I LOVE COOL EDIT PRO: Cool Edit Pro is an audio editing program. There are others that are bigger sellers (WaveLab and Sound Forge, for example, both of which I also have, and which are perfectly fine). But Cool Edit Pro is the geek’s favorite, and here’s an example of why. I was reading the manual the other day. I hadn’t bothered before because Cool Edit is very intuitive, and if you know your way around a recording studio most of its functions are quite obvious and easy to use. But the manual’s actually very good, and in the midst of a multi-page section on different types of filters I ran across this:

Cool Edit Pro attempts to give as much flexibility as possible when designing filters. You can specify pass and stop band frequencies and an attenuation dB, and Cool Edit Pro will do the rest. However, advanced users may want to set the order of the filter for a number of reasons. . . . There is also an option 2 for this type. For this you specify everything but passband ripple, and Cool Edit Pro picks that. This can lead to some pretty strange-looking filters, but is good to give you an idea of the tradeoffs involved if nothing else. This is a holdover from the bad old days when filters were expensive and one was always trying to push what could be done with a low order filter. Now it’s just there as a learning tool.

“Now it’s just there as a learning tool.” I love that philosophy, and the whole program is that way. It’s easy to use, but it’s designed to teach you things as you use it. Not coincidentally, it began its life as shareware.

THE VILLE has comments on the weekend’s “peace” protests. Cato is unimpressed too, though he’s addressing a slightly different group of antiwar activists. Meanwhile, reader Paul Music says that this incident reflects anti-war protesters’ ability to foresee and respond to threats.

UPDATE: Reader Howard Veit emails:

Saw one in Eugene OR this weekend. Several hundred on two street corners. I was only impressed at the lack of young people demonstrating in this college town. I saw none. This was like an old time 60’s or 70’s bunch of wandering demonstrators. Old time peace signs, scraggly looking guys and dumpy looking women (no makeup, no hair, and serape like dresses), and no organized shouting.

This is clearly the old Anti-Vietnam crowd having their alumni moment.

Could be.

NATALIE SOLENT says Putin did the right thing, in spite of the casualties. I think she’s right. The gas thing seems to have been handled in a less-than-optimal fashion, and people died.

But people would have died anyway — probably in greater numbers. And this was done in an emergency, with hostages already being killed by terrorists who were ready to die themselves.

I can’t help but feel that some of the criticism of Putin is a weird and particularly despicable form of schadenfreude, which has been echoed in a few emails that I’ve gotten, along the lines of “Your get-tough approach didn’t work too well, did it?”

It seems to me that this attitude — that it’s preferable to do nothing and let people be killed than to do something and perhaps cause people, even in smaller numbers, to be killed — is an example of the pathological fear of effectuality that I was discussing earlier.

I think that — as Natalie writes — it’s better to do something like this than to pay the Danegeld and encourage more such behavior. It’s possible that Putin’s decision will turn out to be wrong, but I don’t think so. Letting a mixture of Arab and Chechen terrorists kill over 700 citizens unobstructed would have been wrong.

UPDATE: Ron Campbell agrees. So does Cato.

SOME GUY WHO DOESN’T AGREE WITH STEVEN DEN BESTE has decided that arguing with him is too unpleasant. Instead, he thinks that Den Beste should be sealed off by some sort of Saudi-Arabian-style Internet firewall. Bruce R. of Flit isn’t having any of it.

SECURE BENEATH THE WATCHFUL EYES: I meant to link to this post on surveillance in Britain the other day, but forgot. Check it out, and be appalled.

RADLEY BALKO OFFERS ONE OF THE MOST THOUGHTFUL ANTI-WAR POSTS that I’ve seen lately. I’m still not convinced, but it’s better than anything you’ll hear from Susan Sarandon, Al Sharpton, or any of the other famous demonstrators from this weekend.

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT FROM THE ABC, Jemaah Islamiyah has plans to create an Islamic superstate including Indonesia, Australia, and apparently parts of Asia.

Kind of ambitious for a bunch of guys who just blew up a disco, but insufficient ambition has never been these guys’ problem. This may serve as a further wakeup call for Australia, though.

ANOTHER NEGATIVE REVIEW FOR MICHAEL MOORE:

The more you know about the rancid methodology of Michael Moore, who wants you to see him as an honest documentarian, the less appealing he becomes.

This is, I think, the most favorable statement in the review.

COLBY COSH has an extended rant on the terrorists-are-idiots theme. I think he’s basically right. Osama and his ideological soulmates were doing pretty well as of 9/10/2001, and they’d be doing better if they’d just left well enough alone.

UPDATE: This post by Nick Denton is, sort of, along the same lines.

EUGENE VOLOKH PERFORMS A GENTLE-YET-THOROUGH FISKING OF FRANK RICH. He’s good at that.

INSTA-POWER, BABY! I don’t know if it was in response to the comments at the end of this post or — more likely — in response to comments from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s lawyers, but the AP has issued this clarification to yesterday’s Bellesiles story:

ATLANTA (AP) — An Oct. 26 Associated Press story about the resignation of Emory University professor Michael Bellesiles amid questions about his research for a book on the history of guns in America mentioned three other historians or academics recently caught up in controversy over their work.

The story misleadingly suggested that the three had been accused of academic fraud of a kind similar to that alleged against Bellesiles, who was found by an academic panel to be “guilty of unprofessional and misleading work” in his research. Bellesiles has denied the allegations.

In fact, the three others are not accused of fraudulent research, but of actions ranging from inadequate attribution of source material to plagiarism.

Whatever, I’m glad to see them make the point clear. (Thanks to reader Mike Daley for the headsup).

UPDATE: Fritz Schranck has criticisms of the original story and the correction. I like the Nixon comparison.

ANOTHER ANTI-SADDAM IRAQI IN AMERICA:

Mukhlis is one of 5 million Iraqi expatriates wandering the world like so many Gypsies. Unlike many of his countrymen, he’s a leader in a group looking to bring democracy to Iraq. The Iraqi National Movement has U.S. State Department support and advice from the CIA, but Mukhlis points out that if Iraq wants democracy, it’s going to have to rely on itself.

“What we are advocating is Iraqis getting rid of Saddam with American help,” he said.

What the Iraqi National Movement suggests is turning Iraq’s army against Saddam. “They have family and friends. And every family has suffered,” Mukhlis said. “The opposition has to be a broad spectrum where there’s representation for everybody.”

I wonder why anti-Saddam Iraqis in America don’t get as much attention as the much smaller number of anti-American Americans who go to Iraq?

ANDREW STUTTAFORD ON VIETNAM ANALOGIES:

NPR ran a story this morning on this weekend’s ‘peace’ demonstrations in the US. The reporter noted that many of those demonstrating were veterans of Vietnam war era protest. In a revealing slip of the tongue, one woman recalled how those protests had “ended Vietnam”. Indeed they did. Within two years of the US withdrawal, South Vietnam had fallen to communist rule. Thousands were murdered by the new regime, an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 people (out of a population of twenty million) were incarcerated in concentration (oh sorry, ‘re-education’ ) camps for periods of up to ten years, and hundreds of thousands of boat people took the dangerous and often fatal route into exile. Quarter of a century later Vietnam remains a communist dictatorship. Doubtless the Vietnamese are most grateful to the peace campaigners of yesteryear.

And the campaigners remain proud of their success.

I’VE BEEN WORKING on my TechCentralStation column for this week (inspired by Jim Henley’s “a pack, not a herd” phrase) and ran across this post from September. I think that as people fight over the Homeland Security department, it’s worth remembering that so far on-the-spot responses from ordinary non-law-enforcement people — the passengers on Flight 93, the folks on hand at LAX when Mohammed Hadayet started shooting, the passengers who subdued “shoebomber” Richard Reid, and now the truck driver who spotted Muhammad and Malvo’s Caprice — have been responsible for pretty much all of our domestic victories against terrorism.

BELLESILES UPDATE: The New York Times has finally run a story on Bellesiles’ resignation in disgrace — but it’s just the AP story from yesterday. Given all the attention that the Times gave Bellesiles’ book when it came out (and even the big story it ran early on attacking Bellesiles’ critics) it’s rather surprising that it’s giving this denouement so little attention.

Or maybe it’s not so surprising, after all.

UPDATE: When I blogged the above I was working from memory. The Times story in question is pretty pro-Bellesiles and paints his critics in a fairly negative light, but “attacking Bellesiles’ critics” probably gives an overly harsh view of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t have a web link for it.

DIANA HSIEH is a proud alumna of the Front Sight Institute. She’s thus rather unhappy to discover a connection between the Institute’s head and the Church of Scientology.

JIM BENNETT’S ADVICE TO EUROPE: Be careful what you wish for — you might get it. “Americans must stop equating ‘Europe’ with the European Union. Europeans often complain about the failure of Americans to discern fine yet significant nuances in local situations. Thinking of Europe and the European Union as the same thing is precisely a failure to discern an important difference, although it is probably not the nuance European intellectuals had in mind.”

I also like his suggestion for moving NATO headquarters to Warsaw or Budapest. (I’ll bet Nick Denton would agree with him).

UPDATE: Reader Matt Crandall writes: “How about the Europeans stop equating all ‘Americans’ with cowboys? Perhaps the Europeans would also like to discover the significant nuances in our fifty states.” Heh. I don’t know — moving NATO HQ is one thing, but Crandall’s proposal seems a bit unrealistic to me. . . .

IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN: Michele at A Small Victory responds to Susan Sarandon.

MY DOUBTS ABOUT THE “SLEEPING GAS” appear to be correct:

The doctors in the footage described the gas as being a neuro-paralyzing agent, one that disables the body’s nervous system. The description contrasts with other reports that described it as a sleeping gas.

Several readers point out that it seems to have killed an awful lot of the terrorists in proportion to the hostages. I’m reminded of the “Vee-Two nerve gas” from E.E. Smith’s vintage science fiction stories: disabling, but fatal after a while without the antidote. This seems quite similar.

(Link via Shoutin’ Across the Pacific).

MORAL EQUIVALENCE is hitting a new high in Germany. One wonders if this was the agenda all along.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM takes on Professor Diana Abu Jabr, who seems to think that people aren’t agreeing with her because they’re afraid to speak out. Sjostrom suggests that perhaps it’s just that not that many people agree with her.

(Blogger problems, link broken, scroll down, blah blah).

UPDATE: Hmm. Or maybe she just can’t read them because they’ve adopted the mind-boggling new lefty approach to debate identified by Nick Denton.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Maybe there are just a lot more Grandpa Jones types out there than Professor Abu Jabr realizes. (And no, he’s not the father of Mother Jones, though that would make a kind of sense, wouldn’t it?)

Meanwhile Josh Chafetz says that Abu Jabr confuses epistemology and ontology. “Please don’t confuse losing a debate with having your opinions silenced.”

MORE ON THE BIN LADEN / CHECHNYA CONNECTION, in today’s Times:

The documents contain a handwritten statement by Zawahiri in which he signs himself Amin Abdulah Aman Mohammed, a businessman. “We entered Dagestan to study the local market and to build contacts for our business,” he wrote.

There is little doubt of the captive’s real identity, however — files stored on an Al-Qaeda laptop computer which later surfaced in Kabul contain extensive notes written by Zawahiri about his failed mission.

He came to the Caucasus in search of a new base: like Bin Laden he had found a safe haven in Sudan, but in 1996 both men were among militants who were expelled.

Chechnya seemed ideal — Muslim rebels had defeated the Russian army and gained de facto independence in their first war which had just ended in humiliating defeat for Moscow.

Zawahiri is not the only possible link between Chechnya and Al-Qaeda. A court in Hamburg heard last week that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, planned to travel to Chechnya to fight there.

The Times story expects Putin to make much of this. Will he make enough of it to start supporting the United States in the Security Council?

GORE VIDAL probably isn’t out of bed yet, but his column in the Observer today has already been Fisked.

UPDATE: Damian Penny has a roundup of responses, and observes:

Vidal’s pathetic conspiracy theorizing is yet another example of the moral quandary in which the ultra-left finds itself. The one and only guiding principle for the fringe left is that the United States is the most evil, oppressive country the world has ever known, period. And when an “alternative” like Islamofascism – a movement completely opposed to every stated goal of the far left, including women’s rights and acceptance of homosexuality – comes along, the left is left with three choices: acknowledge that the Yanks and their allies are the lesser of two evils (as Christopher Hitchens has done); pretend to be “neutral” in the conflict, on the basis that (American) military action can never, ever be justified; or, in the case of Vidal and the IndyMidiots, assume that the Americans – especially the Republican president and his inner circle – must be in the wrong, because they simply cannot comprehend them ever being right. When the third option is chosen, wild conspiracy theorizing is what you get.

Yep. On a related front, the Angry Clam has a collection of links to Wellstone-related conspiracy theories.

EGYPT AND ANTISEMITISM: Geitner Simmons has a long post. Excerpt:

And so, with the new Egyptian TV series on the Protocols, the lies of anti-Semitism march into a new century. The ancient anti-Semite Manetho surely would be delighted.

Egyptians ought to be ashamed that such ignorance is about to be displayed so rapturously in their country. That they are not should give Americans great pause about the depths of prejudice and gullibility in the Muslim-Arab world.

Or no pause at all.

FLASHBUNNY has a hilarious post on why Hollywood has an unrealistic attitude toward guns and gun control:

Of course, we can see where they’re coming from. A lot of movies would be pretty short when practical, real-world gun usage came into play. Consider the lack of suspense and drama if proper gun usage was depicted in the following movies:

Cujo: “Oh no, I’m trapped in my car by a large, rabid dog. Where did I put my Glock?”

The Birds: “Boy, the air is so thick with birds, you don’t even have to

aim.”

Signs: “Unarmed aliens are trying to kill us? Grab the AK’s boys, we’re

going a-huntin’.”

Se7en: “Some psycho is trying to force me to eat until I die. I think I’ll

shoot him instead.”

Fargo: “Oh no, two men have broken into my house and are trying to kidnap

me. How will I get their bloodstains out of my carpet???”

Halloween: “If I can’t actually kill Jason, he’s going to look pretty damn

funny walking around after I blow his head off with a 12 gauge.”