FUTUREPUNDIT: “With oil hitting $117 per barrel major media organizations are paying more attention to the future availability of oil. On the one hand, a New York Times discusses worries about future energy availability. On the other hand, the analysis still lends considerable credence to the idea that large increases in oil production are possible.” Bring it on.
Archive for 2008
April 22, 2008
EARTH-SAVING DONE RIGHT: I’ve got a column in the New York Post today on global warming, the environment, and what to do.
UPDATE: Dan Collins writes: “Geez, Glenn, you’re starting to look like Ray Kurzweil. I think you ought to get away from the screen more.” It’s the life-extension treatments. Soon everyone will look like Ray Kurzweil. It’s worth it to live 1000 years, though. I think.
ANDREW IAN DODGE reviews J.D. Johannes’ Iraq documentary trilogy, Outside the Wire. “The DVD should be seen by as many people as possible; whether they are for the war, against it or merely indifferent. This is documentary making at its rawest and best.”
READER KALIPH EMAILS:
My wife & I have been looking to get a new gas grill & I’ve been having a hard time figuring out which one to purchase. Sadly, my first thought was to search your archives & amazingly I came up with no hits on this. Grilling comes up from time to time, so I was a little surprised.
So if you’ve been meaning to put up a post with the collected knowledge of your audience with regards to gas grill recommendations, I’d be all for it.
Or failing that, if you know of a good place to get some good reviews/advice on a grill, that’d work too I guess.
Obviously, I’m a big fan of the site. Keep up the good work.
You know, it’s been years since I bought a gas grill. Any reader recommendations?
SOME DISTURBING FACTS ABOUT EDUCATION, from Greg Mankiw.
ANOTHER ANTIWAR SUICIDE BOMB: “British cinema verite director Nick Broomfield’s film ‘Battle For Haditha’ is joining the rest of the wannabe Iraq-exploitation movie failures at reaching audiences with anything resembling truth or interest..”
Pick up a copy of Outside the Wire instead. Amazon’s even offering it bundled with Michael Yon’s book. Call it the Iraq War honesty-pack.
WAFFLEGATE! How does a candidate avoid the press for 10 days, and get away with it?
REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of this weekend’s book reviews from various newspapers.
RANDY NEAL: Democratic Convention 101.
“CHICAGO SOUNDS LIKE MOSUL:” That’s an email from . . . Michael Yon, who knows his Mosul. Here’s the story on last weekend’s violence. Still, they’re different: One has crooked officials, violent gangs with their hooks into government and law enforcement, and a culture of corruption that has resisted the central government’s effects to clean it up, and the other is a city in Iraq.
UPDATE: Fred Butzen emails: “I’m surprised you overlooked this difference: One has crazy preachers, and the other is in the Middle East.”
MORE: Another reader emails:
It really should be no surprise, since Chicago and Illinois itself have been failing to reach their political benchmarks for years now.
It is too bad there is not some powerful politician who might have served the Chicago area and brought them Change and Hope. If there was, we could blame him for the “complete failure” to achieve those political benchmarks and reduce sectarian strife.
Heh.
A LOOK AT WINDOWS XP Service Pack 3.
WE’RE NUMBER ONE: Knoxville gets rated worst for asthma. Plausible, maybe, given the immense variety of pollen here — though the WebMD ratings list “the lack of a smoking ban in public places” as a reason, and we’ve had one of those since last year. This calls their research into question.
April 21, 2008
ADVICE FROM BRENDAN LOY: “One cautionary note to those who, like me, are hoping for a strong Obama showing. Don’t put any stock in the leaked exit poll numbers. I’ll publish the details tomorrow, but bottom line, when you look at New Hampshire, Super Tuesday and March 4, Obama does, on average, roughly 7 to 8 points worse in the actual, final results than in the leaked, unweighted exit polls.”
OVER AT JERRY POURNELLE’S PLACE, some thoughts about evolution and creationism:
The ID/fundamentalists only posit a Creator who acts in ways that make sense to people, with human motivations (and yes, some folks like Hoyle—RIP, a great man—did not fit into this category). I’m back with Greg Benford about that: “The thing about aliens is, they’re alien.” The same thing holds true for deities. We *cannot* understand the universe from quanta to quasars, genes to galaxies. At least not now.
The AAs fit the same mold. I know better than Dawkins about the limitations of evolutionary thought on a molecular level (he is not a molecular biologist, as I am). Yet his pride shows in every syllable. The Greeks had a word for this: hubris.
None of this is new, and you have a great deal to contend with at present. All I am saying is that both “sides” miss the point: we should be humble about ourselves and our place in the universe. We cannot *know* if a Creator exists. We can only *believe* if one exists, or does not. And we should definitely be humble about our own tools to probe the universe—they are sparse and primitive.
The Fundamentalists who say the most ignorant things about evolution are wrong on their side. And Dawkins and Myers and their ilk, who dare to call people of faith “stupid” (while their own atheism requires as much faith as any snake handling fundamentalist), revolt me.
Mark Twain once wrote that we didn’t know whether or not there was life after death. But soon enough we would know, so why fret about it?
Indeed. Robert Heinlein said something similar.
BRITAIN CANCELS ST. GEORGE DAY PARADE over fear of Muslim riots. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.
OBAMA REFUSES TO DEBATE CLINTON in North Carolina.
Allah is disappointed: “I wonder, are the creme de la nutroots creme who signed this letter also cool with this last debate being canceled? How else are we going to reclaim the opportunity denied us by ABC to learn about their policy proposals, aside from visiting their websites or googling the transcripts of their previous 21 debates?”
THREATS OF FOOD RATIONING? But I filled my tank with 10% ethanol!
And having just been to the mall, I’ll say that some people are well-positioned to get through any coming famine . . . .
I’VE OFTEN ECHOED THE PREDICTION that Hillary Clinton would make the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history, but here’s some evidence that it just might be true:
Hillary: If Iran Attacked Israel With Nukes ‘We Would Be Able to Totally Obliterate Them’
If the Iranians are smart, they’ll believe her. I think she’d kinda like obliterating somebody.
UPDATE: “I like Hillary best when she shows her hawkishness.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Alex Knapp disagrees.
KNOXVILLE EXPATRIATES MAY LIKE THIS, a picture from the last Kay’s Ice Cream still in existence. Once these were ubiquitous, but they began a gradual slide toward extinction in the 1970s and now there’s only this one, on Chapman Highway, still in business. It’s a full-service place, still featuring lots of different ice creams and a “Kay Burger” from the grill. But it’s a bit the worse for wear — the giant ice cream cone is supposed to have a kid on the ladder, licking the ice cream, but he’s disappeared.
And no, I’ve never tried the “Frozen Tamale.”
It was closed on Sunday when I drove by, but I took a picture. I’ll try to post some inside pictures from when it’s open some time.
Baskin-Robbins just isn’t the same, to say nothing of Maggie Moo’s, Cold Mountain Creamery, and the like.
James Lileks could no doubt do a more poetic job. I’ll just say that I’m glad there’s still one of these in business, somewhere.
SCOTT WILSON’S war.
THE YALE “ABORTION ART” STORY JUST GETS WEIRDER: Eugene Volokh has thoughts on the latest developments.
OKAY, I WAS BASHING BUSH YESTERDAY for not doing enough, so I should note this report: “The Bush administration is intervening with governments in southern Africa to prevent a Chinese ship carrying weapons for Zimbabwe’s security forces from unloading its cargo, The Associated Press has learned.” Any guns going to Zimbabwe should be going to the opposition.
ERIK SOFGE: Are Hollywood science fiction movies going down the tubes?
A quick comparison: In 1982, the year’s major sci-fi releases included Blade Runner, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Thing and Tron. In 2007, we saw Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, 28 Weeks Later, I Am Legend, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Invasion, Resident Evil: Extinction, Spider-Man 3 and Transformers. In this glut of sequels, remakes and comic, cartoon and video-game adaptations, the closest thing to an original production was I Am Legend, based on a classic novel that had already been made into multiple movies. Unfortunately, the science in that movie is on par with Optimus Prime’s magic, robot-killing heart, or the completely brushed-aside explanation of the Silver Surfer’s cosmic abilities. In all of these movies—particularly the ones based on comics—technology is used to leap sudden chasms in the plot, then shoved quickly out of sight. They get away with this because we no longer expect it to make sense. After all, it’s a comic … or a video game, or a cartoon, or a live-action movie that feels like a cartoon. So it’s supposed to be stupid, right? . . .
What’s missing from Hollywood sci-fi, and what the comic adaptations continue to smother, is a celebration of smarts. The smaller movies have them—films like Sunshine and Primer. In fiction, writers like Charles Stross are pushing the limits of the genre. Maybe next year’s Star Trek reboot will make quantum physics look cool again. And if anyone can return some credibility to science-fiction movies, it’s James Cameron, whose long-gestating Avatar (about a human remote-operating a robot on a distant, alien planet) also shows up next year.
Let’s hope. They can’t all be Destination Moon, but, yeah.
PATERNITY FRAUD LEGISLATION killed in Tennessee: I don’t see why this bill counts as “anti-family.” I thought we banned involuntary servitude.
UPDATE: More on this story here. A lot of commenters were laboring under the same misapprehension I was.
LOADS OF STUFF on tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary, at TalkLeft.