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Archive for 2010
May 21, 2010
SAVING FACE IN KOREA: Austin Bay writes:
The Korean War started with an explosive communist attack that raised the specter of global nuclear war. Now it appears it may end with a communist implosion, one that risks igniting a brief but terrible nuclear conflict in East Asia, should North Korea hit Seoul or Tokyo with a nuke.
Seoul’s suburbs lie within range of North Korean artillery. A North Korean fighter-bomber, heading south from communist airspace, will reach Seoul in minutes. South Korea’s Samsung Corp. is one of the largest private employers in the Texas county in which I live. This means Pyongyang doesn’t need nukes to attack Texas’ economy, a fact of life among the 21st century’s economically, politically and technologically linked.
Global linkage and Pyongyang’s nuclear quest explain the caution stirring this strange twilight of an old war — caution expressed in Washington, caution followed to the point of kowtow by a South Korean government that hoped the Cheonan suffered a tragic accident.
Read the whole thing.
“TODAY MUST BE IRONY DAY IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE,” Ed Morrissey writes, adding, “First we have Cuba calling immigration enforcement ‘brutal,’ and now we have gun-control politicians demonstrating why the founders passed the Second Amendment in the first place. When challenged by a reporter to explain how gun control makes the city safer when it only disarms the law-abiding, Mayor Richard Daley responded by offering to demonstrate by shooting him.”
“WAIT. HIS NAME WASN’T TRIPPY?” I’d tell you why I ran across that but I’ve sworn off self-linking for the rest of today. It has something to do with making fun of the way Reason Magazine judged its “Draw Mohammed” contest.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Today’s Google logo, in honor of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary, is actually a playable game of Pac-Man.
You didn’t want to do any work today anyway.
“STILL I AM A MARXIST,” says the Dalai Lama, conceding that capitalism has done China some good: “Millions of people’s living standards improved.” Marxism remains dear to him because it has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.” Only. Only improving the lives of millions.
IN THE MAIL: The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates.
IT’S NOT A RAT, it’s a vole. And a vole is not a fly. Remember the fly? UPDATE: Hours later, scientists determine that it was in fact a vole. You heard it first on Instapundit (thanks to my dear husband, Meade).
Maybe the ancient creatures of the Cambrian lived on longer than we thought.
With markets unsteady, this seems like a good time to recommend Benjamin Roth’s The Great Depression: A Diary. Those who don’t know history are doomed . . .
Claim: The federal government will make the health care system simpler, more accessible, and more affordable.
Why I’m dubious: The Pentagon’s recipe for brownies is 26 pages long.
ALL ABOUT 3D TECHNOLOGY at Amazon’s 3D 101.
Today’s photo of the day is from the Familia Zuccardi winery in Mendoza, Argentina.
STARTING TODAY IN MIAMI: The Cuba Nostalgia Fair.
Mexican “lake pirates”? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha. Chris Stirewalt, my Washington Examiner colleague, gets the hat tip for pointing out this amazing story from a San Antonio TV station. BTW, Chris is our politics editor and his reporting bears an uncanny resemblance in originality and insight to that of our inimitable Michael Barone. You heard it here first, friends!
“I HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO,” Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes at PJM, “but I revel in it:”
As predicted was inevitable, today the Spanish newspaper La Gaceta runs with a full-page article fessing up to the truth about Spain’s “green jobs” boondoggle, which happens to be the one naively cited by President Obama no less than eight times as his model for the United States. It is now out there as a bust, a costly disaster that has come undone in Spain to the point that even the Socialists admit it, with the media now in full pursuit.
Breaking the Spanish government’s admission here at Pajamas Media probably didn’t hurt their interest in finally reporting on the leaked admission. Obama’s obvious hope of rushing into place his “fundamental transformation” of America into something more like Europe’s social democracies — where even the most basic freedoms have been moved from individuals and families to the state — before the house of cards collapsed has suffered what we can only hope proves to be its fatal blow. At least on this front.
La Gaceta boldly exposes the failure of the Spanish renewable policy and how Obama has been following it. The headline screams: “Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster.”
A scanned PDF file of the La Gaceta article, as well as an English translation are included in Horner’s post.
GREAT MOMENTS IN HEADLINES: “Breaking News: War crimes prosecutors seek Naomi Campbell.”
(Found via Mark Steyn, who writes, “Naomi Campbell: Star War Crimes Witness? Words we never thought we’d type.”
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The Fruits of Weakness.
THOSE ARE MY PRINCIPLES. If you don’t like them, I have others.
May 20, 2010
THE CULT OF PERSONALITY.
WE’D BETTER HOPE THIS IS JUST BOMBAST: “North Korea said on Friday the peninsula was heading toward war and it was ready to tear up all agreements with the South after it accused the reclusive state of torpedoing a navy ship near their disputed border.”
CRAIG VENTER creates a cell with synthetic DNA. Venter is an interesting character. I invited him to DHS while I was in government, for an encounter that left neither of us satisfied. Here’s an excerpt from, yes, Skating on Stilts:
Craig Venter is a bald man with a beard and the tanned, bulky fitness of a sixty-year-old defying his years. He leans across the DHS conference room table as though he owns it. But the meeting isn’t going quite as smoothly as Venter expected.
If anyone represents the promise of biotech, it is Venter. He sees engineered organisms as the key to progress and riches on a vast scale. So he can’t be comfortable with the theme of the meeting.
I am pressing him on risks, not promise. Venter knows more about biotech than almost anyone. If there’s a way to avoid the dangers that come with democratizing genetic engineering, Venter should have it at his fingertips.
“What will stop terrorists from inventing new diseases?” I ask.
I’m thinking of what happened in 2001, when an Australian research project went frighteningly wrong. The researchers were trying to create a rodent contraceptive from the mousepox virus. They spliced a gene into the mousepox virus. They didn’t want to hurt the mice, so they injected the engineered virus only into mice bred for resistance to mousepox. And, adding suspenders to their belt, they vaccinated some of the mice for mousepox before administering the injection.
As a contraceptive, it turned out, the new virus was an overachiever. Dead mice don’t have sex, and dead mice were what the virus produced. The new gene turned the formerly mild mousepox virus into a killer, overriding the genetic resistance of every unvaccinated mouse. And then it turned on the vaccinated mice, killing half of them for good measure. If just one researcher made just one mistake as bad as that with human subjects, I tell Venter, even nations that had stockpiled vaccines would be destroyed. How do we know, I say, that well-intentioned hobbyists, not to mention hapless terrorists, won’t produce pathogens that are far more lethal and contagious than they intended? …
I’m hoping Venter can see something I’ve missed, some reason why democratizing this technology won’t ultimately empower the worst in human behavior as well as the best. Or at least some way to keep his beloved technology from putting humanity at risk.
I wait. Venter leans in, clears his throat. He smiles the winning smile that has charmed reporters and government funders for more than a decade.
“My, my, don’t you have an imagination,” he beams.