ANDY BOWERS has a podcast roundup at Slate.
Archive for 2005
August 21, 2005
A RATHER BRUTAL FISKING of the New York Times’ “Peak Oil” article, from Steven Levitt at the Freakonomics weblog:
One might think that doomsday proponents would be chastened by the long history of people of their ilk being wrong: Nostradamus, Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, etc. Clearly they are not. . . . The NY Times article totally flubs the economics time and again.
Oil, of course, is not a unitary commodity. Huge amounts of oil, from shale and tar sands and other reserves, become economically exploitable at prices not much higher than we’re seeing now. At most, we’re facing “peak cheap oil,” and so far I’m not convinced that we’re there yet, even though I’m not quite as optimistic as these guys are.
IS THE THIRD YEAR OF LAW SCHOOL WORTH IT? They’re discussing this, over at The Volokh Conspiracy.
It’s certainly worth it for the law professors!
They’re not children in Iraq; they’re grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as “children.” If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton’s Oval Office, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee “child” who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.
I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in ”Sex And The City.”
Ouch. He’s going to make a lot of people regret that whole “the personal is political” thing . . . .
Not even proud Bush-hater Jonathan Chait is impressed with the Sheehan argument as interpreted by Dowd:
Everybody, of course, ought to feel horrible for Sheehan, and to honor her son’s bravery. But Sheehan’s supporters don’t just want us to sympathize with her. They believe that her loss gives her views on the Iraq war more sway than the views of the rest of us. As Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, “the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.” . . .
One of the important ideas of a democratic culture is that we all have equal standing in the public square. That doesn’t mean stupid ideas should be taken as seriously as smart ones. It means that the content of an argument should be judged on its own merits.
One doubts that Dowd would grant “absolute” moral authority to, say, the Pope, and her uncharacteristic embrace of the notion here seems a bit opportunistic, as, in fact, does the whole episode.
Jeff Jarvis has more thoughts. And judging by the poll data reported by Will Franklin it’s mostly involved both sides playing to their bases without doing much to affect opinions.
EGYPTIAN BLOGGER BIG PHARAOH IS VERY UNHAPPY:
U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure. . . .
Why not tell the state department and the US diplomats in Iraq “what the American people want”? Why not side with those Iraqi women who demonstrated for equal rights in downtown Baghdad and not let them down? Why not side with those secular and religious Iraqis who do not want a constitution dictated by Iran? I’d rather have the constitution delayed for 10 more years than rushing it through like this!!
Please take a few seconds to call the US state department NOW and raise this issue. The deadline for the constitution is tomorrow (Monday August 22nd).
US State Department:
202-647-4000
More numbers here.
As he notes, the Kurds are unhappy with this development, and though I’m certainly no expert that seems like a red-flag to me.
Read this item from Austin Bay, too. There are limits, of course, to how much we can tell the Iraqis to do with regard to their own constitution, but given the evidence (mentioned by Publius earlier) that Iraqi citizens are more liberal on the subject of religion than are their representatives here, there seems no reason to rush this, and, in fact, many reasons to hold back.
This makes me wonder what the diplomats are thinking, and I can’t help but feel that they should probably think again.
UPDATE: More on the Kurds’ unhappiness, here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Sunnis don’t like it either. That may actually be good news — or evidence that there are wheels within wheels here.
MORE: More here: “The repercussions of this policy are huge. Allowing fundamentalism to take hold in Iraq would be a mistake of epic proportions. Supporting and ecouraging such a move would be, in my mind, an impeachable offense. Be very careful here Mr. President.”
SPACE ELEVATOR UPDATE: IEEE Spectrum has an interesting article on the subject:
It now costs about US $20 000 per kilogram to put objects into orbit. Contrast that rate with the results of a study I recently performed for NASA, which concluded that a single space elevator could reduce the cost of orbiting payloads to a remarkably low $200 a kilogram and that multiple elevators could ultimately push costs down below $10 a kilogram. With space elevators we could eventually make putting people and cargo into space as cheap, kilogram for kilogram, as airlifting them across the Pacific.
The implications of such a dramatic reduction in the cost of getting to Earth orbit are startling. It’s a good bet that new industries would blossom as the resources of the solar system became accessible as never before. Take solar power: the idea of building giant collectors in orbit to soak up some of the sun’s vast power and beam it back to Earth via microwaves has been around for decades. But the huge size of the collectors has made the idea economically unfeasible with launch technologies based on chemical rockets. With a space elevator’s much cheaper launch costs, however, the economics of space-based solar power start looking good. . . . I have found that the schedule for more elevators, after the first, could be compressed to as little as six months. The first country or consortium to finish an elevator would therefore gain an almost unbeatable head start over any competitors.
Bring it on. And, yes, I’ve been doing more tech-blogging lately. That’s because I’m writing a tech-related book, I guess.
UPDATE: Tim Worstall has thoughts.
CLEANER AIR in Tennessee: I’ve noticed that the view of the mountains has gotten clearer in recent years. On the other hand, this summer has seemed rather murky.
UPDATE: More information, with links to some interesting charts and graphs, here. Things really are getting better.
JIM LINDGREN: “It is quite depressing to read descriptions of how investigations or captures of Osama Bin Laden or other Al Qaeda were hindered by lawyers, rules developed by lawyers, or fears of lawyers.” This has been an issue in other settings, too, with the Pentagon bringing in lawyers to approve air strikes and the like. There’s no question that this is the most heavily-lawyered war in history. But, even as someone who loves lawyers, I doubt that’s a good thing.
THIS IS COOL:
Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.
Or maybe it’s warm. . . .
GOOD NEWS FROM LONDON:
SCOTLAND YARD believes it has thwarted an Al-Qaeda gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 then identified an Al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the attack.
The encrypted e-mails are said to have been decoded with the help of an Al-Qaeda “supergrass”. By revealing the terrorists’ code he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre at Cheltenham, to crack several more plots.
The discovery of the suspected Commons nerve gas plot was behind the decision to increase security around parliament this summer.
(Via Hugh Hewitt).
PATTERICO has an oped in today’s L.A. Times. He’s not kind.
August 20, 2005
AN IRAQI FRIEND OF AUSTIN BAY’S weighs in on the Iraqi Constitution.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: “Having a government employee giving money to a litigious environmental group suing the same guy the government scientist is investigating sure looks like a conflict of interest and potential for prejudgment to me.” Indeed.
YES, BIRTH CONTROL IS IMPERFECT: But I think that Jennifer Roback Morse would be even less happy if it worked flawlessly. I’m unpersuaded.
SO MOVIE STUDIOS are going to cut way back on newspaper ads. Part of this is because they don’t think that their customers read newspapers anymore — and part of it is because they don’t have as many customers as they used to. Of course, why they don’t have as many customers is unclear, but I like this theory:
“Here’s what we know about 2005: The movies are not as good,” said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners.
Indeed. (Via Bill Quick).
UPDATE: Some (sort of) related thoughts from Roger Simon. And read this, too.
THE LATEST CARNIVAL OF CHINESE BLOGS is up.
BACK HOME: Drove to Nashville this morning, did my talk, drove back. About 6 hours of driving for 4 hours there. But the event was put together by a former research assistant, so I couldn’t say no.
I can attest that however much people are complaining about gas prices, it doesn’t seem to be slowing them down. Traffic was flying. I drove the RX-8, which got a so-so 22 miles per gallon. However, they were FKMPG: “Fred Krause Miles Per Gallon,” defined as “the mileage obtained by a vehicle traveling 85 miles per hour with the air conditioner set on ‘MAX.'” It’s a somewhat more demanding standard than the EPA version . . . .
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