Guns, germs and steel

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

That bit of Ogden Nash whimsy came into my head as I thought about Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, a reflection on human history through the lens of evolutionary biology. Diamond, unlike Professor Twist, is seeking answers to real world problems. In this case, he seeks to understand the plight of indigenous peoples and their subordination to European and Asian cultures in light of evolutionary pressures. Even so, Diamond struggles awkwardly in his attempts to justify the ways of the Blind Watchmaker to men. One false note comes early in the book, when he departs from his evenhandedness to assure us that not only should we not hold New Guineans to be less intellectually endowed than Europeans (a reasonable enough assumption), but that they are probably intellectually superior. He admits that he can't demonstrate that superiority empirically, so that assertion strikes the reader as an attempt to curry favor by a politically correct reverse bias.

On the other hand, there's a lot of really stimulating and interesting stuff in this book. Diamond talks about: what kinds of foodstuffs are necessary to support civilization; why disease almost always flowed from native Europeans to native Americans (and not vice-versa), whereas Europeans encounter many new diseases when they attempted to enter Africa; why those previous two topics are related; how innovation happens; etc. It seems like there's an interesting fact or point of view whenever you turn the page.

The book seems to want to be a complete explanation for the course of human history -- it's got that sort of broad, sweeping intellectual appeal that a large work of philosophy or science has. For example, after someone learns Newtonian mechanics, he tends to see the entire universe as the interplay between physical forces that are expressed in terms of differential equations. A similar dynamic happens here.

As with most grand theories, it's important to see that there are some important limits to the analysis. While we can see why, in broad strokes, European and Asian peoples might have overwhelming advantages in human history in purely biological and geographical terms, Diamond's analysis is of no help in answering historical questions that still might strike us as large, but come within the realm of European or Asian culture, instead of at the border with other peoples. For example, it's hard to see how his analysis adds anything to our understand of conflicts such as the Greco-Persian wars, the rise and decline of Rome, the Napoleonic Wars, or the American Civil War. Certainly these questions are important, and we rightly inquire into agricultural, military, political, and culture causes for these events. In these cases Diamond's analysis is largely impossible, since we are dealing with peoples that share genetics, foodstuffs, climates, terrains, etc.

Perhaps I'm nit-picking. It's an excellent, thought-provoking book. I'd just like to temper the inevitable temptation to view all history through this lens.

Whores, and there's an end on it

Jim Geraghty at TKS writes about a Turkish movie that shows

American soldiers crash[ing] a wedding and pump[ing] a little boy full of lead in front of his mother. They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

The surprise is that it stars American actors Gary Busey and Billy Zane. It's been a while since these two have been in the money (Zane's terribly hammy performance in Titanic, e.g.), but to appear in propaganda that is both anti-American and anti-Semitic is a new low for both.

Google: Tiananmen? Never Happened!

Evan Coyne Maloney has a good bit on brain terminal about Google's selective social conscience:

Google has been taking a lot of flak, rightfully so, for censoring search results to satisfy the Chinese communist dictatorship.

The search engine is placing notices on each page notifying users that items have been censored at the request of the Chinese government, so it isn't quite as bad as Microsoft's actions to placate the Chinese, which include taking down entire websites without notice, rendering them inaccessible to the entire world. Google's censorship applies only to the version of the search engine aimed at the Chinese market. Still, for a company whose motto is 'Don't Be Evil,' the action is at best hypocritical, and it shows the slogan to be nothing more than empty P.R. sermonizing. . . .

What makes Google's actions even more hypocritical is that, just a week before this Google flap erupted, the company was hailed by privacy advocates for refusing to turn over to the U.S. Justice Department aggregate data on searches for child pornography. What a brave stand!

So Google has the backbone to rebuff to the U.S. government's attempts to fight child porn, but the Don't Be Evil company is willing to help China continue to repress its people by erasing moments from history like the Tiananmen Square massacre

Nailed.

Encyclical Letter "Deus Caritas Est"

Pope Benendict XVI's first encyclical letter "Deus Caritas Est" ("God is Love") has been published and is available in English on the Vatican's Web site. Haven't read it yet, hope to get to it this weekend.

Greg Gutfield on the Huffington Post

Greg Gutfield has a good satire up at the Puffington Host: "Marking Sunday's anniversary of the 33-year-old Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood has launched a magazine targeting 'choicers' to be given out at clinics across the country.
'This new magazine will reflect the growing concerns and needs of women in the child-nonbearing age group,' says Melody Barron, a spokesperson.

Called 'Child-Free,' the premiere issue will feature articles and sections that target this prized demographic, as well as counter all those supermarket magazines that show actresses and models happy with their new babies and pregnancies."

It gets better. Check it out.

Z-Man #2 has a new tape, too

Al-Qaeda's al-Zawahiri praises 'martyrs' in Afghanistan in audiotape - Forbes.com: "Al-Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, paid tribute to the Islamist 'martyrs' in Afghanistan, in an audiotape posted on an Islamic website purportedly from the target of an air strike last week.

The 18-minute tape, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, gave no indication of when the recording was made. But the website said it was 'a new speech by Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God protect him'. "

Pope's First Encyclical Due This Month - Forbes.com

Pope's First Encyclical Due This Month - Forbes.com: "Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he will publish his first encyclical on the different aspects of God's love next week, adding it was 'providential' the text would be released after a period of prayer for unifying all Christians. "

Sad post in the midnight hour

R.I.P. Wilson Pickett

Sen. Patrick Leahy will vote against Samuel Alito

Leahy just announced this at a speech at Georgetown Law Center. Alito isn't a done deal yet. It'll be interesting to see how the Dems play it. Red state Democrat senators will support, blue staters oppose, with a total just over 60 nominating Alito? This would immunize the party leadership against the wrath of the Left. They can say they didn't call for it because the votes weren't there, leaving Daily Kossacks to fume at the Ben Nelson's of the world, but not the Leahy's and Kennedy's . . . .

Or they can have a narrower loss and antagonize their base. Or they can call for a filibuster and probably lose the filibuster in the future.

The pro-life "conspiracy"

A good friend of mine on the other side of the abortion controversy writes to me that Alito looks assured of nomination because the pro-choice side was outmaneuvered by the pro-lifers, and the pro-choice activists did nothing. I have to wonder what planet he's on.
For example, here's the headline in huge, stop-the-presses font on NARAL's homepage:

The battle for the Supreme Court continues . . .
Stop Anti-Choice Alito
Help save the Supreme Court from President Bush:
Tell your Senators to oppose anti-choice Alito!

On the National Right to Life Committee page, we find . . . no call to action on Alito. The first and largest link is "PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION RETURNS TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT." No invective, no call to action, just a warning that activists should pay attention. The Alito link? The writers at the New York Post ("Headless Body Found in Topless Bar") are undoubtedly impressed with this attention grabbing headline: "Heightened Interest in Alito's Views on Abortion as Hearings Approach." The date on the linked story is December 6, 2005. That's right, they didn't even bother to call for his passage, and they didn't bother to update it once the hearings came or went. NRLC's volunteer copy editors are worth every cent they're paid.

How did I choose these pages? I simply googled the most prominent pro and anti abortion organization that I knew off.

Of course, I don't expect my friend to see that his analysis was wrong. Like most pro-choicers, he's convinced that Alito is likely to succeed because the pro-lifers were more vocal and focused on confirming him than the pro-choicers were on shutting him down. Why acknowledge anything that's actually occurring or address contrary evidence?

For the time being, the reality denial of the pro-choice sympathizers works against them.

Poor Richard's Birthday

The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary: "HAPPY 300th BIRTHDAY, BEN FRANKLIN!"

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

Cheerfully desperate, curmudgeonly in a breezy way, Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is a delightful, quick read. Truss takes on the tendency of email and other rapid-response technologies to send our written communications into a world of Joycean incoherence. It's a chatty thing, with lots of diversions and asides, such as the contributions of Aldo Manuzio to the wonderful world of typesetting and punctuation. This book makes a great gift for people who love books qua books and reading qua reading.

Truss have a very pleasant sense of play. For example, in a section dealing with particular punctuation rules, she loves to display those rules she's writing about within the selfsame section. Truss is clever and lively and charming. Bookworms, give it a try. You'll like it.

Are you ready, CC?

The Political Teen has a video of Ray Nagin advocating keeping New Orleans a "chocolate" city.

Isn't that charming.

I'm picturing David Duke campaigning to keep Louisiana "vanilla."

Apple Launches iMeat?

News of the Weird:

A 14-year-old girl who received a new Apple iPod opened the sealed box and found raw mystery meat inside, according to a Local 6 News report.

Rachel Cambra purchased a new high-tech iPod for her daughter as a gift this week. When she opened the sealed box, the device was missing and in its place was a piece of raw meat, the report said.

Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda - New York Times

Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda - New York Times:

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

And this is a bad thing because . . . .? Isn't the Times always claiming that we're not winning Muslim "hearts and minds"? Shouldn't we be trying to win some?

Lazy Sunday (Chronic of Narnia)

Port Authority at Found at Fault for 1993 WTC Bombing

Ah, the joys of civil litigation. This detail in a civil case arising from the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center is priceless:

In order to reach a verdict, at least five of the six jurors had to agree. The jury voted unanimously that the Port Authority was negligent. It found the authority 68 percent at fault for the bombing, while the terrorists who carried it out were 32 percent at fault.

In other news, a jury found Ford's Theatre to be 62 percent at fault for Lincoln's assassination, while John Wilkes Booth was 38 percent at fault.

Sweet smell of -- ?

Yummy diversion or sign of the apocalypse? You make the call.

Don't cry for me, Mesopotamia

Wyclef, Baathist, freestylin' into trouble: "Father Saddam cries in the prison"

Richard Clarke

Recently read Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies. The prose style is atrocious, even for a hastily written "instant bestseller." The badly-written "remembered" dialogue strains credulity. He recreates detail that makes him into an omniscient narrator. For example, he reads Condi Rice's mind and strongly implies she was utterly ignorant about Al Qaeda. That's more than a tiny bit presumptuous.

It also would help if just once, in his memoir, he didn't claim that he had made every call correctly. If it had been written in Lincoln's time, there would have been a passage where he writes, "I strongly opposed the choice of Ford's Theater, as the strong sentiment of the southern actors was well known. Unfortunately, my warning fell on deaf ears."

His treatment of Clinton's Mogadishu omits key facts that he must be aware of. It's utterly dishonest to say that Clinton is criticized for the deaths of 18 American soldiers. Rather, the criticism is that Clinton's response was to say, "Absolutely no more casualties. Let's formally recognized the man we were trying to arrest -- pick him up in a limousine instead of chains." Whether or not that criticism is fair, the reader deserves to hear it stated correctly before it can be rejected or accepted.

His treatment of the Millennium plot ignores the fact that NONE of his preparedness exercises were responsible for catching the LAX bomber -- it was a complete fluke, a customs official at the border deciding to pull a nervous guy out of the line, a man who then panicked and fled. Had he played it cool, LAX would have been bombed. Interestingly, Clarke's hero Sandy Berger was just convicted of illegal removing and destroying the after-action reports on the Millennium plot. A wild guess is that they painted Berger and Clarke's efforts as insufficient.

Clarke is never bothers to meet his opponents objections. He mischaracterizes arguments about the Iraq terrorism connection (arguments that he himself is on record making in the late 90's, when he claimed that the al-Shifa plant in the Sudan was making chem weapons with much help from the Iraqis). He gratuitously slanders Laurie Mylroie by totally misstating her theory about an Iraq connection to the first WTC bombing.

You'd have to go back to the Nixon Administration and its aftermath to find someone so intent on covering his ass and denying the obvious fact about his legacy.

Clarke depicts himself consistently as the smartest guy in the room in any situation. A small ego he does not have. No mean feat, considering he failed in his main responsibility for 9 years.

On the positive side, you do get an occasionally interesting behind-the-scenes look at U.S. counter-terrorism policy.