I have previously posted what I believe to be evidence that Russia is evolving a nationalist and fascist form of government modeled on China, which managed to negotiate the transition from communism to a form of capitalism without collapse. Now, we see the efforts of Russia to regain some of its former “Soviet Republics” by harassment and subterfuge. Georgia and Ukraine are the two large republics that broke free from Russian control in the collapse of the USSR. Maybe we should sell the Georgians a few Predator drones that can defend themselves.
Archive for the ‘general’ Category
Russia and fascism II
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008More results of multiculturalism in Britain.
Saturday, April 19th, 2008I have previously posted about my concerns over the British trends that mimic similar trends here in the 1960s. We wound up with cities that were unlivable and the movie “Death Wish“, which portrayed a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered by thugs in New York City, was greeted by standing ovations in movie theaters. The movie was so successful, it made a huge star of Charles Bronsan and spawned three sequels.
The Labour government has relentlessly pressed forward with policies that reward bad behavior and with education “reform” that removes the British culture and history from the society. I recently noted an absence of historical knowledge among tour guides at an historic castle in Britain.
The result of the Labour policies has been prosecution of protesters who oppose Muslim influence while Muslims attack government ministers verbally and collect welfare benefits for their many wives.
Although already married with three children and reportedly living off £700 a month in state benefits, the 31-year-old is seeking more wives, with the intention of fathering more than nine children.
The same courtesy doesn’t extend to non-Muslim protesters collecting petition signatures. The new law is called the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill and illustrates a fact often unappreciated by Americans. Britain has no “First Amendment” free speech rights. The results are now becoming apparent. A new BBC poll suggests that Britons are worried about racial violence.
Certainly they have seen plenty of evidence recently.
The trial of the airplane would-be bombers.
The 2005 Underground bombings.
There are plenty of warnings. Are they being taken seriously ?
Time magazine and why I don’t read it
Friday, April 18th, 2008
UPDATE: Sandra Tsing Loh has the ultimate putdown for eco-snobs.
And yet there is the exquisite pleasure of eco-stalking those who used to eco-stalk you. “Good news!” I now enthuse to formerly smug Prius-driving friends of mine. “Right this second, a SolarCity engineer and I are studying a live Google Earth picture of your house! Little shade, south-facing — how ’bout I send them over for an estimate?”
It will be about $40,000. Next step ? Loss of interest.
Sniped a scientist friend of mine: “Instead of solar, why don’t you spend the money on something less self-aggrandizing — like offering $50 to anyone with an old refrigerator?”
There you are.
The utter fatuousness of the next Time magazine issue is staggering. This interview shows just how far gone they are.
“We are experts in what we do.”
Veterans of Iwo Jima are not amused.
I have previously posted on some of the ignorance of economics so clearly demonstrated by the Time editor.
Here is more on the Time cover story that points out how the environmental activists are ignoring both science and economics. The planet has been warming for the past 60 years but the warming trend may have ended or flattened out.
For example, satellite measurements of temperatures aloft show no warming trend. Surface warming measurements may be affected by urban heat islands and, while NASA tries to avoid skewing data in the US, there has been a scandal in the placing of temperatures sensors in China. The scientist who was supposed to be ensuring that rapid urban development in China did not affect the sensors, was found to have falsified some of his data.
The data came from only 84 stations, 60% of which had no history whatsoever, and the report claims “details regarding instrumentation, collection methods, observing times … are not known.” Of the 35 remaining, over half had moved large distances (one station moving as many as five times) or had serious, known inconsistencies in the record. The report specifically contradicts Wang’s claims, concluding that “even the best stations were subject to minor relocations or changes in observing times and many have undoubtedly experienced large increases in urbanization.”Keenan immediately filed a formal allegation of fraud against Wang, a charge which is pending investigation at this time.
China is a big place with lots of land area and a rapidly industrializing society. How much did that development affect global warming ? Especially since the measurements were affected by urban heat islands. What we are seeing is a huge extrapolation of data from very shaky sources.
I’m currently reading a book titled The Deniers about scientists who are resisting the lockstep march of the anthropogenic global warming crowd and many who are paying a price.
Turkey and Islamist revolution
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008I was in Turkey in 2004. I was struck by how friendly everyone was and how they revere Attaturk, the founder of the modern state and the founder of secular Turkey’s culture. That may change. When we were entering the Blue Mosque, there were stern young men who did not look friendly and who were there to ensure that shoes were removed and that women wore veils.
My wife wears a head scarf in the Blue Mosque of Istanbul.
On the other hand, here is Annie with a Turkish Army officer who thought she looked just fine without a veil. I like Turkey and think of it as a model for what we are trying to do in Iraq.
Now, that may be changed by an obscure man living in the US.
The parallels with Khomeni and 1979 are too serious to ignore.
Few U.S. policymakers have heard of Fethullah Gülen, perhaps Turkey’s most prominent theologian and political thinker. Self-exiled for more than a decade, Gülen lives a reclusive life outside Philadelphia, Pa. Within months, however, he may be as much a household a name in the United States as is Ayatollah Khomeini, a man who was as obscure to most Americans up until his triumphant return to Iran almost 30 years ago.
While Gülen supporters jealously guard his image in the West, he remains a controversial figure in Turkey. According to Cumhuriyet, a left-of-center establishment daily — Turkey’s New York Times — in 1973, the Izmir State Security Court convicted Gülen of “attempting to destroy the state system and to establish a state system based on religion;” he received a pardon, though, and so never served time in prison. In 1986, the Turkish military — the constitutional guardians of the state’s secularism — purged a Gülen cell from the military academy; the Turkish military has subsequently acted against a number of other alleged Gülen cells who they say infiltrated military ranks.
The Erdogan government took over Parliament in 2002 and placed many of their members in key positions in the judiciary.
On May 5, 2006, the Ankara Criminal Court overturned the verdict against Gülen. While a public prosecutor — a secularist hold-out — appealed the court’s action, the process is now nearing conclusion. Gülen’s supporters are ecstatic. His slate wiped clean, Gülen has indicated he may soon return to Turkey.
This would be very bad news. In another example of her clumsy manipulation of other people’s business, Condaleeza Rice is about to interfere on the side of the Erdogan government. This would be a bad mistake and brings back memories of Carter’s representative desribing Khomeni as a “Muslim saint” before his return to Tehran and the Islamist Revolution.
Gerald and Sara Murphy
Thursday, April 10th, 2008I’ve started reading a biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy.
They were a young couple, both from wealthy families, who lived in Paris and spent summers on the French Riviera in the 1920s. They were sort of the anchors for the “Lost Generation” as Gertrude Stein called them all. The Murphys had money, although living in France was very cheap in American dollars after World War I (unlike now). Some of the reasons why so many young Americans moved to Paris then included Prohibition, the perception that America was crass and materialistic (Sinclair Lewis wrote Babbitt in 1922.), and the ability to live very cheaply. In Cole Porter’s song “You’re the Top”, whose words have changed over the years as fashions changed, one of his examples of something “top” was “The Coolidge dollar.”
Aside from a wealthy patron and “bartender” for the other expatriates, Murphy became an excellent painter. His style was his own with a sort of cubist method of depicting machinery like “Watch,” painted in 1925 .
One of his paintings, now lost, was the size of a billboard and dominated the exhibition since it was too large for the room in which it was to be exhibited. It was titled Boatdeck and was 18 feet high. One of their friends during the summers they spent at Cap D’Antibe on the French Riviera was Pablo Picasso, who painted Sara Murphy as “the Woman in White.” There has been speculation that they had an affair but most knowledgeable people doubted it because she was not one to do that although she was very beautiful and sensual. He later painted over two figures in another painting from the period.
There are two other figures painted over in this painting , thought to be images of Sara and Picasso. Xrays have shown them in recent years and it was known that this was part of a series. Perhaps his advances were rejected or deflected, for they remained friends, and he modified the painting.
This photo, of Gerald and Picasso, is thought to be the model for the painting above. The other two figures were to be Venus (Sara) and Eros or Cupid. The latter may have been another image of Picasso, the lover.
The Murphys were friends of Cole Porter and his wife Linda; Gerald had befriended Cole at Yale when both were undergraduates and interested in art. Cole was bisexual but Gerald has no history of any homosexual encounters although sexual identity was quite loose in those circles at the time.
The recent movie of Cole Porter’s life got me interested in the Murphys since they are prominent throughout the movie and were friends of Porter’s until his death. They had three children, two boys who died in their teens, and a daughter who lived until 1998 and wrote a biography of her parents. After the boys died, one of tuberculosis after a long illness, the other, suddenly of meningitis from a mastoid infection, Gerald never painted another picture.
For anyone who has read the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, these people are of great interest. For example, Fitzgerald’s novel Tender is the Night uses the Murphys as models for the couple in the story. Sara hated the novel because the events that occur in the novel had nothing to do with the Murphys’ lives. Hemingway is said to have modeled his couple in The Snows of Kilimanjaro on the Murphys. In both cases, the rather unflattering (Hemingway), or overly familiar portrait of her (Fitzgerald) seems to have been the result of her rejection of sexual advances by each author.
They were a major part of the art scene in Paris in the 1920s and knew everyone. I have walked Paris seeking out the scenes from that era and my next trip will include some pilgrimmages to the Murphys’ haunts.
I recommend the book. Here is a review of the book from the NY Times in 1998 when it was published.
Steven Pinker
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008Steven Pinker is a linguist and cognitive psychologist and, oddly enough for a colleague of Noam Chomskey, something of a conservative. His book, The Blank Slate, describes how most behavior is genetic in origin. This, of course, is anathema to the left which follows the behavioral theories of Stephen Jay Gould.
Pinker here gives a marvelous lecture on the history of violence and why it has been declining since The Enlightenment. Rousseau was wrong and those who believe in the myth of The Noble Savage should view this talk.
The evolution of Iran
Friday, March 14th, 2008The recent election in Iran is part of what an Iranian scholar calls a creeping coup d’Etat. The Revolutionary Guards are taking over as Iran becomes a military dictatorship. This might even be an improvement if these men are more rational then the clergy who seem to yearn for martyrdom. Whatever it is, it is not democracy.
Maybe this is evidence of sanity. Kissinger said at Davos, “the Iranian government has to decide if they are a cause or a state.”
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt interviewed Robin Wright on her new book about the middle east, an interview worth reading. I may get the book, as well. It sounds powerful.
The Spitzer story
Thursday, March 13th, 2008Spitzer is a thoroughly nasty person from everything I have read about him. This story sounds about right and I wonder which of the “difficult clients” he resembled. I’ve never been rich enough to be one of her customers.
The future of aircraft
Monday, March 10th, 2008The newest Air Force reconnaissance airplane is unmanned and hypersonic. It is called Falcon/Blackswift and is the subject of considerable speculation. This platform will set the stage for the transformation of military aircraft to unmanned for all future fighters and bombers. Even the F 22 has capabilities that a human pilot cannot tolerate. This interview has a few points not usually discussed about this aircraft.
Several cockpit characteristics make the F-22 a departure from existing cockpit designs. The Raptor receives numerous inputs from its own or ‘onboard’ sensors as well as data from sources outside the aircraft (offboard sensors). Current fighters use the pilot as the sensor systems operator to point or cue various systems and sensors to acquire data. The pilot must then become the data analyst to sort through these sensor inputs and determine what it all means. The F-22 pilot is neither a sensor operator nor data analyst.
What this means is that all data is processed on board and can be as easily accessed from a remote site.
As an example, the F-15 pilot can overstress or over-G his airplane, particularly in the transonic region. As a result, the Eagle pilot must constantly be alert to rapid aft stick inputs as he accelerates in a fight. One careless input in an air-to-air fight and you can overstress the Eagle. It has been done and continues to be a problem. As a result, the Eagle driver cannot be quite as aggressive with his flying at all times for fear of over-G. The F-16 pilot is a little better off but his flight control system does not protect him from over-G while rolling so he must also temper his aggressiveness in a fight. The F-22 pilot has no such concerns. Aside from diving the airplane directly into the ground, the Raptor pilot can ‘yank and bank’ to his heart’s content without fear of over-G, loss of control or otherwise ‘hurting’ the jet. This makes for one aggressive fighter pilot in a fight and makes the F-22 a lethal opponent.
This statement may be a bit misleading. My information is that the airframe is capable of greater G forces than the pilot can tolerate but it is flown within the “envelope” determined by the pilot, not the airframe. This allows the possibility of greater performance when a pilot is not aboard.
The Aurora project was the next step after the SR 71. It has never been formally acknowledged but may have now been superseded by the new unmanned aircraft.
I have previously posted an incident in which my brother-in-law, a former Marine fighter pilot, was talking to another parent at their kids soccer game. The other man was an Air Force officer who, after the game, went to work at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson where he would spend the next 12 hours flying a Predator UAV over Iraq. The most recent Michael Yon column from Iraq tells the other end of that story.
The bombers were being watched. Invisible to them, prowling far overhead, was a Predator.
The Predator is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) whose eye sees through the darkness. The night sky is the jungle where it hides. The Predator strikes with more suddenness and force than any tiger. I often watch the live feed streaming down into the Tactical Operations Centers (TOC) around Iraq, while crosshairs track the enemy, and the screen lists data such as altitude, azimuth, ground speed, and the precise grid coordinates of the target.
The future is coming very fast. Manned military aircraft, especially fighters and bombers, may be a thing of the past. Not now, but soon.
John McCain’s saving grace
Monday, March 10th, 2008This fatuous puff piece in the Washington Post illustrates one of McCain’s best qualities; his ability to cut through BS of this sort and nail wasteful government spending. I do worry about some of his ideas, immigration and campaign finance/first amendment issues, but this crap is reassuring. At least he has the right enemies.
Bob Novak has more on this story.