Via Tim: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature: Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive

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Interesting article on Scooter Libby, sent by Oda Mae: Bush Got It Right... Unlike Mr. Clinton

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Lileks posted for the 4th of July. I wanted to excerpt it, but 1) I can't even pick one part that's better than another and 2) if I excerpt it, you might not go read the whole thing.

Trust me, you're gonna want to read it twice.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Must read Michael Yon: Bless the Beasts and Children

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Here's a fascinating blog post about a church that invited someone from the local mosque to speak to the congregation.

The stated purpose of the visit, from my church’s perspective, was printed in the newsletter: “In an increasingly fragmented world in which followers of other religions are often viewed with fear – how wonderful it would be to build bridges.” But when we’re told flatly, “Touch Mohammed and there will be riots,” it’s obvious that it’s less about bridge building and more about schooling us as to how we are and are not to behave to avoid what Muslims who think like our speaker believe are the reasonable consequences of offending Islam–or even the more “aberrant” consequences. Ironically, this pattern reminds me of radical feminists, whose aim is to curtail the behavior and speech of people, particularly men, whom they deem offensive. In both cases, this reveals an absolutely infantile grasp of human relations that insists you tightly align your behavior with their proscriptions because they simply cannot handle, or respond appropriately to, what you might say or do. Our speaker, in answering my questions about the Mohammed cartoons, asked vehemently and self-pityingly why we could not leave Mohammed alone, why Islam cannot have even one thing that is sacred from the opinions of others (my words). I remember pathetically wondering this myself when my sister wanted to play with my toys–when I was about eight. But this begs for control of the behavior of others rather than planning for measured responses of one’s own.

Read the whole thing.

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Found a very old Grim's Hall post I missed the first time around:
"The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous."

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The title of this one is all you need...
Iraqi Orphanage Nightmare: U.S. Troops Discover And Rescue Orphan Boys Left Starving, Chained To Beds
The photos made me weep. They're concentration camp liberation for my generation.

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Found a comment over at Buzz.mn that narrowly applies to seatbelt laws but broadly applies to almost everything we cover in the blogosphere:

Anecdotal Evidence Can Be Fun!
Submitted by jhugart on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 12:36am.

My dad used to wear seat belts only when he was driving on the interstate; he explained it by saying he could hold on to the steering wheel at lower speeds.

Then one day he was driving to the interstate, and had his belt on. Another driver ran a red light and smashed into his car, rolling it, and shaking him up a lot. He was uninjured, which all agreed would not have been the case had he been unbelted. From that point on, he always wore a seat belt.

For my part, I always put on the belt, and expect passengers to do so as well. I used to get the response, "Oh, I trust your driving!" My reply was, "It isn't my driving we're worried about." That always resulted in a thoughtful look and the click of the belt.

The entertaining part about anecdotal evidence is that it is great for supporting something you already believe in. If you believe seat belt use is a good idea, you can find stories to back it up. If you think seat belt use is dangerous, you can find stories to back that up.

Humans being human, I suspect that no scientific assessment of seat belt use, non-use, accidents, injuries, and fatalities would sway people from whatever positions they have already adopted. They are much more likely to be affected by a friend or relative who survived because of behavior X, whatever it happens to be.

The short answer is that there are all sorts of ways to die with a car involved. You can do your best to protect yourself, but sometimes you can get killed in spite of those efforts...and other times you can survive in spite of what may seem terminal stupidity. C'est la vie.

Jacob

(Thanks to this ColdFury post for leading me there.)

Actually, it reminds me a lot of something that's been bugging me immensely lately over at SpouseBUZZ: the idea that the new Lifetime series Army Wives is unrealistic because officer wives would never deign to hang out with enlisted wives. I say that my three best friends in Germany were all enlisted wives, and someone else says that in her entire Army life no officer wife has ever once spoken to her. And so our anecdotes cancel out. Ace says nicely today that "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'", and I don't know if there's any data out there on this subject, but it sure does bother me to read over and over that I am too snobby and uppity to ever be friends with my three best friends.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:15 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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You really must go read "In Saudi Arabia, a view from behind the veil," an article about the horrific gender segregation. It's absolutely vile. Go here and click on the top link to read.

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When I was two years old, I got to meet Mr. Rogers in the airport. I don't remember it, but my parents took me over to say hello. They say that Mr. Rogers was the exact same person in real life as he was on TV and that he talked to me as if I were the most important person in the room.

I told that story to someone a few years ago, and she gave me a weird look and said that Mr. Rogers was a pedophile. I was stunned. I had never heard any such thing, and I told her she'd better google it and make sure of what she was saying before she ever repeated it again.

I loved this blog post (via Hud), and I hope that my friend has never repeated those horrible things about such a wonderful man.

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Some people are just complete and utter freaks. Wendy's manager shot over chili sauce
What on earth is wrong with people?

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Good article written by a Muslim: How to end 'Islamophobia'

Islamophobia could end when masses of Muslims demonstrate in the streets against videos displaying innocent people being beheaded with the same vigor we employ against airlines, Israel and cartoons of Muhammad.

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This article on illegal immigration is excellent: The Promise of Home

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Bill Whittle's newest is finally up: You Are Not Alone

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Annika, who will quit blogging in exactly six and a half hours, isn't going out with Miss America waves and reruns. She managed to find these hilarious quotes from rockers who are wising up to the fact that their benefit concerts don't really help much of anything.

Annika, you will be missed.

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I enjoyed Annika's gun interview. I will miss her when she stops blogging in a week. And my husband and I really need to buckle down and do some firearms research soon. We've been talking about it since we returned from Germany, but we haven't done anything about it yet. And it needs to get done before he deploys.

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Read this interview with Sandmonkey and be depressed.

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If you look up "turn of phrase" in the dictionary, you should see Mark Steyn's picture. Holy crap, can this man write.

So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe.

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A great Jonah Goldberg article about how pointless public opinion is:

HUGE NUMBERS of Americans don't know jack about their government or politics. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 31% of Americans don't know who the vice president is, fewer than half are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29% can identify "Scooter" Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the vice president, and only 15% can name Harry Reid when asked who is the Senate majority leader.

Also last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe that Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales' firing of eight U.S. attorneys was "politically motivated."

So, we are supposed to believe that two-thirds of Americans have studied the details of the U.S. attorney firings and come to an informed conclusion that they were politically motivated — even when Senate Democrats agree that there is no actual evidence that Gonzales did anything improper. Are these the same people who couldn't pick Pelosi out of a lineup? Or the 85% who couldn't name the Senate majority leader? Are we to imagine that the 31% of the electorate who still — after seven years of headlines and demonization — can't identify the vice president of the United States nonetheless have a studied opinion on the firing of New Mexico U.S. Atty. David Iglesias?

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Mark Steyn is awesome, as usual: Let's be realistic about reality

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

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1 Oh that was awesome. The Prussians has a great saying: Trust is good, control is better.

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at April 26, 2007 11:43 AM (deur4)

2 Possibly so. But think about this: would you really want more than one untrained idiot running around with guns? It would be worse carnage than what happened. More guns is NOT the answer. I don't know what the answer is, but arming more idiots who go charging in like Rambo is NOT the answer.

Posted by: dejah at April 26, 2007 04:50 PM (pD1u6)

3 I don't necessarily think that people who own guns are "untrained idiots." More guns isn't always the answer, but I think in this particular case it was.

Posted by: Sarah at April 26, 2007 04:53 PM (vrR+j)

4 "A profoundly deluded view of the world." Like one where Saddam possesses WMD and is working with Al Queda, and where the Mission is Accomplished?

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 01:46 AM (n17hK)

5 Q, Hijacking another thread, eh? Your right, Saddam never had or used WMDÂ’s against Iran or his own people. The UN was free and able to verify that he no longer had WMDÂ’s. Hell, he was a wonderful man and his people and neighbors loved him. There were no terrorist or their training camps in Iraq pre 2003. We didnÂ’t crush the Iraqi army, capture Saddam, kill his lunatic sons and free the Iraqi people from a tyrannical dictator and his rap rooms and slaughter houses. You absolutely right, the world would be a much better place with Saddam still in power. One other thing, we should leave Iraq, that way there will be peace in Iraq and the world will be one happy place. Kumbiya my Lord, Kumbiya...

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 03:55 AM (nno0f)

6 It's getting harder to find places where the nutcase right still speaks up, but this site rarely disappoints.

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 05:25 AM (n17hK)

7 ...and youÂ’d be an expert on the nutcase subject. DoesnÂ’t that tinfoil get hot?

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 07:15 AM (nno0f)

8 Doesn't giving dittohead get tiring? Army Spc. Bryan O'Neal is a hero. You dishonor brave soldiers like him.

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 08:31 AM (n17hK)

9 You can't fight ideology with a gun. Iraq and virginia tech were both avoidable mistakes that Bush is directly responsible for.

Posted by: Will at April 27, 2007 10:20 AM (soQkB)

10 q, Get a clue. Since you seem to think you know about honor, exactly how do you honor soldiers/marines? Careful now, IÂ’m setting you up. Will, So Columbine was Clintons fault? (Speaking of Clinton, shall we dovetail Kosovo into all this, q? ) Your freedom of speech, in your & qÂ’s case-to make an a$$ of yourselves, came from the barrel of a gun. If you didnÂ’t think that history started the day you were born, youÂ’d know that. FreakinÂ’ children. Go play with your ipods. Till Monday kids. Late.

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 11:02 AM (nno0f)

11 The gun issue has always been so foggy for me. On one hand, I agree that it's so very scary to think of the kinds of people who possess weapons in our society but I also realize that many people who own guns are responsible, law-abiding citizens who realize that the gun is probably their only chance against someone else with a gun. It sounds so simple but it's so true. In many ways, I agree with the view that if we outlaw gun ownership, the only people with guns will be the outlaws.

Posted by: Nicole at April 28, 2007 07:32 AM (vYQMs)

12 Nicole: Actually, a gun is also useful against an assailant who doesn't have a gun. Say, one who is a lot stronger than you are. It's caller an equalizer for a reason.

Posted by: Patrick Chester at April 28, 2007 07:46 AM (MKaa5)

13 OK - College Exam time. Put away your IPODs...no cheating here. This is a multiple choice exam. One question. Two answers. You DO NOT GET to answer "C". Why? The VT students did not have access to answer C. OK...Ready? Scenario: You are a VT student sitting in class taking notes on the lecture when a student you've noted around campus but don't actually know walks into class, lifts his firearm, and begins taking aim. Something inside you assures you this man is not bluffing and will begin killing people within nanoseconds. Do you: A: Scratch your head, wondering how this can be since you are seated in a clearly marked "gun-free school zone". Silently congratulate the university administration for creating a NEARLY gun-free zone while at the same time cursing them knowing that 99+ percent of your fellow students scrupulously follow the rules. Sadly, you realize, at least one doesn't...never knowing this is to be your last thought as NUTJOB has apparently selected you to be his first casualty. B. Take a quick assessment of the situation and realize that NUTJOB apparently holds all the cards. Drop to your knees and pray to God that by His grace there is at least one other person in the room who has disregarded the law-enforcement-by-sign approach and is carrying a weapon, determining that one additional weapon in that room statistically reduces the body count by half...implicitly understanding that if this is a particularly GOOD day for you, that other weapon in the room might end the event with only the bad guy dead or wounded, achieving a 97% to 100% needless death avoidance rate, including saving yourself, who, unknown to you, were to be first on the shooter's list of victims. OK...time to mark your answer. Before you do however...ask a trusted friend to help you. Ask your friend to hold your head under two feet of water for exactly 2 minutes. Not a second more, not a second less. Then, around about 1 minute, 18 seconds, try to rationally assess just what rule for good social order can prevent you from breaking your friend's arm in order to grab a precious breath of air so you may continue to live. Time to mark your papers. Remember...you may choose only between A or B.

Posted by: Tim Fitzgerald at April 29, 2007 05:35 PM (kb594)

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