The Man Who Would Be le Président

Christopher Caldwell of The Weekly Standard describes Sarko, Nicolas Sarkozy, as The Man Who Would Be le Président:

One thing Sarkozy does not resemble in the slightest is a traditional French politician. "I am a man of the right," he says over breakfast, "even if I'm not a conservative in the traditional sense." This is an extraordinary admission. No presidential hopeful in decades, even in the UMP created by Jacques Chirac in the wake of De Gaulle's RPR, has ever accepted the label. Never in his political life has Jacques Chirac made a similar statement. From his time as prime minister in the mid-seventies, when he described his goal as the creation of "a labor movement à la française," to his recent New Year's address, in which he again attacked American-style capitalism, Chirac has taken many positions, but none of them on the "right." Since Sarkozy's profession leaves him liable to accusations in the French press that he is the favored candidate of Americans or free-marketeers, he is anxious to spell out exactly what he means by a "temperament of the right." It is something he has obviously thought about a lot. "First, the primacy of work; second, the need to compensate personal merit and effort; third, respect for the rules, and for authority; fourth, the belief that democracy does not mean weakness; fifth, values; sixth, . . . I'm persuaded that, before sharing, you have to create wealth. I don't like egalitarianism."

Out of this value system come plans for everything. Between stints at the interior ministry, Sarkozy also spent time as minister of finance. He intends to shrink the state, reform the profligate, bureaucratic, and job-killing "French social model," cut taxes, promote ethnic harmony (through the controversial expedient of affirmative action), normalize Islam in French society, and shore up France's alliance with the United States. These plans amount to what supporters and detractors call la rupture. As Sarkozy told a roomful of journalists at UMP headquarters in January: "You can't run France on the ideas of 30 years ago." This may sound old hat. Since 1974, all French presidential elections have been run on the theme of "change."

Original Franklin Planner

LifeHacker points to the Original Franklin Planner — the one that didn't come in a faux leather binder:

Once upon a time, a young man at the tender age of 20 came up with a life plan which consisted of 13 guidelines. He kept a daily chart of these 13 goals, and placed a dot next to the ones he failed to abide by each day for the rest of his life.

His name was Benjamin Franklin. His 13 guidelines included:

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

National Archives and Google Launch Pilot Project to Digitize and Offer Historic Films Online

National Archives and Google Launch Pilot Project to Digitize and Offer Historic Films Online:

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Google Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin today announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video as well as the National Archives website.

(Hat tip to LifeHacker.)

Keep It Simple

Years ago, when I was first investing in mutual funds, I was shocked to find out that I'd be taxed on any capital gains made by the fund, as well as any capital gains I made by selling shares that had gone up in value. ETFs get around that problem:

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are an increasingly popular investment. ETFs are open-end mutual funds that, unlike traditional open-end funds, trade on exchanges, such as the NYSE and AMEX. The fact that they can be bought or sold throughout the day is one of their advantages over ordinary open-end funds, which only allow purchases and sales at the end of the day.

But the big advantage of ETFs is that the sale of securities inside the fund does not typically generate taxable capital gains for ETF shareholders.

In Keep It Simple, finance luminaries Fama and French argue to treat all mutual funds like ETFs:

We suggest a simplification of the tax code that levels the playing field for ETFs and ordinary funds. Taxation of distributed dividends continues. (It hits the shareholders of ETFs and ordinary funds in the same way.) But taxation of capital gains occurs only when fund shareholders redeem their shares. In other words, we suggest that mutual fund capital gains should be taxed in the same way as gains on other securities. This is the system in many other countries.

What Does a Chinese Keyboard Look Like?

Daniel Engber explains "How they type in the PRC" in What Does a Chinese Keyboard Look Like?:

How do you type Chinese characters on a keyboard?

You use a piece of software called an input method editor, which allows conventional-looking keyboards to produce the thousands of characters used in written Chinese. There's no standard system, though, so two Chinese keyboards may not look exactly the same and they may not function in the same way.

In the Peoples' Republic of China, most computer users type out their Chinese in transliteration, using the standard Roman alphabet keys on a QWERTY keyboard. To generate a character, you type out its sound according to the same spelling system — called Pinyin — that represents the name of China's capital with the word 'Beijing.' The computer automatically converts the Pinyin spelling to the correct Chinese characters on the screen.

Europe's chill linked to disease

From around 1500 to 1850, Europe endured a Little Ice Age. Europe's chill linked to disease presents an unusual explanation:

Europe's 'Little Ice Age' may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.

Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says.

A French Daredevil Hopes to Live to Tell Tale of 25-Mile Jump

You may already know about Joe Kittinger's jump from a 20-story-tall helium balloon at the edge of space, 19 miles up, in 1960. I blogged on it recently. He reached 714 miles per hour, breaking the sound barrier without a vehicle, before a small stabilizing 'chute and a later, bigger parachute slowed his fall.

Now A French Daredevil Hopes to Live to Tell Tale of 25-Mile Jump:

Now a Frenchman named Michel Fournier aims to top the feat. In 1988, two years after the U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on ascent 11 miles up, managers of Europe's space program selected the paratrooper as one of three people to leap from 25 miles up. Scientists wanted to see whether an ejection higher than Col. Kittinger's jump is survivable. After doing initial tests with lifelike dummies, Europe abandoned its ambitions for manned spaceflight and scrubbed the jump.

Mr. Fournier wasn't so easily grounded, and in 1992 he retired to pursue the plunge solo. He has since amassed $12 million in gear — and impoverished himself. He sold his house, antique furniture and gun collection to buy the mothballed European jump equipment and a massive balloon capable of rising higher than planes can fly. He cajoled sponsors to pitch in high-tech gear, including a pressure suit and life-support system that took nearly three years to develop.

As Kittinger says, "Space is hostile":

Belly-flopping from the edge of space isn't just an incredibly long parachute ride. At that altitude, conditions quickly turn deadly. Above 40,000 feet, the atmosphere is so thin that unprotected people lose consciousness in around 12 seconds. Even with an air supply, nitrogen bubbles may form in the blood and soft tissue if the jumper hasn't prepared by inhaling pure oxygen for several hours. If the jumper is unprotected above 50,000 feet or so, saliva boils off the tongue, and body parts begin swelling painfully. Lungs may hemorrhage as they and the skull fill with liquid.

On Col. Kittinger's ascent to his record leap, his right glove broke, causing his exposed hand to balloon. A Soviet officer died two years later from pressure sickness in a similar attempt when his face mask cracked. An American sky diver died from decompression trying to beat the record in 1966.

Giraffe Manor

I may have to plan a trip to Giraffe Manor:

The Giraffe Manor, built in 1932 by Sir David Duncan, is situated on 120 acres of land just a few miles from the centre of Nairobi, Kenya's capital city. In 1974 Jock Leslie-Melville, grandson of a Scottish earl, and his wife Betty, who also founded the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife (AFEW), bought the Manor. They then moved five babies of the highly endangered Rothschild giraffe to their property where they have been successfully reared and they now have their own babies.

When Jock died, Betty decided to open her house, now called the Giraffe Manor, to visitors. Exclusive, spacious and elegant, it is the only place in the world that you can feed giraffe from your second floor bedroom window, over the lunch table, and at the front door. Guests can feed and photograph the giraffe and the Warthogs at the Manor, and also wander through the adjoining primeval forest to view the bushbuck, dik dik, and more than 180 species of birds.

Is the left out of ideas?

Jane Galt asks, Is the left out of ideas?:

The left used to have a Big Idea: The free market doesn't work, so the government will fix it. The social democrats disagreed with the Socialists and the Scoop Jackson democrats about how much fixing was necessary, but they all agreed on a basic premise, and could sell that simple message to the public. Then, after fifty years or so, people noticed that the government didn't seem to work any better than the free market . . . worse, actually, in a lot of cases . . . and it was awfully expensive and surly. Conservatives stepped in with their Big Idea: the government screws things up, so let's leave more stuff up to individuals, which, if nothing else, will be a lot cheaper. Obviously, liberals disagree with this . . . but they have not come up with a Big, Easily Sellable, Idea With Obvious Policy Prescriptions to replace it. Some of them have just kept repeating the old Big Idea, which it seems to me that fewer and fewer people believe, as the US continues to pull ahead of its economic peers. Others have focused on coming up with lots of little ideas . . . but those take up too much time and energy to attract voters. Gore tried to whang up anger against pharmaceutical companies, and Kerry tried to stoke anger against Bush, as replacement. But in politics, there's just no replacement for the Big Idea.

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? "In the 1971 De Beers annual report, Harry Oppenheimer explained the unique situation of diamonds in the following terms":

A degree of control is necessary for the well-being of the industry, not because production is excessive or demand is falling, but simply because wide fluctuations in price, which have, rightly or wrongly, been accepted as normal in the case of most raw materials, would be destructive of public confidence in the case of a pure luxury such as gem diamonds, of which large stocks are held in the form of jewelry by the general public.

If normal people started selling their diamonds on the open market, the De Beers cartel would lose much of its monopoly power.

The Da Vinci Lode

The Drawn! blog calls it The Da Vinci Lode. It's a collection of Leonardo's drawings, from medical studies, to scientific diagrams, to flying machines.

Fernando Vargas Loses to Shane Mosley

Fernando Vargas Loses to Shane Mosley — and it looks really, really ugly:

Fernando Vargas reacts after losing to Shane Mosley during their junior middleweight boxing match at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006. The fight was called by referee Joe Cortez due to swelling on Vargas's left eye.

Drawn to the power of Pi

Drawn to the power of Pi:

In October, The Times and Canongate Books launched a competition to find an illustrator for a new edition of Yann Martel’s Man Booker-prizewinning novel Life of Pi. Today we feature the five shortlisted images, chosen by our judging panel out of some 600 entries. Five more artists have been selected from those who entered via The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada, and another five from those who submitted their illustrations to The Age in Australia. All 15 shortlisted artists will submit three more illustrations each before an overall winner is chosen in April.

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

Autistic basketball player causes mayhem at game

Autistic basketball player causes mayhem at game:

Jason McElway, an autistic high school basketball team member in Rochester NY, served as the team manager and spirit coach for several years. On the final game of the season the coach let him finally put on a uniform with the rest of the team. Watch what happens then...

Elsewhere

I've seen this before, but if you haven't, follow Michael Blowhard's advice and "Wait for the guy in the orange shirt."

His name's David Bernal, and he goes by the nom de danse of Elsewhere.

Good for America

James K. Glassman thinks that letting the UAE's DP World run American ports is Good for America:

Using Schumeresque logic, the U.S. should ban flights into the U.S. by airlines from Arab countries, and we should certainly bar any cargo from being loaded in Arab ports and bound for the U.S. ('If you are worried about a bomb in a box going off in New York, you need to worry about who loads the container overseas rather than the terminal operator who unloads it in the U.S.,' says someone who actually knows something about port security, Theodore Price of Optimization Alternatives, a Texas company that provides terminal-operating software.) In fact, one would suppose that Dubai, with billions at stake, would be more careful — not less — about assisting in anti-terror activities at U.S. ports if it is actually operating them.

Word Cloud T-Shirts

SnapShirts is offering a free web service to "automatically generate a word cloud from your blog" — a word cloud that fits nicely on a brand new t-shirt from SnapShirts.

Free Parking versus Free Markets

In Free Parking versus Free Markets, Dan Klein reviews Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking:

The book is marvelous and wonderful. It explains that parking policy is stuck in a self-feeding cycle. It brilliantly criticizes the culture of parking policymakers. It tells all facets of the history. It provides theoretical underpinnings. It displays rich empirical evidence. It makes novel connections and illuminates old issues. It bubbles with illustrations, cultural allusions, and ripe quotations. And its 734 pages are gracefully written. It is one of the best policy books I know. The book represents a life-work in understanding the problem and enlightening the public.

The meat of the review:

Fundamentally, the policies in question are just two: city governments (1) mismanage curb parking and (2) require developers to provide extensive off-street parking.

Pesky policy-wonkery? Shoup shows that the magnitudes are huge. About 87 percent of all trips in the U.S. are made by personal motor vehicles, and parking is free for 99 percent of these trips (p. 590). But free parking is not a spontaneous outcome. The required parking lot at a restaurant usually occupies at least three times as much land as the restaurant itself. Shoup reckons this a subsidy to parking, and estimates the U.S. total of such subsidy between $127 billion and $374 billion a year. “If we also count the subsidy for free and underpriced curb parking, the total subsidy for parking would be far higher.... Do we really want to spend as much to subsidize parking as we spend for Medicare or national defense?” (591)

Like freeways and free schooling, free parking isn’t free. “We don’t pay for parking in our role as motorists, but in all our other roles — as consumers, investors, workers, residents, and taxpayers—we pay a high price” (2). Meanwhile, when motorists drive downtown and cannot find a parking spot, they curse and increase congestion. Exactly like on freeways.

The extent of free parking is so enormous and so normal that people just think it nature’s endowment, like air. Everyone feels entitled to free air and free parking. Hence, “most people do not see it as being any subsidy at all” (591). “Because parking costs so much and motorists pay so little for it, the hidden subsidy is truly gigantic” (591).

(I've blogged on The High Cost of Free Parking before.)

Musings About the War on Drugs

George Melloan, of the Wall Street Journal, offers his Musings About the War on Drugs:

Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, making the trade immensely profitable — tax-free, of course. The more the U.S. spends on interdiction, the more incentive it creates for taking the risk of running drugs.

In 1933, the U.S. finally gave up on the 13-year prohibition of alcohol — a drug that is by some measures more intoxicating and dangerous to health than marijuana. That effort to alter human behavior left a legacy of corruption, criminality, and deaths and blindness from the drinking of bad booze. America's use of alcohol went up after repeal but no serious person today suggests a repeat of the alcohol experiment. Yet prohibition is still being attempted, at great expense, for the small portion of the population — perhaps little more than 5% — who habitually use proscribed drugs.

Believing in Belief

Michael Shermer reviews Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell in Believing in Belief:

In a 1997 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson discovers a fossil angel. Suspecting a hoax, she takes a piece of the fossil to the natural history museum where Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (playing himself) analyzes it. The age-old conflict between science and religion then plays out in this ne plus ultra of pop culture. The town evangelical Ned Flanders bemoans: “Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends.” When Gould announces that the test results are “inconclusive,” Reverend Lovejoy boasts: “Well, it appears science has failed again, in front of overwhelming religious evidence.” Marge counsels Lisa’s skepticism with motherly wisdom: “There has to be more to life than just what we see Lisa. Everyone needs something to believe in.” Lisa’s rejoinder is classic skepticism: “It’s not that I don’t have a spiritual side. I just find it hard to believe there’s a dead angel hanging in our garage.” The Scopes-like trial that ensues ends when the judge issues a restraining order: “Religion must stay 500 yards from science at all times.”

This is, in fact, Gould’s conciliatory solution he called NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), and it is the primary target of Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his latest book, Breaking the Spell. All restraining orders are off, as Dennett calls for “a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many.” The spell to be broken is the taboo that science will render incapable “the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself.”

PlayStation 3 Breaks the Bank

From PlayStation 3 Breaks the Bank:

In the videogame business, hardware makers generally sell new consoles at a loss, making their profits by charging licensing fees to videogame publishers. But according to an analysis by News.com, Sony is paying an unusually steep bill for its upcoming PlayStation 3 console. The system's components cost between $725 and $905, analysts estimate. The biggest culprit: Sony's new Blu-Ray disc drive, which will play high-definition movies as well as games. With the PS3 console expected to sell between $299 and $399, Sony will lose hundreds of dollars per console.

Don't be too surprised if the hardware hackers buy it for its parts.

Fossil Overturns Ideas of Jurassic Mammals

Fossil Overturns Ideas of Jurassic Mammals:

The discovery of a furry, beaver-like animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals.

The find shows that the ecological role of mammals in the time of dinosaurs was far greater than previously thought, said Zhe-Xi Luo, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

The animal is the earliest swimming mammal to have been found and was the most primitive mammal to be preserved with fur, which is important to helping keep a constant body temperature, Luo said in a telephone interview.

For over a century, the stereotype of mammals living in that era has been of tiny, shrew-like creatures scurrying about in the underbrush trying to avoid the giant creatures that dominated the planet, Luo commented.

Now, a research team that included Luo has found that 164 million years ago, the newly discovered mammal with a flat, scaly tail like a beaver, vertebra like an otter and teeth like a seal was swimming in lakes and eating fish.

The team, led by Qiang Ji of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, discovered the remains in the Inner Mongolia region of China. They report their findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
[...]
The new animal is not related to modern beavers or otters but has features similar to them. Thus the researchers named it Castorocauda lutrasimilis. Castoro from the Latin for beaver, cauda for tail, lutra for river otter and similis meaning similar.

Willy the Hog Pairs With Antelope at Zoo

Pig-like animal meets deer-like animal in Willy the Hog Pairs With Antelope at Zoo:

This photo released by the Los Angeles Zoo shows Willy, a 10-year-old, 187-pound Red River porcine, right, nuzzling his new companion Nicole, a 16-year-old bongo antelope, in their exhibit at the zoo Feb. 13, 2006, in Los Angeles. Willy's mate Ruby died last summer of cancer and within a week the hog turned to the antelope for companionship.

Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan speaks for all of us when she attacks airport security:

This is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one — the ritual abuse of passengers.

Now there's a security problem. Solve that one.

gladwell.com

Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point, Blink) now has his own blog at gladwell.com:

In the past year I have often been asked why I don’t have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don’t have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I’ve now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker. What I think I’d like to do is to use this forum to elaborate and comment on and correct and amend things that I have already written.

Scholar's Dictionary Of Aztec Language May Take a Lifetime

Scholar's Dictionary Of Aztec Language May Take a Lifetime:

Word by word, Mr. Amith is creating an extensive archive of Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time of the 16th century Spanish conquest and now the first language of 1.5 million Mexican Indians. He records fables and personal histories, collects plants and insects, and keeps up a nonstop patter with locals, searching for information to add to a Web site he is building that is part dictionary, part encyclopedia and part storybook.

Tyler Cowen calls Nahuatl "the most beautiful language" he's heard.

The Manwagon

It's not an SUV. It's not a minivan. It's The Manwagon:

Seeking to lure speed-crazy guys with kids, car makers are trying to transform the dowdy old family hauler into something new: the manwagon. In perhaps the most extreme sign of the industry's horsepower race, some of these wagons are quicker than a Porsche Boxster. They have monstrous engines, giant brakes, track-ready suspensions and race-car-style seats — plus prices up to $30,000 higher than the base versions. But unlike a sports car, these wagons can fit strollers and coolers in the back.

This melding of speed and sippy cups may seem unlikely, but car makers say their consumer research has unearthed a surprising number of family men who thought wagons could be cool, if only they had more guts. Dodge responded by rolling out its aggressively styled Magnum wagon in 2004 and just added a faster version, the 425-horsepower SRT8. Volvo's V70 R has 79% more power than the base V70 wagon, while Audi put together its S4 Avant by pairing an A4 wagon with a 340-horsepower V8 engine from its flagship A8 sedan. Mercedes-Benz recently began selling the supercharged E55 wagon for the first time in the U.S.: It boasts the same 469-horsepower engine that powers one of the fastest sedans Mercedes has ever built.

Soccer Ball Contact Lens

There's something both amusing and disturbing about a Soccer Ball Contact Lens:

A set of 'Magic Lens' contact lenses with images of one soccer ball and a German flag cost 45 euros.

Explosive-eating fungus

There's a fungus for almost any task, including eating explosives:

When explosives are used for mining or demolition, some may fail to detonate and get lost in the rubble. Riggs reckons the remedy could be to mix pellets of dormant fungal spores in with the explosive charge before inserting the wick into the explosive package.

The dry spores lie dormant while the explosives are in storage and, if the charge detonates as intended, will get blown to smithereens.

But if the explosive fails to detonate, water from the air should migrate down the wick and into the charge. The spores should then germinate and devour the charge, rendering it harmless.

The white-rot fungus Phlebia radiate is particularly fond of high explosives, according to the patent. And the speed at which it gobbles the stuff up depends on the number of pellets added: 5 pellets per stick for slow degradation or 30 to make it safe after just a few days.

(Hat tip to Defense Tech.)

Israeli Military Finds Perfect Vehicle For Special Ops Forces: The Llama

Israeli Military Finds Perfect Vehicle For Special Ops Forces: The Llama:

Israel's military has found the perfect vehicle for special operations forces—the llama.

After extensive tests, the uncomplaining workhorse animals were found to easily out-perform donkeys. What's more, they need refueling only every other day.

Llamas are dangerous, so if you see one where people are swimming, you shout...Look out, there are llamas! (From Monty Python's Flying Circus.)

Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It

Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It makes a bold proposition about the country best known for Black Hawk Down:

Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming.

From the CIA factbook:

Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia's service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu's main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security.

Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who married into a Somali clan, holds that Somalia is a country based on customary law:

Customary laws develop in a country like Somalia in the absence of a central legislating body. Rules "emerge spontaneously as people go about their daily business and try to solve the problems that occasionally arise in it without upsetting the patterns of cooperation on which they so heavily depend" (Van Notten, 15: 2005). Van Notten contends that the Somali customary law closely follows the natural law and therefore should be preserved.

The extended family is the core of Somali society. Families descended from common great grandparent form a jilib, the basic independent jural unit, and a number of jilibs in turn form a clan. Each family, jilib, and clan has its own judge, whose role is to facilitate the handling of disputes by deciding where the liability lies and what compensation should be paid. For example if a man is murdered, the murderer's clan gives the victim's clan one hundred camels (the blood price). Verdicts are widely discussed, and a judge who does not base his decision on norms prevailing in the community is unlikely to be asked to settle further disputes. Thus while a judge may form his own principles, his customers will decide his competence as a judge.

What happens when you try to impose democracy on a tribal society?

When the electorate is composed of close-knit tribal, religious, linguistic or ethnic communities, the people invariably vote, not on the merits of any issue, but for the party of their own community. The community with the greatest numbers wins the election, and the minority parties then put rebellion and secession at the top of their political agenda. That is nothing but a recipe for chaos.

Libertarian Paradise

James H. Joyner Jr. calls the Netherlands a Libertarian Paradise:

I recently spent a few days in what a friend referred to as 'the land of debauchery.' Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, is probably as famous for its openness toward prostitution and drug consumption than for wooden shoes, canals, or world class museums. Yet, strangely, it nonetheless seems to be a clean, functioning society.

While Holland has an exceedingly redistributionist economic policy, it is a libertarian's paradise on the social front.

Dogbert Explains "Fungible"

Dilbert doesn't understand what "fungible" means. Dogbert does.

1994, Year of the Newt

Brian Carney suggests that Newt Gingrinch, who led the Republican Party to victory in 1994, may be making a run for the presidency in 2008:

The party governed to maintain power, and so lost touch with its electorate. And here he adds a warning: 'Our natural majority in the country is a very reform majority. It's the taxpaying majority. It's the people who do not trust Washington, do not like seeing their money wasted, are not impressed with pork — if anything, they're irritated by it. And either the House and Senate Republicans are going to move substantially in the next few months or they're going to run a very real risk of losing the fall election.'

So what does 'substantial movement' look like? Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gingrich has a program. '[T]here are two layers. I'll give you things they can't do and things they can do.' First, the things they can do, such as cutting down on earmarks and pork-barrel spending. 'They should change the House rules so that any conference report that comes back is automatically filed on the Thomas system [the Web site where congressional actions are logged and made publicly available] and is not voted on for 72 hours so that every blogger in the country can go in and read it. That would immediately cut down on the most outrageous stuff because you wouldn't be able to pass it.'

This is Mr. Gingrich at his best — a swish of the sword when faced with a Gordian Knot.

Asymmetrical warfare, 1906

Asymmetrical warfare, 1906 looks at the long war against the Muslim Moros of the Philippines:

They had never been Filipinos: their identity pre-existed King Philip of Spain; their national consciousness had always been as Muslims. After the first Mohammedan missionary arrived in Sulu in 1380 parts of the island of Mindanao had constituted themselves into the Sultanate of Sulu. A succession of Europeans: the Portuguese, French, British, and Spaniards had attempted to incorporate it into their respective colonial schemes but the Muslim Malays, led by Imams who controlled ruthless kris killers, resisted implacably. When beaten on the battlefield they simply surrendered out of convenience, signed a peace treaty and disregarded it once the enemy force had left.

When the US acquired Mindanao after the beating Spain in the Spanish-American war, Americans came face to face with what came to be known as asymmetrical warfare. Here were attacks on civilians, beheadings, raids on schools. All the stuff of modern headlines. And in the pre-explosive era the ultimate weapon of Imams was the suicide bomber of the day: the juramentado.

To make his point, Wretchard cites a few colorful passages from Victor Hurley's Jungle Patrol:

Then all firing ceased as the men went at it in a furious bayonet to barong duel that was a fight to the finish. At the nearest cavalry tent a white soldier rolled out under the wall, rifle in hand. Before he could stand up a Moro was upon him. Another soldier crawled out and the Moro leaped to him. My Corporal Batiokan ran up to crush the Moro's skull with a rifle butt. Blood was squirting from two great gashes in the cavalrymen's back. Soldiers came running to carry away the wounded man. Their uniforms were red with blood. ... One of the men was past medical aid. He had been chopped to ribbons, with arms and legs severed and lying apart from his body. ...

Seven of the eight juramentados who had made the attack had succeeded in getting through the wire in the face of the fire. One lay dead outside the wire and seven were stretched out in the enclosure when morning came and we made inspection. The hospital was lined with terribly wounded men, slashed with barongs, and we were forced to kill many of the slashed horses who had been in the path of the charging Moros. The juramentados who had plunged through the wire in a desperate dive had left skin and clothes on the wire. They were horribly torn from head to foot by the long barbs. They were riddled with bullets, and many had heads bashed in and bayonet stabs. They lay there, with glittering eyeballs and bared black teeth. Their heads were shaven and their eyebrows were a thin line of hair.

Has the world become a better place?

GapMinder's goal is "to make sense of the world by having fun with statistics!"

Enjoy this animated presentation, Has the world become a better place?

Minister offers £6m to behead cartoonist

This is not reassuring. Minister offers £6m to behead cartoonist:

A minister in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has offered a £6m reward to anyone who beheads one of the Danish cartoonists who outraged Muslims by depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare, said the killer would also receive his weight in gold. He made the offer during a rally in his constituency in Meerut, northeast of Delhi. Protesters then burnt an effigy of a cartoonist and some Danish flags.

A Pakistani cleric has also offered a $1m reward — and a car — as a “prize” to anyone who kills one of the cartoonists. Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi made his announcement after Friday prayers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The Age of Corporate Environmentalism

In The Age of Corporate Environmentalism, Katherine Mangu-Ward says, Surprise — big business has learned that it’s pretty easy being green:

The idea of the rich corporate villain gleefully dirtying Mother Earth is powerful and appealing. Children of the 1980s encountered this supervillain in comics, movies, public awareness videos, and science textbooks. Times were good for mandatory recycling, for mandatory emissions reductions, for anything mandatory aimed at restraining corporate polluters.

But in the late ’90s, something peculiar started happening. The men in suits were still middle-aged, round, and white. They were still just as concerned with profit and golf. Very few of them sported tie-dyed attire, aside from the occasional whimsical Jerry Garcia tie. But the men in suits started caring. Or at least acting like they cared. Which, if you ask a spotted owl, is the same thing.

Hottest Fitness Trends

Some of the new year's Hottest Fitness Trends:

• The newest offering at Crunch Fitness Gyms across the U.S. not only makes their female members look good in high heels, they make them exercise in them. Recently introduced, 'Stiletto Strength' classes consist of a 30-minute routine of Pilates and strength training, with the last 15 minutes spent strutting around in 3-inch heels.
• At Equinox Fitness, new offerings include a sword-wielding class called Forza.
• At Clay Health Club in New York City, members can tighten their abs with an Indian dance called Masala Bhangra.
• In Bikram yoga studios, clients follow a series of yoga techniques in a room of 90 to 120 degrees.

You're Never Too Old for Dodgeball shares some more fitness trends:

• Chelsea Piers' 25,000-square-foot gymnastics facility advertises the largest adult gymnastics program in the country, attracting both first-timers and professionals. Classes are split nearly evenly between men and women, instructors said. Participants hail the sport's almost meditative effects, but the regulars' sharply defined muscles point up other benefits.
• The Seattle-based group Underdog Sports offers adult leagues for elementary-school staples — dodgeball, kickball and flag football.
• The Sports Clubs Network — which has 135 U.S. health centers — offers hip-hop dance, a ballet workout and "urban rebounding," exercises on miniature trampolines.
• The ballet class offered by the Sports Clubs Network, the NYC Ballet Workout, can be done at home, too. Since it was created in 1997, more than half a million copies of its videos and DVDs have been sold, along with 100,000 instructional books.
• With the influence of the
  Winter Olympics and the Fox TV network show "Skating with Celebrities," figure skating is becoming particularly popular among adults.

Hidden Passageways

I may have to remodel the house. From HiddenPassageway.com:

Creative Home Engineering is a registered contracting company that adds value to homes by integrating silent, automated hidden passageways.

I'm not surprised that they have sample hidden doors triggered by pulling books on a bookshelf or twisting candles on a mantle; I'm surprised that they don't have one triggered by a button in a bust of Shakespeare.

Go With Your Gut

Harriet Brown says Go With Your Gut — because it's better for you:

I'd like to make a radical suggestion: instead of wringing our hands over fat grams and calories, let's resolve to enjoy whatever food we eat.

Because, as it turns out, when you eat something you like, your body makes more efficient use of its nutrients. Which means that choking down a plateful of steamed cauliflower (if you hate steamed cauliflower) is not likely to do you as much good as you think.

In the 1970's, researchers fed two groups of women, one Swedish and one Thai, a spicy Thai meal. The Thai women — who presumably liked the meal more than the Swedish women did — absorbed almost 50 percent more iron from it than the Swedish women. When the meal was served as a mushy paste, the Thai women absorbed 70 percent less iron than they had before — from the same food.

The researchers concluded that food that's unfamiliar (Thai food to Swedish women) or unappetizing (mush rather than solid food) winds up being less nutritious than food that looks, smells and tastes good to you. The explanation can be found in the digestive process itself, in the relationship between the 'second brain' — the gut — and the brain in your head.

The Father Without a Son

Lee Harris celebrates President's Day — Washington's Birthday — by praising The Father Without a Son:

So here was the problem. Washington had to be given the kind of powers normally reserved only for kings and military dictators — yet it was politically impossible to declare him either one or the other. After all, America was a Republic, and Republics could not be governed by kings or dictators. Therefore, a solution was found in devising an hitherto unheard of office, namely, the Presidency. Though the word 'president' had been used before to designate various appointed officials, it had never been used to designate a Head of State.

By a stroke of extraordinary good fortune, the man for whom this office was designed was also a man who was profoundly aware of the potential dangers inherent in the office that had been specially designed for him. Washington was keenly aware just how easily the Presidency could degenerate back to a monarchy, or worse; and, shrewd man that he was, he clearly saw that there was nothing in the written Constitution that could prevent such a process from occurring.

For example, there is a remarkable letter that Washington wrote, before assuming the Presidency, in which he argues that he is peculiarly qualified to be President because he has no son. Now imagine a candidate for the Presidency today making such a claim: Vote for me, because I have no son. How strange it would sound to our ears. Yet Washington regarded this as virtually an indispensable desideratum in a President — or, at least, in the first President. Nor is it difficult to see why this mattered to him so much. He did not want the office of the Presidency to become the possession of a dynasty.

The Saintly Sinner

In The Saintly Sinner, Joan Acocella looks at Mary Magdalene and the stories that rose around her.

From the Bible itself, we know two things about Mary Magdalene: she was crazy — Jesus cast "seven devils" out of her — and she saw the angel who announced His resurrection.

Later stories conflated her with Luke's "sinner" — it all made sense, after all — and Mary Magdalene was declared a whore:

As such, she was a tremendous success. Europe, once it was converted to Christianity, was not content to have all those holy people in the Bible confine their activities — or, more important, their relics — to the Middle East. And so the Magdalene, among others, was sent west. After the Crucifixion, it was said, infidels placed her in a rudderless boat and pushed it out to sea, in full confidence that it would capsize. But, piloted by the hand of God, the Magdalene’s bark arrived at Marseilles, whereupon she undertook a career of strenuous evangelism and converted southern Gaul. Eventually, however, she tired of preaching and retreated to a cave in a mountain near Marseilles, where she wept and repented her foul youth. She wore no clothes; she was covered only by her long hair (or, in some paintings, by an appalling sort of fur). Nor did she take any food. Once a day, angels would descend to carry her to Heaven, where she received “heavenly sustenance,” and then fly her back to her grotto. This went on for thirty years. Then, one day, her friend Maximin, the bishop of Aix, found her in his church levitating two cubits above the floor and surrounded by a choir of angels. She promptly expired.

This is a summary of various stories, but most of them can be found in The Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives written by a thirteenth-century Dominican, Jacobus de Voragine, who later became the archbishop of Genoa. After the Bible, The Golden Legend is said to have been the most widely read text of the Middle Ages. On its basis, sermons were composed, plays written, altarpieces painted, stories told by the hearth fire. The Magdalene, according to some sources, became France’s most popular saint after the Virgin Mary.

This story made me a bit queasy:

The crucial development in Magdalene scholarship was the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library. Biblical scholars had understood for a long time that the orthodox Church was just the segment of the Church that won out over competing Christian sects, notably the so-called Gnostics. But, apart from what could be gathered from the Church fathers’ denunciations of these supposed heretics, students of early Christianity knew little about them. Then, one day in December of 1945, an Arab peasant named Muhammad Ali al-Samman drove his camel to the foothills near the town of Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt, to collect fertilizer for his fields, and as he dug he unearthed a clay jar about three feet high. Hoping that it might contain treasure, he broke it open and, to his disappointment, found only a bunch of papyrus books, bound in leather. He took the books home and tossed them in a courtyard where he kept his animals. In the weeks that followed, his mother used some pages from the books to light her stove; other pages were bartered for cigarettes and fruit. But eventually, after a long journey through the hands of antiquities dealers, black marketers, smugglers, and scholars, Samman’s find was recognized as a priceless library of Gnostic writings—thirteen codices, containing fifty-two texts—recorded in Coptic (an early form of Egyptian) in the fourth century but translated from Greek originals dating from between the second and fourth centuries. In time, the books were confiscated by the Egyptian government and moved to the Coptic Museum in Cairo, where they remain today. (They were published in 1972-77.) Actually, they were not the first Gnostic texts to be discovered. Others had come to light in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but most of them were not published until after the time of the Nag Hammadi discovery.

The Mary Magdalene of the Gnostic texts is far from a lowly prostitute; she's a fount of wisdom.

Shining Tree of Life

In Shining Tree of Life, Adam Gopnik explains why the Shakers made such fabulous furniture:

Most of the elements of Shakerism are common to orders and sects: the Dervishes whirled, Dominican monks renounced the flesh. What seems distinctive is, first, their feminism and its insistence on coed monasticism, which made much of the sexual while also denying it. Theirs was a genuinely radical feminism. Shaker communities, though not specifically matriarchal in rule—there were plenty of male elders, too — were among the few American communities of nearly perfect sexual equality. There is even a sense, perceptible in the letters and other writings, that this made a Shaker colony a welcome place for “effeminate” men — a surviving letter reveals a code of homoerotic innuendo that is as easy to decrypt as pig Latin.

The Lessons of Counterinsurgency

When the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment served in Iraq in 2003-04, its performance was judged mediocre, with a series of abuse cases growing out of its tour of duty in Anbar province, but its recent tour in Tall Afar has been judged "a case study in classic counterinsurgency, the way it is supposed to be done." Here are some of The Lessons of Counterinsurgency:

The regiment's campaign began in Colorado in June 2004, when Col. H. R. McMaster took command and began to train the unit to return to Iraq. As he described it, his approach was like that of a football coach who knows he has a group of able and dedicated athletes, but needs to retrain them to play soccer.

Understanding that the key to counterinsurgency is focusing on the people, not the enemy, he said he changed the standing orders of the regiment to state that in the future all soldiers would 'treat detainees professionally.' During the unit's previous tour, a detainee was beaten to death during questioning and a unit commander carried a baseball bat that he called his 'Iraqi beater.'

'Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy,' McMaster said he told every soldier in his command. He ordered his soldiers to stop using the term hajji as a slang term for all Iraqis, because he saw it as inaccurate and disrespectful. (It actually means someone who has made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.)

One out of every 10 soldiers received a three-week course in conversational Arabic, so that each small unit would have someone capable of basic exchanges with Iraqis. McMaster, who holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina and is an expert on the Vietnam War, distributed a lengthy reading list to his officers that included studies of Arab and Iraqi history and most of the classic texts on counterinsurgency. He also quietly relieved one battalion commander who didn't seem to understand that such changes were necessary.

I recommend reading the whole article.

Integration and “Savage Liberalism”

Theodore Dalrymple discusses Integration and “Savage Liberalism”:

My mother arrived in Britain penniless, but fortunately for her—and for Britain—no one sought to persuade her that she need not learn English, and no one set up expensive and ineffective services for her in case she did not. She was not obliged to give up her tastes or conform in private respects, but she was expected (de facto) to blend into society as much as possible, rightly and reasonably, in my opinion. There was no ideology seeking to Balkanize the sensibilities of the population, enclose people in ghettoes and so forth, in the process acting as an employment opportunity for hordes of officials and bureaucrats.

Although it is not a complete answer, a flexible labor market is very important, because there is nothing like work to integrate people.

How to Get Condi to Power

In How to Get Condi to Power, Uriah Kriegel explains how "the notion of a Rice presidency is appealing to three different groups within the GOP":

First and foremost is the moderate wing of the party. Secretary Rice combines an unwavering hawkish foreign policy with socially moderate positions on abortion, race relations, etc. She is a deeply religious person who is nonetheless not, politically speaking, guided by religion. And as such, she appeals to Republicans worried about the rise of Evangelicals evident during the Bush presidency.

Obviously, Rice not only represents, but also embodies, the socially inclusive element in the Party of Lincoln.
[...]
This is also part of her appeal to a second Republican group — the libertarian/meritocratic wing headed by anti-regulation, small-government Republicans and associated Big Business interests. Despite the challenges presented by her racial and socioeconomic background, Rice ascended to her current stature on the merit of her intellectual and moral character.
[...]
This also ties to the third group Rice appeals to, the "Emerging Majority" Republicans and the pragmatically-oriented apparatchiks and wonks in conservative think-tanks throughout the country. This wing may value Rice's moderation (and competence) not only for its own sake, but also for its political potential.

There are obstacles though:

First of all, successful presidential candidates who have never been previously elected to office are extremely rare in American history, and tend to be retired generals (e.g. Eisenhower).

Second, Rice has been able to sustain her unblemished integrity precisely because she has never run for office. As long as she speaks in favor of freedom and democracy, she is bound to look dignified; once she speaks in favor of herself, sustaining the image of integrity would require some political skill we simply don't know whether she has.

Third, personal facts about Secretary Rice are likely to present a challenge to her candidacy. Rice is a strong and independent single woman in her fifties who has never been married.

Holy Flying Cow!

In Holy Flying Cow!, Nick Schulz interviews Randy Cerveny, author of Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming, about man's effect on the weather, starting with the "heat island" effect:

Right, the urban heat island effect. Here in Phoenix, Arizona for example, the temperature that we have in the airport which is in the center of town, is generally about five to seven degrees warmer at night than it is out at the surrounding areas. And that's due to the fact that the concrete and the asphalt absorb all of this heat and then release it during the night, so that that central part of the city becomes much warmer. Now, that's solely due to us, I mean, that's not a natural type phenomenon.
[...]
That's at the local level. I also, as I started to say, had done some research with a colleague of mine where we demonstrated that people are apparently having an impact at a regional level. That off the coast of the United States, the Eastern seaboard of the United States, we demonstrated pretty conclusively, that it rains more on the weekends than it does on the week days. And this is due to human activity.

And the reason is because in nature there is no such thing as a seven day cycle. The seven day cycle is manmade. It's something that we created as part of our civilization.

So, if you find seven day cycles in nature, the likelihood is that it's something that we've done. Well, we've found seven day cycles in rainfall off the Eastern seaboard. We were able to link it back to pollution. That as pollution during the week builds up and reaches a maximum towards Friday and Saturday and then gets pushed off into the Atlantic Ocean, that pollution acts to produce more rainfall, so it's kind of odd, but at a regional scale, all along the Eastern seaboard we tend to find that just off shore, weekends are going to be rainier.

At the global level, things aren't so clear.

Inigo Montoya On Broadway

David Hornik says we may see Inigo Montoya On Broadway. From Guettel and Goldman to Team on Princess Bride Musical:

Composer Adam Guettel and screenwriter William Goldman will collaborate on a musical version or the hit fairy tale film 'The Princess Bride,' the New York Post reported.

Candy Makers Cater to the Health-Conscious

Candy Makers Cater to the Health-Conscious with flavanol-rich dark chocolate:

Mars Inc., maker of Milky Way, Snickers and M&M's candies, next month plans to launch nationwide a new line of products made with a dark chocolate the company claims has health benefits.

Called CocoaVia, the products are made with a kind of dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that is thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may even lower blood pressure. The snacks also are enriched with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy.

Saint Valentine

According to The Golden Legend (Aurea Legenda), which records many fanciful stories of the lives of the saints, Saint Valentine was a martyr, executed by Emperor Claudius for denying the Roman gods.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three such Saint Valentines, all martyrs, all "mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February."