Feb 25 2010

The Road Not Taken

Category: freedom — amuzikman @ 9:00 am

I have been thinking a lot about the future lately.  In some respects my future now is perhaps more uncertain than it’s ever been.  While pondering the imponderables of what tomorrow may hold, lately I find myself frequently recalling a scene from a Tom Hanks film.  “Cast Away” was made in 2000, and stars Hanks as a man who survives a plane crash only to be stranded alone on a desert island for two years.

The scene I keep thinking about is at the very end of the movie.  Hanks, starting his life over after being rescued, is standing in the middle of an intersection of two country roads somewhere in a very rural part of Texas.  He looks in each direction, his eye following the roads as far as he can see, as he contemplates his future.  He is at a point in his life where he can literally just get in his car and drive in any direction he chooses for as long as he chooses.

I often take my dog for a walk late at night.  Sometimes she and I stop in the middle of an intersection near my home as we return from our walk.  Like Hanks’character in the movie I look in all four directions and try to imagine what it would be like to have the freedom to choose to travel in any direction.  It’s been a very long time since I had that kind of freedom.  For I cannot take any road I choose.  I must take the road that leads to home, to family, and to the life I lead.

I am not complaining.  I am very blessed.  But with age comes family, career, and a host of responsibilities.  And with age comes a life that in some ways offers fewer choices, or… perhaps it’s better to say it is a life made up of consequences from choices past – mostly good, some not so good  – that lead to other choices.

In my job as a teacher I am surrounded daily by very bright, happy, and generally motivated young college students who have their entire lives ahead of them.  As they approach graduation they are nearing an intersection in their own lives.  How thrilling it is for them to be able to travel down any road they like, for as long as they like. I’ll admit a little part of me is jealous. OK, sometimes maybe more than a little.  For I cannot just take any road as they can – most of my choosing time is behind me.  (I think I’m starting to understand the concept of mid-life crisis…)

Young people, enjoy the intersections in your lives.  Yeah, they are scary at first.  But each one is a great adventure, and they get fewer and further apart as you go on down the road.

Ah, that Robert Frost – he was on to something!

Feb 24 2010

Raising African-American consciousness about abortion — at last

Category: abortion,media,society — harmonicminer @ 9:30 am

I’ve commented many times on the Shoah of abortion, and how the enormous injustice of it is especially bitter in inner-city minority communities, where Planned Parenthood and its competitors do the largest part of their business.  This is just about the first time I’ve seen serious mention of black abortion rates in the major media.

The message on dozens of billboards across the city is provocative: Black children are an “endangered species.”

The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community. The reaction from black leaders has been mixed, but the “Too Many Aborted” campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country.

“It’s ingenious,” said the Rev. Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based anti-abortion group aimed at African-Americans that operates in 27 states. “This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it.”

Oh, I don’t think NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN will have much trouble ignoring it.

The billboards went up last week in Atlanta and urge black women to “get outraged.”

The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.

Black women accounted for the majority of abortions in Georgia in 2006, even though blacks make up just a third of state population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nationally, black women were more than three times as likely to get an abortion in 2006 compared with white women, according to the CDC.

This understates the real jeopardy of African-American children. It isn’t that it’s false, it’s that it disguises the fact that black children are about five times as likely to be aborted as white children.

“I think it’s necessary,” Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue, said of the billboard campaign. “Abortion in the black community is at epidemic proportions. They’re not really aware of what’s actually going on. If it shocks people … it should be shocking.”Anti-abortion advocates say the procedure has always been linked to race. They claim Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eradicate minorities by putting birth control clinics in their neighborhoods, a charge Planned Parenthood denies.

“The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of color,” said Leola Reis, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Georgia. “If we want to reduce the number of abortions and unintended pregnancies, we need to work as a community to make sure we get quality affordable health care services to as many women and men as possible.”

In 2008, Issues4Life, a California-based group working to end abortion in the black community, lobbied Congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood, calling black abortions “the Darfur of America.”

Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler said a race-based strategy for anti-abortion activists has gotten a fresh zeal, especially in the wake of the historic election of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights.

“He’s really out of step with the rest of black America,” Scheidler said. “That might be part of what may be shifting here and why a campaign like this is appropriate, to kind of wake up that disconnect.”

Abortion rights advocates are disturbed. Spelman College professor Beverly Guy-Sheftall called the strategy a gimmick.

Is it a “gimmick” to simply tell the truth?

“To use racist arguments to try to bait black people to get them to be anti-abortion is just disgusting,” said Guy-Sheftall, who teaches women’s history and feminist thought at the historically black women’s college.

“These one-issue approaches that are not about saving the black family or black children, it’s just a big distraction,” she said. “Many black people don’t know who Margaret Sanger is and could care less.”

Stunningly, this “professor” seems to think that’s a good thing.  Why are there so many blacks who don’t know about Margaret Sanger’s opinion of blacks, their value to society (not much in her mind), and the desirability of blacks not reproducing?  These people have been VERY ill served by “black studies” programs and “black history” weeks and so on, which should surely include prominent attention paid to a person who wanted many fewer of them, and helped found Planned Parenthood to bring that outcome about.

On the right side of this page, there are some links for you to click. They are Black Genocide, CURE, Issues4Life, and LEARN.  Educate yourself, if this is new to you.  You cannot support abortion-on-demand, or politicians who support it, and care about the future of African-Americans in the USA.

Feb 23 2010

Dvorak meets dixieland

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 4:47 pm

Some music students apparently have entirely too much time on their hands.

Feb 23 2010

It is very sad

Category: energy,Obama,Russia,science,space,technology — harmonicminer @ 9:43 am

Charles Krauthammer – Closing the new frontier

“We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this,” says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. “But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!”

The Russians may be new at capitalism, but they know how it works. When you have a monopoly, you charge monopoly prices. Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space.

By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We’re not talking about Mars or the moon here. We’re talking about low-Earth orbit, which the United States has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.

Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.

But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the United States will have no access of its own for humans into space — and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.

Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASA’s efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It’s too expensive. It’s too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.

Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative “clean energy.” Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.

As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can’t afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?

To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip — six months of contingencies vs. three days for a moon trip.

Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It’s like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence.

Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen.

At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year — 1/300th of last year’s stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.

As for President Obama’s commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it?

Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy’s liberalism and Obama’s. Kennedy’s was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama’s is a constricted, inward-looking call to retreat.

Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.

Feb 21 2010

How much of this can you tolerate?

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:16 pm

Is anyone actually surprised by any of this? Only people who have been deliberately blind to the facts.

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century, but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised

* Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now, suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

There is nothing new here, except that now the liars are beginning to admit their prevarications. The fact that the science is anything but “settled” has been obvious for awhile.

Now you should ask yourself this:  exactly how seriously should we take any politician, or any scientist who has been carrying water FOR those politicians, who have tried to scare us into accepting economy killing measures to reduce CO2 on the ground that it is a greenhouse gas?  When other greenhouse gasses are far more potent?  Including, well, water vapor…

These people have simply forfeited all credibility, in my judgment.

It is time for them to go.

Shoot..  rather than implement any of the suicidal economic policies these clowns are promoting, it would be cheaper to put the entire IPCC as well as the bulk of the global-warming establishment on permanent vacation on the French Riviera in 9-star hotels (we’ll have to create new categories), with leased Aston-Martins and paid, fawning entourages of GAIA worshippers along with entire Hollywood movie production companies filming their lives for the eventual Oscar ceremonies.

Feb 21 2010

I wonder if these people have Ahmandinejad’s address

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:51 am

Dubai seeks global dragnet for Hamas man’s slaying

Dubai police appealed for an international manhunt Tuesday after releasing names and photos of an alleged 11-member European hit squad accused of stalking and killing a Hamas commander last month in a plot that mixed cold precision with spy caper disguises such as fake beards and wigs.

Powerline thinks this was done by Mossad, or a similar Israeli agency.

I doubt it. They don’t leave this many loose ends, especially the security camera footage.  I suppose they may have paid for it.  On the other hand, it could simply be a political foe who fronted the cash.  Fatah doesn’t exactly love Hamas.  In fact, this kind of thing has happened before, but is just more likely to be ignored when there isn’t an obvious potential Israeli assassin angle.

I suppose it’s possible the hit was done by a private assassination service for hire, though it seems they didn’t use bullets that move in curves.

I think I may start insisting that everyone who goes to faculty meetings go through a metal detector on the way into the room.  And I won’t assume I’m safe from that slightly crazy looking Medieval Literature professor, just because he’s sitting on the opposite side of the computer projector.

His beard looks fake to me.

Feb 20 2010

A Thoughtful Reply To A Serious Subject

Category: Olympics — amuzikman @ 4:18 pm

U.S.A. Olympic skater, Evan Lysacek has won the gold medal in men’s figure skating, beating heavily favored Russian, Yevgeny Plushenko.

Apparently Plushenko and all of Russia, from the Prime Minister down, have taken great exception to this and have been complaining bitterly about the results, claiming the outcome was unfair.

Given the sensitivity and significance of the subject plus the enormity of the implications for our two nations I feel it is important for me to contribute a considered personal reply.  After extended thoughtful deliberation, here it is:

Dear Mr. Plushenko,

Yawn…

Feb 20 2010

Gun free zone failure number 60?

Category: college,education,guns,higher education,society — harmonicminer @ 9:07 am

The other kind of IED (intermittent explosive disorder)
Much more at the link.

The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”

I’ve been to some tense faculty meetings. Meetings with outcomes that had the potential to really change people’s lives who were involved, in one way or another.

So far I haven’t had to duck and cover because somebody started shooting.  But it is starting to seem that the only people who respect the “gun-free zones” on campus are the victims.

Maybe I should start ordering my hoodies to be Kevlar-lined.

Just in case a deranged post-modern prof who gives feminist readings to medieval French poetry happens to go postal.

Feb 19 2010

G-G-G-Global W-W-W-W-Warming (It’s hard to say when you’re shivering!) UPDATE

Category: Al Gore,funny but sad,global warming — amuzikman @ 9:00 am

A recent group of headlines from the Drudge Report:

If I were a cartoonist I’d draw Al Gore giving a speech on global warming somewhere outdoors.  In every frame of the cartoon he’d have to pause his speech and put on another layer of clothing as the weather worsened and the temperature dropped.  The last frame would show him so bundled up that he could neither be seen or heard.

…..Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

UPDATE: I was taken to task over this original post.  Here is an example of one critical comment. There are others.

But your claim that a cold winter is “evidence” against global warming is downright foolish, and shows either a) an interest in misleading people, or b) a blatant misunderstanding of climate change research.

Now watch this archival footage showing a series of Democrat politicians claiming that a warm winter and lack of snow was concrete evidence of global warming.   Which just further underlines the fact that a) a double standard exists, and b) those who think anthropogenic global warming exists do so as a matter of belief rather than of fact.  It’s almost a climate religion.

Feb 18 2010

More formatting help:

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 11:01 pm

This:

<i>italic</i>
<em>emphasis, same as italic, usually</em>
<b>bold</b>
<u>underlined</u>
<blockquote>quoted</blockquote>
<strike>strike</strike>
<big>bigger</big>
<big><big>even bigger</big></big>
<small>smaller</small>
<b>
<i><big><blockquote>bold, italic, bigger, quoted</blockquote></big>
</i></b><i></i>

Made this:

italic
emphasis, same as italic, usually
bold
underlined

quoted

strike
bigger
even bigger
smaller

bold, italic, bigger, quoted


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