The Noble Pundit

Since I started linking to some of the interesting games I’ve been coming across lately, I thought I might let you know about the one I found last night called Kapi Regnum, a game where you run a medieval economy. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how the gameplay all interacts, but so far, it seems to have some pretty good promise.

10-3

My UCF Knights went down to defeat in the Liberty Bowl tonight, but they put up an incredible effort – especially defensively – and have nothing to be ashamed about after the season they had. 10 wins is no small feat in college football these days. I will be wearing my UCF gear with pride. This loss was but a minor setback on the road to becoming a true powerhouse football team.

Another game I came across that I found to be quite interesting, even though it is out of my normal range of interests, is a game called Trukz – A trucking simulation game. I’ve only been playing for a couple of days, but it is a blast.

I think that one of the most important things is to find a good company to join in game. A company gets you any number of benefits, but the most important to me is having people who can help you to learn the game by answering questions and passing along the wisdom learned of prior mistakes. In CyberNations, the Alliance performs much of the same function.

Go over and take a look at Trukz. I think you’ll be pleasantly addicted as well

So it’s been a while since the last time I posted on here, but I haven’t gone away! Just seems like every time something interesting happens, I don’t get a chance to post about it and when I’m have time, I have lost the fire about it.

But this is different. For the last couple of months, I’ve been playing some great online games that people might have a bit of interest in.

Aviation related:
Airline Empires – this game was the first aviation management sim I came across since the days of AirBucks. It consists actually of two simulations, one that started in 1946 and is progressing from there with 1 hour = 1 day. The second is a modern day time frame, but is much faster paced with 15 min = 1 day. The game is very intuitive and I also found it to be a great way to teach the little one a little geography without him knowing it

Airline Mogul – I found this game right after I started in AE. At first I was a little frustrated by it as it is 1 hour = 1 day and I hadn’t started playing the slow AE sim yet. Once I got into it though, I found it to have quite a bit of depth and it is very easy to pick up as well. I got started late in the first round I played – which was based in the 1950s, very cool – and still finished extremely well, even given the congestion. The developers are doing an excellent job of listening to their customers and are in the process of creating multi-worlds, which should alleviate the congestion in future rounds.

The as a non-aviation related game, I came across CyberNations, a game that lets you create and manage your own country. I’ve just recently started playing it and have found it to be easy to understand but it has a deep layer of complexity that keeps the interest level up.

I’ve put links to each of these games in the sidebar in the “Gaming” section of the blogroll to make it easy to find them. Hope to see you over there!

I caught an article today about a new pair of ETFs that are available that are designed to track the price of crude oil. One fund, UCR, is designed to profit when the price of crude goes up; it’s partner DCR profits when oil goes down in price. Neither fund actually represents an actual position in crude, but rather represents ownership in a complex financial arrangement between the two funds.

As I started reading about this and started considering it more and more, it became more and more obvious to me that these are actually futures contracts that are being traded on the stock exchange. I always think of futures as having two key characteristics: they are a zero-sum game – in other words if one person profits somewhere there is a corresponding loss – and they have a limited duration – in this case, the duration is nominally 20 years.

The difference here is that the risk of delivery is a little different. In a traditional futures contract, you run the risk that if you hold the contract at maturity you will have to perform, either to take delivery or to make delivery. In the case of these new ETFs, you don’t have to make delivery, but you theoretically can be made to take delivery of the underlying cash position the fund is based on (well, actually, I guess if you were short a position at the time the fund terminated, you could be forced to make delivery….)

These seem like they could be interesting tools for the savvy investor, but I’m a little afraid that they might be a bit over the top, risk-wise, for the average investor. I hope that people do their research on these to understand what exactly they are buying before someone screws up and the potential resulting lawsuit gets them pulled.

Way back when, I used to write on a somewhat regularly irregular basis about investing topics. I did this as an opportunity to spread some of the knowledge that I had gained in my time as a stockbroker. To this day, I still talk investing with people at work and will talk to a few select people about different things I find to be of interest.

The other day, I was perusing the web and came across an outstanding site that is an excellent educational tool: Investopedia.com.

As my test of the quality of the site, I looked up how to read a cash flow statement (one of my favorites) and found that the site not only explained the fundamentals of reading the statement, but also explained why it was important.  The fact that a site was willing and/or able to do that astounded me.

If you’re looking to pick up some investing knowledge, I would highly recommend this site.

Congressional Quarterly has an interesting article about a simple quiz that was given to the incoming House Intelligence Chairman in which Rep. Reyes had problems answering some basic questions about the power groups in the Middle East (article can be found here).

Now I won’t hold this interview against Rep. Reyes as it really is emblematic of a larger problem. How many members of Congress, period, could answer these questions? My guess would be that the number is quite small. And I have a problem with that.

A significant portion of the role of Congress requires that they be able to provide oversight of the Executive Branch. This article also points out, about halfway down, that the President and his advisors failed to understand what the consequences of the war might be (namely, a Sunni-Shi’ite civil war). How can we honestly expect that Congress will be able to perform their duty as a Constitutional check and balance on the Executive Branch if the members have no clue themselves?

This kind of knowledge, a basic understanding of the power players in a region that we have a vital interest in (and the lives of our soldiers is a vital national interest), should be a REQUIREMENT to be a member of the government. The problem is that we the people get exactly what we vote for. We get the guy who raises the most money, promises the most pork, or produces the slickest ads, while ignoring the fact that their knowledge is only 30-second-sound-bite deep.

It’s unreasonable to expect the everyday working guy to understand the ins and outs of international politics. It is NOT unreasonable to expect that a member of Congress (or any political office holder for that matter) to understand the basics about the rest of the world.

I feel bad for Rep. Reyes, I really do. From the article it looks as though he was at least game to try to answer and self-conscious enough (and probably embarrassed enough) to go find out the right answers afterwards. It’s not as though he is displaying willful ignorance, he seems to be genuine and probably not far off in his knowledge from the average member of Congress.

Somehow, as a nation, as a people, as the basis from which all power is derived in our government, we need to find a way to stop putting unknowledgeable people in office – in any office. Maybe the five-day Congressional workweek is a mistake. Maybe they should work three and study historical and current events for the other two (or even work two, study two, and spend the next three in their home districts finding out what their constituents are wanting and saying ! ). When we let unknowledgeable people make laws, we end up where we are today, with Congress being a joke and the jails full of people who are in for long prison terms on petty charges. Like the old computer saying: garbage in-garbage out.

Maybe this is just a result of our political system where the person who wins is the one acceptable to the lowest common denominator. Maybe this is just a result of the fact that the distastefulness of system keeps highly qualified candidates from running. Maybe it is none of these things, but it is unacceptable that a member of the government doesn’t know the basic facts about the enemy we are currently in a war with.

Earlier today I saw a segment on ESPN about athletes who own guns. There was a lengthy discussion about why various athletes are packing heat and numerous interviews with gun owning athletes, including one guy who really seemed to be, for lack of a better word, aggressive. I thought the whole segment was interesting, but that for the most part, it missed the mark.

I don’t have a problem with athletes owning firearms. I believe absolutely that the Second Amendment gives every American the right to own a firearm. The reason for owning one is irrelevant to me. It can be for protection, for hunting, for collecting purposes, or just because it has “bling.”

What I found to be interesting was that they had on multiple athletes who talked about how they feel unsafe or how they feel like they need to pack heat to be more of a man. Then they had someone ask why it was that things had changed from the days when Willie Mays played stickball with the neighborhood kids and “how did today’s athletes become so disconnected?”

That question right there answers the issue. Today’s athletes are disconnected from reality. Think about it. The athletes that are most celebrated today are the ones who are the most outrageously sociopathic. Everyone wants to see the highlights of the guy who flaunts the rules. They want to see the maverick. The good guys, the athletes who go out on the field, day in and day out, doing good and doing well don’t make the nightly highlight reel. So there is an incentive of sorts to increase marketability by being more of a showboat than the next guy. And since the leagues allow the showboating, allow the flaunting of the rules and standards, the athletes get a warped sense of reality. They get the idea that the rules are not rules or even guidelines, so much as suggestions that can be obeyed or not at the athlete’s whim.

And when they go out in the real world, they get treated with a deference that simply reinforces that warped sense. Then, as Karl Malone pointed out, and as everyone else glossed over, these athletes go places, such as strip clubs, that tend to put them in situations where they are just asking for trouble. So why is everyone so surprised when that trouble rears its head?

Now this might be so much of a problem, except that many of these athletes have never had to learn how to really tell right from wrong. So they make poor choices, like pulling a gun and firing it into the air several times. They have parties where guns and alcohol mix in a concoction that leads to murder, a la Jason Williams. They drive around with a weapon between their legs in the car. And then they wonder why they get in trouble?

Malone expressed doubt about the whole needing protection excuse. I’m not sure that I agree with his doubt, but I do agree with his point that most of the problems with athletes and guns are a result of their poor decision making. Until we quit treating athletes like they’re above the rest of us, the problems will continue.

I have to give ESPN credit because they didn’t try to make this into an anti-gun screed like most new organizations would have. But instead of delving into the real problem, they glossed it over and instead focused on a couple of athletes that were very strong into the “I need a gun for personal protection” point of view and that tended to be aggressive in posture, while giving minimal play to the responsible people like Karl Malone. Guns are not the problem. Athletes who aren’t grounded in reality are the real problem. And until we quit glorifying them, they will continue to be like this.

I’ve kind of been steering clear of politics lately, mainly because I have gotten to the point that I am simply so disgusted with the state of the politics and politicians today that I have no real desire in analyzing or thinking about what they’re doing. I actually got to the point that for the last election, I really only went down to vote for the state constitutional amendment limiting eminent domain. For every other race on the ballot, I found myself voting more for the candidate I believed least likely to do significant damage. In the time since the election, I have only seen my fears borne out. Two announcements in particular have stood out as emblematic of the problem: the move towards increasing the minimum wage and today’s announcement that the European Socialist Party is pledging support for the Democrats as they take control of Congress.

Our foreign policy is a wreck, mainly because we don’t have a clear goal or direction (Neal Boortz points this out pretty well today when he asks how we are having a war on a tactic, not a people). But I believe that the most dangerous challenge facing us today isn’t foreign in nature. Rather it comes from our incoming Congress in the form of the proposal to raise the minimum wage.

Now I’ve always been a free market libertarian sort when it comes to government interfering in the labor markets and the minimum wage is no different. There is no compelling, rational, defensible reason (outside of buying votes) for raising the minimum wage. There are several scenarios that can take place when the minimum wage is raised. First, companies can cut back on other benefits for other employees to keep their overall cost of labor stable. Or they can absorb the new costs in the form of lower profits. Another alternative is to pass the new costs along to the customer in the form of higher prices. Or they can simply not hire new employees, forcing everyone else to work harder. Every single one of these scenarios has a loser whether it is the employee who loses his benefits, the stockholders who see their investments reduced due to the earning power of the company, the customers who have to pay more or the unemployed prospect who stays that way because the company won’t hire them for the higher wage.

Companies, any company, exist for one reason and one reason only: to make money. If they can’t achieve that goal, they will cease to exist. Companies are not work program extensions of the government. Companies are not a tool for the government to redistribute wealth. They exist to reward risk takers, visionaries, and hard workers who put it all on the line to fill a gap they see in the marketplace.

As much as we don’t want to recognize it, every decision a business makes is an economic one. Particularly when hiring a new employee, a business wants to ensure that that new employee will add to the bottom line. They may do so by increasing sales or by providing better service so that customers don’t look elsewhere. They may actually lead to a reduction in costs if they can consolidate a function that was previously done by many people, thereby freeing those people up to perform other tasks that may have necessitated hiring multiple people. But the bottom line is that if a company doesn’t believe a move will be profitable, they won’t undertake it.

Raising the minimum wage simply makes the economics of hiring a new person that much worse. When the economic hurdles get higher, the jobs available will be fewer. A few people may be helped, but in the end, more will be hurt.

But as more people struggle, the more the modern government wants to step in to “help.” Government programs, welfare, regulation and even nationalization become ways of the government stepping in to “right” the wrongs they have created through poor policy. It is also the path of socialism.

It’s really no surprise that the European Socialist Party would be so supportive of the new Congress. The Europeans have long believed, going back to the time of the monarchies, that nations are great because of their governments. They believe that governments give all the rights to the people and that only they are equipped to make the proper decisions for a nation. This is opposed to the United States’ theoretical form of limited government where the people grant the rights to the government and that the nation is great in spite of the government. However, since the New Deal was first proposed, the Democrats have been moving more and more towards the socialist model themselves.

One of the problems with the socialists is that they believe themselves to be intellectually superior to everyone else and their elitism leads them to disdain the general population. What does it really say about the European Socialist Party if they could not bring themselves to stand beside the United States when Congress was Republican, but they will stand beside the Democrats? Friends are friends regardless of the type or nature of the government (see the US in relation to both Tory and Labour governments in the UK).

When I look at what is likely to come from our next two years, I keep hoping that the Congress won’t be able to accomplish anything substantive. The worst they could do would be to raise the minimum wage, force a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, and to grant amnesty for illegal aliens. Maybe they’ll spend the whole time negotiating with the European Socialist Party over how they can jointly approach the North Korean conundrum or how they end world hunger, peace, etc.

Then, hopefully, in two years we can get some candidates that are actually worth voting for.

So I took part of the day off today to take care of some things around the house and while I was doing so I spent some time listening to the various pundits of the world pontificating on the issues of the day.  The big issue for today seemed to be the report from the Iraq Study Group.  Now I haven’t read the findings (and don’t really plan to honestly), but it sounded like the group was suggesting a combination of diplomacy with people we don’t like and our implementation of an exit strategy from Iraq.  With tomorrow being the “day that will live in infamy” it seems like as good a time as any to take a look at how things are.  Bottom line, things are not pretty, but not for the reasons that is normally assumed.

Tomorrow being December 7 makes this discussion all the more apropos, as World War II was the last war that we really won.  Now I’m certainly not he first to bring up this idea, in fact Ben Shapiro did the same over at WorldNetDaily today and while I disagree with some of his conclusions, I think that the basic premise is accurate.  When you look back at Korea, we quit before achieving total victory.  In Vietnam, we failed to recognize that the war was a two front war – the military front and the propaganda front – and we failed to prosecute the war as completely as we should have.  In the first Gulf War, we stopped before achieving total victory.  And now in the Gulf War Redux, we again stopped before achieving total victory.  Now I wouldn’t necessarily call Korea or either of the Gulf Wars a loss, but a victory they were not.  In every case, every war, that we have fought in since 1945, we have clearly had the superior military, but we have lacked the will to unleash the military in a way that would allow the achievement of total victory.

When we look back in history, we can look to the US Civil War to see a clear-cut example of how the unleashing of an army’s destructive force can change the tide of the war.  From 1861 to 1864, the war hung in the balance.  The Confederacy probably wasn’t on a path to victory, but they certainly were positioning themselves to hold out in a war of attrition that could have led to a ceasefire and possibly a reunification under radically different terms than those eventually achieved.  So what changed the course of the war and led so rapidly to the downfall of the South?  Sherman’s March to the Sea.  As Sherman waged his scorched earth war against the general population of the Confederacy, he weakened the resolve of the Confederate soldier to stay on the front lines as his home was burned, his lands stripped barren, and his family left destitute.  Sherman took the war to the people and in the process he broke the will of the Confederacy to continue the fight.

Part of the reason that the First World War was unsuccessful is because the fighting was generally contained to the military units.  The German people weren’t subjected to the devastation of the war being brought home.  They weren’t subjected to their homes being destroyed, their factories destroyed.  When the war ended, the Treaty of Versailles was viewed as an affront (one of the factors that Hitler played up very well in his rise to power).  The German people didn’t feel as though they had been defeated, just humiliated.  So when Goering promised that there would be no bombers over Berlin, no one thought any differently.  It wasn’t until the total and complete destruction of the Third Reich that the German people began to change and accept that they had lost.

Certainly it is a terrible thing when people’s homes are destroyed.  Certainly it is a terrible thing when civilians die in the course of a war.  War is a terrible thing. 

Maybe part of the problem is that as a nation we view war much like we view gun control.  When I was learning about guns I was taught that you never pull out a gun unless you intend to use it and you never use it unless you intend to kill the person.  Gun control was being able to hit your target.  There was no screwing around with taking knee shots or with using a weapon as a negotiating tool.  If you used it, you used it for one purpose and one purpose only.  That view impressed upon me the awesome responsibility that came from owning a gun or from (gulp) potentially using it. 

Today, people think that guns should be used like they are in all the cop shows where the cop shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand or shoots him in the leg so that the bad guy drops his gun and cops can move in for the arrest.  There is no consideration for what happens when the hand shot missed because on TV it never does.  There is no thought about what happens to you or your family that you’re protecting when that slick shot misses and now the bad guy is mad, scared, armed and knows that it is likely going to be you or him.  A cornered, scared, armed person with nothing to lose is incredibly dangerous and unpredictable.

Anymore, we want to use our military the same way, going for the disarming quick strike or the debilitating surgical strike, rather than going in for the body blow that, while it is more deadly, is much more effective.

We go into wars with narrowly defined goals like “take out their ability to do ‘X’ while minimizing collateral damage” (the shooting the gun out of the hand move) or “let’s go and destroy these weapons that can threaten us/their neighbors/our friends” (the leg shot).  The problem is that all we do is, at best, wound our enemy and give them resolve for next time and at worse, we back them into a corner with nothing left to lose.  Instead, when we put our military in harm’s way it should be with a simple, broadly defined goal – victory.  Not stalemate.  Not a police action.  Complete and total victory so that we don’t have to fight the same fight over and over (World War I and World War II, Korea and Vietnam against the communists, the Gulf Wars).

Part of going for complete victory is that we get behind the effort and stay there.  That’s not to say that there can’t be debate about other avenues.  I hate the idea of negotiating with Syria or Iran, but to bring it up as an alternate path to victory is perfectly legitimate.  It shouldn’t be used as a plan “B” but rather as an enhancement to our original plan (which should have been total victory).  That’s where we screwed up here; we didn’t go in for total victory.  We went to get rid of Saddam and minimize collateral damage – the hand shot.

Where we’re at now is that we’ve fought the bulk of the military battle, but instead of pushing it through to completion, we allowed outside parties to come in to fight the propaganda war against us.  The insurgents have no hope of winning an actual military confrontation with us, at this point they’re out there for propaganda purposes.  They kill a few of our people, make it seem like their cause is supported by the majority of the people in the country so that we decide that we are in an unwinnable fight.  In Iraq, much like in Vietnam, the enemy has done this.  We will fail to win the war because we will believe that we lost, not because we actually did lose.

Is diplomacy with despicable nations and a withdrawal from Iraq the best path forward from here?  Assuming that we lack the backbone to go win the war (and I seriously doubt that we would be willing to stomach the carnage we would have to inflict to win at this point), it is probably to worse an option than any of the others. 

We need to step back as a nation and look back at the last four wars and look for the lessons learned and the common threads.  We are too humanitarian and it appears that we cause more death from our unwillingness to be brutal while fighting.  Except for Vietnam, we are too interested in multilateralism and unwilling to go it alone, even when we know it is the right thing to do.  We don’t fight the propaganda war at home and end up letting the enemy dominate the view of the fight being presented to the American people.  And finally we are too willing to take on these military adventures with narrowly defined goals instead of simply deciding that if we’re going in, we’re going all in.  We do a serious disservice to our men and women in uniform when we don’t put a high value on their lives and only risk their sacrifice for truly meaningful fights that we intend to win.

Tomorrow will be 65 years since Pearl Harbor.  To honor the men and women who have fallen since then, we would do well to think about why we send them off to fight.  We would also do well to think about what we really want to fight for. The military is our national gun.  We should only use them when we intend to win.  Anything else is unfair.

The other day, I got a new book in the mail The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed To Save an Ailing Industry by Rush Loving, an author who used to write for Fortune magazine. Being a student of history in general, and an avid reader of railroad history, I thought that the book was incredibly interesting – and it was well-written and easy to read, unlike your typical history. While I found the book to be enjoyable (and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing curiosity into railroads, corporate history or even who wants to better understand corporate finances), it did raise a few interesting points, both good and bad, that merit further discussion and questioning. Mr. Loving did an excellent job of trying to consolidate over 40 years of history into a story that was readable, but as with any attempt at covering something so broad in a readable manner, there were loose ends.

After reading the book, I was left trying to figure out what exactly the author’s agenda was (and I do believe that he had one). What I was left with was a feeling that the author had some sort of religious agenda, that he had an axe to grind in the financial arena, and that he was putting forth an idea about his view on the best avenue of corporate governance.

The religious aspects really seem to bother me the most. He makes significant mention of the fact that Alfred Perlman, the President of the New York Central and a key figure in the early years of the Penn Central, was Jewish. This didn’t particularly bother me (other than the fact that it was mentioned multiple times, in excess in my opinion) as Mr. Perlman’s religion certainly could have been a factor in many decisions made about him as anti-Semitism was stronger then than it is even now. I could even be brought to believe that it played a part in his ouster from the Penn Central (this wasn’t stated in the book, but I personally think that it is plausible). What really bothered me was the way in which Walter Annenberg. The only mention of Annenberg seemed to be that he was the first Jewish member of the board of directors for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Now I think that that is an interesting fact, but what role did that play in the merger or post-merger debacle? How does Annenberg’s religion figure into the story or even add anything to the book? The whole Annenberg was Jewish angle really seems like a throw away. Is the author alluding to anti-Semitism within the railroad? What is the purpose of coming back to that topic so many times with no real concrete reason given for doing so?

The financial aspects of the Penn Central failure I found to be exceedingly interesting (not surprising given my background as a broker) and actually a good primer on one of the methods of cooking the books (which in turn gives some ideas on how to see the signs ahead of time, something I’ll get to in a minute because it is a technique that I have successfully used before). The factual analysis was impressive, but when the author started trying to make connections between the financial disaster of the Penn Central and some of our more modern financial calamities he seemed to lose some credibility.

Several years ago I obtained a copy of the book Wreck of the Penn Central, a book that was written during the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy. The book was detailed, but sensationalist in many aspects. When it comes to the details of what lead to the filing, I think that Rushing actually does a much better job of laying out the path of ruination using 30 years of hindsight and additional details. What I found really compelling was the way in which he detailed out exactly how David Bevan, the CFO, was manipulating the numbers through the accounting of dividends from subsidiaries, the realization of profits from non-cash transactions, the manipulation of the definitions of extraordinary expenses and the release of only top level reports which served to hide the basic weakness of the fundamental business.

Sidetrack:

What I really thought was most interesting was that in reading all of the manipulations and then sitting back and thinking about it, a good reading of the financial statements still should have given an inkling of an idea that there was a problem. See the problem is that most people only look at the earnings per share and then will glance at the balance sheet, without ever really understanding what they’re looking at. A key fact the Bevan and Stuart Saunders, the President of the Penn Central, understood was that they had to show positive earnings and that they had to continue to pay the dividend, irregardless of the financial condition of the company (doing so kept people from digging too hard into the financials and asking uncomfortable questions). However, a look at the statement of cash flows would have uncovered some of these questions that should have been being asked. At some point the statement has to reconcile where the cash on hand came from and went and if there is manipulation going on, there will be numbers that look out of whack or there will be a clear signal that the company isn’t viable in it’s current state. A few years back I used this statement to identify a major well known Fortune 500 company that was unable to make money from their core business. They were existing entirely on their ability to buy other companies for stock and then sell off the valuable part for cash. I pointed this out to a client when this stock was trading in the mid $40s, last I looked it was trading under $3 per share. My advice, learn to read a statement of cash flows. Businesses live on cash, not earnings.

End sidetrack

Now where Loving seems to stretch is when he attempts to compare the shenanigans of Bevan to the Enron and Worldcom debacles. In all three cases there were manipulations and the public was misled about their investments, I will grant that. Where the comparison falls down, I believe, is in the intent of the manipulations. In the cases of Enron and Worldcom the ultimate goal was pure, unadulterated greed. When one looks at the lifestyles of a Ken Lay or a Bernie Ebbers, the money they made from their companies, and the way that they manipulated everything with no regard for anyone else I believe puts them on a totally different plane of evil than the manipulations of Bevan and company. I am in no way condoning what Bevan did, but his goal seemed more to be keeping the Penn Central out of bankruptcy than personal enrichment (though there was a component of that also). More often than not, Bevan’s manipulations seemed to be consistent with the goal of saving the company, and in turn, the jobs of the employees. I just have trouble getting up the same degree of outrage about Bevan as I do with Enron. I also think that when Loving fails to acknowledge that there is a difference in the malfeasance perpetrated by Enron and that by the Penn Central, he loses a bit of credibility. The two were similar, but they are not the same. In the end, the repeated harping on Enron and Worldcom makes it appear as though Mr. Loving has some sort of bitter taste from those debacles and viewed this as an opportunity to air I his feelings.

Finally, in what I found to be the most perplexing aspect of the book, Loving spends a good portion of the book comparing the decisions of the bean counters and the railroad men to demonstrate that railroad men tend to make better decisions about how to operate the railroad and then seems to reverse course at the end of the book. Going on the facts presented by Loving, which he supports with financial numbers, it does appear that Norfolk Southern has traditionally been run by railroad men, and CSX more by financial types in the recent years (I’m uneasy with Loving’s descriptions of John Snow, who ran CSX for the time period of the Conrail merger and later became Treasury Secretary in the Bush Administration, his view is generally negative and I detect a bit of an agenda here also). Now I can buy the idea that people who like trains and understand the day to day operations of a railroad will make better long term operational decisions than a financial guy who is only worried about the next quarter’s numbers. And for much of the book, Loving presents that idea. But then at the end, he ends up portraying Norfolk Southern, the railroaders railroad, as too militaristic, too regimented, too everything bad, and CSX the financial railroad, as the better place to work and even talks about how many of the former Conrail employees – the same ones that he portrays as committed to their railroad – are eschewing NS for CSX, which is the exact opposite of what you would expect after reading the book. The reason for this reversal is never really adequately explained in my opinion.

My only other nitpicks with the book are that it focuses too much on one person and it makes it seem like CSX wasn’t quite as developed a corporation as NS. But really, those are minor issues and none of this detracts from the point that this is an excellent book and one that I would highly recommend.

A few weeks ago I was sitting at lunch and had a rather interesting discussion about the current direction of world events. Basically, in the course of 30 minutes we reexamined an old post of mine on the need for a renaissance or enlightenment in the Arab world. The discussion got me thinking about things from a little different point of view.

First, let’s look at the stages of civilization (quoted many places, but this one comes from here):

The first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. The second from spiritual faith to great courage. The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence. And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

Now in my previous postings, I had essentially been expressing the hope that perhaps the Muslim faith was moving into the liberty stage, which is most commonly associated with things such as the Enlightenment or the Magna Carta. But as I look at the world today, I fear that this is not the case, that the Muslim world is only now beginning their second foray into great courage (the first foray being halted at the gates of Vienna and by the reconquista of the Iberian peninsula). But more importantly is the fact that just in the last few years since September 11, we have in fact accelerated our own move from complacency towards moral decay and dependence. In other words instead of the world progressing towards a global enlightenment, we are slipping more and more into a new dark age.

When Rome fell to the barbarians, many of the advancements that had been achieved up to that point were lost for centuries, among them, the recipe for concrete. In the last thirty years, we have lost the ability to put a man on the moon at will. Now I’ll admit that the comparison is a little unfair in that concrete is a bit more simple than rocket science, but the point remains the same, we can no longer do something we used to be able to. And it’s not as if Rome was the first example of a technological regression in history, in fact they almost appear to be the normal interlude between the great civilizations. It is the continuity of the most recent technological progression from the European powers to the United States that really seems to be out of place.

As we move more and more into apathy and moral decay, we seem to move further and further away from the ideals put forth by the enlightenment. No longer do we believe that reason is the best path forward, putting it aside for doing what feels best instead. No longer we believe that all people are generally the same, instead we hyphenate everyone to highlight the differences. We no longer believe that popular government is the best path forward or that secularism is needed, instead we move towards the rule of the mob and accept that religious law may be a good alternative. We have become so afraid to embarrass, humiliate or offend, that we are walking away from the very ideas that have made us great as a civilization.

So why the shift? Complacency and apathy. For years, decades in fact, we in the west have become apathetic. We have reached the point that very few people want to defend westernism. Instead we want to worship at the altar of diversity and equality. It is simply so much easier to breezily pay homage to the good of another civilization than it is to challenge its faults or accept that it has your total and complete destruction as one of it’s goals. The other major problem with apathy is that there is no desire or push to perpetuate the civilization. This is leading to the demographic time bomb that will push the west from apathy and moral decay into dependence and back into bondage.

Mark Steyn recently had a column (I can’t find a link, but will post it if I do) in which he pointed out the many of the western nations had birth rates than had declined to the point that the population was no longer even being replenished. The western nations are getting older and represent a declining slice of the population pie. This is in contrast to population boom going on in the lesser-developed civilizations (this same article quotes an average age in the Gaza Strip of 15.8 years old).

What this means is that as time goes on, more and more of the world’s population will be associated with civilizations that have not entered a period of enlightenment. As they grow and continue to spread, our apathy won’t allow us to stand up to them. We will lose our freedoms and will be delivered back into bondage simply because we won’t care until it happens and even then, we’ll have someone who will tell us how great it is.

The Cold War was a similar threat to western civilization, but at the time we had the backbone to stand up to the threat that communism represented to our enlightened existence. The Cold War was a clash of ideas (capitalism vs. Marxism), much as today’s confrontation is (western civilization vs. fundamentalist Islam). Today, we seem to not have the stomach for the fight. Instead we seem content to look for the positives and we highlight semantic differences between those who would destroy us. Interestingly enough, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have also given in to the allure of the communistic ideal of equality of outcome (as opposed to the traditional western value of equality of opportunity).

As time inexorably marches forward, it seems that we move, on a daily basis, further from the ideals upon which western civilization was founded. One of the things that occurred to me during that lunch was that Islam and the West were in fact on a convergence course when viewed as their respective degree of civilization. But in the past, I had always assumed that the convergence would come from the Muslim world progressing more rapidly on the civilization scale than the West. I had always assumed, however, that civilization in general would continue to advance. Now, I’m not so sure. I’m thinking more and more that we are on a convergence course more because the West is in regression and is heading towards a new Dark Age as we abandon our roots.

We are in a war of civilizations and right now, we are on a course not to lose, but to not fight. We’re simply going to give it away because we don’t care. We’re all becoming hyphenated people. Becoming an American (or a member of any Western civilization) is no longer a big deal. Much as the cachet of being a Roman citizen declined when that status was given away to every provincial resident, there is no longer any reason to want to assimilate. Outsiders who would do us harm and destroy our way of life can now come in and use our own systems to destroy us from within, and they don’t even have to lie about it any more – they just have to become hyphenated.

Can we win the war? I don’t know. I’d like to think that we will wake up quick enough to do something about it, but it seems more and more like we won’t. We’re content. We’re arrogant enough to believe that no one could dislike us. We’re naïve enough to think that if we simply didn’t present a threat, that people would be our very bestest friends. We’re dense enough to ignore human nature and the to believe that it only affects everyone except the person or people we’re dealing with at that moment. But that still begs the most important question:

Do we even care?

I’ve been keeping up lately with the events in the Middle East and have been watching as they spin further and further out of control and into a generalized regional war. And while I have some serious concerns about where events around the world are headed, I have been most disturbed by the most common complaint I’ve heard about the Israeli activities in Gaza and Lebanon: that the reponse is disproportinate to the original act.

Let me start by saying that I believe Israel has made a number of mistakes in their prosectution of this war, particularly in Lebanon. I believe that Israel is simply applying too much pressure to the Lebanese government and Lebanese people, through the disruption and destruction of thier economy and infrastructure, when the government clearly has the authority but lacks the power to reign in Hezbollah. Given the internal demographic divisons in Lebanon – and Hezbollah’s ongoing support from Syria and Iran – it is simply unreasonable to believe the government there can really do anything to stop the terrorists from acting. To continue to punish the majority of the Lebanese for the uncontrollable actions of a few is the wrong way to go.

That said, as far as the attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas, there is no such thing as a disproportionate response. OK, maybe nuking Tehran at this point would be a little over the top, but to continue to rain down death on terrorists until they give up is completely within the realm of reason. One thing the Israelis have done well so far is to warn the residents of South Lebanon when a major attack was coming to give them time to leave the area. Anything connected with Hezbollah in Lebanon should be fair game, just as anything connected with Hamas in Gaza should be open for destruction. Like it or not, Israel is in a war, but it is not a war of nations. Instead this is a physical battle of ideas: relative modern freedom vs. religious medival serfdom. But the battlefield is as much in the mind of the non-combatants as it is in the fields of Southern Lebanon. If Israel is to truly have peace after this round is complete, they must not lose the battle with the Lebanese Christians or Sunni Muslims. The war must be fought only against Hezbollah. And Hezbollah should know the full fury and might of Israeli firepower.

But this also makes me wonder: what would we do if it was three of our soldiers that were kidnapped? Would we unleash hell on the kidnappers? Or would we stomp our feet and wag our finger while threatening to go to the UN Security Council to get a statement that essentially says “Dear Mr. Terrorist: This is bad. We condemn it. And we pat ourselves on the back for condemning it. And you should release these men before we get another resolution condemning you a second time. We are mad and don’t you doubt for one minute our resolve to scold you again!” I fear that we would take the UN route. What are three more lives sacrificed on the altar of multinationalism? < sarcasm> It’s a mistake, it is absolutely wrong and it is almost certainly what we would do. Speak softly and carry a big stick? Anymore, we talk trash loud can jabber ‘til the cows come home and while the stick is still big, we are afraid to use it as we must.

Disproportionate response? The lives of three soldiers hang in the balance. The only proper repsonse it to make an all out effort to get them. But that effort must be carefully directed and coordinated to go after those responsible, while not harming the innocent. That is the kind of response that will truly win the war.

Today, on my way home from work, I was listening to Sean Hannity and he was on the air exclaiming “We should be celebrating today!” referring to the demise of the terrorist al-Zarqawi in an air raid this morning. He said he couldn’t understand why we should not be celebrating the death of this man. I believe it is wrong to celebrate the death of a man – any man – and that in doing so, certain among us (Hannity to be one for sure) prove ourselves to be hypocrits and no better than that upon which we look down with such disdain.

al-Zarqawi was a human being. He was a man. He had feelings; he had dreams and desires; he had conscious thought. Everything about him may have be (and was) revolting, but it does not change the most basic fact about him: he was human.

People like Hannity purport to be “pro-life.” Every life is sacred to them. Every abortion is a tragedy to be mourned and railed against. The taking of a life is a grave affront to mankind and is the very act of which they have rightly condemned al-Zarqawi.

But then they turn around and say that we should celebrate his death. If every life is sacred, how can we celebrate the fact that one was cut short? If every life was sacred, how can we celebrate the demise of another human being? Is life only sacred when we decide that it should be? Are some lives more sacred than others? Are some human beings more worthy of life than others? How can we be “pro-life” but not mourn the passing of our fellow man? Does the fact that al-Zarqaei was such a despicable person change his biological humanity?

I mourn the passing of al-Zarqawi as a human being. However, I do rejoice in the fact that his person, is no longer on this earth.

So how do I reconcile this contradiction? Am I simply being hypocritcal? Maybe. But I think that I am more being pragmatic and making a distinction between al-Zarqawi the person and al-Zarqawi the human.

I believe in the sactity of life. I think the world is forever diminished in some way whenever a life is cut short. I think about what might have been – what ideas, what good – and I get that sense of loss; of mourning. A human life is precious; it is unique. Never again will there be another just like it.

Pragmatism tells me that there are some people who have simply squandered away all the potential from their life and who deserve to have it cut short. It takes a grevious act to cross that treshhold, but it is possible to cross. Some people are simply so evil, so murderous in their intent, that they deserve to die. This is why I believe in the death penalty. This is why I am glad the al-Zarqawi is taking his eternal dirt nap.

A human being is a tabula rasa, with potential for unlimited good and incredible contribution. And I believe that fundamentally, that state of tabula rasa never goes away. That is why people can change and it is why the death of a human being is to be mourned.

A person comes into being when a set of circumstances, events, and experiences is overlaid upon the human being. A person is what determines the outcome and ultimate value of a human being. A person can mold their tabula rasa into good or pure evil. And sometimes, the person becomes so evil that ending it’s existence is the only reasonable and rational course of action. To put it another way, the human being is the physical, the person is the intangible. The loss of the former is always a tragedy; the loss of the latter may not be.

al-Zarqawi was simply an evil person. He was a murderous, vicious, evil thug. There are few persons in this world who more richly deserved what he got. Justice was served in the form of 1000 pounds of high explosives.

We can rejoice that an evil person is dead. But to not seperate the person from the human and to mourn the human loss is a terrible injustice. Regardless of how we feel about al-Zarqawi the person, al-Zarqawi the human left behind a family: brothers, sisters, nephews, parents all of whom are feeling the loss of a family member – even if they had distanced themselves from the evil that was his person. To not acknowledge their pain, to not mourn their loss, makes us really no better than people who ran around cheering the attacks on 9/11. We, as a society, claim to believe in the power of individuals. His family distanced themselves from him; they repudiated him. Yet we will visit the sins of the black sheep on the rest of the family, even as they disavowed him? That is simply wrong. We, as a society, are better than that – or, at least, we should be.

The men and women involved in making this happen did an outstanding job and achieved a significant goal. People lives were saved by the taking of this one. Certainly people will die in a spate of retaliatory attacks as the terrorist thugs lash out in anger at the loss of their leader. But how many more would he have killed, with his own hand or through his direction, had he lived? I believe the number would have been significantly higher.

Some will certainly try to drum up reasons why the death of al-Zarqawi was a blow to our efforts in Iraq. Rudyard Kipling pointed out the falicies of these people over 100 years ago:

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

“The Devil you know” is off meeting with the Devil we all hope to never meet. That is justice. We should rejoice that this devil-person is dead.

But we should mourn the passing of another human life. A man met his demise in a violently explosive way. That should be enough to temper any celebration.

When I drive into work in the mornings or home in the afternoon, I listen to our local talk radio station AM 580, WDBO, mainly for the traffic and weather updates. On days I have off, I occasionally like to listen to Neal Boortz, as he is pretty funny, but usually, I spend the half hour to 45 minutes each way tuning out the noise that makes up the shrill drive time programs – particularly in the afternoon.

Tonight, I decided to run to Taco Bell for a cheap dinner. This being a night that the Magic aren’t playing, Michael Savage was on the radio. Normally, I don’t care for Savage, as he strikes me as something of a nutcase – but a very smart nutcase, I must admit. Tonight wasn’t all that different, with him ranting about something (I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention). But then, he had a clip of Winston Churchill and the Finest Hour speech. Savage then went on to talk about how a modern leader couldn’t make such a speech because the people were not educated enough to be able to understand it. Eventually the rant disintegrated into something about Bush giving a speech written by MBAs, for MBAs, and given by an MBA - and how it sounded every bit like it. I basically tuned it out at that point.

But the immediate talk after the Churchill clip I thought was very profound. He acknowledged that more people have gone on to college today than every before. Nonetheless, his basic premise, that we are in a decline intellectually, I think is in interesting one.

Back when I started this site, way back in 2003, I posted a rant about the need for an Arab Renaissance. And I still believe that this is true. Enlightenment and the valuing of human life – even when the beliefs in that life differ – is the basis on which a lasting peace can be built. It is not a guarantee of immediate peace – it took Europe well over a hundred years and two world wars to begin to even approach that goal after experiencing their Enlightenment.

But the whole discussion about modern politicians needing to “dumb down” their speeches for the uneducated got me to thinking. What if there is a convergence of Muslim and Christian civilization happening as we speak? What if the Muslim civilization is advancing out of the medival thought process slowly but surely and the Christian civilizations are regressing back towards a medival world view?

What do I mean by the latter half of this statement? The medival time in Western (Christian) civilization was also known as the Dark Ages, partially due to the loss of knowledge and stability after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The era was based around a few ruling elite, in this case in the Church for all practical purposes, who were educated, but had to “dumb down” the message to get it across to the great uneducated masses. Look at the beautiful stained glass windows in a church such as Canterbury Cathedral. They were designed to pictorally tell the important stories of the Bible – as the Church wanted them told.

Now we have not descended into societal illiteracy, though with reading and writing skills I have seen demonstrated by many it seems as though we are close, but we are certainly having trouble maintaining the richness of our language. It is getting to the point (if it is not already there) that the majority of college freshmen are having to take remedial math and writing courses. People still come from all over the world to get an American college education, but what is it really worth?

Large segments of the population already have college degrees, with even more having at least some college experience. A bachelor’s degree is no longer a bonus or added advantage in seeking employment, it is a requirement. Yet, go off and talk to the typical college graduate. Many of them are lacking the basic knowledge that a high school graduate should have. They don’t know their history. They have a rudimentary grasp of the English language and are comprehesible only when using spell check and/or grammer check in Word. Math without a calculator is an arduous undertaking and advanced math – like figuring a percentage discount – is impossible without a computer to provide the equations, and with inputs, the answers. The main value of a college degree is to prove that the owner knows how to work within a bureaucracy. That is a wonderful skill in today’s world of ever expanding government, but is not very value added. Our degrees are not so much about expanding skills and capabilities as they are about being able to follow a checklist.

A world in which a few bureaucrats control the knowledge and power. A world in which the masses are classed by their ability to navigate the bureaucracies. That was the way it was in the Dark Ages. The Church had the power and was but a vast bureaucracy from the local priest, to the bishop, to cardinal, to the Pope. People who understood how to work the Church bureaucracy did well, sometimes even attaining the throne of a nation. Every one else stood in awe of the arcana that seemed so distant and confusing. When we think of today’s government, with the alphabet soup of agencies, we see much of the same. Today’s lobbyists are the monks of the past. Our government is a bureaucracy from the local level, through the agencies, to the Congress, to the President. We are reeastablishing the political form of the Dark Ages. A monolithic bureaucracy that is not answerable to the very people it is supposed to serve.

But the problem comes in that we spend more time in inventing ways to work the system than trying to invent new technologies, ideas, or paradigms. We become technologically stagnent. Yes it appears that technology is advancing at a rapid rate, but is it truly? What was the last truly revolutionary technology to come into the world? Flight (remember, rudimentary computers had been created during ancient times)? We are making improvements and that is advancing things. But we have not seen another industrial revolution, a rail revolution, or even a flight revolution. We tweak and improve, but we don’t really invent anymore.

And when we look at some of our past accomplishments, we cannot even reachieve them without a major effort. Look at the mission to the moon that has been proposed. We went to the moon 38 years ago. Yet we don’t have a capability to do so again right now. We have lost the capacity. We have lost that technology. And a loss of technology was a hallmark of the decline of Western civilization into the Dark Ages.

Now I believe that the Muslim world is trying to modernize. It is going to be a long, painful process for them, but I think that they are working on it. What worries me now that I’ve opened myself up to the idea is that we are on a convergence course, with them advancing and us regressing. In the West, education is being cheapened; technology is being forgotten or discarded. In short, we are forgetting where we came from. The light of the Enlightenment seems to be fading.

Winston Churchill was able to talk about their finest hour in such eloquent terms because the people of the day understood him. They may not have been as “educated” but they sure seemed to be quite a bit smarter. Could it be that Churchill was right? Was the Battle of Britain truly the finest hour and the beginning of a slow decline back into bureaucratic bondage? I certainly hope not.

I was sitting here tonight playing Everquest 2 (a game I bought for the kids, but have ended up liking it quite a bit myself) and for some strange reason, I started remembering things from long ago. Not useful stuff like how to do differential equations or anything. No I started remembering what it was like in preschool.

It is the wierdest thing. I can remember, like it was yesterday, standing in the hall waiting to go somewhere (where, I don’t know) from our classroom. I can remember the smells; in fact, I swear I can smell them right now. I remember the bulletin boards with the typical 4 and 5 year old art work on them. I don’t think I’ve set foot in that building for a good 20+ years, yet it is all right there…

I don’t know what triggers memories like that. Every once in a while, I get memories of the smells of orange blossoms and smudge pots. I know that it is not the orange groves around here (there aren’t any anymore) or even the time of year – these memories come and go at odd times with no rhyme or reason.

But I like them. They bring me back to a simpler time and place (for me at least). It’s hard to explain, but I get memories like the one today and it is incredibly calming. I went to run a 5K out of Disney today and had an absolutely miserable run – the worst for me this calender year – by a good margin. I was irritated and upset with myself about it. But once the I started seeing myself in that hallway at school, with the pictures on the wall, my friends standing there with me, and the gentle smells that permeated the building, it took the edge off my anger. It is a relaxation that I don’t find anywhere else (but then again, I’ve never tried drinking or anything of that sort – and have no plans to start now. I’m getting too old for that!).

Sometimes I wonder if episodes like this aren’t just the mind’s way of trying to relax and distract the body. My life has been stressful lately. All those years of being told that I could have anything I wanted, all I had to do was work at it – frustration is setting in that I can’t get what I want even when everyone agrees that I’ve earned it and deserve it. Having my fate and future out of my control and in someone else’s hands is hard for me to deal with. Intellectually, I understand and know that things will be made right – eventually. Emotionally, the eventually is grating on me. My world makes very little sense right now, and I’m the kind of person who has to make sense of everything.

Back in Novemeber, my mother had been pushing me to take up running, mainly because I’m just a bit out of shape. Funny thing about it is that when I run a good race, I just kind of go. My time sucks compared to everyone else in my age group – and hypercompetitive me is okay with it. 40 minutes for a 5K is a terrible time for my age group (usually last or next to), but I know that it is what I can do right now, so I’m happy with it. After a good run, I feel energized and uplifted.

And then I get races like today where nothing seems to go right. I did well in the first mile, finishing just a touch slower than what I had done in the last 4 runs and from there my shoes kept trying to come off, the new insoles I put in started creeping and turning my ankle over, which hurt the muscle in the other leg, etc., etc., etc. My time ended up being 43:30 or so. Not the worst I had ever run, but certainly not where I expected it to be. I was mad at myself for not forcing my way through the discomfort, even though I know it could done some good damage to my legs. Today was not the worst race I have ever run, not even close to that. But it was a bad run and I came out of it mad, tired, in pain and frustrated. I also came out ready to go try to fix everything for next weekends 2 miler. The things we do for hobbies!

And then given all the irritation and frustration, I end up calm and relaxed. Because I could smell the industrial disinfectant and deodoizer that my preschool used? That is almost too funny to think about.

But it’s true. As true as the smell of orange blossoms in the morning…

Earlier today while perusing Drudge Report, I came across an article about a guy who made the Patriot Act version of Monopoly. Now the game was nothing special, it struck me more as cheap schtick rather than anything special. But the whole thing set me to thinking about how it would be received by the right wing of the media – folks like the Sean Hannitys of the world.

Very often, something like this comes out and the knee-jerk protectors of the Administration begin the drumbeat of “you shouldn’t question or criticize the Administration in the midst of a war.” I believe that this is wrong. We should continue to question and criticize. Ultimately, it makes us stronger as a nation.

Now, that being said, the questioning should NOT be “politics as usual.” We have an institutional flaw in our political process to begin with. Too often we no longer engage in debates or constructive criticism. Instead, our politcal process has morphed into the politics of personal destruction. We spend more time attacking the person proposing an idea, rather than considering the idea itself and contemplating ways to improve on it. The “not thought of here” syndrome is the strongest driving factor in politics today.

Constructive criticism of the government, even in a time of war is something that should be accepted and even encouraged – so long as it is criticism of the ideas. Does the Patriot Act go too far is a fair question. Does is even address the true problems that face us? Even better would be if the questioner came up with alternative ideas or suggestions.

Where I have problems with the criticism of the Patriot Act is that people too often focus on the people surrounding the Act, like former AG John Ashcroft or the President. Using figures such as these to polarize the debate takes away from the debate over ideas.

But at the same time, trying to completely supress the debate by attempting to use patriotism as a club is just as bad. The First Amendment doesn’t say that you have freedom of speech except when it is inconvienient for the government. It doesn’t say that your freedom of expression is suspended during a time of war. And by no means should it be.

I’ve heard the arguments that we should have to give up some of our rights in a time of war. Usually, we are told that it would only be temporary and that it has been done before (Lincoln did it during the Civil War, for example).

But what are the real risks involved? In the past -even as recently as the late twentieth century – the world was not as integrated and interdependent as it is today. This interdependence has been wonderful from an economic standpoint, but leads to more instability in the political arena. As the global political instability grows, it gives more reason for asking for one just a little more time with the restrictions. Eventually, the restrictions will become an accepted part of life and only a few constructionists will question them. So long as the vast majority of the population can continue to live with minimal perceived disruption then there will never be a concerted effort to overturn the restrictions. And the great cycle of government will continue: from bondage to revolution to freedom to restriction back to bondage.

This game is, in and of itself, irrelevant. It means little to nothing in the great national debate except to be a tawdry humor schtick. Its importance in the debate will be in the reaction to it. I’m afraid that the reaction will be the same – to question the propriety of the game.

And it will be a shame.

It’s been a while since I last posted here. Over the last long while, I’ve been fairly preoccupied with work and home issues and as such the blogging has lagged. On occasion I have heard stories or seen articles that have inspired me to write something, but since it always seems to happen when there is no computer near, I tend to forget my profound (or not, depending on your point of view) thought of the moment.

Driving home from work today, another of those stories came up on the radio. And this time, a computer was near for my stream of conscious rant, so here we go.

The radio station I listen to for traffic reports is one of our more conservative talk radio stations in the area AM580 WDBO. As I stated back when I first started this site, Boortz and Hannity are occasionally interesting to listen to, but often become strident enough that I tune them out if I don’t turn them down.

But in talking about the renewal of the Patriot Act that passed the Senate today, they had a clip from Mel Martinez, the Republican Senator from Florida. Now just as a point of note, I like Martinez. I voted for him – though I do have to say that I’m somewhat disappointed in some of the gaffes he’s had since being elected. In his quote, Martinez talked about how in the time we live in how it was incumbent upon us, the citizens, to give up some “insignificant rights.”

Insignificant? Rights? Those two words being used together? You have got to be kidding me!

I believe in a strong national defense. I love the idea of taking the fight to the terrorists rather than waiting for them to bring it to us. I even have trouble getting stirred up over the whole wiretapping thing since it involves listening to overseas phone calls where at least one party is not a US citizen. I’m okay with all that.

But an insignificant right? What is that? Whose decision is it that a right is to be deemed insignificant? What protection is there that today’s significant right will be insignificant in tomorrow’s new paradigm? The only rights that are insignificant are the ones we willingly give up. And they are only insiginificant because they are the ones we will likely never get back.

When the Constitution was written, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution clearly resevered all the unenumerated rights to the states or the people. If it wasn’t clearly defined in the Constitution, it was not a job or responsibility of the government. Over the years, the elastic clause has been used to stretch and redefine the roles that government could undertake as being in the “general welfare of the United States.” And while our rights have been generally eroded over time by the expansion of the federal government, rarely have our leaders told us we needed to give up our rights. And I cannot recall an instance (though I’m sure that they’ve been out there!) where we were told that ANY of our rights we insignificant.

The problem with us having “insignificant” rights is that we have then crossed over from the idea that the people have granted to the government certain enumerated rights to the idea that the government has graced us with the rights we have. It is much like the right of private property. Currently that right is under assault because of the Kelo vs. New London decision and the fact that local governments are now starting to run rampant with declaring areas blighted so that they can redevelop them to gain a better tax base. We now own property due to the kindness of our government, not because we paid for it and it is ours. We are merely renters to whom the government can serve eviction notices whenever and seemingly for whatever reason it wants. Was the right of private property, the very basic foundation of our capitalistic economy, an insignificant right? Whether it is or it isn’t, that right has been severely weakened at best – all because the government believes it knows better than the people what the land use should be. If we willingly give up our rights or allow them to be deemed insignificant, then we are essentially allowing the government to tell us that they know better than we do what our rights should be.

There is no insignificant right. There cannot be. Even the right to sit sideways in a chair is significant because once the government starts to dictate what you can and cannot do, their power only expands, never contracts. I understand Senator Martinez’s good intentions, but the road to Hell is paved with those and we cannot allow any rights to be deemed as “insignificant.”

Like I said before, I like Senator Martinez and believe that he is a good person trying to do what is right and best for the country and the State of Florida. But with this statement, I have to wonder if my insignificant vote would go his way again.

The enumerated rights belong to the government, everything else is ours. To allow it otherwise is to gut the foundations of the Constitution.

Every once in a while I find the odd story that just really catches my fancy.

This is one of them.

The idea that the medieval monks had this depth of knowledge is amazing. Almost as amazing as the fact that we can figure it out.

I was reading an article earlier today about how global warming is contributing to a rise in the severity of North Atlantic hurricanes. I have not read the study itself, but judging from the report about it in the Boston Herald, I think that there are some serious questions about the author’s understanding of hurricane formation or the history of hurricane activity in the North Atlantic basin.

Before I go into detail about why I think this report is bunk, let me give you some background. After last year’s four ‘cane adventure, I went to Amazon and bought two books: Florida’s Hurricane History and Hurricanes of the North Atlantic: Climate and Society, neither of which could be considered light reading material. But in reading them, I have learned a significant amount about the formation and patterns of hurricanes – much more than I already knew, which was enough to have people constantly asking me about them.

The first clue that I had that this report consists of rigged data is that the author is making a comparison between the 1970s and now. That is certainly not a fair comparison at all. The 1970s were a quiet decade by almost any measure. Florida, which normally gets hit by significant storms several times per decade, only had four significant storms in the 1970s – one of which was a minimal category I, notably mainly for the extensive flooding up north (Agnes in1972) and another, Frederic, which didn’t even really hit the state. The only two major hurricanes to hit Florida during that decade were Eloise in 1975 and David in 1979 – also as a Category I. Looking back at the record, the 1970s were a lull period in the hurricane history of the North Atlantic basin. There were fewer hurricanes and by and large, they were weaker.

In contrast, the last few years have seen a significant upsurge in both quantity and intensity of the storms. But so far, every piece of real research I have seen traces this back to normal climatic shifts that occur, sometimes in concert to create killer years, sometimes in opposition to create more moderate years.

So what would be an effect of global warming, if the sea temperatures truly were getting higher as theorized? Well, one of the major effects, and one that we hear quite often, is that the polar ice caps would start to melt. This would lead to a cooling of the waters of the far north Atlantic, but more importantly, the cold would cause a rise in the air pressure. This rise in the air pressure occurs mainly over the eastern North Atlantic and Europe. This in turn forces dry air into the westward moving tropical wavees coming off the African coast, suppressing hurricane formation (for a detailed explanation – better than mine by a long shot – see the Hurricanes of the North Atlantic, p. 323-324).

One thing that the global warming fanatics seem to forget to take into account is that the earth, like people, has a natural temperature regulation system. With people, we sweat. The earth sweats with the polar ice caps. If it gets too hot, it releases cold water, cooling itself off. When it gets too cold, it freezes the water, making it possible for the sun to more easily warm the oceans, heating things up.

When you go back and look, it turns out the 1991 and 1992 were two of the coldest years on record for sea surface temperatures – yet they spawned Andrew. The warming of the atmosphere may be happening, but the formation and strengthening of hurricanes is something we really don’t completely understand. To say that global warming is having a significant effect, especially when comparing selective data series, is like trying to explain how an automobile engine operates without understanding the principles of internal combustion.

I’m going to try to track down a copy of this report to read. Maybe the good professor has some valid and important points to make in the discussion of hurricane formation and strengthening.

But I’m guessing, based solely on the conclusions spoken of in the Boston Herald, that it is nothing more than eco-wacko junk science.