We Can't Change The Weather, No Matter What Pat Robertson And Al Gore Say

Here are the non-scientific reasons that I am an AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) skeptic.
Define anthropogenic: adjective - meaning that it's all your fault.

1) It's a fashionable belief. Most fashions fall from favor quickly. We'll see.
After a while, though, the list of things sloppily attributed to Global Warming becomes unintentionally hilarious.

2) When I was in elementary school, I remember a group of my uncles discussing Hurricane Camille, the devastating hurricane that hit the Mississippi gulf coast in 1969. There had been several other severe storms and hurricanes in that time period.
One of my uncles floated the idea that the weather patterns had been severely altered by our exploration of space during the Apollo missions. After all, it seemed that "every time we went up there" there was a storm afterward.
I couldn't yet articulate the concept that correlation is not causation, but I knew that sending up spacecraft wasn't causing hurricanes.
People have a need to believe that everything is about them. It's nice to believe that you're the center of the universe, that God stays up late to admire you, that gays and lesbians in New Orleans could cause Hurricane Katrina, and that we can change the weather. I don't think we could change the weather even if we tried, much less change it by accident.
Why is it ok to ridicule charlatans like Pat Robertson when they threaten to bring down tornados and hurricanes on Disney World and Dover, but when Al Gore threatens to raise the sea levels, he gets a free pass from people who should know better?

3) I remember sitting in the North Sunflower Academy library in the mid-1970's, and reading reports, perhaps this one, about the dangers of Global Cooling. Yes, Global Cooling. Scared the hell out of me.
This article has been reprinted numerous times by other skeptics and mockers who enjoy throwing rotten eggs at Al Gore's chapel.
I love the last paragraph as much, or more, than anything ever printed. Remember, this is about Global Cooling:

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult they will find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Yes, we need to act quickly. We need to melt the Arctic ice cap. We need to panic. The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

4) Speaking of panic, the primary evangelists of man-made climate change are set to make a fortune if we panic and Congress subsidizes their alternative energy start-up companies. Hell, they're going to make a fortune just doing the lobbying and doing shakedowns of the existing manufacturing companies. It's a win-win.

5) Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates are starting to acknowledge that we're probably going to have a ten-year period of Global Cooling. This cooling is also supposed to be a sign of warming. I swear I don't sit around making this stuff up. I just copy it or link to it.


6) At the end of the last ice age, approximately 11,500 years ago, temperatures spiked upward 22 degrees (F) in 50 years. This didn't happen because Fred Flintstone's foot-powered SUV had an excessive carbon footprint. It happened because that's what our planet does. But I bet that various witch doctors were throwing virgins into volcanos in an effort to please the gods and stop global warming.

7) Speaking of Greenland, from the year 800 to 1300, it had a much calmer climate. The climate change at the beginning of this time period was not caused by Viking oil tankers.

8) Thousands of websites and editorials have predicted that it will be possible to navigate across the Arctic circle by the end of September, since the ice cap will be gone. I was going to bet $100 that it won't happen. This guy beat me to it. This is a new site, the guy is very very funny, and his site is already getting lots and lots of traffic. I hate him.
I'm still good for the bet if anyone wants to take me up on it.

9) The guy who runs The Coyote Blog doesn't think we're having an impact on the climate that is larger than the natural temperature swings. He's right about everything else, so I'm siding with him.

Gore cartoon lifted from Pete's Place.

Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Last night I drove over to Dallas to see "Gonzo", the new documentary about journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

It was worth the trip.

The movie doesn't give you any new info on Thompson. It doesn't keep you on the edge of your seat. You probably know going in that the hero dies by his own hand.

But it's fun to see unexpected guys like Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, and George McGovern fondly reminiscing about a drug-crazed writer for Rolling Stone. (I already had a subscription to RS back when it was still published on unstapled newsprint, which would've made me about 14 years old. The magazine had great music and concert reviews, wonderful political writing, and would take chances on experimental projects by writers like Thompson and Tom Wolfe. It's been depressing to see the magazine decline into a support system for fashion and fragrance ads.)

The documentary doesn't spend much time on his childhood in Kentucky, but takes you ASAP to Thompson's coverage of the Hell's Angels biker gang. His gun fetish gets a lot of attention. His collaborative relationship with artist Ralph Steadman is fully explained. I was surprised by the amount of available Thompson TV and news footage.

The first Mrs. Thompson is, shall we say, bitter.

Jimmy Buffet is aging gracefully.

Gary Hart is aging gracefully.

Various Hell's Angels are not.

It was a bummer to watch home videos of the last few weeks of Thompson's life in Colorado, no longer at the top of his game (having lost some of his mental capacity to mescaline, coke, and bourbon), getting jowly, plinking around on an IBM Selectric, and writing a sports blog for ESPN.

Dr. (from a mail-order divinity degree) Hunter S. Thompson is what you get when the libertarian positions on gun rights, free speech, and opposition to drug and alcohol prohibition are carried to the extremes.

And that's how Dr. Thompson wanted to live his life. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved, and Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail are by themselves worth far more than any retired, healthy, Kentucky journalist.

Gonzo logo was borrowed from The Plastered Poets. The last sentence was borrowed from Faulkner. (Hit the "journalist" link.)

It's Mark Steyn, not Mark Stein, filling in for Rush Limbaugh

It's Mark Steyn, not Mark Stein, filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Here's what you need to know about the guy:

1) He writes for MacLean's, a Canadian newsmagazine that is pure greatness. Some of his warnings about organized Muslim hyper-sensitivity got him and the magazine hauled in front of the Alberta Human Rights Commission - a group that makes kangaroo courts appear to have The Wisdom of Solomon. From a free speech point of view, these Human Rights Commissions are beneath contempt. End of story. If you're interested, check out this thread about a Canadian blogger named Ezra Levant.

2) Mark Steyn (not Mark Stein) began his career as a musical theatre critic.

3) He recently published the book "America Alone", about the U.S. being the last bastion of Liberal Tolerance. I'm only halfway through it, but the general theme is that a curtain of intolerance toward traditional liberal values - Free Speech, Women's Rights, Equality Under The Law - is descending over much of Europe and Canada.

4) The book seems somewhat alarmist until you realize that Canada now has the dreaded "rights" tribunals, England is drifting toward an acknowledgement of Sharia law, and, for the crime of pointing out this intolerance, Steyn's book will soon be banned in Canada. Because it is intolerant.

5) Hmmmm.

6) He's very funny. More of a Libertarian than a Conservative. Here's his website. Enjoy.

Alisa In Wonderland

And now for something completely different....

Someone calling herself Alisa In Wonderland is a frequent commenter on two of my favorite blogs - Counting Cats and Samizdata.

Alisa's observations (in English) on these two sites are usually brilliant. Her blog (in Hebrew) probably is also, but I can't read most of it. She occasionally toggles back and forth between English and Hebrew. Or Yiddish. Or whatever it is.

She writes from Jerusalem.

I know from my hit counter that a lot of seminarians from SWBTS regularly visit my site on heresy hunting field trips. Perhaps you guys could go there and brush up on your Old Testament source language.

It's the best Israeli bilingual libertarian blog you'll ever be unable to read. I promise.

Please join me in encouraging Alisa to write everything in parallel translations.

Barack Obama's Manhood Is In Danger ! ! !

Several months ago, Newsweek magazine referenced Michelle Obama possibly being an "emasculating" influence on Barack Obama. Mrs. Obama denied any such ability. But Newseek used the same quote three times in one issue, an obsession which I thought strange enough to write about.

Now Jesse Jackson has expressed an urge to emasculate Barack Obama. The unfortunate Reverend Jackson was caught on tape.

What is there about Barack Obama's manhood that makes it such a highly coveted item?

When Lyndon Johnson ruled the Senate he claimed to know how certain colleagues would vote, stating "I've got his p***er in my pocket".

Is it just a matter of time before Obama's manhood winds up in the pocket of those who want to claim it as their own? And, if so, is the object in question entitled to additional Secret Service protection?

Addition from 9:00 p.m.... here's some video and sound of the Jesse Jackson Obama comments. This will turn into a Press Agentry/Publicist case study that will be studied for decades.

Caption This

I need a caption for this picture.

Congratulations to Pete Wann at West And Clear, winner of last week's caption challenge. A two dollar donation has been made in his name to The Whited Sepulchre Outreach Ministry And Social Club For Wayward Shipping Personnel.

Trucks In The Left Lane

I work in the freight and shipping bidness, and one of the recurring gripes that I hear from drivers has to do with the signs shown above.
The left lanes of Fort Worth's Interstate-30 were closed off to "trucks" a couple of years ago. This was supposedly done to improve traffic flow.

But, as one of my mentors recently told me, "if you ain't got the data, the chatter don't matter".
Words to live by.

Does this restriction make a demonstrable difference?

According to a study presented in (ahem) College Station, TX.... completed at a cost of $960,000.00..... and this doesn't include the cost of the signs or their installation....traffic has averaged a 1/2 mile per hour improvement.

Interstate 20 and Interstate 30 both got the signs and restrictions, and the data from both highways is lumped together as one number in the presentation.

Why? I'm betting that one of the highways had a meaningful improvement in speed, and the other one stayed the same or even declined.

But lets look at the methodology for a moment. The study compares what they call Phase 1 (August) to a similar time period in Phase 4 (January/February). Can anyone else in the trucking business (I don't want to be the spoiler) let us know how much difference there is in freight volume between August and January/February?

We're not comparing apples to apples, or even apples to coconuts. It might not even be apples to alligators. It's huge.

And a 1/2 mile per hour improvement? (Unless I'm mistaken, the decimals are rounded upward from here to here.) I think we're looking at static, white noise, and dissimilar time periods. These numbers aren't significant enough, in my opinion, to show us anything outside the margin of error.

Who is more likely to hop onto an interstate highway for just a few miles? The guy in a two-door compact, or the long-haul trucker? The left lane should be for those who are just passing through. Those going from exit to exit for a few miles should be in the right lanes. And they don't need 18-wheelers in their way.

Photo from Flikr

The Colombia Free Trade Agreement

A few months ago, The Clintons fired pollster and campaign strategist Mark Penn. Hillary had been speaking out against the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and Penn had met with Colombian officials to strategize on how to get the bill passed.
I've been saving editorials ever since, waiting until an appropriate moment to put together something that might be worthy of your attention.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has been in the news lately for helping orchestrate a dramatic hostage rescue.
John McCain has been down there, trying to promote the Free Trade Agreement.

So let's get started. This is from Arianna Huffington:

(After Penn's resignation), then came word that Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson also has financial ties to Colombia via his involvement the Glover Park Group, a company founded by Clinton administration alum Joe Lockhart that has also been advising the Colombian government.

And that's not all. It wasn't just Penn and Wolfson and Lockhart. Someone else was taking money from the Colombian government in exchange for influence. Someone much closer to home. Someone who lived at home. One of the owners of the freakin' home.

And, of course, there is the Whitman sampler of Colombian goodies gobbled up by Bill Clinton, including: $800,000 in speaking fees from a Colombian pro-free trade agreement group; a "Colombia is Passion" award bestowed by Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe (who honored the former president as an "unofficial minister of tourism"); and a sweet Colombian oil field deal for a company Clinton pal Frank Giustra's investment firm had advised. Giustra is the mining magnate who has donated $31 million to Clinton's charitable fund, and whom Bill personally introduced to Colombian President Uribe (Giustra is the same guy Clinton helped land a uranium deal in Kazakhstan, but that's a Clinton story for a different blog post).

I apologize for the amount of sleaze in this particular post, and I hope the good people at blogspot.com don't censor all this. Ms. Huffington goes on to describe how the He-Clinton bundled an aid package, a giveaway for Lockheed-Martin, and other goodies in the same package.

I'm afraid that I've made the Colombian government sound like the villain here. That's not the case. They're merely the weak storefront on the block, forced to pay protection money to the guys with connections who run the rackets. At least that's what Kimberly Strassel says.

Critics will point out that all this smacks of a protection racket, as Democratic lobbyists and consultants cash in by offering to protect companies from their own party's agenda. There's undoubtedly some of that, but it's old Washington news. Many lobbyists and politicians take up causes with which they aren't entirely in tune. It pays the bills, and also siphons up cash for their greater political purposes. Talk to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who last year stepped in to save private equity firms from a big tax threatened by his own party. In thanks, the industry coughed up for his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is now working to add several Democratic seats to the Senate.

I love that line..."cash in by offering to protect companies from their own party's agenda".

Various opponents of the Free Trade Agreement point to a high level of violence against union officials. Not so, says The Boston Globe in the preceding link. President Uribe and the Colombian government know where their bread is buttered.

Others point to the quantity of coke and weed produced in Colombia, coke and weed that somehow makes it across our borders despite not being a part of anyone's trade agreement. They say this is harmful, and that the Colombian government doesn't do enough to stop the drug trade. Not so, says former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Colombia works very hard, under the circumstances, to curtail the drug trade. According to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, there are now more Latin American and South American deaths from North American tobacco than there are North American deaths from Latin and South American cocaine.

I know this is hard to believe. But yes, Jimmy Carter was once elected President of The United States.

Here's an editorial from Daniel Weintraub that explains why the chief benefit of a Colombian Free Trade agreement would be the elimination of the 20% tariff that Columbia currently has on American imports. (If you're a total geek, do some Googling on a concept called "The Lerner Theorem". It essentially states that a 20% tariff on imports is the same as applying a 20% tariff on your exports. This is something that everyone but Hillary and Barack have known since 1936. Yes. 1936. There are people in high places who rely on you being economically....dense.)

Finally, here's a John McCain press conference. I'm not wild about the guy, since he's a Republican, and the Republican Party needs to be punished. (As for as government spending goes, they've made the Democrats look like coupon-clippers who wear their socks twice to save on detergent.) But McCain's supports Free Trade, and seldom hesitates to say so. Heck, he went to Iowa and spoke out against the ultra-protectionist Farm Bill.

Let's go back to the Daniel Weintraub piece. Nancy Pelosi of California seems to be the primary obstacle with getting this bill passed. Here's Weintraub:
Pelosi could have been the grown-up on this issue, drawing on her own state's experience to show that globalization, just like technology, has made our economy more dynamic and robust, and, over the long term, healthier. Instead, she is playing to the worst impulses of her party and pandering to those who believe that economic nationalism is the road to prosperity. The best argument for free trade is a moral one: The government ought not use discriminatory tariffs to discourage two parties from buying and selling goods that otherwise would be legal. It shouldn't matter whether the trade is between a Californian and a Kansan or a Californian and a Colombian. It's a matter of free will.

So here's the problem..... Hillary's advisors have made plenty of money, taking Colombian cash for access to Congress. Bill has made money on the deal. The Friends Of Bill have made money on the agreement. Has no one thought to buy off Nancy Pelsosi? Or do the Democrats want to leave it out there, thinking the electorate is dense enough to condemn McCain for supporting it? Do the Republicans want to leave it out there, thinking that Obama's waffling on trade issues will hurt him in November?

The Colombians are moving heaven and earth in order to be partners with us, giving their citizens access to markets that doesn't involve the drug trade, and they've long been one of our allies in the region.

Why hasn't someone thought to pay Nancy Pelosi to get out of the way?

A Dead Sea Scroll On A Stone

Archaeologists have discovered a large stone tablet that is causing some controversy, because it may have predicted a messiah who will be raised from the dead after three days.

(Actually, "discovered" isn't the correct word, since the tablet has been in the collection of an Israeli/Swiss antiquities dealer for about ten years.)

The New York Times has called it a "Dead Sea Scroll on stone".

Here's more from the Times: If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

I've posted the entire Times article here, for future reference. If you're wondering "What are The Dead Sea Scrolls?", they're the only known Biblical writings from earlier than the first century B.C. They were discovered in the late 1940's in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. Hence the name.

This particular "Dead Sea Scroll on stone" lends a bit of credence to the theory that various prophetic statements were projected onto the life of Jesus after his death. On the other hand, many Christians will see the inscription on this tablet as one more prophecy that Jesus fulfilled.

Academic papers will soon be published. Then books will be written. Sermons will be preached. Theories will be formulated and denounced. Blog posts will be commented upon.

Regardless of what the original stonemason intended, we'll all find a way to absorb this latest archaeological find and make it fit what we already believe.

Addition from Sunday morning, July 6th,

Click around the net and you'll see that the atheists, agnostics, and skeptics are pointing to this tablet as proof that the death, burial, and resurrection stories were out there before Jesus was born.

Christian sites see the tablet as proof of fulfilled prophecy.

I believe we could travel back in time to Jerusalem 33 A.D., and shoot a video of the resurrection or the non-resurrection. Regardless of what was on the tape, people would see what they wanted to see. Changing your mind on a big issue is too painful.

Mark Twain on the cover of Time magazine

Mark Twain, one of my literary heroes, has made the cover of Time magazine approximately 98 years after his death.

Roy Blount wrote the main article, and it's worth reading from beginning to end. Blount's "good old boy, gone up North" schtick can wear thin sometimes, but there's not a hint of it in this piece.

Stephen Carter wrote the inevitable piece on Twain and race. See "Getting Past Black and White".

They've got a piece on Twain's travel writing. Check out the map of his travels and lecture tours here.



And if you're interested, look at this collection of portraits.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July !

And belated thanks to everyone who risked his "life, fortune, and sacred honor" 130 years ago so that we could freely express ourselves, disagree with each other, throw stones from glass houses, and generally engage in Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

Even though some of you people are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

100 Munchkins and A Giant

Around the middle of June, I did a post about some University of Chicago faculty who signed a petition protesting the name of the $200 million dollar Milton Friedman Institute, to be located on the UofC campus. Naomi Klein brought it to the world's attention in an article for The Guardian.

Milton Friedman is probably the most vindicated economist of the 20th century. Is there anyone whose fundamental worldview has been proven more accurate? When you get a chance, check out Free To Choose and Capitalism And Freedom. In that order.

Perhaps the faculty would've been happier with "The Nostradamus Institute"? Or "The Prophet Habbakuk Institute?" How about "The Karl Marx Institute And Shelter For Political Theorists Who've Never Really Worked, And Let Their Families Go Hungry And Got Their Housekeepers Pregnant"?

Anyway, for the longest time I couldn't find any references online to the faculty petition that weren't based on the Naomi Klein/Guardian article. I wondered if the petition even existed. Then I wondered "Can anyone let me know which members of the French, Mythology, Womyn's Studies, Physical Education and Anthropology Departments signed this thing?"

Thanks to my new friend Chris, I have the list of petitioners. It's as bad as I thought.

Phys Ed is poorly represented, but music and religion show up.

I don't believe you have to have a doctorate in a particular field to be knowledgeable of that field. But couldn't they talk anyone from the Economics department into signing up? Anyone from the business school? Anyone who teaches about life in the untenured wasteland? (Every one of the teachers listed below probably does a few classes that I would love to take, BTW.)

To get to the point: The faculty members who signed the petition are almost all from the disciplines that I predicted, fields that are developing reputations for stifling P.C. orthodoxy. Here's the list:

Hussein Agrama, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Muzaffar Alam, Carl Darling Buck Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College
Yali Amit, Professor, Departments of Statistics and Computer ScienceClifford Ando, Professor of Classics
Leora Auslander, Professor, Department of History, Committee on the History of Culture, Committee on Jewish Studies, and the College
Ralph Austen, Professor Emeritus of History Lauren Berlant,
George M. Pullman Professor, Department of English
Michael Bourdaghs, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Mark Bradley, Associate Professor of History
Bill Brown, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Visual Arts; Committee on the History of Culture
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and History
Tamara Chin, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Kyeong-Hee Choi, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Cathy J. Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science
Jennifer Cole, Associate Professor, Dept of Comparative Human Development
Jean Comaroff, Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences
John Comaroff, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology and the College
Ral Coronado, Assistant Professor, Department of English
Bruce Cumings, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College Michael C. Dawson, John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College
Hilary Parsons Dick, Postodoctoral Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American Studies Michael Dietler, Associate Professor of Anthropology Fred Donner, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Prasenjit Duara, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations Darby English, Associate Professor of Art History Jacob Eyferth, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Christopher Faraone, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor of Classics James Fernandez, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Pedro Felzenszwalb, Department of Computer Science Norma Field,
Robert S. Ingersoll Professor of Japanese Studies Cornell H. Fleischer,
Kanuni Suleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies
Richard Fox, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Rachel Fulton, Department of History and the College Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics
Leela Gandhi, Professor of English
Michael Geyer, Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European HistoryMcGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology, NELC, Oriental Institute
W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Professor of History of Christianity
Andreas Glaeser, Associate Professor of Sociology and of the Social Sciences in the College
Jan Goldstein, Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History
Robert Gooding-Williams, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
Ramn A. Gutirrez, The Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History
Susan Gzesh, Lecturer in Law, Director, University of Chicago Human Rights Program
Elaine Hadley, Associate Professor, Department of English
Miriam Hansen, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Department of English / Committee on Cinema and Media Studies
Donald Harper, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Neil Harris, Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus, Departments of History, Art History
Elizabeth Helsinger, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Thomas Holt, James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of History
Paola Iovene, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Travis A. Jackson, Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Assistant Professor of British History
Matthew Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and the History of Religions in the Divinity School
John Kelly, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Robert L. Kendrick, Professor of Music James Ketelaar, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Emilio Kour, Associate Professor of History, Director, Katz Center for Mexican Studies
Loren Kruger, Professor, Departments of Comparative and English Literatures, African Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies
Laura Letinsky, Professor, Department of Visual Arts
Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of Religions
John A. Lucy, Department of Comparative Human Development
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and Center for Latin American Studies
Amanda Macdonald, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English
Patchen Markell, Associate Professor, Political Science Franoise Meltzer,
Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Comparative Literature, Romance Languages, and Divinity Janel Mueller,
William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of English
Matam P. Murthy, Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics and the College Joseph Masco, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
William Mazzarella, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College.
John P. McCormick, Professor, Department of Political Science
Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelly Professor Emeritus of Theology, History of Christianity, and Medieval Studies
Omar M. McRoberts, Associate Professor of Sociology Jason Merchant, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Stuart Michaels, Associate Director, Center for Gender StudiesW.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Nancy D. Munn, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology
Deborah Nelson, Associate Professor, Department of English; Chair, Center for Gender Studies
David E. Orlinsky, Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development and Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Stephan Palmi, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Moishe Postone, Professor of History
Francois G. Richard, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Seth Richardson, Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History
Mel Rothenberg, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Math
Danilyn Rutherford, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory
Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
Mario Santana, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Julie Saville, Associate Professor of History
William Sewell, The Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and History Emeritus
Bart Schultz, Director of the Civic Knowledge Project and Senior Lecturer in the Humanities
William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics
Dan Slater, Associate Professor, Department of Political ScienceJoel Snyder, Professor of Art History, Visual Arts, and the College
Amy Dru Stanley, Associate Professor of History
Richard A. Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Katherine Fischer Taylor, Associate Professor of Art History
Russell H. Tuttle, Professor in Anthropology, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Biology and Medicine, and the College
Theo van den Hout, Professor in the Oriental Institute and Dept. of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
Candace Vogler, Professor, Department of Philosophy
Kenneth W. Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English
Lisa Wedeen, Professor of Political Science
Christian Wedemeyer, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Anthony C. Yu, Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Humanities
Tara Zahra, Assistant Professor of History
Rebecca Zorach, Associate Professor, Department of Art History

The Flood That Hasn't Happened Yet

Katharine Mieszkowski has a post on Salon.com called "A Deluge Waiting To Happen".

She explains how the Army Corps of Engineers has constricted the flow of the Mississippi River, and this constriction has caused the recent flooding in Iowa. (Missing from the discussion is an acknowledgement that The River used to flood every year. And as a former Mississippian, I insist that The River be spelled with capital letters.) The flooding situation in the Mississippi Delta was once an annual event.

At the time, no one lived there. But every drop of water that hits the ground between Pennsylvania and Denver has to go somewhere, and we're trying to make it flow through this little amusement park flume ride of levees, channels, dykes, and detours.

Back when the river flooded every year, the leftover silt and sludge created some of the most fertile farmland in the world. (Check out Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Big Daddy's references to his plantation as "28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Valley Nile".) The levee system makes these farms possible, for better or worse.

The best book I've ever read on this is "Rising Tide" by John Barry. Barry explains the huge amount of water that goes past New Orleans every day, and how we've tried to control it. His explanations of local, state, and national political battles are fascinating. His analysis of how the Mississippi River flood of 1927 changed our political map is the best I've ever read. Sales of the book went through the roof after Hurrican Katrina, since Barry was one of the expert Talking Heads featured on television.

Have you ever wondered why the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and the abolitionist states, was abandoned by African-Americans? John Barry explains why.

Good stuff.

Based on the law of averages, Barry predicts that one year we'll have a rapid spring thaw in the Denver/Upper Midwest, combined with heavy rain in the currently flooded Iowa/Missouri area. No one, not even Al Gore, can tell us which year it will be.

But you don't want to be in New Orleans when this happens.

Why I'm A Liberal (heh heh heh heh heh....)

I'm a liberal.

I can say this because I don't believe that our government should interfere with trade.

Since I have a dislike of Socialism in almost all of its forms, that makes me a liberal.

I'm a liberal because I'm against price supports, minimum wages, and most other government interference with market pricing.

Here's an interesting post on how the word "liberal" has gone even further from its original meaning. Here's a Samizdata post entitled "An American Liberal Becomes A Real One".

It's funny how the meaning of words can change.

Caption This

I need a caption for this picture:

How To Kill A Religion (Hint: Darwin has nothing to do with it.)

Slate.com has an interview with the author of "Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution," - Karl Giberson. Mr. Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College, is also the director of the "Forum on Faith and Science" at Gordon College.

I've looked through the book a few times at Border's or B&N, but haven't purchased it.

The book looks interesting, and the author interview is top notch.

But here's the really really really good part of the Slate.com interview:

Evolution is taught in American high schools and yet many still don't believe in it. How can that be counteracted?
Well, if you could figure that one out, someone would be interviewing you, not you interviewing me. You're absolutely right. That's a challenging problem and it's a problem that the Europeans are just shaking their heads over.

Why is that?
Because Europe doesn't have a robust fundamentalist subculture like America has had since the early parts of the 20th century. American religion has been characterized by an entrepreneurial spirit. In Europe, many of the great religious traditions wasted away because they were supported by government. They didn't need to be popular and have lots of people coming to worship on Sunday to continue. So they atrophied and people lost interest.
In America, without that kind of governmental support, religious leaders had to be entrepreneurial. So a charismatic evangelist can come up with a brand-new approach to faith and touch some chord contemporary with people's needs.

I'm going to buy that book this weekend.
Any author who can slide an anti-government subsidy, pro-Free Market, ultra-libertarian concept like that one into a Slate.com interview deserves my support.

And check out the interview in the link above when you get a chance. Good stuff.

Happy Birthday, blah blah blah

I just changed the "About Me" section to your right. I turn 47 on July 1.

My mother gave me a card that said "Happy Birthday to the one I count on to be as obnoxious as I am". We both laughed really hard at it, partly because it's true, and partly because she was so sincere about it.

If you come here regularly for the anti-government rants, that's me channeling my father.
If you're here for the attitude I bring to it, that's my mother.

I've had a fun year talking to you folks.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends, Left Wing Edition

Here are a few noteworthy posts from the left side of the spectrum....

I LOVE, LOVE, love, love, love The Electronic Village. Love it. Even when I think The Villager is dead wrong, he expresses himself well. His posts are usually short and straight to the point. The EV is a combination aggregator/bulleting board/comment field gold mine for African American bloggers and the African American point of view. Here's a list of The Top Ten Black Blogs of 2008. How do we know they're the Top Ten? Because The Villager said so, and it's his site. If you came of age in the '70s and miss the music, check out Old School Fridays (every Friday). And sometimes The Villager tells you things you already knew, but provides more evidence for your opinion.

Jobsanger has a good post about imperfect Presidential candidates, called "Obama's Not Perfect, But He's Our Candidate". That's the state of mind I'm trying to achieve with Bob Barr. He also provides a left-wing rationale for the recent Supreme Court decision striking down gun control laws.

Left Is Right has posted too many bells and whistles on his site, and it takes too long to download. He's usually pretty good. I wish him a speedy recovery.

Lotus - Surviving A Dark Time - is shocked, shocked, I say...when he discovers that the Bureau of Land Management is in bed with some corporate interests. Or maybe we really do need to wait a half decade while they do Environmental Impact Studies before they put up solar panels in the middle of nowhere. You decide. Mr. Lotus is a good guy, and we emailed back and forth a bit when we did some reciprocal linkage. He's someone you'd like to have for a neighbor.

Tbogg has been going at it online since 2002, and the posts are getting further and further apart. He was great when angry. He was great when he was happy. Hope he gets the fire back in his belly.

I got acquainted with The Revolution Script through Soobdujour. This guy has amazing collections of Revolutionary posters, guerilla warfare training manuals, and the like. He's also the only Marxist gun nut I've ever encountered. I love the internet.

Turning Left gets worked up over Dr. James Dobson misinterpreting Barack Obama's speech at the Call To Renewal meeting. And they have a cool picture of Dobson in front of a flag. Heh heh heh heh heh....

I don't have nearly enough Lefties on the blogroll, and I'm open to suggestions.

What Was Samuel Clemens' Birthplace?

Some game show has apparently asked the question "What was Samuel Clemens' Birthplace?"
People are being sent here from various search engines, due to a fluke in Google's algorithms.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. The family moved to Hannibal, Missouri a few years later. Hannibal is the town that Clemens made famous, so I'm assuming they're using this as a trick question.

Here's a pre-emptive strike..... "How did Samuel Clemens get the name Mark Twain?" And "What does the name Mark Twain mean?"

The "marks" were the strips woven into a depth sounding device used on steamboats. "Mark One" meant approximately six feet deep. "Mark Twain", twain meaning "two", meant twelve feet or "safe water". Click here for a full listing of the divisions of marks. Anyone who rode on a steamboat would've heard these terms shouted to the pilot throughout a river trip, so when Clemens needed a pen name, Mark Twain seemed like a natural choice.

Those who love psychobabble have wasted a lot of ink on Clemens picking a pseudonym that means safe but not too deep.

Now, back to our regular scheduled programming. I apologize for whoring for hits. And I would appreciate it if someone could comment on why people suddenly want to know where Sam Clemens was born.

The Victim Disarmament Laws have been overturned ! ! !

The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of extending 2nd Amendment rights to almost all Americans. This makes sense, because we don't have a "well-armed militia" patrolling the streets of East Fort Worth.

I honestly haven't read that much about the legal aspects of gun ownership. Most of my research has been along the line of surveys showing that residents of gated enclaves don't see what the fuss is about, while those living in high crime areas tend to want a gun.

The New York Times recently ran an editorial lamenting the court's decision to overturn our nation's Victim Disarmament Laws. You can click here for an excellent Fisking of that editorial.

So let's take it to the next level, shall we? My new friend Robert Harrison, from the Tarrant County Libertarian Party, just sent me a link to an online petition which asks Governor Rick Perry to add Texas to the list of "open carry" states. In other words, your handgun doesn't have to be concealed.

Bad guys don't like it. Good guys packing heat in public are a great equalizer.

An armed society is a polite society.

Addition from July 4th. This was filmed in Dallas on June 29th, the day I wrote this post.