Solly Ezekiel of GedankenPundit has dinner with Daniel Pipes and offers some interesting thoughts…
On Saturday night I went to a dinner party where the guest of honor was none other than Daniel Pipes. He was in Vancouver, BC (where I grew up) to speak at the Hillel Foundation at the University of British Columbia, and in between speaking engagements a former classmate of mine managed to have him over for dinner. I got a chance to chat with him for a while, and later on he addressed the room and entertained questions. What he said was very interesting.
He started by describing the causes to which he devotes his time. He works for the DoD on the War on Terrorism, which he is trying to have renamed the War on Militant Islam (“terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy,” he said). He also founded CampusWatch, the organization that monitors Middle East studies at universities. He also works toward assisting moderate Muslims to confront militant Muslims and reclaim the religion from those who have turned it into an excuse for violence (interestingly, and perhaps not too surprisingly, he said this is the area that generates the most vehement hatred toward him). Finally, he monitors the relationship between the American and Saudi governments.
He talked about the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. The core of the problem, he said, is that the Palestinians still haven’t given up on their dream of destroying Israel (no surprise there). He also said that if you graph Palestinian optimism that Israel can be destroyed as a function of time, between 1948 and 1993 it was dropping. It hadn’t dropped to zero, but it was dropping. In 1993, with Oslo, the Palestinians once again started getting more optimistic that they could destroy Israel. Three years ago, when Ariel Sharon started getting tough with the Palestinians again, that optimism once again started to fade. Between 1993 and 2000 the diplomats managed to undo most of what the military had accomplished in the years since 1948; the big mistake of Oslo was that the Israelis assumed the Palestinians had already given up on their dream of destroying Israel.
Turning to the War on Militant Islam, he said that misidentifying our enemy has already damaged the war effort, and that the sooner we realize who our enemy is, the sooner we will win this war. If you’re hunting a rapist, he said, you don’t waste your time interviewing women; if we’re hunting terrorists, we need to remember that militant Islam draws all its recruits from Muslims. It doesn’t appeal to anyone else. It’s non-PC, but it’s the truth.
He also talked about the unhealthy relationship between our government and that of Saudi Arabia. In his view our relationship with the Saudis is unique in that foreign policy is set not by the State Department but by a small number of individuals who are either expecting to be on the Saudi payroll when they leave government, or are on the Saudi payroll already. He cited examples of restrictions some government employees have to follow for a period of years after they’ve left the government in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest; those who set our foreign policy with the Saudis ought to be subject to the same restrictions.
Read the whole thing.
from the Saudi American Forum
Saudi Arabians have allocated an estimated 60% of their global investments to the United States through passive and direct investments. This commitment has enabled the United States to finance an ongoing trade deficit and produce new economic growth opportunities.
Objections and barriers to Saudi investment in the United States are on the rise. Although most are baseless and even discriminatory, their impact could be multiplied in the current market environment. Promotion agencies across the globe are maneuvering to attract and keep foreign investment. The Kingdom’s own market climate has opened and become highly attractive for Saudi investors. America must eliminate growing impediments to Saudi and other foreign investment in the United States in order to remain competitive.
(emphasis mine)
The Saudi’s are pumping money into supporting Wahabbism and Militant Islam. They are masters of Public Relations and have been saying one thing in English for the media and turning around and saying (and doing) something completely different in Arabic.
They are not our friends.
A Japanese team has developed a robot that can browse the stacks and retrieve books via command issued over the internet.
A Japanese team of researchers has developed a robot that could help browse for books in a library by receiving instructions via the Internet, a team member said Friday. The robot, a wheeled vehicle measuring 50 by 45 centimeters with a digital camera, mechanical hand and arm, follows orders received through the Internet.
Still in the experimental stage, it was developed as a way to help people who cannot go to a library, said Akihisa Oya, an assistant professor at the University of Tsukuba. Using a laser to navigate between shelves and other barriers, it can select a book, open it and flip through pages with its own hand, while taking and sending pictures of contents. (Kyodo News)
very cool idea from Google…
You pose a question and tell how much you are willing to pay for an answer. Someone from their pool of 500 researchers will pick it up and provide the answer…
from the World Tribune
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has not been seen in public since Oct. 31, fueling concerns that the reclusive communist leader has gone into hiding.
The last public reference to Kim was on Oct. 30, when the Korean Central Broadcasting Agency reported his meeting with a delegation of visiting Chinese officials.
U.S. intelligence officials said Kim dropped out of sight last spring for several weeks during the military operation in Iraq. Officials at the time said Kim feared the United States might try to conduct a strike against him, coinciding with the Iraq operations.
It should be interesting to see what happens here…
things are warming up over there…
from the Washington Post
On the eve of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit, the Bush administration signaled a tougher stance on Taiwan’s moves toward independence yesterday, warning the island nation not to take any unilateral steps that might provoke the government on the Chinese mainland.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters in advance of Wen’s meeting with President Bush today, said the administration had decided to drop a policy known as “strategic ambiguity” — declining to say how it would respond to efforts by either nation to change Taiwan’s status. Instead, the official said, actions by both countries had forced the administration to spell out more clearly what it thinks each nation should do to maintain stability in the Taiwan straits.
from National Review
Of all the many wild cards in the wartime deck — whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and how he’ll use them, what role Israel will play, how Turkey, the Gulf states, and Europe will react — China is the wildest, and probably the most dangerous.
China views itself not as America’s strategic partner, but as America’s strategic competitor. In Asia and around the world, China is vying to replace the old Soviet Union as the next challenger to what it sees as America’s ambitions toward hegemony. To this end, China’s People’s Liberation Army (probably the most misnamed military in the world — it neither belongs to the people nor liberates them) issued an annual white paper predicting war with the United States within ten years. An American war with Iraq might just offer China the opportunity to test our resolve as well as our ability to deal with multiple threats simultaneously. It might even offer China the chance to invade Taiwan.
Steven DenBeste has an interesting read on what could happen if the Chinese actually try to invade - remember, they do not want to destroy this country, they just want to take over the government so they can benefit from the economy. All those chip and motherboard companies add up to a good chunk of change…
My opinion is that Taiwan is capable of defending itself against an invasion by China without our help, and with our help such an invasion would be hopeless. But we would not help with ground troops; our contribution would be naval and air. A hypothetical invasion of Taiwan would be won or lost in and over the straight of Taiwan.
In many ways the closest equivalent in the history of warfare is the English Channel in WWII. After France fell in 1940, Germany planned operation Seelöwe (Sea lion), an amphibious assault on the UK. Barges and other ships were accumulated in ports in France and Belgium and the Netherlands, but there were two problem: the Royal Navy Home Fleet, and RAF Bomber Command.
He goes on:
The lesson of the Channel is that for an invasion to succeed on land, you have to have absolute control over the water; and to do that you have to have absolute control of the air over the water.
The Battle of Britain wasn’t fought on the ground, and a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan wouldn’t be, either. If we got involved, we would fight with naval forces and air forces, not with ground troops. We would use carrier battle groups (probably two) operating in open ocean east of Taiwan, land-based bombers flying out of Guam, fighters and bombers flying out of Okinawa, and attack subs.
To begin with, it should be clear that if China wanted to destroy Taiwan it could do so with nuclear-tipped missiles. Doing so would risk an American nuclear response, and for that and many other reasons I do not think that such an attack is being seriously contemplated by the leaders in Beijing. What they want, or claim to want (more on that later), is for Taiwan to be incorporated into China more or less intact. Ideally it would happen voluntarily, but that seems less likely every year, and any serious attempt at reunification now would have to be based on conventional military force.
and more:
Taiwan would have to be assaulted with enough ground troops to defeat Taiwan’s army of about 200,000 men in regular service, and an additional 1.5 million reserves, who are armed and trained specifically for counter-landing operations. Obviously it would take a huge force to defeat that; it isn’t going to be done by a regiment or two.
Such a force can only be moved by sea, and would have to number in the hundreds of thousands at the very least. It is by no means clear that China has enough shipping to move such a force, but that’s only the beginning of the problems facing any invasion plan.
In fact, it is by no means clear that China has that many troops who are actually capable of engaging in that kind of combat. The People’s Liberation Army is immense, but equipment is terrible and training is poor and most of the soldiers spend their time in service working on PLA farms. And in 2000 China reduced the size of the People’s Liberation Army by 500,000 men.
Interesting times - the next ten years will be fun to live through…
ran into this new Blog a few days ago and it’s worth checking out.
So I said I’d talk about how my research on fruit flies has a practical application. The eye of a fruit fly is very different from mammalian eyes. They are basically arrays of tiny motion detectors, designed to sense movement of a predator rather than to discern the intricacies of color and form like human eyes. The electrical responses of fruit flies are 100 times faster than those of human eyes. That’s what makes them so darn hard to swat with a fly swatter.
While insect vision is interesting in itself (especially if you want to be able to swat them effectively), what I’m really interested in is how nerve cells or neurons function in all animals. The photoreceptors in the fly eye are actually modified neurons. They receive an input (light) and transmit an output (histamine) at their synapses. Flies are ideal model systems to use to study neurons because they have simple nervous systems, they are easy and inexpensive to maintain, there are many mutant flies that can be tested, and you can do experiments on them that you couldn’t do on humans. Yes, ripping the eyes off a human being and jabbing electrodes into the freshly dissociated eyes IS unethical and illegal in case you were wondering.
The fly photoreceptor cell signals in a way that is similar to certain types of neurons in the mammalian brain. This pathway contains a receptor, the protein rhodopsin (also found in mammalian eyes) in this case, on the surface of the cell that responds to an external stimulus, light. Once light activates rhodopsin, rhodopsin then turns on a whole cascade of other signaling proteins. The proteins in the signaling cascade had different functions. Some turn on other proteins, some turn others off. Some breakdown certain biological compounds, while other synthesize new compounds. Some proteins undergo conformational changes that allow them to transport other molecules into or out of the cell. These proteins are called ion channels. The end result of light stimulating rhodopsin results in ion channels opening and allowing high concentrations of calcium from outside to rush into the cell. High amounts of calcium are eventually toxic to cells so it is then pumped out of the cell at the end of the signaling event.
from CNN/Money
Congress approved a bill Monday outlawing some of the most annoying forms of junk e-mail and creating a “do not spam” registry.
By a voice vote, the House approved the bill containing jail time and multimillion-dollar fines for online marketers who flood e-mail inboxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes.
The measure, which cleared the Senate last month, now goes to the White House where President Bush is expected to sign it into law by the end of the year.
“For the first time during the Internet era, American consumers will have the ability to say no to spam,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement.
“What’s more, parents will be able to breath easier knowing that they have the ability to prevent pornographic spam from reaching defenseless, unsuspecting children,” he said.
This is a start - it will not in any way limit the ammount of spam that you recieve since most of it comes from two sources beyond the control of the US Government. Most of the SPAM is sent from outside the USA. A good chunk of the rest (and this number will jump on December 26th) comes from clueless people whose computers have been infected with viruses that don’t appear to be doing anything but are using the computers resources to serve as a relay point for SPAM. December 26th is the day that all the new holiday gifts will be plugged in, turned on and their initial install (without the latest patches) will be connected to broadband internet.
Their owners will be so enthralled with the new experience that they will click on all sorts of ‘fun’ websites, open attachments that their friends sent to them and send and recieve eCards with abandon.
Sigh…
Keeps people like me in business anyway
from the NY Post
Interesting speculation about the future of Disney with M. Eisner at the helm…
Steve Jobs would be an interesting addition to the mix:
Here’s where the Hollywood rumors get interesting.
As far as the entertainment industry and Wall Street would be concerned, the most welcome second-in-charge and nominal successor to Eisner could be none other than Steven Paul Jobs - head of Apple Computer and Pixar, and the guy who currently has Disney over one massive barrel.
“That one’s been around for a while,” says a Disney spokesperson.
Indeed. But sources out in the land of warmth say speculation that the Disney Co. would be forced to offer Jobs a position - if only a seat on the board - intensified this week, as soon as Roy Disney’s keister had cleared the company parking lot.
But there are problems, naturally.
For one thing, Eisner apparently doesn’t much like Jobs, either.
And the famously independent Jobs, who founded Apple Computer in his family’s garage, apparently has been returning the dislike ever since Eisner accused Apple in Washington of abetting video piracy.
Now for the final twist: Disney right now is in the middle of renegotiating a very important movie production deal with Jobs’ Pixar, an animation studio that made a bundle for Disney with “Finding Nemo” and others even as Disney’s own cartoonists had become a mere caricature of their former selves.
And other studios are trying to lure Pixar away.
Heh…
from MSFT Research
It is getting increasingly popular for consumers to buy a digital camera and take thousands of photos of daily life. Most consumers simply dump these photos into one directory, analogous to dumping developed prints into a shoebox. A typical user generates thousands of photos a year. Finding a photo in this shoebox directory is difficult.
AutoAlbum and PhotoTOC are browsing user interfaces that help solve this problem. AutoAlbum was the original UI, while PhotoTOC is a new, updated UI. PhotoTOC consists of two panes. Thumbnails of all images in the shoebox directory is shown on the right pane, as a big contact sheet. PhotoTOC automatically clusters these images. One representative photograph from every cluster is shown on the left pane. When the user clicks on a representative photograph, the right pane scrolls to show that same photograph in the center of the window. The user can then find his/her photograph with minimal scrolling on the right-hand pane.
There is an online demo that looks pretty neat. You will want to have more features (ability to add EXIF data, comments, searchable database keys) but for a 1.0 release, this is not too shabby…
My personal favorite for photo album and database software is PhotoDex CompuPic Pro, nice and fast and only $80
from USA Today
Actually sounds pretty good - there will be increased network traffic but not that much (just the token check)
Internet services company Yahoo Friday said it is working on technology to combat e-mail spam by changing the way the Internet works to require authentication of a message’s sender.
Yahoo said its “Domain Keys” software, which it hopes to launch in 2004, will be made available freely to the developers of the Web’s major open-source e-mail software and systems.
Spam — unwanted Internet e-mail, direct advertising, body part enlargement, and other commercial endeavors on the Web — has quickly become Web surfers’ Public Enemy No. 1 as inboxes around the globe are clogged with hundreds of such messages daily.
Governments around the world are working on legislation to reduce spam, but in the interim a number of companies have stepped in with technology proposals designed to filter and block the electronic detritus.
Under Yahoo’s new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would check the Internet’s Domain Name System for the public key registered to the sending domain.
If the public key is able to decrypt the private key embedded in the message, then the e-mail is considered authentic and can be delivered. If not, then the message is assumed not to be an authentic one from the sender and is blocked.
Clever idea…
from the NY Times
Perry Vona works five days a week on a busy stretch of 43rd Street between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas, which is not to say that he keeps an office there. Mr. Vona, who is homeless, works on 43rd Street — literally — repairing laptops, hard drives, keyboards, scanners, monitors and whatever other detritus of the digital age he can scavenge from the trash.
He is a common sight amid the pedestrians in Midtown, who might encounter him at 8 a.m. on a weekday sitting in a swivel chair, hunched over a stubborn piece of computer hardware plugged into the base of a public light pole. Working curbside with a fully stocked toolbox, he claims to sell his products to wholesale buyers and bargain hunters for as little as $60 to $80 apiece.
I have visited this site from time to time over the last few years.
Need to blog it and get it out into wider circulation - it is wonderful!
His lab: here
Antarcitic expedition: here
with Pancho Villa: here
friend of T.R.: here
much much more - dig and dig deeply…
interesting division of U-Haul
You can either request or provide moving and storage services online. Enter what you need and when you need it and it presents you with a list of qualified vendors. You also have the option to become one of these vendors to provide specific moving/storage services to others in your locale.
eCommerce at work. Minimal hype. Cool!
interesting article in the NY Times regarding Wal-Mart’s presence in Mexico.
This is an interesting company - it is so large that it really causes problems for other stores in areas they move into, being a vendor for them (even if you are a large company) is dificult - they have you over a barrel regarding prices and delivery.
They seem to be doing a really good thing for the Mexican people though. Read on:
Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the United States, is already the biggest private employer in Mexico, with 100,164 workers on its payroll here as of last week. Last year, when it gained its No. 1 status in employment, it created about 8,000 new positions — nearly half the permanent new jobs in this struggling country.
Wal-Mart’s power is changing Mexico in the same way it changed the economic landscape of the United States, and with the same formula: cut prices relentlessly, pump up productivity, pay low wages, ban unions, give suppliers the tightest possible profit margins and sell everything under the sun for less than the guy next door.
“This is the game that Wal-Mart has played in the United States,” said Diana Farrell, director of McKinsey Global Institute, a policy research group run by the international business consultancy McKinsey & Company. “They’ve changed the name of the game in Mexico.”
In the United States and Western Europe, Wal-Mart has been accused of driving down wages, introducing cut-throat business practices and bankrupting local companies.
But in Mexico’s dreary economy, foreign investment, especially American investment, is about the only bright light, and many Mexicans know it. Cries of economic and cultural imperialism, rampant 10 years ago, when the North American Free Trade Agreement took hold, are more muted now.
“Part of globalization is adopting the methods and customs of another country,” said Francisco Rivero, an economic analyst in Mexico City.
Though it came to this country only 12 years ago, Wal-Mart is doing more business — closing in on $11 billion a year — than the entire tourism industry. Wal-Mart sells $6 billion worth of food a year, more than anyone else in Mexico. In fact, it sells more of almost everything than almost anyone. Economists say its price cuts actually drive down the country’s rate of inflation.
Last year, 585 million people — nearly six times the population of Mexico — passed through its check-out lanes. With 633 outlets, Wal-Mart’s Mexican operations are by far the biggest outside the United States.
Its sales represent about 2 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product — almost the same as in the United States. Analysts say it now controls something approaching 30 percent of all supermarket food sales in Mexico, and about 6 percent of all retail sales — also about the same as in the United States.
Though Wal-Mart is not the only game in town, it is the biggest, and its bigness is crushing its supermarket competitors. Its methods are creating “a radical change” in the way business is done here, Ms. Farrell said.
“Wal-Mart has changed the retail market in Mexico,” said Raúl Argüelles, a Wal-Mart vice president in Mexico City. “Every store manager has authority to lower prices if he sees the store across the street selling for less. If you have to lower the price, you lower it.”
For Mexicans trying to compete with Wal-Mart, a new business culture is emerging, based on those hard-nosed, sometimes cut-throat tactics. For Mexicans with money to spend, a new consumer culture is rising, along with the sales of McDonald’s hamburgers and Domino’s pizzas (the three favorite toppings here are jalapeño peppers, ham and pineapple).
The marketplace is making Mexico look more like the United States, like it or not.
“From the commercial point of view, it’s a total convergence,” said Luis de la Calle, who was a chief Nafta negotiator. “If you go to a supermarket in Mexico, the type of products, the service they give you, it’s just like you find in the United States or Canada, in terms of variety, quality and price.”
The origin of the word ‘Octothorpe’ (the ” # ” symbol)
from someone at Bell Labs
The parent site is worth spending some time with - lots of fun stories…
More fun and ganes from old Europe (as reported by the BBC)
Countries refusing to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases should face trade sanctions, according to a British independent think-tank.
The United States has not signed the Kyoto agreement on climate change and Russia has indicated it may follow.
The New Economics Foundation wants the EU to tax imports from these countries because they enjoy a competitive disadvantage as energy costs increase
Ohkaaay - they are saying that we will not play their game so they are raising the prices they will have to pay for our own goods…
Kyoto has some major flaws in it - the core data behind the basic model (the hockeystick graph) has been refuted by two Canadian researchers. The issue here is not global warming - we know this is happening. The issue is the cause of the warming.
We left an era known as the Little Ice Age in the 1850’s and the planet has been gradually warming since then. The Little Ice Age was preceeded by an era known as the “Medieval Warm Period” which covered the three previous centuries.
Periodic fluctuations of this planets climate are well known and provable from plant (tree ring), glacial ice and sedimentaru deposits.
This is a complex issue and there is no simple answer (CO2) and no simple solution (Kyoto)
from the Washington Post comes an article regarding the sales of black-market arms in a new country which broke away from Moldavia 12 years ago:
In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world’s first surface-to-surface dirty bomb.
The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.
The last known repository was here, in a tiny separatist enclave known as Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova 12 years ago. The Transdniester Moldovan Republic is a sliver of land no bigger than Rhode Island located along Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine. Its government is recognized by no other nation. But its weapons stocks — new, used and modified — have attracted the attention of black-market arms dealers worldwide. And they’re for sale, according to U.S. and Moldovan officials and weapons experts.
When the Soviet army withdrew from this corner of Eastern Europe, the weapons were deposited into an arsenal of stupefying proportions. In fortified bunkers are stored 50,000 tons of aging artillery shells, mines and rockets, enough to fill 2,500 boxcars.
Conventional arms originating in Transdniester have been turning up for years in conflict zones from the Caucasus to Central Africa, evidence of what U.S. officials describe as an invisible pipeline for smuggled goods that runs through Tiraspol to the Black Sea and beyond. Now, governments and terrorism experts fear the same pipeline is carrying nonconventional weapons such as the radioactive Alazan, and that terrorists are starting to tap in.
“For terrorists, this is the best market you could imagine: cheap, efficient and forgotten by the whole world,” said Vladimir Orlov, founding director of the Center for Policy Studies in Moscow, a group that studies proliferation issues.
And the U.N is where???
from the always excellent Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
On this the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, I want you to forget, for once, about the attack itself.
Before you proceed to call for a lynch mob and make for the Imperial Palace, however, I’d like to qualify my outrageous statement a bit.
I do NOT want you to forget all of the brave souls that died that day and I do NOT want you to forget the righteous anger that the cowardly attack aroused in all true Americans back then.
What I WANT you to do is to not leave it at that.
When you remember 12/7/41, I want you to remember what we did to the bastards that attacked us. I want you to remember the resolve, determination and sacrifices in the years that followed, because THOSE were the factors that gave us victory.
Anger itself is worthless. Anger transformed into action, on the other hand, isn’t.
Our grandparents’ generation transformed their anger into action, and they STUCK WITH IT.
THEY didn’t allow their resolve to be watered down by defeatism, THEY didn’t throw the towel in the ring at the sight of the first setback, and THEY sure as Hell didn’t get all pissed off, then sat down to ponder if it was “all their own fault”.
THEY didn’t show up for a candle-lit vigil in the week after Dec. 7th, only to go home the next day to resume whatever they were doing on Dec. 6th, thinking that “they’d done their bit”.
They stuck with it, through 4 long years of struggle, staring the Devil in the eye, celebrating their victories and dealing with the defeats, never letting go of the throat of the monster until the monster was dead, shunning no sacrifice and, ultimately, doing whatever it took to win, no holds barred.
We need to emulate that now. We’ve been doing “OK” so far, but that isn’t good enough. That alone won’t win the war. We can continue to “play at war” for a long time, this is true, we certainly have the strength and resources for it, but if we want to WIN it, the gloves have GOT to come off.
Islamofascism must not be merely “defeated”, it must be vanquished, eradicated, wiped out, exterminated, because anything less than that will only serve to drag the war out indefinitely.
They must be shocked and awed by our resolve the way that Tojo had his shit-filled britches scared off of his scrawny legs in ‘45, in a way that will leave no doubts in their diseased, murderous minds that not only do we have the MEANS to wipe them permanently off the face of the Earth, should we feel that it is necessary, we also have the WILL to DO SO.
Emporer Misha 1st is usually a very good writer but with this short essay, he blows the top off other comments regarding this day. Read the rest of the article, you will be glad you did…
we were up on the property this weekend, bringing down the large truck (20’ box truck) for moving the 2,000 gallon hard cider fermentation tank this week. Purchased the tank at auction adn now I have to install it… Sheesh!
Couple of interesting items before I close for the evening.