What Price Energy Security?

The good people at NewsMax have seen fit to run my latest article, a piece on Iran and China. You can read it here.

Next Gas 500 Miles

China, always looking for reliable energy suppliers, is investing billions in new Venezuelan oil deals. Reuters is covering this as Venezuela wants to “to lessen its dependence on its arch-foe the United States.” Well it might, but not as much as Chavez wants to shift oil away from the U.S. for ideological points. Even with the free tankers, shipping costs will net Venezuelans a dollar or two less per barrel than they could get from the U.S.

Forget claims about a million barrels a day to China by 2012. It will almost certainly be more than that as Venezuela swaps dependence on one power for even greater dependence on another. Diversification is just a temporary feature.

If you’re tempted to shrug and say “Big deal, we’ll get oil elsewhere,” you should focus less on our percentage of imported oil and more on MPB – miles per barrel, from field to Ford.

A Good Rule in Life

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. - P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs

C ** All done

The inventor of FORTRAN has died:

Mr. Backus and his youthful team, then all in their 20s and 30s, devised a programming language that resembled a combination of English shorthand and algebra. Fortran, short for Formula Translator, was very similar to the algebraic formulas that scientists and engineers used in their daily work. With some training, they were no longer dependent on a programming priesthood to translate their science and engineering problems into a language a computer would understand.

My computer is not taking the news well. It keeps flashing this old Data General FORTRAN error code: “Error 155 – You can’t do that.”

Human Shields for Trustafarians

Jack Langer has a piece on Human Events describing his experience with anarchist protestors from an International A.N.S.W.E.R. rally. This is priceless:

The police announced through a bullhorn that they’d use teargas if the protestors didn’t return to the parking lot. In response, a female-looking anarchist in dreadlocks yelled out to me and some other reporters nearby, asking if we’d help get the word out that the police, without cause, had gassed peaceful protestors. “No!” I instinctively yelled back, eliciting some shocked stares from the anarchists. Another anarchist approached us and asked if we’d stand between them and the police to prevent the cops from “attacking” them. He pointed to one elderly female reporter: “You ma’am, if you get in the middle, there’s no way the police will knock you over.” The request caught me off guard -- I was unaware that old women are used as human shields anywhere outside of the Middle East.

The group sat down in front of the police to decide what to do. Some people passed out food, at which point most of the anarchists removed their masks and bandanas to eat, then put them back on when they had finished. My respect for this bunch was rapidly declining.

I just wonder if they left their juice boxes behind when nap time rolled around.

Like Victory

The Poughkeepsie Journal has found an underutilized asset for the Democrats (But just try to get someone to drive that bus to the polls):

The new statewide database of registered voters contains as many as 77,000 dead people on its rolls, and as many as 2,600 of them have cast votes from the grave, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal computer-assisted analysis.

You would think they’d get at least 10,000-15,000 votes out of that many living-impaired.

Motorway Copropraxia

An important style-setter has been nabbed:

A Swede who delights in giving speeding cameras the finger while driving past at high velocity in a car without license plates has been caught.

The man, who has been recorded three times while giving the camera the finger at a speed high enough to qualify for automatic loss of license was taken by police on the E6 highway near Sarpsborg on Sunday night.

If he does any time for this, the terrorists have won.

Scary Stuff

In A Look at What Happens if Democrats Win Congress Deroy Murdock warns, "Hypothetically, if Democrats win Congress, don't expect a mild left turn. Watch the U.S. Capitol building spin nearly 180 degrees."

He’s not kidding. An excerpt:

Foreign Affairs Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, with an 88 ACU rating, could yield to Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, with an eight.

On Intelligence, Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, who earned zeros from the ADA and AFL-CIO, might swap with West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller, who received 100 and 79 from those groups.

Today's GOP House speaker, majority leader, and the chairmen of Ways and Means, Budget, Appropriations, Judiciary, International Relations and Intelligence average a 91 ACU rating. Their Democratic counterparts score seven. Conversely, compare the GOP's average ADA rating of four with a 95 for these Democrats.

Read the whole thing. And vote.

Values Make Conservatives More Generous

Anyone surprised by this should get out more:

Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right wing in America — and it’s making him nervous.

The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.

In the book, to be released next month, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance to two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.

Liberals who only give when hassled by that annoying race-for-a-cause guy at work will reflexively denounce the extensive data analysis. Still, those with any generosity of spirit you have to feel for Brooks. He will be altogether banished from his friends’ wine and brie parties and may even be asked to turn in his Barbra Streisand tickets.

Does Diebold Make Radios?

Today’s bankruptcy filing by Air America Radio comes in the same week that Google’s announced acquisition of YouTube has pundits waking up to the left’s Web 2.0 strategy. The temptation to play this as the passing of the torch from old medium to new, however, misses the bigger picture.

Make no mistake: The left’s radio strategy failed long ago. The demand for humorless, defeatist propaganda never materialized, and today’s bankruptcy filing is simply an echo of its earlier implosion in the marketplace.

Obituaries may be premature, however. Like Fidel Castro or some horror film zombie, we may not have seen or heard the last of this coffin-dodging network. Watch for it to stagger on another day.

[Read the rest at The Right Angle at Human Events Online]

Real enough

I keep hearing pundits dismiss radical Islam by arguing that, well, it is nothing compared to the threat of global nuclear war. The latest pundit, however, is none other than Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, who transmits the meme thusly: “I don't mean to understate the threat, which is real enough. But it's not on the order of the Cold War, you know, and we won that one.”

Stephen Green disagrees: “It’s not often I disagree with Glenn Reynolds on an issue of substance, but in this case, the Instapundit couldn’t be more wrong.” You can read his argument here.

I’d like to disagree with Reynolds on a different point, without getting into the relative costs to society (however expressed) of high-probability, low-consequence events versus low-probability, high-consequence events (e.g., smallpox attacks, sea level rise).

Simply put, as long as terrorists keep feeling for the threshold at which one or a series of low-consequence level events can go all-consequential for a civilization with a high division of labor (long supply chains, everything JIT, critical interdependencies all over), we have no more business dismissing “low-consequence” threats from radical Islam than a man six stories up a ladder has laughing at a one-legged terrorist on the ground trying to kick the ladder out from under him.

Inherently evident

With Cindy Sheehan working three shifts as an activist, there probably isn't enough time in the day to, you know, write stuff. Consider Cindy Sheehan: Commas for Profit, a recent guest contribution at Buzzflash.com.

Halfway through the piece, the Anti-war Mom is in character: Simple words, short sentences, and feel-good sentiments:

Casey was three dimensional and had hopes and dreams. He wanted to finish college and teach elementary school. He wanted to marry and have babies. I wanted him to marry and have babies. I wanted to hold his children and spoil them and love them like a grandmother should.

All believably Sheehan, but only four graphs later, she has stopped moving her lips as she types and gone to graduate school. Is this "Cindy" the same person? You decide (emphasis mine):

I am sorry that the leader of our once great nation is so callous towards the people whose lives he has destroyed. If one agrees with President Chavez of Venezuela, or not, it is inherently evident in our country and the world that we should agree with him when he says democracy is not imposed by "bombs and Marines." Democracy rises from the people. Great Britain did not go to war with our forebears to impose democracy, but to stop it.

One writer per piece, luv, and go easy on the drag-and-drop. I'm just here to help.

Another banner day for Egyptian tourism

The same media hypocrites who pillory Pat Robertson for his every fifth utterance won’t report on stuff like this. Ever.

An excerpt from MEMRITV: Egyptian Cleric Explains Fatwa Sanctioning Killing of Israelis Visiting Egypt:

Mona Shazli, Presenter: Sheikh Safwat Higazi is one of the most well-known people to appear on TV who talks about religious matters and fatwas. He is one of the most well-known preachers, and he has a show on Al-Nas TV.

[...]

He said, among other things, that if he saw an Israeli on the street, in Egypt, he would kill him. This may give the impression of being a fatwa to kill any Israeli Jew walking down the street.

[...]

Safwat Higazi: I did not call upon people to kill Israelis in the streets. I never said such a thing.

[...]

When I said what I said, I was dreaming a beautiful dream, which I hope will come true, and that we all agree upon it. I dreamt that we are the Arab Islamic States, not just Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. I was truly dreaming that we are the Arab Islamic States. Get a map of the Arab homeland, and erase the borders... Or maybe these can be borders between counties or states, like the USA, in which 49 [sic] states were united into one country. I had a dream that we were one country, called the Arab Islamic States. The capital of this country is Egypt, and the president of Egypt and its government head this country. This is the dream I dreamed.

Predictably, the backtracking goes on like this for a while. Read the whole thing.

Wine in a Can

Let’s face it: White wine in a can isn’t a good idea. But is having a recent DUI arrestee promoting it any better?

From ANSA:

Producers and fans of Italian Prosecco are up in arms over plans by an Austrian company to market the sparkling white wine in a can.

The wine in a can is called Rich Prosecco and American heiress and jetsetter Paris Hilton has been hired to be the product's pitch girl.

Makers of quality Prosecco, which is produced in the northeast zones of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, are very worried that the reputation of their wine will suffer from the marketing of an inferior product.

This should set back efforts to take Valdobbiadene upmarket by, oh, a century. Red Bull should also be worried.

And in the red trunks, weighing in at 106 pounds…

The fight is on for the ACLU – or at least the name and donor lists. A dissident group of “longtime ACLU loyalists– members, donors, supporters and activists, including former staff and members of the national or affiliate boards” has launched savetheaclu.org.

From the group’s mission statement:

We applaud the ACLU’s recent fundraising successes, but they cannot compensate for or justify persistent breaches of principle or the abandonment of honesty when those breaches are revealed. The ACLU now stands exposed, and widely ridiculed, for repeatedly acting in contempt of its own core principles, and for chilling and even attempting to prohibit dissent within its own ranks.

Over the past three years, these breaches of principle include the ACLU’s approval of grant agreements that restrict speech and associational rights; efforts by management to impose gag rules on staff and to subject staff to email surveillance; a proposal to bar ACLU board members from publicly criticizing the ACLU; and informal campaigns to purge the ACLU of its internal critics.

All of these breaches, as well as others, violate the ACLU’s historic commitment to free speech. We take little comfort from the fact that some were reversed after bad publicity and donor complaints.

We’ll find out whether these guys can feed the leadership’s bunker mentality and prompt even greater backlashes. Pass the popcorn.

Hat tip: Stoptheaclu.com

Hugo, Put Down the Crack Pipe

When Charlie Rangel took exception at Hugo Chavez talking smack in his district, pundits were shocked. Aren’t Democrats supposed to titter at the lame sulfur jokes? Be frozen by the prospect of chiding their enemy’s enemy? Well, I’m shocked that they’re shocked.

It was the smart move for Rangel all along. He noticed the growing silence and figured the man-bites-dog aspect of the story would net a Democrat airtime aplenty.

With a safe seat and the possibility of being the next Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, where’s the downside for a man who just last year called Bill Clinton a redneck?

He can take any intra-party heat. Most of his spineless wonder colleagues should be ashamed.

Wikipedia as Linguistics Resource

Companies performing automatic text analysis can gain insights from blogs and message boards, but can't understand neologisms that don’t appear in semantic lexicons.

According to NewScientistTech, a program called Zeitgeist could help when the going gets colloquial. To understand a new word like, say, "megamercial" or "hypertasker," it searches Wikipedia and can make guesses about intention when a good enough definition cannot be determined.

It's no cordless extension cord, but pretty cool all the same.

Faithful Democrats

In a 1993 rant to the Christian Coalition, DNC Chairman (and Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager) David Wilhelm claimed that “God is an Independent” and rebuked the group for, among other sins, not backing socialized medicine:

When you call yourselves the “Christian Coalition” and savagely attack members of Congress for their point of view, implicit in that attack is the message that those who disagree have taken an un-Christian position.

Thirteen year later, with elections looming and a Pew survey showing that only 26 percent of Americans see the Democrats as friendly to religion, Wilhelm’s combative message is repackaged in FaithfulDemocrats.com ("An online Christian community").

To make sure the public buys it this time, the site enlists Tennessee Senator Roy Herron, whose folksy letter on the site’s home page churns out “religious” sound bites at a sixth-grade cognitive level:

In recent election seasons, many preachers have proclaimed not the Good News, but the Bad. They have told faithful members of their congregations that they cannot be Christians.

"Christians," they declare from the pulpit and beyond, "cannot be Democrats!"

If there’s any evidence to back up that assertion, I’d love to see it. Herron teaches divinity and law at Vanderbilt, so I’m sure he didn’t simply make it up for rhetorical effect.

Not many Christians will be influenced by the FaithfulDemocrats.com one way or the other, but at the end of the day, it is more a tool to provide sound bites to complement Democrats’ show Bibles. Here’s some more Herron:

We also prayed together before meals. I don't recall us ever eating at home without saying what Dad called "Grace" or Mother called "The Blessing." Mother and Dad, having been through the Depression, always were thankful. And they knew Whom to thank. My parents knew that they and our family and many neighbors had survived the Depression through the grace of God. And, quite frankly, through the policies of the Democratic Party.

I don’t know how that guy can sleep at night – or for that matter why Republicans should lose any sleep over FaithfulDemocrats.com.

Such a Deal

Hezbollah was hoping for Louis “Red” Klotz or maybe the guy who traded Christie Mathewson for Amos Rusie, but they’ll find they can probably work with this German:

A SENIOR German intelligence official has arrived in Beirut in an attempt to mediate a prisoner exchange between Israel and Lebanon, an issue that threatens to rekindle hostilities unless speedily resolved.

Ernst Uhrlau, head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, BND, was involved in the last such swap two years ago, when Israel released 429 Arab prisoners for an Israeli businessman captured by Hezbollah and the bodies of three soldiers.

At long last, maybe Israel has the final solution to their history of lopsided prisoner exchanges.

Disappointing Hybrids

If lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math, what are Toyota’s profits from Prius sales? The thought was in the back of my mind when I came across the 2006 Alternative Powertrain Study by J.D. Power and Associates.

The study finds that consumers considering hybrid vehicles expect an average fuel economy bump of – hold onto your hats – 28 mpg over a comparable gas-only vehicle (actual improvement: 9 mpg). These expectations aren’t just weird, but 200-mpg carburetor weird.

Though the typical Prius owner may be annoyed to learn he can’t drive from Berkeley to Takoma Park on a gallon of Venezuelan, the shock of realization is less acute than that of the affluent burgher who finds he sometimes needs two credit cards to fill up his H2.

The average hybrid owner is 55 years old with a household income of $113,400 according to the study. That pesky $3,000-$10,000 premium over a comparable gas-only vehicle doesn’t loom large for this buyer, and he probably sees the rolling appliance as a platform for that leftover Re-Defeat Bush bumper sticker, not as a way to save $1.59 per on his next twenty trips to Wal-Mart. This segment is small, with hybrids accounting for just 1.2 percent of light vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005.

The expectation disconnect is unsustainable and the cost of wringing it out will be borne by the auto industry as it seeks to expand the vehicles’ appeal to younger, less-affluent consumers. With credit cards scorched by a summer of $80 fill-ups, the car-shopping public may be astonished to discover that hybrid fuel economy hasn’t reached a permanently high plateau.

The technology will get there. Though the actual R&D is slow and costly, I am confident that any technical hurdle can be overcome by sufficient application of wishful thinking, as is my understanding from watching politicians who play energy experts on television.