Thursday, May 24, 2007

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 3735 Diggs, is a story about a creationist winning a science fair. As an atheist, I too find this ridiculous. I wonder, though, how many Diggs were just Left vs. Right.
Any lingering doubts I might have had that large (or at least influential) swatches of the IT industry are Left-leaning are erased by this story: "Apple's Jobs urges Gore to run for President."

The money quote: "We have dug ourselves into a 20-foot hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder."
A condition of Japan's surrender in WWII was that they reject the Emperor as divine ruler. We should require the same in Iraq. So long as Iraq remains governed by religious factions (and, by proxy, by Iran), it will be just as much of a threat to American interests as was Hussein's Iraq.

Maybe even worse.
Our new ally, the French. No, seriously. It's better than nothing.

Then again, maybe it's not: "diplomatic efforts," sanctions, and anything but direct removal of the Iranian government--which has committed enough acts of war against us to have warranted destruction many times over--simply gives Iran more time to implement its strategy.
I remember getting into a discussion with an Indiana University American lit professor about Ayn Rand, and being insulted in the process. She was a Leftist, of course, who, in addition to hating Ayn Rand, believed that American business was evil for failing to produce the same lines of shoes for her freakishly small feet.* My grade, which prior to this discussion had been a high A, suddenly dropped to a low C. Without a single paper having been submitted. Something about an "entire body of work."

That was 20 years ago. I can only imagine what the environment is like today, after eight years of Clinton and almost eight years of Bush. If you want to know more, sign up for a local screening here. I did.

Edit: I forgot to mention: this is a link to Indoctrinate U., which looks like a fascinating documentary on the topic of higher education anti-dissent.

*They really were freakishly small. I'd say she was probably somewhere in the top one percentile of people with very small feet, meaning that any shoe company that tooled their factories to make a full line of shoes for her would soon go out of business. Such crass business concerns were beneath her, though, because she was talking about her right to whatever shoes she wanted!
I disagree. Los Angeleans are pretty bad, as well.
"Oil for Food" money, maybe?

I hate to pick on the French, since they've since elected someone who's at least pro-American, but this, in the context of the war in Iraq, is interesting.
A single American life lost for any reason other than an individual's decision to fight for his values is one too many. This post by Gateway Pundit makes an important point, but only in a purely political context--more American military servicemembers lost their lives under Clinton than so far under Bush--but from an ethical perspective, the point is moot.

Both Clinton and Bush ignored the real enemy, Iran, and have spent American blood in altruistic orgies of self-effacing sacrifice. In those terms, both are equally evil, whether one sent 7500 Americans to their deaths or "only" 3824.
One can only hope that this isn't an isolated trend: "Europeans back plan to profile mosques."

This is like finding needles in a haystack, but only if one ignores that needles have a nature. Treating them like hay means failing to apply tools like metal detectors to the task.

One example [U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff] cited is the case in June 2003 of an agent at Chicago's O'Hare airport who, unsatisfied with a foreign traveler's responses, refused entry and sent him back to where he had come from _ first taking his fingerprints.

Those fingerprints, according to Chertoff, turned up later on the steering wheel of a suicide truck bomb detonated in Iraq.

Better that he blow himself up over there than over here.
I hate politics. I really do:

Similarly, the Democrats’ vow to end the “culture of corruption” in Congress has proven to be empty campaign rhetoric. Only two Democrats joined 187 Republicans on Wednesday in supporting an unsuccessful motion to discipline Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for violating an ethics rules approved by the House in January. Murtha crossed the line when he threatened to bar spending sought by two Republicans who questioned earmarks in his home district.

What will the Left do now?
Unless they're committing fraud or using force, Google can't be "evil." That is, unless your premise is that Google exists for your benefit and not their own. Only then can you suppose that by acting toward their own self-interest, by building businesses that make them money, they're somehow committing an evil act.

Furthermore, it should be no surprise to anyone that Google maintains data on our searching habits. That's obvious: search is their core business, and they (and many others) make a great deal of money by serving up ads based on search criteria, Web site content, and even "personal" data (e.g., what sites we tend to visit, which pages we tend to view, etc.). Indeed, many of us rely on such data to make our Internet usage more efficient and effective.

It seems as if it's only when a company start overtly commercializing such things do people react negatively. This seems nowhere more true than in the IT industry, for reasons that I've not yet fully identified (other than the industry's geography, which is centered smack in the middle of one of the many hearts of Leftist America).

Update (via Instapundit): Exactly.
Dell will soon be selling some tailor-made systems at Wal-Mart. What is the world coming to?

Actually, I think too much is being made of Dell's decision to expand into the retail space. Although the company built itself on direct sales, there's no law (political or economic) against its changing directions. I wouldn't buy a Dell system at Wal-Mart, but then I tend to build my own desktops and source notebooks from other vendors. And, I don't really like Wal-Mart, although only because I find their customer service to be lacking--certainly, not because they're big and influential.

I think that's a good thing.
It's this kind of insane rhetoric that makes Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons different from Irael's (or any Western nation's) nuclear deterrent. One wonders whether Ahmadinejad says these things because he truly believes them, because he knows he can get away with them, and/or because he desires to show "strength" to other Middle Eastern leaders. Whatever.

The point remains that in supposing that Iran has a "right" to develop nuclear weapons because other nations possess them, the Left is as usual creating a moral equivalence between Western nations that act to defend themselves and rogue states that desire to destroy us. To say that Israel will be "uprooted," in whatever context, is tantamount to a declaration of war.

The only question is, when will we start listening?
Boing Boing bills itself as a "Directory of Wonderful Things." I disagree with that billing on general principle: Boing Boing is less often "wonderful" than it is bizarre, disdainful, irreverent, and always tending toward the loony Left.

A Boing Boing post yesterday, though, goes beyond even their typical irrational leanings to border on the treasonous. By reposting the ABC News Blog (The Blotter) post about alleged CIA "black operatons" efforts against Iran, Boing Boing is helping to put American strategy and personnel in jeopardy. The site is so hysterically anti-Bush that it does so in support of a nation that has violated every agreement it has entered into, has threatened the West with destruction, and is currently developing technologies that only make sense in the context of nuclear weapons.

I won't link to the post. If you want to find it, you'll have to search for yourself. I'm picking on Boing Boing here primarily because 1) it's a very, very popular IT site and 2) it's not overtly political. Pointing out the Daily Kos's linking to the ABC News Blog post (and I'm sure they linked to it) would be extraneous and unnecessary--one expects the Daily Kos to publish such information, because their sole purpose for existing is to bring down the current Administration.

As a "Directory for Wonderful Things," though, Boing Boing should explain where a story like this fits.