Pejmanesque

BAD, BAD PUNDIT!

Doesn't Arthur Chrenkoff know by now that all is lost? How dare he mess with the received conventional wisdom!

RAY CHARLES REMEMBERED

Joe Katzman has a nice tribute. In Chicago Bulls home games, when an opposing player fouls out, the sound system blares "Hit The Road, Jack"--which everyone sings along with. The PejmanMother, who became a major Bulls fan during the era of six championships, loves that song. I'm not sure whether she watched games to see spectacular Jordanesque moves on the court, or in the hopes that multiple opposing players would foul out and treat her to a musical delight.

That was Ray Charles for you: The Michael Jordan of music. Or was Jordan the Ray Charles of basketball?

SO HOW MANY JOBS ARE LOST DUE TO OUTSOURCING?

An exceedingly small amount as a percentage of total jobs lost, as Dan Drezner points out. Naturally, this leads one to wonder when--if ever--those who demagogued this issue will actually muster up the courage and decency to apologize for it.

LOTS OF VIOLATIONS OF GODWIN'S LAW GOING AROUND

I just don't have any patience for this stuff anymore, and my hometown paper embarrasses itself by publishing such dreck. Good for Jeff Goldstein for treating it with the contempt it deserves.

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

A whole host can be found here. Of course, if I were one of those who issued said thoughts, I really wouldn't want them publicized.

But since I'm not one of those who issued said thoughts, I am more than happy to publicize them.

YOU'RE NOT TRULY FAMOUS UNTIL YOU'VE BEEN PUBLISHED BY A HIGHBROW BRITISH NEWS MAGAZINE

I liked Stephen Bainbridge's original letter better too. But the revised and edited version still makes the point quite well.

YES!

Suffer, Lakers. Suffer.

STOP THAT HISTORY REWRITE

Kudos to Tim Cavanaugh for pointing out just how fatuous this article is. It is rather impressive to see just how far people will go in order to try to spin their convenient version of history, even when that history is so diametrically opposed to common sense.

Look, Reagan never said that he wouldn't negotiate with the Soviets. He did say, however, that he would do it from a position of strength--which was the message behind that whole "Peace Through Strength" mantra. People like Lawrence Martin seem to think that capitulation is cleverness, and that therefore, the Soviets somehow outwitted us by hoisting the white flag. In a sense, the Soviets were clever to capitulate, but only insofar as the Soviets finally realized that the system of government they were running was no longer viable. And that fact didn't get hammered into their heads until the Reagan Administration. Yes, the Soviets finally offered to negotiate, but only when Ronald Reagan dramatically shifted the ground to ensure that his side--our side--would have the upper hand in those negotiations. As inconvenient as those facts might be for Martin, they are supported by the historical record, and there are more than a few of us who were alive to see it, and to testify to it.

FIRST BRIAN LEITER, THEN MATT STOLLER . . .

Who will be the next halfwit to volunteer to be annihilated at the hands of Daniel Drezner?

WE'LL SEE ABOUT THIS

A nail bomb has gone off in Germany, and the Germans are claiming that there is no connection between the bomb blast and terrorism. Steven Den Beste, however, isn't so sure.

I'll wait and see how this develops before saying anything further. Nevertheless, I am classifying this post under "Terrorism," because I really don't think that any other label would apply. It remains to be seen who is behind this, but whoever is culpable, the detonation of a nail bomb seems rather terroristic to me.

POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY

Quoth PowerLine:

During the four quarters of 1992, GDP increased by 6.7%, 6.2%, 5.9% and 6.7% in current dollars. (In constant 2000 dollars, the percentages were 4.2, 3.9, 4.0 and 4.5) When Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy, stupid," he should have been endorsing President Bush for re-election. But the press, almost without exception, reported economic news in 1992 as though the country were in a recession. Economic growth actually slowed after Bill Clinton took office, but hardly anyone heard about that, either.

I think the same phenomenon explains why most voters have no idea that over the last four quarters, GDP has increased by 4.2%, 10%, 5.7% and 7.2% in current dollars (3.1%, 8.2%, 4.1% and 4.4% in constant 2000 dollars).

I don't know who will win November's election, but I will venture one firm prediction: if John Kerry wins, the economy will take off like a shot. On the pages of the Washington Post, anyway.

That appears to be the way the spinning seems to point. I would just add that the homeless will disappear as a national problem if John Kerry wins, regardless of whether there will actually be less homeless people on the streets.

GMAIL: A REVIEW

Some cursory thoughts:

Overall, I rather like the new tool, and will probably be using it a fair amount as one of my primary e-mail tools? Why? Storage space, baby!

That said, I really don't need to have Gmail constantly remind me that I don't have to ever delete a message again because I have all of this storage space on my hands. Look, if I get junk mail (haven't yet, but I figure that I will in short order), I'm going to delete it. I don't care if my storage space will accommodate it. Junk mail is an abomination. My Gmail account should be purged of it.

I know that Gmail is in the beta-testing phase, but just out of curiosity, why is it that it doesn't have some of the buttons that Yahoo! has for its e-mail service? You know, buttons for cutting, copying, pasting, embedding links in a word, aligning paragraphs, bolding, underlining, etc.? Just because they are beta-testing does not mean that e-mail needs to return to the Stone Age.

I may be persuaded to dole out Gmail invitational accounts, à la Will Baude. The question, of course, is what will I get in return?

"THE BERKELEY INTIFADA"

Michael Totten's latest essay is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the culture and legacy of the PC movement.

RIEMANN, SCHMIEMANN

A very interesting report on a potential solution to the Riemann Hypothesis:

A mathematician at Perdue University in the US claims to have proved the Riemann hypothesis - called the greatest unsolved problem in maths. The hypothesis concerns prime numbers and has stumped the world's mathematicians for more than 150 years.

Now, Professor Louis De Branges de Bourcia has posted a 23-page paper on the internet detailing his attempt at a proof.

There is a $1 million prize for whoever solves the hypothesis.

"I invite other mathematicians to examine my efforts," says de Branges.

"While I will eventually submit my proof for formal publication, due to the circumstances I felt it necessary to post the work on the Internet immediately."

The Riemann hypothesis is a highly complex theory about the nature of prime numbers - those numbers divisible only by 1 and themselves.

It has defeated mathematicians since 1859 when Bernhard Riemann published a conjecture about how prime numbers were distributed amongst other numbers.

Since then the problem has attracted a cult following among mathematicians, but after nearly 150 years no one has ever definitively proven Riemann's theory to be either true or false.

Such is the importance, and difficulty, of the problem that in 2001 the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass, offered a $1 million purse to whoever proves it first.

De Branges solved another problem in mathematics - the Bieberbach conjecture - about 20 years ago.

(Via Tyler Cowen, who also provides a link to the actual proof.)

WHAT THE MULLAHS HATH WROUGHT

This article helps bring to light an overlooked portion of the Islamic regime's sordid legacy in Iran:

A measure of Islamic fundamentalists' success in controlling society is the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights of women. In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls, enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of segregation, forced veiling, second-class status, lashing, and stoning to death.

Joining a global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in Tehran, there has been a 635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.

The head of Iran's Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is one of the most profitable activities in Iran today. This criminal trade is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of the ruling fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.

Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their habits. High unemployment ? 28 percent for youth 15-29 years of age and 43 percent for women 15-20 years of age ‑ is a serious factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers for work. Slave traders take advantage of any opportunity in which women and children are vulnerable. For example, following the recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.

Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to Arab countries. One ring was discovered after an 18 year-old girl escaped from a basement where a group of girls were held before being sent to Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The number of Iranian women and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the magnitude of the trade. Upon their return to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalists blame the victims, and often physically punish and imprison them. The women are examined to determine if they have engaged in "immoral activity." Based on the findings, officials can ban them from leaving the country again.

If you actually have the stomach, I urge you to read the rest.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution. In this very minute, a child is being born to an American family and another child, equally valued by God, is being born to a family in India. The resources of all kinds that will be at the disposal of this new American will be on the order of 15 times the resources available to his Indian brother. This seems to us a terrible wrong, justifying direct corrective action, and perhaps some actions of this kind can and should be taken. But of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production.

--Robert Lucas (Thanks to Alex Tabarrok for the link.)

COMPRESSING THE LEGACY

It's more than a little amusing to peruse left-of-center blogs that tell us that the way to honor Ronald Reagan is to support stem cell research (and conveniently, to oppose the Bush Administration's stance on stem cell research). The issue of stem cells is obviously one that has generated a lot of debate, and it is a debate that is--fortunately--dominated by and large by people of good will on both sides. No one wants to see people dying of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or any other disease that might conveniently be treated by stem cell research. At the same time, it is folly not to acknowledge the potential moral implications of using embryos to further the research. Even if one believes that such moral implications are not enough to stand in the way of the research, at the very least, one should make that argument with some degree of humility and respect. It may be a blastocyst now, but it could be a life later, and in my mind, the proper way to argue in favor of stem cells is to say that while it may be a sacrifice of a potential human life to go forward with embryonic stem cell research, the ends would justify the means and there would be some kind of utilitarian benefit to going forward with the lives that may potentially be saved if embryonic stem cell research delivers on its promises.

But that's not what a lot of stem cell research advocates say. Instead, they tell us that it's just a blastocyst, and nothing more, and that we shouldn't even give a second thought to the issue. Now, I respect the argument that people make on behalf of stem cell research. Indeed, it's a much more appealing argument than the one made in favor of abortion rights--as evidenced by the fact that many pro-life advocates are also for embryonic stem cell research. But again, I don't think the other side can be dismissed so easily. After all, if it is eventually proven that adult stem cells could cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases, we wouldn't even be discussing the use of embryonic stem cells, since the use of one's own adult stem cells would present no moral qualms whatsoever.

I wish that people would recognize this fact, and recognize that there are those who genuinely want to see breakthroughs in the prevention and treatment of terrible diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, but have genuine and deeply felt moral qualms about the use of embryonic stem cells to accomplish this. The way to potentially change their minds is not to ridicule their positions, but to treat them with some respect and decency, while at the same time sticking to one's intellectual position with every ounce of one's intellectual honesty.

And as for the Reagan legacy, if it prompts a discussion on stem cells, that is fine with me. It's an important topic, and it deserves to be discussed with passion and seriousness. It would be nice, however, if some of the aforementioned blogs might also note other Reagan legacies . . . like, oh, say, being instrumental in winning the Cold War, turning around the pre-Reagan conventional wisdom that our economy was irretrievably broken, etc. After all, it is more than a little disingenuous to say that the only Reagan legacy of any note just happens to be one with which the Bush Administration can be bashed by its opponents.

UPDATE: Via the comments section, we have this report on the feasibility of stem cells. I'm no expert on the matter, but it definitely seems worth a read.

DREEEAM . . . DREAM, DREAM DREAM . . .

Sebastian Holsclaw has infinitely more patience than I do with unbelievably improbable arguments. While that may qualify him for sainthood, it will also raise his blood pressure to abnormal and dangerous levels eventually.

JOHN KERRY'S DEFENSE RECORD

The definitive historical compilation. You can judge for yourself whether Kerry's positions on defense are in accord with yours, but in any event, it is a valuable--and revealing--source with which to check his rhetoric against reality.

ON TORTURE

Guest-blogging over at Crescat Sententia, the Curmudgeonly Clerk gives some valuable history on the issue of torture, history which undermines the self-serving argument that current questions regarding torture are in any way unique to the American experience.

OLD-FASHIONED

I like my Bible just the way it is. I don't want the language modernized, I don't want the message unnecessarily softened or hardened, and I don't think it constantly has to be tinkered with. There are segments of the Bible that I take seriously, and others that I do not, but I am firmly reconciled towards having the whole of the Bible remain just the way it is--whether or not I agree with certain portions of it.

Which is why stories like this one give me such a headache.

A SOLDIER REMEMBERS

Ralph Peters pays tribute to Ronald Reagan. I won;t even try to excerpt favorite parts. Just read it all.

I'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE. IT DOESN'T END WELL

While I am as impressed as anyone with the ability of the Detroit Pistons to hang in there with the mighty Lakers, Detroit is going to have to keep from giving games away. The Lakers came back from a 2-0 hole against San Antonio. They surely can come back now that the series is tied 1-1.

Memo to Detroit: We want Goliath dead. Really, we do. How 'bout not missing with the slingshot next time?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

--Walter Bagehot

"IRRETRIEVABLE OPALS"

Will Baude has this retrospective up summarizing his thoughts as a soon-to-be college graduate. As with just about all of his work, it is well-written, well-thought out, and very interesting. Be sure to read it.

(Via . . . well . . . Will Baude.)

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE

I have a new toy. Thanks to the kind Amanda Butler, of Crescat Sententia fame, I am now one of the cool kids who has a Gmail account after having inquired innocently. I'll look forward to giving it a try, and report any interesting aspects of the new system that I find.

In the meantime, of course, I bask in my cool kid status and my ability to make connections with people in high places.

REAGAN REMEMBERED

Roger Franklin:

It was Christmas six years ago when Ronald Reagan, who died on Saturday at the age of 93, became an unexpected addition to our family, thanks to my son, who was then 11. As every parent knows, kids that age can have strange ideas about what the well-equipped adult really needs, so when Squirt handed me a little box with a mysterious present clunking heavily inside, I expected a clock or cast-iron sock rack or some such equally useless thing. What emerged instead was a small bust of the 40th President of the U.S., whose forever-frozen smile gazed up from the wreckage of ribbon and gift wrap with more than a dash of mockery.

A statue of Reagan! A joke, right? His mother must have put the boy up to it. But no, she was just as genuinely bemused. What could he have been thinking to mark Christmas with this grinning, empty-headed lump, seven inches of cast-bronze conservative kitsch?

[. . .]

That Reagan was a twit went without saying, but I said it anyway, and with some vitriol. For example, there was the moron's blunder at the Detroit convention, where he said trees were worse polluters than cars. What a dolt not to know the difference between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. How stupid would Americans be to elect him? But of course they did, and for the next eight years, most of what I wrote, including a whole book on corruption and fraud in the Reagan-era Pentagon, chronicled how the sunny fool in the White House was getting it all wrong.

Nuclear missiles in Europe, that warmonger! Homeless armies on the streets -- didn't he care? And what about this racist imperialism he was unleashing on Central America? Charismatic Sandinistas savaged by Gringo spooks and mercenaries. El Salvador a killing field. Little Grenada ground under a cowboy heel.

And Star Wars -- how sad was that? It couldn't work, it wouldn't work, and yet Reagan was determined to build the bloody thing. The only unknown, or so it seemed, was whether the U.S. would go broke before mushroom clouds replaced cities with pools of black glass, which is what Reagan and his nuke-slinging buddies evidently wanted.

So why had my son bought me this bust? His explanation surprised me, and the gist of it went like this: "Gee, I thought you liked him. You like everything he did."

Turns out, the kid was smarter than his old man, and he really had been paying attention when I'd answered those questions about why Russia wasn't the Soviet Union anymore, and what about this vanished Berlin Wall that they were talking about on TV? My son must have been listening, too, when his American mother reminisced about how, when she was his age, her family stocked the basement with tinned goods and a chamber pot to see them through the storm of nuclear fallout.

Those threats were gone because the Soviet Union was gone -- and it was Ronald Reagan who made it so. My son will never have to master the duck-and-cover, and for that his mother and I are grateful.

Read it all.

THE REAGAN ECONOMIC LEGACY

An excellent and thorough paper on the subject. Thanks to Michael Rappaport for the link.

THE EVOLUTION OF J. LO.

I didn't think a case could be made on this issue, but apparently, it can.

MAYBE SOMEDAY . . .

I'll be able to have the same cult of personality that Howell Raines appears to have.

CROOKED LOGIC AND REASONING

I used to waste time responding to trolls, or to trolls with blogs. I try to do a lot less of that nowadays, since I realize that you just shouldn't feed the trolls. Life is short, and there are more interesting things to do, after all. But some inane commentary deserves a reply.

Henry Farrell has a spectacularly inept (and therefore, for him, entirely typical) response to my TCS piece regarding media coverage in Iraq. In addition to tossing out fifth-rate "witticisms" like "Flack Central Station" (this is what happens when one is deprived of an argument--one tries desperately to be Johnny Carson instead and fails miserably in the attempt), Farrell argues that because Matthew Yglesisas's argument about media critics didn't originate with the Nazis, my comment that "If Yglesias isn't actually accusing those who are critiquing the media of being Nazis, he is accusing them of stealing a page out of the Nazi playbook," is "is quite remarkably at odds with the facts, even by Yousefzadeh’s usual standards."

Farrell could quite obviously use some help with his close reading skills, since it is perfectly clear upon even a superficial perusal of Yglesias's piece, that it was Yglesias who set up the tone and tenor of the discussion, not me. Here is the key paragraph again:

. . . the political purpose of the theory [that everything in Iraq is fine except the media coverage] isn't hard to grasp. The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq, the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war, but rather on those who had the temerity to note that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.

Contra Farrell, I never said that the "stab in the back" originated with the Nazis. But I will say that when phrases like "stab in the back" are tossed around and connected with the destruction of "Weimar Germany," there is a common meaning that is attached to that kind of charge, and that meaning evokes images of Nuremberg rallies. I mean gee, let's think about this: Who is the most prominent person who used the "stab in the back" theory to destroy the Weimar Republic? Could it have been . . . Hitler? I would think that a political science professor should be able to understand the implications and the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" aspects of Yglesias's charge, but I guess that would be overly optimistic in Farrell's case.

And even if we kick the Nazis completely out of the picture and say that the "stab in the back" theory originated with the Girl Scouts of America, the point that I was making in my article (a point that quite clearly flew over Farrell's head) was that there should simply be more balance in reporting from Iraq. As I have said over and over--and apparently will never be able to say enough for simpletons like Farrell to understand--I have no problem with the media reporting bad news from Iraq. But there is no legitimate reason whatsoever for them not to give good news coverage as well. I am genuinely interested in hearing both sides of the story from Iraq. But there is little evidence that is happening, and I have every right to demand better from a media that is supposed to serve me--among others--without being accused of propagating a "stab in the back" theory or without having to endure Farrell's dimwitted commentary. As things stand, there is evidence that the media is dropping the ball when it comes to Iraq. (The last link is an editorial that was written by a Democratic congressman, and the one before has bipartisan criticism of the media. Query: Are the Democrats also spreading the "stab in the back" theory?)

It is a shame that Farrell doesn't understand this, but I've stopped expecting much from him long ago. I do find it disappointing, however, that a member of academia so willingly plays the fool on this issue, but in fairness to Farrell, maybe he's not just playing.

UPDATE: And yet more evidence of incompetent media coverage via Damian Penny. (An important thing to underline: I don't accuse the media of "stabbing us in the back." I accuse it of incompetence. Let's see if the difference finally dawns on Farrell.)

A MANY SPLENDORED THING

The science of love is explained in fascinating detail in this article:

Scientists have a cold eyed view of the purpose of love. The tender intimacy and selflessness of a mother's love might be celebrated by inspiring music, literature and art. Many great artists have been profoundly affected by the relationship between mother and child, as depicted by Da Vinci's Virgin and Child, Van Gogh's First Steps and so on.

But the evolutionary biologist has a more prosaic formulation – the lifelong commitment serves to help a parents' genetic material survive through to future generations. The passion shared by two lovers serves a surprisingly similar function – it facilitates mating and parenting – and hence again is merely the selfish gene in action. If we didn't love, then the species would simply never get perpetuated, so maybe that is love's actual function.

But if all love boils down to, according to science, a genetic prerogative being pursued through hard wiring in our brains, then the neurological basis of love, like the brain activity and hormonal responses which underpin love, should theoretically share similar biological underpinnings.

To investigate this question Bartels and Zeki, who have a long running programme investigating love using the very latest brain imaging techniques, measured brain activity in 22 mothers who viewed pictures of their own infants and compared this with activity evoked by viewing pictures of other infants with whom they were acquainted for the same period. In addition they compared this activity to that when other volunteers viewed their partner, a best friend and an adult acquaintance to further control for familiarity and friendly feelings.

The design of the experiment, using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and just published in the journal Neuroimage, allowed the scientists to determine the brain activation related to maternal and romantic love while at the same time controlling for the effects of familiarity and merely friendly feelings.

The first intriguing finding is that there is a lot of overlap between the brain areas activated during feelings of romantic love for a partner, and those involved in maternal love for own children. The brain cells implicated are the same as those we know become active whenever an extremely rewarding activity is being undertaken. These are precisely the same neurological locations which are implicated when we consume food and drink we like, take drugs like cocaine, and when we are given monetary rewards. So love is indeed like a drug.

However the key result was that it's not just that certain shared areas of the brain are reliably activated in both romantic and maternal love, but also particular locations are deactivated and it's the deactivation which is perhaps most revealing about love.

Among other areas, parts of the pre-frontal cortex – a bit of the brain towards the front and implicated in social judgment – seems to get switched off when we are in love and when we love our children, as do areas linked with the experience of negative emotions such as aggression and fear as well as planning. The parts of the brain deactivated form a network which are implicated in the evaluation of trustworthiness of others and basically critical social assessment.

In other words, strong emotional ties to another person inhibit not only negative emotions but also affect the brain circuits involved in making social judgments about that person. The results, conclude Bartels and Zeki, suggest that attachment involves a push and a pull mechanism – you are pulled along by the strong sense of reward you feel when you love. But you are also pushed by a tendency not to objectively see faults in the other person which might threaten love, or put the brakes on, so preventing you rushing headlong into a relationship, because circuits responsible for critical social assessment and negative emotions are literally switched off. So love really is blind and there is a biological basis for the blindness.

POTENTIALS FOR CONVERSION

I am pretty much a dedicated Windows fan, but once upon a time, I was completely in love with Macintosh. I fell somewhat out of love when, upon using Windows, I found out just how incredibly convenient it is to use a (relatively reliable) operating system that was so universally popular. Still, at times, I find myself wistfully recalling my salad days, when I would delight in the workings of the FruitMachine.

Some might say that Windows is unchallengeable, but no empire lasts forever, and Mac is moving Heaven and Earth to make itself more popular with amazing and fascinating new features:

On Monday, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced its planned July release of a wireless base station that can be plugged directly into a wall outlet. Called the "AirPort Express," this new device offers broadband Internet connectivity in places that have broadband connections, as well as analog and digital stereo outputs that allow users to stream music wirelessly from a Mac or Windows PC to other locations within a given area.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the new product as the world's first mobile 802.11g base station. "This innovative product will appeal to both notebook users who want wireless freedom in their hotel rooms and to music lovers who want to listen to their iTunes music library on a stereo located anywhere in their home," he said.

AirPort Express, which weighs a mere 6.7 ounces, will retail at US$129 and is available for order on Apple's online store. The device offers 128-bit encryption , WiFi protected access (WPA) and a built-in firewall. It will also run on Apple's newly announced "AirTunes" music networking technology, which will be included in Apple's iTunes 4.6 update, available later this week.

Popular resellers of Apple's wares were surprised by Monday's announcement. Mike McNeill, general manager of ClubMac, an Apple reseller, said that his group has been scrambling to get this announcement on its online Web site and in e-mail newsletters.

"I found out about it this morning surfing Apple's Web site," he told MacNewsWorld. "We are getting a heavy call volume on it -- even prior to our e-mail going out to subscribers this afternoon."

McNeill believes AirPort Express will be a hot item because its portability frees users from their desks in many environments.

"I have already had calls about this asking if it will work in college dorms and large houses," McNeill said. "The inexpensive price will be very attractive to those wanting convenience."

It's clear that Apple is making a strong play to win the hearts of technogeeks everywhere, and there just seems to be more intellectual vitality with their product issuances than there does in other segments of the computer world. The Windows folks had better not rest on their laurels. Steve Jobs is out to make them look passé.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG

A new UN resolution on Iraq is expected to pass the Security Council by unanimous vote today. According to this report, one clause of the resolution is to state the following:

Last week the United States and Britain agreed that the Iraqi interim government had the right to order U.S. troops to leave Iraq and made clear the mandate of the multinational force would expire in January 2006, when a permanent Iraqi government is expected to take office.

A key prerequisite to sovereignty is for the Iraqis to be able to order foreign troops off their soil. But to put down a deadline on paper for the removal of troops from Iraq is completely misguided. If there remains any segment of the population determined to undermine the new government, it now knows just how long it has to wait before foreign troops leave Iraq, and an insurgency can presumably step up its operations.

The only acceptable exit strategy for withdrawal from Iraq is one that states that we will leave when our mission is accomplished. Putting down an arbitrary deadline on paper seems to me a recipe for disaster. I hope my fears aren't realized, but if I were an insurgent leader, I would now know just how long I would have to wait out American and coalition troops before making my major push for a power grab in Iraq.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

[H]istory does not repeat itself and it is very difficult to compare historical situations that differ because history is not repetitive.

--Jacques Chirac

ANOTHER TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN

A tribute to Ronald Reagan.

MY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP

The subject that will never die: The media and the occupation of Iraq.

"EXTERMINATING" REPUBLICANS

I noted the recent statements made by conservative columnist Tony Blankley regarding George Soros--statements that were at best incredibly poorly phrased, and at worst, demonstrated anti-Semitism. I noted as well Mark Kleiman's seeming intimation--perhaps made most evident by the title of his post--that the Republican campaign against Soros is essentially founded on anti-Semitism. I said that if this is Kleiman's actual belief, it is ridiculous, since most Republicans simply think that Soros is a lunatic, and are willing to fight him because he is willing to fight Republicans with the piles of money that he has. Eugene Volokh--as I mentioned in my previous post--made roughly the same points.

This isn't good enough, apparently, for Kleiman, who in my comments section says:

As soon as the RNC denounces Blankley's comments, I'll agree he wasn't reading the script.

And in an update to his post, Kleiman writes:

Pejman Yousefzadeh also disapproves of Blankley's ravings, and also disagrees with me that they represent part of the coordinated anti-Soros strategy. I'm still waiting for a non-Jewish conservative to agree, or a hint of complaint from the RNC or its allies.

I find it interesting that the RNC is suddenly responsible for what an opinion columnist says, of course. I don't recall anyone holding the Democratic National Committee responsible for the ravings of Ted Rall or Noam Chomsky. But Kleiman seems to buy into this argument. And relatedly, Kevin Drum is apparently demanding that conservatives show their bona fides regarding the issue of anti-Semitism through condemnations of Blankley's statement by conservative bloggers.

Well, first of all, we can turn Kevin's argument on its head and apply it just as well. Instead of saying the following (as Kevin does):

Conservatives routinely jump on every alleged piece of anti-Semitism out of France as proof of European moral decrepitude, and here at home they can get seriously bent out of shape by nothing more than liberals using Jewish names as examples of neocons (i.e., Kristol, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz). But Blankley's transparently racist imagery hasn't caused much of a ripple.

We could say this:

Liberals routinely jump on every alleged piece of anti-Semitism out of the mouthes of individual conservatives as proof of conservative moral decrepitude, and here at home they can get seriously bent out of shape by nothing more than conservatives using Jewish names as examples of political opponents (i.e., Soros). But Europe's transparently racist imagery hasn't caused much of a ripple.

And speaking for myself, I don't really need a particular segment of the Blogosphere to tell me whether or not I should condemn anti-Semitism. Being Jewish, I rather naturally despised anti-Semitism long before I began blogging. There may be examples of self-hating Jews out there (indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if there are), but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. So I find the demands of Kleiman and Drum . . . well . . . rather puzzling. But that's just me, speaking personally.

In any event, it appears that the rule is that if one particular segment of an ideological camp goes overboard with its rhetoric, the other side can demand complete and total repudiation of that rhetoric from the side where it was issued--even if there is no evidence to indicate that such rhetoric is representative of the mainstream of the ideological camp from whence it came.

So I'm going to wait patiently for left-of-center bloggers and the Democratic National Committee to denounce in the strongest possible terms, the following:

No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren't immediately appointed to it, you'd know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

(Emphasis mine.) Any takers? Or does this just work one way?

WHY WE LOVED HIM

There are plenty of people who talk a good game about caring for the oppressed and downtrodden of the world. They assure us with all of the piousness and sincerity that they can possibly muster that it matters to them that there are people in other countries who are kept down by a totalitarian system. They protest their innocence when others question that sincerity, and loudly complain when discrepancies are pointed out between their words and their actions.

I'm more than happy to welcome as many people as possible from as much of the political spectrum as possible to the camp of those who care about the spread of freedom and liberty, and who are happy to push forward a liberty interest--especially when it coincides neatly with an American security interest (we do not, after all, stop caring about our country's security interests). Just remember, however, that it isn't enough to talk the talk. One must walk the walk as well.

Ronald Reagan did. And that is why those who knew oppression firsthand believed that he was their American President--even if they themselves were not Americans. Comes now Natan Sharansky--who as a Jewish refusenik, was introduced firsthand to the horrors of the Soviet police state. His words are worth reflecting on:

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil. Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

That's walking the walk. We'll see who chooses to make themselves genuine champions for freedom by measuring them with the same metrics that Natan Sharansky used to measure Ronald Reagan.

KILLING THE RADIO STAR, THE RADIO STATION, ETC.

Back in California, my car could receive two classical music stations. It was bliss--just utterly wonderful. Most of the time, I could easily find something on the radio that would suit my fancy. It made even aggravating drives seem almost pleasant, and there was many a time that I wouldn't want to leave the car for fear of missing out on an excellent composition over the radio.

Here in Chicago, while the radio stations are quite good, there is only one classical music station: WFMT. It's a good station, but it is also the only game in town, and seems to underplay music that actually comes from the classical and/or baroque eras. There used to be another classical station in Chicago, but it went country some time ago.

And it seems that this is a trend. Classical music stations around the country are getting cut and axed. Why? You'll have to read this story to find out.

And here I was thinking that NPR fans would enjoy classical music and demand more of it. I thought I was right to think that--after all, I listen to NPR and know a number of other fans. I guess you really do learn something new every day.

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN IRAN

Depressingly, the most recent reports regarding the subject give us more of the same:

The human rights situation in Iran is worse now than at any time since reformist Mohammad Khatami became president in 1997, a report says.

The international monitoring group Human Rights Watch accuses Iran's judiciary of abandoning its duty to administer justice fairly.

Instead, it is ordering the torture of detainees, the report says.

It says many of the abuses take place in illegal detention centres run by "parallel security bodies".

The European Union's dialogue with Iran on human rights issues has failed to produce any tangible results, Human Rights Watch says, urging the EU to exert more pressure on Tehran.

The EU's dialogue with Iran resumes in Tehran next week.

The report highlights the widespread use of indefinite periods of solitary confinement as a method used to break the will of detainees.

A recent report by Amnesty International was less scathing about the EU-Iran dialogue, but it too spoke of ongoing flagrant violations of Iranian and international law in the human rights arena.

The BBC report goes on to mention that there have been some ostensible signs of progress recently in Iran--such as the banning of the use of torture. Of course, the question arises as to whether laws on the books will actually be enforced and respected in practice. The history of the Islamic regime would, sadly, seem to militate against such enforcement.

BEAT L.A.!

It is, of course, delightful enough that the hated and despicable Lakers lost last night to the (despicable-if-one-is-a-Chicago Bulls fan-but-less-despicable-than-the-Lakers) Detroit Pistons. But of course, if the performance can be repeated--as this story indicates it may be--then that will be even more pleasing to see.

THE NEW TULIPS

Once upon a time, tulips were a prized and highly valued commodity, withb their value reaching astronomically high levels. It's hard to believe that there could be a bubble economy regarding a certain kind of flower, but there it is. Of course, like all bubbles, the tulip bubble eventually ended up bursting--perhaps a harbinger of things to come when the Internet economy of the 1990s rolled around.

I don't know if there is a bubble economy regarding Gmail. But it certainly appears to be very much in demand. Indeed, I'm rather surprised to read what people are doing to try to get a mere e-mail account.

Which reminds me: How do I get a Gmail account? Anyone have any connections?

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Al­mighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

--Message of General Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Allied soldiers, June 6, 1944.

My fellow Americans:Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

Amen.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, June 6, 1944

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

--Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984