Much like Iraq can only be understood through analogies to Vietnam, the media is moving towards the “Paris is Burning” story as another 60’s narrative.

Yesterday, Craig Smith, the Paris correspondent of our media’s bellwether, The N.Y. Times, gave us his take. While initially looking at the more recent Katrina riots, the ’92 Rodney King mayhem, Smith gets down to the heart of the matter, the 1960’s:

Although many Americans feel that their country still has a lot of work to do to close the gap between blacks and whites, the social protests and urban upheavals of the 1960's produced a stream of measures intended to increase political and economic opportunities rapidly for members of minority groups, and to stress the value of diversity to a democracy. By contrast, the French model has so far relied largely on expensive measures to keep poor Muslims fed, housed and educated, but has not effectively addressed the social or political isolation they feel from job and housing discrimination, and has actually limited their ability to define themselves as a political interest group. Affirmative action, a cornerstone of the American approach, has been a taboo here.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 12:07 PM | Comments (24)
Post contains 924 words, total size 6 kb.

Much like Iraq can only be understood through analogies to Vietnam, the media is moving towards the “Paris is Burning” story as another 60’s narrative.

Yesterday, Craig Smith, the Paris correspondent of our mediaÂ’s bellwether, The N.Y. Times, gave us his take. While initially looking at the more recent Katrina riots, the Â’92 Rodney King mayhem, Smith gets down to the heart of the matter, the 1960Â’s:

Although many Americans feel that their country still has a lot of work to do to close the gap between blacks and whites, the social protests and urban upheavals of the 1960's produced a stream of measures intended to increase political and economic opportunities rapidly for members of minority groups, and to stress the value of diversity to a democracy. By contrast, the French model has so far relied largely on expensive measures to keep poor Muslims fed, housed and educated, but has not effectively addressed the social or political isolation they feel from job and housing discrimination, and has actually limited their ability to define themselves as a political interest group. Affirmative action, a cornerstone of the American approach, has been a taboo here.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 12:07 PM | Comments (24)
Post contains 932 words, total size 6 kb.

Apparently we used the Ultimate Weapon against Fallujah -- white phosphorous flares to illuminate the enemy.

Illuminate... or immolate? They're pretty close words when you think about it.

“I have felt it order to make attention because he came used phosphorus white man on Fallujah. In the military jargon he comes called Willy Pete. The phosphorus burns the bodies, quite melts them until boneses “, says a veteran of the war in Iraq to Sigfrido Ranucci, envoy of RAI News 24.

“I have seen the bodies burns you of women and children - the former American soldier adds - the phosphorus explodes and forms one cloud. Who finds itself in the beam of 150 meters is dealt “.

Italian TV has an upcoming scoop on another American chemical super-weapon-- injecting toxic lead capsules into the bodies of enemies through a secret technology codenamed "guns."

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 166 words, total size 1 kb.

The actual genesis of "insurgent activity" in France was almost certainly happenstance. The initial rioting was just rioting, par for the course in France, which is still pretty proud about the Reign of Terror, after all.

But... just because it started as happenstance doesn't mean there's not enemy action behind its continuation and intensification.

Captain's Quarters quotes a report from September 27, 2005:

An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France which it describes as "enemy number one", intelligence officials said Tuesday.
"The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," the group's leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

"France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community," he was quoted as saying. ... Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the risk of terrorist attack in France is "at a very high level... There are cells operating on our territory."

Man, this joke gets old, but I'll repeat it anyway: It must be because of all those French troops in Iraq.

CQ muses:

The "riots' have sophisticated coordination between cell leaders, using the Internet and instant messaging as well as cell phones -- an odd tool for a spontaneous demonstration where one neighborhood would hardly have those phone numbers at the ready.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 255 words, total size 2 kb.

Gee, I thought the NYT would be pretty consistent as regards the "absolute moral authority" of those closest to the dead of war -- as they said about Cindy Sheehan -- but it turns out they're giving the finger to Corporal Starr's family and girlfriend.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. I'm about to say something crazy; I can't believe I'm going to say it. But just hear me out before judging me, okay?

I am beginning to believe -- and mind you, this is a first-blush reaction -- that the "absolute moral authority" mentioned by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times is in fact a highly selective and not at all "absolute" moral authority, and seems to apply only to left-wing freaks criticizing the war.

Jesus, I'm beginning to doubt my very senses. It's almost incomprehensible to me that this could be true, but... I don't know.

I may have to take a few days off to take stock of the entire situation, as well as my mental stability.

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (29)
Post contains 197 words, total size 1 kb.

Can't blame them. They had at least a 10% chance of surviving the game. Those are my kinda odds!

The idiots also managed to kill a bystander.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

Professor "Rats Out" Conservative PhD Candidate; Finds The Candidate's Expression of Views To Be "Contrary To the Spirit Of Free Inquiry," Which Means, It Seems, Absolutely Kow-Towing to the Leftist/Marxist Academic Party Line

Pretty disgraceful:

For those of you who haven’t been following the story as it makes its way around the blogosphere, Info-Theory’s Paul Deignan, a PhD student, was the victim of a “retaliatory” attack by a professor who didn’t appreciate Paul’s insinuating himself into a blog thread on the leftwing academic blog, Bitch PhD [this being a leftwing site, the administrator has removed the exchange in question; Paul saved it here]. Evidently, Paul’s attempt to debate civilly was regarded as beyond the pale. Notes the good professor in a comment on Paul’s blog, “Your behavior is highly unprofessional. If the shoe was on the other foot—if I were disruptive and unprofessional on a right wing site, I’d expect to be called on it. But I don’t troll conservative academic sites. It would be unprofessional to disrupt their discussions and contrary to the spirit of free enquiry—liberal values you seem to be unfamiliar with” [my emphasis].

In the world of the academy (in the humanities, in particular), anything that doesn’t echo established leftist orthodoxies is considered an “attack”—and not surprisingly, this professor took Paul’s criticisms as “contrary to the spirit of free enquiry” (which, sadly, has been twisted to mean “freedom from criticism"). To remedy this, the professor took it upon himself to call Paul’s faculty dissertation advisor (at a different school) to let him know—as a professional courtesy, you see—of Paul’s alleged poor form (which a review of the evidence will show consisted of nothing more than his arguing his positions quite civilly). This, after calling Paul both “a lunatic” and “homely” in an email.

Such is an absolutely unconscionable misuse of power. Further, it as an intentional effort to ruin PaulÂ’s academic career. And because it was done explicitly to punish Paul for his social and political views on the legality of abortion (all of this took place in the context of a debate over AlitoÂ’s nomination), it is intellectual McCarthyism at its most baldfaced and cowardly.

"Lunatic." "Homely." I see the sort of civility and airy intellectual give-and-take this Guardian Against the Corruption of Innocent Liberal Minds is cultivating.

Naked Testicle Spiderman has the douchebag's email address, in case you want to say hello. And contact information for his boss, too, in case you'd like to weigh in.

Keep the stuff to the boss reasonable and profanity free.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (13)
Post contains 409 words, total size 3 kb.

The claims of Blacklight Power have been bubbling around the Internet for a while. Supposedly, they've found that quantum mechanics, which specifies that the electron orbiting a proton (a hydrogen ion) must be precisely so far from the proton, has some wiggle room in it. They claim that they can induce the electron to take an orbit closer to the proton, releasing energy (apparently the tighter orbit has a lower energy state, and when an electron jumps from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, it must release energy).

Bullshit? Most physicists think so. But they claim they've got some big companies investing in this scheme, which may indicate that there's something here... or that big companies are greedy and run by people who don't know much about science. Either/or.

I suppose it should be pointed out that at some point physicists and chemists believed that nobel gasses could not bond with other atoms under any circumstances -- all of their orbits were filled! it was impossible! -- until one day someone did a little chemical engineering and got them to do just that.

I'm a little more interested in this bit at the end of the alt-fuels rundown:

Wave generators

No longer a dead duck, the hopes of engineers are riding on bobbing floats again. The British company Trident Energy recently unveiled a design that uses a linear generator to convert the motion of the sea into electricity. A wave farm just a few hundred metres across could power 62,000 homes.

There's an extraodinary amount of energy in the oceans -- just ask the citizens of New Orleans -- and if there were some way to convert that to electricity...

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (24)
Post contains 287 words, total size 2 kb.

Wunderkraut's unhappy:

Maybe all bloggers go through this at some point. This must be where most give up, while others stick it out. You reach a point where you have written about the things that most interest you and you feel like you are repeating yourself. What more is there to say? How many more times can one point out the bias in the MSM? How many more times can you point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats in Congress concerning the war in Iraq? How many times can you bash Republicans for selling their souls and spending like drunken Democrats? How many times can you criticize President Bush for failing to use the bully pulpit to explain his positions on the war and on Social Security?

How many times?

Trust me-- a lot of frickin' times if you want to keep this up. I don't think I've said something original since May 2004.

It's the nature of the beast, though. Anyone who has to produce opinions day-in day-out is going to have to start, errm, judiciously recycling them. How many times has the Doyenne of Ditz Maureen Dowd likened the Bush Administration to the Sopranos and/or The Godfather? About sixty-seven bazillion at last count. And she only writes twice a week. (Or, as Truman Capote said of Jacqueline Susanne, "She doesn't write, she types." And, yes, I've quoted that before, too.)

And yeah, that's why I sometimes don't post much... sometimes I just think, "Does anyone really want to read that CBSNews is a liberal institution again? Or that Mary Mapes is an idiot?"

I couldn't even bring myself to comment on Mapes' book. It's like picking on the retarded kid at school-- sure it's great fun for all involved (including for the retard, who's happy as a clam to play a rousing game of "Who took my favorite Snoopy hat and filled it with vegetarian chili and dissected cat organs?"), but it leaves you feeling a little empty.

That said, Wunderkraut goes into the breach once more and notes media and Democratic hypocrisy on Michael Steele, "twisted intelligence," and the like.

Repetition About Repetition: Actually, I'm pretty sure I wrote a similar post with the same title "The Long Dark November of the Blogging Soul."

In fact, I might have written the same f'n' post twice before.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (22)
Post contains 405 words, total size 2 kb.

A lot of people sent me different links to the same story: two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders arrested for having full-on lesbian sex in a public bathroom.

I didn't post it because I didn't see an angle. Then again, it's two cheerleaders having full-on lesbian sex in a public bathroom.

I guess that's an angle in itself.

There's also some punching and bar-fighting, as if you need to gild the lily.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (46)
Post contains 86 words, total size 1 kb.