Barack Obama, in his own his allies' and mentors' and speechwriters' words:

Via Classical Vaues, who I'll link in the next post. Thanks to TomG.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (9)
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No, really.

This is helladisappointing to all of us, who want killer robots almost as we want flyin' cars. But it's especially saddening because there is some evidence that, yeah, robots are basically just looking for an opportunity to turn on us. The SWORDS robots turned their guns on their human masters... almost immediately.

Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.

The revelations were made by Kevin Fahey, US Army program executive officer for ground forces, at the recent RoboBusiness conference in America.

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Fahey said there had been chilling incidents in which the SWORDS* combat bot had swivelled round and apparently attempted to train its 5.56mm M249 light machine-gun on its human comrades.

"The gun started moving when it was not intended to move," he said.

Apparently, alert American troops managed to quell the traitorous would-be droid assassins before the inevitable orgy of mechanised slaughter began.

...

No humans were hurt, but it seems that the struggle was sufficiently terrifying that it may be some time before American troops are ready to fight alongside robots again.

As Fahey pointed out, "once you've done something that's really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again".

A Popular Mechanics guy is quoted as calling the Army "silly" for being overly cautious, comparing the SWORDS malfunction to the many Osprey malfunctions, the latter having taken 30 lives.

I don't know. A machine-gun armed robot that doesn't respond to human commands is sort of scary.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:24 PM | Comments (32)
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I suppose this could be part of that looming instability thing the NYT is fretting about, but it seems to me more likely that if a major agent of instability is neutralized, that's probably good, in the long run, for stability.

But what do I know. I just like writing funny headlines.

A senior aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was assassinated Friday in the holy city of Najaf. Authorities immediately announced a citywide curfew and security forces deployed on the streets.

The killing threatened to raise tensions amid a violent standoff between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Yes, but... the last time that happened it didn't go very well for the Sadrists.

A risk here, yes, and I don't want to be glib about it, but at some point this clash is inevitable. Either the Sadrists lay down their arms or the Coalition forces lay the Sadrists down next to their arms.

I take this as generally good news. The Sadrists had been largely untouchable. And now, in an elevator car, the word "Touchable" written in blood.

Riyadh al-Nouri, the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf, was gunned down as he drove home after attending Friday prayers in the nearby city of Kufa, a police officer and a local Sadrist official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

...

Al-Sadr said the United States and the Iraqi government bore responsibility for al-Nouri's death and he demanded an investigation be opened.

"It is the hands of the occupiers and their tails reaching out traitorously and aggressively against our dear martyr," he said in the statement, using rhetoric for the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers.

"We will not forget this precious blood. I call upon Sadr followers to be patient. The occupiers will not rest in our land as long as I am alive."

Police said al-Nouri was driving his car alone and had passed through two of their checkpoints before heading for the residential part of the city in which he lived. The gunmen were waiting for near his home, where no security forces were present.

No security forces were present? Oh dear me that's terrible. If only US forces had been there, this tragedy might have been averted.

Read on in the article and you'll get to the downside, like sporadic fighting breaking out again in Basra and curfews in several cities to control restive populations.

But I'll quote this bit:

U.S. airstrikes also killed 12 more suspected militants.

An unmanned drone fired on a group of gunmen carrying grenades and mortars overnight in Sadr City, killing six of them, the U.S. military said.

Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Thanks to Greg.

Corrected: I initially identified this solid citizen as a cleric. He appears to have just been a lay asshole, not an invested one.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (37)
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New science? Nope. Facts wrong? Nope.

Just a global warming activist who emailed the editor and, after some back and forth, the editor capitulated to her view that the BBC ought not to present actual facts which might cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Must read. The editor goes from defending the article, noting that is is completely true, to capitulating in the activists' demand that "no doubt" over greenhouse gas warming must be permitted at the BBC.

I actually found this in this morning's Global Warming search, but J-Dub just told me to post it. I wasn't sure it was juicy enough, but now I see it his way.

One definite take-away: Compare this editor's capitulation to this lefty eco-activist with the snide and fuck-you type responses Patterico typically receives from the LAT, even when he catches the LAT in a clear, demonstrable factual misstatement.

Politically, you are who you read, who you talk to, who you consider to possess opinions even worth considering. Patterico's basically batting .112 with the LAT on its gross factual misstatements; here the BBC is all to eager to rewrite (and re-headline) a completely factual story to push a conclusion not supported by the facts of the story itself just to avoid that most insidious of intellectual states, "doubt" over things "we all know are true."

Oh... J-Dub tells me he got this from S. Weasel, who's also writing about it.

Corrected: An hour and sixteen minutes, not sixteen minutes. Sheesh, even I should have caught that -- how could eight emails be sent in sixteen minutes?

Bart corrected me on that, and also notes that I just rolled over for J-Dub the way the BBC rolled over for Jo the Global Warming Alarmist.

Well... sort of. It was really a question of 1) How sharp a post can I get out of this and 2) do I really want two global warming stories up nearly back to back?

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (36)
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At least they're taking a strong interest in their son's future.

Honey, we can't afford an addition; you know we have to save for Junior's crack-lab fund.

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. -- A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father's arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.

On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays and even a computer, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval said.

After he ran out of the store, police were called and the 19-year-old was arrested at his home.

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

"They have different ideas on how the baby should be raised. Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would 'claim,'" Sandoval said.

This is an issue that most intergang couples face at some point. It's not an ideal solution, but can't the child both learn about the ancient traditions of the Crips while also having a Ballers tree for the holidays?

Or just expose him to both gang-traditions and let him choose himself when he's at the appropriate age. Like 11 or 12, or whatever.

Thanks to RobG.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (50)
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Remember, the debate is over. When this scientist's work was taken as dispositive that global warming would cause more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, the debate was over. He wrote a paper, after all. Case closed.

Now, of course, that he's revising his earlier work (as scientists do, if they're actually scientists), the debate will still be over, and global warming will still cause more frequent and more powerful hurricanes. After all, he wrote a paper. Sure, he now challenges his own older conclusions, but still: Case closed.

One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this week unveiled a novel technique for predicting hurricane activity. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.

His changing views could influence other scientists. [ed: Not bloody likely.]

"The results surprised me," Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes but what that role is remains far from certain.

...

Among the first to publish was Emanuel, who, just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina's landfall, published a paper in Nature that concluded a key measurement of the power dissipated by a storm during its lifetime had risen dramatically since the mid-1970s.

In the future, he argued, incredibly active hurricane years such as 2005 would become the norm rather than flukes.

This view, amplified by environmentalists and others concerned about global warming, helped establish in the public's mind that "super" hurricanes were one of climate change's most critical threats. A satellite image of a hurricane emanating from a smokestack featured prominently in promotions for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

...

What has not been as broadly disseminated, say Pielke and some hurricane scientists, is that other research papers have emerged that suggest global warming has yet to leave an imprint on hurricane activity. One of them, published late last year in Nature, found that warming seas may not increase hurricane intensity.

...

In the new paper, Emanuel and his co-authors project activity nearly two centuries hence, finding an overall drop in the number of hurricanes around the world, while the intensity of storms in some regions does rise.

For example, with Atlantic hurricanes, two of the seven model simulations Emanuel ran suggested that the overall intensity of storms would decline. Five models suggested a modest increase.

"The take-home message is that we've got a lot of work to do," Emanuel said. "There's still a lot of uncertainty in this problem. The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down."

"We don't know" and "the evidence is inconclusive" and "we've got a lot to work to do" are all of course just scientific jargon for case closed, the debate is over.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (27)
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I mostly gave up fisking a while ago, as it seemed, what's the word, childish. Just snarking after quoting someone.

Kaus seems similarly embarrassed to employ this old school technique, but it's so much fun it reminds me of why I used to do it. The NYT is determined to see looming instability and political collapse; but their case is made difficult by the facts (which they report with some amount of chagrin) that stability appears to be increasing.

But there's always the risk hope of instability somewhere over the horizon.

The tension between what the Times hopes for the future and what it actually must report as the present is funny enough on its own, but Kaus helps point out the contradictions.

From Instapundit, who rounds up Austin Bay's take as well as Iraqi blogger Alaa's. Quoting Austin Bay:

The Iraqi army and Iraqi government planned and executed the operation themselves. Failure? Don't think so. This is progress. As time passes, it is increasingly clear the Iraqi army did a far better job than the Shia gangsters.

But we all know why the complex chart gets ignored and successes are glasses half-empty: A presidential election campaign is on, and the Democratic Party has bet its soul on defeat.

"Hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, but most of all speak of no progress in Iraq." Thus Sen. Joe Lieberman, a member of the Armed Services Committee, deftly summed the last two years of Democratic Party posturing as well as the Democrats' talking points in the latest hearings.

Mr. Lieberman's maverick pal, Sen. and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, spoke more bluntly, "Congress should not choose to lose in Iraq, but we should choose to succeed."

Ted Kennedy had a bit of snark himself, noting that when violence is increasing and we appear to be losing hope of a victory, Bush says we have to stay the course, and when violence subsides and we appear to be on the verge of actual, unambiguous victory, Bush also says we have to stay the course.

He presents this as some sort of a contradiction, when in fact the same imperative runs through both: We cannot afford to lose in Iraq and indeed have a fair chance of a cataclysmic victory. Cataclysmic for Al Qaeda and Islamist lunatics, I mean.

But what is the imperative that runs through both of Kennedy's flip-side claims, to wit, that we must withdraw when violence is increasing and hope of victory seems diminshed, and also that we must withdraw when violence is subsiding and hope of victory seems... well, rather hopeful, actually?

On the first point, I can't fault him: If a situation looks dire and unwinnable, withdrawal may in fact be the best of a pile of bad options.

But how about on that second point? Is he saying that when a situation looks like it might actually result in a major victory, we should still withdrawal and force a sure defeat on ourselves?

What possible logic animates that latter proposition, except for the obvious, the viciously partisan position that sacrifices national security (not to mention the fate of millions of Iraqis) to the ostensibly greater moral imperative that Bush must be repudiated and America soundly defeated in order for the Democrats to prosper politically?

A house burned, but the heroic efforts of Americans (and Iraqis, and also Austrialians and Czechs and Poles and, earlier, Brits) put out the blaze almost completely, so that the house still stands and only small pockets of fire crackle here and thee to threaten it.

Bush (and McCain, and Hillary and Obama too, sometimes) say "Well, gee, maybe we should put out those fires once and for all so that this house may stand forever."

Ted Kennedy is saying "Let the winds and circumstance play with the flames and let's see if we cannot invite the inferno once again. Just... to see if we can get it to burn."

Bush and Kennedy both have clear and consistent positions on the War in Iraq. Neither is engaged in contradiction or inconsistency whatsoever.

It's just that Bush always wants to win the War in Iraq, whatever the circumstances, even when they are the most dire, and Kennedy always wants to lose the War in Iraq, whatever the circumstances, even when they are the most hopeful and victory seems almost in reach.

They're both consistent. There is no hypocrisy on either man's part.

But there is obviously a chasm of integrity, morality, and statesmanship between each position. Bush can well be faulted for stubbornly insisting on victory even in the face of circumstances that caused many of us -- myself included -- to despair.

But compare that to a man stubbornly insisting on defeat even in the face of circumstances suggesting not merely the possibility of victory, but the strong likelihood thereof.

And what does he gain? Why, his party has a marginally better chance of taking the White House and picking up a few more Congressional and Senate seats. And he will reap the great personal satisfaction of finally winning a political argument, the argument that the War in Iraq was unwinnable, even if he himself needs to intervene to make sure it is not won.

Stay classy, left-liberals. Stay classy.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (22)
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Finally that damn state may start pulling its weight!

The government estimates up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.

The U.S. Geological Survey calls it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

Â…The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.

Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.

The USGS release is here.

I am sure the environmentalists are working overtime to figure out reasons why we canÂ’t possibly go ahead and exploit this new find.

It looks like we share the geological formation where this oil is with Canada. This could mean war! Better dust off War Plan Red.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:18 AM | Comments (76)
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Well, that's close enough to what he said.

In a very small part of my presentation, I referenced a meeting I had with RabbiÂ’s and other community leaders. A Rabbi stated in that meeting that the close relationship between the African American and Jewish communities had been disconnected after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I further referenced in my speech that my response to the Rabbi was that the Black Power Movement emerged after the assassination of Dr. King and it was a direct response to the negative characterizations of African Americans through the silver screen, TV and the music industry, industries that are influenced by many in the Jewish community.

What about other industries influenced by the Jews, like stealing gold from Africans and financing the slave trade? He mentioned those Jewish-controlled industries as well.

As Captain Ed notes, Rev. Lee realizes the Kinsley gaffe of saying what he actually believes and then sends Simon a follow-up claiming he no longer believes Jews control the media at all. Like, two hours later.

In two hours he purges himself of one of the classic tropes of antisemitism.

Wow! Barack Obama's "open, candid" national discussion on race is really bearing fruit!

Posted by: Ace at 06:32 AM | Comments (41)
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Clayton Cramer picks up on an encouraging PJ Media item.

Worldwide, Islam is a religion on the decline and has been for many years.

Islam used to represent Â… AfricaÂ’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

There's more, lots more at Clayton's link.

I know Ace frowns on posting personal anecdotes to the blog, but please bear with me.

The reason this story rang my bell is that the facts in the quoted article support a statement my father made to me a couple years ago while we were lounging by his pool. Dad is a remarkable man and almost always right about things. I have a lot of respect for him.

"Princess," he said, "go get the funnel and a couple beers, and make me another Rusty Nail."

This is how we kids know that Information Of Great Import is about to be dispensed.

"Dad," I began, "I'm too fucked up to get to the kishen. Thish is the fiff time you've shtarted this convoshashunen."

"FINE!," he whispered from under his lawn chair. "Leme bin."

"What, Dad?"

"Let me begin."

"You shed, 'let me bin,'" I giggled.

"Don't correct your father." He cleared his throat and threw his cigarette butt in the pool. "Peanut, Islam will not survive this century. It is incongruous with the modern world, and people will refuse to live like savages while they see the rest of humanity moving ahead with technology and peaceful commerce."

Scout's honor, he told me this, and it actually happened something like that. My dad's a great guy and a good father. I only hope that someday I will be able to remember more of our discussions.

Thank you kindly to Man of Substance. Which substance, I hesitate to guess.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:26 AM | Comments (40)
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