Hallelujah, it's scAlito

Susan Estrich,
miss smarty-pants,
and Professor of Law and Political Science
at USC law School





I ran into Susan Estrich today and we had a nice chat. No, really, Susan was a co-participant at the Milken Institute's State of the State conference at the Beverly Hilton where I was also, due to the generosity of my good friend and Milken Research Fellow Lorna Wallace. More on the conference tomorow.

Anyway, during a coffee break I spotted Estrich and spontaneously blurted one of my patented intro lines: Hey, I know you!

Well, Susan was very gracious, kindly answering several of my rapid fire questions. To wit: How come Bill O'Reilly was so mean to you on his show last week?
Weeellll, (Ya'll know how Susan drags it out) O'Reilly just hates women!!

Feeding the flame, I agreed and noted that Bill is also mean to Ann Coulter. Weeellll, Susan was having none of that, making it very clear that Bill is much meaner to progressive women.

Next question: So what do you think of the Supreme Court nominee?
Weeelll, if you mean SCALITO, weeelll, Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer should be very happy!! After what they did to that nice Harriet Maiers.

So now I know that Sam Alito, ScAlito to his friends who compare him to Justice Antonin Scalia, is a great pick. That was confirmed by two of the initial salvos from the left: 1. He's a Catholic and we already have four of them on the Supreme Court. 2. When he was a federal prosecutor he lost a case against the Mafia.

Aha!! A Catholic and an Italian too, can't have him on the Court.

Hallelujah, Bush did a good thing here.

Six Degrees of Separation

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called Chains. (Wikipedia)

In 2001, Columbia University professor Duncan Watts sent e-mails to 48,000 people who were each instructed to forward the email to a person they knew who they thought was most likely to know a target individual personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the email wes finally transmitted to its target recipient. The original emails contained the target individual’s name, occupation, and general location. The data collected by 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries), showed that the average number of intermediaries was indeed, five.

Yesterday I met Peter Hansen at Starbucks. Peter is a scientist at Aerospace Corporation who has a keen interest in “discordant redshifts.” Some stellar objects such as quasars that are emitted by galaxies have spectral redshift values that are dramatically different from the host galaxy that emitted them. The big differences are not explained by the standard Big Bang model of the universe and thus are a big pain in the rear to the Astrophysics establishment.

I wrote a paper (“Optical Redshifts Due to Correlations in Quasar Plasmas”) in 2003 describing a theory that could potentially (maybe, perhaps, somehow, … several other mealy-mouthed disclaimers) explain the discordant redshift cases.

Peter was bothered by the fact that if quasars are ejected isotropically from galaxies as Halton Arp suggested decades ago, then why are there no observable blueshifts (since some must be coming toward us)? Like my work, Peter’s theory uses a framework developed by my former professor Emil Wolf at U. Rochester.

Peter sent Wolf his draft paper for comments and Wolf mentioned that he had a former student living in California who was working on the problem.

Just two steps were required: Pete – Emil – me. We beat the magic six.

After exchanging a few emails, Pete and I decided to meet at Starbucks. Pete sent me the picture from his Aerospace Badge so that I might recognize him. Here is what he wrote:

I'm attaching my picture. It's one of the biggest smiles I ever made - you should spot me easily, especially in my California home-boy weekend uniform (swim trunks and tank top).











Peter Hansen, smiling








I remember going to work each and every day. Discordant was just the right word to describe my mood.

But Peter surprised me with his wit, his charm and good cheer. It must have been Saturday.

Christian Girls Beheaded, Prince fond of Islam

Camila, wife of the Prince

complete with head







Christian girls beheaded in grisly Indonesian attack
Associate Press October 29, 2005

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded and a fourth was seriously wounded in a savage attack on Saturday by unidentified assailants in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has a roughly equal number of Muslims and Christians.

The girls were among a group of students from a Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation on their way to class.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters "In the holy month of Ramadan, we are again shocked by a sadistic crime ….... I condemn this barbarous killing, whoever the perpetrators are and whatever their motives."

Meanwhile, The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W. Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.

The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. "I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said.

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, was also at the meeting at St James's Palace. "His criticism of America was a general one of the Americans not having the appreciation we have for Islam and its culture," he said.

Prince Charles, who is about to embark on his first official foreign tour since his marriage to the Duchess of Cornwall, wants Americans to share his fondness for Islam.

He urged the West to overcome its "unthinkable prejudices" about Islam and its customs and laws.

He spoke warmly of the West's debt to the culture of Islam ???? and distanced moderate Muslims from misguided militants. "Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity," he said.

The Prince must be referring to the rampaging gangs of teenage Christian girls beheading Muslims in their wake.

You'd think that the British aristocracy would have realized by now how totally irrelevant they are; not to mention rediculous!

Quagmire

With the American death toll in the Iraq war reaching 2000, the stories about another Vietnam (where nearly 60,000 Americans died) are sprouting like black poppies. In Newsweek’s Oct. 31 issue, Anna Quindlen wonders if she will still be around in 2063 or so when the body count reaches Vietnam levels. Will she be a 115 year old peacenik?

Of course, there are only two valid parallels with Vietnam. The main stream media have been beating the anti-war drum and disseminating only bad news since before we invaded Iraq. And the anti-war-at-any-price leftists born in the Vietnam era are singing the same dismal tune. Anna Quindlen is one of the most melodious.

“The policy became a moving target: weapons of mass destruction; links to the 9/11 terrorists; removal of Saddam Hussein; bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. Once again we were destroying the village in order to save it.”

One can quibble about the policy, but all those objectives are noble and in America’s best interests. And they are subsumed by the big enchilada which is fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them in Palos Verdes, CA. and Rochester, NY.

Unlike the North Vietnamese, these Islamic bad guys have demonstrated a fanatical desire and uncanny ability to strike at the heart of America. The last time it was 3000 dead in NYC and Washington. The next time it could be millions.

The most unattractive feature of leftist ideologues is the way their weak arguments rapidly give way to personal attacks. Quindlen credits Lyndon Johnson for having “the good sense to be heartbroken by the body bags. Bush appears merely peevish at being criticized.” And then there is her ultimate cheap shot: “America's sons and daughters are dying to protect the egos of those whose own children are safe at home.”

Such rhetoric can only come from an elite intellectual who has never had a meaningful interaction with an American soldier. How is she to know how proud they are to be fighting for our country and for her safety? Has she forgotten that this is an all-volunteer army, and that the re-enlistment rate among the troops who have actually served in Iraq is remarkably high?

Quindlen’s leftist bona fides shine most brightly when she bashes her own country: “The most unattractive trait of the American empire is American arrogance, which the president embodies and which this war elevated. It is not simply that we have a good system. It is the system everyone else should have. It is the best system, and we are the best people.”

Compared to the European, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese empire builders America was and is a colonialist piker. Only one who knows nothing of history can talk of an American empire. Is she referring to the Western states, to Alaska, Hawaii? Or to the fact that we have maintained American soldiers in South Korea, in NATO and elsewhere to help protect our allies?

Quindlen says it is unattractive arrogance to believe that American democracy is the best political system. How about the fact that ours is the oldest democracy in the world and the most free? France is in their Fifth Republic and they still haven’t got it right, and Britain does not have our Bill of Rights.

Yet we don’t go around the world trying to impose our system on others as Quindlen would have you believe. The Iraqi’s are creating their own political system the democratic way using ballots instead of bullets.

President Bush realized that spreading freedom to oppressed peoples is the best way, perhaps the only way, to win this battle against the oppressors who would spread their evil throughout the world in the name of Allah.

We have the leadership and the military to do the job as long as Quindlen and her ilk do not sap our spirit. We must not let it happen; the stakes are so much higher than in Vietnam.

Name the Liberal Hypocrite

From Do As I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

by Peter Schweizer


QUIZ (a few sample questions)

1. Which liberal says that labor unions are essential for worker rights and accepted the Cesar Chavez Award for their contributions to the labor movement, but uses non-union labor in the hotels, restaurants, and Napa Valley Vineyard that they own?

a. Susan Sarandon
b. Paul Newman
c. Nancy Pelosi

Answer: C. Nancy Pelosi, who is part owner of the Piatti restaurant chain, La Auberge Hotel, and a Napa Valley Vineyard—all of which are strictly non-union.

2. This prominent liberal says that conservatives are nasty, hateful people but once told a newspaper, “I dislike homosexuals. … I was glad when that [Harvard] homosexual got killed.”

a. Sean Penn
b. Ted Danson
c. Al Franken

Answer: C. Al Franken, Mr. Sensitivity, told the Harvard Crimson that very thing.

3. Who says that oil companies cause pollution and global warming but quietly owns an oil company that drills for crude in five states?

a. Tom Daschle
b. Dan Rather
c. The Kennedys

Answer: C. The Kennedys. The Kennedys own Arctic Royalty Trust, which leases out land for oil drilling in five states. Much of the land was accumulated by convincing poor rural black farmers to give away their “mineral rights,” not knowing what it meant. The Kennedys set the operation up as a Royalty Trust to avoid paying income and corporate taxes on the profits. Family members including Ted Kennedy, environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Joe Kennedy, Jr. receive checks every year.

4. Who has called the Pentagon “the most hideous institution on the face of the earth” while enriching themselves with millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts?

a. Noam Chomsky
b. Ward Churchill
c. Howard Dean

Answer: A. Noam Chomsky. The self-proclaimed “dissident” MIT professor and his wife have made millions in military contracts over the years.

Thanks to son John for the link to this QUIZ.

Beware Liberal Colleges

In a recent post (Red America v. Blue Europe) I showed a ranking of the top 20 universities in the world. Of the 20 best schools, 17 are located in the United States, and none are Liberal Arts schools such as Smith, Vassar, Williams or Willamette. The top universities are renowned for their science, business and law. Yet even the foremost research universities have “liberal studies” curricula that are like an “evil virus” infecting the student population and society at large. “Parents, inoculate yourselves. It may be too late for your children.” So wrote Suzanne Fields in a Washington Times article (The evil virus upon us).

In the American Studies program at New York University, for example, is a popular course called "Intersections: Gender Race and Sexuality in U.S. History and Politics." The class spends a week analyzing the murder of Teena Brandon, a young woman who pretended to be a man. Students also study the life and murder of Tupac Shakur, the "gangsta" rapper who glorified drugs, abusing women and the violence. Other courses are called "Queer Lives and Culture" and "Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora." Parents shell out $40,000 per year for this trash.

Smith College has a different problem. About two dozen women who arrived as female have become male, more or less. Smith has long been "gay friendly," but now that girls have become "boys" Smithies joke that the school motto is "Queer in a year or your money back." That’s $37,000 a year.

A program at the University of Pennsylvania deconstructs Herman Melville and other dead white males seeking hidden meanings of homosexuality, pederasty and incest. Vassar College has a "Homo Hop." The Queer Student Union at Williams College holds a "Queer Bash" with gay pornography.

Parents need to watch out for academic programs in "Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Afro-American Studies, Women's Studies, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Studies." Roger Kimball writes in New Criterion magazine that these programs "are not the names of academic disciplines but political grievances. Parents are rightly alarmed at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social and political scruple they have been brought up to believe."

Parents who enroll their children in most universities need to worry about the harmful propaganda their kids are being force fed. Or they can do a more sensible thing and select a college or university where traditional values are still in the mainstream.

After 12 years of home schooling her children, Marta Burgess had no intention of turning them over to just any college, to face professors who might actively deconstruct their value systems. The Burgesses enrolled their first two daughters at Hillsdale College in rural Hillsdale, Mich. and number three enters next year. Lt. General Burgess, who serves in the National Intelligence Directorate, has become president of Hillsdale's advisory board of parents. Hillsdale and the Burgess family are on the same page when it comes to what constitutes a sound college education.

Following is a list of the 10 best colleges for those with a more traditional bent based on the guide Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools.

1. University of Chicago – "It's the best school for students who want to spend four years reading serious books and talking to serious people." The political climate at Chicago is diverse and remarkably tolerant and conservative professors can be found in most departments.

2. Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan - Hillsdale's motto proclaims that it is "educating for liberty. Hillsdale offers excellent teachers and a great curriculum. It spawns many of the conservative activists and scholars who wind up on the Beltway thanks to a curriculum that stresses a "commitment to the Western heritage and to a rigorous liberal arts education."

3. Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia – At this solidly Catholic, profoundly thoughtful liberal arts college, the core curriculum includes six semesters of philosophy in order "to assist the student in using reason to understand the nature of reality and to illumine further the truth of revelation." Daily mass is an integral, but not mandatory, part of college life.

4. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois - The leading Evangelical school is a solid bastion of reflective Christian formation and excellent scholarship. Students take courses in each of four learning clusters: faith and reason, society, nature, and literature and the arts.

5. Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California - At the edge of the Los Padres National forest, this Catholic liberal arts college "is the perfect escape from the outside word - ideal for undertaking the gravitas of Thomas Aquinas." They study the Great Books, a rigorous curriculum that consists of the writings of some of the greatest thinkers ever.

6. Baylor University, Waco, Texas - This Baptist school is a place where conservative students can get a solid liberal arts education. College Democrats and Republicans coexist on the Baylor campus, along with a flourishing chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas.

7. Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. - Chartered by Pope Leo XIII in 1887, it is the foremost Catholic university in the United States, with first-rate minds, excellent resources, a sincere student body and a sense of mission. Politics at CUA definitely leans to the right.

8. Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania - The school "seeks to provide liberal and professional education of the highest quality that is within the reach of families with modest means who desire a college that will strengthen their children's spiritual and moral character." Political conflicts at Grove City tend to reflect differences among conservatives.

9. University of Dallas, Irving, Texas - Founded by the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, UD is full of devoted scholars who are dedicated to teaching. "With high moral and intellectual expectations placed on the students through the core curriculum, one does not find the kind of politically charged 'activism' found at many other universities."

10. Washington and Lee, Lexington, Virginia - One-time college president Robert E. Lee helped craft W&L's honor code and its genteel customs of civility. Teachers are dedicated, students gracious, and most subjects still taught the way they were 30 years ago. "It's a conservative's heaven," says one student, "but liberals still feel comfortable."

European Postscript

Juergen Klinsmann








I’ve been a bit rough on Europe in a few recent posts (Oct. 12, 18, 19). I was fairly critical of Western Continental Europe’s work ethic, economic policy, government regulations, social welfare, secularism, pretension, pacifism, spirit, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. And I forgot to mention ingratitude.

But one thing I admire is their football (soccer for the non-Bundesligers). Now I find that Juergen Klinsmann, coach of Germany’s national football side, moved to a beach town in California, where he lives with his American wife and two children. He has been flying the 20,000-km round trip about twice a month to work in Germany ever since he took the head coaching job.

Bundesliga critics of Klinsmann have long been bothered by new ideas on training, fitness and job competition that Klinsmann brought to Germany from his adopted home in the United States. That a world soccer power could possibly learn anything from upstarts in America is seen as heresy by many in Germany.

Klinsmann's sunny optimism also seems to have upset the pessimists in Germany. German newspapers have published pictures of a smiling Juergen jogging along the beach in California.

He should stop his dancing around in California while leaving us to deal with all the crap here, said Bayern Munich's sporting director Uli Hoeness, one of Klinsmann's sharpest critics. The team is in the same catastrophic condition as the whole country, added Hoeness.

It appears that the talented, optimistic, successful Klinsmann has become part of the European brain drain. And he had the sense to wed an American lass, have two American kids and settle in California.

On a more serious note, the European sickness is a serious problem for America. US exports to the Euro-zone in 2004 totaled $193 billion, but have grown at a measly 3% yearly since 2000. US direct investment in Europe was $97 billion last year. Europe’s stagnation hurts the US trade balance and generally depresses the world economic vitality.

Unfortunately the European outlook is sobering. An upsurge of spirit and courage to forego the entitlements and social safety nets that cripple the economy will be needed to enact the critical economic and government reforms. All the world should hope for this result.

Able Americans Should Support America

Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free. -- Thomas Jefferson

America is getting richer, no matter what the Democrats say. In 2003, 44% of U.S. households had incomes exceeding $50,000; about 15% had incomes of more than $100,000. In 1990 the comparable figures were 40% and 10%. In 1980 they were 35% and 6%. All comparisons are adjusted for inflation.

True, the median household income is up only slightly since 1990, but the median income family has gotten smaller, thus the income per person is substantially up. Look at incomes of households of given sizes. In 2003 households with two people had a median income of $46,964, up almost 10% from 1990. For four-person households, the median income in 2003 was $64,374, up about 14% from 1990. Clearly, the middle class is getting richer.

At the low end, the Census Bureau estimated that 35.9 million Americans had incomes below the poverty line in 2003; that was about $12,000 for a two-person household and $19,000 for a four-person household. Hispanic immigrants account for most of the increase in poverty as the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990. Among blacks, the poverty rate declined from 32% to 24% since 1990. The rate is still much too high, but the cause is clear: Almost 70% of black children are born to poor single mothers. Still, the increase in poverty in recent decades stems mainly from (illegal) immigration.

As America gets richer, all strata of society are raised by the income tide. However, it is inevitable that the absolute income gap between the top and bottom income quartiles will increase. The root cause is intelligence. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray noted in their controversial book The Bell Curve that intelligence is both measurable and in large part hereditary (an unexceptionable finding for psychologists but maddening to social engineers).

As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it. "America is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy." Seems like a good thing!

Success, however, depends on more than intelligence and education. Equally important ingredients are personal behavior and hard work. And those traits are accessible to all. As Murray has written, all you need to do to avoid poverty and find a valued place in American society is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job.

Then pay your fair share of income taxes.

But, according to the government "a record 44 million tax returns filed in 2005 will(correctly) demand the return of every dollar (or more) that was withheld from their paychecks during 2004."

"In other words," said Tax Foundation economist J. Scott Moody, "after taking all the available credits and deductions, they will owe no income taxes and Uncle Sam may well owe them."

The number of zero-tax filers is growing rapidly because of the Bush tax cuts, the Tax Foundation reported. In 2000, 29 million people had no federal income tax liability; that figure will reach 44 million in 2004, a 50% increase. (Tax cuts for the rich?)

"In addition to these zero-tax filers, roughly 14 million individuals and families will earn some income but not enough to be required to file a tax return," noted Moody. "When these non-filers are added to the zero-tax filers, they add up to 58 million income-earning households who will be paying no income taxes," he said.

Even 58 million is an undercount, Moody noted, because one tax return often represents several people. When all of the dependents of these income- producing households are counted, roughly 122 million Americans -- 44% of the U.S. population -- are entirely outside of the federal income tax system.

In 2002 the top 1% of earners paid 34% of the federal income taxes while earning 16% of the income. The top 5% paid 54% of the taxes while receiving 31% of the income. The bottom 50% of earners paid only a few percent of the federal taxes.

“Is it healthy for our democracy to put the costs of our federal government on a thin slice of Americans at the top of the earning scale?” Certainly that is not what our founding fathers had in mind.

[Excerpts taken from Michael Barone, Is Social Mobility on the Decline?, TechCentralStation; Scott Hodge, 58 Million Wage Earners Pay No Federal Income Tax, The Heartland Institute; Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker, Broad Ownership Needs Broad taxpaying, The American Enterprise.]

Intellectuals or Idiots

The results are in. The poll to select the world's top 100 living intellectuals by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines began with this list. On the Prospect web site here you could vote for your top five. Following are my selections and their finishing places (see Men are Smarter, 9/23/05):

1. Benedict XVI (pope) ----------------------------17
2. Freeman Dyson (physicist) ------------------- 25
3. Francis Fukuyama (political scientist) ------21
4. Christopher Hitchens (essayist) ------------- 5
5. Bjorn Lonborg (environmental scientist) --- 14

The credentials of my top five were discussed in Educating Rori, 9/25/05. I stand by my choices.

Now here are the “winners” according to the Intellectual watchers who took the poll. My ratings are at the right.

1. Noam Chomsky (linguist) ------- 10000000000….
2. Umberto Eco (writer) --------------------------- 8
3. Richard Dawkins (biologist, Darwinist) ------1000…
4. Vaclav Havel (playwrite, politician) ---------- 6
5. Christopher Hitchens (essayist) -------------- 4

Ok, I cheated on Chomsky and Dawkins. Playing by the rules they would be 100 and 99 respectively. Hitchens I love and Eco and Havel nearly made my list.

Václav Havel came to prominence in the 1970s for writing plays that ridiculed the absurdities of life in a dictatorship. His involvement in dissident activism led to imprisonment and the banning of his work. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Havel emerged as the leader of the “velvet revolution” and he was elected president of Czechoslovakia. After the country split in 1992 he served as the president of the Czech Republic from 1993–2003. He remains active in Europe, chastising the European Union for its passive approach to human rights in countries such as Burma and Cuba.

Umberto Eco might be known as a medievalist or a renaissance man. The 73-year-old Italian is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna. He has written about the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the relevance of aesthetics throughout time, and the cultural influence of comic strips. Eco became known around the world for his novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, and the former was turned into a major Hollywood film.

Then there are the dregs (in my view). In his book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Richard Posner noted that "a successful academic may be able to use his success to reach the general public on matters about which he is an idiot."

Richard Dawkins burst on to the scene with his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, which presented the gene as the central unit of natural selection. Now professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University, the 64-year-old Dawkins is a formidable critic of organized religion and is perhaps the world’s most vocal atheist. Dawkins makes the case for science, and against religion, to the general public in a way few can match. He is now reportedly working on a documentary about religion, tentatively titled “The Root of All Evil.” How can a guy with such a high IQ be so remarkably stupid?

And then there was “Chumpsky.”

Noam Chomsky earned his academic stripes as a young linguistics professor at MIT in the 1950s. His theory of transformational grammar posits that the capability to form structured language is innate to the human mind. But soon Chomsky became infamous for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War summarized in his book American Power and the New Mandarins (1969).

But Chomsky went beyond the leftist critique of US imperialism to the belief that "what is needed [in the US] is a kind of denazification." This diagnosis is central to Chomsky's political output. In his newly published Imperial Ambitions, he maintains that "the pretences for the invasion [of Iraq] are no more convincing than Hitler's."

After 9/11, Chomsky drew an equivalence between the destruction of the twin towers and the Clinton administration's bombing of Sudan—in which an asperin factory, wrongly identified as a bomb factory, was destroyed and a night watchman killed.

Unfortunately, Chomsky has a dedicated following among those of university education, and especially of university age, for opinions that have the veneer of scholarship and reason yet verge on the pathological. This is a bad man!

[Excerpts taken from Oliver Kamm, The Most Destructive Intellectual, Prospect 10/20/05; Peter Schweizer, The Branding of the World's Top Intellectual: Noam Chomsky, TechCentralStation 10/19/05; David Herman, Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals Results, Prospect Online 10/05.]

Hugo Loves Kelo

Dumb and Dumber






Special Forces Colonel and good friend David McCarthy responded to my "Europe's Fantasy Life" post with the following observation:

What is truly frightening to me is that there are judges in the US (primarily those appointed by Clinton) who beleive that the US should follow "international law," even when it conflicts with our Constitution. There have been a few Supreme Court decisions which have cited international law and international tribunals.

Consider the infamous case of Kelo v. City of New London Conn. By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the City's development plan served a "public purpose" that justified use of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to condemn the homes of nine citizens. These properties would then be combined with other land to form the site of a new Phizer Inc. facility that would provide jobs and increase the tax base. The five affirming Justices were Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.

According to Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford, "the American dream means letting city governments seize property under newly expanded eminent-domain powers so they can give it to private developers who promise to generate greater tax revenues." And despite the near-universal outrage from minority groups, the Hartford mayor said eminent domain is good for blacks.

Susette Kelo -- whose restored pink home in New London, Conn., faces such a seizure -- said the American dream means owning a home without fear that the government will take it to give to the highest bidder. (Washington Times)

Meanwhile, according to a Wall Street Journal story, "the Venezuelan government (read Hugo Chavez and his Marxist buddies) have been seizing idle farms and now industrial property in his attempt to reduce poverty in the manner of Robert Mugabe. The government has asked food company Alimentos Polar to sell corn flour at cheap prices to the poor as a condition to resolve a state seizure of its grain-storage silos. A similar seizure has taken place at Alimemtos Heinz, a subsidiary of the H.J. Heinz Co."

Gotta wonder what Thereza Heinz thinks of her hubby's Marxist buddies now.

One wonders if the US Supreme Court took advice from Mr. Chavez in the Kelo case or vice-versa. The next time someone tries to tell you that the Democratic Party is for the little guy .... oh, never mind!

John Lama Lives

The report of John's demise was an exaggeration.












Those PVBloggers who check in regularly noticed that I was off-line from Oct. 12 thru Oct. 18 while visiting #1 son John in the people's republic of San Francisco. I had intended to blog while there but found that John's computer was not hooked up until 10/18 due to his move.

The new appartment is in the Marina District a few blocks South of Marina Blvd and the harbor, a few blocks East of Park Presidio and the Palace of Fine Arts and one block to Chestnut and its resturant row.

We ate out every day, late breakfasts at places like Cafe Rulli, Judy's and Rosie's and early dinners at U. Street and three great Italian places. Mmmm good!

John introduced me to three gal pals, each one adorable and conservative. He must have cornered the Frisco market. June is a young South Korean who works at home for HP developing business applications. Kim is a nurse-manager at a hospital and a National Guard Captain from a military family. Sharon is a grade school counsellor who opposes the union habit of spending her dues on liberal causes. (Vote YES on Prop 75.)

We visited new parents Michelle and Kurt with baby Alexander, the little slugger, and his puppy Filbert. Alexander is such a sociable baby and just about ready to walk. We had such a great time that they invited us back the next day.

John, ever the joker, sent me the grave shot above on my return home. He also sent the following post from Craigs List:

On the anniversary of Bush's "re-election", students from high schools and colleges all over the country are walking out of school to declare the beginning of a brand new student movement to drive the Bush regime from power. We are looking for speakers, drummers, musicians (horns especially), artists, guerrilla street actors, stilts ppl, and all others to come out on November 2nd. Help us create a festival of resistance! -- gavin. graders@berkeley.edu

See why I love San Francisco. It's a HOOT!

Europe's Fantasy Life

A Spanish judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman. U.S. officials have insisted that the soldiers believed they were being shot at when they opened fire. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said a review of the incident found that the use of force was justified.

But Judge Santiago Pedraz said the warrant "is the only effective measure to ensure the presence of the suspects in the case being handled by Spanish justice, given the lack of judicial cooperation by U.S. authorities."

In this final post on the political, economic and cultural divide between Old Europe and America (see also “Red America v. Blue Europe” 10/12/05 and “Europe’s Sickness” 10/18/05) I will focus on the philosophical issues that threaten to fracture the old alliance.

As America becomes ever more conservative, Americans see old continental Europe as a suburb of San Francisco. Europeans tend to embrace “pacifism, radical secularism, utopian environmentalism, blind support for the UN, socialized health care, government steering of the economy, redefinition of marriage, strident abortion rights and open euthanasia.” One might add a history of appeasement and cowardice; a close relationship with Saddam Hussein, the PLO and Yasser Arafat; opposition to Israel and tolerance of nasty anti-Semitism; and support of the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court.

As revolting as these positions are to the majority of Americans, the most dangerous European trait is simple greed. As China builds up its military might with armaments from Russia and some European countries, it lacks only one thing. If China acquires command-and-control electronic systems from our NATO allies, Euro-greed will enhance the likelihood that American forces may one day be fighting against weapons systems supplied by our allies. This ugly scenario is disturbingly reminiscent of the Iraq war.

What are we to do? Victor Davis Hansen (The American Enterprise, October 2005) has some suggestions I like a lot. First, withdraw as many US troops from the continent as practicable. This will get their attention.

Second, allow dissident Europeans to enjoy fast-track immigration to the US. Next, cultivate our friendships with Britain, Denmark, Italy and Eastern Europe. Rely more on Australia, Japan, India and Taiwan. Finally, push the United Nations to add India and Japan to the Security Council while reducing the European vote to one only.

And tell them just where they can shove the International Criminal Court and the Spanish Judiciary!

Europe's Sickness

The failure of Continental Europe to achieve its self proclaimed goal of world leadership of the knowledge economy by 2010 is guaranteed by its academic and economic shortcomings. (See “Red America, Blue Europe,” 10/14/05). But the well being of European society is threatened even more by a pernicious and dangerous malady, a sickness of the spirit.

The American Enterprise (October 2005) magazine notes “that the economic lags, and demographic sags, in Europe are accompanied by declines in optimism, in personal satisfaction, in belief that life is fair and within an individual’s control.” TAE calls it a “crisis of the spirit.”

The Harris Interactive 2002/03 poll of American and European attitudes reveals a vast (and growing) Atlantic chasm. In response to the question “How satisfied are you with your life?” 57% of Americans answered “very satisfied” as opposed to 14% of Frenchmen, 17% of Germans and 16% of Italians. How, you may ask, can this be true? We are constantly told that life is so much better in Europe, freer, more leisurely, more enlightened. What’s up?

Could it be that Europeans are not so very successful and believe it to be the fault of outside forces, perhaps the government, perhaps globalization? To the question whether “success is determined by forces outside our control” only 32% of Americans (all liberals I’m sure) agreed as opposed to a majority in France (54%) and supermajorities in Germany (68%) and Italy (66%).

Furthermore those European countries have a poverty of hope. When asked “Do you expect your personal situation to improve in five years” only 20% in Germany, 42% in France and 53% in Italy (those wide-eyed Italian optimists) expected improvement. In America, 63% were counting on improvement of an already very satisfying existence.

The sickness of the European spirit is manifest in much of social life. The birthrate has already fallen below the population replacement level (2.1 children per woman) in France (1.9), Germany and Italy (both 1.3). The lower homeownership rates and much smaller houses in Europe compared to America reflect an attitude unfriendly to family life. The homeownership rate in Germany is only 41% (compared to 69% in America) and Germans are reluctant even to buy cars.

Yet former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder insists “our unique European model of social participation and our embrace of the welfare state have something to offer to the whole world.” In the words of TAE, Germans are “behaving like people on the sinking Titanic who insist that their drinks be shaken, not stirred.”

The next time someone tries to sell you on the European social model as a roadmap to the European’s blissful existence, there is a one word New Yorker response that fits the situation: Fuggedaboutit mate.

Red America v. Blue Europe

America v. Europe













John Lama sent me the article "Schroeder quits government, blasts U.S., Britain" where the former German Chancelor lashed out at "Anglo-Saxon" economic policies favoured in Britain and the United States, which he said had "no chance" in Europe. I guess he means that "economic growth and prosperity also have no chance in Europe" said my son. John and Gerhard are probably both right.

The current issue of The American Enterprise, my favorite journal of politics, business and culture, is devoted to a series of articles examining Europe's flight from "economic and political reality." The articles compare continental Europe (primarily France, Germany, Italy and Spain) with America in the areas of economic growth, employment, productivity, higher education, science and technology, demographics and "spirit."

Britain and Ireland are excluded from the European union for this comparison since they are much closer to America in most of the measures.

The article Red, White and Bruised looks at the long history of anti-Americanism among European elites. The first clear statement of anti-Americanism can be traced back to a French lawyer, Simon Linguet, who in 1780 warned that "the dregs of Europe would build a dreadful society in America, create a strong army, take over Europe and destroy civilization."

Early in the 20th century French prime minister Georges Clemenceau sneered that "America is the only nation in history that has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

German poet Heinrich Heine called America "that pig pen of freedom inhabited by boors living in equality."

No, the anti-US sentiment did not start with George Bush's presidency. Once in a while we gave as good as we got, like when President Eisenhower dismissed the French as "a hopeless, helpless mass of protoplasm." Facsinating, enlightening article!

I'll discuss at the rest of the AE series in the next few posts. Here I'll finish with a look at higher education.

One of the telling statistics is the spending on higher education. The US spends 2.6% of total GDP on college education as compared to 1.1% in France and Germany and only 0.8% in Italy. The discrepancy is even larger when one notes that the GDP/person is 40% higher (and growing) in the US compared to those European countries. Thus the US spending on college per person is roughly 3.5 times the European average. One result is shown in the following table.


1. Harvard USA
2. Stanford USA
3. Cambridge Britain
4. UC Berkeley USA
5. MIT USA
6. CalTech USA
7. Princeton USA
8. Oxford Britain
9. Columbia USA
10. Chicago USA
11. Yale USA
12. Cornell USA
13. UC San Diego USA
14. Tokyo Japan
15. Pennsylvania USA
16. UCLA USA
17. UCSF USA
18. Wisconsin USA
19. Michigan USA
20. Washington USA

Top 20 Universities in the World, 17 in the USA

Taken from an article in The Economist (The Brains Business, 9/8/05) the table lists the top universities in the world ranked according to academic and research performance, Nobel prizes, publications, etc. Note the presence of two British universities (Cambridge and Oxford), a Japanese university (Tokyo) and seventeen American Universities (including 6 in California and 7 in the Ivy League). The US universities emply 70% of the world's Nobel prize-winners.

The oldest universities in the world (Bologna and Paris, circa 1080) are not on the list nor is Barcelona, Berlin or any other continental European university. Funding is one of their major problems along with government interference.

The "brain drain" from Europe to America since the second world war continues and has recently accelerated. This is a huge problem for a European Union that just five years ago proclaimed its intention of becoming the world's premier "knowledge economy" by 2010. Lots of luck, as we will see in the next post.

Conservatives Debate Harry

The debate among conservatives over Harriet Miers has devolved into a simple question: Is the Supreme Court nominee qualified because of her belief in the Constitution, or unqualified by her lack of intellectual heft?

On the one side, James Dobson and President Bush speak for her conviction. On the other, George Will, William Kristol and others decry her lack of constitutional law bonafides.

Let’s look at some more of the PROs and CONs expressed by conservative pundits and politicians.

Unlike Justice O'Connor, Miers believes in legal rules, that law has content. She is not one who would vacillate back and forth in a world of murky standards like O'Connor.

But nominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America's constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom.

The type of Justices Bush has selected -- well-qualified, traditional conservatives who believe in judicial restraint rather than judicial policy-making -- may do more to change the course of our nation than the presidency and Congress combined.

But the president would have been better served by a bench-clearing brawl. A fractious and sparring base would have come together to fight for something all believe in: the beginning of the end of command-and-control liberalism on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The very fact that Harriet Miers is a member of an evangelical church suggests that she is not dying to be accepted by the beautiful people, and is unlikely to sell out the Constitution of the United States in order to be the toast of Georgetown cocktail parties or praised in the New York Times.

But the president insists that if she's good enough for him, she's good enough for the rest of us. "I know her character," he declared. "I've worked with Harriet. . . . I know her heart. . . . I know exactly the kind of judge she'll be." Message: Trust me.

As the leader of the Texas Bar Association, she proved to be a very effective leader opposing the American Bar Association's official stance in support of abortion, including active support of taxpayer-funded abortions.

That she is a trusted friend of the Bush family and a born-again Republican and evangelical Christian are not enough. That Dr. Dobson has been assured she is pro-life is not enough. After all, we have a president who professes to be "pro-life," yet cannot bring himself to say that Roe v. Wade was an abomination he hopes will go the way of Dred Scott.

We are now at war and therefore the great issue of our time is the Article II powers of the president to wage war. Miers has been immersed in war and peace decisions and therefore has a deep familiarity with the tough constitutional issues regarding detention, prisoner treatment and war powers.

But is Miers the best of the best by any objective measure? Since Bush made it clear that he wanted someone who did not have judicial experience, let's look at female lawyers who do not wear black robes. Just for fun, let's compare Miers resume with that of radio-talk show host Laura Ingraham.

Miers and U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Owen were once vying for the affections of Texas Justice Nathan Hecht when things turned ugly. The image of this Southern, Christian lady elbowing out the much younger Owen, maybe even telling her to "hit the road, honey," implies a certain amount of chutzpah on the part of the nominee I find appealing.

Welcoming Miers to the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist said she "understands judicial restraint" and called her a "pioneer" in Texas legal circles. Miers also won a quick and enthusiastic endorsement from the Senate's top Democrat, Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who months ago advised Mr. Bush to nominate her.

Oh, oh! Why is she supported by a leading Democrat? But the real point is that this is the way Republicans and conservatives argue the case. Is she qualified? What is her constitutional philosophy? Those are the only things that matter.

Palos Verdes' Devil Dog

Brian Weiss,
Devil Dog

with Karen Wickline,

Carrie and her hubby

Dave Young and I were talking treason outside Starbucks last Sunday morning when we were joined by the former Farm Market manager and our favorite new Marine. Lance Corporal Brian Weiss joined the Marines as a recruit late last year and recently graduated from boot camp at Camp Pendleton. The thirty-something Brian has already made Lance Corporal.

Yes, I said thirty.... the guy joined up at that advanced age and immediately became "pops" to the teenagers in his unit. After the last training march carrying full battle packs when Brian finished in the top 5 the kids have a newfound respect for the "old man." Devil Dog Brian is an inspiration!

Brian told us about the US Marines and the Devil Dog moniker. The Marine Corps were founded in 1775 by the Continental Congress and took part in the war with France and against the Barbary Pirates off the Shores of Tripoli while the service was still young. The Corps participated in many wars of the nineteenth century, including defending Washington against the British in the War of 1812 and fighting all the way to the Halls of Montezuma in the Mexican War. In World War I, battlefield tenacity earned Marines the name of Devil Dogs from the German enemy.

From the Devildogs blog site I found a description of Corps Values:

Honor guides Marines to exemplify the ultimate in ethical and moral behavior: never lie, cheat, or steal; abide by an uncompromising code of integrity; respect human dignity; and respect others. The qualities of maturity, dedication, trust, and dependability commit Marines to act responsibly; to be accountable for their actions; to fulfill their obligations; and to hold others accountable for their actions.

Courage is the mental, moral, and physical strength ingrained in Marines. It carries them through the challenges of combat and aids them in overcoming fear. It is the inner strength that enables a Marine to do what is right; to adhere to a higher standard of personal conduct; to lead by example; and to make tough decisions under stress and pressure.

Commitment is the spirit of determination and dedication found in Marines. It leads to the highest order of discipline for individuals and units. It inspires the unrelenting determination to achieve a standard of excellence in every endeavor.

Brian is waiting to hear when his unit will be deployed, most likely to Iraq or Afghanistan. How can you not be proud of a country that produces such brave young men and women. God bless you Brian.

Bush's Brain

It has been a staple of Democratic rhetoric that the President has no brain of his own, pointing instead to that pudgy, big-headed Rove guy as the brain-in-chief. Then Bush nominates Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court and “Harry” proclaims that Bush is the “smartest man I know.” So which is it, no brain or brainiac?

In the Miers’ case the right wing intelligentia are also questioning Bush’s intelligence and his conservative bonifides too. I was struck by the strength of anti-Miers sentiment among my friends, including some of my readers. This from Garrett Mack:

“I was wondering what everybody thought of Bush's Supreme Court nominee. I have always been a big supporter of Bush, but lately I am having BIG doubts. First spending SOOO much money on hurricane Katrina and now nominating Miers. I always said conservative first, Republican second, but now I think I am no longer a Republican and not a Bush supporter either.We finally have control of the government and what do we do. Spend money like Democrats and have a president that is trying to be accepted by them. Someone please comfort me and tell me that I am way off base here. I want to be wrong on this issue more than anything but I got a feeling I am not.”

I appreciate Garrett’s feelings and am here to provide comfort. It’s important to begin with some perspective. Remember that were it not for the Electoral College and a rarely sane Supreme Court decision we might have Al Gore as commander-in-chief. (SHUDDER!!!) So as we go through the President’s report card, keep in mind how it might have been.

The most important federal responsibility is defense, and I’m sure we all agree that Bush has done a masterful job in the war against Islamic fascism first in Afghanistan now in Iraq. And don’t forget the subsidiary successes in Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Lebanon, all this in the face of nearly worldwide criticism and Democratic obstruction.

The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Department are critical defense initiatives. Bush has had to show supreme courage to keep the country on the right war footing. Since conservatives believe that defense is nearly the only federal responsibility, we should be very happy with Bush.

Though I think the Feds ought not to be involved with education, I have to applaud Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. In fact it may take a federal law to reform the education establishment by shining the light of measurement on the woeful performance of public schools. Bush has also strongly supported vouchers, again showing courage by standing up to the teacher's unions.

How many times have you heard the mantra of “tax breaks for the rich”? Bush had the guts to reduce the taxes of those who actually pay them, thereby reviving the economy and providing additional government revenue.

Oh yes, tort reform is on the way due to this President, and liberal trial lawyers hate him for it.

Conservatives place the judiciary just after defense when it comes to Presidential responsibilities. Here again the Bush record has been masterful, from Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owens, and several other strict constitutionalists for the appellate courts, to John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But the conservative base is now largely criticizing the latest nominee Harriett Meirs. Is that because she is not a conservative? No! Is she pro-abortion? No! Is she anti-religion? No! Is she an Ivy Leaguer? No,.. and there you have it, she is not a member of the elite intellect club.

Here I’m reminded of my son John’s reason for being a Republican: Because they are the “adult party.” When I think of the recent antics of George Will, Billy Krystol, David Frum, etc., I wonder if they forgot the adult thing.

Garrett and many conservatives are concerned about runaway government spending. I am too, but the Republican Congress is more to blame than the President. We also worry about illegal immigration, and there are other problems we need to work on.

But, when we have a President and a Party that takes care of defense and the courts, reduces taxes and fights the entitlement factions we should be very happy and motivated to continue the Reagan-Bush revolution.

Proud to be an American

President Bush gave a powerful speech today wherein he spelled out in bold, clear words the danger facing America and the world, and our commitment to prevail. I was proud of our country. Following are some of the excerpts that I particularly liked.

“Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and looked back on a great turning point in our history. We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on Earth fighting the enemy. And we remember the calling that came to us on that day, and continues to this hour: We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won.

Bin Laden has stated: "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries. It's either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation." The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity.

The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.

With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

As Zarqawi has vowed, "We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life." And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century.

Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not."

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.

We don't know the course of our own struggle -- or the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice. We do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history. And we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.

May God bless you.
----------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, in the “enlightened” world…Daniel Pipes noted in his article "Enforce Islamic Law in Canada?" that "efforts to integrate Muslims into the West [often] upset a benign status quo" and gave as examples the banning of Santas, Nativity plays, Christmas carols, and Bibles so as not to offend Muslim sensitivities.

And in Merry old England the Dudley Council, West Midlands, instructed employees that all pig-related novelty items are henceforth banned from its offices, so as not to offend Muslim staff. (See Representation of pigs) This includes pig toys, porcelain figures, calendars, and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. There's no mention of piggybanks, but presumably those must go too.

Dudley Councillor Mahbubur Rahman endorsed the ban: "It's a tolerance of people's beliefs."

Just what we need, more of the tolerance that led to the London bombings by Islamic fascists.

Quantum Optikers Win Nobel

Roy Glauber 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics





Well I’m excited! Three quantum optikers, my specialty, today were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. One scientist worked out a theory describing the behavior of light using quantum mechanics and the other two scientists used the knowledge to develop a powerful laser technique for identifying atoms and molecules.

Half of the prize goes to Roy Glauber, 80, a professor of physics at Harvard, for calculations that laid the foundation for quantum optics.

John Hall, 71, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Theodor Hänsch, 63, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, share the other half of the prize, for later work that uses ultrashort laser pulses to make precise measurements.

One of the baffling properties light is that it sometimes acts like waves while at other times it appears to consist of discrete particles (photons).

Einstein established the existence of photons in describing the photoelectric effect, work that won him the Nobel Prize (not Relativity). Scientists developed theories to describe how one or a few photons interact with matter, sometimes like billiard balls. But they lacked a good understanding of the collective behavior of many, many photons.

"It occurred to me around the early 60's that … one had better develop the quantum theory (of light) to the fullest extent mathematically possible" Dr. Glauber said.

Glauber was intrigued by astronomical observations of the star Sirius by Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss, who counted photons from Sirius using two identical detectors 20 feet apart. The expectation was that photons from Sirius would arrive randomly like raindrops, but instead the scientists detected a pattern in the arrival of photons in the two detectors.

Dr. Glauber's theory showed how the patterns of bunching, called coherence, could emerge during the photons' travel to Earth. His theory is also fundamental to using light in quantum computers and quantum cryptography, the use of quantum mechanics to create an unbreakable code.

Decades later, Dr. Hall and Dr. Hänsch built upon that work developing a technique called the optical frequency comb that uses short pulses of laser light like a ruler to measure the color, or frequency, of light, accurate to one part in one-quadrillion.

At the University of Rochester the quantum optics group was led by two Brits who were part of the 1960s brain drain, Emil Wolf and Leonard Mandel. Their speciality was optical coherence and I was one of a long succession of grad students who benefited from their brilliant guidance. Mandel is dead now, but Wolf in his eighties is still a prolific theoretician and extraordinary teacher.

I remember one of the earliest teacher evaluations in the late 60s when we had the opportunity to comment about our prof’s. The comments were published. Someone wrote that the University ought to pay Wolf a million dollars and make him teach all the classes. Mandel was not far behind him.

Bill and Dave Debate God and Science

In “Myths of a Godless Science” (10/2) I pointed out that (1) A primary goal of the radical left is to drive God out of public places, most especially the public schools; (2) a primary polemical device of the left has been that science and religion are diametrically opposed; and I argued that (3) the belief in God the Creator is not anti-scientific; and (4) the rise of science in the West was a product of European Christian universities and, generally, religious men.

I received a vigorous rebuttal from good friend Prof. Dave Young that I will address here.

DAVE: The reason it (belief in a Creator) isn’t scientific is because it doesn’t lend itself to being disproved.

PVB: I agree, but it is nonetheless true, and it provides a rational explanation for the unexplained in evolution science (see below).

DAVE: Belief and empirical method are not the same. Science limits itself to the realm of things that can be observed and tested. There is no test with our existing technology that can test your assertion for the existence of a grand designer. He may be there, or have been there, but we can’t test for Him.

PVB: I agree with the first point. But, much of science is inferential. Take quasars and much of cosmology. We cannot do experiments with quasars but we can observe them and compare observations to theory. We call it science. In the same way we can look for evidence of “design” in nature.

DAVE: Therefore, it ain’t science and it doesn’t belong in a science classroom.

PVB: Wrong, the science of Intelligent Design studies the fundamental questions of life and the creation of species, just what evolution science should do but seems to have abandoned because 150 years of trying have been fruitless. This ID effort is analogous to the cosmology study of the birth of the universe, also best explained by Creation.

DAVE: You go on about how only the west created science, but then you criticize the west for being guilty of the very thing (rejection of God the Creator) that keeps us from being like the barbarians we are in a real fight with. I don’t see how you can have it both ways.

PVB: Wrong, belief in God does not make us like the Islamists.

DAVE: Your criticism of the Islamic world and its lack of development for the last several hundreds of years should be all the evidence you need.

PVB: I do not criticize the Islamists for their belief in Muhammad. Muslims did not create science because they followed the Greek classical model of a capricious god who does what he pleases with the universe whenever he pleases. There was no concept of a universe governed by unchangeable laws that could be derived from the study of nature. That critical concept came from Christianity.

DAVE: Affectionately, yours in Starbucks.

PVB: Thanks buddy.

This was Eighth Grade

Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?






California has finally instituted a high school exit exam and the initial results are disquieting. While the english and math tests are at the level of 9th or 10th grade, a substantial number of seniors have failed, and the passing grade is only 50 percent. Now educators are scrambling to find ways to pass the uneducated off on the community colleges and services (fast food) industry with some sort of credential.

To appreciate how bad this situation is, take a look at the following sample of questions from an eighth-grade final exam from 1895. The exam was on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal. The exam contained 45 questions and you were given 5 hours to complete it.

Grammar
> Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no Modifications.
> Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
> What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
> Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic
> Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
> Find the cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
> Find the interest on $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. (NICE)
> Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U. S. History
> Give the epochs into which U. S. History is divided.
> Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
> Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
> Show the territorial growth of the United States.
> Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

Orthography
> What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
> Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
> Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

Geography
> What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
> Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
> Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
> Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
> Describe the movements of the earth and the inclination of the earth.

These questions comprise less than 50% of the exam. I wonder how well our high school seniors would do on this 8th grade test. Or our senior citizens?

Thanks to Zone Bridge friend TexasJudy Floyd (aka SpaceBabyDoll) for the article.

Myths of a Godless Science

Polls show that, overwhelmingly, Americans believe in God, the Creator of life and of the universe. A small minority of Americans think we are idiots to hold those beliefs. In a nutshell, that is the core of the hysterical controversy over the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. Oh, there is a lot of obfuscation about the nature of science and the separation of church and state. But, make no mistake, the radical secularist’s goal is to chip away at the fundamental religious beliefs of the American people.

It is a national shame that we have allowed the atheists and their fellow travelers, aided and abetted by judicial activists, to control what our children are taught in the schools that we fund. One has to question our collective intelligence, but more so, our moral willpower in the face of the continuing leftist assault on what we know in our hearts to be true. So what happened, how did we lose this battle?

Rewriting history has been a common tactic of all totalitarian regimes, and the secular left has done such a masterful job of selling their myth that most Americans have come to believe it. Go to any school text on the history of Western Civilization and see what you find about the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. We all know the story.

The fall of the Roman Empire (circa 475AD) led to the Dark Ages when, for several centuries, intellectual life and cultural advancement receded into the darkness. Classics such as Gibbon's “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” expressed the author's contempt for "priest-ridden", superstitious, dark times.

The popular secular view is that the Renaissance, beginning in 15th century Italy, represented a reconnection of the west with classical Greek culture and knowledge. The Renaissance movement spread northward from Italy and by the late 16th century became closely linked to the Protestant Reformation.

Proponents believe that the rise of secularism and the corresponding decline of religion in so called 'secularized' countries, are the inevitable result of the 18th century Enlightenment, when people turned towards science and rationalism and away from religion and superstition. Recall that during the French Revolution, the desire for rationality in government led to an attempt to end Christianity in France.

Thinkers of the last wave of the Enlightenment – Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, Jefferson and Goethe - adopted the biological metaphor of self-organization and evolutionary forces. Enter Darwin.

So the storyline goes that the rise of Christianity brought on the ignorance and degradation of the Dark Ages while a reconnection to Greek antiquity and the adoption of secular humanism led to the emergence of rationality and science. God is out and all is fine with the world.

Except it is a myth and many have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. In his wonderful new book “For the Glory of God,” Rodney Stark shows that during the so called Dark Ages, Europeans (1) rejected slavery; (2) developed technology on a scale no civilization had previously known (including waterwheels, mills, camshafts, clocks, the compass and advanced military armaments); (3) enabled the 17th century Scientific Revolution by departing from the classical Greek model that was a scientific dead end (see where it led in Islamic societies); and (4) nurtured scientific ideas in the new Christian universities (first at Bologna and Paris in the middle of the 12th century then at Oxford and Cambridge around 1200, followed by a dozen more before the end of the century).

The Enlightenment claims of an inevitable war between religion and science has until this day been “the primary polemical device used in the athiest attack on faith.”

So I say that we reject the radical secular agenda. When they say that belief in God the Creator is non-scientific, I answer that they need to show me the beef. When they have better explanations for the origin of the universe and the origin of life, I’ll consider them.

Meanwhile the explanation we all believe needs to be tought in our schools. The Godless crowd needs to read the First Ammendment. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts will read it to them.