Again with the beheadings

As I was running out to the store this morning, I had Mike Gallagher's show on, and he was discussing this Marine that had been captured and threatened with beheading. He was wondering how we, as a country, would react to the beheading of a soldier, comparing it with cop-killing criminals. He and the callers I heard seemed to be in favor of "stepping up" our efforts in the middle east to help stop the terrorists responsible, just as police forces tend to step up their efforts after one of their own is killed.

The thing I have to wonder about is what more we can do. The problem is that their method is simple and easy to execute. Kidnap someone--it doesn't really matter who--videotape them, threaten to behead them unless their demands are met, wait, then kill them. Anyone can do this; I mean, if I wanted to, I could pull off something like this. You don't need a huge army; you just need a couple of big guys, a big knife, and a videocamera. And the address to Al-Jazeera.

The only thing I've heard that might be effective is my dad's solution: Bomb al-Jazeera. If the terrorists have no one to publish their videos, then they'll quit making them.

The Progress Paradox

On a recommendation from Dean Esmay, I've begun reading a book entitled The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. I've just finished the first chapter, and it's very encouraging stuff. The first chapter lists many of the ways life has gotten better for the middle class--not just the rich. For example, the per capita buying power--income adjusted for inflation--of Americans has more than doubled in the past forty years. Virtually everyone has indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and a car. Most Americans can afford to fly. We spend, on average, 42 hours a week working, versus 66 hours a week for the average man in 1850. And, Easterbrook says, the trendlines point to still more improvements.

All I can say right now is: Thanks be to God that I was born into this era.

Now it's off to mail a postcard to my brother (who's working in a camp across the country, which he reached by airplane) and to get my car's oil changed. What a country!

Top Ten Dumbest Terrorists

This is hilarious: No Virgins For You! The World's Top Ten Dumbest Terrorists. For example, there's:

The site provides links to the news stories that earned the terrorists their place in the list.

(Hat Tip: The Carnival of the Vanities, the roving list of many posts)

Today's Life Lesson Pop Quiz

Question one: Should you climb over a guardrail next to a canyon to get a shoe? (The answer isn't yes)

My blogroll now is BlogRolling!

BlogRolling.com provides a cool service by making it much easier to keep lists of links at the side of the webpage. Now I don't have to alter my index page's code every time I want to add a new link! Not only that, but when the blogs I've linked have been recently updated (I think I have it set for within the half-hour right now), BlogRolling will tag the link with the word "new" at the end of it.

I also added several links to the blogroll, such as Dean's World, Gizmodo, and Samizdata. Good stuff.

SpaceShipOne makes it into space

We can get there, without the government, for cheaper than the government. SpaceShipOne, the Scaled Composites entry into the Ansari X-Prize competition has crossed the threshold into space.

The next step is getting into orbit. After that, I think we should go to the moon. It's only three days away; we could set up a hotel there with a restaurant and a golf course next to it. After all: How much would *you* pay to play golf on the moon?

Then we can work on Mars....

As you'd expect InstaPundit has lots of info. Also, aSamizdata has some good posts on the launch.

Yum, yum, yum

How about some nice chocolate-covered pork fat? It's the latest taste sensation from the Ukraine. It sounds almost as bad as my chocolate-cheddar cheesecake that I entered in my church's cheesecake competition. The recipe is in the extended entry.

Ingredients:

One (1) block sharp cheddar cheese

One (1) package of chocolate frosting.

Open cheddar cheese and set on a plate. Slather chocolate frosting on block of cheddar. Smooth. Cut into pieces. Makes 12 large pieces.

(What was really bad about this cake was it won 3rd place out of 4 entries in my division. And half of it was gone by the end of the night. Weird. It's like they took me seriously.)

Something to be proud of!

Greenville, SC, home of BJU, ranked second in list of America's sweatiest cities compiled by Old Spice. I believe it. The South would be unbearable without air conditioning.

Encouraging Example

British Olympic hurdler Tasha Danvers-Smith won't be participating in the summer olympics this year. Why, you ask? Another steroids scandal? Perhaps an injury in training? Nope.

Give up? She's pregnant! Not only that, but she has the strength of character to reject the abortion option.

Key Quote:

Good on ya! God bless you and your baby.

(Via the new blog of one of my favorite columnists, Michelle Malkin. I'd say she's second only to Walter Williams in my book)

New Member of my Blogroll

Welcome to the Blogroll: Boileryard Clarke!

*applause*

I found his blog through a conversation about homeschooling, when he said "[There's] a need for a sea change in the concept of what we think government is FOR." After looking at his blog, which he started around a month ago, I noticed a strong libertarian slant to his opinions, which I can only approve of. It's really a great blog from what I've seen, and I hope you'll stop by and add him to your reading list.

Intelligent Conversation Changes Minds

Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice has a good post about how blogs change people's minds. The problem with most talk-radio that I've listened to is that the host tends to be more focused on either himself *coughRushLimbaughcough* or advancing his own viewpoint to the exclusion of other viewpoints. They tend not to be debates, but more like lectures. (The one exception that I've found is Hugh Hewitt, who invites both liberal and conservative guests and talks to them, and to members of the audience.)

Most media suffer from this sort of syndrome. Look at the editorial page of your local paper, watch the TV news, and you'll find one side of the story, and no more. I think that the two huge advantages that blogs have in this area are comments and trackbacks. Not only can you get one person's viewpoint (the host of the page), but you can also get the viewpoints of others, and then you get to see the argument that ensues.

In short, it gets you to think about things from more than one angle. For example, take the Judge Roy Moore and his ten commandments idol monument. On the one hand, you have the position of my pastor, who seemed to look at Moore as a heroic defender of the faith. On the other hand, Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit.com asks "If judges don't obey court orders, who will?" Chances are that if I hadn't been reading blogs, I wouldn't have come to share Reynold's conclusion.

(Via Dean's World)

My Entry

The following is my entry into this contest; I used nine of the words, but I used one twice. Do I get to count that as ten? Bob, who was always a persnickety old soul, made a kerfuffle regarding the defenestration of a plethora of callipygian flibbertigibbets; he was struck by the serendipity of the onomatopoetic qualities of the word "thunk" to describe their rather messy landings, an insight which merely discombobulated the flibbertigibbets.

Comics Update

I might have to make this a weekly feature or something. First off, Sunday witnessed a rare and historic event: Doonesbury was actually funny

Dilbert was also particularly good.

Now that I've shown some strips with good humor, it's time to smush those good feelings with a politically-oriented Non Sequitur cartoon (and in the funnies too!).

OK, so in the author's universe the Spanish Inquisition (i.e., state-sponsored religious terrorism) = the War on Terror (i.e., a fight against state-sponsored religious terrorism). If he even bothered to examine his own cartoon he'd seen the difference between real torture (involving physical pain a la the rack, the blade over the tortured one's head, and the boiling oil) and taking pictures of naked people. I mean, certainly what they did was wrong, and I think it was utterly foolish for Rush Limbaugh to call it "blowing off steam," but it's not torture.

Oh my goodness...

I am so glad I don't live in Britain. There's the typical things I could make fun of (driving on the wrong side of the road, misspelling words, the BBC), but then there's the occasional serious issue. This article in the UK Telegraph proves, first, that the strict gun laws in Britain have not eliminated guns from their criminal element. (But we knew that already.) Secondly, if the accusations noted in the headline are true, it proves that the police force in Britain is, at best, criminally incompetent.

(My emphasis)

Ya know, I don't think this would happen on ER. There's a certain amount of risk involved with being either a police officer or a paramedic. That's why the entertainers make so many doctor/police dramas. It seems that, in attempting to avoid the risks of its profession and in preventing others from taking those risks themselves, the British police force has managed to fail in its duty and kill two of the citizens it was supposed to protect.

(Via Samizdata.net)

Reagan and Alzheimer's

It seems inappropriate to say anything else before mentioning the death of Ronald Reagan yesterday at 93. I have little to say about the man that hasn't been said before, and better, by others. I was born in 1984, when he was reelected to a second term, so I, unfortunately, recall nothing about his presidency. From what I understand, he was one of the greatest presidents that this country has ever had. But although it's sad to see him go, it was probably more merciful for him to die than for him to spend any more years suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Of all the incurable diseases known to man, I think that Alzheimer's is the worst. What other disease invades the sanctum sanctorum of the mind and steals the memories of its host? I can only hope and pray that researchers will find the cure to the disease by the time that I've grown old enough to be susceptible. (Wait, I lied; I can also donate.)

Grace and glory to Reagan and his family, and let us hope that God sends us more presidents like him.

Tenet Resigns

Everyone seems to be blaming Tenet's resignation on Bush, saying that Bush needed a scapegoat for the failure to find WMD's and for the "intelligence failure" that failed to prevent 9/11. Last night the BBC claimed that he, under orders from the president, fabricated (!!!!) intelligence about Iraq to make a case for the war. (No, the BBC's not biased at all...)

While I know that the "personal reasons" excuse may tend to be overused, particularly in movies, to cover up the real reasons for quitting a political office, this time I think it's his genuine reason. Think about it: What word appeared three times in the opening sentence of this entry? Failure. Day in and and day out he has to hear about intelligence failures, which is really saying that he's a failure. After months--years--of working the long hours that it takes to head any government agency, and being told at every turn what a failure he is, I think he decided it just wasn't worth it anymore. Why put so much time and effort into the job when every time something bad happens to the country, people are going to blame him? I can definitely understand why he'd rather spend time with his family.

The Pursuit of Excellence

Imagine, if you will, a young baseball player, ten or twelve years old, and his father in their back yard. The father tells his boy, "If you work hard, good things will happen." The boy goes on to be one of the best pitchers in his little league. He throws a perfect game and two no-hitters. He blows away the competition.

What should be done for this boy? I would tend to think he should be commended for his efforts, wouldn't you? Now, imagine instead that the boy is instead banned from pitching in any more little league games because he's too good. Because he blows away the competition, he's now an "illegal player."

According to the New York Daily News, from which I've quoted some lines above, it's happened to a boy named Anthony Seblano of Marine Park, New York. Because "he is an overwhelmingly, [sic] powerful pitcher" he has "a very unfair advantage."

This decision is brought to you by the same mindset that encourages taxes for the rich (after all, the rich couldn't possibly have worked for that money).

It's nice to see the little league team so dedicated to encouraging excellence in its players. On the other hand, I suppose this decision is a valuable lesson on how some people will treat those who are better than they are. (Via Common Sense and Wonder)

Summer Plans

So, what is it about summer that just sucks my will right out of me? During the school year I have a passion for excellence in what I do, especially in regards to school assignments. But now... I stay up 'til one in the morning, get up at nine in the morning, waste the morning on the internet, play games with my brothers, and generally waste time. Oh, I work, when Chick-fil-A gives me the hours. (But since my managers apparently can't say no to any potential applicant, that means that I've been working once or twice a week. We just hired an addition 5 or 6 new workers. Argh!)

I need to find something to occupy my time. Maybe I need to find a good temporary job for the summer. On the other hand, my Dad suggested that I work for a SC Senatorial political campaign (I'd do either Jim DeMint or Thomas Ravenel), partially for the experience in the political process and partly to put it on my résumé. I'd like to be working at a summer camp in California, Camp Lucerne, but I ended up turning in my application too late and I was put on a waiting list of some kind. So, that's a (remote) possibility, but one I won't know about for another week or so.

Other ideas: Hugh Hewitt, in his excellent book entitled In, But Not Of, suggests that to be influential in the world, it's important to have a good understanding of history, and suggests about a dozen books to read on the subject. Considering my less than stellar understanding of history, it might be prudent to spend my summer reading them.

He also suggests, "Your obvious need is to go deep into at least one area of material that will be of interest to many, if not all, people of accomplishment" (page 53) as a means of demonstrating the desire to develop "depth of intellect." To be honest, this is probably one of my weak points. Naturally, as a Christian, brought up in a Christian home, going to Christian schools all of my life, I have a fairly in-depth knowledge of the Bible, at least by comparison to the world. I could teach you how to customize a windows-based computer to look and act like a Mac (or whatever you wanted). I could bore you to tears about Star Trek. But are any of these interesting to "influential" members of society?

I could learn to golf, I suppose. That seems to be a useful skill for any aspiring businessman.

Anyways, I'm open to suggestions.