I used to refute the claim that a man was 5 times more likely to be shot by his wife then by a stranger with the fact that he was 5 times more likely to be stabbed by his wife then a stranger, so shouldn't we ban kitchen knives too?
I figured it was obvious this was stupid. I guess not the British are talking about doing just that.
Its not that we need to control guns, its that we need to be nicer to our wives so they don't kill us, the evil witches. :-)
Q: What is the difference between a press release from Halliburton and an article in the New York Times?
A:
Well, lets see.
Both the New York Times, and Halliburton are corporations. One sells newspapers, the other builds oil related stuff like pipelines and refineries. *
Recently, the New York Times Company has been branching out into the internet. Halliburton has been branching out into government contracts, they provide mashed potatoes to people in the armed services as well as some other weird stuff like dismantling weapons.
Recently, Halliburton was accused of inflating costs by the government, while the New York Times Company was accused of inflating circulation numbers used to set ad rates.
Halliburton exists as a corporation to make money, as long as said actions are legal. The New York Times Company is “committed to the creation of long-term shareholder value through investment and constancy of purpose.” * It's not clear whether “constancy of purpose” means legal or not, since they don't say what that purpose is.
The New York Times makes more money if a story is controversial. Halliburton's stock price will go down if a press release is controversial, but they'll be prosecuted by the SEC if its not controversial enough.
I know! The Halliburton press release is more likely to be true!
A commenter on Goose-Stepping Hippies writes:
My mom was addicted to cigarettes, and it killed her. You've got some interesting hippy theories yourself, Pierce.
I'm really sorry about your mom. That's tough.
My wife's addiction to cigarettes was tied in with her hypoglycemia: she smoked during the parts of the day when she needed an energy boost. Fixing the hypoglycemia meant she no longer needed the cigarettes.
I remember asking my sensei about her smoking, and his question back to me still floors me:
Why does she smoke?
I had never, ever thought of it that way. I sort of sat there with my mouth making fish motions... My sensei commented to me that tobacco was a powerful herb, and it was possible she was self-medicating. To me this has always highlighted the difference between the clinic and the Western approach: ask the patient why they do something, and then fix that.
I went home and asked her, and she said she craved cigarettes the most when her energy was low. So the first one in the morning, during her lull in the afternoon, those were the hardest to give up.
From that moment on, I stopped bugging her about quitting. She'd been trying for two years, and at that point was both wearing nicotine patches and smoking. Instead I bugged her about going to clinic. What I'd said to her also clicked with her, and she came into the clinic and started getting treated for her hypoglycemia.
Soon, she came to realize that the cigarettes were the devil's bargain: she would get a boost of energy for 15 minutes from a cigarette, but she would end up being more tired later. It gave her a 15 minute boost at the cost of an hour nap. Not a good trade. So they seemed less attractive as a solution . As the clinic evened out her energy levels (and mood swings, thank God!), she didn't need the crutch of the tobacco.
The real test came when her dad died (of Lung Cancer), and she had to go out to California alone. Despite all the stress, not once did she smoke to relieve it. In her mind, she knew they didn't really work as a solution, plus her hypoglycemia was gone, so she no longer had the large peaks and valleys.
All of that taught me the lesson to not be so judgmental about other people's addictions, even people who are addicted to things like crack or heroin. My first question is always: Why?
So yeah, if you want to call it that, I have my own hippy theory: judge not, lest you be judged.
May the fleas of a thousand desert dogs infest your arse.
May the syphilis of 72 infected whores wilt your shriveled genitalia.
May the bugs of a hundred leprous camels flay your skin.
May the curse of eternal damnation land on your and your supporters' doorsteps.
May the cancerous cells of a million lab-rats invade your body.
May the annals of history forget your existence.
May the terror you have inflicted on Islam be your eternal companion in Purgatory.
Nice to seem some Muslim anger against these buttheads.
My entry about Goose-Stepping Hippies was in the Carnival of the Vanities this week. Also in there was this piece called Liberal Fundamentalism by Mahatma over at the Loonatic Left, on a similar theme.
But it is about the desecration of the Quran:
Yet, some people have no respect for others' culture as they would not hesitate to use a Quran to smuggle drugs into Bahrain.
This probably is the ultimate desecration. Using a Muslim's inherent respect for the Holy Book to try to smuggle drugs. Hoping of course that the customs officer will not bother checking it thoroughly.
That's kind of interesting...
From a guy working in Afghanistan
Hint, his RSS feed is this. In fact, any blogspot blog can be subscribed to via /atom.xml at the end of their blog home page URL.
Update: Er, her blog. I was so impressed by the first article I read that I immediately wanted to share, before I'd read enough to realize he's a she.
Longtime readers know I'm fairly Wilsonian, even if I blame him for most of the current problems in the Middle East for not having a plan during the Treaty of Versailles (though he had probably just had a stroke). One of the reasons I support the Iraq war is because it was time for some reverse dominos in the Middle East. Bush isn't a fanatical Christian, but he's definitely a fanatical believer in democracy. For me that's a good thing.
Via Chrenkoff comes this article from a Lebanese newspaper about how Bush's War is almost a breath of fresh air in the middle east.
Some Quotes:
The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs. For decades, the intellectual classes in the Arab world bemoaned the indifference of American power to the cause of their liberty. Now a conservative American president had come bearing the gift of Wilsonian redemption.
Unmistakably, there is in the air of the Arab world a new contest about the possibility and the meaning of freedom. This world had been given over to a dark nationalism, and to the atavisms of a terrible history. For decades, it was divided between rulers who monopolized political power and intellectual classes shut out of genuine power, forever prey to the temptations of radicalism. Americans may not have cared for those rulers, but we judged them as better than the alternative. We feared the “Shiite bogeyman” in Iraq and the Islamists in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia; we bought the legend that Syria's dominion in Lebanon kept the lid on anarchy. We feared tinkering with the Saudi realm; it was terra incognita to us, and the House of Saud seemed a surer bet than the “wrath and virtue” of the zealots. Even Yasser Arafat, a retailer of terror, made it into our good graces as a man who would tame the furies of the masked men of Hamas. That bargain with authoritarianism did not work, and begot us the terrors of Sept. 11, 2001.
Pick up the Arabic papers today: They are curiously, and suddenly, readable. They describe the objective world; they give voice to recognition that the world has bypassed the Arabs. The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim “exceptionalism” to the appeal of liberty. For a people mired in historical pessimism, the message of this outsider was a powerful antidote to the culture of tyranny. Hitherto, no one had bothered to tell the Palestinians that they can't have terror and statehood at the same time, that the patronage of the world is contingent on a renunciation of old ways.
By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world. No Iraqis I met look to neighboring Arab lands for political inspiration: They are scorched by the terror and the insurgency, but a better political culture is tantalizingly close.
Women want the vote in Kuwait, the Lebanese clamor for the truth about the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and about the dark Syrian interlude in their history. Egyptians don't seem frightened of the scarecrows with which the Mubarak regime secured their submission. Everywhere, the order is under attack, and men and women are willing to question the prevailing truths.
Right or Left, knowing the facts about alternative energy is a must.
Here's the latest briefing from Winds of Change
I'll say it again though, if it was practical, it wouldn't be “alternative” it would be “energy”.
That said, I'm thinking about putting a wind machine on my property. APS just got approval to raise their rates during the summer when all the Phoenix people turn on their air conditioners. But that means that my electric bill jumped $60. A $500/500 watt generator could save me $44/month, so it might end up paying for itself during the summer months.
Unlike me, who seems to be posting small tiny ravings multiple times a day, Bill posts rarely, but its always worth the read.
This one is on the concept of Sanctuary and how terrorists violate that.
Here are some great lines:
If producing humiliation and fear is now to be defined as “torture,” what international human rights organization will be appointed to help the surviving readers of _The New York Times)?
armies of useful idiots with television cameras and microphones and Expensive Hair
Civilizations fall because they become so successful that their citizens become, over many generations of increasing security and prosperity, further and further away from the reality of the human condition.
Reality has not been kind to far leftists, historically, as we shall soon see. Like many in the deepest, most pleasant and safe confines of our Sanctuary, they have never had a chance to see – or have chosen not to see -- the reality of human nature up close and personal. Reality told them it was just going to the bathroom, when in point of fact Reality left these Leftists alone at the table without paying the check, and it hasn’t returned their phone calls, either.
The Taoists have an interesting concept of karma.
“The more good you do, the more good you want to do. The more evil you do, the more evil you want to do.”
That is, its not that bad things happen to bad people, as much has doing bad things makes you a worse person.
There's little moral distinction in Taoism, they consider the evil path as valid as the good path or the true neutral.
What they don't like is compromise being occasionally good or occasionally evil.
Like being a pacifist, yet praising Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden.
Or believing in the war, but not believing in foreign aid...
Hmmm... How did Iraq get in here? This was supposed to be about Darth Vader...Oh, I remember.
And all I got was this lousy ticket stub.
Yeah, I saw the movie. MUCH better then the first two, even though its like watching a bad horror movie: You know what's going to happen...and you want to tell the people in the movie...don't go into the basement alone!!!! Or in this case, “Don't trust the evil chancellor, he'll turn you to the dark side.”
I spent a good part of the movie trying to keep from directing the characters, or making fun of them.
It did seem a bit like an Act III movie as I talked about earlier.
I like Ahrnold, but ugh
Bush hasn't been 100% with the new democracy theme in our foreign policy, and like others, I deplore the violence in Uzbekistan. I can live with the dictatorship in Pakistan, its a complex country given that the government really only controls the big cities, but I wish our foreign policy was 100%, not 75%.
Then again, 75% is about as consistent as our foreign policy ever gets.
Speaking of hippies...
I now tell the Bush-haters (in my most sarcastic voice):
Yeah, sure, Bush 2 is the reason we're in Iraq. It couldn't have had anything to do with the foreign policy of Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, the twin disasters of World War One and the Treaty of Versailles, or the Iranian hostage crisis. Nope, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were all chocolate and daisies before Bush came into office.
Bush is a gnat being ground between the gears of history, as are all of us. He was dealt a lousy hand at the beginning of his term; we need to give him credit for having the balls to trade in a pair of Jacks for two wild-card democracies. He said the US would no longer choose dictators over democracies, and he's pretty much followed through with that. 5 wild-cards beats 4 Aces any day of the week, even if one of those wild-cards is France.
Please Lord, save me from the self-righteous.
So my wife and I went to the local health food store for some sandwiches, and plastered all over the parking lot I see these signs that say No Bookstore Parking.
So let me get this straight. Four days out of the entire year, college students come to that bookstore to trade in the useless ravings of college professors they were forced to purchase for some badly needed cash. Yet the health food store, which is often so busy the other 361 days that their parking spills over into the bookstore parking, they're offended? So much for living in peace and harmony with our fellow man.
It wouldn't be so annoying if the store didn't sell the sorts of magazines that claim that if it wasn't for the evil of corporations, we'd all be living happily together in the forest off of nuts and berries at peace with one another. There are several problems with this theory:
The health food store itself is a corporation.
Have you ever tried to live off nuts and berries? Give me a cheeseburger any day!
The people I see in the health food store always look sickly. The people I see in the butcher look healthy. Do the math.
All the people I know who shop exclusively at health food stores are terrible cooks.
I can't think of anything worse then living with the people I meet in health food stores.
After living in Flagstaff for awhile, when its January 15th and I'm looking out the windows of my house watching it snow horizontally, and I'm warm and toasty, I kind of appreciate those evil energy companies...
But the real point for me is that these days, when I meet someone who is smugly certain that their world view is 100% correct, that God and all his Angels are on their side, chances are he's wearing a T-Shirt and Birkenstocks. The whole thing with the parking lot is typical. Inside, they sell these magazines promoting peace and harmony; outside they're towing customers cars away.
All those people who grew up in the 60's have to realize that to a Generation-Xer like myself, they've become the Establishment, and frankly, people being people, they're just as smug, self-satisfied, and close-minded as the guys in suits and crew cuts they replaced.
Typically, in Flagstaff last week, smoking got banned in bars as well as restaurants. Now a few years ago, I wouldn't have thought about it, and given that my wife smoked, I would have been secretly glad. But then I started working in the Taoist healing clinic at my martial arts studio. I found out from working on healing people there that all the people that smoked, drank too much, whatever, had some sort of health problem. It's not that people were addicted to cigarettes, as much as they were self-medicating.
From a healing point of view, cigarettes and alcohol are terrible “herbs” in that they have bad side effects beyond the effect the person is taking them for. On the other hand, they're widely available, and the quality control is good. In our clinic, we don't treat the alcohol or nicotine addiction, instead we treat the underlying health problem. Eventually, the patient stops on their own.
If you talk to the people that pushed this sort of thing through, they'll tell you all about how they're pushing through the smoking ban for “health” reasons.
Hmmmph. I think you just deprived sick people of their medicine.
In the 20th century, left-wing governments killed more people and caused more misery then right-wing governments. For all that left-wing people like to call right-wingers “Nazis”, Nazi is short for National Socialist.
To paraphrase Jesus, I'd rather hang out with a bunch of strippers then a bunch of left-wing political activists; the strippers are probably a better class of people. Come to think of it, hanging out with capital-C-Christians wouldn't be so bad either; annoying as they are, they usually mean well and given the dominance of the hippies, they're often more open minded. (I'm a little-c christian myself.) The liberals hippies I meet are sometimes well-meaning, but rarely open-minded.
So the last couple of years, especially since the beginning of this year, my wife has been in the throes of peri-menopause.
That is, the changes women go through before menopause. You would think that early on, the doctors would have correctly diagnosed her.
No such luck. These days, because of birth control pills, most women have the effects of peri-menopause much reduced. They're still present though, they just don't realize it, because all that knowledge has been lost by the general population because it basically skipped a generation. We've forgotten that the “change of life” happens before your periods stop, not after.
In my wife's case, because of fertility issues, she's never taken birth control pills. So she had a wide range of weird unexplained symptoms: lack of energy, GERD, GERD-related asthma. Even with an Eastern approach, I couldn't find much of anything wrong.
Luckily, a friend of the family had recommended a book:
My wife started reading it...pretty much every symptom she had was related to perimenopause. Not only that, but reading the book, she realized that while cancer didn't run in her family, depression and divorce around age 44 did...
So now she's on low-dose birth control pills, and its made a world of difference. As we say around here now, We Love Estrogen.
Thought I'd pass that along to any women in their 40's or men married to them. Buy that book.
Awhile back I posted about how we get ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder) kids in the clinic occasionally.
Someone followed up with some questions because of an ADHD kid they were trying to help, so I thought I'd share the answers.
Anyhow, what do you know about getting this cool little 8 year kid fixed via QiGong? I've been looking at some TCM stuff too. Do you know which organs are the root of the ADHD?
ADHD is one of those diagnoses that for an Eastern practitioner could really mean anything. Every patient I've seen diagnosed with ADHD has had a different problem from a Eastern perspective and had different symptoms from anyones perspective: if I lined up all my ADHD patients together, it would be obvious to you just looking at them that they had different complaints. That is, I've seen ADHD cover everything from kids who look totally listless to kids who are vibrating where they stand.
So when I treat a kid with ADHD, I generally ask:
How do the parents see the ADHD manifesting itself?
What led to the diagnosis of ADHD?
How does the child respond to heavy physical exercise? If you have the child run around the building for 5-10 minutes are their particular symptoms better or worse?
Does the child prefer to concentrate on a single task for a long period of time, or flit from thing to thing? That is, would the kid spend 4 hours playing with legos, or 15 minutes each playing with 16 different toys?
Based on the answer to those questions, the treatment will vary widely. So while we have a lot of success with ADHD, its hard for me to treat remotely.
Since you don't have me available unless you live in Flagstaff, I'll make the following suggestions for the rest of you:
Find a good kung-fu/tai chi class to enroll the kid into. The old softer styles of Kung Fu didn't separate health from martial arts the way the more derivative successors like Karate do. So its quite possible that by enrolling the kid in a kid kung fu class that their system will gradually rebalance itself as they learn. Most instructors have some sort of trial lesson thing so that they can scope out the kid and the parents. In that introductory visit, if the parents talk to the instructor about the ADHD diagnosis, the instructor may very well be able to figure out how to get the kid to focus, especially if the instructor is pretty experienced with kids. People were coaching kids for a long time before there was ADHD
Now, finding what I would consider a “good” kid program is hard to explain because the martial arts you teach kids has to be customized for their age anyways. I'd probably examine the adult side in some detail, looking for tai chi or qi gong classes on the adult side.
The ideal would be something like we have locally where the kids program is separate but the adult program includes both qi gong, qi gong healing, and a healing clinic so you know there will be crossover to the kids program. That would be the ideal, but that's hard to find. If you find some websites for programs in your area I can look at them, but the parents should also follow their instincts when they meet the instructors: better a good coach in a bad program then a good program with a bad coach, and better a program that they can commit to driving the kid to twice a week then one across down they'll never go to.
Here's a study about Tai Chi and ADHD if you're interested.
Just a few posts, but scary ones.
In this book I just finished, Freakonomics, the author figured out why crime rates suddenly dropped in 1995 and kept going.
Roe v. Wade lowered crime.
Unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.
Think I'm pro-choice? Think again. As the author points out, 1.6 million abortions/year isn't exactly an efficient way to stop crime. Ask yourself if you're pro-choice, “How sure are you that abortion up until the moment of birth is a good thing?”
99% sure? ok, that's 16,000 preventable deaths a year.
When was the last time you were 99% sure about anything?
Like I said, before making it illegal isn't the answer, but neither is the status quo.
I'll say it again: Plan B
Oh, and by the way, I recommend the book. Did you know most drug dealers make under minimum wage? It's pretty interesting.
Kindly pull your head out of your ass please.
You guys have had it too easy for too long.
Unlike our parents, Generation X knows how to add. You dumped us in front of those video games, and you're surprised now that we know how to calculate our optimum economic strategies down to the gnat's ass? Legend of Zelda dude!
You self indulgent baby boomers are roadkill on the highway of history, you just don't know it yet. We're younger then you, smarter then you, and 300,000 hours of video games have honed our reflexes to a fever pitch. The only reason we haven't killed you all and taken over is there's just too damn many of you baby boomers. But you're getting older...
Stop lying to us. We know that its 15% of our paycheck, not 7.5% that's getting sucked into the cavernous maw of the government, we can count, and many of us have had to work as “independent contractors” for one of you greedy-ass boomers. Anyone who's ever paid “Self-Employment” tax knows isn't fooled anymore that government is a good thing.
Don't feed us this line about that really being our money either. We never believed you when you told us that you were holding our Social Security in “trust”. It was obvious at the time that the government was taking our money, giving some small fraction to seniors, and blowing the rest on hookers and crack. So now the bill is coming due, and you tell us nothing needs to be done?
As a member of the video game generation, I've spent more time managing artificial economies then the current board of the Federal Reserve. I know what works, and what doesn't. Stop lying to me, and fix Social Security, because I'm getting older and I need to start saving more for retirement.
If you don't, by the time you retire, we'll just drop the whole Social Security fiasco, and to hell with the Me generation, you can eat cat food.
Don't think numbers will help you. We're the video game generation, and all we have to do to keep you from voting is computerize the whole thing, and you dumbasses will never be able to vote again. Think you'll be able to vote? Let me ask you. Is your VCR blinking 12:00?
You have been warned.
From BookSlut
Some Phoenix parents might be “startled” to learn the public library's new teen reading program is called “Shut Up and Read,” reports The Arizona Republic. They should just be grateful the library didn't go with their first choice, “Read a Book, You Fucking Pussy.”
You people who don't live in Arizona are wusses. Cowboys rule!
Patrick has another interesting analysis of the Pew Report.
This paints a clear picture of:
I won't bother excerpting it, it's short, and worth the trip.
Why? Because they've earned it.
The wars of the 21st century will need women soldiers.
Which makes John McHugh a threat to our national security...
I don’t think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be. I think you can draw parallels here with the computer — here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position.
If you’re thinking about getting an iPod, here’s my advice:
I have 4 iPods.
1 is my wife’s mini, which she is loving right now.
2 are the 40GB models
1 is the Shuffle.
I use the Shuffle the most. It’s the cheapest, lightest, etc. In practice, while it was nice to have my entire CD collection available, I was always selecting everything and shuffling anyways. So having 10+ hours of music in one tiny lightweight thing works out better then having to lug around even as something as small as the iPod. Every few hours of listening, I recharge it and swap out whatever was on there for a new 10 hours.
So for weight and simplicity, I like the Shuffle the best.
On the other hand, the mini works better for my wife, because she likes to listen to books on tape, and she’s more selective then I am about music. So with the mini, she can have one book on tape, and several hours of music, and she’s good to go.
I don’t think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be. I think you can draw parallels here with the computer — here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position.
If you’re thinking about getting an iPod, here’s my advice:
I have 4 iPods.
1 is my wife’s mini, which she is loving right now.
2 are the 40GB models
1 is the Shuffle.
I use the Shuffle the most. It’s the cheapest, lightest, etc. In practice, while it was nice to have my entire CD collection available, I was always selecting everything and shuffling anyways. So having 10+ hours of music in one tiny lightweight thing works out better then having to lug around even as something as small as the iPod. Every few hours of listening, I recharge it and swap out whatever was on there for a new 10 hours.
So for weight and simplicity, I like the Shuffle the best.
On the other hand, the mini works better for my wife, because she likes to listen to books on tape, and she’s more selective then I am about music. So with the mini, she can have one book on tape, and several hours of music, and she’s good to go.
Patrick Ruffini is reading the Pew Report
Which is basically a comprehensive survey of politics in America.
Now realize that Patrick worked for the Bush campaign, and you have some insight into how true political insiders think about things. Its more interesting reading his take on the Pew report then it would be to read the Pew report cold.
I’m adding him to the blog roll as an expert for that reason.
I really, really hate both sides of the abortion debate.
Both sides are too busy screaming at each other to really make any progress.
1.6 million abortions a year is too much, making it illegal won’t stop it.
Emergency Contraception would cut that by 75%, or it would prevent 1.2 million abortions a year:
The fact its, we could cut the number of abortions by 75%, and give women a another choice if PlanB was available without a prescription.
You’re Pro-Choice or Pro-Life and you don’t know what Emergency Contraception is? F* YOU! You are an idiot, and I’d rather smack you then talk to you.
Join the Mercutio Side today! Emergency Contraception should be next to the tampons in every supermarket in America!
I was watching the first Star Wars movie (1977) last night.
Ya know, Luke is a total whiny butt.
I never noticed this when I was a kid.
Now I’m watching the movie and thinking, “so he has some chores to do. Big Deal.”
Growing up sucks.
About immigration. I mean, I love La Shawn normally, but stuff like this just irritates me.
I mean really, people in non-border states don’t know what they’re talking about.
It seems to me that there are only two sides in this debate:
Non-Border states: Yeah, we should close the border with Mexico. Border States: The border is closed? Someone should tell the Mexicans…
Do the math people!
Look, the border is 2,000 miles long, or 11 million feet.
Let’s say decide to implement your own border closing. The government must be stupid right? We just need to put up a fence. Well, lets see how much that would cost. We’ll want a 12’ high fence at least, plus about a foot of razor wire on top.
Looking around the internet, that will run us about $140/foot or $1.5 billion.
That’s for the fencing. Now we’re going to need some guard towers every 500 feet. Let’s say its $10,000 for a simple guard tower. We’ll need 22,000 of those, so that’s another $220 million. We’re assuming that the guards don’t mind peeing in a bucket, otherwise we’ll need 11 million feet of plumbing…
Total so far: $1.7 billion.
We’ll need 22,000 guards, at $100,000/year, 3 shifts a day, so that’s $6.6 billion in salaries every year.
Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.
Have you non-border-state people shut up yet? No? Ok, well these guards need some way to get to the guard tower, so now we need 2,000 miles of road along the border. Say $800,000 a mile, so that’s another $1.6 billion.
Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $1.6 billion for a road so the guards can get to the towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.
Now we’ll have to maintain the fence and the road, figure 10%/year in maintenance costs for the fence, since it will be getting actively attacked, and 5% for the road. So that’s $250 million/year in maintenance costs.
Total so far: $9.9 billion the first year, $6.9 billion/year after that.
So ignoring the fact that our guards don’t have uniforms, guns, bathrooms, helicopters, training or supervision, we’re spending $9.9 billion to keep out 3-5 million Mexican immigrants/year, or $2000 per possible immigrant.
Currently, the Border Patrol has 9,000 agents stationed on the Mexican border. The reality is that the border patrol only patrols about 50 miles out of the 2,000 miles of border with Mexico. To patrol those 50 miles, will cost us $6.7 billion in 2006. So my numbers are probably very very low, but even so, just put to up a fence and man it at a minimal level would more then double the cost of the border patrol.
On the other hand if the 5 million people who cross the Mexican border generated $2500 in taxes instead of having to pay $2500 criminals to cross the border that would be $12.5 billion dollars in additional revenue to the government.
Like I said, if you don’t live in a border state, kindly shut up.
In the introduction to one of his books, Noam Chomsky tells a story about himself. It seems that he went to the dentist because of some pain, and the dentist told him he was grinding his teeth, and to cut it out. After some investigation, he figured out that it was when he was reading the New York Times.
Me too.
Two Sundays ago, they had this article in the Sunday Magazine comparing action against the insurgents to death squads in El Salvador.
Now mind you, you could make a lot of interesting comparisons between Iraq and El Salvador. Did the NYT do that? NO! Instead, they made all these strained comparisons to El Salvador of the early 80’s, completely ignoring their history since then, like the elections in ‘89. A piece that could have been very interesting was made completely unreadable by their struggle to fit their flawed (and intentionally limited) metaphor.
Then Sunday, in the AZ Republic, I see an opinion piece by Paul Krugman reprinted from the NYT, somehow managing to argue that Bush’s proposal to cut benefits for the richest people still receiving Social Security was somehow designed to secretly benefit the wealthy because they don’t actually depend on Social Security. It was a pretty strained argument.
Jeesh. The New York Times wants to improve? How about adopting a “no strained metaphors” rule? Or perhaps adopt a rule that you don’t try to make Bush to be evil in every single opinion piece?
Everytime I read the NYT, I have to spend 75% of the time disentangling the reporters strained metaphors and obvious bias from the true facts of the piece. That’s why I grit my teeth.
Here’s a review from Variety for those who didn’t like I and II. It looks like Revenge of the Sith will be really cool.
For me, I’ve always been willing to give Lucas a little more slack. While I was somewhat disappointed by I, unlike most of my friends, I just said “it feels like the first third of a movie”. After II I said, “it feels like I’ve now watched two-thirds of a movie”.
In other words, it seems to me that the reason I and II were so weak is because they’re really one 6-hour long movie. Traditional 3 active dramatic structure generally follows this structure:
To quote from here:
In the first act, get your hero up a tree. In the second act, throw progressively bigger rocks at him and force him further up the tree. Then in the third act, let him climb down or shake him out of the tree.
Act I Exposition: The first act has to establish the characters. So in the Phantom Menace, we meet Anakin as a little boy, we meet Padme as a young girl, and we hear about the prophecies about someone “restoring balance to the Force”. We also meet the Chancellor, and of course, the infamous Jar-Jar Binks. In this movie, though Anakin is still young, we see the character traits that make him great yet flawed. In Western literature drama is created when events overtake our hero, exposing his tragic flaw. This narrative structure has been common to theatre since the Ancient Greeks. Much like Oedipus ignored the Greek Chorus, we see Anakin ignoring again and again the advice of others. Typically, Act I is only 25% of the total length. I think one of the problems with Phantom Menace was that it felt padded, I think that Lucas had to pad this movie a bit. Cut down to an hour, I think this movie might have been better.
Act II Development: In the theatre, Act II is usually twice as long as Act I or Act III. Here, Lucas is again constrained by the fact that his vision was too long to fit into one movie. A lot happens in this movie, and I suspect that when I see the third movie I’ll fund a good chunk of Act II plot development ends up being part of the third movie. Anyways, in this movie, we start to see all the elements start to come together for Anakin. The Republic is corrupt and obviously a large collection of factions. Meanwhile, the Sith are behind the scenes actively working to bring down the Empire, and as everyone knows, the Chancellor is the head Sith. Having seen the other movies, we see the clones, the supposed saviors of the Empire for what they really are: Imperial Stormtroopers. We also see evidence of Anakin’s tragic flaw, but in this case, it leads to what should be a happy ending: Anakin marries Padme. Jar Jar Binks shows up again here, and it is he who proposes giving the Chancellor emergency powers, when Padme is busy elsewhere. Perhaps we are supposed to dislike Jar Jar, for he is the ignorance that leads to evil.
Act III Climax: Of course, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but we know what happens don’t we? Anakin is corrupted by the Emperor to the dark side, and becomes Darth Vader in the process. One doesn’t have to be a dark lord of the Sith to see how that can happen: Anakin’s vulnerabilities are his stubbornness and his love for Padme.
So in most plays, the first 75% of the play is just to setup the final 25%, Star Wars is no different, the first two movies were just to setup this one. So I’m looking forward to the third movie, and if its any good, I probably will get all 3 on DVD when they come out. Maybe if I edit all three movies into one really long movie (cutting about half of the first movie) others can see what I see.
This isn’t the first movie I’ve had this experience with, Back to the Future parts 2 and 3 were one long movie, the 2nd and 3rd of the original Star Wars movies also seem like one long movie, and the Matrix sequel was one long movie as well.
Back to the Future is really still 2 separate movies, it seems more like an old movie serial in that each movie seems like a TV episode. I think that’s why that movie hangs together so well.
The 2nd and 3rd (now 5th and 6th) of the original Star Wars movies leveraged off the 1st movie as Act I, allowing the Empire Strikes Back to function as the plot development movie. If you just watch Empire, its really not that good of a movie. If you watch all 3 at one sitting however, despite the fact that the first movie seems more self-contained, they can loosely function as one long movie.
The Matrix sequel splits 3 acts into two movies, so consequently it ends up being a much better movie viewed as one continuous piece then either piece separately. There’s no climax in the second movie, and no exposition in the third movie. Viewed together, the whole Matrix sequel as one long comes out as a better movie.
It’s important to remember though that we’re talking about the 3rd movie in a 6 part series. Taken as a whole, Star Wars is really the history of Darth Vader: prophesied to restore balance to the Force, it is really Darth Vader who destroys the Emperor, not Luke Skywalker. Perhaps I shouldn’t edit the first 3 movies into one, perhaps I should edit all 6 movies into one.
P.S. To my liberal friends: It took Bush 2 to get rid of Saddam…
We were talking about people with low self-esteem, and I said that I have that sometimes.
She responded: “No you don’t. Thinking Hmmm…my plans for becoming Master of the Universe aren’t going so well today does not mean you’re having low self esteem”.
From Airbornehogsociety:
I have worked in the civilian world in rural, suburban, and urban areas. I have gone to college in Alabama - in the buckle of the Bible belt - and in the heart of Boston, which is just about the exact opposite. I have lived in small towns, suburbs, and cities. There are no better people to live with, talk with, befriend or work with than infantrymen. It is difficult to explain why and I lack the eloquence, time, and a sufficiently well-rested brain to explain why. So, I will just sum it up by saying this. Here is a conversation that you will never hear in an infantry unit:
Sergeant: “Gee, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I got a little upset and said some things that I shouldn’t have.”
Soldier: “I understand. We all get stressed out sometimes.”
Sergeant: “Thanks for understanding. Hey, how about a hug?”
Instead, you are more likely to hear this:
Sergeant: “All right, I’m done yelling at you. Dust yourself off and get back to work. If you ever pull some stupid crap like that again, I will smoke you into a coma.”
Soldier: “Hooah, Sergeant.”
Sergeant: “Shut up.”
I get tired of being nice to my coworkers.
Ph33r my po\/\/3r!
nikita demosthenes has P.J. O’Rourke as his hero.
Me? Oscar Wilde, Camille Paglia, Ann Coulter, and Cartman.
A gay man, a lesbian, a woman, and a cartoon character.
I’m not sure what that says about me. Maybe I just think the conservative writers write like pussies!
P.J. O’Rourke is pretty funny though. He’s just not vicious enough for me. This is the Opinionated Bastard blog, not the Opinionated Tea Drinking Surrender Monkey blog.
Must now go drink foofy hippie-ass chinese herbs for my health now.
(I never said I was consistent.)
The Change Before the Change: Everything You Need to Know to Stay Healthy in the Decade Before Menopause