Category: Everything Else

Michael Kinsley gets it mostly – but not completely – right today (by way of Washington Monthly, since I don’t have a login at the LA Times):

It’s true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose and where gay relationships have civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values…don’t involve any direct imposition on you. We don’t want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same sex, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

We on my side of the great divide don’t, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don’t claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?

I find the first paragraph much more persuasive than the second. A quick look around the left-leaning side of the web this last week shows an awful lot of contempt and close-minded prejudice to people on that side of the divide, at least in some circles. Some of it was just post-election angst venting, but some is more deep-seated than that.

And when it comes to science, it’s harder to say that folks on this side of the divide don’t want to impose. We may feel that evolution, for example, is an obvious choice for what to teach in schools, but if your view is belief-based then I can see that mandating the teaching of evolution is a forcible imposition. Some of us may like to think that the Scopes trial settled this issue decades ago, but events in Kansas in 1999 and Wisconsin today are showing that this issue is by no means dead.

Ugh. So many issues, so may ways to alienate people. I just hope we can all find some sanity at the end of it.

UPDATE: Digby got in touch with his funny side today & came out with a good post on this issue as well.

Update #2 (6/29/06): Welcome, Volokh readers…..

The Washington Note has a seriously depressing account of what is really going on for our armed forces in the mideast. Basically, there is not one bit of good news.

It is worth a read, though.

The days when I had any positive feelings about Yasser Arafat are long since passed, but if the reports are true, he’s not long for this world and that’s Not Good News.

Exactly how ill he is seems somewhat up in the air — the various news reports I’ve read range from describing Arafat as practically being on his deathbead to his being ill but not critically.

Says ABC:

Palestinian officials said he had the flu. Israeli officials speculated he might have stomach cancer, but two of his doctors said Wednesday a blood test and a biopsy of tissue from his digestive tract showed no evidence of cancer.

On Tuesday, a hospital official said Arafat was suffering from a large gallstone. The gallstone, while extremely painful, is not life-threatening and can be easily treated, the official told AP.

So why is this bad news?

Arafat’s health crisis has highlighted how unprepared the Palestinians are for their leader’s death, making a chaotic transition period all but inevitable. Arafat refuses to groom a successor; rival security chiefs already have battled each other in the streets.

[snip]

No leader of Arafat’s stature and popularity is waiting in the wings, said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. “It’s only natural to expect that there would be either a power struggle or there would be a loss of cohesion,” she said.

Analysts said it could take years for a leader to emerge, hurting prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. However, Israel and the United States hold out hope that a post-Arafat Middle East will be more conducive to peace because of what they say is Arafat’s blind eye to terror and opposition to reform.

Polls show the second most popular Palestinian after Arafat is Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Fatah’s young guard. But Barghouti is serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison for involvement in deadly shooting attacks.

On paper, at least, a path of succession has been charted. The parliament speaker would replace Arafat as Palestinian Authority president for 60 days, until elections are held. However, current speaker Rauhi Fattouh is a bland backbencher uncertain to hold on during a turbulent transition period, and timely elections appear unlikely.

Somehow I don’t think this is going to end well. We shall see though. After all, if the Red Sox can finally break the Curse of the Bambino, anything is possible.

I listen to the local ABC AM radio affiliate, KGO, fairly often, but I missed Ronn Owens’ show today. Unfortunately. Howard Stern called in to rant at Michael Powell this morning on the air.

KGO has a link to an audio archive of the show on their home page. I’m about to listen to it.

My passport recently expired. I should have renewed it sooner:

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Bush administration–specifically, the Department of Homeland Security–has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. Countries whose citizens currently do not have visa requirements to enter the United States will have to issue passports that conform to the standard or risk losing their nonvisa status.

These future passports, currently being tested, will include an embedded computer chip. This chip will allow the passport to contain much more information than a simple machine-readable character font, and will allow passport officials to quickly and easily read that information. That is a reasonable requirement and a good idea for bringing passport technology into the 21st century.

But the Bush administration is advocating radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for both U.S. and foreign passports, and that’s a very bad thing.

These chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can “talk” to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. Passport officials envision being able to download the information on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of an electronic reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around RFID passports are broadcasting their identity.

Think about what that means for a minute. It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder’s knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily–and surreptitiously–pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.

Since the program is currently in test only I suppose I should renew ASAP so I don’t get stuck with the chip. You might want to check your own passport’s expiration date and see if you’re in a similar boat.

I’ve been meaning to post a review of William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognittion” for quite a while now and still have not done so. It’s a book that moved me deeply in some ways and left me really annoyed in others, and I find it hard to wirte about that contradition. Hopefully I’ll get it finished eventually.

Good news today, though — Peter Weir wants to make it into a movie.