Name that Tune

Michele, of A Small Victory dedicates a song to the fellow who inspired the Four Horsemen poster contest mentioned below.

Very catchy, too.



Posted 8:29 AM by Oscar Jr.
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I Think Lileks Might Like This

Via Boing Boing, The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss. A few small samples:

Posted 1:24 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: Food, Bombs or Both

(Is death-by-scary-carrot preferable to death-by-bombing?)

Tonight, we meet "Food Not Bombs" founder and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer", Keith McHenry. Naturally, he appears to be a professional:

"It's a fact, the U.S. is a genocidal country," said Keith McHenry, one of eight people arrested Thursday when anti-war protesters demonstrated at the Raytheon Missile Systems plant here.

McHenry, who acknowledged that some people will call him a "lunatic," said he has protested U.S. action in Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, East Timor, Panama and Kosovo.

He has a jolly sense of humor, too. (Adobe Acrobat document)

The radical group Food Not Bombs admitted recently that the ambiguity of its message, “Food Not Bombs”, could have contributed to the confusion of the Bush administration, which recently began both bombing and dropping food supplies on the country of Afghanistan.

“We did our best,” conceded Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry, “but we admit we speak a different language than the president and his analysts.”

The group is currently considering several new names as options, hoping to resolve any confusion, including “Food Not Stuff That Explodes”, “Food Not Stuff You Can’t Eat That Kills People,” and “No Bombs At All, You Stupid Git.”

Ah, lovely. Let's give the last word to Christopher Hitchens:

If you remember, there were also those who warned hysterically of a humanitarian disaster as a result of the bombing: a "silent genocide," as one Boston-area academic termed it. But to the contrary, the people of Afghanistan did not have to endure a winter with only the food and medicine that the primeval Taliban would have furnished them. They survived, and now the population has grown by almost 1.2 million, as refugees from the old, atrocious tyranny make their way home. Here is the first country in history to be bombed out of the Stone Age.

Posted 12:31 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Loopiness!

Posted 8:16 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse: Reynolds, Sullivan, Johnson, & Den Beste

Steven Den Beste chooses "Plague," and nominates Charles Johnson as "Famine," Andrew Sullivan as "War," and, of course, Glenn Reynolds as "Death."

Despite the fact that he was inexplicably omitted, Bill Quick is hosting the "Ablogalypse Poster Contest" today.

Here's my entry.

Yeah, it's lousy. I have no artistic skills.

Update: The original artwork can be found here.



Posted 8:14 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Loopiness!

Posted 4:46 PM by Oscar Jr.
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"Humanity's Associated Movements Against Stuff"

Via Michael Totten, via LGF, Byron York notes in today's New York Post ("'MAINSTREAM' USEFUL IDIOTS") that recently arrested, accused terrorist Sami Al-Arian is former president of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, a group associated with anti-war group Not in Our Name. York writes:

Until recently, the group's president was Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer-science professor who has been suspended for alleged ties to terrorism. (He is still a member of the coalition's board.) According to a New York Times report last year, Al-Arian is accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised by another charity he runs, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times also reported that FBI investigators "suspected Mr. Al-Arian operated 'a fund-raising front' for the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine from the late 1980s to 1995." Al-Arian also brought a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah to the University of South Florida to raise money for one of Al-Arian's foundations - a job Shallah held until he later became the head of Islamic Jihad.

Here's the Tampa Tribune on Al-Arian's arrest ("The Scorching Indictment of Sami Al-Arian"):

The arrest Thursday of Sami Al-Arian, accused along with seven others of conspiring to aid and abet terrorism, including killings abroad by suicide bombers, ends a decade-long investigation into the nefarious activities of the University of South Florida professor.

In that time, Al-Arian has become the consummate manipulator, willing to take advantage of the freedoms here - to use the United States as a safe haven - to wreak havoc elsewhere.

and

The indictment is damning, bringing to light intercepted reports and recordings of telephone conversations over the years between Al-Arian and other defendants and known terrorists and terror organizations.

Many of Al-Arian's activities have already been detailed by the Tribune's Michael Fechter, who deserves credit for yeoman service to this newspaper and community. He first raised the issue of Al-Arian's terrorist ties in 1995 - a moment, the indictment reveals, of great concern to the cell the professor is accused of establishing at USF.

Among his dubious and well-known achievements, Al-Arian was introduced at a 1991 Cleveland rally as head of ``the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.'' At the same rally, a speaker exhorted attendees to lend their support ``for the Intifadah, for the Islamic Jihad, I say it frankly, for the Islamic Jihad.''

The Islamic Committee for Palestine was a ``charitable'' organization run by Al-Arian that sponsored conferences around the country at which a number of Middle East radicals appeared, including Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who was convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing.

Here's an October 2001 "Special Report" on the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom. Some excerpts:

The coalition, with members from some 35 diverse political, legal and ethnic organizations—such as the National Lawyers Guild, Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, Irish Northern Aid Committee, the American Muslim Council, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee—was formed in 1997 in reaction to the passage of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, the bill gained momentum and passed. The government has increased its use of secret evidence in detaining people who have visa problems. Prior to (and since) that legislation, the federal government had used case law to deport and detain non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having connections to “terrorist” organizations.

Immediately upon the implementation of that law, immigration lawyers and First Amendment activists knew that trouble was brewing, and they began joining forces to battle the consequences of the act. It wasn’t long before their predictions proved correct, as people increasingly were arrested and incarcerated with evidence that neither they nor their lawyers were allowed to see. Indeed, said NCPFF president Sami Al-Arian, by the time the group was formed in 1997, cases of intimidation and arrests had increased in the wake of the anti-terrorism act.

Almost ironically, one month before the coalition’s June 1997 inception, Mazen Al-Najjar, a Florida university professor—and Al-Arian’s brother-in-law—was arrested for suspected “terrorist” ties. Al-Najjar was held for 43 months.

and

Despite the fact that no new secret evidence cases have been brought since 1998, last spring a Dallas, Texas immigration lawyer found herself facing the possibility that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was going to add secret evidence to a deportation case she was handling. Four Palestinian men are being targeted for expulsion because of their connection to two Islamic organizations—the Holy Land Foundation and the Islamic Association for Palestine—that long have been under scrutiny by the U.S. government.

and

At their July conference, Gage said in the telephone interview, coalition members agreed on the need to focus on another Anti-Terrorism Act provision—material support for terrorism—that the government seems to be invoking now. “Instead of going after criminal activity, [the federal government] is going after organizations, [and] going after the First Amendment,” she said. “They are criminalizing diapers going to an orphanage, if that orphanage happens to be controlled by Hamas.”

Gage was alluding to a list of 30 groups that are on the government’s list of “terrorist” organizations. Hamas, an Islamic organization that, in addition to its military wing, also provides humanitarian and educational services, is on that list. Under the material support for terrorism provision, a person can be arrested for giving humanitarian aid to any group on the government’s list.

One of the most recent additions to the list is the Real IRA, which, according to the State Department, has two alias groups, one of which collects support for the families of Irish political prisoners. Material support charges help to “shut down people whose politics you don’t like,” Gage said. This new trend in targeting certain communities has broad ramifications, according to Gage. Merely attending a meeting at which a member of one of the listed “terrorist” organizations was in attendance could result in charges of material support for terrorism. Gage likened the broad interpretation of the law to the poisonous suspicions of the McCarthy era.

Of course, International A.N.S.W.E.R. condemns the arrest:

Dr. Al-Arian has helped to establish several organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, est. 1981) and many affiliated organizations. In 1990, he co-founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a research and academic institution. In 1997, Dr. Al-Arian helped to found the Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace, which has fought against the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar; and in the same year co-founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, which he was elected the president of in 2000. Dr. Al-Najjar is Dr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, who in 2002 was deported after being held in U.S. jails without charges for nearly five years using "secret evidence."

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition joins the organizations and individuals worldwide who are condemning Bush's and Ashcroft's political targeting of Dr. Al-Arian.

And here's Mr. Al-Arian, describing his "persecution" by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News:

This is terrorism perpetuated by journalists against innocent civilians and public institutions.

Ah, irony.



Posted 4:27 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Worlds Collide

Slashdot readers interview Dave Barry. Some humor ensues.

Excerpt:

Free bonus question: Is it painfull
by geekoid

Dave,

Is it painfull to read all these attempts at asking a 'funny' question?

Dave:

These questions were supposed to be funny?

I found this inside-Slashdot comment amusing, too:

Looks like it's time to send one of those USPS postcards that you can send online [usps.com]...

and here's the corrected address:

JOKE TRACKING CENTER
PO BOX 11509
MIAMI FL 33101-1509

Now let's all be good citizens and send our fritzspotting records to Dave! I wonder if a post office has ever been slashdotted before...

Posted 2:43 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Saddam Dead Pool Update: The Market Bets on April

The implied probability of a March removal of Saddam have fallen from 35 percent to 26 percent, but April is holding up pretty well. Overall, the probability of his removal by June have fallen to 74 percent.

Posted 10:25 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Despot or Sexpot?

Take the quiz here.



Posted 8:42 PM by Oscar Jr.
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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Best of the Web yesterday linked to this opinion piece by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of weasel jr. Belgium, who writes:

Belgium has been at the centre of international attention in the past few days.

Correction: Belgium either does not exist or has recently ceased to exist.

Yet the Belgian story of last week is but a small part of something that goes much deeper. I have been trying to find out in recent weeks what is really going on between both sides of the Atlantic. Why are some European countries not solidly behind the US, as they usually are in times of crisis?

A compelling explanation can be found in this terrific essay by Steven Den Beste, who writes:

The answer is that the purpose of the European Union is to roll back the post-war experiment in western Europe with capitalist representative democracy, and to restore Europe to its rightful place at the center of the world's stage by displacing the US as the predominant power in the world.

The driving motivation behind it is a religious belief, along with a nostalgia for past greatness, profound distrust of the masses, and resentment of American power and influence, as well as outright fear of what America might decide to do with its unprecedented position in the world.

Back to Mr. Verhofstadt:

Because, I think, the real threat is lacking. At least, that is what most Europeans feel. And a sense of real threat is crucial if we, battle-weary Europeans, are to take up arms.

When in doubt, consult Workers World: "Every new or aspiring NATO member, and most of the old ones, have endorsed war against Iraq."

NATO expanded from 16 to 19 countries in 1999 with the entrance of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Other former socialist countries, now capitalist semi-colonies, are lining up to join. The U.S.-dominated military alliance stretches now from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and has begun to reach from Kosovo to Kazakhstan.

Heh.

Back to Mr. Verhofstadt:

This is not to say I feel any sympathy for Saddam Hussein. He is a villain, a threat to his own people and a substantial factor behind instability in the Middle East. If we do not stop the Iraqi leader, he will go on trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And without military pressure from the US, there would not even have been any new United Nations inspections in Iraq. On the other hand, neither Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, nor Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, have yet found a smoking gun. And while it is beyond dispute that Baghdad sponsors terrorists, such as the Palestinian suicide bombers, the indications of a link with al-Qaeda are not very substantive, to say the least.

Yeah, he's a bad guy, but...

But, "It Was Never About a Smoking Gun" says former weapons inspector David Kay.

(Rachel Lucas expresses her dislike of the "smoking gun" metaphor here.)

As long as we Europeans feel threatened, the use of war and weapons can more or less be justified. However, without this sentiment, a transatlantic gulf has opened up. I fear this rift will only grow. As long as Soviet divisions could reach the Rhine in 48 hours, we obviously had a blood brotherhood with our cousins overseas. But now that the cold war is over, we can express more freely our differences of opinion. And one of those differences of opinion concerns the fundamental question about the use of war as an extension of politics. (emphasis added)

"Thanks for protecting our necks, again. Good luck saving your own."

Moreover, the balance in transatlantic relations has shifted. Our continent is no longer the exhausted and traumatised west of 1945. Indeed, we remain grateful to America, as well as to Britain, for putting an end to our nightmare. But many things have changed since 1945. That explains the tensions within the Atlantic alliance. For years traditional Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean have been sceptical about the development of a strong European pillar within Nato. Some have even strongly opposed it. And their argument is the same: it would be the beginning of the end for Nato.

Exactly the opposite is true: as long as we have no European pillar within Nato, its unity will be at risk. There is an imbalance in the alliance: one superpower and 18, mainly European, countries with shattered defences.

Self-shattered, perhaps? According to this article in Policy Review:

This perceived weakness becomes real when one looks at military spending and capabilities. For many years, European governments have reduced or maintained low budgets for the military and defense, arguing that the post–Cold War world poses lesser threats that can be handled more effectively by means other than brute military force. Americans, on the other hand, have argued that Europeans are making a unilateral decision to forgo extensive military cooperation with the United States. Our findings suggest that this tension will not disappear anytime soon.

Europeans may be willing to support the use of force in theory, but they are less interested in spending real money for military purposes. When asked whether defense spending should be expanded, cut, or kept the same, 19 percent of Europeans want to boost military funding, 33 percent want to cut it back, and another 42 percent want to maintain current low defense budgets. By contrast, 44 percent of Americans are willing to spend more on defense, and another 38 percent support current levels of spending, which are already significantly higher than European expenditures.

The rest of Mr. Verhofstadt's comments have already been well-addressed in the post, mentioned above, by Mr. Den Beste.



Posted 3:03 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Blog Stuff

Thanks to the gang at Silent Running, for linking to this humble site.

Wind Rider wrote,

Shining on the A.N.S.W.E.R. lunacy, in all the sewers and under all the slimy rocks...

That's me, plumbing the sewers and climbing under slimy rocks for our mutual edification.

Silent Running is now, of course, on the Circle of Reciprocity.

Update: A belated thanks to Bigwig, too, for linking to the post below on teacher Ian Harvey. A Hrakalanche is a nice experience.



Posted 12:49 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: Alleged American War Crimes

Tonight, we meet teacher of cultural history at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore and North American Coordinator for Women for Mutual Security Lenora Foerstel and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer":

Ms. Foerstel's alternative version of the U.S.'s military history since WWII, published January 26, 2002, is here:

Excerpts:

The royal family in Kuwait was used by the United States government to justify a massive assault on Iraq in order to establish permanent dominion over the Gulf. The Gulf War was begun not to protect Kuwait but to establish US power over the region and its oil.6 In 1990, General Schwarzkopf had testified before the Senate that it was essential for the U.S. to increase its military presence in the Gulf in order to protect Saudi Arabia. However, satellite photos showed no Iraqi troops near the Saudi Border.

and

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the U.S. has waged a merciless war against the Afghan people, using chemical, biological and depleted uranium (DU) weapons. The use of DU continues to spread radiation throughout large parts of Afghanistan and will affect tens of thousands of people in generations to come, causing lung cancer, leukemia and birth defects. DU was also used against Iraq and Yugoslavia, where the frequency of cancer has tripled.

The bombing of the Afghan population has forced thousands of civilians to flee to Pakistan and Iran, and seven to eight million civilians are facing starvation. UNICEF spokesman Eric Larlcke has stated, "As many as 100,000 more children will die in Afghanistan this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities in the next six weeks."10

The racist underpinnings of the American world-view allows the American press and its political leaders to be silent on the mass killing of Third World children. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, has stated that the U.S. is not looking to negotiate peace with the Taliban and Al-Quida in Afghanistan.

I've found no retraction or correction of the above post.

Here's an early description of the refugee situation:

REFUGEE RETURNS TO AFGHANISTAN LARGEST IN 30 YEARS, UN AGENCY SAYS
Source: UN News, 03.09.02

The more than 1.6 million Afghans who have returned home since March constitute the largest single refugee repatriation in 30 years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today.

According to a spokesman for the UN agency, more than 1.63 million people have returned to Afghanistan over the past six months. By adding the estimates of spontaneous returns since late 2001, more than 1.9 million Afghans have repatriated to the war-torn country.
[...]
Thousands of Afghan refugees continue to repatriate daily, although the pace from Pakistan has been rapidly declining, the spokesman said. "There has, however, been an increase in returns from Iran," Mr. Redmond said. "Considering the state of Afghanistan's infrastructure and the security problems that still affect many areas, this is an astonishing number."

August saw the lowest number of refugees going back under the joint UNHCR-Afghan Transitional Authority repatriation operation that began in March. Over 196,000 returned home last month - less than half the more than 412,000 refugees who went back in May when the repatriation reached its peak.

In all, more than 1.44 million Afghans have returned from Pakistan, according to Mr. Redmond, while the total number of assisted returns from Iran stood at over 180,000 plus an additional 55,000 spontaneous returnees since April. Meanwhile, some 10,000 Afghans have gone back from the Central Asian states with UNHCR assistance.

UNHCR estimates that 2 million Afghans will return home this year, although the number of refugees and other Afghans still outside the country is difficult to assess because of the large number of migrant workers in countries like Pakistan and Iran, Mr. Redmond said.

One might think that the North American Coordinator for Women for Mutual Security would appreciate seeing this:

I do. Do you think they, too, find America racist?



Posted 12:31 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Loopiness

Posted 1:28 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: A Teacher with A.N.S.W.E.R.

Meet Ian Harvey, Naples, Florida teacher and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer":

Former Lely High School teacher and peace activist Ian Harvey often wrote letters to the editor.

Some garnered more attention than others.

One letter published in the Dec. 5, 2001, Daily News put him squarely in the media spotlight.

"At 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 9, a protest will be held at the corner of Golden Gate Parkway and U.S. 41 by Collier County residents and anyone else interested against the war on Afghanistan, against U.S. support for the Northern Alliance or any other mujahadeen gangs like them, against the many civilian deaths caused by U.S. policy ...," Harvey wrote.

and

In his seven-page report, district investigator Peter DeBaun concluded that Harvey:

- Used his classroom as a forum to espouse his ideological views and thus make his students sit as a captive audience to the detriment of the learning environment.

- Provided course materials, engaged in discussion and behaved in such a way that served to inhibit the free flow of ideas and skew learning ideologically so as to taint the learning process in violation of School Board policy and The Principles of Professional Conduct of the Education Profession in Florida.

- Allowed his ideological views to affect the efficiency of school operations.

I find this interesting:

The First Amendment, DeBaun argued, "does not give an employee carte blanche to do and express whatever he wants in a public school environment."

According to his report, Harvey intimidated students who disagreed with his views and once ignored a female student who asked him to tone down his antiwar talk because her boyfriend was in the military.

He noted that 67 percent of Harvey's students in the term following Sept. 11 either failed or received a D.

According to Harvey, DeBaun ignored class materials that offered both sides of issues. Harvey also denied dismissing the female student's concerns about her boyfriend. Most of his students got poor grades last semester because they didn't participate or failed to hand in the required journal, he said.

No grading curve in that class, I guess. I might like to know more about this, too:

Musicians today often attempt to address the concerns of disenfranchised youth, flawed as those attempts seem to Marxist- Leninists like ourselves. I believe, however, that the subversiveness of rock-and-roll and rap can serve sometimes as an impetus to revolutionary politics in youth - I graduated from Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" to The Communist Manifesto!

Posted 12:34 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Status Report

I've just returned from the first Oscar Jr.-sponsored New York City blog-bash. I'm pretty sure I was the only blogger there, but a good time was had by all of me.



Posted 11:24 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Exactly Right

Whenever I'm tempted to link to something by James Lileks, I start by choosing an excerpt of his great prose. Finding one excerpt insufficient, the post inevitably grows. ("Once You Pop, You Can't Stop!") Wary of copying his entire post, I give up.

CGHill has it exactly right here:

Excerpting Lileks is rather like fixating on Marilyn Monroe a square inch at a time...

Here's the full Lileks. "Read the whole thing."

Update: And here's the whole Marilyn:

I think they both deserve our attention.



Posted 8:58 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: Support the Women of Afghanistan, But Not Iraq

So implies Roz Rayner-Rix of the Hambleton Area Belly Dance Association and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer" on her website:

On Afghanistan, in a post titled, "AFGHANISTAN Summer 2001," Ms. Rayner-Rix writes:

There are underground women's groups in Afghanistan, which are operating extremely dangerous activities. They meet secretly in small groups to paint their nails or make up their faces. If they were caught they could face death for doing this. We cannot comprehend living in this way, when we have the freedom to drive cars, own property, have careers, paint our faces and dye our hair whatever colour we choose, as often as we like. Female children born into these families are offered no education, however there are groups who are trying under extreme difficulties to give some sort of education to these children. What it will do for them, who knows as female teachers and doctors are a thing of the past and women die every day as they cannot be touched by a male doctor and if women are not to be educated then it has a logical conclusion.

Dance was a very popular thing in Afghanistan, not any more. The words of the Koran are the only music to be heard now. Musical instruments have been destroyed along with tape TV's and CD and video players. Dance is a primal instinct and even cave men made music by chanting and banging on primitive drums. Afghanistan has pushed itself right back into a time so far , it never existed.

Many Eastern countries want to keep out so called Westernisation, yet every city in the world is busy, simply because people have to get together to trade. People have to eat, they also have to have places to live and clothes to wear. To learn how to do all this is called progress and to do so requires an education. Are we as human beings going to allow this to be just for men? While the women are shut up in what purports to boxes 24 hours a day.....

Subsequent military action by the U.S. and allies seems to have helped with that problem. Yet she also writes:

I cannot believe that we are yet again faced with a ridiculous and unnecessary war. What sort of world leader would condemn terrorism so severely after September 11th 2001, yet keep on supporting Israel. Why provoke the people of the Arab world to terrorism? Many can only attack with their bodies and car bombs. They have nothing else.

Now we have to live with the threat of a war with Iraq. How many innocent lives will be lost if this is allowed to continue? How can the terrorist attacks ever be stopped if the Arab nations are continually provoked by the threat of war?

It is countries more powerful than the Arab countries who are doing the provoking, yet the Muslim World would all join together to become a force to be reckoned with, if unnecessary war were declared.

We all are aware of the character of Saddam Husain. He has been fairly quiet for a number of years. He has his followers, yet he is not loved by all Iraqi's. Many of these people are extremely poor, as are many Palestinians. What harm have they done to us?

I cannot condone any military action on Iraq at this time. The so called evidence for the construction of Nuclear weapons is so flimsy. The scientists documents found by the weapons inspectors were the mans personal property. Did you see the amount of dust on those chemical weapons containers? Everyone I speak to has seen right through this scam....

Does she: (a) deny that removing the Taliban improved the lives of women in Afghanistan, (b) accept that the lot of Afghan women was improved, but deny that removing the Baathists will improve the lives of women (and non-women) in Iraq, or (c) simply latch onto the cause-of-the-day?



Posted 1:24 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: An Alternative History of Iraq Since the First Gulf War

(I have no idea if this is Mr. Hugus, but the picture sits atop a letter from him here.)

So offers Richard Hugus, a self-employed Falmouth carpenter and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer" in this June 25, 2000 letter to a former governor of Massachusetts:

I am writing to protest the use of the Massachusetts Air National Guard to enforce the "no-fly" zones in Iraq. The mission is scheduled for this fall for the 102nd Fighter Interceptor Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base at the Massachusetts Military Reservation. What business is it of the "citizen soldiers" of the Massachusetts National Guard to prevent the people of Iraq, a sovereign nation, from using the air space above their own land? The no-fly zones have been imposed upon Iraq unilaterally by the United States and Britain. They have not been approved
by any UN ruling or international law. Nor has the United States declared a war against Iraq. The Gulf War officially ended in 1991.

Under 10 USC 12301(d) volunteer members of the National Guard may be called to active duty during peacetime only by
consent of the Governor. What justification do you give for allowing Massachusetts Guardsmen to be involved in exercises
that have been killing, by means of bombs and missiles, an average of one civilian per day in Iraq? Since December 1998,
bombings by U.S. planes have become almost a daily occurence. Because of economic sanctions imposed by the United
States, as many as one million Iraqis have already died of starvation, malnutrition, and easily treatable diseases. This is in
addition to the 200,000 Iraqis killed in the Gulf War. After all this, what right does the United States have to subject
civilians of this devastated country to unrestricted bombing?

What business is it of the "citizen soldiers" of the Massachusetts National Guard to prevent the people of Iraq, a sovereign nation, from using the air space above their own land?

This business:

My hon. Friend also raised the question of the no-fly zones over Iraq. I would first like to record our gratitude for the invaluable role played by the RAF air crews who have risked their lives for eight years to protect Iraqi civilians from repression. The no-fly zones were established to protect innocent Iraqi civilians from persecution at the hands of the Iraqi air force. Although 1991 may seem a long time ago, it is still vivid in the minds of those Iraqi Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmen who fled their homes in fear as Iraqi helicopter gunships attacked their villages. That was not the first time that those villages had suffered. In the 1970s and 1980s, Iraqi forces destroyed more than 3,000 Kurdish villages. That is never referred to by the critics of our policy in the debate on sanctions.

On the question of the chemical weapons attack on Halabja, I recently met professor Christine Gosden of Liverpool university. She has expert knowledge of the awful medical conditions suffered by the people of that town: infertility, miscarriages, congenital abnormalities, and cancers. They also suffer from respiratory problems caused by the inhalation of mustard gas. These dreadful illnesses continue to afflict people born in those areas even today.

Anyone who has seen the effects of such attacks on innocent civilians will want to ensure that such atrocities can never happen again. That is what our pilots do in the no-fly zones over Iraq. They patrol the zones every week, as they have for the past nine years, to deter Iraqi air attacks on Iraqi civilians. That happens not only in the north. RAF aircraft have also patrolled in the south since the establishment of the southern no-fly zone in 1992, to limit the repression of the Shi'a Muslims.

As well as damaging the southern marshlands, Iraqi forces did much to destroy the way of life of the marsh Arabs. The persecution continues today. In March last year, Iraqi firing squads summarily executed a number of alleged demonstrators from Basra, who had already been tortured while in detention. Afterwards, they were buried in a mass grave. Why is no attention focused on that?

We must not forget what happened in the years leading up to the creation of the no-fly zones, nor should we ignore the repression that continues on the ground.

Security Council resolution 688 called on Iraq to end its repression. The zones were set up in support of that resolution. Since December 1998, Iraqi forces have maintained a sustained campaign to try to shoot down our aircraft, which are defending the rights of Iraqi citizens. Iraqi forces have shot at, or otherwise threatened, UK and US aircraft more than 630 times. Those threats are real, and our forces have responded in a proportionate manner, in self defence. That is their right under international law, and their safety must be paramount.

I must make it clear that we do not target civilian infrastructure. All defensive action is strictly limited to responses against Iraqi weapons and facilities that pose a threat to our forces. Our forces make every effort to minimise the risk to civilians when responding to threats. I urge hMs to treat Iraqi reports of civilian casualties with great caution. As my hF is aware, the Iraqis have, in the past accused us of killing civilians on days when we have not even been flying, and of damaging buildings later shown to be intact.

What justification do you give for allowing Massachusetts Guardsmen to be involved in exercises that have been killing, by means of bombs and missiles, an average of one civilian per day in Iraq?

I don't believe your statistic, but will this suffice?

That attitude applies to military operations, too. Some in the north do criticize American bombing in the south, but only because they think it does not go far enough: They want a sustained military campaign to remove Saddam from power. People here also vigorously support the American- and British-enforced no-fly zones that protect the north's independence. People in Dohuk, just five minutes from Iraqi government lines, visibly relax when they hear Allied sorties flying overhead. They understand that the real menace to their well-being--and to that of their fellow Iraqis--isn't international pressure. It's the dictator to the south.

Posted 1:05 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Objective Saddameter Update

Since yesterday's post on objective measures of the probability that Saddam will be removed from office (which Bill Quick was kind enough to link to and comment on here), the market has determined that things are looking up for Saddam:

The bad news (for us, good for him) is that the market judges him 14.3 percent less likely to be removed by March. The less bad news (for us, less good for him) is that he's still faces only 1-in-4 odds of maintaining power by June, a decrease of only 2.6 percent. Slate holds constant at 92 percent (yesterday's 92 percent was published after I posted), but represents a 2.1 percent decline from Friday. Confounding this trend, the other potential and objective indicator discussed, the index of Kuwaiti stocks, increased by 0.7 percent for the day.

The current issue of Forbes covers this market (link requires registration):

Will Saddam be gone by the end of March? If you think so, then put your money where your mouth is by buying Saddam futures contracts. Listed by Irish firm Tradesports.com, the contract pays $10 if Hussein is out of power by Mar. 31 and nothing if he holds on. After Secretary of State Colin Powell's United Nations speech the contract was offered for $3.60--suggesting a 36% probability that Saddam will change his address. Daily trading volume surged 56% before the speech, and as of early February, 37,000 contracts were outstanding. ISI Group, a Washington, D.C.investment and geopolitical research firm, finds this lottery ticket attractively priced. Says ISI Managing Director Thomas Gallagher: "This is a close call--if diplomacy is given until mid-March before a war starts, Saddam may be in his last days by the end of March."

Since the article was written, the implied March probability has fallen to 30 percent. Is the price even more attractive, or are we getting too close to the March deadline?

Update: I seem to have killed the Roz Rayner-Rix, Hambleton Area Belly Dance Association, post that was below this one. I hope to restore it, or re-create it, at some point.

Update the update: Google's cache saves me again. I've left Google's highlighting in the restored post in tribute. Google capitalizes Blogger, Googles saves me. I'll be buying shares.



Posted 7:23 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Fun with Google: How the US Was A Maverick, Crazy State under Clinton, Too

So says the felicitously named Felicity Arbuthnot, freelance journalist and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer" in this July 7, 1999 interview with the World Socialist Web Site:

I think the biggest disaster is what we are laying down in the Middle East. There's this sort of bewilderment, particularly about Britain. They have all written off the US as a maverick crazy state. But they say, "You know, all the ties we have with Britain. We know about colonialism, we know about the spying that went on over the years, we know about the manipulation. But deep down we have had cultural ties, trade ties, historical ties. So many families have had somebody who came to Britain for postgraduate study." And now there's both bewilderment and a sort of hate, that a country, with which they have had these historic ties—and history is very strong in Iraq—has just trashed them and abandoned them.

This was news to me:

When I was in Baghdad this time I went to what is called the Reconstruction Museum, which is in a huge, very beautiful Ottoman building beside the Tigris. They have minutely reconstructed every public building, from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south, that was damaged in the Gulf War. Then they show how they have been reconstructed. I was stunned to see that in every city the television station was bombed. In Yugoslavia they bombed every radio and television centre. We heard about a couple of them, but in fact there were 27.

They also targeted education. In every single town in Iraq, the educational establishments were targeted. On the same day the stores that provided educational materials were also targeted. This can only be described as a kind of cultural or historical cleansing (emphasis added)

Posted 6:37 PM by Oscar Jr.
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A Better Saddameter?

Some fun (e.g., VodkaPundit) has been had around the Blogosphere at the expense of Slate's Saddameter ("Chance of Invasion Today [February 14]: 94" percent). Introducing the feature, William Saletan writes:

Four years ago, Slate published a Clintometer that tracked President Clinton's chances of being removed from office during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This year, Slate presents the Saddameter, which monitors the chances of a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The Saddameter probability of invasion has increased from an initial 58 percent (on November 18, 2002) to a high of 97 percent (on February 10, 2003) and stood at 94 percent as of Friday.

In search of some objective data, via Chicago Boyz, I found this Bloomberg News article on traded "Saddam Hussein Futures." As of February 10, this market was placing odds of 43 percent that Hussein would be out of power by March, 74 percent by April, 82 percent by May and 84 percent by June (updated data available here), so Slate's forecast seems a bit more optimistic to those of us who support this war than that of people willing to put their own money on the line (assuming, correctly I think, that an invasion of Iraq is equivalent to Hussein being removed from power).

(The current implied probabilities are 35 percent, 63 percent, 73 percent and 77 percent, respectively. There appears to have been a small decline in the shortest-term contract over the weekend, perhaps in reaction to this weekend's anti-Democracy-in-Iraq protests. The June contract actually increased slightly since Friday.)

Here's a chart showing the prices of the June no-Saddam contract:

Some more objective evidence:

Weekly Review & Analysis
Jordan Investment Trust Pllc.
Issue No. 40, Dec 15, 2002

The threat of war had a negative impact as well on the performance of Arab stock markets, with Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt suffering most. The stock markets of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which enjoyed good performance in the first half of the year, retreated in the third quarter but stayed in positive territories in the fourth quarter. Kuwait and Qatar have so far this year surged by more than 30% and UAE by 22%. We expect Jordan and most GCC stock markets to do well next year as Iraq-related political/military tension subsides. However, the uncertainty associated with future US-Saudi relations is likely to have an adverse impact on the performance of the Saudi market. Kuwait will benefit from the absence of Iraqi risk on its northern border. The UAE and Oman will also do well, while Qatar may witness a correction after two years of successive stellar performance in which the market index rose by more 30% annually. We remain bearish on Palestine, Morocco and Tunisia next year and opportunistic on Lebanon and Egypt. (emphasis added)

Source: Bloomberg.

By any measure, then, things appear to be looking positive of late for Democracy in Iraq.



Posted 2:31 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Life Maintenance Day

"Please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like."

And help support democracy in Iraq. Dean's World and Winds of Change lead the way with this effort, while we await the big dictator-removal campaign to come.



Posted 9:54 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Blog-Guilt

To anyone who might notice, I apologize for the lack of content (such as it has been) of late. I started this site at the worst (i.e., busiest) possible time (excluding, I suppose, that bender in graduate school) due to requirements at work. I intend to return. Or retire young, so I can blog more.

At least, I've kept any readers' expectations low.

Query: Would you trade members of the Senate minority leadership with, say, random members of your local White Pages?



Posted 12:50 AM by Oscar Jr.
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A Preliminary, Less Preliminary and Shoddy Statistical Analysis of the Heights of the Blogosphere, Crediting Bigwig

In this post, I quoted Bigwig (from the comments in a related post):

[Y]ou need to factor in the age of the blog, as well. Those lists tend to grow over time.

I responded:

[O]nce a weblog is established (however that may be defined), as those in the MBE would seem to be, I see no reason to expect that the ratio of ingoing-to-outgoing links will necessarily increase over time. At an extreme, while InstaPundit may be reluctant to add more links, new websites like mine will continue to link to him. But are most established sites close to that extreme?

(If this article, New Poll Shows Correlation Is Causation is correct, Bigwig was right.)

From the most recent iteration of the Myelin Blogosphere Ecosystem (MBE), for 50 randomly-chosen blogs (I'm working on the rest), I gathered, in addition to the number of outgoing links, the date of the first post I could find. (This is the best proxy I could find for blog-age, though a few sites tend to move and lose archives).

I then estimated the relationship between the number of incoming links and (i) the number of outgoing links and (ii) the relative age of the blog compared to the average age for the 50 on which I've gathered data. The number of outgoing links is statistically significant at the 99% level, and the relative blog-age is much more statistically significant. These variables alone explain about 66% of the variation in the number of incoming links for these 50 blogs. Each outgoing link is worth about 0.9 incoming links for these blogs, and each year in existence beyond the average of 1.4 years for these sites is worth another 142 incoming links (or an additional link every four days).

This is getting interesting. Thanks for the idea, Bigwig.



Posted 11:44 PM by Oscar Jr.
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War of the Words

John Hawkins, proprietor of Right Wing News, hands out the First Annual Warblogger Awards. Laurence Simon is kind enough to share his voting record. Perhaps inexplicably, I was not sent a ballot. In the unlikely chance that there is a recount, here's how I would have voted (no slights intended to any of the other sites I regularly read -- you're on the blogroll for a reason):

Most Underrated Blog
I agree with the real voters here: Brothers Judd. I also find Rantburg underappreciated. And Juan Gato deserves to win something.

Best Unknown Blog
Dunno.

Favorite Editorial Writer Who's Not A Blogger
Mark Steyn.

Favorite Member Of The Bush Administration Other Than Bush
Rumsfeld.

Most Annoying Celebrity
Barbra Streisand

Most Annoying Blogger
Not applicable -- I don't read annoying blogs. I write them.

Most Overrated Blog
Mr. Hawkins does not allow for own-votes. Nonetheless, Oscar Jr.

Most Missed
I'd vote for Spoons, but he just posts in other bloggers' comments now, or Jeff Goldstein, but he still promises to return. Instead, my vote goes to Whigging Out, who really seems to be gone.

The Most Bloodthirsty Blog
I expected to vote for Dracula, but this doesn't seem so bloodthirsty:

I have no idea if I'm doing this correctly or not, No sense going any farther until I know for sure...

I guess I'll join Laurence in voting for The Rottweiler, Misha, instead.

Best Looking Blog
Little Green Footballs.

Best Group Blog
The Corner.

Best Non-American Blog
Tim Blair.

Best Female Blogger
Can I split my vote between Michele, of A Small Victory, and Rachel Lucas?

The Best Fisker
Misha, again.

The Funniest Blog
Scrappleface is always funny, but Frank J. of IMAO, both blood-thirsty and hilarious, gets my vote. He gets additional points for hating me.

Best Linker
Instapundit.

Best Original Content
USS Clueless. Runner-up, Eject! Eject! Eject!.

Best Blog Overall (5 selections)
1. Instapundit.
2. Daily Pundit.
3. Lileks.
4. LGF.
5. USS Clueless.



Posted 1:28 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Ooh, This Should Be Good

E. Nough finally has his own site, Thinking Meat. I expect to be spending a great deal of time there. Enough said.



Posted 11:31 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Passing Thoughts

I. I suspect that most everyone interested has already read Clay Shirky's Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality.

Gist:

Once a power law distribution exists, it can take on a certain amount of homeostasis, the tendency of a system to retain its form even against external pressures. Is the weblog world such a system? Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.

Though there are more new bloggers and more new readers every day, most of the new readers are adding to the traffic of the top few blogs, while most new blogs are getting below average traffic, a gap that will grow as the weblog world does. It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.

It's an interesting thesis about which I've not given sufficient thought, but my initial reaction is negative. I expect that this static view of the Blogosphere will not be borne out. I'm still collecting data, but will comment further soon.

II. The Corner and Instapundit have already linked to this article in the Telegraph, but I can't resist highlighting these three paragraphs:

The German government attempted to play down the criticism. "Mr Rumsfeld is like he is. I can say no more," said Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister. Other senior politicians were more explicit. "Rumsfeld has flipped out - his behaviour is impossible," said Klaus Kinkel, a Free Democrat and former foreign minister.

Some Germans have misgivings, however, that their country's hard line against war with Iraq may backfire - especially if, as widely predicted, France drops its own objections at the last minute and joins in military action.

Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democrats, yesterday became the first opposition figure to call for Germany to become involved. "If it is impossible to solve the situation peacefully then Germany has to take part in a military operation," she said, accusing Mr Schröder's government of "spreading ill-will and confusion" in Nato.

Two thoughts come to mind: 1) Thank goodness for our impossible, American, Rumsfeld; and 2) Germany: If we can't stop America, then we'll join her.

III. Via Silflay Hraka, I've added Dances with Dogs to the massive blogroll after reading one post, and it's comments. Please read it, and tell me if I was wrong.

IV. I missed dinner, but managed to avoid both violence and scantily dressed young women (alas) tonight.



Posted 2:45 AM by Oscar Jr.
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A Night in My Life

Newly-burned compact disk, book (my first attempt at Heinlein) and WSJ crossword puzzle in hand, I walked to the local pub for a light meal and a couple of adult beverages. The crowd was a little more interesting and young than usual, so the music would have to wait for another night. Quite a bit of dancing and stuff was taking place around me, distracting me from the book and crossword puzzle, so I chatted with the always-friendly bartender.

A guy of approximately my age walked in and took the seat next to me. He struck up a conversation with a girl and her two male companions on the other side. He bought them a round of drinks.

Grown bored with them, he turned to me. His first question: "How'd you get those black eyes?" I explained to him that it's a lack of sleep, rather than an excess of violence, that lead to my present condition. He went on to lecture me about the problems caused by working too much (thanks!, buddy), repeatedly slap my back, hug me (I'm not so big on hugging, especially unrelated males), and insult the girl next to him. He bought me a beer. He called me, "an old guy." I've never been called "old" by anyone more than a few years out of college, so I was a bit taken aback.

He quickly grew bored with me, too. He paid the $50 bar tab (run up in less than 30 minutes), and left. I later found out that the aforementioned girl's two companions had taken issue with our departed friend's insults, and assaulted him on the sidewalk. Bad behavior running amuck, I decided to head home.

Showing no judgment whatsoever, I decided to stop at the place on the corner for a nightcap and to see an acquiantance who works there. Lots of really, really pretty young women work there, so maybe I needed to get over the hug. The bar was pleasant enough at first, and a little less crowded than usual. Soon, however, things got interesting there, too. The DJ played some song which apparently drives said pretty, young women insane. Within seconds, they were all dancing rather, um, lasciviously together. I had a second nightcap.

I had my new, digital camera with me ("Terror Alert: High"), but couldn't muster the nerve to use it there. To my few readers, I apologize.

Well, it's almost time to go out for dinner again. Maybe tonight I'll actually get some reading done.



Posted 9:18 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Filler

Lest anyone think I spend my weekends gathering data on blogs better than mine (which already took up most of my Saturday) in order to "quanitify the Blogosphere", tonight, while reading Happy Fun Pundit, I'm mixing-up a CD to entertain the kids at the local pub. (Note to RIAA, I own all of the content.)

I have to self-censor a bit, as the otherwise-kind proprietess doesn't think much of my musical tastes. In the interest of posting something today, and perhaps spreading these questionable tastes, here's the contents of my previous endeavor:

Freedom of 76 - Ween (a fun website, too)
Spinning - Hazel Motes (featuring a blogger bassist)
U-Mass - Pixies
Let's Save Tony Orlando's House - Yo La Tengo
Cold Brains - Beck
Cure for Pain - Morphine
Snibe - Sunny Day Real Estate
Waitin' for Superman - Flaming Lips (another fun website)
Rachael - Buffalo Tom
Rise - American Music Club
Tropicalia - Beck
Where'd You Go - J. Mascis & Fog
60 Miles an Hour - New Order
Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
Ocean Size - Jane's Addiction
Debris Slide - Pavement
Something about What Happens When We Talk - Lucinda Williams
Closing Time - Semisonic
Lithium - Nirvana

And here's tonight's effort:

Fight Test - Flaming Lips
Still - Hazel Motes
Hate Song - The Posies
I Can't Wait to Meetchu - Macy Gray
Never Bought It - Dinosaur Jr.
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bryan Ferry (thanks!, dad)
Tee Ni Nee Ni Noo/Tip on In - Alex Chilton
All He Wants to Do Is Fish - The Replacements (thanks!, brother)
Warm Machine - Bush
A Fool for Love - Bryan Ferry
Vaporub - Bob Mould
Joppa Road - Ween
One - Sunny Day Real Estate
Precious Moments - The Posies
Cruella de Ville - The Replacements
Along the Way - Bob Mould
Baby Bitch - Ween
Make a Little Love - Alex Chilton

Time to go. Back tomorrow.



Posted 10:36 PM by Oscar Jr.
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Quantifying Hraka

Since I'm home from the office early tonight, I think I'll try to post something.

In a comment, Bigwig of Silflay Hraka wrote:

So, what does this analysis predict for long, difficult to type and essentially meaningless blognames?

(I assume he was referring to his own site. If not, please ignore the rest of this post, but the answer then should be obvious.)

Actually, Silflay Hraka isn't long (13 characters vs. an average of 15), difficult to type (test your skills by clicking the link here) or meaningless (thanks to Bill Quick for pointing out the meaning, linked to here).

However, the Hraka-site was one of the inspirations for my analysis of the benefits of a big blogroll. When I first started reading the site, I could never remember how to spell "Silflay," so I would mouse my way over to Daily Pundit to track down the link. (This was before Instapundit added Bigwig to his blogroll, ignoring his less-prolific coauthors, as I've done in the Circle of Reciprocity).

Since Bigwig asked, this is what the preliminary and shoddy (and I mean it) analysis done to date says: given Silflay Hraka's generous number of outgoing links (161 versus an average of 92, though I can't yet test for, or qualify as, quality links) and it's shorter-than-average name (see above), the site has 25 fewer links than would be predicted (125 actual versus 150 predicted). I've done what I can to rectify this, of course.

Next question?



Posted 2:21 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Home at Last!

Four in the morning, and I'm finally home from the day job. Time to blog-up a storm? Nah, probably not. Time for the nightly dose of Lileks, though.

To those of you who stopped by to give my poor, neglected site some company, thanks! I hope to post something to justify your visiting soon.



Posted 4:25 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Further Quantifying the Heights of the Blogosphere, A Benefit of Brevity

We have previously discussed the relationship between outgoing and incoming links for the 177 sites both most linked-to and most link-generous in the Myelin blogging econsystem ("For each additional 10 outgoing links in their blogrolls, these sites receive an average of 4 more incoming links than their peers (a result statistically significant at the 98 percent level).")

Tonight, I analyze whether the length of a blog's name has any statistical relationship with the number of incoming links to that blog. I use the names assigned by the MBE (which are not always correct, e.g., "The Kolkata Libertarian" is named therein after its proprietor, Suman Palit). My hypothesis was that shorter blog names, easier to type and to link to, would be more likely to be cited.

(New Poll Shows Correlation Is Causation.)

Some evidence exists that this hypothesis is correct (a result significant at the 89 percent level). Each additional character in a blog-name is associated with 1.8 fewer incoming links. The average blog-name length is 15 characters. This result may help to explain the inexplicable success of the site IMAO, and will well-explain why I'm hoping to steal the domain name "O."

Sorry -- no graphs tonight. I have trouble working in three dimensions at this hour.



Posted 1:17 AM by Oscar Jr.
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A Little Linky-Hate

In response to my post below, Frank J. of IMAO , the correctly certified Imperial Secretary of War, wrote,

Oscar Jr. has insulted me and tried to outdo my scientific survey of bloggers' ages (mine still has more digits). The official stance of IMAO is that we (meaning me) hate him. I have added a him to my blogroll so I can later de-link him (the ultimate insult to a blogger).

Readers can judge for yourselves whether I insulted Frank J. (I did credit his extensive use of digits), but note that I've added him to the Circle of Reciprocity, the easier to defend myself when he de-links me.

Anyway, Frank J.'s very clever in setting me up for a fall, and ("IMAO doesn't have enough outgoing links to make the sample, ahem.") improving his chances at becoming the youngest atop the Myelin blogging ecosystem. I suspect that Secretary Rumsfeld would be impressed.



Posted 1:01 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Quantifying the Heights of the Blogosphere, or How to Avoid Work on a Saturday

Inspired by Frank J.'s unscientific poll of 62 of his self-selected blogger-readers (more here, here and here) and his very scientific use of digits in calculating an average blogger age of:

34.1612903225806451612903225806452 years of age,

I determined to add a small degree of "science" to the Blogosphere, surveying the 177 sites on both sides of the Myelin blogging ecosystem (i.e., both most-linked and most-linking) previously discussed here to see if I could verify IMAO's result. Of these 177, I was able to easily obtain (or estimate based on year of undergraduate degree) the age of 53 (or 30 percent of the) top bloggers. While this sample may well be biased (due to these bloggers' willingness to publish this personal information), I expected it to be less biased than a survey of readers of 23-year-old Frank J.'s juvenilia (one of whom is me, frequently). The youngest in my sample was Oliver Willis at age 25. (IMAO doesn't have enough outgoing links to make the sample, ahem.) Ben Domenech is surely younger, but I couldn't locate enough information to determine his specific age. I won't name the oldest, in the vain hope that he will someday visit this site.

For what it's worth, the average age for my sample of 53 webloggers is (IMAO-like) 36.9622641509434 and the median age is 36.

The full distribution is given here:

Posted 12:02 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Shuttle Columbia Lost

Bad news. Fox News is showing footage of the breakup and discussing stories of debris over east Texas. Damn.

My condolences to the families and friends of the crew of the Columbia.

InstaPundit has lots of interesting thoughts up already.

Update: Via The Corner, here's President Reagan's Address to the nation on the Challenger disaster. Two excerpts:

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

...

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Update the update: That didn't take long. The political conspiracy theorists are already blaming President Bush for this. Lowlives.



Posted 10:48 AM by Oscar Jr.
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Meme Must Die

Like me, Frank J. of IMAO hates the word "meme." I've never before used the word myself, and I cringe when an otherwise good writer feels the need to do so. Call me old-fashioned (if that's the best you can do), but I'll stick with more syllabic phrases like "clever concept" or "what the kids are talking about."

What's wrong with this word?

1. People who are enthusiastic about "memes" write things like this:

Abstract:

The dictionary definition, and Dawkins's (1976) original conception of the meme, both include the idea that memes are copied from one person to another by imitation. We therefore need to be clear what is meant by imitation. Imitation is distinguished from contagion, individual learning and various kinds of non-imitative social learning such as stimulus enhancement, local enhancement and goal emulation. True imitation is extremely rare in animals other than humans, except for birdsong and dolphin vocalisation, suggesting that they can have few or no memes. I argue that more complex human cognitive processes, such as language, reading, scientific research and so on, all build in some way on the ability to imitate, and therefore all these processes are, or can be, memetic. When we are clear about the nature of imitation, it is obvious what does and does not count as a meme. I suggest that we stick to defining the meme as that which is passed on by imitation.

Please shoot me! Or

2. It reminds us of the absence of Axis-of-Layne member a. beam. Or

3. It's also a French word:

France isn't so popular these days, especially not with Frank J.

Stupid and ugly word, it is. Let's ask Rumsfeld to get rid of it!



Posted 12:31 AM by Oscar Jr.
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