Back of the Envelope

Captain Ed has a lot of information on the 9/11 commission's report, starting with this post, which describes how the commission has been surprised to learn about the lieutenant colonel of Saddam's Fedayeen who was at one of the 9/11 planning meeting. Considering that this story was reported in the Wall Street Journal weeks ago, and I had seen it reported on various blogs, I want to know how the Commission failed to hear about it. They're treating it as if it were classified information they didn't have access to rather than a news story in the public domain. Then the Captain gives his take on William Safire's suggestions to fix the 9/11 Commission. Captain Ed thinks this is impossible to do, although I would like to see the Commission actually give a nonpartisan, accurate, and informative report with useful suggestions. I don't think it's likely, but I don't think it's impossible either. And finally, Captain Ed finds that at least one newspaper is retracting its absurd statments about the Commission's staff report last week. It's good when a newspaper realizes its mistakes, but as Captain Ed says, "Either all of these people simply take marching orders from the NY Times or they don't bother to read their source material very carefully, and likely the problem is a combination of both." All in all, good material from Captain Ed today. Read it all.

This subject came up at my Bible study on Tuesday: Do sitcoms today glamorize dishonesty? Does this affect the honesty of people who grow up watching them?

The question may be a bit too simplistic. Overall, I think I'd blame moral relativism as the source, and sitcoms as just a vehicle by which popular media helps to disseminate a really bad idea. But it is hard to deny that sitcoms seem to glorify that kind of behavior. The sitcoms I grew up with were shows like Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and Full House. These shows generally featured the cute kid, the rambunctious teenager, and the responsible adult, and numerous variations thereof. Humor more often came from the kids' cuteness and naivete than anything else. When there was lying involved, it was always the kids, they would always be found out, and always learn that lying was wrong. Important life lessons were a staple of the genre.

In edgy modern sitcoms, the humor comes more from misunderstanding and deceit than anything else. Hiding a romantic (meaning sexual) relationship, and the lies that entails, or faking a British accent to get a job, are certainly funny to watch, but if the lying does finally catch up to the culprit in these shows, and that's a huge if, it's generally swept under the rug and trivialized--no criminal charges, barely any hurt feelings, at most some embarrassment. Not exactly life lessons here.

This is of course a massive generalization. There have always been adult sitcoms and family sitcoms on television. Am I just comparing the family sitcoms I used to watch with the adult sitcoms I watch now? Or are adult sitcoms just more common now? Has the adult humor and mindset gradually edged into even the family sitcoms? Any thoughts?

Here are the things I was talking about over this past week. Fortunately, I had more to say this week than last. As usual, this post is timestamped to put it in the correct place in the archive.

Free Will and Eternal Security -- And the debate over whether free will and eternal security are internally inconsistent continues. Check Letters from Babylon for more.

Why I blog -- I answer La Shawn Barber's question and explain why I blog.

Of tigers and hamsters -- While everyone else is making fun of John Kerry's new nickname, "caged hamster," I take the New York Times to task for such a poor choice of words.

9/11 Commission reports no cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda on attacks -- I'm not sure which is worse, the Commission's vague deference to the conventional wisdom, or the media's misrepresentation of their admittedly vague position.

Mark Steyn misses the great communicator -- Yes, sometimes even we Bush supporters wish he were more like Reagan.

Once again this is late. Once again I've changed the timestamp to put it in the right place.

Sluggy Freelance -- Despite two days of filler, this was a very good week for Sluggy. So what if alt-Bert is dead, the DoP demons have captured alt-Riff, and alt-Zoe is now terrified of Torg, Torg's got a talking magic sword!

Day by Day -- It's the media this week. Even Fox News isn't immune.

It's Walky! -- It's a week for revelations. Beef is working for the bad guys willingly. But so is Mrs. Walkerton!

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- Roger meets the dragon while Diana figures out the truth about Roger.

General Protection Fault -- A tearful reunion of Fooker and Sharon. It's about time!

Schlock Mercenary -- Kevyn comes up with a way to ger Breya's ship running at slightly below optimal capacity.

I've been remiss not to point out some excellent articles by Doc Rampage. Be sure to read the following:

fisking David Greenberg -- Doc takes Mr. Greenberg to task for his partisan attempt to sound reasonable. A brief example:

[Greenberg]

Myth No. 3: Reagan was an incorrigible optimist. Or, as we've been hearing, his sunny disposition made him impossible to dislike. This is more a half-truth than a whole lie. Certainly, Reagan charmed political antagonists like Tip O'Neill. His morning-in-America campaign tapped into a public sense of hope. And he could deploy humor brilliantly. But Reagan also possessed an ugly mean streak. It was evident back when, as California governor, he warned student protesters, "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." Anyone who has watched the replays of Reagan saying, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green," or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," can see the manifest ferocity that was as crucial to Reagan's persona as his self-effacing grin.

I don't know if Greenberg is deliberately slandering Reagan here or he really is incapable of distinguishing between "an ugly mean streak" and courage. His second two quotes suggest the latter. The fact that he thinks his readers will interpret those two quotes as "an ugly mean streak" suggests that Greenberg is just morally stupid and can't see the difference.

As to the first quote, Greenberg obviously hasn't seen enough westerns. When the good guy points a gun at the bad guy, he has to make the bad guy understand that he means to use it. That's the only way to avoid using it. By making the students believe there really would be a blood bath, Reagan was trying to avoid a bloodbath. This should be blatantly obvious to everyone, including the students at the time. And if Reagan really was willing to have a blood bath? Well, the alternative was anarchy. The willingness to do what needs to be done is not a mean streak, it's courage. Get a dictionary, Mr. Greenberg.

The UN's sex-for-food scandal -- Doc thinks the sex-for-food scandal is overblown:

At the risk of being viewed as callous, I'd like to point out that prostitution is a nearly universal accompaniment of troops. The phrase "camp followers" sometimes specifically refers to prostitutes (and almost always includes them). These UN soldiers are acting no differently than any other soldiers in history, including American soldiers.

If there is a real horror here, (and I emphasize "if") it is that these girls are being so poorly fed at the refugee camp that they are forced into prostitution for a banana or other small bit of food. But I'm skeptical of even that. From the article, it seems that these girls are all former victims of sexual slavery. That is, it seems that they were all kept prisoner and raped repeatedly, by many men, over a long period of time before they got to the camps. And they came to the camps with babies conceived by those rapes.

on whether Bush is a conservative -- Doc takes on Andrew Sullivan in his attempt to paint Bush as... well, I guess I'm not really certain what Andrew's trying to do. He lists a bunch of Bush's conservative positions and then says they prove that Bush isn't really a conservative. Anyway, this appears to have been Doc's impression as well: "Now, anyone who reads my blog knows I'm not a Bush fan. I didn't vote for him, and if the Democrats had put up any kind of reasonable candidate, I would likely have voted against him this year. But really, this list of complaints is so off-the-wall that someone has to respond to them..."

All in all, it's good reading. You may not agree with all of it (I don't), but I highly recommend taking the time to read it.

Although he likes Bush, Mark Steyn wishes he were as well-spoken as Reagan:

I feel a bit like a guy who’s been dating a pleasant lady in the office for a couple of years and suddenly bumps into the gal he always adored in high school. As readers will know, I’m very supportive of George W. Bush, especially on the foreign policy front. But it was unfortunate that a week of 24/7 Ronald Reagan greatest hits on the cable networks should have had to stop once or twice a day to cross to a blinking, groggy Dubya at some G8 press conference with a duplicitous pseudo-ally going round in circles on Iraq for the umpteenth time. Bush is a great and remarkable president and, between Normandy and G8 and the UN, he actually had a very good week. But gosh, it’s hard not to miss the Gipper...
....
Bush has set himself a similar challenge — to remake the Middle East. I think he can do it. He’s played a shrewd hand with both fractious Iraqi politicians and devious UN diplomats and he’s seen off Chirac, but at home there’s undeniably a rhetorical shortfall, as there was in his Reagan eulogy. He could use some Reaganesque clarity and toughness, plus a little more lyricism in the patriotic uplift. But one of the problems with the Bush Administration is that they think they’re so good at walking the walk they don’t have to bother talking the talk. Wrong. Last week conservatives were reminded of everything they’ve missed these last ten years. Never glad confident ‘Morning In America’ again? Your call, Dubya.

It's hard to disagree with Steyn. On the whole, I agree with what Bush is doing and what he's trying to do. I think that too often he refuses to make the strong arguments he needs to make, preferring to let his actions speak for themselves. If the media were the bastion of truth and objectivity it makes itself out to be, that might work. But it's not. Even without the transparent liberal bias, all too often its quest for sensationalism and bad news would keep it from reporting on what's really going on. I'm just glad blogs are taking up some of the slack.

But do we believe them? The 9/11 Commission has severely damaged its own credibility already, so when they make a statement like this, we wonder:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

First, note that the commission doesn't deny links, just that these links included actual co-planning of attacks (something that no one's ever made a strong claim for, although there are tantalizing bits of evidence). Andrew McCarthy puts this in perspective:

That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine. [McCarthy's]) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Frankly, the commission report hasn't added anything new, merely restated the evidence for cooperation (while leaving out some significant, and what McCarthy would call inconvenient, evidence) and rehashed the conventional wisdom. I'm not impressed, but then, I'm not too surprised. Read all of McCarthy's article.

This is the best Sluggy Freelance in a long time. Not only is Torg cool when he runs to rescue the girl, he takes along a sentient magic sword--which no one knew was magic until now (although I have speculated about that being the case). All right, enough of me crowing about Sluggy Freelance. This is one webcomic which you really need to read from the beginning.

The Christian Carnival is up at Belief Seeking Understanding. Douglas Bass has divided the carnival into two parts, the first one here and second here.

As you may have noticed, there's a new button on my sidebar that takes you to Amazon. I've recently become an Amazon Associate, which basically means that if I link to a book on their website, I'll get a commission if someone follows the link and buys it. I also get a commission if someone follows the general link in my sidebar and buys something. I figured it wasn't a bad idea, as I tend to link to their website anyway whenever I'm discussing a book. I've been in the program for almost two weeks now, and I've only made the link once, so it's pretty clear that I'm not abusing it. But, if you intend to visit Amazon anyway, you may want to follow the link in my sidebar. (That's the one at the bottom: there's another button to Amazon's Honor System, but that's only for direct donations, and it doesn't say Amazon on it.)

This sort of thing would usually slip beneath my radar, although Tim Blair is having a lot of fun with it. From the New York Times, of all places:

Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road. He pokes at the perimeter of the campaign bubble that envelops him, constantly trying to break out for a walk around the block, a restaurant dinner, the latest movie.

Congrats to the VRWC operative who managed to slip that one into the paper of record. I don't even want to know who he bribed to make it happen.

Seriously, you'd think any newspaper editor who wants to make a good faith effort not to belittle a candidate (something I think they should do regardless of political bias) could come up with a better choice of words. For a counterexample, I have a tendency to pace when I'm thinking. When I'm in my own home, this doesn't bother anyone but me. If I do this while at work, however, it can annoy my co-workers. If they ask me to stop, I do, embarrassed that I'd fallen into the habit again. Just a month or so ago one co-worker said I was distracting her by pacing around like a caged tiger. So I stopped, embarrassed again, but being called a caged tiger did a lot to assuage my pride. If my co-worker, who is not a native English speaker, has enough tact to boost my ego while asking me to stop being so annoying, you'd think that the New York Times ought to be able to manage it for the man they want to be president. I realize Democrats, with their victim cult belief system, may have difficulty understanding why most men would rather be considered tigers than hamsters, but surely they realize that the dumb masses out there would rather have a tiger than a hamster as president during a time of war.

La Shawn Barber wants to know why we blog and why we read blogs. For me, the second part is easier to answer than the first part. I started reading blogs during the Iraq War in 2003. I tried to follow the war in the usual news outlets--CNN, MSNBC, ABC. It became clear very fast that I wasn't getting the whole story. The doom and gloom that they were preaching just didn't match up with what any idiot with a map could see. I found a bit of insight on MSNBC in the form of glennreynolds.com, where I could find links to other places with more accurate information on the war. This in turn brought me to Glenn's "other" blog, Instapundit. From Instapundit, of course, I discovered all sorts of other blogs, and soon I was reading them daily.

As for why I started to blog myself: the first reason was just one of productivity. I felt that with all the blogs I was reading, I just wasn't producing a whole lot, and I wanted to be writing something. And part of it was that I'd occasionally feel I had something to contribute to the debate, and commenting on the blogs of other people just wasn't a very good way to make my contribution.

If you want to submit a post to the Christian Carnival, send an e-mail to Douglass Bass of Belief Seeking Understanding. The post should be of a Christian nature, although it can also cover other issues from a Christian point of view. Please include the following information:

Title of your Blog
URL of your Blog
Title of your post
URL linking to that post
Description of the post

The deadline is 11:59:59 PM Tuesday.

Old Post: My last post on this was here.

Joshua Davey at Letters from Babylon argues that free will and eternal security are inconsistent:

If this is true, then I believe the Arminian who holds to eternal security puts himself in a very difficult position indeed. For if he believes that humans exercise genuine free will in the choice whether or not to accept the salvation that Christ offers, but at the same time believes that the believer cannot lose his salvation, he is essentially saying that the believer, in accepting Christ, forfeits at least an element of his free will—he cannot “un-choose” salvation. Thus, the Arminian who holds to eternal security seems to be saying that (1) part of what it means to be made in the image of God is to have genuine free will, (2) humans exercise this genuine free will in their choice whether or not to accept the salvation offered by Christ (3) once humans have accepted Christ, they cannot exercise their free will to un-choose salvation. To me, what seems to follow from this is that the Arminian who holds to eternal security must also believe that in making the choice to accept salvation, humans surrender their free will as to that most important decision, which in essence means they surrender part of the imago dei. And because I do not believe that humans can surrender part of the imago dei, I believe that holding to both Arminian free will and Calvinist eternal security is incoherent.

I'll admit that I do not find this argument very compelling. As surrender to God is in fact a large part of what it means to accept His grace, giving up a portion of your free will does not seem incompatible with the view that it is initially your will to give. He likens making the choice to accept God to crossing a street--sure you can cross it, but you can also walk back. I tend to think of our relationship with God in more binding terms, such as a contract or, more fittingly, a marriage. A marriage cannot be easily undone, at least not as Jesus saw it (Matthew 5:31-32), where, sure, you can have a divorce, but that's just a legal fiction, not really an end to the marriage. Admittedly, even from Jesus's view, a marriage could be undone (by adultery), but it still wasn't as easily unmade as made.

Of course, I have some peculiar views on God's relationship to time and thus his relationship with us linear creatures, so I tend to view these things in a different light entirely.

Once again, I'm a bit late, so the timestamp is changed to put it in its proper place. It was a pretty slow week anyway, so there's not a whole lot to discuss.

What I remember about Ronald Reagan -- My own reminiscences of our 40th president.

Saved once, saved always -- How a view of God outside of time affects my view of eternal security

Wait, you mean scientists aren't altruistic guardians of the truth? -- A few thoughts on the motivations of scientists

Sluggy Freelance -- Alt-Kiki has come over to the dark side--which she was never very far from. Torg comes up with a daring plan, but then decides he isn't quite daring enough when he discovers that he's suddenly become the most hunted man on the planet. And it turns out that Alt-Riff built the retreat-bot just a bit too well when he and Alt-Zoe run into the resistaunce--which is run by people who were kitty food in our universe.

Day by Day -- Sam accidentally sends a virus to the team, causing much consternation. Reagan's funeral is a major topic of discussion among the group.

It's Walky! -- Jason kicks butt! I sure hope he survives the upcoming sure-to-be tragic ending to It's Walky!

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- Dave sneaks back into the facility using his wits and his eye-lasers, while Marsha lets slip Roger's secret to Diana.

General Protection Fault -- Maddie and Sharon take on the henchwomen, while Fooker is pinned down by Dr. Not.

Schlock Mercenary -- After much contemplation, and nudging from Breya, Tagon comes up with a plan for the little ones. Meanwhile, Kevyn hasn't gotten the fabber quite up and running yet.

Joe Carter points out something that seems obvious to us professional science types: scientists have a tendency to hype their own areas of research, glossing over difficulties. There are various reasons for this.

First, as Joe mentions, there's the money angle. For some fields, the potential for entrepreneurial success teaches scientists salesmanship. For most scientists, however, it's a matter of writing grant proposals in order to convince government and industry funders that you can do the research that they want. That money doesn't usually go directly into your paycheck, but it does allow you to hire more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, to buy more equipment, and overall to do better research. That, in turn, brings you the more important coin of academic research: prestige. The better the funding, the easier it is to do better research, publishing more papers. Now, when discussing your research among your peers, overhyping your work can have a detrimental effect on prestige, so you need to be a little less enthusiastic in your peer-reviewed papers, but not too unenthusiastic. When you're talking to sponsors, however, you're a salesman, and that means putting a positive spin on things.

Second, when all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails. Most scientists went into their respective fields because they saw potential in it. They don't give up their initial optimism easily. So they are always looking at problems and wondering whether their particular field can help. It may be true that some other field is more likely to solve the problem first, but no scientist understands--or trusts--other fields as well as he does his own. His natural inclination is to think that his research holds the most potential to help, and it takes a bit to convince him otherwise. My particular specialty is superconductivity, and for a long time now, it's been a solution in search of a problem. I'm just hoping that quantum computation is finally it.

Intolerant Elle reports on Reagan's funeral procession here.

I use Netscape's free e-mail service as my non-work e-mail account. When I started this morning, I couldn't send e-mail through Netscape's server. So I spent the morning modifying and deleting and restoring files, making things even worse, until I reached the conclusion that the problem was probably on Netscape's end. Then I spent the first part of the afternoon fixing the stuff I had broken. Now, having spent all that time, I still can't send e-mail through netscape's server. But at least it's in no worse shape than it was this morning.

Sigh... On the whole, not time well spent.

Parablemania directed me to this wonderful post at Evangelical Outpost (which I had overlooked previously). I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed that the VRWC* dropped the ball on this one. The problem was that we forgot to tell that gullible Bush that we didn't really mean all that stuff about liberating Iraq and finding Saddam's WMDs. You know he's not all that smart, and sometimes he forgets that he's not really in charge.

*Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the ones who really are in charge. The Neocon Cabal is just our scapegoat.

The Christian Carnival is now posted at Christ Web. Check out what other Christian bloggers are saying.

Old Post: I considered the question of how eternal security from the perspective of God being outside of time below.

John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon has further thoughts on what it means if God is outside of time and we are not.

Pete Abrams mocks the UN again this week. (For a bit of background, start here. For a lot of background, try here.) While Pete usually tries to avoid politics, and has in fact blasted Guatanamo Bay in the past, strips like this one and this give the impression that Pete has a low opinion of the UN.

Jeremy Frank at Letters from Babylon briefly touches on the question of whether the concept of free will is compatible with the concept of eternal security. He argues that it is, even though he's a Calvinist and thus doesn't feel much need to make that argument.

I've always been an advocate for free will rather than predestination myself, although in recent years I've begun to wonder whether this is one of those doctrinal disputes where both sides are equally right, in that they aren't at all. I won't go into that right now (you may consider C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 4, "Morality and Psychoanalysis," for one of the ideas that is shaping my thinking in this), but I will make this tricky question even trickier.

I've always thought that it makes more sense to consider God outside of time, unconfined by its constraints, and that His view of us is not a linear one. We humans tend to think of our lives linearly: we go from point A to point B, and that leads us to the conclusion that when it comes to your relationship with God, it doesn't matter where you've been for most of your life, what matters is where you are when you die. That's what really counts. And so the criminal who stole and raped and murdered, if he repents on the way to the electric chair, is saved. What of the minister, who preached and cared for the sick and loved his neighbor, who at the end of his life finds himself in poverty, loneliness, and despair, and in his twilight years loses his faith and dies in bitterness? Do we give him up? Does God?

If God looks on our lives as a whole, does He view our salvation as a turning point, as we do, or as a high point? Is faithlessness and disbelief worse for being on one side of that point than the other? Here's where I'll run counter to my own argument and say that it is, since from our point of view, our linear point of view, it is worse. If a child takes a toy from a store without understanding he is stealing, we don't see it as a crime. If a teenager does the same thing, we do, not because the teenager is older, but because he knows better. Rejection of God after salvation is worse than rejection before not because it's on the other side, but because before you didn't know God to reject Him, and now you do. But if God sees our lives as a whole, is that much worse crime of rejection by one who knows Him enough to negate earlier faithfulness? We might consider it so, but then, we live linear lives, and to us the rejection is more recent than the faithfulness. If it is no more recent to God than the faithfulness, then would He see it the same way?

Okay, that's enough making hard questions harder for today.

Ronald Reagan died this past Saturday at the age of 93. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's for a decade, and while we mourn his passing, we are thankful that he is finally at peace.

Reagan was the first president I was aware of, and at the time, it was hard for me to imagine that there was ever any other. I was six when Ronald Reagan took office, and as I don't remember anything about the Carter administration, I think it's fair to say that I grew up with him as president. My parents were moderate Southern Baptists (which would mean fairly conservative to anyone else). While my father liked Reagan, my mother didn't think he was all that smart. We lived in some fairly liberal parts of the country for most of that time, and the outright scorn many of my peers felt for Reagan made it difficult for me to hold him in high esteem. I remember in the 1984 election, where all the kids in my class were talking about how their parents would vote for Mondale. I was astounded when my father told me he was voting for Reagan and explained to me what a good job he was doing. I had never thought about it before, and only now can I see how true that was.

I remember hearing about how during the Clinton campaign, during a townhall meeting, one of the audience stood up and said the World War 2 generation just couldn't understand how horrible it had been to grow up under the threat of nuclear war. Frankly, I wondered what he was talking about. I grew up under that threat, and while I was vaguely aware of it, I didn't spend much time worrying about it. Part of that was religious belief--"Of course the world is going to end someday, but God is in control" summed up my attitude then and now--but I think part of it was Reagan as well. I grew up knowing that the US was strong, so that the Soviet Union wouldn't dare attack us with nuclear weapons, and that it was good, so that we would never launch a nuclear first strike. Considering how many people in the previous decades had believed exactly the opposite on both counts, I have to credit that attitude to Reagan, his optimism and his faith.

When the cold war ended, I was as astounded as anyone. Who knew that the Soviet Union was so weak? Well, it turns out that Reagan knew, and even though I had appreciated his optimism, I had become too cynical to believe that he had been right. But he was, and the pressure he placed on the USSR is what brought it down. I believe that communism is an inherently flawed political and economic model, and I suppose the Soviet Union would have eventually failed anyway, but without Reagan and the will to bring the might of the US to bear on the USSR's weak infrastructure, it might have taken decades, and who knows how many more millions communism would have oppressed and killed in the meantime?

I owe Reagan a debt of gratitude, both for the hopefulness with which I grew up, and for bringing the greatest threat to the US and the world in that age to an end. Rest in peace, Mr. President.

I missed a week for this, so here's my two-week review.

Papers published -- I give full references for a couple of my published papers... I had mentioned them earlier, but they were still in the publication process

Peace in the Sudan? -- Another Bush foreign policy success.

Americans Killed by Middle-Eastern Terrorism -- I look at some statistics and try, without much success to find trends.

Partisan prayer -- Some thoughts on praying about politics, along with an exception.

Bible Translations -- My comments on the Biblical translation discussion in the blogosphere.

Second Revision Done -- The second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness has been done for a week now. You'll hopefully get a chance to read it soon.

Hey, I won! -- My entry to the Captain's caption contest wins. Cool!

Good books nobody's read -- My thoughts on unknown but talented writers, in response to Dean's thoughts.

Publishing A Phoenix in Darkness -- I show off my mad drawing skillz.

Scientists speaking out -- Scientists annoy me. Not people who do science--I'm one of those--but those who claim to speak for all of science.

Americans Killed by Middle Eastern Terrorists, Part II -- I take another look at the data, this time counting attacks rather than deaths, and a trend becomes clearer.

I missed last week's update, so I'll cover two weeks this time

Sluggy Freelance -- Torg is transported to the Dimension of Lame which is being invaded by the Dimension of Pain. Fortunately, he's transported with the Sword of Torgamus and one of Bun-bun's Glocks. Unfortunately, the demons are sword-proof and he's only got one bullet.

Day by Day -- Zed tries to figure out how to use a new camera, and accidentally takes an embarassing picture of Sam. Al Gore is severely mocked, and I don't think it's undeserved.

It's Walky! -- SEMME faces brainwashing, but we get a flashback from Billie's past. When we return to the present we find that Billie's in trouble. She's snuck into SEMME's facilities and it looks like she's caught in the crossfire between SEMME and the Britjas. And she's dragging poor Danny into it.

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- While April's dreaming of Mike, Mike decides not to interfere with his mother's upcoming marriage to the evil mastermind who kidnapped him and his friends. Meanwhile Thad helps Mike, the newly introduced Jay blackmails Thad, the evil mastermind finds out there's trouble, and Dave has a revelation.

General Protection Fault -- The fake Craig makes his move, Fooker and Maddie make theirs, and there's Dr. Not and her henchwomen And and Or. And there's Sharon, caught in the middle. After a couple of close run-in, she finally discovers that Fooker's in the area.

Schlock Mercenary -- Schlock is released. He isn't out of prison for more than a couple of days before he gets in trouble again. And now Tagon must figure out how to deal with reproduction among the crew. Not Schlock's, thankfully.

Old Post: I mention a few of my own recommendations below.

Doc Rampage is recommending books again, in response to Dean Esmay's post on great books no one's read. He mentions The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy. By this point it's been mentioned so many times that it's pretty clear that plenty of people have read it. I agree that it's a great trilogy, and a significant inspiration for my own writing. It was the first fantasy series I read after Tolkien (must have been around fourth grade), and it's what convinced me that fantasy was worth reading--fantasy's been my primary reading material since then.

He also mentions a bunch of other series, only a few of which I've heard of and none of which I've read. Once again, more books are added to the list of Books I Really Should Read Once I Get Through the Ones I Already Have. It's a pretty long list by now.

Old Post: Originally this was an update to an earlier post, but I decided to bump it and give it its own post. The original post is here.

In my previous post, I showed a rolling plot of the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks. The problem was that highly successful attacks tended to cause sharp peaks which skewed the data, so I've done a plot of the number of Middle Eastern Terrorism attacks per year affecting Americans. This is also a five-year rolling average, and I think it shows a much clearer trend. Number of attacks doesn't consider the effectiveness of attacks, so it's more of a measure of intent than competence. It includes attacks that resulted in injury and deaths, as well as kidnappings where the prisoner was released. It also includes bombings on American property which didn't hurt anyone. Once again, it also includes attacks on Israeli targets which killed and injured Americans. I need to control for those at some point, but not right away.



This shows a peak in the Eighties, a decline around 1990, but a clear upward trend in the late nineties. In this chart, the whole of 9/11 counts as only one attack.

Nothing annoys me more than people pretending they're experts when they're not. Well, okay, stating speculation as fact annoys me more, but it's closely related.

What brought this to mind is something Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost said:

John Marburger, the science advisor for the Bush Administration, would make an excellent blogger. After the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC) issued a report, "Scientific Integrity In Policy Making", that listed instances of what it described as the administration's "misuse of science", Marburger fired back with a point-by-point fisking of the USC’s claims.
...
The true "misuse of science" is when reputable scientists make false claims about their area of knowledge in order to further a political agenda. The public has already grown wary of authoritative claim by scientists on such areas as politics and ethics. If they continue to erode their credibility in this manner we may find that we can't trust them on issues of science either.

[Incidentally, I think it's UCS, not USC.] What I'd like to know is whether these scientists really are making claims, false or not, about their area of knowledge. "Scientist" is a general and highly misleading term. Scientist, whether theorists or experimentalists, know a lot about their particular fields of study. When it comes to things outside their fields, even areas of scientific research outside their fields, they generally don't know much more than the well-educated layman. They may have a better generic understanding of the manner in which research is done, but they rarely know the specifics of the facts and procedures and caveats of fields other than their own. Thus I'm very reluctant to take a physicist's word on what the results of CDC research, or a biologist's word on the philosophical ramifications of quantum physics (on this subject, I'm reluctant to take anyone's word). I get very annoyed when scientists use their moniker to pretend they're knowledgeable in all things science.

I was looking into ways to self-publish A Pheonix in Darkness. It's too long for a short story and too short for a novel, so I don't see any way to publish it the traditional ways. I could self-publish it as an e-book, but there are expenses involved. I can handle the formatting myself (I put everything I write in PDF anyway). It'd be nice to have a professional copy-editor, but it's expensive, and I think I can manage on my own. Most expensive is the cover art. It's not just aesthetically pleasing, it's important for drawing attention to the story in an online bookstore. It'd be nice to be able to get someone to do it.

Then I figured, I'm no artist, but why not? I can use Microsoft Publisher just as well as the next guy, and while I can't do much in the way of freehand drawing, I didn't get an engineering degree without learning some technical drawing skills. Start with one of Publisher's templates, completely change the color scheme, add an extensively remodeled symbol from Campaign Cartographer, and I might have something half-way decent. In any case here's what I came up with:



I think it turned out pretty well. While I'm not entirely certain of copyright issues, both Publisher and Campaign Cartographer are designed to make publishable documents, so I doubt there'd be a problem.

Mark Steyn has some Memorial Day thoughts worth reading:

Like the French Resistance, tiny in its day but of apparently unlimited manpower since the war ended, for some people it's not obvious which side to be on until the dust's settled. New York, for example, resisted the Civil War my small town's menfolk were so eager to enlist in. The big city was racked by bloody riots against the draft. And you can sort of see the rioters' point. More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War -- or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.

But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America. Even in its grief, my part of New Hampshire understood that 141 years ago. We should, too.

Read the whole thing.

Dean Esmay is asking for recommendations on good books which aren't widely known. He mentions Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton and Ariel by Stephen R. Boyett. Readers have offered their own opinions, including a bunch which I wouldn't consider unknown, by authors such as Patricia McKillip, Ursula K. LeGuin, Poul Anderson, and Stephen R. Donaldson, who certainly aren't unknowns (to SF readers, anyway). Admittedly, it could just be that I don't consider anything I've read unknown.

Sadly, no one's mentioned Fire yet.

Let's see, is there anything I'd add to the list? Frankly, most of the books in my library are popular books from popular writers. How about Jane Jensen's The Beast Within? Jane Jensen designs computer games, specifically the Gabriel Knight series, which are fabulous games with intricate, engrossing plotlines. Her first attempt to convert a game into a book, Sins of the Fathers, didn't turn out too well, but her second book was very good. I'm not sure she ever tried to turn the third Gabriel Knight game (Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned) into a book, but it was the weakest game in the series (not to mention host to some religious elements I found disturbing). I'd also recommend John Ringo, whom I think is pretty well-known, so I'm probably not recommending an unread author. He's written some intriguing Sci-Fi series, including A Hymn Before Battle and There will be Dragons, and he makes it clear in his books that he's a Sluggy Freelance fan.

New Post: I note that Doc Rampage has made some suggestions above.

Lileks gets a bit uppity:

Anyway. So I’m waiting at the Gap for my wife to try on some outfits. I sit down, I read the book. Later I wander up to the men’s floor, try some shorts, size Small; baggy beyond belief. But! They have X-small size. They fit. Hmm. Time, perhaps, to eat carbs again. As I buy the shorts the clerk says:

“Are you a writer?”

I think: what?

“There were some people up here,” he said, “who pointed at you as you went into the changing rooms? And they said you were a writer.”

I spread my arms out. “They were correct. I am a writer.”

“Cool.”

And I’m thinking: how nice that I was carrying around a battered 1957 book, eh? That’s just what writers do! I went downstairs and related the anecdote to my wife, who said that the clerks had been whispering about something there being a writer upstairs.

Don’t think I didn’t milk that one all night. Hello, there’s a writer in the kitchen, looking for ice! Make way, mortal. What, you want to change the channel? Don’t you know a WRITER is watching this?

I want to be able to do that someday. Well, granted, I could do it now, but I'd be a delusional jerk. It'd be better if I were just a jerk. I think I have to publish something first. You know, aside from on my website.

Each week, Captain's Quarters holds a caption contest, where he invites his readers to caption photographs of Democrats in action. Up until now, it's always been Kerry who's been captioned. I've never participated before, partly because I don't think it's dignified to make fun of people simply because you disagree with their political views, but mostly because I couldn't think of anything funny.

This week, however, Gore was the one in the photo, and it was from the insane rav--er, I mean, speech he gave in front of MoveOn.org. I looked at the photo, thought of something funny, and submitted an entry. Ten seconds later, I thought of a way to make my entry funnier, but I didn't want to make another submission. Go here to see what the winning entry was. And here is what it should have been:


Fighting to contain a violent yawn at his own words, Al Gore is mistaken for a raving lunatic. He decides to go with it.

Update: Edward Yee, who judged this week's contest, reminded me that I'm late with his bri--uh, I mean, check out his blog. You know he must have a good sense of humor.

Christian Carnival XX is up at Patriot Paradox. I submitted my post on Bible Translations. I had almost forgotten about the Carnival until I got the e-mail that the deadline had been extended. Good thing, as it was already past the original deadline when I got it. Go check out what other Christian bloggers are writing about.

I've just heard that my two-year-old niece is in the hospital with pneumonia. She's expected to be okay, but any prayers would be appreciated.

Well, I'm a week behind, but the second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness is now done. On to the third and final revision!

Update: If you're wondering why the blogging's slow, this is it. As I may have mentioned earlier, I tend to work harder when I'm near the end. I finished over three quarters of the work on Monday, got the final quarter done today by the time I put up this post, and I've been adding small touches for the rest of the day. I have a day job, but I've spent somewhere around seven hours on this project over these past two days.

Rather than using my own poor words to describe Memorial Day, I'll direct you to the speech that Bush delivered at the opening of the World War II memorial dedication on Saturday. An excerpt:

In the history books, the Second World War can appear as a series of crises and conflicts, following an inevitable course -- from Pearl Harbor to the Coast of Normandy to the deck of the Missouri. Yet, on the day the war began, and on many hard days that followed, the outcome was far from certain.

There was a time, in the years before the war, when many earnest and educated people believed that democracy was finished. Men who considered themselves learned and civilized came to believe that free institutions must give way to the severe doctrines and stern discipline of a regimented society. Ideas first whispered in the secret councils of a remote empire, or shouted in the beer halls of Munich, became mass movements. And those movements became armies. And those armies moved mercilessly forward -- until the world saw Hitler strutting in Paris, and U.S. Navy ships burning in their own port. Across the world, from a hiding place in Holland to prison camps of Luzon, the captives awaited their liberators.

Those liberators would come, but the enterprise would require the commitment and effort of our entire nation. As World War II began, after a decade of economic depression, the United States was not a rich country. Far from being a great power, we had only the 17th largest army in the world. To fight and win on two fronts, Americans had to work and save and ration and sacrifice as never before. War production plants operated shifts around the clock. Across the country, families planted victory gardens -- 20 million of them, producing 40 percent of the nation's vegetables in backyards and on rooftops. Two out of every three citizens put money into war bonds. As Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby said, "This was a people's war, and everyone was in it."
...
On this Memorial Day weekend, the graves will be visited, and decorated with flowers and flags. Men whose step has slowed are thinking of boys they knew when they were boys together. And women who watched the train leave, and the years pass, can still see the handsome face of their young sweetheart. America will not forget them, either.

At this place, at this Memorial, we acknowledge a debt of long-standing to an entire generation of Americans: those who died; those who fought and worked and grieved and went on. They saved our country, and thereby saved the liberty of mankind. And now I ask every man and woman who saw and lived World War II -- every member of that generation -- to please rise as you are able, and receive the thanks of our great nation.

May God bless you. (Applause.)

Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost has begun a project to update the Dictionary of Cultural References. I've submitted a few things under the Internet and Computer Games already. Go ahead and make your contribution.

I visited a couple of cousins of mine in Pennsylvania this weekend. It was fun to see them again--it had been years. My cousin Mark showed me a project he's been working on, cataloguing all 3000+ US counties, collecting demographic data (ethnicity, wealth, household data) and voting results. He's worked out a election projection based on demographics which predicts that the election may depend on Ohio. I'm not so sure about his conclusions--I think 9/11 may have changed the equation, but it was an impressive piece of work, and I've offered to share it on my blog. He's interested, but it remains to be seen whether we can distill it down to information easily shared on a blog. If we were really patient, we could do a by county map, like the famous one from the last election, but I don't think we have the patience.

I've noticed a bit of discussion on other blogs about the best Bible translations. In particular, Letters from Babylon and Parablemania have discussed their favorite translations. While I think getting a good translation of the Bible is helpful, I'm not sure it's sufficient. I have two Bibles I tend to use.

One is the NIV, which I find easy to read and understand, despite complaints about it being a dynamic equivalence--not a word-for-word translation, but one which converts idiom and language into our way of speaking. Now while dynamic equivalence involves some interpretation, so does a formal equivalence translation, which follows the original language more closely. Any translation requires finding an equivalent word, but no word in English contains the exact same history, nuance, and cultural context of the Greek word. Consider John 1:1, and the use of the word logos. In English, it's translated as Word, while in Greek it could mean word... or message, or purpose. In Stoic philosophy, it was used to signify the driving power and reason behind the Universe, and it would have been recognizable as such instantly by the Greek readers of John's Gospel. Idiom is also very tricky. Consider Matthew 12:40: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." The phrase "three days and three nights" has drawn much interpretation as people tried to reconcile it with the one day and two nights Jesus actually spent in the tomb. It would be helpful to know that ancient peoples reckoned inclusively (saying that Sunday is three days after Friday, because they would include Friday in the count), or that x days and x nights was a common idiom, referring not to whole days and nights but to the day-night cycle, which we would simply call days. These are famous problems which even dynamic equivalence doesn't try to solve. While I think a dynamic equivalence does infer some interpretation, I also think that it can, when done properly, convey more of the original meaning to modern readers than a formal equivalence translation.

The other Bible I use is an interlinear one. It has one very literal translation, and the original Greek and Hebrew. The very literal translation is hard to read and follow, but it's useful, especially when coupled with the original language and some knowledge of that language. (I may be rusty, but I still remember some Ancient Greek.) Which brings me to my question: Why don't more Christians study the original languages? I don't expect every Christian to attend seminary, but there are many Christians in college who could easily take a semester or two of Greek and/or Hebrew. I'm curious why they don't.

Update: Cleared things up a bit.

I try to avoid partisan prayers. While I'll pray for political figures, I'm very reluctant to pray against them. I also don't like praying that one party or another will win the election. While I think that God is in control, well, I think He is in control, and He knows what He's doing, while I have very little idea what I'm doing when I talk about or pray about politics. So I think God will bring about His will, and I'll occasionally pray that politicians be more in tune with His will, or that this thing or that thing will be done by our government, but I don't pray about who will win elections.

During the 2000 election showdown I did pray for a quick resolution. While I prefered Bush over Gore, in 2000 I thought that Gore would do a decent job governing even if I disagreed with the majority of his policies. So when I prayed, I may have let slip that I'd really like to see Bush win, but I trusted God to choose the right candidate. After 9/11 I thanked God for doing so, because I felt Bush dealt with the situation better than Al Gore would have. Earlier this week I fervently and effusively thanked God for doing so, offering up my heartfelt thanks that Gore did not win. If you don't know what I'm talking about, try visiting here or here. Now I'm praying that Gore gets help, and that he is never allowed near the reins of power again. Meanwhile, if any of the Florida voters who voted for Bush in 2000 are in the Rochester area, let me know. I'd like to thank you for saving us from disaster.

You may be wondering why I stopped the archive review. While it was fun, it consumed an inordinate amount of time. Plus, I was out-of-town and without net access for a good bit of Memorial Day weekend. I figured the end of the Sci-fi Adventure was a good place to stop. I may pick it up again eventually, but consider it on permanent hiatus unless there is a real demand for it.

I spent an inordinate amount of time working on this. This chart shows the five-year rolling average of Americans killed by Middle-Eastern Terrorism:



This data was taken from this webpage, maintained by the the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. The page's objective is to show that US citizens are victims of Middle Eastern terrorism as well, so they don't distinguish between Americans being specifically targetted, and Americans who are killed in attacks on Israeli and other targets. I wasn't too concerned with the distinction either, since what I was curious about was this statement in a post by Doc Rampage:

Cliff pointed out in a comment that the expected deaths from terrorists each year in the US is about 300. This is roughly the same as the number of people killed by lightening. Cliff suggests (I infer from his irony) that we are spending too much time, money, and energy in combating what is statistically a minor problem. he problem is... Well, the problem is that his logic makes a weird sort of sense. Like Cliff, I'm an engineer and I detest inefficiency. Especially inefficiency for emotional, anti-rational reasons.

Being the experimentalist that I am, I'm always leery of snapshot statistics, and I'm more interested in trends. For something like terrorism, where attacks come at irregular intervals and the number of deaths per attack depends on a number of factors, I prefer to smooth out the data, in this case using a rolling average. I'll have to think about the best ways to analyze the data: large attacks cause spikes, yet you can't ignore the large attacks. One thing I noticed, though, is that throughout the nineties, there was a rise both in the number and effectiveness of attacks. This follows a drop off at the end of the eighties.

New Post: What was originally an update to this post, a plot of attacks rather than deaths, has been moved to a new post here.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 9: Home again

If you're wondering, you should read the comic first, then read my comments.

Torg and Riff are on their own against the alien. On the bright side, they now have big guns and a plan. On the dark side, they're using the guns to blow up random stuff and it's a really bad plan. But when they find the way home, it all works out in the end. Well, except for the fact that the alien is loose to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting population... Hey, look, there's Zoe!

Things I noticed:

1. Monday's comic is beautiful. I'm not sure the guys can tell the difference between their lives and a first person shooter. Considering how crazy their lives are, this may be a good thing.

2. Tuesday: Torg as bait. I intend to take his advice if I'm ever in that situation.

3. Thursday: "We have to open the portal now!" "I have to eat you guys!"

4. Friday: "Could I just throw a shoe at it?" In the next comic, you can see the shoe in the alien's hand.

5. I wasn't sure the guys would make it home. Heck, we've had nearly as many comics in the alternate dimension as the real world. How do we know the "real world" wasn't just the set up.

6. Zoe is reintroduced in Sunday's comic. Bet you thought she was just a temp for a week. Turns out she's the neighbor. This comic also establishes time--it's been about a month since they left, the same amount of time as has passed in real days. It's not always easy to tell with comics. Pete makes an effort to have the holidays line up, but other than that, it can take a month to cover the events of a single day in comic time.

7. So not only is the alien loose in our world, advanced weapons are now in the hands of Torg and Riff. They're not exactly the folks I'd pick to bequeath advanced technology to, see Monday's strip.

8. Sunday's comic also has my favorite line for the week: "Oh yeah, the girl from the park! I didn't recognize you conscious, upright, and unmangled!"

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

Captain Ed points out another Bush foreign policy success. No doubt the Democrats will be explaining why it's really a disaster... From the Telegraph:

A peace deal to end Africa's longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives.

Decades of recrimination were put aside as the two factions inched towards agreement on how to share power in a new transitional government, as well as on the future of three contested regions - the final hurdles in over a year of tortuous negotiations hosted by the Kenyan government.

The conclusion of the fraught negotiations - in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States - hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country.

If Bush has too many more of these "rare" foreign-policy successes in Muslim countries (Libya, Iraq, reform movements in Iran and Syria gaining steam, and a statement of principle from the Arab League to move toward democracy), in a hundread years people are going to be wondering what all those references about unrest in the Middle East in the late 20th, early 21st centuries were about.

Doc Rampage should be happy.

Update: I read the article more carefully. It appears that this deal doesn't cover the conflict in the Darfur region, which was what the Doc was concerned about. I'm hoping that bringing resolution to the main conflict in Sudan will calm things down in Darfur.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 8: The Alien

If you're wondering, you should read the comic first, then read my comments.

Now the Alien parody is in full swing. If it were Star Trek, then only the extras would die, but here, they're all extras. You do the math.

Favorite parts:

1. Tuesday: "Wow! It knows to go after the extras first!" "All aliens do."

2. As usual, in a dangerous situation, Riff takes charge. Torg makes jokes.

3. Saturday: "On my way, and thank God for dandruff shampoo!"

4. Sunday: "By the way, I'm not going to turn around so you can get the satisfaction of seeing me gasp in fear before sucking my brains out." "Fine, I'll just find someone who will!

5. Also Sunday: "What is this? A sci-fi thriller or a goofy buddy movie?" Gulp! "The defense rests."

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

A long, long time ago, I mentioned that there were a couple of papers of mine in the process of being published. Well, they're out now. They've actually been out for a while, I've just been negligent. Now that I have them, here are the full references:

dc measurements of macroscopic quantum levels in a superconducting qubit structure with a time-ordered meter
D. S. Crankshaw, K. Segall, D. Nakada, T. P. Orlando, L. S. Levitov, S. Lloyd, S. O. Valenzuela, N. Markovic, M. Tinkham, and K. K. Berggren
Phys. Rev. B 69, 144518 (2004)

Energy Relaxation Time between Macroscopic Quantum Levels in a Superconducting Persistent-Current Qubit
Yang Yu, D. Nakada, Janice C. Lee, Bhuwan Singh, D. S. Crankshaw, T. P. Orlando, Karl K. Berggren, and William D. Oliver
Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 117904 (2004)

They're available online, if you have a subscription. Or you could look them up in a local university library. Or you could just e-mail me and I could send you a copy if you really wanted it.

I'm not pro-choice, and I'm glad to see that some pro-choice folks have a better understanding of the pro-life movement than those organizations (such as NARAL) who see themselves as the defenders of abortion rights, who label any restriction as an assault on women, and say that those who argue for such are would-be oppressors.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 7: Engineers

So, now that Riff and Torg are the engineering crew, they're on their way to the dimensional rifts that will take them home. It's not clear how well Riff understands the technology (even a technological wizard would need some time to leap forward a few hundred years in technology), but Torg doesn't have a clue. Still, they can fake it fairly well. Unfortunately, they get sidetracked, and the Star Trek (with a little Star Wars) parody makes a head-on collision with Aliens. Some things I noticed:

1. So this Confederation dumps toxic waste into random dimensions? That's not very nice.

2. First Officer Brenas. The less said, the better.

3. I like the technobabble: "Gamma-Gozer rays" and "Stabalizorama" from Riff, and "Chocolate Doh-doh waves" from Torg.

4. Torg and Riff make inappropriate use of the ship's resources. How very like them!

5. "Space station 9-Bab-5" Obviously a hash of Deep Space 9 (a great show, IMO) and Babylon 5.

6. Saturday's is great: "Keep forgetting we're the engineers." "Beats being expendable."

7. And on Sunday, Star Trek meets Aliens. Apparently they aren't so tough in zero-G. My favorite exchange: "Have you tried communicating with them, Chief Riff?" "But Sir, they are ugly and really weird looking!" "Very well, continue firing." Star Trek meets Aliens indeed.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

Old Post: I complained about the term "homicide bombing" below.

James Taranto at WSJ's Best of the Web also has problems with Fox's use of the term "homicide bomber." He also has a lot more information on how the term came about.

I haven't decided how I feel about the investigation of Chalabi yet. I don't think the CPA raided him because he was problematic to the UN. Or because he was an attention-getting embarassment. He may be both. I guess I just believe better of the CPA, and the Bush administration, than some people. I think that Chalabi is sincerely suspected of wrongdoing and is being investigated. From what I read, the evidence against him was too strong to ignore. I don't know whether he's actually guilty of wrongdoing, but I guess that's what the investigation is meant to uncover. Rich Lowry has a rather detailed post on him in The Corner, which also shows a lot of ambiguity.

Posting has been fairly slow for the last few days, with just the Sluggy Archive Review going up every day. There are a few reasons for that. The first is that I was working hard on A Phoenix in Darkness. I tend to work harder as the end comes into sight, so I've finished the second revision on Part 3 and revised all of Part 4 in just a few days. I've also been going to bed earlier so that I could get up earlier for work reasons, so that's kept me from doing any late night blogging (and also limited what I can get done every night, so I've had to prioritize). Finally, nothing's caught my attention and really demanded that I write. Sometimes I hear about something and I just can't help myself. It's hard to predict what will do that, but it's often when I see factual errors left unaddressed, or have a theory that I feel a need to share. It hasn't happened recently, however, and although I have thoughts on some of the things in the news recently, I haven't felt the need to comment, so I haven't prioritized the time to do so.

I'm now 80% of the way through the second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness, meaning that I've finished the revision of Part 4. Part 4 is the longest section, accounting for 22% of the story, and it contains a lot of action. I'd be done by next weekend, but I'm going on a short trip then, so I'm not certain. We'll see.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 6: The Dimensional Flux Agitator

The guys are still trying to get rid of Bun-bun. In their efforts, they accidentally zap themselves to another universe.

1. This is the first indication that Riff is something of an inventor. "Something of an inventor" in the sense that he can create a device which proves the many-worlds quantum theory.

2. For the record, there are only a few many-worlds adherents in the physics community. There are a few, I'll grant, but most just tune them out, considering the many-worlds hypothesis implausible, unproveable, and unnecessary.

3. Random reality pathways?

4. "Let me check my notes." Words to strike dread into the heart.

5. This is actually the introduction of sci-fi into the Sluggy universe. Of course, we already know that the supernatural exists there, from the first week if we take Satan in the computer seriously, and certainly the third.

6. The borg need to be more careful whom they assimilate. Torg and Riff throw the whole collective off, so that the borg end up kicking them out.

7. I loved Sunday's strip. There's plenty to love: "No problem, careful is our middle name." "No, you have no honor!" And the nod to Star Wars. "Trusting and compassionate?" "Gullible. I lied on our resumes and got us jobs on the ship."

8. To be honest, I spent most of the Sci-Fi adventure wishing they would just hurry up and get home. That and wondering whether Pete had decided to change the entire premise of the strip six weeks into it. I wanted to know whether Zoe would become a regular.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 5: Zoe

Pete finally gets around to introducing some women to his strip, starting with Zoe, some hot girl, and the suicide-bikini-frisbee girls. Zoe's really the only one who has any characterization in this strip, or even a name given to her. Her role this week is to suffer. Things to notice:

1. She's wearing a Ranma 1/2 T-shirt. When I first read the archives, I knew nothing about Ranma 1/2. If I had, I might have made something of the shirt. I'd at least think that Zoe read manga.

2. Torg and Riff come across as real jerks this week.

3. Zoe meets Bun-bun. Her response to Bun-bun is the same as most people's, and Bun-bun's reaction to her is the same as for most people.

4. Torg also comes across as rather gullible in Saturday's strip. Overall, I thought that was the funniest strip this week.

5. Sunday's strip shows that it's been a very bad day for Zoe.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

As usual, this post is timestamped to put it at 12:01 am on Sunday, even though it was written around 7 pm. I don't consider the timestamp too important on this post. It covers my significant posts for this week.

Sarin used in attack in Iraq, or Terrorists have WMDs! -- I try to get across the idea that the use of a Sarin shell in Iraq is a very bad thing.

Christian Carnival XVIII -- I host the Christian Carnival. See what other Christian bloggers are saying.

Sluggy Freelance Archive Review Week 1: August 25-31, 1997 -- I've started a review of Sluggy Freelance. It's a great way to experience Sluggy if you've never read it before.

Angel Series Finale -- My thoughts on the series finale of Angel.

Opposing the Iraq War -- My thoughts on what good reasons for opposing the Iraq War are. I was originally rather ambivalent towards the whole enterprise.

Third Revision Progress -- A quick summary of how A Phoenix in Darkness is going.