Back of the Envelope

Glenn's no peacenik:

InstaPundit strongly supports the use of violent force to save lives of its workers (er, that's me), readers, advertisers, or unrelated onlookers should they be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a conflict situation. The use of grossly excessive or gratuitous violence, while not exactly encouraged, isn't exactly deplored, either.

I think I need a similar policy.

I had heard that Frank J wanted to nuke the moon, but I never knew why. So I did a bit of research (I read his blog) and found out. Apparently, it's for world peace:

World peace cannot be achieved by sitting around on our duffs singing hippy songs to the moon. Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence. Who do bullies pick on in the playground? The giant, crazy looking guy who looks ready to snap and kill the person nearest or some harmless looking weenie who appears to do anything to avoid conflict? People pick on the weenie because people like to start fights they think they can win. In the same way, people will continue to attack America and our interests when they get the idea that they can piss off America without us immediately eradicating them and everyone around them in the most painful way possible.

Now, if I were president, here’s what I would do. Next time some country does something we don’t take a pining too, such as supporting terrorism or speaking French, I’d pick the dumbest reason for an attack, e.g., "A ‘q’ should always be followed by a ‘u’. I don’t make the rules, Iraq, but I will enforce them." The more irrational you look, the more scared the country will be that you will really hit them hard. I’d then give the country the old one-week notice until bombing starts. Then, after just twenty-four hours, I’d start bombing. When the stupid dictator calls to complain, I’d say, "I meant one week max. Oh, and by the way, ground troops - one week." I’m sure that would be enough to capitulate the average evildoer, but some extra measures could help intimidate others as well...

Now the world will be pretty convinced that America is frick’n nuts and just looking for a fight, but we need to really ingrain it into everyone’s conscious so that no one will ever even contemplate crossing us. This requires making good use of our nukes. I know, nukes can kill millions of people, but they sure aren’t doing anyone any good just sitting around. I mean, how many years has it been since we last dropped a bomb on someone? No one even thinks we’ll actually use one now. Of course, using nukes shouldn’t be done haphazardly; all uses have to be well planned out because the explosions are so cool looking that we’ll want to give the press plenty of notice so they can get pictures of the mushroom cloud from all sorts of different angles. But what to nuke? Well, usually the idea is populated cities, but, by the beliefs of my morally superior religion, killing is wrong. So why can’t we be more creative than nuking people. My idea is to nuke the moon; just say we thought we saw moon people or something. There is no one actually there to kill (unless we time it poorly) and everyone in the world could see the results. And all the other countries would exclaim, "Holy @$#%! They are nuking the moon! America has gone insane! I better go eat at McDonalds before they think I don’t like them."

Read the whole thing, and tremble.

The latest Christian Carnival is up at Jordan's View.

Their's a hurricane relief carnival at Vitamin B16.

And, finally, don't forget to send your Storyblogging Carnival entries to Mark Rayner.

It looks like I had a lot of links to post today, but not much that's substantive. As I just received George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows from Amazon, it may be a while before I come up for air. I'm also working on Fire's sequel, which is tentatively titled Water. Very original, huh? Remember, these are both part of The War of the Elementals. Anyway, looking at the passage that I finished writing last night, I think it may be deserving of the title.

The ninety-fifth Christian Carnival is online at Eternal Revolution. There are, as usual, a lot of entries, almost 50. It makes me tired just skimming through it, not even reading the entries.

See the title:

• Doc Rampage has an interesting post on the nature of the mind and brain. It does ask an interesting question: "How could a non-physical mind interact with a physical brain without violating conservation principles?" Doc offers some possibilities, but I'll admit I don't find them very compelling. I'll have to think about this one.
• Joe Carter has some interesting posts on the nature of knowledge and religiously based explanations. He argues that religiously based explanations are indeed valid, and that it's ceding intellectual ground unnecessarily to let secularists get away with discounting it. His first post is more of an assertion than an argument. His second goes a long way toward making his argument by example. This is something I've always been interested in, asking what it means to do science in a Christian manner. Of course, his example, discussing different philosophical rationales for why 1+1=2, seems pretty abstract. On the other hand, it may not be as abstract as you think, as one of the underlying axioms of quantum information theory is that all information is physical, which is indeed one of the rationales that Joe presents. However, I've never been convinced that this axiom is necessary for quantum information theory. It seems to me that you may be able to derive the same theoretical framework by assuming the reverse, that information can describe all physical states. I may go into that at some later time, although I freely admit that I'm not qualified to construct a theoretical framework.
• Dean Esmay goes on the rampage against those who argue that science presumes that there's nothing supernatural. He makes arguments very similar to the ones I made in the Religious Debate: science presumes nothing, it merely observes, measures, and creates models. I agree whole-heartedly with Dean's argument, though it's interesting to see coming from an atheist.

Speaking of the Religious Debate, yes, I'm aware that Skeptic posted an argument against the existence of the soul. I do intend to post a response to it soon. I haven't been blogging much at all recently, but it's been almost a month, and I know I really oughtn't let it sit much longer.