Betsy Newmark takes a pitch in her wheelhouse and belts it out of the park. The fact that she nails the Seattle school system by calling it "despicable" adds extra distance to the homer.

American Thinker asks, "What Islamic Science and Philosophy?"

The Tao of Defiance explains "Why the Muslims world was left behind."

This excerpt should encourage you to read the whole thing:

[..] Secular order in India thus is possible only when Muslims are not in power. Thondi, Rasathipuram and other places prove that the Muslim mind suffers from a dangerous duality—of seeking secularism when out of power and imposing a brutal demeaning theocracy for non-Muslims when in power."

India is in effect another canary in the coal mine, illuminating the true character of Islamofascism for all who will see to understand the threat to civilization that unchecked Islamofascism poses to the world.

Update: don't miss this post, entitled "The Hajj story you won’t hear; Islam as a religion that lost sight of its inner meaning."

Despite being born in Mobile, AL and growing up in Macon, GA--and purposefully mimicking Gary Owens of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In fame--my quiz results indicate that I am from Philadelphia.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Midland
The Northeast
The South
The Inland North
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I wonder if Space Ghost is from Philly? Gary Owens is from South Dakota.

That source of unimpeachable truth, the Weekly World News, reveals a truth that puts paid to the ambitions of all too many of us.

Jason Miks is lucky enough to have had A Conversation with Bjorn Lomborg. He's still correct; I hope he's right that more climate scientists are becoming global warming catastrophe skeptics, at least for the next half century. I also applaud his efforts to attempt to get mankind focused on real problems like indoor air pollution caused by burning the wrong fuels to heat homes, lack of drinking water and encouraging responsible use of pesticides in developing countries to control disease.

Glenn links to Ronald Bailey's article in Reason Magazine in which he asks the question, "Brother, Can You Spare 22 Terawatts?: Big ideas for the future of energy."

The first sentence should hook you into reading the whole thing: "The flip side of the climate change conundrum is energy."

Where is the energy going to come from to feed the growth of not only the west, but the developing world? Can we trust government to make the right choices, or should government take a less activist role in terms of the technologies selected to produce the energy to meet our needs?

Move along, nothing to see here: "Hurricane predictions off track as tranquil season wafts away."

Betsy Newmark links to and expertly fisks a column in the Washington Post by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska who seems to have lost his will. I commented beneath the article; I repeat my comments below for those who don't care to visit the WaPo.

Mr. Hagel, Mr. Hagel. I can't understand how members of Congress who supposedly understand American interests and geopolitics can spout this drivel over and over again.

1) "They will decide their fate and form of government." Mr. Hagel, the Iraqis have voted in election after election, with overwhelming support and in numbers greater per capita than our republic.

2) "Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism." This is the only true statement in the article.

3) Apparently Mr. Hagel depends on the NYT headline writer for in-depth analysis of the news. Here are Dr. Kissinger's most recent and celebrated comments on Iraq in full,

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible....A dramatic collapse of Iraq - whatever we think about how the situation was created - would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region." It appears that Mr. Hagel and his allies would have argued against the occupation of Japan and Germany and against the many efforts in the Cold War that cost lives--including the Korean War--to restrain the Soviet Union. There were many setbacks during that period, and peaceniks and "know nothings" argued for rapprochement since the West could not defeat the Soviets and the ChiComs. Truman understood US national interests, as did Kennedy. Why can't today's Democrats?

3) "We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build." This is high comedy. During the 90's, the "Clinton peace dividend" was used to shrink the number of troops, ships, air squadrons, etc. I think that counts as more deliberate destruction of force structure in my book.

4) While the cost of the war is high, and the loss of any member of the armed forces is one too many, the cost and losses compared to WWII is insignificant on a per capita basis. The bulk of our population carries on virtually untouched by the war. There are no war bond drives, no rubber drives, no gas rationing, no draft. The strongest argument against our policy in Iraq is that we are not fighting hard enough. We are lawyered up and in a politically correct straitjacket. During WWII, Patton's third army would bypass tough opposition and use artillery and air power to neutralize it. "Rubble causes no trouble."

If Mr. Hagel believes that validating OBL's assertion that America lacks the will to defend its interests over the long term, as Europe has shown, then he must be willing to spend fantastic sums at home to attempt to defend every possible avenue for attack and strengthen every possible vulnerability. If Mr. Hagel spent time listening to the speeches given by Islamofascist leaders and reading and watching their media, he would understand how badly that they want to follow us home. Utter defeat is the only lesson these people understand. We owe future generations of free peoples everywhere to defend liberty at all costs. We cannot defend it by running from the hot point of the conflict of ideas and ideals.

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Glenn compiles a list of interesting articles about outgoing Secretary of State Rumsfeld and the U.S. military's loss rate during the current war on terror versus historical loss rates since the beginning of the republic.

Here's an excerpt from a TCS daily article that Glenn includes in his post:

In the full sweep of U.S history, from the commencement of the Revolution on Lexington Green in April 1775, until the sunny morning of September 11, 2001, our average daily sacrifice has been between 14 and 15 military fatalities (1,217,000 fatalities/83,461 days = 14.6/day). Since 9/11, the average daily sacrifice has been 1.7 per day (3200/1900=1.68).

From the Revolutionary War until the American entry into World War I, the average daily rate was about 11 per day (578,000/52,231=11.07). From World War I through the break up of the Soviet Union, the rate was over 16 per day (636,000/38,811=16.39). Or in our long running confrontation with Soviet communism following World War II until the collapse of the Soviet empire, the rate was over between 6 and 7 per day (112,400/16,892=6.65).

As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?

As the man says, read the whole thing

An amazing story of a wake held for a Green Beret.

Excerpt:

On Nov. 3, a string of Blackhawk helicopters had been roaring across the desert on a nighttime counterinsurgency raid, carrying Special Forces soldiers to hunt high-value targets who had been making improvised explosive devices.

Flying over the desert at night is disorienting. Toz apparently believed the helicopter had touched down. He stepped out. It was more than 100 feet off the ground and thundering ahead at 100 mph.

His mother was impressed with the professionalism of the Army's presentation and took comfort in learning that the mission had been a success. Her son's e-mail precluded any resentment.

"Don't ever think that you are defending me by slamming the Global War on Terrorism or the U.S. goals in that war," Jeffrey Toczylowski wrote. "As far as I am concerned, we can send guys like me to go after them or we can wait for them to come back to us again. I died doing something I believed in and have no regrets except that I couldn't do more."

Toczylowski had gone through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Pennsylvania's Valley Forge Military College and then turned his Texas A&M criminal-justice degree into an assignment as platoon leader with the military police. He had completed the Special Forces training course in 2003.

After a sergeant in his company died of a heart attack, Toczylowski got serious about his mortality, fellow soldiers said. He earmarked money from his savings and insurance policies to assist friends and help cousins with college tuition and to fund a scholarship at Valley Forge, his mother said.

Honoring his wishes

The party was the challenge for the family. But Peggy and Pam say Toczylowski was wise, and they're convinced he knew that assigning them planning duties would keep their minds off losing a son and brother.

With the sadness that comes with the passing of Milton Friedman comes pleasure at reading tributes to him from those who knew him and from reading articles written by the great man himself.

It's unfair to excerpt from the second article since it is already an abridgment of longer works by Friedman. Still, this excerpt is among my favorites:

"The company town has been revived in one major area: medical care. It is taken for granted that workers should receive their pay partly in kind, in the form of medical care provided by the employer. How come? Why single out medical care? Surely food is no less essential to life than medical care. Why is it not at least as logical for workers to be required to buy their food at the company store as to be required to buy their medical care at the company store?"

--from "Pricing Health Care: The Folly of Buying Health Care at the Company Store," Feb. 13, 1993

A very interesting criticism of foreign policy during the administration of President George H. W. Bush (41) appears in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal section.

Wow! The Israelis may have a process to convert oil shale into refinable oil at the equivalent of $17 per barrel.

The reaction of the environmentalists:

Amid various presentations on the nature of the fuel resource, problems unique to processing this fuel, emerging technologies, economic issues, etc. was a presentation by an attorney representing the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that could be summed up in one sentence: "It is really bad - don't do it."

And of the wildlife advocates:

the observation of a Mexican Spotted Owl in a canyon nearby one of the reserves, which therefore qualified the area as a habitat for an endangered species.

The Israelis appear to be a couple of years ahead of the US in this field. Hopefully we will learn enough from their experience to alleviate these concerns by those who want alternatives to foreign oil as long as they're alternatives that are ineffective and don't address the actual need.

Global Warming: it's worse than we thought--even other planets are affected.

H/T: Jerry Pournelle

Tim O'Reilly considers the hardware costs of the PS3 and the subsidization of hardware by long term commitment to software and services:

I forget who I heard ask me a year or two ago, "how long will it be before we can give away cars for a multi-year commitment to the information services embedded in them?" That question is increasingly on the horizon.

James Lileks points to an editorial cartoon that shows that Europe thought Camelot was not such a pretty place after all .

The National Center for Public Policy Research documents the distribution of "Kyoto Protocol Survival Kits" at a United Nations Global Warming Conference.

More examples of "environmentalists" following a "do what I say, not what I do" credo .