On The Third Hand

Warblog Archives

Saturday, 05 Jan 2002

Or just a lone nutcase? Fox reports, you decide. Summary: A small plane crashed into the 20th floor of the 40 story Bank of America building in Tampa, Fl. The plane took off without clearance, and when ordered to land, instead crashed into the building. [Update] CNN reports that the plane was being flown by a 15-year old student pilot.

I just consider it suspicious that the plane crashed into the Bank of America building. Teenage copycat, perhaps?

Glenn Reynolds mentioned on something this morning that I'd like to see done. He says: "There's a good argument that "loser pays" should always apply to the government." Perry, at Samizdata, picked up on it and argues that the concept should be expanded to a simple "loser pays". He does add: "particularly if they were not the party which brought the action." Glenn then expands on his earlier post and basically limits the idea to criminal prosecution by the government. I suspect, since he's a law professor, he may not feel the same about other instances of legal injustice.

I don't quite agree with either one here. I would like to see a restricted loser pays idea. The problem is just where to restrict it? Allowing it only to defendants in situations where the government starts criminal proceedings is a good start, but doesn't even begin to get into the problem of frivolous lawsuits and 'I'll beggar you unless you give in" lawsuits, both of which Perry mentions. On the other hand, making a 'loser pays' for all lawsuits goes much too far, and would tend to discourage people from taking legal action when they should.

My thought here is that we should start where Glenn is, a have a 'loser pays' for criminal actions started by the government, where they lose (assuming the state is not also paying for the defence anyway). Then we should start looking at various other types of suits, and trying to set up some stringent rules for other types of suits where that should apply. I think there might be a place for jury in this too, perhaps an option for them to declare that loser pays in particular types of suits.

I don't have the answers; I'm just thinking in type. But this is something about which 'we the people' can get noisy -- at least enough to get it looked into and make it rise up a bit more on the campaign issues list.

I've added a few more blogs to my list. Probably more to come. The first few are ones I check daily, the rest are ones I don't get to every day. I'm a speed reader, but I do have limits!

I've decided to change my mind about keeping the index on a daily basis; it will have at least two days on it. I will try to keep it smallish, though, since I seem to have a fair number of readers coming in on slower lines.

Friday, 04 Jan 2002

... with bated breath, my fellow bloggers' dissection of the latest gem from Edward Said. I don't normally dissect, but I do enjoy watching the process. Said does have a few interesting points hidden in the rhetoric. I challenge you in the dissection business to find them. Liberal is not always wrong.

What it was like to be there.

A number of my fellow bloggers (you know who you are) seem to be having a problem with this post by Natalie Solent. They are wondering what she has eaten or drunk (with some pokes mentioning John Walker...). I'm not sure if this is a male/female thing or a myth-fans/not-myth-fans thing, but I had no problem understanding her. I promise you I don't drink J Walker, black or red. I am somewhat partial to single-malt scotch, but I don't think that is a negative personality trait (and I wish they had scotch on Amazon's wish list).

Then again... it might be an age thing... I disconnected with modern culture in the mid-eighties too.

White Russia? A terrorist armory? That insignificant little pipsqueak of an ex-Soviet (so-called) 'socialist republic'? According to this article in the Washington Post, yes. I think I better review my slavic languages. Who knows... I might get a high-paying job as a translator when we start dropping daisy-cutters.

We have lost our first soldier to enemy fire in this war. May he rest in peace. In a way, that is good news -- not that we lost one -- that it took so long before we did. The military is doing things right, except for the 'friendly fire' incident.

I've decided I can't stand Greymatter anymore, so I'm doing things by hand from now on. You probably won't notice much difference, except that the permanent links (from this day on) will no longer go to a separate page for each post. The links will go to an "anchor", so that if you copy a link, you will go directly to the post, not just to the top of the archive page.

The main page and all the archives will be by the day from now on. This should keep the size of the main index page reasonable for those on slow lines. None of the previous Greymatter links will change at all, so don't worry if you linked an older story of mine. I'm also changing my blog-time to be the same as my server's time.

Since Andrew Sullivan finally has a site that doesn't crash my browser, I've added him to my blog list. I'll be adding others as well.

Thursday, 03 Jan 2002

Bjoern Staerk takes issue with a part of Jonah Goldberg's latest article (page down to "It's the Little Things"). Jonah (extreme simplification--read the article) says that understanding does not bring peace. Bjoern replies that familiarity and understanding are not the same thing (read his piece too). I agree with Bjoern (mostly), when he says: "When you understand your potential enemy, you know how to deal with him. When you don't understand, you do either too much or too little."

I'd also add; when you understand a potential friend, you know how to deal with him. When you don't understand, you may end up as enemies. On a purely personal level, I have had some serious anger and hurt feelings simply because of misunderstandings (and my being misunderstood) between cultures that are only mildly different (US and UK -- US and Australia). We all need to listen first, and create bloody noses only when we know we really have been attacked. If we truly understand the attackers, as Bjoern implies, we can bloody the noses much more effectively. (Yep, I'm still feeling bellicose... and I studied the Russian language and Soviet culture during the Cold War... I'll leave it to you to figure out why.)

Let's have a million-bellicose-women march on Washington in favor of crushing terrorists by any means necessary. Ahem... if anyone is wondering, I've been reading through CommonDreams and Antiwar.com. Tends to raise the bellicosity index sky-high.

According to Fox News, "Members of the South Carolina House are being asked to attend sensitivity training after a furor last summer over a phony memo that called on female pages to wear skimpy clothing." The memo was sent around as a parody on an official memo telling the pages not to show cleavage or wear short skirts. Instead of sending the legislators to sensitivity training, perhaps we could send the PC bunch to a "Humour 101" class?

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for pointing me to this fabulous flame by James Lileks on the subjects of peaceniks, PC and multiculturalism. Here's an excerpt:

This is where the Peace School lessons take you: In order to respect all viewpoints, no actual viewpoints may be professed, let alone examined. The Peace School wants a place where religion is turned into a sparkle-flecked gruel of good intentions that curdles the moment it comes in contact with reality, where every idea is equally empty, where tolerance becomes abolition, where Good has an infinite number of cheeks to present to mass murderers who had bad childhoods, and no one has the ability to shove the flag in the dirt and say THIS is where I stand without being mocked by those whose cleverness barely conceals their loathing.

I'm impressed.

I just caught this one on UPI hears(page down):

Is there something to astrology after all? In June 2000, Lynne Palmer, a 69 year-old Las Vegas practitioner of the ancient art, published her Astrological Almanac for 2001. On page 95 was the notation, "avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."

Yep, that notation was there. It was debunked by "Truth or Fiction" some time ago. She listed 16 dates in September to "avoid terrorist attacks", September 11th was one of them (16/30 is over 50% chance). She also did not list September 11th as one of the days to "avoid travel by air".

Words mean things. A coincidence is a coincidence.

Yes, they do exist. Kudos to Kathleen Parker for admitting error and apologizing, rather than sticking it into a "page 6" correction.

Seems he's got another suspicious letter, with a powdery substance inside. Initial tests came back negative for biological hazard (they'd better). All letters and such going to the Capitol are still being irradiated, so they don't know whether it once was hazardous material. I wonder if Daschle has asked himself, "why do they hate me?"

Wednesday, 02 Jan 2002

Yeah... right.

My latest idea is that all passengers on airlines be given a block (out of those ubiquitous--I have one as a souvenir, all in Thai language--cans) of spam to throw at any hijackers or suicide bombers. Let us use their superstition against them! Spam contains not only pork but (gasp) pork parts (including things that even I am not too sanguine about). Seriously unclean stuff. Hit them with it and they will be convinced they won't get their 72 virgins. So... if you fly, buy a can of 'Spam' first.

Gerald sent me this cartoon, I think it applies to all those of us who did little or no blogging yesterday.

Well, let's just say I'm fine today!

I had a lovely New Years Eve, got home a bit after 4am, and totally neglected blogging all day yesterday. Sorry! By the way, while I'm catching up, you might want to go read today's Pundit Watch. Will has done a bit of catch-up of his own, having neglected Sunday's Watch in favor of family (how dare he make me wait a whole week for my fix).

I read Natlije's "Echoes and ghosts over New Years" yesterday, and spent a while wiping tears. It reminded me of an old quote byJohn Greenleaf Whittier:

For of all sad words
of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
"It might have been!

Monday, 31 Dec 2001

One thing I enjoy about Libertarians is that they manage to get both the right and left up in arms. There's been a major blog war on guns going on,with Libertarian Samizdata'sPerry de Havill and Dale Amon on one side VS AintNoBadDude's Brian Linse and Qausiundit'sTony Adragna on the other. It's been interesting reading.

Almost lost amidst the gun discussion; however, is the much more interesting (to me) debate on compassion VS morality that is going on between Natalija Radic of Liberarian Samizdata and Kevin Holtsberry of Ideas etc., over the Australian debate on the ethics of dying 15-year-old's wish for sex. His wish was granted, and Natlija wrote an article in favour of granting that wish. I read the article, gave it a mental "you go, girl" and thought no more of it. Then I saw that Kevin objected on moral and legal grounds. I considered blogging a defense of Natalija, but I figured she was an adult and could defend herself, against both Kevin and oddball e-mails, which she has done quite well.

I'm fairly sure that Kevin would take exception to my calling this a debate on compassion VS morality (or even legality), but that is exactly what it is. I'm weighing in on the side of compassion. Sex is a basic human pleasure, and surely he deserved some pleasure, after all the pain he had suffered. Anyone who wants to send me strange e-mails may click on the contact button above. I'm solidly with Natalija on this; doing the legal and moral thing in this case would have been nothing less than cruelty.

I'd just like to wish you and yours a very Happy New Year.

Sunday, 30 Dec 2001

According to James C. Bennett at UPI:

Bloggers and their readers may form only a small percentage of the Anglosphere populations, but they are typical "early adopters" -- trendsetters and opinion leaders. The crossover between the blogs and mainstream media means that ideas, opinions and identified errors from blogspace will be reflected more and more in mainstream media, to the extent that they remain distinct things.

Very flattering piece he's written there. If you don't know what an Anglosphere is, type the word into the search box at UPI and you'll get more of his articles ("On unity and diversity" gives a good explanation). I don't agree with everything he says, but I do agree with much of it -- and find the rest very thought-provoking.

Will Vehr's Blog Watch this morning reminded me of a post by Joanne Jacobs yesterday, on what women want. Her conclusion was "Hugh Jackman. Please." I tend to agree - he's a pretty one! But it seems some women, worldwide, have the hots for Osama bin Laden? I'm not a Valley Girl, but can't think of a better comment on that than "gag me with a spoon". Yuck.

Charles Johnson blogged an article from the LA Times, "Terrorists Are Difficult to Profile". He notes that the article mentions that the El Al (the Israeli airline) did catch Richard Reid and, after searching him thoroughly, sat him next to an Air Marshal. He uses this to suggest that the title of the article should be changed to "Some Terrorists Are Incredibly Easy to Profile". Yes, they are if you use El Al's methods, which include interrogating each and every passenger and pulling aside anyone in the least bit suspicious for further checks. Charles, like Ann, seems to be missing the point. The people in the US are (mostly) not arguing for El Al type checking. They are arguing for racial/ethnic profiling.

Ethnic profiling would not have caught Richard Reid. He isn't Arab. Country profiling would not have caught him either. He's British. If we start relying on ethnic profiling, we are someday going to have a blond-haired, blue-eyed, clean-cut, clean-shaven Muslim extremist with a US passport waltz right on to a plane and try to blow it up or crash it into something. We cannot count on profiling, and I doubt our new 'federalized' people (who don't need even a high school education)are capable of doing the kind of security checks that El Al uses. So, once again, it's up to the passengers and crew to stay alert.