Los Angeles reader (and web designer extraordinaire) Bill Simon makes an interesting point about the cultural change since 911.

I can’t believe my ears. I am hearing Christmas music and it is only the beginning of December! It is not just in stores, as one might expect, but KMZT is playing it. Then, while listening to “hold” music (as I was waiting for a company to pick up their phone), I was hearing, “Oh Holy Night.” KOST FM is playing holiday music all the time. Have you noticed this? It is as if September 11th not only awoke our sense of patriotism, but also the spirit that’s embodied in the Christmas holiday. I am 55 and I remember a time maybe 35-40 years ago when, for weeks before Christmas, the radio stations (like the original KRLA!) played Christmas music, intermixed with their top 40 tunes. But just a few years ago I couldn’t find Christmas music on the radio even on Christmas day! I am Jewish and I don’t have any religious ties to Christmas. But I missed the music and the feeling of the season it provided. It had gotten so bad that I had to go out and buy Christmas Carol CDs. Now the music is back and I LOVE it.

He also follows up the thought with this (particularly apropos in light of the loss of George Harrison last week):

An ice age is receding. The Grinch is gone. The Blue Meenies, in the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” have been defeated. The people in Pepper Land (who the Blue Meenies had turned to stone) are coming back to life. When I saw the look on the faces of the liberated Afghani people as they listened to music, danced in the streets, sang songs and flew kites, I couldn’t help thinking about the Blue Meenies. The Blue Meenies hated music, flowers, love, and laughter. And remarkably, liberating Afghanistan from the Blue Meenies apparently liberated us from them as well. Hurray!!!

Good analogy. And in thinking about it, this is really a classical story (and movie) theme. I happened to catch the end of the movie Tron last night, and it had the same thing–the evil Master Control Program was defeated, and all the lights slowly lit up, and the people of the computer world came out of hiding, and started celebrating. Or think Wizard of Oz–Ding, Dong, the witch is dead…

Life imitates art imitates life.

Just heard an auditorial (that’s spoken editorial–I just made up the word) from Matt Miller on NPR’s Morning Edition, in which he was gleefully pointing out that, as a result of 911, the argument about private vs government charity should be over–government wins. His “argument,” (if one can actually dignify it with such a word) is that, since the Red Cross has played bait and switch with their donations, and been shown to be bureaucratic, that we should now prefer government for such functions.

Huh?

He also “argued” that since the Red Cross only raised a billion dollars, and the goverment had already put in forty billion, clearly private charity just wasn’t up to the challenge and didn’t have the necessary resources.

Double huh?

Let’s take his first “point.” He seems to be arguing that because at least one private charity screwed up, that we should now put our trust in government. Of course, he neglects to mention that now that we know that that particular charity screwed up, we have a choice to not give to it any more. And if lots of them are similarly screwing up, it potentially opens up a market opportunity for charities that can advertise, “Hey, we’re a new kind of charity–we’ll actually give money to people.” Of course, part of the problem is all of the idiotic rules that apply to charities due to their non-profit tax status, rules laid down by…government. Miller mentions this, but only in passing, as though it’s not really relevant. His preferred solution is for us to just continue involuntarily giving money to a government bureaucracy that remains effectively unaccountable to, well, anyone. And we’re now supposed to find this preferable?

As to the relative resources issue, he misses a couple key points. First of all, it’s not clear how much of that forty billion was a requirement, as opposed to a desirement. My impression at the time was that it was a number pulled pretty much out of the air, bid up from the original twenty billion after a meeting in the Oval Office with Senators Schumer and Clinton (the same meeting in which Bush made his delicious comment about “not sending a ten-million-dollar missile into a ten-dollar tent and hitting a camel in the butt,” right in front of her Highness). Much of it was to actually go to upstate New York for economic recovery. And of course, even to the degree that it was legitimately related to 911, it was bailouts of industries (e.g., insurance, airlines). Regardless of your opinion on whether or not this is a legitimate role of government, to compare it with charity is, at best, disingenuous. But that’s Matt Miller. Finally, even if it were true that private charity is not capable of raising sufficient funds for the true needs, isn’t it just possible that this is because so much money goes into the bottomless maw of government that charitable donors are feeling too pinched to give as much as they want? It is, after all, only a tax deduction–not a credit. Make it the latter, and see how the fundraising goes…

Anyway, he ended up the silly little commentary by saying, “now can we finally admit that government is better, and quit talking about privatizing social security and charity”?

Sorry, Matt, not until you come up with some real arguments.

There’s an interesting story in the Denver Post that points out that the WTC bombing actually wasn’t the first foreign attack on US mainland soil since the War of 1812, as many have mistakenly pointed out. I had forgotten about this myself, but the Japanese did send balloon bombs over during the war, and some of them did quite a bit of damage (this story points out that one made it at least as far east as Fort Collins, CO).

The real point of the story is that few were aware of it at the time (or even now) because the media made a conscious decision to not publicize it. As a result, the Japanese thought it was a flop and stopped wasting resources doing it.

In today’s Opinion Journal, David Rieff argues, I believe correctly, that we are going to have to take a more activist role in the rebuilding of Afghanistan than simply letting political events take their course while pledging aid, and we cannot count on the UN to do it right. That is a recipe for a return to the chaos, factionalism and oppression that we have seen for the past decades. While the people themselves might choose democracy, it isn’t clear that they will be allowed to, absent a forceful approach by the US. Otherwise, our aid will be wasted as much of the IMF and World Bank funding is today.

If we are going to have an equivalent of a Marshall plan, we will have to follow the successful political model implied by that, as we did in Japan and Germany–a temporary (benign as possible) colonialization to allow time for the inculcation of the values of democracy and freedom. Unfortunately, experience also indicates that this is a job that will take not months, but years, and perhaps a decade or more.

The same will apply to other countries (e.g., Iraq) that we liberate as part of this war.

Well, they obviously didn’t read my last disquisition in response to their muddled leader about manned space. In the latest issue, they seem to welcome Sean O’Keefe as the new NASA head, because they think that he’s a bean counter who will shut down that yucky manned space program and give them back their beloved robotic space science. I can see why they might be a little confused. As their article notes (apologies for the quaint old-world spelling):

…O’Keefe ruffled feathers in Washington, DC, when he presented the House Science Committee with exactly the kind of chart that space enthusiasts hate to see: a side-by-side comparison of government spending on manned space flight against spending on other research programmes. His graph showed that the National Institute of Health’s cancer research centre received $4 billion in federal funds last year, but the space station got twice as much. “I mean, why put that in that graph like that?” asked Dave Weldon, a Florida congressman whose district includes the Kennedy Space Centre. “The reason that I’m particularly bothered by this is, you know, you’re here for the administration and the administration claims to be a big supporter of manned spaceflight.”

I’m not sure where the reporter comes up with that number–station doesn’t get “twice that much”–it gets about the same. He may be taking all of NASA’s manned space activities, including Shuttle, to come up with something close to “twice that much,” but it’s misleading, if not false, reportage.

Anyway, it’s beside the point. Unfortunately, both the good congressman and the reporters at The Economist continue to equate “manned spaceflight” with multibillion-dollar boondoggles that provide jobs in Houston, Huntsville and Cocoa Beach. Unfortunately for The Economist’s science reporter, such a chart showing JPL missions against the rest of the federal science budget wouldn’t reflect well on space in general, manned or unmanned.

I say again–we do not have a space program (or programme) for the purposes of science–if that were its purpose it would justify little more budget than in any other industrialized country (much much less than its current one percent of the federal whole).

My take on O’Keefe is that he is actually more than just a bean counter. He’s a seasoned technical manager with a good track record of recognizing problems and cleaning them up. Rumor has it that he was selected specifically by Dick Cheney and will have his ear and support. That little briefing last month was indeed battleground preparation for a showdown between the White House and the Congress over space policy. We just had eight years of an administration that had zero interest in space, other than as a foreign policy tool, at loggerheads with a Congress that saw it primarily as a source of pork and patronage.

The real question is, just what does this administration want to do in space? Is O’Keefe going to “do the thing right,” or do the right thing? I’m moderately hopeful that it will first be the former, and then, the latter. And if the upcoming housecleaning results in an actual national debate on space policy, and why we have a space program, that will be a very good thing, regardless of what happens to the “manned space programme.”

Well, they obviously didn’t read my last disquisition in response to their muddled leader about manned space. In the latest issue, they seem to welcome Sean O’Keefe as the new NASA head, because they think that he’s a bean counter who will shut down that yucky manned space program and give them back their beloved robotic space science. I can see why they might be a little confused. As their article notes (apologies for the quaint old-world spelling):

…O’Keefe ruffled feathers in Washington, DC, when he presented the House Science Committee with exactly the kind of chart that space enthusiasts hate to see: a side-by-side comparison of government spending on manned space flight against spending on other research programmes. His graph showed that the National Institute of Health’s cancer research centre received $4 billion in federal funds last year, but the space station got twice as much. “I mean, why put that in that graph like that?” asked Dave Weldon, a Florida congressman whose district includes the Kennedy Space Centre. “The reason that I’m particularly bothered by this is, you know, you’re here for the administration and the administration claims to be a big supporter of manned spaceflight.”

I’m not sure where the reporter comes up with that number–station doesn’t get “twice that much”–it gets about the same. He may be taking all of NASA’s manned space activities, including Shuttle, to come up with something close to “twice that much,” but it’s misleading, if not false, reportage.

Anyway, it’s beside the point. Unfortunately, both the good congressman and the reporters at The Economist continue to equate “manned spaceflight” with multibillion-dollar boondoggles that provide jobs in Houston, Huntsville and Cocoa Beach. Unfortunately for The Economist’s science reporter, such a chart showing JPL missions against the rest of the federal science budget wouldn’t reflect well on space in general, manned or unmanned.

I say again–we do not have a space program (or programme) for the purposes of science–if that were its purpose it would justify little more budget than in any other industrialized country (much much less than its current one percent of the federal whole).

My take on O’Keefe is that he is actually more than just a bean counter. He’s a seasoned technical manager with a good track record of recognizing problems and cleaning them up. Rumor has it that he was selected specifically by Dick Cheney and will have his ear and support. That little briefing last month was indeed battleground preparation for a showdown between the White House and the Congress over space policy. We just had eight years of an administration that had zero interest in space, other than as a foreign policy tool, at loggerheads with a Congress that saw it primarily as a source of pork and patronage.

The real question is, just what does this administration want to do in space? Is O’Keefe going to “do the thing right,” or do the right thing? I’m moderately hopeful that it will first be the former, and then, the latter. And if the upcoming housecleaning results in an actual national debate on space policy, and why we have a space program, that will be a very good thing, regardless of what happens to the “manned space programme.”

Well, they obviously didn’t read my last disquisition in response to their muddled leader about manned space. In the latest issue, they seem to welcome Sean O’Keefe as the new NASA head, because they think that he’s a bean counter who will shut down that yucky manned space program and give them back their beloved robotic space science. I can see why they might be a little confused. As their article notes (apologies for the quaint old-world spelling):

…O’Keefe ruffled feathers in Washington, DC, when he presented the House Science Committee with exactly the kind of chart that space enthusiasts hate to see: a side-by-side comparison of government spending on manned space flight against spending on other research programmes. His graph showed that the National Institute of Health’s cancer research centre received $4 billion in federal funds last year, but the space station got twice as much. “I mean, why put that in that graph like that?” asked Dave Weldon, a Florida congressman whose district includes the Kennedy Space Centre. “The reason that I’m particularly bothered by this is, you know, you’re here for the administration and the administration claims to be a big supporter of manned spaceflight.”

I’m not sure where the reporter comes up with that number–station doesn’t get “twice that much”–it gets about the same. He may be taking all of NASA’s manned space activities, including Shuttle, to come up with something close to “twice that much,” but it’s misleading, if not false, reportage.

Anyway, it’s beside the point. Unfortunately, both the good congressman and the reporters at The Economist continue to equate “manned spaceflight” with multibillion-dollar boondoggles that provide jobs in Houston, Huntsville and Cocoa Beach. Unfortunately for The Economist’s science reporter, such a chart showing JPL missions against the rest of the federal science budget wouldn’t reflect well on space in general, manned or unmanned.

I say again–we do not have a space program (or programme) for the purposes of science–if that were its purpose it would justify little more budget than in any other industrialized country (much much less than its current one percent of the federal whole).

My take on O’Keefe is that he is actually more than just a bean counter. He’s a seasoned technical manager with a good track record of recognizing problems and cleaning them up. Rumor has it that he was selected specifically by Dick Cheney and will have his ear and support. That little briefing last month was indeed battleground preparation for a showdown between the White House and the Congress over space policy. We just had eight years of an administration that had zero interest in space, other than as a foreign policy tool, at loggerheads with a Congress that saw it primarily as a source of pork and patronage.

The real question is, just what does this administration want to do in space? Is O’Keefe going to “do the thing right,” or do the right thing? I’m moderately hopeful that it will first be the former, and then, the latter. And if the upcoming housecleaning results in an actual national debate on space policy, and why we have a space program, that will be a very good thing, regardless of what happens to the “manned space programme.”

The folks over at Quasipundit have been discussing, among several other things, the announcement by Jim Gilmore that he is resigning as head of the Republican National Committee. There’s been much speculation amongst the punditocracy about whether he was asked to step down by the White House (both he and the White House deny this), as a result of the recent election losses.

My take–Gilmore was a dud. He was singularly unimpressive in the interviews that I saw with him, and didn’t even seem able to articulate what the Republicans think they stand for. But I don’t think that it’s his fault that the elections in NJ and Virginia were lost.

One of the crucial factors that resulted in the losses, particularly in Virginia, was the fact that the President did absolutely no campaigning for either Schundler or Earley. Ironically, while the war has boosted Bush to stratospheric popularity levels, I think that it actually made life much more difficult for Republican candidates this fall–the issues and tone of the campaign were constrained (for Schundler in particular), and the White House was unwilling to enter the fray. Thus, if Gilmore really was canned by the White House for the losses, it would be singularly unfair. I do think that Karl Rove thought that new blood was required in that position, but I’ll take the White House at their word, and assume that he jumped, but was not shoved.

CBS News reports that a boy has been cured of sickle-cell anemia using adult stem cells from an umbilical cord, heretofore regarded as medical waste (even by pro-lifers). If this isn’t a freak result, it represents a huge breakthrough, because the technique doesn’t even require matching–the stem cells came from an anonymous donor. One would hope that saving the umbilical blood will now become standard procedure in all hospitals.

Wonder what Professor Kass thinks of this one.

OK, I fibbed.

I said I wasn’t going to say anything more, but when it’s the first thing in the morning, and it’s really early in the morning, and it’s the first news you hear, what are you going to say that’s coherent?

First, to follow up on my metacomment from this morning. Yes, we have finally found a story that has broken through the media fog of war.

For weeks–indeed, now months–since the atrocities of September 11, the Fox News Channel has covered the war at their 10 PM eastern time (7 PM, in the time zone where I spend much of my time) slot. Initially, this was on Paula Zahn’s “The Edge,” but since Paula jumped ship and went over to CNN in the morning (where she promptly got trounced in the ratings by “Fox and Friends” on FNC), the folks at FNC have, each week, been alternating various personalities in that time slot with “War on Terror” coverage. I don’t know, but I would presume that they’re actually auditioning potential Paula replacements, and watching ratings each week as one means of making a decision.

This week was handled by Laurie Dhue, a blonde ingenue that FNC acquired from CNN via MSNBC about a year ago. Ms. Dhue normally handles the newsreading at the top and bottom of the hour in prime time, and of all the female news personalities on Fox (or any other news channel, for that matter, in my humble opinion) she is the easiest on the eyes, and has a sultry voice to boot. I can’t offer any similar assessment for male news personalities, not being bent that way.

(Disclaimer–I deeply love Patricia, who reads this weblog, would never ever even consider swapping her for any other, and all comments here are purely objective, and only peripherally derived from my limbic system and several million years of evolution).

She is clearly someone who FNC is grooming for bigger and better things, and putting her in the rotation for the 10 PM slot is a way of finding out if one of those things is replacing Paula Zahn permanently. My impression is that, in addition to her predictable visual and aural effects on the heterosexual male libido, she is reasonably intelligent, and hard working, but, regrettably, not particularly knowledgeable about matters military, and doesn’t always come off well in attempting to cover wars.

Tonight (I suspect at her own request) she got to do an hour on Something Completely Different. She devoted the whole hour to a celebration of the life of George Harrison. Though she was almost certainly in diapers, if she existed at all, when the Beatles were in their heyday, she was clearly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject, and in my opinion, did a much better job of covering it than she has the war this week. She managed to get Dick Cavett and Billy Preston live in the studio together to reminisce.

So, anyway, this is just a long way of saying that the pattern has been broken–we have finally found a story that is important enough to preempt war coverage for.

The other interesting thing that I noted was that while watching it, I was still a little starved for war news (as there is now a battle on for Kandahar–the final Taliban redoubt, not counting Osama’s caves). FNC obliged me by running a crawl during the Harrison tribute. As a result, I got a chance to practice my multiplexing ability–reading the war crawl while listening to the interviews with various people remembering George. However, given my genetic heritage, I have to confess that I lost the war train of thought every time they did a full screen of Ms. Dhue–I can listen to one thing and watch another, but I can only watch one thing at time, and hormones will always out, regardless of one’s devotion to his true love…

Anyway, now, to drop from the metacomment, to an actual dissertation on George Harrison, and a disquisition on genius, life, the universe and everything.

Listening to him sing “Here Comes The Sun,” I realized that I never really appreciated the Beatles until Abbey Road. It may have been partly because that is the time that I really started to come of age, but I think that it’s also because it was the album that had more of George’s influence than any previous one, with the possible exception of Sergeant Pepper. It was the pre-breakup Beatles, the ones that were evolving just as George was blossoming as a total musician, that I enjoyed the most. During that period, in the late sixties, they were revolutionizing their own music, and more indirectly, popular music in general, and I’m quite convinced that it was because George Harrison was struggling to break free of the previous confines of their classical fifties rock’n’roll roots. This artistic tension is what ultimately, a couple of years later, broke up the group, but it also spawned some of their greatest and most interesting work.

The other thing that I was thinking as I listened, appreciating his voice, and guitar, and his beautiful melody, was “what is the chance that people of this level of talent, not just individual talent, but a talent that created something much greater than the sum of its parts, would come together in Liverpool, England?”

And I thought, both infinitesimal, and inevitable. We should be amazed that such a group could come together from anywhere in the world, but for them all to come from the same city at the same time…well, it’s just pure luck. If you think of it kind of like the Drake equation, multiplying probabilities on probabilities, it indicates that there were probably lots of people in Liverpool who could have gotten together to form world-changing bands, but they…well…just didn’t get together. And if there were people like that in Liverpool, there were also people like that in Birmingham, and Manchester, and Glasgow, and London. And New York and LA and Shanghai and even Kabul and Kandahar…

The point is, that at the risk of sounding PC, diversity (true diversity–not the monochrome kind pushed by the PC police) is the source of both sublime genius and, unfortunately, evil mayhem. But if we have a system of both freedom and responsibility that can allow the genius to bloom while containing those who would mindlessly increase entropy, then the more the merrier. Population control is evil, not just because it violates peoples’ rights, but because it violates some more basic principle of the universe–the necessity to throw the dice many times in an attempt to bring together the necessary combinations that create great works and knowledge–to ultimately help the universe to know itself.

And yes, of course earth is not enough–we will indeed eventually run out of room, and that’s why we have to expand into the other 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe. But, trite though it may sound, there is a reason to do so–to create more George Harrisons. And more Beatles, and Beethovens, and Einsteins and Hawkings. And in the meantime, we have to subdue those on this planet who would constrict and destroy, so that we can make room, both physically and spiritually, for those who do create.