Here’s a story that’ll warm the heart of monkey-man Ken Layne.

Monkeys are apparently using millipedes as an hallucinogen.

Doug Bandow, from Cato, lays out a case against a war with Iraq.

The problem with a lot of these arguments (not just Doug’s), is that they set up strawmen, in the sense that they describe the array of arguments against going after Saddam, and then knock them down, one by one. The problem with that approach is that no single argument is probably sufficient to justify it–it is the combination of them, in totality that justifies it (if it is indeed justified).

For example, he says:

Lots of arguments have been offered on behalf of striking Baghdad that are not reasons at all. For instance, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has brutalized his own people.

Certainly true. But the world is full of brutal regimes that have murdered their own people. Indeed, Washington ally Turkey’s treatment of its Kurds is scarcely more gentle than Iraq’s Kurdish policies.

Moreover, the U.S. warmly supports the royal kleptocracy next door in Saudi Arabia, fully as totalitarian, if not quite as violent, as Saddam’s government. Any non-Muslim and most women would probably prefer living in Iraq.

The point is not that Saddam should be taken out because he’s a brutal dictator–as Doug points out, that criterion applies to lots of thugs around the world.

The fact that he’s a brutal dictator is simply used to buttress the more important argument that he will have no compunction against using such WMD against us, if he can get his hands on them. Particularly if he can do it in such a way as to not leave fingerprints. Of course, that’s an argument that Doug doesn’t address.

Another point that Doug makes is that Saddam is rational; therefore he can be contained and deterred. However, there’s a lot of evidence to believe otherwise–he’s calculating, to be sure, and has a strong sense of self preservation, but he’s also liable to major missteps, and miscomprehension about just what he can get away with (the invasion of Kuwait being a notable example).

What needs to be done, and I don’t have time to do right now, is to lay out a whole series of criteria that one would use to determine whether or not to go to war with a despot like Saddam. Put them in a matrix, and come up with rules about how many must be met, or how many must be met in conjunction with others, to make a go decision. One would hope that someone is doing that in the State Department or the Pentagon or the White House Security Council.

That will be a much less assailable argument for those who are opposed to the war, than allowing them to go after rationales piecemeal.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

Vodkapundit has returned, apparently refreshed, from his honeymoon. But posting will be reduced (the free ice cream cones will be 27% smaller, as Lileks says), due to more pressing matters (I know that story). Belated congratulations to Steven on the getting-married thingy.

In the comments section of this post on Friday, a reader argued that scientists ignore inconvenient facts in their defense of evolution.

Charles Murtaugh has responded.

Check out these commercial satellite photos of the buildup of the US air base in Qatar.

I believe that, under the 1992 Remote Sensing Act, the US government does have de jure shutter control over this type of imagery. I’m wondering if and when they’re going to exercise it, or at least purchase the rights to the photos themselves from Ikonos and Quickbird (as they did during the Gulf War, and more recently, in Afghanistan last fall). The fact that they’re not makes me think that they don’t mind folks (and particularly folks in the region, e.g., Riyadh) seeing them…

Friday’s Boston Globe has the latest developments in the Ted Williams case, and in the elder daughter’s continuing attempts to have him thawed and burned, eliminating whatever chances he has for reanimation in the future.

Basically, it looked like things were settled last week, when after being persuaded by the younger daughter, Claudia, that this really was what Mr. Williams wanted, and forensic analysis that showed that his signature on the document was authentic, the executor of the estate withdrew his request to the judge to adjudicate the matter. This had the effect of denying Ms. Farrell’s attempts to have the body cremated.

Now she says she’s going to sue. One of the defendants will be Alcor itself, the cryonics provider that took custody of the patient.

According to the article, there was a reluctance to take this step, because it will now involve calling Claudia a liar. Up till now, all of the vitriol and ad hominem attacks have been focused on the son, John Henry. If this lawsuit goes forward, it could get really nasty, and provide a lot of publicity for Alcor and cryonics.

Here’s my take, given what we know. It appears to me that John-Henry and Claudia sincerely wanted to both be frozen themselves when their time came, and to be able to join their father in the fridge, and reunite with him in the future. John-Henry is certainly not a model citizen, but I don’t see how that’s pertinent. The talk about preserving his body to sell the DNA was just that–talk. Alcor will not allow that, and it’s not a part of the contract. Take that away, and I can’t see any other motivation for their actions. Perhaps someone else has other theories, but I don’t have any.

Ms. Farrell, on the other hand, could have a couple motivations. One is that she is simply so emotionally distraught that her father will not get what she believes his final wish–to be cremated, that she’s willing to do legal battle with her half siblings over the issue, at great cost, both financially and to everyone’s reputation.

I’m still holding to the theory that this is at least partially an extortion attempt. She was cut out of the will. She’d still like to get what she considers to be her share. Her legal case is poor, but it’s a nuisance for the defendants. She’ll ultimately settle the lawsuit in exchange for some amount of money for “emotional pain and suffering” at the thought of her father being upside down in a tank of liquid nitrogen, instead of properly scattered over the Florida Keys. Ted will stay in the vat.

You heard it here first.

Over a week ago, near San Diego, some drug warriors in a helicopter, looking for those evil marijuana plants, clipped a power line, starting a fire. It’s since burned over fifty thousand acres and threatened several small communities.

Your tax dollars, hard at work.

Hank Parnell doesn’t think very highly of the original Star Trek.

Reason and logic were almost always ridiculed on Star Trek. Almost always. Ever notice that? Emotion, passion, “faith” were always extolled; reason and logic shown to be empty, inadequate, and worthy only of derision and mockery.

I found that offensive then, as a boy, and I find it even more so now, as a man. We humans need not fear losing our emotions. Show me an animal that doesn’t feel, and I’ll show you a dead animal. It’s logic and reason we have in very short and apparently extremely limited supply; hence this exhortation to passion over reason always seems to me perverse, and self-flagellant, to say nothing of supremely delusional and suicidal.

But I’ll confess, there are a couple of episodes I like.

One is called “A Taste of Armageddon,” by writer Robert Hamner. This is a very clever show about two planets locked in a 500-year war which they fight “virtually,” using computers? and march their casualties off to suicide stations! This is a wonderfully novel idea, and just the sort of stupid, delusional thing you could actually see human beings convincing themselves to do at some future date, for the very reasons expounded in the show: to “preserve” civilization, to deal with our “killer instincts” rationally. (Rationally, you would think that if you had killer instincts, and you found them appalling and self-destructive, you would try to thwart them somehow, not exercise them in a vain and pointless manner; but then, I often wonder if what I mean by “rationality” is a completely different thing from what others mean. Others seem to think rationality means only the ability to rationalize?that is, to use “reason” in the service, or rather self-service, of the emotions, which is hardly the “superior” position!)

Kirk, of course, puts an end to this nonsense, and in a fashion I approve of? by blowing up their suicide stations and their computers, leaving them open to the real thing. And there is also that truly wonderful business of “General Order 24,” which Kirk gives Scotty at one point, and which essentially means, “Wipe the bastards out!” I often wonder how that little apocalyptic directive “fit in” with the later almighty and sacrosanct “Prime Directive”, which Kirk’s gutless, emasculated successor, Little Man Picard, the Cosmic Social-Worker, couldn’t bring himself to violate on a technicality.

And there is in this episode a genuine message, which is that war is a serious business that should never be undertaken lightly; effete, bloodless civilized guys should leave it to savage hot-blooded barbarians like James Tiberius Kirk?who nonetheless always managed to be enough of a man to avoid making it, whenever and wherever he could. Kirk may’ve been a jerk, as I called him in those youthful parodies; but he was at least a man, not a bloodless corpse like Jean-Luc Picard, who was stuffed so full of his own phony self-righteousness that the rotten reek would’ve gagged the viewer, had we been able to smell him.