Month: June 2003

This commercial is stunning. The key thing to remember is that no special effects were used. They actually set this thing up manually and filmed it hundreds of times before they got it exactly right. And some think capitalism isn’t creative.

What will the political consequences be if a) Saddam is captured and b) we get real new intelligence and data on the Iraqi WMD program? I think that’s when president Bush gets out his saw and cuts off that big, high branch his Democrat opponents are now sitting on.

THE DIFFERENCE: I’ve long believed that science will at some point render many of our current policy arguments moot. I think we’ll find that genes play far more of a role in our lives than most of us would ever want to believe. But the news yesterday about gender difference in our genes dwarves the debate about the role of testosterone in gender difference. Here are the money grafs:

The finding of 78 active genes on the Y contradicts an earlier impression of the chromosome as being a genetic wasteland apart from its male-determining gene. But if the Y is not a wasteland, important consequences ensue for the differences between men and women. As often noted, the genomes of humans and chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical, when each of their three billion DNA units are compared. But what of men and women, who have different chromosomes? Until now, biologists have said that makes no difference, because there are almost no genes on the Y, and in women one of the two X chromosomes is inactivated, so that both men and women have one working X chromosome.
But researchers have recently found that several hundred genes on the X escape inactivation. Taking those genes into account along with the new tally of Y genes gives this result: Men and women differ by 1 to 2 percent of their genomes, Dr. Page said, which is the same as the difference between a man and a male chimpanzee or between a woman and a female chimpanzee …
“We all recite the mantra that we are 99 percent identical and take political comfort in it,” Dr. Page said. “But the reality is that the genetic difference between males and females absolutely dwarfs all other differences in the human genome.”

By far the biggest difference in the human genome is gender. Blank Slaters take another hit.

The latest piece of racial obsession from the far Left enters the academy.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: Finally, it goes to Fidel Castro, who shares John Derbyshire’s loathing of “bastardy” and “buggery.” When Fidel was punk’d by a Miami radio station, his first recourse was to swear at his radio hosts by using expletives accusing them of being illegitimate and gay.

They go at it over Whitewater.

THEY WERE GUILTY: Radosh on the Rosenbergs.

REYNOLDS ON GAY MARRIAGE: As usual, he takes a sensible position. One reason his blog is so popular is his ability to reason calmly and reliably. I know my own passions are involved in this subject; so it’s always good to see my own view echoed by someone as disinterested and as sane as Instapundit. The arguments of the opponents, in contrast, seem to be getting more far-fetched and hysterical. David Frum’s notion that this will destroy motherhood makes absolutely no sense to me. The gender of a parent has already been subject to all sorts of permutations under the increasingly diverse realm of heterosexual marital arrangements. Stanley Kurtz’s view that this will mean closeto an end to religious freedom and the First Amendment seems just as strained. Jonah Goldberg makes the obvious point that anti-gay-marriage conservatives would be more persuasive – and less suspected of simple anti-gay animus – if they came up with some alternative to gay marriage. But the far right’s resistance to any civil acknowledgment of gay citizens and gay relationships has actually made fully-fledged gay marriage more likely. Hoist by their own prejudice, I’d say.

Not Leo Strauss. Not Norman Podhoretz. Not Irving Kristol. Can you guess?

NEWS FROM IRAN: Jeff Jarvis has an excellent round-up.

The one thing that knowledgeable people have told me about John Kerry is that he doesn’t know when to stop. He has no controlling mechanism when he goes on the attack. To accuse this president of deliberately lying to get this country into war is therefore a typical piece of Kerry excess. I think Kerry will pay dearly for it in the long run – and maybe even sooner. Yesterday, for example, we received news that the fourth most wanted Saddam apparatchik had been captured. Does Kerry honestly believe that we have all the information about WMDs or Saddam already? Here’s what the Daily Telegraph is reporting:

No details of Abid Hamid’s capture were released by the Pentagon. But yesterday a huge operation was launched. American troops raided two farmhouses and found $5.3 million in US dollars, up to $250 million in Iraqi dinars, quantities of British pounds and euros and $600,000 in gems. Up to 50 people believed to be part of Saddam’s security or intelligence apparatus or members of paramilitary groups were taken prisoner. “I believe over the next three to four days, you will hear much more about the number of senior Iraqi individuals we have detained here over the last couple of days,” said Maj Gen Ray Odierno, commander of the US 4th Infantry Division. He said it was believed that part of the money was intended for funding bounties to be paid for killing American soldiers.

My bet is that we soon have a breakthrough in WMD evidence in Iraq – and that we are getting closer by the day to discovering Saddam himself. Bush and Blair will be vindicated more clearly than before; and this president will – once again – out-fox his mewling critics on the war. I have a feeling Kerry has just inflicted on himself a massive unforced error. Gephardt looks more promising by the day.

Pejman takes on the moral abdication of the Western left. On his own blog, he also has some useful tips on what to do to help.

A FUNDAMENTALIST WRITES: “I wish you would quit mischaracterizing the views of the Religious Right. It’s fine that you disagree with religious conservatives but you should be more honest in your assessment of their viewpoints and motives. Our opposition to many aspects of the homosexual agenda (marriage rights, etc.) is based on principle. Not fear, ignorance, hatred or even puritanism. We simply believe what the Bible (both Old and New Testament) has to say about homosexuality.” – more dissent on the Letters Page.

BIG SPENDING BUSH: Blogger Porphyrogenitus sticks the boot in.

If this Saddamite leads us to Saddam and/or WMDs, it’s a huge coup.

A charming column that actually reads fresh. I agree with all of it.

The latest tactic from the far right in opposition to gay marriage is that it will somehow destroy free speech. Huh? This is now David Frum’s gambit. All of these arguments rely upon the enforcement of oppressive hate crime laws. But the problem here is the hate crime law, not equal marriage rights! You should certainly be able to live in a country where marriage is available to gays and straights alike and in which some straights are perfectly free to express how repulsive they find the notion of homosexuals having legally protected relationships. I’m for equality and free speech. But the issues should not be conflated. Andrew Stuttaford also makes an obvious numerical point. Let’s say that the gay presence in the population is 3 percent. Let’s say that marriage will be half as likely for gays as straights. Out of 1000 marriages, around 15 are therefore likely to be same-sex. Of those fifteen, ten will probably be lesbian. What Stanley Kurtz is trying to argue is that 5 gay male marriages are more likely to affect the 995 other marriages than the other way round. To put it politely, this is highly implausible. The almost certain effect of same-sex marriage will be to mainstream gays, not radicalize straights. Only the truly paranoid could think otherwise. Yet Kurtz and others would actually doctor the U.S. Constitution to prevent this tiny conservative social reform from happening.

THE LIES OF MICHAEL MOORE: Even in Europe, they’re catching up with him.