Month: November 2009

National Geographic explains why identical twins might not have the same sexual orientation:

(Hat tip: Box Turtle)

Phillip Carter, who ran the blog Intel Dump before joining the Obama administration as an official for detainee affairs, resigned last week. Greenwald speculates:

[W]hat is abundantly clear is that many of the Bush/Cheney policies which Carter found most offensive are ones which the new administration has explicitly adopted as its own.  Equally clear is that, following Greg Craig, this is now the second high-profile resignation of a relatively devoted civil libertarian in a short period of time.  Combine that with the still-missing-and-unconfirmed Dawn Johnsen, and all of this leaves those who are indifferent or hostile to civil liberties values — people like John Brennan and Rahm Emanuel — with even fewer counter-weights than before.

James Joyner interjects:

Ironically, given that Phil was a relatively senior appointee in the administration, my position on these issues is closer to the president’s than his.  But this is perhaps the most substantive issue area in which President Obama most sharply differs from Candidate Obama.  From my perspective, this is a classic case of a naive candidate being hit with reality when confronted with the reality of being responsible for America’s national security and I applaud the president for alienating his base rather than doing the wrong thing.  But for a true believer, I could see how the dashing of Hope and lack of Change could be too much to bear.

The turkey wasn't always so dumb:

Generally considered cranially vacant even for a bird—the turkey wasn’t always such a buffoon.  The wild turkey was historically considered a rather shrewd critter, difficult to fool with standard hunting ploys and surprisingly agile. Did you know, for example, that wild turkeys can climb trees?  And if you throw an apple to a group of wild turkeys they’ll play with it like a football, according to Oregon State University poultry scientist Tom Savage.

We’ve all heard that Ben Franklin was so enamored with the wild turkey that he thought it should have been named the national bird instead of the bald eagle. He reasoned that the turkey embodied the resilience and street smarts of the new Americans (unlike the austere, detached eagle that seems more French). Back then, the turkey had class and enjoyed a level of respect rare among fowl.   

But then we started domesticating them, and every bit of the turkey’s appealing attributes were drained out like so much broth.

Blake Hurst gives thanks:

If the movie “Food, Inc.” can be said to have a theme, it is that corn is too cheap. Cheap corn has led to industrial uses, cheap fast food, and, horror of horrors, corn fed to cows. This year's harvest is bad news for documentary makers, because we're bringing in a tremendous crop. Corn prices are at two-year lows. Author of Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser's pain is palpable, but a big harvest should be a cause for celebration for everyone else. Farmers make the news when weather causes low yields and high prices, but plentiful and reasonably priced food is such a given that nobody but we farmers celebrates a great crop like this one. The rest of America should celebrate, and be grateful for the abundance that agriculture provides.

There is nothing more fun than a record crop, if you're a farmer. We have a monitor in the combine that approximates yields as we pass through the fields. In the last several years, due to floods, droughts, and a very memorable wind storm (if you recognize your farm on one of those tornado-chaser videos, it's a very bad sign), we've rarely hit 200 bushels per acre on that monitor. This year, I've had days when I barely dropped below 200 bushels per acre. I'm old enough to try to capture this crop, this year, in my memory, given the very real possibility that I'll not farm long enough to see its like again. We farmers are protected from extremely low prices by the government, our crop insurance is subsidized by the taxpayers, biotechnology has made yields and pest control more predictable, we can harvest and plant in a fraction of the time it took my grandfather, but we're still at the mercy of Mother Nature, and she's a tough taskmaster. When we escape her worst, it's a harvest of joy.

A very useful reminder of the long view, in these days of precipitous decline after the disastrous, bankrupting, morale-breaking over-reach of the Bush-Cheney years:

Even if America is exhausted, worn out and a shadow of her former self, from having spent her way from world dominance into a chasm of debt, the U.S. does have something to show for it the last six decades.  

A world saved.  A majority of human beings lifted out of poverty. That task, far more prodigious than defeating fascism and communism or going to the moon, ought to be viewed with a little respect.  And I suspect it will be, by future generations.

This should be contemplated, soberly, as other nations start to consider their time ahead as one of potential triumph.  As they start to contemplate the possibility of becoming the next great pax or "central kingdom."

If that happens … will they emulate Marshall and Truman, by starting their bright era of world leadership with acts of thoughtful and truly farsighted wisdom?  Perhaps even a

little gratitude?

Or at least by evading the mistakes that are written plain, across the pages of history, wherever countries briefly puffed and preened over their own importance, imagining that this must last forever?

Probably not.  This unconventional assertion will meet vigorous resistance, no matter how clearly it is supported by the historical record.  The reflex of America-bashing is too heavily ingrained, within the left and across much of the world, for anyone to actually read the ancient annals and realize that the United States is undoubtedly the least hated empire of all time.  If its "pax" is drawing to a close, it will enter retirement with more earned goodwill than any other.  Perhaps even enough to win forgiveness for the inevitable litany of imperial crimes.

Yo, Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll:

(Hat tip: Daily What)

And why I will not relent on Palin and the danger she represents:

"The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action …  [H.G. Wells] was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity."

And we appease or ignore those forces at our peril.

Hank Hyena, writing for transhumanist magazine H+, imagines the consequences of lab grown meat:

In-Vitro Meat will be fashioned from any creature, not just domestics that were affordable to farm. Yes, ANY ANIMAL, even rare beasts like snow leopard, or Komodo Dragon. We will want to taste them all. Some researchers believe we will also be able to create IVM using the DNA of extinct beasts—obviously, “DinoBurgers” will be served at every six-year-old boy’s birthday party.

Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we’ll just eat people we don’t like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, “The State of the Art” with diners feasting on “Stewed Idi Amin.” But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines.

Enjoy that turkey.

(Hat tip: Reason)