Month: November 2009

From The Economist's cover story (video here):

In principle, there are three ways of limiting human environmental impacts: through population policy, technology and governance. The first of those does not offer much scope. Population growth is already slowing almost as fast as it naturally could. Easier access to family planning, especially in Africa, could probably lower its expected peak from around 9 billion to perhaps 8.5 billion. Only Chinese-style coercion would bring it down much below that; and forcing poor people to have fewer children than they want because the rich consume too many of the world’s resources would be immoral.

If population policy can do little more to alleviate environmental damage, then the human race will have to rely on technology and governance to shift the world’s economy towards cleaner growth. Mankind needs to develop more and cheaper technologies that can enable people to enjoy the fruits of economic growth without destroying the planet’s natural capital. That’s not going to happen unless governments both use carbon pricing and other policies to encourage investment in those technologies and constrain the damage that economic development does to biodiversity.

Falling fertility may be making poor people’s lives better, but it cannot save the Earth. That lies in our own hands.

A great local news segment on an interesting campaign by a bunch of Texan churches:

If this is really the best that Kathryn-Jean Lopez can offer in defense of the Catholic hierarchy's subjugation of women and treatment of nuns, it's pretty sad. She has no arguments. She just has the reflexive defensiveness of the dumb and the orthodox. Every now and again, you get a glimpse into the intellectual quality of the forces of reaction in the church. It is largely execrable – as anyone who has to listen to the Benebots being churned out in today's seminaries will testify. 

And then you realize that this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start … and now we're left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore, defending orthodoxy because, well, any critique amounts to "anything goes." Really – pathetic.

Because of my horror at the inhumanity of, the Gaza assault, my support for a two-state solution soon enough to rescue Israel from becoming South Africa, and my desire to see the US-Israel alliance become less suffocatingly one-sided, I am deemed an anti-Semite. This is the fate of most goyim who question the Israeli government on any grounds in Washington, so I cannot complain (at least I am not called a self-hating Jew as most Jewish American critics of Israel's government are).

But when real anti-Semitism emerges, it is hard not to miss it. And if American Jews do not see it in the current Populist right, a faction that loves Israel primarily to bring about the Apocalypse, they need to open their eyes. From the comments section on Ben Smith's story on Elie Wiesel's concern about Dachau being a salient image for universal health insurance:

Rothschilds nothing! Everyone knows that Obama is George Soros sock puppet. Wasn't Soros Jewish once upon a time? May the Schwartz be with you.

The jews need to clam up and accept the fact that they are in a Chritian country.

This hollowcost thing is totally overblown by the jewish.

Eli Wiesel should just go back to Indonesia. I don't see him condemnig the terrorist shooter at Fort Hood.

Elie is a whiner. She should stop her whining. You didn't not complane when the libs were calling Bush Hitler.

You know what? The fact is that at a time in history, The Rosthchild family controlled practically everything. This is a fact. Not anti semitic. I resent the Jewish outrage at everything. I am a tea partier. obama is a Marxist and takes his orders from George Soros… it is similar and these people need to get a life., Why any Jew would support the Obama administation is a mystery anyway. He is a Muslim sympathizer and the greatest threat to Israel ever to sit in the White House. Wake up Jewish community. Take off the blinders.

Rothschild sign? Well its factually true. They were one of the primary families involved in founding the Federal Reserve and are still in it up to their necks. Obama, Bush, and every president since Wilson have done as the Fed told them. Since it a valid historical fact that this family was involved in creating and still has ownership of a substantial piece of the Federal Reserve (but nobody seems to know how much), I guess its now Anti- Semitic to discuss anything a Jew does critically? This guy is a Hebrew Al Sharpton.

Elie, how did that whole Madoff thing work out for you?

Elie Wiesel: Newest, most current tool of the sick, perverted, racist, anti-semetic Democrap party. Have you no shame Democraps?

"most American jews are not very religious and many are outright unbelievers, Jews in name only." Many older Jews in America feel shame for BEING in America, rather than emigrating to Israel in the late 1940s. Many sent money to help the colonization, and a few sent Army-surplus rifles, but the majority came up with the most interesting excuses for not answering the call to gather together and forge their homeland.

Elie Weisel is disgusting PR-seeking profiteering demagogue who has made a fortune off playing on the world's guilt trips about the what happened to the Jews during WW2. Most objective WW2 researchers agree now that the beastial Nazi''s, who happened to be anti-capitalist Socialists, killed even more Slavs and Gypsies in their concentration camps than Jews, but you don't see the Slavs and Gypsies trying to profit off the "Holocaust" like some of the shameless powerful Jews in the media.

I sometimes wonder what has happened to the Jewish people?. The Bible says that they are GODs' people and Israel is their home land. I see so many Jews seem to have abandoned their faith and I think this has to sadden our Father in Heaven. I see many Jews that are homosexual-actively promoting it as a "normal" lifestyle. I see many Jews involved in the ACLU- which I call the "Anti Christian Liberal Union", this bothers me as how can one be against their Father and Son in Heaven who are for Life??. I see many Jews in Hollywood making filthy ,sinful movies-what happened to the good, Family movies??. I see many Jews full of Greed in Hollywood, Wall Street,etc. I see many Jews involved in abortion groups- how can one support the killing of human fetuses??, especially people who have suffered through the Holocaust??. I am not anti-semitic, I know many will come on here and attack me. I am simply stating what I see and I believe our Father in Heaven is wondering what is happening to his "chosen" people?. He sent his only son to Earth to die for our sins and I think He is wondering the direction our Country is taking??. I am praying for our Country and all the Jews in our Country and pray that our Father will forgive us all for our sins. I hope I have stated what GOD would have wanted me to say?. GOD Bless and Pray for our Country.

Old man should go away.

A tragic but heartwarming tale about a little girl named Elena:

“They told us at the very beginning that she had 135 days to live,” Keith Desserich said. Though her parents didn’t want her to know the severity of her cancer, they feel that she must have known what was happening. The tumor slowly took away her ability to talk. But Elena was still able to write. “That was her way to letting us know everything would be OK,” Brooke Desserich said.

After Elena passed away, her parents discovered that their daughter had left a message behind for them — a lot of messages, actually. “We started to pull out notes and they would be in between CDs or between books on our bookshelf,” Keith Desserich said. Then the couple started finding them everywhere. “We started to collect them and they would all say ‘I love you Mom, Dad and Grace.’ We kept finding them, and still to this day, we keep finding them,” Keith Desserich said. “Literally, there are hundreds of notes that we found.

The notes were made into a book for cancer research.

(Hat tip: The High Definite)

The reasons seem pretty obvious:

The party-buckers on the 220-215 vote on Saturday night included 39 Democrats who voted against the bill. Of them, 31 represent districts that voted for John McCain over Barack Obama. Republicans are targeting many of them for defeat in the 2010 election. Of the other eight, three are serving their first terms in districts in which they defeated or succeeded Republicans in the 2008 election.

“I read the versions of the House [health reform] bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding – if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children," – Republican congressman Anh Cao of Louisiana, who voted for health insurance reform last night.

Nick Bilton is one voice in an exchange about digital information over at Edge:

I feel the same comfort from a pack of informavores rummaging together through the ever-growing pile of information while the analog generation still feels towards an edited newspaper or the neatly packaged one-hour nightly news show … Every moment of our day revolves around the idea of telling stories. So why should a select group of people in the world be the only ones with a soapbox or the keys to the printing press to tell their stories? Let everyone share their information, build their communities, and contribute to the conversation.

Nick Carr highlights other aspects of the debate. Personally, I love both ways of understanding the changing world. I still read my NYT on dead-tree every morning, with coffee and ginger snaps, and then plunge into the bloggy chaos. Why do we always have to choose between them? Why not both?

(Hat tip: Arnold Kling)

Razib Khan dusts off some religious history books:

I agree with Winnifred Sullivan’s argument in The Impossibility of Religious Freedom that one of the ways in which the American religious injunction toward neutrality was made practicable was that religion qua religion was fundamentally shaped by a belief-centric (orthodoxy) Protestant model. Why did Roman Catholicism and Judaism not change that model? Because both of these religions in the United States were heavily “Protestantized.”

The vast majority of American Jews do not adhere to the orthopraxy, a system of behaviors and actions, which defined Judaism for nearly 1,500 years. Rather, their Judaism is defined by an unadorned monotheism, a small set of rituals, holidays and taboos, and a “culture.” Similarly, American Catholics are very hard to differentiate from mainline Protestants in their beliefs & practices; the Americanist won over the long haul. In fact, they would no doubt be shocked at how Protestant American Catholics had become in their outlook.