Israeli raid on Syria produces many questions

This article is worth reading, but it answers few of the questions it raises.

Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran? | World | The Observer:
"They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft."

Fundamentally, Israel has a right to exist (guaranteed by the UN even!) and an obligation to protects it's citizens & residents. Being very unpopular in a very hostile part of the world has forced Israel to become better at many things than most countries. Based on their very good intelligence, they attacked something that the Syrians haven't said much about. I suspect that when the true fact are known, once again most people in the West will support Israel's actions.

Here is another artcile about the raid:

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’ - Times Online:
"IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way. At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames."

Science Fiction gradually becomes practical technology

There's no telling whether this technology will scale up to the point where palettes of household goods can be easily moved around a warehouse (or the galaxy), but it is interesting to speculate about.

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation - Telegraph:
"Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists. In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible."

In general, practical technology scales up and/or the costs fall dramatically. This doesn't always happen at the same rate for every technology. For example, a modern car offers far more features for a lower portion of the average annual income than in the 1950s, but if the cost of cars tracked to the cost of computers, we could all afford a choice of cars to drive for every day of the week.

It will be interesting to see if the levitation technology depends on rare metals and compounds or if like computers the cost is primarily intellectual property . . . Remember Jerry Pournelle's observation that "steel is expensive, sand (silicon) is cheap".

Who brings what to WW-IV?

This review of a new book contains some sobering thoughts:

WORLD WAR IV? - Yahoo! News:
"Begin with our military superiority, which would appear to make victory inevitable. 'Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?' A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:
'-- A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
'-- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
'-- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
'-- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians.
' Add to the above 'a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived.'"

If we're going to win the war on terror, then we have an interest in how the Muslim religion is taught & spread. Currently, the Saudis finance more Islamic churches & schools than any other group, and in this, they're subsidizing some of the most radical clerics out there (the Wahhabi sect). Now that they're feeling some pain back home, they're beginning to address the problem of radicalized young men, but they still need to change what is taught in their schools & services.

Islam isn't likely to be transformed by a Christ-like messiah anytime soon, so it needs to be transformed by the clerics and the Muslims themselves. We need to find ways of making moderate beliefs more attractive, while at the same time casting the radical beliefs in a bad light. Perhaps if the media reported terror attacks as failures by the Muslim world instead of failures by the Western world it would help.

The "Poor" in America. We really need to get out (into the world) more.

Wow! 43% of the poor are homeowners!

How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America:
"The following are facts about persons defined as 'poor' by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:
* Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
* Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
* The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consump­tion of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernour­ished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II."

I have a friend who says " ... poverty is a industry in the USA. If your definition of poor does not garner enough votes then change the definition." We certainly have succeeded in doing that during the last couple of generations.

Americans who travel need to ensure that they see "the real world" and not just tourist spots - most of the world's poor would love to be poor in America.

"...
There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year — nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

While work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to require work and encourage marriage, poverty among children would drop substantially."

This represents the impact of governmental social engineering, particularly since Lyndon Johnson's administration. Society was managing things better before the government stepped in to "help" us.

IBM mainframes central to 'Big Green Linux' initiative

Much like COBOL, The imminent death of the mainframe computer has been predicted "really soon now" for at least the last 20 years. The efficiency of putting massive amounts of computing power together with enormous communications bandwidth is once again being revealed in the search for more energy efficient computing.

IBM launches 'Big Green Linux' initiative - ZDNet UK:
"The 'Big Green Linux' initiative is part of the wider Project Big Green, launched in May, which is specifically aimed at helping IBM and its clients reduce data-centre energy consumption. IBM kicked off the new initiative at the opening of the LinuxWorld and Next Generation Data Center trade shows in San Francisco, accompanied by Novell and the Linux Foundation.
The initiative doesn't centre on any one product announcement, but instead highlights several new IBM systems and projects aimed at Linux-based energy efficiency.
. . .
IBM said last week it would take its own advice, with a plan to consolidate about 3,900 of its own servers onto about 30 System z Linux mainframes, cutting energy consumption by about 80 percent in the process."

Why the Fairness Doctrine is a bad idea

As discussed in this blog below, the main stream media (MSM) is widely represented and largely liberal in political bias. Despite that, they've targeted talk radio for their "Fairness Doctrine" legislation because most successful talk radio shows have a conservative political bias. As noted here, such legislation, if applied fairly, would also decimate some popular liberal talk radio, such those heard on NPR.

Pajamas Media: The Talk-O-Sphere: Why the Empire is Striking Back with the Fairness Doctrine:
"Two other key members of the media establishment—National Public Radio and Manhattan-based book publishers—are on the fence when it comes to talk radio.

While NPR doesn’t have a “Rush Room” in its sprawling Massachusetts Avenue headquarters and its executives probably don’t drive home listening to Mark Levin or Michael Savage, the network knows that bringing back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” will not be good for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” let alone some of its liberal lions like talk show host Diane Rehm. Would NPR really want to air a “responsible opposing view” for every stray comment on its airwaves?

NPR, by the way, is proof that the old saying that “liberals can’t make it on talk radio” is dead wrong. It is just that liberal radio audience already tunes it to NPR; they don’t need another network.
. . .
For what it’s worth, Air America, the ultimate attempt at lefty talk radio, is against the ‘fairness doctrine.’ Air America Radio personality Thom Hartmann writes in “CTA Aircheck,” an industry publication:

“The “progressive has failed” frame is simply wrong. In just three short years, our format has gone from a small handful of progressive stations to 10% of the talk radio content of this country. If I’d started a soda pop business in my garage and in three years had taken 10% of Coca Cola’s market, my picture would be on the cover of Forbes! Nobody thinks of Apple as a failure, but they only have 4.8% of the U.S. computer market, and that’s taken them 20 years! What if a new music format had taken 10% of the radio market in just three years? Everybody would be talking about it . . ."

Why in 2007 are we talking about limiting freedom of speech? If you don't like what you're hearing, change the channel, hit the power button, or go surf the Internet.

If you don't like what other people are hearing, then you might consider moving to a country where freedom isn't a priority - there are many choices available.

As usual, your choices are criticized by those who think they know better

For electronic journalism, the main stream media (MSM) consists of the news departments of at least ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, Ganett newspapers, and their various feeds from the networks to local TV & radio stations. Many people believe that the MSM broadcasts a consistently liberal spin on all news and have turned to FOX and it's affiliates for an alternative. As evidenced by this article, some folks can't stand even a little heat in the ktichen:

Liberals Pressure Fox News Advertisers - washingtonpost.com:
"Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network.

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.
. . .
"It's a lot more effective for Sam's Diner to get calls from 10 people in his town than going to the consumer complaint department of some pharmaceutical company," Gilliam said.
. . .
Groups like the Sierra Club have targeted Home Depot because they believe it's inconsistent for the company to promote environmentally friendly products while advertising on a network that has questioned global warming.

The groups seem particularly angry at Fox's Bill O'Reilly, who has done critical reports on left-wing bloggers. On July 16, O'Reilly said the DailyKos.com Web site is "hate of the worst order," and sent a reporter to question JetBlue Airways Corp. CEO Dave Barger about the airline's sponsorship of a gathering run by DailyKos.

He'll never ride on JetBlue again, O'Reilly said.

Fox said JetBlue has since asked that its name be removed from the DailyKos.com Web site.

MoveOn.org is campaigning against Fox because it says the network characterizes itself as a fair news network when it consistently favors a conservative point of view, said Adam Green, the organization's spokesman."

What may be really bugging these folks is that FOX gets ratings - it usually has more viewers than any 3 of the MSM network news shows - perhaps an indication that some folks aren't prepared to swallow the liberal message without getting at least a glimpse of an opposing view.