Our author writes about his email correspondence with the American who threatened the creators of South Park for (potentially) depicting Mohammed:
‘Zachary Adam Chesser, better known by his Internet sobriquet of “Abu Talhah al-Amrikee,” is the 20-year-old Virginia man who was indicted this month for supporting a Somalia-based al Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabab. Most Americans learned of him in April 2010, when Chesser’s media stunt wishing death upon the creators of the South Park cartoon thrust him into the national spotlight.’
And as for more homegrown terrorism?:
‘Under the banner of his “Abu Talhah al-Amrikee” brand, Chesser wanted to fundamentally transform English-language jihadist online activism.’
It’s interesting that in his desperation to join a righteous cause, he might have forgotten that how to interpret Islam itself is also worth thinking about, despite the injustice and legitimate grievances there are in the Muslim world (as well as the failures of Muslim societies to provide educational and economic opportunities…and representative rule as there is plenty of injustice coming from Muslim governments upon their own citizens).
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
I’m a non-scientist, so this is probably partially understood, somewhat accurate, and certainly dated:
Here is a well-done video from the Sprites Project at the University of Alaska:
During what is normally a cloud to ground lightning strike during a thunderstorm, there is occasionally a discharge of energy above the cloud, high up in the atmosphere. These phenomenae are called blue jets, red sprites, and elves. They are faint, require a dark background against which to view them, and also require that you be far enough away to see the storm from a distance (preferably from aircraft or a mountain overlooking a plain).
“Sprites are highly structured discharges lasting 5 to 100 ms and extending from 40 to 85 km altitude which result from intense electric fields following a major redistribution of electric charge in the troposphere — usually a positive cloud-to-ground return stroke.”
The Runaway Breakdown thesis here’s a quote from wikipedia by Nikolai Lehtinen:
“In the upper atmosphere, cosmic rays striking air molecules within thunderstorms can supply the relativistic electrons which trigger a breakdown in “runaway” mode. The breakdown region is a conductive plasma many tens of meters long, and it can supply the “seed” which triggers a lightning flash.”
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new [law],” Judge Bolton wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”
The DOJ has made its case to block parts of the law from being enforced. I still worry that the politics of the matter will lead Obama to seek Latino votes, perhaps unnecessarily imparting politics into the debate. I do not want to see too wide a gap grow between reasonable nationalism and patriotism on one side, and extending the multicultural net to non-citizens (another round of Amnesty?) and favoring Latino groups such as La Raza, whose logic is as bad, and rhetoric worse than the Minutemen. This will normalize further Left groups that I’d argue, need to be further out.
A valid concern?
Reason magazine defends the ruling for economic reasons, against mostly the Right, but also lone California Democrat, Mickey Kaus, who wants to bring anti-union, secure the border immigration policies to the Democratic Party: Full video and background on Kaus here.
The previous record was 7 in in diameter, and fell to the ground in Aurora, Nebraska in 2003. This is not quite official yet, but is measuring 8 in in diameter and weighing in at 1 lb 15 oz, and was perhaps as large as 11 in before it melted to measured size.
Here’s a graphic on hail formation, and some more information here. It takes a tremendous amount of lift to keep stones that big aloft.
As of now, it’s not conclusive (part of the Wikileaks dump). We’ve known that Pakistan has been playing both ends, but just how much support they give to the extremists on their side of the border might be surprising…and, of course, we still need Pakistan’s cooperation.
Addition: Obama hasn’t exactly been drumming up European support, which is vital. The White House says the leak puts national security at risk, which it very well may do.
Addition: Stewart Baker argues that it’s irresponsible and it’s unethical (same old news), and it’s a vain attempt to have us pull out or claim the injustice of the war.
Another Addition: Is the aim here somewhat similar to the NY Times Mineral Piece? Eventually, the base over on the left may force Obama to its own contradictions: involve yourself in the affairs of other nations according to your moral obligations, but war is bad, so are corporations, America is seeking blood for oil...From Foreign Policy: ‘Afghanistan Has $1 Trillion In Untapped Mineral Resources?’
A recent book with some criticism of Leo Strauss passed along by an emailer:
How would Straussians reconcile using the logic of Nietzsche (the eternal recurrence and the will to power) to get around…well…Nietzsche…and back to the Greeks, or to the Straussian reason/ revelation distinction. Has this Nietzschean interpretation of the Greeks led to an unnecessary esotericism in Strauss? This seems to be the main argument against some of Strauss’ thinking that I could find: he’s not owning up to his debt to Nietzsche.
I’m attracted to the idea that certain interpreters of Strauss also find appealing: to provide an alternative to the project of reason and its dangers. Maybe one could return to Plato and to Natural Law and Natural Right thinkers and restore a conversation that could prevent painting us into the corners that old Europe has painted itself into, and a way out from under value speak and excessive relativism, and importing the most toxic European heritage. I find Strauss’ fact/value distinction and tools to challenge historicism quite compelling as well.
I also don’t necessarily count myself among those who would use Strauss (or Strauss via Nietzsche) to justify one’s religious beliefs directly because I’m more an agnostic if anything. Here’s Dinesh D’Souza taking that route (using Nietzsche to defend his religious beliefs) in a debate against Daniel Dennett:
I’m aware I haven’t touched on the depths of the work here. Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
“There do not exist two distinct types of reality in the world which require two distinct modes of expression. This leads Quine to conclude that the analytic-synthetic distinction is a purely logical convention that is ontologically unnecessary and empirically superfluous. In this respect, Quine agrees with the radical empiricism of Mill, with its claim that there is no a priori knowledge. The fact that something is the case, or even the fact that something seems to be necessarily the case, does not imply the reality of a priori truths. Quine goes so far a to refer to the notion of a priori knowledge as a “metaphysical article of faith.”
That quite cuts at the heart of Kant’s project. And if we have history and engineering tending toward one end of the spectrum of human knowledge, as Quine describes it above, the other more absract end would involve mathematics and a philosophy that has a narrower, but vital task.
Addition: By narrower I mean as an addendum to the physical sciences…narrower than Kant’s aims perhaps.
Mentioned: Natural Law Theory (Greeks and Romans…Aquinas) Utilitarianism, Mill’s Harm Principle, Kant’s potential relation to Natural Law Theory and his deontologism (word amended)….
Where I very much agree: George’s acknowledgment that there may be no fundamental way to determine, in the aggregate, the utilitarian maxim. Much political danger and political idealism can be prevented against if we think rationally about who would implement the ideas that most drive us, and the potential consequences.
Addition: Has George made the case for natural law…that morality is somehow a law…and connected to nature and that which is beyond us?
“I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy, or that it’s made up, or that there aren’t plenty of informed individuals who believe it entirely apolitically. However I also believe that the left desperately want it to be true, and would be crushed if some miraculous evidence came to light that disproved it beyond question.”
Worth a look. It’s entirely reasonable to be skeptical of the foolish idealism and re-sentiment being directed toward government action and economic regulation.
chr1
