Tall Buildings and Tall Fears

AP reports that the city of Dubai initiated plans to build the world's tallest building.


Courtesy of AP
The Burj Dubai skyscraper, now under construction, and how it compares with the top five worldwide skyscrapers.
Though the exact height has not been publicly revealed, at a suspected 2,313 feet, it will surpass the competition in Kuala Lampur, Taipei, and Chicago by a landslide. The building will be so tall that it is estimated to have a 10-foot sway in high winds. Yes, that's 10 feet! If acrophobia doesn't get you, then the motion sickness will surely do you in.

More Energy Independance Updates

Personally, I'm beginning to think that Hydrogen may not be the best way to alternatively power vehicles, mainly because it is just so much more efficient to power vehicles directly with electricity rather than to generate energy, convert it to hydrogen, distribute it and then convert it back into electricity with expensive technology (like fuel cells). This process will require more advances in battery technology to create lighter and more energy dense batteries, the ultimate goal being to increase practical range. These batteries could be recharged on the grid at work or at night. Moreover, a small engine that runs on biodiesel/ethanol/methanol could conceivably power a generator to recharge the batteries in an emergency. Previous posts on energy policy can be found here, here, and here.

Of course, this type of setup would require a large increase in electricity generation, upwards of 50% in grid generating capacity and infrastructure. Next generation nuclear plants could provide the source. Alternatively, photovoltaic films could potentially be applied to cars once it is made practical by technological advancement.

So, any kids out there in college that are wondering what to major in may want to consider a future in materials science and nanotech. Clearly, we already have enough English and Psych majors.

Over at FuturePundit, the ‘state’ of solid state batteries is considered:

MIT battery researcher Donald Sadoway says there is still room to improve lithium ion batteries but solid-state could double or triple capacity over the best existing commerical batteries:

I have cells operating at about 300 watts per kilogram, which is double what lithium ion is doing today. I think there's plenty of room at the top here. We're not banging up against the ceiling yet.

Where will the next big leap come from? Solid-state batteries. We think the next improvement will come from eliminating any liquid from the battery. We think that there are opportunities for looking at multilayer thin-film laminate with no liquid, a polymer as the electrolyte separator. You're looking at something that's similar to a potato chip bag, a polymer web coated with a different layer of chemistry. We can make that by the square mile -- it's not difficult to do. We're talking about a doubling or tripling of the capacity of today's batteries, as opposed to a 20% or 30%improvement.

Sadoway also says that the fuel cell fad starting in the 1990s caused a shift of government research funding away from batteries toward fuel cells. But he says that even before the fuel cell fad the government was putting little into battery research funding:

I think the US government's focus on fuel cells and hydrogen research is a mistake. We could achieve some major gains in energy efficiency much sooner if battery research was ramped up. Hybrid vehicles are becoming popular now whereas hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are probably decades into the future. Hybrids avoid the need to totally replace the existing infrastructure for delivering energy for transportation.

Batteries could also serve as an important enabling technology for both wind and solar energy by providing a way for energy generated at peak times to be used when the wind doesn't blow and the sun does not shine. Battery technologies pushed forward now could first find large scale use in hybrid vehicles. Then as wind and solar photovoltaics become cheaper, the battery technology will already be available to enable their more rapid adoption.

Here's an elegant and efficient way to supplement interior lighting (during the day). It is unclear how cost effective it would be, but MSNBC reports that it sounds promising:

Hybrid solar lighting (HSL) is different than traditional solar power, which converts sunlight into electricity. HSL captures sunlight and channels it directly into a room, using optical fibers.

“Our idea was: let’s just pipe the sunlight into the building,” said Duncan Earl, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. During times of little or no sunlight, HSL light fixtures use electricity to provide a constant amount of illumination.

If used in a top-floor of a building, HSL can deliver 50 percent of collected sunlight as indoor lighting, Earl told LiveScience in a telephone interview.

This is far more efficient than photovoltaic cells, which convert about 15 percent of sunlight into electricity and then have to change this electricity back into light. Since light bulbs lose a lot of energy in the form of heat, the end-result is only about 2 percent of the sunlight gets used.

An Historical Pictography of Michael Jackson

Anomalies-unlimited has a shocking but hysterical collection of photographs detailing the horrific transformation of Michael Jackson's face throughout the years. I'd post a couple of samples here, but the pictures are truly unsettling and it seemed wiser to let our readers go to their site for the full history.

My personal favorite? The "Planet of the Apes" Michael Jackson action photo.


(UPDATE: I thought you might be interested in this artist's computer generated rendering of what Michael Jackson might actually look like today had he not had plastic surgery. -EBO)

Multilateralism Killing Thousands in Darfur

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Once again, we see the limits of UN-style multilateralism. Why is the UN unable to even condemn the horrific situation in the Darfur region of Sudan? Two veto-wielding members, China and France, have extensive oil investments and interests in Sudan. They do not wish to jeopardize their good relations with that government. Furthermore, they do not want to be seen as siding against Arabs…even when the Arab governments is engaged in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing against its own (black) people. If this sounds like the pre-Iraq war situation with France, Russia, and Germany, it is not a coincidence as evidenced in excerpts below... -BBM)


China, U.S. Interests Conflict
By BARTON W. MARCOIS and LELAND R. MILLER
The Washington Times
Thursday, March 24, 2005

Lost amid the responses to President Bush's 2005 State of the Union speech was that of China's phlegmatic Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan. Twice asked by a reporter whether China shared the president's hope that democracy would take root in the Middle East, Mr. Kong artfully evaded the question, merely hinting that the issue was not on China's agenda.

In fact, China's agenda is so different that it threatens to seriously undermine American initiatives in the Middle East.

The United States and China have never seen eye-to-eye in the region, but the reasons for this have evolved over time. China's diplomacy in the Middle East began in the 1950s as an ideological crusade in support of socialist Arab leaders such as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, but by the 1970s its focus had shifted to weapon sales. By the 1990s, China was actively supplying ballistic missiles to Syria, missile technology to Libya, and sensitive missile and nuclear technology to Iran and Iraq.

Many scholars have simply accepted that China wants to lessen its dependence on the volatile Middle East and the long, vulnerable supply lines through the Indonesian archipelago.

On first glance, this may seem surprising. How can China hope to compete in the crowded Middle East with other oil-hungry nations, particularly the United States? The answer is that China plays by a different set of rules. As China's support for the rogue regimes in Iran and Sudan has made clear, moral constraints and human-rights considerations are not pillars of Beijing's foreign-policy calculus. While Tehran threatens to go nuclear and Khartoum continues its genocide in Darfur, Beijing has used its clout (and U.N. veto) to shield these regimes from international sanctions. In return, it receives entree into two important energy markets.

Furthermore, unlike private Western oil companies who are beholden to shareholders and profit margins, Chinese state-owned oil-traders have been given the mandate to secure long-term energy relationships by offering hugely discounted rates, production-sharing arrangements and technical know-how. The fact that China has overpaid for recent ventures in Oman, Sudan and elsewhere is telling. Rather than investing in money-makers, China is buying footholds throughout the Middle East.

Nanoscale Silica May Solve Hydrogen Storage

Courtesy of FuturePundit some intriguing research is taking place in efforts to advance the state of modern transportation:

Hydrogen storage faces a few problems. Getting hydrogen out of a storage medium is just one of them. Another problem is the stage when the hydrogen is stored. Some hydrogen storage methods either require energy be expended continuously to keep hydrogen cold or the storage mechanism is too risky for cars due to accidents and equipment failure. But there is an even earlier step problem that must be solved: How to get the hydrogen into a storage medium quickly, easily, and cheaply? These researchers think they can extend their work on this material to solve the initial storage problem as well.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are taking a new approach to "filling up" a fuel cell car with a nanoscale solid, hydrogen storage material. Their discovery could hasten a day when our vehicles will run on hydrogen-powered, environmentally friendly fuel cells instead of gasoline engines.

Whatever the method, it needs to be no heavier and take up no more space than a traditional gas tank but provide enough hydrogen to power the vehicle for 300 miles before refueling. One approach is to find a solid chemical material that can hold and then release hydrogen as needed. Recently, PNNL researchers Tom Autrey and Anna Gutowskafound found a way to release hydrogen from a solid compound almost 100 times faster than was previously possible.

70 Million Year Old T-Rex Fossil Preserved Tissue

If there are cells, there will be DNA, which happens to be incredibly resistant to degredation. How cool would it be to pull off a real life Jurassic Park?

MSNBC reports that a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Paleontologists forced to break the creature's massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.

Credit Card Fraud Is Too Easy

ZUG goes crazy trying to get caught with credit card fraud in a post called The Credit Card Prank II.


Courtesy of ZUG
Notify the Post Office Immediately if You Change Your Address.
Some of the more memorable excerpts from the post include:

I signed my receipt "UNDETECTABLE SMALL PURCHASE." Just in case that wasn't subtle enough, I signed a hearty "YEE-HAW!!" This time, I actually lifted the receipt up so that I could get the cashiers included in the photo with the receipt. No one said anything, but why would they? It was a small undetectable purchase.

Drawing the musical staff just right was quite time-consuming, and I discovered an interesting fact: the touchscreens reset themselves after two minutes or so. This meant that just as I was snapping my first picture, the screen went blank and I had to start over again. The people behind me in line were not amused, giving me the kind of looks normally reserved for elderly immigrants trying to pay for their groceries in Italian lira. The woman behind me, a good-looking professional in her 30's who was buying a granola bar and a bottle of water, stepped forward to see what I was drawing. "Oh my God," she said, rolling her eyes disgustedly. "Apparently you're not a lover of the arts," I said, which made no sense.

Then I put on a suit, because you can get away with anything if you're wearing a suit. Suits lie.

Hysterical!

Texas Bull Schiavo

The Washington Post makes some interesting observations about the increased levels of rhetoric and hypocrisy that are making the rounds in response to the fate of Terri Schiavo in Florida:

Lots of conflicting interpretations today about the 1999 Texas law that Bush critics say shows how hypocritical he is being about the Schiavo case.

Joel Havemann and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times: "A Texas law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1999 allowing an end to life-sustaining treatment for certain patients became a point of contention Monday in the Terri Schiavo case, sharpening the focus on the president's eleventh-hour intervention in the question of the woman's fate."

Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service: "President Bush, now championing the right of Terri Schiavo's parents to decide whether her feeding tube should be reinserted, signed a Texas law in 1999 giving spouses top priority in making such decisions.

"By siding with Schiavo's parents, who have been in a prolonged battle with her husband about removing the feeding tube that has kept her alive for 15 years, Bush ran counter to the Texas measure. The state law says that in cases in which a patient has not signed a directive about life-prolonging care, the patient's spouse -- unless there is a court-appointed guardian -- makes the call. The patient's parents are third, behind 'reasonably available adult children' and ahead of the 'the patient's nearest living relative.' "

Anne Kornblut writes in the New York Times: "The Texas law allows a patient's surrogate, like Ms. Schiavo's husband, the right to make end-of-life decisions. But it ultimately gives hospitals the right to withdraw life support if there is no hope of revival, regardless of family wishes. Under the law, a critically ill 5-month-old was taken off life support and allowed to die last week in Texas, even though his mother objected."

Frankly, this whole issue has become appalling. For 15 years, the tax-paying citizens of the United States have witnessed a battle of the egos in Florida between a husband, parents, and politicians.

I challenge anyone to counter my claim that this issue would be null and void if Ms. Schiavo's parents were personally responsible for the $80,000 in annual payments required for her care and treatment. The general disregard for Terri Schiavo's husband in executing her own specified wishes is shameful. Ms. Schiavo's parents' push to fulfill their selfish emotions and ignore the irreversible nature of her condition comes at the expense of our hard earned dollars.

This case is about more than Ms. Schiavo now; it represents all that is wrong in our society when we look to others to support our own illogical demands.


(UPDATE: The New York Times reports on divisions in the Republican party over this issue as well. Most noteworthy is a comment from David Davenport of the Hoover Institute:

"This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative. When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."

My sentiments exactly. -EBO)

More Good News from Iraq

The good news keeps coming in Iraq. The following excerpts detail just a few of the goings-on that give cause to hope for some strong progress in the Middle East, courtesy of Instapundit:

Quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, the fractious tribes of Iraq are sorting things out:

The Sunni Arabs never expected all this armed resistance, to Shia and Kurdish rule, to get Sunnis back in power. What they want is a deal on the question of war crimes trials and revenge in general for their complicity in Saddam's decades of atrocities. The armed resistance gives the Sunni Arabs something to bargain with. Of course, the major members of Saddam's gang will go to trial, but there are thousands of lesser officials, nearly all of them Sunni Arabs, who also have blood on their hands, and real concerns about prosecution (legal, or otherwise.)

Negotiations have been intense, and many of the Sunni Arab clans and families involved have begun to actively battle al Qaeda gangs in their neighborhoods. These groups are a mixture of Iraqis and foreigners, and are basically armed religious fanatics. There's no negotiating with them, and the terrorists don't apologize if one of their suicide bombers accidentally kills a lot of Sunni Arab civilians.

Increasingly, Sunni Arabs are fed up with this, and killing al Qaeda in their vicinity, or driving the fanatics out. It will be difficult to prosecute a lot of lesser war criminals who have recently become heroes by fighting al Qaeda.

And that's how it should be, on two counts. First, it's best if the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds can settle things (relatively) peacefully among themselves. An imposed solution would most likely break at the first stress - see Bosnia in the '90s. Second, there's no need to prosecute every single Baathist in Iraq, especially not ones who have come around to the good side, so to speak. We didn't do so in Germany or Japan after WWII, and that kind of practicality should serve us well in Iraq, too.

But mostly, it seems we're sitting back and let the Iraqis work it out. Smart.

The following is also encouraging, along with other signs that the "insurgency" has worn out its welcome in even the hard-core reactionary areas, also by way of Instapundit:

The Tables Turn in Iraq:

Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured.

The battle was the latest sign that Iraqis may be willing to start standing up against the attacks that leave dozens of people dead here nearly every week. After a suicide bombing in Hilla last month that killed 136 people, including a number of women and children, hundreds of residents demonstrated in front of the city hall every day for almost a week, chanting slogans against terrorism. Last week, a smaller but similar rally took place in Baghdad. Another demonstration is scheduled for Wednesday in the capital.

And also this:

Iraqi blogger Husayn Uthman writes: So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot. To many outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fool’s errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though he is the embodiment of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream. Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different.

Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have. Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen: I don’t care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh comments: "I believe it should be published in newspapers worldwide. Reading about Husayn's feeling is special because he lost his cousin in the Hilla terrorist bombing."

France to End 35 Hour Work Week

Not surprisingly, the 35 hour work week has been a disastrous experiment for the French economy. Not only did it not create jobs, but lower productivity directly resulted in a lower standard of living. Production costs increased leading to a wage freeze and also increasing the price of goods and services for consumers.

Doubtless this has contributed to lower tax revenues and to France's large deficit and sluggish economic growth. MSNBC reports:

[W]ith unemployment at 10 percent, politicians of all stripes acknowledge that the country's unique 35-hour law has failed in its original ambition: to force employers to hire massively. What's more, there are strong signs that it hurt living standards as employers froze salaries to make up for lost labor.

"The intention was to spread work around, but the effect was to spread our salaries around," Thierry Breton, France's new finance minister, said last week.

A government-backed bill that effectively restores the previous 39-hour workweek is expected to win final approval this week, despite massive public protests earlier this month and denunciations by the now out-of-power Socialists.

Amid soaring unemployment and stagnating wages, the reform is supported by jobseekers and even by factory workers, according to a survey that pollsters CSA published last month and by 46 percent of the overall population, with 43 percent opposed.

Post Delays

My apologies for being somewhat lax in posting the past few days. Things have been all consuming in other venues and have thus distracted me from my duties at The Realist Party. However, I promise to resume posting with regularity as soon as possible.

All the best.

Highway Antics

The Wall Street Journal reports that "the $284 billion highway bill that passed the House last week [is] a 33% increase over the previous six-year spending level." Just what has gotten into the minds of our elected officials these days? We are battling the largest deficit in US history and they continue to find new and absurd uses for our hard-earned dollars. Here are some examples, again courtesy of the Journal:

[The bill] includes the likes of $7.3 million for a Vermont snowmobile trail. There's also $10 million for a parking garage at a Harlem hospital. "You have to have a car to get into the garage," Representative Charlie Rangel told the Washington Post.

The biggest winner is Transportation Chairman Don Young, who by one estimate brought home $722 million for his state of Alaska, about $1,500 a resident.

So, basically, the federal government is paying for a garage, a nature trail, and a state payoff. Is it any wonder that the public's sentiment towards politicians has been waning for decades?

Stop Global Warming? Impossible.

An article on Reuters suggests that global warming is unstoppable:

Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of researchers reported on Thursday.

"Even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, the climate will continue to warm, and there will be proportionately even more sea level rise," said the NCAR's Gerald Meehl, who led one of the two studies.

Virtually no one disagrees human activity is fueling global warming, and a global treaty signed in Kyoto, Japan, aims to reduce polluting emissions.

Let me be plain and simple: I disagree.

Those models included as many variables as the researchers could think of, such as human carbon emissions, other pollution, current temperatures and their rate of change, emissions from volcanoes, changes in solar radiation and shifts in the ozone layer.

Do people actually realize the outrageous amount of estimation and assumption that is required to correlate these elements and thus draw a conclusion? Indeed, a computer does not yet exist that can efficiently and speedily process every iota of climate change, natural environmental trends, and human influence on the Earth. It speaks much more of an art than a science.

There is, as yet, no concrete evidence that global warming is not being fueled by natural cycles in the Earth's climate. Indeed, the Earth's temperature has been on a warming trend for the past 6,000 years. Am I to assume that the fires created by man back then began this trend?

It's plain rubbish. Global warming is simply not global. In his book, "State of Fear", Michael Crichton provides evidence to illustrate that although temperatures in New York City have risen on average by 6-8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, they have quizzically fallen by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit in Albany and Rochester, cities which lie only 300-400 miles away. Indeed, Mr. Crichton's evidence is not based on elaborate and questionable computer modeling and interpretation; rather, the data is collected from the National Weather Service station records itself. Ergo, there is no confusion as to the interpretation of the data.

The conclusion seems to be that while some cities are indeed increasing in temperature, others are not. This phenomenon exists in countries around the world. What we are witnessing is not so much a global warming (a scary term meant to incite fear in the public), but a city-based occurrence as a result of increased concentrations of the population, increased levels of concrete and construction, and increased blacktop to absorb the sun's heat. While I cannot confirm any underlying motive for scientists' desire to continually espouse conclusions on humans impact on global warming, it does seem that they are rather please with their efforts to unnerve and unwitting public. Well, consider me 'witted'.

In simpler terms, the Earth has undergone a series of Ice Ages and Thaws in its 5 billion year history. Am I to assume that modern man, in the 200 years since the industrial revolution, has somehow unseated this cycle?

Proof of Bias

A report on Reuters finally reveals what many who followed the 2004 Presidential election already realized: The media was particularly flagrant in their efforts to vilify George W. Bush.

U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.

The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study looked at 16 newspapers of varying size across the country, four nightly newscasts, three network morning news shows, nine cable programs and nine Web sites through the course of 2004.

This study certainly paints a picture of a media more interested in influencing the result of a national election rather than reporting it.

Shameful Silence of Hollywood and Pacifists

The only thing that will seemingly get the Hollywood left out to a protest is the imminent toppling of a dangerous, outlaw, human-rights abusing dictator. The cold-blooded murder of one of their own does not even stir their ire, particularly when he was murdered for standing up for free speech and women's rights.

It has been some time since the murder of Theo van Gough, a Dutch filmmaker executed in the streets of Amsterdam by Islamic terrorists for producing a film criticizing the treatment of Muslim women. There was no mention of this at the Academy Awards. Nothing!

Former leftist and author Roger L. Simon notes the contradictions in his blog:

But now, according to a press release, at least "60 Minutes" is going to report on the case this Sunday and show part of the film, which harshly criticizes some Islamic attitudes towards women. Hirsi Ali, the Somalian actress/activist who wrote the script and starred and is now living underground in fear for her life, will appear on the program and announce that she is doing a sequel. In Ali's words to "60 Minutes'" Morley Safer:

"By not making 'Submission Part Two,' I would only be helping terrorists believe that if they use violence, they are rewarded with what they want."

What guts! Hirsi Ali is the kind of fellow artist Robbins, Sarandon, Penn et al should be supporting. Where are they? Time to get your eyes away from your navels, Hollywood, and join the movement for democracy.

Moreover, there was no celebration of the elections in Iraq. No acknowledgement of the successes in the Ukraine or the burgeoning breeze of reform blowing through the ancient regimes of the Middle East. No support of the moderates in Lebanon. No protests demanding the end of Syrian occupation. And no protesting the treatment of Muslim women.

Could it be that they are willing to test the limits of free speech only when the stakes are low? Criticizing Bush will, at most, draw criticism in return from those that oppose your views. But standing up for what is important can get you killed. Just ask Theo Van Gough and Hirsi Ali.

The same criticism can be leveled at the anti-war left, courtesy of Instapundit:

Why are so many Westerners, living in mature democracies, ready to march against the toppling of a despot in Iraq but unwilling to take to the streets in support of the democratic movement in the Middle East?

Is it because many of those who will be marching in support of Saddam Hussein this month are the remnants of totalitarian groups in the West plus a variety of misinformed idealists and others blinded by anti-Americanism?

Or is it because they secretly believe that the Arabs do not deserve anything better than Saddam Hussein?

Those interested in the health of Western democracies would do well to ponder those questions.

Giving It to The Times' Krugman

One of my favorite economists, Donald Luskin, really gives it to one of my least favorites, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, in today's post over at the always noteworthy Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid. It's not so much that I don't like what Krugman has to say, because I clearly don't. Rather, it's the fact that he seems to say things just to come across as confrontational when all he really ever seems to convey is a prevailing notion of ignorance and bias.

Entitling Who?

The monumental challenge in the months ahead for the current administration in driving entitlement and tax reform begs the question: When precisely did the United States become a nation of entitlement rather than accomplishment?

It is particularly galling when one considers that any efforts to return any responsibility to the public, be it in the form of social security private accounts or health savings accounts, is met with galling criticism from politicians. The Realist Party deeply supports the notion of a safety net to ensure that welfare and health benefits are made available to all individuals in need. Pay heed, however, to the word "in need". This safety net should be offered only after individuals have demonstrated an inability to provide these services for themselves.

Sadly, our elected officials pander an ever increasing amount of entitlement program funding to the public each year in blatant exchange for votes in the next election. This theme of 'buying' votes, which has been propagated in these pages since The Realist Party's inception, deserves more and more of the public's focus. Recently, the public's attention has shifted from what they can offer our country to what our country can offer them. I suggest a system that encourages, nay urges, individuals to stand strong on their own two feet and to drive our nation into a more prosperous future.

And this system? It begins with accountability and responsibility. The United States has shown a resilience and a capacity to accomplish almost anything. Let us return to the roots of a country founded upon individualism and freedom. Taxes in support of bloated government entitlement programs, instead of the personal responsibility inherent in the form of private accounts, are no different from the shackles of control that spewed forth from an aristocratic past. A revolution is required to stop this menace before Social Security and Medicare taxes threaten to weigh down the shoulders of workers in lieu of an ability to improve their own lives.

Higher Taxes in the US than You Think

Business Roundtable issued their updated principles for tax reform earlier this year. Most striking in their analysis, regardless of whether or not your political persuasion urges one to support one method of tax reform over another, is a statistic from the OECD:

The U.S. corporate tax rate is the third highest (including state and local taxes) among all developed nations.

Think about this figure for a moment. Among all of the socialist-leaning countries in the world (read France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, and Spain to name a few), companies in the so-called capitalist United States that strive to compete with rapidly developing economies in China and Korea, pay the third highest tax rates.

Talk about a competitive disadvantage!

Fatwa Issued against Bin Laden

(EDITOR'S NOTE: By way of California Yankee. -BBM)


According to the Associated Press, the fatwa issued on the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calls bin Laden an apostate and urging others to denounce the al-Qaida leader:

The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain.

…The commission's secretary general, Mansur Escudero, said the group had consulted with Muslim leaders in other countries, such as Morocco - home to most of the jailed suspects in the bombings - Algeria and Libya, and had their support.

…The fatwa said that according to the Quran "the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organization al-Qaida ... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam."It added: "Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of 'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such." The Arabic term 'istihlal' refers to the act of making up one's own laws.

Transgenic Poplars to Strengthen China Lumber?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Transgenic crops are here in a big way. -BBM)


Scattered across at least seven provinces in China are more than 1 million common poplar trees with an uncommon bite. They can kill the insects that nibble their leaves. Their unusual defensive system is a genetically engineered bomb: Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a naturally occurring toxin inserted into the tree's DNA. Other such transgenic species, such as the larch and walnut, are in the works, Chinese researchers report.

Such moves are shaking up the twin worlds of forestry and environmentalism. Transgenic trees are reaching the threshold of commercialization - a point bioengineered crops reached in the 1980s, observers say. This time, though, it's not the United States leading the charge, it's China.

Though little reported in the West, China's swan dive into large-scale transgenic forestry is essentially the first commercial-scale deployment of genetically engineered (GE) trees in the world, experts say. That could one day mean a potent new competitor to the lumber and paper industries. It also may mean that cutting-edge GE tree research in the US will fall behind, hobbled by regulation and public protest. It also puts decisions about a controversial - and, some say, potentially dangerous - technology into the hands of an authoritarian government, with less oversight and fewer technical controls than in the West.

Indeed, the idea of releasing GE trees into the wild sends shudders through Alyx Perry of the Southern Forests Network, a coalition of loggers, landowners, and environmentalists. "Our conclusion is that the genetically engineered trees will inevitably contaminate nongenetically engineered stands of trees."

That, in turn, could lead to millions of acres of infertile private timber, possibly lacking enough lignin (a wood-strengthening substance) needed to be saw timber, Ms. Perry says. Combined with internal pesticide production in pine and poplar trees in the wild, it could lead to forests unable to reproduce, produce food for animals, or create marketable timber.

A Forest of Facts:

Trees are the world's largest and oldest plants. They cover nearly a third of the world's land surface (excluding Antarctica and Greenland). They blanketed two-thirds of the surface before humans began to farm.

-The double-coconut palm in the Seychelles boasts the largest tree seed: 50 pounds.

-California boasts the world's tallest trees, the redwoods, and the oldest, bristlecone pines. The former can grow 360 feet tall. The latter have been known to live more than 4,000 years. The average city tree lasts eight years.

-By turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, trees replenish the atmosphere. Two mature trees can produce enough oxygen for a family of four.

-Over one year, a tree can absorb the carbon created by a car driven 26,000 miles.

Sources: World Book; United Nations; Earth Policy Institute; International Society of Arboriculture

Securing Social Security

Bloomberg News interviewed Milton Friedman in regards to the former Nobel prize winner's thoughts on the state of social security and the current federal income tax. His commentary was particularly enlightening and certainly corroborates many of the observations and recommendations that we have been championing here at The Realist Party for some time. Witness the following excerpts from the article:

"There's no building up of assets" in the current system. "Private investment accounts would change that completely. There would be, for the first time, a connection between what individuals paid into Social Security and the assets that were accumulated."

"The trouble with Social Security arises because it's structured like a Ponzi scheme," said Friedman. "You take money in today from people in the workforce and spend it today on people who are in retirement."

"Some benefits may have to be cut," Friedman said. "After all, people live on the average much longer than they did at the time Social Security was established. It's absurd that the retirement age should remain at 65. It should be raised to at least 70."

"Like most economists, I believe consumption is a much better basis for taxation than income," Friedman said. "The trouble is the present income tax is a mess, an obscenity, with all of its details and complications. When you tax income, it's a tax against savings."

Friedman said he isn't concerned about the federal deficit "because it serves a very useful function of keeping down government spending."

For the record, Ponzi schemes are investment vehicles popularized in the 1920s that promised investors higher rates of return by taking money from new investors to pay off earlier ones. Friedman offers a wonderful analogy to social security, eh?

Driving Yourself Crazy

A letter to the editor at The Wall Street Journal opines on the benefits of a long morning and evening commute:

I commuted on the Long Island Railroad from the late 1950s into the early 1970s, and it was always a positive experience. Absolutely.

The newspaper man at the bottom of the stairs every morning always made sure I got my Journal, and when else could I find time to read all those best-selling books on my list? Or retreating into my own head, eyes wandering along the rivers of human endeavor below me, or at eye level, to cogitate on past and future life choices. Of course, the possibility of catching a nap was always a plus.

But, until today, I thought I was the only one who really enjoyed commuting. I never met a single soul who told me they actually enjoyed it. Who knew there were ever others like me?

Listen up, buddy. There really aren't. I can accept that sitting on a train or inside a limousine during the morning commute is somewhat relaxing. Unfortunately, most cities do not have effective mass transit to alleviate the grueling experiences that our road warriors undertake each day. Can there be anything worse than sitting in traffic, listening to banal DJs on the radio, and shimmying back and forth between lanes in efforts to make even a modicum of headway on the highway to work? Oh yes, of course: I forgot about the inevitable fender-bender. Frankly, even walking along New York's city streets during the day has become a veritable hassle in recent years. Let me offer a tip for commuters and walkers alike: slower traffic stay right. That means all of YOU.

In my mind, the only worthwhile and truly satisfying commute is the journey from my bed to the bathroom each morning.

Men

Nothing makes a grown man cry like bad backs and worse women.

Giving Credit where Credit Is Due

First The New York Times editorial board, now NPR's Daniel Schorr?

Could the mainstream liberal media finally be ready to acknowledge the good with the bad effects of an interventionalist foreign policy? Whatever our differences on policy, it is commendable that they finally have the intellectual honesty to at least question their long held beliefs as evidenced by the following excerpts...

From All Things Considered, NPR's senior news analyst says that recent events in Lebanon and Egypt suggest that the Middle East is moving towards democracy:

Bush may have had it right when he said that a liberated Iraq could show the power of freedom to transform the region.

And at The New York Times:

It's not even spring yet, but a long-frozen political order seems to be cracking all over the Middle East. Cautious hopes for something new and better are stirring along the Tigris and the Nile, the elegant boulevards of Beirut, and the impoverished towns of the Gaza Strip.

[T]his has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power. Washington's challenge now lies in finding ways to nurture and encourage these still fragile trends without smothering them in a triumphalist embrace.

As an aside, with Syria out of Lebanon, Hezbollah will wither, and therefore so will Syrian and Iranian influence over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This is important because the Iranian-directed Hezbollah suicide-bombing offensive in 1996 is generally credited with derailing the good chance for an agreement at that time. This will greatly increase the chances of a fair, durable agreement this time around.

Based on developments of the last 50 years, the desire to be free cuts across many cultures -- from Japanese to German to Anglo to African to Indian...and now Arabic. It would be good for all the naysayers to recall that, although significant cultural differences exist, we are all the same species needing food, shelter, clothing, and as it turns out, freedom.

As people discover that they can make their voices heard without resorting to violence, much of the impetus behind terrorism will eventually (though it may take generations) evaporate.