The Birth of a Passion

History (from coffee) -- Encyclopædia Britannica: "One of many legends about the discovery of coffee is that of Kaldi, an Arab goatherd, who was puzzled by the queer antics of his flock. About AD 850, Kaldi supposedly sampled the berries of the evergreen bush on which the goats were feeding and, on experiencing a sense of exhilaration, proclaimed his discovery to the world."

Blessed are you Kaldi, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but the Father in heaven.

Don't despair. We're winning.

An emailer to Instapundit.com -: "We're not losing momentum in Iraq. The Pentagon strategy is a very deliberate form of tough love that is forcing the Iraqis to defend their own country.

Arabs are culturally the most passive, fence-sitting people on the planet. By their own admission they follow the strongest leader out there. If we had sent 500,000 troops to Iraq and fought a Soviet-style counterinsurgency, the end result would have been an Iraq with no incentive to do the very hard work of creating viable fighting forces from scratch. We would've been their new masters in perpetuity.

We also can't attack Iran and Syria right now because the Iranians would then activate their Iraqi militias and send a million Basij into Iraq. Syria would do a Saddam and start firing WMD-tipped missiles at Israel. The entire region could go up in flames.

Don't let the media convince you that things are going badly in Iraq. The Anbar tribes are now fighting al Qaeda on their own initiative, and the Shi'ite-dominated government is slowly dismantling al Sadr's Mahdi Army. 'Experts' predicted that neither of these things would ever happen because of secular loyalties, but they are happening, and only because we're forcing the Iraqis to stand up and fight for their country.

Finally, take a look at what happened when the French, Soviets, and Russians fought Muslim insurgencies with the kind of aggressive, 'proactive' approach so many Americans claim to want.

The French lost 18,000 in Algeria, a KIA rate three and a half times ours. The Soviets lost 14,000 in Afghanistan, a KIA rate twice ours. The Russians officially lost 5500 in the First Chechen War of 1994-96, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia puts the actual number at 14,000, a KIA rate ten times ours. Nobody knows how many Russian troops have died in the Second Chechen War, but Soldiers' Mothers of Russia had the number at 11,000 by 2003.

Our strategy in Iraq is sound. It's keeping our own casualties down, and it's forcing the Iraqis to defend themselves.

Don't despair. We're winning."

And it's undermining al Qaeda's ability to bring terror to the US (5 years and counting). It's interesting to me that many assume that George Bush and all who agree with him, on Iraq specifically, are incompetent idiots when brilliant arguments can be made to understand the Iraq strategy. You may not agree with the rationale outlined above and it may not work but it's not the work of an idiot. And it seems to be working better than other possible historical alternatives.

Campus Crusade for Katrina

10,000 Campus Crusade college students chose to spend spring break doing Katrina relief work. Many were from the Northeast.

Talkin bout my generation...

USATODAY.com - Round and round they go: "When the USA's 300 millionth resident appears next month, that person's life will be shaped, in part, by whether Mom and Dad are baby boomers, Gen-Xers or millennials, experts say.

Someone who came of age when civil rights and the women's movement helped define the generation will have a very different take on life than someone who grew up a decade later listening to Madonna and watching MTV. Those even younger who have never known life without computers, video games or cellphones have yet another perspective."

Jury Duty Fraud

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Press Release September 28, 2005: "Washington, D.C. - The FBI today is providing a warning to the public against an ongoing scheme involving jury service. The public needs to be aware that individuals identifying themselves as U.S. court employees have been telephonically contacting citizens and advising them that they have been selected for jury duty. These individuals ask to verify names and Social Security numbers, then ask for credit card numbers. If the request is refused, citizens are then threatened with fines."

Hold me like you held me on Naboo...

Variety.com - Lucas: Let's get small: "'We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing, because it's too expensive and it's too risky."

Here's to you Jar-Jar, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

The Irish Economic Miracle

The Right Coast: "I remember being in Germany in the 1980s, when Irish kids would go there to try to get jobs. Now the travel goes in the opposite direction. Every Democrat (and many Republicans including President Bush) should be asked about the Irish miracle and how their own policies compare with these."

When will the coffee be ready?

 

Back Talk: To Bob Woodward

Back Talk: Distinguishing the Insurgency from Sectarian Violence in Iraq: "A shocking fact the administration has kept secret? Please. As I noted, information about the number of attacks on American troops -- including this particular statistic of one attack every 15 minutes -- is not secret. Instead, it is very publicly available in the form of a big graph on page 22 of the Iraq Index (published by the Brookings Institution). In fact, that's probably where Woodward himself got the information. Some secret. The Iraq Index has been publishing attack statistics for a long, long time for anyone who is interested. I cannot remember how long the exact graph that Woodward apparently refers to has been there, but graphs just like it have been there for months on end. Therefore, the claim that this is top secret information is simply false (to put it as mildly as possible)."

Bob Woodward is coming to Cambridge to sell his new book. The post above demonstrates why I won't be going. I can learn more about Bob and his views on blogs like this than I ever could by listening to him in person. It seems that he could learn a few things too.

Bob is the last dinosaur of the end of the Watergate era. He has no idea where the meteor came from or what it will mean, and that's not going to stop him from doing what he has been doing since Watergate, when there was no Back Talk.

You've got to hand it to him though. He knows that he has an audience in Cambridge, and Boulder, and Eugene, and Madison, and Austin, and... hmm? What do all of these towns have in common?

The Future belongs to...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "A pair of USA Today articles look at the 'marriage gap' and the 'fertility gap' in American politics--that is, the tendency of places with high rates of connubiality and parturition to vote Republican. Among the findings:

Republicans control 49 of the 50 [congressional] districts with the highest rates of married people.

Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district. . . .

Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.

USA Today doesn't make much effort to explain this; about the closest it comes is this evenhanded quote from Prof. Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University: 'Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways. Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids.'

Neither article, though, ever mentions the Democratic Party's status as champion of abortion, which seems to us to have great explanatory power. Obviously there is the Roe effect: Pro-abortion women, who are more likely to be Democrats, are more likely to abort their children, which gives Republicans a demographic advantage.

Abortion is related to the marriage gap too. Abortion is a "single" issue in more ways than one: Every poll we've seen shows that unwed people of both sexes are far more pro-abortion than the espoused. This makes perfect sense: Singles, with their slapdash sex lives, are both unlikely to want kids and less likely than married couples to have reliable birth-control rituals. Thus they feel much more acutely the need for abortion as a last resort should they become or make someone pregnant. If you live in a place like New York, you'll find lots of young adults who say they vote Democratic only because of abortion.

Of course, many of these people eventually get hitched and move to the suburbs, where some become Republicans, either because their views on abortion change or because it recedes in importance to them. (Relatedly, Republicans do better among wealthier voters; and wealth, like marriage, is a status to which many people who do not enjoy it aspire.)

Republicans, then, are outbreeding Democrats and doing better among voters whose personal lives are the most successful. All in all, the party of abortion is an unfruitful thing for the Democrats to be."

Afraid of the Fear of Terror

SPIEGEL ONLINE - News: "And now the Deutsche Oper in Berlin has taken Mozart's opera 'Idomeneo' off its schedule after a 'risk analysis' produced by Germany's Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) concluded that 'the possibility of performances being disrupted cannot be ruled out.' The opera is more than 200 years old. This performance was to be directed by Hans Neuenfels, and it featured Idomeneo, the King of Crete, stepping onto the stage with a bloody sack containing the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad. "

And whatever you do, don't say radical Islamists are violent, or else.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Global Warming

OpinionJournal - Extra: "Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."

Looks like Big Tobacco has competition from Big Green. Read the whole thing.

Young, Restless, Reformed

Christianity Today Magazine: "Not all of these youth know Piper's theological particulars. But plenty do, and Piper, more than anyone else, has contributed to a resurgence of Reformed theology among young people. You can't miss the trend at some of the leading evangelical seminaries, like Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which reports a significant Reformed uptick among students over the past 20 years. "

Crazy Dog

This is what the internet is all about.

Bill Clinton Freaks Out

He didn't do it because he couldn't.

Dead Tree Media almost Dead

New York Times forecasts lower quarterly earnings | Business News | Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday forecast sharply lower third-quarter earnings because of a 'challenging' print advertising market, sending shares down nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading."

I'm shocked, shocked.

Economic Networks

Time Warner chief queries internet prices - Financial Times - MSNBC.com: "Facebook, a social networking site aimed at college and high school students, is run by its 22-year-old founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

The company has been in talks with numerous media groups, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom.

Media executives said most media companies had taken a look but so far there was no appetite to pay the $1bn being sought by Facebook's backers.

YouTube, a video sharing site founded less than two years ago and also run by founders in their 20s, has become one of the top destinations for video content.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive officer of News Corporation, acquired MySpace, the world's most popular social networking site, last year for $580m.

Since then, Mr Murdoch has struck a deal with Google that guarantees income from search-word advertising of $700m over the next four years."

Lessons from a Punker Ph.D.

Christianity Today Magazine: "After twenty years of listening to the punk band Bad Religion, I sent the group's front man a note. I greeted Greg Graffin, told him that he had fans among Christian college professors, and I asked about his doctoral work at Cornell University.

I was surprised to get a note back—and then another. After a few months I printed our emails. They came to over 100 pages.

Very little of the written conversation between Greg and me concerns the music of Bad Religion. He gets enough fan mail. Instead, we discussed what my students would call the 'big questions.' What is life for? What are people for? Why do people think God exists? If you listen to Bad Religion's lyrics, you know that these kinds of questions are important to Greg, who is an atheist."

Brad Pitt comes out for Polygamy, Incest

BREITBART.COM - Brangelina to Marry When Everybody Can: "Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped.

'Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able,' the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19."

Attention Marion Jones

ESPN.com - GEN - Stem cells could be next generation of sports doping: "For athletes, stem cells have much more than the potential to cure disease and save lives -- they may be able to heal injuries, boost strength and endurance, and provide a lasting edge over the competition.

If it sounds like stem cells are next frontier for doping in sports, it's because they very well may be."