I don't like to think of myself as a Luddite, but yesterday's experience with a high tech toilet hardly endeared me to the idea of modernizing and revolutionizing Every Last Personal Thing.

At O'Hare Airport I made the mistake of going to the bathroom and entering a sit-down toilet stall. First I was a bit off-put by the fact that there was an automatic plastic toilet seat cover which didn't appear to be readily removable. Normally (huh?) I don't use toilet seat covers, and whether that makes me "anal" or the opposite I don't know and don't care, but in this case there was something just, well, a bit creepy about sitting on someone else's toilet seat cover. As irrational as it may sound, I'd rather sit on a bare toilet seat than a used toilet seat cover! That's because not only do toilet seat covers give me the creeps, but whoever used a toilet seat cover might have had an unpleasant and undisclosed reason for using it.

To my annoyance, I didn't see an easy way to remove the toilet seat cover, which was attached at each end, and seemed to roll into a dispenser. A button on the wall was right under a red LED with numbers -- almost like something you'd see in a hospital. Hell, why not press the button? I did, and then the toilet seat cover slithered across the seat -- reminding me of the way a snake sheds its skin -- until a new virgin coating was formed on the seat!

Now, I was already feeling slightly manipulated by this. That's because I don't choose to use toilet seat covers, but I felt compelled to use one whether I wanted to or not. The idea that some unknown bureaucratic forces somewhere have decided to dictate a change in my personal habits is unsettling to say the least. Coupled with the constant diminution in quantity of urinals, I find this ominous. Still, I sat down on the thing. And no -- I don't like the sensation. It's slippy-slidy and creepy.

That was the least of my problems. For, no sooner had ten or twenty seconds elapsed from my sitting down on the toilet when the automatic flush mechanism activated itself! And not just with a normal toilet flush. This thing was under pressure. With a big "WHOOSH!" it sprayed me! Worst of all, (and without going into the kind of personal details which might get my blog more censored than it already is -- just take my word for it) the timing could not possibly have been worse!

But that wasn't all. "Recovering" (hope that's the right word) as best I could from this traumatic assualt on all I hold dear and personal, after another ten or twenty seconds (I didn't check my watch) the damned thing flushed and sprayed me again. Surely, that would be the last time, I thought. But as I'd been twice fooled, I was ready to jump if it happened again.

And it did. Only this time I stood up, remained standing, and concluded my personal details with as much dignity as I could muster under the circumstances.

Does anyone know what is going on? Is there some vast bureaucracy which has decided to save environment at the expense of our privacy and our sanity?

I know that these things are all about control. I just can't decide how to label the problem. . . No control? Lack of control? Loss of control?

When will they stop? They haven't stopped with potty parity, urinal removal, mandatory seat covers and automatic flushing. Where does it end?

Until this day I never imagined that there could be such a thing as a Luddite libertarian or libertarian Luddite, but now I'm wondering . . .

I'm back, and trying to get caught up from my trip. While I was in Rockford, I did not forget Memorial Day, and I visited a cemetery. But, I wanted to do something to help living veterans, and via Glenn Reynolds, I found Chicago Boyz link to the Wounded Warriors Hospital Fund, to which I left a donation. Chicago Boyz also provides a link to Stars and Stripes' list of worthy charities.

Remember, Memorial Day is over, but there's still time to contribute!

I'm subscribed to receive a daily article from the rather radical Libertarians over at the Mises Institute. I don't always agree with the folks at Mises--in fact, I often find quite a few of their views disagreeable. Nonetheless, their scholarship is impeccable, and their articles are always thought provoking and informative.

I was a touch surprised at the article I received yesterday. The basic premise was that the U.S. government's War On Drugs is a woefully negative policy, impacting non-drug users in great and substantial ways. There's nothing particularly new about that particular libertarian (both small 'l' and big 'L') argument. What was particularly interesting was that the argument took strikingly conservative lines. I think it would have a distinct appeal to more traditional, conservative thinkers, and as such, the article is of particular importance and relevance.

Author Gennady Stolyarov II begins:

I personally find all currently illegal drugs loathsome; they stunt the mind, inhibit the body, and curtail productivity. I would never consume such substances myself, and I would advise others against doing so.

Yet, compared to the adverse effects of their illegalization, the harm of drugs themselves is small indeed.

In other words, it has the virtue of a scientific theory: it's testable and falsifiable (as opposed to, oh, I dunno, say Intelligent Design "theory" which is neither).

And we're not even through the first paragraph. It concludes:

Drug-taking is extremely unhealthy for the persons engaging in it, but not for anybody who abstains from it. The "War on Drugs," by contrast, harms everybody subject to a government that undertakes it. I have no sympathy for drug addicts; I wish to argue the case of the innocent, moral, productive people who have never used such substances in their lives but are nonetheless harmed by the coercive illegalization of drugs.

There are moral problems with drug-taking, but the ethical problems with the War on Drugs far exceed them. Let us presume that someone has decided to ruin his life by consuming harmful drugs. That decision alone would likely deny him the voluntary association of respectable people; these respectable people would thus not be damaged by any adverse consequences to the drug-taker's health, career, and personality. By the very fact of strongly disapproving of drug-consumption on a moral basis, one shields oneself from the adverse consequences of drug-consumption. This would be the case on a free market; the only damage from drug-taking would come to the drug addict himself — not to respectable others.

Yet this is not the case under a government-waged War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is waged with taxpayer money — which especially means the money of respectable, well-to-do people, who are taxed higher under the perverse "progressive" or punitive tax system. Thus, to regulate and thwart the activities of the addicts, the government expropriates substantial property from moral, productive people who do not even think about consuming illegal drugs. To punish the self-destructive, the government must also punish the self-improving and deprive them of the fruits of and the incentives for their self-improvement.

The War on Drugs is generous to drug addicts and punitive to all others; the drug addicts are arrested at others' expense and given "free" food and "free" lodging at government prisons — free to the imprisoned, that is, but paid for by the taxpayers. Why should moral people pay to sustain others for those others' immoral conduct? Why should the drug addicts be given state handouts and be spared the requirement to earn their own living on the free market? Prison conditions may be miserable, but they are granted to the drug addicts automatically — as a taxpayer-funded gift for having broken a silly law. Why should drug addicts deserve even poor-quality food and shelter for ruining their lives?

The War on Drugs harms innocent schoolchildren, who are at risk of being suspended or expelled by draconian public school administrators for bringing in sugar, salt, aspirin, or other "drug look-alikes."

In the inner cities, the War on Drugs harms anyone who does not engage in drug consumption; it subjects them to the tyranny of black-market drug gangs, which have by now usurped control of certain ghettoes. The government prohibits peaceful, overt trade in drugs, but it cannot legislate away demand for them. The demand persists, and some suppliers are still willing to satisfy it.

[...]

Thus is created the environment of competing, heavily armed drug gangs — willing to murder to gain black market share. Such drug gangs are far more effective at seizing power than ordinary citizens; it should come as no surprise that the gangs should eventually begin to terrorize and extort even those not directly connected to the drug trade.

[...]

Most likely, the inner-city resident will not bother with the dangers of opening his own business or finding a productive job. Rather, he will be inclined to stay home, keep a low profile, receive his welfare check, and gradually disintegrate.

The War on Drugs restricts the mobility of virtually everybody, as the inner-city ghettoes are no longer safe for respectable, well-to-do people to even walk around in. The War on Drugs hurts everybody who has been robbed, mugged, or killed by the black-market gangs that the illegalization of drugs has created.

The War on Drugs fundamentally harms Americans culturally. By dividing the ghettoes into the drug gangs and the slothful welfare recipients who are too afraid to leave their homes, the government has inadvertently created the American ghetto culture: a culture of dissipation, vulgarity, insolence, indolence, foul language, deceit, promiscuity, brutality, and violence — indeed, an anti-culture. This culture is eagerly romanticized and popularized by the leftist mass media and damages the morals of many who indiscriminately absorb it. The War on Drugs has been indirectly responsible for the widespread decline in tastes in music, art, clothing, and lifestyles during the past half-century.

When compared to the expropriation of honest, productive citizens, the punishment of innocent children, the stifling of inner-city residents' opportunities and aspirations, the massive increase in crime and black-market activity, the restriction of territorial mobility, and the corruption of culture, the harms of drug consumption are slight indeed. Let the drug addicts ruin their own lives; it is their business, not ours. We may object morally to their conduct, but let us persuade — not coerce — them away from their pursuits. If we try coercion, we will only be imposing far greater harms on ourselves.

What could be more exciting than riding a bus from Rockford to Chicago O'Hare Airport?

Riding on a bus while writing a post about it, that's what! There's a line of rush-hour traffic as far as I can see, and the bus just lurches and stops, lurches and stops, so it's tougher to sleep than it was an hour ago when it was moving along normally in a more rural area.

I had almost zero time to get online, much less post about anything, but on Sunday I happened to glance through the Rockford Register Star, which featured a nice front-page feature on local Rockford blogs:

ROCKFORD — A movement aimed at transforming the political landscape in America has spread to the Rock River Valley with the help of a small army of volunteers — some of whom report for duty dressed in pajamas.

The local devotees come from all walks of life.

One’s a self-styled “house person” in Pecatonica.

A couple of others are Rockford lawyers who hide their true identities in their movement endeavors.

Some are technicians or teachers or retirees.

And many strongly disagree among one another on the issues of the day.

These are our homegrown political bloggers, advocates who post their opinions — along with news items and, in some cases, rumors — on Internet sites known as blogs, which is short for Web logs.

By now, the effect of blogs on the national political and media scenes is well-known. Bloggers have been credited with forcing Sen. Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican, to resign his leadership post after making public remarks that critics construed as racist, and with exposing CBS newscaster Dan Rather’s use of forged documents in a report on President Bush’s National Guard service.

By most accounts, the influence of blogs has just begun. But if the political blogosphere as a whole is only in its infancy, its Rock River Valley component is downright embryonic.

Two political veterans, Harlem Township Supervisor Doug Aurand, a Democrat, and Winnebago County Board member Tim Simms, a Republican, said last week that they’ve discerned no effect from blogs — at least not yet.

"I never hear anything about them," Aurand said. "But that doesn’t mean they might not be a factor sometime in the future. They might be useful in helping to organize people around certain issues."

Simms said he’s seen no influence from local blogs and doesn’t expect any: "What you get from blogs is worth exactly what you pay for it — nothing."

At least one blogger, Michael Simon of Rockford, despairs of the blogosphere influencing local politics.

"Our local government is way too corrupt," he said, "and hardly anybody is interested in cleaning it up."

The 61-year-old electronics contractor said he devotes his blog (http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com) mostly to national and international issues, especially the war on drugs, which he criticizes from his libertarian perspective. He said his site "has been pretty well-received" and once received a torrent of visitors when it was mentioned on the nationally popular Instapundit.com.

There's more, including an account of another blogger Scott Richert (of the Rockford Institute) and his role in saving a beautiful local landmark church from being torn down to build an awful-looking jail.

Glad I found the piece online!

Wish I could have spent more time in Rockford, but I'm heading home.

Almost at the airport now. . .

(Forgive the typos while I post and run.)

Rod Adams runs an informative and gentlemanly blog called Atomic Insights. Mr. Adams is a nuclear engineer and a former submariner in the U.S. navy. His blog's primary focus is fission power and its potential benefits. It was through Mr. Adams and his blog that I discovered Kirk Sorenson's superlative Energy From Thorium blog. It has some great introductory papers to the wonderland that is thorium fission power. We'll come back to both of them another day. For today we're going to concentrate on an old Classical Values staple, Jeremy Rifkin. Mr. Adams recently attended a function in Washington D.C. where Rifkin was a featured lecturer. Your tax dollars at work.

Last night (May 22, 2006) I had the opportunity to listen to Jeremy Rifkin, the author of The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth.

The talk was hosted by The DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and the Office of Force Transformation as part of a continuing series of "conversations" about energy issues.

What was DOD thinking?

For those of us that were listening very carefully, Dr. Rifkin acknowledged that an energy system based on only natural flows would not be able to support a human population that is already more than 6 billion people with a growth rate that makes it likely to approach 9 billion in the next 50 years or so. He talked a bit about a gradual reduction in the world's population but did not seem concerned by the drastic changes in human behavior that would be required to turn our population growth rate into a population reduction rate. Perhaps he would like the rest of the world to adopt China's one child policy.

I took the opportunity provided by sitting in the front row in a rather small room to ask the first question following Dr. Rifkin's talk. (As an aside, I am sure that others in the room noticed my fidgeting while waiting through at least three separate "finally I want to talk about. . ." from Dr. Rifkin. He managed to stretch his talk long enough to only allow for about 4-5 questions.)

That sounds about right. For those of you who would prefer not to read Birth Of A Notion, Rifkin Redux, or "Machine Gun For An Idiot Child" yet again, I've stripped out the snarky commentary and am re-posting some unadulterated Rifkin excerpts. This first batch comes from "Entropy: Into The Greenhouse World". Think of it as a massive reference material dump for our newer readers...

Each day we awake to a world that appears more confused and disordered than the one we left the night before. Nothing seems to work anymore…Our leaders are forever lamenting and apologizing…The powers that be continue to address the problems at hand with solutions that create even greater problems than the ones they were meant to solve... P 3

The Entropy Law has a special power. It is so utterly overwhelming that, once fully internalized, it transforms everyone it comes in contact with; it is this almost mystical attraction that makes the Entropy Law so frightening to take hold of. Yet.... few people can resist the temptation to do just that. The allure lies in its all-encompassing nature.The Entropy law is the assassin of the truths of the Modern Age.... Now those truths have metamorphosed into monstrous lies which threaten our continued existence. Pp 6-7

It should be emphasized that the Entropy Law deals only with the physical world where everything is finite and where all living things must run their course and eventually cease to be. It is a law governing the horizontal world of time and space. It is mute, however, when it comes to the vertical world of spiritual transcendence.
The spiritual plane is not governed by the ironclad dictates of the Entropy Law. The spirit is a nonmaterial dimension where there are no boundaries and no fixed limits to attend to. The relationship of the physical to the spiritual world is the relationship of a small part to the larger unbound whole within which it unfolds. While the Entropy Law governs the world of time, space, and matter, it is, in turn, governed by the primordial spiritual forces that conceived it. P 8

Every time you light a cigarette, the available energy in the world decreases. Of course, as already pointed out, it’s possible to reverse the entropy process in an isolated time and place, but only by using up additional energy in the process and thus increasing the overall entropy of the environment…A point that needs to be emphasized over and over again is that here on earth material entropy is continually increasing and must ultimately reach a maximum. That’s because the earth is a closed system in relation to the universe. With the exception of an occasional meteorite that falls to earth and some cosmic dust, our planet remains a closed subsystem of the universe…

The fixed endowment of terrestrial matter that makes up the earth’s crust is continually dissipating. Mountains are wearing down and topsoil is being blown away with each passing second. That is why, in the final analysis, even renewable resources are really nonrenewable over the long haul. While they continue to reproduce, the life and death of new organisms increase the entropy of the earth...
Every farmer understands that, even with recycling and constant sunshine, it’s impossible to grow the same amount of grass on the same spot year after year in perpetuity. Every blade of grass grown today means one less blade of grass that can be grown some time in the future on that same spot. P37-38

Finally, the idea that valuable resources could be mined and sent back to earth from other planets in the quantities needed is completely ridiculous. The cost of mining additional resources on earth is already becoming prohibitive. Even assuming we could locate planets with resources that would be usable in some way here on earth, there is no way we could ever afford the costs of mining and transporting the materials from these distant places. Pp 66-67

The faster we streamline our technology, the faster we speed up the transforming process, the faster available energy is dissipated, the more the disorder mounts… In short, we live in a kind of nightmarish Orwellian world. P 79

Addiction! There is simply no other way to accurately describe America’s energy habit. The statistics are overwhelming. With only 6 percent of the world’s population, the United States currently consumes over one third of the world’s energy. P 99

It has been said before that the world could not possibly support another America. Looking at these figures, it becomes apparent that even one America is more than the world can afford.

The remaining reservoirs of untapped nonrenewable resources are primarily in the hands of the poor Third World nations. These resources are their only remaining trump card to bargain for a more equitable redistribution of wealth between the industrialized countries and their own…

To those of us who have lived for decades on huge quantities of energy and resources provided by the Third World, it is easy to resent the squeeze that cartels will put on our economic system. A popular country-and western song of the summer of 1979 summed up the frustration many Americans felt over escalating OPEC oil prices: “No crude, no food.” In other words, if the Third World won’t sell us its petroleum, then we should withhold food exports from the world’s hungry.

This kind of jingoistic attitude on our part is not only morally and politically indefensible, but it threatens our very survival. The choice is ours. We can either accept the new terms presented by Third World nations and cut back dramatically on our energy flow and material consumption, or we can intervene militarily to seize the resources we need… p 188

…as long as we in the United States continue to consume one-third of the world’s resources annually, the Third World can never rise to even a semblance of a standard of living that can adequately support human life with dignity. Those who are irate over the formation of resource cartels as an economic weapon to be used against rich nations like our own had best ask themselves what they would do if they were living in the Third World…. P 189

we must begin, now, voluntarily, to substantially limit our own material wealth. We must show our own willingness to accept hard sacrifices in the name of humanity. P 190

However, this too must be said: no Third World nation should harbor hopes that it can ever reach the material abundance that has existed in America over the past few decades.

To put its faith in Western-style development is a cruel hoax, simply because it is a physical impossibility even if there were a complete redistribution of the world’s resources….

It is thus impossible for the rest of the world to develop as the United States has. In fact, as we have already seen, absolute resource scarcity makes it impossible that even the United States can continue at anything near its present level of energy flow. This is not, however, to dismiss the absolute necessity of fostering economic development in the Third World. The question is: What kind of development is appropriate to poor nations? Pp 190-191

….It is clear that Third World nations must seek different forms of development from those used in the industrialized West. High-energy, centralized technology should be eschewed in favor of intermediate technology that is labor intensive and can be used in local villages…

Several appropriate models for Third World development already exist. Before Mao’s death, the People’s Republic of China organized itself in a way that maintained the rural base of the society and favored labor-intensive production. China is not a rich society, but no one is starving to death--or is jobless or homeless, either.

More attention should also be turned to the Gandhian economic model….Gandhian economics favors the country over the city, agriculture over industry, small-scale techniques over high technology. Only this general set of economic priorities can lead to successful Third World development. Pp 192-193

Accepting higher and higher prices for all nonrenewable resources means a steady contracting of the American economy. For the first time in our countries history we will have to deal with the ultimate political and economic question—redistribution of wealth…

The contraction of the American economy has already begun. On September 6, 1979, the Secretary of the Treasury warned the nation that it must go through “a period of austerity”.… There is really only one viable solution: it is imperative that there be a massive redistribution of wealth and power in this society. Without that redistribution, the poor and working classes in America will rightly condemn any talk of austerity or economic sacrifice…

Without a fundamental redistribution of wealth, all talk of lowering energy flow and heeding our planet’s biological limits will result in nothing but the rich locking the poor forever into their subservient status The chic upper-class ecologists, with their hot-tubs, their quarter-million-dollar homes, their designer clothes, and their Mercedes Benzes, had best realize that their calls for clean air must be accompanied by meaningful actions that will lead to a redistribution of their own unwarranted economic abundance. If they do not voluntarily begin to make this economic adjustment, then others will make it for them. Pp 194-195

We have denied the qualitative, the spiritual, the metaphysical…We have gloried in the concepts of material progress, efficiency, and specialization above all other values. In the process, we have destroyed family, community, tradition….Now our world view and social system are falling victim to the very process of their creation. Everywhere we look, the entropy of our world is reaching staggering proportions…. P 205

There is no doubt that we are in for a massive institutional realignment….But before we can even begin to broadly outline the nature of agriculture, industry, and commerce in a low-entropy society, we must turn our attention to first principles….the Big Questions of the past are destined to re-emerge in the low-entropy world that awaits us….. p 206

The governing ethical principle of a low-entropy world view is to minimize energy flow. Excessive material wealth is recognized as an irreversible diminution of the world’s precious resources…. A low-entropy society deemphasizes material consumption...Human needs are met, but whimsical, self-indulgent desires—the kind pandered to in every shopping center in the country—are not.

In a low-entropy culture the individual is expected to live a much more frugal or Spartan life-style….In the new age, the less production and consumption necessary to maintain a healthy, decent life, the better….

In a low-entropy culture, work is understood to be an activity as necessary for the proper life-balance as sleep, contemplation, or play….
But not just any kind of work can be considered appropriate. It must be designed, first and foremost, to provide dignity and purpose for the worker…. Pp 208-209

In a low-entropy culture the concept of private property is retained for consumer goods and services but not for land and other renewable and nonrenewable resources. The long-accepted practice of private exploitation of “natural” property is replaced with the notion of public guardianship….

Individual rights are protected, but they are no longer regarded as the dominant reference point from which to judge society. Instead, the notion of public duties, and responsibilities once again gains ascendancy as the dominant social motif, as it has been throughout most of history.

In a low-entropy society, our modern view of man and woman divorced from the workings of the ecosystem gives way to a holistic comprehension of the interrelatedness of all phenomena…. Once it is understood that human beings are “one” with nature, then an ethical base is established by which the appropriateness of all human activity can be judged. P 211

Small-scale labor-intensive agriculture will require a massive shift of people away from the cities and back to the farms. The transition will not take place overnight…. Eventually the proportion of farm to city population will have to reverse itself if human life is to survive….An agricultural way of life will dominate the coming Solar Age as it has in every other period of history before our own….

Along with the scaling down of cities, transportation systems are also going to be vastly reoriented in the years to come. The high cost of energy is going to force a fundamental shift in the pattern of travel away from automobiles and trucks and toward greater mass transit and long-distance rail use…
Our social and economic life will undergo radical changes reflecting the change in transportation….

Because of escalating energy and resource costs, industry will reverse its historical trend and convert back from energy- and capital-intensive production modes to labor-intensive ones….
Agriculture, which will no longer be able to continue its mechanized farming techniques, will also become far more labor intensive….

To recognize the extent to which production will be diminished, we have only to take a tour through a suburban mall and ask ourselves, “How many of these products are even marginally useful in sustaining life?” Any honest appraisal is sure to conclude that most of what is manufactured in our economy is simply superfluous. P 218

The production that does continue should take place within certain guidelines in keeping with the low-entropy paradigm….Of course, adhering to these guidelines will necessarily mean that certain items will become impossible to produce.

A Boeing 747 for instance, simply cannot be manufactured by a small company employing several hundred individuals. Thus, a new ethic will have to be adopted as the litmus test of what should be produced in the low-entropy society: if it cannot be made locally by the community, using readily available resources and technology, then it is most likely unnecessary that it be produced at all.

Many industries will not be able to withstand the transition to a low energy flow. Unable to adapt to the new economic environment, the automotive, aerospace, petrochemical, and other industries will slide into extinction.

….the low-entropy age we are moving into will require a great reduction in world population. The massive explosion in world population is really only understandable when viewed in thermodynamic terms….

I'll take the nukes, thank you very much. And a big thanks but no thanks to Rifkin's version of ghastly communitarian paradise. I think Cambodia has already beta tested it for us, and it had a few too many bugs to generate a solid market. I can't believe the government is still listening to this guy.

Our next batch load is excerpted from "The Emerging Order". It's one of his earliest books, and in my sober estimation it's also the looniest. If you've never encountered it before you're in for a real treat...

Cancer is the new plague. It strikes without warning and seemingly without reason.... Cancer, like the plagues is a direct consequence of the changing economic period we're living in. Seventy to 90 percent of all cancer, according to government studies, is caused by the environment of industrial capitalism... p 220

If there is one element that has shaken public confidence in science and technology more than any other it would be the ineptness of the commercial health establishment and government in dealing with cancer...Today, with billions of dollars of tax money spent, a solution is no more in the offing than before. The reason is that the problem does not lend itself to a particular scientific cure...On the contrary, it is science itself that is responsible for cancer...Science created chemical pesticides, nuclear radiation, toxic substances, and all of the other ingredients that cause the disease.... p 220

While it is conceivable that the medical establishment could find a new technological cure for cancer, it is more than likely that the cure itself would merely serve to create an even greater set of problems in human biology at some future date. Ultimately, the answer to the problem of cancer (and other more sophisticated diseases that might replace it) lies in the establishment of a new world view based on an ecologically balanced steady-state economic system. Only by slowing down the entropy process and restoring the natural balance and interplay of nature can the problem of cancer be ultimately put to rest. Until that realization sets in, the popular response to cancer...is likely to ba a mixture of public resentment and hostility toward the scientific medical establishment (which is justified) and a search for alternative cures. That search has already begun.... p 221

Today, millions of Americans are professed adherents of faith healing as an alternative to medical science.... p 221

While we’ve already caught a glimpse of the revolutionary potential in the shift of faith from medical science to faith healing, the full gravity of what’s taking place only becomes apparent upon deeper examination of the underlying assumptions behind the Baptism of the Holy Spirit… p 222

One of the important aspects of special gifts is that they are, in fact, observable and repeatable, just like scientific phenomena. Unlike science, however, their manifestations do not depend on what the individual does, but what God (through the Holy Spirit) does. The individual is no longer in “control” as with scientific truths. Instead, He becomes the faithful repository of supernatural truths. When a Charismatic “lays hands” on someone, and in so doing, cures them of an ailment by the special gift of faith healing, there is no doubt that the results of the procedure are often observable-as observable as the results of a medical operation. But it is not the special skills or knowledge of people that cures the victim, but the indwelling spirit of God…. p 223

The Charismatics have replaced the scientific method with supernatural power….They have taken the human being from a horizontal perspective to a vertical one...their challenge to the existing order is profound and could well end up turning the world upside down, just as the Reformation did a half millennium ago. To begin with, vertical experience provides an ahistorical context. The Charismatics believe that God can speak to each person today just as authoritatively as he spoke to the Apostles 2000 years ago. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit sets up a nonlinear frame of reference…His revealed truths are timeless. p 224

Technique is humanity’s way of trying to create a timeless world, a world of total unified being, omnipotent, all present and eternal. Technique is a horizontal race to a vertical finish. Of course, human beings can never win the race; in fact, we can never even finish it. The more people apply technique, the more we reduce the components of life to their particulars and the further away we slide from the universality we’re striving for. The age of expansion is characterized by the notion that people can overcome all limits. Time and space, however, are the very real limits imposed upon all life. By trying to overcome these limits, people try to become God; this failure is reflected in a world in shambles, destroyed largely by science, technique and our own hubris. p 225

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit eliminates the need for efficiency and technique. In so doing, it sets up conditions for return to a balanced ecosystem. With special gifts people can overcome this world’s time and space limitations and become one with God directly, now. Humanity doesn’t need to get sidetracked on a long and futile journey technologizing people and nature…Speaking in tongues is a more powerful form of communication than any satellite network…The gift of prophecy is more powerful than any computer information system…it is providential and inerrant. p 225

Special gifts, say the Charismatics, are God’s signs. In a secular sense, they are indeed signs-signs of the anxiety and hostility being engendered by the emergence of the new postindustrial order. Imagine, for a moment, the significance of tongues….Speaking in tongues contradicts all communications theory…..If everyone spoke in tongues, it would be indecipherable according to communications logic. Yet millions of people are now doing just that. They are speaking in tongues and the evidence is that they are communicating more effectively with each other as a result. ….p 227

Anyone can speak in tongues; it provides the kind of access that people feel is denied them by those who hold a monopoly over communications in this society. Speaking in tongues requires no special training. It is a universal language available to all men and women……It does not provide partial information, or inaccurate information, but the complete body of truths necessary for life. This is so because the truths are those revealed by God, and therefore all-inclusive.

Backed up by the most sophisticated communications hardware that money can buy, evangelicals are now threatening the long-standing hegemony over the airwaves previously enjoyed by CBS, NBC, and ABC…..All of this is just for openers, boasts Jim Bakker, head of PTL television network. PTL stands for both “People That Love”and “Praise The Lord”. p 106

During the show viewers are urged to call in and discuss their personal and spiritual problems with some of the 7,000 trained volunteers staffing some sixty regional telephone centers strategically placed across the country...

…..the studio lights darken, the camera scans the audience as heads are lowered in prayer…looking into camera left, the Reverend James Bakker, attired in an egg-blue suit, standing against a blue-velvet background, begins quietly:

“There is a prostate gland condition that God is healing right now …there is a spinal condition, perhaps a missing disc that is being restored…someone to my left has a kidney ailment…there are growths and in the name of Jesus those growths are gone…you will not need surgery…there is something that goes into the marrow of the bone…and the Lord is healing it.”

Whew! 1979. Wasn't that a time? Let's just decompress a minute and then wrap up with a little juxtaposition that I found too good to pass up. First, some more shallow historical analysis from "Entropy". Any emphases are my own...

Imagine a time warp that could put us face to face with a medieval Christian serf. The thirteenth century is not so very long ago...Still, even without a language barrier we and the serf would have very little to say to each other after the usual chitchat about the weather. That’s because we would probably be interested in finding out what his goals in life were...Of course, we shouldn’t expect much in the way of a response. In fact, if all we see in his eyes is a blank expression, it’s not because we’re talking over his head, or because his mind isn’t developed enough for the exchange of ideas. It’s just that his ideas about life, history, and reality are so utterly different from our own. The Christian view of history, which dominated western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, perceived life in this world as a mere stopover in preparation for the next...the doctrine of original sin precluded the possibility of humanity ever improving its lot in life...There were no personal goals, no desires to get ahead or leave something behind. There were only God’s decrees to be faithfully carried out.

Right, right. Devout Christians all, and this life is but a mere prologue. So just how accurate is this account? As you might imagine, not terribly. In fact, it's downright cartoonish, being so simply rendered as to be useless.

I was reading up on the Hanseatic League, a mercantile alliance active during (surprise!) the thirteenth century and found the following synopsis of a trading dispute...

Waldemar Atterdag, King of Denmark, was envious of the wealth the Hansa was taking from the herring fisheries off the coast of Scania. Waldemar felt, perhaps rightly so, that the revenues from the fisheries in his territories should be more under his control and did his best to reduce the privileges his predecessors had given to the Germans. In 1361, just after the counsellors from the Hansa had returned to Luebeck after re-negotiating the rights to the herring fisheries, news came that Waldemar had sacked the city of Wisby on the island of Gotland.

The leaders of the Hansa in Luebeck, who had the greatest interest in the Wisby "counter", were outraged and pushed for war. The Wendish third was in favor of the war, but the Rhennish third saw no interest to be gained from it and the Prussian third were forbidden to take part by the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was a friend of Waldemar's...

Despite the lack of support from the other thirds the Wendish third decided to undertake a campaign against the Danes, who they saw as pirates...

The campaign was initially quite successful and the fleet sacked Copenhagen and took with them the bell from the main church. They then went to attack the Danish fortresses on the Scania coastline of the sound. The plan was to meet with an army provided by Magnus Erikson, King of Sweden...

When the Hansa fleet arrived there was no Swedish army to be found and Johann Wittenborg made a grave error in taking the men-at-arms off the ships in order to besiege the fortress. Several days later, with the soldiers all on land, the Danish fleet sailed into view, and with only skeleton crews on most of the German vessels most of the German ships and Provisions were either sunk or taken captive...

The Hansa, in the terms of peace, was forced to cede most of its revenues from the herring fisheries to the Danish crown.

Waldemar was a cunning man and he felt that since only the Wendish cities had taken part in the war with him he had only made peace with the Wendish cities and not the Prussian ones. Therefore, Danish attacks against the Prussians increased through the next decade causing the Prussians to repeatedly call for a reopening of the hostilities, but the Wendish cities, who had lost so much in the first war without the support of the Prussians and the Rhennish third, were not in any hurry to take the risk again.

Finally the situation became totally intolerable and the Wendish cities were persuaded to join into a unified campaign which would include all of the cities. This time the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who had lost revenues to Danish attacks, did not interfere with the Prussian cities' involvement...Waldemar was forced to flee Copenhagen and stay as a guest of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order...

The Germans gained control over the revenues from the herring fisheries, control over the fortresses of the sound, the right to be the only ships allowed to enter the port of Bergen with their tops in place (Haakan Haakanson, the Norwegian King, had allied with Waldemar), and the right to veto any person's ascension to the Danish throne for fifteen years.

That's some "prologue". Onward Christian soldiers, hey? But where is Rifkin's conception of the medieval God in this mundane jockeying for economic and military advantage? It all sounds depressingly familiar and comprehensible. They fought a war for herring revenues.

Jeremy Rifkin, mangling the historical record since 1979.

Well, actually no. It isn't. But it is the most beautiful skyscraper constructed in the last five years, that I'm personally aware of. I suppose I could have missed one. Anyway, it's called "Turning Torso" and it's located in Malmö, Sweden.

Taste is always subjective of course, so you may find it's not something you care for. Hey, it's a big world. I'll live. But if you do like it you might want to check out the buildings own flashy site. It's fun.

Fact is, I liked this building so much that I looked up the architect , Santiago Calatrava, to see what else he'd done. Lots, as it happens. And more lots. Plus, he has a flash site all his own. Please, enjoy.

Most modern architecture either leaves me cold or enrages me. What San Francisco did to the De Young Museum calls for show trials at the very least. Seriously, it looks like a Klingon parking garage. My teeth begin grinding whenever I'm reminded of it. In this one small locus of human endeavor, Kunstler and I are in perfect agreement. Most modern architects are guilty of crimes against humanity. Have you seen the monstrous abortion that's planned for downtown Louisville?

Awww, it's a gigantic Dickens Droid. Look, it's limping along with the help of a trusswork girder crutch. It must be Tiny Tim! God bless us, every one! But where is the robot's head?

Those people have a lot to answer for. Here's what Rem Koolhaas, whose firm designed the steel and glass crime, fondly imagines is a deep thought...

"People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living."

God help us all. No wonder I hate his buildings. And yet, they're not that different from Calatrava's, aside from being graceless, ill-proportioned, and inescapably intrusive. So it must just be subtle differences, right?

Calatrava's designs remind me of bird bones, whale ribs, narwhal tusks, or even Brancusi's "Bird in Space". They are truly lovely, but in a mildly disturbing way, like something that H.R. Giger might design for his children if he got really, really mellow. Cuddly Giger. Plushy Giger. It soothes me.

Older readers may recall Nevil Shute as the author of On The Beach, or perhaps less famously, No Highway. Both books were eventually translated into films, starring Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart respectively. At the peak of his writing career he was a fairly well known man of letters. But much earlier in his career, back when his name was still Nevil Norway, he spent many years as a pilot and aeronautical engineer. As such, he was intimately involved in the construction of the R100 airship. His autobiography, Slide Rule, details his experiences with that enterprise as well as his thoughts on the doomed R101. Slide Rule is a wonderful little book, full of unpredictable observations, and the following passages are as good an example as any.

A man’s own experiences determine his opinions, of necessity. I was thirty-one years old at the time of the R.101 disaster, and my first close contact with senior civil servants and politicians at work was in the field of airships, where I watched them produce disaster. That experience still colours much of my thinking. I am very willing to recognize the good in many men of these two classes, but a politician or a civil servant is still to me an arrogant fool till he is proved otherwise…

I considered at the time that the disaster was caused by the actions of the men at Cardington; I do not think that now. The men at Cardington were honest, hardworking men doing their best in a job that was rather too big for them. The first-class brains in the Air Ministry, the high executive civil servants at the top, should have been able to assess the position correctly and take action that would have avoided the disaster. They had plenty of evidence, extending over several years…

If just one of them had stood up at the conference table when the issue of the certificate of airworthiness was under discussion, and had said, “This thing is wrong, and I will be no party to it. I’m sorry, gentlemen, but if you do this, I’m resigning”—if that had been said then or on any one of a dozen previous opportunities, the disaster would almost certainly have been averted. It was not said, because the men in question put their jobs before their duty…

Ten years after these events when I was in the navy I was drafted to a technical department of the Admiralty which was staffed by over a hundred temporary officers of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. As civilians in uniform we found the Admiralty system to be better adapted to conserving money in peace time than to getting quick production in time of war. We found in many instances that the only way to get things done quickly was to short-circuit the system, getting verbal authority by telephone conversations with the various departments affected and letting the paper work tag along three weeks later. These methods required senior officers of the regular navy to give verbal decisions which might involve expenditures of thousands of pounds without any paper cover, and naturally made us very unpopular. These naval officers were as brave as lions, and would have risked their lives in a destroyer torpedo attack without any second thought, but to be asked to risk their jobs on a verbal decision involving public money often seemed to them unfair.

Now and again, we would find some cheerful young commander or captain who was not affected by these scruples, who was as brave in the office as he was at sea. Commenting on such a regular officer and on his way of doing business we would say, “He’s a good one. I bet he’s got private means.” Invariably investigation proved that we were right. The officers who were brave in the Admiralty were the officers who had an independent income, who could afford to resign from the navy if necessary without bringing financial disaster to their wives and children. It started as a joke with us to say that a brave officer in the office probably had private means, and then it got beyond a joke and turned into an axiom. These were the men who could afford to shoulder personal responsibility in the Admiralty, who could afford to do their duty to the navy in the highest sense.

Such men invariably gravitate towards the top of any government service that they happen to be in because of their carefree acceptance of responsibility. They serve as a leaven and an example to their less fortunate fellows; they set the tone of the whole office by their high standard of duty. I think this is an aspect of inherited incomes which deserves greater attention than it has had up till now. If the effect of excessive taxation and death duties in a country is to make all high officials dependent on their pay and pensions, then the standard of administration will decline and the country will get into greater difficulties than ever. Conversely in a wealthy country with relatively low taxation and much inherited income a proportion of the high officials will be independent of their job, and the standard of administration will probably be high.

I do not know the financial condition of the high officials in the Air Ministry at the time of the R.101 disaster. I suspect, however, that an investigation would reveal that it was England’s bad luck that at that time none of them had any substantial private means.

It's an interesting hypothesis, and I'm afraid I'm predisposed towards finding it plausible. Nevertheless, off the top of my head I can think of at least one contradictory datum. How are we to account for Ted Kennedy?

Hitachi announced their latest, smallest RFID a few months ago, and I've just recently become aware of it. You can click here to see it. I believe it would be worth your while to do so. By way of comparison, here is its bigger, older brother.

When I first heard of RFID technology, the devices were about the size of a credit card. You would attach them to whatever you wanted to track using strapping tape. That was less than ten years ago. Today we're looking at a silicon fleck, .15 millimeters on a side. Progress.

So how significant are these motes? Well, to be honest, in the Big Brother Is Watching You department, not very. They are nowhere near to having the capabilities of the mythical Qeng Ho localizer, or even its humbler real world inspiration. It has no sonics, no light sensors, no ad hoc mesh networking. No direct optic nerve stimulation via phased array transmission, for that matter. In fact, all they can do is identify themselves. They give a tiny little squeak-back when you tickle them with radio waves. Nevertheless, I do worry. It's Moore's Law, you see. If these things continue to improve as they have, in twenty to forty years their capabilities should be increased anywhere from a thousand to a millionfold. That's when things will get really interesting, though I suppose it needn't be all bad. Perhaps not even mostly bad. Still, a little worry now might save us considerable grief later. Just so you know.

For some reason, that image of tiny RFID chips with salt crystals has me thinking about Bob Shaw, a science fiction writer whose work I've not read in thirty years or so. He was one of those rare SF authors who truly advanced the conceptual state of the art. These days most people are at least passingly familiar with the standard science fictional props. They know what a hyperdrive is supposed to do, you step on the gas and you go. Likewise, a blaster is trivially easy to understand as a space six-shooter. It's actually a bit of a shame, what Lucas and company have done to the popular conception. Star Wars hand weapons are positively anemic compared to the rather more emphatic blasters of my youth. Those Buck Rogers antiques combined the best features of an atomic flame thrower and a recoil free hand-cannon. Imagine a light saber with a two hundred yard reach and you're almost there. Captain Flandry would have sneered at Han Solo's pokey little popgun.

But, all fun aside, science fiction can be far more than just rocketships and rayguns. It can tackle stranger, more original concepts, and Bob Shaw is responsible for one of my favorites.

Going far beyond the standard beloved cliches of the genre, he used a classic application of the "What if?" technique and posited a substance that could impede the progress of light by a factor of quadrillions. He called it slow glass.

A ray of light entering a pane of slow glass might take years to reach the far side. You, after waving and mugging at a pane of such stuff, might come back in five years, or ten, and circling round to the other side of the glass watch your younger self happily clowning as the tardy photons bearing your image finish their slow trudge across the millimeters and burst out into freedom.

What if we could synthesize such a material? What would we do with it? The easy answers came first. Rustic views for the everyman, indistinguishable from reality. An end to electric street lighting.
Other, more complicated scenarios can be imagined, and one such is freely available online, the award winning short story Light of Other Days. If you've never read it, here is your chance. I hope you'll take the time, as it's quite good.

Gregory Benford once remarked that writing science fiction without limitations is like playing tennis with the net down. Without difficulties, there can be no drama. For most of his slow glass stories, Shaw followed this dictum, adhering to a self imposed set of limits. Once fabricated, slow glass couldn't be manipulated. You couldn't fast forward. You couldn't rewind. Tampering with the glass caused it to release all of its stored energy at once. Bad idea. If you wanted to view a particular event, you just had to wait it out.

I recall a story involving a court case where this "fact" was used to quite good effect. My memory of the story is a bit hazy, but it went something like this. The suspect had been tried, convicted, and executed. The evidence was fairly conventional (no video), but was believed to be as airtight as such things can be. Then, and here my memory grows extremely unreliable, it was discovered that a piece of slow glass had been present at the scene of the crime. Perhaps the court had the glass all along, but felt that sentencing couldn't wait? No matter. Years after the fact, far too late to do any good, the judge and jury would be able to know if they had killed an innocent man. Oddly enough, I can't recall which way it went. What I do remember is the sickening suspense as the glass counted down to the fatal minutes.

That story and many others are available in Shaw's collection, Other Days, Other Eyes, and the final story in that collection is where the connection with Hitachi RFID chips comes in. Were you wondering if it ever would?

In that story, in short, scientists finally achieved the Holy Grail of slow glass research and learned how to access the glass's "memories" without triggering a huge explosion. Progress.

And what did they choose to do with their new triumph, their readable slow glass? Why, nothing but good.

First of all, they ground up tons of the stuff into fine crystals, rather like beach sand or sea salt. Then, they dusted everything with it, wholesale. Cityscape, country lane, lonely moor, whatever. So that forever after, no matter where you went, tiny bits of observant grit would tirelessly memorize your every move for posterity. And you could never be alone again.

It needn't be all bad. Nevertheless, I do worry.

As luck would have it, I've had only one chance to get online so far, and that was on a hotel computer which would not allow me to access this blog -- not the main page nor anything else. So I couldn't even write a post complaining about it until now.

A content filtering service called (appropriately) "Net Nanny" is blocking Classical Values, as well as other blogs (Alphecca for one) which I tried to pull up. (BTW, content filtering is not a new topic on this blog.) I realize that this is not censorship, and I understand people's concerns, but I like to think that while I don't shy away from controversial issues, I do try to maintain civility and I try to avoid profanity or obscenity.

Either I am not trying hard enough, or there's something else that's found offensive by the software proprietors. I'd love to hear from anyone who is knowledgeable or has had similar experiences.

How ironic it would be if blog-blocking software like Net Nanny is in wide use by schools or other institutional facilities.

Sigh.

Imagine if the same people who teach children how to put condoms on bananas use software that blocks criticism of the condoms on bananas!

UPDATE (06/01/06): If this information from the anti-filtering site Peacefire is correct, this blog and many other blogs are incompatible with Net Nanny, no matter how cleanly we might keep them:

Net Nanny, however, blocks all pages by default that contain the words "sex", "drugs" or "pornography", and can even be configured to hang up the modem or lock up the computer if a banned word appears on the screen.

Even "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" ?

There is violence.

There is violence built into the system. This is obvious.

There is violence built out of the system. This also is obvious.

There is a reason for the violence. This is non-obvious.

The reason is the system. Coincidentally, there is no system. Realize. Exclusively, that which can be truly said to exist is the individual. You. You right now. Reading these insipid, incipient lines. You are the only thing that exists. Amusingly, you allow yourself to be dominated by the system. The one that doesn't exist.

I'm sorry. I hate preaching. I hate pedants. I'm just trying to set you free, and the only way to do that is by shaking the chains you flippantly copulate with ‘til the rattling gets too irritating to ignore. Really, that's the thing that sets the above-average sentient free: irritation. Not logic, not joy, not sorrow, but mosquito bites. Man, thems a muthafuckah.

Where were we? Ah yes. A manifesto of intoxication. Preternatural. Ly.

I want to share something with you. It's a bit of myself. What I experience, what I feel, what I am, what I realize. You'll note a superfluity of first person pronouns. There's a reason. It integrates. Keep up. You'll thank me in the morning. Ooh, yeah, you like it like that don’t’cha?

Not enough people shout. Not enough object. Not enough howl. Not until the end anyway. The only howl emitted by the vast majority of humanity is the sudden striking revelation that comes free of charge concurrently with the moment of oblivion at their terminus's terminal. Don't. Be. That. Human.

Trying to help the helpless is the ultimate exercise in futility, so really this is an elaborate masturbatory exercise on my part, yet I can't remain silent, and perhaps there's a person among you who retains a last shred of whimsy. Whimsy. Whimsy. Whimsy will set you free. Don't believe me? When's the last time you saw a dead clown?!

Politicians don't count.

Listen. We are all wholly severable. That's the real key. Once you grasp that, you begin to understand that not only does your fellow man not particularly esteem you, he also doesn't have any obligation to gain your esteem. Most fortuitous yes?

Work with me, you wacky crazy kooky insane marthafochers. You can't keep your cancers, cozy as they may be. Because it turns out that misery doesn't actually need company; rather, it obliterates company. Like a germ on a flea of the very last tender tasty morsel of the ultimate dead skin cell. Penny Royal tea. Formulate infinity.

Scabs. Laughter. Picking at them both. Like sandpaper on a steel rasp. That's your existence womb. Freedom is.

Freedom and liberty are absolute. So are the laws of physics. Hence the big bitch about bullets. Both sides are wrong, but one side has better aim.

If you can't drink it all in, it isn't necessarily because you're scared. Of course, probability being what it is, you might want to jump one way just to play it safe; nonetheless, I'll go ahead and give you an applause line. For jumping. Because not everyone has even the hint of self-preservation necessary to not die in absentia. Some times there IS a right answer.

Back to basics.

You're scared. You're powerless. What a happy coincidence: all you have is basics. Sympathizing, I think you're dumb. The maestro says so word-for-word. And the maestro is never wrong.

Never.

I am spending Memorial Day weekend in the Midwest, and I'll be doing a lot of traveling (starting right now) so posting will be nonexistent to light.

My reading material for the plane consists of two cheerful books:

While both of these men were important historical characters (and obviously, there's a lot more known about Lincoln than Pilate) it's always fascinating (for me, at least) to examine the fuzzy locus of uncertainty where history and mythology meet. Often, history is driven by human emotions, politics, and what people want to believe. This includes writers, who have their own biases, or they wouldn't be writing about their subjects, so I always read with a skeptical eye.

Everyone have a great Memorial Day weekend!

If (like me) you feel that the latest bipartisan bribery scandal is just too much after much too much, do not despair!

For you have not been disenfranchised, and you don't have to boycott anything. Instead, tou can make your voice heard! Simply take The Commissar's Dennis Hastert poll (which I won't spoil here; just go take it).

The Commissar also links to John Cole:

When I see the Republican and Democratic leadership closing ranks to protect a crook, it briefly makes me want to go apologize to all the Naderites for making fun of their paranoid conspiracy theories.

Local trains are not running because of an Amtrak power breakdown which has in turn shut down SEPTA train lines in the Philadelphia area as well as on the New Jersey transit system.

Naturally, infuriated commuters who were stranded on the trains wanted to get off and find other means of transportation to work.

But according to Reuters, they were threatened with arrest:

New Jersey Transit said the outage halted its two most heavily traveled lines, which move 70,000 passengers per weekday, and some trains destined for midtown Manhattan have been diverted to Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York.

"It just stopped," said public relations executive Liz Anklow, stuck on a New Jersey Transit train for two hours. "It started to get very hot in there" before railroad workers opened doors for ventilation.

"A very imposing New Jersey trooper just walked through the train and said if one person leaves the train you will be arrested and taken to jail," Anklow said.

Legally, when people are compelled to remain in a certain place by force, that constitutes the tort of false imprisonment. The airlines understand this, which is why passengers are allowed to leave grounded or stranded planes when that is possible.

It happened to me once when a flight I took to San Francisco was forced to land in Oakland because of problems with the San Francisco airport. The flight crew tried to stop passengers from getting off the plane, but after someone conferred with the airline's uppity-ups, they announced that passengers would be allowed to leave "but we cannot guarantee your safety in Oakland." Fine with me, as I never wanted a safety guarantee, so I left.

Absent a life-threatening emergency or something, I don't think New Jersey Transit had any right to hold people against their will, and unless there's no tort of false imprisonment in New Jersey, I think they can sue.

(Unless the freedom thing is a loophole or something. . . )

MORE: In a report after the power was restored, I see that at least some pasengers managed to get out while avoiding arrest:

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- A major power outage stranded thousands of rush-hour commuters Thursday between New York and Washington, stopping trains inside sweltering tunnels and forcing many passengers to get out and walk.

Power was restored throughout the heavily traveled corridor at about 10:30 a.m., more than two hours after outage, Amtrak said.

The outage stranded five trains in tunnels - one in Baltimore and four under the Hudson River heading into New York. The last one lurched back to life at 11:15 a.m. after stranding passengers for more than three hours in the heat and darkness.

A brief word on the well-organized movement by conservative activists (Richard Viguerie being a good example) to punish the Republicans by staying home in November.

Ostensibly this will punish the Republicans who voted the wrong way on guest worker amnesty and against the wall, because they will not be re-elected, and their seats will go to Democrats. Considering that the Democrats oppose the wall and favor amnesty, this "punishment" will not advance the activists' ostensible goal one iota -- at least not in the short term.

If the House goes Democrat, the activists' chances plummet to nil.

Obviously, the primary goal is punishment, not achieving the goal, unless of course the goal is something else.

What might that be? Mere punishment of the Republican leadership? Or might it be some sort of dissembled attempt at a takeover of the Republican Party? If it is that, I'd love to know who the principal players are, and whether there's an element of opportunism in the near-hysterical focus on immigration.

I think such a development would only favor the election of Hillary Clinton (for the reasons I've discussed many times).

Certainly, it will not punish the Democrats to give them control of the House. But what about the many voters who worry about things other than the border? What about fearful firearms owners? Citizens who fear higher taxes and hate bureaucracy? I'd be willing to bet that there a lot of other issues of interest to a lot of citizens.

Because punishing the leaders ultimately comes down to self-punishment (eliminating, as it does, all possibility of hope), one FREEPer compared the strategy of defeat to a suicide threat:

Maybe the Republican leadership should pay closer attention to their base this time around.

The issue the last time was over GHWBush going back on his pledge and raising taxes after the D's refused to pass a budget until Bush raised taxes.

The faithful threw a hissy fit and went for Perot...we got Clinton and the first thing he did was [drum roll] raise taxes again.

So...threatening to punish the Republican leadership and rank and file by helping them get unelected unless they do what you want is like pointing a loaded gun at your own head and threatening to pull the trigger.

(I don't expect the Democrats to call the suicide prevention line.)

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has a front page story headlined "Closer to a Safety Target" which hails new developments in so-called "smart gun" technology:

As police in Philadelphia struggle to stop a scourge of shootings, some New Jersey engineers say they are closing in on a "smart" solution: a gun that can be fired only by its owner.

The prototype, developed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, has pressure sensors embedded in the gun handle that recognize a person's unique grip.

The team says a commercial model is up to five years away, but if it works, it will trigger a singular - and controversial - state law. Within three years, all handguns sold in New Jersey would have to be personalized, with this or some other recognition technology.

Michael Recce, who dreamed up the grip-recognition concept in 1999, said the only obstacles are time and money.

"It's an engineering problem, not a scientific problem," he said.

However long it takes, it's safe to say the university has embarked on a product-development quest like no other - wading into a contentious issue on the fault line between red and blue America.

Various smart-gun efforts have flamed out in the past, amid vocal skepticism by the National Rifle Association. Many gun owners chafe at the notion of any restrictions on their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and warn that any such modifications would make guns more expensive.

Gun-control advocates, meanwhile, are split, with some warning that personalized firearms would give owners a false sense of security.

Most see New Jersey's 2002 law as a commonsense safety measure, but they are starting to run out of patience.

"These guns should have been developed 20 years ago," said Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire New Jersey.

Duke University economist Philip J. Cook estimates that if all handguns were personalized, more than 4,000 lives would be saved each year from fewer murders, accidents and teen suicides.

Though the New Jersey law exempts law enforcement, police might also benefit from the technology. According to FBI statistics, as many as one in six officers killed each year is slain with his or her weapon.

In the last few months, Recce's team has crammed the necessary electronics into the handle of a prototype, so the firearm no longer must be tethered to a computer.

Inside the grip, 16 ceramic discs generate a charge when pressed. They are called piezoelectric sensors, from the Greek piezo, for "pressure." Barbecue lighters use a similar feature.

Once the shooter squeezes the trigger, the grip sensors spring into action, recording the pressure for one-tenth of a second. In that moment, the pressure applied by each finger varies enough that engineers can distinguish between shooters with a high degree of reliability. A grip's signature does not vary significantly from firing to firing, even in stressful situations, researchers have found.

Dave Kopel discusses the many problems with this technology, from both civil rights and hands-on perspectives, noting that the reason police officers from the requirement is the idea is inherently unreliable.

Bottom line: real guns would still be sold -- but only to police officers!

Extreme Tech has long discussion of the emerging technology, which seems inevitable eventually:

Smart guns, no longer science fiction, will be a commercial reality in a few short years. And the future holds a wealth of possibilities, such as accelerometers to aid in firing practice and GPS sensors to help in crime-scene reconstructions.

As Chang notes, smart gun technology isn't a restriction, but an enhancement.

But if it is "not a restriction," what if you want to add a "user"? What if you don't live alone, but with another adult you love? What if you have a wife, a husband, a live in? If it is in fact your gun, isn't part of its function to offer protection to your loved ones? Lots of people have to leave their loved ones at home when they go to work, go on trips, drive to the store, or even take a shower.

I can just see it now. . . Husband goes downstairs to investigate a noise. Intruder jumps him, and during the struggle the husband screams upstairs for his wife to get the gun and help him. She grabs the gun and runs downstairs.

"Honey, the gun won't work. How long will it take to have it reprogrammed?"

This leads to an inevitable question.

Whose gun is it?

Suppose you want to turn off the damned piezoelectric sensor mechanism to allow it to be fired when you're wearing gloves, or by anyone in your household. Who is the owner? Obviously, high tech guns are a bureaucrat's dream, for they invite a plethora of rules and regulations, programmer standards and certification, hacking, and in turn anti-hacking police. In short, a war over the chip inside your gun, and over what you can do with it.

As is the case with so many bureaucrat's dreams, this one sounds like a citizen's nightmare.

I suspect that's the idea. But it's only part of the idea. Long term, I think the goal is not to offer an "enhancement" but to confiscate older guns. It's a very short step from prohibiting the sale in stores of any firearms that aren't "smart guns" to prohibiting the sale or transfer, or possession of real guns.

Yes, real guns. The kind that can be picked up and fired -- even if it has been left on a shelf or in a drawer, or packed inside an emergency survival kit. The kind that don't need a charger:

Chang is also concerned with battery life, a crucial factor in this case, of course. He imagines that the finished product will operate four hours in active shooting or several days when idle. The guns would likely come with charging stands, much as handheld computers and cell phones do now.

Look, I'm no Luddite, nor am I anti-technology. If gun dealers wanted to market the smart technology as an "enhancement" in a free market, fine. But when the government is developing them and laws require people to have them, calling a limitation an enhancement sounds Orwellian.

I don't know if I'd ever want one of these things. But even if I did, common sense requires having a backup -- in the form of a real gun.

In case of a thing called an emergency.

(To my old-fashioned way of thinking, emergencies are what guns are for.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: Just to prove I'm not a total Luddite, here's a detail from the Inquirer piece that intrigued me:

The most sensible approach may be to marry Recce's recognition technology with a gun that fires electronically - without mechanical, moving parts such as a hammer. If an authorized user were recognized, it would be a simple matter to turn on the firing circuitry.

I suppose making them "tamper proof" would have to be the next "enhancement." If they're smart, why not make them smarter and build in an emergency cell phone chip that sends a distress signal to the authorities whenever attempted tampering occurs?

Imagine how many lives "we" could "save."

MORE: How about real smart guns activated by human brain waves?

Nah. They'd probably be activated by sleeping users during home invasion nightmares, and start firing at dreamed up targets.

The recent incident involving two Saudi men who boarded a school bus, frightened children and then gave police conflicting stories (see this report linked by Glenn Reynolds) aroused my curiosity.

When I researched the story further, I saw that the two men were here as a result of a huge new exchange program:

The UA will enroll about 100 new Saudi Arabian students this summer, which could signal the reverse of a post-Sept. 11 trend of having fewer international students in the United States, especially those from the Middle East. The students are part of a new large-scale scholarship program by the Saudi government, which will send about 6,000 students to American universities this year after just 1,442 Saudi students had visas to study in the United States in 2004.

About 80 of the students are already at the UA, enrolled in English-immersion classes before they start their academic programs in the fall. More are expected by the start of next semester as they secure visas...

...The program grew out of an agreement in April by President Bush and then-Crown Prince Abdullah, with the more open policy part of larger efforts at improving relations between the two nations.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

Is anyone, anywhere, doing anything to make sure that these students are not suicidal Salafists? Earlier I voiced suspicions about the State Department resettling ethnic Turks in the local Saudi madrassa, because Saudi madrassas have such a poor track record. See Senator Lautenberg's report which documents the problem.

Despite reassurances, the madrassas do not seem to have done a good job of policing themselves. (A recent hearing failed to reassure me that the one in my neighborhood is even capable of policing itself.) According to this Washington Post report, the madrassa curricula are still loaded with hateful propaganda.

I know that everyone is worried about illegal Mexicans crossing the border right now. But am I being unreasonable in asking whether bringing in many thousands of apparently unsupervised Saudi students is a great idea right now?

As to reassurances, Randy "Duke" Cunningham and the State Department both seem to think that the Saudis have turned over a new leaf. Says Congressman Cunningham:

I feel that Saudi Arabia is the leader in the Arab world, especially with Medina and Mecca. I feel that Osama probably put 15 Saudis in there, flew them into the [World Trade] Center, partially to divide one of our better allies that we have in the Middle East from us.. ..I realize they do have problems there. But I also -- and I can't address it here, but I can in closed session -- note to the extent that the Saudi intelligence agencies are working with us daily in helping -- more so than most agencies. And so, I see them as an emerging support for us, but I'm afraid that's going to erode. And collectively, I know it's INS, it's FBI, it's CIA -- your problem is going to be magnified five years from now unless we get our arms around this.

UPDATE (05/25/06): According to CNS News,

The Saudi government has not only broken its promise and failed to eliminate anti-western rhetoric from its public school textbooks, some Saudi-funded schools on U.S. soil continue to incite violence...

"There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation about others in these textbooks. These textbooks groom a child to be a terrorist," Al-Ahmed added.

With about five million children in Saudi public schools instructed each year in Islamic studies from Ministry of Education textbooks, and many more outside of Saudi Arabia, Al-Ahmed told Cybercast News Service that the threat "is more dangerous than the Chernobyl reactor."

"If even 1 percent takes this to heart, you will have a lot more terrorists than just the 15 (Saudis) that we saw on September 11," Al-Ahmed said. He alleged that Saudi schools are graduating 1,000 terrorists each year.

"Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden understands this well," Al-Ahmed asserted. "In his April 23, 2006, audiotape, he railed against those who would interfere with school curricula."

Big national chains are bad, and local ownership is good, right?

Not necessarily. It depends on who the local parties are -- and whom you ask.

Huge headlines today confirm that the Philadelphia Inquirer has been bought by a consortium of local businesspeople. Here's a look at who they are:

One sells cars and another hawks diet food. There are an ad man, an insurance broker, and a money manager.

In all, seven individuals and a union pension fund that form the new board of directors of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com appear to have little in common except this: a lot of money to invest, and a professed love for Philadelphia and its environs.

For most of the first-time newspaper owners brought together by advertising and public-relations executive Brian P. Tierney, the purchase will simply add to an already broad stable of local ventures in which they have a major stake or leadership role. That includes NutriSystem Inc., Reedman-Toll Auto World, and Donald Trump's slots parlor bid.

Politically, at least two have been staunch Republican donors, two have been Democratic supporters, and two have given to both. Two are women, and one is African American. And for at least one, Catholicism and religion-related activism have been a major facet of his work.

As a local privately held company, Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C. will not have to obey Wall Street on profit and spending, free to tailor all its resources and priorities to the regional media market for the first time since Walter H. Annenberg was publisher in 1969, Tierney said.

Local leftists are not too happy about it. Atrios warns of "bad times" ahead, links to Editor and Publisher's dire warnings of Republicanism, and concludes that "all signs point to scary." And in the most uncivil language possible, a local blogger slams the Inquirer's new CEO for being a Republican, and adds,

I guess it’s up to us to disintermediate him so he loses his millions. It won’t be pretty.

Bad and "scary" times ahead? The Inquirer has been struggling, and now it appears that it will survive. What is scary about that?

Is "scary" simply a synonym for Republican?

From what I can see so far, the staff doesn't appear to be terribly frightened. Editor Amanda Bennett describes herself as "not worried at all":

"Unlike the financial fight, maintaining journalistic integrity is a fight I know how to fight and everyone in this newsroom knows how to fight."

And she's supposed to be afraid of a couple of Republicans?

Longtime reporter Larry Eichel, discussing the potential for influence by the new owners, doesn't seem frightened either:

The potential for the exercise of influence, whether real or perceived, goes beyond the businesses the investors run. They serve as directors of other corporations, on the boards of local nonprofit and cultural institutions. They have histories of political involvement.

"This is ethical minefield territory," said Robert M. Steele, chief ethicist at the Poynter Institute for journalism in Florida. "It takes a real strong gut check by the owners at the front end in term