I have been hinting around about what our Grand Strategy should be in the War On Islamic Fascism. Some of the hints can be found at: Islam vs American Morality and In The Long Run Their Struggle Will Be Hopeless and The New Middle East. So what should our strategy be in plainer terms? We should be undermining Islamic fascist culture. How? There in lies a tail.

Let us start with the BBC.

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers' mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.

"The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence," said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.

The Opinion Journal has some early news from the battle for Iraq.

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?

"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

Around him, the crowd roared its approval.

Ralph Peters takes a look at strategy in information warfare.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy. One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims.

The contemporary expansion of available information is immeasurable, uncontainable, and destructive to individuals and entire cultures unable to master it. The radical fundamentalists--the bomber in Jerusalem or Oklahoma City, the moral terrorist on the right or the dictatorial multiculturalist on the left--are all brothers and sisters, all threatened by change, terrified of the future, and alienated by information they cannot reconcile with their lives or ambitions. They ache to return to a golden age that never existed, or to create a paradise of their own restrictive design. They no longer understand the world, and their fear is volatile.

Information destroys traditional jobs and traditional cultures; it seduces, betrays, yet remains invulnerable. How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community). The attempt of the Iranian mullahs to secede from modernity has failed, although a turbaned corpse still stumbles about the neighborhood. Information, from the internet to rock videos, will not be contained, and fundamentalism cannot control its children. Our victims volunteer.

Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can't wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather "Baywatch." America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no "peer competitor" in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted--men and women everywhere--clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.

May 3, 2007: One reason for Islamic terrorism is there are too many Moslems. At least in the sense that the economies of Islamic countries cannot create enough jobs for all the young people coming of age. Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.

Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men. But the women are not too happy either, and this is becoming one a major threat to Islamic terrorists. In Islamic societies, women's activities are greatly restricted. One thing they are encouraged to do is have lots of children. Many women in Islamic countries are rebelling against this. You don't hear much about this, because women don't rebel in the same loud, headline grabbing way that men do. What unhappy women often do is stop having children. Not so easy to do, you think? Well, think again.

While Islamic countries tend to have very low levels of education, especially for women, the introduction of satellite television and DVDs has enabled even illiterate women to learn that there are other options. Ignorance is an excellent form of control, but when the ignorance is lost, so is the control.

Thus in most Islamic countries, the women are having fewer children, and making more noise about economic and educational opportunities. This resonates with some of the better informed Islamic men. One reason the West, and other parts of the world, have enjoyed much better economic growth than the Moslem countries, is that they have added large number of educated women to their work force.

Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.

Matthew Parris discusses the end of the End of the American Empire. He says that it is premature to blow taps for America.

Writing in The Spectator two weeks ago ('Why there will be no future Pax Americana'), the distinguished essayist, author and thinker had sniffed the wind and concluded that it is all up for what he calls the US 'imperium'. Islam has been Washington's undoing, he believes, and after six short decades as top dog of the world, America is already stumbling and set to lose her predominance.

Have we not noticed how incompetent are Islamic governments and organisations the world over? Has it not occurred to us that if al-Qa'eda really were as wily and resourceful as we tell ourselves they are, and if their tentacles really did extend as wide and deep as some say, they would be on the advance -- not battled into a stalemate by Western security and intelligence? If I were an al-Qa'eda activist I could have blown up Parliament or shot at least one of a range of prime ministers by now. Al-Qa'eda's failure to infiltrate or penetrate Western structures has been complete.

There is a reason for this. Islam, in its more fundamentalist form, doesn't work. Serious, committed Islamists are most unlikely to succeed within any structures but their own. Their own, meanwhile, are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. Only by lucky coincidence have much of the world's known petrocarbons been found beneath Islamic nations, giving them what temporary influence they wield. How can any culture which despises modernity, hates mobility, distrusts individual liberty and autonomy, persecutes those who deviate from cultural or ideological norms, imposes a kind of brutal conformity on the way people live, love and work, and at a stroke disempowers 50 per cent of its people (women) from proper education and from all career opportunity so that every boy-child it produces is being brought up by a person who knows little of the world and only a fraction of what the boy must learn -- how can such a culture bestride the 21st century, as Selbourne fears Islamism will do?

Wretchard at the Belmont Club takes a look at the issue and our secret weapon:

And that, come right down to it, is why some Muslims believe in the power of Allah. Allah strengthens the will of his adherents past any breaking point. They are willing to go past death itself. And they say to us: with our rifle and our belief in Allah we can defeat you with your laser guided weaponry and your belief in Harry Reid. Come to prayer. Come to Islam.

We have a secret weapon. Come to Brittany. This is a weapon more fearsome than any 20 divisions of soldiers backed up by 10 CBGs.

The munitions are delivered at the speed of light. The targeting precice and once a target is located follow on rounds are almost automatic.

Memri TV has a video clip from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International about Saudi women stripping for Web Cams. They also have a transcript of the show.

Reporter: Behind closed doors and far from any supervising eyes, they remove their shame and turn their backs on all customs and traditions. Girls display their bodies in chat rooms on the Internet, in most cases, free of charge. As soon as one of these girls places the camera in front of her, she begins to strip, displaying her seductive charms to more than 300 young men of different ages. Some believe that the phenomenon of stripping over the Internet may be understood within the framework of social hypocrisy, especially since they believe that our religious and educational discourse does not attribute importance to the strengthening of self-restraint, and prefers the appearance over the essence. This drives some people to play several roles and wear several masks.

Reporter: On the other hand, many believe that web stripping has not reached the proportions of a phenomenon, and that these are merely isolated cases. They emphasize that the vast majority of our girls protect their modesty and respect the customs, and traditions. These people believe that web cams can be useful tools. They can be used to maintain family ties, and can have educational applications, in lectures and conferences, for example.

Many young men and women believe that the endless prohibitions drive them to hide behind closed doors, and surf in relations that rebel against all costumes and traditions, in search of love, in some cases, and in order to satisfy their urges, in other cases, especially since the Internet gives them the opportunity to openly declare their repressed desires without fear.

Young Saudi woman in shopping mall: The girls misuse the web cams. They take them into their rooms, and even their families do not know that they have cameras, or what the girls use their laptops or web cams for.

Young Saudi man in shopping mall: A girl can buy a web cam for a very cheap price, 70-75 riyals. She takes it to her room, closes the door, and begins the show.

Yep it is just a few isolated incidents and outside agitators causing all the trouble. Sure it is. The subject is well known and yet no one knows who is involved. I believe that. Sure I do. Hasn't any one explained that when family members surf the 'net supervision is required?

I'm going to let Dr. Sanity have the last word.

If there was ever in history a better example of the paranoid fear of female sexuality, I can't think of it. You don't have to be much of an expert on Islam or Muslim culture to be able to observe that it has evolved into a societal structure whose primary purpose is to contain and manage female sexuality.

This containment has not only become a key aspect of the worship of their god; but it also is a key factor in individual personality development; as well as the main pollutant of all possible social interactions within the culture.

The men of Islam are obsessed with sex beyond even the wildest imaginings of the Western male's mind. And the obsession is far from healthy and even further from reality.

We frequently joke about men's preoccupation with sex and female body parts in the West, but our fascination with "T&A" is nothing when you consider that the Muslim world is literally consumed by female sexuality and with their fear of it. It is ironic that both Muslim men and women are under the mistaken impression that Western society is oversexualized compared to them, when in fact, it is practically impossible to be more obsessed with sexual matters than they are in Muslim communities.

It looks to me that their defeat by pornagraphy is inevitable. I might also add that I have been doing some field research for this article (yeah, right) and it appears that pornography by Arabs are increasingly frequent on the free amateur pornography sites. A sub theme in all this is that American music is popular as background on about half the videos that have any music. It is not just sex. Democracy, whiskey, sexy is more popular than Islam. Which means that what ever military action we take is just a holding action while our culture does a number on them.

H/T Little Green Footballs, and Instapundit, and The Daily Brief, and Instapundit again.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I have been doing a lot of thinking about nuclear physics the past couple of days and I didn't want to post it here until I got the illustrations correct. I'm working on that.

I might also add that politics seems to lose its interest when you can do some serious thinking about hard physics problems. Which sort of explains the "quiet time". However, Fred Thompson moves me.

==

I'm heartened by this. Thompson is a communicator. A skill sorely lacking in the current White House.

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Politician-turned-actor Fred Thompson plans an unconventional campaign for president using blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties, he told USA Today.

Thompson, a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, has been coy about his intentions with audiences, but made clear in an interview that he plans to run.

"I can't remember exactly the point that I said, 'I'm going to do this,' " Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. "But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: 'I'm going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.' "

Well Fred was thinking about Michael Moore a while back. And told people what he was thinking.

H/T Instapundit

Partially cross Posted at Power and Control

This is the first time since leaving home that I've had a chance to do anything at all online, as I've been completely busy with other things. (Right now I only have about a half an hour using someone else's computer, running Windows Vista, which I'm not sure I like).

This trip to the Midwest began with a hectic twelve hour delay in the flight from Philadelphia to Chicago, which shortened the Milwaukee visit. From Milwaukee to Chicago for a day, then to Rockford, home to M. Simon!

We met for a beer (or two or three) at a wonderful place Simon suggested called the Irish Rose. (Damn! This sucky-ass Windows Vista doesn't even allow me to insert links!)

I managed to get a photo from the evening into this computer, and I shrank it so I could upload it to the blog.

High time for an official Classical Values party, no?

(The problem is that I've spent so much time getting the hang of Vista that I'm quickly running out of time to finish this post!)

Fast forward to yesterday, when I drove from Freeport, Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa, pausing to stop in Galena where I visited the home of Ulysses S. Grant.

The house has not changed at all since the Grants lived there. Even the furniture is the same. This contemporaneous photo shows Grant and his son Jesse standing on the porch:

Galena is an utterly charming town of 3500, just a short drive to the Mississippi River and Dubuque, Iowa.

I can't think of anywhere more beautiful in the Spring, but I'm out of time, and sneaking this post in was all I could do.

Lubos sent me an e-mail thanking me for Clouds In Chambers and suggesting I have a look at Sunspots. He shows the correlations between sunspots and global temperatures.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

Cross Posted at The Astute Bloggers

Last night I had a blogger meet up with Eric of Classical Values at the Irish Rose Saloon in Rockford. My first mate was there and so was Harmonica Joe.

Needless to say a very good time was had by all.

When Eric returns to Philly he will be posting pictures of the usual suspects.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

China is set to becone the #1 CO2 producer in the world. China's rapid industrialization along with its low economic productivity is causing its energy demands to rise at a furious rate.

China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world's biggest carbon dioxide producer, according to estimates based on Chinese energy data.

The finding might pressure Beijing to take more action on climate change.

China's emissions rose by about 10 percent in 2005, a senior U.S. scientist estimated, while Beijing data shows fuel consumption rose more than 9 percent in 2006, suggesting China would easily outstrip the United States this year, long before a forecast.

Taking the top spot would put pressure on China to do more to slow emissions as part of world talks on extending the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012.

In the mean time how is the USA, which did not sign on to Kyoto, doing? As it turns out not too bad.

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

The 1.3 percent drop in CO{-2} emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.

In 2006 the U.S. economy grew 3.3 percent, a fact President Bush touted yesterday as he hailed the government's "flash estimate" that the country's carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 78 million metric tons last year.

"We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong economic investment," Bush said in a statement. "New policies at the federal, state, and local levels -- such as my initiative to reduce by 20 percent our projected use of gasoline within 10 years -- promise even more progress." A number of factors helped reduce emissions last year, according to the government, including weather conditions that reduced heating and air-conditioning use, higher gasoline prices that caused consumers to conserve, and a greater overall reliance on natural gas.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Take a close look at the photo at the left from Little Green Footballs and see if you can detect anything unusual?

First check out the rubber boots on the steering gear. They are intact with no obvious signs of fire. Second look at the dust on the tires. It looks like the car was dragged into place, rather than moving like a regular car which would have cleared the dust from the wheels. Or had the road been really dusty it would have covered the whole wheel and not just covered a portion of the wheel and left a portion untouched.

Supposedly this car was rocketed and burned.

So far it is just suspicion. Comments welcome.

And just for amusement here is a picture of Little Richard. Looks a lot like one of the guys in the photo. I wonder if the guy in the photo is an old time American Rock 'n Roll fan? Tuti Fruity, nice booty!

H/T linearthinker of Random Traverse who alerted me to the possible fraud and also provided the Little Richard photo.

Tom Ligon, an engineer who worked with Dr. Robert Bussard, is giving a talk on fusion powered rockets at the International Space Development Conference in Dallas. Here is a link to Tom's Power Point Presentation at ISDC. Scroll down the page and click on the button in the lower right.

In other news Tri Alpha Energy has just raised $40 million in venture capital for nuclear fusion.

Tri Alpha Energy, which hopes to commercialize nuclear fusion technology, has raised $40 million from Venrock Associates and others, according to VentureWire.

The company, which grew out of the University of California at Irvine, says its advanced plasma fusion technologies could be used to generate electricity as well as eliminate waste from nuclear power plants. A plant based on its technology would cost less than a conventional nuclear plant. Tri Alpha was founded in 1998 and has raised funds in the past.

Tri Alpha is working on a generator in which hydrogen chases boron, according to literature from UC Irvine. These atoms then form a helium atom, which is placed in a particle accelerator. Slowing down the helium generates electricity.

Here are some more details on the venture capital deal from UC Irvine.

Norman Rostoker, research professor of physics and astronomy, received $5.2 million from Tri Alpha Energy Inc. to research a plasma electric generator that will use as fuel a mixture of hydrogen and boron. In this generator, hydrogen will chase boron in a cylinder, eventually resulting in helium nuclei that will be made to escape into a particle accelerator. The backwards-running accelerator will slow down the nuclei, turning the energy released into electricity.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at The Astute Bloggers

From 2001: A Space Odyssey by Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Heywood Floyd catches up with the headlines while travelling to the moon...

There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read. When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad.

I am not about to try a beat-down on Sir Arthur C. Clarke for not imagining a more user-friendly interface. When I first read these words, almost forty years ago now, I was enthralled by his vision of the world's information at your fingertips. That he didn't also invent the touchpad is no big deal. For science fiction writers the future is a moving target, and Sir Arthur has done a better than average job of keeping up with the times.

Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

If we ignore all the finicky keystrokes required, what most strikes a modern reader is the user's passivity. The display is as spiffy as one would wish for, likewise the connectivity, but the content is more akin to cable tv than today's internet.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

Certainly, I couldn't imagine it either. I had to wait for it to happen.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

What do you do when you want to study clouds and all you have is balloons because airplanes are not very reliable and they are expensive? Like any good scientist you try to make clouds in your lab. Which is exactly what C. T. R. Wilson did in 1912.

The study of high energy particles was greatly aided in 1912 when C. T. R. Wilson, a Scottish physicist, devised the cloud chamber. The general procedure was to allow water to evaporate in an enclosed container to the point of saturation and then lower the pressure, producing a super-saturated volume of air. Then the passage of a charged particle would condense the vapor into tiny droplets, producing a visible trail marking the particle's path.

The device came to be called the Wilson cloud chamber and was used widely in the study of radioactivity. An alpha particle left a broad, straight path of definite length while an electron produced a light path with bends due to collisions. Gamma rays did not produce a visible track since they produce very few ions in air. The Wilson cloud chamber led to the discovery of recoil electrons from x-ray and gamma ray collisions, the Compton-scattered electrons, and was used to discover the first intermediate mass particle, the muon. Wilson was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927 for the development of the cloud chamber.

Inspired by sightings of the Brocken spectre while working on the summit of Ben Nevis in 1894, he began to develop expansion chambers for studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in moist air.

Very rapidly he discovered that ions could act as centres for water droplet formation in such chambers. He pursued the application of this discovery and perfected the first cloud chamber in 1911. In Wilson's original chamber the air inside the sealed device was saturated with water vapor, then a diaphragm is used to expand the air inside the chamber (adiabatic expansion). This cools the air and water vapor starts to condense. When an ionizing particle passes through the chamber, water vapor condenses on the resulting ions and the trail of the particle is visible in the vapor cloud.

OK, so men have been making clouds in chambers since 1912. Since not long after that time we have understood that high energy nuclear particles can help clouds to form.

Which leads us to the question of climate and how our sun's magnetic field can affect climate. I wrote some about that in Clouds and More Clouds. As usual with any "new" science there are sceptics and deniers (you know who you are). So let us follow this along, look at some really big cloud chambers, and see if we can shed some light instead of just generating heat.

Let us start with the experiment that triggered off the whole brouha. An experiment done under the auspices of the Danish Space Agency first reported in the summer of 2006.

An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth's atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons.

Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.

Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth's atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.

Geneva, 19 October 2006. A novel experiment, known as CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets), begins taking its first data today with a prototype detector in a particle beam at CERN[1], the world's largest laboratory for particle physics. The goal of the experiment is to investigate the possible influence of galactic cosmic rays on Earth's clouds and climate. This represents the first time a high energy physics accelerator has been used for atmospheric and climate science.

The CLOUD experiment is designed to explore the microphysical interactions between cosmic rays and clouds. Cosmic rays are charged particles that bombard the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Studies suggest that cosmic rays may influence the amount of cloud cover through the formation of new aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air that seed cloud droplets). Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth's energy balance, and changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate. The CLOUD prototype experiment aims to investigate the effect of cosmic rays on the formation of new aerosols.

Understanding the microphysics in controlled laboratory conditions is a key to unravelling the connection between cosmic rays and clouds. CLOUD will reproduce these interactions for the first time by sending a beam of particles - the "cosmic rays" - from CERN's Proton Synchrotron into a reaction chamber. The effect of the beam on aerosol production will be recorded and analysed.

The collaboration comprises an interdisciplinary team from 18 institutes and 9 countries in Europe, the United States and Russia. It brings together atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists to address a key question in the understanding of clouds and climate change. "The experiment has attracted the leading aerosol, cloud and solar-terrestrial physicists from Europe; Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are especially strong in this area" says the CLOUD spokesperson, Jasper Kirkby of CERN.

In the mean time the BBC reports on some other experiments going on.

A three-week experiment to resolve the biggest riddle in climate science begins in Australia on Thursday.

Scientists will use radar, aeroplanes, weather balloons and a ship to study the life cycle of tropical clouds.

They are searching for details of how clouds form and carry heat high up into the atmosphere.

A better understanding of these crucial processes should lead to computer models that can predict the extent of global climate warming more accurately.

Tropical clouds carry heat and moisture from the Earth's surface high up in the atmosphere, a key process in driving heat around the globe.

"You have these 'hot towers', tropical storm clouds acting like chimneys to carry heat to the upper atmosphere," said Peter May from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, co-chair of the project's organising committee.

"Also, you've got large areas of cirrus clouds which are reflecting a lot of incoming sunlight back away from the Earth; but they're also absorbing infra-red radiation coming back from below," he told the BBC News website.

"So you've got competing processes going on; and that balance depends on how big the ice crystals are and what the density is, how high they are and so on."

Existing computer models did not reflect these processes accurately, said Tom Ackerman of the University of Washington in Seattle, US, because they typically treated convection and cloud formation as separate processes.

Obviously more information is needed. One of the things we need is an understanding of how the sun affects the cosmic ray intensity on earth.

So let us look into it. First off let us look into Dr. Nir Shaviv's review of the Danish experiment.

After a long embargo, results from the Danish National Space Center (DNSC) Sky experiment were finally published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. These results will probably we overshadowed with today's announcement of this years' physics nobel prize winner (for the COBE microwave background experiment), but they are very important nonetheless.

This is the Royal Society's press release on the publication of Svensmark et al.:

"Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists trace the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy - the cosmic rays - liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than atmospheric scientists have predicted. That may explain the link proposed by members of the Danish team, between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change."

Now what does all this have to do with the sun?

Nir again provides us with a connection

The activity of the sun manifests its self in many ways. One of them is through a variable solar wind. This flux of energetic particles and entangled magnetic field flows outwards from the sun, and impedes on a flux of more energetic particles, the cosmic rays, which come from outside the solar system. Namely, a more active sun with a stronger solar wind will attenuate the flux of cosmic rays reaching Earth. The key point in this picture is that the cosmic rays are the main physical mechanism controlling the amount of ionization in the troposphere (the bottom 10 kms or so). Thus, a more active sun will reduce the flux of cosmic rays, and with it, the amount of tropospheric ionization. As it turns out, this amount of ionization affects the formation of condensation nuclei required for the formation of clouds in clean marine environment. A more active sun will therefore inhibit the formation of cloud condensation nuclei, and the resulting low altitude marine clouds will have larger drops, which are less white and live shorter, thereby warming Earth.

Today, there is ample evidence to support this picture (a succinct introduction can be found here). For example, it was found that independent galactic induced variations in the cosmic ray flux, which have nothing to do with solar activity do too affect climate as one should expect from such a link. There are many more examples.

So why is this link important for global warming? As previously mentioned, solar activity has been increasing over the 20th century. This can be seen in fig. 5. Thus, we expect warming from the reduced flux of cosmic rays. Moreover, since the cosmic ray flux actually had a small increase between the 1940's and 1970's (as can be seen in the ion chamber data in fig. 6), this mechanism also naturally explains the global temperature decrease which took place during the same period.

Using historic variations in climate and the cosmic ray flux, one can actually quantify empirically the relation between cosmic ray flux variations and global temperature change, and estimate the solar contribution to the 20th century warming. This contribution comes out to be 0.5±0.2°C out of the observed 0.6±0.2°C global warming (Shaviv, 2005).

Dr. Shaviv has a paper that originally appeared in PhysicaPlus that has more on the cosmic ray/climate connection over geological time. You can read it here along with some interesting pictures.

But wait. That is not all. Let us take another look at Dr. Svensmark's research.

For more than a decade, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings -- published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society -- the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London -- are now in, and they don't point to us. The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century, and he has laboratory results to demonstrate it. Dr. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures. The chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, then castigated them in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." Others accused them of denouncing the greenhouse theory, something they had not done.

Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays --highspeed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way -- and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined.

Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.

The Danish scientists put together several well-established scientific phenomena to arrive at their novel 1996 theory. The sun's magnetic field deflects some of the cosmic rays that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and in so doing it also limits the immense amounts of ions and free electrons that the cosmic rays produce. But something had changed in the 20th century: The sun's magnetic field more than doubled in strength, deflecting an extraordinary number of rays.

Update:

A paper by Dr. Svensmark. This appears to be one of his earlier papers on the subject (no date given) and not the results published in 2006.

Another Svensmark paper [pdf] Dec. 2006

A paper by Jan Veizer [pdf] on climate over geological time.

More updates:

Empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds [pdf]

The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds [pdf]

Cosmic Rays and the Evolution of Earths Climate During the Last 4.6 Billion Years

Low cloud properties influenced by cosmic rays

The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years

Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves as a Driver of Terrestrial Climate Change

Galactic Cosmic Rays and Insolation are the Main Drivers of Global Climate of the Earth

Reader linearthinker has a post up on his blog about the politics behind the science with reference to the IPCC and Dr. Svensmark.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I've been obsessed with the climate change debate recently (you noticed?).

And did a piece on the uncertainties in the IPCC numbers on expected global warming from human CO2 emissions.

However, the spam filtering software seems to gag on the post. Probably too many models in the text.

If you want to read it you can go here:

More Uncertain

Well it might as well.

Because, as soon as I finish this post, I'll be readying my departure for a nine day trip -- which means blogging (my blogging, that is) will be erratic until June 2.

I hope I'll get to post before Monday, but just in case I do not, everyone have a Happy Memorial Day weekend.

(But feel free to check in anyway, because you never know who will post next, or when. Things might get exciting in my absence......)

How many illegal aliens are there in the United States?

The reason I'm asking is because earlier I clicked on Glenn Reynolds's link to this post by Mickey Kaus in which he says there are 12 million:

If border-enforcement can be made to work (and the implausible premise of the "grand bargain" is that it can--indeed, that it will work so well it can hold off a new wave of illegals lured by amnesty) the problem of the 12 million diminishes gradually, steadily over time. Eventually, it disappears. The Bush administration, which always gins up a "crisis" before its big policy pushes, doesn't like to dwell on this point...

That's because many organizations and activists insist that there are more than 12 million.

Far, far more. According to Newsmax.com the number is 20 million.

According to a spokesman for the Minutemen Project, there are 30 million, and that was last summer.

So what is it? 12, 20, or 30?

Or (from Newsmax this month) "more than 30 million"? (A jump of 10 million in a single year!)

Of course, there's also a much lower figure given by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services:

As of 2003, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services put the number at 7 million. Since then, United States immigration officials have said the number has grown by as much as 500,000 a year.

Quite a range.

Now, if we look at this logically, there has to be an actual, accurate number. It's just that not only is it impossible to determine it, but there there's no way to achieve a consensus on what that number might approximately be, because there is no method of independently verifying any of the proffered numbers in a manner which would satisfy everyone. Facts are not opinions, but when opinions vary as to what the facts are, it strikes me as rather pointless to refer to numbers as if they are facts.

Is this a sort of "numbers popularity contest" in which the numbers depend more on which side you're on? I strongly suspect that liberals would tend to prefer the lower numbers, while conservatives would prefer the higher numbers.

But even there.... Is "prefer" the right word?

I wrote about political tastes yesterday, and tastes are of course preferences.

But can numbers be a preference?

If so, then should the numbers to be determined by a sort of numbers democracy, in which the number which get the highest number of votes wins? Or should only "experts" be allowed to decide these things? The problem with that is that the experts would inevitably be selected by people who are elected or who have to answer to people who are elected, so democracy (and things like political disagreements) always end up being involved.

I don't know how much any of this really matters, but I thought it over, and it occurred to me to apply some basic democratic logic. Numbers ought to be determined by numbers, right?

So I've written a democratic numbers poll.

You decide.

And may the best numbers win!

UPDATE: Because an alert commenter pointed out that my poll was not democratic enough, I've added the "no freakin' clue" category.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but anyone who was inconvenienced, feel free to vote again!

No voter will be turned away!

(At the time I closed the first poll, there were only four votes: 2 for 20 million, 1 for 30 million and 1 for 12 million, so I don't expect the change to affect the poll in a major way.)

Anyone remember how there weren't any more bees?

Last month, shortly after feeling scolded by an op-ed saying that, I was shocked to discover that my yard was full of bees, and in other posts I explored whether the great American bee extinction meme might be exaggerated.

I realize, of course, that anecdotal stories about the existence or non-existence of bees are not proof of any overall pattern, but here's my bias: I like the bees. I hope the bees thrive, whether in my yard or anyone else's. Whether the bees manage to turn up on farms, on the beaches, or in the cities, I'm rooting for them.

More bees! Yaay!

Naturally I found myself just loving today's Inquirer piece about a bee problem in center city Philadelphia:

Center City remains a very desirable place. Just ask the bees who have been swarming downtown lately.

Over the last couple of days, thousands of Italian honeybees have come to Center City, most likely looking for a place to establish their hives. In the end, it wasn't a good fit.

I was just kidding of course. Normally I take multiculturalism as seriously as I can, so I really should stick to the facts. The Wikipedia entry on Italian bees notes that they've been here since 1859, but has an ominous warning under the heading of "Character":

Character

It has a reputation for gentleness, but hybrids with the darker races can be especially vicious.

I shouldn't get so easily distracted by extraneous issues. Back to today's great news:

It all started Tuesday morning, when thousands of bees appeared on a tree outside Liberty Place at 17th and Chestnut Streets.

That's when Nancy Schnarr of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association was called in. She sawed off the tree limb and drove off with the bees in tow.

Yesterday, another swarm showed up about noon on a planter outside the Borders bookstore at Broad and Chestnut Streets.

But Schnarr was already booked, so she called in a pinch-hitter, her 70-year-old mother, Dawn Potts. Her mother is not a beekeeper, so she had to follow instructions given by cell phone.

Schnarr, 40, said she had no idea where the bees came from, but that mostly likely the swarms happened when someone failed to properly attend to their hives.

Hives can have only one queen. If another queen is going to be born, the old queen will take part of the hive with her and look for someplace else to live. That's a swarm.

Beekeepers keep this from happening, Schnarr explained, by regularly removing compartments in the hive where queen eggs would be laid. Think of it as a kind of bee regal birth control.

By any standard, that's progress.

Far be it from me to ask whether there a lesson in life to be learned from Philadelphia's Italian bees, as I'm far from being a moralist, and I'm just not into anthropmorphic morality. Besides, Aesop did it better.

I'm just glad to read about Philadelphia's bee problem (and I'm even gladder that no one so far is blaming global warming).

For a variety of reasons, I am tired of writing posts about the horrendous Christian/Newsom double murder. Now that the victim's family and the Assistant District Attorney have finally spoken up, I'd like to think that the allegations of pre-mortem sexual mutilation have been put to rest. (Others don't think they have been, though.)

The reason this series of posts started (in reverse chronological order, they are here, here, here, here, and here) was because something just didn't seem right to me when I read numerous accounts of these unspeakable tortures, without any official confirmation anywhere.

Now that there has been official confirmation that the allegations were false, that ends my inquiry.

It does not, however, end the legal case, which is only beginning and which will of course drag on for months and probably years. I think it's important to get the facts right in cases like this, especially when the claim is made that the MSM is ignoring them, and now that the unverified stuff has been debunked, it ought to make the discussion of the case that much clearer.

The bigger debate is the MSM's treatment of the story. The MSM hysteria surrounding Duke "rape" case still being very much on the public mind, it is quite natural for people to ask questions about a media double standard. I know I've said this before, but I think media circus trials are a bad idea, as they make it very difficult for a district attorney to do his job and see to it that justice is done. In the Duke case, you had a politically motivated DA who was deliberately fueling the media circus even though he had no case. It was very wrong for the MSM to treat the case as a circus, just as it was wrong in the case of the OJ murder trial, the Michael Jackson child molesting trial, and countless others.

I'm having a conceptual problem, though, because on the one hand I don't like double standards, and there certainly is a double standard in the disparate MSM treatment between the Duke "rape" case and the Christian/Newsom savage kidnap/rape/murder/corpse-burning case.

But on the other hand, there's the principle that two wrongs don't make a right. Should one improper media circus justify another?

It's not clear to me that it should. So, it's right to condemn the double standard, but forgive me if I don't demand a media circus. As it is, I've written enough blog posts about this, and my only goal was to verify the gruesome pre-mortem mutilation details, which I believe fueled the story to the point where it could not be ignored.

In the comments to my last post, Scott from Buuuuurrrrning Hot asked me a very good question:

Does mutilation really add that much to the list of evil already performed?

In the normal scope of things, there is no crime worse than murder. But there are degrees of savagery which make some murders worse than others. Rape might come a close second to murder, but when you add cutting cutting off a man's penis while his girlfriend was forced to watch, and torturing the girl for four days and cutting off her breast, I think this increases the severity and the emotional appeal -- and very dramatically. I also think that these particularly heinous atrocities are what drove (and continue to drive) the story emotionally -- to the point where people became far more hysterical and less willing to be logical than they'd have normally been.

I keep warning that this can only redound to the benefit of the defendants.

Now that the DA and the family have cleared things up, where are the retractions and corrections?

IMO, none of them helped the DA's case against the defendants. There are degrees of murder, degrees of savagery, just as there are degrees of hysteria. Had the live mutilation allegations been true, I would have considered this to be the most horrible contemporaneous criminal case I'd ever heard about in my life. This is not to defend the defendants in any way, but a double kidnap/rape/murder does not rise to the same emotional level as cutting off a man's penis while his girlfriend is forced to watch and then cutting off her breast during four days of agonizing torture. Vicious tortures like these performed on live human beings rank among the most cruel and depraved activities of which man is capable. There is no way to read about them and not be horrified and emotionally overwhelmed -- often beyond many people's ability to be logical.

The emotional hysteria thus created can create a lynch mob mentality, and once again, clever lawyers could manipulate this to the advantage of the defendants. (More here.)

Because I want the people who raped and murdered Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom to pay with their lives, I don't want to give their defense team any advantages.

In that respect, perhaps I should not have written about the case at all. I hope that my posts have helped defuse at least some of popular hysteria, and I also hope that people will stick to the facts of the case and let the prosecution do its job.

I also hope this is my last post about the unverified "reports."

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. I'm on the road, and mostly offline, but I do appreciate all comments.

UPDATE (06/03/07): I just returned from vacation and found this email from Stefanie Williams, the text of which I thought merited an update:

So as I am on summer break, our news editions don't begin until June
6th I believe. I am the opinion editor during the year, not the summer,
and rarely am I allowed to write articles anymore. So in lieu of writing
a "new facts show" article, I logged into my administrative site and
updated the original article, and removed the sexual mutilation
information.

I hope you understand whole heartedly I did not intend this article to
spread rumors and lies. I worked on it based on a reliable source. And
sometimes, reliable sources can make mistakes too. Before I removed it,
I wanted to make sure the information (no mutliation) was correct, and
as it has now been shown, there was no mutilation, so I promtly removed
it, leaving only the information that has been substantiated by reports
and documents. I am not a white supremacist, I am not a KKK member, I'm
pretty liberal to be honest-this had nothing to do with my "agenda", as
I don't have one, and I never wanted people to believe so. Your blog
upset me because I think a lot of people thought that's who I was, a KKK
white supremacist looking to exploit the murders of two kids. It's so
far from the truth, and I hope I have shown you that about myself.

Do I still believe this crime deserved more media attention?
Absolutely. Do I believe it was a hate crime? Debatable, though I do think
affluence and "white affluence" had a place in the attack, but I will wait
'til trial to make a full blown decision. I am not a racist. I just seek
equality all around. If this happened to two black kids by whites, I
would feel the same way if it weren't reported. Just like I feel anger
that so many minority men, women, and children go missing daily and Greta
is not on their case 24/7.

I hope by me correcting the article, it will show you and others than I
was not trying to sensationalize this or lead to any further racial
tensions. I don't believe the families of these two victims, nor the
victims themselves, would ever wish to create an atmosphere of dishonesty or
racial hatred--I think those who exploited this tragedy to advance
their own agendas (specifically white supremacist groups who marched in
Knoxville, for example) did nothing to help any situations that this
brutal double murder highlighted. Making a situation more tense is never a
way to solve it. That was not what my article intended to do either. It
just saught to put things in perspective coming from a very frustrated
former men's lacrosse manager and citizen of a town that was under
scrutiny for so long after the Duke Lacrosse Hoax. Regardless of whether
the victims were white, black, yellow, pink, or blue, I think this case
deserved more attention, and the media failed miserably. I have my !
!
own opinions why, as I stated, but I don't think anyone will ever
surely know why this case was overlooked. All I can hope is that the
families find some peace in knowing those who did this to their children are
in custody and justice will (hopefully) prevail.

I was hoping maybe you would be willing to post this on your blog, if
it's not too much trouble. I would like people to see that I never
intended the article to be viewed as racial propaganda, nor am I a part of
any group or organization trying to advance an agenda. Simply, I saw
something that pissed me off and I wrote about it. That's what I did as an
opinion columnist.

I apologize very much that it came out so late that indeed those two
facts (the penis and breast mutilations) were false. I never would have
printed them if I didn't truly believe they were correct. And I hope
people understand that.

Take care,

Yours,
Stef Williams
Maryland '08

In what is described as "their first extensive interview" with the AP, the family of rape and murder victim Channon Christian are saying that the Internet mutilation accounts are exaggerated:

The Christians said Internet accounts have exaggerated aspects of the crime, particularly accounts that the victims were mutilated. "Seventy-five percent of the stuff you are reading on the Internet is fallacies," Gary Christian said. "They are stretching it out of proportion. (Though) it was horrific and they were tortured."

The couple was carjacked after leaving a friend's apartment late Jan. 6. His body was found the next day, shot, burned and dumped along some inner-city railroad tracks. Her body was found two days later in a trash can in a house nearby. Both had been raped.

The more people link these words, though, the more the mutually-linked words appear to be true, because of the nature of the Internet. This is not new (and I've seen it before), but whenever I see it, I try to point it out. There was a nonexistent retired political science professor (and former Nixon and Reagan official) named "George Harleigh," and there was the notorious Air Force Regulation 160-23. Both were alive on the Internet, but nowhere to be found in reality. (I consider it a sort of "blogger responsibility" to point such things out when I run across them, but I also see it as an individual human responsibility -- one arising out of the natural distaste I feel when I am being lied to.)

In logic, of course, the inability to verify something does not mean that it did not happen or does not exist. On the other hand, should people be reciting unverifiable information and claiming it constitutes facts? I don't think so -- especially when the allegations are highly imflammatory, and involve a case which has not yet gone to trial.

The Christian family's claim that the facts are exaggerated made me think of something else so obvious I don't know why it never occurred to me before, and that is this: if the pre-mortem sexual mutilation occurred, why aren't any of the suspects being charged with it?

I haven't researched the law, but I'm pretty sure it is illegal in Tennessee to sexually mutilate living people, whether by cutting off penises or cutting off breasts. If there is any evidence that such crimes committed, why hasn't anyone been charged with the crimes? It's not as if there hasn't been enough time to conduct detailed medical examinations. If I may speculate for the sake of argument, if we assume the horrific pre-mortem mutilation occurred, for some reason the authorities in Tennessee are failing to charge anyone with the crime. (And they're covering it up as well.) Unless additional charges are pending, this doesn't make sense.

Again, I wish people would stop reciting things that cannot be verified, because it isn't helping what is a very serious case.

Those who complain about the lack of media coverage ought to be especially concerned.

Again, facts matter.

(Even on the Internet.)

UPDATE: I have just received an email from Stefanie Williams, who believes that I treated her unfairly:

Since I see you made it a point to cover what I sad in my e-mail in
your blog today, I'd like ot point out several things to you. One, I was
not a journalist. News reporters, those who actually report the news,
are journalists. I was a columnist for the opinion section of our paper,
and even if you go back at my other news related articles (the Duke
Lacrosse Case article, and the priest molestation charges in Maryland,
even my story about my Kappa Alpha Theta sorority), every fact in those is
true and can be verified. So when you say the "the first actual
journalist to report the claim was the University of Marlyand's Stefanie
Williams", you are lying. I am not a journalist. I am an English major who
had a bi-weekly OPINION column, not NEWS column.

Secondly, you say so self sighteously "I consider it a sort of "blogger
responsibility" to point such things out when I run across them, but I
also see it as an individual human responsibility -- one arising out of
the natural distaste I feel when I am being lied to". Have you ever
contacted Cash Michaels or Wendy Murphy to ask them why they continue to
spread a viscious lie that the Duke three paid two million dollars to
shut Crystal up? Have you asked why they continue to perpetuate this lie?
Have you contacted Cash about the multiple articles he wrote last year
regarding "cousin Jakki's" verification that indeed there was a payoff,
yet the accuser claiming otherwise? Have you contacted Cash Michaels to
lambast him for not posting his "sources" that "some black leaders"
were approached by "some people" about 2 million dollars? I haven't seen
you bitch about that in your blog. And Cash Michaels is an actual, on
the books, paid by a news publication reporter whose job it is to!
!
collect facts and report them to the public, not to give opinions. I
have yet to see you lambast him, but maybe you just managed to miss over
that little snipit of total bullshit regarding a huge miscarriage of
justice in our society that was reported online MULTIPLE TIMES IN HIS
ARTICLES and somehow a college student's editorial piece that at the time
still stands 98% true, with 2% uncertainty regarding two of the MANY
tortures those two kids endured, deserved way way way more attention. I
guess I am just missing the big picture. Or maybe you did, I'm not sure.

Next, you make an excellent point: "Those who complain about the lack
of media coverage ought to be especially concerned." As I mentioned in
my previous e-mail, if I didn't have reason to believe it was true, I
wouldn't have printed all the information I was given. As I mentioned, it
came from a reliable source, other parts of that information turned out
to be true, and as I repeat, I AM NOT A JOURNALIST with a PRESS PASS I
am not at liberty to information, nor was there much available at the
time. You say I perpetuated a lie. How about I included every bit of
information that up until that date, had been said about the crime. "Some
reports say...". Some reports, my source. I made it very clear that it
wasn't definitely confirmed, but that I had heard that those two bodily
mutilations also happened. That is not lying, that is repeating what I
was told about the case, issues that hadarisen on the internet about
the case, because my column was not a news report, it was an op-ed !
!
submission about this case where these kids might have been tortured as
far as these reports, some reports, my source had said. There is a
difference you are not understanding, and by calling my a hypocrite because
you seem to think I was perpetuating a lie you are taking away from the
entire point to my article; had it not been for my article, to date,
10,451 people would not have read about their deaths or the lack of media
coverage. And out of all the tortures those two endured, whether or not
the final bit was done, seems to be irrelevant, specifically when you
now know I didn't include it to "sensationalize" it, but rather to
include all the information I had at the given time.

"Again, facts matter." Then I suggest you learn to distinguish an
editorial opinion columnist from a news reporter, if you are so damn
obsessed with "facts" because the "fact" is, I am not a journalist. I am an
English major who had an opinion and a place to write about it. You are
making it seem to your bloggers I was the go to girl for news stories at
my paper. I work for the opinion desk, NOT the news desk. When we have
editorial meetings (as I am not the EDITOR of the opinion section,
because my stories, even this one, have not only garnered so much
attention, stirred up so much information and made such good points, but exposed
many lies of other organizations), Opinion editors are asked to leave
when the NEWS is discussed because NEWS and OPINION are kept separate. I
was not a news reporter when I wrote this column. I was an opinion
columnist who was handed information about this case and I wrote MY OPINION
about the information I was given.

"(Even on the Internet.)" Except on your blog, where you continue to
make it out as though I am a dirty reporter with no sources, which is a
complete inaccurate depiction of me and a complete lie. And apparently,
you seemed to let Cash Michaels off the hook time and and time again,
an actual journalist, who to this day is still perpetuating lies in
order to make it out as though the Duke three are guilty of SOMETHING. But
hey, apples and orangs right? A college publication with an op-ed from
a college girl who consistantly wrote thorough and factual opinion
articles (again, I suggest you read them all, if you are so interested in
facts) that couldn't with 100% certainty verify the fact that Newsom's
penis was cut off and Christian's breast cut off, but had reason to
believe and at the very least thought readers should know that this was
even being said about the case, God let's just make her the main focus of
four blog submissions because she really has an effect on the world,!
!
and she must have some sort of agenda. Maybe we'll expose her as a
raging KKK member or the daughter of David Duke! Nope, I'm not.

I suggest you take all your own criticisms of me and possibly use them
in your future blogs. Stiring the pot with words like "journalist"
instead of "op-ed columnist", citing "facts" as missing instead of
understanding I worded my column carefully enough to show it was not certain,
are all lies, and lies by omission. But you are the self righteous
leader of the blog world against college opinion columnists who once in 20
columns might, MIGHT have been wrong about a lengthy, gruesome torture,
where rape, sodomy, abuse, cleaning fluid in the mouth, gun shot
wounds, the body set on fire, were all prevelent and accurate, somehow you
think that in the big picture the penis and breast comments matter. No.
They don't. And the way I worded it makes it that way.

If you want to keep bloging about me as though you are the amazing
blogger who caught the lying "journalist" with her hand in the cookie jar,
go ahead. If it makes you feel important, like you uncovered some huge
agenda driven conspiracy to make these murders "look worse" than they
really were, you need a new hobby. I didn't have to sensationalize the
story. Leave out the penis and breast part, and people would still be
outraged about not hearing about the brutal rape of a man and woman who
were tortured and murdered, their bodies destroyed (Newsom's body WAS
set on fire). Look at the bigger picture. Stop playing self righteous
blogger. And stop painting me to be something I'm not so you can benefit
from it. I'm tired of it.

Stefanie Williams
Maryland '08

As to Cash Michaels and Wendy Murphy, I haven't written about them, and maybe I should. There are a lot of things I've never written about and maybe should.

While I don't think all of the above criticism is well-founded, I decided to post this in order to be fair to Ms. Williams.

I'd still like to know the facts, though.

MORE: Since the subject was raised, readers who are interested in reading about Wendy Murphy could probably start here and here.

AND MORE: Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked a column by the distinguished John Leo -- a journalist by any standard, for whom I have the highest respect and whom I have cited in this blog on a number of occasions. Writing in the New York Sun, here's what John Leo says:

Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, were out on a dinner date in Knoxville, Tenn., on January 6, when they were carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured, sexually mutilated, and killed.

Despite the press's taste for dramatic crimes, even crimes that do not involve missing blondes in Aruba, the story got almost no publicity. Conservative bloggers, who are beginning to buzz about the case, think they know why: the couple was white and the five suspects arrested in the case are black.

The mainstream press does not like to carry stories of black mayhem and white victims. First, there is the fear of stirring up more racism among Klansmen and neo-Nazis, as the Knoxville case has started to do. More importantly, the newsroom culture tends to view black-on-white crimes as responses to black oppression, and therefore not worth reporting. Whereas similar white-on-black crime is oppression itself, and thus crucially important to put before readers and viewers.

While I wish they'd both said "according to unverified reports," I'd still like to know whose "reports" they were, because knowing the source of the reports is an aid in evaluating their possible validity.

It is still possible that they'll turn out to be true.

But if (as Nicholas Stix condends) they in fact originated with the notorious Hal Turner, I think that's unlikely.

AND MORE: Also via Nicholas Stix, there's this report that the District Attorney's office says the sexual mutilation allegations are false:

Similarly, claims made over the Internet that the couple were sexually mutilated are "absolutely not true," John Gill, special assistant to District Attorney Randy Nichols, said Friday.

MORE: A web site called the Council of Conservative Citizens is taking issue with Assistant District Attorney Gill's claim that the couple was not sexually mutilated:

Assistant District Attorney John Gill claims that the couple was not sexually mutilated. Well, John Gill, what do you call hacking off a woman's breasts and a man's penis while they are still alive? While the details of the crime have not been widely reported, they are well documented. Christian was forced to watch her boyfriend brutally tortured and then shot. She was then raped repeatedly for four days and tortured until she died. The suspects are also alleged to have purchased Viagra so they could continue raping the girl. Truly this was one of the most horrific hate crimes in US history.

Show me one document!

Anyone?

MORE: I'm now accused of "defending" the awful perpetrators in the comments below. Far from it; I hope they get the death penalty, and I certainly hope the circulation of inflammatory rumors doesn't help the defendants.

It's beginning to look like some people care less about the facts (and less about the prosecution's case, even) than their partisan interests.

UPDATE (06/03/07): I just returned from vacation and found this email from Stefanie Williams, the text of which I thought merited an update:

So as I am on summer break, our news editions don't begin until June
6th I believe. I am the opinion editor during the year, not the summer,
and rarely am I allowed to write articles anymore. So in lieu of writing
a "new facts show" article, I logged into my administrative site and
updated the original article, and removed the sexual mutilation
information.

I hope you understand whole heartedly I did not intend this article to
spread rumors and