Can dirt be holy?

Is there such a thing as "sacred soil"?

If you're religious about physical things, I guess dirt as well as locations can be considered sacred. Certainly, a good argument can be made that important graveyards, or places where large numbers of people died -- such as Auschwitz or Gettysburg -- are worthy of a certain kind of reverence. Whether that makes the dirt itself holy is another question.

When I was on the Berkeley Police Review Commission, People's Park activists used to scream that the park was "sacred ground," and they meant it.

Here in Philadelphia, local activists (in an ongoing effort I have blogged about repeatedly) have pressured officials from the notoriously guilty Bush regime into creating a holy place out of the buried ruins of the first presidential mansion. Not because George Washington lived there, but because he kept his slaves there. It is believed that slavery needs to move from being an unfortunate reality at the time of the founding to being a central feature.

My own view of this is that the most important feature was the development of the idea of freedom itself, manifested in the break with England, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. That many of the founders were themselves flawed, that they did not live up to the principles they enshrined, well, that is certainly an important part of history, as well as a feature of man. One of the founding's contradictions is that the founders' ideas were incompatible with slavery, even though slavery -- and slaves -- accompanied many (not all) of the founders.

However, to say that the country was "founded on slavery" because there were slaveholding founders is at least as much a mistake as saying that the country was "founded on Christianity" or "founded on the Ten Commandments" because many of the founders were devoutly religious. George Washington used to have insubordinate soldiers flogged; does that mean the country was founded on flogging?

But logic be damned; according to the law of identity politics, it is very important that people have "their own narrative," so slavery has to become a central feature of the founding. The first thing Philadelphia tourists ought to see is the sacred soil where slaves once walked.

...black enslavement at the nation's birth and in its birthplace has taken its place as a painful, essential topic of discussion and commemoration. In 2010, a memorial to the President's House and its enslaved occupants is to open right outside the front door of the Liberty Bell Center.

This change is a monumental revision of America's founding mythology, historians argue - one that has not diminished the sanctity of sacred ground but magnified it.

"The whole concept of sacred ground and the creation of sacred space has been extended by what's happened," said Randall Miller, a professor of American history at St. Joseph's University, who has pressed Independence Park officials to address the issues raised by the site.

"We're not just looking for history. We're not just looking for information on free blacks or slavery. We're going deep into discovering ourselves as a nation."

In the spring and summer of 2007, Philadelphia witnessed something unprecedented, as hundreds of thousands of people streamed across the city to look at a hole - an archaeological exploration of the house site at Sixth and Market Streets.

Washington's slaves lived there when he was president and Philadelphia was the nation's temporary capital in the 1790s. Though John Adams, his successor as president and occupant, opposed slavery and held no human property, the hole kept its redolence of the unspeakable, for some a wound exposing a painful past, for others a scooped-out vessel holding a culture's complex secret self.

What's in this hole? Foundations of a house which belonged to Robert Morris, and which was temporarily donated by him for the residential use of the first two presidents. Washington had slaves there, Adams did not. The house was eventually torn down. Hardly magical or mystical, unless you believe that the foundations of the house have deep and hidden meaning, and that the soil is "sacred":

The excavation, done under the auspices of the National Park Service and the city, ignited imaginations and intense conversations as more than 300,000 visitors watched archaeologists expose the symbolic foundations of black slavery and governing white power in the literal foundations of the first U.S. executive mansion.

"Here, the powerful," said one man, pointing to the uncovered granite footings of a great bow window designed by Washington and said to be the precursor of the oval rooms of the White House.

"Here, the powerless," he continued, pointing to kitchen foundations a few feet away, all that remained of the world where Hercules, Washington's chef, worked his culinary magic before escaping to freedom. Nearby the outlines of an underground passage linked the world of kitchen and the world of bow windows; those who passed between them did so invisibly.

From spring till August, when the foundations were temporarily re-covered to preserve them, visitors who crowded the viewing platform stood transfixed, looking down on America's intertwined, parallel history of slavery and freedom.

But the word "sacred" is used seven times, and the Inquirer is so caught up with the magical powers of the narrative that it is reported that when the archaeologists "exposed this sacred ground," they were "releasing its power." I kid you not:

When the excavation was completely open and the worlds of George and Martha Washington were revealed, so intimately interlaced with the worlds of Hercules and Oney Judge, Michael Coard ventured down, 15 feet below street level, to the area that had once been the kitchen.

He says he felt a power and a connection unlike any he had felt before in America.

"I'm down in the pit at Sixth and Market feeling the same physical, cultural and spiritual sensation standing there on that ground, where Hercules stood in the kitchen, that I felt when I touched the ground in Africa in 1996," Coard said.

Archaeology exposed this sacred ground, releasing its power. And while the President's House site has been the most dramatic example at Independence Park of archaeology's potency, it is not the only one. Perhaps more than any other single activity undertaken at the park, archaeology has triggered the greatest change and precipitated the greatest renewed interest in America's civic origins.

"We are pleased now also to have the tangible connections to relate the stories of many individuals previously not as well represented, such as James Dexter, all the free and enslaved Africans at the President's House including Oney Judge and Hercules, and, I hope, Martha Washington and Abigail Adams who also occupied the President's House," she said.

Nevertheless, more than once in recent years, the park and its partners resisted archaeological efforts, balking at the pursuit of what local historian Ed Lawler has called "the power of the real."

Yet each time an excavation has been performed, it has uncovered something extraordinary - significant forgotten or unknown characters, the complexities of 18th-century life and previously hidden connections to 21st-century America, new history, new facts, all leading to heightened public interest.

It is not an exaggeration to call archaeology a key driver of the transformation of Independence Park, carrying it from the received traditional history of Founding Fathers and 20th-century veneration of their unassailability, to the complexities of the 21st century, where greatness is not denied but made more human.

"What we are looking at [through archaeology] are people telling their own story," said St. Joseph's historian Miller. "They're not writing it down, but they're doing it their own way and we have to go down and discover it.

"It's not just sacred ground - it's the realness of it that's so powerful. It's not reproduced. The African American story is there staring us in the face. Race is what defines us. There it is."

It's all about race.

Isn't it nice to know that modern America can finally agree on something?

This is all so nonsensical to me that it's hard to know what to say, and I'm barely resisting the temptation to violate Godwin's Law. (But I do feel obliged to observe that the notion that defining people by race has a poor historical track record.)

Of course, if you're one of those recalcitrant reactionaries who don't believe race should define us, there's a term for you. You're guilty of "color-blind racism."

In other words, if you don't think race should define us, you're a racist.

As to unbelievers in sacred ground, they're probably guilty of an emergent form of blasphemy.

My favorite writer on everything has some words on "how you can do your bit to build democracy":

In the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniya, the American University of Iraq has just opened its doors. And it is appealing for people to donate books. ... As anyone who has read the Arab Human Development Reports will know, the Arab region--which at the time of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad was one of the world centers of humanistic learning and philosophy--is in a profound crisis of intellectual unfreedom. It boasts of no great centers of study; it translates pathetically few books from other languages and cultures; it is prone to waves of intolerance and fanaticism under which books are actually burned. Thus the attempt to reverse this trend and to lay the foundation of a liberal and cosmopolitan education for the next generation of educated Iraqis is of the highest importance from every conceivable point of view.

And last but not least, how:

So here's what to do. Have a look at the university's Web site. Get some decent volumes together, pass the word to your friends and co-workers to do the same, and send them off to:

Nathan Musselman
The American University of Iraq--Sulaimani
Building No. 7, Street 10
Quarter 410
Ablakh Area
Sulaimani, Iraq
(+964) (0)770-461-5099

It's important to include the number at the end.

We've been going through our 2,500 books over the last few days, sorting out doubles and the like, and should have a nice package to send soon.

A simple cup of joe not always so simple

The days of women fetching coffee for the boss still linger in some workplaces

That was the headline on a story on the front page of the Business section of today's Inquirer. A perfectly good headline -- if disapproving in a feminist sort of way. But I couldn't find it online.

While the same article (by Jane M. Von Bergen) appears at the website, it has a different and more subdued headline "Hot controversy: Fetching coffee for the boss." A female receptionist was asked to get coffee for her boss. She refused, and was fired. So she brought suit in federal court alleging a "hostile and discriminatory work environment":

Nine minutes after receptionist Tamara Klopfenstein complained - for the second time - about getting her bosses coffee, she was fired.

"I don't expect to serve and wait on you by making and serving you coffee every day," Klopfenstein e-mailed to her boss at National Sales & Supply L.L.C., of Bensalem.

Manager Jason Shrager told her the issue wasn't "open for debate."

Instead, the issue caused a brouhaha in federal court.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller couldn't resist punning his way through a decision on the deeper issue - whether Klopfenstein's managers had created a hostile and discriminatory work environment by requiring the receptionist to fetch them coffee.

He wrote that she had no grounds for her complaints of sexual discrimination.

Please pour Judge Schiller decaf before he puns again.

"The act of getting coffee is not, by itself, a gender-specific act," Schiller wrote. The fact that a vice president wrote "looks nice, dresses well," on notes when she was hired also doesn't add up to discrimination, the judge wrote.

"While the behavior of plaintiff's supervisors may have been rude, gauche, or undesirable, their actions do not violate federal or state antidiscrimination laws," Schiller wrote.

Klopfenstein, who worked at the company for six weeks in 2006, plans to appeal, said her attorney, Timothy M. Kolman, of Langhorne.

Plaintiffs attorneys Timothy M. Kolman and Rufus A. Jennings of Timothy M. Kolman & Associates in Langhorne, Pa., said in an interview that they intend to appeal the ruling, and that Schiller erred by failing to recognize that some tasks are "inherently more offensive to women."

Schiller also erred, they said, by dismissing a retaliation claim in which Klopfenstein complained that she was fired immediately after she complained that she should not be expected to get coffee when it was not one of her listed job duties.

According to court papers, Klopfenstein worked for six weeks as a part-time receptionist and data entry clerk. In her suit, she claims that the office environment was tinged with sexism from the very beginning when a vice president of the company made a note after her initial interview that she "looks nice, dresses well." After just a few weeks on the job, Klopfenstein claims that a male co-worker invited her to lunch in an e-mail that said "I feel bad you have been working here for a couple of weeks and we haven't gotten to know each other yet."

In her deposition, Klopfenstein testified that she found the invitation "very offensive" because "there is no reason why a man and a woman should go out to lunch together without any other party around. To me that's a date." (Emphases added.)

The things that pass for sexism these days!

Sheesh.

I can remember when workplace sexual harassment meant, you know, sexual harassment. I have a serious problem with the idea that the task of getting someone a cup of coffee is "inherently more offensive to women" -- even if we put aside whether it constitutes sexual harassment. Logically, that would mean that getting a cup of coffee is inherently less offensive to men, right? Otherwise, how could it possibly more more offensive to women?

To see this out, let's assume getting coffee is less offensive to men than women. Does that mean it should become "men's work," and that only men should be asked to fetch coffee, lest women be offended by being asked? Can anyone tell me how that wouldn't be sexist? If a man worked somewhere and could show that only men were tasked with getting coffee, couldn't he sue?

And why couldn't women also sue? If we adopt the plaintiff's position, and the company were to show more sensitivity by defering to women, what would stop a woman from turning around and claiming that the company was preventing her from doing what had become "men's work"?

It also bothers me that it's considered "sexist" to tell a woman she looks good or "dresses well." If someone (including me) tries to look nice and dresses well, compliments are always appreciated. So once again, if we assume it's OK to say that a man dresses well, but sexist to say that about a woman, then what would stop women from suing for not being told they dressed well while men were being told they were? And what about telling an employee he or she dresses poorly? Seriously, suppose the boss wants men and women dressed for success. Does he get in more trouble for telling a man to dress nicer than if he tells a woman to dress nicer? As to the idea that a man can eat lunch with a man but not with a woman, please! If that isn't sexist, what is?

Pretty soon, employers will not be in charge of their workplaces. The courts will.

I'm glad at least one court drew the line.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Comments appreciated.

(But who's going to get me a cup of coffee?)

I keep hearing and reading that the average world temperatures reached their peak in 1998, and leveled off since. This article -- titled "There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998" is typical:

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Other than the fact that Bill Clinton was president then, and George Bush is president now, I am at a loss to explain this phenomenon.

Anyway, look at the graph:

(CO2 is in pink, while temperatures are in red and blue.)

You can click on the above to see a larger version, and the URLs given are the following:

UAH NCDC LT: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

Hadley CRUT: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/te...hadcrut3gl.txt

The only correlation I can see is a political one.

So, if we superimpose a line representing global warming alarmist rhetoric (measured in parts per million, naturally) over the same period, that proverbial "hockey stick" we so often hear about immediately becomes visible.

Very alarming, I'd say. Why, the alarmism is off the chart!

How much more can we endure before the global economy is ruined?

(Actually, the chart might be understating the case if we consider the escalating nature of radical alarmist rhetoric.)

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, a link to what's best described as "Ye Olde Hockey Sticke." Plus, an upside down hockey stick from the colden days of present and future past!

No seriously!

MORE: This dire warning from Salon.com (in an article titled "Anti-science conservatives must be stopped") reminded me that not everyone is on the same page:

If conservatives block serious action until the 2020s, then the nation and the world will begin a desperate race to avert catastrophe. By then, the world's carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations will be so high that the relatively easy market-based technology strategy will not be able to stop us from crossing the point of no return, when major amplifying feedbacks kick in and undermine all efforts to avert catastrophe. The most important feedback is probably the melting of the permafrost and tundra, which could release 1,000 billion tons of carbon -- more than the entire atmosphere contains today -- much of it in the form of methane, which is 20 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

I call the period from 2025 to 2050 "Planetary Purgatory." Assuming conservatives block a major reversal in U.S. policies in the next decade, by the 2020s, everyone will know the grim fate that awaits the next 50 generations, including widespread desertification, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people, sea level rise of 80 feet or more at a rate that might hit 6 inches a decade and extinction of most species on land and sea. Maybe then, as the miseries of global warming overtake everyday life, a backlash against conservatives will begin to rise, one that will ultimately relegate that political movement to the dustbin of history

This is just to say that despite calls by others in years and decades past, now really is the time to privatize the postal service.

My girlfriend and I returned home tonight after a lovely evening with friends to find everything as we had left it. We'd already received our daily ration of junk mail and bank statements by late morning. But she'd been waiting for a few packages, and decided to check "Track and Confirm" online. Imagine our surprise to find that one package had supposedly been delivered at 4:00 PM, and a notice of attempted delivery had been left at the same time.

There was no notice. There was no package.

What there was, however, was a sneaking suspicion that the carrier had left these across town with the people whose mail we always end up with. See, we have the same apartment number. Different complex. Different street. Different plus-4 codes (which we've begun using to help the Postal Service keep things straight).

But hey, I'm a reasonable guy. I know that these things happen. It's just that they'd a hell of a lot easier to fix or prevent in the real world. You know the real world? Where customers can actually complain, or find a phone number or an e-mail address? The real world where competition means those who fail to satisfy their customers make way for the rest?

Can't I send off an e-mail to customer service, leave a message for my local agent, or log in to my account? No? Doesn't that seem odd in 2008? Can't I even find the phone number for my local branch? (800) ASK-USPS? Are you sure that's local?

Like many people, I have paper problems. Paper that I do not want but cannot throw away for security reasons accumulates to the point where there's too much to easily shred, and on top of that Coco hates my shredder. I kid you not:

I'm not alone. Junk mail is a national problem of vast proportions:

The amount of paper junk mail sent each year in the USA is staggering -- some 4 million tons, nearly half of which is never opened. Even if you recycle there are still enormous environmental costs in terms of ink, energy to produce deliver and recycle the paper, recycling inefficiencies and loss of virgin forest to create the high quality glossy paper much junk mail uses.

AMERICANS RECEIVE 77 BILLION PIECES OF JUNK MAIL ANNUALLY or THE AVERAGE AMERICAN WILL SPEND EIGHT MONTHS OF THEIR LIFE HANDLING JUNK MAIL.

Aside from the human inconvenience angle, from an environmental standpoint junk mail just plain sucks. I'm no greenie weenie (and I'm against the government getting involved), but is this really necessary?

More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail....

...Creating and shipping junk mail produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 2.8 million cars.....

...About 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce and recycle junk each year....

...You waste about 70 hours a year dealing with junk mail.

One rather bizarre project I don't quite understand transforms junk mail into spam. Or if you're like this enterprising young Scotsman, you can enjoy countless hours plotting retaliatory schemes against the junk mailers (link):

There's also "How To Stop Junk Mail And Get Revenge" (link):

Fun! He argues that the more people do this, the more likely they are to stop sending unsolicited junk. Actually, I think the more people do this, the more likely the direct marketers will be to persuade Congress to make it illegal to engage in retaliatory or vexatious mailings (if they haven't already).

Really, though. Sometimes it's as if your mailbox has become a free-for-all commercial littering zone at your expense.

One thing that seems clear is that the Postal System isn't about to do anything to stop it:

According to the USPS and other organizations, the Post Office receives anywhere between 50 to 80 percent of its revenue from junk mail.

Fortunately, today I was lucky enough to learn about NBC10's Great Shredder Event, which was held today at Rose Tree Park in Media, PA.

I drove right in, and there they were -- waiting to help:

The shredding was done absolutely free by Iron Mountain Secure Shredding, in trucks like this one, which shredded mine:

An Iron Mountain staffer came to my car and dumped my boxes and bags of paper into bins which were wheeled to the truck, then hoisted inside and dumped into the hopper.

A TV monitor lets you watch the entire process:

I had two bins full of paper, which had weighed the car down on the drive to the event. Not only did the car feel lighter, but I felt incredibly liberated on the drive back.

Just think. In the old days people got to use fire!

Will the decadent West be conquered by decadent Islamic sexual tolerance?

If that sounds like too much of a mouthful, read "Converting the West to Islam Through ... Sex?" by Timothy R. Furnish, whose Ph.D. is in Islamic History, and who is a former U.S. Army Arabic interrogator and college professor.

Furnish recently learned of a Yahoo group MahdiUniteMuslims which is propounding the idea that promulgating Shia-approved multiple, "temporary" serial marriages will so popularize Islam that the West will be unable to resist:

For the past few weeks MUM -- which is dedicated to uniting the Islamic world through belief in the Mahdi, the "rightly-guided one" of Islamic traditions who will create a global caliphate -- has hosted a discussion about mut`ah, Shi`i temporary marriage, the "secret weapon that will convert the West to Islam in the later days before the advent of Imam al Mahdi" according to the ingenious Muslim who first advanced the idea (and is there any doubt it was a guy?). His starting point is the Islamic tradition that in the last days before the Mahdi returns, women will greatly outnumber men worldwide. This Muslim Hugh Hefner opines that "the West will not consider mut`ah as marriage but more at par [sic] with mistress or girlfriend though we consider it a valid form of marriage."

I'm not sure most American men are quite so weak as to flock towards Islam simply because of the promise of a sexual loophole. It's like, who needs a piece of paper purporting to "allow" what the West doesn't consider legitimate anyway, but which you can already do? But I suppose there are some who would join a religion to get approval of what they want. As a practical matter, how many men manage having multiple women they actually provide for, married or not?

What intrigues me about this movement, though, is the offer to bestow religious "legality" on that which is illegal. Polygamy. Yet there's nothing to stop men from screwing as many women as they want, and taking care of the kids who result, and (I suppose) executing partnership agreements. They just can't marry legally. In that respect, it's a bit analogous to same sex marriage. And while there are already plenty of religious groups and churches that will perform the latter, does that really cause people to join them? Why would a different result obtain in the case of heterosexual polygamy temptation?

Still, it's a fascinating read, and the author contends this movement is more dangerous than WMDs:

I fear that our mut`ah advocate may have hit upon a policy more dangerous to American civilization than WMDs or even the intellectual appeal of Islam purely as a religion: the siren song of sex. Men are notoriously weak in this regard, and if mut`ah is allowed to exist, even sub rosa, how long will it be before irreligious, or even lapsed Christian, American males begin to see the sexual advantages of Shi`i Islam? Some would certainly argue that mut`ah is a more realistic marriage institution for the male of the species than that rather more demanding serial monogamy which Christianity has mandated. And even in these days of rising ethanol demand, a handful of corn is not that hard to come by.

A little more revisionism might be called for. Why, the foot in the door might be bisexual couples in need of, um, "relationship expansionism." Clearly, Islam has nothing to offer them. Not now, nor in the immediate future.

That's just off the top of my head, and please bear in mind that this is just a quick blog post and I have not yet begun to seriously theorize* about other possibilities for religious/sexual hedonism competition.

However, I think it's safe to say that if these desperate "MahdiUniteMuslims" imagine that they can beat the West at the hedonism game, they've got something else coming....

* Muslim competitors be warned! I was theorizing about certain "religious rites" during the first week of this blog!

I was very sorry to read that the lead singer of the Dixie Hummingbirds, Ira B. Tucker Sr. has died -- right here in Philadelphia:

Ira B. Tucker Sr., 83, of North Philadelphia, one of gospel's most celebrated voices and lead singer of the venerable Dixie Hummingbirds, died of heart failure Tuesday at Kindred Hospital in the Northeast.

Mr. Tucker joined the Dixie Hummingbirds in 1938 in Greenville, S.C., when he was 13, 10 years after James B. Davis gathered a group of friends to sing a cappella. Mr. Tucker brought his style of gospel and blues to the group and the 'Birds soared in worldwide performances for the next 70 years.

The Hummingbirds spent their first decade together "wildcatting" and establishing their reputation in one small town after another. They recorded their debut record on the Decca label in 1939.

Davis, who died last year, ruled his gospel singers with an unforgiving, steady hand. No women could ride in their 1940 DeSoto while they toured and no drinking was allowed.

The Hummingbirds - named for the only bird that can fly forward and backward when that was an apt metaphor for the group's fortunes - had some tough times. They were stopped for a bad headlight, speeding, or simply because they were black and riding in a fancy car. One night after playing in Spartanburg, S.C., they were hauled into jail. An inmate who recognized them said, "Man, you got the Dixie Hummingbirds."

The officers let them sing behind bars. "We had some kind of program that night," Davis said in a 1998 Inquirer story. "You would have thought we were in church. We made the news the next day. They said if everyone were like the Dixie Hummingbirds, this would be a great world to live in."

Stevie Wonder said in 1998, "No other group has been more important in the history of African American music." The 'Birds were credited with inspiring singers as disparate as B.B. King, James Brown, the Temptations, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin and Bobby Bland.

In 1973, Paul Simon picked the Hummingbirds to sing "Loves Me Like a Rock" with him on his second solo album. The 'Birds then cut their own version of the song and won a Grammy for Best Soul Gospel Performance.

I looked around on YouTube, and I'm embedding the one I liked best (despite the fact that it has "AL-19" emblazoned on it annoyingly).

Here's "I Got So Much To Shout About" -- performed in 1966.

Incredible music.

I guess separation between gospel and doowop never occurred to anyone in those days....

Yes it is true. America's need for more oil refining capacity is bringing a new refinery on line. In India. Shouting Into The Void tells the tale.

Here's some news that should make all the energy independence buffs throw their hats to the floor and shout "Tarnashion!" India's Reliance Industries is building the world's largest oil refinery. This refinery, scheduled for completion this December, is planned for refined fuel export to Europe and the US exclusively. So by the end of the year we can be dependent on India for gasoline shipments. Gas prices could drop by 60 cents a gallon from this.

How can this lower prices when we're being told we live in a world of tight oil supplies? It's actually quite simple. This enormous refinery will process sour crude oil. Sour refers to the sulfur content of the petroleum. Sour crude has lots of sulfur. Sweet crude has little. Removing sulfur from oil is an expensive process, so in the past oil refiners have chosen to favor sweet crude. I was surprised to learn there is actually a glut of sour oil. The extra 200,000 daily barrels Saudi Arabia pledged this weekend to pump is all sour crude. That's why the announcement did nothing to lower prices. The Saudis will pump more unwanted oil. Iraq has 30 million barrels in tankers floating at sea. They have no destination because no one wants to buy sour crude.

So maybe we need to refine our peak oil theories. Maybe we have not reached peak oil. Maybe we have reached peak refinery. And who benefits the most from peak refinery? The people who already own a refinery. Why it is like a license to print money. I wouldn't be surprised if I found that oil companies were in cahoots with enviros on this.

Fortunately there appear to be some real hicks in flyover country who are trying to profit from the current situation.

ELK POINT, S.D. - A Texas-based energy firm planning to build the first U.S. oil refinery in more than 30 years said today that Union County is a finalist for the $8 billion project.

The refinery, which Hyperion Resources Inc. described as a "green energy technology center,'' would create as many 10,000 construction jobs and employ 1,800 after its completion in four years.

Hyperion also is considering "alternative sites'' in at least two other Midwest states, project executive Preston Phillips said at a late afternoon news conference at the county courthouse. A final decision should come by the first half of 2008, he said.

The announcement ended months of intense speculation over the so-called Project Gorilla. Until Wednesday, only a few local and state leaders knew the identify of the firm that has been optioning thousands of acres of farmland northwest of Elk Point, a city of about 1,800.

You have to ask yourself what is the point of even starting a project like that if it will have no effect on the supply situation for at least four years. Why bother? It is all so hopeless. Just ask our Democrat Congress. They will tell you. There is no point in drilling now in the hopes of having oil for delivery in the future. And what is that "future delivery" stuff? Sounds like speculation. I think an investigation is required.

If the American people re-elect the current controlling Party to majority status in Congress, they will deserve what they get and if past history is any guarantee of future performance we are going to get what we deserve hard. Very hard. Or as they say in some circles, "without lubrication".

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Yesterday M. Simon opined that because the Heller decision was only 5-4, the gun issue might very well become important in the fall election.

While I can't predict that far in the future, what prompted this post is that I'm still not certain which candidate will benefit more in the long run from the Heller decision.

Eric S. Raymond gives some excellent reasons why McCain will benefit from the Heller decision:

...I'm certain that right now he's [Obama's] wishing the Heller ruling had come down 7-2 or better and he didn't have to deal with what McCain is going to do to him over this issue.

I'll finish by re-quoting McCain's delicious, deadly zinger:

"Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly,"

The sting here isn't just McCain's "sacred right" appeal to gun owners, it's the way he links Obama's anti-firearms record to the sense of elitism, entitlement and disdain for traditional American values that radiate from the man. These traits play well in Berkeley and on the Upper West Side, but they lose national elections.

Like John Kerry in the last election cycle, Obama increasingly looks like a man who knows the price of arugula but the value of nothing. And if John McCain can convince voters of that, he'll not just win the general election -- he'll actually deserve to.

Obama benefits from this decision. Although he formerly supported groups promoting a collectivist interpretation -- nullification, really -- of the Second Amendment, as a presidential candidate he has prudently endorsed the "individual right" interpretation. Had the court held otherwise, emboldened gun-control enthusiasts would have thrust this issue, with its myriad cultural overtones, into the campaign, forcing Obama either to irritate his liberal base or alienate many socially conservative Democratic men.

By re-affirming that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the court effectively takes the gun issue out of the fall campaign. Republicans will now have a very hard time arguing that if you elect Democrats they will take away your guns.

While McCain might not be able to argue that "if you elect Democrats they will take away your guns," everyone knows this was a 5-4 decision, and that three of the justices are due for replacement. What that means is that whoever is elected will be tasked with creating the new, post-Heller majority. Thus, while the gun issue might not be a direct campaign issue, it's a heck of an indirect campaign issue. Most likely the issue will be subsumed in a discussion of judicial philosophy, but those who care about the Second Amendment won't forget what's at stake.

I very much enjoyed "Guns Are a Feminist Issue" (which Glenn Reynolds linked earlier). Megan McArdle observes that guns level the playing field between men and women, and wonders why more feminists don't push for gun ownership:

...guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no difference; if you pull the trigger first, you win.

This is an enormous social advance. I am all for strengthening the social contract (and law enforcement) so that fewer men commit rape, assault, or robbery. But until human nature has improved so radically that grievous bodily harm has passed from living memory, I don't understand why more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership.

I think the problem is that most feminists really aren't feminists. Not in the sense of believing that women should be equal and independent. Guns are the ultimate tool for enabling true independence, in the form of self-sufficiency. "Feminists" (in quotes because I don't think they are that) overwhelmingly believe in having the government take care of everyone, which of course is socialism -- the opposite of independence. I've long believed that feminism boils down to replacing male supremacy with government supremacy. Instead of women being equal, the role once occupied with the male husband/father as provider is replaced with the state as provider. You have a problem? Don't ask a man for help, ask the government. But do it yourself? No way. That threatens to erode the whole "feminist" concept that women are in need of outside help.

MORE: Not only are most conventional "feminists" opposed to guns, so are conventional gay activists. From Gay Patriot:

With these ruling, gay people will have greater and more ready access to handguns and so be better able to defend ourselves against gay-bashers. With such a victory for gay rights, I thought I'd check the sites of the various gay organizations to see how they're celebrating, acknowledging how the constitutional freedom enshrined in the Second Amendment benefits us. Nothing on the websites of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) or the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR).

Silence on such an important victory for gay rights?!?!?

Like feminists, gay activists tend to be socialists who oppose self-sufficiency while claiming to be for it.

There are exceptions, of course, and Gay Patriot cites Tammy Bruce, Log Cabin, and Volokh's Dale Carpenter.

By and large, though, the mainstream gay activist reaction is extremely anti-gun. Sometimes rabidly so.

Well, they are. Because, they warn, the poles are melting! Only this time, they're serious. Even if it seems "unthinkable":

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic - and worrying - examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

Actually, this is nothing new. Back in August of 2000 the experts were claiming the pole had melted, but apparently not enough people were paying attention to the unthinkable (at least not in Florida where they failed to push their chads all the way through for Gore).

Another scientist on the cruise, palaeontologist Dr Malcolm C McKenna, said the ship was able to sail all the way to the North Pole through only a thin crust of ice, and arrived on the spot to discover no ice at all.

"I don't know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice," Dr McKenna was quoted as saying.

"Some folks who pooh-pooh global warming might wake up if shown that even the pole is beginning to melt at least sometimes."

Actually, the experts started their latest round of unthinkable warnings last year when large amounts of ice descended on the North Pole. The problem, they claimed, was that it was not the right kind of ice:

Last year as arctic sea ice melted to record levels, panic set in for many. But then, as the sea ice rebounded and froze again quickly in the 2007/2008 winter, making up for that record loss and reaching heights not seen for several years, many exclaimed that even though the ice areal extent had recovered, this new ice was "thin" and would likely melt again quickly. There were also many news stories about how the Northwest Passage was ice free for the first time "ever". For example, Backpacker Magazine ran a story saying "The ice is so low that the photos clearly show a viable northwest passage sea route along the coasts of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska." (Icecap Note: See Dr. Gary Sharp's view on that here)

Cashing in on the panic that has set in with the help of some climate alarmists, tour operators like Quark Expeditions of Norwalk Connecticut are offering polar expeditions catering to that "see it before it's gone" travel worry. One of them is in fact a trip though the Northwest Passage on a former Soviet Icebreaker called the Kapitan Khlebnikov which is a massive 24,000 horsepower Polar Class icebreaker capable of carrying 108 passengers in relative luxury through the arctic wilderness.

Walt from Canada, pointed out this story in the Globe and Mail on may 24th in the travel section. It seems the irony of a polar expedition to see such things as record sea ice loss being stopped cold by the very ice that doesn't exist was not lost on the editors.

....What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage - which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world - and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can free us.

Well, at least they were warned.

MORE: American Thinker's Thomas Lifson has even more alarming news -- that the "Arctic ice melt may be due to undersea volcanoes." Moreover, the volcanoes have been erupting since 1999 -- when the melting began:...is it not possible that these volcanic eruptions - going back to at least 1999 - may have played a part in whatever melting there has been of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets? Absolutely not! Nor is it possible that the volcanoes release vast amounts of CO2.

More here:

Yes, neither this volcanic activity under the North Pole, nor the huge star in the middle of our solar system could possibly cause temperature changes on the earth.

By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

Obama's long march to the center has begun.

And why not? What's the downside? He won't lose the left, or even mainstream Democrats. They won't stay home on Nov. 4. The anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment is simply too strong. Election Day is their day of revenge -- for the Florida recount, for Swift-boating, for all the injuries, real and imagined, dealt out by Republicans over the past eight years.

Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama....

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. "He does what politicians do," explained Jeremiah Wright.

When it's time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.

Easy for me to say. But maybe the voters won't care. They have a long history of enjoying hucksterism. That's because bamboozling is an art form, and Americans are connoisseurs. Here's critically acclaimed rerun:

AFTERTHOUGHT: The problem for me is that all these criticisms seemed repetitive in March and April. The problem for the country is that most of the voters haven't even heard them. So, impatient bloggers like me will have moved on -- largely out of boredom and tedium -- from what most people will never have heard.

So what am I supposed to do? Repeat myself in the hope of "reaching people" who don't even read blogs? That would be more than just boring and tedious; it would be idle and self-important.

Some commenters out there, among them Instapundit, say that the decision in Heller today takes gun rights off the table as an election issue. I beg to differ.

The decision was 5-4. That means that everything could change if a Justice is confirmed whose views are more in line with Obama's views (which appear to have changed) of a while back. Don't forget that he lives in a state that is one of two that are totally out of touch on this issue. The two? Illinois and Wisconsin. The only two states in the nation that do not have some form of concealed carry laws.

Of course what are the odds of getting another Justice Thomas? Higher with McCain than Obama. FWIW.

For some background on the case visit Clayton Cramer.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

What a relief!

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment says what it says:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court says Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling strikes down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision goes further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

Volokh's server seems overwhelmed, but so far, Orin Kerr has this to say:

The opinion should be available shortly. In a case like this, the details of the opinion are critical; it will take a bit of time to read the decision to get a sense of what it means. SCOTUSblog is reporting that the vote was 5-4, with Scalia writing and the four liberal Justices dissenting.

Did the Supreme Court get things right? We'll know soon enough! Er, well, you'll probably know a bit before I do, today. . . .

The Supreme Court blog has some selected quotes from the opinion, including this:

"Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command."

"We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans."

"the most natural reading of 'keep Arms' in the Second Amendment is to "have weapons."

"The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity."

"Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation."

"Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose."

"The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting."

"It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense."

MORE: Here's an interesting headline:

Supreme Court Decision Hits Bull's Eye Against Obama Anti-Gun Agenda, says John Snyder of Telum Associates, LL.C.

MORE: Real Clear Politics reports that John McCain is praising the decision:

"Today's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans," McCain said in a statement.

The GOP nominee couldn't resist the opportunity to take a shot at rival Barack Obama: "Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly."

Obama's campaign has not yet released a statement on the opinion.

UPDATE: The text of the opinion in PDF is here.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, Bob Owen notes a comment (apparently from liberal blogger named David Ehrenstein) to the effect that Justice Scalia should be shot.

While I don't think Ehrenstein's remark typifies liberal thinking, I nonetheless find myself wondering whether people who react to disagreements by wanting to shoot people might be likely to project their lack of self control onto others, and thus be very fearful of allowing anyone to own a gun.

MORE: I am delighted to see the blogosphere was a factor in the decision. Not only did the majority cite Eugene Volokh, Randy Barnett, and Erik Jaffe, but they also cited Clayton Cramer.

At p. 15, they cite our paper! Yahoo!

MORE: Orin Kerr comments on the narrow scope of the ruling, and its limitations:

My basic thought after reading Justice Scalia's majority opinion is that it is relatively narrow -- in the sense that it leaves a lot for another day. It recognizes the individual right (citing, by my count, 3 articles by Eugene and one by Randy, not that we academics count such things), but does not resolve the degrees of scrutiny, does not address incorporation, and indicates (without establishing) that traditional gun restriction laws are valid.

MORE: Barack Obama now says that it the Second Amendment is an individual right, and that it has been his position all along.

Hmmm.....

Besides his potential to make a really bad President, I think Obama's constant return to the theme of racial intolerance in America puts him outside the mainstream. Which will make it hard for him to get elected and if elected to govern. In America criticizing politicians is a national sport. So much so that politicians never miss a chance to join in. I think Obama is wilting in such an environment. It will only get worse. America is not Chicago.

With a decision on the Heller case imminent, the Barack Obama campaign is flip-flopping backtracking away from an earlier statement that the DC statute in question is constitutional:

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Alexa Ainsworth Report: With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.'s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an "inartful" statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional.

"That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator's consistent position," Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.

The statement which Burton describes as an inaccurate representation of the senator's views was made to the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 20, 2007.

In a story entitled, "Court to Hear Gun Case," the Chicago Tribune's James Oliphant and Michael J. Higgins wrote ". . . the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he '...believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.'"

http://www.topix.com/content/trb/2007/11/court-to-hear-gun-case

As to why it's inaccurate now, they're not saying it has anything to do with the pending Heller decision. Rather it's inaccurate because Obama has "refrained from developing a position."

No really.

The Chicago Tribune clip from Nov. 20, 2007, is an inaccurate representation of Obama's views, according to Burton, because the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has refrained from developing a position on whether the D.C. gun law runs afoul of the Second Amendment.

When Obama has been asked on multiple occasions to weigh in on the D.C. gun case he has regularly maintained that the Second Amendment provides an individual right while at the same time saying that right is not absolute and that the Constitution does not prevent local governments from enacting what Obama calls "common sense laws."

Although he has been willing to describe his general views on this topic, Obama has sidestepped the question of whether the ban in the nation's capital runs afoul of the Second Amendment.

He is disavowing his previous position as "inartful."

OK, so what does that make his current, um, position?

Artful?

I think so. I also suspect there will be a lot more artfulness before this campaign is over. But what should we call this process, this artful spinning of the previously inartful?

Artfulizing?

Why not? While there seems to be no such word as "artfulizing," it's logically consistent with "awfulizing."

And if Obama isn't an awfully awesome artfulizer, then who is?

MORE: Hot Air questions the timing of Obama's artfulizing of the inartful:

Suddenly, with the general election looming, Obama discovers that his campaign's statement was inartful. This seems rather puzzling, because before he ran for public office, Barack Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional law expert. One might expect the "inartful" excuse on wetlands reclamation or some other esoteric matter of public policy, but the Constitution is what he supposedly studied at Columbia and Harvard. One has to wonder whether Obama has any competence even in his own chosen field to have seven months go by before realizing that he got the Constitutional question wrong.

[...]

We used to call John Kerry a flip-flopper for his enbarrassing quote on his opposition to Iraq war funding. Obama has now changed position on almost every key position in this election, and exposed himself as incompetent as a Constitutional law analyst as well. Democratic superdelegates may want to rethink their position on this nomination before Obama changes his party registration, too.

That would be waaay awesome!

Via Glenn Reynolds, who gives Obama the benefit of the doubt and blames the (presumably inartful) staff.

God bless Queen Elizabeth for being one of the few people on the planet actually capable of doing something about Robert Mugabe: she stripped the bloodthirsty tyrant of his knighthood:

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "This action has been taken as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe over which President Mugabe has presided."

Mr Mugabe is the first foreigner to be stripped of an honorary knighthood since the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, shortly before his execution.

I'd like to think that as went Ceausescu, so will go Mugabe. The man is a savage.

I hate to sound intolerant, but burning people alive after chopping off their feet just plain sucks.

Richard Fernandez thinks Mugabe is playing a game:

....Mugabe's basis for legitimacy -- and today his sole basis for legitimacy -- is the Colonialism card. On the day the West sticks this card where the sun doesn't shine in Robert Mugabe's anatomy, the way will be open to the obvious: a Zimbabwe free of his tyranny.

Yanking Mugabe's knighthood is of course a symbolic gesture. But at least there's some reality (and history) behind the symbolism.

The Queen's symbolism carries more weight than the UN's empty gestures.

William Saletan discusses a theory of homosexuality that I have seen before. That homosexuality in some men is compensated for by the increased fertility of their female relatives.

Gay couples can't have biological kids together. So if homosexuality is genetic, why hasn't it died out?

A study published last week in PLoS One tackles the question. It starts with four curious patterns. First, male homosexuality occurs at a low but stable frequency in a wide range of societies. Second, the female relatives of gay men produce children at a higher rate than other women do. Third, among these female relatives, those related to the gay man's mother produce children at a higher rate than do those related to his father. Fourth, among the man's male relatives, homosexuality is more common in those related to his mother than in those related to his father.

Can genes account for these patterns? To find out, the authors posit several possible mechanisms and compute their effects over time. They conclude that only one theory fits the data. The theory is called "sexually antagonistic selection." It holds that a gene can be reproductively harmful to one sex as long as it's helpful to the other. The gene for male homosexuality persists because it promotes--and is passed down through--high rates of procreation among gay men's mothers, sisters, and aunts.

The article does not discuss a point that no one seems to have paid any attention to (What a surprise - no one is discussing what they haven't paid attention to - what will they avoid thinking of next? Elephants?). Is there a genetic basis for some male's antagonism to male homosexuality? If so then what?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

They're not making currency like they used to! Earlier I was at a store, and the guy gave me this worn out bill along with the rest of my change:

I hope it's not where we're headed. The great seal on the right looks pretty flimsy -- even flimsier than the Obama redesign.

Back in the old days, they knew how to design currency. Here's a Czarist era 100 Ruble note from 1910, showing Catherine the Great striking a classical pose:

Empires rise and fall like money.

Easy come, easy go.

Charlie Martin (who lives in Colorado) looks at why passenger trains can't compete with airlines as they do in Europe. The answer is simple arithmetic -- long distance trains take much too long:

I can imagine taking the train to New York on vacation, because I am a train nut and the trip would be fun in itself. But let's think about this as a business trip: taking the train would not only cost about 1.5 times as much -- or four times as much with a compartment, and I'm just sure I'd be all set to go right to work in New York after two full days in a coach seat -- but it consumes four working days in travel time. I can manage a one-day business trip by plane, but a one-day trip to New York by train is a five-day trip. Subsidies won't help: counting in the lost time, Amtrak would have to pay me $4,000 to make up for the time difference. The travel time difference is so large that Amtrak couldn't compete if train tickets were free.

So why are trains so popular in Europe? Simple: Europe is smaller. My Basel to Paris trip is 250 miles; Denver to New York is 1,625 miles. Why is Amtrak popular in the Northeast? Because, here we go, the distances are comparable to Europe: Washington, DC, to New York is 203 miles.

But to fly from Philadelphia to New York (something that was once routine) would be an act of insanity these days. Because of runway congestion and bureaucratic inefficiency, planes rarely take off on time from Philadelphia. As to landing on time in New York, you might have better luck winning at the Atlantic City crap tables. And that doesn't include the hour and a half you have to set aside to get past security and onto the plane. Or the often-impossible airport parking. To call it "insanity" is no exaggeration.

Even flying to Chicago is so iffy that depending on the circumstances, you'd often be better off driving. When I drove to the Midwest during the recent series of thunderstorms, I remember thinking how impossible it would have been to fly. On several occasions when I have tried to fly from Philadelphia to Chicago, I have ended up having to drive home because of weather-related flight cancellations and try the next day. I always end up thinking that had I known in advance about the cancellations, I could have gotten there faster by driving.

Taking the train to Chicago, though, is not as reasonable an option as driving. If you look at these Amtrak schedules, the listed time durations range from 17 to 27 hours, but each listed time period has an asterisk with this ominous message:

Approximate duration does not include layovers.

Even considering all the grim options, flying to Chicago still seems like the best of the worst.

But for the shorter Northeast corridor routes, not surprisingly, buses are emerging to fill the void between trains, planes, and driving. And I don't mean Greyhound, where passengers are treated like criminals by local narcs acting under authority of "Homeland Security."

The last time I went to New York, I tried a newer line called Megabus.Com. Despite having to go through New York's rush hour, they got us there nearly ontime, and the late night return trip was a snap -- even in pouring rain. These are slick new buses equipped with WiFi, and they even showed a DVD of one of the Narnia Chronicles (I was a bit too tired to watch fantasy, but I'm sure it helped my dreams while I slept....)

Best of all the Megabus costs $12.00 round trip. That's much, much cheaper than Amtrak's prices for the same trip, which range from $86.00 to $278.00.

It's even cheaper (and faster) than driving, because not only do you have the fuel costs, but there are whopping bridge tolls with long waits, and have you ever tried parking? In New York? Hah! You could sleep overnight in the average Motel 6 for less. The fastest way for me to drive to New York is to drive to Newark, park there, and take a local train across the bridge to New York Penn Station. But even then, the parking is $11.00, then the train fare is another $8.00. So the bus saves $7.00, and spares you the aggravation of two long and aggravating drives on the New Jersey Turnpike (something best used only by seasoned portal-travelers in Being John Malkovich).

In any case, getting from point A to point B is no fun unless you make it fun, and the best way to do that is by attempting to beat the system through economic navigation. Thank God we still have the free market system, which still allows (for now, at least) new companies like Megabus to appear out of nowhere and offer genuine services to human beings.

But if you think things are bad now, just wait till the carbon footprint people (a subdivision of the infernal "they" class that wants to run our lives) get their dirty mitts on every last aspect of what remains of our ability to simply get from point A to point B.

Our cherished constitutional right to travel will become infinitely more challenging.

I don't know whether there is such a thing as vicarious hedonism or whether I have what has been called a "freedom fetish," but something happened earlier which has been happening to me more and more. When I saw a pedestrian walking down the street smoking a cigarette, it made me very happy, and cheered me immensely. I swear it renews my faith in humanity to see people -- shrinking in numbers though they may be -- not doing as they are told.

This is not to say that I'm unaware of the possible health consequences of smoking, and I derive no pleasure from the idea that he might get cancer and die. However, the fact that he's willing to run such a risk while he defies a society dominated more and more by anti-cigarette bigotry -- well, I can only take comfort and solace in that as a form of inspiration.

When I say "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING," I mean it. I felt like pulling over and actually thanking the smoker, but most likely he would have thought I was a loony tune (or some asshole activist trying to upset him deliberately), so I didn't.

Because of the persecution, cigarettes have become a symbol of freedom.

A reminder of freedom that was.

As I say this, I am well aware that the "other side" would accuse me of a lack of "compassion." They'd probably think the smoker suffers from an addiction, and needs help, whether he wants it or not. (That's compassion for you; they used to put homos in mental hospitals for similar reasons.) Oddly, my lack of compassion is grounded in what I see as compassion. If they can regulate the smoker out of compassion, I can oppose the same regulations out of compassion. Compassion is seen by individualists as leaving people alone, and by communitarians as not leaving people alone.

You think this is bad, just wait till the compassionistas start helping people by forcing them to stop driving.

As part of my ongoing search for the musical roots of modern American hedonism (a search in which I take n