(Tap, tap) Hello, is this thing on? Can you hear me in the back? Great.

Okay, I'm not as erudite as The Captain, not as good a writer as Lileks, and no way can I be as prolific as InstantMan. And there's already one guy named Kevin from Houston on the net. So what, exactly, do I hope to contribute to this little party called the blogosphere?

Um, can I get back to you on that?

John Derbyshire at NRO tries his best to harsh our mellow, but I'm not buying it:

One of the disorienting things for an Old World conservative settling in America is that over here, even conservatives are optimistic. This really won't do. A conservative ought to be a pessimist, at least about human nature, human society, and the prospects for improving them.

Just as the American Left is different in character from the European Left -- never having truly embraced all-out Socialism or dallied with Communism -- the American Right is distinct from the European Right. There's that stubbornly optimistic Libertarian streak. The European Conservative understands that government cannot provide happiness or lead to the perfection of the human condition, and despairs; the American Conservative notes the same fact, but understands that the individual can achieve happiness, and that, as Adam Smith taught us, individuals pursuing their own ends in a civil manner will lead to the improvement of the human condition.

Pop culture is filth. It is now completely degenerate. Why do you never hear anyone humming a current pop song any more? Because none of them is hummable, or even worth bothering to remember. What is the main topic on TV sitcoms and "dramedies"? You know what. Why do you stand in the aisle in Blockbuster muttering to yourself: "There isn't a single damn movie in here I want to watch"? Because Hollywood produces nothing but crap, crap, crap.

There is more to Hollywood than Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, and there is more to pop culture than Hollywood. Just off the top of my head, I can think of plenty of recent movies that a sex-and-violence-hating conservative would enjoy: "Apollo 13", "Chicken Run", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "The Fellowship of the Ring", "Shrek". As Ted Sturgeon reminds us, ninety percent of everything is crud. Pop culture has always been mostly crap, and always will be. We pan through the past like a prospector, sifting out and saving the flecks of gold. The past was no Golden Age; we just remember the gold that we saved, not the dross we discarded.

And much of the vulgarity that Derbyshire laments is a characteristic of a mass media corporate culture that is on its way out, and is struggling to hang on to its power and influence. As cable channels catering to every taste proliferate, and broadband Internet promises to expand the options unimaginably further, the old guard -- the big three networks, the MPAA, the RIAA -- flail about, trying to summon the monolithic audiences they once commanded, with ever greater -- and ever coarser -- spectacles and stunts. They are desperate and dying; pay them no mind.

The environment is collapsing.

On this topic, I defer to Bjorn Lomborg.

Science has stopped. None of the really major scientific advances that you have been reading about since 1970 as "just over the horizon" is ever going to happen. Cheap fusion power; the colonization of Mars; artificial intelligence; supersonic air travel you can afford; contact with extraterrestrial civilizations; the conquest of cancer, tooth decay, or the common cold; fuhgeddaboutit.

Yeah, and global data networks, two-way radios small enough to carry in your pocket, aircraft that are invisible to radar, a tunnel under the English Channel, robotic dogs, and space travel so routine as to be boring -- what were we thinking back then?

Fugeddaboudit, indeed; the irony of reading such a comment in National Review Online is beyond my ability to lampoon sufficiently. Yes, a lot of predictions about the precise shape of the future were off the mark; but how can any adult in the Western world -- simply observing the changes that have taken place in his lifetime -- believe that scientific and technological progress has ground to a halt?

Only Anglo-Saxon countries can do democracy.

The oldest extant democracy in the world is that of Iceland. The second oldest is Switzerland. Compared to these, the Anglosphere has yet to prove it can stick with democracy for the long haul.

The third oldest democracy is the United States, which started out Anglo-Saxon, but has not remained so. True, the majority of Americans are still of European descent, though perhaps not for much longer; but to be caucasian is not necessarily to be Anglo-Saxon. I have not a drop of English blood in me, as far as I know; I and many other Caucasian Americans are descended from peoples that, by Derbyshire's analysis, only pretend at democracy. Some of them have pretended so hard as to have died fighting for it.

Taiwan will be re-united with the Motherland ... Something inconceivably horrible will happen in the Middle East ... The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride ... The U.S. constitution is incompatible with a war on terrorism ... Justice is dead ... We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!

Lighten up, Francis.

UPDATE (9 Aug 2002): Though he makes no reference to the Derbyshire piece, Eugene Volokh provides an elegant counterpoint to the gloomy conservative, as a justifiably optimistic libertarian.

Okay, I watched my usual Friday night one-two last night: Farscape and Stargate SG-1, back-to-back. I don't know how I made it through. I couldn't pause the show or go back and replay interesting bits, I couldn't zip forward through the commercials (that Arby's commercial with the news anchorman going nuts got old real fast), and I desperately wanted to go back and play on the 'net and watch the show later.

You see, my Tiverino went kerflooey while I was out of town, and its currently on its way back to the Philips mothership for repair or replacement. And I had forgotten just how unpleasant watching regular TV could be without it.

Yeah, I do own a VCR, and I could have programmed it to tape the shows for me. What part of "Lazy" do you not understand? Besides, that's just one show. I elected to skip my weekly Rukeyser fix, and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 rerun the next morning, because it just wasn't worth it.

Okay, so there must be some deeper philosophical point to make here, so that I'm not just bitching about my appliances going belly-up like some kind of spoiled yuppie. Think, think ... ah, got it.

One perennial worry about the future of technology is that we'll someday create an artificial intelligence, and it will replace us, the next stage in evolution (whereupon it send a robot back in time to kill Linda Hamilton before she got preggers, but you know how that one ends). It's not just a Hollywood plotline; serious people thinking serious thoughts about the future take this idea, um, seriously. One version of Vernor Vinge's Singularity is that human history ends because history is being made by someone (or someTHING, daa-dummmm) other than humans at that point. Eric Raymond gave a talk touching on this at last year's Open Source Software Conference, and this notion's been bugging me ever since.

It bugs me because it's wrong. Intelligence is easy to create; it can, in fact, be created by unskilled labor, and often by accident. (Condoms do break, you know.) Why would we need to create more?

What's coming down the pike is not artificial intelligence, but artificially augmented human intelligence.

I had little-to-no access to the Internet on a couple of recent trips out of town, and the experience was surprisingly unpleasant. I am used to having an encyclopedic memory for movies and TV shows; no more. I am used to knowing the definition of any word I come across; no more. I am used to knowing what movies are playing, where, and when, how to get to any address in town, and what's going on in the world at large; I am used, in fact, to having in-depth knowledge of any topic that crosses my mind.

Sitting at my parents' house, playing Solitaire on a 486 PC that lacked even a modem connection, I didn't just feel cut off; I felt stupid.

And in a very practical sense, I was. No, techically, the Internet doesn't truly make me smarter, any more than a hammer really makes me stronger, or a bicycle really makes me faster. But in evolution, there's no such thing as "cheating"; results are all that count. Elephants have strength, lions have a deadly attack, birds have flight -- and humans have the brains and hands to make tools. Tools that make us stronger than any elephant, deadlier than any lion, and faster and higher-flying than any bird.

And smarter than humans of previous generations. I have seen the next stage of human evolution, and it is called "Google".

Just to close the circle: digital cable television, satellite receivers, VCRs, and Tivo have made us much more adept at watching television, compared to the benighted troglodytes of ancient times whose TVs had black and white nine-inch screens, and only received three channels. And being able to watch reruns of "Forever Knight" whenever you want, wherever you want, commercial-free, is of course what really matters in life.

I wouldn't call it a new look; call it the stylesheet equivalent of changing the part in your hair. Just tinkering a bit.

I took the quite fashionable stylesheet provided by Mena Trott, and mutilated it to my own, more puritanical, tastes. Mostly it consisted of stripping out hard-coded font families and sizes, and letting a lot of parameters fall back to the defaults provided by the browser. If you don't like the font you're seeing now, you have no one to blame but yourself: it's the default font from your browser preferences. Pilate-like, I wash my hands of responsibility; font selection is up to you.

I'll probably do some more tinkering, but don't expect anything fancy. I'm one of those old fogeys who fondly remembers a time, back in the dark ages of 1995, when all the web pages were battleship gray, and the color schemes and text sizes didn't induce migranes. I hated the early Wired; my idea of a well-designed magazine is The New Republic. I even occasionally browse using Lynx.

We're not going to get quite that primitive, children; I'm sure I'll still have something on the page that Jakob Nielsen would find objectionable.

With the stock market in the dumper lately, the idea of Social Security reform is dead, right?

Wrong. Andrew Biggs of the Cato Institute points out that, as wretched as the last couple of years' returns have been, a worker retiring at age 65 today would still be better off having invested his retirement money in a stock market index fund than in Social Security. If allowed to invest in a mix of stocks and bonds, the returns would be better still.

It might be expedient for advocates of private retirement savings to place their emphasis not on how good the stock market is, but rather, on how bad the existing, government-managed alternative is.

Reuters and Yahoo identify these yahoos as "Baath party soldiers" -- i.e., Saddam Hussein's best and brightest. (Link courtesy of InstantMan.)

Okay, the belts-full of explosives are just too surreal for words. But note, too, the level of training and discipline implied by this photo. I'm not expert in how a Kalashnikov is supposed to be handled, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to sling it over your shoulder by the barrel.

But anyway ... what, exactly, are the explosives supposed to accomplish? I mean, when we send our soldiers into combat, we give them explosives too, but in a form that can easily be thrown at the enemy. (If one of those belts gets hit by a rifle round, could it go off?)

Maybe we mistake the intent of this battlefield fashion statement. Perhaps these belly bombs are meant to serve a different purpose.

I imagine Saddam, in his bunker, after the war has begun. A staff officer rushes in: "Mr. President-for-Life, the front in sector seven has collapsed! The 102nd Screaming Martyrs have been routed!" Saddam calmly reaches toward a control panel, and presses a button marked "102" -- and miles away, at the front, the men of the 102nd explode like a string of firecrackers.

"That'll teach those damned slackers," rumbles Saddam.

(I know I really should take this more seriously.)

Okay, I am taking it more seriously now, because I figured it out; I know why Saddam Hussein really put suicide belts on his soldiers. It took a post from the redoubtable James Lileks to prod me into figuring it out, but I think I've got it. Seriously, this time.

Keeping up morale in a conscript army is tough in any case. It makes it a bit easier if you can demonize the enemy, convince them that those heathen American will stampede the women and rape the cattle, and they skin their prisoners alive, so do what the nice political officer tells you and don't even think about surrendering.

That becomes harder if you have a few "veterans" of Gulf War One still around. "Yeah, kid, I remember surrendering to the Yankee dogs. They gave us all the water we wanted, and the first actual meal I'd eaten in two weeks. They had something called 'Cool Ranch Doritos'. I'm looking forward to surrendering again; I want to try the Nacho Cheese this time."

Okay, I'm slipping back into comedy mode (sorry), but you get the idea. Attempts to scare the troops about the horrors that await them if they surrender to the Americans will lack credibility, due to previous experience.

But what if some of the soldiers "surrendering" are actually suicide bombers? Will the Americans be so quick to accept surrender after a few such prospective prisoners have blown themselves up, and taken their captors with them? Aren't the Americans more likely to simply shoot any Iraqi solder they see, whether he has his hands in the air or not?

Well, no. We have some idea of the real level of loyalty and willingness to sacrifice at work here (i.e., little to none). American troops approached by surrendering Iraqi soldiers might require them to lift their shirts and show that they're not packing, but that shouldn't slow things down much.

But remember that this idea isn't directed at us; it's aimed at the Iraqi conscripts, and it just might get some traction with them. No Cool Ranch Doritos for you, fella; the Yankees will shoot you on sight because they think you might have a bomb. Just follow orders like a good soldier, and you might actually survive. It's the only explanation I've got that makes any sense.

But maybe making sense is optional. Maybe I'm giving the Baath military planners too much credit, and they really just think suicide bomb belts are cool and macho. I hope they really are that dumb. But the disincentive to surrender might still apply, even if it's not the explicit intent.

Comments, anyone? (Hint, hint, see link below.)

Charles Krauthammer writes about the case of Yaser Hamdi, a Taliban soldier captured by the US military, who turns out to be a US citizen. He makes sense, but fails to grapple with the really tough question (which, admittedly, is not directly raised by the Hamdi case).

Hamdi was captured on the field of battle, armed, living and fighting among enemy soldiers. The military should therefore, says The Hammer, be able to hold him as a prisoner of war, with correspondingly limited rights. If they have the right to shoot him in combat, surely they can keep him prisoner. Fair enough.

But "we should acknowledge a different standard for a citizen apprehended unarmed in the United States" [emphasis added], with standard criminal procedures and standards, and the burden of proof being on the military to prove combatant status. Also fair enough.

But that leaves a yawning gap in between, one particularly relevant to the current conflict. What about those captured on home territory, but engaged in "asymmetric warfare", i.e., terrorism? Suppose, for example, that United Flight 93 had been brought home safely, and after the hijackers were detained, one of them was discovered to be a U.S. citizen. He would have committed what the government considers to be an act of war. What standard would apply?

I haven't thought of a good answer for this question. But we may have to come up with an answer, and soon; the issue may be forced upon us.

I recently attended the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention, and was fortunate enough to catch Lawrence Lessig's keynote there, on the historical role of intellectual property in popular culture, and how media companies are perverting the intent of IP law. Old news for many, I'm sure, but Lessig states the case well; and the accompanying Flash presentation is worth a few minutes of your time, if nothing else.

And if you feel moved to act by his words, then by all means, do so.

Steven den Beste, redoubtable skipper of the USS Clueless, holds forth at length on the subject of military innovation in the US and UK armed forces, and the role that the cultural values of those two countries affect their performance.

Now, I realize that by disagreeing with Steven, I'm taking my life in my hands here, or at least my reputation; but given that I don't have a reputation, here goes.

The Brits have a point; it makes sense to institutionalize the means by which military research and development is done.

Good old Yankee ingenuity has certainly produced visible, and justifyably famous, success stories. But those major successes have all been with front-line weaponry, which is actually a fairly small part of the technology brought to bear in a war, and may not be the decisive part. As Steven has pointed out elsewhere, victory may hinge on some decidedly unglamorous technology. Will such drudgework engineering as transportation and communication -- where the connection to the success of the war effort, while manifest, is less obvious -- attract the same attention as does actual weaponry?

An institutionalized research organization can allocate resources to development projects that matter the most to the war effort, and can direct the attention of engineers and innovators to where their ingenuity will do the most good. Larger projects can be contemplated, with a level of planning and management that is flatly impossible when dealing with individual tinkerers.

Such tinkerers, drawn from the general population of soldiers and sailors in a self-selecting fashion, may devote themselves to some project, or not, pretty much on their own volition; will they be there when cruch time comes? Can such a process be relied upon when time is short and lives are at stake?

In civilian economy and society, entrepreneurship is a clear win. But military operations are fundamentally different; logistics -- which is to say, planning, at both the tactical and strategic scale -- is everything. It is essential that military leadership be able to plan as far in advance as possible, and allocate resources accordingly. Institutionalized research and development lends itself to this need; it allows for the possibility that new technology can be managed and tracked as it is developed, even on a very tight timetable.

And the importance of the quality of personnel at work on those innovations is not to be brushed off. Weapon systems are complex, and involve design tradeoffs that are not obvious without intensive study; and certain fields of study are put to use in defense that are used nowhere else in the economy. An institutional development organization can find and attract the most qualified people, focus their efforts, and if necessary, spend the time and resources needed to train them in the deep knowledge required for this work.

The alternative, a chaotic and unreliable system of innovation that is Open to any Source of ideas available, cannot possibly produce a superior alternative, can it?

(Heh. Just kidding. Obviously, it can. Freedom and innovation go hand in hand, whether in warfare or software.)

The Onion, beacon of truth and clarion of hope for tomorrow, brings us word of a voice of common sense and firm resolve, a true leader for these troubled times.

He's opposed to higher taxes, strong on defense, and more articulate than Dubya. And the downside is what, exactly?

Put him on the ticket with Condi Rice, and you've got a winner.

Gronk/Rice 2004: Gronk now, more than ever!

(And then the Democrats run Grogg/Lieberman...)

Conservatives make the case that President Bush (the Current, not the Former) is not, as widely proclaimed on the left, an idiot. They cite SAT scores (not as good as Gore's but better than Bradley's), his Harvard MBA degree (family connections will get you in, but won't necessarily get you out again with a sheepskin in hand), and the testimony of those who've spoken with him at length in private, and found him more more impressive face-to-face than in front of a crowd.

Fair enough. Many people have trouble with public speaking, your present author emphatically included. Many people mangle their syntax, yet have impressive intellects. Resolved: George Bush is, if not brilliant, then at least reasonably intelligent, but seriously inarticulate.

But the pro-Bush argument stops there; once Bush's general acuity is acknowledged, it seems, there is no problem. Not so.

Ronald Reagan, a man of simple and occasionally amusing verbal habits, is nonetheless known as The Great Communicator, and with some justice. He spoke clearly, persuasively, and often inspiringly. He even made some oratorical history, in his call to "tear down this wall". Bartlett's Quotations may not love him, but he was comfortable and effective before a crowd, and this was a major political asset.

A President must communicate, and must do so effectively before crowds, microphones, and cameras. He may be able to skate by in relatively quiet periods (Gerald Ford springs to mind), but when crunch time comes, we need a Communicator, a Persuader, in the Oval Office.

As George Will points out, crunch time is officially here; it is time for the Administration -- quite specifically, the President himself and no mere proxy -- to make the case, to spell out why we are launching hostilites on someone who has not directly acted against us, a precedent in American history.

The case is there to be made, and Will makes it ably. But it needs to be made by you-know-who, and George W. Bush's broken lines may not be sufficient to connect these particular dots. Especially as the election draws near, and the Democrats in Congress are deciding whether or not to embrace the President and his war.

(Can you tell I've been reading George Will? The too-clever-by-half verbiage tends to rub off on you. It's fun to stretch your grammatical legs once in a while, but it gets tedious to read pretty quickly. No fears: I'll get back to ripping off Lileks' style instead now.)