Tuesday, January 28, 2003

[Colin Glassey]To Make the World Free! An impassioned essay here which I agree with. Entitled simply War it goes on at some length on why war with Iraq is justfied. Here is a quote from the end of the essay: I am not an ideologue in this regard, and I certainly don’t want to send our sons and daughters out to fight and die for anything less than our safety and survival. But that, to me, is looking like what it might come to. Each success makes the next case easier, and each triumph further shames and silences our critics. ... If we have the courage of our convictions, if we do indeed feel that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth fighting and dying for, then we may find that freeing the world is in our national interest, regardless of the cost. This is what I believe. For too long we have watched as other people lived in failed countries ruled by tyrants. Its time for that to stop. For us to live in peace and safety, the rest of the world must be free. No more toleration of tyrants and dictators. No more accepting the rights of kings and dictators. That time is over. Live free, or die. 3:08:19 PM     [Colin Glassey] Why is Housing in Palo Alto so Expensive? This is an insightful essay by John Nye about Irreducibile Inequality. Put simply, as incomes rise, the best things that can not be mass produced (like real estate in Palo Alto) will be more expensive. The same sorts of people will buy it (i.e. the richest 1% of the population) but they will have to pay more for it. The down side is that the rest of the population which is gaining income (and may even be gaining slightly on the top 1%) will not be able to afford the best. I'm giving up on living in Palo Alto myself after reading this :-) BTW: Blogging has been curtailed to some degree due to my course work at San Jose State. 2:01:00 PM     [Colin Glassey] Pragmatic Pacifism In this new essay by Lee Harris, he argues for Pragmatic Pacifism. Lee Harris argues (amoung other points) that the reason why the U.S. let Saddam stay in power after the Gulf War of 1991 was that we didn't know what to do. We were in a new world, a world where we were operating not for our own national interest or survival, but to perserve a world moral order. Here is the ending of his essay: If the international community supported the First Gulf War overwhelmingly, which clearly it did, it is morally committed to supporting the current policy of the United States and the failure to realize this connection can be most charitably ascribed to intellectual dishonesty. Since the United States is the only nation in the world that is willing to play this role, let alone capable of playing it, there are only three ways that it can relate to the international community: either as its lackey, or as its leader, or as its tyrant. The world cannot really expect the United States to be its lackey, and certainly doesn't want it to be its tyrant. And this leaves them only one choice. Those who are now currently refusing to accept America's moral right to lead at this point are betraying the very ideals they pretend to champion—you cannot have world peace until someone enforces it; but no one who is powerful enough to enforce it can be persuaded to enforce it like a flunkey—it is utopianism to think otherwise. Thanks (as usual) to InstaPundit for the link. 1:53:37 PM     [Colin Glassey] Science News This Week Great article about the Dry valleys in Antartica which once were buried under glacial ice but now have an exposed rocky surface. The glacier ice appears to have simply disappeared, sublimated into the air, leaving behind some odd terrain which is very much like some terain we have photographed on Mars. Bottom line: glaciers like the ones that used to be in the dry valleys could have existed on Mars. A really wonderful science mystery shows no signs of being solved as the study of the Leaf Cutter Ants continue. Leaf cutter ants discovered farming some 50 million years ago (they farm mushrooms). Now we know the ants are constantly seeking to defeat a mold which will destroy their mushrooms and we have learned the ants fight the mold with antibiotics produced by a bacterium that lives in a patch on their skin. This is the most complex symbiosis we have (yet) discovered. The mysteries keep piling up. Read the article. :-) 1:48:03 PM

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