Afghanistan

The new policy is send 30k troops for 18 months. Tribal leaders, Taliban leaders you only need to keep your head down for 18 months.

Actually I don't fault Obama for this. Our whole society both left and right are wrong headed about this. The right version of victory is send as many troops as needed, pacify the country like we did Japan and Germany in WWII. The left version is... actually I don't really know what the left wants other than to withdraw alltogether. Probably the main difference between my view and the view of the left is I don't profess to care much about Afghanistan. I am for getting out and I don't particularly care what happens to Afghanistan after that.

What I don't understand is why we are staking our success, our reputation and our ability to inspire fear in those who might want to attack us on whether or not Afghanistan becomes something better than what it is. It is sort of like the top down approach of the central planners in the current government who want to make us all better people with government policy. This is ridiculous. I can improve myself, I can have some effect on my family but making believe we can improve people through government policy is silly. Our Afghan policy is a bit like you or I staking our reputation on whether we can make the methamphetamine dealing family down the street better by sending your son and daughter to go break up their fights. When they get shot are we going to say they died for a cause? Their death was not for nothing?

18 months from now, 18 years from now Afghanistan is still going to be a mess. There is one way Afghanistan will not be a mess 18 years from now, maybe two. They could spontaneously change their ways and become a modern enlightened people. Quantum physicist will tell you virtually nothing has a 0 probability. The second and more likely (but still next to 0% chance) way for this to happen would be to send half a million to a million troops and garrison the country for 20 years or more until people begin to forget their current ways of living. Tens of thousands of american soldiers will die but in the end something will have been accomplished. Whether it will have been worth the cost is another matter. The current policy will mean probably hundreds will die until the insurgent forces make occupying Afghanistan unpopular enough for american poiticians to withdraw. At that point will we say they died for a worthy cause and that because of their sacrifice the world is a better place?

Climategate continued

Here is a good editorial from the Wall Street Journal on this. It kind of says what I said earlier, if the science was so good why was any of this necessary. When Eddington tested Einstein's theory of simple relativity the results were what they were. Once it was proven, there was nothing to hide from and no fear of other scientists verifying the results. One difference here is we are dealing with probabilities and not solid facts, but something strong enough to act on and to take drastic measures based on, should be strong enough to survive a certain level scrutiny, don't you think?

I have just been wondering as this starts to unravel if more people may come out of the woodwork. For years AGW proponents have been intimidating people who might otherwise speak up questioning AGW. Skeptics risked being labeled as "deniers". As these cracks have been forming it may encourage others to reveal what they know. I don't have a lot of faith that this will turn the tide of the AGW debate. People who control government funding are still going to fund studies favorable to AGW. There is so much momentum behind AGW belief in popular culture that I don't think it can stop on a dime. To tell you the truth I don't know for certain what is real with regard to AGW and from what I have seen in the last week and a half neither does anyone else. What I do know is many people have jumped on the AGW train in the last decade without much concern for examining if it is real or not. There has been almost a religious fervour that has shouted down any real debate. Absent also has been any cost benefit analysis as to what level of global warming could be acceptable. No level of global warming is tolerable and all steps need to be taken regardless of the outcome or cost. If this means spending trillions of dollars with negligible affect, slowing our technological development, lowering our standard of living then so be it. If it means developing nations be prevented from reaching the standard of living of the US and people die due to lack of electricity and all that it brings then so be it. This is not acceptable. Millions may die as a result of AGW policies, that have not been been debated, and are based on questionable scientific evidence.

Maybe India, China, Russia and some other contries who have basically said up yours when it has been suggested they jump on the AGW train as will take an interest in disproving AGW. My personal opinion is AGW actually worked in their favor. If your competitors (us) want to run a race with weights tied around their ankles, why stop them. The populations of these countries were either more concerned with economic development or the leaders were in a position not to care what their citizens wanted.

Anyhow, I don't think this is going to be over just yet.

Meanwhile in another Universe

Steven Seagal is a cop?

In real life?

This seems to prove the theory of multiple Universes with different outcomes. So how do I get back to mine?

Climategate

I have been all over the internet reading about climeategate today and one thing has me puzzled. Here is a sample of what I found. One of the arguments, one of the more popular arguments anyway is that this is isolated and whatever happened East Anglia is only data that has been tested and verified by other scientists at other research centers. If this is the case then why the need to; a. hide data from FOI requests that would have been tested elsewhere and b. "hide the decline"? Was East Anglia the only research center that found a decline? If no other centers found declines then why not? If East Anglia had bad computer code, bad data or bad tests, why were they not concerned to cross check their results with other research centers. It just seems

Nothing Penetrates

You know, if they found emails from Christ discussing with his disciples how the water to wine thing was a simple trick with food dye, I think Christians would be quicker to lose faith than these global warming believers.

Taggart Transcontinental Waffles?

Don't tell me Rand was right and it is going to begin with waffles? Not sure what the production problems are but I find it kind of chilling in a way.

What could happen?

I'm sure nothing can go wrong with this. I saw a scientist on the History Channel talking about the LHC and how the risk is minimal because mini black holes evaporate much to quickly and eat to slowly to be a danger. This comforted me for about the expected lifespan of a mini-black hole until I realized no one has ever actually observed one and measured its lifespan or how fast it eats including the guy telling me all this in great detail. All speculation is based on theory and theories are never wrong, right? If we new definitively how mini-black holes worked we probably would not need the LHC to tell us that. Well, if they are wrong at least we may get the answer to another question, why no other intelligent life has been detected given the predictions of Drake's equation.