27 April 2004 @ 4:54PM >> One of the co-founders of Greenpeace has an article in the San Francisco Chronicle detailing some of the damage caused by the extremist take-over of the environmental movement:

For example, today’s eco-activists boast that they have blocked more than 200 hydroelectric projects in the developing world over the past two decades. It is true that hydro power has a large ecological footprint, creating lakes and filling valleys. But it is a renewable energy that makes it possible to read after the sun goes down, boosting literacy in poor areas. It provides controlled irrigation for better crop yields and mitigates flooding and the loss of life and property damage.

Moreover, green groups have zero-tolerance policies when it comes to genetically modified crops. This includes the genetically modified “golden rice” that could help prevent blindness in Asian and African children (as many as 500,000 go blind every year, according to the National Institutes of Health) plus hundreds of millions of others who suffer from vitamin A deficiency. Because of activist opposition to GM crops, it will be at least five years before golden rice can be planted in many parts of the developing world. That means another 2.5 million kids could go blind even though no human or natural risk is associated with planting this crop.

The article concludes:

Until the environmental movement comes to terms with the harm it has fostered in addition to the victories it has achieved, there will be no reason to celebrate Earth Day for millions of people around the globe.

What would America be like if these environmentalists had been around in, say, 1850? Probably much like the third world today.

26 April 2004 @ 11:20PM >> If you’ve ever wondered who benefits from the peace movement, consider this:

A group holding three Italians hostage in Iraq has threatened to kill them in five days unless Italians take to the streets to publicly denounce their country’s involvement in the U.S.-led occupation.

Let’s see if the protesters take the bait. If so, it’ll be another example of the European left helping terrorists achieve their objectives.

26 April 2004 @ 7:40PM >> Traditional media outlets are finally covering the bombshell U.N. scandal that many web sites—including this one—started reporting back in February.

Dubbed UNSCAM, the scandal involves the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, which Saddam Hussein subverted to reward people connected to the governments that most strongly opposed military action against him. Many billions of dollars in pay-offs occurred, and it now appears that the U.N.—if it didn’t actively facilitate this scam—certainly looked the other way. But claims of innocence at the U.N. sound a little hollow, considering who benefitted.

ABC News reports that “[a]t least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multimillion-dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime” and that “[m]ost prominent among those accused in the scandal is Benon Sevan, the Cyprus-born U.N. undersecretary general who ran the program for six years.”

If the accusations prove true, Sevan’s alleged activities “would have generated an illegal profit of as much as $3.5 million.” And that was just for him. The U.N. itself collected over $1 billion in commissions on the sales of Iraqi oil.

According to Michael Soussan, a former U.N. Oil-for-Food program coordinator one estimate says “Saddam Hussein used the U.N. operation to extort $4.4 billion in kickbacks from Iraq’s international trading partners.” Another report claims over $10 billion in fraud.

As London’s The Telegraph reported, “The list is an extraordinary collection of names, stretching from Paris to Moscow, from the Vatican to the Far East.”

So now we know. Higher-ups at the U.N. had a vested financial interest in keeping Hussein in power, as did affiliates of French and Russian government officials. They were doing billions in business with Saddam. No wonder he felt safe ignoring each and every U.N. resolution passed against his regime. Threats of force issued by the U.N. were completely meaningless to Hussein, because the people who were supposed to be enforcing them were on his payroll, profiting from his oil. Gives a whole new meaning to the slogan no war for oil, doesn’t it?

This story should have implications for our election, which may explain why it still isn’t getting the coverage it deserves. John Kerry wants to give the United Nations a veto over our national security decisions. Does that really sound like such a good idea?

23 April 2004 @ 8:03PM >> How often do you hear about some dangerous food that will take years off your life if you consume too much of it? How often does it turn out to be something that, ten years prior, we were told we should eat more of? As children, we were told to drink our milk. Now Atkins advises against it.

The moral of the story is, scientists aren’t always right. Bandwagons roll through the scientific community just like any other.

Recently, I discovered this Newsweek article from 1975 that warned of “ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change” and that—get this—the changing patterns were caused by global cooling that could bring about a “little ice age”:

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

Some of the scientists even proposed solutions to the “grim reality” of global cooling that we’re now told will happen naturally as the result of global warming, “such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers [...]”

A generation ago, scientists warned us against global cooling. Now they’re ringing the alarm bells about global warming. Think about that next time the media hypes The Next Great Crisis.

22 April 2004 >> In Manhattan, most people take the subway to and from work. A lot of people take buses, while some take cabs. And then there is The Van. More >>

21 April 2004 >> After more than ten years in the software industry, I’ve seen projects large and small implode for a variety of reasons. Although the process of software development starts off like a traditional engineering task, beyond a certain level of complexity, software takes on biological properties.

To run smoothly, software must be in perfect balance. Changes to the environment can disturb that balance; a change in one area can cause problems in seemingly unrelated areas. That’s why software maintenance tends to get exponentially more complex for each incremental increase in the amount of code in a given project.

Despite having seen projects disintegrate in stunning fashion, I was still surprised by the extent of the damage done by a failed software upgrade at AT&T Wireless. An article in CIO magazine details the horrors “that cost the telco thousands of new customers and an estimated $100 million in lost revenue.”

20 April 2004 @ 3:06PM >> According to the left, Bush Lied. Saddam Hussein didn’t pose a threat to anyone, despite the fact that he had used weapons of mass destruction in the past. No, he didn’t have such weapons, they say, despite the fact that when U.N. inspectors vacated Iraq in 1998, they left with a long list of weapons that Saddam hadn’t accounted for.

No, Bush Lied, you see, despite the fact that the intelligence reports Bush cited were consistent across three U.S. administrations and were corroborated by the intelligence estimates of many western nations. Forget all that; those are merely inconvenient details that cloud the bigger picture: Bush Lied.

Now we discover that Denmark Lied, too! According to the BBC:

Denmark has declassified intelligence reports compiled before the Iraq war which show officials thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In one report, Iraq was thought to have both chemical and biological weapons, as well as an active nuclear programme.

Since John Kerry is so fond of citing his purported popularity in foreign lands, perhaps he should consider running for Prime Minister of Denmark instead. At least then, his wife Teresa “I can’t believe I live in America” Heinz Kerry might be happy.

8 April 2004 >> Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission made for riveting listening. The political fireworks were on full display when the Democrats on the panel pressed Rice, asking why President Bush had not developed a pre-September 11th plan to preemptively attack Afghanistan and disrupt al Qaeda. These questions, of course, come from the same folks who criticize Bush administration for acting preemptively against Iraq.

The inconsistencies of the Democratic arguments against the Bush Administration make it impossible for them to put forth any alternate vision, because anything they propose will conflict with some of their previous criticisms. Even that they’ll deny, though; they’ll sweeten their waffles with the syrup of nuance, the word they use to cover up the fact that they’re holding several completely contradictory stances simultaneously.

According to principles of quantum mechanics, it is possible for a subatomic particle to occupy multiple positions at the same time. Perhaps the Democrats hope to become the quantum party. If so, it explains why John Kerry, the consummate Quantum Candidate, is the perfect person to head the Democratic ticket this fall. More >>