The Marching Armadillo Legions

The Animal Uprising™ is busily occupying new territory in its conquest of the world. This time it is the Armadillo Legion® moving North into the Midwest. And they are wreaking havoc upon the poor flyover states.

"We've had armadillos killed on the road just about every year" since 2003, says Nelson, reflecting what wildlife specialists say is ample evidence that the creatures with the pencil-thin tail are nudging their way northward from their southern U.S. climes.

"We've got them in Nebraska; that's as far north as we have any records," said Lynn Robbins, a biology professor at Missouri State University. "They're adapting, filling in so many places."

To Robbins, the prehistoric-looking armadillo — Spanish for "little armored thing" — is here to stay.

Exactly how many of Texas' official state mammal have made their way into the Midwest remains elusive. But observers say the remarkable advance may have been aided by the region's lack of predators and the abundance of favorable habitat such as forests and river valleys.

Milder winters packing less long-standing snow and ice — the bane of armadillos who have little body fat, don't hibernate and rely on their noses to root out beetles, grubs and earthworms — hasn't hurt, either.

"All the evidence, the sightings and the number of roadkill would indicate that their numbers are increasing," said Clay Nielsen, a wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. In Illinois in recent years, "there's been quite a spurt in sightings."

Just how they're getting here also isn't clear. Some may have been released by people, either as pranks or by folks second-guessing the sensibility of having them as pets. Others suspect the nocturnal animals are master stowaways, freeloading rides north on barges or railroad cars.

Or "maybe they're coming from Missouri on their own four feet," perhaps using bridges to conquer the Mississippi River separating that state from Illinois, says Joyce Hofmann, senior research scientist with the Illinois Natural History Survey's center for wildlife and plant ecology in Champaign. "This is just the direction they're headed."

The "little armored things" are essentially possums wearing full plate. They are out to attack humans at every opportunity. One of them purposely throws themselves under the wheels of onrushing cars, hoping to get the driver to swerve into the ditch. That is where they have the ambush party waiting!  Our advice is to not swerve when confronted with the Kamikaze plated possum. Accelerate instead. They make a satisfying series of thumps under the car!

Iran Urinates On UN

Big surprise.

The Iranian government immediately rejected the resolution, vowing in a statement from Tehran to continue enriching uranium, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel for civilian purposes or for a nuclear bomb. The government said it "has not delegated its destiny to the invalid decisions of the U.N. Security Council."

Anyone other than James Baker who didn't see that one coming raise your hand.

Then slap yourself with it.

In Which I Review A Reviewer

In general, I tend to steer away from reviewers of pretty well any fiction, books movies or music. At times, a really good, knowledgeable reviewer may have an interesting insight into a particular movie or book or song, but all too often all they are doing is projecting their own personal views on whatever subject onto someone else's creation. This is not so much commentary as it is an assault on someone else's creativity. An imposition of someone's ideas and prejudices onto another, mostly, as I see it, to pump up the reviewer's own feeling of importance. That said, there are some reviewers I generally like and some I wouldn't read on a bet. I'll let the reader decide where on that scale I fall in this case, since I am actually undertaking to review a review here.

David Itzkoff, writing in the New York Times, takes aim at a book by John Scalzi. I have not read that book, or indeed, any of Scalzi's books. That is not what I am writing this post about. What I am addressing here is Itzkoff's lengthy preface to his actual review of Scalzi. That preface is an attack on Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

When an emerging science-fiction writer’s work earns him comparisons to Robert A. Heinlein, should he take them as a compliment? Don’t misunderstand me: I have no reason to doubt that the old master’s classic novels “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” are still as good as I remember them (and if they aren’t, please don’t tell me). But Heinlein’s military sci-fi, particularly the book that practically invented the genre, “Starship Troopers,” has not aged well, to put it mildly.

First published in 1959, when America’s misadventure in Korea was over and its intervention in Vietnam was hardly a twinkle in John F. Kennedy’s eye, “Starship Troopers” tells of the education of a naïve young man who enlists in a futuristic infantry unit. Raised by his father to believe that the practice of war is obsolete, the immature soldier — and, by extension, the reader — is instructed through a series of deep space combat missions that war is not only unavoidable, it is vital and even noble. While peace, Heinlein writes, is merely “a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties,” war is what wins man his so-called unalienable rights and secures his liberty. The practice of war is as natural as voting; both are fundamental applications of force, “naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax.”

From here the book starts to get a little scary. Frame it as a cautionary tale if it helps you sleep better, but to a contemporary reader it is almost impossible to interpret the novel as anything other than an endorsement of fascism, from an era when the f-word wasn’t just a pejorative suffix to be attached to any philosophy you disagreed with. Taken literally — and there is no indication that Heinlein meant otherwise — “Starship Troopers” might be the least enticing recruitment tool since “Billy Budd.”

In those paragraphs, I can detect , I think, a common thread. Mr. Itzkoff is not really familiar with the military and has a rather imprecise understanding of what fascism actually is. If you do not really understand the difference between duty and honor and equate them with fascism, you are kind of missing the entire point of Heinlein's work. Itzkoff also appears to miss the point that there is a very strong, logical consistency running through all (or almost all, there are a very few that are somewhat different in some ways) of Heinlein's works that essentially restates the author's belief in duty and honor. That would, ironically, include the two books Itzkoff cites as masterworks. There have been a number of attempts recently to redefine fascism to mean all things Republican, but I think the dictionary definition is appropriate here:

fas·cism [fash-iz-uhm] noun

1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

What Heinlein does, I think, in Starship Troopers, is to explore how the individual comes to understand that it is sometimes more important to put others - society as a whole, if you will - ahead of personal selfishness. In other words, duty and honor.

Well, there, I've now projected my own personal views on another's work. The reader can decide how I did.

UPDATE: Well, I just noticed from the server logs that this post has been linked by John Scalzi from his blog, thank you very much. I did buy a copy of Old Man's War today when I did a bit of last minute shopping, so I will finally get around to reading that.

Meet The Newest Innovation!

You've heard of the venerable tradition of the Yule Log. This is where a large chunk of tree is burned in the fireplace as a way to celebrate Christmas. The log is lit, the Yule (called "booze" at other times of the year) is drunk and a good time is had all around. Or if you're a pagan, it's just a chance to burn a big log and drink. Some television channels, notably public access channels that have little else to program with, show a "virtual Yule Log" burning on a virtual hearth. That way you can indulge in lots of "Yule" without actually having to deal with the ashes of a log.

Modern technology has also brought us a new interwebby tube application that has gotten a lot of attention this past year. It's called YouTube™ of course. And it is a way to share interesting, or weird, or silly videos of various subjects with everyone in the whole wide world. And waste a lot of time on. Well, it appears that a man in Bakersfield, California has merged the two technologies.

He's created the YouLog™. to protest the local school board calling the winter and spring breaks "Christmas" and "Easter" breaks, respectively. As in he set fire to himself in protest.

The man, who was not immediately identified, on Friday also set fire to a Christmas tree, an American flag and a revolutionary flag replica, said Fire Captain Garth Milam.

Seeing the flames, Sheriff's Deputy Lance Ferguson grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the man.

Flames were devouring a Christmas tree next to the Liberty Bell, where public events and demonstrations are common.

Beside the tree the man stood with an American flag draped around his shoulders and a red gas can over his head.

Seeing the deputy, the man poured the liquid over his head. He quickly burst into flames when the fumes from the gas met the flames from the tree.

The deputy ordered the man to drop to the ground as he and a parole agent sprayed him with fire extinguishers.

"The man stood there like this," the deputy said with his arms across his chest and his head bent down, "Saying no, no, no."

The man suffered first degree burns on his shoulders and arms, Milam said.

Kern County Sheriff's Deputy John Leyendecker said the man had a sign that read: "(expletive) the religious establishment and KHSD."

Now, we suspect that said man needs more than a little face time with some mental health professionals, and we seriously hope he gets some. But as a new Yule tradition, it was a flop. Nobody brought any good Yule to drink while sitting and watching the conflagration.

UPDATE: AllahPundit has pictures - and a huge discrepancy. Supposedly the guy burned for 30 seconds - yet his hair is perfect. And he had first degree burns. Can we say stunt?

UPDATE: Others: Verum Serum, OTB, Gateway Pundit, Sister Toldjah, Rightwinged, While Rome Burns, Rain Falls on Everyone, Political Dogs, Thinkin' About Stuff,

Illegal Surveillance

Jim Lynch has a chilling revelation that should have been published by the New York Times, but they are obviously in the tank on this one. We must stop this at all costs. For the children, of course.

Experiments, Experiments

Doug Ross over at Director Blue has an interesting thought experiment posted which you can read here. We hasten to add that the Sandy Berger Experiment has nothing whatsoever to do with the Alan Parsons Project or the Blue Man Group Keyboard Experience.

Deny This

The cretins who just had their little class reunion in Tehran to get together and deny the Holocaust will have a bit of trouble explaining all this away. The International Tracing Service, part of the International Red Cross is going to open its archives after more than 50 years. More details of the Nazi system of concentration camps, bordellos where women were forced to work as prostitutes and death camps are already emerging. And the picture is one of a massive death machine run with great enthusiasm and efficiency.

Holocaust historians are only now piecing together the scattered research in many languages to understand the vast scope of the camps, prisons and punishment centers that scarred German-ruled Europe, like a pox on the landscape stretching from Greece to Norway and eastward into Russia.

Collecting and analyzing fragmented reports, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum say they have pinpointed some 20,000 places of detention and persecution — three times more than they estimated just six years ago.

And soon they will know much more.

They are about to have their first access to millions of documents locked away for a half century in the sprawling archive of the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the central German resort town of Bad Arolsen.

The 11 countries governing the ITS have agreed to lift the ban on research that had been imposed to safeguard victims' privacy, though it still will take months until each country ratifies the decision and the doors open.

Recently, The Associated Press was allowed to view ITS documents on condition it did not publish the identities of individuals. Among the yellowed pages and pasted telegrams seen by AP were internal communications, secret orders, and "conduct reports" that determined whether inmates would be freed.

The "pyramid" ranged from death camps such as Auschwitz at the top, to secondary and tertiary detention centers. There were 500 brothels, where foreign women were put at the disposal of German officers, and more than 100 "child care facilities" where women in labor camps were forced to undergo abortions or had their newborns taken away and killed — usually by starvation — so the mothers could quickly return to work.

The earliest prisoners were communists, Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political opponents, as well as homosexuals and common criminals. The Final Solution, which ultimately would claim 6 million Jewish lives, had not yet begun.

But begin they did. There is an unbelievably large amount of very precise records. Not that I think the deniers will be at all troubled by any of that, they haven't been by any of the other proof. They just make up their own versions and pall around with madmen. This is the reason why "Never Again" must mean just that.

An Act Of Faith That Nobody Wants

Justo Gallego has spent the last four decades of his 81 years building a cathedral. There are no plans, there are no drawings. Gallego started his endeavor with no building experience whatsoever. And nobody wants what he has built. Local residents in Mejorada del Campo call him crazy and town officials are very unhappy with him. He is probably not going to finish building it himself, so the real question is what happens when he is gone?

To some, the 10-story-high product of Justo Gallego's labor of love is an awesome monument to faith and perseverance. Coca-Cola featured it in a 2005 commercial, and Gallego was included in a 2003 exhibition on modern Spanish artists in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

But to municipal officials in this gritty industrial town on the southeastern fringe of Madrid, it's something of an eyesore.

"For the town hall, Justo's thing is a big problem," said government spokeswoman Flora Saura, lifting her shoulders to convey a sense of helplessness. "Everybody's fond of him but he's living in another world."

"It's all in my head," Gallego wrote on a board hanging inside the door of the enormous structure. "I am not an architect and I confess to having no training related to construction."

Two questions arise: Will he able to finish it? Unlikely. And what if he doesn't? No one knows. Although he has a string of nephews, Gallego has reportedly willed his brainchild to the bishopric of nearby Alcala de Henares.

Saura calls it a "a poisoned present." Mejorada del Campo, she says, has neither the expertise nor the money to take charge, and repeated requests to the regional and national governments and to the Roman Catholic Church for help have gotten nowhere.

"Nobody wants anything to do with it," she said. "There's no project, no construction permits, no inspections, no architect's plans. It's totally illegal and numerous legal proceedings have been opened against him."

There is a certain striking beauty to the work he has done, there are plenty of pictures and a lot more background here. Huge photo album here (in Spanish).

Interview With A Cop Killer

Reuters has an almost fawning article describing an exclusive interview with Wesley Cook, the man convicted of the cold-blooded killing of Philadelphia police officer Danny Faulkner in 1981. You may be more familiar with the name Cook prefers these days, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Go read it if you're so inclined, but if you do you also need to read this from Michael Smerconesh. That way you'll get the other side that the fawning media keeps suppressing. They moan that Cook was only allowed to spout his story for 15 minutes.

Danny Faulkner could not be reached for a rebuttal.

UN Security Council Sanctions Iran

Four months after the "firm deadline" for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, the UN Security Council has finally passed some weak sanctions against the rogue regime. It isn't a very strong resolution, and Iran has already signaled its complete contempt for even the watered down version that finally got passed.

The resolution orders all countries to ban the supply of specified materials and technology that could contribute to Iran's nuclear and missile programs. It also imposes an asset freeze on key companies and people in the country's nuclear and missile programs named on a U.N. list.

If Iran fails to comply, the sanctions call for the UN to issue a cranky note.

Expanding The Military

The San Diego Union-Tribune calls for an expanded active-duty military and increased funding for the armed services.

With many soldiers and Marines on their third or fourth combat deployments, vital equipment lost or worn out, budgets woefully short of replacement costs and stateside units nowhere near combat ready, it's long past time to recognize that we need a bigger and better-funded Army and Marine Corps.

Belatedly, President Bush this week acknowledged the need to add more troops to an undersized, underfunded Army and Marine Corps. The president's imprimatur makes for something approaching consensus. The Pentagon (the Army especially), prominent members of Congress from both political parties, independent experts such as former Secretary of State and former Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell all support adding troops and funding for our overstretched ground forces.

How many new troops and how much new money will be matters of discussion over the next few months.

One thing that they make sure they spell out very clearly is that they are not in favor of imposing a draft. Nor is the military. They also point out something that should be rather obvious: The military, before the cuts during the Clinton Years, was able to maintain an all volunteer force that was half again as big as it is today. The military used to be a quarter million troops larger than it is today. There was no need for a draft then and there is none now.

Stirring Fear

The New York Times reports on the flurry of fear-mongering that resulted from a Hearst wire service story. That article reported that the Selective Service System was working on a computer exercise to test their ability to conduct a draft if the need arose. Such tests are supposed to be routine, but none has been carried out since 1998. But the media was off to the races with it.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As the de facto media contact for the Selective Service System, Dick Flahavan is the Maytag repairman of government press people. With the military draft out of business since 1973, the Selective Service just doesn’t get a lot of calls these days.

But by midday Friday, Mr. Flahavan’s office had fielded dozens of inquiries, not just from reporters but from some anxious parents as well, all with some variation of the same urgent question: Are you reinstituting the draft?

So adamant was the denial that Mr. Flahavan, a bit beleaguered, had his staff members post an unplanned update Friday morning at the top of Selective Service’s Web site: “No Draft on Horizon!”

What prompted all this was a Hearst wire service article noting that the Selective Service was making plans for a “mock” draft exercise that would use computerized models to determine how, if necessary, the government would get some 100,000 young adults to report to their local draft boards.

The mock computer exercise, last carried out in 1998, is strictly routine, Selective Service officials said, and it will not actually be run until 2009 — if at all. The exercise has been scheduled several times in the last few years, only to be scuttled each time because of budget and staffing problems, and Mr. Flahavan said he would not be surprised if it was canceled this time around, too.

The military does not want a draft. Period. Draftees would harm the military as it is now organized. But that has not stopped the actions of a number of people to stir fear up. You have to hand it to the director of the Selective Service, William Chatfield. He called it like it is:

William A. Chatfield, director of the Selective Service, said Friday that “we try to send out a signal of strength that we’re prepared.” The Selective Service, he said, needs to be ready “if something totally unforeseen should come upon us.”

But for now, the chances of that happening are “very, very, very low,” Mr. Chatfield said. “There’s nothing even being discussed in a remote fashion, but you have people trying to create fear when there’s nothing there.”

Oh, No! They’re Alive!

For more than forty years now, the Christmas season has brought around one inevitable media event. Ok, several. It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story and a number of other holiday flavored movies barrage all of us. But the one I'm posting about is one that every child is forced to watch, year after year after year. Then later are forced to watch it again and again with their own children. I'm talking about the stop-action puppet film, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And the New York Times carries the horrible news:

Santa and Rudolph are alive. And they have been restored and are on display.

“The response has been overwhelming,” said Stacy Shaw, development director for the center. “People have been driving from Florida and places to see the puppets.”

The pair, made of wood, felted wool and wire, are thought to be two of the last surviving figures of the thousands made by Japanese puppet makers in the 1960s for the Rankin-Bass animated film production company, led by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass.

Shortly after “Rudolph” was completed, the tiny Rudolph and Santa puppets were taken home by a Rankin-Bass employee. She gave them to her children, who fed Rudolph crayons and red Play-Doh. Over time, his glowing red nose was lost and his felt fur deteriorated. Santa’s fluffy white eyebrows and half his mustache vanished.

In 2005, the nephew of the original rescuer found the puppets in a family attic and brought them to be appraised on the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow.” Created for about $5,000 each in 1964, they were valued at $8,000 to $10,000 for the pair. The family sold both figures to Kevin A. Kriess, the president of TimeandSpaceToys.com and a lifelong fan of the Rankin-Bass films. Mr. Kriess declined to reveal the purchase price, but said he had promised the family he would restore the puppets and show them publicly.

The misfit toys are off the island! Run for your lives!

The Coming National Sales Tax

The Opinion Journal points out that a number of state governments are busily working at imposing a de facto national sales tax that will forever change the online world. And the consumer will be on the short end of the deal.

But even Christmas stories, from Dickens to Seuss, need a villain. We'd like to nominate your friendly neighborhood state governments, which for years now have been predicting dire declines in state finances because untaxed online shopping would erode the revenue-raising ability of sales taxes.

As usual, the political gloom proved to be overwrought. State tax revenues took a header in 2002 along with the rest of the economy, but they've been growing smartly ever since. The third quarter of this year saw state tax revenues up 4.6% over last year, and that was a deceleration from growth that has bumped along at close to 10% at times in recent years. State sales-tax receipts grew at 4% in the third quarter–and that was the slowest growth in three years. The biggest news about the sales-tax apocalypse is that it isn't happening.

But the strong trend lines for overall tax receipts and sales-tax revenue in particular haven't slowed the move among states to grab a piece of the online-sales pie. In the 14 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the myriad state and local taxes were too complex for mail-order retailers to be expected to master, there's been a movement to obviate that argument by "streamlining" the country's many sales-tax regimes.

Indiana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia and more than a dozen other states have been busy laying the groundwork for an Internet sales tax regime that will charge consumers based on where they live, not where they click to when shopping online. And the system is already up and partially running.

Some retailers are already trying to comply with the state's efforts and are collecting sales tax no matter what state you live in, or what state the retailer is located in. As the editorial points out, many small online retailers will be squeezed badly by this and may not be able to deal with it. With no competitive pressures between the states to keep taxes lower, consumers can expect a steadily increasing tax burden in the future.

Cyber Mafia

The monitor your are staring into right now to read these words may well be staring right back at you. There is an increasingly organized - and increasingly dangerous - systematic attack on the internet and its users by criminals. The Washington Post carries the story today.

Computer security experts say 2006 saw an unprecedented spike in junk e-mail and sophisticated online attacks from increasingly organized cyber crooks. These attacks were made possible, in part, by a huge increase in the number of security holes identified in widely used software products.

Few Internet security watchers believe 2007 will be any brighter for the millions of fraud-weary consumers already struggling to stay abreast of new computer security threats and avoiding clever scams when banking, shopping or just surfing online.

One of the best measures of the rise in cyber crime this year is spam. More than 90 percent of all e-mail sent online in October was unsolicited junk mail messages, according to Postini, a San Carlos, Calif.-based e-mail security firm. The volume of spam shot up 60 percent in the past two months alone as spammers began embedding their messages in images to evade junk e-mail filters that search for particular words and phrases.

As a result, network administrators are not only having to deal with considerably more junk mail, but the image-laden messages also require roughly three times more storage space and Internet bandwidth for companies to process than text-based e-mail, said Daniel Druker, Postini's vice president of marketing.

There is quite a lot more. There are cyber shakedown rackets, "Nice website you got there, squire", phishing, hijacking and so much more. In fact it strongly resembles the evolution of organized crime. Heck, it is organized crime. Security experts are not at all happy with what is happening right now.