You Have Been Warned

Do not mess with Fluffy.

Truth Is Stranger Than Science Fiction

Researchers have developed a computer that runs programs while turned off. Wow.

Now, it's a quantum computer and not a regular binary desktop PC like you're using right now. So having one of your own is years off yet. But still:

They send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices, which included a set of components that run a simple database search by changing the properties of the photon.

The new design includes a quantum trick called the Zeno effect. Repeated measurements stop the photon from entering the actual program, but allow its quantum nature to flirt with the program's components - so it can become gradually altered even though it never actually passes through.

The geek in me loves the weirdness of this.

An Answer to The Pesky Fly and a Ramble

In the comments to the post below, Chris The Pesky Fly asserts:

Um Mike, if somebody says, "We should kill all the freaking jews." You can't call Godwin's law when somebody else says, "hey, that sounds like Hitler."

What you're saying here DOES smack of Hitlerian logic--- that's not to say you're anything close to a Nazi.

The breeding model is really over-the-top.

Read the post and you will see that nowhere do I suggest anything like "kill the Arab Muslims." I do suggest that unless we in the Western liberal democracies (WLD) can keep our numbers up the faster-growing Arab Muslim population will overtake us and displace our WLD with Arab Muslim theocracy. I feel safe in saying that even Chris doesn't welcome this.

We need to hold the line of WLD until we can grow it in the Arab world and bring them into the fold. You can read this post of mine (and the linked essay) for more, to see the larger point being made here. I thought I'd blogged about this PBS program about population pressures and economics, but a Blogspot search didn't find anything. They make compelling corrolary points. I again feel safe in saying that PBS is no hotbed of Neo-Hitlerian eugenics.

Anyway, I replied:

Chris, you implied as much over at your blog and then Jeff, one of your co-bloggers, comes over here and invokes Hitler. Don't pretend innocence.

To which he shot back:

No Mike, I never implied that at all. If you can find ANYTHING that remotely suggests a comparison to Hitler in my post I'll eat my laptop. I'm not playing innocent, I think this is an absurd post advocating what YOU WOULD CALL "social engineering."

And yet, in the comments to his linking post is this exchange:

Yes, it seems I recall someone arguing much the same line on the History channel. It was a documentary, about this guy, and had black-and-white dramatic shots of bright young blond-haired boys and girls doing exercised. And people marching, and saluting, and burning books.
Jeff | Homepage | 02.21.06 - 8:57 pm | #

Now, now, Mike's a good fella. But yeah, when you start seeing destiny in those terms...

I just think the whole, "You liberals are all evil social engineers" is--in light of this-- pretty darn funny.
PeskyFly | Homepage | 02.21.06 - 9:43 pm | #

I'm just trolling dear Mike.
Jeff | Homepage | 02.22.06 - 9:28 am | #

Clearly it was on your mind. But let's go back to the original post. The headline?

Destroy Feminism Breed Young Ones

(Emphasis mine.) That's long been recognised shorthand on the Left for Fascism / Nazism, a standard fear trope. "The Rethugnicans will shackle you to your homes and make you churn out babies if we even touch the right to choose." Jeff sure seems to have picked it up.

Continuing to the text of the post:

Every time I consider things like light rail, the economic and environmental merits of increasing urban population densities, and encouraging pedestrian culture, Mr. Mike of Half-Bakered calls me a typical liberal and accuses me of an atrocity he calls, "social engineering." Well look what Mr. Mike's been writing about.

(Emphasis again mine.) Atrocity? I submit that, while it may be coded somewhat, it's clear the allusion of "atrocity of social engineering" he wants the reader to infer is the Nazi slaughter of the Jews.

Think I'm reaching? Well, I'm a long time reader of Chris' blog. Just a cursory search of his archives pulls up this post and this post, both by Chris himself. Republican - Nazi imagery right there for you. There's also another post by a co-blogger and this post (read the last paragraph) by another co-blogger. Chris is obviously comfortable with his readers and co-bloggers having "Republican / conservative ideas = Nazism" comparisons.

Did he out and out say it? No. Did he get close enough for readers to make the leap easily and without being pushed. I'd say the evidence is yes.

Context is everything. And so it is here on my blog. Chris knows, though he seems not to want to believe it, that I'm a conservative Libertarian. I deeply distrust national government, and most tools of government at all but the most local of levels. I've said so over and over and over again here. No matter the intentions of the originators, those tools will almost always be co-opted by the power hungry and the idealists. Democrats and Leftists are especially happy to do that because they believe in their hearts that they will always be in control.

That's not to say that Republicans and certain Christians don't want the same thing. They do. They try to create or co-opt their own sets of government tools. The point is that government power comes from the people and so should be kept as close to the people as possible and doled out with skepticism and an eagle eye. You create swell and powerful tools, there's always someone willing to try to steal them.

Reread the post Chris pounced on and you'll see that I don't advocate government solutions. It's interesting that Chris takes my musings as calls to government action, though. I'd say that's a good view into his thinking. Nor did I say "Christianity." I said religion, a wholy different thing, and inclusive by definition.

How you get where I want to go is called social change. It worked with women's suffrage at the turn of the last century and civil rights in the Fifties and Sixties, to name two examples. Inspire people to rise to their best, most moral nature and the world can be changed.

(Yeah, yeah. Mr. Atheist is calling for more religion in America and the West? Is he drinking again? No, it's just that I have a theory about the source and purpose of religion that I don't think I've addressed here. Suffice to say that I think many people need religion or early religious training for good reasons. John Adams said that a moral people are neccessary to a democracy and that it couldn't function without them.)

So, back to the point of the post. Yes, I call bullshit on Chris' defense. I think the evidence supports the call.

And I love how the discussion now isn't about the points made in the post, nor in the essay, which are vital and worth study. We have, instead, been diverted into silly and wasteful argument of who is or isn't a Hitler. It's a favored tactic of the Left to shut down debate they don't want or know they can't win. Hitler used the very same tactic by calling his enemies "Bolshevists."

But I'm not making any comparisons here.

It's clear that I'll have to create another post sometime going into more detail and drawing more links between ideas on the whole demographics and the clash of civilisations topic. And y'all need to read those Steyn essays, dammit! Visit that PBS link! What I thought I'd said was that we in the West, the defenders and inheritors of the Great Democratic Experiment, need to make sure that Western liberal democracy takes hold across the world before the results of some of its deformities (the narrow, radical, politicised NOW feminist agenda for one) shrink us down to a size not capable of doing the job. Read the Steyn essay I linked in the recent post to see why that's important.

The Arab Muslim world is producing people fast enough to export them around the world. Those immigrant populations are growing faster than the "native" ones. Nations with excess numbers of single men are especially dangerous, as that's how armies willing to die are made. Right now, China has something like 5 million men who will never marry because there aren't enough women. That's a potential army of men willing to wear the uniform in desperate hopes of appealing to and attracting a wife. And China has made no bones, in fact is openly making plans and operations, to take over Taiwan.

Nations with stable or shrinking populations can't wage colonialism or war easily. Especially when they have a large social safety net to appeal to stability and lassitude.

China is being remade in WLD, though of a peculiarly Chinese Communist stripe. Taiwan and Hong Kong are the hyper-examples of Western capitalism with a Chinese Confucian flavor; they will suit well for China in the long run, but cause the West no end of economic headaches. India is well on the way; Indonesia is too. Latin America is on the way, eventually. So are parts of Africa.

But the Arab Muslim world isn't. Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia are examples of WLD nations with a Muslim religion, so we know it can be done. We must break the authoritarianism and theocracy, the subjugation of women. Kuwait is doing it. (Ah! Didn't know that, did you?) We know it can be done.

Lefties will instinctively pop up here with "What about the native populations, like Indians, aboriginals, Maori, etc.? We screwed them over pretty well. We're evil and must stop." Good point and lessons we must always remember. But India and Egypt are excellent counter-examples. Hawaii and the Phillipines are less-successful examples, and cautionary warnings on how to handle things. It's not a painless process, but I firmly believe it's a vital one.

Besides, aren't a large part of Chris' concerns to do with overly-large populations? Smaller populations are a good thing for eco-Lefties. WLD means smaller populations. It means opportunities for women that they control, yes?

Go back to my point about the black v. white model of childbearing in the previous post, which somehow seems not to have generated any controversy here. In terms of women's biology and career / financial planning, having children young is a better way than the upper-middle-class NOW feminist model of career then babies late in life. I grow more convinced of this as time passes. It's easier for society to integrate, as well as the business world. This is a debate we need to re-examine.

Whew. This post is all over the place.

Let's review: Chris? Wrong. Evidence? Yes. The original post and its ideas? Needing discussion; shouldn't be shouted down or diverted by dolts who likely didn't read the essay(s).

Suggestions? Read the posts and essays and the PBS link. Read more on your own. Reflect. Discuss.

If you want to explore this further, you're always welcome here. If you want to reflexively invoke Hitler and eugenics (which I do not advocate) either way, or scream and shout and distract, then go elsewhere.

I dont' expect Chris to admit anything wrong. He wouldn't. This post is directed to my other readers who may not have noticed the distraction and yet still been steered away from the discussion I wanted.

Demographics is Destiny

Regular readers know that I've grown fascinated with the interplay between demographics, birth rates and the edifice that is Western liberal democracy. Europe is becoming Eurabia because native Europeans are no longer breeding fast enough to sustain their population levels. They import workers from the Middle East to help do the work they no longer have the people to do themselves. The Arab Muslims are breeding faster than the natives and slowly, inevitably, pushing them out.

Japan as a country is pointed straight into the heart of oblivion. There population growth is below the replacement rate and their population is already shrinking. Add to that their monoculture (there are no "Japanese" but the Japanese), their resistance to bringing in workers and assimilating them, and you have a dying nation.

America thinks we're not experiencing this problem, but we are. The "native" population of white women are no longer reproducing at the replacement rate. Our nation's growth is coming from immigration, birthrates of immigrant populations, and the birthrate of African American women.

Anyway, Mark Steyn takes a look at this complex interplay and the near term implications. I agree that we are in a clash of civilisations -- Western liberal democracy v. Arab Muslim theocracy -- and in a rush to get the Arab Muslim world converted to Western liberal democracy (WLD) before their numbers overwhelm ours. History repeatedly shows that introducing WLD transforms women's lives so that they get out of the house, get educations, get into the workforce and politics, and start having much fewer children.

If we cannot sustain our numbers and influence long enough, we face being outnumbered and seeing the greatest transformation of human existence imaginable come to a screeching halt.

On the other hand, essays like this routinely seem to skip over Latin America, except maybe to mention Brazil. Latin WLD doesn't seem to slow the birthrate for women as much as Euro-American WLD. I think the difference is in the greater role that religion still plays in Latin nations. Euro-American WLD is far more secular, demandingly so, and I think that's the crux.

America is the still among most relgious nations of the WLD-sphere. We are the most populous, after India. I think that's part of what's insulating us, along with immigration, from the worst of the death spiral.

It's also why I've blogged before that the career model put forward by white feminists is inferior to the career model of black American women. Staying childess until your late thirties or forties, then having only one or, at most, two children, and then deforming the work world to support that decision is not the way to go. Having children young, when (grand) parents are also young, when you can juggle education and lower-wage jobs, means larger families overall, I think.

I'm finding myself becoming less concerned with high immigration than I used to be. (Though border control is very important!) What we need to do is reform feminism and its ills, reform how we approach abortion and pregnancy, and fearlessly re-establish the hegomony of Euro-American WLD as rapidly as possible. It's literally a fight for the future.

Seen through this filter, suddenly the Global War on Terror takes on new meaning, doesn't it? And George Bush, god help us, starts to look something like a visionary.

Wow.

Same Fruitcake, New Wrapping Paper

While I'm on this blogging burst here, let me add some thoughts on the new set for FOX13 news. Sure, it's pretty, flashy and matches the FOX News cable image. I like the nice, bold, jewel-toned colors. The television news bloggers in Memphis all seem to be crushing hard over it.

But so what? It's still the same old anchors, the same old banter, the same presentation style, the same way of reporting. The wrapping paper may be new, but the substance is unchanged.

So color me unimpressed. All the local news shows are variations of the same thing. Newschannel3 and Action News 5 are virtual carbon copies. They both bombard you with "Developing Story," "New Since Three Hours Ago," "Breaking Story That's Hours Old But We're Still on the Scene," "Story We're Still Milking Even With No New Developments," and "Live at the Scene Where Nothing's Happening Any More and It's Pitch Dark." Pow! Look! Hey! Here! Whoo! Wake up! It's like being constantly poked in the chest. After a while, you just back away.

Poor EyeWitnessNews24 is afflicted with low budgets and a very amateurishly applied consultant's presentation package. ("Props! Use props. Wave 'em around. Are you in a grocery store? Use the cash register! Make it ka-ching! And don't forget to keep moving. What did I teach you last time? Move, move! It's visual.") You get the sense there's a good hard-news organisation in there being smothered by bad ideas.

Calm, serious, intelligent, discriminating, content-focused. Give me that and I'll watch.

The Market Speaks

I forget which blog supplied this link to radio ratings for Memphis, but it's pretty interesting.

The most listened to talk station in Memphis? WDIA, by almost two to one! They are the number three station in the market with a 6.6 rating. The next talk station is WREC, at #9 and a 3.9.

Oh, and the much ballyhooed Air America? They are waaaay down the list, at #26. Their rating is .5, which is one-third what it was a year ago! Losing two-thirds of your audience isn't a good idea guys.

Where are all those vaunted Memphis liberals? Don't they support their own?

By the way, is there a similar public resource for Nielsen television news ratings? I'm curious.

Bush Spied, Terrorists Died

Via Stromata Blog comes Bumper Stickers of the Future:

Bush spied, terrorists died.
Democrats – a 40 year war on poverty and still no exit strategy.
I stubbed my toe. Impeach Bush!
Keep your socialism out of my paycheck!
It takes a conservative to feed a liberal.

I like that last one, too.

Everything New is Old

Many folks on the right and more than a few on the left believe the Democratic Party is headed to disaster, being dragged to doom by the MoveOn / Dean-Gore / Bushysteria / anti-war crowd. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened for them.

It just goes to show how recurrent human events can be. Note that back then, the Democrats stayed out of power for more than 25 years, briefly seized power only to see the county fall into a bad recession, then were back out of power for another couple of decades.

Something to think about.