The Blogger Bash After-Action Report

Got back a while ago from the bloggers bash and have to say this one was tremendous fun. Again. There was the expected geek-talk about blogging software and tech, of course, but also a lot of talk about movies, fan-made video and film works, the future of entertainment, Scenestars, the murdered body found in Overton Park, Mayor Dr. Willie Baby-Daddy, family name derivations and family history, and babies. And a marathon political discussion at the end.

Garibaldi's was busy but not overwhelmingly so; the music was intermittent and the television's volume was off. Food was good and hot; service very top-notch. It had a nice family / Saturday night out vibe. Phil and his wife and baby girl had commandered some tables already when Mark and I got there. Their baby, Madeline, was a total cutie. You can see pics of all the attendees over at Abby's blog. Yay!

The total roll call was: me, Mark, Phil, Brock and Len, Abby and Aaron, EJ, Rachel, and Steve. Not bad, and certainly a group of folks to hang out with, but I was hoping for maybe double that turnout and am a bit disappointed. I'm open to ideas and constructive criticisms to get turnout up next time.

It was an enjoyable, relaxed evening. I got to chat with Rachel about Scenestars, Memphis music and radio, and other things. I haven't seen her in a while and she is still the Hottness of Memphis. Abby shared with us about the hullaballoo in Overton Park this week. Dead bodies, eek! Aaron wasn't as quiet this time as last; he seems a really nice guy. I didn't get to talk hardly at all with EJ and it was only when he was leaving that I learned who he was. Brock, Len, Mark and Phil all made for funny and entertaining evening companions. I was most happy to get to meet Steve of Left Wing Cracker. I have the feeling I may have monopolised his time and attention somewhat, but he proved to be a good guy, for a Dem. Time flew by; it really did.

The evening ended in a massive political discussion, naturally enough, with Phil, Len, Brock, Steve, Mark and myself. It was spirited, but entirely good-natured. We discussed Harold Ford, Jr.'s prospects, the coming Senate race, the future of the Democratic party and Howard Dean's rise, and who might be the Republican nominee for President in 2008. I sorta put Steve on the spot, sensing he's a political junkie like me, but he was friendly in the give-and-take. I was surprised he agrees with me that the Democratic Party will be in the woodshed for a few election cycles before it can rise again. He thinks Dean will help them regrow; I think it means further marginalisation. It was nice to be able to talk politics with knowledgeable folks; I really enjoyed myself.

As always, we agreed to do it again. Maybe in April? It can't be soon enough, that's for sure. My thanks to everyone who showed up. You made for a revitalising evening. Those of you who missed it: well, you're missing out. Great folks; friendly attitudes; smart and informed talk. You can't pass a more enjoyable evening.

Ola!

The Major Matt Mason hostage photo (scroll down a bit) is still going strong. The Instalanche is over, but now a lot of smaller blogs have taken it up. Especially in the Hispanosphere, for some reason. My Spanish and Portugeuse is bad enough I can't really follow the discussions, but at least half-a-dozen Hispanic blogs are now linking and driving traffic.

The photo is also being passed around the military world too. I've had hits from several military and Iraqi War discussion threads, even some from Army.mil!

It shows, as some have noted, that we've turned an important corner in the Second War in Iraq and against the terrorists. They are reduced to faking videos (shooting down planes; captured hostages). Zarqawi calls democracy "evil" just before the Iraqi elections and still 8 million turn out to vote, despite shootings and bombings. We -- the bloggers and the amateurs -- can spot the fakes faster and better than the MSM. We can crank out parodies at an insane rate. We enjoy creating these parodies. It's the American middle finger.

Hollywood can completely avoid the topic in movies and television, and the MSM can twist the news all they want, but the facts on the ground have supplanted them. The American people have outpaced them. There is no quamire; we're making solid forward progress. The situation is improving. We are winning.

Of course, all this downloading is running up the bandwidth over at hollihan.net, where the images are hosted. If you have a few spare dollars, please consider throwing them into the PayPal tipjar on the left. It only goes to pay for hosting and bandwidth.

Alternate Universe Air America?

(AP - Axis Press) The Nazi News Network today announced a new addition to its daily radio lineup, Luft Amerika, with the addition of Party-approved actress Janeane Garofalo. Her film credits include Ho Ho Hitler!, Der Luft Kapitan and the World of Today and My Big Fat Aryan Wedding.

[This is a parody of a real Garofalo appearance on MSNBC. I am so not kidding! You can read the story, with more links and the original screencap, here.]

Remember to link to this post, not the image. I am not paying your bandwidth.
link:
http://halfbakered.blogspot.com/2005/02/alternate-universe-air-america-ap-axis.html

Speaking of which, please help me pay these costs by hitting the PayPal tipjar up on the left. All money goes to pay for domain hosting and bandwidth.

WELCOME Tim Blair readers! Please take a moment to read the rest of the blog while you're here. Apartment fires, renegade reporters, Mayor and State Senator baby-daddies, Star Trek, blogger bashes, cat-blogging, the Volunteer Tailgate Party, you name it. Thanks for stopping by.

Bandwidth Thievery

Thanks to the success of the Major Matt Mason "hostage hoax photo" it has been spread far and wide. Unfortunately for me, it's finally spread far enough that 'tards are hotlinking directly to the image on their own blogs. Bad bloggers!

It's leaching a lot of bandwidth, so I finally had to do something I've been avoiding to this point: setting up an htaccess file. That should solve the big problem.

It also creates a new one. I've been hosting the Memphis Blogger button and letting anyone who wants to hotlink it. If you're one of those folks, just drop me an email or a comment and I'll add you to the htaccess file so it appears on your blog again. I'm sorry for the trouble, but blame the lazy, greedy and stupid of the Internet.

Bloggers Bash: Final Details

Alrighty, we got us a bloggers bash. Here are the final details:

Garibaldi's (near the U of M)
Saturday, February 5th (next Saturday)
7 PM (nighttime is the right time after all)

Thanks to Steve, here are directions: "The address is 3530 Walker. From Midtown, take Central or Poplar east to Highland; turn right, go past the first stoplight (Midland), go to the 2nd left (where Domino's Pizza is) and you will IMMEDIATELY see the sign for Garibaldi's. They are all the way back in the shopping center."

Please email all the bloggers you know to invite them. Let's really get the word out this time. If anyone goes by there this week, can you stop in and warn them to expect about a dozen folks that night? Hopefully we'll have more, but that's a good round number.

See y'all there.

The Volunteer Tailgate Party

Half-Bakered is a proud member of the Rocky Top Brigade (Motto: "RTB is TCB"), a collection of bloggers in, from and around Tennessee; bloggers who are ex-pat or wannabe Tennesseans, or who just love the Tennessee vibe. It's a motley crew covering the political spectrum, blogging from the deeply personal to the highly intellectual, talking about life where they are in varying degrees, deadly serious to blackly comic. Like the State we love, you can discover some of everything in the RTB.

Every so often, as a service to you the reader, we like to host a Whitman Quality Sampler of RTB writings, to tempt you into reading blogs you may not yet know that you'll love. In honor of a long-standing football tradition, we call it the Volunteer Tailgate Party. Like any good sampler, this edition will tempt you with tasty morsels of a delectable variety.

Thomas of the Newsrack Blog (Motto: "Fair and balanced news and opinion commentary by Thomas Nephew. Can you hear me now?") sends along two posts. The first is his list of blogs he's recently discovered. The second is his tale of attending the second Bush inaugural:

I saw that people were just walking by the lines I was in, and decided to try my luck wherever they were headed. That took me down to near 7th and C, where things got a little dicier. A group came marching down the street waving red and black flags, turned the corner, and were lost from my view -- if I'd had one, I had the hood on as they went by. I then made what was nearly a bad mistake and followed them -- in time to see several PVC pipes and assorted other sticks (used to hold banners) tossed high in the air and towards a line of police. I believe I said "Oh boy."

Oh my! You'll have to read the post to see what happened.

Real life friend Mark of The Conservative Zone (Motto: "Thoughts of a Conservative living with Mental Illness") sent along this post on understanding the liberal mind:

I have wanted to comment on Ward Churchill's essay/speech that has caused quite a controversy. He calls the 9/11 terrorists "Combat teams," and he calls the WTC the "Little Eichmanns." I haven't commented upon this because I wanted to see the original essay before commenting. Well, I found it here and I want you to read it. Nay, I command you to read it, because it is glaring in its inconsistencies and lack of congruency with the real world.

No punches pulled here.

Queen Medb (Motto: "thoughts, photos, miscellany") sends along a pair of photo links. My meager descriptions will have to suffice. The first is a gorgeous, meditative, sepia-toned photo of a graveside angel. The second thoughtfully contrasts early Spring and lingering Winter. Both are very nice.

Moving along, we come to Holding Down the Fort, by Nathan Fortner. He also has a photo post, with pics from his trip to the inaugural. Be sure to scroll down to the street-level view of a flag-draped Capitol. Sitrs my patriotism, it does. His essay post looks at post-Soviet Russia with some trepidation:

Many considered the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Russian Republic to be a big step towards freedom in the old USSR. Are things really going that way though? Anyone keeping up with Russian politics will most likely give you a stout 'No'. During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, corruption was, undoubtedly, rampant through the Russian government. However, with the election of Vladimir Putin, things reached a new level.

An old evil is rearing its ugly head.

Buddy Don, the Wandering Hillbilly, sent a stack of posts covering his views on the reform of Social Security! Buddy Don writes as he speaks:

thays been a slew of articulls lately on soshul securty. them thats been trine to dismantle it frum the day twuz started claim tiz in a crisis, that we gut to do sumthin now or face a day of reckonin.

when is that day? this feller name of edwin j feulner over at the heritage foundation claims tiz 2018. heres how he puts this dishonest claim:

The revered entitlement program seems fine, but it needs fixing. Starting in 2018, Social Security will start paying out more than it takes in through taxes.

tiz a common lie thats bein tole all over the place. fack is, soshul securty has dun been payin in add vants jes to cover this day, witch we started a'doon that back when president raygun n alan greenspan raised soshul securty taxes on us all back in 1983. that money wuz spozed to be locked away n makin a good rate of interst in a verr secure investment, u.s. gummint bonds.

now tiz gittin close to time to pay em back n folks lack dr feulner wonts us to thank they shouldnt have to pay us whut they owe. n no wunder: ifn thar a'gone make good on that debt, they wont be able to make them tax cuts on the rich a permanent thang. we dun spent all the money on tax cuts fer the rich n a unneeded war in iraq, a'wipin out the surplus without payin off no bills, n runnin up the highest deficit in our histry.

Much more here, here, here, here, here, and here. No blog slouch is our Buddy Don.

Stick your finger into the center of the box and you find our Fearless Leader, Mr. RTB himself, South Knox Bubba (Motto: "OK, then.") His contribution is this somewhat surprising admission:

I believe businesses should not be in the business of delivering health insurance. Not because it will save companies money (which is clearly why Bush and the GOP want to end it). But because it injects employers into their employees private lives in areas that are none of their business. It also makes it harder for an employee to change jobs if they or someone in their family has a preexisting condition.

It also leaves families without a source of health insurance when employees jobs are "downsized" or outsourced. It would be like if employers provided electricity as part of their compensation. Lose your job, they cut off your power, even if you have rainy day savings to get you by until you find another job. And COBRA doesn't help. Small business aren't required to offer it. Companies that do offer it make it so expensive that few can afford it.

But worst of all, it leaves the self-employed, underemployed, and unemployed without access to health insurance.

Ok, it's not such a surprise if you're a regular reader. Which you should be! Ok, then.

Janet's Dagley Dagley Daily (Motto: "Covering the world from the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA") offers a triplet of goodies:

Here's my contribution, a series of photo animations of ice on the Hudson River here in the Hoboken, NJ outpost of the RTB.

See? I told you we were everywhere. Check 'em out here, here and here.

From Paisley Dreams, Libby tells us about a very special doll:

Anyway, I was terrified. I hadn't spent a lot of time playing with girls. What would she want to do? Play with dolls? I didn't have any dolls. So, I did what almost every little girl does at some point: I asked my parents for a Barbie. Well, my parents made a move that probably saved them billions of dollars over the next few years, and don't think I don't think they did this for that reason (I just haven't asked). What did they do?

What indeed. You'll have to read to learn the humorous -- and admirable -- answer.

WGBV (Motto: "You'll Always Find a Fifth") reminds us that "almost only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades" with a heartbreak photo.

Tiring from the many treats you've tasted? Let's stop at the Inn of the Last Home, then. Barry has a couple of things to share. First, there's music "Based on a Cro-Magnon skinning chant" that's unplayable! Look at the score excerpts only if you dare. He also share a vignette of life with his family:

BrainyBoy v8.9 has the flu. Or a reasonable facsmile thereof.

I don't think it's the real flu - we'll find out a diagnosis in a little while.

Wednesday morning he woke up...well, woke up yakking for want of a better term. I stayed with him until Laura relieved me at 2, then I came in to work. He had a fever approaching 103 the rest of that day, though his stomach had settled somewhat before I left.

He spent yesterday at his grandmother's, and - a treat for him - got to sleep on the couch last night. Fever this morning was in the low 100's, unmedicated, so there's hope for him yet.

As he was dozing last night, about 10pm, I was sitting in a chair nearby watching TV. He takes after me, as all good sons should, and was snoring softly. Abruptly I noticed movement and I noticed his hands were moving. He'd picked up part of the comforter I'd thrown over him, and was moving the little fringes around rapidly right in front of his face. I looked more closely, and he was really moving the fringe up and down.

I stood and walked over with trepidation. Looking up at me with an odd, goofy expressions, he smiled and said, "I'm making the little people move!".

Uh oh. How does it end? Read some more on his blog to meet Giggle Girl.

Allow me to inject a bit of personal opinion here. (Hey, it's my blog after all....) Say Uncle (Motto of the day: "An unapproved 2nd Amendment zone.") doesn't blog as much on his family life as he used to. I miss that. On the other hand, if we get posts like this -- a readerpoll on choosing between an AR or AK rifle, with a lively discussion thread -- and
this:

This thread really reinforces this notion that gun owners are racists and homophobes. Note the references to being anti-gay is OK because gays are typically anti-gun. They imply the same thing regarding American Jews. Pretty abysmal stuff.

They don’t realize or don’t care that the number of gun owners in this country seems to decrease (though there was a post 9/11 spike in gun sales) and we are the minority. By a alienating any particular group, they do a disservice to gun rights. There are a few gay gun nuts who are better to have as allies than enemies.

You'll have to read the post to find out the thread and the links! It concludes with a pungent observation.

Smijer (Motto: "STOP TERROR STOP TORTURE STOP GONZALES") rebuts some other bloggers on the Gonzales nomination for Attorney General:

The Gonzales nomination is a chance for every Senator, every blogger, and every citizen to answer a call to conscience. We can oppose confirmation and show the world that we do not promote those who try to craft legal protection for torture and abuse, or we can do nothing and show the world that we truly believe ourselves to be above the law. Call your senator today, and encourage others to do so as well!

Some good point-by-point takedowns to think about, neat and efficient.

Hello! Putting this post together, I found a blog I should be reading: Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog (Motto: " Explorations of personal and community journalism online..."). As he says:

I've been watching for Knoxville-area local non-blog RSS feeds... Bubba pointed to one on the same day that the News Sentinel had an article /about/ RSS, so the coincidence became an excuse to surf around and find a few more.

See what he found. If you are a blogger or a blog reader, RSS is important to be familiar with. This is a quick and informative read.

Alright, let's take a quick breather right about here. Leave some room for the treats to come.

Goobage! (Motto: "statisticulating with the best, fact-checking the rest") Don't you love the name? This blog is the caramel in our sampler. Rich and chewy. Auntie Goob's posts are always chock full o' facts for you to work over. Like this:

That bastion of socialist propaganda, the Tennessean, recently printed articles about evaluating schools using "value-added" scores. One article discusses the nation-wide adoption of the in-bred Tennessee system....

Over half a million annually may not seem like much, but how many half-millions does it take to get to real money? After all, this only amounts to ten cents per citizen. Of course, that's not the only goob foisted on the taxpayers. Who paid for developing the method?

What method? That would be telling....

Gunner over at No Quarters (Motto: "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."), links to R. Lee Wrights' post, "I am a criminal." It's a biting look at the omnipresence of law and regulation in our lives. Gunner adds:

In a sadistic act the government has started playing games with regulations on travel. You have to follow them, and yet they will not tell you what they are. Then there are the instant laws. Regulations handed down by government officers that have the full penalty of law behind them, yet were never voted on and passed. For every law I think there are probably two regulations. All that fine print in government offices that you have to follow, or else.

Gunny's been in the hospital lately, so send good thoughts and prayers his way.

Satire! Not a flavor for everyone, but a delight for some. At WhitesCreek Journal (Motto: "Thoughts to share from White's Creek gorge.") he lists his reasons why, if elected State Senator, he will not serve:

3. I don't believe that Jesus wants us to kill Iraqi women and children. See, I am not much of anything, much less, a Baptist. To be elected around here you have to go to a lot of churches and just sit there smiling while preachers say nasty things about the people sitting in other churches saying nasty things about people sitting in other churches. The last church I tried to attend had a good friend of mine as the preacher. He learned fairly quickly to not ask me what I thought about the sermon as we shook hands in the doorway out of there. "Don, that sermon made as much sense as anything else I've heard you say, " I came around to saying and my wife would look very relieved that I hadn't said, "Oh, Bullshit, Don."

Steve sent in this entry with the following comment: "How am I supposed to know what's good and what's not?" An interesting and honest admission. But I don't think he's got anything to worry about.

A quick disclaimer: Soulfish Stew (Motto: "Never Go Hungry Again.") and I are members of the Blogcritics, as well as the RTB, though he's active and I'm not at the moment. Search for his name there for more great posts like this one about his formative influences in his teenage years. In his second submission he writes:

The place was named Phranks N Steins. We were too young to ever attend the rock shows Rick Champion soon started featuring there. Heck, we didn’t even know where the place was. Somewhere out on West End? But the legend is that this event kick started a post 1978 Nashville rock and roll revolution. This is where this survey of Nashville’s rock and roll past begins.

Wally Bangs - I called up good friend and once local Middle Tennesse resident Dr. DD Blank and asked him to come up with a list of 20 great Nashville music artists of the last 27 years. I was to do the same. I would then combine the lists with commentary from both of us. That gave us way more than 20 on the list though it is far from including every great local rock and roll act from this time frame. Whether you’re from Nash Vegas or not let us know what you think we’ve missed. Enjoy.

Nashville20+ Part One of a four part series.

I can't wait for the rest of this. Though I'm not a Nashvillain, I did know two of the bands they discuss. And he namechecks The White Animals, who I saw many times in several cities back in the day. A wonderful trip into the regional musical past.

What Can Brown Do For You? (Motto: "John Brown's take on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.") Good question and he provides excellent answers! In his first post, we get more photos from the Bush inaugural. Then John turns his attention to the future, with his predictions for 2005:

The Bush Administration will push through Social Security reform including allowing investment in private accounts, despite some nay-saying Republicans. The AARP will fight this to the end, proving how much they care about young people. This will cause a new group, a version of the AARP for taxpayers under age 35, which will lobby for even more reforms, possibly even the total privatization of Social Security. Politicians, seeing a chance to gain voters for the next 50 or so years (as opposed to only the next few years, as is the case with seniors), will begin to pander to the youth with as much zeal as Ted Kennedy panders to grandma. Trent Lott will be interviewed on MTV. Bill Frist will be a guest voice on "South Park." Bill Clinton will appear on "Blind Date." Voters under 30 will respond with apathy.

Bush will also announce his plans to reform the tax system. Before seeing his plans, Democrats will denounce them as "tax cuts for the rich."

UT President John Peterson, by serving in his post for two years, will become UT's longest serving president in half a decade.

Ouch! And that's just the start.

Lastly, we have your humble host, Half-Bakered. No links needed, just scroll down. Catblogging, Memphis politics, the global baby bust, apartment fires, Strongbad email, it's all good. I hope you enjoy me as much as all the other blogs you've sampled so far.

But we have reached an end. That's it for our sampler. I hope it wasn't too long, too filling. Make with the link clicky-clicky, widen your interests, expand your tastes. Take a chance on some of the other links in the blogroll in the righthand column. It's a box full of goodness in the Rocky Top Brigade. Thanks for reading. Be good or be careful.

Let's Review

Back in 2001 an audit was being done on the Juvenile Court Clerk's office. The prosecutions that resulted from that audit are still in court today, and nowhere near trial.

In the course of that audit, irregularities in other parts of County government came to light. The County launched a private audit (not State or County) that turned up a lot of abuse of county credit cards. Several individuals were implicated, including then Mayor Jim Rout, but only Tom Jones, long time executive assistant to several mayors, was focused on.

I distinctly remember, but cannot find in the Commercial Appeal's archives, a story from 2002 that mentioned the results of an audit had been known around County Hall since at least April but didn't become public into late summer, election season. In fact, if memory serves, it didn't come to light until after the election. I don't remember any election discussion or debate on this. (If I'm wrong, please let me know. If you can find the story, drop a link in comments.)

Anyway, incoming Mayor AC Wharton, facing his first scandal, declined to reappoint Jones to his position. Jones was never fired, as many still believe. The results of the private audit were turned over to Federal authorities who eventually prosecuted the case (not the State or County). Jones was found guilty, sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to make restitution on $65,000.

While awaiting going to jail, Jones began to name names. Especially his former boss Jim Rout. He threatened to write a tell-all book. To me, this sounded like he was trying to force old "friends" to intervene for him and minimise his jail problems.

It didn't work. He went.

But before he went, he approached old colleagues County Bobby Lanier and Susan Adler Thorp about his pension. Seems that all that credit card unpleasantness had screwed up his retirement. By leaving his position when he did, he missed getting an upgrade to his retirement that nearly doubled his pension payments. Jones, who worked for the County for decades, didn't go to the Retirement Board -- as is standard procedure -- but privately approached Lanier and Thorp to intercede.

Jones was put back on the payroll on a Friday. He wasn't assigned a job and didn't report to County Hall. He was taken off on the following Monday, a County and Federal holiday. But by dint of this, he effectively "retired" on a date that made for a much more generous retirement for him.

The incident became public. Lanier and Thorp insisted that nothing was amiss in the way they handled the situation -- bypassing the Board and not informing Mayor Wharton -- but the smell of "old boys network" was all over it. Lanier and Thorp were pressured to resign; they were not fired, either.

A couple of months later, the Retirement Board met again and Jones' pension adjustment came up. By a unanimous vote, Jones' adjustment was allowed to stand. They ruled that since Jones hadn't done anything wrong, it was all on Lanier and Thorp, the action was justified.

So, where are they now?

Jones is out of jail after six months. He's in a halfway house here in Memphis, being helped to adjust to post-jail employment after incarceration. This for a man who has been working for more than three decades and never spent a day in jail otherwise.

Lanier, who wasn't honest enough to work for Wharton in government, is now Wharton's re-election campaign finance director.

Thorp is now a "consultant" for WMC Channel 5 news. She doesn't appear on air or give advice for broadcasts, but serves to "open doors" to people who might otherwise not be inclined to talk with reporters. A greaser, you might say.

Yeah, reviewing all this just inspires real confidence in local government, doesn't it?

Catblogging

Those of you who don't like cats just skip ahead to the next post.

So, the war for bed dominance seems to have been won by Bennie, my older cat. She's taken over the valley between my legs and it seems that Rocky (the new girl) has given up. Sometimes, Bennie will climb under the covers (after she wakes me up with gentle and insistent paws to the nose to open up the sheets) to lie down in the space between my left arm and my torso, when I'm on my back. If I roll onto my side, she'll adjust so that she's pressed up against my chest. It's so cute.

The downside is that Rocky doesn't always know that Bennie's under there. The other morning, she stepped on Bennie and started off a hissing, clawing fight inches from my face. Bad girls!

Bennie's still not happy with the new addition, though the attitude has calmed down a lot. She still likes to perch somewhere and glare at Rocky as she walks or lies around. It's kinda like when Snoopy does his vulture thing in Peanuts. Fights still happen, but there's less vehemence and more signs of play. I think.

Only problem now is that Rocky has no concept of "Don't sit on the keyboard." Bennie learned when she was a tiny kitten. Rocky is nearly a year old already and hasn't a clue. She leaps onto the desk for attention or companionship and I have to make sure I've saved whatever I'm doing. Teaching her just earns me a lot of meows and petulance. Sigh....

Rocket Blogging

There's been some talk in the big media about corporate blogs; that is, blogs written by company employees on the corporate website. Usually, they serve to give an insider view, to promote products, generate buzz, etc. It's a hard line to walk: blogging tends to be open and to demand access. Corporate culture demands control and to keep the curtains drawn.

So, I was a bit surprised to find that model rocket company Quest Aerospace now has a corporate blog. So far, it treads much closer to the "behind the scenes" model, and seems intent on serving as a forum to respond to consumer questions. It's really good right now: conversationally written, assumes the reader is informed, and willing to admit when the company says "no." I like it. (And they confirm that an 18mm D motor is coming. For rocketeeers, that's very cool. Small rockets = high flights.)

Also, they provide a link to Model Aerospace, an official seller of Quest kits, run by a member of an earlier Quest corporation -- and a name known well in rocket circles -- Dane Boles.

Uhhhhh...OK

Which Website Are You?
Yodel? No. Air guitar? Yes.

New Hostage Photo Released

Following on from the hostage photo released Tuesday, another group has surfaced with their own photo, claiming to be holding American Air Force Major Matthew "Matt" Mason. No further details are available.

WARNING! Do not try to link directly to the image. Either host it on your own server or link to this blog post. Use the link at the end of this post. Bandwidth thievery is not tolerated. You are being lazy, stupid or greedy.

With apologies to the guys at Powerline.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE Wow! I've been privileged to get a few Instalanches since starting this blog, but this one is the biggest yet. I guess when you tap into America's love of action figures, you've hit the gold vein.

Do you think any of these will make it onto the editorial pages of America's newspapers? Are you seeing them on cable or network news? Of course not. And that's too bad.

Welcome and thanks to: Instapundit, Sgt. Stryker, Dean Esmay, Templar Pundit, Joe's Dartblog, and HispaLibertas. Click the links, as there are a lot more of these parodies out there. If I've missed yours, put a link in comments.

A Small Victory traces the hoax-busting back to Fark.

And don't miss the harrowing tale of a hard luck company of men and their evil captors.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE I'm having my best traffic day ever. More than 10,000 hits and still going strong. Take a look at the Sitemeter link over in the right column. Thanks to everyone for visiting and linking.

Please take a look at the rest of the blog. Memphis politics is a circus these days: renegade reporters, polygamous senators, baby-daddy mayors. And don't forget to try some of those Rocky Top Brigade (Tennessee bloggers) and Axis of Weevil (Alabama bloggers) links while you're here.

Yet more terrorist cruelty. Children everywhere are crying.

AND THERE'S MORE! Blogdex has me listed at #14, as of 5:30PM CST. Blogdex! That was an eye-opener, no question.

I was wondering how long it would take to bring Team America into this and sure enough, there you go. Go read the "faux FOX" news story. And, in a mind-twisting media double backflip, see how EtherPundit manages to drag the "kidnapping the Secretary of Defense" plot from 24 into the action-figure photo hoax. I'm seriously impressed.

NOT OVER YET Half-Bakered is now a Jokester of Note over at MSNBC. Still surprised at how this bit of humor is spreading.

HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP! Sorry to geek out over a numbers thing, but Half-Bakered is now #12 on Blogdex. (As of 11:30PM CST) I know 99% of you don't care and it sounds unseemly to brag this way, but I'm just a li'l ol' Memphis blog, obscure at best by Internet standards, so it's just, uh... rewarding, I guess. Yay team! I'm number twelve! I'm number twelve!

HE'S DEAD, JIM As of 3AM Thursday morning, I've dropped to #42 on Blogdex. By lunchtime, I'm falling like a rock. Ah, the heady ride is over. I've also spotted people hotlinking to the image, not this post, and had to set up an htaccess file on my server. Shame on y'all. Still getting lots of hits from all over, but the big Instalanche is over. The hoax photos are spreading all over now.

Sinking Feeling

Oh dear. I was having problems with my connection, trying to send an email, so I saved the message as "send later." When I rebooted, logged on and re-opened Thunderbird, I hit the "Send unsent messages" button. Well, it sent off two messages.

For the life of me I can't remember what the other message was. Can't find anything to indicate what it might have been either. I do have the habit of writing angry emails, then deleting them. I do the same at websites: write an ill-advised comment, then not post it. I figure it's better to get it out, then disappear it. Therapeutic for me and not harmful to you.

Except maybe this time. Damn. Now I'll worry for a couple of days about who I've pissed off.

Unintentionally, that is.

The Herenton Recall

I spoke briefly with Thaddeus Matthews today about the Recall the Mayor petition drive. He said that he'd have something ready to go Wednesday. If I get the chance to speak with him further, I'll offer some webspace and bandwidth for hosting PDF copies of the petition signature list, even a webpage if needed.

He OK'd me giving out his cell number for those who'd like to speak wiht him directly: 949-3000.

The Pixies, and Hot Bass-playing Rock Babes

I just happened to go past Austin City Limits as the program was starting and who was on? The Pixies! This was the recently reunited band and they were sounding awfully good. The set seemed to run chronologically, but was way too short. They played one of my favorites ("Monkey Gone to Heaven") but not the other ("I'm Tired").

It was an odd performance. Frank seemed to be in his own world, visibly disconnected from the rest of the band. Same for Kim Deal, who had this very spooky fixed grin on her face; one of those pharmacological ones. As in prescription, not recreational. Only Joey and the drummer seemed to be interacting with the rest of the band. Very odd. But musically they were as tight and powerful as you could ask for.

It was only in the encore, "Gigantic," late in the jam at the end of the song, that Frank walked over to Kim with a huge grin on his face and kept asking her something. You could see her plainly say to him at one point, "No!" But he kept on, both of them smiling and talking as they played. She finally turned to her mike and boomed, "Thank you for coming to the show!" It was almost the only really interactive moment of the program. But they were fantastic.

Kim Deal still looks as hot as ever. (Except for a slight tendency to soccer-mommishness.) And that brings me to the second part of this post. I must admit to having a fatal weakness for women bass players. No joke. I'm not sure what it is, but a cute woman swinging that bass guitar around is just the sexiest thing going. And for some reason, women bass players (at least in rock) tend to be really hot!

Take a look: Talking Head's Tina Weymouth, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Hole's Melissa Auf Der Maur, Sahara Hotnight's Johanna Asplund, Patricia Morrison, and Echobelly's Ruth Owen in one of my all-time favorite rock pictures. Her face is much cuter than the pic suggests (look elsewhere on that site), but I get all uncomfortable in the pants at that leather, the tight tee, and that stance! Yowza. That's nowhere near a complete roster, either. I don't follow music like I used to any more, and there is a whole new crop of all- or majority-female bands out there now. The list keeps going, but I don't have time to track down more pic links.

Even one of my favorite songs is about a female bass player: "Behind the Wall of Sleep," by the Smithereens.

She had hair like Jeannie Shrimpton back in 1965
She had legs that never ended
I was halfway paralyzed
She was tall and cool and pretty
And she dressed as black as coal
If she'd ask me to I'd murder
I would gladly lose my soul

Now I lie in bed and think of her
Sometimes I even weep
Then I dream of her
Behind the wall of sleep

Well she had a bass guitar and
She was playing in a band and
She stood just like Bill Wyman
Now I am her biggest fan
Now I know I'm one of many
Who would like to be your friend
And I've got to find a way
To let you know I'm not like them

Now I lie in bed and think of her
Sometimes I even weep
Then I dream of her
Behind the wall of sleep

Got your number from a friend of mine
Who lives in your hometown
Called you up to have a drink
Your roommate said you weren't around
Now I know I'm one of many
Who would like to be your friend
And I've got to find a way to
Let you know I'm not like them

Now I lie in bed and think of her
Sometimes I even weep
Then I dream of her
Behind the wall of sleep.

Oh yeah. A bit too much of me in that song. Anyway, if you play rock'n'roll bass, are a hot or cute babe, are single and looking for a fat, balding, middle-aged guy who will slavishly worship you, hit the email up there. I'm your sucker.

Colin Farrell Alert

It seems some of the ladies find this Colin Farrell actor-guy attractive. Just thought I'd let distaff readers of Half-Bakered know that you can see a very young "Col" Farrell on WKNO/10 right now in Memphis. He stars as Danny, a troubled young Dubliner staying with his Uncle Eammon in the rural Irish village of Ballykissangel, the Irish comedy/drama you can catch on Saturday nights at 9M. It repeats at 1AM for the night owls.

For the guys, unfortunately the series' most attractive actress, Dervla Kirwan left at the end of last season along with co-star and then-husband Stephen Tompkinson. Still smoking hot, but she's not starring in anything you can see in America right now.

Star Trek: Enterprise -- Oh Yeah!

**SPOILER WARNING**

Oh hell yeah. Tonight's episode, "Babel One," is just the kind of Star Trek I've been hoping for. Gruff, bluff, in your face Tellarites. Paranoid, scheming Andorians. Even Romulans! This is the kind of action-packed stuff Star Trek can do well. If this is Manny Coto finally settling into his production/show style, I'm happy.

The same moving camera and snappy editing I mentioned in the Enterprise post down below was evident here. I didn't check the credits, so I don't know if this was the same director or the new Trek style. There were fish-eye lenses in the alien ship and even long-focus lenses used up close in a chase scene in the Enterprise's corridors. Sometimes the always-moving camera gets a little old, but it's a good style.

The episode opens with a great Hoshi/Archer scene that Linda Park shines in. Fans have been saying for years that Linda's every bit as hot as Jolene Blalock, so it's good to see her being used a bit more. The happy smile she flashes at Archer at the end of their scene is completely winning.

The Tellarites were introduced in TOS (The Original Series) episode "Journey to Babel," and seen only in that episode until a season two ENT where the episode was built around two Tellarites. Those two were a letdown, as they didn't behave like the "argumentative" species in TOS. No problem with "Babel One." These guys are just what you'd hope for. It was hugely fun to see them again.

The Andorian captain, Shran, Archer's sometime friend and sometime enemy, was back with another Andorian we'd seen before, his HOTT officer Tovar (sp?). Best of all, we get to see Tovar in a swimsuit -- lots of shapely blue skin kicking the crap out of some Starfleet Marines. Bring on the (green skinned) Orion slave girls!

All the scenes with the Andorians, Tellarites and humans arguing rang so true, just like a fan would want. There was the expected talk about trying to for alliances for cooperation, setting up the meetings next season (we hope) that lead to the United Federation of Planets.

One thing I was pleased to see was that the main story -- ferrying Tellarites and Andorians across space -- was the focus, but they didn't forget to work in small bits of character business around that. The interplay -- Archer serving tea and the way T'Pol drinks it -- around the dialogue in an Archer/T'Pol dinner scene tells us nearly as much as their words, especially T'Pol's expressions. When Trip and Reed go over to an alien ship, they find time to talk about Trip's now-ended relationship with T'Pol. They even reference a season one remark by Reed about T'Pol's "bum." Nice bit for the fans there.

And then there's the Romulans! Oh yeah. All through the episode we see them in a ship's bridge (two of them), doing something with another being trapped in a chair with its fingers attached to controls and its head fully encased in a metal helmet. As Tucker and Reed work through the ship we keep wondering if they'll catch the Romulans; but we also know that no human has seen a Romulan in their time and won't ever until the time of TOS.

They solve this problem so neatly, so unexpectedly and so smartly, I'm seriously impressed by the writers and the director. When Tucker and Reed burst into the alien bridge, it's empty! They cut to the identical bridge where we still see the two Romulans and their captive. The camera pulls back through what we first think is a porthole, showing what turns into a wall, to slowly continue to pull back and reveal a building in the heart of a Romulan city! The alien ship was remote controlled. It's so carefully set up that the reveal is a surprise.

Some people will likely moan that this episode is yet another recycled plot. They aren't completely wrong, but the most important thing is that they stamp it with Enterprise's particular style.

I'd like to think that some of the flat episodes from earlier this season were just down to Manny Coto getting his hands around his show. I'm really hoping that the most recent episodes are what we can expect from the show from here on out. Star Trek is exciting again.

Next week: challenge death fight with slashing blades!

Mike Fleming: Tool or Moron?

I make myself listen to the first half-hour of the Mike Phlegming show, just in case he has big local news. Usually, I turn him off right after that. The longest I've listened to his show on purpose has been an hour. Trust me, it was painful.

Anyway, right off the bat today, Phlegming announces the name of Herenton's baby-mamma, and where she works. Her phone number is now unlisted. He even talks about paternity tests, which I won't repeat. He then crows that he knows her street address, but he won't give that out! No sir, he has scruples. The public has a right to know, but apparently not that much.

I haven't listened to WDIA today, but I'm sure she's been outed over there, too. If the hosts won't say, plenty of callers will, just to out her. Scanning the 5PM news shows, I didn't see any stories naming her, but I might have missed something while changing channels. None of the news websites are naming her yet. Haven't read the Commercial Appeal yet, either.

So why does Phlegming feel the need to identify the woman? He claims the "public's right to know." Nah, I don't buy that for a second. It's about him getting back at the Mayor and looking good to his audience. Pure and simple. The man is such a waste of airtime and opportunity.

He almost always takes the easiest and cheapest position on whatever the topic of the day is. Criminals? Kill 'em. Politicians? Corrupt! Black Memphis pols? Idiots! Taxes? Too high! You name it. He's a glib button-pusher and about as deep. Partly, it's the nature of his show, where things have to hustle along pretty steadily. But I also think it's just Phlegming, that he's not an especially deep thinker.

He talks tough but, for example, during the Income Tax Wars he went after House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh daily for his efforts to pass the tax. When Naifeh appeared on his show, suddenly it was all niceness and "thank you" and obsequiousness. Having slammed radio talk show hosts the day before, Naifeh made a special point of exempting his friend Mike. It's like that time after time when he can get people to appear on his show. Not that many do.

Sometimes Phlegming will ask questions that don't seem connected to anything except making some obscure point. When he had County Mayor AC Wharton on, around the time of a previous John Ford blowup, he threw out a question, out of the blue, asking if AC had helped to write Ford's letter of apology. What? Sometimes it's pretty clear he's carrying water for some Republican interest, like with Mayor Rout's son and the Young Republicans.

There is his problem with vocabulary. Everything is idiotic, stupid, garbage, moronic, etc. He speaks in superlatives: it's always the "most" idiotic. "I can't believe it!" Oh, the list goes on and on. I can't count the number of times he gets lost in a sentence he's contructing, only to flounder around before making a lurch into a finish. You can tell he's a writer at heart and not especially good at thinking on his feet.

There are problems with his program format and time. Since its so packed full of ads and promo or news breaks, he's constantly against a break. It forces him to cut off callers or finish their thoughts for them to hustle them along. He has to repeat things for new listeners dropping in during their drive home, which eats up time.

Phlegming's bad about abruptly changing topics. After a break he'll come back and, even though he's promised to take calls, he'll start up on something new. When he takes a call, if the caller wants to talk about something previous Phlegming will cut them off and say something inane like "You've got to keep up on this show!" There's no rhyme or reason for it.

A recent example: When he broke the news yesterday about Herenton's child, he said something like, "The baby doesn't have a name yet." Even though it's four months old, just because the Mayor didn't disclose his name Phlegming jumps on that to encourage callers to offer their own suggestions. So childish.

If anyone out there can forward Arbitron numbers, I'd like to see them. I'd like to know just how many listeners he has. Especially as compared to shows on WDIA, and to morning shows. The station brags he's the most listened to, but that's against a pretty small pool: him and the James brothers on WDIA, I think. That's not saying much.

Well, 680AM inaugurated the Air America schedule today. They are also talking about having a liberal local call-in radio show. I'd listen to that, at least to start. It mostly, as always, depends on the host. Pretty much anyone will be a step up from Phlegming, even across the political aisle. And maybe if they give him some competition, he'll either improve or lose his slot.

We can hope.

INSTANT UPDATE A quick scan of the 6PM news shows that the woman is not being named. Good for them! It's not germane to whatever points about Herenton that need to be made.

INSTANT CORRECTION My bad! WREC/3 is identifying the woman. Tools.

Fiiiiiiiiiiii-yuh!

I just had a brush with my worst fear as an apartment renter: a fire in a neighboring apartment. Luckily, it was confined to that one unit and no one was injured.

I was just goofing off online when I smelled acrid smoke. My first thought was that the neighbor behind me was grilling something. But when I stuck my head outside, black smoke was pouring out from under the breezeway. (I live upstairs.) Leaning farther out, I saw it was from the apartment diagonally down from mine, in the middle of the building. A woman driving by was parked in the street trying to call 911. I saw my neighborlady standing near the stairs with her infant child.

No one had yet gotten 911, so I dialed. I was put on hold! It was only a few seconds, but still. But after the call got in, it took only a few minutes for almost half-a-dozen pumpers and ladder trucks to arrive.

By this point, the smoke was really dense and roiling out of the unit. The neighbor said she'd been asleep when her child starting crying loud enough to wake her. That young man saved her life. She grabbed him and headed out. It was only a moment later when I saw them outside. I went to the occupied apartments to bang on the doors to wake them up, if they were home. No one was; it was just the three of us. Another neighbor in back came around to let her son wait in his warm car, away from the scary stuff.

The Fire Dept. cut our power all around (for safety) and went in. It didn't take long to put out, as it was mostly contained to the front living room. Apparently, a bad mixture of electric heat and drapery. When they knocked out the back window, another column of choking smoke poured out. Everything they had is ruined by either smoke or water damage.

Things were squared away in pretty short order. The firemen kept us advised on what was going on. Very professional and courteous responses on their part. All the windows in the apartment were broken out, and the inside is destroyed. It will take major renovations before it's livable. The neighbors got moved to another unit in the building. All of them are safe, thank goodness. The boy saw some smoke leftovers and started to whimper a bit, so I imagine he'll have a tough time sleeping tonight. He's a hero, just too young to comprehend.

The big fear on my and my upstairs neighbor's part is that a wall fire is still lurking inside. We made sure to have the firemen check for that and they say we're fine. Damage was mostly confined to the front wall, not any side/conjoining walls. Still, I doubt I'll be sleeping tonight.

Both the cats, once the smoke got thick, bolted for their hidey holes. Rocky is out now, scoping out the situation; Bennie is still hiding, which is normal for her. She's slow to recover from these kinds of scares. My apartment was undamaged, but is pungent with acrid smoke. Even though it's freezing, I have the windows open and a fan on to mitigate things. My fingers are numb and shaking as I type this.

Only bad thing I learned is that the other upstairs neighbor, a young woman, had left her apartment just minutes before the fire really took off. She had noted the smoke and smell but didn't worry about it! She had gone off with not much second thought. Thanks lady.

Things are beginning to settle down. The folks downstairs are in a new unit, sorting through the wreckage. They know they need to act before it gets dark, because the unit will be looted overnight. The landlord showed up. She parked in the lot next door and surreptitiously came around to see how bad it was. MLGW got out pretty quickly and turned our power back on.

It could have been much, much worse, of course, and I'm grateful it wasn't. No one was seriously injured (or killed!). The fire didn't spread (yet!). It's over now and the block will be sharing and retelling the story for months to come.

Remember Kids, They Have To Give Them To Someone

I'll be honest here. I put just about no stock in television news awards. There may be some merit to them, but the entertainment (television, film, video) industry is awash in awards. They are the most self-congratulatory group I've ever seen. Similar thinking applies to the news industry, print and broadcast. Especially television news, which often combines the worst of both. For news, there are local Emmies, state Emmies, regional Emmies, national Emmies, etc., etc. Stay in the business long enough and don't suck and you'll eventually have one fall into your lap.

So, finding out that WPTY/24's Jeni DiPrizio won an Emmy for her "Road Rebels" feature was not a surprise; it was also confirmation of my worst suspicions.

Jeni darts into traffic to confront surprised drivers with their bad driving. What could possibly go wrong here? I want to know why she hasn't gotten tickets for traffic violations. If she's getting a pass from the cops, I want to know if I can have one too, if I blog about something traffic-related. Like the speeders on my block.

This is Memphis. It will happen soon that she picks the wrong driver to confront. She's one cracked-out, drunk, pissed-off Memphis driver away from catastrophe. She'll be lucky to get a face full of pepper spray. Worst case, she gets shot by a driver who doesn't see her clearly. A fender in the bones is another possibility.

Why this kind of thing gets awarded is beyond my simple thinking skills. I guess I have to be credentialed and trained in broadcast journalism to understand it.

Implications of the Global Baby Bust

Excellent essay over at Foreign Affairs on the coming problems of world underpopulation, the so-called "baby bust." Phillip Longman looks at falling birth rates around the developed and developing world, meeting the promises of retirement security, and how it all may shake out. You should read the whole thing, and it's a bit long, so I will address a few points here.

Although many factors are at work, the changing economics of family life is the prime factor in discouraging childbearing. In nations rich and poor, under all forms of government, as more and more of the world's population moves to urban areas in which children offer little or no economic reward to their parents, and as women acquire economic opportunities and reproductive control, the social and financial costs of childbearing continue to rise.

This is what the social scientists and science fiction writers of the Sixties and Seventies failed to recognise. I can remember all the doom'n'gloom over a world swimming in people. Soylent Green anyone?

That didn't happen. What experts quickly discovered was that, freed of the shackle of pregnancy by the Pill and by on-demand abortion, free of religious pressures to produce children, free to pursue their own education and careers, women did so in droves. Of course, these same women stopped having kids. Everywhere that Western educational and cultural norms have taken hold, the same has happened or is happening. China's population control, the only exception, has come at the point of a gun.

This fact alone would seem to argue for the Bush Doctrine of spreading liberty and freedom. We haven't been picky if newly-democratic nations tend to fall into the European model of social democratism, which accomplishes the same thing population-wise. What has always mattered is women: giving them reproductive control and occupational options.

A nation's GDP is literally the sum of its labor force times average output per worker. Thus a decline in the number of workers implies a decline in an economy's growth potential. When the size of the work force falls, economic growth can occur only if productivity increases enough to compensate. And these increases would have to be substantial to offset the impact of aging.

One thing not mentioned by Longman is robotics. This can go a considerable distance in improving productivity, though there are natural limits. We in America have come nowhere near those limits, so watch for robotics to become a buzzword in the coming decades.

Theoretically, raising the retirement age could help to ease the burden of unfunded old-age benefits. But declining fitness among the general population is making this tactic less feasible. In the United States, for example, the dramatic increases in obesity and sedentary lifestyles are already causing disability rates to rise among the population 59 and younger. Researchers estimate that this trend will cause a 10-20 percent increase in the demand for nursing homes over what would otherwise occur from mere population aging, and a 10-15 percent increase in Medicare expenditures on top of the program's already exploding costs. Meanwhile, despite the much ballyhooed "longevity revolution," life expectancy among the elderly in the United States is hardly improving. Indeed, due to changing lifestyle factors, life expectancy among American women aged 65 was actually lower in 2002 than it was in 1990, according to the Social Security Administration.

This essay also makes the point elsewhere that we do face a Social Security crisis, but for reasons like those above. And it was written nearly a year ago, before the most recent political debate.

This is going to become crucial in the next couple of decades, so will we be seeing more and more intrusion by the government, or by cost-conscious insurance companies? Will there be a return to a sort of "means testing" based on weight and overall physical fitness? Don't be surprised.

Current population trends are likely to have another major impact: they will make military actions increasingly difficult for most nations. One reason for this change will be psychological. In countries where parents generally have only one or two children, every soldier becomes a "Private Ryan" -- a soldier whose loss would mean overwhelming devastation to his or her family.

In America, we've been seeing more and more of this since Vietnam. It's an effective anti-war strategy, which is why the media is drenched with it since the Second War in Iraq. Even with an all-volunteer Army (an important change too many don't consider), we'll still find it harder and harder to justify sending soldiers to die.

The other side of this is China, which already has an excess male population (ie. men who will never marry) in the tens of millions and will see that grow in the coming decades. Military planners don't need a lot of fancy equipment when they can send in a million-man force in any given assault. This, I think, will have consequences for Taiwan and North Korea, possibly even resource-rich Siberian Russian. Turning an army of men loose on an occupied nation, where they can have a slightly better chance of gaining a wife, has to have some appeal to Chinese leaders.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the imbalance between what the U.S. federal government will collect in future taxes under current law and what it has promised to pay in future benefits now exceeds 500 percent of GDP. To close that gap, the IMF warns, "would require an immediate and permanent 60 percent hike in the federal income tax yield, or a 50 percent cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits." Neither is likely. Accordingly, in another 20 years, the United States will be no more able to afford the role of world policeman than Europe or Japan can today.

What Social Security crisis? American political leaders of the Right have already proposed shifting some of the burden of NATO back to Europe, but that's not going to happen. They just can't afford it. Their welfare states are overburdened already and facing relying on foreign, unassimilated workers to keep it going. You think those immigrants will join in?

European Union expansion east, to the newly democratic nations of the old Soviet sphere, can make a hollow military practicable by creating an enormous buffer zone between Russia and Europe. But Russia is already nervous by the encroachment and is making noises. They won't be able to afford to do anything about it for years, unless they can find a way to end the oligarchs and move to open markets, letting their economy grow. That will mean Russia has to import its own foreign workers, most likely from the Asian Islamic nations of their south and south-east. Which puts them into this problem, too; especially given their current negative population numbers.

Population aging is also likely to create huge legacy costs for employers. This is particularly true in the United States, where health and pension benefits are largely provided by the private sector. General Motors (GM) now has 2.5 retirees on its pension rolls for every active worker and an unfunded pension debt of $19.2 billion. Honoring its legacy costs to retirees now adds $1,800 to the cost of every vehicle GM makes, according to a 2003 estimate by Morgan Stanley. Just between 2001 and 2002, the U.S. government's projected short-term liability for bailing out failing private pension plans increased from $11 billion to $35 billion, with huge defaults expected from the steel and airline industries.

There's a whole section of the essay looking at these kinds of costs, along the costs of a larger, more sustaining retirement state. Did you read that: $1800 per vehicle for pension costs?

Indeed, according to a study by the UN Population Division, if the United States hopes to maintain the current ratio of workers to retirees over time, it will have to absorb an average of 10.8 million immigrants annually through 2050. At that point, however, the U.S. population would total 1.1 billion, 73 percent of whom would be immigrants who had arrived in this country since 1995 or their descendants....

Another is the prospect of a cultural backlash against immigrants, the chances of which increase as native birthrates decline. In the 1920s, when widespread apprehension about declining native fertility found voice in books such as Lothrop Stoddard's "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy," the U.S. political system responded by shutting off immigration. Germany, Sweden, and France did the same in the 1970s as the reality of population decline among their native born started to set in.

I can't find it now, but I remember reading last year that most to all of the population increase in the USA in the last census came from immigration. If you factor that back out, the US had flat population numbers!

The cultural backlash is already well underway. If we follow past history and shut down immigration for a generation, to absorb the most recent groups, then we too face shrinking worker numbers, exacerbating the problem immigration is masking. But seen another way, some things begin to make sense.

The Bush (and previous Republican administrations) have shown almost no interest in stopping the flood of illegals from Mexico. Could it be that they've done the math and seen that Mexican immigration is necessary? Will Mexico's coming hyper-aging population problem (read the whole essay, OK?) mean a reverse flood back, to take care of aging parents, or an ever more growing flood of young workers taking American wages and sending larger and larger percentages back home? What kind of economic effect will such a large outflow of potential capital and consumer spending have on our economy?

So where will the children of the future come from? The answer may be from people who are at odds with the modern environment -- either those who don't understand the new rules of the game, which make large families an economic and social liability, or those who, out of religious or chauvinistic conviction, reject the game altogether.

This is where the so-called "clash of civilisations" comes into play. Arab and Asian (a forgotten, but large group) Muslims will continue to grow in numbers, versus Christians, for quite a while. It's not likely that Muslim resistance to the West is motivated by a meta-awareness of this issue. But the functional result is still to see growing imbalance between Christian (European, American, and shrinking) populations and Muslim (Asian, Arab, and growing). Given the already large numbers of Muslims in the world, this will affect the problem.

But there's also, as the essay discusses, the growing movement in America for Christian cultures to disconnect from the larger culture. While this has the net effect of increasing white, European numbers, it's hard to see how this is sustainable when the attractions of delaying or avoiding children for material prosperity and career success are so strong. Some of the proposed solutions, unfortunately, involve government intervention.

There's another mode, which Longman only barely touches on: following the African-American model of having children. the dominant paradigm is from the upper-class ideals of modern American feminism, which is still largely class-driven and white-, European-oriented. Overwhelmingly, we see feminism approach motherhood as something to do after career success. More and more, medicine and culture are deformed to allow older women to have children at a time of life when their bodies are less well-suited.

In the African-American community, it's far more common for young women to have children, then enter the workforce and later still work on educational success. Many black women begin having children in their late teens, when women's bodies are better suited to pregnancy. Also, grandmothers are often still in their thirties and forties and better capable of providing post-natal support.

Institutional feminism stigmatises this model, but it seems to offer some attractive advantages. First, education is much simpler to fit around a child-raising schedule than a job. By the time a woman completes higher education or job training (or begins to seriously pursue a formal career) her children are of school age. The woman's career is then not disrupted by a need for extended leave, nor are businesses stressed by the demand to keep options open for leave-takers.

In this light, educational financial support serves two complementary purposes: first, we get a better-educated woman and second, it indirectly encourages child-rearing by smoothing out the complexities. It surprises me that this isn't explored more.

How can secular societies avoid population loss and decline? The problem is not that most people in these societies have lost interest in children. Among childless Americans aged 41 years and older in 2003, for example, 76 percent say they wish they had had children, up from 70 percent in 1990. In 2000, 40-year-old women in the United States and in every European nation told surveys that they had produced fewer children than they intended. Indeed, if European women now in their 40s had been able to produce their ideal number of children, the continent would face no prospect of population loss.

The problem, then, is not one of desire. The problem is that even as modern societies demand more and more investment in human capital, this demand threatens its own supply. The clear tendency of economic development is toward a more knowledge-based, networked economy in which decision-making and responsibility are increasingly necessary at lower levels. In such economies, however, children often remain economically dependent on their parents well into their own childbearing years because it takes that long to acquire the panoply of technical skills, credentials, social understanding, and personal maturity that more and more jobs now require. For the same reason, many couples discover that by the time they feel they can afford children, they can no longer produce them, or must settle for just one or two.

This is the nub of it for America. Government cannot encourage religion, but it clearly must not impede it. Government can encourage children by subsidy, possibly, if the focus is changed. The African-American model I talked about is an attractive possibility that demands further research.

I've only scratched the surface of this informative essay with these few excerpts. It's got wheels in my head turning like crazy. Current political trends don't seem to take into account the demographic trends underlying our society. Yes, war or disease could change the equations radically. But you can't plan for that, only alter plans afterward. You are encouraged to Read The Whole Thing.