Posted 5:44 PM by Floyd

When I was an impressionable pup of a student at Purdue University, I had my first contact with college professors. I decided they were pretty damn smart. They wrote our textbooks and graded our exams, and clearly knew the subject matter forward and backward. Of course, sometimes they were a little eccentric. There was a psychology professor who had jammed with Blue Oyster Cult, and who had a little dog whose hind legs had been lost in a car accident -- so he made a little wheeled seat for the dog's rump. And there was the sociology professor who held up a grenade in class, to see if we were paying attention.

Since then I have had more experience in the great wide world, and have found that some professors are intelligent, some are doing okay, and some -- well, check out this editorial by Laura K. Donohue, acting assistant professor of political science at Stanford University.

You can read the whole thing if you want. Here is the executive summary: USA Predator drone fires missile at suspected terrorists in Yemen. Terrorists are killed. Assassinations are bad. Bad USA, bad!

Some quotes, and my reactions thereto:

The incident in Yemen wasn't the first time in the war on terrorism that the Bush administration has assassinated people it considers ``enemy combatants.'' But it is the first time it has done so outside Afghanistan; it is the first time it has done so in a country with which the United States is not at war; and it is the first time it has assassinated a U.S. citizen.

If I were an acting assistant professor of political science -- or even an acting janitor who hears some lectures when he empties the trash can -- I would expect to know what constitutes an assassination. Killing a head of state or influential private citizen is an assassination. Killing a person who wages war, such as a terrorist, is not.

The target was clearly Harithi, a man Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to after the killing as ``a suspected terrorist connected to the USS Cole.'' He was suspected of terrorist crimes, but he had not been charged -- much less convicted -- in any court of law. Neither had the other five, at least one of whom was entitled to U.S. constitutional protections.

If an American citizen joins the SS, and is wandering about France prior to D-Day, is he entitled to constitutional protections before being bombed or shot at?

Does Donohue think that all attacks made by American forces on enemy forces are preceded by a trial?

The White House refused to apply the Geneva conventions to prisoners and replaced the U.S. judicial system with military tribunals, claiming that due process did not apply to suspected terrorists. Now, the administration appears to be interpreting the resolution as a license to kill.

3000 US citizens are murdered during peacetime. And the US might actually kill people? Impeach Bush! Re-elect Al Gore!

On Nov. 4, the day after the assassination, President Bush denounced Al-Qaida as ``international killers.'' A State Department spokesman then announced, ``Our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context has not changed.'' The United States cannot live by the standards it condemns.

I'm glad to see that Donohue sees no distinction between killing terrorists, and filling Israeli civilians full of nails. It makes the Fisking ever so much more guilt-free.

The assassination raises important moral questions. Is it better for one, or, in this case, six enemy combatants to die, their guilt unproved, than for American soldiers' or citizens' lives to be placed at risk? The utilitarian argument that might allow this ignores the central importance of individual rights -- rights that form the basis of our political structure.

Aren't enemy combatants usually attacked? When does Donohue plan to learn about how wars are conducted?

"Colonel, the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler SS division lies between us and Paris. Shall we attack?"

"Captain, I can see that there are enemy combatants ahead. But is their guilt proven?"

If we suppose that we are at war, then the tradition of ``just war'' demands that the force we employ must be ``discriminate,'' providing immunity for innocents wherever possible. And it must be proportional to our ends.

That's exactly right, dipwad. That's why a missile was used, not a nuclear warhead. That's why we wasted six guys in a desert, and didn't drop a bomb on Aden.

In terms of proportionality, was the murder of six people proportional to the suspicion of the guilt of one?

"Sergeant, who can I shoot at?"

"Private, you can shoot at Heinz Sheisskopf. He's a known war criminal. You can kill some number of soldiers near him. Let me use my slide rule ... carry the three ... AUGH! I've been hit!"

"I'll avenge you sir!"

"Not out of proportion, private!"

The United States cannot insist that everyone else play by democratic norms and then turn the tables by establishing a separate set of rules for itself. It is not just irresponsible. It is dangerous.

Yeah, somebody might fly some airplanes into some buildings and kill a few thousand civilians. What's that? They already did, before the new assassination policy was approved?

I guess you don't learn about cause and effect until you become a full professor.

Posted 9:39 PM by Floyd

Advocates of the nanny state often use children to push their agenda of control. Usually this is presented as "For the Children", which Juan Gato has mockingly trademarked. There is an especially obnoxious subspecies which one might call "For the Children Nearby." Here is an example from the San Jose Mercury News opinion page, by a Jane Eisner of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I may not be the best arbiter of cool, but this sure seems cool to me: A lithe, laughing young woman wearing a pair of low-slung jeans and what looks like a black bra is pouring drops of liquid on her bare belly. A lucky young man is licking them up, tongue prominently on her skin.

``Vegetarian by day,'' says the magazine advertisement. ``Bacardi by night.''

Now, I'm not an advertising genius, either, but of this I am also sure: With that message, Bacardi isn't looking to get my business. I don't dress like that and, at this stage in my life, don't even wish to. Nor do I generally read Rolling Stone, where this ad appeared last year.

Yet more than 4 million people who cannot legally drink in this country do read that magazine, comprising 35 percent of its audience, and only the blind or the foolish would argue that this sexy scene escaped their attention.

Correction: The blind, the foolish and the liquor industry. The industry, which gets to regulate itself on this matter, claims that it is doing a fine job ensuring that alcohol advertising does not appeal to underage individuals, and it managed to get the Federal Trade Commission to agree.

David H. Jernigan knows otherwise. As research director for the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, he's just published a comprehensive study that shows how underage youth are actually seeing more magazine ads for beer and distilled liquor than are people of legal drinking age. Using the demographic data employed by marketing strategists, CAMY analyzed what ads appear where and found a dismaying proportion in magazines with high youth readership.

``Bacardi by Night'' is hardly the only example. Jim Beam pushed its ``Real friends. Real bourbon'' campaign featuring what looks like a high school football team in Maxim (underage audience: 28 percent). Absolut Vodka hawked itself in last month's Vibe (41 percent). And Heineken even appropriated a Nintendo game controller to promote its product.

This attempt to entice ever-younger drinkers comes despite the huge social cost of drinking. Alcohol plays a substantial role in the four leading causes of death for young people: car wrecks, suicides, homicides and accidents. And research shows that kids who start drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to become alcoholics by the time they're 21.

The wine industry has managed to place most of its magazine advertising in publications read by only a sliver of the underage population. As Jernigan says, that proves it's possible to reach an adult audience without overexposing youth.

Unless this advertising is banned altogether -- which raises troubling First Amendment questions -- some spillover to younger audiences is inevitable. But the industry's current voluntary code is as squishy as beer-filled paper cups at a frat party. It asks only that advertising not appear in publications in which more than half the readers are under 21.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants to restrict such marketing to underage audiences of less than 10 percent. Jernigan thinks 15.8 percent is appropriate -- to correspond with the percentage of the general population aged 12 to 20.

Even the FTC, in its 1999 review, suggested that the industry move to a 25 percent standard. According to CAMY's study, that expectation is being violated big time: Almost one-third of all alcohol advertising dollars are being spent in 10 magazines with at least one-fourth of the readers under 21. Clearly, the FTC has to encourage the industry to revisit this issue.

``It's all about the beer,'' brags the Heineken ad. It sure is.

Eisner and her ilk want to create the a magical world where no person under the age of 21 will ever be exposed to advertising for an alcoholic beverage, kind of like the "boy in a bubble" concept of two decades back. Because children live in an adult environment, and imitate adults -- that being their job -- it is just as impractical to insulate the young from alcohol advertising as it is from any microorganism. Trying to prevent youth exposure to adult drugs is to effectively prevent all advertising and public consumption; I am cynical enough to believe that this is what Eisner and company are really after.

Consider the immense burden she seeks to place on the publications she named: Maxim, Vibe, Rolling Stone. Eisner purses her lips when she relates that these magazines are self-regulating. My blog is also self-regulating, Judy. I can give you a list of countries to move to if you don't like that. Not only does Eisner hate freedom of speech, she also hates it when someone makes a buck. Eisner doesn't seem to appreciate why these magazines are advertising for Jim Beam and Absolut: Because advertising pays their bills.

Eisner quotes a bunch of statistics on how many of various publicationss readers are underage. These figures are a joke. No publisher can possibly have any more than a vague idea on how many of its readers are in a certain age group. They can't do any statistically significant polling of their subscribers, because most subscribers wouldn't bother reporting their ages. And what of newstand sales? I don't know what's happening on Planet Eisner, but when I go into Borders to buy a magazine I never see the sales clerk attempt to guess my age and make a tally mark. All that CAMY or anyone else can do is to make an educated guess.

I don't know what is more ridiculous: The idea that companies like Jim Beam and Maxim should cease their entirely legitimate activities, based on statistics pulled out of some busybody's ass -- or that Eisner, MADD, and the FTC thinks there is some way to write a magazine that appeals to people who are 21, but not to those one year younger.

Posted 8:36 PM by Floyd

Here's a recipe which is guaranteed to make you less stinky and dirty. Therefore like Stephen Green's better recipes, it can increase your chances of getting laid.

Hot Water for Bath

Ingredients:

• 1 malfunctioning water heater
  
• 1 malfunctioning hot water recirculating pump (optional)
  
• 2 to 4 large pots or saucepans
  
• Lukewarm tap water
  

Fill each pot or pan with lukewarm tap water and place on stove.

Bring to boil, stirring frequently. (Why do you need to stir? I don't know. That's what all the recipes say, and who am I to argue with them.)

While water is heating, fill tub halfway with lukewarm tap water.

Add boiling water to bathtub. Boil more water if bath is not hot enough.

Bathe. (Serves 1.)

Posted 9:01 PM by Floyd

I have a scoop, kind of. It shouldn't be a scoop because my source is a radio interview of Donald Rumsfeld that originally aired last Thursday. But I haven't seen any reporting on the blogosphere.

The program was Q-and-A, with questions submitted via phone and email. The first question was from the CBS interviewer; he asked what would happen if the UN inspection team did not find any weapons of mass descruction.

Rumsfeld's answer was, "We know Iraq has biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. This would show that they have been successful in hiding evidence from the inspection teams."

What this means is that the US has the screws down so hard on Saddam that the poor bastard can't even twitch. If Blix finds nothing, then Iraq is hiding evidence. Regime change! But if there is evidence found, I doubt the US will say, "Okay, that's everything? We'll back up the truck and load it then." No, what I think the US will say is, "Told ya! Weapons of mass destruction! He's hiding more! Regime change!"

I don't see any way that Hussein can give satisfaction. I realize Rumsfeld is not the ultimate authority in this matter, but do you think he's shooting his mouth off? I don't.