A few quickies while hanging out at the UMCP comp lab:

• Rich Lowry gets some email:

  In addition to all of the problems you cite, there is another problem with the Chicken Hawk talk. While it would drastically reduce the number of people allowed to support the use of force, it would not limit in the slightest the ranks of those who would be allowed to oppose the use of force. That most fundamental issue–war or peace–is the last one on which we should skew the discourse by artificial limits on who is permitted to have or express an opinion. Incidentally, if anyone wants to see a fictional but plausible example of a society that accepts the chicken hawk logic, check out Starship Troopers. The book is good, the movie bad, but in either one you see a society in which only military veterans get to vote and whose defense policy involves very little wondering why the bad guys hate us and a lot of blowing the bad guys up…

  I like the first half of the passage, but the way Heinlein’s Troopers was cited seems a bit off. I’ve read the book twice (and I like it, too) and I think it was more about an emphasis on merit (with military service as that merit). I could cite a few other things that would be better off as an example for what Lowry’s mailer wants to say. For example, if the chickenhawk argument were to be held true, then no Catholic, in fact, no non-clergy Catholic, would have a say on the juvenile sexual abuse scandals of that church.

• I had something to say over at Doc. Taylor’s place over the uselessness and meaninglessness of all the information that is at our fingertips.

And for the spotlight: Dean Esmay gives Mother Cindy all the right coverage she deserves.

Total grab bag today:

• “Open DRM.” Not as much an oxymoron as it sounds.
• Google has a new desktop app. I’m not a fan of convergence technologies that bring together apples and oranges into a basket. Besides, an app like that, blown up to absurdity, is just another layer to the desktop environment. I, for one, can do without it.
• Two links to Doc J of OTB: First, he notes that Michelle Malkin has now outclassed Insty on the incoming links. There’s perspective in the comments section. Also, he cites an article on the new business casual trend. I’ve rode on the Metro enough times on a summer afternoon to observe enough men in penguin suits absolutely, positively soaked in sweat. It’s disgusting, and don’t tell me that it’s okay just ’cause you’re on the way home. I’m not saying you should paint yourself with anti-sweat liniment, I’m saying that those damned penguin suits are the male’s equivalent of an oppressive wardrobe. Are they our sex’s chastity belts, though? I wouldn’t go that far.
• Rev. Don Sensing has the scoop on one of the most remarkable inventions I have ever heard of. I just hope the water is palatable.

Here’s something I just had to take out of the bulletpoints and give its own section:

Lastly, is now the time to save money for the down payment on a hoose? I’m taking clues from Libertarian Amazon Jane Galt, whose examination of the housing bubble says “yes.” Now, in some markets, the bubble is going to be bigger and will pop louder than in others. My sister’s home is a single-family “normal” house (and not one of those unsightly behemoths called “starter castles” or “mini-mansions”) whose location would be bufferred from catastrophic slides, but what of the others? Well, hopefully I’ll have enough money saved up by the time the bubble bursts.

I just don’t know if I’ll enjoy buying a foreclosed house. I mean, some guy and his family probably paid through the nose with a huge portion of their monthly income only to lose it. That’s bad vibes in the house, right there.

Sorry folks, count me an unbeliever in the NYT’s prophets.

Steve Verdon has a five part series (and then some) on the phenomenon: The Sky is Falling… We are Running Out of Oil, Peak Energy Part One, Two, Three, and Four. It’s a truckload to read, but it’s worth the free time.

Also, Freakanomics picks apart the NYT’s latest. (Prov: Jeff Jarvis.)

Mind you: at the heart of all this is my acceptance that fossil fuels are a finite resource. I just don’t think it’s as doom-y as the NYT’s article says.

My stance on “alternative energy” is that we have some of the best, almost completely renewable sources of energy around: atomic. Couple that with the concept of a breeder reactor that a certain peanut farmer was too afraid of that it made him ban research into it, and we do have a powerful, renewable source of energy. This comes with the caveat that energy “renewal” can only go so far without breaking the laws of physics, ya?

At one point or another people who are viscerally afraid of atomic energy will have to realize that they can’t have it all: unlimited energy without cost to the environment is a pipe dream. Yes, we can be very efficient with oil and market forces can affect oil consumption. And yes, we can be as clean as we can about our atomics but not all potential disasters can be predicted and prepared for.

Lastly, and herein lies my fear of humanity’s stubborness: do you really think we as a civilization will be so fixated on oil that we would be digging in the dirt, so to speak, for the very last drop without even preparing for that moment beforehand?