Iron Man

I was a comics nerd as a kid, before it was anything like cool. It was so uncool, in fact, that my nerdy next door neighbor friend and I were the only comics nerds in our school, along with 1598 kids who didn't know Iron Man from iron pyrite (whatever that is). As far as I know, anyway, because comics were too uncool to talk about.

Before going to see it this weekend, I pulled out my copy of Marvel's Son of Origins of Marvel Superheroes and flipped through it before giving it to my son to read before the show. I'd forgotten how campy the story was.

So Iron Man the movie gave me deja vu. The cave, Stark's hit-and-run sex life, Pepper's "Sometimes I even take out the trash" line -- almost every scene was like instant replay from somewhere.

But it was better than the comic book. Using terrorists instead of some Viet Nam leftover, or setting it as a period piece, allows much more modern relevance. Not only that, but it fits with the Bin Laden style of leveraging Western technology against its creators; in that, Marvel was prescient.

The best part of the movie was that Tony Stark didn't become a full-on liberal crusader for ending capitalism and saving the spotted owl. He just realizes his errors, and wants to correct them. Given Hollywood's typical stupidity, I was expecting a moonbat lecture on global warming; what I got was a good movie.

I didn't expect all the Audis, either.

I can't wait for the Avengers. If they play Captain America straight, and don't moonbat him up, people will line up around the block.

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Lunactivists Take Part in Easter Mass

From Moe Lane of Redstate and the Gateway Pundit comes this poor use of of leverage: six adult brats disrupt a Catholic Mass in Chicago on Easter Sunday. I don't care why, and hesitate even to say "Iraq war", because they don't deserve it. The important part to me is that they were there to compain about something the Church and probably the congregation is against, to gain for themselves some measure of attention.

This has all of the elements of lunactivism, all rolled into a nice little package.

They call it "raising awareness", but it's an attention-getting device no different than a toddler's temper tantrum.

The setting chosen for the idiocy ensured the brats' phyical safety.

They wasted leverage. Catholic Mass, like almost all church services, is open to everyone, and a disruption like theirs was sure to result in blog stories like this one. I feel dirty and ill-used even giving them the attention they were after, but I feel compelled to note the absurdity of it all.

The lunactivism is shown most clearly because they were preaching to the choir: most of the cathedral goers are probably against the war, but the act of lunacy drives a wedge between the activists and their audience. All of the worshippers were aware of the war. were The only awareness they raised was a negative perception about those opposing it.

And guess what: despit the best efforts of anti-war leftists in Congress and nursery schools, Iraq is becoming a country again: it's own country, not ruled by a thug and not run by our enemies. In time, we will leave there, too. But for now, our armed forces are giving terrorism a bad name in Iraq.

And so there is this from Michael J. Totten:


Meanwhile, "Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War" and the Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice are giving anti-war activism a bad name in America.

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Anthropocentric Global Alarmism, Part II

Archimedes ^† said, "Give me a lever long enough and a proper fulcrum, and I shall move the Earth." Liberals today see world government as the leverage to institute their ill-considered policies. They have found their fulcrum in the issue of Global Warming.

By asserting that mankind is endangering the climate, liberals are using time-worn techniques of psychological manipulation in an attempt to gain control over economics, institute a measure of world government, and show a triumph of science over theology. Blaming capitalism for all the world's ills as they do, in Global Warming they see a chance to lay at its feet the price, and exact tribute for their cause. They insist that the cures for Global Warming require subverting both the nation and prosperity before the needs of "the planet". And since traditional religions did not predict climate changes, and don't offer solace for this problem, Global Warming is an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the atheistic world view.

Whether we call it Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW), Anthropocentric Climate Change, or whatever (ACCOW), or something else, the concept is both simple, and bizarre. The path by which the idea of AGW has arrived at mainstream acceptance is the usual one: a weird theory is proposed, which masks incredible complexity with apparent simplicity, along with the alleged potential for disaster.

So by repeatedly having a cow over having ACCOW, liberals are using the technique of the Big Lie: repeated assertions take on the aura of truth.

In Part I of this series, I touched on the resistance to change as it relates to having ACCOW.
But the ACCOW controversy is really dominated by the fear of looking stupid. Not wanting to be wrong, scientists in government and academia would follow the consensus opinion off a cliff, and figuratively speaking, many have. Having done so, it now will be very difficult psychologically for them to reject the "consensus" opinion.

Another aspect of ACCOW which ropes people in is the principle that

Experts in the psychology of human error have long been aware that even highly trained experts are easily misled when they rely on personal experience and informal decision rules to infer the causes of complex events.

Humans tend to think that what they themselves personally experience generalizes to all people, all places, and for all time. While often accurate, hasty generalizations can lead to ruinous results.

Liberals tend to be more urban, and in cities every passing vehicle and belching smokestack shows to the city-dweller a clear link between heat and pollution. This makes them more willing to accept the notion that CO2, which makes up a tiny fraction of greenhouse gases and an even tinier proportion of the atmosphere, can have anything like the massive effect that proponents of having ACCOW suggest.

This all follows a pattern, that of the boy crying wolf. Since the 1970s, there has been a procession of looming disasters about to doom the planet. Liberals now talk about climate change, and condemn as in denial anyone who is less than apoplectic about having ACCOW.

Liberals are understandably excited about the opportunity to change society, and at the prospect that in Global Warming we can seem man despoiling the commons. It's the perfect chance to do what the threat of the previous looming disasters about to doom the planet could not. Each of the following was to be the beginning of the end of mankind, and possibly all life on Earth:

• Overpopulation
  It is odd that the Earth has managed to support its burgeoning population, given the hysteria that led to the attempted extermination of the 'lower races', and the current worldwide practice of prenatal infanticide. But perhaps these outcomes have done their grisly job.
  
  
• Pesticides
  Let's sing it, shall we?
  

  Hey farmer, farmer
  Put away that DDT now
  Give me spots on my apples
  But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
  Please!

  It is a terrible irony that the pesticides needed to replace DDT have done more damage to the birds and the bees than DDT would have, while also allowing millions of deaths due to malaria that DDT use may well have prevented. While resistance, effectiveness, and side effects have to be weighed, the hype surrounding DDT's alleged dangers artificially increased the number of people who died from malaria, as well as needlessly complicating agricultural production.
  
  
• Nuclear Winter
  I must have missed it. Of course, now that only Israel is being threatened, liberals seem unconcerned by nuclear war.
  
  
• Ozone depletion
  There's a hole, there's not a hole. Go figure.
  
  
• Deforestation
  Goodness me, people figured out that if they want to chop down their trees, they'd better get busy growing them. And when the 'old growth' trees are all gone, we'll just have to wait for more, or learn to to do without. Hardly seems worth it to do without now so we don't have to do without later.
  

But those problems either didn't materialize or weren't anything like the disaster we were told they would be. It seems likely that, while there will doubtless be changes coming if the Earth gets warmer, it's hardly worth having ACCOW over it.

---

 ^† This is in paraphrase of Archimedes, who actually spoke Greek, not English. At least, that's what I'm told; I wasn't there.

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The Mass Hysteria of Convenient Targets

Mankind has a certain way of finding scapegoats, a method which seems to assign blame for causes on a scale inversely proportional with the ability of the scapegoat to defend itself against the charge.

Why do we insist on assigning guilt for all troubles great and small to the bogeyman of the day? While Satan, demons, pixies, elves, gremlins, and other such creatures have often received more blame than is their due, there can be little doubt that they are involved in some of our many troubles. But we don't stop there; we take actual things and people we see in the world and assign other-worldly power to them.

• Witches
  From as early as we can tell, witches enjoyed a special reputation for casting ruinous spells and unprovoked magicks on their hapless neighbors.
  
  These witches were so powerful as to control the climate, the economy, disease or war. That they chose in their omnipotence to live in a hut on the outskirts of some dirty little village ought to have given a thinking peasant reason to pause with his pitchfork. History being so woefully incomplete, we may never know whether the Cotton Mathers of the world gave that consideration.
  
  
• Jews
  Like witches, the Jews represented a convenient target. A small minority, with "odd" ways, the Jews were also quite a bit smarter on average. But beginning with the Black Plague in the 14^th century, Jews were blamed for various events which, with the benefit of hindsight, they probably wish they had not brought about.
  
  
• Corporations
  At the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th, a populist movement began to vilify the Trusts as controlling all economic activity and exerting undue influence on government. This fell short of attributing weather patterns to corporate greed, but not too far short of it.
  
  
• Drugs
  At about the same time, Prohibition Fever caught hold of Americans, especially activist Christians. Opiates, marijuana, and alcohol were each vilified as ruinous to good living, and banned. This was at about the same time that self-propelled vehicles became common, allowing unprecedented leverage. Prior to this time, what a person drank or smoked was a matter of taste, with social benefits and consequences, but no concern of the government. With modern machinery came modern restrictions on freedom.
  
  Today the hysteria continues in certain circles, but it must be noted that drug use has not tapered off, despite laws to the contrary.
  
  
• Jews again
  The Nazis incorporated antisemitic hysteria into their governing philosophy.
  
  
• Commies
  In the United States at the height of the Cold War, the Red Menace was thought capable of any evil imaginable, and so communists were held responsible for even the evil they didn't do.
  
  
• Jews again
  What a surprise it is that the Islamofascists blame the Jews for their troubles. And what a shame that some Western dhimmis agree.
  
  
• Corporations
  Those evil corporations are said to be keeping a lid on 200-mpg cars, electric cars, a cancer cure, an AIDS cure, and the like.
  
  
• Global Warming
  But perhaps the all-time winner in the Mass Hysteria Sweepstakes, or at least giving antisemitism a runner up, is the Global Warming hysteria. Perpetuated by science worship and a willing media, the global warming myth plays on the fallacy that if something happens, there must be a human cause.
  

So if you start to think the Witches have unleashed the Jews on us with their Evil Corporations peddling Drugs and leading to Global Warming, just relax. It's really George Bush's fault.

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The Police Cannot Protect You

We live in a world of leverage, in which a small amount of human effort and knowledge can control vast amounts of energy. That energy can be used for good, and almost all of the time, it is. Cranes, jackhammers, SUVs, guns, airplanes -- all of these things have tremendous destructive power. When used appropriately, as they almost always are, they make our lives much better. When used poorly, they give us the power to destroy.

Laws cannot protect you.

There are laws against killing people, laws against stealing, and laws against just about everything someone doesn't like. In places where its illegal to have guns, people still have guns, and people still die. People still kill people, and they always will. Our society works on the premise that people will behave themselves. If they will not, then the American Experiment will be shown a failure.

"You cannot legislate morality" means exactly that: laws change only the law-abiding, and a certain number will always ignore the law when you least expect it.

The police cannot protect you.

There is no guarantee of police protection. There is no service level agreement, nor even an agreement that one neighborhood will be served by police as well as the next one. Police cannot be everywhere. If a person is willing to give up his life, there is nothing the police can do to stop him or her from committing any number of violent acts.

Make no mistake: the police were not responsible for the shootings at Virginia Tech, Columbine, or those by the DC Snipers.

Being a good person cannot protect you.

Evil people bent on killing others make no distinction between who gave the most to charity or who volunteered at the homeless shelter. The level of kindness, integrity, and generosity with which you live your life may not make it into that final conversation -- and there may not be a final conversation. But if there is, there is no reason to believe that anyone already set to kill will be dissuaded by a history of goodness.

Even God cannot (or will not) protect you.

We are all going to die some day. God allows wickedness in the world, including the level of wickedness needed to look into the eyes of and kill, one by one, a group of thirty people.

Only you can protect you.


Only you will be there when your life, or your family's life, is on the line. Only you will be there to see the murderer coming down the hall. Only you will be there. The question is: will you be there, standing in the moment, or will you hide your face and wish it all away?

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Leverage

The media dustup over Dr. James Dobson's interest in Fred Thompson's faith made me think about Dr. Dobson. I used to be a devoted follower, back when I was a single dad trying to figure out kids. This isn't about him at all, though.

A few years ago, Focus on the Family interviewed Dr. Richard Swenson on his book Margin. I haven't read it, but that interview stuck with me ¹.

Since the invention of writing a few thousand years ago, technology has been able to increase at an exponential rate. I use "exponential" advisedly. Prior to writing, Man possessed only the amount of knowledge that a group could memorize and pass on to its next generation orally. After writing, information could be recorded in much more detail, allowing an individual to acquire or recaquire the details of an area of knowledge as needed.

A quantity increases exponentially when the amount of its increase is a function of how much of it there is. That's not a rigorous definition, but it will do.

Writing allowed information to spread, even being carried by people who could not read it. Once written down, it could last as long as its medium. The more people there were who could read, the more information there was to store and disseminate.

The Internet has greatly expanded our power to communicate. We can form cliques with people whose interests we share, even though we have never met them and couldn't pick them out of a crowd.

Likewise, the technology of war has come a long way, from spears and slings to firearms, rocket-propelled grenades, and supersonic fighters whose targets never see or hear them. Many of these weapsons require only one person to operate, and greatly magnify a single human's power.

Dr Swenson was writing before 9/11, but he foresaw the leverage acquired when a handful of people with simple knives can control the destructive power of a jumbo jet, or derail a train, or poison a city. Blogs and online communication allow us to control of vast amounts of power with the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse. Well, "us" may be a bit of an overreach.

I really should read that book.

¹ Or maybe I've got it confused with some other book. It's been several years.

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