Thoughts of the day

The Serenity prayer should be my guide, yet I couldn't resist commenting here, here, and here on a Princeton history professor's hit piece on President Bush, coinciding with the opening of Bush's presidential library. Here, too, under Yoo's National Review article.

There are cost/benefit and risk/reward analyses. There is also weighing trade-offs and alternatives.

CUMilComm need: core (living heritage and essence) and progress (tangible benefit and making a difference), with ties that bind a demographic with living flows across generations and geographies, especially to the core base on campus. Eg, Hearts of Oak.

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.” (on youtube) is the grim mantra that revives the Mandy Patinkin character who refuses to accept defeat despite seemingly mortal injuries in his running duel against the Christopher Guest character in The Princess Bride. I associate the line and scene with anyone who refuses to quit and keeps fighting despite seemingly decisive defeat and overwhelming disadvantage when surrender and submission seem reasonable. A good pop culture example is Rocky coming off the mat in Round 13? to nearly knock out Apollo in their first fight. With the NBA play-offs in mind, another example is an 8th seed that's blown out 3 straight games by an obviously superior number 1 seed to start their series, but then in Game 4, the 8th seed claws its way to a win. Then they eke out a Game 5 win. Now it's Game 6, 1 game from a tied series and a winner-take-all Game 7. The 8th seed is dug in and the 1 seed has no more moves in reserve, no higher gear to put away the 8th seed.

Truth (introverted, honest, genuine, real, open, integrity, essential, inquisitorial) and politics (extroverted, dissembling, guarded, maneuvering, manipulative, agenda, adversarial) are fundamentally different in nature.

Meg Tilly says she was burned when she gave her truth in a political setting, an interview. The interview was represented to Tilly as focused on her new book, but instead focused on "tabloid fodder" about Tilly's love life. A journalist's take. How does one live a truthful life while engaging a political world?

I like elegant, simply functional solutions. Goes with scavenging.

Maslow's hierarchy: Making a life decision based on I-want is preferable to I-need, but I-need must be secured, too.

The dead end of Junior Seau's CTE: How do you fix your crumbling life when the tool to fix your life is your mind, your brain, yet the chief culprit in your downfall is corruption of your brain's workings (broken hardware, software errors).

Ray Mears ties an "Arab-style headdress" to shade his head for desert survival.

The ADA's How to floss.

Best Yet garden combination pasta sauce is surprisingly good.

Salty egg and onion fried rice, fatty country pork rib (broiled and grilled with onions), and bone broth is a decadent meal.

I tried a bachelor stew with ground turkey instead of the canned salmon. It's better with the canned salmon and salmon oil. Bachelor stew made with canned salmon is decadent. Made with the ground turkey, it's just soup.

When deciding what flavors to add, keep in mind it's not a sliding scale where more flavors equals better flavor and fewer flavors equals worse flavor. Plain is a flavor, too. Think in terms of distinct flavor profiles, not comparitively more or less or better or worse.

The store-brand smoked hocks aren't bad at 1.49/lb. There's still some aftertaste, but it's better than the factory-brand smoked ham I bought a while back. Still, cooking my own pork is better.

Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge brownie mix is unexpectedly weak flavored. Too bad I didn't grab a 2nd chewy fudge brownie mix instead. The dark chocolate fudge brownie mix instructs adding 1 large egg, 1/3 cup oil, and 1/3 cup water for chewy brownies, while the chewy fudge brownie mix instruct adding 2 large eggs, 1/4 cup water, and 3/4 cup oil for chewy brownies (the amounts differ for "cake like" or "cookie like" texture). I planned to exchange the 2nd box of dark chocolate fudge brownie mix, and would have, had the store not been sold out of chewy fudge brownie mix. Instead, I decided to experiment. Since the listed ingredients are the same for both brownie mixes, although it's implied the amounts of the various ingredients differ, I tried adding 2 eggs, 1/4 cup water, and 3/4 cup oil to the 2nd dark chocolate fudge brownie mix in order to find out whether the result would taste like chewy fudge brownies. Nope, still weak flavored. I'm adding grape jelly and sour cream for flavor.

The Salton works for making brownies and bannock. They fluff up like man-tou, probably because I use the 1 quart mixing bowl with water around it, so it cooks with wet steamer heat, not dry oven heat.

Farrelly brothers bowling comedy Kingpin is a classic.

Simpsons classics Homer's Barbershop Quartet and Last Exit to Springfield sped up to 15 minutes.

Laina, aka Overly Attached GF, has a youtube channel. Turns out she's an entertainer with an expressive face.

Jason Collins, the starting center on the fun, likeable Kidd-led Nets teams of the early 2000s, admitted he's gay. Good for him. However, the dark side of the story is that Collins dated Carolyn Moos for 8+ years from 2001 to 2009, when Collins broke off their engagement a month before their wedding. (Pic of her in college - cute girl.) Moos, born in 1978 and unmarried and childless at 34, invested her biologically prime years in Collins based on a lie. Dated 8+ years, engaged - did they not have sex?

I wonder how Monica Seles is doing these days? I had a small crush on her back in the day. She seemed like an unaffected, down-to-earth, approachably cute, nice girl who happened to be great at tennis. Hm. As far as I know, she hasn't married nor had kids either.

'Yeah? You and what army?' It's true. If you're going to battle, you need an army, or at least a gang. Righteousness ought to be enough to compete, but in the real world it is not even close.

Keanu invokes The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and wonders whether he should pursue his dream and thereby choose the risk of freedom over the guarantee of security. As always, the harder right is weighed against the easier wrong.

Oh, my broken heart.

The change must be internal this time.

Eric

My responses to CNN hit piece against President Bush

CNN article "History's jury is still out on George W. Bush" by Julian Zelizer.

My response to the author:

Professor Zelizer, I disagree with you on several points. I'll focus on one point here: your analysis is flawed by crediting Bush with harmful effects of Obama's policy decisions where he changed course from Bush.

Our Iraq mission was trending as a success at the point that Obama and Biden badly bungled the SOFA negotiation. It's as though Eisenhower somehow fumbled away Germany, Japan, and Korea, for whom US-led nation-building also required many years, at their critical turning points.

By the close of the Bush administration, the US presence in geopolitically critical Iraq was settling into a stabilizing role like our long-term presence in Europe and Asia. Obama's failure in Iraq has led to, at the very least, a stronger position for Iran, decrease of US options in the region, and the heightened risk of reversing hard-won progress in Iraq. Like Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia, an empowered liberal Iraq should have been the lynchpin of our Middle East strategy. Now, we can only hope the US did enough for Iraq to resist corrupting influences and stand on its own before our premature exit.

The Arab Spring occurred during the Obama administration. It, indeed, was likely inspired in part by Bush's liberal initiatives. However, Bush's Freedom Agenda was a long-term plan for controlled, measured progress from autocratic rule to liberal modernity in the Middle East with active US assistance. Obama scrapped Bush's Freedom Agenda in favor of "leading from behind", which turned into short-sighted ad hoc applications of US power. Predictably, with poorly and unevenly applied US assistance, the Arab Spring has degenerated from its early aspirations.

Islamic terrorism suffered a massive defeat in Iraq at the hands of the US-led coalition and the Iraqi people. Predictably, Islamic extremists have stepped in where the US has stepped away under Obama and appear to be having a resurgence in the winner-take-all chaos of the Arab Spring.

Obama's dramatic escalation of drone kills is also a departure from Bush.

The counter-terror industry consensus is that the Bush administration was very effective at breaking down Islamic terror networks and organizations. As such, no more Islamic terror attacks were successfully carried out in the US for the remainder of the Bush administration.

However, Islamic terrorism is adaptive and resilient. Because Bush administration efforts successfully reduced organized Islamic terrorism (which again, appears to be having a resurgence in the Arab Spring), anti-US Islamic terrorism has shifted to the Anwar al-Awlaki brand of self-actualizing 'lone wolf' attacks. As such, there has been an upsurge of self-actualized Islamic terrorist attacks during the Obama administration.

The Boston Marathon attacks can't be credited to the Bush administration. They happened 4+ years after the Bush administration within a shift in anti-US Islamic terrorism that evolved on Obama's watch. The drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki shows the Obama administration identified that shift in Islamic terrorism. The question is whether homeland security under the Obama administration failed to adapt sufficiently to the shift.

I also engaged in a comment thread:

Comment. My response:

Bush made the right call on Iraq. If you're against a last chance for Saddam to comply, then your only alternatives are maintaining an indefinite toxic status quo or freeing a noncompliant Saddam. Keep in mind that a founding reason for al Qaeda in the 1990s was our indefinite toxic status quo in Iraq where we were rendered effectively complicit with Saddam's harm of the Iraqi people.

Iraq's guilt was established and presumed as the basis of the Gulf War ceasefire and UNSC resolutions on weapons, humanitarian, and terrorism standards. Saddam's noncompliance was established. There was no burden on the US and UN to prove Iraq's guilt. The burden was entirely on Saddam to prove his compliance. Over 12 years, Saddam was given multiple chances to pass. In 2002-03, he failed for the last time.

Saddam did not even try to pretend compliance with the humanitarian standards, which were equally triggers for war as the weapons standards, which he also failed. Saddam was in fact guilty.

The alternative choices were not better. The default was an indefinite toxic,
provocative, harmful, expensive stalemate. The only other alternative was to free a noncompliant Saddam.

It's not the US presence that has caused pain in Iraq. First, the pain in Iraq was caused by Saddam. After Saddam, the US was dedicated to peace operations in Iraq, just as we've built lasting peace in other countries we've occupied. But great pain was caused by the Islamic terrorist onslaught in Iraq. To our credit, we honored our promise and refused to abandon the Iraqi people to the terrorists.

Again, if you're opposed to giving Saddam a last chance to comply, then would you have maintained the toxic status quo indefinitely or freed a noncompliant Saddam?

Comment. My response:

Again, it was not the US or UN's place to prove Iraq was guilty. Iraq was established and presumed guilty as the basis of the ceasefire and UNSC resolutions. The burden was *entirely* on Saddam to prove his rehabilitation. With Saddam, we had to be sure.

The argument of Iraq's innocence is based on information after the fact and unrelated to the relevant procedure. In fact, Saddam was guilty.

The justifications for OIF aren't retroactive. See the 2002 Congressional authorization and UNSC resolution 1441. The baseline case against Saddam was diverse. The threat of Saddam was part and parcel with the 12 year course with Iraq.

Moreover, the case against Saddam was mature by Operation Desert Fox in 1998 when Clinton set regime change as the solution for the Iraq problem, labeled Saddam a "clear and present" danger irrespective of possession of WMD, and declared Saddam had failed his "final chance".

Saddam posed a threat distinct from other nations because his belligerence combined with his repeated crossing of red lines under dire warning that other actors have not crossed. Saddam showed he could not be treated like a rational actor.

The US was also in an a uniquely direct and harmful relationship with Iraq that needed to be resolved, especially in the wake of 9/11. Keep in mind that the most visible, provocative, expensive, and dangerous part of our pre-OIF mission in Iraq - the no-fly zones - were enforcing humanitarian standards, not weapons standards. Clinton intervened in the Balkans on humanitarian grounds before Bush and Obama intervened in Libya on humanitarian grounds after Bush. Humanitarian grounds were included in the Iraq intervention.

9/11 merely emphasized and highlighted the existing terrorism part of the case against Saddam, which had dated to the earliest UNSC resolutions on Iraq. Clinton also acted on Saddam's terrorist threat. Saddam didn't need al Qaeda to be a terrorist; he had demonstrated his own capacity and willingness to use unconventional warfare.

To be accurate, "imminent" threat was not cited. Actually, Bush said that for an unconventional threat like terrorism, we cannot afford to wait for indications of an imminent threat, like we can for a conventional threat. In a terrorist attack, "imminent" often means the attack just happened.

The bottom-line is that Bush's case against Saddam didn't trigger the war. It only led to the application of the final compliance test under credible threat for Saddam. Saddam held the power to prevent war by complying fully on the weapons, humanitarian, and terrorism standards. Instead, Saddam refused to comply again on standards that he could and should have met in 1991.

So, facing the Iraq problem in the context of the decision point in Bush's shoes, if you would not have given a final chance to Saddam to comply, then would you have maintained the toxic status quo indefinitely (in the wake of 9/11 no less) or freed a noncompliant Saddam?

Comment. My response:

Again, Saddam was established and presumed guilty on WMD as one of the several bases of the Gulf War ceasefire and UNSC resolutions. We don't ignore the other threats. But starting with the Gulf War, our enforcement in Iraq, our relationship with Iraq, and the threat of Saddam were unique.

Again, the argument including the image of a 'mushroom cloud' wasn't describing a conventional "imminent" threat but rather explaining the urgency of resolving the Iraq problem in light of the unconventional threat. If the argument was based on an imminent threat, then Saddam wouldn't have been given a final chance to comply under credible threat of ground invasion and regime change. Instead, an imminent threat would have compelled an immediate invasion with no compliance test.

When Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 as the penultimate enforcement measure to ground invasion, he didn't claim knowledge of Iraqi WMD. Rather, Clinton's reason was that our lack of knowledge of Iraq's WMD as a result of Saddam's noncompliance was equal to Iraq's guilt on WMD due to the foundational presumption of guilt.

So, if Bush lacked knowledge on Iraqi WMD, then that only takes him to the lower bar that triggered Clinton's military enforcement on Iraq. Again, Saddam also had to meet humanitarian and other standards as well as the weapons standards.

Comment. My response:

The US was the primary enforcement authority on Iraq starting with the Gulf War and that role deepened through the Clinton administration. By the close of the Clinton administration, the US was inextricably entangled with Saddam. After years of struggling with Saddam, Clinton finally set regime change as the solution for the Iraq problem if Saddam failed to comply.

We were going to crash land with Saddam one way or the other, with or without 9/11. We could either take control of that crash landing or allow Saddam to decide the manner of the crash landing.

The Iraq mission did cost too much for a number of reasons that are correctable from practical, political, and policy standpoints. We did underestimate the capacity of Islamic terrorists to slaughter Muslims in Iraq and sabotage the nascent state. But keep in mind, too, those "trillions" (when did that become plural?) include possibly exaggerated extrapolated costs that aren't used to calculate costs of other wars.

What did we get for it? We achieved Clinton's goals for Iraq, ie, Iraq in compliance with the ceasefire and UNSC resolutions, Iraq at peace with its neighbors and the international community, and Iraq internally reformed. The 1st 2 goals were firmly met. The 3rd goal was met but left shakier than we like.

I'm impressed with how Saddam nostalgics have rehabilitated him in death into a reliable American agent for peace in the Middle East. Touting Saddam as the solution for Iran is like saying we should have propped up Hitler in order to deal with the Soviet Union for us (an argument that was made before WW2). Hitler + USSR was the worst of WW2, not peace in our time.

Saddam was not the answer.

I agree that it would have been better for the US to build up Iraq more so Iraq would be less vulnerable to Iranian encroachment. Unfortunately, after the great gains of the Counterinsurgency "Surge" and Anbar Awakening, the glue holding together the stabilizing pluralistic Iraq wasn't dry yet when Obama and Biden badly bungled the SOFA negotiation. As with the Arab Spring and elsewhere, wherever the US steps away, an ambitious competitor will naturally step in.

As to your last point, the Iraqis tried their "Arab Spring" in 1991 when they answered Bush the father's call to revolt. Then despite that our forces were still on the ground, we stood down and allowed Saddam to slaughter them.

Can you imagine the utter trust that the Iraqi people had in America to risk their lives against the psychopathic tyrant on the mere word of the US president? Yet despite being in position to help them, we betrayed them. Bush the father's short-sighted cost/benefit calculation in 1991 greatly damaged our standing at the historical point that our world-changing influence and reputation were at their highest.

Set aside the other justifications, and the US owed the Iraqi people a tremendous debt of honor for our betrayal in 1991. By resisting the calls to abandon the Iraqi people to the terrorists like we once abandoned them to Saddam's wrath, George W Bush restored some of the American honor lost by his father.

Comment. My response:

Clinton:
"Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and lawabiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region. The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian makeup. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life."

Obama:
"Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. The Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence in favor of a democratic process, even as they’ve taken full responsibility for their own security. Of course, like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. And as they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner."

Iraq in compliance and at peace with its neighbors and international community, and no more Saddam is hardly a "major geo-political disaster". Our troops are justified to be proud of their extraordinary achievements in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom was an honorable mission and one of the best grounded missions in terms of law and policy in our history.

Iraq, however, does represent a lost opportunity. It's a tragedy that we left Iraq prematurely, which runs counter to our nation's tradition of securing the peace after war. Due to the success of the Counterinsurgency "Surge" where Americans and Iraqis had together defeated the terrorists, Iraq was finally on the right track. Bush gave Obama a winning hand in Iraq, and Obama wanted to stay. At the point that Obama and Biden bungled the SOFA negotiation, serving in Iraq was even turning routine for our troops, something like serving in Korea.

Had we stayed in Iraq, a progressive pluralistic Iraq with our active partnership would have been a positive force in the region, a game-changer. But Obama lost the game-changing opportunity that was so hard earned by Americans and Iraqis alike. Because we left Iraq prematurely, Iranian influence has grown there and the situation in Iraq has deteriorated.

Obama's bungling of the SOFA negotiation with Iraq and the confused, uneven "lead from behind" policy that replaced Bush's Freedom Agenda have lost ground on the hard-earned and, yes, expensive progress that Bush handed to Obama.

Eric

Russell Westbrook injury is an opportunity for Jeremy Lin

This is an excellent breakdown of Jeremy Lin's game based on this season.

Russell Westbrook, one of the most dynamic, athletic guards in the NBA, tore his right knee lateral meniscus in Game 2 of the Rockets-Thunder first-round play-off series. Ironically, that's the same injury that ended Jeremy Lin's season last year.

In Game 2, Lin suffered a chest contusion and spasms that kept him out of the 2nd half of the game. He should be fine for Game 3.

Westbrook's injury greatly diminishes the Thunder as a contender. They rely heavily on both Westbrook and Durant as creative scorers and playmakers. Outside of their two stars, the Thunder roster is made up of role players. Remove one of the stars and the system becomes ordinary. They become one-dimensional. The Thunder back-up PGs, Reggie Jackson and Derek Fisher, are a big drop-off from Westbrook. Too bad for them that they traded Harden.

The Rockets have a good shot to win the series now. Their biggest match-up advantage is at PG with Lin against the Thunder back-up PGs. Reputations are made and ruined in the play-offs and Lin has started his play-off career poorly. With Westbrook out, Lin is set up to excel and start building up his post-season reputation.

Post-game update: Lin only played 18 minutes. He's still hurt and didn't play well. Durant took a retaliatory shot on Lin for the Westbrook injury. It didn't look like much, but jerked Lin's arm, which pulled on his chest contusion. Ouch. The Thunder, after a hot start that peaked with a 26-point 2nd quarter lead, looked as one-dimensional as expected in Game 3. The Thunder were lucky to pull out the win. If any team can come back from a 0-3 series deficit, it's the high-octane Rockets offense against these crippled Thunder. If Lin can recover for Game 4 and take advantage of the PG mismatch, the Rockets should win.

If the Rockets season ends against the Thunder, Lin essentially will be at the same place in his career he would have reached had he played through his injury and suited up hurt against the Heat last season: roughly a season's worth of experience as a starting point guard and getting wet in the post-season.

Eric

Serenity prayer

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

The Serenity prayer is a staple of Alcoholics Anonymous and twelve-step programs.

Eric

Regarding Obama's decision to interrogate before Mirandizing the Boston bomber

The great John Yoo comments. Insight from a professor of terrorism and homeland security studies. Emily Bazelon warns about adding intelligence-gathering to the public safety exception and reacts to details about the questioning.

My take at Talking Points Memo:

This demonstrates why Bush was better for civil liberty than Obama in the War on Terror.

When urgent enough, exigency conflicts with civil liberty. In our contest with Islamic terrorism, we are challenged to preserve civil liberty while resolving the exigency. The challenge didn't begin on 9/11, only amplified - much of Bush's counter-terror policies were inherited from Clinton's struggle with Islamic terrorism.

In response to 9/11, President Bush's solution for the exigency vs civil liberty conflict was a firewall that insulated domestic criminal procedure as much as possible via a removable, separate wartime legal procedure, thus the "enemy combatant" label. It was modular in that the wartime procedure allowed the US to rise to the exigent needs of the War on Terror, but if and when the exigency is cured, the wartime legal procedure can then be lifted with little-to-no lasting effect on domestic criminal procedure. In other words, the "enemy combatant" designation *protects* our civil liberty by using, when prudent, a separate category from "criminal defendant" for terrorists.

Bush's use of a separate wartime legal procedure was a practical way to balance exigency and civil liberty. However, Bush's policy was relentlessly criticized by Senator Obama and others who neglected to formulate a better alternative for balancing exigency and civil liberty. (They downplayed the exigency in their rhetoric instead.)

When Obama became President, he inherited the exigency he had once downplayed. Rather than retain Bush's modular approach that housed the exigency in a removable, separate wartime legal procedure, however, Obama has torn down Bush's firewall that protected domestic criminal procedure as much as possible from the exigency.

By incorporating the exigency into our domestic criminal procedure, Obama is causing lasting, perhaps irreparable, damage to our civil liberty.

For our contest with Islamic terrorism, I have yet to see a better way to balance exigency and civil liberty than Bush's policy. Compared to President Bush, President Obama so far has been worse for civil liberty. I suggest that Obama should restore Bush's policy of a wartime legal procedure that preserves domestic criminal procedure.

My response to a CNN article implying the terrorist attack was a reaction to OIF and OEF:

Islamic terrorists are against our Iraq and Afghanistan missions, but not for the same reason as Western anti-Iraq and anti-Afghanistan protestors. The younger brother (allegedly) has said the attacks were motivated to *defend Islam* in Iraq and Afghanistan - note, *not* to defend Iraqis and Afghans.

Yet Americans have fought alongside and for Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan against Islamic terrorists. It is demonstrable that the US is not opposed to Islam.

So just what do Islamic terrorists mean when they say they're defending Islam?

For Islamic terrorists, there is only one true Islam that should rule all. They fight for a new world order defined by a particular type of strict Islam that is intolerant of both Western values *and* more-tolerant types of Islam.

As such, note that Islamic terrorists have continued to murder Iraqis after the departure of US forces.

For Islamic terrorists, our Iraq and Afghanistan missions have threatened to promote Western values and advance more-tolerant types of Islam in the Islamic heartland. Both are unacceptable developments for Islamic terrorists and, from their perspective, are worth killing any and all to stop.

Eric

IEDs at Boston Marathon

2 apparently homemade Claymore type bombs exploded into the crowd near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Was it a terrorist attack?

The event was terroristic, but it may or may not have been a political act by organized terrorists. I suspect, with no evidence for my suspicion, that there is no political agenda behind the bombs and the killer is one more crazy who planned and acted out an urge to kill on a large, public scale. The indicators so far are of a relatively low level of sophistication in the bombs. (The pressure cooker shrapnel bomb apparently is a common IED design that's proven effective and uses cheap common materials.) People jumped to the assumption that the event is the imported product of an organized network or at least a conspiracy. Not necessarily. The plan seems simple enough for one crazy to carry out. Two crude portable sized bombs left in crowded, busy locations, mixed in with the random clutter. It could have been a lone wolf, a crazy, with no coherent agenda who just wanted to blow up people in a way that would gain maximum attention and stir things up. Hacker mindset, but bloodier. Too many random lone 'black swan' mass-murdering killers have popped up without warning in recent years. Several of them who used guns also made explosives they didn't use or used but failed to detonate. Maybe this time, the crazy led with explosives instead of guns and enough of the explosives worked. The crazy may not even be someone with especial technical ability, who just followed a basic easily obtained IED recipe and got lucky with it.

Even if the culprit states an agenda, that may not indicate a network affiliation. There are self-actualized terrorists without organizational ties: crazies who have latched onto an excuse to kill.

What am I going to do about it?

18APR13 update: Schematic. The FBI released photos and video of 2 suspects. A partnership increases the likelihood of a conspiracy and reduces the likelihood of a 'lone wolf' crazy, although crazies sometimes join forces, too, like the Columbine HS killers. They're brothers, Chechen immigrants. Chechen Islamic terrorists have been among the most vicious. Did the brothers act alone or is there a wider conspiracy?

19APR13 update: The older brother is dead. The younger brother has been captured alive. From earlier in the week, Professor Nacos's post about the possible identity of the bomber(s) and my response.

23APR13 update: Professor Nacos posts about the death and capture of the brothers and my response.

Eric

Roger Ebert died. R.I.P.

It's just been announced that film critic Roger Ebert died from his cancer. Ebert's last blog post was 2 days ago. He informed that his cancer had recurred but gave no indication that death was imminent.

When I was a kid, Siskel & Ebert was a mainstay of popular culture. Gene Siskel died in 1999. Now they're both gone.

Rest in peace.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

From the New Yorker, an update on the Horace Mann sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

This NY Times story via SWJ matches my prognostication and encouragement for CU ROTC+ to prepare Columbia cadets to carry out small-scale, surgically delicate missions.

At the Foreign Policy article on OIF, a commentator recommended to me his 'Why We Fight' explanation for OIF.

The villain: The author of this piece also authored the misinformation/propaganda campaign against President Bush and the Iraq mission. In the Salon piece, he equates libertarian militia with Islamic terrorists. Here is a diluted echo of the same theme by Professor Nacos.

The lectures by Professor Iván Szelényi for Yale course Foundations of Modern Social Thought (SOCY 151) are on youtube. Course page here. According to the Nietzsche lecture, Thus Spake Zarathustra sounds like the Nietzsche book I ought to read.

You know you're a Ray Mears fan when . . . I'm enjoying his Wild Britain series, despite that it's a nature show and not only occasionally a survival show.

An accounting trick to create the appearance of lowered spending in the short term is to eat into the capital reserve. If usage doesn't go down yet spending goes down, the difference has to be made up somewhere.

The classic appeals of persuasive writing - pathos (emotional), logos (pragmatic, also implying scientific or statistical evidence), and ethos (ethical) - seem to match the concept of id, ego, and super-ego.

TED talks tidbits. The organizational and family success formula is core and progress. On fear of failure and dabbling.

The growth of Lebron James as a basketball player, as he's profiled in this Grantland piece, reminds me of the artist Louis Comfort Tiffany who made the most of his internal and external advantages.

The moral of the story of Kobe Bryant's failed rap career is that internal vision, talent, motivation, and dedication are necessary but not sufficient. To realize a goal, external steps from the alpha (α or Α) to omega (ω or Ω) must be achieved. On that journey into the world, outside influences, including people with supportive intentions, can misdirect and undermine the project even when the originator hits all of the marks in his plan. The outside factors that click into place in the right or wrong way are normally referred to as luck or fate. Bryant's pursuit of basketball greatness succeeded, but his pursuit of hip-hop greatness failed despite his similar passion and drive for both.

Christopher Knight, the North Pond Hermit who survived in the Maine woods alone for 27 years by foraging (stealing), was captured by an enterprising game warden who set a trap with a motion sensor camera and alarm. Knight doesn't know why he walked into the woods in April 1986. He just did. Impulse, feeling.

Pro wrestling jargon for a good guy going bad is a face (to) heel turn and a bad guy becoming good is a heel (to) face turn.

Funny youtube series: Retarded Policeman.

The Four Quarters, a Canadian singing group that joined together in HS, sing Pachelbel's Canon in D acapella style. While other videos show off the girls' superior skill and harmony, this one stands out as a beautiful classic that manages to highlight each girl in contrast to their usual trade-off of feature and background roles. What stands out most in the video is the display of modest feminine grace. The unaffected placid harmony and joy in their music and demeanor is enchanting. I hope that quality endures in the girls' performances as they mature. It's special and perhaps even marketable. The light doo-wop "In Time", which was written for them, is catchy. The glimpse into their world supports the notion that outward confidence correlates with outward appearance.

Talented fun Gen Y musical collective cdza or collective cadenza (h/t) pinpoints the sudden vulgar turn of male and female "love" songs in the middle 1990s. (The gorgeous girl singer is Dylan C Moore.)

Don't sleep on Gen Y. I went to college with these kids. They'll remake the country in some ways perhaps uncomfortable for us Gen-Xers, but the Gen-Y kids are more aware and clear headed than we give them credit for being. They have fewer hang-ups than we do. And they are talented. If any American generation can figure out the changing world order, it's them. They might be the last best hope of our country.

HS senior vents in the Wall Street Journal about being rejected by colleges. I predict she will go to law school.

It takes 12 feet or 144 inches of 1/16" diameter accessory cord to make a 39-inch long 3-strand braid. Inefficient but still cool. Right now, I'm using the braid to dummy-cord my laptop's power cable.

The shooter's cliche of "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" also applies to getting out of bed. I was scissoring my legs and swung my right knee into the wood corner of my bedside table. Ouch. Fortunately, there's a little bit of give or else I might have broken something. At least, I don't believe anything is broken in my knee. It's stiff and sore, though.

My Sunbeam electric fryer works since the heating indicator bulb broke, but I'm convinced the temperature is lower, maybe by as much as 100 degrees. My proof is that anything I try to brown with it, such as onions or bacon, is browning much slower than before. The pizza bannock is taking longer to bake and the bottom isn't searing like before. Where my pizza bannock was done in 5-7 minutes before, it's now taking 20 minutes and the crust is lighter colored. Whatever mechanism regulates the temperature is wonky, too - it takes too long to turn back on and makes loud clicking noises. I'm chagrined that the Sunbeam worked for as long as 60 years and then broke while I was using it.

My latest pizza bannock in my Sunbeam failed. The whole middle of the pizza bannock crust stuck fast to the fryer, which hadn't happened before. Part of the blame may be spreading the dough using an oily spoon on a cold unoiled fryer, rather than placing the dough on the heated fryer and flipping and pressing on the crust. I've spread the dough cold before without the bannock sticking like it was glued though.

The burner has a higher temperature than the fryer and with the grill pan works well for making pizza bannock. I eventually may need to buy a cooking pan for the burner if the fryer gets worse.

Everything I cook in my Nesco is cooked in a mixing bowl because the "non-stick" Cookwell flakes.

I adopted the 1-handed 2-utensil tong technique, with one utensil locked in my pinky, ring finger, and middle finger and the other utensil held by my thumb and index finger, after my latest meat flipping fiasco. I was broiling pork in my toaster oven, which is shoulder level, and flipping the pork with a fork when the pork slid off the fork and dropped on the floor. It's the second time I've done that. During the clatter, I caused 2nd degree burns (self diagnosed by the blisters) on the inside of my right wrist and below my left index finger. From now on, I'll use the pseudo-tongs to flip the meat.

Rite Aid, Western Beef, and NSA weekly circulars are on-line.

I'm tempted to buy pork that's on sale for 88 cents a lb. The catch is that it's only sold in a bulk size. I don't know that I'm willing to apportion and freeze 10+ pounds of pork.

I'm struggling to finish the beef liver. I have no doubt it's healthy. It's filling and packed with iron and protein. I'm just not a fan of the taste. The liver ruined what should have been my best pizza bannock to date, made with onions and spinach with sauce and mozzarella. I figured I had enough flavors in the pizza bannock to cover for the liver. I was wrong. I used another slab of liver in my latest bachelor meat sauce pasta. It's still unpleasant tasting, but there's enough flavor in the pasta to cover for the liver. A benefit of adding liver to my pasta is I'm eating it slower.

Speaking of which, my second latest bachelor meat sauce pasta: mix of Barilla elbows (n.41) and farfalle (n.65) pasta, about 8 oz of frozen Perdue fresh ground chicken, about 4 oz slab of beef liver, 1 can 28 oz Marzano crushed tomatoes (works well), 1 can 15.25 oz Green Giant whole kernel sweet corn, 1 box 10 oz Best Yet frozen whole leaf spinach, 1 yellow onion.

I used the remainder of the beef liver in my latest bachelor meat sauce pasta. The notable difference is I used the Nesco and 3-quart mixing bowl to boil the sauce rather than use the Sunbeam to make a a sloppy-joe-style sauce. When boiled, the ground turkey atomized in the sauce rather than clump into chunks as ground meat does when fried. Another more-subtle difference is the lack of cooking oil, which I didn't use, and char flavor in the boiled meat sauce. I'm glad I've finished the liver. Unless I find a very reliable recipe that can overcome the liver taste, I don't anticipate buying liver again.

Cooking Western Beef frozen chopped spinach with my rice works, except I've found that frozen chopped spinach has lost its taste. Frozen whole spinach tastes better.

I've been wearing down a Cook's traditional bone-in, Hickory smoked, super trim, butt portion ham and water product, cured with water, dextrose, salt, sodium phosphate, and sodium nitrite, 4.920 lb chunk that I bought on sale at 1.49/lb. They're not kidding about "23% of weight is added ingredients." The ham shrinks when cooked. The package says "ready-to-eat" but also instructs to "heat through" before eating. I've eaten a few pieces without cooking them. The ham tastes okay but I'm not fond of the unpleasant after-feeling from eating the ham, which I don't get from eating pork that I cooked myself. I think I'll stick to buying raw pork from now on. Given that I need to heat the ham anyway, there's no advantage to it.

Pillsbury chocolate fudge brownie mix brownies are okay.

Sour cream is versatile: butter substitute on toast, pasta creamer, brownie topping, cheese substitute for pizza bannock (in a pinch). Cue the grandmotherly voice-over in the Frank's Red Hot radio spot: "I put that beep on everything."

I've eaten a pizza bannock and a bowl of spinach, onion, and egg boiled rice (using the Salton rice cooker and 1 quart mixing bowl, turned out not bad) today, and I'm still hungry. I'm boiling the remainder of the Perciatelli pasta now in the Salton rice cooker (broken into thirds to fit). Update: Pasta with sauce, hot sauce, and sour cream. Yum. That should hold me over for the night.

The Perciatelli pasta looks interesting, like exceptionally thick spaghetti, but it actually has a hollow core. I don't know the purpose of the hollow core or whether it's just a different look.

Roger Ebert (RIP) advocated for rice cooker cooking and I agree. I'm satisfied with my bachelor cookware that co-stars my rice cooker in the ensemble, though I mourn my wounded Sunbeam electric frying pan, which had been the star of the set. With my Sunbeam diminished and maybe dying, I may shift the load and broaden my range of cooking with the Salton, which I've used to cook rice, pasta, soup, and boil my bone broth.

A dumpling skin recipe.

Bachelor stew with the canned salmon and pasta sauce turns into bachelor salmon sauce. Not bad, but not really bachelor stew.

Young husband records his cute crying wife. He stopped updating their web presence in 2010. I wonder whether he stopped because she changed on him like Kate changed on Jon. Update: I don't know whether she changed on him, but the husband has continued his web presence.

Slick.

Claire Abbott apparently is the new Angie Varona. Just remember, young lady, with great power comes great responsibility.

Rollo linked to an interesting collection of photos showing porn actresses before and after their stage make-up is applied. The popularity of tattoos among young women saddens me. It's not attractive and interferes with their natural beauty. I disagree with Rollo's harsh downgrade of Zarena sans make-up. Rilee's appearance changed more for the worse.

Women can transform their appearance and demeanor to a degree that's beyond most men who aren't actors or con artists. Men change like driving a manual shift, while women change like driving an automatic. The unreliability of judging girls' actual looks through the illusion of make-up reminded me of a recent post by Emma observing that, contrary to the worldview espoused by PUAs, most men assign high value to traits in women besides looks. I agree with that. Looks matter, but compatibility and good-womanly traits matter just as much or more. Victor Pride of Bold and Determined touched on the subject of a girl's appearance and demeanor in his post How to Meet Shy Girls. (More here.) If her looks are good enough, that's good enough if she brings other valuable qualities to the table. Besides, I like girls who can dress down and relaxed and dress sharp and made up as the occasion calls for it.

Emma also talks about faking normalcy for the sake of others. There's what I desire from the world and there's what I want to give to the world. As an INFP, my approach has been to harmonize both sides of the equation with my inner self. I can give or push to the world on my terms. But self-centered integrity is not a realistic way to draw or pull what I desire from the world. To pull what I want from the world, I need to be better at faking normalcy and communicating on other people's wavelengths. How does the other person sense and process me? What does the other person want? What makes the other person happy? What cues are the keys that will unlock the reactions I want? How should I present myself and what image should I portray for the other person's sake rather than my sake? One answer.

British mom who loves her husband resents having had children but was a dutiful, conscientious mom nonetheless. Just not a loving mom. I have some suspicion that she is a loving mom and her over-the-top essay is a covert attempt to comfort her daughter who has been bed-ridden with MS and under her mom's full-time care since age 23 and is now 31. In other words, it's unlikely at this point her daughter will have her own children. The essay may be mom's heavy-handed way of trying to reassure her daughter that the alternative to becoming a mom is okay, too.

Judgybitch on Husband ≠ Friend.

I like this blog. Happycrow is red pill, but not an ideologue. I believe that's the right approach. The red pill is not a religion that one joins reciting a fixed catechism. It's about the truth, less universal Truth than emotionally and critically filtered, custom-fitted personal truth.

An interesting discussion deconstructing the popular cultural concept of romantic love. I think the commentators go too far in their attempt to discredit romantic love by revealing it as a deliberately manipulative social construct. They're like radical feminists in that regard. There is some pushback within the comment thread. I believe romantic love is real, and I want it, though I agree with the cynics that the popular cultural concept of romantic love has been harmfully misleading.

Liz asks for advice from men on raising a son from middle school through high school.

The questions are who am I, love, what do I do, in that order, albeit with some shifting and combining. I don't feel that I can answer the 3rd question until I've answered the 1st two.

For some, the red pill is rational and logically reasoned. For others, the red pill is koanic and intuitive.

Mastery learning goal orientation and growth mindset.

Eric