Links and Minifeatures 11 23 Wednesday

Carnival of the Vanities is up at Don Surber's. Recommended posts: Ruminating Dude, and ROFASix, who writes an excellent article detailing how DDT got banned despite the "science" or doing so being complete junk. In point of fact, DDT may cause problems. But there are no serious scientific papers (peer reviewed, etcetera) backing up this claim. The whole subject has been taboo for over thirty years, and it's past time to revisit it. The world is losing 3000 people per day, dying horrible deaths due to malaria and similar diseases because DDT has been banned. The environmental movement that keeps the subject politically untouchable is performing no favors for the world.



While I'm on the subject of bad science and denial of science, Respectful Insolence has a great debunking of HIV deniers. The actual argument, I confess, had parts that were beyond my understanding of the subject, but I can appreciate the use of scientific method, debunking where lack of evidence was used as if the evidence pointed the other way, etcetera. Well worth reading just to watch the scientific method in action.

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Hold The Mayo has a good post up about the UN's attempt to further erode our freedom of speech.



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Chris Cam caught something I'd missed in that our asian allies don't think the US can win a war with China. Pay close attention to the reasoning stated. It demonstrates that they are paying attention to our domestic politics.



Justus For All has more on the tactical situation, but fails to take the political one completely into account. The "evil" US fighting "wonderful" "communist" China has all of the elements that would have our domestic america haters thinking they'd be committing treason against mankind if they didn't sabotage us. "But they're not white men! And they have a different culture, not corrupt western chauvinism! And they're communist, which must mean they care about The People®!"



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Don Surber has a post up with his reactions to TTLB changing the rules under which the Ecosystem is computed. Well, let's see, I do this Links and Minifeatures column as many days of the week as I have time for, and I admit to sending trackbacks to a lot of the places that take them. But I link because there's something there that I think worth reading. Don (among others) is bigger than I am in the 'sphere, and does open trackbacks to give the little guys some exposure. I don't have a problem with that - it's one of the reasons I have for doing this column. His method is passive and works off of others willingly linking to him. Mine is just active and requires more time on my part, and the other site can always delete my trackback if they don't like it. If I got as much participation as he does, I might do some kind of open thread periodically.



On the other hand, "open" posts do kind of tend to make the large folks bigger (economic principles say that folks will respond to open stuff where it'll do the most good). So it's kind of a negative for the diversity of the Ecosystem, as it allows the "big boys" to coast. But back to the first hand, all of the participants are mutually willing. So both ways have their drawbacks. If NZ wants to change the rules of how his site counts links, that is, of course, his prerogative. I believe, however, that changing them will prove largely a waste of time as the real incentive for the Open Trackbacks lies in the traffic they can generate. If people come to realize that anytime you send a trackback, it is something interesting and relevant, they will follow it, and they are more likely to make you part of their regular routine. If people start thinking "not him again!" (and I can point to many sites I see regularly submitting to carnivals where I just groan and move on, having wasted entirely too much time on their tripe), they will ignore it. Links may be fine and easily quantifiable, but it's traffic (daily eyeballs) that's really important. If we just had a standard tool that did it well (According to Powerblogs' server logs, Sitemeter counts an average of 15 to 25 percent of my unique visitors and page views. The ratio has been under 3 percent, never over 40). I'm sure NZ would switch to traffic, if we had something that measured it reliably.



Poliblogger makes a few more points along these lines. I just hate his trackback machine because Powerblogs doesn't reliably have a permalink until it actually posts ;-). HT to Arguing With Signposts for directing me to an Outside the Beltway post by James Joyner that also mostly agrees with what I've said. Since he's the one who started the open trackback thing, that carries some weight.



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Willisms has a heck of a good article about economic creative destruction, and why protectionism of existing jobs is a bad thing. Highly recommended, and a further demonstration of the principal that many times the worst risk is not taking one. Yes, it's a risk to jump out of an airplane with only a parachute. But if all four engines are on fire and it's plummeting towards the ground at terminal velocity, they guy who declines to take the risk is dead for sure.



(HT to Justus for All)



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Accuracy in Media has the goods on the press giving Hillary a free pass for far worse infractions of election rules than Bill Frist and Tom DeLay are even accused of. HT to Random Numbers via Wizbang.



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Balloon Juice has a hefty thumping of Daily Kos.



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Armies of Liberation notes that the Yemeni government seems to be aiding and abetting the Iraqi resistance - the the tune of allowing training and refusing to extradite Saddam's nephew at the request of the Iraqi government.



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Captain's Quarters has an excellent article of John Bolton warning the UN that it can clean up it's act, or the United States will invest in a different problem-solving mechanism. The UN has been allowed the illusion that they are important simply because they're the UN. This has never been the case, but even back in the 1980s Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Ronald Reagan never had the guts to go this far.



I think it's time for all of us to sign up for the John Bolton fan club.



Maybe he's a good example for other countries, also: Via Instapundit on Pajamas Media, Germany's new Chancellor made her first foreign trip and said (among other things) "BRUSSELS, Belgium, Nov. 23, 2005 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- Angela Merkel made her first foreign trip as German chancellor Wednesday, calling the NATO alliance the main forum for settling world problems and saying her country must heal its rift with the United States."



Hmmm.



(BTW, is it just me or is Glenn not linking Althouse nearly so much anymore? I wonder why?)



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LGF has the scoop about a Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali wanting to make a Islamic version of Monty Python's Life of Brian. I see serious problems with the mob outside his window scene: "You are NOT individuals!"



On the other hand, the crack suicide squad bit could easily fill an hour and a half movie. It could trivially be the new ending: "Always look on the bright side of life KABOOM! KABOOM-KABOOM-KABOOM!"



Or the scene in the forum when they're trying to find someone to accuse of being a "splitter!"



LGF also talks about Joe Lieberman standing firm in the War. If he runs for President in '08, I may decide to register Donkey so I can vote for him. He is my nominee for best potential savior for the Donkey party, but I suspect the only way he can get nominated is by switching to Elephant, as the Donkey moonbat base considers him a traitor (considering the source, that's a compliment!). I might vote for him there, too.



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Time to sign off. Happy Thanksgiving to all (I will have a real estate article auto post tomorrow morning), but probably won't do anything further until Saturday.



A very partial list of what I am thankful for:

My wife

My children

The rest of the family

The country of my birth and those who have defended her, and all of us, for the past 230 years.

The vast majority of her citizens who are decent, civilized, intelligent folks. If this were not so, we would not be so successful as a nation, not nearly so important to the world.

The fact that we have the right man in the white house for the test we are now facing.

the dogs

My father's influence and good example.

All of those who have won victories for humanity, so that we are able to live the lives we can, doing the things we are able in the comfort we have become accustomed to, rather than beating each other's brains out with rocks every day of our nasty, brutish, unpleasant, and short existence.



Good night.