Links and Minifeatures 01 29 Sunday

Ladies and Gentlemen,



I have a very reasonable, very easygoing trackback policy. I make my trackback URLs easy to find and easy to reference. Anybody is welcome to trackback, so long as you reference the post and should say something I believe worth my readers' time about the subject of the post. You may agree or disagree with me, and as long as you have a rational point, I'll happily leave it there. I will accept trackbacks from a straight "read this!" recommendation, but it's really not what they're for (And I apologize if my software sends you one automatically when I recommend one of your articles thusly). A spot on your roll of worthy sites is usually considered to be courtesy, but is not required, and the universe knows that I've slipped up on this.



The idea of trackbacks is that traffic goes both ways, not just from me to you. I will delete trackbacks that do not adhere to this. If you do not reference my post, I will ban your trackbacks completely on the second offense - the first if I think you're hitting me with trackback spam. I'm happy to share traffic, so long as we both benefit.



Due to requiring comment accounts, I have had very few problems with comment spam (which is exactly why I require comment accounts). I've always had issues with trackback spammers, but the cure of killing trackbacks completely is worse than the disease. I am trying to foster discussion and dialog, not stifle it, but if you want me to tell my readers about your post, you must tell your readers about my post. Unfortunately, two sites that should have known better have earned a ban in the last week. If you're not one of them, don't become one.



Oh, and one trackback per article of mine per article you reference it in, please. More than one trackback going from the same post to the same post is a waste of electrons. This is the reason I've essentially stopped putting manual trackback pings in my posts - I never know when the software is going to send an automatic one. I don't get angry, I just delete the extras.

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Balloon Juice has the details on the Bush Administration trying to silence a NASA scientist on global warming.



This is why I'm a Raging RINO. This is not what the United States is about, which is a free flow of ideas. I'm far from convinced about global warming. Okay, I'm openly sceptical and have been trending in the direction of further scepticism for some time. But if I don't let those who adhere to the hypothesis to make their arguments to the best of their ability, that indicates nothing more or less than than fear on my part. Fear that what I believe may not be the truth. The correct response is "I believe you are mistaken, but you're welcome to try and convince me - and others - that I'm wrong."



Not to mention the fact that the current Bush Administration has done more to control global warming, if it exists, than its predecessors by a goodly margin. Yes, there is a point to be made about making clear the distinction as to whether Dr. Hansen is speaking at any point in time for himself only, or for NASA. Nonetheless, trying to silence the opposition is nothing less than cowardice.



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Decision '08 has an excellent fisking of the New York Times misrepresentation of the scope, scale, and legal justification for wiretapping.



It is naked partisan politics to get angry with the administration for doing the same job you criticized them so harshly for not doing prior to 9/11. It is stupid, and ultimately self-defeating, to overexercise a privacy fetish. Furthermore, "Reasonable Suspiscion" is and has been the standard for any number of searches for a very long time.



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Rhymes With Right has a good article about why race shouldn't prevent adoption. Much to the annoyance of race baiters of all races.



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I'm not happy with Google's China cave-in, but I do agree with Q and O that it's not that awful that they're censoring stuff. Actually, Google's censorship (and the communist Chinese's requirements to do so) are going to be significantly less effective as Russia's attempts to keep the internet as a whole out in the late 1980s. Which is to say, not very. Fact is that in recent times we've been spoiled by search engines, and the chinese are only being denied access to part of a search engine. The chinese are intelligent and resourceful - perhaps more so than any other people on earth. They'll figure out how to find what they're looking for. It'll be harder, but they'll do it. The trick is to find the connectivity of subjects, a research skill that users of the internet needed until not so long ago. The whole censoring of search results is just going to make the chinese have to look a little harder for anti-regime stuff. They'll still be able to find it.



Via Instapundit, Paul Boutin makes my point graphically.



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Iraq The Model has some information about attempts to form a government. But they're negotiating. With words. Yeah, it could get ugly, but if "I do not want the coming four years to be wasted in waiting for another chance and I want our parliament to be a parliament of work and constructive discussions not one of sterile rhetoric and disputes" is your biggest problem, well there are worse things in life than a Congress too deadlocked to do anything. That also means that they can't goof anything up.



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Big Lizards has a possible explanation for Donkey behavior: the false dichotomy. You must choose either Bush or Harry Reid, and you don't want to choose Bush, so you must choose Harry Reid. Judges? buzz! So sorry, and thank you for playing. Be sure to enjoy our wonderful parting gifts.



Except for possibly Hamas in the most recent Palestinian election (Fatah makes Mexican policement green with envy at the level of corruption), I can't remember a time when anyone was elected because of who they weren't, anywhere in the world. Okay, yes I can. But George W. Bush is not running again, nor is he Nixon. And coincidentally, neither was Gerald Ford. I think we've figured out what kind of loser that kind of thinking gets us.



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Captain's Quarters gets it right on earmarks and the federal budget. Money flows to power - the ability to send money in the supporter's directions. Take away Congress' ability to allocate as much money, and the corruption automatically becomes less.



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One of the themes of the 'sphere the last couple of days is "Where were you when Challenger blew up?" It's easy enough to remember. I was starting training as an Air Traffic Controller the next day. I got into Oklahoma City the previous evening and thought, "Cool! I'll wake up early and watch the shuttle launch, then check out of the motel and into the apartment and take a nap, then get ready to report the next day."



Well, whereas the plan for the day was executed in pretty much every other particular, no nap. Spent every moment I could watching to see if maybe there was any hope of a survivor, or some small silver lining to salvage the day. The entire day was an exercise in surreality. It seemed like the whole world was trapped in a bad dream from which we couldn't wake up. I was just too young to remember Apollo 1, although I knew about it intellectually, especially as my dad worked at Convair assembling stuff for NASA's manned space program throughout the sixties. I had seen "The Right Stuff", which frankly acknowledged the risks but never showed them (A worthwhile movie if you've never seen it, and I'm happy to note that we as a nation are once again moving closer to the willingness to undertake risks that were characteristic of the time chronicled. Take the Gus Grissom spaceflight with more than a grain of salt, though. The movie leaves out a lot of relevant facts). Still, it wasn't until the next day, when I woke up and the newspaper headlines were all about Challenger, that it really hit me. We really had had a disaster. Of course, within a couple days, the jokes in the breakroom started, but they were always with a certain edge that you could feel the person was telling them in a "I've got to laugh because otherwise I'll cry!" vein. I missed Reagan's speech; I took quite seriously the claim that the ATC program at the time was "law school in 3 months" and devoted nose to grindstone that evening and never really came up for air until graduation. I only saw the speech years later. I spent fifteen months in Palmdale right after that until it became obvious that the desert and my allergies were not meant to co-exist, and the fact that there were no shuttle flights and therefore no landings (Edwards AFB is/was just up the road) during that period was one of the things that I remember hating most about the Antelope Valley.