Links and Minifeatures 03 23 Thursday

Think of the history he lived through! Kolkata tortoise, Clive's pet, dies at 250 years. Here's a biography of his first owner, Robert Clive, who was one of the reasons the British conquered India instead of the French.



The Plassey Campaign. The Mutiny. The Great Game. Gandhi. The Partition and Independence. Nuclear India. Market reform. And that's just in India. When this tortoise was born, there was no United States. Poland had not yet been partitioned. Mozart may or may not have been born. Napoleon wasn't born yet, and the French Revolution was decades in the future. The Ottoman Empire had not yet begun to decay. Venice was still an independent nation. Cook had not yet discovered Hawaii. The Barbary Pirates were the terror of the Mediterreanean and beyond.

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Michael Barone has a convincing argument that we should re-examine the benefits and costs of "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards homosexual folks in the military.



I admit that I don't like "don't ask, don't tell," although I have defended it in the past. The purpose of the military is to keep us safe, and any other considerations have zero weight against that function, IMHO. There is no "right" to serve in the military. If, however, the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" would not damage the military in effectiveness, retention, morale, or otherwise, then personal prejudices of anyone anywhere in the progress against homosexuals swing precisely zeo weight with me, and it should be repealed. In fact, I'd probably favor it just to tick off Fred Phelps (As Volokh Conspiracy notes in the referenced article, sometimes you've gotta let a jerk be a jerk. But that doesn't mean you have to like him).



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I want to believe in moderate Moslems (and the one article documents some), and even moderate mullahs, but then I keep running across stuff like Danish Imam Caught Making Death Threat on Hidden Camera and Peaceful Religion Watch. Stuff like this are a good reason to read Little Green Footballs, and MEMRI, which is his source for a lot of it. I tend to believe what they say when they think the West isn't listening.



HT to Captain's Quarters for a link to a biographical essay of Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a hardline advisor to Iran's president.



Captain's Quarters also has the good news that Stephen Harper, the new Canadian PM, has been attempting to sway Afghani president Karzai on behalf of the Abdul Rahman, the gentleman that's being tried for apostasy because he converted to Christianity - sixteen years ago. (In case you haven't been following the story, they offered him absolution if he recanted, but he wouldn't. Then the mullahs, perhaps realizing the political danger, tried to pass him off as not guilty by reason of insanity, which is itself going over like a lead balloon among the international community). Relating to this, Scrappleface has a (satirical) suggestion for what to do now that the FAA lawyer has blown the Massaoui prosecution.



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D'oh! Church Sign Smackdown! HT Hugh Hewitt



While we're on the subject of humor, Ann Althouse covers South Park's revenge on Scientology.



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Michelle Malkin notes another good deed that didn't go unpunished. Coalition forces rescue these three moonbats (a fourth was executed by the terrorists holding them), and their website says "Celebrate the peacemakers release", as if the terrorists were going to let them go any day, instead of executing them one by one for maximum effect.



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Do you think that the fact that (via Michelle Malkin) this study was conducted in Berkeley, and the kids' personality was evaluated by preschool teachers in 1969-1971, might have anything to do with the evaluation? Do you think that the attitudes of the researchers might have had some selection bias?



This doesn't pass the smell test on the undergraduate level. For crying out loud, my basic Psych professor or any of my statistics profs would have had apoplexy had I turned in work like that. As a serious scientific study, it looks a lot more like activism and self-validation.



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Via Instapundit, StrategyPagenotes (in part):

The Internet and cell phones have changed all that. Now, whenever the military offends a lot of civilians, the words gets around (nationwide) quickly (within hours.) These embarrassing situations (especially when the military seizes land it needs, or causes a mess with pollution, or other bad behavior by the troops) tend to get into Chinese or foreign media, and that does not make the big shots in Beijing happy at all.

This is part of the reason why I'm not too concerned with the Chinese censoring the search engines and other stuff on the internet. Such techniques work about as well as building half a dam. It's not so convenient, and it's not so easy as it is for us, but people will find ways and the information will get around. To stop it from doing so would require plugging email, instant messaging, cell phones, etcetera - every method of fast communication, without which China cannot compete any more than we could.



My offer to perform searches if anyone in a censored country asks is still valid, by the way. Not that I think it's necessary, just my way of twitting the tyrants.



The whole referenced story is only about 300 words, if you're considering reading the whole thing, it's fast.