Links and Minifeatures 05 11 Thursday

Carnival of The Vanities Recommended: Escape From Cubicle Nation

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Cool! They've got a mathematical model of how Neptune might have captured Triton, which always appeared to have been formed elsewhere, as well as orbiting retrograde to other moons.



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Men Pay the Ultimate Price to Attract Women



I hope someone gets film of when they tell Maureen Dowd, Catherine MacKinnon, and Susan Estrich.



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via LGF comes this IRNA article confirming that Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush was a call to Islam, with likely effects I discussed yesterday.

Jihad Watch has the text of the letter President Ahmadinejad sent to President Bush.



I'm going to hide some text here so that you won't read interpretations until you've looked at it, if such be your desire.



He thinks it's a Call to Islam, as encouraged by Mohammed in the Koran, possibly as a prelude for an attack. Reading it in it's entirety, I was thinking "Statement of causi belli according to an Iranian hardliner." Sort of analogous to our own Declaration of Independence in a twisted around kind of way. My estimate is that President Bush is not the real intended audience of the letter, which is intended to furnish ammunition for the apologists here in the US as well as rally the Islamist faithful. As is implied by the fact that it was an open letter.



Please read it for yourself. I am interested in what others have to say.

Via neo-neocon (who has her own worthwhile input), More confirmation in the New York Post.



Protein Wisdom says the obvious very well.



Scrappleface has the only possible reply from President Bush. Simultaneous reading of this reply and consumption of beverages is contra-indicated.



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Captain's Quarters has a nicely reasoned article on HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson's turnabout on whether or not a Bush hating contractor had it's contract killed.



Two points I would like to make. First: What proportion of corporate contracts would you expect to stay rewarded if you told a loyal subordinate that the CEO was a incompetent and he intended to see that CEO replaced? Having a government contract is not some sort of right. Someone who tells you he's an in-your-face partisan of the other side may have incentive to use that contract to arrange for political embarrassment. I don't agree with revoking the contract but I can certainly understand the rationale and concede that it was a reasonable, intelligent response. I don't call my clients, who are putting money into my pocket, names. They'd dump me. I cannot blame Secretary Jackson for that.



Second, I would like to know how the above action by Secretary Jackson can be unacceptable, while Hillary Clinton's firing of the formerly nonpartisan employees of the White House Travel Office in favor of political appointees is acceptable? They didn't declare themselves her enemy, and as I recall, about half of them were registered Democrats. The only offense any one of them was guilty of was having served the Republican previous administration.



Volokh Conspiracy covers the legal angles.



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Meet the new members of the UN Human Rights Council: Cuba, China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Azerbaijan. I wish I was joking. Okay, I'm not aware of any major human rights violations Azerbaijan is guilty of, but that's not something I can say about the other new members. As the UN proceeds upon its quest to prove itself capable of making any situation worse, no matter how bad it was to begin with, Michelle Malkin has a round up.



Crimenetly, as many pies as the UN has their fingers in, you'd think they'd occasionally accomplish something beneficial by accident. No such luck, I'm afraid.



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Putin offers Russian Women Cash to have more babies



Glenn Reynolds has a good discussion.



Foreign Affairs has more.



I can tell you how to encourage children in one short sentence: Cut back on social insurance for old people. I'll let you folks do your own research to confirm or deny. You won't be convinced if I just lay it out.



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Professor Rudy Rummel, posting at Dean's World, has a list of the mass murdering realms of the twentieth century. For those condemning colonialism or imperialism, it is a damning condemnation of communism. 148 million citizens dead at the hands of their own communist governments.



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I've decided to do away with the "issues" email. Try as I might, I just couldn't get folks to use it, and so I am deleting that mailbox. Use the "dm" email for everything.



Stay tuned for more changes coming up, and there will be a new mortgage article tomorrow morning, as well as quite possibly a political one later.