Quick Roundup 172

The Rising Martian Life Consensus?

Ian Hamet recently posted the following quote from the blog of the Adam Smith Institute. "We know there is life on Mars, and we know that the Martians are driving 4×4s and taking budget flights. We know that because the planet is heating up."

Aeon McNulty was being facetious, but not long afterwards, an actual news report has surfaced that Mars is experiencing global warming! (HT: Allen's Image Adjustment)

Given that Mars is heating up at four times the rate of the earth (which the report explicitly attributes to human causes), one halfway expects to hear, any day now, an announcement that Mars, too, "has a fever" due to "infection" by intelligent life.

The Titanic Truth Movement

Perhaps the reason we aren't hearing about the Martians yet is that the loony left, led by Rosie O'Donnell, is too busy building upon the work of the sagacious spooked911 to work itself into a froth about the upcoming invasion. (And, boy! Orson Welles would have been fun to have around this last April Fool's Day!)

On Thursday's "The View," Rosie said, "It defies physics for the WTC 7, which collapsed in on itself -it's impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved."

Rosie issued a challenge to "Look at the films," and "get a demolition expert."

What Rosie and other conspiracy theorists don't say is that building 7, since rebuilt, suffered a 10-story gash from huge columns which fell from the twin towers.

It was also weakened by fires that burned for 10 hours.

And oh yeah, they seem to have somehow hacked into Maddox's web site.

Chortle! (HT: Mike M)

Working Towards a Solution

Ironically, the legions of conspiracy theorists are accidentally correct in one respect, but not in the way they think. Our government is behind an appalling disaster: Government-funded schools, after destroying incentives for good work and thwarting most competition, are churning out the kinds of people who fall for such nonsensical conspiracy theories and "scientific" arguments.

Fortunately, we have pioneering educators like Lisa VanDamme doing something about it:

When visited by prospective clients, I usually have the span of a half-hour appointment to learn about the family and their reasons for seeking a new educational environment, to explain the basic history and structure of VanDamme Academy, and to describe what I regard as the defining virtues of the school. I have therefore had to become adept at a "standing on one foot" description of the VanDamme Academy curriculum. This is what I tell them.

...

Hearing this presentation, most parents sigh in a sort of melancholy recognition that this is what constitutes a real education and lamentation of their own and their children's lost years. The majority then enroll their children, and ask with a smile (as if they are the first) whether we also enroll adults.

For the explanation, read her blog.

And on a more serious note about the silliness Rosie the Driveller is manufacturing, is it not a little odd how much attention she is getting from the right? Yes. It is disturbing that so many people take her seriously, but how many times do we really need to refute this nonsense? One conservative commentator -- at NRO, I believe, but I lost and can't retrieve the link -- even emailed her, as if that's going to do any good.

I think the right is in a high dudgeon about this because it does not really know how to answer her properly, which is: To write her and most of her followers off, and work on improving the cultural climate of our country. But since most conservatives scoff at discussing fundamental philosophical ideas as "impractical", they fail to see how such abstract ideas as "progressive" education have real-world consequences through the inability of so many people to logically gather and evaluate evidence about the world around them.

And so they get stuck at the point of whining about results instead of tackling causes.This is why we see so many of them impotently taking out their wrath on Rosie O'Donnell.

The War That Must Not Be Named -- Or Fought?

This article on the campaign by the Democrats to not name the current war makes one excellent point and leads to another:

A Republican aide quips, "If you are a reader of the Harry Potter books, you might describe this as the war that must not be named." But underlying this semantic argument is a serious question -- one that shows why the Democratic Party cannot be trusted with national security.

Sadly, the remainder of the article goes on to show why the Republicans cannot be trusted on national security, either . The rest of the piece simply takes Bush's limited "war on terror" as the standard for waging the war and holds out "hope" that Bush's successor will have the green light to carry on with this massive foreign aid boondoggle. It would have been nice to see a criticism of Bush for not fighting the war decisively enough.

Instead, the article shows us that we are in a no-win situation at the moment. One party wants to pretend there isn't a war, and the other wants to pretend that we don't really have to fight it.

-- CAV