A Report From the Afterlife?

I think I may have had a vision of Hell last evening. This remarkable event took place during the brief time I was home between my return from the day job and my departure for Vacation Bible School (where one of my fellow congregants mentioned to me that her husband often refers to the week of VBS as "hell week"). I won't try to deny that I effectively invited this terrifying vision. As I was sorting out my gym bag, depositing some fragrant socks and shorts and towel and so on in the dirty-clothes basket and replacing them with the corresponding clean items for this morning's use, I turned on the television set -- or, as my friend Ron likes to call it, the magic-talkin'-Satan-box -- and, on MSNBC, I caught some of "Hardball." Now, that's as bad as my vision of Hell gets, but it's quite bad enough. I mean: just imagine being condemned to spend eternity watching a discussion between Christopher Hitchens and the Reverend Al Sharpton, "moderated" by the amazingly-rabid Chris Matthews, all held outdoors in what appeared to be some wilting heat, before a crowd of howling youthful persons. I suppose that in real Hell, the viewer would be strapped to a chair with his head clamped facing the screen and his eyelids clipped open, a la Little Alex in A Clockwork Orange. But a vision isn't quite the full, real thing.

I wanted to link to a transcript, but there doesn't seem to be one available yet. When it is (Saturday, 6/30, maybe?), you can find it here.

But there they were: Mr. Sharpton in all his ebony incoherence and idiot's perfect confidence; Mr. Hitchens looking every bit the debauched Britisher enduring a death-dealing hangover in the dreary Colonies, sweating out partially-processed Beefeater's Gin and squinting out the broiling sun; and Mr. Matthews, looking as if he were pining away for just one more snootful of Fred Thompson's delicious cigars-and-Aqua-Velva Daddy-smell, keeping things stupid as he does so well.

Maybe what I saw wasn't Hell; maybe it's the future. In that case:

"I have seen the future, and it don't work."

Scriptoid Time

I see that my heroine and role model Grace Nearing's been on fire this week. Let's see: we've got a brilliant excerpt from Matt Taibbi; we've got some vintage Freeptardia; we've got (M)Ann Coulter; we've got Da Prez; and we've got Da Vice-Prez, better known to his not-shot-in-the-face-yet friends as "Dick."

With all of that going for you, why are you still here? Go read Grace.

Libertarian Megatent Teratent

In a comment on the previous post, Jeff Pruitt alerted me to one of the Historic Slate of Historic Libertarian Party Candidates for Fort Wayne City Council, historically selected at the historic county convention of the Libertarian Party of Historic Allen County. The history-making details can be read at this historic post.

Jeff referred me to this post at Fort Wayne Left. There you'll find a link to this post by one of the historic Ell Pee candidates, one Gloria Diaz. I sniffed around the rest of her blog a little, to see if the linked post is generally representative of her work, or if she merely had a sudden bout of Tourette's one day. While I can't say I exactly scoured her archives, my impression is that it's mostly the same. Amazing, indeed.

So, here's a friendly and sincere question for those associated with the Allen County LP. I'm really curious -- really! -- and I'd be interested in your responses. What would it take to disqualify a prospective big-L Libertarian candidate here in Allen County? Is there any stench that the clothespin on your nose won't take care of? Or is your tent SO big that it just basically isn't there at all?

Why Should I Be the Only Queasy One?

I generally try to avert my eyes from the sorry state of "official" libertarianism (i.e., Republicans in drag) these days. Sometimes the local train wreck gets pretty spectacular, though. Check this out, and this, too.

Wankers.

Osama's Indispensable Ally: Dubya

Why assume our government is incompetent? Who knows -- maybe they're actually trying to nurture the emerging crop of terrorists? Check it out:

The civilian death toll in Iraq is, by all accounts, frightful. Car bombs enact a terrible toll, and this is widely covered by the press almost every day. But civilians who die at the hands of American troops get much less attention. There are many reasons for this. The incidents are widely scattered and usually do not involve large numbers at one time. The U.S. military rarely admits wrongdoing -- in some cases, it may not even know that anyone has died. The media, amid horrible violence, has trouble investigating.

But a recent episode involving a single casualty has drawn unusual attention – only because the youth happened to be the son of a Los Angeles Times employee in Baghdad.

Tina Susman told the story last Tuesday in the L.A. Times. The boy was 17, but she did not name him, nor identify the father.

Susman, the paper’s Baghdad bureau chief, wrote, “U.S. military officials say troops are trained to avoid civilian casualties and do not fire wildly. Iraqis, however, say the shootings happen frequently and that even if troops are firing at suspected attackers, they often do so on city streets where bystanders are likely to be hit. Rarely is it possible to confirm such incidents. In this case, the boy was the son of a Los Angeles Times employee, which provided reporters knowledge of the incident in time to examine it. Witness and military accounts of the shooting offered a rare look into how such killings can occur.”

She revealed that since February, stringers for the newspaper across Iraq have reported at least 18 incidents of American troops firing wildly with at least 22 noncombatants killed. Surely this only scratches the surface, as Walter Pincus observed yesterday in a Washington Post article on the “solatia” or condolence payments that I have often written about. Thousands of such payments have been made by the U.S.

Susman noted that in most cases the wild firing occurs after an IED or car bomb goes off (as happened most tragically in Haditha).

She graphically recounted the testimony of a man named Abu Mohammed who owned a shop where the youth ran for help after getting shot. "I was hesitant to open the door because I was afraid that the American soldiers would shoot me dead," he said, recalling when the boy began beating on his door. Even as he let the boy in and helped him to the floor, he said, troops kept firing.

"They were confused and angry and suspecting anyone around," Mohammed said. "If a bird had passed by, they would have shot it."

The U.S. military said troops fired in self-defense.

If the War Party were trying to recruit for Al-Qaeda, could they possibly do a better job than they're already doing? If so, how?

On second thought, I shouldn't suggest that Dubya is indispensable in his capacity as Mr. bin Laden's ally and recruiting agent. After the Crawford Caligula is long gone, I'm sure that whichever of the famous senatorial duo -- Obama or Clinton -- succeeds him will continue the project in a fine and workmanlike manner.

Scienterrific!

I will cheerfully admit that I don't get exercised about the appropriate things. The things that get normal people excited aren't the things that do it for me. Normal people, I know from my online reading, experience despair and the urge to give up on their fellow man when they hear about fundamentalists and upland Tennessee aborigines -- Hoosiers, even! -- who fail to accept Holy Evolution. Doesn't bother me a bit; in fact, if by "accepting it" one means thinking that life on the planet is the result of a random incidence of abiogenesis a zillion or so years ago, well, I don't believe that stuff either.

But I have my own odd science buttons, always there and waiting to be pushed. The local Professional Journalist Frank Gray pushed one today:

A few days ago an obscure item showed up in the news.

A company in India was going to start mass producing an air-powered car made of lightweight fiberglass. It would top out at 68 mph and travel up to 125 miles on one pump-up.

Bob Manor of Salamonia in Jay County must feel at least a little bit vindicated on hearing that. The car, if it does go into production next year, would prove that the idea Manor first came up with 39 years ago and has been struggling to perfect since then wasn’t a crackpot notion.

We first wrote about Manor almost seven years ago. He had a working model – a very ugly working model – of an air-powered car that was fueled by big torpedo-like tanks that held air compressed to about 45 pounds per square inch.

Manor had converted an old gasoline engine to run on compressed air, and had even tinkered with attaching compressors to the wheels so that as the car ran, it would refill the compressed air tanks.

The problem was money and expertise.

Well, no, the problem isn't money, nor is it expertise. The problem is freakin' thermodynamics, boys! But, by all means, let us continue:

In the past few days, Manor has been testing the rebuilt air car, running it through drills while it sits stationary in his garage. He’d like to take it out on the road eventually and give it a test run. But he’s nervous about doing that.

“If the government and oil companies find out you have a new form of energy, watch out,” Manor says. “You know what happened in South Carolina.”

In Charlotte, N.C., a man who converted his diesel car to run on vegetable oil reclaimed from restaurants was fined $1,000 by the state for not paying fuel taxes. Manor is afraid he’ll get slammed similar penalties if he hits the road with a car that runs on air.

Manor hasn’t received much encouragement. He did find two engineers willing to look at what he’d created, one from Ball State and one from the University of Dayton.

One estimated the truck could travel three-quarters of a mile. The other said he thought it would be able to travel 50 feet on a charge of air.

At 82, why listen to them? One of these days Manor will take his air-powered truck out and see for himself.

And that will probably be the end of it.

“I’m ready to hang it up,” he said. “Money controls everything.”

Ah, yes, money. I know just what he means. Why, a few years ago, I was all set to become the dominant center in the NBA, totally embarrassing all those millionaires with my stumpy, five-foot-eight bod. But I knew it was too dangerous to do it ... that players' association would disappear me in a heartbeat. Money controls everything.

"Liberal education" sounds like a great idea. We should try it sometime. If education were a bit more liberal, which is to say a bit more comprehensive, it might be that a lot less foolishness would ever see print. But meanwhile ...

One of these days, as we said, he’ll take his truck on a test run and see what happens. He’s promised to call when he’s done.

Don't hold your breath while you wait, Frank.