Category: Uncategorized

It’s Unnatural!

I’ve never met Patrick West, but I definitely like how his mind works if his article on the natural vs. unnatural distinction is any clue.

Personally I’m just sick of the sheer hypocrisy over the use of the words “natural” and “unnatural.” Tell a liberal that homosexuality is “unnatural” and watch them freak out. On the other hand, tell the same person that genetically modified organisms are “unnatural” and 9 times out of 10 they’ll still freak out — but for entirely different reasons.

Not that some conservatives are much better. The most hilarious example I ever saw of this were conservatives on Usenet who would post that homosexuality was “unnatural.” Yeah, whereas Usenet is completely instinctual.

My problem is that I grew up in a rural part of Michigan and absolutely hated it. You know what natural is? Natural is not having HBO and Showtime because the cable company doesn’t want to string wires out to the podunk part of the world that you live in. “Natural” sucks.

Or as West puts it,

As far as I’m concerned, nature is not our friend — it is the enemy of humanity. Earthquakes, cancer, death, wisdom teeth, short sightedness [lack of cable!!]: these are natural. Penicillin, antibiotics, heart surgery, toothpaste, the spectacles I wear as a I write this [HBO and Showtime]: these are the innovations of man. Our ability to defy, defeat and overcome nature is what makes us human. Thanks to our tampering with the natural order of things, most people in the Western world can now look forward to dying in their beds.

(And if they’re really luck, dying with HBO or Showtime on the TV.)

But I’m willing to compromise. I just want to stipulate that everything humans do is either natural or unnatural and stick with it. If homosexuality is unnatural so are electric toothbrushes, camcorders, and xylophones. If homosexuality is natural, so are photographs, books, and Pez dispensers.

Lets just dispense with this absurd fiction that there are things that are “natural” and other things that are “unnatural” that is really equivalent to there are things that some people like and other things that those same people don’t like. The whole natural/ unnatural dichotomy is just a fraud to make it look like those personal preferences have some deep seated origin other than the whims of the people making the distinction.

Source:

In praise of the unnatural. Patrick West, Spiked-Online.Com, January 24, 2002.

Baseball Simming Perfection

Last night I was awake until almost 2:30 a.m. playing around with a new software toy Out of the Park Baseball 4.0. This is not only the best baseball computer game I’ve ever played, but easily the best sports simulation game I’ve ever played.

One thing to get out of the way up front is that this is not necessarily true for people who place historical replay value as the number one criteria for a baseball sim. If you want to sim the 2001 MLB season and have the results come out as close as possible to the real thing, then Diamond Mind Baseball is still the way to go. OOTP 4.0 certainly results in realistic statistics, but has some simplifications and lacks features that a game like DMB has that are necessary for getting complete replay accuracy (which, frankly, has never interested me all that much).

Where OOTP 4.0 shines is that, as one of it’s promotion pages put it, it is “Tweaker’s Heaven.” You can pretty much create any sort of baseball league you might like, determining everything from the style of play (Dead Ball era, etc.), tweaking overall league stats, editing stadiums, setting salary caps, dealing with the finances, managing minor leagues, all the way to calling the shots and going out to argue with the umpire during a blown call. Or let the computer do as much or as little of all of that stuff for you and focus on the parts of baseball sims that are most appealing to you. This game is so into tweaking, you can get into deciding criteria for inclusion into the Hall of Fame and the various post-season awards for rookie of the year as well.

Another extremely impressive aspect to OOTP 4.0 is its excellent HTML export features. A lot of baseball sims have HTML export but most of them aren’t nearly as obsessive with exporting everything as I want them to be. OOTP 4.0, however, is more than up to the task.

Last night, for example, I created a fictional league with 2 divisions, and 6 teams in each division. I set all the teams to be run by the computer and simmed a season (which on autopilot like that took about 10 minutes). The I exported the league to HTML — this was baseball geek heaven. OOTP 4.0 created almost 7,000 files totaling around 36 megabytes (note, you don’t have to be as obsessive as I am about this stuff — if you want a short but sweet version or something in between those two extremes, that is easily accomplished).

I had box scores and play-by-plays for every game, a plethora of statistics and ratings on every player, extensive records for every statistic you could imagine, financial reports, attendance, fan interest — everything I could have ever wanted.

The only real drawback to OOTP 4.0 is the lack of a pitch-by-pitch mode for simming single games, which eliminates a lot of the strategy of baseball.

Craig Rosebraugh Respond to House Subcommittee

On March 15, 2002, Craig Rosebraugh submitted written replies to questions given to him by Rep. Scott McInnis as part of McInnis’ ongoing investigation into ecoterrorism. The answer speak volumes about the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front.

Right off the bat, Rosebraugh says what has been obvious all along except to the animal rights true believers:

[QUESTION] 1) Do you view violence against individuals, organizations and other enterprises that work and play on the national forests as a legitimate means of seeking public policy change, specifically with respect to management of the nation’s forests?

[ANSWER] Yes.

Violence against individuals is “a legitimate means of seeking public policy” change in Rosebraugh’s eyes. That is a textbook definition of terrorism, and Rosebraugh an advocate of such a philosophy.

Rosebraugh hits this same theme a few questions later when given the opportunity to address a quotation attributed to him regarding the dangers to people posed by ALF/ELF actions,

5) Do you still agree with this statement attributed to you in The Bear Deluxe Magazine? “If you are talking about fires, and the use of incendiary devices, there is the danger of people being near or inside that building, or the fire could spread to another building. There are always dangers.”

I do not adopt any factual assumptions made in your question. Yes.

And, again, when asked if he is worried that someone might die from an ALF/ELF attack,

8) Are you personally concerned that one day an ELF or ALF perpetrated attack will wind up killing or wounding someone?

No, I am more concerned with massive numbers of people dying at the hands of greedy capitalists if such actions are not taken.

In fact, in a bizarre twist given what happened on Sept. 11, Rosebraugh goes on to advocate the destruction of American monuments as a legitimate way to strike against capitalism,

30) In the “Frequently Asked Questions” piece [on the ELF web site] the authors listed Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and Wall Street on a short list of “forms and symbols of capitalism [that] can be targeted successfully to greatly influence the impact the capitalist state has on life.” Remember, in your video and in other places you have frequently said that fire bombing is the best tactic to use in a direct action. Taken together, aren’t you encouraging ELF’s cronies to go out and firebomb the Statue of Liberty? Since ELF has shown no signs of slowing down since 9-11, do you still think that, on an abstract level, it would be a good or desirable thing for the ELF to attack other symbols of capitalism in New York City, like Wall Street offices?

a) I don’t know.
b) Yes.

When the questions turn to whether or not Rosebraugh is directly involved in ALF/ELF attacks, suddenly Rosebraugh starts invoking the Fifth Amendment (as his right),

17) Do you know who Michael Conn is?

Michael Conn is a researcher at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton, Oregon. Conn wastes hundreds of thousands of federal tax dollars torturing and killing monkeys, a practice which has in no way benefited human health.

18) Were you ever arrested for trespassing on the Oregon Regional Primate Center where Mr. Conn works?

See all objections, rights, and privileges asserted above.

19) Why was there an index card with Mr. Conn’s name and home address in your residence? Was either ELF or ALF planning to take “direct action” against Mr. Conn or his property? If not, why was Mr. Conn’s name and address in your possession?

See all objections, rights, and privileges asserted above.

Michael Conn has faced repeated harassment and threats from animal rights activists (see http://www.animalrights.net/articles/2002/000038.html).

The whole thing gets surreal with the answer to a couple questions which are completely contradictory,

43) When the ELF called for “direct action” to protest this hearing, and included the photos, names, and addresses of Members of Congress on the same website (www.protectcivilliberties.com), what was its purpose? Were they seeking to intimidate the Members of this Subcommittee and the witnesses?

A) I was not aware that the ELF “called for ‘direct action’ to protest this
hearing.”

B) I do not know.

44) Did you play any role in the construction of the aforementioned website calling for “direct action” in conjunction with this hearing? Did you ever have a conversation with anyone regarding the construction of www.protectcivilliberties.com?

A) yes.

B) I don’t recall.

So Rosebraugh expects us to believe that he played a role in the construction of the web site, but cannot recall ever having a conservation with somebody about the construction of that web site?

Yeah, that’s believable. Just like everything else Rosebraugh claims.

Source:

Responses to Additional Questions. Craig Rosebraugh, March 15, 2002.

Steve Hindi Abandons Defamation Lawsuit

Steve Hindi announced this month that he was dropping his lawsuit against Utah state Rep. Paul Ray because it would be too expensive to proceed. Ray had state attorneys defending him, and Hindi apparently did not think he could match those resources.

The Salt Lake Tribune quoted Hindi as saying,

As badly as I want to see this guy in court, as badly as I want to see him put his money where his mouth is, he’s going to put taxpayers’ money where his mouth is . . . We’re not going to play that game.

The lawsuit was filed after Ray sent a letter to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee asking that committee to reject animal rights demands to stop a rodeo held as part of the Winter Olympic’s cultural events. In that letter, Ray wrote, “We cannot allow terrorist groups such as SHARK and PETA to frighten us with their threats of violence.”

Hindi took umbrage to Ray’s repeated claims that his group had made threats of violence and supported terrorism and filed suit.

Ray, for his part, seems to be choosing his words more carefully these days and told the Tribune, “I’m not going to get in a name-calling fight with them. I don’t want to rehash all this.”

Hindi’s lawyer, Brian Barnard, was apparently disappointed at the decision to withdraw the lawsuit thinking he had a good defamation case.

Realistically, though, the odds of Hindi prevailing in court were slim to none. Hindi may have been right that SHARK is not a terrorist group and does not support terrorism, but in court he would have had the burden of proving that a) Ray knew this, and b) despite that knowledge, Ray called SHARK a terrorist group anyway (Hindi an SHARK are clearly public persons and, as such, would have had to prove actual malice to prevail).

It was very clear from his statements, however, that Ray had only passing knowledge of the animal rights movement and would almost certainly have relied on a defense that he believed what he was saying at the time was true and accurate.

Winning a defamation case in the United States is extremely difficult, and Ray would have almost certainly prevailed had the lawsuit went forward.

Source:

Animal rights activist drops defamation suit against lawmaker. Dan Harrie, The Salt Lake Tribune, March 14, 2002.

Animal Tests for Prion Disease Move Closer

The Scientist published an article this month reporting on advances made by Stanley Prusiner in understanding — and hopefully treating — prion diseases such as CJD, vCJD, and BSE.

In the article, Prusiner — who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for his work on prions — notes that there is still much that researchers do not understand about prion diseases. “We though the number of cases of the disease [vCJD] would increase two to three times,” Prusiner told scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, “but the number of cases in 2001 was similar to the number in 2000.”

That seems to be due to an oddity with vCJD. Whereas CJD generally affects older people, vCJD seems to affect mainly younger people.

The good news is that Prusiner believes there is enough known about prion diseases to start looking at trials to test therapies for the diseases. Some compounds used to treat other diseases also appear to have the ability to prevent normal prions from degenerating into diseased prions that cause CJD.

Prusiner is currently working to develop a mouse model to test such compounds. His plan appears to involve a drug discovery compound to examine 11,000 compounds that might have some effect on prion disease and then test the promising ones in a mouse model before proceeding to human clinical trials.

Source:

Prion-Disease trials on the horizon?. Jennifer Fisher Wilson, The Scientist, 16[6]:28, Mar. 18, 2002.

Joe Sobran Proves William F. Buckley Right

For a long time, Joe Sobran wrote for National Review. Then he was booted out by William F. Buckley who agreed with Sobran’s critics that Sobran was an anti-Semite. Sobran and his supporters have long decried that decision as completely unfair. But in a recent column about Israel (a country which Sobran appears at times to be obssessed about), Sobran writes,

Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review has summed up the situation in one pithy sentence: “The truth is that if we held Israel to the same standards that we apply to Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, U.S. bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and weÂ’d be putting Israeli prime minister Sharon behind bars for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The Institute for Historical Review is an anti-Semitic organization dedicated to Holocaust revisionism. Weber himself has written that there is no evidence that Jews were mass murdered at Treblinka and that, in fact, the camp was used as a transit camp.

For someone who insists he is not an anti-Semite, Sobran keeps fairly odd company.