Inside the Asylum

Conspiracy theorists' have been trying to disprove the moon landings for years. Now NASA responds (sort of) by releasing a whole bunch of cool satellite images that show the landers, tracks, flags, instruments etc. that they left behind.

Of course this wouldn't be necessary if NASA had actually done anything decent by now. Trips to the moon should be old-hat by now, not ancient history. I remember when I was young, maybe about 13, I looked out my window at the moon. I had a yearning sadness as I stared at it, knowing that I'd probably never get to go there (or anywhere else in space.) I can't tell you how much more sad I would have felt if you'd told me that in the next three decades, no human would have done so much as leave Earth orbit. I mean, what the heck have we been mucking around at? Where is the moon base? Where are the mining stations in the asteroid belt? Where are the orbital solar power stations? Where is the 2001: A Space Odyssey space station? All we've got is an almost finished rather pathetic little international space station that they're already talking about abandoning. We've landed a few feeble things on Mars. Oh yes, and a few probes to different parts of the Solar System. Probes ... hmmm. I think a few properly applied probes to politicians and NASA bureaucrats might have led to a little more of where we should be, and a little less of, "have we accomplished so little in so many years?"

Who, in a recent article, described the model of the centralized economy as "flawed"? He also said the following:

The real achievement we can celebrate is the fact that the 20th century marked the end of totalitarian ideologies, in particular those that were based on utopian beliefs.

Well, judging by a lot of people in the Obama administration, I think he's being a bit optimistic there. There seem to be entirely too many people who think that there's a utopia to be achieved, if only the government can take over enough aspects of society.

So as not to misrepresent his views, I should point out that he's also not a fan of capitalism.

So, who is he? I'll put the answer in the comments, or you can follow the link to read the whole essay.

The LA Times can't spend all its time covering for ACORN, so now it's doing what it can to cover for Obama's indecision on Afghanistan. In the Sunday edition, they ran (amongst other thing) a cartoon obviously meant to support a decision to not send extra troops, despite the fact that both the commander-in-chief ("listen to the generals!") and NATO allies ("don't be so unilateral!") think more troops are needed.

[Digression: The Europeans have known this all along, but (as usual) they were hoping to get out of actually doing anything about it, expecting the US to pick up the security bill ... but now that Obama is looking so weak at the knees they're trying to nudge Obama in the right direction by finally announcing they'll send extra troops.]

Anyway, the cartoon shows the skeletal remains of Alexander the Great, the British, the Russians, and finally a still living but unhappy Uncle Sam, caught in a spider's web that is Afghanistan. The British skeleton says to Uncle Sam, "more troops? Why didn't we think of that? Oh wait, we did." The message is clear. A shame the history doesn't align with the political message.

Let's take them one by one: Alexander the Great. A single campaign, which encountered many difficulties, nevertheless succeeded in planting Greek colonies in the region that would achieve independence and rule a successful kingdom in the region that lasted until about 125BC. The cartoon is wrong on two fronts: there was no issue of "extra troops" and the implied failure doesn't exist. The lesson of Alexander the Great is that you can go into the region and reshape it in your own image. Scratch one for the LA Times.

Then the British. Mostly, they didn't give a damn about Afghanistan, except to make sure the Russians couldn't use it to threaten their Indian Empire. Most British movements into the region were along the lines of "march in, kick heads, march out". I'm not exactly sure why the cartoonist thought it would be appropriate to have the words coming out of the mouth of the British skeleton. The times the British suffered real troubles in the region, it was mostly because of incompetent leadership. Again, this is a lesson Uncle Sam needs to learn, but the problem in this case doesn't seem to be with the generals and troops, but with the commander in chief in Washington. I'm reminded of the obituary of Brigadier Ted Hughes that appeared in the Daily Telegraph when he died aged 89, in 1987. He took part in the Third Afghan War, and wrote a memoir that was scathing of the British commanders. He wrote, "The Higher Command acted on the excellent principle that if you can't surprise the enemy it is better to surprise your own side than no one at all." Well, that certainly seems to describe the Obama Regime's approach to its own commanders (25 minutes on Air Force One for the general in command, with Obama doing most of the talking). After capturing Spin Baldak, the British forces improved its defenses and water supply, then marched off again leaving it back in the hands of their enemies. Again, that sure sounds like what Obama would like to do ... spend lots of time and effort to improve the infrastructure etc., so US troops can withdraw. As I said ... some good historical lessons, but not any that let Obama off the hook that justify not sending more troops.

Then the Russians. They were doing quite well until a certain power started arming the locals with things like stinger missiles. Without massive American assistance, the anti-Russian resistance would not have been nearly so successful. The Russian lesson is not that more troops won't solve the problem, but rather that you had better make sure that outside forces aren't providing massive aid for your enemies. A good lesson for the current situation, but not the one the cartoon seeks to make.

So even in a cartoon, the LA Times manages to continues its policy of being a) politically motivated b) factually incorrect and c) not worth the trouble of using it for more than scrap newsprint.

It's 70 years since a major conflict was fought between Japan and USSR, yet many people, even WWII history buffs, don't even realize it occurred. Russian forces defeated the Japanese, turning Japan's attention to the south, in a move which would ultimately result in the Pearl Harbor attack. The failure of the Japanese airforce also sent the Japanese back to the drawing board to design new planes, resulting in the Zero which did so much damage in the Pacific War. The war also gave Marshall Zhukov, who played such an important role against the Nazis, a chance to gain combat experience, and above all prevented them from having to fight a two front war. Finally, it preserved Mongolian independence, something that endures today.

The following clip includes an interview with a veteran of the conflict.

There's been a lot of flack in the right-wing media (read "alternative media" since the MSM is simply a wing of the Democrat Party) about Anita Dunn the interim White House communications director and her comment that the two people she admires the most are Mother Theresa and Chairman Mao. Here's a sample from Victor David Hanson:

Anita Dunn's praise of Mao Zedong as a "political philosopher" is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto. Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag.

Now I admire Hanson, own a couple of his books, and agree with many things that he says, but I find myself in at least partial disagreement here.

Yes, Mao was guilty of many of the above things and more, but let's try to take things within their proper context. The Nationalists, to put it bluntly, were a pack of fascists. They were actual fascists, as opposed to "I'm calling them fascists because I don't like them." If Hitler's Germany benefited from being cleansed of fascism, then I think we're on uncertain territory condemning Mao for the removal of the Nationalists from China. OK, they were "our" fascists, but that doesn't make them saints. Yes, innocents suffered in the process, but just as with the Nazis, it was kind of hard to be part of the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek without having some guilt. Innocent families of Nazis suffered when their husbands/fathers faced summary execution while the war was running down or faced Nuremburg trials after things cooled off a little. Does it make Mao a good guy? Hardly, but let's not get carried away calling Nationalists "innocents" as if they were a bunch of children roused out of an orphanage for summary execution just for kicks. The Nationalists lost a civil war, they deserved to lose, and then they paid the price.

The "scouring of the countryside" has a dramatic Lord of the Rings "ring" to it (you can just see the orcs in the Shire doing nasty things to poor hobbits) and refers to the campaign against "landlords". Again, a lot of injustice was done, but the fact of the matter is, landlordism really was a scourge and blight for China, with far too much land concentrated in far too few hands. Hanson himself is a champion of the small farmer, and it was precisely this group that Mao was seeking to help. Nor was it something unique to the communists ... it's almost boringly repetitive in Chinese history that during periods of chaos and instability the poor peasants would suffer the most, and that one of the most urgent tasks of a new regime is to give them land so they can support themselves. It happened with the unification of the Sui/Tang Dynasties, and it happened with the founding of the Ming Dynasty, to name just a couple of other examples. Where was that land going to come from? Mao was on solid ground, following long established historical precedent, in his campaign against landlords.

The Great Leap Forward was an utter disaster. It was not, however, caused by maliciousness. It should be characterized as gross economic incompetence and irrational exuberance in believing that "human spirit" and "mass effort" could overcome all problems. Millions died, but they were not rounded up for execution, and nor were regions deliberately allowed to starve as part of some Machiavellian plot. We can certainly convict Mao on this one, but it's not a murder conviction: it's manslaughter with contributory negligence.

Next comes the Cultural Revolution. There's pretty much no one who is going to try to defend that one, but again, let's not get carried away. It was a cultural disaster. Society was turned on its head. Many extremely good people suffered really badly (and I know several of them) but it was as nothing compared to the kind of stuff Stalin, Hitler, etc got up to. Some people died. Most just suffered ideological indoctrination, public humiliation, and loss of status. Many priceless historical relics were lost to posterity. Even the Chinese, who generally admire Mao, no longer even try to pretend that the Cultural Revolution was anything other than a disaster. It was a bad thing, but let's not overstate the case. The same applies to the Chinese "gulags" ... and since Davis raises the Soviet comparison with his choice of the word "gulag" let's run with that. If we're talking about the campaign to send people down to the countryside exiling the intellectuals from the cities, then (again) I know people who went through all of that, and let me tell you that was a tough time, but it was as nothing compared to Stalin's gulags. If we're talking about the re-education camps, then I don't personally know anyone who was sent to one, but I have read books by people who were. They were very bad places ... but the Chinese never went through the multiple purges of Stalin's USSR with secret police knocking on doors and millions disappearing never to be heard of again except (perhaps) as a bit of bone being turned over by a farmer's plough. The Soviets put bullets in their dissidents' heads, while the Chinese sent them to be re-educated, and hopefully to be reintegrated into society once they were "cured". The Russians executed the Czar and all his family, but the last emperor of China was sent to a re-education camp, from which he was eventually released. He lived out his remaining years in relative peace as a common man, and was even put under police protection to keep him safe during the Cultural Revolution. He wrote an autobiography, and died of natural causes in 1967. Mao might not have been a saint, but he could have been a heck of a lot worse.

Wow ... this post has become a mini-essay. Let's recap. Mao wasn't a good man, and it was stupid and historically ignorant of an Obama Regime official to express open admiration for him as one of her favorite political philosophers. However, I believe it weakens the case against her to get carried away with anti-Mao rants. In fact, the reality of Mao is probably considerably more dangerous in our current circumstances, because it bears a much closer resemblance to the situation in USA. It is also why we need to be more realistic in assessing what Dunn really meant when she expressed admiration for the Chairman.

a) Mao saw real and pressing economic problems within his country, and took radical steps to try to solve these problems. Due to ideological foolishness and ignorance of economics, the steps he took did a lot of damage.
b) Mao saw people who disagreed with his ideology as enemies. This was because he genuinely believed that his ideas were what was best for the country, and that removing these people was necessary to accomplish his goals.
c) Mao believed in using the education system, the media, and many other community organizations as a way to reshape the ideology of the country, and to target those opposing his goals.
d) Mao believed in collectivization and ideological faith over anything so mundane as economic laws.
e) The miracle that is modern China only began to emerge with the passing of Mao and the return of pragmatism: it doesn't matter what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice. To express admiration for Mao is to fail to realize that capitalism, not socialism, is responsible for bringing more people out of poverty in China than the total population of any previous Chinese dynasty. China still has a lot of poor people, but it has a rampantly capitalist middle class bigger than the population of USA, and they didn't get where they are today through ideological fervor.

Frankly, when you look at it this way, Dunn's admiration for Mao is a lot more of a concern. To express admiration for the Mao described by the right wing media is to be nothing more than absurd. To express admiration for the Mao that I have described is a lot more concerning, and gives us a much better insight into the way people within the Obama regime see the world.

An Australian, George Morrison, went to China in the 19th Century (I'm unsure of the exact dates) and took a series of fascinating photos which seem to have been published around 1895. The following picture of a Chinese John Galt, particularly with Morrison's sardonic comment, really caught my attention.

Morrison had this to say about it:

AN INGENIOUS DEVICE. The toll for a wheelbarrow going over one of the bridges in the foreign settlement being 18 cash (about 3/4d.), while a coolie carrying a burden passes for 4 cash, barrow drivers upon arriving at the gate take their barrows to pieces, and thus transforming them into simple "burdens" avoid the additional impost. The notion is not a bad one. It combines simplicity with ingenuity, and is especially to be commended as a novel means of evading an unpopular tax.

Who knew Ayn Rand was so popular in 19th Century China?

The source of this photo, the digital records of the Japanese Toyo Bunko Rare Books is worth checking out. They've scanned in quite a number of very rare books concerning the Silk Road which include a lot of beautiful plates.
[Of course, the coolie would actually have to opt out of carrying things altogether to actually be a John Galt, but still, I like the tax avoidance ingenuity.]

The Obama Regime seems to be getting its wish: a reset with Russia, or at least a reset in Russia. The only problem is, things appear to be resetting back to the 1950s. But don't worry: Obama style international diplomacy worked really well in dealing with Stalinist Russia.

The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev... in May set up a new state commission to prevent what he called the ''falsification of history''... A Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during World War II has been arrested in an apparent clampdown on research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities... Russia's FSB intelligence agency also arrested a police official who handed Professor Suprun material from the local Interior Ministry archive... Professor Suprun had been carrying out research into Germans sent to Russia's Arctic gulags. A historian at Pomorskiy University in Arkhangelsk, he was looking at German prisoners of war captured by the Red Army as well as Russian-speaking ethnic Germans, many from southern Russia, deported by Stalin. Both groups ended up in camps in Arkhangelsk.

Many would like to believe that China has changed. I still believe that in many ways she has, and very much for the better. Then they put on a display like the one in Tiananmen Square for their 60th anniversary, and you start to doubt your own optimism. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here's a collection of past memories of Chinese parades in Tiananmen Square. (Follow the link for many more photos). The same mentality that saw the invasion and occupation of Tibet as entirely justified continues to dominate in China. It is clear that the only thing that has so far stopped a similar attempt to "reclaim" Taiwan is a) fear that such an attempt might fail, and b) the hope that they can achieve the goal by other means. But one thing is for sure ... some things haven't changed at all.
1956

1984

1999

Hmmm ... while I've just said a bunch of admiring things about the Peoples Republic of China, I wasn't exactly comfortable with the site of armored vehicles driving along past the square ... following the same path they followed in 1989. It didn't help that you could squint your eyes and see a Soviet parade in Red Square.

Image taken from here.

Image location here.

The Chinese view history in a different way to new countries like USA. Events of several hundred years ago are still things to cause passions to stir. On the other hand, it also means that people who were China's friends in the past don't get forgotten ... unlike USA, where the Obama regime thinks it's quite fine to sell USA's friends down the river as he throws them from the bus.

I posted once before on China's honoring of the Flying Tigers with a museum in Zhijiang, Hunan Province, and also a museum honoring General Stilwell. Now I have pictures of another museum, the Aviation Martyrs Museum in Nanjing.

And here's Chennault

October 1st 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. They deserve our admiration. True, many bad things were done by the communists, and it is true too that they are far and away from being a perfect government or society.
BUT: look where they came from. The earlier regime, the KMT Nationalists, for all of its reinvention as a democratic party in Taiwan, was more fascist than anything else. I'm not just using the whole "Nazi" thing as a bad word to call someone you don't like, as it has become in USA. Bush is Hitler! No Obama is Hitler! How un-American to call our president Hitler. No. The KMT really was in bed with the Nazis. Hitler's Germany gave the KMT material aid and advice, and in return the KMT provided the Nazis with almost all the tungsten essential for the manufacture of modern armor plating ... and we all know what the Nazis used that for. [While we're sharing blame around, the Japanese got a pile of iron from the Australians. That's why Australians still call Robert Menzies, the minister responsible at the time, "Pig Iron Bob."] The European fascists had their Brown Shirts and Black Shirts ... the KMT had their Blue Shirts. The CCP (Chinese communist party) was a rebel group, hiding in the back country, as the KMT with German military advisers and equipment, tried to hunt them down. The only reason the Germans stopped their cooperation with the KMT was because it came down to a choice of either China or Japan, and the Japanese looked like the more useful ally.

Then, from 1931 to 1945, China was subjected to a brutal occupation by the Japanese. Both the KMT and the CCP held on by the skin of their teeth, but even while the KMT got massive aid from the Allies (which it hoarded rather than use to fight the Japanese), the CCP was cut off from aid, even by the Soviets, who didn't want to risk their non-aggression pact with the Japanese. Nevertheless, the CCP grew in strength in these years, mostly because the people (correctly) judged that they were the only ones with any real interest in resisting the Japanese. Ancient Chinese philosophy has always emphasized that victory depends more on moral correctness than on equipment, and this rather odd idea (at least to western ears) was proven to be entirely correct by the events of 1945-1949. The CCP were outnumbered by 3 to 1, and also badly outgunned by the KMT who had all that material from the Allies. The Allies airlifted KMT troops to take Japanese surrender (and equipment) and the CCP was left to pick up what it could. Only in the far north did they get any help at all from occupying Soviet troops, but even then the Russians were more interested in looting and carrying off industrial equipment back to mother Russia. Yet ... the CCP won the Civil War, and they won it decisively. The people backed them, and their troops had infinitely superior morale compared to the KMT. No objective examination of the material advantages of the KMT would have predicted the result. It really did come down to moral superiority, or at least superior morale.

So, by 1949 the CCP had won. But what had they won? A scarred country, internationally isolated, with little industry barring what was left by the Japanese in Manchuria. They had a medieval countryside and a few early modern cities. They were even forced into a fresh war in the 1950s against the Americans in which they suffered horrendous casualties including the loss of Chairman Mao's own son. [Note, I'm talking from their point of view here. Anyone who studies Chinese history should know that the Chinese would feel compelled to intervene once American troops starting pushing into North Korea, and it's not as if they didn't give advance warning of this fact.] In the years following 1949 they made a lot of quite astoundingly successful reforms, and they also made some horrendous cock-ups, most particularly in their agricultural policy which lead to mass starvation at one point. They emerged from that, only to fall back into insanity in the 1960s with the Cultural Revolution, something that is now widely acknowledged in China to have been a really bad mistake. Rational pragmatism returned in the 1970s, and look what has been accomplished since then. China is now Australia and Brazil's biggest trading partner, amongst others. She has a rising middle class bigger than the entire population of USA. More people enjoy comfort and security in China than have ever experienced it before. Yes, there are still problems, and some of them are really nasty ones, and some of them are even self inflicted ... but it bears remembering that they've basically moved from the industrial revolution to the modern age in those 60 years. They deserve our admiration and respect. Happy 60th birthday PRC.

[It doesn't mean we have to ignore civil rights violations etc., but let's get a little perspective here. Where was the west in terms of human rights 60 years after the industrial revolution, when we hadn't even emerged out of the 19th Century? Let's not even talk about environmental protection at the time!]

The role of Chinese women has always been underestimated. They are the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove. They're the personification of the Daoist concept that water conquers stone. Water seems soft, but in the end it flows around all obstacles and wears away even the strongest stone. There's even a saying that the Cultural Revolution was really caused by the fact that the wife of Liu Shaoqi (Wang Guangmei, d.2006) was a lot more glamorous than the wife of Chairman Mao (Jiang Qing), and that Jiang really hated Wang because of it. It's also said that when Wang Guangmei appeared in public again at a Beijing Opera, everyone knew that at last the Cultural Revolution was really over. Amongst other things, Madam Wang joined the closest China has to a parliament. Her children still hold high positions in Chinese society.

Well, that brings me to today's news. Madam Zhuo Lin, widow of Deng Xiaoping, has passed away, aged 93. I don't know much about Zhuo Lin, but if I know anything about Chinese women, I know this. She was a lot more important in the history of modern China than anyone realizes. Let the men have face in public, and let them pretend to be in charge, and they'll do what they're told. Sometimes they won't even realize they're doing it, but that doesn't really matter. If I had to guess, I would say that the incredible resilience of Deng, and the way he successfully came back again and again from "outsider" status to finally become the most important man in China, can be credited to Madam Zhuo. The era of Deng Xiaoping has finally passed.

Stanislav Mishin at Pravda has some interesting observations on the whole "Czar" system the Democrats seem to love so much. [Update: I just noticed that Pravda picked it up from here.]

Americans can call them what they want, but we Russians and the US emperor know their true name: Commissar.

That's his conclusion ... a lot of his discussion is worth paying attention to as well.

There is a new silliness in the Western Anglo Media, comparing the US Emperor's Czar program to the number of Tsars that Holy Russia had. It is a good thing that the US/UK public is ignorant not only of ancient history but also of recent history, otherwise they might start to worry.

Then there's this, which seems to describe Obama pretty well, and not just his Czars.

The commissars were mostly young, had little achievement outside the power structure, self assured, true believers. They knew very well that outside their positions, created and granted by the dictator, they had little hope of career success. They were given responsibility much higher then their experience levels, further beholding them to their owner. It made them extremely jealous of their power, which in turn made them vengeful against anyone who stood in their way, especially other power hungry commissars.

This is pretty cool. The universe began to form about 13.7 billion years ago (the "Big Bang" was a process, not a single event, so I don't really like to say the universe was "created" at the time, as some do.) Now scientists at UC Irvine have detected a couple of supernovas ("supernovae" if you want to be strictly correct about it) that are 11 billion years old. Stars are born and stars die all the time. An 11 billion year old supernova only gives you 2.7 billion years for the whole life cycle of a star, but the giants live and die at a much faster rate than smaller stars. To put this is context our sun is probably something more than 4 billion years old, perhaps as much as 5 billion. It's a case of bigger not necessarily being better, because the bigger the star, the shorter its lifespan. This whole cycle is pretty damned important for us too ... because there are elements present in our Solar System that can only be formed during a supernova, including small amounts even within human bodies. In other words, there has to have been at least one supernova in our area of space, and our Solar System has to have formed using some of the left-over fragments of that explosion. We're talking about cycles that are billions of years long ... and our puny human brains have trouble wrapping our brains around any concept beyond a few thousand. Except, oddly enough, when it comes to money, and then people seem to think that a trillion isn't a very big number. Go figure. (How much is a trillion seconds? See my "Wisdom of Heinlein" post.)

AP Headline

US military damaged ancient Babylon site

I'm not even going to quote any of the BS from this story, because you'll learn nothing factual about how the US treated sensitive archaeological areas, and instead you'll wade through a lot of politically charged anti-American rhetoric produced by UNESCO. There's not a peep about the appalling damage inflicted on priceless sites by Saddam Hussein's regime. There's not a word about how one of his sons had things bulldozed just so he could have one of his palaces on a hill. This story is an anti-American political hit piece.
I happen to know a high ranking marine who told me about the extra-ordinary measures his troops took to protect archaeological sites. He also told me a story of the tours an Iraqi archaeologist gave himself and some of his men, as they walked (on foot) through one of the most famous ancient sites. There was no

leveling of hilltops and driving of heavy vehicles over the fragile paving of once-sacred pathways.

as the AP UNESCO hit-piece alleges. The only ones who did that were the pre-invasion Iraqis. This particular marine was visibly awed at having the opportunity to walk down those once-sacred pathways. He was filled with respect for the site, and knew exactly the significance and value of the place. Did UNESCO even bother to check who was responsible for leveling the site? More likely they saw Iraqi inflicted damage and automatically assigned it to American forces.

A quick bit of history for those who don't know where Xinjiang is, and why this violence is occurring. Xinjiang, also known as East Turkistan, was one of the last pieces of territory to be incorporated into mainland China. It's "native" people are the Turkic Uighurs, who also happen to be Muslim. Given a choice, many of them would dearly like to break away and become a new Central Asian Republic, but of course the Chinese have no intention of allowing that to happen. Just like in Tibet, China has been encouraging Han Chinese to migrate to the province to try to strengthen their hold on the territory. They also generally allow the practice of Islam, but only within the strictures of the State structure, much as they tolerate various other groups such as Catholicism (minus the Vatican, mind you!)

I've not been to Xinjiang personally, but from people I know who have, it's not uncommon to see Han police pushing around Uighurs, and foreign tourists who look anything like a Turk are well advised to have their foreign passports well in hand to immediately identify themselves as not local Uighurs. There's a lot of hostility the other way too. It's the kind of place where most of the Uighurs can speak some Mandarin, but won't want to, and if that's the only means you've got for communication, you better be apologetic about it. The person telling me one such tale said one conversation he had in Mandarin started like this: old Uighur man: "You're not Han?" man: "No, I'm not Han" old Uighur: "Good. The Han are no good. You're sure you're not Han?" "Yes, I'm not Han." "Good." You get the general picture.

When Sept 11 rolled around, the Chinese immediately jumped on the "terrorist" bandwagon, and labeled all separatists as terrorists instead of their former labels. You may remember that there were a bunch of Uighurs at Gitmo who recently got released to various tropical islands ... I posted about that earlier, and the likelihood that the Chinese will eventually get their hands on them.

It's one of the greatest problems in the study of recent human evolution (in terms of the last 150,000 years or so.) There's enough evidence to draw some conclusions about the physical development of bipeds into hominids into homo sapiens, but it's much harder to judge when those creatures actually began to think like modern humans. A thought or an emotion simply doesn't leave physical evidence. Cave paintings and such are useful, because they show that humans were starting to think symbolically, but there are a whole bunch of other human behaviors that we'd love to know about. For example, when did humans start dancing? It sounds like a funny question, but it's not: every human community, no matter how isolated, practices some form of ritual dancing. Perhaps it was drill for war, or perhaps from mating rituals, but other primates do not demonstrate anything close to the universal human habit of dance. Well, this latest evidence doesn't necessarily indicate dance, but it is solid evidence for music, and there's another thing that helps us show earlier human thought processes. The reason I mention this is that there's just been an announcement of the discovery of fragments of a bone flute in Swabia (SW German) that have been dated to 35,000 years ago. That's the oldest evidence we yet have for human music.

Back in 1971 a book appeared called Bullshit and Jellybeans, by a guy called Tim Shadbolt. If you trust his wikipedia entry he's been arrested no less than 33 times. He was also Mayor of one of the cities around Auckland, and has been Mayor of Invercargill for over a decade. He's an interesting character, and one of his relatives once said of him: "the only reason he smiles all the time is because his teeth don't fit in his mouth." Americans may even have seen him because he played a cameo role as Frank in the popular movie about a New Zealander, The World's Fastest Indian. OK, interesting history lesson and biography of an obscure New Zealand personality. So what? Well, his biography Bullshit and Jellybeans really reminds me of a story I just read from England. The title of the book comes from two incidents in his life: in the first, he was arrested for saying "bullshit" and in the second, they tried to bust him for unlicensed trade as a grocer (or something) because he was giving away jellybeans (get yours here.) Sad to sad, moronic bureaucrats and judges have not yet shuffled off this mortal coil. Indeed, they seem to have spread like leprosy.

Hilaire Purbrick might find he has a lot in common with Tim Shadbolt. Maybe he should contact him and get a few tips on how to run for mayor ... then he really could kick the useless bums out that are harrassing innocent people. Back in 1999 he beat a prosecution for illegally trading in vegetables using the defense that he had exactly one customer (who bought his sprouts). Lucky he didn't give her any jellybeans. Now the council is kicking him out of his home, and the UK courts are backing this. He lives in a cave on his allotment, and they're evicting him because it doesn't have a fire exit. ***cough*** bullshit ***cough***. He's not quite defeated yet ... he's going to take it to the European Court of Human Rights. Maybe they're good for something after all? Oh yeah, the judge Jonathan Simpkiss of the Brighton County Court,  said.

"The council considers this was a danger to life. They have a responsibility to the public."

They have a duty to kick someone out of his home ... because they have a duty to him ... Bullshit and Jellybeans has been reincarnated on steroids. When will it end? And how do we stop it?

(Via Tim Blair)