More on the Armenian Genocide

From the department of common-sense:

Last Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee condemned mass murder in the Middle East. Quite right, you may say -- except that this mass murder took place more than 90 years ago.

The committee approved a resolution, which could go to the House floor this week, calling on the president "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide . . . relating to the Armenian genocide."

...

It is absurd, then, that Turkish politicians and some academics (not all of them Turks) insist that the issue is somehow open to debate, though there is certainly room for more research to be done in the Turkish archives. And it is deplorable that writers in Turkey can still be prosecuted for describing the fate of the Armenians as genocide.

Yet I remain far from convinced that anything has been gained by last week's resolution. Indeed, something may well have been lost.

Relations between the U.S. and Turkey were once good. The heirs of Kemal Ataturk were staunch allies during the Cold War. Today, Turkey allows essential supplies to Iraq -- around 70% of all the air cargo that goes to U.S. forces -- to pass through Turkish airspace. Moreover, the regime in Ankara currently offers the best available evidence that Islam and democracy can coexist.

...

Does gratuitously bringing up the Armenian genocide increase or decrease our leverage in Ankara? The angry responses of Turkey's president and prime minister provide the answer. On Thursday, President Abdullah Gul called the resolution an "attempt to sacrifice big issues for minor domestic political games" -- an allusion to the far-from-negligible Armenian American lobby, which has long pressed for a resolution like this.

The absurdity is that the genocide of 1915 was not perpetrated by today's Turkish Republic, established in 1923, but by the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed at the end of World War I. You might as well blame the United States for the deportation of Acadians from Nova Scotia during the French and Indian Wars.

"If we hope to stop future genocides, we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past," argued Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat and a sponsor of the resolution. Really? My sense is that all the resolutions in the world about past genocides will do precisely nothing to stop the next one.

And if -- let's just suppose -- the next genocide happens in Iraq, and the United States finds itself impotent to prevent it, the blame will lie as much with this posturing and irresponsible Congress as with anyone.

The more mistakes this Democrat-controlled congress make, the more I will believe that there is something systemically broken about the American democratic system. We've already had one of the worst Congresses in history, we don't need another bunch of idiots making stupid decisions.

If this resolution is passed by congress and then vetoed by Bush, it may be the first time I support anything Bush had done in his role as president.

I H8 Heat

32.8° Celsius (90.7°F) at this very moment.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, this part of the world gets above 30° on average 2.8 times every October.

But this is the 7th day this month to get over 30°.

Complain complain moan moan.

Stone Magazine

This photoshopped image has been shamelessly stolen from Something Awful.

Scientists again prove the obvious

From the department of no-kidding:

Some men should have sex every day to maximise the chances of getting their partner pregnant, researchers say.

It is known for couples with fertility problems to abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive.

However, the Sydney University team, addressing the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, said this could mean poorer quality sperm.

One UK expert said daily sex might be better for men with damaged sperm.

So, in other words, more sex = higher chance of having a baby. Sounds like an Ig Nobel Prize nomination.

Nothing about whether wearing wetsuits will increase conception...

Oil $86

From the department of reduced-supply-leads-to-higher-prices:

Oil prices surged as high as $86 a barrel Monday for the first time after OPEC said crude production by non-member countries is likely falling even as global demand for oil is rising.

Prices were also supported by concerns that Turkish forces will pursue Kurdish rebels into Iraq, disrupting oil supplies, and by technical buying by investment funds.

Despite the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' decision last month to boost its production by 500,000 barrels per day beginning next month, the rest of the world will likely produce 110,000 fewer barrels of oil per day than expected in the fourth quarter, OPEC said in a report.

At the same time, fourth quarter demand for crude oil will grow by 100,000 barrels a day over last year, OPEC said.

The estimates add to sentiment that crude supplies are tight. Last week, the Energy Department reported that domestic crude inventories fell during the week ended Oct. 5 when they had been expected to rise. And the International Energy Agency concluded that oil inventories held by the world's largest industrialized countries have fallen below a five-year average.

"The fact that U.S. crude inventories fell yet again ... reinforced the market's underlying concern that demand has yet to slow down sufficiently to allow stocks to build, while supply is also perceived to be struggling to catch up," wrote Edward Meir, an analyst at MF Global UK Ltd., in a research note.

Light, sweet crude for November delivery jumped $2.44 to settle at a record $86.13 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after rising as high as $86.22, a record trading price.

Despite the gains, oil is still below inflation-adjusted highs hit in early 1980. Depending on the adjustment, a $38 barrel of oil in 1980 would be worth $96 to $101 or more today.

I love that last paragraph. I read a couple of years ago that the inflation adjusted 1980 price was $80 per barrel so I'm starting to wonder why all these news outlets keep changing their reporting.

What I find interesting about this report is that it is the non-OPEC producers that seem to be having trouble matching production. Who knows if that is simply OPEC bluster trying to cover up their own production issues? One thing is certain - if the market (those with enough money to buy and sell oil) believed in Peak Oil then the price would've gone through the roof ages ago. The fact that the market believes that oil production can increase (proved by their responses to OPEC announcements about production increases) shows their ignorance of the subject. In order for a market to operate properly, it needs to have reliable knowledge. Since the oil market has not accepted Peak Oil, it still prices oil as though production can still increase. This will only make things worse when the oil market does realise the truth.

Of course America is the economy which will suffer the most economic impact from this high price because a) the US Dollar is dropping fast, making oil more expensive for Americans and less expensive for the rest of the world, and b) America's infrastructure is more oil dependent than other Western economies (which have higher petrol taxes and more extensive public transport - both of which encourage less oil consumption).

Mr Putin goes to Iran

From the department of Only-Nixon-could-go-to-Mongolia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to make a historic visit to Tehran on Tuesday for talks expected to focus on Iran's controversial nuclear plans.

While he has visited Gulf Arab states, his journey to Tehran marks the first visit to Iran by a Kremlin leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

He will also be attending a summit of leaders of Caspian Sea states.

Earlier, Mr Putin brushed aside reports of a plot to assassinate him, which the Iranian government also played down.

The Iranians probably will not believe President Putin is actually coming until they see him on the airport tarmac, the BBC's Jon Leyne reports from Tehran.

Given Mr Putin's recent history of inhibiting Democracy in his own country, his going to Iran may solve nothing. Nevertheless I feel somewhat encouraged that Iran is being approached by others in the international community. Russia does not gain anything with a nuclear-armed Iran and stands to gain much if the Middle East is more peaceful and orderly. Putin is no angel, but I'm hoping he'll be able to broker some sort of agreement with Iran to reduce tensions in the area.

My team for the 1st Test

1. Matthew Hayden
2. Phil Jaques
   
3. Ricky Ponting (c)
   
4. Mike Hussey
   
5. Michael Clarke
6. Andrew Symonds
7. Adam Gilchrist (wk)
8. Mitchell Johnson
9. Nathan Bracken
10. Stuart Clark
11. Shaun Tait

Comments:

• No I do not like Brett Lee. He'll be picked, of course, instead of Bracken.
• Bracken deserves another go at Test level. He is a superb one-day player and has performed well at first class level so I think it will only be a matter of time before he performs well at Test level.
• No spinners. Why? None of the available players (MacGill included) deserve to be picked. If a spinner is to be picked he has to be consistently taking wickets in the Sheffield Shield. Moreover it also needs to be proved whether the selection of an in-form spinner is better than an in-form pace bowler.
• Tait and Johnson open. Clark is first change. Bracken is second change.
• Symonds' value to the team is whether he can perform well as a batsman, not a faux all-rounder.
  
• I toyed with the idea of Hussey opening but I felt that Jaques deserves a place as an opener, and I couldn't see any middle-order batsmen worth picking just yet. Moreover, Hussey should be elevated to no. 4 because of his form, rather than batting down at 6.
  

Gore Derangement Syndrome

From the department of Everyone-loves-Paul-Krugman:

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “...Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change — therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration. ...

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. ... For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously. ... It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of ... greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing..., either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. ... Climate change is ... global. ... So dealing with climate change ... also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of — who else? — George Soros.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

Daniel Cullen Bailey aren't doing well

Daniel Cullen Bailey are Australia's best spin hopes now that Shane Warne has retired.

For South Australia vs Victoria:

Daniel Cullen 37-3-125-2
Cullen Bailey 16-2-66-1

Still hoping...

And Jason Gillespie continues his form (?) with 32-6-97-1.

In better news, WA has been bowled out for 99 against NSW at the WACA.

MA Cameron (obviously a relative) took 11-1-33-5.

No players were seen wearing wetsuits.

And check out the mugs of these two Western Australians, Steve Magoffin and Brett Dorey:

Alabama Baptist Pastor found dead

From the department of I-am-very-disturbed-by-this:

An Alabama minister who died in June of "accidental mechanical asphyxia" was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report. Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking).

Now if you were in a church where the pastor died in this manner, what would you do? (especially when the autopsy revealed something where the sun does not shine).

I'm sort of confused about this. There's obviously some level of paraphilia going on here but nothing (as yet) to suggest that the pastor involved anyone else in his "activities".

Blogging about this makes me feel yuck.

Update:
His paraphilia is known as Total enclosure fetishism.