The Zincan Slate

How did Rush Limbaugh become so popular, when he can’t even make a good argument? Attack the idea or claim, not the man. It’s a shame that the MSNBC broadcaster, Keith Olbermann, and his host, Sam Seder, couldn’t follow this rule in their own rebuttal. They end up ridiculing Limbaugh for his past drug abuse. I guess they were trying to contrast Limbaugh’s past actions with his current behavior. It failed. Limbaugh’s inexcusable and poorly researched attack on Michael J. Fox was the subject here, not Limbaugh’s past drug use. Personal attacks don’t make your argument any stronger, it only makes the speaker look weak and ignorant.

Regardless of which side you take in the stem cell issue, Michael J. Fox made a great case for his cause. He simply wants the issue to be intelligently and openly discussed. Yes, his disease does give him an edge in making his case, but it only exemplifies the reality of human frailty. Both sides raise important issues. Communication is a beautiful thing.

We’ve all read that North Korea is a mismanaged and poor country. I wasn’t able to put this into perspective until I saw the picture below (from the Wikipedia Commons). It’s a shame that Kim Jong-il won’t put aside his senseless military and political ambitions. I found a clearer picture of North Korea at night on Yahoo! News.

I don’t know what Kim Jong-il expects to get out of his current foray into the nuclear club. Does he want respect? Didn’t he see what the United States did to Hussein? If there were an invasion of North Korea Kim Jong-il would face a similar fate, unless he could flee to China. I guess we can’t expect a man who is delusional to think rationally.

What can the civilized world do about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions? If we don’t act we risk the proliferation of nuclear arms. Kim Jong-il would undoubtedly sell his arms to organizations or nations that would be unafraid to use them. Inaction would also increase the costs of an invasion. If North Korea became capable of delivering its nuclear weapons to their intended targets, the economic and human costs would be enormous and felt worldwide.

How about sanctions? How could they work on a country that is already in despair? China feeds the North Korean economy with its trade. Even if China agreed to a trade embargo, how could the west know it’s being enforced?

Is an invasion of North Korea the answer? The costs of an invasion would be high, but no one can argue that the west’s victory would be inevitable if it were to face an unallied North Korea. South Korea is not anxious to see a reunified Korea. The costs of reunification would be staggering and make German reunification seem pale in comparison. Would China aid North Korea in the case of an invasion? If it did it would bring its economy to a halt. The U.S. would suffer from this also, but it would recover, as other countries such as India would pick up the business for inexpensive goods.

I wonder if China is considering it’s own options if North Korea continues to go rogue? It doesn’t want a democratic state to border its country. Nothing is more poisonous to a totalitarian state than freedom. Could China be considering a regime change in North Korea, perhaps installing, forcefully or subtlety, a new leadership that would be more obedient to China?

Wow. I just got done reading a story from the Associated Press about a farming accident in Turkey. One sheep ran off a cliff and ~1,500 other sheep followed his lead. I would like to know if anyone watched this happen from bellow the cliff? Hey pop, you know it’s raining sheep out there? Whaddya mean you don’t believe me? Just look at the pile in the back yard.

I wonder if this is one of those sensational stories that just happen to make their way through the AP? If it’s true, somebody has a mess to clean up.

Every once in a while I find a piece of writing that helps me see a clearer view the world. Last Sunday our local paper (Tribune-Review) had an article written by John A. Pidgeon about self-esteem and how we acquire it. I like his “let’s not treat them like invalids” approach to raising children. People need their trial by fire to earn their self-esteem.

If more people were raised under this kind of meme, then most people would have more of respect for others and themselves. There are too many people in this world who haven’t been humbled enough to learn to understand other people before judging them. Most parents are afraid of their children hating them for being too harsh or strict on them. (That said I find abuse appalling. Discipline is the controlled use of punishment to help someone learn. Abuse is used by the emotionally retarded to harm others for their own sake.) What most people fail to realize is that it’s the job of a parent to raise their children. Children will despise their parents anytime that they set restrictions on them. Parents need to keep their children’s future in focus, not the moment.

I picked up this week’s issue of the Economist at Barnes and Noble last night. There’s an article in it about detecting nuclear material on the ground. Nuclear defense is difficult because the weapons are small. They can easily be whisked across the sky by strategic or tactical missiles. It’s also very easy to keep a nuclear weapon hidden in a car, plane, or boat. A two hundred pound nuclear weapon could easily fit in the trunk of a car.

The busy scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico built a machine that will make land detection far easier. This device emits muons. Muons travel in a straight path through most materials, such as metals, but they’ll scatter if they encounter a heavy atomic nucleus, such as uranium or plutonium. A change in their path can easily be detected because Muons strip electrons away from air molecules. This results in the generation of an electric signal that can be sensed by an array of drift tubes that are positioned opposite the emitter.

In practice the government could set up these detectors along our border crossings and check each vehicle that crosses into the United States. It sounds expensive, but it may be worth it. According to the Economist, our missile defense research has cost $130 billion so far and doesn’t work yet. The muon emission system would cost $1 billion to deploy and would likely work as planed. Which method of delivery do you think that on-a-budget terrorists would choose: missile or car?