Hu is Here

Chinese President Hu Jintao will meeting with President Bush today. It's his first visit to America in his capacity as President of the People's Republic. As it has always been with me and China there is a measure of fascination along with the requisite suspicion.

China, in my estimamtion, is coming to a real crossroads in the next few years. Since its rapid embrace of modernization and its entry into the world marketplace China is the most dynamic culture on the planet right now. Everyone is rushing to do business there and one has to assume that for the businessman the pluses outweigh the minuses. Unlike Russia it seems China has embraced capitalism, in fact they have become better capitalists than we are. On balance it will mean a better life for the Chinese people, or at least the possibility of it. Serious human rights issues and a domineering one-party political apparatus are still huge impediments for a nation of nearly unlimited potential. The question remains: will China transform (reform) and meld into the community of nations as full partner in the global economy or will it exploit its vast human resources by using slave labor while building a massive military in order to replace America as the preeminent power in the world?

American businesses are betting on the former and the American military is planning for the later - as well they should. With Wal-Mart leading the way, American, Japanese and European businesses are falling all over themselves for a slice of all that cheap labor. The hope being that a growing middle class in China will force political change in Bejjing. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting editorial on this subject today. The real significant point being this:

The hue and cry over America's trade deficit with China is a distraction that masks this broad and beneficial economic relationship. It's also misleading. China runs a trade surplus with America, but it also has a deficit with the rest of Asia. That's because Asian companies that once exported goods directly to the U.S. now send them to Chinese factories for assembly and export. More than half of all Chinese "exports" aren't really "Chinese" at all. And here's a trade statistic you won't hear much about: China's relative share of the U.S. trade deficit is shrinking as wages rise on the mainland and American businesses source cheaper goods from other countries.

I don't necessarily share all of the WSJ's enthusiasim or confidence on the China debate but I want to be hopeful. The thought of a billion3 souls freed from the yoke of communism is very exciting to me. I just can't get past official government policy that advocates forced abortions and imprisons dissidents for speaking out against inhumane government policies. While America is obsessed with political correctness and other self-defeating internal debates China is amassing a manufacturing and information technology base with designs on greater global influence using the West's own inovations as its catapult. The old term Nero fiddles while Rome burns comes to mind.

The last question we need to ask is what about China and the global Islamic jihad? Part of me believes that China is secretly funding and supporting al Qaeda. The other part of me understands that al Qaeda and the rest of the Islamic facists seek to kill or convert Buddhists, Confucians and Hindus with the same zeal the employ against Jews and Christians. In other words just like Russia, China has a pending Islamic terrorism problem of their own. For now though it may be a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We certainly see that with Russia and Iran. Would it be out of the question to envision secret meetings between Hu and Osama bin Laden?



CW

The Missing Link

Every so often a fossil is uncovered that energizes the scientific community and stirs up that old debate over Darwinism and Creationism. Lately the Darwinists have taken to lumping Biblical literalists in with those of us who believe that some intelligence is the force behind the marvel of nature and the universe. You can call it Intelligent Design or ID, you can call it God - you can give it any name you like. It just means that you don't favor the notion that the universe and life as we know it sprang up from the meaninglessness of chaos and random chance. What it isn't is a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. It is quite obvious that the world was not created in six days 5 or 6 thousand years ago.

Well it has happened again. A remarkable fossil was found in Canada that has the whole Darwinist community claiming that the missing link has been found. Tiktaalik roseae, it is said will show "that the evolution of animals from living in water to living on land happened gradually, with fish first living in shallow water." This may all be true and like most people interested in the science of palentology I too am excited about this find. Still, it does not in my mind render the debate between ID and biological randomness solved.

For one thing it may or may not be a stunningly unique find, other fossil finds have led to similar claims. Number two, this debate really stems around the notion that man is not set apart from lower creatures as those who believe in a Judeo-Christian God believe. Darwinists see nothing uniquely special about the high-functioning ape known as Homo Sapiens.

For me the answer lies in the simple, yes, black and white, concept of good and evil. Darwinists have never expalined to my satisfaction the dual nature of man. Can it be demonstrated that pure evil exists in any other species? It surely exists in man. As science has proved time and again that every force, every action has its equal and opposite. Where there is evil there is good. In good there is God. In evil there is God's brother, Satan. That is what this debate is all about.



CW

Wild America: Coming to a City Near You

Turkeys Aren't Just for Thanksgiving Anymore

My wife said to me the other day "We saw a bunch of wild turkeys on the railroad tracks over by Century Ave." Me, I barely lifted my head from the newspaper to acknowledge her proclamation. Wild turkey sightings, having become a common fixture in rural Minnesota are now considered a hum drum event even in the big city.

This was not always the case. Having grown up in the outer ring suburbs of the Twin Cities my brothers and I spent a lot of time in the woods and prairies in and around the Mississippi backwaters. Frankly, I see a whole lot more wildlife nowadays driving around in my car within the boundaries of the second largest city in Minnesota. St Paul is part of the 15th or 16th largest metropolitan area in the country, and it is not unusual to hear of black bear and cougar sightings or even to hear the howls of coyotes on clear, windless nights.

When I was a kid it was a huge event if you saw a bald eagle. Now, we have a resident bald eagle that is so young he doesn't even have his tell-tale white head yet. I see him regularly passing over the house. I read in the paper about the nesting pair that were prepping their nest for their third season over by Keller Lake. I thought "wow, it would be cool to get a look at the nest and maybe even see the eagles." As it happened a few weeks later I was mindlessly driving east along Highway 36 when I spotted a huge nest in a grove of trees 60 yards off the freeway. And there, standing on the nest proud and majestic, was the eagle. It was hardly a challenge to get up close to catch a glimpse of the wily and elusive bald eagle - I didn't even have to slow down!

So, you may ask why is it that we see deer and fox and canada geese with such regularity that it hardly elicits an ooh or an aah anymore? Some would use that tired platitude that wildlife is not moving into the city but rather the city is moving out to the wildlife. I don't buy it. I live in a part of the city that has been urban for 40 or 50 years. This is a static environment in the sense that it has not undergone major changes from a more rural setting to a more urban setting. In fact, the maturity of the area has probably more to do with the increase in wildlife sightings than the so-called disruption of the natural habitat. In other words the animals are adapting - and thriving!

Like I said, when I was a kid I spent a helluva lot more time in the wild than I do now and it was a rarity to see foxes and eagles. I never once saw a wild turkey as a kid. In fact the most exotic thing I ever saw as a youngster (besides the badger my older brothers trapped and killed) was a rare timber rattlesnake near the bluffs of the Mississippi.

A few years ago I had entered the bathroom in my house to use the facilities and as I stood there taking care of business I glanced out the window and there staring back at me from the bush outside the window was a Coopers hawk. My God it was cool. I was able to sneak out and get the whole family in for a look before it flew away. We would see the hawk now and again chasing sparrows in and out of the shrubs and bushes in the neighborhood.

Then there was the story of the drunken raccoon that was stumbling down the sidewalk and falling out of the trees. Apparently raccoons routinely dined on fermented fruit that grew on the neighborhood trees and became intoxicated. Eventually (sometimes after a few days) they would sober up and climb down out of the trees in the dark of night. It was very, very funny.

We live by an old Chicago-Northwestern railroad line (now owned by Union Pacific) and have come to realize that the railroad tracks and the land surrounding them is essentially a wildlife highway that literally passes by our backyard. It may account for some of the neat things we have seen over the years - but still contend that wild animals are adapting to our cities and in some cases doing amazingly well. One day my son and I were walking along the tracks and, in fact, had seen a white-tailed deer buck with his harem that very day. Still pumped up by the buck sighting as we walked along we spotted something crossing the tracks up about a hundred yards ahead of us. I couldn't believe what my eyes were telling me! I broke into a run and covered 20 or 30 yards before the creature and it's cubs disappeared into the woods again. I was convinced I had just seen a mother cougar and her cubs. I had never seen a cougar in the wild so seeing this thing within a mile of my house was simply mind boggling.

When I told my story to my wife and friends they thought I had been smoking something illegal. Bottom line, no one really believed me. Several weeks later my wife handed me the newspaper which had a story of several sightings of a cougar in the different parts of the metro area - all since the time I had my encounter. I felt vindicated. Since then we have had many more confirmed sightings of cougars. One was even caught on a motion sensing camera set up by an Xcel Energy company employee who had also been called crazy. He baited it with deer meat right behind the building where he worked near the Minnesota River Valley wildlife refuge.

I think there is a lesson in this that shows us that we can and do share the land with the animals. And just as our ancestors had to learn to live and thrive in the wilderness the animals are learning to live and thrive in our urban jungles. It only seems fair...



CW

iPOD, uSUE

Recently I received one of those e-mails that said "Take this Survey for a Chance to Win an iPOD". Normally an e-mail like that would hit the trash bin faster than you could say left click. For some reason this time I began filling out the survey. I hit submit when I was finished and summarily forgot all about it in a nano second. Lo and behold two weeks later I get an e-mail that said "Congratulations You Won an iPOD!"

Now how cool was that? Prior to that I had never given an iPOD a second thought. While I would have loved to have one as I had been an early adopter of the whole MP3 paradigm the cost of an iPOD seemed ridiculous to me. Besides my wife bought me an MP3 player last year for $39.95 and it worked fine. Well, let me tell you the iPOD is an excellent piece of machinery. In form and function it is sleek and elegant. The minimalist controls make it virtually impossible to get it wrong. There is a thumb slider on and off switch on the back and on the front a very smart circular control panel that has a Play/Pause button in the center and Next/Previous - Volume up/Volume down buttons around the circumference. Perhaps the best feature is the rechargable battery that gets it's power directly from the PC via the USB cable. Yes, that means no adapter and no trips to the store for an over-priced AAA battery.

Equally impressive is the iTUNES software that comes with it. While I have only explored a few aspects of the progam I can tell you it is also a fine piece of software engineering. It can survey your computer and collect all your audio files and organize them in a logical and coherent presentation. Depending on how anal you are you can catalog your entire music collection with excruciating detail. Me, I just want the artist and the song title, everything else is a bonus. Mind you, there is a lot of tedious renaming and organizing on the front end after "ripping" a CD into MP3 files before sucking them into iTUNES.

So now that I am a fan of the whole iPOD thing a recent headline in the paper caught my attention. Apple to add Volume controls to the iPOD. I thought - what? - iPODs already have a volume control??? Apparently the Apple Corporation has been hit with lawsuits by unscrupulous lawyers claiming their clients have received hearing damage from listening to iPODs. I'm kidding right? No. As the young girls would say "OH MY GOD!"

Frankly, I don't know what to say except that lawyers and their get rich quick clients are simply out of control. Is it any wonder that the cost of everything keeps going up and up. The fact that Apple Corp. actually went back to their engineers and had them build in volume limiting controls says a lot. Surely in todays environment they had to do it, but honestly, they had to be besides themselves with incredulity. I mean c'mon, if it's too loud press the Volume down button. If you are too stupid to figure that out you probably should be institutionalized and forced to wear a helmet ( but, then again the helmet maker would be sued too since those little iPOD ear-buds fit right through the ear holes on the helmet).

It's when we hear things like this that I start humming that old tune Its' the End of The World As We Know - and I Feel Fine!



CW

The State We're In

Is Depression Becoming the Natural State of Things?

It seems to me that more and more Americans (and presumably all Earthlings) are depressed. Perhaps it has always been so. Part of me believes it's the times we live in - this is a fast paced, go go go and bloody expensive way of life - and part of me belives it's a perfectly natural condition. What I mean by perfectly natural is that everything is not going to be ideal all of the time. Everyday things are going to get us down and Lord knows sometimes our own bodies and our own minds let us down. But having an occasional case of the blues and having deep, profound depression are quite different things.

I have been hypothesizing that the boob tube is really the culprit - and I really think it plays a part. Aside from people spending way too much time in front of their TV's the programming content is itself as depressing as it gets. How much depravity, negativity and unbridled shilling can we Americans take? Sure, there are a lot of really fine programs to watch, but people have put the clicker down and live a real life now and again.

Of course TV is only a part of it, there are natural causes like bio-chemistry, heredity and situational reasons many people become depressed. Modern medicine can and does work wonders. I do not follow the Tom Cruise line that drug therapy is a grave sin. It can literally be a life saver. Yet, I feel that we need to do all we can within ourselves to combat depression before it gets so bad that we need drugs. However, if medicine is called for BY ALL MEANS TAKE IT!

The following is a method that I have used to keep myself from sinking into the depths of depression. It is a concept originally conceived by the late Professor Julian Simon. This world renown economist and thinker suffered repeated bouts of depression through out his life.

Anatomy of Depression
and How it Can be Defeated

the depression formula: mood =

Presenting this formula for beating back depression in a graphical manner really brings it home for me. One can see that the events in your life coupled with a bad self image and unrealistic desires can drag anyone down. But those who can drain off the negatives and focus on something outside of themselves stand the best chance of living in Happy City, USA. I for one want to live there!



CW

No Hope For Political Junkies

Our Political Biases Become Hard Wired into the Emotional Centers of Our Brains

Part 1

Are we slaves to our political "feelings"? Those of us who are extreme partisans apparently no longer use logic or reason during the political season. According to new research discussed here in an aptly named column "Is This Column Futile?" by Dick Meyer, seems to conclude that strongly partisan people are essentially immune to rational argument about political things.

I, for one, cannot argue with that. I can't read extreme liberal diatribes and process any of it into a persuasive refutation of my biases. Even when everything they say seems perfectly reasonable and their "facts" demonstrably true. My own bias looks right past their outward arguments and looks for the hidden agenda or deliberatly omitted facts that will (in my mind) render their entire argument meritless.

For instance when a local radio show (where the two hosts represent a liberal and a conservative) begin discussing global warming I simple cannot hear the liberal when he immediately scoffs at the notion that the Sun is a likely cause for increased global temperatures. He will point out that we are burning more fossil fuels than at any time in human history. Well, he's right, it's a fact. Does one have to do with the other? Maybe, maybe not. The point being that since he won't grant me the fact that the Sun is a HUGE contributor to the temperature of our planet (duh) then nothing he says, reasonable or not, will affect my opinion. This is a purely emotional response on both of our parts, thus bolstering the claims of this study.

I like to think I am open minded and perfectly reasonable guy. In truth I am a slave to my emotions like everyone else. The difference is I believe that nature of liberalism is emotionally based. Conservatives sometimes miss that people have two natures in the form of emotion and logic. It's best not to be blinded by pure emotion like the liberals but we have to recognized that "feelings" are legitimate factors in our belief systems.

Part 2

All of that being said - I grow weary of right-wing pundrity. Don't get me wrong the leftists and dyed-in-the-wool socialists are not persuasive in the least, in fact, I agree with some of the more strident right-wingers when they claim that liberalism is a mental health issue. But the conservative movement needs new rhetoric something fierce. It is not enough just to refute the liberals when they say Republicans are "mean". The future of America and Western Civilation is literally at stake.

From the President on down the center/right has to develop new strategies that connect with middle America that can't be demogogued by the liberals. This is not a time to pussy foot around and try to assuage the fears the Democrats foster about "mean" Republicans.

I am not holding out hope that someone will come along anytime soon to re-energize me the way Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh did but the time has come for something new on the right. I am bored. Just think of how interesting 2008 will be if the conservatives had an articulate, no nonsense, America loving pursuader running against that phony baloney Hillary Clinton.

One can dream...


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The Oppressed and the Oppressors

During the Cold War I used to daydream about a world where the human potential and genius of the Russian people had not been locked away behind the Iron Curtain. Can you imagine the world with two or three Silicon Valleys and a handfull of MITs or several Hollywoods, multiple Mayo Clinics and NewYork Stock exchanges. Imagine where humankind would be if we wouldn't have had to spend 50 years and billions (if not trillions) of dollars trying to bottle up the failed ideology of communism.

Daydreaming is fun but its usually unproductive and so is dwelling on the past. But the past isn't really gone yet... Our Cold War foe may have been vanquished but the legacy of Marxism is as pervasive as ever. It lives in the socialist beliefs of most of Europe and half of America, (not to mention the ruling class in China).

Commentator Arnold Kling discusses the history and the consequences of two philosophers who have had a profound influence on this world. He examines with ultimate irony the roles and perceptions of the oppressor and the oppressed.

For example:

Seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke's theory of government influenced America's founders. It has become deeply embedded in our culture. Beliefs that Locke helped to encourage include:

-- individuals have inalienable rights
-- those who govern have obligations to the governed (and not just vice-versa)
-- government's rightful powers are limited, not absolute

At the level of folk beliefs, Locke's views have been distilled into a jaunty defiance of tyrants, whether they are actual, potential, or imagined....

...As Americans, we cannot conceive of ourselves submitting meekly to tyranny. We cannot picture a regime like that of North Korea or Saddam Hussein's Iraq taking root in our soil.

By maintaining our Lockean tradition, we have built a vibrant society and a prosperous economy. Limited government has allowed innovation to flourish in a peaceful, gradual, evolutionary way.

Despite her legions naysayers and self-haters America is the most successful and most powerful nation there has ever been. Far from being invaders and genocidal maniacs Americans have been liberators. A statement like this is sure to be greeted with a chorus of laughs but upon examination the truth is out there for those who care about such things.

What is it that Marxist socialism has left as enduring legacy? From the article: re: Karl Marx

Marxist countries have murdered millions, imposed a regime of fear and repression on their citizens, and impeded economic development. Where the "natural experiment" was performed of splitting one culture into Communist and non-Communist regions (North and South Korea, East and West Germany), well-being in the non-Communist country ended up several times higher than in the Communist country. People fled Communist countries by the millions, while barely a trickle of individuals chose to emigrate in the other direction...

...Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing. It should be no surprise that this belief could lead to tyranny and wanton murder by government. It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as "oppressed." It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character.

Even when Marxism does not lead to tyranny, it retards economic growth, as the stagnation of continental Europe indicates.

Unfortuantely too many people in the West and particularly in America have no idea what their own country means to the world. They are fooled by a media/entertainment/academic conglomerate that delights in making America look bad. Actually, I think a lot of people do get it and are growing sick and tired of it. After all, since the advent of modern talk radio and Internet blogging we proud and loyal Americans finally have a way of "talking truth to power". (God how I hate that phrase, but you know what - It works for me!) .

All together now: POWER TO THE PEOPLE! See, didn't that feel good?


CW