Well, of course it was, but that's not the conspiracy that Fisk and a small army of other deeply confused individuals are thinking of. No; planes full of jet fuel could not do it; it had to be controlled demolition involving explosive charges

Never mind that this is completely impossible for a thousand reasons, such as, for example, the fact that there weren't any such charges. Logic and fact mean nothing to these people; if you explain all the reasons why explosives could not have been put in place without it becoming open knowledge, they will suggest (this is a real example) that the explosives were mixed in with the concrete when the towers were first built.

...

What we are dealing with here is people who are blindingly stupid and wilfully ignorant, to the point where they are in effect functionally insane. That is, they are unable to apprehend or deal with the world as it is, and instead attempt to deal with the world as the imagine it to be. I mean, we knew that already; Fisk's conspiracy ramblings are really just a case of running an orange highlighter over a significant paragraph.

Given that Robert Fisk is quite obviously crazy, his broad popularity with the left is yet another indication of the deep and growing separation from reality on that side of the divide. I have no particular insight on what to do about this. Making fun of them seems to offer the best return on one's effort, though it is of course lost on the targets themselves. I'm open to suggestions.

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So here's me, 175cm tall and eighty kilograms, and here's my fellow vertebrate, all of two inches long and weighing maybe a gram.

Which led me to musing. With all the problems of the world becoming overcrowded and resources running out, wouldn't things be better if we were smaller? What really counts is our brains, right?

So, we replace our brains with self-assembling nanotech (or possibly quantum) systems that are a thousand times more computationally efficient. That means that for the same level of intelligence, we only need one thousandth the amount of brain - and one thousandth the body mass to support it. Which means a thousand times less impact on the environment.

Since we'd be ten times smaller (lengthwise), we'd each want one hundredth the living area we currently do. That means that with current crowding levels we could increase our world population to 660 billion while consuming just one tenth our current resources.

This has obvious advantages: With 12 billion Japanese, the amount of anime produced would be huge. Blockbuster movies like The Lord of the Rings would be a dime a dozen, thanks to the massive new audience available.

There's other, less obvious rewards. Ever fallen and hurt yourself? No more! It will be impossible to hurt yourself just by tripping over something - your centre of mass is only three inches off the ground. And while your bones and tendons are now a hundred times weaker, they only need to support one thousandth the weight, so they are proportionally ten times stronger.

And the downside? Well, JBS Haldane wrote about this nearly eighty years ago. One is temperature regulation; we are warm-blooded and need to eat to maintain our temperature. As much smaller creatures, we would lose body heat much more rapidly, because the ratio of surface area to volume has increased. But that's a fairly straightforward problem for an advanced civilisation; we already have reverse-cycle air conditioning. (And clothes, for that matter.)

The eye is somewhat less tractable, but not impossible. With a hundred times less retinal area, we have a hundred times fewer pixels; in linear terms our visual resolution would be ten times worse. But by extending our vision down to UVc, we can regain a factor of four right away. We'd need to adjust our colour processing and radiation-harden the retina, but that's no big deal. Fixing the existing imperfections in the eye - more to do with the lens than the retina - would apparently buy us another factor of two or three in acuity, which would bring us back to roughly current standards. And if that's not quite enough, we can always go the BESM* route, like anime girls and tarsiers.

The more I think about it, the better it sounds. I think government funding for a research program - involving large amounts of anime, tarsiers, and high-powered computers - is definitely called for.

(Read the Haldane article all the way to the end, by the way. I first read this when I was sixteen, and had long forgotten the origin of my ideas on the information-processing problems inherent in communism. This is it.)

* Big eyes, small mouth.

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After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.

After this searching and careful review of ID as espoused by its proponents, as elaborated upon in submissions to the Court, and as scrutinized over a six week trial, we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science. Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendants’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

A significant aspect of the IDM is that despite Defendants’ protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. Dr. Barbara Forrest, one of Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, is the author of the book Creationism’s Trojan Horse. She has thoroughly and exhaustively chronicled the history of ID in her book and other writings for her testimony in this case. Her testimony, and the exhibits which were admitted with it, provide a wealth of statements by ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical, and cultural content.

Moreover, in turning to Defendants’ lead expert, Professor Behe, his testimony at trial indicated that ID is only a scientific, as opposed to a religious, project for him; however, considerable evidence was introduced to refute this claim. Consider, to illustrate, that Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God. (P-718 at 705) (emphasis added). As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition’s validity rests on belief in God, nor is the Court aware of any such scientific propositions, Professor Behe’s assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view, as is commensurate with other prominent ID leaders, ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition.

The Wedge Document states in its “Five Year Strategic Plan Summary” that the IDM’s goal is to replace science as currently practiced with “theistic and Christian science.”

The Commissar has the complete ruling. Thanks to Jon at JREF for finding some particularly fine quotes.

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Senior police today pledged to keep up their presence on Sydney's streets as members of a Muslim youth group and the surf movement held peace talks on the boardwalk at Cronulla.

But a leaked document has indicated that police were not equipped to respond to Monday's violence in Cronulla, in which people were assaulted and cars, shopfronts and windows were smashed.

The Seven Network said it had obtained a police incident report instructing officers to stay away from one of the trouble spots – believed to be Punchbowl Park in Sydney's west – on Monday night.

The park is believed to have been the meeting place for scores of men who formed a vehicle convoy which drove to Cronulla unimpeded by police.

The report showed those in the crowd were suspected of being Middle Eastern criminals who had been involved in malicious damage and civil disobedience offences throughout the Sutherland Shire, the network said.

The report said "a direction was given to police about midnight not to enter the area and antagonise these persons".

I call for the 48-hour rule on this, though.

(via comments at Tim Blair's)

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A church burned down overnight and that is being investigated as arson, but other than that, not much happened last night.

Even the possum turf war that has been waking me at dawn every day seems to have been called off. Good work.

For those of you trying to make sense of things from the media reports - never an easy task - this timeline from the Wog Blogger may help.

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One thing becomes obvious: The mainstream media, never mind their habit of editorialising and passing it off as news, can't even get the facts straight. Those layers of editors and fact-checkers must be off on an extended lunch break, I guess.

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Police ordered scores of trouble makers to the ground at gunpoint in a bid to regain control following a day of rising tension across the city.

The first flashpoint was Lakemba, where a small group of Caucasian men began vandalising cars near the mosque. A crowd of about 500 local men quickly gathered, some of them turning on the interlopers while others threw missiles at police.

Shortly afterwards carloads of Lakemba men headed for Cronulla and nearby suburbs, bashing passers-by and smashing shops and vehicles.

Although intent on destruction, dozens of the intruders were arrested as they ran into a massive police net strung across Cronulla, Brighton-le-Sands and Maroubra.

The violence began at the Lakemba mosque, where hundreds of local men gathered before a hard core of hotheads drove east late in the evening.

About 70 car-loads hit Cronulla soon after 10 o'clock. Police had already began sealing off roads into the beach suburb.

Within 20 minutes police were responding to reports of assaults, vandalism, men on the streets with baseball bats, bashings and shots being fired.

A number of cars were stopped by police, with guns drawn.

Drivers and passengers were swiftly dragged on to the pavement and arrested.

At one stage police were chasing a Ford Laser which had tried to run down officers.

"Get out of the car, get out of the car," officers yelled at the driver when he was stopped minutes later on Elouera Rd.

A man and a youth with their hands up got out of car and were forced to the ground at gunpoint.

One note on the vandalising of cars at the Lakemba mosque: This article reports the situation a little differently:

Hundreds of youths last night rampaged in Lakemba, while further trouble was brewing in Maroubra and again in Cronulla. A woman police officer was injured when more than 400 youths of Middle Eastern descent smashed cars and rioted at Lakemba mosque.

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Anti-Arab rioters smash cars, windows in Sydney

Monday, December 12, 2005; Posted: 2:44 p.m. EST (19:44 GMT)

Police arrest a man Sunday at Cronulla Beach in Sydney.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Violence on the streets of Sydney spilled into a second night Monday, as scores of youths drove through beachside suburbs smashing windows of stores, homes and apartments, police said.

Any hopes that a race riot Sunday would be an isolated incident were shattered after dark when car loads of youths rampaged through southeastern Sydney chased by hundreds of police vehicles and a helicopter.

A police spokesman said the violence first broke out in Cronulla, where Sunday's riots also started.

"We have shops damaged at Caringbah, cars damaged at Cronulla," according to Paul Bugden, spokesman for New South Wales police. "We have six arrests at this stage."

One person was apparently hit with a rock outside the Cronulla police station, he added, saying that youths riding around in at least two dozen cars were involved in the violence.

Bugden said he did not have descriptions of those involved in Monday night's rampage, but said that clearly it was linked to Sunday's rioting.

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But when it comes to something like this:

The violence started at Cronulla after about 5000 people gathered at the beach, many were chanting racist comments and waving Australian flags.

The rioters then moved on to other beach suburbs, vandalising cars and targeting innocent individuals.

What happened at Cronulla Beach was a protest against ongoing harassment and intimidation by Lebanese Muslim street gangs that turned ugly under the influence of alcohol and stupidity, never a great combination.

The second part was an planned attack by the street gangs, not by the Cronulla rioters. That's some really amazingly bad reporting on the part of Sky News, but the BBC is hardly any better:

Thousands of young white men have converged on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, and attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.

...

By Sunday night, the violence appeared to have spread to a second beach suburb, Maroubra, where men armed with baseball bats reportedly attacked cars.

Put not your faith in the media, for they are lying weasels.

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