Hit & Run

Faithful Reader, do you also read Hit & Run? Is it just my erroneous perception, or are the bloggers there really a bunch of pseudo-intellectual snobs?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 10:30:00 PM
Categorized as Other.

If It Hasn't Been Tested, It Doesn't Work

Did you know that North Korea has nuclear weapons? That's the big news today. I did think, though, that we've been talking about North Korea having nuclear weapons since, oh, last summer. No?

I think it was FNC's Shepard Smith this afternoon who was talking with some sort of "expert" (yes, those are "sneer" quotes) who said it would be an awful, awful mistake for North Korea to test a nuke. Japan would get mighty worried, don'tchaknow. And who knows what the Japanese might do if they finally got worried about something besides their never-ending economic recession.

Now, ever since we started talking about North Korea having nukes — it has been since last summer, right? — I can't ever remember anybody talking about the North Koreans having tested any such darned thing. I'm pretty sure that every government on earth would know if they had done it. So, I'm also pretty sure that the North Koreans indeed must not have ever tested their nuclear weapons that are big news today but which we've all been talking about since last summer.

When I was working as a programmer/analyst, we used to have a rule. It wasn't a written-down rule. It was more a chatting-among-ourselves, wondering-how-things-are-going kind of unwritten rule. And this is it:

Though you have finished coding a program, if it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work.

That's a rule derived from lots and lots of experience. Bad experience. (Not just mine, mind you!) Rare is the computer program that's worked right the first time it's been run. Thus, the prudent assumption that, until a program has been tested, it doesn't work.

Now, if that's a good rule for computer programming — and it certainly is a good rule for computer programming — wouldn't it also be a good rule for building a nuclear bomb? If it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work. Wouldn't it actually be an even better rule for building a nuclear bomb than for writing a computer program?

I say we call 'em on it. Tell the North Koreans — dare them — to test their nuclear bomb. Frankly, I think the Japanese would be relieved by the results, not panicked.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 10:22:45 PM
Categorized as International.

Why No Terrorism During the War?

A good question, for which there seems to be no certain explanations.

BTW, though I know I'm going out on a limb here, I still think Osama bin Laden is dead.

(Thanks, Phil.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 09:23:41 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Confronting White Guilt"

Margaret clues us in to this article in yesterday's Seattle Times:

.... Steele delivered a stinging, dead-on indictment of the sophistries that get between many whites and blacks in America today.

Steele began by noting legislative and social reforms of the civil-rights era comprised an admission of real guilt, but this confession deprived whites of moral authority over African Americans, something seemingly liberal whites couldn't actually stomach.

Steele said as a result, whites and major institutions must keep "disproving the negative" — that they're racist — by playing benefactor to blacks. Some statewide initiatives and court rulings may indicate mounting resistance to public-sector racial quotas, but Steele said ours is still an "age of white guilt."

For instance, if whites say African-American parents are responsible for sending their children to school unprepared, they're promptly labeled racist, said Steele. Likewise those who challenge affirmative action or claims of race-based police bias and other "institutional racism," I've noticed.

This was perfectly illustrated by the white keynote speaker at a recent nonprofit and business-sponsored race forum in Seattle, who said, "Denial is a form of racism." What tidy — and mainstream — authoritarianism!

As noted by one of a number of black readers who have contacted me after columns on race, "The nastiness isn't limited to blacks; liberal whites seem to take a particular delight in these sort of attacks."

Steele explained why. "White guilt shifts responsibility for black advancement from blacks to whites... there is at the heart of white guilt a profound selfishness and self-preoccupation." Whites feel they "have to let (African Americans) out of things" to ease their own consciences....

For living proof, see the articles referenced here.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 08:25:35 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Defending Senator Santorum"

A remarkably well-crafted article by Stanley Kurtz at NRO today. I have great admiration for a writer who expresses himself clearly and patiently while taking due care to make necessary distinctions.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 02:31:07 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

One Year Ago Today, the U.S. Cardinals Issued a Statement

Have they forgotten?

Have we forgotten?

The cardinals' statement in its entirety is available here (second item).

In response, I noted that the cardinals were providing a measure by which it could be determined if they really meant business or were just full of... um... hot air. Specifically, I took up one facet of "certain basic principles" which the cardinals reaffirmed "in communion with the pope":

5) Given the doctrinal issues underlying the deplorable behavior in question, certain lines of response have been proposed: a) the pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care....

To explain, here follows a lengthy quotation from my column of April 29, 2002.

Some Tests for the American Bishops:
How the Laity Can Score Them

Talking is all we got, so far. The bishops will have to show us that they can “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk” — assuming some of them can manage to continue to do even that. Honesty and courage in action: they will be required, every day, every step of the way. Every national meeting, every diocesan meeting, every press conference and pastoral letter, will require honesty and, perhaps as never before in the USA, courage in action. Those who are falsely called “dissenters” — who are, in reality, quite happy assenters to any and every doctrine at odds with the Catholic faith — will scream in fury if the bishops actually take the steps necessary to regain their “moral authority” and restore the integrity of Catholic faith and life in the USA. And every syllable of every furious scream will be faithfully reported in a mainstream media that hates authentic Catholicism as much as “dissenters” do.

The next year will show us what future the bishops of the USA really have planned for Catholics in America. During and after the bishops’s semi-annual meeting in June, mainstream media, and perhaps the bishops in response, will want to talk only about what policy will be put into place to deal with “pedophile priests”. That will be, as logicians might say, necessary but insufficient.

We have the cardinals’ own words to show us how to judge the bishops’ response: “The pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care.”

• How many theologians, who promote error if not outright heresy, will be publicly reprimanded in the next year? (Will the famous on-TV-a-lot-these-days Fr. Richard McBrien, a theologian at Notre Dame, be among them?)
• How many bishops will be publicly reprimanded in the next year for giving encouragement and support to homosexual behaviors that the Catholic Church condemns as sinful? (Will Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit, be among them?)
• How many groups will be publicly reprimanded in the next year for the same reason? Or for some other reason connected with Catholic moral teaching on, say, pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, divorce and remarriage, abortion, or artificial contraception. (Will Dignity, an organization of homosexual activists, be among them?)
• And how many of these reprimands, of whatever kind they may be, will actually contribute to clearly promoting the correct moral teaching of the Catholic Church?

I submit that, if the answers tally up to zero — as I suspect they will — we shall know that the U.S. Cardinals’ Statement was merely words.

It has now been a year. So far as I know, nothing whatever — nothing whatever — has been done to begin to implement what the cardinals wrote about. Absolutely. Nothing. Whatever.

Okay, I'm a small-town boy: maybe I'm out of the loop. True, things could be going on behind the scenes, of which I could not be aware. And, maybe I'm expecting too much, too soon.

Now, the Bush administration took 14 months to "rush" to war, and a whole, entire month to demolish a despotic regime that had been firmly ensconced in power for a couple of decades on the other side of the world. But the likes of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield and Powell and Rice aren't in charge at the USCCB.

So far as I know, the closest we have come to anything like implementation of the cardinals' statement is that (1) a Californian bishop suggested — I believe that "suggested" is a fair characterization — that the pro-abortion "Catholic" governor should refrain from receiving Holy Communion and (2) a South Dakotan bishop declined to either confirm or deny that he had ordered a pro-abortion "Catholic" senator to stop calling himself Catholic.

Is that all I should have expected so far? Perhaps. It's only been a year. At his first birthday, a child might be expected to crawl about on the floor, and poop in his diaper, and puke on his bib.

After a year, we've gotten the equivalent from our bishops. No?

Lest We Forget

“The pastors of the Church need clearly to promote the correct moral teaching of the Church and publicly to reprimand individuals who spread dissent and groups which advance ambiguous approaches to pastoral care.” (U.S. Cardinals, April 24, 2002)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/24/03 11:47:49 AM
Categorized as Religious.