An Idiot's Guide to Distinguishing the Baga attack from the Paris attack

It seems someone needs to write this because some writers have exposed themselves as idiots who can't tell the difference between the attacks in Baga and Paris without making ugly racist accusations. 

1. Paris is a world capital in a country that generally believed itself not at war on its own territory. Combat breaking out in such a capital is big news. When capitals fall, regimes fall. Baga is a remote border town that is not even the capital of its local state. It has come under attack within the past two years and it's likely to happen again during the next two years as things go. 

2. Boko Haram is a significant military force that at least sort of fits within the standard framework of how people go to war in the modern age. The irregulars attacking in Paris are an example of a systemic threat to the Westphalian system that has undergirded how nations interact with each other since the peace of Westphalia in 1648. If Westphalia goes, a lot of things change. If Boko Haram takes even a province or two, nothing systemic changes. 

3. Nigeria's rulers have decided that it is in their interest to minimize the tragedy of Baga. France's rulers have decided that it is in their interests to play up the tragedy of Paris. The rest of the world's leadership rightfully take cues from the leader of the country in which the attack has taken place. 

4. There is a political affinity between France's governing party (socialist) and the marxists that put out Charlie Hebdo. There is a political rivalry between the muslim north (where Baga is) and the christian south (where the current government is drawn from). This naturally leads to different treatment. While it's unfortunate, race has nothing to do with it in either case. 

Education

Is it just me or are people looking to expand the time spent on preparing for life while shrinking the time spent actually living life productively? Instead of proposing free community college, turning the secondary education system into grades K-14, wouldn't it make more sense to work to stuff more learning into the present time available?

The problem with my proposal is that we'd have to pay attention, seriously ask what is school for, and take action to fix what ails the education/employment system. There are entrenched interests standing in the way of that conversation and the likelihood of success is low. So why not just whistle past the graveyard as another year is lost by kids being taught inefficiently and ineffectively?

Je Suis Charlie

Islamic radicals, with their usual style, have asked the world to repeat Everybody Draw Mohammad Day. As before this has caught me by surprise so I will simply repeat my earlier entry.

Is it draw Mo day already?

Here's something from the Mohammed Image Archive, a reproduction of Islamic art. 

 

Ok, I'm ready for my fatwa now.

This sort of image of Mohammed, illustrated by muslims, is just as blasphemous to the iconoclastic primitives who just murdered a dozen french satirists in Paris as any of the other cartoons and drawings floating around. I picked it because we should not forget that these barbarians want to murder Islam's past as much as our present.

#IAmCharlie

Free association

This is going to be an occasional series of notes to help me fix half formed thoughts, and nail down concepts that sound pretty good inside my head.

The inaugural one is this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State

What are the necessary and proper 10th amendment rights retained by the people that are implied by this clause of the 2nd amendment? 

The anti-gunners never ask this question and I've never seen the pro-gun side ask this either. Is there any literature on this subject? 

How parts of the US manifest getting poorer

My local municipality monthly newsletter came in the mail over the weekend along with the local utility bill. News You Can Use put out a new snow policy and it's a statement admitting growing financial problems (at least between the lines).

Mains and secondaries will only be salted at intersections, railroad tracks, school zones, curves, bridges and around hospitals. Once the snow event has stopped, we will salt the mains and the secondaries all the way through and then we will move into the residentials. We will only salt residentials at stop signs once the snow event has stopped. We will no longer salt mid-block of the residentials

It's in little statements of service cutbacks and quietly deferred maintenance that between the lines often announce financial decay in the US. During the recent fiscal crisis, miles and miles of asphalted road were converted back to gravel. The trend is getting push back but even oil booming Texas tried it out in 2013 on two roads before public anger made them permanently shelve the idea a year later. The Texas case might be a matter of a fiscally responsible state running into the high depletion nature of shale oil wells but that circumstance seems to be an outlier.

So keep an eye out for those little announcements. Lowered salt usage on icy streets, asphalt going back to gravel, changes like these that can be pushed through relatively quietly are going to be more frequent signs than big changes like government pension cuts and municipal bankruptcy.

SpaceX making history this week?

In 2014, I thought I was in luck. We were going to Disney World and SpaceX was going going to run its first attempt at launching a rocket with landing gear. I was going to see history being made. Except I didn't in the end. A range safety failure closed down Cape Canaveral to launches for a few weeks and the historic launch was postponed.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Tuesday's historic launch will fly without a hitch. This time, they're trying to actually land a 1st stage Falcon 9 component. It's landing site is going to be on an autonomous barge in the Atlantic ocean for now but the ultimate aim is to have return flights go directly back to a maintenance facility where the stages can get refurbished and reused.

If a full Falcon 9 can get reused even once, it will chop off 40% or better of the cost to launch as the $54 million construction cost can be amortized over two launches. If the components can be reused more than once, the savings get even more spectacular.

These are heady days for spaceflight, even if Tuesday's launch develops a glitch. I'm very confident that they'll get it done relatively quickly.

Unhackable systems and the dumbness of trying to get into it on twitter

It is theoretically possible to create an unhackable system. From Instapundit today Neil deGrasse Tyson shows how not to talk about the subject.