The Best Hraka Around
No Doubt About It
Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.
Who’d have thought they’d lead ya (Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)
Here where we need ya (Here where we need ya)
Yeah we tease him a lot cause we’ve got him on the spot, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
It floats through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young crab testing out Zero-G.
Putting a Face on a Killer
What is psychological profiling? Is it useful? Last night on television, two men were arguing about the validity of this practice. One man, a person who participated in the hunt for the Son of Sam, suggested that the practice of psychological profiling is an exercise in futility. He claimed that nobody, and he meant NOBODY, has ever been arrested based on tips received from a profiler.
The other man, whose job it has been to profile murderers, not surprisingly, chimed in regarding the usefulness of this practice. He argument did lack some punch. He said that the practice can be immensely helpful, and then stated that although many people are not caught due to the profiling, it is amazing how many times a person is arrested who meets the qualities described by the profilers.
My conclusion is that it is a complete waste of time. The hunt for the sniper is a good example of this. Recently found in the New York Times, three different theories have been discussed. The ideas are that the sniper is possibly a loner, a hunter, or a teenager. Is this helpful? What skills do you need to have in order to be a profiler? Perhaps this occupation is similar to that of a fortune teller or the person who writes your horoscope each day. I am not sure what methods are used to profile someone other than to look at previous killings and make predictions based on that information. In order to make my point, let me act as a profiler and make some assumptions of the sniper, realizing that I have no previous training in this craft.
1. Sniper is a male. This is a good bet for a number of reasons. First, all witnesses have reported seeing a male, or men, in the ?van.? Also, it is simply a good guess since most killers in history have been men, as well as men traditionally being more adept at firing a gun.
2. Sniper is someone who does not care for other people. This is what we refer to as a ?no-brainer.? Dammit, this guy is killing random, innocent people. Even my 22 month old can tell that he does not have any warm feelings for human life.
3. Sniper is brazen, bold and not afraid of getting caught. Hey Sherlock, the guy shot his last victim at an estimated 30 yards, that is definitely bold. If he cared much about being caught he would have shot his victim from farther away than 30 yards and done it from a more remote location than in the middle of a busy parking lot.
4. Sniper is a loner. Must be, because if he had a bunch of friends, family and coworkers, somebody might have noticed him being gone every time somebody has been shot and would eventually put 2 and 2 together and go to the police.
I don?t see how using a profiler is helping this investigation or any previous investigations. Instead of wasting the money paying a consultant some astronomical fee to come up with this composite of a person, I suggest taking that money and hiring more policemen to get on the case, because it is that group that is going to solve this killing spree, not a profiler.
Show me the money
Thomas Friedman comes out swinging on the divestiture campaign targeted at Israel, and accuses the organizers of hypocrisy.
Memo to professors and students leading the divestiture campaign: Your campaign for divestiture from Israel is deeply dishonest and hypocritical, and any university that goes along with it does not deserve the title of institution of higher learning.
You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth, and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought Ariel Sharon to power.
It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer, pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery.
You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I’m not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?
How’s this for a theory on the Israel divestiture campaign? It’s all about the ooooooiiiiilllll, as Spleenville would say. It’s easy to campaign for divesting in Israel, because the economic effect of such a divestiture on the protestors is nil. Divesting in Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, would hit the protestors directly in the pocketbook. Why, gas prices would go up, and we already know the Left is terrified of that. After all, it’s one of the main arguments used against invading Iraq. You’d think that liberating the oppressed would be worth a few more pennies per gallon, wouldn’t you?
Speaking of gas, when was the last time the Left protested against the polices of an OPEC member? When Indonesia was killing thousands in East Timor, where were the campus protests? Nigeria is about to stone a new mother to death for adultery, where are the petitions calling for economic sanctions? Iran is about to kill thousands of dogs, where are the PETA nudes?
It strikes me that there is a logical explanation for the Leftist focus on Israel and Iraq nowadays. What if they’re not only scared of rising gas prices, but petrified that a fund source is about to dry up? The Arabs certainly gave a lot of money to Cynthia McKinney, and the Arabs haven’t had that much involvement with a black woman since they were selling Cynthia’s ancestors into slavery. It’s too bad there’s nothing like an opensecrets.org for college professors. I’d be real interested in seeing who gives Noam Chomsky money.
It’s all well and good to say you’re for human rights, to paint a nice little sign and shout slogans before you take a break and get a venti at Starbucks, but it’s another thing entirely to actually apply those moral standards. The best friend of the habitual Saudi wife beater, of the Hamas member recruiting suicide bombers at a middle school, and the stone throwing Nigerian today is the Left, because the Left has decided that their worst atrocities are as nothing when compared to a Jewish democracy defending itself.
Here are the friends of the Saudi wife beaters and the suicide bombers at Tufts,
at Cornell,
at Harvard,
and at Princeton
Drop them a line, ask them if they’d hold a press conference and announce that none of the groups sponsoring this travesty is receiving money from the Arabs, has never received money from the Arabs, and will never accept money originating from non-democratic countries. Ask them to open up their financial records for outside inspection so that they can prove it.
But don’t hold your breath.
Update: A reader points out that that at least some lefties were all over the East Timor issue.
Thanks, Yehudit.
Baywatch in Alaska?
The only things missing from this group of rescuers are thongs and a massive amount of silicone.
Carnival of the Vanities #4
I think one of the hardest things to do in the blogosphere is to learn the equivalent of hitting singles day after day, especially when it seems like everyone else in the blogosphere is knocking them over the fence. Face it, no one hits a home run day after day, not even Lileks or Den Beste. The best you can do is make contact, keep the ball in play, advance the runner, keep on keeping on. Yes, a home run drives in a lot of traffic, but since home runs are few and far between for most of us, it’s the singles that keep us in the game.
The second hardest thing is to learn is to avoid tired old clapped out baseball metaphors. Nevertheless, here are this week’s hits, all ground-rule doubles at the very least.
CSI
Weck up to Thees - Going Ballistic
Culture Medium
Dustbury - Summer 0f Love Plus 35
Solonor’s Ink Well - A Cultural Event
Greeblie.com - Led Zeppelin is Back!
Ipse Dixit - In The Mind Of The Beholder
Kalyr.com - The Demon Drink?
Dogs of War
Whigging Out - The Real Engagement Begins
Cognocentric - Without Apology
skippy the bush kangaroo - roasted chickenhawks
Heretical Ideas - We are at War
Philosoblog - Dead Enemy Innocents
The Road to Surfdom - Overtures, Curtains, Lights
Humor
AMCGLTD - Break Like the Wind
Mad Kane - Irresolution Blues
Blogatron - Important Lessons I Have Not Learned
Meryl Yourish - Proof of Conspiracy
Kalyr.com - Fun with the Smart Engine
Norwegian Blogger - MiSTing the Mad Aussie
The Raving Atheist - Nun Sees God’s Work in Desperate,Violently Flopping Fish Gasping Through Bloody Hook-Ripped Mouths
Amish Tech Support - Powers of 10 Day
Silflay Hraka - Conversations with Zod
Innumeracy
Allsci - Is Terrorism Really That Bad?
Legal Eagles
Kyle Still Free Press - The Constitutionality of Cross Burning
The Kitchen Cabinet - Dickmania!
Mars, Venus
Sour Bob - Unexpected
Mists of Time
The Roblog! - The Fulcrum of 1978
a small victory - and babies come from the garden
Sure Thing, Babs - Babs’ First Slow Dance, Epilogue
Natural History
Fragments ~ From Floyd - Life. And Death. Of a Leaf, and Thee, and Me
Shootin’ Arns
The Safety Valve - License Drivers, Not Guns
Ravenwood’s Universe - CBS for Gun Banning
Updating the Mythos
Ipse Dixit - Hell, V2.0
The Carnival of the Vanities is published every Wednesday at Silflay Hraka and Blog Critics, except for next week, when it will be hosted by Amish Tech Support! Many thanks to Laurence for undertaking this Herculean task for us, as we will be on the island of Ocracoke all week long, torturing fish and drowning our brain cells in a hellish mix of nicotine and microbrews.
Information on how to join the Carnival is available here, and all are welcome.