The Blair Witch Project? Whatever happened to lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

" f you go down to the woods today, you are likely to come across a cleared path, a neatly manicured glen and a strategically placed water feature," according to the Sunday Times of London. "Everything will be signposted and there will be few, if any, surprises. The British public's fear of dark, imposing forests in which ghouls and goblins lurk has led the Forestry Commission to order a series of woodland makeovers. The commission is being advised by a team of psychologists who found that a legacy of folklore, fairy tales and films such as The Blair Witch Project, in which young campers are pursued and murdered, is causing tourists to steer clear of forests. The only remedy is to redesign them."

"Lions, and tigers, and Blair Witches, oh my!"

The Cloned (Non) Easter Bunny The Cloned (Non) Easter Bunny The Cloned (Non) Easter Bunny

" rench Scientists Clone Bunnies in Time for Easter," claimed the March 30 Reuters headline. Wrong; the rabbits had been born almost a year before. The announcement was timed for Easter in order to get more publicity. Apparently the scientists think we're a bunch of dumb bunnies who need gimmicks to draw attention even to such serious developments as the ability to make genetic duplicates of important lab animals.

roof that Americans will sue over anything comes in the first suit seeking reparations on behalf of blacks for slavery in the United States has been filed in Brooklyn against three major corporations: Fleet Bank, CSX Railroad, and the Aetna insurance company. Actually, I'm with the plaintiff on this one. I think full reparations should be made to any slave in the country who is still living. Case closed.

"To me, it's all worth it – just knowing that someday my descendents will be rolling in dough for doing nothing more than signing onto a class action!"

Headline: Iraqi Vet Says Depleted Uranium Killing Fish (Reuters)

ranslation: Iraq is great at making chemical weapons to kill its own people and its neighbors, but can’t raise a farmed fish. So a veterinarian mouthpiece for Saddam gets an idea from whining Gulf War veterans, blames it on U.S. depleted uranium weapons, and Reuters thinks it’s worth a story.

en. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has already made it clear he wants to end his career on a politically correct note. Now, along with Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), he has proposed adding $500 million to the U.S. contribution to foreign spending on AIDS. The money would an addition to a cool $1 billion already in the Bush administration's 2003 budget request and – here’s the kicker – will come as an amendment to the administration's pending request for additional money to fight terrorism both at home and abroad. No doubt, the proposal has Osama bin Laden shaking in his boots. And I don’t know about you, but I feel safer already.

"Allah help us! $500 million in AIDS spending will destroy us!"

he good thing about conservative talk shows is that they provide balance to the left-wing mainstream media. Right? Not necessarily. I’ve done more than my share over the years and have found that, almost without exception, they exist not to inform their listeners but merely to reinforce prejudices.

"We may be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, Mary, but we agree on the importance of keeping media bias!"

Case in point: At the last minute I was dumped from the schedule of the Mary Starrett Show, syndicated by KPDQ Radio in Portland, Oregon. Just a few weeks ago Miss Starrett had as her esteemed guest Joyce Riley, a crackpot who has done her best to terrify Americans from going to war by spouting nonsense both on Gulf War Syndrome and on anthrax vaccinations. Listen to Joyce for about sixty seconds and you get the idea there’s something not quite right there. Mary Starrett gave her an hour. But after having me on the schedule for a week, she gave me the heave-ho when she discovered that the report I did on notoriously left-wing biased Dan Rather’s Prescription for Bias concerning Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder actually dared claim that ADHD was real. No matter that this is also the opinion of the AMA, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, the Surgeon General, and the American Psychiatric Association in its famed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, along with every other professional group you can name. Never mind that just last week the Mayo Clinic released a study finding that as many as 7.5% of American children suffered this "non-existent" disease. Mary Starrett doesn’t trust them, and she’s not about to let her audience know their positions. This strange belief that ADHD is a made-up disease is unfortunately rampant among conservatives. One reason: It’s rampant among conservative radio talk show hosts. Thanks, Mary Starrett. We wouldn’t want you breaking with the pack and actually letting your audience come to its own conclusions.

ike, wow! Pamela Anderson has, like, announced she has hepatitis C and I'm like thinking, bummmmmmmer! There's no cure for that and like it can turn your liver into Swiss cheese and all that kind of stuff. Pam says she got it from her ex-husband, the guy she like you know tied the knot with after knowing him for like all of FOUR DAYS (Is that like, rad or what?!?) She says she got it from sharing a tattoo needle with this guy who, like, doesn't have a square centimeter that isn't permanently inscribed with some sort of dragon-like thing you might see in that Hobbit movie. I mean, this guy's tattoos make Ray Bradbury's "Illustrated Man" look like a blank slate. And you know, like I'm thinking, "Wow, she's really like messed up now!" but ya know, maybe there's a lesson in here for us even if it will forever be lost on her because, like, let's face it, she's not exactly a platinum blonde Albert Einstein. Maybe the lesson is that when nature gives you a beautiful body (admittedly enhanced by a little silicone in a couple of places and some of that gnarly collagen stuff in those "bee stung" lips), like maybe you shouldn't go injecting permanent ink into it in all sorts of ugly patterns so that even if you do try to get them removed you'll still have permanent scarring.

"Does this beat hula hoops, or what?"

I mean, like, I know it's all the rage to mutilate yourself, you know: If it's flat tattoo it; if it sticks out, pierce it. But like, I mean, isn't this just about the stupidest fad in the history of the human race? Like, DUDE, even that Braveheart guy made sure his blue face paint could be washed off in time for supper. I mean, don't any of these people wonder what it's going to be like when their grandkids ask grandma Buffy what's this stretched out blob on your neck and that thing that kinda looks like a vampire bat on your backside and those like permanently dyed ankle bracelets? And what about that big gaping hole in your tongue, and that one in your belly button and right above it, along with the smaller ones in your nose, eyebrows, earlobes, and, well, places that, like, maybe we shouldn't be talking about on a PG-13 website. You know, like those Elvis lambchop sideburns were sooooooo lame, but at least you could get rid of them with a few swipes of a razor. Hula hoops you could just toss out. (Though, like, it would be nice if there were more than a handful of Americans left thin enough to actually get one around our waists.) But, like, you know how dumb we think those guys are now? I'm like thinking, what are people in the future going to think of all this permanent inking and piercing? So, like, don't get me wrong; I'm all messed up over the hep-C, Pamela Lee thing. Been crying like a little baby ever since I found out. I don't want pretty Pam to go the Swiss cheese route, you know. But man, you know it's kinda like she got what she was asking for and, like, dude how many of us can say the same? Pam's been on a lot of posters (not to mention that unmentionable videotape of her and her hubby exchanging more than needles), so I'm like thinking that maybe she can become the poster girl to encourage us to "Just say No!" to turning yourself into a circus freak. Like, you know?

"Don't ye be worryin' Camry owners, there's safety in numbers!"

very year Chicago-based CCC Information services, and insurance industry consulting firm, puts out data on what CNN.com this year calls the "Thieves' Most Wanted List." And every year it's the same old baloney. This time the honors went to the Toyota Camry as the "most stolen vehicle model for the fifth-straight year on an annual list that monitors trends in auto theft." Does this mean you should reconsider buying that Camry or perhaps slap on a couple of more anti-theft devices, even if the beeping every time a sparrow coughs makes your whole neighborhood want to throttle you? Don't bother. The Camry is stolen so often simply because it's sold so often. The other most-stolen cars are also quite common, Honda Accords and Civics. Statistics like these are as useful as saying most murders are committed by right-handed people or most babies are conceived by heterosexuals. What would be of value would be knowing theft rates per number of cars sold. But since Camry, Accord, and Civic readers are also overly represented in the news audience, the media is going to play to them.

He really wanted to be a Green Beret.

ow that Americans have re-discovered what the military is all about, namely killing people who want to kill us, the "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning homosexuals inaugurated under Pres. Clinton seems rather quaint. (Clinton understandably was a strong backer of ignoring sexual activity that might be damaging to important American institutions). Nevertheless, the Washington Post of March 14 bemoans what it claims to be a tacit end of the policy. "Group: 1,250 Gays Left Forces in '01; Harassment Cited in Largest Exodus From Military Since '87," ran the headline.

The group was the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which actually has no interest in defending any service member who isn't homosexual. Now here's the catch in their data, revealed only towards the end of the Post piece. "Elaine Kanellis, an Army spokeswoman, said 92 percent of the Army's 616 gay discharges were based on 'simple statements' by soldiers that they are gay. "All that is required is for the soldier to claim they are homosexual," Kanellis told the paper. "Those claims are routinely accepted at face value and not investigated."

So doesn't this mean that a lot of guys could just be using this as a way of getting an easy discharge out of an institution that's usually quite difficult to leave prior to the end of one's enlistment term? Yup. Kanellis told the Post that once the expediting of gay discharges at Fort Campbell was discontinued late last year out of concern that non-homosexual service members were improperly obtaining homosexual discharges as an easy way to leave the military, the number of such discharges dropped from 33 in July to three in December.

In other words, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is a sham, its report is a sham, and the Post had no business running a non-story on page A4. Perhaps we don't have to stop all military activities for the next six months to form a distinguished panel to review this claim of unfairness and can continue with the business of killing terrorists.

Executed Navy SEAL Neil C. Roberts

ow that we've seen what Al Queda and the Taliban do with captured prisoners, where are all those people who complained about the "nightmarish" treatment of the terrorist prisoners kept in Guantanamo (such as their temporarily being held two to a cell), and demanded that the Geneva Convention be applied to them? The rules of the Geneva Convention were never meant to apply to animals or insects, but to humans and soldiers. Until Orkin comes up with an Al Queda spray, nothing we do to those people is worse than they deserve.

orst Quote of the Day Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: "It seems quite clear now that our economy maybe never suffered a recession."

"Why are we spending all them dollars in Afghanistan, when we could be paving the last few inches of grass in West Virginia!"

hy did the Democrats suddenly (or finally, if you prefer) start bashing Bush on the war? It's the economy, stupid. With the war working against them and no "hot button" issues in sight, the only hand they could play was the economy. It wasn't a particularly good hand, since Bush had barely taken office when the downturn began. But it was all they had. Now it's clear they're losing even that. (For an excellent commentary on this, see Andrew Sullivan's "Daschle's Gamble."

My bet is that Daschle and the Democrats are going to end up with aces and eights. It might be different if they actually had something constructive to say. But when the best they can do is West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd's complaint that, "If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday," they're not doing very good. When Bush said the committment against terrorism was open-ended, he meant it. Why not demand to know when the war on crime will end? Just toss a few more billion at Byrd to build some more worthless Wild Wonderful West Virginia freeway projects; that'll shut him up.

eacting to my article "No Straight Shooters: The Washington Post's Questionable Afghanistan Reporting," an Air Force pilot states:

I see no need to add anything to your article about Molly Moore's rather fanciful descriptions of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. I would add some comments from an operator's perspective, however. She writes, "The trailer that was hit still bears a 20-inch hole ripped by a missile." If the trailer was hit by a missile I would expect that there would be something other than a 20-inch hole given the carnage she reports. We've all seen burned-out targets and they bear characteristic evidence of fire that a wise reporter, had she actually looked at it, would have detailed to her audience."

Yours Very Truly,
Bob R

Bob,

Thanks for that observation. Here are a few more. Initially, Moore wrote that, "In an instant, a missile sliced through the front end of the trailer. Witnesses said the explosion that followed scattered the arms, hands and feet of children across the road." But later in the same piece the "sliced-through" trailer is described as having a 20-inch hole. Sorry, it can't be both. But it CAN be neither. The "hole version" is essentially impossible. Only an undetonated missile would do that. An AGM-65 Maverick, which is 12 inches in diameter, might do the trick. (Making the assumption that the 28-inch wings ripped off on impact.) But Moore declared: "Witnesses said the explosion that followed scattered the arms, hands and feet of children across the road." These missiles are meant for tank-busting. That explosion of either the 125 or 300-pound AGM-165 warhead would have obliterated the trailer, much less the entrance hole. You've elucidated that there's no evidence either that Miss Moore was at the attack site or that there even was such an attack. The only holes we know for a fact exist are those in her articles.

ubject: Hate Mail?

Dear Mr. Fumento:

"As Allah wills it I am continuing to wreak havoc on the Great Satan by cutting off the supply to the Hate Mail Page! Oh, and does anyone know where the toilet is? Those dates go right through you!"

I read it all, and have checked back about once a week, but didn't find any new ones. Do you no longer display your hate mail, or have you suddenly become popular? If the former, please start displaying it again, because I thought it was funny. If the latter, let me know and I'll start a hate-mail campaign for you. (That's all right. It's my pleasure. Really.)

My fellow citizens must be getting used to me, I haven't been yelled at, honked at, or flipped off while standing at the bank machine lately.

Linda

Dear Linda,

If the hate mail were coming, I'd be printing it. But as it happens, after a certain date it pretty much just stopped. That date was September 11. Choose your own reason: People have become more polite (as your experiences would suggest); people have found somebody better to hate (nobody has yet accused me of killing 3,000) people; or perhaps people have just realigned some of their priorities. You can see this as good news for America, but bad news for fans of my hate mail page. But in any case, it's probably just temporary.

Sincerely,
Michael Fumento

erry Flint, in his commentary "Hydrogen Bomb" in the March 4th issues of Forbes Global declares the "fuel-cell engine will be terribly costly and an unlikely source of car power for anyone old enough to read this page." It's never wise to make predictions further out than five or ten years, much less 90 years or more, but in any case Flint is flat wrong and you needn't be an engineering expert to see why. Internal combustion engines continue to improve, but fuel cell technology is improving much faster. Further, nobody has proffered any physical law as to why fuel cell technology will suddenly slam into a wall. Thus, at some point in time fuel cell engines will overtake internal combustion engines. They already have some key advantages; not for nothing did the Apollo moon rockets use fuel cells instead of pistons. One major advantage is that hydrogen-powered fuel cells are absolutely pollution free. Nor do they produce carbon dioxide, the alleged primary contributor to alleged global warming. Another advantage is the lack of moving parts. Each year, fuel cells get considerably smaller and cheaper, to a point where they may soon be used to power laptop computers. Oil in real dollar terms is about as cheap as it's ever been, but hydrogen comes from water. You can't get a lot cheaper than that. At some point the trend lines for internal combustion engines and fuel cells will cross and fuel cells will begin to dominate and then completely take over. Learn more at this site.

In addition to electricity, the "pollutants" emitted by fuel cells comprise only oxygen and water.

A comparable analogue is digital cameras versus film ones. Both film and film cameras are still improving. But like internal combustion, film is a very old technology with improvements coming more and more slowly. Digital camera technology is booming. Every year digitals offer more pixels, more removable storage, and more other features at a cheaper price. Film prices are staying the same. In a few years digital cameras will outsell their film counterparts and soon film will go the way of the slide rule. And speaking of rules, another one that Flint violates is looking at who's spending the research money. He rightly castigates the feds for putting money into fuel cells, but he himself points out that, "Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to research it by every major auto company and by such companies as Ballard in Canada." If the government is pouring money into research; it means nothing. But private sector spending indicates a trend worth watching. I can't tell you when fuel cells for engines will become viable for large fleet vehicles (such as buses), much less for automobiles, much less when they make internal combustion engines obsolete. But the day will come and almost all of you old enough to read this page will see it.

Mardi Gras in the Phillipines

"It's not like it looks; I thought the safety was on! These evil Americans should send me right back to Afghanistan -- with a first class ticket and high-topped tennis shoes!"

liford Orwin's January 21 National Post commentary, "Don't Shed Any Tears for Prisoners in Cuba,"(January 21) is EXCELLENT. I've seen nobody say it better. Slamming airliners into civilian targets doesn't make you a soldier; it makes you a vicious terrorist. Releasing these prisoners practically guarantees that they'll go right from the cells of Guantanamo to the "cells of al Quada." It's infuriating that the Brits have three men among the prisoners in Cuba, meaning they have contributed at least three of their countrymen to the fight against America, yet some of their Members of Parliament and their newspapers are now crying bitter tears about what somebody has told them about their treatment. These people all deserve death; anything less and they're getting off easy.

"I'm off to join the Virginia Military Academy! If I can just get myself up . . . "

"ll we want is to be treated equally!" How often do we hear that one day and a demand for special privileges the next? Well, here we go again. The Washington-based National Women's Law Center now insists that the Virginia Military Institute drop its policy requiring pregnant students to leave the school. It says it discriminates against female cadets. No, it only discriminates against female cadets who take part in certain activities.

From a course for teachers put together by your local public school system: Kwestion: Witch of theez is a dedly wepon? Anser: Al them.

Public schools still aren't teaching "the three Rs," but they seem very determined in other areas, such as zero tolerance for anybody who insists that there's something, anything, out there that's not a weapon. That's what eight-year-old Dustin Rogers of Burnt Mills Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland discovered in December when he accidentally brought to class his mother's key ring. Because of something on that key ring, he was suspended for a month. That object was . . . A small thermonuclear device? No. Tennis shoes filled with plastic explosive? No. Well, at least a dull machete, right? No, it was an inch-long nail file. When this weapon of mass destruction was discovered on the alleged suspect, the principal sent him home with a letter beginning: "On Tuesday, December 11, 2001 your son, Dustin Rogers, was found in possession of a dangerous object. The most dangerous object being a 2 inch blade." (Yes, it is a violation of federal law for a public school principal to use proper English.) Never mind that it wasn't two inches and wasn't a blade. The school sought to expel Dustin permanently. Four weeks later the school relented, and decided that Dustin could come back – so long as he promised to fly the straight and narrow from here one, of course. Still, it could have been worse. Montgomery County had probably already bought the 8-year-old a one-way ticket to that new prison they're building in Guantanamo.

Two years ago, at the height of the panic over the "Hong Kong avian flu," I penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal saying that not only was the current "crisis" a bunch of horsefeathers but that because of advances in medicine there would never be another pandemic such as that of 1918-1919. These include something called the (duh) "flu vaccine." BioMedNet News, in its January 9 issue (free subscription required), now reports that "Advances in understanding the molecular signatures of bird viruses look likely to consign the unpredictability of influenza epidemics to history." New flu outbreaks are always caused by the transmission of the virus from birds to humans. But now scientists are able to look at the genetic structure of the virus while it's still in the birds, giving us a quicker and more efficient way of determining which new flu strain or strains will be coming our way. That's bad news for those who have cashed in on plaguing us with talk of new killer epidemics (Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, comes to mind), but good news for the rest of us.

The British army, in response to complaints that depleted uranium a mmunition was the alleged cause of Gulf War Syndrome (or in any case "DU syndrome") has begun buying tungsten-tipped armor piercing rounds instead. (Read the article.) Tough luck. It just means after the next war they'll have to deal with Tungsten Tipped Syndrome.

According to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "Between 1987 and 1997, there was a marked increase in the proportion of the population who received outpatient treatment for depression." Is this depressing news? Is the new national color blue? Or could this be like the attention deficit disorder epidemic, wherein every child who loses track of what the teacher is saying on any given occasion is dosed with Ritalin? Probably not. According to the researchers, "These changes coincided with the advent of better-tolerated antidepressants, increased penetration of managed care, and the development of rapid and efficient procedures for diagnosing depression in clinical practice." In other words, more people who can benefit from the drugs are getting them. Contrary to what you may have read, anti-depressants are not "happy pills," the equivalent of the Soma drug in Huxley's Brave New World. They bring depressed people up to the level of healthy people. Their greatest drawbacks are side effects that may be intolerable and that none of them kick in before at least two weeks. It appears the increased use of anti-depressants is something to be quite cheerful about.

Small (and Cheap) Is Beautiful

It was called the “Superconducting Super Collider” and it came with a super price. In the early 1990s the Energy Department under President Bush lobbied furiously for a giant atom smasher with a price tag of at least $11 billion. And that was just for construction. It would cost another half billion or so per year to keep it running. In return for this tremendous outlay taxpayers would receive . . . Well, there’s the rub. There was lots of talk about theoretical possibilities, but nobody could say with any certainty that the leviathan would provide any practical applications. “Practically the only commercially useful aspect of the SSC project is the possibility of improved superconducting-magnet technology. However, that marginal benefit could be produced at a fraction of the SSC budget and is well within the financial reach of private industry - should it perceive the need," wrote Kent Jeffreys of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1992.

Designed to be an oval underground tunnel some 54 miles in circumference and approximately 12 feet in diameter, SSC was little more than a gravy train for physics scientists. Believe it or not, Congress actually killed it. Less hard to believe is that we now have a super collider that could fit in your front shirt pocket, actually has benefits, and not only costs less than the GDP of several African countries was actually built using everyday lab equipment. As noted in the January 4 Nature Science Update, the new Nevatron measures just six centimeters around and was built at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta using everyday lab equipment. As NSU notes, “Unlike its giant relatives, the Nevatron won't create exotic new particles. It should, however, find more practical uses, for instance in the emerging field of atom optics - which is like conventional optics but uses ultra-cold, slow-moving atoms instead of light.” Moreover, says the publication, it “may also harbor useful quantum-mechanical properties, and may one day become part of a quantum computer or act as an exquisitely sensitive gyroscope.”

There’s a small lesson in there for all of us.

Clinton Criticism = Abetting Terrorism

In a bizarre column that appeared in the December 25 Washington Post, Richard Cohen acknowledged that September 11 was the result of Clinton's paying too much attention to his penis and not enough to overseas threats. But who was really at fault? It was Clinton’s critics, the bastards! Yes, if they had just left the poor guy alone, he could have handled both Monica and Osama at the same time. (Don't try to picture that.)

Television is Getting Better, at least in New York City

After countless years of mind-numbing, insulting insipid television programming, it looks like Americans have finally had enough and want something at least a bit more meaningful. The Nielsen television ratings service reports that the most viewed program in New York City on Christmas Day was "Yule Long." Shown for two hours, it consisted of nothing but a log burning in a fireplace accompanied by seasonal songs. The Larry King Show should be so stimulating.

Back to Vieques!

Nothing clears out peacenik-think and political correctness like a war. In the June 25, 2001 issue of National Review, in my article I observed that none of the arguments against continued use of Puerto Rico's Vieques island for naval training exercises had any merit, that the myriad health complaints linked to practice bombing (including male pattern baldness) were baloney.

A RIM-7, NATO Sea Sparrow missile is fired from the forward missile deck on board the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp.

The Navy said Vieques was prime real estate, that exercises there were vital to national defense because they combine sea, land and air maneuvers that cannot be done elsewhere. No matter, the Bush administration gave in to an activist coalition that included Robert F. Kennedy, Al Sharpton, and Hillary Clinton (along with a few Puerto Ricans) and said it would be "Anchors Aweigh!" It said the referendum would not be held and Congress went along with it. The Navy was giving up its prime real estate.

Then something happened. September 11. Everybody realized that we actually need a navy and it actually needs to train. "A planned referendum on the future of Navy training on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques will be canceled by the 2002 Defense Authorization bill reported by the U.S. House and Senate this week," according to the Environmental News Service. Let's see if Hillary complains.

Testosterone = Terrorism

According to Washington Post feminist columnist Judy Mann, the answer to the war on terrorism is emasculating men. That's not surprising, since to Judy Mann the answer to everything is emasculating men. In her December 19 column, "Terrorism and the Cult of Manly Men," she writes "Men and women can change the definition of manhood. We're making progress. Colin Powell is a far cry from General Patton." To be sure! She concluded, "This is indeed a time of opportunity, a chance for us to understand the roots of violence that the terrorist embodies. Then we can look to the firefighters in New York who wept. That, to me, is real manhood." Right. And it was tears dropped from B-52s and F-18s that routed the Taliban and al Qaeda. And those special ops soldiers who led the way, they received their training from effeminate fitness guru Richard Simmons. Afghanistan is littered with millions of mines that blow off feet. Apparently Mann thinks the answer to world conflict would be sending all men through a chamber that blew off something else.

It's easier being green? Yes, but that's not the entire explanation.

"Power of nature is profound, says Cornell researcher in finding that living amid green space is highly beneficial to children." (ITHACA, N.Y.) A house surrounded by nature seems to help boost a child's attention capabilities, a study by a Cornell University researcher suggests. "When children's cognitive functioning was compared before and after they moved from poor- to better-quality housing that had more green spaces around, profound differences emerged in their attention capacities even when the effects of the improved housing were taken into account," says Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell. Wells also conducted a study that suggests the mental health of adults improves with a move from poor to quality housing. (Cornell News Service)

Actually, the Cornell researchers are missing the underlying science. Tests on rodents demonstrate that clutter kills. Animals with obstructions in their cages have considerably shorter lives than those with relatively empty cages. Clutter makes you nervous and causes hormones to be emitted that do all sorts of nasty things to you. Better to live in a condo or townhouse that doesn't have clutter on the inside than to live in a veritable rat's nest surrounded by the Black Forest or the Great Plains.

Friendly Fire

We have now lost three soldiers in Afghanistan from an errant B-52 strike, compared to only one lost from enemy weapons. In another well-publicized incident, five special ops soldiers were wounded by a U.S. air strike they had called in. Injury and death by "friendly fire" goes back to long before there was fire, when one soldier's spear or sword accidently struck friend instead of foe.

B-52 Stratofortress

There are horrendous accounts of friendly fire incidents from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. But it seems that since Vietnam the proportion of our soldiers (or those of our allies) killed by our weapons is larger than before. There's a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with incompetence. To a great extent in Vietnam, to a greater extent in Iraq, and to the greatest extent in Afghanistan, the percentage of fire coming from our side rather than theirs has grown. In all three wars, the only bombs dropped were ours. The more fire coming from our side than theirs, the more likely it will be that our casualties will be from friendly fire than from the enemy. None of this is to say that each and every friendly fire incident isn't a terrible loss. Each should be analyzed to see how it happened and how the chance of it happening again can be reduced. But the bottom line is that when we're pouring in all the heavy stuff and we're not taking many casualties as a whole, a large percentage of those casualties will be from our own weapons.

Hear it from the Marines!

Yes, I know the expression is actually the other way around. But the Washington Post found one darned quotable Marine Captain in Afghanistan who knew exactly why he was there. The paper explained why Capt. Michael A. Shayne, 30, was not worried about going into combat for the first time. "The moment I wake up every day, I think about the people who lost husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters and children on September 11," he said. "That makes it all easy."

Leahy's Liberties

Perhaps the first rule in politics is to exaggerate your own importance, but Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.), has taken a rather peculiar route. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on November 25th, he declared there was enough anthrax in the letter sent to his office to "have killed over 100,000 people." The FBI, conversely, has said there was enough to kill two people. That's two (2), as in "One, two, buckle my shoe." You know, that kind of two. Who's right? The letter was estimated to contain about 23,000 spores. It's generally accepted (based on rodent studies) that a fatal dose is about 5,000 to 10,000 inhaled spores. Assuming you took the lower end of the estimate and carefully divided it up, leaving no spores in the envelope and spilling none on the ground, that would mean as many as four deaths. Further, the letter sent to the Florida reporter killed one person. Therefore, it does appear that Leahy was off by about 99,998 people. Give or take. What explains this little discrepancy? The second rule of politics is to fabricate, fabricate, fabricate. Then never apologize; never explain.

Foolishness du Jour

According to a November 22 article in the Telegraph of London, a study "A study at Liverpool University suggests the disease [the Black Death] that first appeared in Europe in 1347 and spread like wildfire for 300 years did not need insanitary [sic] conditions and could strike again at any time." Ooh! How exciting! The researchers decided that the real culprit was not bubonic plague spread by the fleas of rats, but rather - by great coincidence - the media’s favorite scary disease, Ebola virus.

A Swollen Bubo

But breathe easy, gentle reader. For those not aware of it, going back through history and coming up with new disease theories is actually something of a sport among academics. It gets you in the papers, it gets you grant money, and it gives you something to do in a job that otherwise may have few demands. But the new theories almost always have glaring holes, as does this. For one, Ebola doesn’t kill rats. Contemporary chroniclers reported that during bouts of the plague, rats were keeling over in greater numbers than humans. For another, Ebola doesn’t spread "like wildfire." It’s very difficult to transmit, requiring physical contact with a victim or blood from the victim. Bubonic plague did spread like wildfire. Finally, even the authors of the Liverpool report admit that, "Only one Black Death symptom, swollen glands in the armpit or groin, accords with bubonic plague." Only one? That’s like saying "The only indicator that this man is George W. Bush is that he has George W. Bush’s DNA." Look, they don’t call bubonic plague "bubonic" for nothing. Huge swollen black buboes were the characteristic symptom of the disease. Conversely, nobody with Ebola has been observed with this symptom. Game over. Science 1, Liverpool O.

More on the "Invincible" Guerrilla

Mike,

Good article about guerrilla war. I think you're absolutely right. The myth of guerrilla invincibility is much exaggerated. [There] are numerous, now forgotten instances of US troops suppressing guerrillas (in Philippines, Haiti, etc.) Max

Max,

Thanks. Yes, contrary to myth guerrillas usually lose. The non-exception that proves the rule was Vietnam. As far back as 1965, it had strong conventional elements. In 1968, Tet broke the back of the VC and thereafter the war was less and less guerrilla and more and more just a conventional attack by the North Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese. North Vietnam won, but the guerrillas lost.

Mike

The Myth of Afghan Invincibility

Regarding: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-fumento112101.shtml

Dear Mr. Fumento,

Actually the U.S. is no more likely to succeed in fighting guerilla warfare than did the Russians or the British.

Chasing Talibs about the caves of Afghanistan is likely to take years, and given the level of treachery and greed most Afghans appear to be capable of, not likely to suceed for years.

Carl,

What most people don't know is that the British actually succeeded in controlling Afghanistan for over 100 years. How? Because back then, as now, tribal loyalities superceded any idea of nationality. The Brits played off tribe against tribe and it worked. When the Brits got into trouble it was because they sent troops in to keep the Russians out. (This went by the name of "The Great Game.")

The myth of the invincibility of Afghan warriors is largely a product of Rudyard Kipling's poetry and the outcome of a single disaster in early January, 1842. Although you will now generally read that the British contingent comprised 16,000 troops, it actually consisted of about 4,500 British and Indian troops with 12,000 camp followers. The British general, who was essentially an idiot, accepted an offer of safe passage out of Kabul that turned out to be treacherous. Only one person from the British contingent survived. You probably haven't read that the British later went back and retook Kabul. (Needless to say, the earlier retreat from Kabul was lacking in air support.)

Judging the British experience in Afghanistan by 1842 would be like judging America's success in World War II by 1941.

In any case, we have no intent on trying to control the country or any part of it. We're not even trying to exterminate the Taliban. Our concern is eliminating the Taliban leadership and exterminating members of al Qaeda who have not been able to flee the country. In that, there seems little doubt that we'll have the support of the Afghan people and their leaders.

Michael Fumento

You Can Never Be Too Careful

8,000 accused al Qaeda terrorists to go on trial tomorrow - best and brightest organize defense.

So declared a piece in National Review Online on November 20th. Alas, the editors felt obligated to run beneath the title: EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a parody.

For my part, I considered putting out an email warning recipients that emails were being sent around that had attachments containing the dreaded anthrax. Then it occurred to me . . .

This is one Predator that even Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't want to tackle.

The Sunday Times of London has an excellent article about the involvement of the world's first armed robotic aircraft, the Predator, in the killing of bin Laden's deputy Mohammed Atef. And YOU thought Microsoft's X-Box was fun!

The RQ-IB Predator

Live, Live, Live, Live, Stayin' Alive! Stayin' Alive!

Mike:

How do our special forces succeed in killing so many of the other side without incurring more U.S. casualties? The news reports indicate that our troops are engaged in combat and killing enemy troops. Why aren't we suffering any?

Paul

Paul,

1. Much better discipline. If you've seen TV clips of Afghanis firing their AK-47s, they like to stand up and shoot from the hip. It demonstrates bravery ? and foolishness. It' also hard as hell to hit anything.

2. Body armor. Kevlar helmets are bullet-resistant, as is Kevlar body armor up to a certain point. (Obviously they're not going to stop a .50 cal slug.) But on top of that, they often wear ceramic plates. They're not comfortable, but those things will stop practically anything. They proved quite effective in Somalia where they helped the Rangers and Delta Force get a kill ratio of about 18 to 500.

3. Air support. Their guys have Aks; our guys have F-18s circling to drop ordnance at a moment's notice. In at least once publicized case, air support kept our guys from being overrun.

4. We don't know for a fact that we haven't lost anybody. That's what we're being told at this point.

Mike

How Green Is my Valley - or Perspective, as it Were

Dear Mr. Fumento:

I appreciate your alternative views on pollution and global warming. It is nice to see someone reporting on studies never mentioned by Dan Rather. However I need some affirmation if I am going to continue in my wholesale support of your reporting. Please tell me you support sensible environmental restrictions. Tell me you don't believe that dumping pesticides into rivers and streams is ok. Tell me you believe people should take their used motor oil to recycling centers instead of dumping it in the storm drain. I need to know you support the precautions that have been taken to reduce air and water pollution.

Ben

Dear Ben,

Okay, consider yourself told. As a rule, I'm a gadfly so I don't write about sensible things, I criticize dumb things. But I do recall being hissed in Hong Kong and labeled an environmentalist because I told them they have no excuse to have such filthy air and water when they have such a high GDP. All things are relative. I would have been a true environmentalist in 1970. Now I clearly don't fit the accepted definition. That said, my just-finished book on biotechnology goes into great detail on how biotech is and will be used to dramatically improve the environment in countries where dramatic improvement is needed, and to also considerably improve matters even in the cleanest of countries. Biotech is already reducing effluents, cleaning up toxic waste sites, reducing farm chemical usage, and helping turn more land back to nature. It can play a crucial role in reducing pressures to cut back the rain forests. Already in 1989, bio-engineered bacteria were used to help clean up the Exxon Valdez spill. Biotech also may be the tipping factor in making in making pollution-free hydrogen fuel cells workable in automobiles. The potential impact of this on air pollution and on our demand for petroleum is incalculable.

Sincerely,
Michael Fumento

Predictable and Predicted

In my October 31 op-ed, "Bayer's Headache: U.S. Government Uses Heavy Hand For Cheap Cipro," I warned that HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's strong-arming of Bayer to get cheap Cipro would come back to haunt us. "This sets a terrible precedent for all companies that develop drugs. Since American companies develop the most drugs, guess who's heart the dagger is pointed at?" I wrote. Already, I noted, "Recently, a prominent activist declared in a Washington Post commentary that all AIDS drugs should be provided free worldwide," but "that would guarantee is that in the future no one would get AIDS drugs."

Sure enough, now AIDS activists are protesting outside U.S. trade negotiators' offices Thursday, accusing the officials of keeping cheaper medicines from poor nations while getting a discount on an anthrax drug at home. The activists, according to Reuter's, were "chanting and carrying signs with pictures of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and drawings of skulls, said it was unfair for the United States to fight poor countries' efforts after it pressed Bayer last week to sharply discount its anthrax drug Cipro. "To deny poor countries the measures that the U.S. used just last week to push down the cost of medicine in unacceptable," said Paul Davis, a member of the AIDS group ACT-UP Philadelphia.

He's right; it is inconsistent. The only counter Thompson could think of was, well, to lie. He simply claimed he never threatened to break the Bayer patent. All this, now, for a drug that the CDC is less useful for anthrax than cheap old doxycycline. Was it worth it, Mr. Secretary?

That'll teach me not to look like an Aryan!

Sir:

Now that you mention it, you do look like Omar Sharif. In fact you do look positively Arabic! And you do have an icy stare!! My sister and other people around me think you do "look strange"!!! Your photo on the web page is NOT making eye contact; you are looking to my left!!!! You have a sinister smile!!!!! Aaargh!!!!!! You are one of them terrorists that couldn't get on the plane on time!!!!!!!

Sir, please follow me to escort you out of my computer.

( ;-b)

Jaime

Dear Jaime,

The damned thing is I worked on that icy stare for years. Now I find it's a detriment. Who knew?!

Best,

Michael Fumento

Do Hysterics Have the Right to Impose on the Rest of Us?

Omar, Omar, Omar:

You are a passable "Arabic-looking" guy. [See my comments under "Cosmetic Anti-Terrorist Tactics, Part XVI" below.] You were shouting about newspapers at the closed door (I presume) of an airliner toilet cubicle, just about a month after the nine-eleven events. What was the flight attendant SUPPOSED to think? There has been so much press in recent weeks about how people simply wither when other people LOOK at them in certain ways. SO WHAT IF SOMEBODY LOOKS AT YOU IN ANY FASHION? It's a look. It's not a fist, or a rope, or a blackjack, or slander. I get looks like that whenever I wander into the men's room, or into the tool department at Sears. Even in these insane times, can't we be adult enough to take the reactions of imbeciles in stride and not take up print space and airwaves with our reactions to their reactions? And it's not just you. It's not even primarily you.

If the IRA had been responsible for the attacks, I might be getting LOOKS now. And I wonder if a better reaction than just clamming up and getting off the plane might be for a challenged traveler to sit down on the plane and pleasantly demand to see the chairman of the board, or the CEO of the airline, or at least the head of airport security. Explain where he/she is going and why. Make personal contact with the pilot and flight attendants. Pleasantly but firmly assert the right to fly on that carrier for which he/she holds a ticket. Recite the LAST verse of the national anthem or the recipe for turkey dressing or speak Pig Latin or list the starting line-up for the Cubs. You're right, the line IS about us being the "Land of the free and the home of the BRAVE." Maybe Rosa Parks should have given lessons.

Sunnie

Dear Sunni,

I believe the attendant was supposed to think I was wondering where my newspapers where, and the only way you can communicate through one of those toilet doors is to shout. I'm sorry if her nerves were frazzled, but we all have jobs to do. To the extent we don't do them, the system breaks down and we've just become a big part of the problem. My real concern, however, was for those poor people removed from the plane because they were born with dark skin (me, I need a tanning bed or a beach to bring out my full terrorist qualities) and the attendant perceived their stares as cold. Were I an airline struggling with finances (or God forbid, just trying to do the right thing), I would have put the attendant on leave until she could get her act together. Being an airline attendant has always carried a certain amount of stress. That stress level is now higher, at least temporarily. Those in the job need to evaluate their ability to handle if and if they can't, they need to do themselves and everybody else a favor and recall President Harry Truman's famous dictum about heat and kitchens.

There's never a good time for hysteria, but this is the worst. And while no single hysteria can be sustained, there's no law that we can't keep moving from one to another to another. That makes the bad guys win without even lifting a finger.

Best,

Michael Fumento

Media images aside, U.S. campuses are not holding hands out to bin Laden.

Bastions of Taliban support like Berkeley aside, American college students support the war in Afghanistan, according to a new poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Almost four out of five students gave two thumbs up to the war effort, in an October telephone survey of 1,200 undergraduates across the country. That’s fairly close to the support expressed by Americans as a whole, and is actually quite amazing considering the attempted brainwashing from an academia teeming with hippie holdovers.

I finally understand this not bombing during Ramadan stuff!

It's accepted that Muslims routinely attack each other during Ramadan, and have since Mohammad himself. The Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur (Judaism's holiest day) in 1973 is known in the Arab Middle East as the Ramadan War. The Prophet Muhammad won victory at the Battle of Badr in the month of Ramadan and many years later began a campaign to reclaim Mecca during that same month. The Iranians and Iraqis routinely blew each others brains out during Ramadan, as did the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. "The Taliban has always violated the sanctity of the holy month of Ramadan with massacres and ethnic cleansings," Haron Amin, the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington told the Washington Times. "In 1998 during Ramadan, they drove 150,000 people from their homes in ethnic cleansing of the Shomali Plain north of Kabul."

So here's why WE have to become peaceniks during Ramadan. WE'RE not Muslim! It's like using the word "faggot." If you're a homosexual, it's okay for you to use it. But God forbid that a heterosexual use it. "Young man, you've committed a hate crime," says the judge somberly. "I have no choice but to put you in prison for five years with murderers and rapists. And they DON'T believe in using condoms!"

So, since we're not Islamic we can't bomb during Ramadan and if bin Laden takes the opportunity to slip away or at the very least the Taliban harden and reinforce their positions, we'll just have to eat it.

NOT.

Complete and Utter Lunacy Department

The page one major headline of the October 30 Washington Post reads: "FBI Issues 2nd Global Attack Alert." Just to the left to this in much smaller letters, "Pressure to Curtail War Grows: U.S., Britain Consider Pausing for Ramadan."

Isn’t this just a tad inconsistent? Does memory fail or didn’t we just lose 6,000 American civilians in an unprovoked attack back on September 11 by the guys to whom we’re now going to give a month to rest their weary bones, dig in deeper, and restock their ammunition supplies? Is it not the case that Islamic Iraq regularly fought with Islamic Iran during Ramadan? Is it not the case that several Muslim countries attacked Israel during its holiest period in 1973, hence the name "The Yom Kippur War." Most to the point, is it not the case that the Taliban themselves fought with the Northern Alliance regularly during Ramadan?

There was a movie entitled "Wake Me When the War Is Over." In this case, somebody please wake me when it begins. At least when it begins on our side.

Well, that didn't take long!

We now have our first official syndrome of the anti-terrorism war: "World Trade Center Cough." Stay tuned for more!

Anthrax hysteria goes to the dogs - and cats.

The October 29 Washington Post reports that pet-owners across the country are desperately trying to project their own hysteria onto their animals, albeit with limited success. "When she first heard about people being infected with anthrax spores, Jane Bedrick ordered a gas mask, protective hazmat suit and gloves for herself. Then she called her veterinarian and immediately got a supply of Cipro for her pet Woody, 'an upscale, spoiled Bethesda cat' that she rescued from the street eight years ago," said the Post article. Taking no chances, this upscale, spoiled Bethesda woman then called the Israeli Embassy in Washington to find out about gas masks for pets.

Let's be clear on this. She called the embassy of a country that routinely suffers terrorist attacks in which its people are blown up in pizza parlors, discos, and schools and asked them for advice on getting a gas mask for her cat? Good thing the conversation was by phone, or she might have a feline stuck half way up you-know-where.

Cosmetic Anti-Terrorist Tactics, Part XVI

Washington Post columnist William Raspberry relates that on his latest Southwest Airlines flight he was forced to give up his tiny cigar guillotine. But wait; it gets worse. "Two young Arabic-looking men and an Arabic-looking woman were quietly escorted off [Raspberry's] plane. The pilot announces that some people wanted to leave." ("Arabic-looking" is an awfully wide net. I'm Italian on my father's side, Jewish on my mother's and I'm constantly told I look like Omar Sharif.) Actually nobody WANTED to leave. Rather a flight attendant said the two men had "icy stares" and wouldn't make eye contact with her. She became so frightened she was "shaking all over," Raspberry reports. She also took the names of some of the passengers who agreed that the three people "looked strange." That was it. Raspberry lost an instrument that on a good day might be able to cut a finger tip off and three people lost their flights for having dark features and failing to make eye contact with a flight attendant. What was that line about us being the "Land of the free; home of the brave"?

A response from a friend:

"Well, Omar, just make sure you google over the (female!) flight attendant on your next flight and you'll be fine."

Dave

Dave,

Actually, it's no joke to me. I was picked out for a special search on my way to LAX two weeks ago. Then, once on the United Airlines plane, I called to my wife in the bathroom to see if she knew where the newspapers where that I had just bought. The stewardess looked at me like I was Osama himself. I could have been removed from that flight because I wanted to read a newspaper and because I have dark hair and mustache. So much for the "friendly skies of United." This hysteria thing, whether it's over anthrax or over dark-skinned people, HAS GOT TO GO.

Best,
Mike

Easy Answers to "Tough Questions" about the Bombing Campaign

For those who are left stuttering and stammering over some very tough questions posed by Taliban sympathizers and mindless peaceniks:

Question: Do we really have to bomb them on their Sabbath?

Answer: They should have thought about that before they came to our country and killed 6,000 civilians.

Question: Do we have to keep the attacks up even during their holy month of Ramadan?

Answer: They should have thought about that before they came to our country and killed 6,000 civilians.

Question: Don’t you realize that no matter how careful you try to be, you’re going to kill civilians?

Answer: They should have thought about that before they came to our country and killed 6,000 civilians.

Anthrax Hysteria, Part 83

From CNN, the 24-hour anthrax channel: "Angry federal law enforcement officials, overwhelmed by thousands of prank calls and ‘silly’ emergency reports about anthrax threats, are taking a hard line with the relatively few hoax perpetrators they can identify." In Rhode Island, the FBI arrested a man who admitted he sent an anthrax letter containing what turned out to be Gold Bond powder. If he was itching for a jail sentence, it looks like he’s going to get it.

"Several law enforcement officials, who asked not to be identified, expressed dismay, frustration and disappointment over the thousands of false alarms and unnecessary calls that have kept hundreds of emergency response teams occupied around the clock," reported CNN. One law enforcement official told them, "Maybe if you've just done your laundry, and you discover some white powder on your hands in your home, it’s not anthrax." What a party-pooper! He added, "How many instances of anthrax have there been in private homes? None. People have got to start using common sense." Another exhausted FBI agent told CNN, "In my 30 years, I've never seen anything like this and I hope I never see it again."

Meanwhile, a rider ordered a bus stopped and evacuated because sand on the floor was feared to be a suspicious powder. A truck that kicked up a cloud of dust was thought to be men of Middle East descent spraying the road. "We had 80 calls of suspicious substances or packages yesterday," said one official. "Not one of them produced anything at all. This is just nuts."

Subject: "A Dose of Anthrax Reality Behind the Hysteria."

Dear Mr. Fumento,

Your piece concludes:

"Whatever the messages our media and our Congress send, we the people must act with the resolve that Mr. Churchill saw in his people and is characteristic of our people. Like Britons in 1940, we possess a steely resolve. It’s time to show it. It's time to show that we must not and will not give our enemies precisely what they seek."

Good thoughts, of course, but I wonder whether our feminized, touchy-feely, solve-everything-in-a-half-hour-sitcom culture really does possess sufficient resolve. Personally, I liked what that fireman had to say at the concert on Saturday, "Hey Osama, you can kiss my fat Irish ass." Even the military brass is getting squeamish - from what I’ve read, bomb loaders wouldn’t be permitted to put that sentiment on the nose of a bomb.

Kim

Dear Kim,

A good many of us wonder what you wonder -- including a fellow named Osama bin Laden. But clearly one improvement over the past few years is having a commander-in-chief who doesn’t see M-16s barrels as tiny flower vases. Clinton’s attempt to kill bin Laden by lobbing a few cruise missiles his way was the ultimate in preposterousness. As the Israelis have shown, missiles fired from close range (meaning you can literally see the target) can be effective in targeting individuals. But a bunch of conventional warheads fired at night from a thousand miles away NEVER had a real chance to kill bin Laden, even if he had been in the camp at the time wearing a bull's eye on his butt. Our current president has shown he apparently knows what rifles are meant for, as well as the other weapons in our arsenal.

Best,
Michael Fumento

Uh-oh! Bad News for Smallpox Alarmists

No, it isn’t just that there's still no evidence that there's any smallpox virus available outside of one lab in Atlanta and one in Sibera. Jonathon B. Tucker, in his new book Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox, a tome hardly intended to be reassuring, relates that in eastern Nigeria in 1967, by vaccinating only 750,000 people out of a total population, it was possible to contain a smallpox outbreak. Moral: No Nigeria 1967, is not the U.S. In some ways smallpox would have advantages in spreading here (namely jet travel), but in most other ways the US in 2001 is much better able to contain an epidemic than Nigeria from a generation ago. More to the point, the estimated 15 million doses of vaccination we have stockpiled gives us a powerful weapon in restricting outbreaks. We are now painfully aware that anthrax's bark is worse than its bite. The same is true of all the horrific worst-case scenarios we've been hearing about smallpox. Don't buy the hype; don’t supply the terrorists with their terror "fix."

From the Peanut Gallery

Dear Mike:

It amazes me that people will speak in interviews on the details of how horrific a smallpox attack would be, but leave out the tiny detail that it there is no reason to believe that terrorists have access to small pox and how difficult it would be to obtain it. Also, in the recent past, small pox was in the wild in the U.S. It didn't shut down the country. The bio-terror hysteria makes me wonder whether people have turned off their thinking capacity.

The media claim they are just reporting the facts. However, if they would consistently report with each new case the facts to put this thing in perspective, we could put an end to this hysteria.

So far, no one [here] in Cincinnati has died of anthrax or any other biological weapon. Just last night, however, two people were killed in separate fatal car accidents and one person was shot. Where is the run on bullet proof vests? Why are people still willing to drive in a car?

Paul

Dear Paul,

What’s with this perspective stuff? You’re a real stick in the mud, ya know that?

Best,
Michael Fumento

A Diamond in the Wrong

In an otherwise excellent October 21, 2001 New York Times op-ed, "Keeping Panic at Bay," historian Jared Diamond wrote, "We Americans are now experiencing terrorism for the first time on American soil, as well as forms of terrorism new in world history." Hmmm . . . Methinks relatives of those killed and maimed by the Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski) and Timothy Mcveigh might disagree. We’ve also been subject to non-domestic terrorism. In one instance, the Japanese sent over 9,000 15 kilogram (33 lb.) bombs flying across the Pacific attached to balloons. They were almost a complete failure. Almost. An Oregon woman and five children were killed when they tried to drag one. (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0298/bombsb.htm)

For that matter, what Diamond refers to as the "low-tech military terrorism [that] has been with us since the recorded origins of war" such as mutilations of the living and dead were practiced throughout the Indian wars by the English, French, Americans and Indians before there even was a United States. Apparently some tribes had women who specialized in slowly chewing the fingers off of captured prisoners. Which reminds me, it’s time for lunch.

Michael Fumento is the author of the numerous books, including Science Under Siege.

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