Dr. Jack’s Reading Recommendations for April, 2003
This month we’re going to focus upon books on Islam. The first thing to do in this regard, however, is to go into the To The Point Archives and read the Myth of Mecca article. It explains how the religion of Islam was invented as a religious rationale to justify Arab imperialism. At the end of that article, you’ll see a list of sources, all of which I strongly recommend as works of serious professional scholarship:
• Al-Rawandi, I.M. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources. Prometheus, 2000 • Crone, P.M. Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Oxford, 1987.**
PROUDER THAN EVER
[Written ten days after the start of The War in Iraq, March 31, 2003]Let me say it straight. I am almost sixty years old, and I have never in my life been prouder to be an American than I am today.I was talking to my friend Tony Blankley, editorial editor of the Washington Times, the other day, and when I compared George Bush to Ronald Reagan, Tony replied, “It may turn out to be the other way around.”
How to End Civilization as We Know It
Doomsday scenarios were ever-popular during the Cold War. But the reality was that if a nuclear missile hit a U.S. city, we would know for sure who launched it: the Soviets. Thus we knew against whom to retaliate. And thus the Cold War was conducted without a single nuclear shot fired.We are now facing a threat an order of magnitude or greater than that of the Cold War. What if a nuclear bomb goes off in a U.S. city and we're not sure who did it, so we don't know against whom to retaliate?
Something’s in the Air for 2003
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT, January 2003
One hundred and sixty years ago, in 1843, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Henry Ellsworth, reported to Congress: “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” (This is the source of the spurious quote attributed in 1899 to Ellsworth’s successor, Charles Duell, who never said “Everything that can be invented has been invented”).
Human improvement did not come to an end in 1843, nor will it in 2003. In fact, I think 2003 is going to
PLAYING POKER WITH KOREA
One of the meta-reasons America won the Cold War is that Russians play chess, while Americans play poker. Chess demands great skill and intelligence, particularly at developing complex long-range strategies and anticipating your opponent's moves. But it bears little resemblance to life in the real world. It is completely static and open. Nothing is hidden. Poker is very different. You have to guess what your opponent has and the extent to which he is bluffing. In business, in politics, in life in general, the folks who know how to play poker will almost always fare better than those who know how to play chess.
THE SECRET RUSSIAN GAS IDENTIFIED
Across the world, today's newspapers carried front-page headlines similar to that of the Washington Times: "Russia Remains Silent on Deadly Knockout Gas." The mystery of the Knockout Gas's identity has been solved.
AMERICA’S SADDAM
In light of Janet Reno’s concession of defeat in Florida’s gubernatorial primary elections, America needs to remember the horrific evil perpetrated by then-Attorney General Reno in the first months of the Clinton presidency.It is important to grasp that what happened in Waco was no accident, that the Davidians were killed on purpose in an act of revenge by the American government. And it is important to know just how they were killed, that the method of their killing was as grisly and evil as anything perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein discovered the most lethal chemical warfare agent was a combination of sulfur mustard gas with hydrogen cyanide, which he used in artillery shells to slaughter thousands of Iranians. It was in effect this same combination that Janet Reno had the FBI use to slaughter 87 men, women, and children in Waco.
GLACIERS IN THE GOBI
In the deepest heart of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, just south of the Flaming Cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews discovered dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, there is a naked spine of mountains called the Gurvan Saihan. In the Gurvan Saihan there is a valley called Yol Alyn, the Vulture’s Mouth. And in the Vulture’s Mouth, there is a glacier.
It is not a big glacier, the ice buildup of a stream that refuses to melt even in the heat of the Gobi summer. But it is a glacier nonetheless, thick enough for my son Jackson and I to walk
Still Not Eaten by the Leopard Seal
When penguins in Antarctica get hungry, they get nervous. Grouped together on an iceberg, none of them wants to be the first to jump in the water and go fishing — because there just might be a leopard seal waiting for them. There’s nothing in the sea a leopard seal finds more tasty to eat than fresh penguin.
So the waddle (on land or ice, a group of penguins is a waddle; in the water, it’s a raft) bunches together, the ones in the back pushing forward, the ones in the front backing up away from the ice edge. When
Blowing Up The Bombers
One of the most critical imperatives for Israel right now is to stop the suicide bombing. One of the best ways would be to blow up the bombs -- and preferably the bomber along with it -- prematurely. The ideal would be to blow up the bomber so only he (or the occasional she) dies and no innocent Israelis.Here are two different versions of how to accomplish this.