THE MOONLIGHT SYMPHONY
MORU ROCKS, SERENGETI PLAINS, TANZANIA, AFRICA. It is at night that Africa becomes most alive - especially when there’s a full moon. The most restful night’s sleep one can have, it seems, is when you are lulled by the cackling whine of hyenas, the incessant barking of zebras, the coughing of lions, the grunting of hippos, the bellowing of Cape buffalo, the stomach rumblings of elephants, the flutter of Guinea fowl roosting in the trees, and the soft chirp of the tiny Scopes owl. The Moonlight Symphony of the Serengeti. I’m writing this on the veranda of my tent overlooking a grassy plain and trees along a nearby stream. Herds of zebra and wildebeest are grazing, a few giraffe are munching on a huge umbrella acacia tree, and two elephants are happily stripping the bark off a yellow fever tree with their tusks for an afternoon snack. It is a peaceful and restful scene. In the distance is a rock outcropping that’s the home of a pride of 11 lions, a mommy with four cubs, two other females, and two males with gorgeous golden manes. They’re sleeping off last night’s repast of a young wildebeest. Predators on the Serengeti do not prey on themselves. Two prides of lions, say, may occasionally compete for territory, but they never attempt to survive upon the other, and it would never occur to them to do so. Only man has the capacity to choose to prey on his fellow man. In our time there have been three great predations upon civilization: Nazism, Communism, and Islamism. The first was defeated entirely, and that by military force. The Soviet version of the second was defeated by a combination of military threat and guile. The Chinese version remains. The struggle continues with the third. There is a lesson to be learned here in the Serengeti about how to conduct this struggle.
HOMELAND SECURITY
Sure we trust our kids. Most of them grow up OK. A large part of the problem for parents is the mystery - the not knowing what really goes on in their kids’ lives. Are the web sites and chat rooms they frequent more or less innocent? We are pretty sure we can trust them, but can we trust the people they are communicating with? What about their email and IM buddies? Because so many of kids’ potentially dangerous activities and relationships are conducted online, a measure of control is possible. We have to figure out a way to get at their information without their realizing it.
TYRANNY AND THE BOOGIEMAN OF ISLAM
As you can see, this woman is not Chinese. She’s European, a Celt. Although she looks young, she’s 4,000 years old, born before 2,000 BC - in what is now China. It turns out European Caucasians got to China before the Chinese. The lady is known as the Beauty of Loulan, where her mummy was found in the ruins of an ancient city on the eastern edge of the Takla Makan Desert. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of mummified remains from such ruins (many with blonde or red hair), and using DNA analysis, have determined that Caucasians populated the entire area, geographically known as the Tarim Basin, for a thousand years before Han Chinese arrived. The Chinese Communists hate this research and are trying to suppress it - for it supports the claim of the Uighur people who live in the Tarim Basin (the Chicoms call it Xinjiang Province) that the region does not belong to China and never has.
BAGHDAD MEMES
One of the most provocative, brilliant, fascinating, erudite, yet ultimately silliest books of recent times is Jared Diamond’s best-selling Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book is Diamond’s long attempt to answer a question put to him by a primitive tribesman in New Guinea, essentially, “Why do you guys in the West have such prosperity why we are still knee deep in pig poop?”As a learned and persuasive hard-core environmental determinist, Diamond’s answer is: The West (whose inhabitants are two-digit IQ morons compared to the natural brain power of New Guinea natives) is the most culturally and technologically successful civilization in history because Mesopotamia (where Western Civilization originated) had wild animals and grasses conducive to domestication 9,000 years ago.See what I mean by silly? For a determinist like Diamond, thought processes are irrelevant to the fate of human societies. He has no appreciation nor understanding of how cultural values and practices drive the success or failure of civilizations. Proof of this is that the word “meme” does not appear once in the book’s 480 pages.
SYNCBACKSE
There are many backup programs to choose from. I did not test dozens of contenders against one another. I took the advice of the computer magazines. Most rated SyncBackSE at or near the top. That’s the one I bought and it’s the one I’ll review.
BACK TO AFRICA
It’s very easy to get bitten by the African bug, the one that compels you to keep coming back to the most primeval place on our planet. I took this picture in the Serengeti in 1971, I’ve been going back to Africa every chance I got ever since, and by the time you read this I’ll be there again. Africa has been a lot in the news this week. The G8 forgiving billions in debt by African countries; Little Bobby Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s depraved dictator, bulldozing thousands of poor people’s homes into rubble for not supporting him; President Bush hosting his counterparts from five African countries in the White House. One of them was Festus Mogae of Botswana. Bush hailed Botswana as an African model of democracy, and you have to give Mogae credit for this. What comes up for me, however, is the war the Botswana government has been waging against the last remaining cultural link humanity has with its original lifestyle, with our ancestors who birthed the human race, the Bushmen.
THE FIVE-STEP JET LAG SOLUTION
It’s summer, which means summer vacation, which means for some of you buzzing off to a distant time zone and getting wigged out on jet lag. For business travelers, jet lag can translate loss of mental acuity into loss of an important deal. For government folk, it can translate into failed negotiations or embarrassing misstatements to a foreign press. I’ve used a five-step jet lag avoidance method for some years now. I’ve given it to a number of corporate CEOs, diplomats, Capitol Hill staffers, Congressmen and Senators. They tell me it works. It works for me. Here it is and I trust it will work for you.
BOLIVIA’S ROAD TO NOWHERE
Remember this map in Bye-Bye Bolivia last April? A favorite protest tactic of Evo Morales’ socialist mobs is to block roads leading to Bolivia’s capital, La Paz. This may backfire big time. Serious candidates for the world’s scariest roads are the thin ribbons of asphalt that plunge off the Bolivian highlands to the lowlands. There are only two, and since the lowlands produce most of Bolivia’s wealth, they are the lifelines to all those protesting folk way up there in the Andes. So don’t be surprised if the guys in the lowlands, the targets of Morales’ demands to nationalize and expropriate their wealth, blow the roads and destroy those two thin lifelines. They won’t do it themselves. Brazilian Intelligence - ABIN (Agencia Brasileira de Inteligencia Nacional) - will do it for them.
GENERIC TROJAN / ADWARE REMOVAL PROCEDURE
So many people have been having vicious malware attacks recently, attacks which have brought their computers down, that I am addressing the problem this week. I’ve discussed many of these items in earlier columns in bits and pieces. Apparently people don’t pay attention, don’t protect their computers, and go to dangerous sites. In case you’ve caught a particularly wicked infection that is wreaking havoc with your computing, do the following. Download the following items.
SEND SWAYR TO THE WHITE HOUSE
I received this terrific idea from TTPer Chris Landrum from Kennewick, Washington. It was in response to the No Apology article last week, describing how a number of folks at State and the Pentagon are sick and tired of our kowtowing groveling constant apologies to Moslems. Inspired by John Wayne’s famous line as Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon - “Never apologize, son, it’s a sign of weakness” - these folks even sent a DVD of SWAYR to the White House. Chris Landrum’s idea is to have a SWAYR to the White House campaign - hundreds, hopefully thousands, of Americans ordering the movie at Amazon and having it sent to President Bush at the White House, together with a letter demanding No More Apologies to Moslems. Want to participate? It’s easy: