We Should Live - Ben Bateman

It’s hard to find a good word with which to describe works of prose, especially on the internet. Every word I think of feels wrong. So I’m determined to scour the language for a solution, or at least an understanding of the problem.

Article. When referring to text, an article is traditionally an independent portion of a larger document. Legal documents are often divided into articles, as are newspapers and magazines. This is a great word to use when referring to prose that appears as part of a larger work, because it can refer either to the words themselves, or to actual paper on which they appear. But this word grows weaker the farther it moves from its connection to the larger publication. Can a page on a web site properly be called an article, that is, a portion of the larger publication that is the web site itself? I use it frequently, but only because the alternatives are so much worse.

Column. The historical root here is to a pillar, with the extention to prose coming in newspapers where the writing appears in narrow vertical spaces. Prose that actually appears in that format can properly be called a column. But it’s a stretch to extend it to anything else.

Post. This apparently refers back to cylindrical pieces of wood stuck into the ground. These wooden posts had two uses that gave rise to two distinct extended metaphors.

First, you can tie a horse to a post, which gives rise to a post office or a military post. For centuries, both the mail and the military moved mostly on horseback.

Second, you can nail a piece of paper to a post, and thereby make the information written on the paper available for public inspection. From this I think we get the modern notion of a post on a web site. And the metaphor fits pretty well. In an internet blog or forum, a post is some public prose, usually with some time sensitivity. But take away that time sensitivity, or the text’s public availability, and it’s arguably no longer a post.

Paper. This word is probably the blandest available to refer to prose. A paper is made of—paper! It’s ground-up wood pulp pressed into sheets. There might be some ink on the paper, and that ink might be arranged into words that convey some interesting ideas or information. But the word itself tells us nearly nothing, except that paper will be involved.

And we can’t even be sure of that! One of its common uses is “to present a scholarly paper,” where there’s a lecture and no actual paper is presented to anyone. College students also write papers, which for the moment still involve compressed wood pulp. But it won’t last.

Manuscript. ‘Manu’ means hand, and ’script’ means writing. As an adjective, ‘manuscript’ still refers to someone gripping a stylus and spreading ink onto paper.

As a noun, this word probably referred to a handwritten document that an author would present to a printer, who would then convert the handwritten words into some type of printing plates. The word wandered far from its origin sixty or more years ago, when many authors learned to type on manual typewriters and the “manuscript” that they presented to the printer was not in fact handwritten. Today the document that an author sends to the printer may never have existed as ink on paper. Yet we call it a manuscript, because we have no better word.

Essay. The original Latin ‘exagiuim’ was to test an object’s weight. That ancient meaning is still present in our modern verb ‘assay’, which is mostly limited to geology. From there the French developed ‘essai’, meaning to try or attempt. From there we get ‘essay’ referring to prose, meaning a short text on a single subject presenting the author’s personal view. This is a good word to use when it fits, because it connects directly to the words themselves without getting tangled up in the details of printing technology.

Document. The Latin root is ‘docere’, meaning to show or teach. So a document was originally any physical object that provided proof or evidence. It was often a paper with writing on it, but could also be a wax seal or a drawing. Today it can also be a sound recording, video recording, or photograph. If my memories from law school are accurate, ‘document’ is a term of art in the law of evidence.

This word is poised to stay with us for a long time, because we now have ‘document’ as a general term for computer files designed to present text.

Thesis. This word would be so much fun if it weren’t wrapped up with the specific document that a student writes in earning his master’s degree. The history goes back to a greek verb for to place or set. A thesis in any writing is therefore the idea that you put down and then defend or support. By extension, the whole document can be the thesis. This word could be a fun alternative to ‘essay’ if it weren’t so tied up with academia. I wish they’d give it back.

Dissertation. The Latin here is ‘dissertare’, meaning to debate or argue. This would be another fun word because it refers directly to the words rather than the physical document. But the academicians have snatched this one, too, and bound it up with the PhD.

Composition. The root Old French verb ‘composer’ meant to put together or arrange. Most of our meanings for this word are consistent with that idea. A work of art, especially music, is the bringing together or artistic components to form a whole. Maybe the literary meaning came from the broader artistic meaning. This is a relatively obscure word to use in connection with prose, and it carries a definite odor of the schoolroom. But it could be very effective in suggesting that the prose in question is artistic in nature and involves the bringing together of disparate ideas.

Piece. I sometimes resort to this word in referring to someone’s prose, but I don’t like it. It’s much like ‘article’: It literally refers to a part of some larger thing, though in actual use it’s often unclear which larger thing it’s a piece of. To me, it sounds a little like newspaper slang. ‘Article’ has a bit more dignity, though it isn’t really any clearer.
—

In conclusion, this is a weak area of our language, and a careful writer must select from among various poor options. Maybe the better approach is to avoid words that emphasize the written-ness of the ideas, and instead use verbs that normally apply to speech: say, explain, announce, reveal, ask, hypothesize, accuse, report, wonder, claim, etc.

Americans are generally pessimistic about the situation in Iraq, but an article on NRO says that the Iraqis themselves are much more optimistic:

The International Republican Institute’s “Survey of Iraqi Public Opinion,” released July 19, 2006, provides a useful reality check to these assumptions. The survey records that Iraqis overwhelmingly reject sectarianism and national division; and that they widely support the government they have elected. Moreover, most Iraqis feel safe in their own neighborhoods.

The poll is the latest addition to a series that the Institute has sponsored for the past three years. The surveys were conducted June 14 through June 24 this year—a time of high sectarian violence, particularly in the Baghdad area. The pollsters conducted 2849 interviews in Arabic and Kurdish, balanced for geography, ethnicity, sex, and age.

For those of you who weren’t social-science majors and aren’t otherwise familiar with the mechanics of polling, this suggests a carefully conducted poll.

What do Iraqis think of democracy? Outside Iraq’s borders the Arab world considers Iraqi democracy a sham—a publicity ploy by the Americans to disguise a cruel occupation. In a 2005 John Zogby–Shibley Telhami poll, Arab respondents said the war was bringing less democracy rather than more (58 percent to 9 percent).

But Iraqis disagree. Even in the Sunni provinces, the new Iraqi government musters 23 percent support. And overall, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki commands approval numbers that any Western head of state would envy. Nationwide confidence in the al-Maliki government stands at 58 percent “approve” to 20 percent “disapprove.” Kurds—roughly 20 percent of the population—support the new government 60 percent to 11 percent. Residents of the southern provinces—largely Shiite—approve 83 percent to 3 percent.

Might it be that the Iraqis believe in democracy, but feel unsafe because the incompetent Americans have failed to defeat the insurgency, blah, blah, blah?  Well, no.

Asked about overall security in the nation, 23 percent of Iraqis consider it to be “good” or “fair”, compared to 75 percent who rate it “poor.” But asked about security in their own neighborhoods, the numbers change drastically. Sixty percent of Iraqis consider security “good” or “fair” where they live, compared to 38 percent who consider it poor.

The IRI’s regional breakdowns clarify this further. Residents of Baghdad feel insecure (60 percent to 38 percent), but 82 percent of residents of the Kurdish provinces feel secure in their neighborhoods. Residents of the Sunni provinces feel insecure, (73 percent to 27 percent), but only 9 percent of the residents of the Mid-Euphrates and southern governates rate their security “poor.”

The Americans may panic at the sight of some blood and suffering on their TV screen, but the Iraqis are far tougher.  They know that their lives are better off with Saddam gone, and it doesn’t upset them that they face more difficulties.  The future is always full of difficulties, and each of us can choose to view them as calamities or challenges.

Many writers don’t distinguish this word from ‘end’. But I see ‘terminate’ as being much more limited. It implies a term, that is, a period of time set in advance during which something should exist or occur, and at the end of that time it ceases to exist or occur.

Thus a president has a term of office, or a mortgage debt has a term at the end of which the debt should be fully paid. Pregnancies have terms, and medical jargon refers to babies born at 40 weeks as ‘full term’, while those born earlier are ‘pre-term’, or ‘preemies’. College students take mid-term exams. All of these are periods of time set in advance, and we expect that something should stop happening or cease to exist at the end of that set time.

Speaking of the ‘term’ of someone’s life extends this core meaning slightly. It implies that fate or some deity has decreed the day on which each person will die. It has been a common idea in most times and places, though it’s not popular in the West today.

From that metaphorical meaning of ‘term’, we have extended the meaning further to ‘terminate’ as a euphemism for ‘kill’ or ‘assassinate’. This use suggests a fate-oriented worldview: The victim’s life was preordained to end at that time, and the murderer was merely the tool that Fate used to accomplish its ends. It’s an extended metaphor that can still be consistent with the core meaning if you use it right.

But beyond that point, modern uses for ‘terminate’ become silly. The worst in my view is to call an abortion the ‘termination’ of a pregnancy: Pregnancies have well-defined terms of 40 weeks. An abortion by definition occurs at some time other than the end of the natural term.

Runner-up for worst use of ‘terminate’ is with employment. This might have made sense decades ago when workers could reasonably expect to stay with one company for their entire working lives. That would create a natural term of employment, which could then be terminated. But today few workers or employers have any idea how long they will stay together, so the idea of a term of employment is usually nonsense, and therefore terminating employment should also be nonsense. With most “terminations” of employment, no term has ended.

(The exception would be for an employee working under a contract. If the contract has a set term, such as the year-to-year employment contracts that I understand are common in academia, then it would make sense to say that the contract and resulting employment relationship terminated at the end of their stated term.)

A final problem with ‘terminate’ for ending someone’s employment is that the common syntax often makes the employee the verb’s object: “He has been terminated.” This is exceptionally clumsy usage, because it suggests the older meaning of termination as death. It leaves the question: Has the employee been killed, or merely fired? An attempt at euphemism ironically becomes far more threatening than a more direct word.

Abortion and employment are not the only areas where we hear ‘terminate’ used on something that doesn’t have a term. I will confess to having drafted contracts in which certain conditions (such as breach) led to termination of the contract before its stated term. In hindsight, some other verb would have worked better. But I’m not alone in my poor usage. Google points out that ‘terminate’ is very common in computer programming, where it describes the end of programs or processes that don’t have natural chronological terms. And beyond that it pops up in all sorts of circumstances to describe something that stops occurring or existing regardless of whether it has a natural term.

Bonus Word of the Day: Execute. Lawyers like to use this word to refer to signing legal documents. That usage is consistent with the word’s historical meaning of putting a command or plan into effect. The trouble is that the word is closely associated with the execution of court orders that certain convicted criminals be killed. That following or execution of a court order has become so closely associated with killing someone that many people have no idea that the word could mean anything else.

So here I give way to modernity. It may be etymologically accurate to ask someone to execute his last will and testament. But why add the stink of death to an already morbid conversation? I just ask them to sign.

You may recall this post from last March about Masschusetts liberals working to forbind the Catholic Church, via one of its affiliated charities, from helping the state government match orphans with couples willing to adopt. The Catholic Church decided that its moral principles forbade it from placing orphans with homosexual couples. The state government requires adoption agencies to comply with state law, and state law requires nondiscrimination on sexual orientation. According to this thoughtful article from mid-May, the issue is still up in the air. The governor won’t allow the state government to revoke the adoption licenses at issue, and the legislature won’t pass a religious exemption to the statute. The next governor’s election, set for next fall, is going to resolve the issue, and that resolution will probably result in fewer orphans being adopted, but at least those adoptions will proceed according to politically correct principles.

This is apparently not unusual in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the nation. Tracy Mehan reports on NRO about Robert Smith, who is an appointeee to an area transit authority. According to this Washington Post article, Mr. Smith was on a Sunday television show in which he referred to homosexuals as “persons of sexual deviancy.” When asked about his comments, he did not back down:

“Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant,” he said. “I’m a Roman Catholic.” Smith said his comments had been part of a discussion about a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. “The comments I make in public outside of my [Metro board job] I’m entitled to make,” he said. His personal beliefs, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with running trains and buses and have not affected my actions or decisions on this board.”

Is anyone naive enough to imagine that everyone was satisfied with this explanation? He holds this view that many in the state find offensive. But it doesn’t affect his job. From all indications it exists entirely within his own head, and has affected no one.

A naive reader might say: Of course none of the liberals bothered him about his view. It doesn’t affect his job. Liberals are all about freedom and tolerance. And besides, Mr. Smith’s argument is precisely the argument that homosexuals have been making for decades: If someone’s views or private behaviors have no direct effect on anyone else, then it should be illegal to discriminate against them on that basis. This argument boiled down to the old “consenting adults in the privacy of their own bedrooms” cliche that no right-thinking person would dare oppose today. No less an authority than the US Supreme Court has declared a constitutional right to sodomy in the privacy of one’s own bedroom. Surely the same principle would grant Mr. Smith the right to believe, in the privacy of his own bedroom, that homosexuality is deviant behavior.

To such a naive reader I would say: Don’t be stupid. Modern liberalism isn’t about real freedom, and hasn’t been so for the past quarter-century. Under liberal dominance, you’re free to believe in liberalism and mouth liberal pieties. Otherwise, sit down and shut up.

So it should surprise no one that the political reaction to Mr. Smith’s statements was unanimous and completely intolerant. His beliefs were immediately declared, by everyone willing to comment publicly, to be discrimination against homosexuals prohibited by Maryland law and unacceptable in any government official. Nobody seemed interested in the idea that the idea of discrimination requires some sort of action, rather than a mere thought or statement. Nor did any of the commenters opine that Mr. Smith was entitled to his beliefs, but he was somehow wrong for expressing them in public. The view of everyone quoted in the Washington Post story was that these beliefs, which reflect Catholic doctrine, are unacceptable in a public official. Period. Freedom of religion and freedom of conscience are brushed aside as so much chaff in the march towards progressive Utopia.
It’s funny how constitutional law works. Liberal judges find all sorts of rules in constitutions that aren’t actually written there, and then insist that those rules are iron-clad and can never be changed, even by constitutional amendment. But the rules embodied in the actual literal written words of a constitution? Pfffft! Those are just archaic nonsense written by evil slaveowning dead white males.

Many conservatives are irritated with George Bush and the seemingly flaccid Republican Congress. But disappointing as they may be, the alternative is far, far worse. If you want to imagine a government run by liberals, then you need look no farther than the intellectual gulag that is Massachusetts.

Another far-left academician has self-destructed in a partcularly spectacular way: by advocating the rape and murder of a conservative blogger’s two-year-old son. Michelle Malkin has excerpts here. The nutcase, Deborah Frisch, has resigned from her teaching post at the University of Arizona, and it seems unlikely that she’ll find another. But the conservative blogosphere isn’t nearly done with her yet.

The story has spread across the conservative blogosphere like wildfire. The victim blogger, Jeff Goldstein, is here, though he hasn’t really put all the pieces of the story together yet; he’s just come out from under a big denial-of-service attack. Michelle Malkin’s most recent post on it is here. She always links back to earlier posts on the same subject, which is nice.

The liberal’s blog is here, and by now is full of various non-apology apologies. She’s sorry for certain specific things that she wrote, and for their consequences. But she apparently still isn’t sorry for her unbounded hatred of Jeff Goldstein and others like him. From what I can tell, she still feels that Mr. Goldstein isn’t “human” to her. (Gosh, that sentiment sounds familiar. And dangerous.)

Here’s the story presented from a liberal perspective, with as much sympathy for Frisch as any responsible person can reasonably muster. Ace was apparently in the lead on this story here.

And my thanks to RightWingSparkle for pointing me to the story. I’m having a busy summer, and can’t keep up with the blogosphere hour by hour any more.

My friend Bruce asks where wealth comes from in a modern economy:

If money was all gold coins, wealth would come from the mines - they control the total amount of coin in circulation.

If money was all dollar bills, wealth would come from the mint.

But nowadays, its all on paper, or in computers. Where does new wealth come from?

We could calculate ‘available wealth’ by taking the net worth of all people and asset-owning entities. But that seems like a zero-sum game; just money shifting around. Where does the new stuff come from?

First let’s distinguish wealth from currency. There’s nothing inherently valuable about gold or small green pieces of paper. You can’t eat them, and you can’t build houses out of them. Currency only has value because people agree to accept it in exchange for goods and services. It’s just social consensus. People could decide one day to stop accepting paper money in exchange for goods or services—and in many countries at various points in history, that’s exactly what they’ve done. People could even stop accepting gold, if, for example, someone found a way to synthesize it, and thereby destabilize its supply and drive its price down.

The real value is not in the currency, but in the goods and services themselves. A cow has value because you can eat it, or milk it, and meat and milk satisfy the human desire to eat. A brick has value because you can build a house out of it, and people prefer living in houses to living out in the wind and rain. A dry-cleaning service is valuable because it cleans your clothes, and people prefer clean clothes to dirty clothes. That’s where the real economy is. Currency is just a way to help people avoid the inefficiencies of bartering.

So the total wealth in the world at any given time is the total value of its goods and services. If you owned all the money in the world, then you still couldn’t buy more good and services than those in existence. If you could go back in time 3000 years and be the richest man alive, then you would still be much poorer than you are today, because all the goods and services in existence 3000 years ago would make you less happy than a teensy fraction of the goods and services available today. 100% of a tiny economy can be worth much more than a trillionth of a huge economy.

There’s more wealth in the world today because there are more and better goods and services to buy, not because there’s more money to buy them with. So the proper answer to Bruce’s question is: Why are there more and better goods and services available today than there were 3000 years ago? It’s because we’re better organized. Wealth increases when people reorganize the world so that it more efficiently meets human desires.

A blank computer CD isn’t worth much. A CD with some data on it might be very valuable. Where did the value come from? It came from a human mind organizing the atoms on the CD in a way that people find desirable.

A book is just paper and ink, both of which are very cheap today. But the two together become much more valuable when someone arranges the ink on the paper to form words in a sequence that people enjoy reading. The configuring of the ink on the page is the creation of wealth.

And this isn’t limited to intellectual property. Once upon a time there were some trees and rocks in the ground, and most of us wouldn’t have found them very useful. But then somebody cut down the trees and made lumber out of them. And somebody else dug the rocks out of the ground and refined them into steel, sheetrock, tile, copper wire, and other mineral products. Then some other people arranged those processed trees and rocks into a house, which was very valuable because it made people happy. The trees and rocks weren’t valuable in their natural state. Human effort and ingenuity made them valuable. That’s where wealth comes from.

Finally, consider services. Imagine a day-laborer pickup area, with a couple dozen men hanging around, waiting for a job. Unless someone employs them, those men will not generate much human happiness. They’ll just stand there, or create small amounts of their own short-term happiness through chit chat or watching TV. But then suppose that a contractor hires several of them, and starts assigning jobs: Worker #1 is told to nail this lumber together this way. Worker #2 is told to mix this cement according to these specifications and pour it over there, and so on. Worker #3 is told to use some earthmoving equipment in a useful way. Just as with the trees and rocks, the men go from being disorganized and not generating much happiness into a configuration that produces lots of happiness. The reorganization of people creates wealth, just as does the reorganization of rocks, trees, ink on a page, or atoms on a CD.

Various Hollywood liberals are planning a hunger strike to protest our military presence in Iraq. They hope that it’ll pull the entire country together. And it will. The Left will hope that they starve themselves enough to draw attention to their cause. And the Right will hope also hope that these celebrities starve themselves into unattractiveness. If that’s how they want to show devotion to their cause, then they’re free to do so.

But don’t worry: There’s no risk of starvation. It isn’t a real hunger strike. The MSM still fells some duty to include the relevant facts, even if they’re buried in paragraph 16. While a few non-Hollywood liberals say that they’ll fast for several days (though with no firm goals), “[o]ther supporters, including Penn, Sarandon, novelist Alice Walker and actor Danny Glover will join a ‘rolling” fast, a relay in which 2,700 activists pledge to refuse food for at least 24 hours, and then hand over to a comrade.”

Mark Steyn filets this with his usual rapier wit:

‘’I'll not have what she’s not having.” Winona Ryder is telling waiters, ‘’Hold the haunch of venison.'’ Keira Knightley is saying, ‘’Hey, I’ll just go with the short stack this morning. And the low-fat simulated-maple syrup substitute.'’ Ice T has given up iced tea. Disgusted by the callousness of the Bush war machine, William Powell and Myrna Loy have decided to go without the olive in their fourth martini. Willie Nelson is said to be gaunt and sounding croaky. Michael Moore, hovering dangerously at 300 pounds, has told friends, ‘’You can never be too rich but you can be too thin.'’ Molly Ringwald’s press agent has announced his client is starving for publicity. Tom Cruise was reported as looking physically shrunken, but then put his elevator shoes back on.

A friend of mine was frustrated with trying to understand his girlfriend. She would occasionally explode at him, and from his perspective these bouts of anger were impossible to predict or avoid.

I assured him that he was mistaken. I’m something of an expert on the subject, having not only been happily married for 16 years, but also having raised my daughter from toddlerhood to womanhood. Women’s moods aren’t all that difficult to predict; the key is to know which variables to watch. Men tend to pick the wrong variables, usually those associated with some theory about how women should act, rather than how they do act.

The bizarre twentieth-century fetish for ignoring all sex differences muddies our thinking in this area. Anyone with the slightest grasp of evolutionary biology should expect men and women to act very different, as they would expect the sexes of nearly any species to act differently. I have much more to say on that, but I’ll reserve it for a later post.
So for all those confused men out there, I offer my theory of predicting your woman’s mood. Here are the variables to watch:

1. Hunger. When two people start arguing, it’s very, very likely that one of them has low blood sugar. It’s very difficult to argue or stay angry on a full stomach.

2. Affirmation or rejection of feelings. Women get hungry on their own, but this is the most effective way to make a woman angry or happy. When a woman tells you how she feels, then you can offer empathy, or you can tell her that she shouldn’t feel that way for reasons X, Y, and Z. Many men enjoy conversations that amount to verbal battles of wits. Very few women enjoy those.

3. Comfort with surroundings. Messy rooms stress most women, as do unpleasant odors, poor personal grooming, and other signs of disorder and uncleanliness. Women vary on the specific aspects of their surroundings that they find pleasant or stressful. Many focus on clutter, but others prefer hygiene, the appearance of wealth, aesthetics, pets, etc. But nearly every woman will become irritable if the important aspect of her environment is not as she wants it. This is much more important for women with significant men in their lives, as it’s basically the expression of the nesting instinct.

4. Social status with other women. Women compete amongst themselves on a plane that’s largely invisible to men, because their methods are usually very subtle. But a snippy comment from a woman will upset your woman far more than you would expect, because the same comment wouldn’t upset you at all.

5. Sickness and internal discomfort. Your woman is virtually guaranteed once-a-month crankiness. Beyond that, she might not have slept well, she might be falling ill, or her feet might hurt from poorly fitting shoes. If she’s in pain, then she won’t be in a good mood.

6. External stresses. There’s no sex difference on this one: Each woman has her own life, with her own goals and frustrations. Her mood will go up or down as she sees herself accomplishing her goals, or failing to accomplish them. She can also just have a bad day, and affirming her fatigue or frustration is a great way to score points.

7. Perception of danger. Young men have trouble with this. Most men like the idea of danger. That’s why we flock to movies in which the hero is continuously on the verge of being killed. Most of us don’t actively seek out danger, but our response once danger has passed is usually one of exhilaration and accomplishment.

Women see danger very differently. To them, there’s no upside. Danger is simply scary and acutely unpleasant. Many women learn to handle danger and cope effectively in dangerous situations. But very few women enjoy the feeling of being in danger, and most detest it. So a perception of the possibility of imminent harm will often drag down a woman’s mood for hours or even days afterwards. This is a particular problem for young men, whose moods often soar to levels of intensity often associated with violence, even though the mood itself may be elation or friendly horseplay.

8. Personal attractiveness. Nearly every woman wants to look good, because her appearance not only helps her secure a man’s affections, but it also plays a big role in her social status with other women. A woman will be unhappy to the extent that she feels that her hair looks bad, her clothes look bad, she doesn’t have her customary makeup, etc. It doesn’t help much to tell a woman that she looks good without those things, even if it’s true, because women usually try to look good more for each other than for their men. And women tend to judge a woman not on her inherent attractiveness, but on whether she has made the most of what nature gave her.

A week or two ago one of the leading news stories was over North Korea’s announcement that it would be testing missiles. For those who only get their news via the MSM, North Korea is a huge threat to us. It’s a communist hellhole of a country where the peasants eat rats and grass to survive, though the army does much better. And unlike Iran, geography would make it difficult for the US to strike back at N Korea. It’s nestled up next to China, which uses its small but aggressive neighbor the way a drug dealer uses a pit bull: It’s an effective tool to keep others at bay, though there’s always a risk that the little monster will turn on you.

The good news is that we still have some time: Their missiles don’t work very well yet. The MSM is predictably silent on anything that would encourage Americans to stand strong in the face of adversity (or maybe they’re just slow), but the right-wing blogosphere is having some fun with it. Wizbang has some news links. GOP Vixen cracks some jokes. Michelle Malkin is focusing on what the United Nations will do. (And we all know the answer: Nothing.) Hot Air has several updates and links.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the fact the N Korean missiles failed doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually work. And don’t confuse N Korean missile technology with Chinese missile technology. Remember that the Chinese bought our very best missile technology from Bill Clinton in the late nineties for a couple hundred thousand in campaign contributions, and the Chinese have lots more money to invest in weapon systems. When the Chinese start conducting similar saber-rattling exercises—as they inevitably will—their missiles will almost certainly work properly.