Email like you wouldn't believe

Aw, prairie shit, I just finished my reading for class tomorrow, and it's not even 9 o'clock yet. I think that's a record. As if to reward me, I use my newfound free time to log onto blogger from work and find a little ad offering me a first crack at a beta version of Google's new email service, Gmail. Not only do I get 1,000 damn megs of storage (free!), I also nab the ridiculously convenient email address "mattwright" at gmail dot com — before the entire world signs up for the Gmail gigabyte gravy train! And I'm going to the Union to roll after I get off work. Incredible. Everything is coming up Milhouse.

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I have a couple thigns I wanted to write about, but first I need to satisfy that most primal of human urges and bitch about work. Don't worry, it's a least semi-related to bigger issues.

We here in the editorial office debated for over a week on the merits of the UT System's bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory (yes, the Los Alamos National Laboratory) before I sat down to tackle the beast. (For those not familiar, a good summary is here. Lilly "Tha-Tha Tha Roc" Rockwell has more here and here.) I thought our Viewpoint was pretty fair:

At the University, most students neither worry about nor love the bomb.

But a small, vocal student watchdog group virulently opposes the UT System's bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory because of the lab's ongoing nuclear weapons research. Many more students are, undoubtedly, at least a little uncomfortable with any University involvement in nuclear weapons.

On the flip side, UT System officials argue that managing the lab brings enough significant benefits - from increased research opportunities to a boost in System prestige, which is critical to those oh-so-important college rankings - to warrant a bid.

Then there's a third opinion that asserts: Even if every college in the country refused to oversee the labs, the federal government would not stop researching nuclear weapons, so the System shouldn't pass up the other benefits of lab management.

All of these stances are valid and at the same time incongruous, so the question of whether to support the System's bid becomes one of scope rather than principle. In this respect, the bid appears misguided.
System officials push speculative benefits: managing the lab could increase research opportunities; it may allow for closer collaboration with lab scientists; it might bring more federal research dollars; and there's a chance it will bolster recruitment of top-tier scientists and grad students. The only assured gain for the System comes from prestige.

In many cases, management would not open any new doors for UT faculty or students, only push them open a little wider. University researchers can already work at the lab, and we already attract a number of the best future and current scientists.

Plus, given all of the experience the University of California System already has running the lab, it is unlikely that the UT system has much of a chance of winning - even in spite of the UC System's recent mismanagement.
The bid, which a visiting professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology told the Texan is a "vanity bid," will cost an estimated $6 million. Granted, this money comes from the entire system, comprising nine different colleges, so it is a relative drop in the bucket, but that's still $6 million. Given all of the doubts about the bid and concerns about contributing to the development of nuclear weapons, we wonder if bolstering the System's prestige warrants such an expensive gamble.

It appears System officials have taken all this into consideration and come to a different conclusion than us. "What the National Lab does, including Los Alamos, ... is constitutional, legal and ethical, and I don't see any problem with any of that," board chairman Charles Miller told the Texan. "It's an issue to discuss broadly and clearly, but as far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly reasonable to consider doing something like this."

Fair enough. But with the UT System already known for overseeing important and socially beneficial institutions, such as the UT Health Science Centers, it is unfortunate that System officials cannot find similar ways to improve our standing without all the costly fallout.

But then, come this morning, there's this Firing Line from a prominent UT student actvist:

If it's so hard to express an "opinion" in the Opinion section perhaps the Editorial Board should reconsider naming it "Strattle" or "Compromise" or "Feigned Objectivity Gone Too Far And In the Wrong Section." After aptly delineating three prominent positions on UT's bid for Los Alamos, the piece gallantly concludes that our potential $6,000,000 pursuit is just "unfortunate."

Wow. You acknowledge that UT Watch's opposition to UT managing a lab developing weapons of mass destruction (seemingly only elusive abroad) is a "valid stance." But when Regent Chairman Charles Miller states that Los Alamos is "constitutional, legal and ethical" you respond: Fair enough.

Don't beat around the bush, beat around Bush's appointees (read: UT Regents) with smart, articulate editorials that say something. Dante Aligheri supposedly said "the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." What will the Texan say?

Now, it's one thing to disagree with us; that's fine. But this guy agrees with us and then takes us to task for not doing so on his terms. He refuses to acknowledge any perspective except his strictly principled opposition to nukes, which we addressed and disagreed with, and then drops us a line from his pulpit about the fires of hell.

The only reason I bring this up — besides narcissism of course — is because Seth has up an excellent post on why he now feels he was wrong to support the invasion of Iraq. But he runs into the same problem I encountered today in different form:

Before I self-psychoanalyze, there was one thing about the whole thread that made me really mad--and I will come back to this: all the anti-war people savaging Matt [Yglesias] for admitting he was wrong. "Not good enough," and "Fuck you," and all that. No, Fuck you. If someone apologizes, you accept graciously, no matter how wrong they were at first. Period.

He admits that he has "utter contempt" for the far left, and I'm more and more beginning to agree with him. Whereas before, I saw them as this annoying little band of impotents, I now see that Seth is dead on in his assessment of their discussion of Iraq as it stands now, which is in essence, "Well, we were saying all this was gonna happen from the beginning, so we're obviously morally and intellectually superior, and let's vote for Nader so Bush will have to clean up all this shit for himself":

Look, a lot of neoconservatives got started on that road because they couldn't stand hippies; more particularly, they couldn't stand politics based only on principle (war bad; corporations bad; etc.) rather than pragmatics... Or politics that rely almost solely on sloganeering and demonizing rather than compromise and discourse. That's what people like Jerry Falwell do. That's exactly what it means to demonize a relatively nice, intelligent guy like Matt Yglesias. That kind of holier-than-thou crap is exactly the sort of stuff that makes me ashamed to be a liberal--in fact, I think that it's contrary to the whole concept of liberalism, which is supposed to be based on the care of, and on faith in, other human beings, not setting up political strawmen and subscribing to hateful conspiracy theories.

I mean, seriously, there's a guy like George W. Bush in the White House, flanked by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and this whole goddamn cadre of charlatans and liars and criminals, and the best thing that the Left can find to do is bitch and moan about how stupid such-and-such person was to think that anything good could ever possibly come from invading Iraq? Please.

Okay, this post is much longer than I intended, plus it's time to go slang some rocks, so I'll end with this: If you really want George Bush out of office, then get off your pedestal, stop screaming, take of that silly-ass costume and talk to people who disagree with you like they're decent human beings. Has anything from Fox News or the YCT ever changed your mind? No, of course not, and there's a reason for that.