Monday, September 17. 2012
"Making the case is necessary, but it may not be sufficient."
Norm at Normblog's When reasoned argument fails
Quirky, quaint, and comfortably shabby and unpretentious, Cold Spring (pop. 1900) is a 75-minute commute to Grand Central Station on the Metro North Hudson line. A few commute daily, but a good number commute for weekends because if your legs are good, you can walk from the train station to everywhere in Cold Spring.
It's nice to see the downtown of a small town so busy with friendly people, walking people, busy cafes, etc. Seems to be the sort of town in which it is impossible to be anonymous.
Terry Teachout went there to escape life for a few days. He "did nothing." (His Dad is more like me - GoGoHiHo).
The NYT profiled the village a few years ago.
Here are some listings of Cold Spring real estate. Some of those listings are remarkably ugly. Prices aren't too bad, all things considered.
The village is about 40 minutes north of White Plains, and a half hour south of Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, and the great CIA - The Culinary Institute of America with its great restaurants. It's the Juillard of cooking. This view down the Hudson from the lawn of Boscobel, site of the famed Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (their photo, not mine):
This is Lower Main St., with the little gazebo on the Hudson shore. I tried to avoid taking pics of people.
More pics below the fold -
Continue reading "A little American town: Cold Spring, New York"
From Simon Schama's Why I Write:
Orwell’s four motives for writing still seem to me the most honest account of why long-form non-fiction writers do what they do, with “sheer egoism” at the top; next, “aesthetic enthusiasm” – the pleasure principle or sheer relish of sonority (“pleasure in the impact of one sound on another”); third, the “historical impulse” (the “desire to see things as they are”), and, finally, “political purpose”: the urge to persuade, a communiqué from our convictions.
To that list I would add that writing has always seemed to me a fight against loss, an instinct for replay; a resistance to the attrition of memory. To translate lived experience into a pattern of words that preserves its vitality without fixing it in literary embalming fluid; that for me has been the main thing.
No mention of the income at all?
Iceland was a mess after the 2008 meltdown. By 2012, while GDP per capita is still at depressed levels, unemployment is also down dramatically and growth has returned, making Iceland a 'star' among the embattled European nations.
It helps, somewhat, to be a homogeneous and isolated isle. It also helps to let financial institutions fail so debt can be washed out properly.
I'm not a fan of rap music, but Russ Roberts and Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek have done a good job making economics entertaining for the younger crowd. I sent their Hayek vs. Keynes series of videos to my son at college. There is an appropriate correlation to the events in Iceland and Hayek's views. There is no Keynesian stimulus taking place there.
"[W]hen the boom has collapsed, there exist dislocations and disproportionalities in the world of industry, the wreckage of false expectations, which monetary manipulation is not likely to remove."~Lionel Robbins in 1934, writing on the Great Depression
 Are All Teachers Still the Selfless Heroes of Yesteryear?
Buying a Home Is Now 45% Cheaper Than Renting
Unnecessary equivocation in life
Is this racism? Poll: 0% of Blacks Support Romney
Arguments for wind power are just hot air
And Now Let Us Gasp In Astonishment At What Just Happened To The Newspaper Business
CONCERNED VIRGINIA CITIZEN DISCUSSES MEDIA INFLUENCE
Florida Couple Wins $4.5 million: OB Didn’t Suggest Abortion for Damaged Child:
I hope when little Bryan grows up he never Googles himself or his parents. I can’t imagine the horror when he reads that his parents wish they would have killed him. I wonder how quickly he will grasp that his parents think his life, since he has disabilities, isn’t worth living. I wonder if that jury considered how the disabled community would feel if they knew that a jury awarded these parents millions because they missed the opportunity to abort their disabled son.”
Nice payday for the ambulance-chaser
Wisconsin Judge Strikes Down Collective Bargaining Reform Law
Via Ace:
As Cabela's prepares the selection of guns it will sell for the holiday season and winter hunting, the outdoor-gear retailer has two plans: one if President Barack Obama is re-elected, and one if he isn't.
It’s impossible to keep U.S. diplomats safe
Pakistani protesters march on U.S. Consulate; 1 dead:
It also has been unclear how much of the violence was spontaneously triggered by the film and how much of it was spurred on by anti-American militants using it as a tool to grow and enrage the crowds.
What's unclear?
Why is the Arab world so easily offended?
They aren't. Any excuse will do. It's the religion of perpetual outrage
Ben Stein: Mr. President, Mitt Romney Is Not the Enemy
Appeasement and Blowback
An American woman reaches out to Muslims: PS We Love You Wonderful Muslims to Death.
I think it was satire, but it's hard to tell nowadays
Sunday, September 16. 2012
This is my idea of a pizza. Thin crust so it's almost like a cracker, cooked in a wood-fired oven. Shape doesn't matter, and if it's not a little scorched it doesn't taste right. Toppings? Whatever you can find in the fridge or the pantry. No tomato sauce, please. Never! I think this one is Buffalo mozzarella, asparagus, sliced yellow tomato, and pancetta. Nice.
People with outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens have pizza parties where you assemble your own small ones from a vast assortment of ingredients, then throw it in the oven for 3-5 minutes. I have a pal who does this. That's how they made fast food in ancient Rome.
Someday, I will build an outdoor combination oven and grill out of fieldstone. Indoor cooking is for the birds, and ovens were never meant to be indoors. My Memphis cast iron grill/smoker is excellent - burns wood just as well as charcoal - but it would not work for pizza, bread or calzones where you need a deep oven with a banked wood fire in the back.
Here's how to use a wood-fired oven:
And here's Baking bread in the Wood Oven. Watch that, and you'll understand the luxury of electric or gas ovens - 3 to 6 hours to heat up a wood oven.
Use the Force: How Magicians Can Control Your Decisions - Our choices are often not as independent as we would like to believe.
It is certainly true that we frequently deceive ourselves about the rationality and the intent of our choices. As easily as we may deceive ourselves, we are easily deceived too. The article explains some of the tricks magicians use to "force" our "free choices."
What exactly are we getting for the time and the billions of dollars we spend on higher education? A quote:
Professors are often put in an impossible position: Their students, regardless of IQ, typically have few actual academic skills when they arrive, and they know next to nothing substantive; yet they have an almost unassailable confidence in their belief that they are highly skilled and extensively knowledgeable. If a professor gives them honest feedback about the quality of what they produce, who would support him? The administration? The parents? The education school establishment? No, he would be on an island.
That is a lonely place, and it is expecting too much that more than a few outliers here and there would persevere. The students whom professors do care about are the small fraction who want to get Ph.D.s. Those students professors nurture. For all the other students, however, professors’ feelings tend to range from mild irritation to thinly veiled contempt.
But we cannot be too hard on the students, either. Ask even the serious ones what proportion of their classes they believe is actually worthwhile. Their answer: maybe 25 percent.
Rosh Hashanah, which begins tonight, is the first of the intense ten Days Of Awe (or Repentance) that ends with Yom Kippur. Is ten days enough time to make good on our better selves and set a course for a better year and life ahead? For some it may be. For most of us however, it takes many years to set ourselves straight with others and with G-d’s desires for how we should live. It really doesn’t matter as long as you get there. What does matter is the realization that every day that goes by without thinking about it, without in some way working at it, is time lost forever and opportunities lost forever.
Shana Tova Umetukah is the traditional greeting at Rosh Hashanah. It means I wish you a sweet and good New Year. It is up to you to make it come true.
Mark 8:27-38
8:27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?"
8:28 And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets."
8:29 He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah."
8:30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
8:32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
8:33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
8:34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
8:35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
8:36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
Saturday, September 15. 2012
Kayaked down the choppy and windy Hudson a piece from the charming, granola-feeling old river hamlet of Cold Spring, NY (which was packed with cheerful strolling, shopping, and eating people) then snuck under the Metro North Hudson Line bridge into Constitution Marsh just before the tide got too high to get under it.
They rent kayaks on the river. We rent kayaks. Kayaking on ordinary waters is easy for anybody. We did a good 4 hours. The rental guy said "Use your core, not your arms, and find your core rhythm." We are not proficient yet, but we sure enjoy it. The pros give the same advice for tennis, but I still use my arms. I have no core rhythm for anything.
Those hills are the Hudson Highlands, on the other (west) side of the river. Storm King. Dramatic. The Hudson there is still tidal, but low salinity. Can barely taste salt when you splash yourself.
Did not see a lot of migrants - no Teal yet. A migrant Harrier, Osprey, and some Spotted Sandpipers, a Sharpie, plus the resident Bald Eagles, Cormorants, Black Ducks, Mallards and herons (Great Blue and American).
A recurrent thought was that this must have been great for October and November duck hunting before the Audubon Society took it over. Good for Rail shooting too. The marsh is full of Wild Rice and Cattails. In the 1830s, some guy tried to make it a Wild Rice farm, hence the kayak routes and the abundance of Wild Rice.
No powerboats allowed. You could get lost in there if they did not have water-trail markers because it is a water maze. Good fun. We kayaked down to the southern lake, and visited the Audubon lodge there (and grabbed a coffee, chatted with the naturalist, and used their facilities).
If you kayak down the marsh around 40 minutes, you turn a corner and what do you see, across the marsh, across Constitution Island, and on the other side of the Hudson?
As I recall, George Washington picked that location. The big river is narrow and defensible there, due to Constitution Island poking into it.
Well they're not showing any lights tonight
And there's no moon.
There's just a hot blooded singer
Singing 'Memphis in June'
And they're beatin' the devil out of a guy
Who's wearing a powder-blue wig.
Later he'll be shot for
Resisting arrest.
I can still hear his voice crying
In the wilderness.
What looks large from a distance
Close up ain't never that big.
Full lyrics here.
From the new Bob interview in Rolling Stone, the interviewer had fits trying to get Bob to say he loved the O. Here's the best he could get out of him:
"He loves music. He's personable. He dresses good. What the fuck do you want me to say?"
Hey, MSM. That's a game-changing endorsement!
 I learned about Poutine from NRO.
Best food in the world? I would need convincing. The freshness of the curd seems to be key.
Maybe it's cold weather comfort food for after playing three hours of hockey outdoors when it's 8 degrees F. Add a few Molson's and then it's bedtime.
 Summer is slowly ending up here. Carpe diem. We're kayaking on the upper Hudson River this morning.
Money Can Buy You a Baby Girl. But What About Happiness?
For self-defense: .22 beats .45, but shotgun beats all
Kodiak Bears, Up Close and Personal, in the Alaskan Wilderness A newly renovated retreat gives visitors a chance to see the Kodiaks in their element
Old Urbanist: Places That Aren't Car-free, But Should Be
Tawdry Sex and the Decline of Yale
Ten Reasons to Ignore the U.S. News College Rankings
5 Signs He's Cheating
Our friend Tom Brewton of The View From 1776 has a book out: The Liberal Jihad: The Hundred Year War Against The Constitution
Column: The sun never sets on Obama’s failures
Where are his popular successes?
Hewitt: President Chauncey Gardiner, The Press and The Collapse
Steyn:
...don’t worry, when your president’s so cool he’s doing gigs in Vegas, what happens in Tunis stays in Tunis.
As a Canadian, I’m interested to see that America has belatedly adopted the divided responsibilities of the Westminster system. Proceeding from the Pimp with the Limp show to Letterman to Beyoncé and back again, Barack Obama makes a perfectly adequate (if somewhat cheesy and downmarket) ceremonial queen.
"Ceremonial queen"? Ouch.
Knish: We're better than they are:
Our experiment at civilizing the savage failed miserably in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will go on failing as often as we keep attempting it. And at the end of the experiment, there will be burning embassies and savages crying, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger", the same words that the bearded bandit who was one of the first Muslims and their many times great-grandfather was crying out as he was raping the shamelessly unveiled tribal woman who would become their many times great-grandmother.
"There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger" means that the Muslim need not waste time worrying about his conscience. His conscience is a Koran and that book says that he's entitled to kill any time that an infidel offends Islam by mocking his prophet, walking in front of him or building a skyscraper that is taller than a mosque. The Muslim need not waste time pondering the ethical implications of killing another human being to know that he is better than we are. His little black book assures him that he is better than us, that he has every right to kill us and that if he fails, he will be raping demon virgins who are so anorexic that their bones can be seen through their flesh.
But, we oh what good people we are, we will apologize for having an embassy and for having free speech and for getting our embassy in the way of their mob and our free speech in the way of our religious sensibilities.
Washington Post: Hey, Obama’s Chevy Volt Is A Real Stinker
More Obama drug and homosexuality allegations (video)
Is this stuff true?
MSNBC agrees with Egyptian government. Says Jonah:
Are we really going to hold what we can say or do in our own country hostage to the passions of foreign lynch mobs?
Echoes of "Better red than dead." Cowering submission seems to be a reflex.
Speaking of dhimmitude, Obama submits to Brotherhood, asks for suppression of anti-Islam video
Can't stop bending over bowing
Al Qaeda Flag Flies Over U.S. Embassy In Tunisia
HuffPo Contributor: ‘Why Should I Care’ About Death of Ambassador Stevens
Romney is right: In embassy incidents, Obama administration's first instinct was to sympathize with attackers
Soul Brothers: The Arab Street and The Mainstream Media:
...our media, terrified that their hero would be unmasked and themselves also then revealed as shallow and unworthy, focused their ire on Mitt Romney while the world burned, hoping that Romney had made a “gaffe” even when it was clear that his analysis, if not his timing, was correct.
Meanwhile, our government and its State Department have been revealed to be criminally negligent in the protection of their own people.
The roots of this negligence are a willed ignorance of the realities of the Middle East.
Obama: The Weak Horse
Romney's not doing badly in the polls
The World from Berlin: 'Obama's Middle East Policy Is in Ruins'
Spoken by Hamlet, Hamlet Act 4 Scene 4
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
The people in the foreground are clamming. Clamming is good fun. Fun to harvest, fun to eat.
Friday, September 14. 2012
What is higher ed these days? Any of the above, or maybe sometimes all of the above along with a delayed adulthood.
From Stephanie Blanchard:
By the time I was college-aged and supposed to be "finding myself," I didn't want to pursue a degree; I wanted to work. Instead of searching through course catalogs, I found a better-paying position with a large insurance company. At that time, the early 1990s, no one demanded that I have a degree or even wondered how young I was. (I'm guessing because it was illegal to ask.) Someone in Human Resources put me in a temp spot, and before long, I had a permanent job followed by a promotion. It took me a while, and working for a few small businesses, before I finally found my true calling, newspapers, but by the time I became a weekly reporter, I already had ten years' office experience, at just 24 years old.
This would be impossible today.
In Psychiatry today there is much discussion, debate, and confusion about diagnosing the varieties of serious mood or attitudinal instability (ie instability which is life-disrupting in some significant way).
It's not your grandfather's Bipolar Disorder anymore. The numbers of people labelled as "Bipolar spectrum" has increased dramatically, for better or worse, in recent years. It may be "diagnosis creep," or it might be better understanding. A complicating factor is the overlap between Bipolar Spectrum problems and Borderline Personality, discussed here, where flips in attitudes towards relationships (eg idealization and devaluation) can be prominent in both (along with volatility, grandiosity, hypersensitivity, rage and paranoia).
All of this mess can be treated. I have become a fan of Lamictal for mood instability and attitude shifts which do not rise to the level of full-blown Manic-Depression but which are well-outside the normal moods and shifts of daily life. Lamictal plus confrontational psychotherapy, and maybe an antidepressant.
Here's Hornbacher's book, Madness: A Bipolar Life
I often wonder what such peoples' lives (mostly women) were like before modern treatments. Not too good, I suspect, in the absence of a loyal spouse.
The stories are back in the news on the internet: Claim: Obama hid 'gay life' to become president - Chicago homosexual community shocked he could keep it secret.
It hardly matters, and I suspect that nobody cares much including FLOTUS, but it is interesting if true. (h/t Moonbattery.) It is claimed that Obama and ballet dancer Rahm hung out at "Man's Country."
Male dancers are not always gay - see Baryshnikov. Lots of talented guys dance for the money and the chicks.
Graph from Terrifying: Increases in Real Per Capita Federal Spending Over The Past 35 Years
Redefining ‘Poor’: The Fifty-Year Change in Quality of Life - Struggling in 2012 is undeniably preferable to 1962 affluence.
Hideous architecture at Harvard
What to Consider in Deciding Whether to Rent or Buy
Pay Somebody to Take Your Online Classes, Get an A 99% of the Time
FLOTUS: Obesity ‘Absolutely’ Greatest Threat To National Security
The Teachers Union Commits Suicide
Inconvenient bacteria eats a good portion Deepwater Horizon oil spill
How Quantitative Easing Helps the Rich and Soaks the Rest of Us - And why the Occupy movement should be up in arms.
Strassel: Mr. Romney, Trust Your Pants - Obama tells Americans the terrible things the Republican will do to them. The Republican remains silent about what he would do.
How the EU is like the Soviet Union: Scottish Independence Movement Shot Down by Europe
Joe Scarborough:
...that aging rock star will win this campaign going away if Romney keeps playing it safe. That is a terrible waste for Republicans, an ominous sign for a country in desperate need of new leadership, and more than enough reason for me to stop bothering to tweet on Saturday nights.
...the more people look for the anticipated acceleration in the rate of sea level rise, the less evidence they seem to find in support of it.
Obama Super PAC Banked $1 Million from Producer of Anti-Religious Movie
Is Egypt Governable?
Pic below from Lucianne:
Exclusive: America 'was warned of embassy attack but did nothing'
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D)
How the Media Made Obama's Ineptitude a Story About Romney's "Gaffe"
Michelle: ...And there he is with all of his fanboys and fangirls in Vegas raising money while they scream ‘I love you!’ in the middle of an international crisis.
The administration has a full-blown crisis on its hands, and as yet, there is no sign it knows what to do about it.
Libya: Not Just a Tragedy But the Start of Another Endless War for America
Krauthammer on Mideast Turmoil: “What We Are Seeing Is the Meltdown, Collapse of Obama Policy in Muslim World”:
The worst line in the clip you showed was this where she said there are different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech. Why is she engaging in a disquisition on free speech with the mob? The implication here that, perhaps the mob is right, that we ought to be suppressing anything that offends Islam, this is a nation where somebody puts a crucifix in bottle of urine and it ends up in a museum. We allow all kind of expression. But perhaps we ought to make an exception in the case of Islam. This is absurd. She ought to be speaking to the heads of state, to the State Department equivalents in other states and saying ‘You speak to your mob and talk to them and defend the embassy.’ This is return to statement a few days ago, I think and they are totally in meltdown at the State Department.”
Former Yale Dean Harold Koh (Now Legal Adviser at the State Department) on Dealing with “Hate Speech” by “Applying … the Transnationalist Approach to Judicial Interpretation”
Thursday, September 13. 2012
‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’ A quote:
...to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
I doubt that it is widely true that young women have become the sexual exploiters and predators, but I know it is true to some extent.
I wonder what our readers have observed.
Joesph Epstein: Who Killed the Liberal Arts? A quote:
When I was about to graduate from high school as an amiable screw-off, ranked barely above the lower quarter of my class, my father, who had not gone to college, told me that if I wished to go he would pay my way, but he encouraged me to consider whether my going wouldn’t be a waste of time. He personally thought I might make a hell of a good salesman, which was a compliment, for he was himself a hell of a good salesman, and a successful one. I eschewed his advice, not because it wasn’t sound, but chiefly because I felt that, at 18, I wasn’t ready to go out in the world to work.
In those days, the University of Illinois was, at least for residents of the state, an open-enrollment school. If you lived in Illinois, the school had to take you, no matter how low in your high school class you graduated. Lots of kids flunked out, and my own greatest fear on the train headed from Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana, in white bucks and reading The Catcher in the Rye, was that I would be among them.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For today, we'll (semi-ironically) adopt the Democratic Socialist Party's meme: We didn't build Maggie's Farm on our own.
We rely on the geniuses who made the intertunnels possible, the engineers who provide us with our coal- and nuclear-energy, on the geniuses who invented the hyperlink and YouTube, on our Webmeister who keeps this rickety site functioning with duct tape and baling wire, on hundreds of other bloggers, websites, and news sources for content, on our commenters who add zip, on Dunkin Donuts which keeps us going, on Panasonic who built my Lumix, etc etc - and on our readers and the good folks who link to us.
It's a communal effort, and an enjoyable one. Many farm hands make light(er) work. No government involvement or funds, however.
This is our biannual request that our readers pitch in and give us a hand by sending out the word about our eclectic, informative, and politically-Centrist/Libertarian website. As I always say, our readership is our reward for what we do here.
Pic of the Maggie's Farm hard-working back office farm hands - and fact-checkers (Zachriel missed the photo op) - safely below the fold.
Continue reading "We didn't build this prize-winning Maggie's Farm. It takes a village."
I should not be surprised that the shocking, shocking headline news of the past 48 hours has not been lethal Islamist attacks on American embassies, but Mitt Romney's comments about these barbarian atrocities.
Breaking! Yemen: US Embassy Stormed By Protesters
 Paestum reconstruction
Cool
Mike Rowe and Manual Labor
We love manual labor here
A book: The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex
Deceptive Telemarketing Linked to Big Charities
Fantasy Football-Playing AI Beats 99 Percent of Humans
US median income lowest since 1995
Moonbats on parade: Schools beat the drum for equity (h/t Driscoll)
Jungle drums for brown people? Sounds raaaacist to me. Why not electric violin? Or math?
Does this look like an economy that’s moving forward? 9 reasons why it really doesn’tLess is more
It's whatever you want it to be. I work 14 hrs/day. Am I "full-time"?
Eleven years after the most devastating terrorist attack in history, some in America pretend that the threat of jihad or Islamist terrorism has waned to such an extent that it is no longer a priority.Profs. LeVine and Zunes Plot to Globalize BDS
Wednesday, September 12. 2012
"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen."
George MacDonald (H/t Vanderleun)
If you think I was angry yesterday…then stand by for today. Let’s connect the dots in close to real time. Reasonably, President Bush took aggressive action against the Afghan and Iraqi regimes that sponsored terrorism against the US and its allies, although – along with every intelligence service – in major error believing that Iraq’s WMDs were more and more able. At the same time, reasonably, President Bush exerted himself to inform Americans to separate believers in Islam from radical Islamists.
That latter distinction is still valid. However, experience has demonstrated that the radical Islamists have grasped power in country after country while the voices or efforts of moderates have been inadequate or squelched by both the radical Islamists and by much of the Western media making increasingly tenuous excuses for the radicals.
Cap that off with an Obama administration, from the president himself to his appointed minions in the highest levels at the State Department, apologizing for supposed US sins, as claimed by radical Islamists, and otherwise stubbornly pursuing fairy tale wishes that catering to radicals will transform them into moderates and allies.
This same Obama administration failed to negotiate a reasonable timetable and process for reducing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan while directing our military to leave more quickly. This has increased instability in those two countries in which Americans have sacrificed, persuaded fence-sitters to lean or go into the radical Isalamist camps, and encouraged bolder defiance from Maliki and Karzai of US and Western interests.
With all that and more background, the attacks yesterday on the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi should come as little surprise. It should also come as little surprise that the response by the Obama administration was so initially apologetic -- and little better in its walk-back -- to the attackers instead of calling them out as thugs and demanding apologies from the Egyptian and Libyan governments for standing by. It should come as little surprise when there are more attacks on US Embassies and Consulates in the MidEast. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has seized almost all power in Egypt, calls for more nationwide demonstrations this Friday. There are strong signs that Islamists in other Arab countries are stampeding in that path.
Apologists for extremism, abroad, in the White House or media, will continue to twist themselves into putrid pretzels of pusillanimity, and the media play along, with the most prominent prime perpetrator of press cover-up, the New York Times, even being so craven to keep yesterday’s outrages off its front page.
Presidential contender Mitt Romney, while pointedly criticizing the weak Obama response, needs to go much further, and quickly, to demonstrate how his administration would put spine back in the deboned eagle of the past four years. MidEast expert Michael Rubin lays out a program. That’s more and better than these offenses just being bantered and battered about without purposeful action.
It’s past time to return the proud and mighty eagle to prominence, talons bared, and let our enemies stand by for a thrashing wherever and whenever we decide. No longer can they be allowed so much initiative to incite without serious consequence, expecting the US to just whimper from the Oval Office.
Of the plethora of super-hero movies that have spilled out of Hollywood over the past few years, I've thought most of them were 'pretty bad' to 'barely okay', Green Lantern was a slight cut above, and Thor was terrific. It was so good it got its own review.
Add Watchmen to the A List. This engaging little number is intriguing from beginning to end. It deals with a banned group of (mostly) masked crimefighters and the story that unravels after one of them is killed. The ending poses the classic philosophical question; isn't it better that nine million people die, rather than nine billion?
As usual, click on the little symbol on the player bar to expand it to full-screen mode.
Here's a small snippet from the opening. Dig the 'real-time slo-mo' effect. I believe that's Donovan singing in the background.
Hot chicks, bullets, kissing. This movie's got everything!
And then there's Rorschach, the narrator of the story and winner of the coveted 'Mr. Congenial' award in high school. This bad-ass has such a good line at the end that I put it on my Great One-Liners page.
Check out the spy drone at the beginning listening in on every word.
Likable old cuss, isn't he?
It's hard to put into words, but there's just something about this movie that's...
different.
I'll review the quite-intriguing Bunraku below the fold.
Continue reading "Movie review: 'Watchmen', 'Bunraku'"
Tuesday, September 11. 2012
This is good fun: Dad, I told a boy at school that any number to the power zero is one. He said that was idiotic.
The comments on that post show some eddication, too. Math is the best test of intellectual rigor because, up through Calc 3, it doesn't require talent. Just IQ (ie pattern-recognition, pleasure in the application of logic, and ability to handle abstraction), some humility in witholding one's own precious opinions and bullshitting skills learned in high school as in soft courses, and good study habits.
That's why tough colleges use Calc as "weed-out" courses for so many majors, and why so many grad school entry exams include Calc and advanced math (eg Med School, Engineering, Accounting, Computer, Biz School, Bio, the hard sciences obviously, etc). It's about capacity for mental discipline.
However, many Prep Schools and large High Schools in the US today offer Calc 2 and even Calc 3 so brainy kids don't have to waste college time on them and can jump right into real "Higher Ed."
The sad thing is that many bright kids' brains do not mature at the same pace (due to myelinization and other things), and sometimes can process things easily at 20 which they could not have done at 16.
As they say, eddication - like sex - is wasted on the young. I have friends who have taken up higher math, Chinese, and accounting in adulthood, just for the enjoyable challenge and for life-enrichment. Even writing books about obscure 16th Century Dutch artists. Reading fiction and watching TV and movies do not suffice for the active, adventurous mind. In fact, I have a 65 year-old (not retired) golfing buddy who is taking up Sanskrit. I admire people like that, and do not particularly admire people who do not have serious intellectual, artistic, or religious pursuits, regardless of their age.
I might like or love them, but don't admire. Precious grey matter should not be put out to pasture, because it is a gift. Very rare and fortunate are those who can combine vocation with avocation.
If your kid doesn't know Calc 1 or Stats 1 in High School, your government is ripping you off. That does not happen in India, China, or Singapore.
Average pay for Chicago teachers is $76,000 for 9 months' work with many vacations, not including benefits and defined-benefit pensions. Student performance is terrible, with only 15% of grade school students reading at grade level. In other words, it's not working. If this were a competitive business, it would be out of business but it is a government monopoly, controlled by a wealthy and powerful union.
Via Ricochet:
1. The highest-paid public school teacher in Illinois is a physical education teacher making $191,124 per year (I'm assuming this is a 9-month teaching "year").2. Six of the top 12 highest-paid high school teachers in Illinois teach physical education, each making $170,000 or more. 3. Six state employees teaching driver education make $150,000 or more. 4. Six high school teachers make more than the Illinois Governor's salary of $177,500.5. 14,048 Illinois high school teachers made salaries of $100,000 or more in 2010, which is up 13% over last year.
Megan takes a look: Why are teachers willing to walk out?
This spectacular video, I think, distracts from this song from Bob's new record. It's got the old-timey sound he's been fond of in recent years.
Many, too many, Americans appear to have not learned or forgotten the critical lesson of 9/11/2001. The United States has some ruthless enemies, in some cases with even more capabilities now than then, and we must go out into the world to foil them. In the 1990s, benumbed and enjoying a supposed peace dividend after the fall of the Soviet Union, we too much ignored other budding threats. Then came 9/11/2001. Now the minor attention paid to foreign affairs in the presidential campaign caters to ostrich-head-in-sand voters.
But, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. BIG shame.
It may be rationalized that downplaying foreign affairs, or downplaying imminent threats, is good politics for this election. It is not, however, the leadership we need and deserve for now and the coming years. It is a shame.
Welcome to those of you arriving from Instapundit and my thanks to Glenn for the helpful link. My original post on this gruesome subject is here and the Save-Our-Doc donation page is here.
And welcome to Maggie's Farm, the oldest and bestest eclectic site in the sphereoblogs. It's the only site in town where you'll see a penetrating look into the human psyche by a renown psychiatrist, an exposé of the rotten core we call our educational system, a warning about the latest nasty computer virus, all followed by an endearing piece titled 'Chipmunk of the Week'. Quality eclecticity, all the way.
As far as who the hell I am, I was blogging ten years before the word was invented and had a page of the latest hot web links up a decade before Instapundit launched. Details here. As I said to Ed Driscoll today, relics like me should be preserved. As for some of my recent posts, if you like music, check this out. If you like horses, check this out. The genetics post Ed once referred to as "epic" is here, and my home site is here.
As for the rest of you lugs (and lugesses), I'm still tentatively scheduled for the 24th, but I might push it back a bit. The problem with the entire medical field is that it's full of 'ifs'. If the operation goes routinely, I might have enough money. If the post-operative costs are normal, I might have enough money. If the drugs are still available (a number of post-operative cancer drugs have recently become harder to find because of — you guessed it — government over-regulation by the FDA), I might have enough money.
It's the not-ifs that are worrying me.
The good news is that a subsidiary of the company I normally do the web work for hired me to do a big project for them (Ever put an Excel database online? It's not a pretty site.) so that'll keep me busy for a while. It should be worth about $800, but the pisser is that I won't get it for almost two months.
I also dusted off my plumbing tools the other day and made $350 replacing a water heater and two faucets. I modestly admit I haven't lost my touch. I had those puppies replaced in no time flat.
And, of course, no Big C update would be complete without including one of the many, many (many) happy-go-lucky, cheer-me-up cartoons and pics my two best friends have sent me since this all began. I'm sure lucky to have such support!
Eleven years on
The Dogs of 9/11
 A pal took this pic of the USS Saratoga in Newport, RI last weekend. Some people want to use her for a new Naval museum, but Naval museums aren't really profitable. Even the Intrepid loses money.
Parenting: Red State vs Blue State
A letter to a future daughter-in-law
The Oldest Profession Evolves—How the Web Transformed Prostitution
Gas prices? Not a whisper
Imagine if a Repub were in the WH
GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds
Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers’ Unions
Chicago teachers strike, but it's not for better schools
25-Year-Old Shocked to Find Out that Taking Out Huge Student Loans Lead to Huge Debt
$188,000. in debt and still cannot write an English sentence.
Daily Show: The Democrats’ ‘Inclusiveness’ is Actually Aggressively Selective
The Worst Of Barack Obama In Quotes (h/t Bookworm)
Mitt Romney would lead eight in unskewed data from newest CNN/ORC poll
You Know, Republicans Have Been Promising To Deal With Pre-Existing Conditions For a Long, Long Time
Via Legal Ins:
With its sales weak, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy — but not until after the election.
Obama Demands $1.1 Trillion Tax Hike, Won't Get Specific on Spending Cuts
Democrats Help Republicans Prove that Voter Fraud is Real
Dem Sherrod Brown: Unemployment Is Good
AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime
Israeli vets help US vets heal
Why Hasn't There Been Another Palestinian Intifada?
Here's a review: The Rage in Bob Dylan's "Tempest". One quote:
Dylan recently told Rolling Stone that he had intended to write religious songs for this album, but the songs just didn't end up that way, even though the Book of Revelations makes an appearance right on schedule. Chaos has come again, and Dylan seems pulled to the dark side. From listening to this album - filled with killing floors, "lyin' and dyin in blood," and a "flat chested junkie whore" all leading him, if not to temptation, than a tempest of the soul - it's clear that Dylan's done his three score years and eleven, and he's not going quietly.
Monday, September 10. 2012
 Early fall (ie late Sept to November) is the best time for planting or transplanting most things in the temperate zone.
There's less heat to stress the plants, there's more rain, and plants have just enough time to send out new roots so they will be established by Springtime (and also because all plants begin growing - underground - well before what we consider Spring planting season. Thus fall planting gives them a double head-start to prepare. Plants grow roots at least a month before they show any green).
I planted three Knock-Out Roses this weekend. They are the easiest, most care-free, toughest shrub roses around. That's why they have become the biggest sellers. (Bill Radler built them - not the government - and he is getting rich from his creation. It's called genetic engineering.)
September to early October is the time to plant Peonies, too. I remember when everybody's grandma had a circular peony patch somewhere, but now people just put them in borders. Prepare their soil well, because Peony plants last a long time and take a year or two to become established and strong.
People recommend full sun for them, but half-day sun seems fine.
Here's How to plant and grow peonies.
Image is from White Flower Farm's Peony page.
 The classic regional sandwiches of the US.
My favorites: BLT, Club Sandwich (with extra Mayo on the side), Po' Boy (fried oysters). Best of all? The Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich.
They omitted the classic Northeastern Italian-inspired sandwich: Fried eggplant on a hard roll. And what about the ordinary tuna sandwich? I like capers on mine.
I like 'em all though - except for Fluffernutter (h/t Marginal Rev)
And I don't mean large in a Chris Christie kinda way, I mean large in a spit-in-the-face-of-the-law, let's-incite-anarchy kinda way. That kinda large.
I've never gone to Coyote's site on a regular basis. Coyotes are, to be perfectly frank, scavengers. And a pretty scruffy lot, to boot. As such, I also tend to view his writing as 'scruffy'. Such is the power of word association.
Well, Bird Dog bravely linked to this scalawag the other day, so I held my breath (coyotes live in filth, I needn't remind you) and checked it out. I enjoyed the article, but it seemed like there was something 'off' about it. I read a few more posts and continued having this strange feeling that all wasn't right in the world of coyote scruffiness.
Then I discovered the raw, naked truth: A blatant admission to the world that he had spit in the face of Truth, Justice and The American Way by preaching outright anarchy against the government!
Striking a Blow Against the State
Automatic weapons, you ask? Incendiary bombs? Molotov Cocktails?
No!
I am proudly holding the government-mandated flow restrictor I just removed from my most recent shower head purchase.
 Pic: Artist's concept of the crime in progress
After calling the FBI, DHS, EPA and OSHA (just for good measure) about this self-admitted nihilist, I felt it my duty to warn you, the Maggie's Valued Reader™, about this 'gateway crime' — where the pusher draws you into his web of sin with a 'simple' crime — only to have you later trapped into doing his bidding when it comes time to rob that armored car guarded by six ex-Army commandos with Uzis and you end up dying a horrific, painful, bloody death — and all because you visited Coyote's blog. Such is the power of word association.
I also thought I might elaborate on his post, so that you may further know exactly what to watch out for while steering clear of gateway crimes such as this. I have a little perspective on the whole water-rationing thing because I was a sub-contractor when California went through an official 8-year drought back in the 80's. Then the weather cycle flipped back around and 'flood control' was at the top of everybody's list. Such were the whims and vagaries of weather, back in the days before global warming, back when nature still had a say.
I remember them well.
Continue reading "Blogger Coyote: Scofflaw At Large"
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I forget where I found today's photo so I can't credit the finder, but 