Tuesday, August 16. 2005
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
Franklin P. Jones
Monday, August 15. 2005
 Thought you all might enjoy a photo of a captive-bred baby Eastern Box Turtle. Captive breeding is done for the pet trade (most of them taken as pets die - they are wild animals with exacting requirements which only their instincts know how to fulfill - you cannot just throw them a mouse once a week like you can with snakes), and for re-stocking of habitat. We do it for the latter. We do not approve of the former. Boxies are charming critters but do not make for responsive pets - stick with dogs and cats unless you are a herp nut. And herp people are strange, isolated, tattooed, eccentric, obsessed folk, like Bird Dog.
 The Martin Scorsese Dylan film now available - cannot download the GIF photo but click here for details.
Lunch with Chuckie "It's all about me" Shumer, here. Sheehan updates you won't get from the newspapers: Michelle and Powerline and Solomonia (HT- Cons. Grapevine) and David Duke celebrates her anti-Semitism, here. Abe Lincoln was burdened by a self-centered, not very popular, and not very likeable or warm wife. But was he gay? Or bi? Does anyone really care? Classical Values doesn't care. Nuclear - I mean Nucular - Hypocrisy: OK for Iran, not OK for the US: Robinson Getting real about Iraq: It's about time we recognized that Iraq will not be a mini-USA. Jihad Watch. How wierd are you? Blogthings. Another Guardian Leftist bites the dust: Cohen, in Blair.
 (Posted April 29, 2005)
Pagan Idolatry (!?) Michael Shermer, in The American Scientist, has written a thoughtful piece entitled "The Soul of Science" about how he claims that he finds fully-satisfying non-transcendent meaning and purpose in his life. My title above is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I have not dropped the dime to the Spanish Inquisition - lost their phone number. Nor do I have any argument with anyone who feels simply that "Life is to Live" - I think that is an entirely wholesome, if willfully unreflective, approach to the miracle of existence. We all have to map our own way of being in the world; that's the burden and blessing of freedom. You can easily tell from his earnest writing that Mr. Shermer is a very good, decent, likeable, thoughtful fellow. But there is something in his piece, an undercurrent of trying too hard, or protesting too much, that makes me wonder whether Mr. Shermer is resisting something in himself. I am not a religious man, nor - God forbid - a "spiritual" man. But, like most people, I have a feeling about, or interest in a transcendent force. Call it what you will. And I do find an unaccountable joy in singing hymns about Jesus which causes me to imagine that something "out there" is connecting with something "in here." Some of us Maggie's crew had dinner with The Analyst, Dr. Bliss, last month in Cambridge. She expounded on the theme that "everyone worships something," whether they know it or not. She feels that self-worship - the idolatry of "self-fulfillment" and "self-importance" and "self-realization" is the pop alternative to a deity. At which point Bird Dog tends to crudely interject about his yet-unwritten book entitled "I'm An A-hole, You're an A-hole" - the theoretical counterpoint to that best-seller of the 70s I'm OK, You're OK. I have doubts about whether Bird Dog's title will sell books, but I get his point. Shermer puts everything in a science frame: "Humans have an evolved sense of purpose—a psychological desire to accomplish goals—that developed out of behaviors that were selected for because they were good for the individual or the group. The desire to behave in purposeful ways is an evolved trait; purpose is in our nature. And with brains big enough to discover and define purpose in symbolic ways that are inconceivable to millions of preceding and coexisting species, we humans are unique" Despite his welcome humility about it, I guess Shermer "worships" science, or genetics, more or less, since that is how he decides to frame his experience of reality. Read entire and see what you think. I am out of time. (The ironic choice of photo is of Baal, AKA Beelzebub, to whom live children were sacrificed in Christ's time.)
The Commerce Clause: Brewton's consideration therof: View from 1776 Scotland has had enough multiculturalism: Dhimmi Watch Austin Bay: The truth is, after 9/11 we’re not engaged in nation building – we’re engaged in planet building (see here). I completely agree with Hitchens on this point. We should “consistently act” against internationalist totalitarian ideologies out of both principle and realism. “…[I]f you don’t fight them now you fight them later... We can't live on the same planet as them and I'm glad because I don’t want to.” That’s precisely why I went back on active duty and served in Iraq. Read entire.
A War for Oil? Who made up that lie?
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. January 20, 1961
Saturday, August 13. 2005
Accutane v. the FDA As anyone who has visited a pharmacy or turned on a television knows, there are nearly as many available remedies for acne as there are people to buy them. Drying creams, antibiotic ointments, facial peels, exfoliating gels - the sheer quantity is mind-boggling, yet the vast majority of these treatments have no effect on acne (as any dermatologist will freely admit). While some other moderately effective remedies do exist, for those with severe acne, there is really only one medication that has a significant and lasting impact: Accutane, the vitamin A-based drug that acts to shrink the oil-producing sebaceous glands, resulting in a face that is free of both acne and excessive oiliness. Furthermore, these effects are often permanent, providing relief not only from the physical symptoms, but from the low-grade psychological torture of going through one's day-to-day life constantly expecting breakouts. For many teenagers enduring the shame, humiliation and peer ridicule accompanying a case of severe acne, Accutane is truly a miracle drug. Why am I bringing this up? Well, the one nagging problem with the drug has always been its potential to cause serious developmental defects in fetuses exposed to Accutane. The risk has always been known, and in the past several years preventative measures have been increased to such a degree that women wishing to take the medication must pledge to take two forms of birth control while on the medication - even if they do not engage in intercourse! - and submit to monthly blood and pregnancy tests. Given that Accutane is prescribed to hundreds of thousands, the odd pregnancy still does occur (and is usually promptly aborted), but apparently even the unprecedented safeguards surrounding the drug were not enough for the FDA, which yesterday announced that all patients (men included, despite their presumably low risk of pregnancy!) taking the drug and doctors prescribing it must enroll in a goverment registry and undergo even more stringent tests. If such safeguards still do not prevent further pregancies, the drug may be taken off the market altogether, the article claims. Now, since our government, thankfully, cannot control what people do in the privacy of their own homes, it is virtually guaranteed that some extremely careless, irresponsible or just plain stupid folks will still find a way to get pregnant. The question here can be simply stated: is it just to ban a drug that has been enormously helpful to millions of people because of the lack of responsibility of a tiny minority (160 "Accutane babies" born in the last 20 years out of more than 20 million users)? No one wants to see babies born with severe, incapacitating defects, but if doctors and the FDA enact the most stringent possible safeguards, shouldn't patients assume the remaining share of the responsibility? And given that the average male has an exactly zero percent chance of pregnancy by my calculations, what logic would compel the drug to be banned for both men and women? Would allowing only men to take Accutane violate some unspoken equality-of-access clause that the FDA secretly maintains? Given that at least one recent medication has been approved by the FDA for use in preventing heart disease among African-Americans only (it does not have a beneficial effect on other races), this theory doesn't seem to hold any water. In any case, at a time when hundreds of thousands of abortions are performed every year on healthy fetuses, it seems odd for the FDA to zealously target a medicine for endangering the health of a scant handful of unborn children. There are tangled ethical issues here, for sure, but speaking as someone who has been a beneficiary of this amazing drug, it would be a great shame if it were taken off the market. (As a side note, Accutane has also been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts in some patients, but studies have shown that the suicide rate for Accutance users is not different in any statistically significant way from that of the general population. In my own experience, the tremendous boon in confidence and self-assuredness resulting from the disappearance of acne far outweighed any vague "feelings of depression" that could possibly have occurred, and I have seen the same thing in a number of other people as well).
Continue reading ""
Friday, August 12. 2005
 OK, Bird Dog, you add the links to this because I can't but we're headed home tomorrow to Boston, then another dang bus back to the Green Mountains, and I didnt think I would ever say this but I am not excited about coming back home and probably will find that Seth and Reuben have burned the place down but you cannot harm growing corn, and I assume the haying was finished up right because only a true moron could screw that up. We actually took the high-speed rail back from Teze yesterday and since you are a Christian gent or at least a wantabe I will have to tell you about that place which if any place can give an old yankee atheist Congregationalist a touch of the spirit, that place can and Miss Millie blew a wad on their CDs so if we stay friends I guess I can look forward to Spirito Sancto etc nonstop when I prefer no sound but the crickets and the dogs and the grumbling cattle. Well we did go to Lordes first which was a holy tourist trap deal almost, thousands of people from all over and lots of sickly ones and we all lost eachother in the crowds and we saw the candlelight march and went to a mass but didnt take communion we being protestants or even hopeless heathen like me and two of our group, two sicklies but I have my doubts because for years they are always ailing but never dying and can drink their wine OK and chow down on the snails, well they did some special deal even not being catholics and it seemed to perk them up. Now but that Teze place I could tell you about at lenth but maybe later, and I aint convertable because I have my principles but it is something and our whole group acting reborn and refreshed in the spirit except me of course, and well Pastor Winslow I worried about him losing his marbles he is a good fellow and can party and dine and can be a tough sob at times and knows farming and fixes his own car but he has a hunger for the spirit and I aint never seen him and Edie as happy as they were there. I am a lost sheep to them I suspect but we have become good pals and they never preach or condesend or do that Christian nicey nice thing and so I respect them back. Galla goodby dinner tonight we have reservations and it aint mcdonalds just a little place Pastor knew about and we will all tank up on the frenchie grape juice vin ordinare and Pastor has his jokes and stories all ready then back to the old Beantown via Air Frog in the am.
(Editor: photo from the Taize website. Their music, all live and natural, is as good as it gets for modern religious music. It is not rock, but it will rock you if you let it.)
Homelessness plummets in San Francisco: Here's why: (Am. Thinker) ACLU will not rest until Christianity is driven underground - back to the catacombs? Quoted in No Oil from Guardian Op-Ed: The least attractive characteristic of the middle-class left - one shared with the Thatcherites - is its refusal to accept that its opponents are sincere. The legacy of Marx and Freud allows it to dismiss criticisms as masks which hide corruption, class interests, racism, sexism - any motive can be implied except fundamental differences of principle. . . Read entire.
We judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions. Dwight Morrow
Thursday, August 11. 2005
Ibrahim Ferrer - Que Dios lo Bendiga: May God Bless Him A terrific Cuban balladeer dies. He was in his seventies but looked ninety probably due to the Cuban sunshine and hard labor but he kept a song in his heart and thankfully Ry Cooder brought him to world attention before he was buried like so many others in the "land that time forgot." "Known for his trademark cap and graying mustache, Ferrer was a wiry, animated figure who clearly enjoyed performing Cuba's traditional "son" music of the 1940s and 1950s for new generations of fans. Among a group of older Cuban performers recruited by U.S. musician Ry Cooder, Ferrer performed on the "Buena Vista Social Club album" that won a Grammy in 1999 and was among those appearing in the film of the same name."Click here: Ibrahim Ferrer CNN.com - Singer Ibrahim Ferrer dead at age 78 - Aug 6, 2005
Great minds think alike. The same week we sent out a request for rational and thoughtful liberal blogs, Rick Moran produces a leftist Moonbat Blog Taxonomy, as does QandO Blog. So our betters have saved us a lot of work. Review their pieces to see if there are any there that you might enjoy, even if disagreeing. As I have said, we don't want to be part of a giant echo chamber or a Rush dittohead blog. We have reviewed many more than mentioned below - just the highlights thus far: I find Atrios boring and predictably partisan, but partisan for no principled reason that I can decipher. Tom Paine too - just another Party hack site for their own echo chamber. And don't even talk about Kos - it is bedlam. Yglesias, like most of the Democratic Party Line blogs, has a mean streak with a "gotcha" schtick going which is unattractive to the open-minded. I had high hopes for Washington Monthly but they also seem part of the gotcha game. Waste of time. In fact, the entire angry attack mode is probably unproductive, or even counter-productive in political blogs, because it doesn't make anyone think. I like Pennywit very much. Also Brendan Nyhan. Will continue to pan for gold in them thar internet hills...developing, as Drudge would say.
An in-depth legal consideration of the Air America scandal - CQ The NARAL smear: Nyhan is good on this. Moonbats on parade, at Livermore. Here. Shape of Days re drugs: Look, if you want to stand up and say that you think drugs should be legalized because you really, really like to get high, fine. If you wanna say that drugs should be legalized because you don’t give a shit about America, go right ahead. Free speech, free country. But don’t you dare try to argue that drugs really aren’t that bad for you.
Does the NYT deserve a break? Tapscott asks that we give Keller a chance. Seeing is believing and I aint seen nuthin yet. Corzine's payoffs to girlfriends - jeez. He sure is generous. These stories can kill his chances in NJ. Going back to school: The Hawk Man: Dear Parent or Guardian: On behalf of the faculty, staff, administration, and grief counselors of Rockwood District 603, please let me extend a warm welcome to you and your student for the upcoming 2005-6 school year at Rockwood Public Schools. In the enclosed information packet you will find your student's classroom assignment and schedule, a calendar of important dates, staff contact information, and a handbook of detailed first aid tips. Please read and review carefully. Your cooperation will help insure that your student enjoys an enriching and survivable year of educational opportunities. Read entire hilarious piece.
Wednesday, August 10. 2005
Mexican Navy vs. Turtle Killers Man, is this story disgusting. Real Meal Ministries is right - turtle-lovers separate the men from the boys, and the moral from the immoral.
Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming The LA Times reports that illegal aliens are now receiving generous home loans from major national banks, despite their lack of legal status, credit, or Social Security number. This anecdote was particularly amazing: Silvia Avalos, a hairstylist, and her husband, Jose Luis Avalos, a busboy, are among the people Mancera is talking about. They were tired of spending their money on rent each month but didn't want to use fake Social Security numbers to buy a home.
After friends told them they could buy legally, they found a two-bedroom condo northeast of San Francisco for $280,000. They moved in as soon as escrow closed.
Two illegals working as a hairstylist and a busboy (!) can easily obtain a loan for a $280,000 condo? With an assumed lack of any credit rating or guarantee that they even plan to remain in the country? I would like to see the impression on my Citibank rep's face if I were to saunter in today and ask about receiving such a loan with my (probably higher than those above) salary as a young paralegal. Not only is this a clear abuse of the law and the public trust, this sort of mindlessly greedy behavior will end up penalizing American citizens as illegals inevitably default on their loans, driving up interest rates for all prospective home-buyers. Perhaps low-income American citizens who want to own a home should simply run across the Mexican border, toss away their passport and Social Security card, and re-enter illegally? At the very least, you'll be able to get a driver's license, free, taxpayer-funded education and health care, and if you can land a job washing dishes for six bucks an hour, maybe a house too!
 Swimming Pools and Politics: The YWCA
I amused myself by spending a few moments delving into the national YWCA website. I have heard from many women hereabouts in New England complain that the YWCA, which many of them frequent, has had its national HQ co-opted by political purposes and goals extending far beyond the health and spiritual well-being of American women. They love the pool and the Yoga classes, but - almost sounding like union members - they are dismayed what is being done with the part of their dues that goes to the national HQ - some of which appears to go towards leftist political "advocacy." They even have a thing called "congressional watch." It is a stated goal of the national Y to "empower women," (whatever that means) but these ladies feel truly helpless and disempowered by a national HQ with a political agenda. Eg: "There's nothing we can do about it, but it's the best pool around." Here's a sample of what I learned: The Y takes the official position of opposing partial "privatization" of Social Security, which seems nutty to me - what a boon that would be for working women. The Y supports extending affirmative action. (How it can be extended is beyond me - see Moonbat for the latest example of the employment problems in owning a penis.) The Y supports "immigrant rights," which I assume but do not know for certain probably means illegal immigrant rights. The Y opposes racial profiling by law enforcement, which seems crazy in a time of Jihad and which has nothing to do with women. I notice, interestingly but somewhat surprisingly, that they have not dared take a pro-abortion position. But are they officially "troubled" by Judge Robert's nomination? You bet. Is YWCA-USA an organization with a political agenda? You bet. My conclusion: Locally, a fine and useful and handy organization full of dedicated employees and volunteers and hard-working board members, and an important resource for abused women - but nationally, a Lefty political organization. Is it paranoid to call this one more example of Marx's "long march through the institutions"? My question: To the local Ys - why send any $ to the national HQ? To what extent are the pools and Yoga classes and local good deeds being used as a fund-raising tool for a political agenda? I don't know any more than what I see on their site, but I'd like to learn. And I wonder whether all the ladies at the Yoga classes know that part of what they pay is being used to pursue a political agenda in Washington, with which they might strongly disagree. Update: Have email from an ex-local board member that YWCA-USA - the national board - absconded with the entire YWCA endowment, moved from NYC to DC, and that now dues go to the regional HQs. So it looks even worse, to me. I guess that means that the national is no longer dependent on the locals? More info, please...I know half the world is on vacation, but half my life is a vacation, and a nice one, too. Organize your life so you can love it, as The Analyst always says, unless your discontent comes from within.
Does the Left want us to Lose the War? Hitchins suspects so. He is getting wiser by the day. Do "moderates" exist? Right Wing Nation has the polls. What is an "evangelical"? Evangelical Outpost knows. Good blog. What's going on at the UN? Pennywit The Energy Bill - Or should they just call it the Pork Bill? More pork than energy. More planets? But what use are they? TCS Piano Man remains a mystery. Very odd. Only in England. Banning English in Denver libraries. Crazy, un-American, condescending, stupid, but right up the PC alley. Here. Are they saying the immigrants are too stupid to learn English, or are they saying that Denver is part of Mexico? One or the other... Cloning racehorses. Great. But what about great pointers? Or me? Clone me, please. I'll have the other me pay the bills, go to work, do the dishes, and I'll go fishin'. SDA Yahoo News Outs CAIR. Here: Click here: Profile CAIR - Yahoo! News Biological Pollution: Snakehead fish found in Queens, NY Opie made me post this: Discounted Ambriel Floyd Tees, here: Click here: Ambriel Floyd - Birds Tee Western Canadians are ready to consider separation. The Canadian Civil War? I do not blame them one bit - they are not represented to their satisfaction. Here.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on. Robert Frost
Tuesday, August 9. 2005
Our friends travelling in the Amazon emailed us this photo of the point where the thousands of blackwater tributaries merge to form the brown-water Amaz on River.
Pool of Siloam Found - What a find! Drudge has story. Add this to the Department of Why Blogs are Needed: Who is reporting the story of the economy? Atlas
Brewton does Classroom Totalitarianism: When people cannot be kept in ignorance, socialists sooner or later must resort to compulsion to enforce compliance with their catechism of social justice. Classroom political-correctness and administrative thought-police are one such example, different only in degree from Stalin’s Soviet Union. Read the whole thing.
 Lobster Pots, The Lobster Pot, and P'town
Everything you ever wanted to know about lobster pots and lobster-fishing, here. Cool facts, such as the biodegradable escape hatches for lost pots. Our family's favorite restaurant on Cape Cod for many, many years? The Lobster Pot in Provincetown. Excellent authentic Portuguese seafood - Kale soup, squid stew, stuffed cod or haddock, Sopa Do Mar, etc., - plus all the regular stuff, fresh off the pier a half-block away. They sometimes have bluefin toro. P'town, once known for its fishing fleet and its artist colony, is now probably better known as a gay vacation haven. However, it is still full of Portuguese fishermen, great seafood, and has both the old-time and the new-time local color. Don't miss the Gay Parade, if you like parades - it's unique, the height of exuberant exhibitionism, and definitely not for the "homophobic".
Thompson on "America First": To be sure, the majority of American immigrants — legal and illegal — come here precisely because they seek a better way of life. Contrary to left ideology, most immigrants understand that adapting to the cultural strategies of success in the United States is in their best long-term interests. Of all the tough immigration-related choices we collectively face, no imperative is greater than pulling out all stops to ensure that those who play by the rules in coming to America are clearly committed to the political and cultural norms of our national civic culture.
If Blair can sound like this, why can't our "leaders"? Read entire NYT is Dancing to NARAL's Tune: American Spectator In the Sunday Times (UK): "Even for someone who agreed with you about the war in Iraq and the deception perpetrated by our government to prepare us all for it — the latest stuff feels suspiciously close to treason. It is hard to know whether we should laugh at Galloway or hang him."
Scott Johnson on the ACLU's War on the Boy Scouts: Weekly Standard Iowahawk focuses on the culturally underprivileged in Crawford, seen through the eyes of reporters. A re-tread, still good: It was a scene that would be constantly repeated throughout the first weeks of the Bush retreat; dozens of panicked media professionals wandering the streets of Crawford, searching in vain for alternative weeklies, gallery openings and Peruvian-Vietnamese tapa parlors, only to be met with blank stares and offers of free beer. The experience stunned many.
Virtue breaking out all over? David Brooks Steyn on Almost Winning: Republicans may see the increasingly arthritic, corpulent, wheezing, flatulent Democratic Party as a boon for them, but I don't. Two-party systems need two parties, not just for the health of the loser but for that of the winner, too. Intellectually, philosophically, legislatively, it's hard to maintain the discipline to keep yourself in shape when the other guy just lies around the house all day.
Aker takes on the "mainstream moderates": Sometimes people call themselves moderates because they're not bright enough or interested enough to have positions on important issues. It's easy to see both sides, but it takes thought, knowledge and courage to decide which side is right.
And on the big questions, one side is always right. These are questions like whether we should have stopped the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, whether to sterilize and lobotomize the mentally ill, and whether it's good for the economy to have an income tax rate over 50 percent.
The Mainstream Coalition was about as bold as you'd expect a bunch of moderates to be in crafting their list their principles. They're for human rights, religious freedom and quality education, against saying mean things about homosexuals and racial minorities, against candidates who lie about their beliefs, and against requiring office-holders to belong to a particular religion.
This would only matter if anyone with power or influence were taking the opposite position on these things, and none are.
The Mainstreamers should add a little to their statement that a quality education is the cornerstone of freedom and democracy. Along with quality education, you need guns, a constitution, ammunition, private property, citizens who know how to use guns, judges who follow the constitution, gun factories and a separation of powers. And maybe a few more guns.
You need one more thing. A moral population. A religious citizenry. Read entire, in Rapid City Journal
The Christian Left: One example here: Two thoughts about it: First, the Christian Right emerged in the 80s as a reaction against the Christian Left of the 60s, which seemed to have co-opted the religion and still dominates Protestant main line denominations. Second, interesting how the website is mostly about getting the govt. to do stuff - no surprise there. It's political, not religious, same as some parts of the Christian Right.
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