Friday, September 30. 2005
Random Post Enjoying a nice illegal Commie Cuban and a nice triple scotch tonight, windows open to the cool colonial Connecticut September evening and the wonderful cricket chorus and the occasional bullfrog croak from down in our marsh along the Farmington River, and checking out random blogs while the splendid she-who-must-be-obeyed is working on the elegant evening repast while watching dumb Fox news and sipping a few lady-like chardonnays in the kitchen. Stumbled onto a highly mediocre blog (not because of content - because of quality) and I found these assertions: God forbid that we must endure another three and a half years of his Administration before anything can be changed. Are we going to sit around and keep our fingers crossed, hoping (incorrectly) that we've seen the worst, or are we going to FINALLY get off our fat, lazy butts and realize that we must begin turning this nation around now, because Bush and his band of thugs (in EVERY sense of the word) are not going to sit back and be satisfied with the destruction they have already wrought?
They are going to keep the neocon steamroller fueled and in overdrive until the final hour of his presidency. They are going to stay the course in Iraq, wasting thousands more young American (and Iraqi) lives. They are going to continue the relentless dismantling of our social and security programs/agencies. They are going to continue increasing taxes on the poor and middle classes in order to reduce the same for the wealthy and the corporations. They are going to spread marshall law throughout the nation (New Orleans is only the start, folks).
They are going to persist in ramming through new legislation that benefit petroleum/energy companies, allowing them to continue increasing their unbelievably obscene profits (and thus power). They are going to continue forcing our education system down the toilet by pushing increasingly unreachable standards onto the public school system. They are going to remain incessant in their ruthless attack on the air we breathe and the ground on which we live and from which we grow our food. And finally, they are going to accelerate the dismantling of the independent judicial system such that laws and rulings support only conservative ideology and christian evangelical theology. We are becoming a nazi state before our very own eyes. What's worse, we are all allowing it. We are the masters of our destiny, yet somehow we have decided, as a nation, that our destiny is Hell.
Yikes - Bush is attacking our very "ground." And aw, gee, not those dang "obscene profits" again. Try running a business sometime, cousin blogger, and ride a bike to work. The above is a quote from a blog in the Flappy Bird category, which means that it receives a fair amount of attention but is far from a star blog. Neither are we - yet. Up-and-coming, with a readership IQ I would be willing to put up against any other blog's. Notice the "marshall"? No, I will not make the effort to refute the statements. Too boring. Sounds kind of like a govt union employee of some sort, no? A teacher who cannot spell, angry about being evaluated? Feels entitled to a free lunch? I am not surprised that there are benighted humans out there who are so fearful and so distressed. I only want to tell them that it will be OK - no-one will take away your baby-bottle. Even the evil, evil Bush. Unemployment has never been this low in our lifetime, and the admin. doesn't even talk about it. Their PR stinks - right now, there is not a functional soul in American who wants to work who is not working at something. That is a wonderful thing - work is a blessing, and no honest work is ignoble. But I will offer one thought: Bush's legacy will be the Court. It is hard as hell to move the US govt. in any direction, and correcting our renegade courts may be all he can really do to make a lasting difference. (Is anything more important than our Constitution?) Plus getting rid of a bunch of fascist jihadists whose religious mission is to kill us all. How bad is that? Go ahead, read the blog I quoted, just to get a sense of how some Americans feel, however irrational and unfounded and sad their emotion may be. I wish they would read us. They would feel much better. But they won't. Ahh, I hear the dinner bell. Pavlov's Dog cometh on four furry feet and with salivating jowls. Update: Great dinner, of course. Just chatted with our vet on the phone. He and his wife have been in Louisiana for the past ten days, taking care of lost and abandoned animals. What a great country we live in, in which even the animals receive our concern and effort.
Streisand Interview News from Mars at Paxety
Chicken Korma, 1805 Who knew? Samiz.
Sloppy News Live news requires special care, and needs to be done by calm, skeptical people. But does that sell soap? Rick considers the hysterical, unprofessional, and deeply flawed Katrina coverage, which has been taken to task many times. Sad thing is - that dopey and plain wrong coverage went world-wide and made LA, and the US, look like idiots. No-one reads the corrections - the first impressions stick, however wrong they may have been.
Leftists in the CIA It's more about where their loyalties lie, than their politics. Front Page: Click here: FrontPage magazine.com :: CIA Renegades by Steven Plaut And speaking of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, he's running a Restoration Weekend at The Breakers at the end of Oct. Looks good. Wish I could go.
Sociology: An academic discipline or a political movement? An entire academic discipline has been taken over by "the revolution." But we all knew that already, right? It's a joke, but also a damn shame. From Wagner's piece at HNN: At the 1968 ASA convention in Boston the radicals succeeded in preempting an appearance by LBJ’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and allowing radical Martin Nicolaus to tactlessly harangue the secretary (referring to him as the “Secretary of disease, propaganda, and scabbing”) and any mainstream sociologists who may have been left in the ASA on the evils of value-neutral, scientifically rigorous research. This speech, known as the “Fat Cat” speech in sociological circles, called for sociology to serve the interests of radical politics, and spelled the ascendancy of radicalism in sociology. It has been a downhill road every since. While the rest of academe moved back to positions of relative normalcy after the radical days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, sociology stubbornly remained a very politicized field.
Read entire: Click here: Is Sociology Stuck in the 60s?
Bush needs to be taken to the woodshed No doubt. Apparently his lousy polls are due to losing conservative support. He never had much liberal support to lose, did he? Hoagland at WaPo: Click here: A President in Need of a Blunt Friend
Gandhi and Hitler Norm Geras' piece on non-violent resistance has attracted quite a bit of blog interest. Which Norm does deserve, but hasn't it always been clear that non-violence only works in Anglo-Saxon-derived cultures where conscience and Judeo-Christian religious ideals are embedded in both culture and government? Norm's piece here.
Wild cards: Baseball headed for an interesting weekend. Canada's military "woefully unprepared" for terror - or anything. SDA Teaching in Inner City Schools - not fun. Edn Wonks How to beat your wife: Instructions on how, by a Spanish Imam. LGF More on fisheries, and the success of IFQs. Env. Economics Supreme Court will take on spending limits. Lonely Centrist Polygamy in the Netherlands. Ah yes, the Vanguard of Societal Evolution, eh? Zarquawi: "This war sucks." Iowahawk How do we get around without getting lost? Cognitive Daily The War on Israel is just the Lesser Jihad. Jihad Watch Conservatives getting fed up with Bush. Nyhan Samuelson: Are capitalism and democracy really so perfectly compatible? Click here: Capitalism vs. Democracy - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.com Exodus, freedom, truth, and Dylan. Real Meal Ministries Olasky on Katrina winners and losers. Click here: Townhall.com :: Columns :: Three winners, three losers by Marvin Olasky Eric takes on the 10 Commandments: Graven Images? NYT Letters to the Editor: Stix does a little study. Click here: Bush League: Letters Page Politics at the New York Times
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill
Thursday, September 29. 2005
Anti-War, or Pro-War? Hitchins on the "anti-war movement:" It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
Please read entire.
The Int'l Freedom Center On our blog, we are sometimes so far ahead of the news cycle that it can look like we're behind it. We wrote the death certificate for the IFC a week ago, when Hillary opposed it. FYI, here is/was their website. What the site will not tell you is what they really wanted to do.
A Rational Canadian Editorial A defense of the USA, and a critique of Canada, From The Ottowa Citizen, via View from 1776, re NO: The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription medicine and government support through many other programs. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to be lost in the flood. Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth... Read entire.
The National Review turns 50 Excellent piece in Claremont Inst., by Uhlmann, reviewing the past 50 years of the conservative movement, and especially the role of William F. Buckley, now 80: (The NR's) subsequent success, which within 20 years had moved the center of American politics noticeably to the right, tends to obscure the audacious, some might say quixotic, character of the original program. The cultural and political milieu of the 1950s, after all, offered little evidence to sustain the hope that an explicitly conservative movement was necessary, desirable, or even possible. Did anyone besides the Buckleyites seriously believe that socialism would come creeping in on the little cat feet of Eisenhower Republicanism? Undaunted, the new conservatives responded with the cheerful determination of The Little Engine That Could. If the body politic was ignorant of or indifferent to threats deemed palpably dangerous by the editors of National Review, it would simply have to be instructed.
Read entire.
 Fishing for a fishing license in NYSo -- Gwynnie thought she'd like to pursue some Fall troutses in the Empire State, and was not surprised to see that its Dept. of Environmental Protection protects its fishes by making it impossible to get a license! Their newly announced on-line internet program D.E.C.A.L.S. purports to offer on-line licensing, but you can't use the system unless you have used it before! [How to you get on a train that doesn't stop?] But wait! You can get a license by mail if you print out the application and (b) show your on-line D.E.C.A.L.S. number you obtained in (a) above AND (c) pay by credit card - no checks or cash! [How do you send money by mail using an application without blanks for a credit card number?] So, off she goes to use the old method of visiting the nearest NYS town hall -- wonder what the unusable internet site cost NYS residents?
More on the Moonbats
"The media have pushed the idea that the demonstration this weekend at the White House was an 'anti-war' gathering. What they didn't say was who was behind it... For the record, the lead organizer [was] ANSWER, which the media routinely refer to as an 'antiwar group.' It is nothing of the sort. In fact, ANSWER is a front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party. And any group that qualifies for that epithet in front of its name deserves special scrutiny, since Josef Stalin was responsible for the murder of as many as 25 million human beings... So why do communists—particularly those who march under Stalin's flag—get different treatment? And why do thousands of average people feel comfortable marching arm in arm with them? It's a puzzle. After all, according to the 'Black Book of Communism' —a widely cited and respected compendium of communism's crimes in the 20th century—communist regimes murdered as many as 100 million people over the last century. That's quite a record. Indeed, all the century's great mass murders—Mao Zedong (65 million), Stalin (25 million), Hitler (21 million), Pol Pot (2 million)—were communists or socialists. Yet many well-meaning people who marched this weekend perhaps didn't know all this. Or perhaps they don't mind having their cause besmirched by people who aren't really anti-war at all, but anti-America, anti-West, anti-freedom and anti-capitalist... Maybe it proves the old adage: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas." —Investor's Business Daily
Jeff Harrell enters retail Hell We all sometimes feel like we just want to buy something, do we not? Usually an impulse best resisted, but what the heck. Harrell's piece is funny and familiar. Bush just can't win Now he's too engaged with the storm mess. Just goes to show you can always criticize anyone, anytime, if you want to. Sensible Mom. I agree. Fact is, I think the press just wants to see some emotion, Clinton-style ("my empathy is bigger than your empathy"), rather than manly effectiveness.
The Old Doc asked me to jot down some thoughts about his post on Transgender. His post was pretty good for an off-the-cuff piece, and I can't do much better, but I can say more. But let me first explain that the psychoanalytic view of the world is a strange and highly skeptical one: we rarely take unexamined thoughts and feelings and actions about important matters at face value, but rather regard them as surface data. Like oil geologists, we survey the terrain not because we value hills, but because of the clues they offer about what lies beneath. In AA they like to say that "Feelings aren't facts," and that is the truth. Therefore we are inclined to view thoughts and feelings people have about their bodies and their sexuality as just that - thoughts and feelings, not facts, until demonstrated otherwise. Same as their thoughts and feelings about their mothers, or their jobs, spouses, or money, or anything else that matters. For example, I have seen patients who thought they were gay, and weren't, just as often as I have seen patients who refused to admit that they preferred guys. The Old Doc is right - people's feelings about what they are is always a muddle, and especially in adolescence. This is why analysts are always reluctant to label anyone: to stick with the geology metaphors, when there is a rattling of teacups in the cupboard, we want to know whether it's a mouse running around, or an earthquake in the neighborhood. Plain "rattling teacups" doesn't do it for us. As a consequence of our skepticism about accepting thoughts, feelings, and fantasies at face value, we naturally also are skeptical about behavior. We know that people often do not know why they do what they do, even though they may offer a ready explanation. People are great at rationalizing and justifying things they do for irrational or hidden motives of which they are often unaware. So, given all of that, just a few disjointed points: First, the idea of how we feel and think of ourselves, and the melding of "female" and "male" identities, were discussed at length by Freud, as the Old Doc recalls, and is nothing new. However, most analysts would tend to regard a person's viewing themselves as another sex as a surface sign of what we call an identity disturbance. Second, the idea of how we think of ourselves (not for the moment talking about partner choice) is sculpted by culture: it is not a "something" independent of culture. For example, the Whites at Harvard showed in their cross-cultural studies that man and woman roles are related to the economy (hunter-gatherer vs. agricultural in the "simplest" societies, with, as I recall, more gender differentiation in the hunter gatherer societies. Third, Bettelheim's book, Symbolic Wounds, demonstrated the yearning by men across cultures for the power of the woman's body: ie. Bettelheim showed that there is male "womb envy" as there may be female "penis envy." (These refer to usually unconscious thoughts and feelings and fantasies.) He described various male pubertal rites across cultures of symbolic "menarche" including subcision or circumcision at time of puberty. In US cultures, this is more often seen as ear or nose piercing by boys, and the like. The phenomenon of "couvade" among some American Indians (male hysterical pregnancy at the time of the woman's pregnancy) was culturally institutionalized in some Indian cultures.
Continue reading "A few thoughts about "Transgender," etc."
VT needs a Repub to run against Sanders for Senate: Am. Spectator DeLay's statement, here. Anglican leadership in Iraq slaughtered. Why I am still a Republican, by Robert George Is Cindy a media whore, a star-f-er, or just a "liar," as McCain says Real reason NO Police Chief resigned? RRWH has info. (Who would live there?) At No Oil, A Marine comments on the peaceniks. Propaganda in the classroom. Protein Wisdom Calif - important referendum on union dues and politics. CSM FEMA's Brown testifies, gets roasted by congresspeople trying to evade their own resp. Junior Gotti out on bail - Curtis Sliwa watchful Dick Morris: Hillary doesn't know which way to turn. How Zarquawi hijacked the insurgency. Austin Bay Downward mobility tough on male health.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax. Albert Einstein
Wednesday, September 28. 2005
VDH on University Presidents: More importantly, we have lost sight of what university presidents are supposed to be. Their first allegiance ought to be to honesty and truth, not campus orthodoxy masquerading as intellectual bravery amid a supposedly reactionary society. In a world of intellectual integrity, Robert Birgeneau would ask, "Why are Asians excelling, and what can Berkeley do to encourage emulation of their success by other ethnic groups?" Denice Denton might wonder whether open hiring, monitored by affirmative action officers, applies to university staff or only those who are not associates of the president. President Hoffman would decry Ward Churchill's crass behavior and order a complete review of affirmative action and the politicized nature of hiring, retention, and tenure practices at Colorado. And Larry Summers? In the old world of the campus, he would defend free inquiry and expression, and remind faculty that all questions are up for discussion at Harvard. And if self-appointed censors wished to fire him for that, then he would dare them to go ahead and try. The signs of erosion on our campuses are undeniable, whether we examine declining test scores, spiraling costs, or college graduates' ignorance of basic facts and ideas. In response, our academic leadership is not talking about a more competitive curriculum, higher standards of academic accomplishment, or the critical need freely to debate important issues. Instead, it remains obsessed with a racial, ideological, and sexual spoils system called "diversity." Even as the airline industry was deregulated in the 1970s, and Wall Street now has come under long-overdue scrutiny, it is time for Americans, if we are to ensure our privileged future, to re-examine our era's politicized university.
Read entire. Thanks for the tip, Instapundit
Two problems with Airplanes News Flash: airplanes linked to global warming. I guess we never thought of that one before: Citing the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Reuters said aviation causes 3.5 percent of “man-made global warming.” This figure is forecast to spike to 15 percent by 2050.Click here: http://www.travelwirenews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000059/005938-p.htm
Dymphna on Air Safety: "It's all for show". Read this before your next flight. My links aren't working: Click here: Gates of Vienna: It’s All for Show
Doris Goodwin ReturnsIn this edition of the Atlantic, Mallon writes on Doris Goodwin and her reentry into historical biography. Everybody has made mistakes, and Ms. Goodwin is no different but I still think she is one of the best Presidential historians we have today. Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's much anticipated book about Abraham Lincoln, marks her return to the arena after a devastating scandal. Throughout her personal trials, Goodwin says, Lincoln himself proved to be a major source of consolation. "His whole philosophy was not to waste precious energies on recriminations about the past" From Click here: No Ordinary Tome
"E pur si muovo" Galileo's famous sotto voce words regarding the nature of the solar system, following his conviction by the Inquisition. One of our thoughtful readers (well, they all seem to be a cut above) suggests that the so-called "Scopes II" trial in PA might be better regarded as a "Galileo II."
Steyn: US out of UN? Hard headed, strong stuff from Steyn: Transnationalism is the mechanism by which the world’s most enlightened progressives provide cover for its darkest forces. It’s a largely unconscious alliance but not an illogical one. Western proponents of ‘sustainable consumption’ and some of the other loopy NGO-beloved eco-concepts up for debate in New York this week have at least this much in common with psychotic Third World thugocracies: both groups find it hard to win free elections, both regard transnational bodies as useful for conferring a respect unearned at the ballot box, and neither is unduly troubled by the lack of accountability in global institutions.
Read entire.
We have two species of Scaup in North
America, but they look very similar, and
90% of them are Lesser Scaup. Unlike the Teal, featured last week, Scaup are divers, feeding on crustaceans (especially amphipods), mollusks, insects, minnows, and some plant material. They are long-time favorites of duck hunters (despite their anchovy-like flavor which I enjoy), with historically abundant populations along the Atlantic coast during migration, but their population has been unaccountably declining over the past decade. You can see their flocks resting in fresh or salt water, or wheeling in the sky like schools of fish, between October and February, with most birds wintering in the southern US and Central America. Their main breeding grounds are the northern boreal forests. More on scaup here. Does hunting have a measurable effect on duck populations? No. As with most critters, habitat is everything. We will bag a few bluebills next week, in Canada. And eat them, too, cooked rare. Never cook duck anything more than rare. And never with anything with an orange flavor - overpowers the duck. Cooked pears or figs are far better with duck.
The Scorsese Documentary I found it to be not very revealing, but a fun thing with great music clips, which I guess was the point. A good introduction to Dylan for those needing one. Man, did he look drugged out sometimes, but still produced on stage. I thought the best parts were the interviews from today.
 Melville
Call me Bird Dog. I would have to confess to being a Melville fan, having read everything he wrote that is extant, including Billy Budd a few times and Moby Dick more than a few. Far from being a daunting book, Moby Dick is pure fun, a rambling, shambling mythic tale decorated with all sorts of information and local color; truly a book as big as an ocean and as unruly. If Moby Dick is the ocean, then Billy Budd is a pearl in an oyster at the bottom of the ocean. Like all wonderful writers, Melville couldn't write on one dimension if he tried. But Melville was almost forgotten and lost until the 1920s. From Dirda's review of Delbanco's new biography: The life and afterlife of Herman Melville (1819-1891) present the greatest illustration in American literature, perhaps in world literature, of the Psalm "The same stone which the builders refused is become the head-stone." After the popular success of Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), which led to the young Melville being dubbed "the man who lived among cannibals," he embarked on a literary career that went gradually, then precipitously, downhill. By the time he was 40 he had essentially abandoned fiction altogether, tried publishing poetry with comparable success (i.e., none), and finally resigned himself -- he was, after all, married, with four children and debts -- to spending the rest of his life as a customs inspector for the city of New York. When he died, the newspaper obituary misprinted his name as "Henry Melville."
 What is "transgender"?
The question came up at dinner with friends Saturday night. Lots of the wives were Smithies (in their 60s+, dare I say?) and they were talking about how their Alma Mater had become a haven for the sexually confused and deviant. They were nostalgic for the old Smith days of weekend trips to Yale and Dartmouth for a wholesome romp and some drinks and hopefully a husband. By skillful application of their charms, they all married very well indeed, and relatively happily too, if appearances are any measure (which they aren't). I had to admit that I had heard of transgender, but didn't understand it at all. So I tried to read up on it, and I still do not quite get it, but I can see that it all stems from this idea of "gender," a recent concept, sort of a wierd one, introduced by Dr. John Money, a shrink and a famous sex researcher at Hopkins. The notion is that one's anatomy and one's psychology are not always in sync. But I can reach back to medical school and psychiatry classes and, as I recall, Freud said that humans are all mixed up and perverted, psychologically anyway - whether it's conscious or unconscious, so I do not find the fact that many or even most people fail to fit a male or female stereotype particularly interesting - I never met anyone who did, unless they were either putting their best foot forward, or play-acting. We are all made differently. And when it comes to sex change operations, I would no sooner get near one of those than to an abortion. For me, such things are not medicine - they are barbarism and not any part of the Hippocratic Oath I took - which I take to forbid abortion by physicians, in addition to the famous forbidding of cutting "those laboring under the stone". (That was for lowly surgeons, not physicians.) So as not to look stupid, among the things I read was this piece by Carl Bushong, which I found to be basically happy horse s-, basically true things about people but drawing drastic conclusions from superficial psychology. And this "true self" stuff sounds a little too pop-psychology for me, a little too self-involved. (I guess everyone is kinda transgendered, but who worries about it? Well, I guess adolescents and young folks do a lot of navel-gazing, especially where it's in fashion. Still, if youth wants to navel-gaze, I'd suggest that they worry more about their character and about how they plan to make a living than about their "sexual identity" - if such a thing even exists. The kids today are spoiled, self-indulgent brats: didn't Socrates say that? And, in Socrates' day, seems like all the young folk were transgendering themselves silly in the gymnasium - the fellas, anyway.) But, at this point, I am out of my league and will ask Dr. Bliss to take this one on for me.
Observing the Foolish Master, Packing for Hunting Trip Gwynnie the dog just has to speak out: Whazzizname is crashing about the house, panting, with foam flecking his ample chins. Scary to hear about – appalling to see! Shouted comments to the innocent: “Have you seen my boonie hat?” Did you touch my blaze vest?” Where are my camo hat and jammies?” The innocent, and Gwynnie is as innocent as they come, stay clear. Whazzizname is going on his annual hunting expedition to upper Manitoba and is incapable of packing till the last minute – which, at his pace, is a couple of days in advance. The innocents don’t know what a boonie is, or why he needs a hat. “Chokes!” he shouts, “I never remember chokes! Oh, oh! Handwarmers, gotta find those too. Wonder if Bird Dog will remember everything?” Gwynnie is glad she’s a herding dog – what can you forget, the cow? “Look at those labs,” she says. “They have all that GEAR – electronic collars, camo jackets, bells, all the stuff from Orvis or Cabelas or Kevins. Stuff must drive them nuts!” Yet, still, Whazzizname grins with a blended expression of eager anticipation and deep satisfaction whenever he pauses to take a breath. Could it be he is remembering Manitoba Sunsets? 
Or chilly dawns? 
Or simply chatting idly with great friends? Whatever it is, it is an enduring mystery to Gwynnie and Whazzhername – but to Whazzizname himself as well. 
We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing. Robert E. Lee
Tuesday, September 27. 2005
Media Whore gets herself Arrested Yup, Cindy finally did it. Wow, what a hero! Saw her happy face on Drudge this AM, but the photo is taken down now.
Odysseus Found? Like Pejman, I will take this story with a grain of salt. But fun to think about Ithaka.
A Plan for Fisheries Reasonableness finally enters the subject of preserving fisheries, and the Bush admin. is on the right side. The Commons.
Hillary Concerned about Free Speech on Internet From Drudge: "I don't have any clue about what we're going to do legally, regulatorily, technologically -- I don't have a clue. But I do think we always have to keep competing interests in balance." Meaning her interests, no doubt. Honestly, I do not like the sound of this. Wonder whether she might like the Chinese approach.
Choooo chooo Good timeline of railroad history. And the Central Pacific Railroad photo history website.
Gimme Some Money, Part 2 Katrina's flood waters woke the poverty pimps from their dormancy, but now the heavy hitters are getting on board - massive pork projects for LA. Quoted from Washington Times at The Corner: Louisiana Sens. David Vitter (R) and Mary Landrieu (D) tucked the request into their $250 billion Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, the state's opening salvo in the scramble for federal dollars. The bill, unveiled last week, would create a powerful "Pelican Commission" controlled by Louisiana residents that would decide which Corps projects to fund, and ordered the commission to consider several controversial navigation projects that have nothing to do with flood protection. The Corps section of the Louisiana bill, which was supported by the entire state delegation, was based on recommendations from a "working group" dominated by lobbyists for ports, shipping firms, energy companies and other corporate interests. The bill would exempt any Corps projects approved by the commission from provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. It would also waive the usual Corps cost-sharing requirements, ensuring that federal taxpayers would pay every dime.
Glenn Reynolds on the Second Amendment and States Rights In 1995, before he achieved renown as Instapundit, Glenn published this piece (Click here: THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND STATES' RIGHTS: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ) in the William and Mary Law Review to examine the Second Amendment from the states' rights (rather than from the individual rights) standpoint, and in the process is critical of casual Constitutional interpretation by talking heads. He concludes the article: The Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, is a package deal: It is all or nothing, and for each of us there are likely to be parts we dislike. Where such parts exist, the answer is either to live with them or to amend the Constitution, not to interpret pieces of it out of existence. There always will be a market for those who feel otherwise just as there always will be a market for "miracle" diets that purport to let people eat all they want and not exercise. But the Constitution, unlike the diet industry or the mass media, is not founded on giving the people what they want. We forget that at our peril, and as the mass-marketing of the states' right interpretation of the Second (p.1768)Amendment demonstrates, we appear perilously close to forgetting it now.
I think the right to bear arms is, or should be, an individual right, but the "thought experiment" was an interesting way to approach the issue of states' rights, and reveals Glenn to be a disciplined thinker.
Scopes II The so-called Scopes II trial begins this week in Harrisburg, PA., which concerns a Dover, PA school board's decision for teaching Intelligent Design along with evolutionary theory in biology classes. Frm the NYT piece: On the evolutionists' side is a legal team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. These groups want to put intelligent design itself on trial and discredit it so thoroughly that no other school board would dare authorize teaching it.
So here come the religion-haters and the Bible-phobics. Isn't the real issue, though, as it was in Scopes I, whether a local school board can make its own decisions?
Man thinks; God laughs. Yiddish saying
Monday, September 26. 2005
Admiral Nelson's t-shirt and other personal items to be auctioned. His undershirt expected to bring $500,000. Says Sotheby's re the Admiral: "He was remarkably brave in battle, but he also wanted recognition for this, and was remarkably weak in his personal life," Grist said. "He'd face the French and Spanish fleet much easier than he would face his first wife." Who wouldn't? Piece here.
 What's a Steamfitter?
One of those trade terms I've heard all my life, and sounds antique, but wasn't too clear on. They started out as the construction trade that handled the furnaces boilers and piping for residential and industrial steam heating and other steam-powered equipment, but nowadays steamfitters are the guys who do installation and maintenance of heating, ventilation, and refrigeration equipment. It's an apprenticeship trade, whose unions are generally closely associated with pipelayers, plumbers, and pipefitters. Pipefitters? Not sure how different they are from steamfitters and plumbers, but all kinds of industrial piping. Pipes and welding. Good, honest, physical work, not like mine. Photo of a nice steam boiler and spacious boiler room.
Katrina, Environmentalists, The Corps of Engineers, and Money Powerline highlighted this piece in the WSJ. Good. A sample: "...the Corps hardly has a record of rationality. It claims that Katrina produced surges higher than the levees that Congress funded it to build. But Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center found that "the flooding of most of New Orleans" came from breaches of floodwalls on canals adjoining Lake Pontchartrain; Katrina's surges did not pour over the levees but breached them because the Corps' floodwalls were shoddy. The barrier stopped by the lawsuit was designed to keep storm surges out of the lake, so it would have reduced the pressure on these floodwalls. And now, as we have seen, Hurricane Rita drove new surges into the lake. The Corps actually contributed to increased pressure from the surges on Lake Pontchartrain by building the little-used Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile long canal that destroyed 20,000 acres of wetlands. The Corps causes floods across the country by destroying wetlands and channeling rivers. Meanwhile, the federal government encourages construction in flood plains by providing flood insurance."
Gimme Some Money Trying to leverage the Katrina coverage into some cash. Star Parker: More than $7 trillion has been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson declared his "war on poverty" 40 years ago, with effectively zero impact on overall black poverty. Yet 40 years of failure doesn't seem to be enough to suggest to liberals, black and white, that their approach to poverty might be wrong. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards, among others, riding the post-Katrina poverty-in-America theme, are making predictable speeches calling for yet more government poverty programs. I'm not sure I want to let these folks off with an insanity plea, but you really have to wonder what it takes for liberals to add one and one and get two. It's a bit hard to buy the claim that Katrina suddenly made Americans aware of poverty.
Read entire.
Canada's GunScam, at Captain Ed Killer Dolphins Missing? At Ex-Donk. Howler reports on Ed Decker. Who he? Find out, and watch Howler rip the poor soul a new one.
Photos from the Anti-War protest Photos here. Gives you a good sense of who these people are. Thanks, Powerline. Protest posting from No OIl, too. Definitely Moonbats on Parade - their signs are revealing. Respectful disagreement, people? The Coalition Against Civilization Even wackier than the anti-war crowd. Thanks, LGF Men outnumbered by women on campus. This has got to be fun for the guys, unless half the women are transgender whatevers. At Instapundit
Another offering by Julian Beever, the English street chalk artist. Notice the way the guy steps around the "hole." 
On natural Disasters, from Barcepundit: 579. That’s the current death toll in Louisiana from the hurricane and catastrophic flooding. Terrible for the victims, their family, their friends. But also much less than the 10,000 widely predicted. And, BTW, much less than the more than 35,000 killed by a heat wave in Europe two summers ago. You recall the debate that set off about European heartlessness, racism and discrimination? No, neither do I." Read all of his comments on the latest news stories cause he is good:
Dylan Fest Seven short Dylan-related videos at BBC. And BBC's Dylan page here. You can follow the "Endless Tour" here. A piece by Scott, and a special Dylan page at The Independent. Mark your calendars, if you have not done so already. The Scorsese film "No Direction Home" will be on PBS Sept. 26 and 27. The DVD should be available around Sept. 20 on Amazon. The No Direction Home CD is available at Amazon. The Gaslight CD is at Starbucks. The Dylanologist and I were talking yesterday, wondering why Dylan has quit his guitar and returned to his first instrument, piano. We decided it was whim - not arthritis, as has been speculated. We also wondered whether his current touring band will ever reach the heights of his past bands. And we decided that, regardless of the interest in the Scorsese film, we'd be more interested in a current documentary about this fascinating and enigmatic character.
An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth. Irish Saying
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