Monday, November 21. 2005
Carnival of Digital Cameras. H/T, Instapundit Dems fell into their own trap: RWNH, and New England Repub summarizes. Michelle pushes back. Good piece on the essential Peter Drucker in The Economist.
 Visiting NYC this season?
It seems as if a lot of bloggers have been visiting NYC lately. Good. New York does Christmastime well. Maggie's has been very clear that we enormously appreciate the Renaissance of NYC as it has occurred under the hands of Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg. We posted some NYC travel tips last April, and we have recently noted the Fra Angelico show at the Met. Another tip - Jersey Boys, on Broadway. The story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Fine music - better than The Four Seasons ever were, I am told. Don't forget to consider Fraunce's Tavern (since 1762) for dinner, way downtown, where Washington delivered his farewell address to his troops back when mid-town NYC was farms and woods. Consider Peter Luger Steak House (since 1887) too. Remember - dining in NYC means reservations. Image of Fraunce's Tavern.
Charity Season Send a Cow. One Maggie's favorite charities. Check it out.
Manners and civility: Geo. Will Katrina money still unspent: Drudge Clinton's change of mind re Iraq? Op. Journal Organic vs. non-organic: The Milk Wars. Intell Cons. Chinese New Yorkers sending their kids back to China. NYSun
Is Zarquawi dead? Inquiring minds want to know. Internet use in China. Bird flu vaccine and the trial lawyers. How about a blog named "No Vaccine for Trial Lawyers" - like No OIl for Pacifists. Welfare and the aborigines. They call it "sit down money". Al Quaida caught on Mexican border. $100 laptop for the third world. Synthstuff. Wonderful.
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 - 180)
Sunday, November 20. 2005
Mahna Mahna Addictive, silly Muppets tune: here.
Tell Ol' Bill Can now be gotten on iTunes. Get it. We did the lyrics a couple of weeks ago - check our Song and Dance Man category. And download that Dylan clip posted on Sat: you won't regret it.
The moon over San Miniato's bell tower, one hard week ago. Remarkable Michelangelo, wearing his military engineer hat, ordered cannon emplaced up in that tower during the Siege of Florence. A famous graffito during that ten-month siege in 1529: "Poor but free." The armies of the Pope and his Spanish and French allies finally prevailed, marking the end of the free Republic of Florence and the installation of the Medici as autocratic rulers of Tuscany. Enjoy odd facts? Michelangelo died the year both Galileo and Shakespeare were born: 1564. The ancient seeds of the memory of Greek political freedom were germinating, back then. The pursuit of freedom, self-reliance, and dignity is an endless battle for mankind, is it not, against those who seek power and authority over us, and "responsibility" for us? Like we are weak, or children. Give me God's, or even nature's fate - not man's. I will deal with those. Like those Florentines, I do not trust human power, because it is always the wrong sorts of folks who seek it: people who want to be too big for their boots. Bush, however well-intentioned, and all the rest included. While the regular people just want to live life in God's amazing and scary world, or to figger out how to. But che bella vita, and to Hell with all of the power-seekers. Which circle? Dante knew. That's all I have to say, today, on a holy Sabbath. For those who had trouble posting to Friday's San Miniato post, try here. 
Saturday, November 19. 2005
Three Votes Exactly three votes for surrender to a handful of ignorant terrorist lunatics. That's a little more like it, America. Powerline. Has everyone seen this? If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the
Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112
deaths, that gives a combat death rate of 60 per 100,000.
The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol (which happens to have some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation) than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.
San Dominico Fra Angelico (1387-1455), the early Renaissance painter, was a Dominican brother in the San Dominico monastery in the hamlet of San Domenico, on the #7 bus route between Firenze and Fiesole, where a Bird Dog daughter is dwelling at present. This is an alterpiece of his, still there performing its holy function, and not hanging under bright lights in an art cemetery. Dominicans - Domine canis - The Dogs of God, charged with rounding up the lost sheep. By coincidence (thanks Alert Reader - man, do we have good readers), Fra Angelico has a big show at the Met in NY right now. 
Vegetarian eats grasshopper, wants compensation. Here. Hey - I'd say it's the grasshopper's family that deserves compensation. A widow, and God knows how many fatherless children with crime, and possibly even gun ownership, in their futures. Where is PETA when you need them? An up or down vote on Iraq? Ace Where are the WMD's? Atlas and Anchoress Dead people as art. WTF? AOL news. Hilarious, especially with Bird Dog writing about "art cemeteries." This is a true art cemetery. The mind of a terrorist: Gay and right
Friday, November 18. 2005
Truth Mark Twain said that a rumor can go around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Seems to apply to the insidious Whiskey Pete story. Instapundit. I know someone who was already taught the unproven story today in a government class in college.
Help Desk: Technical Support Don't know where this came from: Dear Tech Support: Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition , Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, Beer and TV 3.0, and the now-antique but still functional Stay out Late and Get Drunk and Stupid with Pals and Then Drive Home Drunk 1.0. I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but my uninstall doesn't seem to work on Wife 1.0. Please help. Thanks, Troubled User
Reply: Dear Troubled User: This is a very common problem that men complain about.
Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is
just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed to monitor everything. It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed.
You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not
allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child
Support. I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and work on improving the
situation. I suggest installing the background application "Yes Dear" to alleviate software augmentation.
The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway.
Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as Clean, Dust and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5, Do Me Once a Month Maybe 3.2, Constructive Criticism 4.o, and Do Bills 4.2 .
However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0 !
WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Dumb Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.
Best of luck,
Your Friendly Helpdesk
The rear wall, behind the altar, of San Miniato, the Benedictine chapel which we posted yesterday. Note the painted timbers of the roof beams - my flash couldn't quite reach that high. How come only Catholics get to have this kind of stuff? (I know, I know.) 
Poitiers, Redux Steyn: "The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.'' Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.'' Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman." Read entire.
The books some celebs, etc. loved most in college. In Slate.
Decaf unhealthy? Always knew there was something fishy about the concept. One Christian view of sex (not necessarily endorsing this view, but it's interesting). Natural Family Planning Outreach "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." A piece by Brian on Community of the Desperate. Real Meal. What good is a GOP majority? Ankle Biter Stavins on climate change remedies, recommending economic incentives. Env. Economics. Am I an idiot not to stay awake at night worrying about this? Climate does change, for whatever reasons. It has never been static. Heck, we were just covered under a mile of ice in New England a short ten thousand years ago, and will be again. The enviro-nuts are short-term thinkers. They need to think more Progressively: Change is Good - right? And if things warm up, we'll need less evil oil! And nature will take its course. What? Me worry? Hey, Al Gore - chill - or should I say, take a Prozac and a scotch and warm up and enjoy life. Che bella vita, as Bird Dog sometimes says. The collected works of Bin Ladin, LGF Iraqi bloggers: No Oil "Mr. President, Build that Wall". Gates of Vienna on Immigration. Are we ever lucky to need a wall to keep interlopers out, instead of to keep people in? I doubt that even most liberals want govt experts taking over a family function like this. MassRight. However, a true socialist would be happy, as more power accrues to the Almighty and Omniscient State. It is the dawning of the Age of Eurabia, etc. Iowahawk
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude. WS, As You Like It
Thursday, November 17. 2005
The Basilica of San Miniato al Monte One of the oldest buildings in Florence, construction of San Miniato was begun in 1013. It is now the chapel of an Olivetan Benedictine monastery. I was fortunate to hear the monks do Vespers in the crypt, in Gregorian chant, last Friday night. Michelangelo integrated the chapel in his rapidly-designed battlements in the 1500s, as he did with that entire part of Florence. Like DaVinci, a multi-talented fellow. Unlike the Duomo, the marble facade is old. Many consider San Miniato to be the finest Romanesque building it Italy. Did not know that Carlo Collodi was buried there. The hike from downtown Florence to the top of the hill is a good, scenic way to burn off lunch, and to get some looks at Michelangelo's defenses against the great siege on the Republic of Firenze by the Pope and the King of France, neither of whom liked the idea of an independent republic. Here's a nice timeline of those crazy 1500s. Has anything changed in Italian politics?
Grizzlies and Sea Otters It's a pleasure to have two conservation success stories at once. First, a report on studying the Yellowstone Grizzlies who have made a remarkable comeback. It looks to be a short series in the CSM. Second, the resurgence of the Pacific coast's Sea Otter has fishermen bent out of shape, although the otters' numbers are nowhere close to what they were historically. They have to eat, too. CNN
Two Books Two books that I have heard people mentioning lately: 1. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, by Bernstein 2. The R. Crumb Handbook, by R. Crumb
 C.S. Lewis
Gopnik in The New Yorker takes a fresh look at the complicated life of the beloved (at least in the US) story-teller, medieval literature scholar, and Christian apologist extraordinaire: "The two Lewises—the British bleeding don and the complacent American saint—do a kind of battle in the imagination of those who care as much about Narnia as they do about its author. Is Narnia a place of Christian faith or a place to get away from it? As one reads the enormous literature on Lewis’s life and thought—there are at least five biographies, and now a complete, three-volume set of his letters—the picture that emerges is of a very odd kind of fantasist and a very odd kind of Christian. The hidden truth that his faith was really of a fable-first kind kept his writing forever in tension between his desire to imagine and his responsibility to dogmatize. His works are a record of a restless, intelligent man, pacing a cell of his own invention and staring through the barred windows at the stars beyond. That the door was open all the time, and that he held the key in his pocket, was something he discovered only at the end." Was he a prig, a sensualist, a saint, or a mensch? A fantasist constricted by dogma? An everyday neurotic, mixed-up writer? I'd guess the latter. Read the whole thing if you are at all interested in this brilliant and fascinating fellow who was transformed by earthly love, and then loss, late in his life. A brief bio of Lewis here. There are lots of C.S. Lewis websites. Here's one. By the way, Disney's (!) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes out Dec. 9. Can Disney possibly do it justice? And finally, if you ever wondered in which order the Chronicles of Narnia ought to be read, here's the website on that important subject. (I read them out of order.)
More Chavez Antics John Sweeny writing for Vcrisis covers the 24 hour telesur program featuring Hugo ranting and raving like his mentor Fidel on the evils of the US: "• The United States is a criminal, terrorist, imperialist global oppressor. • Capitalism and free trade are responsible for the abject poverty in which billions of humans live. • The FTAA is a U.S. conspiracy to enslave Latin America" read the entire comedic tragedy here :Hugo Chavez Owns the Message: Telesur’s Global Reach | www.vcrisis.com Also yesterday Venezuela's Hugo Chavez achieved a new level of moronic diplomacy by severing ties with President Fox of Mexico. Both ambassadors have been sent home until someone apologizes. What a pity Latin Americans are ruled by such buffoons: "So, yesterday President Chavez proceeded to insult Mexican President Vicente Fox, escalating the friction between the two countries to unparalleled levels and inducing both countries to recall their respective Ambassadors and de facto breaking relations between the two countries. Curiously Venezuela breaks relations with the Latin American country that has maintained relations with Cuba for the longest time since Fidel Castro assumed power forty seven years ago. "
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