Tuesday, November 8. 2005
Mirengoff on Eurabia: "In a certain kind of liberal universe, French Muslim rioters are victims who want nothing more than to enjoy the bourgeoise pleasures of secular France. Iraqi Muslims, by contrast, have little yearning for freedom, self-government, and prosperity, preferring civil war, a Saddam-style strong man, and/or a theocracy. They are victims of U.S. aggression, which denies them these things, at least temporarily. To me, however, it seems plausible that Iraqis Muslims will find satisfaction in their own democratic state before European Muslims will find satisfaction in a western-style democracy." Read entire: Powerline
In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily. Charles, Count Talleyrand (Need we say more about the French?)
Monday, November 7. 2005
WHO, World Bank, etc., convene on Avian Flu Pandemic a matter of time: Story here.
News refuses to characterize the French "youths": Ankle-Biter A hybrid update from Glenn, here. Newspaper circulation continues to decline, via Drudge, here. Living in Eurabia: Atlas (We like to call it Euristan) IRS hassles anti-war church. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More on tuition discounts for illegals: Imm. Blog
We'll Always Have Paris Eleven straight days of worsening rioting and French authorities are still "vowing" to restore order. A first fatality was reported today, yet as VFR notes, the AP stories on the topic all follow the same structure, calling the rioters simply "youths" or "French youths" and blaming the violence on unemployment and racial discrimination. Chirac, in a latter-day imitation of Emperor Nero, has simply stood by for 10 days while the city burned, only emerging to issue feeble calls for calm when it became clear that closing his eyes wasn't going to make the problem go away. The entire government seems to be paralyzed by a fear that tough action will only inflame the rioters, but the conciliatory rhetoric and promises to deliver special, affirmative-action style privileges to African and Muslim immigrants - in direct opposition to France's cherished equalité - worsens the situation still further by legitimizing the use of violence to achieve political ends. If the government is willing to be blackmailed so easily, who can blame the rioters for escalating the violence?
A brand-new  Congregational
Church in Connecticut, approaching completion, on yesterday's misty, foggy morning. When have you last seen a new Congregational Church being built? This congregation is not a member of the UCC, by the way, but a true independent congregation of the original Mayflower variety. The story is that the original building burned down in 1920, and the congregation has been in "temporary" quarters since then. Not having had fire insurance, it's taken them a while to re-build - and the costs have gone up a little over the past 85 years.
Dalrymple There is a fine education in going to City Journal, and searching Dalrymple under "author". This Brit has been a prolific writer and thinker for years in that excellent journal, but our alert and intelligent readers have pointed me to one piece in particular of his, from 1995, Do Sties Make Pigs?, apropos of the French rioting. It's a case study of the law of unintended consequences, and of government's wealth, hubris, and lack of common sense. I quote here: "But it is public housing that exemplifies most clearly the ideas of those who transformed the British urban landscape during the 1950s and 1960s. Here the new aesthetics combined with socialist reforming zeal to produce a multilayered disaster. After the war, bien pensants universally agreed that pre-war British society had been grossly unjust. The working class, it was said, had been shamelessly exploited, as was manifest principally in Britain's great inequalities of income and its overcrowded housing. A sharply progressive income tax (which at one point reached 95 percent) would redress the inequalities of income, while slum clearance and the construction of large- scale housing projects would alleviate the housing problem. The middle class reformers thought of poverty wholly in physical terms: an insufficiency of food and warmth, a lack of space. How, they asked, could people come to the finer things in life if their basic requirements were so inadequately met? What could freedom mean (I remember my father asking) in the absence of decent housing conditions? Since social problems such as crime and delinquency (which we were soon to discover were in their infancy) were attributable to physical deprivation—to the environment rather than the criminal or delinquent—the construction of decent housing would solve all problems at once. But what was decent housing? A civil servant, Parker Morris, provided the answer: a certain number of cubic yards of living space per inhabitant. The Ministry of Housing adopted the Parker Morris standards for all public housing; they governed the size and number of rooms—and that was all." Read entire.
No, it's not from a grocery store tabloid. Warmflash and Weiss in Scientific American: "Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a homegrown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis. The alternative possibility--that living cells or their precursors arrived from space--strikes many people as science fiction. Developments over the past decade, however, have given new credibility to the idea that Earth's biosphere could have arisen from an extraterrestrial seed." Read entire.
Douthat reviews Dowd's book: "AS WITH MUCH of what Dowd writes, it's hard to know how seriously to take her mix of cheap shots and caricature. Still, it's worth at least suggesting, by way of counterpoint, that the world we inhabit isn't one in which the feminists have been backlashed into retreat for the last 40 years--it's a world where feminism won, at least insofar as it could, and the sexual confusion that so dismays Dowd is the unexpected consequence of its victory." Read entire. Immigration legislation update. Barone. Istanbul Update. Eurozine
The Latin Beat: Chavez The situation in Latin America is dire indeed. We are witnessing the rise of the new 'Castro' if allowed Hugo Chavez will finance the overthrow of any remaining democracies and perpetuate the communist ideal of the 'state' mentality. Let us remember that most of the citizenry in Latin America are uneducated and below poverty levels, as was the case in 1959 when Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista. Castro did so under the pretense of ridding the country of a corrupt dictator and then transforming himself into a dictator significantly worse. Now, some 40 years later, Cuba is a crumbling country filled with hopelessness and despair. The beautiful colonial architecture is without chance of being repaired and returned to its former glory. The people are unemployed and without food. Education is perhaps the only benefit left and without lights, books and basic materials even this program is a joke. If given the chance to flee most would. How can Americans sit by, watch and read about a leader who potentially threatens the US by causing ill will throughout an entire continent? I suggest we sit up and take notice because in the Americas they are once again singing the praises of Che. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, sporting a Cuban national baseball cap, told a stadium full of protesters that the free trade accord of the Americas was dead and urged resistance to "American imperialism."
Saturday, November 5. 2005
Charlie Rich and the Democrats I tend to assume that everyone who is online reads Powerline regularly, if not daily. However, this past week they have outdone themselves with quality of thought and writing. They keep getting better. Scott somehow manages to combine the great Charlie Rich with the Dems' Behind Closed Doors antics, but their whole week sets an impossibly high standard for the rest of the blogosphere. These guys have jobs, too?
A Blog, and a Post Just stumbled into a fine blog I hadn't seen before, Dinocrat, and, lo and behold, they had blogrolled Maggie's. That is a fine moment for a humble blogger. Here's another piece from Dinocrat: 32% of Dems believe the US is "a bad country." They are not on the planet that I inhabit. Can't help but wonder what a "good country" is to those folks.
France, more From Dinocrat: "A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.” All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities." Read entire.
Crash on the Levee From NYT: "The senators asked the engineering experts whether the corps should be trying right now to design and rebuild the levees to resist the strongest storms, those of Category 5. They replied that it would be best to work in stages, starting with the goal of resisting Category 3 storms, a level that can be attained relatively quickly. Any broader plan, they suggested, should include restoring the wetlands that create a protective buffer against oncoming storms." Read entire.
Cuba and Venezuela: the best examples of why socialism and communism don't work. How can political systems be successful when egocentric megalomaniacs are in charge? They can't. See the new census and the destruction in Cuba from Wilma. And we thought New Orleans was bad. Downtown Caracas. A crumbling district, under dirt, garbage and lack of elemental maintenance, to the vociferous complaints of Chavez himself. Not to mention that street vendors occupy now all the main streets of downtown where tourists cannot go anymore. It smells now permanently of urine, even during the rainy season. From Venezuela News And ViewsVenezuela News And Views
| |  | | | Next time you hear Chavez saying that Cuba evacuates everyone before a storm, show him this (11/1) |
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Grit vs. Talent and Brains From Psychology Today: "In a series of provocative new studies at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers find that the gritty are more likely to achieve success in school, work and other pursuits -- perhaps because their passion and commitment help them endure the inevitable setbacks that occur in any long-term undertaking. In other words, it's not just talent that matters but also character. "Unless you're a genius, I don't think that you can ever do better than your competitors without a quality like grit," says Martin E. P. Seligman, director of the university's Positive Psychology Center. Indeed, experts often speak of the "10-year rule" -- that it takes at least a decade of hard work or practice to become highly successful in most endeavors, from managing a hardware store to writing sitcoms -- and the ability to persist in the face of obstacles is almost always an essential ingredient in major achievements. The good news: Perhaps even more than talent, grit can be cultivated and strengthened." Read entire.
From Gates of Vienna: "The european union is so busy building houses of cards they don’t even notice that half the place is on fire and the other half is muslim." The American right to Cheap Oil: PoliPundit Liberal politics: RWN: "But, when will they have their big "awakening" and finally figure out liberalism is a political killer? Who knows? Given that the Democratic Party has been going downhill at least since Nixon slaughtered McGovern in 1972, you'd think the Dems would have figured this out long ago." "While Europe Slept": Neo-neocon Sambo in Maryland: good comments from Ragged Thots "Some things shouldn't be for sale." Ain't that the truth. Classical Values on Art, etc. The California elections - a run-down on the Propositions by Ankle Biter Tuition breaks for illegals in Massachusetts - but not for legals, of course. MassRight
Friday, November 4. 2005
If I burn a car, can I get a free villa in Provence? A case study in how not to deal with Jihad. NY Sun. I guess now it's all about "occupied territories" - Sensible Mom. And how did it happen that France is now Jihad's "Enemy Number One"?
Minor Details France, via Yahoo News: "The country has 751 neighbourhoods officially classed as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the population. Conditions are often dire with high-rise housing, unemployment at twice the national rate of 10 percent and per capita incomes 40 percent below the national average. Many of France's estimated five million Muslims live in those suburbs." Dare I ask what is wrong with "high-rise housing"?
More on the Paris riots here- things seem to be rapidly spinning out of control. Every day I read that De Villepin is "vowing" to restore order, yet the situation only seems to get worse as French authorities are paralyzed by their own politically-correct inhibitions. Meanwhile the mayor of a nearby town recommends that France "give these people a message of hope" to remedy the situation, a textbook example of 60s thinking that views criminals merely as victims of societal oppression and exclusion, thereby excusing and even justifying their violent behavior. Amazing that Sarkozy seems to have received more criticism from calling the rioters "scum" than the rioters themselves have received from their own actions.
Steyn on Moslem Riots in Europe "This is a fuse that's been lit all across Europe." Read Steyn interview with HH, here. Thanks, Instapundit
GODDAMMO For the unhappily divorced, keychain bullets made out of your wedding band. Reminds me of the old line: "I still miss her, but my aim's getting better."
Vermont Barbecue: Curtis' Now I ask our Southern readers: Does this look real? It is.
Comments on Recent Postings 1. My thought about the piece on Wellies: A charming and useful post, but the problem with wellies is that you cannot eat them like leather boots when you run out of food, as Chaplin famously did in The Gold Rush: Click here: Film Listings Archive: 2. A comment on my piece about barbecue: There is a roadside barbecue pit in New England - in fact, in Putney, VT, which is excellent. Go about 1/2 mile or less west off the Putney Exit of Rte. 91, and it's on the right hand side. They run it out of old broken-down trailer homes, and the southern gent named Curtis who owns it is the real deal, with a pet pig. He's open until Oct., when he goes back to North Carolina for the winter. Definitely worth a stop, even if you think you aren't hungry. 3. Paxety had some thoughts about the piece on recorded vs. live music: "Plus, folks get fewer and fewer places to learn to play - or to play after they've learned. Far too many school systems consider band and orchestra to be outside activities similar to sports. When I taught band many years ago, I had students whose only academic achievement was in music - it was the only thing they "got" and were successful in. Now, those kids aren't allowed to take part in what's now called extra-curricular activity.
Then there's the opportunity of performance. Even when I played professionally, I performed many times for free in local little theater productions and at churches. Now, these venues use recorded music rather than live.
I don't know where future musicians will come from. Perhaps that's why current pop music contains so little of what I would consider original music - it seems to be mostly samples, or chords that make the old rock 'n roll 3-chord turnover seem complex."
Migration Updates from our friends at Lighthouse Point, New Haven - a south wind this week, so no migrating hawks: 10/31: 800+ Black-capped Chickadees, 1,500 Cedar Waxwings, 1,000 American Robins, 120 Eastern Bluebirds, 2,000 Red-winged Blackbirds, 350 House Finches 11/02: Migration flight from approx 7:00 AM thru 10 AM and then slowed down... 5000+ BLACKBIRDS/ GRACKLES, 850+ CEDAR WAXWINGS, 75 COWBIRDS, 1200+ ROBINS, 45 BLUEBIRDS, 200+ BRANT
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