Wednesday, January 31. 2007
 This is a 26' triple cockpit runabout with a 425 hp Chevy V8. Mahogany, of course.
Pefect for Lake Champlain or Lake Winnepesaukee, if you don't mind being noticed. Or Long Island Sound, in nice weather. You can buy it here.
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. Edward R. Murrow
Edwards' sleazily-earned wealth, and his 28,000 square-foot house for which he clear-cut many acres of woodland, convinced me that there truly are two Americas: He is in one, and I am in the other. But this house takes the cake. Wow.
Over the last century, millions of people from all over the world have come to New York City. They didn’t come here to be taken care of and to be dependent on city government. They came here for the freedom to take care of themselves. Rudy Guiliani (h/t, Ace)
These animals should be killed. There is no reason on earth to keep such dangerous mongrels alive, and the risk for escape seems obvious. If the story was intended to be heartwarming, it wasn't. Real wolves - fine. But these things are an insult to nature.
 Story from the AP:
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- It's not all checking hunting and fishing licenses. Sometimes the issues are bigger. Like when a Nevada game warden was Handed the chore of figuring out how to separate two bull elk who locked horns while sparring and couldn't untangle them.
The saga began Nov. 21 when a rancher in Reese River Valley spotted the two elk.
By the following day, the animals were gone and the rancher assumed they had separated.
A week later, according to Nevada Division of Wildlife biologist Tom Donham, the rancher was out looking for some of his cows and saw the elk again.
This time, he called the wildlife department and Donham, game warden Brian Eller and Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist Bryson Code headed out to see what they could do.
When they reached Indian Valley, south of Austin, it was Nov. 29, one week after the elk were first seen.
"When we arrived where the rancher had last seen them, we found them pretty quickly. They were both lying on the ground and one of them was in a very uncomfortable looking position with his head directly above the others head and his nose pointing straight up to the sky," Donham said. Eller said he wondered if they had survived their ordeal.
"Once we found out they were alive, I was hoping they couldn't move and would stay where they were. That didn't happen. When they ran off, I was hoping that they could not go very far. That didn't happen either," he said.
The elk may have been sparring at the outset, but Donham and Eller say they used teamwork to run for nearly a mile to evade the newcomers. "It looked like they had been doing it all their lives; serious cooperation if I've ever seen it," Donham said.
After two unsuccessful attempts, Donham was able to get a tranquilizer dart into one of the elk. With one down, the other could not run, but was also partially tranquilized in order to separate the two.
Continue reading "Elk Story"
A quote from Ben Stein's piece in American Spectator: And suddenly it hit me. The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn't done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he's just a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.
The media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him alive and well in the White House. It's a sort of neutron bomb of media that seeks to kill him while leaving the White House standing (for their favorite unknown, Barack Obama, to occupy).
Maggie's Farm is up and running. Limping, bleeding, but alive to fight  another day. See our post from last night on Our Denial of Service Attack. We continue to block a good deal of our legitimate traffic, and commenting will be open sporadically today - if at all. An Aussie is offended by the Aussie flag. I am offended that the Aussie is offended. Mark Green's brother buys him a radio network. Air America. What a nice brother. Those outside the northeast don't know who Mark Green is. Here's the story. Mr. Edwards Builds his Dream House. Richard Clark - yes, that Richard Clark, on Iran. When people ask "When will we go to war with Iran?", I say "We already are." Meanwhile, Jon Cary attacks the US from Iran. That is beyond dissent: that is disloyal, if not utterly insane. But that's why we call him Pariah Kerry. Someone needs to run against him in MA. How about it, Neo-neocon? Two new books by Warming doubters. via Drudge Some of the problems with Vista. Chris Hedges scares me. Coyote A rational Senator? Lugar on Iraq.
I have never treated a patient with a "transsexual" diagnosis (now known as Gender Identity Disorder), and I know little about it. The case in Germany described in Clayton Cramer's piece, in which a 12 year-old boy is undergoing hormonal treatment in preparation for surgical transformation into a "female," raises the issue. The German Child Endocrinologist says this: "They are not freaks, nor do they suffer mental illness. They are simply trapped in the wrong bodies. That is why it is best to help them as early as possible and reduce the trauma for them and their families."
Freud made it clear, and he was right, that everyone is psychologically a bit male, a bit female, and, on some level, bisexual. Psychiatrists, and especially psychoanalysts, tend to look for the inner motives for things in general, and to view desires for external change as "externalizations." Just the phrase "trapped in the wrong body" is based on a strange premise. Furthermore, who has the body they really think they want? I was a tomboy myself, refused to wear dresses, and liked guns and sports. However, sometimes things do go awry during early development - before birth - which affect the development of the brain and thus the personality. I guess all I can say about this is that I'd like to imagine that there could be some "therapy" for a kid like this that would fall short of dreadful physical mutilation. I'd be willing to give it a try. And, by the way, I do not believe you could do this thing they are doing in Germany in the US: I doubt any physician would be willing to do it at that age. Primum non nocere.
Tuesday, January 30. 2007
Just got off the phone with our Webmeister Chris. Here's what I learned about the Denial of Service (DOS) "attack" which we have been dealing with on and off since Thursday, and which has made access for our readers intermittently difficult or, today, impossible. We have been subjected to what is termed a DOS Botnet Attack, consisting mainly of lengthy black market drug advertisements, containing multiple links, directed to our trackback system and to our commenting system (which is why they are shut down at the moment). A "bot" is, of course, a robotic software program. Chris determined that this attack is coming from China, India, Japan, and Korea, simultaneously. It is probably a criminal consortium of some sort - and a large one. DOS attacks are not designed to damage specific sites, and they are not designed to result in a DOS - after all, that would defeat the purpose, which is advertising. Like any parasite, a bot is not intended to kill its host - just to feed off it. Just like the Welfare State.
Continue reading "Our Denial of Service Attack, Update"
We have been down most of the day due to overwhelming bot attacks. Had to turn commenting off for the moment. Will be back to normal as soon as we reinforce our defences, or find an effective counterattack.
 I am indebted to the indispensible Tangled Web for alerting me to Cohen's new book What's Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way.
A quote from Derbyshire's piece on the book: In Ian McEwan’s novel ‘Saturday’, the protagonist Henry Perowne watches as demonstrators gather for the massive anti-war march of February 2003. He is struck, and slightly disturbed, by the levity of the crowd. ‘Everyone is thrilled to be out together on the streets – people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other.’ The protestors may be right, Perowne muses: leaving Saddam’s sanguinary dictatorship in place might, just, be preferable to aerial bombing and invasion. But they ought to be ‘sombre’ in this view – it’s a dreadful moral calculus, after all, that weighs summary execution and ‘occasional genocide’ against the hazards of regime change. The marchers’ placards and slogans catch Perowne’s eye too. Some belong to the Islamist group that helped to organise the march, an outfit, Perowne remembers, which believes that ‘apostasy from Islam was an offence punishable by death.’ Others bear the legend ‘Not in My Name’, a phrase whose ‘cloying self-regard suggests a bright new world of protest, with the fussy consumers of shampoos and soft drinks demanding to feel good, or nice.’
There is an extract from the book at The Observer, from which I quote: It is not novel to say that socialism is dead. My argument is that its failure has brought a dark liberation to people who consider themselves to be on the liberal left. It has freed them to go along with any movement however far to the right it may be, as long as it is against the status quo in general and, specifically, America. I hate to repeat the overused quote that 'when a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything', but there is no escaping it. Because it is very hard to imagine a radical leftwing alternative, or even mildly radical alternative, intellectuals in particular are ready to excuse the movements of the far right as long as they are anti-Western.
Let's pray that this book from this well-known recovering Left-Liberal, pink-diaper baby will have an impact on the UK.
Moscow Mayor terms gay parade "Satanic." via Drudge. Why married people don't want sex. Dr. Helen LaShawn reminds us of an important piece by Walter Williams - Bogus Rights Color photos from the Depression Era. Very cool. (h/t, Done with Mirrors) Taking offense is offensive. Indeed it is, and hostile and manipulative too. Am Thinker. A quote: The great victory of the left is that it has made us apologize for being right. A few may be truly offended, being in the grip of primitive pride. But, mostly, we are in the grip of a primitive ploy. We need more offensiveness, not less. We must offend the liars, the degraded, the darkness, the destroyers of civilization. So my answer to the offended is, you have every right to be offended. Now, grow up. If you can't sit at the table of reasoned debate, go back to your bread and circuses. Let the adults figure out the problems of the world.
The new Battleground Poll shows a conservative America. Intell Cons. The anti-war march. Old folks, reminiscing about 1968. Some people never grow up. (h/t, Instapundit) Quite pathetic, really.
Monday, January 29. 2007
 China warns against "wine and women" at Olympics. I guess song is OK.
A case against women's suffrage, at Althouse. Emotional, impulsive, and elections are a popularity contest, like high school. Is that true? Dumbest thing: he put the duck in the fridge without cleaning it. And now the bird has a name. Sheesh. Can he shoot it again? The debate about Iran's role in Iraq. Regime Change Iran From a piece at Driscoll: Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times runs a piece titled, "Was 9/11 really that bad?" with the subhead, "The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting".
Yeah, LA Times. Let's wait 'til they do something really bad. Ethanol and corn prices. Willisms Webb, and absolute vs. relative poverty. Betsy. Good point. Now that absolute poverty is gone in the US, the envy-mongers need to focus on relative poverty. What else can they do? Everybody is relatively poor, compared to someone. New black realism in a post-civil rights world. Hymowitz in City Journal. A quote: For a younger generation of blacks, the symbolic, I-marched-with-Martin politics, not to mention the Jackson-style cronyism that it often degenerated into, doesn’t cut it—and not just because this generation is too young to have felt the billy clubs at Selma. Instead of rights activists and ministers, many of these newcomers are lawyers or businessmen. Even though a few grew up poor, they’ve all spent their formative years swimming in the mainstream, including major universities, corporations, and law firms, and they are now solidly middle class. “These politicians are comfortable in a post–civil rights world,” explains Vanderbilt political science professor Carol Swain, author of Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress. “They’ve had white friends; they’ve had white girlfriends. They may still be frustrated by racism at times, but they’re functioning fine in the world they’re living in.”
They do not mix. The UN Report will be another silly exercise, like the Stern Report. Truth is, nobody knows anything, and it is difficult to find opinions which are not emotion-driven, or agenda-driven, or eco-religionist-driven. When the climate scientists and the paleoclimatologists stop driving and flying on airplanes and eating beef, I will listen...maybe. Already, The UN Report is being slammed. Image via Tangled Web
...but I think he is back up, after his beat-down last week. Henceforth, we will call him Pariah Kerry - assuming he is permitted back into a country he clearly detests. Gotta wonder why he wants to come back, anyway.
 An echo of Reagan's quote, from Kling at TCS on Plato vs. Milton Friedman:
I call this the Fundamental Problem of Political Economy. How do we limit the power that idiots have over us? One solution, that might be traced to the expression "philosopher-king" associated with Plato, is to hand the reins of government to the best and the brightest. Since the late 19th-century, the Progressive Movement in American politics has championed this approach. The Progressive vision, which DeLong embraces, is to channel brains and technical know-how through government in order to improve people's lives. One hundred years ago, they sought to prohibit alcohol. Today, they are going after trans fats. One hundred years ago, they favored eugenics, based on the then-new science of evolution. Today, they embrace anti-growth economic policies, based on the contemporary science of happiness. Indeed, we get headlines like 'Tories promise to make happiness a priority'. The other way to avoid having our lives run by idiots is to limit the power that others have over us. This is the approach that was embedded in our Constitution, before it was eviscerated by the Progressives. It is the approach for which Milton Friedman was a passionate advocate. Friedman's insight is that a market limits the power that others have over us; conversely, limiting the power that others have over us allows us to have markets. Friedman argued that no matter how wise the officials of government may be, market competition does a better job of protecting us from idiots.
Exactly right. My life belongs to me, and I am smarter than they are - and more humble, too.
 Roger won the Aussie Open. He is on a roll.
He is 25, and he likes Heineken. Visions of Sampras.
At Maggie's Farm, we plan to avoid discussing the primaries and the '08 election for quite a while. It is too far away to say anything meaningful - anything can happen between now and then. It's a waste of virtual paper and virtual ink, we believe, and thus damages our virtual planet. Where is our News Junkie today? On a listening tour in Iowa in NYC on an underwear modeling job again. He calls it "beer money" but it actually supports his poorly-paid, humble journalism career in MA. Image: The Diebold Accu-Vote system, famously accurate when Dems win elections, but deeply flawed, corrupt, and hacked by Karl Rove when they do not.
Government isn't the solution: it's the problem. Ronald Reagan
 French member of Parliament convicted for saying that homosexuals are morally inferior.
This isn't about gays - it's about the slippery slope to speech control. Is freedom a universal human aspiration? I doubt it: I think it might be an Anglo-Saxon thing. (Is that a racist statement?) However, to refute even that Anglo-Saxon statement, look what David Cameron wants to do. Is it too late for another revolution in the UK? Heck, look at what we did in the US, and that was about a lousy tea tax. OK, I take back everything I implied about Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism: maybe all humans are infants at heart, longing for a Daddy and Mommy to provide and to take charge. Image: A guy who knew what was best for you.
 It might be a bit chewy for a Monday morning, but Bob at One Cosmos has the answer. You know you want it, as the beer man says at Yankee Stadium.
He does get into Schopenhauer a bit: "If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of the subject's representations."
I think I exist to drink wine and to wonder why I exist, after work. After a few wines, one wonders whether one does exist at all, and whether "I" is an illusion. Sometimes, I wonder why other things, like ham sandwiches, exist. The cosmos itself just gives me vertigo. Image: From the Hubbell scope
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy. Dave Barry
Sunday, January 28. 2007
 The Duke humanities faculty have everything figured out, don't they? Allen in The Weekly Standard:
"The faculty enabled Nifong," Baldwin said in an interview. "He could say, 'Here's a significant portion of the arts and sciences faculty who feel this way, so I can go after these kids because these faculty agree with me.' It was a mutual attitude." Indeed, it was the Duke faculty that could be said to have cooked up the ambient language that came to clothe virtually all media descriptions of the assault case--that boilerplate about "race, gender, and class" (or maybe "race, gender, sexuality, and class") and "privileged white males" that you could not read a news story about the assault case without encountering, whether in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or Newsweek for example. The journalists channeled the academics. Although outsiders know Duke mostly as an expensive preppie enclave that fields Division I athletic teams, the university's humanities and social sciences departments--literature, anthropology, and especially women's studies and African-American studies--foster exactly the opposite kind of culture. Those departments (and especially Duke's robustly "postmodern" English department, put in place by postmodernist celebrity Stanley Fish before his departure in 1998) are famous throughout academia as repositories of all that is trendy and hyper-politicized in today's ivy halls: angry feminism, ethnic victimology, dense, jargon-laden analyses of capitalism and "patriarchy," and "new historicism"--a kind of upgraded Marxism that analyzes art and literature in terms of efforts by powerful social elites to brainwash everybody else. The Duke University Press is the laughingstock of the publishing world, offering such titles as Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity and An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Phrases such as "race, gender, and class" and "privileged white males" come as second nature to the academics who do this kind of writing, which analyzes nearly all social phenomena in terms of race, gender, class, and white male privilege. A couple of months after the lacrosse party, Karla F.C. Holloway, a professor of English and African-American studies at Duke, published a reflection on the incident titled "Coda: Bodies of Evidence" in an online feminist journal sponsored by Barnard College. "Judgments about the issues of race and gender that the lacrosse team's sleazy conduct exposed cannot be left to the courtroom," Holloway wrote. "Despite the damaging logic that associates the credibility of a socio-cultural context to the outcome of the legal process, we will find that even as the accusations that might be legally processed are confined to a courtroom, the cultural and social issues excavated in this upheaval linger." There was a fascinating irony in this. Postmodern theorists pride themselves in discerning what they call "metanarratives." They argue that such concepts as, say, Christianity or patriotism or the American legal system are no more than socially constructed tall tales that the postmodernists can then "deconstruct" to unmask the real purpose behind them, which is (say the postmodernists) to prop up societal structures of--yes, you guessed it--race, gender, class, and white male privilege.
Read the whole thing. And wonder, like me, how long it will take for this sort of academic to be "unmasked" as no more than cynical, bitter, and ignorant careerists, with interest in neither truth nor beauty. Are there two Dukes? Because one does not encounter such soul-less people in the stands at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
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