Tuesday, May 15. 2007
On Feb 17, 2009 TV will switch to digital (DTV). What do you have to do to be ready for this change-over? Details here.
 Iraq: We could eliminate the enemy and stabilize the nation in 48 hours with a few of these handsome airplanes on the right (that's a model H on the left, and a B on the right). However, we are trying to fight a half-war - or a Nice War - or what I would term a Police Action. Neoneo takes a look at two of today's pieces on the so-called war in Iraq.
Free markets and medical care. Betsy. It's already happening. And (via Opinion Journal) speaking of government medical care, Illinois just nixed the idea. JK Rowling pleads not to leak the outcome of the final Harry Potter. Al Quaida in Iraq. Dino. Yes, they are there, and it is an excellent opportunity to kill them. Let's do it now. Whining about work. France is #1, but the US is up there. Spoiled babies. Everyone should be thrilled to have work to do. My friend says people need only three things: Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Public housing. Get rid of it, and give the apartments to the renters. Instant millionaires. Why not? NY Sun Special treatment for Moslems. Wizbang. Why do people do this? I like this quote from a piece on Clinton's legacy at The Anchoress: Why did welfare reform work? Perhaps when people were liberated from the shackles of socially-engineered government dependence, when they were freed from the quicksand and muck of “Free Government Cheese” and able to move to the higher ground of “Unleashed Potential,” they grew in self-respect, self-confidence and - most importantly - in hope. The message “you can, if you try” was a louder, clearer and more spiritually sustaining message than “you can’t, so just give up” The reformation of our Welfare system, which in the early 1990’s was burgeoning out of control, became a pushback against what President Bush has called “the soft racism of low-expectations,” and the long-term effect of that pushback is not surprising. Encouragement will always trump condescension, and the fisherman who catches his own supper will always feel better about himself than the man who begs the scraps.
I am planning my goose trip for this fall. Jerry Falwell. RIP
More Hitchins: Londonistan Calling. A quote: I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as "magnificent" and proclaimed that "Britain belongs to Allah." When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari'a, he replied: "Who says you own Britain anyway?" A question that will have to be answered one way or another.
Whole thing here.
The New Yorker reviews two books about the 4th largest religion in the world - Atheism. Well, all this talk about atheism is no big deal to me. Let's face it - very few of those Greeks and Romans ever really believed in their Gods: these cultural ancestors of the West lead secular lives until Christianity arrived on the scene, and changed the color of everything. Atheism is the oldest religion in the world, and the easiest to follow: it spares you the trouble of having to trouble the brain by contemplating an entire dimension of reality - by just closing the shutters on the windows to it. Very appealing, really.
Daimler actually ended up paying to unload Chrysler.
From Alphecca: I really think most liberals are just developmentally arrested people who look at the world –regardless of their age– through the mentally immature eyes of a 12-year-old. How else to explain this silliness?
It's about guns.
This photo shows an unfortunate situation a driver found himself in:  Look at the first picture above and you can see where this guy broke through the guard rail (right side where the people are standing on the road). His truck left the road, traveling from right to left. He flipped end-over-end, across the culvert outlet and landed on the left side of it. Now look at the 2nd picture (story confirmed via Snopes):
At dinner on Friday night I was talking with a friend about fusion as a power source. He told me that he had had a conversation about energy with physicist and Benedictine priest Stanley Jaki. In that conversation, Jaki posed this question: If energy were endlessly abundant and free, what would life be like, what would people do, and what would matter to people?
It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square. Pete Rose
Monday, May 14. 2007
 A darn nice bass. 25 lbs. even, caught outside San Diego. Story here. With freshwater fish, you learn to display them towards the camera, to make them look more impressive - but this is a big fellow.
Stumbled upon a good website. The Real Cuba. Opie would like it. Lots to peruse. I was taught that Tulipmania was real. Now it is thought that it was a myth. Tulips are OK, but far from my favorite flower. Four months of Dems in Power. Kudlow. Same old. Thinking big about fuel, from an engineer's brain. Small Dead Lemmings. You need to read the whole thing. Ten billion served, and hundreds of millions fleeced. Transit subsidies, at The Commons. We usually agree with The Commons, but there is no comparison in the piece with the federal subsidization of highways. I am opposed to the latter, sort-of. Bush's greatest speech. Kim. I could have written that. Medical insurance should cover this. All male Coyotes need them. Eurabia. Add Kyoto to the mix, and they could create a new Afghanistan! Classical Values. How experts think. A Parliament of Clocks, via Kim, via Instap.
 I have told my kids that one optimistic yet realistic way to look at life is that it is like standing in front of a conveyor belt upon which a stream of opportunities are passing by, but each one will never pass by again in the same form.
I am referring to every sort of opportunity: opportunities to make friends, to be kind, to find love, to have fun, to stand up for your beliefs, to show mercy, to develop interests, to develop good habits of character, to make money, to be forgiving, to practice strength, to find God, to learn, etc, etc. Alas, that conveyor belt offers just as many opportunities to make mistakes and poor choices. It is a tough part of maturity to accept the reality limitation, however, that any opportunity grabbed will reduce the number of opportunities passing by on the conveyor belt, because time is an arrow. A friend reminds me of the old story: The levee broke and the water is rising in the town. One guy gets on his knees and prays "God, save me from this flood." There is a knock at the door and a firetruck offering to evacuate him. "No thanks, God will rescue me." He waits as the water fills the first floor. A guy in a rowboat shows up. "No thanks, God will save me." Water fills the second floor and he goes to the attic and punches a hole in the roof. A helicopter comes by. "No thanks, God will rescue me." The water rises further, and he starts treading water, but finally tires and drowns. Up in Heaven he berates God. "Hey, you said you would help me when I was in need. Where the heck were you?" God replies "I sent you a firetruck, a rowboat, and finally a helicopter. You rejected every one..."
You can locate anyone's cell phone with this GPS mobile phone tracking system. But, if my ringer is turned off, can it help me find my cell phone in my house?
 With all of the exciting news about wildfires, I want to make a pitch in favor of wildfire. Wildfire is part of nature, and it's a good thing.
Fire suppression makes natural fires worse when they occur, because kindling builds up on the floor of the forests. Why is wildfire good? Not just because it is "natural." I am not a pagan who believes that whatever is "natural" is good. But fire is nature's way of creating swaths of ash-fertilized space for plant succession on the land, and new habitats for the species that like newer growth. In fact, mature forests probably have the lowest biodiversity of any non-polar habitat. For one example, the Elk and songbird populations of Yellowstone took a huge jump after the big fires. Smokey the Bear was wrong. Wildfire is part of the creative destruction of nature. Suppressing it is little more than sentimentalism combined with a subsidy to logging business. Whether millions of taxpayer's money should be spent, and lives risked and lost, to support that sentimentalism and that industry is a political question (to which my answer is "No"). We have written more about the virtues of wildfire and clear-cutting before.
I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. Confucius
 Excellent cartoon about Truthers and Conspiratorialists. No Pasaran.
The arrogance of experts. Samizdata A reader brought to mind a book to consider reading. The Death of Satan, by Columbia prof Andrew Delbanco. It's about how the idea of the Devil was replaced by a de-personified, impersonal "evil," and how the notion of "evil" is being replaced by social and psychological, rather than moral, concepts. World's most powerful cordless drill. YouTube A very nice hydrangea we bought yesterday at the nursery. Kardinal, It is said to tolerate more sun than most hydrangeas can.
Sunday, May 13. 2007
A Ukrainian explains it (h/t, reader). One quote: Anyone who had lived through the attempt by Soviet hardliners to take back the power and restore a Stalinist dictatorship would be astounded, just as I am, with allegations by today’s American “progressives” that George W. Bush is a dictator whose “junta” has usurped our freedoms and reversed decades of progress, turning America into a “fascistic autocracy.” Such people don’t even begin to know what “junta” really means nor what it feels like to live in a dictatorship. These pundits may think of themselves as enlightened “defenders of freedom,” but in reality they only expose their own moral blindness. By shooting in the wrong direction they are hurting the very cause they claim they fight for. Freedom cannot be attained by erasing the objective criteria of liberty and democracy. Dictatorship cannot be fought by misleading the nation about the true nature of tyranny and oppression.
Read the whole thing at Pajamas. The author of the piece is the creator of a humor site on our blogroll, People's Cube. Below is an image from Cube, and from the article: 
 Moms are great! Our best to all Mom readers, and to all future Moms. How you put up with us when we were kids, God only knows. A bouquet of thanks to y'all. Just quit worrying about us, OK? Let us worry about you for a change.
Hilarious. The Hillary-Osama Obama Debate. Very clever video at California Yank Many are eager to visit Cuba when travel restrictions are ended. What could possibly go wrong with banning guns? TigerHawk Education, and sliding down the razor blade of life. Hatemonger Powerline throws down the gauntlet. Sue us, please. It must be fun to be a First Amendment lawyer. Mao embalmed. Roger Simon The New Puritans. It is getting strange out there. Driscoll. Thankfully, here on planet Earth, things are OK. More on the Tufts Psychosis. Captain Ed does a good job with it. I would think the alumni donors would be going berserk about now.
Bird Dog made an error when he posted that Bobcat photo this week. That was not our place in the mountains, which is still entirely snowed in, no doubt because of global warming. It was the ranch of friends, outside San Francisco, which we visit every year and where we ordinarily shoot wild pigs (but we failed to find any this trip). Here's a shot I took of their typical ranch landscape, last week. 
Saturday, May 12. 2007
 A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan, says one TV Fundie. That is the sickest thing I've heard today. Romney's dad ran for president, and nobody said that about him. And nobody has said it about the other Mormons in government, like Harry Reid. And isn't Orrin Hatch a Mormon too? This is just pathetic, if not downright evil. I don't mind fundies at all, as long as they worry about their own relationship with God, but leave other people alone to find their own way.
Is there any reason for the FCC to exist anymore? Driscoll doubts it, and so do I. Let markets deal with it. The sources for information and entertainment, these days, go so far beyond broadcast that the FCC is obsolete. Psychotic breakdown at Tufts. Fortunately, good old FIRE is on the job. I hope this story gets around, because it is a truly shameful thing for a fine American university. I read about it first at Powerline, and now Wizbang has an update, with good excerpts from Volokh. Yes, it's about those hypersensitive Moslems who must be protected from facts. Not that the Moslems are complaining so much - it's the loonies who want Islam to be a "protected class." I am opposed to windmill farms, but the Cape Wind story is hilarious anyway. Update from Libertarian Leanings. Why am I opposed to windmills? Because wind power is a joke and will never, despite subsidies, make a meaningful contribution to our energy wants. It's just "feel good" stuff, like fluorescent lightbulbs Sperm donor must pay child support? Not a joke. Hey fellas: God should have put a warning label on that thing of ours. Now Farmer's Branch, TX wants to be rid of their illegals. They are voting on it. Viking's Quote of the Day: "The more you fail, the more money they throw at you," he said. "We're filthy rich; I don't want any more of your money. Send me quality teachers."
Why are we getting repeated Google searches for "removing pachysandra"? We have never posted on that subject, although I guess we have posted on pachysandra. Since there appears to be interest out there, here's my method. (But first, even though I have some pachysandra beds adjacent to the house, I do not really approve of it near houses or buildings. It belongs at a distance, in full shade - if you must have it at all.) I am an expert at pachysandra removal. You take a good sharp spade - not a shovel - and with it cut deep parallel lines in the pachysandra bed, about 14" apart. Then you use the spade to cut those stretches into 2-3' lengths. Use the spade to begin to undercut those strips a couple of inches deep, and then you can peel the whole thing up like a slice of carpet. If you want to replant it somewhere else, just lay those lengths of carpet down, and, with some watering, they will grow in.
 From a review in The National Interest of two books by Paul Hollander on the violence and oppression of Communist states during the 20th Century (h/t, reader):
Communist terror varied from one country or region to another, and at different times within any one geographic unit; nevertheless, the common elements, both theoretical and practical, are easy to discern. Political police forces (known as “state security” organs), charged with controlling “ideological” rather than ordinary crime, tended to dehumanize the “class enemy” as historically obsolete and “destined” to become extinct. Abuse of the “mentally ill” designation also cut across communism’s manifestations. Marx and Engels’ oxymoronic “dialectical materialism”, juxtaposing the inevitability of revolution with the imperative of party leadership and predicated on a quasi-divine belief in history as progress, allowed zealous disciples to justify terror and murder by transforming “is” into “ought.” Lenin understood perfectly that the next stage of history must be right, hence any means to bring it about were justified. Therefore, expediting the proletarian nirvana requires “eliminating” those who doubt the omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence of history’s anointed force, the vanguard of the proletariat, the Communist Party. Not unexpectedly, as nirvana became more elusive, the number of concentration camp inmates grew. Their crimes were often simply accusations—or having been arrested. As the gap between reality and promise increased, so did the need to eliminate those most likely to notice. Repressive measures, including imprisonment and torture, were most frequently taken not against declared ideological opponents, but against members of an inherently “counterrevolutionary class.”
I think we understand that the atrocities and mass murders of communist states have been given a pass in history due to the reflexive sympathy to the Left's "the ends justify the means" ethic, on the part of the intelligentsia. I hope Hollander will help to undo that deception. Read the whole thing.
 Excerpt from The Waste Land (1922)
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of Man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at morning rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Friday, May 11. 2007
 Adding to blogroll: Theo Spark, under Anglosphere. The charmer on the right with the very nice smile is borrowed from Theo, who posts lots of mostly-political graphics. Hmmmm, is the pool open yet? Where my Ray-Bans at? So I can stare without anyone noticing. Ya gotta love this globalisticalistic warmening.
Also adding to blogroll: No Left Turns. Also, re-adding to blogroll: Right Thinking from the Left Coast. We lost Lee somewhere along the way. Disaffected youths hold anti-Sarkozy riots in New York City. Haha. What is Babelgum? It is something new. Doomsday Called Off. The five-part CBC documentary, via S,C &A. The health Nazis now going after virtual smoke. RTLC. I am so sick of these controlling busybodies. Quit trying to "do good" for me, OK? I am an educated adult in a free country, which includes the freedom to be stupid and to defy "the experts" whenever I feel like it. NBC hires "Diversity Leader." Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Does anyone take this junk seriously? Michelle. It's called a payoff to Jesse Jackson, and everybody knows it. US cancer care 10X better than the UK. Anchoress Also from Anchoress, Class and Class Warfare. Anchoress appreciates true class. Oral sex can lead to throat cancer? Our reader suggests reading the humorous comments on this scare piece, but I will not go down on record by opening my mouth about this story. Sisu and Roger Simon are upset about PBS' cancelling of America at a Crossroads. I understand their point, but I don't watch TV, much less PBS, anyway. It's a waste of time. A gunless gunship. In From the Cold. (h/t, Reader) LA Charter Schools, and Steve Barr. The District and the unions hate him. Barr had the cojones to wonder whether the school district leaders are "pig f-ers." Nobody likes competition, but government hates it more than most because they like to think they are smarter than everyone else. And they are smart, when it comes to taking care of themselves. Politics is a very ugly business.
Our truant contributor Gwynnie emailed this photo to us from her place in the California mountains south of Lake Tahoe. Took the photo this morning. Message: "This fellow was as interested in me as I was in him." (No word yet on how the pig hunt went, but I know Gwynnie will return to Yankeeland with a ton of wild pig sausage. Always does.) 
OK for work, at our cousin's place, Free Market Fairy Tales
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