Friday, August 17. 2007
Re those Brit Christians who want to call God "Allah": I am not one of those who says "It's all the same god, so what does it matter what we call him/her/it?" They aren't "all the same," and I happen to be a happy monotheist. I like this from Insty: "I SAY CALL HIM "HERMAN," OR I'LL START BLOWING SHIT UP."
Thursday, August 16. 2007
Johan Galtung, father of the "peace studies" movement. Thompson. People like this give me the creeps. I guess there are lots of kinds of "peace."
I guess that is pretty clear by now. Also, from the report at Front Page: Cuba has fewer internet connections than Uganda.
Big doings this week: WaPo
"The man in me will do nearly any task,
And as for compensation, there's little he would ask.
Take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me.
Storm clouds are raging all around my door,
I think to myself I might not take it any more.
Take a woman like your kind
To find the man in me.
But, oh, what a wonderful feeling
Just to know that you are near,
Sets my a heart a-reeling
From my toes up to my ears.
The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein' seen,
But that's just because he doesn't want to turn into some machine.
Took a woman like you
To get through to the man in me." "The Man In Me," from 1970's New Morning, and Bob's favorite tune to play live from that album. The track is also featured prominently in the film The Big Lebowski, where it appears in the opening sequence. A performance from 2000 is below, but you can listen to the original recording here (plus the sound of a few bowling pins).
Before the SAT, colleges gave their own achievement tests to see whether you were prepared. In 1926, the SAT was intended to be a "progressive", democratizing influence by testing your "aptitude" instead of your mastery of Latin, Greek, French, chemistry and trigonometry. At the time, the elite prep schools did the best job preparing kids for the elite colleges' requirements. Charles Murray on educational testing, college admissions, class and genes. He suggests dumping the SAT, but keeping the Achievement Tests. His discussion makes sense to me: a college ought to be able to state what they expect in terms of preparation. On the same subject, Ivy Leaguers take untimed SATs. ADD and dyslexia, ya know?
The Global Cooling Crisis. See the Newsweek piece from '75, at the bottom. h/t, Memeorandum - Discussed further by Tigerhawk
 I see that Sean Wasson has changed the name of his blog to The News Junkie. Lots of news junkies in this world, because we are all escapists from reality.
I am offended by your t-shirt. Hess at NRO. Amphibians dying from fungal spores. 94% of Americans are satisfied with their lives. (via Drudge). However obtained, that's an impressive number up with which to come (can't end sentence with a prep, right?). People in the northeast are unhappy, though. Not me. Will Imus go to New York's WABC? I hope not. He would displace Curtis Sliwa (founder of the Guardian Angels) and radical lawyer Ron Kubie - two witty and enjoyable radio amateurs. We receive 50,000-watt WABC well in western MA. Al Quaida in Iraq is getting slaughtered. If Fred runs, he will do it his way. Schools of education are propaganda mills. Stocks valued too highly? Mankiw. Giuliani on immigration. Good. John Leo on post-modern news, via Betsy. And neoneo on how facts just get in the way when you are trying to tell a story. St. Nietzsche? Religion and politics by the great Scruton, via Done with Mirrors. John Howard: In trouble, down under? Heck of a good bloke. No protests against Islamization allowed. Moonbattery. It might upset the barbarians.
There are 20,000 species of Sunflowers. This is one of them. This happy patch sprung up on the edge of our stream, and it is welcome to stay as long as it wants to. 
Wednesday, August 15. 2007
Atheism is selling books. Joseph Bottum at First Things thinks it's about politics - and about selling books. Brewton says, of Bottum's piece, that the Atheists are getting desperate and frustrated: At the apogee of atheistic materialism, in the 1830s, Auguste Comte’s well-intentioned expectation was that all the world would quickly recognize the superiority of his Positivistic philosophy and its Religion of Humanity. People from the rest of Europe, from America, and from Asia, he assumed, would all come to sit worshipfully at his feet to learn the proper new system of socialist government and its canon of materialistic ethics. Central to the process, of course, would be accepting the belief that there is no God other than human reason and that the proper object of worship is Man in the abstract, Humanity. To the horror of liberal-Progressive-socialists, the world did give Comte and his followers a respectful and lengthy hearing, but didn’t like what ensued – the slaughter of tens of millions of human beings by 20th century atheists in the Soviet Union, National Socialist Germany, Red China, and elsewhere. Today, with Christianity rebounding strongly in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and more than holding its own in the United States, the New York Times, Christopher Hitchins, Richard Dawkins, et al have become desperate to reassert the superiority of their own minds.
We live in a world in which some Christians are comfortable calling God "Allah." After all, it's just a word for the higher power, right? Well, "dhimmitude" is just a word too.
 We like all of the DR products (a great Vermont company) but the one we use the most on the farm is our sturdy and indestructible 17 hp Field and Brush Mower.
The machine really does take down 2" saplings and chews them up, and it can run faster than a weary, sweaty, dirty man can walk. The only downside is that using the thing is hard work: you have to muscle it around to turn and maneuver it, and it is heavy. Using it for a few hours ends up being a good work out, unless you are just mowing tall grass on a flat surface. I hate saying it, but it isn't a machine for most females. We tend to use it in places that the tractors can't get to with the brushwacker, and on slopes that are too steep for the tractors.
Two links to our friend Dino: Two books from 1962: Harrington and Freidman A Petraeus Preview
VJ Day. Photo is the White House lawn, Aug. 15, 1945. (Thanks, Roger de H.) 
 Multicultural issues do not exist in Minnesota. Powerline. All must respect barbarian inferior degenerate other cultural traditions.
It's like a Carnival of Kitchen Knives at Insty Hillary's White House records will be locked up until after the election. Very shrewd. Time and Newsweek race each other to be first down the drain. Driscoll. Until they both turned left, I always kinda enjoyed those mags. They were comfortably middlebrow, like me. The Chinese Toy Boss: Execution or suicide? Dino noticed it too - the NYT is providing cover for a Dem shift on Iraq. Fred's campaign is a mess. Something is wrong there. He doesn't really want it, maybe. We agree: Rove's legacy is similar to past close political advisors. Rove made some good guesses - and some terrible guesses. Nitrogen in the air: A new crisis? Moonbattery Even Der Spiegel is hedging its bets on Iraq. Photo: That's a wooden 1972 Concordia custom 62' schooner.
Mostly Joe Pye Weed and Goldenrod on this tiny sand island in our trout stream. The butterflies love the Joe Pye Weed, mostly Monarchs and Tiger Swallowtails. 
Tuesday, August 14. 2007
Socialism advances via invented crises to alarm the people, or to seduce the people, into foregoing the markets for goods and services. It is a deceptive strategy designed to prey on the worst, most infantile instincts of Americans. Re the big lies about the uninsured, we posted the above YouTube already. Hillary goes Shrillary over socialized medicine: Gateway I have no doubt that Hillary is a socialist, whether she admits it to herself or not. Anyone who wants the State to take over the medical businesses, which are 16% of our economy, and the oil industry, which is ? % of our economy, has a good start on taking over all of it.
 When the Marquis de Lafayette snuck out of France against the King's wishes in 1777 to join the many unemployed French - and some German - officers who wanted to aid the Revolutionary cause, he was 19 years old, with a pregnant, lovely - and enormously wealthy - wife at home. He loved to spend her money, but what he really wanted was the glory of his military ancestors, most of whom, like his father, died in battle.
And, like any French aristocrat, marriage was no obstacle to his skirt-chasing. A wonderful summer read: Adopted Son: Washington and Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution.
Thanks to all who cared about the condition of my cracked olecranon (aka elbow). It's less sore today, and I have had a bandage on it - mainly so I remember not to bump it into anything. I've survived worse!  French winemakers hope for global warming.
For tax revenue, no capital gains tax might raise the most taxes. Conspiracy explains. But who wants to raise more tax revenue? What for? The NYT's garbled view of Iraq. Crittenden. What do they want, and why? Rush thinks the MSM is trying to provide cover for a confusing Dem Iraq message. As Captain Ed says, "Congress will find it very difficult to retreat from Iraq while we're succeeding." How difficult is it to enforce our current immigration laws? Easy. And is immigration really an American ideal? Not according to the founding fathers. Thank God Stanislav Schmulvitch is in jail. America is surely safer because of that. Two fingers means "Give me a banana." h/t, Flares Where is Gaza headed? The Corner. It's their own damn fault: nobody is stopping them from becoming a world-class resort and banking center if they wanted to. I missed that story about the $10 million cheeseburger while I was away. Joke of the Day: Synthstuff Even our friend at The Moderate Voice gets irrational when it comes to the Dark Lord Rove: From the sliming of John McCain in the 2000 primaries to the outing of Valerie Plame and the firing of the U.S. Attorneys for not being political enough, Rove’s fingerprints have been all over every unethical, immoral and illegal move of the Bush Administration.
What did Rove have to do with outing Valerie Plame? Nothing. Rove was nothing more than Bush's Paul Begala. And if Rove were really an evil genius, he would have done a better job.
On Maggie's Farm, our Jewelweed (aka Touch-Me-Not) is now in bloom everywhere there are damp, semi-shady spots. Where there is Jewelweed, there will be Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds if you sit down and watch. 
Monday, August 13. 2007
It is all explained here. h/t, American Digest
 The Porn Myth, by Naomi Wolf, via Dr. Bob who, speaking of porn, needs to learn more about beavers.
Porn is popular, but is it any good? Our view is that the human mind is the most pornographic thing that exists, and probably should be banned.
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