Sunday, September 9. 2007
 Peter Breughel and kids' games: Yesterday and today. Cool.
A nice visit to Baskin-Robbins. Alphecca. Word to the wise: Do not point a weapon at anybody - even at a friendly Baskin-Robbins ice-cream scooper. The Golden Bears: Football and the soul of Berkeley. Suddenly I find myself liking college football. Why I left South Africa. Kim du Toit Hispanic immigrants account for all increases in US poverty. Coyote Have you noticed how Christian preachers, outside church, always mention God but never Jesus in public prayer? They pretend there is a generic god, to be polite. Here's what happens if they don't. h/t, News for Christians A sovereignty that no-one has taken by arms since 1066 will be handed over. EU Referendum. My opinion? Insane. Speaking of which - "Get your own damn army." Why is the USA still defending Europe? Or South Korea, for that matter? Time for them to grow up. The Inca mummy on display. More nukes is good news. Willisms. It's as close to a free lunch as this world offers. Dartmouth update: "The First Shoe Drops," at Powerline. Bad news for the Indian Uprising: the Indians have stone-age weapons, and the bad guys have cannon. Photo: One of Theo's gals to remind us that it is getting time to get the guns out. Hunting season is just around the corner.
 Jeremiah 18: 1-11
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2“Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. 5Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. 9And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. 11Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
Image: Jeremiah, approx 1311. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. From Web Gallery of Art: "...the Slaughter of the Innocents (which also portrays Herod in the act of ordering the slaughter) is fully explained in the scroll of the prophet Jeremiah, where one can read: "Vox in Rama audita est, ploratus et ululatus multus: Rachel plorans filios suos" (Jeremiah 31, 15: A cry is heard in Rama, a groaning and bitter lamentation: Rachel is weeping for her sons).
Saturday, September 8. 2007
Video: wisdom from Conan O'Brien, at Stuyvesant, 2006 graduation. h/t, Mankiw. For those unfamiliar with NYC, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are NYC's premier and highly-competitive (to get into, and to stay in) public high schools.
And tomorrow is Super Sunday. Here is Federer playing Roddick in the quarter-finals, from the US Open site. Roger does what I never remember to do: GLUE YOUR EYES TO THE DANG BALL! A miracle of tennis is that when you stare at the ball, the ball seems to slow down, and gives you time to move your lazy-ass feet. 
 What is missing, and what is wrong on this agenda? A prominent Brit leftist on what a nation is for. The Left is totalitarian at its core, regardless of what our friend Uncle Norm says. He is surely not, as an individual - but the movement is.
Federer beats Roddick, and other US Open updates from the NY Sun Re Madeleine L'Engle: Our brief post did not mention to what extent she was a Christ-inspired author and a long-time presence at St. John the Divine in NYC. I heard an interview with her recently. Very impressive lady. Brit mosques are becoming a metastatic cancer in Brit society. More on the Deobandi sect at Dino. Psychologists are overwhelmingly Dems. Driscoll. I have no idea what that means. Osama and the Dems: Perfect Together. Ace. Bin Laden can tell useful idiots when he sees them, and, despite his apparently minimal knowledge of the Vietnam era, he picked up one useful fact: get the surrenderist Left as allies by humoring and flattering them. Photo Editor note: We were recently introduced to this old-time Italian summer squash, (which goes by many names including Zucchetta and Serpent of Sicily) which I am told grows like crazy and resists bugs. There is an old joke: If you park your car in a suburban neighborhood in August, be sure to lock it. If you don't, someone will put zucchini in it. Same goes for this squash.
Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday in Connecticut at 88. She is one of the greats, and never underestimated her young (and older) readers.
Japanese Watermelons. They pack compactly. 
Friday, September 7. 2007
A man owned a small farm in Maine. The IRS claimed he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to interview him.
"I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them," demanded the agent.
"Well", replied the farmer, "There's my farm hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $600 a week plus free room and board. The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $500 per week plus free room and board.
Then there's the half-wit who works here about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes $10 per week, and I buy him a bottle of whiskey every Saturday night."
"That's the guy I want to talk to - the half-wit," says the agent.
"That would be me," replied the farmer.
 The US government has the Bin Laden tape. Sounds like people are hoping he looks ill. Too many chicks and too much booze and blow down in the fleshpots of Dubai? Too many hours of Beer Pong with Mullah Omar and the hos and goats?
"Until Proven Innocent." The new book about the Duke disgrace, with comments. Never Yet melted. Horrors! Military recruiters in NYC schools! Rhymes with Right. Which is the greater evil in NYC: The military, the Boy Scouts, or Christians? All are evil counter-revolutionaries. Fallujah, Revisited. INDC Journal Al Gore caught with his pants down. Drudge. What a phony. I'm supposed to think he's worried? All he wants is attention. A day at the range, Theo Style What are you having for dinner? I am now smoking a pork butt with some locally-grown Black Cherry wood for some friends. Beer and an Oregon Pinot Noir, home-made cole slaw, tomato salad from the garden, and some Italian-style potato salad (garlic, parsley, white vinegar and olive oil). Western North Carolina-style sauce for the pulled pork, on cheap burger rolls. Splurged on a bottle of Dewars, too. For dessert, vanilla ice cream with powder-ground good coffee sprinkled on top, then a splash of Scotch over it: believe it or not, I am told that's Italian too. Go figure. Finally adding to Blogroll: Dissident Frogman (recently returned to the internet swamp) and Oxford Medievalist (A Jules talent discovery who we forgot to add a while ago)
A man said to his wife, "I don't know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time." The wife responded, "Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!"
Regarding the CNN series "God's Warriors," Christiane Amanpour said this: "In the Western and in the developed world, perhaps here in the 21st century we would have expected secularism and governance and politics to be what governs our daily lives," Amanpour told the bloggers. "We would not have expected, and perhaps we still don’t expect, religion to play such a real, present role in our daily lives, politics, and culture."
Who is "we"? What governs my daily life is family, having friends, making a living and juggling bills, being a Christian with a relationship with God, reading books, playing tennis, maintaining the homestead, planning this Fall's hunts, and riding and caring for the horses - not necessarily in that order. Oh - and trying to toss a half-decent post on the blog when I have a spare moment. I only care about politics and governance to be a good informed citizen - and because it is so screwed up these days: I wish I didn't have to think about it. Ms. Amanpour is a fruitcake. Whole story at Evangelical Outpost.
A quote from a Sept. 6 piece by Iraq The Model: The war is going to be long because it's a war of ideas—the conflict is not going to be a localized one and will have different forms because I believe the whole world is concerned and will take part in one way or another.
Identifying and supporting the true moderates would be a fair weapon to use in this war and I think American and the rest of the free world will keep trying to support positive reforms towards a better life to defeat the ideology of death.
More news from Iraq the Model: Omar has moved to NYC.
Is France rejecting arrogance? Lifson at Am. Thinker
We were alive during one of the handful of milestones of human history. Sippican What does 1+1=2 mean? Evangelical Outpost NY Sun opinion: Fred Thompson can win. Medical care in the US is already half-socialized. TCS (h/t, Insty)
Thursday, September 6. 2007
Here's his official announcement (a video, but not the one on Leno), if you haven't seen it.
 Some Swedes now insist that the Swedish flag is racist. Gates. And, via that link, Muslim Ambassadors say "Sweden must change its laws." The money quote from the Algerian Ambassador after meeting with Swedish diplomats:
the meeting "was an excellent initiative taken in a spirit of appeasement."
Indeed. These European struggles are not about racism. They are about nations desiring to preserve their cultural identities and traditions and values, codes of behavior, and ways of life - to preserve their societies - and about those in those nations who are happy to see those things disappear. The charge of racism is a phony, designed to put people on the defensive and to shut them up. It usually is. Yes, as we have said and as Buddy said today in a comment, the long-time strategy of the Left is to undermine the foundations of a society, with the fantasy that a utopia - run by them - will ensue. It is nihilistic; it is heartless, and it is a form of grandiose insanity.
 September 11th is on the horizon now. There will be a flurry of text commemorating the day. None of it will be written as well as this, so you may as well stop trying right now.
The Wind In The Heights
Luciano Pavarotti: RIP. We have YouTubed him recently, so will not do it today - everyone else is anyway. We'll miss the big guy. And about Fred: Let's see how he does. He surely is a likeable, seemingly-straight-forward fellow. Greenies: Airplanes for us, man-driven treadle pumps for you. Moonbattery. Related: Global warming and ocean saltiness. Did you grow up poor in America? You probably did if you are over 35, by today's definitions. I did, and I am under 35. Never thought I was poor, though: plenty of food, plenty of sports, and plenty of books. Duke, Ham, and PC: SISU, the Queen of the Segueway (if that is how it is spelled). Will the NAACP ever resume working to lift up and inspire their constituents? Viking wonders. So do I. Ethanol for cars: One more strike against that dumb idea: It's depleting water supplies.
 Almost everybody knows that Dartmouth College offers the best undergraduate education in the world. If Dartmouth is a bit of a cult, it is for good reason.
Alumni do not wear Dartmouth as a badge - they just care and stay involved and give money, and stop by whenever they can. Some of them decide to run for the elected alum trustee spots, and that is where the excitement began. The excitement began because the folks who have been winning these trustee elections (voted for by the entire body of Dartmouth alumni) have been more independent-minded, more tradition-minded, and generally if not entirely more conservative than in the past. The administration and the non-elected board aren't happy with that. Like any organization, they want support from the board, not trouble and intrusiveness. It's an Indian uprising. The administration and its allies are fighting back by trying to eliminate alumni voting. Interestingly, a number of major-league bloggers are Dartmouth folks. They keep the campus political issues in the public eye, which is good for the future of the school. Most schools are run as fiefdoms, shutting out the views of the alums who support them. When alums have a voice, they use it. It's a shame more schools don't have a powerful alumni presence among their trustees. Opinion Journal has a good summary of the history of Dartmouth's governance. Trustee T. J. Rogers wants to stay involved, and finds himself up against a totalitarian mentality. The alums won't put up with that. Joe's Dartblog is always on the story. Image: The now officially banned (God knows why) Dartmouth Indian. That image derives from Dartmouth's 1769 founding as a mission school to Indians, hence the school's motto "Vox clematis in deserto."
"Maybe it's the color of the sun cut flat
An' coverin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
But mama, you been on my mind.
I don't mean trouble, please don't put me down or get upset,
I am not pleadin' or sayin', "I can't forget."
I do not walk the floor bowed down an' bent, but yet,
Mama, you been on my mind.
Even though my mind is hazy an' my thoughts they might be narrow,
Where you been don't bother me nor bring me down in sorrow.
It don't even matter to me where you're wakin' up tomorrow,
But mama, you're just on my mind.
I am not askin' you to say words like "yes" or "no,"
Please understand me, I got no place for you t' go.
I'm just breathin' to myself, pretendin' not that I don't know,
Mama, you been on my mind.
When you wake up in the mornin', baby, look inside your mirror.
You know I won't be next to you, you know I won't be near.
I'd just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind." "Mama, You Been On My Mind," recorded in 1964 but only officially released on 1991's must-have collection, The Bootleg Series Vols. I-III. The song had been performed in concert many times before that, however, including memorable duet performances with Joan Baez during the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 (now also available in official release). Dylan has also performed the song numerous times during the Neverending Tour, including the version below from the spring of 2000.
Ted Dalrymple is becoming more interested in good than in evil as he ages, he says. A quote from his short essay in New English Review (h/t, reader): ...I have spent a great deal of my life among the utmost ugliness, both physical and moral. Moreover, I must confess that the problem of evil has preoccupied me. One of the reasons for this, perhaps, has been literary ambition. It is far easier to make evil interesting than good. Depictions of good people are inclined very soon to decline into mawkishness, and make their objects as dull as they are unbelievable. Too much good repels us; we long for the feet of clay to be revealed. As Oscar Wilde said, only a man with a heart of stone could read of the death of Little Nell without laughing. A fascination with evil is pretty widespread. When, at social gatherings, I tell people what I once did for a living, namely that I was a doctor in a large prison, it isn’t usually very long before someone asks me, slightly shamefacedly, who the worst, most evil man I ever met was. They also want to know what he did in as much detail as possible, of course. No story is so horrifying that it ever bores people; and even the most demure cannot for long entirely resist the thrill of the barbarous.
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