Thursday, December 20. 2007
 We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
From the news piece: “Through your inspiring video lectures i have managed to see just how BEAUTIFUL Physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.
Steve Boigon, 62, a florist from San Diego, wrote, “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes.”
Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold forth in cyberspace on their college Web sites and even, without charge, on iTunes U, which went up in May on Apple’s iTunes Store.
In his lectures at ocw.mit.edu, Professor Lewin beats a student with cat fur to demonstrate electrostatics. Wearing shorts, sandals with socks and a pith helmet — nerd safari garb — he fires a cannon loaded with a golf ball at a stuffed monkey wearing a bulletproof vest to demonstrate the trajectories of objects in free fall.
He rides a fire-extinguisher-propelled tricycle across his classroom to show how a rocket lifts off.
He was No. 1 on the most downloaded list at iTunes U for a while, but that lineup constantly evolves. The stars this week included Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Leonard Susskind, a professor of quantum mechanics at Stanford.
Wednesday, December 19. 2007
 Attack Machine is on a subject we have discussed recently: the desire of some voters, mainly on the left, to seek more from politicians, or from government, than can be possibly delivered.
We recall that, when Christ arrived in Jerusalem, much of the enthusiastic crowd who greeted him with palm leaves were counting on him to be a political, if not military, savior for Judea - not a saver of souls for Judea and the world. Indeed, that was the meaning of the palms. The piece, Obama as Messiah, quotes Oprah: “We need a leader who’s going to touch our souls. Who’s going to make us feel differently about one another. Who’s going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us.” “Are you the one?” It’s a question the entire nation is asking — is he the one? South Carolina — I do believe he’s the one.”
I am only as strong as the weakest amongst me? Give me a break. It's a sad day when people equate their government with their country, and seek inspiration, strength or - God forbid - spiritual injections from political leaders. It is infantile, un-American, and too close to blasphemy in its sentiment. False idols, false gods. It's pitiful. Pitiful because in a land of hard-won freedom we have earned the adult privilege of building our own lives, by our own individual lights, informed by our own spirits and our own gifts and our own beliefs. Therein lies the beauty and the grandeur of it - the faith in the individual - and that is why we hire random jerks to do the grimy government work: it's so they can protect us from enemies and tyranny, and to keep us free to pursue our personal goals in our own ways, as best we can. That is all I ask of these job-seekers. If anybody imagines that a politician or the government will change their life for the better, they are nuts. It does not take much history education to know that. In fact, the only reason we ever mention politics on this blog is because we wish to be left alone, and because some other arrogant jerks without normal difficult jobs, with the fantasy that they somehow know better than us, wish to bother us and to abscond with our hard-won freedoms and our hard-earned shekels - representing our sweat and time and tears and, in fact, our lives - to keep their stupid easy jobs. We do not appreciate that particular scam.
This came in over the transom (sans photo): 
In 1973 an Italian submarine named Enrique Tazzoli was sold for a paltry $100,000 as scrap metal. The submarine, given to the Italian Navy in 1953 was actually an incredible veteran of World War II service with a heritage that never should have passed so unnoticed into the graveyards of the metal recyclers. The U.S.S. Barb was a pioneer, paving the way for the first submarine launched missiles and flying a battle flag unlike that of any other ship. In addition to the Medal of Honor ribbon at the top of the flag identifying the heroism of its captain, Commander Eugene 'Lucky' Fluckey, the bottom border of the flag bore the image of a Japanese locomotive. The U.S.S. Barb was indeed, the submarine that 'SANK A TRAIN'. July, 1945 (Guam) Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz looked across the desk at Admiral Lockwood as he finished the personal briefing on U.S. war ships in the vicinity of the northern coastal areas of Hokkaido, Japan. 'Well, Chester, there's only the Barb there, and probably no word until the patrol is finished. You remember Gene Fluckey?' 'Of course. I recommended him for the Medal of Honor,' Admiral Nimitz replied. 'You surely pulled him from command after he received it?' July 18, 1945 (Patience Bay, Off the coast of Karafuto, Japan ) It was after 4 A.M. and Commander Fluckey rubbed his eyes as he peered over the map spread before him. It was the twelfth war patrol of the Barb, the fifth under Commander Fluckey. He should have turned command over to another skipper after four patrols, but had managed to strike a deal with Admiral Lockwood to make one more trip with the men he cared for like a father, should his fourth patrol be successful. Of course, no one suspected when he had struck that deal prior to his fourth and what should have been his final war patrol on the Barb, that Commander Fluckey's success would be so great he would be awarded the Medal of Honor.
Continue reading "The USS Barb sinks a train"
It's time we linked this documentary again, with ice and snow everywhere. It's especially good on capturing the "new green morality" which is supposed to supplant the old moralities.
 Wise up, guys. Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
They are flattering to a lady. They look good against female skin. What she wants in her stocking are good diamonds, and not a year's subscription to Maggie's Farm. To fill up her stocking, of course, you could also add a Cartier watch wrapped in an Official Maggie's Farm Gift Certificate.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. Ayn Rand
We are truant in not having added The Atlantic's brilliant Megan McArdle to our blogroll. We will. A quote from Three Cheers for Retail (h/t Insty) - I remain amazed by how often I think I have found a wonderful link, later to find that Insty has posted it already. Does he really have a day job? Assessing the health of the economy, we tend to get obsessed with stuff: how much are we making? This is why lost manufacturing jobs so obsess trade foes. But manufacturing isn't where the economic beef is, and hasn't been for some time. Distribution is the dominant force of change in our lives now, whether the distribution vehicle is Wal-Mart, and iPod, or the internet. Retailers: God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Hopefully not atop your piles of unsold merchandise.
Our blog friend Bert Prelutsky is a Jewish agnostic. A quote from his essay, I'm Happy to Live in a Christian Nation: Even among some of my friends and relatives, there are those who half-expect their Christian neighbors to start organizing pogroms any day now. They remain unconvinced that Hitler and the Nazis were pagans. And even when I point out that it was American and British soldiers, mainly Christians, who brought down the Third Reich and liberated the concentration camps, it often falls on deaf ears.
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. Max Gluckman, as quoted in a piece at Overcoming Bias about the guardians of Ayn Rand
Good point: How come drunk women are assumed irresponsible and cannot give consent, but drunk guys are expected to make sober, sexless choices when they have a bit of a buzz going, and the girl next to him looks like a horse but, to him at that moment, looks like Marilyn Monroe? Englishman's Castle. Isn't that based on a sexist assumption that women are mentally frail, but men are strong? Most men aspire to mental, physical, emotional and spiritual strength. It doesn't mean that they achieve it.
 Is alimony obsolete? Dr. Helen
Not repairing the AMT? Blue Crab Iran's new friends in the Americas. Dino Infra-red art photography. Good Communists and Bad Christians. Dr. Sanity English-speaking in England's schools. Tangled Web The rich pay for the federal govt. Adopted kid finds his real mother at his workplace, working the register at Lowes. More on the Inquisition in Canada. Attack machine
Tuesday, December 18. 2007
Elder Bush denies Bill Clinton notion. How stupid do they think we are?
A particularly fine variation on a type of bungalow form that was very common from about 1900-1920. I especially like the use of an elegant archway to frame an additional entrance space leading to the front door. Japanese architecture, which we briefly spoke about a few weeks ago, emphasizes the creation of transitional spaces in between the indoors and outdoors, and this small space helps contribute to such a gradual transition here. Compare to the 1970 home below, where there is hardly any transition at all besides an uncovered concrete porch, leaving visitors completely exposed to the elements as they wait outside. 
Editor's comment: How can you be sure that isn't just a Bambi hitching a ride from a sympathetic animal-loving bicycler? Well, I could give you a half-hour shaggy dog story, entirely true by MSM standards, on the subject of a deer, skull-grazed by a 14 year-old in an old Maine apple orchard, which regained consciousness (the buck, not the orchard) after being hauled across the orchard and lifted over a barbed-wire fence (the deer, not the orchard), on a bike with the kid, and pedaled the bike (the wakened deer pedaled, not the kid) three miles to the nearest roadside bar and walked in and said (the buck, not the kid)...well, but I don't want to do that story today. That's enough unclear run-on sentences for one post.
You've read this already, but since we did link the original Princeton story (with a hoax warning), this is for the record. What a jerk. The guy is as bad as the AP or the NYT.
From a piece in Opinion Journal, a quote: Ironically, these government handouts are creating the tuition problem. Tuition has risen about three percentage points faster than inflation every year for the past quarter-century. At the same time, the feds have put more and more money behind student loans and other financial aid. The government is slowly becoming a third-party tuition payer, with all the price distortions one would expect. Every time tuition rises, the government makes up the difference; colleges thus cheerfully raise tuition (and budgets), knowing the government will step in.
and Our financial-aid system also hurts middle-class applicants. Parents who have saved money for their child's tuition quickly find that, by the strange calculus of financial aid, they are charged more for college tuition than if they had blown their savings on a bigger house.
Read the whole thing.
Stanley Kurtz at The Corner
EJ Dionne wonders whether Hillary Clinton's arrogance has gotten the better of her. I wonder that too. Isn't she just another one of those thousands of arrogant, self-satisfied Wellesley gals, born on third base and thinking that they hit a triple, who are taught that they are anointed to run the world? And how come she didn't get into Radcliffe if she's so darn smart? What were her SATs? My question: Did Obama pull a rope-a-dope on her? Related: The anybody-but-Hillary vote. Apparently younger men cannot stand her, and some older women seem to like her, for whatever reason.
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