Wednesday, April 30. 2008
 What's going wrong in Basra? Civilization is happening.
How localism (as in Italy) could save Europe. Yes, save them from the EU Empire. How the Dems are screwing you at the gas pump. Important post. Global warming on vacation, say scientists. Do the models predict 30-year vacations? NYT proposes regulation of textbook prices. Mankiw notes the irony. 50% of LA job-holders were born in other countries It still could happen, and likely will - but we don't have a recession yet. Spank those kids or they could end up in jail Bet you didn't know that global warming causes AIDS. Silly you. More BBC censorship. The very notion of government media should be anathema in free societies. Need somebody to hate today? This low-life scum deserves yours. If I were a better person, I would say he needs our prayers...but I'm not that good yet. Right Wing Prof says that this NYT piece on Bio-bigotry makes him want somebody to shoot him. The NYT should have made it a companion piece to their Rev. Wright article, who is a genuine bio-bigot. I hate rats and Starlings. Sue me. Imus, who refers to Hillary Clinton as Satan, referred to Obama this morning as a pencil-neck wimp, or pansy, or something like that. Dean Barnett wonders the same thing. Pixie dust on solar, from Tom Friedman We'll all miss Red Ken, who is going down, tomorrow, with any luck. He was good for humor, though:
As if to reinforce the post below, today AOL news creates a Depression-era scare story: People selling their belongings to survive. You would think things were terrible because of tag sales. Meanwhile, economic data say no recession yet, but if people are fearful enough, the media will provoke one in time for the election. So what's the big issue, other than everybody's normal everyday challenge to build the life that suits their desires and their conscience?
From our brother-in arms Coyote: Todd Zywicki has a nice post on the The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke by Professor Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. In his writings on the tactics for engineering the communist state, Karl Marx talked a lot about the need to "proletarianize the middle class." This has been a very popular tactic among leftish writers and politicians today, attempting to convince the middle class that they never had it so bad.
No doubt. Let's inculcate a sense of grievance in those two-income middle-class families, so they will turn to the State for rescue. The fact is, we have two-income families because people want more money, and desire a higher standard of living than the average single-income middle class family in 1970. Ah, but they have less disposable income than in 1970 - and here's why (from the linked pieces): 
Discretionary income has shrunk from 46% to 25% of total income - and taxes account for all of that reduction. The governmental solution, no doubt, will be to raise their taxes to provide more "free services." That's the Gramscian tactic: tax 'em 'til they feel poor, then apply incremental Marxism until they own your soul and you become a grateful serf of The State at The People's Tractor Factory #23. For details, read the links above.
Here are some clues, in the WSJ. He is not a metrosexual.
If economists only do things that make economic sense, then Captain Capitalism lists a few things they surely do not do. I would add one more: they would never run a blog like Maggie's Farm.
 More here.
(h/t, Ace)
This is a pretty good rule-of-thumb. (h/t, Tangled Web)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Sherlock Holmes
 Save the NYT! RWNH. Related, quoted from Auster:
The editors and reporters of the Times are not just “biased.” They are conscious, stone-cold, Soviet-style liars. And somehow they get away with it.
Wrigley sold to Mars Hillary's $3 billion in earmarks Dartmouth prof wants to sue her students. It's the victim/grievance culture run amok. Governments make problems worse, then demand more money to fix their unintended consequences Soak the rich isn't working this time around. Powerline "You have been had," at Am Thinker. A quote: It comes as a blow to the solar plexus to confront the fact that in urban African American communities all across America a frank racist hate-filled rhetoric is not merely condoned but actually celebrated. We white conservatives have been taught for the last generation to button our lips and never to give utterance to a racist thought. We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism. Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had. While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile. On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up!
Photo from Bits and Pieces
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
My current favorite smoke: Macanudo 1993 Vintage No. 2. Spicy. Definitely needs no aging in ye olde humidificatorium. By the way, do not expect me to ever discuss Cubans here. 
 A propos the piece on reading in college which we linked this morning, Insty came across another bit in The Chronicle titled America's most over-rated product: the Bachelor's Degree.
Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science. Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.
Read the whole thing. It makes sense that the degree must be degraded as more people seek it, and as more colleges seek students to fill their buildings. I am reading the new biography of Albert Einstein. Few college students today could pass the entry exams that he took, which included calculus, literature, French, physics and chemistry. He failed them the first time, in part because his French exam was judged to be weak. (No, he never flunked math.) He spent a year after high school studying to take them a second time. My point is that "education" or a liberal arts degree was never intended to be a "consumer product." Now it is viewed that way, in the US. And that is a big part of the problem in how we think of education today, because it is not something that can be bought for any price: it is something that can only be taken by those who really want it. Photo: Columbia College's Alma Mater - one college where a BA degree still means something. Same goes for the great University of Chicago.
 Is recreational sex a good thing? Good for whom? And how do I define "good"? Does our pop culture contain any sexual morals anymore? Are women naturally as sexually predatory and opportunistic as some men can be? And what does "natural" have to do with it anyway, since we are humans, not monkeys?
Were I a smarter person, I'd have all the answers. Anchoress on Prudery, Virginity, and Do-Me Feminism And Harvey Mansfield reviews Hook Up or Shut Up
As Englishman notes, the tropical troposphere should be the most sensitive indicator of global warming. It just isn't happening. Full discussion and details at Climate Audit. 
Big Lizards has a good take on the Supremes' decision. Everywhere I have lived - except in NYC - an ID was required to vote.
There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs. Booker T. Washington, via Vanderleun
Is college supposed to be more demanding than High School? Maybe not, in the new, democratized Higher Ed. From a post at Chronicle on reading books: ...when I listen to students today chat (not, I hasten to point out, the ones in my very own class who are all good looking, strong, and above average) about their classes, I too often hear criticism of the work load rather than excitement about the subject matter, a complaint about the hours taken from meeting with friends or playing sports rather than engaging in debate, deciphering philosophy, history or a good poem. “Keep it neat, simple and to the point,” my faculty colleagues tell me. If I assign too much work, they say, students will write negative comments and the following semester enrollment will plummet.
Unbelievable abuse of power, in the WSJ. (h/t, Betsy)
Awful but lawful. Steep declines at the NYT. Related: Where have the smart media moguls gone? Buy your own Taser The science of doom and gloom The oil panic. Don't worry From Boundless (read whole thing): "It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of antipathy towards the ROTC on the Left in America." Koreans heading for the Ivy League Wright's poison. Sullivan
Springtime, and amore is in the air. (h/t, Theo) 
Monday, April 28. 2008
From the NZ Herald: Japan started the war with six million tonnes of shipping and of course built more as the war went on. US submarines sank 1314 of their ships of more than 1000 tons each, plus 700,000 tons of naval ships including eight aircraft carriers, a battleship and 11 cruisers. They did 416 patrols and fired 14,500 torpedoes. Out of a total of 52 subs lost, 48 were lost operating from the Fremantle base. American submariners made up only 1.6 per cent of the US naval manpower but they had the highest loss rate of US Armed Forces with 22 per cent killed.
Read the whole thing. Photo: USS Swordfish, sunk off Okinawa in January 1945
Ah, I still remember when I filled up my first 10-CD case. I was on top of the world! When you've got an entire case filled with CDs of hot programs and pics and things, it's like you're some kind of computer god!
I now have over 950 discs. Admittedly, the luster wore off pretty fast.
And I keep them in seven of these:
Each carousel holds 150 discs. You operate a database program on the computer and when you want a certain disc, click on 'Eject' and out it comes. They're only $129, which seems fairly reasonable. I've owned my original three for almost four years and have never had a problem with either the units or the software. Home site is here.
Most of my discs are DVDs, and there's a great program out called MovieCollector that not only organizes your movies every which way, but automagically downloads the jewel box cover pics, names of actors, IMDb rating, etc. Here's the standard layout:
You can also browse through the movies using thumbnails of the jewel box pics, pretty cool. I have a much larger post on this subject on my own site here.
Kimball shows how they do it.
Quoted from VDH: As I said before, between Wright's racism and hatred, and Obama's contextualization of what he has said, we have so lowered the bar that the next racist (and he won't necessarily be black) who evokes hatred of other races and then offers a mish-mash pop theory of genetic differences will have plenty of "context" to ward off public fury.
Orwellian times.
 I think so, and Climate Skeptic agrees:
Observe today how little of the discussion is about anything other than climate. There are still many environmental issues in the world that can be improved by the application of man's effort and technology -- unfortunately, climate is the least of these but the issue getting the most attention. Consider how the global warming panic has sucked the oxygen out of the environmental movement. Ten years from now, I predict that true environmentalists will be looking back on the hysteria over trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere as a huge setback for real environmental progress.
As readers know, we are old-time Conservationists here. We believe in National Parks, State Parks, nature preserves, farmland protection, habitat protection, species protection, zoning, "open space", clean rivers and waters, unpolluted air, and we do not approve of the government subsidizing real estate developers and urban sprawl by building highways to nowhere. The Audubon Society came into being to protect Egrets. The photo above of an American Egret in CT, with his breeding plumage (sent in by a reader last week), shows the reason. At the turn of the century, those breeding-season plumes were all the rage for decorating lady's hats. Thus our egrets - the American and the Snowy in particular - were hunted almost to extinction. That is called "unsustainable use." The same applied to the market-gunning and netting of waterfowl - and the Passenger Pigeon. Of necessity, we now have hunting laws, hunting seasons, wildlife refuges, and protected species. Thus we are not Libertarian when it comes to land-use and unsustainable and irreversible exploitation of wildlife or wildlife habitat. The Conservation Movement of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt had to become politicized, because laws were required in the presence of competing interests: witness, nowadays, the political conflicts in MA and in Europe around the efforts to enforce sustainable fish harvests. We simply try to be rational about it all. For example, we have no problem with oil drilling in ANWAR or off the Florida coast (as the Cubans and Chinese are doing). We have no problem with responsible logging, which effectively mimics the effects of natural wildfire on forest succession. We love to hunt and fish, and do so responsibly and sportingly. We think the earth probably has more than enough people on it. We favor nuclear power for reasons of energy independence and because it's the closest thing to a free lunch after compound interest. We feel that biofuels are a lousy idea for many reasons.  At the risk of sounding corny, we believe in good stewardship of our inheritance.
What's irrational? The Green Movement is irrational. Most of it represents feel-good ideas that are hooey: symbolic hooey that is meant to make people feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. Witness the lightbulb craze, "organic" vegetables, "recycling" plastic bottles (totally energy-inefficient), or hybrid cars (which do nothing "for the planet" but which are great on gas mileage). It's empty vanity and fashion, and nothing more (for an example, see this foolish agonizing piece by Michael Pollan, who has caught a bad case of the vain and guilt-ridden sanctimony of the "I can make a difference" disorder). Pure organic pixie dust for the latte liberals. The CO2 obsession is similarly irrational, and, deep down, everybody must know it. It is irrational because it is futile, regardless of whether there is any current warming, and regardless of whether there is any man-made warming. (We suspect that it is long-term cooling.) As Steyn said yesterday at NRO: Whether or not there’s very slight global cooling or very slight global warming, there’s no need for a “war” on either, no rationale for loosing a plague of eco-locusts on the food supply. So why be surprised that totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation? As for Time’s tree, by all means put it up: It helps block out the view of starving peasants on the far horizon.
If anybody thinks the Chinese, the Russians, and, eventually, Africa, intends to stop building fossil fuel power plants, they are dreaming. If anybody thinks wind power will ever be more than a drop in the bucket - even if subsidized as it is - is dreaming. And those who want (more) "carbon taxes" just want another cover, another excuse, to take more of our money. They can have more "carbon tax" if they reduce my income tax to compensate. Everybody wants more power, and as cheap as possible, because power is the wonderful stuff that makes our modern civilized, efficient and lazy lives possible. The rapidly-developing world understandably wants more of it. Somebody will need to pry my Stihl saw - and my computer - from my cold dead hands. So, to meander back to my main topic, I agree with Coyote that the CO2 frenzy and the other trendy Green frenzies have "drained the oxygen" from a Conservation movement which has many other compelling areas in which it can be, and should be, effective. And, yes, I do believe that many of those Greenies are motivated by a Socialist agenda using "Gaia" as a front. I will believe their sincerity when they quit driving and flying. However, their socialist-totalitarian streak, plus their wackiness and scolding, have damaged rational conservation goals via guilt by association. On the other hand, I do favor the use of local, state and federal powers (and especially some non-profits which do the same things free from political considerations) for the conservation goals which are important to me, which I believe to be rational, and which I like to believe contain no ideological agenda but which certainly contain a moral and practical agenda: we do not wish to hand down a planet covered with asphalt and oceans without Codfish. Some things - maybe just a very few precious things - should be more important than freedom and free markets, but that's where the political debates begin, isn't it? That is the line of scrimmage. On the "values" scale, we rank individual freedom at the top of the list, but, like everybody, we also have competing values, morals, and interests.
You know, people often ask me why I write for Maggie's Farm. That's a poser, as we say on the Farm. Truth be told, the proprietor of this sorry place, Bird Dog, promised me hookers and blow if I joined the Maggie's team. So I attended the Christmas party expecting great things. It didn't work out exactly as I had planned. 
At this point, it's just plain stubbornness keeping me around. On a farm, sometimes being stubborn is all you got.
From Manly. It begins: Dear Barack Obama: I grew to like you over the last year. I've always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best. I couldn't vote for you -- but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn't vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I'm convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I'm convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don't respect the Second Amendment (which I'm convinced should disqualify any politician from any office). Still, I've liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I've hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.) And I've long said if you beat Hillary Clinton, you will have done your country a tremendous service. But anymore I'm having a harder and harder time rooting for you.
Read the whole thing.
The surrender of free speech in the face of Jihad: Bawer at City Journal And it looks as if Rev. Al has learned from them. Isn't this terrorism, of a sort? Rev. Al is another Rage Boy. "Operatic" displays of guilt and grief on the Left. Thompson Obama's character: Is it a distraction? Krauthammer The deep swimmers of the Left: Why Bill Ayers is more dangerous now Terming Obama "too extreme" is racist? The NYT says so, so it must be true. Some atheists want their own churches and ministers. Quote from NY Magazine: Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing. But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is gone.
We posted a painting by James Buttersworth last week. This one, Welcome Home, is by his father, Thomas (1768-1842). 
Sunday, April 27. 2008
Bush at the Correspondent's Dinner last night: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire, and Senator Obama's at church."
 Talked with an older gent this weekend who had been a Skipper of an LSM in the Pacific during the war. He correctly guessed that I could not describe an LSM. Landing ship, medium. Odd-looking craft.
We built over 500 of them. Designed for island-hopping, smaller and quicker than LSTs, carrying just 3-4 tanks and crews. He said he did a lot of ferrying, and they were too small potatoes for kamikazes or subs to bother with. He said they put plenty of 40 mm in the air, but thinks that they never hit anything. For landing, they threw out a stern anchor, then headed for the beach. As the tanks off-loaded, you could maybe float off. When you loaded tanks on, you needed the stern anchor winch and hoped for the best. You were not supposed to get stuck.
 Marines deploying in Afghanistan
Attitudes of disdain. VDH McCain triangulates. Powerline. Also, McCain never saw the ad he criticized. No wonder he sounded out of touch. Greenpeace founder wants nuke power. So do I. Reverse racism in the Dem primaries. Jules Rev. Wright, in context (if you want to hear more) Duck hunting on Long island: Dec 26, 1920 Willow Creek changes direction. Interesting. (h/t, Smart Christian) A good rant about the govt and oil prices. Wizbang Not a warrior, and other thoughts about war. Comfortably dumb.
John 14:15-21 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’
Saturday, April 26. 2008
After a long hiatus, they're back. Here are a couple of brick bungalows, of a style very common in the streetcar neighborhoods of Nashville, built for middle-class families in the 1920s (these two are both from the Edgehill neighborhood, close to Vanderbilt). They don't try to be flashy, but are solid, well-proportioned homes that are now far more popular among buyers than their much more recently-built ranch style counterparts in the same neighborhood. 
Menu for this Spring's Ducks Unlimited Game Dinner tonight: Medley of wild game hors d'oevres: Home-made venison sausage, seared duck breast, grilled venision loin Quail on toast, stuffed with fois gras with giber sauce and parsnip frites Pheasant breast over penne, with tomato pink sauce Home-made fresh Mango Sorbet Antelope Bistro: Teriyaki tenderloin, mozzarella and tomatoes over mixed baby greens with balsamic glaze Home-made fresh Raspberry sorbet Stuffed filet of venison: fire-roasted peppers, spinach, sweet-potato puree and grilled asparagus Bananas Foster served over challah french toast Assorted imported cheese board with grapes, sliced pears, nuts, dried fruit and home-made breads Wines: Chassagne Montrachet, Nuit St. Georges 2005, Pommard Le Rugien 2005, Chateau Guirard Sauterne
Quoted from our old friend Marvin: Obama is also emerging as a more eloquent version of four recent Democratic presidential candidates—Mondale (1984), Dukakis (1988), Gore (2000), and Kerry (2004)—all of whom polled well early in their campaigns but faltered as they failed to understand and convey the truth that the United States is a country founded on ideals rather than tribal ethnicity or simple economic interests. That idealism moves some millionaires to vote Democratic for environmental reasons and some poor folks to vote Republican for pro-life reasons. And those voters who do put economics first often think long-term. William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900 because many workers cared more about opportunity for their children than maximization of current income. George McGovern in 1972 was surprised to find the working poor opposing his guaranteed income proposal because they saw themselves as upwardly mobile and wanted others to compete as well. Many academic liberals see themselves as eminently rational and others as warped or dumb. Some conservatives readily grasp the importance of worldviews because, surrounded as they are by generally hostile big media, they come to see how people look at the same facts and come to different conclusions. Many liberals aren't forced daily to think presuppositionally, so it's easy for them to view dissenters as psychologically or intellectually inferior.
Politics sucks, but Socialism doesn't quite make it in the Land of Opportunity. Almost, I am sorry to say, but not quite. You can go to other countries if that is what you want. Sweden or England. Not China. Vive la difference. Except for the slackers who want freebies, people who come here to the USA want the opportunity, not the hand-outs. If America doesn't stand for individual freedom and the opportunity to pursue your own goals and values and to stand on your own two legs, it stands for nothing at all. It works pretty well, too, if you are willing to take your lumps along with your chances. American ideals, perhaps, are not for everybody, and yet we take darn good care of those who stumble, run into bad luck, or cannot handle it. Charity, via government and via private charities. We are generous as heck here, thanks to our Christian values. Love to help folks, but do not enjoy doing so at gunpoint. That doesn't count as virtue - and taking care of our own families comes first. As it should, for adult humans. Figuring out your own path through life is the blessing of freedom.
 Darwin's garden, at the NY Botanical Garden
How McCain is dodging McCain-Feingold Oxblog's David Adesnik's life is too interesting for him to find computer time Beyond Discrimination: African American Inequality in the 21st Century TNR: Cheer up, Democrats The biofuel backlash England removed from the European map. My brave ancestors, castrated and played for suckers. Very sad to watch cultural suicide unfolding before ones' eyes. Repubs are racist? Not the ones I know. Let's start with Lincoln, and work forward towards Eisenhower. We will vote for a Conservative guy or gal - brown, black, yellow, Jewish, or Mormon - in a New York minute. A quote from Norm: Argue about when wars are necessary and when they aren't, when they are justified and when they aren't, and whether a particular war should be fought or not. But to pontificate about the meaning of war being bad, as if you really hate it and are therefore with the angels - unlike the rest of us - is a feeble ruse. War has been tested to destruction? Yes, I also wish. Unfortunately, if others decide to wage it against you, it does put you in something of a quandary.
The words, with Peter Spier's illos, here.(Thanks, reader. A great old tune, and Spier is the best.)
 This is a weekly Saturday morning feature that will slowly, over time, turn you into a full-fledged computer expert. More info here.
Lesson 3: System Backup
It's an amazing thing, really.
Consider what a phenomenally different reaction I have when my system melts down than you do.
You're innocently typing away on a blogsite, or reading some article, or working on a personal project. Suddenly, the computer locks up, or just reboots on its own. Or maybe all you did was turn it on for the day. And all you get is a...
black screen.
Your computer has melted down. All it takes is one little video driver file to become corrupt and poof! It's off to the shop for a week and — $250 later — it's working again.
And our wildly different reactions when our computers crash?
You: Oh, no! My computer's broken! The last time this happened it was gone for a week and cost me $250! I'm too busy right now! This is a nightmare! What am I going to do?? Gawd, I hate computers!!!!!
Me: Dang! Now I have to clean the bathroom!
Pretty amazing, eh?
If you, yourself, would prefer cleaning the bathroom for 10 minutes while your computer is being restored, rather than having it spend an expensive week in the shop, then please...
Continue reading "Dr. Mercury's Computer Corner: Lesson 3 - System Backup"
Friday, April 25. 2008
"It may be perpetual motion, but it will take forever to test it."
A site for perpetual motion machines and other things that don't work. (Toon from the site). h/t Neatorama
 We enjoy seeing our local Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds buzzing around, and we plant things that they like.
Wayside lists 56 varieties for them. Butterflies tend to like similar plants. Gardens without hummingbirds and butterflies feel sterile. Photo: An Agastache (Hyssop).
Video of an amazing and hair-raising walk. Not my cup of tea.
|
Reviewed