Tuesday, April 8. 2008
Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris discusses the making of The Thin Blue Line in the NYT (h/t Neuroanthropology via Dr. X). My bolds: Personally I have never been averse to the use of reconstruction, generic archive footage, still photographs, or whatever techniques exist or we can create for ourselves as film makers so that we can become better story tellers, but the unbreakable rule must surely be that the audience MUST always know what it is they are seeing, at least when it comes to documentary. I know that there is no such thing as objective truth, particularly when it comes to film-making, but if audiences are being tricked without their knowledge, and worse still, when the film makers themselves are unable to distinguish between fact, fiction and distortion, what chance will they or future generations have of being able to disinter even a semblance of truth about what happened?
Huh? If the guy is hopeless about facts and truth, why does he bother worrying, and why doesn't he simply call his own stuff "fiction"? This guy is an exemplar of the pomo notion of "narrative." I guess nobody killed the police officer, or maybe the chocolate shake did it - probably the same chocolate shake that shot JFK. Al Gore, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone: all fully-conscious propagandists seeking to mess up the minds of the ignorant for their own purposes. Malignant people, clever but not wise.
 Obama comes out against concealed carry. What a jerk.
Does he expect me to walk around Hartford with a visible holster like I was Wyatt Earp? Of course, unlike John McCain, this Obama guy chooses to be surrounded by armed men who carry, concealed, on my nickel. So why not me? Is he more important than me? Maybe, in his dreams.
 A quote from Dr. Bob's post, The Prayer of Java:
There is one secret ingredient to make prayer work: trust. Gotta have it. Can God work without your trust? Sure — the rain falls on the just and the unjust, as the proverb says. Our problem is we want to understand God before we trust Him. We want Him to strut His stuff, lightning bolts and miracles and the like, before we’ll acquiesce and maybe give Him a break. Sorry, that’s not trust — just the opposite. But God cannot be understood — even in a limited way with our most enfeebled minds — until we first trust Him. Sounds like a bum deal, a Catch-22, but that’s just the way it works. Get over it — you won’t regret it. And one last thought in this long-winded essay: If you’re new to this prayer thing (or even not so new), start small. Praying for world peace or a cure for your cancer is fine, but a bit grandiose for starters. Pray about your misplaced car keys, finding a parking spot, the wisdom to deal with that difficult patient, or co-worker, or child, or situation. Then open your eyes, your ears, your heart for the response. You won’t hear it every time — but I bet you’ll be surprised how often you do, and you’ll learn something about God, about yourself, and in some small way about how this spiritual world works.
Sen. Clinton was the establishment candidate running in a party addicted to novelty (in candidates, that is; its policies remain mired in the 1960s). Hill calculated that, given the Dems' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Obama trumped that, and now it's eternally three in the morning, and the phone doesn't stop not ringing. She's like Frank Sinatra in Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's all-time great saloon song:
"It's quarter to three
There's no one in the place except you and me … "
Read the whole thing.
Just grow them, dry them out, punch a 1" hole in them, and hang 'em in a tree. Instant House Wren house. A house is not a home unless you have these members of the chattering class around. (Ours haven't arrived yet this Spring. Global cooling is to blame.)
I learned recently that this bright Vermont lad is now completing his doctorate at MIT (at 16).
Elizabeth Samet teaches Literature at West Point. A quote from a review of her book, Soldier's Heart, in Newsweek: It's hard for any good teacher of English to get away from war; great literature is soaked in it. Along with love, war supplies us with the greatest human drama. And war, like love, seems to somehow be essential to the human condition. "You may not be interested in war," Leon Trotsky once wrote, "but war is certainly interested in you." For Samet, teaching these young cadets, the trick is to reconcile romantic notions of honor and glory with harsher realities, the randomness of death by IED or the savagery of bombing civilians—all the great and terrible things that humans do when fighting for their lives against other humans. In her new book, "Soldier's Heart," she does it beautifully. The book, named after an archaic term for combat fatigue or, to use the modern acronym, PTSD, is a recollection of her 10 years of teaching English at West Point, but it is much more than that: a meditation on the need for both myth and reality in preparing young officers for war.
From Sipp: 
 More on global cooling. But of course it has nothing to do with "climate change." Huh? Isn't cooling "change"?
Paul Mirengoff for 2nd VP Smallest girl in the world. Happy little kid. American Indians were Arabs, claims US textbook. Probably Palestinians, don't you think? Trying to turn the battle of Basra into Tet. If I recall correctly, the good guys won Tet, didn't they? It was Cronkite who lost it. Law School deans prepare for US News ranking changes. Amusing. (h/t, Insty) Obama tries to make it clear that he does love America. Also, Does Obama understand defeat? Generational divisions about climate change. Sad story about how Mexico serves as a stepping stone for illegals. McCain: Dems show failure of leadership. Leadership is an interesting subject. Been thinking about it lately, although I do not lead anything or anybody except, barely, myself. Terrible economy, right? No jobs, right? Dr. Sanity. The media distortion is unbelievable. As Dr. Helen says on another topic: Funny, if a Democrat gets in the White House next year, my guess is that the US will suddenly become a wonderland where pretty ponies and butterflies live.
More on pessimism and protectionism. Heritage Foundation Why Hillary should be winning. Salon Confederate Heritage Month. Prof B. takes a look at the Civil War, suspects it would have happened without slavery as a factor.
Monday, April 7. 2008
Thanks for the photo, Chris 
Albert Einstein: The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. Cicero: The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. H. L. Mencken: It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake. Hannah Arendt: The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Helen Keller: Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings. Henry David Thoreau: There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. Leonardo da Vinci: He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done. Mae West: When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. Martin Luther King, jr.: I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. Mary Wollstonecraft: No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Pearl S. Buck: When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail. Raisa Gorbachev: Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects. Robert Heinlein: But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
From George MacDonald Fraser's (RIP, George) Burma campaign memoir Quartered Safe Out Here (those north Brits talk funny): There was a formula for the password, which always consisted of a seven-letter word, Victory, for example. In theory, the patrol, when challenged, the patrol would prove its bona fides by responding with whichever letter of Victory corresponded with the day of the week using the Morse alphabet. Thus, if it was Sunday, the correct reply was the first letter of Victory, which was Victor. If Monday, Ink, if Tuesday, Charlie, and so on. Who thought this up, I don't know. But if he could have heard Grandarse who seldom knew what day it was at the best of times and couldn't spell anything longer than "pint" trying to persuade Forster that he was not a Japanese White Tiger, he would have thought of something less sophisticated. You may imagine the exchange: Grandarse: (hoarsely from the dark): Is that thoo, Marra? It's me. Forster (being awkward): Victory. Grandarse: Ye wa'at? Awm shit, aye...Victory. Haud on, noo. (to a fellow patroller) 'Eym Wattie, w'at day is't? Thoorsdeh - awreddy? Girraway! Aye, weel, let's see...Moondeh, Choosdeh, Wensdeh, Thoorsdeh - v....i...c...aye, t, that'll be reet! Tock! 'Ey, thoo on stag, Ah'm sayin' Tock! Are ye theer? Forster (knowing it was Thursday when the patrol left, but that midnight has passed): Booger off, yer a fifth columist! Grandarse: Bloody 'ell! Whee the 'ell's that? Thoo, Forster, ye git! W'at ye playin' at? It's me, sayin' Tock! Forster (relenting): It's Friday, ye daft sod! Grandarse: Ah, the hell! W'at is't then? Orange? Forster: Awreet, bollock-brain. Coom in if yer feet's clean.
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 Christopher Buckley, on his dad. (h/t, Am. Digest) A quote:
And so off we sailed into the storm. This was in my father’s last sailboat, a 36-foot fiberglass sloop named Patito. We somehow made it across Long Island Sound, through a screaming, dark night and 15-foot seas. I kept the radio tuned to the Coast Guard frequency. I thought of my two young children. I thought of my warm bed in Washington. I thought, What the __ am I doing out here?
The next morning, after a sleepless night at anchor listening to the halyards slap furiously against the mast, dawn arrived greasily. The wind had increased. It was now gusting to 55 knots. The radio reported that half a million homes in New England were without power. Various governors had declared a state of emergency. We had gone for an overnight sail in a state of emergency.
I proposed that we row ashore and flag down a passing car. Or perhaps a passing FEMA vehicle.
“No, no,” said my father. “We’ll be fine.”
It was daylight now, so we could see the seas we were up against and there was nothing pleasant about them. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie The Perfect Storm?
Somehow we made it back across Long Island Sound. My mother had spent the morning on the phone to the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard kept saying, “But Mrs. Buckley, what are they doing out there in this?”
Good question, I thought, gulping down a brandy with trembling hands.
I simmered for a few days, and wrote my father a blistering letter. Never again, I vowed.
Read the whole thing. Photo from the piece at National Review.
Global warming causing disease, says Doc. He's a shameless fear-monger. Shiver my timbers. More pirates KKK supports Obama, says noted commentator Snoop Dogg Bloggers dying? It's an epidemic, a crisis! It's their wishful thinking, thinks me. How surprising. Brit employers like to employ people who want to work hard. We celebrated too soon: Mugabe plans a delay Petraeus comes home to face another battle. I think he can handle it. Privileged teens who "hate America". I thought you had to be taught to hate. Who taught 'em? A "green" 7000 sq/ ft. house? Ugly as sin.
Moon Over Peacham (VT), by Larry Miller. Available at Silver Print Press. 
Sunday, April 6. 2008
 We reach down to the Gold Coast of suburban Fairfield County, CT for today's New England house for sale.
This 1920 4-bedroom house, with 4800 sq. feet, sits in the Tokeneke area of Darien's Long Island Sound waterfront in what realtors still call "Aryan Darien." Darien: Cheaper and more homey than Greenwich, more pleasant than Stamford, and less than an hour from NYC by train. Average house price in town: over one million, and every kid in town is above average and plays hockey and lacrosse. House looks modest and civilized enough to me. Asking $3,995,000, which seems quite reasonable for the area. More photos of the charming place here. But can I farm it, and shoot on it?
Bob Brinker noted on the radio today that many Americans would find themselves in the 64% tax rate in some states, such as NY, MA, and California, with Obama's Social Security and tax plan. Brinker said, correctly, that few Americans are willing to work for 36 cents on the dollar unless they are desperate. The entrepreneurs and job-creators would go fishin' or golfin', and cut back hard on their expenses. Thus, on the tax income, job-creation, charitable donation, and consumer sides, the economy would go into an ugly spasm and a downward spiral. "It's nuts," says Bob (who is a political "moderate"). I, for one, would retire immediately and remove my income from the tax rolls: I enjoy my work very much, but I won't be a chump, or a serf or slave to the Federal government. I thought we left feudalism behind us...I think we already had a war about that. Russia now has a 13% flat tax on everybody, on all income. I would be OK with that. How can they be ahead of us? Off topic, Charlton Heston said, before his decline, "I'd like to be remembered as: American, husband, father, actor."
 I take a good hammer and pound a 1" dowel into the ground about 12-18" deep, 2-3 holes per shrub (including roses), and fill the dowel hole with a cheap all-purpose fertilizer. I make the holes within the drip-line of the plant. It seems to work well. Fertilizer thrown on the surface just washes away and never gets to the roots.
I do it now, before the leaves emerge in Yankeeland. Roots wake up and start getting active and growing at least 4 weeks before you see any greening - and the roots are the root of the matter. I repeat in June, if I remember and if I feel like it. Definitely twice for the roses, though. They are hogs. If I don't want a plant to grow more vigorously, I don't fertilize it. Incentives, you know. Speaking of outdoor chores, I am working on an update of my Maggie's Farm Exclusive Lawn Care post. I did lime my lawns today, too, despite the icebox weather. The "poor man's fertilizer" adjusts the soil pH around here. It's good that it comes in pelletized form now.
A quote from Ed Kaitz' excellent Doublethink and the Liberal Mind at American Thinker (my bolds): George Orwell claimed that there was something more calculated at work when politicians begin to claim for example that "Slavery is Freedom" or that "Hate is Love," or in Mao Tse Tung's words, that "Compulsion is Voluntary." The new and improved Democratic Party version seems to be that "Diversity is Unity." Orwell called this "doublethink" and he claimed that it was a condition endemic to the totalitarian mind. It meant the ability "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory" and "to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies." For example, a liberal socialist political platform usually involves "liberating" us from our attachments to property, families and nation in the name of "freedom." When the State chooses for us, however, the result is slavery. Doublethink in Mr. Obama's case ("Diversity is Unity!") gives him the luxury of defending not only the divisive and intolerant Reverend Wright and his party's divisive policies over the years, but it also allows him to be seen as the savior who will finally make America whole.
 The internet will become obsolete, beginning this summer. It was nice while it lasted.
"Who says San Francisco doesn't honor vets?" Driscoll The school crotch inspector. Reason Fallacies: A nice example of data selection bias. Coyote The real inconvenient truth: How warming zealotry can damage the earth. Fun stuff at Bits and Pieces How the heavy hand of China creates a Potemkin village for the Olympics A quote from Luskin: WOW. How fortunate are we to live in an age where all major political parties want to stabilize both the Earth's atmosphere and stabilize financial markets." Take THAT, global warmers! Take THAT, subprimates!
And speaking of grandiosity, our friend Sissy notes in Saint Obama awaits his Michael Kelly that Michael Kelly's 1993 NYT essay, St. Hillary, which Peggy Noonan refers to as the first and definitive Hillary take-down, can be read online. A quote from Kelly: ...asked if she has always been impelled by what she called, in a recent interview with the Washington Post, "a burning desire" to "make the world better for everybody," Mrs. Clinton say, with a slight, self-conscious laugh: "Yeah, I always have. I have not always known what it meant, but I have always had it."
Sheesh. Who asked her to fix my life? I am an adult. I just want the govt to leave me alone. Virtue sure can be creepy when combined with vanity and power. And speaking of Mrs. Clinton, another repeated campaign lie comes out. It's a campaign based on lies from start to finish. From an intriguing essay on the psychology of voting by Sewell at Am. Thinker: Erich Fromm can tell us a lot about what is behind how most people vote. He makes the point that most people are terrified of being an on-their-own, take-care-of-themselves, free, adult human being. So, we attach ourselves to surrogate family units and surrogate parents to escape from our freedom. That translates to belonging to and becoming psychologically dependant organizations as diverse as the company for which we work and our boss, to the church we attend and its clergy, and the political party to which we belong and the parent figure who gets our vote. Identifying with the group becomes our new collective identity, and we surrender our individual identity and freedom.
Ask any priest, pastor, rabbi, teacher, psychotherapist, supervisor, or elected official and they will be happy to confirm that the people they deal with are all trying to work out their childhood agendas on any available authority figure.
Photo: Wuzzat? A reader sent in this photo of somebody's well-decorated Butterfly House. Do those things work? How soon before it's filled with bees and wasps?
 Matthew 6: 24-64
No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. (25) Therefore I say to you, Do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (26) Behold the birds of the air; for they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not much better than they are? (27) Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? (28) And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin, (29) but I say to you that even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (30) Therefore if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much rather clothe you, of little faith? (31) Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, With what shall we be clothed? (32) For the nations seek after all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. (33) But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. (34) Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow shall be anxious for its own things. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
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