Friday, July 18. 2008
 Religious hypocrites are good people
The American Physical Society changes stance on warming. Well, maybe not (see first comment below). Also, another climate scientist changes his mind about AGW Many Americans save too much Nation demands new bubble to invest in. Mankiw New York tax rates would reach 60% with Obama's taxes. Related: The Obama groupies, at Anchoress. Related: What the heck is Obama talking about here? John McCain on Afghanistan. Belmont
Thursday, July 17. 2008
p> "Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?" ... Complete lyrics here. 1965's "Like A Rolling Stone," off Highway 61 Revisited, accompanied by a solid 1986 performance with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. We have somehow avoided featuring Dylan's most famous song ever since Thursday Dylan postings started appearing on Maggie's Farm in 2005, but there's no sense in putting off the moment any longer.
Over the transom. This spoof of my profession is making the email rounds in Shrinklandia: We of the psychotherapeutic and medical professions feel kindly and respectful towards our clients/patients, and genuinely care about their well-being. Occasionally, however, we will have an impatient or non-therapeutic thought, because we are human, not machines. These are often best kept to ourselves, of course, but sometimes such thoughts help lead us towards useful comments - when presented constructively. Here are a few client comments (CC) and the unspoken responses (UR) accumulated over the years: CC: Do you think I should follow my heart?
UR: Yes, I think leaving your wife and kids and running off with the 18 year-old Swedish au pair is an excellent life plan. CC: Do you really think I should stop drinking this much?
UR: Definitely not. You should keep doing this until your life is ruined and your liver shrinks down to the size of a pea.
Continue reading "The Sarcastic Shrink"
I hope our blog friend at Never Yet Melted doesn't mind this photo theft, but this one completely cracked me up: 
From Robert Samuelson, a quote: Today's global economy baffles experts -- corporate executives, bankers, economists -- as much as ordinary people. Countries are growing economically more interdependent and politically more nationalistic. This is a combustible combination. The old global economy had few power centers (the United States, Europe, Japan), was defined mainly by trade and was committed to the dollar as the central currency. Its major countries shared democratic values and alliances. Today's global economy has many power centers (including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia), is also defined by finance and is exploring alternative currencies to the dollar. Major trading nations now lack common political values and alliances. It is no more possible to undo globalization than it was possible, in the 19th century, to undo the Industrial Revolution. But our understanding of international markets, shaped by impersonal economic forces and explicit political decisions, is poor.
 McCain supports school vouchers at NAACP. But not Obama: private schools for me but not for thee. Poor people like vouchers: the union and the middle class seem not to.
What's in Zimbabwe's future? EU Referendum Mars was covered with water. Media BJ counter AP: Iraq war is over The EU wants Ireland to continue voting until they get the result they want. But, says Aengus O Snodaigh: "The fact is that the people have spoken and the Lisbon Treaty is dead." Nanny doesn't want you eating burgers in South LA Roger Kimball bids a fond adieu to Linda Greenhouse: Greenhouse Gas. It's mostly about Robert Bork. What is Edward O. Wilson up to these days? Here's the letter from 100 U of Chicago profs about Milton Friedman. Unbelievable. The art market in 2008. New York Sun. A quote: If you're wondering why there's such a boom in contemporary art today, that's because of competition, too. It's no longer possible to put together a world-class collection of Rembrandts or Botticellis; in fact, it can be hard to find a good one at all, at any price. But if you love contemporary art, or at least think you do, you can scale the heights of the market and leave your mark on the world as a collector. Today's richest got to where they are by having this emphasis on reaching no. 1; we should expect that same psychology to carry over to the art market. If the price is having to buy a stuffed shark rather than a shining Madonna, so be it; the world is growing more secular anyway.
Wednesday, July 16. 2008
Obama wants to nationalize our public schools? That is utterly insane. My town would never surrender that to the people who run the Post Office. And his effete nuttiness about languages: French, maybe, to read Baudelaire; German for Goethe and Wagner; Spanish to read Don Quixote and to speak to the yard guys - but Mandarin for business and for the future. Maybe Cantonese. This is all so sophomoric that it is embarassing. It's amateur hour in America. (The guy, by the way, speaks no foreign language.) I see these sorts of phonies all the time.
 From Totten:
What most of us still think of as “war” in Iraq is, at this point, a rough and unfinished peacekeeping mission. Whether it is officially over or not, it has certainly been downgraded to something else, and it’s about time more analysts and observers are willing to say so.
Photo via Villainous
Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner is known for his work on mutiple intelligences - the idea that there is not one kind of "intelligence," but up to seven of them. It's an interesting approach. IQ, which is an individually stable and inherited tendency, likely measures your linguistic and logical-mathematical "intelligences." His books are also on that link above. Neuroanthropology linked to a speech he gave in Bogota about his personal intellectual history and his views on science and life, Multiple Lenses on the Mind.
 This is, IMHO, Windows' best trick and the biggest time-saver of the bunch. In short, it makes it easy to load a file into a program that it's not normally associated with.
A quick example would be a Notepad document you want to spell-check. Notepad doesn't have a built-in spell-checker, so the usual routine would be to:
- Laboriously fire up a program with a spell-checker like MS Word
- Painstakingly open the load requester
- Achingly browse to the Notepad document
- Tiresomely load the file
- Troublesomely spell-check the document
- Backbreakingly save the file
- Exhaustedly close the program
But with the SendTo feature:
- Simply click on file's icon with the right mouse button and 'send' it to MS Word
- Simply spell-check the document and that's it!
For more of this unbiased, impartial review of the unbelievably fantastic SendTo feature, please...
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: The "SendTo" feature"
Bloom off the rose. People think Obama is pandering to them. Duh. Similarly, Powerline: It's fair to say that Obama has now admitted that he was wrong about the most important national security issue that has arisen during his brief time in public life.
Straight-talking Bush: Americans are smart enough. Al Gore, the Dems, and the enviros have wanted expensive power for many years. They are getting what they wanted for us. From NE Repub: 
What did Manhattan, or Manahatta in the Lenapi language, look like in 1609 when Henry Hudson arrived? It is often forgotten that NY Harbor is where the Pilgrims were headed. November storms interfered with that. A landscape ecologist is mapping it out. Slide show here. h/t, Neatorama 
 Obama: the Middle East needs social workers? Related: When both look like losers
Dalrymple's My Problem of Evil, via SC&A Joe Lieberman is right again Students' evaluations of the teachers. Right Wing Prof Rewriting history. Here's the story of Obama purging his website of references to his criticizing Iraq policy. This is not a display of good character. China plans to change the weather for the Olympics Liberty threatened by radical environmentalism Sean Collins reviews Zakaria's The Post-American World in Spiked. One quote: In viewing growth as problematic and potentially destructive, Zakaria raises a common theme of our time. Rather than celebrate the benefits of growth, such as a reduction in poverty, Zakaria and others emphasise the downsides that accompany development. This gloomy outlook reveals more about the commentator than the reality on the ground. Zakaria refers to the predicted increase in the number of cars in China from 26million to 120million in 2020 as an environmental problem rather than a cause of celebration, as the Chinese people gain greater freedom of movement. In doing so, Zakaria joins in with today’s growing China-bashing chorus (2). If Zakaria is concerned that growth causes immediate problems like oil price increases and environmental damage, he is even more worried about the longer-term consequences of economic growth upon geopolitical stability. Not only do we have a diffusion of economic power today – Zakaria believes that these economic trends will ultimately lead to political change, in particular the growth of nationalism within the emerging countries.
Tuesday, July 15. 2008
Today, from Dad to young lady teen studying advanced Shakespearean acting at Oxford with the Royal Shakespeare Company: "Hey, babe. Leaning anything?" Entire reply from teen: "You betcha."
Very bad politics. Rick Moran has got this right. One quote: Forget that Gramm’s remarks about America being in a “mental recession” and that our fellow countrymen are a “nation of whiners” were insensitive, crass, stupid, and abominably ill-timed. They were just plain bad politics and trying to justify them as “true” in any sense whatsoever is the heighth of political ignorance. To chastise your fellow countrymen who are genuinely worried about the way the world seems to be giving way underneath their feet as change and uncertainty sweeps across the country in the form of ever rising energy costs and a housing crisis to which there doesn’t seem to be any bottoming out bespeaks an obliviousness to the political realities of what is happening beyond your own small corner of the world. Your appeal to an economic Darwinism as a model for the American people to follow is as outmoded as it is despicable.
A quote from a piece on Obama at Belmont Club: It’s not fair to accuse BHO of a “bait and switch”. The hook was never concealed and even the worm was always labeled as fake. For anyone who was prepared to listen, Obama was always brutally honest to his audience. In his book, the Audacity of Hope, Obama was aware of the vast untapped market for dreams. In fact he knew that selling his audience anything less would be bound to disappoint them. I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them. Which perhaps indicates a second, more intimate theme to this book?namely, how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger to please, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice within each of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments.
It’s a remarkable paragraph, one which captures the excitement of salesman who knows he can close the big deal if only he glides over the fine print. It’s hard to blame Obama, already aware of his audience’s eagerness to believe, for failing to volunteer the messy details. There was no deceit. BHO’s loyalties have been unswervingly for himself and if the customer asked him no questions he would tell them no lies.
Update: His website is now being cleaned of any criticism of the surge. Related: Obama not funny. Protein
 The good news from Venezuela: Dayana Mendoza, Miss Universe 2008 (pictured)
The new diamonds: Is a diamond cartel forever? Beijing's new architecture. Vanity Fair Obama's tax plan would hurt NYC badly Simple gifts. What a great family place. What does bailing out Fannie and Freddie mean to us? Kling David Axelrod: Obama's Karl Rove Credit card companies target college students
Photo: The gardens of Villa Pallavicini in Stresa, two weeks ago. If a garden space is like a room, they put a row of picture windows in it. In A Tribute to Italy, The Fjordman posting at Gates of Vienna takes a look at the European sickness, and sees a ray of hope in Italy: Italy is by no means immune to the problems affecting everybody else in the Western world, but her odds are better than those of several other countries. Through contact with Italians, I get the impression of a country whose national heart is still beating, a people still in touch with their roots and believing that their cultural survival is desirable, which is no mean feat given the suicidal state of our civilization in this age. When observing Italy, I see sickness but also life; and where there is life, there is hope. Something tells me that the story of Italy as a vibrant heartland of European civilization still contains more chapters to be written. If we are lucky, her struggle for survival and rebirth can inspire others far beyond her borders.
Gates speculates about Italy's resistance to PC and modern multiculturalism: ...commenters speculated that Italy’s innate regionalism might be one of the key factors that inoculates it against the most pernicious post-modern political diseases.
 Our regular Italian commenter Ioshkafutz confirmed this viewpoint, and provided us with a comprehensive and engaging summary of Italian culture, which is reproduced below. It has been edited minimally for spelling, punctuation, and clarity:
Italy is many countries. A Milanese is closer to an Austrian than to a Sicilian, A Torinese to a Frenchman than a Calabrese. When I go to my Roman caffé / bar at night and Neapolitans truckdrivers enter, I don’t understand a word, or rather, just barely enough to know they are Italians. The rest could be Ancient Greek.
They — the Neapolitans — have their own musical genres, theater, and even cinema… all still thriving.
They’ll defend the legacy of the Borboni when Naples was a Capital city. They never really digested the Piedmontese invasion. The Romans instead have, also because when Rome became the Capital city and Mussolini brought cinema to Rome (he is responsible for cinecittà) Turin was marginalized.
Maybe Italy is already multicultural enough. Ever since Italy was a province of the Roman empire, it never became a political entity again until 1861.
Monday, July 14. 2008
 Our Editor mentioned to me that one of our most-searched posts ever in recent times has been The World's Largest House - other than searches for "Farm Porn."
Adjustable beds. Not cheap, but good fun. h/t, Mousin' Smoking is good for your memory and concentration. h/t, Theo. I would say it's essential. Budweiser sold to Belgians. OK with me. I don't drink their watery brew anyway. I do own their stock, however. What to do about Zimbabwe. Q&O. Nothing we can do. Sometimes one just has to admit that you can't do anything about it. What Obama wanted, or wants, in the Middle East There's a brilliant idea. Let the kids vote. I think they would vote for free candy. It is a Dem approach, isn't it? Dems search their souls (and votes) about drilling for oil. Singleton Is free speech a dying American quirk? There is no fight against cancer. If it wants to kill you, it will. Everybody dies. Carpe diem. The diminishing returns of political pandering. Reason His own gay identity, at 15. What can I say? Sweden: Always insane. Blame for Baltimore's rot Not a joke: To Iraq with Chuck Hagel Derbyshire, re Obama: His instinctive liberalism aside, Wonder Boy doesn't strike me as any more vain, stupid, or dishonest than your average politician. He does, though, strike me as awfully lightweight — the lightest-weight of any major Presidential contender I can recall. We have interns round the office with deeper life experience than Obama. Heck, I've had goldfish with deeper life experience than Obama. JFK at least had a boat sunk under him.
Photo of a stalwart Maggie's Farmer courtesy of Theo.
Somehow, the Lefties have managed to make people feel a bit guilty about pursuing self-interest. (Lefties, however, tend to be very good at making money for themselves. Everybody is concerned with their own interests.) Nevertheless, they advise folks to vote on their self-interest: to vote themselves benefits from other peoples' labor, risk-taking, and creativity. That's the essential hypocrisy of Liberal-Leftism. I do believe in service and duty: to God, family, country, and one's fellow man - in that order. A quote from Self-interest is bad? at Weekly Standard: Oh, terrific. Now we have two of them--two presidential candidates, presumptive nominees of their respective parties, who insist they will not rest until they have inspired all of us stick-in-the-mud Americans to reach celestial heights of personal fulfillment by committing ourselves to a life of service. Service to what? Service to .??.??. something or other. The phrase that both John McCain and Barack Obama use is a "cause higher than yourself" or "greater than self" or alternatively a "cause greater than your own self-interest." Whatever the precise wording--for now, let's just use an unpronounceable acronym, CGTYOSI--we'll be hearing it a lot till November. McCain grabbed it first, years ago. CGTYOSI appears in his first memoir, Faith of My Fathers. In fact, it's the theme of the book, dramatized by the story arc: McCain begins as an impetuous young midshipman resisting the Navy's attempts to "bend [him] to a cause greater than self-interest," and then endures harrowing adversity, rejects the shallowness of his earlier life, and embraces a CGTYOSI. As a candidate, McCain has fastened on the phrase as one of those prefab word-clumps that politicians automatically release when answering a question about this or that. He uses it constantly. "If you've remembered anything I've said," he often tells audiences, "please remember there's nothing nobler than serving a cause greater than your own self-interest." As McCain tells it, that cause is found in AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, and other government agencies that pay people to volunteer.
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I am sick of this kind of sanctimonious BS. I get paid to work towards justice. There is truth in all this stuff, but it becomes cloying quickly. After all, how many people really want your "help"? Very few. Plenty of folks want your money, though. Everybody wants that. If you don't take good care of yourself and your family, what good can you possibly be to anybody else?
 A provocative essay at Boston Review: Reentry: Reversing Mass Imprisonment.
I do not agree with many of the author's points, but all of the issues and debates are touched upon, and the author does make the correct point that not all criminals are incorrigible sociopaths. I also agree that we over-use jail time, which ought to be mainly for violent and comparably major offenses. Certainly not for drug addicts or financial offenders. Large fines. After all, many of our hard-earned tax dollars go to support those folks in jail. A year of jail time costs us more than a year of Ivy League "education" would. Everyone has broken a rule. As a rule of thumb, you have to break quite a few to get caught. My advice: teach and learn the rules, and do not break them. I think it's time to ask, again, what sorts of consequences we, as a society, want to impose for violations of the rules we make. And no weight-lifting equipment in our jails, please. One quote: As the social crisis of urban America supplied the masses for mass incarceration, the penal system itself became more punitive. The tough-on-crime message honed by the Republican Party in national politics since the Goldwater campaign of 1964 spoke to the racial anxieties of white voters discomfited by civil rights protests and summertime waves of civil unrest felt in cities through the decade. Conservatives charged that liberals coddled criminals and excused crime with phony root causes like poverty and unemployment. President Nixon launched a war on crime, only to be surpassed by President Reagan’s War on Drugs, which applied the resources of federal law enforcement to the problem of drug control. Policy experts abandoned rehabilitation, concluding that prisons could only deter and warehouse those who would otherwise commit crime in society. These politics produced a revolution in criminal sentencing. Mandatory minimum prison sentences, sentencing guidelines, parole abolition, and life sentences for third-time felons were widely adopted through the 1980s. The no-nonsense, tough-on-crime politics reached a bipartisan apotheosis with President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, which launched the largest prison construction project in the nation’s history. As a result of these changes, prison time—as opposed to community supervision—became the main criminal sanction for felony offenders.
Read the whole thing. Link above. (By the way, I am a supporter of Prison Fellowship. I believe that Christ can save anybody's soul.)
 Yes, the New Yorker. All about that New Yorker cover, and the essay they wrote about Obama. Michelle thinks he should grow a pair.
10 big mistakes parents make. h/t, Dr. Helen McCain is moving to the supply side. Kudlow Hail Joseph Lancaster. Marg. Rev. The rise of Barack Obama. Powerline What will happen to Lehman? It's all about Bear Raids Google as the new pressroom. Buzz Machine Iraq: handing out $ on the street The U of Chicago profs vs. Milton Friedman. Kimball. Add this one to the things global warming has caused Could 2008 be a McCain landslide? Shiver How the Latino vote can determine the election. Pajamas A recession is just mental. h/t, Insty. There is some truth to that, except for the financial services biz, where it's just getting uglier. Still, slowdowns trickle down, just as the good times do. McCain and computers. Good grief. Would somebody sit him down and show him, please? So he can read Maggie's Farm. Fannie and Freddie. No choice but to bail them out. They are quasi-government agencies - for better or worse.
From Theo, that's a bunch of service dogs in Hawaii. How did that fat Golden sneak into the photo? And, via Callimachus, Poodles in WW 2. A bit too friendly to be good guards.
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