Wednesday, December 31. 2008
From my window, this afternoon:
More photos of this happy bird below the fold.
Editor: Darn nice pics, Gwynnie. Given his hunting success around your bird-feeder, he'll be back often. My diagnosis is in the comments, so folks can make their own minds up first.
Continue reading "Who ate my sparrow? (photos)"
You can support The New Criterion before the tax year is over. We like to read them.
A re-post, for Gramsci Week: Re-Taking the University: A Battle Plan Kimball's 2005 piece in the New Criterion has been previously posted here, but it deserves a second go-round, if not a third. The author of "Tenured Radicals" goes beyond the subject of academia in this essay which succinctly exposes the tactics and strategies of the now-greying but still revolutionary 60s radicals. Some sample paragraphs: The old Marxist strategy of “increasing the contradictions”—a strategy according to which the worse things get, the better they really are—is a license for thuggery. It excuses all manner of bad behavior for the sake of a revolution that will (so it is said) finally transform society when all the old allegiances have finally collapsed. If one or two tottering institutions require a little push to finish them off, so be it. Shove hard: You cannot, as comrade Stalin remarked, make an omelette without breaking eggs. Tenured Radicals is a frankly polemical book. In some ways, however, it underestimates if not the severity then at least the depth of the problem. What happened to the universities was part—a large part—of that “long march through the institutions” that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci recommended and whose American lineaments I chronicled in The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America (2000). “The Age of Aquarius,” I wrote in the Introduction to that book, “did not end when the last electric guitar was unplugged at Woodstock. It lives on in our values and habits, in our tastes, pleasures, and aspirations. It lives on especially in our educational and cultural institutions, and in the degraded pop culture that permeates our lives like a corrosive fog.” Since the 1960s ...colleges and universities have more and more been home to what Lionel Trilling called the “adversary culture of the intellectuals.” The goal was less reflection than rejection. The English novelist Kingsley Amis once observed that much of what was wrong with the twentieth century could be summed up in the word “workshop.” Nowadays, “workshop” has been largely replaced by the word “studies.” Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Afro-American Studies, Women’s Studies, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Studies: these are not the names of academic disciplines but political grievances. They exist not to further liberal education but to nurture the feckless antinomianism that Jacques Barzun dubbed “directionless quibble.”
Read the whole essay.
Time for me to get my phones on the National Don't Call Registry. Something to do to start the new year right.
 How does he know? And what exactly is he really saying about them, then? Furthermore, what about him? Does he have a dirty mind, and find God's splendid artistry prurient?
Aussie MP/Reverend wants topless beaches banned out of sensitivity to Moslem men. Sheesh. Australia has lots of other beaches to go to, if they want to swim or surf. Or they can do as I do, which is to keep my eyes discreetly down when visiting topless beaches...admiring my pedicure. How about banning burkhas for the happiness of the non-Moslem men? Funny thing is, I know a couple of Moslem men. They might be the exceptions, but they seem to appreciate females quite a bit. Photo: From a naked surfing contest in Australia.
Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are. Thoreau
Getting Along with Women 101. Villainous. One quote: Many women will argue, understandably, “My husband knows I love him. He doesn't need me to have sex with him to know that. And this is especially so when I'm too tired or just don't want sex. Anyway, my man only enjoys sex with me when I'm into it, too.” Not a bad argument so far as it goes. Realizing that many men would rather stick their heads into a gas oven than talk about their feelings, ask a woman how she would react to this statement from a man: “My wife knows I love her. She doesn't need me to listen to her or tell her I love her to know that. And this is especially so when I'm too tired or just don't feel like making nicey-nicey. Anyway, it wouldn't mean anything to my wife if I acted affectionate just to please her.”
Photo: A theo pic
Photo is one of several from a commenter to Free Republic's Obama's silence on Gaza angers Arabs. It is A.N.S.W.E.R. people, it appears. Useful idiots, for whom Israel is always in the wrong. But what the US has to do with this is beyond me. My view is that Hamas deliberately provokes Israel into responding, for their own political purposes. Their pathetic political purposes, it seems to me, are to maintain a privileged victim status, to deflect attention from their failures to create a decent society by scapegoating Israel, to collect $ from other countries - and to stay in power. No wonder the Arab countries dislike and distrust the Palis to the extent that they refuse to take them as refugees. 
 The Hollywood Che Cult. A sadistic, totalitarian murderer and rapist. But it was all "for the people." There are apparently no limits to what you can do "for the people." Stalin had many American apologists too.
Why the 1918 Influenza was so bad. Obama will ration your medical care. Or try to, anyway. He'll deflect criticism by using Daschle as point man. Daschle will take the bullets, same as Hillary did. Related: The NHS death that shocked Britain Residential architecture: Never do this China reduces taxes to deal with slowdown. China has become more realistic, and less ideological, than the American Dem party. The WaPo and the amateur rockets. Would they object if the Palis lobbed some of them into their building? Yesterday we focused on the astonishing failures of New Jersey. Today, the flight from New York State Some folks are enjoying this recession Europe to the US: "Here, wear this millstone around your neck." Where are the real men? Armed and Dangerous (h/t, Vanderleun) One quote: One of the things this culture badly needs is a set of manhood ordeals. Unlike the tribal societies of the past, we’re too various for one size to fit all — but to reliably turn boys into men (or, to put it in more fashionable terms, to help them become mature and inner-directed) you need to put them under stress in a way that, except for the small percentage that go through military boot camps, we basically don’t any more.
Photo: Not only do I not particularly enjoy champagne or any other white wine, I do not enjoy New Year's Eve either. Never did. Always seemed like a time for phony, forced jollity (like that dumb dropping ball thing) and, as much as I enjoy a cocktail, I dread hangovers which have the power to steal a whole day of my precious time.
Tuesday, December 30. 2008
This is reposted from Sept, 2007 for Gramsci Week -
 Yesterday's handy summary of Gramsci put me ta thinkin'. I realized that when I am in the mood to be appalled by a pure strong dose of Gramsci thought, I check out what insanity our friend Van Helsing at Moonbattery has to offer.
Top of his blog right now - Bloomberg compares US in Iraq to Brits during the Revolution. Perfect Gramscian confusion. The amoral elements of New York love to create moral equivalents because it makes them feel sophisticated. Of course, Bloomberg is the embodiment of the intrusive Nanny State too: it's miraculous that he is one of the world's most successful and exuberant Capitalists.
And then next I happened to stop by David Warren for my weekly visit and read Reconstructing the Family. Yes, it's about Gramsci again.
This stuff is everywhere. Am I a victim, a pitiful captive of counter-revolutionary Bourgeois Thought which causes me to believe that this stuff is utter, malevolent nonsense designed to mess with your mind?
Photo: The Minuteman in Lexington, MA, who is the moral equivalent of an Al Qaida Jihadist.
Tiger begins: ...do not let this happen to your state. New Jersey is functionally bankrupt, and there is no sign that the state's political class is going to do a damned thing about it. The state has been waging war against employers for years, and the result is that 93% of the jobs created in the state from 2000 to 2007 were in the public sector. That is an extraordinary statistic for the United States, and it includes a period of long economic expansion elsewhere. I suspect that if the number were recalculated to include 2008 and then 2009 results, government jobs would account for more than 100% of total growth in employment.
Joe Skelly at NRO remembers O'Brien, who died a week ago at 91, and linked O'Brien's 1990 essay in the national Review, A Vindication of Burke. It's a rich historical essay, and would serve as a fine intro to Burke's work. Just one quote from it:  The grand distinguishing feature of the Reflections is the power of Burke’s insight into the character of the French Revolution, then at an early stage. This insight is so acute as to endow him with prophetic power. He sees what way the Revolution is heading. No one else seems to have done so at the time. The spring and summer of 1790 — the period in which Burke wrote the Reflections — was the most tranquil stage, in appearance, in the history of the Revolution. It was a period of constitution-making, of benevolent rhetoric, and of peaceful jubilation, as in the Déclaration de Paix au Monde on May 21, 1790, or the Fête de la Fédération on July 14, 1790, celebrating the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.
Contemplating that attractive scene, in the spring and summer of 1790, most people seem to have assumed that the French Revolution had already taken place, and that all that remained was to reap its benign consequences. Burke sensed that the Revolution was only beginning. In the penultimate paragraph of the Reflections, Burke warned that the French “commonwealth” could hardly remain in the form it had taken in 1790: “But before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, ‘through great varieties of untried being,’ and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.”
 From Gene Expressions on Dec. 28:
Samuel Huntington died yesterday. Though famous for his Clash of Civilizations thesis, more recently he argued for an emphasis on the reality that this (the United States) is an Anglo-Protestant country. But I think that this assertion needs to clarified to a finer grained scale. In Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, the author makes the claim that the culture of the United States is a synthesis of four strands of colonial settlers; New England Puritans, the Lowland Southerners (e.g., Tidewater Planters), the Highland Southerners (i.e., the Scots-Irish of Appalachia) and the polyglot peoples of the Mid-Atlantic (e.g., Quakers of Philadelphia, Dutch Patroons of New York and Swedes of Delaware, etc.). After reading quite a bit of American history, especially the period between 1600 and 1850, I think that over the long haul the concrete political and social realities of America owe much more to New England than the other regions. Â After I came to this conclusion (which I will flesh in more detail later), I couldn't help but note that today New England isn't included in the "Real America."
Bruce Kesler sends this post:
What does CNN cite for this? Groups, mostly of young Arabs, numbering several hundred to several thousand having street demonstrations in the following countries: England, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Iran, the Sadrist neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, and even in Israel. Ironically, and tellingly, none interviewed saw any reason to protest Hamas terror rockets and mortar barrages into Israel. This is what CNN calls the world! Or, is this CNN’s market that it caters to?
 The Dutch Left rethinks "tolerance." (h/t, Insty) A quote:
"The multi-cultis just aren't making the running anymore. It's a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country. "
Given enough time, Reality always wins in the end.
Writing tips, plus "Happy Holidays" Volokh Earnestly-wrung hands. Jules Can the UAW survive? 25 unbelievable pictures. (h/t, Retriever) How porn shaped the web. Related: How amateurs are taking over the online porn biz. Napa Valley, China Do the Palis want anything except to kill Jews? Saving Lehman would have saved everybody a lot of grief. Bad call? We'd like to see a lot more people do this sort of conservation thing with their land. The necessary service government agencies provide Sounds kinda creepy-gay: “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
More on the sad, slow death of Detroit
On Saturday. As you can see from the age of the trees, these rocky woods were pasture 50-60 years ago. The remains of Chestnut trees, tragically felled by the Chestnut Blight in the early 20th century, can still be seen slowly disintegrating on the forest floor.
Tired dog after walk:
Monday, December 29. 2008
At vacation times, we like to re-post old material. The Dyl has proclaimed this week Gramsci week, so we'll re-post old Gramsci-related stuff daily. This from a couple of years ago - It is difficult to understand what has been happening politically in the US and in Europe for the past 30 years without understanding the influence of Gramsci (1891-1937) on Western Leftist thinking and strategizing. Gramsci was a clever Italian neo-Marxist who realized that the West, due to its prosperity, its increasingly-wide access to education and opportunity, social mobility, and its readiness to repair injustices (due to its Judeo-Christian morality), would never be amenable to a violent proletarian socialist revolution. So he came up with Plan B, which is often termed "Gramscian tactics." These were based on the idea, as the good Wiki entry says:  Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the 'common sense' values of all. Thus a consensus culture developed in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
Thus Western "hegemonic culture" became the enemy - even more so than "the ruling class," which was simply a reflection of bourgeois culture. And defeating that enemy could not be done with guns. It required a "long march through the culture" to slowly discredit and undermine its institutions, values, and foundations. This was a brilliantly destructive idea. Eventually, the society would fall apart, opening the way to totalitarian socialism to rescue the mess. Thus the nihilistic flavor of the Western Left which is always seemingly-incomprehensively mingled with extreme Statism. One might well ask why he wasn't satisfied with the remarkable outcome of Western regulated markets, the growth of the welfare state, unionization, etc. - but he wasn't. He was determined to remain true to Marx and to find a non-revolutionary path to economic totalitarianism. A central component of the culture war he envisioned was the war on religion (also Wiki): Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and values. He was impressed by the power Roman Catholicism had over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was Marxism's task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses.
I hope I do not sound paranoid when I soberly say that much of the wacky, upside-down, right-is-wrong, black-is-white stuff we see in the news these days is directly or indirectly inspired by Gramsci: the attacks on Christianity, the family, individual freedom, morality and moral judgements; multiculturalism; the cult of victimhood, "tolerance," political correctness, the replacement of the roles of family, religion, individual responsibility and choice with government rules, laws, and regs; the expansion of the State and the Welfare State and the Nanny State; anti-tradition, anti-capitalism, anti-success, anti-nationalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, etc - all the stuff that makes me echo Bob Grant with "It's sick out there, and getting sicker." I am sure Antonio never anticipated that a Green movement would emerge to become an ally of the slow, incrementalist and thus less-alarming Gramscian revolution. Yes, it is all ultimately about suppression of the individual soul and spirit - his freedom, autonomy, initiative and self-definition - the highest and most noble notions of Western Civilization - in pursuit of a collectivist utopia run by "them." In short, it's about the location of power and money. OK. This is getting too long-winded for Maggie's ADD writers and readers and Editor. This Town Hall post from last year, The New Left, Cultural Marxism, and Psychopolitics Disguised as Multiculturalism is a nice little piece on the subject. I am sure our readers have many more, better links and commentary.
Two totally random and undistinguished shots of the far West Side of Manhattan on Sunday: 
We think this toon is about 15 years old, or more: 
 Just watched a Red Tail grab a squirrel from my bird feeder. Squirrel was, understandably, not happy about it at all.
They usually miss them. This guy came out of nowhere, fast, like an Israeli jet. Nature red in tooth (?) and claw. Those squirrels are over-fed and full of juicy fat. Happy dining, pal. Now I wish the Sharpies would pick off the rest of my pesky English Sparrows.
Our News Junkie must have been working too early to catch this masterpiece from VDH today, of the above title. It's a prediction for 2009, and further. I don't have time to comment. One quote:  So all that will change for now will be the sudden absence of shrill complaints that we live in an America without a Constitution. Static, same-old, same-old government policy will, of course, be said to have altered radically ("hoped and changed"), but it will also be refashioned in the media as "sober" and "judicious", as the administration moves "in circumspect fashion" to probe and explore "complex" and often "paradoxical" matters of national security that "indeed at the end of the day have no easy answers".
Expect much of the same on the economic front. For all the campaign hysteria about greedy Bushites who destroyed the economy, Obama realizes that in fact the seeds of the current financial weeds were sown years ago, and watered and fertilized by an array of both Democratic and Republican facilitators in Congress and hacks in government-affiliated mortgage sinecures. So expect the bailouts to continue. We will see Wall Street in about 24 hours after January 20 transmogrified from Gordon Gecko's habitat into a sort of the old Robert Rubin/Warren Buffet-like necessary institution about which a Sen. Schumer or Chris Dodd can offer invaluable advice and consultation. Socially, we will get a mix of Maya Angelou, Oprah, and Rick Warren, a rich diversity of therapeutics that appeals to everyone's popular feel-my-pain tastes...
Do me a favor and read the whole thing.
 Is "small government Republicanism" a fantasy? Are libertarian ideals silly utopian fantasies?
It's a good debate, and it would be fun if enough readers are home or working this week to join in via comments. We have three fine pieces on the topic today: Jennifer Rubin: How do you fight Obama's New New Deal? The GOP must reject big government: LAT Where should Conservatives draw the line? Am Thinker
 Sent an email to our occasional guest poster Nathan in Jerusalem with the Sultan Knish review of Defiance. His reply:
good review. will see movie. great review of it by adam gopnik in the New Yorker. And Daniel Craig! How cool can that be? We are at the edge of war here; my neighborhood blocked off last eve bec of rock throwing; missiles reaching ashkeolon (one killed - an arab). I will write more, but it's a bit eery, as I continue to go about my work and life.
N Update: Israeli ground troops and tanks enter Gaza.
 I looked through our ABC Carpet link and found the rug in the photo. A Caucasian Kazak, my favorite "brand." Readers, buy it for me! It would add beauty to my life.
Malthus, Scrooge, and others. Lionel Tiger on bonobos and utopia What the heck is this "ranked choice voting" all about? Most embarassing global warming claims of 2008 Cigarettes are sublime. Too true. Harold Pinter hated us. Quoted at Big Lizards: The U.N. General Assembly split over the issue of gay rights on Thursday after a European-drafted statement calling for decriminalization of homosexuality prompted an Arab-backed one opposing it. Diplomats said a joint statement initiated by France and the Netherlands gathered 66 signatures in the 192-nation assembly after it was read out by Argentina at a plenary session. A rival statement, read out by Syria, gathered some 60.
The State is our shepherd Jeb Bush? Why not? Why we need newspapers. Surber. I agree. Just the facts, please. A final look at Barack, The Magic Negro From New England Repub: Obama isn’t going to put gas in your car nor pay your rent. As for Gov Patrick, he thinks you’re good for one thing, more taxes, and Barney Frank doesn’t like you. Now compete with Jose for the lawn mowing job.
From Andy McCarthy: The question is whether the Palestinian people are educable. Which brings me back to the first point: the Palestinians voted to put in power — i.e., vest with the power of a quasi-sovereign government — a terrorist organization which thinks legitimate governing consists of bringing about the annihilation of its sovereign neighbor and, meantime, targeting the said neighbor's civilian population with bombing attacks. When you do that, you make yourself a target. There are worse things than war — like Hamas. They have to be defeated, just like al Qaeda had to be defeated in Iraq.
Sowell, via Betsy: Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.
Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts.
A bailout of Detroit's Big Three would be only the latest in the postponements of reality.
George Bush, The Great Liberator. I'm down with that. Good man, lousy pol. Quoted at American Digest: President-Elect Man-Child: The man-child projects a simultaneous sense of not being comfortable in his own skin and perpetually on display to others. He's twitchy, approval-seeking, and doesn't know when to shut up. He's never been tested to anywhere near the limits of his physical or moral courage, and deep within himself he knows that because of this he is weak. Unproven. Not really a man. And it shows in a lot of little ways - posture, gaze patterns, that sort of thing. He'll overreact to small challenges and freeze or crumble under big ones. - Armed and Dangerous ? Blog Archive ? Where the men are
Reality will grow him up, as it does with all of us. He has had a charmed life thus far, in many ways.
Sunday, December 28. 2008
ABC Carpet in NYC has a major antique rug sale going on. It's fun to flip through the examples they put on their site. Real antique oriental rugs are made with vegetable dyes and not modern dyes which weaken the wool fibers. Few man-made things are more lovely, and you hate to put them in places where people will step on them with shoes because they can easily last a few more hundred years if treated properly. (Thanks for corrections of my errors of fact, Commenters. I should never say anything about something I only know a little bit about...but if I stuck with that rule, I would never say a thing. The word "dilettante" has two connotations.) On the left is an antique Turkish Konye; on the right is an antique Iranian Bakhtiari.  
 Resist the urge to trash your husbands.
Global warming is caused by computers. Amazon's best year ever Computer ownership, by country. I don't see China on the list. Africa needs God "On the sick" in Britain. It pays to be fat or an addict in the UK. Cool, dude. How would this story be reported if it had been the other way around? Now they can say it: Bush has advanced health care Fashionable scientific illiteracy Hooking up update If not appointed, I won't run Can you give Wikipedia a hand? A wonderful site, but it doesn't make $. Like Maggie's. Teddy Roosevelt, Socialist? The top political scandals of 2008. AVI A Pomo Christmas Story: S,C&A Taliban fighting for freedom Sarah was a member of the wrong party: Palin vs. Caroline. Also, More on Palin Bad, kennedy Good. Also, she doesn't sound too bright or aware. I know plenty of heavyweight folks who need an easy job more than she does. Indeed, all reporting these days is partisan-motivated. See Barak's fancy vacation in Hawaii.  Michelle:
Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist. Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.
J Post: Since the cease-fire went into effect in Gaza in June, Hamas used the lull in action to fortify its military posts in the Gaza Strip and to dig tunnel systems as well as underground bunkers for its forces. IDF estimates put the length of the tunnels at over 50 kilometers.
Related, from VDH: Certain deranged reactions are now anticlimactic—a local water main bursts and so we blame Bush for diverting resources away from infrastructure; an arctic freeze or a summer tornado alike evokes Bush and his wayward attitude toward global warming. In the same vein, Hamas blankets Israel for days with rockets and the Europeans are silent until Israel responds with force—only to be blamed for inordinate aggression—the subtext being both that the militarily capable party is to be condemned for being,well, too militarily capable, and that those who can field and deploy terrorists, or aid those who will, against Western targets are deserving of some sort of exemption.
Related: Hamas got what it wanted. No doubt. Does public spending stimulate? Why banks are a special case. Megan. I agree with that. Samuel Huntington, RIP: Huntington, who graduated from Yale College at age 18 and who was teaching at Harvard by age 23, was best known for his views on the clash of civilizations. He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nation states, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations. Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, identified these major civilizations as Western (including the United States and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), Hindu, Japanese, and "Sinic" (including China, Korea, and Vietnam). "My argument remains," he said in a 2007 interview with Islamica Magazine, "that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."
Saturday, December 27. 2008
Our thanks to Gene Expressions for finding the way cool Strange Maps. Two samples: Jeopardy watchers: 
The 2008 Pres election, by county: 
Quoted from Steyn: “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”
Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we’ll be fine.”
And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these last few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.
Some people are impossible to please.
From Bruce Kesler: In light of the self-righteous pomposity with which some make a bad joke of their religiosity, here’s a clip of a popular Chanukah song that shares the fun of religion:
Sling shot shooter. Like any great shooter, he doesn't know how he does it. Rufus Hussey (h/t, Theo)
Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer this week. We posted on her performance on April 13 of this year, when she was in fine fettle. Here is our post: I had the remarkable pleasure and privilege of being invited to a small fund-raiser gathering last night at which Eartha Kitt performed a dynamite set. At 81, she is in great shape, a wonderful and sexy performer, and she still can sing ferociously - and in Japanese or Turkish when she wants to. She has a gift for languages. She surely gives the impression of enjoying the whole thing. Got my photo taken with her. She lives in Westport, CT and will be doing her usual gig at the Cafe Carlisle again this year, after a two-week stint in Paris - God bless her. This is C'est si bon from 1961:
 2008 Media Research Center Awards for moonbat media
Kwanzaa is really over. I heard jokes about it at the beginning, but not even a joke for years now, which is proof that it is irrelevent. An Iditerod without dogs. Good grief. Anything without dogs is a drag. The final proof of climate change: Q&O Brit Hume: retiring, but not gone What happened to muni swaps. Caveat emptor. I am not guilty. So why should I pay for these messes? Obama's "job fetish." Reason Via Gene Expressions: We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
Liberal Joel Stein admits he doesn't love America. That explains a lot. He seems to like Sweden, partly for their sexual "freedom." So leave, Joel, and get your recreational sex! Sweden happily accepts immigrants, but they seem to prefer Moslems. Sweden and Moslems: Perfect Together. Not meant as a joke: Indulgences in San Francisco. Who expects to make $ from this scam? Jimmy Carter did the hope and change schtick too. Am Thinker Corporate welfare, institutionalized. At Marg Rev: I believe that moving more assets under government guarantees is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.
The Bernie Madoff I knew. Detroit Update. Where the sirens never sleep. Yet another corrupt Dem to add to the list? Gov. Richardson
 Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.
This song is from As You Like It
A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries. This one is the Biblioteca Geral University of Coimbra, Portugal (h/t, Samiz): 
Friday, December 26. 2008
 Matthew 5:13
Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. This scripture is put into context by Sipp, (with Ginger Ale which, in my opinion, is almost as good as Ginger Beer. And the mere mention of Ginger Beer puts me in the mood for a Dark 'n Stormy.)
From Bruce Kesler: In light of how the language of Jews has entered common usage in America: During the first day of Hanukkah, two elderly Jewish men were sitting in a wonderful deli frequented almost exclusively by Jews in New York City. They were talking amongst themselves in Yiddish - the colorful language of Jews who came over from Eastern Europe
A Chinese waiter, only one year in New York, came up and in fluent impeccable Yiddish asked them if everything was okay and if they were enjoying the holiday.
The Jewish men were dumbfounded. “Where did he ever learn such perfect Yiddish?” they both thought. After they paid the bill they asked the restaurant manager, an old friend of theirs, “Where did our waiter learn such fabulous Yiddish?”
The manager looked around and leaned in so no one else will hear and said... “Shhhh. He thinks we're teaching him English.”  When in Israel, I told a variation of this joke to my host. He, then, invited me to meet him for lunch the next day at the members’ club of the Tel Aviv diamond exchange. The maitre d’ was a 6-foot tall Chinese man, who spoke in Hebrew, he being the husband of a Jewish woman diamond merchant who’d met him at the Hong Kong diamond exchange. Israel, like the US, is a population drawn from around the world, initially speaking a polyglot of languages, but adopting a common language and culture.
My hardworking Yiddish speaking immigrant grandparents owned a tailor store in downtown Brooklyn. Their presser for several decades was a Black man who spoke Yiddish to the customers. When I was a small child, he always had time for me. I learned as much Yiddish from him as from my grandparents. Famous books by Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish and The Joys of Yinglish, are hundreds of pages of words that many non-Jewish Americans use or hear frequently and are chock full of definitions and jokes. A measure of the contribution to America by various ethnic groups is the degree to which its language and culture enters common usage. There are about as many Moslems in the US as Jews, yet sadly the only Islamic word most in the US have come to know is “jihad.”
"I've been known to be calm." Please Mrs. Henry with The Band, from the mostly-playful and never released and never intended for release practice Basement Tapes from the garage at Big Pink outside Woodstock (good photos):
An important essay: Obama’s Job-Creation Program Flunks Basic Math by Caroline Baum at Bloomberg. One quote: There’s nothing like a crisis to play on the public’s insecurity and expand the reach of government. There’s nothing like a serious financial crisis to get economists of all persuasions on board. Opportunity in Crisis “In this crisis lies an opportunity to create the jobs that America needs, doing the work that America needs,” said Larry Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, at a press conference yesterday. The best intentions face a stark reality: There may be more money than opportunities. It’s one thing to spend money to improve and update crumbling infrastructure. It’s quite another to find projects on short notice. There’s a limit to how fast even our profligate politicians can get money out the door.
What is defined as a "crisis" is quite subjective, if not entirely trumped up and manipulated for political purposes. The "opportunity in crisis" is, indeed, to expand the reach and control of government, whether it's war, recession - or manufactured crises like "health care." That's been the Statist tactic since FDR, and I resent it.
In my view, it is best to consider all knowledge as tentative. The best scholars maintain an open-mindedness and humility about even their own core beliefs. Greg Mankiw
At Englishman. You can read the wiki on the Golden Angle here.
 The Boxing Day meets are a fine old English tradition. Has the hunt outfoxed the law? (h/t, Theo)
I hope you had a merry holiday. I finally saw Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Hilariously un-PC and insensitive, and therefore highly recommended. Now, back to work.  Christmas in Baghdad. Photo from the piece at Gateway
Harvard's endowment likely lost much more than they are saying. University greed is the problem. What's with the double-counting? I don't get it. Handel's Messiah: I thought I saw the face of God. The alarmists are becoming increasingly shrill. Maybe they are worried that we quit listening, and have begun to mock and satirize them. Dang it, we want warmening - for the children. Coyote on the wind power scam and the green jobs myth. A year of scary, trumped-up myths about smoking and obesity. Spiked. Sounds like people don't like to feel pushed around by the government they pay for. AVI on Special Education. From everything I've read about education, "special" or otherwise, neither $, nor computers, nor fancy buildings make any difference at all. "More Science in journalism school, please." Surber. My impression is that journalists understand science about as well as they understand economics. Speaking of science, Politicizing Science at Powerline. Steyn on Subprime Education, ... in America, so-called "expanding opportunities for college" is an obvious crock to absolve high schools of their failure to educate.
with a h/t to Viking who also quoted Professor X thus: There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces-social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students-that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment. Rape or love? Sounds like love to me. What's the latest on Sen. Dodd? And why do Libs always get a free pass on their sleaziness? Jonah critiques the New Republic's critique of Liberal Fascism Well put, by Rick Moran: Our economic situation is dire – and being made more so by mortgaging our future so that politicians can be seen to be “doing something about the problem.”
Thursday, December 25. 2008
Thanks for all the kind words from our visitors over the past week or so. Your appreciation is our reward - along with our own pleasure and education. 
 From our guest poster Bruce Kesler:
In light of the contributions of Jews to Christian celebrations of Christmas, two songs that never caught on:
- Deck the Halls with Balls of Matzos - Jumpin’ around the Chanukah Bush Some famous Christmas songs written by Jews: White Christmas Christmas Song We Need A Little Christmas Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree A Holly Jolly Christmas The Christmas Waltz Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow Silver Bells I’m Getting Nuttin’ For Christmas Santa Baby Santa Claus Is Coming To Town Sleigh Ride I’ll Be Home For Christmas It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays Do They Know It’s Christmas (Feed The World) The United States is the shining light on the hill to all who care for freedom and the land that has given generations of Jewish and other immigrants and refugees the sanctuary and liberties from which they’ve been allowed to heavily contribute back for the benefit of all. Photo: Ellis Island Menorah from Levine
This one from our virtual friend Sissy grabbed me:
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