Thursday, December 25. 2008
Luke 2:1-20 1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. 2 And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. 8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. 18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1440-1460 
Wednesday, December 24. 2008
Wanted to squeeze these links in before I begin my Christmas shopping. Maybe I will just pickpocket somebody's wallet and head for the jewelry store with their American Express card so I can finish up before church at 5. Heck, everybody I know would appreciate trinkets like Cartier watches or some diamonds. Somebody needs to remind me to take the day off on Christmas Eve next year. We'll only have pre-posted stuff 'til Friday.  Microwave oven Christmas song.
Why Santa wears red and other Christmas facts. Grinch du jour The Afghanistan slog, and the glorification of the Taliban. Jules What a joke: Objecting to Rick Warren. He's the Billy Graham of our time. What a joke: Merry Christmas from Ahmadinejad. I'm sure it will be da bomb. What a joke. Caroline Kennedy: "I have, you know, quite a lot to learn, but I feel like I bring a lot with me, as well," she said. "This is a time when nobody can afford to sit out. And I hope that I have something to offer."
Ah, the smell of noblesse oblige in the afternoon. I don't want no noblesse oblige from nobody. She wants to do the "job" for me! I'd rather see any one of 30 bloggers I know in the job. And they've all done more with their lives, too. Theo would of course be my first pick for the seat and he would enjoy it the most because Senators are chick magnets in the Georgetown pubs - but he's a Brit. Related, via Insty: JOURNALISM: Times City Room Will Not Mention Caroline Kennedy’s Special Friendship With Pinch Sulzberger.
Maybe that explains where the "Schlossberg" in her name went to. From Eurotrash to Lefty propagandist. Nice evolution. Related: Resistance to Caroline grows. No, I do not dislike the lady. Why would I? I am sure she and Pinch make a charming couple. I just think this political family stuff is ridiculous: how many generations before somebody gets a real job and learns about real life and about how business works? Same for Bush Jr, although he did pay his dues in the private sector.
The fourth in this week's Hannukah series from our regular/occasional guest poster Bruce Kesler: In light of how infectious is the ignorance and coveting with which we make excuses and create hate:
It was two days before Chanukah and Mr. Feldman, quite downcast, was trudging home. "Where will I get money to buy presents for the holiday?" he asked himself sadly, thinking of his wife and children. On the way, he passed a church, in front of which was a sign: Five Hundred Dollars Cash To Anyone Who Joins This Church Today! Here was the solution to Feldman's problem! He went in, joined, and was given the five hundred dollars as the sign promised. That evening, at supper, he told his family how he had come by his sudden wealth. "And here's the money," he announced grandly, waving the money before them. "Darling," said his wife, "you remember that coat you promised me three years ago? Well it's on sale at Macy's." "How much is it?" "Only a two hundred and fifty dollars, and it's worth at least three hundred and fifty." Feldman peeled off five fifties and gave them to her. The son spoke up. "Pop, for a long time I've been saving up to buy one of those cool mountain bikes. I already have most of the money, but I need a little more." "How much more?" "One hundred and fifty dollars." Feldman handed over the money. "Daddy," said his teen age daughter, "next week our school is having the most important dance of the whole year. If I don't have a new dress, I'll simply die." "Don't die Sweetheart. How much is the dress?" "Only a hundred dollars, Daddy dear." Feldman handed over the remaining twenty five dollars, leaned back and grinned. "It never fails," he announced. "The minute we Gentiles have a little money, you Jews take it away from us!" A self-absorbed child takes from others, as do adults who haven’t matured. Instead, all our holy days are common gifts to be shared for their giving of appreciation for the blessings that enrich our lives and society.
 My Chipmunks seem to be doing their sleep thing (they do not hibernate, they just curl up and snooze when it's cold out) because I have not seen them for a while.
Long Vs of Canada Geese have been honking high overhead all week, heading south, fleeing the snow cover in search of open fields for grazing. It's a sight and sound to lift anybody's spirits. All we have at the bird feeders now are White Throated Sparrows, Juncoes, Mourning Doves, Cardinals, Black-capped Chickadees, and Blue Jays. Kinda dull at the bird welfare office here, but we are always glad to help out at Christmastime. I did see one shivering Mockingbird. Where are the Goldfinches and all of the interesting sparrows? Even our semi-tough Carolina Wrens seem to have taken a hike south. I think they are all fleeing global cooling and sitting on lawn chairs in patios in Key West, sipping Rum Punches. If they weren't bird-brains, they would stay there.
Excellent, in the WSJ. Final quote: Politics is in charge -- in a way that makes a lost decade of subpar prosperity more likely than not. Happy Holidays.
 Let's begin with Scrooge.
Tierney at the NYT doesn't think much of O's science advisor. Sounds like a phony resume. More on Holdren here. (h/t, Insty) Reisman rips another O appointee - Larry Summers Huffington satirizes herself. (h/t, Jonah) The stimulus plan: $1 billion for Las Vegas roads. Since when is that a Federal issue? Talk about entitlement: Caroline not only refuses questions, she refuses to open her books. The arrogance and condescension aren't going over too well. But Uncle Teddy wants it. Teasing vs. bullying Expanding executive power? Who's complaining? Powerline. I am complaining. "We don't predict, we project." Ignore the weather: it's Apocalypse Later. The Apocalypse is always later. Related, at Flopping (this is amazing): “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.” –Stephen Schneider Lead Author of reports for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
And that, my friends, is exactly why we file our climate posts in the Politics category instead of our Natural History category. Photo: The Renaissance Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Tuesday, December 23. 2008
 Dennis Prager. A quote:
...women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think mens' natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a womans nature that few women know this about men unless told about it.
Apparently some, or many, women do not always fully appreciate what a special, deeply emotional (yet also physical) gift we sensitive fellows are offering to share with them when we seek their attention. Photo: Scientificalistic research experts indicate the female Elf in the photo has an 65.6% chance of being in the mood at the time of this research photo, and a 34.4% chance that she is faking it. Computer models say that global warming, if consistent with IPCC heat predictions and mathematically scientificalistic computer models, would almost instantly melt the ice and snow and increase those odds to a heart-warming 92.3%, which explains the cars and trucks men chose to drive. It's only natural to want to warm things up in this cold world.
 The proverbial expression has nothing to do with Advent. Here's Wiki:
The Dog in the Manger is a fable attributed to Aesop, concerning a dog who one afternoon lay down to sleep in the manger. On being awoken, he ferociously kept the cattle in the farm from eating the hay on which he chose to sleep, even though he was unable to eat it himself, leading an ox to mutter the moral of the fable: People often begrudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.
 The third in Bruce Kesler's Hannukah series for us:
.
In light of how artificial barriers among us create unnecessary divisions: A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Chanukah cards.
She says to the clerk, "May I have 50 Chanukah stamps?"
The clerk says, "What denomination?"
The woman says, "Oh my God. Has it come to this? Give me 6 Orthodox, 12 Conservative, and 32 Reform." My son’s Cub Scout subject for December is Holiday Lights. In discussion with the 8-year olds, all of whom attend their church or synagogue’s training, it was a surprise to them that the Holy Temple in Jerusalem that the Maccabees freed and sanctified is the same that about 150-years later Mary and Joseph brought Jesus. How can we defend or explain our common heritage when we either don’t understand it ourselves or make the efforts to even explain it to our children?
Photo: A Menorah in the Hoboken City Hall, 2007
Chanukah's Da Bomb:
Hugh Hewitt is wrong about this. He seems to want the government (ie, us) to somehow subsidize a renewal of the unhealthy and artificial housing bubble. Perhaps people don't see the bubble as having been a government-created market distortion, but instead see the bursting of the bubble as the problem? Let's let the market determine housing values - as it is doing.
Do the Hokey Pokey and go to jail in Scotland. Well, it is a dangerous song. Sex in the Middle School stairwell? Dang, I grew up too early. There is no hangover cure. Teen morality today. Chavez: Stop buying what you want The death of Deep Throat and the crisis of journalism. Stratfor. The case that Woodward and Bernstein were Felt's tools. I didn't know Bison had beef cattle genes. If they interbreed, does that mean they're races of the same species? (h/t, Jungle Trader) My Republican Party was the town party girl. Am Thinker  From News You Can Lose in The New Yorker:
Newspaper readership has been slowly dropping for decades—as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago—but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century—a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.
The above was linked at a Buzzmachine piece about the decline of newspapers, Downbeat. Nyquist, with a parade of stupidities. One quote: The president indirectly proposes that the government knows better than the market. He is saying that the government knows how to save the market, namely, by violating the market. By way of analogy, this amounts to advocating promiscuity as a means for preserving virginity. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. “We’re in a huge recession,” said Bush, “but I don’t want to make it even worse.” But President Bush has made it worse by throwing good money after bad, by redistributing the market’s losses, pronouncing in favor of moral hazard, and by making massive decisions for the market. What comes next is hyperinflation. According to a senior economist at Decision Economics, quoted in an AFP news story titled “Fed cuts rate to virtually zero, will expand stimulus moves,” the government is “pulling every lever and pulling them hard. They are going to print money until they get a reaction from the economy.” Well, the reaction has begun. The good faith and credit of the United States is over. Who is going to loan money to a government determined to inflate? Consider the parade of stupidities we’ve seen since the crisis began in September: the bailout of Wall Street, the bailout of the banking system, and now the bailout of Detroit. This is what the president means when he says, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” So the solution is to spend trillions to save trillions. But nothing is saved!
White House rightly slams the NYT for attempting to blame Bush for the housing bubble. Related: Quoted at Belmont: ...in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, virtually every branch of the government undertook an attack on underwriting standards starting in the early 1990s. Regulators, academic specialists, GSEs, and housing activists universally praised the decline in mortgage-underwriting standards as an “innovation” in mortgage lending. This weakening of underwriting standards succeeded in increasing home ownership and also the price of housing, helping to lead to a housing price bubble. The price bubble, along with relaxed lending standards, allowed speculators to purchase homes without putting their own money at risk.
Sowell reminds us once again about the facts on the Great Depression. People love the comforting myth that government helped. Myth or scam? Green jobs, at Coyote LaShawn wants this book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism Photo via Theo, who knows how to celebrate Christmas
That's salmon fishing on Cain's River, New Brunswick, in October. 
Monday, December 22. 2008
Bjorn Lomborg thinks the earth is warming, but he's rational about it (h/t, Samiz):
 From Bruce Kesler:
In light of why most holiday celebrations are directed toward children: In recent years, Christmas has become more and more commercialized. The same holds true for Chanukah, even though it is a minor holiday. It makes sense. How could we market a major holiday such as Yom Kippur? Forget about celebrating. Think observing. Come to synagogue, starve yourself for 27 hours, become one with your dehydrated soul, beat your chest, confess your sins, a guaranteed good time for you and your family. Tickets a mere $200 per person.
Better stick with Chanukah! Purists decry the commercialization and simplification of holy days. But, few among us have the interest or training to delve into the deeper meanings. Religions have found that stressing a central theme or lesson accomplishes most, and making it enjoyable transmits the core meaning to children they can build upon and enlarge. The central theme of Chanukah and of Christmas is that devotion to our faith takes courage that can overcome even hostile empires.
Freedom is always in peril.  Regular readers know that, here at Maggie's, we hold individual freedom from the power of the State as the highest political value.
We figger that's why we had a revolution. Other countries seem to rate other values more highly, and seem more willing to put their lives in the oily, arrogant, and mediocrity-ridden hands of the political and power classes - as plenty of Americans seem to be willing to do these days. That's fine for those other nations if that's what they want, but we are meant to be special in the freedom way - and an example for others to follow if they can. Two quotes from Freedom Imperilled at The New Criterion: How is freedom faring in the United States today? Peter Robinson, a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, provided a melancholy précis in “The Loss of Individual Liberty,” a column that appeared in Forbes last month. Mr. Robinson recalled a dinner he shared with Milton Friedman several years ago. He complimented the venerable economist on his role in transforming the intellectual landscape, especially in fostering widespread appreciation of the inextricable connection between free markets and individual liberty. Friedman refused the compliment. “We may have won the intellectual battle,” he said, “but in practical politics, it’s difficult to see that we’ve had any effect at all.” Even a few years ago, it would have been easy to react as did Mr. Robinson at the time: to think that Friedman was responding with false modesty. After all, had not the power of the free market been demonstrated beyond cavil in America’s triumph over the Soviet Union, its unparalleled prosperity, its culture of political freedom?
and As Hume saw, it is generally not lost all at once, but step by step: government program by government program, regulation by regulation, entitlement by entitlement, until finally, as Tocqueville put it, we find ourselves “nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry. Mark Twain, quoted at AVI
Sarbanes-Oxley, stock options, etc. WSJ. An important article for anybody who wants to create or produce anything. I have no doubt that the Washington power elite wants to keep us all poor and stupid. And dependant upon them. Their problem is that we are smarter than they are. We the people know how to make stuff happen, and all they do is take our stuff to try to get relected to their phony, no-heavy-lifting sinecures with their amazing benefits. "Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters." I have always been impressed by doers and makers, but never impressed by political "leaders." Not even once. Including Reagan, who I liked very much.
 From recent news reports: 11,700 years ago, at the close of the last ice age, a time when fully modern humans inhabited most of the globe, Greenland experienced a 22-degree temperature spike in a matter of years. That's the equivalent of changing from New York's climate to Miami's, and on a human timescale.
Meanwhile, climate alarmists eagerly embraced the news that 55 million years ago, Greenland and barren Arctic islands such as Spitzbergen enjoyed year-round temperatures of 74 F - equivalent to West Palm Beach - pointing to it as evidence of the dangers of high CO2 levels. There's only one problem: at that time, temperatures in the tropics were the same or even slightly cooler than today, making for a balmy, paradise-like world devoid of freezing or baking temperatures. At the time, parts of what is now Colombia had an annual average as low as 78 f or less, meaning that CO2 is unlikely to have been the warming agent at work (at the time, CO2 was at approximately 3,500 ppm, vs. 380 ppm today. Mammals apparently flourished like never before or since in this climate). Scientists guess at changing air circulation patterns and ocean currents to explain these phenomena, but the fact is we simply have no idea what was responsible.
 Those are today's temps via Surber.
Skeptical about the warming crisis? Then sign the Big List for posterity. Posterity will thank you.
Somehow, in our post on the variations on the classic Bloody Mary, our editor forgot to include the Bloody Maria. Try it during the holidays, for breakfast or brunch. Tequila and horseradish!
 Wizbang:
The unspoken truth is that if Charlie Rangel was a white, conservative Republican his Democrat colleagues and the usual suspects in the media would not be satisfied with his resignation from Ways and Means, nor his apology. They would demand his prosecution for alleged felonies.
Britain has lost the stomach for a fight. The emotion of "elevation" Walter Dellinger: The juicy bits of the Constitution (h/t Joe Carter) Obama's pair of Lysenkos 100% of top world terrorists are Presbyterians The ongoing battle for Minnesota. WSJ Dr. Bob on assisted suicide The housing bubble, from Cafe Hayek: There are four factors that helped drive up the price of real estate in the United States and create the housing bubble: The GSEs (Fannie and Freddie), the Community Reinvestment Act, expansionary monetary policy starting in 2001, and the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act that for the first time let people avoid capital gains on home price appreciation without having to rollover the gains into a bigger house.
On addiction, via Dr X: The problem is that the very concept of addiction is controversial and philosophically problematic, touching on great questions of free will, emotion, and even spirituality. Most of this is beyond the scope of this post (and, it must be said, beyond the scope of this amateur philosopher), but it seems safe to say that addictions are never entirely chosen nor entirely determined. They always hover somewhere in between, and it's hard to get one's mind around that (sort of like the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics on a psychological level, perhaps...
Image is this year's Christmas Card from our friend, artist Elissa Gore
|
