Monday, January 5. 2009
 We emailed our cuz Mr. Free Market to ask him whether we had borrowed the image of that ceegar-smokin' gal from him. Yes, we had.
He went on to inform us that the lady in question is none other than Miss Dita Von Teese, a burlesque performer and a walkin', talkin' pin-up - with her own web site.
Thermocouples are cool little items, conductors which generate a voltage when subjected to a thermal gradient (Wiki). That's the old thermoelectric effect that you remember from high school physics.
The effect was accidentally discovered by the Estonian Thomas Seebek in 1822. Most of our general-use thermocouples are the inexpensive K-type, Nickel-Chromium and Nickel-Aluminium.
I had the unfortunate opportunity to learn more about our dependence on these mechanisms over the weekend. Among hundreds of other things they are used for, I learned that they control the pilot light on gas water heaters. If the pilot light goes out and your thermocouple sensor is on the blink - no hot water.
Steyn on the Palis: In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers. At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French President Sarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation." Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth. Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation." If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?
Read the whole thing. We over-flatter the human species when we assume that humans are motivated by innocent and/or rational goals.
 Algore got so many innocent and well-intentioned but scientifically-uneducated people upset with his fear-mongering silliness. It's a damn shame. Those with a familiarity with how science works, and who had no political agenda to drive, just stood back and watched bemusedly.
Finally, even the HuffPo gets it. Harold Ambler's Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. (h/t, No Looking Backwards, whence the borrowed image.) One quote:
If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.
If Lefties want to take over the world's economy, they need to try Plan D.
Smart thing to do. Obama eyes tax cuts. It's one of the only effective things a government can do to try to shorten a recession. In the end, though, recessions just have to play themselves out. It's the natural history of economies, and, now that economics is fully global, local efforts can have minimal impact on the big picture. Maybe (let's hope) Obama will be more practical and less ideological than has been feared.
A reader sent in this hunting photo from Saturday. That is clearly an old, raggedy CT apple orchard, so I can assume he was hunting grouse. Nice spot. Dinosaurs grew feathers before they became birds. Bailout Bonds. Get 'em while they're fresh. Our blog friend Prof Deneen at Georgetown is going on indefinite blog sabbatical. And I don't blame him. If I could clone my inner dog self to handle this job, I'd do the same thing.  A friend of mine loves the new Garrison Keilor book. It's about aging.
The Lib love affair with Castro Why Clinton as Sec of State? Paglia How the UN funds Pali Jihad The Obama team needs to continue following Tiger's advice Re the seven things nobody tells you about marriage Carville: Watch for a Dem streak of scandals All that talk about "peak oil" has disappeared Steyn (via Driscoll) 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.
A reader took these photos this weekend on the CT shoreline. That is the common Ring-billed Gull (sometimes known as the Parking Lot Gull), an inland, fresh-water breeder. They head for the coasts when the fresh waters freeze up.
Gulls take seveeral years to reach maturity and to earn adult plumage. These, I think, are second-year Ring-billed gulls hunting in the surf. First year birds would have a darker brown plumage:
And a good portrait:
Sunday, January 4. 2009
 Matthew 2:1-12
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." 3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:
6 " 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'" 7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." 9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Image: Epiphany by Hieronymous Bosch, 1490
 I agree with Gateway: These kids must want jobs.
Alternative buildings and cities, from the 60s. EU denounces carbon offset scams projects The cost of hollow virtuousness: Taxpayers pay for UK's mountain of recycling. Isn't it called "garbage" for a reason? Does Israel really want a victory? Related, via SC&A at Shrinkwrapped from March: Has Israel lost the will to live? Rangel update (h/t, Insty). Yes, Rangel is an expert in ways and means. Branford Marsalis: What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t. More Burris Fun 'n Games. Politics is one disgusting game. Two camps on climate in the new admin: Crazy, and crazier. Related, from Junk Science: Obama energy/environment 'czar' is an offical with Socialist International - That's right comrades... Carol Browner is a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Check out SI's principles -- including, "it is imperative to establish a genuinely new international economic order."
Just one more totalitarian bureaucrat who thinks she is smarter than me. She is not. She just likes power more than I do.
From our occasional guest poster Nathan in Israel:  Last night -
My coffee guy (long hair past his shoulders, very cool, very left) spent the night watching the news. "Eyn ma la'asot" - "Nothing else one could do." He says it is like walkiing into zefl (tar); have to fight meter by meter with mines and weapons not only in the ground but in houses. My electrician , Avi, came back from Miluim a few days before the war started (father of four). He has more to say (will write when I have time) . Temenite background; very quiet, diligent. He describes how Isr airforce gives warning 10 minutes before hitting a target; then the Hamas tells women and children to stand on top of the roof to wave at the planes and deter the bombing. He goes on to speak about a Palestinian laborer worked for him for years; good worker. But, when he would telephone his wife, he would get violent and warn her that she would get what is coming to her when he got home. Avi asked him why he didn't speak more respectfully to her -- she makes a life for you, cooks, raises your kids. Guy says, "But, she's a woman."
I plan to visit the children in Kiryat Malachi on Monday.
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
The primary and overriding obligation of a government and its military during war is to accomplish its objectives. Support among its own public and that of influential outside powers is surely important, particularly the longer the armed engagement.
The press’ role can be either constructive toward this, or not. The government may, or may not, be correct in its management of the war and of the press, but it is the government at war that has the requirement to decide, not the press.
It is argued, often correctly, that the press in a war sometimes sees more clearly than the government or offers useful additional insights. Still, it remains that it is the government and its people that suffers from failing to meet war’s objectives, not the press. Failure at war is a far more grievous harm than can be recompensed by a corrections column or apologetic retrospective re-analysis in the newspaper.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza and the West Bank, have always focused on this priority. All journalists and stringers there are under their strict control, only allowed access to those areas and stories chosen by Hamas and the PA, and physically penalized for straying into criticism or embarrassment of Hamas or the PA. The Western media has gone along with this, in virtual silence and even cover-up, in order to retain any access at all. Meanwhile, the world’s media has had unlimited access and freedom to report anything it wishes in and about Israel. Mostly hewing to excess Western sensitivities and even to anti-Israeli attitudes, much of the world’s media have in effect been active accomplices of Palestinian propaganda. Western and world audiences have thereby been manipulated into undue negativity toward Israel and sympathy toward Palestinians.
Israel recognizes this imbalance and in the current Gaza offensive has taken measures to restrain the press’ undermining of its war effort.
This lengthy article, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/86631with much more detail than here offers a useful summary of the measures that Israel has taken, and of the establishment press’ opposition. Among Israel’s new approaches is going around the West’s established reporting screen and filters by going directly to the increasingly influential alternative media outlets, including YouTube. As reported in the Jerusalem Post: “'In terms of communicating our message, new media is the future', Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu, the IDF's spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post.”
The ending observation made by the Israeli Defense Force spokesman gets to the heart of the matter: “An army has to fight, not to spend its time in front of television cameras.” Israel is not allowing journalists in Israel to enter Gaza at will, to flash emotional scenes – often stage managed by Hamas – to incite the natural distaste the world’s civilians have toward the hell that is war. For that matter, Egypt is also barring entry for journalists via Egypt.
The Israeli Supreme Court, in the manner of a civilized state, has ruled that some safe pooled entry will be allowed. Egypt has no such civilized, independent court. The response by the Western media, from its Foreign Press Association in Israel: “We believe the Israeli Government should ensure unfettered access for the world's media to Gaza during this crisis.” Of note, there is no such press entity or hue allowed in Egypt, but that is not mentioned or mentionable by these Western press representatives.
It is not the responsibility of Israel to cut its own throat by allowing the sensationalist emphasis, negativity and bias of much of the West’s media “unfettered access.”
It's out of the house, but my tradition is to extend the cheer outdoors for a while by keeping the lights on it and putting it outside a window: 
Saturday, January 3. 2009
 Our post about Office Romance: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar prompted this little bit of research. Freud on smoking:
"[Cigars have] served me for precisely fifty years as protection and a weapon in the combat of life...I owe to the cigar a great intensification of my capacity to work and a facilitation of my self-control." Another: "My boy, smoking is one of the greatest and cheapest enjoyments in life, and if you decide in advance not to smoke, I can only feel sorry for you." Via Cigar Aficionado
Reader at Rug Rag made us aware of this talk by Barry O'Connell at the Textile Museum, Washington DC, on Caucasian rugs. We like old Caucasian rugs. The videos are an education, but more about the history of the Causasus region than about the rugs. The intro here, and the rest of the series is on our continuation page below.
Continue reading "Lots more on old Caucasian Rugs"
Among other things, Kindleberger's classic Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. From a review at Amazon: If you believe in efficient markets or the overriding importance of macroeconomics, you will be angered and annoyed by this book. Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes each take their shots here, although in polite ways. As Peter L. Bernstein summarizes nicely in his introduction, Professor Kindleberger's argument boils down to four principles: (1) Irrational behavior does occur from time to time in financial markets. (2) There is a general, repeatable pattern in how this irrational behavior plays out (a positive economic displacement is followed by euphoria that takes the form of overtrading, then distress following revulsion, discredit by lenders in the overtraded assets, and then panic leading possibly to a crash brought on by those who bought high). (3) The economic system needs a lender of last resort to step in at the right time and in the right way to restore confidence and liquidity. (4) Trying to solve these problems by being doctrinaire is "wrong . . . and dangerous."
How about a net worth test for Charlie Rangel? The medical and spiritual dangers of WiFi Good point, via Driscoll. Be sure to read the Jamie Lee Curtis link. Reasons global warming may not exist at all New Year's resolutions you can keep Peoples' Paradise update: Cuba celebrates 50 years of oppression, fear, and misery. Powerline A book: Larry Elder's Stupid Black Men
Friday, January 2. 2009
A quote from an important essay which needs to get around: The Necessity of Mathematics: Once, we had a troll at Pharyngula who, insisting that only "Theism" could solve the problem of dark matter, displayed some rather confused ideas about "energy" and "gravity." Using the actual physics, energy is interchangeable with mass — that's the content of Einstein's famous equation  — and we've known since Newton that mass is the source of gravitational attraction. Of course, we've updated the Newtonian force law to the Einsteinian description of curved spacetime, but still, more energy means more mass which means a stronger gravitational pull. A sealed box of hot helium gas will actually pull very slightly harder on nearby objects than a box of the same size containing the same number of helium atoms at a lower temperature. Yet to our persistent Pharyngula commenter, "energy" and "gravity" were diametrically opposed concepts — because, I think, when you have "lots of energy" you're not "weighed down" but instead "bouncing around the room." In short, inconsistencies which appear at the verbal level turn out to be illusory when you progress to the actual science.
Alinsky is the best-known American Gramscian. The Chicago community organizer who was an inspiration to Hillary Clinton (and maybe indirectly to Obama) wrote a deeply cynical handbook for radicals who seek power. His rules for power tactics are here. We can see those rules followed and enacted every day, mainly in Left-wing in politics.
Kimball reacts to Thomas Franks' WSJ article on the need to "return" to government economic regulation. I think this laissez-faire vs. govt regulation debate is pure politics and boob bait for the economically-uninformed. Kimball agrees. One quote:
The next time someone bemoans the evil of “laissez-faire capitalism” to you, utter the number 69,428. That’s the number of pages in the 2006 edition of the Federal Register, the official government compendium of rules and regulations, the handy-dandy list of things you must do, and not do, if you want to do . . . well, just about anything. “Laissez faire” is the bogey man unhappy leftists use to frighten the credulous. Capitalism was never completely unregulated, and it certainly isn’t unregulated now. In fact, we have much more to fear from the ethic of “défendre faire”–the nanny-state ethic whose ultimate goal is to turn us all into wards of the state. Thomas Frank criticizes rating agencies like Moody’s and banks like Washington Mutual for being insufficiently regulated. But the real problem was not lack of regulation but unintelligent and overbearing regulation. Mr. Frank derides those who believe that “all sin originates with the Community Reinvestment Act” (on which see here), but really he should pause to consider the disatrous effects of that piece of government regulation which, by intruding into the orderly operation of the market in order to further a utopian social goal, helped to precipitate the global credit crisis of 2008.
Read the whole thing. As we repeatedly note here, any crisis, real or manufactured, is used by the power-hungry as an opportunity to grab more. And, unfortunately, this process only ratchets in one direction.
Furthermore, booms and busts have forever been part of human economics - even in command-and-control economies. No-one should ever be surprised that they occur. Like hurricanes, they blow through and knock down the weak trees and blow away the poorly-built structures, leaving space for new opportunities and ventures. People get hurt in the process, which is why we have safety nets.
 Thanks to SDA for alerting us to a new model of the Antikythera Device. It's more of a calculator than a computer.
Most remarkable: they still have the original instruction manual for the 2100 year-old machine. I am missing the manuals for stuff I bought a year ago.
The video about the machine here.
My meals with W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson: American Scholar. Very cool. Empson is a favorite here at Maggie's.
 Was 2008 really all that bad? Only to us who have been spoiled and expect life to be easy.
Good news. Earth has cooled since Bush took office. Good going, George. But I think you overdid it. School endowments are saving for what? It's greed, I tell ya. This guy Senator Burris sure does dig himself. I wonder what it feels like to have that much "self-esteem." (h/t, Betsy) Related: Bobby Rush says take a chill pill. I'm fresh out of 'em. Our cuz Mr. Free Market not only pokes a friendly stick in Maggie's eye, but, more importantly, into the eye of the Nannies. Make my day, Nanny. How did California become so suicidal? We always knew they were nutty and flakey, but not suicidal. Unpleasant truths about Germany. No, not about the Nazis. Quagmire update: Most under-reported item of yesterday: Green Zone handed off to Iraqis. I know she's good, but how does Small Dead Lemmings do this? Jealous? Who, me? Pondering parenthood in that agonizing, Liberal way. Sheesh. What a putz. The C of E today: Crazy people. Certifiable. Student of the Great Depression Amity Schlaes on What Obama should do. He won't. George Will: Health care costs keep growing All this rug stuff on Maggie's. Now I've been bidding on old rugs on eBay. Most of the eBay rug items are coarse new crap, but some looks very nice. Life does need beauty in it. But does one need to own it? Photo: Borrowed from Moonbattery. At first I thought it was satire, but now I wonder. That shirt has got to come off.
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