Monday, June 7. 2010
Thomas Jones, Naples. The Capella Nuova outside the Porta di Chiaja, 1778:
Dalrymple discusses Thomas Jones and the non-essential consumption economy: The Machine. Almost a miracle, isn't it, that we no longer have a predominantly essential-consumption society?
Dr. Arie Friedman on A Dying Profession
I think it is still appealing (as a second income) for those who find the work interesting and challenging. It will be mostly women in the US, I think, in the future, and on government pay.
The problem with CPR is remembering what to do when your adrenaline begins surging because it looks like somebody is trying to die. (Some of the other problems are those of cracking some ribs of some guy who doesn't need it, or of keeping "alive" somebody whose brain is already dying or dead. Knowing when to use CPR is as important as knowing how.)
Coyote offers this useful reminder: Super Sexy CPR
"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey."
Stephen Covey (h/t Retriever)
Sunday, June 6. 2010
New York Times: "To Avoid Voter Rage, Democrats Skip Town Halls"
Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.
It was no scheduling accident.
With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions.
Ain't Democrats' democracy something!
A friend writes me seeking contributions from US Christians and Jews to build a grand cathedral and a grand synagogue in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Then leftist clergymen would have a prominent place to conveniently issue apologies for existing to Muslims, at Islam’s spiritual center.
Sounds like a very nice project for those who like self-abasement, doesn’t it?
Problem: Saudi Arabia does not permit any churches or synagogues to exist anywhere in the country.
Er, Saudi Arabia funds mosques throughout the world, many harboring Imams and congregants who mouth, fund and participate in radical anti-West actions. Have you heard any apologies from Saudi Arabia?
Meanwhile, in the heart of pagan capitalism, close to 9/11’s Ground Zero in New York’s Wall Street area, a $100+ million mosque is planned. The Imam has already plunked down $4.85 million for the property. He is cagey about where the rest will come from. Hmm? Oh, the Imam is pocket-deep in funding the Gaza flotilla and pals with international anti-Israel radicals.
Youssef Ibrahim, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent who covered Islamic fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, finds other journalists oddly lacking in the curiosity to dig deeper.
Look at all these potential contributors, over 8000, who turned out today at the Ground Zero mosque site.
From Dr. Bob:
Deep within each of us dwells a bottomless abyss, into which we pour an endless train of insufficient and destructive detritus. We seek to fill the abyss with material goods; with drugs, or alcohol, or food, or sex; we seek relationships, hoping through them to fill that void — then destroy those relationships when they fail to accomplish what they are utterly incapable of fulfilling. Neither power, nor money, nor eminence, nor the esteem of others will suffice. Only to be chosen by God; to be accepted, fully, unconditionally, eternally by Him: this alone fills the despondent destitution within — for that emptiness was made to be filled with naught but God Himself.
I understand what Dr. Bob is saying in his post, but surely not all foolish desires are displaced and misplaced yearnings for God...or are they?
We have been promoting the documentary The Lottery. I see that the WSJ covers it: Storming the School Barricades - A new documentary by a 27-year-old filmmaker could change the national debate about public education.
Another one on the same topic coming out in the fall, Waiting for Superman.
It's a movement! People want choice, not government monopolies.
In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger used South Vietnam as a tool to widen the split between China and the Soviet Union. In 2010, Islamists, Iran and other Muslim states use the Obama administration as a tool to split the US from Israel.
Most of us who are still aghast at the Democrat controlled US Congress dooming South Vietnam to fall by cutting off promised arms and air support necessary to its survival also criticized Nixon and Kissinger for walking into the duplicitous trap of the Peace Accords of 1973. The North Vietnamese rulers had a long, documented history of promising one thing while doing another.
However, Nixon and Kissinger had a bigger game afoot, to reduce tensions with China for our purpose of widening its rift from the Soviet Union, which added pressure on the Soviet Union.
In effect, South Vietnam was a tool to what they had good reasons to believe was a bigger, more important end. Surely, neither Nixon nor Kissinger expected Nixon’s Watergate downfall and the left Democrats to sweep to Congressional power.
There’s a difference now.
Obama and Clinton may be thinking they are using Israel as a tool to cuddle up to long and continually intransigent Arab states. But they are actually tools themselves of those who seek nothing else than the downfall of Israel and the retreat of the US from confronting their clear goals of dominating the Middle East and, via its oil, Europe.
Obama and Clinton don’t deny the ongoing efforts of Iran in going nuclear or sending men and arms to those attacking US, Iraqi and Afghan troops, to Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. They just avoid the necessary countermeasures and march forward in repeatedly proven delusions of Iran changing its spots and of kumbaya as a replacement for reality.
Nixon and Kissinger had a world view realistically based on US interests furthering a world order of surer peace. Obama and Clinton, fully consciously or not, have a world view based on US interests being a barrier to a world order of peace, that ignores or excuses or refuses to confront the reality of foes’ unrelenting hate of the US and the West, encouraged by Obamanesque fecklessness.
Oh! Another bit of reality that Obama and apologists can try to ignore: "Iran Revolutionary Guards ready to escort Gaza ships"
- Thanks again, Insty. We appreciate your appreciation, and encourage Insty folks to peruse our eclectic site. You might like it. Or you might not.
P.S.: Hillary Clinton warns Iran not to pull a stunt. Wake up Hillary, "Iran called our bluff long ago."
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Yesterday afternoon on Long Island Sound with a nice breeze, with some pics of pretty boats.
These folks are setting their sails:
This was a 12-meter race which we watched for a bit, mostly boats from the 60s:
An email with pics from our friend and occasional guest-poster Nathan, who is living in Jerusalem:
After watching Verdi's Nabuco performed at night at the foot of Matzada, I planned my ascent on Saturday.
Up at 415 a.m. and cabbed to Matzada from Ein Gedi Kibbutz facing the Dead Sea, two kilometers below sea level. Hiked up the 350 Meters during sunrise. First one up. Took the "snake path" on the east face of the mountain fortress built about thirty years before Christ by Herod, the son of Edomite Converts to Judaism, who was King under the Romans and fairly much despised by the Jews, even as he prevailed over some thirty years of stunnning prosperity and --- trained as an engineer/architect -- proliferative building including the entire port of Cesaria (named after Cesar), which included a hippodrome and perhaps more importantly a major port for the Romans.
The snake path
The history here is ironic and as twisty as the Snake Path, which was built by Herod so that supplies, including water from Ein Gedi oasis about 17 km north, could be brought up by donkeys. There is a western ramp built by Jewish slaves under the Romans to defeat the Jewish Sicari in 73 AD, but that in a moment.
The remarkable stillness (beyond quiet) on the 45 minute hike up gives time for reflection and occassional glances to sight the hints of sun's birth over the Dead Sea, even as the crescent moon and a star-like planet linger in the South East.
Sunrise over the Dead Sea
Herod built this fortress, designed by himself after his architects and engineers said that it could not be done. Built it to protect himself with the sheers on all sides. Protect himself from his Jews. Having been driven once from Jerusalem by angry Jews (a tough crowd to rule over, it seems), he decided he needed a few refuges to which to escape in the future. Built Herodian just south of Jerusalem, but Matzada was his star. Quarried in place, he imported the two-piece capitals for the columns. The quarries apparently became used for water storage. But, Josephus (the Jewish general turncoat who became a chronicler for the Romans) describes massive storehouses filled with wine amphoras (Greek for any container that can be lift from either side) for wine and olive oil, and supplies of corn, dates, pulse and other preserved foodstuffs, which Josephus said could supply the garrison for years. There are remaining frescos (apparently the artisans were familiar with Vitruvius multi-volume work on architecture) and elegant mosaic floors in place. The castle was built on three levels at the northern tip of the plateau, on three natural ledges. The castle faces towards the oasis of Ein Gedi, where David once took refuge from King Saul, who was jealous of DAvid's achievements. But that is another tale.
Below as one reaches the top, the Dead Sea has a heaviness to it, as if made of molten lead. Light appears before the Sun, which arises with its shifting colors until it attains that blinding glare of the Desert.
After Herod's death, the Jewish rebellion began against Rome: the Jews even minted their own shekels, labeling them for each year of the rebellion: one can eye these up to the fifth year in the new Museum at the end of the visit.
Jerusalem fell. (The Romans complained that there was so much blood from slaughtering Jews in the Old City that Roman horses had to wade through lakes of blood to their bellies.) A group of some seventy Sicari Jews (very fierce and named for the Sicar, double-edged curved knives) retreated to Matzada, which became the last refuge and last place defeated by the Romans. Coming out here, at the edge of a dead lake of salt, two kilometers below the world of sea level, surrounded by pastel-hued mountains which themselves once were ocean bottom, on the edge of the Syrian-African rift, one is impressed, amazed at the extent to which the Romans went to defeat this last 70-citizen outpost of the Jews.
They set a siege that lasted several years, the Romans building some eight permanent camps, the largest of which had a Cardo, the central commercial street of every major Roman town. The Sicari settled into the opulent palace and buildings of Herod, leaving evidence of their pottery, which measure poorly when compared to the simple, but elegant Edom-tinted, reddish pottery made for Herod (and each labelled by its artisan). The Jews wrote notes on pottery shards to use for dealing out each families portioin and so on.
Surrounding landscape
The Romans, as I said, used Jewish slaves to build the assault ramp. At first the Romans built, but the Sicari would dump scalding oil on the Roman laborers, so Jewish slaves were enlisted to solve that problem. To taunt and demoralize the Roman soldiers, whose water was carefully met out, the Jewish women would hang out their clothes to dry, as if to show that they had plenty of water in the underground cisterns (which are massive as one walks into them.)
The end of this story came quickly when it came. The Romans, upon completing the ramp, pushed a ram to the top to batter the wall. The Jews tried to reinforce with stone and dirt. I believe that at this point the Jewish set the ram afire, but winds blew this towards the wall and burned through what was not made of stone.
The rest we know from Josephus, a very literate turncoat, who in turn learned of the last moments of the Sicari from two surviving mothers and their five children who had hidden within the double-walled storage area so as not to be "suicided" by the Sicari. Ben ari, the leader of the Sicari Jews gave a speech, stating that their women would not be violated by Romans, nor their children ever taste slavery. They set all the stores afire to defeat the Romans in death. After the ten men killed the others, they had lots with their names written upon them. The leader cut the throats of the remaining nine, then his own. These lots -- with the names legible -- were found by Yigal Yadin in the 1960's excavation.
Ruins of Herod's castle
Matzada was mostly forgotten. Briefly used by some monks, then forgotten again. In the late 50's a Jewish archeologist, Shmarayu Guttman suggested excavation. but, not until 1963 did former General Yigal Yadin do the excavations as a Professor at the Hebrew U. Just a brief tale from Yadin. By reading Josephus (you know the reversible-coat part here already), Yadin was determined to find the castle on the northern lip. But, from above, it looked like nothing was there and colleagues doubted that anything could have been built on such a sheer, surfaced with shards and rubble. But Yadin tied a rope to a rock at the top, rappeled down with a brush and hand tool, and discovered the castle. When they got to the lowest level, the third terrace, they found the skeleton of a Roman soldier -- armor intact -- lying near a woman's skeleton, her hair braids intact.
That's the news from Matzada.
Psalm 30
30:1 I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
30:2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
30:3 O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
30:4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
30:5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
30:6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved."
30:7 By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.
30:8 To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication:
30:9 "What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
30:10 Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper!"
30:11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
30:12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
Saturday, June 5. 2010
Better appreciations of the facts about the Gaza flotilla (a flatuated term for that motley group of ships) are emerging, after the jumping to jaundiced judgment to jeer Israel. The key one: Turkey hid behind its radical IHH front to instigate violence and got what it wanted.
Why? The obvious answer is to delegitimize Israel.
True, but there are fathoms below that to delve for some bigger truths.
I’ve been stressing diving for one “big truth.” (here and here) The Obama administration was deep into pressuring Israel, likely contributing to the outcomes favorable to Israel’s enemies. Washington and Jerusalem should have known better.
The Obama administration, as the US State Department spokesman admitted, “through multiple channels many times” before the interdiction urged Israel to “restrain” itself. Israel acted with restraint, to the point of ineptitude. Similarly, the Obama administration at Turkey’s demand urged Israel to immediately release all aboard the Gaza blockade running ships, even though about forty were not identified or their links to Turkey and instructions were not discovered, and Israel promptly complied, allowing Turkey to cover up a key part of its nefarious role.
Credible journalists should be investigating these and probably more instances of the Obama administration’s culpabilities in harming Israel and strengthening US and Israeli foes. For those journalists who have forgotten how, here’s the basics of their craft when competently practiced: Who? What? Where? When? Why?
Some may find this exercise in truth finding not worthwhile because “everyone already knows the Obama administration is comprised of useful tools of US foes”, as one bluntly put it. But, not everyone knows, just those not of the Left paying attention. Most liberals are still in denial. This key truth needs to be prominently driven home for all to face and know. Such a high-profile event as this is the perfect vehicle to highlighting and verifying what “everyone already knows,” or should know.
There’s a second “big truth” to be brought to the surface.
Since 2002, when Prime Minister Erdogan came to power in Turkey, he has been inching and jumping to move Turkey away from its past of Western orientation that Kemal Attaturk set it on after WWI, instead toward an Eastern (i.e., Islamist) view. Erdogan has played his cards well, and the stale Kemalists not. September 12 Turkey is to hold a referendum, supported avidly by Erdogan and his party, though by none else, that would cripple separation of powers by placing the judiciary under tighter control by his executive.
In the usual way of rulers who seek more power, Erdogan purposely picked the perfect “us-them” to rouse the 99%+ of Turks who are Muslim, “them” being Israel.
Erdogon and Turkey’s fingerprints on the Gaza instigation needs to be brought to the surface for all to see, including for those Turks who will be repulsed by Erdogan’s dirty deals with radicals for his own self-aggrandizement. The future of Turkey and of its impact on the West is at stake.
There’s a third “big truth” that needs to be brought to the light of day. That is the utter dangerous inanity of the Obama et. al. world view. They have repeatedly demonstrated that their view is useless and counter-productive to Western interests. Former allies and foes are not fools as ours in Washington. They see the weakness, incompetence and ineptness of the Obama administration. They are, thus, encouraged to be bolder in pursuing policies and actions inimical to the US and to regional or world peace. Consistent with the Obama world view that is indifferent to or hostile toward the West is the casting out of Israel as an ally and measures that weaken its survival.
Surfacing the first “big truth” above is key to taking the blinders off for all to starkly see the others, and get more energized in sending those who have shucked American strength and integrity, and the survival of allies, to the bottom.
P.S.: The Washington Post editorial board connects some of the dots
Making money without working. I have not made a penny in my retirement account for 10 years. It is mostly equities. The long view, from Tiger. Probably just tracks inflation, but what do I know?
Wrong about Everything.
A brief taste of it:
The whole enjoyable thing is here.
 More on Palin and Feminism
The Spirit Of Walter Duranty
The truth about those atolls
Progressive Bloggers Are Money-Grubbing Corporatists
UVA’s Defense of Michael Mann: Back Off, He’s a Scientist! Like a priest or something?
Helen Thomas: The Jews should go back home
Taking a look at border security - video
Michelle: The long, hot Summer of Corruption
Time to change birth citizenship?
The Fastest Growing Class of U.S. Millionaires: Government Workers Making 2X Private Workers
Worse than a Depression
Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews
Freshman orientation at Wesleyan. Sounds like re-orientation.
Will states come begging for a trillion? It's like Euroland.
Employers have gone on strike:
Imagine if Ms. Romer had instead promised in 2009 that Congress could spend nearly $1 trillion, and 16 months later the unemployment rate would be nearly 10% and that more than 2.5 million additional Americans would be without jobs. Would Congress have still spent the cash? Well, sure, Congress will always spend what it can get away with, but the American public would have turned against the stimulus even faster than it has.
Is the Turkish Military a Bulwark against Islamism?
Also,
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said all deals with Israel are being evaluated.
"We are serious on this issue. New cooperation will not start and relations with Israel will be reduced," he said.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has said discussions about extending a Russian natural gas pipeline to Israel and providing fresh drinking water to Israel from the Manavgat river were being shelved.
The pro-Palestinian activists' deaths on the aid ship increased tensions in the Mideast, especially with Turkey, an important ally of Israel. On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel's actions "a historic mistake."
More sad stuff about Turkey, at Shrinkwrapped, who is interested in Islamic use of language. - especially hyperbole.
Also related, from Mead: Terrible Twins: Turkey, Brazil and the Future of American Foreign Policy
 To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Friday, June 4. 2010
A reader of Maggie’s Farm manufactures spare parts for military applications. He emails, posted here with his permission, about our Defense Department preferring Turkish firms above his, “in a way that is rather unique in their dealings with other (NATO) countries.”
By that I mean, Turkey is the only country that they give these orders to, besides maybe an occasional one to Canada. The reason I know this is that everyday I get emailed to me "notices of unsuccessful bid.
I have been dealing with DLA [Defense Logistics Agency] since I began my business in 1986. I broke every rule in the book in starting my business, with regard to undercapitalization. Somehow, (blessed be the Lord), we made it this far and enjoy a good relationship with the gov't as our primary customer (75%). 99% of what we make are spare parts for military applications- machine guns, tanks, apvs, land, maritime and a smattering of aircraft parts. There's me (veteran), wife, son (veteran), 3 machinists and 2 welders (1 veteran). We've never received a dime of "stimulus" money, but it would be nice if the gov't appreciated the value of having domestic sources and not give so damn much of what we quote to the Turks. Every day I get auction notices for small manufacturing companies going down the tubes. How stupid of us to unthinkingly paint ourselves into a corner for the day when we need stuff and countries like Turkey have us over a barrel. Much of what I make involves an investment of tooling. This enables us to supply parts more quickly in the future. How's it going to be when we need crucial spare parts and the tooling is in Ankara, Turkey- then likely a hostile country?
I think what caught Bruce's attention was the reference I made to a letter I got back through my congressman, Pat Tiberi, from the Director of Procurement of DLA. In that letter (which I still have)*, a response to my complaint about all the work that was going (and still is) to Turkey, I was given a wonderfully unvarnished bit of information; that under the "Buy American Act", Turkey is a qualified country. Thank God for the occasional bit of honesty from a bureaucrat! No way you'd ever hear that from an elected official.
I hope you find this educational.
Cordially yours,
Steve Boggs
Boggs & Associates, Inc
Columbus OH 43227
614-237-0600
*Another line I remember was something like this- "Furthermore, it is DoD policy the the Buy American Act does not apply." This blew the mind of a friend who practiced law specializing in federal contracts.
The US is aiding Turkey's "final solution" for Israel.
BTW, Steve's son is a two-tour veteran of Iraq.
Arrogant idiot Derek Bok thinks government needs to provide us with happiness. More at Moonbattery.
Says I, just give me my freedom, and I'll figure out how to be as happy or unhappy as I chose to be - and I'll do it my way, and definitely not the way a Harvard President would do it for himself - or "for me."
Furthermore, I do not need any government Soma. I can handle unhappiness just fine and I can take my lumps like a man, when necessary. Life wasn't meant to be a bowl of cherries, nor did I ever expect it to be.
|
It's working flawlessly: President Obama's outreach to Muslim countries