Wednesday, July 28. 2010
To enhance Bird Dog's experience with Customs when he visits Europe in a few weeks, we've ordered some stickers for his luggage. Yeah, full body search. If you visit the site, there's one for his female companions.
 
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman, via The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science’ at Pajamas
 City and County Government Associations: Obama Economy Will Create or Save, Eh, I Mean Destroy or Eliminate 500,000 Public Sector Jobs. Toon borrowed from that piece at Ross.
The “does it make me look fat?” question
Caddell: Our Divisive President - "Barack Obama promised a new era of post-partisanship. In office, he's played racial politics and further split the country along class and party lines."
Hawkins: Seven Deceptive Mainstream Media Techniques
Reason.tv: Arthur C. Brooks on the Battle Between Free Enterprise and Big Government
"Temporary marriage" in Iran: "We call on all our sisters who are virgins" to put out for the lonely pilgrims - for cash.
At Thompson:
Greg Lukianoff on knowing why you think what you think.
One of the great harms of speech codes and campus censorship is that it leaves students with the false impression that censorship is what good, compassionate people do.
Reynolds: Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime: Analysis. "Too many officials think taking photos is a crime. Here’s why they’re wrong." h/t Ace
"Set up a motion-activated camera at a stock water tank in South Texas and you'll catch all manner of critters."
Good advice: Surviving the Low-Level Job. People will need to get used to this.
Tuesday, July 27. 2010
I once booed Jewel at a performance. It was the year she toured with Bob Dylan, and I saw them in New Haven. (She once said that she thought Bob was gay because he didn't hit on her during the tour. Disappointed by that, it seems.)
I booed because she had to bring some political snark into her chatter, assuming as such folks do that their audiences are all on the same page politically. Rude of me, but that sort of presumption bugs me. As usual, my friends were embarassed by my behavior. She was not really known, then.
Here's the whole song that was chopped up on Dr Merc's fun post:
It's good to hear Tom Sowell say it: How Smart Are We? Elites may have more brilliance, but they can’t have as much experience as the people whose decisions they preempt.
One quote:
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
"Things taking their own course" means, of course, people exercising free choice.
Some of us here have been accused of being elites ourselves. If I am in that category somehow, put me in the subgroup that has no interest in controlling anybody but myself. Just that is difficult enough, and often impossible.
 One pesky little computer problem is when you run a program most of the time the computer is up, like an email program, but it minimizes to the Task Bar and clutters up the place with its icon. For 'permanent' programs that run all of the time, the better routine is to stick the icon in the SysTray (the area just to the right of the Task Bar) and leave the Task Bar area for current projects.
Some programs have a setting in their Options that tells them to minimize to the SysTray, so check that first.
To solve this little poser, we have a program with the cheek-pinchingly cute name of Trayconizer. It's not promised to work on every program, but it's worked on the three I've thrown at it.
Home page is here. Get the 'Unicode build'.
Unzip the file to its own 'Trayconizer' folder in a place you'll later be able to locate. This is, if you put the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, remember it for the next step.
To set up a program for trayconizing, go to the Start Menu, find its icon, right-click on it and open the Properties.
In the 'Target' box, put the full path to Trayconizer before the path to the program.
(capital letters are only used for clarity in the following)
For example, if you placed the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, the path would be:
C:\Tools\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe <existing path to program>
If you stuck it in a folder with a blank space in the name, like 'Program Files', you need to put the whole path in quotes:
"C:\Program Files\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe" <path to program>
If there's an error in the path, Windows will let you know when you click 'OK' to close the box. If you get stuck, open the Properties of the Trayconizer icon, highlight the 'Location', copy it to memory with Ctrl-C, paste it into the 'Target' box with Ctrl-V.
Now when you minimize the program the icon should go to the SysTray. Single-click on it to get a few options, double-click to pop the program back open.
Good video summary of the American aircraft carrier. Most of our readers probably know it all, already.
For our hillbilly friends, safely below the fold -
Continue reading "Dear Abby"
Monday, July 26. 2010
As I always do before trips, I am catching up on history. This trip will be Vienna and the Danube. I view these places historically as the hinterlands, but you cannot fault their production of music in recent centuries. Music, wars, and sort-of hideous baroque architecture.
Vienna had been a Roman frontier outpost, but surely had been a barbarian settlement before that.
I do recall that European History in high school made my head spin from the endless alliances and endless wars and the reconfigurations of empires, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and nations. With my ADD, it's a wonder I did so well with it. Forgot most of it. The War of the Spanish Succession.
I did not forget some details of the devastating Franco-Prussian War, but I certainly had forgotten that "German Austria" wanted to be part of Germany after WW1, but the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations forbade it. German Austria reached down into the (still) German-speaking areas of northern Italy. The Austria of today is a relatively brand-new nation (1945 or 1955 - pick the date) although it was a Babenburg duchy in 1156 and later was roughly the core of the Hapsburg's power for 640 years.
The Hapsburgs are credited with keeping the Ottomans out of Europe in 1683, but the King of Poland, Jan Sobieski, deserves lots of credit. There were 300 years of resisting the Ottoman Empire's invasions. I have never understood why Middle-Easterners coveted Europe, but they still do.
I find it amusing to think of what was going on in the wilds of the American colonies at the same time. Only Spain really cared, because of the gold. Otherwise insignificant except as pawns in larger European power games.
In the early 1700s, the Hapsburgs counted among their imperial control Belgium, Sardinia, Corsica, the Duchy of Milan, Naples, and Sicily. Two hundred years earlier, HRE "Emperor" Charles V in 1516 also happened to be King of Spain, bringing Spanish America, for a while, into the bounds of the Holy Roman Empire - such as it was: A crown, a flag, a bunch of castles and palaces, a title, and some truly snazzy outfits with fancy medals on them to impress the gals. Being King of Spain, on the other hand, was probably a cool gig with plenty of perks and babes.
The modern European nations are all younger in their configurations and their governmental structures than the US (except for the post-Empire island core of Britain).
One thought this perspective gave me is that the EU may be little more than an expanded reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire - combined with the old Roman Empire. In time, it will pass too.
Photo below, Palace Schoenbrunn, first constructed as a hunting lodge in the early 1700s. "Hey, honey, have you seen where I put my camo and my ammo?"
That's from a time when royal governments lived off the labor of the people. Not like now, right?
Stumbled across this web site today. An oasis of calm in a world of chaos. As a semi-amateur photographer, I'm always amazed at the way creative people come up with new ways to make and create new and interesting photos: Mila's Daydreams.
An email from a buddy:
 I came across a Japanese Type 14 Nambu pistol. These were reasonably well made Japanese semi-autos, used from mid-1920's until end of WWII. The ammo is available for around $25/box of 50. I had planned on using it for a project that didn't work out
If interested, I can email photos. I'd like just what I paid for it - $300.
I don't need one and do not want one, but it's an interesting firearm from an historical point of view.
Everything about the Type 14 here.
From a review of Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character:
...Made in America is not simply an entertaining narrative history. It is also an argument, or rather a set of arguments, about character and culture. The first is that "modernity" entailed less wrenching and negative change than most today believe. In the realm of culture and society, continuity -- or the intensification of already apparent patterns -- was the rule. Fischer writes, for example, that his is "not one more account of how American character was corrupted by rising individualism, egoism or selfishness." Instead, Americans "remained by Western standards remarkably committed to family, church, community, job and nation." Second, like Potter, Fischer sees abundance as the engine of American history: not simply economic wealth, in his telling, but an ever-increasing stock of security, health, social opportunities, political freedoms, and self-mastery. Third and most significant, he declares a Tocquevillian "voluntarism" -- a highly socialized individualism that led Americans to join groups and build communities -- to be the substrate of national character, the key trait that binds Americans together.
This Sherrod story. I thought I was sick of the story even before it started, but I guess this is a slice of America too. Every country has moonbats but, as Palin would say, these are "sick puppies," determined to live in anger and hatred.
 Glassman: Notes on Europe’s Economic Decadence. "Prosperity creates sloth."
Axe falls on NHS services
Examiner: The calamitous effects of Obama's tax hikes. Related at Powerline: Coming Soon: The Biggest Tax Increase Ever. There's nothing like a big tax increase to work wonders on a struggling economy.
Vernon Smith says "no more government spending,...avoid new taxes."
Ariz. law comes after years of mounting anger
Malanga: The Muni-Bond Debt Bomb
Am Thinker: We The Serfs...:
Your tax dollars at work in Rhode Island. How long before those sidewalks are cracked with weeds growing through the cracks?
VIDEO GOLD: Howard Dean Gets A$$ Handed to Him On FOX After Misplaying His Race Cards
From Cato's Investors: Fear the Process That Gave Us ObamaCare, Not Efforts to Repeal It (my bolds):
... the problem is not that the political system is breaking down. That system is working pretty much the same way it always has and always will: it promotes irresponsibility. Republicans and Democrats are merely responding to the incentives created by the system in which they operate. (If they didn’t respond to those incentives, the political system would throw them out and replace them with people who do.) If investors don’t already understand that, the sooner the better.
This is why responsible people want to take responsibility for our health care, etc., out of the hands of politicians.
Sunday, July 25. 2010
Encinitas, where I live, is the last refuge of traditional laid back Southern California beach towns. We have the usual run of art shops selling third rate paintings to tourists, any town's laughing-up-our-sleeves joke on the gullible.
But, the beachside bronze paid for by the local Cardiff Botanical Society (WTF does surfing have to do with botany?) has run into disdain for its insufficiently iconic image. Locals don't consider it realistic enough, and aren't to be treated as gullible by purveyers of public art who foist their artistic sense (or not) upon the populace.
The statue, disdainfully titled "Cardiff Kook" by surfers, has been dressed in tutu and bikini, but the latest Encinitans-gone-wild prank is the best yet.
Overnight, a huge papier-mache replica of a great white shark was erected devouring the statue.
The Sheriff Lt. at the scene said, “It wasn’t considered vandalism because there wasn’t any permanent defacing.” The sculptural addition will be removed, to the sorrow of locals and the crowds who consider it an improvement and stop to admire and shoot photos.
Encinitans will strike again.
What public sculpture in your town would benefit from a puckish aesthetic addition?
While feasting on late after-dinner hazelnut gelati a little over a week ago in the relatively non-touristy lakefront village of Baveno, just up from the small piazza on the main drag, we were drawn to the sounds of a church choir, and sat on the stoop of the side door of the sanctuary for a half hour listening to them practice as darkness fell.
Nothing can make a 20-person choir sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the way a small stone 900 year-old church can. Excellent group, too, with an exuberant organist.
Saint Gervaso is the patron saint of Baveno. Like many old buldings in Italy, the church was built of stone previously used in Roman buildings, some still bearing Roman markings and lettering. Recycling. We noted that they never took stones from the Roman bridges or aqueducts, though. Smart - and a conservative message.
This is no famous church, just an ordinary village church. Clearly pre-Gothic. The church and tower were built in around 1100 (but the front of the sanctuary was expanded a bit since then), the Baptistery in 1628, and the open hall of the Stations of the Cross probably in the 1700s, when Baveno became wealthy from its quarries of pink marble (which are still in use).
Palm trees right up there near the Swiss border.
More photos of this small, unknown parish church below -
Continue reading "Santi Gervaso e Protaso: a re-post from 2008"
No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong.
Stanley Fish. h/t, Dr. Bob
Edge: Getting at the Neuroanthropology of Morality
Los Zetas drug cartel seizes 2 U.S. ranches in Texas. Is this story true? Possibly not.
Coming Soon: Tax Tsunami
Reid to Netroots: "We're Going To Have a Public Option"
Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care
More government intrusion into private sector pay
Race realist Jared Taylor declares the "civil rights struggle was won long ago"
A guy who doesn't want you to have a/c: The Big Chill: Giving AC the Cold Shoulder
Dino: What happened a year ago to permanently change public opinion?
Powerline: The case against Elena Kagan
Obama’s Solar Energy Fantasy
The Lottery Makes a Strong Statement About Charter Schools
From Insty: "THE YOUNG AND THE JOBLESS: New Evidence That The Minimum Wage Has Hurt Teenagers."
Climate and budgets from Coyote:
The climate modeling approach is so similar to that used by the CEA to score the stimulus that there is even a climate equivalent to the multiplier found in macro-economic models. In climate models, small amounts of warming from man-made CO2 are multiplied many-fold to catastrophic levels by hypothetical positive feedbacks, in the same way that the first-order effects of government spending are multiplied in Keynesian economic models. In both cases, while these multipliers are the single most important drivers of the models’ results, they also tend to be the most controversial assumptions. In an odd parallel, you can find both stimulus and climate debates arguing whether their multiplier is above or below one.
Luke 11:1-13
11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."
11:2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.
11:4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."
11:5 And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;
11:6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.'
11:7 And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'
11:8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
11:9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
11:10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
11:11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?
11:12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?
11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
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