Saturday, June 19. 2010
Marginally, maybe. Maybe, from being around curious, achievement-oriented, high IQ peers. From that, one might become competitive, inspired, and humbled - if one were not lucky enough to have those qualities in the first place.
Truth is, as I say here ad nauseum, that we don't know what "education" means beyond readin, ritin and rithmatic. A college degree can mean anything and nothing because becoming aware of the world and the world of the past, and the stories and the ideas of the past, cannot be fed. It must be taken. All edumacation is self-edumacation.
I think America would be better off if you could buy an Ivy League diploma online for $39.99 after answering a few questions about calculus, Julius Caesar, and Leonardo.
The Egalitarian Craze.
A Sheaf Of Snakes Used Heretofore To Be My Seal, The Crest Of Our Poor Family
 ADOPTED in God's family and so
Our old coat lost, unto new arms I go.
The Cross—my seal at baptism—spread below
Does, by that form, into an Anchor grow.
Crosses grow Anchors; bear, as thou shouldest do
Thy Cross, and that Cross grows an Anchor too.
But He that makes our Crosses Anchors thus,
Is Christ, who there is crucified for us.
Yet may I, with this, my first serpents hold;
God gives new blessings, and yet leaves the old.
The serpent may, as wise, my pattern be;
My poison, as he feeds on dust, that's me.
And, as he rounds the earth to murder sure,
My death he is, but on the Cross, my cure.
Crucify nature then, and then implore
All grace from Him, crucified there before;
Then all is Cross, and that Cross Anchor grown;
This seal's a catechism, not a seal alone.
Under that little seal great gifts I send,
Works, and prayers, pawns, and fruits of a friend.
And may that saint which rides in our great seal,
To you who bear his name, great bounties deal !
Friday, June 18. 2010
For a little Friday evening fun I thought I'd cobble together some of the animal videos from my art gallery. Enjoy.
Bird Apes Dog, Horses Around, Pigs Out, Is Catty With Ewe
Here's Einstein the parrot. If you watch him carefully, you'll see that he's got one thing, and one thing alone, on that beady little brain of his:
Her right hand.
I watched three DVDs on training parrots a while back, and they just live for that next snack treat. As with other animals, you find out what treat they like the most and then hold that one back for when they do a trick correctly. The parrots in the DVD were certainly eager to learn — but you can bet it wasn't for learning's sake. Like Einstein, they kept their sharp little eyes on the hand that held the treats almost the entire time.
Which isn't to diminish this bird's exceptional repertoire. Take it away, Einy!
This Dog's No Rummy
Here's 'Gin' and owner doing some freestyle dancing.
Continue reading "Cool Animal vids"
From a post at Coyote:
I work with a lot of very bright, very good people in government. The problem is that their incentives and information are awful. How would you behave if for 20 years your main feedback was to be criticized for violating minor procedures or trying new things? How would you have any understanding of business if you grew up in the bizarro world of government budgeting and accounting? This is the problem with government – not that it is full of bad stupid people, but it takes good smart people and incentivizes them to do counter-productive things.
Who'd a thunk it? Tough Moslems, too. Everybody is afraid of them, even in a place like Tennessee, the home of Davy Crockett.
I like the idea of "truth without value." How come it took me this long to find that concept? AVI's final paragraph of The Morality of Nonbelievers:
The Christian answer, as I have suggested, may be no truer than the others. It may be just one more variation of photosynthesis. I offer here no defense of that. Perhaps there is some other explanation outside of mankind – no, it would have to be outside of life itself – no wait, it would have to be outside of this accidental planet and even the accidental universe – that would make something in morality real, and true, and valuable. But absent any such, there isn’t anything that qualifies as morality – and there is simply no meaning beyond the masturbatory for a nonbeliever to give himself any credit for having one equal to the believer’s.
I agree with everything AVI says, and I feel motivated to think harder about things which affect me which have truth but little value.
Lux et Veritas, as they say in Rome. They used to say it in New Haven, too.
Jack Fuller has an interesting essay on the future of journalism and the news, and it is worth reading if only to see how older dead-tree newspeople view the world.
I disagree with much of it, and with his premises too. Plus his brain thing is just silly. Anyway, I have no time to share my thoughts about it this morning.
An email from Nathan, our correspondent in Jerusalem:
 The head burger assembler at Burger Bar is a tall, handsomely groomed, black-bearded Samurai master of the knife. More a ridged machete or sword he wields, rather twirls, flips, flicks in a ballet of carbon-forged steel. He calls me Abelleh, "little father," as if I could have fathered such a towering genius of the blade, with a smile that dims the knife"s glistening. From my loins, not likely. But as one of my professors who served in the Pacific said when complemented for his respect towards Japanese colleagues said, "Gotta be nice to these bastards; never know whether one of 'em is mine."
I take refuge in Burger Bar after a marathon of moving, a different choreography of furniture shifting, socks disappearing, blaring badly-sung, out of tune Hasidic music blaring as the "Dosies" (those who have found haredi religion) whip away an adult lifetime's collection and disappear it into a half-container.
Only the Chagall I worried about, insured separately, and between my house and the truck, it disappeared, evaporated into the blazing Jerusalem arid air, whiffed away as if heavenward. One of the packers complained, "Chagall, Shmagal, what is this, who is this, what does it matter?" Only the insistence of my helper, Keren, and a search of many unlabeled packages was Abraham consoling Sarah as the angels come to announce her fruition, does Chagall reappear. A city of miracles, Jerusalem is. And persistence, as Keren raises her voice and pays back with interest. ("The Chagall is equal to the whole value of the shipment. You will open every box until we find it.") Tough chick.
Continue reading "Moving Day in Jerusalem"
 Revealed: Orangutans use language of at least FORTY different gestures to 'talk'
Yesterday was Bunker Hill Day
PJ O'Rourke on public schools: End them, Don't Mend Them. A quote:
Schaeffer calculated that Los Angeles, which claims $19,000 per-pupil spending, actually spends $25,000. The New York metropolitan area admits to a per-pupil average of $18,700, but the true cost is about $26,900. The District of Columbia’s per-pupil outlay is claimed to be $17,542. The real number is an astonishing $28,170—155 percent more than the average tuition at the famously pricey private academies of the capital region.
I believe that the $ should follow the kid to wherever the family wants.
Vitter: Obama Exploiting Oil Spill to Push Liberal Agenda
Krauthammer: The O is Dreamer in Chief
Soccer is a Capitalist Tool
Q&O:
Legislators are not executives, they are process orientated admins. The skill sets for the two are completely different. One set requires decision making of the highest order – sometimes on an instant and unilateral basis. The other set requires slow deliberation, compromise and consensus building. One deals with pure leadership. The other deals with the duller aspects of management. Executives are result oriented. Administrators are entirely process driven. Executives use action as their means of accomplishment. Administrators set goals and work toward them as their means of achievement.
Hmmm. Chicago Law Prof on Obama: “The Professors Hated Him because he was Lazy, Unqualified & Never Attended any of the Faculty Meetings”
Other McCain:
...am I the only reader who resents being lectured to by 22-year-olds? I don’t care what your SAT score was, sweetheart. You’re not that precocious.
Duke: Goodbye to One Man, One Vote
Thursday, June 17. 2010
Some more about this talent.
At age 15, Mark is already a veteran of the industry. His late Grandfather, Bruno Riccio OAM, realised Mark's talent as he sang along to Andrea Boccelli albums at the family's Italian restaurant at age nine. The boy soprano was soon taking singing lessons and before long Bruno was ferrying him to performances at markets, hospitals and charity balls, Mark's repertoire expanding to include swing and musical theatre numbers.
There's lots more at Youtube.com
Taxpayer funds are redistributed to other levels of government and to private organizations that use the funds to lobby for more, and more.
The Pacific Research Institute just completed a 92-page study of such "State-Level Lobbying and Taxpayers."
The study delved into lobbying disclosure laws in all the states, finding that on average the states scored a “D”, 59.3%, on disclosure.
Little wonder. Using the example of California, as the authors summarized in an op-ed:
When it comes to government-to-government lobbying, we’re not talking about small amounts of money, as California confirms. Direct government-to-government lobbying constituted the single largest category of state-level lobbying. Specifically, it represented $92.6 million of the $552.6 million California spent on lobbying, or 16.8 percent.
If that amount is expanded to include other taxpayer-funded organizations that are not directly government, the number increases to almost one-in-four-dollars of lobbying. Perhaps most telling, the level of taxpayer-funded lobbying at the state level, using California as a case study, is two-and-a-half times the magnitude of similar lobbying at the federal level.
While governors lobby the federal government, taxpayers in 50 states are staring down the barrel of April 15. Most do not intend their hard-earned money to fund lobbying activities on the part of government. All citizens have a right to expect that government-to-government lobbying will be subject to the same level of scrutiny and reporting as lobbying by the private sector. All states should make improvements in disclosure, accessibility and equal treatment.
The study points out, “A shocking 44 states provide specific exemptions in their lobbying laws for public agencies and public officials.”
Why?
The study continues:
For example, a bureaucrat’s prestige, power, and resources are ultimately a function of the importance of their area, the resources allocated to their department or agency, and the visibility of their work. Bennett and DiLorenzo argue that bureaucrats can and do indirectly create pressure on government to increase the resources and priority of their own departments by funding private organizations. The funding of these organizations creates a self-reinforcing dynamic: the outside group receives government money in part used to lobby the government for more programs and services in the area the funding department is responsible for. This creates pressure for the government (generally) to allocate greater funds to the department, which then in part allows for even greater funding of outside groups to continue lobbying.
Bennett and DiLorenzo describe a similar situation for politicians. Funding to outside groups by the government creates naturally strong constituencies for members of Congress. These outside groups can provide volunteers, campaign resources, and so-called independent voices of support for politicians during re-election campaigns.
A similar self-serving dynamic operates at the federal level:
Continue reading "Blockbuster Study: How Government Lobbies To Increase Itself"
I have been mulling over the notion of doing a post on ineffectiveness in people, but every time I thought about it, the subject just got too big to tackle. There are so many ways to be ineffective in life, ways of not addressing reality - and oneself - firmly.
Schneiderman is keeping it simple: "The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People"
A buddy who is a fan of Judge Yachts emails me the following:
Those of us originally from south of the Mason Dixon line get tired of hearing about how good the Yankee boat builders were. Southern boats ran rings around those Yankee blockades during the War of Northern Aggression.
Anyway, link is to a builder who constructs Chesapeake Bay style workboats, all gussied up for fishin' and cruisin' They don't have the high, flared bow like the Carolina style hulls of Buddy Davis, but have a nice wide transom so a following sea doesn't cause problems.
“I pretty much have my bad inclination [‘yetzer hara’] under control; it’s my good inclination [‘yetzer hatov’] that always gets me into trouble.”
Rabbi Wolfe Kelman (h/t, Vanderleun). I suppose that's the Yiddish version of "No good deed goes unpunished."
Female Viagra fails
From Shiver at Pajamas:
When I see a president with enough leisure time on his hands to party (not on his own dime, lest we forget) chime in on a baseball umpire’s call, and never miss a beat on the Democrat fundraising circuit or a chance to shave one more point from his golf score while crises explode unfettered from here to kingdom come, I see a president so out of touch with reality that it would take a complete nitwit not to assume the man has simply lost all his bearings. Flipped out. Gone ‘round the bend. Is so out to lunch that he doesn’t even have the good sense to pretend he’s hard at work so as to quell the public’s growing-more-frantic-by-the-day concern.
And when all is said and done, I shall always remember the Hey Jude sing-along as the most clarifying image of the whole unseemly mess we refer to as the Obama presidency. He’s done.
Is he? I did think this quote from his speech was strange, when he spoke of "our determination to fight for the America we want for our children ... even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like."
More detail from that IPCC insider:
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider.
The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was ”only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography …
Powerline: The O's long nose
IRANIAN AND HEZHOLLAH FLOTILLAS ARE SAILING
There is plenty of oil around
The BP Oil Disaster: Big Government’s Dream Come True
$5m prize for good governance goes unclaimed again in Africa
Feds move to grab power over state governent unions
Did you wonder, as I did, who Mead was and what he does?
131 Law School Deans Fail To Sign Letter Supporting Kagan
Wednesday, June 16. 2010
The US Labor Department is going after employers of children age 13 and under.
Anyone illegally employing 12-and 13-year-olds will now face a penalty of $6,000 for each violation. The maximum fine previously was $900.
Those employing children under 12 will face a penalty of $8,000 per violation. That's up from a previous maximum of $1,150.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis (soh-LEES') says the new fines are part of a stepped up effort to crack down on illegal child labor. The penalties could go as high as $11,000 per violation in cases that involve injury or willful and repeated offenders.
I started working at age 5, sweeping the sidewalks in front of stores, dusting stock, shoveling snow, and the myriad of other jobs I could find in the neighborhood. Twenty-five cents for an afternoon’s work was big bucks to a poor slum kid. More important, I learned work habits. Friends raised in rural areas worked in the fields at age 5. They learned work habits. We all feel better off today for the learning.
No one is in favor of putting kids in sweat-shops for 16-hour days, or such, as my grandparents were in the early 1900s.
But, next time you hear anyone complaining that kids don’t have work habits, or don’t value the money they have or the comforts, thank the types who feel that childhood and adolescence should be a skate or so protected as to deny kids and teens the opportunities to become adults with better work habits and self-responsibility.
At Moonbattery. There must be a crisis of Brit 12 year-olds taking up Cubans to imitate ol' Winston.
From Gateway:
Over the past 30 years:
Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.
But, they’re funding projects in Brazil.
We have the Chinese drilling off our southern coast, and Brazil is drilling everywhere they can. I think the Dems have an aversion to American oil.
 John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of what we now call Methodism (the term was originally used as an insult but was eventually adopted by Wesley), and his brother Charles spent some time in Savannah, GA. I lost a bet about that at a dinner party last year, which cost me a bottle of good Montrachet.
Methodism was the ultimate source of our 12-step programs: the Wesleyans liked to have methods for spiritual discipline. John Wesley was an evangelist, and liked to preach outdoors. He tried to convert the Georgia Indians.
He was a "by faith alone" preacher.
He got in a bit of a problem with a Georgia lady, and eventually returned to England. Here's a piece on Wesley in Georgia, and here's a Wesley bio.
The hymns written by John and Charles Welsey are among my favorites. Charles wrote 6000 hymns. John even produced a hymnal but, as this site notes,
Today people are much more familiar with some of Charles Wesley's hymns than with John Wesley's sermons.
Image of John Wesley above, Charles Wesley below:
More on Voegli's important new book, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State, at Powerline. One quote:
Voegeli seems to understand welfare state liberalism like Whitaker Chambers understood Communism, from the inside. Jonah Goldberg has written of him: "Bill Voegeli has become my new James Q. Wilson -- the egghead I always read even if I don't think I'm interested at first."
Good online radio, from the Ivy League: WKCR. On Saturday they had a Howlin' Wolf festival which blew my mind. And right after, I went to hear Nozze di Figaro.
How much amazing music can a brain process in one day?
Powerline is clearly a Dartmouth-oriented website. Nary a month goes by without their talking about their attachment to their beloved Alma Mater. Volokh has Dartmouth connections too.
I just learned that American Thinker, another essential site, is sort of a Kenyon College site. Both Lifson, Publisher, and Baehr, founder and "Chief Political Correspondent," are Kenyon guys.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider
Compare, contrast: News Judgment, Washington-Post style
Chantrill begins:
It is true that liberalism is cruel, corrupt, wasteful, and unjust. But one should never forget its delusion. The delusion is a simple one. It is a belief that government can be made rational and efficient. This delusion leads our liberal friends into disaster after disaster.
Applebaum: Acting like politicians can solve all our problems just makes us look weak
NPR Poll Shows Tough Road Ahead For Democrats
MSNBC bashes the O. Scroll down and see the Frank Luntz video. Good grief. Americans really can see through BS.
Powerline: Was Einstein bright?
Tiger: Meritocracy and teachers unions cannot coexist
A new friend in Iran? Ahmadinejad: Obama Is Immature
Remarkable: One-fifth of NYC supports Tea Party
Hillary Clinton: Secretary of Your Estate
No Soccer please, we're Moslems
Cruel, via Insty:
IN THE MAIL: From Mike Cullen, Whiny Little Bitch: The Excuse-Filled Presidency of Barack Obama. That’s rather harsh for a sitting President, but it does support my observation that Obama’s first term has already morphed into Bush’s second term. .
If not Carter's...
Steyn:
Now Mr. Bawer finds himself cited for "Islamophobia" in an official report from Norway's near parodically Orwellian "Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion". .
A repeat, which splains it all:
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