Monday, March 8. 2010
At Chicago Boyz, Seizing the Opportunity to Destroy Western Civilization. A quote:
Narrative reduces personal experience to a linear progression where cause and effect seem to have a purposeful order. These narratives can then be shared with others, leading to the best definition of history ever: history is a fable agreed upon. Most personal narratives will never be the equivalent of the histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Gibbon; or even the fables of Aesop, La Fontaine, or Orwell. Most are simply humble habitual ways of thinking. As habits of thought, such narratives largely control how you react to unfolding events, whether it’s pricking your finger or waging a world war.
Photo: Killer Whales killing Sea Lions just for the fun of it.
Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.
Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt).
Euphemisms are a form of propaganda (see The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook: Updated! New Entries!) designed to kill reality.
"Imagine," indeed.
Please post your favorite euphemistic reality-killers in the comments.
 From a commenter on our Communist Manifesto post:
Quite a few years ago I was at a company management training class at which we had a Marxist professor as an invited speaker. He explained to us that our political views were determined merely by our economic self-interest.
I raised my hand and suggested to him that maybe the political views of the academic class are partly determined by their economic and status self-interest.
He had clearly never thought of such a thing, and was a little upset. Some of the other attendees thought I had been rude to a guest by raising the question...
A companion piece, from another brilliant commenter here:
A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I've since forgotten when he said, "From each according to ability: to each according to need".
My standard and automatic response to that statement (which I hadn't heard anyone actually spout in MANY years) is, "Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?"
 It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.
It's Here. I love it.
(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)
 For the guys and gals over there -
Toon via Moonbattery
Mark Steyn: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats. Steyn gets it. It's worth any price.
America puts off the pain to have some jam today. And, CBO: $1T yearly deficits for at least the next 10 years
The Tides Foundation: Bagman for the Left
Feeling a "bit off" today? Who doesn't? Crystal meth is good for that feeling.
No mention that a "minority" made that noose. But exactly in what way is academia "tolerant"? Higher ed strikes me as the most intolerant place in America.
Tiger:
Barack Obama has called an "entrepreneurship summit" with the Muslim world. Naturally, I have a question: What could Barack Obama or anybody in his administration teach about entrepreneurship? Years from now, when the Muslim world has gone another generation without a single useful invention, will they look back at this "summit" and regard it as another evil western deception? Of course, they will have only themselves to blame insofar as the invitation promises advice from "social entrepreneurs," Orwellian slang for "transnational community organizer."
The Golden State's Me Generation - In the midst of the Great Recession California students protest in favor of themselves. Worth reading just for the quote from the Prof.
Reason: Busting the Well-Endowed - It's time to cut federal funding for the arts
Sunday, March 7. 2010
The Washington Post’s editors took Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task in February 2009 when she downplayed speaking out about human rights abuses during her trip to China. She'd said: "We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." The Chinese were delighted. The Washington Post editors pointed out that the US speaking out hasn’t interfered in the past when there are mutual goals, “But Ms. Clinton's statement will have an effect: It will demoralize thousands of democracy advocates in China, and it will cause many others around the world to wonder about the character of the new U.S. administration.”
Last December, Hillary Clinton clarified. In an address at Georgetown University:
Under the first element of the agenda, Clinton said the United States would be working to hold everyone accountable for human rights in their countries. In order to “reinforce our moral authority,” she said, the U.S. will lead by example by way of reporting figures for human trafficking that occur within its borders for the first time.
Clinton said that while holding other accountable could entail public denunciations of a country’s leaders, “other times our negotiations would take place behind closed doors,” such as with China and Russia.
The second element, “principled pragmatism,” also applies to China and Russia especially, she said. The administration can deplore the murders of Russian journalists and violation of minority rights in China, but “the assumption that we must either pursue democratic rights or [national strategy] is wrong.”
The third element involved partnering with and supporting groups like NGOs which share U.S. goals, and the fourth involved highlighting success stories and rejecting the notion that some situations cannot be remedied.
Tomorrow, Monday, Sec. Clinton has the opportunity to effect her third element.
The Wall Street Journal editorial highlights Friend and Faux on Human Rights:
Some of the world’s most courageous champions of human rights will convene today, Monday, March 8, in Geneva, seat of the United Nations’s Human Rights Council [where gross human rights violator Iran is up for possible election to the UN Human Rights Council]. But don’t expect the Council itself to welcome these distinguished visitors.
The Geneva Summit -- organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel -- will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum.…
In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that it was time “that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell.” In Geneva today, the real truth tellers will be meeting down the block from the Council’s chambers. It would be nice to see the U.S. ambassador show up.
The world’s oppressed await.
The Azimut Magellano. A 74' blue-water boat, but you can park her with a joystick and make tight, high-speed turns like a speedboat.
There is a market for such wondrous craft but, for better or worse, it ain't me.
I tend to think we still live in a Greco-Roman civilization. This from George Mason Prof Steven Davies:
Anchoress. Is it God speaking, or is it just me? I often wonder about that.
 Image via Moonbattery. Related, Obamacare Is a Budgetary Disaster
Related, $2.3 trillion later, 23 million still uninsured
Related, a quote at Powerline:
The great mystery of the health care debate is why liberals, who don't trust doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies or insurers, trust Congress and federal bureaucrats.
Natural methane, from the ground
Can Wild Bison Repopulate the Plains? I am all for that.
A good summary of the issues at Weekly Std: In Denial - The meltdown of the climate campaign.
School Board President of Failing Detroit Schools Can’t Write
All about Rahm Emanuel and health care, etc. TNR. h/t, Driscoll
Krugman vs. Krugman
Chile quake shifted earth's axis. h/t, Vandy
Prof Bill Gray responds to Globe's op-ed titled Climate Change is Proven Fact. At least we are finally getting some debate, and outing those who benefit from the alarmism.
Stossel: The case for legalizing drugs, prostitution, organ sales, and other consensual acts.
While College Fails to Adequately Transmit Civic Knowledge, It Influences Opinion on Polarizing Social Issues. h/t, Protein
Can there be a value-neutral tax? Does income tax punish work?
Left gears up to fight media wars
David Warren:
Economic decline is a choice, not a fate, and it has everything to do with big, intrusive government.
We posted about the prodigal son a couple of weeks ago. We are finding Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith so compelling and eye-opening that we want to re-recommend it, especially during Lent.
Image is Rembrandt's Prodigal Son
Saturday, March 6. 2010
From Walter Mead at one of our favorite new web sites.
I thought I'd list out some tips & tweaks that might make your browsing experience more enjoyable. I'll cover Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.
Below the fold, I'll offer some suggestions on how to clean things up and get more web viewing space (IE in particular needs help in this department), how to make the tool bar buttons more efficient, how to get rid of those ugly purple fonts that some pages display in IE, some clarification on browser speed, and some bug fixes.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Browser tips"
Re-posted from a couple of years ago -
(Trout season around 
here opens on in April. Fishing has a lull during the summer, and perks up again in the fall.)
“Fishing Bamboo” is the name of a wonderful book by John Gierach, a veritable fishing curmudgeon of the old school.
In reviewing the book, W. D. Wetherell said, “The split bamboo fly rod and the mystique that goes with it is a subject that deserves just the right mix of skepticism and reverence, and John Gierach is just the writer to supply this, in a fascinating book that explains what the excitement is all about.”
Yet like many wonderful things of the past, the bamboo rod is close to being on the endangered list. I took one of my late father’s wonderful E.C. Powell rods to Montana to fish the Bighorn (hated it – we were trolling downstream from a boat with the fly being swept ahead of us by the current). As I assembled the rod, the 20ish guide said “It just don’t look right, being yellow.” He had never seen a rod that wasn’t molded from green or brown-dyed synthetic petroleum by-products reverently referred to as “graphite”. A professional fishing guide, on the Bighorn, and he had never seen a bamboo rod.
Well, I have to wonder why not, and deal with the conclusions. Those of us who use bamboo are probably using our father’s or grandfather’s rods, because the values of these rods have gone from high to stupid. I lost my mother’s 2½ oz. 7-foot “baby Powell” on a transcontinental flight, and after two years of mourning and being unable even to contemplating fishing, I felt morally obligated to replace it. The 2½ oz. 7-foot Leonard “Fairy Catskill” I found on eBay cost me $3,600, and I fish it often, refusing to be terrified. It’s just Ma’s rod reborn, and it is meant to fish the 7”-9” wild trout we find where I fish in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The tip, maybe one millimeter thick, is still composed of six long, incredibly slender, patiently-planed pieces of Tonkin cane spliced together, tied with dark red thread and then lacquered. There are precious few people alive today who can replicate or repair such artistry.
Orvis still sells bamboo, and there are still some fabulous rodmakers working today, like my friend Jim in Florida, a retired USAF Master Sergeant, who not only makes amazing bamboo rods, he also make all his own machine tools for the bamboo and also the metal fittings.
Well, where are the rods? I fear they have fallen into the hands of “collectors”, look-but-don’t-touch people with a lot of money and minimal fishing skills – much like Purdey shotguns. Have you ever seen a Purdey in the field in the US where it can get dinged on stone walls, fall in the mud, and run over by SUVs (except for those fancy-ass Hudson Valley corporate clubs).
I have several old bamboo rods and may add one of Jim’s quad rods to my arsenal, and I have some English shotguns, but I follow – and leave the gentle reader with – my partner Tom’s advice. Be sure you can say that you have caught a fish with every rod you own, and that you have taken a bird with every shotgun; only then do you honor the rare skill of the maker.
(Image is an old Heddon 7-8 wt. 9' rod, for big fish - salmon and salt-water fishies. I never thought I'd see it, but salt-water fly-fishing has become all the rage these days.)
How we drill in the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota. Video
I've been a kid, and I've been an adult. Adult's better.
Robert Parker, quoted at Wash. Rebel
Re the press and climategate:
The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business. For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up. Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics. They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards. They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay. That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.
Friday, March 5. 2010
California Republican Senate primary contenders Tom Campbell, Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore had an hour radio debate today, their first, slated to focus on national security issues. I listened closely to the first 43-minutes, leaving to play 1-on-1 with my son after school and watch the basketball tryouts. I was struck that at the tryouts there was none of the under the basket elbows and knees I was used to from Brooklyn schoolyard basketball. But there was plenty at the debate.
Continue reading "CA Senate Debate Knees and Elbows (UPDATE: Refs Miss Campbell Fumble)"
Jimmy Rodgers is said to have risen from his sickbed to record this the day before he died. h/t SDA
Headed to Sugarbush for the weekend. (Do you know what a "sugarbush" is? It is a grove of Sugar Maples.)
In praise of Parsnips. We love parsnips. Steam, then light sautee in butter.
Chile will survive the earthquake because its democracy works.
Global aid harming Haiti economy. h/t, Tiger
‘The Science is Settled,’ They Told Copernicus
Population Bomb Author Giving Advice to Global Warming Nuts. A quote in the article:
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
This is a re-post from guest author Skook:
Glaciers and mountain-building have created many distinct species of trout throughout the Pacific drainage. To find them, fish a mountain river, take a boat out on the Pacific, or hike to a desert lake.
Rainbow (above) – Silver with black spots and a reddish band along the side. Their native range is the West Coast mountains, though they have been introduced elsewhere in North America and beyond. Redbands are a variant found in the Great Basin, where they have adapted to high summer temperatures. Steelheads are anadromous rainbows that spend parts of their lives in the North Pacific from Kamchatka down to Malibu Creek near Los Angeles. In the Northwest, rainbows and steelhead are the premier game trout of the rivers and coast.
(While Rainbows are to be found in the East, these are all transplants or hatchery fish. The native stream trout in the East is the Brook Trout - which is a char.)
 Cutthroat – Meriwether Lewis stopped at a Philadelphia tackle shop before setting out and his purchases served his expedition well, like on the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805. Private Silas Goodrich fished the river as Lewis described events. Goodrich caught a trout “with specks of a deep black…and a small dash of red on each side behind the front ventral fins… the flesh, when in good order, of a rose red.” There are at least 14 types, often unique to particular river systems. Cutthroats are the classic trout of the inland American West, and they sometimes interbreed with Rainbows.
 Dolly Varden - These are char (as is the eastern Brook Trout), like trout but with different teeth and coloration. Dollys are olive or gray-green with yellow to pink spots and light gray bellies. A character from a Dickens novel, Dolly Varden became the name of a patterned dress and in the 1870’s the name was given to the char found in California’s McCloud River. Dolly Varden are similar to Bull Trout, another char, and at one time they were thought to be the same species. They spend time in the ocean as do Cutthroats.
There are a few other species found in isolated areas that exist today only due to the hard work of folks like Trout Unlimited. Here are two examples:
Apache Trout - Jump in your car and drive to the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation about three hours northeast of Phoenix. There in the White River is the gold, red, and black Apache. It has been a long struggle due to loss of habitat and interbreeding with rainbows. But now things look good enough to move it from the endangered list to merely “threatened” so you may legally try your luck at catch and release.
Gila Trout – Another modestly reviving species in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, it too had been pushed to the brink by development and competition with non-native trout introduced decades ago. Gilas have black spots on gold and copper bodies and grow to over a foot. Long term restoration has brought them back enough to permit limited fishing in a few beautiful mountain streams. Bring your hiking boots.
 If you are like me, you are getting sick and tired of the endless push for government control of medical care.
These folks aren't listening to America, but they are wearing us down and the Libs are doing a full-court press now.
One more chance to send your Senators and your Rep a brief note with your opinion. A FAX is more useful than an email, but anything is better than nothing. I advise doing so regardless of their position on the topic.
I faxed my folks in DC. I told them I would support the Republican proposals for health care reform, but that the 2000 page Dem mess is an obnoxious and unwanted piece of garbage.
FAX and emails of Congress here.
That's what the beer man calls out at Yankee Stadium: "Hey! Beer man! Beer man here! You know you want it." Devilish marketing.
You know you want this pretty Hinckley 49, currently for sale. But even if you afford her, can you afford to keep her?
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