Friday, March 5. 2010
 Want more kids to graduate from college? It can be easily done: just lower the standards even further.
Speaking of college, look at these ungrateful crybabies
Muslim group moves to ban burka
How loopy is Liu? He is a real live moonbat.
Legal aspects of the digitus impudicus
The NYT finally deigned to do an obit for Arnold Beichman. Final paragraph:
Socialism is dictatorship, he told Columbia College Today, the alumni magazine, in 2005. “The control of wealth is the control over human life,” he said. “So if a centrally planned economy decides how wealth is to be created and how it is to be distributed, then they really have a control over human life.”
Like we said:
In a private meeting with House progressives, President Obama said that this bill is just a foundation for future reform, and could pave the way for a later push for the public option and even single-payer systems at the state-level.
Hurricane Katrina Victims to Sue Oil Companies. That defense team is going to have fun.
From OMG! Global warming!!!
Thursday, March 4. 2010
The current Newsweek reviews a new book about North Korea based on study of its internal news reports, art and school texts. Threats, mostly hollow, and mild sanctions, by Bush and Obama, have not stopped North Korea’s nuclear bomb making or long-range missiles fired over Japan.
Kim Jong Il and, before him, Kim Il Sung based their legitimacy not on fabricated reports of the country's economic success (that line is directed at outsiders) but on a world view that casts them as "great parental leaders" who embody Korean virtue at its most untainted. In this national narrative, the Korean people "are too pure-blooded, and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world" without the leaders' benefic guidance, writes Myers. This potent myth of racial superiority is aimed at confirming to the North Koreans that they are morally superior to Americans and the rest of the world, even if they lag behind it in technology or wealth. When visiting foreigners are covered by the domestic media, they are portrayed as being highly respectful--even obsequious--toward their North Korean hosts.
Today a North Korean colonel who spent 16 years in Austria procuring luxury goods for the father and son tyrants, before faking his death in order to defect, held a news conference to tout his tell-all book that “shows the deep divide between the lifestyles of the North Korean leadership and their citizens, who sometimes must subsist eating tree bark, knowing they will be sent to labor camps if they criticize the government.”
Kim Jong Ryul said the late dictator had dozens of sprawling villas — some of them built underground — filled with crystal chandeliers, silk wallpaper and costly furniture…. It was in these palatial homes that Kim Il Sung and his family would feast on an immense array of fine foods — including Austrian specialties….He also described how Kim Il Sung — while publicly denouncing "Western decadence and imperialism" — had an extensive luxury car collection that included Mercedes, Lincolns, Fords, Cadillacs and Citroens. Kim Jong Il, who liked taking fast sports cars for a spin, also appeared to share his father's passion.
There’s more tasty tidbits, like Kim Il Sung sending chefs to Austria to ferret out recipes from the best restaurants.
Admiring the North Korean regimented mass dance steps, Vietnam has imported North Korean marching dancemasters to advise the government on choreography for its celebration of Hanoi’s 1000th anniversary.
Impoverished and isolated, North Korea has little to export [aside from nuclear materials and technology] and its tourism earnings have been hit by political wrangling with South Korea over the North's military threats to the region and nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea’s agriculture minister who defected in 1998 estimated that up to 2.8 million North Koreans starved to death during the ‘90’s, that’s about 10% of its population. Now, Pyongyang’s geniuses have committed “currency reform” that made its currency worthless, to wipe out the black market trade that kept many North Koreans alive. Then there’s about 200,000 in North Korea’s prison camps, worked and starved to death in harsh conditions, along the way experimented on, tortured and even babies murdered.
Hey, but don’t let some dead or starved North Koreans, like this woman, stand in the way of a party.
A disastrous currency reform, which wiped whatever little savings North Koreans had, has compounded the effect of international sanctions. For many, survival has become impossible. Currently, ten million North Koreans are living on less than a dollar a day.
In the meantime, this year’s celebrations include the traditional Flower Festival.
For Kim’s birthday, the red kimjongilia was all the rave. The flower, a begonia, was created by Japanese botanist Mototeru Kamo of Shizuoka Prefecture and dedicated to Kim Jong-il.
Two sporting events were also held in the capital yesterday (figure skating and synchronised swimming) in honour of Kim who opted instead to attend a concert by the Unhasu Orchestra, organised to mark the new lunar year, which began on Sunday.
The North Korean leadership’s new motto: Party Hearty Like There’s No Tomorrow. It’s worked so far, for them.
 - Robin from Berkeley at Am Thinker
- Driscoll: I Think We Can Now Officially Pronounce The Late ’60s D.O.A.
- and via that Driscoll post, this good one from Reason last fall: The Paranoid Center - How the panic over right-wing violence is being used to marginalize peaceful dissent
Your Maggie's Farm posters tend to be fairly Centrist-Conservative, like most Americans. How scary are we?
I see that George Will wrote a piece, The Basement Boys -The making of modern immaturity, which echoes the themes I mentioned in my post this week, Are men "naturally" monogamous?
Will wearily concludes:
Last November, when Tiger Woods's misadventures became public, his agent said: "Let's please give the kid a break." The kid was then 33. He is now 34 but, no doubt, still a kid. The puerile anthem of a current Pepsi commercial is drearily prophetic: "Forever young."
Alas, Will makes the common error of associating years with psychological maturity and strength of character. I have known plenty of mature 18 year-olds - even 16 year-olds, and plenty of infantile 75 year-olds.
Redstate. The government could not run a candy shop. Enuf said.
The Endeavor, off Newport in 2004
Our recent post on this year's America's Cup race in Valencia got me to reviewing the history of J-Class boats, often known as "J-boats." An excellent summary here, which takes note of the surviving Js.
I've seen 'em up close, but never sailed one. Open for an invitation, though. I do know how to trim a jib but that monster foresail is one big Genoa, not a jib.
Hi there. Are you a Lefty? Do you tend to get all wee-wee'd up when you hear Sarah Palin talk?
If so, then this video is not for you.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. Mencken
 Many cheerful facts about aging
Obsolete: The US Mail
Why recycling glass is silly and useless
Reporters used to be tough guys. This one sounds like a big baby - plus he doesn't have a clue
US now #1 in natural gas production. Hey - it's organic!
Not predicted by models: Sea ice thickens
Prediction of the intertubes, c. 1995
Lowry: Clever rhetoric from the O:
It's all rhetorically clever as far as it goes. But the problem here has never been the salesmanship, but the bill itself, which is an anchor around anyone trying to sell it.
The problem with one-party government: Led by New York, big-government blue states sink deeper into corruption.
Why can't we sell our own bone marrow?
Mankiw:
Americans, as well as citizens of many other advanced nations, now spend about twice as many years in retirement as they did a generation or two ago. During that time, they expect the government to provide them with income support and healthcare. Is it any wonder that we face serious fiscal problems?
Why does this Tea Party thing drive Libs crazy?
Wednesday, March 3. 2010
A Pudd'n Guy who knows his math. An easy investment in a lifetime of free air travel.
BTW, it would save us all some linking time and trouble if y'all would just check Vanderleun's American Digest daily, or twice, or thrice daily, same as you do Maggie's.
 Just stumbled on this 2001 book by Ted Dalrymple: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.
I think I'll track down a copy. It's the first book I have heard of from a Psychiatrist taking a look at the topic, and Dalrymple has spent much of his career in tattoo land.
I assume he is talking about Brit families of multi-generational poverty and dysfunction rather than the temporarily poor (eg the unemployed, new immigrants, grad students, people down on their luck, etc) or the electively poor (eg hippies, small farmers and farm help, spendthrifts, Maine fishing and hunting guides, aspiring artists and actors, etc) who together make up much of the American poverty stats.
Addendum: By coincidence I see from Insty that Dalrymple has a new book:
IN THE MAIL: From Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.
Can he say that nowadays? Oh, I forgot. He's in the USA now, isn't he?
Photo: Ted Dalrymple, aka Anthony Daniels MD, retired Psychiatrist
It's an 11,500 year-old temple in southeastern Turkey. h/t to a good piece at Protein.
 - The Mediterranean population of the Bluefin Tuna - "Tonno" - the King of Fish, is headed for extinction due to overfishing. Their vulnerability is that they all congregate in one place for breeding, and helos direct the netting. EU politics will permit that extinction to occur. A damn shame. Of course, the regular Atlantic population is headed for the same fate.
- And Bottlenose Dolphins aren't really fish, but the Japanese in Taji kill 23,000 of them each year. This is not stewardship.
- Another fish tale: An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World.
Apparatchiks who pretend to be revolutionaries — that’s an awful lot of the press these days.
Prof. Reynolds, here.
It's time we did a plug for a wholesome site, The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys. Photo is not from it, but sorta could be:
Post-industrial ghost towns. Why won't these folks move for jobs, like most people do? Texas has tons of work.
Krauthammer on Congress.
Sowell: Alice in Healthcare
Related, The WSJ's Abuse of Power begins:
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
Wilkinson gets it:
A lot of people are saying government is broken. They’re mainly saying it because the Democratic health care bill isn’t going to pass in a form that gives most Democrats what they wanted. The argument, in its general form, goes like this: There is this huge problem! My team’s favored solution to the problem is politically infeasible. So, politics is broken! When you put it like that, it’s evidently a pretty silly argument.
To get a better grip on the debate behind the debate I think you need to understand that big entitlement politics is about enacting policy that generates a kind of lock-in effect for a new power-shifting political equilibrium. Savvy political operators know that big entitlements, once established, create their own political demand. That’s why, for example, it was so important for the left to kill Social Security reform.
"create their own demand." Exactly right. From one seed, another mighty weed to strangle our garden.
Frank Rich: Obsessed and deranged. And Paul Krugman: Always pissed off. These two cranks have a problem with gratitude. We may be cranks too, but we have gratitude - and try for a bit of humor.
Tea Party violence
Inst. of Physics slams CRU
Weekly Standard: Media Failure: Global Warming Edition
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
 A charming female figure affects men like a drug.
A dinner partner asked me "Are men naturally monogamous?" on Saturday. What a silly question. "Of course they aren't."
Men are obviously programmed to want to have a good time spreading their DNA around willy nilly, as it were, but, at the same time, normal men are capable of forming these strange things we call "relationships," of forming sturdy and deep attachments, of developing strong character restraints, and of living by moral codes and committments to others.
We often refer to those latter things as core aspects of "manliness" in our culture: loyalty, honor, dependability, reliability, responsibility, self-control, providing support and family defence and all that. Otherwise, a guy is just a teenager. The combination of the former and the latter is part of the male challenge. (Females have their own set of life dilemmas.)
Still, these "naturally" questions I get always raise the basic problem: How does one discuss "natural" for a naturally culture-building and society-building animal like man? The discussion always becomes circular.
Freud was not the first person to address the topic, but he did his best.
Did you pack your own bag?
Yes, you always pack your bag. You'll be tempted to say that your new man-servant Abdul Arafat packed it in his tent, and then welded it shut so you couldn't peek. Resist this compulsion unless you crave proctological attention followed by long rides on Greyhound buses for life.
Are you innocent?
Yes. Everybody in this prison is always innocent. Just ask them.
Lots of other important FAQs at Vanderleun
Mitt Romney. But does he have sex appeal? Does he tingle? Is he cool?
 Tar and Chip is a good way to do, or re-do, a driveway. It's more attractive than asphalt, cheaper, and affords better traction.
It can also be applied on top of an asphalt driveway to improve the appearance. It's basically stone chips or small gravel, of whatever color you chose, rolled into hot tar. Over time, careless snow-plowing will wear away the gravel. Not quickly, though. It lasts for years.
This guy loves his tar and chip.
Do we have any readers who are tar and chip fans?
|
