Saturday, December 19. 2009
The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created - created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar, author of Legitimacy in the Modern State
Begin your Christmas shopping yet? I thought I'd begin today or tomorrow.
Did everybody know that Wikipedia is a non-profit? FAQs about Wikipedia
What would they do to me today if they saw the pictures I drew in Kindergarten? (h/t, Tiger)
California as a failed state
Is health care reform a gift or lump of coal?
Above the law? SEIU and the MA Senate race
From Michael Feinstein in the NYT:
If you look at a list of the most popular Christmas songs, you’ll find that the writers are disproportionately Jewish: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” (yes, Mel Tormé was Jewish), “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” — perennial, beloved and, mostly, written for the sheet music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, not for a show or film. (Two notable exceptions: “White Christmas,” introduced in “Holiday Inn,” and “Silver Bells,” written for “The Lemon Drop Kid.”)
Libertarians and Conservatives, at Ace. One quote:
Barney Frank is a crusader against any efforts to impose or even encourage any sort of traditional morality by the government. He is -- as regards only traditional morality -- a libertarian.
Meanwhile, he's supporting the government's efforts to throw you in jail if you don't purchase a government-qualified health insurance plan.
Liberals -- leftists, really -- continue to "bravely" (is it brave anymore?) tweak and thwart traditional mores and taboos while simultaneously replacing them with new taboos and new Temperance Crusades even more onerous and obnoxious and freedom-destroying than the ones they're so "courageously" freeing us from.
IN: Government-permitted gambling
OUT: Government-permitted Ho-Ho's and Mountain Dew
IN: Gay "bathhouses"
OUT: Actual baths -- too much water and too much energy used!
IN: Transgenderism
OUT: Transfats
IN: Anal bulbs
OUT: Light bulbs
h/t Gateway - An interview with one of our favorites, Thaddeus McCotter, plus the Republican Policy Committee Principles (listed below on cont. page)
Continue reading "Saturday links"
Friday, December 18. 2009
Since "the time for talking is over," we will try not to post further about the joke that is Copenhagen for the rest of this pre-Christmas weekend - except to note these observations:
Obama sez 'Time for talk is over.' China and India Say, "O Shut the F Up Bozo!"
Obama braves blizzard to preach at the Church of Climate Scientology
and, of course, big early blizzard predicted from DC to New England. Great! Somebody needs to remind me again: "Weather isn't climate."
From Warner in The Telegraph:
When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?
and
This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.
From Hoven in Who Needs Data?, which begins:
The scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), and the people who funded them, did not know how utterly useless CRU was. All the research done at CRU made no difference whatsoever to the "science" of global warming . Just ask other scientists and global warming alarmists. Heck, ask CRU.
What do the EVIL WARMISTS want? Global domination! It's called the Belgrade Process. Ya can't make this stuff up.
Update: Is this for real? Give China and India a pass, and give away more of our $. Just to get a piece of paper signed. What a joke.
Photo is Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, during the summer. Nice place to drink some beer.
A Bird Dog pup took an oath today. He took a vow this past summer, so he is now up to his ears in oaths and vows.
I looked up the etymology of "oath," which I rightly suspected to be of Scandinavian origin:
OATH, a solemn vow. (E.) M. E. ooth, oth; Chaucer, C. T. 120.—A. S. áđ, Grein, i. 17; the change from á to oa being regular, as in ác, oak, ár, oar. + Du. eed. + Icel. eiđr. + Dan. and Swed. ed. + Goth. aiths. + G. eid; O. H. G. eit. ?. The Teut. type is AITHA; Fick, iii. 4; allied to O. Irish oeth, oath (Rhys); cf. W. an-ud-on, a false oath, perjury.
Here's "vow:"
The word vow (oath, assure) comes from the Latin voveo (I vow), which derives from the Greek verb ?????? (to assure, to promise with certainty; veveo).
I wonder how much our culture takes oaths and vows seriously in modern times. I like to think that I take all of my promises with the greatest seriousness - but don't we all?
When I think about it, the person to whom I have broken the most promises is myself.
 Q&O on Copenhagen, etc:
China is emerging as a leader among the 130 nations that make up the misnamed Group of 77. While Hugo Chavez may be the court jester, the real power of that group lays with China. And China sees a developing power vacuum with the diminished role of the US – partially due to the financial crisis and partially due to a young and inexperienced president. Again, they’re not staking out a negotiating position, they’re telling the rest of the powers the way the table is set. Demands will follow later.
Too logical? Climate Change Is Nature's Way: It's our good luck one of Earth's many ice ages ended 12,000 years ago.
Yes, He Can: President Obama’s Power to Make an International Climate Commitment Without Waiting for Congress
Meanwhile, in this insanity, billions of taxpayer's $ to Third World countries to cope with an AGW which doesn't exist.
Video of no fuel, no emissions, no brains
He lives in a different world from that of Bernie Sanders
Hot Air: Merry Christmas: Senate ObamaCare vote may come on December 24th
Americans Souring on Democrats
Real global warming, at Insty
The atmosphere is cooling. Cold as hell in the Northeast now. And to our continued amusement, Copenhagen remains in a deepening deep freeze
Yes, Al Gore caught again lying like a Polar Bear-skin rug
Also via Lucianne: President Obama’s allies try to shield him from a potential climate catastrophe
Powerline on Pawlenty in NH. Right message.
Walker: Obama the America denier
In CT last week. A stacked-rail fence, I think - but maybe it's a zigzag fence:
Thursday, December 17. 2009
From A Jacksonian, trained as a geologist, on how science works and doesn't work:
The very first warning signs on Antrhopogenic Global Warming (AGW) and just plain old GW came from the paleoclimatologists who tried to run the models made for AGW/GW against known climates and what those models would predict for those climates. The models came through with junk, not even getting close to the actual climates they were tested against. When the paleoclimatologists asked for the datasets from those pushing AGW (mainly EA CRU, but elsewhere) they were stalled and rebuffed. Coming just after the K-T event and its aftermath, paleoclimatologists were not slow in criticizing the models, how they did not form into anything resembling known past climates nor did the models explain how those climates changed.
AGW/GW advocates refused to come out an play in the full contact body sport that was geology.
They retreated to the hothouse of academia, environmentalism and seeking to 'extract' government grants for their perfect theory of how bad man was to planet Earth. Apparently they couldn't model how nasty Earth was to life forms during the Permo-Triassic that saw over 95% of all species perish... but then geologists don't put an anthropomorphic form of the Earth on a pedestal and worship her. If you DID anthropomorphize the planet it would come out looking far worse than Pol Pot and all other mass murderers, combined, with just a hint of Charles Manson thrown in for fun. But then those seeking to castigate man don't bother to look at Earth's history, either.
Christmas book? NRO reminds us of Florence King's collection of columns, STET, damnit. One quote:
The draft produced the kind of men that today's girls have never known, and relations between the sexes were better for it. What sticks in my mind about them is their self-sufficiency and competence in fixing things that broke and figuring out solutions to emergencies. Thanks to the draft I belong to the last generation of American women who could scream "Do something!" and get results. Most of my men were intellectuals, but they had been taught in basic traning to change a tire in 90 seconds, rig up electrical wiring, tie knots that stayed tied, and take a rifle apart and reassemble it while blindfolded. This last was never necessary in civilian life, but it made for a self-assured deftness that was awesome.
On the Brink, at American Thinker. One quote:
Given the political landscape the left decided on a drastic approach: President Obama and his Congressional allies would take advantage of their temporary preponderance and go all in on their program to take control of three major sectors: health care, education and energy. Speed was of the essence; while the Republicans are in post-electoral disarray, attack, attack, attack, overwhelm the enemy's defenses, give him no time to regroup, and push through the coveted legislation. All the chips were placed on a blitzkrieg. Using a football analogy, the Democrats threw a Hail Mary pass into the enemy's end-zone, pinning all their hopes on one daring toss.
Fortunately, it hasn't worked out very well, thus far.
Except for a supply for starter logs under the eaves, I like to keep my firewood wet and out in the weather. I go through around 4-5 cords each season (which isn't much), but it's enough to keep my home fires burning.
Dry wood makes for a dramatic, short-lived blaze, but it will not smolder and produce the slow heat and the slow burn, the popping, and the flickering flames I want.
I like to see a little steam and wet ooze from my wood, not a flash in the pan.
The Canadian version has the old tune, good pics:
Wednesday, December 16. 2009
 Tom Sowell's Christmas reading
How about a doppelganger for Christmas?
Militant Theophobes
Illegals, yes. Anatolie, no.
Climategate: Something’s Rotten in Denmark … and East Anglia, Asheville, and New York City
Copenhagen: 'This Guy's Just Showing Up to Collect His Check'
A good post with good links re Paul Samuelson
Good comments on our sexual addiction post
A book: Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law. Interesting reviews there at Amazon.
Ann Applebaum: Some climate-changers are anti-human.
The 2009 Obama Achievement List
Climate Scientists and Ethics: Some Advice from a Finance Professor
How would the Reid bill affect the middle class?
Protecting Investors or Prosecuting Innocents? The Dangers of Vagueness in Financial Fraud Laws
Kimball:
...if it is hard to ginger up any enthusiasm for the topic of health care reform, it is even harder to contemplate what is happening in Washington without an overwhelming sense of alarm. The Obama administration is not only on the threshold of usurping some 20 percent of the U.S. economy, handing it over to government bureaucrats to oversee, it is also just a few signatures away from utterly transforming medical culture and the way you will be allowed to interact with your doctors. Do you really want this?
And via Insty:
ANN ALTHOUSE: Blaming Obama Is The New Trend. “People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. Obama kept his distance, which looks pretty smart now.”
Civil-Rights Panel Names 19 Colleges It Will Investigate for Gender Bias in
Admissions. And here we thought they wanted diversity.
Pop culture and politics. Driscoll on Guido Beach Meets The Great Relearning. Culture from the bottom, up?
The Underarm Thermometer sales gal. Borderline safe for work.
If those guys at East Anglia had thought of this temperature trick, nobody would be giving them any grief.
Sorry, this was shut down. We'll try to find it again -
Alex Massie in Spectator: American Exceptionalism & the Decline of Limited Government
Re health care, the O says we're "on the precipice." Truth, for once. No wonder he uses a teleprompter most of the time.
DOE sends a “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU
Harry Reid, Card Shark
York: Why Democrats push health care, even if it kills them
City Journal: Teachers’ Unions vs. Progress—Again. New York resists reforms that would bring in millions and improve teacher quality.
Faster? Please. Yet another proclamation that global warming is "accelerating, much faster than we anticipated," as activists have been telling us since the late '90s.
I think that was shortly after the decade of global cooling scares.
Tiger on what Jamie Dimon should have said to the O, including this comment: "...it is hard to see how anybody smarter than a reporter would be fooled by such silliness."
Woodstock, CT has always held a certain pride in the education of its children from colonial days to the present. Higher education beyond the basics of readin', writin' and 'rithmetic wasn't a staple of affluent farming communities during those times and Woodstock was somewhat unique in supplying the opportunity to colonial children. The "high" professions of religion, medicine and politics required a larger perspective on the world and the citizens of Woodstock provided that opportunity - mostly under the instruction of various religious and university educated leaders of the community.
As the town expanded and became more populous, the need for an organized "high" school became apparent. On January 12th, 1801 the town leadership "granted provision to build an academy on the North side of Town Common" and $100 was collected from 32 leaders of the community to build the facility.
Farmers from around the area supplied the appropriate amount of white oak and the raising was quite the social event. On Feburary 2nd, 1802, the building was opened for operation under the guidance of Preceptor Thomas Williams of Pomfret, CT.
Over the years, Woodstock Academy has both prospered and fallen on hard times. In the downturn of 1860, the original building was razed, basic post/beam construction saved and this building was it's replacement. Henry Bowen (remember him - Pink House?) donated $5,000 of the $20,000 raised and the rest is, as they say, history. Yale University had an interest in the operating of Woodstock Academy for many years (up until WWII) and supplied many of its original Preceptors and Instructors.
Woodstock Academy, while considered by the state as a public high school, is actually a private non-profit institution governed by a Board of Directors and operates outside the governance of the Woodstock Board of Education. It is considered a "free academy" - the only other similar institution in the US is also located in Connecticut, the Norwich Free Academy in Norwich, CT.
Tuesday, December 15. 2009
Talking points and debating points, at Daily Express. Not that facts matter any more.
Related: Al Gore's mosquito story is pure BS. Malaria is only a tropical disease due to public health advances, DDT, and drainage of marshes in the developed world. At the turn of the last century, malaria was endemic in New England. Russia, too.
Related: It's all about the $. A quote:
Leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to suffer. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an eye-goggling 5% of GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion from the United States alone. There never was a response from the industrialized world.
Related: Copenhagen summit carbon footprint biggest ever. Why not? Who cares? Live it up with the Danish hos and the limos and the grand hotel rooms and the smorgasbord and the aquavit. It's all for Gaia, after all.
Related, via Dino from some psychotic, self-aggrandizing moron at Copenhagen:
I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already.
And, via Driscoll's It Was Necessary To Destroy The Carbon In Order To Save It:
Woodstock, CT, last week:
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