Monday, January 12. 2015
Good manners are one thing, but law is another. A free speech crisis
Related: Defending Satire to the Death - Moderate Muslims are most in need of a robust defense of free speech, especially if it offends.
Photo above from Old Trees
How Brazilians Fish For Piranhas
Science: Your Kid’s Not Special
In Praise of Marriage
More: Study Finds More Reasons to Get and Stay Married
Can the Government Force Medical Treatment?
Kerry Gets It totally Wrong on Climate’s Impact on New Zealand’s Dairy Farmers
Repeat After Tweety: Ted Cruz = Joe McCarthy
Wounded Warrior Project Wasting Donations?
Obama Will Hold Summit on 'Countering Violent Extremism'--Not Radical Muslim Terrorism
6 TIMES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SAID ITS JOB WAS TO PROMOTE ISLAM
Eugene Robinson: France attack might have been worse here, because guns
Moderate Muslims Criticize the Charlie Hebdo Attacks
Afghanistan rally hails Charlie Hebdo attackers as 'heroes'
Feel Good Story: Muslim African American Hid the Thirty Jews in the Freezer at the Hyper Casher, Saved Their Lives
Joyce Carol Oates: “It is delicate matter to adjudicate, even to
oneself, where a literary/political sort of satire ends & something
like ‘hate crime’ begins…”
Sultan: Let's Laugh at Islam
Rupert Murdoch Tweets About "Jihadist Cancer"
Powerline: Terrorism as Rorschach Test
Williamson:
Some forgotten early homo sapiens, the first great moral philosopher of our species, forever lost in the shadows of prehistory, took note of the fact that while wolves kill because they are hungry and bears kill because they are threatened, the human animal kills toward unknowable ends, from motives far more complex than biological necessity. Eventually, that first moral philosopher or one of his intellectual descendants came up with a word for that, for this inexplicable inclination that is not known to any wild animals, no matter how ravenous — but which is present only in men.
If only we could remember that word, and remember what it means.
It's called the sinfulness of fallen mankind
Re Gwynnie's post on Saturday: Saturday´s suicide bombing elicited little coverage...
Sunday, January 11. 2015
Cooked up a big batch of superb Beef Stew (my  opinion) for the family crowd yesterday, to be served today for birthdays. A stew always benefits from a day's rest. I do it the Frenchie way with the cheapest cuts of meat, lardons, lots of pearl onions, porcini mushrooms, Cotes de Rhone - all the best stuff. My concoction is also good for the unwanted cuts of venison.
I slow cook it, low heat, for 6 or 7 hours, let it rest for 24 hrs, and serve on egg noodles, Italian or otherwise.
However, I somehow stumbled on recipes for liver 'n onions. I love calves liver and onions, with a side of mashed taters. (Me like chicken liver too, but that's another story.) The trick to tasty calves liver is the same as for foie gras - crispy on the outside and pink on the inside. That means high heat, quick cooking. I like liver in chunks, not slabs.
From Richard Friedman, You’re feeling down, and your doctor or therapist has confirmed it: You have depression. Now what?
Anybody with clinically-significant depression needs psychotherapy at the least.
The toughest route up The Dawn Wall. I can hardly stand to think about it.
A critic of police shoots first
Comply with the Law, whatever. You can argue later.
“I’m now retired, so I have no scientific career to protect by spreading lies.”
He said he thinks dire global warming predictions are really all about lassoing federal research funding and votes.
Psalm 29
29:1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
29:2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD in holy splendor.
29:3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters.
29:4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
29:5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
29:6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
29:7 The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
29:8 The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
29:9 The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, "Glory!"
29:10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
29:11 May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!
Saturday, January 10. 2015
The MSM are in a twit about 16 Frenchmen. Well and good, but thanks to The List of Islamic Terror Attacks from 2014 you can see that, in 2014, they killed 32,004 people, or 88 a day. I copied it to a spreadsheet and there are 3,000 incidents.
Why no fuss? It is brown people killing other brown people. The killers "don't know any better" because they are brown and therefore judged under a different, lower standard. The victims don't count because they too are brown and the MSM can't pronounce their names.
Remember how we ignored the Cambodian holocaust? Brown vs. brown. I thought when Jews spoke of their Holocaust and said "never again" that they meant no more holocausts. Nope - the media in NYC were silent about killing 3,000,000 Cambodians; I guess "never again" meant no more killing Jews. Good idea for certain, but a far smaller scope.
Now THAT is racism!!
Why elderly couples often die together: the science of broken hearts.
No matter how much you may fight and argue, you become bonded tight over years if you are even half-normal. It is a wonder, given all of our annoying flaws.
 Today's image from People's Cube
Poor teeth - If you have a mouthful of teeth shaped by a childhood in poverty, don’t go knocking on the door of American privilege
My own teeth are a disaster, and I was never really poor except temporarily. Just bad luck and bad genes
This isn’t a culture anymore. It is a freak show.
The New Sneaky Tactic Gun Control Advocates Are Embracing
A Conservative case for New Urbanism: Conservatism for the City - Beauty, streetcars, and dual codes are the right ideas for urban policy.
Nikon 1200-1700mm Helps French Photogs Capture Hostage Situation from a Safe Distance
Mankind Tired Of Having To Remind Itself Of Good In World
We Don’t Need No (Free) Education - Ultimately, Obama's plan is a bad deal for America, because it will hurt people’s employment opportunities and cost too much.
Dalrymple:
Among the many thousands of my patients, I do not recall one who demanded to know the source of the good aspects of his character. This might be because virtue does not know, or at least proclaim, itself. And, indeed, if someone were to ask the origins of his own good character, we should suspect him of being a Tartuffe or a Pecksniff.
This is not all there is to it, however. We are not inclined to demand an explanation of other people’s goodness, either. For every such enquiry, we ask a thousand times about the origins of other people’s malignity. Our enquiries about the origins of our own malignity are perhaps less frequent, but they are incomparably more frequent, even infinitely more so, than our enquiries about the origins of our own goodness.
On population growth and decline (a reader found this somewhere) - correction, it is from Alan Macfarlane, ‘The Invention of the Modern World’ -
Alan
Macfarlane, ‘The Invention of the Modern World’ - See more at:
http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/08/dumb-and-dumber-2/#sthash.WvW1G8Hh.dpuf:
Putting it simply, in an embedded peasant economy, when the unit of production and consumption is the family household, it is sensible to have as large a family as possible, to work the land and to protect against risk in sickness and old age. To increase reproduction is to increase production. Yet as Jack Caldwell and others have shown, when the individual becomes integrated into the market, when wealth flows down the generations, when the cost of education and leaving for an independent economic existence on an open market occurs, children become a burden rather than an asset. In other words, capitalistic relations combined with individualism knocks away the basis of high fertility, and if this is combined with a political and legal security so that one does not have to protect oneself with a layer of cousin, the sensible strategy is to have a few children and to educate them well.
A low-pressure demography means that a society avoids the situation where extra resources are automatically absorbed by population expansion. As Malthus argued, the only force strong enough to stand against the biological desire to mate and have children, was the even stronger social desire to live comfortably and avoid poverty.
Some people are surprised that Raùl Castro would act to precipitately in cracking down on Cuban freedom advocates. But why the surprise?
House passes 40-hour workweek for Obamacare; Dems buck Obama veto threat
The U.S. Marines' 5 Most Lethal Weapons of War
We Are Not All Charlie - It is easy to express solidarity with murdered cartoonists, but it is difficult to live as bravely as they did
Not so difficult if you are armed
Boko Haram massacres 2,000 in Nigeria
The Examiner on The NYT:
Elsewhere, in separate statement to Politico, Baquet explained that the New York Times is also trying to avoid offending its Muslim readers: “[L]et's not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet.”
“I don't give a damn about the head of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them,” he said
In 1999, the New York Times republished an image of Chris Ofili's “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a painting “with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background,” Politico reported.
Nobody is afraid of Christians
 Oysters
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.
Alive and violated,
They lay on their bed of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
Craig Raine has a recent piece on Heaney: Seamus Heaney: no shuffling or cutting — just turning over aces
Friday, January 9. 2015
Somebody mentioned a Moose going into a car through a windshield. Here's a variation on that theme.
Readers know that we do not meander around this incredible museum colossus at random (which works fine if you are stoned and have all day but that ain't us anymore), but we only go for one show or one area. One hour only, or a little more, or you get the deadly brain affliction known here as "museum-brain."
Having accumulated a manageable dose of education and culcha, a nice lunch and a glass or two of wine nearby is perfect. Mrs. BD suggests the following for affordable cheap amazing prix-fixe lunches - make reservations) Decent dress code not a bad idea for these, ie dresses and jacket and tie.
Our long-time favorite: Giovanni Vento Cinque. Cozy, cuisine not entirely predictable but always good. My favorite? The calves liver with balsamic. That's Italian.
Caravaggio. Jacket and tie required. Wonderful and elegant but not stuffy.
Jean Georges - just across the park. Mind-blowing.
If you can handle two venues in one day, stroll down to the intimate Neue Gallery and have a perfectly authentic Viennese lunch in their parlor. I have been in Vienna, and this is Vienna.
 Rush said today: "Just two Muslims with guns dominated the world news, and scared the media out of their minds, for almost a week. That, my friends, is called power."
It is amazing how fearful the American MSM is of, of Muslims. The New York Times males have their panties messed up. Man up, pussies. I advise 12 ga. shotgun, not rifle or handgun. When lunatics in the vicinity, steady aim is difficult except for the pros.
He went on to explain that those two are not the real news, that the real news is the millions of Muslims all around the world who remain silent, support, or applaud their war on Western civilization. Not to mention their apologists and the scaredy-cats in the West.
Has any Muslim organization in the world condemned these sorts of evil ones yet? Not one.
 Unlike some hysterics, I have no big fear of the batshit lunatics. Unlike the French, we regular Americans are well-armed. Unlike past free-world threats, these are snakes, not formidable armies. Slippery, though, because Islam advises them to lie to nonbelievers so, if in the wrong place at the wrong time, these snakes can bite. They need killing, same as a rattlesnake in the barn.
This idiotic war has been going on for a long time, since around 600 AD. We are on the side of the crusaders, defending the foundations of Judeo-Christian civ. It ain't perfect, but it's OK. The French may need a Charles Martel, but most of the West just needs a St. Patrick to eliminate the snakes. Send them packing back to whence they came along with their loony cult and their hopeless, ignorant, pedophile, goat-f-ing, wife-beating, bloody, desert culture where their fun was in killing eachother and nobody really cared what they did until WW1.
My only problem with all of this is that I have some Muslim friends and colleagues who I respect - and vice-versa - and whose company I enjoy a great deal. They have zero interest in killing me for my Christian faith and I believe it because we've talked over (many) beers in NYC pubs. In fact, in my heart I would rather bring them to Christ than they are interested in bringing me to their Mohammed prophet.
For me, live and let live - but if you want to harm me, I will kill you and I have the means and the heart to do so with no remorse.
Metamorphosis is disgusting
How Exercise Keeps Us Young
Why daughters might be better than sons
Some of each is best
The First Jew Scalped for America
Why white dudes often don't make the NBA (quick vid)
Kevin Williamson: The New Royals - Princesses, peas, and the emotional needs of chickens:
As in the case of the princess in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 story, so sensitive that she could feel the pea under 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds, acute dissatisfaction with the tiniest, most ridiculous little details of life is how 21st-century progressives communicate to the world that they are indeed the new royalty, with sensibilities finer than those known to mere commoners. No normal, mentally healthy adult human being actually gives a good and sincere goddamn about the “emotional needs of chickens.” But that sort of posing, along with such daft enthusiasms as foie-gras horror, wetting oneself liberally over the fact that Bradley Manning’s Wikipedia page identified him as “Bradley Manning” for a full eleven minutes after he declared that he wants to be called “Chelsea,” sneering at SUVs and roomy suburban homes, insisting that Melissa McCarthy is a comic genius, using the word “mansplaining,” being terrorized by “thigh gaps” in advertisements, fretting about “micro-aggressions” — all of it is a way of saying, “Look at me! I went to a good school! (Or am truly at heart the sort of person who might have!)” There is a term for this that is uncharitable but cannot be improved upon: status-whoring. The old status symbols may have been shallow; the new ones are shallow, destructive, and a great deal less fun to drive.
And they don’t even require you to work particularly hard in school.
Williamson keeps getting better, doesn't he?
Gobble Down Those Goose Guts, Californians! Judge Strikes Down Foie Gras Ban
Yum. Really.
High speed rail in CA: "It's not that expensive. We can afford it. In fact, we cannot NOT afford it."
I can't NOT afford a Ferrari. Don't they have airplanes in California?
The slow death of the precious gem jewelry business
Diamonds are a scam and everybody knows it now
Brutal Cold Does Not Factor Into Man's Decision To Stay Inside For Two Days Straight
A diverse group of social psychologists calls for more diversity in their field
UVA Still Punishing Fraternities Over Debunked Story
Sowell: The Dogma of Multiculturalism - The fallacy of “equally valid” cultures polarizes society.
Obama to propose two free years of community college for students
If it doesn't cost you, you don't value it
17 Brilliant Insights From Legendary Marine General James Mattis
Christians in the Holy Land: Don’t Call Us Arabs
Where's the Coverage? Majority of Israeli Arabs Proud to Be Israeli
As the Purge Intensifies, Xi Shifts to the Left
East Asia's Population 'Death Spiral'
What's wrong with population decrease? Seems like a good thing to me.
Dalrymple: Equating Prudence with Cowardice - France must continue to mock, bait, and needle its Muslims.
Muslims segregated from French society in growing Islamist mini-states
Nobody segregated them.
Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ - Intolerance for free expression is rooted in classical Islam.
Saudi Blogger To Be Publicly Flogged Outside Mosque For “Insulting Islam”…
French policewoman killed in shoot-out, hunt broadens for militant killers
New York Times Reports On Muslim Proselytizing During Charlie Hebdo Attack, Then Deletes It
Chickenshit weenies
Thursday, January 8. 2015
I always wondered whatever happened to organ grinders. I'd never seen one in the US, except on cartoons or in old movies. I saw quite a few when I lived in London in 1983 (I have a picture of a particularly colorful one). I had no idea LaGuardia outlawed them, or his reasons for doing so. With the swipe of a pen, he outlawed a form of employment (beats the hell out of other forms of begging, if you ask me). But you can be assured, it was in the "best interest of the people" (and the monkeys!). I'm certain this is precisely how Mayor Bill feels about horse carriages. His views are the only ones that matter because nobody else really cares about those poor horses, right? It's in our best interest, of course. Below is a picture of one of the last legal organ grinders in NYC.
Around here, there are three bird species which annoy the heck out of me. They especially annoy me in winter, because they eat most of the bird food I put out to attract native winter visitors from Canada.
The three are The English Sparrow, aka House Sparrow (really a finch), imported from England
The House Finch (not to be confused with the Purple Finch), imported from southern California and Mexico
and the European Starling, imported from England - no photo needed I am sure. The only good use for these three species is to feed migrating falcons and Sharpies, and to provide target practice for kids with BB guns and .22s.
Will a Cheap Engagement Ring and Wedding Help Your Marriage?
Contents of Paul Revere’s time capsule unveiled in Boston
Jeffrey Epstein's Society Friends
Living the Hugh Hefner life style. Those aren't "sex slaves," - they are concubines, courtesans
Just Because It Sucks Is No Reason to Leave New Jersey - Why would anyone leave New Jersey?
Naomi Oreskes and Post-Modern Science
Frontiers of microaggression
Why ‘Manspreading’ Is Definitely a Serious Issue, as Explained by the Feminist Internet - The government should maybe do even more.
This Is Not Your Grandma's Humane Society
Hating Whitey’s Brunch
Solving the Police Problem - If They Don't Want to be Policed, Don't Police Them
The Overcriminalization of America - How to reduce poverty and improve race relations by rethinking our justice system:
Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. Over time, this has translated into more than 4,500 federal criminal laws spread across 27,000 pages of the United States federal code. (This number does not include the thousands of criminal penalties in federal regulations.) As a result, the United States is the world’s largest jailer — first in the world for total number imprisoned and first among industrialized nations in the rate of incarceration. The United States represents about 5 percent of the world's population, but houses around 25 percent of the world's prisoners.
Why academics can't write:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Le Pen Plays Islamist Card Linking Attacks to Immigration
No - it's the Islamists playing their Islam card. She's France's Paul Revere
Via Reuters:
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Wednesday the attack in Paris had nothing to do with Islam. "Islamic extremists and Islamic terror are something entirely different from Islam," he said. "It is immensely important to underscore that difference on a day like today."
Howard Dean: Don’t Call Paris Terrorists ‘Muslim’
We call them Lutherans
Lutheran cleric: ‘Freedom of Expression Does Not Extend to Insulting’ Muhammad
Mark Steyn To Media: 'Man Up' Before You 'Retreat Even Further Into Self-Censorship'
New York Times: With A Dozen Parisians Dead, MUSLIMS Hit Hardest
The lefty New Yorker:
A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique. Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism. For some believers, the violence serves a will to absolute power in the name of God, which is a form of totalitarianism called Islamism—politics as religion, religion as politics. “Allahu Akbar!” the killers shouted in the street outside Charlie Hebdo. They, at any rate, know what they’re about.
And even The Atlantic:
The Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists.
My question for the day: Why do the euro elites want all these Muslim immigrants?
Wednesday, January 7. 2015
Re "just hit the damn deer"
 It's been smoldering for years, but Jihad is not smoldering anymore in Europe.
Is everybody worried about the "backlash"? I hope not. We all have big problems with these bat-shit crazy bloodthirsty barbarians.
Brit imam living on welfare celebrates Paris massacre. Where is Charles Martel when you need him?
At Am. Interest:
Europe dreams that it has entered a post-historical paradise of international peace and social tranquillity resting on blue model social capitalism and the cooling of religious passion. In reality, every year the foundations of Europe’s peace and order are eroding. The great achievements of European civilization and culture have to be defended, and at the end of the day you can’t defend something unless you believe in it.
Also, Some Outlets Are Censoring Charlie Hebdo’s Satirical Cartoons After Attack - News outlets shy away from publishing the controversial images of the paper’s satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Driscoll:
...with Wolf Blitzer of appeasement-oriented CNN already muttering about Charlie Hebdo occasionally going “over the line,” as Pundit Press notes today, and Ed Morrissey paraphrasing at Hot Air that the Financial Times thinks that “Charlie Hebdo kinda asked for it, y’know?”, tomorrow’s news stories write themselves, don’t they?
Also, France Under Islamist President in Novel Stirs Controversy
Some of the victims.
CNN’s Sally Kohn: Wanting To Censor Criticism Of Islam Is Consistent With Belief In Free Speech…
Catholic League President Bill Donohue on Charlie Hebdo: 'Muslims Are Right to Be Angry'
Greenfield:
Mocking Jews, Catholics, Mormons and atheists isn’t going too far. But mocking Muslims… that’s going too far.
Finally, this:
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith went on an editorial rant against those rushing to judgment and suggesting that the terrorists who massacred twelve people at Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday might be — gasp — Muslims.
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A Nerd for Our Times: Alan Turing