Sunday, November 14. 2010
 I plead happily and mindlessly guilty to a habit of watching stupid action and sci-fi movies on my zone-out Saturday Night Stupid Movie cavalcade.
Last night I broke with tradition and watched a critically acclaimed film, one of the best who-done-its I’ve seen in ages, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
A notable theme: the beautiful, brilliant and troubled heroine refuses to be a victim or accept victimology-type excuses, holding others responsible for their actions and taking vengeance on those who commit heinous acts upon herself or others. The film is not for the squeamish.
There are two more films in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. I really look forward to another two Not Saturday Night Stupid Movies.
The films are from Sweden, and if you go to Set-Up on the DVD you can get it dubbed well in English instead of distracting subtitles. You don’t want to miss a second.
The plans for the new National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall in Philadelphia looked good to me. And, my friend, historian Judith Klinghoffer volunteered to be one of its first docents.
But, the newly opened reality, as Judith Klinghoffer describes, is empty of most of the American Jewish experience. As she puts it, “The architects were instructed to make sure that 'there was to be nothing religious in the Museum' and they have done just that.”
The contents of the exhibits:
Jews are indubitably free in America, but just how free do they feel? Or, to put it more precisely, how free do the museum creators feel? Do they feel free enough to assert their deep commitment to their age old religion? Do they feel free enough to acknowledge their ties to the global Jewish family? Do they feel free enough to take pride in their outsized contribution to America?
No. Instead, Judith wrote to the museum's leadership, "the museum almost seems to me an all out celebration of American Jewish radicalism."
Bummer.
Judith Klinghoffer has the credible background to criticize:
I have studied Jewish History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with such eminent historians as Shmuel Ettinger and Saul Friedlander, have a PH.D. in American history, wrote numerous books and articles about a myriad of topics including on American Jewish history, my teaching experience ranges from Hebrew Day school to Graduate school and I currently write an acclaimed historical blog such eminent open minded rabbis such as Richard L. Rubinstein and Arthur Waskow deem worth reading and becoming my efriends.
Stick with it, and get past the Polar Bear example to the Einstein: A Hipbone Approach IV: Polar bears and polar opposites. He quotes CS Lewis:
What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something but reality is about which truth is) and therefore every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths…
I could write, and run in circles, on this topic for days. So I won't. Plus I promised She Who Must Be Obeyed that I would clean up the kitchen. Fact.
Thanks again for the invite, dear friend. (If you wondered, it's gents only - and tobacco enjoyment is encouraged. Jacket and tie for dinner, of course. Traditional American, like Maggie's Farm.)
That's Harpoon UFO in the Growler. Their UFO is good stuff.
A fellow hunter at the lodge this weekend had his Spinone with him. (Pic of his pup below) This was a new breed to me. A pointer. They seem to run 70-80 lbs. His owner says that if you want one, make sure you buy it in Italy, not in the US. Relatively slow, methodical, and errorless hunters, it seems, with a style which sounds similar to that of the Munsterlanders: they do not run crazy, but search carefully and relentlessly, at a steady human pace.
It's all in the genes. (You would like this dog, Craig.)
His dog was very well-trained (in Italian commands, eg "Posto!"). He told me that they say in Italy that the face of a Spinone should look like an old philosopher. His dog had that look, and insisted on slobbering me with drooling kisses - perceiving, as any wise philosopher dog would, that Bird Dog is a dog guy.
The breed is said to be an ancestor of all of the pointers, with a pedigree dating to c. 500 AD. The fur is thick and wiry.
I could use a spare Spinone around the place (although they look like tick magnets). A good excuse for another trip to Italia.
Does due diligence need to include going undercover?
Some at the Brooklyn Law School have their panties in a knot about an authorized photo shoot by Diesel, known for youthfully pushing the clothing envelope.
For a fee to the school, Diesel took over the law library, and had fun hitting the books: “what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers.”
The panties uptight response:
"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man.
"Ugh. The library fantasies are now relentless."…
Red-faced school officials said they were duped by Diesel.
"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.
My favorite:
In one shot, a woman crouches over a man lying facedown on a desk covered with legal tomes, with the rear of her pink panties bearing the words, "Today I am your school teacher."
His gray undies answer, "Tonight I am your student."
The law school spokesperson let this slip show:
But she admitted that Brooklyn Law events director Chris Gibbons was in attendance during the shoot, while the nearly nude models crawled all over the library's desks and each other.
The spokeswoman said she did not know whether Gibbons shouted "Objection!" when the ladies got lewd in the library.
See the photos for yourself. Now crack those books, and smiles.
h/t, Theo
Lib Walter Russell Mead does some introspection. A quote:
Give us more power because we understand the world better than you do, was the message. We are so smart, so well-credentialed, so careful to read all the best papers by all the certified experts that the recommendations we make and the regulations we write, however outlandish and burdensome they look to all you non-experts out there, are certain to work. Trust us because we are always right, and only fools and charlatans would be so stupid as to disagree.
Readers know that Soros really bugs me. He has the freedom to buy political speech, etc., if he wants, but I just can't stand the guy.
At Am Thinker, Soros Forgiven, Pope Not So Much.
Isaiah 65:17-25
65:17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
65:18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
65:19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
65:20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
65:21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
65:22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
65:23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well.
65:24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.
65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.
No, it is not a Flying Fish.
Saturday, November 13. 2010
Our post this week about Grizzlies reminded me of Kephart's 1906 classic, Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness.
It's very much in the Teddy Roosevelt vein, and I have no doubt that he read it.
One quote from the interview:
One miserable November day I was down there on the sideline, wet, cold. And I looked up to the top of the stadium, and there was the press box. Shelter! I knew they had heaters in there with them, and these people were sitting there in complete comfort while we’re miserable down here on the field. They’re writing, they’re typing, and they’re warm. Then and there I decided to become a writer.
Is this image via Moonbattery fair, or just a cheap ad hominen shot along the lines of "Bush is retarded"? Name-calling.
As I understand it, "narcissism" covers a spectrum from wholesome self-respect (which must be earned), to dangerous sociopathy (manifested by an inability to care about, or even to deeply recognize, the existence of others except as tools).
The Wiki piece on Malignant Narcissism says this:
"The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism."
That sounds pretty bad. To understand these things, one really needs to understand in detail how a person relates to others and what they mean to him. You can't do that by watching somebody on TV.
Here's a post on the topic: Narcissism in High-Functioning Individuals – Big Ego or Severe Disorder?
Sweeney Among The Nightingales
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward toward the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney guards the horned gate. Gloomy Orion and the Dog Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas; The person in the Spanish cape Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees Slips and pulls the table cloth Overturns a coffee-cup, Reorganized upon the floor She yawns and draws a stocking up; The silent man in mocha brown Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes; The waiter brings in oranges Bananas figs and hothouse grapes; The silent vertebrate in brown Contracts and concentrates, withdraws; Rachel née Rabinovitch Tears at the grapes with murderous paws; She and the lady in the cape Are suspect, thought to be in league; Therefore the man with heavy eyes Declines the gambit, shows fatigue, Leaves the room and reappears Outside the window, leaning in, Branches of wisteria Circumscribe a golden grin; The host with someone indistinct Converses at the door apart, The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid droppings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
Friday, November 12. 2010
President Obama, are you listening? Or, would you rather raise taxes and regulatory costs on smaller businesses?
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports a study by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young that, not only do entrepreneurs create more jobs, entrepreneurs give more to charity than large, established companies.
Entrepreneurs give twice as much of their profits to charity as more-established companies, according to new research released today by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young.
Entrepreneurs, the study found, allocate a median of 3 percent of their corporate profits to charity. That is more than double the median 1.2 percent of profits found in The Chronicle’s latest corporate-giving survey of the nation’s largest companies.
Not only that, but "Nearly 70 percent said they started supporting charities while building their business, before it was successful."
 I have never had bad grits, but some afficionados get fussy about their grits.
Come to think of it. friends gave us a big bag of stone ground grits a while ago. They were very good.
The above is the title of Boortz' post this week. It is indeed plunder. He quotes Bastiat:
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
People are finally waking up to this issue. Lasky at American Thinker: The GOP's First Target Should Be Government Worker Salary and Benefits:
There has been a long-running vicious cycle playing out over the years. Politicians (mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats) have been signing generous agreements with government workers and their unions. In return, the government workers provide a solid voting block, and the public employee unions can use their enlarged dues to funnel money to Democratic campaigns. There was a reason -- beyond their leftist ideological beliefs and animus towards businesses -- that both Barack and Michelle Obama counseled people to go to work for the government. Those government workers become a special interest group in the pockets of Pelosi and company.
Who is greedier: the government unions who want stuff extracted from the taxpayers by their political allies, or the struggling taxpayers who produce the money in the first place?
Warning labels for voting Democratic. Sad but true, nowadays.
My Dad, who has had a few surgeries, feels the same way. The point is, I think, that the US doesn't have a planned system. No PhD planner is smart enough to know, understand, or meet, every person's needs and wants. Plans and models never work out according to plan, in real life.
If people are doing better, increase taxes because they can afford it. If people are doing worse, raise taxes so as to be able to "help" them with more government spending.
Commenter John, here at Maggie's yesterday
Leaving this morning for an out-doorsy weekend. This pic made me notice how filthy my keyboard is. I need to run it through the dishwasher.
We discussed the rise of the black middle class earlier this week. Here's one piece on that. A quote:
Larry Tye helped answer an ages-old question: How did a high percentage of black people, who toiled as slaves and suffered under Jim Crow laws, shed that oppression to live middle-class lives and enjoy the American dream?
Telegraph: When people stop believing in God they start believing in Big Government and Obamaism
TIME: Happy Meal ban doesn't go far enough.
It's a wonder we can ever feed ourselves.
Driscoll: NYT Editor: Our Subscribers are Such Morons!
Not hot dogs for you.
This guy is an American hero
Everybody talks about the housing crash.
It has been no "crash." It's just the return from a bubble to the normal trend line.
Air power in Afghanistan.
Repub health care ideas are genocide
Another view of the deficit commission, from Mother Jones
More on those Russian spies
Map narrows for Obama reelection
VDH: The Obama Fabulists
Thursday, November 11. 2010
New York aristocrat Rosalie Edge was a crank, a Suffragette, and an ardent conservationist. A bio of her came out last year: Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists.
Among the many causes she took up, one was protection of raptors from the mass slaughter of her era. She bought Hawk Mountain in Eastern PA and created the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. A high point on the Eastern raptor migration flyway, Hawk Mountain had been a popular site for the slaughter of raptors by gunners who believed they were going some sort of good while having fun.
Hawk Mountain is now a foundation engaged in conservation education programs. It remains an excellent viewing spot in fall migration season. (Photo from the Hawk Mtn website.)
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