Sunday, January 9. 2011
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields"
Krauthammer via Protein:
Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration’s bold push for government expansion – a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders’ intent.
White flight from the Dems
US jobs report an ‘utter mess’
The Distraction Of Birthright Citizenship
Shrinkwrapped: Sex and War; Political Correctness and Perversion
Surber: Believe in global warming, collect $2.4 billion
Related, via If it were only about the science:
What it really shows is the extent to which the politics of global warming is driven by an already existing culture of fear. It doesn’t matter what The Science (as greens always refer to it) does or doesn’t reveal: campaigners will still let their imaginations run riot, biblically fantasising about droughts and plagues, because theirs is a fundamentally moralistic outlook rather than a scientific one. It is their disdain for mankind’s planet-altering arrogance that fuels their global-warming fantasies – and they simply seek out The Science that best seems to back up their perverted thoughts. Those predictions of a snowless future, of a parched Earth, are better understood as elite moral porn rather than sedate risk analysis….
"Moral Pron"? Cool phrase.
Why the Left Loves the Lies of Climate “Science” - Climate science's only product is political because its only patrons are politicians.
Brooks on health care: Buckle Up for Round 2
WaPo blames Israel for Palestinian barbarity (updated: NY Times too)
Reason: Defending the Right to Offend
Truth in America: Am Spectator
Best of Left-Wing Hate From 2010
Acts 10:34-43
10:34 Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
10:35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
10:36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all.
10:37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:
10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
10:39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;
10:40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,
10:41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
10:42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.
10:43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
Home sweet home. Even got central heat. Gas heat.
And my 27 year-old Brooks tux still fits me. Trousers were let out an inch a few years ago, though. Darn good investment: 4-5 times/year, ready whenever needed. Sharp-dressed man, is Bird Dog. When he wants to be, that is. Which is rare.
Saturday, January 8. 2011
I have been sorting through my file of images, and found some that are worth posting before discarding. I suppose some have been used in past years. I don't recall where most of them came from.
I may need to do this for a few Saturdays, to clean out the files...
Steal them at will.
More below the fold -
Continue reading "My first fun and useful image dump"
Ethnic dining? A bit of England in New York City: Tea & Sympathy.
 From Mark Steyn's Dependence Day:
Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world. It starts with the money—it always does. But the money is only the symptom. We wouldn’t be this broke if we hadn’t squandered our inheritance in a more profound sense.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind (from Act ll, Scene 7 of As You Like it, 1600)
Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing, &c.
Friday, January 7. 2011
I happen to know two people who are venturing to Haiti next week, one acquaintance and one friend, to do good works, mostly of a medical nature. They do not know eachother.
Haiti is in a state of anarchy. It was anarchy before the earthquake, which is why it could not deal with an ordinary catastrophe. They tried socialism, but how do you do socialism without producers to take money from? There have been hundreds of NGOs in Haiti, and billions of dollars given, and it all goes into a black hole. Nothing happens. God knows where the money ends up. Switzerland or the Caymans, probably.
Haiti is the sort of disastrous place that draws people who want to do good works. As the whole world grows more prosperous, there are fewer and fewer outlets for such folks. For non-profit types, going to work in Haiti is analogous to getting your combat medals.
In my view, Haiti's problem is the culture - not earthquakes or cholera or the endemic rape or Voodoo or hurricanes. The Dominican Rep, next door on the same island, is flourishing, lovely, and generally civilized and safe despite their rural poverty.
- How do you transplant a new culture to a population of 10 million poor people?
- How do you persuade businesses to invest in a totally corrupt and violent place?
- How do you create an honest and well-intentioned government in an anarchic place where flagrant corruption and violence are the rule?
- And who asked you to do that, anyway?
I advised these folks to read Graham Greene's classic The Comedians, but they had done that already.
So I advised them to watch Masked and Anonymous.
 A reader suggested that I stop by Lepcis Magna (aka Leptis Magna, aka Neapolis) while visiting North Africa.
Not a bad idea, but I have seen tons of Roman ruins from England to Pompeii to North Africa, and they're all about the same: an arena, a forum, a bath, a few monuments and lots of columns, etc. The ones in Carthage were cool.
I prefer seeing Greek things, and it seems like it would be a shame to go through life without seeing ancient Egyptian things in situ.
Where I want to poke around, from the Romans, is Ostia.
We posted on a visit to Ostia a few years ago.
 At Washington Times:
What was most remarkable about this was the almost hysterical opposition from congressional Democrats and left-wing commentators. In what should have been a united celebration of the nation's foundation document in a period of partisan rancor, liberals instead reinforced the view that they are profoundly uncomfortable with the essential truths underlying American freedom.
I hate to say it, but it appears to be so. If it is so, I say it's a big deal. The Constitution is our secular Bible, and designed to protect us citizens from State power. It was - and remains - radical and revolutionary.
Statists and elitists hate it, and prefer to forget why it was written. They think they know how I should arrange my life and feel somehow anointed to do it for me. I resent their attitude immensely.
"My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met."
Rodney Dangerfield
 Barack Obama - Either Doing His Best In One of The Most Difficult Times In American History, Or Hitler
Everything about Bedbugs
Maine Family Robinson: It's Time To Be Interested In Houses Again:
I dare you to go to the library and read House Beautiful from 2000. You won’t even be able to stand looking at the typefaces on the pages, never mind the pictures of the houses. It is unwise to set fads into mortar.
How can there be a right to health?
Health? No. In fact, terminal disease is our definite fate - barring horrible accident.
Via Ace's The Illusion of the "Professional" Class and the Rise of the Liberal Aristocracy:
I've long believed that a key failure of modern society is the widespread disdain for honest labor. There should be no shame in doing a "regular" job and doing it well. However, among many there is the assumption that any person who doesn't work in data or abstractions is a dullard.
Ten dumbest tech predictions
Dr. Helen: "Pretty sad when something all teen males fantasize about happening to them is considered a crime."
Via Insty:
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Sophists. “In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street. . . . The public might have better believed the deficit nostrums of former budget director Peter Orszag had he not retired after less than two years on the job to position himself for a multimillion-dollar billet at Citigroup — itself a recent recipient of some $25 billion in government bailout funds. Are we to wonder why an angry, grassroots tea party movement spread — or why it was instantly derided by our experts and technocrats as ill-informed or worse?”
AVI has a comment for some of our commenters
Rubin: What would it cost to repeal ObamaCare?
Tanner: What Republicans Can -- And Can't -- Do about ObamaCare
O'Rourke on "Gimme rights" and "Get out of here" rights
Bob Parks: The New York Times: Three-Fifths Of A Newspaper
Bookworm: Reading the Constitution in Congress
Two books I want to re-link:
Vedder's Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much
Minogue's The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life
Art above by our friend Elissa Gore
Thursday, January 6. 2011
From RailPictures, this pic of the Nevada Northern #93 operating on the Heber Valley Railroad line for the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, near Wildwood, Utah, by G. Brubaker. (That site has over 300,000 rail photos):
Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie
Hennessey: The ten most important American economic policy issues of 2010
Pethokoukis: ‘Cut and grow’ is really the only way forward
Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving
McArdle: Commercial Real Estate on the Mend?
Via Neptunus:
"The New York Times is just basically being a mouthpiece for political correctness,” King said, later adding: “These are very legitimate hearings.”
Miller begins:
Feminists began to embrace and promote the legacy of author Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) in the 1970s, starting with an article by Alice Walker in Ms. magazine. This rescue effort was necessary, according to a pair of Harvard professors in the Chronicle of Higher Education, because Hurston had lapsed into obscurity “probably due to her political views.”
Reb recalls The vicious lie behind the global warming scare
Russian News Discusses Rise of Communism in New York City
Television Losing Ground to the Internet as a Main Source of News
No Pasaran:
...the percentage of the world living poverty is shrinking, and no-one sought Europe’s permission for that to take place.
Volokh: District Court Upholds Stolen Valor Act Again First Amendment Challenge
The value of Facebook: Take the money and run
Anonymous on the internet: Schniederman
Watts: Are huge northeast snow storms due to global warming?
Wednesday, January 5. 2011
From Dr. Ablow:
I now see more clearly than ever that helping people identify and embrace their own beliefs, inclinations, hopes and dreams is essentially helping them embrace God. And if I may have been timid about saying so before, I am no longer.
As we quote more than once in The 7:
You are the temple of God.
 Reader Buddy prompted me to refresh my memory of the Children's Crusades.
While of no historical importance, there is a cautionary tale in the story.
The story begins:
One day in May 1212 there appeared at Saint-Denis, where King Philip of France was holding his court, a shepherd-boy of about twelve years old called Stephen, from the small town of Cloyes in the Orléannais. He brought with him a letter for the King, which, he said, had been given to him by Christ in person, who had appeared to him as he was tending his sheep and who had bidden him go and preach the Crusade. King Philip was not impressed by the child and told him to go home. But Stephen, whose enthusiasm had been fired by his mysterious visitor, saw himself now as an inspired leader who would succeed where his elders had failed. For the past fifteen years preachers had been going round the country-side urging a Crusade against the Moslems of the East or of Spain or against the heretics of Languedoc. It was easy for an hysterical boy to be infected with the idea that he too could be a preacher and could emulate Peter the Hermit, whose prowess had during the past century reached a legendary grandeur. Undismayed by the King's indifference, he began to preach at the very entrance to the abbey of Saint-Denis and to announce that he would lead a band of children to the rescue of Christendom. The seas would dry up before them, and they would pass, like Moses through the Red Sea, safe to the Holy Land.
My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading.
Steve Jobs
Was going through photos, and liked this one from the lad's Woodstock, VT wedding in Aug. 09.
This is the Simon Pearce factory (and restaurant) in Quechee, where we had the jolly rehearsal dinner. That's the party on the porches. If you wanted to walk around, you could go downstairs and watch the glass-blowing.
Tuesday, January 4. 2011
At Smithsonian. Always wondered how they filled that space with water for the mock sea battles.
This January, the BD family is devoting itself to enjoyable DVD series from Santa. That Ken Burns Jazz series is one (the old photos, film footage, and the music are well-worth it).
And, as part of our planned summer trip, we are alternating the Jazz with Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor and the History of Ancient Egypt.
The Teaching Company has some good sales on right now. You can really pick any random course and find it interesting and life-expanding. Plus, unlike college, you get the best teachers, collected from all over the world. Home schoolers should use these courses. Lots of libraries have them now. Each one comes with a study guide.
We love these courses. Some are fine on audio, but some require the DVDs.
The trip (cruise, that is) for which we are preparing is below (we are only doing the Rome to Athens leg of the voyage, due to time and $ constraints). I have been eager to get back to Turkey.
Do I need a better camera?
A reader sent in this pic of dying, discarded Christmas trees. Mine is still standing proud, outdoors, in its stand in the snow. I hate to let them go.
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