October 2008 Archives
The New Atlantis » Technology, Culture, and Virtue
"t has been during this short period of industrialization that most of our longstanding cultural forms have attenuated, faded, or gone wholly out of existence. Writing as a farmer, Berry has repeatedly lamented the decline of the family farm as a locus of human community and the embodiment of numberless forms of cultural knowledge and practices. But everywhere we see around us the ruins of once vibrant culture. Most of us know little or nothing of how to produce food. More and more of us cannot build, cannot fix, cannot track, cannot tell time by looking at the sky, cannot locate the constellations, cannot hunt, cannot skin or butcher, cannot cook, cannot can, cannot make wine, cannot play instruments (and if we can, often do not know the songs of our culture by which to entertain a variety of generations), cannot dance (that is, actual dances), cannot remember long passages of poetry, don't know the Bible, cannot spin or knit, cannot sew or darn, cannot chop wood or forage for mushrooms, cannot make a rock wall, cannot tell the kinds of trees by leaves or the kinds of birds by shape of wing--on and on, in a growing catalogue of abandoned inheritance....
"By disconnecting culture from nature and regarding nature as an enemy to be conquered, we have, above all, disconnected ourselves from the most important aspect of culture: the inexorable lessons of the limits of human power and the pitfalls of human efforts at mastery."
HillBuzz: Hey Eeyores: how good are you at spotting trolls?
McCain Democrats urge us to resist "troll logic" and "Eeyore chow." Obama's concern trolls pose as conservatives and post demoralizing information; "Eeyores" take the planted doom and gloom and spread it around. "Their MO is to try to stike some psychological affinity with you, agreeing on some point, before casting an Eeyore spell over your gullible self and bringing you down with troll lies. Their hope is to spook Eeyores to stampede, and call or email all of their friends in panic." (BatesLine is a troll-free zone.)
Make Bath Time Easier and More Fun « meeciteewurkor
How to convince your little one to let the water drain out of the tub: Food coloring.
The Land of Misfit Books: "The Reanimation Library is a small, independent library based in Brooklyn. It is a collection of books that have fallen out of mainstream circulation. Outdated and discarded, they have been culled from thrift stores, stoop sales, and throw-away piles across the country and given new life as resource material for artists, writers, and other cultural archeologists." (Via Language Hat.)
A humorous but educational look at the mathematics of randomly-sampled polls -- confidence intervals and margins of error -- and the non-quantifiable errors that have nothing to do with sampling: "What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you? What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue? What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?... [S]o-called scientific "sampling error" is completely meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by unmeasurable non-sampling error. Under these circumstances "margin of error" is a fantasy, a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact."
McCain Gets My Vote by Charles Krauthammer on National Review Online
The Hammer slams Christopher Buckley, Peggy Noonan, et al.: "Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.... I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.... Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb."
Roemerman on Record: Coffee Does Not Help Balding
Judging from the photo, neither does reading BatesLine. But commenter Pamela recommends a nutritional supplement that seems to help.
Roemerman on Record: Whose Shoes?
Crikey! An alligator died to keep a Tulsa City Councilor's feet dry. Click the link to find out whose shoes.
The Spectator: Melanie Phillips: Is America Really Going to Do This?
"...on the big picture, [McCain] gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies. Here's why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else.... McCain understands that an Islamic war of conquest is being waged on a number of diverse fronts which all have to be seen in relation to each other. For Obama, however, the real source of evil in the world is America. The evil represented by Iran and the Islamic jihadists is apparently all America's fault."
Biden's Hint by Bill Whittle on National Review Online
Whittle asks, "What the hell was Joe Biden hinting at? What possible action would drive a President Obama's poll numbers down into the ground?" Reinstate the draft to counter the drop off in enlistments? Stand idly by when Iran attacks Israel? Or is it this -- a unilateral draw-down of America's nuclear forces and defenses: "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.... I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material. And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBM's off hair-trigger alert."
WuzzaDem: Nine Days Before The Election, An Undecided Voter Stops By The Local Starbucks
"If Obama wins, then within six months, businesses all across the country will fail, families will be destroyed, heads will explode, eyeballs will bleed, and groins will be hit with whiffle bats." So says Joe Biden, um, Joe the Candlestick Maker, Undecided Voter.
Wonder Land - WSJ.com: Hatin' Palin
"If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?
"My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians."
WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Twistin' The Country Classics (MP3s)
A 1963 recording by a Liberty Records studio band featuring legendary guitarist Tommy Allsup: "The album, released at the peak of the nation's raging case of twist fever, combined familiar standards with more contemporary country tunes and re-interpreted them as hard-driving twist tempo instrumentals." Includes Wabash Cannonball, Ida Red, and San Antonio Rose.
RealClearPolitics - Tony Blankley - The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative
Blankley takes on the "neuroticons": "Peggy [Noonan]'s unconscious fear may be that it will be precisely Sarah Palin (and others like her) who will be among the leaders of the about-to-be-reborn conservative movement. I suspect that the conservative movement we start rebuilding on the ashes of Nov. 4 (even if McCain wins) will have little use for overwritten, over-delicate commentary. The new movement will be plain-spoken and socially networked up from the Interneted streets, suburbs and small towns of America. It certainly will not listen very attentively to those conservatives who idolatrize Obama and collaborate in heralding his arrival. They may call their commentary 'honesty.' I would call it -- at the minimum -- blindness.
"The new conservative movement will be facing a political opponent that will reveal itself soon to be both multiculturalist and Eurosocialist. We will be engaged in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country.... But just as it does in every great cause, one question has to be answered correctly: Whose side are you on, comrade?"
Copious Dissent: Cuba Discovers Oil While Democrats Block Drilling
"Cuba just found 20 billion barrels of oil off its shores in the Gulf of Mexico, and now plans to be one of the top 20 exporting countries in the world. This story alone should disqualify the Democrats from being reelected. Had there not been a moratorium on drilling, that oil would have been ours." (Via Ace.)
Blow to image of 'green' reusable nappy - Times Online
Disposable diapers ("nappies" in Britishese) use less energy, with about half the "carbon footprint" of cloth diapers used over the same period of time. The British government (run by the socialist Labour party) is attempting, unsuccessfully, to suppress the findings: "The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a 'defensive' stance towards its conclusions." A commenter remarks, "Though the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs does vitally important work, I still believe that their funding should be stripped and given to the Ministry of Silly Walks in order to properly prioritize those services that are necessary for the good of the British public."
Townhall.com: Michael Medved: For Conservatives, Obama's Changes Would Be Permanent and Devastating
For all of us, actually -- on immigration, new entitlements, new government agencies, "conservatives need to face the fact that Barack Obama has promised profound systemic changes that will be irreversible--absolutely permanent alterations of our economy and government where there is no chance at all that Republican office-holders of the future could in any way repair the damage.... The chances of ever taking away such goodies are nil --- Presidents may come and go, but entitlements are forever.... In his first years in office, a President Obama could easily succeed in buying so many interest groups and constituencies with expensive new governmental favors, that conservative dreams of rebuilding a small government majority will go absolutely nowhere." Remember Reagan promising to eliminate the then-new Departments of Energy and Education?
Issued before Powell announced his endorsement: "Of course, Colin Powell was the one who counseled George H.W. Bush not to help the Shiites and Kurds when they when they rose up to depose him and watched as Saddam Hussein slaughtered countless numbers of them. He wanted to leave the tyrant in place as a counterweight to Iran, continuing a heartless realpolitik strategy that directly led to 9/11."
JammieWearingFool: Soros-Funded Pair Running Obama Transition Team
Obama already has a transition team up and running, and who's heading it? A guy whose salary is funded by America-hating tycoon George Soros and subprime mortgage moguls Herbert and Marion Sandler. (Remember the SNL bailout sketch?)
Obama and Ayers: Ideological Soul Mates | Verum Serum
Not just guys from the neighborhood, but partners in wasting private funding on goofy leftist educational fads instead of real curriculum improvement: "Under Obama and Ayers, the CAC distributed over $100 million dollars in an effort to place race, class, language and culture at the center of public school curriculums. That's why Obama, as head of the CAC, declined to fund an Algebra initiative (which received funds from other Challenge sites around the nation but not in Chicago), but found money for the South Shore African Village Collaborative which its founder described this way: 'We've had big community arts and sports festivals,' says Williams-Kinnison. 'And we're working on shared graduation ceremonies. We want to show that all of us, not just an individual school, have a stake in graduating all our children.'"
Townhall.com::A sad reaction to Peggy Noonan's Palin meltdown
"I see no way to avoid the conclusion that Ms. Noonan thinks that I am, and that people like me are, 'a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics,' and that we're 'no good, not for conservatism and not for the country.' It's impossible to avoid drawing that conclusion because I'm a long-time and enthusiastic supporter of Gov. Sarah Palin, after all -- and that's exactly what Ms. Noonan has written about her. It's as vicious an attack as I've ever read or heard her make, both unmoderated and immoderate."
Brit Gal' in the USA: A momentous day remembered
On the third anniversary of her move across the pond, Sarah reflects on the stresses and surprises of starting over at mid-life in a whole 'nother country: "You don't know what to dial for local and long distance calls, you don't know any street names, directions are given with north, south, east, west - not left and right. You have no idea where to go to shop for certain things, most of the store names are alien to you. Everybody you meet is new to you; your brain rapidly goes into overload with new names and faces to remember. You're driving on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the street. The food is very different, products are different, some things you love you can no longer get at all. All the measurements you have known all your life have been thrown out the window; whether it's shoes, clothes, cooking or weight. Everytime you open your wallet you are faced with different currency and coins are very confusing."
Brit Gal' in the USA: Okie's may have the cleanest mouths ever!
Sarah, a British expat living in small-town western Oklahoma, writes: "I kid you not, it's probably been a good few months since I was in the company of anyone who swore publicly! Coming from England, where I don't think you'd get through more than a couple of hours without hearing someone swear, it is quite bizarre."
Anatomy of a Congressional Leadership Race [The Dirksen Congressional Center]
How Bob Michel (R-IL) beat Guy Vander Jagt (R-MI) to become House Minority Leader in 1982.
Harvard Classics Five-Foot Shelf of Books Reading Guide - 15 Minutes A Day
A year-long reading program through the classic works of the western world.
Harvard Gazette: 'Towering figure' in Latin literature Bailey dies at 87
Continuing my stroll down via memoriarum, Harvard Classics department chairman Richard Thomas recalls Shackleton Bailey's importance to our understanding of Cicero and the late Roman Republic through his editions of Cicero's letters.
Professor D. R. Shackleton Bailey - Obituaries, News - The Independent
I had Prof. Shackleton Bailey for Latin Prose Composition at Harvard. He died, age 87, in late 2005. He had a long and distinguished career at Cambridge, where he taught Tibetan and Classics, before crossing the pond to teach at Michigan and Harvard. This is a typically fascinating British broadsheet obituary.
A Short Banking History of the United States - WSJ.com
It's all Jefferson's fault, says John Steele Gordon, because he didn't understand the notion of a central bank.
Medieval Help Desk for Thee in Camelot from Merlin « Knights of the Pain Table
A sketch from a Norwegian comedy show: A monk calls the helpdesk because he can't figure out how to use this newfangled contraption called a "book." "I got to that point myself, but then I stopped, fearing I would lose some text."
Rocks In My Dryer: A Letter To Myself in 1987
Some retro-perspective from a 35-year-old to a 15-year-old: "First of all, Honey, we need to talk about the eye make-up. If God intended you to have electric blue eyelashes, He would've made you a Smurf. Second of all, you're not fat. Look in the mirror and memorize what (have mercy!) 105 pounds looks like, because you will never, NEVER see it again." Read the whole thing.
Conservative Canon « Marty Andrade
A collection of links to lists of must-read books on political philosophy, economics, culture, etc.
Scrappleface: Obama Scraps Plan to Change Middle Name
Satire: "Sen. Obama noted again that he is not a Muslim, and that Americans shouldn't fear his 'funny sounding name.'
"'If you want to be scared of something,' he added, 'be frightened of my socialistic domestic policies, my amoral social policies and my capitulationist foreign policy. After all, what's in a name?'"
Does dowsing work? - Crunchy Con
Supernatural weirdness, an unexplained natural phenomenon, the adaptive unconscious?
Stepping in Number Two by Fred Schwarz on National Review Online
Colorful vice-presidential nominees from the past.
Percy Shaw / Designing Modern Britain - Design Museum
The elegantly designed, durable, self-wiping Catseye road reflector: "Shaw's eventual design consisted of four glass beads placed in two pairs facing in opposite directions, embedded within a flexible rubber moulding which was mounted on a cast iron base. The device was buried in the road and fixed in position with asphalt. When vehicles drove over the dome the rubber contracted and the glass beads dropped safely beneath the road surface. Aiming for minimal maintenance, Shaw even devised a way for his Catseyes to clean themselves. The cast iron base collected rain water and whenever the top of the dome was depressed, the rubber would wash rainwater across the glass beads to clear away any dust or grime that had gathered there, just as the human eye can be cleansed by tears."
Fred Thompson :: Townhall.com :: Qualified
"One can hardly disagree with the desirability of our leaders having the qualities that Brooks describes (putting aside the question of how many of our leaders who are not Sarah Palin have demonstrated these qualities). But there are other important qualifications, such as will, courage, and determination. Frankly, an infusion of these qualities into our body politic is desperately needed - not just to raise hell with the establishment, but to speak the hard truth about unpleasant choices facing our country. To push for choices that will, in the long term, benefit our country, our children and our grandchildren. In other words, things which 'prudent' leaders are all too often reluctant to do.
"For many years we have failed to address looming problems that will prove catastrophic to our nation. It's not because we are bereft of leaders with great experience. And it is not because they do not understand the 'essential current of events.' They know these things all too well. It is because they do not have the political courage to do anything about it."
Michelle Malkin » Newspapers dying. You should care.
From August, but See-Dubya's words are worth keeping in mind as we read about layoffs and price increases: "As much as I'm for amateur and semi-pro sleuthing, the fact remains that most news gets reported because someone, somehow, gets paid to report it. Obviously, newspapers need to adapt and respond to market pressures. And maybe someday maybe the web will be organized to deliver the same degree of full-time local reporting and investigation that print media does, and a paperless news environment will come about. Until then I'm going to keep subscribing to a paper-even though I'm not in any particular hurry to get cable TV."
Fusing Politics and Motherhood in a New Way - NYTimes.com
"Many high-powered parents separate work and children; Ms. Palin takes a wholly different approach. 'She's the mom and the governor, and they're not separate,' Ms. Cole said. Around the governor's offices, it was not uncommon to get on the elevator and discover Piper, smothering her puppy with kisses.
"'She'll be with Piper or Trig, then she's got a press conference or negotiations about the natural gas pipeline or a bill to sign, and it's all business,' Ms. Burney, who works across the hall, said. 'She just says, "Mommy's got to do this press conference." '
"Ms. Palin installed a travel crib in her Anchorage office and a baby swing in her Juneau one. For much of the summer, she carried Trig in a sling as she signed bills and sat through hearings, even nursing him unseen during conference calls."
"This is the deeper political import of his relationship with Bill Ayers and the Rev. Wright. For all his talk about change, Obama has been far better at adapting to the environments in which he finds himself. In Chicago, he had no enemies to the left. He took care not to alienate the city's corrupt establishment. In Congress, he voted in lockstep with his fellow Democrats. Independence is not his strong suit. If a Democrat wins the presidency, there will be very little check on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- and especially if this weak-willed Democrat wins....
"McCain needs to ask whether it would serve the national interest to create the most left-wing Washington in decades. He needs to ask it with respect to many issues, but the economy is certainly one of the top ones. As the economy sinks, do we want more taxes, spending, and trade restrictions? Are Pelosi and Reid, along with a pliable Barack Obama, the people to lead the nation out of this crisis? Is this really the change we want?"
An Everyman on the Trail, With Perks at Home - NYTimes.com
"As a secure incumbent who has rarely faced serious competition during 35 years in the Senate, Mr. Biden has been able to dip into his campaign treasury to spend thousands of dollars on home landscaping and some of his Amtrak travel between Wilmington, Del., where he lives, and Washington. And the acquisition of his waterfront property a decade ago involved wealthy businessmen and campaign supporters, some of them bankers with an interest in legislation before the Senate, who bought his old house for top dollar, sold him four acres at cost and lent him $500,000 to build his new home."
Fannie Mayhem: A History - WSJ.com
Articles and editorials from the Wall Street Journal. As early as 2002, WSJ was calling attention to problems with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Hot Air: Another confirmation that enforcement works
Commenter "rockmom" says that illegal labor made this crisis possible, by driving down wages, facilitating overbuilding, and creating a market for no-documentation mortgages.
What They Said About Fan and Fred - WSJ.com
From the 2005 hearings on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Barney Frank bravely asks the heads of those companies if they feel they "have been substantially under-regulated." Plus quotes from congressmen and senators from 2003, 2004, and 2005 hearings on problems with the Government Supported Enterprises. (Via The Corner.)
tvpoll | Inhofe holds double-digit lead though narrowing - Week Five
53 to 40, according to Bill Shapard and Keith Gaddie's polling company. (Via Muskogee Politico.)
Bounded Rationality: Some Thoughts on Shifting
An interesting essay by Jeff Shaw, who is learning to play violin, on how and why a violinist shifts finger positions.
Strategery Capital Management LLC
"Strategery is a unique hedge fund. It is the largest in the world, with expected initial capital of $700 billion. It has a free and unlimited credit line should it need more. It has no fixed mandate, though it is expected to initially focus on mortgage-backed securities. And it is the only fund backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. Strategery is a way for you to be more patriotic. Supporting this fund is an American duty. Criticizing this fund or any of its associated legislation or regulations may be subject to civil and criminal penalties."
A retired computer programmer posts photographs of his life and places around Tulsa from his mobile phone.
InsideCatholic.com - How Catholic Money Funded Obama's Community Organizing
Deal Hudson writes: "Some years ago I published an article in Crisis about CCHD, and spent some time studying their grants as pubished on the USCCB web site. There were long lists of $20,000 to $30,000 grants to groups and communities all over the United States, all under the rubric of 'community organizing.' It was clear to me that "organizing" meant training in politics, and I had no illusions about the kind of politics the recipients were being trained in....
"99% of Catholics in the pews haven't any idea of how much they have invested in building the political infrastructure that has now been activated to support Obama. That infrastructure always supports the Democratic Party and its candidate, but now they have a candidate who comes directly out of their political culture, well to the left of previous Democratic nominees like Gore and Kerry."
Brit Gal' in the USA: BWOTD Competition!?
For americans only: Test your knowledge of British colloquialisms by translating five paragraphs containing 39 phrases not commonly heard in the US. If you've been reading Sarah's "Brit Word of the Day" posts, well, Bob's your uncle.
Preserve Midtown: Midtown Under Attack!
Good overview of the problems caused by teardowns, and what Preserve Midtown proposes to do about the problem.
