Another visit to the Answers In Genesis creationism museum

Writer John Scalzi blogged a visit to the creationism museum a few years ago. He was overwhelmed by the sheer idiocy of the place, and was reduced to spewing incredulous profanities, mostly.

Now comes this Indian fellow, Krish Ashok, paying a visit. Coming from a heritage which includes the most baroque religious traditions in the world, he seems to be a little tougher to freak out.

Most people in the queue did not strike me as fundamentalist nutjobs out to destroy the Western intellectual tradition. They struck me as tourists who thought it might be a decent idea to take their kids to a museum that advertised dinosaurs. Now, lifetime members are a different species altogether. They pay $495 and are people who seriously believe that (barring the engineering that built the museum itself) science is generally bad and that (a specific English version of ) the Bible is literally true. But then I have met VHP-RSS type uncles in Chennai who believe that India had the Pushpaka Vimaana thousands of years before the Wright brothers. And people drop jewellery into the Hundi at Tirupati, so to each his own I guess.

Doubtless because of this ancient hodge-podge of a heritage, which isn't so hung up on establishing underlying unities as the Abrahamic faiths are, he is gallantly forbearing of the museum's patrons:

So hahaha, LOL and all that at all these creationist duffers etc. But then, the only difference between a 21 million dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY and people who consult astrologers is budget. It’s easier to laugh at dinosaurs eating pineapples than it is to smirk at someone breaking coconuts for Lord Ganesha. One’s own way of life is always superior no? “Our” philosophy was more advanced than this sort of simplistic nonsense no?

It was interesting that I did not find the sort of people Richard Dawkins always seems to find when he goes about pwning creationists. I just found regular folk who didn’t particularly care much about the complexities of the origin of life, the universe and everything else, not even two score and two times. To them one explanation is as good as the other and while we can bemoan this collective failure of rational thinking, there isn’t much one can do except build a better real science museum right next to this one. Even then, I’ll still visit this place to feed the alpacas.

Very sporting. It's more than I can manage, whenever I visit Answers In Genesis online. Teh stoopid, it burnnnsss...

Ambush interviews

I don’t care who it is, I dislike ambush interviews. The whole way the interaction is framed strongly insinuates the guilt of the quarry. A jittery shot of someone walking briskly & disappearing behind a door or into a car just makes them look shifty. If I ever get notorious enough for a cameraman + mike jockey to waylay me, I intend to do the following: Stop where I’m at, look at the interviewer and answer every question with “I’m sorry, but I don’t do ambush interviews.” Repeat until they get fed up and leave.

Bishop Eddie Long, what he should have done...

Today he addressed his congregation, voicing defiance of the charges against him, but declining to refute them, in public.

What would have been a smart move is this: He could have taped himself at home, uploaded it to YouTube, and sent out a statement via his home email account. He could have said that he was doing this in order to show that he was going to fight these allegations entirely on his own dime. He wouldn't spend one minute of work time on it, nor one penny of church money--not even a bit of the church's electric bill. It would have been a great good faith gesture.

Church of Body Modification

Did you know that there was such a thing? Just like with witchcraft a coupla decades ago, it's probably a phase for willful teenage girls. Like this one, for example.

Yes, I think these things are bollocks, as the British say. "Your body is a temple"--that plainspun commonplace should be everyone's watchword.

Holy Wackah-moley!

This guy prays for Glenn Beck's children to become Muslim suicide bombers! (FF to the 3:00 mark) Why? Because his rally for America was too inter-faith for his liking. What a creep!

The Tea Party

I heard a rerun of Rush today, railing against the Republican "establishment" and plumping for the Tea Party candidates. He was especially histrionic; I wonder if he suspects that this is going to be the Right's last, best shot for a while, this November.

The Tea Party movement will dissipate, as all movements eventually do, and no doubt some opportunists will hop off the bandwagon once it's carried them to where they want to be. The question is: what will it leave behind? The memory of a mere spasm of popular pique, or a genuine revival of our nation's foundational principles?

One thing I think we can agree on now: this is no astroturf movement. And they aren't going to run away and hide because some liberal bloggers sneer at their misspelled signs, or holds them to shameful double-standards.

Hey, Seattle...

So Molly Norris, a freeborn American, practicing her lawful trade in the heart of her native land, has to go into hiding because of a death threat from an imam hiding in Yemen? I have a hard time believing that pre-Californicated Seattle would have stood for this. Will none of you hippies stand up for her, protect her, dare the jihadists to come through you to get to her? Or are you too busy laughing at misspelled Tea Party signs?

Christine O'Donnell and the leftosphere

O’Donnell has induced quite the stack overflow at some excitable liberal blogs. Maybe they can organize and elect a more suitable public someday.

Always entertaining to watch these types sneer in fear, when the peasantry dares to answer back.

Christine O'Donnell's 90s The Salt clip

You've seen the video & maybe had a good snicker over it. But consider: These people aren't forcing their morals on anyone--and when have liberal entertainment industry types ever been shy about forcing their *lack* of morals on everyone else?

Amazingly enough, to some, there are people in the world who don't want to be sybarites, libertines, spiritual and moral slobs. They long for a zone of purity and cleanliness around themselves. They understand, however inchoately, that when anything goes, nothing matters. They don't want their own God-given sexualities not to matter. Clean living under adverse cultural circumstances is an achievement which deserves praise, not derision.

On the public passing away of Christopher Hitchens, pt 2

When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
-- H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, June 12, 1922

Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate say our moral code is out of date?

Of course our moral code is out of date! That's why it's called "our moral code"!

English Defense League poobah turned away at JFK airport--good!

I've got no love for jihadists or creeping shariah. But the EDL are street thugs with union jacks, nothing but. A load of skinheads swarming through the streets chanting, "Let's go fookin' mental! Let's go fookin' mental!" are nobody's freedom fighters.

Don't you get tired of hearing people denounce "religion" as if they were all the same?

He pulled together the available evidence and found that the more atheists or agnostics a free society has the more moral it becomes.

And I pulled together the available evidence and found that the more ice cream I eat, the hotter the weather becomes.

Who discovered water? Probably not a fish.

Nicholas Kristoff shoots the messenger

He wants his country back!

Europe is alarmed that Muslim immigrants have not assimilated well, resulting in tolerance of intolerance, and pockets of wife-beating, forced marriage, homophobia and female genital mutilation. Those are legitimate concerns, but[...]

Mr. Kristoff: Change the "but" to "therefore", and try again.

On the public passing away of Christopher Hitchens

I'll probably never execute my old plan to do a model funeral service for agnostics, admittedly damned. I am now too near my own need for it to give it the proper lightness of touch. Some day somebody else will do one. It is really amazing that none has ever been drawn up. An agnostic's funeral, as things stand, consists mainly of idiotic speeches--that is, when there is any ceremony at all.
-- H. L. Mencken, diary, May 11 1940

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
-- from Philip Larkin, "Aubade"

When death comes and whispers to me,
"Thy days are ended,"
let me say to him, "I have lived in love
and not in mere time."
He will ask, "Will thy songs remain?"
I shall say, "I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity."
-- Rabindranath Tagore

My best once again to him and his family.

Communists

Whoah! A major American newspaper describes American communists as "communists"! Not activists, or community organizers, or some such euphemism, but communists. Maybe we're finally putting the McCarthy legacy behind us, and can now go back to calling these people what they really are.

Neo-nazis and such base their beliefs on racial hatred, and are thus correctly abominated by all good people. But communists are motivated by class hatred, which, even after all the bodies have been tallied up, carries much less stink among people who consider themselves a cut above the common run of humanity. While vanishingly few such self-congratulatory types would ever actually endorse execution cellars for landlords, something in the back of their minds will respond to them with "Well yes, but..."

Back in my marchin’ days, I attended a U. S. Out Of El Salvador march & rally in Washington, D.C. The organized groups participating were all hard-left in persuasion. Spartacists, Trotskyists, Social Revolutionaries, Maoists, Communists, Stalinists, Castroists, Fourth Internationalists, plus numerous brands of Socialists, all practicing truth in labelling with their t-shirts and signage. I heard many chanted slogans about overthrowing the government, the joy of violent revolution, and so forth. I collected quite a stack of mimeographed lefty propaganda, too. One group in particular had an enormous banner, which dominated the march from every line of sight. On it were printed revolutionary slogans of the crudest, most anti-democratic, anti-humane type.

When I got home, I read about the march in the newspaper. They did mention one communist group by name, but only one. On the front page was a photo of the crowd, including that enormous banner. Thing was, it was obscured. The newswire photographer must have hiked rings around that crowd, and shot dozens of frames, in order to get a picture of the crowd that didn’t include “SMASH THE RUNNING DOG CAPITALIST PIGS!” hovering over all. He obviously wanted a favorable image of this march to be presented, so he had to hide the fact that the biggest banner advertised communism. This was my first first-hand encounter with leftist bias in news photography.

I guess the next thing will be to see how many of the anti-globo groups get named, when those recreational rioters next follow the G-Whatever summit to town.

Neo-nazis in the news

A quick browse through google's news aggregator lists three recent appearances in the news of American neo-nazis. One is a couple of weeks old: Bill White getting slapped with a big fine. Another is J.T. Ready, seeking state recognition from Missouri for his group, as a "militia". The third is some murdering scumball standing trial, who is covered head to toe with nazi tattoos. Creep looks like he was scraped up off the bottom of an ashtray.

The rest are all European: German, Russian, Dutch, Bulgarian...The most bizarre one is this:

Holland is considering tightening up regulations governing sperm donors after clinics accepted the offerings from a prominent neo-Nazi who said he wanted to promote ‘a strong white race’.

Patrick de Bruin attached the condition that his sperm should ‘only be used for white couples' infertility treatment’.

Sheesh. Given how the bravest person in the Netherlands is--or was--a black Somalian woman, that's quite bemusing.

The lesson of 9/11

One of the big lessons of 9/11 was this: There is nothing, literally nothing, that could befall the U.S. which would induce progressives to float down from their presumed higher moral plane and stand together with those icky fellow Americans. Instead, they bitterly cling all the more tightly to their exploded yet still treasured memes: poverty causes terrorism, the straight white male conservative middle class taxpayer is the root of all evil, to be brown, foreign, and angry at America is to be in the right by definition, etc.

Yes, Katha Pollitt, I'm remembering you.

No words...

Projection

"Given the explosive debate over an Islamic center near ground zero, “we thought it [the celebration] might be misunderstood and create a wave of attacks on our faith and community,” the imam said."

There's a word for attitudes like that: Projection. The imam doubtless knows how savagely Muslims treat Christians in Jos, Hyderabad, Orissa, and so forth, on the slightest pretext. He naturally fears that Americans would react to trifles the same way.

Quran-Burning Flap Stokes Concern In Muslim World

All this concern trolling by the Islamic press reminds me of certain community activists, who threaten (while pretending to warn) the authorities with riots if they don't get their way.

Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre--a parallelism

Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue:
My prophecy is but half his journey yet;
For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,
Yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
Must kiss their own feet.

How to commemorate this anniversary of 9/11

Me, I'll probably repost my usual: my account of what I saw and did that day. Look for it a bit later this weekend. I might take my kids down to Centennial Park for some of the reading of the names of the murdered. Certainly not the whole thing, as they'd never sit still for it, and besides one of them has a soccer game. I'll block out an hour, maybe.

Other than that, I'll probably trawl through some archives of that day in 2001, including some of my own usenet posts. Just so I don't forget...

The original burn the Koran day

Very funny. Book burning is still barbarous, though. I don't care what they do in Saudi Arabia; "everyone does it" is a teenager's argument.

Team Rubicon rescues Pakistan

For those who are unaware what or if the U.S. is doing to help Pakistan: This remarkable bolas de acero charity, Team Rubicon, is in country in Pakistan. They are saving lives by distributing simple, easy to make, rehydration fluids. They are partnering with locals--a dicey proposition in the Paki hinterlands--and keeping on the move, to stay ahead of the Taliban.

Over the past few days TR has treated over 2,500 patients in various parts of southern Punjab, an area devastated by the floods and resulting water-borne disease. We treated patients for heat stroke, malaria, multi-drug resistant TB, scabies, boils, diarrhea, and severe dehydration. We were able to reach remote villages because we developed a local partner who facilitated our entry, security, and other logistical needs. Dr. Eduardo Dolhun noted that many of his colleagues wanted to travel to Pakistan but were just too scared to commit. Given the barriers to entry, including fear, I think we’ve proved that developing a trusted local partner – in conjunction with local security forces – is a safe way to bring medical relief to the 20 million plus Pakistani people who have lost their homes due to the flooding crisis. God knows they need it.

Browse their blog. Caution, contains wrenching video clips of dehydrated infants.

Koran burning on 9/11

I'm against it. Book burning is barbarous, and this deed is being done out of frustration more than anything else, obviously.

Little Green Footballs de-linked

Well, my high-minded intentions from earlier this spring are coming to naught. I thought that I would keep my own banning from Little Green Footballs in perspective, and still recommend it as a reasonably bi-partisan if somewhat overheated forum for all comers. But in the past couple of weeks it looks like some sort of Final Offensive against conservatives has been occurring at LGF, with a number of old familiar names leaving or being banned. Looks like most of them are landing at Correspondence Committee blog, the alleged stalker blog which doesn't actually stalk. Charles is "turning over the house", as club operators say, when they induce customers to leave after they've bought all the drinks they're going to buy, to get a fresh crowd of customers in.

So, I've concluded that the leftward shift over there has gotten to the point where LGF isn't all that even-handed anymore. Such balance as there ever was turned out to be temporary, maybe even illusory.



I know, I know...

And so I can no longer endorse the site on the terms I formerly did (for what little that was ever worth). And so out of my blogroll it comes. Farewell once again.

"We were expecting Islam to adapt to France and it is France adapting to Islam"

His camera shows that Muslims "are blocking the streets with barriers. They are praying on the ground. And the inhabitants of this district cannot leave their homes, nor go into their homes during those prayers."

"The Muslims taking over those streets do not have any authorization. They do not go to the police headquarters, so it's completely illegal," he says.

The Muslims in the street have been granted unofficial rights that no Christian group is likely to get under France's Laicite', or secularism law.

"It says people have the right to share any belief they want, any religion," Lepante explained. "But they have to practice at home or in the mosque, synagogues, churches and so on."

Some say Muslims must pray in the street because they need a larger mosque. But Lepante has observed cars coming from other parts of Paris, and he believes it is a weekly display of growing Muslim power.

"They are coming there to show that they can take over some French streets to show that they can conquer a part of the French territory," he said.

Ground Zero Dialog films

A collection of PBS's pro-Islam films is collected here. "My Faith, My Voice". Tax-funded taqiyya, yessireebob.

Well, one PBS film which you won't find there, and the likes of which Public Broadcasting System will never, ever air again, is this: Terrorists Among Us: Jihad In America. This is the notorious 1994 episode of Frontline about violent Islamic militants in America, bracketed by post-9/11 footage of that disaster and the U.S. attack in Afghanistan. Hidden cameras inside American mosques reveal Islamic militants raising funds for Hamas, baying for the blood of Jews. Even something so innocent as a summer camp for boys is turned into hate training by these apostles of jihad. (Catch the little arab boy hissing "Butcher the Jews!" during that segment.) Evidence is also offered suggesting that the first World Trade Center bombing was plotted and funded inside the U.S. At the end, the narrator assures us that Islam itself does not condone the violent jihad that American Muslims are being called to. This is baldly untrue, based on the Koran and the Hadiths and a quarter century of painful experience, but that issue needs its own video, so it doesn't much matter here.

It's hard to believe that PBS once actually aired this mortal sin against multi-cultism. Complaints against its creator, Steve Emerson, from well-funded American Muslim groups helped get him blacklisted from NPR's All Things Considered for a while. Less subtle disapproval from less savory Muslims nearly landed him in the FBI's witness protection program. In response to the (non-existent) oppression of Muslims in America, PBS in 2002 aired its infamous pro-Islam infomercial, in which American Muslims are portrayed as no different from anyone else save for headgear and cuisine. It ain't so, and this film shows why. As Paul Harvey says, it is not one world.

So what can honest, patriotic, innocent American Muslims possibly do? They are lumped in with terrorists, their religion is openly feared and reviled, they are presumed to be dissembling (as their religion permits them to do to advance the cause of the faith), and their children receive the cold shoulder, even scorn. They've been good citizens, paid their taxes, obeyed the laws, served in the military, and yet they are viewed as the menacing, unassimilable Other. What can they do? Beats me. It's a real dilemma, but you know what? More and more, I feel that it's not my problem.

It seems that I mourn for my murdered compatriots even more as time goes on, and have less and less patience for American Muslims' pity parties. How about some sensitivity from them? As much as Muslims and liberals instruct me to ignore how savagely Muslims treat non-Muslims in Islamic lands, I can't. I can't help but wonder how many of these earnest people in these videos, entreating my humanity and understanding, would just sigh "Allah knows best" if such savageries ever became widespread in this country. No doubt about it: an Islamicised America would be a disaster beyond all lamentation.

The reason this all stings so much is that Islamic terrorism is just that: Islamic. The elephant in the room is the fear that it is not a perversion of Islam, but its fulfillment. American Muslims urgently plead that all these fire-bombings, head-choppings, and all have nothing to do with Islam. Not so. The fire-bombings and head-choppings have nothing to do with American Muslims, personally. But their perpetrators are inspired and guided by the Koranic injunctions to wage war against all infidels, everywhere, forever. And it is this that I fear, Islam itself, in all its historic glories and modern horrors, for myself and for my country and my children's futures.

Islam is what Islam does. The tree is known by its fruit.

Broadband subsidies to backfire?

That's one of the fears from some telecoms in Montana, where the federal stimulus package is trying to extend broadband connectivity.

The government is pushing larger users, such as hospitals and schools, to jump from smaller networks onto ones being built with federal dollars. Without those large users, or "anchors," in their customer base, smaller consumers on the existing networks face higher rates for high-speed service, he said.

And that's a neat illustration in miniature of how government subsidies can make things cost more for little people. I have a feeling that we'll see the same thing with healthcare insurance reform--only not in miniature.

NPR figures out why America isn't giving to Pakistan

Bigotry, donor fatigue, bigotry, the slow-motion nature of flood disasters, and ...ah...bigotry.

At this embarrassingly late date, NPR should really be less ingenuous in its reporting on these matters. It is not one world, and people are not all the same except for headgear and cuisine. Why are Westerners reluctant to donate to Pakistan? Because the Taliban has been carrying out its threats to murder Western aid workers, even during this disaster. And because there is a high likelihood that the money and aid donated will be siphoned off to corrupt officials or worse to the Taliban itself, to be used against our soldiers. And because Islamic charities are not like Western ones, in that the Islamic conception of "zakat" includes conventional charitable aid, but also bribery and funding of jihad.

The poor wretches... One can only hope that a lot of al-Qaeda have drowned also, up there in the Swat Valley.

Farewell to Mandy Manners' LGF account

Honest, I've been trying to just draw a line under my lizaroid years and move on. Really I have. But the pull of fascination is strong, still. I bump into an ex-lgf-er here, I comment on someone banning tale there, etc. So when a fixture like Mandy Manners finally wore out her welcome, well... *shakes head*

Mandy old pal, if you happen this way, take it from me--it's a big internet. Branch out! You don't have to fall in with the stalkers in order to have a life beyond Little Green Footballs. Don't feel bad--if Irish Rose couldn't stay on his good side, then probably no one from "our" side could, either. Whatever name-calling he directed at you won't follow you out into the wider world.

My best to you & your child, btw.

UPDATE: And I also hear that Spare O'Lake bailed, voluntarily. Good luck to you too, then.

Beslan, six years on...

Thanks to Howie at The Jawa Report for reminding me: The most savage jihadist attack since 9/11.



Note that which is noteworthy, which nonetheless notably goes un-noted in the above news clip. Not so in the one following:



And memo to everyone: Oedipus Rex is a tragedy; this was an atrocity. Yes, there was a backstory, a history, a precedent, etc. Bringing those up just amounts to telling the Russians "you deserved it"--same as certain Voices Of Conscience© have been telling us for nine years.

But hey: some teens hassled worshipers at a mosque in New York, so who are we to judge...

H. L. Mencken on teh OUTLAW

On blue, hyperacid days the suspicion often seizes me that most of my favorite notions are nonsensical—worse, that some of them are probably downright insane. It is a sad pleasure to examine them thus at leisure, and pick out the flaws in them. What is left is little save a pile of platitudes -- the apple-cores of meditation. Well, who is better off? I know of no one, though neither do I know of anyone who admits it. [...]

Nevertheless, it comforts me to think that, in one respect at least, I am superior to my chief opponents. That is in the respect that, in the main, my ideas are unpopular, and hence not profitable. No one can reasonably allege that I emit them in order to gain political office, or to get an honorary degree from the Ohio Wesleyan University, or to acquire the Legion d’honneur. This may seem a small thing, but it is at least something, especially in an American. Practically all the other men that I know try to capitalize their doctrines in some way or other. Who ever heard of an uplifter who was not looking for a job? Or, at all events, some one to finance his crusade? No one finances mine, such as it is. No one ever will.

Resisting an epiphany

Over at POWIP, Enoch is disturbed by the gradual roiling of dark waters in his soul.

I am not sure what to do with how I have come to feel about Islam in general and Muslims in general. [...] It is not as if I have a personal issue personally with any given Muslim person. And herein is the rub, as they say. [...] I would not consider myself a racist or a xenophobe. And I won’t proclaim that I am so very beyond harboring a sliver of deep distrust. Nor will I pretend it is but a sliver. The creaturely part of me signals as if I need be on guard when I am around The Them. And it bothers me that I do feel this way involuntarily.

RTWT.

A history professor of mine in college once told about an incident when he was touring the Balkans, Greece IIRC. He was in an old church, and noticed that the walls were streaked with soot. There had been a fire inside. The docent angrily confirmed it: "The Turks did this!" How terrible, the professor replied. When did it happen? "1348!" We all laughed. Such ancient, slavic grudge-carrying was quite foreign in America, the land of buried hatchets and fresh starts.

It doesn't feel so much like that anymore. Something is coalescing, taking root, something which may have repercussions centuries on down the road.

Americans are a kind, forbearing, humble, welcoming people, lefties' incessant accusations otherwise notwithstanding. I have never had a negative personal experience with a Muslim and, SFAIK (anonymous internet flammage aside) no Muslim has ever had one with me. I suspect that that is true of most everyone reading this, left or right. In fact, I sometimes have occasion to help Muslims who are new to the area, or to America altogether. During one point of misfortune a few years ago, I learned that one Muslim family of my acquaintance was praying for my wellbeing. So trust me: I know how all this sounds to people who disagree. American Muslims just want to run their convenience stores, parking garages, halal meat shops, or physics labs, and get on in life, same as everyone else.

And yet the Islamic terrorists, well-trained foreign agent or Sudden Jihad Syndrome flipout, are hiding among them, not us. And the alleged moderate Muslims who run interference for them are quick to scold us for noticing, as are the progressives who tend to make mascots of civilization's enemies. And every snowflake in an avalanche can plead "who, me?".

On the ground, under the news radar, most people get along fine much of the time, even in the world's hot spots. Muslims will even visit Palestinian churches to receive The Virgin's blessing, I've heard. And yet "My biking buddy is a Muslim, therefore Islam is a religion of peace" is as idiotically simplistic a statement as "I get along fine with all the black people at work, therefore there is no more racism in America." Only difference is that the stakes are far higher with the former delusion.

The people who roll their eyes at the commotion over Park51 do not understand or appreciate the power of symbols--intended or unintended. They do not understand the power of memory, of grievances unassuaged, and how they can be passed along year to year, generation to generation, to unpredictably multiplying effect.

No, like Enoch, I don't want to follow these thoughts to their terminus. Just as force should not always be applied to its utmost extreme, so ideas should not always be pursued to their logical conclusions. But the sectarian wedge has been driven deeper between us, with this "center". Who or what can prise it out again? Here be monsters.

Update: welcome readers of Lawyers, Guns and Money. Gee, between The Jawa Report flood earlier and now this, it's almost like having a live blog again, circa 2005!

Blowback for Muslims

There's a small mosque in Cobb County, which was burned by an arsonist earlier this summer. It had been there for years and years--I drove past it sometimes--and the congregation even hosted a memorial in 2004 for a local man who was beheaded by al-Qaeda in Iraq. But all the hate speech flying around finally sent someone over the edge, and the place was torched.

It was torched by a Muslim, and the hate speech was flying around in his native Gambia, where Wahhabism imported from Saudi Arabia has poisoned people's minds.

So let no one think that opposing The Jihad is *quite* the same as opposing Islam. They'll kill insufficiently crazed Muslims as quickly as they will the rest of us.

Twitter for Victorians

From the Victorian London blog, a great find from the 1850s:

A Telegraph all over London? The wires brought to within 100 yards of every man's door? A Company established to carry it out?
Well - I don't know. There's a good deal to be said on both sides.
It certainly would be pleasant to be within five minutes of such a message as "Dine at the Club with me at seven;" or "SQUATTLEBOROUGH JUNCTIONS" at six premium; I've sold your hundred, and paid in the cash to your account;" or "Little stranger arrived safe this morning at twelve; mamma and baby doing well;" and one might occasionally be grateful for such a warning as "KITE and POUNCE took out a writ against you this morning - Look alive;" or "JAWKINS coming to call on you; make yourself scarce."
But think on the other hand of being within five minutes of every noodle who wants to ask you a question, of every dun with a "little account;" of every acquaintance who has a favour to beg, or a disagreeable thing to communicate. With the post one secures at least the three or four hours betwixt writing the letter and its delivery. When I leave my suburban retreat at Brompton, at nine A.M., for the City, I am insured against MRS. P.'s anxieties, and tribulations, and consultings, on the subject of our little family, or our little bills, the servants' shortcomings, or the tradesmen's delinquencies, at least till my return to dinner. But with a House Telegraph, it would be a perpetual tete-a-tete. We should be always in company, as it were, with all our acquaintance. Good gracious, we should go far to outvie SIR BOYLE ROCHE's famous bird, and be not in two places only, but in every place within the whole range of the House-Telegraph at once. Solitude would become impossible. The bliss of ignorance would be at an end. We should come near that most miserable of all conceivable conditions, of being able to oversee and overhear all that is being done or said concerning us all over London! Every bore's finger would be always on one's button; every intruder's hand on one's knocker; every good-natured friend's lips in one's ear.
No - all things considered, I don't think society is quite ripe for the House-Telegraph yet. If it is established I shall put up a plate on my door with "No House-Telegrams need apply."

I thought this was too perfect, but here is the original page from Punch, archived in Google Books. People often lament the passing of the closeness of small town community, where everyone knew their neighbors & their business. But like everything else, this closeness has been digitalized and globalized, with the warmth of human contact replaced with the high-tech sheen of the internet age. Instead of socializing over the back fence, we connect by peering into this year's hot new glowing rectangle.

And, like a commenter at the original blog post said, don't knock it til you've tried it. Maybe the Victorian writer would have overcome his misgivings and plugged right in, if given the chance. You never know.

Test post

To see if IntenseDebate comments is working.

Shirley Sherrod declines to be rehired by Department of Agriculture

Good for her. Even in tough times like these, there's room for only so many knives in one's back. Loyalty is a two-way street.

Mayhem at the Ground Zero Mosque protest

From YouTuber MikeFerrara66

YouTuber: "Hey bro, bro: How does it feel to curse out an old man who's a Holocaust survivor? How does that feel?"

Lefty counter-protestor: "I have no problem cursing out a goddamned treasonous piece of garbage, who wouldn't know the Constitution if it hit him in the f!ing face, okay?"

Random Rock Bloggage

I'm enjoying using the Google archive of photos from LIFE magazine. But it's maddening when I find errors, and have no way of correcting them, or calling them to Google's attention. For example, if you search for bluesman John Lee Hooker, a number of mis-identified photos of Bo Diddly are also returned. I went through all of these and added Bo's name to the labels, but when I returned several days later all of my additions had vanished. There's no email contact provided, and I couldn't get through to Mountain View on the phone the other day, either. It's a shame; I'd love to help improve this fine resource, but they seemingly can't be bothered.

A view of The Jihad

"A gigantic taboo zone has been created, repeatedly reiterated and expanded with the well-intentioned collaboration of Western intellectuals. [...] In the confrontation with Islamism, the Left has abandoned its principles. In the past it stood for cutting the ties to convention and tradition, but in the case of Islam it reinstates them in the name of multiculturalism. It is proud to have fought for women's rights, but in Islam it tolerates head scarves, arranged marriages, and wife-beating. It once stood for equal rights, now it preaches a right to difference – and thus different rights. It proclaims freedom of speech, but when it comes to Islam it coughs in embarrassment. It once supported gay rights, but now keeps silent about Islam's taboo on homosexuality. The West's long-due process of self-relativisation at the end of the colonial era, which was promoted by postmodernist and structuralist ideas, has led to cultural relativism and the loss of criteria."

Submission in advance: 20 years after the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie, Islamism has the West more firmly in its grip than ever before.
By Thierry Chervel

Ground Zero Mosque protests photos

Here are more than 600 photos taken by various photographers today at the Ground Zero Mosque protest, uploaded so far to Flickr. And if you click through all of them, you will find two of a dude got up in prison tats and Confederate gear.

In the comments to one of the shots of this fellow, I noticed Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, asking permission to reproduce it at LGF. Here it is, trumpeted as the face of the protest. (And IINM that's the first time I've been back to LGF since getting the heave-ho--I don't do the stalker thing. Felt strange, but that's another story.)

Now, Charles must have searched through all 300+ [at the time] of these pictures, same as I did. He surely saw all the other people there: bikers, firemen, family members of 9/11 victims--certainly nothing like the freakshow at anti-war marches over the past decade. He may have even clicked through to some of the photographers' profiles and blogs, as I did, and seen that they were by no means sympathetic to the protesters. If there were more like Rebel Boy available to be photographed, they would surely have been snapped. But there apparently weren't. I'll stand corrected if more photographers upload examples later. But for right now, a better title for the LGF post would be The Most Disgusting Character I Saw At The Ground Zero Mosque Protest. Because that's all he really is, based on the available pics so far.

Sidebar: if any lizardoids of my former acquaintance should swing by, and happen to remember a family situation I shared with them last autumn, I'd like to thank them for their kindness back then, and let them know that it's now over.

The real problem with the Ground Zero Mosque

It's not tall enough.

No, really. If it were taller, it would "affect" the New York skyline, and the city government would be involved up to their elbows in this private construction matter. As they are with this proposed building.

Via videoblogger Vincent Ferrari.

And this Burmese YouTuber warns American Muslims of blowback, if the GZM is built.

The Iranian Bomb -- I mean, reactor, is set to be fired up Saturday

Los Angeles Times to publish names and "scores" of teachers.

I believe that teachers should be held accountable. I just don't believe that the puzzle of classroom achievement can be boiled down to just that one variable. A great teacher can move mountains in an under-performing district, where the children struggle under any number of disadvantages, and barely budge the results. A mediocre teacher can be placed in a district with bright, motivated children, involved parents, & so forth, and just proceed on cruise control.

Insensitivity in New York City

The backers of the thing seem to actually think--assuming they're sincere--that building it will make them part of the national healing process. After all, they've been in Manhattan for 30 years. They are reportedly Sufists, not hardline Wahabists. The imam has soft feelings for Hamas? Well, so does just about every "fill-in-the-blank studies" department in our top drawer universities.

So the question is, what can this congregation do to show their sympathy and support? Answer: I don't know, and given their moral tone-deafness in foisting this project on lower Manhattan, their dilemma is not my problem. As much as sensitivity towards Muslims is demanded of us, it isn't too much to expect some from them, once & again. I will not be buffaloed by anyone into reviling them, but this controversy...they did it to themselves.

Bad mothers in the news

How does the news media decide which crimes are to be covered nationwide? This crime is horrible, as reported on CNN:

Shaquan Duley is scheduled to make her first court appearance Wednesday afternoon. She faces two counts of murder in the deaths of her two toddler sons, the Orangeburg County sheriff said. Police identified the dead children as Ja'van T. Duley, age 1, and Devean C. Duley, 2. The funeral for the children will be Friday morning.

But so is this crime, which was only reported in its immediate locality:

In addition to having intercourse with the child, the indictments allege Richardson used his hands and electrical cords as deadly weapons inflicting serious personal injury and also restrained and terrorized Teghan.

Teghan died July 19 at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, three days after she had been taken to Johnston Memorial Hospital by Richardson. She had cuts, lacerations, bite marks, head trauma and sexual assault injuries, authorities said.

Teghan and her mother, Helen Reyes, had been living in a barn with Richardson on 750 Old Sanders Road behind the home of his grandparents, Wade and Helen Creech, for the past four weeks. The structure had no bathroom, no running water and a single air mattress on the floor for sleeping, according to Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell.

Reyes left for New Mexico for Army Reserves training on July 6, leaving the sole care of her daughter entrusted to Richardson.

The Ground Zero mosque

A sudden disgusting thought. Maybe that Ground Zero center will be built in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Maybe, at the vigils that will be sure to be held there, the imam and his congregation will join in--in all sincerity, let's say. Imagine his flock mumbling prayers in arabic during the Moment Of Reflection....allahu akbar, allahu akbar...the same prayers the hijackers screamed as they slit the flight crews' throats, as they stabbed the passengers who tried to resist, as they revved up the engines and slammed into the buildings. The same prayers that the muslims worldwide cheered in their mosques, dancing in the streets, exulting over the infidel victims' deaths.

Fuck that.

Random Rock Bloggage

You know, it's strange. When I was a spacey adolescent, back when woolly mammoths roamed the continent, I enjoyed the hell out of Jimi Hendrix. But now that I'm hauled up into middle age, I find that he's frequently too intense & mind-blowing for me. Why? I enjoy plenty of less innovative rock from that same era. I certainly wouldn't be so idiotic as to say that I've outgrown him. But he's just overwhelms me nowadays. A function of the broad mind & the narrow waist changing places, prolly. But it's amazing how his freshness, intensity, & innovation has *stayed* all these years, without losing its potency. His best transcended the hippie daze, and is undiminished to this day.

HP's Mark Hurd exits twelve million dollars richer

Fine with me. Way up at that level of the economy, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate.

Visible girl, invisible girl

Porn is ultimately not very liberating for women. The 70s being long past, a feminist voicing such an opinion is not such a rara avis anymore. Indeed, Dr. Gail Dines is a long-time activist against what she sees (disclosure: and me too) as the pornification of our culture.

The Stepford Wife image that drove previous generations of women crazy with their sparkling floors and perfectly orchestrated meals has all but disappeared, and in its place we now have the Stepford Slut; a hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, technologically, and in many cases surgically-enhanced, woman with a come-hither look on her face. We all recognize the look: slightly parted glossy lips, head tilted to the side, inviting eyes, and a body contorted to give the (presumed male) viewer maximum gazing rights to her body. Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver have morphed into Britney, Rhianna, Beyonce, Paris, Lindsay and so on. They represent images of contemporary idealized femininity – in a word, hot – that are held up for women, especially young women, to emulate. Women today are still held captive by images that ultimately tell lies about women. The biggest lie is that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give women real power in the world, since in a porn culture, our power lies, we are told, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chances, but in having a hot body that men desire and women envy.

Okay fine, so far as that goes. But this rubs up against my dissatisfaction with feminism as a Compleat Theory of Everything, which some advocates seem to want it to be. Reducing all the rich pageant of men and women and home and work and life and love to mere politics is as barren, in its own way, as reducing it to mere carnality, as porn does. I wonder: what would she think if one of her students were a chaste, home-schooled, moral, prairie dress wearing virgin? "That's not normal" would be one of those thoughts, I'd wager. And if "That's not right" were another, I'd despair of her & her counsel altogether.

Feminism makes use of conservative moralism to further its own ends. This is akin to, and actually part of, the fatal old alliance between traditional conservatives and radicals, which has had such far-reaching effects for more than a century. They had nothing in common but their hatred of capitalism, the conservatives looking back to the revival of throne and altar in the various European nations, and to piety, the radicals looking forward to the universal, homogeneous society and to freedom — reactionaries and progressives united against the present.
-- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1988

Good night, beloved mother...

She passed away recently after a long illness. Her funeral and visitation was attended by more than a thousand people. I did a little video tribute to her, which I posted but then took down, out of respect for the privacy of my wife & inlaws. I love them to pieces.

RIP, Omoni...

Obquotes:

Look in those eyes... Listen to that dear voice... Notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all gifts. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the anxiety of that tone and look, however slight is your pain. In after life you may have friends, fonds, dears, but never will you have again the inexpressible love & gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay

No; even he that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother; as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought, the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-mer, 1835

Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
-- Conrad Richter

Anne Rice renounces Christianity, again

Some friendly soul ought to have whispered in Anne Rice's ear these wise words of Frederick Buechner:

"The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God's name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to look. The invisibile church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God. Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don't even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap."

The store clerk could get her work done faster if it wasn't for all the pesky customers. The manager could make human resources work like a dream if it wasn't for all the pesky employees. And Anne Rice could commune with the Church if it just wasn't for all the abrasive fellow Christians.

Cordoba House, the Ground Zero Mosque

Intellectually, I think that most of the Muslims involved in this project are probably sincere, in their own notions of bridge-building. Emotionally, I feel that this "center" represents the enemy's taunting touchdown dance in our endzone.

And why name it "Cordoba House"? The Caliphate of Cordoba was an allegedly golden age in Spain, when people of many religions lived prosperously and harmoniously together, firmly under the rule of Muslims. Why not name the thing "American House" instead? America is a much better place where people of many religions live prosperously and harmoniously together, minus the being subjugated by Muslims part.

Death follows Wikileaks

Assange is giving us a wonderful lesson in why things are classified during war. His cavalier attitude toward the safety of the people he exposes to mortal danger, as if a really terrible context like a war provides justification for adding further risk to their lives (and his repeated, and thus far unsupported, accusations that Afghans who help us are criminals), is beyond immaturity and callousness, though—it is monstrous.

Julian Assange is the worst sort of moralist, one whose sense of justice is so selective (secrecy is of utmost concern for Wikileaks’ sources and employees, but not the government), and his comprehension of consequences so short-sighted and defined by ideology rather than fact, that he doesn’t care who he has to offer up to murderous @#!*% to satisfy his sense of moral outrage. It is the same morality that leads the ELF to destroy car dealerships using chemical explosives out of a concern for the environment.

A wrong is a wrong is a wrong

Okay, let’s take all the known facts about Ms. Sherrod and interpret them in the most negative light. Say she’s a self-satisfied civil servant who considers herself a civil master. She’s got a queen bee mentality, terming a farmer in need “acting superior”, when in reality he probably wasn’t kissing her @$$ smoochily enough for her. She’s an affirmative action quota hire who yells racism to tar her enemies and generally smooth her road in life.

If she is all that, then what happened to her would be just as wrong as it would be if she was otherwise. Breitbart ran with a juicy item straight from the Too Good To Check File, as have most of us at one time or another. I doubt that this is the hill he wants to die on, but in the long run it may turn out to be just that.

Yes, she is a bad mother...

First, she shacks up with this defective shitbird, whom she herself was afraid of. Then she leaves her to live with him in a barn behind his grandfather's house. Then she deploys to the other end of the country, leaving her alone with him. Then this. Idiot!

We are told by the cultural Left that a family is any random grouping of people who share a fridge, and who have sweet feelings for each other most of the time. So why, in these cases, does it so often seem to be this year's boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) and not the natural father/husband who brings harm to the defenseless child? Or is it just me? Someone point me to a study, but that's the impression I get, browsing these awful stories.

I am so sick and tired of listening to single mothers going on about how they would do anything for their children--anything except give them a father who's married to their mother.

RIP to the poor tot...

Ten ways to brighten a service industry worker's day

Yes, the toughest day at work is better than the best day job-
hunting. So why not make the tiny effort necessary to make someone's
else's day less tough? Of all the things you can spend, good cheer is
the least expensive and the most easily restocked. Only a fool would
be stingy with it. So tuck into these, and then get out there and
spread the kindness!

* Say hello or thank-you to them in their own language.
You can brighten the day of immigrant workers this way. For example,
Ethiopians seem to run most of the parking garages, as well as many of
the convenience stores. I chatted with one once, and he taught me how
to say "Tah-dias", which roughly means "how's it going?" in Amharic.
So now when I roll out to pay the parking attendant, (assuming I can
identify them as Ethiopian), I'll salute them with that greeting.
They are pleased, and couldn't be more surprised if the drop gate had
spoken to them! The same is true of speakers of other languages--
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are especially pleased not to be
mistaken for each other.

* Inquire after their well-being, beyond the formulaic "how are you
today":
In autumn of 2008, I telephoned a mutual fund I own shares in. This
was when the toxic assets bomb had just gone off, and the stock market
was free-falling in earnest. I was calling about an unrelated matter,
but I knew the poor cubicle inmate answering the phone must have had
to endure quite a lot of rage from investors that day. So I asked
him, "Everybody being civil to you today?" He laughed, and said "No!
You're the only one!" Thus, a brief acknowledgement of their humanity
and expression of concern for their wellbeing will lighten their mood,
if only for a few moments.

* Tip the wait staff adequately.
As you know, most of them earn much less than the minimum wage, and
rely on tips. The internet is awash with tales of stingy tippers, and
the occasional story of a generous giver. Certainly, bad service
should not be rewarded. But if you decide to tip, make it a real
reward. Can't afford it? Maybe tipping generously will keep you from
dining out so often, then; you'll save money that way.

* Tip the food delivery guy even more than that.
The waitress walks across the room to bring you your meal, and walks
back a few times to refill your drink. The pizza guy drives your meal
to your doorstep, which may be hard to find, or in a dangerous
neighborhood. Consider that, while his nightly pay for maybe three
hours work might seem nothing to sneeze at, he's probably putting four-
fifths of it into his gas tank at shift's end. He depends on tips to
make the job worthwhile. So pause before you fill out that check &
add some more, or grab a few more coins from the change jar. You
won't really miss it--you're already paying more to have food
delivered, remember--and it will put his evening in the plus column.

* Repeat or explain your request without irritation, if necessary.
Are they slow on the uptake? Nobody was born knowing how to work the
machine at the counter. A less than sparkling public manner today?
Maybe the person is trying to cope with some private anguish. Are
they hungover? At least they came in to work. Just remember: If
everyone in the world who was stupider than you were to be taken out
and shot for it, then you would be the stupidest person in the world.

* Josh with them, in an appropriate way.
If they nervously admit that "I'm new here", joke that you'll be sure
to give them an extra hard time, then.
Or this: Fast food counter clerk: "What would you like?" You: "Oh,
surprise me!"

* Transact complicated business yourself.
Yes, your tiny child, clutching a wad of singles and stammering
ferociously, looks adorable up there at the counter trying to place an
order. And the dumbest person on your staff doubtless could use the
practice in sorting out some transaction. But do the world a favor
and tend to these things yourself, when things are busy.

* Don't blame them for being short-staffed.
How many times have you seen this? Lines are backing up, because
somebody is out or the place was never adequately staffed in the first
place. The remaining workers are dealing with the crowd as best they
can, silently enduring the grumbles and glares of the impatient
public. Ask yourself: Why are you getting mad at the workers who
*did* show up for work?

* Praise them to their boss. This is much, much less of a hassle than
in the old days. Time was, you had to fill in and mail back a
postcard, or call a toll-free number. Usually the only people who did
so were people who wanted to complain. Nowadays, most every company
has a website, with an email contact on it. It's no effort at all to
shoot off an email: "Hey! You know the young stoner with the
muttonchops running the coffee frother at the Main Street location?
Well, he gave me extra whipped cream without me even having to ask for
it. I appreciate that!" It's easier than Facebooking, and pays
better karma dividends.

*And the old stand-by, pay with the smallest bill possible.
Having a string of people breaking big bills on them, on a day when
the bank is closed, is a definite stressor. Also, have your money
ready when your turn comes up. And empty your coin jar at the bank,
wilya? All matters of simple expediency which may not seem like much
to you, but which you would surely appreciate if the roles were
reversed.

Tattooed ta-tas

Breasts with tattoos are just hideous to me. Ladies, can't you think of a classier way of advertising your sexual availability?

Racist satire earns Tea Party faction the boot

Good.

The National Tea Party Federation, an organization that represents the Tea Party political movement around the country, has expelled conservative commentator Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express because of an inflammatory blog post he wrote, federation spokesman David Webb said Sunday.

Appearing on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Webb said that Williams and the Tea Party Express -- which has held a series of events across the country to generate support for the movement -- no longer were part of the National Tea Party Federation.

"We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote," Webb said of the blog post by Williams that satirized a fictional letter from what he called "Colored People" to President Abraham Lincoln.

Williams' alleged satire was not funny enough to be good, nor bad enough to be funny. It read like something dredged up from a usenet sewer. Thanks to this, more people will wonder if the Tea Party is not a pro-liberty movement, but rather the (barely) acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff. No, this particular spat was definitely not fought on the plane of ideas....

The Blogosphere and its discontents

On the Internet, you read the fierce posts of political and ideological writers and wonder, Why do so many young bloggers sound like hyenas laughing in the dark? Maybe it's because there's no old hand at the next desk to turn and say, "Son, being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life."
-- Peggy Noonan, "Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness", The Wall Street Journal, July 16th, 2010

Despicable Me

Took my kids to see it Sunday. A fun flick! They enjoyed the fart jokes, and I enjoyed the nods to movies like The Godfather. And the animation is just incredible--as is the animation on most kids movies these days. Gotta love Dilbert's pointy-haired boss showing up in a supporting role, too.

Battle of Britain, 70th anniversary

Hats off to Britain's heroes, who saved Western civilization in that long ago summer.

Compare and contrast

Obeying their religious tenets, Muslims in Kerala state, India, try to kill a suspected blasphemer. Obeying his religious tenets, the Christian victim forgives his attackers.

A scene from The Jihad

And what of my father? Had he, too, become a terrorist? One afternoon, I read a newspaper headline about a recent suicide bombing (or “martyrdom operation” as some in Hamas called them) that had killed many civilians, including women and children. It was impossible for me to mentally reconcile the kindness and character of my father and his leadership with an organization that carried out such things. I pointed to the article and asked him how he felt about such acts.

“Once,” he answered, “I left the house and there was an insect outside. I thought twice about whether to kill it or not. And I could not kill it.” That indirect answer was his way of saying that he could never personally participate in that kind of wanton killing. But the Israeli civilians were not insects.

No, my father did not build the bombs, strap them onto the bombers, or select the targets. But years later I would think of my father’s answer when I encountered a story in a Christian Bible that describes the stoning of a young innocent named Stephen. It said, “Saul was there, giving approval to his death” (Acts 8:1).

I loved my father so deeply, and I admired so much about who he was and what he stood for. But for a man who could not bring himself to harm an insect, he had obviously found a way to rationalize the idea that it was fine for somebody else to explode people into scraps of meat, as long as he didn’t personally bloody his hands.

At that moment, my view of my father grew much more complicated.

-- Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A gripping account of terror, betrayal, political intrigue, and unthinkable choices, 2010

July 4th, 1826--the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

From Daniel Webster's eulogy of both men:

Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and for so long a time, blended with the history of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and recollections, with the events of the Revolution, that the death of either of them would have touched the chords of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link, connecting us with former times, was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were driven on, by another great remove from the days of our country's early distinction, to meet posterity and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the currents of the ocean and the winds carry along until he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descend one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another great luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away from our sight.

But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been President, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act/ that they should complete that year/ and that then, on the day which had fast linked for ever their own fame with their country's glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?

Thinking about graduate school...

Somewhere on the web there's a bitter spoof about graduate school, likening it to a living body's metabolism. Doctoral candidates (and their money) are ingested as raw material. They are transformed into low paid graduate assistants, metabolizing the workings of the school. They are then excreted as unemployable PhDs.

Christopher Hitchens announces he has cancer

THIS IS AN OLD POST: THE NEWS OF HIS PASSING IS BLOGGED HERE.



Sorry to hear it. This conservative Christian wishes that pugnacious atheist a swift course of treatment and full recovery. He may be an enemy of the faith, but over the past several years he has proven himself a great friend of civilization. Our best to him and his family during this time ahead.

A list of YouTube firsts

Here's the list I submitted to Listverse, which was not used. Someone may find it interesting anyway, so here it is.

Roundhay Garden Scene: The world's earliest surviving motion-picture film, from 1888. It was directed by inventor Louis Le Prince, and was recorded at 12 frames per second.


The earliest known footage of a live Genesis concert, from The Piper Club, Rome, 18 April 1972.


This is the oldest known footage of a Pope in existence. This film of Pope Leo XIII was created in 1896. The audio portion is the oldest known audio recording of Pope, also of Pope Leo XIII recorded in 1903. The audio is Pope Leo XIII chanting the Ave Maria in Latin.


The 30-second live-action introduction to this Betty Boop cartoon, filmed in 1932, is the earliest known footage of Cab Calloway.


Australia's earliest surviving film -- an 1896 movie known as "Patineur Grotesque" or "Humorous Rollerskater", features a clown on skates.


The earliest known recorded vocal performance of Spanish Catalan operatic soprano Victoria de los Ángeles was privately recorded in 1942.


This, the oldest surviving color videotape footage, from 1958, features an address by President Dwight Eisenhower.


This 1970 clip of “Border Song” is supposed to be the earliest surviving film of a performance by Elton John.

This game of footie is the earliest footage in existence of a Merseyside derby. The game took place on 27th September 1902 at Goodison Park with Everton winning Liverpool 3-1.


This Muay Thai boxing footage is claimed to be the oldest such still extant. Although it’s supposed to be from the 1920s, it has a narrator and a music track, so eh??? Possibly a ringer, but still plenty old.


The oldest film of the Madina Sharif, the Mosque of the Prophet, in Medina, 1938.


One of a collection of business comedy shorts from 1990; they are supposed to be the earliest performance clips of a then-unknown Stephen Colbert.

I like Listverse!

There are innumerable websites out there devoted to top 10 lists of one sort or another. But Listverse, which I discovered via StumbleUpon, seems to be the most "human" of the ones I've encountered so far. Most others I've seen are repackaged from other sites, or seem artificial in some other way. But Listverse is run by a real person in New Zealand, name of Jamie Frater.

All of which is a lead up to presenting a couple of list I submitted which were used on the site: 10 Notable Apologies From The Past Decade and 10 Generals Who Got In Trouble With Their Chiefs. A third list I submitted was poorly conceived and not used, no loss. I'm working on three other lists now, and hope to whip them into submittable shape in a few weeks. This is fun!

In sympathy...

Our best wishes go out to the family of Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein, on the recent passing of his father. These are some photos from Google's LIFE Magazine archive, keyword search "father".

June 22nd 1941, Operation Barbarossa begins...

I Gervinus Rothling have emptied life not from a glass but from a magnum. Have known history as I know my own skin. Have crossed and recrossed Europe like Napoleon's hordes, have seen Salonika burning and the face of an old man floating, smiling in the Grand Canal. I have smelled new wheat in the Carpathians and eaten eel, salt-cold from the Tyrrhenian Sea. I have passed my hands over the stone roses in the cloister at Albi and over a woman's hair in a cellar in Kharkov. A magnum, a Jeroboam, till it was empty. God how we lived! Each terrible year like a hundred ordinary years, like a thousand. He was true to his word. A thousand-year Reich inside each of us, a millennium of remembered life. We have left nothing for those who came after. That's our real crime. They are ghosts, plump ghosts, lean ghosts, the whole generation of them. Not their fault. We left them the cold ash of history, the skin of the grape. But I wouldn't trade. I wouldn't.
-- George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H., 1979

Fun with Google

1. Take a look around you, and pick an object, any object that you see. Then, go to images.google.com and search that object with the world "novelty" in front of it. Novelty computer mouse. Novelty teapot. Novelty ashtray. Anything! A great shopping aid.

2. Take the first name of someone you know. Then go to google and search the phrase "______ is a real piece of work", filling in the blank with the name. Then search "________ is a gem" You can also do this with a relative term, like wife, nephew, sister, etc. For lovers of gossip!

A global warming data point is revised

Yes, that Antarctic glacier is melting faster nowadays. But the Pine Island Glacier melt may not be due to global warming. A submersible research device found that it had been sitting on top of a previously unknown rocky ridge, which had heretofore blocked its progress. Now the glacier has separated from the ridge, and so the glacier is flowing unimpeded, and hence faster, into the sea, and therefore melting faster.

It'll be interesting to see if this finding holds up, and how it is worked into the greater skein of climatology. I wish I understood the math, so I could follow this discipline more attentively.

Deepwater Horizon hasn't finished collapsing yet?

An anonymous but seemingly knowledgeable commenter elseweb says that the worst is yet to come.

All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same. [...] To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.

What does this mean?

It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
same dynamics. [...]

This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.

Dear God, what a shit-shower this is....

Pigs fly, the underworld freezes, and...

...Dhimmi U. acts against the formerly untouchable Muslim Student Union. For years, the MSU has freely romped all over that campus, engaging in recreational disruption and threats against non-Muslims, especially Jews. But it seems that even the granola gobbling multi-cultists running the University of California-Irvine have had enough now.

In making the suspension recommendation, Lisa Cornish, UC Irvine's director of student housing, found that the Muslim Student Union had "planned, orchestrated and coordinated in advance" an effort to disrupt a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on Feb. 8 about U.S.-Israeli relations. The recommendation was made in late May but not made public at that time.

Oren was shouted down repeatedly by Muslim students who stood up and delivered statements such as "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech." Supporters cheered as the students were escorted away by police, and each time Oren attempted to resume his speech, another student jumped up with another outburst.

Eleven UC Irvine and UC Riverside students were arrested and cited for disturbing a public event, but none have been criminally charged. The Muslim Student Union claimed the disruptions were caused by individuals and were not organized by their group.

Backstory:

Isaac Yerushalmi, former president of Anteaters for Israel, which sponsored Oren's appearance in February, said the Muslim Student Union has been "involved in repeated attempts to silence Jewish voices on campus."

And irony fail:

[Reem Salahi, the students' attorney] said she worried the recommendation could jeopardize Muslim life on campus. Victor Sanchez, president of the systemwide UC Student Assn., said he was outraged. "It's almost impossible not to interpret this as a means of the university to silence dissent," he said.

Remember, class: The West "invades". Islam "spreads". Many if not most Muslim immigrants come here for a better life, and to get away from both the government oppression and the fundamentalist crazies that bedevil their homelands. It's not so different a story from that of innumerable earlier waves of immigration. But their children? The tenured radicals are teaching the Muslim kids to despise America and her works, same as they're teaching our children. But in the Muslim case, there's an alternative to the standard leftist bullet points the faculty pushes. There's the dream of a resurgent caliphate and sharia law, imposed on believer and infidel alike. The wreckage wrought by the Destructive Generation can often be repaired merely by prolonged exposure to the real world, and enough 1040s under one's belt. But when The West Is Evil And Must Be Smashed is proclaimed by your college education and your ancestral faith, then hmmm...???

Harrumphs of approval here and here and of course here.

Thus far, and no farther.

Paypal drops Atlas Shrugs for TOS violation

I don’t much care for Pamela Geller's over-the-cliff manner or ideas. (Like, what is she actually going to do with any Muslims who take her up on the offer of sanctuary for leaving Islam?) And Paypal is a private company, not a government agency. Still, the whole point of protecting freedom of speech is that unpopular speech is included in that protection. The New Black Panther Party is sporting a paypal button, as of tonight.

Maybe Geller will have to hit the lecture circuit, to make ends meet.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is still a remarkable woman...

...and a walking refutation of the Left's more dangerous multi-culti delusions.

"Well, she was black, so they could not dismiss her as a racist; she had lived in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands and the United States, so they could not call her an ignorant provincial hick; she was an avowed atheist, so they could not call her a Christian bigot on a crusade against peaceful Islam; and she was multi-lingual, articulate, and brilliant, so they couldn’t just call her stupid. All the pejoratives they usually apply to people who disagree with them wouldn’t work, and so they were left to confront her ideas, and those ideas stripped them naked, rent their garments of superiority and condescension into tatters at their feet, and left them angry and confused, whining to each other in the corners of the room, unable to say anything to her face. Their favorite weapons, ad hominem name- calling and sneering condescension, were disarmed."

Roundup of Helen Thomas fallout...

Comedy first:

"Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards."

More than 25 thousand hate emails have been sent--to the rabbi who busted her.

"These are people that feel very mainstream about anti-Semitism and hate. They feel so proud of it. There is an arrogance about it. There is no shame," Nesenoff said.

An aspiring pundit you've never heard of, who is also a self-described non-observant Jew, uses the kerfluffle for a little self-promotion.

For some, the outragey part of the outrage was the outrage displayed by those outraged by Thomas' comments. Shorter: libs are never very comfortable when the peasants answer back, and often warn of a chilling of free speech, when it happens. Kim Priestap over at Wizbangblog parses one such instance.

What to do with the Helen Thomas Award For Lifetime Achievement? The question awaits the photoshop muse of serr8d or Darleen Click.

Liberal and progressive defenders of Thomas complained that she was taken out of context. Well, imagine this scene: A parcel of land is bought by, say, Wal-Mart. It is graded and prepped for the construction of a store. But, homeless people move in and set up a squatters' camp on the construction site. In the ensuing legal set-to, guess which side the libs & proggs would take, the self-same libs & proggs who want to kick the Jews--oops, the settlers--out of Israel altogether?

Thomas has been a long time hard lefty pretending to be an objective journalist. Throughout the Bush administration, it was hard to tell if Thomas was a White House correspondent or a reporter working for Al Jazeera. Now that she has put herself out to pasture, she can spend her time going to all those far left rallies where she can support illegal immigration, socialism and support Hamas all day long.

Don’t let the door catch your tail on the way out Helen!

Random Rock Bloggage

Everyone's seen this already, but it gets better every time I watch it. So, here it is once again. It isn't displaying properly, so double click it to proceed to its home at YouTube.



Perpetuum Jazzile, Toto, Africa