Light Seeking Light

Toby Young explains:

Being politically correct is also socially correct — which helps explain its ubiquity. When a political trend is reinforced by snobbery it becomes an irresistible force, which helps explain the success of the environmental movement.

Political attitudes as social indicators -- very perceptive, and it explains a lot. Read the whole thing here.

As I have expected, evidence now comes to light that "scientists" have been faking global warming data.

Read about it here.

Back when I was in the game they used to talk about "massaging" the data to achieve the desired results.

UPDATE:

The Anchoress has a lot of links on the climate change fraud. She points out that President Bush, unlike his critics, was able to see through the fraud and resist immense pressures to go along to get along. Read her here.

I seldom look at Scientific American any more -- it's been taken over by warmist enthusiasts -- but it has a nice, objective, overview of the current controversy over Ardi.

Check it out here.

Excellent piece by Jonah Goldberg over at the National Review on the subject of Palinophobia. He makes a lot of sense. I particularly liked this line:

[S]ome of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated.

My feelings exactly. And this:

[M]y sense is that Palin is good for the Republican party but not necessarily great. She generates enthusiasm among, and donations from, the base. But she also turns off many of the people the GOP needs to persuade and attract. That could change with this book tour, and I hope it does. Whether she’s ready or qualified for the presidency is another matter. But the presidency is a long way off, and besides, that’s what primaries are for.

Read the whole thing here.

Today is "Universal Children's Day", officially so designated in 1954 by the U. N. This is not to be confused with "International Children's Day" sponsored by UNICEF which comes in December, nor the other "International Children's Day" which comes in June, nor with "National Child's Day" which President Bush established on the first Sunday of June, nor with "Children's Day" which was celebrated last week in India, nor with the "Children's Day" [formerly "Boy's Day"] which was celebrated in May in Japan, nor with the hundreds of other national and international celebrations of children. Actually, for people with children still at home every day seems to be "children's day", and that is how it should be.

On this day in 1272 Edward I [Longshanks] was proclaimed King of England. Today he's mostly remembered as the guy who killed Braveheart, but he was an extremely competent king who greatly strengthened the monarchy. His son, however, was a different matter.

And on this day in 1866 Howard University was founded in Washington, D.C.

And on this day in 1910 Francisco Madero issued a call for revolution against Mexican President-for-Life, Porfirio Diaz. This is the start of the Mexican Revolution that brought Madero to the presidency. It didn't last long, though. Soon Madero himself faced revolt and in 1913 he was displaced by a coup and executed by strongman, Victoriano Huerta.

On this day in 1945 the Nazi War Crimes trials began in Nuremberg. These trials remain one of the most controversial events of the Twentieth Century. Many consider them to be fully justified considering the nature of the Nazi regime, but it is clear that the trials were terribly flawed. Not only were prosecutors selective in the choice of defendants and used fraudulent evidence to convict some of them, but many of the charges were made "ex post facto" [that is, the actions were only defined as crimes after they were committed]. U.S. Chief Justice Harlan Stone called the trials a "fraud" and a "high-grade lynching party"; liberal icon, Justice William Douglas called them "unprincipled"; and even the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson, admitted that the Allies [particularly the French and the Soviets] were guilty of precisely the same "crimes" that were being charged against the defendants. Most disturbingly, the Nuremberg Trials set precedents for legal actions that have repeatedly been abused by left-wing ideologues ever since.

On this day in 1967, according to Census Bureau projections, the population of the United States stood at 200 million people. In less than forty years it had exceeded 300 million people.

And on this day in 1978 Jim Jones' followers drank the kool-aid and died.

Entering the building:

Kennesaw Mountain Landis [1866] First Commissioner of Baseball, hired to clean up the mess after the Black Sox scandal.

Edwin Hubble [1889] -- he proved that there were galaxies outside the Milky Way and discovered the "Red Shift" that showed that the universe was expanding.

Robert Byrd [1917] Democratic Senator from West Virginia and former Ku Klux Klansman who served as Senate Majority Leader.

Robert F. Kennedy [1925] -- Joe McCarthy henchman who rode his brother's coat-tails to national office as Attorney General and while there hatched and ordered the execution of assassination plots against foreign leaders [most notably Fidel Castro] while ordering domestic surveillance against potential political foes [including Martin Luther King, Jr.]; who shamelessly exploited his brother's death to seek election to the U. S. Senate from New York, despite not actually living in the State, and to launch a campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Ironically, this man, who had ordered the assassination of others, and who had exploited his brother's assassination for political gain, was himself assassinated by a Palestinian radical Muslim.

And on this day in 1929 Dick Clark, DJ who hosted "American Bandstand" out of a studio on Market Street in West Philly and went on to become one of the most influential figures in the music business, was born.

And "Happy Birthday" to Joseph "Plugs" Biden [1942], Scranton native and longtime senator from Delaware who is currently one heartbeat away from the presidency [shudder].

Leaving the Building:

Leo Tolstoy [1910] Russian novelist whom nearly everyone claims to have read but probably didn't.

Allan Sherman [1973] "Hello Mutha, hello Fadder, here I am in Camp Granada..."

General Francisco Franco [1975] Leader of the Falangist movement in Spain and longtime dictator of that country.

And a very "Happy Anniversary" to Queen Elizabeth II of the U.K. and her consort, Prince Philip.

Look for a huge opening for "New Moon". We went to the movies this afternoon and when we left teenage girls were already lining up for the midnight showing.

Here's a nice visual representation of county-level unemployment statistics since the beginning of 2007. You can see the country rapidly turning into California.

Today is "Have A Bad Day Day". Wow! Sounds bad! Wishing misfortune on others -- that's what comic book villains do. But it's not as perverse as it sounds. The commemoration was established by folks fed up with hearing people say "Have a good day" at the end of every encounter. In other words it is a protest against the insincerity of social conventions.

And in the spirit of mocking social conventions I should note that today is also the "Great American Smokeout", or as I call it "Nag your Neighbor Day". Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you so reiterating the fact over and over is not conveying useful information, it is just a form of nagging. So for those of you who want an alternative to the social convention of trashing and admonishing smokers, here's Harriet Harris' famous paean to smoking from the "Frasier" TV show.



Potatoes anyone?

On this day in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln delivered a commemorative address at the Gettysburg battlefield. Many scholars have argued that this "Gettysburg Address" (little noticed at the time) is the most important single speech ever given in the nation's history. The reason? Not only is it brilliantly composed [the story about it being written on an envelope on the train ride to the battlefield is completely bogus], but it fundamentally redefines the nature of the United States.

Originally conceived as a voluntary and conditional union of sovereign States, the United States emerged from the Civil was as an integrated nation in which the supremacy of the federal government was confirmed for all time. As one historian put it, "The United States" became a singular, rather than a plural, term. Lincoln's formulation at Gettysburg: "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" gave perfect expression to this new state of affairs. Big government advocates and nationalists have ever since looked to Lincoln's address, and indeed his entire administration, for inspiration and justification.

And on this day in 1874, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for having defrauded New York of millions of dollars. Tweed's corrupt political machine was typical of that era and has been denounced by good government reformers ever since. But historians have pointed out that corrupt city and state machines were responsible for building the nation's urban infrastructure and modernizing America in the decades after the Civil War, and provided a remarkably democratic way of organizing the nation's resources.

On this day in 1919 the U. S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Liberal transnationalists have long lamented this decision to stay out of the League and have argued that America's refusal to participate helped to bring about World War Two. Others find that argument unpersuasive.

On this day in 1928 "Time" magazine publishes its first issue with Japanese Emperor Hirohito on the cover.

And on this day in 1942 the tide began to turn on the Eastern Front as Soviet troops defending Stalingrad went on the offense. This was the beginning of the "Great Winter Offensive" that many European, and especially Russian, historians see as the great turning point of the Second World War. Most British and American historians see things a bit differently because such a formulation relegates actions on the Western Front to a decidedly secondary status.

And on this day in 1969 Apollo 12, bearing Pete Conrad and Alan Bean touched down on the Moon.

And on this day in 1986 Mike Schmidt, Phillies third basemen, won the NL MVP award, and four years to the day later Pittsburgh's Barry Bonds won the very same award. What a coincidence!

Entering the Building: King Charles I of the UK [1600]. His attempts to reassert the "divine right" of kings to rule provoked the English Civil War in 1642 which did not go well for him or for the doctrines he espoused. Also entering the building on this day in 1831, James Garfield. 20th President of the United States. Things did not go well for him either. And a very "Happy Birthday" to Billy Sunday, Pirate infielder who went on to be one of the nation's greatest evangelists; and to Tommy Dorsey [1905], a Mahanoy City kid who, along with his brother Jimmy, made it big, very big in the big band era; and to Phillies catcher, Bob Boone [1947], and also to Larry King [1933].

Leaving the Building: Franz Schubert [1828]; Lincoln Penny (Stepin Fetchit) [1985]; and Cab Calloway [1994] another Pittsburgh kid who made it big in show business.

Just what the heck is going on here?

Gordon F. Chang identifies the problem with Obie's approach to foreign relations:

We should thank Beijing’s ruling group for pointing out the fundamental flaw of American foreign policy toward China. Even if our policies are working — they’re not, but that’s another story — Washington is employing tactics that will take decades to bear fruit. So far, we have been appealing to the good instincts of autocrats who interpret gestures of friendship as signs of weakness and who respect nothing but strength. Perhaps we can entice them to be cooperative, but they have just told us that this approach will require a lifetime of unilateral concessions and obsequious behavior on our part.

Well said, and applicable to far more than US-Chinese relations.

Read the whole thing here.

Today is "Occult Day" so go out there and spend the day getting in touch with your paranormal side. Dabble in Theosophy or Ariosophy or Astrology; hold a seance, complete with spirit rapping; seek out Madonna and ask her to explain the Kabbalah; or answer an ad for the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Your life will never be the same. To get you in the mood, here's a link to the collected works of H. P. Lovecraft.

On this day in 1307 William Tell supposedly was forced by a local tyrant to shoot an apple of the head of his son in Uri, Switzerland. Nobody knows if the story is true, and there is some doubt as to whether Tell ever existed, but the tale of Tell's defiance helped to spark a rebellion that eventually led to the formation of the Swiss Confederation.

And on this day in 1803 Haitian rebels defeated French troops in the Battle of Vertieres. This battle secured the independence of Haiti and the successful revolt convinced the French government that it would be impractical to attempt to refound their North American empire in Louisiana. They began to look around for someone to take it off their hands and offered to sell the vast territory at a bargain price to the United States. Fortunately, President Thomas Jefferson did not take constitutional principles very seriously. He made funds available and Louisiana was purchased, mostly to keep it out of British or Spanish hands.

On this day in 1928 Mickey Mouse made his screen debut in Steamboat Willie.



This was also Minnie Mouse's first screen appearance, although Mickey got all the credits.

And on this day in 1981 Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt won his second consecutive NL MVP award.

"Happy Birthday" to Louis Daguerre [1789], inventor of the daguerrotype; to Eugene Ormandy [1899], conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra; to George Horatio Gallup [1901] the pollmeister; and to Alan Shepard [1923], first American astronaut in space.

Leaving the House: Chester A. Arthur [1886]; Niels Bohr [1962]; and Joseph P. Kennedy [1969].

Why are Europeans so committed to the idea of climate change? Investors Business Daily thinks it has an answer. Reacting to a hysterical anti-American rant by Christian Schwagerl in Der Spiegel, IBD concludes:

Should anyone wish to know why Europe has bought so fully into the global warming nonsense, Schwagerl clears that up in his rant about Americans' lifestyles. He is typical of many in the Old World who are jealous of U.S. prosperity and demand that Washington adopt CO2 emissions limits that would bridle our economy. They want Americans' lives to be as materially meager as theirs.

Read it here.

Nice piece by Michael Barone in The American on childbearing and cultural differences in our society. He notes that women tend to conceive earlier in Republican leaning States than in those that lean liberal. This is interesting because of the prevalence of early child-bearing in many Democratic-oriented minority groups. Obviously the discrepancy in the general population must be quite significant to overcome that built-in bias. He then notes that age of first pregnancy has been shown to be a proxy for a number of cultural tendencies and the demographic divergence, which has been widening in recent decades, therefore seems to indicate a developing cultural split in our society.

All of this is to say something that we all know -- that there is a deep, profound, and growing cultural divergence in contemporary American society and that it has significant political consequences. America has passed through similar periods before and the outcome has never been benign.

Read the whole thing here.

Today is "World Peace Day". An admirable sentiment, no doubt, but one also has to ask at what price. A number of studies have shown that since the collapse of the Soviet evil empire the world has been getting steadily more peaceful, that is, the levels of conflict, both between states and within states, have been steadily declining since 1990. [here, here, here, and here.] This has been accomplished without any centralized direction or control [although the United Nations has tried, somewhat unpersuasively, to take credit for the changes]. So perhaps it is more appropriate to celebrate the emerging era of peace rather than to waste effort on insane schemes to pacify the world from the top down.

On this day in 1558 Mary Tudor ["Bloody Mary"] died and Elizabeth I ascended to the throne of England. Catholic persecution of Protestants in the realm came to an end and the Church of England was re-established.

And on this day in 1800 Congress for the first time assembled in Washington and President John Adams moved into the White House. At the time Washington was just a small settlement in the middle of a fever swamp, but in the minds of Tom Jefferson and his supporters it was better than Philadelphia.

And on this day in 1869 the Suez Canal was opened for business.

And on this day in 1913 the first ship passed through the Panama Canal.

And on this day in 1997 "Super" Mario Lemieux entered the NHL Hall of Fame.

Happy Birthday [1755] to Louis XVIII, the first post-revolutionary King of France [1814-1824]; And to Gen. Bernard Law "Monty" Montgomery [1887] who led British forces in WWII and gave Eisenhower more headaches than any commander should have to bear.

Edward Woodward has passed away. He achieved fame as The Equalizer and in Breaker Morant, but for me he will always be Officer Howie in The Wicker Man.

Read about him here.

There's a nice piece by Jeff Jacoby in yesterday's Boston Globe on the subject of "Obama's Swelling Ego".

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends’’ that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.’’ He referred to “tyranny,’’ but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words “Soviet Union’’ or “communism,’’ for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.
....
Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama?

Read the whole thing here.

Today is "Button Day". I don't know what it means either.

Lots of military stuff today.

On this day in 1532 the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro took Inca emperor, Atahualpa, hostage after victory in the battle of Cajamarca.

And on this day in 1798 the Brits boarded a United States ship, the Baltimore, and impressed several seamen into the Royal Navy, claiming that they were deserters. The practice of impressment was a clear violation of American rights and was a major source of tensions leading up to the War of 1812.

And on this day in 1846 General Zachary Taylor occupied Saltillo, Mexico.

And on this day in 1864 General William Tecumseh Sherman began his "march to the sea".

And on this day in 1967 American planes bombed Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam for the first time. Escalation, anyone?

And on this day in 1960 [the Year of Mazeroski], Pirate shortstop Dick Groat won the NL MVP award; and not to be outdone, in 1966 the peerless Pirate, Roberto Clemente received the same award.

"Happy Birthday" to the Federal Reserve System [1914]; to the Roman Emperor Tiberius [42 BC] (not to be confused with the captain of the Star Ship Enterprise); and to W. C. Handy [1873], writer of exquisite songs. Leaving the building today were Clark Gable [1960], the biggest male movie star of all time; and Rep. Sam Rayburn [1961] legendary Speaker of the House. He held the position for seventeen years. After he died they named the building for him.

And on this day in 1981 Luke married Laura on General Hospital. I'm not sure why, but I know several women who consider this to have been a big deal.

Obamao t-shirts, conceived as a compliment to our fine young President, but now banned because some thought it sent the wrong political message. Other's see it as perceptive commentary.


There he goes again -- bowing to a foreign leader. The first time might be excused as simple ignorance on his part, but he keeps doing it so the bows must be deliberate. Why does he do it? Who knows, but there are no acceptable answers.


And again with the Mao imagery. Does Obama not know who Mao was and what he did? Or could it be that he just doesn't care. Again the question arises -- are these gestures simply a matter of ignorance, or is Obama trying to signal his disdain for Western culture and values and acceptance of the worst the Twentieth Century had to offer? Time will tell.

One of the most famous images to emerge from the Spanish Civil War was Robert Capa's "falling soldier". It purported to show a Spanish leftist being felled by a Falangist bullet and it became a powerful symbol of resistance to fascism, used for decades to promote sympathy for left-wing causes. But it was a fake.

George Will explains here.

Even the dean of Washington correspondents has finally had it with the "ditherer in chief". David Broder writes:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose -- and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

Read the whole thing here.

Of course the rabid lefties are baying for Broder's scalp. What they and our feckless young president don't seem to realize is that inaction itself has consequences and, in the case of Afghanistan where we are faced with a deteriorating situation indecision can be fatal.

Obie's defenders like to pretend that he is simply and wisely considering all alternatives before acting, unlike President Bush, who they like to think acted precipitously and without thought. But Bush was anything but foolhardy and impetuous in the runup to the Iraq invasion and, as Broder points out, there has been plenty of time to consider all the available options and to gather all the pertinent information needed to choose among them.

What is left, then, is simply a President who, for whatever reason, is unable to make the kinds of decisions his office demands, who is unable to function once drawn away from a pre-ordained and rigidly held agenda. Faced with difficult choices and conflicting interests, Obama once again stands paralyzed by indecision. Frustration has been building among those who once supported this callow man and gloried in his triumph. Mr. Broder's protest is a measure of that frustration. The time for decision has long passed and now Mr. Obama must stand up and be counted. Presidents cannot vote "present".

Speaking in Tokyo Obama referred to himself as the "first Pacific President" suggesting that he, unlike any of his predecessors, had significant experience in Pacific affairs based on the fact that he was born in Hawaii and spent some of his childhood in Indonesia. As with so many pronouncements made by this most historically illiterate of all Presidents and his minions the assertion is nonsense. California, home to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, borders the Pacific and could reasonably be considered a Pacific environment. Several former Presidents served military tours of duty in the Pacific. George H. W. Bush not only served in the Pacific, he was American ambassador to China. Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines. Hoover lived and worked in China and spoke Mandarin. So, Obama's claim to be the "first Pacific President" is not just unfounded, it is a slander against his predecessors in office.

And Obama's ignorant minions singled out George W. Bush for particular scorn, accusing his administration "of letting US ties with East Asia founder". Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bush administration took the lead in forging regional security, economic, and environmental agreements with Australia, South Korea, Japan, India, New Zealand, and the Philippines while simultaneously expanding the range and depth of ties with mainland China. If anything, Dubya was an activist with regard to East Asia and the Pacific.

It would be easy to dismiss all this as simply more lies from an essentially dishonest man and his lackeys, but it more likely reveals a disturbing level of self-centeredness and ignorance of history and global affairs unparalleled in any recent administration.

Interesting piece in New Scientist on real sea monsters that inhabited ancient seas. Read it here.

The Hunt for Gollum



Ingenious and nicely done.

Remember all that turmoil in the press when Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia? Of course you do! Back then the White House blatantly lied, claiming that the bow was not a bow, which anyone with eyes could see was false. Wonder what they will have to say about this one.

The rule is simple -- American Presidents do not bow to monarchs. For some reason Obama thinks that he should, which is a tad troubling to anyone who respects the reasons for this country's founding.

Read about it here.

This week I'm posting some pictures I took while we were driving through Pennsylvania Dutch country -- my favorite part of the commonwealth.

First, migration season is in full swing and the Susquehanna valley seems to be a favored route for a number of species. As we drove through there were literally thousands of birds in the sky and, most interesting for me, several flocks of Canada geese, some of them winging low overhead.



And down around York we saw balloons in the sky, not an unusual sight in that area. There is a full-time ballooning company operating in York County and they seem to be doing a pretty good business.



And also in York County. This is Lake Redman, a lovely stretch along Rte. 83 near Leader Heights.


And no trip through Central Pennsylvania would be complete without a picture of an Amish horse and buggy. This was taken east of Lancaster along Rte #222.


And just a bit earlier, not far from Reading, we had driven through a rain squall. The sun shining through the clouds cast an eerie glow over the landscape, so naturally I took a picture. Strange, eh?


That's all for this week, folks -- just another wonder-filled jaunt through the gorgeous commonwealth.

Drudge has an excerpt from Sarah's book on his site. Read it here. From her account the McCain staffers assigned to handle her were inept, patronizing, and dishonest. This may well be true, but her insubordinate attitude toward them reveals more than Sarah might want people to know. Ann Althouse explains:

[I quote at length because it's just too good to excerpt]

She had trouble getting phone numbers? She "snuck" around, relying on friends? Like it's a Nancy Drew caper. And did she not see the downside of allowing right-winger to draw her out? That wasn't fair to McCain. McCain's people locked her down? Did she think carefully about their reasons? Does she think carefully about anything? Why did she agree to be McCain's running mate? She won't take responsibility for her own difficulties.

Apparently, they were afraid you were not ready, and they were right, so why didn't you trust them or at least accept that you owed them control over the presidential campaign? You agreed to take the subordinate position, and you had to know that their reasons for picking you had to do with image and style. If you weren't prepared to do it their way, you should not have accepted the part. At the very least, you should not have been mystified about the way they were treating you. You should have been looking at the campaign strategy from every angle and building your sophistication, not just aching to burst free and expose yourself to the world — which, as you soon learned, did not go well.

It seems that Sarah Palin wasn't able or didn't want to bother to analyze whether she was ready to debut on the big media stage, and she wasn't large-minded enough to think beyond herself to what it would mean for the whole campaign. That is, she was dumb. She was too dumb to handle campaign responsibilities properly, so she was clearly too dumb to step into the role of President of the United States.

Could she build up her political intelligence? Might she have it now or by 2012? If these 2 pages of "Going Rogue" are any evidence, she is displaying her weaknesses all over again, and she is still too dumb to be President. And, most scarily, she doesn't know how dumb she still is.

Read the whole thing here.

Dumb is perhaps a bit too strong a word -- naive is far better. Washington politics ain't beanbag -- it is nasty and duplicitous and brutal and unfair and disgusting and every other negative word you care to throw at it. It represents human behavior at its worst. And to succeed at it you have to be willing to draw upon the expertise of those disgusting monstosities who populate the beltway environs. They know what they are doing. Yes they are trying to use you -- let them, and use them too. Political instincts and behavior honed in Wasilla are not going to work in national politics. Get used to it.

Ann may be wrong about Sarah's intelligence. I think she is. But she is right about one thing. This excerpt from Sarah's book reveals that Palin has not yet been able to shed the Capraesque image she had of herself when she started her remarkable odyssey into the wilds of Washington. This lack of self-awareness and intellectual growth is disturbing..., unless, of course, it is a calculated pose cynically intended to present to her numerous supporters an image of purity that supports their general revulsion toward the nation's political elites. Is she really Jimmy Stewart crusading against the monsters of the Washingtons swamp or could she perhaps be Andy Griffith in "The Crowd Roars?" cynically adopting the pose of plain-speaking, home-spun virtue. Or is she just plain Sarah from Wasilla? None of these, I fear, is an attractive alternative.

Today is "Sadie Hawkins Day". For you young'uns out there, Sadie was the invention of Al Capp, whose "Lil' Abner" comic strip was extremely popular half a century ago. Sadie was an unpopular girl who couldn't find a man. She was also the daughter of the town's mayor. So he proclaimed a special day in her honor. On that day all the eligible young people in town would assemble for a race. Men would be given a short head start, then the young women would run after them. If a girl caught a boy he would have to marry her. That's the way things went in "Dogpatch", Al Capp's imaginary universe. When I was young we used to have "Sadie Hawkins" dances at our school. On those occasions girls would take the initiative and ask boys of their choice for a date or to dance. Boys were supposed to be passive and accepting. I don't know if they do that any more. It was fun reversing the sex roles and letting women be the aggressors, that is if you were one of the chosen ones. For some guys with an inflated sense of self esteem, Sadie Hawkins Day was a revelation.

And on this day in 1839 the Liberty Party, the first specifically anti-slavery political party in the United States, convened in New York. Eventually the Liberty Party was absorbed into the Republican Party.

On this day in 1921 "The Sheik" starring Rudolf Valentino hit the theaters, producing Hollywoods first superstar. The movie biz would never be the same.

On this day in 1979 Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the presidency. Wonder how that turned out.

And on that very same day, Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell won the National League MVP AND Darryl Dawkins broke his first NBA backboard. Whooda figured?

Happy birthday to Saint Augustine [354 AD], possibly the most influential Christian theologan of all time; and to James Maxwell [1831] Scottish mathematician and physicist whose "demon" contradicted the second law of thermodynamics; and to Robert Louis Stevenson [1850] another Scotsman whose stories of adventure thrilled me as a child; and to Louis Brandeis [1856] the first, but certainly not the last, Jew to sit on the Supreme Court; and to actor Robert Sterling [1917] the pride of Newcastle, PA.

Today also marks the death in 1460 of "Henry the Navigator", the Portuguese prince who instigated and financed that nation's early exploration and colonization efforts along the coast of Africa and in the Atlantic. Few enterprises in history have had such momentous consequences. You can read about his life and accomplishments here.

Sarah will be on Oprah this coming Monday, talking about her book, Going Rogue. The show has already taped and details are leaking out. Supposedly Oprah asked Sarah about hosting a TV show and Palin did not say "no" [here]. Roger Ailes ears must be pricking up. And Mark Halperin has a few details on what the book contains -- talk about family and faith and a lot of dirt on the campaign and the naming of names [here]. Check out his description of a Sarah rally here. And get ready in case her book tour brings her to or near your city.

She'll be in Washington PA on November 21st at Sam's Club, 80 Trinity Point Drive, South Strabane, 11 AM (Link) So far, that seems to be her only Pennsylvania appearance.

Phyllis Chesler has a nice piece on the Fort Hood murders over at Pajamas Media. She invokes common sense to counter the victimization narrative being pushed by far left publications such as the Nation and echoed in the MSM and the administration's pronouncements.

Check it out here.

A must-read tribute to George and Laura Bush over at HillBuzz written by gay, Hillary loving, lifelong Democrats.

After reviewing the classy response of the Bushes to the Fort Hood massacre and comparing it with the behavior of Obama and his minions they write:

We will never look at the Bushes, the Bush presidencies, or their legacies the same again…and someday when his presidential library is built, we will be so proud to visit there and tell anyone will listen about November 10th, 2009, the day we finally appreciated former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.

Thank you for your service, Mr. President. We’re sorry we didn’t appreciate you while you were in office, but we thank Heaven we’ve wised up and can see the good you are out there doing, under the radar, today.

Read it here.

The NY Post reports:

A prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations, cops said yesterday.

Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges.

McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school's theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.

Is this the dialogue on race that Obama encouraged?

Perhaps. But if there is to be an honest dialogue, the sides must be accorded equal status in the debate. Now stop for a second and think about how the incident would have been handled if a white man had attacked a black woman after having an argument with her about the subject of race. All the ingredients of a "hate crime" were present. The victim was of a different gender and race than her attacker and race was the subject of the dispute. Of course the assailant would be charged with a hate crime. Why not Prof. MacIntyre?

Need I ask? As an African-American MacIntyre is a member of a protected minority that in any dispute is automatically supposed to be accorded superior moral and legal status. But his victim was a woman, and she, too, can assert privileged status on the basis of her sex ["You don't hit a woman"].

In such a poisonous situation, where all involved assume a position of moral and legal superiority, no rational discussion is possible because neither side ultimately can cede the moral high ground and the likely result of the debate will be the one Prof. MacIntyre applied.

Today is "Veterans Day" so go out and find a veteran and sincerely thank him or her for his/her service [in an entirely appropriate way, that is].

When I was a child Veterans Day was still "Armistice Day" and it commemorated the end of major combat in World War I. The armistice had supposedly been signed by the Germans at 11:11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month and so shortly after 11:00 am we would observe a moment of silence for those who fell in the "Great War". There would be parades and marching bands speeches and ceremonies honoring the veterans and people would pass out poppies in remembrance of those who had fallen in battle. It was a big deal. In 1954 the observance was changed to Veterans Day to honor all those who wore the uniform and served their country in all times and all places. To some of us it's still a big deal. Various communities around the Commonwealth are planning observances for 11:00 today. If you can, try to get to one. I know I will.

On this day in 1620 forty-one passengers on board the Mayflower anchored off Cape Cod sign an agreement to form a government and to be bound by its laws. This is the famous "Mayflower Compact", arguably the first "constitution" written by English settlers in America although it did not specify the form of government.

And on this day in 1939 Kate Smith first performed "God Bless America" in public. Her career and the song's fame rose together. Here's the way it sounded when she sang it. Some would object to the song's militant tone, but on this day it seems appropriate.




Happy Birthday to Gen. George S. Patton [1885], to Kurt Vonnegut [1922], to Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1821], to Pennsylvania senator Hugh Scott [1900], and a very special shout out to Pirate third baseman, Pie Traynor [1899]. I should also note that today is the birthday of the Soviet spy and left-wing icon, the aptly-named Alger Hiss [1904].

The utilitarian calculus that informs the current health care debate and informs us that certain classes of people are too expensive to treat is now creeping into discussions of public education. The continued failure of successive waves of education reform has convinced many educators and social scientists that most young people are just not cut out to succeed in college and should therefore pursue alternate career paths.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a discussion of the question "Are Two Many Students Going to College?" It is apparent from the remarks of the experts polled [and they include several distinguished figures in the field] that more and more they are willing to apply the same kind of cost/benefit analysis to education -- especially in the case of publicly subsidized education -- that we are seeing in the health care debate.

Thia is a tough set of questions because they challenge fundamental assumptions upon which our culture is based, the most basic of which is, "in the allocation of resources in our economy are all persons equally deserving of support?" The answer to which, increasingly, seems to be a resounding "NO!"

Cambyses' "Lost Army" has been found. Once again Herodotus, styled by some as the "Father of Lies" by others as the "Father of History", has been confirmed. He told the story of a great Persian army of 50,000 men that disappeared into the desert of Western Egypt 2500 years ago and was never seen again. Most modern Egyptologists regarded the story as a myth, but recently two Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of the army. It seems that the Persians, rather than fight their way from oasis to oasis, took an alternate route through the desert in an attempt to surprise the Egyptian army and were caught in a sand storm. That's why investigators searching along the main route were unable to find their remains.

Read about the discovery here.

Today is USMC Day, commemorating the founding, on this day in 1775, of the Continental Marines. These days we know them as the United States Marine Corps. Happy Birthday, jarheads. You done us proud.

On this day in 1871 Stanley met Livingstone. It's one of the iconic moments of the age of imperialism and it brought together two of the Nineteenth Century's most fascinating figures and gave us one of the all-time greatest catch phrases, "Dr. Livingstone I presume". As to what went down when the two men met. You can find a pretty good account here.

And on this day in 1969 Sesame Street debuted on PBS.

And on this day in 1983 at Lehigh University a USC graduate student conducted a demonstration during a security seminar in which he inserted a short code into a UNIX command. Within five minutes this short program, which he called a "virus", had taken control of the university's mainframe. This was the first public demonstration of a computer virus, but it was not the first one created. That distinction probably goes to a fifteen-year old Mount Lebanon kid named Rich Skrenta who in 1982 created the "Elk Cloner"virus that attacked Apple II programs. It is widely considered to be the first large-scale self-spreading personal computer virus. It would not be the last. Hell of a job, Rich.

Happy Birthday to Martin Luther [1483] the man who kicked off the Protestant Reformation with the posting of his "Ninety-five Theses" on the Wittenburg church door. He was not the first to protest the corrupt practices of the Renaissance Church, but he was the first to get away with it in defiance of Papal authority. His success set in motion a vast transformation of Western Christianity. It is a measure of public education in our time that when I was teaching many of my students had never heard of Martin Luther, but they were certainly familiar with Dr. King.

And among those who departed on this day we should note Mustafa (Ataturk) Kemal, the first President of Turkey who set the nation on a secular and modernizing course that has only recently been reversed [1938], and Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet dictator, [1982].

How to spot a geek [here]. HT Twisted by Knaves.

George Will, who has recently [if somewhat belatedly] awakened to the evil that lies at the heart of the environmental movement thinks that its recent initiatives will collapse because they are inherently stupid [here]. I wish it were so, but take a look at what Congress is in the process of doing regarding health care. Wisdom is in short supply these days and stupidity seems to reign triumphant.

Today is the strangely titled "Chaos Never Dies Day". Supposedly it is a day to contemplate all the random turmoil that characterizes modern existence. I like that. The central conceit of modern culture is that the seeming randomness of life results from the operation of deep, fundamental processes that trained "experts" can discern, understand, and control, and by so doing remove risk, turmoil, and unpredictability from our existence. Clearly the experts have failed, but that doesn't keep them from trying to control everything and everyone -- if we let them.


Today marks the twentieth anniversary of one of the most inspiring days of modern times -- the day the Berlin Wall fell. On this day in 1989 the East German government [GDR], responding to increasing levels of domestic protest and pressure from the West, proclaimed that all citizens were now free to visit West Berlin. Immediately people by the hundreds of thousands swarmed the wall from both sides to celebrate their new freedom and to begin the long process of dismantling the Berlin Wall, the most visible symbol of communist oppression. Most people alive today are too young to remember that glorious day when freedom reigned, but those of us who had lived through the Cold War well remember the day the hated Wall came down. I started to assemble a series of links commemorating this wonderful event, but the guys over at the Chronicle of Higher Education had already done so, much better than I could. Here is the fruit of their labor as presented on Arts and Letters Daily [my favorite site on the web, check it out].

Schabowski shrugged and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down ... A night never to forget ... Jürgen Ritter took his camera along the Death Strip ... Daniel Johnson was there, and asked Schabowski a crucial question ... Some Ossis would bring back the GDR, if they could: no surprise there ... Whom do we credit? CIA? Dissidents? Ronald Reagan? There was no single cause ... Some walls remain in the mind ... It was Reagan and Gorbachev ... Hour by hour, history was being made ... Germans still grope to understand what happened ... The fall of the Wall was years in the making ... “Victor, what are you doing here? It’s midnight and you live in East Berlin” ... Berlin today is “poor but sexy” ... For West Berliners, the world suddenly had no edge ... After collapse, jubilation, fear, and uncertainty ... The Wall made for many great escapes ... No, it was not about bananas ... At the Bornholmer bridge, a vast tide of people, in tears, stunned ... Life will never be the same, say East Germans ... visiting U.S. presidents have left an outsize footprint on Berlin ... There have been missed opportunities ... The Stasi destroyed the most ordinary trust between people ... There was life beyond the gray cement certainties of Stalinism ... Not all lands in the East are doing well today ... Angela Merkel was excited, but still stayed in the sauna

Long-term consequences of 1989 are only now starting to emerge. They belong to a history that could not be written till now ... The East simply committed suicide ... Helmut Kohl was a shrewd player of the events ... Events of 1989 unfolded in a crazy blur ... Mrs. Thatcher had other plans for Germany ... America was caught off guard

1989 was the biggest year in world history since 1945. It changed everything, says Timothy Garton Ash ... The Soviet Union, observes Josef Joffe, was the first empire ever to die in its bed ... A tyranny set in stone, writes Roger Kimball ... It was never a foregone conclusion, Anne Applebaum insists ... Berlin was the centerpiece of the Cold War, Fred Kaplan reminds us ... The end of the only world I ever knew, says Stefan Theil ... Gorbachev only wanted to the door an inch or two, writes George Jonas, but the wind caught it ... First U.S. envoy to united Germany was Robert Kimmit ... Communism took power away from the people, says Boris Johnson, but they took it back ... A Polish view from Adam Michnik ... Realists wrongly thought only war could defeat the Soviet Union, says James Carroll ... Communism had to die, says Rupert Cornwall ... The Wall showed Kennedy’s weakness, says Donald Kagan ... the world changed, says Victor Sebestyen, on that wonderful night in Berlin ... I promised the Warsaw Pact countries not to intervene in their affairs, says Mikhail Gorbachev ... The world turns, but it should not forget, writes Conrad Black ... Communism was a dark comedy for Guy Sorman ... The will of the people, says James Baker is the final arbiter ... Gorbachev’s reforms, like those of some Tsars, came too late, says Mitchell Cohen ... It’s good Gorbachev was weak, says Lech Walesa ... A grotesque tyranny, says Doug Bandow ... The GDR made citizens into prisoners, writes Henry Kissinger ... The Left wanted to pretend nothing had happened, writes John Vinocur ... For Robert Fulford Communism was a great con game ... Reagan’s speech was crucial, argues James Mann ... Intellectual walls remain, says Roger Scruton ... One of history’s finest moments, says Matt Welch ... Where is Russia today? asks Jonathan Brent ... The spoils of victory did not go to the U.S., argues Andrew Rawnsley, so much as to Europe ... NYT Op-Ed editors asked nine poets to remember the Fall of the Wall.

The picture at the head of this post depicts the Berlin Wall as it was in 1985. The wall itself has been decorated with anti-communist graffiti. Behind it is the "killing zone" where machine gunners would mow down refugees seeking to escape to the West. It was heavily mined, yet thousands upon thousands of people braved the guns and mines in a mad dash for freedom. We should never forget them. The people walking inside the killing zone are a cleanup crew of East Germans. It was popular in those days for West Berliners to throw their trash and waste over the wall to show their contempt for communism, so every day the East Germans had to clean up the mess.

And here's another thing we should never forget -- an American President who dared to identify and stand up to the cosmic evil of communism and to tell the Soviet leader, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall".



And a few other notable events:

On this day in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte seized control in revolutionary France and proclaimed himself "First Consul" [in effect, dictator]. The French experiment in republican government had failed. Many scholars argue that Napoleon created the first totalitarian state, upon which more recent tyrannies were modeled.

And on this day in 1900 Czarist Russia, which in many ways would qualify as a totalitarian state, completes its conquest of Manchuria. Within four years Japan will respond by invading Russia and the great Twentieth Century conflict -- what Prof. Naill Ferguson calls "The War Of The World" will have commenced.

And on this day in 1938 another totalitarian regime, Nazi Germany, launched attacks on Jewish citizens throughout the country. This is remembered as the Kristallnacht, the "Night of Shattered Glass".

There are so many other things to commemorate on this day -- the abdication of the Kaiser [1918]; Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" [1923]; Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox [1865]; Imperial Japan invades Shanghai [1935]; the opening of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the first such institution in North America [1821]; Jack the Ripper concludes his killing spree, so far as we know [1888].

So much history, so little time....

Really stunning images of the Martian surface at the Boston Globe [here].

Check out the National Debt Clock here.

AP reports:

FORT HOOD, Texas — Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, have visited wounded soldiers and their families after the mass shooting at Fort Hood.

The Bushes made their private visit to Fort Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center on Friday night. Bush spokesman David Sherzer said in an e-mail that the couple thanked Fort Hood's military leaders and hospital staff for the "amazing care they are providing."

Read it here.

And what about the current occupant of the White House? He took Michelle and the kids to Camp David to get away from it all. He might be able to schedule a visit to Fort Hood next Tuesday.

Oh -- the Bushes kept everything low key. No reporters or news photos. They have class -- something Obama has only heard of.

By far the weirdest thing you are going to see on the web today, or probably any day. A look inside Jim Carrey's mind. Click on the tiny little arrows to navigate from one strangescape to the next.

Election day, late in the afternoon, we were on our way to vote. The sun hung low in the sky and its rays slanted across the landscape. Photographers call it the "golden hour", when everything seems to be infused with an amber glow. "She Who Must Not Be Named" was behind the wheel so I was free to take pictures. Here's a bit of what we saw as we drove to the polls.







The leaves may be well past their peak, but the golden brown of late autumn is still a wonderful sight here in the gorgeous commonwealth.

Today is "Saxophone Day" honoring Adophe Sax, who invented the instrument back in the 1840's. Here are three of the greatest sax men ever, Bird, Bean and Prez with a few friends. If you don't know who they are, you should.



And a bit more...



Aaaaaahhhhh..., that's nice.

On this day in 1917 Bolshevik revolutionaries seize power in Petrograd -- the "October Revolution" [old calendar] is underway.

And on this day in 1950 Branch Rickey signed on as Vice President/General Manager of the Pittsburgh -- the best hire the team ever made. Mister Rickey was the smartest baseball man ever.

And a very "Happy Birthday" to Charles Henry Dow [1851] of Dow Jones fame; to John Philips Sousa [1854]; to James Naismith [1861] who invented basketball; and to the "Big Train", Walter Johnson [1887], perhaps the greatest pitcher ever.

Right now there is only one news story worth discussing. That is the horrific slaughter that took place at Fort Hood. Probably the wisest take on the whole thing comes from war correspondent Michael Yon:

Foremost today is to care for the wounded and the families of those who were lost or wounded. Next week, we must continue to care for those in need, while mourning our losses.

First reports are notoriously wrong. The shooter already has been killed then resurrected by the media. Some media are in a frenzy and so the reports are particularly untrustworthy at this time. Now is not a time to psychoanalyze the attacker by using a media-supplied telescope that already said he was dead, and that there were multiple attackers. Media: STOP, please. There will be time to pursue answers and justice after Christmas. We must remember that family members lost loved ones just before the holidays. Justice and answers will come with time.

Most important is to remember that we have just lost a dozen people. Others are wounded. Children and other family members will need care and thoughtful attention.

Read it here.

But it is unreasonable to expect that the media and various political interests should not try to exploit this terrible incident for ratings or to push various agendas. For the left the overriding imperative is to find an anti-war angle to push. The strategy is to suggest that the stress of war "post-traumatic stress disorder" [PTSD] is the ultimate cause of the killer's actions. The New York Times, for instance, writes:

The incident raised new questions about the toll that six years of continuous fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan have taken on the U.S. military and on individual soldiers, many of whom have been on several combat tours.

The trouble with this line of attack, though, is that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the murderer, had never been deployed to a battle area. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, however, is undeterred by this fact. She combs back through decades of news stories to find incidents where military personnel have committed murder or suicide and assembles them into a montage that suggests that all military personnel are operating on a hair trigger and might explode into violence at any time. She then interviews a guest "expert" who opines that although Major Hasan had not personally experienced the stress of battle, he would have been exposed to it vicariously through the testimony of soldiers he treated. Then the show moves immediately to a long discussion of PTSD that portrays soldiers as victims. What is not discussed is the report that Hasan was a devout Muslim who had in the past urged his co-religionists to rise up against American invaders.

Investigating the murderer's Islamic ties and radical sentiments might seem to be an obvious line of inquiry but the news sources are tiptoeing around the subject.

Patterico has a nice critique of the LA Times coverage of the incident, which initially failed to note that the murderer was a Muslim, and is frequently updating his information. [here]

Jim Treacher is updating the story on Twitter.

Allahpundit has updates at Hot Air.

Today is Guy Fawkes Day so,

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot,

I know of no reason

Why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

And don't forget to give each child you meet today a "penny for the Guyver" and tonight to relax you can build a bonfire and burn an effigy of Fawkes in it.

On this day in 1605 Guy Fawkes and a group of Roman Catholic "restorationists" sought to blow up the Houses of Parliament, killing King James I and the members of Parliament (including many Catholic aristocrats). The conspirators also planned to kidnap the Royal children and hold them hostage and to raise a revolt in the Midlands. Word of the conspiracy leaked, Fawkes himself was caught red-handed in the cellars beneath Parliament surrounded by barrels of gunpowder. The rest of the conspirators fled but were eventually apprehended. They were tried and convicted then hanged, drawn, and quartered and their severed heads displayed on pikes.

This was the infamous "Gunpowder Plot", one of the most fascinating episodes in British history. You can read detailed accounts about it here and here. And, for the curious, I have provided [above] a contemporary print depicting their execution.

"Happy Birthday" to Eugene Debs [1855], President of the American Railway Union and Socialist Candidate for President; and to Leonard Sly [1911] popular singer and actor (you probably know him better under his stage name, Roy Rogers); and Andrea McArdle (Philadelphia, 1963) Broadway actor and singer, and TV star.

Again there is a lot of electoral stuff on this date, but I will refer only to the most interesting. On this day in 1912 Woodrow Wilson, the progressive governor of New Jersey and former President of Princeton University, was elected president defeating the incumbent Republican, William Howard Taft, and the Progressive Party candidate, former president Theodore Roosevelt. This was the "Bull Moose" campaign. It was one of the most exciting campaigns in American history. Not only were there three powerhouse candidates going at each other, but there were fascinating second-line candidates. The most interesting of these was Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party nominee who campaigned from his prison cell. This is the election that returned the Democrats to power after several decades of Republican dominance, and it is the one that gave us the man whom I consider to be by far the worst president in our nation's history.

And some housekeeping. I was too busy yesterday to post so I missed noting that November 4th was the thirtieth anniversary of the Iran Hostage Crisis. Here is a BBC site where you can see pictures of the unfolding crisis. Here is a site that allows you to relive those horrible days through a series of pertinent video clips.

The biggest winners in yesterday's elections were the much-maligned Republican establishment. Biggest losers, Sarah, Rush, Pawlenty and the Reaganite insurgents who could not deliver a win in NY23.

Now the ball is in the insurgents' court. How will they respond? I think It will be interesting to listen to Rush this afternoon.

UPDATE:

Mickey Kaus notes that the collapse of the insurgents robs the MSM and the DNC of their favorite whipping boy.

Scientists are starting to wake up to the fact that their recklessness in making wild predictions and shaping their research to confirm political and ideological biases is starting to undermine their authority. There is a terrific article by Stuart Blackman in the latest issue of The Scientist reprising many of the observations I have been making for some years here on this blog. A few excerpts:

As physicist Niels Bohr once jokingly put it, “predictions can be very difficult—especially about the future.” Or as Joan Haran says, when scientists make predictions and promises they are entering “a realm of the imaginary.” So even if those predictions are based on science’s conventional territory of facts and data, they have as much to do with wishful thinking and social and political possibilities.

A single unexpected scientific discovery is all it can take to confound the most carefully considered of predictions by throwing open new worlds of possibilities or shutting down others.

....

The consequences of inflated expectations about what, and when, science can deliver may be felt by individuals, society, and by science itself. Harold Varmus’s expert panel on gene therapy reported that overselling of the science by scientists and their sponsors “threatened confidence in the integrity of the field and may ultimately hinder progress toward successful application of gene therapy to human disease.”

....

Predictions can also create a sense of haste and urgency that can impede cool, calm reflection on how to proceed at the policy level.

....

This is not only a waste of financial and legal resources, she says, but it serves to narrow social and scientific possibilities.

....

Trust in science is not bulletproof. How many expert assurances or warnings must turn out to be conspicuously wrong for the authority of science and scientists to be diminished? “I do very much worry for the soul of science should there be a backlash,” says Sarewitz. “And I can’t see any feedbacks into the system right now that would encourage communities of scientists to be more circumspect in their claims about what the future will look like.”

Check it out here.

The problem, of course, is much larger than Mr. Blackman recognizes. Scientists and journalists are guilty of far more than mere over-promising. Systematic misrepresentation of both the nature and the results of scientific inquiry has public policy consequences that can cripple or destroy lives, institutions, economies and entire societies.

BBC reports:

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.

Read the whole thing here.

What the story didn't note was that the "militants" were radical Muslims. Will there be reprisals against the wildlife?

Today is "Housewife's Day" -- a time to show your appreciation for the stay-at-home wives who reject the feminist mantra and take on themselves the awesome responsibility of providing a rich and nurturing environment for their families and ensuring that the next generation of Americans is raised with strong character and sound basic values.

You go girls!

On this day in the past there were a lot of elections to note. Grant, McKinley, LBJ, Clinton -- you know, people like that.

Happy Birthday to John Montague. What's that you say? Never heard of him? You all know his contribution to modern life. He was the fourth Earl of Sandwich and, so the story goes, was so addicted to gambling that he had no time to sit down to a proper meal. So when hungry he would simply have a servant slap two pieces of bread around a hunk of meat for him to consume. This culinary treat was called..., wait for it, a "sandwich". The story is probably apocryphal and Montague was by no means the first to eat bread and meat together -- the practice had been around since time immemorial, but Sandwich's preference for the treat, and Gibbon's recording of it, helped to introduce the practice to polite British society.

Today marks the birth in Philadelphia [1831] of one of the most eccentric major figures in American political and literary history. His name was Ignatius Loyola Donnelly. A graduate of Central High School, he studied law under Benjamin Brewster [later Attorney General of the United States] and was admitted to the bar in 1852 and started to build political connections. So far, so good, but the weirdness soon began to emerge. He got involved with some shady communal home-building schemes and, to escape prosecution for financial scandals, fled Philly for the wilds of Minnesota. There he became a founder of a utopian community called Nininger City. The idea was to attract immigrants to the frontier and to organize them into a farming cooperative in which private property would be abolished. The community was poorly conceived, poorly run, and collapsed into financial ruin within a matter of months. Donnelly then entered politics and was elected Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, then served in Congress during the Civil War and was then elected to the State Senate. In office his two big issues were protecting the civil rights of blacks in the post-war South and women's suffrage. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to his past financial scandals. In Minnesota, it seems, social justice rhetoric and hostility to capitalism could carry you a long way. It still can, witness Senator Franken's career.

In 1878 Donnelly returned to law practice and began to set his ideas down on paper. This is where he became seriously weird. His magnum opus was Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, published in 1882. In it he argued that all human civilizations originated in a sunken continent located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, he supposed, Aryans led by enlightened kings ruled a vast and productive agricultural society, followed a simple Solar religion under the leadership of a caste of priestly scientists, and sent forth colonists to populate the earth. From Atlantis came all religion, all science, all wisdom. The book was enormously popular and contributed to a number of cultic enthusiasms like "Mayanism" which currently is having a revival with regard to predictions of impending doom. He followed this up with a second book, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, in which he argued that the passage of a comet through the solar system had caused all the great catastrophes of history. This book had a big influence on Immanuel Velikovsky, who enjoyed a cult status by making similar claims in the Twentieth Century. He then wrote a book claiming that all of Shakespeare's works were actually written by Francis Bacon. You get the idea -- Donnelly gained financial success as the spokesman and publicist for just about any far out idea that was floating around in Nineteenth Century America.

Donnelly's political affiliations were equally unorthodox. He began as a Republican, then switched to the Democratic Party, and then campaigned as an Independent. In the 1880's he helped to organize the Farmers Alliance -- a precursor to the Peoples Party that advocated the reorganization of agriculture into cooperatives, inflation of the currency, government takeover of transportation and agriculture-related industries, and an alliance of the farmers and workers, the "productive" classes, to topple the power of the "parasite" classes [stock traders, bankers, gamblers, lawyers, and the like]. As with earlier cooperative movements the Alliance was economically unsuccessful and with its collapse Donnelly moved on to the Populist crusade. He wrote the Preamble to the Peoples' Party Omaha Platform in 1892. It contained these sentiments:

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

Read the whole thing here.

Does that sound familiar? Of course it does. Donnelly continued his involvement in Populist politics and in 1900 was nominated by the Peoples Party as their Vice Presidential candidate. He lost, then ran for the Governor of Minnesota and lost again. By that time his health was in steep decline and he died within a year.

And a very "Happy Birthday" to some other Pennsylvania notables: Actor and Hollywood tough guy Charles Bronson [1922 in Ehrenfeld] Dennis Miller [1953 in Pittsburgh] comedian and radio host extraordinaire, and also to "Larry "The Easton Assassin" Holmes, [1978] former Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Rick Moran gets down on the Republican Base which he calls "anarcho-conservatives".

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn’t been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a “conservative” reigns supreme all across the land.

Read the whole thing here -- he gets nasty on Bill Quick.

Meanwhile uber-RINO David Frum is making nice with Glenn Beck. These are, as they say, interesting times.

Last night instead of watching the Pathetic Phillies succumb to to the New York team we journeyed up to Shriver Hall on the Hopkins campus to hear a concert by Midori Goto and Robert McDonald.

Midori is the latest in a long line of violin virtuoso prodigies. She started studying music at the age of two, gave her first public recital at the age of seven [playing Paganini]. At eleven she was enrolled in a program at Julliard. Her audition piece was "Chaccone" by Bach, one of the most difficult pieces for violin ever composed. A few months later she made her concert debut with the New York Philharmonic. What were you doing when you were eleven? One of her most famous performances came at Tanglewood when she was fourteen. Performing Bernstein's "Serenade" [with Bernstein himself conducting] she broke an e-string. Not missing a beat she borrowed a violin from the Concertmeister and when a second string broke, borrowed an instrument from his assistant and continued to play. Here's a recording of the crucial part of this performance.



What you don't see in the video is that at the end of the number, Bernstein knelt before her in sheer awe at her talent.

While not as famous as Midori, Robert McDonald is an extremely accomplished chamber performer and accompanist. He teaches at Julliard and has collaborated with Midori for decades.

Here is a performance they gave about two decades ago when Midori was only nineteen. They were a great team then, and are even better now.



The piece they perform on the video was the conclusion to last night's concert. It was not, however the high point. That was her performance of Bach's "Sonata for Solo Violin in G Minor". The fugue movement was long considered too difficult for anyone to play and Schubert even composed a piano accompaniment for it on the assumption that it would never be performed solo. Midori did it easily. Here's a clip of Henryk Szeryng attempting it. He gets through, but has to play it slowly. Midori played it at normal speed.

For those of you who are Catholic today is "All Souls Day", a time to pray for the souls of the departed that they may be cleansed of sin and enter Heaven. In Mexico and Portugal it is "Dia de Muertos" the "Day of the Dead". If you are not Mexican, nor Portuguese, nor Catholic, you can always celebrate "Deviled Eggs Day", which is certainly tasty and, for some I suppose, just as spiritual and even more nutritious.

On this day in 1734 Daniel Boone was born at Birdsboro in the Oley Valley in Berks County, PA. His childhood home can be easily reached from Philadelphia. Check out the site here. Boone was something of a superstar in his day, a famed "long hunter" and pioneer who became the subject of numerous books and tall tales that circulated widely both in America and Europe. As a young man he participated [along with George Washington] in Gen. Edward Braddock's ill-fated attempt to attack the French at Fort Duquesne. After that he traveled widely on the frontier acting as a liaison between various Indian nations and colonial governments. On the eve of the Revolution he blazed the "Wilderness Trail" through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky where he founded Boonesborough, one of the first White settlements west of the Alleghenies. During the Revolution Boone was at various times associated with both sides and for a while was adopted into the Shawnee nation, which at the time was allied with the British. He redeemed himself in American eyes, however, by acting as a spy and warning settlers of an impending Indian attack. After the war he had a political career and spent much of his time fleeing from creditors. So much has been written and said about Daniel Boone that it is almost impossible by now to separate fact and fiction. If only a small fraction of the adventures attributed to him are true he must have lived one of the most exciting lives ever.

And on this day in 1920 KDKA broadcast the results of the Harding-Cox election, America's first political broadcast.

And on this day in 1947 Howard Hughes flew his "Spruce Goose" for the first and last time.

And in 1948 Truman Beat Dewey. Lots of election stuff on this date.

And on this date in 1950 Phillie Jim Konstanty wins the NL MVP and in 1977 Steve Carlton wins his second Cy Young Award. Nice going, guys.

"Happy Birthday" to Marie Antoinette, unfortunate Queen of France [1755]; to James K. Polk, 11th POTUS [1795] and Warren G. Harding, 29th POTUS [1865]; to William Donald Schaefer, former Mayor of Baltimore, Governor of Maryland, and one of the most eccentric and entertaining politicians of my lifetime [1921]. A statue of him currently sits inside a crate at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Rumor has it that it will be unveiled [actually, uncrated] sometime soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: Not long after I finished posting several trucks drove up to the Harbor and work crews uncrated the governor, set up seats, and draped the statue with flags. My neighbor tells me that an unveiling ceremony is scheduled for this afternoon. I won't be attending, but she will.

Want a child-friendly way to introduce your little one to the traditions of the Old Cult? Meet little Cthulhu, who lives in the magic city of R'lyeh with all his friends, as you and your child embark on a fun and educational journey through the world of the Great Old Ones, meeting all kinds of new buddies from the Necronomicon along the way....

What scares me is that there are actually people out there who like it..., a lot.

“Imagine” is a cloying, boggy, sonic swamp of numb-skulled sentiments that sound like they were recycled from a bong-fueled, 2 a.m. bull session between a couple of pampered, credulous UC Berkeley lit majors. It’s the national anthem of the hopey/changey crowd — all at once pretentious, smug, tiresome and intellectually bankrupt.

Read the whole thing here.

I missed this when it first was posted. Oh well, better late than never. Excitable Andrew in Dial "M" for Maternity by "Iowahawk".

My name is Loads. To me, everything is a mystery.

I was working the night shift at the Atlantic blog division, typing up my final report on the Khalid Sheik Mohammed torture case (Mike Loads #11, "The Waterboarders"). That's when he walked in.

My eyes scanned the 5-foot-10 slab of man candy framed in my office doorway, the neon light from the venetian blinds slashing diagonally across that tailored acre of double-breasted charcoal. He took a step forward and removed his fedora, revealing a jet black pompadour glistening with high-dollar salon gel product. He was toting a shopping bag from the P-town Chocolate Shoppe.

Check it out here.

Hilarious as usual.

Appropriate for Halloween, the story of Matthias Shambacher, America's first serial killer, who lived on Hawk Mountain. Read about him here.

I've passed the place many times crossing Hawk Mountain. Never stopped, though. Maybe someday soon.

It all depends on what the meaning of "Conservative" is. Read Jason Richwine's analysis of the question and evidence relating to it here. His conclusion: any meaningful definition of conservatism in this regard has almost nothing to do with political attitudes and political liberals can sustain a sense of their own intellectual superiority only by isolating themselves from society-at-large.

Bret Stephens has an excellent piece in the WSJ on the objections to global warming hysteria raised by the authors of "Superfreakonomics" and the, well..., hysterical reaction to them on the part of Al Gore's "little helpers".

Read it here.

Today is "National Candy Corn Day" so stock up on the stuff for feeding tomorrow's trick-or-treaters; better yet stuff yourself with fistfuls of the delicious little sweets. Don't worry about running out -- Brach's Confections, the largest producer of candy corn, each year Americans eat enough Brach's candy corn that if the kernels were laid end to end, they would circle the Earth four times. You might find that impressive, I find it a bit scary -- think of the dentist bills, the stuff is made from sugar, corn syrup and honey. Yum!

On this day in 1785 Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII of England. His ascension to the throne brought to an end the dynastic struggle between York and Lancaster called the "War of the Roses". Under Henry and his Tudor successors the British economy flourished and trade expanded, state power was greatly enhanced, the Royal Navy established, and the nation emerged as a major power in the modern world. The story of the Tudor monarchs also makes for some of the greatest soap operas in history.

And on this date in 1838 Oberlin College in Ohio becomes the first American institution of higher learning to admit women.

And on this day in 1922 Mussolini led a bloodless Fascist revolution in Italy. On the following day he was made Prime Minister and the rest, as they say, is history.

And on this day in 1938 H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" was broadcast nationwide by Orson Welles' Mercury Players. This was the broadcast that panicked the nation. You can download it from the Mercury Theater website [here]. In keeping with the holiday mood, you can also get their version of "Dracula" at the same site. Just perfect for scaring the kids [or me for that matter].

And on this day in 1948 industrial "smog" killed twenty people in Donora, a little industrial town on the Mon just south of Pittsburgh, [famous as the home town of Stan "The Man" Musial, Ken Griffey, and Ken Griffey, Jr.] The thick, yellowish cloud [containing sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, and flourine] formed on the 27th and persisted for three days during which it is said, "smoke ran like water". In its aftermath at least another fifty people died, including Stan's father. Here's a link to a Post-Gazette story on the killer smog.

Happy Birthday to John Adams, second president of the United States [1735]; to William F. "Bull" Halsey, admiral extraordinaire [1882]; to Ted Williams, "the Splendid Splinter" [1918]; and to Andrea Mitchell, Philly broadcaster who made it in the bigs [1946 -- jeez, I thought she was older than that].

Today is "Hermit" day, so dig out your dusty old picture of Peter Noone and the boys and spend the day [like so many days lately, it seems] sitting alone in a dark room, staring at a computer screen and softly singing, "I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I Am...." If anyone should approach your house, walk out on your porch brandishing a shotgun and, in your best Clint Eastwood voice tell them to "Get Off My Lawn!!!"

On this day in 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed. Rising from obscure origins Raleigh had gained favor with the English court by killing and oppressing lots of Irishmen. By all accounts he was extremely charming [he was a poet back when that was cool] and gained the favor of the Tudor queen, Elizabeth I. Eventually he parlayed that into knighthood and a royal patent to explore the New World, which resulted in the unsuccessful attempt to found a colony at Roanoke. Raleigh screwed up his career, though, by secretly marrying one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton [the things men do for love]. When the Queen found out she had the newlyweds imprisoned in the Tower of London. Raleigh gained their release by promising to leave court and retire to Dorset. Once there began a publicity campaign aimed at gaining another royal patent, this time to find "El Dorado", the City of Gold. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and the new monarch, James Stuart (whose mother, Mary "Queen of Scots", had been executed by Elizabeth), looked upon Raleigh and other favorites of the Tudors with suspicion. He suspected Raleigh of treason, imprisoned him again in the Tower, and released him only after Raleigh promised to leave England on an expedition to locate El Dorado. That didn't work out well. Not only did Raleigh fail to find the City of Gold, but men under his command sacked a Spanish colonial outpost, which led to strenuous protests from the King of Spain. When Raleigh returned to Britain King James, who was trying to repair relations with Spain, had him arrested and beheaded. It was tough being a courtier back in those days, even if you were a poet and devilishly handsome.

And on this day in 1885 Major General George McClellan, a Philly boy, died at the age of 58. As commander of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War he was consistently outmatched and humiliated by Robert E. Lee. Eventually Lincoln removed him from command. Historians are divided on the justice of this. Most consider Lincoln's actions warranted and judge McClellan a failure, but there are those who see the political attacks on McClellan as an attempt by Lincoln partisans to shift blame for the President's misjudgments and ineptitude onto the backs of his military commanders. In 1864 McClellan was nominated for President by the Democrats who adopted a platform promising an immediate end to the war and unconditional negotiations with the secessionist States. The Democrats went into the election divided between a "peace faction" that demanded an end to the slaughter and a "war faction" that attacked the incompetence and corruption of the Lincoln administration and promised to prosecute the war more effectively. Even so divided, the Democrats had a good shot at taking Lincoln down. The President himself expected to be defeated. But Sherman's capture of Atlanta, just a month before the election, and Grant's approach to Richmond allowed the Republicans to plausibly argue that the war would soon be over and that it would be a mistake to change horses in midstream. Lincoln won convincingly. Later McClellan served as Governor of New Jersey. The State has posted his biography online here. He's a fascinating guy. Check him out.

Today is the eightieth anniversary of "Black Tuesday". On two successive days in 1929 the Stock Market plunged by nearly 25 percent. This collapse precipitated the greatest financial crisis of the Twentieth Century, but it did not [as popular imagination has it] create the Great Depression. That was the result of inept and wrongheaded actions by the government as it sought to manage the financial crisis. For an overview of what happened and an introduction to theories as to why it happened check out Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression. [here]. It's a pretty good introduction to the subject that explains a lot of basic concepts and terms, but don't take it as gospel.

Happy Birthday to Bela Lugosi [1884], the first and still the best of the Draculas; and to Ed Kemmer [1921 in Reading, PA], who we kids knew as Commander Buzz Corey of the United Planets Space Patrol. He was the fifties radio prototype for TV's James Kirk. You can hear a bit of his work here. Ed shares his birthday with William H. "Bill" Mauldin, the greatest newspaper cartoonist of the WWII era. His "Willie and Joe" cartoons spoke were for millions of readers the voice of the American GI. You can see some of his work here and here.

Today is "National Plush Animal Lovers Day" so get yourself a plush animal and love it [in an entirely appropriate way, that is].

This one'a a biggie: On this day in 312 AD the Emperor Constantine [the Great] defeated a challenger to the throne [Maxentius] at the battle of Milvian Bridge. He afterward [probably for political purposes] claimed that he had been inspired by a vision of a cross inscribed with the words "in this sign conquer" and sort of converted to Christianity. The significance of this conversion was that Christianity became a prestige religion throughout the Roman Empire and as a consequence spread throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

On this day in 1636 "The College at New Towne" was founded in Massachusetts. Three years later it changed its name to Harvard College. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and is the alma mater of many members of the Obama Administration and Al Gore.

And on this day in 1740 Ivan VI became Czar of All the Russias. At the time he was less than ten weeks old. It didn't last long. Thirteen months later his cousin, Elizabeth [daughter of Peter the Great], deposed Ivan and had him and his family imprisoned. After a few months he was separated from his family and put into solitary confinement, seeing no human other than his jailer. He remained in that condition for twenty years. Finally, in 1762 word of his confinement leaked out and an attempt was made to release him. Under standing orders from the new empress Catherine the Great, Ivan was murdered by his jailers and buried in an unmarked grave. Being a Czar is not easy.

On this day in 1793 Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the "cotton gin". This was a labor-saving device designed to efficiently separate cotton fibers from embedded seeds [a process that previously had been done by hand]. The major historical significance of this invention is that it greatly increased the efficiency of cotton plantations and sparked a major economic revival of the southern States. It also revived the institution of slavery, which had been in steep decline in the late eighteenth century. Many contemporary observers had felt that there was no need to abolish slavery as it was likely to die out naturally over the course of the next few decades. However, as cotton production rose so too did the demand for slaves and the institution grew and rapidly spread into new parts of the country. Whitney was also a pioneer of industrial organization, building one of the first integrated factories in the country, and is credited by many [although this is controversial] with developing the concept of interchangeable parts.

This day saw the development of a few important cultural markers: the emergence of a large urban middle class with leisure time and disposable income; a massive wave of immigration that changed the cultural contours of the country; and a major failed effort on the part of government to control the behavior and attitudes of the American public.

On this day in 1858 Rowland H. Macy opened Macy's department store in New York. It was not the first department store [there were earlier ones in England and France], nor was it the first in New York, but by the 1920s it was the biggest one anywhere. Here's a link to information about several major stores, including some nice pictures of Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.

And on this day in 1886 President Grover Cleveland formally dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.

And on this day in 1918 the Volstead Act was passed. Prohibition began.

Happy Birthday to the Bride of Frankenstein [1902] Elsa Lanchester was born in London. And on this day in 1914 Jonas Salk was born. While at the University of Pittsburgh he developed a polio vaccine. And in 1955 Bill Gates, America's richest college dropout, was born.

Matthew Continetti has a new book out titled The Persecution of Sarah Palin. It chronicles the many ways in which the MSM and elite media concocted and elaborated an entirely false image of a remarkable woman. Paul Bedard, who writes the "Washington Whispers" column for USA Today, isn't planning to read the book, but suggests that it is worth looking at to see how "the other side" views Governor Palin.

Check out Bedard's column here.

George W. Bush seems to be doing pretty well on the lecture circuit. Speaking at a motivational event he charmed the audience and steered well clear of political commentary. What I found interesting about the article was the different reactions of the British and American commentators. Americans liked Bush and found his performance well worth while. The Brits, on the other hand, seem to have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the Democrat slanders directed against Bush in recent campaigns. They were astounded to find that he could speak directly and coherently without a teleprompter. I suspect that in coming months they will continue to be pleasantly surprised by what they see from our best recent president.

Read about it here.

Just for fun, Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins performing "Poor Boy Blues".



That always makes me smile.

It's been a while since I posted anything by Zo. I should do it more often -- he and his friends are funny and say intelligent things about uncomfortable subjects. Here's "Victicrat". Watch and enjoy.

Dan Drezner over at Foreign Policy, considers how International Relations theorists might respond to a global zombie plague [here].

It's all in fun, at least I think it is, but it does serve as a nice introduction for the general reader to the major schools of thought currently informing debates over foreign policy.

Today is "Navy Day" so find yourself a swabbie and demonstrate for him or her your heartfelt appreciation [in an entirely appropriate way, of course].



And on this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus tooling around the Caribbean trying to figure out just where he was, discovered Cuba and claimed it for Spain.

The area along the Gulf coast between the Mississippi and the Chattahoochee rivers was long in dispute, claimed at different times by France, England, Spain, and the newly-formed United States. In 1810 American settlers in the region, under the leadership of the felicitously named Fulwar Skipwith, staged a revolt and proclaimed themselves to be the independent "Republic of West Florida". They even organized a military expedition to capture Mobile, but it failed. Then on this day of that year President James Madison announced the annexation of West Florida over the objections of the residents and sent in federal troops to occupy the region. The West Floridians eventually acquiesced to the land grab, but Spain continued to claim West Florida until 1819 when the Adams-Onis treaty transferred ownership to the United States. This is only one of many times when the American government acted aggressively, unilaterally, and possibly in defiance of international law when vital interests were considered to be at stake. Such is the way of the world.

And on this day in 1920 Westinghouse Radio, KDKA, America's first commercial radio station, begins broadcasting in Pittsburgh.

On this day in 1941, in a national broadcast commemorating Navy Day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that "America has been attacked, the shooting has started". He was referring to a German attack on the destroyer Kearney but the remark seemed prescient when Pearl Harbor was attacked less than two months later. Read the speech here and note just how strongly, one might say hysterically, Roosevelt was building the case for war. The American people were just not ready to believe the hype yet. Pearl Harbor changed that.

And on this day in 1962 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev accepted JFK's capitulation in the Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing it to an end.

Happy Birthday to Isaac Singer, whose sewing machine made the lives of millions of women easier; to Theodore Roosevelt, America's most bizarre president; Sylvia Plath, crazy lady who really, really hated her father and wrote poems about it; and John Cleese, the guy who walks funny and, for that matter, does just about everything funny. And a very special "Happy Birthday" to Ralph Kiner [1922], who was the heart and soul of the Pittsburgh Pirates when I was a boy and to Astronaut Terry N. Hart [1946], Pittsburgh's contribution to the Space Program.

Today is "National Mincemeat Day", so get out your chopping block and implements. Here's a nice little recipe from the Sixteenth Century:

Pyes of mutton or beif must be fyne mynced & seasoned with pepper and salte and a lytel saffron to colour it / suet or marrow a good quantitie / a lytell vynegre / pruynes / great reasons / and dates / take the fattest of the broath of powdred beefe. And if you will have paest royall / take butter and yolkes of egges & so to temper the floure to make the paest. (Pie filling of mutton or beef must be finely minced and seasoned with pepper and salt and a little saffron to colour it. [Add] a good quantity of suet or marrow, a little vinegar, prunes, raisins and dates. [Put in] the fattest of the broth of salted beef. And, if you want Royal pastry, take butter and egg yolks and [combine them with] flour to make the paste. )^[1]

Source: Wikipedia.

On this day in 1682 William Penn gained clear title to land along the Delaware River. He decided to call it New Wales, then changed his mind and called it "Sylvania", but King Charles changed the name to "Pennsylvania" to honor Penn's father, the Admiral William Penn. So Billy Penn is not the guy the State is named after -- it's his father, and Penn didn't do the naming.

On this day in 1774 the First Continental Congress adjourned at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia. It had drawn up a formal protest against the "Intolerable Acts", couching its objections in terms of the rights of Englishmen, it had proposed a restructuring of the relations between Britain and her colonies [an "Act of Union"], it had organized a continental boycott of British goods to apply economic pressure to the mother country, and it called for a second Congress of all the continental colonies [including Florida and Canada] for the following year.

Not bad.

And on this day in 1825 the Erie Canal opens for business. Huge advantage to New York in its continuing rivalry with Philadelphia.

And on this day in 1881 the "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place between the Earps [and Doc Holliday] and the Clantons in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It was the most famous, if not the most lethal shootout in the history of the "Wild West". Here is a decent online source if you want to go through the details of the encounter. Here's a good link to several of the primary sources. There have been a number of attempts by serious historians to place the gunfight in a cultural, political or social context [my favorite, just for the laughs, is an explanation that the Earps were agents of Republican oppressors of the people, and the Clantons were freedom-loving Democrats] and, of course, there have been numerous books and movies based on the incident. My personal favorite is "Tombstone" [that's the one with Val Kilmer] although Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp" is in many ways more interesting. Rent either one and enjoy. And, if you want to see a great filmic shootout, rent "Open Range". The gunfight there is legendary even if tere aren't any Earps involved. If you were wondering why Wyatt Earp became so famous consider this. In his old age he moved to Hollywood and made friends with lots of actors, including William Hart and young Marion Morrison [you know him as "John Wayne"].

And on this day in 1911 Philadelphia defeats New York in the World Series, 4 games to 2. Don't get excited -- it was the Athletics who beat the Giants.

And on this day in 1942 the Battle of Guadalcanal was raging on both land and sea. The eventual American victory there was, in the minds of many, the turning point of the War in the Pacific. Yes, I know about Midway, but it was Guadalcanal that convinced President Roosevelt to switch from defense to offensive operations in that theater. There are several good online sources on the battle. I would recommend this one by the Army as a good starting point.

And on this day in 1954 Walt Disney's "Disneyland" premiered on ABC TV.

And on this date in 1962 Nikita Khrushchev offered to withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuba if JFK removed them from Turkey and guaranteed never to invade Cuba. This was the deal that finally resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and Khrushchev went eyeball to eyeball and JFK blinked and accepted Russia's terms. The US backed down, but the administration kept all the negotiations secret for fear of looking weak and instead published self-serving accounts of how Kennedy had stood up successfully to the Communists and to his own advisors. The truth didn't come out until two decades later.

And on this day in 1982 Philly Steve Carlton won his fourth Cy Young award, the first pitcher to do so.

Happy Birthday Hillary [1947] and to John Cardinal Krol [1910], former Archbishop of Philadelphia, and to the Minute Men [1774]. Also born on this day, Leon Trotsky [1879], one of the most loathsome figures of the Twentieth Century; Lauren "LoveBoat" Tewes [1954, the Pride of Braddock, PA]; Shah Reza Palavi [CIA stooge who used to run Iran before the Mullahs took over]; and Desideratus Erasmus [1466], one of my favorite Renaissance characters.

Baltimore's culture season is in full swing and we are taking advantage of it. Last week we attended a concert by the Belcea String Quartet at Shriver Hall. Quite good they are. Here's a sample of their work.



They are enormously versatile and the program we heard showed it. They started with Hayden, followed by Shostakovich, and finished with Beethoven. Dmitri's by no means my favorite composer [to say the least], but they made even him sound pretty good.

This week was devoted to the visual arts. We started with lunch at the Lebanese Taverna then on to the Walters Gallery where my brother and I spent some time studying their small, but interesting, collection of Middle Eastern art and armor. He was more interested in the art, but I spent more time with the weaponry on display. Stuff like this:



We then toured a new exhibit on Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece and watched a short amateur dance recital, neither of which I found particularly interesting.

Then we headed up to the BMA for a preview party for an exhibit of Matisse prints. The Cone Collection has long boasted a major holding of Matisse's work. Recently that was augmented by a contribution from the artist's children, and yesterday highlights of the combined collection of more than 600 works were on display.



What fascinated me was that the sheer number of works allowed us to see Matisse refining his style, developing ideas over time, and transferring images from one medium to another over the course of the career. The suspicion remains, though, that the high proportion of female nudes among the prints represent a convenient way of getting the wives and girlfriends of his friends and colleagues to take their clothes off for him.

Then it was home after a long day and evening. Fortunately today was Sunday and we could sleep in.

In keeping with my theme, oft expressed, that the "lessons of history" are many, varied, contradictory, and in a constant state of revision rather than being a repository of authoritative wisdom, I note the following piece in today's New York Times:

Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt

Agincourt’s status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history — and a keystone of the English self-image — has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers.

Read it here.

The article notes that some military historians now argue that Henry V had more troops, and the French far fewer, than traditional accounts would credit, that these revised figures are strongly disputed, and that a composite biography of the British troops infers that they had long been a cohesive fighting unit [almost literally a "band of brothers"] that had a strong corporate identity.

Most importantly, the article also notes that even when the facts of the battle are not in dispute, they have been reinterpreted in the light of current concerns. Rather than placing it within the context of a century-long conflict between British and French royal lines, revisionists now see Agincourt as an episode in a long English intervention in an ongoing French Civil War in which the English, whatever their victories on the battlefield, lost the confidence and support of their French allies by failing to protect them. The outcome of the Hundred Years War, in their view, was simply the result of the English being unable to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy. The analogy to ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is obvious.

And so it goes. New information, new ways of organizing information, new perspectives, and most of all new contemporary concerns shape, reshape, and constantly revise historical understanding and the "lessons" that can be drawn from it.

So cool -- I used to listen to this when I was a kid.

You can find other podcasts here.

It's that time of year again, when the trees show us just what they are capable of. This year is not quite up to the standard of some recent years, and the weather turned bad just as the trees peaked, but even so Fall splendor in the gorgeous commonwealth is a joy to behold.

Twenty years ago Francis Fukuyama set off an immense wave of controversy with the publication in "The National Interest" of an essay titled The End of History? He followed this up with a small book The End of History and the Last Man.

What Fukuyama argued was that two centuries of experience since the French Revolution have shown conclusively that liberal democracy is the best of all forms of government and that the evolution of societies will inevitably tend toward that best form. The collapse of the Soviet empire shortly after the publication of his initial essay seemed to dramatically confirm his predictions as did an impressive wave of democratization that followed in its aftermath. Since then the rise of theocratic Islamism and a socialist backlash against democratic liberalism have called his thesis into question. What does Fukuyama think now? Read this interview in the Christian Science Monitor and find out.

RELATED:

Michael Moynihan has a nice essay over at Reason.com on the continuing historical debate over the end of the Soviet empire.

Twenty years ago this month... the Berlin Wall, that monument to the barbarism of the Soviet experiment, was finally breached. The countries held captive by Moscow began their long road to economic and cultural recovery, and to reunification with liberal Europe. But in the West, where Cold War divisions defined politics and society for 40 years, the moment was not greeted as a welcome opportunity for intellectual reconciliation, for fact-checking decades of exaggerations and misperceptions. Instead, then as now, despite the overwhelming volume of new data and the exhilaration of hundreds of millions finding freedom, the battle to control the Cold War narrative raged on unabated. Reagan haters and Reagan hagiographers, Sovietophiles and anti-communists, isolationists and Atlanticists, digested this massive moment in history, then carried on as if nothing much had changed....

And the debate continues today, and probably will indefinitely. I have often asserted that those who look to history as the final judge on the meaning of our experience will be frustrated. There is no such thing as an objective authority and that goes for historians as much as for contemporary pundits who write the "first draft" of history. All historical accounts, no matter how scholarly, are the products of ideology, expediency, and bias and history, rather than being an impartial judge or teacher of truth, is a continuing dialogue in which nothing is finally settled.

From "Politics and the English Language". Read it here.

The short version:

1. Avoid cliches.

2. Use short words.

3. Cut out words you don't need.

4. Use active, not passive, verbs.

5. Avoid foreign words and jargon.

6. Feel free to break these rules.

Read a slightly longer version here.

Great rules if you are a telegrapher or a modernist author. Post-modernists use rule 6.

Happy Mole Day! No, I'm not referring to the little critters that drive gardeners crazy, but to the chemical term. It refers to a standard unit for measuring the amount of a pure substance.

The mole is defined as the amount of substance of a system that contains as many "elementary entities" (e.g. atoms, molecules, ions, electrons) as there are atoms in 12 g of carbon-12 (¹²C).^[1]. A mole has 6.0221415×10^23[6] atoms or molecules of the pure substance being measured. A mole will possess mass exactly equal to the substance's molecular/atomic weight in grams. Because of this, one can measure the number of moles in a pure substance by weighing it and comparing the result to its molecular/atomic weight.

From Wikipedia [here].

It's been a long, long time since I took chemistry [although I do recognize Avagadro's number in that mess] so I'm not sure just how to celebrate National Mole Day. It's something that chemists dreamed up. I suppose I'll just go out this evening and imbibe some chemicals. I urge you all to do the same.

And a very happy birthday to the World. According to Bishop James Ussher the world was created on this very day in 4004 BC, at precisely 9:oo in the morning.

And on this day in 1641 Felim O'Neill led a rebellion in Ulster that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands [estimates range between 40,000 and 100,000] Protestants. People in Northern Ireland still remember him, some of them fondly. That's scary, but true.

And on this day in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln tramples civil liberties underfoot by suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the District of Columbia for any matters relating to military activities.

And on this day in 1956 the people of Hungary rose spontaneously in revolt against their Stalinst government. Throughout the country people formed militia units and attacked government officials. Many of those officials were killed, others imprisoned. At the same time political prisoners were released and a new political leadership promised free elections and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. By the end of the month it seemed that Hungary had gained its freedom. It didn't last long, though. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary and crushed the revolt. Despite desperate pleas for assistance from the Hungarian patriots the Eisenhower administration, NATO and the United Nations did nothing. This was not, to say the least, America's finest hour.

Today is also the anniversary of the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. 237 U. S. Marines were killed in the blast and another 80 injured. President Ronald Reagan ordered the withdrawal of American forces from Lebanon, which only reinforced the conviction among Islamist radicals that America was, indeed, a weak horse. Another not-so-shining moment in our national history.

Happy Birthday to Michael Crichton [1942] and Johnny Carson [1925] two men who provided me and many millions of other people with lots of thrills, chills and laughter.

The recent spectacular publication in Science of data on Ardipithecus has shaken up the field of evolutionary anthropology and forced reconsideration of what was considered to be settled scientific consensus [see discussion here]. The last time that happened was about fifteen years ago when palaeobotanists disproved the, to that point, universally accepted "savanna theory" which argued that human bipedalism and associated traits resulted from movement out of the forests and into grassland environments [here]. Now two studies are published that restore the savanna hypothesis to some, if not all, of its earlier prominence.

Artifacts found in southeast Kenya show that hominins were living in savanna environments 2 mya, long after the emergence of obligate bipeds but possibly before the development of many associated traits like hairlessness which might represent adaptations to the grasslands environment [here]. No sooner had this emerged than another team reported that close analysis of wear marks on Australopithicene teeth showed that grasses formed a large part of their diets [here]. That would seem to suggest that early bipeds inhabited an environment in which grass was common.

So we apparently cannot completely dismiss the possibility that much of what makes us different from other closely related species is due to life on the savanna after all. All the nice neat models lie in shambles and things are getting really messy. That's good science.

Today is "National Nut Day". There is absolutely no reason to believe that it refers to you. Really! So quit acting that way. I mean it! Stop that!

On this day in 741 AD, Charles "The Hammer" Martel, hero of the Battle of Tours dies. He served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian Kings of the Franks and was, at his death, the de facto ruler of France. He was one of the greatest military leaders of all time. During his life he revolutionized western warfare, conquered much of Western Europe, began the Reconquista, and established the foundation for the Carolingian Empire. His son was Pepin the Short, his grandson Charlemagne. Quite a legacy!

And on this day in 1746 the "College of New Jersey" was founded. We know it better as Princeton University. Currently it is 0-2 in league competition and 1-4 overall. Heck of a job, Tigers.

And on this day in 1836 Sam Houston, one of the most fascinating figures in our early history, was sworn in as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

Born in Virginia, Houston as a boy had moved to Tennessee and lived for a while among the Cherokee. Later he returned to White society and was in the process of setting himself up as a schoolteacher in Tennessee [despite being basically uneducated himself] when the War of 1812 broke out. He signed up to fight the British, served under Andrew Jackson, and at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend was wounded three times. Jackson was impressed and later hired Houston as an Indian agent overseeing the removal of the Cherokees from Tennessee to Arkansas. Houston's sympathies lay too much with the Indians and he didn't last long in that position. He then studied for and passed the bar, then ran successfully for Congress and in 1827 was elected Governor of Tennessee. His future seemed bright, but then he met a woman.

After a mysterious affair with a young woman Houston was forced into marriage. Then within a matter of weeks his wife left him. He then resigned his governorship, went back to live with the Cherokee, opened a trading post, was adopted into the tribe, and married an Indian woman [which technically made him a bigamist since his estranged wife and he were not divorced]. From there it was downhill. He took to drink, got involved in some questionable business deals, was arrested for assaulting one of his business partners, was convicted in civil court and fled the country for Mexico rather than pay the fine. His future seemed dark, but once again he pulled off a stunning reversal.

His Indian wife refused to accompany him so he left her behind. In Texas he got involved with the independence movement and when the revolution broke out he was given a military command and within a year became Commander in Chief of the Texican forces. After independence he was elected President of Texas twice, finally divorced his first wife and, at the age of 47 married a 21 year old woman. Third time was a charm. They had eight children.

After Texas was annexed in 1835 Houston was elected Senator and returned to Washington in triumph. Then in 1857 as sectional tensions rose he returned to Texas determined to keep it from leaving the Union. He was elected Governor in 1859 [the only person to have been elected governor of two different States] and worked to keep the State from seceding. He failed and in 1861, after Texas joined the Confederacy, was removed from office. After that he retired and devoted himself to Masonic activities. He was in poor health at that point and two years later he contracted pneumonia and died.

Quite a career, one that stands as testament to the extreme fluidity of early American society and to the amazing range of opportunities it afforded ambitious individuals. Sam Houston was a remarkable man living in a remarkable country.

And this day in 1844 followers of William Miller, a religious leader, gathered together to welcome the second coming of Jesus Christ. He didn't show up.

And on this day in 1918 the Spanish Influenza epidemic was raging. Both Baltimore and Washington ran out of coffins in which to bury the dead. Before it had run its course more than half a million people died in the United States. Globally mortality estimates range between 50 and 100 million people. The "Spanish Lady" probably killed more people than the "Black Death" of the Fourteenth Century.

And on this day in 1962 the Kennedy administration was blundering its way through the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a result of some spectacularly stupid covert activities engineered by the White House Fidel Castro, fearing yet another invasion, had invited the Soviets to send troops and missiles to his country. We had learned of the missile deployment as early as September and had hard proof of their existence early in October, but the adminstration dithered. Finally on the 22nd Kennedy went on TV to tell the American people about the missile threat, ordered a blockade of Cuba [technically an act of war] and placed the American military world-wide on high alert [DEFCON 3 -- we would go to DEFCON 2, for the only time in our history, on the following day]. I was living in Florida at the time and remember how scary it was to look up several times a day to see military jets flying over [to be continued].