Hanging Out At Hawk Mountain -- Part Two

I headed back up to Hawk Mountain on Saturday and the contrast with a weekday was dramatic. The place was packed with bird fanciers from all over.

This being the peak of the migration there were plenty of raptors passing through.

But for a few of us lucky people the real show took place below us. Three black vultures stopped by for a drink [there was a small pool of water in the rocks] and we were able to see them cavorting up close for quite a while.

Eventually they left and so did I. On my way back to the car I stopped by the garden. These were getting ready to pop when I was up during the week. By Saturday they were in full bloom. Nice!

Hanging Out At Hawk Mountain -- Part One

A few days ago I headed up to Hawk Mountain. Right now we are in the middle of the fall migration of the eastern raptors and this year has been pretty spectacular, just this weekend they broke their record for sighting of bald eagles [251 and still counting]. Since it was a weekday the crowds of birders would not be overwhelming and the weather was great -- a perfect day for just hanging out at one of the lookouts to see what could be seen.

Here's some of what I saw:

The first two shots are of an American kestrel

The next two are of sharpies, sharp shinned hawks.

There were lots of other birds in the sky, but they were too far off to photograph and I didn't have my long lens with me. Too bad, but there will be other days.

Mostly what I saw, though, were these things -- stinkbugs. Thousands of them swarming across the mountains. They have been a major annoyance all over the mid-Atlantic region.

I couldn't stay for long so after an hour I headed back home, stopping for a few minutes along the way to visit the sanctuary native plants garden.

All in all a very enjoyable break for the middle of the afternoon.

Sigh!

Once again, despite a valiant effort, the formerly fearsome Quaker warriors failed in their attempt to defeat  their effete suburban rivals, falling to the Villanova Wildcats 22-10. This is the Quakes seventh straight loss to the suburbanites. I suspect foul play. Certain Villanovans have been known to pray for victory, thus invoking supernatural outside assistance in their bid for dominance.

Oh well, there's always next century.

The Uprising

I'm not sure who Ben Howe is, but he captures the spirit of the Tea Party pretty well.

Sarah Palin Is the American Mainstream

So says Rasmussen:

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Likely U.S. Voters say their own views are closer to Sarah Palin’s than they are to President Obama’s, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. 

Just 40% say their views are closer to the president’s than to those of the former Alaska governor....

But note this:

Among the Political Class however, 68% say their views are more like Obama’s, while 63% of Mainstream voters describe their views as more like Palin’s. 

How's that for a disconnect?

And of course party matters. Democrats overwhelmingly identify with Obama's position while Republicans and Independents largely support Palin.This is why attempts to portray Sarah and the Tea Partiers as extremists are going to fail.

Read it here.

A British View Of the Tea Parties

It's a lot better than anything you are going to read in American papers:

First they were ignored. Then they were derided as the tools of Big Money. Then they were branded as racists, the unhinged, the unwashed, the paranoid, the subversive and the ignorant - or some combination thereof.

Now, they stand accused of aiding and abetting the enemy by splitting the Republican party and giving Democrats hope for the November mid-terms. It has been a rough ride for members of the Tea Party in the 19 months since their movement sprung up. 

But each insult and attempt to marginalise them seems only to have stiffened their resolve and swelled their numbers. Polling indicates that they are now more popular than either Republicans or Democrats. Despite all the claims they are extremists, around half of the electorate now identifies with the Tea Party and up to a quarter view themselves as members. 

 Read the whole thing here.

Hey, Here's An Idea!

From AFP:

Russia plans to slash 100,000 bureaucrat jobs by 2013, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday, in a drive to reduce costs and modernize the country's bloated bureaucracy.

"We expect that in the three years more than 100,000 federal civil servant jobs will be cut," Kudrin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

"The overall savings from this by the third year will amount to 43 billion rubles (1.4 billion dollars)," he added.

 Read it here.

Granted, it's only a drop in a bucket, but it's a start..., it's a start. We should be able to do a lot better..., let's say we cut the federal workforce by a million and work from there.

Even Song By the Yellowjackets

I ran across this on You Tube -- one of my favorite songs by the Yellowjackets. Bobby Mintzer is a beast on that sax, and as for Jimmy Haslip..., well it just don't get any better. I like this performance even better than the studio cut on the "Run For Your Life" album.



Just great!!!!!

Spooky Forces

This is interesting and might be immensely important:

Researchers say Pioneer 10, which took the first close-up pictures of Jupiter before leaving our solar system in 1983, is being pulled back to the sun by an unknown force. The effect shows no sign of getting weaker as the spacecraft travels deeper into space, and scientists are considering the possibility that the probe has revealed a new force of nature.

Dr Philip Laing, a member of the research team tracking the craft, said: "We have examined every mechanism and theory we can think of and so far nothing works. 

"If the effect is real, it will have a big impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation...." 

 Read it here.

Time and again we see that our understanding of the physical universe, while impressive, is far from complete, but then we have known that for a long, long time. As Hamlet put it:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Now if only someone would tell Dr. Hawking....

Judge Judy at Half Speed

Hilarous -- check it out here.

Iowahawk Strike's Again -- Fighting the Jacobins

The funniest man on the web takes on the Republican establishment. It's devastatingly funny.

I was, as you might imagine, eager to read the results of the previous evening's Republican U.S. Senate primary in Delaware. Normally I would have followed the returns by live television, but Mariska and I were otherwise engaged as hosts of a black-tie fundraiser for our new charity program, Inner City Badminton, along with our dear friends from the firmament of conservative punditry, Kathleen Parker and David Brooks. Together we passionately believe that by introducing the "grand old pastime" to the hiphop community, we will in some small way begin to repair the incalculable damage done to Republican-African American relations by the racially tactless Tea Party idiots. Spirits were quite festive, especially after Parker, Brooks and the Rev. Sharpton became entangled in a badminton net during a Tom Collins-fueled limbo tournament. By the time they were freed we were all too giddy and exhausted to worry about election returns. Indeed, why should we? For the most part, the damage inflicted by the Tea Partyists has been confined to the hinterlands west of the Alleghenies and south of Washington, so it seemed somewhat absurd to suggest that their benighted candidates might actually find success in one of the better states like Delaware. Yes, I am aware of Mr. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, but as I have noted before, that particular electoral fluke can be readily explained by Brown's erotic appeal to his state's famously nymphomaniacal womenfolk....

Read the whole thing here.

Have You Ever Zwibbled?

If not try it out here.

Go ahead..., it's fun.

Worst Person Ever!

The man who made Hitler look like a boy scout. The most evil person ever to walk the face of the earth. Mao Tse Tung. At the time he was committing his atrocities he was revered by many in the West as a great figure. Even today he is revered in his homeland, although there is some admission that he might have made "some mistakes".

Here is some of what he did:

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years....


Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation....

State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.

Read about it here.

The Good President [continued] -- Bush's Reputation

Victor Davis Hanson has a nice piece out on changing perceptions of the second Bush presidency [here]. He concludes that over time and especially in comparison with Obama, the nation is gaining a new appreciation of George Bush.

The frenzy of Bush hatred and Obama worship that crested in the summer of 2008 is over. We now better remember the Bush at Ground Zero with a megaphone and his arm around a fireman than the Texan who pronounced "nuclear" as "nucular." Meanwhile, hope-and-change now seems to offer little hope and less change.

America woke up from its 2008 trance and is concluding that Bush was never as bad, and Obama never as good, as advertised.

Indeed! Bush derangement, and it verged on total insanity at times, was largely a creation of political and media figures who constructed a fantasy. Seen in the harsh light of reality the unrealistic portraits of both Bush and Obama are seen for the fantastic constructs they were.

Interrupting the Happy Dance

Jim Geraghty, over at NRO, points out that the Democrats aren't dead yet, and that they are desperate. That will make for a very, very nasty couple of months ahead. Geraghty quotes his political mentor, who he calls Obi Wan:

This fall they [the Democrats] will know no checks — October Surprises, maybe every day and all day. What this means, I don’t know — bombing Iran? Capturing Osama bin Laden or some other big name and announcing the news two days before the election? Get tough with Paris Hilton and send her to Guantanamo?

Media organizations and figures (especially ABC, MSNBC, the Politico, Stephanopolis, and First Read) all of which are first wave transmitters will spread the White House's latest talking points to the public. Keep an eye on those sources, because they are White House sock puppets and will tell you where the discourse is heading.

So, this thing is far from over and the worst is yet to come. Tighten your seat belts, we're in for a really nasty fall.

Read Geraghty's piece here.

Should Babe Ruth Be Jailed?

Bill James thinks that it is unfair, as well as being a sad commentary on our times, that people in authority should wish to imprison Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for steroid use. He points out that Babe Ruth broke the rules of his time too, yet is today celebrated as the greatest ever. Read the whole thing here.

The Shifting Sands of Science

Anthony Gottleib has a nice piece in More Intelligent Life in which he notes, as I have many times in this blog, that there are a number of reasons to be skeptical toward scientific authority.I liked this paragraph in particular:

At the end of her book “Science: A Four Thousand Year History” (2009), Patricia Fara of Cambridge University wrote that “there can be no cast-iron guarantee that the cutting-edge science of today will not represent the discredited alchemy of tomorrow”. This is surely an understatement. If the past is any guide—and what else could be?—plenty of today’s science will be discredited in future. There is no reason to think that today’s practitioners are uniquely immune to the misconceptions, hasty generalisations, fads and hubris that marked most of their predecessors. Although the best ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Darwin, Einstein and others have stood the test of time and taken their place in the permanent corpus of knowledge, error remains inherent in the enterprise of science. This is because interesting theories always go beyond the data that they seek to explain, and because science is made by people. [emphasis mine]

 Precisely!

Read the whole thing here.

Liberal Myths

Liberals have long and loudly claimed that the modern Republican Party, especially its conservative wing, has embraced and promulgated racism. Gerard Alexander, writing in the WaPo, does a good job of dismantling the charge here. He wonders why Liberals persist in their insistence of what is obviously a falsehood. The answer is obvious -- it is in their political interest to do so. 

And while we are on the subject of liberal mythmaking, Richard Vedder writing in the Claremont Review takes a critical view of the way Democrats have systematically misrepresented the Great Depression and Roosevelt's response to it. Read it here.

Sarah Hatred

Shannon Love, one of the Chicago Boys, elaborates on a theme that is gaining increasing currency -- that the Left's irrational hatred for Sarah Palin, is based status anxiety, an old Parsonian concept recently popularized by Alain de Botton. He writes:

Palin’s success stabs [Leftists] in the heart of their anxiety. If Palin can be a successful political leader, what does that say about the leftists’ claims of intellectual and moral superiority? If people don’t just instantly assume that leftists are smarter and better than everyone else, why would people trust a leftist government to make so many decisions about the [way] people’s live, e.g., medical care?

That is why leftists see Palin as a genuine and significant threat of unusual magnitude. In the emotional thinking of leftists, she is a personal threat to everything each individual leftist has attained in life. They feel a sincere, visceral sense of danger about her because she attacks the very core of their egos. They feel the same hatred towards Palin that the European upper classes felt towards the upstart middle-class. They feel the same hatred that poor whites felt towards non-whites. They feel that way for the same reasons. If she succeeds, worse, if she is right, then they become nobodies.

As long as she is viewed as a significant political figure, the left’s obsession with Palin will never wane because it does not spring from rational roots. She threatens something too deep and too profound in a political subculture built around the belief that a small percentage of human beings have a vastly superior understanding of the world compared to all the rest. 

Read the whole thing here.

I think Love, Codevilla, and other recent commentators on the status system of America's post-war elites are onto something. The ever shriller protestations of today's credentialed elites increasingly sound like those of the old WASP country club set, whom they displaced half a century ago. Too bad that Digby Baltzell is no longer around. He would be the ideal person to chronicle their collapse.

The Eliminationist -- Hoping You All Die Soon

This woman is one of the scariest people you will ever see, and she is not alone. By herself, she is just a freakish oddity, but ideas like those she espouses are spreading, especially among those who think of themselves as "intellectuals" and that is a matter of considerable concern.

Dragon Boats at the Inner Harbor

Crowds turned out today to watch Dragon Boat races at the Inner Harbor.

The boats were crewed by local business, civic and military institutions.

Most of the attention was focused on the crews, but I was just as interested in the crowd. There were some strange creatures there.

And bubbles floating through the air, bemusing those they passed.

The Bubble Man and his appreciative fans.

Some random shots:

Never Again!

A Realistic View of the Internet

Trevor Butterworth has a terrific piece in Forbes on the social and ethical implications of the internet. He is, quite rightly, reacting against Princeton philosopher Peter Singer who has naively proclaimed the internet to be a transformative phenomenon that, by making information available to all, will magically liberate mankind [here].

Butterworth makes some excellent points:

The great transformation has already taken place and is comparable in scale to what took place in Renaissance Italy or the Scottish Enlightenment.

It has not been anti-corporate or particularly liberating.

Utopian philosophical speculation may be sexy, but it is no substitute for hard work in the trenches of historical research.

Technology is not science. It is more closely related to moral philosophy and should be understood as such.

We need to understand in harshly realistic terms just what the social effects of the internet are and what they are not.

Read the article here, and check out some of the people he references. It's well worth the effort.

Obama's Bigotry

Ann Althouse points out an interesting aspect of Obama's public statements on the current imbroglios surrounding the Ground Zero mosque and the Florida Koran burning.

Without hesitation, [Obama] called upon the Christian to exercise forbearance and to care for the feelings of others. He didn't dare say that to Muslims. And he talked about Muslims as if they are incapable of understanding a society based on individual liberty and freedom of expression. Obama propounds the stereotype of irrational Muslims who resort to acts of violence when they don't like what people are saying.

Read it here.

George Bush used to denounce this sort of thinking as "the soft bigotry of low expectations". He was right. The automatic assumption of a group's incapacity is indeed a form of bigotry and such assumptions permeate liberal ideology.

Sarah Palin Nails It!

She wrote on Facebook:

People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.

 Exactly! Well said, Sarah!

Some other interesting commentary:

Jim Geraghty finds it surprising that some people are surprised that Sarah Palin would denounce the Koran burning. Not surprising at all, given the amazing amount of vitriol that has been heaped on this good woman.

Allahpundit at Hot Air gets to the heart of the matter:

The grand irony of this crank pastor’s publicity stunt is that he’s trying to force the public to confront a difficult issue — when, if ever, is it appropriate to offend Muslims? — but doing it in such a grotesque, notoriously fascist manner that he’s guaranteed a united front against him among pols and pundits. Denouncing a book-burning is as easy a litmus test for decency as it gets in American politics.

Read it here.

The idea expressed in Allahpundit's last sentence, that somehow book-burning is as indecent an act as can be performed comes in for some examination from Ann Althouse. What's wrong, she asks, about burning a book?

Good lord. There's an immense difference between burning your own book as a way of saying "I hate this book" — which adds more expression to the marketplace of ideas — and the confiscation and destruction of other people's books — which is about depriving people of access to expression that they want to consume.

It's offensive to say "I hate this book" about a book that some people revere, but that's the point. It's a vigorous, vicious expression. Burning your own copy of a book is the same thing. Unless you possess the only copy of the book — or, perhaps, an artistically or historically distinctive copy — the burning is just a way of being showily expressive and getting a big audience. It's absurd that any clown who wants attention can light a tiny fire and become world famous. Get a grip, people.

Indeed! As Althouse notes, the amount of attention devoted to discussion of this act is ridiculous and serves only to increase tensions and empower obscure and offensive people. She urges us not to abet these publicity whores. But this is an election season and too many people think that they can gain advantage from endlessly chewing on this issue.

Megan McArdle on Confirmation Bias

One of the most sensible commentators on the economy writes about the use and misuse of "science" in political and policy matters.

One of the things I find most wearying about writing about economics is the extent to which people attempt to hijack economics to "scientifically prove" that their value judgements about things like the proper size and role of government are 100% factually correct--as if there were some way to empirically validate the correct marginal tax rate for people making over $100,000 a year.  

But even when you're careful, it's distressingly easy to find what you expect.  The result is a history of science developing models that used "scientific evidence" to bolster the social hierarchy of the day.  We think that phrenology and 19th century racialism are obviously preposterous--but they clearly weren't, because some very smart people believed them, and were not conscious that they were simply confirming their own prejudices.  We're still doing this kind of science today....

Read the whole thing here.

The naive presumption underlying the Progressive movement has always been the faith that "science" in its various forms would invariably produce superior policy recommendations that could be implemented for the benefit of all. More than a century of experience with technocratic regimes should have disabused us of that notion and awakened us to the horrors that technocratic utilitarianism can produce, but still the Democratic Party and a sizable portion of the Republican establishment buys into the notion that government by credentialed experts is superior to democracy. The tendency of "experts" to find what they are looking for and to issue "scientific" pronouncements that simply confirm their own biases is an endemic problem that should remind us that science is a human undertaking and as such is susceptible to all human foibles.

Persistence

He put a lot of work into this, and so far hasn't caught anything. Still he persists.

The Demagogue

Writing in National Affairs, Henry Olson discusses the nature and meaning of populism, citing the classical authorities that defined the applicable terms and concepts. Here he is on Aristotle: 

In the Politics, Aristotle defines a demagogic democracy as one in which "the decrees of the assembly override the law" and a popular faction "takes the superior share in the government as a prize of victory." The people's leader, the demagogue, incites them to pursue such despotism through extravagant rhetoric, playing on the people's basest desires and fears. The result is laid out ominously in Plato's Republic: The people — "an obedient mob" — "set up one man as their special leader...and make him grow great." The masses take the property of the wealthy to redistribute it among themselves; the people's enemies, meanwhile, are charged with crimes and banished from the city (or worse).

Read the whole thing here.

Lets see now, who on the current political scene has used extravagant rhetoric to rouse a mob of mindless and obedient followers, has overridden legal precedent with executive orders, has used the justice department to go after political foes, has declared that because "we won" the opposition should shut up and get out of the way, and has used the politics of fear to force through an unpopular agenda?

Just sayin'.

So Much For the End of Combat Operations

Baghdad (AP)

Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq's ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

Sunday's hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army's 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.

 Read the whole thing here.

Iowahawk's Latest -- "Barak, Can We Talk?"

The funniest writer on the web presumes to speak for America:

Oh, nothing. It's just that it just seems we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. I mean, I know we've both been busy for the past year or so. You with your fundraisers and golfing and stuff, and me with all those appointments at the unemployment office. But you know I think it's important in a relationship like ours to keep the lines of communication open.
So anyway, I've been think that... look, this is really hard. God. Do you remember when we met at that big party in Denver back in 08? I mean when I saw you across that crowded convention floor, it was like, Oh My God. I don't think I ever saw anything like you before. I was on the rebound from a bad relationship and you were so tall and articulate and, well hot. And then I couldn't believe that of all the democracies in the room you picked me out!
Yeah I know my some of my friends warned me you were trouble, and that it was the alcohol talking. But I knew that if we gave it a chance we could make it work. You and me, together. And after you moved in, I really think we did for a while. I mean, you've really helped me get over my inhibitions and hangups, and I like to think I've really helped you grow and discover yourself. Like last year when I lent you $800 billion to pay for your demo tape and new rims for the Cadillac.

 Read the whole thing here.

"The Junkiest City in America"

From CNN:

NEW YORK -- The capital city Pennsylvania is broke and will be skipping this month's multi-million dollar bond payment.

On Sept. 15, Harrisburg, Pa., was scheduled to make a $3.29 million payment on the bonds it issued to build a trash plant. But, the cash-strapped city doesn't have the dough. 

"The city's budget is in deficit," said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson. "We're looking for ways to trim the budget just to keep services going."

"Now the chickens have come home to roost," the mayor said in a statement released Wednesday.
In May, Moody's knocked the rating on its general-obligation bonds three notches to B2 -- five steps below investment grade. To put that into perspective: Moody's rating on Greece's government debt sits at A3 -- still investment grade.

So Harrisburg's rating is below that of Greece! Way to go guys. And of course they are going go be looking to the State to bail them out. If not, they're going to be bankrupt.

Read it here.

The Good President [continued] -- Missing Bush

Victor Davis Hanson notes that with today's widespread disapproval of both Congress and the current administration a lot of people are missing President Bush. He speculates on why and finds ten reasons:

1) Obama's miserable record.
2) Obama's adoption of Bush policies.
3) Obama's habit of blaming Bush.
4) Obama's yuppie lifestyle.
5) Michelle!
6) Obama's internationalism.
7) Many of Bush's harshest critics have discredited themselves.
8) Bush's "disasters" and "failures" turned out to be not so bad.
9) Bush was incorruptible and ran an honest ship.
10) Bush was authentic.

I find little to disagree with in VDH's characterizations, but then I always admired Dubya. Read the whole thing here.

Anita O'Day Sings "Sweet Georgia Brown"

I was watching "Anita O'Day Life of a Jazz Singer" on the Documentary Channel this evening and was inspired to share with you what I consider to be her single best performance. Here she is doing "Sweet Georgia Brown" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. This was really her breakout performance and you can see/hear why.



Aaaaaah! Wasn't that nice? O'Day is one of the great ones, but I still prefer Ella. Here she is in 1979 accompanied by the Count Basie Orchestra.



Ain't nobody gonna do what that woman did with her voice.

Sliming Sarah

The Vanity Faire hit piece on Sarah Palin is so bad that even liberal columnist Ben Smith cannot stomach it. Of course he blames all the hostile and dishonest reportage and commentary on Sarah, saying that it is because she won't give interviews to unfriendly journalists [like Ben Smith]. He seems to think that if she gave lots of such interviews the hostility would abate. Yeah..., sure.

Read it here.

UPDATE:

Smith is not the only one protesting the hit piece. Other liberals, feminists, and even Palin haters are protesting the piece.

Read about it here.

Early European Cannibalism

It seems that refuse piles produced by humans 800,000 years ago contain the remains of people who had been butchered mixed in with bones of other animal species. There is no indication of any ritual context so they conclude that, to ancient Europeans, human beings were just another game animal. Read about it here.

Back to School Advice

Walter Russell Mead has a piece in the American Interest advising students marching into the maw of our bloated higher education establishment on how to approach their experience. The points he makes are as follows:

1) Recognize that the real world does not work like school.
2) Most of the teachers and administrators know very little about the world you will enter after school.
3) You are going to have to work much, much harder than you expect.
4) Choosing the right courses is more important than choosing the right college.
5) A traditional liberal education is the only thing that will do you much good.
6) Character counts, as do good habits.
7) Relax

Most of this advice is good, especially points 1, 3, and 6. I do have some questions about numbers 4 and 5, though. It's an interesting piece, though, and well worth reading here.

The Good President [continued] -- Missing Bush

By 50 to 42 percent Ohio voters say that they would rather have George W. Bush back in the White House than Barak Obama. Read about it here.

More Left-Wing Violence

Yet another case of left-wing propaganda inciting weak-minded lefties to violence:

[Hostage taker] James Lee was linked to a manifesto that was posted on the internet, a source close to the investigation told CNN.
The angry manifesto repeatedly refers to humans as "filth" and demands that the Discovery Channel "stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants."
"Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is," the 1,149-word statement says.
....
Lee said he began his crusade to save the planet after being laid off from his job in San Diego and reading "Ishmael," a novel by Daniel Quinn about a gorilla that tells a man what it is like to live in captivity in a world where humans exploit natural resources.
Lee said he then felt an "awakening," watched former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," and decided he had been doing too little to protect the environment.
[Emphasis mine].

Read it here.

Time and again lefties in the press tell us that conservative talk shows and books incite a climate of violence that encourages weak-minded people to commit acts of destruction, and each time it turns out that the violence was perpetrated by left wingers. Now we have the testimony of the maniac to the effect that he was inspired by Al Gore's apocalyptic environmentalist screed. Will this give the MSM reason to question the validity of their anti-conservative narrative? Nah!

UPDATE:

Richard Morrison has a full discussion of the environmental terrorist's mindset here.

We should recognize that by far the biggest domestic terrorist threat emanates not from religious groups but from the environmentalist movement.

Cities of the Past and Future

Nice piece by Joel Kotkin in Foreign Policy on the cities of the future. It's a strong rebuttal to Richard Florida, and that I like -- I like a lot! It's really nice to see someone stick up for the suburbs and decry the fetishization of urban culture, And it serves as a reminder that urban theorists are, more than anything else theorists, and that they are badly in need of a historical perspective.

Read it here.

Vicious but Cute

Alan Becker's "Animator v. Animation"!

Check it out here.

It's interesting to note how a crude line drawing can invoke our sympathies.

HT to Elsie and Deedee.

The Ecumenical Right

For nearly a century now progressives have striven mightily to portray conservatives as narrow, closed-minded, intolerant religious zealots, and their efforts have paid off. Millions of Americans and Europeans hold precisely that image of the Right. But it has never been like that and isn't now. Bill Kristol points out that last Friday, before going down to Washington to speak at Glenn Beck's rally, Sarah Palin spoke at a Jewish shabbaton in Hershey, PA. He writes:

[E]vangelical Christian Sarah Palin spent Friday night with (mostly) observant Jews, along with various Christians, including some Amish. Then on Saturday she spoke at a rally hosted by a Mormon who went out of his way in his remarks to refer to the important role of "churches, synagogues and mosques" in American life.

 Read it here.

Well, what would you expect from Sarah? She was baptized into the Catholic faith, but followed her mother into a Pentacostal congregation, then took her own children into the congregation at the Wasilla Bible Church, a healthily non-denominational congregation that frequently welcomes Jews and Catholics to speak from the pulpit. 

Man Eating Squids -- Oh My!

From the UK Express:

DEADLY sea monsters have woken from the deep to cause carnage among some of the world’s richest fishing grounds.

Millions of killer giant squid are not only devouring vast amounts of fish they have even started attacking humans.

Two Mexican fishermen were recently dragged from their boats and chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified even by their own families.

No wonder the giant squid are called “diablos rojos” – red devils. 

 Read it here.

Big Boat in a Little Harbor

We got into town the other evening and as we drove down Light Street, "She Who Must Not Be Named" remarked that there was a really big ship docked at the Inner Harbor. "She" was right. That's the USS Whidbey Island, 600 feet of steel, just back from the Strait of Hormuz. Nice!

Memphis In the Meantime

Just because I'm in the mood for it:

John Hiatt and the Goners doing "Memphis in the Meantime". Great song, and some remarkable guitar work by Sonny. It's John's song, but I like Chris Smither's upbeat version better.

Baltimore Pictures -- Water Street

Just a few years ago this was one of the hot spots in Baltimore. On a summer's Friday evening it would attract hundreds of young people who would spill out onto surrounding streets and jam up traffic. This is what it looked like early on Friday evening a week ago. Sure there are some customers, but not many. The herd seems to have moved on to other pastures, which is a relief for those of us who live in the neighborhood.

Media Malfeasance and Katrina

There has been a lot of media hype this week about the fifth anniversary of the Katrina disaster, most of it self-congratulatory. In some cases it was treated as an opportunity to get in a few more whacks at President Bush. W. Joseph Campbell, author of "Getting it Wrong", notes that he [a conservative] and arch-liberal Harry Shearer, director of "The Big Uneasy" agree that the media coverage of the crisis and recovery efforts since have been abysmal. For the most part it was showboating, exaggerated, inaccurate, and to some extent politically, driven. He describes the on-site coverage:

“They reported snipers firing at medical personnel. They reported that shots were fired at helicopters, halting evacuations from the Convention Center [in New Orleans].

“They told of bodies being stacked there like cordwood. They reported roving gangs were preying on tourists and terrorizing the occupants of the Superdome, raping and killing. They said children were victims of sexual assault, that one seven-year-old was raped and her throat was slit. They reported that sharks were plying the flooded streets of New Orleans.”

And what is perhaps most offensive, is that the press refuses to admit their errors and has even gone so far as to congratulate themselves on the excellence of their reporting.

Faugh!

Read the article here.

Baltimore Pictures

We were in Baltimore during "Restaurant Week", so naturally "She Who Must Not Be Named" wanted to eat out every night. She blogged about it here [Yes, "She" has her own blog]. "She" took pictures of the food and decor in the restaurants -- my eye was caught by other things.

A garbage scow reporting for duty. I noted the extremely choppy wake and liked the way it reflected the morning sun.

We rode the new "Circulator Buses" [ride for free from the Inner Harbor to various entertainment and restaurant centers] over to Harbor East. Our destination was the Lebanese Taverna. We are both experienced users of urban transit systems, so we left plenty of time for the trip, but this time we got there quickly and had some time to kill. The bus stopped right outside a decorator's showroom, so we went in to get out of the heat and to look around. I took a few pictures:

"She Who Must Not Be Named" bought a few trinkets and I chatted with the salesgirl. She was originally from Harrisburg and still had family there. Then it was time to go to dinner... but to read about that you will have to go to SWMNBN's blog here.

The Good President [continued]

What a classy couple! K-Lo at the Corner reports that George and Laura Bush showed up unannounced at the recent "Run For the Fallen" even in Ogunquit, Maine and met with and posed for pictures with each of the families being honored. It was a kind and gracious thing to do. They are good people, those Bushes. The nation was blessed to have had them for eight years. Wish it could have been longer.

A Teachable Moment? Race Violence at the Iowa State Fair

So 30 to 40 black youths roamed the Iowa State fairgrounds openly proclaiming it to be "beat whitey night", and randomly assaulting fair-goers including attacks on two police officers. Some of the victims were seriously injured. So what is the official reaction?

There are indications that some of the fights - which appear to involve mostly teenagers and young adults - were racially motivated, police said.

We don't know if this was juveniles fighting or a group of kids singling out white citizens leaving the fairgrounds," Sgt. Lori Lavorato said. "It's all under investigation, but it's very possible it has racial overtones."

Yeah, right! They don't know, and just can't say, but they will investigate. And then there's this:

State Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad, D-Des Moines, who has worked to fight gang-related violence, said he doesn't have enough information to decide if the fights were racially motivated. He said police comments that race was involved could miss other factors, such as nonracial taunting.


....


He added, "We of course need to work on race relations. If anyone says we don't, they are playing games with themselves."

State Fair spokeswoman Lori Chappell said she had few details about the incidents.

And what would you expect from our PC official culture that is, in Dennis Miller's words, "a mincing behemoth".

And here's the kicker -- the assailants were young women in their teens and twenties. What was it Kipling said? Oh yeah! "The female of the species is deadlier than the male", and don't ever forget it. 

Amazing Optical Illusions

Check them out here.

Tolerating the Intolerant

Toleration is a two-way street. In order to be tolerated, you must be tolerant and tolerable. But what if one of the disputants has no interest in  being tolerant and is making irresponsible demands that are profoundly offensive? Christopher Hitchens has a nice piece in Slate on the problem:

As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …
As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

Read the whole thing here.

Hitchens is absolutely right on this matter. This is why the demands of the Iman Rauf and his backers must be resisted and why his supporters are acting shamefully by branding opposition "Islamophobic".

The Good President [continued] -- Missing Bush

Elizabeth Scalia has a nice way of cutting to the core of the situation. By way of explaining why people miss Bush she writes, quoting a friend:

"We knew that he said what he meant, even if we didn’t want to hear it. We knew who he was, even if we didn’t like him. And we never had to wonder whether he liked us. He always did.”

And continues: 

And that is it, in a nutshell. Bush is missable, because we miss having a president whose affection for his country and its people–even the ones who hated him–was never in doubt.

We miss Bush because he never lectured us or harangued us, and when people disagreed with him, they were not immediately called names in an attempt to simply shut up debate. 

....

[B]ecause Bush never hated his opponents, and he never believed the worst of his countrymen; he believed the best. 

Believing the worst of his countrymen sometimes seems to be President Obama’s default mode.

We miss Bush because he believed that Americans are inherently decent and heroic people who would–even in strained situations–bring thoroughly decent and heroic responses to bear.

Read it here.

As I have said many, many times, George W. Bush was a good man, a far better man than his critics, and a good, possibly a great, president. Time will tell how much he will be appreciated. For my part, I consider him to be the best of my lifetime [and I was born during the Roosevelt administration].

The Good President [continued] -- Bush on the Rise

Newsmax surveys recent polls on Presidential approval and notes:

Since March 2009, Bush's Gallup rating has climbed 10 points. Obama's favorability during the same period: down by over 20 points.

The bottom line: just 18 months after leaving office, Bush doesn't look so bad after all – despite the fact that the current administration has used him as a political piñata for months. 

The article attributes this to several factors:

The winding down of the Iraq war, which increasingly seems like a victory and the unpopularity of Obama's Afghanistan adventure; the fact the Bush allies have begun to defend him and his policies in the press; the revelation that Bush was deeply involved in humanitarian activities and policies, particularly in Africa; the fact that Bush kept America safe from terrorism; and the fact that Obama has continued many of Bush's most controversial policies, suggesting that they were in fact the responsible course of action.

I have little hope that the current inhabitants of academia's upper reaches will soon get over their Bush derangement -- they are far too committed to their pet ideologies to be disturbed by mere facts -- but the general public is slowly awakening to the fact that the man they so despised was a good, honest, and possibly great figure. 

Amazing Photos -- Yann Arthus-Bertrand

The earth from above: Check the whole series out here.

Check out the National Geographic video "Home" based on his work here.

Ayaan v Barak

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali born former Dutch parliamentarian, forceful voice for human rights, and prominent critic of Islamic culture, especially as regards the treatment of women, argues that President Obama's understanding of Western/Islamic relations is flawed. She instead suggests that Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" model is more appropriate to the current situation and should form the basis for our policy toward the Islamic world. The fundamental point at issue is whether patient tolerance will lead to a positive change in Muslim attitudes toward the West, or whether those attitudes are so deeply ingrained in the culture that persistent acquiescence to Muslim demands will simply be interpreted as weakness. It's an interesting debate. Check her out here.

The Good President [continued] -- Missing Bush

From the National Review:

A prominent Democratic pollster is circulating a survey that shows George W. Bush is 6 points more popular than President Obama in “Frontline” districts — seats held by Democrats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as most vulnerable to Republican takeover. That Bush is more popular than Obama in Democratic-held seats is cause for outright fear.

 Read it here.

Volcanoes

National Geographic has a series of really spectacular volcano photos available online. Check them out here.

The Continuing Collapse of Scientific Authority -- Fraud at Harvard

Even in the most illustrious institutions, the quest for fame and fortune corrupts scientific inquiry.

Harvard's media-friendly evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser, famous for his 2006 book Moral Minds, is under investigation for misrepresenting research on morality in primates. Students asked Harvard officials to raid Hauser's lab three years ago; they didn't like what they found.


Like his colleague Steven Pinker, Hauser believes that primates (including humans) possess psychological traits - like morality - which go back quite far in our evolution. In other words, humans possess an innate sense of right and wrong that they share with their evolutionary cousins, the monkeys and apes. He's written extensively about the moral and cognitive traits of tamarin monkeys, as well as human babies. But, according to the New York Times' Nicolas Wade, who has been following this unfolding academic melodrama, Hauser's students got so fed up with wrongdoings in his lab that they reported him to Harvard authorities three years ago. They claimed he was misrepresenting his research, an accusation which was mirrored by other colleagues.

Read it here. Original NYT report here.

So the scientist wanted to become a media star and in the process of doing so sold his integrity and threatens that of the entire field. And how did Harvard react to the problem? The Times quotes a colleague:

“The people who really know what’s happened are students, current and former,” said a scientist who asked to remain anonymous because of Dr. Hauser’s continuing power in the field. “They are very unhappy about how Harvard has handled this, and they feel things are being swept under the rug.”

Indeed!

Genomics and Race, An Anthropologist's View

An observation by Dienekes:

How strange that modern genetics is supposed to have invalidated the concept of race, yet, at every turn, it confirms most of the basic racial taxonomic observations of people working only with their eyes and, much later, their calipers.

Read it here.

The Greater Evil

Lovecraft's "Curse of Cthulhu" as you've never heard or read it before:

Taiwanese Take on Michelle's Spanish Adventure

Not Thinking Things Through

In the wake of the administration's tacit admission that the choice of Joe Biden for Veep was an unmitigated disaster and the numerous suggestions that he be replaced by Hillary Clinton,Tunku Varadarajan asks:

If Hillary is going to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office, would you want that to be your heartbeat?

Well do ya feel lucky, punk? Do ya?

Barone's Simple Truths

In his latest column Michael Barone states the simple truth, long understood by conservatives, that market mechanisms are more efficient allocaters of economic resources than panels of government experts -- a fact blithely ignored by an administration that has placed its faith in the pronouncements and policies recommended by various "expert" economists. Unwilling, for obvious reasons, to call Obama's policies what they are [fascism, which as Jonah Goldberg has demonstrated is a variety of socialism] Barone instead lables the administration's policies "State Capitalism". He writes:

[F]acts are stubborn things. The fact that the private-sector economy has not responded as administration economists expected and confidently predicted should be a wake-up call.

It shows the limits of expert knowledge and of the ability of political actors to make optimal economic choices.


The intellectual firepower of this administration may be high. But so was the intellectual firepower of the postwar British Labour governments that nationalized steel and auto companies and the railroads.

That didn’t turn out so well, and for decades the British economy lagged behind those of America and its European neighbors. State capitalism has been tried before. It didn’t work.

Barone not only invokes the historical experience of post-war Britain -- he cites the opinion of a number of conservative economists, which only goes to illustrate a second simple truth -- experts are seldom in agreement on any major issue.

The Obama administration seems to have a naive faith in the ability of "experts" to come up with the single best solution to problems facing us as a people and to recommend the most effective policies to be implemented in order to deal with them. These feckless progressives do not seem to realize the simple truth -- that intellectual [and especially scientific] inquiry is a continuing dialogue in which new perspectives and evidence are constantly changing what we think we know.
Barone suggests that in the face of such uncertainty a certain degree of modesty is in order, but modesty is an alien concept to Obama's "experts". If this administration can be characterized by any single thing it would be a staggering and overwhelming hubris, based in a naive faith in the efficacy of "expert" opinion.
 
He leaves us with yet more uncertainty. Obama's vaunted teams of "experts" have failed, and failed miserably, but there is no indication that Republican "experts" will do any better. Maybe, just maybe, they will be a bit more modest, but there is no guarantee of that. After all, they too are "experts" and to admit that they just don't know what to do would be to deny their own value, and they are not about to do that. 
 

The Good President [continued] -- Double Standards

The death of federalism.

This WSJ editorial points out the blatant double standards applied to President Bush, who was blamed for the failure of State and local authorities in the case of Katrina and President Obama, who largely escaped criticism when federal incompetence and regulations blocked any effective response to the BP oil spill on the part of State and local governments. The point is not just the obvious one that Bush has frequently been subject to unfair criticism, far more so than Obama, but that in both cases the national media disregarded the role played by State and local authorities in order to focus on the more politically potent critique of national and international [in the case of BP] actors. Read the piece here.

What We Had for Dessert

Early this evening "She Who Must Not Be Named" and I joined a dear friend for dinner. After a bit of discussion we decided on Thai. We hit the streets south of the Inner Harbor walking down Light Street heading for the Thai Arroy near the Cross Street Market, but when we got there they were closed. What to do? What to do? It's not like there weren't other restaurants in the area -- the place is loaded with them -- but we had our appetites set for Thai food. "She" suggested that there was another Thai restaurant -- "ten oh six" -- nearby, but none of us could remember seeing it recently. We soon found it nestled into a small space next to "Regi's" about half a block away. It wasn't "ten oh six" anymore. The ownership was the same, but they had changed the name, the decor, the menu, and some of the personnel. It is now called "Thai Yum".

What a wonderful surprise! They had gone from a mixed Asian-American cuisine to authentic Thai and had changed their focus in an attempt to appeal to young, urban foodies. It seems to be working. We got there early and were the first customers, but as the evening progressed the place filled up, mostly with young women out for dinner with their friends. Not bad for a Monday crowd. I won't blog the meal -- "She" has already done that over on her own site -- but I do want to call attention to the dessert. It's something like baked alaska -- an ice cream core ["Thai tea" ice cream] surrounded by baked merangue. Mmmm, yum.

If you are in the Baltimore area and feel like eating Thai food, check out Thai Yum on South Light Street, about a block north of the Cross Street Market. You'll be glad you did.

Timewasters

Blessing or curse? Probably the latter. If you like to push pixels around go here to find links to the 150 greatest online flash games.

Eastern State Penitentiary in Photos

Check out the whole series here.

Prof Reynolds on the Coming College Crackup

For some time now I have been arguing that not just the public schools, but the entire higher education establishment is pursuing an unsustainable course and that a crisis is emerging that will radically transform the current dysfunctional institutional structure. The university as we know it is not going to be around for long and alternative methods of instruction are already becoming more popular. Glenn Reynolds [the Instapundit] has a nice piece in the Examiner on the subject. He writes:

For the past several decades, colleges and universities have built endowments, played moneyball-style faculty hiring games, and constructed grand new buildings, while jacking up tuitions to pay for things (and, in the case of state schools, to make up for gradually diminishing public support).

That has been made possible by an ocean of money borrowed by students -- often with the encouragement and assistance of the universities.  Business plans that are based on this continuing are likely to fare poorly. 


....

A college degree demonstrates, at least, moderate intelligence - and, more importantly, the ability to show up and perform on a reasonably reliable basis, something that is of considerable interest when hiring people, a surprisingly large number of whom do neither.

But a college degree is an expensive way to get an entry-level credential.  New approaches to credentialing, approaches that inform employers more reliably, while costing less than a college degree, are likely to become increasingly appealing over the coming decade.

Read it here.

God, the Singularity, and Optimising Mechanisms, Oh My!!!

Here's an interesting dialogue between Bob Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky on the subjects of "the Singularity" and evidence from design for the existence of God. The two men hold very different positions on the subjects and feel deeply about them. It's fun and, for anyone who has not thought deeply about the matters, instructive to watch them go at each other.

Flash Opera at the Reading Terminal Market

I have been at the Market many times, but never seen anything like this. I wish I had been there.

The Times They Are A'changin'

In the middle decades of the Twentieth Century an elite consensus emerged in the Western democracies, largely in response to the perceived experience of World War Two. One element of this consensus, a reaction agaisnt Nazi race theory, was a massive repudiation of biologically based determinants of the human condition. This was matched by an avid embrace of sociological categories of analysis, for the most part based in Marxist theory. Evolution, we were told, ended with the emergence of society, people were all the same under the skin, and perceived differences among people were mere "social constructs" or evidence of atavistic bias. That consensus still holds in official circles, but is rapidly crumbling in the face of genomic research.

Even such a bastion of liberal opinion as the New York Times has begun, quite tentatively to be sure, to report on this potentially explosive scientific research. A recent article noted that evolution is still ongoing and is producing some interesting variance among population groups. Many Asians, for instance, metabolize alcohol differently than do people whose descent traces back to other parts of the world. Tibetans have in recent times evolved biological adaptations to high-altitude living. People living in cold climate, too, show a suite of recent biological adaptations. Primitive farming populations synthesize folic acids differently than other groups. East Asians, unlike other populations, produce dry earwax. These can all be considered superficial traits, but fundamental biological processes are involved and the Times list is hardly exhaustive. There are well-documented differences among ethnic groups regarding susceptibility to disease or responses to medical treatments and some evolutionary biologists have suggested that there may be cognitive differences too. These, quite understandably, are highly controversial and the Times is right to treat the entire subject gingerly, but genomic research is still in its infancy and the fact that its conclusions, however troubling, are being discussed in such a forum suggests that some major rethinking regarding some fundamental tenets of the post-war elite consensus is taking place.

Naill Ferguson on the Ascent of Money

Naill Ferguson talks with Harry Kreisler about his immensely popular history of finance, "The Ascent of Money". The interview includes one of the most lucid discussions I've seen of how the current credit crisis originated.



Watch the PBS series based on the book here.

Afghanistan and Empires, a New Perspective

Christopher Caryl, wriitng in Foreign Policy, has a nice review of Thomas Barfield's new history of Afghanistan. In it Barfield persuasively challenges the conventional view of Afghanistan as the "Graveyard of Empires". He shows that until the Eighteenth Century Afghanistan had successfully been incorporated into a number of empires and had even spawned some spectacular ones. The Soviet defeat in the region, due largely to American support for the Afghan resistance, represented a break with rather than a continuation of the region's history.

Read the review here.

Promises, Promises -- The Trail of Deception that Produced Obamacare

Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson once again do the tedious, but important, job of documenting the deceptive rhetoric that was deployed in the Democrat's campaign to inflict Obamacare on the nation. The result is an invaluable resource of which all voters should be aware.

Read it here.

The Continung Collapse of Academic Authority

Brendan O'Neill, writing over at Spiked, takes on the peer-review process. Once the mechanism supposedly served to guarantee a high level of competence in academic publications. Now it has been thoroughly politicized and serves to enforce a party-line.

Read it here.

The Way Things Used To Be

Amazing colorized pictures of America seven decades ago. Check them out here.

Mamet's Conversion

On the subject of liberal to conservative conversions, Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, has a nice piece in Commentary on David Mamet's discovery that he was a conservative. Read it here.

Losing Her Faith

Some of my favorite reading on the web has been the now numerous accounts by disillusioned liberals of how and why they became conservatives. One of the best is Neo-Neocon who usually has interesting things to say about a lot of things. Chris Muir's cartoon yesterday summarized the amazing number of intellectual and moral insults liberals have had to endure in the past two decades. Considering the frequency and seriousness of these insults it is astounding that any intelligent person could remain a liberal, but many do -- a triumph of faith over reason.

The National Dialogue on Race -- Loury and McWhorter

Two really smart black guys talking about race in America and, surprise, surprise, they make a lot of sense.I particularly like Professor Loury's assertion that the reign of Political Correctness is coming to an end.