Michael J. Totten has a great review of Michael Yon’s book. Which, if you haven’t read yet, you must.
18 May, 2008
17 May, 2008
NRCC Site Hacked!
Democrat operatives have hacked into the NRCC web site and are making blog posts under the name Tom Cole!
At least that’s what it looks like. And the RINO morons in D.C., assuming they read the comments (further assuming, I suppose, that they can read) are getting a keyboard lashing from the base.
If you search the page for the phrase “put a fork in it” you’ll know what I think.
Pile on!
Michelle Malkin has more.
Eye of the Storm
An exhibit of combat photographs taken by military photographers will benefit the Wounded Warrior charity.
As an unintentionally hilarious sidebar, read this LA Times article. They seem genuinely perplexed that someone could actually “take sides” in the war, scratching their pointy heads over a photographer – a woman, no less – who refers to “bad guys”. Go figure.
Funnier is their description of this photo:
SAN DIEGO-based Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Watkins captured the spooky terror of the war in 2007, with a nighttime shot of heavily armed U.S. special forces standing by a door, with a barking German shepherd straining at its leash. Their high-beamed nightscopes cut into the darkness. Their faces are masked with night goggles that tint the photograph in ghoulish green desperation.
Would anyone willingly open the door to these scary trick-or-treaters?
I’m not sure what a “high-beamed nightscope” is supposed to be, but those green lines are infrared laser beams. They can only be seen with night vision devices, such as the one through which the photo was taken. That’s what tints the photograph green, dummies. It is assumed, or at least dearly hoped, that the bad guys inside aren’t wearing NVGs. In any case, if you’re someone who would “willingly open the door” you won’t find Special Forces all armored up on the front porch. Duh.
The LAT has to begrudgingly give the photographers their due – there’s some very nice work here. The contortions they go through are just indicative of how disconnected from reality so-called journalists are.
16 May, 2008
GOP: Get a Clue
Mark Alexander rails against the dying of the Right.
Finally smelling the coffee, RNC Chairman Robert Duncan proclaimed, “This was a real wakeup call for us. We can’t let the Democrats take our issues. We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives.” First, what issues? And second, half the Republicans in Washington pretend to be conservatives, why shouldn’t Demos give that ruse a spin?
The realization that there’s a zero percent chance of getting a good president this year is depressing.
15 May, 2008
The Trinity of Hell
Just when you thought this presidential campaign couldn’t get any weirder.
What a dead culture looks like
If you need any more proof that England is dead, watch this video of hapless London police “confronting” a mob of barbarians.
14 May, 2008
Wikirabia
A tale of anti-Israel machinations at Wikipedia.
I suppose that if, say, Jews went rabidly violent whenever someone accuses them of being, oh I don’t know, violent they might be getting more “cooperation” in the world.
Neural Buddhism
David Brooks’ column has sparked a lot of interesting discussion. John Derbyshire got the ball rolling on The Corner with this and posted a reader’s response here.
I particularly liked this analysis by Steven Novella.
What resonated for me personally was his comment responding to a reader who claimed that agnostics are just atheists in denial. I quote Novella’s response liberally here because it perfectly echoes my own reasoning as I arrived at thinking of myself as agnostic rather than atheist. Emphasis is my own.
Here is my position – very briefly. It is important to distinguish between propositions that are false and those that are outside the arena of science. Those ideas that cannot be tested, even in theory, are simply not science, and they are unknowable (I am talking about factual claims, not value judgments).
Unknowable propositions are worse than wrong – they are unnecessary. As I said – deism is unnecessary. That doesn’t mean there is no god – it means that the notion of a god (depending upon how it is conceived, but the basic idea of a being outside the confines of our physical universe and its laws) is simply unknowable. It is simply wrong to say that we can know god does not exist. The only logically consistent position is agnosticism. But you can combine that with the notion that such unfalsifiable claims are unnecessary. If someone chooses to have faith in such a thing, like the FSM, I really don’t care – as long as they keep it pure faith and do not make any logical or empirical claims – that’s cheating.
Regarding the term agnostic – I would rather have the opportunity to explain to people why I am agnostic than to create the other misconception (which is absolutely used as often as possible by believers) that atheists have faith in the non-existence of god. You’re burned either way, and you will have to explain yourself, so don’t shy away from philosophical purism.
Or, in bumper sticker brevity, Militant Agnostic: I don’t know and you don’t either.
Seriously, though, note that the above implies that being an agnostic allows me to co-exist peacefully with faith, even if I don’t share it. I’ll never get into an argument about whether or not god exists, because I don’t think there can even be an argument. That may or may not be a comfort, depending on who you are.
Update:
I forgot to link to this post by Derb.
13 May, 2008
Sudden Clue Outbreak at NASA
A mere four years after SpaceShipOne, NASA has seen the light.
“I’d like for us to get to the point where we have the kind of private/public synergy in space flight that we have had for a hundred years in aviation,” Griffin said. The spirit of private enterprise is crucial to the future of space exploration, he acknowledged. “I see a day in the not-very-distant future where instead of NASA buying a vehicle, we buy a ticket for our astronauts to ride to low Earth orbit, or a bill of lading for a cargo delivery to space station by a private operator. I want us to get to that point.”
That’s a pretty fast turnaround for an outfit that went from can do to can’t fail to why bother.
12 May, 2008
Election Year Numerology
No, I don’t believe it. But it’s a funny coincidence.
Still, suspicious of the number, I looked it up. If I’m counting right, that’s 19 columns of 3. Sure enough. But the cached description that showed up on my Ask.com search says 56. If the 57th had just been added recently that could argue either for it being fresh in Barry’s mind, or argue that it’s just a coincidence.
I’ll stick with coincidence.
What’s the Real Controversy?
It’s not what the IDiots say it is.
Evolution clearly has no shortage of controversies. But none of those controversies involve the basic principles of evolution, and all of them operate within a framework where random mutation and selection play a key role in creating diverse species that are related by common descent. It’s clear that the Discovery Institute is trying to introduce controversies that don’t exist, while ignoring those that do. That’s why the academic freedom bills it’s promoting are such dangerous things; while supposedly promoting intellectual analysis, they’re actually an attempt to pave the way for misinformation to enter the scientific classroom.
11 May, 2008
Whenever I’m presented the choice
between “organic” food and “no-organic”, I always choose the cheaper. I consider “organic” to be a marketing term used to sell inferior goods at inflated prices.
Perhaps I’ve been too kind.
10 May, 2008
9 May, 2008
Mini Movie Reviews
First, my take on Iron Man: Don’t let the bleeding-heart politics bother you. It’s really a fun movie. Tony Stark, even when he’s outwardly despicable, is really likeable for a very important reason: He’s his own man.
Next, someone at PIxar gave this nerdly review of Speed Racer:
Probably just before the final save in every comp script the following is run
ColorSpace1 = ColorSpace(0, “rgb”, “hsv”, 0.3, 0.59, 0.11);
Reorder1 = Reorder(ColorSpace1, “r1ba”);
ColorSpace2 = ColorSpace(Reorder1, “hsv”, “rgb”, 0.3, 0.59, 0.11);
For a select few, that’s laught-out-loud funny.
Rhetorical Question OTD
Why are liberals actively helping terrorists?
Common goals couldn’t possibly be the answer.
8 May, 2008
Six Things Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You To Know
A civil, succinct list from Scientific American.
Red Flag?
Instapundit writes:
I GET AN EMAIL NEWSLETTER from an oil trader and today it includes this tidbit: “In an interesting twist of OPEC news – in the folder titled ‘Adequate Supply’ – Iran has chartered an armada of supertankers to act as floating storage for as many as 28 million barrels of crude oil that is backing up on them. Analysts are blaming worldwide refineries yet to recover from maintenance programs. It’s not the first time that Iran has had trouble finding buyers; they temporarily floated 20 million barrels in 2006. No, I can’t explain this in light of record oil prices and continual cries for more release of OPEC crude oil. ”
U.S. crude stocks are up, too. This is unlikely to be the case, but here’s a thought: If I were, say, the United States government, and I anticipated military action in the mideast that might interrupt oil supplies, I wouldn’t want to stockpile directly because that would be a tipoff. But if I manipulated markets into running up stocks, I wouldn’t have to. . . . Nah. They’re not that smart.
Then he updates with this hmmm.
Could the working side of Bush’s brain, the one that hasn’t fallen for global warming and ethanol, be misunderestimated again? The elephant in the room has been speaking Farsi for quite some time now.
6 May, 2008
Why Israel Matters to Us
It’s the civilized world’s canary in a coal mine. If the Jihadists sweep it aside, we’ll be next.
Aaron Klein, an American journalist who now lives in Israel, last year released a fascinating book, Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans — To a Jew!. In it, he recounts how in hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of terrorists their declared hatred of the West was nearly as great as their hatred of Israel. They were not motivated by poverty or political oppression as much as by faith and ideology, and nearly all spoke of establishing a worldwide caliphate once they had dispatched the Jewish state. They were especially enraged by our equal treatment of women and our tolerance of gays and lesbians.
The enemy isn’t resting. And there are more of them than their apologists want to admit.
Update:
Mark Steyn agrees.
The Western intellectuals who promote “Israeli Apartheid Week” at this time each year are laying the groundwork for the next stage of Zionist delegitimization. The talk of a “two-state solution” will fade. In the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Jews are barely a majority. Gaza has one of the highest birth rates on the planet: The median age is 15.8 years. Its population is not just literally exploding, at Israeli checkpoints, but also doing so in the less incendiary but demographically decisive sense.
Peter Robinson has a fun job
He gets to meet and interview some really interesting people.
Treat yourself to part 1 and part 2 of his interview with Tom Wolfe. I especially like Wolfe’s explanation of the Charming Aristocracy in part 2.
One of his readers observes:
What he said about the charming aristocracy perfectly describes, it seems to me, the sophisticates who support Obama. [They think that] those of us who are lesser beings can’t possibly understand what Obama is and what his election portends for the country.
Update:
Another reader takes it a step further.
Tom Wolfe, in his description of the charming aristocracy, outlines many of the habits of liberals in general. He points out that the aristocracy comes to believe that the simple “journalism” is too low-brow for them. I have seen this exact attitude in many who embrace anti-Americanism, anti-patriotism, and most liberal points of view because they don’t want to seem pedestrian. When they come up against someone who is well educated, reasonably refined, AND conservative, they are at a loss to explain it. Hence, the difficulty understanding someone like William F. Buckley and his peers (did he actually have any peers?).
5 May, 2008
Graduation Day
All college commencement speeches should, from hence forth, be this one.
Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.
We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything — which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.
My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth’s resources of the weird. Weird clothes — we wore them. Weird beards — we grew them. Weird words and phrases — we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.
Read the whole thing.
Obama’s Better Half?
Christopher Hitchens asks a very good question: How responsible is Michelle for Barack’s association with bad people? He hits some interesting points along the way.
In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled Brother Minister about the assassination of Malcolm X. It contained a secretly filmed segment showing Louis Farrakhan shouting at the top of his lungs in the Nation of Islam’s temple in Chicago on “Savior’s Day” in 1993. Farrakhan, verging on hysteria, demanded to know of the murdered Malcolm X: “If we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours?” His apparent admission of what had long been suspected—that it was the Black Muslim leadership that ordered Malcolm’s slaying—is not understood or remembered (or viewed) as often as it might be.
I didn’t know that. And I love this:
I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama’s 1985 thesis at Princeton University. Its title (rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus) is “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be “read” at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.
