Perhaps if Pelosi hadn’t been tirelessly pursuing her job of “[changing] the leadership in Congress and in the White House—the Congress part,” at the time, she would have spotted and fired back at this misleading article. In fact, it may have proven a golden opportunity to first uncork the “CIA lied to me!” truth tornado. Alas, Speak Pelosi mustered a Herculean effort to resist the overwhelming temptation to respond, keeping her powder dry for another year and a half. Again—very cunning.
Thanks to LGF for finding the most delightfully weird bit of filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time. As a bonus, it comes from someone with the simply awesome name of Estus Washington Pirkle.
As an agnostic skeptic I find the content simultaneously hilarious and sad. As a filmmaker I find the editing and camera choices mesmerising.
You’re wondering about, uh, the “other place”, aren’t you? Well, it’s worse than you thought. Lower resolution and more film scratches!
Update:
My film-literate coworkers have let me know that this first clip is lifted from Dianne Keaton’s 1987 film, “Heaven“. That explains the great editing.
“This is where your parents are important,” Mischel says. “Have they established rituals that force you to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage you to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile?” According to Mischel, even the most mundane routines of childhood—such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning—are really sly exercises in cognitive training: we’re teaching ourselves how to think so that we can outsmart our desires. But Mischel isn’t satisfied with such an informal approach. “We should give marshmallows to every kindergartner,” he says. “We should say, ‘You see this marshmallow? You don’t have to eat it. You can wait. Here’s how.’ ”
We Latinists have also been resistant to change. Like most keepers of arcane knowledge, we savor our rare moments of prominence.
I say this from personal experience: Once, the hardened leader of the local SWAT team asked me for a Latin version of his team’s credo, “The strength of the wolf is in the pack, the strength of the pack is in the wolf.” I told him: “Robur gregi in lupo, robur lupo in grege.” He thanked me and then said the nine most comforting words a SWAT team leader could say to anyone: “Let me know if you ever need a favor.”
Admittedly, this pales in comparison to the fame gained by the Columbia University Latin scholar who had the high honor of translating for the press the tattoo of the woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal from “Tutela valui” to “I use protection.”
This all sounds very exciting, but these stories of linguistic derring-do obscure the fact that Latin diplomas have outlived their usefulness.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China. We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Yesterday the English High Court made an astonishing and highly illiberal ruling in the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh.
The ruling was by Sir David Eady, the presiding judge. He has decided the “meaning” which should be given to the passage complained of in Simon Singh’s original article.
All we need now is for bogus CAM practitioners like Chiropracters, Accupuncturists and Witch Doctors to start intimidating people through the courts.
Why does the Mafia release hostages? Because they have collected the ransom. So to all those who are looking for subtle reasons for the Saberi release, take it from someone who has been there. Iran collected its ransom. The mullahs aren’t subtle, they’re mafiosi. We probably won’t know for a while what they got, who delivered it, and who worked the deal. But anyone familiar with the workings of the Islamic Republic has to assume that there was a payoff.
I can just picture the meetings between the Mullahs and Obama’s people: It’s The Godfather without the Sicilian accents. Or the good food.
Ann Althouse asks the obvious questions about that idiotic flight over NYC. I was being too kind assuming the photo was meant to be taken from the ground, since no such photo has surfaced. The one that has illustrates that, while the F-16 is many things, an air-to-air photo platform it ain’t.
Who was on the plane, I wonder? Is Caldera under the bus to keep them secret?
Not long after 911 I was at a security training session with a member of the local bomb squad. He was teaching us how to recognize suspicious packages. When he brought out the lumpy manilla envelope with the wires hanging out he said, “This is what we call an FBI clue.”
Even still, the FBI apparently thinks that there may be something in the envelope besides a bomb. Like some candy, maybe.
The FBI’s decision to suspend formal contacts was not intended to reflect a wholesale judgment of the organization and its entire membership. Nevertheless, until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.” [emphasis added]
The degree to which overarching government inserts itself into our lives is sometimes best measured by the smaller wounds. Case in point: Your yard sale is illegal.
The Arab word for a phony truce is hudna. And the West keeps falling for it. Charles Krauthammer doesn’t.
The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they’re offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except. The offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide — Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.
There is a phrase for such a peace: the peace of the grave.
Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.
Michael Ledeen has a good definition of peace:
Wars end when one side wins and the other loses. The winner imposes terms on the loser, and those terms are called ‘peace.’
This is a sickeningly shameful performance by Fox News (which has apparently just come completely off the rails lately) wherein some idiot reporter who obviously has no idea what he’s talking about (which describes nearly all reporters) interviewing a smug liar. Casey Luskin is lying through his teeth here, and he knows it. Let’s see if we can count the lies.
Back? OK. I’m not going to count the idiotic things the reporter said. Let’s just concentrate on the demonstrable falsehoods uttered by Luskin.
“textbooks…censor the science that challenges Darwin”. FALSE. It is not censorship when you don’t print crackpot theories. It is not censorship when textbooks don’t print the phlogiston theory. That’s because there is no evidence to support it, and all available evidence points a different direction. Also, IDiots like Luskin try to hang the word “Darwinism” around evolution as if it were just another philosophy. In fact, there is no such thing as Darwinism except in the minds of creationists. There is only science, and there is so much evidence for evolution now that even if you discount everything Darwin ever wrote it would still have to be considered a fact.
“this is not about teaching creationism”. FALSE. So-called Intelligent Design is nothing more than creationism in drag. This has been demonstrated multiple times, including in court, and with the Discovery Institute’s very own documents.
“…evidence that challenges evolution.” FALSE. There isn’t any. And it’s not because scientists are hegemonic lemmings. Scientists go where the data lead. The problem is that now there is so much fossil and genetic evidence that it is completely overwhelming. Absolutely everything in modern biology depends on common ancestry, or evolution. When all of the evidence supports a hypothesis and none of it contradicts, it is called a theory. That means you can make predictions with it and treat it as a fact. If the DI has any evidence contradicting evolution they should publish it.
Haekel’s Embryos in modern textbooks. FALSE. One of the few things he said that was true is that those illustrations were debunked decades ago. That would be why they aren’t in any modern textbooks. And the fact that they are false in no way falsifies the theory of evolution. This is just more fallacious thinking on the part of the IDiots. The mountains of evidence for common ancestry are in our DNA, not any old drawings. He’s shooting squid’s ink here.
Darwin’s Tree of Life is full of holes, therefore evolution is wrong. FALSE. More selective quotations from the IDiots. It’s true that some scientists are questioning Darwin’s simple, branching tree. But, as I’ve pointed out before, evolution is not Darwin. Instead of a tree, life may be more of a web due to “horizontal gene transfer” or, simply put, interbreeding.
Other cases of HGT in multicellular organisms are coming in thick and fast. HGT has been documented in insects, fish and plants, and a few years ago a piece of snake DNA was found in cows. The most likely agents of this genetic shuffling are viruses, which constantly cut and paste DNA from one genome into another, often across great taxonomic distances. In fact, by some reckonings, 40 to 50 per cent of the human genome consists of DNA imported horizontally by viruses, some of which has taken on vital biological functions.
This in no way nullifies Darwin’s insight about natural selection and descent with modification:
…the tree concept could become biology’s equivalent of Newtonian mechanics: revolutionary and hugely successful in its time, but ultimately too simplistic to deal with the messy real world.
“We don’t support the teaching of creationism”. FALSE. (See above)
“The best science shows that there’s a scientific controversy over this.” FALSE There is absolutely no scientific controversy. Evolution is the only theory there is for speciation. There are no competing theories.
A minimum of seven falshoods in three minutes. Fox should be absolutely ashamed of this. It’s yet another data point to support my contention that no TV “news” program should be trusted about anything, ever.
Update:
Apparently this “Trouble with Textbooks” feature is an ongoing piece shilling for a book of the same name. If you got past the faux religion in part one, you’ll love part 2, which turns this book into an important-sounding “study”. Now, I’m sure that most textbooks are indeed politically correct, meaning in part that they have to be hostile to anything Judeo-Christian and friendly to Islam. But the relentless religious nature of these features on Fox really puts the phony “science” in this one into context.
I’ve been following the story of the Flores “Hobbits” for a while. Some of this is new, though. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
So unless the Flores hobbits became more primitive over time — a more-than-unlikely scenario — they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.
For Jungers and colleagues, this suggests “that the ancestor of H. floresiensis was not Homo erectus but instead some other, more primitive, hominin whose dispersal into southeast Asia is still undocumented,” the researchers conclude.
Companion studies, published online in the Journal of Human Evolution, bolster this theory by looking at other parts of the anatomy, and conjecture that these more ancient forebear may be the still poorly understood Homo habilis.
Either way, their status as a separate species would be confirmed.
As Charles points out over at LGF this could cause some discomfort amongst creationists. And do watch the video. In spite of some cheesy parts, there are some good interviews and it does a decent job of painting a picture.
While the odds are against it, just how cool would it be to find these guys still alive?
The Montana State Legislature recently passed legislation, which was signed into law by the Democratic Govenor Brian Schweitzer, which exempts citizens of Montana from federal background check requirements if a gun was made in Montana, sold to a resident of Montana, and intended to remain within Montana.
The idea behind this is that if the gun remains within the state then the commerce clause of the U.S. constitution does not apply and the Federal Government would not be allowed to regulate the sale or distribution of these firearms. This is an interesting concept, and is sure to generate a fight. This one could get really ugly, really fast.
What a beautiful idea. Who knew that legislators could actually think?
By promoting the dangerous lunatic Jenny McCarthy and, by extension, her anti-vaccine agenda Oprah is putting children in mortal danger. Jonathan Adler asks if Winfrey has no shame. That’s a strange question to ask about someone who puts herself on the cover of her own magazine every month.
McCarthy’s quite dingy and can’t spell to save her life — “grimmess” for “grimace” in this blog post — so maybe people will stop taking her anti-vaccine ravings all that seriously and the Oprah-enhanced part of her career will be short-lived. For our children’s sake, I hope so.
I’m not so hopeful. Life-saving vaccination is under attack from many fronts.
Parental doubts about the safety of childhood vaccinations are leading to outbreaks of largely eradicated diseases like measles and whooping cough, doctors warned in a new report.
A U.S. measles outbreak last year — almost exclusively among unvaccinated people — has sparked concern about places where many parents opt out of having their children vaccinated.
Convincing people not to vaccinate their kids is the hight of irresponsibility. Anybody not vaccinating their kids should be arrested for child endangerment. In fact, they should also be arrested for assault, because their malfeasance affects all of the rest of us. If someone walked into a mall and started randomly throwing bricks at people they’d be cuffed and hauled away. How is this any different, other than disease is slower than bricks?
Construction on Pixar’s Phase Two building has reached the pile-driving stage. We’re on loose soil that used to be part of the Bay, so over five hundred giant concrete columns will be driven into the ground. Some are annoyed by the sound.
It’s trying to keep track of the Justice Departments position on “torture”. Andy McCarthy takes one for the team:
As K-Lo notes, I have an article (posted on the homepage this afternoon) which recounts how the Obama administration is urging the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to adopt the same interpretation of federal torture law that it is investigating former Bush administration lawyers for developing. (And why shouldn’t AG Eric Holder rely on the memo written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo in 2002? After all, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals already adopted it as the law of the United States in a ruling last year — as I also recount in the article).
But now there’s more. As Jan Crawford Greenburg reports at her ABC News blog, Legalities, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility — by playing partisan politics — has blown the critical filing deadline for referring Prof. Yoo for professional sanctions. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good thing — as I’ve been arguing, there is no legal or ethical basis to pursue this cockamamie investigation. But this is an episode that should be studied given all the blather about how it was Republicans who politicized the Justice Department.
Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.
Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.
That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.
The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.
I’ll update and bump this post if I find anything that changes my mind, but I’m inclined to agree with the RLCC that the best course is to vote no on everything.
The sample ballot for the special election showed up the other day, and some of them “sound good” in the brief description, but I’m easily convinced that they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Update:
Funny how the commercials from the Howard Jarvis group used exactly that metaphor. As is often the case, all you need do is listen to who it is sponsoring the ad to know how to vote. The pro side is the teachers union. The con side is Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. And there’s nothing in the voter info pamphlet to convince me otherwise, so it’s final: Vote no on all of it.
One More Update, and bumped:
Tom McClintock has posted his recommendations, wherein he makes a tepid case for voting yes on 1D and 1E. I, frankly, don’t see it. But look at his arguments.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has posted a thoughtful letter with which I largely agree. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
My fellow Republicans:
As our party is going though a much-needed period of introspection, please consider that there was a time when this party stood for the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights. We still honor those principles; but those who now govern have no concern for or even understanding of such matters.
While the other party has been winning elections and undermining everything we have traditionally valued, what issues dominate our political discourse? Our party has been talking about sex and religion.
When we say “sex,” we mean topics like abstinence, promiscuity, homosexuality, pre-marital relations, contraception, sodomy, nudity, pornography, masturbation, same-sex marriage, sex education, abortion, and morning-after pills. Does that list sound familiar? It should, because those are the issues that too often dominate your campaigns.
Except for late-term abortion, where the other party has an extreme position that could be exploited (except that it’s lost in a sea of other sex-related issues), there is absolutely no reason to discuss such matters as part of our party’s policies. The Constitution doesn’t give the federal government any authority over those issues. If they need to be addressed, it should be done only at the state level.
When we speak of religion, we mostly mean the current movement to insert religious doctrines into public school science classes, especially creationism and its love-child, intelligent design. It seems to us that this is a latter-day substitute for prayer in public schools, which is essentially a dead issue these days, but still a hot-button item. There are other religious issues, like objections to certain areas of biological research.
I think, parenthetically, that the case can be made that same-sex marriage is not a “sex” issue. But her larger point is very well taken. If the Republicans’ lunatic fringe creationist, bible-thumpers take over the party will be marginalized. It’s time to focus on what the real core values of conservatism are: “the Constitution, the rule of law, national defense, free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, balanced budgets, and individual rights.”
I suspect that those who like their so-called social conservative issues would be more comfortable in a country governed by those principles than the country we’re heading for.
Update:
Here’s a prime example of what I’m talking about. Note how when Ol’ Tingle Leg asks Pence a direct question about evolution, he squirms and evades and absolutely refuses to answer the question. Now he may be smart and honest enough to recognize evolution as the fact that it is, but he’s obviously pandering to the lunatic fringe of his party. This kind of embarassing performance is no way to govern, and no way to win elections.
NB: Matthews in no way “destroys” Pence. Pence does that to himself.
The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he said. “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”
David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.
In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”
Update:
Well, the New Yorker’s fact-checking continues to be first rate. Turns out that, while parts of the article have merit the basketball part is pretty weak. I’ll bow out of that debate; I have no dog in that hunt. I don’t watch, much less play, basketball.
