ishkabible: September 2005 Archives

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September 30, 2005

September 29, 2005

Roberts Confirmed

John Roberts was confirmed today by a 78-22 vote in the Senate as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Posted at 03:04 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Politics

September 27, 2005

Journalists aren't numerate? Who knew....

Five-year-olds can use their intuitive math abilities to solve problems, a new study finds. Reader Nels Nelson points out the news story describes math as "torture" and tedious. Well, people who find math easy generally don't become journalists.

"Math, pre-torture," joannejacobs.com, September 26, 2005

In the story cited, here's what the reporter wrote:

In the United States, a child's first encounter with math is often in elementary school, and for some, perfecting the ability to add and subtract, multiply and divide will be a long and torturous process.

Thank goodness the reporter who wrote that isn't writing for a "scientific" periodical or web site or anything ... whoops ...

"Math Made Easy: Study Reveals 5-year-olds' Innate Ability," by Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer, LiveScience.com, September 15, 2005

Posted at 06:13 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance

Who the hell does he think he is not watching us?

Just because the president doesn't watch you on television, it doesn't mean he's not doing his job. You know, Franklin Roosevelt wasn't hired to listen to radio accounts of D-Day. You're hired to do the job, and the president can do his job without having to listen to Chris Matthews or Andrea Mitchell or Tim Russert, or any of the others.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), to Chris Matthews on Hardball, transcript, radio blogger, September 26, 2005, "Just because the president doesn't watch you on television, it doesn't mean he's not doing his job." (with links to video clips)

Posted at 06:00 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Stupidity

September 25, 2005

"Walts" - new unit of measurement from Stay Free!

Stay Free! proposes a new unit of measurement ... the Walt ... "the Walt Scale of Crass Commercialization." .. we'll just call it Walts, as in "Disney World is 100 Walts, Isle Royale National Park is 0 Walts" ...

Posted at 06:21 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Humor

Imagine that Jesus had raised armies, raided caravans, beheaded hostages ....

Imagine that Jesus had raised armies, raided caravans, beheaded hostages, ordered the murders of poets whose verses displeased him, and engaged in what we would today term statutory rape. Christianity would be a far different religion than the one that has come down to us, and the Imitation of Christ would be a far different enterprise. One dares even to say that, under this imaginary scenario, Osama bin Laden would be more Christlike than Mother Theresa.
If you change the name Christ to Mohammed, however, the scenario is no longer imaginary. Which is why we find it so distburbing that the Council on American Islamic Relations has successfully intimidated National Review's book service into removing The Life and Religion of Mohammed from its inventory. (The book now available at the Human Events book service.)

CAIR was angered by the ad's assertions that Mohammed's llife was "marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries...."

"The Life of Mohammed," by The Republican Party Reptile, September 4, 2005

Posted at 05:56 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism

"From Torah to Qassam"

The Politburo Diktat has a post about the "People of the Rocket" converting a synagogue to a weapons museum ... the follow up quote from lgf is spot on:

Newsweek prints a false rumor that a Koran was dunked in a toilet, and the entire planet goes nuts. Hamas announces that they’re going to turn a Jewish house of worship into a memorial to mass murder … and the silence is absolutely deafening.

Posted at 05:43 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism

"A Day Among the Moonbats"

Michelle Malkin has a funny post ... "A Day Among the Moonbats" ...

I spent the afternoon at Sheehanapalooza in D.C. under overcast skies, in a haze of hemp-scented paranoia, steeped with fetid Bush hatred. Am uploading a bunch of photos of moonbats in action at my Flickr site.

Ai yi yi yi yi ....

see Global Cop From D.C. for many photos .. my favorite is this one: "'George Bush Killed my sons' ~~Cindy Sheehan~~ Saddam Hussein"

OxBlog tells us what A.N.S.W.E.R. stands for

for more, see ... protein wisdom "Anatomy of an anti-war puff piece" ... gateway pundit "Waiting on Ramsey Clark!" ... Davids Medienkritik "Just Back from the DC Demonstrations" (with photos) ... Instapundit ... Daily Kos "Do's and Dont's for Anti-War Rally This Saturday" ... RenaRF "My Photo Journal of the DC March" (love this caption: "Like all good radical anti-war protestors, we started our day at Starbucks. I had coffee and a cinnamon scone - armed for marching.") ... The Bitch Girls "I Went To The Protest Today" ... the anchoress "Rita and DC march both weakened" ("po-dunky picnic is precisely what it looked like to me") ... baldilocks covers LA "Sights and Sounds" ... TopTechWriter has many pics "Anti-War Protest in Washington, DC" ... GayPatriot asks "If Iraq is like Vietnam, how come the rallies keep getting smaller?" ...

Posted at 06:42 AM · Comments (1) · Categories: Ignorance

September 24, 2005

Free Markets at Work

[I]f there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.

"No Time for Kerry's Europhile Delusions," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, October 24, 2004

Posted at 08:19 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America , Free Markets

September 23, 2005

Art and Identity

Anthony Daniels reviews two exhibitions in London at the Tate Modern: "Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity," May 26-September 18, 2005, and "Frida Kahlo," June 9-October 9, 2005.

These are a few extracts from Mr. Daniels' review.

[S]oul and character make us uneasy nowadays; it is personality that interests us: particularly our own, of course.

Writing about Frida Kahlo:

No advertising man could have given her a better biographical profile for eliciting a favorable response at the present time. She had polio at the age of six and subsequently walked with a limp; she was severely injured in a crash, aged eighteen, and suffered from the results for the rest of her life (she died aged forty-seven), undergoing twenty-two operations in the meantime. She married a man, Diego Rivera, who was flagrantly unfaithful to her and who even had an affair with her sister; she was probably bisexual and had a couple of lesbian affairs; she had two miscarriages, either of which might have killed her, and was in any case ambivalent about having a child; her father was a German who settled in Mexico and her mother was half-Indian, thus conferring on her the original virtue of hybridity (though in fact she didn’t so much live in non-European cultures as visit them or collect their artifacts, and turn them to her artistic use). Her politics were radical; she was anti-American, though in her case America always returned good for evil. She was Stalinist, at a time when all right-thinking people agreed that the killing of millions was the road to utopia, but she also had a fling with Trotsky and towards the end of her life displayed a less than dialectical-materialist attraction to the wisdom of the East, thus later appealing to the New Age, healing-power-of-crystals end of the dissent market. All in all, a pretty good C.V. for the modern age.

there is something unhealthy, of equal intensity, about the disproportionate adulation that Frida Kahlo has received over the last two or three decades. I think that what has happened is that people with no objective right to do so have equated her suffering with their own, and have appropriated her work as a symbolic representation of their own minor dissatisfactions and frustrations, victimhood being the present equivalent of beatitude.
They say, "I too have known a faithless or a worthless man; I too have suffered from persistent headaches, dymenorrhoea, or sciatica; therefore, Frida Kahlo has understood me, and I have understood Frida Kahlo. After all, I have suffered just like her. Moreover, like me, she was a moral person, which is to say that she had all the right attitudes; she was on the side of the oppressed, at least those who were not in the Gulag; she loved indigenes as a matter of principle; and she took part in the holy work of dissolving boundaries, the boundaries between sexes (or rather, genders) and between cultures."(emphasis added)

"Exhibition notes," by Anthony Daniels, The New Criterion, September, 2005

UPDATE: John Fund has this to say about Frida Kahlo

Take the 2001 decision of the U.S. Postal Service to issue a stamp commemorating Frida Kahlo, an artist and ardent Communist revolutionary who lived in Mexico her entire life. The subject of a film starring Salma Hayek, Ms. Kahlo was slavishly devoted to Marxist ideology and her last unfinished work before her death in 1954 was a portrait of Josef Stalin. Compared to Kahlo, Maudelle Shirek is a piker in the annals of obnoxious leftism.

"Reds: No Longer Just Under the Bed," by John Fund, OpinionJournal's Political Diary, October 3, 2005

Posted at 06:06 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories:

Quick quiz

1) From Russell Roberts (no relation):

What proportion of the American labor force earns the minimum wage or less and what is the standard of living of the average American today relative to 100 years ago?

2) If you placed

one penny on the first square of a chess board, two pennies on the second square, four on the third, etc.

how much would you have after doubling the pennies on the 63rd (the next-to-last) square of the chessboard?

3) Are disasters good for the economy?

You can click "Continue reading..." after jotting down your answers ...

1) Less than 3% of the American population earns the minimum wage or less, and "the average American is at least five and maybe 30 times better off than we were in the good old days." That's 500% to 3000% better off ... "Knowledge Deficit," Econoblog, The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2005

2) The power of compounding means you'd end up with $92,000,000 billion ... and that's real money, even in Washington ... it's also why you want to start saving early in your working life ... "Economic Growth," by Paul M. Romer, The Library of Economics and Liberty

3) As Martin Wolk and Bob McTeer explain, those who answer "Yes" are succumbing to Frédéric Bastiat's "fallacy of the broken window."

Posted at 09:59 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Economics

September 21, 2005

"The MF Digital Baxter: rip 25 music CDs at a time"

engadget has a post about "The MF Digital Baxter: rip 25 music CDs at a time" ... rips ... and duplicates ... CDs and DVDs ... from Baxter ...

Posted at 09:28 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Technology

September 20, 2005

"Sorry, the Constitution limits the role of the federal government ...."

And what a lot of spinach there was. Call me a cranky libertarian conservative, but just once I would like to hear a candidate for president answer a question by saying, "Sorry, the Constitution limits the role of the federal government -- the issue you're asking about is one for the states or the private sector, not Washington."
There was no talk of limited government last night [Presidential debates, Oct. 13, 2004]. Instead there was talk of: firehouses not having enough firefighters, a shortage of flu vaccine, the rise in health insurance premiums, how laid-off workers should attend community college, the need for more grade-school math and science, the high price of gasoline and medicine, a minimum wage for unskilled workers, education for parents who don't speak English -- and those are just the ones I managed to scribble down. There was even a mention of ceiling fans from China. Where does the Constitution say that any of these are properly the concern of the federal government?

"One Answer Not Given," by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, Oct. 14, 2004

Posted at 06:17 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America

September 19, 2005

Fatwa ... Burger King lids ... formidable foes ...

protein wisdom ... "We commend the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King has taken."

The fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.

We like this comment ... "All your words/symbols/lives are belong to us!"

my response to Burger King's decision ... goodbye Whopper ... goodbye BK fries ... goodbye BK ... hope appeasing idiots works out for you ...

What's next ... "This ad is CAIR approved" ... hajibs on all women in ads? ... displayed on products? ... instant hajib! ...

and you thought the study of medievalism was only for historians! ... "The medieval age was tyrannized by a demand for spiritual perfectionism, making it hard to accomplish anything practical."

during the Cold War, many suggested dropping JC Penney or Sears catalogs behind the Iron Curtain ... why use bombs on gynephobic wankers ... drop Victoria's Secret catalogs ... they might spontaneously combust ...

and note the hyper sensitivity of these wankers ... compared with the response of a Catholic guy to images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with dung and crucifixes in urine ... kind of makes you wonder how formidable such sensitive types are ...

Posted at 08:57 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ay Caramba! , Gynephobes , Ignorance , Nihilism

Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?

This commentary is by a friend and is reproduced here with his permission.

"Catholic guy: Who's the establishment here?," by Chuck Williams, guest commentary in the St. Paul Legal Ledger, October 19, 1999.

I'm writing this after a long couple weeks for a Catholic guy. First I heard from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and then I heard from Gov. Jesse Ventura.
Maybe it's just fatigue, but in the end, I can't get too worked up about Jesse. I'm a Catholic guy, and my governor thinks I'm a dolt: so what? Every politician thinks I'm a dolt. I'd rather have a governor who bellows that religion is for fools than a slippery president who parades around with a Bible. Besides, I'm used to the fact that if you ask Jesse a question, you're likely to get an answer, however wrongheaded.

That's in stark contrast to the board at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which hasn't come anywhere close to answering any of the questions that interest me about their funding fight with Mayor Giuliani.

I've always understood that art must be challenging and that the First Amendment protects it, so the more the board pontificates about that, the more I just sagely nod my head. But meanwhile, what I really want to know are other things. Things like, whatis it about pee and dung that gets the New York art crowd in such a happy tizzy? And why do they only pee and dung on things Catholic?

The first question probably has a cool avant-garde answer. I just don't know what it is.

Maybe that's because I'm a parent. I can't understand how any parent could see anything sensational in pee and dung. Your youngest kids are always dropping toys and other weird stuff in the toilet just to see what it looks like. And there's a friend who tells the story of walking into her kid's bedroom and finding he'd painted the wall with his own excrement. When she walked in on him, he was just beaming, pleased as punch. On the other hand, he was eight months old, or something like that. So even though I'm familiar with the concept of putting things in pee and getting artistic with dung, I still don't know what the deal is when it's a bunch of grownups who are getting off on it.

But even if I was smart enough to grasp the avant-gardishness of all this pee and dung, that still wouldn't answer my second question. I'd still be wondering how come it's always got to be Catholic stuff that's put in the pee and under the dung. My friend's kid used excrement as his medium and a wall as his canvas, and I can respect that. It makes some kind of sense in a pre-toddler kind of way. But if that's the fun spirit, you'd think the artistic community could at least do an occasional Jewish sculpture in dung, or place some non-Catholic stuff, like a Koran or something like that, in one of their big old bottles of pee. But no. It's always got to be Catholic stuff.

So I have to wonder. The artist and the board surely know that, since it's always Catholic stuff that's getting peed and dunged on, after a while some Catholics are likely to get the idea that all this Pissing on Christ and Dunging on the Holy Virgin is intended to insult their religion.

Look, I agree that everyone has a First Amendment right to Piss on Christ and Dung on the Holy Virgin to their hearts' content.

All I'm saying is that it does raise the question of why. Well, it does to some of us Catholics, anyway. And it's not a particularly shallow question, I don't think. I mean, if you know that what you're doing will insult somebody and you go ahead and do it anyway, it seems to me you'd expect that one or two of those somebodies might eventually demand an explanation.

But as far as I can tell, the museum's answer to that and every other reasonable question has been, "Shut up."

And then, even if the "why" is answered, even if the museum board or some brainy critic can explain how the artist has an avant-garde reason for insulting my religion (I'm not saying he doesn't), and even if he has a solid First Amendment right to insultmy religion (and I'm saying he does), why must the board's supporters act shocked and appalled when I then say well, OK, but I still don't think you should use the government to force Catholics to pay the board to insult us. And it is brute force we're talking about here: if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.

The appropriate answer to would-be censors is to say, "if you don't like it, don't look at it." Or just don't read it, or just don't listen to it. The reason that retort doesn't work here is that the Catholic guy isn't complaining that anybody's forcing Catholics to look at Dung on the Virgin. He's complaining that Catholics are being forced to pay for it. He's saying, go ahead and Dung on the Virgin anywhere you like. Just do it on your own dime, or on your fellow Catholic-bashers' dime. Just don't do it on the taxpayers' dime.

But to the wine and cheese crowd on the museum board, them are fighting words. OK, I admit I don't understand that reaction. But I'd still just shrug my shoulders if the board didn't go on to add farce to insult by assuming the ridiculous pose of a courageous little community being set upon by the heavy hand of the establishment.

That's just too silly to go unremarked. Because it's as clear as a jar of pee that it's the Catholic guy who's being stomped and insulted here � and by people who make more money in a day than he does in a week. The museum board members are wealthy, powerful, socially and politically connected, and like lots of this country, and certainly much of the media, not too fond of the Catholic Church. They're the establishment, if anyone is, not the Catholic Church, with whatever pitiful, tenuous hold it may still have on 1999 American culture.

I mean, like another friend of mine once said, if you want to be counterculture, be a Catholic.

So here's what I'm saying. Picture the wine and cheese crowd gathering at some Brooklyn Museum of Art benefit. Then quick cut to somebody, anybody, in 1999 New York, who still gets up early to go to church, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Maryand pray. Which depicts a smug and intolerant establishment?

Well, if you picked the devout Catholic on his knees before the Virgin, you're not alone. But I still don't get it.

Posted at 08:42 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism

eBay - Ultimate Hippie Vacation

Only one more day to bid on the Ultimate Hippie Vacation ...

Posted at 12:02 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Humor

September 18, 2005

Biloxi, Mississippi

Dr. Goodheart is a clinical cardiologist blogging this week from Biloxi, Mississippi ... lots of pics ...

Posted at 07:13 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Katrina Jambalaya

Instant hajib!

Jihad Watch has an interesting post about the use of PhotoShop to ... add head coverings to women in photographs ... "Stalinism at CAIR: photo doctored for Islamic correctness" ... instant hajib! ...

Posted at 07:06 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Gynephobes , Stupidity

No fat in the budget?

Not according to Cato:

At a briefing on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declared an "ongoing victory" against bloated federal spending. Congress passed $62 billion of spending for Hurricane Katrina relief that will push the deficit back up to the $400 billion range. When asked whether Katrina relief should be offset with budget savings elsewhere, DeLay said "bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it."

Cato Institute scholars Steve Slivinski and Chris Edwards have the offsets that the majority leader is looking for. They have compiled $62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term.

The attached table (which is also pasted below) lists the cuts and the rationale for each cut. The cuts are targeted at business subsidies, welfare for the well-to-do such as farm subsidies, and activities that should be funded by states and the private sector. The cuts would not affect programs for the poor, and thus could get support from reform-minded Democrats. Many of the cuts were proposed, but not realized, by House Republicans in the 1990s.

"Budget Disaster Looming," Cato News Release, September 14, 2005

Also see "Congress Faces Pressure to Surrender Pork for Flood Relief," by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., Heritage, September 15, 2005 ... and here's a list of Texas earmarks to start with ...

Posted at 06:55 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Politics

September 17, 2005

"Burning Synagogues"

From Evan Coyne Maloney:

Desecration of religious symbols is acceptable--and sometimes even funded by the government!--as long as certain groups don't get offended.

Burning Synagogues, September 13, 2005

Posted at 10:03 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism

What "Little House on the Prairie" can teach us about Structural Unemployment

Asymmetrical Information has a succinct post about the differences between "structural unemployment" and "cyclical unemployment" ...

What that means is that when the industrial composition of our economy changes, because machines can do some jobs better than people (word processors instead of secretaries), because other countries can do some things better than we can (Chinese-manufactured electronics), or simply because some markets got overcrowded (telecoms and web retailers), it takes a lot longer for employment to adjust than it used to, because workers' skills are very specific to their old industries or jobs. This sort of unemployment is known as "structural unemployment", as opposed to "cyclical unemployment", which happens when companies lay off workers they expect to rehire in the future as a result of temporary downturns in demand.

"Structural Unemployment," by Jane Galt, Asymmetrical Information, September 16, 2005

And reading through the comments, you can see the many different jobs people have held ...

Jobs I've held since the age of 14: dishwasher, pizza maker, cashier, grocery store bag boy and stocker, construction laborer, gas station attendant, micro-business owner (lawn mowing, snow shoveling), janitor, freelance legal researcher, taxi owner and driver, law clerk, attorney, CLE administrator, editor (print and electronic), managing editor, new product developer, trainer, marketer, manager, consultant, publisher ... and the occupations I gave some thought to and took some preliminary steps towards include financial planner, college professor, and carpenter.

With three children, I'm coming to believe that the only thing college is good for is (increasingly bad) signaling that the holder of a degree is somewhat literate (not numerate, however), and can probably communicate in spoken, although not necessarily written, form.

When we hire people, we always ask candidates what kind of customer service jobs they have held. It is amazing to me how many candidates think that a couple of years during their teens or twenties of learning to deal with people by being a waiter/waitress, hostess, cashier, retail store clerk, laborer, telemarketer, etc., are not relevant to their abilities. Because we see that the folks who have held unskilled labor type entry level jobs dealing with people are often more tolerant, better listeners, not so arrogant, more easily trainable, and become better colleagues.

Posted at 09:02 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Economics

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Why did the chicken cross the road?

These are collected from various sources. Many of these are credited to David Kissinger, at Harpercollins

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Humphrey Bogart: Of all the roads in the world, she had to cross mine....

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Jerry Seinfeld: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway?

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronictitiously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential. (also: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.)

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees. (also: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.)

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Sappho: Due to the loveliness of the hen on the other side, more fair than all of Hellas' fine armies.

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Stephen Jay Gould: It is possible that there is a sociobiological explanation for it, but we have been deluged in recent years with sociobiological stories despite the fact that we have little direct evidence about the genetics of behavior, and we do not know how to obtain it for the specific behaviors that figure most prominently in sociobiological speculation.

Joseph Stalin: I don't care. Catch it. Crack its eggs to make my omelette.

Captain James T. Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of pleghm in its pancreas.

Andersen Consultant: Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM) Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Andersen consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park-like setting enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful.

Kindergarten Teacher: To get to the other side.

Why did the elephant cross the road? Because the chicken had a day off.

UPDATE

Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
Mathematician: To get to the other ... er, um ...

Thanks Ploum's

Posted at 08:44 AM · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: jokes

September 16, 2005

Why did the New Orleans levees fail? - Update

We posted earlier this week asking why the New Orleans levees failed ... Solomon's House has a LOT more about those failures at "On the Levees of New Orleans" ... just keep scrolling ...

Posted at 12:15 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Katrina Jambalaya

September 15, 2005

Garrison Keillor sues blog ...

Garrison Keillor, the host of A Prarie Home Companion ... which IMHO ceased being funny many years ago ... has sued a blog ...

"Trial Of The Century: Keillor V. MNspeak.com," MNspeak.com, September 14, 2005

A Prairie Homeboy Companion

On a Tuesday night two weeks ago, the letter showed up in the mail. It is included below, so you can see for yourself the kind of verbal mastery it takes to make a legal document sound like Keillor's forlorn nostalgic prose.
Let's quickly review the situation: Garrison Keillor -- a liberal comedian! -- is threatening to sue MNspeak -- some blog! -- that uses a t-shirt to poke fun of his mega-gigantic media empire. You'd think we shot Guy Noir or something.

Man, this guy is getting old.

Ay caramba!

We had to craete a new category, Stupidity, for this post.

Posted at 05:58 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ay Caramba! , Stupidity

September 14, 2005

Eating the seed corn ...

From The Belmont Club, we learn that "greenhouses that were left behind by withdrawing Israelis for use by impoverished Palestinians" in Gaza were looted ... quotes an article from Khaleej Times Online: "The greenhouses provide jobs for 3,500 Palestinians and had been a lucrative market for fresh produces for Jewish settlers."

Ai yi yi yi yi ...

As one of the commenters said,

They build nothing and destroy whatever windfalls come their way; it takes talent to get funded billions and still be worse off than the year before.

But of course, it is the Israelis' fault that the greenhouses were looted, that the synagogues left in Gaza were burned, etc., etc., etc.

The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of cynically leaving the synagogues standing to make Palestinians look bad for demolishing them.

"Gaza looters settle old scores," by Stephen Farrell and Ian MacKinnon, The (London) Times, September 13, 2005

Posted at 06:10 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism

September 13, 2005

Why did the New Orleans levees fail?

Rich Lowery got an email that suggest that the levees that failed are the newer ones ...

Rich, the article from this morning's New Orleans Times-Picayune is what I have been hearing since this weekend. Namely, the amount of funding for the flood control efforts (high or low) is not the issue here, but that newer structures built since 1995 were flawed. The 17th Street Canal sections were completed only within the last 18 months. The main breaches appear to all be from SELA [Southeastern Louisiana Flood Control Project] or post 1995 construction efforts that are concrete rather than earthen -- like the Mississippi River levees…

The NOLA article, "Mystery surrounds floodwall breaches," by John McQuaid, September 13, 2005, includes this:

The floodwalls lining New Orleans canals consist of concrete sections attached to steel sheet pile drilled deep into the earth, fortified by a concrete and earthen base. The sections are joined with a flexible, waterproof substance.

Floodwalls were breached in the 17th Street Canal, at two places in the London Avenue Canal, and at two places in the Industrial Canal, Suhayda said. Naomi said last week that one of the Industrial Canal breaches likely was caused by a loose barge that broke through it.

Suhayda said that his inspection of the debris from the 17th Street Canal breach suggests the wall simply gave way. "It looks to have been laterally pushed, not scoured in back with dirt being removed in pieces," he said. "You can see levee material, some distance pushed inside the floodwall area, like a bulldozer pushed it."

He suggested that because the walls failed in a few spots, the flaw may not be in the design but in the construction or materials…

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that anyone would even suggest that there may have been flaws in the construction of or materials used in the levees ... it is starting to sound like Turkey ...

Posted at 01:16 PM · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Katrina Jambalaya

"Ill wind may not blow to the Whitehouse"

Slugger O'Toole reposts an editorial by Newton Emerson from the Irish Times (September 8, 2005) ...

As the full horror of Hurricane Katrina sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if this is the end of George Bush's presidency. The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that every copy of the US Constitution was destroyed in the storm. Otherwise President Bush will remain in office until noon on January 20th, 2009, as required by the 20th Amendment, after which he is barred from seeking a third term anyway under the 22nd Amendment.
As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term will not still be damaged in some terribly satisfying way.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term consists of repealing the 22nd Amendment. Otherwise, with a clear Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, he can carry on doing pretty much whatever he likes.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the Republican Party itself will now suffer a setback at the congressional mid-term elections next November.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that people outside the disaster zone punish their local representatives for events elsewhere a year previously, both beyond their control and outside their remit, while people inside the disaster zone reward their local representatives for an ongoing calamity they were supposed to prevent. Otherwise, the Democratic Party will suffer a setback at the next congressional election.

read the whole thing ...

Posted at 01:06 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Katrina Jambalaya

Katrina Jambalya

An interesting "Katrina Jambalaya" of narcissism, fakery, ignorance, adolescent and criminal behavior, incompetence, lots-o-money, grandstanding, laziness, finger-pointing, and stupidity is being served up post-Katrina. But this jambalaya isn't just a Creole dish ...

Austin Bay, in "Katrina: Is it all about Cooper?" talks about fakery and moral airs on TV ...

24/7 tv craves drama and emotion — especially easily identified emotions, like anger, rage, fear. Think Greek dramatic masks, the cork or linen masks Greek actors wore in the ampitheater so the audience could quickly identify the character and the emotion.

Did you know slavery has returned to the South? ... or at least bloviation is still there ... baldilocks says this clown, er, slave, Fisks himself:

Man: What I would like to happen? I would like for them to give us at least $20,000 apiece so we can, you know, get our life together. You know, we didn't ask to come on that bus, slave. It's like a slave ship. It's just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. They separated us from our family. They did it--you know, just modern-day slavery, you know? Just give us what the f--- we deserve.

You know, like, you know ... you know?

James Taranto (Best of the Web, September 12, 2005) said about this particular occupant of the slave ship: "Looks just like a slave ship, doesn't it? Well, except that on a slave ship, he probably wouldn't have his arm around a white woman."

Taranto is gonna catch hell for that ...

baldilocks later quotes from an email she received:

It was heart breaking to hear their stories on the local TV. One man needed only one more years work to retire, one was a chemical factory worker (hired instantly by a local factory), one worked for the city, I believe one was a merchant, you get the idea. This is the opposite of what the MSM is telling. These are not poor, black, poverty stricken, non working, welfare expecting people. These are black Americans who consider themselves working middle class and who by natural disaster have lost all they have spent their lives working for. They arrived at 1am Sunday morning and some went to work this week. One man cried on camera in shame of not being able to take care of his family and having to accept charity. He also cried when he showed three handwritten pages of phone numbers and job offers he had received in a couple of days.

The Evacuees, September 13, 2005

how come most of the stories of New Orleans refugees we're hearing about seem to be about either the very well-off, or the poor, or the slaves ... are there any able-bodied middle class folks who lost everything? ... just wondering ...

George Will comments ("Post-Katrina Liberalism," Townhall, September 13, 2005) on how race-baiters are using the occasion to not let facts get in the way of grandstanding:

America's always fast-flowing river of race-obsessing has overflowed its banks, and last Sunday on "This Week" Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois' freshman Democrat, applied to the expression of old banalities a fluency that would be beguiling were it without content. Unfortunately, it included the requisite lament about the president's inadequate "empathy" and an amazing criticism of the government's "historic indifference" and its "passive indifference" that "is as bad as active malice." The senator, 44, is just 30 months older than the "war on poverty" that President Johnson declared in January 1964. Since then the indifference that is as bad as active malice has been expressed in more than $6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending, strictly defined.

The senator is called a "new kind of Democrat," which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash -- much of it spent through liberalism's "caring professions" -- to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.
. . .
Liberalism's post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious -- if an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately minorities -- stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the victims were women with children but not husbands. Released during the post-Katrina debacle, scant attention was paid to the National Center for Health Statistics' pertinent report that in 2003, 34.6 percent of all American births were to unmarried women. The percentage among African-American women was 68.2.

Given that most African-Americans are middle class and almost half live outside central cities, and that 76 percent of all births to Louisiana African-Americans were to unmarried women, it is a safe surmise that more than 80 percent of African-American births in inner-city New Orleans -- as in some other inner cities -- were to women without husbands. That translates into a large and constantly renewed cohort of lightly parented adolescent males, and that translates into chaos, in neighborhoods and schools, come rain or come shine.

George, George, George ... the problem is that we had only "$6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending." ... we needed to spend at least twice as much ... or, according to the slave above, give every one on the "slave ship" $20,000 ... then everything would be fine ... there would be no more poverty ... just imagine ...

But, as Asymmetrical Information points out, "The poor really are different," September 9, 2005:

If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:
1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children
4) Work full time

. . .
That leaves us in a rather awkward place, because while I don't agree with conservatives that the poor are somehow worse people than we are, I also don't agree with liberals that money is the answer. Money buys material goods, which are not really the biggest problem that most poor people in America have. And I don't know how you go about providing the things they're missing: the robust social networks, the educational and occupational opportunity, the ability to construct a long-term life instead of one that is lived day-to-day. I think that we should remove the barriers, like poor schools, that block achievement from without, but I don't know what to do about the equally powerful barriers that block it from within.

But I also don't think that the answer is to use those barriers as an excuse to wash our hands of the matter.

Captain's Quarters in "Will New Orleans Death Toll Escalate?" September 13, 2005, observes:

That prediction [of 10,000 dead in New Orleans] by Mayor Ray Nagin may yet still come to pass as more of the city emerges from the floodwaters. At this point, though, it will provide yet another example of the hysteria that finds its home with the unprepared and the passive, those who want others to do the work that should have already been done by themselves. The figure got a lot of press play because of its spectacular nature and because of the official status of the man proclaiming it.

The Exempt Media should ask themselves whether the estimate of 10,000 casualties had any other basis in fact. If so, they need to explain what else prompted them to report that as a reliable range. If not, then they need to rethink using reports from overwhelmed local politicians who used such estimates to shove attention off of their own performances.

And PowerLine points out in "Business Week Publishes Democratic Party Hit-Piece As News, Forgets to Warn Readers" that the adminstration's approach to telecom de-regulation is probably not responsible for the collapse of communication after Katrina:

Today's example of MSM bias: this Business Week article by Leo Hindery, Jr., titled "Tragedy and Telecom." The article is subtitled, "How the Bush Administration's antiregulation stance contributed to the post-Katrina communications collapse -- and what should be done now." Mr. Hindery's indictment of the Bush administration is the latest effort to blame the President for just about everything associated with Hurricane Katrina. Its reasoning is so fragmentary, however, that Hindery never does explain why "the Bush administration's antiregulation stance" had anything to do with the hurricane or its aftermath.

Ben Stein, however, in "Get Off His Back," September 2, 2005, has a list of 12 things George Bush did not do:

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
. . .
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
. . .
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

and in an update asks some questions, including

What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?
. . .
Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?

The last ingredients for Katrina Jambalaya are an incompetent mayor and members of his police department who go "shopping" at a Wal-Mart with other looters ...

There's even a song to go with Katrina Jumbalaya ... The Right Place has put together "New Orleans Rhapsody"

Making a bigger batch of a recipe that wasn't nutritious in the past ... is still a recipe for more of the same ... and adding a few ingredients and renaming the recipe "Katrina Jambalaya" won't make this putrid dish any better ... or more effective ...

Posted at 09:36 AM · Categories: Ignorance , Katrina Jambalaya , Politics

September 12, 2005

The Telecrapper 2000

engadget has a great post on the Telecrapper 2000, which "identifies incoming telemarketer calls and using caller ID (or more specifically, their lack thereof), and is programmed to ensnare the caller in a software-driven conversation in order to keep them on the line as long as possible."

See this flash animation for a "Telecrapper 2000 virtual conversation" ...

Posted at 08:50 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Humor , Technology

September 11, 2005

Photos of Hurricane Katrina damage

Hurricane Katrina caused all kinds of damage in Mississippi.

Pictures from the air of Gulfport and Biloxi areas - from Murdoc Online - look at those bridges ...
CAT Duty - from Lapeer Living - he's an insurance adjuster deployed to Mississippi ... just keep scrolling ...

Webshots Member Photos: Hurricane Katrina August 29, 2005

Posted at 08:10 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories:

September 10, 2005

RCA Cell Docking System

engadget reports on the RCA Cell Docking System ... allows you to use a cordless phone to use your cell phone and your landline /VoIP line ... "now much easier to gobble up those free evening and weekend minutes" ...

Posted at 07:35 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Technology

September 08, 2005

Posting will be light this weekend ...

Soccer season begins this weekend, so posting will be light ...

Posted at 06:32 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories:

September 07, 2005

Inflation calculator

Here's a handy inflation calculator ... from Steven Morgan Friedman ...

Posted at 02:43 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: History

"Step away from that Flood-Damaged Car!"

Good advice from lifehacker ... "Step away from that Flood-Damaged Car!" ... and don't think because you're buying that car in Arizona that it's not a flood-damaged car ... use CarFax to get the history ... is the seller reputable? ... for other things to watch out for, see the resources below ...

Other Resources

"Used cars could hide storm damage: 'Title-washing' is one way crooks pass off flooded or otherwise ruined cars as nearly new," by Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN/Money, July 14, 2005
How to Spot a Flood-Damaged Car - from The Auto Channel

"Don't Get Sunk by a Flood-Damaged Car," KDKA, Pittsburgh

Detecting and Avoiding Flood Damaged Cars - from CarFax

Flood-damaged Vehicles: What to look for when shopping - from Progressive Isurance Company

Posted at 02:23 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Good Advice

This just in! George Bush did not cause hurricane Katrina

Ben Stein has a list of all the things George Bush did not do recently, including

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

...

11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

Posted at 12:10 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America

September 06, 2005

Blog Analytics

Brad Feld has a post on the tools he uses on his blog, Feld Thoughts ... Blog Analytics, August 16, 2005 ... he's since moved to FeedBlitz instead of Bloglet ...

Posted at 08:39 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Technology

"Fill 'er up w/ turkey-guy biodiesel"

Oh, stop complaining about high gasoline prices. Adjusted for inflation it’s still not as costly as it would have been in 27 AD, when the cost of pumping by hand and straining light sweet crude through slave livers would have been ruinous. And it’s still cheaper than it was in 1981, before Ronald Reagan brought the price down by firing the air controllers, who stopped driving to work and thus reduced demand. Or something like that. In any case, it could be worse.
. . .
To sum up: We could drill more, build more domestic refineries, build new nuke plants and slash government taxes on gas. Or we could have federal mandates on fuel economy and carpooling, so you’re forced to sit in a tiny box arguing about the radio with a stranger who applies “Brut” with a hose. Sure, you lose some freedom, but ANWAR remains pristine, and Malibu beach houses don’t have their sunsets spoiled.
The owners will wave thanks as they pass overhead in their private jets.

James Lileks, Screedblog, August 31, 2005

Posted at 08:26 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Humor

September 05, 2005

Price gouging?

If you cap the price (as some people are making noises about), rationing will take the form of queuing: people will have to wait in long lines for gasoline. This sounds just fine to some activists and academics, apparently ones with a lot of time on their hands. The rest of us, who do not think it would be fun to live in the Soviet Union, recognize that, painful as it may be, prices are in general a better way to allocate scarce resources than lines.

"In praise of price gouging," by Jane Galt, Asymmetrical Information, September 1, 2005

With the whole country bemoaning the rise in the average price of gas, a far more economically surprising change has been almost overlooked: The massive rise in the variance of the price of gas. Before the hurricane, the spread between the highest and lowest price of gas in Northern Virginia was about 10 cents. Now a half hour drive to Manassas revealed a four-fold increase in the spread, with prices ranging from $2.99 to $3.39.

"Gas Price Variance Up!" by Bryan Caplan, EconLog, September 5, 2005

Note to politicians of the world: For the last time, if you want supplies to flow to disaster areas, let prices rise!

"Bush's Hate Speech," by Bryan Caplan, EconLog, September 1, 2005

Posted at 10:21 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Economics

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