July 2, 2008
I Remember the Seventies Too
...It's all such a 1970s way of thinking. That's when many gloomy experts told America that the Cold War, inflation, scarcity, and economic malaise would be permanent fixtures in our lives. Americans, they insisted, needed to lower their expectations of what was possible. Life was now more of a zero-sum game. The same meme is being recycled today. Don't believe it.
The whole thing here.
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
July 1, 2008
'America's Jedi Knight'
Loved Jonah Goldberg's column today on the Obamessiah:
... "I am absolutely certain," he proclaimed upon clinching the Democratic nomination, "that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." So wait, America never provided care for the sick or good jobs for the jobless until St. Barack arrived? That doesn't sound like the country most Americans think of when they wave their flags on the Fourth of July.Obama went on to say that he will "remake" the country. Well, what if you don't want it remade? And Michelle Obama — who believes America is "downright mean" and is proud of America for the first time because of her husband's success — insists that Barack will make you "work" for change and that he will "demand that you, too, be different." What if you don't want to work for Obama's change? What if you don't want to be "different"?
Liberals might giggle at what to them sounds like paranoia. But if you aren't already entranced by Obama, Obamania can seem not only vaguely anti-American but also downright otherworldly. Star Wars creator George Lucas recently proclaimed that it's "reasonably obvious" Obama is a Jedi Knight. Mark Morford, a particularly loopy San Francisco Chronicle columnist, says Obama isn't really "one of us." Rather, he's a "Lightworker," the sort of being who can help us find "a new way of being on the planet." Self-help guru Deepak Chopra insists that an Obama victory would bring about "a quantum leap in American consciousness." Even NBC's Chris Matthews has been entranced by Obama's Jedi mind tricks. Obamania, he says, is "bigger than Kennedy. … This is the New Testament."
The whole thing here.
Pigeon hole: Hanson, Goldberg, & Steyn
June 29, 2008
Bah!
So I actually managed to install the new TypePad/MT anti spam plug in. Go me! It's showing up on the plug ins page, but I don't think it's working. I'm getting the same amount of spam as before. And seeing as I disabled the older anti spam plug ins, I'm beginning to think none of them ever actually worked. No wonder I've been drowning in spam. I'm thinking of disabling comments altogether and people can just email me if they have something to say. It's not like we're drowning in traffic around here -- just spam!
Pigeon hole: ARGH!!
June 28, 2008
Schism
Looks like it finally has happened:
Jerusalem -- Just minutes ago, conservative Anglicans announced what they are calling "The Jerusalem Declaration," which states their intention to erect a new "fellowship of confessing Anglicans."From their statement:
[W]e grieve for the spiritual decline in the most economically developed nations, where the forces of militant secularism and pluralism are eating away the fabric of society and churches are compromised and enfeebled in their witness... Sadly, this crisis has torn the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together.
All the details here.
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
June 19, 2008
Best Friends in Iowa
Best Friends is on the move in Iowa, rescuing stranded pets and farm animals.
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
June 18, 2008
How Stupid?
How stupid do the Dems think we are? Yeah, rhetorical question there. Their fave line is 'but if we started drilling now, it would take ten years to get to the oil'. No kidding! And if we'd started drilling ten years ago, we'd have the oil now. By that argument, there's no point in building new roads to relieve traffic congestion. Heck, they won't be finished for five years, right?
GAH!!
Pigeon hole: ARGH!!
May 31, 2008
Those Backwards Irish!
Imagine actually letting their people vote! Where will it all end? Truly shocking. /sarcasm
Irish referendum could scupper EU treaty
Pigeon hole: You Don't Say?
And *Bush* Is The Stupid One?
Lord!
From Obama's visit to Mt. Rushmore:
He did express curiosity about the filming of a chase scene in "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 classic starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint that included a death-defying scramble over Rushmore's presidential faces."How did they get up there in the first place?" he asked ranger Wesley Jensen.
"They didn't. It was a movie set," Jensen told him.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
May 30, 2008
Drill Here, Drill Now
You can sign the petition here.
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
May 29, 2008
Bilbo Baggins = James McAvoy?
That's the rumour at least.
Pigeon hole: Here Be Dragons
More Missing Girls
The bitter irony of sex-selective abortion
Missouri state Treasurer Sarah Steelman recently earned the opprobrium of abortion-rights advocates by calling for a ban on sex-selective abortions. Critics have derided this as an attempt by the Republican gubernatorial candidate to pander to pro-lifers. But a quick glance at international statistics suggests that sex-selective abortion is no dystopian fantasy. It is a chilling reality throughout the world and in our own backyard.
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
May 26, 2008
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
The Mars Photos Are Awesome, But...
why the heck are they in black and white? Is there an actual reason we can't transmit colour photos from the Mars Phoenix Lander? I assumed with a new, higher tech lander, we'd also get colour photos, but instead, they're the same old B&W. Anyone know why? The only colour image I've seen says it was colourized after the fact.
Pigeon hole: Space: Above & Beyond
May 25, 2008
Sadness
I'm just glad my grandparents never lived to see this day.
Religious trends and our religious future
If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims. Perhaps most importantly the government has chosen to allow hard-liners to act as representing all Muslims, and more liberal Muslims have almost completely failed to produce any leadership voices to compete, leading many Britons to wonder if there are indeed many liberal Muslims at all, surely a mistake.
At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty.
While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.
The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.
Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace. There needs to be some fresh thinking in this area where the claims of Christ are sensitively explained. Our church leaders must develop ways of explaining this, as our feature on mission and evangelism this week demonstrates.
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
May 20, 2008
Big Time
How cool is this? Jane's in the NYT!
Pigeon hole: Nifty!
May 19, 2008
You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up!
So Obama thinks the rest of the world gets to have a say on how much I eat and where I set my thermostat. Like I always say, real life is very often a Monty Python skit. What's frightening is that this guy could be President.
I would love to see what him and Bitterchelle spend on groceries and what their utility bills are. I bet they aren't sitting under blankets during the cold Chicago winters, or sweating during the summer without air conditioning.
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
May 18, 2008
Feed
I think I have the feed fixed, thanks to Jay. He sent me some instructions, which I managed to implement without blowing up the blog.
Pigeon hole: Nifty!
May 9, 2008
'Remembrance of Panics Past'
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Pigeon hole: You Don't Say?
Do I Have To?
I see headlines like this: McCain planning climate change tour -- and I ask once again, do I really have to vote for this guy? He sure doesn't make it easy.
Pigeon hole: ARGH!!
May 8, 2008
How High?
So how high do energy prices need to go before we can muster the public will to overcome the lock the environmentalist faction has on utilizing our native energy sources?
Pigeon hole: Not A Klew
May 6, 2008
Celeb Hippy-crites
Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?
Pigeon hole: Blithering Fools
April 30, 2008
Why So Bitter?
I've been thinking about Michelle Obama lately. I admit, I don't get her. She's my age, but that's about all we have in common. She has a loving husband, healthy children, an Ivy League education, and makes more money than me and my entire family combined. And yet, she seems so angry, and dare I say it, bitter. In Michelle Obama's world, living in America sucks. And yet, she is blessed with a life few of us will ever have. She doesn't have to worry about her next paycheck, or paying a credit card bill, or paying her rent when it goes up. I doubt she ever lived out of the family car when she was a teenager. But instead of feeling blessed at what being an American woman brings her, she's angry; all the time, it would seem.
I'm not rich, I never went to college -- I was too busy working as a teenager to help support my family. And no, not in the U.S.A., but in Canada, that perfect society, or so the liberals would have us believe. I have a roof over my head, and food on the table, and I'll never be rich and powerful like Mrs. Obama. But you know what? I thank God everyday I was born in this country. I am blessed. Mrs.Obama may not think she is, but I know I am. I can vote, I was educated, I know I won't be murdered by my family for besmirching some disgusting concept of honour, or stoned to death for talking to a man who isn't a male relative. I don't have to worry about armed gangs slaughtering me and my family, or wonder where my next bowl of rice will come from. Each and every one of us in this country is blessed beyond compare to so many who suffer in this world.
John Edwards talked about 'Two Americas', and perhaps he was right. There's the America he and Mrs. Obama inhabit, the one that's hopeless and never good enough. Then there's mine, the one I'm grateful for and wouldn't change for a life in any other country in the world. Sure, we all go through hard times. But that's life. No one promised us we'd have perfection. It isn't possible. All we can do is be the best people we can be with the life we have, and to be thankful for the blessings we've been given. And we've certainly been given many. It's sad that Michelle Obama will never realize that.
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
[snorfle]
I love the title of this article: Dude, Where's My Recession?
And if that weren't enough, he throws in a Terminator analogy for good measure.
[snorfles some more]
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
I Hate That!
You just discover a product you really like, and when you got to buy more, find out it's been discontinued! Last year, at Bath & Body Works, I bought a shower gel form a new line they were carrying, Aquatanica Spa. I really liked it it -- it had a fresh oceany sorta scent, made with seaweed and other sea type ingredients. I went to the website, and they've discontinued it! The bottle said it was a line from France, but it looks like it was actually made by B&B W since I can't find it anywhere else but on Ebay. I'm bummed. My favourite showergel by Aveda (sage and cedar), which I'd used for years, was discontinued last year, and this was what I'd replaced it with. To add insult to injury, the B&B site recommended I try instead one of their other lines, which they claim is similar, but it's almond scented! Bleah! Almonds do not smell like the ocean where I come from.
/ticked off
Pigeon hole: ARGH!!
Blog Tech Stuff
Just an FYI that I'm trying to get a quote on how much it will cost to get the RSS feed fixed. I know it's been broken for something like two years, but I just wasn't blogging enough for me to want to spend more money on the place :) Since I'm blogging more regularly now, I figured it was time to get it fixed. Depending on the cost, of course. As for all the other broken bits, it's been suggested I switch over to WordPress, but while I'm blogging more, I'm not sure I'm blogging enough to justify what that would cost to have installed and set up. Same thing with just upgrading to the newest MT, which seems to do all the things I've wanted for quite a while.
So, RSS first, and then see if it's worth doing a complete overhaul at some later date.
Pigeon hole: Not A Klew
April 29, 2008
Travel Notes
We stayed at the Gold Hill Hotel this weekend, which is the oldest hotel in Nevada. Highly recommend it if you're in the Virginia City area. On Tuesday nights, they have historical lectures w/barbecue for $15 a person.
Will have photos later.
Pigeon hole: Rummaging In the Attic
'An Anatomy of Surrender'
Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.
An excerpt:
Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the “spirit of appeasement.” In 2005, Norway’s parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country’s most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it’s arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society’s norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman’s request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her.Those who dare to defy the West’s new sharia-based strictures and speak their minds now risk prosecution in some countries. In 2006, legendary author Oriana Fallaci, dying of cancer, went on trial in Italy for slurring Islam; three years earlier, she had defended herself in a French court against a similar charge. (Fallaci was ultimately found not guilty in both cases.) More recently, Canadian provinces ordered publisher Ezra Levant and journalist Mark Steyn to face human rights tribunals, the former for reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the latter for writing critically about Islam in Maclean’s.
Even as Western authorities have hassled Islam’s critics, they’ve honored jihadists and their supporters. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth knighted Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a man who had called for the death of Salman Rushdie. Also that year, London mayor Ken Livingstone ludicrously praised Qaradawi as “progressive”—and, in response to gay activists who pointed out that Qaradawi had defended the death penalty for homosexuals, issued a dissertation-length dossier whitewashing the Sunni scholar and trying to blacken the activists’ reputations. Of all the West’s leaders, however, few can hold a candle to Piet Hein Donner, who in 2006, as Dutch minister of justice, said that if voters wanted to bring sharia to the Netherlands—where Muslims will soon be a majority in major cities—“it would be a disgrace to say, ‘This is not permitted!’ ”
Pigeon hole: Warm, Fuzzy, "Religion of Peace" Moment
Question Time
They note that "the government-subsidized burning of our food supply to create ethanol has both increased carbon dioxide emissions and driven up food prices at a startling rate" and join the growing chorus to end the mandate.Add the fact that it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it, and that it requires an enormous amount of another increasingly precious resource — water — in order to process this inefficient fuel, and you wonder how ethanol was ever considered green to begin with.
So who's going to pull a George Stephanopoulos, and ask Obama about his support for Third-World-starving ethanol policy, just ahead of the Indiana primary?
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
April 28, 2008
Bitter Californians
From an Obama delegate:
* Message # 3: If someone in SF asks you about those "strange rural people in PA"...don't indulge their liberal, latte drinking bull [poop]...Just tell them if they want to understand rural and ethnic PA that they should get in the Prius's and drive down to Bakersfield or any of the other mid state towns in California where there are people who actually lead ordinary lives and care about God and own guns....
Pigeon hole: Electioneering We Will Go
That About Covers It
The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.
Word.
Read the rest of Chickenfeedhawks.
Pigeon hole: Hanson, Goldberg, & Steyn
April 24, 2008
Criminal
Here's another good article on the suffering ethanol has wreaked across the globe. One wonders how people like Al Gore and his ilk sleep at night. Of course, him his other wealthy frineds never have to worry about going hungry, do they?
Global Food Riots: Made in Washington, D.C.
That reminds me of the House Hunters episode we saw last night. Talk about the hypocrisy of the modern enviro nut. This well off couple who lived in New Mexico wanted a vacation home on the Oregon Coast. They prattled on about what great people they were because they recycled, and lived 'green'. And then they prattled on about how the vacation home they bought just had to be 'green' with energy saving appliances, etc.. They seemed to have not a clue about what hypocrites they were! If they're so interested in saving the planet and carbon footprints, why on earth would they want two homes? And just for the two of them? Not to mention two large homes. Homes that require either driving two days to get to or flying! By the end of the episode, I just wanted to slap them. Okay, I wanted to do that way before the end of the episode. I admit it.
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
April 23, 2008
Fallen Angels
Anyone else remember the Niven/Pournelle novel form the eighties, "Fallen Angels"?
Basically, the Earth is facing an Ice Age, while environmentalists are still going on about global warming.
Turns out it might not be so fictional after all:
Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
April 21, 2008
Chickens Coming home To Roost
Except there's nothing to feed them.
Food Crisis Shows How Bad Policies Can Be Deadly
Pigeon hole: Worried & Watchful
April 16, 2008
Beautiful
Rush just played the Army Chorus singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic from the Pope thing this morning. I actually started to cry at my desk. Really amazingly beautiful performance.
Pigeon hole: God, Family, Country
April 12, 2008
Some Things Never Change
"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."
It's not what you think. Well, maybe it is. But the answer lies here.
Pigeon hole: Blithering Fools
April 6, 2008
Hot Damn!
I'd forgotten how good my smoked habanero salsa is. I just made some for tonight's dinner, and whoa! I should bottle and sell the stuff [g]
Pigeon hole: A Shortcut to Mushrooms
March 17, 2008
New Entry On the 'Awesome Possum Show List'
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles! We watched all of them over the course of the weekend, and loved it to pieces! What a great show!
Pigeon hole: Here Be Dragons
March 8, 2008
In Ur Base, Reading Ur Fic
This is the most cracktastic piece of fic. I really and truly was weeping with laughter.
Why do you need to go read this? It's Torchwood/LOLcats. Really.
Shoo!
Pigeon hole: Quill & Ink
March 7, 2008
Fair Play
I thought this was interesting:
British sense of fair play proven by science
The British sense of fair play has been scientifically proven by experiments held in 16 cities which show that, by comparison, the Russians and Greeks thirst for revenge.The idealised games held around the world have shed new light on the way in which people co-operate for the common good - and what happens when they don't.
The research published today in the journal Science shows that taking revenge is more common in relatively corrupt and undemocratic traditional societies based on authoritarian and parochial social institutions, where citizens think it is acceptable to dodge taxes or flout laws because criminal acts frequently go unpunished.
[...]
In a commentary in the journal Science, Prof Herbert Gintis of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, confirms how: "Anti-social punishment was rare in the most democratic societies and very common otherwise."Using the World Democracy Audit evaluation of countries' performance in political rights, civil liberties, press freedom and corruption, the top six performers among the countries studied were also in the lowest seven for anti-social punishment. These were the USA, UK, Germany, Denmark, Australia and Switzerland."
He adds: "Their results suggest that the success of democratic market societies may depend critically upon moral virtues as well as material interests, so the depiction of civil society as the sphere of 'naked self-interest' is radically incorrect."
Pigeon hole: For Your Perusal
March 5, 2008
Can We Say, "Duh!"?
Study: Illegal immigration costs border counties millions
Pigeon hole: Repelling the Invasion
