Holiday Fruit Bread Part I
Part II

From here: "You're only given a little madness. You mustn't lose it."

What I have said: "Being a little cracked is okay. Because it is through the cracks that you can hear the Muse sing."

Also this:

A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

-- Yehuda Amichai

Poignantly true.

And more: "Objectivity: Multiple subjectivities that agree with one another."

"How DARE you question my patriotism?!!"

Leftist scum.

d.m. to SondraK

Looking for something, I often find something else. Marked for future perusal:
[Leibniz, thought emergent or all the way down] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

"Is thought an emergent phenomenon, or does it go all the way down?"

Here's a project to try sometime when I'm completely bored and run out of other things to do*:
Building a marble shooting airgun

Once I'm bored with that, I can try my hand at this ABS pipe cannon.

*That will be about, oh, never.

dead mousie to Rodger

Teen in Crash May Have Been Text Messaging

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (AP) - A 17-year-old likely will face misdemeanor charges after allegedly losing control of his car while text messaging and hitting a bicyclist.

The bicyclist, Jim R. Price of Highlands Ranch, died Friday, two days after the accident.

'We do not believe it was an intentional act, but it was inattentiveness to the roadway,' said Lt. Alan Stanton, spokesman for Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

'The investigation showed that he was text-messaging on his cell phone' at the time of the accident, said Stanton.

The driver could face a charge of careless driving resulting in death, Stanton said. Under Colorado law, the teen could face up to a year in prison.

Which is the least that should happen.

I am in favor of a complete ban on cellphone use while driving. Those who are not outright hazardous are haphazard in their driving at best while using a cellphone. "Hands free" is scarcely better, as it still results in a divided attention. One can always let the call go to voicemail and pull over at the first opportunity if it's that damned important.

This is not necessarily an anti-libertarian stance, as cellphone users are almost universally infringing upon the safety of other motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists while irresponsibly yakking or (!!!)text messaging while driving. It's the same reason I cannot get behind the wheel after having too much beer. It places other people at undue risk of loss to life and property, especially considering the banality of most cellphone conversations!

Update: This could certainly be construed as a "THAT GUY" stance. However the libertarian stance as I understand it is this: while it may not be appropriate for the state to impose restrictions on individual liberty, recourse for those who are injured or killed by other's irresponsibility lies with the courts.

In that case, I'd support the creation of an advocacy group that gives aid and legal advice to those who suffer loss due to irresponsible cellphone use by others. Call it MACC - "Muthas Against Cretinous Cellphone use", and we'd sue the livin' shinola out of the cretins who drive and yakk while mowing down pedestrians! This would not prevent the harm or loss in the first place, but when the name MACC begins to strike terror in the heart of moronic cellphone users, it might begin to.

Update:
Q: How does one stay safe against reckless cell phone users?
A: Drive a bigger truck!

"You are puny. I will crush you."


Update 2: On the other hand, if the idiot is flying a plane while yakking on his cellphone, it's probably a good idea to just run away!

Pyjamas Media contributor Bachman files the following grim report:
President Orders Troops To Wal-Mart

Nothing more fun than a good spoof of something that desperately needs spoofing. Linked for future reference:
Open Sore MediaPyjamas Media

UPDATE: Renamed Pyjamas Media, in honor of the other site re-renaming itself.

Just FYI, it is completely "open source", as in anyone can register and become a contributor.

Any bets on how long before it goes FUBAR and has to be shut down? I give it maybe a week at the outside before problems surface, and 2-1/2 weeks at the outside before either new restrictions are established, or the whole thing crumbles under the weight of spammers and spambots.

Update 2: I'm still agnostic on the OSM/PJM concept. It would be nice to see something like that work. But the back story of this particular effort seems abysmal at best. For an effort funded by venture capitalists, you'd think they would have the experience to avoid some of the faux pas that have transpired. That and you just can't piss off half of the 'sphere with your mendacity (perceived or otherwise) and expect to get a pass.

"It's just business", true to a certain point. But you're forgetting who you're dealing with. To a venture capitalist, it's just a bunch of joe blow's with computers. But these same people would not expect to shaft a handful of newspaper columnists and expect to emerge unscathed.

Here are some descriptions of various tools that might come in handy next time you are training a new shop assistant.

TOOL DESCRIPTIONS:

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted airplane part you were drying.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, "Ouch...."

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub you want the bearing race out of.

WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16" or 1/2" socket you've been searching for the last 15 minutes.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new disk brake pads, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2X4: Used for levering an automobile upward off a hydraulic jack handle.

TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters.

PHONE: Tool for calling your neighbors to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.

SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog crap off your boot.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool ten times harder than any known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes you couldn't use anyway.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the tensile strength on everything you forgot to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2" x 16" SCREWDRIVER: A large prybar that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT: The home mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, it's main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last overtightened 58 years ago by someone at ERCO, and neatly rounds off their heads.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50¢ part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to cut hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts.

DAMMIT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling "DAMMIT" at the top of your lungs. It is also the next tool that you will need.

EXPLETIVE: A balm, usually applied verbally in hindsight, which somehow eases those pains and indignities following our every deficiency in foresaid.

(gleaned from an anonymous coworker)

To Tell the weather, go to your back door and look for the dog.

If the dog is at the door and he is wet, it's probably raining. But if the dog is standing there really soaking wet, it is probably raining really hard.

If the dog's fur looks like it's been rubbed the wrong way, it's probably windy.

If the dog has snow on his back, it's probably snowing.

Of course, to be able to tell the weather like this, you have to leave the dog outside all the time, especially if you expect bad weather.

Sincerely,

The CAT

dead mousie to Dadcat

Curmudgeons get respect in the 'sphere. Curmudgeons get readers and attention (both positive and negative). Curmudgeons don't have to be nuanced and multidimensional, just for the sake of affect or impressing the chicks. And I honestly think curmudgeons have to have it easier when writing too. You can say whatever you want at one moment, and retract it later if necessary, and few will call you on it. It's expected that you'll go off once in a while. You're a curmudgeon!

How about "Curmudgeonly Feline"?

Update:
curmudgeon
n : a crusty (brusque and surly and forbidding) irascible (prone to outbursts of temper) cantankerous (stubbornly obstructive and unwilling to cooperate; having a difficult and contrary disposition) old person full of stubborn ideas.

I don't know. This guy can be pretty entertaining. And this guy*. And is someone going to tell me that this curmudgeon is not often hilarious?

Then of course there are the likes of Acidman, Nate, Bane, and others whose acerbic wit and opinionated writing wins them friends as well as enemies.

Or perhaps they're not really curmudgeons? Then I need a new word.

*Just a snippet from Fred On Everything, from his recent article titled "Will Someone For God's Sake Marry Maureen?":

I read with ashen resignation that Maureen Dowd, the professional spinster of the New York Times, will soon birth a book, no doubt parthenogenetically, called Are Men Necessary? The problem apparently is that men have not found Maureen necessary. Hell hath... Clearly there is something wrong with men.

I weary of the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.

Why is Maureen hermetically single? For starters, she is not just now your classic hot ticket. She's not just over the hill, but into the mountains, to Grandmother's house we go. She probably gets more daily maintenance than a 747, but she still looks as though a vocational school held an injection-molding contest and everyone lost. That leaves her with only her personality as bait. The prognosis is grim.

A rare moment of (relative) harmony in DC:
Congress Helps Self to $3,100 Pay Raise:

The cost-of-living increase for members of Congress _ which will put pay for the rank and file at an estimated $165,200 a year _ marked a brief truce in the pitched political battles that have flared in recent weeks on the war and domestic issues.

"The Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to America's wealthiest. This is not a statement of America's values," said the Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.

...who then proceeded to vote herself up from the wealthiest 1% to the wealthiest 0.9%.

Failing to take the Enemy into account when trying to understand the ills of this world is like failing to take germs into account when trying to understand the ills of the body.

Sure it is possible to come up with an explanation of disease in either case. But in the case of misdiagnosing a bacterial or viral infection, you get such ludicrous treatments as poisoning, leeching, and bloodletting. In the case of misdiagnosing the cause of evil in the world, you get modern liberalism.

When you don't have something to say, you don't have something to say. No point in blogging about my dump as some are wont to. Although I *could* blog about that albino log from last week, that is just not my style here.

I gave up on the popularity contest a while ago. Now I just say what I want to say, when I want to say it, whether that is several times a day, or just a couple times a week.

"I am a Ceramic Chia Pet in the TTLB Ecosystem."

Drive by shootings? Gangland murders? Bah. But rap? Twenty Major:

If you suspect anyone in your family or any of your friends are involved with these gang killings please tell the Gardai. Not so justice can be done. Not so we can make some kind of breakthrough into the underworld. Not we can turn them into a supergrass so they can rat out more. No, it's worse than that.

Maybe you can live with them being a drug dealing, drive-by shooting, scumbag but I know for a fact you couldn't stand it if they went around rapping hither and thither. Could you live with yourself?

Rap? Just say no. Call the Garda Confidential Hotline now on 1800 666 111. They're kicking it old school in full effect.

Why would someone who is slowly dying of poisoning insist on being served more of the same poison as a "cure"?

This country was founded on principles of liberty that are almost completely misunderstood by probably at least 90% of the people in this country today. Neither major party can honestly lay claim to representing liberty over state authority. What we have are two political camps who are both certain that they represent a true vision of liberty. And yet both camps are struggling hard and striving for the political power to impose their own brand of authoritarianism on the other. With apparent lack of irony, the left points at the right and accuses it of fascism. With equal lack of apparent irony, the right points at the left and accuses it of socialist tyranny.

What most people miss is that their political views, whether leftist or rightist, are poorly represented by the political parties and the Behemoth that has become the federal and state governments. Ask any liberal or any conservative, and most of them will say they don't want someone else meddling in their lives. Few people want the Nanny State looking over their shoulder. As it affects them on a personal level, most people tend toward a libertarian view.

But most people DO want the Nanny State looking over THAT GUY's shoulder! Liberals and Conservatives are equally guilty of this, just in different areas. Government is of such nature that it will always gladly accrue whatever power the people give it. And once accrued, that power is rarely if ever given back. The result is that while the people may want less government interference in their own personal lives, they find that government is instead becoming more and more intrusive. And it is always the OTHER PARTY'S FAULT!! Never mind their own complicity.

The political parties and politicians gravitate toward representing the authoritarian demands of their constituencies, and generally fail to represent the libertarian demands of those same constituencies. Thus you get the spectacle of Republican politicians mumbling mealy-mouthed excuses about why the size and scope of government has exploded under their watch, and why you will never see an earnest effort by any Democrat politician to roll back the abuses of the war on (some) drugs.

Hypocrites all of them!

The principles of liberty that this country was founded on are dying. This is not the free country that it was even thirty to fifty years ago, and it certainly bears no resemblance to the shining city on a hill that it was in the heady days following 1789. Whatever you learned in grade school Civics is no more, if it even was true any more when you learned it.

When people feel insecure, they demand something be done about it. Too many people are willing to give up a little liberty here, and a little liberty there, if it means they will temporarily feel more secure. But there is always another threat just around the corner, and the statists and elitists are more than willing to exploit the next threat to induce the people to give up yet more of their liberty, more of their sovereignty, and more of their power over their own lives. We had slavery, we had the Great War in Europe, we had "demon rum", the fascist threat in Europe, the Cold War, various hot wars, "reefer madness", environmental destruction, global warming, economic insecurity, "ozone holes", and now Islamic terrorism. There is always a good sound compelling reason to take more power from the people and give it to the government, isn't there?

It's poison, and it is killing Lady Liberty just as surely as arsenic-laced sugar over a bowl of berries.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid visits the drive-thru at Taco Bell

Reid: "Yes, let me have the Santa Fe gordita, please. Two of them."

Taco Bell drivethru lady: "Chicken?"

Reid:

Reid: "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY PATRIOTISM!"

I'm tellin' ya...

So where is the Cat lately? Over at protein wisdom!

Go peruse. Jeff is ON FIRE lately!

A new blog of note--lots of energy and fresh inspiration:
Frothing at the Mouse

Marked for future perusal.

Tim Worstall has a wickedly nice idea for civil disobedience against the War on Drugs
The Neolibertarian Network Blog

dead mousie to Jeff G

Tinfoil hats actually amplify certain radio bands reserved for government use!

For reallies, these MIT students designed an experiment using a quarter million dollar network analyser and discovered this highly interesting anomaly.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
An Empirical Study

Somewhere in the archives is my own subjective analysis of the effectiveness of the tinfoil hat. This research validates my findings.

big dead mousie to Ace

More HERE for a high tech approach to to mind control ray blocking.

Whatever you do, beware The Watchers! They ARE watching you, after all.

Update: Say here's one more thought for you tinfoil brigade sorts to ponder. You know that tinfoil is supposed to be an effective shield against mind control rays. Any tinfoil hat researcher worth his salt also knows the higher metals are even more effective, limited only by their cost and availability in a useful form--gold being the grand champ. And you most certainly will be aware that certain species of wood make an effective barrier against certain "spiritual" (non EMR) influences. In light of this, consider the composition of the Ark of the Covenant: gold foil over acacia wood! Consider the inner chambers of Solomon's temple: gold foil laid over wood paneling! Well! Setting aside for the moment the intended purpose of these structures, can you imagine the properties of a room thusly protected?

Get busy on your research! Let me know the results. If the Illuminati don't get you first that is...

Update 2: Rebuttal of the study results HERE.

Some of my favorite bloggers are those who seem to be able to do stream of consciousness commentary on whatever topic, and produce a fascinating bit of reading with minimal editing. I almost never do that. At least not here in this public venue, I seem to be much too self-conscious about what I am saying and how. This has probably hurt me in readership.

But just a bit now, if I may indulge. And if this doesn't come off as polished and coherent, well now you know why.

I have been busy in much of my free time working on my next "career", or at least the next phase of my sideline. When I close on a new loan on my rental property, I will be free to build on the first of my two lots. So I've been up to my ears in research on building options, city requirements, financing options and so forth. I am trying to get into a situation where I can perform most of the functions of a general contractor without getting into a situation that is over my head. To that end, I've been looking seriously at modular and panelized construction. Modular has the advantage of being almost completely constructed offsite, and my involvement is dealing with the city approval process, getting the foundation built and the utilities hooked up, and any onsite finishing issues once the house pieces are delivered and assembled. The downside is a bit less design flexibility (at least with the one modular factory in Arizona), and fewer areas where I can economize and/or complete work myself. Honestly though I do not have the time to do much actual construction if I'm going to try to do the project management.

I read a lot of sources that say being your own GC is not for most people. So who is it suited to? I am a project manager at my day job. Granted the projects I manage are six and seven figure public works projects, not home construction. And I am not working for (or as) the contractor on the nitty-gritty of subcontractor scheduling and coordination, payment, and so forth. So it's related but not necessarily equivalent.

On the other hand, I do know how to wield a screwdriver and I have a healthy set of handyman-level home repair and improvement skills. I watched my father build two "kit" homes when I was a child. Trust me on this--there is a lot that seems to simply come naturally once you've seen it done a few times at a tender young age. Plus I have a load of skills and knowledge I have picked up since then. There is little or nothing that intimidates me in the actual details of the hands-on construction of a home. There would certainly be a substantial body of additional knowledge and skills I would need to pick up if I were to tackle the construction of a complete home from scratch. But that would be a challenge I would relish--if I actually had the time to do it myself.

The rub is that I am caught somewhere halfway between those two areas of expertise right now. If I do the "owner-builder, be-your-own-GC" thing, I will be in neither the position of the owner's PM overseeing a GC, as I am in my day job, nor in the position of actually doing the hands-on work myself. I will be in a new skill area of managing a project from the inside--everything from obtaining city approval of the various aspects of the project, obtaining bids and developing a budget, arranging financing, scheduling subcontractors, inspections, pay requests, dealing with change-orders and cost overruns, and probably a host of additional headaches I have yet to discover and obsess over.

Not that I don't think I'd be up to the task--after all I took over someone else's house renovation project and brought the whole thing to completion for rental in my spare time over the course of 2-3 months last year. But right now I'm staring at one helluva Dagwood Sandwich and contemplating just how I'm'a gonnna break it down and consume it. The trick of course is knowledge, knowledge and the arrangement of that knowledge into a coherent plan of action that is, if not the best plan, at least a reasonable enough facsimile thereof that success is reasonably assured.

By success, what I am hoping to capitalize on is the current rather large disconnect between construction cost and appraisal/sales price. For the conventional route, it is the GC that pockets that difference. I want it. The best I can tell at this point, it ought to cost me in the ballpark of $95/square foot to put a house on the lot (not counting the lot value), and the finished product in this less-than-desirable neighborhood should appraise for about $140 to $150/square foot. Assuming a 1200 s.f. house and subtracting out the per square foot value of the lot, this should mean a $15-$20/square foot profit for yours truly. Now I may not sell the final product, but the equity is mine in any case. That's a pretty healthy return for a few months of evenings and weekends and the permanent gain of having crossed a new learning curve.

So perhaps you may indulge me if it seems as if this has not been the cutting edge political commentary blog it was during the last election cycle. I've been a little bit busy with my free time lately.

Y'know the various internet acronyms indicating varying degrees of mirth are often overused, and rarely meant literally.

However.

I just now picked myself up off the floor after having fallen out of my chair, gasping and laughing hysterically at Twenty Major's latest yarn:

Twenty Major: Do you swallow?

Clean (mostly), safe for work and all that. Go read. Report back.

No.
Do it now. You won't regret it.

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

This DRM scheme is probably criminal in several jurisdictions, not to mention subject to civil proceedings in many others.

dead mousie to Og

Update 1: First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted

Update 2: CA targets Sony DRM as spyware

Computer Associates, maker of security software, has announced their anti-spyware program PestPatrol will detect and remove Sony's rootkit-enabled DRM software.

In response to the outrage, Sony issued a so-called patch which has been found to be problematic as well. The patch removes the rootkit but creates new issues.

Update 3: California Suing Sony Over Rootkit DRM

California has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony and a second one may be filed today in New York. The lawsuit was filed Nov. 1 in Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles by Vernon, CA. It asks the court to prevent Sony from selling additional CDs protected by the anti-piracy software, and seeks monetary damages for California consumers who purchased them.

And I sincerely hope Sony gets it's ASS handed to it in court.

In the mean time, if you happen to have purchased any of these CD's but not played/installed them on your computer yet, Computer Associates has instructions HERE for disabling the Auto Run feature of your CD drive. This will allow you to rip the songs to disk and then burn them onto a fresh, uninfected CD, using your favorite ripping/burning software (Nero in my case).

via Bane comes this blog:
Twenty Major - still smoking in Dublin bars.

Quite funny. I may need to add him to the list.

New York Times: "EVANSVILLE, Ind., Nov. 6

Well after most of his neighbors had gone to bed, Jerry Blackburn, a resident of the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park, was up late watching television when he saw the tornado warning.

At least 22 people were killed, the majority of them neighbors of Mr. Blackburn in the mobile home park, and hundreds were injured, some critically, when a tornado tore across southwestern Indiana and northern Kentucky about 2 a.m. on Sunday, cutting a path of destruction about 20 miles long and three quarters of a mile wide.

Am I the only one left wondering what it is about trailer parks that seems to attract tornados like junebugs to a porchlight?

Maybe the whole concept of a trailer park is just flawed. Sort of like how stationing the Marines at Beirut Airport was just a bad idea. Tornados are like little boys with an ant hill--they just can't help the urge to kick it over. Jam a bunch of tin boxes on stilts together in one compact location, and sooner or later a tornado is going to notice and git 'em.

What is going on in France? The Belmont Club has an excellent discussion going here. Read the post and then read the comments.

Much insight from several perspectives.

AZ Central -- Clinics almost out of flu vaccine

Providers of flu shots in Arizona are rapidly running out of vaccine, with the largest operation expected to close its grocery-store clinics after Saturday.

I got mine last Tuesday. In past years I've procrastinated right past the end of the clinic schedule. But on a "whim" in the late afternoon, I checked the online schedule and sure enough there was a clinic being held at the pharmacy nearest to me on my way home. I hesitated just a moment, then said heck with it, told the boss I was taking off early to catch the flu-shot clinic, and went down and got it.

For some reason I felt particularly good about getting my shot, like I'd secretly gotten something very valuable. At the time I had no idea there was this looming shortage.

Now I know why. Someone's watching over me.

Thanks!

All night, all day,
Angel's watchin' over me, my Lord...

http://www.qando.net/ - Review of Right Wing Blogs

Well ok, if this is the official list, I suppose I should start reading some of them.

Wait...why isn't MY blog on that list??

Oh.

Yeah.

It's 'cause I have only like ten actual readers or something.

Pissing and moaning and carping and complaining and conspiracy theories abounding. That's when gas prices are rising. But now that they're falling...crickets.

Well I'm not going to stand for the silence. Prices are 50 cents cheaper than a month ago around here. After watching prices continue to fall all week, I filled my tank yesterday. Today they are 2 cents lower yet.

HOORAY FOR LOWER GAS PRICES! Keep falling! I can feel the pressure coming off the economy penny by penny.

Not that my leftist/statist co-worker and his snotty Prius will be happy. Heh!

Arrogant Bastard Ale, one very awesome beer! Don't mess around with pussy beer--this is the real thing.

FOXNews.com - Politics - Senate Permits Oil Drilling in Alaska Refuge

Drilling would occur on the coastal plane on a 1.5 million acre plot within ANWR's 19.5 million-acre terrain. Available oil reserves are estimated between 4 billion and 12 billion barrels, a six-month to 20-month supply for the entire United States if it were completely dependent on the reserve. Currently, the United States now uses about 7.3 billion barrels of oil a year, or 20 million barrels a day. Almost 60 percent of it is imported.

And what is not stated in this article are the following facts:

1) That 1.5 mil acres is not located in the portion of the reserve that is known for it's scenic and pristine beauty. That picture is what's always shown on eco-fascist propaganda pieces. No, this area is on the utterly barren, flat and desolate coastal plain at the edge of hell-frozen-over.

2) Within that 1.5 million acres, the actual "footprint" of the well drilling and oil recovery equipment will occupy about 2000 acres. That represents approximately 0.01% of the reserve. To get a sense of just how small this area is, try the following exercise: take a dime and set it into the middle of your living room (assuming you have a typical living room of about 12' x 15'). The living room represents the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The dime represents the area that the oil drilling equipment will occupy. Now move the dime back in that unused space behind the sofa where the dust bunnies gather. That's about the impact that drilling in ANWR will have.

USATODAY.com - What Libby indictment left out says a lot

Now, as Libby prepares for a trial next year, attorneys and legal experts say the fact that Novak is not critical to the case says a lot about what Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has decided about the alleged original crime -- the leak. It also signals that Libby was not one of Novak's sources on the story, they say.

Novak's absence from the case, says attorney Steven Reich, supports the assumption that Fitzgerald decided the leak itself wasn't a crime. Reich was a senior associate counsel in the Clinton White House. He's now with the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

No one who leaked CIA officer Valerie Plame's name has been charged with a crime for doing so and Fitzgerald has said his investigation is nearly over. It can be illegal to disclose a CIA officer's name, but the laws prohibiting it are very narrowly written and make it very difficult to prove any violation.

So what we are left with are alleged false statements made during the course of an investigation. This is Martha Stewart all over again. What a waste of resources!

Still the Democrats will try their best to make hay out of stubble. Nevermind the real issue, which is that Joe Wilson is a partisan hack, who was sent to Niger by his wife for the express purpose of undermining the Administration in a time of war. Nevermind that the trip itself was worthless--there was no way it could ever have turned up anything the way it was conducted. Nevermind that all it served was to provide him a platform for grandstanding and prevarication. Nevermind the fact that he has been proven a liar by the commission report. Nope. It will be all about whether Scooter Libby deliberately misspoke when recounting his conversations with reporters.

Ok, since it is coming up YET AGAIN, The Anchoress has a roundup of quotes and information here that should serve to remind frothing lefties that the origins of the Iraq war lie back in 1998 with the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (P.L. 105-338), which stated,

"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

This policy was unanimously approved by the Senate and strongly supported by the Clinton administration.

Gosh, "Bush Lied!", huh?

Tools...

Here's just a few quotes from that timeframe:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
-President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
-Sec. of State Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.
-Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.
Letter to President Clinton, signed by:
-Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.
-Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors"
-President William Jefferson Clinton Dec. 16, 1998

But Bush lied, huh? Well hell's bells! Clinton must have been lying in 1998 then too, right? If there really were no WMD's, that is. Unless you're so naive as to believe Clinton's little missile strikes took out every vestige of Saddam's WMD progaram, and he made no effort whatsoever to reconstitute them in the four intervening years.

"Bush Lied, People Died!" Repeat a lie often enough and it gets mistaken for the truth by many. I have noticed that the left often accuses their opponents of the very thing that they are engaged in doing themselves, as a diversionary tactic to cover their own tracks. Bill Clinton was in fact a serial perjurer, and they can't stand the fact that he was successfully called on it. In their blind rage they are trying to make the same charge stick to this administration.

Tools. Your Orwellian puppet masters must be so proud of you.

Physics Today November 2005

Albert Einstein was certainly the greatest physicist of the 20th century, and one of the greatest scientists of all time. It may seem presumptuous to talk of mistakes made by such a towering figure, especially in the centenary of his annus mirabilis. But the mistakes made by leading scientists often provide a better insight into the spirit and presuppositions of their times than do their successes.

In thinking of Einstein's mistakes, one immediately recalls what Einstein (in a conversation with George Gamow) called the biggest blunder he had made in his life: the introduction of the cosmological constant.

See?

In the midst of a discussion of Peggy Noonan's recent article HERE, commenter W Sol Vason beautifully summed up something I've been struggling to set to words:

The Founding Fathers did not believe that God appointed a King, or even a group of Lords to rule. God's Grace does not flow directly to a King who then rules wisely. God's Grace flows directly to each and every citizen who then governs his or her own life according to God's will. There can be no elite, because we all have equal amounts of God's Grace. No one man can say he is King by the Grace of God. Those of us who are conservatives know that all men are equal because we all have the same amount of God's Grace and that the only government we need is minimal.

Conservatives trust people and distrust government. Liberals trust government and distrust people. Liberals still believe that God only gives his Grace to the elite, to the Saddam Husseins of the world. They believe leaders can come only from the elite. They condemn the American liberation of Iraq because they do not trust the Iraqi people can govern themselves and because Saddam was a member of the elite.

His expression of the Founding Father's vision of the relationship between God, Man and Government is what hits it dead on for me. In this vision, there is no authority between God and the individual citizens of the country. God himself is the Authority, and the function of government is that of a servant, located in the hierarchy below the position of the sovereign citizen.

Modern liberalism inverts this authority structure, relegating God to irrelevancy and building a secular Authority on the backs of the slave citizens.

Whether you harbor some vestige of modernist
morality or simply fail to see the irony in
Reality TV, one thing is clear. You are just
Not Postmodern.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla


And you were expecting a different result?

dead mousie to Li'l Miss A

More grist for the mill:
Dean's World - 100% Fatal, Vaccine-Proof Pox?

Okay, this stuff on the coming evolutionary shift really is starting to have me a bit worried. We recently learned that scientists have recreated the 1918 'Spanish' influenza that killed millions.

But it gets worse. The recent articles on it (see below) led me to this story from late 2003.

Read it carefully and follow the logic: they were trying to modify a virus, a variant of smallpox that only infects mice, that could not be vaccinated against. They succeeded. The purpose was to devise a vaccine-proof virus, so they could learn how to kill such a virus. But it was also supposed to be a minor pathogen, typically causing sterility. Instead it was 100% fatal.

As if there wasn't already enough to be concerned about...

Rodger has found the winning halloween costume--LOOTERMAN!!