Good morning.

1. Women and combat … testosterone matters.
2. On aggression.
3. Wonder why the White House is equipping IRS SWAT teams? What for? What’s coming down the pike?
4. Maybe they figure the piper will have to pay when people figure out the song and dance they’ve been given is untrue?
5. Advice for the married(s).
6. On Caucasian stereotypes.
7. Flashmob.
8. I’m in the first 45%.
9. A thought experiment.
10. Timor.
11. Movements in American Orthodoxy.
12. This raises, indirectly, an interesting question. Stimulus advocates argue that it doesn’t matter what the stimulus gets spent on, just so the money gets moved. That necessarily would include “not raising taxes on the rich?” Oops.
13. Bonhoeffer.

Good morning.

1. A letter posted.
2. The fluidity of language.
3. Mr Roberts reluctance.
4. Much to lose means having much in the first place.
5. Visiting other places and rites.
6. Talking tough, sort of.
7. Who is “really Black” or really Native American, or White, or whatever … the problems with the left’s race identity politics. Someday, we’ll judge people by the content of their character … but before the left can let go of their racism, they have to admit that their racial identity crap is racist.
8. Grrrr.
9. Civilization ending? Yikes.
10. Betting on ignorance.
11. Now there’s a question that displays lack of self-examination. “Where’s the atheist fiction.” Hello? That describes most fiction, almost all science fiction and probably 98%+ of regular fiction. Look at the NYTimes best seller lists for the last year. Name three books in which religion and theology factor in a meaningfull way. I’ll wait. Name a mainstream science fiction book written in the last 20 years in which any character is religious, in most of them religion doesn’t even exist and/or is never mentioned. How about thrillers?
12. Pedagogy.
13. Look at the places you can go if your premise if false. I suspect a true statement would be that the motives behind charity are varied and that there is not one.
14. St. Patrick.

Good morning.

1. As people in US talk about the lifeguard who was fired because his employer (probably rightly) feared liability suits. This struck me as similar in some ways, culture/politics/law coming to the wrong conclusion.
2. Academic freedom? Or just a complete lack of pedagogical sanity?
3. Smelling another big war (read as global conflagration) in the next decade or so.
4. Hope and prayer … found and needed.
5. In which the left thinks that painting themselves as the Nazi Jew haters is a good move. I’m just a bit confused by that strategy.
6. Some advice regarding the tax/Obamacare ruling. I have a question for those watching the “tax vs penalty” debate? Is the child rebate in the tax code a penalty or a tax on those without children?
7. DADT and the chaplaincy.
8. Lots of places are citing the large storms resulting in power outages over the Eastern US as signs of global warming, ’cause that storm was so unusual. Alas it wasn’t.
9. This reminds me of William Safire’s grammar puns, for example “A preposition is something that you should never end a sentence with.”
10. Recommended books.
11. A health care “what if” considered.
12. The culture war and demographic collapse.
13. A lights show … what I noticed most was the lightning.
14. ’cause in Florida they dislike shopping at Staples and Home Depot.
15. And we’ll finish with a slight understatement.

Murphy’s law and others give not exactly hard and fast guidelines for prediction of events and interpretations. My (just coined as such) first Rule is the following

Conventional Historical Wisdom is always wrong.

In what follows this will be applied to the third rail of historical discourse … vis a vis to suggest that the Jewish narrative concerning the Holocaust is wrong. This may or may not be a historical third high voltage line as suggested above, but there are blogging/pirate rules that state any you mentions Nazis loses the argument … and Nazis will be noted in this piece.

For a long time references to the Holocaust have bothered me, in that the focus on that particular feature of German/Nazi atrocities has overwhelmed our historical recall of other Nazi (and concomitant Soviet ones). When one recalls mass murders in the mid 20th century …. with rare exceptions only one thing will be recalled and the others minimized or forgotten. This is wrong. Do not misunderstand, the fault for this lies with historians, teachers and educators … not with the Jewish people. Their memory, their remembrance is apt and warranted. What is not is for the rest of us to forget that this was just a small part of a larger horrific picture.

If, in a recent non-mass killing like that at Columbine, if 10 persons had been killed of which 4 Muslims had been killed if conventional wisdom called this an attack on Islam that would be wrong. It would not be wrong for Islamic faith communities to remember this in their own way. It would however be wrong for everyone to do that. Similarly remembering the mass murders of the 20th century in Eastern Europe as being only about the Holocaust would also be wrong.  This is however, the conventional story.

Read the rest of this entry

Good morning. We’ll try a comma, pause, comma edition.

1. My youngest daughter starts driving this fall, so,  is this good advice or not?
2. A problem of our time for, well, many.
3. So would that poster/graphic work, perhaps, as the main thread of a graduation speech?
4. Diaspora, and then, return.
5. Here’s an interesting question, does your the meta-X work consistently with the micro-X and macro-X as exemplified here with ethics and political theory (and I couldn’t figure out how to transform that into comma, pause, comma … sorry). Note, that’s not specific tenents of micro/macro but the meta layer.
6. While Congress wastes its time on college loan matters, surprise, they ignore arguably more important flaws within the secondary educational system.
7. Remember how the liberal of so many stripes bemoaned certain language in political discourse after a certain shooting, well, will this be remarked?
8. Tears don’t work, really its true, in Legislative bodies in a close vote.
9. Slurp and Zaap!
10. This didn’t turn out how I’d expect, really, not at all.
11. Considering wages and minimums, and well, justice.
12. The reality of the so called reality based party is, alas, based on lies.
13. Mr Romney has shown himself to be very weak regarding his notions of foreign policy, however, so has his opponent.

Good day (if just a tad hot).

1. On rights and the 4th. Those who thing rights important or useful need to deal with Rousseau’s (if I remember correctly) criticism that rights are insufficient against government which can redefine/define them as they see fit for their purposes … and we see that in action today.
2. A reading/viewing list … interesting intersection, I’m trying to read Moby Dick in parallel with China Meiville’s Railsea, ?as the latter seemed from the outset to draw a lot from the former and my memory of Mr Ahab and company is dim.
3. Slipped through the liberal eugenics screening programme.
4. Making it a law … as if everything were free and adding ~$2k to the cost of a table saw is inconsequential.
5. A liberal/progressive maxim … “the US is no longer the greatest country in the world” which oddly enough never proposes an alternative. The reason is that the statement is false. Others may be catching up, but in the words of UK educational maxims (as expressed in this wonderful book) if the US is not “top nation” who is? China with $4/day labor? India? France? Germany? Sweden? Cuba? Get real. If you want to name the US as not “top nation” you need to indicate which nation replaced the US.
6. Of taxation and consent.
7. Which founder?
8. Oooh, I did this (sort of) for my kids. When they were little and worried about the noise from the freight trains going through town … I told them, don’t worry, if it gets off the rails, the “snake” will get it.
9. To what purpose.
10. A Saint and romance.
11. Unnoticed and forgotten peoples.
12. There will always be war?
13. On union labor and freedom.

Good morning.

1. Kinda like “life is too short waste drinking bad beer”
2. Scientific malpractice.
3. On American heresies.
4. A famous American Orthodox man passed away. He will be remembered.
5. ’cause companies like Staples and Home Depot are such job killers.
6. Well, self-esteem was the 7th sin (of 8) in the list before Pope Gregory dropped it.
7. Two posts on the Higgs in the news, here and here.
8. The only thing in this notice of antisemitism is any notice of actual antisemitism (and I’m sorry “investment in Caterpillar” doesn’t cut it).
9. The Russian Federation modernizes their army.
10. Health care and top down designs.
11. A church in the midst of economic movement.
12. Thinking race shouldn’t be a factor does not make one a racist … it’s the other way around, thinking race is a factor when that is unwarranted is racism.

Good morning.

1. Of poisonous politics and personal consequences.
2. I think there is a theological error lurking here, something to do with western views of individualism.
3. Cookstoves and third world activism.
4. Another approach to gun buyback programs, that is to fund NRA youth camps. Whaddya think?
5. Asian conservatives coming on over “most think you get ahead with hard work” …. yep that would be about right.
6. Drones in our future.
7. Examining colonialism claims.
8. Misinterpreting Zeno … which was about limits and continuity not quantitative vs qualitative.
9. The fate of ATF whistleblowers.
10. Regulations and the Colorado fire.
11. Considering the hear-after.

Good morning.

1. Start with some fun.
2. Mr Holder and the 17 Dems … one claim is that all 17 face difficult re-election campaigns.
3. Ice melt.
4. Experimental Platonic ethics considered.
5. Some Television recommended viewing.
6. Fur the carnivore.
7. Some pessimism regarding bureaucratic growth.
8. Hunting for a realistic broccoli example.
9. So its a tax. Let’s see, you’re 20 something have a modest income and good health. Pay $800 tax or $8k for heathcare. Hmm.
10. So girls, to be safe, drive and carry concealed.
11. And we’ll end (bookend?) with some grace and poise.

Good morning.

1. Google makes a political statement. Or is that religion? Or do they just not like to empower women?
2. Putting the Obamacare decision in perspective.
3. A real virus and horror fiction.
4. I haven’t read either report, although it brings to mind an experiment. My prediction (untested so far) is that Mr Scalia’s remarks are about Constitutionality of Mr Obama’s actions and none of Mr Dionne’s objections are about Con-law. Am I right?
5. Of oil pipelines and ancient Germanic gold.
6. A “zipper truck”.
7. Philosophy imitates comics … that is to say this particular ethics question was kinda the point of Joss Whedon’s X-Men story arc.
8. I really dislike the pretense of putting probabilities to judgements. You either think a thing is or it isn’t and you don’t do have any probabilistic metrics to apply.
9. The creative class myth.
10. Wood tube.
11. Circumcision and Germans some thoughts. More musings here.
12. A scientific funding proposal … so are you carbon/AGW supporters on board with that or not? It occurred to me that the atheists who by and large support AGW theory often use the argument “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” for God but not climate.
13. Totalitarian walls don’t hold against culture forever.

Woo hoo. I’m still here. Actually, weekend travel + Monday I was on site all day sans Internet, and then I’ve come down with laryngitis and between trying to work and sleep blogging has taken the hit.

1. Circumcision and Germany, two views here and here.
2. Magic … the interesting inclusion of “contagion” prompted me to link this … sounds kind like quantum entanglement, eh?
3. Unimpressed by a TV mini-series.
4. And a film review.
5. A thank you from Mr Barnett … I’d link a thank you from the other side of the aisle but didn’t find one. Is that to be expected? Why?
6. Big gun.
7. Speaking of guns (and bikes!?).
8. Economists you like.
9. The EU and unexpected exit advice.
10. Hunting for the honest liberal with respect to “judicial activism”?
11. Having a bad day … nature edition.
12. Freedom and university.
13. Chicago and stupidity around gun laws.
14. Modify the past to effect predictions is not warranted, …. right?
15. First birther. Heh.
16. Statistics of violent encounters.

Good morning.

1. Protestant and the Theotokos.
2. See, for liberals … whose motivations are unquestionably (unlike conservatives) in the right place, laws are kinda like guidelines, so who needs careful guidelines anyhow?
3. If you have time … Fast and Furious explained.  While somebody didn’t do their homework at all.
4. So was the President involved in Fast and Furious … or is he lying (a point missed by the cartoonist)? Executive privilege invocation is there to protect conversations between the President and his advisers.  So either he was involved and is invoking this correctly (which in turn is not such a good thing) or he’s dishonestly invoking the privilege.
5. But we know he tells lies (big ones too getting “4 Pinocchio’s” ) … so … believe what you will.
6. Uruguay makes a move.
7. Why does motivated reasoning always affect the “other guy”. It’s “you are affected” not “we are affected”.
8. A reminder why an elephant is a mouse to government specs in the context of the new Obama DREAM directive.
9. Our network of premises.
10. Zooom.
11. Pretend to be gay or Christian akin to the Turing test.

Good morning.

1. Executive privilege and flip flops. Soon we’ll see Mr Obama’s remarks on Mr Bush’s use of privilege I suspect. Interesting to watch defenders of Mr Bush’s use of this now attack Mr Obama and vice versa. A pox on all your houses.
2. Like that noted here.
3. So … has Mr Obama said he is involved in the Fast/Furious programme by his words that is what it would take to involve executive privilege.
4. Faint praise for Mr Obama.
5. Never fear, the left won’t hear you … that’s a message they’ve conditioned themselves to not hear.
6. It is not however on account of epistemic closure, a term misused widely. Now that you know what epistemic closure actually is, we can all stop misusing the term.
7. Exegesis and the detective narrative.
8. Technical know-how and the US.
9. Basic education and college costs.
10. Intelligent TSA screening … hmm.
11. And computers are relatively simple … but make a good argument about central planning.
12. Praising the hybrid, and missing the points of why the don’t “kick ass”, which is that hybridization of vehicles only pays if they are already far too heavy (you get less and less payback from hybridizing as the vehicle gets lighter).
13. On religious freedom …

Good morning.

1. While the left seems unaware of the workings of sexual apparatus (apparently they are unaware that the fetus gestates in something called the uterus at the same time ignore the whys and wherefores of polite discourse) …
2. they also continue to blithely ignore and keep quite about larger problems or the elephant in the room.
3. Demographics of abortion and political party.
4. Hmm. I thought it would have had something to do with the serial killing of women and children that the Palestinians keep doing.
5. The (real) medical problems of the sort not addressed by the Democrat vision of how to fix things with redistribution.
6. An economist look at what the medical fixes that the right might have suggested/supported.
7. Killing from a distance is not COIN and no way to “win hearts and minds” at all.
8. This sort of thing, if the press was honest and unbiased, would have come out more than 4 years ago.
9. Some reading suggestions.
10. There’s some missing logic here (looking at his enumerated list of logic leading to inflation or not) … look at college costs and its rampant rise ahead of inflation (with no concomitant rise in quality) due in a large part to “free money” pumped in by government grants and loans. Prices can inflate in the presence of money unforced by supply.
11. DREAM … out the window.
12. Of partisanship and undercover journalism.
13. And someday perhaps the disgusting unaffirmative action supported by liberals will end in our schools too.
14. Is this right? How about Constitutional?

Apparently common construction practice is to build the sewage out piping from your house to extend 3-4 feet with heavy cast iron piping and to use two to three foot lengths of clay pipe after that. A consequence of this is local bushes and trees have roots seeking water sources find the joints in those clay pipes, insinuate themselves and eventually block the pipe. Which in turns either backs up in a basement drain or in a basement toilet, whichever is lower. Ours chose the drain … and a wonderful outflow of stuff was discovered late last night in our laundry room.

Synchronicity abounds however in that we were this weekend (and still have not finished) watching In Darkness, a WWII film concerning a group of less than a dozen Jewish men, women, and children hiding in the sewers in the then Polish Lwow, now Ukrainian city of Lviv. These people owed their life to an anti-semitic sewer worker and the complex nature of Polish/Ukrainian <=> Jewish Polish/Ukraine is explored in the movie. The book on which this is based Girl in the Green Sweater, by my understanding was authored by one of the young girls who survived that which the movie portrays. The synchronicity of course points to the sewage flowing in our basement and in the film … on the same day.