Good morning. 

1. Lent begins, and a popular American company gets in the act in Greece.
2. A thought on the Lenten process.
3. Normally critical of Mr Krugman, one person gives him his due.
4. Of rights, place, and a film.
5. Talking union.
6. Way out on the Palin derangement limb or … how un-self-aware a blogger sounds when talking about the putative self-awareness (or lack) of those whom he basically has zero personal knowledge.
7. A good coda for the Krugman/Iowahawk exchange.
8. A odd way to praise a translation.
9. Dimension and scale.
10. Plumbing the depths of young male stupidity.
11. Fisticuffs and gender.
12. The genesis of modern science.

I’ve been a bit of a techie for quite some time (I’m in the biz, so it comes with the territory). I’ve had e-mail in one form or another since the late 80s (using dial-up Unix machines). I keep up with what’s going on, even if I don’t buy the vast majority of it. I like what’s happening in the tech world, generally.

But there’s one thing I’ve not figured out. I’ve always preferred CDs that I can buy and hold. I can play them on a CD player or in my car. Anytime, anywhere. Sure, I’ve had MP3 players for a long time , but I’ve always pulled the audio from the CD first and then copied it to my player; first an old RIO player, then a Sansa, and these days an iPod Touch. Never an issue.

But for some reason, huge music publishers are trying to figure out a way to do exactly that; the same thing I’ve been doing for a decade.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is in talks with record companies to give iTunes music buyers easier access to their songs on multiple devices, three people with knowledge of the plans said.

Apple is negotiating with music companies, including Vivendi SA (VIV)’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd., said the people, who asked for anonymity because the talks are private. An agreement may be announced by midyear, two of the people said.

The arrangement would give users more flexibility in how they access purchased music. Apple and the record labels are eager to maintain demand for digital downloading amid rising popularity for Internet services such as Pandora Media Inc., which don’t sell tracks and instead let users stream songs from the Web, whatever the device.

Talk of streaming music providers aside (and I love Pandora), I already have access to my music on multiple devices. This is because I have the physical media and can do with it what I want. Today, not 4 months from now. It’s for this reason I don’t even intend to buy any music from the iTunes store.

I like the concept of buying just single songs that you like rather than a whole album that you might not like the rest of, but if it requires Apple and at least 5 other music publishing houses to figure out how to get the music you buy onto multiple platforms, did you really buy it in the first place?

Ordnance found on a York city street!
It seems that the police were summoned after a man discovered live ordnance in a puddle of water. From The York Press,

A STARTLED man has told how he found a bullet lying in a York city-centre street.

Tim Stark said he was unloading items into the MOR Music store where he works in Fossgate yesterday morning when he spotted what he believed to be a live .22 bullet gleaming in a puddle.

That’s right – the ordnance was a lone .22LR cartridge, such as is used to “plink” empty cans, shoot gophers, etc.

This, my friends, is what happens when you vilify (and confiscate) firearms.

###

I’ll bet they made no bones about shooting the whole 9 yards
An Engadget post about the iPad 2 generated some interesting comments, especially regarding just how broad the knowledge base is of some of its readers. While we live in a Google-rich world, with every bit of information seemingly at the tips of our fingers, it seems that some individuals have issues with commonly used idioms.

First, the original post,

Ignore the fact that the iPad 2 is likely just a few weeks away — we’re talking about the here and now. You’ve read our $0.02 on a few of these, but why not throw a few opinions of your own in comments below?

Then, some of the comments that resulted,

just to let you know the phrase is “two sense” not “two cents”

…

the phrase, dear Mike, is “to sense” meaning get yourself some sense before making nonsense corrections.

…

No, its definitely $.02 as in 2 cents

…

What kind of bonehead are you? Obviously, the correct phrase is “too scents!”

…

That doesn’t make any sense! The phrase is “my two cents” it’s originally from an English saying “my two pennies worth”. Get your facts straight before you start correcting people.

###

Choosing pets over children – sad article of the week
While the myth of adolescence may certainly be a reality, it seems we have created a generation of self-indulgent perpetual adolescents, intent on driving themselves into the realms of PD James’ Children of Men.

###

Rob Bell, oops
Perhaps it was a brilliant publicity stunt, which succeeded in getting a whole lot of free exposure. But I’m wondering if they’ve not shot themselves in the foot for any future work?

###

I apologize, really
I truly believed that the people of California would not re-elect Elmo-loving Boxer (m’am).

Good morning.

1. TSA, coming where?
2. If it doesn’t do that, what’s the point?
3. Economics and nonsense.
4. Attacked? For what?
5. That’s the attraction of “pragmatism”, after all having principles is just soooo limiting.
6. Jailed in Germany.
7. The FDA strikes again.
8. What you know is wrong, examine for example the Puritan preacher.
9. Happiness and the US.
10. An interesting comparison made by the left.
11. Visiting a memorial.
12. Not the digital revolution we have come to expect.

It’s not every day that I will link to an article by Kirsten Powers but this one is worth reading in its entirety:

During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.

I’ll admit I bought the argument—it makes intuitive sense—and initially opposed cutting off funding for precisely that reason.

Then I did a little research.

Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. This doesn’t mean that access to contraception causes more abortion—though some believe that—but that it doesn’t necessarily reduce it.

In the U.S., the story isn’t much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy; 32 percent had had concerns about contraceptive methods; 26 percent had had unexpected sex, and 1 percent had been forced to have sex. Not one fraction of 1 percent said they got pregnant because they lacked access to contraception. Some described having unexpected sex, but all that can be said about them is that they are irresponsible, not that they felt they lacked access to contraception.

Read the rest of this entry

The Left has been energized lately about Charles and David Koch; the brothers who run Koch Industries and give to right-leaning causes. What’s interesting is that the Left simultaneously ignores the money that comes in from George Soros. Personally, I don’t mind rich people giving their money away to causes they agree with, whether liberal, conservative or otherwise.  But the Left has been apoplectic over the Kochs, or, as John Hinderaker says, they have an unhealthy Koch habit. Charles Koch wrote an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal on Tuesday laying out what his issues are; getting rid of "crony capitalism" and massive government spending & debt so that entrepreneurs aren’t stifled at the expense of the politically connected. So…why is the Left against this?

Medicare is losing $48 billion a year from fraud and otherwise improper payments. And Democrats want to give the government more control over our health care purse? Really?

A Christian politician in Pakistan, the country’s minister for minorities’ affairs, was assassinated yesterday for speaking out against the proposed blasphemy law, that would make it a crime to insult the Prophet Muhammad. This is the second high-profile murder related to this law. This may have been perpetrated by Islamic militants, but moderates within the "religion of peace" are getting a bad name from all of this. The problem is, there are a lot of those militants all over the world.

And finally, a civics lesson. (Click for a larger image.)

Goooood morning.

1. Mr Krugman caught lying with statistics.
2. S;peaking of the skewering of NYTimes punditry.
3. Anti-Semitism and racism.
4. Showing its demographic weakness, so who is supposed to be buying these things, besides the rich wanting to badge as green?
5. Stupid academic folly, more here.
6. Continuing the folly of the non-exceptional status of man.
7. Climate and cycles.
8. Vice or virtue?
9. Mr Obama as neo-con?
10. Billionares and the left, a question.

Back in October, I said this:

If jobs start getting created after big Republican wins in November, it’ll likely be because the "Party of No" will be there to curb this uncertainty.

And now?

Employers in February hired at the fastest pace in almost a year and the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent—a nearly two-year low.

The economy added 192,000 jobs last month, with factories, professional and business services, education and health care among those expanding employment. Retailers, however, trimmed jobs. State and local government, wrestling with budget shortfalls, slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November.

The government’s report Friday bolstered hopes that employers will shift into a more aggressively hiring mode and allow the economic recovery to get on firmer footing.

The unemployment rate has been falling for three months, down from 9.8 percent in November.

I’m no economist, but this sort of clear cause-and-effect is rarely seen in politics. But indeed, taking the uncertainty out of economic policy has done what it should have done; allowed businesses to take a deep breath and jump back in to a hiring mode. The Obama administration’s policies were all over the map and were giving businesses heartburn trying to predict what new regulations would come out that afternoon. The "Party of No" has returned stability to the process, and now unemployment is going down.

Was that so hard to understand, really?

…of Libya’s Human Rights record, such as it is.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has postponed consideration of a report that praises Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s government for its human rights record.

The report was written several months before the uprising in Libya — which has pitted Qaddafi, as well as armed loyalists and mercenaries, in a violent battle against his own people. But it was nevertheless scheduled for consideration and a vote on March 18, even as the U.N. General Assembly voted Monday to suspend Libya from the Human Rights Council.

Because everything was pretty good in Libya under a 40+ year dictator until just a couple weeks ago. Look, real human rights are the result of an underlying belief in the principle. If, at the drop of a hat, you’re dropping bombs on your own people, they never really had human rights to begin with; just a convincing façade.

Good morning.

1. Plutarch on the modern politician, while the quote is focused on Mr Obama I think the application is far wider.
2. Working in DC.
3. Female and pre-natal.
4. Stimulus and effect. That multiplier looks negative, eh?
5. “Afraid of the police?” Seriously? Perhaps that’s a key difference between conservative and not-conservative. 
6. Protesters in Wisconsin.
7. Guns and feminism … go hand in hand.
8. Fer the national Christie luv.
9. So, I’m going to be on a list?
10. Having fun in the scientific field.
11. At least one preson is confused about voluntary vs involuntary contributions.
12. Sex and men, …  and the gender academics.
13. A felony?!
14. Hanging with (very rich) scum.

I sometimes cross-post items from this blog to my diary on RedState.com, one of the top conservative web sites. Occasionally, the editors find a diary entry that they like and promote it to the front page. They did this to my post about the Christian family in the UK that was denied the chance to do foster parenting because of their beliefs. This, of course, gives it much wider readership, and I wound up getting an e-mail from Melody Scalley who does a weekly conservative radio show on WESR in Virginia. She wanted to interview me about the article, and so this afternoon we had a 5-10 minute talk on the phone, which she’ll be running on her show tomorrow night.

I don’t see any way to get streaming audio or a podcast, so I’ll see if I can come up with the segment from somewhere. But if you just happen to be on the Virginia peninsula near Onley, tune in tomorrow to 1330 AM or 103.3 FM between 6 and 8pm.

From HotAir, a link to this jello,

A coalition of progressive Christian leaders has taken out a full-page ad that asks “What would Jesus cut?” in Monday’s edition of Politico, the opening salvo in what the leaders say will be a broader campaign to prevent cuts for the poor and international aid programs amid the budget battle raging in Washington.

What would Jesus cut? Seriously? For starters, I think he’d trim it down to five loaves and two fish.

Good morning.

1. A person who thinks the President is not such a Constitutional law expert after all.
2. Ohhh. rhetoric with guns. Speaking of which.
3. That pesky muliplier.
4. Pen and sword … is the pen mighter because it can sign checks … or does the checkbook fit in the sword category?
5. A really good piece on the Wisconsin thing, which unsurprisingly indicts the media for their astoundingly poor coverage.
6. More Wisconsin coverage here.
7. More rank stupidity in the government.
8. I think those are backronyms. 
9. Against the “diversity rational” for affirimative action.
10. Talking liberal/conservatives and academia.
11. The Pentacoltal Christian couple in-the-news regarding homosexuality and foster children in the UK (photo).
12. Mr Krugman, professional idiot? Hello? The country is larger than the Boston/New York/Philadelphia/DC metro area … use your economic “smarts” to consider the economic feasibility of rail and say … any given medium to small city in the MidWest, South or West. Pretend you realize that rail feasibility hinges on population density just a little bit. 
13. Looking at the choices of “experts” on CNN panels. And “they” say FOXNews is biased. Pot meet kettle.

That’s precisely what a court in the UK has done. They’ve cited the values that the country was founded on — Judeo-Christian ones — to rule against holding to those values.

There is no place in British law for Christian beliefs, despite this country’s long history of religious observance and the traditions of the established Church, two High Court judges said on Monday.

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong.

The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values.

In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.

Is Britain’s government "largely secular"? Yes, it is, as are all Western democracies. Our own founding fathers in the US did not set up a theocracy. But this by no means suggests that the government should take no position that happens to coincide with a religious view. Laws in our country against murder, theft and extortion are rooted in Christian morality; the Biblical ideas of the intrinsic value of each human being, and the values of justice and fairness. Further, we have death penalties, when we do have them, for only the worst offenders, and for the same reasons.

While other countries may have similar laws, this is more than a law issue. Our culture itself was shaped by these same Judeo-Christian values. I’ll make the obligatory disclaimer that it has been implemented by fallible human beings, and it’s not always been in a manner consistent with itself. Still, this foundation has produced the freest, wealthiest, healthiest and, yes, most tolerant countries in history. Millions of immigrants and refugees are trying to get into Western democracies all the time because of the results of holding to those values.

In fact, the judges unwittingly note this foundation in their ruling.

“Although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century,” they said.

It was a “paradox” that society has become simultaneously both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse in religious affiliation, they said.

“We sit as secular judges serving a multicultural community of many faiths. We are sworn (we quote the judicial oath) to ‘do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will’.”

The irony is clear. These judges are citing an oath, that has been proscribed by the government influenced by the Judeo-Christian culture, to rule against people exercising their Judeo-Christian beliefs. You won’t find an oath like this in countries where you can be persecuted for believing the "wrong" religion. This value of fairness to all, regardless of who they are, is thanks to, for the most part, the Biblical beliefs of the Johns family, the ones trying to become foster parents.

Is it, therefore, "fair" to only allow people with the right beliefs and religious affiliation, approved by the government, to become foster parents? Will the court make the same ruling for Muslims and Jews who feel the same way? Apparently, society’s shifting standards win out over a basic, fundamental right of freedom of religion.

However, when fostering regulations were taken into account, “the equality provisions concerning sexual orientation should take precedence” over religious rights, they said.

And thus, the more homosexuals, or any group with a protected status, can convince governments that they must have special rights to override basic human rights, the more the foundation is chipped away; the very foundation that made this society what it is today, with our without an established Church. 

Some Anglican church officials say essentially the same thing.

Speaking personally, Canon Dr Chris Sugden, the executive secretary of Anglican Mainstream, said the judges were wrong to say religion was a matter of private individuals’ beliefs.

“They are treating religion like Richard Dawkins does, as if Christian faith was on a parallel with Melanesian frog worship,” he said.

“The judgment asserts that there is no hierarchy of rights, but itself implies there is one in which the right to practise one’s religion is subordinated to the secular assumptions about equality.”

Gays use to say that they didn’t want special rights, just equal rights. This is another example of special rights that cut to the very core of the free societies they live in. This is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Good morning.

1. Libya and the UN.
2. Symptomatic of our modern world?
3. A slippery slope path suggested.
4. A anthropology, in a literal sense (a logos of anthropos).
5. From pro-choice to pro-life, a journey recounted.
6. The plan all along? The backed-into-a-corner aspects of Obamacare. 
7. Where is the outrage?
8. The god gene.
9. When 1-hour charge is a pretense of workable. It seems to me a industry standard swappable battery is the way to go, that way you can get a re-fueling in minutes not hours.
10. Blogger=extremist.
11. Parkour.
12. Fantasy on Wall Street?
13. Hostile Op-Ed. 
14. 6-months to a year from now, when I note something like this, it will be assumed by my liberal interlocoturs that it never happened because I fail to google and re-locate it. 
15. A downside to no-fly.
16. Losing a foster child because of homosexuality.