HT: Belmont Club's Memory and Survival

Sippican Cottage: Have A Pleasant Memorial Day. Try Not To Forget What It's About

Footnote:

And, lest we forget,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry....

[HT: Patvann]

Once Only

almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full

moon

in the center of the sky.
--- Gary Snyder, 1958

I don't remember who first played "The Landscape Game" with me. It would have been many, many years ago. I also don't remember what my answers were to the game's ten questions, but I wish I had written them down. Played once the game is played forever. Once the first answers are lost, they are lost forever.

You can only play The Landscape Game once in your life. Once you know the questions and the interpretations any chance of replying honestly and openly is gone. It is one of those things that, if you know the "solution," makes any further revelation impossible. "The Landscape Game" is true once and once only.

So no peeking by any means. There's no "win" in the game and the only player you can cheat is yourself.

On Friday you will see why.

The good thing about the game is that once it has been played with you, you can then play it with others. The only provision is that those you play it with can never have played it before. If that has happened, the game is not just spoiled, there's no real point to it.

That is because "The Landscape Game" is all about getting to the Real Point; about the revelation of yourself to yourself and to one another. It can be played in groups if the group is trusting of all the people in it. It is often good for there to be a glass or two of wine before playing, but that's not strictly speaking necessary -- giving a massage or making love will do just fine in the absence of wine.

I don't really know the provenance and the origins of "The Landscape Game" with any certainty. I can only repeat here what I was told when it was first given to me. It sounds a bit pat and I'm sure others will know better where it came from, or even the other names by which the game is known. But it is very much a part of the oral tradition, so all I can do is pass along what I know.

"The Landscape Game" is a variation of an ancient Chinese "thought experiment," or means of self-examination and revelation. It is thought to predate the I-Ching ( +/- 2700 BC ), perhaps as a precursor, but nobody is sure exactly when it came into being. It is seldom written down, but is instead passed from person to person across the generations. Those with whom it is played take it and play it with others. And so it goes on.

Like many of the deeper things in this life, "The Landscape Game" is very simple on the surface, but like a stone dropped into the center of a still pond its ripples will spread out.

It takes a minimum of two to play but beyond that any number can play. It could, conceivably, be played in a stadium holding a hundred thousand if one person led and none of the 99,999 others had ever played the game before and were each equipped with a pencil and an index card. (Which you might think about getting for yourself just about now.)

The game consists of ten questions which are always asked in the same order.

The one being asked the questions should think calmly about the answers to each and respond in a detailed manner giving the first clear thought that enters his or her mind. These answers can be written down or simply remembered by those playing the game.

Each question must be answered before the next question is given. There is, however, no clock used in "The Landscape Game" so it can be played across hours, days, weeks, etc.

The only rule is that the person being asked the questions must never have been asked the questions before. In this, the questioner relies on the honesty of the person receiving the questions.

Ready? No? No problem. I'll wait.

Ready? Good. Let's play.

Continued...

What are ordinary Americans to make of this strange man-child who has, through sloth and design in the media, sloth and inattention among the body politic, and cupidity, corruption and chicanery within his dark political machine, risen to dominate the landscape? What are ordinary Americans to make of this most un-American of all our erstwhile leaders; a man profoundly ungrounded in the American earth? It is a protean question, painful and difficult to contemplate, to which ordinary Americans will give but a partial answer this November.

In the meantime, there will be an ever increasing addition of possible answers and pondering added to the already towering tsunami of non-information available on the subject of Obama. It is by now a commonplace that never has so little been known about so pivotal a figure in our history. In this case partial ignorance leads not to bliss but rather an opera buffa that is sung in the key of existential distress and portends a finale that is not "a comedy tonight," but a Roman Tragedy replete with fire and blood.

Conspiracy abhors a vacuum and we've had more than our share of theories, speculations, dire warnings, and dark murmurings about a leader's life that is, in many ways, less documented than the undocumented Democrats oozing across our southern borders.

• He is /is not a natural-born citizen.
• His mother was / was not a harlot.
• His father was / was not a man named Obama.
• His mentor was a black Communist pornographer/poet.
• His mentor was a crazed, race-hustling preacher on the make in Chicago.
• His mentor was a bitter Red agitator with an sheaf of techniques for destroying the country.
• If we knew his college grades we'd see how brilliant he is.
• We don't know his college grades because he's much less brilliant that he seems.
• He wrote his books.
• He couldn't write a rubber check.
• His books are the accurate transcript of his life.
• His books are carefully crafted legends.
• He's out to rule the world.
• He's just another hack politician in the iron mold of corrupt Chicago pols since time immemorial.

With Obama the best that can be said is, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." We simply do not know enough, even now, to know who this stranger among us is. We sense, dimly at first, but with increasing conviction that he does not mean us well and that he is controlled by some strange amalgam of interior compulsions. The hallmarks of his administration's actions and his speeches seem to be to do many small but insidious things in deep background, a few large and destructive moves in the foreground, give as few details as possible, take no questions, and, if a question is taken, to give no answer. It is an administration that sees no foreign enemies, only domestic ones. Theories about his history and his current character and motives abound as facts fade. The chances are that when he departs the stage most will still say, "Who was that masked man?"

We could ask, in the words of Sinatra, whether this man with the power is "a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn or a king?" But we'd get no answer that would satisfy. We might as well read tea leaves, read auguries from the flights of flocks, divine answers from sheep's entrails, or descend into the subways and read the words of the prophets on the walls between the stations.

Or, in the spirit of divination that has lately gripped the nation, we can simply look at a photograph from a simple time in the man-child's life. As the writer said in Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, "Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school."

Or in the sand on a beach in Hawaii:

A toddler sitting and laughing on the shoulders of his grandfather, who would become the only father figure the child would ever know. Perhaps it was while looking at this picture that Obama or his ghost writer came up with, in Dreams From My Father, “One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather's shoulders as the astronauts from one of the Apollo missions arrived at Hickam Air Force Base after a successful splashdown." The shoulders of the grandfather seem to loom large in the legend.

The photograph holds, as so many people’s photographs do, one of the happy moments. But I’d like to see the next few moments. I’d like to see what happened next after the laugh. I’d like to see what that boy in the background with the stick raised as if to throw it at the heads of the toddler and grandfather in the foreground did. Did he let it fly? Did it strike the laughing toddler in the back of the head? Did an abrupt attack from behind form a lasting impression? Or did it miss? Or was it merely a brief gesture signifying nothing?

One can imagine all sorts of next moments but know none of them. Which is, of course, the problem with the burgeoning field of “Obama Historical Studies.” This man’s personal history is simply a collection of small tokens separated by vast swathes of time empty of data and detail. The one thing we can be certain of is that these empty spaces, these profound absences without leave, are not due to happenstance but due to design.

Later in the dubious “autobiography,” the aptly short-titled Dreams, we stumble across this statement: "I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they'd leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight."

Maybe that’s how it works still. Maybe that's at the root of the grand bargain made between this man and the media and those that voted him power. He keeps his trouble hidden and many decide to just leave him alone and live with him. That would explain the curious silence that soaks sheaves of his erstwhile supporters that are not currently getting checks cut by the Obama Booster Industry. It’s the policy of a profound invert, “I don’t tell so you don’t ask.”

At this point, trying to understand who or what Obama was is like peeling an onion. You unwrap layer after layer and when you reach the core you have nothing; you have the Oakland of American politicians, a man who has no there there.

This is the central fallacy and futility of "Obama Studies." You cannot, in the end, understand a person as carefully crafted as Obama by examining the past. He has no past. He’s the man upon the stair that was not there. You can only understand Obama in the present by looking at what he and his minions do.

Once your attention is directed away from the past and into the present it all becomes as simple as that snapshot from the beach. What one sees is a man of dubious ancestry rising on the shoulders of a previous generation, stalked by a paranoid fantasy , and becoming, as a result, a bad man with an evil intent, supported by a rag-tag collection of apparatchiks, with a megalomaniac design for a bleak future; a man that does not stand with his feet planted in the American soil, but forever in the backwash of the slow Pacific swell on its most distant shore.

But in the end it is also clear that this man is not wholly someone who has been invented by himself or others in the shadows, but by us as a country and a culture. Simply put, this leader who cannot lead is the fruit of our more than 50 years of downward drift and rising degeneracy. In this we are like the happy toddler on the beach waiting for a stick in the back of the head to wake us up or put us down like an old dog; like, as Ezra Pound wrote so long ago, "an old bitch gone in the teeth, a botched civilization."

Not for everyone, but those who, as I do, recognize this as the beginning of the finest science fiction novel ever written will like it. YouTube - "The Stars my Destination", Chapter 1. by Alfred Bester It is found on the extraordinary YouTube channel, Spoken Verse by Tom O'Bedlam

Another segment of the book can be found at "Freak Men:" Gully Foyle Interviews a Robot Bartender @ AMERICAN DIGEST

One of life's better moments: Found at Christopher Taylor's Word Around the Net: Picture of the Day where Taylor notes:

"What I love about the picture most is that this is gonna hurt dad. She's coming at him knees-first and even with how little she weighs, this is gonna sting. And he's not even wincing; he either has no clue what's coming or he knows and doesn't care because that's his baby and he won't get to do this kind of thing with her much longer."

I know what he means now. Wish I'd known it then.

"If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
-- Psalm 139

That long green swell that sears my eyes
As I drowse on this bed of black stones,
Is it the Irish coast rising in the dawn
Beyond the brushed silver of my cowling
Where, throughout the night, I trusted
Not in some desert God's directions,
But like all fools who dreamed my flight
In the calibrated compasses of man?

That rushing sound, is it the crowd at Le Bourget,
Swarming past the barriers and lights
To scavenge my Spirit; to lift me up
Into the air that only heroes breathe?
Or is it the age-old sigh of sea on stones,
Known to those who pace the shingle
And the swirled black sands that wrap
These impossible islands in a shawl of waves?

That painting daubed on the chapel's window --
Not the roselined mandala at Chartres
Where flame in glass misprisoned sings --
But a cruder Savior, bearded, browned and popular,
An icon obtainable to plain sight, a trim God
Limned flat upon the glass in dull gesso,
And, when light moves behind it, looking down....
Is this the sign in which, at last, we conquer?

Conquer? I'd laugh the laugh of stones
Had I but eyes to see and lips to breathe.
No, I am content with my reduced cathedral
Here above the ocean where man and apes
Together waltzing lie, having done at last
With all horizons, having done at last with sky.

If you would see me now pass by
The small green church where ancient banyans
Bloom with shade, and guard
The tower and the bell which you
May toll for you or me, or other souls
Not yet delivered to the stars and sea.

And then, retreating, mark the tree
Whose tendriled branches hold but air,
And shadow both the church and stones
Beneath which wait both apes and men
Who, foolish with their hunger for the air,
Swung branch to branch up all the eons
And, letting go at last, they learned,
Through my night's leap, to rise.

Sea, stone, tree, ape and Savior:
These now my long companions are.
Better here, I think, in this dank green
Cartoon of Paradise, this slight-of-hand Eden;
Better here beneath the pumice stones
Where strangers drop a wreathe a year.

Better here than there --
Hovering over the widening waves alone,
Suspended between the old world and the new,
Trusting in man's compass to guide me home;
Descending down sharp cold blade of dawn.
Better, much better, here at last to wait
Where the shawl of the waves below enfolds
That fire they could never snare.

         -- At the Palapala Ho'omau Church, Hana, Maui

Composed and photographs taken on site. Hana, 2003 Lindburgh flew the Atlantic and opened up the skies 83 years ago this week. May 20–21, 1927. An inch of time but all is "changed, changed utterly."

Yesterday's spate of look-backs on the Mt. St. Helens eruption recalled an essay from some years back on disasters and being prepared for them.

It all started in Laguna Beach when something went BUMP!

And then
something went BUMP!
How that bump made us jump!

We looked!
-- The Cat in the Hat

ABOUT QUARTER TO NINE this serene Sunday morning, as I was sitting down and wondering what to write about, the house bumped me. One BUMP with the sound of "Thump!" as if a giant's fist had given the floor a little love tap. And then... nothing. No rattle of plates and shuddering of books in the shelves. No rising hiss of gas lines pulled open. None of the sounds of panicked birds. Just one BUMP with a thump and then everything goes back to "Condition California Normal."

Everything except me.

When you've recently had a number of homes 400 yards from you just wake up one morning and decided to take a slide down their hill, you tend to become just a wee bit oversensitive to your environment. That solid BUMP had me out of my chair and moving toward the front door with dedication. Once second, I'm sitting. Next second, I'm standing in the middle of the intersection looking up and down the streets. I'm
paying special attention as to whether or not I can see any tall trees swaying on this windless morning. Nope. Nothing. But the birds agreed with me since they had, for once, shut up.

I also found myself standing in the intersection in my pajamas with bare feet. A neighbor dressed in a robe and boxer shorts came out on his third-floor balcony, wallet and keys in his hand.

"You feel that?" I asked.

Continued...

MAY 17, 1980

MAY 18, 1980

On May 18th, 1980, thirty years ago today, at 8:32 a.m., the ground shook beneath Mount St. Helens in Washington state as a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck, setting off one of the largest landslides in recorded history - the entire north slope of the volcano slid away. As the land moved, it exposed the superheated core of the volcano setting off gigantic explosions and eruptions of steam, ash and rock debris. The blast was heard hundreds of miles away, the pressure wave flattened entire forests, the heat melted glaciers and set off destructive mudflows, and 57 people lost their lives. The erupting ash column shot up 80,000 feet into the atmosphere for over 10 hours, depositing ash across Eastern Washington and 10 other states. Collected here are photos of the volcano and its fateful 1980 eruption. -- The Big Picture

The finest, clearest days in Seattle are those when the inhabitants remark, "The Mountain is out." The Mountain is Mount Rainier, a peak so looming and solitary on the edge of the Puget Sound basin that it makes its own weather. Here's a peek at the mountain I took last week from I-5 inside Seattle city limits.

Continued...

Alas, the source of the threatening spew is nothing so simple as an oil spill off the southern coast. Instead, the source spews everywhere. It spurts up when you least expect it so dependably that you begin to expect it everywhere. Toxic, dark, and odious it sweeps in waves across the land staining and besmirching all it touches. A clean-up at this point would probably cost more money than there is money. Indeed it would only exacerbate the crisis since it is, for the most part, made of money. The toxic spew, uncapped and surging at more than 100,000 gallons per hour is.... bullshit.

Yes, after years of unremitting bullshit the bullshit spew shows no signs of lessening. It builds by the day, hour, minute. The most recent example of bullshit hit when I was on guard against it at the local source of contemporary American bullshit, the weekly "Farmers" market.

Everybody loves "Farmers" markets in America. They are everywhere now. They metastasize in our urban cores like eczema in a teenager's armpits. Every snoburbia has to have one or more in order to be a bona-fide snoburbia. Where else, I ask you, can white people go to be reassured of the proposition that small, local, "sustainable," and oh-so-organic farms can feed a nation of more than 300 million people for only three times to cost of current farming methods? Farmers Markets are malls for morons and we all love them. Pass the drool cup and the goat cheese samples, thank you.

I'm primed for the ordinary and established catechism of the Church of Eternal American Bullshit whenever I go to the "Farmers" markets, but I was unprepared for this fresh sign in an empty storefront on the hip Ballard side-street that supports merchants selling nut-butters at $50 a pound every Sunday. It promised levels of bullshit previously thought impossible:

Click on and study this sign of impending bullshit in detail. It's got everything.

Just for fun let's count the Lumps of Bullshit embedded in this "exciting" business plan.

1. Artisanal This is now federally mandated bullshit. Everything is "artisanal" these days, except, for only a moment, toilet paper. And that's coming.
2. Gelato Actually soft ice cream but we don't want anybody with just a high-school education coming in our store, our block, our neighborhood, our city and looking for a scoop.
3. "from scratch" Yes, we raise the free-range dairy cows ourselves.
4. "on site" And milk them in the back room.
5. "University certified" One of our investors is a UW professor of advanced anti-American studies and he certifies all people associated with this business are registered Democrats. Who is this moron disguising himself as in the "Fish Named Wanda" ice cream parlor?
6. Master Gelatiere Enzo D'Ambrosio Also known as "Master Fucking Gelatiere Enzo Fucking D'Ambrosio." As in "D'Ambrosio my ass."
7. Organic and Natural Because "organic" is not natural enough and "natural" is not organic enough.
8. traditional In the tradition of hippy rip-off artists since 1968.
9. Imported Those cows we're milking in the back room? Rustled them in Mexico and had six coyotes drive them across the border in the dead of night.
10. No additives and a catalog of same We add nothing except the finest bullshit. Taste the flava!
11. Low in Fat Have two!
12. Low in calories Fuck it, have ten!
13. churned Hard to get ice cream without churning, so okay we'll do it.
14. slow But we'll do it real slow so that your don't think you're buying a Happy Meal.
15. authentic As opposed to what?
16. experience! Oh the experience you get when you pay $10 a scoop is not one you will soon forget.

and of course the biggest stinkiest chunk of bullshit:

17. Italian Name: Gelateria Artigianele: Say that outloud three times and people will think you're gargling.

It's staggering that people crank out this crap when what they are up to is opening an ice-cream store in which they will sell you flavored churned curds at around one dollar a bite. But is the way these things get done these days. There has to be a thick layer of bullshit smeared on any new business opening around these "Farmers" market sections of our snoburbias and there is. And it does.

It works in these zones because they are thick with educated and intellectually insane white people. The business plan here is the one that we've been running from the control towers of the country since 2008. It is predicated on one simple notion; People dumb enough to vote in the Democrats and Obama will eat any bullshit you can serve.

Gelateria Artigianele? Just one little wavelet in the tsunami of bullshit sweeping across our land. If it keeps up you'll have to move onto a houseboat in the center of the oil slick in the gulf just to have a reasonably clean place to live.

I've been dealing with dental issues and as a result I get to experiment with various prescription drugs with the suffix "din". As a result, my mind comes up with strange activities. One of them was to print up and post this flier around the neighborhood.

As you can see, I'm getting results!

Lady Gaga's gotta be thinking, "Made it, ma. Top of the world!"

Unbelievable: "Don't Stop Believin'" - Lady Gaga, Elton John, Springsteen, Sting, Blondie, Shirley Bassey  

Let me repeat that: "Lady Gaga, Elton John, Springsteen, Sting, Blondie, Shirley Bassey sing Don't Stop Believing"

Got it? Good. Now shut up and watch it.

And no snarking about this or that moonbat's politics. As I noted elsewhere, if we vetted musicians today for their politics we'd be stuck with John Philip Sousa.

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Dear Lord, please let us elect a host of men and women like this to every office in the land. And, dear Lord, please let them all crush the insects of the media as completely as this one is crushed:

Via Matt Rooney @ The Save Jersey Blog who writes:

The antics of liberal columnist Tom Moran (and the anti-Christie curmudgeon Paul Mulshine Moonshine) are topics of regular discussion here at Save Jersey. Until now, however, no one else has had the intestinal fortitude to put them in their place except for your beloved and revered Blogger-in-Chief.

Then came along Governor Christopher J. Christie! Check out the INCREDIBLE (and entertaining) exchange he had with Moran at yesterday's "33 bills" press conference. When was the last time we saw a Republican elected official display this much backbone with the media, Save Jerseyans? Not since Reagan...

Makes you want to move to New Jersey just to campaign and vote for this man.

HT: James Simpson

Wikipedia: Richard Dawkins "British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, popular science author and transexual in transition.

Wikipedia: Emma Watson "a British actress, creationist, and model who rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in drag."

Admit it, nobody's ever seen them together.

Flyer from the Democrats for the election of 1864

How long has this carping bullshit about a simple and constitutional law passed in Arizona been going on? One week? Two? Three? No matter. The usual "insulted/outraged" gang of quislings and traitors from the White House to the out house have long since shot their bolt and are now in the lebenty-lebenth reiteration of their blathering bombast. The tiny gaggle of people persuadable on the issue have long since been persuaded. Unlike wine, bullshit does not improve with age, it just becomes flammable. The manufacturers of it grow tedious and tiresome. They need to put a gas-soaked sock in it and light up.

The problem in Arizona can be seen by anyone with access to Google Maps in satillite view. Here's one small section of the border a number of miles to the east of Nogales and near nothing in particular. You can see for yourself going to Buena Vista, Mexico HERE and scrolling east along the line. [Set the map to satellite view.]

Click the image to enlarge it and savor the detail of existential distress in trying to "control" such a border. Note that the scale in the lower left is set at 200 feet. That's 200 feet. As you look at this map you'll note not only the road on the Mexican side running along the border but the trunk road running across the border and into Arizona.

Continued...

In her 95th year, this happenstance kitchen collage of my mother's life is growing both richer and deeper. The image above is of what once was a bulletin board. It is kept in my mother's kitchen in her apartment to the rear of an unassuming but decent collection of apartments in the small city of Chico, California.

It's too bad the image of it is so small here on the page. But no matter how much I might enlarge the image of it, it could never be as big as what it represents. Although small in scale it is larger than the lives it chronicles. It is the sum of all love.

You'd miss that. If I could show it to you in real time and at its actual size, you'd still miss it. It would remain much as you see it here -- just a jumble of clips, slogans, photos, handicrafts and images. Aside from its complexity, it wouldn't mean all that much to you. These icons of other people's private lives never do.

And yet, if you have anything that even resembles a functioning family, there's a bulletin board like this somewhere in the various dwellings of your family. If you're lucky, there's more than one. You don't know what this one means, but you know what yours means. You know it all -- for better and for worse.

Still, to know the worst of the stories that lie behind these images you not only need to know the lives these commonplace icons chronicle, you have to be looking hard for the worse and, in the end, dragging it out of your own memory. If you work at finding the worst in people, you can always locate it.

But if those who keep these family altars are like my own mother in their dedication to them, you won't see them displayed. There will be no shadows there that you do not supply yourself.

My mother only adds the things of love to this board, never the things of disappointment, failure, heartbreak or betrayal. To do so would be a betrayal of the trust that keeping this board brings with it, and, to my mother at least, a waste of life.

My mother does not waste life.

In my mother's home not a scrap of love -- however faint or distant now -- is ever discarded. Everything that does not meet her measure is tossed away without pause or regret. If something comes her way that she deems special -- be it an out-of-focus photograph, a clipping from a far-away newspaper, a small note of thanks, or a pipe-cleaner figure made by one of the second graders she acts as a teacher's aide for -- it gets promoted to the bulletin board. Once there, as you can see, it stays. If something comes to her that's a downer, out it goes.

That's why my mother has two piles of scrap in the kitchen: one for recycling and one for the shredder. She gets a warm feeling by recycling, but she gets a real kick out of running things through the shredder.

At age 95, she's tiny but sharp. Quick to empathize and quicker still to laugh. Playing tennis several times a week kept her on her game in more ways than one. So does bridge and working as a teacher's aide with small children. She's wise that way but without pretense. If you ever told her she was wise, she'd shrug and ask you if you'd like another German pancake, this time with lemon juice and powdered sugar. She hasn't missed breakfast for nearly a century, which shows you, if you had any doubt, just how wise she is.

Years ago, after she sold her rooming house for college girls and moved into her apartment, she decided that the kitchen wall was perfect for a bulletin board that she could use to keep track of her busy schedule. Somewhere under everything else on the board we think there are things that pertain to schedules in the late 1980s, but it would take an archeological team to excavate them. Instead, one photo got put up, and then another, and then a clip of this and a note of that and, over time, it became the raucous riot of bits and pieces you can see here.

Babies and friends, present and past wives, can all be found. Girlfriends long let slide still peek out. Birthday parties and christenings, weddings, vacations, and graduations.... all the private triumphs and moments of personal happiness glisten and shine, one fit atop, against, behind, or aside the other as life rushed on and curved away, ebbed and then surged back again, brighter and larger than before.

If you knew all the pieces here as I do, you could review them and see the tokens of a life that begins before the end of the First World War and rolls along right up until today. It's a very big life to be contained on such a small board in such a small apartment, but my mother's genius when it comes to this collage is that, no matter how full it gets, she always finds room to add one more moment.

We don't know how she does it. It's a gift.

---

Mom on a bench created and dedicated to her by her friends and installed at the Chico Racquet Club in April, 2010.

This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
-- Vitai Lampada - Sir Henry Newbolt

When the world is too much with you, take a walk through the back streets and alleys of the neighborhood to the field behind the old school. There in a lake of early evening sunlight ringed round by blossoms in the shade, then and now, and far into the future, the game always comes back.

Pitcher, Queen Anne, Seattle May 7, 2010 [Click to enlarge]

Batter, Queen Anne, Seattle May 7, 2010 [Click to enlarge]

Everyday, it's "We've got your 5 to 50 Odd Internet Items per day RIGHT HERE!" at KA-CHING!, my tumblr page (**). Yes, it's work, work, work -- but every so often something comes up that makes it all worthwhile. Today that's this little take-down of your nuttier than the av-er-age feminist's new "book" which "celebrates" this bit of never-was "feminist technology" on the cover:

Speculum, nutcracker, or tallywhacker. You decide. If "speculum" it saddens me to point out to the Feminist editors and authors that the speculum is not "feminist technology," but was invented by a man, one J. Marion Sims, the father of gynecology. So, to coin a phrase, "Put that up your pipe and smoke it."

Heather Ault, turn in your "Sisterhood is Powerful" t-shirt.

technologylovesgender:

Here’s the new cover for the volume I co-edited.  Thanks Heather Ault for the artwork!

At this rate, "Feminist Technology" is going to be in a race with "Italian War Heroes" and "Islam's Greatest Inventions" for world's thinest book.

---

(**) Speaking of Tumblr, I don't see why everyone doesn't have a Tumblr. Taken all in all, it has to be the world's simplest blogging platform. It's like having your own personal scrapbook of things you like on the web as quotes, photos, videos, essays, and songs. I'm up to over 4,000 items in an easy to search form.

It just doesn't get easier. Check it out and get your own for free @ TUMBLR. Sign up, pick a theme, and then grab the bookmarklet for your bookmarks bar and Bob's yer uncle.

We have made a dark bargain with ourselves to let one of our cities die.

First published: October 2004 Read Part II below or at The Sacrifice and the Reckoning: The Event

"We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their schedule. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?" -- In conversation, July, 2004

THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers. We've seen it continue in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Spain, Russia, Italy and England.

Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule.

All these things we know. We know the nature and goals of our enemy well. Our army is at the ready and in the field. And yet we hesitate.

We hesitate because we believe our search for a moderate, modern outcome will somehow determine what actions our ancient enemy will pursue. We are a foolish people grown fat and fearful during the long peace.

We stay our hand and hobble our warriors and walk on wrapped in our suburban slumber.

The party in power shambles about speaking in color codes and hushed words of warning. It mumbles of "they" and it seeks love from where there is only hate. It is a party of quislings led by a traitor.

We are soothed on the days when our media feeds us only thick streams of pap concerning grisly murders of obscure women by their husbands, the latest fornication festivals of the lightly talented in music and the cinema, and estimates of how long a woman famous for finger-bowls will spend in jail. We are relieved because the media's relentless focus on the tripe and detritus of our culture tells us that the day of the sacrifice is not to be this day.

And so we dream on. We imagine that the cliff is not really directly in our path, believing on some persistent level that merrily, merrily our life is but a dream, rather than a somnambulant march through the gates of history that is all too real and, for as yet unknown thousands of us, all too lethal.

But this world is not a dream and our awakening will be into nightmare.

Continued...

"We have made a dark bargain with ourselves to let one of our cities die."

[First published: October 2004]

San Diego, California. August 6th, 11:36AM

THE TECATE TRUCK was just like all the other Tecate Beer trucks that went back and forth daily at the border crossing, except that it was not owned by Tecate. The driver of that truck spoke fluent Spanish and the truck was always loaded with Tecate. In time the US border guards got used to it. The difference was that this truck had, at its center, a narrow, hollow space shielded with thin sheets of lead so that no ambient radiation would escape.

It had cost The Base over $150,000 to convert the truck at a garage in Ensenada a year before. That was little enough when it came to securing the device which had cost the same group more than $10 million in Russia in 1997. In any event, the truck did its job and passed without incident over the border and into the United States at Tecate, California on August 6th. Dates were important to The Base, and this date was especially significant. After all, what could be more significant than the day on which Hiroshima was destroyed?

After clearing the border the Tecate Truck followed Highway 94 north to it's merge with Highway 8 at La Mesa, California, and then drove west towards Highway 5. It pulled off the road at a rest stop where it picked up a technician in a Tecate uniform who was carrying a case with the necessary electronics and a couple of weapons. After that, the two men followed the road thought the heart of San Diego. It got off the freeway in downtown and quickly made its way to the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway. It's total travel time from the border to downtown San Diego was just over an hour. It was running close to schedule. It was about 11:30 in the morning.

The truck pulled over and parked along North Harbor drive and the technician took out some binoculars and scanned the harbor beyond the Navy Region Southwest Complex whose entrance was less than 100 yards away. Intelligence was correct. The USS Ronald Reagan was in its home port and riding comfortably at anchor.

The technician opened his case and took a wire that ran from the back of the truck along the floorboards. He plugged it into a jack in the simple switching device in the case. He looked at the driver and smiled. The driver smiled back. They both began to recite a prayer in Arabic while looking over the San Diego harbor. At some point in the prayer, without really thinking about it, the technician threw the switch. In the next instant, at the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway in San Diego, California on a warm August morning, a miniature version of the Sun appeared on the surface of the Earth.

Continued...

What can I say? This soloist will ROCK YOUR WORLD!

As they speed thru the finish the flags go down.
The fans get up, and get out of town.
The arena is empty except for one man,
Still driving and striving as fast as he can

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up,
And long ago somebody left with the cup,
But he's driving and striving and hugging the turns,
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns.

He's going the distance.
He's going for speed.
She's all alone, all alone in her time of need.

Morgan @ House of Eratosthenes wants to work up some new names for old things:

"We have a lot of things infesting us that seem to hang around from one year to the next, because nobody puts together an organized campaign to make ‘em go away. And it isn’t possible to put together such a campaign if these things aren’t named. I thought, without taking the time to actually invent the names, I should start a little list of what they are."

Interesting. Here's my free-association "off-the-pop-of-my-head" names for the infestations collected on Morgan's list. Add or subtract at will.

1. Vaginism: That branch of feminism that seeks to divide privilege from responsibility, so that all gender disparities having to do with privilege can be ended, but disparities dealing with responsibility can endure indefinitely.


2. The Apocolyptics: That sect of Christianity that seeks to win converts through fear and threats, by linking random disasters to the vengeance of an angry, spurned God.


3. Fellatioration: Excessive adoration for a public figure based not on the sensibilities of his ideas, or their likely success, but rather on the uneducated perception that he would be a close and dear friend if only his acquaintance could be made somehow.

Continued...

A car bomb is parked in Times Square but fails to go off. Result: Preening and "It's no big deal. Amateur stuff. Not to worry. Move along. Nothing to see here." Others take it seriously. Very seriously. As they should.

There's an old Beyond the Fringe routine concerning the end of the world. The Fringers climb to the top of the mountain to observe the end of the world, but when the appointed moment comes, the world goes on -- nothing happens. The last stinging line of the routine is, "No matter. We'll come back tomorrow. We're sure to get a winner one of these days."

Neoneocon cites Steve Coll whistling through his New Yorker graveyard with Think Tank: Terrorism : The New Yorker

There will be more of this sort of low-level terrorism in the United States in the years ahead, not only from self-styled jihadis but possibly also from the extreme right.

Never any shortage of fools at The New Yorker, yes, The New Yorker. I especially love how he conflates "extreme right" with Islamic terrorism. Seems he's forgotten who exactly killed 3,000 of his fellow New Yorkers. Fine. If he sticks around New York long enough, he'll get his lesson again. A fool and his head are sooner or later parted.

Back in 2004, I wrote the following "scenario" of what it would take to kill New York. I've updated it once or twice since, but it still works. I see that currently terrorists are thinking a bit smaller and simpler. And if they miss, they all think:

"No matter. We'll come back tomorrow. We're sure to get a winner one of these days."

THIS JUST IN:

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009: FBI agents with bomb-sniffing dogs Wednesday raided the Colorado apartment of an Afghan national linked to Al Qaeda and a plot to attack the New York City subway system.... In the past three days, the NYPD increased its attention to the subway system and its 5.2 million daily riders. Officers were warned to keep an eye out for vans near transportation hubs such as Grand Central, police sources said. The safety zone around subway and commuter stations also was expanded by two blocks, the sources said.

-- FBI unit set for more anti-terror raids in Queens; Colorado home raided

LEADS TO THIS:From the AD Archives, Written March 13, 2004

In the wake of the Spanish outrage, [11 March 2004] an email asks what it would take for the Islamic terrorists to take the next step in the United States.

It turns out that, as in Spain, it wouldn't take much at all. Here's what you'd need and how it could be done. But it is just one way. There are many.

The Elements:

One City: New York

Three Locations: The Brooklyn Bridge, Union Square, Penn Station

Terrorists: 4

Equipment:

Plastique explosives (15 pounds)
Backpacks: 2
Ten penny nails and ball bearings: 4 pounds
Anthrax: 2 Liters
Machine Guns: 4 (Small) with 2 extra clips each

Time: Late September to Early November when the weather makes wearing coats common.

Intellectual Equipment: An understanding of the New York subway and bridge system, an understanding of symbolism in America, a willingness to die.

The Method:

Continued...

Deeply moving. See him now. We shall not see his like again.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned,
they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Directed by takcom™ -- Taka Fumitsuchiya

Bio: Duranta D. Cook (born December 31 1980 in Vallejo, California, USA), is an indie singer-songwriter that goes by his artist name Vital. Vital was born in Vallejo, California in 1980. He was raised by his mother, Theresa McCall, a struggling parent who raised Vital and his sister Shalon by herself. Vital’s first performance came at the age of six, singing and acting in a local church play entitled “The Return of The Messiah.” Less than one year later, when Vital was only seven, his mom was shot. Luckily she survived the tragic incident, however, the circumstances forced the three of them to move to Chicago to stay with relatives and friends.

Vital moved back and forth between the two cities until he was twelve-years-old when he moved back to California to attend junior high school.

Vital currently resides in Atlanta, GA. However, he will be moving back home to the Bay Area, Calif. this summer.

Download this and five other songs for free @ Songs from the upcoming Vital EP

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Back to a list of 2:

"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)

Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."

Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy

Road kill scraped off a randomly-selected backwoods highway comes next, followed by a gap,

followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes

John Fleming reflects on Side-Lines: Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot

"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."

Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.

The Yorktown neighborhood of Philadelphia, immediately adjacent to Temple University,

prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update

What will it be about? Anything.

There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:

If you enter “Dostoyevsky” into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days. --Dostoyevsky — Marginal Revolution

Clint is right. It IS halftime in America. We're down by about 5 trillion. Time to switch quarterbacks. -- Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad: The Untold Obama Connection - The Hollywood Reporter

Elementary school students learn what journalists do. “

Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”

No matter who you support this year, you have to admit Mitt Romney went about becoming president the wrong way.

Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ｫ Don Surber

The "O" Face Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this,"

Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.

The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.

I'm sure there will be a lot of takers to explain that house as mental illness, but like I said: I'm not buying.

The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord

Planned Parenthood is very far from the uncontroversial organization the Susan G. Komen Foundation aspires to be. According to its most recent annual report, for 2010, Planned Parenthood sells abortions to nine out of every 10 pregnant women who come to its clinics.

And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com

I still like the Charles Murray argument which is, basically, that the poor are increasingly populated by the cognitively inferior and that taking away certain social controls has lifted the lid off of the crock pot.

The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ｫ Gucci Little Piggy

At 1,000 feet above the water... 40 knots too fast with the glideslope full scale deflection below us. Obviously, this is not going to work.

Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:

There is not enough money in the world to pay back America's national debt.

Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment

On the same day a report revealed the names of a number of top donors to presidential campaigns, President Barack Obama spent time with around 25 wealthy donors who paid $35,800 each to be with him behind closed doors at a Washington hotel. --President Obama Spends Afternoon With Wealthy Donors In DC ｫ CBS Washington

Voters this year look set to continue an odd pattern that's prevailed in presidential politics for a quarter century.

They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com

In 1993 geneticist Dean Hamer studied pairs of brothers

who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a “gay gene.” But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine

Hit the piste like Grizzly Adams’ gung-ho nephew with your very own Beardski. Part insulating ski mask, part fake beard; these spectacular accessories will make you look like the most experienced man on the slopes. --Beardski @ Firebox.com

Answer: you sold it for a mess of pottage.

When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacob’s Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

Where Christian virtues fail there liberty turns into license and licentiousness: pornographers admired as men of business. Wealth promotes an industry of envy, as lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians make it their daily business to loot what others produce. Medicine turns to infanticide, and the Hippocratic Oath languishes. Science goes mad, and says the universe is nothing but a carousel of atoms, and your brain a defective calculation machine that merely hallucinates self-awareness and free will. --Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

but rather of the candidates themselves. None of them are worthy -- at least at this point --€” of the presidency. A three-term congresswoman and a half-term governor are as unready as Barack Obama was in 2008. Let's not fight fire with fire. Let's use water. That usually works unless it is a grease fire. --The view from the fence « Don Surber

"The $4 million price tag is the least of it." -- The 1st of 14 screens @ Business Insider

It does not believe that most of the national debates are a tempest in a teacup

that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!

Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago,

those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer

U S Bases

What would you report home to Tehran after reading the Washington Post day after day?

I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore

JUST ABOUT AS BAD A GAME AS YOU'D EXPECT FROM TWO MEDIOCRE TEAMS...

There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120ｰF summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions,

soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands

Once an honest and intelligent person opens himself to the facts,

it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:

those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones,

the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days » Are You "Them"?

“Slow traffic keep right” is such a simple rule to understand,

but evidently they’re issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain

How exactly do we know, from the photo, that she is on the political left rather than right?  Seriously.  Here is her blog and profile.  Here is her Twitter feed.  How do we know?  And that we know — should it make you less confident in your own political beliefs?  WWRHS? -- Assorted links -- €” Marginal Revolution

The status quo must be thought of as a direction, not merely a state,

considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance

If you had to write one big check for the whole twelve years of public education of the 88 percent or so of the entire population of the United States that doesn't go to private schools, at 2011 rates of $10,441 per person per year, it would be a check for thirty-three trillion, eight hundred forty-eight billion, eight hundred eighty-six million dollars. --Sippican Cottage: Bin Laden; Joe Biden; Whatever

Tru' dat, but every few days it seems that this whining "candidate" redefines "sore loser:"

"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political Ticker

Sigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!

Hoping for another visitation from ye olde Proverbs 5:3

Valentine's Day gift ideas for the nerd in your life.

Over 700 abandoned settlements bear the collective name The Dead Cities of Syria....

Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas

Kenneth Boehr, Clara Lazen's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used

to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science

No fool like an old.... etc. A Day With Warren Buffett Offers Wealth of Photo Opportunities

The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.

Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."

Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com

No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month!

So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge

To all Roman Catholics who voted for Mr Barack Obama: SUUUCKERS! -- | John C. Wright's Journal

Re: The Planned Parenthood Paroxysm --

It is a fresh reminder that the left fully absorbed and adapted the Brezhnev Doctrine: once they capture an institution, they aren'€™t giving it up.  How dare a private foundation stop coughing up the dough.  It explains why "diversity" means conformity to liberal views in newsrooms, college faculties, and Hollywood studios.  It's why the left reacts with howls of outrage every time you propose reducing taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, even as the left disingenuously argues that NPR and PBS receive only a "tiny"€ amount of tax subsidy.  It should also remind us how the left will fight every battle to shrink government like it was Verdun.  Which suggests one obvious conclusion if you're an incoming Romney Administration: go big.  Go after everything at once.  -- | Power Line

An hour's worth of C-SPAN Q&A: Diana West, Syndicated Columnist, Universal Uclick - YouTube

Diana West, discusses her weekly online column syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. She writes about cultural and political issues from a self-described conservative viewpoint. She talks about some themes in her columns, including the spread of Islamic law throughout formerly non-Islamic areas of the western world and her opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

☛ Thinking Right Archives ☚

• Links
• Links

• Something Wonderful: Sunday Piano Meditation for Memorial Day Weekend
• "He was every color that runs through that flag."
• Something Wonderful: His Mother's Voice in These Days of Miracle and Wonder
• The Landscape Game [with answers and bumped]
• Everything You Cannot Know About Obama Is In This Photograph
• Something Wonderful: The Stars My Destination
• Something Wonderful
• At Lindbergh's Grave
• The Go-Bag: "What does one wear to a truly stunning natural disaster?"
• KA-BOOM! What a difference a day makes
• Uncapped Sources Spew. Threaten States. No End in Sight.
• Saturday Hobby
• Something Wonderful: Don't Stop Believing Goes On and On and On....
• Something Wonderful: Politician Speaks Truth to Cower
• Emma-Watson-Richard-Dawkin's Hot Secret
• Roots of the Democrat Party
• Arizona and the Line in the Sand
• In My Mother's Small House Are Mansions of Memory
• "Play up! play up! and play the game!"
• When Ka-Ching Speaks, Feminists Get a Thrill Up Their Leg