Tuesday, April 20, 2004

It Must be Time to Make New Signs

Alex Tabarrok, at Marginal Revolution, links to a Future Pundit post titled “We Should Develop Defenses Against Large Asteroids.”  Tabarrok has this to say in his preamble to the Future Pundit link.

“Ironically, we spend very little on one of the few public goods that I support, asteroid detection and deflection.”

I would like to opt out of the public good.

Then there’s this headline.

“Scientist Predicts Earthquake by Sept. 5.”

Lets see, asteroids cover the fire and brimstone part of the end of the world, earthquakes cover, well earthquakes.  Here’s someone who is predicting hail storms and such, based on sun flare activity, and in the Middle East, locusts are rising, they think.

I keep looking for robed individuals walking around with large placards stating, “The World is Going to End, Sometime in September, Maybe.”  I haven’t seen any, yet.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 12:56 PM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Wild Man, Wild

The estimable John T. Kennedy, a sovereign man, blog lord of No Treason, and friend, has launched his solo forum.  The Wild Shall Wild Remain.  I shall drink a toast, and run fifteen plus one through the Beretta, to JTK’s solo success while I roam wild, in the woods of northern Michigan this evening, after Midnight.  Wild.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 12:44 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

So What

The headline.  ”‘Doonesbury’ Character to Lose Leg in Iraq.”

BFD.  The artist can draw him a new one.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 12:42 PM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Tis The Season

Winter has passed and the streams of northern Michigan are beckoning me.  The fishing report holds promise of hatching mayflies, the weather report is just an educated guess, but neither report really makes a difference, to me, whether or not I head north for an extended period of time, well, till Sunday at least.

The next five nights will be spent fireside, the days will be spent busting brush to favored stream sections in search of rising trout.  There may be a post or five before 10 P.M. this evening, but after that,  I’ll be incommunicado.  I hope to commune with a trophy brook trout.

Update:  If you look closely, I’ll be somewhere in this section of northern Michigan, as shown in this satellite photo.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/20 at 05:37 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, April 19, 2004

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today, April 19th, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.  An event from history, which was so cold, calloused, calculated, and ignored, while it was ongoing, it boggles the mind.  I must admit, I did not realize that today was a day designated to officially recall this tragic time, though I did not forget the horrors inflicted by the Nazis.

Jeff Jacoby’s remembrance is voiced in a piece titled “Faith in the depths of Hell.”

Via J. Bowen at No Watermelons Allowed.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 10:52 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

It’s Everbodies Fault Except the Drunk’s

Ryan Pisco, after drinking Coors, was killed after driving a car, his girlfriend’s, 90 miles per hour into telephone pole.  So, who should be sued, why of course, Coors, the girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s mother. 

Coors should be sued because, according to the dead man’s mother, it ”..failed in its duty to protect the country’s youth from drinking.”  The girlfriend should be sued because she allowed her drunk boyfriend to drive off in her car without her in it, and the girlfriend’s mom should be sued because she shouldn’t have given her daughter a car as a gift.

“Mom sues Coors over son’s death in accident.”

Of course this specious suit should be thrown out, but it probably won’t be.  And what is even more disturbing, is, a so called jury will probably rule for the mom of the dead drunk.

Via Jonathon Alder at The Corner.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 10:22 AM
(5) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Spelunking for Popularity

The other day I criticized a Nicholas Kristof piece which commented on the 9/11 commission.  Kristof’s piece was titled “Why Didn’t We Stop 9/11?”  Within that post, I linked to a Billy Beck post which was related to the subject matter Kristof was wondering about.  Also, in the comments section, a commentator, Robert, left a link to another opinion on this subject.

Today, stopping by The American Spectator, I find another interesting piece written by Geoffrey Norman.  Norman’s piece is titled “Surprised Again” and within his piece Norman has the following to say, among other things.

“Taken together, the 9/11 hearings and the 2004 presidential campaign are an almost lethally demoralizing combination. William Faulkner famously said (or wrote) that the past is not really dead; it is not even past. Well, he was a smart man but even he probably couldn’t have anticipated the way we have gone spelunking down the memory hole these last few weeks, mining for votes. First, Bush/Kerry rekindled the debate over Vietnam. Then, the hearings turned into the kind of “it wasn’t my fault; it was all your fault” sort of exercise that obscures the past in the smog of partisanship when what most people outside of Washington would settle for is a little more clarity.

With this crew and these hearings—fat chance. When it is not about votes; it is about book sales and television ratings. Will the hearings produce any new information or insights or—perish—the kind of wisdom it will take to prevent a future 9/11?”

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 08:54 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Pile ‘Em On

“Ridge Forms New Terrorism Task Force.”

Why add another layer, you ask?

Here’s why, according to Ridge.

“We are rich with opportunities this year for terrorists to shake our will,” Ridge said in a telephone interview Sunday. “The message is that Homeland Security doesn’t wait to raise the threat level in order to make us safer and more secure.”

You have to wonder at his use of language, “rich with opportunities.”  Sounds like a prospectus for investment purposes, which, could very well be the way the government views the challenge.

Via Yahoo News.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 08:43 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Choosy Maori Choose…

“Tamihere has a point - just as Maori shouldn’t be forced to assimilate, they shouldn’t have to give up their rights to inherited land claims if they choose to assimilate. The rights of any minority should include opting out of that minority without penalty, and maintaining a traditional identity is a personal choice that the government should neither discourage nor encourage.”

The above statement was posted by Jonathon at The Head Heeb.  Tamihere, who is referenced in the beginning of the quote, is Associate Maori Affairs Minister John Tamihere, who is urging caution in regards to collecting and disseminating personal voter information on Maoris.  An excerpt from Tamihere’s view.

“We’ve also got to have some reason in the debate, because tens of thousands of Maori have moved on and they need to be acknowledged as well, as we move forward as a country. So there are big questions being asked, not just about your tribal background or your iwi background, and therefore whether you’re ethnically a Maori, but also what that means on the road to nationhood, asking if one day there will be a belief that we are all Kiwi, regardless of whether you’ve got Croatian, Dutch, French, British or Maori backgrounds.”

Via Gene Expression.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 06:18 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Are You Experienced?

No, I’m not thinking of Jimi Hendrix’s first album.  I’m thinking of The Devil’s Dictionary definition of experience as compiled by Ambrose Bierce.

”Experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.”

Via the Anal Philosopher who posts some verse by Joel Frad Bink to accompany the above definition of Bierce’s.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 06:02 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

I Guess Mothers Should Only be Submissive

“As is so often the case when I try to comment on today’s American society, I can only fall back on profound understatement: Such a young woman is not the sort of mother whom Mother’s Day was founded to honor.”

The above statement was posted by Nicholas Strakon at The Last Ditch in response to a Ben Stein comment made while being interviewed on a NPR show.  Stein’s comment was in regards to having a care for mothers who are serving in Iraq.

Strakon’s statement is bullshit masquerading as anti-statist/war sentiment.  Either that or an exhibition of fear of women who aren’t necessarily afraid to mix it up.

Via Strike the Root.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 05:35 AM
(7) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Exaggerated Moralism

PC this and PC that.  Roger Kimball has a piece in The National Interest on all the PCing going on around us.  It’s titled “Political Correctness, Or The Perils of Benevolence.”  An excerpt.

“Just so, the politically correct of our own day seek to bring about a moral revolution by changing the way we speak and write about the world: a change of heart instigated and embodied by a change of language. Examples are legion. We are told to scrap the phrase “learning disabilities” and replace it with “learning differences.” The announced hope is that little Johnny, who is a bit backward, poor thing, will not feel stigmatized; the secret hope is that by refusing to speak the truth, we can change the truth. The bbc tells its employees that they must use the word “partner” when referring to their wife or husband, since using “wife” and “husband” might seem to imply that the married state was somehow preferable to other possible modes of sexual cohabitation. Major newspapers in the United States refuse to accept advertisements for houses to let that mention that their property has “good views” (unfair to the blind), is “walking distance” to the train (unfair to the lame), is on a “quiet street” (unfair to the deaf). I know it sounds mad. It is mad. Nevertheless, it is true.”

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/19 at 04:55 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sunday, April 18, 2004

C.S. Lewis’ Allegorical Journey

I finished reading C.S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress this weekend, and though I did not find the book enthralling, it was an entertaining allegory.  The book seems to follow Lewis’ own meanderings from unbeliever to believer, and, as in many other Lewis writings, exhibits Lewis’ complete embracing of Christian faith.

Paging through the book, I find I only took my pen to it two places.  In one of those instances, I penned a remark that a statement made in Lewis’ book reminded me of remarks made by Plato in regards to what we know, or remember, that I had highlighted from the book Great Dialogues of Plato.

The other notation made was an underlining of the following where Lewis criticizes the inductive method when applied to science.

“Hypothesis, my dear young friend, establishes itself by a cumulative process: or, to use popular language, if you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact.”

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, pg. 22

A statement which, by substituting “Religious Truth” for “Scientific Fact,” can be applied to Christianity.

I did enjoy Michael Hague’s illustrations within Lewis’ book.  On to Nietzsche.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/18 at 09:52 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Forecasting God?

For your Sunday morning edification I link to a piece written by Marshall Lev Dermer, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Dermer’s piece is titled “Forecasters and the Existence of God.”

“If you care (or dare) to discuss why some people believe in the existence of God and others do not, such discussions almost always reduce to the issue of faith.  Apparently, one person has faith and another does not and we cannot understand the basis for faith so we might well stop our discussion.

I neither understand every aspect of faith nor present a more complete behavior analytic interpretation here, but understanding why weather forecasts ma influence our behavior may tell us something valuable about faith in the existence of God, particularly the faith of children.”

Personally, I’ll read or listen to weather forecasts, but I always walk outside to see what the weather is actually like.

Via J. Orlin Grabbe.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/18 at 07:16 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Hii Yaah

Aaron Haspell displays why the pen can be mightier than the sword in his review of Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Not having seen the first film, or the second for that matter, I can offer no opinion of the films themselves, but I must admit I enjoyed Resovoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, for exactly what they were, pulp fiction.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/18 at 07:01 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 232 of 286 pages « First  <  230 231 232 233 234 >  Last »