February 09, 2010
The right to evaluate risk for oneself
Mark Steyn has almost certainly violated (some new) English law by publishing the following (via Five Feet of Fury).
Silver lining: It turns out all you have to do to get kicked out of the EU is go bankrupt. Britain is closer to safe harbour than I had suspected.
That said, there are rocks at the harbour mouth; Greece is not the only European country with a political class so shy of responsibility they cede national sovereignty they do not own to a power they have imagined into being for this purpose.
At some point, I have to stop reporting news from England: White Cliffs of Dover to be sold to the French to help reduce Government's debt
The proposal for the port has prompted outrage.
"Outrage." I am certain that will have the blighters quaking in their boots.
In defense of simplisme
The UK: UK minister says Iran not part of 'axis of evil'.
"They [Iran] couldn't stand al-Qaeda … or the Taliban anymore than we could," said the British minister who asserted that the country's inclusion in former US President George Bush's "axis of evil" incomprehensible.
"I think it's simplistic to regard Iran as a bogeyman," Straw said.
The US of A: Palin beating drums of war on Iran.
Reporting from the Dark Ages
Barbarism confronted by tenuous forces of civilization: Turkish man faces life for burying daughter alive.
The pair were arrested after the body of 16-year-old Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing.
A post mortem showed a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning she was buried alive, forensic experts have said.
Barbarism endorsed by tenuous forces of civilization: Lahore, Muslim lawyers will "burn alive" anyone who defends murdered 12 year old Christian.
The girl, of Christian faith, died on Jan. 23 as a result of violence - even sexual – at the hands of her employer, a wealthy and powerful Muslim lawyer in Lahore. The alleged murderess, Chaudhry Mohammad Naeem, is a former president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association. The girl, just 12 years old, had worked as a maid in the home of Naeem in the last six months.
February 08, 2010
Follow Me
The provocateur.
Kathy's salvo!
Update: The rules of engagement at Blazing Cat Fur.
UK sees challenge; Canada sees opportunity
Education in the UK:
Part of the problem: Christian teacher forced out after complaining Muslim pupils praised 9/11 jihadis as heroes.
Others said, ‘We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up', and 'the Christians and Jews are our enemies, you too because you're a Christian', he added.
Part of the solution: Britain plans to cut flow of foreign students.
Canadian challenge round:
Part of the problem: Ryerson University told to crack down on racism (unless it is racism against Jews in which case they will probably give you a grant tenure).
Part of the solution: New rules help draw foreign students: Colleges laud move to speed visa process.
But a pilot program to fast-track applicants by Citizenship and Immigration Canada has dramatically reduced the visa-processing time to mere weeks...
Generalizing from experience
Test subjects were able to accurately identify candidates from the 2004 and 2006 U.S. Senate elections as either Democrats or Republicans based on black-and-white photos of their faces (hat tip to the Sister of the Flea).
The authors concluded that people possess "a general and imperfect" ability to infer political affiliation based on facial appearance, which is related to stereotypes about Democrat and Republican personalities.
Multi-national
Methinks he doth protest too much.
Elsewhere: France plans to sell as many as four Mistral assault ships to Russia.
Which may go some way toward explaining a change in Russian inclinations: Officials from the United States, France and Russia called Monday for stronger measures against Tehran.
London Sound Survey: Outside Charing Cross Station
Many more recordings from the London Sound Survey at http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk.
February 07, 2010
The male curiosity motive
Tasmin Egerton finds sex scenes "horrendous", apparently. But to report the fact is not my motive in drawing the story to your attention.
I have no clue who "Jim Hason, Ilford" might be but his comment - absurd as I think it might be - is more interesting than anything in the Daily Mail's reportage; a fact I am happy to generalize across the entire MSM presence on line and, perhaps, the salvation of their business model.
With this in mind, if anyone might suggest a straightforward comment system I might use to replace TypePad, please let me know. I am after some combination of simple registration, CAPTCHA and/or spam blocking in a system I can plug in to my creaking Moveable Type 3.2 set up. Something a bit more user friendly too, please. This might go some distance toward a proper conversation.
What would Byzantium do?
Edward Luttwak: If the west really wants to fix Afghanistan, it should learn from an ancient, brutal empire (via In Harmonium).
Sounds like a plan.
With Afghanistan, the west faces a simple strategic calculus: too costly to stay in, too risky to leave. A Byzantine response would be, first to withdraw the west’s scarce, expensive troops, and arm local proxies instead. This was the standard remedy for turbulent, worthless lands where no taxes could be collected, but which were to be denied to enemies: an improvement over the Romans’ fondness for battles of attrition and annihilation.
RTWT. Not that I am entirely convinced. All I am saying is give battles of attrition and annihilation a chance.
Ender's Gamers
StrategyPage suggests something I had long suspected: Video games make you smarter and faster. That said, I am open to the idea smarter and faster people are drawn to video games rather than simply made smarter and faster by them, a possibility I hope the Office of Naval Research took into account (the following lifted in its entirety from Quotulatiousness, with thanks).
The army noted the same thing, especially under combat conditions. For example, because so many troops had years of experience with video games, they took to CROWS (the remotely controlled machine-gun turret on many vehicles) quickly, and very effectively. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements, and any firepower the enemy sends your way. But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger. The army now has a CROWS trainer built into its America’s Army online game. Many NCOs believe that all that multitasking kids do with their computers (and other electronic gadgets) have made the combat troops more effective.
Canada, j'accuse!
Christopher Hitchens and I are of one mind on the following: The Olympics and other international competitions breed conflict and bring out the worst in human nature.
Well, especially the bloody Olympics. If it is a European Cup final conflict and the worst in human nature are more by way of a feature than a bug.
But I want these words tattooed on the foreheads of every Canadian Michael Moore fan.
February 06, 2010
Liquid can be heard when the crates are moved
Five pine cases of rare 101-year-old Mackinlay's Rare Old Whisky (and some brandy as well) have been discovered intact in the ice under Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic hut.
Gentlemen: We have an objective.
Distillers Whyte and Mackay, which supplied the whisky, hope the drink can then be analysed so they can replicate the original forgotten blend.
'This is a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers," said Richard Patterson, master blender at Whyte and Mackay. 'If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analysed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists this may open a door into history.
Is James Cameron high on crack?
The U.S. Government doesn't build your computers, nor do you fly aboard a U.S. Government owned and operated airline. Fair enough.
But does this make me a cynic to believe Barack Obama is the last President to turn to for a free market solution to anything, let alone space exploration?
Outlaw lampshades
Theodore Dalrymple has worked out how to save the planet.
As my friend was uttering these heretical words — I am sure he would be burned at the stake for them, if it were not for the carbon emissions thereof — he happened to be screwing one of those new, energy-saving (and now mandatory) light bulbs into a light fixture. These new bulbs always seem to me to cast a kind of yellowing gloom rather than light, the color approximately of the pages of bad-quality paper in old books, reminiscent — perhaps not coincidentally — of artificial illumination in the Eastern Europe of the good old days.
Then it came to me — the solution.
At the link!
The emotional deficiencies of the masses
Charles Krauthammer calls it "The great peasant revolt of 2010" (via Five Feet of Fury).
Non serviam
In Canada, this orthodontist would face the drumhead at two or three of many human rights commission.
The doctor in Donaueschingen told local daily Schwarzwälder Bote on Friday that she believed his name was a declaration of war against all non-Muslims and refused to treat him.
Pat Condell: The crooked judges of Amsterdam
Via Blazing Cat Fur.
Men at work: Land down under
This has been going round and round in my head said I read about the lawsuit. Tag!
Related: Chunder.
February 05, 2010
Anna Paquin and crisps
Anna Paquin is marrying somebody who plays a vampire on tv. Gripping stuff. Thought I should bring it to your attention. Also, crisps.
Images: Marie Claire.
Lancing the boil
I will be curious to learn if it is still racist when a Labour cabinet minister says it.
Margaret Hodge warns British values of openness and tolerance are under threat because of an increasing sense of 'unfairness' over immigration. The Culture Minister is calling for a new points system - based on length of residence or national insurance contributions - to determine that only migrants who have made a fair contribution to society get the same rights as local families.
Mrs Hodge, who is facing a General Election challenge from BNP leader Nick Griffin, told the Daily Mail it was time to 'lance the boil' of growing discontent over the wave of economic migrants entering Britain. Labour strategists fear there are signs that the far-Right BNP will mount a 'serious challenge' in her Barking, East London seat.
Note here the problem as it is construed by the Establishment. To the Culture Minister, the points system is not meant to redress actual injustice but only the perception of injustice on the part of Britain's white working-/permanent under-class. Not only does this formula absolve the Establishment of its policies these last 40 years but so too the divine terror atrocities, child sexual mutilation and chattel ownership of women practised by the victims of white working class "racism".
Perhaps most grotesque of all is the spectre of the Establishment promising legislation it believes to be at best misguided, at worst racist, now at long last it comes time to appease the British people.
Operation Catapult
When The Daily Mail publishes this sort of twaddle, what hope is there for England?
Moments later, the Bretagne capsized. 'The water was black with oil that was smoking and bubbling, like a chip pan, and men were struggling and screaming in it. But I had to jump in. I fell into that oil and I let myself sink, sink, sink. I was so burned.'
Jaffre had joined the navy determined to fight the Nazis. But the shells that rained down on him that morning were not German ones. They were British, fired by men that Jaffre knew well.
'Only two weeks before, we'd been with the British in Gibraltar, out on the town,' he says, 'and then suddenly they're firing on us. It was unthinkable.' Jaffre's comrade Leon Le Roux remembers the same shock. 'Today we're allies, tomorrow we're enemies. The reasons for it? For that see Sir Winston Churchill.'
No. The reasons for that? The French Navy, preferring to side with Vichy and the Nazis than man it up and fight the war (though I realize to ask such a thing is to mock a French disability and in so doing risk bringing Vichy and the Nazis into hatred and contempt).
Well, they got to fight the Royal Navy instead and, at the time, that still meant only one thing.
Corpse-man
The fruit of an Ivy League entitlement, if not an education.
Video and schadenfreude at the link.
Something in common
Proposed high speed rail network.
Via.
Pajama Jeans
Hat tip to the Sister of the Flea.
February 04, 2010
This is what terrorist prisoners did to me
And why they should be tried at Guantanamo. Content warning (via Ace).
We were back at their cell. It's only me and those two guys. No supervisors. Just the three of us. Somehow, they slipped out of their handcuffs.
They sprayed me with some kind of hot sauce. I couldn't see. They pulled me into the cell and hit me — boom, boom. They hit me so much, I swear to God, like a hundred times.
I hit my radio. I thought help would come.
They wanted the keys for the other prisoners, but they couldn't find them. They were in my front pocket. I used to be big, 300 pounds, and I was laying on them. I gave them my car keys.
About halfway through, they used a comb — thick and long, about 10 inches, with a handle. They'd taken the teeth out and sharpened it like a knife.
They put it in my left eye. It went three inches into my brain.
Walesa's warning
Lech Walesa sees America under Obama, an America that apologizes for everything, kowtows to rather than confronts dictators and has started down a slippering slope to socialism.
Walesa no longer thinks America is the last best hope for mankind.
"But they don't lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope."
The end of the RAF
Sir Jock Stirrup, who is not a P.G. Wodehouse character but Air Chief Marshal, said it was only "plausible" the Royal Air Force would still exist as a separate service from the Royal Navy in ten years time.
Sir Jock made his comments at the unveiling of the Government's Green Paper on military reform, which lays the groundwork for a full-scale strategic defence review after the General Election.
More bad news: Anyone care to guess what it will cost to process - let alone house, medicate and educate - the barbarian horde at Calais?
Not to worry, let's destroy the Royal Navy instead.
However, with a strategic defence review only months away, that will inevitably lead to cuts — particularly in the Navy and RAF — naval commanders believe that the cost implications for the Senior Service have not been fully grasped.
If you live in downtown Toronto, it would be difficult to find a soul who would not put "housing immigrants" ahead of "military procurement" in a list of spending priorities. The failure of the West is not a technological failure, not even an economic failure, it is a failure of reason.
Vanity Fair's "New Hollywood" issue completely lacks diversity
This is what Leftists worry about. This is the result of a half century of grievance studies instead of education. This is the Obama administration writ small.
I believe I know which part of this failure to represent "diversity" has Shine Staff writer Joanna Douglas pissed off.
Related: Real women, by contrast, have something else to worry about beyond their appearance.
Ninety-five per cent believed current immigration levels would 'cause us to lose our national identity to some degree', according to a survey published in the group's magazine.
And 28.5 per cent of respondents to the survey - which attracted five times the magazine's usual number of poll replies - said Britain should have a ban on immigration. Fifty per cent said there should be a 'one in, one out' policy.
The Open Road London (1927)
Stunning colour film of 1920s London.
It shows scenes of London Bridge, the Thames, the Tower of London, Greenwich Observatory, the London docks, Whitehall, the Cenotaph, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Petticoat Lane, the Oval, the Changing of the Guard, Rotten Row, and the Houses of Parliament.
The Cenotaph sequence from around 3:37 to 3:54 is very poignant. This was filmed only nine years after the end of the Great War. The women and looking at the wreaths would very likely be wives and mothers of the men killed, and the Second World War was, at that time, inconceivable.
