August 31, 2009
Moscow looks fun if slowed down fifteen-fold
Slow Moscow from Andrey Stvolinsky on Vimeo.
Andrey Stvolinsky's Moscow arrives via English Russia, whence the title. Chill soundtrack. And by chill I mean somebody is coming to murder me with an axe.
Nicasius: The Troubled Deep
I might even make the album... Further instructions after the fold. I have lost the image link, much to my chagrin; and, as may be obvious, I cheated a bit (but not much).
Our debased currency
Theodore Dalrymple on the effect of inflation on human character.
Geographical correctness
British weather presenters live in fear of the L-word: London.
...
‘You could argue that city workers in offices don’t need to know the weather in the same way people who live off the land do, so perhaps we have got it right.’
The Mail’s Science Editor Michael Hanlon noticed the geographical correctness phenomenon last month, noting: ‘Scotland ( population five million) usually gets about the same amount of airtime as England (52million).’
And you could argue that given the weather programs are broadcast from London, some thought might be spared for her teeming hordes. If the Outer Hebrides feel excluded, they might consider paying for their own weather reporting or, better yet, save themselves the bother by looking out the window.
That goes triple for Nunavut.
Artists United Against Apartheid: Sun City
In which Bono cranks up his mullet to 11.
August 30, 2009
The map is not the territory
Can there be anyone paying attention who is in the least surprised to learn the British government sold out the dead of Lockerbie? One is tempted to observe, you know, maybe it is all about oil. But such would be to miss the point about this squalid little deal, the squalid little men behind it and the undeniable outrage to the murdered and their families.
First, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi should never have been tried in the first place. The man was not and is not a terrorist. The man was an is an agent of the Libyan "government". Lockerbie was not an act of terror. Lockerbie was an act of war.
I blame President Ronald Reagan for not treating it as such.
Second, if the law had any role to play in the matter, it should have been American law by which this Libyan agent was tried, convicted and sentenced to death or to life imprisonment - real life imprisonment - in the United States. Just because this act of war ended in the skies over Scotland does not mean this act of war was directed against Scotland. It was not, it was directed against the United States. Scottish victims were not targets but bystanders. As such, Scottish jurisprudence should have had little if any role to play beyond the collection of evidence and the representation of Scottish victims on the ground.
Nevertheless, to point fingers at the Labour party, the Scots and the British Establishment is entirely justifiable. Given the cretinous masquerade of compassion to which the government of Scotland has subjected the free world, they have effectively victimized once again not only the murdered and their families but all free peoples in the face of Libya's sordid version of jihad. That said, while there is a small lesson to be found as we watch the British Establishment descend once again into a grotesque parody of itself there is little advantage - justified as it is - in pointing at them as they do so.
If anything, their performance only serves to underline our complacence.
The answer is not to be found in the law. The answer is to be found in war.
That is not my conclusion, it is not even my observation. It is the decision of the enemy and it will be made one way or another. It will be made whether or not we choose to recognize the fact before we are forced to do so at the point of a sword. And for so many of our countrymen, not even then.
August 29, 2009
This is who Doncaster elected
By his own admission, Peter Davies would make a dreadful Foreign Secretary (but an exemplary Prime Minister).
So the week after next it is going to be interesting when Mr Davies welcomes a delegation of German VIPs on an all-expenses-paid visit to his home town - and tells them not to bother coming back.
'I have only two words of German: "Auf" and "Wiedersehen", ' he says. 'But those are the only words I need.'
In the first hundred days after being elected mayor on an English Democrats ticket, Peter Davies has got rid of the mayoral limousine, shut down the council's "free" newspaper and cut his own pay by 60%. He is out to slash two-thirds of Doncaster's council seats ("If Pittsburgh can manage with nine councillors, why do we need 63?"), wants to encourage car traffic in town ("Like it or not, we live in the age of the car.") and will de-twin Doncaster from its civil service holiday junket twin towns around the world.
Exit question: Is there no way we can convince him to sort out Toronto next?
August 28, 2009
A gigantic Ponzi scheme
Ed West on Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
The problem is that soon these new immigrants tire of doing the dirty work and new recruits are needed to keep an ever larger number of retirees and other state dependants in villas.
Muslim immigrants - and particularly their children - are faced with a human dilemma: How to live as a person in a country where neither you nor your children will ever be considered fully French (to pick one) or Italian or German... Europe is not the United States (nor Canada) where national identity is predicated on a national ideology and consequently is open to any who accept said ideology*. In Europe, as in China or Japan or Persia or Arabia, your identity is predicated on your ethnicity (or, your "race", in the language of the left).
Small wonder when minorities, shipped in to do the dirty work on a lie, react with violence out of social and economic circumstance. Still less when they are no paid to do so by the same elites who brought them in as leverage against their own working class and now Hengist and Horsa find once again the hired help is unwilling to leave. Still less so again when the co-religionists of these immigrants - fat oil ticks with captive populations of their own to distract - should also pay them to mount low level insurgencies across the cities of Western Europe.
* Multiculturalism - a near synonym for apartheid - damages the universal character of the American revolution and consequently damages the United States and is ultimately corrosive to the minority cultures it feigns to protect.
August 27, 2009
Where's Mary Jo Kopechne's eulogy?
Read the whole thing (via Ace).
More: From Allahpundit at Hot Air.
Update: From the comments at Halls of Macademia.
Reckless Star Wars schemes
I can only imagine the shock on "the left" as the Russians fall for the lie that strategic missile defense could ever work. Silly Russians: Don't you know fire does not melt steel? Google it.
In case you were wondering, the above pictured Star Wars-themed poster is indeed Polish. It suits my illustrative purposes better than the somewhat inexplicably abstract Russian movie poster style of the period.
Related: Wishful thinking in the Islamic Republic. Iraqi and Syrian nuclear site mileage may vary.
The international community knows very well that any attack on [Iran's] nuclear facilities would cause horrific catastrophes at the sites of the facilities, in the region, and in the world, ISNA quoted Soltaniyeh as telling Italy's AKI news agency on Tuesday.
August 26, 2009
The Ethics of Ferocity
The already indispensable Doctor Zero on the ethics of enhanced interrogation. Read the whole thing but I believe the following qualifies as a money quote.
I forget if it was Mark Steyn who observed that if it is something you are prepared to undergo for the sake of a magazine article then it is not torture (pace Mr. Hitchens). I say, force everyone at Guantanamo to watch MSNBC and see how long it takes for them to break.
Song from Annai Kaligambal
I have decided Hinduism kicks a higher percentage of ass than my current belief system.
August 25, 2009
Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire
Joseph Peden's lecture to the Mises Institute Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas on October 27, 1984 makes ancient economics seems all the more topical decades on as we Latter Day Spenglerians contemplate the twilight of the West.
Monetary policy therefore always serves, even if it serves badly, the perceived needs of the rulers of the state. If it also happens to enhance the prosperity and progress of the masses of the people, that is a secondary benefit; but its first aim is to serve the needs of the rulers, not the ruled. And this point is central, I believe, to an understanding of the course of monetary policy in the late Roman Empire.
Proselytizing
Richard Dawkins considers an Epistle to the Arabs.
“I would like to see my books translated into Arabic. They haven’t been. They are all translated into Hebrew. Persian, I’m not sure. My books are translated into Turkish and they regularly get censored and suppressed.
I would be just as happy if the Bible were freely available everywhere in the Arab world. Happier still if everyone had the right to read as they please regardless of their language or location.
Related: W. St. Clair-Tisdall's Sources of the Quran. It speaks ill of our civilization I have to turn to Edwardian England for a frank discussion of the subject.
Piseogary
A 3000-year old barrel of butter is an interesting find (still spreadible if not edible) and it is fascinating to me the thing could still attract cows after all that time. But I draw the discovery to your attention not for its own sake but for the following passage.
"There are accounts dating back to the 1850's with people used to wash their cattle once a year in the bog and then put some butter back into the bog. It was piseogary," Mr. Clancy explained, adding that the butter was usually "stolen by the following week!
Now try googling "piseogary". Most returns - save the following - lead back to this passage. As it happens, a pishogue is a kind of fairy enchantment... a word is born!
August 24, 2009
Who's the infidels now, bitches
The commentary - and singing - is classic. I especially enjoyed the Team America World Police reference (nsfw language).
The horses of instruction
The following is a posting I have just made to a military anthropology discussion group. I am only posting my reply to earlier posts as to do otherwise would be to violate the confidentiality policy of the group. To that extent, I am part of the problem.
One thing I am not is a bloodless academic incapable of making, let alone expressing, a clear moral judgment (ritual condemnation of George Bush or Sarah Palin does not count). It occurred to me some time ago my political views most probably precluded a career in academic anthropology.
Good. I would rather be a man.
***
Dear Professor __________,
First, I want to thank you for expressing some of the same concerns I have had with regard to recent postings to this group. I found it difficult to do so in a way that did not descend into polemic.
The trouble, it seems to me, is how to reply in an academic discourse (made up not only of disciplinary concerns, standards of evidence, care to take into account differing perspectives, etc. and so forth but of a careful - and I would argue middle-class - etiquette) to statements that are overtly polemical and incendiary. The difficulty is by no means limited to this group but is common to most attempts by academics to participate in - let alone influence - broader public debates on matters of policy. To be blunt, there are contexts where an academic discourse, including and especially academic etiquette, can serve to obfuscate rather than to clarify differences.
I hope everyone will understand I intend a courtesy, and not a breach of manners, by putting the following in frank terms:
i - I see no factual - let alone moral - equivalence between the status of women in any polity with representative government and the status of women in the Taliban theocracy or the Saudi kleptocracy. To make a play on a well known observation: We must not let the needle in our own eye obscure the plank in the eyes of the Taliban. The status of millions of Afghan women under the Taliban - including countless teachers with whom I hope we would all immediately empathize - cannot reasonably be placed in the balance against societies where women participate in the public sphere. The fact that Canada has yet to fully realize our aspirations toward the full equality of women does not mean the status of women under Canadian law is in any sense equivalent to that of women under Taliban law let alone the status of women in Canadian society relative to the status of women in Taliban society.
I am an advocate of universal human rights including and especially the rights of women, not an advocate of an unrestrained cultural relativism (to be clear, I do not mean to suggest you are an advocate of an unrestrained cultural relativism). As academics, we have professional and intellectual (and career) interests that may preclude political assertions of this kind. I believe our academic interests are often counter-productive not only to open debate but to a clear expression of our views.
I believe the treatment of women under the Taliban was and is reprehensible. I believe any outcome of the war in Afghanistan that does not result in the liberation of women would be a tragedy.
I do not care if there are Afghan men who think differently except in so far as these are the men whose views need to be opposed by force.
ii - The stated war aims of the United States in Afghanistan did not include the liberation of women. That this has been - to a limited extent - an effect of American and allied intervention (and serves the rhetorical aims of war supporters) does not mean we can retroactively condemn the hypocrisy of the Bush administration for a war aim it never advocated. Furthermore, in my opinion we would be better served by an American administration that explicitly favoured policies - including the use of force - to advocate the universal rights of women.
If anything, recent exchanges in this group have convinced me the Canadian government should never have agreed to participate in military intervention to overthrow the Taliban only to re-impose Islamism upon the Afghan state and, by extension, upon Afghan women. Cultures do not "have" religious views much less should states; individuals have religious views. It is shocking to me the United States - a secular republic founded upon revolutionary and emancipatory aims whose expression are demonstrably alive in contemporary American life - should have expended its blood and treasure - in its own defence - only to re-impose the enemy's ideology upon the enemy's subject peoples.
iii - Finally, and most importantly, I cannot continue to participate in a group passively supporting the rhetoric of "Zionist infected" government expressed twice over the weekend by the same man who thinks we will be edified by the Taliban anthem. This is not Stormfront or an alien conspiracy forum, this is an anthropology discussion group. I hope I am not alone in this view not because I have any particular investment in my ongoing participation in this group but because if I am alone in this view I weep for what has become of the once emancipatory aims of anthropology.
To be clear, I am addressing these observations to the group as a whole and not attributing any specific views to an aporia in your posting. I found your intervention measured, reasonable and appropriate to an academic discussion. Unfortunately, this aspect of academic discourse is precisely what disarms us in the face of bald evil.
Yours,
The Flea
My real face
Vanity googling turned up a post by Raphael Alexander I should have linked several months ago (it has been busy). Alexander uses Robert Jago’s (then) monthly list of top 25 political bloggers as a reference for a discussion of blogging and anonymity; it turns out most of us on the list blog under our own names. More fools us, perhaps.
I still think my response is quite clever.
(Google that one, hypothetical future employers!)
For the record: No need to turn to the copyright statement; my name is in the sidebar.
How to make the perfect bang
Goth hair: Kitten Adora Batbrat showing off her best tricks. This is what the Flea is for.
August 23, 2009
What Really Happened Last Week in Montana
An email making the rounds that deservers a wider audience.
By now you have probably heard that President Obama came to Montana last Friday. However, there are many things that the major news has not covered. I feel that since Bill and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday I should share some facts with you. Whatever you decide to do with the information is up to you. If you chose to share this email with others I do ask that you DELETE my email address before you forward this on.
I will post the remainder after the jump. And God bless Texas, btw.
On about Tuesday Bill found out that they would be holding the "Town Hall" at the airport. (This is only because Bill knows EVERYONE at the airport) Our airport is actually located outside of Belgrade (tiny town) in a very remote location. Nothing is around there. They chose to use a hangar that is the most remotely located hangar. You could not pick a more remote location, and you can not get to it easily. It is totally secluded from the public.
FYI: We have many areas in Belgrade and Bozeman which could have held a large amount of folks with sufficient parking. (gymnasiums/auditoriums). All of which have chairs and tables, and would not have to be SHIPPED IN!! $$$$$
During the week, cargo by the TONS was being shipped in constantly. Airport employees could not believe how it just kept coming. Though it was our President coming several expressed how excessive it was, especially during a recession. $$$$$
Late Tuesday/early Wednesday the 12th, they said that tickets would be handed out on Thursday 9am at two locations and the president would be arriving around 12:30 Friday.
Thursday morning about 600 tickets were passed out. However, 1500 were printed at a Local printing shop per White House request. Hmmmm......900 tickets just DISAPPEARED.
This same morning someone called into the radio from the local UPS branch and said that THOUSANDS of Dollars of Lobster were shipped in for Obama. Montana has some of the best beef in the nation!!! And it would have been really wonderful to help out the local economy. Anyone heard of the Recession?? Just think...with all of the traveling the White House is doin. $$$$$ On only imagine what else we are paying for.
On Friday Bill and I got out to the airport about 10:45am. The groups that wanted to protest Obama's spending and healthcare had gotten a permit to protest and that area was roped off. But that was not to be. A large bus carrying SEIU (Service Employees International Union) members drove up onto the area (illegal)and unloaded right there. It was quite a commotion and there were specifically 2 SEIU men trying to make trouble and start a fight. Police did get involved and arrested the one man but they said they did not have the manpower to remove the SEIU crowd.
The SEIU crowd was very organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30 and they were not locals! They had bullhorns and PROFESSIONALLY made signs. Some even wore preprinted T-shirts. Oh, and Planned Parenthood folks were with them.....professing abortion rights with their T-shirts and preprinted signs. (BTW, all these folks did have a permit to protest in ANOTHER area)
Those against healthcare/spending moved away from the SEIU crowd to avoid confrontation. They were orderly and respectful. Even though SEIU kept coming over and walking through, continuing to be very intimidating and aggressive at the direction of the one SEIU man.
So we had Montana folks from ALL OVER the state with their homemade signs and their DOGS with homemade signs. We had cowboys, nurses, doctors you name it. There was even a guy from Texas who had been driving through. He found out about the occasion, went to the store, made a sign, and came to protest.
If you are wondering about the press.....Well, all of the major networks were over by that remote hangar I mentioned. They were conveniently parked on the other side of the buildings FAR away. None of these crowds were even visible to them. I have my doubts that they knew anything about the crowds.
We did have some local news media around us from this state and Idaho . Speaking of the local media...they were invited. However, all questions were to be turned into the White House in advance of the event. Wouldn't want anyone to have to think off the top of their head.
It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled by the White House. Everything was orchestrated down to the last detail to make it appear that Montana is just crazy for Obama and government healthcare. Even those people that talked about their insurance woes........the White House called our local HRDC (Human Resource and Development Committee) and asked for names. Then the White House asked those folks to come. Smoke and mirrors...EVERYTHING was staged!!!!!!!!!!!
I am very dismayed about what I learned about our current White House. The amount of control and manipulation was unbelievable. I felt I was not living in the United States of America , more like the USSR !! I was physically nauseous. Bill and I have been around when Presidents or Heads of State visit. It has NEVER been like this. I am truly very frightened for our country. America needs your prayers and your voices. If you care about our country please get involved. Know the issues. And let Congress hear your voices again and again!! If they are willing to put forth so much effort to BULLY a small town one can only imagine what is going on in Washington DC . Scary!!
xxxx
Bozeman , Montana
Justice delayed
Ed Morrissey posts on the Lockerbie bomber, Libyan oil and the venality of the British Establishment (Prince Andrew to the front of the line, please). Much the same as I have posted here, actually, but for a telling remark left by Caper29 in the comments.
Also: Some Arab wisdom.
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends
David Rose describes a week exploring the Asopladeru la Texa cave complex. Follow the link for some spectacular imagery.
Related: A description and rigging guide (pdf) for Flea-readers inspired to a bit of cave exploration.
August 22, 2009
Perfidious Albion
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan fuhrer Muammar Gaddafi, claims the release of Lockerbie bomber/Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi was tied to a trade deal. You could knock me over with a feather.
The Foreign Office issued a strongly worded statement insisting there was no such deal and that Megrahi's release was purely a matter for the Scottish government.
I may have to start boycotting British goods. And feel free to cancel those golfing holidays to Scotland.
Related: Stephanie Bernstein, widow of Michael Bernstein, a prosecutor who tracked down Nazi war criminals, summarized the problem.
"MacAskill talks about showing compassion and mercy. This is weakness. This is how it will be seen by Gaddafi. This is how it will be played within Libya and this is how it will be seen by every single person that wants to do harm to people all over the world."
Update: Now Gaddafi broadly hints at a quid pro quo.
"This step [Megrahi's release] is for the benefit of relations between Britain and Libya, and relations of personal friendship between me and them, and it will certainly be positively reflected in all fields of co-operation between the two countries," Col Gaddafi is reported to have said during his first meeting with the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
The Consolation of Buses
Taking Alain de Botton as an inspiration, Tanya Gold has become writer in residence at the Edgware Bus Station. I would do the same at the Spadina streetcar platform but I suspect TTC security would show me the door in short order.
Then I speak to a man reading a newspaper. He is called Graham. He is chubby and affluent; he looks content. I ask, who are you? "I am a building surveyor," he says. "I spend my days looking at broken guttering. I am one of the non-people." And is this what you want? "I would rather be sailing a yacht round the Caribbean," he says. And he gets on a 340 to Harrow Weald. I scribble: "Dreams of water."
"I am one of the non-people." Such is the bus stop of our discontent.
August 21, 2009
Red-baiting
Communists, socialists and Marxists are sick of "unfair media attacks, stereotyping and vicious slander" they have suffered in the wake of America's first Marxist president. If experience is any indication, People's Weeksly World is giving the rest of us a look at the next social category to be sheltered from richly deserved mockery.
"Our simple request is that you as beneficiaries of our ratings put an end to unfair media attacks, stereotyping and vicious slander against us, your audience," the petition states.
Would not want to hurt any delicate feelings.
The enforcement apparatus of romanticism
Theodore Dalrymple on England, a country hosting one third of the world's surveillance CCTVs (via the Steynian).
Chinese Guy vs. Robert Pattinson & Hot Russian Whore
Peter Chao is setting himself up for an appearance before a human rights tribunal. Vampires gots rights (not safe for work language) (also not safe for Canada humour).
August 20, 2009
France still vexed by German holiday plans
Max Hastings reviews Colin Smith's England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-1942
A further note of historical interest to Flea-readers: England and France were Christian kingdoms in "Europe" noted for frequent conflict before they came to know peace.*
You can't blame the French for being annoyed. They are in the unique position of having lost the Second World War twice.
* I take the liberty of translating "peace" into English. Cognate terms in the original common tongue include "submission".
Medusa effect
Thanks to a Medusa effect, a "perfectly preserved" fossil squid-like creature comes complete with ink sac.
All very interesting. But ultimately of trivial importance next to the awakening of those nameless things that sleep just beyond the stars. Wilby has conjured the ink. Wilby has loaded the pen. Wilby has made his mark with preterite care, aligned his head vertically to an uncaring sky and cried out in ecstasy: "Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They rule again."
August 19, 2009
Hour glass
In fairness, I was already pretty much planning to see the film. Yet it suggests an unattractive element in my character I should take pleasure at the thought of Gwyneth Paltrow upstaged by Scarlett Johansson on the set of Iron Man 2 (via WWTDD?).
Johansson almost certainly voted for Barack Obama, let's face facts. But by contrast with Paltrow's pinch-faced, holier-than-thou, busy-body progressivism, Johansson has a positively conservative beauty.
I may be the only person left thinking this analogy is valid but I am about to hit publish nonetheless.
Gwyneth did nothing to make friends with fellow superhero Scarlett Johansson, playing the Black Widow, says the insider, and crew actually preferred to be around her husband, Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin.
"Gwyneth is extremely cool at work. She's just a step above professional, too snobby," the on-set source tells FOX411. "Gwyneth is not friendly to anyone, and tends to make people feel awkward and uncomfortable. She wasn't outright rude to Scarlett, she just didn't ever speak to her. Gwyneth went out of her way to avoid Scarlett, and they had zero contact, at Gwyneth's choosing."
Funny now the first person who comes to mind when I hear the word "snobby".
The racist ideology of Scandinavian progressives
Gerald Steinberg sees a well financed strategy behind the latest incident of Swedish blood libel against the Jews of Israel, a pattern of anti-Semitism that is the logical result of funding anti-Semitic NGOs.
Many of these NGOs routinely accuse Israel of "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "apartheid," and some compare Israeli military and political officials to Nazis. This propaganda warfare is waged through the façade of "research" reports which routinely quote Palestinian "testimonies," taken and repeated without question. The path from this demonization to the blood libels of Aftonbladet is short and direct.
Play now, my Lord
"Evony - The Best Online Advertisement Ever"... well, I wouldn't go that far. But this YouTube contribution saved me from setting up an account to find out.
Vaguely related: A list of seven essential fantasy reads at The New Yorker of all places. A pedestrian list (with one or two exceptions) but fun as a nerd flame war breaks out in the comments.
August 18, 2009
Hinterland snooze who
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is up north flexing "Canada's military might" at the Russians and the best quotes the Sun's Parliamentary Bureau can manage come from some poli-sci prof who - gasp! - claims a "narrow focus" on the miltary detracts from Arctic social and economic regional development (what a depressing collection of syllables) and an NDP (socialist) MP who had the following entirely predictable twaddle to pronounce.
He is also worried about "climate change". Here is a thought: If you do not enjoy northern infrastructure and services you should move somewhere warmer and more convenient. As a Canadian southerner, I find your whining, your grasping for hand-outs and your anti-military rhetoric offensive. Also, boring.
Note to the PMO: If you cannot be bothered to provide a quote to spin your man's events to the press down the hall from the Prime Minister's office, you might as well not have bothered. It would at least save those of us paying for this charade the price of the airfare.
Putting off the inevitable
Canadian mathematician and walking zombie enthusiast Robert Smith? claims only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force can hope to stem a zombie outbreak.
Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."
The Space Game
In case any of you were planning on getting any work done today.
August 17, 2009
Skulls
I have been sketching characters for a new project and consequently have been after reference pictures for objects and such. An image search for skulls turned up "The Skull of Zurbarán" (above) and with it an impressive Virtual Dali collection. Not terribly useful for sketching but quite excellent for thinking with.
Along the same lines: The hanging coffins of Sagada, the cult of the dead at Fontanelle Cemetary, the Sedlec Ossuary and the Capuchin catacombs at Palermo.
Unrelated - except skullishly - but impressive: This badass Santiago Choppers Skull Helmet and a handy phrenology helmet.
We should be ashamed of ourselves
Canadian soldiers should not be fighting and dying for this.
This is the price we force Afghan women to pay for the way we have chosen to fight this war. We are in a war to the finish with a culture bent on our extermination and all the while we insist on praising the enemy's way of life for its uniqueness. Unique it may be but the truth is not every culture is a beautiful snowflake. The self-congratulatory smirk of our elites translates directly into a smile on the face of every Afghan rapist empowered by his demon, his rapist's holy book and our complicity with both.
Prime Minister Harper: What, if anything, do you intend to do to stop this? If the answer is, as I suspect, "nothing" then it is time to withdraw Canadian forces from Afghanistan. We can contribute fast air for the follow up when it comes.
August 16, 2009
Scanty outfits on the horizon
With the advent of "sleek" singers including Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, and Australian-born Danielle de Niese (pictured above), the era of Wagnerian* opera divas may be over.
At the world-renowned Salzburg festival, the heaving bosom of a traditional, generously proportioned opera diva has been replaced by slim waists and scanty outfits. The streets and shop windows of the Austrian city are papered with posters celebrating the svelte figures of international stars who have flown in to sing. And three of them together would fit inside the voluminous costumes once worn on stage by great singers such as Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé.
Take it away, Danielle.
Brava!
* The polite term used to be Rubenesque.
Related: What's Opera, Doc?
Remagined
Bryan Singer is reportedly set to helm yet another Battlestar Galactica reboot.
Quite.
Vive la différence
Fadela Amara, France's Muslim minister for urban regeneration, has called for a nation-wide ban on the burqa.
Quite a different story in the UK, on the far side of the Channel and on the wrong side of women's rights.
Human-powered hovercraft crosses the Thames
This does not look like it is going to work. Yet it does.
August 15, 2009
Scientists in Japan microscopically confirmed Islam is the correct religion
New poll shows 78 percent of Pakistanis support death penalty for leaving Islam
Dear Pakistan: I have decided I do not want to be your neighbour.
In this light, some news to make Americans proud.
August 14, 2009
Guilty as sin, free as a bird
Life never means life.
Hamas terrorist hides behind white flag: Gaza, 8 January, 2009
I expect we are going to never hear the end of a Human Rights Watch report claiming the IDF killed civilians with white flags, a charge the IDF vigorously denies. These are separate incidents but the jihadi way of war is undoubtedly the same.
This is just one of many examples of how Hamas uses uninvolved civilians as human shields. This example is particularly egregious since the terrorist used civilians waving a white flag to try to evade IDF soldiers.
Strategy
Most Americans have yet to notice, still less the European "powers", still less minor dependencies such as Canada. To a large part of the world, history has moved on and the contest lies elsewhere.
“China can dismember the so-called ‘Indian Union’ with one little move!” claimed the essay posted last week on China International Strategy Net, a patriotic website focused on strategic issues. The writer, under the pseudonym Zhanlue (strategy in Chinese), argued that India’s sense of national unity was weak and Beijing’s best option to remove an emerging rival and security threat would be to support separatist forces, like those in Assam, to bring about a collapse of the Indian federal state.
“There cannot be two suns in the sky,” wrote Zhanlue. “China and India cannot really deal with each other harmoniously.” The article suggested that India should be divided into 20 to 30 sovereign states.
This via Danwei who reports the email has been floating around since at least 2005. So much for the West. What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy and consequently we must support a strong, democratic India.
Related: StrategyPage argues Red China has given up on its North Korean client.
Yet more related: The Peoples Liberation Army Air Force is practicing with its Su-30s amd a ski ramp, presumably in preparation for carrier operations. This is the first I have heard of the Varyag rechristening.
This is what we call a clue.
The Monks: Drugs in My Pocket
Quoting the comments to serious effect.
August 13, 2009
No to national boycott of Israel
The United Church of Canada votes against a proposed Israel boycott, preferring to scuttle for cover now the light is on their activities. In a slippery move, they suggest their individual congregations can pray for guidance and impliment their anti-Semitism at a local level (via Solomonia).
Bikini Cinema - Star Wars
"It's too big to be a space station." If I had a nickel...
Sadly, it is not as if I am planning a return to hard news once August silly season is done. I have standards to maintain.
Israeli society has something Europe longs for
Italian legislator Fiamma Nirenstein argues it is time to drop the apologetics and admit Israel is fighting a war. Perhaps more important, Nirenstein goes a long way toward explaining today's European anti-Semitism.
"You have to realize that Israeli society has something Europe longs for," she says. "Europe is lost. It longs for a society of values defending its people, for a society which is still able to produce three children per couple. But you have to have the courage to say that you are different than Europe."
This will naturally highlight the things that set Israel apart from Europe rather than what unites the two cultures, she concedes. "But pretending you are not at war is just a lie."
August 12, 2009
German SS officers - That Mitchell and Webb Look
I have almost certainly linked this before. It remains pertinent.
Questions
Martin Henrichs asks if someone has answers to the questions.
* Why is the issue of health care being decided by government and not by the consumers, health professionals and insurance companies? Isn't government the one that can't defend our borders, win the war on poverty or control the cost of stamps? And if Medicare and Medicaid are rampant with corruption and cost overruns, what will government do to a much broader program?
* Why are the 10 poorest cities in America the ones that always elect Democrats to public office? Is it because their solutions to problems is welfare, not work?
* Why is it considered desirable to register every uninformed voter to cancel out the votes of informed, well-educated people?
* What does it mean when cities with strict gun control laws, like Chicago and Washington, D.C., can't control gangs, drugs and shootings?
* Why is global warming even an issue when the increase in worldwide temperatures during the past 100 years has been only one degree Celsius and, for the past three years, has declined?
* Why does President Obama prefer to house terrorists in the United States rather than at Gitmo?
* With Cash for Clunkers and $8,000 bribes to first-time home buyers, what will happen to car and home sales when these "incentives" end? (I'm waiting for my 10 grand for grandpas.)
* Why is there so much weeping and gnashing of teeth over Burr Oak Cemetery? Didn't anyone ever visit the graves of their loved ones on their birthdays or Memorial Day to honor them? Or is there now "money in them there bones"? I found a beautiful tombstone of a relative buried in Germany in 1959. I couldn't find it again five years ago. I discovered that, because of a shortage of burial space, tombstones remain only as long as a relative pays an annual fee. Oh, well, in my opinion, it's what happened to the soul of my relative -- not his bones -- that counts.
* Should I buy a car from a company owned by unions that caused their own bankruptcies and by a government stupid enough to invest taxpayer money to prop them up?
* Whatever happened to the great all-American principle that when a business fails, it provides opportunity for others to step in and do a better job? Has our government become the No. 1 enabler of inefficiency?
* Why is the stimulus package loaded with funding that obviously will not stimulate the economy, but will stimulate people to vote a certain way?
* Why is it that public schools that spend $10,000 per pupil can't do any better educating children than private, religious schools spending $4,000 per pupil? Shouldn't more resources go to those who succeed and less to those who are proven failures?
* Why do television network news broadcasts use the term "news"? Isn't their product just tabloid entertainment? Fortunately, we still have good news -papers that do an excellent job of informing.
August 11, 2009
Glowing eyes, cliche behavior, evilness, that kind of thing
Flea-readers may have guessed I have been watching the Stargate franchise from start to finish and consequently have this stuff on the brain. But, seriously, a part of us always suspected Michael Jackson was a Goa'uld, right? There is a limit to the number of times you can run yourself through a sarcophagus. You may keep some semblance of youth - even keep your nose, if you are lucky - but you will surely lose your soul.
" We've had people coming to the museum and asking 'Where's Michael Jackson?' So we have to tell them that he's not here, but there is a bust that looks a lot like him."
Like Jackson's surgically-altered face, the carving has a distinct, upturned nose and rounded eyes. And like Jackson -- if rumors of the singer's prosthesis are to be believed -- the statue's nose has partially disintegrated.
No blaming Napoleonic enthusiasm for the nose job this time. And imagine the spirit if this long lost Egyptian woman, immortalized at great price and not at all in the way she most probably hoped she would be.
Asymmetric honour
I am struggling to remember the last time a young woman fled her family in fear for her life for having converted to Islam. The problem is not al Qaeda. The problem is not the Taliban. Our cretinous tolerance of evil is the problem.
"What did your father say to you?" WFTV reporter Mary Nguyen asked.
"He said he would kill me!" replied Bary.
By the asymmetric logic of "the left" and the ideology of its jihadi allies, we may only conclude Rifqa Bary is a racist.
But all is not lost: Follow the link, watch the video and rejoice in the strength of a young woman circumstance, character and necessity has made brave enough to speak for the rest of us.
World gasps in awe as riots erupt in Paris suburb
Not erupting in Paris: A return to constitutional order as streets clear of rabble after "youths" shot for engaging in armed insurrection. If the French insist on regarding low intensity jihad as a form of cultural expression - worse yet, as a form of play - then the French will get exactly what you deserve. More and more of the same.
Some 40 rioters in an eastern Paris suburb, Bagnolet, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and firefighters and torched 29 cars in a rampage provoked by the death of a teen pizza deliverer, Yacou Sanago.
Not to be too hard on the French. After all, we learn nothing whatsoever from their bad example.
Shakira: She Wolf
This blog remains implacably committed to the principle of bendiness. Also, lycanthropy. Awoo!
Shakira - She Wolf (Video Premier) Full HD
With grateful thanks to Taylor Empire Airways who elaborates thusly.
That would be one of the great pop hooks of all time.
August 10, 2009
The largest non-nuclear bomb, like, ever
Cunning linguists may be amused by the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Iranian engineers perhaps less so.
The MOP is 20 feet long and can penetrate bunkers up to 200 feet before exploding. At 15 tons, the MOP is a third heavier than the previous "mother of all bombs", the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which was only 10.5 tons. The MOP also packs a whopping 5,300 lbs of explosives, which is 10 times the amount its predecessor bunker-buster, the BLU-109, carried. Basically, it's massive.
Massive, yes. But in this as in life what matters is how you use it. With Jimmy Carter squared in the White House, these massive penetrators may have to wait until after 2012 to get into the rubble bouncing business.
August 09, 2009
Of course, from the point of view of social justice as equality, it wouldn’t really matter whether the treatment meted out to dogs was good or bad, so long as it was equal
Theodore Dalrymple compares human and veterinary health care in the UK and decides dogs have it better.
He is just getting warmed up.
August 08, 2009
About time
Set to take command of the British Army, General Sir David Richards says the United Kingdom may be involved in Afghanistan for forty years. While he is right to think in the long term, I cannot imagine the UK electorate - let alone the UK public - would care to invest the time and effort in decades of "nation building" in Afghanistan. Most clearly cannot be bothered with nation building at home.
On the contrary, I see no chance of NATO existing anywhere except on paper at the end of the time-frame Richards is considering. The Taliban, by contrast, and by whatever name, seem likely to persist so long as we spend our blood and treasure on "nation building" rather than some robust "nation destroying". A blend of Pashtun supremicism and puritanical Islam exhibit little interest in wells and bridges and an active antipathy toward education and women's suffrage. Until we set about destroying their culture, their culture will continue to produce men bent on destroying ours. No amount of economic or planning assistance will negate the enemy's ideology nor change the fact it is the enemy's culture that has left Afghanistan a war ravaged basket case in the first place. Tens of millions of Afghans - and particularly Afghan women - deserve better than to once again find the bloody wages of Islamic medievalism paid for by earnest (post-)Christian Pollyannas.
The original "evil empire" speech
President Ronald Reagan's Address to the British Parliament (June 8, 1982) is the specific for what ails us. And by "us" I mean "me". I have read Tolkien and I understand despair in the face of the darkness is a sin. This helps (transcript here).
A false sense of futility
Four-star U.S. Air Force General Chuck Wald argues the merits of an American military strike on Iran's nuclear weapons program. He only makes one point but he makes it clearly: Iran's nuclear facilities are touchable.
Such assumptions are false.
An attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would mostly involve air assets, primarily Air Force and Navy, that are not strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the presence of U.S. forces in countries that border Iran offers distinct advantages. Special Forces and intelligence personnel already in the region can easily move to protect key assets or perform clandestine operations. It would be prudent to emplace additional missile-defense capabilities in the region, upgrade both regional facilities and allied militaries, and expand strategic partnerships with countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia to pressure Iran from all directions.
Conflict may reveal previously undetected Iranian facilities as Iranian forces move to protect them. Moreover, nuclear sites buried underground may survive sustained bombing, but their entrances and exits will not.
All of which may be casually dismissed by "the left"; long on cliches, short on reality. Remember: Violence never solves anything (except slavery, Nazism, etc. etc.).
Related: Information Dissemination on RAND wargaming an assault on Taiwan by the PRC. Missiles and aircraft feature prominently in both the report and in the critical response it has generated. A comment left to the post is worth republishing here in bold (you can imagine it is in bold). I would not count on USAF sallies from Guam either.
August 07, 2009
Bless the Maker and all His Water
Universe Today reports the best news I have read in some time, thoughtfully including an illustrative map of Titan (pdf file) made possible thanks to the Cassini fly-by.
The Balzac of homeroom
Michael Weiss considers John Hughes, Republican ersatz class warrior. It is an elegy for Hughes, dead of a heart attack at 59, and deserves to be read in full. I shall excerpt the immortal words of Ferris Bueller by way of introduction.
Related: Requiem For A Day Off.
August 06, 2009
Toronto stinks
Overcast and smelling, Toronto stumbles from yet another gratuitous, inconsiderate strike action by city workers insulated from reality by our socialist council and an electorate largely indifferent to the process whereby they are governed (and, not incidentally, their money is pissed away). The garbage has been collected from the public parks where it had been left to fester through the summer. Yet still it stinks.
Comments to a CBC piece give me some hope my fellow subjects are, if supine, not entirely unconscious.
DavidMillerSucks had this to say:
In both elections his total vote count was around 300,000 - a large chuck of that is city workers plus their cupe brothers and sisters from queens park as well as the other loyal NDP supporters like the Ontario federation of teachers. Even so, he only beat Tory by a 30K in 2003; and beat Pitfield by 100K in 2006.
If 4% more of the city stands up and says enough of letting Cupe run the city, and gets off the couch to vote - we can get rid of this bum.
What this city needs is a campaign to get out the vote, and an anyone but miller candidate to focus that vote on. Smitherman, Tory, someones three legged dog - who cares - I will vote for whoever has the best chance of sending Miller back home to the US where he was born. Let him go on the lecture circuit with his other silver spoon socialist peers and complain about how the peasants did not deserve him.
Exit observation: Note how s/he works an anti-American angle into this anti-union rant. Such is Toronto; the city that lined up to cheer Jefferson Davis after President Lincoln freed the slaves.
Update: David Miller's deal is worse than I thought (via Blazing Cat Fur).
The little-understood impact of that is that if, in the next election, any mayoralty candidate runs on the promise to remove that benefit and wins, union members will simply threaten to cash it out immediately, plunging Toronto into a profound financial crisis until that demand is withdrawn. Needless to say, the city cannot afford the immediate payment of hundreds of millions of dollars which that cash-out of the sick-leave benefit would entail. The mere possibility of this would be enough to make any city council blink before threatening its elimination. If city council persists, union members will cash it out immediately making the benefit of such a change nugatory.
Small wonder our neighbourhood has already seen the petty arrogance of the garbage collectors fresh (if such can be said) from their victory. Democracy has failed us. Time for direct action. (Suggestions welcome.)
Luft in Bewegung
I am sick to the back teeth with i:everything but for the i:wing I make an exception. This is the birth of true ornithopter technology (via Luxist).
Ok, it's a fan. But it is still one step closer to chairdogs and the Spice.
August 05, 2009
Neither new, nor democratic, nor much of a party
After half a century, Canada's socialist New Democratic Party is thinking of dropping the "new" from its name.
"We're an established Canadian party that has shaped many public policies in Canada, that has been instrumental in health care, pension reform and progressive environmental and economic issues. I think this is a natural evolution. Drop the new from the name and run with the 'Democratic Party.'
I blame Obama.
On a happy note: Flea-readers unfamiliar with the NDP can take heart from the news the NDP has a remarkable track record for being comprehensively wrong. Jack Layton et al. deciding to hitch their wagon to Obama now is as sure a sign as any the fraud in the White House is past his sell by date.
Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don't hesitate to make it beautiful
An affordable apiary is now in reach. I suspect I just want one so I can say I have a Beehaus.
Vitas: 第七元素
Don't ask me, I haven't a clue. But I will tell you this. Given Japan and Russia as recent historical precedent, the Arabs have no need of oil - let alone religion - to see them through. Centuries of repression have left them perched atop a well of untapped kitsch such as the world has never seen.
August 04, 2009
Do what you haven't done is the key, I think
Normally I am against prequels but for Alien I make an exception: I want to see more of The Pilot.
...
The new film will be set before the events of Scott's 1979 film, in which the crew of a commercial towing ship respond to a distress signal from the empty ship, only to discover too late that the signal was meant to warn them.
The prequel will be Scott's first science fiction project since Blade Runner in 1982 and will be based on a script by Jon Spaihts, who seems to be Hollywood's sci-fi writer of the moment. Apart from the Alien prequel, Spaihts is also working on Shadow 19, which has Keanu Reeves attached; Reeves in turn has hired him to write "space journey epic" Passengers. Spaihts is also reportedly scripting Children of Mars for Disney.
Sober second thought: Den of Geek! considers plot obstacles to the prequel.
But what choice is there, if this is the road the producers have chosen? The chances of Alien 0 dealing entirely with an expensive CGI/prosthetics space-jockey civilisation are pretty remote, not least because such an outlandish project doesn't tick all the demographic boxes for the target audience (who are almost inevitably going to be young teenagers, I fear). The producers will be needing pretty faces to shroud in face-huggers - and probably younger ones than featured in the original movie.
A functioning police state needs no police
Sergeant Deb Leonard, PCSO Helen Turner and Sergeant Deb Pickering spend a day in "Muslim clothing" as part of an "In Your Shoes" exercise. Presumably the next stage of cultural enrichment for female police officers involves going out on patrol only when accompanied by a male relative and offering testimony in court at half the weight of their male fellow officers. Call it a teaching moment.
Douglas Murray, of the Centre for Social Cohesion think-tank, said: ‘You just couldn’t make it up. The victims of crime must be amazed that the police have so much time on their hands that they can spend a day playing dress-up. This is a complete waste of police time and taxpayers’ money. It’s not the duty of police to empathise with particular sections of the community. It is the duty of the police to prevent crime and catch criminals.
‘After this are they planning to dress as members of other communities such as Hindus and Buddhists?’
A purely rhetorical question.
The War on Speed
Jeremy Clarkson's closing to the finale of Top Gear season 13 was superficially (and fundamentally) a review of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage, a beautiful car and a triumph of engineering. Somewhat more pointedly, it was a rejoinder to recent criticism of the show's "speed is good" philosophy (and much else, as ever).
Perhaps it is my Spenglerian bent - or rather, Melnibonéan - that attaches a rather more comprehensive, civilizational spin to the piece. If the V12 Vantage represents an elegy for speed so too does it represent an elegy for the West. Having watched what the busybodies have done to smoking, it is all too easy to imagine ourselves to be one enervated step away from a generation of Gammas stopped short in wonder that such a machine was ever built.
They will have forgotten how. Worse yet, they will have forgotten why.
August 03, 2009
To be, or not to be. So much for that question.
So much for the Royal Air Force. So much for England.
The industry, founded on the Sopwith Camel in the first world war, is expected to come to an end when the last of the Typhoons rolls off the production line in 2014. The BAE Systems aircraft manufacturing plant at Warton, Lancashire, would close with the possible loss of 20,000 jobs at the site and in support trades.
Under the Eurofighter deal, the RAF was due to receive 232 aircraft, now known as the Typhoon, in three batches. They were to be built at Warton as part of the joint British, German, Italian and Spanish project. Last Friday, however, it was announced that Britain would buy a total of only 160 aircraft in what is in effect a £4.5 billion defence cut. The number of RAF frontline Typhoon squadrons will be cut to five from the six that were planned.
Funny how it takes 232 aircraft to man six squadrons but only 160 to man five squadrons. With math skills like these perhaps it is best to leave the defense of the realm to its traditional defenders: The Americans.
By contrast: India has plans to build 100 warships; and with 120 warships the Indian navy is already the fifth largest in the world. Given my pessimism about United States naval power, I think people who believe in democracy, pluralism and genuine celebration of diversity must soon look to India as their protector. Any suggestions on how to secure an Indian passport?
Mind the gaps
MI5 may have been infiltrated by al Qaeda. Hardly surprising given the MI5 application form most probably includes a box to check marked "al Qaeda" as an affirmative action measure.
August 01, 2009
Modernists in medieval clothing
Theodore Dalrymple reviews Kenan Malik's From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy
So much for my plan. At least I have The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to look forward to.
I am most curious how they plan to convince us we are in snowy Hogsmeade when it is midsummer in Florida with its wall of heat and we are surrounded by fat people in shorts speaking thirty languages. Perhaps a uniform requirement is in order.
On a related note, Emma Watson has legs: Yes, I realize I started this post on a serious topic. It's Saturday morning. Also, I am certain whatever Watson is talking about (with her flawless diction) is quite fascinating so you can always avert your eyes.
Spenglerian gloom
Victor Davis Hanson says he will try to get off his Spenglerian gloom before writing from Santa Sophia. Pity. I enjoyed his gloomy thoughts from Ravenna.
Just as there is no logic in ruining the American medical system, so too there is no longer an elite class when its best and brightest scream slurs like “mama” and “messin’ ”, or condemn an entire police force as acting “stupidly” when it is trying to keep the rule of law.
Yes, parts of the United States are becoming like the collapsing world outside the sanctum of San Vitale.