Posted 6:47 PM

Somebody googled obstreperous+marsupials and got my little weblog! They must be googlewhacking ... I didn't use those terms, It was actually a quote from Rand Simberg who was referring to the Florida Supreme Court (remember them?)
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Posted 6:26 PM

NewsMax reports that the Saudis are giving a large donation, possibly $20 million, to the Clinton Library.

... Clinton's Saudi windfall comes in the form of a pledge to his presidential library foundation in Little Rock, Ark. A library spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the donation.
Former senior Clinton advisor Dick Morris has described the library donor account as a "slush fund" which the former first family will divert to their own personal use.
The ex-president was also paid a $750,000 speaking fee when he traveled to Saudi Arabia three months ago, Novak said...

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Posted 11:02 AM


Funeral for American soldiers, near Saint-Mihiel

The United States in World War One #4

Success in war, (and in all of life) seems to grow out of disasters and defeats. Victory in the Gulf War can be traced in a large part to men who were young officers in Vietnam (including a Captain Tommy Franks, who lost a foot in Cambodia) -- and who were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

In a much larger way, our century has been shaped by the young men who fought in the trenches of WWI. I mentioned previously the poison gas that was ready, but never used, in WWII. Hitler had been gassed and temporarily blinded, which perhaps gave him some sanity about gas.

One ugly thing that the next generation tried to avoid was Chateau Generals. All too often the leaders in WWI stayed in comfortable headquarters and moved tokens around on maps; sending thousands into suicidal attacks. There is a legend that a British staff officer visited Passchendaele after the battle (which, besides being a pointless bloodbath, was noted for endless miles of glutinous mud, into which many men just sank to their deaths.) He is said to have burst into tears and said: You mean we sent men to fight in this? In the next war generals were often far to the front. Rommel was notorious for it -- he was often out-of-communication during battles because he wouldn't stay in any headquarters.

The AEF made plenty of mistakes, but this is one we avoided. Pershing wouldn't tolerate it. Staff officers visited the front frequently. Trivia question: what did it mean to Blooey an officer?

It's March 30. Yankee Division is relieving 1st Div. on an 18,000m front at Seichprey. It has been a quiet sector, but also a nasty spot where low-lying allied trenches are dominated by a German-held peak, Mont Sec. The relief is carried out with much confusion -- the intricate staff-work is still being learned. And the Germans are planning to give them another sort of education.

Posted 8:06 PM

It's shocking the things that happen when you have teenagers. I made supper tonight. Cooked up about 20 pieces of fried chicken. Three skillets full! So we'd have some tasty leftovers for tomorrow, y'understand ....

WELL, it's 8PM, and there are 4 pieces left. Going .......going.........
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Posted 7:52 PM

John Hawkins is thinking about Poison Gas attacks. even if he has a gas mask, what about their soon-to-be-arriving baby? Peggy Noonan had some interesting things about this in an article called We Are All Soldiers Now

... Half the people in New York now use this phrase: "my Israeli guy." We all know someone from Israel who has lived a life a bit like the one we are entering.

"Do what we do in Israel. We have what we call a safe room." This was my Israeli guy, an elderly fellow at my local hardware store, on Sept. 13. I told him I needed advice on how to make my son and myself safer at the margins as we entered a difficult unknowable time ...

I'm sure some people will sneer that these home-brewed precautions can't help against modern NBC (Nuclear-Biological-Chemical) weapons. Well, if you are at ground-zero, you're a crispy muffin. But if you are on the periphery, even a few hours of protection may just be enough for the wind to disperse the worst of it.

Poison gas is grim stuff, and the Iraqis have already used it on their own people. Interestingly, in World War Two, all the combatant nations were well supplied with gas. But no wanted to start that mess up again, so it was never used. There was one catastrophe when an American ship loaded with gas was bombed in an Italian harbor.
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Posted 6:21 PM

"The rescue of drowning men is ... a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself."

--C.S. Lewis

Posted 1:01 PM

Iain Murray adds some statistical perspective to terrorist attacks:

"The murder of twenty Israelis at a holy feast seems small by comparison with the WTC attacks, but consider this: Israel has a population of just under 6 million. Proportionately, the attack is equivalent to killing 933 Americans. That's how terrible these attacks are.

And the next time you see Gerry Adams at the White House (hopefully never again), remember that the Omagh bomb killed 29 out of a population of 1.6 million. That's equivalent to killing 4,808 Americans.

These outrages may be small in numerical terms, but the damage to their countries is huge."

Someone posted a comment to Iain's post:" ... Let me recap to make sure I understand, 1 Northern Ireland life = 4 Israeli lives = 50 American lives. Now I'll be able to adjust my outrage appropriately in the future." But that's not the point at all. Iain is writing about the impact on a country as a whole. (For instance, most Americans, if not directly affected by 9/11, know someone who was. Richard Bennett told us his daughter would have been on one of those planes if she hadn't taken a dislike to United Airlines.)
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Posted 6:33 AM

Bill Quick informs us:

"In 1998, the U.S. Government changed the standards by which body mass index is measured. As a result, close to 30 million Americans were shifted from a government-approved weight to the overweight and obese category, without gaining an ounce ..."

In fact, if the 1980 standards are used, obesity is actually decreasing! You can read his post here, complete with basketball stars who are now officially fat.

So what will government do ?

A. Do nothing, because Americans are free people, and their weight is no one's business but their own ?
B. Do nothing, because this is obviously a statistical absurdity ?
C. Start new government programs to fight this terrifying epidemic of obesity ?

It is very very hard to predict ...

Posted 12:44 PM

I was reading Peter Pribik's new weblog . He takes Best of the Web to task:

... It is a venerable tradition to poke fun at the frogs, and as I was subjected to French folly firsthand in high school (ehem, that's lycee for you), I'm all for it. But this blurb is sanctimonius, stupid, and rabid. Further, it is in bad taste. Finally, one should labor to choose one's enemies more wisely than that. How is Taranto better than Hubba the Vedrine?

And another thing, please spare me the line "Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994." Every time there is a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which is every day) we are blessed with it in closing. I know it's coming and it irks me anew each time to think that Taranto can be predictable to the point of being cheap. I suspect most WSJ readers agree that Arafat should be peddling trinkets to tourists by the pyramids. I also think that most people are aware that the Nobels are all too similar to the Oscars. Meanwhile the story usually speaks for itself. And WSJ readers are smart folks who can do without the cry to arms...

I had thoght I was perhaps a bit jaded because I haven't been getting much of a kick out of my daily BOTW. But it's not me, the thing has become predictable. Repetitious.

It makes me think of Reader's Digest. I have heard that the editors of Reader's Digest commission writers to produce exactly the stories they want. Then they place them in obscure journals, and discover them for the Digest. The result is that every issue has the same mix of stories, and readers are never disappointed or confused ...

Peter is obviously going to be worth reading. He and his girlfriend Christina were the charming hosts of the recent Berkely blogfest. (One complaint Peter: The white type on black background looks cool, but makes it very hard to read long posts.) Update: Scratch that, it's just been changed to black on white ...

Posted 7:51 PM


John Adams on CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM:

. . . as Arrant an illusion as ever was hatched in the Brain of an Enthusiast, a Politician, or a Maniac. I have laugh'd at it—scolded at it griev'd at it and I don't know but I may in an unguarded Moment have rip'd at it but it is vain to Reason against such Delusions ...
John Adams to Horatio Gates, March 23, 1776

I don't remember what this quote was actually referring to, but I had jotted it down and it suits my mood. President Bush has betrayed his oath and signed the stupid thing, but I have no energy for outrage. ... it is vain to Reason against such Delusions ...
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Posted 11:19 AM

I followed a link from Dawson to The Fat Guy to Disenchanted and found a great essay on The Kyoto Treaty:

... Imagine you've inherited the Old Man's mansion, but the boiler is rusty, the roof is leaky, the lead paint is chipping off the walls, the septic tank has ruptured, and there's toxic mold growth everywhere. You and your spouse, with toddler in tow, take a look around aghast and promise yourselves to repair everything before junior's old enough to raise his own family there, too. So you trade-down your lucrative careers for ones that give you more time to spend renovating, dump the SUV, cash in the pension and college funds, and sure enough the mansion is simply glorious by the time you're ready to retire and let Junior take the helm as its master. The only problem is that he's just as broke as you are ...

One of the many reasons lefties want to turn education, especially History, into something mushy and meaningless is that history shows a long series of environmental problems arising, and then being solved by those societies whose economic growth was most vigorous. This deserves a long scribble, but I don't have time; so, one example:

Cholera is a problem of water pollution. (And far deadlier than the water pollution problems we worry about now) The fast-growing cities of the 19th Century suffered terrible Cholera epidemics. But the same rapid economic growth that brought millions of new workers to the cities provided the funds for aqueducts and water purification plants; and also for the ever-increasing amounts of scientific and engineering research that made them effective. As for those places that don't allow nasty ol' capitalism to flourish? Well, when you visit, I suggest bottled water.
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Posted 7:07 AM

Luxurious lobster nights farewell, for sober studious days ...

I can' t remember where that comes from, but it rose like a log from the bottom of the mental pond while I was reading Dawson just now. Anyway Dr D, we'll consider that a promise and be looking forward to a visit.

A quote about crab would be more appropriate, but I haven't encountered any. Some smart aleck wrote about spiders of the sea or succulent arachnids or something, but it's slipped away ...

Posted 6:41 PM

Possibly you may feel you are overwhelmed with detail work, but:

The quartz crystal in your digital watch vibrates 3,579,546 times a second. "... a logic gate called a "JK flip-flop" counts the vibrations. Every time the count hits 3,579,546, the gate sends a pulse to the display unit, and the watch records the passage of another second." From The Chip by T.R.Reid

Posted 6:34 PM

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness.
I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

--Robert Frost

Posted 10:01 AM


Salvation Army gals baking pies. The Salvation Army was popular for generosity without much red-tape. The bags hung around the neck are gas masks ...

The United States in World War One #3
Some things stay the same. Then, as now, the European powers were not happy about the growing strength of the US. The Allies were glad to welcome large numbers of strong young men to their depleted ranks, now increasingly filled with boys and old men. But they did not want to admit the corollary, that America was a strong young nation surging past tired older states. They were in deep denial.

As an instance, the French and British never ceased, until the last weeks of the war, pressuring General Pershing to give them his men to be incorporated into their own units. Now this was ridiculous. General Haig would never have asked Canadians or Australians to serve in British battalions; he knew they would fight best under their own officers and traditions. Not even Scots or Irish -- they had their own regiments. But hardly a week went by without pressure being put on Pershing to give up some or all of the Doughboys.

Strange as it seems, the British, French and German leaders did not think the United States was a nation. They seem to have viewed us as a mass of European refugees milling about in confusion. (Now they say we're a bunch of cowboys.) This is from a German report on prisoners taken from 2d div. at Belleau Wood: "... Only a few of the men are genuine Americans by ancestry, the majority is of German, Dutch or Italian parentage; but these half-Americans, who with few exceptions were born in America ... consider themselves unhesitatingly as genuine sons of America." Surprise!

The term Doughboys came to be applied to all the American forces. It was originally army slang, from Texas: cavalrymen would call the dusty infantry adobes.

Trivia question: What was a "cup of George?"