Ranting and Roaring

Dear Conservative Party of Canada,

I'm indifferent to rolling back (or not) various social engineering programs of the last decades. However, if your plan is to actively make Canada a worse place to live in by having more government busybodies measuring our lives against some half-cocked socialist measuring stick, I'll be more than happy to site at home and watch Simpsons re-runs on election night. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Regards,
David

PS. Do you actually this believe this is a good idea, or would convince a single person to vote for you?

In case you're curious about how things would work under a federal NDP government, why not visit the London Fog and read all about the NDP London North Centre riding association vice-president deals with dissent? With photos and audio! [Part 1] [Part 2]

There's a new scary blog in town — the Vampblog.

• America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940
• The Abyss
• Kentucky Fried Movie

Saturday Morning: light snow, about zero degrees. The wind was so calm when you looked at the lake it looked like it was snowing up. We hit four pickerel and kept three (now in the fridge for dispersal to relatives).

Saturday Afternoon: snow/rain mix, 1 degree with a bit more wind. Not a bite on my line, Dave caught and released a pike.

Yes, we probably are crazy but it was a good time.

Do you think the Liberal Party of Canada is the party of ideas? From its spokespaper:

Trudeau Shakes Up Liberals

Justin Trudeau has roiled Liberal waters by saying Quebec nationalism is an outmoded "idea from the 19th century," a remark interpreted as a direct attack on leadership contender Michael Ignatieff's pledge to formally recognize the province as a nation.

Not anything particularly profoundly original or that you wouldn't hear from the mouth of any other transnationalist (living the best life the West has to offer, of course). Why then are the Liberals shoke up by the words of this boy-man of no accomplishment? Do I even need to answer that?

• Simberg mentions Lileks making fun Andrew Sullivan on Hugh Hewitt
• Hewitt interviews Sullivan
  
• Sullivan says he has lots of fun, runs 80's videos
• One such video: We built this city
• Wikipedia entry on Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship
• Wikipedia entry on Grace Slick

Where we find out:

Slick's longevity in the music business helped her earn a rather unusual distinction: the oldest female vocalist on a Billboard Hot 100 number one single. "We Built This City" reached #1 on November 16, 1985, less than three weeks after her 46th birthday.

Jebus, rock and roll is a vicious game — we're all washed up by the time we're in our mid-40s? Ah well. Even more amazing:

Her record stood for 12 years, but was ultimately broken by Cher, who was 53 in 1999 when "Believe" hit number one.

I thought Cher was in her 80s?

From Slate:

There may also be deeper differences. If the Internet were not a bookstore, or tubes, but rather a red-light district, YouTube would best be imagined as the hotel, and Napster, well, the pimp. YouTube, like a hotel, provides space for people to do things, legal or not. It's not doing anything illegal itself, but its visitors may be. But Napster, everyone more or less now admits, was cast as the pimp: It was mainly a means of getting illegal stuff. Right or wrong, we seem to accept the benign vision of YouTube as an entity which, unlike Napster, was basically born as a place to showcase stupid human tricks.

Jason Calacanis (as recounted by Tris Hussey):

[how to] be an A-list blogger:

1. Go to Techememe
2. Blog something intelligent about the top story of the day
3. Link to and mention all the people who have said something intelligent
4. Repeat for 30 days
5. Go to a couple conferences a month
6. You're an A-list blogger.

The blogosphere is the ultimate meritocracy … "It's not broken, you suck" (when someone complains that they don't get traffic).

Canada.com reports on the Tom Ellison trial (an ex-teacher on trial for having sex with his students back in the 70s):

"There were lots of teachers in high school having sex with students," said Ellison, who took the stand Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday in his own defence. "That was female teachers as well . . . Female teachers with male students and in some cases female teachers with females. It was quite common."

Ah, a fantastic opportunity missed to ask Tom who all these groovy guys and gals were that were boning (metaphorically or not) their teenage charges.

From the Independent (via Hit and Run):

Women in England and Ireland are officially the world's biggest binge drinkers, according to a unique study of global alcohol consumption.

One in three 17- to 30-year-olds is now classed as a heavy drinker, bingeing on four or more drinks in one session at least once a fortnight.

These disturbing figures are 11 times higher than those of Germany and Italy, prompting warnings that record numbers of women face liver damage and premature death unless they curb their alcohol consumption.

4 drinks in one "session" once every two weeks? The women I knew from University must have been sort of super nuclear ninja drinkers.

But in the meantime (in reality, one might say), Biosingularity reports an entire different result about alcohol consuption … for men:

Even as studies have consistently found an association between moderate alcohol consumption and reduced heart attack risk in men, an important question has persisted: What if the men who drank in moderation were the same individuals who maintained good eating habits, didn’t smoke, exercised and watched their weight? How would you know that their reduced risk of myocardial infarction wasn’t the result of one or more of these other healthy habits?

A new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) helps answer this question. Reported in the October 23, 2006 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the findings show for the first time that among men with healthy lifestyles, those who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol – defined as between one-half and two drinks daily – had a 40 to 60 percent reduced risk of heart attack compared with healthy men who didn’t drink at all.

“This latest research speaks to how robust the link is between moderate drinking and heart attack risk,” explains lead author Kenneth Mukamal, MD, MPH, an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

It's raining on the north side of the system and snowing on the south. My assumption is the land is much colder than the water, so precipatation over the lake is rain and as it moves south it cools and becomes snow.

Hit & Run did the commentary I wanted, so I'll just put the whole thing here:

The New Scientist is running an article entitled, "Earth Without Humans." It asks what would happen to Earth if all 6.5 billion of us simply disappeared.

"The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California.

Just how do things get "better" when you've subtracted the only creatures that are self-conscious enough to know better from worse?

I suppose I'll add that polution isn't really different than poop — it's value or lack-thereof is defined by humans, in the long run the environment will take care of it, and for the (much more import) short run, we just have to make sure it doesn't pile up in public places and make an awful smell.

Powerful white American-born woman laywer to vie for the right to boss us provincial hicks about; ideas and thoughts about how we should live far superior to ours.

Lyn Davis Lear (via CQ):

Or have Diebold, ES&S, and local state secretaries assured them that they will do "whatever it takes" to get a Republican Congress elected again? Or are they just planning to outspend us? Karl Rove recently told the Washington Times, "For most Americans, particularly the marginal voters who are going to determine the outcome of the election, it started a couple of weeks ago… Between now and the election we will spend $100 million in target House and Senate races in the next 21 days". That is $30 million a week in 15 or 16 key races. Knowing this group, the answers must lie in a clever blitzkrieg combo of all of the above.

When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.

What makes this more hilarious is Dear's bio; she's a professional propagandist for left-wing environment and other causes (because obviously just making the intellectual case for them won't work).

The close paragraph is incredible:

If for whatever reason we don't win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.

Yes, because you're so effective you're bound to succeed there.

Definitely moving into a baroque phase here…

The Sci Fi Network, NBC and Ron Moore are battling over royalities for the Battlestar Galactica "webisodes". Read all about it here.

Note: BSG has nothing to do with it really; this is a proxy fight for how creatives will be compensated in a post-TV world.

Tim Blair is a god. Look what he dug up:

"Michael Arcuri is a strong candidate, and I came to the realization that my staying in the race would only make it more difficult for him to win in November," Roberts said Wednesday morning. "I think it’s critically important that we elect a Democrat and that Democrats take control of the House of Representatives."

Chenango County Democrat Les Roberts, 44, withdrew Wednesday from the 24th Congressional District race.

[...] Roberts said, "Republican control of the Congress and White House in recent years has given us the most destructive governance since the Vietnam War."

The pre-emptive war against Iraq and record deficits fueled by "tax gifts for the richest few" have left the United States greatly weakened, he said.

In recent years, "one-party rule has degraded the Constitution and American civil liberties dramatically," Roberts continued. "We need to do something about that this year."

Roberts said he would try to help Arcuri win in November, and later in the morning, Arcuri had kind words for his former opponent.

Weird that (as Blair notes) no newspaper reports of the Lancet study could find the time to mention that he ran for the Democrats this year.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

Here's an idea that's, well, insane (tip: Jacobs):

Students at Montgomery County's largest high school are in an uproar over a new policy that requires them to wear color-coded IDs — black for seniors, white for magnet kids and a particularly loud shade of yellow for students of limited English proficiency.

Ninth-graders at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring took particular umbrage at being forced to advertise their status with bright red badges and optional matching lanyards. Last week, after all, was Spirit Week, otherwise known as Freshman Hell Week.

The campus has been thrown into a state of rhetorical turmoil over the IDs, issued two weeks ago in 11 colors to denote various smaller learning "academies" within the 3,000-student campus.

The new policy "tags us like dogs," wrote Breton Sheridan, a junior, in one of hundreds of postings to various school Web sites.

I'll bet the school is run by progressives.

More Global Warming skepticism:

I am a Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University where I have been employed since 1961. I have been performing meteorological research, teaching, and forecasting for the last 53 years. I have participated in many tropical field experiments over the last 50 years. These experiments were directed to the study of cumulus convection, condensation heating, evaporation cooling, sea-air energy-moisture exchange, hurricane formation, etc. These are topics of crucial importance to the physics of global temperature change. But they are not well understood by the human-induced global warming proponents. The incorrect handling of these moist processes is responsible for the major flaws in the human-induced global warming scenarios.

Gray goes on to list 10 reasons why we're in a state of global warming hysteria. However, I think he missed the most import one: GW is the latest answer to the question "why should power be invested to a small group experts … like me". The 20th century is a catalogue of -isms, each supposedly better than free markets where power is distributed amongst everyone.

"Howard Dean" reaches out to red state voters:

Despite what you may have heard on Fox News, we Democrats know what issues are on the minds of heartland conservatives like you. We know that your number one concern of is the safety of  your children — whether they are plucking their banjos on the back porch, speaking tongues to snakes at Jesus Camp, or torching crosses at your local Nascar racing contest. We also know that the number one threat to your children's safety is the scourge of international homo-ism. That's why we at the DNC have created "The Contract With American Hillbillies," a new multipoint investigation program to identify and root out conservative stealth homoism before it threatens you or your precious little inbreeds.

Rex Murphy editorializes:

The story is almost big enough to drown out the news that U2, the famous Irish band, has moved some of its assets from Ireland to the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a very favourable tax rate, even better than Ireland, which for artists is already a tax haven of unimaginable indulgence. U2 is of course Bono's band, Bono, the Stephen Forbes business partner and the greatest scold of "rich" governments on the face of the earth. Bono was the man who nagged Paul Martin in public for Canada's not giving enough for African debt relief, but then Bono, friend of Bill Clinton, consort of the princes of the world, World Economic Forum attendee, gazillionaire, nags everyone about Africa.

He even read the riot act of Liberal outrage to his own government because the Irish government, like Canada, was slack on debt relief for Africa. Uriah Heap with groupies. Bono and his multimillionaire band-mates have hauled their songwriting business out of Ireland because Ireland has modestly upped the tax levy on artists making over half a million a year. So he wants Ireland to give more of its taxes to help poor Africa, but he, Bono, wants to pay less taxes to Ireland.

[...] Bono said he was crushed. Well, I guess the "Make Poverty History" front-man has less trouble with inconsistency and hypocrisy when it's his bank account and his band-mates' bank accounts that actually take the hit.

[...] This guy has been lecturing whole continents for decades — he's the self-declared pope of poverty — about Africa, but now hauls part of his empire from his home country to Amsterdam. Lecture us no more, Mr. Bono. A tax haven is not a pulpit. Amsterdam is not an African village. However, all is not lost. Maybe Bono will adopt someone. Let us pray, let us all pray it's Madonna. They deserve each other. For "The National", I'm Rex Murphy.

Bono is just doing the same as the rest of us are trying to do: minimize taxes paid. He does this by moving his corporations to Amsterdam; we do it by voting for governments that don't pledge to give our money to Bono's pet causes.

The New York Times has an article on sexy Halloween custumes for women. No article on such would be complete without some scholar sucking all the fun out of it:

Perhaps, say some scholars, it could even be good. Donning one of the many girlish costumes that sexualize classic characters from books, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Cinderella” and “The Wizard of Oz,” can be campy, female sartorial humor, said Professor Gill. It can be a way to embrace the fictional characters women loved as children while simultaneously taking a swipe at them, she said. “The humor gives you a sense of power and confidence that just being sexy doesn’t,” she said.

Dr. Tolman added that it is possible some women are using Halloween as a “safe space,” a time to play with sexuality. By taking it over the top, she said, they “make fun of this bill of goods that’s being sold to them.”

“Hey, if we can claim Halloween as a safe space to question these images being sold to us, I think that’s a great idea,” Dr. Tolman said.

Maybe women are wearing these things because it's a laugh, and not because they're trying subvert the social order, spit on their childhood or whatever, or some other half-assed explanation that only someone paid to sit around and make this stuff up could.

In either case, this movement gets my full endorsement.

Via Pieter discussing the one of the universal and defining characteristics of the left everywhere, Peter McKay is in the doghouse:

While the government was being peppered with questions about the new Clean Air Plan, Holland says a Liberal jokingly asked Mr. MacKay about the impact of pollution on humans and animals: "What about your dog?"

According to Holland, Mr. MacKay motioned toward Ms. Stronach's vacant seat and replied: "You already have her."

Sputtering rage from the Liberals as one Mark Holland steps up to the plate and claims to speak for all women:

"It's completely unacceptable to call a woman a dog and to point over to her is completely disgusting," Mr. Holland told reporters outside the Commons.

"And he owes Belinda an apology, he owes the House an apology, he owes women an apology."

Obviously he hasn't had many opportunities to listen to girl talk or he would have heard a lot worse that that, and not in the context of a joke either.

No, this isn't more on the Lancet study. Just want to mention "add 5 to Republicans when reading Zogby pollings" is a good rule, confirms "Riehl World".