Saturday, September 30, 2006

Miss World

Czech girl comes in #1, Romanian #2. How would you have voted?

Maddrassas

Keep on pumping talibanis. Don't panic, says JJ. Not in my backyard, says Pepe. OK, dudes, whatever.

How to use a toothpick

The wudoo way.

Y dance or grinding?

I fondly remember the slow dancing. At least, I could master those "steps", and it was kind of fun. Anyone else tried it?

Buy this?

These are grave accusations. If true, this could change the equation, in unpredictable ways. What to make of it?

No Comment

The Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies is pleased to invite you to Gender and Education: A Panel Discussion and Course Development Workshop

Thursday, October 12 , 5:30 - 8:00 PM at the Stata Center, MIT

This workshop will address enduring debates about gender and education. Panelists from different disciplinary perspectives will share their research, teaching experiences and thoughts on the topics of access, equity, empowerment, and the gendered construction of knowledge. In light of the resurgent concern about a "gender gap," focused on the underachievement of boys, panelists will consider what various feminist perspectives might have to offer this debate.

The panel discussion will include presentations by Helen Haste, Professor of Psychology at the University of Bath, England; Lorna Rivera, Assistant Professor of Community Planning and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston; and Kathleen Weiler, Professor of Education at Tufts University; and will be moderated by Wendy Luttrell, Aronson Associate
Professor in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Antidotes here and here.

Finkielkraut

Another post reminded me of this old interview. How do you guys think it's holding up? Here is a response from the French version of our dear and beloved CAIR.
Finkielkraut got off scot-free after some grovelling public apologies reminiscent of Soviet days. The execution has been stayed for now.

It's the Danes' fault!!!

For 139 people getting killed in mob riots, says the Guardian. Yet they show their fabled impartiality by giving kudos to "fervent rightwing Americans" for supporting free speech, and buying Danish. I guess this means "wimpish leftwing Euros" don't, right?

Tawny port


On a whim, I bought today a bottle of 10-year old Tawny Port. I have no idea how the stuff tastes, but I figured it can't be bad. Anyone has any idea on the subject? Also, what does it go with -- anchovies and olives, perchance?

prisoner of the month

Andre Schiffrin Copied Me!

Comme le souligne André Schiffrin, l'un des éditeurs américains de Chomsky, "Chavez fait mieux qu'Oprah Winfrey", l'animatrice de télévision dont l'émission littéraire est la plus influente des Etats-Unis. En France, le livre de M. Chomsky a été publié en septembre 2004 sous le titre Dominer le monde ou sauver la planète : l'Amérique en quête d'hégémonie mondiale, par Fayard, qui en a vendu 8 000 exemplaires. La version de poche, parue un an après chez 10/18, s'est écoulée à 6 500 exemplaires.

La France fait figure d'exception en Europe. C'est le seul pays où aucun livre du linguiste n'atteint les 100 000 exemplaires. Pèse en effet sur lui un soupçon de négationnisme, depuis qu'un de ses textes a servi, en 1980, de préface à un ouvrage de Robert Faurisson. Un texte utilisé sans son accord, précise André Schiffrin, qui estime qu'en aucun cas "on ne peut reprocher à Chomsky d'approuver le négationnisme de Faurisson".

Noam Chomsky a vu difficilement ses textes traduits en français, au début des années 1990, d'abord chez Aden, en Belgique, puis au Serpent à plumes, chez Fayard, Agones et aux Arènes. Depuis le 11-Septembre, il connaît néanmoins un succès croissant.

Quick! Get Millions of Olives!

Hope This Holds Up

We Live in a Police State

Old commies never die

They just keep coming back.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Lefty photoshopping

I mean, OK. Even a 10-year old can do a better job than these fake-but-accurate Birkenstockers. Are they all going gaga, or what?

Meet Brian

Can't they give this guy a break ? I mean, what would you do ?

WSJ Urges Busharraf Crow-Eating


The Bush Doctrine can survive the Musharraf Exception over the short run. But over the longer term, the credibility of our efforts to address the root causes of terror will require nudging Pakistan, too, back toward the democratic path.

Counterrevolutionaries and Collabos

Moonbat Central--Boston Common

AQ imitates Al Franken

But will Taranto imitate me on this?

Getting closer to Versailles?

Putting the fatwa on a French dissident, for writing this article. Is that being civil, JJ?

Yesterday the voice of the poor claimed to come from Moscow, today it would come from Mecca! Today again, the intellectuals incarnate this eye of the Koran, as they incarnated the eye of Moscow yesterday. They excommunicate for islamophobia, as they did yesterday for anticommunism.

La meme Jeanette , autrement coifee...

Satbecue

The unified theory of Coanda and berbec. Another of Bubba's chickens coming home to roost. And what is W doing? Just wishing it away with ouzo shots, I guess.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Failure to Barat the Bush


Being taken seriously is always a Worry.

[I thought I would add this link and image.--JJ]

the dangers of acne

She described him as "creepy", saying he had acne and stubble on his face.
No wonder he lost it: I was never able to get laid until I discovered Clearasil.

How's the Grant Process Work?

The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them.
Is the Jihad Field relativistic or Euclidean? Classical or quantum? So much work! You think the Lagrangean can be found in the Koran somewhere? What if the conservation laws violate sharia? I think the gauge group should be SU(9) × U(1) × U(1).
This is an interesting development, though. The terrorists in Iraq (if indeed there are any) need technical help and so they appeal to the disgruntled infidel. What does Mogo (PBUH) say about dat?

Steyn in MacLeans

Time to Eat Crow, Pepe

Italy Gets Lift from World Cup

your tax dollars at work

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Youths Sprout in Brussels

Not that I could find this mentioned on NPR, or BBC, or NBC, or ABC, or CBS..never mind the Nation, flagship of Chomskiana.
Steyn predicts a few short decades before the balkanization of Europe, literally into warring fiefdoms of Islam vs NonIslam [it would be comical to suggest many might actually be christian]. Interesting to see when the first blood drawn in street battles takes place [the "youths" of France and England have, of course, drawn blood, but so far its been Believers jihading and Kufr cowering. Hard to call that a battle]

Socratic Benny


St. Clement argued that Greek philosophy had been given by God to mankind as a second source of truth, comparable to the Hebrew revelation. For St. Clement, Socrates and Plato were not pagan thinkers; they prefigured Christianity. Contrary to what Tertullian believed, Christianity needed more than just Jerusalem: It needed Athens too.

The alternative being... math and Kant? Or Sharia?

New Versailles

Surely Pepe will enthusiastically support building the Paris Markaz right next to Versailles. Or maybe on l'Ile de la Cité, right next to Notre Dame? How could any politically correct Euro-lefty harbor the slightest doubts? That would be oh-so Ricain-redneck-ignorant. I wonder though whether the Ministre de l'Interieur be allowed on the premises?

Fair and Balanced

don't break them


A lot of these girls look like they'd break or snap. If one of these models gorges themselves at breakfast with a bowl of cereal and only manages to purge half of it before the show, do they have fainting couches at these fashion shows?

Another Hussy Makes Life Hell for Our Willy

What, is she calling him a LIAR?? Our Willy, the Master of His Is? The Gurl has no shame.
Note her assertion that the Bush administration did at least as much prior to 911 as the Willyards had done in the previous 8 years. Perhaps true, but, ya know, having done as least as much as almost nothing was part of the problem.

a Dostoevsky short

...a sort of short...

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Kinky for Guvna!

Of course, Kinky is extremely politically incorrect. Once, he ran for the position of Justice of the Peace in Kerrville and his slogan was "If you elect me the first Jewish JP of Kerrville, I’ll reduce the speed limit to 54.95." He

Moon-Face

AA has got me thinking of favorite short pieces. Here is one we might all relate to. It's a favorite of mine.

Standing Agape at the Burning Mountain of Best Intentions

JJ will probably get the point when I mention Updike's "The Coup". I don't recommend The Coup in general, written well after Johnny Boy had descended to NY puerilism, but it has one very good, short and sharp, moment. Read it, and you will know.

Springtime for Hitler at Auction

Italian Commies Get Serious About Terrorism

Clintonism in Thought and Action

Nope, El Presidente never gave a thought about WTC attack numero uno. Left such humdrum considerations to such as Reno, Conqueror of Dravidians. And the Dyke failed him. Ya see, always a woman behind what troubled El Presidente, always an ungrateful hussy ready to drench his lit cigar. And now, sweet justice, life in Hope is good; for Wallace has been made his bitch.
Given Willy's taste in what sort of flesh rouses him to public passion, it is no wonder Pepe finds him near as irresistible as the LePewian UberHero, Fidel "I eat Gays for Breakfast" Castrato.

King of Cretans Inflames Passions

contemporary dope ads

I don't smoke cigarrettes, nor the funny variety. Stevenson's article (and the new anti-drug ad he comments on) gets it right: most the time, smoking dope leads to laziness, and here's his props for the blunt commercials (I think Orwell would approve of the clarity) that our tax dollars create:

Whatever you may think of its arguments, this spot is quite a departure for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Finally, an admission that using pot isn't necessarily calamitous. It's possible we're seeing this about-face only because previous scare-tactic ads were recently proved to increase drug use. But either way, I applaud the new, more truthful strategy. Lying is never what you want from your government (even if you've grown accustomed to it)...

Stevenson isn't too keen on recent Public Service Anouncements, saying that they, "have suggested that drug use leads to: 1) Shooting your friend in the head, 2) running over a little girl on her bike, and 3) helping the terrorists."

Stevenson asks two final questions: 1.) Will the ONDCP now retract its previous claims that pot is a dangerous gateway drug?; and 2.) If smoking pot is the safest thing in the world, does not lead to the use of harder drugs, and, worst case, causes you to veg out on a couch for several hours, why is it a criminal offense?

Final question, a bit more important because I, mft, thought of it: if America allows liquor stores to sell shitty pisswater, isn't that a gateway booze that leads those same individuals to consume worse kinds of hard liquor?

Also: if we can agree that banning certain "drugs" (what's known as the "illegal" variety) is more of a Conservative cause, wouldn't it make more sense for Conservatives to lobby for the legalization of these drugs? I mean, afterall, Liberals are the only ones who are going to buy them, smoke them, and stay on their sofas when elections roll around...

Monday, September 25, 2006

Stupider Than Oprah's Book Club?

new dance

i have an idea for a new dance - the "baghdad menuet". It goes one step forward, 10 steps backwards. Corners help.

a Culinary Calling

I'm finding that I have more evidence to build a polemic against Populism. A key example is the overwhelming support given to Rachel Ray (hereafter RR), a fabrication of the once credible Food Network. Unlike Anthony Bourdain or Mario Batali, RR constructs, or builds meals -- in the artistic sense, she cannot create.

All three are products of America. Bourdain would not have been possible without France, and Batali would not have his regional sensibilities without Italia, but it's plausible that neither would have been able to realize their full potential without America. RR, on the other hand, represents everything that is Wrong with the U.S. of A. She forces smiles all the time, is self-absorbed, uninformed, and gets off on hearing herself talk.

As the "Rachel Ray Sux" blog put it: Rachael Ray is annoying for many reasons but here are a few: she is repetitive, she talks with her hands way too much, she giggles incessantly, she puts olive oil and chicken stock in everything, she wears really ugly clothing, she talks out of one side of her mouth like she's had a stroke, she looks like "The Joker" when she smiles, and she can't stop talking about her family.

This kind of response gives me hope that America does want to get better, to build, in Whig terminology, onwards and upwards. While it's absurd that Pepe's politics are French, it's good that he's hear to spread the fineries of his culinary homeland, even better since France is not going to be able to use pork for much longer. JJ, continue bringing the best of Italia back to Bostonia, and AI, we are interested in everything eastern European. AA: yes, inform your Portuguese brethren to continue putting swine on the spit and roasting it in that succulent manner. We need to combine forces and wipe the bullshit that passes for "cooking" from America, and from the world.

Yes gentlemen: you’re either with me, or against me.

~mft

thanks but no thanks

Thanks Mel but why don't you stick to acting instead ?

Thailand Does Martial Law


CARRI E BALLERINE Un gruppo di giovani danzatrici si esibisce a pochi passi da una fila di carri armati nella piazza di Bangkok, in Thailandia. Una delle iniziative adottate per rendere meno minacciosa la presenza di soldati nel centro della capitale dopo il colpo di Stato militare appoggiato dal re Bhumbol Adulyadej che ha stromesso il premier Thaksin Shinawatra. L'ordine del generale Sonthi Boonyratglin ai suoi soldati è stato infatti: «Sorridete, la patria e il mondo vi guardano». (Afp)

Saturday, September 23, 2006

A touch of Berkeley in Bismarck

We should stop the name-calling and the demonizing immediately. No more "axis of evil," "Islamo-fascists," "evil-doers" and "you're either with us or against us," or Nazi Germany analogies. We need to regard our adversaries as adult human beings who see the world in a way that is radically different from the way we make sense of it. We need to sit down with them and listen to their demands and try to take seriously their critique of our policies and our culture. We don't ever have to condone their methods, but we need to try to discern their message through the noise and rhetoric.

is this propaganda too?

DEATH

Twenty-two year old Dru Sjodin was a University of North Dakota undergrad. She was abducted outside of the Columbia Mall, in the parking lot, just after she got off where she worked at Victoria Secrets.

The stalker and killer, Rodriguez, used some three dollar knife he purchased at a nearby Menards (hardware store) to kidnap and kill Sjodin. He left her body face down in some ditch in northern Minnesota.

Leave Her Alone!

Yummy in black and white, too.

Communism, Islam, and Proctology

Euro-welfare Recips Make Spruce Goose

Petulant Hayseed Pouts

Typhoid Mary meets Binnie?

Well, who knows what the French are saying? Can one trust their spooks?

Citgo sign


Time to go. Leave the Green Monster alone.

Friday, September 22, 2006

They love him, they really do


It's just that they have a hard time expressing their true feelings. Maybe Pepe can verbalize what they really mean.

Paris-Berlin axis

Will Wovi follow in Betrand Delanoe's steps, and declare Mumia a honorary Berliner?

Chavez on Metaphysics; Pepe's Opine?

Deconstructing the symbolism of Hugo's tangent is of interest. Here me out, and at the end I have a query for Pepe:

On the one hand, Chavez stresses socialism and hoists the mighty flag. On the other hand, Chavez introduces the epic Good vs. Evil metaphor, and this clearly smacks of both the Old Testament and the wild language of Revelation. As Pepe tells us, to be a socialist means to be an Athiestic Reactionary.

Pepe: 1.) why is Chavez discussing metaphysics?; 2.) Does he subscribe to metempsychosis?; and 3.) Pepe, do you believe in ghosts?

Your buddy Chavez does. How do you rationalize this? I'm curious.

the dangers of zero gravity sex

12 days in space satisfying a crew of astronauts and look at the result. The martian girls on my trip were much more hardy.

Aristotle on megalopsychia; or, getting back to the philisophes

In parusing the footnotes of, uh-oh, Beyond Good and Evil (something I've argued that Islam doesn't, and may never, get), part 6, "We Scholars," aphorism 212 (the Walter Kaufmann translations), I came across an interesting passage that Nietzsche remarked on when speaking of Greatness of Soul. No, I can't claim I'm a Nietzschean, but I do think he's an interesting and provocative and understandable read. The late Kaufmann provided the extensive Aristotle footnote.

Aristotle says that a person with a great soul, "does not bear a grudge, for it is not a mark of greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them... Such then being the great-souled man, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is the small-souled man, and on that of excess the vain man."

Alright: let's have some freecounterpoint about that.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

some useful advice

Subtext is, shall we say, Interesting

I had been wondering what the hell the Thai Coup was all about [economy was doing well, Thaksin had won overwhelmingly in what was judged a very fair election, his corruption was the generous Thai spread it out around variety]. This provides some subtext, in a sick and disturbing sort of way. So, let's see, an "understanding" would mean what? Sharia law in the south? A separate little caliphate? Bringing the Burqua to Bangkok? The Thai Army held back while the muslim insurgency pushes further into Cambodia? A little agreement as to expanding the role of Islam in what is overwhelmingly a buddhist nation? A foreign policy more in accord with, let's say, Mahathirism, at least?
Frankly, I cannot see any positive for Thailand, as a free and Buddhist realm, in allowing a Muslim general to dictate whatever bounds there are to be on Islamic prerogatives in what has never been, not even close, a part of the Ummah.......
Just some questions on one of those lands, far from Versailles, which are beyond the pale of Pepe care [unless of course the 'Ricains are therefore in a position to be bashed]

Pelosi's Responsible Pose


What does Hugo Delahunt say?
Here we see that the Dems are trying to put some distance between themselves and Chavez. That's new!

Tout s'explique

A Khanny Death

So we may add "subtle poisonings" to the heavy tome of "Basic Muslim Behaviors"??

Shrevesport..hmmmm.... get closer, Pepe. Be careful of Jamal and his generous drinks, next time, eh?

If It's Televised, Will Dominique Dhombres Call It Porn?


There was a Le Monde article in which Dhombres likens the Jordanians' putting this thug on TV to her being exploited in some porn-type show. It was hilarious. Here is an excerpt: Le strip-tease de Madame Ceinture, 15 Novembre 2005, Par Dominique Dhombres, LE MONDE.

LE DÉFILÉ de mode improvisé diffusé par la télévision jordanienne, vous l'avez trouvé comment ? Vous n'avez pas pu le manquer. Une femme un peu enveloppée, la tête voilée de blanc, vêtue d'un manteau noir, qui exhibe sa ceinture d'explosifs en indiquant comment s'en servir... Pour ceux qui ont manqué cet épisode, on résume la scène, qui est passée en boucle sur les télés du monde entier. La dame ouvre son manteau, montre les explosifs emballés dans un plastique transparent et l'espèce de prise électrique qui sert à actionner le tout. Comment a-t-elle été filmée, cette fameuse séquence ? Où ça ? On ne sait rien, en réalité, des coulisses de ce défilé.


If you think this kind of laugh is worth buying, you can do just that here.
The BBC allows access to said 'porn' at the link that makes this post's title.

Saddam I, the Just

What a Wide Aperture You Have!

dubbyah and democracy

Carey Leaves Benny in the Dust

What, from Muslim-Christian yakkery to this? Reality, apparently, came for the Archbishop.

Rumors and The Pakistani

Take it for what it's worth. But don't forget that rumors were telling in the buildup to 911. I will note, however, that I am safer than you are. So should this be no mere rumor I , at least, will be around to say "Oops"

For Ye Wankers of Self-Delusion

A little from "The Rage and the Pride"

"In this world there is room for everybody, I say. In one’s own home, everyone is free to do what they please. If in some countries the women are so stupid to accept the chador, or the veil where they have to look through a thick net at eye level, worse for them. If they are so idiotic to accept not going to school, not going to the doctor, not letting themselves be photographed etcetera, well worse for them. If they are so foolish as to marry a prick that wants four wives, too bad for them. If their men are so silly as to not drink beer, wine, ditto. I am not going to be the one to stop them. Far from it! I have been educated in the concept of liberty, and my mother used to say: “the world is beautiful because it is varied”. But, if they demand to impose these things on me, in my house… and they do demand it. Osama Bin Laden affirms that the entire planet Earth must become Muslim, that we must convert to Islam, that either by convincing us or threatening us, he will convert us, and for that goal he massacres us and will continue to massacre us. This cannot please us. It has to give us a great desire to reverse roles and kill him. However, this will not resolve itself, it will not be exhausted with the death of Osama Bin Laden. This is because the Osama Bin Ladens number in the tens of thousands now and they are not confined to the Arabic countries. They are everywhere, and the most militant are in the West. In our cities, our streets, our universities, in the nerve centers of our technology. That technology that any obtuse can manage. The Crusade has been underway for a while. It works like a Swiss watch, sustained by a faith and a malice which compares only to the malice of Torquemada when he led the Inquisition. In fact it is impossible to deal with them. To reason with them, unthinkable. To treat them with indulgence or tolerance or hope, is suicide. Anyone who believes the contrary, is deluding himself"

Lazy Leftist Tropes

Meet the fabulous wealthy gentleman, Mr. Qutb.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Interesting

Basic Muslim Behaviors

So, how long you figure before some Raptor of Law, gazing out from his perch high in the fumeries of Huntingtonia, sees this case as Opportunity Writ Large. If the Saudistics pony up 400,000 bail for this gerbil, imagine what they might offer to he who could provide some legal mojo to the usual admirable list of "Basic Muslim Behaviors"? CAIRing minds want to know.

Youths at Work

And why exactly should "youths" fear the French?

Ship of Fools


Progressives at home and abroad seem oddly unconcerned. "Islamophobia," after all, is just a product of the BushCo junta's relentless fearmongering, and Benedict is the Nazi pope who personally swipes the condoms from people's bedroom drawers.

"Progressives" found their niche on this ship, running around on the deck in their Bierkenstock sandals, tilting at W-cifer mills. And the Hitch, unhinged, torches straw popes in effigy.

The real problem is the West and its bluenose brigade, its Wal-Marts and Hummers and Big Gulp lifestyles. The Christianists, as some clever equivocators call them, are an impediment to Utopia as great as the terrorists... Using the legislative process to pass faith-based initiatives, driving jets into skyscrapers: madness, everywhere.

Says Pepe. In the meantime, below the ramparts, the geese are making funny noises.

If you say Islam isn't always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn't make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.

Naahh, says JJ, don't worry, be happy. Have another shot of ouzo. Peace, man, peace.

Clintonian

Clearly, the pope has been watching replays ot Clinton's impeachment hearings: he is now literally groveling. Someone ought to tell him he can't be fired.

Man bites panda story

But panda bites first, so does this count as newsy?

Angels and daemons


Chavez has the Lefty dichotomy down pat: Bush is the Devil, Chomsky is God.

America in charge

The trial of Saddam

This has to be one of the most embarrassing fuck ups of this war. Here's a guy whose guilt in countless atrocities is probably just about as undisputable as that of other sorry dictators of last century, from Videla to Pol Pot, yet the courts trying him seem unable to do so without giving the impression of impropriety.

The useful way to nail saddam would have been to try his entourage from the ground up first in order to amass as much evidence as possible and later to go after him based on the fruits of that effort. He's now already managed to mount a successful defense arguing that atrocities were done in the context of the iran-iraq war.
Instead, we are witnessing a pathetic PR attempt at hanging him as quickly as possible that will only serve to make him a martyr. He may get a deserved punishment but the families of his victims will be denied justice as the court is failing to demonstrate his guilt to the arab street - the only one that really matters.

Washington ? We have a problem

It's puppet rotation time

I'm crying a river

The end could be near for Libération, the newspaper founded by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and members of the extreme political left.

After years of falling readership and advertising, the paper’s largest shareholder, Edouard de Rothschild, has stopped paying operating costs and, according to Pierre Haski, deputy editor of the newspaper, salaries have been frozen for October. “On Sept. 28, we hit the wall,” Mr. Haski said. “This seems too sad, but it is the reality.”

How terrible! Quick, get Jean Q. Taxpayer to bail it out!!

Hitchens' Meds Run Out. Call Pepe!

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

some dudes arguing

I am sure it has been discussed in the past but doesn't the sub-title "some dudes arguing" preclude a healthy feminine input to our bouts of invectives ?

Back to the Becherovka Basics

If you're feeling a bit bombarded by politics, Manhattan porno, and Berkeley undergrads wallowing in bath-tub shit-water (sadly the latter two are probably much cleaner, at least according to O'Rourke and HST standards), a professor of the Ancient Mediterranean suggested the following: Becharovka over a large glass of ice with a splash of tonic. It worked last weekend, and it seems to be working now.

Any other suggestions out there?

~mft

How Many Table Dances is That?

If you just can't get enough, here's more.

Evidently They Need More Pakistanis

Jesus camp

Check out the trailer

New Math Ph. D. Course

...how to handle this situation:"I was sort of tapped on the shoulder and asked, 'Do you want to teach a statistics class?"' said Masterson, the graduate student association president and a University of Cincinnati doctoral candidate. "The philosophy is, if you have a master's in the subject, you know it well enough to teach it." But he warned: "How do you handle a racial comment that targets another student? How do you manage classroom tension? You don't get that."

I Wouldn't Do Her with Yours Takes a New Meaning

Faith and Reason


Since most of us are frequent readers, it seems silly in this blog to link to the WSJ. But since there has been so much fascinating talk about this speech of Benny16's elsewhere in posts and comments, I thought it worthwhile to provide a synopsis. It seems that WSJ handled this for me this morning and so I include it here. AI asked for a ten-minute version of those discussions. Here's a five-minute one.
Addendum: Now that I have broken a protocol of mine, I should also point out that Taranto is especially interesting today.
Pepe: Addendum is not the same as pudendum.

The Bro Job and Hasbians

Now that our blog has migrated from a political one to a sex-and-politics one, I thought I would fill you guys in (ugh) with the details of some early observations of mine regarding Central Square, Cambridge. It was my view that OBL had a point if what he was trying to do was keep these freaks out. Now I see in a Best of the Web from a few days back that Dinesh D'Souza agrees with me (though not Taranto).
Well, bluenoses and pervs, you stomached Pepe's emissions of Lava Light lesboporn and Craigslist depictions of excretory hilarity. Are you ready for Central Square?
I say the town needs an enema. You?

Ratzinger on universitas, 09.12.06

Instead of reading the cliff notes to Ratzinger, why not just read Ratzinger's reconstruction of the seige of Constantinople in the latter part of the 14th century? While this is a longer excerpt, it is important if one wants to bring singularities such as "Islam is about the sword" into proximity with Ratzinger's points through historical characters.

Excerpt: I [Ratzinger] was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.

The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".


Ratzinger asks: Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.

Of course, I think acting reasonably could be a Greek idea without "proving" or "disproving" the existence of God, god, or gods (didn't Socrates say something similar?).

Taranto psychoanalyzes Pepe

Why is the liberal left more frightened of George W. Bush than of Osama bin Laden? It is a classic reaction formation, a neurotic response that a feminine Freud who dubs herself "Answer Girl" defines concisely as "behavior or emotion that is the polar opposite of the way someone is or should be feeling, because the authentic emotion is too frightening to deal with."

Got it.

Champions of "choice"

Is this Liberalism run totally amuck, or what?

Monday, September 18, 2006

Deep Thinking at Wentworth

What do you Italian speakers think of this guy's name?

Kofi Say Hide Yourself

Anne Applebaum Goes Crusader!

It's a sad day when one gets excited if a columnist for the Post says something obvious.

Gupta goes Papist

In line with my comments a few posts below. Except his writing is pithier and sharper than mine.

The Left's modus operandi

Remains in the grand tradition of Uncle Joe (Stalin that is, Tailgunner Joe was a choirboy by comparison):

The hysteria engendered by the series found more than one target. In addition to the death threats and hate mail directed at me, and my grotesque portrayal as a maddened right-winger, there developed an impassioned search for incriminating evidence on everyone else connected to the film. And in director David Cunningham, the searchers found paydirt! His father had founded a Christian youth outreach mission. The whiff of the younger Mr. Cunningham's possible connection to this enterprise was enough to set the hounds of suspicion baying. A religious mission! A New York Times reporter wrote, without irony or explanation, that an issue that raised questions about the director was his involvement in his father's outreach work. In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission.

Don't worry, be happy


The Mujahidin Shura Council, an umbrella group for Sunni Islamists, said in a statement: “We tell the worshipper of the Cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated . . . May God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahidin.” Another militant group in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, added: “The day is coming when the armies of Islam will destroy the ramparts of Rome.”

Who cares about that little city? After all, it's not Versailles, dixit Pepe.

Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, said: “The violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world justified one of Pope Benedict’s main fears . . . They show the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence.”

You don't say!

Meanwhile, back in London, a "militant Muslim lawyer", Anjem Choudary had this to say:

"The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and that must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet. "Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."

Aahhh, just free speech, will say JJ -- no problemo. Incitment to murder is an obsolete concept, like treason. Yeah, sure, whatever.

Student life is tough

Did it suck as badly for you as it did for this poor girl ?

The ant's perspective

or is it the crab ?

Dog Bites Man

Saddam's Niger Shopping

Now turn to the front page of the June 28 [2004] Financial Times for a report from the paper's national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among European intelligence services that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. The bogus document produced by an Italian con man in October 2002, which has caused such embarrassment, was therefore more like a forgery than a fake: It was a fabricated version of a true bill.

In now myriad comments, Pepe has disputed Saddam's possession of WMDs as "proven" by Hans Blix and the dictator-friendly UN. AA has pointed out that a couple thousand Kurds can't be wrong and so Saddam certainly had some chems a while back...
Here, Hitchens says Saddam really sent his boys to Niger in spite of what the now-exposed Wilsons say. He has gone on in other more recent essays to say his allegations have not been challenged. In the sidebar a link will send you to an archive of Hitchens' writings. I would be curious to know what Pepe thinks about this.

More here and in its links.

A Pope Leavens Spengler's Gloom

So many "bigots" for Pepe to tilt at. Now he and his trusted Sacko Pansies now have the Singaporean Admiral Doom to contend with.

Banksy Wannabe? Or Daniel?


"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image ... his feet part of iron and part of clay. ... And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken."

sheer madness

an iranian ? don't they see the dots connect ? they're going to attack us from space!

Shooting nuns in the back

So let's see how the jaded atheists will spin this story. Just deserts, perhaps?

Fascinating page

Fascists Take Over Socialist Paradise

Goddamn Karl Rove!

SHHHHIIIITTTT!!!!


The Apple Store is there! (Thanks Niko.)

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The US was founded on Christian principles.

From CL's best of:

This is incorrect.
The Constitution never once mentions a deity, because the Founding Fathers wanted to keep their new country "religion-neutral." Our Founding Fathers were an eclectic collection of Atheists, Deists, Christians, Freemasons and Agnostics.

George Washington, the Father of our country, and John Adams (Second President of the USA) CLEARLY stated in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli: "The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion.”

G.W. rarely attended church and instead followed a popular 18th century philosophy called Deism—a Star Wars-esque philosophy that believed in a cosmic energy or big-ass universal "Force." The dictionary says that Deism is "a system of thought advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation," that had nothing to do with Christian principles.

James Madison, original mastermind of our Constitution, was an Atheist to the core who loved skewering Christianity. In 1785 he wrote, "What have been [Christianity’s] fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

Thomas Jefferson, who sat down and authored The Declaration of Independence, rarely missed an opportunity to laugh at Christianity. In a letter to John Adams in 1823, he wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

More ammo: In 1814, Tommy J. wrote about the Bible's Old and New Testaments, "The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful -- evidence that parts have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds.”

In fact, it was President Jefferson himself who first wrote (to a Baptist church group in 1802), "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State." Therefore, when Jefferson talked about “Nature’s God,” the “Creator” and “divine Providence ” in the Declaration that he wrote, he was being a hippie and referring to a general cosmic energy-- not the Christian God.

America is not a Christian nation. Period. Our Constitution derived from the post-Christian Enlightenment values of reason and truth...never from the paranoid yammerings of that otherwise compassionate cult leader who fucking died in the Middle Eastern desert 3000 years ago.

Ghandi-like

The pinko-Left will lap this up. I have a bridge to sell, while at it. It's somewhere in Brooklyn.

"Of course as we know the meaning of jihad can only be understood by Muslims," Budianto told the crowd. "Only Muslims can understand what jihad is. It is impossible that jihad can be linked with violence, we Muslims have no violent character."

We're just behind the Portuguese

When it comes to being cash-strapped. How come?

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Reuters Goes Bananas

MEXICO CITY, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Mexico's opposition leftists who claim electoral fraud voted on Saturday to declare losing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as "legitimate president," a symbolic move aides say reduces the chance of radical street protests.
Yeah. That should do the trick. Deny you lost and denigrate democratic institutions. Where's Al Gore when you need him? BBC weighs in on the side of Hugo Chavez also. Well, if they can keep it up, there will be change, for sure.

Mirroring the NYT

Soulmates from far away get on with the program.

Castrated!

May 10 More Racists Like This One Sprout

Pepe, read the last two paragraphs in here.

On Topic

Going to Canossa


Time for sackcloth and ashes?

Careful what you ask for

How about a Photoshop rerendering of the Tower of London as a mosque complete with minarets?
Or Nasrallah with a Legion of Honor get-up?
Osama bin Laden and Adenauer...?









why the US needs to pull out now

The generally accepted view against an immediate withdrawal is that if the US were to pull out, iraq would break into all out civil war.
But in reality, iraq would greatly benefit from an immediate pull out:

First off, the marriage of interest with Al Qaeda would cease: the only justification for the presence of AQ is in iraq is the us presence. Certainly the invasion of iraq has given AQ breathing room that it lost when the Taleban were defeated. Beyond the common goal of defeating the invador, there is little common ideological ground and it's hard to imagine how AQ, which has little to no roots in iraq, would maintain its presence once the only reason for its presence has disappeared.

The generally accepted view implies that the US is preventing civil war from happening. But what we see on the ground is that the US first created the conditions for civil war to flourish, and is now proving largely unable to control it. The notion that the obviously incompetent american command, suffering from a plethora of chronic problems ranging from a short-sighted policy to understaffing is somehow a shield from civil war flies in the face of everything we've seen in the last three years. The iraq policy has proved a unique case of the doctor killing the patient with medecine.

The US is the problem, not the solution.

New social studies


as recounted by Taranto:

"Drinking alcohol can fatten your pay check, according to a Reason Foundation study published in the Journal of Labor Research, Men who visit a bar at least once a month to drink socially bring home 7 percent more pay than abstainers, and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than non-drinkers... Social drinking builds social capital," Stringham, a professor at San Jose State University, said in a press release. "Social drinkers are out networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their BlackBerries that result in bigger paychecks."

New research by Scottish scientists suggests that smart people are less likely to repeatedly experience the excruciating headache, nausea, dry mouth and sensitivity to light and sound that can follow a heavy night out. "The main finding of this study was that higher IQ scores at 11 years of age were associated with a reduced risk of alcohol induced hangovers in middle age," said Dr David Batty of the University of Edinburgh.

Aha! So that's why JJ can take so much ouzo without experiencing a headache! Now, if he only had a BlackBerry, can you imagine how fat his pay check would be?

Friday, September 15, 2006

what's your take on this?

A friend of mine just did 3 years for essentially the same story. My take is that it is a victimless crime: he was talking to an fbi agent, not a 15yo girl. Any of you understands how this works ?

banksy in LA

Did she mean JJ ?

What would you do ?


ok - quit pretending. How would you have handled this ?

Delusions

When Flatulence Can Be Lethal

Does This Mean the UN Promotes Cancer Too?

Shoulda stuck to fighting the war on potatos

Here's a letter I sent him 3 years ago. Didn't get an answer:

From Representative Bob Ney's website:
March 11, 2003
WASHINGTON D.C. -
In a symbolic effort to show their support for American troops protecting freedom abroad and their displeasure with France's continued refusal to stand with its U.S. allies, U.S. Rep. Bob Ney (OH-18), Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, today responded to a letter circulated by U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (NC-03), and ordered that "French fries" be removed from all restaurant menus in the three House office buildings and be replaced with "freedom fries". Chairman Ney directed this change, as well as the new term, "freedom toast", instead of "French toast", in a letter to the House Chief Administrative Officer who supervises restaurant operations in the House.

Dr XXX
New Orleans, LA 70115

New Orleans, March 12th 2003,

Dear Congressman Ney,
As a Frenchman residing in the United States, I would like to express my profound gratitude for your efforts at dissociating our nation from the greasy organic matter that so many of your compatriots seem to enjoy ingesting daily. As you know, we pride ourselves in the quality of our food and find it intolerable that lardy potato scraps be identified as having anything to do with our heritage.

May I suggest that you further extend your important efforts to "French dressing", a nauseating salad mix that is also entirely foreign to our culinary art ?

Thank you again and best wishes,

Duplicates of this letter were also emailed to Reps Saxton and Jones, co-masterminds of the War on Potatos.

Pepe's Lovefest Continues

Echo chamber, huh?

Aw, Hell

Clowns and Nukes

In all honesty, I would've loved to see military MPs arrive and "neutralize" the clowns.

The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9 Minuteman III facility, located just northwest of the White Shield, North Dakota. “Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead,” the group said in a statement. “The activists painted ‘It’s a sin to build a nuclear weapon’ on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.”

This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting overalls, and bright yellow wigs.


The clowns themselves weren't from Canada -- as we might expect.

Here's DefenseTech.org on the story.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

more deception

On Sept. 25, 2002, just days after the CIA received the source's information, President Bush told reporters: "Al-Qaeda hides. Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. . . . [Y]ou can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

France Go Home!

the NBA


Paris Hilton exposed, Natalie Bush looking cheeky. Since meat has become a central theme in the past week, I thought I'd bring the official NBA to the fore: yup, the National Bar-b-Que Association.

The etymology of BBQ has been a source of entertainment in the past, so here's a back-log BBQ story from Slate, and I need to try burying and roasting a sweet potato in hot coals.

Kerry Wants to Cut and Run Only in Iraq

I Support Natalia Bush

Venetian Warehouse