Because the Fards Thought it was Timber too

Burn, Buried, Burn Allah can appreciate a crispy sufi now and then. It's said to be divine.

Occupy Central Square.....

....and other GOP losing strategeries.

One to Take to the Bank

Sweet Justice indeed.

150 Years In-Bound

If you have a couple minutes (yeah, right), click on the link and scroll down to the audio-video story below. Interesting stuff on the Civil War. Also note: the north won the war, but you'll notice the abundance of monuments erected by the south that effectively charges them as chief interpreters. In this case, the North won, but the South, the loser, writes a lot of the history. Kind of turns that old saying on its head.

The Mufti finds Malik is the Hammer, not the Anvil.

So they had prepared a little show trial, and she was to bow her head in shame and beg for forgiveness...or else....eh?

A brave [and brainy, and beautiful] woman. Too bad they will kill her, in time.

Would be ironic if Obama came close like Reagan

Rot gets all huffy about the Fourth Amendment

Then buys a fig leaf.

In Vino Sha Veritas

So much Hate, such little Wine.

Why Rott Is Happy to be a Running Chihuahua of Kapitalism

Sometimes the Bitch is Fortuna.

Tecs' Awesome Genius Holds Forth on History

UPDATE.

Airbrushing the Soviet Encyclopedia

Of course, Herr Rot ululates.

A history lesson in 3 panels

Lanced.

The Bust and The Blightest Get Their Yearly Stockholm Syndrome

And, at last, Mathematics is properly honored [although it should have been Economics]

Leo Tolstoy on Mathematics

In 1862, Leo Tolstoy published “War and Peace,” an epic national novel of Russia that uses individual and singular moments in peace and war to explore human universals and timeless themes. So now, as I begin page 937 (out of 1,386), or Part 11, Chapter 1, I decide to bring Tolstoy’s thoughts on mathematics (circa 1862) to bear on the FCP crowd.

After the catastrophic and near pyrrhic Russian victory over Napoleon’s forces at the Battle of Borodino just outside Moscov (Tolstoy has it taking place in late August 1812), Tolstoy ruminates on the eternity that is the universe, and how humans are incapable (or nearly incapable) of dealing with infinite, but are very capable in dealing with small segments of quantities in an historical or mathematical way. To connect the analogy with the battle, or with humanity: “The progress of humanity…” that is, after literally tens of thousands of Russian and French soldiers are annihilated, “…arising from an innumerable multitude of individual wills, is continuous in motion.” Thousands have died. But hundreds of thousands continue living. Humanity pushes on, and on, and on. But understanding this grand push requires one to study the singular.

And on mathematics, Tolstoy says, “By taking smaller and smaller units of motion we merely approach the solution of the problem, but we never attain it. It is only by assuming an infinitely small magnitude, and a progression rising from it up to a tenth, and taking the sum of that geometrical progression, that we can arrive at the solution of the problem. A new branch of mathematics [again, this written in 1862], dealing with infinitely small quantities, gives now in other more complex problems of dynamics solutions of problems that seemed insoluble.”

(page 937 of Tolstoy, “War and Peace,” Constance Garnett translations, Modern Library, 2002 printing.)

So feel free to use that as the opener in you next mathematical conference paper (just footnote me as your pro-bono, self-appointed historical and literary consultant).

Cat and Pig at War

Poor Orwell, with Eliot he had a Snowball's chance in Harvard to get published. Pretty upfront about rejecting it for political reasons. His more literary criticisms would have just a wee bit more heft if TS wasn't the "honored" author of a bunch of indigestible, hooey dripping, cat poems [yeah, if you've ever suffered through "Cats" you can thank Mr. Eliot]
Next thing we'll find out is that Updike was behind O'Toole's difficulties in getting published.

The Flamboyant and the Flaming

Steyn Meets Pepe Da Canucka: Fire in the Hole!

Mr. David Zimmer: Mr. Steyn, there was a well-known, indeed famous, American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who made a statement in which he expressed his view of the limit on free speech in a case in the 1930s, and I'm wondering if you agree or disagree with this statement. He said that nobody is free to yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre.

Mr. Mark Steyn: It wasn't the 1930s; it was 1919 that Oliver Wendell Holmes made that statement. It's interesting, that case. He was an American-

Mr. David Zimmer: I know, but do you agree with that statement or not?

Mr. Mark Steyn: Let me say this for a start: He was upholding espionage charges against an anti-war protester. So by his measure, thousands of Canadian liberals would have been rounded up for protesting the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. David Zimmer: But don't duck the question.

Mr. Mark Steyn: I'm not ducking the question...

Mr. David Zimmer: No, no, but then answer the statement.

Mr. Mark Steyn: Because Oliver-

The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Excuse me. Could I just have one speaker at a time?

Mr. Mark Steyn: Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely-falsely-shouting "Fire" in a theatre. The problem with the Human Rights Tribunal is that falsely shouting "Fire" is not at issue. It doesn't matter whether the theatre actually is on fire, because under the Human Rights Tribunal, truth is not a defence.

In my own particular case, no one has ever pointed to a single fact in the Maclean's article, an excerpt from my book, that is inaccurate. So essentially-

Mr. David Zimmer: But back to Holmes's statement, is that a fair limitation on freedom of speech: You can't yell " Fire" in a movie theatre, just as a general proposition?

Mr. Mark Steyn: As I've tried to answer you, I think if the theatre is on fire, you're certainly entitled to point that out. By the way, that, as a metaphor, is simply a ludicrous metaphor. He was talking about gaslight, 19th century theatres. By 1919, the Winter Garden on Broadway... was an electrified theatre, and it wasn't in danger of burning down. The metaphor is lazy and irrelevant

FCP Hath No Fury Like a Blago Scorned

Romans duking it out with the Krauts

Have a Nagillah, Planet Pepe Ullalah

Do unto others as they would do unto you