Mitra's Freedom

Lagniappe's Lair has the post. In for surgery, he engages in a conversation with his nurse about her story about escaping from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Go. Read.

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
--Thucydides

Sports

Here's a sport I never considered. Not thinking about trying it now, either.

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Shotguns and the Box O' Truth

I got into a discussion with a friend about various shotgun rounds, home defense, and over penetration. After a few minutes, we were on the computer looking at the Box O' Truth. I remember that back in the early days of his site, he had tested shotgun rounds against the box, and posted some real world information. It was easy to find and helped us discuss the choices more clearly.

Here's the link directly to his shotgun test pages, but if you haven't looked over the Box O Truth, I recommend starting with his original chapters and working forward. He started with a frame that pieces of wallboard or plywood could be mounted in, creating simulated walls and gaps, worked up to water jugs stacked back to back, Kevlar, and car doors. It just goes on and on. If you have the time, the money, and a personal range, there's no substitute for doing your own testing, otherwise, scroll down this page, if you're a shooter, there will be a link there to interest you. It will have detailed information about the round, the set-up, the outcome, and lots of pictures.

As always, shooting stuff is fun.
--Old Painless @ The Box O' Truth

Similarities

I noticed this in a picture of him that was taken recently in Chicago. It's the expressions and mannerisms that seem so similar.



Not convinced?

Here's a pair of quotes:

The war made possible for us the solution
of a whole series of problems that
could never have been solved in normal times.
--Josef Goebbels

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
--Rahm Emmanuel

Take Her Down

They were rammed by a Japanese gunboat, then their deck was swept by machine gun fire. The rest of the surviving members of the bridge crew managed to get below. Wounded and alone, on the deck of his submarine, the USS Growler, Howard Gilmore gave one last command. The sub survived. Howard Gilmore was lost at sea, but honored with a posthumous Medal of Honor.

Take her down!
--Commander Howard W. Gilmore, February 7th 1943

Hope

Borepatch put up a thoughtful post a couple of days ago. I reflected on what he is saying, on what I believe, and what my 8th grade Social Studies teacher would have called Current Events.

In the film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings there is a deleted scene, where Aragorn, Gandalf, and the remaining members of the Fellowship march on the Black Gate. If you have not read the book, then suffice it to say that they are are on a desperate mission, a suicidal attack on the enemy stronghold in an effort to get an overwhelming enemy to focus all it's attention on them.

In this scene, the dark emissary shows a garment that belonged to one of their number and suggests that he was tortured to death. It is an invitation to despair. Aragorn's reply is what is important.

I do not believe it. I will not.

He refuses despair, choosing to hope. Moments later, they ride back and the enemy legions march out to array before Aragorn's small army. The very mass of the enemy before them is an invitation to fear. Aragorn makes the following speech.

It is not this day.

He discards fear the same way he discarded despair. Now this is just a movie, made from a fantasy novel, and heroes can be very heroic on the pages of a book. It is here in the real world where we live and face the challenges of our time.

Paying the bills, dealing with the unexpected breakdown of a car, a difficult relationship with a adolescent child, the decline of an elderly parent, a personal health crisis, a troubled marriage. All are invitations to despair and fear.

Then we can open a newspaper or log on to the computer and the troubles of the larger world are always waiting for as much of our attention as we care to give them. Local crime, the economy, the never ending troubles in the Mid-East, the seeming way we have lost any sense of a vision of America. Again, invitations to despair and fear.

To reject that invitation, to persevere in the face of all the challenges large and small, is to choose hope.

In the Bible, there is a passage that speaks of faith, hope and love, and says that the greatest of these is love. That may be, but I think they were put in that order for a reason. I think that faith comes comes first, and when you have faith you have some basis for hope, and when you can dare to hope, it is possible to love.

When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.
--Charles L. Allen

To the Shores of Tripoli

The Somali pirates, having hijacked four Americans on a yacht, are now claiming they only executed their prisoners when the U.S. Navy fired on them first. The Navy disputes this and has their own sequence of events.

Let's pretend the surviving pirates are telling the whole truth. They claim they boarded a ship, took the crew prisoner, and when it appeared that the crew might be rescued, they murdered them.

As Lex pointed out, through great restraint, the Navy Special Forces didn't kill them all on the spot. However, since they have confessed to piracy and murder, resolving the proceedings in court and handing out an appropriate sentence shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.

It follows than as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
--George Washington

This Week, in 1945

The Marines went ashore on Iwo Jima on February 19th, 1945. It was the most costly battle in the history of the Marine Corps. Everyone remembers the famous photograph, and the name of the island. We forget the price.

Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
--Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn, 5th MarDiv Chaplain, speaking at the dedication of the cemetery pictured above

Libya

A military turned on the citizens, with orders to shoot anyone who dares try to move outside, an unknown number of bodies lying in the street. Good job, Qaddafi. Leader and Guide of the Revolution, eh? You have only proved, once again, that Ronald Reagan was right about you 25 years ago.

We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution, Moslem fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of his own Arab compatriots.
--Ronald Reagan, April 9th, 1986

Our Real Strength

Confederate Yankee explains the situation in Wisconsin. Simple, really, why couldn't my local newspaper have made the situation clear?


Meanwhile, the President is calling the effort to balance the Wisconsin budget "an assault on unions".

I haven't been posting a lot of news lately, but this one deserves a moment of outrage. If you were looking for an example of how and why we feel like bit players in Atlas Shrugged, this is it. A State trying to fulfill it's Constitutional mandate to balance it's budget, the Federal Executive branch backing the union, with protesters being bussed in from other places, like Chicago.

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

We got money from gambling, but our real power, our real strength, came from the unions. With the unions behind us, we could shut down the city, or the country for that matter, if we needed to get our way.
— Vincent Carfaro, mobster, 1988

Who Is John Galt?

When I first read Atlas Shrugged, I thought it was science fiction from the 1950s, overly long, and a vision of a dystopia that had not come to pass. Now I see it, for all the flaws in her writing, as a work of genius. Ayn Rand was a prophet, and all she missed was the time frame it would take to destroy the shining city on the hill.

Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
-— Ayn Rand, writing the words of John Galt

Why I Read View From The Porch

Because, in posts like this one, which she self describes as random stuff, there are gems like today's quote.
Every day, I feel more like an extra in Atlas Shrugged.
--Tam

There and Back Again

It is an amazing thing to cross a continent in 6 hours. To wake up on the west coast and be on the east coast before the sun sets is one of the marvels of the age.

I had arrived at the airport one hour early so that, in accordance with airline procedures, I could stand around.
--Dave Barry

For a Week

Sometimes it was windy, sometimes it was colder, but it was like this the entire time.

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Bait

If I wanted to hunt leopards, staking out a gazelle by a watering hole would be one way to draw one in.
If I wanted to hunt I.T. professionals, this is how I would do it. Large cauldrons of coffee and a table full of donuts and scones. They will collect in large numbers as soon as the gate is open and the bait will make make them slow to escape.

I am in no way immune to this technique, and could have been picked off shortly after this picture was taken.

For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Shomen

I've been visiting a different dojo this week. It's a different style, and I'm not all that good at the style I study, but they have been gracious and allowed me to join them on the mats.

A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing.
--Morihei Ueshiba

Night Photography

When I first started taking night pictures it took tripods and bracketing shots. You worked up to it, threw away a lot and finally figured out lighting. Now you can do it handheld with a digital.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
--Vincent Van Gogh

Skynet

Skynet does some early testing.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
--Joseph Campbell

Saturday Morning in Three Images

In order to write about life first you must live it.
--Ernest Hemingway

The Declaration of Independence

Bluesun left a comment referring to the Declaration of Independence as opposed to the Constitution. It is true that the Declaration of Independence is a historical document, and not part of the body of our law that begins with the Constitution, but he has a point worth exploring.

First, a link, to the Online Library of Liberty and then to the page for Thomas Jefferson.

Drilling further in, if you want to study the Declaration of independence, here's where I'd start. Carl Lotus Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas [1922] It has the Declaration as it was signed, draft copies, and the ideas and historical precedents behind it. Here are a few paragraphs from the first chapter.
_____________________________

Rebellion against established authority is always a serious matter. In that day kings were commonly claiming to rule by divine right, and according to this notion there could be no ‘right’ of rebellion. The framers of the Declaration knew very well that however long their list of grievances against the king of Great Britain might be, and however oppressive they might make out his acts to have been, something more would be required to prove to the world that in separating from Great Britain they were not really engaged in rebellion against a rightful authority. What they needed, in addition to many specific grievances against their particular king, was a fundamental presupposition against kings in general. What they needed was a theory of government that provided a place for rebellion, that made it respectable, and even meritorious under certain circumstances.

Before enumerating the specific grievances against the king of Great Britain, Jefferson therefore proceeded to formulate a general political philosophy — a philosophy upon which the case of the colonies could solidly rest. This philosophy, which affirms the right of a people to establish and to overturn its own government, is formulated in the first part of the second paragraph of the Declaration.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

This is a frank assertion of the right of revolution, whenever “the people” are convinced that the existing government has become destructive of the ends for which all government is instituted among men. Many difficulties lie concealed in the words “the people”; but it is sufficient to note in passing that a large part of the people in the colonies, not being convinced that the British government had as yet become destructive of their liberties, or for some other reason, were either indifferently or strongly opposed to separation. Yet the leaders of the Revolution, being now committed to independence, found it politically expedient to act on the assumption that the opposition was negligible. Very naturally, therefore, Jefferson endeavored to make it appear that the people of the colonies were thoroughly united in wishing to ‘institute new government’ in place of the government of the king.

Accordingly, having affirmed the right of revolution under certain conditions, the Declaration goes on to state that as a matter of fact these conditions prevail in the colonies, and that ‘the people’ have submitted to them as long as it is humanly possible to do.

_________________________

The entire book is there, the ideas are free and freely available. While the Declaration of Independence is not part of our law, it is one of our founding documents, studied, even memorized by schoolchildren for generations. When you look to the history of the American Revolution, the signing of it is a pivotal moment. We don't celebrate the signing of the Constitution, although perhaps we should. We celebrate Independence Day, and honor the memory of those men who put their names on the parchment that established a new country.

We stand in the footprints of giants. But they are gone and it is our day. What will our posterity be?

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
--Ronald Reagan

Martyrdom

If you convert to Christianity from Islam, you face a death sentence for apostasy under Sharia. This isn't unusual, it happens regularly even in moderate Islamic countries. A Red Cross worker has converted, and will not renounce his new faith. He is scheduled to be hanged. Any argument now made about the peaceful nature of Islam will be ignored.

The other issue, covered well by Ron at Silent No More is that this is happening in Afghanistan. So, after nine years of war, all our dead and wounded, the billions of dollars, and an ongoing series of military deployments, we have built a country and continue to support a country where you can be legally executed for becoming a Christian.

If we can't do better than that, we need to pull out. Now. Because what we have done so far isn't worth a single one of the American lives we've lost.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
--John W. Gardner

Liberty

This is the Preamble to the Constitution. It explains why the Founders were going to the trouble to form a federal union.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
--Lord Acton

What Socialism Means

As we move toward winning the future, it is best to remember that this has been tried before.

Socialism means slavery.
--Lord Acton

In the Footsteps of Giants

I went back to college a few years ago. One of the classes I took was Physics. It was a night class, the instructor was from Poland, had tenure, and taught it old school. I was 1st in the class going into the final and got a B for the class. I was just happy to pass.

On the midterm, he gave us an extra credit question I still remember.

Using Kepler's Observations and Newton's law of Gravitation, derive the mass of the earth.

No one even tried the question. He then offered it as extra credit as a take home assignment, and I decided I wanted the points.

I won't do the math here, but the idea is that the time of revolution and the distance to the object being revolved around tells you most of what you need. The size of the revolving satellite doesn't much matter. Newton figured this out, working with the fact that Kepler had noticed the period of every planet was related to the distance it was from the sun. Newton figured out the equation without knowing the value for gravity.

The value for gravity is called "Big G", a value for gravitational force. A man named Henry Cavendish figured it out using large lead spheres and springs, and got it right within 1%, the value being used today is only .02 N-m2/kg2 different from Cavendish's value. The details of the equipment he built, the problems he overcame, and the genius of it would be a book, not a blog post. But once you had that value, you could return to Newton's equation and plug it in. So, if you know the distance to the moon, the period of the moon, Newton's equation, and Big G, you can calculate the mass of the earth.

It took me three days, off and on, to gather that information, come to understand it, and write it up. I felt like my brain was on fire. I learned something. It was something I would never have been capable of discovering, it was all I could do to follow what they had done. I turned in four typewritten pages and was one of four students in the class that attempted the assignment.

The instructor gave me an A on that assignment. He even complemented me on the work I had done. It didn't matter. I knew I was just walking in the footsteps of great men.

I feel the same way when I read about Lord Acton. I can find pages of his quotes, copies of books compiled out of his letters, ideas about freedom and government that I would never have come to on my own. His ideas speak to the issues of our day as well as they did to the issues of his time.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.
--Lord Acton

Two Wolves and a Sheep Planning Dinner

So we elect politicians and they make laws and we call it right, assuming that because the majority rules, it is somehow okay. What if that majority votes poorly? In my last post, I provided what should be a pretty clear example of a set of laws that we would all now say was morally reprehensible. If 51% of our elected official passed a law like that today, there would be large scale civil disobedience. What if some other laws are morally repugnant to individuals? As minorities in our society, do we protect their right to live as they choose, or do we pass laws forcing conformance with the larger group? Here's a list of a few minorities, whose freedoms do you support?

1. Conscientious objectors to military service.
2. People who want to drink unpasteurized milk.
3. Parents who choose to home school their children.
4. Religious minorities; Jews, Muslims, Amish, etc.
5. People who deviate from the sexual norms; gay, transgendered, polygamous, etc.
6. Recreational drug users.
7. Gun owners
8. Conservatives
9. Libertarians
10. Code Pink

There are millions more, because every individual is a minority of one. I picked those examples because they came to mind as groups that other groups would try to control with legislation. I also picked them because I believe that the individuals who would identify with those groups have rights that the majority cannot morally suppress.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
--Lord Acton

The Will of the People

The fact that the majority of the population is in favor of something is not an argument for the correctness or morality of their desires. It is sometimes possible to see this by looking back at history. It is harder to see it in your own time.

From the Daily Oklahoman, 10-10-1918

The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.
--Lord Acton

Moral Laws

When the Constitution was being written, there was discussion about whether or not to include a Bill of Rights. Those opposed to the idea were of the belief that all rights and freedoms were held by individuals, and that a Constitution was a declaration of how the people was agreeing to consent to be governed. Those favoring an enumeration of certain rights held the day and the Bill of Rights was added. It was understood that the rights being enumerated preexisted the Constitution, that they came from God, or from natural law, depending on your beliefs. Even so, to allow some end to the Bill of Rights, the 9th Amendment clearly stated it.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Constitution sets limits on the government, not on the people. It was limited in it's scope, granting only certain powers to government, while retaining all rights to the people. But, creating laws infringing on the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution, or any other freedoms, does not just violate the Constitution.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
--Lord Acton

Truth Prevails

Is the planet really getting warmer?

If it is, does the use of fuel that causes carbon emissions have anything to do with it?

Are there cyclic fluctuations in climate that we don't fully understand, changes in solar output, weather patterns, etc., that cause decade long trends in temperature?

Are there people and organizations using the fear of a catastrophe to further a political agenda?

Is data being honestly collected and studied, or it being manipulated and falsely presented?

Truth always prevails in the end.
--Lord Acton

Power Corrupts

In 1870, the man who was then Pope Pius IX announced the doctrine of Papal infallibility. In recent years, there's been a lot of hedging on this whole idea, and the Pope is only considered infallible in certain narrow situations. But when this doctrine was being debated as an idea in the 1st Vatican Council, Lord Acton went to Rome to personally argue against it.

This was a very contentious issue, and while writing about the idea that any man or organization would be considered infallible, it was in 1887 that Lord Acton made the statement that became the quote I used in my last post.

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

I bolded the last line, because that idea should be held up again. At every level of government, office holders are fawned over, given security, ornate buildings, offices full of fine furniture, free travel, all paid for by the citizens they purport to serve. Lord Acton may have been talking about the Pope in 1887, but what would he have said about this?

We haven't really gotten the credit for what we have done.
--Nancy Pelosi

Lord Acton

John Dalberg-Acton, known as Lord Acton, was a British historian, writer and politician in the 19th Century. That does not begin to describe who he was, but this is just a blog post, not a history book. Most of us don't know his name, but almost everyone remembers one thing he said. We'll start there. There's going to more, because his words resonate for our time.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
--Lord Acton

**Big hat tip to Borepatch

On The Radio

This was on the radio today. I can't hear this without remembering flashing my ID card to the Marine at the gate and strolling out into the evening up Magsaysay Boulevard with some friends. We were so young. Neon lights, San Miguel, and adventure all beckoned.

The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Winter Sunlight

Taken early yesterday.

Sunlight is painting.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Superbowl Commercials

Budweiser isn't an American product anymore, it's owned by InBev. I don't know if that is good or bad, or even if it matters. But they don't do Superbowl commercials as well as they used to.



YouTube remembers them all.

Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
--Stephen Leacock

On The Way Home Today

They've been sitting on a siding for a couple of months. I don't know why they were put there, or when they were last in service, but I am pretty sure I know where they are headed. The only thing left for them is to be cut up as scrap. I noticed them sometime around Thanksgiving and have been intending to take pictures. I went to cut firewood this afternoon, and on the way home, I stopped and walked up the tracks. I stood and wondered when was the last time this light was lit in operation, and who tightened down the nuts and put in the cotter keys?

It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back.
--Bill Vaughn

Brave New World

In Egypt, the future takes shape. It's a brave new world for the minority Christians. Israeli National News has the story. Of course, it's just latest in a long history. If you need to know what the future will be, look to history. Here, at Voice of the Copts, is the the story of their oppression.

Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
--Robert F. Kennedy

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

The Census data from New Orleans was released yesterday. The population is down by a third since Katrina flooded 80% of the city.

My first thought was, "What's wrong with the rest of them?", but after reading more, I realized my question should be "What's wrong with this picture?"

Day after day we keep hearing that global warming is real, it's coming, it's unstoppable, it causes everything from droughts to snowstorms. The oceans are rising, our coastlines are going to join the lost city of Atlantis, monster hurricanes are predicted, and the Army Corps of Engineers is spending 14 billion dollars rebuilding the levees of New Orleans? 14 billion that is a drop in the bucket compared to the money being spent to rebuild the city.

If the U.S. Government believed that global warming, rising sea levels, and bigger hurricanes were real, would they be trying to rebuild a city that is already below current sea levels? Would they construct a levee system that will fill like a swimming pool in a major storm, just like it did last time?

Wouldn't they be relocating people, cutting off services, and preparing to return New Orleans to swampland? Wouldn't those dollars be better spent building a new port further up river where some high ground can be found? Al Gore predicted a 20 foot rise in sea levels, if you take him seriously, how can you spend a dime of government money anywhere in New Orleans? Even if you thought he was wrong by a factor of 10, and there was only going to be a 2 foot rise, why would you rebuild?

If you think New York is going to look like this, how do you think we're going to save New Orleans? Levees wouldn't do it, you'd need undersea domes.

The only possible conclusion is that the remaining residents of New Orleans and the federal, state, and local governments have rejected the idea of global warming and the inevitable flooding of their city. That gives me hope.

We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur.
--Al Gore

How It Will Turn Out

Over at New Platz Journal, he has a short post on the situation in Egypt. Here's a quote:

Egypt? There’s no telling how that will turn out.

I like his writing, but in this case, I beg to differ. I think lots of people know how it's going to turn out. As soon as the demonstrations began, there was looting and arson. Now it is clear that Mubarak is planning to hold power by force, so there will be street fights, and one of two things will happen.

1. The army will use enough force to regain control and the situation will simmer like a pressure cooker with a stuck valve until some future explosion when Mubarak will be deposed.
2. The army will side with the demonstrators now and Mubarak will fall immediately.

When he does fall the Muslim Brotherhood will consolidate power and Egypt will join the other 14th century theocracies in the region. Along the way there will be a lot of blood. It is already starting, but that how I predict it will turn out.

In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated understand how democracy works.
--Naguib Mahfouz

Information

It used to be that you got a local newspaper, or you didn't. Then there was television news, a quick report from a talking head. Now there is the internet, but news is still filtered, rewritten, sent out by the AP and reprinted. I am not making any claims that this is a deliberate attempt to obscure, it's just how things are.

For example, there was a terrorist bombing in an airport in Russia last month. That might still be news, but the events in Egypt overshadowed it. Is it still important? What do the Russians really think of the American President? You cannot get that from a U.S. newspaper.

Two women lost in a gorge in Oregon makes the front page of the Oregonian. Is this important enough to read about if you live in Oregon? What about if you are in Oklahoma and you're dealing with a blizzard? What if you're living in Israel and concerned about Egypt?

The internet is a fire hose and you can only drink so much. I bring this up to offer you a link and an idea. At the bottom of this page at the Daily Earth is a set of links to newspapers in every state and most every country in the world. It's not reality either, but it's at least reporting through a different set of filters.

If you are interested in what's going on in Egypt, for example, you can get the Israeli perspective, or the Saudi. The German newspaper Der Spiegel has had a lot of in depth coverage and photos about the events.

You can't do this for everything, there isn't time. But when something in the news interests you, you can get closer, learn more about it, and not have to settle for what passes through the filters at the New York Times or CNN by going to the newspapers closest to the events.

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.
--Dave Barry

The Scariest Thing Ever

For some people it's clowns, and I'll grant you that Pennywise would get your heart racing if you ran into him. For others it's spiders, snakes, or mice. There is even a group of people who hyperventilate at the sight of a firearm. But when I thought about it, this is the scariest thing ever.
Going to the ammo cans, pulling them open and finding this. It's enough to give a man nightmares.

I believe in ammunition.
--Robert Leckie, USMC

Heating With Wood

The Adaptive Curmudgeon has a series of posts about deciding to use a wood stove for heat. His observations about the responses he gets from people about it are hilarious. Here's a link to the first post in the series, you can follow them forward to the current post. I blogrolled him, as this series is a work in progress and I want to see where it goes.

I've been heating with wood about 15 years. It's a fair amount of work, and there will come a time when I will no longer be able to cut and stack it. For now, it is one of the pleasures of my life to have that hot metal box in my home on cold winter evenings.
My favorite story about responses from other people came at a birthday party for one of my kids when they were in junior high. It was warm weather and the stove was being used as a plant stand, and I noticed one of the guests looking at it. She asked what it was and I told her it was a cast iron stove used for heating. The following exchange took place.

"Does it still work?"

"Yes, see that pipe? It runs up into the chimney. You build a fire inside it and the fire heats the metal to provide heat to the room."

"Do you use it?"

"Yes, in the cold weather. If you look out the window you can see the wood pile I'm getting ready for the fall".

She looked out the window, looked back at the stove with her hands on her hips, and said, "Well, isn't that quaint."

People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
-- Albert Einstein

Totally Predicted

Temps below zero, 3 inches of snow an hour, a weather system creating blizzard conditions from the Great Plains to New England. All totally predicted by the high priests of the Church of Global Warming man made climate change, no doubt.

Don't suppose any of you are getting just a wee bit agnostic on this topic, are you? No, of course not. If the glaciers came back and pressed down out of Canada you would no doubt point at them as a sign of Global Warming man made climate change.

Man made climate change, it's not just a religion, it's a delusion.

...snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
--Charles Onians, Monday, 20 March 2000, writing in The Independent

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Update: Al Gore backs me up, on his blog today he says this:

An Answer for Bill February 1, 2011 : 11:43 AM

Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.

As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”

“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”