Atlanta ROFTERS

Iran militia basiji kills young woman

2009-06-20T12:52:00.003-05:00

The girl's father asks viewers to tell the world, so here you go. Bastards.

David Letterman apologizes to the Palins

2009-06-16T21:55:00.002-05:00

I'm sure that apology came right from the bottom of his pocket.

Serendipity fun with Snopes

2009-06-04T19:40:00.001-05:00

Go to Snopes.com

Enter your year of birth in the search box.

Pick an urban legend from the year you were born!

Fanaticism

2009-06-02T22:17:00.002-05:00

These recent shootings, of abortionist George Tiller and those two Army recruiters, along with the horrors that the Taliban is inflicting in Pakistan, bring to mind this R. A. Lafferty quote on fanaticism. It's from And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire

How is a person or a world unmade or unformed? First, by being deformed. And following the deforming is the collapsing. The tenuous balance is broken. Insanity is induced easily under the name of the higher sanity. Then the little candle that is in each head is blown out on the pretext that the great cosmic light can better be seen without it.

Up, the movie

2009-05-30T22:26:00.002-05:00

Took my two kids to see Up this evening. Surprisingly touching, with the old folks backstory. Plenty of thrills and laughs, though maybe not so much for girls as for boys. The roly-poly little Asian kid is sweet. And no liberal indoctrination, as in Monsters Vs Aliens. It's a winner!

Nork Nuance

2009-05-26T18:52:00.002-05:00

I can't find a link online, but this afternoon I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. They gave a disgusting bit of "backstory" on why North Korea is building nukes: it's because the U.S. bombed North Korea in the Korean War. Old habits die hard: during the Cold War the Left had the same excuse for every instance of communist malfeasance: the big bad Americans made them kill and oppress all those people, and breach all those treaties. Nevermind that the North Korean regime is a horror show unlike any other regime on earth. To be non-white, foreign, and angry at America is to be in the right by definition.

"Peer-refused science"

2009-05-26T18:14:00.002-05:00

Tim Blair gets into it with a commenter who deploys the term "peer-refused science". It's in the context of the global warming debate, but it strikes me that it is a bulls-eye description of creationist "research".

Poor Texas...

2009-05-20T20:54:00.003-05:00

It's like Groundhog Day over and over, having to fight off this particular creationist from the Texas Board of Education. I hope all this hoopla doesn't stir up the creationists in my area. We were the ones with the disclaimer stickers in the biology textbooks a few years back, you may remember. I blogged about it here.

More astronomy wonders on the way

2009-05-15T10:43:00.002-05:00

While the Hubble Space Telescope is getting repaired, the Europeans are launching what's described as the largest telescope ever into space (I wonder if they mean the largest space telescope?) Can't wait for the pix...

A delicate way of putting it...

2009-05-13T10:41:00.003-05:00

I'm reading an article about cities and their affordability/liveability, and noticed this sentence:

Similarly, the close-in communities of the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles are home to large contingents of entertainment industry workers, many of them self-employed.

Thanks to a book I read by essayist Mike Sager, I recognize these self-employed entertainment industry workers in the San Fernando Valley as aspiring actors. Very tactful turn of phrase...

Photos to drive 9/11 Truthers nuts

2009-05-12T20:41:00.001-05:00

Via Discarded Lies, this is a photo essay neatly debunking a number of troofer claims. Won't do any good, of course, but it's nice to see someone take the time to refute them.

Wishful thinking

2009-05-11T16:29:00.001-05:00

How often we settle for wishing over doing:

For in general mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an effect towards which they have done everything, and at the absence of an effect towards which they have done nothing but desire it. Parents are astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the most time-honoured and expensive means of securing it; husbands and wives are mutually astonished at the loss of affection which they have taken no pains to keep; and all of us in our turn are apt to be astonished that our neighbours do not admire us. In this way it happens that the truth seems highly improbable. The truth is something different from the habitual lazy combinations begotten by our wishes.
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876

The complete idiot's guide to Pakistan

2009-05-11T15:39:00.001-05:00

This handy guide to who's who and what's what in Pakistan is most illluminating. What a snakepit, politically speaking, that country is.

Fratricide in Baghdad

2009-05-11T10:21:00.004-05:00

I'm reading Thomas Ricks' The Gamble right now, and so can't help what a feat it is for our military to have drawn down the violence in Iraq as much as they have. But this news of a "stressed-out" American soldier turning his gun on his comrades is a horrifying reminder that this is still a war, and war is still hell.

Leonard Nimoy interview

2009-05-11T10:15:00.001-05:00

I used to be a Trekkie when I was in grade school, so this interview with Leonard Nimoy brought back some memories.

So long, Dom Deluise...

2009-05-09T23:04:00.000-05:00

In search of the missing millions

2009-05-09T16:14:00.002-05:00

Millions of missing Russians, that is. These teenagers are searching Moscow's marshes, looking for the remains of Soviet soldiers. God bless 'em for trying to recover Russia's brave history.

The hazel wand of chance...

2009-04-30T13:44:00.001-05:00

Love this quote:

The universe is supremely complicated to the point that chance can be a practical explanation, if not an ultimate one. Was it chance that sent an asteroid smashing into the Earth 65 million years ago, redirecting the course of reptile and mammal evolution? It's as good a word as "God did it," and conveys exactly as much information. The difference is that "chance" is open to ever deeper investigation, whereas "God did it" is a closed door.

All Edges Gilt is back

2009-04-29T13:39:00.001-05:00

I replaced my scanner, which was not compatible with Windows Vista, and have started scanning vintage book illustrations again. I invite you to browse the images here. Be sure to click on the images for the larger view.

Love across the racial barrier

2009-04-26T21:36:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite searches is to go spelunking in Google's news archive. Here's a story I found by keyword searching "negress". It's from The New York Times, in 1911. Heartwrenching...

Deterrent? A deterrent for what?

2009-04-20T18:21:00.003-05:00

In the course of reviewing Michael Quinlan's Thinking About Nuclear Weapons, this Times Of London article includes a paragraph which caught my eye:

It is laughable to suggest that, for instance, unilateral British nuclear disarmament would persuade others to follow our virtuous example. Israelis and Pakistanis, and for that matter Iranians, want ultimate deterrents for their own reasons.

Of those three nations, Iran is the only one which does not seek a nuclear "deterrent". Their avowed aim (as the article goes on to state) is not deterrence, but offensive capability, to wipe out the Jews from the Middle East. Indeed, some commentators have claimed that the threat of nuclear retaliation does not scare the mullahs, as it would only amount to a martyrdom which they actively seek, even if only for their own hapless subjects.

Stay tuned

2009-04-20T18:17:00.002-05:00

I'm tapering off my anti-depressants. As my highs and lows return, this blog may become more interesting.

Crocs on the way out?

2009-04-11T21:29:00.001-05:00

Another clothing fad that I don't have to bother keeping up with, mercifully. Sic transit gloria mundi.

They shall beat their assault rifles into art

2009-04-11T20:28:00.000-05:00

I love stories like this. Iraqi art students are turning old munitions into art:

The former Iraqi army soldier approached the students last year and agreed to provide them with a place to work as well as supplies of scrap metal from destroyed Chinese and Russian AK-47s, mortar tubes and grenade launchers.

"These weapons for killing people — I wanted to change them into symbols of love, freedom and life," says the former mine specialist.

"These destroyed guns have a message for all people, that art can bring peace," he adds.

An unreported cause of poverty

2009-04-02T22:27:00.004-05:00

So I was watching The News Hour on PBS tonight, and they had a segment on the working poor. The person they selected was a woman named Scharf (I forget the first name, sorry) who was running to stand still, financially. The segment ticked off a number of misfortunes she was faced with, and how tough it was for her. One cause of her straits that was mentioned but not analyzed was probably the biggest one: she is a single mother. Single motherhood is a sure ticket to financial struggles in America, documented umpty times over, yet there was no discussion of it in Ms. Scharf's case. That would be too insensitive, and also violate the liberal precept that single parenthood is simply one lifestyle choice among many, none better or worse than another.