As it says. Trouble ticket is in. I will blog at wolfe.wordpress.com (currently just a test site) if this persists past Christmas.
(Finally this one appeared). Posts are taking days to appear, and I can’t comment reliably either. Wordpress seems to think it’s a problem on Dick’s site; I’m not sure what the problem is.
-wolfe
One of the characteristics of a not-so-free country is a not-so-free press: a press that doesn’t print the truth, but some ‘version’ of the truth more palatable to the elites that rule.
In a free (or freer) country, it’s much better, but there’s still a disturbing trend to report not what happened, but what one would have liked to imagine happened. Truthiness, as Stephen Colbert would say. Rather than report the objective truth, they report what they’d like to be true.
A very fond truthiness that’s been oft-reported is ‘youths’ rioting in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Rather than reporting the truth — that disaffected Muslims are rioting in thousands and tens of thousands across France, and continuing to burn cars by the hundreds every week, we speak of ‘youths’, and don’t mention the billion-plus dollars in damages they’ve done over the last year.
This allows multi-cultural boosters to bask in the warm glow of feeling that they’re not racist, even while society starts to tear itself apart. It’s not so good for, well, people who drive cars or people who don’t want to be burned to death.
Copenhagen youths stage an unannounced
demonstration last night. AP photo
Last night, the famous ‘youths’ rioted again in Copenhagen. Did I say ‘rioted’? I meant ’staged an unannounced demonstration’. In a story almost worthy of Pravda, Reuters writes:
Protestors throw stones at police vans in a Copenhagen street December 16, 2006 … hundreds of young people started an unannounced demonstration.
What does this mean? Who are these youths? Are the Danish really going that crazy? More:
Several hundred demonstrators threw cobblestones, bottles and fireworks at police and erected blazing barricades made from Christmas trees, trash cans and bicycles, police said.
They were setting Christmas trees on fire. Maybe they were atheists? Maybe they were anti-Christian? Maybe they were Christians unhappy about people saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”?
Ah-ha! Maybe it was leftists:
The conflict over the youth centre has been brewing since 2000 when local government sold the building that houses the centre. Left-wing activist have been using the centre as a base since 1982.
It was certainly very violent:
“It was extremely violent. It looked like a war zone and it’s been many years since we last had to use tear gas on the streets,” police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch told reporters.
Police responded with tear gas attacks and split the main crowd of demonstrators into several smaller ones using armoured cars. Groups of demonstrators walked toward the city centre smashing shop windows, leaving a trail of destruction.
Tear gas and armored cars? Some angry youths.
In the end, this story tells us nearly nothing. We don’t know if it was a mass Muslim riot like almost all the other ‘youths’ rioting in Europe of late; we don’t know if it was a bunch of leftist squatters; we don’t know if it was people mad about Christmas! We read the story, and we’re simply not informed… other than that violence is breaking out.
Truthiness is such a wonderful thing.
-wolfe
Same rules as the first one. This one will be linked in the sidebar.
Update: Other sidebar tweaks:
Added (which I thought I’d done) Say no to Crack and also Teri’s site, The road lester travelled.
Renamed “Wonderful Luka” to the more accurate “Engender Truth”, though I don’t think she’ll be posting much til post-Christmas.
Removed, alas, Dakota Smith’s blog link since he doesn’t seem active. If he does become active again, back up it shall go.
If you’re a regular reader and commenter and you’d like to be blogrolled, please let me know.
-wolfe
Never fearing to delve into a story and come up with a completely different (yet factually accurate) spin, I turn ‘Veggies are more intelligent’ into ‘Vegans are stupid’. And treat my readers to some Friday Boobies.
‘Vegetarians are more intelligent’ says the headline.
Wonderful to see a vegan woman who cares so much about
what she puts in her body. Credit: Publicity still via pestola.gr
A provocative claim:
[R]esearch show[s] vegetarians are more intelligent than their meat-eating friends.
A study of thousands of men and women revealed that those who stick to a vegetarian diet have IQs that are around five points higher than those who regularly eat meat.
Granted, we’ve the usual caveats on what IQ measures. Stipulated. And this seems almost like saying “Being vegetarian makes you more intelligent.” Except it doesn’t.
People who eat chicken and fish (but supposedly no red meat) are just as intelligent. And they sure aren’t vegetarians.
And the vegetarians? Turns out they were already more intelligent in their childhood, at age 10, before they switched to a vegetarian diet.
those who were brainiest as children were more likely to have become vegetarian as adults, shunning both meat and fish.
The typical adult veggie had a childhood IQ of around 105 - around five points higher than those who continued to eat meat as they grew up.
There was no difference in IQ between strict vegetarians and those who classed themselves as veggie but still ate fish or chicken.
While vegetarians tended to be people from higher social classes, there appeared to be some evidence that there was a negative correlation between wealth and being a vegetarian. i.e., being a vegetarian is consistent with being poorer than you would otherwise be, though not more stupid.
In other words, this study seems to say that intelligent people are more likely to care about what they eat, within reason. And possibly being vegetarian makes you poorer, but not dumber.
But the meat of the matter? Vegans are stupid.
However, vegans - vegetarians who also avoid dairy products - scored significantly lower, averaging an IQ score of 95 at the age of 10.
So, avoid dating vegans if you’re thinking of having kids.
-wolfe
This piece is about a politician. Or about writing. Or images. Or what the media does, both subtly and blatantly. Even though ed makes an appearance and makes fun of me, it’s mostly not that funny.
We have a righteous wind at our backs, and, as we stand at the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.
Americans do seem to love perpetual political campaigning… for all that we say we don’t. Or maybe just US journalists love it.
The somewhat Kennedy-esque first TV commercial for Senator Barack Hussein Obama Jr.’s possible presidential run has surfaced here.
Sasha, Michelle, and Barack Obama (l to r).
Scott Olson, Getty Images
Note what I did with his name above? I gave his name in full. This probably subtly attacks the man: the technically accurate “Jr.” — he was named for his father — is somewhat demeaning. The ‘Hussein’? A lot of people are talking about that. Some of (right-wing) talk radio is pushing the ‘Hussein’ angle.
Granted, a politician running in 1948 named “George Hitler Jones” might have attracted some attention, but Hussein is a much more common name.
(There’s also the subtle point that mostly full names are only given in the U.S. for notorious serial killers).
I don’t think there’s any ‘there’ there. It’s about as controversial as the “W” in George W. Bush’s name. Both are named for ancestors. And, as Senator Obama sensibly noted, if you can get by the name “Barack Obama” the Hussein really shouldn’t give you pause.
But I thought I’d just dissect my reference to his name. Signals we send are subtle; sometimes unintentional. They can be propagandistic nevertheless. Henceforth, I’ll refer to the man as “Barack Obama”, but I thought the fact that his middle name is “Hussein” is an interesting bit of trivia.
I suppose I could leave it as an exercise for the reader, but I’ll point out the two ways I boosted him in this article.
First, opening with “We have a righteous wind at our backs”. I could have opened with no quote, or quoting him denying the scandal of a Chicago land deal (see below). That would have certainly altered the initial perception of the man in this post.
Second, a smiling picture of the man with his family. Short of kissing babies or running into a fire to rescue people, there’s little that’s more telegenic for a politician. Pictures can exalt or destroy politicians. Consider the two rides in tanks of two politicians in the ’80’s: Margaret Thatcher and Michael Dukakis. (The latter was the Democratic governor of Massachusetts who challenged George H.W. Bush for the presidency in 1988).
Everyone believed Dukakis was a technocratic nerd (I say that as a bit of a technocrat and maybe a nerd — though at least a tall and athletic one — myself). [can someone blog and NOT be a nerd? --ed.]. The tank pictures didn’t help.
No one in this galaxy, or our neighboring galaxies, believed Thatcher was anything but tough — very tough. Riding in a tank — however prim and womanly she looked — just plain felt like the kind of thing she’d do on weekends for recreation. After running over Michael’s Foot. [Everyone's going to think you mean Dukakis' foot, and no one will get the joke --ed. (well it made you laugh -wolfe). Touché, but it's still a bad joke -- ed.]
Dukakis was dressed photo-op-style for it, down to having a helmet with his name on it. Thatcher was wearing a flowing, female [trouble using the word 'feminine' with Thatcher? -ed.] ensemble that looked as though she’d just stepped out of Selfridges. [Little known fact: the founder of Selfridges was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, a town that Diesel should like].
The results? Well, here goes:
Hi, I’m Mike Dukakis, and I’m a dork. AP Photo
Which way is Moscow? BBC Photo
Dukakis, in all his 5′6″ magnificence [come on, give his real height -ed.] OK, OK, … Dukakis in all his 5′8″ magnificence looked, like, well, a technocratic dork. That’s worse than nerd. I think. Worse yet, going up against a tall, patrician genuine war hero in George H.W. Bush (youngest carrier aviator pilot in the USN; gave up university to go into combat in WW 2) he looked… well… pathetic is the kindest word.
Thatcher, by contrast, looked as though she wanted to nuke Moscow, yet unlike Dukakis was completely inappropriately dressed.
Papers that endlessly reprinted the Dukakis disaster of a photo-op were subtly saying “vote Republican”. Or maybe they were saying “Dukakis is an idiot”. Similar thing I guess. Papers that endlessly reprinted the Thatcher tank photo-op were, of course, the Sun.
With that digression into politician photos and photo-ops, we come to an important point on Obama. Recent allegations have surfaced that he was the beneficiary (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) in a sweet land deal seemingly orchestrated by a supporter of his.
Now see what I just did? I talked endlessly about other things, including going back to the 1980’s then unleashed an important bit of current (negative) news on Barack Obama.
This is what newspapers call ‘burying the lede’. (Yes, ‘lede’ not ‘lead’, though it means much the same thing).
Newspaper stories, unlike blog posts or newspaper columns, are written so that they can be chopped off, arbitrarily, at the end any paragraph, after about 1-3 paragraphs. Try it in a good newspaper and you’ll see. It’s quite an interesting style of writing.
By ‘burying the lede’, you not only hope that the conclusion (A1 story continued on page A17) will not be read because of a ‘jump’ in pagination, you also hope that online readers won’t read it, either because of a ‘jump’ (beyond a big online ad) or because they are bored. You also faintly hope an editor may excise part of the damaging information at a paragraph break. Purely for space constraints of course. Even online space constraints. Of course.
But you can then truthfully say, yes, we reported on Obama’s land scandal problems in a page A1 story.
Needless to say, when it’s a Republican, the lede tends not to be so buried.
Senator Obama’s land scandal? Oh, it’s smelly. But pretty much par for the course with politicians. Seems about as bad as anything George W. Bush has gotten up to, but only one instance rather than several. And nothing near Hilary Clinton’s “Whitewater” and “Cattlegate” scandals. (In the latter, a $100,000 bribe to her husband was ‘laundered’ through Hillary Clinton.) And Senator Obama’s reacting appropriately, I think. You can read the linked article for more information. Unless Senator Obama is lying, there’s not much ‘there’ there.
What do I like about the man? Though this is a buried lede, I’m boldfacing it in the hopes that it will be seen. From Wikipedia:
In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes a nearly race-blind early childhood. He writes: “That my father looked nothing like the people around me –- that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk –- barely registered in my mind.
Wikipedia goes on (accurately, I think), to describe him as a cultural and ethnic Rorschach test:
an ink spot on which his fans can project their own personal histories and aspirations. Obama’s own self-narrative helps encourage diverse multiethnic affinities. In Dreams from My Father, he links his maternal family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the Civil War. Speaking before an elderly Jewish audience during his 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate, Obama likened the linguistic roots of his first name Barack to the Hebrew word baruch, meaning blessed.
This country is too screwed up on ethnicity and race. To our detriment. I hope that we’ll see an end to legally enforced racial discrimination by the 2020’s, and an end to most other forms this century. But I’m not holding my breath.
In the end, do I support the man? Heck no. His voting record in Illinois was virtually unreconstructed Marxism. His quotes are long on platitudes and short on ideas. But I think he’s a good and decent man and one worth thoughtfully looking at. You may differ.
-wolfe
This story is pretty sad. Especially since the man concerned had to know it was coming. Or maybe he really did think being a Democrat gave him +5 armor of invulnerability to impertinent media questions?
It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield? …
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,� Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?�
“Sure,� I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,� he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.
At least he was somewhat more knowledgeable than two of the Republicans on the committee were. On the other hand, he had several months warning that these questions were being asked by this reporter, after his two colleagues were ridiculed in the New York Times (justly so, for once).
On this one, I’m against a partisan spin. There seem to be plenty of political ‘leaders’, both Republican and Democrat who seem profoundly ignorant of the details of the forces we’re facing. It would have been nice, of course, to see the NY Times, before the election, publish both Democrat and Republican ignorance of these issues, but, hey, what do you expect of a pamphlet run out of Howard Dean’s office? [so you couldn't resist at least one partisan dig? -ed.]
What to do? Hope they learn, I guess, and try and shame them into learning. Hence this blog post, in its own tiny way.
Here’s the crash course for Chairman Reyes and his colleagues:
Islam is divided into two primary theological camps: Shiite and Sunni. Essentially, the Shiites believe that there is no continuity (after the death of Mohammed) of divinely inspired political leadership. Only the heirs of the fourth Caliph (leader of the Muslim world or Caliphate — roughly analogous to a kingdom), Ali, were legitimate religious leaders. Moreover, when the 12th Imam (religious leader) disappeared in 931 A.D., they believed that brought an end to divine leadership (via humans).
The Sunni, by contrast, believe that there was an unbroken divinely inspired succession of Caliphs all the way into the 20th century, ceasing only with the post-World War I breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
You can now imagine how devastating this was for a devout Sunni — an end to an unbroken succession of leadership by God. Imagine, for a devout, fundamentalist Catholic an abrupt end to the apostolic succession, and the Pope and Cardinals vanishing completely like dust in the wind. Then imagine that the Pope was their Lord Temporal as well as Lord Spirtual.
And you’ve got some idea of the repercussions for Sunni fundamentalists.
And you can imagine the arguments between the Sunni and the Shiites.
Thus, the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a reactionary force in Egypt in 1928. Hating what they viewed as Western permissiveness/modernism/Christianity, they sought to overthrow that by force. Gradually, the Brotherhood nominally shifted to non-violence over the century to come. But not before birthing Hamas, and, effectively, al-Qaeda. These three, are, of course, Sunni.
The major Shiite terrorist group (depending on whether or not we define the nation of Iran as a terrorist group) is of course Hezbollah. A creature of Iran, operating in Palestine. Shiite to the core, it is nevertheless seemingly willing to work with Sunni extremists against ‘zionists’ (Jews) and ‘crusaders’ (westerners).
In the end, the Shiites are perhaps 10-15% of Islam; the Sunni almost all of the balance.
Here endeth the lesson.
-wolfe
Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’d
Around their shores.-William Blake. America: A Prophecy.
Discovery streaking over Daytona Beach.
AP/Daytona Beach News-Journal, Nigel Cook.
Discovery night launch with a one-hour time exposure,
as seen from Titusville, Florida. Rick Fowler, Reuters.
On a slow race against time to finish the International Space Station before America’s shuttle fleet is retired, the Discovery lifted off Saturday, 9 December 2006 in a rare night launch.
In clear skies throughout much of Florida, the sight was spectacular as night turned to day.
While the shuttle remains a technological marvel of 1970’s-era engineering, it’s a dead end as far as manned space exploration goes, with neither the safety, reliability, turnaround time, nor low costs originally promised of the reusable orbiter program.
That said, I’m still happy to see people slipping the surly bonds of earth.
-wolfe