Memes

Generally, I do not do "memes". Those odd stepchildren of blogging where someone comes up with an idea to torture fellow bloggers. (I did once tag The Anchoress with one, though, so I suppose paybacks are in order.) So Phil, from Brandywine Books decided I needed to be tagged, though I am not sure why he hates me. So the rules he sent are these:

In which each player lists eight facts/habits about themselves, the rules of the game being posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed, eight people tagged at the end of the post, listing their names. The player then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read his blog.

I am supposed to list eight facts or habits about myself. I am not entirely sure I have eight that I wish to share, but I'll give it a go.

1. I tinker with things. At the moment there are four computers in my office, two online right now, one disconnected and sitting forlornly looking sad and another with a questionable power supply that is daring me to try to fix it. I have bits and pieces of computer hardware stuffed in various locations waiting for me to get around to sticking them into various computer boxes. They are patient, but I can sense them watching me, waiting for their moment in the sun, so to speak.

2. I write some things in full hyperbolic mode. See #1.

3. For someone who spends as much time as I do writing about the Animal Uprising™, I have a lot of animals about the place. Well, not a lot, I suppose, but a dog and a cat. There are some fish, too. But no bird.

4. The bird, who for whatever reason was my bird from the moment he laid eyes on me, died a short while ago. He was a cockatiel named Carter (He had that name when he was given to us - has nothing to do with politics). He died while I was on vacation a while ago. My son, who was watching him for us, felt awful. I felt worse. I had to bury him.

5. I hate having pets. Because I always have to bury them. Every time. Except the pony, thank heavens. (Not hyperbole).

6. I am a very good cook. Seriously. Not the "throw something on the grill" variety but a really good cook. Oh, I can throw things on the grill with the best of them. But I can also make a gourmet meal. (Not hyperbole).

7. I watch almost no television at all - especially the news. This is, I think, a bit surprising considering that I grew up watching it almost every free moment. (Wasn't it Harlan Ellison who called it "The Glass Teat?") I grew tired of the television  - especially the news - a long time ago. I still catch a few shows - but not regularly. The news is right out, especially the broadcast network stuff.

8. I'm not a huge fan of professional sports. I watch the occasional football game during the season, but never pay any attention to baseball or any other sports. It was never a big deal for me. I suppose that is a bit odd these days.

I'll not tag anyone with this, despite the rules. I can be contrary at times.

Reid Panders Yet Again

Harry "Bozo" Reid, his ever-sensitive political antennae (at least the ones on the left side of his head) twitching mightily, has pandered, yet gain, to the nutroots. Earlier today they were panting that Harry should put one of his big, floppy red shoes down and actually make the Republicans filibuster. Harry is ever reliable as a tool of the far left and promptly complied to his loud, screeching masters.

Don Surber throws cold water on the lefty high-fives:

Oh my goodness. The Senate is actually going to be in session for a few hours of overtime.

This is supposed to impress the American people?

The lefty bloggers are all chirpy over this, as if the American people are going to be impressed by parliamentary moves in the Senate. The lefty reactions are here.

So Harry Reid has to stay up past his bedtime one night. Big deal.

Troops over in Iraq are putting in 12- to 16-hour days fighting in a war that Reid and half the Democrats in the Senate authorized. I remember all the get-the-WMD talk and all the flag-waving shown by the Republicans and half the Democrats — a month before an election.

Now the war is not so popular and Reid and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and all those other sunshine patriots are on their high horse telling me how immoral the war is.

I’ll tell you what is immoral: Starting a war, putting our soldiers in harm’s way and then bitching about the cost 4 years later.

Should have thought about that before going in.

Yep. Harry toed the line. It has the left in a positively giddy mood. And it will not impress the voters, other than the true believers, one whit. It is a stunt, and a lame one. It actually works against the Democratic party attempts to paint this as "Bush's war" and puts them firmly on the side of "Democratic party surrenders to the terrorists." Thank heavens Harry's not smart enough to see that. That is the perfect way to paint the Democrats as the party of defeat and retreat - and he walked right into it. Nice shoes, Harry.

UPDATE: Should have included this one in the first place. Michael Van Der Galien points out the flaming hypocrisy of Reid. A very short time ago the filibuster was the patriotic thing to do - for the Dems. Now, it has morphed into "obstructionism" when the Dems (and Harry's big red shoes) are in charge. Funny how that works, isn't it? (Whoops - it is Jason Steck writing over at Michael's place that wrote this, sorry for the confusion.)

Lament

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
(Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice Cream)

Mark Steyn writes a column for the New York Sun pointing out that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Eco-fanatics are revealing their true intent in raising the hysteria level over global warming: a loathing of humanity. Specifically, a loathing of the societies that produced them and gave them their soapbox to preach auto-genocide.

So how far are the ecochondriacs prepared to take things? In London last week, the Optimum Population Trust called for Britons to have "one child less" because the United Kingdom's "high birth rate is a major factor in the current level of climate change, which can only be combated if families voluntarily limit the number of children they have."

"Climate change is now widely regarded as the biggest problem facing the planet," says Professor John Guillebaud. "We're nearing the point of no return and people are feeling increasingly desperate and helpless. The answer lies in our own hands … We have to recognize that the biggest cause of climate change is climate changers — in other words, human beings, in the UK as well as abroad." As the professor sees it, having fewer children is "the simplest, quickest and most significant thing any of us could do to leave a sustainable and habitable planet for our children and grandchildren." The best thing we can do for our children is not to have them.

Professor Guillebaud isn't the only one. Just ahead of the Live Earth flopperama, another "rational" man of "science," Professor Chris Rapley, head honcho of the British Antarctic Survey, turned up on the BBC to argue that population control is central to the environmental debate.

This is the logical reductio of climate-change fever: throw the baby out in order to save the bathwater. For a start, look at the "high birth rate" Professor Guillebaud is complaining about: Britain's current fertility rate is about 1.8 children per couple. Replacement rate — ie, what you need for a stable population staying pretty much exactly the same — is 2.1 children per couple. So the United Kingdom's population is already headed for long-term decline (and would be in much steeper decline without the higher birth rates of immigrant communities). In Europe as a whole, the fertility rate is a little over 1.3, which is what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility, from which no society in human history has ever recovered. The Spanish, the Italians, the Germans, the Greeks, the Bulgars and Ukrainians will be extinct long before the polar bears or the Antarctic krill or the Latin-American three-toed tree sloth or any of the other species these professors wants to protect.

Steyn is, as always, difficult to excerpt. So much is left behind when a section of his work is quoted. There are multiple snarks on Al Gore that alone make the whole thing worth reading. But Steyn is spot on in pointing out the anti-Western-civilization motivation of many of the most vociferous of the true believers. And in the end, if they get their way, the West will fall. An auto-genocide, a self-inflicted eradication of all that we are. Thirty or more years ago, the screeching was about the "population bomb". That "problem" seems to have been solved in the West. The lights are flickering across Europe and we here in the US appear to be not far behind.

(Steven's poem came to mind when I read Steyn's piece. Somehow it seems to fit.)

The Lies Of The BBC

Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, goes ballistic on the BBC. The recent spate of outright fraud the BBC has admitted is symptomatic of a deeply flawed, ideologically driven operation where the truth is simply not valued. It is all about twisting stories to fit a predetermined world view. And it is destroying the BBC brand name.

The BBC is in serious trouble. In the space of one week it has suffered three serious blows to its credibility as a broadcaster of integrity which can be relied upon to tell the truth.

First, it was fined £50,000 after it faked the results of a Blue Peter competition last November.

The show allowed a child visiting the studio to pose as a caller when technical problems stopped real calls getting through. The BBC was criticised for 'negligence' and for 'making a child complicit' in the deception.

In the wake of this disaster, its director of vision Jana Bennett seemed to be tacitly admitting that the BBC cupboard was packed with skeletons about to come tumbling out, when she urged staff to identify programmes 'where you feel there may be a risk that in some way audiences could have been misled'.

She didn't have long to wait. Within a few hours of her panicky request, the BBC was engulfed by a fresh and even more explosive revelation that it had put out a false accusation about the Queen.

The Controller of BBC1, Peter Fincham, gloated at a press launch of the BBC's autumn schedule that a forthcoming documentary would show the Queen had 'walked off in a huff'.

He showed the Press a trailer which purported to show the Queen storming off from a photo-shoot after being asked to remove her crown by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

This turned out to be an outright falsification. The footage had been edited in such a way as to reverse the actual sequence of events. The Queen did not storm out; she made the remarks on her way in.

Yesterday, in an echo of this most damaging debacle, it was revealed in addition that BBC TV's Newsnight had similarly reversed a filmed sequence of events, this time apparently to present the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in a bad light.

The sequence purported to show that Mr Brown's press officer had told the police to question a Newsnight reporter under antiterror laws in retaliation for an earlier confrontation between them. In fact, the two events had taken place weeks apart and in reverse order.

As a result, Mr Brown's officials complained to the Corporation about an 'unfair, unbalanced, unnecessarily personal and disingenuous' film which they claim was altered to make Mr Brown look like a thug.

Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, has admitted that the sequence of events was reversed, but has refused to apologise. The BBC has insisted there was no intention to deceive. Disingenuous, or what? …..

…..And that certainly fits with the institutionalised infantile Leftism that passes for neutrality at the BBC.

Indeed, questions about the integrity of the BBC's processes are intimately bound up with questions about the integrity of its journalism.

In recent months, concern has steadily mounted that our public service broadcaster is abusing its position by systematically presenting events through a distorting ideological prism.

That was the mild part - from there it gets scathing, go see for yourself. I very seldom link anything from the BBC - I have known of their bias for a long time. But the world - who has come to trust the BBC - is getting a rude awakening. A series of scandals this close together can only be considered the tip of the iceberg. And people are a whole lot smarter than the leftist elites give them credit for. The BBC is in trouble, the question is: are they smart enough to realize it and fix it?

Armed Man Killed Attempting To Enter Colorado Governor’s Office

A man armed with a gun attempted to enter the office of Colorado governor Bill Ritter, declaring he was "the emperor" and was there to take over the government. State Troopers were forced to shoot the man dead when he refused orders to drop his weapon. The governor was not hurt and not involved in the confrontation.

State troopers shot and killed an unknown man who attempted to enter Gov. Bill Ritter's office inside the state capitol just minutes ago.

The man, who claimed he was "the emperor," said he was going to take over the state government.

Ritter was in his office at the time but was not involved in the shooting at about 2:25 p.m. today.

State troopers, who provide security inside the statehouse, ordered the man to drop his gun. He didn't and they shot him. The man died where he fell.

"He said that he was the emperor and he was here to take over state government," said Gov. Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer, who added he did not witness the shooting.

The man's identity has not been released. Neither Ritter nor anyone else was injured, Dreyer said.

Sounds like he flipped out.

UPDATE: First AP blurb on it, not very informative, but they will update as more as known.

Rock-N-Roll-N-Rock

Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building. And moved into a rock.

Rock collector LaDell Alexander, 60, has found a stone she swears has the face of Elvis Presley on it. You don't have to think Elvis is everywhere to see it: A pattern on the rock resembles a human head with dark hair and the king of rock's trademark muttonchop sideburns.

Alexander, who splits her time between Estes Park and Texas, said the rock was one of many she bought in various places last summer. She didn't notice the pattern until she took the rocks to Texas and cleaned them before using them to decorate her yard.

"I was about 20 feet away and the first thing I said was, 'That is Elvis,'" said her husband, Lynn Alexander, 63.

Townhall has a larger image. Alexander says 7 out of 10 people see Elvis. If you screw your eyes up enough, I suppose it sort of resembles him. Or Rob Reiner back in the All in the Family days. Or the Easter Bunny. These things are open to interpretation.

Okay, Pal, Hand Over Your Liver

Doctors in Britain are expected to call for compulsory organ donation tomorrow. Oh, for now they say people will be able to opt out of the scheme, but that will change very quickly if enough people do so. Bet on it.

People should automatically have their organs removed for transplant after they die unless they opted out while alive, Britain's most senior doctor is expected to say tomorrow in his annual report.

Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, is expected to call for a change in the law amid fears that people are dying needlessly due to a shortage of donors.

Latest figures show that more than 7,300 Britons are on the waiting list for a life-saving transplant, a rise of about 30 per cent in the past 10 years.

Britain operates a system where organs can be removed only from people who have joined the donor register or carried a donor card.

Under a new system of presumed consent, which is supported by the British Medical Association, everyone would be treated as an organ donor unless they explicitly opted-out of the scheme while alive.

It is understood that Sir Liam will call for a "soft" system of presumed consent which takes into account the views of relatives.

Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, who tried to introduce presumed consent in 2004, said: "Bodies are buried or cremated complete with organs that could have been used to save lives, not because the deceased objected to organ donation but simply because they never got round to signing up to the NHS Organ Donation register or informing their relatives of their wishes," he said.

This is where socialized medicine begins to show its ugly side. Note the presumption that the doctor knows better than you do what you intended. Note also the idea that your organs actually belong to the state to do with as they see fit. It will start as "soft" enforcement, but it will harden up soon enough. There will be punishment for people who opt out, probably in the form of denying medical services. Britons will be nothing more than a source of spare parts for the bureaucrats. Soylent Green, anyone? 

UPDATE: I also should have mentioned that Larry Niven predicted a very similar thing in his story The Jigsaw Man.

No Nudes Is Good Nudes

Gee, I had to get this from the British press. The town of Brattleboro, Vermont got a lot of media attention last year when a fad started among the town's teenagers of wandering around town in the buff. The town council decided last year not to pass a law against public nudity since winter was coming on. They figured Mother Nature would settle things. What they did not take into account is the problems the media coverage would provoke: visitors to the town just showing up with no clothes. Now they are set to pass an emergency law banning the practice, at least in some areas.

A town in Vermont famous for turning a blind eye to public nudity is planning to ban it tomorrow amid concern it is attracting unwelcome attention and offending local people.

Brattleboro's strip-and-let-strip philosophy may end when its council intends to introduce an emergency ordinance to ban nudity in certain parts of the town.

Local feeling hardened a few days ago after a 68-year-old male visitor strolled naked through the centre of town during Gallery Walk, a monthly social event in which people visit the town's art venues.

The man told residents he was from Arizona and had decided to have a holiday in Brattleboro after reading about its public nudity freedom on the internet.

Vermont - famous for its liberal views - has no state laws against public nudity, although a handful of cities and towns have banned it.

Brattleboro flirted with the idea last summer when a group of teenagers held naked gatherings in a car park. Local people said publicity over the incident triggered interest from all over America.

The ironic thing here is that the "nonconformists" who are not wearing clothes are now all conforming to that role. As with all fads. The kiddies are even recycling old hippie mantras:

"I like to swim naked, and that would be affected if they do this. Vermont doesn't need to conform to the rest of society's uptight rules."

Like, wow, man. Groovy.

I Want My Dead TV

A slightly butchered version of Sting's memorable intro to Dire Straits' classic Money for Nothing seems appropriate here. After all, we're talking the round the clock death network. Really. A German man is starting up a television network devoted 24/7/365 to aging, death and dying. No, really, he is.

Eos TV, which takes its name from the Greek goddess of the dawn, will feature documentaries about graveyards, televised obituaries, tips on finding a decent retirement home and even how to install in-house stair lifts.

The €10 million (£7 million) project was conceived by Wolf Tilmann Schneider, 51, a former television producer who has joined forces with Germany's funeral association to launch the 24-hour, seven days a week, death-and-dying channel on cable television and the internet.

Mr Schneider told The Sunday Telegraph: "More than 800,000 people died in Germany last year. Multiply that by four and you have a rough estimate of the number of relatives affected. They will be our target audience. We are convinced that Eos TV will attract viewers."

The channel aims to capitalise on the changing demographics in a country that has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Last year there were almost 150,000 more deaths than births, and an estimated 2.1 million elderly people were receiving professional care. "There are millions of people confronting the issues of ageing and death," Mr Schneider said.

This whole idea is so depressing. It says an awful lot about the demographical disaster that Europe faces.

Deja Vu All Over Again

A career criminal in France is on the loose, armed and dangerous, after a spectacular prison break involving four henchmen and a stolen helicopter. The accomplices hijacked the helicopter at gunpoint and had the pilot fly it to the maximum security prison where Pascal "Kalashnikov Pat" Payet was incarcerated. They then forced their way into the prison, freed Payet and escaped in the waiting chopper. However, this is not unusual.

This is the second time Payet has escaped prison in a helicopter. And he's helped others break out the same way.

A convicted killer known as 'Kalashnikov Pat' was on the run last night after staging a spectacular prison break involving a helicopter and four armed accomplices.

It is the second time that Pascal Payet, 43, has got out of a high-security jail using a chopper in the past six years.

On Saturday evening a single engine Squirrel, made by Eurocopter, was hijacked in the glamorous seaside resort of Cannes, in the south of France, by the four masked men.

Half-an-hour later it landed on the roof of the state penitentiary in nearby Grasse, with three of the gang jumping out and threatening guards with machine pistols and sawn-off shotguns.

The men, who appeared to know exactly where they were going, forced their way through a number of doors, before emerging back on the roof.

Payet, serving 30 years for a variety of offences including murder and armed robbery, was bundled into the helicopter before it took off again.

At around 7.30pm it touched down at a heliport next to a hospital in the inland town of Brignoles, 25 miles inland from the port of Toulon.

The French authorities are mounting a huge manhunt for the escapee and his gang. Which is probably a good idea - the last time Payet was out of prison following a helicopter escape, he organized another jailbreak for some friends - using a helicopter. All told there have been at least a dozen jailbreaks in France using helicopters. French authorities appear to be very slow learners. By the way, "Kalashnikov Pat" got his nickname by shooting a security guard to death with an AK-47 during a robbery. So this guy is not Robin Hood. He does appear to be running a thriving helicopter excursion business, however.

Blue Plate Special

Funny, in New York City or Washington, DC they close restaurants when video captures rats doing the rumba in the establishment. Not so in China. There, the rats become the special catch of the day for hungry patrons. Think of it as a blue plate special with a tail.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.

Rats had been doing a roaring trade thanks to strong supply over the last two weeks, the China News Service quoted vendors as saying. (Ed. Note. Wouldn't that be a squeaking trade?)

"Recently there have been a lot of rats… Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," it quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province, where people are reputed to eat anything that moves.

Some vendors, who declined to reveal their names, had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said on Monday.

"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kg, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats alive.

"If we want to do that, there is no problem. We could catch 150 kg of rats in one night…but we will not do this against our conscience," the villager was quoted as saying.

Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting "rat banquets", charging 136 yuan (8.80 pounds) for one kg of rat meat, the newspaper said.

No, in this case the "rat banquet" in question has nothing to do with political fundraisers. At least we don't think so. Are rats listed on the commodity exchanges yet? Want to bet they will be soon?

Fear

Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, writes his weekly column for Real Clear Politics about the subject of fear. Specifically, Brown looks at the hyper-partisan attacks on Fred Thompson and reaches the conclusion that someone in the Democratic camp is scared of Thompson. Badly scared.

When one political party tries to influence the other's presidential primary race the reasonable assumption is that someone is trying to stop the nomination of a candidate that party does not want to face in November.

That's why a Democrat-aligned group injecting itself into the Republican campaign by alleging that Fred Thompson lobbied for abortion rights is a pretty good indication the other side thinks he has serious potential.

Thompson has become a force in the GOP polls even though almost half of Republicans and more than half the rest of the electorate say they don't know enough about him to form an opinion.

In this case his Democratic foes are trying to define him negatively for GOP voters before he can make a good first impression.

That's why in the last few weeks we have seen a stream of stories that would seem to be aimed at derailing his candidacy. Some were clearly planted in the news media with information from partisans of other candidates or causes. Others may have arisen independently from a news media itching to vet Thompson……

……The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association claimed that Thompson had lobbied the White House on its behalf in 1991. Thompson denied the charge, and John Sununu, who was White House chief of staff at the time, backed up Thompson.

Only time will tell which side eventually turns out to be perceived as being truthful by the electorate. But regardless of the truth of the allegation, its presence is remarkable at this stage of the race.

Memory does not produce a similar case where an interest group tied to one of the major political parties sought so overtly to influence the debate and outcome of the other parties' nomination fight, especially before a candidate even formally announced.

And it has been a remarkable series of negative attacks, obviously planted in a compliant media. I've said all along that candidates in both parties should rightfully be frightened of a Thompson run. It sure looks like some are.