Straight outta North Korea

Ho Lee Crap - it's a Nork-style religion. Brainwashed children sing the praises of Dear Leader:

The Anchoress knocks it out of the park.

Update: this video seems to be the tipping point for a lot of folks:

• Joseph Goebbels Rises Up From The Dead And Leads Liberal Media To Their Messiah
• The new brownshirts
• It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
• The HopeChange GroupThink Mindthoughts Song
• The indoctrination of children begins
• Amazing (dis)Grace: Obama children video
• The Church of Obama

Blues for Miles

Miles Davis died 17 years ago yesterday. Here's an article with videos.

Rules of thumb

• application of Islamic legal principles = more dead women
• a new Cabinet level office = another area in which nothing will improve, forever
• "nationalized health care" (as heard on NPR this morning) = adequate health care for the rich, rationed low-quality Canadian health care for the rest of us
• nationalized health care = the post office running the hospitals

More to come as I run across them.

Well-crafted death propaganda

I'll reproduce this little bit of death propaganda in its entirety, as heard on NPR (of course) this morning. Lefty memes and traditional NPR tropes galore:

• the obfuscating term "stem cell research"
• human beings as property to be disposed of
• the only choices: help other couples or discard embryos
• be like the rich and well-educated ignorati of Chicago: support embryonic stem cell research
• and a special kick in the face for Catholics

Couples seeking infertility treatment overwhelmingly support embryonic stem cell research. The data comes from a new survey of patients at a Chicago fertility center.

Nearly three in four infertility patients said they think unused embryos should be available for stem cell research. And it matters what those people think, says Doctor Tarun Jain.

JAIN: These embryos belong solely to the infertility couples who created them. They are in charge of what happens to these embryos.

Jain directs in-vitro fertilization at the University of Illinois Fertility Center. His survey shows infertility patients are more likely to back stem cell research than the general population is.

JAIN: If they have these extra embryos, in general they would prefer to help other couples rather than discard these embryos.

Jain found that support for stem cell research increases with age, income and education levels. Catholic respondents show the same level of support as the whole survey population.

I’m Gabriel Spitzer, Chicago Public Radio.

Rule of thumb

When your daily tests start taking longer than twenty-four hours to finish, it's time to optimize your code for pure speed (or punt and move to a faster machine).

Father Indiana Jones, OSB

Dom Columba Stewart travels to the dangerous parts of the world to photograph and preserve ancient manuscripts.

Home from Iraq to handle the post-election riots?

Vide:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

Lorraine Callaghan, R.I.P.

Lorraine Callaghan died last week on the Feast of the Holy Cross. She managed Jon's Pipe Shop in Champaign's campustown and was quite a character.

In praise of financial subsidiarity

From Johanna Maurice's editorial in the Charleston, West Virginia, Daily Mail on this week's financial collapses:

But it would help if we restored to their rightful places the flinty local bankers once considered such an impediment to the extension of the American dream. They didn't give mortgages to people they feared couldn't repay them, because they would have had to eat the losses. This is a useful governor of behavior, and kinder, too. They didn't screw up like this.

We've finally escaped from debt slavery in the last year (aside from our mortgage) and, like our Depression-era parents and grandparents, we now have a healthy horror of debt. Speaking of which, we get lots of mailings from local loan sharks in Champaign and Decatur - payday loan outfits, car dealerships and the like. One of them had the gall to call me a couple of days ago to check whether we'd received his mailing, and I had a marvelously entertaining time heckling and harassing the bastard til he hung up.

I LLOL

I literally LOL'd - John Cleese has the goods on Dawkins and friends, via Carl Olson. It's light on content but long on delicious fun-poking.

A public confession

or maybe it's a boast: I've never seen an episode of The Simpsons even though it's been on teevee for nearly 20 years. Am I missing something?

Not a good sign

You expect a pharmacy to excel in the "attention to detail" department. That's why it's disquieting to read on their website, "If shipping address is the same ckick here". What the hell else are they going to botch up?

If Instapundit had a laugh track...

...it would have went off when Glenn Reynolds wrote, "Is there anyone in DC who can manage money?"

mark-sexp!

After about 15 years of using emacs I've just now discovered C-M-space, mark-sexp, by accident. My thumb lingered on the meta key when I was setting mark with C-space and there it was - the whole expression I was starting to mark was already highlighted. There's always something new to discover in emacs.

Here comes Ike

35 mph winds, 3-5 inches of rain and a possibility of tornadoes:

Update: the basement flooded again thanks to a couple of failures in our house's ancient infrastructure. We're not sure yet if the water rose high enough to empty our bank account again. Fortunately, Lisa's parents came over from Indiana today after hearing about our woes - her dad is an industrial electrician & should be able to take a professional look at the equipment downstairs tomorrow.

Benedict XVI on the media

This excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI's second Regina Cæli address in 2005 seems appropriate for the current silly season in America: the media can promote knowledge, dialog and peace, or prejudice, contempt and violence. The perennial remedies are personal responsibility, objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good.

Responsibility and respect for human dignity seem to be basic human habits learned (or not) at a young age in the family; perhaps objectivity and sight of the common good are habits of thought that come with maturity. Can they be taught? Are they? What would an objective media serving the common good even look like? [how about C-SPAN? -ed.]

Anyways,

World Communications Day is being celebrated this Sunday on the theme: "The communications media: at the service of understanding among peoples". In today's world of imagery, the mass media effectively become an extraordinary resource to promote solidarity and understanding within the human family. We have had incredible proof of this recently on the occasion of the death and solemn funeral rites of my beloved Predecessor, John Paul II. It all depends, however, on how these means are used.

These important tools of communication can support reciprocal knowledge and dialogue or, on the contrary, fuel prejudice and contempt between individuals and peoples; they can contribute to spreading peace or fomenting violence. This is why an appeal must always be made to personal responsibility; all must do their part to ensure objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good in all forms of communication. In this way they contribute to bringing down the walls of hostility that continue to divide humanity, and to strengthening the bonds of friendship and love which are signs of God's Kingdom in history.

(Hmm... insidious politics worked its way back in.)

For future reference

Why gas prices will rise for a while after the hurricane. Via Instapundit.

A syllogism for Protestants (and other Christians)

So if Christ is to be the pattern of our lives, and if Christ became, before anything else, the son of Mary, then we...

Where Mary is, there is the archetype of total self-giving and Christian discipleship. Where Mary is, there is the pentecostal breath of the Holy Spirit; there is new beginning and authentic renewal. ... In the words of Saint Bernard, I invite everyone to become a trusting child before Mary, even as the Son of God did. —Benedict XVI, Address at Heiligenkreuz Abbey, 9 September 2007

(There. How's that for anti-politics?)

Overdose

To the great relief of my half-dozen readers, I've overdosed on politics and will attempt to refrain from posting on that stuff until November.

Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius

Obama attacks McCain for not knowing how to use email. Guess they didn't realize he can't type, or comb his own hair, or tie his shoes or throw a baseball.

Every day, Obama looks more and more like Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

Ike and my boss

My boss went down to Houston, Texas, a couple of days ago to help his nephew's family with a newborn and to help do some hurricane weatherproofing of their house. Meanwhile, Brendan Loy, the Weathernerd, says "Get the hell out! Ike’s storm surge is a deadly threat!"

Lipstick redux

A friend of mine has started a web business and the first item up for sale is a visual riff on Barry Obama's cryptic "lipstick on a pig" gaffe. Click! Buy! I think a barbecue recipe wouldn't be out of place.

Update: they have bloggage.

Thank God for Mediacom!

I was emailing with a couple of friends tonight, and one said his internet bandwidth at home is limited by a "fair access policy" to 150MB every 90 minutes or somesuch. If I had that limit, I wouldn't be able to work from home. Just today I've downloaded about 10GB of stuff from work: mainly Mathematica installers and cvs checkouts of Mathematica documentation. Our isp is Mediacom.

The wikipedia article above says that HughesNet's FAP for "large businesses" is 1.25GB per day!

Blossom-end rot

We've lost about half our tomatoes so far to blossom-end rot. In other gardening news, at least one neighborhood cat has discovered our planting of catnip and he seems to visit regularly to wallow in it. Next I suppose he'll be wearing his pants down below his hips and cranking the bass in his car as he comes to score another hit.

Here come videos to frighten the lefties

It seems that Sarah Palin attends various Pentecostal churches, and videos of church services are beginning to appear. I'm sure the average lefty is wetting himself in gobsmacked awe by this stuff, but it's standard harmless fare in such churches, and the folks who attend are normal ordinary people. Wait til they see someone slain in the spirit while speaking in tongues! Once again, and as usual, we'll see that the left is the party of fearful bigoted Christophobic reaction and the right is the party of quiet tolerance and acceptance.

I spent 10 years or so in a couple of Pentecostal churches: I was a member of a Church of God in Shelbyville, Illinois, run by John and Pam Schneider, now in Sebring, Florida, then a small nondenominational outfit, the Tree of Life Christian Center then run by Tony and Gail McWilliams. Gail's father was an engineer in the Mercury program and gave me lots of old NASA technical documents on the Mercury spacecraft.

The best

Ignatius Press designs the most beautiful book covers in the world.

Random sample hold the one you need

Inspired by Carl Olson, 20 random tunes from my collection:

• The Beatles: Love Me Do
• Johann Strauss: Im Krapfenwaldl
• The Wiggles: Picking Flowers
• Blue Mitchell: Good Humor Man
• Aimee Mann: This Is How It Goes
• Thad Jones And Mel Lewis: Get Out of My Life
• JS Bach: BWV 183 Choral - Du bist ein Geist, der lehret
• They Might Be Giants: Hypnotist Of Ladies
• Miles Davis: I Don't Wanna Be Kissed
• Red Hot Chili Peppers: Fire
• R.E.M.: (Don't Go Back To) Rockville
• Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 036 in E flat major - 3. Menuetto e Trio
• Woody Guthrie: Gypsy Davy
• Bill Monroe: Careless Love
• Wolfe Tones: On The One Road
• Dire Straits: So Far Away
• Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs: The Chase
• Radiohead: Like Spinning Plates
• Webb Wilder: Hittin' Where It Hurts
• Frank Sinatra: Bein' Green

Saving the bacon

I was looking through some old computer files a few weeks ago and found a to-read list of books I'd made way back in January 2002. Back then I was planning to hit the University of Illinois library to check out the books, but a couple of days later our son John was born and he put most other plans on hold. So this time, when I rediscovered the list, I ordered cheap editions at Amazon and waited for our thrice-blessed UPS man to deliver:

• Christopher Derrick: The Rule of Peace: St Benedict and the European Future
• Christopher Dawson: The Making of Europe
• Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time to Keep Silence

I'm two chapters into Derrick's book. So far he's writing as one of those depressing cranky old RadTrad Catholics who sees the End of Civilization around every corner, and he's making the Order of St Benedict out to be a legion of bibliophiles with a genius for saving civilization during Europe's periodic murder-suicide jags. Sure, that's a happy side-effect worth exploring, but we should realize at the same time that that wasn't what St Benedict was aiming at. If you're going to understand the effects of St B and his Rule, you need to get things in order first - maybe Mr Derrick does that in later chapters.

I'm just starting Dawson's book, published in 1932 and revised soon after World War 2. He relies a lot on the venerable and still-valuable Mommsen, and on some Russian guy who imposes Marxist categories on ancient history but otherwise has some decent insights.

A Time to Keep Silence is the first of Mr Fermor's books I've read. Wikipedia says he's known as "Britain's greatest living travel writer". Here, he's at his best writing about people, especially people he hasn't met before and whose ways are strange. He travels to a couple of French Benedictine monasteries and enters into their way of life as much as an Anglican guest can, and after a painful time of adjustment he finds a home in the peace of the cloister. His thoughts upon returning to Paris after a long stay at Normandy's St Wandrille are widely quoted:

If my first days in the abbey had been a period of depression, the unwinding process, after I had left, was ten times worse. The Abbey was at first a graveyard; the outer world seemed afterwards, by contrast, an inferno of noise and vulgarity entirely populated by bounders and sluts and crooks. This state of mind, I saw, was, perhaps, as false as my first reactions to monastic life; but the admission did nothing to decrease its unpleasantness. From the train which took me back to Paris, even the advertisements for Byrrh and Cinzano seen from the window, usually such jubilant emblems of freedom and escape, had acquired the impact of personal insults. The process of adaptation—in reverse—had painfully to begin again.

But wait, that's not all! Lisa and I hit both of the Half-Price Books stores in Indianapolis last weekend, and two days later I packed a huge number of books into 3 large grocery bags at a library book sale: three dollars a bag. I've found that it pays to arrive at a library book sale during the last hour or so - by then all the romance novels and crappy histories have been plundered, leaving the best of the best sitting out in the open: Mortimer Adler, Bill Buckley, Anthony Trollope, Washington Irving, Robert Graves, treasures bought for almost nothing now piled up around the house waiting to be shelved. It's like we're Benedictines saving civilization's bacon once again.

"Obama To Dispatch Female Surrogates"

This is the best political campaign ever! Now starring Barack Obama as Harcourt Fenton Mudd:

and Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius as Mudd's women:

On living in emacs

Indeed:

In contrast, your more... ah, seasoned (read: fanatical) Emacs users gradually come to live in it. Anything you can't do from within Emacs is an annoyance. It's like having to drive to a government building downtown to take care of some random paperwork they should have been offering as an online service a decade ago. You can live with it, but you're annoyed.

There's a boatload of other good stuff in there both for grizzled emacs veterans and shiny fresh newbies. Read the whole thing.

"These go to eleven."

So said Nigel Tufnel. Imagine what would happen if McCain & Palin are elected and Palin inherits the presidency. We've seen the media and the left (pardon the redundancy) reach some pretty revolting depths as they suffer through their eighth year of Bush Derangement Syndrome; imagine the white-hot flood of molten hatred they'll heap on President Palin as they try to destroy her - a wife and mother who dares to put on her shoes and step out of her kitchen without the blessing of the old feminist hags. They'll have to turn their amps up to eleven.

You're a homeless carnie? Meet our little boy!

The parents of a 6-year-old boy take in a homeless unemployed carnival worker. Weeks later, in a stunning and totally unexpected twist of fate, they flag down the village policeman to help them investigate the carnie's use of their computer to download child pornography. Why, yes, he is a convected sex offender.

Buttons

This button at the NOW store is about as morally defensible as "Against slavery? Don't own one." It's amusing to recall that the Democrat party was the party of slavery as it is of abortion.

Tip o' the hat to Scott Bilik.

Drudgery, horror, delight

It took a long harrowing day of debugging and rewriting elisp code capped by an hour of invigorating "OH CRAP DID I JUST DELETE 1100 UNREAD EMAIL MESSAGES?!", but I'm finally done - my office gnus setup with its last 3 years of email messages now works perfectly from home, connected to Wolfram's imap and smtp servers via vpn. Jamie S at the office tracked down my missing messages - it turns out that if you tell gnus to tell an imap server to split messages from INBOX to "imap-split", a file ~/imap-split is created with all the messages in it. 'G f' ahoy!

Along the way I finally read and understood The Fine Manual - it is possible to use an imap server as a simple message-serving pop server.

After the day's total immersion in elisp I switched back to mathematica to fix up some code and felt a bit of confusion, like trying to speak a foreign language I hadn't used for months.

Tony Woodlief on homeschooling

What he said.

Careful with that slash, Eugene

Til today, I never realized there was a difference in emacs between a directory's filename and directory name:

A directory name is the name of a directory. A directory is actually a kind of file, so it has a file name, which is related to the directory name but not identical to it. (This is not quite the same as the usual Unix terminology.) These two different names for the same entity are related by a syntactic transformation. On GNU and Unix systems, this is simple: a directory name ends in a slash, whereas the directory's name as a file lacks that slash.

I suspect my lack of slashes after directory names is the root of my problem today in porting my work gnus setup to my home computer.

Update: here's what John and I were talking about in the comments: