Nazis, Conservatives, and Religious Nut Jobs

I really like the "Letters of Note" blog...Here's a note from Hitler that's a pretty good piece of history.

Frum asks the uncomfortable but prescient question: "Can Conservatives Govern?" The nut graf:

• "One attendee said something very thought-provoking. “Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then – because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this.”

  My answer: If your principles don’t allow you to save your country when it needs to be be saved, then there’s something wrong with those principles."

A follow-up on that "Gospel of Prosperity" nonsense: The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin asks: "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?"

Back to School Flurry of Miscellany

Beyond the kind of flippant title, this blog post does have some interesting sociological implications/stuff in it...

As usual, Medved has an insightful take on politics in the near future, although I still think talking about 2010 is very premature.

Two ABCNews.com medical stories: The Girl Who Could Feel No Pain and The Girl Who Was Addicted to Abortion.

This is a fascinating graphic that takes a while to load, showing the amount of time different groups of people spend doing different things during their day. I dare you to spend less than 5 minutes on there (and I bet it's impossible.)

Two pictures that are a little creepy and probably inappropriate but have been used to try to spread positive societal messages (don't click on the links with children around): "AIDS is a Mass Murderer" and "The Media Messes With Our View of What Beauty Is" I'm all for PSAs against AIDS and for accepting yourself, but is this not too much?

Although it's not entirely accurate (and I like Pepsi's taste better,) this graphic was kind of cute:

Hurray for tradition.

Speaking of tradition, here are some Notre Dame related links to warm your heart: The Notre Dame online jigsaw puzzle (also available in real life.) Someone at the ND gameday site has been going crazy with panoramic camera recently, so check that out as well.

Also, we're being reviewed? Goodness GE is getting desperate.

A Very Natural World Tour

In honor of my encounter with a very open and maternal FC Barcelona fan, I present to you some highlights of strange things from cultures besides our own:

Trying to teach your daughter (or son, for that matter) about the joys of nursing? Fear not! Baby Glutton is here, complete with nipple jet pack and sound effects! Thank you, Spain!

For those skittish about the idea of urination, the Baby WeeWee is designed to ease your way into a world free of diapers. Thank you, Britain!


But wait - Worried that little Baby WeeWee is going to kill the environment every time he flushes? Don't worry! SOS Mata Atlantica, a Brazilian environmental group, has a new ad campaign that it says can save 1,157 gallons of water a year! Thank you, Brazil!

Political Mumbo-Jumbo for 7/29

If you haven't kept tabs on the "birther" conspiracy theories, this video shows a pretty public demonstration at a town hall meeting in Delaware with Rep. Mike Castle. It's kind of culty. (And total nonsense.)



Sullivan at The Atlantic links to this chart quite visibly demonstrating the housing bubble. How did your hometown do?



And a note from the home front: "Wednesday will likely be the hottest day in the history of Seattle with high temperatures breaking the 100-degree mark in parts of Western Washington." 102 as I write this.

Attack of the Linx! [Part IV]

Did you know you can make a gift to the Federal government? "This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States." Joe Biden was right.

As Sports Illustrated would say, This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse is: Charlie Weis has a twitter account.

This was one of the most amazing inside-the-Beltway stories I have ever read. Keith Olberman did a funny interpretation of it, if you search for it, but above all, DON'T CALL HER LIZ!

Go Britain Go..."More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today [In Dec 2006.] It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good...A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian."

An article about gender bias in theatre in the NYT comes to some interesting conclusions - "Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said. Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?” Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”" Take that chauvinist misogyny!

Finding consumer equillibrium for babies?

Some people don't have enough: "Dr Zavos said yesterday that this was just the "first chapter" in his ongoing and serious attempts at producing a baby cloned from the skin cells of its "parent"...Little Cady died aged 10 in a car crash in the US. Her blood cells were frozen and sent to Dr Zavos, who fused them with cow eggs to create cloned human-animal hybrid embryos." Some people have too many: "The pregnancy was unexpected, and for one 32-year-old single mother in Syracuse, New York, the ailing economy became a factor in her decision to have an abortion." (funny story: the first time I saw that article, there was a picture of an ultrasound attached...It's gone now...)

On a lighter note, this type of thing is one more reason why I so enjoy baseball...What nerds. But how cool :) And there's nothing like thrift in government to inspire the citizenry. Obama has pledged to cut $100 million from his $3.4 billion budget. The one and only Greg Mankiw puts in perspective:

• "[I]magine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year."
  

But have no fear, says Roger Simon: "In the future, because of Janet Napolitano, may her name forever be praised, our executive branch will buy its office supplies in bulk."

Lastly, this article was handed out by our "development" (read: fund-raising) crew today...Read it. It gets a little creepy: "See if you can adopt the same breathing pattern as your prospect. In doing so, it is helpful to observe the rise and fall of your prospect's chest or shoulders for cues. Of course, use your peripheral vision to do this so you are always maintaining eye contact. Synchronized breathing between you and your prospect is such a subtle thing, yet people really pick up on it." Creeped out right about now.

Crossing my Ts and dotting my Irish eyes

For those who are hoping for an exciting football season next year, team profiles by MSNBC/The Sporting News and ESPN.com can not help but raise anticipation and excitement a little.

I apologize for the following heft. My virtual post-it is groaning under the weight of so many abandoned links.

"I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal." - I can't see how that $2.5 million investment is worth it for any sane male at any stage in life, but what do I know...After all, America's consumed with an irrational obsession with purity, apparently. So what better to do than turn it into a game? Rah rah capitalism!

In the mood for music? Zap! Jesus is a friend of mine that has got to get into my life. Two for one! The accompanying videos are what basically make the both of them, though. Please share.

***PARTISAN INTERLUDE*** "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits." In 1999.

"In another [study,] a white rat in a maze repeatedly beat groups of Yale undergraduates in understanding the optimal way to get food dropped in the maze. The students overanalyzed and saw patterns that didn’t exist, so they were beaten by the rodent." Innnnnnnteresting.

From your local Heritage automaton: A Doctor's Right. But seriously, though, why can't we just let them do what they think is right? Please?

That's enough for now.

Attack of the Linx! [Part III]

These are mainly things I want to get back to reading tomorrow or at a certain point.

"Red Sex, Blue Sex"

"Thank God America Isn't Like Europe -- Yet"

"But Enough About You..."

"Weekend Opinionator: Obama's Communication Breakdown"

"An Open Letter to Fr John I Jenkins, C S C, President of the University of Notre Dame"

The last one is my own contribution :)

In a Handbasket

THIS IS STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As is this, although to a much smaller degree. Inspir-asian? Really?

Ketchup

Slight backlog of stuff I've been meaning to put up for a while now, so bear with me:

This is just weird. Some people are messed up. Body integrity identity disorder? I'm sorry...

You may have seen this story out of Florida, which has been in the news recently...But here's my question: If it's such a disgusting and shocking thing, why would have it have been any less shocking if the abortionist made it to the appointment on time and sucked the baby's brains out?

Rick Santorum is awesome and gave a great speech at CPAC while I was there.

I'm not generally a William Saletan fan, but it sounds like he is genuinely trying to find the middle ground, but he just doesn't "get it:" It's not just a political issue, it's a cultural and moral issue. But if he's saying things like this - "This isn't a shortage of pills or condoms. It's a shortage of cultural and personal responsibility. It's a failure to teach, understand, admit or care that unprotected sex can lead to the creation—and the subsequent killing, through abortion—of a developing human being." - then at least we have common ground we can try to work towards, even if I would disagree with the methods. (And I and other conservatives aren't the only ones doubting the conventional wisdom...)

More to come someday.

Attack of the Linx! [Part II]

Not sure how long this link will be active, but it comes as somewhat of a welcome surprise to hear the commentariat getting their heads around the deeply profound statement that maybe focusing our entire economy and educational system around feeding the brightest minds into the soulless creation of monetary wealth may, in the end, turn out to be a destriment to our health as a nation.
"These are the times that try men's resumes":

• "In a society as wounded as our own, there is something repellent about the assertions of elitism. Its most awful expression, of course, is the acquiescence of almost everybody in the dynastic ambitions of the Kennedys. I can almost not imagine a more obvious mutilation of the meritocratic ideal than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the United State Senate."

Quick Hits: This was cute [common sense]...This was horrifying [botched Florida]...This was insightful [economic word cloud]...

Attack of the Linx!

Lots of links and articles that I've been stockpiling. Yuval Levin is an author and thinker on matters bio-ethical, philosophical and scientifical, and contributes to the National Review Online blog. This post, "Brave New Britain," is a real-world example of the stuff a lot of people have worried about in the science fiction realm for a while, and now are being faced with it in real life. This is really a problem and it's not going to go away anytime soon. It scares me.

Then on the other side, instead of getting rid of children we have people misusing technology to have too many artificially-inseminated children...I'm not sure if banning IVF is what I would recommend at this point, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if there's any other policy suggestion out there that makes sense.

Also, most of you have seen this ad that got cut by NBC from this Super Bowl broadcast, but if you haven't, I recommend it.

In the midst of the stimulus debate, here's a WSJ article I came across that kind of explained to me what I'm doing with my health care work with Heritage. In the business realm, I don't feel sorry for them at all. At all.

Finally, it's not often one comes out in favor of discrimination, Patrick Deneen, a professor at Georgetown who spoke at the forum I attended, wrote a fairly eloquent defense of Catholic univerisities such as ND (even though I think it's a little bit of a stretch to still call G-town a truly Catholic school) giving special weight to Catholic applicants for professorial spots.

All right, I'm done. Enjoy the game, ads, and halftime shows, everybody.

"Son, your ego's writing checks your body can't cash"

The quote above has absolutely nothing to do with the Web site below, which I think is among one of the most ridiculous and immoral things I have seen pretty much ever:


The Ashley Madison Agency: Married Dating & Affairs

"Ashley Madison is the world's largest dating service of its kind catering to men and women who are currently in relationships but are looking for more. Over two and a half million of you have joined our service, so rest assured, you are not alone...Purchase an Affair Guarantee Packageand experience an affair to remember or I will give you your money back...Our website is 100% secure, completely anonymous and now with the Affair Guarantee Package, absolutely risk free. So start now and change your life today!"

Change your life?...Yeah, I guess.
It's just sick.

Letting my inner nerd out a bit...

I would definitely describe myself as much heavier into the Political Science half of my studies than the Economics side, but one thing I do enjoy about Econ is the quantitative aspect of data collection/study that is kind of lacking in the more abstract discipline of Poli Sci. As such, I keep an eye on the Freakonomics blog and found these two fun little links that are economics-related but kind of amusing. Many Eyes is an IBM-sponsored way of presenting data in new and interesting ways, while the Baby Name Wizard is just sort of fun to look at how popularity changes over time. Look at your own name and see how it's been viewed over the years, it's kind of a kick.

Billy the Basketballer?

I watched my sister's 5th-grade basketball game today, and was reminded how much I dislike the strata of the population who is self-absorbed, insular, caught in the rat race, Starbucks-sipping, North Face-wearing, secular, navel-gazing, ego-inflated, and generally thinking that they're God's gift to the world...And don't even get me started on the parents...Also: This self absorbed little snots are going to be genetically engineered for physical perfection in a couple years. It makes me sick. 

Anyway.

I thought this study was funny; I didn't get a chance to finish reading it, but it's interesting to think that I might have more of a chance to ending up a politician or plumber than I do an architect or toothpaste lid screwer-on-er. (Much love, Charlie Bucket.)