In the email box:
I’m waiting for the FTL phones anyway.
An Unfortunate Juxtaposition
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Author: Brian J. Noggle
Good Book Hunting, April 30, 2011: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Book Sale
I wasn’t going to go to the book sale at Remington’s.
Wait, let me back up: I volunteered at the Friends of the Library book sale on Friday night, collecting the money as other people bought books and offering a running commentary to the customers about books they had. I was pretty adamant to the volunteer at the table with me that I was not going to go to the sale to buy anything because I already own enough books and I don’t have any room.
Of course, as with any of these things, I always find someone has bought something that I want specifically. In this case, a young man came through the line with Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, which I have not seen in the wild, but in retrospect that’s because I tend to skip over the religious section.
I told the guy about it, and he said these fateful words: “There’s another one, but it’s an older edition.”
So despite all of my assurances to my partner volunteer, since my beautiful wife and I had a ‘date night’ on half price day, I fell off the wagon. Loudly.
I got:
- Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, fortunately.
- A ten volume set called the Great Ideas program. It was $10. But it meant I needed a box to carry them, and away we went.
- Peace Kills by P.J. O’Rourke.
- A book called Chariot which is a history of that particular military equipment.
- Two courses on CD from The Teaching Company that were quarter of the list price since they were half price of half price. I thought that I’d picked up a third, and either I did and it was left at the counting table, or I put it back demonstrating some restraint.
- David Barry’s History of the Millennium.
- Eric Flint’s 1632. I already own the sequel 1633, so I can read them in order now.
- An English translation of Pepita Jimenez, a book I have already read in Spanish.
- A collection of writings from Spinoza.
- Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan in paperback. I was supposed to read this in college. Of that particular class, the only book I read of the required reading was Plato’s Republic. I read a lot in college, but only a small percentage of what I was supposed to have read.
- The Letters of Ayn Rand. We chose to go to the sale instead of going to see Atlas Shrugged Part I. I bought this in recompense.
- A couple of localish history of small town kinds of books.
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois.
- The Fantasy Role-Playing Gamer’s Bible, which is earnest, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which is not.
And so on.
My wife bought a couple books, mostly cookbooks that she picked up while waiting me to finish, along with a record, some sheet music, and a CD. The Smooth Jazz CD is mine, but please note it’s not smooth jazz in format; it’s a collection of standards by Sinatra, Count Basie, and whatnot.
The total, after half-off, was $98.50. I got 42 books in total along with the CDs. I have already read the Dilbert book depicted within, which means I need to read 41 by October’s sale to keep pace.
The funny thing is how I almost blackout regarding what I buy. When my wife and I had dinner, I could barely recount what I bought. Some books I thought I’d picked up, I must have put back. I am such a glutton.
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An Expected Lack of Principle
The United States military used military action in a sovereign state, a nuclear power with whom we’re not at war, and killed Osama Bin Laden. Hey, I’m a fan.
What I find sort of stunning and mostly not, though, is the triumphalism of my left-leaning friends who want to put the President back on his pedestal as though the President’s authorization of military action based on intelligence gleaned from interrogations he previously decried at a military base he previously decried represents a re-apotheosis instead of a continuation of ongoing action started by the previous administration.
If the previous administration, or a McCain administration, or a Palin administration, had undertaken this action, these same people damn well would have stamped their feet at it and warned about creating another martyr, about summary dispensation of justice without a trial in Manhattan, and so on. You know it, I know it, and some of them know it.
I’d like to think that the enemies of the American Republic will see this as an example of the long memory and long reach of the American military. However, it will be too convenient and too accommodating to their particular narrative that this is the feckless action of a single American leader acting to prop up his flagging regime, and if this serves his purpose, he will leave them to plot and arm again. Some Americans will believe this is true. Perhaps it is at some level, but this is a continuation of American policy. The President did the right thing no matter who thinks so.
Will it stop al-Qaida? Hardly. I don’t even know how much of a figurehead bin Laden was nowadays. We haven’t heard about communications from him for some time. The loose organization of the outfit means you cannot stop it like you can topple a despotic regime by forcing the leader into exile or killing the leader.
Still, it’s good news.
I just hope it doesn’t lead to a Pakistani nuke making its way to Los Angeles or Long Beach.
UPDATE: Two wiser men than I speak: Richard Fernandez and Steven Den Beste, although Den Beste is merely predicting that which already happened as of 10:30 last night.
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Liveblogging the Waiting
The President is to speak. Well, he was to speak at 9:30 CDT, but I’m waiting.
The word is he’s going to announce the death of Osama Bin Laden. Say what you will.
President John McCain would have eaten Bin Laden’s heart on the live feed. I can’t wait to see what Obama says.
10:04: How triumphant will it be if Osama Bin Laden died of old age?
10:07: If Osama Bin Laden died of old age, wouldn’t you, as a Taliban, throw a couple grenades on him and drag the smoking wreckage to the Americans to claim the reward?
10:08: Yeah, I’m facile and cynical, but personally, I like my thoughts better than Geraldo on Fox going, “Uh, uh, uh, the son of a bitch (I am tough! I curse on Cable TV!) is dead!” and the guys on CNN going, “This, after 8 years of failure and 2 years of earnestly leading from behind resulting in resolution (not triumph or victory, we’re above that!”
10:12: I planned to spend the last hour reading. Now, I’m listening to a Washington Post photographer talking on C-SPAN about taking pictures. The President’s delay is elevating me.
10:14: Remember when President Bush interrupted our nights to say he had Saddam Hussein? Frankly, I caught it on the morning news after a Christmas party, and President Bush spoke on Sunday morning about it. We didn’t get the “Here’s a big announcement on Sunday night. Hold the wire!” thing.
Makes me wonder what news Monday will bring about other things.
10:18: Fortunately, the adrenaline has worn off in the 49 minutes since the President was supposed to speak, and the speculation has gone from (personally) uh-oh to the Osama Bin Laden, yesterday’s villain, has been captured. Now, I hope I can stay awake until the President speaks. Once he starts, though, all bets are off.
10:22: I sent the link to this liveblog to Instapundit. Considering that I am timing out writing to the database when I try to update this post for my own echochamber, I daresay it will all fall down if I get an Instalanche.
Sorry, Trog, but Danica’s sponsor does me wrong sometimes.
10:27: Just checked in on Fox News. Geraldo is still asking the only sober Fox person qualified for live broadcast to ask him what he thinks the president should say.
Me, I think he will say, “Let me be clear: On one hand, there are some people who say that my predecessor failed. Some people say it was impossible. I have done it.”
10:29: Did the President mean 10:30 CST because so many swing states are in the Midwest?
10:31: Maybe we should have put Petraeus in charge of the CIA years ago. The man, and his reputation, get things done.
10:33: In the past, when I live-blogged, I had a second computer (a Macintosh) running live feeds so I could post and keep up. In the second decade of the 21st century, I’m playing Civilization IV in another window and am going to paste it to the Dutch in just a second here. I’ll be kinda upset when the president drops in to take credit for the efforts of 10 years of American military men.
10:34: Maybe it’s just that the President doesn’t have to go to work in the morning.
10:35: When I was a boy, this was time to watch Dr. Who.
10:36: Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida? Kinda like claiming that the Tea Party is astro-turf, hey?
10:36: The White House feed is offset, so he’s not looking at the camera. Like Michelle Bachmamn’s response to a previous speech. Wonder if it will make SNL.
10:38: Well, he thanks the military. Good.
10:39: HE DID IT! He made Leon Panetta do it. But he did it.
10:40: President Obama is more butch than President Clinton, who pulled back at the last minute. Rock on! Maybe he should launch airstrikes against the leader of a foreign country under the auspices of the … and wait a minute….
10:41: It’s a good speech. I hope it doesn’t essentially throw Pakistan under the bus.
10:43: I wish this guy was president.
10:44: Except for the laundry list of things that we can put our minds to, as long as they’re as easy as killing one man.
Recap: Well, that was a very good speech. If George W. Bush had said it, I would have believed he meant all of it.
However, if “unity” means “we celebrate together the military accomplishments of this nation but submit to the programs of Washington that I dictate,” I’m still going to pass. There was a day when the Federal government did sort of hew to that protect us from foreign enemies abroad but let us drill for oil on our land and hope to strike it rich and let us take whatever means we think is necessary to provide for our own health, but those days have passed in the last two years.
Crikey, couldn’t he have called a press conference for tomorrow?
I’m afraid for a Monday morning document dump now.
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Tips On Doing Household Mending Without Feeling Like A Sissy
- Don’t wear a thimble. No pain, no gain.
- Tie threads with knots that would make Jack Aubrey proud.
- Don’t tell anyone or allude to the fact that you’re doing mending. Dammit, you’re an American! Pretend you buy another Chinese-made article of clothing like everyone else.
Sissy.
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Overlooking the Phrase I Coined
A correspondent of Jerry Pournelle and Instapundit have read Larry Niven’s Ringworld books and have noticed the resemblance of the president to the Hindmost.
Independently riffing off of the Krauthammer column. Remember, I called him the Hindmost in February, before the Krauthammer column.
I am clever. LOOK AT ME!
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Does The President Not Understand Economics Or Does He Hope The People Don’t?
The President has spoken:
And even if you have a job, chances are you’re having a tougher time paying the rising costs of everything from groceries to gas. In some places, gas is now more than $4 a gallon, meaning that you could be paying upwards of $50 or $60 to fill up your tank.
Of course, while rising gas prices mean real pain for our families at the pump, they also mean bigger profits for oil companies. This week, the largest oil companies announced that they’d made more than $25 billion in the first few months of 2011 – up about 30 percent from last year.
Now, I don’t have a problem with any company or industry being rewarded for their success. The incentive of healthy profits is what fuels entrepreneurialism and helps drives our economy forward. But I do have a problem with the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies we’ve been handing out to oil and gas companies – to the tune of $4 billion a year. When oil companies are making huge profits and you’re struggling at the pump, and we’re scouring the federal budget for spending we can afford to do without, these tax giveaways aren’t right. They aren’t smart. And we need to end them.
The President would seem to argue that raising the cost of doing business for the oil companies will lead to a lowering of gas prices. He cannot believe that, can he?
Those subsidies are not payouts from the government. Apparently, they’re money the government doesn’t take from the oil companies:
Amid rising gasoline prices at the pump, President Barack Obama urged congressional leaders Tuesday to take steps to repeal oil industry tax breaks, reiterating a call he made in his 2012 budget proposal earlier this year. The White House conceded his plan would do nothing in the short term to lower gas prices. [Emphasis added.]
Apparently, he or someone at the White House does not believe this will lower gas prices. He must then think that some people will react to the attack on the cartoon character Big Bad Oil.
Sadly, I know some people who do hear that bell and drool appropriately.
Here’s a hint: If the cost of doing business goes up, price goes up. And money the government does not take from you is not a subsidy. If you firmly believe that, one could make a case the government could trim the deficit by ending your graphic novel subsidy, that is, the money it does not take from you that you spend on graphic novels.
Sadly, one has difficulty arguing with people who feel Big Oil is the bad guy and the President is the good guy.
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge that this president is, in fact, effective at achieving his goals.
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Don’t Overlook The Phrase I Coined
Charles Krauthammer, today: The Obama doctrine: Leading from behind:
Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.”
— Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue
To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do.
Remember, way back in February, I offhandedly called him “Hindmost Obama.”
This is more relevant if you’ve read the Ringworld novels, I suppose.
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On the Whole, It Balances To Some People
Someone on my twitter feed retweeted this:
The next time someone says something bad about Pakistan compared to the US, I’m going to point them to this:
Pakistan has taken the landmark decision to allow transsexuals to have their own gender category on some official documents.
You know, in the United States, we don’t have climate of fear over blasphemy laws:
This is where Pakistani Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti was shot dead in March. Bunches of flowers, many now dry and brown, are piled on the kerb. Large colour posters showing his picture are displayed alongside.
On seeing the media, guards from his mother’s home nearby rush out to explain what happened.
Mr Bhatti had just left her home, they say as they walk me through the short distance, when another car blocked his path at the junction and the gunmen inside it opened fire.
Mr Bhatti’s murder shocked Pakistan.
It came just weeks after the shooting of another prominent politician, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.
Both men had dared to speak out about the need for debate and possible reform of the controversial blasphemy laws.
And both men paid with their lives.
So, a checkbox on a government form for transsexuals and maybe transvestites. On the other hand, you have killing members of minority religions and people who think you shouldn’t probably kill members of minority religions.
And it’s a wash to some people. One merit, one demerit. Maybe two merits since it’s Christians and their defenders who are dying.
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Book Report: Selected Poems by John Donne (1958)
I began to read this book a long time ago. I remember reading this book to my son when he got a rare excursion into the basement in our home in Old Trees. That’s before he was our eldest son, and our non-eldest son is turning three next month. So it’s been a long time since I first put a bookmark in this book.
As you might recollect, my main methodology of reading poetry these last few years has been to read it aloud while my son(s) played. Sometimes he (they) actually ask(s) for more poems. But I read this aloud to my boy before he got to that point. And then I hit the poem letters, which sometimes run for several pages. That’s too much to try to jam into a session where one is reading aloud to a child and interjecting to keep the child from flossing with the poorly insulated electrical cord.
So I thought I’d read the epistles to myself. Then I hit the poem “Of the Progress of the Soul”. Which is 16 pages. Which is a long slog. Especially if you’re trying to pay attention and read the poem out loud, which is what I do: I cannot read poetry without reading it aloud to see how it sounds and how the rhythm of the words, line breaks, and punctuations make it sound. You know what 500+ lines of a single poem take? An hour or so scattered in places where I waited to pick children up from school over the course of several days. What will they think of the Noggle boys’ Daddy, who has to move his lips when he reads? I don’t know, but suffice to say the number of birthday party invitations has declined.
Oh, wait, a comment on the poetry? It’s “Meh.” I mean, Donne’s poems are about love, sometimes, and spirtual all of the time. If you’re going to read him, read him in an anthology. There are few poets I can take in large doses–I mean, it took me four years to read this volume and coming on twenty to read the complete works of Emily Dickinson (as of 20 years ago; I think they’ve been revised upwards since). He has a couple of quotable lines here and there, but if the poems are going to stretch into more than a dozen pages–there’d better be bloodshed in them, not just the flattery of a perfect soul who died two years prior.
So get it if your class requires it, I suppose–I think that’s the purpose of this cheap volume. Or if you have patience. But be prepared.
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You Get Some Cat Pictures, Damn It
I buried my buddy Ajax today.
Continue reading “You Get Some Cat Pictures, Damn It”
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No Doubt, This Could Win The Contest Somewhere
If only there were contests for making up inspirational conspiracies blaming Bush instead of whole jobs doing that as columnists and television personalities, I would submit the following explanation of how Bush is responsible for the current high gas prices:
Oil companies kept oil prices artificially low during the Bush presidency to prop up Bush’s poll numbers, and now the oil companies have to redouble their gouging to make up for the lost revenue.
That’s weapons-grade punditry right there, folks.
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Teaching Your Children Classical Mythology The Brian J. Way
Remember, boys and girls: Marvel Comics = Greek mythology and DC Comics=Roman mythology.
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A Meterological Prediction
A couple dry springs and a couple wet springs like this one will produce an average rainfall that no year actually meets, which will be further proof that Washington, New York, or the Hague needs to control more of your life to support a statistical abstraction.
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I See Your Strange Search Engine Queries And Raise You
one discordant suggested sell:
Steaks and Disney Princess decorations.
I know what my nightmares will contain tonight.
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I’m The Kind Of Guy Who Invites Flash Gordon Allusions
How many Flash Gordon allusions do you get or make in a single day?
Today, I’ve had two.
First, while discussing teaching toddlers to laugh diabolically, a friend on Facebook said that Ming the Merciless had the most diabolical laugh. I had to agree.
Secondly, I am prone to singing to my second son, who has a monosyllabic name, “<monosyllabic name>, ah-ahhhhh!” Tonight, my wife asked me what that was from.
From the Queen theme song to the thirty-one-year-old film, old man:
Maybe it’s because my father and I caught one of the old serials starring Buster Crabbe on a Milwaukee television station in the late 1970s.
Maybe it’s because I own a DVD of episodes from the 1950s television series starring Steve Holland.
Maybe it’s because I watched that 1980 film over and over while my mother, brother, and I lived with friends who had HBO ca 1983 and Flash Gordon played a bunch amid the Fraggle Rock.
Or maybe I’m just the sort of fellow who is open to the universe and its possible Flash Gordon allusions.
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The Harpies In Washington Pluck The Strings
When the government holds out the dollar, you dance like the government likes or you don’t get the dollar:
Now, the federal Department of Health and Human Services is attempting to oust Solomon from his job. According to the company, the agency’s Office of Inspector General advised Solomon, a Yale Law School alum, last week that it planned to exclude him from doing any business with federal Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The move — similar to the government’s exclusion of KV Pharmaceutical’s former chairman, Marc Hermelin — is part of a new effort by regulators to use this enforcement tactic to root out “untrustworthy individuals” who knew or should have known that health care fraud was being committed on their watch.
But some experts, who point out that Solomon was never charged with a crime, question whether regulators have overreached, bypassing the court system in favor of banishing drug company executives without having to prove a case against them.
This seems an unethical and unconstitutional device circumventing the court system tht requires a burden of proof. Instead, we have regulators as judge, juries, and banishers. This is a nation of bureaucrats, not of laws.
Imagine the government saying that your employer should fire you or else it won’t be able to do business. “But, Brian J., I am not a fat cat wealthy evil drug company executive!” But if the government can do this to a wealthy fat cat evil capitalist, why can’t the government do it to you? Because you’re obscure or because you’re a right-thinking Democrat voter?
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Book Report: Traces of Silver by Artie Ayres (1982)
This book is an Ozarks History of the Yoachum family that was responsible for the Yocum Dollars, which were briefly used in currency in the Ozarks in the early part of the ninteenth century. Of course, as it’s an Ozarks history, only the first part of the history talks about the three brothers who purportedly traded some horses, soaps, and blankets to some departing Delaware for the location of an old silver mine and then mined the silver, minted coins, and exchanged them among their neighbors. Given the bank failures and the dearth of other currency, the money caught on amongst Ozarkers and went on until a homesteader tried to pay the government for his land with these unofficial dollars. Government officials called the proferred dollars and sent it to Washington for analysis, where they determined the silver was purer than that in actual US coins. One of the Yocum brothers died in a cabin fire, perhaps sealing the mine forever, and the bulk of the Yoachum family moved out of the area.
It might be a myth, or it might have happened. Records are sparse, and I don’t think any of these dollars actually has come to the present day.
As an Ozarks History, though, this book then goes into general stories of days gone by in the Ozarks. Read how the author’s mother’s experience as a mail carrier. Learn about the Wilderness Road hangin’ tree. And so on. So the book is more a collection of stories than a true investigation of the Yocum Dollar. The Yocum/Yoachum/Yoakum family and the searches for the silver mine do crop back up, though.
Unfortunately, some of the stories are untold. The author mentions his father found a cache of these in the 1920s and searched for the mine all his life, but that story is underrepresented. Then, in a chronology in the back, a simple line reads 1975 – Two hundred thirty-six Yocum Dollars found buried in a metal box South of Branson, Mo. No account of this discovery is given.
Still, an interesting read if you’re into regional history.
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Who Wants To Play “Spot Brian J.’s Old Office”?
My house in Old Trees appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters:
See if you can spot my old office.
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One Ring To Rule Them All
Hey, where have I heard this before?
Imagine–one secure credential that you can use to shop online, bank, even get quick information about what to do during natural disasters or other emergencies.
Good idea? The Obama administration thinks so and announced a plan on Friday to achieve it.
It’s a little thin on details, but the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace envisions a day when people conducting online activity no longer have to rely on passwords, which can be hard to remember or can be hacked.
Instead, people will be able to get a secure credential in the form of a smart card or a USB thumb drive, which will carry their personal information and can be used to authenticate their identity online.
Instead of your papers, please, it will be your plastic, please. Make no mistake, this is a national ID sneaking in the back door.
I know, there are reasonable arguments for a national ID card, but I don’t think they trump the risk of abuse by government officials who would have a great deal of ability to track the citizens. Whether as a matter of policy or simply because bad apples could, they would dip into that data with less innocent intent than proponents would argue.
Thanks, but I’ll stick with using my children’s names as passwords and writing them on Post-It notes so I don’t forget.
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