I always liked Dr. K. ... and Queen

Kissinger warns of possible "war of civilizations"

Kissinger gets it. He always has, as far back as I can remember. If you could penetrate that thick-as-the-old-Black-Forest accent, the words and ideas always made sense.

Maybe too much sense for some.

It reminds me, somehow, suddenly, of an old song by Queen from their landmark "Night at the Opera" album. A very obscure track, not even B-side single material. I've never heard it on the radio, not even on a "deep tracks" show.

Side B, track 1: "The Prophet's Song."


Look up the lyrics. Buy the CD and have a listen.

Too lazy?

Here it is, in twelve-part overdubbed harmony: "Ahh, ahh, people can you hear me? ... Listen to the wise - Listen to the wise - Listen to the wise man!!"

And as if in reply the chorus sings, "La la, lala la la lah lahh... Listen to the mad - Listen to the mad - Listen to the mad man!!!"

All that's missing is the laughing and jeering of the head-in-the-sand crowd.

But, a note of hope. The narrator pauses a moment and then sings, "But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman"



As the Wise One said, let him who has ears, let him hear.

It is to LOL

North Korea, Iran, and Syria want terrorism redefined.

I'll bet Al Capone wanted tax evasion redefined, too.

Safer but wiser

5 years after 9/11, many angry at U.S. Some people think that US actions since 9/11 have made the world less secure.

Hogwash.

We were not safe and secure on September 10, 2001. We just thought we were. We didn't really understand the nature of the threat.

Now we do.

We are in fact safer now, though we feel less easy.



We are safer because we DO understand the threat. (At least, some of us do. The Denial-Dhimmicrats still live in blissful 9/10/01 ignorance.)

We are safer because we have a President who is committed to fighting Islamist thugs on their turf, with Marines and A-10s, rather than cleaning up after them on our turf with cops and fire trucks.

We are safer because young men and women who understand the threat and who love this country are willing to risk and shed their blood in its defense, despite the shameful calls for surrender from those who once wore the same uniform.

We are safer because the enemy is reduced in number and capability. Under the previous administration, the enemy grew in capability. In 1993, he blew up 1500 lbs of explosives the parking garage under the WTC. In 1996, he killed US servicemen and women at the Khobar towers with 5,000 lbs of explosives. In 2001, he commandeered four jetliners and killed 3000 Americans in the span of an hour.

Then we woke up.

Since then, what as the enemy been able to throw at us? Car bombs. IEDs. Backpack bombs. And doctored photos and planted news stories. We are winning the military war. We may yet lose the propaganda war.

It is up to those of us who recognize the threat to continue to point it out.



When they are in fact out to get you, paranoia has a certain amount of survival value.

9/11 and Goose Aerodynamics

Watched the first part of "United 93" last night with my wife. Then I carried my sleeping daughter to her bed (she'd crawled into ours) and prayed - hard - that if she ever faced murderous thugs shouting "Allahu Akbar" that she'd fight back with every fiber of her being, shouting, "Isa Akbar!"

Today is nearly a sacred day for me. Like July 4th, there's a lot of red, white, and blue out, and I'm glad to see it. But it's not a celebration. It's a solemn acknowledgement that freedom is never free, that there are those who wish to strip it from us, and that they will unless we resist with all we have.

But still, life goes on, and the view out my window prompts me to write this...

Ahh, fall. The trees across the parking lot outside my window are beginning to show their autumn colors. There's a nip in the air. And the young geese are practicing their formation flying skills.

You've probably seen that geese fly in V formations. This is so that each goose except the lead can surf on the vortex generated by the goose ahead, reducing the amount of energy needed to stay aloft. They maintain a precise relative position to take maximum aerodynamic advantage.

But did you ever notice that the V is almost always asymmetrical? One side is usually longer than the other. Turns out there's a precise mathematical reason for that, too.













There's more geese on that side.

James Tubthumping

Lileks with a grand post on honest work and optimism. Great stuff.

Time to re-read Revelation and Daniel...

American appears in new al-Qaida tape

Just read it.

Then go think a while.

Mo' planets!

Proposal would add planets to solar system

I *like* Xena. I do hope they keep it.

Woodworking Methods

Notes & Comments, Woodworking Methods Can't use Furl for some reason, so Blogger is the next best thing.

Everything we know is wrong

Science is a funny thing. Sometimes for every question it ansers it asks three more. And sometimes it turns your whole world on its head.

Universe Might be Bigger and Older than Expected:

A project aiming to create an easier way to measure cosmic distances has instead turned up surprising evidence that our large and ancient universe might be even bigger and older than previously thought. If accurate, the finding would be difficult to mesh with current thinking about how the universe evolved, one scientist said.

Gawrsh.

WAY cool user interface

TED Blog: Jeff Han on TEDTalks
I WANT one of those!

LOL!!!!

Governors bristle at plan to federalize Guard:

Emphasis added:

"'Federalization just for the sake of federalization makes no sense,' said Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, a Democrat who had rough relations with the Bush administration after the disaster last year. 'You don't need federalization to get federal troops. ... Just making quick decisions can make things happen.'"

Blanco talking about quick decisions?? ROFL!!!

Paging Mr. Serling, Mr. Rod Serling...

Yaakov Kirschen at Dry Bones Blog: notes the following:

So if we're going to discuss the supernatural I propose that we examine the following weirdness:

The Bible is not a book It is a collection of books. One of the books of the Bible is the book of Psalms. When I went to school we were taught that the book of Psalms is a book of poetry. Actually it's a book of prayers or incantations.

When the war broke out, religious Jews began reciting Psalm 83.

A rabbi, being interviewed on an Israeli TV news show called on viewers to read Psalm 83.

The Chief Rabbinate's governing council in Jerusalem announced that at 6:00 p.m. (Israel time) every day, Psalm 83 is to be recited simultaneously by Jewish communities all over the world.

Turns out that Psalm 83 calls out for Divine help to fight off an attempt to wipe Israel off the map.

Here's the text of Psalm 83.

So what's weird?

Archaeologists have just announced the amazing discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who was digging in a bog in Ireland two weeks ago. The book, which was buried and lay hidden under centuries of mud, has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries...



Oh, and the book was found 'frozen open' to Psalm 83... With all other pages stuck shut.

REVEILLE

REVEILLE

Watch the whole thing.

The wash of the penguins

Clean penguins return to sea after spill.

Can't you just see them? Waddling, flapping, honking happily, wearing that fresh-scrubbed shine...

Blog value - who knew?

Business Opportunities Weblog | How Much Is My Blog Worth: "

My blog is worth $24,839.76.
How much is your blog worth?

Hat tip to Laura, btw. Forgot to mention that!

Veto #1

President Bush uses his first veto to kill a bill allowing expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

He's not running for re-election, so the charge of "pandering to the base" doesn't work.

Maybe he really is a man of conviction.

MSM strikes again!

How much more blatant can you get?

Robert Novak says today that he learned Valerie Plame's identity from a source he refuses to name and from Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who.

He called a number of people in Washington to confirm it, amonth them Karl Rove and an official at CIA. Both confirmed the information. (Presumably, if the identity was secret, the CIA contact would have said, "no comment.")

But look at the AP headline: Novak: Rove was a source in outing Plame

Not "Novak: I got Plame's name from Who's Who" or "Novak confirms Rove was not Plame leaker" or even "Novak: Rove, CIA confirmed Plame's identity".

How can you trust people who spin so blatantly and transparently?

The Handyman's Secret Weapon

Whether in the shop or on orbit, there's no substitute for duct tape.

Fruit is the root of all evil

The Anchoress identifies the source of the world's problems.

It's covered with seeds....

Here they go again

Once again, the forces of gender-PC are running amok.

This time, they're trying to remove a noted researcher - a female researcher - from two national advisory panels (National Math Panel and Nat'l Science Board) because of three articles she published twenty years ago that - gasp! - found differences between boys and girls.

Have these people never been to a kid's birthday party?

FWIW, a female cousin of mine is a Ph.D. mathemetician. Last I heard, she was working for the NSA.