Freeman Hunt

Wyatt Randall Hunt...

2012-01-17T12:59:00.002-06:00

... was born last Sunday, January 15th, at 3:15 a.m. Hooray!

All went well, all are well, so all is well.

Much Like the Hippopotamus

2012-01-02T14:56:00.004-06:00

The hippopotamus is a ridiculous looking animal with its absurd size, bizarre proportions, and odd features.

So it is at the end with pregnant women, and I can write that because I am one.

At the very end of pregnancy, the woman usually assumes a shape something like the grotesque female imaginings of R. Crumb. (No, I'm not a fan of his, but I have seen Crumb.) Or, as I said to my husband this morning, something like a series of orbs in a sock.

It is a good trade though. This transformation is usually temporary, and you get a kid in the end.

Unlike the hippopotamus.

Predictable Things

2011-12-17T15:13:00.002-06:00

Trinity wanted to ride the tiger. Now the inevitable.

I Empathize

2011-12-15T08:55:00.001-06:00

Want the Backstory to the Dawkins Refuses to Debate Craig Kerfuffle?

2011-10-25T15:34:00.002-05:00

This presents it nicely:

Heh.

"Only Crazy Helicopter Parents Freak Out About Elementary School Kids Walking Around Cities Unsupervised."

2011-07-13T12:49:00.002-05:00

At least that's what I hear. But I beg to differ.

The Cr48 Chromebook

2011-07-12T21:28:00.001-05:00

A Cr48 showed up at my door several months ago, so here's my brief take.

This has become the most used computer in my house. It comes out of hibernation instantly, and it boots up from off in just a few seconds. As someone who only has time to access the Internet in short bursts, this is ideal.

This computer cannot replace a regular computer for storing pictures offline or running programs, but it kills a regular computer for accessing the Internet. Because it's a browser in a box, there is no waiting for the browser to load. It's always open. And because there are no additional programs, there is nothing to bog the system down and no routine maintenance to perform. Due to the machine's simplicity, the battery lasts forever.

If I manage to break this one, I will buy another.

"Weinergate tells a cautionary tale." or Why I Am a Libertarian Conservative

2011-06-12T21:30:00.002-05:00

To speak of what “the founders believed,” you have to speak broadly, ideologically, not monolithically. But one thing they knew, to a man, was that they were sinful men. And even those who trusted in their own rectitude, attributed depravity to others. So with each codicil of the Constitution they labored to answer the question: What would weasels do? And then they built a barrier against that tendency. ...

Men are weak, wily, wicked. Don’t give them any more power over you than absolutely necessary...

By restraining the federal government to a few, specific functions, and setting it up with checks and balances, and yes, negative liberties, we mitigate the harmful effects of human nature. Smaller government is also easier to monitor, and error and evil harder to hide.

The Utopian dreams of the Left perpetually die on the altar of human frailty.

For more, and you should read the rest of it, go here.

Would it be illegal...

2011-05-29T20:49:00.003-05:00

... to pay Paul Ryan or Chris Christie ten million dollars to run for President?

I don't think you'd have any trouble raising the money. Maybe if one of them is close enough to the edge of running, it would be enough to put him over.

"C'mon, what would Huckabee have to say to make you change your mind about him? What's one thing he could say?"

2011-05-14T22:12:00.004-05:00

"Endorse the Club for Growth."

Mamet Must Read

2011-05-14T20:12:00.004-05:00

This. It's about David Mamet's experience of converting from a liberal to a conservative, and it captures that experience perfectly. That's it. That's what it's like. If you've done the same, you'll see yourself somewhere in it. If you haven't, you can find out what it is and what it's like.

And then there's this:

Higher ed, he said, was an elaborate scheme to deprive young people of their freedom of thought. He compared four years of college to a lab experiment in which a rat is trained to pull a lever for a pellet of food. A student recites some bit of received and unexamined wisdom—“Thomas Jefferson: slave owner, adulterer, pull the lever”—and is rewarded with his pellet: a grade, a degree, and ultimately a lifelong membership in a tribe of people educated to see the world in the same way.

“If we identify every interaction as having a victim and an oppressor, and we get a pellet when we find the victims, we’re training ourselves not to see cause and effect,” he said. Wasn’t there, he went on, a “much more interesting . . . view of the world in which not everything can be reduced to victim and oppressor?”

I don't get very personal on this blog. I'm not interested in sharing with you my in-depth biography and personal psychology. But this was like a revelation. If I write that it was like a punch in the chest but in a good way, will that makes sense to you? Because that's what it was.

David Mamet sums up in that bit why I can't bring myself to go back to school. I think higher ed, outside of mathematics and hard sciences, has become largely a sham, a fraud.

I was talking to a dear friend the other day with plenty of graduate school credentials. She was complaining that most of the highly educated (read: highly credentialed) now seem to take it for granted that there is no objective reality, everything is a construct of personal experience. Academics aren't about seeking out truth anymore; they're about creating narratives that will further the academic's vision of what reality should be.

Once you decide that there is no truth to pursue, there is no point to academics. At that point, you've become so obsessed with admiring the leaves that you've chainsawed through the trunk to get it out of your way.

So what then? If you want an education outside of the hard sciences, what do you do?

Maybe you can find an exceptional institution truly dedicated to the pursuit of truth. I don't know the way to do that, but perhaps you do.

If not, you have to go out and pursue that education yourself. There are extensive resources for that now, and you don't have to be a rich guy to use interlibrary loan. Good luck.

Still a Birther? What Do You Need?

2011-04-27T14:39:00.003-05:00

Here it is.

For a few people, hard core birthers, that's not enough. I guess they'll have to wait for the 35mm film of Obama's birth with the "Welcome to Hawaii" sign in the background and the bald eagle cutting the cord at the end.

"Stay-at-home parents are good for society, but I am a smart, capable woman with great promise. Don't I have more to offer the world?"

2011-03-01T16:33:00.018-06:00

Many people think there's a lot of controversy around being a stay-at-home parent. I think that's overblown. People have different opinions, but I don't think the issue is as heated as some over-hyping rag-peddlers would try to sell it.

That said, it's my opinion that it's good for families to have a stay-at-home parent while the children are young. Usually, the stay-at-home parent is the mother, thus the title of this post. But this post isn't about whether or not it's good to have a stay-at-home parent. This post is about whether or not someone who already thinks it's good should be a stay-at-home parent herself.

To narrow the focus of this post, I will only address having a full time career versus staying at home. I will not address hybrid options, such as those where parents arrange their schedules to share duties or one parent works at home while also acting as a stay-at-home parent.

I know people who are of the opinion that staying at home is fine for regular people but a bad idea for the highly educated, driven, or capable. The "elite," they argue, have more to offer the world and shouldn't be limited by parenting duties. I disagree with that. Here are a few of my reasons:

If your children don't have a stay-at-home parent, who is staying home with them? Family or, more likely, someone you hired? Is that person a good stand-in for you? If you think you are a particularly gifted person, couldn't you be a particularly gifted stay-at-home parent? Is the person watching your children as intellectually curious as you are? Does that person care about your children as much as you do? The person you choose to be with your child instead of you will have a profound effect on him. That person will affect your child's habits, outlook, speech, areas of interest, exposure to the world, etc. That person is extraordinarily important. That person could be you. Is that a position you want to outsource to someone who you, by your own reasoning not to stay home, deem less exceptional than yourself?
If you live in the United States and are of average health, you have a life expectancy of about eighty years. Children do not stay very young for very long. Could you pursue your interests as hobbies for a time and pursue outside achievements after your children move out or at least enter school? If so, what's the hurry? The world will still be around when your kids are not.
It's a common elitist attitude to think that if you're extremely intelligent or successful or creative or wealthy or beautiful or something else, the common rules don't apply to you. Societal strictures are for the little men. But does the world actually work that way? No trait confers harmony, emotional health, or fulfillment of potential on members of a family. Those things require work, and they are often overlooked. Perhaps family work is important enough to merit a sort of family CEO. That can be the role of the stay-at-home parent.
If you already think that stay-at-home parents are a societal good, and this post is only answering these questions from the perspective of someone who does, what sort of society are you creating if you say that the most promising people should not be stay-at-home parents? If you contribute to the idea that the best and brightest are above the stay-at-home role, are you not creating a society wherein that role is not valued? Who is going to want to stay at home with their children if doing so is viewed by the culture as an admission of mediocrity? You can't help but shape the culture you're in. If you have a vision for the culture, a good place to start molding it is in your own house.

UPDATE: I just received this in my email. Maybe I should forward my blog post to Mary Elizabeth Williams.

A Minor Disagreement

2011-01-11T22:38:00.003-06:00

I have no problem with what Pawlenty said. In fact, I would have given exactly the same answer.

The crosshairs on the map aren't his style. So what? Not my style either. We need our politicians to be libertarian conservatives, not the GOP Borg. He's saying you don't have to like the style, but whether or not you do, it certainly didn't cause any violence.

I see no problem with that. The answer is "man enough" for me, and my bar for that is pretty high.

And Now, a Public Address from the President of the United States

2010-12-08T10:02:00.003-06:00

"I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts.

"I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed."

"It's like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but the original one. You know, from '74. And I'm Walter Matthau. No, no, wait; I guess I'm the mayor. So I'm paying because of the people on the train.

"It's the American people on the train, and it's a runaway train. But the Republicans aren't even on the train. We have an undercover guy watching them not on the train.

(Aside directed away from mic: "Is that supposed to be Snowe? ... Biden says it's him? That doesn't make any sense.")

"Anyway, the Republicans are dividing the money. But one of them will electrocute himself. Maybe some of you haven't seen this movie. Just stay with me here.

"The point remains that electrocuting yourself, like a tax cut for the rich, is bad. But we can't allow the American people on the train to get hurt, so we're not going to crash the motorcycle carrying the ransom. We will only allow the top motorcycle driver in the country to deliver the ransom for the American people, and we will not lie about being at the tunnel. At the end of which, there is a light... the light of jobs.

(Aside directed away from mic: "When you wrote this, had you even watched this movie recently? ... Why didn't you just use 'Die Hard'?")

"Look. We all know that runaway trains kill people, and so we have to pay the Republican hijackers so that they will electrocute themselves and not shoot the American people who are on the train that the Republicans are not on... they would be shooting them not directly in this case because they're in different places, but indirectly, and just as harmfully, with .... money, or taking their money ... with shooting, which is involved. Really with today's technology, you could have a gun that shoots in one area and the bullet tracks its target and follows it to kill it. Actually that's something like a missile.

"The Republicans want to kill you with missiles. Thank you. Yippee ki yay, my fellow Americans and goodnight."

Humor for Election Day

2010-11-02T11:46:00.001-06:00

25 Greatest Figures in American History

2010-08-19T11:13:00.004-05:00

... according to this poll of conservative bloggers that included me.

I think this group list of greatests came out much better than the group list of worsts. I was especially glad to see Norman Borlaug receive enough votes to appear.

This is the list I sent to RWN:

Norman Borlaug
Washington
Jefferson
Lincoln
Franklin
Madison
John Quincy Adams
Reagan
Edison
MLK
Frederick Douglas
Noah Webster
Henry Knox
Lewis & Clark (That's two, so I suppose I cheated there.)
George Mason
John Adams
Eisenhower
Phyllis Schlafly
Davy Crockett
Neil Armstrong (Representing all those who helped to build the space program during its infancy.)

I had a very hard time narrowing down to twenty. (At least one of the ones I didn't cut is purposely controversial. Have to have at least one like that in any list.) I had to cut a lot who I would have just as easily left on the list. Others I'd like to have included are Patrick Henry, Daniel Boone, Calvin Coolidge, George Patton, Henry Ford, Thomas Paine, the Wright Brothers, Ethan Allen, Andrew Carnegie, Sam Walton, and Bob Hope.

Who would be on your list?

25 Worst Figures in American History...

2010-08-13T23:13:00.002-05:00

... according to this poll of conservative bloggers that included me.

I did not vote for these:
23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

Apart from Carter and Obama, there aren't a lot of votes backing those candidates. I'm guessing that the votes for other historical figures were split, and that led to current, better-known figures winning the vote. Forty-three bloggers responded, so while seven of them did vote for, say, Bill Clinton, thirty-six of them did not. I would be interested to see a full list of every figure that received votes.

People I voted for who did not make the list:
Robert Hanssen
John Marshall
Boss Tweed
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Bull Connor
Roger B. Taney
Huey Long
George Wallace
Suge Knight

Some of those are purposely provocative choices. You can also probably tell that I especially dislike machine-style politics. I failed to cover criminals. Major figures in organized crime could be on a list like this. There were also, sadly, many more Presidents who could have been on it.

Who would be on your list?

How Does Your Church Allocate Its Resources?

2010-06-25T14:17:00.002-05:00

From A Life Apart: Hasidism in America:

When the Satmar Rebbe came to America he saw many empty synagogues and only a few religious schools. He said, "We will do exactly the opposite from these Americanized Jews. We will get by with small synagogues. Instead, we will build big schools with many children learning the Torah."

Everybody Wants a Free Pony or A Civics Primer for Horse Lovers

2010-06-19T10:54:00.008-05:00

Adapted from my comments at Althouse.

Everybody wants a free pony, and there's no easier way to get votes if you're a politician than by buying them with pony promises. But you can't promise ponies to everybody at the same time because you'd run out of ponies, and no one would believe that you had so many ponies to hand out anyway. So each politician, or pony handerouter, picks a few groups and promises them ponies.

Of course, that just makes more people want ponies because if one guy gets a free pony then the next guy thinks it's only fair that he gets a free pony too. And the people who do get free ponies just want more free ponies because after you've finagled the first one for free, the finagling begins to feel a bit like being paid what you're owed. You're a good guy, right? If the world is handing out free ponies, why shouldn't you get yours?

Unfortunately, there aren't enough ponies. And ponies are never free. That's the reality. But politicians don't get elected easily by dealing in reality. They get elected easily by promising ponies.

Take Social Security for instance. The government said it would take ponies from everyone, breed the ponies, and then give everyone his ponies plus some extra ponies at retirement.

But politicians being politicians, they couldn't stand to see all those ponies sitting idle in the government stables when they could be trading those ponies for votes. So they opened the stables and traded all the ponies.

People got angry that all their ponies were gone, but the bureaucrats said, "Don't worry. We'll just take even MORE ponies from your children, and we'll give the ponies to you!" People like ponies so much that they thought this was a pretty good deal. "Surely our sweet children won't mind giving us all those ponies," they thought, "and besides, we don't have to ask them."

And so it went on.

But even that wasn't enough ponies for the politicians' pony trading appetites.

The Chinese politicians had plenty of ponies, and they didn't have any votes to trade them for. So the American politicians borrowed a few trillion ponies from the Chinese politicians and handed out the Chinese ponies to their American friends. The American politicians promised that American babies would grow up and work very hard to collect lots and lots of ponies to give back to the Chinese politicians.

You probably think that you can't sign contracts for ponies with the names of people not yet living. But you aren't a politician. The politician says, "Enslave the babies and the babies of the babies and the babies of the babies of the babies! Chinese ponies for everybody!" And he usually gets elected.

So what will future generations think as they toil and toil and toil to pay off our "free" ponies? "Yes, life is now very hard, but at least our ancestors had free ponies." Is that what they will think?

I doubt it.

I think we all know they'll take us for horse thieves. I guess we're counting on not being around to suffer the traditional penalty for that. Too bad. Because if we keep going on as we are, we'll deserve it.

My Full Answers to Patrick Gavin of Politico

2010-06-05T07:52:00.004-05:00

There's this today. I have a minor quibble with the context in which my quote was presented, but it's no big deal. It's a nice, little article. These were my full answers to the questions Gavin emailed:

Did you know you were nominated?
No.

How do you feel about being on the list?
Family commitments have kept me from blogging as regularly as I'd like lately. I suppose this offers some motivation to get back into it when possible as it seems I haven't been entirely forgotten just yet.

What do you think of the #1 winner?
My young children currently dominate my time, so I'll have to admit to being unfamiliar with the work of most people on the list, including that of the winner. I've heard that her show is excellent though.

Who do you think is the hottest left wing woman?
I don't think "hotness" is a very interesting subject, but then, I'm not the target audience for these lists. Dennis Kucinich's wife is stunningly beautiful, I think.

How the Oil Industry Works

2010-05-16T19:25:00.002-05:00

This blogger explains it to you.

Buying Your Identity

2010-05-15T23:15:00.004-05:00

At the end of the movie Helvetica, Rick Poynor observes that through modern technology we've begun to express ourselves graphically through, for example, the layouts of our blogs and social media sites and that is an extension of other ways we express our identities like buying certain clothes or buying certain furniture and decorations for our living spaces. It reminded me of some large ads that adorned a local upscale outdoor shopping mall. The ads had a picture of a made up and bejeweled woman, and across the picture in big, bold letters it read "DEFINE YOU."

I was always repulsed by that ad.

There's the obvious repulsiveness of the idea of defining yourself by purchases in the mall, but there's more. The very idea seems like such an obvious individual and societal ill that having it used in an advertisement printed twenty feet high made it seem like the designer was throwing it in one's face. "This is who you are. You are seduced wholly by consumerism. It devours you. Now go and serve it." Or that, perhaps, the designer of the ad didn't see anything wrong with the idea.

Why have we accepted that clothing and interior design is an expression of identity? Not just part, but for many, its principal expression. Now some people see assembling an outfit or decorating a room as an art and a means to express themselves, and that is one thing, but how did these particular forms of expression become the default and expected?

What if a person wasn't interested in expressing himself that way? What if he didn't have any interest in clothes or decor? What could he wear that would indicate, "Look not here to find me"? How could he decorate his house to say, "I'm not trying to say anything about myself through this"?

One might say that many men do this. They can wear plain clothes, and they can simply leave their homes undecorated. But what about women? There's a much greater expectation on them to use dress and decor as primary modes of expression. So how does a woman indicate that those aren't her expressive avenues? How do you wear something that says nothing? I submit that if a woman attempts this, people will really think she is trying to say something!

And when we do buy things to express ourselves, are we really expressing ourselves or are we attracted to certain things, say through advertisements, that we buy and then, without thinking about it, we mold our self-conceptions to fit those things? Also how many things do we buy that are aspirational? "That mixer isn't me now, but I want to the sort of person that people would identify with this mixer."

Do we want to be defined that way? Do we want to be wandering a store thinking, "No, that clothes hamper isn't me. I'll go to that other store. It might have a hamper that I can really identify with."? Do we want to have these intense, self-defining relationships with objects?

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm interested in your answers.

ADDED: Suggested in the comments. I love this.

Pictures from the Tax Day Tea Party in Fayetteville, Arkansas

2010-04-15T13:56:00.011-05:00

Best estimate is that about 1200 people showed up. Dick Morris came to tell the crowd that the conservative Democrat is extinct. (If I can post the audio from the video I took, I'll do that later.)

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

"Anybody but Blanche." No kidding. Well, almost anybody anyway...

Went up high to try and get better shots of the crowd but could only get this little section near the front because of the trees.

Heh:

I liked this sign a lot, but this was the only shot I got of it:

Morris left in this car. Another "heh."

Let's hope so:

Worthwhile Listening 3

2010-02-28T22:26:00.003-06:00

American Rhetoric, the site I've been linking to for these speeches, has this speech at number one. The choice is obvious. Everyone knows this speech. The title has become a common cliché.

However, have you listened to it in its entirety during your adult life? (I specify adult life because some vague memory of it from back in grade school is not the same thing.) There are the parts we hear all the time in audio snippets, but the rest of it is just as good. I've listened to it more than any other speech on my MP3 player.

The man was a master of the metaphor and simile. The skill of his delivery is equaled only by Reagan, and even then, it is not exceeded. I also like how precise this speech is. It is very tight, and by that I mean that King deftly slices off any shoots of misguided thought that he anticipates may sprout from his words in the listener's mind.

And look at this bit:

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

Good advice for all of us even now.

Don't miss the rest of it.

More Worthwhile Listening

2010-02-21T13:40:00.003-06:00

If you find yourself feeling like the republic is headed down the road to serfdom, listen to this. That's not to say that we're not on that road, but imagine hearing that speech from a President today.

It [the Constitution] has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis -- broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

I am happy that we are not so foregone today that a President would be comfortable giving that same speech. At least, that is, I do not think a modern President would be comfortable giving it.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo

2010-02-15T23:01:00.003-06:00

The big three. Incidentally, the best three years of our lives. Thanks for that!

Where You'll Find Me Today

2010-02-11T07:34:00.001-06:00

Here at 2:00 PM CST on Dylan Ferrell's show. You can watch online.

Heh.

2010-01-26T13:38:00.000-06:00

Almost Four Years

2010-01-25T20:07:00.003-06:00

This blog is almost four years old. So was the picture on the sidebar. No more. I replaced it with a picture from today. New picture, older me.

Worthwhile Listening

2010-01-25T10:06:00.004-06:00

I've been listening to speeches during my thrice weekly run on the treadmill. I think I'll start linking one each Monday.

First, a classic.

Free audio, video, and transcript available at the link. A taste:

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

...

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.

...

Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the -- or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Don't miss the rest of it. It's all that good.

Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat

2010-01-20T08:26:00.001-06:00

Heh. Via Instapundit.

The Big Tent

2010-01-19T22:07:00.006-06:00

You want a big tent? It's fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it.

You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats.

Everything else is beside the point right now. You lose the fiscal conservative fight now and allow the United States to head deeper into Statism, and it's over. If the government controls healthcare, it will "[redefine] the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists." You can kiss freedom goodbye in the longterm.

So instead of utterly failing our future generations, leaving them to toil under the yoke of an obscenely powerful government, we should make our stand now. Embrace fiscal conservatism. Leave the rest to federalism.

It's easy. It's a no-brainer. It's even Constitutional. People are sick of the spending, sick of the debt, sick of the bailouts, sick of the handouts, sick of the back room deals, sick of the taxpayer funded bribes, sick of the bureaucrats. They want unyielding, unapologetic fiscal conservatism.

Fiscal conservatism is the big tent.

Coakley Spoofs

2010-01-19T21:32:00.002-06:00

Originally posted in the comments on Althouse.

"Who are these impudent scoundrels asking questions of me?!"
"They're reporters, ma'am."
"Reporters?! And to whom do they report?"
"The people, ma'am."
"The people? Really? How droll."

-----------------

"Shake their hands?!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You can't be serious."
"It's the standard thing, ma'am."
"You mean, I am to touch them?!"
"Yes, the candidates are generally expected to shake the hands of the people they meet at an event."
"God, save me from this prole hell!"
"..."
"..."
"No, ma'am. I don't think the surgical gloves will go over..."

------------------

"I'm glad you agreed to come, ma'am."
"What is this Fenway Park anyway?"
"Ma'am?"
"Well, I mean it's got to be the worst park I have ever seen. I see no trees, no meandering water features...? Are they inside?"
"..."
"It looks like we're standing outside of some sort of coliseum!"
"Baseball, ma'am. It's a baseball park."
"Baseball?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Oh, a sport..."
"Yes, ma'am."
"..."
"You should probably smile, ma'am."
"Oh. Perhaps after I am deloused."

---------------------

"What was that strategist screeching about? 'Lose the seat', as if I don't know where it is!"
"He's worried that you'll lose the election, ma'am."
"What election?"
"The Senate election, ma'am. The one you're running in."
"There's no election."
"Yes, ma'am, there is."
"Oh please, you say that as if the people were allowed to vote in it or something."
"They are, ma'am."
"They are? That's ridiculous. The people don't even know anyone important; that's why they're 'the people'. I don't believe you."

-----------------------

"We have to leave immediately!"
"Ma'am?"
"My allergies. It's horrible."
"Your allergies, ma'am?"
"Yes. My God, I fear I will be stricken blind by them at any moment. We must leave at once!"
"We've only just arrived. The people have assembled here to hear you speak. Perhaps we can fix whatever is causing you offense. What are you allergic to?"
"What do you think? Look at them! It's a sea of synthetic fibers out there!"

------------------------

Good Evening, Massachusetts!
with Ted Clark

"I'm here tonight with Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Senatorial candidate. Hello, Martha."
"Hi, Ted."
"So Martha, you've been receiving some criticism these last few weeks."
"Unfairly, yes."
"What are some things that voters might not know about you?"
"The news has been sidetracked with trivial matters, but I have great plans to fix the problems of this country."
"What's an example of one of your plans?"
"Well, Ted. Take feral dogs for instance."
"Alright. What about feral dogs, Martha?"
"I calculate that if we adopt a public shoot on sight policy for loose dogs, we will not only end problems with feral dogs, we will save hundreds of millions of dollars in animal shelter costs."
"You want people to shoot loose dogs on sight?"
"Yes, precisely."
"That's... bold."
"That isn't my only plan."
"Oh?"
"No, cats are a problem too. Really there are just far more cats than this nation can support."
"There are? I didn't realize..."
"Yes. Now we must adopt a one cat policy. No one may have more than one cat. If a household has a cat, and the cat becomes pregnant, and the pregnant cat gives birth to kittens, police should be dispatched to the household to then execute the excess kittens."
"Oh!"
"Yes. I've got a plan for widows too."
"Uh..."
"They cost quite a lot to our system. But we can eliminate those costs entirely. I was just reading about this former custom in India called Sati..."
"Ah! Well, we might not have time for that. Uh, how about we move on to Obama. I hear he's coming out here to support you."
"Yes. I appreciate his support."
"What do you think about his healthcare plan?"
"I think any plan that would help us weed out the people we don't need to be spending money on would be great."
"And what do you mean by 'weed out?'"
"I think everyone knows what I mean, Ted."
"Mmkay. Well, what do you think of his plans to address our country's economy?"
"He is right about the banks. All of this financial mess is the fault of the banks."
"Mmhm."
"I even brought a graphic to illustrate the problem with the banks. Here it is."
"That's a map of Israel."
"I think that about sums it up."
"What does that even mean?!"
"Thank you so much, Ted, for having me on."
"Do you want to be elected?"
"Of course! And before we go, I'd like to send out a big @$%& you all to the voters of our state."
"Uh... Right."
"Oh, and children suck. Especially the crippled ones. Ick."
"This is Ted Brown, and thank you for watching Good Evening, Massachusetts!"

Elections are not coronations. Politicians who forget that suffer for it.

The Blanche Lincoln Poll Is "Iffy?"

2010-01-12T18:21:00.002-06:00

John Brummett thinks so:

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln is getting creamed by no-name Republicans in a new Rasmussen Poll. But, as it happens, there’s national criticism right now that Rasmussen’s polling may be weighted in favor of Republicans.

I think Rasmussen’s polls are fine. All you do is transfer five points from the Republican to the Democrat and you have a pretty good poll.

Read the rest of it, and then read this critique that was emailed to me (and Brummett):

Mr. Brummett,

I must respectfully disagree with you regarding the shot you took at the polling firm Rasmussen Reports in your column from this past Saturday(1/9/10). First of all, you mention "national criticism" about Rasmussen's polling being weighted in favor of Republicans. There has been a recent spate of "shoot the messenger"-style anti-Rasmussen pieces appearing on left wing blogs, driven mostly by lefty firm Media Matters, but I hardly think that really constitutes a "national criticism".

Secondly, you failed to mention in your piece, questionably in my view, that Rasmussen is one of the most consistently accurate pollsters currently in operation. Their final poll on Bush/Kerry in 2004 showed the President winning 50.2% to 48.5%. The actual final tally was 50.7% to 48.2%. Likewise, their final poll in the 2008 race showed Obama beating McCain 52% - 46%. The actual result was 53% to 46%. These results make Rasmussen the most accurate pollster of the last two Presidential elections, hands down. Nobody else is even close.

They are also consistently one of the most accurate in state polling. Rasmussen called the recent Gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey almost exactly right in each case. In your column you compare a Rasmussen poll of the 2006 Arkansas Governor's race, which had Beebe up only 7 points, with polls "about the same time" from Opinion Research and Survey USA that had him up by 17. You then immediately declare that in reality Beebe "won by 14", obviously trying to imply that Rasmussen was way off in that race when others were right on. You must have really had to search the archives to find the snapshot in time when polls taken "about the same time" were that divergent, because the final Rasmussen poll before election day showed Beebe winning by 12, which was basically right on the money. The juxtaposition of a Rasmussen result from some amorphous point in time in the race with the final electoral tally is not relevant in any way unless you are trying to mislead your readers into thinking Rasmussen was off by 100% in their polling in this case, when that's simply untrue. The obvious way to judge Rasmussen's accuracy on the 2006 Arkansas race is to compare their final poll, taken days before the election, with the final result. Had you done that, you would have correctly informed your readers that Rasmussen was spot on. Instead, you chose to unfairly demean the firm's accuracy by comparing a poll from some other point in the race, meaninglessly and misleadingly, with the final result. If you have to leave out the most obvious comparison in order to make your case, then shouldn't that alert you that your premise is hollow?

You seem to be attacking the accuracy of a pollster who delivers information you don't like while leaving out the inconvenient fact that Rasmussen has a proven track record of calling both state and national races in a very accurate manner. Indeed, they may be the most consistently accurate pollster out there. The reason Rasmussen often has Obama's approval rating 5% lower than other pollsters is because Rasmussen always polls likely voters, whereas firms like Gallup poll "adults" on that question. Likely voters always skew more Republican than overall adults. Every pollster knows this, which is why they poll "likely voters" instead of adults before elections. It's really no more complicated than that. Rasmussen's robo-calling model simply sticks with polling likely voters, because they are the ones who's opinions matter at the ballot box.

If you really wanted to turn your ire toward lousy polling, why not look at the CBS poll and other mainstream media polls of its ilk? These polls routinely vastly over sample democrats, sometimes giving them ridiculous partisan advantage gaps of over 20 points, in order to arrive at the numbers they publish. In reality, the partisan gap in actual elections has never been even close to that high in the modern era. Obama, for instance, won by only 7 points in a big Dem year with significant Republican crossover.

Thanks for your time,

So, Brummett, what say you?

Happy New Year, Have Some Macro

2010-01-01T00:38:00.004-06:00

My Fuji Finepix F30 was inadvertently killed. Replaced it with a Fuji FinePix F200EXR. It's been a long time since there was any macro photography on this blog. Here's some from playing around with the new camera.

Self-portrait:

Macro with flash:

Have hope for changing minds.

2009-12-31T14:10:00.001-06:00

Looking back on the decade:

Ten years ago I was a very far left liberal. Probably more of a communist. And an atheist. And wanted to work for the government.

Heh.

30 Today

2009-12-28T21:39:00.004-06:00

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

A Fun Way to Introduce Magnets to a Preschooler

2009-12-12T12:45:00.003-06:00

I place a little, black disc on the table in front of my two year old. "Little disc, little disc, follow my command! Move in circles now, if you understand." The disc moves in circles on the tabletop, seemingly on its own. My son's eyes widen in amazement. I continue, "Listen, disc, listen disc, you must listen well. Move back and forth now, like a swinging bell." The disc moves back and forth. My son is delighted. Next, I pretend to concentrate very hard while moving one finger around in the air. The disc follows it below on the tabletop. My son is thoroughly impressed, so I stop and let him take the disc off the table.

"That," I say dramatically, "is a magnet."

Then I show him the one I was holding under the table to make the first one move. He holds both of them, and they click together. I show him how to do the trick. He moves the magnet under the table to make the one on top move around.

He thinks magnets are really cool.

Success.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence."

2009-12-01T15:34:00.001-06:00

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

-- Calvin Coolidge

Where I Have Been

2009-11-30T22:24:00.007-06:00

It's not that I wasn't writing. It's that I was writing a whole lot.

UPDATE: People have asked some questions about this, so I'll answer them here. (Too long for Twitter.)

What is NaNoWriMo? It's a challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words (or more if you want) in one month. You can read more about it here.

Are you going to post your novel online? I have no plans to do that.

What is your novel about? I wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but I had forgotten all about it, what with having a baby and all. Then I saw someone mention it ten days in. I didn't want to miss it, and 2500 words a day seemed doable, so I joined in. I didn't have an outline nor any other support material, and I didn't have time to develop any, so I treated the term "novel" pretty loosely. (Yes, this is allowed.)

The novel has a single thread of dialogue that runs throughout about writing; writing under pressure, analyzing writing, joking about writing, overcoming the inner editor in writing, etc.; and interspersed with this dialogue are bits of fiction. Some of them stand alone. Others are continuing stories that are revisited over and over. A few are even exercises from John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, one of my favorite books.

Overall, I think it would be very enjoyable for me to go back and read, and to steal story bits from to develop into other things, but I don't know that it would be of interest to anyone else. None of this is to say that it isn't a novel. It is, and it's about the mind of the writer.

So if you aren't going to post it, and it's weird, what was the purpose of writing it? To develop as a writer. To prove to myself that I really can sit down in a disciplined way each day and churn out mountains of prose if I decide to do it. For me, that's huge. Also, it allowed me to explore a lot of different ideas and methods. Perhaps most importantly, it killed my tendency to be a fiction perfectionist on a first draft. That's incredibly freeing.

If you are a writer, I recommend doing NaNoWriMo without reservation. It's sort of like having a writing retreat without leaving the house. It also allows you to take at look at how your writing skills have developed. If you have an otherwise busy life, you'll have to write so quickly during NaNoWriMo that you'll be relying on habits and skills that you have already mastered. If your skill at doing a certain type of writing needs work, NaNoWriMo will uncover it because you'll find yourself stuttering along or floundering when that skill is required.

If you don't have a family or a demanding job, and you have a lot of writing experience, I would recommend shooting for a higher word count. I'm not sure that NaNoWriMo works the same way if you have plenty of time on your hands. I think you need to feel squeezed to get the benefits I listed above.

I am definitely planning to do this next year. If you want a similar group writing challenge and don't want to wait a whole year, you might look into Script Frenzy. I'll probably join you.

Good luck!

Ducks

2009-11-01T20:25:00.001-06:00

At Murphy Park.

Crystal Bridges Construction

2009-11-01T19:49:00.004-06:00

Information about Crystal Bridges.

My Devil's Den slideshow was too long. This one is very short.

Introducing Astronomy to Young Children

2009-11-01T09:13:00.004-06:00

Astronomy is a great science to introduce to young children because the night sky is always available and looking at it is free. Plus, it might be one of those first awe-inspiring things that causes a kid's mind contemplate the infinite (or at least the really REALLY big.)

Obviously the easiest thing to first point out to a young child is the moon. Then you get into stars, and it helps to know your way around a bit.

If you need some help finding your way around, here are some ideas:

Take a field trip to a local university's planetarium. You can call to find out if they have one. If you live in Northwest Arkansas, you are in luck--it's free.
Books. Here are a few good ones.
- Preschool: The Big Dipper, By Dr. Franklyn M. Branley
- Early Elementary: The Sky Is Full of Stars, By Dr. Franklyn M. Branley
- Nine and Up: Find the Constellations by H. A. Rey
- Young Adult and Up: The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H. A. Rey
You may know of others. If you have one to recommend, please do so in the comments. (Incidentally, the person who I first found out about Find the Constellations from has just written a book about raising children that looks excellent.)
Join an astronomy club. There are lots of them.

Most kids also love planets. I've yet to find a book on planets that's not a hit with my two year old. Not all of the books have been revised to eliminate Pluto from the planetary lineup, but I don't think there's much harm in that. You can explain the change in Pluto's classification while reading the book.

How about you? Do you do astronomy with your young children? What are your suggestions?

Devil's Den Loop

2009-10-31T20:28:00.002-06:00

Pictures taken at Devil's Den State Park on the Devil's Den Loop, a 1.5 mile hike.

Heh.

2009-10-29T22:34:00.002-06:00

Do You Live in Northwest Arkansas?

2009-10-26T12:58:00.003-06:00

Have you been outside lately?

"Unfortunately, most of this is antithetical to the mind-set that now dominates mainstream educational thinking."

2009-10-25T21:22:00.004-06:00

To be wise, gifted children need to learn how to make accurate judgments, but many educators want to teach them to be non-judgmental. To be wise, bright children need to be exposed to the best that has come before them, but many educators insist on treating all cultures as equally valuable and avoid discriminating between them. Educators say they want our little darlings to express themselves, but the primary purpose of education should be to give children the tools and the intellectual discipline for expressing themselves as adults.

What I am calling for is a revival of the classical definition of a liberal education, serving its classic purpose: to prepare an elite to do its duty.

Read the rest of it.

It's part of what I was getting at here:

The heart of relativism is a void of tyrannical ignorance. What is worth knowing if everything is, at heart, the same? Liberty is tyranny. Freedom is statism. We throw our greatest minds into that abyss.

Poetry for Kids

2009-10-23T13:27:00.006-05:00

My older son, same as any child I've ever met, likes to learn songs. So we learn songs. And if your kid is into learning songs, why not poetry?

We have a few poetry anthologies for children. I've combed through these and written down one poem on each weekly view in my planner. Each week, I say the poem lots of times, and if my son likes it, he starts saying it too. Having the poems written down in the planner keeps them convenient and makes it more likely that I will actually remember to share them.

I also stay flexible about it. If the poem in the planner doesn't catch, but some other poem we read in a book that week does, then I switch over to the catching one.

Here are a few of my son's favorites:

People from Skipping Village by Lois Lenski (excerpt)

Tall people,
short people,
Thin people, fat;
Lady so dainty
wearing a hat.
Straight people,
dumpy people,
Man dressed in brown,
Baby in a buggy-
These make a town.

Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

(You will find the first line of "Rain" written differently in different anthologies. Some use the word "raining" while others use "falling." After some quick research, I believe that "raining" is correct.)

The Tiger by William Blake (excerpt)

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Because my son likes to read, I like to print these out, one poem to a page. My son always thinks it's very neat to read something he's often heard said. Put the pages in protectors, gather them into a binder, and your child has his very own poetry anthology. Hopefully I'll get around to doing that myself this weekend.

How to Make It Funny

2009-09-24T23:05:00.002-05:00

I came across this. It's a rant about Rich Lowry. The writer obviously thought it was funny as he was writing it. The piece goes something like, "Lowry said this... ha ha ha. Lowry said that... he he he," but the pull quotes are just bits of arguments Lowry has made, not gaffes.

Is it funny? "Sadly, no."

But you can make it funny. Just erase everything you know about economics, put on your giving money away good, profit bad, intentions are more important than results goggles, and it works.

How to Be a Successful Activist

2009-09-07T13:42:00.004-05:00

In five steps. Well, sort of five steps. It cheats that number quite a bit by having sub-steps a, b, c, etc.

It culminates with this step:

5. How to bring down the dominant culture
a) Ask yourself if you’re content with your relatively high quality of life being possible thanks to the poor quality of life of others elsewhere
b) Ask yourself if you’re content with your relative freedom being possible thanks to the oppression of others elsewhere
c) Accept that we are all accomplices to the perpetual global crime called “civilization”
d) Bring down the dominant culture

Maybe before doing any of these steps, you should investigate the fallacious assumptions of a, b, and c. What good is it to be an activist if you're supporting a harmful cause? Suddenly, you're the bad guy.

Identify the good fight. That would make you a better activist.

It's So Hard Being Goode

2009-09-06T14:03:00.004-05:00

I was researching something else and happened upon this. It's hard to even know what to pull quote. All of it is must read material. (As it happens, there was an episode of The Goode Family about very much the same thing.)

Here's a tiny snip to lure you over:

Needless to say, I spent the next few days trying to dismantle my privilege and the analyze why I felt so uncomfortable with a) our lack of gay role models in our family life, and b) my eager reaction to “Quick! Find them!”

Do not make the mistake of thinking that is parody. It isn't. Read the rest of it. The comments are worthwhile too.

I emailed the link to someone who sent this back:

Ring.
"Hello?"
"Hello. You don't know me, but I noticed you're a person of color and I would like to be your friend."
"What???"
"Oh, it's not like I'm collecting you or anything. I just need you as a reference."
"You need me as a reference for work?"
"No. I need you as a family friend so that if my daughter says black people are bad I can reference you to prove we know a black . . . a person of color who is nice. It's an educational thing."
"I don't even know you."
"Unfortunately, there isn't time for that. My daughter is already five, and we've got lesbians, Muslims, and Puerto Ricans to reference but no persons of color. It's only a matter of time before she says something derogatory about black people."
"Why would she do that?"
"We don't have any black friends to reference."
"And why is that?"
"Well, we didn't need any until recently. By the way, we're looking for gay married men, homeless people, and Native Americans, if you could direct us to any."
"Er . . . "
"Could you come to dinner this week? Obviously, there's no point to being your friend unless my daughter can see that you're our friend. Oh, by the way, please be on your best behavior!"

Heh.

Coburn Lays It Out on Health Care

2009-09-04T13:14:00.003-05:00

Begins eight seconds in:

UPDATE: I wonder how many are aware that Coburn is a doctor.

Tabloid Headline 2059: "Is Jen Calling Brad's Nursing Home? Angie Fumes!"

2009-08-30T02:06:00.002-05:00

I admit to not knowing the details of these stories because I haven't read them, but I see these three people on nearly every tabloid cover on every trip I make to the grocery store. Didn't this business with them take place years ago?

Seems like awfully dry gossip by now.

Another Protest Against Government Health Care

2009-08-26T10:51:00.007-05:00

UPDATE: Pictures.

I don't think this event went as MoveOn.org planned. As Laurie Masterson put it on Twitter:

... it was great! We always had 2 times as many as obama supporters did, and the "mob" took them water!

I was there. She is right. And I even saw her counting many times at the event to make sure.

By the way, if you are interested in politics in Northwest Arkansas, you need to be following Laurie on Twitter. She organizes the local Tea Party coalition.

At the end of the event, something weird happened. Suddenly all of the Move On people left en masse and walked off to ride home together. Grassroots? I think not.

-----------
MoveOn.org is holding a pro-government health care demonstration today at the corner of Dickson and College in Fayetteville from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM. If it's anything like that Organizing for America rally on the Fayetteville square the other day (the one with more journalists than participants in attendance,) they'll bus people in.

And, of course, you can expect lots of media coverage.

So, time to go out again! Bring your signs and bring your manners.

Don't leave our elected officials with the false impression that government health care is a popular idea in Arkansas.

Protesting Health Care in Bella Vista as We Chase Sen. Lincoln Around the State

2009-08-15T19:10:00.007-05:00

So they really did decide to move the Democratic rally at the last minute. The word got out, and it looked as though there were more protesters than there were attendees.

The Senator, it seems, was brought in a back way and didn't drive past those protesting outside. She won't just refuse to have a townhall, she apparently refuses to even countenance constituents who don't support government health care. There was talk, and it seems the people felt a bit disrespected by that.

Many of the Democrats attending the rally even stopped to say, "I'm here for the rally, but I'm with you guys on health care."

In getting the kids ready to go, I forgot my camera. Fortunately, many people took pictures. I'll post them as I track them down:

As described by Caroline on Twitter, "Angry mob outside."

UPDATE: Caroline also took video of Lincoln's speech: here, here, here, and here, and has this still from inside the event where protesters were not allowed.

You CAN Go to a Public Meeting with Sen. Lincoln...

2009-08-14T13:12:00.005-05:00

... she just wasn't going to tell you about it.

----------
UPDATE: Lincoln's people say that Organizing for America got it wrong. The event is not open to the public. (Please note: The same people who cannot send out an email correctly think they are capable of planning the entire health care system.)

Of course, protesting is still on.

But there's also talk that the event has moved to avoid protesters. Supposedly it will now take place at Blowing Springs in Bella Vista. I don't have confirmation of that though.

Luckily, The Samaritan House and Blowing Springs are only fourteen minutes apart. Here's a map. You can show up early at one location, and if it's obvious there's no event there, you can drive on to the other location.

Such confusion a Senator causes when she won't just meet with the people. Surely she should have no problem meeting with the people because the health care bill being drafted is so great that she would relish the chance to explain it personally.

Heh.
----------

Lincoln's press release describes the event like this:

4:40 p.m., Featured Speaker, Benton County Democratic Committee Political Rally. 1211 Samaritan House, W. Hudson Road, Rogers.

Okay, so it's a rally for Democrats. Hey, we could still protest outside.

Then Organizing for America, Obama's activism and propaganda arm (Yes, the same one hiring people through Craigslist to show up at townhall meetings.) sent out this information:

What: Public meeting with
Sen. Blanche Lincoln

Where: Samaritan Community Center
1211 W Hudson Rd
Rogers, AR 72756

When: Saturday, August 15th
Arrival Time: 3:30 p.m.
Start Time: 4:30 p.m.

And directs people to this page.

So, once again, bring your signs and bring your manners.

Probably best to show up at 3:30 or even earlier if you want to get inside to ask questions of Sen. Lincoln. She may not be taking questions, so you might want to bring a small paper sign to hold up if that's the case.

If you can't get inside, have your big signs in the car and ready to go for protesting outside. I think that lots of Tea Partiers are also planning to attend.

Government health care pushers are trying to stack this "public" meeting to make it look as though there is a lot of area support for government health care. Don't let them.

Sen. Lincoln, Are You Listening?

2009-08-13T12:26:00.004-05:00

A lot of people showed up to protest government health care today. I was afraid that we might be the only people there, but there were many people there when we arrived. At any given time, there were about sixty people. People came and went, so there were probably about one hundred people in total. Wow! I think that's pretty great for a blazing hot workday morning.

About nine out of every ten cars honked and waved in support. One nice man even came back with a huge bag of bottled water. Government health care is definitely NOT a popular notion in Springdale.

Will try to update with pictures later. Have to go to the hospital; my friend is having a baby today! Hooray!

UPDATE: According to one reporter, someone in Sen. Lincoln's office is referring to her visit today as a townhall. It was not a townhall. You had to be a member of the Association of Arkansas Counties to get into the building. I know because I tried:

Below are pictures of some of the protesters. I was baby and toddler wrangling, so I didn't get pictures of everyone.

Kennicott Gives Political Satirists Permission to Portray Obama as Easter Bunny

2009-08-12T13:34:00.003-05:00

Here, Kennicott outlines how you may make fun of Obama without being called a racist:

Orlando, Fla.: Please enlighten us to what artistic negative depiction of Obama wouldn't be racist in your mind?

Philip Kennicott: Any and all that avoid racial images or racially coded images. I seem to remember that Obama was criticized for promising too many things. Easter Bunny images would work just fine. Okay cartoonists, graphic designers, urban poster artists.... have at it!

I too would like to extend my invitation to my own political opponents to only make fun of conservatives by calling them sweet, fluffy bunnies who give away presents.

Protest Government Run Health Care in Northwest Arkansas

2009-08-10T11:38:00.005-05:00

Senator Blanche Lincoln is coming to visit these locations:

Thursday, August 13: Springdale
9:30 a.m., Speak, Association of Arkansas Counties. Northwest
Arkansas Holiday Inn & Convention Center, Salons D & E, 1500 South
48th Street, Springdale.

Saturday, August 15: Rogers
4:40 p.m., Featured Speaker, Benton County Democratic Committee
Political Rally. 1211 Samaritan House, W. Hudson Road, Rogers.

Let's get out and show her that her constituents don't appreciate the far left
health care agenda she's supporting. We can do this by showing up wherever she goes.

Bring your signs and bring your manners.

I will try to be at both locations for an hour beginning half an hour before the time indicated above. If you are coming and have the time, drop me an email. Some reporters would like to cover this if enough people are planning to show.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, these are not town hall meetings. Seems she didn't schedule any for Northwest Arkansas. We'll be protesting outside.

We're Rooting for You, Randy!

2009-08-05T15:28:00.005-05:00

This is my Dad:

(The man, not the baby.)

He begins biochemotherapy today at MD Anderson to fight metastatic melanoma, and he's going to beat it.

We're rooting for you, Dad!

UPDATE: And in case you're wondering why I'd put this on a blog, my Dad may be one of the original readers (never a writer) of political blogs. He was reading blogs in the pre-Instapundit days, and he reads them still to this day. So a blog is the perfect place, along with many others, to wish him a speedy recovery. Get well soon, Dad!

"The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men."

2009-07-20T23:08:00.005-05:00

Obama Versus Bush (and Everyone Else) on Debt Spending

2009-07-18T12:18:00.002-05:00

Blog of Note

2009-07-10T20:57:00.001-05:00

John Stossel now blogs, and he is very very good at it.

"The life we've led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. ..."

2009-07-10T20:44:00.003-05:00

Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

Tyranny and Folly

2009-07-08T22:35:00.004-05:00

Bonhoeffer:

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied;...

Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

Can anyone doubt that the tyranny of the busybody is a tyranny born of folly?

Going for a Run...

2009-07-01T08:14:00.002-05:00

... about 20 years ago.

He Is Not Coming

2009-06-12T21:03:00.004-05:00

This occurred to me today and has occurred to me before, but today it occurred to me with greater force and, for the first time, it truly took hold.

He is not coming.

Who will be the next Reagan? Who will be our Thatcher? Who will show encroaching statism for the tyranny it is and turn the tide against it? Nevermind that Reagan and Thatcher, while they did make great gains, did not turn that tide permanently. We expect some even greater personage. The minute a promising face appears we ask, "Could it be? Is this the one?"

I tell you it isn't.

He is not coming.

We don't even bother to ask who our next Jefferson or Washington or Adams or Lincoln will be. We seem to have accepted that we have not produced one of these. Yet, that is what it would take, isn't it? At the very least anyway. Even then, who knows? Even that might not be enough.

He is not coming. And he is not coming because we have not produced him. From whence would he come? We are an ignorant people. Our best and brightest, outside of the hard sciences, are a sorry lot by historical standards. Intelligence, we have. Wit, we have in surplus. But knowledge? Real, discriminating knowledge, where is it? Our standards for knowledge are now so low. Now we are only required to sound as if we know. We are masters of rhetorical style, but of wisdom there is a dearth.

He is not coming. How many of us know Latin? How many Greek? How many are familiar with the great works of our civilization? Some will laugh at the suggestion that students should be troubled with Latin and Greek, but the fact is that it is impossible to be educated in our great works without these languages. When our nation was founded it was assumed that an educated person would be familiar with classical languages. Now they have been discarded.

He is not coming. What do we do with our brightest minds? How do we educate them? We polish them up, teach them to write prettily, and indoctrinate them into the idea that the highest form of wisdom is total ignorance. What I mean by that is that we teach them to value non-discrimination above all else. Total refusal to discriminate between ideas on their merits is now the mark of the sage. Any civilization is just one of many. Any idea is just one of many. Any religion is just one of many. Any philosophy is just one of many. Everything is relative and everything is deserving of respect. (Unless, of course, it is successful like Christianity or capitalism.)

He is not coming, and he is not coming because he can never come from that lie. The heart of relativism is a void of tyrannical ignorance. What is worth knowing if everything is, at heart, the same? Liberty is tyranny. Freedom is statism. We throw our greatest minds into that abyss.

He is not coming because, though they are total aberrations historically, we believe liberty and comfort inevitable. They are not. We are comfortable because by liberty success is found by merit. As ideas and things and people succeed by merit, we become more comfortable. But when you replace merit as the means of success, you will, by and by, find yourself less comfortable. When statism encroaches on liberty and planning and pull replace merit, tyranny and misery are not far behind. There will always be men who love power and seek to consolidate it, and mostly, they are not benevolent. To think that a state can have great power and yet be free of malice is to be naive at best and willfully foolish at worst. To believe that mere men, no matter how great, are capable of knowing all means and seeing all ends and can, therefore, plan for all is the very same folly.

He is not coming because we are lazy. We desire virtue, but we are too distracted to practice it, and so we outsource it to the state. Help him who needs it!... But not by me; let the bureaucrats handle that. We are like children depending on our parents to take care of the hard realities of life. He can never come out of that because he cannot be a child.

He is not coming. He will not speak for us. He does not exist, and nothing will be set aright until we produce him.

It remains to be seen whether or not we will.

Is That Really a Picture of Springdale?

2009-06-10T21:35:00.002-05:00

I live here, and I suppose I must never have looked in that direction.

Free Foreign Service Institute Language Programs

2009-06-10T20:44:00.005-05:00

Welcome to fsi-language-courses.com, the home for language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

Everything from French and Spanish to Kituba and Igbo. The reviews I've read about this program have said that while it is rather boring, it does work.

I've used Pimsleur in the past, but I'm going to give an FSI course a try.

Helpful Link for Arkansas Homeschoolers

2009-06-07T12:31:00.003-05:00

This. Perhaps everyone else already knew about this, but I didn't, so I'll add it to the sidebar.

Also, for Catholic homeschoolers in Northwest Arkansas, I've heard great things about this group. I found the other link while looking for information on how to join.

When Was That Written? Now?

2009-06-07T00:39:00.002-05:00

And good literature is the natural result of that sane outlook which only comes from a share in the active life of humanity and a living conviction of the significance of daily toil, of words and deeds and human relationships, and, above all, of the beauty of the world, and from a living faith too in God, and the triumph of Good over Evil. As soon as men cease themselves to live, and only write, the effect is evident in a certain lack of virility in their outlook. Feeling degenerates into sentimentality.

No. But it could have been. This part, "As soon as men cease themselves to live, and only write, the effect is evident in a certain lack of virility in their outlook," reminds me of most modern writing. And as for this, "Feeling degenerates into sentimentality," she left off that sentimentality often degenerates into irony which often then degenerates into flippancy.

School Envy

2009-06-04T21:24:00.002-05:00

I've wondered about this before: what sorts of things trigger homeschool kids to envy their public and private school counterparts? Wonder no more. (I especially like the kid who wanted to go to school so that he could eat out of a lunch box.) Good tips for handling these short bouts of envy as well.

True story: When I was four years old, I wanted to be an apple picker because I saw something that depicted apple pickers as riding bikes and carrying ladders at the same time. Bikes and ladders! At the same time! What could be better than that?

I Always Loved Geometry

2009-06-03T21:37:00.004-05:00

My geometry teacher's name was Ms. Burke, and she was excellent. I think she has a different name now.

I used to sit in her class and imagine all the lines on the board extending out into infinity. (If they didn't extend out into infinity, we learned, they wouldn't be lines; they'd be segments.) I'd imagine where different ones would meet. If I drew a line on my paper, I'd imagine it continuing out into the room. I could turn the paper and the ghost line would turn too. I'd imagine all the lines everyone else was drawing at their desks, as though we were all sitting in a web. And what if all the line segments that made up the chairs and binders and all the other objects in the room extended out into infinite lines? Lines everywhere, up and down, side to side, diagonally in every possible way (But would it really be every possible way? Certainly not, I thought.) and moving as our doings moved them. And planes, they were infinite too. The counters, the desks, the books, the overhead projector, what if they all extended out into infinity? You could imagine them moving around like gigantic transparencies that pierced the walls and the ceiling and the floor.

Maybe everything did extend out like that in true reality, in the reality of Platonic forms, and we just saw the limited physical representations. Could we affect those forms? I could erase an arrow, the indication of a line extending out forever, in my geometry notes and replace it with a point. That was a full stop. If I stopped the line at a certain point, then it was stopped. Now it was a ray. But somehow it was still infinite. Wouldn't it have to be half as long as a line? And how odd that you could place a point anywhere on a line, and it would be the center. You could place one point and then travel along the line ten million miles out into space to place another point, and as far as the length of the line was concerned, it was as though those ten million miles were nothing at all, and both points were the center. And what happened to the lines as they went on forever? Was forever really forever or would the space curve back in on itself. Would the two ends go on so far that they would run into each other and made a loop?

We didn't study that, so I don't know.

The 179th Carnival of Homeschooling...

2009-06-02T15:09:00.001-05:00

... is up.

Blog Worth a Bookmark

2009-06-01T20:55:00.003-05:00

This looks like a relatively new blog. Here's a representative post titled Literature Curricula for Preschoolers.

I'm impressed. Few people are comprehensive without rambling, and this appears to be one such person.

Cheap Montessori Materials

2009-06-01T19:26:00.003-05:00

We've started using some traditional Montessori materials at home. I guess you could call it home preschooling.

I've seen plenty of people in forums wondering what online stores have decent and inexpensive materials. I've ordered from these two, and I was happy with both places:

Kid Advance: I got sandpaper letters and numbers from this store and thought the quality was excellent. I'd seen what seemed to be identical letters and numbers elsewhere, but for higher prices. I think Kid Advance may be the actual manufacturer.

Adena Montessori: I got a variety of materials from this store including cylinder blocks, a geometric cabinet, a small movable alphabet, golden beads, color tablets, and small number rods. Again, I was pleased. Adena may also be a manufacturer.

Of course, you don't necessarily have to buy materials. There are quite a few that can be made at home. There are directions for making many traditional materials in this book.

I've never really done any crafting, but I'm attempting to make something from that book: cards with numbers on them. Heh. Well, you have to start somewhere, right?

ADDED: I forgot to mention Hobby Lobby. If you have one of these in your area, it is a wonderland of useful items for preschool. Plus, if you do want to make Montessori materials on your own, you can find pretty much everything you need in this store.

George Tiller Is Dead

2009-05-31T11:38:00.002-05:00

Shot this morning.

Homeschooling Still on the Rise

2009-05-31T09:39:00.003-05:00

In USA Today:

As of spring 2007, an estimated 1.5 million, or 2.9% of all school-age children in the USA, were home-schooled, up from 1.7% in 1999.

And this is interesting:

6.8% of college-educated parents home-school, up from 4.9% in 1999.

And this:

The new figures come from the U.S. Department of Education, which found that 36% of parents said their most important reason for home schooling was to provide "religious or moral instruction"; 21% cited concerns about school environment. Only 17% cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction."

You can lump me in with that 17%, though I sympathize with the majority reason as well.

Via Gifted Exchange.

Bringing Out the Best in Any Toddler

2009-05-30T18:58:00.004-05:00

Note: I have an old blog elsewhere that I'm planning to delete. It only has a few posts, but some of them are worth saving by posting here. This is a post from that old blog.

I found Paula Spencer's "Is Your Child Gifted?" while reading Help! My Kids Are Smarter Than Me! Contrary to what the title might suggest, it is not an article about how to identify a gifted child. In fact, it assures parents that their children probably aren't gifted:

"Gifted" has become one of the most tossed-about words in the parenting lexicon. Unfortunately -- sorry, but let's get this out of the way right up front -- it's also one of the most misused. The vast majority of children are not gifted. Only 2 to 5 percent of kids fit the bill, by various estimates. Of those, only one in 100 is considered highly gifted. Prodigies (those wunderkinds who read at 2 and go to college at 10) are rarer still -- like one to two in a million.

The real premise of the article is this:

Whether young children are truly advanced or happily average (where they have lots of company), in the early years they need pretty much the same things.

Of course, as always the devil is in the details, and the pertinent detail in this case is the phrase "pretty much." (I created this blog due to the needs and challenges that arise outside the realm of "pretty much.") However, the domain of "pretty much," those areas where advanced and average kids need the same things, is very large indeed, and for that, the article provides great reminders.

...all babies, toddlers, and preschoolers will thrive as long as they are:

Provided a predictable life with a reasonably ordered environment
Held and touched often
Talked to (or sung to) often
Read to frequently
Exposed to interesting experiences
Given many opportunities to learn through play.

Sure, those are things we all know, but it can be helpful to have certain things repeated in print. Ordered environment, huh? Hmmmm, maybe I'd better tidy up the living room.

There are also some good ideas:

Make Question Books. Scatter three or four notebooks around the house. If your child asks a question you either don't know the answer to or are too busy to answer, say, "Let's write it down." Later, you can explore the question together -- find a book, go online, visit the library or a museum.

Read the rest of it. You might also want to check out the original blog post where I found the article for a pointer to Dr. Sears endorsement of gifted preschool homeschooling.

On the Subject of Subjects

2009-05-30T11:32:00.004-05:00

Subject of email advertisement received this morning:

How to Get the Smoothest Legs in the World

First, be the only person to read this email...

Best Books for Babies -- Children Under One

2009-05-29T13:02:00.006-05:00

I have strong opinions about children's books, even babies' and toddlers' books. Sure, you read everywhere that it doesn't matter what you read to a baby or toddler as long as you read. That's true to a point. But if you're already planning to buy books, why not buy good books? Why settle for often insipid impulse buys when you could select books that go toward the development of literary and aesthetic taste? And when not focusing on those qualities, why not provide information about the real world? A person could argue that all books provide real world information to some extent, but I would counter that some do it far more effectively than others.

Note that for this age, I always buy the board book format if it is available. A baby can turn the pages of a board book, and picking the sturdier format allows the books to be played with. You'll end up with chewed corners, but that's no big deal and a small price to pay for having books become your child's favorite playthings. Many of these books are available under Amazon's 4-for-3 promotions, so it's a good idea to buy strategically in groups of four for the best discount.

With all of that said, these are my favorites for the zero to twelve months crowd, organized by author or type:

Byron Barton: Barton's books are particularly good for this age group because the illustrations are bold and precise, perfect for the youngest eyes, and the writing is terse and clear, making it easier to decode the language. There are lots of brightly-colored books out there with simple pictures and text, but Barton's books are, in my opinion, the most refined of this type. Of Barton's books, these are my favorites:

My Car: If you buy one Barton book, let it be this one.
Machines at Work: If you buy two, let the other one be this one.

All of his vehicle books are excellent.
Trucks
Planes
Trains
Boats

Barton's renditions of these classic tales are the best available for this age group.
The Little Red Hen
The Three Bears

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs: Your child will like dinosaurs. It is some sort of child law. This book is excellent because it introduces dinosaurs using activities and feelings familiar to the youngest child.

Margaret Wise Brown: Brown is something like the uncontested queen of prose for the youngest child. Her writing for this audience has no parallel. If you are only getting a few books for your baby, go with some of hers and some of Barton's.

Big Red Barn: If I could have only one board book in the house, this would be it. The text is perfect, and the illustrations are friendly and engaging. Plus, this book introduces a great number of animals in a story, rather than picture and label, format.
Goodnight Moon: Almost goes without saying. This classic is a must for any home library.
My World: Some of the reviewers on Amazon knock this book, but it looks like most of them are either not clicking into the intended rhythm of the language or introducing it to older children. This was one of my son's favorite books, and he had plenty to choose from.

She has other good titles, but they'll show up in a future list for best books for one to two year olds.

Touch and Feel Books: Babies like to touch, and these books focus on tactile stimulation.

Pat the Bunny: This one is a classic for good reason. It's engaging, and there is a pretty wide variety of direct, tactile experience offered in this one little book. Much better than its spin offs: Pat the Puppy and Pat the Cat , which rely more on pop-up book type interactions like pulltabs and turn wheels.
Roger Priddy Cloth Books: Simple text and lots of different material. You don't have to worry about these being damaged; they're made for babies to throw around and chew.
Peter Rabbit Touch and Feel: My son has always had a special affinity for this book. The textures are more subtle, and the illustrations are more detailed, making this book different from your usual touch and feel book. It can be a welcome change from the others.

Photographs: Sometimes you need photos. I have lots of recommendations for ages one to two in this category, but I have two favorites for the under one crowd.

Baby Faces: There's a reason this book has five stars on Amazon. Large pictures of babies' faces, each depicting a different emotion or other description. Children under one are generally fascinated by this.
Daddy and Me: Out of print but available used very cheap. Pictures of dads having fun with their kids with one word descriptors.

Visual Stimulation: A baby's vision is blurry, but he can distinguish subtler contrasts than you might think. Still, most babies enjoy looking at high contrast images. For that, black and white board books are available.

What are your favorite books for the under one crowd?

Bloglift

2009-05-28T16:09:00.005-05:00

Time to update the blog template. Will be upgrading to new layout system. Will be updating blogroll. If you come here, and things look weird, that's why. I'll post again when I'm done. No, that won't be today. And probably not tomorrow.

ADDED 5/29/09: Well, I was wrong. I'm pretty much done now. The sidebar will evolve, but this will be the basic layout and color scheme. My favorite color is red. Can you tell?

So, why the update? I did like the Scribe design, but I was using the old Blogger template system and wanted to upgrade to the new layout system. The Scribe design under the layout system looks the same but has a quirk I don't like. Instead of allowing content to override layout, the layout overrides the content.

What does that mean? A few posts below, there is a widescreen video about government spending. In my old layout, the video extended outside the post text column. It looked a little goofy, but I was fine with that. It was more important that readers could see the whole video frame rather than keep the layout looking perfectly neat. The new Scribe layout cut off the video frame where it crossed the right side of the post text column. That was a big chunk. And the width of that column was fixed. I probably could have edited the graphics for that layout and changed the coding to make a wider Scribe, but I didn't want to devote that much time to it.

So, red it is.

Goose Bay Deployment -- January 1952

2009-04-16T00:26:00.006-05:00

From my Gran'Dad via email. It is worth clicking into the pictures.

From Goose Bay we were to fly a profile mission to release a blivet on a bombing range off the northwest coast of Puerto Rico, then return to Carswell. The deployment to Goose went well and I got some very good photos. Here's our number one navigator, Cliff Bilek, guiding us in:

And on final:

And what has happened to that C124?

Here's a couple of crew photos of Crew R22(?), George Burch A/C

L-R George Burch (A/C), Cliff Bilek (1st nav), Chester Skelton (pilot) and Wray Jolley (2nd nav)

Same group: Jolley, Dick Vaughn (Radar), Burch and Bilek

And for us from Fort Worth, the flight line at Goose was quite different:

All went well. EXCEPT, our radar was out by the time we reached the Puerto Rico area. Dick Vaughn did an optical offset release, dropping our blivet somewhere near, we hoped, the target. Turning back toward the US we ran into very strong westerlys and could make it no farther toward Carswell than MacDill. In spite of it being in the wee hours, US Customs came out of somewhere to inspect for any Canadian whisky that exceeded our allowance.

Wray Jolley

A Little Perspective

2009-04-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

Act now. Speak up.

"The Dr. William Sears-inspired attachment parenting crowd will soon assail her in the blogosphere."

2009-04-03T15:19:00.005-06:00

Sure, we will. But I won't be doing it for the reason you think.

Enough with the neuroticism. Very few mothers breastfeed exclusively to six months. Given how low the rate is, how can you argue that there's overwhelming pressure on mothers? It seems like the real beef is that some people exist who don't approve. Who cares if they don't approve? They may be annoying, but why so much angst over them? I think that the greatest benefit from breastfeeding probably is the close contact between mother and baby. For that, no pump required. (Though if you accept that premise, you have to accept that a mother's work schedule matters, and that it might be worthwhile to make sacrifices in that area.)

I write all of that as a committed Sears-type attachment parent who never pumped, did breastfeed exclusively for six months, continued breastfeeding until her son was a week shy of two years, and would have used formula during the day if she'd gone back to work.

Ethan Arrived!

2009-04-02T20:15:00.003-06:00

On March 27th. Another. Best. Day. Ever. (The first.)

"Stimulus," Slavery, and War

2009-02-08T19:34:00.003-06:00

Extracted from my comments elsewhere in the blogosphere:

I've asked before, but I'll ask again: At what point will a younger generation rise up and refuse to pay off the debts of their parents? This spending bill is basically a gargantuan political handout to special interests. Think our kids are going to be okay with paying for that? I don't. Pretty vile that we're even considering dropping $1 trillion of debt on them over this, a bill that will almost certainly make the economy worse.

...

Are other people feeling more and more like we're at the mercy of tyrants who feel entitled to confiscate whatever they want from us and spend it as they please? Tyrants who also feel entitled to nanny into every minute aspect of our lives? Tyrants we're supposed to be able to vote out but who have so protected themselves and co-opted the press that it's nearly impossible? This is not good.

...

Currently, I think we're dooming our future generations to eventual war with whatever countries own most of the debt. There will come a point when the debt is a crushing burden, and people aren't going to like paying for a bunch of contracts that they never even agreed to. People aren't always going to stand for the explanation that, "Well, your parents made these deals, so you have to pay."

And what right do we have to sell future generations into slavery anyway? That's what it is, isn't it? We want all this stuff now, so we'll put the debt off on you people who will be forced to work it off for us. Abominable.

Ice Storm in Northwest Arkansas

2009-01-28T17:42:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I posted a few pics on Twitter as the trees fell apart, but then we lost power, so I couldn't do updates anymore. We still don't have power, so I'm posting this from a hotel.

This was the view from the bedroom window this morning:

Looking up and down the street in front of the house:

Across the street:

The backyard:

Macro of the grass to show how the ice was adding so much weight to the trees and tearing them apart:

The whole town looks like that. Nothing will look the same for decades. So it goes.

Good Movies for Six to Seven Year Olds

2009-01-24T16:39:00.002-06:00

Inspired by a fellow Twitter-er, this the FreeHusband's off the cuff, five minute list:

1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
2. The Iron Giant
3. Castle in the Sky
4. The Wizard of Oz
5. The Sound of Music
7. Yankee Doodle Dandy
8. Back to the Future
9. Star Wars: A NEW HOPE(not the horrid new trilogy stuff)
10. The Princess Bride
11. Mary Poppins
12. Toy Story
13. Spy Kids(only part 1)
14. Superman(1978)
15. The Adventures of Robin Hood(Errol Flynn)
16. Singin' in the Rain
17. My Neighbor Totoro
18. The Incredibles
19. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
20. The Parent Trap(1961 only!)

Stunningly Effective

2009-01-22T10:51:00.001-06:00

Gregarious Llama

2009-01-09T23:07:00.000-06:00

Things My Son Made Recently

2009-01-08T17:00:00.001-06:00

With an exception: I set up the yellow arch at the bottom of the block tower.

~~The possibility of stacking books against the wall would not have occurred to me.~~ Four days later, and I notice that I forgot to post the books picture. Que sera sera. Next time.

Entering a Technology I Formerly Shunned: Twitter

2009-01-04T14:44:00.002-06:00

You can now follow me on Twitter.

Notice the total lack of posts of the holidays. I often find links or have thoughts that I'd like to post about but never get around to blogging. Often the things I want to share are so short that I don't even want them on the blog.

Enter Twitter. I'll try this for a while. There will probably be more activity over there. Longer, more developed things will still appear over here. And no, my Twitter feed will not give you a play by play of my day.

My favorite thing about Twitter:

Twitter = terse

I like terse.

So, if you'd like, follow me.

Simple Toys...

2008-12-02T13:53:00.003-06:00

... that I would add to this list (via Instapundit) based on personal experience:

The Original Rollercoaster by Anatex
Fisher-Price: Doodle Pro
Djeco Puzzles - We have the wooden panda and the wooden cat. Both have been big hits.
Schleich Animals - No other animal figures that I know of are as detailed and durable.
Haba Blocks - These wooden blocks cost more than others, but if your kid likes to build tall, these are ideal because the surfaces are perfectly flat and the angles are dead on. Some other blocks will give you leaning towers after a certain height.
Colorforms

ADDED: I almost forgot about this:

Little Tikes Push & Ride Racer - One of the most beloved of toys. This one is great because our son prefers it to all the other, more expensive, toys of this type.

And here's what I mean by building tall:

You can't do that with blocks that aren't cut just right because they'll fall over before you ever get that high.

Shocker!

2008-11-21T12:46:00.002-06:00

Meat comes from animals! Who knew?

I'm amused that this video is getting so much play. Were people unaware that turkeys have to be killed before making it to the Thanksgiving Day table?

I think that the reality in the background makes the pardon more meaningful. "And now by the authority vested in me, from this fate you are spared!"

Poverty Chic

2008-11-18T15:43:00.007-06:00

Getting trendy. There are some amusing anecdotes. This was my favorite:

Harry Slatkin, the founder of Slatkin & Co., a home fragrances company, said he and his wife, Laura, recently canceled a 50th birthday party for her at the Pool Room at the Four Seasons. Instead, they plan to have a party at home, with defrosted White Castle cheeseburgers served on silver trays. “It’s not time to have splashy birthday parties,” Mr. Slatkin said. “It’s a time to stay home, spend time with friends and connect.”

Poor people don't eat White Castle for special occasions! And why do they have to be defrosted? You froze them?! No one freezes fast food burgers. In a supposed attempt to be sensitive to the poor, you've parodied them.

Sales Tax Map

2008-11-17T15:12:00.002-06:00

From The Tax Foundation (via Club for Growth.)

I live in one of the fifteen highest sales tax rate states, and the local tax rate here is much higher than my state's average. Because the voters in my state also overwhelmingly decided that a great way to raise tax revenue would be to prey on the poor (read: lottery), I think we can expect that sales tax rate to rise.

Why You'll Never Catch Me Supporting Huckabee

2008-11-17T14:59:00.003-06:00

Wrapped up in a single paragraph:

In a chapter titled “Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism,” Huckabee identifies what he calls the “real threat” to the Republican Party: “libertarianism masked as conservatism.” He is not so much concerned with the libertarian candidate Ron Paul’s Republican supporters as he is with a strain of mainstream fiscal conservative thought that demands ideological purity, seeing any tax increase as apostasy and leaving little room for government-driven solutions to people’s problems.

Well, yes. That's what conservatism is. Conservatism sees "little room for government-driven solutions to people's problems" because they are generallly unfair and only make the problems worse.

What is Huckabee's definition of conservatism? Religious populism?

If you go to the full article, you'll see what may be The Club for Growth's best endorsement yet:

Among his targets is the Club for Growth, a group that tarred Huckabee as insufficiently conservative in the primaries and ran television ads with funding from one of Huckabee's longtime Arkansas political foes, Jackson T. Stephens Jr.

The Huck is a nice guy on a personal level, but he's not someone I would want having power over my life.

UPDATE: In the comments at Hot Air, commenter rockmom writes:

Huckabee is the Jesse Jackson of the right.

Heh.

Of course, that's not entirely fair to Jackson given what he was up to forty or so years ago.

Everyone's Gone Shopping

2008-11-16T07:51:00.002-06:00

No kidding. I had to run into Target yesterday and found myself parking farther away than I'd ever had to before.