Friday, June 30, 2006

My Kind of Art


Dust Art
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Dust art, from Scott Wade of San Marcos, TX. It's all amazing, I just picked this one because it features future Texas Governor Kinky Friedman. I'm convinced Friedman will win because Texans are like that.

At UT during the mid-'80s I was one of many who voted for Hank the Hallucination, a cartoon character from Eyebeam, over future liberal nutcase and Clinton adviser Paul Begala for UT Student Council president. Hank won by a landslide but they gave it to Begala on a technicality.

Link from Brian Tiemann's excellent Peeve Farm, where he used a Mona Lisa/Starry Night derivative as a pic, so I was forced to choose between this and one of dogs playing poker. It was a tough choice.

You Have a Point

It's hard to dispute C.G. Heckler's view that this is the headline of the millenium.

Gorgeous


Desert Rose and Fred
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Fred's looking at the Desert Rose and wondering, how do I eat that, and what does it taste like? I'm looking at it and wondering, why is it going so nuts with the flowers despite the fact that we haven't fertilized it since last year? My wife says it's because it's in full sun for the first time in its life. I always agree with her, so that must be it.

Nice PR Move There, Doofus


Questionable Choice
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
So a wine maker walks into an ad agency and says, "We have created a white wine made exclusively with organic products, and we don't have a name for it. Can you guys come up with anything?" One of the ad agency guys jokingly says, "How about Pure White?" And that's how David Duke's favorite hat was born.

Honestly, did they really think this was a good idea?

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Now That Looks Like Fun

Some kid in Cambodia has a 20-foot python for a best friend. I would have loved this in college.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Heartbreaking, Pt. 2

Acidman is dead. You may not have encountered him, but he was one of the truly distinct individuals on the great wasteland that is the internet, a brutally candid guy with a lifetime of hard living and regret that he described with great wit and artistry.

William Jordan posted this lovely sermon in the comments, and I may steal it for my own funeral:

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.

Part of a sermon given by Henry Scott Holland, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1910


Perfect. See you there, Acidman.

Do You Remember

How great of a basketball player Len Bias was? Most heartbreaking sports story ever.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Hell Yeah

New and most excellent White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Treasury Secretary John Snow lays the smackdown on Bill Keller of the New York Treason Times:

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.


The New York Times is dead to me. If it were a person, I'd punch it in the face.

OOPSDATE: Not Tony Snow, who is indeed awesome, Treasury Secretary John Snow. And I got the link from Ace, who though it was Tony first. My bad for not double checking.

Gene Simmons Junior


Cherry Jubilee
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Why does this picture make me think of Kiss? Sabrina absolutely destroys some cherries in her self-feeder, and loves it. What a happy little monster.

Who Knew

Ann Coulter: Deadhead. No, really:

I fondly remember seeing the Dead when I was at Cornell. It was the day of the fabulous Fiji Island party on the driveway “island” of the Phi Gamma Delta House. We'd cover ourselves in purple Crisco and drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and dance on the front yard. Wait – I think got the order reversed there: We'd drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and then cover ourselves in purple Crisco – then the dancing. You probably had to be there to grasp how utterly fantastic this was.


She says Deadheads are the real liberals:

Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie – it was like NASCAR for potheads. You always felt like you were with family at a Dead show – a rather odd, psychedelic family that sometimes lived in a VW bus and sold frightening looking “veggie burritos.” But whatever their myriad interests, clothing choices, and interest in illicit drugs, true Deadheads are what liberals claim to be but aren't: unique, free-thinking, open, kind, and interested in different ideas.


She would even have us believe the Dead themselves were not so crunchy liberal:

Either Bobby or Jerry was asked by a Rolling Stone interviewer to denounce all the Young Reaganites attending their concerts in the 80's, and whichever one it was not only refused to attack the young Republicans, but said he liked some of those “rightist” ideas. Consider that when the Dead decided to do something to save the Rain Forest, they didn't harangue poverty-stricken Third Worlders to give up washing machines and electricity. They did it the free market way: buying up parts of the Rain Forest, parcel by parcel.


Link from Cold Fury.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

This Will Never Work


I'm trying to post something with a picture on the left side of a blog entry. Is it working?

I love Bibliodyssey, and today there's something neat there: Zoomorphic Calligraphy. Beautiful.

UPDATE: Also cool, the black sun starlings. Fascinating.

Me Three

Noreen doesn't like Thom Yorke of Radiohead, calling him a "tedious, whining, pretentions veal-calf," which has to be my favorite insult of the day. There's more:

That man really is a monumental c*nt. I hated radiohead - the only song with any sort of a tune to it is the one "fake plastic trees" but even that let itself down by having some of the world's most pretentious lyrics. And now Yorke has decided to go solo and has brought out a new album. I can't even bear to look at the cover of the new album case there is a photo of him on it; he has one of those faces that blend victimy- vulnerability with psychotic ire, a look normally seen in people on the turn from abusee to abuser. A face only a psychologist could love.


If only Noreen could get over her shyness.

Family Fun


Lunchtime
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Sabrina can't make up her mind about solid foods. One day she loves peaches, the next she can't stand them. She doesn't seem to like sweet potatos at all, and too much rice cereal and banana makes her constipated. Here she's being fed by her cousin Amber while Camille looks on with concern.

Now That's Comedy

I don't watch the Daily Show, haven't since 2004. John Stewart's a funny guy, but when he stopped giving equal ridiculing time to both parties and started campaigning for Kerry, the funny disappeared. Someone said once, "When you stop going for laughs and start going for applause, you're not funny any more." They were right.

Well, it turns out there's something funny about the Daily Show after all.

Fight the Power

My old college buddy and smartypants liberal blogger Rogers Cadenhead has run afoul of the nutlaps at Daily Kos and MyDD, two borderline psychotic liberal sites that have apparently been up to some nasty and possibly criminal stuff. It's no surprise these people are crazy, unprincipled and greedy, but now they're endangering their own politcal party. Glad to hear it.

Friday, June 23, 2006

I Totally Agree

Michael Moore is a little bitch. More good stuff from Pat Dollard.

That's Odd

I thought Islam said you aren't supposed to make images of Mohammed. Then what's this all about?

The Human Camera

Meet Stephen, the human camera. Very cool. From Jeff S. in Dallas.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Retraction

The last three posts have "best ever" in the title. I retract the one about the car, even though it's very cool. It's just not Sabrina cool.

Best Father's Day Ever


Extreme Sabrina
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
My lovely wife asked me during the week what I wanted to do for Father's Day, and I replied that I wasn't sure I'd have time to visit my parents in San Antonio, but if she really wanted us to go I'd make it work. She stared at me in silence for a minute until I slapped my forehead and said, "Oh, ME."

Deirdre made me a fantastic mushroom risotto from the Dean and Deluca cookbook, and accompanying it were ribeyes and asparagus. And when I wasn't working (which was most of the day) I played with my lovely daughter Sabrina. This picture shows her favorite position (I'm lying on the floor) and I'm proud to say that she rarely vomits despite my best attempts to make her ill with bits of momentary freefall.

D is worried I'll make our little girl a daredevil by tossing her in the air or doing the other things that make Sabrina laugh her little head off, but I maintain that you're that kind of person or you aren't, and nothing can make you that way if it's not already in you. That's my theory, anyway.

I wasn't allowed to have a motorcycle when I was a kid, so as soon as I could afford one and was out of the parents' house, I was rocketing around on a Honda Interceptor 500. The problem lay in the fact that I had no idea how to ride one and had to learn on the bike, which was an extraordinarily bad idea. I narrowly averted death hundreds of times in that first six months, mostly through pure luck, and I can only imagine that riding a kiddie dirt bike would have taught me some valuable lessons when I still had a chance of surviving a crash.

If Sabrina's lucky, we can convince Mommy that it's better to be exposed to such things with her parents. Unfortunately for Mommy, our beautiful little angel most definitely has a taste for violent, adventurous motion, so look out, world: future MX Freestyle Champion Sabrina is comin' at ya.

The Best Thing Ever


Sassy Smile
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
A friend and I were talking about our daughters, and how their smiles and laughs were the best thing we'd ever experienced. We were both danger-seeking nutcases for decades, and he had a lucrative and adventurous career in skydiving. And if you had asked us in 1987 what the greatest feeling we'd ever have would be, children wouldn't have entered either of our minds.

And yet here we are, knowing full well that your child's loving smile is indeed the strongest stuff made by man or God. No thrill, no achievement, no amount of money can compare. And as my good friend David G. told me over lunch last week (at Hog Island, where I ate yesterday and the day before - it was delightful, thanks), when you've got something as wonderful as Sabrina in your life, all the stresses and difficulties in the world won't dent your happiness and fulfillment. I don't even get mad, or even impatient, in traffic any more, and that in itself is a miracle.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Best Thing Ever Made

The Ariel Atom. A 300 horsepower car that weighs 1100 pounds and accelerates from zero to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds. And it's less than $40,000.

Go look. Hit "Play Video" at the bottom right. God I want one.

Link from the most excellent Neptunus Lex.

God's Gift to Me

Is Hog Island Italian Deli in downtown Austin. I've never had such an amazing restaurant experience in my life as the lunch I had last Thursday with my friend David G., who is a friend of Carlo the owner. Carlo very kindly treated us to some extras after we ordered, and all four of the things that were brought to our table were the best of their kind I had ever had. EVER!

First, the cheesesteak. Carlo and his brother Steve are from Philadelphia, and curiously that didn't encourage me in my hopes for the world's best cheesesteak. I've never had an actual Philly cheesesteak, so for all I know they put peanut butter and maraschino cherries on it, and I heard once that they use Cheez Whiz instead of real cheese in Philly, but my worries were groundless. Hog Island makes the single best cheesesteak I've ever tasted, and as the newspaper writeup they have proudly framed near the register says, to put any kind of sauce on it would have been a crime. I don't know what to say other than it's utterly fantastic and I've been daydreaming about it ever since.

Next we got a lasagna with Italian sausage, which was the best lasagna I've ever had by far. I'm not even a lasagna fan, but this thing was just amazing. After that, the thing I was most looking forward to: the Italian sub. If there's one thing I can eat for every meal, it's an Italian sub made by a real Italian deli. And this one blew every other one I had ever had away. Just perfect in every way.

But the best was yet to come. Carlo kindly gave us 15 minutes to regain some appetite and then he brought the holy grail: the Pastrami Special. Imagine toasted marble rye, brown mustard, cole slaw, and the finest Philadelphia pastrami brisket, chopped and grilled. It was simply the best pastrami I've ever had and I desperately want more of it. All of it. I can't wait to go back Monday.

Anyone who's reading this, for God's sake come to Austin and call me. I'll meet you there.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Amen

Cold Fury responds to Natalie Maines' most recent venomous idiocy:

And there you have it, libs: we question your patriotism because, despite your queasy, half-hearted protestations, you clearly don’t have any. After all, as someone else said not so long ago, so many of you have spent so many years questioning it yourselves. Let one election — well, okay, several — fail to go your way and you’re all ready to flush the whole country down the toilet and condemn the American experiment in toto as a failure.

Well, so sorry if the majority of us think that makes you a bunch of sniveling, contemptible, and yes, unpatriotic sore losers. But that’s the way it is. Cry me a river, cupcake.


Yup.

Friday, June 16, 2006

That Means You, Patsy

Duke alumnus and former Duke lacrosse team member Randall Drain writes an excellent column in the Duke paper that urges a cessation of financial support for Duke University until the president apoligizes:

Richard Brodhead, Larry Moneta, other administrators and certain faculty members have flagrantly and wrongfully hung members of the Duke men's lacrosse team out to dry.

This mistake has not gone unnoticed and will no longer be tolerated by the alumni community. I call on all of Duke University's alumni and donors to end contributions to the University pending a formal apology issued by President Brodhead on behalf of the faculty and administration for failing to appropriately support members of the Duke community.

If Duke University and its current leadership plan to allow TV personalities, sundry activists and District Attorney Mike Nifong run my alma mater, the school is not headed in the right direction, and I declare it unfit for support-financial or otherwise.


My little sister Patsy is a Dukie, and I don't know if she's following this, but if she is I hope she'll send Brodhead a nasty letter. Dukies arise, and man your battle stations!

Link from the wise and powerful LaShawn Barber.

Silly Daddy


Funny faces
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Sabrina has been practicing her walking skills lately. I used to try to help her approximate a walking motion when she was three months old, and she was pretty good at it, but now she's got a confident stride going, even if it's just for five steps or so. She's very close to crawling, but I think we stunted her a little on that because she didn't really like tummy time very much until about a month ago, and we didn't leave her face down when she's start crying.

The hardest thing about parenting so far (other than generalized worry about her safety and welfare) is resisting the urge to do everything for her and thereby preventing her from learning to do things herself. I'm naturally a hovering helper, so it's all I can do to stop myself from guiding a toy to her mouth when she's trying to bite it, or repositioning a rattle so all of her fingers are around the handle. The good part of all that is that it always ends up being satisfying to do nothing when I see her struggling, because she invariably figures it out herself. The best kind of helping is often not helping at all, I guess.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Overflowing with Internet Goodness

A good day out there in blogland. My hero Dr. Theodore Dalrymple says yet another collection of things I wish I had:

Jamie Glazov: I guess we can begin with your observations on the root causes of many of our social ills. You discuss how in your practise as a doctor you have confronted a growing pathology in our culture within which there is an assumption that “one’s state of mind, or one’s mood, is or should be independent of the way one lives one’s life.” You connect this to people confusing unhappiness with depression. Can you talk a bit about this?

Dalrymple: I have noticed the disappearance of the word 'unhappy' from common usage, and its replacement by the word 'depressed.' While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one's life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one's control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness that is the doctor's responsibility to cure. This is so, however one happens to be leading one's life. And the doctor, enjoined to pass no judgement that could be interpreted as moral on his patients, has no option but to play along with this deception. The result is the gross over-prescription of medication, without any reduction in unhappiness.

As you put it, there is a complete disconnection between one's state of mind and the way one lives. Moreover, one does not have a right to the pursuit of happiness, one has a right to happiness itself.

I decided, as a matter of experience, that these attitudes are very destructive and - not surprisingly - lead to a lot of misery about which a mere doctor can do nothing, at least without making judgements.

JG: In your discussion of evil, you observe one central phenomenon: “the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes a duty.” Kindly give us some of your thoughts on this reality.

Dalrymple: The idea that one's pleasure or desire of the moment is the only thing that counts leads to antisocial behaviour.


A little later in the interview, Dalrymple talks about polical correctness:

JG: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of “the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question.” Can you talk about this a bit?

Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.


Link via a wonderful post by Fjordman at Gates of Vienna.

Finally, Al Gore is a douchebag who's lying about global warming. No, really:

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.


Congratulations, Al. You lost the presidency to the least electable candidate in this country's history, and now you're lying about the climate to sell your crap movie. What a pathetic tool.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Sabrina Loves Mommy


Tender Moment
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
A moment before I snapped this, my lovely daughter had my lovely wife's face in her hands and was nuzzling her. I teared up and forgot to snap the photo. I heard some men get jealous of the bond their wives have with their children, but I'm delighted Sabrina feels that way about my wife, and I've never felt left out.

I'm one seriously lucky guy, I tell ya.

Sabrina Gets her Growl On


Grrrr
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
I'm amazed at the rate at which Sabrina learns things, and at how much she loves being photographed or videotaped. When I'm walking toward her with either camera, she lights up and stares straight at it even before I turn it on.

Today my lovely wife told me to get the video camera because we were going to see if she could sit up by herself on a blanket on her bedroom floor, which she had done for a few seconds but not much more. Naturally she set a new personal best of 25 or 30 seconds unsupported, smiling into the lens all the while. Of course the dogs came upstairs and tried to upstage her with doggie cuteness, but to no avail. If cuteness were the Indy 500, the dogs would be stuck in the pits while Sabrina keeps setting new lap records every day.

In this picture, she's growling her little monkey head off. Like a bear. Or maybe a sasquatch.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Crazy Good

Oh my God is the new(ish) Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy" great. Check it out. And what a great video to boot. I should have known months ago when the Thighmaster wouldn't shut up about it that I needed to check it out. It was worth the wait.

UPDATE:



I have no idea if that's going to work, but here goes.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Yummy


Dinnertime
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
I'm guessing that's sweet potato on Sabrina's face. Maybe carrot? Doesn't really look like carrot, but who knows . . .

Laugh Attack


Laugh Attack
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Mommy ate chinese food and had half a Coke last night, so when I got home at 9:30 (real estate hours, don't you know) Sabrina was wide awake and kind of crazed. There was a lot of bear-like growling and, a little later, a long period of laughing her head off in a distinctly adult way. Such a little angel she is.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Cool

Amazing indoor radio controlled plane demo, from Instapundit. Supair fahntahsteek!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Triple Word Up to Ya Momma

Excellent piece in the UK TimesOnline linked at Blackfive, who of course has an excellent D-Day post today, which I recommend even more than this:

America-bashing is in fashion as it has not been since Ronald Reagan accurately described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”. Anti-Americanism is not confined to the usual radical chic suspects of the Left; in Britain, it infects the High Tory Establishment, “good Europeans” and little Eng-landers alike. So why are we all anti-Americans now?

American stumbling on the rough road since 2001 has played some part. Yet had there, inconceivably, been no wrong steps, had America been positively obsequious in courting international support (and it has done more on that score than its critics admit), anti-Americanism would still be on the rise. The US is never less popular than when it is aroused and determined in defence of democratic freedoms, never less trusted than when the world is most reliant on its unmatched ability to project power.

Democracies are psychologically ill-adapted to open-ended confrontations where there can be no decisive victory, the essence of the effort to subdue global terrorism. Eternal vigilance is a wearisome business. The more vulnerable that Europeans feel, the more liable they are to shift blame across the Atlantic.

The strength of disdain is a measure of Europe’s weakness. Smugness is one of Europe’s great contemporary exports. We may all think that we know America, its music, its culture, its self-confident exceptionalism. We tend to forget that Americans fight only with extreme reluctance. We overlook their penchant for agonised self-criticism; everything bad we know about the US, we know because Americans inexhaustibly rehearse their society’s shortcomings. There has never been greater transparency, whether than on the battlefield or the boondocks, and there has never been more open debate about the country’s virtues and vices — the internet has transformed the quantity and, at times, the quality of the conversation.


Couldn't agree more.

Word. No, Make that Double Word

Amazing book review from Theodore Dalrymple, one of my favorite writers, on the subject of Islam. Read:

The week following the Muslim protests in London against the Danish cartoons—with marchers carrying signs calling for the beheading of infidels—other Muslims demonstrated to claim that Islam really meant peace and tolerance. While their implicit recognition that peace and tolerance are preferable to strife and bigotry did these Muslims personal honor, the claim regarding Islam was both historically and intellectually preposterous. Only someone ignorant of the most elementary facts could believe such a thing. From the first, Islam was a religion of pillage, violence, and compulsion, which it justified and glorified. And it is certainly not “the evident truth of the doctrine itself,” to quote Gibbon with regard for what, with characteristic irony, he called the primary reason for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the civilized world, that explains the exponential growth of the Dar-al-Islam in its early history.

It is important, of course, to distinguish between Islam as a doctrine and Muslims as people. Untold numbers of Muslims desire little more than a quiet life; they have the virtues and the vices of the rest of mankind. Their religion gives to their daily lives an ethical and ritual structure and provides the kind of boundaries that only modern Western intellectuals would have the temerity to belittle.

But the fact that many Muslims are not fanatics is not as comforting as some might think.


That's why I love Dalrymple; he's logically devastating but manages to come across as reasonable and objective. And here's the really meaty bit:

I hesitate to rush in where so many better-informed people have hesitated to tread, or have trodden before, but I would put it like this. The urge to domination is nearly a constant of human history. The specific (and baleful) contribution of Islam is that, by attributing sovereignty solely to God, and by pretending in a philosophically primitive way that God’s will is knowable independently of human interpretation, and therefore of human interest and desire—in short by allowing nothing to human as against divine nature—it tries to abolish politics. All compromises become mere truces; there is no virtue in compromise in itself. Thus Islam is inherently an unsettling and dangerous factor in world politics, independently of the actual conduct of many Muslims.


There's either a word or letter too few or too many in the middle of that second to last sentence ("nothing too human" maybe?), but the sentiment is clear, and correct. Link from Cold Fury, which my brain invariably reads as Cold and Furry.

Attack of the Drooling Sabrina


Monster Baby
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Imagine you're seeing this through the window of a train car. Now are you scared?

We Gotta Get These %&$(@#% Snakes off this %&$*(#(@_% Plane

I don't know who this guy is, but he does a great Christopher Walken impression, and a very good Jack Nicholson, and a decent Joe Pesci, auditioning for Snakes on a Plane.

Dirty language ahead, watch out.

That Right-Wing Nazi

The Dalai Lama. Wha?

Dalai, you got some 'splainin' to do.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Freaky Science

So a guy takes a square panel, dumps rice on it, and then resonates the panel at different frequencies, which arrange the rice into interesting patterns. Very cool.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Happy Face Baby


Sweetest Baby Ever
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Sometimes I wonder if you can get any happier than Sabrina seems lately. D gets more exposure than I do these days but our little girl always has a smile on her face. It's amazing what her smile and laugh do to us, it's the best thing I've ever felt. And I understand it gets better. I don't see how, but I'm glad to hear it.

Bouncing Baby Girl


Bouncy Seat 3
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
Sabrina tries out her bouncy chair, a gift from our former neighbors David and Julia H.-L., and apparently loves it. It's fun to finally get to use it and the high chair, Sabrina likes to do new things as often as possible. Did I mention she likes to grab everything? The other day she pushed the coffee table top (we have the kind that has a top you can raise, sort of a giant TV tray when it's up) down and scared the poop out of Mommy and Daddy. Nothing broke, but no longer do we underestimate the power of Sabrina.