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Very Cool Blog
75 Degrees South, life in Antartica.
HT Instapundit.
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Notable
This post from RJ Rummel, while not terribly timely is worth reading, it points out the little known fact that Hitler, while he was elected chancellor, was not elected dictator for life as many seem to think.
Also, he has an interesting historical bit at the very end, to wit:
Note that during his Beer Hall putsch of 1923 in Munich, Hitler launched an unrealistic attempt to rally the public and take over the government. As Hitler and his supporters “marched on Berlin” they were met by police lines blocking their path. Someone fired a shot, and the police then fired into the crowd of marchers, where Hitler and his bodyguard were in front. His bodyguard was hit, and wrenched Hitler to the ground, dislocating his shoulder. Goring was shot in the leg, and 14 marchers and 4 policemen were killed.
Think about how the world would have been changed if one of those many bullets had killed Hitler. And think of this, when commentators treat the present as though the inevitable outcome of irresistible forces. Because one man survives a hail of bullets, everything – everything — human in the world is changed.
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Jimmy Martin RIP
He actually passed away several days again, but I’m finally getting around to writing about it. He was certainly one of the towering figures in bluegrass, both as a songwriter and as a showman.
This article from Gritz goes a long way for an interview. It does not go into what exactly was wrong with him in term of mental illness. I’ve heard it was definitely something serious; and judging from live recordings he always seemed very odd. It also touches on the many feuds he’s had with people.
He does have several pieces of high praise for Earl Scruggs who is yet another towering figure in the genre who probably won’t be in this world for much longer either.
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In place of a longer thought
Songs for John Doe was an anti-war record put out in the early 40’s by dutiful Soviet apparachiks the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie and the rest). For a brief period Stalin and Hitler were allies (and invaded Poland together, a little known fact). This record was their take on the matter, taking the position that America should not go to war for US Steel and JP Morgan, which was of course the only possible reason it would. They changed their tune the moment Operation Barbarossa began.
I have quite a few thoughts about this topic, but in general it would seem that the human condition is indeed timeless. I’ve got a quite a few thoughts on the matter that I’ll get into words over the next week or so.
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The other quote of the day
As work has been very heavy lately blogging will be light, but this is a nice little quote.
“Research has been shown to cause cancer in rats.”
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Quote of the morning
Probably not true, but from a commenter on Yglesias
“…I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s statement to the effect that the human tendency to think their problems would be solved if only they were smarter is like giraffes thinking their problems would be solved if only their necks were longer.”
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I join the rest of the blogsphere
I join the rest of the blogsphere in condemning the current Newsweek crap.
Cox and Forkum put it very well here.And it’s over shadowing reports of over 700 deaths in Uzbekistan.
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Would you like to play a game?
Oh artificial intelligence, so like us.
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More thoughts on the Iraqi insurgency
Via Tom Palmer is this informative article “The Mystery of the Insurgency” which deals largely with the fact that the insurgents are concentrating on killing Iraqis in great numbers.
To me this seems to be no mystery. Police states produce killers and gangsters and to a man with a hammer the world is made of nails. What else are they going to do but murder and crime?
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Very well put
Jesse Walker, in a recent article in Reason
But if you haven’t forgotten it completely, I’d like you to think back to that last week before the ballot, when many Democrats honestly believed that the polls were undercounting the “youth vote” and that this invisible demographic was going to put them over the top. Pretend, just as an exercise, that this fantasy really happened, and that a bunch of cell-phone-wielding kids elected John Kerry last November. Imagine that for the last six months, the Republicans have been searching their souls and spinning their wheels, trying to find out how they can get those fledgling voters for themselves.
One faction would claim that the best way to appeal to the young would be to muzzle every prominent Republican with a track record of appealing to the old. Another group would argue that the GOP needs to change itself more deeplythat it has to adopt youthful concerns as its own, just as soon as it figures out what those youthful concerns might be.
Yet another would insist the Republicans are already young and hip, and that the trick is to frame their message so the kids will understand this. They’d propose ads announcing that Karl Rove sends text messages, that Dick Cheney knows some real live lesbians, and that W. may be versed in the use of powders, wink wink; that running huge deficits is risky, just like snowboarding, and that Bush’s favorite judges are totally extreme.
He also raises the Mother Jones quote of “worse than conservatives’ pretense of moral superiority is liberals’ pretense of superiority to morals.”
He omits the media creating, and the Dems going along with, this whole artificial demographic of “Evangelical” and “People of Faith” when the perfectly good term “very religious” would do, but on the whole, a very good summation, of this whole crass endeavor.