Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing.... For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.What is being proposed is a genuine adventure -- a great and terrible risk, undertaken for no other reason than the romance of it. It is a very high and fine way to live, but perhaps it is only for the brave.
"The last time VMA-211 was combat ineffective was in December 1941, when the squadron was wiped out during the 13-day defense of Wake Island against the Japanese."That squadron commander was Lieutenant Colonel Otis Raible, reportedly a hell of a Marine. I've heard a lot of good things about him in backchannels since the attack.
He spells out some more of the details of the attack:
Eight irreplaceable aircraft (the AV-8B has been out of production since 1999) have been destroyed or put out of action – approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet. Worse yet, the aircraft involved were the AV-B+ variant equipped with the APG-65 radar and AAQ-28 Litening II targeting pods – the most capable in the force. Given the current funding situation, it’s likely that the two damaged AV-8Bs will become spare parts “hangar queens” and never fly again. A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.
One, called Closer, showed Prince William’s lovely bride, the Duchess of Cambridge, without her bikini top on. The other, the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, showed some bloke who died in the seventh century without his bikini top on. In response, a kosher grocery store was firebombed, injuring four people. Which group was responsible? Yes, frenzied Anglicans defending the honor of the wife of the future supreme governor of the Church of England rampaged through Jewish grocery stores yelling, “Behead the enemies of the House of Windsor!That's how you get things done.
[NATO] has all but ended combined operations with Afghan army and police forces at the tactical level, requiring general officer approval for exceptions....What that means is that the commander of a Brigade Combat Team -- who is an O-6, a Bird Colonel -- cannot approve a combined operation for any unit under his command.
Three years after doubling down on an unachievable mission, trust between NATO and Afghan forces is at an all-time low. Already this year, there have been thirty-six of these insider attacks, killing fifty-one NATO troops, most of them Americans.
Even before the latest policy announcement, Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey acknowledged the severity of the problem, declaring, "You can't whitewash it. We can't convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change" and admitting that "It is a very serious threat to the campaign."
Every candidate — hell, everybody — simply must assume henceforth that their every word and email, thanks to technology and the Bush administration’s overwrought defensive reaction to 9/11, is being monitored, taped and weaponized, if need be.As far as "everybody" goes, maybe; but if the NSA is really recording everything you say, they're being remarkably circumspect about it. Elements within the CIA seemed to love to play politics with leaks to the press during the Bush administration, and occasionally even in this administration (for the agency's own benefit, rather than against the President). The NSA may have access to tons of our secrets, but if so they seem to be responsible stewards. That in a way is refreshing, an oasis of encouraging professionalism just where it is most needed.
Chi editor Alfonso Signorini told Sky News that he did nothing illegal, according to The Guardian.I suppose if one took this as a way of honoring a fertility goddess...
"I published them with a conviction that they are pictures of a modern contemporary duchess," he told Sky News, which said that off-camera Signorini had described her as "resembling a Greek goddess".
The problems are close to being unmanageable now. If we stay on the current path, they will wind up being completely unmanageable, culminating in an unwelcome explosion and crisis.By the way, did you know that we are currently giving several billion dollars a year to America's major banks? Not lending, giving.
The fixes are blindingly obvious. Economic theory, empirical studies and historical experience teach that the solutions are the lowest possible tax rates on the broadest base, sufficient to fund the necessary functions of government on balance over the business cycle; sound monetary policy; trade liberalization; spending control and entitlement reform; and regulatory, litigation and education reform. The need is clear. Why wait for disaster? The future is now.
Now that the White House and State Department have made clear that they believe movies compel terrorists to terrorize, it's time for them to get ahead of this problem. And one thing the White House can do immediately is to pressure Sony to stop the release of director Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," which celebrates the killing of Osama bin Laden.
I'm only saying this because, you know, the White House and the media told me movies inflame and cause terrorism.
Think about it: if the poorly produced and laughably bad trailer for "The Innocence of Muslims" results in chaos, murder, and the burning of foreign outposts all throughout the Middle East, how much rioting and mayhem is a big-budgeted, slickly produced, Oscar-bait blockbuster celebrating the death of the leader of al-Qaeda going to cause?Maybe, just to be safe, we'd better not re-elect this guy.
It is beginning to dawn on [President Obama] that revolutions are not a dinner party; that maybe sweeping statements read from a teleprompter can never substitute for a substantial plan. He still thinks that al-Qaeda wants the same sort of freedom America wants. Maybe he misunderstands one or the other. Very possibly he misunderstands both.
The Islamic value — and it a worthy one on its own terms and would certainly have been understandable to our western predecessors who punished blasphemy very severely — of prohibiting insults to the Prophet of Islam clashes directly with the modern western value of free expression. To the western eye (and it’s a perspective I share), a murderous riot in the name of a religion is a worse sin and deeper, uglier form of blasphemy than any film could ever hope to be. To kill someone created in the image of God because you don’t like the way God or one of his servants has been depicted in an artistic performance strikes westerners as an obscene perversion of religion — something that only a hate-filled fanatic or an ignorant fool could do.In general I have little enough tolerance for that sort of person who wants to offend for the pure joy of showing how smart they think they are. It's hard not to sympathize with the Muslim over the atheist who decided it would be clever to portray "Zombie Muhammad," for example. These guys are jerks, and I have no desire to end up on their side.
By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.Nor is he alone. Professor Althouse:
Gaze on that picture and see our government in a sad, shameful display, staged — presumably — to cajole the enemies of free speech into blaming a private individual instead of our country — our country, the caretaker of the freedom that allowed him to speak.If the President were behind such an effort -- to send a photograph around the world that makes it look like we arrested the blasphemer -- then he really should resign. That is indeed a betrayal of his most basic duty.
A lot of Russians had been skeptical about President Putin's highly publicized displays of environmental daring. They thought the tiger looked a little glassy-eyed, and suggested he might have been trucked in from a zoo.Now that's courage. "Lightning threat? Nonsense. We just couldn't fill the space."
"But I thought up these tigers myself," Mr. Putin said. "Twenty other countries where tigers live also started taking care of them. ... The leopards were also my idea. Yes, I know they were caught before but the most important thing is to draw public attention to the problem."
The president also confirmed that a stunt last year, in which he appeared to dive to the bottom of the Black Sea and discover ancient Greek artifacts, had been staged.
"Well of course they were planted!" he said. "Why did I dive? Not to show my gills off, but to make sure people learn history. Of course it was a set up."
A minor vignette from the perimeter of the strike: I tutor kids in the Chicago suburbs for a living. Yesterday I had a first session with a girl in the city who is currently staying home because of the strike. She said that there were some online homework assignments for her physics class we might have worked on, but their access to any online learning materials has been shut down.
Meaning, the striking teachers won't allow the students to educate themselves, either.
Now, I don't want to overstate this because I don't know all the details. I don't know if the union or the district controls access to the site she was talking about. Heck, I don't even know what the site is (although I assume it's the same webassign site that most other schools are using). So it's possible that this was just a "caught in the crossfire" situation rather than a deliberate act by the union. Or it might even be built into the union contract as an "in case of strike" clause. I just don't know.
But I was absolutely floored when she said that.
For The Children!In a perfect world, I guess striking teachers would figure out the best possible way for the kids to continue to learn on their own for the duration. I'm not holding my breath. I'm also not expecting journalists to try to look into this kind of thing.
"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances -- this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. . . .
But as for Queequeg -- why, Queequeg sat there among them -- at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks toward him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
Geithner confesses the desperate nature of the situation. The government is broke. Geithner fears the world knows this when he says: "Suppose we have an auction and no one shows up?" Geithner knows that we cannot finance our deficits using traditional credit markets. The deficits are too large and the government has no credibility regarding the required spending cuts. Geithner was admitting that markets would not allow the US government to continue its profligate ways. That admission is major news[.]Is it? It was, for Uther, that which destroyed his life and his kingdom: a duke who could not be brought to order. In our case, the rest of the world, expressing itself in financial markets, may be unwilling to continue to underwrite the order. Can we make peace, or can we not? Nothing rests on the question except the whole world.
The Clinton Bounce gone a little to far.
“Just three words for you baby, made in the USA!”
I can be a lot more flexible after Obama loses the election .
IT IS worth pausing from time to time to reflect on the remarkable features of the modern economy. As Deutsche Bank points out in its long-term asset return study, the longest series of bond yield data is for the Netherlands dating back all the way to 1517. In June, those yields reached a record low. Not just any old record, then, but a 500-year nadir. In America, yields go back only to 1790 but they too have been at all-time lows. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 but never felt the need to push base rates down so low; not in two world wars or a Great Depression. Nor did the Bank ever feel the need to expand its balance sheet to such a great extent (although Deutsche only has data back to 1830); currently it is around 25% of GDP....Predictive analysis based on a historical dataset is always subject to the "Black Swan" problem of induction, but at least it's based on something. We are here in uncharted territory.
Given this combination of economic circumstances, Deutsche is surely right to say that"Anyone predicting the endgame is speculating outside the historical dataset."
The main headline, in my view? The new science has established a radically new insight: that there is such a strong brain-vagina connection in women that many of the neuroscientists whom I interviewed called it "a single system".I'm trying to imagine, just now, the most disdainful male chauvinist trying to come up with some argument against the 19th Amendment. Could he have come up with anything more vicious than this?
More remarkably, few of us know that when a woman has an orgasm – and, even before that, when she feels empowered to think about pleasurable sex, anticipate it, focus on how to get it, and feels in control of and knowledgeable enough about her body to know she can probably reach orgasm during sex – her brain gets a boost of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Then, in orgasm, opioids and oxytocin are also released. This experience does not just yield pleasure, a fact that is well known; it also yields specific states of mind.That's funny. You know what causes "the ultimate feminist neurotransmitter" to be released in men's brains? Increasingly extreme internet porn.
Dopamine is what I call the ultimate feminist neurotransmitter: it yields motivation and goal-orientedness, trust in one's own judgement and, most notably of all, in my mind, confidence.
Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined.That does seem to be the spirit of the age. Or at least a very loud part of it.
The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today (Sept. 5) that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485.Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets, the line that encompassed his namesake, Richard the Lionheart. He had a short, bold rule of two years only, dying at the battle of Bosworth Field that crowned the Wars of the Roses.
"The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.
She looks scornfully at him
Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which if thou please to hide in this true bosom.
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.
He lays his breast open: she offers at it with his sword
Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry,
But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.
Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward,
But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.
Here she lets fall the sword
Take up the sword again, or take up me.
I can imagine few ideas more dangerous than the idea that our civil liberties** are whatever the government decides they are. American civil liberties were originally conceived as a way to protect us from the government; to assert that there are some rights that are ours by virtue of being human and that bestowing and removing them are beyond the reach of government. Government can violate them but it does not grant them and cannot take them away....That does seem to be where we are. In a way it's hopeful that we see it clearly.
There is one positive thing I can say about both Mr. Moreno’s bullying and Mr. Kenney’s views of civil rights and religion: these men are being honest. As Ross Douthat said in his recent New York Times opinion piece:
If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.The alderman and the councilman have done exactly as Douthat asked. Now we can, as Douthat says, "get on with the fight" - honestly.
I'm an old non-com who, as a bachelor lived in the barracks, and as such I'm well aware of the excitement that permeates any military barracks in the days leading up to a four-day, holiday weekend like Labor Day. Virtually every soldier has made big plans to escape his military existence for four precious days and spend that time with family or friends. Many will have to use the first and fourth days for travel to and from distant destinations, which means only two, crucial days of holiday pleasure for them, sandwiched between two less pleasant days of travel, especially if they must fly commercially. Take away just one of those days and many of those soldiers' plans will either have to be scrapped entirely or the time at home or whatever destination, be reduced to a single day. Plans made long in advance have to be rescheduled, a sometimes quite difficult task when it regards holiday weekend travel: flight changes may be impossible and hotels are booked solid; neither may allow changes in reservations without severe financial penalties.
So, some hotshot in the Obama campaign, feeling badly stung by the sparse turnouts for the president's visits to other locales, gets a bright idea of how to produce a really big crowd for a photo op: "Hey, let's schedule one for some military facility where the commander can be ordered to produce a big audience in a sufficiently impressive backdrop."
I suppose most girls remember when they became aware of themselves as specifically female viewers. Growing up in the eighties, I watched movies about boys and girls with equal relish, empathizing with the protagonists and getting totally absorbed in story without my parts getting consciously in the way. When I realized the boys in my classes didn’t do the same thing — they refused to see themselves in female protagonists and found the prospect humiliating to contemplate — I felt I had overstepped my bounds. Feeling simultaneously embarrassed at being so profligate with my sympathy and spiteful towards those who weren’t, I started watching movies the way I was supposed to: as a girl, specifically.
Boy, was it bleak.
If you don’t get to be Indiana Jones and have to think about how he is with girls, if you have to wonder, while watching Treasure Island, whether any of the characters you loved would even talk to you, movies become kind of painful. You do find ways around it. For one thing, you start actively seeking out stories where people don’t rule you out quite so much. You look for “girl movies.” Barring some truly wonderful exceptions, you get used to eating the same three meals over and over, forever. Without thinking about it too hard I’ll approximate them as spunkiness, pathos, and transformation. Working Girl, He’s Just Not That Into You, Grease. Again, some of these are great. Most are derivative.The somewhat tortured exegesis that follows describes a different sort of meal.
[T]his campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.She offers some analysis to support this proposition, and considers the shape of the American presidential contest.
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time...
You can [given the new economic reality] decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished.
The Desperate Housewives star is, according to folks at Perez Hilton, apparently geared up to open a women-only steakhouse in Las Vegas, so that women can give into their secret cravings for delicious meat WITHOUT the judging eyes of their male companions upon them.I don't know that it is, but this fear of being judged is something that I hear from female acquaintances very often. It is expressed as resentment of people that they think were judging them (based on some internal intuition about what those people must-have-been / might-have-been thinking); or it's expressed as relief and comfort that they think they are in an area where no one will be judging them; or it's expressed aspirationally as their hope or intention for a given group ('This should be a judgment-free zone'); or it's expressed ironically, but with the clear underlying intent that they should be free to behave in a given way without being judged ('No judging!').
Pardon? Is that genuinely a thing that women are worried about when tucking into a juicy plate of peppered steak?
If the Democratic Party truly wants to be a party of inclusion, it must reach out to those who are currently excluded from its identity politics. It needs to disband its caucuses.
Wingnut • 21 mins ago
They also have a Biden pizza which is basically tomato sauce and parmesan served on your foot.
