Via Insty it's "Warman Wednesday" at Steyn Online:

IT'S A FREE SPEECH FUNDRAISER at SteynOnline! Mark Steyn writes: "Until midnight Eastern tonight, for every copy of America Alone sold at the Steyn store, we'll give 50 per cent of the cover price - ie, our entire profit - to the legal defense funds for the five beleaguered bloggers fighting for free speech in Canada. That's 50 per cent of the cover price of the paperback, hardback, audio book (in CD, tape or MP3 format) and our America Alone Anniversary Special. And we'll also put 50 per cent of every other book, T-shirt, mug or anything else we sell today to the Freedom Five."

Plus, he'll autograph 'em. Go for it!

That is, he'll autograph the books. Hm; I've been wanting that Steyn T-shirt that makes fun of "Che-chic" for a while. And I have until 9:00 p.m. here in the land of palm trees.

We've got to do more for the Free Speech Five—that's for sure.

The Steyn Online link above also has links to news on Warman's antics, including a Shire Network News podcast featuring Kate from Small Dead Animals and Kathy from Five Feet of Fury—two of the "Free Speech Five."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:43 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I know; I sent you here once already. But Sean K has an interesting take on the Material Bod. In response to this,

If Madonna didn't devote her life to harassing us, what would she do with herself all day? Remember, this is a woman with so much time on her hands that she can spend four hours a day working out. I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile veiny hands, that sad stringy neck—yuck!

He writes:

Madonna has the sort of body that tends toward the plump/luscious side; you can see it in her early videos. Endomorphs like that who diet and exercise themselves into having no body fat often end up with skin that has a weird stretched look.

I've never not looked plump—even when I dipped below 100 once in my twenties. I really looked perfectly normal until I took my jacket off or whatever, and exposed the top of my jeans. Then it was clear that my hips and ass were too small. (No—really.)

But the fact is, no one is going to survive her fifties looking like a model. As women age, they tend to look either too plump, or too skinny. The only thing to do at 55 if one wants to avoid osteoporosis on the one hand and cardiac disease on the other is to work out. One doesn't necessarily have to go at it for four hours a day, but to expect a 55-year-old woman to look like a babe isn't reasonable: as one gets older there is less and less middle ground.

(I made my mind up a long time ago that when the time comes, I'll go with a bit too much mass, versus too little. No bone loss for me, Baby. Not if I can help it. Better big than frail.)

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What do Japanese people eat for breakfast? Bacon and eggs, right? No?

My friend Beatty has been eating miso soup in the morning; that sounds a bit severe to me. I don't need fat in the morning, but I do need a few carbs and some protein. I've certainly had rice with a bit of milk and sugar on top, but that's probably no less Western than a Denver omelet.

Via Insty, who posits that the "food crisis"—at least in industrialized, wealthy countries—might be overblown. Yup.

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It goes beyond the "necessary, but not sufficient" formulation, and he addresses the "what about Einstein, then?" issue that Ben Stein's movie Expelled doesn't take on:

I do think Darwinism led to Nazism, in a sense. But that's because I see Nazism as one of many responses to modernism. And Darwin, for good and ill, represents the rise of modern science — along with Einstein and others. Nazism and Communism and Progressivism were all impossible without the industrial revolution, Darwinism, relativism, mechanized warfare, mass production, etc. They were reactionary responses to these things. Those responses amounted to an express rejection of the conservative and libertarian vision of society, which is why they were leftwing.

Nazism was reactionary in that it sought to repackage tribal values under the guise of modern concepts. So was Communism. So are all the statist and collectivism isms. The only truly new and radical political revolution is the Lockean one.

(I am re-reading Liberal Fascism, which I had promised to pass along promptly to my husband. When I was done with it I re-read the pages I'd dog-eared. Then I re-read the introduction. Then I accidentally re-read the Mussolini chapter. Now I'm in the Hitler section, and I might as well re-do the whole thing. It's like tying one shoe, and then having to tie the other, because otherwise they'll be uneven.)

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I'm glad there's a major party out there that doesn't go around nominating muti-millionaires to the Presidency, or putting up candidates who have rich spouses.

Um. Wait.

Actually, I'm going to send a bunch of money to the Dem 527s, because it looks like they need some money; if only they could afford to hire someone to do the V.O. who sports a real English accent. Or a real American one. Anything but that drifting-back-and-forth trans-Atlantic hybrid.

Via Morrissey at Hot Air.

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Right here.

For those who haven't seen a picture of Glenn—both of you—that is not his image next to the article; it's Ray Kurzweil's. And for those of you who can't guess what the Instapundit approach to environmentalism might be—all three of you—it has to do with technology. And the prefix "nano-" appears. Heh.

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Kudlow at The Corner heard Novak speak last night, and he's calling the general for McCain.

Yup. Unless Clinton gets the nomination, I really can't see things going any other way after all of Obama's recent gaffes. I don't even think they'll need footage of Michelle for this one.

Not that I'm encouraging the GOP to phone it in. But I think it'll be McCain; what choice do people have at this point? At least Johnny Mac is willing to talk to reporters, which is a plus in a presidential candidate.

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Rachel Lucas gets a giggle out of ignorant non-hunters. Actually, neither she or I have actually been hunting, but at least we're not as wildly ignorant on this topic as the average liberal suburbanite. (And, yes: after a few years at Petersen's Hunting, I do have an odd stash of arcane facts in the back of my tiny little brain.)

Anyway, Rachel is responding to a flotilla of letters on the subject of hunting that ran in "Dear Abbey" today—

I just love Walter M. From FloridaÂ’s very thoughtful expression of his knowledge of human history:

Before the industrialized age, people were forced to hunt to put food on their tables. Today, whether they consume the meat or not, the majority of hunters (I use the term very loosely) are not “hunting.” They are camouflaged, hiding in blinds or in tree stands waiting for the prey to wander by. Some even put out bait to lure the animals to their location.
There is no skill in hiding, waiting for an animal to wander by to be shot. These people are animal snipers. A true hunter would stalk prey using a bow and arrow for the kill.

Well all rightee then. According to Walter, all those millions of humans over the last 150,000 years who killed animals with any weapon other than a bow and arrow weren’t “true hunters.” I bet it sure felt like hunting to them, using spears and clubs.

It's worse than that, Rachel: not only is Walter an incurable romantic, but he also doesn't seem to realize that using bait to lure animals is not permitted in most areas, and for most species. Some areas that allow the hunting of bears permit this, but not many.

I'd still like to take a deer before I die, or some other diminutive form of "large game."

But I suppose if I'm going to take to the trail with a .30-.30 I should first acquire a freezer; most hunters I know either possess freezers, or relationships with Hunters for the Hungry.

One could take Walter's logic still further, and proclaim that not only is stand-hunting inauthentic, but so is bowhunting itself. The true hunter confines him- or herself to employing a very large rock. It should not have a point on the end, for that would give the weak, slow, physically vulnerable upright predator an unfair advantage. Spears are abusive; they should be outlawed.

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Right here.

"CHICAGO SOUNDS LIKE MOSUL: " That's an email from . . . Michael Yon, who knows his Mosul. Here's the story on last weekend's violence. Still, they're different: One has crooked officials, violent gangs with their hooks into government and law enforcement, and a culture of corruption that has resisted the central government's effects to clean it up, and the other is a city in Iraq.

UPDATE: Fred Butzen emails: "I'm surprised you overlooked this difference: One has crazy preachers, and the other is in the Middle East."

MORE: Another reader emails:

It really should be no surprise, since Chicago and Illinois itself have been failing to reach their political benchmarks for years now.

It is too bad there is not some powerful politician who might have served the Chicago area and brought them Change and Hope. If there was, we could blame him for the "complete failure" to achieve those political benchmarks and reduce sectarian strife.

Heh.

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Going well for her. I was a vegetarian for four years, but I cannot get along without dairy products. I might be able to live without cheese and yogurt, in a pinch. But to this day I consume huge amounts of lowfat, liquid milk. It won't stop any time soon.

The other problem I have is that some vegan foodstuffs go overboard on ingredients like seaweed, and though I like a bit of seaweed—say, in a Japanese pastry—there's a delicate line: I don't eat fish at my most omnivorous, so anything that has too fishy a taste is right out. The exceptions are miso soup with just a whisper of bonita shavings that I can pretend not to know about, or an omelet with a splash of non-vegetarian Worcestershire sauce that I can likewise ignore.

Gosh, I hope Megan is wrong about women in Manhattan. I would love it if her upbringing there were a minority experience. Personally, I'd hate to feel guilty about eating. I take a distinct delight in food, though when I'm reading or writing (which is always) there's a point beyond which I simply don't want to fuss with it. If I could take a pill that would keep me from being hungry, I might well starve, since I can go for days or even weeks without being in the mood to mess around with the eating idea. Not because I'm against it, but because I don't have much of an attention span for anything whatsoever. The best thing that ever happened to me is the book rack I got in college, which I can use to prop up a book or magazine in front of me while I eat soup, cold cereal, or anything else that requires two hands.

I'm perfectly willing to cook, but not if I'm in the middle of reading or writing a hot chapter. Or even a hot blogpost. Let's not be ridiculous.

Which is to say that food is lovely, but if I had to choose between interesting food and fine words, I'd take the words: they are more satisfying than food, and more intoxicating than any drug.

But I do live in a human body, and my stomach is growling. So off I go to eat, rather than composing a kick-ass villanelle. This is, of course, the world's grave loss.

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. . . Nora Ephron is above oversimplifying. After all, she's the one who suggested that, ultimately, women who complained about having large breasts were "full of shit."

So it's not like she's never before seen two data points and made a curve based thereon.

"I'm just so tired of thinking. It must all be the fault of white men." Come on, now: you know better than that, deep down.

h/t: Karl at Protein Wisdom, who remarks, "Obama has done well with white men since the beginning of primary season." Yup. Especially the ones who eat arugula, which happens to be one of my favorite salad greens.

Mmmm. Arugula.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This sounds pretty sensible:

If the reasonable reader would interpret an assertion [such as Shvarts' press release] as being literally made, then the student (or a faculty member or anyone else in the university) has an obligation to make sure that the assertion is indeed true. Perhaps in some other contexts hoaxes might be forgivable—but not in class work, unless there's some strong contextual cue that the hoax is indeed a hoax. So if Shvarts did indeed misdescribe what she did (the accounts I've seen are somewhat contradictory), she should be faulted for that, and at least required to correct the misdescription.

. . . Yet . . . it's important that the university set out pretty clear rules, and not punish students or faculty members in the absence of such rules. This is especially true, I think, for art. As I understand it, avant-garde art and academic art, for better or worse, has in recent decades heavily prized the transgressive and shocking.

Shvarts and her advisors, it seems, gave the university pretty much what academic artists are asked to give. So if the university had a preexisting no-human-blood rule, then it could reasonably enforce it. But if it didn't, then I'm not sure what sort of "appropriate action" (setting aside a good talking-to) could reasonably be taken against faculty members who saw the transgressiveness of Shvarts' project as a plus rather than a minus. In other fields, it might be possible to fault faculty and students for violating unwritten but broadly accepted rules of scholarship. But my sense is that this is hard to assert (again, for better or worse) about modern academic art.

My emphasis; h/t to Insty.

UPDATE: Apparently, Ace believes in do-it-yourself abortions; how funny. He seems, otherwise, quite bright. If those worked, we wouldn't have ended up in a national fight that culminated (or, rather, plateaued) in Roe v. Wade.

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I'd say that the "man" is coaching from, as they say, some pretty safe sidelines*:

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran."

A full-blown uprising by al-Sadr, who led two rebellions against U.S.-led forces in 2004, could lead to a dramatic increase in violence in Iraq at a time when the Sunni extremist group Al Qaeda in Iraq appears poised for new attacks after suffering severe blows last year.

In a warning posted Saturday on his Web site, al-Sadr said he had tried to defuse tensions by declaring the truce last August, only to see the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki respond by closing his offices and "resorting to assassinations."

He accused the government of selling out to the Americans and branding his followers as criminals.

"So I am giving my final warning ... to the Iraqi government ... to take the path of peace and abandon violence against its people," al-Sadr said. "If the government does not refrain ... we will declare an open war until liberation."

Rice praised al-Maliki for confronting al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which had a choke hold on Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. The assault was al-Maliki's most decisive act by far against al-Sadr, a fellow Shiite and once a political patron. Kurdish and Sunni politicians, including a chief rival, have since rallied to al-Maliki, and the Bush administration argues he could emerge stronger from what had appeared to be a military blunder.

h/t: Memeorandum.

* Actually, that phrase is from a piece of fiction, but I simply cannot remember what it is right now. As usual, I suspect J.D. Salinger. Maybe not. It's something I've read a number of times, but that doesn't help me too much.

The source is a piece of dialogue, and it's definitely a male speaker. I'm pretty sure the writer is also male.

I'll probably wake up at 4:00 a.m. and shout the answer into the air, much as one of my mathematician friends yelled "It's Funny Face!" in the middle of the night on a cabin trip once. (There had been some discussion of the Kool-Aid competitor whose flavor names were all kind of cutesy: Choo Choo Cherry, Freckle Face Strawberry, Goofy Grape, Jolly Olly Orange, Loud Mouth Lime, and the like. I was not in on that discussion, by the way: I was in the cool cabin, down the hill. The "pimento" cabin. The cabin in which we ate very well, drank wine, shot pool, watched porn, and raided the other cabin's food supplies on occasion [not because we needed to, but just to demonstrate that we could. What do you want?—our median age was 17 or something like that. We were the smartest people in the world, and we were all going to live forever. Now we're in our forties. We're still the smartest people in the world, and we're still going to live forever, but it hasn't been quite as easy as we once presumed. This is our—well, my—interpretation of maturity.])

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:01 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Who knew there was a . . . what do you call that? A "blogosphere"?

Who knew there was a blogosphere out there?

My obsessions:

(1) doing a bit of laundry by hand every night, since our washing machine decided to die 5-6 weeks before we move;

(2) figuring out how cheaply we can move to the new place, and begin to furnish it in accordance with its 1974 leanings/our own tastes/the cheapskate side of my nature;

(3) picking out paint colors for same in the correct blend of 1960s/1970s/1980s hues for each room; setting up a guest bed plus two home offices in, like, no space; selecting window treatments; scienceing out the flooring (Pergo-equivalent, wood laminate, hardwood, or carpeting? Factors are: cost, speed of installation, degree of noise-muffling each will bring; ease of upkeep; hypo-allergenic qualities given that the "lady" of the house [who isn't, of course] is the worst. Housekeeper. Ever.)

Escrow closes on May 21st. I suspect I won't be making it up to either Shell Beach or the Bay Area until after we move— especially since I'm out of commission the first week in May (trip to Oregon, for which I'm on ice-fetching duty after Attila the Hub runs his next marathon).

We went to mass down in Glendale this evening, and then had dinner at one of the local restaurants near our new digs—a chain, but one that serves decent food. Too noisy, but I was able to get a small pizza with spinach and artichoke. For some reason, I crave vegetables lately; probably the changing of the seasons.

Mmmmm: spinach.

Dessert/midnight snack will be either mango slices or fresh strawberries.

You people out in reader-land must be good, now. For I . . . shan't.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:30 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Sean Kinsell explains:

It's convenient that (small-l) "libertarian" suits me fine, because it tends not to set people off. I like "classical liberal," but (today's left) liberals often seem to think you're trying to dress up as one of them while being a closet fascist. ("Yeah, you're a liberal in the sense that, like, Mill would have meant it," someone sneered at me once.) And while my positions on many issues align with what we now consider "conservatism," I'm not fundamentally a conservative. (Well, I am when some gross guy is hitting on me. Then I identify myself as a "conservative" in a clear, forceful tone and mention that I'm a registered Republican. You movement conservatives don't mind the fib, do you? It's to the end of preventing casual homosexual intercourse, after all. And I really am a registered Republican.)

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

Yeah, well. Most of my friends are so far to the left that it doesn't matter that I'm a small "l" libertarian/classical Liberal. Any support for military action makes me Very Misguided Indeed.

"Well, of course," one of my pals said once. "You were so far to the left—a Communist, and all that. It makes sense that if you went over the line you'd be at the other extreme."

I'm at "the other extreme" because I think free markets are the least-inefficient way to lift people out of poverty, I'm willing to wage selective wars to liberate women and protect the people of this country, and I don't think the government has a place in my bedroom, my diet, or my humidor.

John Stuart Mill—I'm comin' to join you, Honey.

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At The Atlantic.

Pandas!

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. . . isn't any such thing. But don't tell the headline writers, and ruin their fun.

Karl at Protein Wisdom:

Leftosphere Recycles Distorted Antiwar Propaganda from McClatchy [Karl]

A McClatchy story about a study of the Iraq conflict by former senior Pentagon official Joseph Collins is blasted by Collins at the Small Wars Journal blog:

The Miami Herald story (”Pentagon Study: War is a ‘Debacle’ “) distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not “lay much of the blame” on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he “bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” It does not single out “Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley” for criticism . . .

Of course, the usual suspects in the Leftosphere ran with the distorted McClatchy story.

Sure they did: they saw the distortions somewhere in black and white, which means that they had to represent The Truth!—even if the author of the study himself says he's being misrepresented by the mainstream media.

People are so ill-served by those who call themselves "reporters." It's maddening. That is, I'm angry. But I am not surprised.

h/t: Memeorandum.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Bunch of Bossophobes:

Via Insty.

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We just got an offer accepted on a condo in Glendale, so I'm

(1) lining up a home inspector (the seller would like the contingencies out of the way as soon as possible;
(2) researching hypo-allergenic flooring that also muffles sound a bit (I'd like to go to Pergo, but I don't know how well that will work on a third floor, particularly given my ability to stomp around);
(3) going to the gym, and maybe
(4) buying a book. Someone packed up every shred of reading material in the house and took it to storage. Now that I've finished Liberal Fascism, I'm dying for reading material that doesn't blink at me like a laptop screen.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm having trouble getting exercised about "fingergate." After all, isn't this something I'd get a kick out of if I liked Obama more, or had less grudging respect for Hillary?

But those who are disillusioned with Changey McHope already will find one more reason to be disappointed, and may want to tell him to "man up."

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