Category Archives: Blogosphere

Gender studies

Posted on January 18, 2014 | 3 comments

Reading a post by J.D. over at Mouth of the Brazos about his hunt for a new stove reminded me of a curious encounter with gender politics last month.

The ice-maker in our 13-year-old fridge started producing not cubes of ice but giant icebergs by apparently leaking water onto cubes already made. After removing several of the bergs with much chopping and cursing, I figured Mrs. C. would insist on a new fridge though we’ve had no other problems with the thing.

She surprised me when she didn’t say any such thing, but went and found the replacement ice-maker online and then, wonder of wonders, installed it by herself. Only the cover was upside down. I knew it wasn’t wise but I couldn’t resist pointing it out. I tried to back-fill by insisting that it was a minor matter and I would never mention it again.

She fixed it. Looks like I’m going to be in complete retirement soon.

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Evolution, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering

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Losing Fallujah

Posted on January 16, 2014 | 2 comments

You could blame B. Hussein and the Democrats for withdrawing from Iraq. You could blame Bush-the-Younger and the neocons for sending American troops there in the first place.

You certainly could blame the Iraqis for handing the town back to the Jihadis. But maybe they really like living in the 7th century CE.

The Marines who fought there, of course, are anguished. As undoubtedly are the Army soldiers who fought there, too, although to much less publicity. As were a lot of combat veterans of Vietnam when the feckless pols withdrew from there, leaving the American dead to have died for nothing.

Well, not for nothing. They died for the Marines, for the Army, for their comrades-in-arms. That might not be enough for their survivors. But, in the end, it’s about all there ever is in war.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Iraq, Obituaries, The War, Troops, Viet Nam, War Without End

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Lurch insulted, boo hoo

Posted on January 15, 2014 | 4 comments

Our clown secretary of state, owner of a “lucky hat” he allegedly acquired in Cambodia (one of Jean Fraud Kerry’s more imaginative lies), got told off in colorful terms the other day by Israel’s defense minister Moshe Yaalon:

“Secretary of State John Kerry,” Yaalon reportedly said, “… who operates from an incomprehensible obsession and a sense of messianism — can’t teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians…The only thing that might save us is if John Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us be.”

It would be remarkable if Lurch could teach anyone about anything, knowing as little as he does about much of anything except gaming the system to go home from Vietnam early, catsup and yachting. But the clown posse in Washington demanded that Yaalon apologize and that Bibi, the PM, denounce his minister for, uh, telling the truth.

Yaalon, bless his heart, made a classic non-apology apology if Lurch “was offended by words.” No words yet from Bibi. Crybaby Lurch, meanwhile, is still in hot pursuit of a meaningless “agreement” between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will ensure his Nobel Peace Prize. And why not? They gave one to Wormtongue just for getting elected. They even gave one to Arafat, the world’s oldest terrorist, for, what? Oh, yeah, for shaking hands with another Israeli PM.

By all means they should give one to Lurch for getting his feelings hurt.

Via Althouse.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, War Without End

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The FBI’s latest scandal

Posted on January 15, 2014 | 2 comments

What can you say about a federal police agency whose longtime boss was a cross-dresser? Who ordered the wire-tapping of Dr. Martin Luther King because he was a suspected Communist, even though that wasn’t a crime? The very agency which failed to uncover and stop the 9/11 perpetrators before they could act?

You’d have to say that what the ACLU calls the FBI’s “warrantless wiretapping, racial and religious profiling, biased counterterrorism training materials, politically motivated investigations, abusive detention and interrogation practices, and misuse of the No-Fly List to recruit informants” was no surprise.

Nor should be their latest lapdog performance for the White House and Democrats in covering-up the IRS scandal by pronouncing no need for criminal indictments without even interviewing the victims of the tax agency’s abuse of its authority. No surprise. No surprise at all.

UPDATE:  More on the 41 victims the FBI ignored. Very professional. You bet.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere

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Rule 5: Georgina Burke

Posted on January 14, 2014 | 2 comments

georginaburke

Aussie Georgina is one of the most alluring of the new  “plus-size” models. Probably most realistic for most of us, as well. Well. We should be so lucky.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Rule 5

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The Texas Curse

Posted on January 13, 2014 | 2 comments

The annual Texas curse is back. It hits me the worst about this time every year. Cedar Fever. When the airborne pollen hits your nose, it mimics a really, really bad cold with its own special features.

You know you have it when your eyes burn and the roof of your mouth itches. And you get into sneezing fits while your nose runs. If it goes on and on until you want to die, that’s cedar fever. But despite the common name, it’s not “cedar trees” behind it. It’s juniper that the Hill Country’s early Anglo settlers called Mountain Cedar. Know thy enemy.

Nowadays, thanks to the damn birds carrying the seeds around, the trees grow all up and down the I-35 corridor, from about Waco in the north to San Antonio in the south. People in Beaumont, way over on the Gulf coast east of Houston, swear that a really strong cold front will bring the juniper pollen to them, too.

Texas Monthly claims cedar fever only lasts a week. They lie. It can begin in November and go on until around Valentine’s. Every year Austin allergists come up with a different reason why it’s so bad: too much rain, not enough rain, too cold, too warm. After 35 years of it I’m convinced they know nothing and have no remedies. Except a series of pollen shots you have to start in the spring. They’re expensive and they frequently don’t work.

Every year I swear I’m going to move to West Texas (preferably Alpine) to get away from this. But I never do. Maybe someday. The only blessing a really bad cedar fever season brings is to thin out of some of  Austin’s godawful traffic.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Freezing or starving in the dark

Posted on January 13, 2014 | 4 comments

When their climate models predicting the end of snow and rising sea levels proved faulty, the global warmists changed their game to foreseeing a trend to “extreme” weather, even as extreme weather events declined. Where pols adopted their anti-carbon dioxide policies, people in Europe are freezing or starving.

Weather Bell Analytics meteorologist Joe D’Aleo: “In the UK 12 million people are said to be in fuel poverty, having to choose between heating and eating…In Germany 600,000 homes had their electricity turned off during the last brutal winter as electricity prices skyrocketed, and the country is rushing to build 10 coal fired plants to lower costs.”

Meanwhile, the Democrat’s EPA works up regulations to put our coal-fired electric plants out of business and replace them with low- and intermittent-power windmills incapable of meeting even current demand. And the Worm’s speechifying to stir up class envy fits nicely with the warmists’ real goal. They’re not out to save the planet.

D’Aleo: “UN climate official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted ‘one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.’  Instead, climate-change policy is about how ‘we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…’”

UPDATE:  The Weather Channel, a prominent purveyor of warmism’s “extreme weather” meme is dropped by carrier DirecTV. TWC bemoaned the future of public safety “at a time when the volatility and frequency of weather events seems to be increasing.” DirecTV replaced them with a cheaper alternative.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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