I walked down to the beach at Tel Aviv to take some sunset photos and found a group of kitesurfers enjoying the waves.

If I'd brought my camcorder I could show you how kitesurfing works, but I didn't, so I'll have to make do with this wikipedia definition:

Kitesurfing, also known as kite surfing, fly surfing, and kiteboarding, involves using a power kite to pull the rider through the water on a small surfboard, a wakeboard, or a kiteboard.

A kitesurfer uses a board with foot-straps or bindings, combined with the power of a large controllable kite to propel himself and the board across the water. However, this simplicity also makes kitesurfing challenging. A kitesurfer's body is the only connection between the kite and the board. The kite is piloted in the sky while the board is steered on the water.

According to the kitesurfers I talked to, some hours of lessons and lots of practice were needed to perfect the tecnique of combining flight over water. Snowboarding is difficult enough - imagine combining that with kiting and surfing.

One kitesurfer, Avri, demonstrated this jump (click on photos to see larger images)

It would take a lot of time and effort to learn how to soar like that, but it would be worth it.

Very bad news - Egyptian Sandmonkey is quitting..

Walking up Jaffa Hill

..on the road, taking pictures, packing and unpacking.

In the meantime, visit Michael Totten's, Bill's INDC and Fausta's for always-interesting and well-researched posts.

Around December 14, there was a massive explosion on the sun*

"Solar flares are essentially magnetic," Davis explains. In the maelstrom above a sunspot, lines of magnetic force are twisted and stretched until the tension reaches a certain point—and then the whole thing explodes.

A rubber band provides a good analogy. Take one from your desk, hold one end in each hand: stretch and twist. If you twist, twist and twist to extremes, the tormented band will eventually snap, painfully releasing all the energy you just put into it.

* Space news thanks to Bruce

If anyone had any doubts that some 'green' 'no impact' luddites are trying to return the world to the all natural lifestyle of the 4th century, read this..

She's not the only one...

Margaret Bourke-White, Garment district, New York City, 1930

More here...

Have you noticed that Global Warming hysteria has become more - unreasonable lately?

If you're in a mood for some extreme adventure, try walking into a roomful of Democrats. Suggest that you might have a few questions about the veracity of the Global Warming theory. See what kind of reaction you get. (Don't express any outright dissent of course - that's not adventure, it's just pure suicide.)

Global Warming is a crusade now, beyond reason, mired in faith. Gore, that sanctified smarmy Colossus of smugness has become an icon of redemption and rebirth. In the Left's common dreams, Gore's Global Warming crusade will usher in their second coming. He's their Vanilla Jesus.

Via Draft Gore

Run Al Run

..How can you lose when you already won
Way back before all the damage was done
Now you’re the number one favorite son
So Run, Al, Run

The Left was lost, but now they're found. With Global Warming, the Blame Bush crusade becomes a world class Leftish event, no longer limited to American politics. Now Bush (and American Republicans) can officially be blamed for the weather. Dissent will bring about the end of the world and the death of baby polar bears. Praise "science."

If Gore can find a way to blame Bush for acne and irritable bowel syndrome, he will become a God.

He's got the whole world in his hands..

Yesterday in New York

Reflections on Avenue of the Americas

Airstream Land Yacht at MoMa

..and there's no waiting period required before students can buy it. There should be a law!

If only that pesky constitution didn't stand in our way.

Via the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal

LEWISTON - One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime at Lewiston Middle School, Superintendent Leon Levesque said Wednesday.

On April 11, a white student placed a ham steak in a bag on a lunch table where Somali students were eating. Muslims consider pork unclean and offensive...

...Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing," said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It's extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It's important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

Posted By:Rick at April 19, 2007 9:48 AM
The real problem here is that these students were able to walk right into a grocery store and buy a ham steak. Here in the state of Maine, there is no waiting period before one can purchase a ham. Maybe this is a good time to bring forth some legislation on strict ham control laws.

In his report from Kirkuk, Where Kurdistan Meets the Red Zone Michael Totten discusses race, religion and power relationships between the Arabs, the Kurds and the Turks.

Kirkuk is divided between Kurds, Turkmens (who are related to Turks in Anatolia, not Central Asia), and Arabs. The Arab quarter is extraordinarily violent. The Turkmen and Kurdish areas aren’t so much, although random acts of terrorism and mass murder can and do erupt anywhere at any time.

People in areas where the Baath Arabs live help terrorists plant bombs, Hamid explained as he drove. The Baathists have no support whatsoever in Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods. Terrorists have a much harder time operating in those places, so they don’t bother much. The available methods of killing are limited without local logistic support. Everyone knows everyone else. Strangers are instantly suspected, often searched, and apprehended if necessary.

Kirkuk’s terrorists are, my Kurdish hosts explained, mostly Baathists, not Islamists. Their racist ideology casts Kurds and Turkmens as the enemy. They’re boxed in on all sides, though, and in their impotent rage murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their entire community while their more peaceful Kurdish and Turkmen neighbors shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box.

American readers may be uncomfortable by the explicitly racial nature of this description, but that’s just how it is in Kirkuk and I cannot apologize for it. Iraqis kill each other over race and religion and power. If you go there yourself you had better pay attention to who lives in which neighborhood and what they think of others. Otherwise you will not survive. I'm a bit awkwardly self-conscious about it, but race blindness is punished in Iraq with the death penalty.

Not every Arab in Iraq is a terrorist, obviously. Most of the victims of terrorism in Iraq are Arabs, after all. And there is nothing at all about Arabs as Arabs that makes them dangerous or hostile to me as an American. I lived in a Sunni Arab neighborhood in West Beirut for six months. All my neighbors were lovely. Not a single one was a terrorist. Lebanese politics is unstable and at times deranged, but it’s nevertheless orders of magnitude more civilized and mature than politics in Iraq, poisoned as it has been by (as Fouad Ajami put it) Saddam’s legacy of iron and fire and bigotry...

...Kirkuk is historically a Kurdish and Turkmen city, but Saddam Hussein tried to Arabize it. He forced out as many Kurds and Turkmens as he could and resettled the neighborhoods with Arabs from the South. He hoped to use the Arabization campaign to solve two of his ethnic and sectarian problems at once. Most of the Arabs he placed in Kirkuk were undesirable Shias from Karbala and Najaf he wished to be rid of. The city is now torn, then, along racial and sectarian lines. The legacy of Stalinist politics will take a long time to die.

“Can you explain the main reasons why Saddam Hussein changed the makeup of this city?” I said. “Was it for the resources, because of the Baath ideology, or both?”

I heard a loud thump somewhere off in the distance and wrote “possible explosion” in my notebook. No one else seemed to notice it, though.

“It was for ethnic reasons,” Mam Rostam said. “The proof of this is that not only Kirkuk was involved. Suleimaniya and Erbil were also involved. They wanted to remove all the Kurds from everywhere in Iraq. They just destroyed whole villages and provinces and moved people into collective towns and concentration camps. Some of the Turkmen villages around here were demolished for the same reason. The point was to make it an Arab area, and no other. Saddam Hussein intended to be the leader of the Arab nation, the whole Arab world. He didn’t want anyone other than Arabs to exist around him. That was his policy.”

Saddam Hussein wasn’t content merely to force Kurds and Turkmens out of their homes so he could move Arabs in. He also smashed their villages and neighborhoods with air strikes, artillery, chemical weapons, and napalm. ..

..“The Arabs use Islam as a cover for their aims,” Mam Rostam said. I hear this time and again from Kurds in Iraq who are just as Islamic – but much more liberal and democratic – as the residents of Fallujah.

“The Ottomans didn’t do this,” Patrick said. “They didn’t try to make everyone Turks.”

“Even when people gave birth here it was forbidden to give them Kurdish names,” Mam Rostam said. “They were only allowed to give their children Arabic names. If a Kurd wanted to purchase real estate he had to have it purchased in an Arab’s name. Otherwise he could not have it. During the Anfal operations they took young women and used them as sex slaves. Even when the Mongols invaded they didn’t do this. They just don’t like people who are not Arabs. Whoever is not an Arab is an enemy, and they use religion as an excuse for their evil goals.”

“In Hamburg, Germany, there was a restaurant opposite the Turkish Embassy,” Mam Rostam said. “That restaurant was named Kurdistan, and they flew the Kurdistan flag. The Turkish government sent a notification to the German government that said If you don’t remove that sign and that flag and that name from that restaurant, we are going to pull our embassy out of Germany. And they did it. The Germans removed it...

UPDATE: Of his trip to Kirkuk, Moderate Risk's Patrick Lasswell writes:

The violence comes from and mostly stays in the areas of recent Arab immigration, another poison legacy of Saddam Hussein who was unable to control this oil-rich region so he destabilized it. Not only did Saddam transplant Arabs from the South, he sent another of his enemies, the Shia Arabs. This was a blatant and deliberate move to counter the Kurds, and if they incidentally wiped out the local Turkomen, so much the better. Saddam's planting his enemies amongst each other to get them fighting is still yielding a harvest of hatred and blood. But because the new Arabs were placed according to bureaucratic decree instead of organic availability, the settlements of the insurgents are contained. The place is risky, but the risk is moderate. I found myself trapped by my own blog title.

The view from taxis in Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. The lovely music is "Im nin' alu" by Ofra Haza

...I want to go back..

..and congratulations to your mom.

Is Kurdistan's status as an oasis of peace in Iraq threatened? From Infidel 753

As if we didn't already have enough problems in the Middle East, there are signs that Turkey is contemplating a military attack on Iraqi Kurdistan. Latest here, with links to earlier articles on the topic.

The US needs to stick up for the Iraqi Kurds. They supported us during the invasion of Iraq when Turkey tried to obstruct us; we owe them. And Iraqi Kurdistan is Iraq's biggest success story — a place which governs itself and keeps the peace on its own territory with its own forces without needing our help, as we hope Iraq as a whole will eventually be able to do.

If PKK terrorists in Turkey are indeed getting support from points in Iraqi Kurdistan, then this is a serious problem and it needs to be stopped...

..and more from Patrick Lasswell at MJT's - President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Province Maso'ud Al-Barazani Threatens Turkey Not to Interfere in the Issue of Kirkuk...

Thanks to a law enforcement officer at a major urban university and Armed Liberal:

Recognize that a University is just a city within a city, filled with people. Some are good, some are bad, some are there to take advantage of the environment for profit and others, to prey upon a particularly vulnerable population.

By vulnerable, I include students, staff and faculty, all of whom tend to believe the hype about the University Community being somehow insulated from the crime that exists outside the borders. By design, Universities are filled with idealists wishing to take the higher road of understanding and compassion when it comes to dealing with the dangers people often pose toward their own species.

Tell your son or daughter that in order to decrease the risks hidden behind the school's marketing facade, they must listen to their instincts when confronted with danger, rather than letting their intellect and ideals overcome them. A student needs to be willing to see danger when it presents itself. They need to understand that bad things happen to good people every day, even in places that are supposed to be safe. That all of nature survives and thrives upon decisions of fight or flight, but fails or dies if they succumb to the immobility of fear.

Unfortunately, we live in a would-be virtual world, where we protect our children from fear and leave them to practice their survival skills in games that allow them to respawn when they make the wrong choice. This leaves them believing that they cannot come to harm and although I don't think walking around riddled with anxiety over every potential encounter is healthy; skepticism, caution and adaptability to swiftly changing circumstances are excellent tools for long term survival.

To be more specific, if something doesn't look right, it probably isn't and you should report your concerns to the authorities. If someone seems irrational, delusional or just plain weird, let someone know. If someone seems to believe you have a romantic relationship and you don't - be alert and report stalking or obsessive behavior as soon as you encounter it. Sometimes, if these situations are caught early, the subject can be helped with medical intervention. Do not put embarrassment above safety.

Most importantly, if you find yourself in an active shooter situation and you can access real shelter or cover, waste no time running full speed in that direction. If you are trapped, in a room with an assailant who is picking off victims as he/she finds them, FIGHT. Throw things, big things if you can grab them. Use that as a distraction to assault the shooter. Go down fighting if you must, but do not let yourself be immobilized by fear. Unless you can hide among the bodies and successfully play dead (a risky tactic if the assailant decides on a 'coup de grace' shot), you may as well go down fighting. If you cower in a corner or under a desk, as soon as he sees you he will kill you. Take the initiative away. You have nothing to lose in this situation. Remember the lesson of 9/11, submission to an adversary bent on killing plays into his expectations and will likely result in your death.

Early reports of this tragedy reminded me of the Bronx Happyland’ social club fire, an arson attack that killed 87 people. The arsonist was angry at his girlfriend, who was inside the club. He poured gasoline on the only exit and set the place on fire to show everyone how angry he was.

That's the way the world works for buttheaded narcissistic ignoramuses like that arsonist and this shooter. If these idiots want to kill lots of innocent people, they'll find a way. Gun control, being armed and having accessible exits can only do so much. If we could find a way to end violent narcisisstic jealousy and the tendency of violent, narcissistic jealous assholes to indulge in stalking behaviour, we'd accomplish a lot.

And if we want to talk about self defense, we ought to teach our kids early how to effectively deck media vultures. I'm not too good at throwing punches - what did Bruce Willis use in Die Hard, a right hook?

If kids want to tell their story, they have internet access and they can blog it.

Ron Coleman reports on the heroism of Virginia Tech University Prof. Liviu Librescu, who was killed while trying to protect his students, blocking the door against the shooter in the hallway.

His daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich said "He realized he had to save the students" she said. "That was the kind of man he was."

More about professor Librescu here.

Also mentioned in Ron's post Some did fight back was Ryan Clark, who was shot as he went to investigate a disturbance in the dorm where he was the resident student adviser.

People usually suprise themselves when they react to situations like this, but it might help in general to be prepared. Instapundit has some links with advice about the psychology of self-defense.

More here..

I took these shots with a very old disposible waterproof camera. Obviously the film wasn't in the best shape.

The fire in the lumber yard turned out to be a four-alarmer. When I saw it, there was only one firetruck there. After a half hour, they were bringing in firetrucks from Jersey City. A few people in the buildings nearby lost their apartments, a 70 year old business is gone. No one was injured.

Ron Coleman liked Hope vs. the Post West's focus on the Ricardo Montalban angle, so he posted this: The Western World: “I grow fatigued”.

Craig Mclaughlin commented:

'I take the point she’s making, but it doesn’t follow from the ’60s science fiction example she cites. What did they get right? I’ve seen and read a fair bit of that stuff myself and I can’t think of a single damn thing. Everyone of those Star Trek episodes that I’ve seen were thinly veiled references to current or past events. Unless it’s just the notion that we’re not living in utopia. But any dystopian vision is by definition correct if you set the bar that low. One thing that all of them had in common, this includes Vonnegut (RIP) and Orwell is they all predicted massive catastrophic change that didn’t happen. Things rot, they don’t typically explode.

She writes: “Would the folks who made up the Greatest Generation have called an attempt to dialogue with fascists ‘realism’?”

I would say that depends on which of them you ask.'

Actually, I was thinking more of general post WWII dystopian sci fi, which usually based on the idea that all scientific or political experiments were proto-apocalyptic. Some basic ideas we've all seen:

1. a society eliminates illness and suffers from horrific overpopulation

2. drugs are developed to cure mental illness or violence, and this leads to a decadent, doped civlization

3. testing nuclear weapons produces huge people-eating ants/lizards/rabbits

4. space exploration brings interplanetary viruses back to earth

5. privatization and computer technology lead to a anarchic cyberpunk universe...

A lot of writers took these ideas to extremes because that makes for more interesting reading, but most of these tales were based on the idea that the path to dystopia is paved with good (or not deliberately evil) intentions.

What we're living in is not a utopia, but it's also not a normal, functioning society. What other society in history would react to an act of war by asking 'Why do they hate us?' What other society or species for that matter is so opposed to simple self defense? What other society holds itself in such contempt? This is abberrant behavior.

I’d guess that a lot of the mistakes we’ve been making lately are based on our fear of our own military power (especially nukes) and our desire for peace. These good intentions are leading to a current dystopia that's more rot than bang.

Noah Pollak of Azure, who visited Lebanon last December, describes a vision of a Western world that will defend democracy, a civilization that's willing to fight for what it believes in. From Hope over Hate

Before departing for Lebanon, the traveler who has been in Israel should purge himself of any evidence of having stepped foot in the Jewish state, from bus tickets and loose change to the notepad with Hebrew writing on the spine. The voyage from Jerusalem to Beirut could take, under different circumstances, four hours by car or forty-five minutes by air — the two cities are less than 250 kilometers apart — but today it involves a daylong travail of buses, taxies, aircraft, the duplicitous use of two passports, and the making of false statements to Lebanese customs officials.

Lebanon, like all but two nations in the Middle East, permits entry only to persons with passports free of any indication that Israel has been visited. But this sign of extremism should not be a diversion from the real Lebanon: While other nations indulge in this kind of practice with great satisfaction, many Lebanese find it ridiculous, one of the many reminders of Syria’s nefarious influence...

...Before visiting Lebanon, I never quite understood the phenomenon in which so many people I know and like visited the country and quickly formed intense bonds of affection for it. But when it came time to return to its southern neighbor, I found myself in sympathy with this infatuation; for me, it involved an admiration for the patriotism, determination, and physical bravery of the Lebanese who obdurately refuse to be ruled by foreign powers and Islamists. I met many Lebanese whose talent and ambition could have brought them to the United States or any number of other safe and prosperous countries. But in Lebanon, they are members of a remnant that prefers to stay and fight — and they deserve recognition and support from every country that identifies with the cause of the West.

When I left the Beirut throng to set out for Rafik Al-Hariri International Airport, the taxi driver took me through the Hezbollah-saturated southern suburbs, and along the main north-south highway. Beirut was still simmering with protesters, and their downtown ranks were being enlarged with freshly imported agitators. The northbound side of the highway was congested with buses and pickup trucks overflowing with Hezbollah sympathizers, most of them the ignorant, paid-off dupes of cynical men who act as local marionettes and cash distributors for Iran. It will be a wonderful day when this menace is gone and an Israeli passport is no barrier to Lebanon’s sunny shores.

In the 1980s, a Lebanese Christian leader declared that "the Western world should either defend us, or change its name." Israel is a member in high standing of the Western world, and should not exempt itself from sympathizing with such pleas...

According to VDH, the civilization that would defend democracy in Lebanon lives only in dreams:

I recently had a dream that British marines fought back, like their forefathers of old, against criminals and pirates. When taken captive, they proved defiant in their silence. When released, they talked to the tabloids with restraint and dignity, and accepted no recompense...

In this apparition of mine, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in Syria at the time, would lecture the Assad regime that there would be consequences to its serial murdering of democratic reformers in Lebanon, to fomenting war with Israel by means of its surrogates, and to sending terrorists to destroy the nascent constitutional government in Iraq.

She would add that the United States could never be friends with an illegitimate dictatorship that does its best to destroy the only three democracies in the region. And then our speaker would explain to Iran that a U.S. Congresswoman would never detour to Tehran to dialogue with a renegade government that had utterly ignored U.N. non-proliferation mandates and daily had the blood of Americans on its hands.

A few weeks ago, I was watching an original series Star Trek episode, "Space Seed", which originally aired in 1967. The vision of the future in "Space Seed" assumed that by the 1990’s we would:

1. Have a reasonable space program

2. Have lived through a eugenics war

3. Have lived through a nuclear holocaust and an attempt by Ricardo Montalban to take over the world.

It's kind of funny to see how they got it wrong, but it's not funny to see that they may have gotten some things right. Would the folks who made up the Greatest Generation have called an attempt to dialogue with fascists 'realism'?

Back then, would Pollak and Hanson's dreams stand in such contrast to a reality where reporters demand the right to be biased, where soldiers are not allowed to fight, where politicians will court fascists as a way of proving their 'courage' to the folks back home? Who would have imagined that we would respond to the unprovoked act of war that was 9/11 with a whine of 'why do they hate us'? What kind of West is this, anyway?

As dystopias go, the Post-West is more subtle than the ones envisioned back in the '60's, but let's face it - the fact that Pollak and Hanson are perceived to be the dreamers, while Pelosi and James Baker are called the 'realists' proves that things have changed, in many ways not for the better.

If you live in New Jersey or NYC, try to avoid driving today. Many highways, including route 21 and route 280, are flooded. In Hoboken, many streets are blocked and most intersections are flooded with at least 1 ft of water. It's hard to tell how deep it is just by looking. You can drive in, but you may not be able to drive out.

Many streets in Hoboken are flooded with at least 2ft of water (I know it was over 2 feet because that's the height of my water-filled waterproof boots).

During my short walk to the drugstore this afternoon I saw three flooded cars and one extremely smokey fire.

It's not clear why the fire started. When I saw it, it was just getting started in a lumber yard. If it was electrical, in a place filled with wood, it had the potential to be a very large fire.

The stalled cars and the flooding surrounding the place didn't help the firemen much.

Some others were walking around out there - some were in raingear and others were in shorts and flip flops. I guess flip flops make sense as far as getting wet goes, but that water is cold.

I wouldn't call it an historical event yet, but it is a mess.

UPDATE: Ron Coleman has news and a photo from Passaic, NJ. (those trees are not supposed to be in the water)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Photos above are part of this local news report about the Nor'easter, on NowPublic

..just found this on You Tube

..this is wonderfully un-PC

[I love nappy headed ho's]

* Link thanks to Irwin

When I say that I rarely watch network TV news, I'm not exaggerating. My mom visited today and turned on ABC news (local and Eyewitness news), and I realized that I haven't seen these talking heads for years. When did Joel Seigel get so grey?

Do you remember the scene from 'Crocodile Dundee', when Dundee checks out his New York hotel room and notes that he hasn't seen TV for more than twenty years. He turns it on, sees an episode of 'I Love Lucy' and says "yup, that's what I saw"...

According the ABC news:

1. Bad weather is coming, this could be the end. Run to the grocery store and buy milk and bread. (they did come up with a new name for bad weather - a potential 'historical event')

2. Eating bread is bad for you, eating bread with milk or butter is downright deadly.

3. The most popular toy on the market is bad for kids. It will endanger them and rot their brains.

4. Everyone is screwing up in Washington. New Jersey's governor is messing up his life and getting his bones broken.

5. Muslims are angry and offended. Foreigners hate us.

6. All of this week's movie releases are good except the one with Bruce Willis.

Yup, that's what I saw.

From a discussion at Dean's (edited for spelling mistakes and clarity)

What Imus said was offensive, but the reaction was counterproductive.

Political correctness grew to monster-sized proportions because it was sold to us as a way of fighting racism - but it encourages the problem we're supposed to be fighting.

Racism is based on the idea that one group of people are the 'other' - the purpose is basically divide and conquer. Political correctness doesn't create the unity that would fight this. It creates the disunity that encourages it.

The racist believes that 'they' are not like 'us' and should be condemned for that. This belief gives certain words or symbols inordinate power. The best way to fight racism is to follow the mythical actions of the Danish king who embraced the identity of the 'other' during WWII, by wearing a yellow star. The actual story never happened, but anyone can understand the symbolic effect - the racist attacks someone for being different, the 'other'.

If everyone assumes the identity of the 'other', they show that the 'other' is part of the bigger group and is therefore protected by the group.

However, if I say "I'm a nappy headed 'ho and I'm proud" or "nappy-headed 'ho's are just like you and me" politically correct types would probably pitch a fit. Or they'd say "it's a feminist/black/Rutgers basketball thing, you wouldn't understand". Or they'd object to the fact that I was saying the 'h word.

Political correctness creates special interest groups, and those special interest groups define themselves by labelling everyone else the 'other'. This encourages the bias it's supposed to be fighting.

When we throw fits about certain words, and hurl accusations back and forth, it encourges everyone to classify 'them' as 'others'. Politically, you create a 'Life of Brian' scenario of splinter groups, where everyone is a 'splitter'. It feeds the problem you're trying to fight.

Ben, commenting on Cinnamon Stillwell's post, Muslim Leftists Love America, Western Leftists Hate America, says:

The sad truth is the right has become much better at policing itself than the left.

I've noted only semi-facetiously that the right wing gives its loud mouthed idiots radio talk shows, while the left elects theirs to congress.

By and large, the things the left gets a pass on, like blatant corruption, the right clamps down on. Randy Cunningham, war hero, corrupt congressman, is gone. Jefferson is not. Murtha is not.

When Pat Robertson speaks, most of the right looks away in embarrassment, like when an older and very autistic family member suddenly announces "I like to Fart!" during a solemn ceremony or legal proceeding. When Jimmy Carter (or, where is Michael Moore these days?) speaks, it is actually taken seriously.

It doesn't matter whether you think the US should evacuate Iraq tommorow or fight as long as it takes, when Murtha babbles about Iraq being in range of US fighter aircraft from Okinawa, it is an old man in need of medication, and NOT a reasonable basis for a discussion of geopolitical strategy, and the Left as a rule does not recognize this.

So the bottom line is, what is the accepted status of the Fringe in each group? I find this exceptionally telling- most of the far far right fringe, the KKK, skinheads, etc, have by now realized they have more in common with the far left fringe than they do the basic right. When will the left disown the left fringe to the same extent?

Via Blogger of the Year Michael Totten:

The Week magazine announced its annual Blogger of the Year award and I won it, along with cartoonist Josh Fruhlinger of Wonkette. There must be some glitch in the universe because somehow I beat Michael Yon who also was nominated. If I were a judge I would have picked Yon over myself, but this is not a complaint, nor is it false modesty...

..some webwork plus a new, updated professional site, here at marypmadigan.com. (yes, I'm a dot-com).

I'm updating it, partially because the old site had become fossillized and partly because I have this crazy dream of being paid to travel around and take pictures.

The site is under construction right now, but pretty soon there will be all sorts of stuff, including photos for sale. I'm thinking of putting it together myself or maybe using zhibit. If anyone has had experience with that sort of thing out there, feel free to give advice!

What nationality are you?

I'm....

You scored as Italian. Italian 100% Spanish 75% Irish 75% French 63% Belgian 63% Turkish 63% British 63% Polish 50% Dutch 50% Russian 50% Swiss 50% Danish 38% German 25% Molvanian 13% Which European nationality should you have been? created with QuizFarm.com

I may be Irish, but I grew up in mostly Italian town, where I learned that garlic is love..

* link thanks to la belle Tatyana, who wonders, as I do, what the mysterious nationality, Molvanian is?

I was walking around Hoboken yesterday and heard something rustling in the leaves. Can you see it? (click on the photo to see a close-up)

I've got to get some work done today, so I'll be mostly offline. If this comment thread digresses into a discussion about Al Gore's global warming crusade and various apocalyptic scenarios, it's not my fault.

Alexandra David-Neel as a teenager

Alexandra David-Néel was a French explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, who was most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners. She wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. Her teachings influenced philosophers, writers and explorers.

Author Alan Sullivan says of her biography:

There were many remarkable photographs to accompany the somewhat haphazard prose. Reading of the seeker’s nostalgia and restlessness, I felt like someone peering through a pair of binoculars turned backwards and seeing a tiny image of myself in youth.

What strange turns my own life has taken since I first read about hers. I too found a transcendent place, from which I was sundered by karmic forces too great for me to overcome. Like her, I am growing old somewhere else — somewhere pleasant enough — my floating house of meditation. Yet I am not content. Like Ms. David-Neel, I keep my passport at hand. I would return to my beloved islands in a moment, if I could; yet I would find no more rest there than here. It is not in natures like hers or mine to find rest in this world.

Bob Hanckel sent me these lovely photos of winter scenes, shot on his way to work.

..he calls them the "Al Gore effect".

Bob was also in Quebec City, where he took these shots at a Winter Carnival:

..speaking of the 'Al Gore effect', given that it's about 34 degrees outside, should I really call this post 'Remembering Winter'?

..tis the season

Why were the British soldiers released?

As far as I can tell, we've been (wisely) waging a quiet asymetric war against Iran, targeting their intelligence agents and their economy. I don't think the Brits were participating in this, mostly because they're incompetent at this sort of thing, and partly due to their tendency to tolerate terrorism and extremism in their own country.

Ahmadinejad was well aware of the British tendency to tolerate and negotiate with terrorists, so he decided to retaliate by targeting the Brits. There were some behind-the-scenes threats and concessions (a returned 'diplomat,' the arrival of the Nimitz) Tony Blair got a chance to play the good, weak cop, Ahmadinejad got a chance to show off to the Muslim world and the Saudis were jealous, which probably prompted their recent hissy fits.

Ahmadinejad won this battle, but he may have lost in the end. Lately, the British government has become wary of dealing with terror-supporting moderate Muslim groups like the Muslim Council of Britain and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Like the US & our relationship with CAIR, they're starting to wake up to the fact that these groups are bad.

Britian has always been a major haven for these moderate/extremist groups, but this most recent humiliation may prompt them to once again rethink their policies. If Iran and Saudi Arabia's paramilitaries (and their corresponding 'moderate' supporters) lose their haven in Britain, they'll lose a lot.

Michael Totten reports from the Ministry of Peshmerga

My colleague Patrick Lasswell and I spent a couple of days with officers and soldiers at the Ministry of Peshmerga in the northern city of Suleimaniya. I knew already that the Kurds bristled at charges that their Peshmerga was yet another of Iraq’s many militias, and I have to agree now that I’ve seen and interviewed them myself...

..."The word Peshmerga is a holy word among Kurds," Colonel Mudhafer said. "It means those who face death. We are the outcome of the oppression and torture of the central government in the past. Peshmergas value their lives less than the liberation of their people. We are not a militia as some people in Iraq say. We are not a militia at all. The political leadership gives us orders, and we are an organized army."

It may appear odd to Western readers that I refer to Colonel Mudhafer by his rank and first name, rather than by his rank and last name. This, though, is how the Kurds refer to themselves and to others. I am never Mr. Totten. Here I am always Mr. Michael. Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s Kurdish president, is never called Mr. Talabani or President Talabani. They call him Mam (which is a term of affection like "uncle") Jalal. Uncle Jalal. The informality in this part of the world, even in the offices of the elite and in the military, is refreshing and agreeable to someone like me from the Pacific Northwest in United States were formality never really took hold.

The Kurdish armed forces don't take their orders from civilian officials in Baghdad. They are treated by the central government as something like a regional or “national” guard. Only the civilian officials in the Kurdish northern governates are allowed to give them their orders, which makes official Iraqi Kurdistan’s status as de-facto independent or, if you prefer, a state within a state...

..."You should know that Kurds are the main friends of the Americans in the Middle East," he said. "In the past we had only God and the mountains as friends. But now we want Americans to support us in all matters, to be another mountain. Our Minister of Peshmerga has great relations with the American forces. We are in the same trench and we are fighting the terrorists just like Americans are. It will be in the future this way, also. Not one American person has been wounded in this area. We have a real alliance with America. We are proud of this relationship. We want the American nation to know we are real friends."

The colonel supplied us with an escort who took us around to shake hands with apparently every important person in the ministry, and many who were not so important: officers, generals, clerks, computer operators, uniform tailors, accountants, cooks. You name 'em, Patrick and I met 'em.

- Link thanks to Bill at INDC Journal

The New York Auto show starts next week at the Jacob Javits Center. For sure, I'm going.

Via Hot Air - Dennis Miller and Dana Carvey discuss Rosie the Truther, the impressionable Hillary Clinton and parenthood...

- Link thanks to Judith of Kesher Talk

Are the Brits finally realizing that they have a problem?

According to Harry's Place, the government and some members of the press are beginning to realize what 'nonviolent moderate' groups like Hizb ut Tahrir and the Muslim Council of Britain are all about:

Hizb ut Tahrir is a busted flush. These days, most people in public life are well aware of the politics of this group. They're well known to be millenialist bigots, with extreme clerical fascist politics.

A similar fate awaits the Muslim Council of Britain, and they know it. The present government is through with courting them.

Food-safety experts share some advice: ‘Don’t eat poop’

Thanks to my husband's generous supply of travel points (and his generous willingness to share them) we were able to stay at the Hilton Bonaventure, which has a year-round heated outdoor pool - on the roof!

Pool at Hilton Bonaventure (photo thanks to the Bonaventure site)

I was in heaven.

View from a gallery window

If my daughter decides to go to college in Montreal, she's going to have to learn some French. Most people in the city speak English, but only if they have to.

Metro Station

The advantage of the French influence - great restaurants and boulangeries.

More pictures up at Flickr...

When it comes to varieties of nerds, apparently I contain multitudes.

Link thanks to the social nerd at Kesher Talk.

Saturday was the United American Committee's Rally Against Islamofascism Day. Seven Rallies were held in cities across the US.

According to the UAC,

Supporters rallied to denounce acts of violence and oppression committed by Islamic Jihadis, and rallied against what they believed were dangerous subversive actions of the organization CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations

(SEATTLE, WA - 04/02/2007) - In a stark departure from the example set by CAIR's national headquarters, the Seattle chapter participated in the rally against Islamofascism, denouncing Jihadism, Hamas, Sharia law, and efforts to transform America into an Islamic theocracy. CAIR’s current national spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, is on record in support of such an anti-American agenda stating, “I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.” Other CAIR chapters were provided the opportunity to participate, but did not.

The UAC has an AfterAction report.