Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Putting it in Writing, Remembering and Forgetting, The Art of Making a List
I am compulsive. I am not comfortable unless I have a notebook or tablet at hand. I make lists. Oh, ordinary enough ones: grocery lists, Christmas lists, birthday lists, to-do lists, lists of all the birds I’ve seen at my bird-feeder, that sort of thing. Then there are lists of plants seen at the nursery, plants seen in the botanical garden, plants I covet, economists, historians, books I want to read, books I want to take out from the library on a trial run to see if I might want to buy. Names for snow, names for storms. Names of scientists I find interesting and their specialty.
I make lots of book lists; histories on specific periods, histories I’ve read, environmental books, best children’s books, a list of the best books I’ve ever read, lists of authors I’ve liked, movies, recipes. I have lists of family names—Grizzella and Tryntje are favorites. I have an annotated booklist in three parts that I share with friends (who think I’m nuts). I have a 68 page list of quotations insights that I’ve collected from my reading to which I refer frequently — which bores my family immeasurably.
Then there are the unintelligible lists—the list of ideas jotted down in a hurry, often undecipherable in hasty handwriting, and I wonder what I could possibly have had in mind. I have stacks of notebooks, and have to go back through them to see if they can be discarded and find that I am fascinated with a list I have made long ago and wonder why I troubled to write that down.
My compulsion seems to be a matter of putting it in writing. A line from Richard Mitchell comes to mind —”the business of writing is to stay put on the page so you can look at it later and see where you have been stupid.” Not a direct quotation, but that’s the idea.
Writing it down fixes an idea in your mind. If I have made out a grocery list, I can usually remember everything even if I leave the list on the kitchen table. A list may organize my mind, but I am, in general, no more organized that anyone else —probably less.
Am I alone in my personal weirdness? Anybody else out there? Just curious.
Filed under: Entertainment, Fun n Games, Humor, News of the Weird, Uncategorized
And here you have some imaginative Welshmen and their sheep and their wonderful border collies. What a delight! Don’t miss this one.
Filed under: Uncategorized
What is a band to do when they need a rhythm section and they don’t have one? This is pretty goofy, but it works!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Here’s a fun way to remind you of who they are:
Update, by AE: Caleb Russell could at five years old. (This was in 2006, so he’s 7 or 8 by now):
Filed under: Uncategorized
Here is an amazing group of photographs from the Hubble telescope. They are absolutely breathtaking, and so …strange. Do take a moment to enjoy.
(h/t: Neoneocon)
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, History, Liberalism, Media Bias, Socialism, The Constitution, Uncategorized | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Disappearing Freedoms, Fighting Back, Leftist Lies
Thomas Sowell wrote a rousing column today, as he usually does.
Most people on the Left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom.
Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don’t approve that you are free.
One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the Left’s many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college-admissions committees that students do “community service.”
There are high schools across the country from which you cannot graduate, and colleges where your application for admission will not be accepted, unless you have engaged in activities arbitrarily defined as “community service.”
The arrogance of commandeering young people’s time, instead of leaving them and their parents free to decide for themselves how to use that time, is exceeded only by the arrogance of imposing your own notions as to what is or is not a service to the community.
Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as “community service” — as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community.
Obama has mentioned that college kids working in the college library or hashing in a dining room are not considered community service, while dishing up food in a cafeteria for vagrants is. Explain that one.
According to campaign promises and statements, by 2012, four years from now, over one half of the population will pay no taxes, and be supported by the other half who work. This is not freedom.
Dr. Sowell goes on:
Supposedly students are to get a sense of compassion or noblesse oblige from serving others. But this all depends on who defines compassion. In practice, it means forcing students to undergo a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the Left’s vision of the world.
I am sure those who favor “community service” requirements would understand the principle behind the objections to this if high-school military exercises were required.
Indeed, many of those who promote compulsory “community service” activities are bitterly opposed to even voluntary military training in high schools or colleges, though many other people regard military training as more of a contribution to society than feeding people who refuse to work.
In other words, people on the left want the right to impose their idea of what is good for society on others — a right that they vehemently deny to those whose idea of what is good for society differs from their own.
I think we are in need of an ongoing conversation about what is meant by “freedom”, how we preserve it, and how we lose it. And how we go about regaining our freedom if it is lost.
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Religion, Uncategorized | Tags: Global Warming, Polar Bears
Here at American Elephants, we are passionately partisan, but we always want to be aware of the arguments of the other side. We are determinedly fair and occasionally impartial, or at least we try. Monica said “the Earth has a fever”, and the Elephant himself responded: “Needs more cowbell.”
(h/t: Tom Nelson)
Filed under: Developing Nations, Foreign Policy, News, Terrorism, Uncategorized | Tags: Piracy on the High Seas, Saudi Oil Tanker, Somali Pirates
Pirates have seized a Saudi-owned supertanker leaded with more then $100 million worth of crude oil off the coast of Kenya — the largest ship ever hijacked according to U.S. Navy officials. Somali pirates have become increasingly brazen, but this is the first time they have attacked a fully laden oil tanker. “This is unprecedented” the International Herald Tribune quotes a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, Lt. Nathan Christensen. “Its the largest ship that we’ve seen pirated. It’s three times the size of an aircraft carrier.” The supertanker, the Sirius Star, was hijacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, far to the south of previous attacks. Pirates range over an area from the Gulf of Aden to the Kenyan coast, more than a million square miles. Most ships do not have heavy security, while the pirates are fast and well armed. And most are taken for ransom. Shipping firms are usually prepared to pay, for the sums demanded are still low compared with the value of the ships and their cargo. This seems like a remote crime — piracy in 2008? But the International Chamber of Commerce keeps track of Commercial Crimes. Here is a map of piracy incidents just in 2008. Once it was the Barbary Coast pirates, but now apparently everything old is new again.
Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Uncategorized | Tags: Humor, Star Wars
(h/t Jonah Goldberg at the Corner)
Filed under: Cool Site of the Day, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Science/Technology, Uncategorized | Tags: Climate Change, NASA, Science News, Solar Cycle
After a little over two years of a quiet sun and few solar flares, a new-cycle sunspot group has emerged on Halloween, and been seen over a four-day period in early November.
This is good news. Warmer is actually better than colder. People are much more susceptible to suffering from cold weather than from heat. Here is the report with moving pictures too.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Election 2008, History, Media Bias, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: Obama, Presidential election, The Founding Fathers, The Value of Debate
On January 20th of next year, we will have a new president, and I wish him well. He was not my choice, but he will be my president, and I wish him luck in dealing with the daunting challenges that face us.
We differed sharply on matters of his policies, his associations and his experience. He will quickly get experience. We will see who he chooses for his cabinet. We will continue to fight for the policies we believe in.
Please remember that disagreement and arguing are how we arrive at a way forward. That is what the founding fathers intended. Attempts to silence those who disagree are attempts to destroy the the world’s most durable constitution. Read The Federalist Papers, and renew your faith in debate, and read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence while you’re at it. Our founding documents have served us well.
