Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The dead cricket coach, and today’s other stories

I don’t really understand how cricket is played, but I loved watching part of a game at an English village green while enjoying some Faust lager years ago. The guys looked great, the weather was wonderful, and the beer was good. Now here’s a cricket mystery: Bob Woolmer – foul play suspected by more people than Sarfraz Nawaz. My neighbor TigerHawk was wondering about this, too.
PS, Yoddha plays cricket at Princeton.

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Imagine if a Republican made a Democrat congress wait for half an hour, didn’t bring his material for them to review until (literally) the last minute, and then showed up preaching about moral crusades.

Well, Algore did all that, and then compared himself to the 300. No Al, your weight may be approaching 300, but that’s in pounds, not Spartans. You wouldn’t know a Spartan if one fell on you and broke your nose.

And there’s no such thing as “carbon neutral”, and you can not do “an immediate freeze on CO2 emissions,” either. But, as Jules said, Planet-saving low energy crap is for peasants like you and I, but not for Al. (h/t Larwyn).

Update That’s the problem with moralistic, messianic crusading — people expect you to live up to it. (click on the link – Glenn needs the traffic!)

Wretchard asks, Which is Greener: the Prius or the Hummer? but everyone knows the Hummer will keep you safer on the NJ Turnpike.

Maria sent this, Czech President Vaclav Klaus sent this letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee prior to former Vice President Al Gore’s appearance before the panel today. From the letter:

The moral obligation of developed countries to the developing countries is to create such an environment which guarantees free exchange of goods, services, and capital flows, enables utilization of comparative advantages of individual countries and thus stimulates economic development of the less developed countries. Artificial administrative barriers, limits and regulations imposed by developed countries discriminate the developing world, affect its economic growth, and prolong poverty and underdevelopment. The environmentalist proposals are an exact example of such illiberal policies that are so harmful for the developing countries. They will not be able to cope with the limits and standards imposed on the world by irrational environmental policies, they will not be able to absorb new technological standards required by the anti-greenhouse religion, their products will have difficult access to the developed markets, and as a result the gap between them and the developed world will widen.

Don Surber has more on Vaclav. (h/t Larwyn)

Listen to Vaclav, guys.

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Amanda Carpenter and Francis Porretto liked the 300. I guess I’ll have to see it.
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Gustavo Coronel reports on Pres. Bush’s trip to Latin America, and raises the issue of the value of good citizenry:

Listening to Tom Shannon I could not help thinking that there could exist a golden opportunity for the U.S. to take an initiative that, unless I am totally mistaken, would find enthusiastic reception in Latin America and more important, make a significant impact on our societies while generating much good will for the U.S. This initiative would be based on the close correlation that exists between good quality democracy and good quality of citizenship. A country without a critical mass of citizens cannot have a true democracy. Good citizenship is, therefore, the essential condition for democracy to take roots. Furthermore, good citizenship is a key ingredient of a progressive society. Absence of good citizenship has condemned Latin American societies to poverty, undue dependence on the State, ignorance and under-development. It is largely useless for more advanced countries to inject billions of dollars into societies that have no citizens able to put the money to good use. It would be like trying to build castles in the sand. Therefore, a long-term, systematic, perseverant program designed to form citizens would be a most valuable contribution to true Latin American development. This is a program for which both strategy and content can be easily defined and for which there is no need to “rediscover the wheel.”

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Maria sent this article about Chemo alternatives for lymphoma
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I’ll post more later. Right now I’m heading to the gym for an exercise class since Janet-my-personal-trainer’s sick with a cold and my dentate gyrus needs a workout. I assure you it’s not going to be aerobic yoga.

Yesterday afternoon at the gym they were giving back rubs, so I had one. I wonder if those guys/ladies are still around today…
Later
I’m back, no massage, just Pilates.

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Children of Men in out on video

I found it baffling and midlly exhausting, but others liked it.

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Back on daylight savings time, the Carnival, and a few items

Did you reset your clocks today?

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My neighbor TigerHawk ponders College town stickerology (h/t Larwyn, too), but he got 19 diggs from this post.

Let that be a lesson to the rest of us bloggers.

I guess I’ll continue having low traffic.

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Environmentalism is a religion that is based more on political ambitions than science, the president of the Czech Republic warned Friday. I like that guy.
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Gerard takes a look at the Filthy Cultures of the Past Some Still Drool Over Today
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Louisiana Conservative wants Governor Blanco to run.
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Dr Sanity has the Carnival:

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    Hillary was in New Hampshire, and Patrick Hynes blogged about it.
    Speaking of Hillary, via Mara, Barak remembers Apple:

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    The great news about the economy, and today’s items

    Larry Kudlow on the great economy,

    Averages across-the-board are now moving toward all-time highs: Dow, transports, utilities, the small cap Russell 2000, the NYSE index and D-J Wilshire 5000. Inside the indexes, the story is the same: commodities, cyclicals, defense, machinery and construction all hitting all-time highs. The depth, breadth and resiliency of this rally is remarkable.

    America’s bull market economy stands at the epicenter of the newly capitalist world market economy. Therefore, it is no surprise that America’s stock rise is being emulated around the world. This is called economic leadership.

    The reality is that non-inflationary growth and rising living standards are occurring all around the globe. For this, thank the spread of American-style, free-market capitalism. Some call it cowboy capitalism, but I prefer to think of it as prosperity capitalism.

    Record wealth is now being created among a hundred million-plus investors in the United States, including union and public employee pension fund holders who are 60 percent invested in the Bernanke bull market. This, even though they rail against stock market wealth and business in general, and still don’t get it that their retirement wealth bread is being buttered by the fabulous expansion of the portfolio value of the ownership society.

    Stocks are the best barometer of future business and economic health. They are signaling that the wealth of the nation currently and prospectively looks excellent.

    Democrats rule the roost on Capitol Hill, but Bernanke stuck to his free market principles. He is targeting inflation and employment, and so far doing a good job with both.

    Does anybody remember that President George W. Bush appointed Bernanke? And that Bush’s record-low tax rates on capital have promoted strong economic growth? And that this tax-driven growth and investment surge brings inflation down by absorbing the excess money created by Alan Greenspan between 2003 and 2005? The availability of more goods and services makes the existing money supply less inflationary.

    In his brief tenure, Bernanke has mopped up this excess liquidity and reduced inflation expectations. Meanwhile, low tax rates are counter-inflationary. So, a combination of strong economic growth and newfound monetary control are working together for the betterment of investors, workers, businesses and federal finances. The supply-side model is very much in place right now.

    Contrast that with France

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    The “Surge” appears in the streets of Baghdad. Muqtada al-Sadr goes AWOL. The terrorists are hurting.
    Where are the Democrats?
    Democrats Will Follow Iraq Vote With Push to Block More Troops

    And they support the troops, yeah, right.
    It’s called De-legitimizing the Troops, folks.

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    El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners.
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    Cultural Marxism

    Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.

    Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying. They are the psycho-political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left. These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria’s ‘cultural terrorism‘ tactics.

    Read it all. (h/t Larwyn)

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    Dr. Krauthammer writes on how Russia steps back on the world stage
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    Amanda Marcotte manages to put together half a dozen sentences without profanity. She keeps that up, I’ll start believing in global warming.

    It’s 13F in The Principality. Amanda’s got her work cut out for her.

    Who’s to blame for Marcotte’s fall? According to her, Dan’s one of the culprits.

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    Over at the church of global warming, Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions

    A new report on climate over the world’s southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

    This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth’s climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

    It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.

    Oh, I forgot, it’s not global warming; it’s climate change.

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    Stop the ACLU celebrates its first million visitors.
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    Al Franken announces a run for the Senate: a Transcript (h/t Larwyn)
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    Don’t trust those Reuters photos. And yes, the bombs are retarded.
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    If you’re a woman who can’t find a guy who wants to commit, and you can’t figure out why, read this.
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    Fools’ paradise, and today’s items

    Via Linda, Fool’s Paradise – Mass Slaughter in Our Public Schools: The Terrorists’ Chilling Plan

    Via Theodore’s World, Global Incident Map

    America After The Next Attack

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    ‘The Bush rally’ thrills Wall Street

    Despite the gloom and doom we heard in last year’s elections, a torrent of upbeat economic reports show the Bush economy is alive and well, and it is likely headed for a healthier performance in 2007.

    Last week’s report from the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis must have come as a shock to President Bush’s Democratic critics when it showed the economy racing along at a brisk 3.5 percent annual growth rate in the last three months of 2006. For the year, the economy grew at a stronger than expected 3.4 percent, propelled by falling oil and gas prices, higher wage and job growth, increased consumer purchasing power and even an uptick in housing sales.

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    The future Nagger in Chief raises her fists in her characteristic anger and yells at you what she knows will be best for you

    Hillary’s Dark Energy Agenda

    Clinton’s remarks are the first time that a nationally known Democrat has openly called for the government seizure of an industry since President Harry Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry in 1952. The U.S. Supreme Court slapped back Truman’s takeover in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. et al. v. Sawyer. (Like Senator Clinton, Truman also championed a national health-care scheme.)

    While other politicians have suggested establishing an alternative energy fund, Clinton is the first to advocate funding it by taking the earnings of a publicly held American company.

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    Via Larwyn,
    Iran: No Bombs, No Appeasement.

    “That’s only true if we say so” — our self-absorbed media culture I’ll be reading “Hitchens’s review of Frank Rich’s book later today.

    The fence near Edwards’s manse sends him a message.

    Not suitable for work, especially if you listen to the Mark Levin radio link Olbermann Left Limp After On Air Smack Down. Olbermann decided to name Levin “the worst person in the world”. Turns out Keith picked on the wrong guy.

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    In a lighter mode,
    Darren‘s freezing in Richmond.
    Because of that lack of global warming, Gerard went to Costco. I’ve been to Costco twice in my life and will try to avoid a third time.

    Today’s Princeton Global Warming Update
    It was 6F when I got up at 6:30Am today. The sun came out and now it’s 8F
    It’s so cold (How cold is it?) I’m wearing one of these, even when it’s not really flattering:

    Time to wear these:

    Ugly boots, yes. Warm, definitely yes.

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    Update: Superbowl Commercials 2007, via Kim.

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    Blogging from the Public Library

    This morning there’s no internet connection at casa de Fausta. The problem certainly wasn’t caused by the snow, which was sparse,

    and therefore thousands of children had to get up early and head to school.

    I left The Husband to deal with the internet problem and took my trusty laptop to the Princeton Public Library, that $18,000,000 living room where

    people shop, talk and fall in love

    I realize one can’t really control who one falls in love with, but I’ll do my best to refrain from all of those three activities. Right now I’m sitting entirely by myself right next to the LARGE PRINT BOOKS section. It smells of popcorn.

    Last night while I was tidying up the family room I watched one of the weirdest musicals ever: In Caliente (1935), starring Dolores del Rio, whom I remember from when I used to wait for my piano teacher when I was a kid living in Puerto Rico. One of the local TV stations used to play in the afternoons old Mexican movies (mostly horrible tragedies) and Dolores starred in many of them after she left Hollywood.

    In Caliente takes place in a Mexican town of the same name at the Hotel Caliente (the hot hotel) where four mariachis followed the guests singing the title song, much like Sir Robyn’s minstrels, and, while they didn’t meet the same fate as the minstrels, there was much rejoicing. Dolores del Rio managed to look impeccable while wearing evening gowns throughout the film no matter the time of day or what was happening around her, mariachi or no mariachi.

    The rest of the movie’s a Busby Berkely musical, and the songs’ lyrics were written by Al Dubin, of Tip-toe Through the Tulips fame. Judging by his lyrics, Al must have been a wild and crazy guy with a Brooklyn accent, with the emphasis on crazy: here’s She’s A Latin from Manhattan

    Fate sent her to me over the sea from Spain
    And she is one in a million for me
    I found my romance when she went dancing by
    And she must be a Castillian, si, si
    Is she from Havana or Madrid?
    But something about her is making me doubt ‘er
    I think I remember the kid, yeah!

    She’s a Latin from Manhattan
    I can tell by her ‘Man-ya-na”
    She’s a Latin from Manhattan
    But not Havana
    Though she does the rhumba for us
    And she calls herself Dolores
    She was in a Broadway chorus
    Known as Suzy Donahue

    She can take her tambourine and whack it
    But to her it’s just a racket
    She’s a hoofer from Tenth Avenue

    While the NYT reviewer said,

    Perhaps its most notable factor is the restraint of Busby Berkeley’s song and dance interludes

    restraint is not what comes mind when you watch eight horses running amok in a Mexican cantina while three dozen dancers drink from shot glasses and sing “Muchacha, at last I’ve gotcha where I wantcha, muchacha“, and Dolores del Rio has just smacked her suitor across the face with a crop, after which he falls down the stairs and miraculously recovers all the while keeping time with the music.

    Here’s a still showing the moment just before she grabbed that crop and whacked him.

    The lyrics are special,

    Muchacha, tonight I’ve gotcha where I wantcha, my Muchacha.
    I’ll watchcha just like a cat would watch a little cucaracha.
    So, stand up and hand me your lovely charms,
    Give me two red lips and a pair of arms.
    I’ve gotcha and in the lingo of the “Gringo,” I’m so hotcha,
    Muchacha, for you.

    I can almost guarantee that no one’s going to be falling in love at the Public Library if they hear those pick-up lines, but going by what Robert Osborne said, being at the set must really have been a hoot.

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    On to today’s items:
    Things are getting more caliente in Venezuela now that the National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months.

    Also caliente, the Chinese used a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile to destroy a weather satellite that had been launched in 1999. Meanwhile in Iran, the UFOs are flying.

    Venezuela and Iran are now facing reduced oil demand, and oil futures dropped to $50. Captain Ed asks, Have The Saudis Declared Economic War On Iran?

    This morning’s WSJ has the latest UN scandal, the Cash for Kim, a.k.a., United Nations Dictator’s Program

    The stakes are nonetheless very high because, unlike Saddam’s Iraq, North Korea has already succeeded in testing its nuclear bomb. The hard currency supplied by the UNDP almost certainly goes into one big pot marked “Dear Leader,” which Kim can use for whatever he wants, including his weapons programs. This may not violate the letter of Security Council Resolution 1718, which restricts trade in anything having to do with North Korea’s nuclear or missile programs, but it certainly violates its spirit.

    Unlike Oil for Food, there’s no evidence to date that corrupt UNDP officials are in on the game–though given the U.N.’s record of late, it would be unwise to rule that out before a full investigation.

    In Turkey, Hrant Dink has been shot dead. He’s the guy who had been prosecuted under Turkey’s strict laws against “insulting Turkishness.”

    In lighter news,
    There’s a local exhibition of diverse views on ‘What’s Sacred’. I might drop by during the weekend.

    Geoffrey Chaucer got tagged with the V Thinges Meme

    Al Gore, weather maker Takes on His Critics… while Instapundit links to Gore Effect in the Urban Dictionary:

    The well documented phenomenon that leads to very low, unseasonal temperatures, driving rain, hail, snow or all of the above whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global “warming”. Hence the “Gore Effect”

    Then there’s that creepy picture. Botox? Wrinkle fillers? Make-up? Or airbrush?

    And from Maria
    Castro Shuffling in Place

    The cadaverish dictator shuffling in place is a perfect metaphoric rendering of Castro’s Cuba over these many decades. He took his country from prosperity and a place at the head of Latin America in material terms to the bottom. In practically every material measure his country is a slum. In terms of freedom it is one vast jail. Had he, when he came to power after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s seven-year dictatorship, made good on his promise to return Cuba to the democratic condition in which it had existed in the 1940s, his country today would most likely be the richest and freest country south of our borders, and possibly Castro would be in the pink and deserving of the accolades now paid him by the American left’s rich and fatuous.

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    A friend’s question

    Yesterday I attended a lecture at the university where a very high-ranking PLO official presented himself as a victim of Israel. The material introducing this man specified that the speaker

    served from 1978 to 1981 as a staff member in the office of Yasser Arafat, former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in Beirut, Lebanon

    This self-proclaimed victim of Israel lives a life of privilege, lecturing across the world on the Palestinian cause. He socializes with the elites, wears fine clothes, and travels in style. Some victim.

    The lecturer believes that Arafat

    was a great man, undeniably one of the greatest of the second half of the twentieth century

    Arafat, who basically invented airplane hijackings and suicide bombings, whose evil and venality can be matched by few.

    But the lecture was not surprising.

    What surprised me was how many people in the audience of 300 nodded in agreement to his statements. We’re talking about an audience at a very rich town, listening in a large, well-appointed hall in one of the foremost universities in America. That audience applauded for nearly two minutes after the lecture was finished.

    There were people there I know. People who are well-informed. People who supposedly know about the Middle East. People who take time to attend lectures and read on the subject. People who go to church. Those people were applauding a Christian whose father is buried at a Catholic cemetery but who nonetheless defends a monster who saw nothing wrong in weaponizing children to kill the people of the only democracy in the region.

    Those were the people applauding the speaker.

    So this morning, when Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, who is a good man, and a friend, asked in his post,

    Does anyone seriously believe that the pious and noble words, spoken with such reasonableness in European languages by the Palestinians, can disguise their continued refusal to accept Israel’s existence?

    I couldn’t help but remember yesterday’s pius and noble words, spoken with such reasonableness in heavily accented English by a terrorist apologist, and I remember the hundred or so people nodding in agreement to those same words.

    And I have to answer my friend’s question, and say, yes.

    That two minutes’ applause opened my eyes.

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    Update Kesher Talk has two posts of interest Working on mysteries without any clues
    and Meet the new PLO diplomat

    Update, Friday, January 18 If you really are Afif Safieh

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    The $18,000,000 living room

    Sometimes I can’t believe my own near-sighted eyes.

    I was reading the Carnival of the Insanities when I came across the most insane item of all, all the more insane because it’s true: Who Needs Books?

    The librarians of Fairfax County, Virginia, have reinvented the idea of the library for the 21st century. “A book is not forever,” says Sam Clay, the director of the system. “If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that’s a cost.” So Clay has set out to purge from Fairfax County libraries all 40 feet of tulip books, which were apparently purchased during the great Tulip Mania of the 17th century. But it’s not just books on tulips he’s tossing into the dustbin of history. Aided by a computer program that earmarks books that haven’t been checked out in two years, he has ruthlessly weeded out outdated works by such long-dead, irrelevant authors as Virgil, Aristotle, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and many others, all to make room for ten more copies of the latest bestseller by John Grisham.

    Books that bored me to tears when I was young and forced to read them in school are finally getting their just desserts.

    Reads like something out of The Onion, doesn’t it?

    Cynics like myself might think that this is the latest ploy from librarians facing budget cuts to try to create an outrage in order to have more money poured into the public library.

    Wrong. It’s part of their long-term strategy:

    To do more with less, Fairfax library officials have started running like businesses. Clay bought state-of-the art software that spits out data on each of the 3.1 million books in the county system — including age, number of times checked out and when. There are also statistics on the percentages of shelf space taken up by mysteries, biographies and kids’ books.

    Every branch gets a printout of the data each month, including every title that hasn’t circulated in the previous 24 months. It’s up to librarians to decide whether a book stays. The librarians have discretion, but they also have targets, collection manager Julie Pringle said. “What comes in is based on what goes out,” she said.

    But it doesn’t stop there:

    “I think the days of libraries saying, ‘We must have that, because it’s good for people,’ are beyond us,” says Leslie Berger, president of the American Library Association.

    Here’s the punch line, folks: Leslie Berger’s not only the president of the ALA, but, as the WaPo points out, she’s the director of the Princeton Public Library:

    “There is a sense in many public libraries that popular materials are what most of our communities desire. Everybody’s got a favorite book they’re trying to promote.”

    The Princeton Public Library “has become the community’s living room“, a place where

    people shop, talk and fall in love.

    How about that! Is there a verb missing (r-e-a-d) in that sentence?

    Unlike my own living room where I don’t have a TV, the PPL has several large plasma screen TVs in the building – just in case you need your fix. If Linda Montag walked in she’d feel right at home.

    At three stories, the Princeton Public Library is monumental in scale…

    That it is: “58,000 square feet on three floors for public use plus a 4,000 square foot mechanical penthouse on the fourth floor”. They also keep their lights on all day and all night.

    …and at the same time openly welcoming. A large glass “porch” and playful glass staircase create a lively “see and be seen” theatricality along the main Princeton street, while quiet spaces and reading nooks are secluded throughout the building. Materials are attractively “merchandised” through custom displays, lighting and graphics forming interior landscapes that invite browsing and inspire exploration for every level of user.

    I’m posting this text from the PPL site just so you know that here in The Principality we’re not all a bunch of esoteric nerdy dorks interested only in arcane texts of substantial literary merit.

    We’re also lively, interested in “seeing and being seen”, and like our open glass staircases to remain playful.

    And for that the PPL cost $18,000,000.

    At least Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Abe Books are there when I need them.

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