Moe Lane

We have to make sure that it’s always worth it.

I don’t know who sings this version, but it’s No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle. Lyrics here.

Hey, Firefox’s spellchecker recognizes ‘squamous.’ They clearly know their target audience.

Anyway, I noticed Musica Cthuliana mostly because they follow me on Twitter – I can’t imagine why – and I finally got around to listening to their stuff. They’re marketing it for people needing horror roleplaying game background music, and they’ve hit it; I might not pick it for Delta Green – at least, not all the time – but it’ll do nicely for your regular Call of Cthulhu, and maybe even some of your darker* White Wolf World of Darkness games.

Anyway, I like what I’m hearing so far.  Check out the free stuff; they’re planning to have a new CD out soon. Presumably they’re also working out how to separate American buyers from their cash at the same time.

*Yes, it can always get darker.

Via Instapundit comes both Roger Kimball’s and Tigerhawk’s comments on this Forbes article about Clifford Asness (“The Protest of a Patriot“). Come, I will hide nothing from you: I am not currently a businessman, and it’s been almost a decade since I was really involved in any sort of business. So I have no personal knowledge about the exact number of people out there who are discovering that they, too, can have a class interest; that they feel that it’s not being served properly in today’s anti-productive atmosphere; and that they feel personally insecure about saying the previous too loudly. (more…)

As in, he really wants to know if you like puppies.

I’m kind of allergic, myself.

And you can believe their intentions as much – or as little – as you like; speaking as an incorrigible giver of advice that I know darn well to be ignored, their cheerful “forget all of this when we get a Democrat that we like running for office” attitude is an argument in favor of it being honestly meant advice. The short version? Don’t go after the current Democratic President the way that the last Democratic President was gone after.

Yeah, some of you don’t want to hear that; personally, I’m more interested in the 2010 election than I am the 2012 one anyway. I figure that the White House can find it just as easy to try to claim credit for everything that a GOP-dominated Congress does and call it a domestic policy as he currently does now for a Democratic-dominated one.  Besides, there’s a need for local support in elections.  There’s always a need for local support in elections.  There’s always going to be a need for local support in elections.

H/T A Conservative Lesbian, whose major problem with the advice is that it implies keeping Michael Steele as RNC Chair.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…Mind you, said answer is “It depends on what you believed, going in.” Yes, I know. Not very helpful an answer, even if it is almost as accurate an answer as you’re likely to get prior to, well.

I found that dichotomy everywhere as I interviewed experts about the emerging science of spirituality. It’s kind of like a Rorschach test: Some researchers look at the data and say spiritual experience is only an electrical storm in the temporal lobe, or a brain gasping for oxygen — all fully explainable by science. Others say our brains are reflecting an encounter with the divine.

And almost invariably, where a scientist stands on that issue has little to do with the clinical findings of any study. It has almost everything to do with the scientist’s personal beliefs.

Via Fark.

This would be the point where I make a Flatliners reference, except that I never actually saw it.  I did see Brainstorm, which was sort of about that.

Kind of.

Not really, actually*.

Moe Lane

*Besides, it should have taken the researchers roughly thirty seconds to realize that a reliable method of recording and playing back memories would have guaranteed their research funding by the porn industry for the rest of their natural lives.

Via Hot Air Headlines: “Conservatives itching for SCOTUS fight.” Remove the snide tone (which, to be fair, is much less than usual), and this Politico article pretty much sums up the GOP base’s attitude: it’s time to go waltzing Matilda.

“The other side does not agonize about whether they are going to give a Republican Supreme Court nominee a difficult time, they just do it.” – Gary Bauer, president of American Values.

Don’t like it? Have the President nominate a real moderate, then – and by ‘moderate’ I do not mean ‘liberal who doesn’t express hatred for Republicans anywhere there might be a recording device.’ Think that you can’t wait, because our coming out swinging is going to help the liberal cause with Americans? Funny: that’s what they said about Cheney throwing down on enhanced interrogation techniques. I’d suggest that people ask Nancy Pelosi how she thinks that one worked out, except that she responds to all questions like that these days by putting her fingers in her ears and shouting ‘LALALA!’. Which would not be cute if my two-year-old did that; you can imagine how it looks on someone who is third in line for the Presidency.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

President Obama, that is.  Via Holy Coast:

Several dozen professors had called upon the first African-American president to forgo a Memorial Day tradition of laying a wreath at a monument to Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, the grand hillside preserve across the Potomac River from the Capitol on the onetime estate of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Instead, the White House sent wreathes to both the Confederate memorial at Arlington and to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington’s historically black U Street neighborhood north of the Capitol.

Presidents traditionally visit Arlington to personally leave a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, bearing the remains of unidentified U.S. military members who died at war. And President Barack Obama did that today, during his first Memorial Day ceremony as president. They have aides deliver wreaths to other memorials – including, today, at the mast of the USS Maine and at the Spanish American War Memorial.

Included in the ranks of said protesters is our old friend Bill Ayers, would-be mass murderer and domestic terrorist. While I’m sure that the President is grateful that he’s decided to come down on the other side of this, one wonders what personality flaws are present in Ayer’s colleagues, that they would be happy to count him as one.

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via AoSHQ Headlines) There’s a metaphor here.  I can feel it in my bones:

KOMODO ISLAND, Indonesia – Komodo dragons have shark-like teeth and poisonous venom that can kill a person within hours of a bite. Yet villagers who have lived for generations alongside the world’s largest lizard were not afraid — until the dragons started to attack.

The stories spread quickly across this smattering of tropical islands in southeastern Indonesia, the only place the endangered reptiles can still be found in the wild: Two people were killed since 2007 — a young boy and a fisherman — and others were badly wounded after being charged unprovoked.

Part of the problem may be that the villagers have been prohibited from feeding the dragons for the last decade or so, thus possibly causing the species to switch humans from the “good source for food” to “good source of food…”

Hey, look, if you want to read a blog written by somebody who actually knows something about Komodo dragons I’m sure that you can find one out there. This is the blog run by the guy who convinced his Compositional Writing class in high school that he had one of these babies living in his basement.  It’s also the blog written by the guy who owns Curse Of the Komodo, which is unfortunately a movie so bad that not even a softcore lesbian scene would have redeemed it.

And that’s pretty bad.

If you’re wondering why this Time article (“North Korean Nuke Test: What Good Is Diplomacy?“) sounds, well, sensible, take a look at the byline:

Bill Powell/Tokyo

It’s amazing how being somewhere that the lunatics in North Korea can easily hit with a nuclear weapon can clarify the mind. Although I am forced to point this out to Mr. Powell: his “usually very well-informed intelligence source in east Asia” may not have seen this coming, but John Bolton predicted it last week. Legal Insurrection is waiting to see whether anybody who criticized Mr. Bolton for that op-ed is going to retract, apologize, or correct their statements now.

Legal Insurrection will probably have a long wait.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, they’re claiming that it was, and there’s evidence that it happened in the form of an earthquake,so that’s how everyone is betting.  Japan is calling for an emergency UNSC meeting; South Korea, dealing simultaneously with this and the suddenly-more-murky suicide of its former President, is doing the same.  The White House hasn’t put up the President’s official statement on this yet, but you can read it here – it differs from the White House statement in 2006 most notably in its unconscious reliance on the UNSC to resolve this situation.  Also missing is any indication that the President has personally consulted with our allies in the region, but no doubt he’ll address that when he holds a press conference this morning on the North Korean crisis.  Note that I am merely assuming at this point that there will be one, and that it will take place before noon.

Meanwhile, John Bolton predicted that this test was going to happen last week; he also noted last week that the administration wasn’t taking the possibility of a second test all that seriously.  Compare the White House statements from today and 2006 again and ask yourself, Which one sounds like it was written by people taken by surprise? Also ask yourself, Is Bolton right when he suggests that not taking even a soft line on this will merely encourage North Korea – and Iran – to proceed?

Please also note that we are in a situation where two of the biggest current, active, and intractable threats to world peace are rogue nations simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and missile technology.  Successful creation of both will put at immediate risk our regional allies; allies that we have spent a lifetime cultivating; and who are genuinely alarmed at the activities of their neighbors.  And in both cases, the enemies of said rogue nations were picked for essentially irrational reasons, meaning that normal rules of deterrence may or may not work.

Meanwhile, President Obama wants to gut missile defense programs*.

Um, no.  That’s stupid.

Moe Lane

*Via FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog, via Michelle Malkin.

Crossposted to RedState.

This was supposedly one of the most popular songs of the Civil War, on either side.

Lorena, John Hartford