Nanny statism in the kitchen

Defying Law, a Foie Gras Feast in Chicago - New York Times

Lets be honest. Nanny statism breeds contempt, not compliance.

I don't recall ever having foie gras but I must say I'm tempted to go to Connie's Pizza myself to try one of their pizzas topped with the illicit organ. Is this what the Chicago aldermen worry about? Though the law went into effect yesterday (8-22-06) enforcement won't begin until today.

“The city gave them a day of fun, but tomorrow we’ll see what happens,” said Joe Moore, the alderman who proposed the ban, adding that the method by which foie gras is produced — force feeding ducks and geese through a pipe inserted into their throats — is clearly animal cruelty.

Sounds like the UN dealing with Iran. Talk tough while pretending not to notice the thumbed nose.

When personal and public responsibility collide

Reading the NYT today I find this article which alternately appalled, infuriated, and saddened me.

Over the last five years, Mysheda Autry has received welfare checks and food stamps, gone through a welfare-to-work program and briefly held several jobs. She has also given birth to her second and third children. (ed. with a fourth due now)

and

“They end up with lots of kids, no family support, no education, no coping skills, so they get a job and lose it and get another job and lose it.’s Its not like they are lying around not doing anything: their lives are constantly on the go as they run behind their kids. But they end up falling way behind. (Gloria M. Guard, president of the People’s Emergency Center)

Appalled by the state of Ms. Autry's life and her incredibly low potential to assume a productive place anywhere in our society. Infuriated that this woman has frittered away her life using only her uterus and poor judgement while being enabled by that portion of society which doesn't share those faults so central to her identity. Saddened to think that the three (soon four or more) children she has given birth to have very little chance of doing better in this world than their mother or grandmother have. Ms. Gard again;

A possibility, once Ms. Autry gets some training, may be work as a home health aide.

Another possibility is that she will continue to do the same things in the same ways with the same results. Earnest efforts to help her squandered.

While she may not beat or intentionally starve her children, this seems like a very clear-cut case of slow-motion child abuse. After eight or nine years of this life her children's potential will be wasted and their lives likely wrecked. Ten years from now you will likely see at least one of her children in prison and what a sorrow that is. What is the solution to the problem Mysheda Autry poses? I'm getting a headache thinking about it. Take the children away and foster them out? Place this unfit woman and children into an institution for the Perpetually Unable To Care For Oneself? Toss her and her children into the gutter to sink or swim? Continue to subsidize her pernicious lifestyle ad infinitum? This creature represents a bad problem without good solutions. What a tragedy. For us all.

Thats why they're called Cheese-Eating Surrender-Monkeys

The title says it all, France's contribution to the Lebanon-Hezbollah-Israel peacekeeping force.

Hezbollah demands end to offensive - Yahoo! News

Hezbollah demands end to offensive; and rapists would probably like to demand an end to their arrests too. In other news, Israel has been defeated.

Hezbollah's deputy chief, Naim Kassem, asked how the group viewed U.S. demands
for its guerrillas to disarm and make way for an international force in south
Lebanon, said: "America and Israel have no right to get a result from their
defeat."

Funny, when American and Russian troops linked up in Berlin at the end of WW2, Himmler didn't claim it as a German victory. The last I looked, Israeli tanks were rolling through Lebanese territory and Israeli jets were pounding Hezbollah positions, not the other way around. I'll have to redefine my definition of victory. I'd ask Hezbollah's chief, but the Iranian embassy isn't taking calls.

Evildoers rounded up

3 Held Overseas in Plan to Bomb New York Target - New York Times

Someone I worked with insisted that there weren't any plots against America by Jihiadis being intercepted by the FBI, CIA, DHS, and other expensive acronyms. His explaination for why there hadn't been any successful attacks on American soil since 9/11 wasn't that competent, vigilant defenders had prevented them but that that nobody was actually attempting to do so.
I shit you not.
This wasn't some deranged paranoid schizophrenic either. A well-educated decent human being actually believes that nobody on this planet hates Americans enough that they would attempt to bomb, behead, shoot, stab, run over with Jeeps, or otherwise wish to harm us.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think, err, drink.

Crashes and near-misses

The In-Car Camera Never Blinks (but Viewers Flinch) - New York Times

I've often wondered just how many car crashes are avoided by those wonderful "defensive driving" tips I heard in Driver's Ed classes back in high school. Turns out that the answer is "a lot." Reading the article highlights the most dangerous things drivers do. As they say, read it all. Even if its the NYT.

Another blow to the presumed superiority of Old Europe - World Times Online

A wine-tasting event 30 years ago which found California wines better than French wines was repeated with similar results.

THIRTY years had passed since the Judgment of Paris, when French oenophiles received a red nose at the hands of American upstarts in a blind wine-tasting competition.
But to the dismay of the French wine experts taking part in last night’s eagerly awaited rematch, Californian vintages have again trumped their Gallic counterparts.

Economic strength, military power, university quality, cultural influence, and now (once again) wine; just what does Old Europe clearly do better than the United States anymore?

HT: Captains Quarters

Now I'll have to find something else to blame for my glacial running speed

Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel - New York Times

At the end of the article is a passage that should delight those who celebrate irony,

Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the
lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way
possible
to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood
things the scientists didn't," he said.

So don't hate the lactic acid pooling in your muscles, embrace it for the fuel that it is.

Russian crooks try to steal a vacuum tube plant

From Russia, With Dread - New York Times

This article is worth reading just for the photo of Mike Matthews, owner of the ExpoPul plant which manufactures vintage vacuum tubes used in amplifiers loved by musicians. Apparently a Russian businessman is using pseudo-legal means in an attempt to steal his business.

By the way, tell me why Mike Mathews and Christopher Lloyd are never seen together.

It's Not Your Father's VA

Naval Institute Proceedings: It's Not Your Father's VA, Art Pine

And its definitely not Oliver Stone's VA either.