It’s been a while since I posted any photography, so here are a few snaps I grabbed in Scotland some years back (click to enlarge):

 These were shot on the Western coast of Scotland in county Kintyre (as in The Mull of Kintyre) a peninsular finger that sticks out into the Irish Sea. In fact, when I took this one I was standing right here. This is on the property of Stonefield Castle on Loch Fyne.

 This former baronial estate may be the most hauntingly beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The place is simply astonishing. Of course Scotland in general is one of the most photogenic places on the planet. It’s mighty difficult to take a bad photograph there. And it can make a hack like me look like he knows what he’s doing.

Here’s a couple more. Click on the thumbnails for a full-size look.

Oh…and if you want to see what a real photographer can do with the place, have a look at this guy’s collection from the nearby Isle of Bute. They’re amazing.

Here’s a blast from the past. A montage of commercial sponsor bumpers from Twilight Zone episodes in the very early sixties. The whole thing runs about 10 minutes. By the way, note the American Tobacco Growers Assoc. spot with the fast talking auctioneer. When we were little, my brother and I thought that was high-larious. We used to try to imitate it and would end up howling with laughter. That memory was completely buried in my subconscious until I saw this reel.

Now I know why I involuntarily blurt out “Sold American!” when I see an auction on TV. Have a look:

Here’s a link in case the embedded player doesn’t work in your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNVMG2307xU

Last evening’s I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis (a bridge I used to cross with some regularity) has brought me fresh evidence of a truly disturbing phenomenon. One that is increasingly predictable in American public discourse.

I first took notice of it in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing back in 1994. And again after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. In fact, I notice it almost every day now. What is this insidious practice that is poisoning the air in the public square?

It is the knee-jerk tendency of ideologues to glom onto the latest tragedy as an ax-grinding opportunity. Here’s all you have to do to join the exploitation parade.

1. Take one shocking tragedy that the public can be counted on to universally consider “a horrible thing.”
2. Take your pet issue–”the one you’re angry and bitter that the American (pick one: public, government, president) hasn’t fully embraced.
3. Find a way to point at the tragedy and shout, “See there! If we weren’t stupidly  _________ (insert failure to embrace pet cause here), then this wouldn’t have happened!”
4. No matter how tenuous the link, no matter how preposterous the correlation, continue to try to hang blame for the tragedy around the neck of your ideological enemy.

Humans of all political persuasions, left and right, are often seduced by this cheap shot logic. But the left has elevated it to an art form.

Remember how the Murrah Building in OKC was still smoldering when then President Bill Clinton tried to suggest that Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts were responsible for inciting the anarchist Timothy McVeigh?

Remember how Robert Kennedy Jr. used a Huffington Post entry to assert that Hurricane Katrina was the Mother Earth’s karmic retribution on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour because he used to be Republican National Committee Chairman for George W. Bush. The logic was if Barbour/Bush had been more supportive of the Kyoto Treaty, the Earth’s troposphere wouldn’t have taken aim at Mississippi and missed slightly to the left.

Remember Kanye’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”?

To be fair, Christians are prone to this as well. (You’ll recall Jerry Falwell’s suggestion that 9/11 was a result of God’s removal of his hedge of protection because of homosexuality and abortion.)

However, no one deploys this maneuver better than ex-conservative Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan’s hobby horse is the U.S. government’s use of tough interrogation techniques, (which he, in a form of semantic bullying, insists on calling “torture.”)

That brings us to yesterday’s horror in Minneapolis.

As divers braved the currents in search of victims, commenters at the Daily Kos were posting many pearls like this:

“Unfortunately, more of these kinds of things will continue to happen as all our monies have gone to the war effort; leaving nothing to take care of infrastructure, and other issues at home. It will take years to catch up. “

You expect that kind of thing in the fever swamps of the Daily Kos comment threads. But before the day was over, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was saying precisely the same thing as he tried to score a few political points over the bodies of the dead and missing” in the process proving once and for all that he us utterly incapable of shame.

There’s a new tragedy in town. Better hurry and hitch up that favorite hobby horse and take it for a ride.

 

A recent Drudge headlined proclaimed, “Scientists Create Mentally Ill Mice.” It linked to a Reuters article  about a breakthrough in genetic engineering.

 It made me wonder: How did the scientists know the mice were deranged? Well, according to the article, it quickly became obvious to the scientists.

One of the mice was heard musing that John Edwards would probably make a fine president. Another was overheard to say that we should stop fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban, bring the troops home and give dialogue and diplomacy a chance. While a third made a big speech about how the government should be running the nation’s health care industry so we can get the same quality health services as British people.

I tell you, it’s downright barbaric what those scientists did to the minds of those rodents. It’s twisted.

On February 12, 1989 I drove the car up to Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City and collected my wife and a 3-day-old baby girl. With pomp and fanfare all captured on VHS tape, we brought Caitlin home, along with a mountain of infant paraphernalia, baby girl accouterments, and a heaping, swirling, throbbing sense of uncertainty that we were remotely qualified to take care of the frail, lovely little thing.

As it happened, we didn’t break her and the authorities never came knocking on the door holding papers declaring there had been a terrible mistake. . . that clueless people aren’t supposed to be entrusted with tiny human lives. In fact, over the next five years, the same heavenly bureaucratic oversight that allowed us to get the first one sent us two more baby girls. An embarrassment of riches.

On August 16, 2007, 17 days from now, we’ll gather up a small mountain of big-girl accoutrements and load up for a move once again. Different car. Same girl. Only this time the move is out. Away.

You see, somewhere along the line that baby girl had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to become a young woman. A curvy, funny, smart, beautiful Jesus-loving woman. One who got herself accepted to a great college. That’s gratitude for you.

Yes, I know millions of families have done this before. And we’ll be only one family in a vast multitude that are experiencing the very same thing at that very same time two weeks from now. But this is my family. That’s my baby girl.

That’s my dinner table that will now be set for four, not five as has been the case for almost 14 years. That will be me telling the restaurant hostess “Table for five please. . . Oh wait. . . I’m sorry, I mean four. Just four.” That’s my house that will ring with one less laugh. That’s my cheek that will be graced with one less nightly kiss. That’s my father-heart that has swelled and healed a little with every “G’night Daddy. I love you so.”

And so you’ll have to forgive me if there’s a selfish part of me that thinks it’s all so very unfair.

Of course, she’ll be back. But we all know it will never again be quite the same. But that’s okay. What has been, has been very, very good. Far better than I deserve.

Sorry readers. I’ve been on the road for several days with little time and limited internet access.

 As you may know if you’ve been following the story on the blogs, the identity of The New Republic’s anonymous soldier-correspondent became known a few days ago. He is Scott Thomas Beauchamp and he is indeed a active duty soldier in Iraq. However, everything he has written remains very much under a cloud of skepticism.

Dean Barnett has the latest on the story and links over at Hugh Hewitt’s blog. And some background here and here.

. . . from Investor’s Business Daily.

 A private firm’s downgrade of its hurricane forecast raises an obvious question: If scientists can’t get near-future projections in a limited area right, how can they predict the climate decades from now?

Read the whole article.

There is nothing we humans enjoy more than having our deeply entrenched biases and presuppositions validated by events. Even when those presuppositions are false and the events never happened.

That’s why so many on the left jumped on the allegations of rape against the Duke lacrosse team. And it may be why the mainstream media unquestioningly accepts allegations of misconduct by U.S. soldiers.

 Mac Owens makes this comparison in a powerful way in this piece over on National Review online.

Check it out.

 

As regular readers know, I’ve been following the evolving story of the pseudonymous military reporter for The New Republic who uses the name “Scott Thomas” whose recent reports of outrageously dishonorable behavior by U.S. service personnel have come under increasing scrutiny (See my posts here and here.)

One such fantastic tale involves a group of soldiers from Forward Base Falcon discovering a Saddam-era mass grave containing the remains of many children. Supposedly one soldier took the top part of a child’s skull and wore it like a crown off and on for the rest of the day.

Now added to the voices pointing out the implausibility of this story comes the voice of Maj. Kirk Luedeke, a spokesman for Forward Base Falcon. NRO Online has details here.

As I was doing a little channel surfing last night before heading to bed and I came across an episode of The Family Guyin which the father, Peter, comes across an ancient Indian burial ground in his yard and proceeds to take a skull and do sophomoric things with it throughout the rest of the episode. The episode is a spoof of the movie Poltergeist, titled “Petergeist.”

Of course The Family Guy is a cartoon for adults and is filled with the usual sexual innuendo, gross-out jokes, sacrilege and off-color language, so I post this link to some highlights of this episode with some trepidation.

Nevertheless, I think it’s important because it may indicate that “Scott Thomas” may knowingly or unknowingly be incorporating an episode of a cartoon into his “reports.”

Here’s a link to a portion of the episode. Once again, PG-13 content this way lies:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6t_XIx0Tj4

This makes me wonder if there are movies and television shows that have featured young men openly mocking the face of a woman who has been disfigured in an accident, or driving wildly to intentionally run over dogs. Wouldn’t be surprised to find there are.

Update:

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb whose questions got this whole party started continues to be the best source for updates. See his blog here. 

Spoiler Alert! 

I haven’t read a single line of a single Harry Potter novel. Nor has anyone in my household. But it’s all the buzz. This new one is about some “deadly mallows,” which is apparently a reference to some poisoned sugary confections.

It’s all very sad really. First a lot of stuff happens. Then a Snipe kills a Bumbledork, as many people speculated might happen. But then Smeldebard learns about it and is really ticked, and goes on a Snipe hunt.

There were lots of rumors about Smeldebard kidnapping Don, but they were so bogus. Don is actually killed by Beatrix Potter in The Battle of Hogswallup. Then a bunch of things are magically turned into other things. And then some of those things are turned back into the things they were. But not all of them. Wands are waved.

By the way, Harry Potter is not a horcrux. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Eventually, Smeldebard is killed in the Department Of Motor Vehicles. And Harry doesn’t die.

It all ends with Harry, Hermione Gingold, and Kramer locked up in jail. And then he wakes up beside Suzanne Pleshette. It was all a dream.