ninme

Posted by ninme at 11:16 am 2 Comments

Mark Steyn in The Corner:

I saw Quantum Of Solace yesterday. Short review: Didn’t think it was as good as Casino Royale.

Anyway, the funniest line in the picture - maybe in the series (up there with Q telling M that Bond’s attempting re-entry) - is when 007 encounters a woman in Russia and identifies her as an agent from “Canadian intelligence”. Daniel Craig deserves an Oscar for his deadpan delivery.

I would love it if Canada turned out to be running an overseas network of glamorous maple sugar traps in deep cover. But, alas, Her Majesty’s defanged Dominion has no agents on foreign soil, unless you count the Mountie snatch team dispatched to New Hampshire to seize me for my “human rights” show trial. (They’re still in the barn, pinned down by my goat.)

(Bonus question: What Ian Fleming novel features a Quebecois Bond girl?

Answer: The Spy Who Loved Me.)

As I pointed out in my Twitter after seeing it: In all of movie history, the only Canadian spy is the one that, when asked, leaves quietly and says “Thank you.”

Posted by ninme at 10:06 am 4 Comments

The Times - Car Trouble
The new administration should resist demands to rescue US car manufacturers; aid risks diverting scarce resources and provoking trade retaliation

The American car industry is in deep trouble. Sales in October fell to their lowest level since 1991. The big three manufacturers - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - recorded big losses in the last quarter and are haemorrhaging cash. Deepening recession, tighter credit conditions and a shift in consumer tastes away from sports utility vehicles, on which profit margins are high, have inflicted severe damage.

The companies are looking to the US Government for help. They have asked congressional leaders for $25 billion in loans to cope with the recession, and another $25 billion to fund employee health care schemes. And they are finding a receptive audience. At the weekend, Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and President-elect Obama both expressed support in principle for a rescue. They were wrong to do so. A bailout of the car industry is a terrible idea. It augurs badly for the new administration’s response to tough economic issues.

Hah! Hah hah hah hah!

The financial crisis is born of mismanagement and predatory lending in the private sector. But at least the bailout of the banks is not a straight subsidy: the taxpayer gets a stake. A rescue for the car industry would recall the failed industrial policies of the 1970s. Subsidising manufacturers in order to protect jobs is a politically potent cause, but it does not work. Its enduring economic effects are to divert scarce capital from more productive uses, and to provoke other countries to erect trade barriers. The danger in acceding to the demands of the car manufacturers is that other industries will also seek aid to withstand recession. Yet the most successful and innovative American industries in recent years have operated without subsidy or trade protection: for example, software, telecommunications and entertainment. American cars have not attracted enough buyers. Supposedly targeted industrial aid is more likely to breed complacency than promote competitiveness.

Rescuing ailing industries represents a retreat to comforting orthodoxies by the Democrats. The new administration might note that the British Government has learnt from experience. Labour in the 1970s supported British car manufacturing, when British Leyland faced a liquidity crisis. The company was a constant drain on public resources. Only later did Labour grasp that investment in manufacturing is wasteful if there is no demand for the product. Gordon Brown has rightly urged Mr Obama not to introduce protectionist trade policies, which would merely compound the crisis. They are not the only example of economic interventionism that should be avoided scrupulously.

Hah!

You know, if I wanted to spend a load of money on an American car, would have bought one. But I don’t want to. Oh wait, yeah I do, but the ones I want they won’t sell here.

Update:

The Times - They might run the economy just like British Rail
The hotel on the shortlist to host the next G20 meeting has a chequered past, by Ross Clark

I am not into Eastern mysticism, but I find myself fretting over the architectural karma that will effuse from the walls of The Grove country house hotel in Watford if it is picked to stage the follow-up next spring to the emergency G20 summit. Far from sorting out the world’s economic problems there, I fear there is a risk that Messrs Obama, Brown and the others might flip and reorganise the global economy along the lines of British Rail.

My own experience of the Grove was in 1985 during its earlier incarnation as BR’s management training centre, when what had been Lord Clarendon’s drawing room was a smoky bar, and his croquet lawn was built over with prefabricated lecture rooms. Harvard Business School it wasn’t. When I arrived for a week’s course as an engineering trainee, the director of studies was quite open that some BR top brass were unconvinced by management training. “They think we spend our time here sitting in circles, holding hands and chanting,” he said.

If only. What followed was a week of seminars presented by functionaries clearly struggling with the concept that they were running a business, not a job club for them and their mates. Too many passengers were using some services, the man from InterCity told us, so we are going to jack up the cost of tickets to discourage them. Can’t you invest in more rolling stock and try to expand the business? I asked. No, he said: that wasn’t part of BR’s remit.

Etc and so on…

Now that bankers and hedge fund managers are in the dock, it is easy to forget how nationalised industries ruined the economy. But with Gordon Brown out to convince the world that we need another state-led Keynesian spending splurge, we would do well to recall what happened last time the State took it upon itself to run industry. The Grove’s transformation from rundown training centre to posh hotel shows just how much richer the country is now.

sigh

Posted by ninme at 10:19 pm 5 Comments

I swear I’m not kidding. At this very moment at 9.02 pm I thought “Wait, what day did I start this blog? Was it the 20th? Then why did the 17th just pop into my head…”

Four years ago, a few days after the 04 election, I started this blog. After the server switcheroo and blog software revolution (Ah, Moveable Type, you bastard I’m rid of you!), I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to add up my traffic numbers. But, for old times’ sake:

I have 8,979 posts (8,980 when this is published) I have 15,865 comments (but I think this new software lists trackbacks as comments and even though I haven’t had a trackback in years (that’s SO 2005) a few of those might be them) My top posts are: Lawyer Up, Kids, 1,957 views, What Year Did 9/11 Happen, 1,207 views, and The Scottish Wildcat and the Iriomote, 1,142 views And my top searches are: iriomote cat, Iriomote wildcat, summer glau asian, which are all rather blessedly wholesome (elder porn seems to have dropped off the top three!).

I can’t even begin to start figuring out Google Analytics right now (anyway we didn’t set it up till a year in or so) because I only ever look at the damned thing once a year, so meh, who cares. But anyway, it’s been another grande year. And I want to thank everyone in the little salon we’ve set up for ourselves for making it another interesting one.

Posted by ninme at 10:00 pm No Comments

This is hilarious:

Wheat & Weeds (On Monday Dinner Out Night, She Covers For U) - Twelfth Imamobama

Posted by ninme at 9:57 pm No Comments

Oh good lord:

Wheat & Weeds - Get A Keload Of This

Remember the infamous Kelo case? In which SCOTUS decided government can seize private property not solely for pressing public purpose but also any time city planners think they can turn a profit?

Here’s the rest of the story: the city of New London razed Suzette Kelo’s (and other people’s) family home…and the project they seized it for fell through. New London put loads of people out of their homes and spent $78 million to get a vacant lot.

That happened here with the (what else?) Monorail. A big stink went up about the Small Business Owners Who Have Had Joe’s Mechanic Shop In Their Family For Three Generations which was being yanked to build the monorail they ended up not building (but still spent enough millions to tax us for it’s nonexistence), but they didn’t make a Supreme Court case out of it.

Jane Roe turned pro-life after (though as I understand it years after) Roe v. Wade. Similar? Or completely different?

Posted by ninme at 12:25 pm No Comments

Clarkson is very entertaining today:

The Sunday Times - The daddy of all idiots at your child’s school sports day, by Jeremy Clarkson

Posted by ninme at 11:53 am No Comments

A Wiki article of unimaginable wealth: List of unusual deaths

Of special interest:

1959: In the Dyatlov Pass incident, Nine ski hikers in the Ural Mountains abandoned their camp in the middle of the night in apparent terror, some clad only in their underwear despite sub-zero weather. Six of the hikers died of hypothermia and three by unexplained fatal injuries. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, one victim had a fatal skull fracture, two had major chest fractures (comparable in force to a car accident), and one was missing her tongue. The victims’ clothing also contained high levels of radiation. Soviet investigators determined only that “a compelling unknown force” had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years thereafter.

And:

1983: Author Tennessee Williams died when he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. Williams’ lack of gag response may have been due to the effects of drugs and alcohol abuse.

Who knew that Tennessee Williams died as late as 1983?

Posted by ninme at 10:36 am 1 Comment

Good heavens.

The Sunday Times - King Charles should be free to speak out

But when will he succeed to the throne? The Queen, at 82, is already Britain’s oldest monarch. The Prince of Wales is now entitled to free off-peak bus travel and the winter fuel allowance. At an age when most people are winding down to retirement he has yet to take up the job for which he has been trained. If nothing changes in the next four years he will become the oldest person to succeed to the throne, beating William IV who was 64.

The laws of succession were not really intended for 21st-century longevity. The Queen has done a fine job but is it fair to ask her to continue doing it into her late eighties, nineties or, if she follows her mother’s example, beyond 100?

A mechanism should be found for Charles to succeed his mother while she is still alive. There would be a role for her, and a permanent place in the public’s affection, as King Mother. Her son, while he still has the energy and enthusiasm, would take on the hard work of being monarch. He has waited long enough.

I never thought I’d see The Times telling the Queen to pack it in and Charles made King while she lives. Not even a George III-style Regency, either, which at least might make some kind of sense. The King Mother? Ridiculous.

And the laws of succession are doing fine. It’s just screwy in this case because the Queen went and got married at a proper age, as women tend to have to do. Charles didn’t, and if he were the Queen’s age, William would be just 48 right now. I think it’s incredibly sexist. If she were King, people wouldn’t be so “concerned” if it’s “fair” to “ask her” to keep “it” up. She’s anointed by God, for crying out loud! You don’t just quit that when you get to retiring age! If she doesn’t want to travel anymore she can stop and he can take over for her but she’d still be Queen and he Prince!

Posted by ninme at 11:44 am 2 Comments

It’s something I’ll never understand, how liberals can see one thing but process the opposite. It’s not like James Bond movies have turned into The Interpreter: The Director’s Cut (now with less running around and more extended talking scenes in the General Assembly!). Bond still flies around to dangerous places and blows a lot of stuff up. He kills people, he operates on revenge, he doesn’t care about the consequences or the collateral damage, but everything works out in the end and M gives him an indulgent look and a quip and the credits roll. And yet the actors involved will then turn around and say something completely nonsensical like this:

NRO - DOUBLE-O BAMA, by Mark Steyn

Before we close the book on this election season, let me quote one of the most dispiriting asides on the subject. Daniel Craig, the star of the new James Bond movie The Audacity Of Solace – no, wait, A Quantum Of Hope - was being interviewed by Kevin Sessums for Parade (that supplement thingie that’s free in all the local newspapers), and as a final question was asked which of the two candidates would make the better 007:

Craig doesn’t hesitate. ‘Obama would be the better Bond because—if he’s true to his word—he’d be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them. McCain, because of his long service and experience, would probably be a better M,’ he adds, mentioning Bond’s boss, played by Dame Judi Dench. ‘There is, come to think of it, a kind of Judi Dench quality to McCain.’

Oh, great. John McCain has survived plane crashes, just like Roger Moore in Octopussy. He has escaped death in shipboard infernos, just like Sean Connery in Thunderball. He has endured torture day after day, month after month, without end, just like Pierce Brosnan in the title sequence of Die Another Day. He has done everything 007 has done except get lowered into a shark tank and (as far as we know) bed Britt Ekland and Jill St John.

And yet Daniel Craig gives him the desk job.

On the other hand, Barack Obama has spent his entire adult life chit-chatting with “community organizers” and campus lefties – and he’s the last action hero? It’s true he’s offered “to quite literally look the enemy in the eye” without preconditions. But, given that he looked the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the eye for 20 years and failed to notice he was an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiter peddling insane conspiracy theories, and that he looked William Ayers in the eye for almost as long and failed to notice he was an unrepentant terrorist, and that he looked Tony Rezko in the eye for an extremely beneficial real estate deal and failed to notice he was already being mentioned in the Chicago papers for various unsavory activities, I’m not sure Senator Obama is the go-to guy for in-the-field intelligence work.

As for his plan to fly to Tehran to “go toe-to-toe” with President Ahmadinejad, one can’t but feel that 007’s famous exchange with Goldfinger pretty much sums up the cross-purposes:

‘Do you expect me to talk?’

‘No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die.’…

Hah.

And yes, his answer was ridiculous. Who do you want on your side when you’re approaching Checkpoint Charlie and you’ve got to rescue the girl? The guy who flies to Germany and coos fatuous platitudes about there being “no challenge too great for a world that stands as one”? Or a crazy old coot who’ll get you over the wall and take a bullet for you? I know who Ian Fleming would have bet on.

Oh well. Ian Fleming’s been dead a long time.

Posted by ninme at 11:28 am 2 Comments

What do we think? Is this something we’d get away with? It’s certainly a funny shirt. “He’s all smilin’,” says Peter.

Posted by ninme at 11:42 pm 3 Comments

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.

Update: It’s been a while since Shasta was with us, but using a combination of her memory and Zoe, my sidewalk kitten up the road, I’ve thrown something together…

Posted by ninme at 5:55 pm 1 Comment

First, The Times archive announcing his birth.

I understand the We Are Not Amused show will be broadcast Saturday night.

Posted by ninme at 3:53 pm No Comments

Gerard Baker, in The Times:

So Washington is agog with anticipation about the arrival of the new president. But Washington being what it is, the immediate focus of frenzied concern doesn’t involve tax cuts or bailouts or sit-downs with foreign leaders. It is the critical decision that will bring euphoria to some and break the hearts of others: where the Obama daughters will go to school.

I’ve long thought that there’s a certain type of parent in Washington that rears children solely for the same reason they do everything else: to move upward in society. They would literally kill to get Nelson Jr into a particular school in the hope that it might be an entrée to some important contact. True happiness for many in this city is the possibility that little Meredith will play on the same soccer team as the daughter of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administrative Affairs, or if fortune is really smiling, some glamorous White House correspondent for one of the networks.

Now suddenly the prospect that their daughter might find herself in the same class as Sasha or Malia Obama - the White House Birthday Party! The Camp David Sleepover! - is, quite simply, going to drive a lot of people insane. This weekend there are thousands of wealthy Washingtonians clinging to the Audacity of Hope that their school will be selected. Many more will flood the lucky academy next year with admission applications. The city’s proudest lawyers will plead with administrative assistants for reconsideration. There will be attempts at bribery. There will be blood.

Plus a hilarious line on Rahm Emanuel:

His managerial style is famous. He is to the courtesies of polite society what Sweeney Todd was to the short back and sides. He is known for using a familiar Anglo-Saxon expletive in conversation as a convenient all-purpose verbal utility vehicle: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, participle, gerund, whatever.

And one final point:

On economics, that suggests that President Obama intends to do what works. That will probably involve a mix of the middle-class tax cuts he promised and some targeted spending increases. But it could well go farther. His economic advisers are understood to be urging him to be bold, as the current crisis demands. A trillion-dollar budget deficit is not beyond the bounds of possibility. He will, if he is as wise as he seems, drop the quasi-protectionist rhetoric that might have sounded good in a campaign but will surely turn recession into global depression if implemented as policy.

Which brings me to an unutterably interesting point of RC2’s the other day:

I couldn’t sleep last night because I had dinner with a very convincing gloomy-gus (who’s lost 30% of his retirement in the last six weeks) who said if Obama was any kind of leader he’d have named a Treasury Secretary and given the market some kind of signal he wasn’t going to destroy the economy instead of yammering on about his puppy in his first press conference.

Said my buddy: either he’s deliberately allowing everything to fail so he can toss his hands in the air and say not my fault and take over the entire economy as we panic, or he is impossibly dithering and weak.

Posted by ninme at 11:43 pm 2 Comments

“On both sides”? Because a middle-aged lady walks across a path with a cardboard cross? Cowards.

Honestly, I blame religious people for a lot of this anyway. I went to Catholic schools and I think every one of my friends is for gay marriage. They had their supposed talons into most of us for upwards of 16 years and all they ever told us was that religion was about loving people, no matter who they are. So, if this is supposedly the quality of the mind-numbed bigots we’ve been turning out, then maybe they’ve got it coming. Who knows.

But why are ex- (or even current-) Christians the only ones doing this? (Ex-Christians and new Eastern-religious. All my cousin’s Hindu-dabbler friends and my would-be Buddhist acquaintances have apparently embraced their new religions only as far as the interesting culinary precepts and bits about loving people, no matter who they are. I guess it’s more interesting hearing that from a more exotic source than one’s own church.) For instance, we can revisit what the Dalai Lama thinks about it all.

Posted by ninme at 11:08 pm No Comments

Deutsche Welle - Cancer Treatment Might Offer Clue To AIDS Cure

Doctors at a Berlin hospital were surprised to discover that, while treating a man for cancer, they also rid his blood of the HIV virus. This could yield a new direction in the fight against AIDS.

The patient in question was a 42-year-old American living in Berlin who was undergoing a bone marrow transplant at that city’s Charite hospital.

The bone-marrow donors were selected because they possessed a rare HIV-resistant genetic mutation since the man had to stop taking AIDS-inhibiting medication for the cancer treatment to work.

On Wednesday, Nov. 12, doctors announced that after two years of treatment, not only had the patient not contracted AIDS — his blood now appeared to be clear of HIV infection.

Well now. Curtsy: Wheat & Weeds.