30 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Sometimes when I observe the ebb and flow of blog commenters, I wonder whether or not we comment just because we’re in the mood. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, for as Plato said, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”.
    Yet with that in mind, I recall Glenn Miller and his orchestra performing the classic In the Mood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6LprT9Emmc

  2. Speaking of Movies. [ Next Post ]
    Looking for a great lost movie can be frustrating when you forget the title.
    The first bunch of Movie data bases that pop up under *Google movie* are not so hot. They just want to sell stuff.
    Allmovie.com seems to be much better than most.
    Example: Looking for a great Peter Sellers comedy I thought was titled *Purple Matador*….
    Lost in the shuffle of Sellers 63 or so movies, it was not showing up anywhere.
    Was only screened in the UK and Europe.
    AllMovie.com listed Sellers movies in such a way that the *Purple Matador* turns out to be *The Bobo*.[1967] Filmed in Spain. Great..finally!
    Silly name, but it derives from the book and the play. While not rated very highly on the site… it is a true gem. Few N.Americans
    ever heard of it.
    Thanks to AllMovie .com for finding the lost movie. = TG

  3. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, TG, if one bothers to look for it. In my opinion, avoiding fashion is the place to start. For example, here’s Peter Sellers with Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan performing The Last Goon Show Of All in 1972:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mo7wuTxze0
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4-B2W2q22c
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GWGD5w677g
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w98GR9EvdQ
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGiwfsytCVY
    Or, if you prefer, part 4 of Pink Floyd’s classic late ’60s work Echoes – at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_1VMmPKnEI – which is their unparalleled work. Only Astronimie Dominie comes close.
    I have collected some other classic works at tinyurl.com/2hxulx if you are interested, some of which go back to the ’30s.

  4. I occurs to me that I should be careful here. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that, eh what? In my opinion the two best pieces of music in the history of man are Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BMV 565 (1705), available as performed by the inimitable Karl Richter at the Abbey Basilica in Ottobeuren, on the Dreifaltigkeitsorgel, which was built in 1766, here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_oIFy1mxM – and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a brilliant performance of which, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1966, is available here – video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3596386168411355814
    Nevertheless, that does not imply that we should not appreciate the other equally brilliant classic works just because they aren’t my first two picks. As EBD has noted here, also without parallel are artists such as Thelonius Monk, as in his 1966 version of “Round About Midnight” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUq2eZ9Fo7M – And Louis Armstrong, including his “What a Wonderful World” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc
    Do not be unaware of the value of the celebrating of the good, just because we must never stop fighting the evil.

  6. The last episodes were great. The upbeat Tennesee number was a perfect surprise and later the harp playing, way above par. Who knew how sharp those pros were?
    Finally that looked like Sellers 3 kids joining everyone onstage. Kept me up too late. = TG

  8. Toronto Star, NYT Try Hand At Math:
    ****************************
    One survey, recently reported by the U.S. government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.
    But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.
    It’s about time for mathematicians to set the record straight, said Dr. David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
    “Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true, for purely logical reasons,” Gale said.
    http://www.thestar.com/News/article/245522

  9. “and in The Star
    The Left, still aching for surrender,” (SDA).
    The German Left surrendered/betrayed its own on August 4, 1914. Ironic? Indeed.
    Below is the cut’n’run account on a socialist website.
    The NDP of Taliban Jack Layton-NDP is the spawn of the German SPD: cut’n’runners/traitors/betrayers.
    …-
    Ninetieth anniversary of the German SPD voting for war
    August 4, 1914, and its consequences
    By Peter Schwarz
    6 August 2004
    This Wednesday marked the ninetieth anniversary of the most fateful date in the history of German social democracy. On August 4, 1914, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) fraction in the German parliament voted in favour of war credits enabling German imperialism to go to war. With the notorious statement of its chairman Hugo Haase, “We will not desert our fatherland in its hour of need,” the SPD placed itself firmly behind Kaiser Wilhelm II and his government in what was to emerge as the bloodiest mass slaughter in human history until that time.
    The vote in favour of war credits represented an unprecedented betrayal of everything the SPD stood for. The German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg described the betrayal as follows: “Never before in the history of class struggles, since there have been political parties, has there been a party that, in this way, after fifty years of uninterrupted growth, after achieving a first-rate position of power, after assembling millions around it, has so completely and ignominiously abdicated as a political force within twenty-four hours, as Social Democracy has done.” And she concluded: “On August 4, 1914, German social democracy abdicated politically, and at the same time the socialist International collapsed.” …-
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/spdd-a06.shtml

  10. The result of some figgering.
    Group: 200. 100 males, 100 females.
    All of those females except one have had sex with only one man. The remaining female has enjoyed the nasty with all 100 of the men. This implies that 99 men have had relations with two women, and one man has had relations with only one woman.
    So, we have 99 men with 2 sex partners each and 1 man with only one. 99 woman have has sex with only one man and one has had sex with 100 men. It balances; averages for both are 1.99 partners. No wonder, since the number of sex acts between men and women of equal population size, considered as two collectivities, have to balance out.
    Now, let’s add a cultural constraint. Assume that the most promiscuous man and woman are both shamed into silence. Since 99 of the men have had an equal number of encounters, it’ll be the biggest braggart who clams up. For the same of narrative flow, despite its mathematical imprecision, let’s assume that one of the guys who got lucky with two gets shamed out.
    Now, we have a group of 100: 1 had one, 98 had two, and 1 has “no response.” So, what we have is a smaple of 99 with 197 different partners betwen them – an average of 1.989 partners per male.
    As far as the females are concerned, we have 99 who had one partner and 1 who has no answer, making for a smple size of 99 with 99 partners between them – and average of 1 partner per female.
    Note that if the most promiscuous man and woman each decide (privately) to give the same answer as his or her best friend, we wind up with (once again for the men, I’m pulling an oversimplification out) 100 men with 199 reported partners between them, and 100 women with 100 reported partners between them. The averages are virtually the same: 1.990 partners for the men and 1.000 partners for the women.
    Lesson? There are more distributions known to man (and woman) than the normal distribution. Prof should consider the skew, and the fact that the few women who seriously desire promiscuity can rack up more partners than a male with a similar desire, due to differental refusal rates in our culture.

  11. Canada: A Mari usque ad Mare.
    One nation: indivisible*.
    Thank you, PM Harper.
    …-
    Sovereignists confront their ‘annus horribilis’
    OTTAWA – It will be a year this month since Prime Minister Stephen Harper led the House of Commons into endorsing a resolution on the Quebec nation. The move was controversial in many quarters, often leading to dire predictions of new tensions to come. But 12 months later, there is mounting evidence that in Quebec the federal resolution has accelerated a significant shift away from sovereignty. …-
    http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/275628
    “I am a Canadian,
    free to speak without fear,
    free to worship in my own way,
    free to stand for what I think right,
    free to oppose what I believe wrong, or
    free to choose those who shall govern my country.
    This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”
    John Diefenbaker.
    * “A house divided against itself cannot stand,”. (H/T Jesus and Abraham Lincoln)

  12. MCGUINTY WON’T BUDGE ON CLOTHES LINE BAN
    http://www.thestar.com/article/274787
    “Pressure is growing on the province to lift “draconian” municipal bans on clotheslines and give people the right to dry their sheets and unmentionables outside following criticism from the province’s chief conservation officer. (…)
    At a time when the government says energy conservation and fighting climate change are top priorities, McGuinty’s reluctance to “free the sheets” leaves many environmentalists and critics scratching their heads.”
    >>>>>
    And they wonder why business and people are fleeing this micromanaged technocracy….Provincial laws about cloths lines has got to go into Guinness as the most ridiculous law on the books.

  13. First, Saskatchewan adopted “Land of Living Skies” to highlight its entomological wonders. Then came word that Wild Rose Country may disappear from Alberta licence plates. Now — a motto for Blighty!
    Dipso fatso bingo asbo Tesco
    It must have seemed such a simple wheeze to Gordon Brown: a motto to capture what makes Britain great. The idea ticks so many boxes on the Prime Minister’s to-do list that it proved irresistible to him.
    A motto would be new, but could convey tradition. Choosing it means consulting people, the kind of participatory democracy that rebuilds trust in politics. And then there is the unstated post-devolution awkwardness of having a Scot as Prime Minister. The motto can highlight Britishness, what unites rather than what divides us. How clever! How British!
    …
    Hundreds of suggestions have been submitted by Times Online readers, in response to an invitation by Comment Central blog. There can, surely, be few citizen’s juries more representative of Middle Britain. And yet they make grim reading for the Prime Minister….

  15. Three Reflections on the Democratic Party That Used to Be, Plus a Footnote
    1. From Senator Joe Lieberman’s November 9 speech:
    …This was the Democratic Party I grew up in — a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders, to draw a clear line between what Nitze in NSC-68 called “the free world” of the West and the “slave society” behind the Iron Curtain. It was a party that grasped the inextricable link between the survival of freedom abroad and the survival of freedom at home — that recognized, as Nitze wrote, that “the idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in the world.”
    And it was also a party that understood that a progressive society must be ready and willing to use its military power in defense of its progressive ideals, in order to ensure that those progressive ideals survived. . . .
    2. …We in this country, in this generation, are — by destiny rather than choice — the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”
    [More, including a well-deserved swipe at NYT…].

  16. In yesterday’s Riders/Stamps game I wonder how many TV watchers saw what I saw. Kent Austin wore a poppy fastened to his jacket by a small Canadian flag pin. I have noticed many do that in the past and although the Legion is not crazy about it I think it is quite appropriate.
    Calgary Head Coach Tom Higgins also wore a poppy although it was difficult to tell because the red poppy got drowned out by the red Stamps jacket he was wearing. What struck me was his poppy was fastened to his jacket, not by a Canadian flag pin, but by a small pin of a horse, the Stamps logo. To me this was completely inappropriate.

  17. “What we don’t have, however, is a massive entertainment infrastructure like the one in the US, so the incredible stories of Canadian military bravery haven’t been immortalized on TV and film. There is no Canadian Saving Private Ryan, so you and the rest of the world don’t know their stories. “: http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2007-11-11-0003/
    Ask, and ye shall receive: http://www.thestar.com/article/275388
    ______________
    The forgotten battle of Passchendaele
    Paul Gross’s $20 million epic film Passchendaele will be the largest homegrown Canadian war movie ever made, and he makes no apologies for that.
    “We’re woefully ignorant of our military history,” Gross says. “For me it’s an issue. How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from?”
    Feature films can work wonders in reconnecting the public with their past, he says. Few Australians really knew about their history at Gallipoli until the 1981 film by the same name, he notes.
    The Passchendaele production team tore up a 20-hectare site in the foothills west of Calgary to re-create the nightmarish Flanders landscape, where heavy shelling turned the earth to fondue.
    […]
    A new movie may finally illuminate the `black hole’ in our memory of this World War I battle in which feared Canadian `storm troopers’ wrested a tiny Belgian town from the Germans. It’s about time
    Gross says that since the 1970s, the idea of teaching military history became controversial, tantamount to being “pro-war.” And we became peacekeepers rather than infantries. “But our actual military history is that we were ferocious fighters, the most feared of the Allied troops.”
    Gross has just wrapped up shooting a new $20 million feature film called Passchendaele, which he wrote, directed and stars in, and should be released next fall. He says it doesn’t shy away from the sheer brutality of the battle.
    The Canadians weren’t shrinking violets on the battlefield. Written and oral histories point out the desire to kill the enemy at all costs, how forthright they were in stabbing with their bayonets a German who was shooting all the way up until his enemy was in his face, before he’d put his hands up in surrender.”
    “In fact, actor Paul Gross points out, the Germans even coined the word “storm trooper” to refer to the Canadians. ”

  18. Vitruvius: Complimenting your earlier post on Sarkozy a possibly more sobering summation.
    What to Think of Sarkozy?
    By The Brussels Journal
    Created 2007-11-11 12:02
    A quote from Tiberge (of galliawatch.blogspot.com) at Lawrence Auster’s blog, 10 November 2007
    Sarko and Bush SEEM conservative compared to Segolene Royal or Hillary Clinton. […] But Sarkozy feels guilty for being even ten percent conservative! Otherwise why would he hire so many socialists, and grovel before Islam, and date (I think) a Muslim woman, and rush into the EU treaty despite his campaign promises, and cleverly help Turkey into the EU, and all the rest? He makes small gestures, band-aid solutions, to look conservative but he’s not. However, he’s not a socialist either. […]
    As for his meeting with the Jews, some French nationalists are acerbic about that because they see him as a lackey of the Washington-Israel axis, or whatever name they give it. This is what is so infuriating about certain French nationalists, whom I quote frequently. Their general ideas and values are fine and good, but there’s this flaw – they hate America and Israel. So they hate Sarkozy doubly for his reaching out to us. And soon he will visit Israel! This will be seen as another act of betrayal by the nationalists.
    (Note: there are different types of nationalists – not all are
    anti-US/Israel.) And in this respect I’m on Sarkozy’s side. He’s a head of state, he’s supposed to visit different countries. To mock him for coming here or going to Jerusalem is ridiculous, and endangers the whole patriotic cause in France.
    But at the same time he is aggressively pro-Islam. He has created several government institutions that give Islamic leaders great power, thus endangering the country he claims to be protecting. […] I think he is a weak man with strong contradictory convictions. Part of him wishes he could be a true traditionalist. But the other part is afraid of the left and of Islam.
    He cannot admit his fear, and he just keeps making promises and band-aid solutions that can never make a dent in the French crises.

  20. Based on the libelous Star headline: PM to cities: Drop dead –
    In todays Toronto Star (or rather, Pimp of filthy propoganda), letter writer June Porter notes:
    “Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be careful about telling cities to drop dead…”
    When the stars grossly manipulated, obviously ignorant readers confirm the lie in writing – one would think this more than proves libel.

  21. Waterboarding has at last claimed a victim. Rachel Marsden, a Toronto Sun columnist, was fired last week over a column she wrote on the topic in the paper’s November 5th edition.
    ————-
    This proved unacceptable to the usual suspects. According to Marsden’s account, she was targeted by an e-mail campaign organized by that bastion of tolerance and free thought, Daily Kos. Her editors at the Sun (although Marsden herself is discreet, these likely would be Glenn Garnett, editor-in-chief, and Mike Burke-Gaffney, managing editor) collapsed faster than Khalid Sheik Muhhamed, and showed her the door immediately, all without a drop of water touching their brows. Marsden now lacks a platform, and that’s a serious loss.
    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/daily_kos.html

  22. Penny,
    Careful when supporting Marsden. She might like you a bit too much.
    Heard about the time she accused her swim coach at SFU of sexual harrassment and got him fired. He was eventually cleared and re-instated and she was proven to have lied. Apparently she liked him, he did not like her and got her revenge.
    Have you heard about the lefty broadcaster(kind of ironic, don’t ya think)who she was involved with sexually but when the relationship ended, she stalked him too. She was convicted on that one.
    How about the time she got fired from Fox and had to be escorted out of the building by security? Rumors of “erratic behaviour”
    One seriously messed up woman with a history of stalking and false accusations.
    enough

  23. Uh Kate typo on your blog sidebar, I think the word ex, or former, or deposed, should be there somewhere?
    😉
    “Smalldeadanimals doesn’t
    speak for the people
    of Saskatchewan”
    Sask Premier Lorne Calvert

  24. This obliterates all doubt and pulverizes its shadow.
    The BBC is communist:
    “Widespread and vigorous miscegenation (race mixing)… is the best answer… Teachers are the most effective anti-racist campaigners in the country, this means more than education in other religions, it means a form of political education.. Only people who understand the economic forces changing their world, threatening them… have a chance of being immune to the old tribal chants. And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress… I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain natural beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off!” — Andrew Marr.
    Talk about conceit; the man’s totalitarian credentials are laid out in plain view. For those who do not know: Andrew Marr is one of the senior journalists, a news controller, at the BBC.
    http://www.iamanenglishman.com/

  25. “I’m the only one left – the last Tommy.”
    A salute to Harry Patch, Age 109.
    Harry says, “Remember the men in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
    Old soldiers never die …-
    WWI Tommy, 109, Says Thank Troops Now
    Military.com
    On the day the British call Remembrance Day, marking the end of the First World War, Harry Patch, 109, recalled his bloody days in the trenches. But in a message that will also resonate with American citizens and troops, Patch exhorted listeners to honor those serving in today’s conflicts, and not wait years before doing so.
    We were the PBI. That’s what we called ourselves. The poor bloody infantry. We didn’t know whether we’d be dead or alive the next day, the next hour or the next minute.
    We weren’t heroes. We didn’t want to be there.
    We were scared. We all were, all the time. And any man who tells you he wasn’t is a damn liar.
    Life in the trenches was dirty, lousy, unsanitary.
    The barrages that preceded battle were one long nightmare. And when you went over the top, it was just mud, mud and more mud. Mixed with blood. You struggled through it, with dead bodies all around you. Any one of them could have been me.
    Yet 90 years on, I’m still here, now 109 years old. It’s incredible to think that of the millions who fought in the trenches in the First World War, I’m the only one left – the last Tommy. …-
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1924471/posts

  27. “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them”

  28. Rage Boy Photoshop Contest: The Results Are In!
    In Patrick French’s article in the Daily Mail (UK), which we discussed earlier, a series of Rage Boy photoshops (originally from here) was presented to Shakheel Bhat. I’ve decided to archive them here, so you can see permanently the things which anger Rage Boy so much. […]
    Includes:
    Irony alert: The following “woman in a bikini” photoshop was a parody of a well known hoax perpetrated against Michelle Malkin. …-
    http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/1348-Rage-Boy-Photoshop-Contest-The-Results-Are-In!.html

  29. How much more can the Liberals tolerate?
    Stephane Dion polls in third place among Canadians when asked who they would want as prime minister.
    Third place! […]
    Dion has slid to just 11% from 15% 90 days earlier in Quebec.
    Just how much more will members of the Liberal Party put up with?
    And now this. Stephane Dion has bled so much support that now combined, Canada’s two major left-of-centre leaders cannot beat Stephen Harper’s leadership numbers.
    Just how much more can the NDP put up with? …-
    http://stevejanke.com/archives/246336.php

  30. “As someone has said of Harper, while his opponents are playing checkers, he is playing chess. Checkmate.”
    Harper’s setting Liberals up for a fall
    The time to strike is now in 2 months he might not be looking at a majority.
    It’s like watching Ewell dicking around at Gettysburg,… Or maybe Hull in Detroit.

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