Reader Tips

Reader Tips 47 Comments

Good evening, welcome to the Wednesday night edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight we sail east through the Strait of Gibraltar, almost run aground on Tunis — apparently the captain values retsina more than the lives of his passengers — and land on the Greek island of Kalymnos, where we look back to Florida to pay tribute to the tsabouna, a shepherd’s instrument that has been played on the Greek Islands for over 2,000 years.
To play the tsabouna one must blow hard into a carefully selected part of a dead goat until the entire goat is inflated, squeeze with all your might until the goat begins to sing, and then use your fingers to serially choose, in rapid succession, from the six available note-holes drilled conveniently in one of it’s hooves.
Difficult to play but easy to listen to, the sound of a well-played tsabouna is irresistible, as you’ll see around the 1 minute 30 second mark of the video. So here then, without further ado, Nikitas Tsimouris plays the old chestnut the tsabouna.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.

47 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. “The Danish Tax Commission estimates that a cow will emit four tonnes of methane a year in burps and flatulence, compared with 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide for an average car.”
    So tax the cows

  5. This should give somebody some fodder….
    UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer:
    – “This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change. ”
    – “Parties have recognized the urgency of action on climate change and have now provided the political response to what scientists have been telling us is needed.”
    Wherein the bureaucrats let us know that they have no intention of allowing us to enjoy prosperity.

  8. OMMAG — Hmm. Looks like there are a lot of empty chairs. I guess the skeptics have left the building.

  10. Leftie blowhard Linda McQuaig, in the Toronto Star, Tuesday, Mar. 10:
    “Canada’s top marginal tax rate was above 80 per cent from the late 1940s until 1970, and yet our annual economic growth in those years was above 5 per cent. In 1981, we reduced our top marginal rate to 50 per cent, and yet our growth rate has averaged only 1.4 per cent since then … This suggests high taxes on the rich are not the prosperity-killers that the rich claim.”
    The slow economic growth rate comes DESPITE the lower top tax rates and DESPITE the great and ongoing advancements in computers, business administration and procedures that have been made over that period. The slow growth rates are mostly caused by (1) the massive expansion of the welfare state, (2) large government subsidies to parasitic “activist groups”, (3) the wasteful shuffling of business dollars out of one pocket and into another through taxation and subsidization, (4) the incredibly complex taxation system that even few experts fully comprehend, and (5) the incredible amount of regulation still on the books (500,000 in Ontario alone, according to a recent column in the same newspaper).
    If we had 80 per cent tax rates today, we’d probably be back in the Stone Age within a few years. I would deal with (2) and (4) immediately, (3) and (5) shortly thereafter, and (1) later.

  11. One of Canada’s pundits who always wants to have his cake and eat it too, Hugh Segal, writing in the Globe and Mail, Wednesday, March 11:
    “The fact that our economy is taking on water because a reckless American speedboat produced a 90-foot wave and a hugely destabilizing wake, forcing Canada to take emergency action, neither discredits nor diminishes the solid Tory balance between a private economy that generates employment and wealth for hard-working farmers and business people, along with support for social and public programs, and a coherent elected public authority that pursues an enlightened and modest role for government.”
    Wait a minute. What ‘modest’ role for government? Government has its finger in every pie already. It takes almost 50 per cent of its citizens’ personal incomes in taxes. If it were to have a ‘modest’ role, you’d have to cut about 75 per cent of it.
    “This balance is part of our Canadian Tory history. It embraces tradition, supports social and economic progress that is mutually reinforcing and builds legitimacy around the core value of equality of opportunity. Keeping this latter mission front and centre while tackling unemployment, poverty, economic growth and prosperity is not only the right Conservative mission, but the right course for Canada.”
    You don’t have to have government “tackle” unemployment; you only have to let wages find their free market level in order to keep unemployment very low. You don’t have to “tackle” poverty either, you only have to let people act productively and to trade freely with each other, and to reap the mutual profits or benefits from doing so.
    The ongoing issues with economic growth and diminished prosperity stem largely from governments butting in and trying to “tackle” this or that problem and compounding their errors (see comments in my previous post).

  12. This evening I have received the 2nd fund-raising e-mail from Irving Gerstein of the Conservative Party of Canada. Since I never signed up to receive such e-mails, I’d be curious to know how they obtained it. Curiously, the e-mail address they’re writing to is the same one that I use here on SDA.
    Here’s what I wrote him:
    Dear Mr. Gerstein,
    As you will learn from my blog – http://Pelalusa.blogspot.com – I am very much a conservative Canadian. Furthermore I have stated publicly that I will donate to the Conservative Party of Canada once the atrocious Limited Free Speech provisions are removed from the various “human rights” commissions across our country. I mean this sincerely.
    Until then please remove me from your mailing list as I never agreed to accept such e-mails from you.
    Sincerely,
    Robert Werner
    Vancouver, BC

  13. This evening I have received the 2nd fund-raising e-mail from Irving Gerstein of the Conservative Party of Canada. Since I never signed up to receive such e-mails, I’d be curious to know how they obtained it. Curiously, the e-mail address they’re writing to is the same one that I use here on SDA.
    Here’s what I wrote him:
    Dear Mr. Gerstein,
    As you will learn from my blog I am very much a conservative Canadian. Furthermore I have stated publicly that I will donate to the Conservative Party of Canada once the atrocious Limited Free Speech provisions are removed from the various “human rights” commissions across our country. I mean this sincerely.
    Until then please remove me from your mailing list as I never agreed to accept such e-mails from you.
    Sincerely,
    Robert Werner
    Vancouver, BC

  14. Malevolent extreme-left windbag Judy Rebick, along with someone named Alan Sears, writing in the National Post, Tuesday, March 10:
    “These past few weeks have seen an unprecedented attack on free expression on our university campuses. The poster announcing Israeli Apartheid Week was banned at Carleton, University of Ottawa and Wilfred Laurier University …”
    These past few years have seen an unprecedented attack on free expression in Canadian society, via the “human rights” commissions that trample the human right to free speech. Have Rebick or Sears ever denounced this? Have they ever stood up for the free expression rights of Mark Steyn, for example?
    Incidentally I have stated previously that I disagree with the banning of propaganda posters (the one in question featured a Palestinian child holding a teddy bear that may or may not have been named Mohammed).
    “Jason Kenney also threatened to pull funding from immigration settlement programs administered by the Canadian Arab Federation on the basis of their record of advocacy for Palestinian rights.”
    No, wasn’t it on the basis of their record of advocacy for the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah?
    “While most university administrators and event organizers have not been intimidated by false charges of hate and anti-Semitism, unfortunately the mainstream media has failed to cover the events.”
    What about the true charges of hate and anti-Semitism, like the intimidation suffered by the Hillel group at York, who were chased into their lounge by activists shouting “Die, Jews”?
    “The organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week are committed to freedom of speech and to working against all forms of oppression, including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of racism or discrimination based on religion, nationality, gender or sexual orientation”.
    All forms of oppression? When did you last speak out or “work against” the plight of ethnic Uighur Muslims in China, or the victims in Darfur? What about the ongoing oppression in places like North Korea or Zimbabwe? Or what about when the targets of verbal abuse or “discrimination” are Americans, businessmen, landlords, or the perceived “rich” (as in most Linda McQuaig columns)?
    “These accusations of anti-Semitism are designed to shut down discussion of Palestinian rights by blurring the boundary between criticism of the State of Israel and attacks on the human rights of Jewish people.”
    Don’t accusations of “racism” fly fast and furious from leftists whenever they want to shut down any discussion on any topic by anyone who disagrees with them?

  16. [quote]Here’s a good editorial from two fellows at the Fraser Institute. I hope that ALL Americans read it because it should [rightfully] freak them out![/quote]
    Robert W.
    That is what I have been saying.. Canada has an opportunity to lead… The Obama (aka George Soros’s dough boy) are heading into a juggernaut.
    Those that don’t know Soros, the ultra Capitalist that tanked more than several US Companies, it may help to research “Tektronix” of Beaverton OR. They where a US manufacture of oscilloscopes & scientific Instrumentation. In ~ 1993 Soros’s forced his way on the Board realizing that the company was worth more broken up. The sales/spin off, personnel layoffs left Tektronix a shell of its former self. They now manufacture junk products in Asia.
    I came upon that information first hand from the CEO, at the time, that predicted the SOB Soros would destroy the company. He did!

  18. “1998 remains the warmest year on record, and since then there has been no discernable upward trend”
    This is posted on BBC website.
    More:
    “The carbon emissions market risks being the next bubble to burst.”
    “No amount of “it’s even worse than we thought” headlines will convince a sceptical public if the words don’t fit with the evidence of their own eyes.
    1998 remains the warmest year on record, and since then there has been no discernable upward trend.”
    …-
    “Cold reality of global warming efforts”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7929174.stm

  19. How do you spell “OOOPS”?
    Mar 12, 7:35 AM EDT
    Alaska Gov. Palin’s daughter, fiance break up
    By RACHEL D’ORO
    Associated Press Writer
    Alaska Gov. Palin’s Daughter, Fiance Break Up
    Documents
    Palin’s agreement to reimburse state for family travel
    WASILLA, Alaska (AP) — Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby.
    Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided “a while ago” to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family’s home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.
    He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.
    Bristol Palin said in a statement that she was devastated about a report on Star magazine’s Web site that quoted Levi’s sister, Mercede, as saying Bristol “makes it nearly impossible” to visit the teenagers’ infant son, Tripp. The baby was born Dec. 27.
    “Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to `cash in’ on the Palin name,” said the statement, which was issued through the governor’s political action committee. “Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth.”
    SarahPAC spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton did not immediately respond to calls seeking further information. The governor’s spokesman, Bill McAllister, declined comment.
    Sarah Palin revealed her daughter’s pregnancy just days after being named John McCain’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. She had said in December that her daughter and Johnston “are committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child.”
    In an interview that aired on Fox News last month, Bristol Palin said her fiance saw the baby every day and described him as a “hands-on” dad.
    Johnston and Palin had said they were considering a summer wedding.
    “We both love each other,” he told the AP in October. “We both want to marry each other. And that’s what we are going to do.”
    —
    Associated Press writer Anne Sutton in Juneau contributed to this report.
    © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

  20. The CBC has a report on Sarah Palin’s daughter splitting up with her fiance.
    They won’t allow any comments regarding Neil MacDonald and Peter Mansbridge’s smear of Sarah.
    They tried to tell us that her daughter was the real mother of 4 1/2 month old Trig and the was 5 months pregnant.
    And Mansbridge intro the report by saying that the McCain campaign hadn’t done enough research before choosing her.
    How much research does it take by the CBC to figure out that a woman 5 months pregnant is likely not the mother of a 4 1/2 month old baby?
    http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/03/12/palin-johnston.html#socialcomments
    http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/09/03/jonathan-kay-the-cbc-s-appalling-smear-on-sarah-palin.aspx

  22. STOPIGGY.
    …-
    “During filming, “her mother was there every day … there is no nudity, or sex,” Sihra said.”
    urlm.in/bwyg
    “Ravishing ruby, she’d been around for awhile
    Ravishing ruby, she was a truckstop child
    Born in the back of a rig somewhere near l.a.
    Ravishing ruby, you poured a lot of hot coffee in your day” (Tom T. Hall)

  23. “Ruby Dhalla has mysterious run-in with Tamils [Updates]
    Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla has had some sort of trouble regarding Tamils. The details are sketchy, and no one seems to be talking.
    If it weren’t for the fact that the police had become involved, we might not have even heard about it.”
    http://stevejanke.com/archives/284121.php

  24. “To play the tsabouna one must blow hard into a carefully selected part of a dead goat”…….
    That sounds like a muslim instrument.

  26. O’s FOcus GrOup reads Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel “*What Is to Be Done?”.
    V.I. Lenin say, the worse the better.
    O say, me tOO.
    WhO’s fOcusing WhO WhOm?
    IOW, who is the focuser and who is the focusee?
    …-
    “It’s an emergency: get your act together, Obama
    As the world’s finance ministers gather in London the greatest danger to the global economy is America’s failure of resolve”
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5891045.ece
    *http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Nikolai_Chernyshevsky

  27. Helo down in the North Atlantic off the coast NF. Ferry flight from oil fields. 18 crew and passengers.
    To the boys in the Cormorants, give er hell boys. The NA in winter is no place for anyone.

  28. What the hell is it with Greeks and Scots? They both like to wear skirts and blow goats until noise comes out of them!

  29. Breaking News!
    (Damn I watch too much CNBC)
    http://www.terradaily.com/ Mar 10 2009
    “Cypriots kill a million migratory birds”
    ‘….mist nets and limesticks……. are methods used to catch black caps and song thrushes, much sought after delicacies in Cyprus that fetch five euros ($6.40 US) each at restaurants, making the illegal trade a lucrative one.’
    ‘He said a clampdown on restaurants was needed to prevent Cyprus revisiting the 1990s when up to 10 million birds were killed.’
    So I guess this news item sort of puts the poor 500 ducks in the Alberta oil sands ponds in the world perspective, eh?

  30. Oh crap AlanticJim, hope they fish the rest out alive and soon.
    Great read on your link Maz2, can it be any clearer now that the US is being run by a bunch of sophomoric personalities, who have no base in reality.

  31. I tipped the webcast of this lecture yesterday. Now the written text is available.
    Allan H. Meltzer, Why Capitalism?
    AEI
    Bradley Lecture, 9 March 2009
    Newspaper headlines during the peak of the housing-c%^dit crisis called it “the end of capitalism” or the end of American capitalism. As often, they greatly overstated and misstated by projecting a serious, temporary decline as a permanent loss of wealth. Capitalist systems have weathered many more serious problems…

  32. It’s only because the weak, feckless and incompetent who surround him can’t rival his incomparable perfection…
    Fred Barnes, Obama’s Quirks
    Now that Barack Obama has been president for seven weeks, we’ve learned a few more things about him. Like every president, Obama has quirks. Or maybe we should call them characteristics or tendencies that we hadn’t expected. Here are five of them:
    1. Delegate and duck…
    2. Doing the opposite…
    3. Loose ship…
    4. Blame game…
    5. Straw man…

  33. (Via SWJ; PDF warning) Carter Malkasian and Jerry Meyerle, How is Afghanistan Different from Al Anbar?
    In this paper, we do not seek to recommend a strategy but rather to highlight the differences between Al Anbar and Afghanistan and to consider their implications upon counterinsurgency. While we frequently refer to “Afghanistan”, we are really focusing on southern Afghanistan and its Pashtun inhabitants…

  34. >>>> MSM does not give the political affiliation of the two politicians:
    “Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, co-chairmen of the Judiciary Committee,”.
    Google does: >>> Democrats.
    …-
    “5,000 Angry Protesters Descend on Capitol
    The bill might have been withdrawn, but 5,000 Roman Catholics, and other opponents of a bill that would essentially change the way the Catholic Church governs itself, made their feelings known Wednesday at the state Capitol.
    Legislation introduced by the co-chairmen of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee would allow a parish to turn over its fiscal responsibilities to a law council, consisting of between seven and 13 people.
    Priests and bishops would then have very little say on financial matters.”
    “Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, co-chairmen of the Judiciary Committee, introduced the controversial measure at the request of a group of Catholics in Fairfield County.
    That group had voiced concern about two cases of financial impropriety at Catholic Churches in that area.
    Neither McDonald nor Lawlor was at the Capitol Wednesday.”
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29640469/

  35. Boil Water Advisory: A cold fish called STOPIGGY.
    …-
    “Being Michael Ignatieff
    He’s known for his charm, good looks and big ideas. But he also admits to ruthlessness. He has hurt those who loved him most. And after decades abroad, he now wants to become the leader of this country. Michael Valpy peels back the layers to find the man beneath the brilliant surface”
    urlm.in/bxad

  36. From Michael Valpy’s biography of Michael Ignatieff:
    “Before I started at age 12,” (Michael Ignatieff’s brother Andrew) writes, “our parents sat down with my older brother (Michael) and me. They said, ‘Michael, you’re the big brother, and Andrew is going to UCC for the first time. It’s the first time he has ever been away. You have to understand you have to be good to him.’
    “Michael was very sweet and he told me how wonderful UCC would be. Then we went to my Aunt Helen’s house and again he was very sweet. My Aunt Helen [Ignatieff, the boys’ in loco parentis in Canada] again impressed on him the importance of him looking out for me. Then we went to the school and he introduced me to all the masters in the prep.
    “The next morning he said, ‘How are things going? Did you sleep well?’ I said, ‘Yes, I slept well.’ He said, ‘How was the food?’ I said. ‘It was gross.’ He said, ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’
    “We went for a walk, and he said, ‘I want to make one thing absolutely clear to you. When we’re at Aunt Helen’s house or Aunt Charity’s house [Charity Grant, their mother’s sister], you can say whatever you want to me. But if you ever see me on the school grounds, you’re not to talk to me. You’re not to recognize that I’m your brother. You don’t exist as far as I’m concerned. Do I make myself clear?'”
    http://ezralevant.com/2009/03/the-ignatieff-effect.html

  37. While E. Coyote?
    Never heard of him, but….
    “Nazarbayev, speaking at an economic forum in the glitzy new capital he has built on the Kazakh steppe, defended his proposal for the “acmetal” world currency saying it might “look kind of funny” but was not.
    And he received intellectual support from the Canadian economist Prof Mundell, who helped lay the intellectual groundwork for Europe’s single currency.”
    “I must say that I agree with President Nazarbayev on his statement and many of the things he said in his plan, the project he made for the world currency, and I believe I’m right on track with what he’s saying,” Prof Mundell said, adding the idea held “great promise”.
    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25173126-12377,00.html

  38. Ronald Bailey, Clouding Up Man-Made Global Warming
    The participants at the final lunch of the International Climate Change Conference in New York were in a celebratory and pugnacious mood. On the one hand, these skeptics feel beleaguered—who would not?—from their antagonists constantly comparing them to Holocaust “deniers” and calling for them to be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” On the other hand, they are cheered by recent polls indicating public skepticism of the claims of imminent catastrophe made by climate “alarmists.” In a January Pew Research Center poll, global warming came in dead last on a list of issues of concern to Americans.
    At the luncheon, retired NASA climatologist John Theon rose to lament the fact that he hadn’t fired James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an ardent advocate of the idea that man-made global warming is a catastrophe in the making. The audience burst into applause when Theon called Hansen an “embarrassment.”…

  39. Michelle Malkin has an update on the Democratic BillBoard on Rush. They selected, from apparently over 80,000 submissions, a ‘winning entry’.
    The Democrats are going to put up a billboard that says: “Americans didn’t vote for a Rush to failure’.
    They selected THAT from 80,000 others? Don’t they realize what they are saying? What is actually happening, under Obama, is indeed a rush-to-failure, as harmful policy after harmful policy is rushed through Congress. Without even reading the policies. Without debating them. Without even the time to reject them. That’s what is going on, Obama is rushing through disastrous policies.

  42. So, ‘figures. Here’s Alan Sears’ bio — and surprise! surprise! He spent 18 years in Windsor, that hotbed of leftist unionism, and now works at, wait for it: Ryerson, that hotbed of leftist toadyism.
    http://www.ryerson.ca/sociology/faculty/searsa.html
    Alan Sears came to Ryerson after teaching at the University of Windsor for 18 years. He works in the areas of theory, sexuality and labour studies. He has written about the changing welfare state, social movements including lesbian and gay activism, workers? health and safety, and the experience of HIV/AIDS. His career has become centered on the development of expertise in teaching and learning at the undergraduate level. His books include A Good Book, In Theory (2006), Retooling the Mind Factory: Education in a Lean State (2003) and, with Barry Adam, Experiencing HIV: Personal, Family and Work (1996). He is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters.

  43. What is “inside a refurbished auto body shop.”?
    Did RRuby have her skinflick(s) shot “inside a refurbished auto body shop.”?
    Tequila Shelia said so. In Hamilton?
    “We have this hidden jewel of these movies that are being made here that a lot of people don’t know about,” Copps told an audience gathered inside a refurbished auto body shop.”
    …-
    “But the Liberals told us Ruby Dhalla’s movie was a hidden jewel
    It’s funny how things can change on a dime. A few years ago, Liberal Heritage Minister Sheila Copps is raising a glass to toast Chico Sihra for bringing Bollywood movies to Hamilton. She even called Kyon? Kis Liye? a hidden jewel.
    Today, though, Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, who starred in the film, wants distribution stopped. And Chico Sihra? Not so much a hero bringing money and jobs to Hamilton, but a crass opportunist.
    It fits into a pattern in which Ruby Dhalla seems to be trying to erase all references to this part of her past.”
    http://stevejanke.com/archives/284208.php
    …-

  44. “He said that?!?
    Michael Ignatieff, in an article on The Epoch Times website, on why he did not try to form a coalition government:
    I could be sitting here as your prime minister, but I turned it down because I didn’t think it was right for someone who believes in the national unity of my country to make a deal with people who want to split the country up.
    This is just an extraordinary statement. One, it validates everything the Conservatives have said about the coalition: that it did, indeed, put the Liberals in bed with the separatists. And two, as a Conservative spokesman took about a millisecond to point out, if he was so opposed to doing a deal with “people who want to split the country up,” why did he sign that letter to the Governor General, expressing his support for the coalition and urging her to put it in charge of the country? If it was right then, why is not right now? And if it is not right, why is it not? After all, weren’t we told over and over at the time that the Bloc were not “enemies of Canada“, but the duly elected representatives of the people of Quebec?
    Ignatieff’s instincts on the coalition were, and are, sound. He may even sincerely believe what he is saying. But he didn’t act on those beliefs when it counted. And the Conservatives are going to make him wear it. Especially after this.”
    http://blog.macleans.ca/2009/03/12/he-said-that/print/
    STOPIGGY.

  46. Via Debka File. Veiled language for ‘Iran has the nuke’:
    At the same time, passages of the Blair testimony, the first by an official of the Barack Obama administration before the Senate, were aired. All carried disquieting import for US and Israel national security.
    The intelligence director told lawmakers that Tehran might bow to a blend of “credible” incentives and “threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures” but “it is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.”
    He went on to say: “Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them.”

  47. Regarding Maz2’s 8:26 link, some Conservative ads just write themselves: just show a photo of Ignatieff onstage with Layton and Duceppe, signing the document, and then overlay his quote “I didn’t think it was right…to make a deal with people who want to split the country.”
    Ah, but you did, Ignatieff, you did.

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