In the mail, Night Trains, a new novel by well known blogger Arthur Chrenkoff. (Along with a nice note – thanks, Arthur!) I’m planning on starting on it this weekend.
Before he signed off the series due to work commitments, Arthur kept up the invaluable collection of “Good News” reports on progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining the notice of both the WSJ and the NYT. His presence is sorely missed, but it looks like he’s put the time to good use. Night Trains is paired with Mark Steyn’s America Alone on Amazon. Check it out.

Here’s one to bookmark;

I am disconnecting myself from the Internet and my TV, all in the name of science, in the hopes of coming to some newfound understanding of how these mediums affect our lives. A friend of mine will be maintaining a blog for me while I am disconnected, and one of the topics I will be talking about is the positive and negative aspects of blogs, especially in terms of how they have facilitated or hindered political debate.

Day One.

Via Robert Prather;

What won Westminster’s ear for synthetic phonics was essentially a seven-year experiment in Clackmannanshire in Scotland. By the age of 11, children taught to read there through synthetic phonics are three and a half years ahead of their peers taught by other methods. Some reckon that boys, in particular, do better with a system like this that offers hands-on tools.

Speaking as a member of the phonics generation – I could read from a newspaper before I finished first grade – all I can add is “You don’t say?”

Boo!

North Korea has probably tested a nuclear weapon and Iran appears to be on track to do the same thing. How should the world’s leading nations react to Pyongyang’s action?

You can access it from the home page.
One detail that I have not heard mentioned in either the mainstream media or in discussion on talk radio is this little known fact – the Korean War has never officially ended, but has been in a state of ceasefire since 1953.
With North Korea still technically at war with the South, one would think the development of nuclear weapons would be taken a little more seriously by those who have been working overtime to convince themselves that Pyongyang is simply sabre rattling to help cut themselves a more lucrative diplomatic deal.
(see also – Senator John McCain on North Korea, guest blogging at Captains Quarters.)

A fascinating interview with the novelist and opinion writer at Doublethink. Here’s a taste;

And by the way, when I was a freshman at Harvard, the first demonstration that I saw was one guy who was carrying a sign protesting. So I stopped and I talked to him, and he told me about how awful America was and everything like that. His case was that his father had been one of the members of the Hollywood Ten, and he had been forced to relocate to the south of France and write his screenplays under a pseudonym. And he says, “Well, it wasn’t right. He was completely innocent.” But the parents lied to their children. They didn’t tell their children. And I said “Well actually, he was a Communist. It was legal to be a Communist. But he should have said so. Or, even if he shouldn’t have said so, your telling me that he was not a Communist does not change the fact that was a Communist.” So he looked at me like he had found a lunatic Red-baiter. Right? “How do you know?” I said, “Because my mother was in his cell.”
And she was in the cell of a lot of those people. And most of the Hollywood Ten, who were supposedly not, were in fact in her cell. And yet she was always, to the extent that someone can be a leftist who was really wild in her thinking, she was pretty much a leftist. Although socially, she was probably like a conservative Republican at this point. That happens, you know. See, you’re in your twenties, you haven’t watched this, but Democrats, if they stayed still, would be Republicans today. A lot of them do. Even I started out as a Democrat, I voted for Hubert Humphrey in ’68. That was the last time I voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Although in ’72 I didn’t get a chance to vote because of the war.

A great story teller, he shares how he came to join the Israeli military, why he believes it’s not possible to bring democracy to the Middle East, how he came to hate parties, and the “nihilistic, ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly” modern literary sensibility. Throughout the piece, you’re never quite certain if he’s telling the truth.
It’s very long, and well worth the effort.

That optimism was dashed almost immediately. The entire trip into the city (I was living in NYC at the time) from my friends home in the suburbs was spent listening to my blind date recount the faults and failures of every man she had dated, and for that matter, the faults and failings of all men, everywhere. None apparently, were worthy of her companionship, qualities or beauty- of which she would refer to every few minutes, as if on cue- as in, “I don’t have to settle, I’m too good to settle. I deserve the very best. I can get any man I want.”

This ranks right up there with the best of ’em.

Here’s a headline for those of you too young to remember the Carter years – “OPEC Concerned Over Falling Oil Prices”.

Ministers of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries arriving in Vienna on Sunday have indicated concern that oil prices may fall. Though the eleven-nation group is unlikely to officially reduce its production quota when it meets on Monday, the change in ministers’ tone could be a harbinger of things to come.
“Inventories are very comfortable, prices are coming down and nobody is concerned about a shortage of supply,” Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister and Opec’s most powerful member, said as he arrived in Vienna.
At previous meetings Opec members, including Saudi Arabia, have voiced discomfort about oil prices being too high, threatening global economic growth. But there was little the group could do because its members were largely already producing at full capacity while high prices were prompted mainly by worries about sudden interruptions in supply caused by hurricanes or geopolitical tensions.
Now ministers no longer think oil prices, at around $67 a barrel, are too high. Instead they are concerned that the recent $10 drop in prices could be a sign that the market is at the beginning of a larger correction, one that could eventually impinge on oil producers’ revenues.
In the US, for example, sport utility vehicle sales fell 14 per cent in August, while sales of compact cars were up 18 per cent. Opec expects oil consumption in North America to increase by only 90,000 b/d in 2006, compared to the 230,000 b/d jump it experienced in 2005 and 520,000 b/d in 2004.

Price, supply, consumer demand – all connected somehow. (How can that be?*)
And no – despite everything you heard in the mainstream media and associated punditry – oil prices did not reach “all time” highs this summer. Adjusted for inflation, the top price for a barrel of crude this summer still fell well short of those recorded in 1979.;

Adjusted for inflation in June 2006 dollars this $38 peak is the equivalent of paying $100.52 today. This number is constantly changing as we adjust for inflation at the current moment.
In other words, Oil would have to average $100.52 for the entire month to be as high as the price we saw in December of 1979. But we are “only” paying about 2/3rds that amount.

A few weeks ago I mentioned I was “knee deep in race car painting”. Today, I received pictures from the track, and thought I’d share one.

The blue base and clearcoat were applied by Bob Heroux, Lazer Auto Body in Saskatoon , and the car is driven by Bob Heroux and Shawn “Skippy” Zezula.
Photo gallery – SIR’s 40th Anniversary, August 26.

Via CanWest;

Four decades ago, an estimated 11 per cent of wives made more than their husbands, rising to around 19 per cent throughout most of the 1980s. During the recession of the early 1990s, it jumped to 25 per cent, mainly because men in high-wage and manufacturing jobs saw periods of unemployment. As employment levels improved, women continued to pull in bigger bucks and, by 2003, almost 29 per cent were the primary breadwinners.

Four decades ago, my mother drew her last formal paycheque. In the years that followed, it had no effect on her ability to “pull in the bucks” compared to my father – with the subsequent changes to community property laws, she accumlated wealth at the same rate he did.

You know, I’m not so impressed by the actual content as I am that Cosh actually took the time to look up the html for “C_d“.

For the last few weeks, an ad for the fiction novel Gehenna Station has appeared on the sidebar. Author Jim Hume sent me a copy and I was finally able to dig into it on the flight to San Francisco weekend before last.
Though science fiction isn’t really my usual genre of choice, (and with conflict of interest duly noted), I did enjoy the read. I suspect those with a military background/interest would also find it entertaining. You can find out more (and check out several positive reviews) by clicking here.

“It’s like a satanic game of parcel ping-pong.”

I wonder how many Canadians under the age of 30 know that the CBC once televised his Crusades?

Why it’s sometimes important to know when to say “no”.

Brought to you by Google Earth.

Lacks realism.

Kathy Shaidle seeks assistance – “I’m begging everyone out there with a working knowledge of the Canadian film & TV industry to tell me why we can’t make a movie that looks one-tenth as pretty as, just off the top of my head, Wedding Crashers”

Here’s your chance to offer predictions, observations, insult Flames fans, postmortem the game and celebrate and/or drown your sorrows.
Please keep the language clean and don’t break any windows. This ain’t Whyte Avenue and I do know where to find you.
Now, I’m going to make one of those rare exceptions here on SDA to step outside my hard earned reputation as a scrupulously balanced, unbiased and objective commentator.
Go Oilers!