Falling Awake

Fed Plans New Rules to Protect Future Homebuyers

[The mortgage rules] would prohibit lenders from engaging in a pattern or practice of lending without considering a borrower’s ability to repay a home loan from sources other than the home’s value.

This is a rule that shouldn’t need to exist.  But if lenders stop lending money to black and hispanic prospective homebuyers based on their ability to repay, expect Congressional hearings.

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Frozen Embryos Better Than Fresh, Study Shows

Infants born from embryos which were frozen and then thawed before being implanted into a woman had a higher birth weight and were less likely to suffer abnormalities.

Perhaps all embryos should be frozen?  Oh, wait…

“We think the reason for the differences is probably positive selection of the embryos for frozen embryo replacement, [said Dr. Anja Pinborg.] 

 ”Only the very top quality embryos survive the freezing and thawing process.”

That which does not kill you makes you stronger.  Of course, the embryos that had been frozen still had malformation rates of 7.1 percent.  They’re obviously not killing enough of them.

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Higher CO2 Levels May Be Good for Plants: German Scientists

How many German scientists does it take to prove the obvious?

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Stealing Recyclables Is Good Business

With prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint going up and an economic slowdown putting added pressure on people’s pocketbooks, curbside refuse has become a hot commodity.

A truck piled high with mixed recyclables can fetch upward of $1,000; newspapers alone can grab about $600.

Why is my city–Stamford, Connecticut–spending $1.5 million next year on recycling when ”thieves” will do it for free?

Why did Columbia University refuse to provide police with video that could show the person who hung a noose on the door of a black professor?  (I know: that sentence is way too long.)

I have no idea who hung that noose.  It seems to me, though, that quite often the police should start their investigation by finding out where the victim was when the incident occurred.

Maybe Pelosi needs to meet with Assad again?

A Lebanese member of parliament belonging to the anti-Syrian governing coalition was murdered on Wednesday in a powerful explosion in Beirut. At least eight others also were killed. The blast took place during rush hour in the mainly Muslim Manara section of the city.

Assad is just begging for some dialogue.

Weapon dates blowhead whale to 1800s

A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.

Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3½-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

Now that’s a survivor.  Well, until just recently.

Dennis Miller radio show

I had no idea he had a radio show.  But you can hear it at the link.

…and yes, Governor Schwarzenegger is a liberal.

I point out liberal dishonesty as much as I possibly can–there are only so many hours in a day, you know.  So, it’s only fair to spotlight a few times this week where liberals spoke honestly.

Hollywood and Abortion, Ctd.

As a liberal who writes about film, there are few things that I find more irritating than the tendency of other liberal film writers to treat the 95 percent of Hollywood films that push (explicitly or implicitly) liberal ideas as if they were utterly apolitical and commonsensical, and then react with shock and despair on those rare occasions when a movie with conservative themes makes its way to theatres.

Yes, in two recent films, Waitress and Knocked Up, a woman whom we might otherwise expect to consider abortion instead opts to have the baby. (Isn’t it supposed to take three examples to establish a trend?) And yes, of course, Hollywood would prefer not to talk about abortion at all, as it’s a subject generally not known for its entertainment value.

But do we really need successive articles in Slate and The New York Times positing some conservative climate of fear in Hollywood? I seem to recall two recent films, The Cider House Rules (which the Times article mentions but dismisses) and Vera Drake (which neither article mentions at all) that netted Academy Award nominations (and one victory) for actors playing heroic abortion providers. (In the former case, Michael Caine won the Oscar despite delivering what may have been the most mawkish performance of his long and frequently riveting career.) When actors start getting nominations for playing anti-abortion activists, then I’ll expect to see a raft of articles about Pro-Life Hollywood. (If it needs to be added, I am myself firmly pro-choice.)

By the way, I try to check out movie reviews at Libertas.  Where else would you find a review of the new Fantastic Four picture (written by an anonymous someone in the movie business) that sounds like this?

Of course the U.S. Army’s evil. This is a studio film. Of course, the Army will eventually turn on the worst outfitted superheroes in movie history. Of course, the Army will do business with evil to save the village. Of course, when we all know it’s not true General Hager will say, “Mission accomplished.” (I’m not kidding,. He really says it. I swear. And please don’t spend $8.50 and risk another sequel to see if I’m lying. I’m begging you to take my word for it. Begging you.)

But the low point of many a low point is reached when the Army uses a loophole to torture a prisoner. This is a PG film aimed at young kids and this moment is obvious in its malicious intent and beyond the pale. This is a total propagandist sucker-punch slipped into a family Summer movie and unforgivable. I was horrified. It’s the most appalling abuse of an audience I can remember in a long time.

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Schwarzenegger: Turn Off Spanish TV

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a gathering of Hispanic journalists that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly.

“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set” and avoid Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster,” Schwarzenegger said.

“I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say, and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” he said, noting that he rarely spoke German and was forced to learn English when he emigrated from Austria.

Of course, this was not received well by his audience:

“I’m sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that,” said Alex Nogales, president and chief executive of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

How could Arnold Schwarzenegger possibly know what it’s like to be a non-English-speaking immigrant?  What would he know about succeeding in this country despite those handicaps?

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Death Penalty Deters Murders, Studies Say

“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?”

Imagine that.  A liberal scientist who’s not willing to fudge facts to push his agenda.

SteynOnline - ‘UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS’

…[A]bout five years or so back, I started making references in columns to “fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community.” But from the lame Steyn joke of yesteryear to the reality of tomorrow is a mere hop and a skip. A few days ago, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, declared:

“This week we will vote on cloture and final passage of a comprehensive bill that will strengthen border security, bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows, and keep our economy strong.”

Talk about “a fast track to citizenship”! Never mind probationary visas, Z-visas and Green Cards, in the eyes of the Democrat steering “comprehensive immigration reform” through Congress these guys are already “undocumented Americans”. Was it simply a slip of the tongue? (Speaking of which, I thought thanks to George W Bush we had “the worst economy since Herbert Hoover”. When did it get “strong”?) Or did Senator Reid mean it?

If he did, the very concept of citizenship is dead, and the Senate might as well opt for “really comprehensive immigration reform” and declare everyone on the planet a US citizen with backdated Social Security entitlements. As Le Monde’s famous headline of September 12th 2001 put it, “Nous sommes tous Americains.” Literally.

I wouldn’t presume to speak for the millions of Americans who oppose this bill, but it’s because I’m an immigrant myself that I object to the most patent absurdity peddled by the pro-amnesty crowd. The bill is fundamentally a fraud. Its “comprehensive solution” to illegal immigration is simply to flip all the illegals overnight into the legal category. Voila! Problem solved! There can be no more illegal immigrants because the Senate has simply abolished the category. Ingenious! For their next bipartisan trick, Congress will reduce the murder rate by recategorizing murderers as jaywalkers.

Steyn goes on to wonder about the ability of the federal government to perform 12 million background checks on our “illegal amigos,” given the level of competence displayed by issuing a visa to Mohammed Atta “on March 11th 2002, six months to the day after famously flying his first and last commercial airliner.”

Also in the news this week:

Illegal day laborers win big settlement in N.Y.

A New York town will pay six illegal day laborers $550,000 and forbid its police department from checking suspects’ immigration status to settle a discrimination lawsuit that claims the men were harassed because they are Hispanic.

The case stems from a much-needed police crackdown on disruptive and violent loitering in a public park in Mamaroneck, a town of about 20,000 residents located some two dozen miles from New York City. Multiple complaints of hundreds of drunken men fighting, littering, urinating and defecating at the park’s makeshift day laborer hiring site led to police to shut it down.

A Latino rights group sued the town alleging that the illegal immigrants’ constitutional rights to assemble and exercise free speech were violated. The suit also accuses village officials of discriminating against the day laborers—all admitted illegal aliens who didn’t use their real name in court documents for fear of deportation—simply because they are Hispanic.

I guess being angry at this makes me a bigot.  How about if I’m angry at Mamaroneck for settling the case?

Paying taxes is a pleasurable duty - being-human - 14 June 2007 - New Scientist

Paying taxes feels good, say researchers.

The surprising discovery, based on brain scans, can also predict which people are most likely to donate cash to charity.

Bill Harbaugh at the University of Oregon in Eugene, US, and colleagues gave 19 female university students $100, and told them some of this money would have to go towards taxes.

(Apparently, it’s only women who have been shown to like paying taxes.  Let’s double their taxes and eliminate taxes on men.  That way, everybody’s happy.)

Each volunteer then read a series of 60 separate taxation scenarios involving $0 to $45 in taxes, knowing that one of the scenarios would be selected at random and the related amount be subtracted from their $100.

As the participants viewed the tax scenarios, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Surprisingly, whenever the students read the taxation scenarios, scientists saw a spike in activity within two of the brain’s reward centres – the nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus.

This is either sloppy reporting or a sloppy experiment.  The scenarios range from $0 to $45, and they all make women happy.  Are they happier with $0?  Or $45?  It doesn’t say.

Harbaugh says that people probably like paying taxes more than they admit. He believes the results of his new study help explain the widespread compliance with tax laws. “We like to complain about it, but based on what we do, we are not as opposed to it as we like to say,” Harbaugh says.

Okay, let’s test this sucker out.  Let’s eliminate withholding from paychecks.  Send us a bill every year for the taxes we owe, and let’s see how happy and compliant Americans can really be!

Chavez orders supporters to give up extra possessions - CNN.com

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told his supporters to give away possessions they do not need such as an extra refrigerator because he only wants true socialists to be members of a new single party he is forming.

“Whoever has a fridge they do not need, put it out in the village square. Whoever has a truck, a fan or a cooker they do not need, give something away. Let’s not be selfish. I demand you do it,” Chavez said at a milk producing cooperative, in remarks released on Monday.

So you won’t have to rack your brain trying to remember why this sounds so familiar, I’ll tell you:

We Are All In It Together, Clinton Says

That’s Hillary Clinton.  I talked about it here.

Harry Potter magic spells losses for booksellers | U.S. | Reuters

Harry Potter has no spell for bookstore profits.

Millions of people will descend on stores for a copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in July, but deep discounts mean many will struggle to turn a profit from the jamboree.

“Everywhere you go there is huge, ridiculous discounting by the chains,” said Graham Marks, children’s editor at the British-based trade magazine Publishing News.

“They are literally not going to make one penny out of the book. It is stupid — just throwing money away … The world has gone mad.”

The world hasn’t gone mad, but when the release of a major title means trouble for booksellers, there’s clearly something wrong with the business model.

Brick-and-mortar bookstores cannot compete with Amazon on price.  They also can’t compete with Costco, Wal-mart, or your local supermarket on bestseller prices.  Customers feel cheated if they don’t get the same markdown on bestsellers at their local bookstore as they do in a supermarket.  So, the very books that should be paying the rent are being sold at a deep discount.  The supermarket pays the rent by selling milk–the few cents they make on every book is just gravy.

You’d think booksellers could make it up by providing good customer service–but Amazon beats them there, too.  No clerk can have read every book in the store, but just about every book Amazon carries has been reviewed by an Amazon customer.  And ask yourself this: has a bookstore employee ever done a great job finding you the perfect book, which you then proceeded to buy on Amazon to get a better price?

I see a day coming when there will be two types of bookstore: self-service megastores and small “boutique” stores in areas where customers are not price-conscious.  Or you can always go to Amazon.

I’m going to quote a (possibly illegally) large amount from this essay, because hardly anyone clicks on links, and I think this is too good not to share at length:

I think Father’s Day ought not to be a celebration of every man who managed to procreate, but instead a time to honor those increasingly rare men who are actually good at fathering. But what makes a good father?

I’m allergic to most danger. I get a stomachache at the thought of confrontation. I’m grouchy and self-centered, and have few of the traits that William McKeever, in his curmudgeonly 1913 classic, “Training the Boy,” considered essential to manhood: “courageous action in the face of trying circumstances, cordial sympathy and helpfulness in all dealings with others, and a sane disposition toward the Ruler of All Life.” I’m hardly qualified to be a role-model for three boys.

Many academics would consider my lack of manliness a good thing. They regard boys as thugs-in-training, caught up in a patriarchal society that demeans women.

But I can’t shake the sense that boys are supposed to become manly. Rather than neutering their aggression, confidence and desire for danger, we should channel these instincts into honor, gentlemanliness and courage. Instead of inculcating timidity in our sons, it seems wiser to train them to face down bullies, which by necessity means teaching them how to throw a good uppercut. In his book “Manliness,” Harvey Mansfield writes that a person manifesting this quality “not only knows what justice requires, but he acts on his knowledge, making and executing the decision that the rest of us trembled even to define.” You can’t build a civilization and defend it against barbarians, fascists and playground bullies, in other words, with a nation of Phil Donahues.

Maybe the problem isn’t that boys are aggressive, but that we’ve neglected their moral education. As Teddy Roosevelt wrote to one of his sons: “I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I would a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess.”

The trick is not to squash the essence of boys, but to channel their natural wildness into manliness. And this is what keeps me awake at night, because it’s going to take a miracle for someone like me, who grew up without meaningful male influence, who would be an embarrassment to Teddy Roosevelt, to raise three men. Along with learning what makes a good father, I face an added dilemma: How do I raise my sons to be better than their father?

What I’m discovering is that as I try to guide these ornery, wild-hearted little boys toward manhood, they are helping me become a better man, too. I love my sons without measure, and I want them to have the father I did not. As I stumble and sometimes fail, as I feign an interest in camping and construction and bugs, I become something better than I was.

Feminists have long downplayed–if not outright denied–the masculine virtues.  Doing so has not improved our society, if indeed that was ever their aim.

Scientists: Finding mimics embryonic stem cells

What if scientists could find a way to produce embryonic stem cells without having to tamper with embryos?

On Wednesday, three teams of researchers said they had found a way to do just that — but in mice. They got ordinary skin cells to act like the embryonic cells.

Even if this procedure works with human cells, there are still going to be difficulties, of course.  But these would be exactly the same difficulties researches face with normal embryonic stem cells.  Embryonic stem cells form tumors.  But at least scientists may be able to “tinker” without having to visit their friendly local abortionist to restock their supplies.

These findings will be downplayed.  (As have the proven results of umbilical and adult stem cell research.)  The whole point of the push for embryonic stem cell research is not to actually cure the sick, but to provide a justification for abortion.

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Young clerk let Tiananmen ad slip past censors

A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday.

The tiny ad in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News on Monday night, read: “Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims”.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said a young woman on the Chengdu Evening News classified section had allowed the ad to be published because she’d never heard of the June 4 crackdown.

China’s censorship is so effective that it defeated itself here.  Perhaps Google can work with the Chinese government to develop tools to enable low-level functionaries to censor information without even understanding what they’re censoring.

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Lebanese troops pound Islamic positions

Lebanon’s army on Saturday pounded al Qaeda-inspired Islamic militants hiding in a Palestinian refugee camp in renewed heavy clashes following a few days of intermittent fighting.

Black smoke billowed from the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon where witnesses reported some of the heaviest army shelling since June 1, when the Lebanese army — using tanks and artillery — launched an offensive to drive the Fatah Islam militants from their positions inside the settlement.

I hope the Lebanese can finish the job.  I miss those pro-democracy protests:

Stirring.

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The Lebanese obviously have an extra incentive to defeat the Islamists.  If the Islamists win, what’s happening in the Gaza Strip since Israel withdrew could happen in Lebanon:

Gaza: Female TV staff get death threat

A radical Islamic group in the Gaza Strip issued a death threat over the weekend against women working for the official Palestinian Authority television station, accusing them of dressing immodestly and behaving in a way that violates the teachings of Islam.

Members of the group are also responsible for splashing acid in the face of a number of young women who had been accused of “immoral behavior.” The Righteous Swords of Islam is one of three al-Qaida-affiliated groups that have popped up in the Gaza Strip over the past two years.

A leaflet distributed by the Righteous Swords of Islam specifically referred to the women who appear on Palestine TV. “The saying these days is that the enemy has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip and so have our morals,” it read. “It’s indeed disgraceful that the women working for the official Palestinian media are competing with each other to display their charms.”

Referring to the fact that most of the female presenters were not wearing the niqab, a veil covering the face of Muslim women as a part of hijab, the leaflet asked: “Where are the decision-makers in this regard? Have we lost our conscience? Have the brothers, fathers and husbands stopped caring about their women?”

The group warned that its members would strike with an “iron fist and swords” against the women who are refusing to cover their faces. “We will destroy their homes,” it announced. “We will blow up their working places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements.”

The leaflet concluded by threatening to “slaughter” the women for allegedly spreading corruption in Palestinian society by appearing on the screen with their faces uncovered.

“The administration and workers at Palestine TV should know that we are much closer to them than they think,” it added. “If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people.”

It’s always “chop, chop, chop,” with these people!

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Odds & Ends

Bono tells Ugandan journalist: You don’t know how to fix Africa

A conference in rural Tanzania has produced a noteworthy contretemps involving pop star Bono over whether self-help or foreign aid is the best approach to helping Africa. MIT’s Technology Review blog reports that many speakers at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference echoed the theme “that traditional aid and charity, whether distributed by nation-states or nongovernmental bodies, have failed.” The report continues:

Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist and social worker, now a fellow at Stanford, made the case most strongly. He argued convincingly that 30 years of Western aid to Africa has achieved nothing at all. More, he said that the persistence of African poverty could be explained, in part, by aid. He explained that aid had convinced the brightest Africans to work for corrupt governments rather than as entrepreneurs, and it had “distorted the incentive structure.”

“What man or nation,” Mwenda asked, “has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?”

Far better, he said, is finding Westerners to invest in African entrepreneurs or businesses, which would create wealth. Mwenda, like other speakers, described at length the investment opportunities in Africa. …

This line of argument enraged Bono, however, who began heckling Mwenda.

“Bollocks!” he shouted. “That’s bull****.”

I love that Bono is considered the intellectual rock star.

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I don’t get the glee surrounding the jailing of Paris Hilton.  I do understand the satisfaction that comes when justice is done, and a Beverly Hills celebrity (besides Robert Downey, Jr.) actually doing jail time is a pleasant surprise.  But why does her breaking down in tears make people feel so good?

But I have to say I like the comment someone e-mailed to John Podhoretz at the Corner:

The Right Man For the Job: Bush should immediately announce that the judge in the Paris Hilton case will be his next Supreme Court nominee.

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Robert Spencer has posted part 2 of his series, “Blogging the Qur’an.”  It covers verses 1-39 of Sura 2.  It’s long, and I haven’t looked at it yet, but I will.

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I just like this headline:

Protestors protest ordinance limiting counter-protests

I wonder if there were any counter-protestors?  They’d be protesting…. themselves?  I’ll betcha some wags from the local high school math club showed up with blank signs.  I’d be disappointed if they didn’t.

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This is interesting.  Take quizzes to see if you can tell the prose of Charles Dickens from his less talented contemporary.  Or a painting by Jackson Pollock from a mess of bird droppings.  (That one’s easy, though funny.)  My favorite?  Mozart vs. Salieri.  There’s a bunch of other quizzes at the first link.