Saturday, September 17, 2005

Not so bad to look at.

Friday, September 16, 2005

NY Times' public editor takes Paul Krugman to task

Subject: Non-compliance with NY Times correction policy. Byron Calame writes:
Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman...Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply...

All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction...Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn't explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong.
Details, details. Does make one wonder how the feller has done so well as an economist tho.

Good question

Heather MacDonald asks it in City Journal :
If the government’s failure to get help instantly to Katrina victims reflects American racism, why have the images of thousands of poor, displaced blacks triggered the greatest outpouring of charity in American history?
Thanks to Power Line for the tip.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

John Kelly on the Black death

Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews John Kelly , author of The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time for NRO.
I read a number of excellent academic histories, but it was the original source material, the literature of the Great Mortality — the chronicles, letters, and reminiscences written by contemporaries — that turned my gaze from the future to the past. The plague generation wrote about their experiences with a directness and urgency that, 700 years after the fact, retains the power to astonish, and haunt.
The effect of the plague:
The best estimate for Europe is a death rate of a third, with some regions — for example, eastern England and Tuscany — suffering death rates in the 50-percent range. Also the estimate for the Middle East — Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc. — is one third. There are no estimates for China, which the plague struck a few years after it hit Europe, but the census of 1200 A.D. counted roughly 125 million Chinese; by the census of 1390 — a few decades after the plague had struck — the population of China had fallen to 63 million...

According to one recent estimate, extrapolated to today’s world population, the death rate for a disaster on the scale of the Black Death would be 1.9 billion lives.
That puts other things in perspective. The whole interview is worth reading.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

"Sauerkraut doesn't grab the glory like cheese and beer"

Well, I can't argue with that. I betcha didn't know that
"Great Lakes Kraut expects to produce more than 150,000 tons of sauerkraut this fall at three plants. That's more sauerkraut than all the manufacturers in Germany will produce"
either, did you? Four thousand pounds of cabbage bite the dust every minute at peak kraut periods in Bear Creek, Wisconsin.

Karen Herzog has the report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Don't miss the recipes.

"Tragedy Strikes Ruby Slipper Community"

There are some hot slippers in the ol' town tonite.

Monday, September 12, 2005

The Algiers Point Association homeowners militia

The several dozen people who did not evacuate from Algiers Point said that for days after the storm, they did not see any police officers or soldiers but did see gangs of intruders.

So they set up what might be the ultimate neighborhood watch.

At night, the balcony of a beautifully restored Victorian house built in 1871 served as a lookout point.

"I had the right flank," Vinnie Pervel said. Sitting in a white rocking chair on the balcony, his neighbor, Gareth Stubbs, protected the left flank.

They were armed with an arsenal gathered from the neighborhood: a shotgun, pistols, a flare gun and a Vietnam-era AK-47.

They were backed up by Gregg Harris, who lives in the house with Pervel, and Pervel's 74-year-old mother, Jennie, who...is known in Algiers Point as "Miss P."

Many nights, Miss P. had a .38-caliber pistol in one hand and rosary beads in the other.
Armed self-defense worked for them. The Proper Authorities aka Public Servants, of course, have something to say about that:
"They say they're going to drag us kicking and screaming from our houses. For what? To take us to concentration camps where we'll be raped and killed," Ramona Parker said. "This is supposed to be America. We're honest citizens. We're not troublemakers. We pay our taxes."

...The roof was damaged on her house, and the rains left "water up to my ankles," Boza said. So she moved into her mother's home nearby.

She said she still has 42 bullets to expend before she'll be forcibly evacuated.
Well, yes, this is supposed to be America, but in America the servants run things, and they can be pretty violent toward uppity employers.

Bob Dart has the story in the Austin American-Satesman.

Thanks to Instapundit for the lead.