Bookworm Room

Tweet There’s an NPR story here about music being used as a therapy to aid chronic pain sufferers or the dying.  Anecdotal reports are good, but there are no scientific, double-blind, replicable studies yet to back it up.  I have my own concern about the practice.  I like listening to music, but I hate opera [...]

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Tweet I sort of just sat back and sniggered when the Presbyterian Church (USA), after first attacking Jews decided next to go after men. How else to explain the new doctrine the Church has put into effect: The divine Trinity – “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” – could also be known as “Mother, Child and [...]

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Tweet How did England so rapidly plummet from the world’s top dog to a nation that has no pride, no sense of its own history (except to be abjectly embarrassed by that history), and no sense of self-preservation. The latter appears in matters large, as in its inability to confront its increasingly visible Fifth Column, [...]

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Tweet We just got yet another reminder (as if we need one), about Government ineptitude at managing its own programs: Welfare recipients and their friends and relatives are defrauding taxpayers of $500 million a year through the county’s child care programs, a grand jury report concludes. The report released Thursday found that nearly half the [...]

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Tweet In yet another reminder that it’s all about the bureaucracy and not about the child, it turns out that California joins the lists of states lying and cheating to get federal funds (and what a good lesson that is to teach our children): California and some other states have inflated test outcomes by lowering [...]

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Tweet Don’t you hate people who say “I told you so”? I do, unless I’m the one saying it. This time, I’m saying it regarding the Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border. But let me back up a bit…. Last night, Mr. Bookworm, who reads only the NY Times, asked me “What the heck [...]

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Tweet I know that many of you are like me in that you’re disgusted with the Republican’s profligacy, as well as with other careless, pandering form’s of government in which Republicans engage. Be assured, though, that “punishing” them at election time, both in 2006 and 2008, will be worse. Why? Because the Dems will control [...]

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Tweet I spend a lot of time talking to people whose children attend public schools in my fairly affluent area.  What always surprises me is the disconnect between the facts they recite and their ultimate conclusion about our school district.  Their ultimate conclusion is that the school district is just wonderful.  As for their facts?  [...]

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Tweet Sorry for the silence today.  I was on the road all day long, and never came near a computer.  I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow morning, especially since I’ve had ideas brewing all day long.

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Tweet Okay, this is the kind of story that puts me in a panic: Senior moments, such as forgetting a recent conversation, may be a sign of the process that can lead to Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests. US scientists examined the brains of 134 older people who had appeared mentally sharp, apart from some subtle [...]

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Tweet You all recall the almighty hooha when Stanley “Tookie” Williams, an Original Gang member for the Cribs, and a convicted killer of four, was put to death last year. You’d have thought the State of California was executing Mother Theresa. Today, with almost no fanfare, the State of Texas put Maturino Resendiz to death. [...]

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Tweet I found something that amused me at the Arab News, which calls itself “The Middle East’s Leading English Language Daily.” It was a religious advice column, with someone writing in with this question: Nowadays Islam is under so much assault with some non-Muslim saying that it is not a peaceful religion. Could you quote [...]

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Tweet I periodically check out Yahoo’s Most popular news stories site, which only seems to carry articles from the Left side (and Ann Coulter, although I never know how she creeps in there). When I checked just now, the most emailed story was an AP story entitled “Scientists okay Gore’s movie for accuracy.” The article’s [...]

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Tweet If we were to repeat the past, I bet you’d find this story in the New York Times, circa July 1944 A secret code breaking group that both Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt authorized has broken a German code and has been using that information to gather intelligence about planned German military assaults, [...]

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Tweet I don’t like the ACLU. I think it’s an agenda drive organization, in thrall to Bush Derangement Syndrome. This means it takes its theoretical focus — the preservation of individual rights against the state — and simply attempts, time and time again, to subvert that goal to striking out at the Bush administration, specifically, [...]

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Tweet Better thinkers and writers than I have tackled Bill Keller’s letter to the public justifying his blithe release of security secrets. One thing he wrote, though, stuck in my mind, and I haven’t read anyone yet who has commented on this point: It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is [...]

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Tweet I think Heather MacDonald has an excellent summary of the fundamental errors lying behind the NY Times’ hubristic thinking that it is the appropriate gatekeeper of this nation’s security secrets: The bottom line is this: No classified secret necessary to fight terrorism is safe once the Times hears of it, at least as long [...]

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Tweet NPR loves to interview RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) or CHRINOs (Christians in Name Only) to make the point that the currently self-identified Republicans or Christians are imposters who have wandered into the wilderness, abandoning true Republicanism or true Christianity. These interviewees may, of course, be correct, and those who consider themselves true, modern [...]

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Tweet My father, who knew what he was talking about, always said, "You fight a war to win."  I don't remember him having a pro or con view regarding Vietnam.  I do remember that he was disgusted by the fact that the biggest military superpower in the world couldn't just go in, win, and get [...]

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Tweet Check here for another wonderful batch of photoshopped WWII posters, all aimed at exposing the LA & NY Times's reprehensible, murderous, arrogant behavior.

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Tweet The article, at the New York Times, is called "Another Kennedy Living Dangerously."  The little promo for it at the NY Times website — the one that's supposed to have you clicking over to read the full article, says "The environmentalist turns crusader and goes out on a political limb. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [...]

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Tweet Israel has never negotiated for hostages.  Israeli operatives have always known that, if they fall into Arab hands, they're on their own.  But apparently the atrocities visited on Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca decided the Israelis that this type of stuff is not going to happen on their watch.  How else to explain this [...]

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Tweet For Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday, British Muslims had to endure this horror: You recall, of course, when the Brits banned Piglet for fear of offending their delicate Muslim compatriots.

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Tweet Some time ago, I blogged about the UC Santa Cruz chancellor, Denice Denton, who was profiled in the SF Chron because of her very questionable expenditures — including getting a cush, pricey job for her lover.  It turns out that she wasn't only someone who used power unethically, she was also a very depressed [...]

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Tweet It's no secret that large chunks of the Western world are in demographic decline. Mark Steyn has focused on the fact relentlessly in a series of articles (with the most recent being an article, first published in the New Criterion and then republished in the WSJ). The most recent article I read on the [...]

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