Bookworm Room

The title of my post is all I could think of when I read this story.

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I’ve decided it’s time to jettison entirely the words “Left” and “Right” when used with reference to political ideologies. I came to this conclusion after a very interesting discussion with my mother. While we were talking about the military Junta in Burma, she let drop the fact that she believes that all tyrannies [...]

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Having used the cult of personality to launch himself in four years from obscurity to a place as the Democratic Presidential candidate, Obama is suddenly aware that, when the adulation wears away, maybe it’s not so great to be center stage with the bright spotlight on you.  Indeed, he’s starting to complain about the fact [...]

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I was going to read this, but I never got around to it.

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From Bulgaria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo

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So sad.
I think many of America’s planning departments have a Code fetish that is counter productive, since they try to impose on every single building — and every aspect of every building — a standard of perfection that is unreasonable for the ordinary risks and uses people face in connection with those structures.  For example, [...]

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I wrote a longish post the other day about Horatio Alger.  I kind of liked it and was a little surprised when no one said anything at all about it.
Did you all miss it, or was it completely unworthy of comments?  I ask, not out of ego (although, Lord knows, I’ve got enough of that), [...]

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I used to get Newsweak because my parents used to get Newsweak.  I stopped when Mr. Bookworm protested that he didn’t want to spend his money on that “trash.”  We were both liberals then (as he is now), but he knew bad thinking when he saw it.  Lord only knows what Mr. Bookworm would make [...]

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Although little remembered today, Horatio Alger was possibly one of the most important voices in mid- to late-19th America. If the name seems vaguely familiar to you, it’s because he wrote a series of “Rags to Riches” books, in each of which a poor boy living alone on New York’s mean streets, through honesty [...]

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The headline made it sound as if another British school was abandoning any pretense of teaching children about their own nation: “Brighton College drops history, geography and RE [whatever the heck RE is]“  The article’s body, though, tells a different and heartening story:
Lessons in the “story of our land” will replace history, geography and [...]

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…and we deserve some beauty in our lives:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlvp8PUnC2Y

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When I was growing up, my best friend had the most wonderful grandparents. They were an incredibly flamboyant Polish couple who escaped the Holocaust because the woman was so charming she was able to talk the Nazis into letting them leave (with the help of some diamonds as bribes). He was pretty charming [...]

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I’ve been the beneficiary of spectacular dumb luck three times in my life.  When I went on my student year abroad, I was randomly assigned to a student housing building that proved to be an amazing social hub.  I was the only American there, and my year was a wonderful round of fun.  Since I’d [...]

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Today is the day for voting on this week’s Watcher’s Council submissions.  This is always a fun time, because the submissions, whether council written or from other sources, are invariably excellent.  Here’s what I’ll be reading today:
Council links:

Death and the Madam
Done With Mirrors
Obama As Marley
Wolf Howling
I Have a Nightmare
Soccer Dad
Whither?
The Glittering Eye
Al Gore Won Florida [...]

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A liberal friend sent me an article from the Winston Salem Chronicle (written by John Mendez, who is identified as the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church and a longtime community activist).  In the article, Mendez attempts to defend Wright.  I sent the friend my comments on the article and thought the article and the comments might be worth sharing [...]

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In the late 1980s, I went to a party at a beautiful Victorian house that a young white yuppie couple had bought — cheap — and begun to remodel.  The reason this house was cheap was because it was in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, which was (at least then) a predominantly poor black neighborhood.  [...]

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Michelle Malkin takes on Michelle Obama’s endless flow of whining and bile. It’s not surprising. As I pointed out in my Anger on the Left post, Leftism once seemed logically congruent with anger because Leftism was the politics of the underclass. In recent years, though, Leftism has shifted to become the politics [...]

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I’ve always been fond of this 1928 popular song, performed by Gus Van and Joe Schenck, urging people out into the night as an antidote to boredom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHhMe9TON4c

Sphere: Related Content

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I like Ibuprofin. It gets me past many low grade migraines and, lately, it’s the only thing that keeps me going at martial arts. (A couple of pregnancies left me with some back and hip problems.) I’ve yet to experience any side effects, although I’ve always worried about its effects on my [...]

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My daughter and a large group of her friends are on a swim team with three coaches. All three coaches work the children hard, all do a good job, all three are strict,and all use a fair amount of humor to motivate the kids.  The kids dislike one, tolerate another, and worship the third.  [...]

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If you use Windows Outlook, you need to check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amRkMds177A

Read more about it here.

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I wonder how many Marin residents, reading this innocuous sounding article about various churches and synagogues getting together for social causes realizes that there is a huge political agenda going on here. (The giveaway is in the second paragraph.) And this being Marin, I wonder how many would care if they knew:
A group [...]

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Last night, we attended the 24th annual Harmony Sweepstakes A Cappella Festival national championships.  From my point of view, it was a mixed bag.  Harmony used to be focused on the melody — as was certainly the case with last year’s winners, Moira Smiley and VOCO, who did really lovely harmonies to old style American [...]

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Blogging will be nonexistent this morning, although I may be able to pick it up a little in the afternoon.  This is one of those “all about the kids” Saturdays, with my son having a musical performance 40 miles from here, my daughter having swimming time trials all morning, my son having a baseball game [...]

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The sign at the baseball game said “Mike’s Lemonade $7.00.” So, when Christopher Ratt asked his 7 year old son what drink he’d like, and the boy said Lemonade, Ratt ponied up the money. It was only later in the game that a security guard noticed the bottle in the boy’s hand and [...]

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