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Monday, July 18, 2005

GETTING A MORE REALISTIC PICTURE OF THE PAST…..

Mostly we see the past in black and white. Typically, and understandably, our images of 100 years ago and more are drab and when we think of those times, we imagine that the world back then really was just as drab as the B&W photographs that are the largest part of our record of the period before the 1920s.

But, what if we could see these same scenes in Living Color? How would our impressions of the past be modified if the trees were green, the streams were blue, the flowers glowed with color, a vendor with his melons appeared to us as he did to his customers, and we could see a father in his pink shirt and his son in a coat of many colors?

All of these scenes from the earliest years of the 20th century are now available to us in full color, along with thousands more, a gift to us from a time BEFORE what we recognize as color photography even existed. Taken by a talented Russian photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, in the early part of the 20th Century, they depend on our peculiar method of forming color images in the eye - with three different color receptors in the retina. Making the color image involved THREE B&W photographs on a single glass plate, each of them taken through a different colored filter - one red, one blue, and one green. These three images could then be shown with a “magic lantern” that superimposed the three images projected respectively through red, blue and green filters to produce a full-color image on the screen. But, they were never printed until the Library of Congress used computer graphic software to reproduce the images in roughly the same way that the magic lantern did, only on your computer screen (or, if it is desired, on paper).

Now, we have them…..a virtual trip into the past, that will amaze you at the vibrance and “reality” of that long-ago time…..not so different, in many ways, from the 21st century. Not, in any case, as different as we have believed, based on the usual B&W views we see.

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 09:23 PM
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WONDERING WHAT THE KARL ROVE/VALERIE PLAME/JOE WILSON FLAP IS ALL ABOUT?

You’ll never find out from the major media…...but the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan (that means Democrats AND Republicans signed off on it) agreed that no crime was committed. Here are three articles that clarify the important questions.

#1 Mark Levin gives an overview and explains how the entire story has been turned upside down, and why it’s his conclusion that Ms. Plame brought this entire situation down on her own head.

#2Cliff May presents the evidence and reasoning that convince him that Joe Wilson, himself, and not Karl Rove, provided reporter David Corn with the information about his wife’s (Ms. Plame) status as a secret operative (in the late ‘90s) for the CIA.

#3 Andy McCarthy, in a bombshell article, uncovers the legal brief filed by 36 major news outlets in this country just four months ago, entreating the special prosecutor NOT to hold their reporters in contempt of court for not revealing their sources, since the information that was revealed had been publicly known for 10 years, and that NO CRIME had been committed! You needn’t take McCarthy’s word for it, either - he includes a link to the actual friend-of-the-court brief (you need Adobe Acrobat to read it).

These are, by the way, the same major media that are now trumpeting demands that Karl Rove be fired for breaking the law by “leaking” the name of an undercover CIA agent—all the while hoping, one assumes, that their legal brief doesn’t see the light of day. We can surely be confident that the New York Times will never print it!

And they wonder why readership is down, and more and more of their audiences are being drawn off by the Web!

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 08:05 PM
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “THEM” AND “US”

American soldier in Iraq shot in the chest by a sniper. Body armor protects him, so after picking himself up, he rushes the van where the sniper is hiding, and with his buddies, captures the now-wounded terrorist. What do you suppose happens next?

Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic….secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.

Would you please join me in 3 cheers for a real American hero? Read the whole thing.

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 07:58 PM
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WHO WOULD BE A MAN MUST BE A NONCONFORMIST

said Ralph Waldo Emerson. That aphorism is perhaps best exemplified by the life of
DESMOND T. DOSS, the only military man who refused to bear arms and also won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss is the subject of a DVD documentary by Terry Benedict.

The film has won awards, like Best DXD at the CineQuest Film Festival, but it’s also been panned:

A worthy subject—- the true story of a WWII G.I. who won the Congressional Medal of Honor despite his refusal to bear arms—- gets pedestrian treatment in Terry Benedict’s “The Conscientious Objector.” Docu is guaranteed some years as a public broadcast perennial, but plodding pace and heavy-handedly inspirational treatment make it an earnest bore.

by Variety magazine.

You can’t win them all. Compared to “modern” media, this IS a slow film, but boring…..? No. If it’s the story you’re interested in, as well as the motivations that made a hero, you’re going to like this documentary. It uses some of the same techniques as Band of Brothers, including stunning vintage footage of battles, readings from letters written while overseas, and interviews with the characters 50 years and more after their exploits. Doss and his compatriots, including the officer who tried to have him thrown out of the Army, only to have his life saved by the man he swore would NEVER be by his side without a gun, were taken to Okinawa to revisit the site of their most famous battle. To watch these dear old men recalling their days of trial as they walk on the very ground, now so much changed, and to think of them as young soldiers, will break you up - particularly if you will focus on what it was that they fought for, and lost so many of their buddies for. They died for the liberty that we sometimes value so lightly today.

Get hold of this DVD—it’s available on the Desmond Doss website Watch it and ponder the price that was paid. Value it…..earn it.

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 03:39 PM
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THE GOOD NEWS FOR TODAY IS THAT SOMETIMES THE GOOD GUYS WIN!

One of the reasons that I like getting First Freedom from the National Rifle Association is the page they call Armed Citizen. This reports cases where ordinary people defended their homes and families, or their businesses and their lives, from criminals who cared nothing for them.

Now, Healy Law Offices in Tyler, Texas, has gathered hundreds of these short reports onto a page they call Stories of Self-Defense. The list can be searched by state, date, name, etc. Here are a couple from Tennessee:

64. John Hercules was working at his Nashville, Tennessee, jewelry store when two teenagers entered, displayed a gun and attempted to rob the business. When Hercules confronted the pair, one shot him in the shoulder. Hercules returned fire and fatally wounded his attacker. The other robber fled but was arrested soon after. Police said he confessed to several other robberies. (The Banner, Nashville, TN, 09/12/91)

More recently,

629. Richmond Watkins, believed to be Haywood County, Tennessee’s, oldest man at 108 years old, may have appeared to be easy prey to a criminal 84 years his junior. At first, the younger crook attempted to trick Watkins into thinking he owed the man money for some firewood. When the ruse didn’t work, the man grew violent, putting a butcher knife to Walkins’ neck and threatening to kill him if he didn’t hand over his money. Watkins reached for his pocket, but instead of a wallet, pulled out a .32 and shot his attacker in the neck, seriously wounding him. (The States Graphic,Brownsville. TN, 6/13/96)

Every one of us, even those without firearms, is a bit safer when the bad guys don’t know who is armed and who is not. Learn who’s part of your system of protection by searching for your state!

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 03:25 PM
Miscellany • Comments •

DID YOU KNOW….....

that

George W. Bush gave Iraq reconstruction contracts to his friends so that Republicans could steal from The United Nations?

or that

George W. Bush invaded Iraq so that the Jews could offend The French?

or even that

George W. Bush allowed 9/11 to happen so that The Jews, Republicans, and gun owners could oppress Muslims?

Probably not. But, all of these conspiracies, and MANY more, are available to you at the new site: The George Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator. You can construct your own conspiracy theories, or if you are, like most theorists, just naturally lazy, the generator will randomly produce theories for your inspection and approval.

I think you’ll find that most of them aren’t more wildly improbable than the ones you’ll read about in the major media these days. So, HAVE FUN!

Posted by Earl on 07/18 at 03:15 PM
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Friday, July 15, 2005

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A JIHAD MARTYR…..?

You might think that this would be impossible to find out, but you would be wrong.

What motivates a suicide bomber? Our correspondent talks to a young Muslim who survived his intended ‘martyrdom’ and describes the terrorists’ rigorous training….The third hijacker, whom I will call S, was struck by a bullet in the head; he lay comatose for two months in Israeli hospitals. Finally, he was pronounced brain-dead, and the Israelis sent him back to his family in the Gaza Strip to die.

But S recovered, and when we met, five years later, he told me his version of the events. By then, he was married and the father of three sons. Each of them had been named for shaheed batal — “martyr heroes”.

Nasra Hassan, about whom I can’t find much information, has written extensively about suicide bombers, but in a very curious way. Jay Nordlinger’s item from several years ago in NRO pointed it out

The Nov. 19 New Yorker has an interesting piece by a Nasra Hassan on Palestinian suicide bombers. But it is a . . . weirdly non-judgmental piece. It is spookily dispassionate about these murderers. And in a case like this, extreme, clinical dispassion — or objectivity — can almost blur into sympathy.

The piece throughout refers to the question of why these men should “blow themselves up.” I couldn’t help thinking — each time I read this — “I don’t care terribly much about their blowing themselves up, although this is a curious phenomenon. I care about their blowing other people up, these [expletive deleted] murderers.”

Now, she has published a different version of the New Yorker article and my reaction to it is much the same as Nordlinger’s. There is surely such a thing as being TOO non-judgmental!? Of course, not everyone suffers from the malady:

But there is grief, too. I asked the mother of Ribhi Kahlout, a young man in the Gaza Strip, who had blown himself up in November 1995, what she would have done if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”

Hat tip to Stanley Kurtz at The Corner

Posted by Earl on 07/15 at 11:15 AM
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