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Favorite book titles

First Annual Threedonia Limerick Contest!

O.K., I’ll go first…

There was a Polack with a Big Journalism by-line,

Who longed to be global warming debunking’s Mark Steyn.

When working a deadline for the late edition,

He was unable to re-fill his viagra prescription,

T’hat’s when his wife learned he’d been hiding the decline.

McFloyd O’Turbo’s turn:

Favorite Book Titles

Sunday’s WTF Video

For some reason this color version is edited. If you feel the need for the entire song in Black and White here it is.

God and Mom: Excerpts from the Hitchens brothers

Christopher Hitchens’ long-awaited memoir Hitch-22 is out in June. His brother, Peter, has a memoir of his own set for release tomorrow called The Rage Against God.

Imagine being called upon by some publisher with the task of writing the story of the Hitchens brothers – utter doom. What writer could put into words the lives [...]

Barack Obama Needs Some Culture

Ban fishing? Obama is the one who is a barbarian… Here are some cultural offering for him:

I’d include Moby Dick, but of course that was whaling.

The person who does not appreciate hunting and fishing does not fully appreciate God’s creation.

Son of Hamas

This looks like a good read.

The son of one of the founders of Hamas has written a book detailing his cooperation with Israeli intelligence forces.

From the AP:

Speaking with Haaretz, Yousef said Shin Bet agents first approached him in prison in 1996 and proposed he infiltrate the upper echelons of Hamas. He did so successfully and [...]

Friday Open Thread

The True Face of Evil — North Korea Edition

Christopher Hitchens, in Slate, writes a review of the book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matter by B.R. Myers

Hitchens begins:

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial “minder” whom I’ll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, [...]

Classic Pick O’ the Day: February 2

The Thin Man (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Nat Pendleton Dir: W. S. Van Dyke BW-91 mins, TV-G. 8:00 PM EST. TCM

I’m not even sure where to begin… as films go this is [...]

J.D. Salinger – RIP

I was never one of the legion of admirers of “Catcher in the Rye.” Well written? Sure. But also petulant, self-serving and – despite its legendary status as a ground-breaking piece of literature, rather obvious. But then I grew up in the 60’s so cynicism and nihilism were pretty much the order of the day [...]

Thursday Open Thread

3D Weekend Five: Lost in Austen, Dickens, et al

In honor of the Lost in Austen series (which runs twice today on OvationTV)…

Which fictional character(s) would you like to meet, if given the chance?

5. Adam Dalgliesh: PD James’s detective.  And poet.  How do you live that life?

4. Sinbad: Or any of those Thousand & One Nights guys.  Eh, I must be culturally bound.

3. Sid Halley/Kit Fielding: Or [...]

Crisis and Command: John Yoo on Uncommon Knowledge

Peter Robinson interviews John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who determined that the use of enhanced interrogation methods on terrorist prisoners was constitutional.

The first part of the five-part interview can be found here, or you can download the entire interview here.  (Second link will launch iTunes.)

The forty-minute discussion covers the inherent executive powers granted to [...]

Grammar Be Fun. Wanna See?

Frank Munro — author The Story of Ferdinand — was serious about grammar. Too bad he didn’t win that battle.

In isolation, good grammar is a small thing. Good grammar is, however, a signpost of civilization (and is in no way the exclusive domain of the wealthy) and it is not coincidence [...]

From the Trailer Park: Percy Jackson & the Last Olympians: The Lightning Thief

One positive of seeing Alvin and the Chipmunks was this trailer. My 10 year old son burned through these novels this past summer and loved them all. What happens when Greek demi-gods live in the 21st century and your teacher is actually a harpy?

Saturday Open Thread

Heart and Sowell

Peter Robinson from the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and from National Review Online hosts an online interview show called Uncommon Knowledge. I cannot praise it high enough. Victor Davis Hanson, Christopher Hitchens, and scores of others have been interviewed in 45 minutes sessions (broken down into 5 parts usually) by Robinson. [...]

The Dangers of Junk Science: Non-Climate Version

Our man Rich has been johnny-on-the-spot regarding the junk science of climate change — or man-made global warming or whatever. This science has not been the only place for shenanigans of course. The largest area of junk science since alchemy has come from the broad amorphous field called the social sciences (so-called) including [...]

Sunday Open Thread

Radio Free Threedonia — Today 2-4 PM PST — LiveBlog

Albert e.e. Gore

Al Gore — in his most recent climate tome — has penned a poem which he read on CNN. Below in italics is Gore’s poem. In bold are some random thoughts I had as I read his work.

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

What pray tell is a “thin” September? [...]

Radio Free Threedonia Programming Note…

This week’s show will feature a pre-recorded interview with National Review editor, columnist and author of Liberal Fascism Jonah Goldberg. Since there won’t be a call-in available for that portion of the show (Sunday from 2-4 PM PST at righttalkradio.com) if you have any questions you’d like us to ask him please put them [...]

Ahistory

Jay Nordlinger noted a passage in President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech that I’d missed:

“War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease.” How do we know that? How do we know that, at [...]

Book Club revisited: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Posting time for the FNWayne clan has been light today, so here’s a greatest hit from May – my review of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

—————————-

My family’s only true vacation occurred three years ago. Shortly beforehand, I gave reading another try. Besides the occasional comic book as a kid, I never [...]

Tiger Woods — Good For Science!

Paparazzi and bored sportswriters are not the only ones to profit off the troubles of Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordgren — no those greedy bastards who write physics books in layman’s terms also profit. This is disgusting.

It’s not as illustrious as having the president publicly declare he’s reading your book — as [...]

Saturday Open Thread

Did FDR Die of Cancer?

And run for office in 1944 knowing he wouldn’t finish his term? Here’s a fascinating article from Slate on a book called FDR’s Deadly Secret — coming out in January.

Beginning in early 1944, the fact that Roosevelt had severely elevated blood pressure and congestive heart failure was also kept secret. These diagnoses were made [...]

Friday Open Thread

Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday

Sunday Open Thread

From the Trailer Park: The Road

Listen closely and you can hear the Wilhelm Scream.

Ben Hur

Here’s an interesting piece from the Nat’l Endowment for the Humanities’ magazine Humanities on General Lew Wallace and his greatest known work Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Here’s a taste, read the whole thing here:

Since its first publication, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ has never been out of print. It outsold [...]

Personalities overshadow policy knowledge? Since when?

If lightning only struck irony, I could see the New York Times headquarters from Ohio. Hotair quoted the Times review of Sarah Palin’s tome “Going Rogue.” Here’s the selection.

Yet, Mr. McCain’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as [...]

Threedonia’s Word for the Day — Friday

Bullshit: 1. Rubbish, nonsense

I know most of you don’t have a dog in this fight, but here goes… Evangelicals know well — or should — the writings of Francis Schaeffer on worldview. He was sort of a hippy fundamentalist in that he loved art, music, etc., but had basically fundamentalist views of Christianity [...]

3D Weekend Five: All Hallow’s Eve Edition

Haven’t heard from Wanks so I apologize up front!!!

OK Threedonians…. it is of course, Halloween. What are your top 5 Halloween memories? Or in the alternative things that creep you out or scare you?

1. Tarantulas… I can kill black widows and all manner of small spiders all the live long [...]

Threedonia’s Word of the Day

Sycophant, “3. A mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle.” OED 2d ed. 1989.

Today’s example comes from Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. A couple of days ago, in a speech, he said this of President Barack Hussein Obama (emphasis mine):

This is the first president that [...]

Threedonia’s Word of the Day

The OED is down today so this definition comes from A Preface to Philosophy 3d ed. by Mark B. Woodhouse, Wadsworth (1984).

Deontological: “Any ethical system or standard in which the rightness of an act is defined by reference to factors other than the act’s consequences.”

Today’s example comes from my dear State of California.

The U.S. Supreme [...]

Threedonia’s Word of the Day

One of the few perks of working in the salt mines called “Academia” is free online access to the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED — like most dictionaries — has a word of the day feature and while I don’t always like the word they choose I do like the concept of a word [...]

I Gave This Post 110% Effort

All hail the cliche! Don’t get your knickers in a twist and don’t get too big for your britches (breeches too) young whippersnapper. Cliches are invaluable — valuable even (from Boston.com):

But here’s the thing: were any of them quite as good as “fit as a fiddle?” Time, to use a particularly sage cliché, [...]

US v. UN

h/t: reminded by comment Rufus made about Europeans loving weak Presidents and detesting strong ones… this is an illustration I use in my International law seminar on International law, the UN, and other aspects of the “world community”. It’s important to stay alert.

Swing and a Miss!

From Sports Illustrated:

Larry Johnson says in the book Frozen: My Journey into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death that he watched an Alcor official swing a monkey wrench at Williams’ frozen severed head to try to remove a tuna can stuck to it. The first swing accidentally struck the head, Johnson contends, and the second [...]

What Would Screwtape Say? (Bumped — as per Kit’s Request)

(Floyd Here: I originally posted this in March and the link to the full-article no longer works)

C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters in the 1940s — a story of a demon who counsels his young charge on how to properly tempt his human — a tour de force in human nature, the nature of evil, [...]

Monday Open Thread

Go Get A Switch

I referenced a Bush quote about Jimmy Carter earlier today from an upcoming memoir by Matt Latimer, a young former speechwriter from the later years of the Bush Administration. He’s disillusioned — natch. The Huffington Post marveled and swooned over released snippets that make various Bush officials out to be fools and [...]

“If I’m ever eighty-two years old and acting like that have someone put me away.” –Updated by Mike!

George W. Bush on Jimmy Carter.

…And Mike! comes to the rescue!  That’s all there was from that quote.  There’s some others here, from Matt Latimer’s book on Bush.