Victor Davis Hanson has a great piece in today’s NRO, in which he identifies the three principles that drive the liberal anti-war crowd. As usual, he states it as clearly and succinctly as anybody. He identifies them as:

1) moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

2) utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

3) multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.‘

Good stuff.

Don’t be suprised if you see occasional downtime on my blog here over the next several days; the server on which it runs has been under attack by spammers for the last week and Geof (the trusty and generous hosting provider) is having the server wiped and then doing a full re-load this weekend.

Best wishes to Geof as he spends his weekend at a no-fun task.

An interesting idea from an outsourcing company: put ‘em on a cruise ship just offshore. Evade the local laws and taxes, but hey, they’re closeby.

Read the article at Computerworld.

[HT: Don Luskin]

I don’t know what triggered this memory today… but I might as well tell the story while I’m thinking about it.

I was in my third year at LeTU when I got asked to be the pianist for some special music during chapel. Now, this was not an unusual request; by this time in my college life I had become the de facto college pianist, doing lots of special music, I was lead accompianist for the singing group, etc. On this particular day, though, the musical content was going to be a bit different.

My friend Mark Holmes, a phenomenal tenor in the Singers, was slated to do a special, and he was having a hard time deciding what to do. Finally, in a move worthy of a bad college movie somewhere, he chose to sing a “Christianized” version of the classic Johnny B. Goode. As I recall, the lyrics were totally cheesy; the chorus ended “go, Johnny, go – go preach the Word.” Yikes.

So anyhow, I had been recruited to play the piano to back him up; we also had a good drummer, a bass player whose name eludes me, and then Fred playing the guitar. Fred was a couple years behind me; he was tall and redheaded, with a beard and ponytail completing his wanna-be rock star image. He was pretty much a goofball when it came to music, which made him fun. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to prove his electric guitar prowess on this dubious semi-cover, and so our band was complete. We practiced a few times, and got it polished enough to be acceptable at the musical abyss that was LeTourneau.

The morning came for chapel and we were slated to do special music right before the message. We revved it up and did an energetic (if not totally polished) rendition, just as we had practiced. What I had not practiced, however, was coming down on a glissando down the keyboard (that sweeping motion where you just run the back of your fingers down the keyboard) and hit a black key the wrong way, and, lo and behold, the black part of the key just broke off. I’ve never seen it happen before or since. The wood was probably kinda soft in that key, and I just torqued it the right way. It’s the only time (to my knowledge) that I’ve ever caused damage to a piano by playing it.

When we were packing up our gear after chapel, I picked up the key and tossed it over to Fred. You’d think he had died and gone to rock-n-roll heaven – he thought it was the most cool thing that somebody had broken a piano while playing a song. I think every time we did music for chapel after that the subject came up, always with amazement and laughter. Fortunately for me, a little bit of Elmer’s wood glue was sufficient to fix the piano so the next pianist in line could have their E-flat.

The epilogue to this story is the memory that this wasn’t the last time I played Johnny B. Goode in chapel. A year or so later, an instructor at the school (also a talented guitarist, now a co-worker here in Iowa) was up for special music, and he chose to do Johnny B. again. He did the original version, complete with the word “hell”, which raised a few of the stodgy faculty eyebrows. He introduced the song this way:

“Last week, a Romanian choir came and sang some traditional songs from their homeland. This morning, I’d like to sing a traditional song from my homeland.”

This time, I managed to keep the piano in one piece.

I don’t know what triggered this memory today… but I might as well tell the story while I’m thinking about it.

I was in my third year at LeTU when I got asked to be the pianist for some special music during chapel. Now, this was not an unusual request; by this time in my college life I had become the de facto college pianist, doing lots of special music, I was lead accompianist for the singing group, etc. On this particular day, though, the musical content was going to be a bit different.

My friend Mark Holmes, a phenomenal tenor in the Singers, was slated to do a special, and he was having a hard time deciding what to do. Finally, in a move worthy of a bad college movie somewhere, he chose to sing a “Christianized” version of the classic Johnny B. Goode. As I recall, the lyrics were totally cheesy; the chorus ended “go, Johnny, go – go preach the Word.” Yikes.

So anyhow, I had been recruited to play the piano to back him up; we also had a good drummer, a bass player whose name eludes me, and then Fred playing the guitar. Fred was a couple years behind me; he was tall and redheaded, with a beard and ponytail completing his wanna-be rock star image. He was pretty much a goofball when it came to music, which made him fun. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to prove his electric guitar prowess on this dubious semi-cover, and so our band was complete. We practiced a few times, and got it polished enough to be acceptable at the musical abyss that was LeTourneau.

The morning came for chapel and we were slated to do special music right before the message. We revved it up and did an energetic (if not totally polished) rendition, just as we had practiced. What I had not practiced, however, was coming down on a glissando down the keyboard (that sweeping motion where you just run the back of your fingers down the keyboard) and hit a black key the wrong way, and, lo and behold, the black part of the key just broke off. I’ve never seen it happen before or since. The wood was probably kinda soft in that key, and I just torqued it the right way. It’s the only time (to my knowledge) that I’ve ever caused damage to a piano by playing it.

When we were packing up our gear after chapel, I picked up the key and tossed it over to Fred. You’d think he had died and gone to rock-n-roll heaven – he thought it was the most cool thing that somebody had broken a piano while playing a song. I think every time we did music for chapel after that the subject came up, always with amazement and laughter. Fortunately for me, a little bit of Elmer’s wood glue was sufficient to fix the piano so the next pianist in line could have their E-flat.

The epilogue to this story is the memory that this wasn’t the last time I played Johnny B. Goode in chapel. A year or so later, an instructor at the school (also a talented guitarist, now a co-worker here in Iowa) was up for special music, and he chose to do Johnny B. again. He did the original version, complete with the word “hell”, which raised a few of the stodgy faculty eyebrows. He introduced the song this way:

“Last week, a Romanian choir came and sang some traditional songs from their homeland. This morning, I’d like to sing a traditional song from my homeland.”

This time, I managed to keep the piano in one piece.

I don’t know what triggered this memory today… but I might as well tell the story while I’m thinking about it.

I was in my third year at LeTU when I got asked to be the pianist for some special music during chapel. Now, this was not an unusual request; by this time in my college life I had become the de facto college pianist, doing lots of special music, I was lead accompianist for the singing group, etc. On this particular day, though, the musical content was going to be a bit different.

My friend Mark Holmes, a phenomenal tenor in the Singers, was slated to do a special, and he was having a hard time deciding what to do. Finally, in a move worthy of a bad college movie somewhere, he chose to sing a “Christianized” version of the classic Johnny B. Goode. As I recall, the lyrics were totally cheesy; the chorus ended “go, Johnny, go – go preach the Word.” Yikes.

So anyhow, I had been recruited to play the piano to back him up; we also had a good drummer, a bass player whose name eludes me, and then Fred playing the guitar. Fred was a couple years behind me; he was tall and redheaded, with a beard and ponytail completing his wanna-be rock star image. He was pretty much a goofball when it came to music, which made him fun. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to prove his electric guitar prowess on this dubious semi-cover, and so our band was complete. We practiced a few times, and got it polished enough to be acceptable at the musical abyss that was LeTourneau.

The morning came for chapel and we were slated to do special music right before the message. We revved it up and did an energetic (if not totally polished) rendition, just as we had practiced. What I had not practiced, however, was coming down on a glissando down the keyboard (that sweeping motion where you just run the back of your fingers down the keyboard) and hit a black key the wrong way, and, lo and behold, the black part of the key just broke off. I’ve never seen it happen before or since. The wood was probably kinda soft in that key, and I just torqued it the right way. It’s the only time (to my knowledge) that I’ve ever caused damage to a piano by playing it.

When we were packing up our gear after chapel, I picked up the key and tossed it over to Fred. You’d think he had died and gone to rock-n-roll heaven – he thought it was the most cool thing that somebody had broken a piano while playing a song. I think every time we did music for chapel after that the subject came up, always with amazement and laughter. Fortunately for me, a little bit of Elmer’s wood glue was sufficient to fix the piano so the next pianist in line could have their E-flat.

The epilogue to this story is the memory that this wasn’t the last time I played Johnny B. Goode in chapel. A year or so later, an instructor at the school (also a talented guitarist, now a co-worker here in Iowa) was up for special music, and he chose to do Johnny B. again. He did the original version, complete with the word “hell”, which raised a few of the stodgy faculty eyebrows. He introduced the song this way:

“Last week, a Romanian choir came and sang some traditional songs from their homeland. This morning, I’d like to sing a traditional song from my homeland.”

This time, I managed to keep the piano in one piece.

William Saletan in Slate:

Bin Laden’s whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down. He doesn’t understand that this flexibility—and this trust—are why democracies will live, while he will die. Many of us didn’t vote for Bush’s government or Blair’s. But we’re loyal to them, in part because we were given a voice in choosing them. And if we don’t like our governments, we can vote them out. We can’t vote out terrorists. We can only kill them.

This guy gets it.

[HT: James Taranto at OpinionJournal]

Last night we had a babysitter available and so we went to the cheap seats theater in town and watched Sahara. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Clive Cussler. Becky and I are both huge fans of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, so we were looking forward to seeing what they’d do with his novel in the movie.

It’s beyond me why they haven’t tried to translate more of the Dirk Pitt series onto the big screen; for swashbuckling adventure tales, they’re tops. (The one attempt thus far, Raise the Titanic! may have discouraged others from trying… it was horrible!) Perhaps it’s the slight lack of realism… but wait, we’re talking about Hollywood here. Part of what makes Cussler’s books so fun, IMHO, is that if the hero is on a quest to find some mysterious hidden treasure, he finds it. None of this “oh it didn’t really exist at all but at least you had a good adventure” type of ending for Mr. Cussler. Nosirree. The hero gets the girl, drives a cool old car, wisecracks with his trusty sidekick, saves the world, and finds his treasure to boot. Realism? Who needs realism?

I wasn’t so sure about the casting of Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn as Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino. Fortunately, they suprised me. McConaughey was excellent, and they captured the fun-loving spirit and wise-cracking nature of the two characters really well. They interacted as though they had been friends for their whole lives (which, in the books they have been). My only gripe was that Zahn’s character was too dumb most of the time. I realize Steve Zahn has made a career out of playing “hi, I’m a doofus” characters. I wish they could have made him just a bit more heroic; in the books Al Giordino is just as much a thinker as Pitt; just with a different personality. That didn’t come through so well in the movie.

At the end, Becky asked “where’s the Clive Cussler cameo?” If you’ve read any of the books, you know that Cussler writes himself in with a small cameo appearance in every book. (Becky likened this to Hitchcock’s appearances in each of his movies.) It’s another one of those things that makes Dirk Pitt novels so much fun – when is Cussler going to appear? It would have been a neat nod to the books if they had written it in somehow… but it was not to be. I guess they can only base so much on the book.

All in all, it was a fun night out. And it was only Thursday. That almost makes it feel like a longer weekend, if it just wasn’t for the fact that I’m working today…

Normally I don’t do a lot of “here’s what I did with my weekend”-type posts, but it was a nice weekend, so since I need to update the blog I figured I’d just have to. Oh, first things first: my brother Ryan has decided to start a blog. Don’t know how much he’ll maintain it, but I’ve added it to the list of links on the right.

Anyhow, to the weekend. Friday night we got a babysitter and went out on a date. Nice to have some time to just be with the two of us after a busy week. We went to Chili’s and had ribs for supper, then went to Barnes & Noble to browse for a while. I bought a 2-disk CD album of Thelonious Monk and his quartet, Live at the “It” Club. I’d not listened to any Monk before, but a friend recommended him because of my love for Harry Connick, Jr. I was not disappointed. 2 1/2 hours of live club performance from 1964, digitally remastered so that it sounds great. I’ve been listening to it for the past couple evenings and it’s excellent. Forgot to bring it to work today so I guess it won’t make its way onto my iPod until tomorrow. So, after B&N, we went down to our favorite little coffeeshop and each had a cappucino smoothie. I sat and improvised on the piano for a while and Becky sat and read a book. What a nice way to spend a Friday evening!

Saturday we got up early and worked on an outdoor construction project. Becky has been planning on building some planters back behind the garage for the past several months; the landscape timbers to build said planters have been sitting on our patio for the past 6 weeks or so. Finally we had a free weekend to build. Finished those up by early afternoon. They will be really nice to have.

With the long weekend we got to enjoy Monday off as well. We did a bunch of cleanup in the morning, in preparation for having several friends over in the afternoon. It rained non-stop from 9:00 until 1:30 or so; we were afraid it might be too wet to spend time outside, but no, it dried out nicely and was beautiful. We invited Steve & Amanda and their kids, Ginger came as well (Daniel’s off to Amsterdam today flying freight), and then a new couple that just moved up here, Jeremiah and Rebecca. We had a great time getting to know them – they seem like a lot of fun, hope we can get to know them better. What I wouldn’t give to have them end up making Noelridge their church home… but they’re looking for a home in Monticello (30 minutes away) to shorten Jeremiah’s commute, so I wouldn’t place good odds on them coming to CR for church… oh well.

Now it’s Tuesday and I’m back at work. I’ve got a project certification plan document to update today. Fun fun. But it was a great, refreshing weekend. Thank the Lord for these times to kick back a bit and relax.