Blogging has failed to develop my political voice beyond the "Yeah, what he said" (link) "plus also..." format. And unfortunately, I have nothing to add to current debates in canon law. And as a final nail in my blog coffin, I am unwilling either to swear or to discuss intimate details of my ... uh ... "inner" health, as they say on the box of All-Bran.

So I guess I'll just be confined to spouting off about minor events in my life, just like everyone else.

No more raspberries. Frost is due anytime in the next week. The birds have started flying south, which means that they fly away from here. I've only ever lived in a place that birds flew to before. It's not very fun to have the birds start bailing out, like they know something we don't.

The cats are starting to shed. For Oscar and Dizzy, our California-born short-hairs, this will be their second attempt to grow a proper Arctic winter coat. Last winter they were afraid to go outside.

Frederick the Attack Cat is now quite well integrated into our household. Yesterday he walked right up to me and sat on my lap. Since this is a cat who hates men and trees guests in the bathroom (a room which has a special place in his idiotic little feline heart), I count this as a big achievement on my part. Or rather, on the part of the ham in my sandwich that Fredrick was trying to cadge.

Here's a picture of Frederick's first sortie downstairs. A few nights ago when I wasn't able to sleep, I was sitting in the living room doing some library work. I noticed a gray cat run up to me, and reached out my hand automatically to pet it. Then I thought, That's funny... what's Fenris [the neighbor's cat] doing in our house?. Of course, it turned out to be Frederick, and he growled the moment I touched him, and then ran off behind a chair to hide. Unfortunately, he picked the chair Dizzy was sleeping on, and since Dizzy is big and heavy and still has his front claws (F. does not), he cleans Frederick's clock whenever they fight. So here's a picture of Frederick skulking and Dizzy trying to figure out what the growling was about:

Steve den Beste is off-base in his condemnation of feminists for failing to speak out against Sharia. The "Choices E-zine" which I subscribe to (helps me monitor the feminist takeover on the Academy) has publicized the Nigerian stoning case of Safiya Hussaini Tungar Dudu.

Back in April, they even promoted a petition aimed at increasing the size of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

The Feminist Majority Foundation (who funds "Choices E-Zine") does make efforts to promote women's rights. They are willing to ignore parts of their own ideology (multiculturalism) when the ideology is wrong and obstructs their fundamental goals. This is a very encouraging sign, and we ought to promote and encourage this sort of behavior instead of sneering at it.

Women's rights is an excellent unifying issue, particularly when you get to the far-out left -- the militant breastfeeding homebirth wackos. But more about that another day.

From a Catholic blog, here's a picture of a common sexual position around here.

A favorite pastime for people the world over is talking past each other. This is what happened between Max Sawicky and Steven Den Beste in their Transnational Progressivism non-debate. Most of us have two modes: agreement mode and disagreement mode. In agreement mode, we agree with the comments of our interlocutor (co-conversationalist?). In disagreement mode, I let the other person speak and then there's a pause while I recall all of the things that I disagreed with in his comment, and then I say them all. And then he does the same to me.

Anyway, here's an excellent example of talking past, in an article about left support for war in Iraq, why it's hard to find, and what to do to make it materialize. A throwaway line from that article is: "The psychological hurdles to [coming to terms with the use of force] were higher [for Baby Boomers] because of the innate, and largely justified, suspicion of Cold War military adventurism in Suez [and other places]..."

That's a lovely thesis, and someday maybe I could debate it on the merits with you. But there's a bigger problem, because there never was any "military adventurism" in the Suez. I assume that this article refers to the 1956 response by Israel to Nasser's closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and the support given the Israelis by the British and French, who were peeved by Nasser's nationalizing of the Suez canal and cuddling up to the Soviets.

See, when you violate international covenants about the free movement of shipping, that's called an act of war. And when you commit acts of war, you become a rogue nation. And then other nations with opposing interests to yours, or nations whose interests you have damaged -- say, by stealing the property of their resident corporations -- why, they come and smack you down.

And if your response to this article is, "What if random other nation decided that the U.S. was a 'rogue nation' because of any of 15,000 unpleasant things the U.S. has done in the last 200 years? What then? Would they be justified in attacking the U.S.?" Yeah, probably they would be. Bring it on, and we'll see who finishes.