| Wednesday,
February 27, 2008 Restless at 4 AM. I sort of got to sleep at
2330, which is very early for me, but I sleep saft and I wake aft, it's long
since sleeping were freyed frae me... gie me service back to my wife and
bairns and all good men what spare frae me.
One gets giddy from lack of sleep. Today at noon is the 6th time of
Zapping.
===============
If you live in Texas, cross over and vote for Hillary. We have to keep
that contest alive. She pitched it in the debates last night, but it's not
time to crown Obama. Or am I giddy?
========
A clarification from an IRS expert:
Rebate
Bearing in mind that the "2008
return" is the one people will file for the year ending December 31, 2008, I
think this item in a recent IRS FAQ clarifies a point made several times by
readers in your mail column:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=179181,00.html
Q. Will the payment I receive in
2008 reduce my 2008 refund or increase the amount I owe for 2008?
A. No, the stimulus payment will
not reduce your refund or increase the amount you owe when you file your
2008 return.
--Mike Glyer
============
And one more thing to look at
If you haven't been to Robert Thompson's web site
this week, he has some clear headed, sobering thoughts on the impact of
DNA testing on health insurance:
http://www.ttgnet.com/daynotes/2008/2008-09.html
Steve Setzer
Mr. Thompson and I do not always agree, but he can be counted on to give
the Libertarian view, and that's worth knowing.
As to what to do after reducing uncertainty through DNA, that is very
much worth discussion. I said elsewhere that I wish Mike Flynn lived near
me. I'd like to talk this over with him.
========
And I am sort of caught up on mail.
There are a number of discussions. Don't miss Fire and Ice.
Be of good cheer:
Wholesale Prices Jump in January
Higher Costs for Food, Energy and Medicine
Push Wholesale Prices Up Sharply
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080226/economy.html?.v=12
Battered by bad economic news, consumer
confidence plunged while wholesale food, energy and medicine costs
soared, pushing inflation up at the fastest pace in a quarter century.
Go burn some more food.
=================
His Most Eminent Highness Fra' Andrew Willoughby
Ninian Bertie (pronounced "Barty"), who has died aged 78, was Prince and
Grand Master of the Order of Malta, that is, the Knights of Saint John.
Farewell, Grand Master Bertie!
<http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12801>
- Roland Dobbins
See also my report on my trip to Rome and the
HQ of the Sovereign and Military Order
of St. John of Jerusalem.
Which reminds me of my story about
the wolf on the Capitoline Hill.
==================
William F. Buckley, Jr,
RIP
I can't call him an old friend, because we didn't know each other that
well. I had dinner with him twice and lunch about as often, all back in
the days when I was at Pepperdine and he visited the campus for a week.
We corresponded with perhaps a half dozen exchanges of mail.
We had a mutual friend, Russell Kirk. Russell was the intellectual leader
of the Conservative Movement, while Buckley was the popular leader.
He was a man of good taste and good sense. There will be thousands of
obituaries, and I need not reference them. He will be missed by many.
====
I wrote the above in haste before my morning walk. I thought about it
during my walk, and I'll have more to say. WFB was one of the influential
men of his time, adept at translating principles into action directives, one
of the most remarkable men I have ever met.
We disagreed badly on the Iraq War, and when Buckley allowed the
egregious Frum to use the pages of National Review to read out of the
Conservative Movement all those who did not enthusiastically support the
invasion of Iraq, we exchanged polite but useless emails. It was the last
time I heard from him directly, although a year later he said that has he
but known, he would have opposed the invasion. I do not know if the
egregious Frum then read Buckley out of the movement, but I would not be
astonished to learn that he had.
We had similarly disagreed about the First Gulf War, which I opposed on
the grounds that which gang of thugs possessed Kuwait was not of great
interest to the United States; but that was different. I believe that the
First Gulf War came about because of affirmative action: a career state
department FSO was made ambassador to Iraq and failed to make Saddam aware
of the stakes in his planned invasion. Indeed, her silly memo could be
construed as giving him permission! But I wander.
From that time on, I thought National Review was fading as the
communications belt for conservatives. It went wrong on immigration, it
supported disastrous Republican policies, and became more and more enamored
of retaining power than of doing the thing which is right and speaking the
truth from its heart. This culminated with the egregious Frum.
But of the dead one should speak only good: and William F. Buckley,
tireless, did stand in the way of history shouting Stop! And he did change
the hearts and minds of many, including me at a time when I was
intellectually vulnerable. I doubt I would have read Kirk had I not read
Buckley first.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
====================
Growing Up Smart
Having read
http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PRODODD.HTM I am minded to write my own
memories of growing up with a 180 IQ. They are quite different from his. Of
course no one can verify any of those numbers to begin with.
My recollections are not his. To begin with, I had no motor skills, and
since I was always associated with boys two years older than me, I had
little chance to excel. I was a disaster at any game involving a ball. My
experience at basketball was inevitable: they would choose sides, I would be
chosen last, I would get the ball, someone would shout "Double Dribble!" and
they would take it away from me. Football was impossible: that two
year difference in age. Baseball was terrifying: this hard object would be
hit or hurled at me, and I was more concerned with it not breaking my hands
or bashing in my head than with catching it. Far too active an imagination:
I could envision terrible things happening to me.
So I read a lot. Like him I cannot remember when I could not read, and I
read voraciously: I soon found a way I could get into the adult section of
the library and a place I could hide while reading books they would not
allow me to take out. But unlike him, I had no gift for languages. I still
don't. I think I have mastered English, and I could once write a coherent if
wooden essay in Latin, but that's it.
In any event, I may begin a page for these musings.
============================
Welcome iPhone
A reader was so curious as to what I would think of the iPhone once I
used it that he impatiently bought one for me. (I applaud such impatience,
of course! Thanks!) It arrived today.
I have unpacked it -- like all Apple products the packaging is elegant.
I now need to accumulate accessories. Among them, I am told, is a skin:
apparently they scratch more easily than one would like.
I also need to know about activation plans. I am already with AT&T for
cell phone service, so I expect the easiest way is to take the new iPhone
down to the AT&T phone store and invite them to show me options. I may get
to that this afternoon after my noon zapping.
But the first order of business is to name this phone. It is far more
powerful as a computer than old Zeke, my first computer, so it certainly
needs a name. I am open to suggestions, for the name, for accessories, and
for implementation plans.
=====================
I vegetated after my treatment. Yesterday I found the energy to write two
pages on Mamelukes, but today there was none at all, and I moped. There's
not much on TV tonight. My eyes aren't focused as well as I would like, so I
don't really want to read, either. Restless. I suppose radiation treatment
will do that to you. Overall, though, I am not particularly uncomfortable,
the mild sore throat has not got worse, tinnitus is not as bad as it has
been, and I can swallow. My voice is worse, after a couple of days of what I
thought was improvement, and that is a bit of a concern.
T0morrow it's a very early zapping.
===================
Took a walk for about a mile with Sable at 2230. That may help me get to
sleep. Roland tells me that I activate the iPhone by going to iStore on the
iMac. I have dug out The Missing Manual on the iPhone and I will read
through it.
I have mixed emotions on transferring my old phone number. The ancient
Nokia has no camera or web browser or anything else, but it is a phone I can
use and carry in a shirt pocket. The iPhone is larger, and has no place to
secure a lanyard, and in my current clumsy condition I really want a
lanyard; I suppose it's off to Fry's (or the Apple Store in Fashion Square?)
to find a case? I am informed that the iPhone doesn't scratch so
easily as the iPods, and doesn't really need a case.
.
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