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Thomas Sowell: Waiving Freedom
November 7, 2012 — xanthippaIn ‘Waiving Freedom’, Thomas Sowell writes:
“The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.
You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.
You do not have a self-governing people when “czars” are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people’s elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.
You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.
You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called “consumer protection” agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.
You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.’
He is absolutely right. Read the whole article here.
Will this arbitrary application of laws turn the US under Obama into a ‘failed state’ by 2016?
The Free Thinking Film Festival starts tonight!
November 1, 2012 — xanthippaFor all of you in the Ottawa area, the thied annual Free Thinking Film Festiva starts tonight – and, as an added bonus, one of my paintings (Aisha) is going to be auctioned off as part of the festivities!
From the organizers:
Tonight…..
Losing Our Sons/Muslim Brotherhood in Canada!
November 1, 2012
The 3rd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2012 Starts Tonight!
We’ve got an incredible first evening planned for the Festival. Tickets will be available at the door, so please make it to the Library & Archives Canada tonight!
Losing Our Sons
November 1st, 2012, 7 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Admission: $20 or with Festival Pass (you can buy an individual ticket or a Festival Pass at the door). Private reception to follow the Q&A with Marc Lebuis.
Right after the film, please join us for an exclusive presentation by Marc Lebuis – the proprietor of Le Point De Bascule Canada blog – on the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.
Point de bascule, or the tipping point, is a Montreal-based French language webmagazine. It is dedicated to explore and expose Islamist activities in our midst, and I invite everybody to check out his site.
Losing Our Sons Trailer HD
Losing Our Sons Trailer HD
A searing true story from America’s heartland, Losing Our Sons tells of two American families whose lives intersected through a shattering act of violence. Melvin Bledsoe, a small business owner in Memphis, watched with pride as his son Carlos went to Tennessee State University in Nashville to better his life through education. Daris Long, an ex-Marine, felt honored that his son, Andy, chose to follow in his footsteps by joining the military. But when Carlos Bledsoe murdered Andy Long in Little Rock, Arkansas, both fathers are forced to confront a new kind of American nightmare. As Melvin traced the trail that led Carlos from Nashville to Yemen and then to Little Rock, Daris confronted an American government that seems to be in denial about what happened to his son. This powerful documentary provides a moment of clarity for people who care about their families and their country’s future.
“Heartbreaking and infuriating … an anguished wake-up call.”
Jeff Jacoby, Columnist, Boston Globe
“Riveting, powerful, educational and a must see for every American”
Brigitte Gabriel, Founder President of ACT! For America
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We made the Ottawa Citizen!
Click here to read their preview of the Festival.
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Get set for one of the most important Canadian Premieres in a long time. Death By China will be our feature presentation on Friday night at the 3rd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2012.
Death by China Documentary Film – Official Trailer
Death by China Documentary Film – Official Trailer
Death By China
November 2nd, 2012, 7 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Speaker: Greg Autry, co-author of “Death By China”. Private reception to follow Q&A.
Admission: $20 or with Festival Pass. Tickets available online (see our website) or at the door.
Death by China is a new film based on the book by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry which challenges the dominant paradigm of a “Chinese Miracle” – the one featuring a modernizing, progressive Chinese state heading toward political reform and driving global economic growth with its new found embrace of capitalism and freedom. Tearing this delusion away, Death by China documents the myriad ways that a powerful, wealthy, and corrupt Chinese Communist Party emboldened by a growing nationalistic frenzy is becoming the biggest threat to global peace, prosperity, and health since Nazi Germany.
“A truly life-changing, mouth-dropping documentary film…Peter Navarro’s ‘Death by China’ grabs you by the throat and never lets go.”
-Francesca McCaffery, Blackbook Magazine
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We’ve added Atlas Shrugged, Part One!
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Room 156
3:00 PM
Atlas Shrugged, Part One
Watch the Trailer
97 minutes, Strike Productions, 2011
Ayn Rand’s timeless novel of rational self-interest comes to life for a new millennium.”. The year is 2016, and America is on the verge of economic disaster. The greatest citizens are being targeted, and dark forces are working to bring about America’s final days. Our only hope for salvation lies with Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden, rugged individualists whose bold ideas may have the power to spark a revolution and reclaim to the American Dream.
3rd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival!!!
We’ve got an amazing Festival this year!
The Festival will feature four major events: On November 1st, the Festival will open with “Losing Our Sons”, a poignant tale of two fathers who have lost their sons – one through terrorism, and one through indoctrination. On November 2nd, the Festival features the Canadian premiere of “Death by China”, a film about the increasingly destructive economic trade practices of a rapidly rising China with author Greg Autry in attendance. On Saturday, November 3rd, Producer Michael King will be on hand to introduce the film, “The Rescuers” about diplomats who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and the Festival will end with a tribute to Raoul Wallenberg – a celebration of his 100th birthday in association with B’nai Brith Canada.
Other films include “The Invisible Men,” about the plight of gay Palestinians; “Windfall,” about the pitfalls of wind power; “Freedom’s Fury,” a look at the “blood in the water” water polo match between the Soviet Union and Hungary at the Olympics in 1956; “Their Eyes Were Dry,” a film about the massacre of teenagers in Ma’alot in Israel by Palestinian terrorists in 1974; “Occupy Unmasked,” a hard look at the Occupy movement; “21 Brothers,” a Canadian film about World War I; “The Red Chapel,” a comedy that exposes North Korea’s totalitarian system; “Putin’s Kiss”, a documentary on the brutality of the Putin regime; “Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” examines why Winston Churchill’s legacy continues to be relevant in the 21st Century; “Why Is It Hate?,” Martin Gladstone’s film on why Queers Against Israeli Apartheid bring a message of hate to Toronto’s Gay Pride; and many, many other films.
In addition, four authors will be in Ottawa to launch their books. Bruce Bawer, the acclaimed American author, will read from his new book, “The Victims Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind;” Pierre Desrochers will present on two of his books: “The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet”, and “The False Crises of Rachel Carson: Silent Spring at 50”; Arpad Szoczi will present his book, “Timisoara – The Real Story Behind the Romanian Revolution,” and Tuvia Tenenbom will be here to talk about his book, “I Sleep In Hitler’s Room.”
Trailer – 3rd Annual Free Thinking Film Society 2012
Trailer – 3rd Annual Free Thinking Film Society 2012
The complete list of events can be seen at http://www.freethinkingfilmfest.ca
Festival passes are available for $75 and can be purchased either online or at the following retailers – Compact Music (785 Bank, 190 Bank), Collected Works (1242 Wellington), and Ottawa Festivals (47 William Street). Day passes will also be available for sale.
Some Amazing Speakers Coming to Ottawa for the Festival!
Martin Gladstone, Producer of “Why Is It Hate”, a documentary about how Queers Against Israeli Apartheid bring a message of hate to Toronto Gay Pride.
Greg Autry, Author of the book, “Death By China” will be here to talk about his new documentary of the same name. CANADIAN PREMIERE.
Michael King, Producer of the film “The Rescuers” in which historian Martin Gilbert teams up with a survivor of the Rwandan genocide to interview diplomats who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
Pierre Desrochers, Professor at the University of Toronto, will be presenting on his two new books: “The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000 mile Diet” and “Silent Spring at 60: The False Crises of Rachel Carson”.
Bruce Bawer, acclaimed American Author, will be in Ottawa to launch his new book: “The Victim’s Revolution: The Rise of Identity Politics and the Closing of the Liberal Mind.”
David Matas, attorney for the B’nai Brith and Human Rights Activist, will be presenting the latest research on the fate of diplomat Raoul Wallenberg – the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust in Hungary.
Clayton Garrett, Producer of 21 Brothers, a Canadian film about life in the trenches during WW1. Shot in Kingston, Ontario.
Marc Lebuis, author of the website pointdebasculecanada.ca will be in Ottawa to present on the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.
Tuvia Tenenbom will be here to present his book, “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.”
Arpad Szoszi will be here to discuss his new book on the Romanian Revolution.
Free Mobile Applications!
By the way, we now have an Android application and an iPhone application. Just click here to download our Android application (it’s free).
You can click here to get our free iPhone application.
Sincerely,
Frederick Litwin
Free Thinking Film Society
Generation Identitaire occupies the roof of a French Mosque
October 20, 2012 — xanthippaLast week, I had posted a video in which a French group calling itself Generation Identitaire introduced itself.
Today, they occupied the roof of a mosque (which has ‘fiery’ imams who frequently preach hate and violence) in France…
This is going to get interesting…
Young people…
September 4, 2012 — xanthippaYoung people…
Wonderous creatures, arent’t they?
Today, the day after Labour Day, is the ‘going back to school’ day in my neighbourhood.
My older son is starting another semester at University today.
My younger son just came home from his first day in High School.
So perhaps you’ll forgive me if my thoughts are turning towards our youth and the future they will build.
One absolutely amazing young person has recently given a TEDx talk in Richmond Hill (Toronto). I do not know her personally, but my trusted source informs me that she is just 18 years old and speaks 17 languages fluently…
I will embed the full TEDx video at the end of this post, but because it includes many talks and is several hours long and the presentation I was so impressed by starts 2 hours and 2 minutes into the video, I think it worth posting a link here that cues up nicely to the start of her talk.
Watching young people like Sophia Glisch is inspiring…
One of the first things I had thought of after seeing this video was what she would make of this linguistic performance:
Here is the full video of the TEDx talk:
UPDATE: this post has been edited to correct the spelling/insert full name of the seventeenlingual genius, Sophia Glisch
Note: this post has been edited to remove some potentially inaccurate information
Random Observations: Analysis vs Algebra predicts eating corn?
August 22, 2012 — xanthippaOK – it’s summer and we are all enjoying tasty summer treats, like, say, corn on the cob.
But, did you know that how you eat corn tells a lot about your other preferences?
‘Back when I was in grad school there was a department lunch with corn on the cob. Partway through the meal one of the analysts looked around the room and remarked, “That’s odd, all of the analysts are eating corn one way and the algebraists are eating corn another!” Everyone looked around. In fact everyone was eating the corn in one of two ways. One way was to munch over the length of the corn in a straight line, back up, turn slightly, and do another row across. Kind of like how an old typewriter goes. The other way was to go around in a spiral. All of the analysts were eating in spirals, and the algebraists in rows.’
It seems natural that the way you analyze/think about the world around you extends to how you interact with your surroundings – including how you eat. Mentalists have long taken note of such cues and used them to cold-read their clients. So, why should we be surprised that this connection exists between how we eat and how we approach mathematics?
Or, indeed, life in general?
And not just mathematics: programming, too:
‘Let me give some examples. Upon my first encounter it was clear to me that object oriented programming is something that appeals to algebraists. So if you’re a programmer and found Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software to be a revelation, it is highly likely that you lean towards algebra and eat your corn in neat rows. Going the other way, if the techniques described in On Lisp appeal, then you might be on the analytic side of the fence and eat your corn in spirals. This is particularly true if you found yourself agreeing with Paul Graham’s thoughts in Why Arc Isn’t Especially Object-Oriented. There was a period that I thought that the programming division might be as simple as functional versus object oriented. Then I encountered monads, and I learned that there were functional programmers who clearly were algebraists. (I know someone who got his PhD studying Haskell’s type system. My prediction that he ate corn in rows was correct.) Going the other way I wouldn’t be surprised that people who love what they can do with template metaprogramming in C++ lean towards analysis and eating corn in spirals. (I haven’t tested the last guess at all, so take it with a grain of salt.)’
To which I add: you should always eat your corn on the cob with a few grains of salt! And lots of butter…
A gratuitously personal post
August 15, 2012 — xanthippaI am the first person to admit that my brain is not ‘wired’ in the neuro-typical way.
The more l learn about other people, the more I realize just how atypical my thinking processes are.
Which is a bit of a self-conscious segway into my post…which is all abouot the excitement of finding a ‘lost’ song…
When I was ‘an itty-bitty-baby’, my parents used to listen to ‘their’ music: and, being political dissidents from the ‘other’ side of the ‘iron curtain’, this naturally included a few records they had managed to get in English.
(And, yes – growing up, I saw many performers who would do ‘yodling’ and ‘stepdancing’ together in one musical piece because they both typified ‘Western culture’ and were thus part of ‘the same culture’…ok, let me re-focus…)
In other words, the ‘classification norms’ I grew up with were ‘slightly’ different from the ‘North-American-perspective’!
But, that is not my point – at least, not now: now, my point is that my parents had acquired a few records in English, back when I was an itty-bitty-baby who did not speak a word of English – and they used to listen to them.
Before I had learned to speak any English whatsoever, that is.
And, I, too, would listen.
Over and over and over…
As a matter of fact, there were a few songs that I picked out that I liked and I would play them – even though I was forbidden to use the record-player by myself -1 song at a time, over and over and over…when my parents weren’t home!
I had no clue what the words said, but I memorized the sound of them and tried to reproduce it…and, I’m afraid, it was as dismal a lingustic failure as I was a musical one (as I am almot completely tonedeaf).
But, I did not give up!
I kept the memory of the sound of those songs deep in my brain…including the sond that the ‘foreign’ singing would encompass.
Fast forward a few decades: I now live in an English-speaking country and can, most of the time, pass for an Anglophone who might speak a littlepeculiarly…but an anglophone nonetheless.
The point is – I remembered the song and re-played it enough times from my memory – once I had learned English – to make ‘some’ sense of the sounds!
OK – except for a tiny little bit – I had made complete sense of these sounds!!!
And, being a new parent, I reverted to my parent’s patterns and tried to sing to my babies the lulabyes I had recalled from my own early childhood – including the ones that were in English!
I had separated the sounds into words, understood their meaning (in time), and filled-in-the-blanks as I needed to…and then sang them as a lullaby to both my ‘surviving’ sons…
A few weeks ago, I actually thought of searching for that song on YouTube…
OK, I should have thought of it before…it seems so obvious now – but I did not really trust my recollections…
…still, I found it!!!!
‘when those cotton balls
get rotten, you can’t pick
very much cotton….’
I freely admit I remembered the song lyrics as:
‘when them cotton fields
get ripened, you can see
very much cotton…’
But – that is the only divergence from the lyrics!!!
I mean – we are talking decades and re-playing the sounds in a language I did not know until years later!
That is pretty cool – is it not?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 