Some simple facts!

From the records:
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature: 1988 - Najib Mahfooz.
Peace: 1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat 1994 - Yaser Arafat
Physics: 1990 - Elias James Corey 1999 - Ahmed Zewail
Medicine: 1960 - Peter Brian Medawar 1998 - Ferid Mourad

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature: 1910 - Paul Heyse1927 - Henri Bergson 1958 - Boris Pasternak 1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon 1966 - Nelly Sachs 1976 - Saul Bellow 1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer1981 - Elias Canetti 1987 - Joseph Brodsky 1991 - Nadine Gordimer

World Peace: 1911 - Alfred Fried 1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser 1968 - Rene Cassin 1973 - Henry Kissinger 1978 - Menachem Begin 1986 - Elie Wiesel 1994 - Shimon Peres 1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics: 1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer 1906 - Henri Moissan 1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson 1908 - Gabriel Lippmann 1910 - Otto Wallach 1915 - Richard Willstaetter 1918 - Fritz Haber 1921 - Albert Einstein 1922 - Niels Bohr 1925 - James Franck 1925 - Gustav Hertz 1943 - Gustav Stern 1943 - George Charles de Hevesy 1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi 1952 - Felix Bloch 1954 - Max Born 1958 - Igor Tamm 1959 - Emilio Segre 1960 - Donald A. Glaser 1961 - Robert Hofstadter 1961 - Melvin Calvin 1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau 1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz 1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman 1965 - Julian Schwinger 1969 - Murray Gell-Mann 1971 - Dennis Gabor 1972 - William Howard Stein 1973 - Brian David Josephson 1975 - Benjamin Mottleson 1976 - Burton Richter 1977 - Ilya Prigogine 1978 - Arno Allan Penzias 1978 - Peter L Kapitza 1979 - Stephen Weinberg 1979 - Sheldon Glashow 1979 - Herbert Charle s Brown 1980 - Paul Berg 1980 - Walter Gilbert 1981 - Roald Hoffmann 1982 - Aaron Klug 1985 - Albert A. Hauptman 1985 - Jerome Karle 1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach 1988 - Robert Huber 1988 - Leon Lederman 1988 - Melvin Schwartz 1988 - Jack Steinberger 1989 - Sidney Altman 1990 - Jerome Friedman 1992 - Rudolph Marcus 1995 - Martin Perl 2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics: 1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson 1971 - Simon Kuznets 1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow 1975 - Leonid Kantorovich 1976 - Milton Friedman 1978 - Herbert A. Simon 1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein 1985 - Franco Modigliani 1987 - Robert M. Solow 1990 - Harry Markowitz 1990 - Merton Miller 1992 - Gary Becker 1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine: 1908 - Elie Metchnikoff 1908 - Paul Erlich 1914 - Robert Barany 1922 - Otto Meyerhof 1930 - Karl Landsteiner 1931 - Otto Warbur 1936 - Otto Loewi 1944 - Joseph Erlanger 1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser 1945 - Ernst Boris Chain 1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller 1950 - Tadeus Reichstein 1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman 1953 - Hans Krebs 1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann 1958 - Joshua Lederberg 1959 - Arthur Kornberg 1964 - Konrad Bloch 1965 - Francois Jacob 1965 - Andre Lwoff 1967 - George Wald 1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg 1969 - Salvador Luria 1970 - Julius Axelrod 1970 - Sir Bernard Katz 1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman 1975 - Howard Martin Temin 1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg 1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow 1978 - Daniel Nathans 1980 - Baruj Benacerraf 1984 - Cesar Milstein 1985 - Michael Stuart Brown 1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein 1986 - Stanley Cohen & Rita Levi-Montalcini 1988 - Gertrude Elion 1989 - Harold Varmus 1991 - Erwin Neher 1991 - Bert Sakmann 1993 - Richard J. Roberts 1993 - Phillip Sharp 1994 - Alfred Gilman 1995 - Edward B Lewis

The Jews are not demonstrating with their dead on the streets, yelling and chanting and asking for revenge; the Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics; the Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels. The Jews don't have the economic strength of petroleum, nor the possibilities to force the world's media to see "their side" of the question.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

The "Penguin" has dinner with his "friends" on his 19th Wedding anniversary

Dinner in Carolina?

Almost but not quite N&C went close the NC border for some grilled meat mojitos and vino with some friends who have been blowing us off for a while. Our friends Pete and Madona made up for it though by offering us some good grub, good laughs and a place to crash. It was a pleasant evening and a quite night! No police cars, gun shots or thugs thumping there way down OV.

Thanks for the good times.. pix to follow..

Quote of the Day!

This sort of rings right up there with all I needed to learn I learned in Kindergarten….

 

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
  - Dr. Seuss

 

An Ode to America

We rarely get a chance to see another country's editorial about the USA. Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper.  The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title "C"ntarea Americii, meaning "Ode To America") in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei "The Daily Event" or "News of the Day".
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''


~An Ode to America~


Why are Americans so united?  They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart.


Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, and the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers.  Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts.  Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about.  The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.


After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag.  They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing.


On every occasion, they started singing their traditional song:  "God Bless America!"   I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.


How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being?  Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy.


What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way?  Their land?  Their galloping history?  Their economic Power?  Money?  I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion... Only freedom can work such miracles.


Cornel Nistores

 

 

 

A bit long from the National Review

National Review Online
8 August 2006

Hawkish Gloom: Unfortunately you'll be joining me one of these days
by Stanley Kurtz

Call me a gloomy hawk. It’s not just that I’m a hawk who’s disappointed with the course of fighting in the Middle East. My concern is that our underlying foreign-policy dilemma calls for both hawkishness and gloom ­ and will for some time. The two worst-case scenarios are world-war abroad and nuclear terror at home. I fear we’re on a slow-motion track to both.

No, I don’t think our venture in Iraq has gotten us into this mess. I think this mess has gotten us into Iraq. And the mess will not go away, whatever we do. Our Islamist enemy has proven himself implacable ­ unwilling to relent in the face of either dovish or hawkish policies. That means we’re facing years ­ maybe decades ­ of inconclusive, on/off (mostly on) hot war, unless and until a nuclear terror strike, a major case of nuclear blackmail, or a nuclear clash among Middle Eastern states ushers in a radical new phase.

Castro
Let’s take a moment to think about Castro. Castro is the master and pioneer of ornery third-world defiance. We need to appreciate the immensity of Castro’s achievement in preserving Cuba’s Communist dictatorship for 17 years after the collapse of his chief patron, the Soviet Union. It’s remarkable that, absent any great-power protection, and even after becoming, without Soviet subsidies, a permanent economic basket-case, Castro’s regime has not collapsed.

Let that be a lesson to those who wait for the collapse of regimes in Iran, North Korea, or Palestine because of long-term economic failure and/or economic sanctions. Yes, popular uprisings happen (as in Iran against the Shah). Yet it’s also clear that a posture of anti-Western defiance, combined with nationalism, ideology, and dictatorial rule is perfectly capable of sustaining a miserable, poverty-stricken, failed system far, far beyond the point that Westerners would consider tolerable or believable.

If you are willing to kill yourself ­ if you are willing even to impoverish, immiserate, and let die much of your country, you can accomplish a great deal. Hezbollah’s gains in its war with Israel stem from its ability to define success as mere survival, even as the country around it is destroyed. This is no mere clever public-relations spin, but the reflection of a profound reality: the growing independence of terrorist organizations from states, and the willingness of Islamist terrorists to sacrifice all in pursuit of fundamentally non-material goals. With military success (accurately) framed as the near-complete destruction of terrorist forces, decisive military victory is virtually defined out of existence.

Democracy?
This is why the United States has turned to democratization. The stick of military force combined with the carrot of democracy was supposed to have provided a way out. Unfortunately, democratization of fundamentally illiberal societies cannot happen quickly. Real democratization requires a great deal of time and deep, painful, expensive underlying cultural change, almost impossible to bring about without an effectively permanent military occupation.

Even a long-term military occupation cannot promote democratization in the absence of social peace. The Iraqi resistance’s greatest victory came with the very start of their campaign. By creating sufficient insecurity to bar Western civilians from Iraq, the real key to democratic change was blocked from the start. If advising an Iraqi bureaucrat, working with an Iraqi entrepreneur, or teaching at an Iraqi college had become career-making occupations for an ambitious generation of young American civilians, we might have had a chance to build genuine democracy in Iraq. Once the rebellion made that sort of cultural exchange impossible, the democratization project was cut off before it could begin.

I’ve made these points about the problems of democratization since before the invasion of Iraq (See my “After the War” and “Democratic Imperialism.”) In those pieces, I even “predicted” the sort of trouble we’re seeing now. Yet, despite that gloom, I was, and remain, a hawk. I am hawk because I believe that the danger of nuclear terror and nuclear blackmail remain real, and because I am convinced that negotiations from weakness, grand bargains, and unilateral retreats are powerless to defuse these threats. In short, I am a gloomy hawk because I believe that neither hawks nor doves have any viable near-term solutions to the problem we now face.

Technology
Globalization, economic advance, and technology are at the root of our dilemma. It is remarkable that 9/11 meant more civilian casualties from a foreign foe than this country had ever experienced at a blow. Without the movement of Middle Easterners to Europe (to learn our languages, take our classes, etc.), without our modern mastery of building technology and air travel, 9/11 could not have happened. Recall that the plan of the first, failed blast in 1993 was to topple one World Trade Center tower into the other, bringing both down on surrounding buildings for a possible total of 200,000 dead. This was the approximate combined total of dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 1993 terrorists were consciously focused on that precedent, wanting to inflict nuclear-level damage on the United States.

The destruction of the World Trade Center raised the possibility that a rogue state might supply terrorists with a nuclear bomb, or enough material to make such a bomb. Already, there was an alliance between a state (Afghanistan) and a terrorist organization. But in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, we’ve seen a further step toward the feared pattern. Hezbollah rockets have already inflicted far more damage and disruption on Israeli civilians than attacks in any previous Middle Eastern war. That is because military technology is getting ever cheaper, more advanced, and more available, and because of a military alliance between a supplying state (Iran) and a terrorist organization.

So we are already seeing a terrorist-executed proxy war against the West using advanced technology supplied by a rogue state. It only remains for a nuclear device to replace the cheap rockets. Iran is working on that. This is why Europe, led by France, is moving into the American corner. The internal Islamist terror Europe had hoped to avoid by distancing itself from the United States is happening anyway. And Europe fears that a terrorist-supplied Iranian bomb, a nuclear-armed Iranian missile, or an Iranian attempt to corner the world’s oil supply through nuclear blackmail, pose direct threats to the continent itself.

Iraq
Our attack on Saddam was the easiest way to create a credible threat of force against Iran and North Korea, while also cutting out Saddam’s own capacity to build or buy (from Korea and/or the A.Q. Kahn network) his own nuclear weapons. For this reason, it needed doing. Given the immense dangers faced by the West, and compared to our sacrifices in World War II and Korea, 3,000 casualties is not an excessive cost (tragic as these losses are). Yet our domestic divisions, and our inability to pacify Iraq have largely (although not, I believe, entirely) canceled out the deterrent message of the invasion.

Without a credible threat of force (and maybe even with a credible threat), there is simply no way that negotiations, “grand bargains,” or unilateral withdrawals will accomplish anything. Israel had about as credible a threat as anyone could. Given its foes’ rejection of a reasonable American-brokered deal, Israel tried unilateral withdrawal instead. Now look what’s happened. The depth of the Moslem world’s failure to adjust to modernity, the profundity of its need for scapegoats, the seeming boundlessness of its willingness to accept the death and destruction of its own in exchange for the “honor” of “revenge,” are difficult for Americans to acknowledge. Read “ A Middle Way” (by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen) and you will see that the Western public is systematically sheltered from the sort of news that turns people into gloomy hawks.

Wishful Thinking
At Newsday, typically dovish Middle East Studies professor Fawaz Gerges says, “Hezbollah has risen to fill a social need.” I find Gerges’s vision of a solution in the Middle East utterly naive. He pretends that Hezbollah is not standing as a proxy for Iran, and acts as though a little bit of forceful negotiating can prod Hezbollah into disarming, and Israel and its Arab foes into a comprehensive settlement. But Israel has already made the sort of gestures that ought to have created momentum for peace. Instead, it’s gotten more attacks, and the persistent calls for its destruction so chillingly described by David Warren.

On one critical point, however, Gerges is right. If liberals are lost in wishful thinking about the prospects of negotiated settlements and nuclear containment, conservatives are naive about the possibility of ending terror by a decisive military blow. Gerges is right that Hezbollah is not some finite terror force, but the expression of the will and aspirations of a massive portion of the Lebanese people. As such, it is unlikely to be bombed out of existence.

Gerges makes the doves’ favorite point: bombing and war only breed more terrorists. True enough, but only because the underlying cultural dilemma of Muslim modernity has created a need for scapegoats. War ought to produce the realization that peaceful compromise is the way out. Instead it produces the opposite. Gestures for peace fare no better. Withdraw or attack, the results are the same: more hatred, more terror, more war. Compromise and settlement have been ruled out from the start by a pervasive ideology, an ideology that is a product of the underlying inability to reconcile Islam with modernity.

New Israel
This means that the entire Western world now stands in a position roughly analogous to that of Israel: locked in an essentially permanent struggle with a foe it is impossible either to placate, or to entirely destroy ­ a foe who demands our own destruction, and whose problems are so deep they would not be solved even by victory.

We can leave Iraq, as the Israelis left Lebanon. But we’ll likely be back, there or somewhere else, before long. Some say our army should wait among the Kurds, striking selectively in the rest of Iraq, only when al Qaeda returns. That’s a plan. Yet its likely to end up where Israel is in Lebanon, especially if al Qaeda starts kidnapping American soldiers with cross-border raids into the “Kurdish entity.”

Meanwhile, short of a preemptive war, Iran is bound to get the bomb. No grand bargain or set of economic sanctions can deter it ­ especially now that Iran is convinced of its success in creating havoc for the West, and in consolidating popular support through its proxy attacks on Western interests. As Ian Bremmer reports in “What the Israeli-Hezbollah War Means for Iran,”

Iran is convinced it’s winning, while America and Europe are increasingly convinced that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an intolerable danger to their interests. “Imagine...how much more dangerous the war in Lebanon would be if Iran had a nuclear weapon.”

Collision Course
The West is on a collision course with Iran. There will either be a preemptive war against Iran’s nuclear program, or an endless series of hot-and-cold war crises following Iran’s acquisition of a bomb. And an Iranian bomb means further nuclear proliferation to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as a balancing move by the big Sunni states. With all those Islamic bombs floating around, what are the chances the U.S. will avoid a nuclear terrorist strike over the long-term?

You don’t believe that dovishness and negotiations will fail? Just wait till President Hillary tries to buy off the Iranians with a “grand bargain.” Just wait till a nuclear Iran is unleashed to make further mischief. A seemingly futile and endless occupation of Lebanon once split Israel down the middle, breeding an entire generation of Israeli doves. Now Israel is a united nation of gloomy hawks, transformed by the repeated failure of every gesture of peace, and by the reality of their implacable foe. (See “ Praying for Hummus, Getting Hamas.”) I’m betting that someday we’ll all be gloomy hawks, too. As for me, I’m already there.

A simpler time!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 40's , 50's , 60's and 70's !!

First , we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin , ate blue cheese dressing , tuna from a can , and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma , our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles , doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes , we had no helmets , not to mention , the risks we took hitchhiking

As children , we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends , from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes , white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it , but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day , as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill , only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times , we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations , Nintendo's , X-boxes , no video games at all , no 99 channels on cable , no video tape movies , no surround sound , no cell phones , no personal computers , no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees , got cut , broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents .

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt , and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays ,

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen , we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell , or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers , problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom , failure , success and responsibility , and we learned


HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids , before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it , forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors , doesn't it?!

PS -The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age

Nutz beats the wire once again..

OV: Across the street from Micks hangover house, the fuzz chased down and captured a "suspect" on bike back! From my perspective it was man on the run, a slow speed chase. The running fuzz needs to do a little more running or just pull out his pea shooter and put a cap in homies butt. The other 5.0 needs to get some training in off road driving, especially in construction areas.

Bottom line, the hood got busted, Nutz got a show and all is well in OV!

I need to end this before Crackerz really gets mad at me.. she says I spend too muc time geeking and not enough time loving.... yeah what ever!!!

Nutz loves his wifey wife!

A new Beer For William.. and all the rest of us men!

T&A Brew

Nutzez Future Daughters

Nutz practices becoming a wino!

In anticipation of things to come, Nutz practices drinking vast quantities of wine....

Ok so he had a little help from his friends the foot doctor, the apulsterererere, the jar head the lizard lady and of course Nutzez lovely wife Crackerz.... Oops I almost for got the cute neighbor girl also helped out.

Kind of interesting how dinners parties evolve. Nutz noticed the Jarhead and the Lizard Lady casing Casa Del Nutz and Crackerz. Thinking twice before empting a mag of 9mm into thier dairy-air, Nutz out of the kindness of his heart invited them in for dinner. Is he a nice guy or what?
Go to the photo album to see the only proof that The foot doc can grill!

Did we set a record today??

We sure did yesterday... 101

Excessive Heat!!

I love hot weather, especially when I have AC!!