Omigod, we've got cousins!

Neo-neocon has a link to this fascinating item:

"The Genetic Bonds Between Kurds and Jews"

by Kevin Alan Brook

Kurds are the Closest Relatives of Jews

In 2001, a team of Israeli, German, and Indian scientists discovered that the majority of Jews around the world are closely related to the Kurdish people -- more closely than they are to the Semitic-speaking Arabs or any other population that was tested. [] Most of the 95 Kurdish Muslim test subjects came from northern Iraq. Ashkenazic Jews have ancestors who lived in central and eastern Europe, while Sephardic Jews have ancestors from southwestern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East. The Kurdish Jews and Sephardic Jews were found to be very close to each other. Both of these Jewish populations differed somewhat from Ashkenazic Jews, who mixed with European peoples during their diaspora. The researchers suggested that the approximately 12.7 percent of Ashkenazic Jews who have the Eu 19 chromosomes -- which are found among between 54 and 60 percent of Eastern European Christians -- descend paternally from eastern Europeans (such as Slavs) or Khazars. But the majority of Ashkenazic Jews, who possess Eu 9 and other chromosomes, descend paternally from Judeans who lived in Israel two thousand years ago. In the article in the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University of Israel wrote that this new study revealed that Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean (Kurds, Anatolian Turks, and Armenians) than to populations in the southern Mediterranean (Arabs and Bedouins).

On behalf of the Jews, I'd like to say: Welcome to the family.

Poem for today

Draw a crazy picture
Write a nutty poem
Sing a mumble-gumble song
Whistle through your comb
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before.
--Shel Silverstien

Ouch!

Florida conservative discovers that liberals can be, well, downright mean

Lately I've been noticing that my liberal friends are just so angry. I realize that they're upset Bush was re-elected. But what I can't stand is that everything seems to be turning so personal and just plain mean. One friend sent out an item about a pending Bush appointee who was pro-life, asking all her friends to write. Well, whenever someone asks me to write, the first thing I do is check Snopes. When I found out the low-down, I simply replied to her that the info (per Snopes) was out of date. She replied to me, and I am not kidding: "Are you even a real woman?"

Another friend wanted to talk about Terri Schiavo a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really want to get into it and chose to limit my response to the fact I was saddened the family had ended up in court in the first place. I wished Michael & the Schindler's had not turned into bitter enemies. My friend responded that it was all Jeb Bush's fault for exploiting a family's suffering for political gain.

I, too, have noticed that stating a conservative view causes my liberal friends to froth at the mouth. They're like little kids: if they don't win, they want to take their marbles and go home.

Today's poem:

Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats



I

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Or deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?



II

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal-yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

III

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! More happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

IV

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou are desolate, can e'er return.

V

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all

Mark Twain on staying healthy

A cheery thought:

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

Rant about New Jersey Motor Vehicle Dept, Illegal Aliens etc.

A kid in my family sent a $50 check to pay a parking ticket. Turns out the parking ticket was for $53, so they sent him a letter threatening to suspend his license. Could he pay the $3 online? Oh, no. The ticket had to be paid personally and a copy of the receipt forwarded to the motor vehicle bureau, plus ten dollars "court costs."

New Jersey considers all of its residents who have driver's licenses as potential criminals who haven't been caught yet. If you don't have your license, registration, or insurance card you have to make a court appearance, even if your wallet was stolen and you are on your way to the Motor Vehicle office to get a replacement license.

And car insurance: It's compulsory and expensive. If you have anything short of a major accident you'd be stupid report it to the insurance company. They will raise your premiums even higher. It's an extortion racket sanctioned by the State. When the Demos are in office, the price of auto insurance goes up. The Republicans, ditto. It's an equal opportunity mugging.

What has this to do with illegal aliens? Being an illegal alien is a real crime, getting a parking ticket is a trumped up "crime." Not having auto insurance is a trumped-up crime too, one that punishes the poor.

Pity the poor widder woman

Suha Arafat seems to have taken a page from the playbook of our old friend, the Nigerian scammer.

Today's snarky poetry quote

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

By Robert Frost

Why did Sandy Berger do such a stupid thing?

What he did is tough to figure out, but as near as I can see, he stole five copies of the same memo, each of which had handwritten notes from five different people. The notes could have said anything from: Wanna have lunch? to Monica L=hot babe, to Take Immediate action, but, as the Bible says:

The wicked flee when no man pursueth.

I also find it difficult to believe that he cut them up with scissors. Didn't the man own a shredder? You can buy one with its own wastebasket at Staples. $19.95. Plus tax, where applicable. Free delivery.

An e-mail from ALA Presidential Candidate Leslie Burger

Since, as the Buddha said, "What we do no[t] only matters; it molds us," yoga for librarians will again be offered at our NJLA conference next week:

What is yoga for librarians? Just asking.

Hysterical lefty metaphor of the week

Oh, oh! Someone does not like the proposed Constitution Restoration Act:

More than religiosity run amok, more than a sodomizing of the constitution with a rusty word processor, the CRA is organized thuggery of precisely the sort that characterizes the legislative agenda of every fascist state.

Inquiring minds would like to know: how do you sodomize a piece of paper?

British Universities pursue freedom of inquiry

It seems every group of true believers, however grand or humble, needs someone to hate. For the intellectual left, Israel is the villain of choice.

The Association of University Teachers' [Britain] annual council, which begins on April 20 in Eastbourne, will also debate whether to boycott three of Israel's eight universities - Haifa University, Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem - over their "alleged complicity with the government's policies" on the Palestinian territories.

The great irony here is that these Israeli universities are all themselves bastions dominated by the Academic Left, including some extremists that make Ward Churchill look like a sane moderate. These Israeli versions of Taliban John will be exempt from the British boycott, because the motion contains a clause to exclude "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies". Naturally, the British in question will not be boycotting any colleges in Syria, Iran, Egypt, Dubai or Saudi Arabia.

Liberal right-thinking trumps investigating the facts.

Poetry is Like Fish

" Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat."
-- Osbert Sitwell

Are the Republicans dumb enough to take advice from their enemies?

Mark Steyn, the incomparable, warns against friendly advice from people who mean you no good:

It's a good rule of thumb that anything 59 economists, bureaucrats or diplomats are prepared to sign an open letter objecting to is by definition a good thing. But that goes double when the 59 panjandrums lined up against you are Princeton Monteagle Jr., President Nixon's ambassador to the Spurgeon Islands; Spurgeon Monkfish III, President Ford's ambassador to the Lyman Islands; Dartmouth Monticello IV, President Johnson's personal emissary to His Serene Highness the Monteagle of Keeny; Columbia Long-Playing-Album, the first diplomat to be named by President Carter to the State Department's Name Control Agency; and Vasser Peachy-Keeny, the first woman to be named Vasser Peachy-Keeny. One sees their point, of course: Let a fellow called "John" Bolton become ambassador and next thing you know Earl and Bud will want the gig.

Even Sen. John Danforth, who should know better, got in on the act, taking half a page in the New York Times to give the Full Monteagle to the "religious right." Blog maestro Andrew Sullivan decided that America was witnessing a "conservative crack-up" over Terri Schiavo and the embrace of her cause by extreme right wing fundamentalist theocrat zealots like, er, Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader. Sullivan was last predicting a "conservative crack-up" during the impeachment era, on the grounds (if I recall correctly) that Republican moralizing would dramatically cut into Strom Thurmond's share of the gay vote. In the '90s, the Weekly Standard ran innumerable special editions devoted to the subject: Conservative Crack-Up; Conservative Crack-Up 2; Conservative Crack-Up -- The Musical; Abbott And Costello Meet The Conservative Crack-Up; Conservative Crack-Up On Elm Street; Four Weddings And A Conservative Crack-Up; Rod Stewart Sings Timeless Favorites From The Great Conservative Crack-Up, etc.

Ignore them, they're born losers.

Read the whole thing.

A song for late summer

The Oven Bird

by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

In honor of poetry month

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
--G. K.Chesterton

Your tax dollars at work

This was posted on April 1. It's an April Fool joke, isn't it? Isn't it?

The Least Funny April Fool's Joke of the Year

A library joke, courtesy of Conservator:

Gorman Abdicates, ALA Leadership in Disarray
-- 4/1/2005

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association (ALA), has stepped down just months before assuming office. “It was the blog people, they did it,” said RLG’s Walt Crawford....”

Not too funny, right? Neither is Gorman, a stuffed shirt who hates bloggers. People, it is a library joke! Go easy on us bun- and comfortable-shoe wearing, dowdy old ladies who say shush a lot. We have so little fun!

Sick of opinions

The wonderful and always refreshing James Lileks reflects on the Internet and Terri Shiavo opinion, pro and con:

Speaking of which: if nothing else, this entire affair has made me heartily sick of the very act of reading the Internet. Pardon my language, but I am simply goddamn sick of opinions, period. Right or wrong, well-reasoned or poorly expressed, snarky or solemn, I am tired of the lot of them, my own included. I’m tired of reading blogs and bulletin boards and noting that it’s OK to joke about one dead person, perfectly fine to kick the Pope when he’s about to give up the ghost, but a breach of human decency to be less than reverential about the passing of a comic who specialized in dope humor. That sort of thing is expected on the internet, but what makes me weary is the blogligation to have an opinion about it and bang it out so the whole world knows I stand four-square against bashing near-dead Popes.

Speaking of which, the radio and television news is covering every last symptom of the Pope's condition. I expect to hear any moment now, that he has, or has not had, a bowel movement. Gruesome! Let the poor old man die in peace.

He's not married, so he doesn't have to worry about anyone pulling the plug.

Oh-oh, I've expressed an opinion. Sorry.