Four Winds Friday

It's Friday, and as I look at the news and the blogs and my Notepad document with all the great ideas I haven't had time to post yet, I'm too distracted to focus on any one thing.

I tried fighting it. I gave up. My thoughts are scattered to the four winds, and that's what you'll get today.

Fish.

I've already posted about the cancellation of the conger-eel-flinging contest and given an update, with mention of the Tunarama in Australia.

Now there's a story in today's London Times about a marlin fisherman in the Bahamas who was skewered through the shoulder by his catch and swept overboard by it.

The 800lb (360kg) [14-ft blue marlin] hit Ian Card with such force that its 3ft spear went through his chest just below his collarbone and knocked him into the sea.

As the fish dived, forcing Mr Card under water, he was able to push himself off the razor-sharp bill and swim to the surface.

Mr. Card was hospitalized and will recover.

Marriage.

The Letter of the Week in today's WorldNetDaily commentary page advocates making it harder for married couples with children to divorce. Alan Rusmisel of the Alabama Coalition for Fathers and Children quotes some research about happy and unhappy marriage partners before and after divorce or reconciliation. Here are just a couple:

Divorce did not reduce symptoms of depression for unhappily married adults, or raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average, compared to unhappy spouses who stayed married. This was true even after controlling for race, age, gender, and income.
Two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later. Just one out of five of unhappy spouses who divorced or separated had happily remarried in the same time period.

Rusmisel also noticed that the states with the longest average waiting time had the lowest divorce rate, while states with the shortest average waiting time had the highest divorce rates.

For the sake of the kids, make divorce harder!

Book Review.

Daniel McCarthy has a book review in the July edition of Reason magazine (a libertarian-ish publication). The review itself is fascinating and makes the book, by virtue of its subject, look fun to read. The book is John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, by Arthur H. Cash, New Haven: Yale University Press, 482 pages, $37.50

The title McCarthy gives to his review say a lot.

In Praise of John Wilkes:
How a filthy, philandering deadbeat helped secure British—and American—liberty

Read the review, and then decide if you want to read the book.

War.

Malott's Blog appears to be ahead of the White House on an important piece of intelligence (the informational kind) coming out of the Middle East. His latest post today reveals the fact that Hezbollah--in the person of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah--has officially declared war on America. He (Malott, not Nasrallah) then offers a multiple choice referendum about how we should respond.

You may feel free to print it, check off your choices, and mail copies of it to your Congressman (no, today I refuse to spell that politically correctly), your Senator, President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and anyone else you wish actually cared how you feel. Here's a small glimpse at the kind of options he offers:

Check one or more strategies:
1.____ Bomb the living crap out of Iran.
2.____ Bomb the living crap out of Syria.
3.____ Bomb the living crap out of anyone that threatens us.
4.____ Sit on our hands and wait for them to come for us.

I choose option 3, because it includes options 1 and 2 as the volume-discount option.

So that's it. My lunch hour is over. Enjoy your weekend.

One more thing. Joe Smoe is back! He's one of my favorite apoplectic Lefty commenters at Logic Lifeline, and he's been away a couple days. He's right back to his prime form of, "BUSH IS A FAILURE!!! And what do you think about THAT???" Gotta love it...