True Colors of the Season

The two colors most widely associated with Christmas (in the Western hemisphere, at least) are red and green. Well, as the guys at Acton keep reminding us, Green is the new RED.


Of course, there's plenty of green to be made by going Green. Al is raking it in since being run out of politics. Hey...jet fuel is expensive, gang. More than that, he needs capital for his start-up cap-n-trade system. And he has to have hush money available for when the scientists start finding serious holes in his Armageddon scenarios. (especially when it's contrary to his "established fact of man-made warming in the last century")


Look...Al is a creative guy. I'll bet that if he wasn't trying to save the world or invent the internet, he could have single-handedly scabbed the Screenwriter's Guild walk-out. But his creativity (er...divinity? PRAISE THE GORACLE!!!) needs to cool it. This global warming nonsense is going to cost developing nations their chance at making the earth a suitable habitat for mankind.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I also hate it when corporations try to pander to Christians with crappy products. They hope that making some relationship to Christianity is going to fuel sales. Unfortunately - as is the case for the minute-ecocrusaders - Christians are in lines waiting to hand their green over for the pap as well. sigh....

Become a Latin Lover

For the past several years, I've taught or tutored homeschoolers in Latin. They always love to learn insults, come-backs, catch-phrases, and pop-culture references in Latin. It makes a memorable "sticking point" for them to mentally hang grammatical concepts. Exempli gratia: "So if I want to tell my little brother to go away, I use the singular imperative abi. But if it's all my brothers and sisters, plus my parents, a hortatory subjunctive like abeâtis might be in order?"

I'm not really all that good at Latin composition, so I rely on a string of books to help me through some populist constructions. Henry Beard's lampooning work has been reliable, and Eugene Ehlich always lends a high-brow hand-up. However, when I was in London, I came upon a title that I just knew I had to have: Amo, Amas, Amat...And All That, or How to Become a Latin Lover. Unfortunately, by the time it came to America, the subtitle had been changed to Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life. Boring....er, modiolus est.

No snickering about the name of the author: Harry Mount.