Thursday, July 7. 2005
BBC seems to be best source of minute-to-minute updated details. From Jihad Watch one year ago: Asked if a British Muslim was allowed to carry out a "terrorist attempt" in a foreign country, Muhammad said "That is another story." He added: "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity."
 Fidel
After 46 years, Castro seems to have the staying power that the exiles didn't give him credit for but then he is over 70 and so is his brother Raul the man slated to take over. Who knows what will happen next? Read more on this never-ending story here: New York Times: This city where raucous demonstrations by exiles were once as regular as summer storms has seen few lately. One theory is that the people whose life's mission was to defeat Mr. Castro and return to the island one day - those who fled here in the early years of his taking power - have grown old and weary."We are all exhausted from so much struggle," said Ramón Saul Sánchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, an exile organization that once ran flotillas to the waters off Cuba to protest human-rights abuses. Mr. Sánchez, 50, also belonged to Alpha 66, an exile paramilitary group that trained in the Everglades, mostly in the 1960's and 70's, for an armed invasion of Cuba, and later protested around the clock outside Elián González's house. Now, he said, he prefers less attention-grabbing tactics, quietly supporting dissidents on the island from an office above a LaundromatClick here: Florida's Zeal Against Castro Is Losing Heat - New York Times
Comment on our McCay Piece Wilfred McCay wrote “But it was not enough for the constraints of this order to be applied externally, like so many fences and leashes. Control, which led to a kind of moral self-sufficiency, needed to be internalized, with the help of institutions like the family, the church, the neighborhood—and the polity. Indeed, in the literature of the era, the relationship between the self-governing soul and the self-governing polity appears as a recurring motif.” This notion was not invented by 19th Century evangelicals; Gwynnie wants to remind you that it is a Biblical promise made by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah and realized through Jesus: (Jeremiah 31:31-34, NLT) "The day will come," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife," says the Lord. "But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the Lord. "I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their family, saying, `You should know the Lord.' For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will already know me," says the Lord. "And I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sins." Throughout our culture, we are being encouraged to break that new covenant as well as the old.
The Court Top Contenders: RWN From 2002, Anderson in City Journal: Click here: City Journal Summer 2002 | Why the Battle for the Court Will Be Nasty by Brian C. Anderson :questions of sex have tempted the Court to bend and twist the Constitution almost as energetically as questions of race. Roe v. Wade (1973) is the most famous case in point. Whatever your views about abortion, it is hard to deny that, as jurisprudence, Roe is embarrassingly shoddy. In a 51-page majority opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun that lacked any discernible legal reasoning, the Court based itself on the “privacy” right of married couples to use contraceptives that it had found in the “penumbras, formed by emanations” of the Bill of Rights in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case. It asserted that this new guarantee of privacy, conjured up like a will-o’-the-wisp rising out of swamp gas, included an absolute right, protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, for all women to terminate pregnancy up until the third trimester—a penumbra formed by emanations indeed. Q
 God Bless and Protect our Brit Cousins
That's all I have to say thus far...
The Ethanol Scam: It requires more fossil fuel to produce ethanol from corn, than there is energy in the ethanol. Fact is, the ethanol program is a farm subsidy and nothing more, under false pretenses. Wind Farms indeed are hugely destructive to migratory birds. Shut 'em down - what a dumb experiment. Digital Cameras - the latest update, in CSM Africa - Roger Simon sums it up, here. Iran - Hitchens does Iran in Vanity Fair Steyn's Requiem for Sunny Jim (the UK's Carter), and the 1970's in England Kennewick Man will be studied. 9000 years old - a very early American - will be studied before being re-buried. Sounds OK to me. What is hotdish? "On your visit to Minnesota, you will sooner or later come face to face with Minnesota's most popular native food, HOTDISH ... A traditional main course, hotdish is cooked and served hot in a single baking dish and commonly appears at family reunions and church suppers. Hotdish is constructed on a base of canned cream of mushroom soup and canned vegetables. The other ingredients are as varied as the Minnesota landscape. If you sit down to something that doesn't look like anything you've ever seen before, it's probably hotdish." - Howard Mohr
How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor's Guide
Penguin, 1 Here are some examples: Click here: Cooks.com - Recipes - Hotdish
 Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape
City's just a jungle; more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it; trying to get away
I was raised in the country, I been workin in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down Dylan, from Mississippi, on Love and Theft
Wednesday, July 6. 2005
Sympathy for the Devil: The Left and Terrorists, on Brainster The Angry Left finds religion, um, well...Opinion Journal: Click here: OpinionJournal - Taste Global Warming Junk Science: Gun Culture - Click here: Gun Culture Cosby under attack - guess his thinking needs a political adjustment. Town Hall: Click here: Brent Bozell: Cosby under fire Berkeley's Contract for America: This will go far. Right Thinking
Abiogenic oil, Science and Politics
We have been hearing about how the earth is running out of oil for decades but thus far there seems to be no end of the petroleum reserves in sight. Those warnings begin to sound like just another Chicken Little story – the sorts of exaggerated scare stories which cause people to dismiss some valid claims and predictions coming from environmentalists.
The theory of “abiogenic” petroleum production and also here - that is, petroleum production not from ancient plant and microorganism life, but generated chemically in the earth’s mantle – enters the debate about the limits of petroleum reserves. After all, if petroleum hydrocarbons are generated in the mantle from simple molecules like methane, then we are sitting happily on top of an essentially unlimited oil and natural gas production line.
Originally promoted by Russian scientists in the 1960s (eg: n for Natural Petroleum. Click here: Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connectio) in the US the theory has been mostly associated with astronomer Thomas Gold at Cornell. There are two interesting aspects of the abiogenic oil story: First, the science. Second, the politics.
The simplest way to demonstrate the origin of organic (carbon-containing) molecules is to look at the ratios of isotopes of carbon, especially carbon 13. Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that our fuel hydrocarbons do indeed have plant and bacterial origins – that they are “fossil fuels” - but it also indicates a likely but very minor production from non-living origins.
When science leaves the academy and the professional conferences, all sorts of things can happen, as in the global warming debates. Anti-environmentalists, and SUV drivers, want to believe the comforting abiogenic theory, and anti-growth and anti-oil environmentalists want to believe – or to make us believe – that we are down to our last drop. (Here is one such discussion.)
Psychologists and psychiatrists always are telling us about how powerful the wish to believe something can be, and how powerful wishes can be in distorting our version of reality. Even scientists are not immune from this human frailty, but they are hopefully more immune – and their results and opinions are always subject to the scrutiny and challenges of their colleagues. Trying to punch holes in one-another’s hypotheses and data is part of the job. Without the emergence of surprising new evidence, it appears that abiogenic oil is not a meaningful component of oil supply.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez If you have not read 100 Years of Solitude, your brain is experiencing a Garcia Marquez deficiency syndrome, even though you may not be aware of it. However, I want to mention a very short book of his, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Knowing the outcome in advance adds to the suspense of this tale about Latin vengeance: On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit.
The below (from the UK?) borrowed from the The Owner's Manual: I was walking across a bridge one sunny day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.'
'Why shouldn't I?' he asked.
'Well, there's so much to live for!'
'Like what?'
'Are you religious?'
He said: 'Yes.'
I said. 'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?'
'Christian.'
'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?''
'Protestant.'
'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?'
'Baptist.'
'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?'
'Baptist Church of God.'
'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?'
'Reformed Baptist Church of God.'
'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?'
He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.'
I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.
Garcia Marquez I may not agree with his politics but as a writer, he may be one of the best. Like the rumba and the merengue, the murals of Rivera and the poetry of Neruda, Latin Americans give the world so much pleasure. Read the interview here:
An interview with Gabriel García Márquez
| GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
GENE H. BELL-VILLADA, Translator | TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The following interview was conducted in 1977 for publication in El Manifiesto—a now-defunct Colombian leftist journal. Chatting with the magazine’s staff writers, García Márquez opens up remarkably and bares his most nostalgic and personal side, even swearing on occasion. (The author can be surprisingly, spontaneously foul-mouthed when in the right company.) And he's unusually frank about his spotty education, his days of poverty, his youthful days residing in brothels, and his having been accidentally cured of boils by putting No One Writes to the Colonel to paper. Naturally the conversation brims with Hispanic references: the Romancero (Spain's medieval ballad tradition), the vallenato (a native music genre from Valledupar, consisting of narrative songs with accompanying accordion, percussion, and bass), Rafael Escalona (the most celebrated writer and singer of vallenatos), Caribbean crooners such as Daniel Santos, and the Colombian literary classic El carnero (literally "The Ram"—a fanciful mock-chronicle from the Colonial era). He reflects on the decisive impact that Kafka had on his development, and admits to how much he needed to work at not being like Faulkner when he drafted Leaf Storm. Finally, he notes the colloquial, Caribbean flavor of The Autumn of the Patriarch—a trait much valued and savored by Hispanic readers of that book. The interview appears here for the first time in English and will be included in my edition of Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez, forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi in December 2005. — Gene H. Bell-Villada
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Read the interview: lick here: The Virginia Quarterly Review - Journey Back to the SourceAn interview with Gabriel García Márquez
I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish
courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment. Shakespeare, Othello
Tuesday, July 5. 2005
Wow. I think Blair gets it. "Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe's social model," Blair told the European Parliament last month. "But tell me: what type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the United States; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy -- skills, R&D, patents, IT -- is going down not up." Funny that he didn't also mention that their politics is being taken over by Islamicists. Powerline.
Lock and Load: The Dems have their strategy, regardless of the nominee: Patterico Everybody Must Get Stoned: Moslem politicians in New Zealand. In LGF A Bullet hitting a bullet: That's how difficult it was to hit that comet, but they did. Video here - thanks, Instapundit. Cap'n Ed reviews Goldberg's new book: Sounds like fun
Eagle Cam Looked at those babies lately? You click above to switch from the Eagle Cam to the Osprey Cam.
Bush's Biggest Failure: Managing the press and public opinion - I agree with the Prof. Thomas Sowell turned 75 and reviews the travails of those years. The US-India Defence Pact: Under-reported important event, in Winds of Change: Click here: Winds of Change.NET: The Alliance: U.S. & India Sign Major 10-Year Defense Pact The top 2% in income pay over 50% of the total US taxes. But some folks, like the Kerry's pay far less than their share. Why? Probably tax-free munis, right? Click here: Brainster's Blog The Red Tide recedes. Good. Why did New London need this Eminent Domain? (and why does Fox News keep calling it Imminent Domain?) Brewton in View from 1776: “Cities like Utica and New London, Connecticut, the subject of the Supreme Court decision, are in trouble, not because of lack of urban planning, but because of high taxes, excessive regulation, and a generally anti-business, socialistic public policy. What they need is fewer labor unions and fewer liberal-socialist citizens who have become addicted to massive, and ferociously expensive, public welfare programs that run the gamut from money thrown unaccountably down the rat hole of public education (read teachers’ union perks), to mandatory, all-inclusive insurance benefits to workers. In short, ongoing operating costs are just as important in determining business locations as their land costs. Indeed. Just like Africa. The politicians create the mess, and then call for help. The Kennedy Quagmire: Man, does he hope it's a quagmire. In my opinion, it's what you call "difficult." Lots of things in life are difficult, but being a politician isn't one of them. Sinecures for the brain-dead. Gelertner explains why Kennedy talk is so destructive to the country. "Hail Seizers." The NYT hails the government land-grabbers, with one astonishing quote: " a setback to the 'property rights' movement." Huh? Sullum at Town Hall. Replacing Sandra Dee: The blogs and news are full of speculation and tea-leaf-reading, so we will not add to the fog. It's all filler until we know what POTUS wants to do. Concept Albums: Vodkapundit reviews the concept and lists the 5 best...but unaccountably omits Blonde on Blonde and Sargent Pepper. The lovely, witty, but doubtless scary-to-date Ann Coulter explains how porn and religion have switched places in our culture, or at least in our legal culture. News=Propaganda, In Minneapolis - Capt's Quarters
 Back to Work
Weekend is over. Drag your lazy butt and your hang-over out of the old hammock, and get back to earning your keep like a good citizen of a free republic. Hop on board this fine 2005 Massey-Ferguson 492 4-WD machine and you will be able to handle any job that comes your way.
Nobody ever said freedom came easy - ya gotta work. It's yours for around $70,000. Perfectly classy and appropriate for showing up at the golf club too - put your golf bags on the loader and drive straight across the patio and the lawn to the pro shop. Not to worry - whatever reactions you get will all be inspired by envy. And if the Membership Committee makes a stink, tell 'em Bird Dog said it was OK.
Chance favors the prepared mind. Louis Pasteur
Monday, July 4. 2005
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Read the rest, below the fold:
Continue reading "Happy 4th"
Sunday, July 3. 2005
Instead of bronze I will bring gold,
and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze
instead of stones, iron.
I will make your overseers peace
and your taskmasters righteousness.
Violence shall be no more heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
and your gates Praise. Isaiah 60:17
Saturday, July 2. 2005
 This long weekend, we at Maggie's Farm will be blogging lightly, but we invite you to click on some of our Categories on the upper left column, to explore what we've been up to for the last five months on the Farm. Some good stuff is buried in there. Pick a category - any category.
And we all wish you a fine weekend of yard work, fishing, sailing, swimming, sunning without weenie sunblock, napping, ice-cream, watermelon, cold beer, relaxation and good times with plenty of American flags and fireworks in the good old beautiful summertime USA. We do love our Brits, but we'd rather have them as cousins than to be their children - many innocent, brave but terrified Yankee farm boys with slow-loading Kentucky flintlocks risked their lives or lost their lives to face tough Hessian lines of fire to make it so - and speaking of cousins... As Cousin Brucie (the great DJ Bruce Morrow) used to say on WABC in the summer, "If you're alone, go out and find someone to love. Because someone is out there looking for you, too." (Yes, of course that is Cape Cod - can you name that light?)...Listening to: Son House: Empire State Express.
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15. Ronald Reagan
Friday, July 1. 2005
 Following a mysterious motorcycle crash in late 1966, Dylan retreated almost entirely from the public eye, instead choosing to concentrate on raising a family in his Woodstock, New York home. Tired of the accolades and weighty titles that had been heaped upon him by critics who saw him as the voice of the 60s counterculture, Dylan released albums that either directly repudiated the trendy psychedelic sound of late 60s rock (1967’s “John Wesley Harding”) or which aimed to drive away his fans altogether through sheer awfulness (1970’s “Self Portrait”). In 1974, with his marriage beginning to crumble, Dylan teamed up with The Band to record a new album shortly after leaving behind the tranquil domestic life he had enjoyed for the previous seven years. The resultant product, “Planet Waves,” is a pleasant, soft-sounding album that on the surface does not seem to foreshadow the drastic changes that were poised to occur in Dylan’s life.
Musically and lyrically, “Planet Waves” is no groundbreaking album, staying true to Dylan’s early 1970s pattern of simple, sparsely arranged songs that Dylan himself admitted (in his recent “Chronicles Vol. 1) “could blow away in cigar smoke.” Apart from “Forever Young,” none of the songs have made much of an appearance in concert, either, making it one of Dylan’s least favorite albums to perform live. The album, which is bolstered by the first-rate musicianship of The Band, is highly listenable nonetheless, and a close reading of the lyrics reveals a man split between his love for his wife and family and his restless, foot-twitching desire to keep moving on and exploring new ground in life. The second track on the album, “Going, Going, Gone,” the title itself a play on a distinctive home run call of Yankees announcer Mel Allen, reads on the page as though it were written not in 1974, but in 1997 for that year’s album “Time Out Of Mind.” The words here, like most of those on the later release, are simple and straightforward, clearly laying out the dilemma that Dylan faces. In “Hazel” the singer seems to be leaning towards staying the course with his marriage, and this sentiment continues in “Something There Is About You” until the third stanza where Dylan abruptly declares that faithfulness may be too much to expect from him. By “Dirge,” the album has descended to “Blood On The Tracks” depths of angst and self-pity, and everything looks as though it’s fallen apart. “Wedding Song” ends the album on a final, fittingly equivocal note, as declarations of love and affection are joined to a slow and mournful melody, resulting in an experience that tugs the listener in two separate directions. Even the lavish praise that Dylan heaps upon his wife in the song seems born of desperation and comes across as an attempt to win back the attentions of another as much as it is a simple confirmation of existing love. Both “Tough Mama” and “Forever Young” work better as standalone songs, and are also two of the stronger vocal and instrumental performances on the album. After the short break required to record “Planet Waves” (some say the sessions were completed in three days!) Dylan was back out on the road continuing to tour for the first time since 1966, and would never again take such a protracted break from live performances. “Planet Waves” would quickly come to be eclipsed by the two outstanding albums that followed, yet it succeeds on its own relatively limited terms and remains a pleasant if unchallenging listening experience 30 years later.
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