Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Monday, February 20. 2006Dog of the Week: PudelpointerA versatile sporting breed, the Pudelpointer is a mix of Poodle (aka Water Spaniel) and English Pointer. I have a buddy who has two of them. Good family dogs, strong retrievers and pointers. Unlike Poodles, they like water retrieving. Unlike workaholic Pointers, they are family pets. There are not many of them, so the gene pool is thin. The less rare German Wirehaired Pointer (the Drahthaar) is a mix of Pudelpointer with several other German sporting breeds. This site gives a good run-down on some of the German sporting breeds. Washington's Birthday, aka President's Day QQQHow soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. George Washington (Cool trivia, re his name. Wassa - a Saxon name. "Ing" Saxon for tribe. "Tun" - Saxon for a fortified village. Thus Wassa's family's fortified town. In England. The Saxons...then the Normans...then the Moslems? Good Grief! "The soul of the nation is under the knife" - Dylan) Sunday, February 19. 2006More on Floods and Flood InsuranceBy way of follow-up on our piece yesterday on flooding and flood insurance, a piece came out yesterday by the AP's Bridges noting the increase of development in flood zones:
Read the whole thing in the Houston Chronicle. Wish we could get some congressmen interested. Who wouldn't have a chat over a free Bud with Adolphus? Sunday LinksStones play for 1 million in Rio. Video clip here. Jingjing and Chacha are watching you: 1984 on the internet in China. Fin. Times More on Sarkozy, who will probably be next French President. Interesting fellow. Weekly Standard The theory of the Just War, considered by No Oil Congress punts on the NSA oversight issue. They don't want the responsibility. Captain Ed. Do the Loftus Tapes confirm that Saddam had a uranium enrichment program? If so, why isn't it front page news?
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New ChurchHow often do you see a new Congregational Church going up? Saturday, February 18. 2006High Water: Flood InsuranceThe National Flood Insurance Program is bankrupt. Not recently. That means that taxpayers are subsidizing building in flood zones, flood plains, and areas with high risk of natural water disasters - and thus encouraging, rather than discouraging, stupid behavior by making it economically risk-free to the individual. For reasons of principle, conservation, and common sense, this subsidy should end. If you chose to live in such a high-risk place, you should carry the risk, not me. Flood Insurance should be a purely commercial enterprise, the same as any other aspect of homeowner's insurance. Not retroactively, but in the future. Somehow, I doubt anyone in DC cares about this every much, but the Katrina costs should be a chance to reconfigure this insurance/subsidy scam. From Burnett at TCS:
I guess politics trumps logic, every time. Read entire. (Image from New Orleans) Saturday Random LinksA bit late with the links this morning - was "overserved" last night at Rudy's. Not my fault. Psiphon. Psiphon will break down the Great Internet Wall of China. small dead animals. Good. We want their traffic! Brits move abroad for a better life. The Independent. And the population replaced by....Moslems. Hey, Brits. Lower your taxes, encourage free enterprise, protect your traditions, place some sane limits on immigration, and folks will want to stay. Just watch Canada under Harper. Laffey attacks Chafee. Many Yanks would love to see Laffey win in RI. Laffey's column here. Religion of Peace: Where is this photo? NYC!!! WTF? And why are these people here, if not for freedom? Just for $? Piece at our pal Pamela's place: Atlas. They obviously have no clue what America is all about, or its history, or what it stands for, or what its soldiers have died for. Disgusting, shameful. We'll buy you a plane ticket home - today. We do not welcome, or want, your values. We prefer our own. Build the Caliphate in France or, better yet, just go home. Dealing with our own Lefty-Fascists is enough work. Dealing with this kind of stupid BS is just...ridiculous! And if these kinds of jerks frighten the American press, the American press is worthless. These folks are unready for Western Civilization if freedom and civility are not their priorities. One question: How would the media react if these were Christians?
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Cheney-Perazzi '08Shooting one lawyer is an accident. Link via Confed. Yank. (What's a Perazzi? Here.) Friday, February 17. 2006Friday Cocktail Hour LinksAnnan wants US military help in Darfur to support any NATO efforts. What about the rest of the world? The US will only end up being hated if we go in there. Religion of Peace. You already saw this probably, but the imams have put a price on the heads of cartoonists. Michelle. Freakin' idiots. You can insult my God all you want. Neither He, nor I, will feel harmed. Canada turning warmer towards US. Great. Am. Thinker. It also looks as if they will dismantle their huge expensive and equally ineffective gun registration bureaucracy. Captain Ed. That's even better. I guess it was time for a change up there. What the heck is going on with young teens at My Space? NY Sun The Common Man in NH. Eaten there several times. Good for after skiing. Wizbang shows the true NH heart in the face of nagging Feds. So sensitive: (from Chronicle of Higher Edn)
Gee, that about covers everything, doesn't it?
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The Loftus TapesIt could turn out that Loftus over-hyped his tapes for publicity reasons. Rick Moran has it right in his piece in which he quotes Lori Byrd thus:
Logical Fallacy of the Week: Reification, Part 1"Searchin' high, searchin' low, Only Bob Dylan could create such a hard-rocking, clever, imagistic song about the hunt for an abstraction. (A rare piano version of Dignity: dignitypianoversion.mp3 - quick download. Official version of Dignity on Greatest Hits, Vol. 3) Reification isn't on the usual lists of fallacies, but it deserves to be. I define it as the error of handling an abstraction, or a mental construct, as if it were a Real Thing with Real World Substance. It comes to mind because The Professor, a corporate law professor, noted this week that a "corporation" is not a thing, but rather is a legal abstraction. He addresses the question of "Who owns a corporation?" Often, it is almost impossible to speak about anything without slipping into reifying fallacies, because having a word for something almost makes it a "thing," and language is full of metaphor anyway. And what is a word? Roger Brown's classic pre-Chomsky linguistics text Words and Things - which I highly recommend - deals with such subjects beautifully and memorably. What seems to happen with abstractions and mental constructs is that they accrue associations over time, lending them the appearance of substance without a substantial core. Psychology is famous for such errors. "The id is at war with the superego." Well, that is a metaphor and a kind of professional shorthand, but there is no "id" and there is no "superego." They are theoretical constructs. Similarly, there is in fact no "Unconscious." There are such things as un-thought thoughts, and un-felt feelings and un-felt desires, but there is no thing "unconscious." Thus the common Reification Fallacy is to to treat such constructs as if they were real things, objective things with real-world impact, rather than as lazy excuses for not saying what is really meant. The good, but brief, Wikipedia entry offers a few good examples: "Give peace a chance." Peace is not a thing, so it cannot do anything. It works as bad poetry, but it says nothing. "Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Huh? An abstraction like a "right" cannot act on the world. It is high-falutin', inspiring nonsense. As a mental construct, the word "right" can mean whatever anyone wants - including a "right to free car insurance" or a "right to a child" or a "right to 8 week's vacation" or a "right to a stress-free life." Whatever! Because it's all imaginary, you can fill in the blanks! Got some of your own favorite reifications? Add 'em to Comments. If you are new to Maggie's, check our category Fallacy of the Week. More on Reification Fallacies next week. This is getting too long for the average blog-reader's ADD, according to our ADD-disabled Editor. Really Nice Gun Cases, Getting Shot While Bird Hunting, and a Good MovieJust got one of these cases for my 16 ga side-by-side, and these are fine. Galazan. And if you take your shotgun out of the case to go bird hunting, over time there is over a 50% chance you'll be peppered by bird shot. Powerline has that story, but erroneously uses the term "BBs." BBs are much larger than "bird shot," and generally are only used for cartridges designed for geese. It seems far less likely in European driven hunting, where the shooter shoots from a "peg" without moving, while the birds come from one direction - and usually high. In the US, we actually hunt, and therefore tend to get scattered around at times. The only perfectly safe bird hunting is one man (or gal) and one dog. But this subject does bring to mind the great movie, The Shooting Party, (1985) with James Mason and John Gielgud. If you haven't seen it, you must. It's a meditation on pre-WW1 England, and the end of an era, and it prefigures the horrors and the cultural changes that the Great War will bring.
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Friday Cow-Milking Time LinksWe were convinced by Brother Kesler at Democracy Project that there is a genuine legal issue about internet providers and China, and that it isn't simply a matter of commerce, but a matter of Commerce Law. He said, via email, that the law
So will re-refer you to his two recent pieces on the subject. Scroll down and read them both. The Loftus tapes to be released today. Should be interesting. Daily Pundit The sickening Abu Graib tapes. I know this is 5 out of 150,000 soldiers, and I understand that they are pissed at these Jihad creeps, but this is not the American Way. Video here. What did these guys do, surrender to troops? WaPo has a piece on this. Is Blogging done? Captain Ed looks at the numbers, and concludes that blogging is event-driven, especially election-driven. I think it's a good thing, but hardly worth the effort without thousands - at least - of daily readers...which we need here...and we will burn down a KFC shop if we don't get what we want!!! (Just kidding.) From a piece by Max Boot on Scapegoating of the West:
No Oil remembers the Steyn piece -well, who doesn't:
Somehow missed this one from Michelle: University of Washington student leaders:
Who raised these kids to be such spoiled morons? Anti-Christian Hate. We Christians hate it. But accept it. It's been going on for two thousand years. But why is it no big deal to the media? Surely they are not all Jihadists? American Thinker. Reason vs. Pretext for rioting and mayhem. We know it's been pretext for the Molsems. Eric makes the point well - "Another Day, Another Pretext." Teflon causes cancer? Aw, man. I think Life causes cancer. Ya gotta die of something, right? Not gonna live forever, right?
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QQQThe opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr Thursday, February 16. 2006A Free Ad for Bob: Thursday Dylan Lyrics, and Live Download"Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee From "Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum," from 2001's astonishing Love and Theft. Download a live version here. Muslim RaveVery funny. My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has the video. She says it's the Islamic Numa Numa, and offers that old video too, just for fun - if you missed it. (And yes, Maggie's Farm will make fun of anyone and anything we want, including our own religion and our own world view. Whenever we feel like it - and even if it's juvenile. We will not even try to compete with Powerline for brains. We are simple God-fearin' New England Country Folk.) American Education, 1895
Welcome to new visitors to Maggie's Farm: Please check out our blog while you visit - try our front page or try some of our Categories and see if you like us - we are an eclectic blog, and always surprising...bookmark us, for those boring moments in life. Click "All Categories" to get up to date.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895 Is this a hoax or not? It is not, after further research. For details of its provenance, read footnotes on page here. This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken Grammar (Time, one hour) Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours) U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes) Orthography (Time, one hour) Geography (Time, one hour) The top of the test states > "EXAMINATION GRADUATION QUESTIONS OF SALINE COUNTY, KANSAS According to the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas "this test is the original eighth-grade final exam for 1895 from Salina, KS. An interesting note is the fact that the county students taking this test were allowed to take the test in the 7th grade, and if they did not pass the test at that time, they were allowed to re-take it again in the 8th grade." (Image is the Grapetown, Texas, one-room schoolhouse, built around 1880. Please leave your guns on the front porch, kids.) For a related link on historic American education, click here. QQQPeople are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.George Bernard ShawThursday Morning LinksWhat is Al Gore's price to sell out his nation? $250,000. for his speech. Jeez, I'll rant for an hour for free...but never like that. I guess Humility is still knockin' on his door. Still crazy, notes Powerline. Isn't he the permanent Garfunkel of Simon and Garfunkel? Lost in the ozone of Ego, disappointment, moral confusion, and too much good pot in Vietnam? Shark attacks decline as people fight back - with their fists! Wash. Times. Punch that killer shark in the nose! Hey, European friends - there's a moral to that story. Italy stands up to intimidation. Good for them. Gateway Steichen photo goes for 2.9 million at auction. Well, it is a pretty picture. Scalia terms ideological foes "idiots." C'mon, Scalia. Even if they are, how about a little dignified behavior. Pictures of Mohammed in many art museums. Is this really true about Islam forbidding pictures? The China-Internet debate. Not sure what the right side is on this one. Kesler considers the law and the issues at Democracy Project. Wedded bliss lasts one year. Amazed those researchers have the balls to go home after announcing that one. Art Therapy for the Middle East. From Dissident Frogman:
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Wednesday, February 15. 2006Wednesday Cocktail Hour LinksA Moslem Brokeback Mountain? Oh, man. This will make the sparks really fly. Coming soon to a theater near If you are a regular reader of Maggie's, you would have known about these Loftus tapes two weeks ago. Is there a smoking gun? Not clear. Do the tapes prove that Saddam was fixated on WMDs? Yes. New York Times: Give Hamas a chance....for what? To kill more Jews? Didn't the American Left want to give Hitler more time to be reasonable... until he invaded their beloved Stalinist Russia? Ronald McDonald, inflatable Mohammeds with 7-inch wieners, etc: Classical Values - with pictures. The Moslem cyberwarfare. Michelle. A Danish view: the US and Brits pissed on us. Europundits. Gopnik on Shaker furniture, in The New Yorker. Scientists prove what everyone knows: illness in a spouse causes the other to go downhill too. Science Daily Pakistan goes postal. What's the matter with these people? Don't they have jobs? Or is it just Party Time, Middle-East style? NY Sun Darfur: Who is going to fix it? NATO? The UN? Or the USA? CSM. Why not France this time? It's your turn, France. You pull this little metal thing, and then the bullet goes out of the end of that metal tube-thingy. Low-fat diet? More evidence that it's useless. NYTimes Science Times. Great news for carnivores who like their steaks burnt on the outside and rare on the inside, with a mountain of buttery mashed potatoes...hey, what's for supper? A White House on Quaaludes. Cheney finally spoke today, honestly and graciously. Copped to the whole thing, although from what I heard it was a true accident and not an error. He should have spoken sooner. The White House has been doing lots of important things, but, in managing the loony shark-infested waters of the press, they are a bust. Fire the jerk whose job is press and micro-crisis management. Email me...I can do a better job.
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Wednesday Morning LinksCombat for Christ? Ankle Biter has story. From VDH: What will Europe Really Do?
Read entire - especially our wonderful European readers. God is a Democrat? I am not sure this is the right way to try to appeal to voters. God is everyone's, if they will have Him. Quote:
Read entire piece on the subject in Democrats Misplay the "God Card" by Hynes at Town Hall. A new website to add to your Favorites: Watching America. News from around the world, translated into English.
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QQQPoetry lies its way to the truth. John Ciardi Tuesday, February 14. 2006Yet Another Cartoon!
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For MSM "Reporters" OnlyThis is what a .28 ga. shotgun looks like. They are graceful-looking little pea-shooters used by good shots on small birds like quail and dove, and clay targets. The only smaller shotgun is the .410, used by expert shots on targets, also on starlings and pigeons around the barn. This one by Connecticut Shotgun Mfg. Co. This pretty side-by-side can be had for a mere $19,000. Too bad it's a little late for the hubby this V. Day.
Bush Hasn't Plowed my Driveway YetThirty-six hours since the Snow Storm of the Century has passed, and still Bush hasn't plowed my driveway. Nor have I heard from FEMA, nor has anyone offered me any free money or free luxury hotel rooms in NYC. This is difficult for me to comprehend, and it surely represents a failure of leadership at the top. Bush had at least four days advance notice to prepare for this snow disaster, and yet - nothing. If I didn't have my 4 WD Lexus, I couldn't get out of the house. And not only that, there is Deep Slush in the village, which presents a serious health hazard to the Aged and Infirm. Does Bush care about the Aged and Infirm? Obviously not. Us regular people are left to Fend for Ourselves without government aid, while the wealthy and privileged loll in the sun in the Caribbean and Cabo and wait for the snow to melt. Or they have the funds to pay someone to plow their driveway or, like The Barrister, are fortunate enough to own their own beautiful snowplow, as posted on Saturday. Photo of The Barrister's freshly-plowed driveway below. Meanwhile, the rest of us wait for Bush to bring help. Who's taking care of me? Who is in charge at the White House?
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