Maggie's Farm

Sometimes I wonder whether Gaghdad Bob is just putting us on, or crazy, or (which I usually think), a good translator of logos-centered metaphysics for the metaphysically-impaired masses (such as me).

So before we can even say anything else whatsoever about the cosmos, we have to concede that it is the kind of cosmos in which some things can symbolize and stand for other things--almost as if the cosmos were having some kind of complex conversation with itself even before we got here. When they study creation, scientific Adams are simply eavesdropping on the conversation. If that weren’t true, there would be nothing we could say or know about the cosmos.

Normally, when we think of information, we think of communication. The purpose of language, for example, is to communicate. But the cosmos was full of information before there were any sentient beings to unpack the message. Now that we’re here, we can do that.

If you want to read a short essay I very much enjoyed, with those paragraphs in it, here it is. 

Image: Why the photo of Dr. Bliss waking up on a sunny morning? The photo is a mere symbol, plus a good, succinct piece of communication from the cosmos, plus I owe a photo to our reader Santay.

Besides worrying deeply and seriously and with the most sincere sense of urgency about obesity (see this mornings links), our dear cousins in Olde Englande have been busy worrying themselves silly about "this knife and gun culture we have."  Notice that they used to just say "this gun culture," but, with less guns, people are offing each-other with knives instead. When knives are gone - so you cannot cut meat and all they can eat is chopped liver and obesity-inducing fish-and-chips, they will kill each-other with cricket bats, and can refer to "this batty culture."  Better yet, they can use forks to kill each-other, thus neatly permitting themselves to appropriately complain about "this stupid forking culture." Atlas picked up the story, but I had previously read about it at Right for Scotland.

As we pointed out earlier today, perhaps they have bigger problems than trying to be nannies to a nation of proud adults from proud Anglo-Saxon/Celtic warrior stock. You just knew it was all over when Blair banned fox hunting: their foxy Moslems got the message loud and clear: the Brit government has no spine, no pride, and no sense of history whatsoever.

Your American cousins could not care less about the hopeless French, but we are worried about you all - because we love ya: you are us, but caught in a web.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

Niccolo Machiavelli

So far from engaging in a war to
perpetuate slavery, I am
rejoiced that Slavery is
abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained.

Gen. Robert E. Lee

What Bird Dog wants for Father's Day is a good Pogo collection.

Much as we love Calvin and Hobbes at Maggie's Farm (with well-worn collections all over the house, and with frequent apt uses of quotes from them), the gentle irony and the humble, loving satire of Pogo cannot be beat. Not a marauding marsupial, Pogo was a kind, rationalist, wry possum.

"I Go Pogo" was Pogo's campaign theme when he ran for president.

Bridgeport, CT's Walt Kelly was the cartoonist's cartoonist. Like poets, cartoonists can capture big chunks of life in a few words and images - and we verbose normal people must envy that skill.

Sadly, good collections of Pogo are not easy to find these days. Got any ideas? Email us with 'em. This is all we could find.

Since this is angleworm week at the blog, here's a sample:

Middle-East expert Amir Taheri revisits Iraq. A quote from his piece in Commentary:

Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various “fundamental mistakes” committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the “carnage” and “chaos” in the streets as signs of the country’s “impending” or “undeclared” civil war. Add to all this the day’s alleged scandal or revelation—an outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessment—and it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles.

It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institution’s much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground.

Read the whole thing in Commentary.