Thursday, May 31. 2007
"Not since I was 16 have I wanted so badly to be on my own." Powerline's Scott Johnson, in response to Hillary Clinton's statement this week: "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society." How is that as a contrast to the earlier QQQ today from our hero Maggie Thatcher in 1980?
 Al Gore flunked out of Vanderbilt Divinity School, then dropped out of Vanderbilt Law School.
I didn't know those facts. He ain't qualified to either preach to, or lecture at me. By the way, how did he do in Physics 101?
"It is not the State that creates a healthy society. When the State grows too powerful people feel they count for less and less. The State drains society, not only of its wealth but also of initiative, of energy, the will to improve and innovate as well as to preserve what is best. Our aim is to let people feel that they count for more and more." Margaret Thatcher (h/t, Samizdata)
Fascinating video via Ace. One guy says that the impetus for the anti-amnesty storm, from all sides of the political spectrum, is the unspoken motive of "it's cultural". It is partly cultural, for sure, which is why we often term it an "invasion." On the other hand, the amnesty bill is purely politically-driven. With black votes securely on the Dem plantation, everybody wants to pander to the (present and future) Mexican vote, which is now of sufficient size to determine elections.
Since we're on the subject of dams this week, the Johnstown Flood was 118 years ago, today. The dam broke.
"You have given everything to me.
What can I do for You?
You have given me eyes to see.
What can I do for You?
Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside,
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied,
Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide
And You've chosen me to be among the few.
What can I do for You?
You have laid down Your life for me.
What can I do for You?
You have explained every mystery.
What can I do for You?
Soon as a man is born, you know the sparks begin to fly,
He gets wise in his own eyes and he's made to believe a lie.
Who would deliver him from the death he's bound to die?
Well, You've done it all and there's no more anyone can pretend to do.
What can I do for You?
You have given all there is to give.
What can I do for You?
You have given me life to live.
How can I live for You?
I know all about poison, I know all about fiery darts,
I don't care how rough the road is, show me where it starts,
Whatever pleases You, tell it to my heart.
Well, I don't deserve it but I sure did make it through.
What can I do for You?" "What Can I Do For You," from 1980's Saved, the second of Dylan's three Christian-content albums, and the least well regarded despite the presence of several excellent songs. Here's a youtube from a 1980 performance in Toronto.
A propos of the post of the WSJ article yesterday about the Greenies who want to get rid of the Klamath River dams, here is a photo essay of what one of those dam projects, the Boyle Dam, has done to the Klamath river. It isn't pretty. Photo below of the Boyle Dam. 
 Microsoft launches Virtual 3D New York City. Flares
If Liberals want to imitate Europe, here are some ideas worth imitating: Lowering taxes They will believe anything in Russia. Man, that is dumb. Do not eat any food from China, Part 5. Or any food in China. What is the ideal climate for the earth? Damn good point, from yet another skeptical scientist with the big picture in mind. Blue Crab. Sometimes I think the whole world is insane. Ferdinand the Bull and other children's books, and Iraq. Excellent piece from neoneo. Academic moonbattery isn't as bad as you might think. RWN. Sharpen up your message, Fred. Powerline What are people's images of God? Interesting, and not what you might think.
Wednesday, May 30. 2007
Ardent Greenies find fault with every power source except solar panels, which are trivial. In the end, I think they want us to live in the stone age. On Maggie's Farm, of course, we have our own mini-fusion reactor in the basement which provides all of our power needs along with an endless source of truly hot water. It is entirely safe, designed by Arnie, our brilliant tractor-repair guy, constructed from old cast-iron tractor parts, and any dangerous radiation is fully contained by solid hardwood planks. The cracks are secured with duct tape, and all is painted with a coat of lead paint, just to be extra-safe. But Greenies hate nuclear, and I don't know why - France gets 70% of their power from nuke plants. Greenies don't like windmills. They hate oil, gas, and coal - and wood. They make laws (Belgium) that you cannot cook on a grill. In today's article in the WSJ, they want to tear down the Klamath River hydroelectric dams. Fine - but propose a non-frivolous alternative and don't play childish fantasy games like telling me to change my lightbulbs or to plant a tree. A quote from the article: Al Gore has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens to rethink theirs, right? Wrong. If their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American way of life. Once regarded as the symbol of national greatness, hydroelectric dams have now fallen into disrepute for many legitimate reasons. They are enormously expensive undertakings that would never have taken off but for hefty government subsidies. Worse, they typically involve changing the natural course of rivers, causing painful disruptions for towns and tribes. But tearing down the Klamath dams, the last of which was completed in 1962, will do more harm than good at this stage. These dams provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and California. Replacing this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars. Given this alternative, one would think that environmentalists would form a human shield around the dams to protect them. Instead, they have been fighting tooth-and-nail to tear them down because the dams stand in the way of migrating salmon. Environmentalists don't even let many states, including California, count hydro as renewable. They have rejected all attempts by PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, to take mitigation steps such as installing $350 million fish ladders to create a salmon pathway. Klamath Riverkeeper, a group that is part of an environmental alliance headed by Robert Kennedy Jr., has sued a fish hatchery that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife runs -- and PacifiCorp is required to fund -- on grounds that it releases too many algae and toxic discharges. The hatchery produces at least 25% of the chinook salmon catch every year. Closing it will cause fish populations to drop further, making the demolition of the dams even more likely. But the end of the Klamath won't mean the end of the dam saga -- it is the big prize that environmentalists are coveting to take their antidam crusade to the next level. "This would represent the largest and most ambitious dam removal project in the country, if not the world," exults Steve Rothert of American Rivers. The other dams on the hit list include the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley that services San Francisco, Elwha River dam in Washington and the Matilija Dam in Southern California. Large hydro dams supply about 20% of California's power (and 10% of America's). If they are destroyed, California won't just have to find some other way to fulfill its energy needs. It will have to do so while reducing its carbon footprint to meet the ambitious CO2 emission-reduction targets that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set. Mr. Schwarzenegger has committed the Golden State to cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a more stringent requirement than even in the Kyoto Protocol.
Hey, Arnold - 80%? Pretty to think so, but it will never happen. The whole piece is subscription-only in the WSJ.
Played hookie from work today with a couple of Maggie's Farmers and friends. It's getting late in the spring season here for trout. This is our ultra-secret ultra private trout stream in CT. The old story is you tell the wife that you're taking the day off to do some things with friends. She asks, slightly annoyed by the irresponsibility, what you're doing. You reply, "Well, we're going over to the Indian casino, and I hope you don't mind our acting foolish once in a while." She says "OK, I do not approve, but have fun and don't come home drunk." Then you sneak off and do what you really want - trout fishing. Why are my photos today blue-tinged and out of focus? I need to get this camera fixed. 
 MIT prof Alex Byrne takes on the subject of meta-ethics in the Boston Review. Byrne is of the view that moral law is built into the structure of nature itself (which I would hear translated as "the Creator made it that way"). One quote:
Everything, in short, is a natural phenomenon, an aspect of the universe as revealed by the natural sciences. In particular, morality is a natural phenomenon. Moral facts or truths—that boiling babies is wrong, say—are not additions to the natural world, they are already there in the natural world, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in scientific theories. Fundamental sciences such as particle physics and molecular biology do not speak explicitly speak of sand dunes, or boiling water, or lobsters, but facts about sand dunes and the like are implicitly settled by more fundamental facts: arrange bits of matter a certain way and you have an eroding sand dune, or boiling water, or (here the arrangement needs to be very complicated indeed) a lively lobster. And, presumably, the same goes for the moral facts. But how can morality be a natural phenomenon? We ought not to boil babies, but the natural world seems not to contain any trace of an “ought,” or an “ought not.” A dropped stone is under no obligation to fall, it just does. Admittedly, I might say, before dropping a stone out of the window, “This stone ought to hit the ground in three seconds,” but here I just mean something like “It is likely that the stone will hit the ground in three seconds.” If the stone doesn’t do that, it has done nothing wrong, and is not to be blamed for anything. In the natural world, nothing ought to happen, or ought not to happen, in the relevant sense of “ought.” Keeping within the confines of nature, there is no space for the fact that we ought not to boil babies. Yet since nature is all there is, there is no place left to go.
Is pleading "nature" a cop-out, or profound? The piece is a heck of a good summary of the current and past basic thinking about meta-ethics, but you have to put your Thinking Cap on before reading.
“…go figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your foolish ass.” The Anchoress, to Rosie O'Donnell
 The same old tired politics of greed, envy, resentment, and whining emerge once again from multi-millionaire, private-jet-addicted Mrs. Clinton. Does she have a single middle-class friend? Or a single real friend? I doubt it.
Well, she knows first-hand that the distribution of riches and power aren't "fair." She got them purely by exploiting - and putting up with - a hideous marriage. However, she does not realize that most people seek neither riches nor power, but seek just freedom from government burden and government interference to build their own lives according to their own lights. She must imagine that everybody is like her: hungry, greedy, angry, empty, and unfulfilled. It's a psychodrama. It has always been darkly amusing to me that the most redistributionist of our politicians are always the greediest and the most worshipping of personal wealth: see Edwards, Kerry, Kennedy, Soros, Clinton, Reid, Pelosi, etc etc. There is a level at which taxes no longer effect your daily life, and are just another minor expense. No doubt her advisors told her that this could be a winning theme, plus a distraction from her Iraq vote. Although this theme stands in opposition to the hearty and healthy red-blooded American themes of opportunity, risk, adventure, and the freedom to chose your own path through life, pursuing whatever heart and conscience decide - and living with the consequences - I guess her pollsters have concluded that there are voters out there who are mad that somebody else has more toys than they do. This is a truly infantile, negative, and mean-spirited appeal to the lowest and least admirable aspects of human nature. Editor's note: Blue Crab calls it a fresh new exciting idea for America - socialism.
 Can personality change? Well, it depends on how you define "personality" and on how you define "change."
Certainly manner of behavior and attitudes can change over time as people adapt and "grow," but the deep foundations of personality are genetically hard-wired (we term that "temperament"), along with the first few layers above that (which we often think of using concepts like "character structure" or "constellations of unconscious assumptions/fantasies about people, one's self, and the world"), are highly resistant to alteration - which is where psychoanalysis comes in. That question was asked in the context of two movies at PsyBlog, who took the trouble to review the best of the psychology blogs: Part 1 and Part 2. (h/t, Neurophilosophy.) I am going to check them all out. I am not aware of any dedicated psychoanalytic blogs. There should be at least one, but analysts tend not to be compulsive talkers and, when they write, it is always too long-winded and jargon-packed for the average ADD reader. The shrinks on our blogroll are more politically-driven than focused on the art and science of the analytic therapies.
The subject of the study and handsome Mockingbird, whose songs have fooled many a beginner birder, comes up because of this nifty story about one from Attack Machine. They are remarkable mimics.  The Mockingbird, (Mimus polyglottos), once a Southern bird, is now found across the US and into southern Canada. His repertoire of over 200 songs - copies of the songs and calls of other species - caused him once to be caged as the American nightingale.
The family of Mimic Thrushes also includes thrashers and the catbird. All are fond of tangles, shrubs and borders. Many of our Mockingbirds in New England overwinter here, and occasionally visit the bird feeder, but they do not seem to like seeds very much. You can read more about them here.
Tuesday, May 29. 2007
If you are white, you have one on your back, filled with goodies. David Thompson. There is a germ of truth in this racist nonsense, though: people from the same subcultures have more in common, which makes trust - or detecting reason for distrust - easier. Nothing to do with race, though. There is no "black culture" and no "white culture."
If Bush is a liberal (which I believe he is), what is Hillary Clinton? She seems to want the USA to be one big happy kibbutz, or collective, or whatever, and is quite clear that she does not approve of the "on your own" society. I don't know about her ancestors, but mine came here precisely to live in the fresh air of an "on your own" place.
Last evening: 
Not from us, but from Daily Kos. (h/t, LGF). I guess there are people - even in America - who value some things more highly than the freedom of the individual mind, soul and spirit. It's a shame.
 Greenpeace: Lost whales as a good source of renewable oil.
Don't go to the beach. The sand can make you sick. Science Daily Whose jobs are the illegals taking? Coyote says "nobody's" Are CEOs underpaid? The Prof has the link. Britain has become a fascist state. Tangled Web. Not to worry, Brits. It's for your own good. Pictogames. Make games out of your photos. This actually looks kind of fun. Yesterday, Chavez closed another independent TV station. Gateway. It gives me the creeps that the American Left supports this. As Tammy Bruce says: "...that pesky tyrannical authoritarianism is a hallmark of "socialist revolution" folks. Always has been, always will be." I am saying nothing about Cindy Sheehan. How the government is going to tax your Social Security checks. Viking. Is "dyslexia" a euphemism for "not too smart"? Daily Mail At the Supreme Court: interesting Seattle case on the use of race for public school admissions.
 Czech President and tennis fanatic Klaus is the only world leader who has been bestowed the honor of being named an Honorary Member of Maggie's Farm.
Our wisdom in that selection is further reinforced by his May 18th speech discussing his reservations about the EU. One quote: I am... in favour of redefining the whole concept of the European Union.
I suggest going back to the intergovernmental model of European integration. I suggest going back to the original concept of attempting to remove existing barriers among countries. I suggest going back to the consistent liberalisation and opening-up of markets (not only economic ones). I suggest minimising political intervention in human activities. Where this intervention is inevitable, it should be done close to the citizens (which means at the level of municipalities, regions and states), not in Brussels.
To summarize, I want freedom in Europe, not democratic deficit, I want democracy in Europe, not postdemocracy.
More of his speech at EU Referendum/
Ilya Somin at Volokh takes on the paternalistic/fascist notion that our lives should be designed and regulated by experts. I wish I had written it, because Ilya does a great job of ripping the notion to shreds. ...some advocates of libertarian paternalism try to get around the problem of political ignorance by suggesting that their policies be implemented by government-appointed experts rather than by elected officials. This is not a new argument. Totalitarians from Plato to Lenin have argued that the ignorance of the masses can be offset by concentrating power in the hands of an expert elite. So too have some moderate liberal scholars such as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and even libertarian Bryan Caplan. Breyer, the libertarian paternalists, and Caplan would never think of taking the argument as far as Plato or Lenin. But the core logic is similar: the experts know better than the average person - and therefore they should make the decisions. For advocates of limited government, the rule of experts is like the vampire that refuses to die no matter how often we drive a stake through its heart. We've been fighting it for 2500 years, but have never quite managed to finish it off. Nevertheless, I'm going to put on my vampire slayer hat, and take a wee little stab at it.
Read the whole thing. My opinion, as you might imagine as a Maggie's Farm contributor, is that common sense beats expertise nine out of ten times; that character beats intelligence nine out of ten times, that too many people have the mental disease of wanting to control people they don't even know, and that regular folks like me - "the masses" - are much smarter than the experts think, and quite capable of making our own choices.
Monday, May 28. 2007
 Our blog: Predictably and amusingly, lots of search hits on our Box Turtle post for "farm p*rn" and "animal p*rn." If we wanted hundreds of thousands instead of our elite thousands of discriminating readers, farm p*orn would surely be the way to go because there are clearly tons of still-closeted bestiality fans out there. Unpredictably but also amusingly, I see lots of hits on "Removing Pachysandra." At Maggie's Farm, one must admit, you never know what you might find. We are pleased that our Brit blog pal Theo named us his "Best Blog in the Known Universe" - or something like that - for the week. Thanks, Theo. You have exquisite taste in both blogs and women. And how was the sailing in Newport, I hear you asking. Wonderful, but we didn't win. Deservedly so. A fairly good strategy for the breezy but shifting conditions, but our tactics didn't work out and, in one race, we fouled another boat at the windward mark. Fouled them badly, but unintentionally, and put a nice ding in their fiberglass in addition to annoying their crew quite a bit in doing so to the point of using unsavory language. We were coming on too fast, and had little room to maneuver. We apologized profusely after that race, and bought them boat drinks.
Let's chat. Dems meet with Muslim Brotherhood. Activist Cash. Where does the money come from? Look it up here. Democracy is no defence against tyranny. Samizdata on the Venezuela mess. True to Socialist form, Chavez sent in his tanks. Another Worker's Paradise in the making. How I learned to love Vlad. A 2006 Guardian piece on Putin. h/t, Free Republic. Apparently Russians don't mind being ruled. The UK becomes more Orwellian. Small Drowned Baby Polar Bears Al Gore's fan club. Rich folks with SUVs. h/t, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Gag me with a spoon. The life of Bill and Hillary. These two are what my friend would term "rude, crude, and socially unacceptable." Soft drinks bad for your health? Somebody tell Mayor Bloomberg. Rachel Carson. A bad person? Moonbattery. True, she was a pioneer enviro-hysteric, but she was right that DDT was harmful to animals, especially those higher on the food chain. But if not for DDT, we would still have malaria in New England. In 1900 it was a major public health problem up here. It is not a tropical disease. Be very afraid of "Big Recreation." And quit using your grill, too. A town that told the food Nazis where to stick their transfats. Why infant morbidity rates in the US are higher than in other countries - we spend too much money. Right Thinking. Never take a statistic at face value. People are too stupid for democracy. An old argument in new clothes. Cafe Hayek
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