Saturday, August 25. 2007
You know it's there, but you just can't find it, like wasting ten minutes looking for a great (in your memory) 2 year-old post - it's in there somewhere, but where? And filed under what category?  Department of Complaints Department Department: Praise for Maggie's Farm from All Over
Scruton on the Dangers of Internationalism A few fun links on pre-1900 education in the US M200 Carbine The New York Cosmo - Nobody can drink just one A damn good steak - just had another one of these last night. Best with thick Rib-eyes, I think. Maximum heat, black on the surface and raw in the middle. As I say, I will never eat a charcoal-grilled steak again, at least at home.
Friday, August 24. 2007
Grow a Brain has an assortment of Dylan-related links.
Did I miss a memo? Sippican Why America commonly doesn't educate. Never Yet Melted Photo from Sippican, who I think will forgive the theft.
Why should we, if they don't? Driscoll
Dean Barnett says it better. Indeed, it was a war the Left would not permit us to win - although we were winning. Why? Because evil Amerika must never prevail.
Maliki: Scapegoat of the week? I would not want his job: herding cats. Willisms said it first, but I was getting ready to note that when Bill Clinton wags his finger, it means he is lying. Calif. Yank has the same thought. Beating a dead horse. It's sadistic fun to beat up on Edwards. Bainbridge pitches in. "Two wops who got in a jam." Sacco and Vanzetti, revisited once again. The Battle of Britain. Great photo. "Black men have abandoned their children." LaShawn More on gun control in the UK. Why not control the criminals? Guns are harmless. Gen Bui Tin, on Vietnam Iraq
 According to our friend Sippican, who kindly forwarded this photo of Sonny Boy Williamson, King Biscuit Time, later known as King Biscuit Flour Hour, was the longest-running radio program in history.
Williamson (posted yesterday) was their first featured performer. Photos like this one lead me into the wonderful Southland of my imagination.
Thursday, August 23. 2007
Their memory problem about Vietnam, in particular. Jules nails it. (link fixed)
A reader likes to highlight the distinctions between a Democracy and a Republic, and recommends this very clear brief essay on the subject. It's worth reminding oneself about this.
"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seein' your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.
Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things that I'm a-sayin' an' a-many times more.
I'm a-singin' you the song, but I can't sing enough,
'Cause there's not many men that done the things that you've done.
Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.
I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today,
Somewhere down the road someday.
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too." "Song To Woody," one of the first original compositions Dylan ever penned, if not the first, and released on his self-titled first album. A tender version from 1999 is below.
 Where was that line-dancing photo taken on the right? You guessed wrong. That would be France. Story at No Pasaran
Neoneo has been avoiding the climate change subject, but she finally takes it on in When Research and Politics interface - watch out A Pakistani Single Malt? Yup. It wins prizes too. Synthstuff. I'd love to try it. Maybe a reader can fetch me some? America's Top Ten and Bottom Ten party schools. h/t, Education Wonks Change the test! Hatemonger makes some suggestions for a truly multicultural teachers' exam. Ten sites for free legal music downloads. h/t, Flares' link collection. Now "America's downtrodden" are homeowners!?! Lib. Leanings. Sometimes it's difficult to keep The Marxist Narrative going in such a prosperous country. And speaking of The Narrative, there's a movie, What Black Men Think. Somehow the simple facts get twisted around to blame "society," of course, the contemptuous - and wrong - implication being that that black guys cannot be real men. That is true racism. Another guilty Brit liberal loses his innocence. Burkean These invisible people are Americans too! Iowahawk's Bonneville Diaries
I own a couple of small Grillos, and had a nice chat with the fine old gent and his wife last summer on the Cape. I will buy one of his large oils when my piggy bank is full. He has moved through a number of styles, but mostly in the general abstract expressionism direction. The gal is his wife, if I am not mistaken, perhaps in her younger years: 
Wednesday, August 22. 2007
 TNR has always had more influence than its small (and shrinking) subscription base would suggest.
As I was reading Roger Simon's bit on the subject of TNR's most recent suicidal hijinks with Beauchamp, the answer came to me to the question "Why does anyone care at all about TNR?" After all, TNR has fewer subscribers than Maggie's Farm has visitors in one month - and we are tiny. We care not only because TNR was once a serious, thoughful magazine which many respected even if disagreeing (up through Andrew Sullivan's excellent editorship), but the main reason we care is because many of us policy and politics junkies relied on TNR in our foolish and liberal youths. We eagerly awaited its arrival in the mail. We have a sentimental attachment to the old rag. She always made us think, and she was always literate - more so than any blog I know. Way beyond what Timesweek was. However, even my considerable sentimentality has its limits. TNR has passed them at this point. I feel the same way about the NYT which I cancelled in disgust two years ago: I like the Book Review; I like their Arts pages; I like their Food stuff; I like their Theater stuff and and Car stuff and the Science section, etc - but their corrupting political partisanship and their PC obsession spoils all of the good stuff for me. Dang - I guess I could say the same thing about The New Yorker too since Tina Brown destroyed it for me. Sad, sad, and sad. Past loves, all undone by a grandiosity that made them want to change the world in their own image, instead of being satisfied with the highly worthy and noble goal of illuminating it.
Tips for teachers, from Right Wing Prof John Leo interviews VDH on Why Study War, at Minding the Campus A threatening school drawing? New Yet Melted. Man, they should see the bloody stuff we drew in grammar school. Especially shooting Japs and shooting down Jap planes. Infantile America, re subprime loans: View from 1776 How come the press hasn't mentioned this cold August we have been having in the Northeast? I have a sweater on at this moment, and we have been using the heat all week. That was just a rhetorical question: this weather doesn't fit The Narrative, I know. If it were a heat wave instead of a cold snap, it would be front page news.
 Riehl found a series of excellent photos of the now-abandoned Weston State Hospital in West Virginia. Construction of this handsome building began before the Civil War.
Abandoned state mental hospitals are gathering dust across the country, due to the deinstitutionalization movement begun by President Kennedy, prompted in part by new effective treatments for chronic mental disorders and in part by horror stories of poor care and abuse of patients. Cramer often writes (recent example here) about some of the tragedies of deinstitutionalizing those who cannot handle life. Some significant percent of urban homeless would probably have been in institutions in the past. For schizophrenia, medicine can control some disruptive symptoms, but most schizophrenics still have a terrible time dealing with the demands of reality. Our town has a "group home" for these people, with plenty of support and structure. It seems to work very well, but only for those who want the help and are willing to take their medicine. Is there still a need for asylums? I don't know. They appear haunted to me. The question at hand, in the photo essay, is whether these big old buildings are worth preserving, and can be put to any use.
 I have always been a big booster of Lebanon and the Lebanese on these pages. It used to be a fun place, and could be again. There are two places which are now dangerous but which I would like to see before I get old: Lebanon, and Mespotamia - especially to see the ancient ruins of Sumer and Babylon.
Twisted logic on illegal immigration, via Wizbang. How does that make sense? Sex tips for women of a certain age. Want to interrupt your morning serenity with a nice anger attack? Multiculturalism in education, via Moderate Voice We have done our best to publicize The Death of the Grown-Up, and so is Scott at Powerline. Surber on the bi-partisan backtracking on the Feb. stances towards Iraq. Sammy Davis, Richard Nixon, and Jesse Jackson. Powerline. Jackson has been a shake-down artist for a long time. He is a pro, and I suspect his admirers admire this expertise. Cancer survival rates. Worstall. Clearly they just let them die right away, in the UK. Cheaper, for sure. And speaking of illness, a Winnipeg company will ship you to Cuba for treatment. Small Dead Koalas. Not a pleasant reflection on Canadian medicine. Of course, you cannot see a private doc anywhere in Canada - it's illegal. Simple thinking and male auto-castration. Dr. Helen Eleanor Roosevelt's commune experiment in W VA. Coyote Photo: Yup, another Theo beauty. We need to quit this photo stealing from Theo, but I just can't help myself: I guess I am hetero, even tho it is out of fashion these days. Or maybe I am just defending against my latent homo?
Got home Monday night. This is the terrain we hunt on the 45 square-mile ranch I visit every year for the deer cull. We only do head shots, because a wounded deer in this terrain means trouble: I would much prefer a clean miss than to track a deer across this lovely but gully-ridden countryside. 
Tuesday, August 21. 2007
We have already linked to both of these City Journal essays, but they deserve to be linked on the same post as our reader suggested, and as Viking and Betsy have done: The Peace Racket, by Bruce Bawer Why Study War?, by Victor Davis Hanson (who we usually refer to as VDH) No time to pick out quotes right now, but please read 'em if you haven't.
The News Junkie referred to academic blackballing this morning. Here's an excellent example of the academic McCarthyism that goes on today, from the NYT. (I hate to use the term "McCarthyism" because, although he was a crank, I am not convinced that Joe McCarthy was all that far off.) It's about Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a sex and gender researcher. Scientific debate is fine, but you are not supposed to use live ammo. When scientists begin using live ammo they have abandoned persuasion, so it makes you rightly doubt their confidence in their positions. By the way, we wrote about the Transgender thing here and here. At this point, I believe that there is more politics than science in the whole subject.
Iraq update, at Flopping. Good stuff still happening quickly.
|
