Monday, August 13. 2007
10 most erroneous predictions of the future. Reason, h/t Driscoll The northern half of the UK is on the dole. Tangled Margaret Drabble hates cheeseburgers. Dinocrat. So, don't eat them. Macon Mayor loves Chavez? MA gun laws. Quote from No Looking Backwards: Edward Arsenault, 70, of Fairhaven, was turned down for his license renewal earlier this year because he had been convicted in juvenile court of stealing a chicken from a chicken coop when he was 9 years old, in 1946.
Reminds me of Alice's Restaurant, for which the un-embeddable Youtube is here.
Finally, a Che t-shirt I would wear, via NE Repub. Be the first on your block to proudly display the body of the "doctor" mass-murdering thug and pig of a human being. 
Well, I know that isn't hot news. I think we may have already linked Dr. Dalrymple's speech on Cultural Confidence but, if not, we should. It confirms my long-held opinion that the Western "intelligensia" in general isn't very intelligent when it comes to the real world. A quote from a quote on the speech at Thompson: If you believe that the history of your culture is nothing but a catalogue of horror, massacre and the oppression of others, then you will not be very assiduous in its defence once it comes under concerted attack. Among intellectuals, at any rate, the history of crimes and catastrophes is more popular than that of achievement; and this view eventually communicates itself to society at large, to the point when it is not even realized that there is any achievement to record. In any case, there is a natural tendency, at least in the modern world, to take progress for granted the moment it is made, but never to accept problems as being an inevitable part of human life…
 Slipped on a wet deck in the rain on Friday and cracked my olecranon, which took some of the fun out of our sailing trip. The problem with sailboats is that everything topsides is hard - nothing soft. And it always seems to hurt more when it's wet.
I never saw Merv Griffin on TV, but thanks to the late Merv for inventing Jeopardy. Who would imagine that such a nerdy show would be so popular for so long. I've always loved it. Organic food produces more CO2. Not that I care. The latest Reuters fakery. Funny What does "life expectancy" really measure? Powerline Dr. Sanity's Carnival was good yesterday. Are taxpayers subsidizing low-wage employers like WalMart? In a way, yes. Depends on how you look at it. On the subject of subsidies, look at the new Farm Bill. Disgusting. Dems are demagoguing against free trade, but do they really mean it? Betsy Fatherless: Much of what is bad and sad about America is a consequence of single-parent - or no parent - families. Malanga on the Newark murderers. In the same vein, look at how much this nice family in Boston costs the taxpayer. "Comparative Dictatorship 101." Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin, via No Pasaran, in The Economist NPR Science Writer likes Moslem science. Ace
Sunday, August 12. 2007
Today on the Farm, 5:30 AM. For the full effect, add the sound of an early-rising croaking raven to the photo. 
A Bird Dog pup practicing lawn mowing on slopes. It's always exciting when the front wheels leave the ground. The photo doesn't capture the slope. 
Share Maggie's Farm - don't hoard us! Help keep us inspired and chugging along during these dog days of summer by sending us around to your million friends. That is all we will ever ask for. But if our readers insist on continuing to mail cash to our Maggie's account, well, that is just great too. Nothing smaller than wrapped ten-packs of circulated 100s, please, or it isn't worth our trouble. Mail cash to: Mr. Churchie la Femme, c/o CYA Assets Associates, Ltd, George Town, Grand Cayman. 
Photo: A handsome 1925 Doble steamer. I remember my Granny explaining to me why her next-door neighbor had a funny low extension on the back of their garage. The prior owner needed the extension to fit their fancy new Stanley Steamer. That funny lean-to extension remains there today, and is surely useful for today's cars.
From La Nozze de Figaro, Bartoli and Fleming. Dang Spanish words in there are annoying.
Saturday, August 11. 2007
Gen. Philip Sheridan, an avid hunter and ornithologist, played a large role in the early conservation movement, especially at Yellowstone. Painting: Sheridan's famous 20-mile ride from Winchester VA to Cedar Creek, on his war horse Rienzi. The Union victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek helped an unpopular Lincoln gain re-election by a war-weary nation. Every school kid once knew this poem.
Two years ago the separate $20 million gifts to Harvard and Georgetown for Middle Eastern Studies programs by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal sparked a short-lived focus on what such academic programs are doing. From a piece by John Miller at Students for Academic Freedom: Because Middle Eastern studies aspired to immediate relevance, it became vulnerable to mixing scholarship and activism, with combustible results. Many professors believed they should become activists for positive change, such as modernization in the Arab world -- a helpful concept, but perhaps a job best left to diplomats and nonprofit groups.
"A lot of what they do is just glorified advocacy journalism," says Rubin of AEI. To complicate matters, Middle Eastern studies isn't rooted in a traditional academic discipline. Like African-American studies and women's studies, it's an interdisciplinary response to dramatic events and social movements. Because of this, the field has a tendency to attract teachers and students with passionate political beliefs that can get in the way of objective research. Although several sub-fields of Middle Eastern studies have flourished, especially in early history, art and architecture, and a few other areas, these subjects are far removed from the modern strategic concerns that Middle Eastern studies might be able to address.
Read the whole thing. h/t, Minding the Campus
Mostly pre-posting this weekend, because your editor (photo below) will be in cow-land and happily without modern conveniences, and thus unable to serve the gate-keeping function. 
Dr. Bliss on Do Americans expect too much from marriage? Fish Chowda' and Fish Fumet Almost Everything about Concrete Does a college degree mean anything nowadays? Motor-sailers
Sonnet XCVll How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
Friday, August 10. 2007
Malanga at City Journal on "The New Privatization." Apparently infrastructure has market value, so it makes sense to wonder why governments should be running these things. A quote: Daley seeks federal approval to auction the rights to operate Midway, Chicago’s second-largest airport, as part of a federal project to demonstrate the benefits of privatization. Midway would be the second airport, and the first major hub, to enter the program. (The first was Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, New York, which the Pataki administration privatized in 2000.) In Colorado, the independent state authority that operates the Northwest Parkway, a Denver-area toll road, is evaluating bids for a 50-year lease to run it; the transaction could raise $500 million. New Jersey governor Jon Corzine is thinking of selling the New Jersey Turnpike, which could yield some $20 billion, though he’s also considering floating municipal bonds, backed by the turnpike’s tolls, which would raise less money but allow the state to continue operating it. Many smaller-scale deals are in the works, too. The Macquarie director said last fall that he anticipated as many as 25 toll-road privatizations in the U.S. over the next two years, potentially pouring $80 billion into government coffers. Selling existing assets may turn out to be only a small part of this promising story. With far more money to deploy than there are public assets to sell, investors are now vying to help governments build and operate new infrastructure, and budget-squeezed states are taking them up on their offers.
Read the whole thing. Yes, that is the Brooklyn Bridge.
Wake up before it's too late. And no, it's not about the Moslems this time. It's about Brussels. The Economist details the deliberate deceit. A quote: A month ago Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, observed that new treaties always involve hefty transfers of sovereignty, before asking if it was “intelligent” to draw attention to this in places like Britain. And last week, the other convention vice-chairman, Jean-Luc Dehaene, a former Belgian prime minister, offered a broader conclusion. In an interview with Le Soir, Mr Dehaene declared it “dangerous talk” to want too much “transparency and clarity” in the EU.
 Since the News Junkie plans to stop by Cuttyhunk this weekend, I thought I'd do a piece on this place which is mainly known to East Coast sailors for its large harbor.
Cuttyhunk is the outermost of the chain of Elizabeth Islands that stretch from Cape Cod southwest into Buzzard's Bay between the MA shore and Martha's Vineyard. Most of the Elizabeths are owned outright, but not Cuttyhunk, which has a year-round population of 52 (many more in July and August). Cuttyhunk is two miles long and about a mile wide. It is mostly wild. The island is not convenient at all, but it ain't a cheap place to buy- example. If you don't have a boat, you get to Cuttyhunk from New Bedford on the M/V Cuttyhunk. Here are some Cuttyhunk photos. Here's a history of the lighthouse. Today's weather report on Cuttyhunk: 54 degrees at noon, with drizzle. Photo is the steeple of the 1881 United Methodist Church. (That is a Striped Bass, if I am not mistaken.)
Aaron Hansom via Pajamas: I developed a unique skill during my brief career as an elementary school teacher in inner city Los Angeles: Within moments of entering a new classroom, I was able to glean which students had two parents living at home. It was really no great feat. The boys whose pants were falling down to their ankles and the girls wearing short skirts were almost always from single-parent homes. I could tell immediately after reprimanding them that they weren’t accustomed to hearing a male authoritarian voice. The girls would usually respond to me by rolling their eyes, while the boys would either kick the wall or march out of class. Even when they remained in class, these students didn’t learn much. After all, they weren’t in school to learn.
Read the whole thing.
The wacky markets are losing a lot of money for some of the hedgies, and making a lot of money for others. It isn't the quant funds per se, it's the funds that do a lot of leveraged stat arb that are suffering from the market divergences. Some quant funds are doing great right now. But when a fund is down 15% in five days, people take their money out, and the overall market dips. Watch 2-3 big hedge funds shut their doors. I would be an equity buyer now, if I had some loose pennies, and I would shed no tears for the hedgies on the losing side of all of this: they (properly but unluckily) had a high risk strategery (aka gambling), which is what they are paid to have.
Funny story, by Captain Ed. You can't get away with anything in the internet era. Also busted: NASA. The News Junkie linked the story well, but kudos to Steve McIntyre, a math-computer blogger who identified NASA's climate error. Is there really any global warming now? And how come NASA didn't find their own error?
 Professor Bainbridge quotes Russell Kirk's ten conservative principles (below) in a piece attempting to determine the political orientation of Andrew Sullivan's readers. (Exactly why the good Prof wants to do that is beyond me.)
- The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent. ... A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be. ...
- The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. ... Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. ...
- Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity—including rights to property, often. ... The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.
Read the rest on continuation page below.
Continue reading "What is a Conservative?"
Thursday, August 9. 2007
 This will be a quiet weekend at the Farm, with most of us away from our keyboards. I am leaving tonight for Rhode Island for a three-day sail around The Islands, and I know Bird Dog will be away too. Hoping to stop by Cuttyhunk again, and hoping to find the mermaid in the photo somewhere in the harbor - if she isn't one of Theo's girlfriends.
Refusal to gloat about the Kos story. I will not gloat about the greedy Lefties. I will not gloat about the greedy Lefties. I will not... The UK's new official religion: Islam. Insult it, and you will be beheaded arrested. When is it OK to break the law? Wizbang Wisconsin tries universal health care. Good luck. Attack Machine If Al Gore had been elected. A thoughtful thought experiment from Assistant Village Idiot Bush gets it exactly right on bridges. The AP gets rough with The New Republic Pushing back against PC: Dust my Broom and Classical Values More on that study about how diversity is bad for people. Globe. Is Hillary "Clean for Gene"? Driscoll Gun nuts are right. Alphecca Why do polls show pessimism about a Goldilocks economy? Betsy Girls gone mild? Bummer. What fun is a girl with self respect? NOAA doesn't want you to know how they get their temperature data. I suspect they don't want further embarassment of people finding their thermometers on asphalt parking lots and next to A/C exhaust vents. Many more details from Ace. And Coyote explains it all in depth. Warmest recent year? 1934. They made a math mistake. And regarding that so-called bogus claim that people are being paid by Big Corn, Big Coal, Big Wind, Big Oil, Big Electricity, Big Car, and Big Peanut to be climate deniers - it's true. I don't know where it comes from, but every time we write a piece skeptical about climate change or whatever it's called, we receive, in the mail, $10,000 in cash. Ten 1000 dollar bills in a bank wrapper, with no return address on the brown envelope with a DC postmark. It's only right that we should come clean about this to our readers because our integrity is important to us. We assure our readers that this has no effect on our writings whatsoever. We have never asked, but we assume other bloggers get the same envelope and are just waiting for the right moment to mention it.
|
