Tuesday, February 19. 2008
 Megan McArle explains simply why cutting the profits of drug companies will damage R&D. A quote:
I don't think of R&D as a budgeting problem; I think of it as an investment problem. After all, even if the pharmaceutical industry has no profits right now, they can borrow the money in the financial markets at fairly attractive rates. The main obstacle to R&D, then, is not the current state of pharmaceutical industry profits; it is the potential return on the investment in R&D. After all, Merck doesn't have to make drugs; it could generate a nice, safe return of 5% a year in government bonds. Or it could get into some other business, such as making soap. If you drive down the profits on new drugs too far, it stops making sense to invest in new drugs, even if there is a small profit to be made on current production.
Exactly right. In fact, I feel that it was wrong to institute time limits on drug patents. (h/t, Big Pharma vs. Big Gov at NE Repub.)
Desperate green housewives Mrs. Obama: Nothing about America to feel proud of Castro resigns Your inner fish. NYT Cheating. Kinsley: Republicans have pulled some dirty tricks before: Swift Boats, Watergate, you name it. But this time they have gone too far. In its desperate hunger for victory at any cost, the Republican Party is on the verge of choosing a presidential candidate, John McCain, who is widely regarded (everywhere except inside the Republican Party itself) as honest, courageous, likable and intelligent.
Has anybody read this book? Inside the McCain campaign: Can he reinvent Republicanism?
A photo of Great Pond, Wellfleet, MA, from this guy's Wellfleet site. I have swum across that old kettle pond many times. 
Monday, February 18. 2008
No, I am a Cheerful Optimistic White Man, not one of these. But when the commies and the nannies get in my way, I do tend to react against it.
My multicultural indoctrination causes me to appreciate such things. All cultures are beautiful in their own ways, aren't they?
Schools don't teach Hyper History, but they should cover it before they teach any specific historical period. During most of my formal history education, I struggled to orient myself in historical time. Hyper History means what happened over the broad sweep of time, say 30,000 BC to 1900 - those old-fashioned time lines, to help you put whatever you learn in some kind of context. Since it isn't taught, you have to make one yourself with big rolls of paper, which will make you learn it better, or, next best for the lazies, buy one from HyperHistory Online. and hang it on a long wall. It's not just for kids. I also found a very cool Roman timeline.
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them... Tom Paine, Common Sense (h/t, Jacksonian) Why do people who think like Rowan Williams (and there are lots of them) get it wrong every time? Stumbling and Mumbling explains it. One quote: In saying that the UK's adoption of part of Sharia law is inevitable, I suspect the Archbishop of Canterbury is making the same mistake he made in calling for laws against "cruel speech." He's failing to see that there should be a (big) space between individuals and the law, a space filled by civil society.
In a free society, consenting adults should be able to settle disputes however they like; this might entail recourse to a coin toss, Sharia, Beth din or whatever. The job of UK law is merely to ensure that consent is free, informed and not too onerous.
This means that Sharia shouldn't and needn't be part of English law, but merely of civil society.
Similarly, the task of restraining cruel and thoughtless speech - insofar as this is necessary - should fall to civil society, not the law. Whatever the response to hatemongers like David Irving should be - protest, debate, ignoring him - it should not be the law.
Dr Williams, then, is failing to see that some things - many things - shouldn't be done by the law, but by free people.
Read the whole short thing linked above. I think Archbishop Moonbat may have really screwed the pooch this time. Insty has more reactions.
Dr. X. offers a brief intro to "mirror neurons" in response to a NYT piece on Mimicry, Persuasion, and Building Rapport. "Mirroring" is about our mental reflection, or replication, of the behavior of others, usually of our own species or tribe. Whenever neuroscience finds something which might connect the brain with the mind, folks in my line of work get excited and tend to over-react, as if needy of validation. As Dr X says: ...recently, there has been a backlash against the overselling of mirror neurons, it is clear that researchers who are studying the role of interactional synchronization (and desynchronization) are onto something very powerful. Gallese wrote an interesting paper connecting this research with a number of psychoanalytic and clinical constructs including "unconscious communication, projective identification, attunement, empathy, autism, therapeutic action, and transference-countertransference interactions."
As a Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, I have always been fascinated with the neurosciences even though I hated Neuroanatomy in med school. (I think I have some LD when it comes to 3-D mental imaging.) The good Doctor links to a Gallese scientific essay on mirroring and interpersonal attunement, which may or may not be an over-interpretation of the neuroscience. In the end, though, the neurosciences offer me nothing in understanding the human mind and human behavior, and probably never will because when we talk about brain and mind we are talking about different levels of organization. The neural operations are assumed, so, when I talk with a person, I am going to be more interested in where they decide to drive their car than in how the carburetor of their car works and, if I see a play, more interested in expression than I am in the physiology of the actors' vocal cords. Early in his explorations of the human mind and soul, Freud had great hopes of correlating his discoveries with neuroscience. He was, after all, a Neurologist, not a Psychiatrist. I think that, were he alive today, he would still find such correlations difficult. Editor: The Alan Parsons Project with I Am A Mirror (lyrics here). Echoes of I Am A Camera:
 A reader mentioned that she liked this rather unique .45/410 revolver for home defence. Makes sense to me. A splash of #6 birdshot to the face will indeed leave a scumbag "learning Braille in jail" - if he is lucky.
Here's a review of the revolver, whence the photo. I tend to like this basic handgun. I prefer revolvers for the same reason that I prefer breaking shotguns: fewer moving parts, and easier to keep track of your ammo. Related, quoted in full from Insty: JAY TEA HAS THOUGHTS ON GUN-FREE ZONES; Nearly all of the mass shootings of late have been in "gun-free zones." And the ones that weren't -- at the New Life Church in Colorado and the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia -- were stopped by private citizens (and members of the community being attacked) with their own weapons. Now for my second thought. If these places aren't going to get rid of their "gun-free zone" status, despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence that they simply get more people killed, then how can they improve their security where it actually make the people inside safer? I have a few ideas. And for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to apply them to a college.
Meanwhile, Nathan Moore is offering to represent anyone who wants to challenge Tennessee's rules against carry on campus. UPDATE: "Lawyer up, kids!"
Also, No Looking Back on gun-free zones (which should be called "Defence-free Zones," or maybe "Helpless Victim Zones.") Here's the argument against The Judge. thanks, reader.
Climate change in California Maoism in Arizona Whatever happened to physics, chemistry, and history?
Sunday, February 17. 2008
 I am posting this in advance because I am leaving tonight for a ski trip to good old Killington. Mass Pike to 91 north. We are in the mood for some gnarly, bone-jarring bump runs, and the natural snow in VT has been great this year, due to the global cooling crisis. Cold is good: I will be expecting some snow-chilled pepper vodka and some nickel poker when I arrive, and I hope to freeze my buns off. Yahoo. A great escape from reality. Give me your best shot, Mountain, and try to break me. I am ready for you.
Speaking of cooling, the Arctic ice is back. Obama is a Leftist. Duh. More at American Power. Never, never tell me that there is anything Christian about giving other peoples' money away. Nevertheless, Mrs. Obama tries to tell me that my soul is broken. Do not take my inventory, Mrs. O... My soul is my problem, not yours. Ardolino takes a look at the Iraq legislature. Sounds like normal politics to me, which I guess is a good thing. Still waiting for my Brit cousins to pull up their trousers and tell their nanny state to go f- itself. Violent video games. And bottled water. Pagan religions thrive in the USA. Avenue K and the travel lobby. Dem Project. I am glad that I am a minority. As a white Christian heterosexual male, they will never fire me from my newsroom... will they? "I cannot process this kind of thinking." Neither can I. McCain: No new taxes. Good. I do not pay much, but I hate government greed. We are stupid. Jules. I am precisely as stupid as I chose to be. The Newt: Repubs need to be Conservative. The black voting bloc, and how the Clintons might have blown it. I detest the very notion of voting blocs, but I guess they are the reality. The Islamic revival in Egypt. Sad. A little bit of Jesus would do them good. Bush is popular in Africa. Rightly so. But what Africa needs, if they want economic growth, is free markets. Educational innovation! New! Improved! From Insty: EMBRACE YOUR INNER MORON! "Requiring children to actually demonstrate knowledge of math, English and science in order to graduate may be the single greatest educational innovation of our time, forcing schools that had demonstrably not been teaching at all to at least teach for the test."
More re Dr. Rossiter's book on Liberalism (sounds like our Dr. Bliss): Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.".
Government fails at providing power in SA. Of course. A government couldn't run a candy shop without a subsidy. Soros tentacles. The guy is a creeped-out crackpot. Marxism is anti-statist, says S&M. OK, but when and where has that happened in the past 100 years? Please. Socialism is all about centralized power. Did you read our link to You are what you spend? Worth reading, with two good charts. He makes the case that what matters is what people consume, not what they make. Of course, America has the richest "poor" people in the world because income does not include government and charity help. Re Hillary (is she running in Texas, by any chance?) "I've gone hunting," she said. "I know you may not believe it, but it's true. My father taught us to shoot." Clinton told reporters later she had once shot a duck in Arkansas, along with "a lot of tin cans, targets and some skeet."
Tin cans? Not just totty. Theo has tons of good stuff up.
"Sarkozy is more pro-American than any of the American Democratic candidates." Stanford's Russell Berman, on John Bachelor's (excellent) radio program tonight. I also learned that Russia has a 13% flat tax. America needs more rich folks - the more, the better. It costs Americans 50 billion to do their taxes - not to pay their taxes, to do them. What a waste of our labor. Even our tax attorneys typically, say, in exasperation, "Just put in a reasonable number and don't worry about it." Nobody understands it.
The conclusion of Twyla Tharp's masterpiece Push Comes to Shove, choreographed for Baryshnikov. I saw him do this, thanks to the Mrs. Bird Dog's insistence many years ago. (In another life, she was a modern dancer in NYC and, as part of courtship, I have seen a lifetime of dance. Still do. Good stuff, but I think it is difficult - but worthwhile - for a guy to fully "get it." It's not in my blood, so I have to try to appreciate to expand my spirit.) NYC remains the dance capital of the world. I always liked Merce Cunningham, with John Cage in the pit. Totally strange, eccentric, and absorbing. There is a lot happening on the stage recorded below, and it is all joyful and fun and technically impeccable. You almost need to be married to a dancer to understand the mysteries of technique, and how technique expresses ideas and emotion. Dance is hard as hell to do right, and Misha had the best Moscow trainng. Ballet in Russia is like football here.
A family member recently handed this over to me, which had been sleeping in his attic for 40 years. It's a 20 ga. single-shot breaking gun from Ithaca Gun. It's in perfect condition, but has little value or practical utility. It might be good for teaching a kid: having one shot concentrates the mind. The point is that you cannot have too many guns around. Each is interesting in its own way. There are so many cool ways to assemble a piece of pipe with a hammer mechanism at one end. This one was thirsty for a little oil, which inspired me to deliver a bit of TLC to many which have not been used lately. He also gave me an equally old, but essentially unused, .22 long with a nice scope and a light oak stock. That is a fun, handy toy tool. He is keeping his .45 police handgun to enforce mannerly behavior around his house. I have too many shotguns, need handguns around the farm. 
Some points that Larry Kudlow made on the radio yesterday (paraphrased): Corporate taxes should be zero in the US, as should the capital gains tax, dividend taxes and estate taxes (they are all forms of double-taxation). The rest of the fast-growing world (except for dying Euroland) is coming to understand that, but our Dems are still stuck in the 1930s with their anti-business, anti-free market populism. After all, who ends up paying those taxes on corporate income? Consumers in the US and around the world (30% of American business does exports), and investors (which now includes most Americans). Without the investors, there would be no business growth and no job growth. Kudlow reminds us that 138 million Americans work for corporations, and it is very much in their interest that those businesses do well in the world economy. The Dem government-greed-based attacks on, and plans to control, our wonderful, high-wage industries (oil, pharmaceuticals, finance, insurance, etc.) are from another era, and promise nothing but damage to employees and shareholders.
 Americans have never had it so good. Surber
Trying to comprehend the Liberal mind. Never Yet melted Academic deep thinking about soldiers and rape Does Obama understand that there are wolves out there in the world? Another victim of global cooling. And still nobody cares. Poverty in Europe. (fixed) Columbia University alumni: Who is remembered and who is forgotten? Warren Buffett is insuring the insurors. Smart man. It's why I own Berkshire. First stock I ever bought. From a piece by Donald Luskin: The New York Times has never been especially vigorous about publishing letters from conservative readers complaining about the outpouring of hate, slander, innuendo and other species of satanic sputum from the mouth of Paul Krugman, as long as its target was George W. Bush and the Republican party. But when his column criticized Barack Obama's campaign for being a "cult of personality" based on "Nixonland" tactics -- in other words, when Krugman focused his hate on a liberal Democrat -- the Times has room for letter after letter after letter.
Two climate-related blogs we check regularly: Climate Debate Real Climate Photo: Another theft from S,C & A
David's Psalm 103, from his older years, was my selection for our men's Lenten study this week. David begs his heart and soul to invest in praise, humility, and gratitude. 1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-
3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children-
18 with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
20 Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
22 Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul.
Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas (h/t, reader). 
Saturday, February 16. 2008
An annual re-post, for our readers with game in their freezers: A few more Maggie's Farm favorites, but first, remember: always salt and pepper your meat before cooking, never over-cook game, and keep a good supply of gibier sauce in your freezer.  For venison, elk and moose
The filets - tie them up tight, and cook as you do a beef filet mignon The steaks - marinated overnight in olive oil, garlic, thyme, a little wine, and grilled rare The stew meat (which is most of it) - Our favorite is to make a Bourguignon, but a Navarin is also excellent. I call these two recipes "savory meats."
Pheasant, duck and goose legs Our habit, with duck, goose and pheasant, is to cook the breasts and to confit the legs and thighs. When you confit them, the tendons melt and they are a great accompaniment for a salad. A container of confit in the fridge will last for months. Just take 'em out and warm them in the oven and let the duck fat from the confit drip off, and either pick the meat off and toss it with the greens, or just put the warmed leg with thigh on top of the salad. Good idea to mix some warm gibier sauce in with the oil and vinegar dressing.  Pheasant
We like pheasant breast sauteed to pink in the middle, in butter and olive oil, on a bed of red cabbage (braised with bacon, a little vinegar, port), with wild mushrooms and braised and sauteed root vegetables - or mashed potato, on the side. You splash some reduced gibier sauce on top. Woodcock We treat the delectable but tiny woodcock with special care. We don't do it like the French (a sauce from all of its guts, and served with a toothpick to eat the brain with). Sautee the tiny breasts for a number of seconds on each side in hot butter and some truffle oil, and place on toast. Squish the livers into the butter and oil to make a sauce with a splash of brandy or something, and pour on top. Amazing first course. Or, even better: woodcock ravioli. Chop very finely, then sautee shallot, carrot, and a little garlic. Very quickly sautee the woodcock breasts, then cut into small pieces. Mix above together with some truffle oil and spoon into your ravioli pasta or wontons. Serve splashed with gibier sauce with a couple of sauteed porcinis. A nice touch: shave some black truffle over the raviolis on the plate.  Ruffed Grouse
Grouse hunters are a special breed of human - bull-headed and foolish - and the Ruffed Grouse is a special kind of food. Every grouse hunter has his favorite way of preparing this subtle but delicious breast meat, like a dry chicken, but a chicken that has been raised on juniper berries and raspberries and mushrooms and aspen buds and fern fronds. One way we like is to brown the breasts quickly, then wrap in bacon and bake until the middle is pink. Serve on a bed of lentils with chopped shallots and carrots in them, with a splash of gibier sauce on top, root vegetables maybe on the side.
Canada Goose Pests? Not on your life. They are great food. Marinate those dark meat, steak-like breasts overnight. Some love 'em on the grill, like steak. That's fine, but also good is to sautee them in oil and butter to your degree of done-ness, then serve thinly sliced with a gibier sauce.
 Wild Duck
We have more favorite ways of cooking wild duck than I can list here. It's a subject for another day, but I will say three things: in Yankeeland, duck doesn't mean Mallard - it means all sorts of ducks, including the delicious and livery Bluebill. Second: we gave up on cooking the whole bird, stuffed or otherwise. It does not do justice to the bird. We just do happy things with the breasts, and confit the legs and thighs. Third, a piece of orange should never get near a wild duck. Domestic duck, ok, if that's what you like, but not the wild ones - it's criminal.
Is the Hillary Clinton campaign the Black Knight? It's not over yet, because she can bite.
Freudian slip? I have heard the tape several times since Bill Clinton said that yesterday. Sheesh. What is going on here?
Put the youngest Bird Dog pup on the plane to Charlotte very early this morning for the Junior Olympics Tournament. (She does Foil - elegant, but millions of rules. It's like physical Chess.) Gave myself a little treat by taking the Queens-Midtown Tunnel from LaGuardia airport into Manhattan, and grabbed a bag of fresh hot bagels and some good coffee before heading back north to the serenity of Yankeeland. I do love NYC. Who doesn't? It is vitality, even at 6 AM. On a Saturday morning at 6 AM you can drive up Manhattan to the 96th St. entrance to the FDR quite enjoyably, despite having to dodge wacko, reckless, seemingly insane or drunk guys in wheelchairs in the middle of 3rd Ave, disregarding the street signals. Had camera, but too dark. 
Fencing demands a lot from your legs, your brain, and your spirit. The young 'uns all come back with some good purple bruises, so it's a wonder that the goo-goos haven't banned this "violent" game yet. In pitiful Euroland, at least. Bruises = Life. Well, this pup of mine is good at finding her way around new places - a handy life skill - having done Europe a couple of times more or less independently. When she goes to a Fencing tournament, I say "Return with your shield, or on it," or sometimes "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." I want to see blood on her foil.
 Photo on right from S,C&A
How not to measure temperature. Doesn't everyone agree that the only useful and meaningful numbers are troposphere numbers? Retainers for primary medical care. Makes sense to me. Why would it be illegal in Ilinois? Tennessee has a good idea for dealing with campus maniacs. If you were President, would you want this guy waterboarded? Obama weaves a spell: Krauthammer. Related: "Hope" reminds Squaring the Boston Globe of a Robert Frost poem. Related: Obama "weak and sensitive", "androgynous," like Trudeau. David Warren Dems have no energy policy. Powerline Legal vote-buying? Surber Brit men would give up sex for a new TV. (h/t, Dr. Bob) Need a driver's license? Try Maine. They will issue one to anybody, even if you don't live in Mooselandia. Job cuts at The NYT and the LAT. So how come the WSJ is growing? Are people sheep? Saudi witch recondemned to die. It is definitely not multicultural to disapprove. (h/t, Jungle Trader) Veganism = Genocide. If they can do this with tobacco, why not with everything else? Cramer Fun-loving Presbyterians won't stop burning stuff in Denmark. I'm sure they have excellent reasons for doing so, aren't you? I mean, besides the sheer primitive fun of wanton destruction.
Friday, February 15. 2008
Shape of Days says he has a Borderline Personality Disorder. He discusses his difficulties in life at length, in his links. Quotes: People like me live in constant fear of abandonment. We are deeply distrustful. We don’t think you love us, or care about us, or even enjoy our company on a superficial level because we know how we are. We’re aware of it. We know we’re manipulative. We know we’re selfish. We know we’re mean and rude and all those things. By the time we reach our mid-20s, we’ve seen the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again. We know how we are, and we dislike ourselves. So naturally we assume that you dislike us, too. We go through cycles, people like me. The eggheads call it idealization/devaluation. We start out by becoming swiftly and overwhelmingly attached to you. Maybe romantically, maybe platonically. We entrust you with our secrets, which are legion since we have so much to be ashamed of. We want you to entrust us with your secrets. We get close, fast. At this stage, you can do no wrong. Literally. You’re perfect in our eyes. But then something happens. Something totally normal. Probably something you don’t even notice. You say the wrong thing — what we define as “the wrong thing” — and it hurts us. We opened ourselves up to you. We made ourselves vulnerable. We trusted you, and you betrayed that trust.
and We’ll probably go through periods of low self-esteem. This isn’t your garden-variety “Oh, I just don’t feel pretty today” stuff. We’re talking about legitimately low self-esteem. See, we really are bad people, by objective standards. We know this. We’re very much aware of this. So when we’re feeling down on ourselves, it’s not just self-pity to get attention. It’s very much the real thing. We’re unhappy with ourselves because we, as people, suck.
Editor's note: Heartbreaking, and so sadly self-consumed. And so talented. You want to say to him "You suck - compared to whom? Don't flatter yourself." But you know that won't help.
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