Tuesday, May 6. 2008
No Endgame, in the New Yorker: "As long as Clinton is willing to fight on simply for the sake of fighting, there really is no reason that this endless campaign has to end." Is red wine really good for you? From Charles Murray's 2006 Atlas Freedom Dinner speech: Every change in information technology gives the individual more power over his own life and more independence from centralized institutions, whether those institutions be libraries, the downtown office building, CBS, or the post office. Every change in information technology also undermines the authority of the state. Yes, in one sense the new technology gives the government more potential for keeping us all under closer surveillance than ever before. But in practice, the race between the power of the state and the power of the individual is determined by the computer geeks and nerds, and all the talent works for one side, the individual. Brilliant chip designers and programmers and hackers don’t want to work for the government. So I have no doubt that the government will try to regulate the internet, for example, and am utterly confident that spontaneous revolt in the private sector will foil those attempts in all important respects. When it comes to the action in tools, the government is on the outside looking in.
Monday, May 5. 2008
The link about make-up for men somehow randomly led me to this, and our doubtless thousands of crossdressing and transvestite readers will be happy to know that there is a Crossdressing Support site. Deep down, every guy wonders what it feels like to be a girl, don't they? And vice-versa.
 P.J. O'Rourke's Commencement speech, with life advice
Dell vs. Apple David Warren on free speech in Canada. Barnett on the slow death of the MSM, and what it will mean (h/t Anklebiting on The Dying Media) From Samiz: Environmentalists like to claim that the politicians should pursue their agenda because that is what the public wants. So free-marketeers will be cheered by a new poll that says that 67% of British people believe that the green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes. 72% of Brits would be unwilling to pay more in taxes, even if used for environmental purposes.
Photo borrowed from Tim Blair in Trees worse than cars
Over the transom: Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done? Today I am a man
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade. More below -
Continue reading "Jewish Haiku"
 These handsome sparrows are uncommon in New England. However, I was pleased to see a flock of five or six this morning under the bird feeder. They are just passing through on their way to their Arctic and sub-Arctic breeding grounds.
Photo from this site. More about these sparrows at CLO.
I know that it is trite to tout exercise, but it is worth mentioning that we keep learning more about its health benefits. I recently attended a talk on breast cancer in which daily exercise compared favorably with several widely-used chemotherapy protocols. Humans were not designed to sit on their butts all day watching TV or reading ephemeral stuff on the Internets. You name it, and exercise helps it, in the NYT by Jane Brody.
If there were no God, there would be no atheists. G.K. Chesterton
 How to recall everything you'll ever learn. Piotr Wozniak and SuperMemo. One quote:
SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they? Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It's too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.
It takes a software program.
 Exercising her right to choose, feminists get mad. Meanwhile, a woman's right to sex, in Ecuador
Steyn: "The mainline Protestant churches have long been beyond parody." See his example. Violence as a contagious disease? NYT. Vermont doesn't seem to want any power. As predicted, warmingologists change their models to accommodate the past decade without any warming, and the coming decade with cooling. Make-up for men? Sheesh. That is nauseating. Global warming models cause shark attacks. It must be the models causing this, since there's been no warming for over a decade. Like we have been saying: The Dem primaries are over. So why the charade? Iraq: NYT spinning (lying?) like crazy. However, Feith's book gets at the truth about the decisions. A "post-American world," in Newsweek. Some truth to it. One quote: At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now—one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples. The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
It's not a Grand Banks trawler - it's a 1970 "Grand Banks-type," which makes it more affordable. Nice 50' boat. A single guy or gal could live on her quite happily. 
Sunday, May 4. 2008
Good to see you Overlawyered folks visiting - check us out while you're here - you might like Maggie's Farm - Re-posted from April 15, 2006 - forgot to post it on Tax Day. (As the weather improves, we like to go like totally Green and virtuously recyle old pieces a little bit, on weekends. To save Gaia.)  Here's my story for Tax Day. I could tell you far worse, but why spoil a nice day? As regular readers know, I live in a small, charming New England town in central Connecticut, not too far from Hartford, with no crime and with no problems, except made-up ones like the crisis of having Coke machines in the High School.
When Robert Frost wrote "Mending Wall," his sentence "Good fences make good neighbors" was intended to be ironic, at the least. But fences do matter, in life. The folks who owned our little farm built a pool many years ago near the edge of the river - it's a nice trout stream which borders the southern end of our place. Yes, the pool was built before anyone ever heard of the word "wetlands." Nice pool, perfect for smoking an Uppmann Magnum next to, with a glass of Scotch, while dangling one's feet in the water, listening to the river and the birdies, and just generally enjoying being a late-middle-aged American fellow. I go to down to our little Town Hall, just to stay on the right side of the law, to make a cautious inquiry. Town Hall sits in a nice old colonial house in the center of town, with a brick addition on the back. "It's about a pool fence," I tell the receptionist, who is doing nothing at all. "P&Z", she replies. I go up the stairs to P&Z, and wait for 20 minutes while it is decided that it is OK with the all-wise and all-knowing government for someone to install central vacuuming in their house. "It's about a fence," I finally am able to say. "Go the Building Dept." I go to Building Dept., where there are two guys hanging around the desk. "It's about a pool fence." The guy is friendly and helpful. "Show me where on the map." I show him the property, and he says "Got to go to Wetlands first." I am now running short on time. I go down the stairs and to the back to Wetlands. The nice young lady takes about 20 minutes to determine that the obvious fact that my property abuts a river. "You can't build a new fence there - that's a high-velocity flood zone." "But I am required to have a fence around the pool", I insist, "because the town requires it". And then I made a foolish error, mainly because I was impatient and had limited time. "The old fence was washed away when Katrina blew through here in the fall, so all I need to know is whether it is OK to replace it." "An unfenced pool? That is a zoning violation. I am obligated to inform the P&Z inspector." I sputtered "But but but..I only need to replace it." She replied "We will need it inspected first, but you are probably currently in violation, because we take pool safety seriously in this town. But construction in a wetlands flood zone will require a variance and a hearing which will take several months to schedule. You can begin by filling out these forms", she said, handing me a packet about one inch thick. "Honestly, I might suggest to you that you get a local lawyer to represent you in this matter, because these issues become complicated, especially when you want something grandfathered." I'm a lawyer. But I know little about Land Use law. So I am supposed to hire some goofball who plays golf with the folks in Town Hall for a $2000. retainer? As I leave, I wonder why there is no law for a fence on the river. Heck - a kid or turtle or fish or moron could drown in that. And no-one can see my pool from any other house or road, so it hardly qualifies as an "attractive nuisance." But I don't mind that much. Just another dumb law - we all get used to them in this era in which government tries to be everyone's parent. Too bad people who go into government tend not to be too...um...swift. As everyone knows, but that's OK. And I also wonder about this: We must have fences around pools, but not around rivers and ponds and lakes - or the ocean. And no fences to protect our national borders. Which is more important? I don't mind being Frost's practical but un-soulful neighbor: I will gladly provide both my pool fence, and my national border fence. The law may be an ass, but it's the law. But when it takes a specialized lawyer to understand the law, it's a big problem - and expense - for everybody. If our laws are not comprehensible, everybody loses. Except us lawyers.
 Cuba lifts ban on home computers. No internet access, though. What fun are those boxes without Ye Olde Internets?
A step in the right direction, though. Police states like China and Cuba love to keep their subjects poor, stupid, and insulated from outside ideas and information. TMI might confuse their tiny brains, you know? They do not trust the good sense of their people to make up their own minds about life. On some level, they view "the people" as their enemy. That is paranoid - and evil. Regular people are farm animals to them, and nothing more than fodder for The State.
 NHS mess drives immigrants away in the UK. Talk about unintended consequences.
Sweden's missed opportunity. I doubt that they care very much. Their energetic and ambitious citizens leave the country, and their slacker quotient rises. Soon they will all be either Moslems or on the dole, or both. Then what? Call the UN for help? Call the USA for money and food? Taking another look at the UCC, in light of Rev. Wright who has become the UCC's poster child. A photo. Good grief Paging all men! It's time to MAN UP. h/t, Wizbang The Ice Age cometh Another note to self: Read OTB daily Car breathalizers? Give me a break. Is this creeping Prohibition? If I cannot have two or three beers at Rudy's and drive home, then this whole thing has gone too far. The Art of Folly at Yale. WaPo
Don't forget - We'll have the first episode of James Burke's history series up tonite 6 pm EDT (that is, Zulu -4 hrs). I'm sure it deserves the hype we have given it. Photo: The steeple of the church on Cuttyhunk Island
 From Thomas Merton, via Anchoress' Memories of God:
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us…It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.
Saturday, May 3. 2008
 When man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing, but worships everything.
Contrary to a widespread impression, G.K. Chesterton apparently never said that. Still, it's a fine statement, and relevant to the modern form of Paganism which views the lives of the unborn, ready-to-be-born, or born-damaged as insignificant, but the social lives of Goldfish - and now the souls of asparagus - as sacred. A quote from Smith at Weekly Standard: "What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people. Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights." Insty has a hilarious video to dramatize the subject. Regular readers know that all of creation is precious to us here at Magggie's Farm. We love plants, trees, birds, butterflies, rocks, mountains, meadows, rivers, intensely. Love them, love to be amongst them, and learn all we can about them. But we still hold that there is a big difference between "precious" and "sacred." These folks have taken the Pathetic Fallacy to a psychotic extreme. One is forced to wonder whether the only dining acceptable to Greenie Gaia-worshippers would now involve cannibalism, since they want us to worry about the souls of asparagus and lobsters, and view human life as an obnoxious intrusion on an otherwise beautiful Eden (except that most animals eat plants and/or other animals). Still, I must confess that the shrill scream of asparagus when it hits that steam always whets my pre-post-Christian appetite.
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
Why is a wheelbarrow load of soil or firewood easier to move around than a wagon load? It's not spring yet, but I recently had a discussion about this subject, which led to some minor research. Like simple devices like the nutcracker, the human arm, scales, a see-saw, the crowbar, ratchet wrench, scissors, catapults, and the fishing rod, a wheelbarrow is a lever. In fact, a Type 2 Lever. By a miracle of physics, levers magnify the force that can be applied with a given amount of effort. Archimedes was the first to attempt to describe the principles of levers. As the physics limerick goes: One morning while eating my Wheaties,
I felt the earth move 'neath my feeties.
The cause for alarm
Was a long lever-arm,
At the end of which grinned Archimedes.
So, using by using your body to apply effort, with lever action, you are magically carrying a fair amount of the load of the wheelbarrow. A wagon offers no such advantage. (I will spare you the math with the factors of friction, torque, vectors, etc. that make a seemingly simple tool like a wheelbarrow surprising challenging to define.) (As an aside, let me ask whether they let kids nowadays graduate from high school and college without taking calculus, physics and statistics? If so, wrong, wrong, wrong. This stuff is BASIC. An educated person knows Latin or Greek, calculus, basic physics, basic chemistry, and statistics. Or they are only half-educated about reality and seriously handicapped in the tools for understanding this world. Saddest thing: you forget it all, over time, but, like bike-riding, it's in there somewhere, and the brain can re-connect with it with the right "links".) I am partial to two-wheelers. The increase in friction, I feel, is compensated by the lack of wobble (torque). Photo is the Ultimate Wheelbarrow from Cariola.
 Krauthammer revisits Obama's race speech. Related: Obama's character at Am Thinker
Mea culpa! Everyone orders off the menu. AVI, friend, Who has original thoughts? "If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now." The fraud of electric cars. Where do people imagine the power comes from? Hybrids, of course, are another matter: they recyle power. The horror of Boris. Thompson. We offer a heart-felt adios to old Red Ken. Bye-bye. Where's the Left when they're needed on Vietnam? Shout out to our Canadian readers: Help out News Flash! People do dumb things when intoxicated. Also, when they are sober. The Opportunity Cities in the US Note to self: Read Belmont Club daily. All views are worthy of respect and protection from defamation? Good grief. In my view, 99% of thoughts and views are worthy of disrespect and forceful defamation. Except for mine, natch. Photo: Theo thinks this is a good day to get your car cleaned. Not here, though. We are experiencing seriously alarming global cooling, and she would need a down parka today.
 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. (The remainder of the poem is below)
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: W.H. Auden's "September 1, 1939""
 This is a weekly Saturday morning feature that will slowly, over time, turn you into a full-fledged computer expert. More info here.
Lesson 4: Windows XP Tweaks
Like most computer nuts, I've had a long love-hate affair with Windows. Sometimes it's just the best darn-tootin' operating system in the whole gol' dang universe...
But then...
Well, let's not go into it. There might be children present.
While Windows straight out of the box isn't bad, there are a number of ways it can be improved for both speed and functionality. Some are transparent, some are quite visible. Some are very important, in that a build-up of certain things, like background programs, can actually keep the machine from working correctly at some point. On the opposite end, some tweaks are totally esoteric, completely valueless, won't do a damn bit of good — but we still do them just because it feels so good to do them.
At the end of the lesson we're all going to join hands and chant for world peace.
But until then, please...
Continue reading "Dr. Mercury's Computer Corner: Lesson 4 - Windows XP Tweaks"
Friday, May 2. 2008
 The varieties of Heuchera available these days is remarkable.
Thanks to the magic of genetic engineering, these excellent shade plants, grown best in masses as ground-cover (more for their foliage than for their delicate and modest Spring flowers) now come in every imaginable leaf color. This site has a number of new varieties. Their "Ginger Ale" is cool.
 We pointed out here and here that people are trying to talk down the economy and to fill people with fear for political reasons. They have done it throughout Bush's long "Goldilocks economy" (which has been stronger and healthier than Clinton's, a fact which our dishonest MSM press has tried to keep a secret), and they are doing it now. But if the credit crunch is going to cause a recession - which one might expect that it would and will - it sure isn't happening yet: Jobless rates fall.
The only jobs disappearing in numbers are those on Wall St., and populist Middle America never weeps for those good, savvy, hard-working folks. (It's as American as Apple Pie to hate the bankers - until we need one to help us start, grow, or sell a business. Then, we pretend to love 'em.)
|
