Sunday, July 13. 2008
 Our regular readers know that I enjoy cooking meat in my smoker. For me, that is real barbecue. Not a grill - a smoker.
Mostly pork, sometimes beef. Unlike some of my pals, I do not believe in smoking game birds because their fine flavor is too subtle to hold up to smoke. I like to put on the hot rub du jour overnight, then start smoking it in the morning - or whenever I get to it. Pork loin, butt for pulled pork, ribs, beef tips, whatever. Sometimes I like to finish it off with a store-bought or home-made barbecue sauce on it while it finishes, sometimes during the entire cooking, sometimes on the side. For ribs, you have to cook with the sauce so they don't dry out. In Texas, it's on the side with the brisket - but I don't like brisket. What's your preference? Photo is my smoked pork loin. You need to have the sauce on the side for that.
This is a summer weekend re-post from our dusty archives:  "Progress," like environmentalism, is a secular religion.
I have always been suspicious of the concept of progress. For Chambers of Commerces, it has always seemed to mean more asphalt. For Leftists it has meant movement towards international socialism. In the world of morals, it has seemed to mean less morality and self-discipline. In art and design, it often seems vain and meaningless. In the world of religion, it has seemed to mean watering it down. In the Sciences though - medicine, technology, etc - advances have of course added much to quality and ease of life - but nothing to the meaning and purpose of our lives unless we are scientists. Wilfred McClay in Touchstone points out how the word has shaped our experience. Our words shape the way we think about things, sometimes in insidious ways and without our awareness, even as we use them: sometimes our words lead our thoughts instead of vice-versa. History has become for our secular age what “fate” was for the Greco-Roman ancients, and what “providence” was (and remains) for many Christians. This is the sense of History that Hegel and Marx promoted, and the sense that Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy recently appealed to in justifying an opinion by “evolving standards of decency.” It is the sense that moral innovators are appealing to in promoting homosexual and polyamorous “marriage,” artificial wombs, bioengineered enhancements, and all the other delights of “posthumanity.” The postmodernists who claim that we are beyond the sway of such metanarratives as History are speaking utter rubbish. (As usual.) “Progress” is the one article of faith that remains strong among us, the one torch in modernism’s darkening hall that still burns bright. To oppose it, even in the slightest, is to render oneself an “enemy of the future.” Which is why the possibility that such innovations might ultimately fail is, literally, inconceivable to so many true believers, as inconceivable to them as a sudden revocation of the laws of physics. You see, there are certain prevailing winds in this thing called History, and the Path of True Virtue can only be found in discerning those winds, and aligning one’s skiff with them. Or so the partisans of conventional wisdom would have it. And their confidence is oddly mirrored in the dejection of the orthodox, who feel themselves on the losing side of History. Yet both are wrong.
You can read the whole brief piece. It's a Christian view of time and of history. Update: AVI did a piece about cultural views of time last week.
Am Thinker. The mysteries of zero always interested me, too. If you have five apples on a table, and take away five, how many apples are there? Still five, just not on the table. I am a concrete thinker.
 From SDA:
A lone, honest Liberal crawls out of the woodwork... The Liberal Party’s Green Shift announced on June 19th marked the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians. [...] I invite and encourage everyone to visit thegreenshift.ca to see how this comprehensive plan will benefit low-income Canadians. I will continue to work collaboratively with my Liberal colleagues towards a fairer, richer, greener Canada.
Yes, it's all about the green. Meanwhile, US delays regulation of greenhouse gases. In its report, the NYT calls CO2 "air pollution." It's also called "air." We'd all be kaput without CO2: all plants would die. Related: Hansen "not interested." Related: The great biofuels con Related: Is man causing global cooling? From Icecap: It was warm from 1850 to 1940, too, but in 1940 the planet cooled for 30 years. However, this cooling can’t happen again, according to the Hadley Centre. How does it know? Because its computers tell it so - the same computers that couldn’t predict the recent 10 years of non-warming. But why isn’t the planet warming now? After all, humans are “driving” the climate, aren’t we? Well, not quite. As the Hadley Centre tells us “The recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Nina conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures.” (incidentally, “slight slowing of the warming” is an unsual way of describing “no warming").
Re the wonderful Tony Snow, Michelle has a video of him playing with his band. Many memories of Tony Snow at NRO. What George Soros is doing with his money in this election. From Nanny State to Totalitarianism: Concentration camps for fat kids. Got to keep your serfs in good shape, eh? Warren Buffet is in a buying mood. We linked on the UN and Zimbabwe yesterday. Norm has a different view - but he is wrong. If the UN had the power to intervene inside nations, nobody would join it. Have we already crossed the line with taxes? Coyote. My preference? Flat tax of 13% on all income, no deductions and everybody pays. Dues, to belong to Club America.
Psalm 119 1Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
2Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
3who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
4You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.
8I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me. 9How can young people keep their way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
10With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
11I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.
12Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes.
13With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth.
14I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.
15I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways.
16I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. 17Deal bountifully with your servant, so that I may live and observe your word.
18Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
19I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me.
20My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times.
21You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from your commandments;
22take away from me their scorn and contempt, for I have kept your decrees.
23Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes.
24Your decrees are my delight, they are my counselors.
25My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word.
Continue reading "From today's Lectionary: My soul clings to the dust: Revive me"
Saturday, July 12. 2008
Looks like it. He does nothing without political calculation.
Sorry. It's not working reliably. Will fix when able. UPDATE: Fixed.
From Dr. Roy Spenser's excellent site, via piece at Am Thinker titled New Hope for Global Warming Deniers: 
The UN, rightly, has no authority and no mission to interfere with the internal issues of states. In my view, imposing sanctions on officials would have no impact anyway.
When I say 'Religious Left'... AVI Will Israel attack Iran? Current Chilled red wine in summertime Good stuff. We linked to Salatin's essay, Everything I want to do is Illegal, in our post on farming yesterday. He's a farmer in VA. India disputes global warming MSM "confused" about Obama. Also, Obama's educational romanticism. Derbyshire Insty: MASS TRANSIT IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE
"We're so..." by Russ Vaughn, via American Thinker: We're hip, we're cool and so arty;
We're Democrats, the smarter Party.
We're sophisticated unlike you:
We understand merci beaucoup.
We're ubane and you're provincial;
We're worldly-wise, so existential.
We're cultured, complex, so refined,
We've left you ignorant serfs behind.
We're witty authors of clever puns,
While you clods cling to God and guns.
Were you not so closed and clannish
We'd have you peons speaking Spanish.
We say all this with knowing smirks;
We're Democrats, you Red-State jerks.
This is a weekly Saturday morning feature that will slowly, over time, turn you into a full-fledged computer expert. More info here.
Lesson 14: Video
Ah, video.
If you knew what I knew about video, you'd run screaming into the night. The very word should cause you to tremble. What's that? Your Windows is corrupt and reboots itself every five minutes? Big deal! Your browser freezes up every 38 seconds? No problem! Your hard drive just caught on fire and burned down half the house? That's the easiest one to fix yet!
But video.
Video is what separates the wheat from the woods, the chaff from the sliced kittens, the bear from the pope poop.
Video.
Video is where the foot meets the rubber, the tire meets the floorboard and the pedal meets the road. It's what separates the fancy from the dancy, the hoity from the toity, the willy from the nilly. It's how you tell the kettle from the heat, the pot from the fire, the brisket from the biscuit from the basket. It's what—
For more unbelievably inane ramblings as I desperately try to avoid writing about this horrid subject of which I, personally, would never partake, please...
Continue reading "Dr. Mercury's Computer Corner: Lesson 14 - Video"
Friday, July 11. 2008
Johnny Otis, Willie and the Hand Jive (with Lionel Hampton) Hand Art, from here: 
More hand art photos on continuation page below -
Continue reading "Hand Jive and Hand Art"
At HuffPo, with good reason: The week that should have ended all of McCain's presidential hopes. That upsets me. I raised money for McCain. He has had months of an open field to run down like a rock star and a winner. (Of course, Obama has had plenty of campaign-killing weeks too.) Perhaps their plan is to let Obama blow himself up...or perhaps they are asleep at the switch. But all I can see from here is that Obama is dominating the press. As they used to say in Hollywood, "Bad press is better than no press." Does McCain want to win this election? He's the better man, and the media is (of course) trying to bury him, but why is he in hiding? He has disappeared since the primaries, and that was a long time ago. My friends are all afraid that he is trying to pull a Bob Dole election. Where's the Viagra? Where's the "hope"? Where's the promise? Where's the inspiration? Where's the America? Where is the darn campaign? This year, he should be running like an Eisenhower, as the calm, moderate, rational, calming, optimistic, stabilizing, patriotic and America-loving guy that you can trust not to take big risks, roll the dice, and make a mess. Sanity. That's tough, in a roll-the-dice and pray-for-the-best sort of year. Still, I believe that Obama's politics are his own worst enemy.
As our News Junkie has noted in a link to Ed Driscoll, the Left has been behaving in ways that seem oddly, well, conservative in recent years. This behavior has been especially pronounced in the area of agriculture, where the fanatical opposition to genetic engineering, antibiotic feed additives and modern methods of farming and animal husbandry seems bizarrely Luddite for a faction which likes to wear the badge of science on its chest when shouting down evangelicals.  Take Michael Pollan's recent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, where the left-wing New Yorker, anti-corporate and anti-factory-farm Pollan finds his utopia not in some Berkeley commune or fetishized indigenous village, but on a Virginia farm - not too far from Monticello, incidentally - run by a right-wing Christian fellow. The anti-corporate and pro-animal welfare concerns of the left and the anti-government, pro-traditionalist views of the right approach each other and, for an instant, cross paths. In its hurried dash away from big agriculture, the Left does not run into Karl Marx, but into Thomas Jefferson and the image of the virtuous republican farmer, tending to his fields and animals without help from nitrogen fertilizer, tomatoes from Monsanto, or growth-promoting antibiotics.
In this ideological battle, the anti-agribusiness left has aspired to portray itself as latter day Jeffersonian faction, fighting the perceived intrusion of the Hamiltonian merchant and manufacturing class into the livelihood of the free and independent farmer. If it sounds too absurd to be true, consider Jefferson’s own articulation of the plight of the farmer versus that of the manufacturer: “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. .... Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” –Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787
This statement seems hardly relevant at a time when less than two percent of Americans make their living through farming, and where those few remaining farmers are totally dependant on products designed by scientists and supplied by manufacturers. Even at the time Jefferson was writing it may have seemed more romantic wishfulness than sound economic reasoning. Today’s “Conservative Left,” however, seems determined not just to stop the clock, as Jefferson wished to do, but to grab hold of the hands and turn it back. Many technological advancements are spurned as being tools of corporate control, while the appeal to nature is invoked frequently to justify the adoption of traditional farming methods. The libertarian successor to Jefferson merely wishes to be able to run his family farm as he wishes without burdensome federal regulations which disadvantage small farms and traditional methods. He does not seek to impose his farming methods on others. The conservative leftist, on the other hand, like his forebears, tends to view things in revolutionary terms, with a creeping capitalism as the age-old enemy. Rarely discussed are the potentially catastrophic consequences of serious state tampering with modern agricultural methods. The rather poor record of the Left in implementing agricultural revolutions during the past century – comrade Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, being only the latest in an undistinguished chain – does not inspire much confidence. Where the two points of view do overlap, and the Conservative Leftist meets the nature-loving, self-sufficient Libertarian or Conservative, there are actually worthwhile insights. Michael Pollan’s work is an good starting point for these, and rather than continue, I will defer to his excellent book, linked above. For the moment, though, a few words from Joel Salatin, whose Staunton, VA farm was the object of Pollan's admiration: "I don’t ask for a dime of government money. I don’t ask for government accreditation. I don’t want to register my animals with a global positioning tattoo. I don’t want to tell officials the names of my constituents. And I sure as the dickens don’t intend to hand over my firearms. I can’t even use the “U” word. On every side, our paternalistic culture is tightening the noose around those of us who just want to opt out of the system — and it is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrannical and free societies.How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers." -Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal!, 2003.
 Dead from overwork.
Baby Leatherback sea turtles run to the sea. Video Female privilege. Ace Final exams in Baghdad went better this year Some Arab states modernized, and some did not Synthstuff: One-third of consumers in the US and UK have made a copy of a DVD within the last six months, according to a report from Futuresource Consulting. Is America a country or an idea? View from the Right Gay Patriot: "I think Rush Limbaugh has it right — Barack Obama is the first black Clinton." Related, from Libertarian Leanings: Their candidate of hope, who wooed them with promises that he would immediately abandon Iraq, has predictably veered to the center, backing away from his earlier stance. In his current stance he says we must withdraw carefully. On the left they know he has to say this, but their uncertainty remains. Do they have the audacity to hope he's lying?
Why the "Black National Anthem" in Denver? Prager Guns save lives. Larry Elder What the Obama campaign is doing. Rove 3000 in Pakistan pledge their babies to Jihad. Nice mommies. Cleaning up the environment causes global warming Does anybody download music anymore? Download music without going to jail Dreher at RCP, re working class voters: What does the Republican Party have to offer these voters? The tried-and-true tax-cut litany is as stale as anything Walter Mondale had to say in 1984. Free-market clichés may suit GOP money men and radio talkers, but they do not satisfy working-class voters for whom the changing economic order undermines family stability.
At Attack Machine, The Anti-American Pose. A quote from Fouad Ajami: It is one thing to rail against the Pax Americana. But after the pollsters are gone, the truth of our contemporary order of states endures. We live in a world held by American power – and benevolence. Nothing prettier, or more just, looms over the horizon.
Westport, Massachusetts is a lovely summertime seaside town on Buzzard's Bay. Lots of Boston people summer there. It has a Cape Coddy feel to it. Plenty of marshes and beaches, and a nice harbor (pictured above). This cute little Victorian farmouse on two acres is for sale. It has a boathouse and a cottage. Asking only $995,000. It looks cozy and perfect, to me. Home. (No, we are not in the real estate biz and no, we don't get a finder's fee!): 
Thursday, July 10. 2008
That's the name of a blog. Interesting stuff. (h/t, No Pasaran). Here's their thoughtful essay on The Green Mark-up: Who pays for environmentally-friendly design? That blog does not post frequently enough. There is no doubt that, these days, "Green" is really all about the green. Speaking of architecture, Sipp has a couple of posts on buildings in Providence, RI - and Maggie's Real Estate has a nice place in Westport, MA in the pipeline.
Aphrodite, a 77' "commuter yacht," was built in 1937 for Wall Streeter (and later Ambassador to Britain) Jock Whitney. Aphrodite has been restored. Here's the story, from the Brooklin (Maine) Boat Yard. Our blogmeister and noted water rat Chris recently took some photos of Aphrodite, on continuation page below.
Continue reading "Powerboat du jour: Aphrodite"
 Here's a short list of some of the books I recommend regularly:
Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families, and Providers An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind: The Nature of Craving and How to Control It Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder People of the Lie. (by Scott Peck. It's about sociopaths.)
"I'm Not There (1956)," from circa 1967, and never officially released until the film of the same name appeared late last year. I will not try to reproduce the lyrics for the simple reason that it is impossible to do so.
And regrets and regrets. Story via Drudge
Obama isn't making sense. Antle How the Greens captured energy policy. Am Thinker. Related: Good review of the world oil situation at Q&O. Related: McCain abandons his cap-and-trade ideas. "Ignorant military types." Villainous A Lefty claims Americans "not selfish enough." Wizbang. This poll proves it: most people don't want other peoples' money. The economy, quoted from Pajamas: Make no mistake: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama are the people who are making the economy sick. I don’t see how anyone can push this off on George Bush; the economy was picking up some steam, despite the housing industry and mortgage credit problems, until the Pelosi-Obama-Reid triumvirate made clear its intentions to put an energy chokehold on the economy. These three and their party appear not to care one whit about the damage ever-higher energy prices and the prospect of punitive taxes are doing, right now, to both the economy and the stock market. They have set and reached a new low in legislative negligence, one that I believe took businesses and investors by surprise.
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