Thursday, November 13. 2008
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That's the powerfully poetic way John's Gospel begins, echoing Genesis. (I am fairly certain I awoke this morning with those lines from John 1:1 in my head because I had been thinking, in my amateurish way, about Bird Dog's post on Monday about Important things that don't exist, virtual reality, and the power of abstract nouns.) We do not know who this "John" was, or whether the prologue (which scholars believe to be an early Christian hymn) was added some time after the Gospel was written around 90 AD. It's probably the most powerful beginning of anything in the Bible (after Genesis.) The NAD has the first verses thus:  1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be 4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; 5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. 12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.
John draws a parallel between Christ's relationship to God (God in a human form) to Creation itself (God's idea, made real and tangible). In doing so, he uses the untranslatable Greek term "logos," which we translated in English to the humdrum "word." While being no student of epistemology, it was clear to me that the author was introducing a note of Platonic Idealism (the basis of all modern mathematics, and lots of other stuff too) to the early followers of Christ. (Here's the Wiki on Christ the Logos.) "Logos" aside, whenever I wonder what words are all about I tend to go back to Roger Brown's classic Words and Things. Epistemolologic altitudes just make a practical fellow like me dizzily short on oxygen in the same way that contemplating the cosmos does: it makes me want to split some firewood, practice my drives, clean out some stalls, or have a Scotch. Well, I will leave Logos and Platonic Idealism to the experts and scholars and our better-informed commenters. My preferred image of Christ is William Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World," (image) where I have seen it hanging in St. Paul's Cathedral right down from Bread Street (where John Milton grew up, and where the Mermaid Tavern used to be). That image of the offer of illumination, with Christ knocking at the cottage door, works best for me. As does Psalm 131, David's song of ascent to prayer: 1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.
 Re our post on Panasonic Lumix cameras, I like the DMC-TZ series because of their Leica 10x optical zoom.
Most of the ones we posted have weenie zooms and can’t get the job done – this zoom is 35mm equivalent focal length: 28-280mm. However, it is only f 3.3 as opposed to the LX3S’s f 2.0.
 The EU: Unelected, redundant, condescending, unaccountable, largely unwanted - and now slowly building their own military. It's a Mandarinocracy.
The gradual return to economic normalcy: excellent little summary by Tiger. Yes, recessions are normal too. Sundown for California. How did it happen? Oh no! Is this a joke? Al Gore as Climate Czar? Thanks for reminding me why I voted for McCain/Palin. I think this is what it's all about: Run candidates who can communicate. The delusion that "progress" comes from Washington. Hasn't government stupidity been fairly well-established over the past 70 years? That piece pretty much captures the Maggie's view. Is now the time to buy stocks? I would say "Definitely, if you have a 20-year time horizon." But I don't pretend to know much. I got through about 7 seconds of this. How long can you listen? An election the Repubs needed to lose. Dick Morris (I'd compare it to GM) Jindal and others at Repub Governor's Assoc We ask this question all the time, but when Insty poses it, it carries more weight: SOME ECONOMIC QUESTIONS: I like this one: "Is it good public policy to have your entire electorate pay taxes? If so, why? If not, why not? I'm trying to figure out how it is healthy to have 35-40% of the electorate outside of the income tax system." I think that everyone should pay something in income tax, and that the amount they pay should go up or down with total federal spending. Otherwise nobody has any incentive to control spending, and we wind up . . . well, where we are. More questions, and an invitation to discussion, at the link.
A remarkable set of photos at Boston.com, via Am. Digest. Here's one: 
Wednesday, November 12. 2008
"The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." Princeton's Henry Van Dyke. h/t, LGF
From Richard Posner in Does the free market corrode moral character? - one quote: Of course politicians lie a great deal, but so does anyone who depends on the goodwill of others. Max Weber in a famous essay on politics as a vocation distinguished between private and public morality. Anyone in a public position--and this includes business and academic leaders as well as politicians--cannot indulge a taste for candor or altruism and expect to be successful at his job. It is the same reason why good business leaders drive hard bargains with their suppliers, play off subordinates against one another, lay off workers by the thousands, receive huge compensation packages, and often relocate plants overseas when foreign wages and taxes are lower.
Michael Lewis of Liar's Poker fame returns to Wall Street to survey the mess. (Thanks, reader.) One quote from the darkly humorous piece which explains the consequences of the investment banks' going public, thus transferring risk from themselves, as partners - to shareholders: His (Eisman's) dinner companion in Las Vegas ran a fund of about $15 billion and managed C.D.O.’s backed by the BBB tranche of a mortgage bond, or as Eisman puts it, “the equivalent of three levels of dog shit lower than the original bonds.”
FrontPoint had spent a lot of time digging around in the dog shit and knew that the default rates were already sufficient to wipe out this guy’s entire portfolio. “God, you must be having a hard time,” Eisman told his dinner companion.
“No,” the guy said, “I’ve sold everything out.”
After taking a fee, he passed them on to other investors. His job was to be the C.D.O. “expert,” but he actually didn’t spend any time at all thinking about what was in the C.D.O.’s. “He managed the C.D.O.’s,” says Eisman, “but managed what? I was just appalled. People would pay up to have someone manage their C.D.O.’s—as if this moron was helping you. I thought, You prick, you don’t give a fuck about the investors in this thing.”
One quote from her piece: Bailing out the auto industry offers no net gain to society. It is a straight transfer of resources from one sector to another: we tax money, or borrow it from a finite pool of capital available to the nation, and spend it on auto workers. The people who pay the taxes, or the people who would have borrowed that investment capital, now have less to spend. Whatever they would have bought goes unbought; whoever would have made it goes unemployed. To coin a phrase, what is made on the swings is lost on the roundabouts We have the illusion of a gain only because that other group of people is invisible. Even if we don't bail out GM, they will not be visible--we will never know who didn't lose a job or a business because we declined to spend one squillion dollars saving the Chevy Cobalt.
It's been as clear as day to everyone for years that the once-Big Three are lousy companies with lousy businesses, products that don't sell, and that nobody wants to invest in anymore - except politicians. We're a Toyota country now (except for the Ford F series). But who ever said raw politics has to make logical sense? This is called vote-buying, and a big thank-you to Michigan for going blue by supporting existing union contracts. With our money. There is a certain sort of political logic in that. Comment from The Barrister: What is often left out in these discussions is that bankruptcy would not put these companies out of business and these workers out of work. They would reorganize (and renegotiate contracts), or sell off their parts. And from BD: Follow the money. Best I can figger, all that a bailout would bail out is the existing union contracts, and little more. And from the NJ: I would not be happy to be working to support Michigan union benefits, which are so much more generous than mine - or those of most folks - that it's ridiculous. Why would I want to do that? Those businesses are obsolete, but somebody is going to try to sell us the notion that they need my money to go green, or some similar BS. Toyota already did that.
 The wary American Black Duck of the Eastern US and Canada is prized by hunters, and there is no binocular birder either who is not happy to see them. Sadly, their numbers in the Northeast have been dropping while the population of their close relative the Mallard (with whom they commonly hydridize) have been rising.
Unlike most dabbling ducks, Blacks are happy breeding on either freshwater ponds and marshes or in salt marshes. Some studies in recent years indicate a significant reliance on beaver marshes for breeding habitat. You can read about the American Black Duck here. Photo from that site.
Borrowed in toto from Conspiracy: Didya hear about the blonde homeowner? Paid her mortgage. Difference between an Investment Banker and a Pizza? A pizza can still feed a family of four. Overheard at Happy Hour: This is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife. How can you tell if a banker is an optimist? He irons five shirts on Sunday.
The internet is both wonderful and terrible. For instance, it enables patients to learn a lot about their own diseases, and if they are discriminating, sometimes even to save their own lives. But medical information, or opinion, on the internet has probably already killed far more people than it has saved. Dalrymple, in an enjoyable piece on used bookstores: Bibiolphia and Biblioclasm
Chess for Charity is planning the world's largest online chess tournament as a charity event for Second Harvest. It seems like a good deal all around: Chess USA Second Harvest Tournament
 Yummy. Good and easy rib-sticking Vegetable Soup. I think Right Wing Prof would rather cook than write. Understanding synthetic CDOs. Dino The NYT bailout watch. Michelle. Here's the mess they are in. There's plenty of good stuff in that newspaper for a curious reader, but their bias and partisanship drives readers away. Speaking of the NYT, Sowell goes after Kristof and the idea of intellectuals in politics. Kristof's condescension is insufferable - and even worse when he's making stuff up. Hugging and loving in DC? Q&O All gun owners are mentally ill? Well, we'd in good company in the violent ward. However, my feeling tends to be that anybody who wants to control how I live is mentally ill. "We cannot tolerate the intolerable." The roots of liberal censorship. I think that academic would want to ban Maggie's Farm. I want Newt and Steele.
Via SDA, this graph speaks for itself: 
Taxes during the New Deal, via Mankiw (excellent discussion of this topic at Marginal Rev: Understanding fiscal policy during the Great Depression - government attempts at stimulus were cancelled out by higher taxes) - 
What middle-class tax squeeze? Graph from a piece at Willisms: 
Tuesday, November 11. 2008
 Curious about New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and Tipping Point?
He has a new book, Outlier. You can read all about Gladwell and his new book here. Photo from the article.
 Political bloggers are having fun discussing whether they want to provide a genteel loyal opposition to a presumably hard-Left and seemingly grimly humorless White House and Congress, or whether to attempt the same sort of relentless knee-capping and smearing to which the Dems subjected Bush for 8 years.
Naturally, the soon-to-be-installed Federal pols and their supporters are urging Kumbaya peace and harmony - on their terms, of course. That will never happen. Paul at Powerline makes the case for genteel, loyal opposition. In a similar vein, neoneo warns those at risk for Obama Derangement Syndrome. John Hawkins is inclined the other way: You guys arent going to do to us what we did to you, are ya? A cranky Ace tries to straddle the line thus: You spent the last eight years engaged in a disgusting orgy of divisive political hatred and now you want to play nice and pretend we're all united now? I for one am not going to treat President Obama the way you treated President Bush. That doesn't mean, though, I'm going to just forgive and forget the fact that you've polluted the political landscape with your bile and patchouli-stanking spittle.
My opinion? My opinion doesn't really matter, but I'll try to stand for some humor and truth. (Plus we aren't a political website anyway.) Photo from Moonbattery's Moonbats Ready for Unity Now. Where was all of the togetherness last year?
I can't imagine why our Editor sent me the link to this topic: Researchers claim foreplay overrated. Sexist, no doubt, because the source clearly has little sensitivity to a lady's need to become, um, interested, when we might be contentedly preparing to teach a class on Freud, or perusing House Beautiful or a gardening catalog. Unless you happen to be Sean Connery, I advise guys to take the time to apply some of those age-old seduction skills instead of acting like a wild animal. Yes, women enjoy being sex objects just as guys do, but a wholesome, red-blooded lady will make it well-worth the effort if you go the extra mile. And yes, I do know that guys like to be seduced too. Love it, in fact (but they hate to admit it). Licking them on the ear works well, for some reason, and repeating "My big strong handsome man" while unbuttoning his shirt. 
Editor's note: I couldn't resist adding that photo from The 6 Biggest Assholes in the Animal Kingdom. I have no doubt that she is "lying back and thinking of England" because he does not appear to be a particularly sensitive male.
 In anticipation of further Dem assaults on the Second Amendment, guns are predictably selling like hotcakes.
I like GunBroker.com, where I found this nice camo AR 15. The SEALs love those little .223 rounds, and they resist deflection. They can mail things to your local gun shop. Full auto, in your dreams.
"I didn't know you were allowed to say those things." A Bird Dog pup, after seeing Taming of the Shrew this weekend.
 DMB likes the Poulan chainsaw. He likes the light weight, which surely can be a plus after a few hours.
Illegal immigration, solved The list of excuses Obama will need. Reality's a bitch. The election being over, the WaPo confesses US trials for Gitmo prisoners? Good grief. Can't we just ship them all to Botany Bay? From Blame Bush: "...that's all Obama wants to do, really. He just wants to share his peanut butter and jelly sandwich with all the people of this country." From the KKK to Birding. Newt offers himself up. I say, Take the offer. He has all the brains in the Stupid Party, and he knows what it's like to be Palinized. Norm rates the Emmylou albums. My favorite is always the most recent one I've heard. Child labor can be a good idea PJ O'Rourke says "We Blew It." I know what he means, but I do not entirely agree. Polls show Reaganism is far from dead. How to avoid the clutches of Obama Derangement Syndrome An open letter to my friends on the Left Somebody please tell this jerk to shut up: UK's Brown says Now the time to build global society. No thanks. From Powerline: In the 1970s a survey was taken of German and American auto executives. They were asked, "What do you do?" The Americans replied, "We sell cars." The Germans answered, "We build cars." It was a difference in corporate culture. The Japanese noticed. They decided to build cars, and they succeeded. Many Americans today, brought up on Pontiacs and Fords, won't own an American car, unless it's a car made in Ohio by a foreign company. What a stunning change.
Why you cannot build a Party around moderates. Related, from Big Lizards: 34% of voters called themselves "conservatives." - Of that 34%, 20% voted for Barack H. Obama; that means 6.8% of the electorate both called themselves conservatives and also voted for Obama. (Would that include Christopher Buckley and his ilk?)
- Contrariwise, only 10% of self-dubbed liberals voted for John S. McCain. Conservatives defected at twice the rate of liberals.
I think this from VDH is true. Not just because I want to think it's true, but because it's consistent with what I hear from people: I think many advisors privately are thinking that the turn-out the vote hoopla in key states wasn’t all that much more than in 2004. And for all the talk of a new realignment and the end of the old conservative regime, 2008 is more likely explained as a once in a lifetime alignment of the stars (cf. Carter in 1976): the mid-September meltdown that ruined McCain’s lead; the normal weariness after eight years of incumbency; two wars; a charismatic young and path-breaking Democratic candidate, a liberal's renouncing of public campaign financing to amass $600 million.
 From It Takes a Church, via Mark Roberts:
God of the ages,
We thank You for all who have served in the armed forces of this country.
We thank You for the freedom their sacrifice has earned and guarded for us. Help us to prize this freedom and use it well.
We ask You to bless all living veterans in a special way today, as well as the families of all veterans.
Comfort those who grieve for those who gave the last full measure of devotion.
Strengthen those who bear physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds.
Stand with those who provide care to them.
Move us to reach out to sisters and brothers who are veterans, or relatives of veterans, or who currently serve in the military.
We pray for the day when no one needs to serve in the military. Help us to live now in anticipation of that day, as people who long for peace, who pray for peace, and who seek to be peacemakers in this world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Monday, November 10. 2008
One of these days I'm going to write a post called "The Age of Ism". Racism, sexism, ageism, whateverism; they're all bad — and you know it.
And Maggie's Farm's may be guilty of one of the worst isms of all:
Boatism.
That's right. Little did Bird Dog know when he took me on that one day I'd be training my 3000X electron microscope on Maggie's, itself, exposing its dark and sordid secret to the light of day.
Boatism.
Are you ready for this? To the best of my knowledge, Maggie's Farm has never, not once, featured a motoryacht. Nothing but sailboats, sailboats, sailboats!
In my book? Guilty of boatism in the first degree.
Mine looks just like this little honey:
NOT a sailboat
Below the fold: The perils and pitfalls of living in a marina and having to deal with bugs, slime, sailboat owners and fungus; tips on buying the right power saw to get rid of those pesky masts blocking your view; hints on using the new Black & Decker Underwater Drill Gun when playing fun tricks on your sailboat-owning neighbors; and, for the best gag of all, how to properly use a hypodermic syringe to inject a rolled-up sail with sulfuric acid late at night so there are gigantic holes in it the next time it's opened. The expression on the owner's face is just priceless!
Continue reading "The Liveaboard Life"
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. Ronald Reagan
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