Monday, December 8. 2008
Some say the finest split bamboo rods in the world. I did not know that Morgan has MS. Anybody can be productive if they want to be.
From Weekly Standard's review of Yuval Levin's Science and American Democracy, a quote: Levin shows that the Joe Friday ideal of science-"Just the facts, ma'am"-overlooks the woods for the trees. It ignores the reality that science, as we take it for granted, is a relatively new phenomenon in human history and was brought about by men who saw science and healthy politics as inextricably linked. Modern science came into being in the 17th century through the thought and action of a handful of great thinkers, foremost among them Francis Bacon and René Descartes. They successfully sought to change the character of scientific activity for distinctively human and political ends. Ancient science was contemplative: It sought to understand nature, but was content to let it run its course. The scientific project founded by Bacon and Descartes saw nature as hostile to human prosperity, as penurious and arbitrary. Far from being a source of guidance on how to live, nature was something to be overcome or conquered. Science was, in Bacon's famous phrase, to be put in the service of "the relief of man's estate." A new order was to emerge in which science would progressively conquer poverty and disease and hold out the prospect of the indefinite extension of human life. Empirical science was to be the means of political reformation. Levin nicely sums up the less sober aspirations born of the modern scientific project in this way: From the very beginning, the modern worldview has given rise to peculiar utopianisms of various stripes, all grounded in the dream of overcoming nature and living, free of necessity and fear, able to meet every one of our needs and our whims, and able, most especially, to live indefinitely in good health. This brand of utopianism generally begins in a benign libertarianism, though at times it has ended in political extremism, if not the guillotine.
We're far from the guillotine, but you only have to think about the relative capacities of smoking, on the one hand, and blasphemy, on the other, to generate indignation and see precisely to what extent this peculiarly modern moralism has taken hold. To be sure, Levin is not the first to observe the hidden political foundations and aims of modern science, but you would be hard pressed to find a treatment that is equally accessible, engaging, and precise. What is new here is the manner in which he uses his scholarly knowledge to illumine the character of our contemporary (and future) political life.
Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living. Mark Twain (h/t, LGF)
Our interesting Lie To Me post last week failed to mention Paul Eckman's book, Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage. It's more of a report of his studies than a how-to book. Shrinks are interested in lying. I have always viewed lying as a theft of another person's reality. The lies we tell ourselves are another matter entirely.
A comment from an active-duty SEAL in our comments section, on our post about Jason Redman's Sign on the Door last week: For those of you who don't know Jason Redman, he was shot twice in the face and once in the arm while serving in western Iraq. He is making an amazing recovery undergoing his 4th surgery for facial reconstruction. His arm is slowly returning to full functionality. My name is Carl Higbie. I am a Navy Seal and had the opportunity to serve with Jason and have him as a close friend for the last 5 years. He is a model of how the teams work, and how we WILL NOT fail the American people. All we ask in return is that you support for what we are doing, and spread the support to those around you for that is what makes it worth it for us to hang our ass on the line for those of you how love this great nation. Thank you.
True American
Carl Higbie IV
Thanks for writing, Carl. And God Bless you and your buddies.
Bloomberg. I agree that they are smart to block withdrawals and, lucky for them, it's their prerogative. Big gains entail big risks.
What is 6 months of your life worth? Do you want the gummint to decide? Schools eliminating Fs. Failure problem solved! We all saw this coming: reporters want government jobs Warming debunkers to hold conference in DC in March. Related: News articles about global warming fears. Is this the real hockey stick graph? (graph from the NYT article) 
Chinese house-hunting tours to the USA Here endeth the new Gilded Age. This will please the envy-ridden. Removing God from American history Steyn: UK demographic deathwatch story of the day Royal Navy not looking too royal 70% of black kids grow up without two parents. It's the socio-cultural catastrophe we aren't supposed to talk about. Insty: Virginia Postrel comments: If anyone should fear a Depression, it should be journalists, who are already the equivalent of 1980s steelworkers. But instead, they seem positively giddy with anticipation at the prospect of a return to ’30s-style hardship–without, of course, the real hardship of the 1930s. . . . Oh the thrill of imagining a Great Depression. It’s an opportunity for Great Design and Really Cool Government.
Regular readers know that Maggie's Farm is a big supporter of Ducks Unlimited, one of the major conservation organizations in North America. The 1,000,000 members of DU now protect over 12 million acres of wildlife habitat. That is a heck of a good cause. We like to have fun, too, while raising $ to protect habitat. I took some photos of our annual event (which is mainly a boy's-night-out). Our raffle girls (with their scary boss on the left who insisted on joining the photo):  More photos on continuation page -
Continue reading "Our Ducks Unlimited Event"
Sunday, December 7. 2008
S,C&A considers many of the things that bug the heck out of us in a piece of the above title. One quote: Leftists today hate freedom and democracy because those ideas have created the environment for success. Assistant Village Idiot recently noted in a comment that Arabs don’t hate us because we have succeeded, but rather, because they have failed. The same is true for the leftists - their burning hatred of democracy stems from their failure to create a single instance of a functioning society that isn’t a least a generation behind our own. Not even the redistribution of wealth can make up for the values and freedom that create an environment that allows for the creation of wealth.
 Earth cooling because of global warming
Cheer up! And you will cheer up everybody around you. More slaves in the world today... Remarkable deer and bunny photos from Tanja Askani. More: Wolf and dog Russia tightens Europe's energy noose A prescription 9mm handgun. Would Medicare cover it? Obama plans huge spending spree. Sounds like history's biggest pork festival. And what do school buildings have to do with good education? Or school internet, for that matter? (Unless the brains full of mush are required to read Maggie's daily...) We've done this too. Paying an erroneous ticket simply to avoid the hassle. Dems suddenly change their minds about waterboarding. It's really not that bad: they do it to me every time I go to the dentist. I wish they would let me control the suction. Boston's border control chief hires illegals. What's your religion? Atheists worship solstices. Who cares? Urban safety and the great Jane Jacobs. Althouse Truthers to the left of me, truthers to the right of me. Michelle Cost-benefit analysis on wind power. Candles are cheaper. Bill Ayers, Victim And, related to the above, on the the Guardian's position on terror, via Thompson: Under no circumstances should we, rational Westerners, seek to apply the same critical standards to the Mumbai murderers and their supporters as we do - haltingly and insufficiently - to our own actions and those of our leaders. What we have to do is understand and empathize with their feelings and, as we can’t expect them to dilute their rage with reason or to seek methods to vindicate their claims that don’t involve hand grenades or AK 47s, we must make ourselves constantly ready to indulge their homicidal tantrums. Above all, we must never, ever treat them as our equals.
Krauthammer on Iraq. A quote: For the United States, it represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don't blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally.
Yes. That's the point.
 How Orson Bean found God: Powerline
The Coming of Love: Anchoress
Sunday, December 7, 1941 
Saturday, December 6. 2008
via Dr. X. I'd be more interested in knowing how our American readers' kids do on this test than on how our readers do.
From Dan Ford: ...on December 7, Asahi News in Tokyo will broadcast a "Scoop Special" about how the US planned to bomb Japan from China, thus proving that the Pearl Harbor attack was purely in self-defense. Tomoko Nagano, meet Richard Barthel! You two will have much to talk about.
Dino revisits his topic of the "lazy, easy" lives we have been leading in recent years. Can we awaken from the dreams? One quote: “The American boy of 1854 stood closer to the year 1 than to the year 1900.” Soon, almost no one in America will have a visceral understanding of what 1854 was like, and what the heck Henry Adams was talking about.
Another: A typical boy of 1854 knew what farming was like and may well have worked on a farm, knew horses and other animals, and learned how to maintain and fix things, from houses to wagons to furniture. A typical young man of 1947 had been in the army, knew people who lived on farms, could tune and maintain his own car, and could change the fan belt on the refrigerator and refill it with Freon. Both the boy and the young man had some feel for the technologies that were developing and changing around them, since the technologies were often sized on a human scale and involved mechanical processes that they had some acquaintance with. To an important extent, this is no longer true. You can’t fix an iPod the way you can fix a record player; indeed you can’t even easily open up an iPod to understand it, as you could unscrew the turntable cover to figure out how 33 1/3 rpm became 45 rpm. Nor can you fool around with a Toyota Prius the same way you could try to replace a 283 with a 327 in a ‘57 Chevy.
Read the whole thing.
Does the average person really lie three times per ten minutes of conversation? If so, I may too trusting, or too gullible, for this world. Psychologist Paul Ekman studies emotions and deception, and has Evaluating Truth training seminars. He is the expert on micro-expression of emotion. Some of his online training programs are here. Cool stuff. Useful, too. A new FOX TV show based on Ekman's work, Lie to Me, will begin airing in January. From the clip below, it looks to be darn interesting:
Vanderleun addresses one of our perennial topics, The Religion of the Left. One quote: The Religion of the Self teaches, as its first and last precept, that there is nothing in this world greater than the self and -- beyond this world, out beyond even the unimaginable edges of the universe -- there is... well... nothing at all; "purposeless matter hovering in the dark."
We're on the same page, Mr. V. Often, if not always. This subject goes to the core of the worldview gap we are experiencing.
Best email I received yesterday (from a bow hunting pal): "We've got four deer hanging in the garage. Can you come over tomorrow around two to help cut em up and have some beers?" My reply: "You betcha."
 Best ad of the year: The Doghouse
Mumbai's the Word. Dalrymple. One quote: ... making the justified assumption that the terrorists were not actually deficient in raw intelligence, it was not the target that was important to the young killers, it was the act of killing itself. And their manipulators probably knew that there are always fools enough, at least among intellectuals in the west, to assume that if you go to extreme lengths, you must have some 'cause' - which is to say some good cause - that impels you to go to them.
Will the academic bubble be the next to burst? The Next Bubble by Donald Downs. One quote: A prescient friend of mine recently related a thought he had while teaching a few years ago at a "third tier private school" that had high tuition. At "job fairs" at the school, most of the positions being offered involved jobs as low-level managers at Target, McDonalds, and similar businesses. My friend surmised that students had to wonder why they or their families had depleted their bank accounts to pay for an educations that led to positions that simply did not require the pedagogical preparation the school offered. To be sure, a liberal education is a precious thing in its own right. But its preciousness has a way of declining when its costs put middle class citizens in a vise---especially when those citizens are already living in the vise of the new economy.
Advice to Himself Sad Catullus, stop playing the fool,
and let what you know leads you to ruin, end.
Once, bright days shone for you,
when you came often drawn to the girl
loved as no other will be loved by you.
Then there were many pleasures with her,
that you wished, and the girl not unwilling,
truly the bright days shone for you.
And now she no longer wants you: and you
weak man, be unwilling to chase what flees,
or live in misery: be strong-minded, stand firm.
Goodbye girl, now Catullus is firm,
he doesn’t search for you, won’t ask unwillingly.
But you’ll grieve, when nobody asks.
Woe to you, wicked girl, what life’s left for you?
Who’ll submit to you now? Who’ll see your beauty?
Who now will you love? Whose will they say you’ll be?
Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?
But you, Catullus, be resolved to be firm. . (I don't know who did that translation.) Here's the original:
Ad se ipsum
Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,
et quod uides perisse perditum ducas.
fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,
cum uentitabas quo puella ducebat
amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.
ibi illa multa cum iocosa fiebant,
quae tu uolebas nec puella nolebat,
fulsere uere candidi tibi soles.
nunc iam illa non uult: tu quoque impotens noli,
nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser uiue,
sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.
uale puella, iam Catullus obdurat,
nec te requiret nec rogabit inuitam.
at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla.
scelesta, uae te, quae tibi manet uita?
quis nunc te adibit? cui uideberis bella?
quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris?
quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis?
at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.
Friday, December 5. 2008
I have skied quite a bit and have had my share of fun/dread with some reckless things and silly drops, but never experienced these drops of 210, 230, and 245 feet (h/t, Theo). If I had, I would not be here to post this:
-
 One of my personal rules since my formal education ended has been to make sure I learn a minimum of ten interesting things per day.
I learned about CD rot today. Indeed nothing is permanent except (we, or some of us, believe) God. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that our whole universe gizmo-thingy is set up that way. As it happened, last night, at a dinner out, a hunting buddy mentioned re-reading St. Augustine's chapter in The Confessions about time. My confession was that I did not remember that chapter at all. I do recall learning that God is a timeless entity and that God's time is not our time - but not in Augustine. And I also confess that the entire subject of time is a mystery to me. Anyway, here's a short essay on Augustine on the subject of time: Time as a Psalm.
"In politics today, intention, symbolism, and rhetoric are everything; facts, nothing." A must-read. VDH: Parallel Lives. Barrister emails: Forget politics. Politics is a power and money game, of course, because many humans get a kick out of those things. But how does Rangel keep his chairmanship, much less remain in the darn House, after these revelations? Or am I naive as hell?
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