Wednesday, July 14. 2010
From this interesting review of a new bio of E.M. Forster:
“Only connect” makes its entrance shortly after Margaret Schlegel, the novel’s liberal intellectual heroine, is first kissed by Henry Wilcox, the conservative businessman whom she has rather surprisingly agreed to marry. Passion has played little part in their relationship, and though they have gotten engaged they have not yet touched. When Wilcox suddenly embraces her, then, Margaret “was startled and nearly screamed,” and though she tries to kiss “with genuine love the lips that were pressed against her own,” she feels afterwards that “on looking back, the incident displeased her. It was so isolated. Nothing in their previous conversation had heralded it, and, worse still, no tenderness had ensued ... he had hurried away as if ashamed.” A few pages later, Margaret’s reflections on this erotic incompetence lead, as often happens in Forster’s fiction, into an authorial homily...
Forster, like CS Lewis and so many splendid writers, was a sexual innocent. Nothing wrong with that, in my view. Fun and diverting and even bonding as it may be, there is more to life than animal instincts. (Not that we disparage those, here at Maggie's Farm, where the animals shamelessly mate, feed, and drink at the drop of a hat.)
For those (most Americans) who don’t follow the annual Eurovision song contest, won by Israel in 1979 for Hallelujah, it is closely watched in our house (on Internet). We enjoy “world music.” It is becoming a smaller world, sometimes not for the better, as this year’s winner, from Germany, sang a number in English! My Germany-born wife was aghast at this loss of diversity.
The music world is also losing other diverse sense.
Some Western musicians are canceling their scheduled performances in Israel, caving to leftist memes and pro-Palestinian veiled threats.
Then there are the attempts to boycott Israeli performers as well. The Eurovision song contest was held in Norway this year. The Norwegian pro-Palestine Committee demonstrated outside the arena holding the event since Israel had reached the finals. A statement from the organisation said: “We want to close Euro Song for Israel. They are not welcome. We will request the European Euro Song TV-consortium to boycott nations that indulge in occupation and apartheid.”
Oppression, despotism, suicidal hatred, terrorism, that’s OK with them? Far from the Summer of Love, huh!
Here’s the Israeli performance at this year’s Eurovision, a lovely love song.
Yeah, we can’t have love where hate triumphs.
Here's Israel's 1979 winner. (This taping has helpful lyrics.)
Some's idea of Praise God (Hallelujah) doesn't include to "hold each other's hands, and sing from one heart."
That includes some Western musicians.
h/t, Theo
The US Chamber of Commerce says (more here) that the term capitalism is misunderstood, as just 57% in its poll support capitalism.
“We need to do a better job of explaining the economic system in the United States and how it is working,” Anderson said in an interview. “We have been looking at anecdotal information that there was a misunderstanding of capitalism.”
Au contraire says the survey’s results of the peasants. Seventy percent support free enterprise and free markets.
Americans know the difference between the two as capitalism has increasingly come to be practiced.
Charles Derber, a sociologist at Boston College, says the results show the public’s unhappiness with the ties between “big business and big government,” exemplified by the multi- billion dollar bailout of banks in 2008.
“When people say they are down on capitalism, they mean they are down on corporate capitalism,” Derber, author of books including, “People Before Profit,” said in an interview. “They see capitalism as it exists here as anything but a free market.”
With bigger and bigger Big Government comes those, pardon the expression, capitalizing on getting their way or piece of the pelf, whether business, union, tax-exempts, state and local governments, etc.
Free enterprise and free markets, in contrast, indeed may we remind freedom itself, work best with a more limited government.
Now, that isn’t to say complete laissez faire, as there is sometimes some need for enforcement of rules of play to encourage competition, not stifle it.
In addition to the findings on capitalism, the Chamber’s poll found that 43 percent of those surveyed said the Obama administration’s policies are making the economy worse compared with 23 percent believing it is making it better.
“There is a major trust deficit,” Lombardo [the pollster] said.
The US Chamber knows the difference between free enterprise and capitalism as it has too often come to be practiced. Increasingly, Americans do. It’s the difference between freedom and fascism.
Perhaps some corporate, union, tax-exempts, state and local governments, etc. HQs need visits from a Tea Party, not just the federal government and its minions of bigger. It takes two to tango.
Homework: Michael Barone, Goldberg.
A review of E.D. Hirsch's new book, The Making of an Educational Conservative, at Claremont. Hirsch is politically liberal, but he believes that people should know things. One quote from the review:
Hirsch holds out too much hope of converting the Left while not welcoming his natural supporters on the Right. He underestimates the education establishment's fear and hostility towards knowledge and rigor, presenting the past "sixty years without a curriculum" as a well-meaning and forgivable misunderstanding. But Progressive education must be understood as an anti-teaching movement as much as an anti-curriculum movement. Anyone who suggests American education should be different from what it is now is subject to merciless attack by those who claim they would teach children even if they didn't get paid, while their unions push one demand: higher salaries for less work.
 No Link Between Computers At Home And Academic Achievement. Duh.
Goldman: Fiscal and Monetary stimulus needed
Obama Administration Approves First Taxpayer-Funded Abortions Under Obamacare
Is this what goes on in jail? Lohan Vs Lesbians
Credit scores should be fairly redistributed. Villainous Related: Yes, Apparently Chris Dodd Really Did Say This
Althouse: If you really believe in AGW...
Mort Zuckerman: Obama Is Barely Treading Water
Coyote: Told ya... (that the Toyota acceleration thing was a scam)
Via neo:
Barack Obama has decided that fiery self defense and withering mockery of Republicans are the best modes of attack as he tries to save Democrats from a drubbing in November’s mid-term elections.
Race-baiting lies at the NAACP. That's the way to keep Americans divided and angry.
All Four Texas Cities Have The Lowest Unemployment Rates Among Major Metro Areas, Nationally.
Is Dem Joe Manchin the Dems' worst nightmare?
Re the EU via No Pasaran:
Union fails most vital test of a democracy
There is no overlap between the space in which people believe they have something to say (which, like it or not, is and will remain the space of nation-states) and the space in which more and more decisions are being made, decisions that are increasingly unpopular.
At Dino:
It would seem that things have definitively changed, as Peggy Noonan noted the other day in her piece on the Tea Parties. The new media have matured to the point where Congressmen who rely only on the MSM for their information are going to find themselves embarrassed in front of their constituents, and scorned for their lack of knowledge of significant issues of the day.
Not the legal definition, but close enough. Would you term this jetsam instead?. Some storm washed up this valuable antique on Cape Cod Bay.
Note again the crowded beaches which are better for bird-watching than babe-watching.
Tuesday, July 13. 2010
This humble old farmstead across the bay from Plymouth Colony was established in the 1650s, and is now within the Cape Cod National Seashore, up one of my secret Wellfleet sand road walking routes in the general vicinity of Duck Harbor.
Many regular visitors to Wellfleet do not know that Duck Harbor used to be a harbor, so this old place was a harborside farm. When currents and sand closed the opening to Cape Cod Bay long ago, most people moved to the big harbor in town (often with their whole houses, too. Lumber was in short supply.)
The original cabins from 1650 are long gone, but I cannot date these structures. Maybe some readers can. This is the main farmhouse, the chimney of which ought to provide a dating clue:
More pics of the farm below the fold -
Continue reading "An old Wellfleet farmstead"
Re-posted from 2008. One quote:
Instead of inspiration the Democrat Party delivers shopworn socialist solution, numbing boredom, sheer despair, intellectual and spiritual poverty, sexism, and the worst sort of racism seen since it gave birth to the Klu Klux Klan. Classical racism loathes "the other." The new racism of the Democrat requires one loathe oneself first and last, and to accuse those that do not of racism. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, "The Democrats want to get you down in the hole that they're in."
Instead of telling us what sort of New Jerusalem it would have us build as our City on the Hill, the party requires that its members root about in the ghettos of the soul, to ponder the rightness or wrongness of the very babies of its opponents. Instead of waving the bright banners of America triumphant, the Party dons the rags and bones of defeatism and appeasement and moves about the country like a tarted-up Typhoid Mary, infecting all who kiss its chancred lips. As a party, it's a poxed whore for whom no condom is thick enough. It's a death trip.
It's in the air, isn't it? The Lefties are in despair that people do not like the dog food they are selling, and Conservatives feel that their mission is hopeless. And everybody feels that the economy sucks.
What's the point of caring if nobody is delivering your jollies? The old line goes "The pessimist says, “Things can't get any worse.” The optimist says, "Yes they can..."
Repubs and Dems: both Socialist
McCarthy wonders whether it really matters who wins elections
Don't count me out yet, because I'd like my grandkids to taste the American freedom of past days.
Chinese readers react to the way guns are sold in American WalMarts, in the comments.
Labash at Wkly Std: Living Like A Liberal - It’s hard work, politicizing your whole life. (It's only 2 1/2 pages).
It's about communities of true believers. In a way, I feel badly for these folks, seeking, as it seems to me, purpose, significance, a feeling of virtuousness - and maybe even transcendent meaning - in all the wrong places. In another way, I feel deeply annoyed with moonbats because I think these people aspire to control me and may view me as diabolical.
Raccoons in Europe?
Who's coming for dinner? Moose gut pile
Are pick-up artists girly men?
What did Prohibition have to do with the Income Tax?
Never mind: Greenland isn't melting
A new glossy mag for jihadists
Obamacare: Other Than These Small Problems It's Great! Also, at Cato:
...the more we learn about what is in this new law, the more it looks like bad news for American taxpayers, businesses, health-care providers, and patients.
Inventing racists. Now it's Michelle Obama. Race-mongers need racism the way cancer docs need cancer, but a cancer doc would not invent a cancer. The other Michelle points out some real racism. David Brooks vs. Paul Krugman, Round 2?
A top computing firm in China, Bleum, was revealed to demand IQs of 140 and over as the first selection hurdle for job applicants -- but it lowered its bar to 125 for Americans to be sure of keeping good working relations with the USA (ComputerWorld, 7 vii).
This is indistinguishable from satire: How do you do grassroots from the top down? You "imitate" grassroots.
The progress that progressives are in favor of is directly down the path Friedrich Hayek referred to as “the Road to Serfdom,” toward ever more statism, ever more regulation, ever more redistribution, socialism, and coercion, supposedly resulting in the ultimate triumph of the rule of experts and a world in which the calculative power of human reason will have abolished tragedy, poverty, inequality, all of the ills to which flesh is heir and all the consequences of human vice and folly.
Harbor Freeze: the ice cream line at "Mac's" after suppertime. Mac makes pretty good fried clam bellies too.
Monday, July 12. 2010
At Globe and Mail:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb,” Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, “voting on what to have for lunch.”
The article is mostly about Italy, as an example.
Wellfleet Oysters and Wellfleet Littlenecks. My cocktail behind them is a Cape Cod Marguerita (cranberry juice added). Refreshing and healthily salt-restoring.
I have Wellfleet architecture in the pipeline, but my photos don't want to upload to the site right now.
Thanks to Hell In A Handbasket for alerting us to a worthy site, Women's Outdoor News.
And thanks to our buddy for this fine aviation site which we have seen before, Flight Level 390. I want that guy flying my airplane. With the machine on auto 99% of the time, what is there to do but sleep or blog?
View from the South Wellfleet Audubon lands, where the salt marsh meets the shore. Here be breeding Willets:
It's about the difficulty in knowing what you don't know, and the limits of self-observation. From this site (h/t, Coyote's Arrogant Ignorance):
…people who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. We attribute this lack of awareness to a deficit in metacognitive skill. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.
What's a "metacognitive skill"? It's about "the ability to reflect and assess ones' own thinking and understanding."
If I did not suffer from a mild case of Dunning-Kruger, I would not be able to post anything on Maggie's Farm because "I don't know anything, I never did know anything, but now I know that I don't know...":
Maggie's Farm condolences to our dear friends whose Obie has gone to Doggie Heaven. Such house dogs, like ours, are family members and losing them leaves a hole in a home.
Sea Turtle Egg Evacuations Begin Along Oiled Gulf
How to fool people into thinking that you are attractive. Amusing.
Killed for bad hijab in Iran
Fred Barnes: A chance to fix Social Security
Politico: Liberals analyze their Obama 'despair'
Reason: Legislation oozing its way up the Hill threatens open markets in beer, wine, and liquor.
IPCC shifts its focus from science to PR
Gingrich: Obama doesn’t understand America
Popular Mechanics: Debunking the Top 10 Energy Myths
Neo: US v. Arizona: where’s the conflict?
Struggling states seeking more aid from Washington
BP Assailed by Naked Code Pinkos. Good grief.
Guy freaks out on learning that Arlo Guthrie is a Repub
Public-sector pensions in New Jersey and other states completely ignore the risk and cost to taxpayers of investing in increasingly risky assets.
Virginia Lawmaker Challenges Feds to Sue His State Over Immigration Enforcement
Via SDA:
Having just moved to BC from Saskatoon, I expected to find Lotus land to be just that. But upon receiving my daughter's Grade 2 report card, the top category that was graded was "Social Responsibility"
I assumed they'd mastered the instruction of Mathematics, Science, English, and other subjects completely, as moving on to designing society would remove valuable time from the classroom.
Aw, math is too hard. Designing Society is easy, and, the less you know, the easier it is.
Telegraph: Copying the NHS is the last thing the US should do
Barbour:
“The issues are jobs, spending, the deficit, debt, taxes and the economy,” he adds. “Republicans should not do anything to take away attention from that.
Am Thinker: Alinsky, Stalinsky, It's Still the Same Old Agitprop
The Climategate Whitewash Continues
Sunday, July 11. 2010
Taken out my back door just minutes ago:
You have your backyard scenery, I have mine.
We'll will be in the Sierra for a month, and mostly out of internet range at our place except when we go to town. The aggregate snowfall (including 12 inches on Memorial Day) was 561 inches (see http://www.squaw.com/snowfall-tracker-2009-10), and this is what's left on July 7. Weather is 75 day, 46 night, but dry. It's early Spring - few flowers are out yet, but the pollen is heavy & everything (grass, skunk cabbage, shrubs, shoots) is bright green.
My photo last week:
 Thanks to a reader for pointing out this remarkable piece by Woodrow Wilson, Socialism and Democracy. A brief sample:
In face of such circumstances, must not government lay aside all timid scruple and boldly make itself an agency for social reform as well as for political control?
'Yes,' says the democrat, 'perhaps it must."
Wilson's short essay, in which he claims that democracy and socialism are inseparable, is certainly relevant to Kesler's Friday post, Demonization Does You In.
A discussion of Wilson's progressivism here.
Ed. comment: Interesting. It is an antique view of the world, indeed. I believe Wilson wrote that blog post essay in the 1880s. As we always ask here, 1. What about freedom? and, 2. Where's the money and wealth gonna come from? I am with CS Lewis, who preferred that people aspire to wealth than to power if they must aspire to worldly goals. Wealth is harmless, and often beneficial. Power is scarey.
Double addendum, Goldberg via Driscoll:
...it is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian–or ‘holistic,’ if you prefer–in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists.
If politicians had more common sense than my plumber or Tom Jefferson, it might almost be a debatable argument. One which Aristotle settled long ago, however.
What They're Doing After Harvard: "Teach for America now attracts 12% of all Ivy League seniors. The program's founder explains why it beats working on Wall Street."
Shut up and sing: Jimmy Buffett Organizes Gulf Benefit, Blames Bush for Spill. Here's a good summertime song: Why don't we get drunk and spill some oil.
The World Cup causes woman-abuse? OK, let's ban the World Cup. It seems like mainly a guy thing anyway.
Lib talks racist for a good cause. I was only trying to be funny!
Also, re race: 'Never Bring Another Lawsuit Against a Black’
Lack of New IPOs and Impact on Performance
Opposition to ObamaCare Surges
Kudlow:
This whole debate about government stimulus versus austerity, and the impact of these policies on economic growth, misses a key point: It is business, not government, that creates jobs.
Whatever “green jobs” are, it’s very clear America doesn’t want them.
Barnes: Think Big - Republicans should embrace Paul Ryan's Road Map.
Commentary: Deliberate Nonfeasance at the DOJ
The Hidden Costs of Jew-Baiting in England
Via Obama's Politics of Fear:
Begala recognizes there ain't much water left in the "hope" well, so the plan is to poison what's left. ‘Cause the numbers don’t look so good.
Advocacy Masquerading As Journalism
Thought Police at University of Illinois – Urbana: Free Speech Dead…Man Bites Dog:
The list of cases where anti-Tyranny students have been punished and persecuted by socialist professors and administrators is endless. There is no such thing as free speech on college campuses for those who disagree with the socialist progressive agenda.
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