Sunday, September 12. 2010
Here's an excellent explanation of it. Yes, it's Alinsky/Gramsci-type strategy.
 Regular readers know that we love turtles here at Maggie's Farm. All sorts of 'em - turtles, tortoises, sea turtles. We think that turtles are cute, cuddly, witty critters, created by a humorous, inventive God to feed, amuse, charm, and fascinate us.
I do not know whether Arnaud's exists post-Katrina (which Bush and Rove caused, don't forget), but they made a fine Green Turtle soup. I had a clear Turtle Soup once, and I would not boycott it (what good would that dumb, self-congratulatory, pointless thing do?), and it was good - but not so good that I would kill a turtle for it. Mock Turtle Soup is at least as good, if not better. Turtle Soup can be clear, like consomme, or full of stuff.
In addition, turtles can teach us a lesson about the economics of conservation, especially sea turtles.
One of our favorite blogs, Brussels Journal, took the time to post this piece on turtle conservation, about how some conservation methods can endanger species, which begins thus:
If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit – hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed.
Four decades ago, you might well have bet that Cayman would eventually be known best for its turtle farms, rather than as a tourist destination and one of the world’s largest financial centers, but economically ignorant environmentalists, who tell us they love sea turtles, have ensured there will be fewer of them.
Image: A Green Sea Turtle - a species we would far rather see than eat. But we would eat them, without hesitation, if presented to us at table. We like a nice light red with turtle.
 In 1802 Beethoven retreated to the then-countryside outside Vienna in an effort to deal with his despair over his increasing deafness and other family issues. There he wrote this letter (found after his death), to his brothers.
It begins:
Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me? You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. From childhood on, me heart and soul have been full of the tender feeling of goodwill, and I was ever inclined to accomplish great things. But, think that for six years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible). Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly I was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.--Oh I cannot do it; therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you.
Whole thing here.
Readers may recall that Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna to study with Mozart. He never did that, and probably never met Mozart, but he did study with Papa Haydn - and with Salieri too.
Psalm 51:1-10
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
51:4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
51:5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
51:6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
51:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
51:9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
This was done to glorify God. Gilding the lily, in my Protestant view, but it's a heck of a sight. They have the bony corpse of a saint in an altar on the side, under glass. Memento mori.
That must be some American kid in the Nantucket Red.
Saturday, September 11. 2010
A fantasy trip, that is. NetJets to Vienna. Five days at the Hotel Sacher with opera tix etc. Then onward maybe to Bucharest and Budapest. And why not Trieste, then down to Venice? Or tack on five days of skiing at Innsbruck or Zermatt? Those nice NetJets pilots will be there whenever needed, and the copilot will load and unload your skis and luggage and mix your drinks for you, and a car and driver will be waiting for you on the tarmac.
It's like I said about boats...
I don't need to go back to Venice, but the rest seems fine to me. That's why I buy Powerball tickets. Foolish not to.
A re-post. This is an important essay about individual freedom. From Peter Saunders
The problem for those of us who believe that capitalism offers the best chance we have for leading meaningful and worthwhile lives is that in this debate, the devil has always had the best tunes to play. Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay. It offers no grand vision for the future, for in an open market system the future is shaped not by the imposition of utopian blueprints, but by billions of individuals pursuing their own preferences. Capitalism can justifiably boast that it is excellent at delivering the goods, but this fails to impress in countries like Australia that have come to take affluence for granted.
It is quite the opposite with socialism. Where capitalism delivers but cannot inspire, socialism inspires despite never having delivered. Socialism’s history is littered with repeated failures and with human misery on a massive scale, yet it still attracts smiles rather than curses from people who never had to live under it. Affluent young Australians who would never dream of patronising an Adolf Hitler bierkeller decked out in swastikas are nevertheless happy to hang out in the Lenin Bar at Sydney’s Circular Quay, sipping chilled vodka cocktails under hammer and sickle flags, indifferent to the twenty million victims of the Soviet regime. Chic westerners are still sporting Che Guevara t-shirts, forty years after the man’s death, and flocking to the cinema to see him on a motor bike, apparently oblivious to their handsome hero’s legacy of firing squads and labour camps.
Environmentalism, too, has the happy knack of inspiring the young and firing the imagination of idealists. This is because the radical green movement shares many features with old-style revolutionary socialism. Both are oppositional, defining themselves as alternatives to the existing capitalist system. Both are moralistic, seeking to purify humanity of its tawdry materialism and selfishness, and appealing to our ‘higher instincts.’ Both are apocalyptic, claiming to be able to read the future and warning, like Old Testament prophets, of looming catastrophe if we do not change our ways. And both are utopian, holding out the promise of redemption through a new social order based on a more enlightened humanity. All of this is irresistibly appealing to romantics.
Family Security Matters collected essays today about 9/11 nine years later. I was asked to contribute one.
On 9/11, I awoke, turned on the computer, saw something bad had happened in New York, turned on the TV in the living room, and sat there from 6AM to 9PM Pacific. My then 1 ½ year old son was toddling around. Several times I hugged him and cried, for America, for New Yorkers, for the battles that I was sure lay ahead, and for my son’s future in that world.
My son has a Hebrew name, shield of Joshua, and an English name, non-labeling, as he, his younger brother and my wife visit my mother-in-law in Dusseldorf, Germany for a month each summer. We don’t want the boys targeted by the increased number of open anti-Semites in Europe, especially the radical Arab youth who prowl the streets. Some of the wonderful counselors at the summer camp my sons go to in Dusseldorf are Muslim. My sons are warned to keep their religion to themselves, not knowing who might be infected with hate. The synagogue in Dusseldorf is well-secured and under constant police protection.
Back home, in suburban San Diego, my sons don’t have that fear. But, since 9/11 there is a locked gate and a guard at the Jewish preschool my sons attended, and guards around our synagogue. The fear is spreading in the US, as is the Leftist-Muslim alliance to delegitimize Israel and to stir hate. We have Muslim friends, who are not radical, and appreciate being in the US. And, 64% of Arabs in the US are Christian, who know persecution for not being Muslim. Unfortunately, their voices, though subdued, are drowned out by those with bigger mouths and designs.
Last Memorial Day, we went to Petco for a Padres game. At the end was a stirring salute to the US military. On the way home, my now 10-year old son, knowing I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, quietly asked me what I felt. I told him, simply, that sometimes we have to fight, not because we want to, only after trying not to, to do good and to survive.
To my surprise, a few weeks ago, my son came into my office and told me he was watching a four-part, two-hour, documentary about 9/11 on Youtube. Since 9/11, I’ve not watched such films, trying to avoid the pain and fear I felt in 2001. Neither had my son watched any, or been taught about it in school.
I watched the documentary, very factual and matter-of-fact, with my son. After, I asked my son what he was feeling.
He said, “I’m glad the US has people who will fight so another 9/11 or worse doesn’t happen again.”
Religion is about doing good, not feeling good.
That was just a couple of weeks ago.
Friday, September 10. 2010
in the Adirondacks. That's my kind of place.
Just returned from the second day of Rosh Hashanah services. We search within ourselves for error, correct it, and develop ways to be better. As the Jewish new year begins, the Torah reading for today is Bereshit Bara Elohim: “In the beginning G-d created…”
A millenia ago, Biblical and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote a homily in which bereshit could be rendered bishvil reyshit, “For the sake of beginning did G-d create the world.” The point is that we’ve been given our start, and then what we do with ourselves is in our power. Another famous Jewish Rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, wrote, “The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself.”
My Rabbi, then, passed out this quote from Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech: “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
NYT: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.
That might be good advice. I am not sure. What always worked best for me in college and in law school was a ration of 2hrs/studying in the library to 1/hr discussing and mutual quizzing with somebody in the course.
From the latter, I learned to interrogate my own understanding after I read anything. It's become a habit for me. If I can't explain back what I've read after I have read it, I've gotten nothing from it.
That's Mead, on America in autumn, 2010. A quote:
Fall has always struck me as the most American of seasons. This isn’t just about football and the world series. Fall is the Puritan time: we are less interested in gathering rosebuds than in storing up nuts; winter is coming and we need to prepare. Enough of the lazy consumerism of summer; it is almost with relief that Americans roll up their sleeves for the start of a new working year.
This particular rentrée does not, however, find the country in good spirits. According to the Real Clear Politics average, more than 61% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. With unemployment at 9.6% and underemployment double that, almost one out of five Americans who want full-time jobs can’t get them. Trillions of dollars in home equity and stock market value has disappeared since 2007, while the federal debt has skyrocketed. China and India are growing blazingly fast; even Germany is growing faster than the United States these days.
The garden-level back entrance of the Belvedere in Vienna. Like them columns?
Thursday, September 9. 2010
 - Jacobson says:
...when I think of Obama's pathological obsession with the top 2% of the population, I think of someone in an ideological death grip. And he is dragging the rest of us down with him.
The O admin hates people like me, professionals and small businessmen. They want to rape us to pay for crap we do not want and yet guys like Obama and other limo Libs have far more money in the bank than I have. I spend most of what I make, after paying my taxes and feeding my pension. (Not happy about that, but that's the way my otherwise wonderful life is right now.)
- Via TigerHawk's storm tab dump:
Ross Douthat pens another excellent column in yesterday’s New York Times. He observes that “obsessing about the paranoia of the masses is often a way for American elites to gloss over their own, entirely nonsymbolic failures.” For example, “Today, establishment liberals would much rather fret about the insanity of the Republican base than reckon with the unpopularity of Barack Obama’s domestic program.”
Yup. Douthat's column is well-worth reading for a number of the points that it makes about paranoia in American politics.
Sorry about the above link - the greedy capitalist pigs at the NYT want you to pay for reading Douthat's piece. Pay for Douthat? Gimme a break.
- A fine Krugman bash at American Thinker: Public Nuisance at the New York Times. Does anybody take Krugman seriously anymore?
- Cooley in Forbes: Why framing the wrong problem killed the summer of recovery.
- How is insulting your readers a good business plan? The dead tree press has killed itself by condescending to their readers, as if journalists were some sacred font of wisdom and virtue.
- Obama Underwrites Irresponsibility — Again. It's about housing prices. I oppose the mortgage interest deduction, myself. Get rid of that and all the other government distortions of the housing market, and find out what houses are really worth. What's wrong with renting, anyway? Everybody with a mortgage is essentially renting from a bank, albeit usually in a heavily-leveraged and risky manner arranged such that you take the risk, and the bank gets paid (normally).
Politicians of all stripes hate free markets, because free markets aren't political. Free markets are just the expression of the free choices of free people. In daily life, free markets are more of an expression of a free people than is voting. Government interference with markets distorts values and pricing, mainly to buy votes so politicians can keep their easy jobs and perks and egos. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
In The Economist, In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with “social entrepreneurs” can solve some of society’s most intractable problems.
 Dream on, rainbow-pony dreamers:
POLICYMAKERS on both sides of the Atlantic are keen on a new approach to alleviating society’s troubles. On July 22nd Barack Obama’s administration listed the first 11 investments by its new Social Innovation Fund (SIF). About $50m of public money, more than matched by $74m from philanthropic foundations, will be given to some of America’s most successful non-profit organisations, in order to expand their work in health care, in creating jobs and in supporting young people.
Let's face it: this is all about jobs for people who work for non-profits. They vote too - for whoever gives them the bucks which they feed on. I don't know what Europe needs (besides a spine or two), but I know what America needs more than more non-profits: more lower-skill but decent-paying work from successful businesses, and better parental examples of adult responsibility.
Novalis has posted a good piece on antidepressants. I pretty much agree with what he wrote - especially the part about trying non-medicine approaches for mild or reactive depressions (or feeling bad, as I sometimes term it).
Fairfield was established as a town in 1635. Pleasant, unpretentious place. Wiki says:
In July 2006, Money Magazine ranked Fairfield the ninth "best place to live" in the United States, and the best place to live in the Northeast.[1] This is primarily due to its affluence, low crime rate with only three homicides in the last five years [2] , excellent public school system, suburban character, scenic location on the Long Island Sound, and proximity to New York City. The town was also listed among the "preppiest" places in the United States in the tongue-in-cheek 1980s best-seller The Official Preppy Handbook.
It considers itself the "dogwood capital of the world," and each spring a Dogwood Festival takes place in the Greenfield Hill neighborhood.
This handsome place is just off the Boston Post Road (which is the Main St. for most CT shoreline towns). It was build in 1791, now in the historic district.
The listing is here, with the details. I see the asking price is creeping downwards, now asking 1.3
Kimball. One quote:
Ms. Feldman is an extreme specimen of the breed. And she specializes, as anyone who wants to excel in the new anti-cultural cultural world must, in the non sequitur:
“We live in a more global, multicultural society that cares about diversity and inclusivity. We're thinking about how we increase our service to the community.”
“Service to the community,” eh? Well, if you are President of the Association of Art Museum Directors, how about serving the community by making sure that museums are exhibiting the best art in the most appropriate way? Just a suggestion. But really, does every institution have to become a sort of social worker’s outreach program? Can’t we have the museum as repository of politically correct thinking over here while still holding onto the the art museum as a place where great art is treasured?
So now museum directors are community organizers. It's a pleasant rant.
Something on that, at NRO
Three fun topics. We just got tix for next week.
 Kudlow: The business of America is business
James K. Glassman in the Wall Street Journal: “Subsidy as a Way of Life”
Victor Hanson on Multiculturalism
Health Insurers Plan Hikes Rate Increases Are Blamed on Health-Care Overhaul; White House Questions Logic
Golly gee, there's weather outside. Revkin discovers weather, feels worried. I know how he feels: There never used to be weather, and now there is. Take a Valium, and it will be fine.
Stossel: Entrepreneurs Under Attack
Obama vs. Boehner . America yawns.
“Party of Limbaugh is Polling Great”
I agree that rules are often confusing: Letters Show Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) Steered CBC Scholarship Money Directly to Her Grandsons
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us” says Castro. And Roger Simon wonders whether Fidel is Jewish.
The textbook bubble.
The Obama economy
AVI: A new way of thinking about Liberalism
Ace: Are You Ready For The Chris Christie Fall Tour? I am.
Vanderleun: An Open Letter to Democrats Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Not Enuf
NYPD Top Cop: Planned Koran Burning Is "Dangerous" Rude, foolish, and provocative as heck to ignorant, grievance-seeking people who have no clue about American freedoms. As with the mosque, being legal doesn't make it right.
Speaking of our constabulary, Chaos After Cop Dares Shoot Drunken Knife-Wielding Reconquistador. Yes, the guy needed a hug instead.
Obama Writes His Thesis Statement. Same old...
Gotta love the nerve of these jerks: Harry Reid: "I had nothing to do with" bad economy. In my view, there is little government can do to help a free-market economy, but much it can do to damage it. Its efforts to "help" are usually efforts to undo their damage by adding new layers of damage.
In a farming hamlet outside Deggendorf. Frequently, the farmers live in little hamlets and drive their equipment to their barns or land to work. Like non-agribusiness farmers in the US, they often supplement their incomes with other work (such as driving school buses, running booths at Oktoberfest, driving tourists around in horse-drawn wagons, etc). I noticed a keg with spigot and cups inside one cow barn, leading me to believe that either the farm workers or the cattle drink beer on the job.
I will dribble out some last few interesting trip pics as I find them in my screwed-up photo files.
Wednesday, September 8. 2010
When to stop? How to gamble if you must—the mathematics of optimal stopping. Black-Sholes is a bit over my head, but my pupette thinks it is simple and obvious.
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