We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Thanks to the librarian at Bird Dog’s local library he is able to send us brief messages from the only computer working in town. Also, thanks to the local librarian, the line is long to use the computer, as middle-aged men dawdle to ogle. So, here again are some links for your evening perusal.
"The one common theme throughout these cases is that they were decided in favor of keeping the unions in power and blocking the ability of employees to challenge whether or not the unions still enjoy majority status," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President of Labor Randel Johnson said in an email.
That tropical storm up here dumped the river into my pool, filled it with mud, plants, and frogs, and knocked down a fence. I think VT got the worst of it all.
What books are you reading right now?
No cheating. Don't tell us that you are reading Kant.
I am reading the new Mark Twain autobiography, but you cannot really read it. You just dip into it. He was a charming fellow.
Reno at First Things looked at the life of Moses from an interesting angle: the multicultural man turned uni-cultural by the hand of God. A quote:
Each of us must struggle to understand how to live our lives in a pluralistic, democratic society. But to my mind, however fuzzy and uncertain we might be about any particular public policy or social project, we must at least be clear about Moses. We should want to follow his trajectory, and there can be no compromise with those who prize his multicultural youth. For he who is not a servant of a cultural authority deeply installed is merely human�which is to say, a slave to his passions and servant of his self-interest, who, when he comes to realize his base existence, is all too easily victim of thin, ideological deities who promise the immediate psychological satisfactions of a veneer of moral idealism.
Still without phone, intertunnel, and TV (but who needs TV?). Posting this memo from a very crowded library - nobody around here has intertunnel connections this week. Even the cell towers got screwed up, somehow.
I appreciate everybody's pitching in to keep our Maggie's "product" coming. All I can really do is to recycle old items, due to the lines here at the library machines.
This "miracle material" is simply a one atom thick flake of graphite, but at this nanoscale, graphite takes on exciting properties. Graphene is the strongest material, 200 times stronger than steel, and it is incredibly conductive. It is also very thin. Three million sheets of graphene stacked is just one millimeter high. These properties make graphene highly suited for use in the manufacture of electronic devices
…this survey suggests that extremists make up only a small percentage of American Muslims, but still make up a sufficient number that other American Muslims are worried about them.
We used to think that information is power and that the personal computer enabled lives. But, according to Jaron Lanier, things changed about ten years ago. He cites Apple, Google, and Walmart as some of the reasons….
... "The Apple idea is that instead of the personal computer model where people own their own information, and everybody can be a creator as well as a consumer, we're moving towards this iPad, iPhone model where it's not as adequate for media creation as the real media creation tools, and even though you can become a seller over the network, you have to pass through Apple's gate to accept what you do, and your chances of doing well are very small, and it's not a person to person thing, it's a business through a hub, through Apple to others, and it doesn't create a middle class, it creates a new kind of upper class. ... Google has done something that might even be more destructive of the middle class, which is they've said, "Well, since Moore's law makes computation really cheap, let's just give away the computation, but keep the data." And that's a disaster….
... What Wal-Mart recognized is that information is power, and by using network information, you could consolidate extraordinary power, and so have information about what could be made where, when, what could be moved where, when, who would buy what, when for how much? By coalescing all of that, and reducing the unknowns, they were able to globalize their point of view so they were no longer a local player, but they essentially became their own market, and that's what information can do. The use of networks can turn you from a local player in a larger system into your own global system.
... It can become such a bizarre system. What you have now is a system in which the Internet user becomes the product that is being sold to others, and what the product is, is the ability to be manipulated. It's an anti-liberty system, and I know that the rhetoric around it is very contrary to that.
How will parents react when they find out they will be expected to provide workers' compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for…babysitters? Dinner and a movie night may soon become much more complicated.
Assembly Bill 889 (authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, will require these protections for all “domestic employees,” including nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.
The bill has already passed the Assembly and is quickly moving through the Senate with blanket support from the Democrat members that control both houses of the Legislature – and without the support of a single Republican member. Assuming the bill will easily clear its last couple of legislative hurdles, AB 889 will soon be on its way to the Governor's desk.
Under AB 889, household “employers” (aka “parents”) who hire a babysitter on a Friday night will be legally obligated to pay at least minimum wage to any sitter over the age of 18 (unless it is a family member), provide a substitute caregiver every two hours to cover rest and meal breaks, in addition to workers' compensation coverage, overtime pay, and a meticulously calculated timecard/paycheck….
Unfortunately, the unreasonable costs and risks contained in this bill will discourage folks from hiring housekeepers, nannies and babysitters and increase the use of institutionalized care rather than allowing children, the sick or elderly to be cared for in their homes. I can't help but wonder if that is the goal of AB 889 – a terrible bill that needs to be stopped.
He was imprisoned November 11, 1942 in German-occupied Poland in Stalag Luft III, of "The Great Escape" fame.Sconiers is the only American yet unrecovered from Stalag Luft III.
If the President’s intention was to win veterans’ votes today in his speech to the American Legion Convention, he failed miserably if the opinions I asked for from attendees are at all representative of veterans who heard the speech. The most common response when I asked folks gathered around the ashtrays and in the hallways after the speech what they thought of it was “He said everything we wanted to hear” but they aren’t convinced that the rhetoric matches the President’s intent.
Get ready for Friday afternoon. You can be sure that the Obama administration will release some bad news that can get lost or overlooked on the Labor Day weekend.
We calculate the present value of state employee pension liabilities using discount rates that reflect the risk of the payments from a taxpayer perspective. If benefits have the same default and recovery characteristics as state general obligation debt, the national total of promised liabilities based on current salary and service is $3.20 trillion. If pensions have higher priority than state debt, the value of liabilities is much larger. Using zero-coupon Treasury yields, which are default-free but contain other priced risks, promised liabilities are $4.43 trillion. Liabilities are even larger under broader concepts that account for salary growth and future service.
…the indictments have not provoked a political earthquake against Hezbollah, as many were hoping, especially as Lebanon's first deadline to apprehend the suspects passed without any substantial repercussion….At the moment, Hezbollah—in addition to its military strength—maintains a solid grip on the Lebanese political system and retains its ability to marginalize the political forces that had been behind the “Cedar Revolution” and the creation of the tribunal.
Here’s a conclusion that follows straight from common sense: Don’t make your incentive scheme the subject of a complex negotiation with a bunch of stakeholders. Keep it simple. Hold people accountable for things they actually have control over, and give them a chance to correct their course along the way. If you discover your rules are lousy—that you made things too easy, or too hard—it’s OK to change them. But never do it in the middle of a game.
Everybody knows that incentives work in real life, but teaching is not exactly real life. How many talented teachers does it take to teach a kid Algebra? One, but the kid has to want to learn.
The first Barn Owl I ever saw was in the headlights swooping low over a marshy field on the North Shore of Long Island. It did, indeed, look spooky in its whiteness.
Barn Owls have a worldwide distribution, but they stay away from the colder regions. In North America, they aren't found much north of southern New England.
Barn Owls are prodigious mouse and rat killers. As such, they are birds of farms and meadows, not of woodlands nor of suburbia. In the Northeast, their numbers were surely higher when the countryside was filled with small farms and cow pastures. Midwestern industrial-scale farming offers them little of interest. I suppose they are the night-time analogue of the Marsh Hawk. The rodents never get a break.
I have never seen or heard one at Maggie's Farm, which would seem to be perfect habitat for them, but which might be towards the northern edge of their range. We even have an open shed with a loft which would be perfect for them to raise a family in. (The Barn Swallows think they own it, though, so maybe they would pester the owls too much.)
The subject of Barn Owls came up because Samizata, of all places, posted a piece on Barn Owl nest boxes. Nobody is going to make a lot of money producing these, but it's a great idea as the wooden barns and silos of the past are falling down.
Bird Dog’s electricity is out due to the hurricane storm, and he can’t pedal fast enough on his tricycle to get enough power to his computer. So, here’s some morning links.
When Beverly Hills residents found out that many of their city’s 950 municipal and public safety employees were earning stunning salaries, 13 weeks of paid vacation, unlimited overtime and other tax-free retirement benefits, taxpayers were outraged and city officials rushed into closed-door sessions to figure out what to do….With a population of 34,000, Beverly Hills has one employee for every 34 residents, the highest ratio in California.
GOOD NEWS:
You did notice the healthy wheat crop, didn’t you?
Specialty Healthcare, in which the board is determining what constitutes an appropriate bargaining unit, is a full-frontal assault on long-established law.With this case, the board is not only trying to discern what is an appropriate bargaining unit within the healthcare setting, it is using the case to apply its interpretation economy-wide.It is expected the board will reach the conclusion that the traditional doctrine of “community of interest” will no longer apply and allow the establishment of “micro-unions.”
These micro-unions could be comprised of as few as two people and effectively cripple an employer’s ability to manage operations in an effective way.Imagine trying to run a manufacturing facility with separate unions representing custodial staff, assemblers, fitters, fabricators, maintenance and others?Each of those bargaining units would have the capacity to shut down production.This isn’t a very efficient model and employers are justifiably worried about having such a model foisted upon them by an un-elected board.
That Irene was grossly over-hyped but, as I predicted, our area has lost power, cable, and phone. It doesn't take much to do that.
When I saw the eyewall disappear, I knew it would be just a stormy day. Took the pup for a walk in it to play in the puddles and flooding waters. Good fun.
I'm posting this from the local library, where everything is working. Lots of folks here using the machines. Will get back to normal posting sched when we all get back up to speed.
General Colin Powell's famous remark about foreign intervention, "If you break it, you own it", also applies to the truth. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, in detail, exposes the blaring untruths by Colin Powell regarding so-called PlameGate, its damage to the Bush White House, and unfair prosecution of Scooter Libby. Colin Powell won't own up to owning his complicity.
I hope I am not boring my readers with all of my posts about the college bubble and the meaninglessness of the current American college degree. From The Case Against the College Degree:
College degrees are poor proof of learning, and perhaps a barrier to it
Students want jobs and respect. Degrees bring both. Employers, meanwhile, want smart, capable workers. A degree is a decent enough proxy for intelligence, but we want it to be more than that. We want degrees to mean that students have learned the foundations of human knowledge literature, chemistry, physics, composition, metaphysics, psychology, economics and so on. If we didn t, we d replace degrees with inexpensive vocational exams.
Charles Murray, a fellow at American Enterprise Institute, calls for just that in a recent book, Real Education. He argues that too many kids who lack the ability to complete a liberal arts education are being pushed into four-year liberal arts schools, because there s a steep societal penalty for not getting a degree. Schools, in turn, have made their degree programs easier. Murray provides a sample of courses that students used to fulfill core degree requirements at major universities in 2004, including History of Comic Book Art (Indiana University), History and Philosophy of Dress (Texas Tech University) and Campus Culture and Drinking (Duke). He documents not only falling standards but rampant grade inflation.
Read the whole thing. He has an interesting suggestion too, but colleges won't go for it. For their own survival, they are committed to their marketing of their expensive credential, whether it means anything or not. In my experience over recent years, it means little-to-nothing.
You used to know what assumptions you could make about somebody with a BA. Not any more. Now, they don't even need to know basic calculus. That's crazy.
Some of my columns here at Maggie's Farm are also carried by Family Security Matters. Last year I wrote a 9/11 column for FSM about what was going on in my life on 9/11, 9/11 With My Son. This year, FSM has produced a moving video for 9/11, and invites anyone to send in their reflections on 9/11 for possible publication. Go here for the video and the invite. I know that Maggie's Farm readers have much to add.
This video is less than 6-minutes long. The US can be virtually energy independent, and cut our trade deficits dramatically, if not even reverse them, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US. Wonder how? Listen.
A farmer stopped by the local mechanic's shop to have his truck fixed. They couldn't do it while he waited, so he said he didn't live far and would walk home.
On the way home he stopped at the hardware store and bought a bucket and a gallon of paint. He then stopped by the feed store and picked up a couple of chickens and agoose. However, struggling outside the store he now had a problem - how to carry his entire purchases home.
While he was scratching his head he was approached by a little old lady who told him she was lost. She asked 'can you tell me how to get to1603 Mockingbird Lane?'
The farmer said, 'Well, as a matter of fact, my farm is very close to that house. I would walk you there but I can't carry this lot.'
The old lady suggested, 'Why don't you put the can of paint in the bucket. Carry the bucket in one hand, put a chicken under each arm and carry the goose in the other hand?'
'Why thank you very much,' he said and proceeded to walk the old girl home.On the way he says 'Lets take my short cut and go down this alley. We'll be there in no time.'
The little old lady looked over cautiously then said, 'I am a lonely widow without a husband to defend me ... 'How do I know that when we get in the alley you won't hold me up against the wall, pull my skirt, and have your way with me?'
The farmer said, 'Holy smokes lady! I'm carrying a bucket, a gallon of paint, two chickens and a goose. How in the hell could I possibly hold you up against the wall and do that?'
The old lady replied, 'Set the goose down, cover him with the bucket, put the paint on top of the bucket, and I'll hold the chickens.'
Pic above via Drudge, Saturday night. Cabs are running but all public transportation is closed. The BD pupette was evacuated from her Chelsea apartment, worked all day Saturday (as usual), then joined a bunch of friends in Brooklyn Heights for a Hurricane Party and sleepover. That's the third Hurricane Party I have heard about.
Even as many families have climbed out of poverty, some families have plunged deeper into it; as I understand it, mostly those headed by women with severe mental illness, drug and alcohol problems, or personality disorders. Before, if your mother was smoking crack, she could at least still collect her welfare check. Cutting off the check after five years, or cutting benefits as some states did, didn't mean she stopped smoking crack. It just meant there was less money around the house.
Those people are unambiguously worse off since welfare reform.
Ecclesiastes 44:1-15 (NRSV) HYMN IN HONOR OF OUR ANCESTORS
1 Let us now sing the praises of famous men, our ancestors in their generations. 2 The Lord apportioned to them great glory, his majesty from the beginning. 3 There were those who ruled in their kingdoms, and made a name for themselves by their valor; those who gave counsel because they were intelligent; those who spoke in prophetic oracles; 4 those who led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the people's lore; they were wise in their words of instruction; 5 those who composed musical tunes, or put verses in writing; 6 rich men endowed with resources, living peacefully in their homes- 7 all these were honored in their generations, and were the pride of their times. 8 Some of them have left behind a name, so that others declare their praise. 9 But of others there is no memory; they have perished as though they had never existed; they have become as though they had never been born, they and their children after them. 10 But these also were godly men, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; 11 their wealth will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance with their children's children. 12 Their descendants stand by the covenants; their children also, for their sake. 13 Their offspring will continue forever, and their glory will never be blotted out. 14 Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on generation after generation. 15 The assembly declares their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise.
I just sent an email to Bird Dog, and received an automatic reply that the Bird Dogs are expecting to lose electricity due to Hurricane Irene. Then, I got this photo of how they plan to cope.
We all want to thrive and flourish in life, as best we can. Why not? Life is short. A quote from the Amazon review:
"Positivity is literally the feel-good book of the year, providing a scientifically sound prescription for joy, health, and creativity. Read one to two chapters daily as needed or until grumpiness subsides." —Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness
I think this is satire, but I am not certain. If it's not satire, we should do a fund raiser for a one-way ticket to Uganda where nobody has to work, or give her a free subscription to eHarmony to find a husband to take care of her. Poor thing, who has let anger destroy her spirit. But, again, I think this is sly satire. h/t, Protein Wisdom:
You have to look pretty hard to find any. Whittle is getting close to my theme that poverty of spirit is a bigger problem than material proverty in the Western world. Perhaps they are alienated from the means of production...or something.
Fried Squash Blossoms are a wonderful summertime Italian treat. I harvested this platterful of them last night and we fried 'em up. When served hot, and lightly browned and salted, they leave French Fries in the dust.
On summer squash like Zucchini and Yellow Squash, the blossoms on the stalks are the males, and thus expendable. However, I use both because there's always too much squash anyway.
This site explains how simple this is, using Marcella's method. We do not wash them at all, just check them for bugs inside. Photo below from that site -
Loftus added that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with a date mentioning that he attended Yale University, bringing it up every 10 minutes is probably not a good idea.
"Yale this, Yale that," Loftus said. "Any way he could work it into the conversation, he would. It was so obvious that he was clinging to his Ivy League pedigree out of insecurity, as a way of making himself look like an intelligent man of substance. It really just made him look like a dick."
Maybe the Swiss never heard of playing doctor. Pedophiles with be grateful for this effort to overstimulate the kiddies. In fact, it comes pretty close to pedophilia. How would it be if your neighbor played with your little daughter's sex box?
Hayward’s First Axiom of Environmental Energy holds that there is no source of energy—“clean” or otherwise—that environmentalists won’t oppose if it becomes cheap, practical, and scalable. So for example the left once favored nuclear power...
From the Hill on Friday: “Al Gore on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry.”
From the Telegraph on November 3, 2009: “Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies. Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology. The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.”
Klavan with three quick tips for would-be pundits. Rule 2 is the best:
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: How can I then be elder than thou art? O! therefore, love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
Everybody needs something to do during the few hours the storm passes, and probably in the darkness thereafter:
We do not mean to make light of storms, but definitely to make light of the hype around them (to which I spose we are contributing by even mentioning it). We can deal with storms, for heaven's sake - and much worse things than weather too. Hurricane Irene is weakening rapidly as I write:
The center expects Irene to be a minimal hurricane by the time it gets to New England.
Here are some interesting storm thoughts from one of my favorite modern authors, the late Walker Percy, via Potemra:
At one point [in Percy’s 1966 novel The Last Gentleman], Will recalls a date with a girl named Midge Auchincloss. The date is a disaster until the two are caught in a hurricane. “Though science taught that good environments were better than bad environments, it appeared to him that the opposite was the case. Take hurricanes, for example, certainly a bad environment if ever there was one. It was his impression that not just he but other people felt better in hurricanes,” Percy writes. The hurricane, it turns out, saved the day: “The hurricane blew away the sad, noxious particles which befoul the sorrowful old Eastern sky and Midge no longer felt obliged to keep her face stiff. They were able to talk. It was best of all when the hurricane’s eye came with its so-called ominous stillness. It was not ominous. Everything was yellow and still and charged up with value.”
Storms bring out the best in people.
Well, with some exceptions: Bill McKibben: Global warming to blame for Hurricane Irene. I just knew that was coming, but not before the dang storm even arrived. You know, if this one just blew out to sea like most of them, he'd never have mentioned it. What a putz. "Let no storm go to waste."
Additional good storm advice from our commenter Blick on this post.
Why is a college degree diminishing in its economic and social value?
Because so many people are going, nowadays. It's not special anymore, and unselected people are getting degrees today who could not have gotten near higher ed one generation ago. It's a consumer-oriented biz now, desperate for gullible consumers. From our IBD link this morning:
A recent example of this exaggerated view of the value of higher education is "The Undereducated American," a paper by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.
The authors argue that the United States needs to produce far more college graduates than it currently does.
Their evidence is that there is a significant wage "premium" for those who graduate from college — across all fields of work. They argue, in effect, that the high return on investment applies regardless of whether the graduate becomes a financier or a dishwasher.
But they fail to look at generational differences.
Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that gains for recent college graduates have been declining for more than 10 years.
Let the dead French theorists lie. Instead, literary scholars can become guides to the physical reality of the past. If you think about it, that's what we've been doing in class for the last hundred years: explaining how to pronounce "Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?" in Early Modern English, for instance, or describing a Boeing B-17 to help students understand Randall Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." Once ordinary people note that we're doing something useful again, they might stop looking at us like we're nuts. And maybe we'll even get some jobs back.
Are the kids so uninformed that they don't know who a ball turret gunner is? Wish I had time now to discuss this essay, but I don't.
The old FDR way of offering progressive government as the antidote to free market recklessness no longer works. It no longer comforts anyone or makes them feel secure. There is a long history of government recklessness that makes it impossible for more than a limited portion of the population to be that naive again.
The public is more accepting of government intervention today than it was then, but it is also more distrustful of it. And that distrust easily comes to the surface in a time of crisis which is why the movement to hold government accountable is gathering steam.
The Great Depression paved the way for a change in the relationship between the public and the government. And the Ought Depression may be doing the same thing. But while the New Deal made it a close relationship, the political wars of the last two years are leading instead to a breakup between the public and the government.
Progressive government has not only failed to avert several economic crises, it has also completely mismanaged the social safety net and become so hideously expensive that it can no longer be kept up. Those are all dangerously compelling answers and the left has come up with no response to them except to throw out conspiracy theories and cry racism. Such intellectual desperation reminiscent of a dictator ranting hysterically on a televised broadcast as the noose tightens around his regime.
"The loss of transcendence evokes the flight to utopia. I am convinced that the destruction of transcendence is the actual amputation of human beings from which all other sicknesses flow. Robbed of their real greatness they can only find escape in illusory hopes."
The prospects for Irene in the northeast change by the hour. Last night, she was downgraded but now it's just confusing. However, if she does hit New England hard, don't be surprised if Maggie's is down for a while. As of now, predictions are just "rain and wind" on Sunday, warm and sunny Monday. (That's obviously an old toon from the files)
Pull in your lawn chairs and stuff. Prepare for loss of power. Beer, charcoal, batteries, beer, candles, booze, gas, beer, etc.
Bungee cords. Forceps. A large sheet of vinyl. Thirty feet of 1/2" clear tubing. A dead rabbit, two pairs of black pantyhose, a quart of corn oil, a large pumpkin, and a fully charged cordless drill with a size-variety of wood boring bits.
You will need these things. Survival is the word. And, undetectable perversion in early natural darkness. Those are also. Some words.
Business Regulation vs. Growth: The View from Middle America - It has become clear that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been a real deterrent to companies that would like to go public.
Zuckerman: Obama and the 'Competency Crisis' - Like many Americans who supported him, I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country.
Excuse me, Mort, but a prez does not "run a country" - not in the USA anyway. And your "longing" is immature.
There’s a major difference, though, between New York and the country as a whole. The New York option—move somewhere else—doesn’t apply to private-sector middle-class workers fighting adverse conditions that exist throughout America. So they’ve exercised the classic democratic right of political action, organizing themselves to compete in elections. The Tea Party is the national voice of the private-sector middle class—despite the demonizations heaped upon it by public-policy elites whose own judgment and competence leave much to be desired.
I doubt that the world "needs" more people, but I do think it needs more millionaires and billionaires because they buy stuff and invest in new enterprises.
Texas governor Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that’s the main reason so many East Coast pundits and Beltway wags are making fun of him. He likes guns! He’s from Texas! He talks funny! He’s a — gird yourself now — Christian! New York magazine and others mock his harmless, Bush-like pronunciation of nuclear (“nuke-ular”). They’re scandalized that he doesn’t go to a golf course to relax, but a shooting range. It’s already a cliché among liberals to describe him as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy ...
I can say for certain that I would reconsider any sailing plans around the Outer Banks, the Chesapeake, New Jersey or southern New England this weekend. I remember being on Martha's Vineyard a day after Hurricane Bob. Big waves. They were already selling "I Got Blown By Bob" t-shirts. Let no hurricane go to waste.
Somewhere, somebody is already printing tees with "I Got Blown By Irene" - just in case they do.
Irene seems to be weakening, to Brendan's ill-concealed disappointment.
I say that it can be either, both, or neither. If one grows up in a drug- and crime-tolerant environment, it's more likely that the wicked side of one's nature will be given free rein and things won't work out well, just as it's easier to live like a Boy Scout when all around you are doing the same.
My problem with addressing the subject this way, however, is that it ignores the large numbers of voluntarily poor, unluckily poor, and temporarily poor. Poverty is not a unitary phenomenon. Is a struggling artist or actor "poor"? And what is poverty in America anyway?
I think that French may be speaking more about "the poor in spirit" than the materially-deprived.
I can also attest to the fact that an Ivy League education isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. Whatever small accomplishments I have in life are not easily traceable to my academic achievements (even though I was considerably closer to Clinton than Gore in class ranking). Arguably, the most successful president of the post-war period, Ronald Reagan, attended the ultra-obscure Eureka College. I don’t know what his grades were and I don’t much care. All I know is he got Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” (Not exactly, but you know what I mean.)
Turning to Perry, he was a mediocre student at Texas A & M, a school that emphasizes a more practical form of education than Yale. What does this mean? Don’t know, but these days going to an Ivy no longer appears to be the royal road to career success it once was. This study of Top 10 Job Placement Colleges only shows one Ivy, Cornell, in the tenth position. Number one, not surprisingly, is The University of Texas at Austin.
Perhaps more importantly… and amusingly… this study from the Wall Street Journal shows Perry’s Texas A & M the number two choice of corporate job recruiters with nary an Ivy in sight until Cornell (again) at fourteen. Harvard, Princeton and Yale did not make the top twenty-five.
Lewis’s aversion to government was clearly revealed in 1951 when Winston Churchill, within weeks after he regained office as prime minister of Great Britain, wrote to Lewis offering to have him knighted as “Commander of the Order of the British Empire.”Lewis flatly declined the honor because he, unlike the “progressives,” was never interested in politics and was deeply skeptical of government power and politicians, as expressed in the first two lines of his poem “Lines during a General Election”: “Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear / All that; it is their promises that bring despair.”
From our archives, because the sound of saws may be constant around here this weekend, if Irene hits us in Yankeeland:
Burning carbon to kill trees! Good work and good fun.
The gasoline-powered chainsaw is one of the finest inventions since the wheel and the plow. It's really just a mechanized stone axe like my Indian sncestors used, and I am eagerly awaiting the laser saw to bring wood cutting into the 21st Century.
While the engineering principles of the chainsaw may go back to surgical instruments of the 1800s, the modern concept dates to the 1920's with bulky and impractical designs until the German engineer Andreas Stihl developed his "tree-cutting machine" around 1929. The one-man saw dates to around 1950 and was perfected by Stihl and their main competitor, the weapons manufacturer Husqvarna. The Stihl family still owns their company. Check out their saws here. (No, this is not an advt.)
I have always enjoyed power saws: my godfather's father started the Wright Saw Company in CT, which produces a reciprocating power saw - an anomaly in the development of power saws which never really caught on except for special uses.
Of course, the famous and indispensible Sawzall is a reciprocating saw.
Here's the interesting weather we have to look forward to, up here. Think I'll go get some gas for my Stihl Farm Boss.
599 Chequessett Neck Rd Wellfleet, MA. 3bd. 2fb. Single Family, asking $1,900,000. I know the site all too well. This place is on half of the lot we wanted to buy, years ago, for $125,000 and felt we could not afford it. Turned out we could have, and should have. I'd be rich now, at least on paper.
Details and pics here. It's right down the road from Aunt Sukie's. Much as I love that area, I'd rather have a place on Lieutenant Island.
It must be late summer, and I have hunting on my mind.
This is my muddy-legged huntin' Standard Poodle, gazing out the cabin door after a long day in the woods and bogs a few years ago. Don't laugh: he points hard, and retrieves. Bred from a line of hunting Standards, and my second from that line. Used to hunt pretty close, but lately ranges too far yet will loop 20 yards left or right on command. Will chase a damn deer in a swamp forever, dang it. That's what whistles and shock collars were made for. He's been good with whistle commands, but I haven't practiced with him lately. Also known to point on mice. Love the guy despite imperfections, and well-aware that any dog's imperfections in training are really the master's laziness.
"Find the bird." He will do that with the greatest of pleasure, but it might very well be out of range if he puts the bird up or points on it. Loves the job, loves the hunt. Like most field dogs, cannot understand how any human can miss a bird. "No bird, no bird." They look at you like you're an idiot. You are supposed to be God.
I cannot clean a shotgun with him in the room. He goes berserko with excitement. All hunting dogs know the difference between hunting gear and ordinary outdoor stuff.
There is no work-out like a few days over hill and dale and busting brush in Maine near the Quebec border, pursuing the Ruffed Grouse (they call it pa'tridge up there - or "chicken") and Woodcock. Gosh, I just love it, even though you occasionally annoy a cranky moose.
Reno at First Things looked at the life of Moses from an interesting angle: the multicultural man turned uni-cultural by the hand of God. A quote:
That Irene was grossly over-hyped but, as I predicted, our area has lost power, cable, and phone. It doesn't take much to do that.
I hope I am not boring my readers with all of my posts about the college bubble and the meaninglessness of the current American college degree. From 
A farmer stopped by the local mechanic's shop to have his truck fixed. They couldn't do it while he waited, so he said he didn't live far and would walk home.
Fried Squash Blossoms are a wonderful summertime Italian treat. I harvested this platterful of them last night and we fried 'em up. When served hot, and lightly browned and salted, they leave French Fries in the dust.
As I said, if Maggie's is down for a while tomorrow - for hours or days - it will be due to Irene's knocking trees down. Our servers' power grid hates storms. 
It's about a Model B Ford engine head, from 
The prospects for Irene in the northeast change by the hour. Last night, she was downgraded but now it's just confusing. However, if she does hit New England hard, don't be surprised if Maggie's is down for a while. As of now, predictions are just "rain and wind" on Sunday, warm and sunny Monday. (That's obviously an old toon from the files)
