Maggie's FarmWe 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. |
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Monday, August 8. 2011Time To Dust This Bad Boy Off It's sort of amusing to consider that these are the Riot Police we're watching scurry away like rabbits. One can only imagine what regular old bobbies would do in that situation -- after they wet themselves, I mean. "Reading the riot act" is such a great expression. It actually used to mean something. The person in charge would literally read it aloud in the street, and then had the power to kill anyone left to hear the "God Save The King" at the end. Its full name was: "An act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters." Lots of websites, this website included, post videos instructing you not to talk to the police. Everyone runs into the street with a video camera, traffic stop and armed robbery alike, trying to catch a YouTube-able Rodney King moment to get their fifteen minutes of Internet fame by proxy. No one has to do that in England, there's a camera everywhere already. This is what you get when the police know there's nothing but trouble in it for them to protect your homes and businesses, and ultimately, your lives. God help you if you don't sort your recyclables, though.
Posted by Roger de Hauteville
in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects
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21:18
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Cape Cod, with God's A/CBack from the Cape, where it's low 60s at night and high 70s during the day. North Atlantic weather. Ocean water low 60s, Cape Cod Bay water low 70s. Harbor water a tad warmer. We find it refreshing. Expect cold rain and fog every few days. Ate lots of Cod and Wellfleet oysters, of course - although Mrs. BD did sin against the Seafood Law with one fat burger with bacon and blue cheese. I declined to turn her in to the food police. We did manage to walk at least 3 hrs/day. One of these days, I'll do a post about why I love semi-shabby and small-d democratic (also large D, however - Obamaland) Wellfleet so much, as compared to prosperous, well-groomed and preppy Chatham, or Eastham (comfortably rustic once you get off Rte. 6, but lacking a village), or rural Truro (also lacking a village), or any of the fully-developed, suburban-feeling mid-Cape towns. Until I do that, I'll just post my snapshots, as usual, and let them speak for themselves. 70% of Wellfleet is national parkland. Duck Harbor, Wellfleet, last week, early morning. Dogs allowed, beer and tobacco allowed - but you cannot go without a town beach sticker. No lifeguards, of course: swim at your own risk pretty much everywhere, like the old days. (Yes, my horizons always tilt to the right. I think it's a Learning Disability, or maybe my politics. So sue me.)
Posted by Bird Dog
in Our Essays, Travelogues and Travel Ideas
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17:00
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In praise of the '50sA re-posted quote from the piece at New Criterion:
It gets better:
Posted by The Barrister
in Best Essays of the Year, History, Our Essays
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13:21
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The First Christian Holy WarsKnights, Jerusalem, the Seljuk Turks - the history of the Crusades and the future of Islam, by Rubinstein in The New English Review. One quote:
QQQI pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time - waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God - it changes me. C.S. Lewis
Only the names and the dates changeBird Dog is returning from a brief vacation, and asked me to do today’s morning links. I’ve mostly been on a staycation the past month (actually, better than that; wife and sons off in Europe visiting family; P-A-R-T-Y!), so I’ve been spending relatively little time following the news and blogs. If one skips the newspaper for days or weeks, it’s largely true that only the names and the dates change. The stories are much the same. But, current events and developments taken together are some of the most negative for the US that I’ve experienced in my 63-years, about 50 of which I’ve closely followed the happenings. As President Obama’s former chair of his Council of Economic Advisors admits, we're "pretty darn f—ked." -– Met up with a Black guy, Rich, who went through Parris Island same time I did. Both still USMC green, not Black or White. He’s now retired from the Corps. He from poverty in No. Carolina, me from NYC. Agreed that following our grandparents’ rule to be frugal and save, don’t gamble, and keep moving forward is best advice we ever received and what we try to pass on to our children. Washington, D.C. residential real estate: The only part of the country not suffering the recession-depression. – Bet the Washingtonians don’t like this: Debt deal could trigger federal employee job, benefit cuts -- They’d rather have a hollowed military, as they defend their own skim. S&P gets it right: S&P credit rating analysis values spending cuts more than tax revenue. – We have to grow our way out of this hole, and that is less likely with higher taxes or more regulations. – 18 Countries with higher credit ratings than the US -- S&P warns of a second downgrade; 1 in 3 chance of further U.S. downgrade: S&P's Chambers – Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First (Huh?The first recession ended?) The Other Debt Crisis: Reforms for post-secondary education Zombie literature review. -- Flesh eaters, tax eating politicians, what’s the diff? They both eat our guts. The West’s Rube Goldberg Schemes in the Balkans Come Apart The 64 Thousand Dollar Question. Where's Code Pink? Sunday, August 7. 2011The Doorbell
Permanent gender gap in incomeKay Hymowitz on Why the Gender Gap Won’t Go Away. Ever. Women prefer the mommy track. A quote from her myth-destroying essay:
This did apply to me:
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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14:20
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5 Myths of Remedial Ed40% of American college admits require some remedial education. I am not surprised. It's not to blame the secondary schools. It's just that we have people going to college who aren't college material - at least not yet. The fact is that higher education is a booming industry in America, subsidized and supported by countless state and federal programs. Many of these schools are desperate for warm, paying bodies to fill their seats. Anybody can get into some college today, and they will do their darndest to keep him there because lower-tier schools need the income to survive (and need to report decent graduation rates). We have become a nation of degree mills producing meaningless pieces of very expensive paper. I have interviewed many such people from lower tier schools and can report that they should not have bothered. They had the illusion that we might pay them more to do a clerical job if they had that degree from Eastern CT State College. Surprise, surprise - they can't do algebra, compose a literate and grammatical business letter, or get their minds around an abstract concept. Who is the bigger sucker: Me, whose taxes subsidize the school? Or them, for wasting years when they could have been doing or learning something useful? Here are the Five Myths of Remedial Ed. Best Essays of 2009: "Snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal arts major."From the I wish I had Written This Department: Voegli's The Roots of Liberal Condescension. (h/t, No Left Turns) One quote:
Read the whole thing (link above). Voegli captures one of those things that bugs the heck out of me. But I am "mentally retarded," so I guess my view doesn't count. We aren't opposed to "higher ed." However, we believe in common sense, and we believe that the intelligent will and do educate themselves, and that the foolish will remain foolish with their degrees. Especially nowadays, with our degraded standards and expectations (examples - it is possible to graduate from college in the US today without ever taking any calculus, physics, statistics, economics, or American History).
Posted by Bird Dog
in Best Essays of the Year, Our Essays, Politics
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12:24
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Summer weekend random slide show from my personal pic fileBarn-garage, Deerfield, MA: My Dad's pic of our ancestral church (Greenford Magna), where our namesake was pastor: Nice garden. No lawn, just paths. Some nice Echinacea on the right: Our favorite restaurant in P-town, : 42nd St. NYC, this winter: More of my fun random pics below the fold - Continue reading "Summer weekend random slide show from my personal pic file"
Posted by Bird Dog
in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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12:02
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From today's Lectionary: "Do not be afraid."Matthew 14:22-33
Saturday, August 6. 2011TootsDo Conservatives have a losing mentality?An overly-long excerpt from Sultan Knish's excellent A Land Without History:
Age of the earthHow did humans figure out the age of the earth?
Making gun-cleaning eroticBest Hot Dog in the Northeast, right off I-95 in Fairfield, CTGwynnie went to Rawley's last week because it's close to her favorite gunsmith, just around the back of the Sturm Ruger plant on the Southport border. Got there at 11:45 and so missed the legendary 20-minute wait for a deep-fried hot dog and fabulous skin-on fries. The booths are so covered with carved initials, names and dates it's hard to imagine they are still standing. Inside and out are signs touting the joint's approval by none other than Martha Stewart, a bit uncommon among weenie joints!! The restaurant guide, "Hidden Boston" writes:
The NY Times adds:
Another image dump (not my photos)Still cleaning out my old image files. Warning: A little cheesecake mixed in here, for the sake of art. More useful or useless images below the fold - steal at will - Continue reading "Another image dump (not my photos)"
Posted by Bird Dog
in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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11:01
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A proper use of 'green' energy Maybe you're just not using it for the right application.
Article is here, and a big hat tip to Maggie's Valued Reader™ John who runs On The North River. Stop Defaming Chauncey Gardner. We Elected Chet RooseveltEvery prognosticator on television news shows is proved wrong about everything within a week's time. Paul Krugman can't predict what's going to happen at dinnertime while he's having lunch. Newspapers can't even tell you what already happened. But a bunch of clowns in 1979 got it about right. Americathon: They miscast a John Edwards lookalike as President Chet Roosevelt instead of an Obama clone, but they did predict that China would go capitalist, so we'll give them a pass. I wonder if we'll try going capitalist anytime soon? You know, after the telethon.
Posted by Roger de Hauteville
in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects
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08:05
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Friday, August 5. 2011She came from ProvidenceI am no big Eagles fan, but I have always liked this one: Getting in touch with your inner childYes, you do have one of those psychobabble things. Your inner child is selfish, self-centered, greedy, jealous, envious, angry, spiteful, grudge-bearing, hyper-sensitive; feels deprived, entitled, fearful, passive-aggressive, and often destructive. It's a nasty thing and results in misery (for others) in life. My general advice is to avoid being "in touch with" one's inner child as much as possible. Reaching down and finding one's inner adult is a much better plan.
Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss
in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss
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17:10
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More Of The Same: Brooklyn College Common Reading A Year LaterLast year’s choice by my alma mater CUNY’s Brooklyn College of the sole Common Reading book distributed to all incoming students for discussion and work in required English classes was particularly marred by the author’s additions of anti-US and anti-Israel comments and statistics that were radical and fraudulent. I had a role in raising the issue to national attention and criticism. This year’s choice – Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat -- probably won’t raise as many hackles, as the focus is less a prominent political hotspot, Haiti. That may indicate welcome increased sensitivity by the selection committee, but this year’s choice still suffers most of the deficiencies as last year’s. The book’s primary theme is the author’s upbringing in Haiti, separated from her parents who had immigrated to the US, she and brothers later joining them, and the relations among the extended family. However, the book’s critical attitude toward the US role in Haiti’s sad history of violence, poverty and instability, and the death in immigration detention of the author’s aged uncle, are strong secondary themes that provide the mileau for the tale. One may argue that these are the author’s acquired views in this personal narrative. But, the prominence of those secondary themes brings the book, and the college, directly into major current political arguments over broader US foreign and immigration policies. This slant is in stark contrast to the author’s reflections exclusion of gratitude to the US for the youngsters’ success in the US. She is an acclaimed writer, her brothers also established in white collar jobs at the time of writing the book. Further, the book does not provide enough political context to allow a better understanding of the author’s criticisms of US policies in Haiti or US immigration practices. In short, the book is part of the “victimology” and Leftist memoir literature so popular among our liberal elite, compared to earlier immigrants’ books about thankfully escaping repression and poverty in their countries of birth, then struggling and succeeding in the freedoms in the US. That isn’t to say there isn’t enough in the book to show the horrible conditions in Haiti, that reading between the lines shows the youngsters’ success in the US, that an autopsy of the 81-year old uncle’s death revealed the cause as a previously unknown pancreatic condition, or that the author’s grandfather and uncle had been rebels and the family’s politics aligned with critics of the US in Haiti. The book is still a poor choice for launching discussion of the political issues raised by the author. It is marred by the underlying anger of the author and her lack of appreciation of the US, her presentation of the US as an oppressive presence in the consciousness of her family, and the lack of underlying contextual details about US foreign and immigration policies. The incoming student will likely read or hear in the classroom discussions little else about the issues from broader or conflicting perspectives or facts. Among the laudatory comments by some Brooklyn College faculty for the book, a senior professor there – Robert Cherry -- raises some of the problems with the book:
Professor Cherry informs me that the English Department is considering such discussions. If so, one may expect the Left and liberal leanings of the English Department faculty to emphasize the charges of economic imperialism prompting the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934, but not that the dominance of its economy by German immigrants was feared in the midst of WWI, the huge building of infrastructure there by the US, or that its liberal constitution was written by then Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. One may expect the criticisms by pro-immigration lobbies that detention practices are substandard and harsh, but not that the deaths from all causes in detention are a tiny fraction of detainees (about 107 out of over 2.5 million, about 5 per 10,000, during 2003-2008; even the January 2010 New York Times report of critics says, “In August, litigation by the civil liberties union prompted the Obama administration to disclose that more than one in 10 immigrant detention deaths had been overlooked and omitted from a list submitted to Congress last year.”). The Center for Immigration Studies, opposed to liberal immigration policies, contends this is a much lower rate of death than in US prisons. The comparison, however, raises many apples and oranges measurement difficulties that need to be clarified. Both sides agree that many improvements to detention policies and practices have been made in the past six-years, after the author’s uncle died in detention, and both sides agree that there is much – if differing – that needs to be done. – Of note here is that the author’s 81-year old uncle, with a valid visa to enter the US, was fleeing gangs that wanted to behead him and asked for temporary political asylum instead of just entering the US on his visa and overstaying it as so many do, so he entered the detention-adjudication system for a few days, dying there from a previously unknown pancreatic condition despite blood/urine and scan tests provided.
Posted by Bruce Kesler
in Education, Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects, Our Essays, Politics
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15:05
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Home Schoolin'From Sipp's My Children Will Not Be Appearing On White Dwarf Star Search, Thank You Very Much:
Posted by Bird Dog
in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation
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14:00
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Change
Posted by Roger de Hauteville
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12:25
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