Tuesday, August 7. 2012
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.
Naturally, attempted to eat my fill of Wellfleet Oysters, but I never will. Life is too short to complete that pleasure.
A number of Obama bumper stickers out there on the Cape (but MANY fewer than 4 years ago). Most of the Priuses there this year had no political stickers. Mrs. BD kept track of that. We used to think that Obama stickers were part of the Prius brand and paint job. The enthusiasm is gone. We tried to keep track of the Scott Brown bumper stickers. "Take America Back". They were easy to find, but I still think he has only a fighting chance. People ignore the details. Warren is a hard Lefty, and that's usually good enough for wealthy Massachusetts.
Will provide more fun pics later. This is at Pearl's (the old Capt'n Higgin's, upscaled with a hopping bar scene) on the dock. My apologies if you drool on your keyboard. Sweetest oysters in the world, thanks to the Herring River. Mrs. BD is addicted to the seared raw Bluefin with the chopped wasabi-bean crust. Dynamite food. I love that, but my soul needs the raw shellfish every summer. All I can find, plus some steamers too. And some mussels.
(Some readers wonder how your editor Bird Dog posts when on sabbatical from Maggie's. I pre-post and pre-date some items when away. I cheat. Got to keep the rhythm section - the basso continuo - rolling along. That's my well-paid job here. Happy that everybody pitches in and keeps the posts coming when they can. We're a hippy hippie commune.)
Monday, August 6. 2012
It's been a bit over a week since the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, and I haven't seen much on Maggie's about them. I really enjoy the Olympics. The Opening Ceremony is always great entertainment, and the events capture my attention. I've found myself watching handball, water polo, and even men's field hockey. I enjoy sports, and there's something about the Olympic Spirit that captures me. But there's always a portion which bothers me.
It used to be the overcommercialization which bugged me. I've grown used to this. I knew the 'amateur' status we used to try and pretend existed wouldn't last. It was clear that money would eventually be the driving force. In some ways, this has made the competition better. The athletes still play for pride, but now they can also get a payday. Nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand, the politicization, which was bad in Cold War years, has taken a subtle turn. There is still a semblance of competing ideologies. But there is also the use of spectacle to make some kind of statement, using the commercial aspect to push a separate agenda.
Continue reading "Olympic Fanfare"
That's the 2008 book by Charles Murray.
I pretty much agree with everything in it. From the blurb:
Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn academic material. Doing our best for every child requires, above all else, that we embrace that simplest of truths. America’s educational system does its best to ignore it.
Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals.
Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn’t get one. For most of America’s young people, today’s college system is a punishing anachronism.
(With Bird Dog on vacation, I'm going to try to fill his mighty shoes by doing a few nature posts.)
 Our twig of the week, or vimine hebdomadis, is a remarkable creature, inhabiting many of the woodland areas of our wondrous globe. Not just a mere leaf or branch, vimine hebdomadis is a hybrid, displaying the very best of both worlds.
As such, many consider it to be the origin of Zen, where every twig, no matter how similar, still has an intrinsic value unto itself and the universe, and how we are much more than the mere sum of our parts; so much so that we become a whole new word in the process of evolving.
Made globally popular by supermodel Twiggy, the once-lowly twig has gained an admiration in humanity's eye that can only be envied by mere leaves and branches. You might see the occasional anti-twig screed on some radical blog site, but this twigophobia is the result of the powerful Leaf & Branch Union and is a story too sordid to be told here.
In short, be proud of the lowly twig, and be happy for the small but valuable niche in life it holds. It cries every night as it holds your heart in its precious little hands, wishing for you to have the most wonderful life possible, and its only hope is that you return a tiny bit of the sentiment.
Nice little twig.
Good little twig.
Sleep tight.
So, how am I doing so far?
What I want is six legal laborers (easily to be gotten around here at 7 am on a Saturday) for 8 hours, armed with my chain saws, my mighty brush-wacker, wood-chipper, a soil tiller, trimmers, garden tools, root poisons, grass seed, and a truckload of mulch.
In one hard day, with me and the lad working hard and happily alongside, I think we could restore the immediate surrounds of the Maggie's HQ to pristine elegance. I do all I can on my own, but some jobs are more than I can handle in the time I have. Lots of rocks and evil vines.
It's a bitch of a job, but many hands make light work and labor is satisfying especially with many hands on board.
Will provide excellent and abundant take-out Mexican lunch for all. Beer with limes after the job is done. Payment in cash, of course, as is customary. The rate here is $100/day, and these guys work hard.
In the fall, I will also have some heavy-duty transplanting to be done but it's not the size of job that this one is.
Sunday, August 5. 2012
Being a natural-born, many-generational New England Yankee, I have to confess that I have disdain for "relaxation." Engagement with life can be passive or energetic.
Don't blame me: it's my culture. We must respect different cultures, and Yankees value effort.
Over the years, I have come to realize (slow-learner that I am) that energy level is a major determinant of success in pursuing one's goals. IQ? Not overly important. Physical appearance? Important only at the margins although being tall does help. Education? A slight edge up, but only for your first job.
Here's how I assess peoples' level of life vigor:
1. Play computer games? Low vigor by definition
2. Watch over 1 hr. of TV/day? Low vigor
3. Read at least book per week? Good mental vigor
4. Read Maggie's Farm daily? Good mental vigor
5. Play sports instead of watching sports? High vigor
6. Make music instead of listening to music? High vigor
7. Exercise daily above and beyond walking (or hold down a physical job)? High vigor
8. Work under 60 hrs/week? Low vigor
9. Sleep after 6 am? Low vigor
10 Live on takeout instead of home-cooked? Low vigor
I need to work on this and produce a copyrighted "Vigor Score." I'll get rich off of it, and annoy millions in the process.
Some Sunday fun ported over from my art gallery. More below the fold.
Continue reading "Calvin & Hobbes + snowmen"
The Kurds: The MidEast's Wild Card?
Entitled to Fail: Inside Italy’s Downward Spiral
The Popular Front Against Iran
Obama's Legacy: $25 Trillion in Debt by 2022
Caeser’s New Las Vegas Vomitorium
A prayer, please, for my ill friend Barry Rubin
GayPatriot: “Yeah, a three-person kiss and signs like “Eat More Carpet” will go a long way to changing social conservative attitudes toward gays.”
Health Care Costs and ObamaCare : “The federal government has demonstrated in its management of Medicare and Medicaid over the past half century that it has no capacity whatsoever to make prudent resource-allocation decisions in health care. Instead, to hit budget targets, the federal government always resorts to blunt, across-the-board cost cutting that harms the quality of patient care and reduces medical innovation.”
Europe’s Quiet Shale Revolution
Springsteen is “Howard Zinn with a guitar.”
(H/T: Doug Ross)
August 4, 1950: The Battle of Pusan, Korea
Psalm 51:1-12
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.
51:11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Lots of glacial kettle ponds out there. Very deep in the middle.
Saturday, August 4. 2012
At Inside Higher Ed, here's a truly educated fool speaking:
“As an administrator, those are the kinds of things I’m really sensitive to – what are the students saying – because even if it’s not true, the perception is their reality,” said William L. Howard, assistant vice president of academic services at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. In other words, while a student’s method of calling attention to perceived prejudice may be flawed, that perception of prejudice still exists. “If you say, ‘This is not an issue on my campus,’ and a student has an experience that is counter to that, you have to listen to them.”
Baloney. If the fraud is their reality, they do not belong in school.
This appellate decision from 1993 (h/t Volokh) is interesting to read, as much for its content as for the decision.
It tells a life story and a legal story.
After recommending Gombrich's Meditations On a Hobby Horse and Other Essays On the Theory of Art a month or so ago, I have been re-reading it after 20 years.
It's the deepest and most thoughtful stuff I have ever read about image-making and our responses to them, so dense with ideas that I can really only digest a sentence or two at a time.
Over the transom:
More below the fold -
Continue reading "Fatal Fotos"
 In a disused graveyard
The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.
Friday, August 3. 2012
 Day two and counting.
So far, so good. In case you haven't heard the horrific news yet, Bird Dog is on vacation until Tuesday, leaving the site in the clutches of the likes of me and Bulldog.
The modern, sophisticated mind reels at the very thought.
If you happen to see the big guy, let him know that everything's cool. I simply deleted all of those warning notices I received from the FCC yesterday, figuring by the time they get around to handing out the indictments, our valiant editor will be long back. I'm sure a quick phone call to Washington will clear everything right up.
As for today's video, I've run across a small handful of web vids over the years that really touched me inside, mainly because of the accompanying music. The collection is here.
Here's the latest addition.
From Liberals’ Tyranny of Tolerance:
One’s reaction to Cathy’s remarks shouldn’t turn on views of gay marriage – an issue so far from being a closed conversation that polling routinely shows the public split roughly down the middle on it. Rather, it should be anchored in the simple fact that the Chick-fil-A president didn’t breathe a word of intolerance, bigotry or even derision. In fact, he didn’t even make a political statement.
The poisonous trend at work here is a complete inversion of the traditional understanding of “tolerance.”
As articulated in the great Western tradition of liberalism (the name given to the political philosophy espousing individual liberty before it was hijacked by statists), tolerance means granting others the freedom of their own actions and views so long as they don’t harm others.
This view was ably expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, when, in regard to religious liberty, he said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
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Pic of a storm cell in southern Connecticut, on Sunday, taken by our webmeister. 
