Maggie's Farm

At Aeon, Earth is not a garden - Some of the world’s most powerful conservationists are giving up on wilderness. They are making a big mistake. A quote:

 The garden metaphor is particularly loaded. A garden is not an ethical place. Life and death occurs at a gardener’s caprice. Plant or cut, tend or kill, include or exclude: it’s an exercise of morally unconstrained will, fine in a backyard but requiring boundaries both literal and philosophical. ‘Once we shift to a gardener’s mindset, it gives us too much freedom to do whatever we want,’ says the bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick. ‘And I’m speaking as an avid gardener.’

In a garden, there isn’t necessarily a sense that life has any value apart from what we assign. Neither individual beings nor larger entities – populations, communities, species, ecological processes – are intrinsically worthy of respect. The gardener ethic can’t account for that. What Leopold so eloquently advised, that we think of ourselves not as conquerors of life’s communities but as ‘plain members and citizens’, goes out the window.

My neighborhood sweep stopped by yesterday for a routine cleaning, and informed me that I had some creosote glaze in the flue. (Like me, many of us up here burn firewood in our fireplaces daily, doing our part to fend off the coming Ice Age and to provide homey comfort and warmth to our humble abodes. The farm still has a good-sized mountain of hard coal in the basement to use when needed. You can just throw a few hunks on the fire if you want to.)

It's not not a good thing to have creosote glaze, because a sweep's brushes cannot remove it and it presents a chimney fire risk. He blamed it on my habit of burning green and damp wood, but said that any long-used flue will accumulate glaze over time.

He proposed a treatment plan: Cre-Away powder and Anti Creo-Soot Spray. These things claim to change the glaze into something brushable. The active ingredient is a catalyst which degrades creosote.

There are these things too, at Amazon.

I ordered some. I wonder whether it would work on my coronary arteries.

Lastly, anybody with fire in the house needs one of these:  Chimney Fire Suppressent

It's a career for people who do not wish to work in a cubicle. Our guy charges $125 per visit, and $50 for each additional chimney. (We have 3, so it's like a doctor's house call.)

He says he tries to do 8-10 calls per day, so this retired fireman makes $1200+ per work day, and takes the entire summer fishing on Cape Cod with his grandkids.

It's open, as of now. Good fun. Walk from the beginning on 34th St. down to Gansevoort St., and then have a nice high-protein lunch in the West Village's old meatpacking district.

We like Macelleria.

Matthew 20:1-16

20:1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

20:2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

20:3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace;

20:4 and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went.

20:5 When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same.

20:6 And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?'

20:7 They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.'

20:8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.'

20:9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.

20:10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.

20:11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,

20:12 saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.'

20:13 But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?

20:14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.

20:15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

20:16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

Verreaux's Eagle Owl in Zambia a week ago

I haven't used Alan, but a pal recommends his travel deals.

I do love ships and boats. Being at sea is great, regardless of destination. I have ex-Navy friends and relatives who beg to differ.

Several versions of this American classic. 

I think it was inspired by Zorba The Greek.

Johns Hopkins study: Huge gulf between D.C. political class and the rest of America

Pic from the article. Tell me, what impression is that rockpile designed to make on the ordinary citizen?

One in three Americans can’t name a single branch of the U.S. government

Not the America Jefferson had in mind

The Media's Absurd NFL Hysteria

Beta Male War on Football and Biology

The latest culinary fad: famine food - Middle-class foodies are paying a fortune to eat what peasants once lived on.

How Sugar Daddies Are Financing College Education - The popular website Seeking Arrangement sets up "mutually
beneficial relationships" between wealthy older men and young female
students.

The beginning of the end of the hedge fund gravy train?

California regulates massages

Definitely an important role of government. RR: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

Shakespeare Didn't Really Want To Kill All The Lawyers, But We Should Deregulate Their Profession (h/t, Insty)

Birth Control Without a Prescription - An unusual Republican proposal makes medical sense

What Alibaba really teaches us about the world

Angry with Washington, 1 in 4 Americans open to secession

Whistleblower in Scott Walker Case Pays Heavy Price

Well-Heeled and Wrongheaded in California - Tom Steyer spends millions to stop energy exploration.

The U.N.’s Climate-Summit Charade

Krauthammer:  Islamic State Logic: Dragging U.S. Into Mesopotamian War

Related, consensus within the ruling class is setting America on course to demonstrate impotence

Those guys are manipulating us

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Industrial Espionage and Cutthroat Competition Fueled the Rise of the Humble Harmonica

Why everything you think you know about salt could be wrong

Is All Spanking Child Abuse? - The Left wants to tie reasonable parents who spank their children to the Peterson case.

Hitting Your Kids is Legal in All 50 States

For the first time in American statistical history, the majority of American adults are single

College Launches Group for White Students to Combat Their White Privilege

Next-gen Zumwalt-class destroyer

Looks like the Monitor - or the Merrimack

Why Samizdata wanted Scotland to vote Yes

The cat just got up from the couch as soon as I sat down. When will these microaggressions end?

"Sorry, but it’s your fault if you’re offended all the time"

Campus Reform's Caleb Bonham discusses crazy college classes

A NYC Bartender's Powerful Open Letter To The Hedge Funder Who Allegedly Grabbed Her Ass

Funny

Islamic Welfare Colonists Demand Free Halal Food in Minnesota

NBC: Survive Home Invasion By Cooperating With Invaders, 'Treat Them Like Royalty'

A reverse Castle Doctrine

Understanding America’s ridiculously large $17 trillion economy by comparing US metro areas to entire countries

Eight bodies found after attack on Guinea Ebola education team

BEWARE FALSE FLAG SITE "THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE": Shares an Office with Far Left American Prospect

Is that true?

John Kerry, Master Dhimmi

ISIL is not a terror group - just ordinary Islam warriors with an ancient history

Rotherham:  A Nice Place to Raise Your Kids

Is it “Moral” to Restrict Fossil Fuel Use

Hey, I Sort of Watched Hillary Clinton's Top Aides Scrub All Damaging Benghazi Files Out of the Official Records

Worse than Watergate

Pay Attention to this Gas Deal in Israel

Why Sunnis and Shiites hate eachother

Mattis: US Ground Combat Troops Must Be Option Against ISIL

Rift widens between Obama, U.S. military over strategy to fight Islamic State

DNI: Obama's intelligence-gathering limits boost U.S. risk

Australia raids foil reported ISIS beheading plots

Not really ISIS - ISIS-sympathizers

Why Women Do Not Belong in the U.S. Infantry

Photo is another from Zambia - a Great Egret. Basically the same bird in North America, which we used to term American Egret.

Remembrance of Trumpets Past -Rosh Hashanah as described in the Torah looks very different from the Rosh Hashanah we know today. What happened, and what exactly are Jews celebrating?

Boswell promised not to attend more executions but ultimately always gave in to his morbid compulsion

Lincoln Log Manufacturing Moving to Maine

Beyoncé’s Theology of the Body

How Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human History

Don't Be a Jerk. Buy Life Insurance.

How many young women can a school legally punish for dress code violations?

California Sorority in Trouble After Taco Event Deemed Racist

Tacos are racist

Not safe to display American flag in American high school

American flag is racist

Could the Apprenticeship Model Work Here?

Despite Liberal Media’s War on Football: Rate of Criminality in NFL Half That of General Public

Why Congress will never take back the NFL’s tax break

Ray Rice vs. Bill Clinton

Chinatown Bus Pioneer Fung Wah Strangled by Federal Bureaucracy

Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation Accused of Tax Law Violations

Surber: Go away, Hillary

Thornston on GMO: When Activism Kills

Are things good enough in California?

Even the New York Times Fears Socialized Medicine

Obamacare: From game-changer to background noise

Scotland’s Moment of Destiny

Scottish Independence: Politicians Love Democracy So Much They're Trying To Subvert It

The “No Boots on the Ground” Mantra is Strategic Foolishness

40% of Europe's Jews hide their Jewishness

The Islamic State of Sexual Violence

How Peace Negotiator Martin Indyk Cashed a Big, Fat $14.8 Million Check From Qatar

Lonely Ukraine - The embattled Eastern Europe country is finding few real allies in its struggle with Russia.

Cool stuff, and a cool life story, from a guy who I barely remember from 12th grade Art History. This dude is having a fun evening: Three Lovers:

The Grand Tour, 2.0 - Can today’s travel deliver on the promise of the Grand Tour – or is the idea of edifying travel utterly bankrupt?

No, not if you ask me. The more people are able to get out of their comfort zones, the better. Furthermore, the only brake I know to slow the rapid passage of time in life is new experiences, new places, new stimulation, new people, and new ideas. Otherwise, it can all just be a blur of same, same and, next thing you know, seven years have passed.