Maggie's Farm

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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Thursday, February 8. 2007

Thursday Morning Links

I love this piece, on marriage. Sippican. This author is hiding his candle under a bushel by limiting his writing to a blog.

Defending China's pollution. Blair. I guess their pollution is cleaner, or more socialistic, or something. Anyway, it doesn't seem to count.

I blame global warming: The UK braces for major snowstorm. Times

Leftists always admire, or at least make excuses for, Fidel and now Chavez (and Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc in the past). Why not Hitler too - he was one. The Left and totalitarianism will be forever wedded. Must be, because socialism crushes the human spirit and, eventually, people rebel.

Who buys lottery tickets? Answer here. (h/t, Squaring the Boston Globe)

Save the Polar Bears: Open a garbage dump. SDA

New Green Crimes in the EU. Quote from Samizdata:

It used to be the dream of socialists and utopians of varying degrees of malevolence or stupidity to want a world state. In a world state, pesky local regulatory differences would be obliterated and replaced by a rational grid of laws from which no escape was possible. In true 'watermelon' fashion - green on the outside, red in the core - the Greens are embracing the instruments of a pan-national state to enforce their ideas.

Nice image of the not-yet-completed USS New York, an amphibious assault ship (LPD 21) containing 24 tons of WTC steel. What would you give to drive this baby around the block a few times?

 

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:09 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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The piiece on marriage is sweet. Liked the guy. Not like those revoltingly saccharine books by evangelical marriage and family therapists on hot sex and dates for Christian marriage. Every now and again it works. I call those lucky few the blessed ones. Most marriages start out like that. I always wonder what's their secret...Vaillant years ago wrote a book called Adaptations to Life about resiliency, what enables people to lead healthy, productive and meaninful lives despite difficult family backgrounds, circumstances, etc. http://www.amazon.com/Adaptation-Life-George-E-Vaillant/dp/0674004140

It would be interesting if someone other than that annoying "there must be at least 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative for marital success" Gottman guy could research what helps good marriages. If it's good people, God help all us miserable sinners who mean so well, but trip over our own feet and neuroses...
#1 retriever on 2007-02-08 06:37 (Reply)
The big things are bounden to be reciprocal--however high, so however low.
#2 buddy larsen on 2007-02-08 10:31 (Reply)
RE: Lottery tickets...

I know they are a tax on being stupid but I still buy them every now and again.

The marriage article was very good. I laughed out loud at this,

-I think the penalty for having two women is they should give you a third one. Happy now?-

And this,
-we ate pigeons at the reception. Tastes like chicken. Chickens that eat cigarette filters out of the gutter, I mean-

And this,
-making children using only Al Green records and two mixed drinks. -
#3 Patina on 2007-02-08 10:36 (Reply)
A Conservationist’s Lament

The world is finite, resources are scarce,
Things are bad and will be worse,
Coal is burned and gas exploded,
Forests cut and soils eroded.
Wells are dry and air’s polluted,
Dust is blowing, trees uprooted.
Oil is going, ores depleted,
Drains receive what is excreted.
Land is sinking, seas are rising,
Man is far too enterprising.
Fire will rage with Man to fan it,
Soon we’ll have a plundered planet.
People breed like fertile rabbits,
People have disgusting habits.

Moral:
The evolutionary plan
Went astray by involving man.

The Technologist’s Reply

Man’s potential is quite terrific,
You can’t go back to the Neolithic,
The cream is there for us to skim it,
Knowledge is power, and the sky’s the limit.
Every mouth has hands to feed it,
Food is found when people need it.
All we need is found in granite,
Once we have the men to plan it.
Yeast and algae give us meat,
Soil is almost obsolete.
Men can grow to pastures greener,
Till all the earth is Pasadena.

Moral:
Man’s nuisance, Man’s a crackpot,
But only man can hit the jackpot.
#4 Surefire on 2007-02-08 12:08 (Reply)
That's terrific Surefire, self done?
#5 Luther McLeod on 2007-02-08 12:55 (Reply)
That is really good Surefire. Thanks for posting.
#6 Patina on 2007-02-08 13:17 (Reply)
Surefire's poem is really neat,
a little acid, a little sweet.
A goal my own can never meet,
And so i'm free to toot and bleat.
#7 buddy larsen on 2007-02-08 13:31 (Reply)
It is so fitting that the USS New York have WTC armor. Let her sail for the freedom of mankind and to kill the enemies of that freedom.

(total sidebar) On her stern is a helipad and as you notice it is painted in a dark grey.
Back in the day, during Project Jennifer we had built the Glomar Explorer to retrieve the Golf class Soviet sub. Now remember this is an above TOP SECRET codeword only operation.
Well somebody thinks it would be a neat idea if we put green astroturf on the helipad so we could have a place to play miniture golf. Then someone with real seagoing experience pointed out to the CIA that large swaths of green on a vessel at sea was a sign of distress....there ensued quite a scramble to rip up the astroturf and toss it overboard lest the Soviet satillites pick up on this curious ship. They didn't until the LA Times published a story about the mission.
#8 Habu on 2007-02-08 13:36 (Reply)
I can't claim it. I wish I were that clever.

Also sorry I don't have the author.
#9 Surefire on 2007-02-08 13:49 (Reply)
Just an incidental, but years ago, (73?) I was working right next to where the Glomar tied up when in port. I always felt there was something going on.
#10 Luther McLeod on 2007-02-08 13:53 (Reply)

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