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.
It's Spring up here, so I'm gonna get me one, in black. Be the first guy on your block to have one. Those Brooks Brother's dead sheep logos are so dorky, and the Ralph Lauren polo player is just plain gay, and nobody wants to be gay unless they are. A seahorse is cool, like Neptune.
Apparently, the Chinese people who travel to Malaysia are doing so in reduced numbers due to the loss of Malaysian Air Flight 370. When I heard this I thought, "Well, nobody said people are rational."
My initial thinking was that air flight is still safe, so if the issue is safety, that's odd. My wife replied, "It's perfectly rational. They think the Malaysian government has mishandled this and they're punishing the government by not traveling."
At first, I thought this was a good reply, but then I thought again. It's still irrational. For two reasons.
The first is a soft reason. 'Punishing' a government is something we all need to do. Governments very rarely do anything right or useful. One could argue the corruption and mismanagement in China is so pervasive, it would do the Chinese tourists well to fix their own government first. I don't know what they are doing, but given the state of affairs there, one could reasonably argue 'not much'. The same is true here, in the U.S., for us. It's a reasonable point, but it doesn't fully make a strong case for how irrational the Malaysian tourism behavior is.
The second reason is that the tourism isn't really hurting the government. Boycotts real people and businesses and rarely send a message to governments. People and businesses who had nothing to do with the missing plane or the mismanagement of the search are impacted. These people rely on tourists, particularly wealthy Chinese, to maintain themselves and their businesses. While it's true this impacts the Malaysian government in terms of taxes, and it could lead to a reversal for the ruling party in the next election. This may impact the current politicians, but is unlikely to yield any meaningful reform. Most importantly, along these lines, it's not expected to be long-lasting. For any meaningful impact, behavior like this would have to be consistent over time.
In the past, I've been guilty of thinking along similar lines when a foreign government didn't do something I thought was right. Over time, I've learned, assuming the government is the people is the wrong attitude. The two are frequently very different things. Chinese tourists may feel better about themselves by not traveling to Malaysia, but it's odd to think they are having any kind of impact, except on the business owners who rely on the stream of visitors they usually get.
I submit that many Americans — regardless of race — are increasingly exhausted by what Chief Justice Roberts declared in 2006 was this “sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
Yikes! A friend of mine forwarded me this video. Not sure if it was a competition, but it seems to be given the spectators and the stunts. This not the kind of mountain biking I do, but I am impressed at the skill and guts. Can you smell the fear? Oh, that's me...
My friend Debbie Cabaniss et al got around to writing this book before I got around to it: Psychodynamic Formulation.
I have written about Psychiatric diagnosis often here, and I re-post my pieces each year. It is a complicated topic, because Psychiatric complaints originate from all sorts of sources and usually multiple sources, and an exhaustive psychodynamic formulation is not always relevant to minor life problems.
When it is relevant, a serious formulation is a difficult thing to do unless one just casually links history to current complaints. That's not a real formulation.
The current fad in Psychiatry is the DSM, which a robot could do. In many situations a DSM "diagnosis" is nothing more than a list of complaints useful only for an insurance claim and has nothing to do with understanding an individual person.
We probably all remember Obama's "You didn't build that" speech. Which, of course, was really lifted from Elizabeth Warren's "You didn't build that" speech, itself lifted from yet someone else whose views helped frame the Occupy Movement.
Dr. Bliss queried about challenging and difficult things which can be intrinsically rewarding despite their effort, complexity, difficulty.
Making music has to be the highest of all hobbies, and understanding music perhaps comes second, but fly-fishing is one of the more humble but still somewhat complex things as are most absorbing hobbies, like woodworking to photography to baseball. Anybody is blessed to have one or two hobbies.
In the US, it's not the 0.01% of movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, hedgie stars, and NYC heiresses. It's the other end - single parents. Anyway, Piketty is Frenchand thus not worth thinking about.
...common to all these cases is the notion of a technocracy of better-educated elites who know what is best for their social inferiors. They just know that gas-burning yokels have to be taught to forgo natural gas. For the right people to be in places to affirm affirmative action, then hoi polloi must accept that affirmative-action allowances be made to give them power. They know that tea-party zealots have to be taught that their politics are bad for America’s trajectory and that tax laws must make accommodations for that fact. Women must somehow be persuaded that liberal abortion laws are good for both them and the collective.
Once we go down that road of assumed noble ends justifying questionable means, then anything becomes not just possible but assured.
In the Northeast US, now is the time to clean out, or put out, your Bluebird houses for the Eastern Bluebird. I have no advice regarding the Western Bluebird, but it's probably similar.
If you don't have the sort of habitat that Bluebirds like, the houses will likely be inhabited by Wrens, House Sparrows, Tree Swallows (if there is any water nearby), Chickadees - or mice.
The point of Bluebird houses is Bluebirds. They will only nest in holes, and there's lots of competition for holes because lots of critters who need holes are not able to make them.
What's Bluebird habitat? They do not live in the woods, and they don't live in suburbia unless it's 5+ acre zoning. They like woodland edges, hedge rows, meadows with fences and large (5+ acres) lawns, large gardens, old apple trees. They do not mind living with humans, and often seem to like having barns and sheds around. To make it simple, if you see them hanging around in April, it means it's the right area for them. You can't really attract them - they have to want to be there in the first place. Like their competitor Tree Swallows, they like their nest boxes in open spaces, not so much on trees but on barns seems OK.
Another factoid about Bluebirds is that, if you have one pair around, there are probably more, and they do not seem to mind sharing an area: you can put up two boxes per acre, maybe more. People build Bluebird Trails in exurban, semi-rural, and rural areas because everybody likes to see them.
At the Farm, I have my own Bluebird Trail of around 20 nest boxes, mostly nailed to fence posts, some to utility poles. Generally about half of mine are used by Bluebirds, half by other things. In a good year, Bluebirds can raise two broods. Snakes are the main predators of nestlings, so metal poles are probably best but I don't bother much about that.
I recommend the one pictured, via Best Nest. The extra piece of wood is to deter predators. Easy to make them yourself, though. Just make the hole the right size (1 1/2" diam), and place them properly. When I was young, my brother and I made them on an assembly line, using Dad's table saw and the free pine scraps from the lumber yard. If you do, don't paint or stain them. Birds prefer plain wood, rough and un-sanded preferably.
This week, we'll do the sorts of things which are tough to do, require exertion of some sort, self-discipline, and can be frustrating or exasperating, but in which the process itself contains gratification as well as a (hopefully) somewhat gratifying result. In other words, a mix of intrinsic and delayed gratification.
Here are a few (or maybe most) of mine:
- Practicing piano - Tennis - Painting a picture - Practicing my firearm skills - Working at my job - Complex travel planning - diving deep into prayer - cooking a perfect and loving meal - Sailboat racing - horse jumping - singing in the church choir - yard work, planting, pruning, garden design - reading fairly serious books - life is too short for fluff - fly fishing - it is fly-fishing week here at Maggie's - investing my money - taking a long run on a late April morning with the dog - raising kids
What are some of the things you find difficult, frustrating, or exertional, but take pleasure in the process too, not just in the completion or the result?
Spring Peepers. They aren't called Hyla crucifer anymore, but I stick with the old name. They are the first musicians in the spring chorus emanating from the vernal pools, swamps, and ponds at night as soon as the ice begins to melt.
People rarely see them because they are so tiny, and nocturnal. After breeding, they leave the water as do Wood Frogs, Grey Tree Frogs, Leopard Frogs, and of course the toads.
Those two pics are Spring Peepers. They are usually grey-brown, but I have seen them turn green on a leaf.
It's worth living near a marsh in the Eastern US just for the two months of free nachtmusik from our amphibian friends. By mid-May, the toads and larger frogs will join the chorus.
Here are the frogs and toads of the Eastern US. Mostly northeastern. I've never seen a Mink Frog, but we have all of the others at the Farm. The Grey Tree frogs make a racket, but they are rarely seen because their camo on trees and bushes changes to match the bark. All you can see are their eyes.
I think it's fun to identify them all by their Spring mating calls, especially because (like owls) you rarely see them. This site gives a brief description and a recording of their individual calls.
I have come to think that it's not so much about ideology and abandoning the canon of mankind's works over the past 10,000 years, but it's more about marketing to the kids. It's disgusting, and it saddens me.
If the U of C were in Big Ten football, they could and probably would keep their core and their soul. They are selling their soul for a bowl of lentils. It's greed.
Marxism is back, and Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” might be its new Bible. But both
Piketty and the Marxist movement miss the real danger of inequality.
Resegregation in the American South - Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, show how separate and unequal education is coming back.
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. 2Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"
4But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
6"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "
8Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
I cannot hear this one without tearing up. We ask non-believer and other-believer readers to be tolerant of all of our Holy Week posts: it's just my "spiritual orientation," ya dig? In my blood. At Maggie's, all spiritual orientations are welcome.
Everybody has his own spiritual orientation, like it or not. It's human. Christians orient themselves to Christ, who we see as the Messiah who was promised, our North Star, rock, redeemer and salvation. As apes, there may be only a little good in us, but we can be changed. That's the offer. Take it or leave it. Speaking only for myself, I don't care at all about eternal life but I care very much about the richness and depth of my life today.
Today is Holy Saturday for the Catholics, but we Protestant Yankee New Englanders just call it "yard chore Saturday" or Trout Fishing Saturday.
I was thinking about how the term "pious" has become an almost derogatory, if not derogatory, term, which took me to Euthyphro. Never get in a debate with Socrates expecting to win, but always get in one if you want to be forced to re-think what you think.
The US geography 
In the Northeast US, now is the time to clean out, or put out, your Bluebird houses for the 
A few weeks ago, we did this: 
Spring Peepers. They aren't called Hyla crucifer anymore, but I stick with the old name. They are the first musicians in the spring chorus emanating from the vernal pools, swamps, and ponds at night as soon as the ice begins to melt. 
pics are Spring Peepers. They are usually grey-brown, but I have seen them turn green on a leaf.
When Lenin 
A view from ye olde fishing club yesterday morning.