Tuesday, November 30. 2010
 Amusing comment from a friend yesterday: It's not Advent, it's Advert. I advised said friend to enjoy Saturnalia while it's still legal.
Santa ideas: A biography of the Atlantic Ocean
Watch for this, and maybe call your Senators today (Senate switchboard # 202-224-3121): Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act vote imminent: Would outlaw gardening and saving seeds
More on S-510:Crucial Senate Vote Today on FDA Food “Safety” Bill
These people are insane.
Few nations were created, much less founded, on an ideal.
Read warmist Mead on Cancun, and then read Volokh.
Those two cover this fiasco/scam. You know how we feel: we pray for warming. It's too darn cold up here.
The Admin looks pathetic with these Wiki leaks.
And Hillary looks worse. It's on her watch, too. 3 million had access to these cables? In that case, not so secret. Essentially public.
It must be Christmas: Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts
Very groovy, man. Like I said, it's Saturnalia season. We say "Behead the infidels." They show very bad manners, but it's oh so avant garde, no?
Mental health professionals gone mad (h/t reader): Adult Picky Eaters Now Recognized as Having a Disorder
We're all nuts.
Is education local or federal? WSJ: The GOP's Education Dilemma
We say local.
Somebody at Am Thinker thinks the O ain't so smart.
What were his grades? Oh, I forgot. They wouldn't release them.
The squiggly light bulb insanity.
I rebel against government cheese, lightbulbs, medical care, and almost everything else those bozos come up with.
Going around: Despotism Made Easy
Watch out: The education industry is discovering mastery.
More fun with the Palin obsession.
Let's face it: Palin sells.
Monday, November 29. 2010
I posted the nifty story about Stuxnet this morning. Now it turned out that maybe the scientist in Iran who was assassinated was their Stuxnet expert.
This is getting as good as John Le Carre. Where can I buy the movie rights to this fun story? I am thinking Russell Crowe as something. The head of Mossad or something. A cameo for Johnny Depp as the motorcycle assassin.
But who for the love interest?
Re that Looking for Racism piece we (and many others) linked a while ago:
I spent most of the summers of my youth working side-by-side with black guys, doing manual labor. Mostly landscaping and in lumber yards, back before all the Mexicans arrived. My folks required us to labor during the summers. They did not wish to produce spoiled, snotty brats.
I loved those dudes, and they liked me. We were a bit culturally alien, but we all liked good music and thought about Jesus. They all grew up in the South. The differences made us more interesting to eachother. They'd invite me back to their places after work to listen to Kenny Burrell, smoke some weed (to which they introduced me), and drink cheap wine and smoke Pall Malls (the red packages - delicious unfiltered smokes) until it was time for me to wobble my parents' station wagon away from downtown back to Whitelandia. I miss them.
In my view, modern racism is an invention of the race-pimps and pols who make a good living off of inventing it and then exploiting it. Even Al and Jesse have trouble finding problems nowadays and, believe me, they do look for signs of them everywhere.
Listening to cool Kenny takes me back to those good old days.
 Some report claims that 20% of the population, and 30% of youth, had a mental illness last year.
I think this must be a gross over-diagnosing of people who are going through tough times in their lives.
Feeling depressed, fearful, and even having suicidal ideas, however, can be quite normal for people in jams. If you apply a DSM checklist to 100 random people, you could come up with at least one diagnosis for every one of them.
Sometimes I feel that modern Psychiatry and pharmacology imagines that anybody who doesn't feel perfect all the time must be assigned a diagnosis (and maybe given a pill or two). Here at Maggie's, we term that Psycho-utopianism - and we have the trademark on that term.
Life is tough. Being a person can be tough. Most people's problems stem from dealing with themselves. I cannot assign a diagnosis to many of the patients I see (but I make them up when need be, for their insurances). If you have trouble with your feelings or your behavior, there is some help out there. Few cures, but plenty of help despite what the article implies.
I did get a kick out of this part:
The survey also found that 23.8 percent of women had some form of mental illness, compared with 15.6 percent of men.
We all know why the gender inequality there: hormones, and having to deal with kids and men.
The O'Quiz, via Tiger.
I didn't know who BB was. My score tells me that I waste entirely too much time on trivial ephemera, such as quizzes like this.
 Via Washington Reb (whence our morning artwork), at The Lost Art of Self-Preservation (for Women), the blogger begins:
I wrote only one post last week, and that was deliberate. I had begun to feel as though all of my posts were reactions to things I found frustrating in the culture, and negative reactions at that. I am, I realize, a natural pessimist, but I genuinely believe - no matter how crackpot-y it sounds - that we are headed toward some kind of real crisis in this country that will be long and messy and extremely unpleasant and in which most of our vulnerabilities will be exposed and tested and for which most of us are totally unprepared. I don't know what it will be exactly, it may be a number of events coalescing into a greater Crisis, but I've felt it coming for awhile now. The mood of the general population has turned sour and, the news seems full of articles questioning whether this or that is foreshadowing of the coming unspecified (though usually economic) apocalypse.
She needs to lighten up and to realize that there is nothing new under the sun.
Saying the wrong thing in Austria: Yet Another trial.
And more from speech defendant Elisabeth Wolff: The Time That is Given Us
Through the past, darkly: The '60s at 50, blurred
A Family Reunion during WW ll
Doctors beginning to avoid Medicare patients
Outpatient Medicare treatment has become charity care. We linked this solution last week.
Gateway: Job-Killer Obama Sets Aside 187,000 Miles For Overpopulated Polar Bears
I think the bears need sex education in grade school
Elderly white women from Iowa as terrorists
You can tell them by those fish stickers on their Tauruses
Boot: Journalism That Knows No Shame
Wikileaks – Anti-Israel Foreign Policy Experts Got Saudi Arabia, Other Arab Countries 100% Backward On Iran Attack
NY Post: CAIR's Jihad
TNR: To Mobilize the Indies, We Need Stronger Unions
Brilliant idea. Kill more jobs, make more people dependents.
Obama's boredom problem
Since when is boredom a sign of genius? Boredom is an attitude - and the sign of an inactive mind.
Ten Things You Need to Know About DREAM Act Amnesty
Karma: SEIU Kicks Members’ Kids to the Curb
American minorities have a GOP problem:
...the GOP has no racial challenge. The challenge belongs to America's minority communities and to the remnant in America who have an appreciation for the United States' historic greatness and a devotion to maintaining the freedom that allowed that greatness to emerge. The challenge for the latter is to expand their appreciation and devotion to all segments of the American populace; the challenge for the former is to shed the blinders that have kept them tethered to a statist, collectivist philosophy and to recognize that, while very far from perfect, the GOP has a much better chance than the Democrats of restoring the American commitment to personal freedom, free enterprise, traditional culture, and economic prosperity.
Bad news: Pa. guv: You cannot protect yourself
But he has a bodyguard and a cop on duty. I have only myself.
Jay Ambrose: Good motives can produce bad results
Duh. He's been slow to learn the Law of Unintended Consequences - and the Iron Law of Incentive
The Euro bailout plan is running down
Sunday, November 28. 2010
 At some point, we become inured to the shrill Chicken Littles who make a crisis out of everything they wish to control. It all makes The Englishman want to blow smoke in their faces.
Last I read, there is really no harm at all to second-hand smoke.
George Will, in today's Our puritanical progressives, says it this way:
Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives' agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise - an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism's itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon - the Pecksniffian progressive.
I have no desire to be improved, unless they can make me taller, smarter, richer, and better-looking - and a few years younger. I would pay money for those things. She Who Must Be Obeyed would pay money to get those things for me, too.
Now is the right but final time to fertilize fruit trees, grape vines, ornamental trees, etc. in northern climes.
Those roots are alive and hungry right now, storing up fat for Spring before they go dormant - even though the leaves are off. Just go easy with the fertilizer on the apple trees. Excess fertilizer encourages rusts. Too little is better than too much for them.
And, while we're at it, don't forget to try my trick. If you have good strong perennial herbs in pots (sage, marjoram, thyme), turn the pots upside down in the dirt for the winter. Odds are that they will spring back to life with a vengeance when global warming warms things up in April. Even it they don't, it will protect your pots from cracking from ice.
I bring my 3 year-old Rosemary bush indoors, but people might have better ideas for that. I like having it in the kitchen so I can run my hands though it. Makes me smell good. It barely survives the winter, but jumps back to life when we cut it back, and put it outdoors in April. My bro keeps his potted Rosemary in his garage, like some people do with their figs. (I let my fig rough it. I just throw a tarp over it and hope for the best.) One of these years, I will plant my Rosemary next to the foundation and cover it with a couple of layers of polyurethane for the winter. The goal would be to have a 6' Rosemary bush like they have at Oxford, and everywhere in Italy.
This guy in CA proudly posted his healthy but ramshackle Rosemary hedge:
 Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, relatively rare in the US but an excellent, sturdy hunting breed. They look quite a bit like the Spinone.
I have hunted with them several times. Close hunters, they do not run around like maniacs and they do not tire. All they do is find the birds - and grumble if you miss them.
 It's the first Sunday of Advent. Nobody knows when He'll come again but, in a small way, He can be reborn in us each Christmas - or anytime we are ready for it. That's the happy story. Another part of the story is the hard story of Judgement:
Matthew 24:36-44
24:36 "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
24:37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark,
24:39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
24:43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
24:44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Saturday, November 27. 2010
Throw some hunks of coal or wood in there, and crank it up and warm it up.
How many times do you need to listen to a Beethoven Piano sonata to really get it? My dumb ears require at least 40 times to get the feel and flow, the intended tone, and to learn the notes.
I am slow to allow a piece of music (or of anything else) to become a part of my soul. I try to maintain high, discerning walls - which frequently fail.
The sonata form is said to be the core of Beethoven's talent. He wrote 32 piano sonatas, and I have them in a boxed set.
Piano sonata 19 in G minor, opus 49, (like the G-major), was written as a Sonates facile for learners and practicers.
I'm not shopping for anything this weekend. I do not shop - crass materialism is against my religion although I confess enjoying getting stuff from other people. Are you shopping? If you are, here's The Techno-Holiday Shopping Guide (Pic above of American Shopping Eagle via Vanderleun from Kaching.)
Tolkien's anarcho-monarchistic politics
Maine Family Robinson: If you want to see a well-off person splutter, make them pay a plumber.
The government should pay my plumber. And my lawyer. And my doctor.
MEP Euroskeptic Nigel Farage: "Just who the hell do you think you are?"
He is one of the good guys.
About those dumb white guys: Advertising's Hidden Second Message
We middle-aged working white guys are misunderestimated, even if we aren't cool. Cool is for pre-teens. Manliness and Womanliness are for adults. Many of us are stuck somewhere in between.
We need more food inspections?
Next thing, they'll have unionized TSA-type guys feeling up my tomato plants, reaching in under the leaves.
At The American, The Protected Class:
Every worker will be asked to make sacrifices as governments put their fiscal houses in order. Private-sector workers should be confident they are treated the same as public-sector workers.
Lucianne termed it "Momma Griz goes THWAP!"
I think it was a mistake from the start. Just another jobs program.
Unless to hang him? Yeah, that must be why.
Give Maggie's Farm half of Daily Kos' readership, for equality's sake. On second thought...maybe they would be an annoyance.
Tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised. Better to cut rates and get 19% of a larger pie.
Hauser misses the point. The intent is to make you poorer, that's all. Ever see a Lefty worry about debt?
From the number of waivers, it already has.
End the "doc fix" and allow balance-billing.
But that would reduce gummint control of our docs.
 Aftermath
When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
Sometimes they do. These very hardy shrub roses are obviously warmed by the house, and are on the south side thus sheltered from cold winds.
Next challenge: Get them to Christmas.
Next chore: put back all the screens that blew off in the last storm.
Friday, November 26. 2010
Want something meaty to chew on tonight? Raymond Tallis' How Can I Possibly Be Free?
He begins:
This essay is an attempt to persuade you of something that in practice you cannot really doubt: your belief that you have free will. It will try to reassure you that it is not naïve to feel that you are responsible, and indeed morally responsible, for your actions. And it will provide you with arguments that will help you answer those increasing numbers of people who say that our free will is an illusion, or that belief in it is an adaptive delusion implanted by evolution.
Like a raccoon dragging off some hunk of good garbage, my brother grabbed one of the two turkey carcasses last night while helping with clean-up. Naturally, he took the grilled and semi-smoked carcass which has a richer flavor (enhanced by my injecting it throughout with cider before cooking). We did not have any meat left over from two 18-pounders, but plenty of cornbread-sausage stuffing, which to me is as good as meat. (Next year, maybe we'll do three - or get two ginormous ones which I do not like because they take too long to cook).
His Mrs. commented: "I see I'll be eating turkey soup for the next four days."
I'll freeze the other carcass for my next round of Jus Gibier.
I have always felt that the leftovers are the best part. Nine Ways to Use Leftover Turkey
I am re-posting this because, as I slowly get through it (slowly because there is so much in it - I am reading it every night), I appreciate it more and more. Some of you cultural history types might put it on a Christmas list.
Another book I am reading, with far more pleasure than the gruesome After the Reich, is Peter Watson's The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century.
Since there was no real idea of "Germany" as a nation until 1817 (The Deutscher Bund), and no modern nation of Germany until 1871, the book is mostly about German culture (which preceded any German nation and which continues to exist beyond the boundaries of modern Germany - Austria, northeast Italy, Switzerland, the entire diaspora of German Jews, etc).
From the review in The Guardian:
So, is there a German genius? Of course there is. Even Borges never suggested that Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers could have been written in Spanish, or Einstein's "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter K�rper" in English. Of all the answers assembled by Watson, the clearest comes from the American philosopher John Dewey in 1915, who summed up German civilisation as a "self-conscious idealism with unsurpassed technical efficiency and organisation". By idealism, he meant a belief that behind appearances or phenomena is some super-reality, sometimes called Geist, sometimes called Wille, sometimes even Musik. Whatever it is called, it speaks accurate German.
His chapter on German Idealism is especially good. Hegel and his brethren inform our thinking today far more than I realized.
 LP-CD turntables?
Seems to me it would be a good motivation to listen to one's dusty LP collection while putting them on CD where they belong.
Pic is this one.
Lots of reviews of these things say that they do not work well. I'd be concerned about the coordination of the endings of the LP and the CD.
 Photo: For your list for Santa, the Pfeifer-Zeliska .600 Nitro Express Handgun. Very handy if your home is invaded by some Cape Buffalo.
We're adding a new link to our roll: The Iconoclast.
Finally added the shooter to our roll. Mostly Politics. Didn't mean to overlook them.
Not for the blogroll, but I need this info: Pick-up Artist Forum. Especially the Social Shyness and Anxiety section. Thought I was the only guy with that little hang-up. I am the sort of guy that girls have to figure out how to pick up.
Buy three, get one free at Thorlos Socks. They are the Official Maggie's Farm casual and outdoor socks.
We also added The Last Psychiatrist to our list this week. He is the author of posts like How Not to Meet Women, and A Generational Pathology: Narcissism Is Not Grandiosity. We're an eclectic website. Eclectic is a euphemism for not knowing what we are doing.
Here's a book any guy would like for Christmas: Hemingway's Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway
James Kibbie put his performances of all of Bach's organ works online, for free downloading. Nice of him to do that.
Taranto: Donkey Turkeys: They explain the election: You're stupid and Obama's right-wing
Jacoby: No subsidy for NPR, Taxpayer money is wasted on a biased institution that should stand on its own
A good Friedman bit for Thanksgiving: The Free Lunch Myth (h/t Moonbattery):
Thursday, November 25. 2010
Today I'm a turkey! Actually, some say, every day. But every 7-years my birthday comes out on Thanksgiving. I was given some yummy chocolates. My sons ate them. I cooked a yummy turkey and sides. My family and friends ate it. I bought an expensive ricotta cheese cake. They ate that, too.
But, I wasn't left with nothing, was I?
A friend sent me this wisdom from George Carlin:
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited
about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!"
You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on
five! That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the
words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21. . . YEAS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED, we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40.
Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 . . . and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a
day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92." Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
Seasick Steve with some Mississippi Disco (with comments about what is real and what is not).
And the North Mississippi Allstars:
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