Sunday, November 14. 2010
No, it is not a Flying Fish.
Saturday, November 13. 2010
Our post this week about Grizzlies reminded me of Kephart's 1906 classic, Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness.
It's very much in the Teddy Roosevelt vein, and I have no doubt that he read it.
One quote from the interview:
One miserable November day I was down there on the sideline, wet, cold. And I looked up to the top of the stadium, and there was the press box. Shelter! I knew they had heaters in there with them, and these people were sitting there in complete comfort while we’re miserable down here on the field. They’re writing, they’re typing, and they’re warm. Then and there I decided to become a writer.
Is this image via Moonbattery fair, or just a cheap ad hominen shot along the lines of "Bush is retarded"? Name-calling.
As I understand it, "narcissism" covers a spectrum from wholesome self-respect (which must be earned), to dangerous sociopathy (manifested by an inability to care about, or even to deeply recognize, the existence of others except as tools).
The Wiki piece on Malignant Narcissism says this:
"The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism."
That sounds pretty bad. To understand these things, one really needs to understand in detail how a person relates to others and what they mean to him. You can't do that by watching somebody on TV.
Here's a post on the topic: Narcissism in High-Functioning Individuals – Big Ego or Severe Disorder?
Sweeney Among The Nightingales
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward toward the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney guards the horned gate. Gloomy Orion and the Dog Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas; The person in the Spanish cape Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees Slips and pulls the table cloth Overturns a coffee-cup, Reorganized upon the floor She yawns and draws a stocking up; The silent man in mocha brown Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes; The waiter brings in oranges Bananas figs and hothouse grapes; The silent vertebrate in brown Contracts and concentrates, withdraws; Rachel née Rabinovitch Tears at the grapes with murderous paws; She and the lady in the cape Are suspect, thought to be in league; Therefore the man with heavy eyes Declines the gambit, shows fatigue, Leaves the room and reappears Outside the window, leaning in, Branches of wisteria Circumscribe a golden grin; The host with someone indistinct Converses at the door apart, The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid droppings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
Friday, November 12. 2010
President Obama, are you listening? Or, would you rather raise taxes and regulatory costs on smaller businesses?
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports a study by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young that, not only do entrepreneurs create more jobs, entrepreneurs give more to charity than large, established companies.
Entrepreneurs give twice as much of their profits to charity as more-established companies, according to new research released today by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young.
Entrepreneurs, the study found, allocate a median of 3 percent of their corporate profits to charity. That is more than double the median 1.2 percent of profits found in The Chronicle’s latest corporate-giving survey of the nation’s largest companies.
Not only that, but "Nearly 70 percent said they started supporting charities while building their business, before it was successful."
 I have never had bad grits, but some afficionados get fussy about their grits.
Come to think of it. friends gave us a big bag of stone ground grits a while ago. They were very good.
The above is the title of Boortz' post this week. It is indeed plunder. He quotes Bastiat:
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
People are finally waking up to this issue. Lasky at American Thinker: The GOP's First Target Should Be Government Worker Salary and Benefits:
There has been a long-running vicious cycle playing out over the years. Politicians (mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats) have been signing generous agreements with government workers and their unions. In return, the government workers provide a solid voting block, and the public employee unions can use their enlarged dues to funnel money to Democratic campaigns. There was a reason -- beyond their leftist ideological beliefs and animus towards businesses -- that both Barack and Michelle Obama counseled people to go to work for the government. Those government workers become a special interest group in the pockets of Pelosi and company.
Who is greedier: the government unions who want stuff extracted from the taxpayers by their political allies, or the struggling taxpayers who produce the money in the first place?
Warning labels for voting Democratic. Sad but true, nowadays.
My Dad, who has had a few surgeries, feels the same way. The point is, I think, that the US doesn't have a planned system. No PhD planner is smart enough to know, understand, or meet, every person's needs and wants. Plans and models never work out according to plan, in real life.
If people are doing better, increase taxes because they can afford it. If people are doing worse, raise taxes so as to be able to "help" them with more government spending.
Commenter John, here at Maggie's yesterday
Leaving this morning for an out-doorsy weekend. This pic made me notice how filthy my keyboard is. I need to run it through the dishwasher.
We discussed the rise of the black middle class earlier this week. Here's one piece on that. A quote:
Larry Tye helped answer an ages-old question: How did a high percentage of black people, who toiled as slaves and suffered under Jim Crow laws, shed that oppression to live middle-class lives and enjoy the American dream?
Telegraph: When people stop believing in God they start believing in Big Government and Obamaism
TIME: Happy Meal ban doesn't go far enough.
It's a wonder we can ever feed ourselves.
Driscoll: NYT Editor: Our Subscribers are Such Morons!
Not hot dogs for you.
This guy is an American hero
Everybody talks about the housing crash.
It has been no "crash." It's just the return from a bubble to the normal trend line.
Air power in Afghanistan.
Repub health care ideas are genocide
Another view of the deficit commission, from Mother Jones
More on those Russian spies
Map narrows for Obama reelection
VDH: The Obama Fabulists
Thursday, November 11. 2010
New York aristocrat Rosalie Edge was a crank, a Suffragette, and an ardent conservationist. A bio of her came out last year: Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists.
Among the many causes she took up, one was protection of raptors from the mass slaughter of her era. She bought Hawk Mountain in Eastern PA and created the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. A high point on the Eastern raptor migration flyway, Hawk Mountain had been a popular site for the slaughter of raptors by gunners who believed they were going some sort of good while having fun.
Hawk Mountain is now a foundation engaged in conservation education programs. It remains an excellent viewing spot in fall migration season. (Photo from the Hawk Mtn website.)
How tasty does this look? These are the $12 lunches at Republic on Union Square, NYC. We love Asian rice-noodle soups and dumpling soups at Maggie's. We like Union Square too. I could tell you stories about what it used to be like, back when I lived for a while on University Place in the Village (just across from Dylan's old hang-out, the Cedar Tavern). It was really bad. The cops would pull dead guys out of the bushes and off the benches when making their morning rounds. ODs, some stabbings too. That was back, before Giuliani, when the pundits said that NYC could not be governed.
You should see it now. A bar and cafe with live music in the small park, a dog park, great restaurants all around. Two off-Broadway theaters. Park guys picking up litter, and even an unobtrusive police presence - on foot. Not in patrol cars. Putting cops back on the neighborhood beat has worked very well in NYC. Patrol cars should be only for back-up and rapid-response, in urban areas.
If not, Powerline linked a good essay by James Ceaser. A quote:
For many Republicans, and especially for the allies in the Tea Party movement, the issues of economic policy were also linked to a deeper concern. The size of government and the extent of the federal debt represented not only a burden on future generation and a threat to American power, but also a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution. The Tea Party in particular, with its belief in Jeffersonian ideas, has been responsible for re-introducing the Constitution into the public debate, a place that it has not held in the same way for over a century. This theme is what connects the Tea Party to the American tradition and makes their concerns matters of fundamental patriotism
 Triceratops never existed
CATO: Fixing Transit: The Case for Privatization
Olasky: What's healthcare like for the poor?
NRO: Best Presidential biographies
Deficit panel's Rx: 'Cancer' surgeryBudget scalpel draws blood, howls
Is this bipartisan thing DOA?
Hugh Hewitt: No more time for California dreamin'
Pajamas: Back to the Future with Jerry Brown at the Helm in California
Jeffrey Lord: Mark Levin's book changed America
Is Mark Levin our Tom Paine?
Connecticut Residents Are Tops in Well-Being
Amusing football trick play
Bob Kerrey: Obama is so Incompetent He Needs Someone to Do His Job for Him
From CVS, of course
BAD NEWS: ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Data on Black Male Student Achievement. “According to the report, poverty levels are only part of the equation because poor white boys (defined by eligibility for subsidized school lunches) are doing as well as black boys who do not live in poverty.” It’s about the culture.
France is a dying nation
Irony: AARP blames ObamaCare for increased cost of employee health coverage
...an essential feature of successful presidents is that they find ways to broaden their coalitions. Doing the opposite—pursuing policies which shed support, but keep just enough of it to maintain a majority—is a very difficult needle to thread.
That's civil war.
Calvin Coolidge once said, "The chief business of the American people is business." The Democrats just lost America because they forgot that.
On second thought, you can't forget what you never knew. The Democrats running things the past two years proved they have no clue about the business of business. In their world, the real world of the private economy is an abstraction, a political figment.
From Michael Novak's God Bless the Tea Party:
In his first two years, the president convinced many millions of Americans that he wants to make the U.S. more like European welfare states. The American people hate the very idea, and they simply rebelled.
Hey Bird Dog, don't you wish you went to restaurants like this when in New York?
I came upon this poem while stimulating my thoughts for today, Veterans Day. As a veteran who saw the looks on the faces of my family when I enlisted, and as a father with two young sons, this poem pretty much carries that look on a parent's face of pride, and astonishment, that their child has grown up straight and true.
An American Boy Grows Up Our son was born so long ago, yet it seems like yesterday...
that I stood in awe before his crib and heard that doctor say,
"You've quite a boy there Mr. Jones." I could only answer with a nod,
for in his very being there I saw the miracle of God.
Later in his high chair, in a manner I deplore,
I saw that Miracle of God throw his oatmeal on the floor.
Well, I fixed him something different, for I felt he must be fed,
but when I turned around again, that bowl was on his head!
A few more years rolled along and he didn't spill things anymore.
But his granddad sent a big bass drum, and once more I deplored
The fact that my miracle of God, had a lusty taste for noise!
When he'd boom! boom! boom! on that big bass drum, I questioned, boys must be boys?
I asked his whereabouts one day...his Mom said, "He's got a paper route,"
"said he'd help to earn his way as he became an eagle scout."
When they pinned that medal on him, tears welled in my eyes,
and then I gripped his mother's hand, our boy had earned his prize.
I won't forget that September day, when he entered senior high,
he had an air of great excitement, but he left home with a sigh.
He came back that afternoon, and gave us some puzzled looks,
"Wow!", he said, "this school is tough, look at all these books!"
"The choice is yours," his mother said, "You can pick the easy way."
"What you put into life, you'll get out of it. Each man pays his price one day."
He looked up, and then he smiled, and I saw he'd lost his gloom,
He said, "I'd better look at these," he headed for his room.
My son came home late one day. He seemed all worn out.
I asked a little sharply what this was all about.
He spoke proudly and threw his shoulders back, and in his eyes I caught a gleam.
"I wanted to surprise you Dad, I'm on the football team!"
They won most of their games, lost a few, it was a thrill to watch him play.
And when they didn't win we knew, he'd met the challenge anyway.
He didn't know it at the time, but, it was a stepping stone,
solid footing for the climb, to face life on his own.
How those three years flew past, when graduation came,
we saw our boy grown up at last, our lives will never be the same.
I guess we've known all along what his goal would be,
from that time three years ago, when he chose responsibility.
He stood in the doorway yesterday, put out a strong right hand.
I held back tears at the uniform he wore to protect his land.
I shook his hand, his mother cried, "Son, why couldn't you wait?"
Embracing her, he softly said, "Mom, if we all did, it would be too late."
"I promise I'll go back to school, when I've met my obligation,
to you, my friends, my girl, my school, and most of all this nation."
"I'll do all I can out there, for I know you'll both be trying,
to make everyone you know aware, we've got to keep Old Glory flying."
And then his mother straightened up, with a smile to hide a tear.
She said, "we're both so proud of you, we'll feel lost without you here.
Someday, you'll know what this moment means, when your boy shakes your hand,
And you watch him as he walks away, the day he becomes a man."
John Mitchum
My friend Tim Ziegler, former Marine, is blogging his son's coming of age in Marine Corps boot camp: "our hope is that Zach's friends and family will have a chance to experience Zach's transformation from average (or above-average, depending) teenager to a proud member of the USMC."
So, I guess the old Marine's phrases, "We still make 'em like we used to," "We never promised you a rose garden" are all still true. The reality is that it is hard for me to hear as a Dad. It's comforting for me to hear as a former Marine. Semper Fi Zach.
Tim emailed me this morning, "The difference in maturity and perspective in just a month has been simply amazing."
Wednesday, November 10. 2010
From Dan Gardner's So is the world predictable or not? The environmentalists' contradiction:
I recently wrote a book called Future Babble (to be released Oct. 12), which is about expert predictions, why they fail, and why we believe them anyway. The experience of sifting through heaps and heaps of failed predictions has made me quite sympathetic to Suzuki's first theme of humility. We truly are awful at foreseeing what is to come. And there's little reason to think we'll get much better. Indeed, key properties of complex systems make prediction inherently impractical or even impossible. We really should be humble. And cautious.
But how can a humble and cautious man say we are "past the 59th minute"?
In a review of Gardner's new book, Steven Pinker says:
“It’s rare for a book on public affairs to say something genuinely new, but Future Babble is genuinely arresting, and should be required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and anyone who listens to them. Mark my words: if Future Babble is widely read, then within 3.7 years the number of overconfident predictions by self-anointed experts talking through their hats will decline by 46.2%, and the world will become no less than 32.1% wiser.”
– Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
I had a tough time deciding what to link on this glorious autumn afternoon, but decided on Mona Charen's Is Obama Trapped? The president has lost the means for Clinton-style triangulation. One quote:
Ironically, Republicans might be the president’s lifeline. If they succeed in defunding or otherwise hobbling implementation of Obamacare; if they succeed in maintaining the current tax rates on all earners; and if they are able, through oversight functions, to prevent regulatory agencies from further intimidating businesses, the economy might improve. And to whom would credit for improved conditions flow? Yup, to Gandhi’s most important acolyte.
Via Bloomberg. It begins:
The co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction commission will propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as reductions in income tax rates in exchange for curbing tax breaks, according to a Republican aide who attended the meeting.
Expense cuts and tax increases. Yawn.
I forget which rural burg in Ohio had this sign up. Near Rte. 62, obviously. I'd worry that the soup might have some salt in it. Salt is bad for you, right?
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