Maggie's Farm

Buddy thought y'all might enjoy

New Mayan Calendar Discovered That Doesn't End in 2012

Craig Claiborne: When He Dined, the Stars Came Out

Shopping bags cause illness

Obama’s EEOC runs amok

Flashback: Obama’s Sordid High School Past

In His Own Words… Obama Admits to Smoking Pot, Drinking Beer, Doing Drugs… And Bullying Fat Nerdy Black Girl in High School

Where's the 5000-word WaPo hit piece on that?

Probably Just a Coincidence

Examiner Editorial: Liberal media aid in Obama's 'shiny objects' strategy

DOJ Defends Employee Comment that Mississippi Is ‘Disgusting and Shameful’

Excruciating details emerge on Jewish ghettos

A Massive Facelift for Eastern Germany

See before and after photo

Health Care Trojan Horse

Moderates Only Look Dead - The center, contrary to what you might conclude, is not vanishing.

This is what happens when the common rabble are permitted to vote

Obama-Loving Media Spin The Economy For The President

ABC Reporter Robin Roberts on Interviewing Obama: “I’m Getting Chills Again”

Obama’s College Promises - He promises more “free stuff,” while Romney offers credible reforms.

Another Warren Bizarre Plot Twist

Department of Unfortunate Headlines: "With Dicks in, all 6 WA congressional Democrats favor repeal of gay-marriage ban"

Excellent summary of thermodynamics viewed through the lens of information: What Is Entropy? (only some very simple math)

On the history of anesthesia

I’m Not Going Home With You..And Other Lies (h/t Linkiest)

A book: The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity

Why they hate Santa (the culture that is Scotland?)

Gay Marriage as a Distraction

The coming waves of gay divorcees

Malanga: How Much Do You Owe Government Workers?

Obama: troops fighting "on my behalf"

Former Navy SEAL Lets Obama Have It

Miami Herald: Thousands of Foreigners May be Illegally Voting in Florida

A good Romney speech

Can Romney win Virginia?

Time to terminate Big Wind subsidies

Harsanyi: Obama's Ridiculous 'To-Do List'

Austerity Is Blamed

An internal investigation at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has uncovered academic fraud involving the department of African and Afro-American Studies

Ilya Somin: Another Issue Where Obama and I Agree

Romney needs to introduce himself to the voters:

So many issues come up in the course of a presidential term and so much of what happens can’t be predicted in advance that it makes a certain amount of sense to vote for the person rather than the platform.

But whether or not this is a smart way to vote, in the real world it is the way many Americans do vote, and Mitt Romney has to figure out how he can make a stronger personal impression on undecided voters.

It isn’t an easy problem to solve. One senses that Romney is more George H. W. Bush than Bill Clinton; he comes from a world where privacy is valued and where sharing can seem like showing off.

The Naomi Riley affair is just one more example of enforced groupthink in academia.

After all, everybody knows that any academic department called "Studies" is non-serious, and exists solely as a sop to some interest group.

As Kimball says in Craven and Pusillanimous at the Chronicle:

Disgusting. Even more craven is Ms. McMillen’s concluding apology “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers.” Are the Chronicle’s readers really such delicate plants? Well, as I say, almost all of them are academics, so the answer is undoubtedly Yes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has long been receding into semi-senescent irrelevance. This latest episode underscores its moral bankruptcy as well. What a pathetic showing.

All those "distressed" academics know that what Riley wrote is accurate. They protest too much. However, academia has rules about what you may and may not say in public.

Interestingly, the now-racist-branded Riley is married to a black guy.

More at Carpe Diem.

Also, KC Johnson's Writer Purged for Causing Distress

(Etymology of "sop": O.E. sopp- "bread soaked in some liquid," (in soppcuppe "cup into which sops are put"), from P.Gmc. *suppo, related to O.E. verb suppan (see sup (2)), probably reinforced by O.Fr. soupe (see soup (n.)). Meaning "something given to appease" is from 1660s, an allusion to the sop given by the Sibyl to Cerberus in the "Aeneid.")

Meet Army Sgt. Julia Bringloe

Gwynnie emails me that he saw a pair of these this morning.

A colorful, not uncommon finch-like, sparrow-sized bird often seen in the Eastern US during migration - which is right now. During breeding season, the male is dramatically-pigmented but, depending on the light, they can appear black.

You can read about them here.

Maurice Sendak: Author of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ dies at 83

Where Did the Taco Come From?

Oprah: The Endorsement That Toppled An Empire

Ten Dreadful Things That Have Become Housing Standards

New Jersey: 'Most liberal town' spars over spending

You know, the federal govt should really get more involved in this obesity crisis

Gov’t Study: No Personal Blame In Obesity

Think It's a Farcical Hypothetical That The Government Could Order You To Eat Your Broccoli? Think Again.

Leef: Forget the Degree, Embrace the Savoir-Faire

Stephens: To the Class of 2012  Attention graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds.

‘Julia Decides to Have a Child’

Soros & Rich Libs to Donate $100 Million to Dem Groups for Obama

Obama's Second Term Transformation Plans

Gerson: Obama’s lost cause

MLR Killing Off Business, Hurting Consumers, NAIFA Survey Says

PPACA: Age-Based Rate Differences Vary from State to State

Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Academic Mob Rules  - Instead of encouraging wide discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education fires a blogger.

Good grief

A Federal program that provides free cell phones is being abused? Go figure …

Ours is in full bloom.

We now live in a country where sixty percent of the households get more from the federal government than they put in. We now live in a country where the Democratic Party has gone a long way towards fulfilling its long-term dream of turning citizens into clients of the state.

Jonah Goldberg, via Driscoll

Megan Draper's Choice

Marin County: What it’s like to live in one of the most affluent and liberal outposts in America

Why Microsoft Chose New York City

Farting dinosaurs

How To Blog. Lesson One: There Is No Lesson Two

5 Insane Fads New Parents Swallow

Jonah Goldberg Discusses The Tyranny of Cliches, Part I

Number of PhDs receiving federal aid more than tripled from 2007 to 2010

Massachusetts Outlaws School Bake Sales

National Offend a Feminist Week 2012

New Light Rail Ridership Falls Short by More Than Half L.A. Expo Line running almost empty with “brief” 30-minute delays

If you buy gold, you need to buy a gun too

"...when looking for a partner, to find someone who’s shown an ability to stick by her friends and family regardless of hurt."

SANDERS: Muddle in the Middle Kingdom

Daniel Hannan: Britain is shackled to the corpse of Europe

Cloward-Piven Strategy Working Perfectly — in Europe

Show Me the ‘Savage’ Spending Cuts in Europe, Please

Brace for Ted Kennedy’s revenge - The path to national health insurance

Poll: Romney Opens 10-Point Lead Among Key Independent Voters

Rubio: Ethnic divide 'offensive'

What are we to believe from the housing market numbers?

Graph below via Dino:

Edward O. Wilson lectures on The Social Conquest of Earth in man and ants.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

James Madison, in Federalist 51, via Tanner's Because Angels Don't Govern Us

A reminder about Hands Only CPR

Matterhorn getting most extensive rehab ever

Wealthy French eye move across the Channel

A Living Lawyer Joke

Why Obama’s ‘Julia’ campaign will be a success

Douthat on Julia:

The condescension inherent in this vision is apparent in every step of Julia’s pilgrimage toward a community-gardening retirement. But in an increasingly atomized society, where communities and families are weaker than ever before, such a vision may have more appeal — to both genders — than many of the conservatives mocking the slide show might like to believe.

The New Class Warfare - California’s superwealthy progressives seem intent on destroying middle-class jobs.

What Motivates the Left, Love for the Poor or Hatred against the Rich?

DO TEACHERS SHOW MINORITY STUDENTS A “POSITIVE BIAS”?

Did a Copying Mistake Build Man's Brain?

Ezra Klein: If Obama wins, what would he do in a second term?

Robert Reich: The Answer Isn't Socialism; It's Capitalism That Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution

Venezuela After Chavez: In the Footsteps of Franco, Ceausescu or Stalin?

Belmont Club: Ode to Cheese

‘FDR used the Jews’

How we broke KSM - CIA big spills on terrorist’s rude awakening – 180 hours of no sleep

VDH:

... liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature. I wish I could just say that about every thirty years or so, forgetful Americans take an allergy shot of it, suffer the reaction, and then get another three decades of Carter/Obama immunity. But instead statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe circa 1989, or the present-day EU, or Greece proper, or California or Illinois today.

Image from Moonbattery of Elizabeth Warren in her native garb

Albino Indians are not all that unusual, same as White Hispanics, etc.

5 Habits That Will Transform Any Introvert Into a Social Butterfly

Great insults

California's Emerald Triangle pot market is hitting bottom

Connecticut: Does state have money for communist politics?

Cinco de Mayo a Mexican import? No, it's as American as July 4, prof says

Charles Murray: Future tense, IX: Out of the wilderness

Who Killed Europe? A Provocation

How more and more ‘disabled’ Americans affects the shrinking U.S. labor force

The Vanishing Workers - The labor participation rate is back where it was in December 1981.

RNC Chair Priebus: ‘I don’t want my daughter Grace to grow up like Julia’

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be ‘Julia’

Obama Launches Campaign in Empty Arena

Abandoning Vietnam

Donald Luskin: The 2013 Fiscal Cliff Could Crush Stocks - Do the math on dividend taxes. Yields lower, stock prices lower—maybe by 30%.

Uncle Sam’s unlimited cell-phone plan

Could George W. Bush Be the Last Republican President?

Hey, America. You are being mugged

John 15:1-8

15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

A friend sends this photo with this note:

"This is the Union Methodist Church in Baldwin, Maryland. I have the date recorded somewhere, but I suspect I took it sometime in the 70's."

This piece has gone viral, and isn't too bad if you haven't seen it yet.

How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet

Is it really a bullying crisis?

The Uncertain Legacy of America's Pedestrian Malls

Bikes, Transit and Traditional Urbanism

Old Maps Online, A Site For Finding Historical Maps

Five Ways to Increase Movie Theatre Attendance

The big story, and the bad news, is the continued shrinkage of the workforce.

Disability applications soar

Disability is the new Welfare

Elizabeth Warren and Affirmative Action in Law School Hiring

Wisconsin Recall Amnesia - Why aren't Democrats running against Scott Walker's union reforms?

Educating Divided Minds for an Illiberal State - Adam Elkus had well-constructed argument about the Thomas Friedman-Andrew Exum exchange

Did anyone know we’ll soon have an “atrocities czar?”

That's atrocious

"The Life of Julia" And Obama's Orwellian Vision for a Fundamental Change In the Relationship Between Citizen and State

New York Times Coverage of Israel: What Comes After Ridiculously Biased?

The well-known excerpt from Blake's rarely-read poem "Milton" is called "Jerusalem" when used as the popular English wedding hymn.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

 Can any Yankees name those 2 trees by their barks? It's an easy one.