Maggie's Farm

Above is the MQ-9, "The Reaper." Grim indeed. Story at (and photo from) Willisms

Poll: Global warming is world's most boring topic

We caught a bad guy - but you already knew that.

Obama wants Kindergarten Sex Ed. Insane. But teaching them to read might be a good idea. On the other hand, Dems want to pay for your abortion. Would someone please explain to me how an abortion is a medical treatment?

What media bias? Astonishing new examples at Gateway

The Carnival of Education at Education Wonks. Always something interesting in that Carnival.

The shrinking dollar. New York Sun

Did you see this copy of an Al Gore contract? SDA. He has a good gig.

Wise words, re socialized medicine (but which apply to anything) from a piece at Asst. Village Idiot:

Every intervention solves some problems and creates others, though it is always possible for a bureaucracy to create problems and solve nothing. If we go to a Canadian/British system of health care it will solve some problems and create others. If we go to a French or German model we will solve different things and create different problems. If we change nothing we will continue to have the problems we are having, but we will avoid getting new ones. In all discussions about complicated and enormous problems with competing needs, we will get some benefit and some loss. Anyone speaking as if there will be all gain and no loss is not thinking. We do have problems. Solving them would be good. The question then becomes, does this plan solve more things or worsen more things?

How to hide from the wife when she wants you to do something around the place, while catching a few Zs. A good year-round use for your camo.

h/t, Classical Values

The correct response to the CAIR complainers should have been "Sorry guys, but this is America."

The Barrister of Maggie's Farm, re CAIR's intimidation of the gutless wussie National Press Club

Bill Roggio's latest report (h/t, Jules C). Our folks are clearly very busy, and I know our young friend (a SEAL) who is over there is helping do the job.

This is a very small war, as wars go - and not really a war at all, even though it receives the same level of negative press attention as bigger fights like Vietnam or Korea. Why? Pure partisanship, I believe. If Bill Clinton had undertaken the same project (he was in favor of regime change in Iraq), I suspect the Dems would be rallying their people behind the good and just cause of freedom and human dignity.

Why are the Dems in a tizzy? I suspect that they are fearful that Gen. Petraeus will be successful, and they would like to sabotage it first. I pray that this effort will be successful, not for political reasons, but for the Iraqis and for the Middle East.

And this from Wizbang, Why Liberals should love the war in Iraq.

Morning mist rising at 6 am in New Hampshire's White Mountains on Sunday. Thanks, reader.

All summer we see and hear the sturdy Belted Kingfishers rattling up and down the stream with their dipping flight pattern, hunting for minnows and small water critters. During migration, I have seen them around salt water inlets too, but I think they prefer freshwater streams.

I have no idea where they have dug their nest: they dig nest holes in banks, and are highly territorial.

Our Belted Kingfisher is found across the US and Canada, and there are a number of species of Kingfishers found around the globe.

Another bank-nester is the drab Bank Swallow, which nests in colonies near water. I have only seen a couple of Bank Swallow colonies in New England - one of them had about a hundred nests - and they are very local in distribution, unlike the Kingfisher. Apparently man has expanded their distribution because road-cuts provide good cliffs for their nest holes.

Photo: A female Kingfisher. The males don't have the red band.

This bit came in over the transom:

The New York City Public Schools have officially declared "Jewish English", now dubbed "Hebronics", as a second language. Backers of the move say the city schools are the first in the nation to recognize Hebronics as a valid language and a significant attribute of American culture.

According to Howard Ashland, linguistics professor at Brooklyn College and renowned Hebronics scholar, the sentence structure of Hebronics derives from middle and eastern European language patterns as they evolved into Yiddish.

Professor Shulman explains, "In Hebronics, the response to any question is usually another question with a complaint that is either implied or stated. Thus 'How are you?' may be answered, 'How should I be, with my bad feet?'

Shulman says that Hebronics is a superb linguistic vehicle for expressing sarcasm or skepticism. An example is the repetition of a word with "sh" or "shm" at the beginning: "Mountains, shmountains. Stay away. You should want a nosebleed?"

Another Hebronics pattern is moving the subject of a sentence to the end, with its pronoun at the beginning: "It's beautiful, that dress."

Shulman says one also sees the Hebronics verb moved to the end of the sentence. Thus the response to a remark such as "He's slow as a turtle," could be: "Turtle, shmurtle! Like a fly in Vaseline he walks."

Shulman provided the following examples from his best-selling textbook, Switched-On Hebronics:
Question: "What time is it?"
English answer: "Sorry, I don't know."
Hebronic response: "What am I, a clock?"

Remark: "I hope things turn out okay."
English answer: "Thanks."
Hebronic response: "I should be so lucky!"

Remark: "Hurry up. Dinner's ready."
English answer: "Be right there."
Hebronic response: "Alright already, I'm coming. What's with the 'hurry' business? Is there a fire?"

More examples on continuation page -

The Burge juggernaut is beginning to look inevitable!

...when I read much of what comes from the left, I'm left with the feeling that they want to consume the benefits that come from living in the U.S. and more generally the West without either doing the messy work involved or, more seriously, taking on the moral responsibility for the life they enjoy.

From a piece about the BBC at Winds of Change, a blog we need to, and will, add to our blogroll.

Also, Samizdata has an excellent piece on Anthony Jay's "confession." It does ring true to me, and applies equally well to the American MSM, I think: arrogant but strangely ignorant.

Flowers, Gospel, and the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

A few fun facts about pre-1900 education in the US

The Caduceus of Hermes and the Staff of Asclepius

Blob of the Week: Slime Mold

Love in the Age of Neuroscience (about campus nihilism and Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons)

Moving a 100 year-old church on 60 wheels. Borrowed from David Thompson

 The sermon at Reader's Corner begins thus:

If there's anything that catches people's attention and causes them to sit up and take notice of what you're saying or doing, it's enthusiasm! The word enthusiasm is derived from two Greek words: "En", which means in, and "theos", which means God. So enthusiasm literally means "in God", or "God in us"!--Thus the truly enthusiastic person is one who acts and speaks as if he were possessed by God!

God's Word tells us, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might!"--Ecclesiastes 9:10. The Bible also tells us, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord!"--Romans 12:11. The Lord expects His children to be whole-hearted wildly willing workers who are filled with an impassioned desire to please and serve Him!--Enthusiastically!

In fact, Jesus said that half-hearted, lukewarm, indifferent Christians make Him literally sick to His stomach! He says to them, "I know your deeds and works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either one or the other, cold or hot!--So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew (vomit) you out of My mouth!...Be zealous, therefore, and repent!"--Revelation 3:15,16,19.

Well, I doubt that Jesus was talking about Christians (which did not exist), but the sermon convicts me: I always hold back something. Read the whole thing.

You are an artist. You buy the paint, then what? A piece by Daniel Kunitz in the NY Sun about a new show at the MOMA titled "What is Painting?" - a quote:

Once upon a time, we knew what painting was. As recently as the 1960s, there was, if not a single consensus, then at least several broad and overlapping consensuses about what constituted a painting: It was two-dimensional and used pigments on some type of support, like a canvas; it was abstract, or it was representational; it was defined by its medium and sought to exclude the influence of all others, or it was defined by how prettily or truthfully it employed its medium, etc.

The delightful proposition of "What Is Painting?" — a broad survey of art from the 1960s to today, drawn from the Museum of Modern Art's contemporary collection — is that we have utterly lost our way: We no longer have any idea what painting is, and we are much better for it. Loosely chronological and with an equally relaxed thematic structure, the show makes its argument largely through the variety and quality of the work on view.

Read the whole thing. 

Image: A 1969 painting by William T. Williams in the MOMA's show, from the NY Sun article. 

Many remain blithely unaware, and many remain in denial and therefore unconcerned, despite sightings around the world. Story here. (h/t, Tim Blair). Rumors that Dick Cheney is behind all of this cannot be confirmed as yet, but Congressional hearings will surely be scheduled soon, with a flurry of subpoenas for the White House.

But I suspect that this may be the result of an experiment-gone-wild, performed by the crazed biologists at Ducks Unlimited.

From a piece by Johannes at TCS:

Since mid-2005, al Qaeda has aimed not to defeat the Coalition militarily, but to drain American public support politically. The strategy was forced on the insurgents by a string of failures in 2004 and 2005. The Baathist groups and their al Qaeda allies planned first to establish a geographic base of control within Iraq; second, to block Iraqi elections; and third, to prevent the establishment of the Iraqi Security Forces. They failed to achieve any of these goals.

The ensuing strategy was dictated by weakness. Mass killings of Shi'ite civilians - a tactic designed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi over the initial protests of the al Qaeda leadership - replaced military confrontation as the insurgency's operational focus. Civilian atrocity is, by definition, easy to implement, as it targets what is undefended. The strategy does nothing to "win hearts and minds." Support for al Qaeda has dwindled to under 2% among the Sunnis of Iraq; among other groups, it doesn't register at all. Nor can atrocities advance a political agenda, or control real estate.

But the mass killings were a boon to recruitment.

Read the whole thing.