Sunday, July 8. 2007
 Isaiah 66: 10-16
10Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her— 11that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. 12For thus says the Lord: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. 13As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. 14You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies. 15For the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to pay back his anger in fury, and his rebuke in flames of fire. 16For by fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, on all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
Saturday, July 7. 2007
 Our Aliyah Diary author has been truant from Maggie's for too long. He has not yet completed the lengthy and arduous aliyah process required for becoming an Israeli citizen, but his Hebrew and his riflery are getting better and better, I understand. He files this report of his visit to a fellow physician in the Bedouin village of Rahat last week.
An afternoon and evening in Rahat, guest of a gentle Bedouin Professor A., who was my Virgil in a tour through the fringes of Hell. A Bedouin town, one of seven built by the Israelis in the early 70’s, Rahat, meaning water-hole, a place to gather for shepherds, so too to gather-in the wandering Bedouin. A town of several thousand, located geographically at the northern tip of the Negev desert, but in other ways, located someplace between here and the fringe of Bombay. I begin with my leaving. Too late, too tired, I see what A., driving his VW diesel Passat, does not: a man, perhaps a father, red broomstick whipping over his head, full-armed whacks on three children to get into the yard. The youngest, a girl perhaps five, has arms upraised, futile, trying to fend off the next blow. He does not always swing; at moments he motions threateningly, stand at the steel corrugated gate. Then, he lets loose once more on the girl’s back and the gate is closed to the outside world. A. says a few moments later that it is better to tour Rahat at night: the darkness hides what should not be seen. I have spoken about courage among Israeli soldiers at Ben Gurion University, thinking at the back of my neck how there are Bedouin colleagues in the audience. Awad has invited me to his home afterwards. Dinner, early. Awad studied medicine in Rumania during the era when the Israeli Communist Party gave scholarships to Arab students to learn in Soviet medical schools. He lived there some six years, got a degree and a Slavic wife, L. It is an evening all in Hebrew. L. is flaxen, angular-faced, has a large wart punctuating the end of her left eyebrow. Seems a Slavic trait – a punctuated face. A. and I enter the house and I barely notice at my right, sitting beneath a tent suspended from the house, is an ancient woman, a white cotton shawl over her head, the left margin clamped at the left corner of her lips. She is there when I arrive; she remains there six hours later. We pass her once more, A. and I. He says nothing, nor does she. She is his mother. Read the rest on continuation page below.
Continue reading "Aliyah Diary: A visit to Rahat"
Cartoon on temporary loan from Theo: 
No Second Troy Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being as she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Friday, July 6. 2007
 Good clean fun!
We already know that those Islamists are fun people with a great sense of humor, and the gift of being mature enough, and emotionally secure enough to laugh at themselves, so our cuz across the pond Theo has a contest. If you have time, give it a whirl your own self. Image of the now- famous Rage Boy (he is very very angry) borrowed from Snapped Shot.
"Men," a sergeant told his people aboard ship before our invasion of the island, "Saipan is covered with dense jungle, quicksand, steep hills and cliffs hiding batteries of huge coastal guns, and strongholds of reinforced concrete. Insects bear lethal poisons. Crocodiles and snakes infest the streams. The waters around it are thick with sharks. The population will be hostile toward us." There was a long silence. Then a corporal said, "Sarge, why don't we just let the Japs keep it?" From William Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness. (h/t, Buddy)
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube." Ayn Rand, borrowed in toto from SDA
 At 247', Mirabella V is the world's largest single-masted sailboat. She can do 20 knots under sail: that lengthy waterline helps with boat speed.
Best of all, you can lease her, with crew, by the week - but it's a bit pricey for the average workin' stiff at $300,000 per week. Summers in the Med, winters in the Caribbean. Details and great photos at Mirabella V.
Thursday, July 5. 2007
Is it possible to know? Bad Astronomy Blog (h/t, Flares). I don't know why the author had to put the Creationism stuff in the piece - probably grinding some axe - but otherwise interesting.
How are we doing in Iraq since January? AQ Feeling the Heat, at Flopping.
Wednesday, July 4. 2007
 We praise Sen John McCain for sticking to his convictions. Unfortunately for him, his convictions do not garner a great deal of support.
Hitchcock film techinques: Synthstuff A Victoria Cross and a Presidential Citation. Jim Miller. But the news is all Michael Moore and Paris Hilton. The great Artur Schnabel: Terry Teachout looks at Schnabel's life and career, at Commentary Re the UK bombings, a darn good question at SDA: How does a 26-year-old become a practicing neurologist? What is this, the Readers Digest version of medical school or just Mohammed Jamil Howzer?)
This was a great business concept. Talk about easy money. Coyote. Funny how people can't resist tossing a coin into a fountain. From the Weekly Standard review of The Dangerous Book for Boys: "If you see a girl in need of help--unable to lift something, for example--do not taunt her. Approach the object and greet her with a cheerful smile, whilst surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation." Ovid couldn't have put it any better.
The Scooter Libby manufactured outrage was totally predictable, as is the stench of hypocrisy. There is a fine line between a successful terror attack and one which looks bumbling and bungled. A good point, at neoneo Freak Show. Looks like the Coney Island side shows have moved to San Francisco. Old media vs. new media: Driscoll. With a bit of an inside view from an anonymous old media person. Women are perps of domestic violence far more often than men. Dr. Helen. Washington is not working? Who wants it to? Who wants "efficient government"? Mussolini was famous for it, but I prefer a paralyzed government most of the time unless they are killing our enemies. A quote from Jay Cost from a piece at Betsy: Washington is "not working" not because it lacks strong and effective managers. Washington is "not working" because it was designed not to work when there is an absence of political consensus, which there is right now. Washington "fails to work" more often than not because ours is a diverse nation with many competing interests, and our Founders feared the possibility that one interest might railroad another. They thought that the best way to preserve our republican form of government would be to make political change next-to-impossible without a political consensus.
Tuesday, July 3. 2007
BondC explains it all (it is Right Wing Prof's food blog). I am working on perfecting my cold smoking, but with an electric smoker.
A warning from John Adams, in a letter in 1814: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.
 From Hansen. A quote:
It is stereotypically easy to identify authoritarians who seek restrict civil liberties during war in the name of "national security." But it is much harder to take on crusading special interest groups, district attorneys, court justices, and liberal Senators who ignore, twist, or subvert our constitutional freedoms under the liberal clarion call of helping minorities, stopping the war, or championing the underclass. If we are to lose our civil liberties, it won't be all of sudden due to Patriot-Act zealots in sunglasses and flattops, but rather insidiously and incrementally by egalitarian professors, moral crusaders, muckraking journalists, and government utopians all unhappy that constitutional justice is too little and too late for their ever impatient desire to ensure heaven on earth.
Their utopia is my Brave New World nightmare, and I am sure that VDH agrees. Read the whole thing (h/t, Jules).
Dr. X has discovered the real reason for Moslem rage against Salman Rushdie. Her name is Padma.
 With the new server, Maggie's Farm should load noticeably faster, and pages should load faster, and it should speed up further over the next few days.
Still some problems if you access via AOL.
Cold-smoked these hunks of pork with cherry yesterday. One chunk came out a bit black on one side, and I don't know why. I think the rub makes the crust the tastiest part. 
Monday, July 2. 2007
Beverly "Bubbles" Sills died at 78. Una Voce Poco Fa (1976), from the Barber of Seville.
This little FICA review came in over the transom today, full of facts which the youths ought to be aware of:
Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:
1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month - and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to "put away," you may be interested in the following: --------------------
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent "Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social
Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking" deciding
vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.
-------------------
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
-------------------
Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract, the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!
And I might add that none of the people controlling SS in our government
are dependent on it in the least. Congressmen have a completely separate fully funded retirement system. There is no decrease in their pay level at retirement.
 Dalrymple thinks about why Australian academics are in love with the idea of genocide of their aborigines. A quote:
...if you are unhappy in a country like Australia, you have to consider the possibility that the problem lies with you rather than with the conditions that surround you. This is a disagreeable thing, particularly for an intelligentsia, which is deprived by it of a providential role for itself. What does an intelligentsia do when a country is already as satisfactory in its political arrangements and social institutions as any country has ever been? Intelligentsias do not like the kind of small problems that day to day existence inevitably throws up, such as termites in the woodwork or conflict at work over desk-space: they like to get their intellectual teeth into weightier, meatier problems. What could be a weightier problem than a prosperous, fortunate country that was founded upon genocide? Clearly, if it was so founded, an intelligentsia is urgently needed to help it emerge from the dark moral labyrinth in which it exists, hitherto blindly. For only an intelligentsia is sufficiently used to thinking in abstractions to be qualified to act as guide to the nation.
Read the whole thing. Photo: Australian Aborigine with didgereedoo
Our host installed a super-duper new server today, so we have been down. It may take AOL a while to catch on, and for full function to reappear.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905, (h/t Anchoress, who has a cornucopia of fine QQQs in her piece: Bloom where you are planted)
Sunday, July 1. 2007
Earl Scruggs, with Joanie Baez doing Dylan's Love is Just a Four-letter Word Don Ross, guitar-picker extraordinaire, at LGF. Today, Maggie's Farm has warned ya, informed ya, fed ya, entertained ya, and provided holy inspiration. Now I am off-duty, with tennis, smoking a nice pork butt, and some outdoor jobs. See y'all tomorry.
 We have written many times about how using ethanol (alcohol, aka moonshine) as a gas additive is a scam, and nothing more than a massive farm subsidy which is raising the cost of food.
But I just learned more. When you use gas with ethanol, it can destroy your gas-powered power tools and mowers. I just had a conversation with my local Stihl and Scag dealer yesterday - my Stihl hedge trimmer needed a new carburetor. Guy said the ethanol kills these machines - their lines, their carburetors, etc. He says it's also murder on outboard engines. He explained that it's less of a problem for pros who use their tools daily, but if you use your tools occasionally, the alcohol - being water-soluble - separates from the gas and makes a mess. The new carburetor cost me $97. His advice: Run the machine down to empty if you aren't going to use it for a while, and always use fresh gas - don't use two-month-old gas. If you are like me, you have five gallon containers of vintage gas-oil mix left over from last fall. Get rid of it, somehow. Here's one article on the subject.
 You can either believe the officials, or you can believe that Cheney and the CIA are behind the UK bomb attacks. Right on cue, Red Ken jumps to defend Moslems. I don't mind his defending innocent Moslems, but he might mention defending his country first. Well, he would never do that.
Global warming claims melt under scrutiny. Sun-Times. Yes they do. Adding to Blogroll: Jon Swift Moscow is now the most expensive city in the world. How did that happen? Here's their new Ritz-Carlton Smaller high schools seem to work better in NYC. Not surprised. Can you pass an 8th Grade Science Test? Could Al Gore? (h/t, Ace) Photo: A view of Wellfleet Harbor, Cape Cod, right across from Harbor Freeze. There was a time when "Nothing happens on Cape Cod until July 4th." I happen to be fond of June on the Cape, but you can have some chilly, foggy days, and swimming in the ocean in June is not for weenies. You can tell how cold the ocean water is by how far a guy's testes recede. In June, they go up to your neck. By August, only about to your belly-button.
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