Maggie's Farm

A special edition of the NYT Science Times. Some of it is self-evident, but it's always a fun topic.

I think one common assumption of the researchers has something wrong, though, at least for young men. For young men, the question should be what turns them off, not on: they're always on, otherwise.

It's amusing to read in the NYT about "hearty tumescence," but I thought the funniest quote was this:

“Listening to Noam Chomsky,” said a psychologist in her 50s, “always turns me on."

Good grief. Under what rock did they have to look to find someone who would say that? But at least she didn't say that her favorite was Al Gore with his hockey stick.

People like to say today that 'diversity is our strength.' It's almost like a State Religion. But diversity isn't our strength: freedom is our strength.

A close paraphrase of Tom Tancredo, as heard on the radio by the Barrister 

A bloom of some sort at the New York Botanical Garden orchid show last week:

"Why? Why would I want to go back to a war that is not producing results, costing billions, and killing my brothers on a daily basis? Why would I want to go to a war where I have little to gain and everything to lose? Why? Because it is the right war to fight."

Whole letter at Powerline.

From the pulpit:

A guy and his wife are tourists in Israel when the wife up and dies. He is kindly offered the opportunity to have his wife buried in Israel.

"No, thanks" the guy replied. "I heard there was some fellow who was buried here some time ago, and came back from the dead....I don't want to take that chance." 

The Perils of Moral Tourism, from David Thompson last Spring, after the cartoon brouhaha. Quote:

Last week, during a conversation about the ‘cartoon jihad’ uproar, I used the phrase “emotional incontinence.” This did not go down well. I was promptly told, in no uncertain terms, that I mustn’t “impose” my own cultural values. Apparently, to do so would be a form of “cultural imperialism”, an archaic colonial hangover, and therefore unspeakably evil. I was, apparently, being “arrogantly ethnocentric” in considering Western secular society broadly preferable to a culture in which rioting, murder and genocidal threats can be prompted by the publication of a cartoon.

As the conversation continued, I was emphatically informed that to regard one set of cultural values as preferable to another was “racist” and “oppressive.” Indeed, even the attempt to make any such determination was itself a heinous act. I was further assailed with a list of examples of “Western arrogance, decadence, irreverence, and downright nastiness.” And I was reminded that, above all, I “must respect deeply held beliefs.” When I asked if this respect for deeply held beliefs extended to white supremacists, cannibals and ultra-conservative Republicans, a deafening silence ensued.

After this awkward pause, the conversation rumbled on. At some point, I made reference to migration and the marked tendency of families to move from Islamic societies to secular ones, and not the other way round. “This seems rather important,” I suggested. “If you want to evaluate which society is preferred to another by any given group, migration patterns are an obvious yardstick to use. Broadly speaking, people don't relocate their families to cultures they find wholly inferior to their own.” Alas, this fairly self-evident suggestion did not meet with approval. No rebuttal was forthcoming, but the litany of Western wickedness resumed, more loudly than before.

Read the whole thing.

If the Easter Bunny didn't make it to your house yesterday, this might be why:

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live, even if he dies."

Jesus to Martha, about Lazarus. John 11:25.

John 15:18-19

"If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."

Shut up and Sing Department:

Elton John's Sacrifice, YouTube. I promise that you will like it. (h/t, Tangled Web)

Here's a version with Elton John, Dire Straits, and Clapton

Lyrics here.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, reviewed at Times Online. A quote;

The probability is that we shall never have an answer to the question how the Gospels came into existence in their present form that is more than a partially tested hypothesis.

Our friend Dr. Bob has published Part lll of his series on Moving the Ancient Boundaries.

All three pieces are worth reading on a Holy Saturday. He always begins with this quote:

Do not move the ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. Proverbs 22:28

Bob combines a conservative instinct - be careful about altering things which have worked, and which have had meaning for thousands of years - with an attack on radical individualism (eg narcissism). One quote:

The life lived in self-absorption is pervasively corrosive, dismantling the foundations of free democratic society in its blind pursuit of pleasure at the expense of principle, comfort at the cost of character. We are increasingly ungovernable because we refuse to be governed. We are receiving what we have demanded — and it will never satisfy us, and threatens to destroy us.

The Mediterranean photo is borrowed from Dr. Bob's series.

Re-posted from April, 2006

"Now the bricks lay on Grand Street,
where the neon madmen climb, they all fall there so perfectly; it all seems so well-timed..."

Photo yesterday, at Ferrara's on Grand St., NYC, to pick up some Easter wheat pies. Creamy, with just the right amount of Citron. Not exactly Yankee food.

Kind of sad to see Little Italy slowly being absorbed by adjacent Chinatown - but Chinatown is great, too. In fact, wonderful. Feels like Asia. Any woman who carries a genuine Gucci or Prada or Kate Spade bag is a big sucker. This is knock-off city, for the folks with brains.

These days, the third-generation Italians have taken the Holland Tunnel and moved out to Soprano-land to try to capture the American Illusion of suburban bliss. But the suburban kids all come back to NY, not to mention the ambitious rural kids from across the USA, and across the world.

What fun it would be to own a little pied a terre in Little Italy, or on University Place, or in Gramercy Park, or anywhere near Zabar's. Thanks to Rudy and now to Bloomberg, NYC is as good as it has ever been - probably better.

Why? The parks have all been re-done, and are welcoming, friendly, with all sorts of stuff going on. The tourists, and the "bridge-and-tunnel" crowd, are back with a vengeance. Interesting things to do and places to see - endless. Places to eat - fuggedaboutit: good everywhere. The cops - out of their patrol cars and just walking their beats like the old days, and seeming reasonably friendly although they have to maintain their NYC cool. The whole place is gleaming, busy, happily crowded, ethnic as anywhere in the world, and full of the usual new construction everywhere. One heck of a town. (Only complaint: Bloomberg says we can't smoke in bars. That is truly nuts, as bad as the UK. If I can handle life, I ought to be able to smoke in a bar without a Mommy telling me what to do. How about having smoking and non-smoking bars? Hmmm, I predict the non-smoking would go out of business.)

We did not forget the cannolis.

from Coyote Blog:

And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee..."

Exodus 3:11-12

How often, in the Bible, does God call the most humble and ordinary people to serve Him?

I hate to see the US going in the direction of the UK, with government nannies all over the place telling us what to do and how to live. It is not dignified, for adult humans, to put up with such nonsense from politicians, who are the last people on the planet we want or need advice from.

Scolding the scolds, from Dick Meyer at CBS News. (h/t, Anchoress, who advises reading the comments too.)

We linked this piece by Stossel via Blue Crab yesterday, and I believe Rush talked about it on the radio. Here's one quote:

What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for "20/20," I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I'm sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Read the whole thing. It's good fun. I want a Federal ban on all swimming pools. For the children, of course.

Update:  Ahmadinejab says they will free them "as a gift." I guess there was a deal. Iran 1, Brits 0.

VDH says the hostage incident reveals the meaningless of the "alphabet" organizations:

This "incident" has proved a multilateral trifecta: a patrol sanctioned by the U.N. gets no support from the U.N., a member of the EU is left hanging in the interest of EU trade, a NATO member finds no NATO allies, other than the U.S., to offer support. So what is the purpose of these alphabetic organizations? Perhaps Ahmadinejad should start holding seminars, Henry Kissinger style, to instruct the Islamic world on how to deal with the West, given his instincts that Western rhetoric is in inverse proportion to Western willingness to stand up for a principle. 

"What on earth has happened to the English?" asks Derbyshire. His answer is that multiculturalism has destroyed love of country. Maybe. His piece here at New English Review. (h/t, Small Dead Baby Seals). I agree. When they come home, these sailors deserve to be charged with something, like cooperating with their captors or whatever the Brit Naval Code contains.

Gagdad Bob calls them EUnuchs.

Dinocrat thinks the entire episode was designed as a "time-waster" and a distraction from Iran's nuke program.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

...and foolishness. Pelosi and company visiting Syria reveals a break with reality, whether Dem or Repub. Who do they think they are?

I am not saying that diplomacy should not try to deal with enemies or adversaries, but it is not the job of Congress to do the work of the State Dept. and the Administration.

Bush has been slow on the uptake for the past year, and so it may appear that there is a power vacuum but, even so, you don't become part of a rogue foreign policy - especially with a nation which supports Hezbollah. Leave it to the pros at State, such as they are.

Image borrowed from Powerline's photo piece on the subject. There is some sort of insanity going on.

By the way, where's Condi these days?

Re-posted from April, 2006

From a piece by Brian at Real Meal Blog:

As we approach Holy Week and focus on the death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection, let us reflect on the implications of the Cross for those who seek to follow Jesus. My daughter’s argument for the safety of a life in captivity over the risk of a life freedom brought to mind the words of Jesus.

In Matthew, Jesus’ most powerful challenge to his followers comes in chapter 16. Consider these two verses:

NIV Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

Most of us read these verses only in the negative: self-denial, hardship, etc, but this is a distortion of Jesus’ point. Yes, the way of discipleship is hard. Let’s be clear about this.
Following Jesus Christ is a profound counter-cultural action. It is a life of risk. It is not about safety. But it is the opportunity to live a full life in the service of our Creator. It is an opportunity to live for that which we were made. Nothing could be more exiting nor, dare I say it, fulfilling. It is about following Jesus into the places that only those who have lost the fear of living can go. Jesus invites us to consider ourselves “dead men [or women] walking” precisely so that he can unleash us into a world that desperately needs women and men who are not afraid of uncertainty, danger, and trials because they know that their true Master is with them always (28:20).

Image: Duccio (1255-1319), Entry into Jerusalem