Maggie's Farm

Johnny Appleseed - John Chapman - was an interesting character: an ascetic, a Swedenborgian missionary, and a nurseryman who had little interest in making money.

Read about him and his unusual life at a good Wiki entry.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Václav Havel (h/t, LGF)

From Grow A Brain:

Have you heard the one about the actress who was late for an audition? She’s driving around and around and there is no parking anywhere. She says aloud, “Dear all powerful and merciful God please find me a place to park - I’ll do anything for you.” As she finishes praying, a space opens up and she says, “Never mind - I found one."

A simple and clear story line from Deal Journal, via SDA.

Also, Coulter via View from the Right:

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with a Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.

Bill Clinton agrees that the Dems are to blame.

Some family and friends climbed Mt. Willey on Sunday. They popped a bottle of champagne on the foggy top. Here's one of their photos from a viewpoint, part way up:

I mentioned hearing Barbados' Arturo Tappin in Roberta Flack's band last weekend. The guy does every reed instrument, seemingly effortlessly and with joy. He does Grover Washington-style stuff, but can rock out if he wants. Here's a good sample of him:

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

Milton Friedman

What's up with Beauty Studies (ie Neuroaesthetics) these days?

A quote from Beauty and the Brain (by the proprietor of Neurophilosophy) in Seed (h/t, Dr. X):

...recent work by several researchers at University College London?—?including the establishment of the first major grant-driven research program for the neurobiological investigation of aesthetics, or neuroaesthetics?—?has made the first steps toward a unified biocultural theory of art.

An object's beauty may not be universal, but the neural basis for appreciating beauty probably is. The researchers' initial discoveries and the increasing formalization of the field promise to open the way for the first time to an understanding of beauty based on something other than speculation.

Can things of the soul and spirit be understood in terms of neurotransmitters and neural wiring? Count me a skeptic. Different levels of organization have different rules and patterns which do not transfer one to the other. For example, you could know everything about atoms but never predict a living cell, and you could understand everything about a cortical network without predicting Moby Dick. (And, for me, on a good day I see beauty everywhere but on a bad day I see it nowhere.)

Still, they may as well give it a try. I get skeptical when they call it a bio-cultural model, however. It makes it too clear that they seek to detour around the psychology part.

Rich Lowry discusses why we need something like the Paulson plan. I think people like "Kill the bailout" Michelle are way off base on both economic and political grounds: frozen credit will create a huge slowdown which will hurt everybody and turn Bush, unwillingly, into another Herbert Hoover. Furthermore, I do not believe that the Feds intend to keep these assets forever. We aren't bailing out rich bankers - we're bailing out the US economy. It's a hangover cure for the housing bubble.

Buffett: It's an economic Pearl Harbor.

Mayor Bloomberg explains how the Dems caused the financial meltdown via a corrupted and politicized Fannie and Freddie.

From Willisms:

Still Life with Apples, Bottle, and Chairback (1902)

The Wall Street woes reminded me of this scene from The Producers, but the best part is, of course, Ulla:

And I dare not leave our readers without Springtime For Hitler:

If we have any such readers, would you guys please consider showing up for work once in a while? I mean, like, even if you have messy lives, and addictions, and multiple divorces, and kids from numerous females with school problems and police problems, and sick relatives, and broken transmissions, and court dates, and side-jobs, and cash-flow emergencies, and bowling practice and softball practice, or a kid with a tooth-ache or stomach-ache, or your helper is out sick with a hangover or a bad head-cold, or whatever, how about considering working like normal people? Like normal Yankee people who do not have an excuse du jour, and view their work as a serious committment to another person? 

You know, like beginning work early in the morning, showing up when you say you will, working a solid 8-hr day, and all that sort of regular steady American thing. It just might do you guys some good.

Most people need structure to their lives if they are to thrive. I think these guys just don't need the money.

I still have no master bathroom, since early August. Tiling is half-done. No, 1/4 done, and this guy is supposed to be the best guy around. He shows up for two or three hours, gets a phone call from one of his ex-wives or a lawyer or a dealer or a friend who wants to go out drinking or fishing or an hysterical girlfriend who says he's cheating on her and who needs calming down, or a friend he has to take to rehab in Ohio, or whatever, then disappears for two days and turns off his cell phone.

The shower door guy seems reliable, and our carpenter is the shiznits.

Contrarian wisdom from Robin Hanson:

Food isn't about Nutrition
Clothes aren't about Comfort
Bedrooms aren't about Sleep
Marriage isn't about Romance
Talk isn't about Info
Laughter isn't about Jokes
Charity isn't about Helping
Church isn't about God
Art isn't about Insight
Medicine isn't about Health
Consulting isn't about Advice
School isn't about Learning
Research isn't about Progress
Politics isn't about Policy

The new camo, from the NYT. (Yes, the NYT.) Be sure to click to change the image from human view to deer view. h/t, Insty.

Of course, if you are in a tree stand it hardly matters, since deer never look up.

Had the pleasure of hearing Roberta Flack perform a charity concert this weekend. She has knocked me out since the early 70s, and does a lot of work for autism. Here's my cell phone quality photo:

The guy on the right is the jazz reed virtuoso Arturo Tappin. Also in her band, Ralph MacDonald (who plays in Jimmy Buffet's band), guitarist David Spinozza, and Buddy Williams on drums. Dennis Collins joined in on a few tunes, and sang his Every Soldier Has One Prayer. Great band. My only regret is that she didn't do Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

Here's Roberta in 1972:

Ace: Why I hate the media

Biden has his message all screwed up. He is a screwball loose cannon, and the Obama people cannot rein him in. More Obama vs. Biden.

Obama finding empty houses, but not Sarah.

Some New York women on Palin:

A posting on a New York-based Web site for women, Jezebel.com, spoke of unbridled anger. "What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage," an associate editor at Jezebel, Jessica Grose, wrote just after the Republican convention wrapped up. "When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull."

And here's Naomi Wolf:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

What did Obama and Ayers do for the Chicago schools? Not much about education.

A quote from a powerful piece in the J Post yesterday (h/t, reader):

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

Read the whole thing. We linked this morning to a piece that reveals a Soros org. behind the Palin cancellation.

As readers may have noticed, with the beginning of Apple Season in Yankeeland we are making a point of having at least one Apple post daily.

Here's Apple Trees: Where and how to plant.

Image is by Nicholas of Verdun (c. 1180)

Re our Yankee Stadium post yesterday, here's a photo of the "Old Met" from 1905, looking uptown. The yellow brick building stood at 1411 Broadway, occupying the block between 39th and 40th street. The Met moved to its new home in Lincoln Center in 1966, after which the Old Met, built in 1880, was torn down.

Besides implying that Hillary didn't really want the VP slot, he says some interesting things about voting. He is a smart politician.