Maggie's Farm

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is more relevant today than it was when it was written 75 years ago.

This creepily prophetic, forcefully anti-utopian science fiction novel describes a world government which scientifically manages everything from hatchery to grave for the happiness and safety of all - except for the Alphas, who have the responsibility for running the whole thing. Truly rule by experts. Freedom is an antiquated illusion, and the government is an omnipotent, benevolent god.

Caitrin Nicol, in The New Atlantis, takes a fresh look at the book. Some quotes from her piece:

This “illusion of freedom” was cast into a clearer light by a reviewer who discerned that the temptation to sacrifice liberty to end suffering often becomes an attack on the reality of the liberty itself. Rebecca West, a prominent novelist and literary critic (and erstwhile mistress of H. G. Wells) said Huxley had “rewritten in terms of our age” Dostoevsky’s famous parable of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov—“a symbolic statement that every generation ought to read afresh.”

and

An unholy alliance of industrial capitalist, fascist, communist, psychoanalytic, and pseudo-scientific ideologies has brought about the end of history. The past is taboo—“History is bunk,” as “Our Ford” so eloquently said—and there is no future, because history’s ends have been accomplished. There is no pain, deformity, crime, anguish, or social discontent. Even death has no more sting: Children are acclimatized to the death palaces from the age of eighteen months, encouraged to poke around and eat chocolate creams while the dying are ushered into oblivion on soma, watching sports and pornography on television. Postmortem, the useful chemicals in every corpse are recovered in cremation to be used as fertilizer. “Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we’re dead,” gloats one character. “Making plants grow.”

and

Unlike the other great dystopias, Huxley’s World State, though totalitarian in its orthodoxy, is ostensibly ordered on the wants of the governed rather than the governors. Threats are rarely used or needed. Rule by bread and circuses has proved more potent than force—and more pernicious, precisely because every means of control is a perversion of something people really want. The only people with any capacity for dissatisfaction are a handful of Alphas, who are as unable to articulate their objection as Russell is. It is difficult to reject the sinister when by slight distortion it masquerades as the sublime. Why feeling should be able to distinguish these things while reason cannot is an interesting question, one which could be left forever unsettled by tinkering, through biotechnology or psychological control, with what Huxley (in a later foreword to the book) called “the natural forms and expressions of life itself.”

One such expression, of course, is a certain measure of autonomy over the meaning and direction of our lives. Its total absence in the World State is ominously signified by the professional title of the genetic engineers: the Assistant Predestinators.

The scariest things about Huxley's book are 1) On a bad day, anyone might be willing to sacrifice some liberty for security, and, 2) On a bad day, the Brave New World Huxley imagined has a certain regressive, hedonistic appeal and, 3) There are politicians who, unknowingly, use the idea of such a world as an ultimate goal - assuming, no doubt, that they would be the Alphas, and not me.

At Maggie's Farm, we try to make a stand for the messy, often-difficult, often-painful freedom of the human soul and spirit. Please take the time to read the whole thing. And read the book, if you haven't.

It has been well-known for a long time that many, if not most, diseases have some genetic component - or at least a genetic predisposition.

Most of the single-gene diseases have been identified, but now researchers are identifying diseases which are contributed to by more complex polygenic predispositions, such as Bipolar Disorder.

Will insurance company actuaries want to rate your insurance based on your genes? Of course they will want to, same as they rate you according to other risk factors like obesity, smoking, and history of heart attacks.

But is that right? That's another question. Insurance is about risk, not right and wrong.

Rick, the esteemed, amiable, and often-provocative proprietor of the Right Wing Nut House, is indeed nutty enough to try to make a living blogging.

Who's gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin? We'd hate to lose him because he is one of those guys who has the time to dig into things rather than going off half-cocked, as we sometimes (some would say often) do here.

“...a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization.” The FDR audio here.

D-Day was an excellent trick.

If you know wonderful Stowe, VT, you know St. John's in the Mountains church, on Mountain Road in full view of Mt. Mansfield. The old building, for some reason, now sits forlornly in the parking lot in the photo below. I'd buy the building if they included delivery.

The parish's brand new digs, on the same spot as the previous, here. It looks like a happy little church. (h/t Chris, a Stowe native who took the photo)

Thanks for the photos, John - but this is not what I would call roughin' it.

 More photos of the vehicle on continuation page below -

He's fine - he's just Astral Travelling. (h/t Right Wing Nation). Indeed he is.

Candidates for the Darwin Awards?

As they say, There is no cure for stupid.

From the National Research Council (h/t Insty):

Domestic cats: 100s of millions a year
. Striking high-tension lines: 130 million - 1 billion a year
Striking buildings: 97 million to 976 million a year
Cars: 80 million a year
Toxic chemicals: 72 million
Striking communications towers: 4 to 50 million a year
* Wind turbines: 20,000 to 37,000

If one must have an outdoor cat, the least you can do is to put a bell on the animal.

CBO says immigration bill will not accomplish its stated purposes. Captain Ed.

But when has that kind of conclusion ever deterred politicians? 

New guidelines on increasing the survival rates of released fish.

I would think that the suggestions would apply to trout.

We mentioned the above notion in the post about Kimball's essay on art yesterday.

How is this quote, from a piece at Right Wing nation on Green sex toys, to illustrate the concept?

Also, note: inflatable sheep can easily be repaired with a bicycle patch kit if popped.

Is it legal to marry an inflatable sheep in Denmark yet?

A quote from a good rant from the New Media Journal, posted at Synthstuff:

Why do Democrats keep claiming that they represent the middle class, when everything they campaign on is aimed at minorities, illegal aliens, the ignorant, and the poor? What have they done for middle class Americans other than to raise their taxes, lower their self-esteem, and attempt to destroy their national pride? What have they done for the country other than to divide it, criticize it, regulate it and tax it?

June is rose season in New England. Thanks, reader, for sending the photo. I think that color might be called "salmon." Whatever it's called, it is easy on the eyes.

And, speaking of plants, thanks to tropical storm Benny or Benjy or Barry or whoever for the wind, thunder, and rain he carried up here. Much needed, and much appreciated. The annuals (Impatiens) and the hydrangeas (Blushing Bride) we planted yesterday in the heat are surely grateful too. True Yankees love stormy weather.

A number of folks have linked to Roger Kimball's piece, Why the Art World is a Disaster. Kimball's ideas have been said before by others, but he is one of our favorite essayists, and it's definitely worth reading.

His point is not a curmudgeonly critique that "modern" art products are ugly, or not really art. His point is that art designed to shock the middle class is predictable, boring, and old hat. Political art, conceptual art, art that attempts "the domestication of deviance" is a tired idea, and was already tired in the 1940s when Orwell wrote:

(The artist) is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L’Age d’Or [which shows among other things detailed shots of a woman defecating] is O.K.

.I learned a few things from Kimball's piece, including the tidbit that Duchamp made art of urinals to mock the avant garde, and found that they took it seriously. At that point, he quit art. Read the piece.

Image: Kandinsky's House in Munich, 1908. Yes, I do love Kandinsky. Maybe my favorite, if I had to pick one artist.

A reader sent in these nice rattlers caught outside Kingsville, TX., near the natural gas plant. I hope they are planning on eating them...or at least making a belt out of the skin.

Her choreography renounces gravity. Great fun to watch. Two videos of her stuff here. 

(Thanks, Nathan. Mrs. Bird Dog says she knows Elizabeth from NYC, and says her work reminds her of the Multigravitational Dance Company which shared a space with the Alwin Nikolai Dance Company in the good old days. "Nik" was Mrs. Bird Dog's role model, mentor, and friend - and a good guy who is missed.)

Who is Elizabeth Streb?

In 1997 Elizabeth Streb was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' award. She is currently the 'Dean's Special Scholar' at New York University at the Draper Program working towards an M.A. in Time and Space studying Physics, Philosophy and Architecture.

Streb's choreography, (she calls it POPACTION) intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, extreme-sports, and Hollywood stunt work into a bristling muscle and motion vocabulary that combines daring and strict precision in the pursuit of attempting to display publicly the aggressive and deep effect of 'pure movement.'

An MA in Time and Space? Hmmm. Well, OK. Whatever. Looks like pure, wonderful physicality to me which blurs the arbitrary lines between dance, gymnastics, and sport.

From the NY Post gossip column (can't find the archive) a few weeks ago (Thanks, Sissy):

Mukesh Ambani is building a 60-story house in Mumbai. It puts our American hedge fund guys to shame.

It has room to house 600 servants. I could definitely use 600 servants around here, if only for a few days. Yard work, closet cleaning, straightening out the attic, weeding the garden, polishing the silver, sorting out the pantries, a bit of painting, spreading mulch, moving shrubs, carpet cleaning, gun cleaning, etc. I could keep 'em busy for a couple of days, and would want them back for a visit next June