Maggie's Farm

There is a new magazine out there, Garden and Gun. It sounds like an ideal sort of Maggie's Farm magazine (h/t, Dr. Helen).

With a photo of Pat Conroy on the cover, how bad could it be? I'll give it a try, if only to find out whether it's more interesting than our Maggie's Farm blog. I am certain that it is better-written.

Re gun mags, I used to subscribe to Shooting Sportsman, but it has become too snooty for my taste. Informative, though, if you own $60,000 shotguns instead of Mossbergs and Brownings like regular folks.

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

P.J. O'Rourke

One of the puppies is graduating from college in two weeks, and will be moving to New York. She is a Math major with a Fine Arts minor, with plenty of street smarts - plus a Division 1 Varsity sport.

She sealed a deal with the job she wanted in back in November. Nice little "signing bonus," too. Yesterday she emailed me the website for the building in NYC into which she will be moving. Dang nice. This building has a doorman, a gym, and rooftop gardens. Plus she will have 6 pals from college and high school in the same building. Look out, New York, for the approaching tornado.

When I lived in NYC, I lived in hovels and basement apartments with slovenly roomates and cockroaches, had few friends - and no money to paint the town even if I had wanted to. In those days, there were no buildings with gyms, indoor pools, and rooftop gardens anyway.

Check out the details of the apartment building. I am jealous, but a professional curmudgeon like me should say "The kids today are so spoiled. They should be suffering and struggling, or in the Army, instead of romping around." She says she expects to work from 6:30 AM to 11 pm, so I guess it won't be all fun and games, and the pressure to be outstanding will be enormous...but that's Life in the Big City.

(Sometime I will have to get her to record all of her job interview questions. One guy gave her five seconds to answer "What's 19X17?" Fortunately, she had memorized her multiplication tables through 20 rather than the ordinary 10. They also wanted instant decimal conversions, and tested the depth of her knowledge of statistics, Shakespeare, Latin, Mozart's operas, Thomas Aquinas, and Duccio.  I take that as an effort to weed out the bullshit artists. A total of about eight hours of pressure interviews, spread over a few weeks, for each of the jobs she wanted. Most interviews included lunch or dinner at least once, which she rightly believes was an effort to check out her collegiality, sociability, manners, and poise under pressure.)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.

Thomas Jefferson 

It's not a classical logical fallacy, but the Zero-Sum fallacy, when applied to money and wealth, is one of the most common fallacies around. We mention it often at Maggie's Farm.

It is a delusion commonly held by the economically ignorant - a delusion which Lefty politicians are never in a hurry to disabuse them of. We are fortunate that it is fallacious, because it means everyone can potentially have whatever degree of wealth they want without detracting from anyone else's.

Coyote re-posts his annual Wealth Creation and the Zero-Sum Fallacy.

Both links via RCP:

Edmund Burke on Sarko's election. This is a revolution he likes. By the way, I read his new book this winter. Essential reading. I think I read it in college, but forgot all of it.

E.J. Dionne: The Left is Reeling. Dionne is a real person, but he always makes for a perfect straw man anyway.

And also, Chirac's Legacy, at Ace

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.

Voltaire

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Winston Churchill

In the past year we have posted quite a bit on pigs. A reader was kind enough to send in his Show-and-Tell photo above of a recent Texas pig hunt. Is that a piglet his friend is holding in his mouth?

(By the way, which crude, culturally-insensitive reader suggested dropping these from 20,000 feet on Baghdad to clean out Sadr City?)

Our contributor Gwynnie sent this note on Friday:

This weekend, Gwynnie will join a group of ranchers using their depredation permit on a Northern California ranch to try to dent the population of European wild boars that have invaded the California Coast Range and beyond.  She will try to post pictures next week or so. She has done a little research on the issue and found an excellent article excerpted below:

I always enjoy reading Lileks' The Bleat. But I believe that Jim is missing the point there: the Minneapolis Strib obviously wants him to leave. When they move you from the executive suite to the mailroom, that's the message, isn't it?

However, there is another point to be made here: Newspapers have a future in local news, and, I think, a rosy future if they have good online editions - with reader commentary.

"Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."

Take Dante's Hellfire and Damnation Quiz (Copyright 1327) and find out where you stand.

When Spring comes, you are supposed to have a solid inventory of Spring-related stuff. I picked up 20 bags of that Black Forest dark-colored mulch that I prefer, on Saturday. (That red-colored stuff they sell looks like crap - it is fake-looking, detracts from the plants' loveliness, and will make your place look like a MacDonalds.) So I schlepped back after church yesterday to pick up another 20 bags and they were SOLD OUT!

Can't the government do something about this kind of problem? Nationalizing Home Depot might help a lot, dontcha think? It was a great inconvenience for me, and think of the gasoline I wasted on that second trip...plus Home Depot, in their greedy, cruel and evil Capitalist way, makes a profit on this stuff that I need. It's just not fair and it's not right to make money off stuff I need, is it?

LaShawn is generally a sweetly reasonable, mild-mannered soul, but here she vents on illegals. One quote:

Working- and middle-class Americans are the ones suffering. While illegal alien scourge-supporting elites are living it up in gated communities in California, for instance, everyone else is dealing with hispanic gangs. While the elites are working the kind of jobs that put them in contact with zero illegal aliens (well, maybe the janitor), working class folks have to compete for jobs with people who aren’t supposed to be here. Forget that illegal aliens are working for less money. I’m a staunch supporter of the free market, and if legal aliens were driving down wages, I’d complain less loudly. But since the market is being manipulated by illegal means, that’s a problem. (Understatement of the year!)

Yes, there is a great deal of frustration out there in the land about this, especially because the Repubs and the Dems have decided, in a de facto conspiracy of cowardice, not to make it an issue of contention (except for Tancredo).

Blues fan Dust My Broom saw BB King in Calgary this weekend. The man is 81 and still on the road. God bless this lovely, amazingly-talented guy.

Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.

Anon.

New York City Fun (and old bars)

Cooking ducks. It's time to empty ye olde freezer.

Hosta City. The variety of Hostas you can find now is remarkable. Genetic engineering must be fun and profitable.

Overfishing and the Atlantic Fish Crisis (Yes, it is a real crisis, if you like fish either on your plate or in the sea)

The Dark Side of God?

Not from today's Lectionary as usual, but from my Bible group's reading last week.

Mark 10:17

17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ¹⁸Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. ¹⁹You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ ²⁰He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ ²¹Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ ²²When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ ²⁴And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ ²⁶They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ ²⁷Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ ²⁹Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, ³⁰who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. ³¹But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

"I am fine, and we are kicking ass."

A typically cryptic email from a friend's son, a Navy SEAL, on duty somewhere where bad guys are abundant.