Maggie's Farm

Lots of glacial kettle ponds out there. Very deep in the middle.

After recommending Gombrich's Meditations On a Hobby Horse and Other Essays On the Theory of Art a month or so ago, I have been re-reading it after 20 years.

It's the deepest and most thoughtful stuff I have ever read about image-making and our responses to them, so dense with ideas that I can really only digest a sentence or two at a time.

Over the transom:

More below the fold -

In a disused graveyard

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

Is the Mojito really the national cocktail of Cuba? This drink seems to be enjoying a craze recently. Sounds like a Mint Julep but with rum.

I have never tried one, but I steer clear of hard booze most of the time. I like anything with mint in it, though.

Here's how to make it.

Image via Eratosthenes

Mumbai lovers find haven as attitudes to dating change

Oxford University Degenerates Into Transsexual Farce

Very old tools (45,000 years old)

Why Toilets Are Still Made of Porcelain

Why the Amish Population Is Exploding

Shackleton and Scott's Antarctic huts are put online

Belarus generals sacked over Swedish teddy bear stunt

Oldie but goodie: New Wool Blanket Tears Commune Apart

Dispelling the misconceptions about feminism.

What Ever Happened to Jayson Blair?

Chicagoans hungry to flip the bird to Rahm, nicely

Beetle could delay Keystone pipeline

Enrollment Off in Big Districts, Forcing Layoffs

New Online Help Wanted Ads Plunge The Most Since January 2009

Meredith Whitney: Banking Industry to Shed Another 50,000 Jobs

What’s More Important, Monopoly Privileges for Union Bosses or Educational Opportunity for Minority Children?

Harry Reid offers still more evidence……that he’s a lowlife bottom feeder.

Jenkins: Is Obama Beating Himself? With "you didn't build that" going viral, the president's campaign is reportedly looking for a positive message. But what message?

Mitt Romney is right, culture matters

Oy Vey! Nancy Pelosi Wants to Protect Me from Being Exploited

Obama’s Campaign Most Cynical in Recent Memory

Santorum: Chick-fil-A a victim of ‘intolerance and bigotry’

Ann Romney slammed for $990 Shirt, Michelle Obama praised for $6,800 jacket

Steyn in Europe:

How many more millions will be on food stamps and disability by the end of the decade? According to the Heritage Foundation, in the United States government spending accounts for 42 percent of GDP, in Canada 44 percent. Those two points are apparently the difference between a sturdy republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens and a notorious semi-French socialist basket case of effete wimps. Oh, wait: New Zealand's about the same as America.

The Young Women's Republican Club of Milford, CT, 1941

Inspirational and entertaining TED talk - with juggling (h/t Cheating the Impossible: Wire-Walker Philippe Petit on Education, Creativity, and Patience)

Image via Vanderleun

Look! There's a shiny object  squirrel chicken sandwich!

Sippican's house (with Tom Waits)

Commutes, Tradeoffs and the Limits of Urban Growth

Burn Down the Suburbs? Not exactly, but Obama is already working to get rid of them.

Japanese robot update

Penn State Students Trying To Understand Why They're There Now

Rag Drag - How we became buried by clothes, and what to do about it

Gore Vidal, celebrated author, playwright, dies at 86

The King of All Media - Maine ‘independent’ Senate candidate Angus King Protected by Maine-Stream Media, Insiders Say

"Independent"?

Brit Hume: Obama’s “distress call” to Bill Clinton.

And, says Krauthammer: It’s a sign of weakness

NPR Host: Romney’s Poland Trip Is Racially Motivated

Obviously. It's a country with no African-Americans.

Reflections on “Chicago values” By Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Health Care in MA Is Bad Omen for Obamacare

Globull Warming, Class Warfare, Last On List Of American’s Concerns

Why ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Resonates

Anti-Semitic Statement: Nancy Pelosi Claims Jews Care Only About Money

Corn for Food, Not Fuel

Government Motors isn't working

Back out to Wellfleet, as usual. Not just for the world-famous Wellfleet Oysters.

"Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. His ideas are even more important today":

 Well over 200 million were liberated from poverty thanks to the rediscovery of the free market. And now as the world teeters close to another recession, leaders need to urgently rediscover Friedman's ideas.

I remember asking Milton, a year or so before his death, during one of our semiannual dinners in downtown San Francisco: What can we do to make America more prosperous? "Three things," he replied instantly. "Promote free trade, school choice for all children, and cut government spending."

How much should we cut? "As much as possible."

A Libertarian at heart. The man believed in American freedom from the state and had faith in human potential - when unleashed. Listening to him talk, for me, is like seeing the sun come out from behind a cloud.

A 1704 farmhouse

A 1755 farmhouse next door, built on the same farm for a kid, I would imagine

And a 15-minute walk to the YMCA and the library. Plus a fairly dense neighborhood where kids can hop on their bike, or just walk down the street, and find tons of kids to hang out with and play ball with. How good is that?

The train would be the New Haven line (NYC to Boston). Fairfield is around an hour and 15 minutes by train to Grand Central Station. Not too bad, especially if you can get work done on the train. A little less time to New Haven. It's part of the "Gold Coast," but this neighborhood is more like Silver. Pricey for what little you get.

The lad and I took our annual journey to the great Pequot Library Book Sale in Southport, CT on Sunday afternoon, then spent a few minutes scouting out the Fairfield real estate (south of the Boston Post Road, near Long Island Sound), just for giggles - but thinking as investors.

With all of the amazing amenities, one might think these neighborhoods near the beaches would be charming as heck. They are not. They are mostly post-war, poorly-built and poorly-designed with lots of split-levels and other charmless ticky-tacky stuff, built on small lots on marsh fill and thus subject to flooding during big storms. But that's the price you pay to walk to the beach. Laws would not permit such wetlands construction today.

My lad says that post-war neighborhoods are rarely gentrified, or spruced-up, due to lack of charm and construction quality. Because of the local amenities and conveniences, the land here is worth about the same with house or without. It's mostly 1/4-acre lots, some less. That means the houses are what are termed "scrapers": the house adds no, or minimal, value to the lot. In fact, the cost of demolition detracts from the value. Those lots are valuable with or without a functional house - around $450-800,000, and well over a million post-scraping and rebuilding. As a result of the near-zero value of the building, many of them are not well-maintained or improved up to modern standards.

Only a few of them have been scraped and replaced by 3-story houses of indeterminate, ungainly style. (Due to setback requirements, you have to build up to 3 stories to get the square footage people want today.)

When people realize their houses are hopeless scrapers, they stop putting money into them and thus make the neighborhood - and themselves - look scruffy, dilapidated, or dysfunctional. Often, they are best off renting the darn thing. Here's an example of one below, a snout house I suppose, which has had nothing done since 1958 except paint. Landscaping, I think, by Home Depot. With a little effort in that department, it could look like a fairly good starter house or retirement shelter. An American flag over the entry, and some interesting landscaping, would add a lot to this basic dwelling without scraping it off.

(By the way, I hate those set-back zoning rules. Stupid. Houses could have friendly porches right off the street, and larger back yards for gardening, etc., without them. People making zoning rules are usually idiots. These are not exactly grand estates with gracious lawns full of grazing sheep.And, speaking of annoying zoning rules, these post-war neighborhoods are zoned as single-family residential, so there are no corner stores to walk to for coffee, a newspaper, an ice cream, or to chat with neighbors over a beer. You have to drive when anybody would prefer to push the stroller a few blocks for a coffee.)

For an example, this pleasant Cape in the same neighborhood is for sale for around $750,000. More Fairfield listings here.

The hidden world of sharks

Wendell Berry update

5 Reasons We Can’t Have It All - You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need.

Do You Have Obsessive-Compulsive Photography Disorder (OCPD)?

 The Absurdity Of Sandy Weill

Republicans Who Oppose Obamacare Are Like Stalin… Want People to “Die Needlessly”

Racism? No, Obama’s Own Incompetence Is Hurting His Campaign

Mark Steyn: Don't cross the forces of tolerance

A global warming skeptic who's a lot smarter than Al Gore

Holder To Banks: You're All Bigots

GM Ramps Up Risky Subprime Auto Loans To Drive Sales.

Cook Medical Scraps Expansion Plans Over ObamaCare Medical Tax

Why Are Keynesians of All People Calling for Tax Increases in a Crap Economy?

DHS won't explain its order of 450 million hollow point bullets

What????

All the Dependency Pieces Are Falling into Place

Understanding real Israeli politics

Some memorable quotes from the first version of Tinker, Tailor with Alec Guiness.

If you haven't seen it, it's the best miniseries ever made for TV. One sample:

Percy Alleline: Merlin is the fruit of a long cultivation by certain people in the Circus. People who are bound to me as I am to them. People who are not at all entertained by the failure rate about this place. There's been too much blown, too much lost, too much wasted. Too many scandals. I've said so many times, but I might as well have talked to the wind for all the heed he paid me.
Control: "He" means me, George.
Percy Alleline: The ordinary principles of tradecraft and security have gone to the wall in this service. It's all "divide and rule," stimulated from the top.
Control: Me again.
Percy Alleline: We're losing our livelihood. Our self-respect. We've had enough. We've had a bellyful, in fact.
[Alleline exits]
Control: And like everybody who's ever had enough, he wants more!

Mrs. BD is a big iPhone fan. The other night, she was showing me an iTunes University lecture from a Yale prof on her phone. It was pretty good.

I asked her how that could be in her phone. She said "It's in the cloud, same as my Downton Abbey."

"I don't understand this Cloud," I said. "Is there a God app in that cloud, because if there is, I need it."

2 Samuel 11:1-15

11:1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

11:2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.

11:3 David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite."

11:4 So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house.

11:5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."

11:6 So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent Uriah to David.

11:7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going.

11:8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king.

11:9 But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.

11:10 When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?"

11:11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing."

11:12 Then David said to Uriah, "Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day,

11:13 David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

11:14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

11:15 In the letter he wrote, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."

Image is David and Bathsheba by Lucas Cranach (the elder, I think), 1526. What a good opportunity to paint a charming nude, but I suppose he had to do what was requested of him by his patron. David and Bathsheba's adulterous lovechild was, as the story goes, Solomon. Correction: that kid died, their second was Solomon. Solomon had, they say, 600 wives but only one had a Neiman-Marcus charge card. The rest of them had to shop at WalMart. Makes sense to me.