Maggie's Farm

"What happens in the cornfield stays in the cornfield."

Anon.

Pic is beautiful central Ohio, on Sunday.

More links later. Server problems...

Pajamas: Time for Heads to Roll Over New Black Panther Dismissal

Falling in Love Only Takes About a Fifth of a Second, Research Reveals

That ain't love. That's called desire.

UNMANNED: Boys, Neuters, Thugs and Other Faux Men

Repressed aggression. Very sad.

Powerline: Independents poised to deal hard blow to Democrats

Cons need to keep an eye on those indies. Don't overreach, Cons.

The Shibboleth of "Fixing" Income Inequality

Russia fixed it. It worked out very well indeed. Everybody pretended to work.

A quote via Thompson on public spending:

See, whilst many… are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t. One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless, then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions. The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings? Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”

The Instyman posts something which might almost be considered a blog post instead of an Instyism. Good stuff, with some Heinlein for dessert. One quote:

The main problem with the “new elite” is that they’re not an elite at all. That is, they aren’t particularly smart, or competent. They are credentialed, but those credentials aren’t so much markers for smartness or competence, or even basic education, as they are admission tickets to the Gentry Class, based on good standardized test scores. That’s fine — ETS was berry, berry good to me — but it doesn’t have much to do with ability to succeed, or lead, in the real world. Worse yet, it seems to have fostered a sense of entitlement.

"Read the whole thing."

Don't vote: It just encourages the bastards.

P.J. O'Rourke

Not from The Onion: Lefty academics convene in Berkeley to try to make sense of the Tea Party movement.

Barack Obama echoes anti-Americanism of Europe in calling voters stupid

But how did Americans go from smart to stupid in two short years?

Don’t Tell Me Why I Hate Woodrow Wilson (h/t, View from 1776)

Barone: Voters Fed up With Obama's Big, Bossy Government

The out-of-control big-money donors this fall aren’t the U.S. Chamber of Commerce types, as the White House would have you believe. Mark McKinnon on the real culprits—union gifts to Democrats.

The dirty ploy with the Chamber of Commerce was a red herring.

Sometimes a fellow just wants a big bowl of Bob Evans sausage gravy dumped on top of a pile of good biscuits.

Many doctors claim the gravy smooths your arterial linings, thus extending life. The biscuits provide serenity and peace of mind in this troubled world, and many peer-reviewed studies confirm this. It is settled science.

I love to have excuses to travel to places where you can get good biscuits and gravy for breakfast, but I have too few opportunities to do so.

What's your favorite way to dine on this treat? Crumble the biscuit? Split the biscuit? Dump it on top of an intact biscuit? Such details matter in life.

The University of Chicago played Kenyon College in Gambier yesterday afternoon! Neither of the colleges recruit athletes nor offer athletic scholarships. Lots of fumbles, simple bleachers, no cheerleaders, and no admission charge. BYOB. Note cornfields in the distance. 

Good fun, like a high school game.

Who won? Don't know and don't really care. I never really care very much about sports scores unless I am playing.

These intellectual schools do have their share of sturdy, fine-lookin' young lads, however, according to the BD pupette. Just a lot smarter and far more academically talented than the usual, says she. Literarily or mathematically-inclined. What a wonderful world.

More Ohio pics later.

Purists might object, but these things are made of "resin," not wood. They are heavy. They have been outdoors for over a year and had accumulated mildew and dirt, so I decided to give them a bleach spray bath last weekend. It worked like magic.

I asked Mrs. BD whether she wanted me to put them inside someplace for the winter and she told me not to bother. "They're resin." I said "You mean plastic." I never realized it. I am happy to know that a lifetime of scraping, painting, and replacing rotting Adirondack chairs is over.

Seaside Casual Furniture, from Rhode Island. Only somebody like Sipp would notice that they aren't the real thing.

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

4:6 As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.

4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

4:8 From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

4:16 At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them!

4:17 But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.

4:18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

On Cape Cod in September. Thought blogger colleague Retriever might enjoy this pic.

I have a fatal disease in my large, probably 100 year-old Copper Beech tree. I have diagnosed it as Beech Bark Disease. I've seen the same bark disease on many old Copper Beeches recently - areas of shedding bark on the trunk and dying branches high overhead. It's a damn shame.

'Charity Has Never Solved Anything'

...imagine if your car insurance covered every scratch or dent. Wouldn't you expect your premiums to rise to meet the expanded coverage? And wouldn't you expect your auto repair shops to become clogged with cars that didn't really need to be repaired, competing for time and space with other cars with broken transmissions or burnt-out motors?

If we want lower insurance premiums, we will need to return to a system that favors high deductible, high co-pay catastrophic-type insurance with a built-in disincentive for overuse, such as the kind that some employers have provided as an option up until now. Patients could pay for office visits from health savings accounts or other flexible spending tax shelters. More than 10 million Americans already have such accounts.

A Lukewarmer speaks at Watts. Good comments on the post.

Prof B: How much is too much when it comes to taxes?

Climate regulations coming for trucks, buses

Let's bring on a new Ice Age

No normal human does not enjoy the smell of bacon

Moslems need to lighten up and learn more tolerance.

FOX is the most tolerant network

Greg Sullivan: Buy, Mortimer, Buy! - The Saga of Maine Family Robinson Continues

Anchoress on The Brutality of Grace and Cormac McCarthy

Did you ever see the film El Topo? McCarthy is like that.

Three Charts that Will Infuriate Taxpayers

Public Employees Union Spends Huge to Save Dems

This is corrupt.

The homelessness industry has re-branded San Francisco's street bums (h/t  Lucianne).

It's quite a story. The homeless advocates are begging and manipulating for money in a way which is similar to that of the seemingly-sociopathic panhandlers.

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

One of the good things about this handyman special on Route 6 in Wellfleet is that you can just walk up the dirveway to the Cumbie and the liquor store. What does anybody really need that cannot be got at one of those places?

Beers range between around 3% to around 9% alcohol by volume. I prefer the lower numbers because it is pleasant to enjoy a few brews without really feeling it.

You can look up your favorite beer's alcohol content (and calories) here.

Over the transom:

Waimea Bay shore-break surfing pioneer, husband, and father of two, Clark Little has gained nationwide recognition for his photography with appearances on Good Morning America, Inside Edition, and many local news stations across the U.S.

It all started in 2007 when Clark 's wife wanted a nice piece of art to decorate a wall. Voluntarily, Clark grabbed a camera, jumped in the water, and starting snapping away capturing the beauty and power of monstrous Hawaiian waves from the inside out.

"Clark's view" is a unique view of the ocean that most will only be able to experience safely on land while studying one of Clark 's photos. 

Now with a camera upgrade and an itch to get that better shot, Clark has taken this on full time and has moved his office from land, to the inside of a barrel. 

Here is Little's website.

Is it time to return to caveman parenting?

Stone Age families didn't spank and relied on multiple caregivers to raise their kids, research claims.

It sounds like Noble Savage silliness to me - the idealization of the primitive - although I am sure stone-age tribal people did share in watching the kids. Tribal kid-watching still makes sense today. The nuclear nucular family is a socio-cultural aberration.

Over the transom:

One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift... The next year, I didn't buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied,
"Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!"
And that's how the fight started.....
____________________________
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, 'Do you want to have Sex?' 'No,' she answered. I then said, 'Is that your final answer?'
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, 'Yes..'
So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."
And that's when the fight started...
______________________________
My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked her, "Do you know him?" "Yes", she sighed,
"He's my old boyfriend.... I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."
"My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"
And then the fight started...

A few more below the fold -

From Mike Huckabee:

"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left."

NPR exists in a kindergarten dream world. NPR has hated Williams since he dared to discuss self-destructive black subcultures. That is a no-no even though everybody knows about it.

Also see Opinion: Juan Williams, NPR and the Death of Liberalism.

More on the embarassment at Widener Law School

With open gays now free to join the army, Ivy League to bring back ROTC any second now, right?

VDH: How our first postracial, postnational, bipartisan president has revealed himself to be a condescending doctrinaire ideologue.

Shamelessly stolen from TigerHawk (who is welcome to steal from us any time):

Quoted in an otherwise appreciative City Journal review of a Normal Rockwell show, this supercilious comment:

Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik, who in reviewing the show derided Rockwell as the cowardly, “aw, shucks” epitome of Middle America. Rockwell “doesn’t challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes,” wrote Gopnik. “From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.”

I can't stand people who write like that. I almost thought it was satire, at first.

Whoever decided that art was meant to afflict comfort? Comfort is a good thing, and difficult to obtain. Sure, art ought to be stimulating in some way - like any other sort of entertainment - or nobody would buy it.  Art is entertainment. We love looking at pictures and designs of all sorts.

Here's Rockwell's 1962 Saturday Evening Post cover pic, The Connoisseur. It makes me think new thoughts and try new acts, and I think his Pollock imitation is better than Pollock: