Maggie's Farm

From Had Enough Therapy? with a post on narrative vs. reality:

Amazingly, led by the self-appointed arbiters of truth, no one seemed to care that Obama lacked a record of achievement, either legislative or executive. It doesn't stop there. Obama never released his medical records. We know nothing of his grade point averages. We have never seen his SAT or LSAT scores.

For the therapy culture, your narrative is the meaning of your life. The therapy culture is about teaching us all to construct our life stories. As a reactionary movement it has pointed us to our past, encouraged us to regress, and imagined that we would find meaning once we discovered which myth we were playing out.

...this may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for right thinking people to confront a specific, widespread mental disorder that has long driven us crazy: what I call Airhead Liberalism Political Disorder or ALPD for short. This is not a coherent ideology like Socialism or Marxism. Rather, it is a style of political engagement whose purpose is psychological satisfaction independent of actual of costs or benefits. In a nutshell: if advocating a policy makes me feel good about myself, it’s a good policy.

Sea levels have been slowly rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. Some people seem to imagine that the world never changes, and never should change. Yet it always has changed.

From The Madness of Prince Charles, this basic inter-glacial temperature graph is always worth bearing in mind:

We tend to feel, here on the Farm, that AGW is a hyped-up, trumped-up carnival designed by people with their own economic, political, pagan-religious, or etc. agendas. Real science-minded people are always skeptics about the science du jour, and know full well that all speculative theories fail in time. The tell, with the Warmists, is how ardently they desire to believe in the projective computer models, regardless of the facts.

We believe that good stewardship of the earth means humbly respecting nature and its power, and preserving natural land as best we can during our brief time here.

Here's what we think, specifically:

1. Warming would be net a good thing for humanity. It always has been, in the past.
2. It's certainly not happening in any catastrophic way - if it is in any way that makes much difference. Climates always change, and the one thing we know for certain is that another Ice Age is coming down the pike eventually. Now that will be a real challenge to humanity. We are due another, and the last Ice Age did no favors for the human species.
3. Even if warming were, somehow, a bad thing (I would need a lot of convincing), nothing meaningful can or will be done about it.
4. Any futile or symbolic effort to do "something" about it will only enrich certain scam-artists, rent-seekers, and grant-seekers, and be exploited by governments to increase their domination of regular people and their tax receipts. Even the big oil companies are hedged and poised to make huge bucks on government legislation internationally in case it ever happens - which I doubt.

Addenda:

- I doubt that the frequently-misguided Tom Friedman has seen the above chart. For stunning Friedman hypocrisy, see here. He won't change his life, but he wants all you little people to change yours. Typical. Just like Al Gore with his private jets and his half-billion he's made on carbon credits, etc.

- If you cannot predict, it isn't science. The non-droughts in the US Southwest. Name one Warmist prediction which has proven accurate over the past 10 years. (Indeed, the Coolists in the Global Cooling frenzy back in the 70's have been better predictors.)

- From Dr. Sanity's Environmental Fantasies:

If the radical environmentalists really wanted to "do something" about global warming, then they would be calling for funding projects that explore countermeasures and methods to adapt to it. What we see instead is the same kind of religious fanaticism and holy fervor that the left so despises in the fundamental right. What they really want is power over people.

Theirs is basically a totalitarian agenda in which they, the "elites", will dictate how people should live on this earth.

- Pajamas: Noble Corruption. I see nothing noble about refusing to be skeptical about scientific theories and computer models. Just ask any hedgie how Nobel-laureate computer models work out as long-term predictors of complex systems.

- Also, How Climate-Change Dance Theory spells the end of a movement. Good grief. All Bozos on that wacky bus.

We know that a Scottie won the Westminster Show, and everybody loves Scotties. I was partial to the Coonhound. My cuz emailed me that he had a show favorite: The Kuvasz. Never heard of them. Big dogs, bred in Hungary to protect livestock. Look kinda like a wolf in sheep's clothing:

At Commentary. One quote:

Today’s New York Times reports that people are increasingly fed up with the high costs and high-handed ways of American colleges. It’s about time. As the Times reports: “‘One of the really disturbing things about this, for those of us who work in higher education,’ said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, ‘is the vote of no confidence we’re getting from the public. They think college is important, but they’re really losing trust in the management and leadership.’”

College tuition has risen far faster than inflation. In the 1960s, I paid $2,200 a year to attend a first-rate university. From the month I graduated to December 2009, there was an inflation of slightly over 550 percent. So tuition today, net of inflation, should be on the order of $12,500. It’s $37,005, almost three times higher. Why?

h/t, reader -

Hope and change...Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases That 'Aren't Even Imaginable'.

VDH has it right: What a Difference a Year Makes. A quote:

...what changed? The Obama administration offered a statist agenda of massive deficits, and it blamed Bush for America's current problems. The people revolted, and even the combined power of large Democratic congressional majorities, a ministry-of-truth media, and an Ivy League technocracy could not push through hope and change — largely due to Democratic legislators' worries that they were walking out on a plank that would soon be sawed off by the next election.

The implosion of the Obama administration is newsworthy, but not as astonishing as this petulant liberal reappraisal of both popular political participation and the structure of American government...

Remember this from Nov., 2008? Republicans still in denial as wilderness years stretch ahead

Just the usual old winter friends lately: SC Junco, WT Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Blue Jay, RB Woodpecker, Carolina Wren, Cardinal, Chickadee, some dang House Sparrows, Tufted Titmouse, Mourning Dove.

I need my Sharpie back to eat those overfed House Sparrows.

(It's interesting to see how just some of the Juncoes - ground-feeders - figure out how to use a hanging feeder, but most do not. Have yet to see a WT Sparrow on the hanger. I throw handfuls of seed on the ground each morning for the ground-feeders, figuring it will all be gone by late afternoon so as not to encourage rats.)

Also, a flock of Robins stopped by yesterday to finish off the Holly berries. Not a single berry left, now. I had a few early blackbirds last week - Grackles - but they are probably back in Georgia by now. I do usually see some Blackbird species around by Feb 15, trying to push the envelope.

The lack of Pelicans at my feeders would appear to disprove global warming catastrophe models. I'd write it up for a peer-reviewed journal, if the gummint or the EU would give me a generous grant: Effects of Global Warming on Pelican Occurrance at New England Bird-Feeders. $1.3 million would cover my research just fine, or at least help me get it underway. I will guarantee a research product which will help "the cause," and the $ will help me hire a handy research assistant/pelican-counter like one of Theo's so we don't lose all of our critical data:

You probably already knew that the so-called Sphinx had been deeply eroded by rain from when the Sahara was wet, that the Sphinx has been buried under sand through most of its lifetime, and that the face is likely not the original. What I did not know is that the body of the sculpture was not constructed, but rather carved out of a single piece of limestone in the middle of a quarry.

Good update at Smithsonian.

...when liberal wring their hands because the U.S. seems to be ungovernable, we conservatives chuckle. That's not a bug, liberals; that's a feature.

From Chantrill at Am Thinker

From the post:

The Nazi propaganda poster says: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too."  

Story here. His pictures kind of pleasantly remind me of 1950s illustrations. Image is his Motel Pool:

From Mrs Ike: Memories of the Life of Mamie Eisenhower, which contains a lot of letters Ike wrote to Mamie during the war. A quote from one of them: 

"When I find myself contemplating a post-war experience, I always picture a little place away from the cities (but with someone near enough for occasional bridge) and the two of us just getting brown in the sun, (and possibly thick in the middle).  A dozen cats and dogs, with a horse or two, maybe a place to fish (not too strenuously) and a field in which to shoot a few birds once in a while - I think that's roughly my idea of a good life."

Image is Currier and Ives' 1851 portrait of "America," the first boat to win the famous race.

The America's Cup (named for the sailboat, not the country) is now sailed with multi-hulls with 17-story masts. 33 knots out of a 10 knot wind speed. Here's winner US-17:

h/t, SDA, with links to more details of the race

I am making my usual St. Valentine's Day day steamed mussels and lobster feast, but I did at least one other act of love today - remembering that love is action, not sentiment. Carpet cleaning done! (They have a special spray for dog pee bedroom carpet spots. Isn't it romantic? Carpet sucks, in my opinion.)

Love Sick, live in Stockholm, 2009 (lyrics here):

No more eccentric than the rest of her Amherst family. Indeed, her life has been sentimentalized.

Well, always interesting to have an epileptic nympho around the place, especially on St. Valentine's Day when the Christian saint seems to give way to the celebration of Eros.

Eros (Cupid) - "desire" - is the mischievous prankster son of Venus who, at the same time, is responsible for keeping humanity thriving. He is, indeed, a troublemaker and a pest, isn't he, with his devilish little arrows and bow? As Kesler and I observed the other day, those little arrows can hit you at the oddest, most unsuspecting moments. Like at the supermarket.

You can refresh your memory of the folktale of Cupid and Psyche here.

This is Caravaggio's c. 1600 Eros Victorious:

h/t, Theo