Maggie's Farm

To a Skylark (1825)

          ETHEREAL minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
          Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
          Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
          Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
          Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
          Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

          Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
          A privacy of glorious light is thine;
          Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
          Of harmony, with instinct more divine;                      10
          Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
          True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Photo: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Mrs. BD and I have been engaged in a month-long debate about trips this year (in addition to the usual Cape Cod family reunion and, I think, hunting in Manitoba).

Cruise or car or trains? Scotland? Provence? Vienna and Prague? Venice and Veneto and the south Tyrol? Canary Islands and Madeira with stops in Morocco and Portugal? Turkey (I love that country)? Sailboat down the Turkish coast? Israel and Egypt?

Carpe diem, right? Now, or never. Could get hit by a bus tomorrow.

I am more in a Provence mood (or maybe Sicily again), but I always do love to get on a ship or a boat. It gives me a reason (besides tuitions) to work. (My theory of life? We can relax when we are dead.) Put it on the credit card...

Where do our readers want to go?

A Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

G.K. Chesterton (h/t, Anchoress)

2008 -

Who knew? The restoration of Elk to Kentucky has been a huge success. (Thanks, reader.) Now they need their hunting season, since the predators haven't found them yet. No Cougars or wolves seen in KY lately, alas. Wildcats, yes! A wonderful state, but too far from salt water for me.

There used to be forest-dwelling buffalo ("Bison" for purists) throughout Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, too. How about trying a restoration of them? I do know that they bust through fences...

As Mrs. BD quips, "Lorenzo was sort of a Renaissance Man, wasn't he?" Lorenzo took an active role in designing the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano, 12 miles north of Florence, in 1485.

The design of this rural Medici farming villa, which so much impressed and influenced Palladio, was revolutionary in several ways, not the least of which were its orientation outwards rather than towards an inner courtyard and its lack of defensive fortifications. (Lorenzo was famously casual about security.)

From the Value of a Life at Ragamuffin Studies:

...as we were speaking, I realized that my friend had wandered into a collectivist view of the value of a life. His value of liberty was not completely based on the principle of individual rights. Because if his values were firmly rooted there, he would realize immediately that the value of a life is not based on how useful to society, or how precious that person is to another.

That friend is a victim of pernicious Utilitarianism - John Dewey's contribution to the totalitarianism of the Left. "The greater good" and all that soul-crushing stuff.

There is no greater earthly good than individual freedom.

I sure hope this is the ugliest building on the Princeton campus:

Mead: AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent. (via Driscoll's Global Warming: Is There Nothing It Can’t Do? Part Deux).

Also, from Mead's response to the NYT:

This is limp reportage and does a grave disservice to the Times readership.  In the first place, a number of additional allegations have surfaced — some trivial, some more substantial.  Rosenthal’s readers come away from this piece with no understanding of why the Guardian ran a commentary headlined “The Case for Climate Change Must Be Remade From the Ground Upwards” or another entitled “The IPCC’s Problems Have Been Exacerbated By Its Imperious Attitude“.  They will not understand why in this Guardian report of Monday February 8 (“Climate Scientists Hit Out at ‘Sloppy’ Glacier Error“) climate scientists who worked on the IPCC report are said to be calling on Pachauri to step down. In case any New York Times readers are reading this post, here’s a quick summary of what the real story is and what it means...

 

How Global Warming Makes Blizzards Worse.

If there's no snow in DC next winter, that will be because of global warming too. I guess we'll have to add blizzards to the Complete List.

Also amusing: Moose numbers in MN dropping "because of global warming." Moose numbers in other states burgeoning...because of global warming?

Why they have begun terming snow "blizzards" I do not know. I took a drive this morning and saw nary a Moose, just an ordinary snowy day:

A friend was thoughtful enough to give us a year's subscription to Zagat's online for Christmas. Zagat's has gone global now.

A (free) alternative to Zagat's is Yelp. Pick your city. I have been warned, however, that a 3-star rating on Yelp in NYC is equivalent to a 5-star rating elsewhere. New Yorkers are highly critical and demanding about dining - and about everything else. "If I can make it there..."

For example, we were in the city this weekend at the Irish Repertory Theater and were looking for Venetian restaurants in the neighborhood. We tried Le Zie in Chelsea on 7th Ave. Not pricey. Zie had some rough reviews on Yelp (people love to bitch in reviews) but the place was better than any neighborhood trattoria in Italy. The ten "small plate" seafood appetizers were wonderful, and the Venetian calf's liver with onions and vinegar sauce was a fine treat.

It was fun checking out Zagat for Venetian restaurants in NYC. Here are a few of them, for your amusement.

The menus give a good idea of what Venetian cooking consists of:

Cipriani

Osteria al Doge

Antica Venezia

Osteria Laguna

REMI

All good fun. Here's inside Le Zie:

Prof Jones, via SDA:

Jones (nine years later) in a 2005 email:

(McKitrick and McIntyre) have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a freedom of Information act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

Jones three days ago:

We interpret data. We don’t create or collect it. It’s all available from other sources.

Our friend Elissa will have a show of her latest at the Noel Gallery in Bronxville. A sample:

...or if we cannot put up new posts, it will be due to the approaching blizzard. I was amused to read that the opening of the NOAA Climate Change Dept had to be delayed due to snow. Here's their BS:

NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, is going to be providing information to individuals and decision-makers through a new NOAA Climate Service office. “More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives,” the release says.

More and more, it seems, we are having weather. There never used to be weather before Capitalism. 

Who are these people? Didn't they get the memo?

The Harvard Psychedelic Club: Did LSD really kill the 1950s?

Is it a tragedy for languages to be lost?

Re the Trapp family, here's a good chronology

Pajamas: Hard truths about the immigration debate

At Volokh: What is the EU all about? I think it's about a bureaucratic empire and unelected mandarins who know what is best for the little people

Please, no! Coming together on a climate bill

Pam Geller destroys Reagan Jr

Thinking about John Jay of Rye and Katonah, NY

Day 386 of Chicago-style politics. Related, even Newsweek is worried (h/t, Dino)

George Will: Charting our way to solvency

From Ben Stein's piece of the above title:

What would my ancestors from the 15th century, probably one day away from starvation each day, have thought about their descendant living in a home with palm trees and a swimming pool and another with a view of the Pacific Ocean? What would they have thought of me being able to appear on a little lighted box so millions of people could see me at once?

What would they have thought of the fact that my father, also their descendant, closely advised presidents of a land they never knew of but that would become the most powerful, most glorious place in the history of man?

I even think of my grandfather, my father’s father, who came here as a fatherless boy and served for many years as a U.S. Army cavalryman. Not in a plane or on a tank, but on a horse . . . What would he think of the fact that his little boy, my father, who helped out with the bills by delivering newspapers in Detroit and Schenectady, would have the ear of world leaders?

What would he, who was unemployed during most of the Great Depression, think of me swimming endlessly in my pool under starry skies as my dogs slumber on the lounges?

I think of the specific luck of Ben Stein to be in America, but I also think of the luck of every American just to be in America.

Highly recommended and hilarious: Pat Condell on the Saudis, human rights - and England. Pithy, as always.

Form Rick Moran:

There are few human beings on planet earth more annoying than Deepak Chopra, the touchy-feely, New Age Guru whose fetid, gooey, and completely banal nostrums regarding health and healing have reached a new low in the history of civilized thought.

But, Rick, remember that he has gotten fabulously rich from his banal nostrums. So maybe he's not a complete idiot. Maybe he is our P.T. Barnum.

I do not know how many of Lorenzo di Medici's country villas are extant, but he helped design a few of them, one of which was an architectural inspiration for Palladio.

This one, sitting on the hills overlooking Florence, was built by Cosimo for his second grandson Giovanni, and came into Lorenzo's hands after his brother was assassinated by a cabal which included the Pope. It became one of Lorenzo's favorite hangouts with his philosopher, artist, and poet pals (and girlfriends).

(By the way, we recommend staying in Fiesole when visiting Florence, and it's just a 15-minute bus ride down the hill. November and May are good months.)

A friend was enthusing about (Habanos) Romeo y Julietas the other day. He views them as the best brand. Photo is their medium strength 42 ring gauge Corona - a good "starter cigar." Now that cigar appreciation is no longer the yuppie fad that it had been for a while, it's OK to enjoy them again.

A reader referred us to a Weisberg post at Slate, subtitled Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.

I don't know what he means by "political crisis." The essay does seem to reinforce our post yesterday about liberal condescension. However, does he have a point or not, here?

Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.

At the root of this kind of self-contradiction is our historical, nationally characterological ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix all of our problems now. At the same time, we want government to shrink, spend less, and reduce our taxes. We dislike government in the abstract: According to CNN, 67 percent of people favor balancing the budget even when the country is in a recession or a war, which is madness. But we love government in the particular: Even larger majorities oppose the kind of spending cuts that would reduce projected deficits, let alone eliminate them.

Let me put the hypothetical question this way: What Federal programs would you cut or eliminate (in addition to the Federal Dept of Education) which affect you or your family personally?