Maggie's Farm

He tells some of the tricks he uses. He is permitted to lie to you. Talk to him, and you are screwed - even if you are as pure as driven snow (which nobody is).

One great line: "If I follow you in my car long enough, eventually you will do something to give me legitimate reason to pull you over." Another: "Let's talk off the record." (There is no such thing as "off the record.")

I am convinced. The correct response to cops of all sorts is "With all respect, I wish to consult with an attorney."

Via Retriever via Neuroanthropology, an essay on The Adaptive Function of Literature. A quote:

Consider the reality of our experience. We live in the imagination. For us, humans, no action or event is ever just itself. It is always a component in mental representations of the natural and social order, extending over time. All our actions take place within imaginative structures that include our vision of the world and our place in the world—our internal conflicts and concerns, our relations to other people, our relations to nature, and our relations to whatever spiritual forces we imagine might exist. We live in communities that consist not just of the people with whom we come directly into contact but with memories of the dead, traditions of our ancestors, our sense of connection with generations yet unborn, and with every person, living or dead, who joins with us in imaginative structures—social, ideological, religious, or philosophical—that subordinate our individual selves to some collective body. Our sense of our selves derives from our myths and artistic traditions, from the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the visual images that surround us.

Fascinating and thoughtful essay on a complex topic. Humankind's hypertrophied cortex is a blessing and a curse.

The leap from the genetics of adaptation to the arts is too large a leap for my pay grade, but the fact that humans exist in their imaginations is entirely clear to me. It's clear to my imagination too.

Mysterious 1922 photo via Dr. X

"I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money...."

Sherlock Holmes

"If you need to foresee the future, you are doing something badly wrong."

From Stumbing and Mumbling in a piece on the inability of economists and other social scientists to make predictions.

From our high veranda.

A couple more Napoli photos below -

Stella By Starlight. Keith Jarett (h/t, Little Green a while ago):

James 1:17-27

1:17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

1:18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

1:19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger;

1:20 for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.

1:21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

1:22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

1:23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;

1:24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.

1:25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing.

1:26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.

1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

The apple comes in towards the end:

A college lit prof at Temple begins:

Last semester, in an unguarded moment, I did what literature teachers should never do. I told a student her interpretation of a poem was wrong. From that moment I was regarded as an enemy to freedom.

Whole thing here.

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer (from Leaves of Grass, 1892)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

A re-post from 2007 -

No living author does black humor and devilish satire as well as Carl Hiassen. For a look into the dark side of south Florida, give him a try. His novels are populated with brutal sociopaths, daffy idealists, the lost and deranged, corrupt politicians, and saints.

He is now an editor at the Miami Herald, but his books will cause you to consider staying far away from south Florida. I think that must have been partly intentional because he has a deep love for the unspoiled and undeveloped Florida.

I just finished Lucky You so I am up to date with all of his stuff. Here's his website. Here's his Amazon listing.

The photo is from this interview.

I had an appetizer plate of top-flight local Gorgonzola Dolce Gran Riserva in Italy last summer, up north in Piedmont where they make the stuff.

It had little in common with the supermarket stuff we get here in the USA. It was creamy, not crumbly, and it was tasty as heck but without any sharpness. It was not meant to be thrown in a salad or on top of a burger, but to be eaten reverently (or irreverently) with a fork in thin slices, with some slices of fruit on the side. Which I did.

It was expensive, too.

A re-post from June 2008 -

One day last week we took the ferry up Lake Maggiore to the impeccably preserved medieval village of Cannobio, just south of the Swiss border.

Cannobio (dig the poor English in that link) is one of those towns that I call "Disney Italy," or sometimes "The Italian Holodeck." It's so quaint and charming that it doesn't seem quite real. Mrs. BD likes to try to remind me that it is real, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm on a stage set.

Like most ancient Italian villages, the streets and general layout show their medieval origins, but most of the structures are Renaissance era stone, masonry and stucco.

The cars were mostly Mercedes and Audis, and the clothing shops decidedly upscale and high fashion. Mrs. BD observed that an elegant lady we passed had a $3000 handbag, so we figured that Cannobio must be a quiet escape for the prosperous of Milan. Their weekend dwellings, however, seem to be simple and 600 years old.

Our goal was a tiny restaurant we had read about, behind a church up in the mountains behind Connobio. We hiked about 3 or 4 km in intermittent rain up the Val Cannobino through the hamlet of Traffiume (all walking in northern Italy is uphill - there is no downhill. It's like an endlessly uphill Escher.), only to arrive after they had closed their lunchtime service.

Later that day, we foolishly missed the last ferry back and had to improvise by bus and cab to get back to the hotel in the dark, wet, tired - and not well-fed. 

Photo is Sant Anna Church, north of Cannobio. It's perched on the edge of a prodigious gorge. If you want to lunch in the little restaurant behind it, Ristorante Grotto Sant' Anna, get there on time.

More photos of Cannobio and environs on continuation page below.

Part 1 was posted yesterday morning. This is from Dr. Bliss.

The Headmaster also had a policy that all administrators had to teach something - from the Admissions officer to the Provost and the Dean - and coach a sport too (however badly - nobody there cared if you were a lousy coach as long as we all got 2 hours of strenuous sport and fresh air). That was wise. Everybody was a teacher first. Every kid had to take 4 years of an ancient language and 4 years of a modern language, and you had to take math at least up to pre-calc. Plenty of kids flunked out. They would say to the parents "Sally does not seem to want or to be ready to take what we have to offer her here."

One of the teachers (or masters, as they were called), with or without their spouse as they wished, presided over every (assigned) table at all meals except breakfast, which was a free-for-all. You could not miss a meal. We students rotated the table service duty, and also the dish-washing duty (in what we called the Wombatorium).

We had required, monitored study hall (in old, panelled study halls) every night after dinner except Saturdays, from 7-10. Except for seniors. No talking and no non-textbooks. There was a prayer before breakfast and dinner, which was rotated through the students regardless of their religion.

Yes, everybody had to be in a sport, every semester. And every teacher was "Sir" or Ma'am." No complicated "dress code" - just a school uniform which made school shopping very inexpensive. The beds were hard and the rooms were cold in the winter. The only TV was in the snack shop, which opened after sports and closed before evening chapel.

Everybody rotated through School Duties: Dinner serving, Sunday Faculty Tea serving, scullery duty, lawn care duty, janitorial duty in the halls and common rooms (dusting, vacuuming), etc. No excuses.

There was brief chapel every evening (announcements, a prayer, a Bible reading, a homily, a hymn), and Sunday church, all presided over by the Headmaster with all faculty (and with all spouses and families on Sunday) in attendance. All the features of a low-Anglican service. The Jewish, Protestant (which I am), Hindu, and atheist kids never were converted (as far as I know), but they did learn to appreciate the virtue of a daily rhythm of contemplation and worship. Plus they learned a lot about Christianity. It is worth knowing about.

Darn good organist, who was also a Music teacher.

My parents sacrificed quite a bit for me to go there: new cars, trips, etc. I am true to my school. I still miss it, in a way.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse.

Henry Ford

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

H. L. Mencken, quoted at Am Digest

"I could be unravelin'
Wherever I'm travelin'
even to foreign shores..."

From 1985's under-appreciated album Empire Burlesque. Tune here (embedding is disabled).

It's the time of year when Tree Swallows head for the coasts to assemble for their migrations. I have seen them flocking by the hundreds on Cape Cod in August (even saw an albino among them a couple of years ago), and by the thousands in places like Jamaica Bay NWP.

These fine birds bother me in the spring, when they successfully compete for the 25 Bluebird nest boxes I have gone to much trouble to clean etc.

Bugs and berries are their food, and they like to breed near water. More about them at the new, and less informative, CLO.

Photo is a male. The females are brown.

26 acres with barn, unusual 6-BR house, pool, paddocks, pastures, tennis court, etc. in the rolling Litchfield Hills. Listing details here. $2.3 million, proving that there are very good reasons to want to make money. One photo:

Also, this pleasant 300-acre farm, asking $6.9 million, and worth every penny. Details here.

The First Congregational Church, Litchfield (1760)

We posted a little while ago about Sociologists complaining about not being a major factor in the Obama administration. Now I see the Anthropologists seeking political "relevancy."

Oh man, that is so 60s. So silly. What's the problem? Do social scientists feel disempowered? I think they should just stick to their knitting and find out fun stuff. It's not supposed to be useful: it's supposed to be pursuit of knowledge.

The new taxes the Dems are contemplating

Blue Crab: "This is fairly shocking. The New York Times discovers that a lot of people who oppose ObamaCare are not raving lunatics - something the Times has not exactly been reporting before now." Related: Those darn violent right wing nuts.

Related: I thought it odd that we have heard very few ordinary people supporting government medicine. Of course not, since polls say 80% of people are happy with their medical care. Gateway found out who does support government medical care. Not exactly ordinary people.

Via RCP, from a Dem in Forbes:

Step back for a second, listen to what the non-screaming skeptics are saying, and it's clear the party severely overestimated its mandate and underestimated the public's growing unease with the government's massive growth over the last year. What would have been a hard sell in any environment has turned into an epic challenge. Yet the Democrats have been charging ahead as if it's still November 2008, oblivious to the dramatic change in the electorate's mood.

At Pajamas:

Now, as Matt Welch of Reason magazine points out, fear of big government is all the rage — and is cause for rage. He writes:

This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.

And increasingly, Obama administration policy does violence to European values, as well. The continent has for the last two decades been systematically disengaging national governments from domestic industries. Top officials from Sweden, of all places, complained about Washington’s auto bailout, tersely announcing that “the Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate, Welch correctly concludes, “Americans didn’t vote for big government last November. They voted for a guy who looked like he could keep his cool in the heat of battle. If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”

But that goes for Republicans as well.

1799, via Volokh (h/t, Insty):

 Let me place myself in the President’s chair, at the head of a party in this country, aiming to extend the influence of the governing powers at the expence of the governed; to increase the authority and prerogative of the Executive, and to reduce by degrees to a mere name, the influences of the people. How should I set about it? What system should I pursue?

1st. As the rights reserved by the State Governments and the bounds and limits set by the Constitution of the Union, are the declared barriers against the encroachments of entrusted power, my first business would be to undermine that Constitution, and render it useless, by claiming authority which, though not given by the express words of it, might be edged in under the cover of general expressions or implied powers — by stretching the meaning of the words used to their utmost latitude, — by taking advantage of every ambiguity — and by quibbling upon distinctions to explain away the plain and obvious meaning. It would be my business to extend the powers of the Federal Courts and of Federal Officers — to encroach upon the State jurisdictions — to throw obloquy on the State Governments as clogs upon the wheel of the General Government — for that purpose to promote a spirit of party among them, and subject to accusations of disaffection those who were opposed to the measures I would pursue. In addition to this I would now and then exercise trifling acts of authority not granted by the Constitution, under some undefined notion of prerogative. If by such means one encroachment should be made good, it would be a precedent for another, until the public by degrees would become accustomed and callous to them.

"Us right-wing nuts sure is scary!" Our hero PJ, Still 'Crazy' - And Proud of It. Conservatives induce a case of the vapors at the Washington Post.

They do not know how to write an English sentence. Stanley Fish on What Should Colleges Teach? I thought that writing, logically developed argument, and coherent essay writing was a job for high school, not college. h/t, Althouse

Via Bernard Goldberg:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots.  For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.”  Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

I am a Neanderthal. OK. That's what I always thought anyway. I eat red meat too. Yummy.

Can medical care be a Constitutional entitlement?

Castro comes out in defence of Obama. That will help a lot. An endorsement only Hollywood could appreciate.

Were the bailouts a good idea? Marginal Rev

Will Scotland learn from this? 

Our friend Jonah's final post on his Liberal Fascism blog.

The Admin joins the defence team for terrorists. Brilliant move. I am sure that will make them love us. Here comes the Grand Inquisitor from Connecticut.

More stimulating stimulus dollars. Why not just give Vouchers for Hookers? Like Cash for Clunkers?

No Pasaran:

Carle Zimmerman emphasized an inverse relationship between the strength of the family and the strength of the state. In other words, he argued that as the state increases in power, the family weakens; and as the state loses power — when the state becomes weak, for whatever reason — the family becomes stronger…

Russia's ongoing romance with Stalin. They like strong (paranoid) men.

Need something interesting to do, and a reasonably safe adventure? The Great Loop is just the thing. It's 5500-7000 miles (depending on your route), so it takes a while depending on your pace.

It's the boating version of the Appalachian Trail.

To make it longer and more adventurous, some Loopers skip the Hudson River and go around the Gaspe Peninsula and down the length of the St. Lawrence.

First, you have to find the right looper boat.

Here's the American Great Loop Cruiser's Association site.

Of course, for car trippers, there is The Great American Road Trip. Everybody probably ought to do it once. I only got as far as Denver and a bit of New Mexico when it was time to turn around and get back to school. Every 100 miles, my pal and I would trade off running a mile or two along the road to stay sane (difficult to do on an airplane trip, unfortunately). Good essay on the topic at Smithsonian.

I'm sure we have plenty of readers who have done the latter, but do we have any Looper readers?

Things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining.

Viktor Frankl (h/t, Vanderleun)

The 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope (photo from the article). Related: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D

Training drone pilots (with attack video) h/t, Neptunus

Photographers' Rights. h/t, Insty

Rick Moran: Why You couldn't pay me to be a doctor

Unbelieveable. IQ too high for the police department. Must be stupid bosses. You cannot be too smart to be a good cop.

The GOP's Hispanic problem

Big surprise:

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, had shown “no sensitivity” to the families of those who died, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, told the Scottish Parliament....

Hmmm. I see no Christian repentence there.

Sowell: A new push to play God from Washington

Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.

Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to "keep insurance companies honest"-- and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.

More Sowell: Utopia vs. Freedom

The nightmare of rationing in Oregon. Pajamas

Via NRO:

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

The only President America treated with anything like a cult of personality was George Washington (and maybe FDR, sad to say). Washington rejected it, and rightly, graciously, and honorably refused to run for re-election. Americans do not "anoint" - we hire and fire. We should probably fire more often, and more pols should make themselves temporary public servants rather than careerists. Government is not a religion - and politics should not be a road to an easy life and a generous pension for lazy or incompetent narcissists, schmoozers, and con artists.

Maine Sportsman. Last month they had an article "Which Bird Dog?"

That's what I ask myself each morning when I glance at the unfamiliar face in the mirror.

(There it is. Thanks, reader.)