Maggie's Farm

5 minutes ago. I love storms. Cameras cannot capture thunder, wind, and driving rain:

I like to explore and learn a bit about the places I go to.

Birmingham, Alabama is a rather new city, by Eastern standards. Even the "old" stuff there isn't very old. There wasn't much of anything there until after the Civil War. Railroads (it has no navigable river), coal and iron ore were the key to that city's wealth, hence the borrowing of the name from the Brits. Amost all of that is now gone.

A new city in the New South.

With a metropolitan population of around 1 million, it's a good-sized city, but the city proper lacks downtown residences. It's a biz center now (most recently a banking center) - not a hopping urban scene. The Univ of Alabama Medical Center also is growing like crazy.

Still, there is no visible urban scene: life happens in the leafy, lovely, quiet suburbs. 

On a weekend, there is not a soul to be seen on the streets yet it looks clean, prosperous, and safe. No "mixed use" as you find in NYC. A Jane Jacobs case study, because I have seen photos of the downtown in the 1920s which were packed with people on weekends and holidays, with the streets lined with storefronts. 

In recent decades, the suburbs which had been part of the city spun themselves off so as to be independent of the constantly-alleged and often court-confirmed corruption of the Dem machine which runs it, and which seems determined to drive people out of town.

One cool thing about cities this size: you can get from Mountain Brook, Homewood, or downtown, to the airport in about 15 minutes. Everything seems easy to do. It's manageable and friendly. For the comfortable, golf seems to be king in Birmingham. Too darn hot for tennis, if you ask me.

Beautiful: the tee of the 4th (or 14th?) hole at Shoal Creek:

A free ad for the nifty mag Garden and Gun, with another golf course in the background:

Every city carries its burden of woeful history. The 16th St. Baptist Church, where the Civil Rights movement tragically obtained energy when some KKK killed four choir girls in church in 1963. The reputation of the fine people of the city was smeared for a generation by the behavior of a handful of murderous scumbags.

More below on continuation page -

Thanks, y'all, for putting us up in these fine lodgings in Birmingham (photos below), for the fine very Southern-style party (with excellent grits 'n shrimp), and for showing us around.

Can any reader name this good old club?

 View from our balcony:

More reminiscences from our friend, during his time in the Indian Health Service. He is probably referring to the Prairie Rattler:

From afar, it might have sounded like "Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk"; at the base of my skull, it was more like "K'thunk, K'Thunk, K'thunk, K'Thunk."  What I didn't know was what how it sounded to a rattlesnake in the dusk of the Dakota scrubland.  My second day's doctoring done on Eagle Butte, the heat dissipating quickly at sunset, I hit the asphalt's edges to jog. 

In Chicago, I had snagged a pair of Nikes, the early waffle-sole design, discovered by Bill Bowerman when he poured urethane onto his wife's waffle iron. Then, Bowerman and Knight's company was still called Blue Ribbon Sports; word was that their victory shoe would protect knees and add speed. I came up in an era when leather was treasured for feet; once yearly, before Pesach, we visited the leather shoe store, where we played with this tall contraption, like a scale, into which you could insert your feet and see your skeleton; a time more innocent, before parents knew to protect their children from Xray exposure.  Good money, hard-saved dough, was spent on a pair of Oxfords. High-tops of flimsy cloth and thin sole were for basketball and any other weekend activity.  It was an era before I knew the difference between an Oxford and a Brogue, between open- and closed-lacing, nor would have cared; a time when I most admired my pediatrician's penny-loafers, shining coppers adorned.  Loafers I desired, but parents believed that laces protected growing feet.  Now, I had laid out precious bucks on some rapidly evolved descendant of polyester to protect my feet and knees.

Minimally dressed -- white T, running shorts (the days before wick-a-ways)  and my Nikes -- I ran with traffic, not yet knowing the treacherous combination of Sioux and cowboy drivers in pick-ups.  But, it was the K'Thunking in my head, the tatooing of my feet in the desert eve that should have hinted to me why the Indians came out to look, some pointing, some waving  -- not quite a greeting, not a hello, a different sort of wave; a mother stepped onto her veranda holding her child, pointing;  words were shouted, muddled in the evening breezes so I understood them not; I thought it was a welcome to the new doc.

Nurse Alpern greeted me in the lot between hospital and my apartment building.  Rattlers are out. Like this M.D., Crotalus Horridus also leave their rocks in the eve, but looking for meals. Rattlers also hear K'Thunking or Thunking, or some rattled version of this to find their meal: they too are served, who simply listen and wait.  Mrs. Alpern, the ever practical:  Don't do this again; can't afford to lose docs.  The Indians who came out to see the doc in shorts and Tee?  They thought I was dumb; wondered how far I would get.

It was a few weeks later that I saw my first snake bite. 

This is long, wonderful, nerdy, and informative. h/t, Language Log:

2 Samuel 1:1, 19-27

¹⁹ "A gazelle lies slain on your heights, Israel.
       How the mighty have fallen!

    ²⁰ "Tell it not in Gath,
       proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
       lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad,
       lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

    ²¹ "Mountains of Gilboa,
       may you have neither dew nor rain,
       may no showers fall on your terraced fields. 
       For there the shield of the mighty was despised,
       the shield of Saul—no longer rubbed with oil.

    ²² "From the blood of the slain,
       from the flesh of the mighty,
       the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
       the sword of Saul did not return unsatisfied.

    ²³ Saul and Jonathan—
       in life they were loved and admired,
       and in death they were not parted.
       They were swifter than eagles,
       they were stronger than lions.

    ²⁴ "Daughters of Israel,
       weep for Saul,
       who clothed you in scarlet and finery,
       who adorned your garments with ornaments of gold.

    ²⁵ "How the mighty have fallen in battle!
       Jonathan lies slain on your heights.

    ²⁶ I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
       you were very dear to me.
       Your love for me was wonderful,
       more wonderful than that of women.

    ²⁷ "How the mighty have fallen!
       The weapons of war have perished!"

Time to repost this fine piece. h/t, Gates:

Blogger and frequent Maggie's commenter AVI mentioned historian David Hacket Fisher a while ago in a comment here. It reminded me of Fisher's fine book, which I once meant to read but never did: Historian's Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. 

From a post on that book from this site:

Fischer, David Hackett, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Collins, 1970). In only approximately 300 pages, Fischer surveys an immense amount of background historical literature to point out a comprehensive variety of analytical errors that many, if not most, historians commit. Fischer points out specific examples of faulty or sloppy reasoning in the work of even the most prominent historians, making it a useful book for beginning students of history. While this book presumably did not make Fischer popular with many of his peers, it should be noted that his contributions as a historian have not been limited simply to criticizing the work of others; since 1976, he has published a number of well-received books on other historical topics. 

Via BSBFB's It's all downhill from here

Insty is on the job:

A TV LOW POINT: Turned on the TV to see Geraldo interviewing Tommy Mottola about Michael Jackson’s death. In the background, footage of the body being delivered to the coroner’s office by helicopter. Glad to see Fox is keeping us up on what’s really important, the night before a big cap-and-trade vote in Congress, while revolution simmers in Iran, and people are trying to nationalize healthcare.

On the upside, Mark Sanford is probably pleased.

Obamacare would not apply to Pres, Congress, high Fed officials. Same as in Cuba.

It's just for us little people. Cost savings, ya know? Megan: Healthcare Economics: Standing Athwart History, Shouting "Stop!"

Or, as Surber puts it, Never buy a Ford from a guy who drives a Lexus.

Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

1 Corinthians 3:18-20

Newport, 1965

Who is funding this health care campaign? Michelle

Via Insty: 

EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study

Facts can be so darn annoying. As I always say, facts are what make life difficult. Fantasy is much better - and our brains are so much better at it.

Related: How many sleeper catastrophes in the Waxman bill?

Europe's empty sense of superiority. Is it simple envy?

My apologies for the obvious links. No time today, and the NJ is out of pocket. And darn, some of the links don't work? Will fix

"Were you out there praying in the garden?" Mrs. BD asked me later. "No." I said. "I was watching ants."

I spent around a half hour on Satuday afternoon sitting in the dirt watching ants. Few things can be more absorbing. (Or maybe I should say that everything in life can be absorbing if you sit for a minute.)

In doing final garden clean-up, I had to move a big old 4X4 garden edger to another spot and, naturally, uncovered a black ant nest full of eggs or pupae - I think pupae because you could see something inside the egg-like shape.

Almost instantly, the worker ants (both the big ones and the little) and the soldier ants grabbed an egg and ran for cover, scattering in all directions. After about 5 minutes, each ant with egg in mandible headed over to the right, over a rock and into a hole in a pile of garden mulch. In about 15 minutes, every one of around 200 eggs had been carried off to safety by a line or marching ants, back and forth like Chinese coolies.

Ants are said to represent 18-25% of the animal biomass of the planet - higher in the tropics. There is nothing as adaptible as the family Formicidae. They are hymenoptera - evolved from wasps, and all still have tiny stingers.

Ant social behavior is interesting, but their specialization, their physical specialization, and their chemical communication is more so.

Here's a good brief intro to ant behavior. The Wiki entry isn't too bad.

From Smithsonian:

The first wheels were not used for transportation.

Evidence indicates they were created to serve as potter’s wheels around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia—300 years before someone figured out to use them for chariots.

The ancient Greeks invented Western philosophy…and the wheelbarrow.

Researchers believe that the wheelbarrow first appeared in classical Greece, sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C., then sprung up in China four centuries later and ended up in medieval Europe, perhaps by way of Byzantium or the Islamic world. Although wheelbarrows were expensive to purchase, they could pay for themselves in just 3 or 4 days in terms of labor savings.

I spent my young youth on Cape Cod, while my Dad was stationed at Camp Edwards. (1st. Lieut., US Army. Drafted out of Harvard College and never went back but, along with his fellow draftees, he was granted alumnus status and afterwards went on to grad school at the great University of Chicago, then, after a stint at the also great University of Rochester, to Yale to teach in a scientific field.)

Readers know that the salty air, the fog and the foghorns, the frigid water, the mud flats, and the clam broth seeped deep into my soul and, despite all of the development and the ticky-tacky that happened up there in the past 30 years, it's still my soul's home base. I can put up with some ticky-tacky, if it's American.

Sipp on Cape Cod (he still lives near there). Here's one of my recent Wellfleet photos. Always buy the Toro (Bluefin Tuna fatty belly meat, and grill flaming hot 3 minutes per side). As you can see in the photo, they cannot spell their own name; that's a Striper eating a lobster (as they love to do); and Cape Cod is not for the fancy set, the Country Club set, the Hamptons set, or even the Nantucket set (or, when it is, they would never let it show: that is the Yankee rules):

Via RCP:

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you're not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull. So here is what Fielding concluded:

Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….

As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.

What Fielding's questioning represents is just the tip of the kangaroo's tail. He speaks for a growing number of Australians who will no longer take green propaganda on trust.

Read the whole thing. The magnitude of the hoax is finally coming clear to the general public. It's about time.

From Dr. Bob's The Temperature of Hell (no, it's not about "climate change"):

In our therapeutic culture, where all is tolerated but the good, the assertion that there are consequences for our behavior, either temporal, or especially eternal, is a truly noxious notion. The idea of Hell is perceived as an anachronistic anathema, promoted cynically by clergy controlling the poor, ignorant fools who follow them. Even those with a nominal belief in a deity will attest, with a pretense more wishful than wise, that a God of love would never condemn those who reject Him to Hell. In some sense–surely not that which the proponents of such pop theology intend–this may well be true. It will be, for those who enter that dark, hopeless, and agonizing eternity, not something dictated from on high by a vengeful God gleeful at our torture. It will be our own choice, fully, to reject the mercy and grace which has been offered to us without cost by Him who gave everything to draw us toward an eternal relationship, filled with unspeakable joy and peace, with Him.