Friday, March 20. 2009
A nice snowfall this morning:
Thursday, March 19. 2009
They could not run a corner candy shop - and they cannot do anything with integrity. The government AIG lies and scandals widen.
The pols cannot even run the government, much less anything else. But everybody knows that.
Our third post on the "JournoList" highlights an example at Just One Minute. h/t, Tiger.
We expect pols to try to present a coherent message, but, in America, we do not expect journalists to collude with the spin du jour. It's creepy.
That's what Jim Hansen is calling for. Glad we didn't give them a dictatorship when they wanted us to fight global cooling 15 years ago...or every other time in history when the experts have been wrong.
Hansen, like Gore, has obviously not been taking his medicine.
Shep gets it (h/t, Anchoress). It's good to hear the truth from the MSM instead of pure flacking and brown-nosing. Makes me think more highly of Shep Smith:
The reviewer of a new definitive bio of Chagall at NY Review of Books says, snarkily, "I don't think his art deserves a biography this good."
This is Marketplace at Vitebsk, 1917:
Wednesday, March 18. 2009
You can die of hypothermia when the temperature is well above freezing, and you will die of hypothermia after a while in 77 degree water. Many interesting facts at Freezing Persons Recollect (h/t, Cons Grapevine). All outdoorsmen should know this stuff. One example:
...many hypothermia victims die each year in the process of being rescued. In "rewarming shock," the constricted capillaries reopen almost all at once, causing a sudden drop in blood pressure. The slightest movement can send a victim's heart muscle into wild spasms of ventricular fibrillation. In 1980, 16 shipwrecked Danish fishermen were hauled to safety after an hour and a half in the frigid North Sea. They then walked across the deck of the rescue ship, stepped below for a hot drink, and dropped dead, all 16 of them.
Photo: 1st Class stateroom, Queen Mary.
I remember, as a lad, passing the Queen Mary in mid-Atlantic on a clear day. Built in 1934, she was an old lady by that time. Yes, she did blow her 1-ton whistles. She sits in Long Beach, CA today.
They don't make em like they usta.
The website Lost Liners has it all. (h/t, Theo)
 Or maybe the angle of the sun. It surely isn't the temperature here (below freezing at 5 am) which made every local bird wake up this morning and begin singing or twittering his territorial song for the first time this year.
I heard Robin, Tufted Titmouse, Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Cardinal, and Song Sparrow singing. Most migratory breeders won't be here until the buds pop open, and the tree buds aren't even swollen yet.
Today was really just a warm-up for the welcome Springtime morning chorus to come. It will last the next 6 weeks or so. Once their eggs are laid, they tend to go quiet so as not to attract attention.
Photo is a Tufted Titmouse, a fairly common songbird in New England.
Tuesday, March 17. 2009
 The blackbirds are now up from the South and back at the feeder: voracious Purple Grackles, Cowbirds, and Red-wings. Also visiting today: Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, White thoated Sparrow, Mourning Doves in droves, Tree Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Tufted Titmouse, BC Chickadee, Goldfinch, Cardinal, Blue Jay, a few remaining SC Juncoes. Nothing exciting, but all comers are welcome.
With all of the snow and cold, it's been expensive keeping these critters on welfare this year. It's getting about time to cut out their free lunch anyway, although it was 29 degrees F. this morning.
Plus the dang fat squirrels eat half of the bird seed, thus resulting in healthier, more fertile squirrels producing more babies to eat even more of the bird seed next winter.
Photo: A male Cardinal. We have plenty of them here. They nest in the evergreens and brambles.
Roger's post here today captures some of the inanity swirling around the AIG situation over the past few days. In my view, the AIG focus is populist, boob-bait scapegoating - along with a (doubtless welcome) chance to trash Wall St. Everybody loves to trash it until they need a loan, want to make an investment, or want to start a business. It's a distraction from the real issues in the economy which pose hard and complicated questions. Tough finance and tough politics.
The previous owners of AIG (the shareholders and bond holders - me included, I am sorry to say) have already been thoroughly punished. Like it or not, though, AIG is still one stone in the arch that holds up the superstructure of the global economy, same as Citigroup (same as Lehman was, and we saw how that worked out). Unlike Citi, We The People now own AIG, so it behooves us to run it well in a businesslike fashion unless or until it is broken into parts and sold. Thus of course those folks should get their contractual bonuses. That's how these folks get paid: it's not "extra" for doing a good job. Their salaries are token, and generally quite modest. Not getting your bonus is a finance company's gentle way of saying "Start looking for another job. We don't need you here anymore because you are not adding enough value to our enterprise." If they don't get paid they will leave, and our national "investment" in AIG will go down the toilet. We are getting these guys cheap, too.
Sorkin at the NYT agrees.
Our friend Tigerhawk has written one of the clearest and most succinct pieces on the background of the financial mess. Too much easy money from governments too politically timid to sit through economic contractions, too many greedy borrowers, and overly-lax lending. We are headed back in that same direction again.
Related: Bank punished by Fed for not making bad loans
We like to put it out there into cyberspace, especially stuff that the MSM neglects, but also whatever seems interesting or diverting to us. We do not aim to cover everything, though. We all have day jobs, so whatever we do is all we can do.
( Our dirty little secret is that we use politics to attract readers to our non-political posts, like recipes, gardening tips, an early morning glance at each Sunday's Lectionary, and pretty girls on occasion.)
How many newspapers these days give you an early look at Sunday's Lectionary reading these days?
If you like us, please send us around with a recommendation to your friends. A steadily growing readership is our reward. Furthermore, we feel sad when we consider all the folks around the planet who might enjoy us, but still do not know of our existence.
Photo: Our fact-checker, on the job serving breakfast at Maggie's Farm HQ this St. Paddy's Day morning. But Corona on St. Patrick's Day?
 I saw a Right Whale with calf from a schooner in the Gulf of Maine about 20 years ago. I had no idea there were so few of them, or that the european Right Whale population had been long hunted to extinction.
Along our American coast, with a few conservation efforts, their numbers are slowly recovering. Still, 350-400 is about as close to extinction as a species can get. Whales are as easy to kill as cows.
Magnificent critters.
Photo from the NYT article.
Monday, March 16. 2009
Charles Murray at The American. One quote:
...do we want the United States to be like Europe?
I argue for the answer “no,” but not for economic reasons. The European model has indeed created sclerotic economies and it would be a bad idea to imitate them. But I want to focus on another problem.
My argument is drawn from Federalist Paper No. 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.” Note the word: happiness. Not prosperity. Not security. Not equality. Happiness, which the Founders used in its Aristotelian sense of lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole.
and another
What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert Heinlein, as quoted in a counterattack piece at Synthstuff
Our pal and occasional contributor Nathan sent us this photo of a rainbow over the Seine, from last week. He does get around:
Sunday, March 15. 2009
"Don't limit God to your perspective and finite understanding of life."
Being an analogy minded person, I have always stated it as:
"You can't put God into our human mind just as you can't put the world's oceans into a thimble."
Dan, at A Slower Pace
John 2:13-22
13And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
15And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
16And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
17And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
18Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?
19Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
20Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
21But he spake of the temple of his body.
22When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
Jan Lievens (1607-1674) was a pal and a rival of Rembrandt. This is The Feast of Esther (1625).
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