Maggie's Farm

New guidelines on increasing the survival rates of released fish.

I would think that the suggestions would apply to trout.

We mentioned the above notion in the post about Kimball's essay on art yesterday.

How is this quote, from a piece at Right Wing nation on Green sex toys, to illustrate the concept?

Also, note: inflatable sheep can easily be repaired with a bicycle patch kit if popped.

Is it legal to marry an inflatable sheep in Denmark yet?

A quote from a good rant from the New Media Journal, posted at Synthstuff:

Why do Democrats keep claiming that they represent the middle class, when everything they campaign on is aimed at minorities, illegal aliens, the ignorant, and the poor? What have they done for middle class Americans other than to raise their taxes, lower their self-esteem, and attempt to destroy their national pride? What have they done for the country other than to divide it, criticize it, regulate it and tax it?

June is rose season in New England. Thanks, reader, for sending the photo. I think that color might be called "salmon." Whatever it's called, it is easy on the eyes.

And, speaking of plants, thanks to tropical storm Benny or Benjy or Barry or whoever for the wind, thunder, and rain he carried up here. Much needed, and much appreciated. The annuals (Impatiens) and the hydrangeas (Blushing Bride) we planted yesterday in the heat are surely grateful too. True Yankees love stormy weather.

A number of folks have linked to Roger Kimball's piece, Why the Art World is a Disaster. Kimball's ideas have been said before by others, but he is one of our favorite essayists, and it's definitely worth reading.

His point is not a curmudgeonly critique that "modern" art products are ugly, or not really art. His point is that art designed to shock the middle class is predictable, boring, and old hat. Political art, conceptual art, art that attempts "the domestication of deviance" is a tired idea, and was already tired in the 1940s when Orwell wrote:

(The artist) is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L’Age d’Or [which shows among other things detailed shots of a woman defecating] is O.K.

.I learned a few things from Kimball's piece, including the tidbit that Duchamp made art of urinals to mock the avant garde, and found that they took it seriously. At that point, he quit art. Read the piece.

Image: Kandinsky's House in Munich, 1908. Yes, I do love Kandinsky. Maybe my favorite, if I had to pick one artist.

A reader sent in these nice rattlers caught outside Kingsville, TX., near the natural gas plant. I hope they are planning on eating them...or at least making a belt out of the skin.

Her choreography renounces gravity. Great fun to watch. Two videos of her stuff here. 

(Thanks, Nathan. Mrs. Bird Dog says she knows Elizabeth from NYC, and says her work reminds her of the Multigravitational Dance Company which shared a space with the Alwin Nikolai Dance Company in the good old days. "Nik" was Mrs. Bird Dog's role model, mentor, and friend - and a good guy who is missed.)

Who is Elizabeth Streb?

In 1997 Elizabeth Streb was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' award. She is currently the 'Dean's Special Scholar' at New York University at the Draper Program working towards an M.A. in Time and Space studying Physics, Philosophy and Architecture.

Streb's choreography, (she calls it POPACTION) intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, extreme-sports, and Hollywood stunt work into a bristling muscle and motion vocabulary that combines daring and strict precision in the pursuit of attempting to display publicly the aggressive and deep effect of 'pure movement.'

An MA in Time and Space? Hmmm. Well, OK. Whatever. Looks like pure, wonderful physicality to me which blurs the arbitrary lines between dance, gymnastics, and sport.

From the NY Post gossip column (can't find the archive) a few weeks ago (Thanks, Sissy):

Mukesh Ambani is building a 60-story house in Mumbai. It puts our American hedge fund guys to shame.

It has room to house 600 servants. I could definitely use 600 servants around here, if only for a few days. Yard work, closet cleaning, straightening out the attic, weeding the garden, polishing the silver, sorting out the pantries, a bit of painting, spreading mulch, moving shrubs, carpet cleaning, gun cleaning, etc. I could keep 'em busy for a couple of days, and would want them back for a visit next June

Long-time readers know that, while we feel FDR was a fine wartime leader, his domestic and economic policies made him the most destructive president in American history, whose errors continue to plague us.

He and his advisors and allies exploited the Depression to try to create their 1930s-era statist-style, Soviet-inspired big government, and partially succeeded.

Alas for America, many of our post-JFK Dems have clung to this antique idea for dear life. They haven't found a new, positive idea yet.

When we look back at the Depression, we can see that Andrew Mellon was right, and that FDR's professors and socialist intelligentsia advisors like Ickes - all of whom played on FDR's well-intentioned but naive sense of "noblesse oblige" - were fundamentally wrong about the resilience of American enterprise and vigor - wrong because their anti-capitalist ideology required them to be wrong about their basic understanding of economics. About economics, and human nature - of which economics is just a reflection.

Kling takes a gander at Amity Schlaes' new study of the Depression - The Forgotten Man (h/t, Buddy via Insty). The "forgotten man" is the guy who paid the bills for all of FDR's ultimately useless programs (guys which includes both of my grandpas who were dutiful but deeply unappreciative, and one of whose boats went to Dunkirk - never to be returned by the Brits). One quote:

The struggle over economic policy in the 1930's was really an episode in the long, historical conflict between business participants in the market and anti-business academics. Roosevelt gave free rein to the professors, until the start of the Second World War led him to realize that he would need the tycoons to help mobilize to defeat Hitler. I suspect that one reason that Roosevelt and the New Deal come off so well in the conventional wisdom is that history books are written by professors, not by entrepreneurs.

Read Kling's whole piece. Despite the astonishing American post-war economy, we still see politicians trying to make hay with the Rooseveltian perennially-pessimistic, anti-commerce, statist view of the economy. (I recently read the interesting factoid that he drank exactly 12 gin martinis daily, beginning at noon, prepared to his specifications by his butler, until the day he died - but never appeared intoxicated. FDR, that is - not Arnold Kling.)

"It is not the State that creates a healthy society. When the State grows too powerful people feel they count for less and less. The State drains society, not only of its wealth but also of initiative, of energy, the will to improve and innovate as well as to preserve what is best. Our aim is to let people feel that they count for more and more."

Margaret Thatcher (h/t, Samizdata)

A propos of the post of the WSJ article yesterday about the Greenies who want to get rid of the Klamath River dams, here is a photo essay of what one of those dam projects, the Boyle Dam, has done to the Klamath river. It isn't pretty. Photo below of the Boyle Dam.

Played hookie from work today with a couple of Maggie's Farmers and friends. It's getting late in the spring season here for trout. This is our ultra-secret ultra private trout stream in CT.

The old story is you tell the wife that you're taking the day off to do some things with friends. She asks, slightly annoyed by the irresponsibility, what you're doing. You reply, "Well, we're going over to the Indian casino, and I hope you don't mind our acting foolish once in a while." She says "OK, I do not approve, but have fun and don't come home drunk." Then you sneak off and do what you really want - trout fishing.

Why are my photos today blue-tinged and out of focus? I need to get this camera fixed.

MIT prof Alex Byrne takes on the subject of meta-ethics in the Boston Review. Byrne is of the view that moral law is built into the structure of nature itself (which I would hear translated as "the Creator made it that way"). One quote:

Everything, in short, is a natural phenomenon, an aspect of the universe as revealed by the natural sciences. In particular, morality is a natural phenomenon. Moral facts or truths—that boiling babies is wrong, say—are not additions to the natural world, they are already there in the natural world, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in scientific theories. Fundamental sciences such as particle physics and molecular biology do not speak explicitly speak of sand dunes, or boiling water, or lobsters, but facts about sand dunes and the like are implicitly settled by more fundamental facts: arrange bits of matter a certain way and you have an eroding sand dune, or boiling water, or (here the arrangement needs to be very complicated indeed) a lively lobster. And, presumably, the same goes for the moral facts.

But how can morality be a natural phenomenon? We ought not to boil babies, but the natural world seems not to contain any trace of an “ought,” or an “ought not.” A dropped stone is under no obligation to fall, it just does. Admittedly, I might say, before dropping a stone out of the window, “This stone ought to hit the ground in three seconds,” but here I just mean something like “It is likely that the stone will hit the ground in three seconds.” If the stone doesn’t do that, it has done nothing wrong, and is not to be blamed for anything. In the natural world, nothing ought to happen, or ought not to happen, in the relevant sense of “ought.” Keeping within the confines of nature, there is no space for the fact that we ought not to boil babies. Yet since nature is all there is, there is no place left to go.

Is pleading "nature" a cop-out, or profound? The piece is a heck of a good summary of the current and past basic thinking about meta-ethics, but you have to put your Thinking Cap on before reading.

“…go figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your foolish ass.”

The Anchoress, to Rosie O'Donnell

The subject of the study and handsome Mockingbird, whose songs have fooled many a beginner birder, comes up because of this nifty story about one from Attack Machine. They are remarkable mimics.

The Mockingbird, (Mimus polyglottos), once a Southern bird, is now found across the US and into southern Canada. His repertoire of over 200 songs - copies of the songs and calls of other species - caused him once to be caged as the American nightingale.

The family of Mimic Thrushes also includes thrashers and the catbird. All are fond of tangles, shrubs and borders.

Many of our Mockingbirds in New England overwinter here, and occasionally visit the bird feeder, but they do not seem to like seeds very much.

You can read more about them here.

If Bush is a liberal (which I believe he is), what is Hillary Clinton?

She seems to want the USA to be one big happy kibbutz, or collective, or whatever, and is quite clear that she does not approve of the "on your own" society. I don't know about her ancestors, but mine came here precisely to live in the fresh air of an "on your own" place.

Czech President and tennis fanatic Klaus is the only world leader who has been bestowed the honor of being named an Honorary Member of Maggie's Farm.

Our wisdom in that selection is further reinforced by his May 18th speech discussing his reservations about the EU. One quote:

I am... in favour of redefining the whole concept of the European Union.

I suggest going back to the intergovernmental model of European integration. I suggest going back to the original concept of attempting to remove existing barriers among countries. I suggest going back to the consistent liberalisation and opening-up of markets (not only economic ones). I suggest minimising political intervention in human activities. Where this intervention is inevitable, it should be done close to the citizens (which means at the level of municipalities, regions and states), not in Brussels.

To summarize, I want freedom in Europe, not democratic deficit, I want democracy in Europe, not postdemocracy.

More of his speech at EU Referendum/

Half the county was at Home Depot this morning. We aren't into buying Hostas at Home Depot, but their tomatoes are good, and mine are in the ground now. And I have 20 more bags of black mulch to carry around.

But getting back to Hostas, Mrs. BD found this site.

Long-time readers know that we have rules about Hostas - never anywhere near the sun and never less than 5-20 plants of the same type en masse. Done right, they can be wonderful, but done wrong, they can be tacky.

One of their downsides is that they take a few years to fully establish themselves. One of their upsides, besides their preference for dense shade, is the astonishing variety of sizes and colors of foliage available these days.

Here's our previous piece on Hostas.