Maggie's Farm

"If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing." 

Kingsley Amis

One more photo of our friend fishing the Upper Malleo River in Patagonia this past January.

Long-time readers know that Maggie's Farm doesn't do ads. I suppose we'd consider it if the money were big enough, though. Anyway, we sort-of linked up with the Pajamas Media team (without taking their ads) and have added their button to our sidebar.

Thanks to Roger Simon for expediting. 

Auster says what many people think silently. A quote from his latest on the dangers of uncontrolled immigration:

Indeed, if someone as smart and as critical of left-wing nuttiness as Badillo could sound the racial-socialist note at this stage of the game, after so many disasters have already resulted in the past from the same egalitarian assumptions, and the lessons had presumably been learned, then we have a bitter taste of the future. America is filling up with a vast population of people who, let us be frank, have no interest in education, no interest in reading, and an average IQ of 90, and, residing as cultural outsiders in a country with a still dominant and successful though ebbing white majority, and also fueled by their own ethnic chauvinism, those people will naturally and increasingly blame their inferiority of accomplishment and income on the whites and seek to appropriate as much from them in the form of government transfers as they can. As their numbers increase, their political power and their will to express their resentments politically will also increase, as will the perverted anti-white passions of the white left.

The whole thing here.

Brits don't want to upset Iran. WTF? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Can't they see that they are being toyed with?  Meanwhile, a show of force.  

Update: Andrew Sullivan (who we no longer read) proposes the theory that the prisoner-taking is the fault of the US. Gay Patriot hits him hard with sarcasm.

Update: This production via MEMRI, via Iran TV - a quote:

"Creating a fuss in order to pressure the Iranian people in this [nuclear] issue, using the U.N. Security Council as a tool, will only harm the forces confronting the Iranian people. I must say this. If they want to use the Security Council as a tool, thus ignoring this indisputable right... So far, we have done everything in accordance with international law, but if they want to violate these laws, we too can and will violate these laws."

Crowd chanting: "Allah Akbar Allah Akbar. Allah Akbar. Khamenei is the leader. Death to America. Oh noble leader, we are prepared. Oh noble leader, we are prepared. Oh noble leader, we are prepared. Oh noble leader, we are prepared."

From a global warming hysteric (with a large, very comfortable home): "How could my wood stove be adding to global warming? It's not oil. It's natural. What would we do without it? It's our pleasure and comfort."

She thinks that as long as it isn't oil, it's good. Wrong. Oil and coal are simply old wood.

From Tom Shales' review of the "Planet Earth" series on the Discovery Channel:

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” 

Aristotle

"Hope is not a plan."

Bird Dog

You cannot be culturally literate - or an educated person - in Western Civilization without knowing the Bible. It's our culture's taproot. It's therefore interesting to see that public school courses in the Bible are growing in popularity.

David van Biema has a very fine piece in the usually-disappointing Time Magazine discussing this new trend, and the issues around it.

It begins thus:

Miss Kendrick came ready, with props. The day's topic was the Gospel of Matthew. "You can divide all the Beatitudes into two parts," Jennifer Kendrick explained to her teenage audience. "The 'Blessed are the whatevers,' like 'the meek,' and then the reward they will get. So I've made some puzzle pieces here." She passed out construction-paper sheets, each bearing either the name of a virtuous group or its reward, in black marker. "And you've got to find the person who has the other half. What's the first one in the Bible?"

"The poor in spirit," mumbled a crew-cut boy.

"O.K. What goes with the poor in spirit?"

A girl in the front of the room replied, reading from her sheet, "For they will see God."

"Nope," chirped Kendrick. "O.K., find the person that matches yours. I'll take the roll."

Read the whole thing (4 pages).

Superb piece by Munchkin Wrangler, found by Mr. Free Market. It begins thus:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Read the whole thing. BTW, can you name that handgun?

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

Eric Hoffer

Thanks for the fun pic, Loyal Reader. Remind me - how many millions did she and her hubbie make in real estate? 20? Gotta love the generosity of limo libs with OPM.  Now gotta get them peas planted, so there will be food for the babies when the Revolution comes. The seeds have soaked overnight, as recommended.

I'll vote for the guy. He is a sane and multi-talented heavyweight for whom politics has been only one of many interests and pursuits. Latest, via Instapundit.

And if he recants, and humbly apologizes for his McCain-Feingold vote, I might do more than just vote for him.  There is no valid defence for supporting McCain-Feingold, which I believe is both un-American and unconstitutional. (We like Rudy, and others, too, but Fred should be in the mix. Lots of good candidates. As long as you can express conservative principles - or anything -  better than our current Pres, we'll like ya.)

The ever-wise retired psychiatrist Ted Dalrymple takes a look at three books which document the decline of Britain, as their nanny-state government attempts to take over more and more of everyone's daily life. A quote from his piece, which focuses on education and policing:

Two of the books are by men who work in the front line of the public service, one in law enforcement and the other in education. Like me, they write pseudonymously. By describing their day-to-day routine, Police Constable David Copperfield and teacher Frank Chalk show how the British state now works, or rather operates, with devastating effect on the British character.

Copperfield, whose website is so annoying to politicians in power that they feel obliged to denigrate it in Parliament, and whose book is titled Wasting Police Time, is an ordinary constable in an ordinary British town. As he makes clear in his book, very little of his time at work is spent in activity that could deter crime, discover those who commit it, or bring them to justice. His induction into the culture of politically correct bureaucratic incompetence was immediate on joining up: he had naively supposed that the main purpose of his job was the protection of the public by the suppression of malefaction, instead of which he discovered that it was to “set about changing the racist, homophobic and male-dominated world in which we lived.” The first three days of his training were about prejudice and discrimination—in short, “diversity training.” There never was to be any training in the mere investigation of crimes, a minor and secondary part of modern police work in Britain.

The message seems to be that if you try to do everything, you do nothing right. Blair has been an utter disaster for the UK. Dalrymple's whole piece at City Journal here. Those of us for whom Britain is our ancestral homeland read such things and weep for the Brits, who seem determined to commit cultural suicide.

Viacom's case against YouTube. Sounds compelling to me. If stuff isn't public domain, it's private. But the way stuff moves around these internets, it can be hard to tell.

How to juggle three balls. This is great. Very clear instruction. Get off the dang computer, find some tennis balls, and teach the whole family to juggle. Update:  The Dylanologist would prefer to juggle oranges, heads of lettuce, eggs, or 20 year-old blond Swedish nannies. On the other hand, Roger says:

Tennis balls make lousy juggling balls. Go to the sporting goods store and buy three lacrosse balls. Get two orange and one white. You can use the white one to see how far along in any progression you are, and eventually you can use it to do unusual throws. Tennis balls don't weigh enough and bounce out of your hands. A lacrosse ball is heavy and sits right in there. It bounces, but not like a superball.

Also, magic/joke/book stores sell little square beanbags for juggling. They are great for learning, as they do not roll or bounce away when you drop them. Lacrosse balls at the beach in the sand are the ne plus ultra schizzle, though.

Remember how the Vernal Equinox works?

Druze, Bedouins, Circassians, etc: What's the deal with the Israeli Arabs, and did Jimmy Carter have a point or not? Berdichevsky at New English Review

2006 was the Chinese Year of the Dog, but we never highlighted all of the sporting breeds that we enjoy, so we will sporadically continue our Dog of the Week feature until we have done so.

Weimaraners are among the most attractive of all dog breeds, with their grey ghostly appearance. Bred mainly as pointers by Weimar aristocrats who were very protective of the bloodlines, they also make good retrievers but are not really ideal family dogs because of their energy level and "assertiveness". They are loaded with muscle and need lots of exercise. A daily walk is not sufficient.

Eisenhower was fond of Weimaraners. So is artist William Wegman.

I have not hunted with one for years, but I'd be happy to, anytime.

You can read more about Weimaraners here.

Lower image: a Wegman Weimaraner

Radical Kids: It's about getting chicks

Interview tips for college seniors

The Americans with No Abilities Act of 2006

Wheelbarrows

IQ

A case for plug-in hybrid cars, with the history of automobile power, by Andrew Frank at American Scientist. My question: If the plug-in power comes from gas- and oil-fueled power plants, what's the difference? Except that it might be easier to control emissions at the plants.

He begins thus:

The idea of a hybrid vehicle—one that propels itself using both a conventional engine and an electric motor—is not new. Indeed, some hybrid automobiles were produced more than a century ago, when the internal combustion engine was still in its infancy. These cars were designed to address the limited range of existing electric vehicles and the difficulty of starting the early engines, which had to be cranked by hand (a procedure that resulted in not a few broken arms). The early hybrid vehicles, and the purely electric cars that dominated the fledgling automobile industry early in the 20th century, eventually gave way to a proliferation of cars based on the now-ubiquitous internal combustion engine, a development made possible by the relatively low cost and widespread availability of gasoline.

Read the whole thing - link above.

As quoted by Rick Moran in his piece on the House vote:

“You really have two options here: One is that you can vote for a change of course here and say we’re going to find a way out of Iraq, or, two, you can vote against it and hand George Bush a victory,” said Jon Soltz, a veteran of the Iraq war and co-founder of VoteVets.org, a group that opposes the war.

I think that quote sums it up. There is an interesting ambiguity in Soltz's statement, though: does he mean deprive Bush of a victory in the House, or a victory in the Middle East? Or both?

Roger Simon reports on the hate-filled mood in DC these days.