Maggie's Farm

Read Ankle Biting's depressing most recent (it is becoming a daily event) example of news distortion - this re Dem/press lies about Medicare), but he cheers you up at the end with Shane MacGowan doing Dirty Old Town.  (fixed that link)

And if you liked that, you can hear Fairytale of New York here. Lyrics here.

Bob at One Cosmos says that science aspires to demystify the world, while religion aspires to remystify it. A couple of quotes:

When you have successfully demystified the world, your soul is officially dead. This is why it is a chore for me to read the words of the scientists referenced above, for these are dead men talking. It is as wearying as communist or leftist boilerplate dogma that explains everything, and therefore, nothing. It is such a ham-handed and oblivious misuse of language, that it offends the sensibility of someone with even a rudimentary acquaintance with spirit. It is also a kind of psychic "bullying," trying to push people around with coarse and blunt language that is entirely disproportionate and inappropriate to its subject -- like an illiterate boob talking about Shakespeare.

and

I'm trying to think of an example that even a materialist with a blunted sensibility might understand. For many people who have successfully demystified the world, the only time they are able to unwittingly appreciate the sacred is when they are directly confronted with it in its most vivid form: death, the birth of a child, marriage, etc. Imagine being so spiritually insensate that you had the courage of your convictions and successfully drained the world of its sacred dimension. Upon the death of a loved one, you would simply put them in the garbage. After all, it's just a sack of meat. The birth of a child would be no different than termites hatching in your backyard. Marriage wouldn't exist, because there would be no recognition of the sacred dimension of male and female sexuality. Euthanasia would not just be legal, but mandatory, on grounds of common sense -- as would the abortion of youth in Asia -- as in China.

Read the whole thing. I could quibble with Bob, and argue that he blends capacity for relationships with capacity for life of the spirit, etc., but I agree with his general direction - and with his attitude and his altitude. Life in abundance: it is Christ's promise.

Image: William Blake's Ascension

Via Crittenden, Via Blair, Here.

If you choose to hand-address Christmas cards (as they should be), but are too lazy to write "Mr. and Mrs. P. Chuffington Badlington-Smythe III" on your cards, but opt instead to write "The Badlington-Smythes" - how do you write it? With or without an apostrophe in "Smythes"? If an apostrophe, where? Or do you just dodge the entire grammatical issue by using the overly-casual "The Badlington-Smythe Family"? There is no implied possessive that I can find, so why any apostrophe? Unless it is short for "The Badlington-Smythe's House." But you don't send a card to a house.

Depending on how you count it, Maggie's Farm is either one or two years old today. Our first year was under the radar - no sitemeter, no stats, etc. - invisible, in the womb.

So we could call this our First Official Birthday. All of us farm slaves spend all of the time we are not busy plowing and pruning fruit trees and milking the chickens and feeding the cows and sucking the sap out of Sugar Maples and popping rats at the dump, chained to our PCs in the Maggie's Farm unheated basement amidst squealing mice, flaking asbestos, toxic molds of all sorts, an oil-soaked dirt floor, and dripping pipes, illuminated only by smoking lamps fueled with old recycled tractor oil, required to either Think or Link for our daily allottments of gruel. Yep, "Think or Link." That's what the sign says that hangs from the creaking, termite-infested rafters. Consider that setting when you read us. Those are not tear stains on these pages - they are spots from leaks from the water pipes overhead. Well, most of them.

The best present we could receive: Call the SWAT Team and get us out of here Let all your friends, enemies, neighbors, bosses, underlings, kids, colleagues, etc. know about Maggie's. A shame for them to miss out on this pretty good thing. And if you are a blogger, throw us a blogroll. It's a vanity thing. If you are a reader, please leave comments. Sometimes our comment threads contain certain glimmers of humor, and indications - if not proof - of human intelligence. Thanks to our current regular commenters (all highly bribed paid for their work). Other readers: don't be shy. If you have a minute, pitch in. We will pay you equally well.

Our mission is simple: To provide a steady stream of stuff that interests or amuses or enrages or delights us, with no ads, with complete free speech and total indifference to the political correctness of the moment, with total independence, with irreverence towards all, with a dose of skepticism towards everything except the US Constitution, and with a deep gratitude for the founders, the traditions, the foundations, and the blessed but shrinking freedom from state power in the USA - and most of all for the God of our Fathers. The official Maggie's Farm hymn (midi music file on link) was written for the Centennial celebration of July 4th:

God of our fathers, Whose almighty hand
Leads forth in beauty all the starry band
Of shining worlds in splendor through the skies
Our grateful songs before Thy throne arise.

Thy love divine hath led us in the past,
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast,
Be Thou our Ruler, Guardian, Guide and Stay,
Thy Word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.

From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,
Be Thy strong arm our ever sure defense;
Thy true religion in our hearts increase,
Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.

Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way,
Lead us from night to never ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine,
And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine.

Thanks for visiting us, and thanks to Green Mountain Boy Chris for keeping us up and running. Onward and upward.

Physicists at Harvard have been able to play all sorts of games with light.

Astonishing, but I guess the math predicts it. NYT Science Times.

VDH, in City Journal. A quote:

Fast-forward nearly five years, and the national climate has radically changed, so much so that the arguments of Mexifornia—close the borders, return to the melting pot, offer earned citizenship to most aliens of long residence in exchange for acceptance of English and American culture—seem tame today, if not passé. In 2002, when I wrote the original City Journal essay, no one thought that the U.S. Congress would vote to erect a wall. Today there is rumbling that the signed legislation entails only 700 miles of fencing instead of spanning the entire 1,950-mile border.

Deportation was once an unimaginable response to the problem of the 11 million here illegally. Now its practicality, rather than its morality, appears the keener point of contention. And the concerted effort by Chicano activists to drive from popular parlance the descriptive term “illegal alien” in favor of the politically correct, but imprecise and often misleading “undocumented worker” has largely failed. Similar efforts to demonize opponents of open borders as “anti-immigrant” or “nativist” have had only a marginal effect in stifling debate, as has the deliberate effort to blur illegal and legal immigration. The old utopian talk of a new borderless zone of dual cultures, spreading on both sides of a disappearing boundary, has given way to a reexamination of NAFTA and its facilitation of greater cross-border flows of goods, services—and illegal aliens and drugs.

So why has the controversy over illegal immigration moved so markedly to the right?

One question for VDH: Why is this "to the right"? I do not understand how "left" and "right" apply to illegal immigration. "Illegal" is not a matter of opinion. The law is not complicated on this subject.

Via Hot Air. My views have changed since college, but I'm not so certain about hers. (Grammar Help Desk: Does that "hers" take an apostrophe somewhere, or not?)

If she can say things like this, one must wonder. More worrisome, I think, is that she can say things like that and not be crucified by the press and the voters.

I love this piece, on marriage. Sippican. This author is hiding his candle under a bushel by limiting his writing to a blog.

Defending China's pollution. Blair. I guess their pollution is cleaner, or more socialistic, or something. Anyway, it doesn't seem to count.

I blame global warming: The UK braces for major snowstorm. Times

Leftists always admire, or at least make excuses for, Fidel and now Chavez (and Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc in the past). Why not Hitler too - he was one. The Left and totalitarianism will be forever wedded. Must be, because socialism crushes the human spirit and, eventually, people rebel.

Who buys lottery tickets? Answer here. (h/t, Squaring the Boston Globe)

Save the Polar Bears: Open a garbage dump. SDA

New Green Crimes in the EU. Quote from Samizdata:

It used to be the dream of socialists and utopians of varying degrees of malevolence or stupidity to want a world state. In a world state, pesky local regulatory differences would be obliterated and replaced by a rational grid of laws from which no escape was possible. In true 'watermelon' fashion - green on the outside, red in the core - the Greens are embracing the instruments of a pan-national state to enforce their ideas.

Nice image of the not-yet-completed USS New York, an amphibious assault ship (LPD 21) containing 24 tons of WTC steel. What would you give to drive this baby around the block a few times?

 

One of the rum things about human life is that we treat any stage we happen to be going though as something permanent and unchangeable, as if spring will never come, as if happiness will never end, as if youth will last for ever.

Simon Barnes, Times sports writer, as quoted by Stumbling and Mumbling

The Pakistan steam railroad, over the historically critical Khyber Pass,  between Pakisatan and Afghanistan. You can do it. Margaret Vladisova did, and posted her photos here.

 

Hating Horatio, by Dr. Jack Wheeler in Free Republic. It begins thus:

Ancient Rome's greatest historian was Titus Livius, known to us as Livy (59 BC-17 AD). In the Second Book of his monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), he tells the famous story of Horatio at the Bridge.

In 510 BC, Rome was threatened with destruction from an invading army of Etruscans. All Romans living in the countryside had abandoned their homes and fled for protection inside the city. The city walls were heavily garrisoned, but the most vulnerable point was a wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, across the river Tiber and into Rome.

When Etruscan forces focused their attack on the bridge, the Roman troops guarding it fled in fear - save for one man, a soldier named Horatius, whom we call Horatio.

Read the whole thing - it's about Iraq and Bush.

The truth is true whether you want to believe it or not...it doesn't need you to make it true. That lie about everbody having their own truth inside of them has done a lot of damage and made people crazy.

Bob Dylan (in his notes for the Biograph album)

"Pre-posterous." Literally, the front following; that is, the cart before the horse.

Chundering - barfing

Chuntering - bitching

12% of Americans hunted last year. Other hunting stats and data here. One quote from the article:

Show Cornell University researchers a young hunter, and they'll show you a future environmentalist. A 2006 study shows that children who hunt, fish or play in the wild before age 11 are more likely to grow up with deeper understanding and respect for nature.

"Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society."

Dr. Timothy Ball

Sonia Szajnberg is the daughter of our (recently truant) Aliyah Diary author. I remember when she was born. She looks like her mother.

She's a jazz singer now in NYC. Try I Remember April. Absolutely lovely.

From an interview with Bob Fass on New York's WBAI in 1966:

Fass: Your music is great, but you'd be greater if you could kinda sing a little bit better.

Dylan: I appreciate that. A good rock-bottom foundational criticism and that just sinks right in. Not everybody has the courage to sing like I do.

The Iranian news service offers this gem of a news article. How dumb do they think people are?

“The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.”

David Brinckley

Note that we post pieces on climate under Politics, not Conservation and Natural History. We place it where it belongs.

MIT Climate scientist calls warming fears "silly," in debate with Bill Nye. h/t, Junk Science. Bill Nye cannot stand up to an MIT Climatologist. Nye drank the Kool-Aid, but has no facts.

From November, Lord Monckton wrote Apocalypse Cancelled for The Telegraph. He goes over the issues in detail. h/t, Small Dead Polar Bears.

And, speaking of Polar Bears, they seem to be thriving in all of the sweltering heat. Also, about those famous bears on the ice floe: that's what Polar Bears do. They hang out on ice floes. They aren't stranded - it's normal for them. Althouse

Roger Scruton wrote this in 1999, at the time of the war in Kosovo, and it applies well to today. A couple of quotes:

In effect, the war in Serbia is an exercise in sanitized aggression -- force without the risk of force, violence without tears, destruction from a place of safety. Not only is this cowardly: It is profoundly counter-productive, as we are beginning to see. Courage is a higher value than safety, and a life without risk diminishes the gift of freedom. And part of the value of courage over hesitation lies in the fact that it moves more decisively, more economically, and with less catastrophic destruction, to its goal. Courage is not just intrinsically admirable; it is also the most efficient means to achieve what we want. 

and

It is not only in war that the liberal priorities are dangerous. The obsession with health is profoundly unhealthy, and the pursuit of safety unsafe. If we believe that the state is there to cushion us from misfortune, to compensate every loss and make up for every suffering, then we automatically relinquish control over our lives, while drastically narrowing the sphere of human action. Regulations of a mind-numbing complexity now govern activities, consumer products, and employment, with the aim of ensuring that the citizen can amble through a risk-free world, picking his pleasures from shelves loaded with packaged and sanitized products, waddling onwards in a state of moral obesity. As a result, the citizen lives longer than he might. But his life is less completely his own. We have suffered an enormous diminution in the value of human existence, because we have removed risk from the heart of it. It is only by staking your life, that you fully possess it.  

The whole essay is fully Scrutonic. Read it. (h/t, Reader)

Ah, higher education. Video at Volokh. A college applicant tour. My Dad always said that, when Dartmouth came down to Cambridge for sports, you were well advised to get your car off the street. A bunch of wild Indians up there.

Re yesterday's post on Secular Culture (work done by Roger, of course):