Maggie's Farm

The Vikings are returning in their ships to Ireland, reports Blue Crab. Very cool, but it's not really a very difficult passage, in good weather.

The Norsemen terrorized the British Isles during the dark ages, raping, burning, killing and pillaging...all the fun stuff Vikings liked to do, but also settling and colonizing, to some extent, until the French-speaking Norsemen of Normandy finally took the whole place over in 1066, more or less.

Monks huddled on top of inaccessible places like Skellig Michael to elude them, and dedicated their lives to prayer and the copying of the ancient classical writings.

We first learned about Skellig Michael on the old PBS Civilization series by Lord Kenneth Clark (that was good TV - every kid should see it). And then more in Thomas Cahill's wonderful How the Irish Saved Civilization. I like all of Cahill's stuff, especially Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus.

I have been to Skellig Michael. Took the little fishing boat out there and climbed those endless narrow stone-cut, railing-less, acrophobia-inducing steps almost to the top, where their stone huts still sit in the wind and clouds. Would not recommend going to Ireland without going down there.

Image: A view from Skellig Michael.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

P.J. O'Rourke 

In those aspen groves. What's a "Woodcock"? Tasty little things.

We see, on average, 1.3 movies per year, so we are not experts. But this new one is good.

After 40 years of seeing every enjoyable Bond film, this one preserves most of the Bond atmosphere (beaches, pretty gals, tuxedos) but dispenses with most of the dated stuff, like car chases, boat chases, helo chases, shaken not stirred, and gizmos (and, alas, Q died). And this one makes Bond a bit less of a cartoon character (he falls in love, he is overly-trusting, he bleeds). Still, an excellent male role model.

5/5 barks from the Bird Dog -  a memorable thriller.

Performance Evaluations:

"This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

"He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

More here.

My love-hate affair with Classical Music. Am. Thinker

No room at the inn: Moslems take over Interfaith spaces in Toronto. LGF

The major flaw in the Stern Report: Env. Economics

More "advocacy" scaremongering at The Lancet: Science Evidence (h/t, Point of Law)

Are Mormons Christians? Kinda-sorta. (h/t, Smart Christian)

Does education cause growth? Or does growth cause education? Or neither? Sounds like a classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc error. BusinessPundit

Of course, at Brown, throwing Christian groups off campus. Worldnet . They can't explain why, but it seems to be because they want Christians in the leadership, which is discriminatory. Hmmm. (h/t, News for Christians)

I'm suing Cisco: Coyote

Tammy Bruce reminded me of William Bradford's hard-won education in basic economics. Yes, socialism failed in 1623.

Sense of entitlement: NYT wants to be above the law. Wizbang

Trying to hand-off Fallujah to the Iraqis. CSM

A school adjusts to transgender teacher in Boston. (h/t,Pajamas) What next?

How to persuade a liberal: Auster suggests using an approach used by religion. A quote from his piece:

Presuppositionalism’s key insight is that you cannot convince people simply by giving evidence that supports your religion. Their false religion is an entire worldview, i.e., a comprehensive system of thought that has something to say about all aspects of reality. Therefore, those with a false worldview will not draw the correct conclusions from the evidence, and will often misinterpret the evidence itself. What is needed is a direct attack on their worldview, which can be done by showing them that their basic presuppositions cannot account for the facts of reality. And since reality has the characteristics that it does, it follows that their worldview must be false. And you have to attack them at what they believe to be their strong point, because being forced to surrender on a peripheral point will not shake them.

Furthermore, you often have to press people to declare what they believe. This is especially important when discussing “religion and politics,” because non-Christians and liberals generally have only a vague idea of their own fundamental beliefs. You have to get them to clarify their position before you can really engage them intellectually.

^{Revelation 1:4-8}

⁴John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, ⁵and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, ⁶and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. ⁷Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. ⁸“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

I decided to trust Right Wing Nation, a blog cousin, on the turkey recipe this year. It was a great success. Father-in-law: "Best turkey I've ever had." Me: "I am finished with turkey breast that tastes like cardboard and has the texture of wood."

We are sold! No more unmarinated turkeys. And yes, we marinate everything in garbage bags: it's the only way. For Mr. Turkey, you need the big leaf bags or contractor bags. We didn't bother with the ice-water part, though. Marinated..."marine" - now I get it. Salt water.

Now I need to try this on a wild goose. Or pheasant. Or why not roast chicken, too?

I know people use "right wing" ironically, and only mean "conservative," but the moral of the story is that you can trust their recipes for the right wing, the left wing, the thighs and the breast.

A fellow told me he spent twenty years looking for the perfect woman before he finally found her. The only problem was that she was looking for the perfect man.

Attributed to Warren Buffet (thanks, Tom)

The most interesting book I've read this year - George Marsden's recent biography of Jonathan Edwards. I am about halfway through it, but find it difficult to put down. (It won the Bancroft Prize.)

Marsden weaves late colonial history, theology, Edward's complex life (his struggles with faith, struggles with temptation, struggles with character flaws, his depressions, his never-resting intelligence), and the daily life of the times into a darn good tale. And Marsden does know his theology.

Connecticut's Edwards (1703-1758) is one of the most compelling and important figures in American history - probably more important than the Founding Fathers: he helped lay the cultural foundation on which the national institutions were constructed. I see him as the evolutionary link between the Puritan Pilgrims and the world of the Founders. His view of the world was far better known in the colonies in 1776 than were the works of John Locke - or of anyone else: sermons were best-sellers in those days. Isolated: not really.

Did Edwards read Locke? You bet. Locke was his great inspiration (except for scripture), at Yale (then a divinity school). Newton and Rousseau too: these New Englanders were plugged into the latest European thinking.

His life and preaching remain a part of America's national DNA. As theologian, theological logician, preacher, and the preeminant evangelist of the Great Awakening, he has been and remains the dominant figure in the history of American religious life - and a major international figure, too, because of his role in the worldwide movement that puritan Reform (Calvinism) represented.

So he is well worth reading about.

From the Booklist review:

In the first full critical biography of Edwards in 60 years, a distinguished Notre Dame scholar humanizes America's greatest colonial clergyman, a man highly esteemed in his own time but since singled out for decades of abuse by Puritan-bashers. To be sure, Edwards' brimstone pulpit rhetoric (most famously deployed in his 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") offends modern sensibilities. But Marsden--drawing heavily on recent scholarship--restores Edwards to an eighteenth-century New England where most shared his doctrines, though few could rival him in the power with which he preached them. Exceptional insight shines through a felicitous style as Marsden recounts how Edwards acquired that power, the intellectual rigor of his Yale studies gradually lending force to his intense spiritual vision. His rare gifts enabled Edwards to kindle the Great Awakening, emblazoning his name on the pages of American history.

A quote from Marsden's excellent Introduction:

Historians of the United States have been prone to give much more attention to Benjamin Franklin than to Edwards as a progenitor of modern America. That is understandable because Franklin seems so congenially to represent tendencies that triumph in mainstream American life and politics. Yet a good case can be made that stories of America are deficient if they do not at least temper emphasis on the Franklins of the heritage with a serious reckoning with its Edwardses. Most strikingly, the modern narratives fail to account for why levels of religious practice came to be so much higher in the United States than in other modernized nations. They also do little to explain why evangelical Christianity  flourished in America and why its revivalist style became one of America's leading exports.

So-called "nice weather" doesn't mean a thing to real Yankees.

We exult in challenging weather, and love to go out in it to do things. Indeed, we look down on the "soft,"  who want life to be easy, overly comfortable, over-heated, and overly safe.

We like hard stuff, and we like to teach ourselves discipline. We do not respect the soft, lazy, easy parts ourselves - and rightly so. But we do not disdain good sex or good wine or good company. Even mediocre wine. And neither did the Puritans, as they were disparagingly termed.

Furthermore, we are raised to expect life to bang us up, draw some blood, break our hearts, make us shiver in the wet cold sleet, rust our guns, damage our faith, strain our capacities, get us lost in the financial, spiritual, metaphysical, or literal woods, disappoint our fondest hopes and dreams, make us hurt by friends and injured by enemies, drag us towards sin and pride, face us with risk, hand us loneliness and doubt, confront us with danger, add sorrow to our basket of sorrows, and even to kill some of us.

But we must give thanks for the chance to engage all of it, for better or worse, as best we can, with such gifts and such weaknesses as we are given. Can we take delight in the moments of joy and pleasure? Of course. But those are the exceptions: the dessert, the country pies of life.

No God promised us a rose garden: only politicans do that. God gave us mainly a chance for salvation of our souls - and interesting weather, and an interesting, complex, difficult life, to contend with, without all of the tools we really need....except the ablility to connect with God's love, if we want to. It's about Grace.

A perpetual motion machine? A carbon-free power scam? Worstall

All lacrosse players are racist, sexist drunks, says a Women's Studies major  (Via Lashawn). This gal is definitely not normal, and she surely does not sound like a fun date.

A website that tracks down Dylan's stolen movie lines. Fun.

Dem strategy: Destroy health care, so you can "save" it: Dem. Project. Right. The deal is always this: manufacture a "crisis", and have your prepared government solution in hand. What country has the highest quality medical care in the world? The US. What country produces almost all of the medical research, and new treatments, in the world? The US. What country does the rest of the world rely on for cool new medical stuff? The US. What country takes care of every sick person, regardless of money - including illegal border-crossers? The US. To what country do the prosperous around the world fly for medical treatment? The US. How do you "fix" something like that? If you want perfection, dream on...but if you want freebies, as they say, "It's your funeral."

Protection racket? Yes, that is what protectionism is - a deal for unions, and a bad deal for citizens, as we repeatedly say here. Blue Crab agrees. The unions required two items for their Dem. support this fall: min. wage increase (some union wages are pegged to it), and protectionism.

Look who's raising money for CAIR. Atlas. Are radical Moslems a new voting bloc?

How creepy are the Chinese? Very. Viking. And how come no-one complains about their liberal use of the death penalty? It's either because they are Commies, so all flaws are excused - or it's because they are beneath us, so it's expected.

The Brits need to remove those crosses from the BA tailfins - if they won't permit crosses on their employees. Via Tim Blair, at Telegraph. No crosses, please, we're British. I always was taught that it was the Devil who hated crosses.

Image: Honey, hope ya got them lime slices ready. Me don't wanna see no cold Coronas without my slices. Them dang pumpkin pies can wait. Then bring your body over here, and keep me company...while we watch them inflate those Macy's balloons.

"The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?"

P.J. O'Rourke (h/t to our cousin and brother in sporting arms Mr. Free Market for a nice basket of PJ quotes)

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.

P.J. O'Rourke

When ye olde brain is hungy for a completely new thought or piece of info, ye olde fingertips often click on One Cosmos or, in this case, on View From 1776 in which, in a discussion of social contracts, he quotes from FDR in 1944 asserting something that I did not know had ever been so clearly spoken:

We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed.  Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the Nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. 

This guy ran for President four times and tried to control the Supreme Court in ways no-one had before or has since, but I will not launch into an anti-FDR rant right now. It is just interesting to see how he invented a "second bill of rights" out of whole cloth and, in the process, undermined the entire independent, family-centered American way of life.

"We have accepted, so to speak..." Huh? What? This is noblesse oblige in its most insidious, malignant form, with the royal "we." I'm the prole, you are the Great Benefactor, right?

Another question: How come they never include free legal care on the lists? That would seem basic for a country with rule by law.

How many people still believe that this sort of stuff is actually in the Constitution?

Observe our national politics. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through the ages. Does it look like God’s handiwork? When it comes to having a role in politics, that would be the Other Fellow.

P. J. O'Rourke

It's criminal that we have neglected P.J. O'Rourke on Maggie's Farm. He deserves plenty of free advertising.

We have read every book he has written, with great amusement, and we have even publicly indicated a half-serious interest in hunting grouse and woodcock with him in New Brunswick.

The subject of P. J. comes up becomes Wizbang has been thinking about humorous conservatives, and those folks seem to enjoy New Hampshire's P.J. as much as we do.

And, to save us the trouble, Wizbang has an archived quote from All the Trouble in the World, which is good fun:

Back in London, I was having dinner in the Groucho Club -- this week's in-spot for what's left of Britain's lit gritz and nouveau rock riche -- when one person started in on the Stars And Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about "your country's never been invaded." (This fellow had been two during the Blitz, you see.) "You don't know the horror, the suffering. You think war is..."
I snapped.
"A John Wayne movie," I said. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie -- with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something, Mister Limey Poofter? You're right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They're us. WE BE BAD.
We're the baddest-ass sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We're three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother's side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn't give us room to park our cars. We're the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap D'Antibes. And we've got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.
"You say our country's never been invaded? You're right, little buddy. Because I'd like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who'd have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying 'Cheerio.' Hell can't hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I'd rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch."
Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this was Europe. He just smiled his shabby, superior European smile. (God, don't these people have dentists?)

There's an entertaining interview with him here. And also in Cigar Afficionado.

Reposted from June, 2005

Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold

His name is well-known in Cape Cod and in coastal Virginia, but not so much elsewhere. He was the first Englishman on Cape Cod, in 1602, named Cape Cod for the abundant fish, named Martha's Vineyard after his daughter, and was later a leader of the Jamestown settlement. He is considered the prime mover in the settlement of Virginia.

His bio here. His grave may have been found, in Jamestown. Story in the CSM.

Photo via Va. Hist. Society - Gosnold trading with Indians on Cape Cod

Gratitude … goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Henry J. M. Nouwen

h/t, And Rightly So

It's getting to the time of year for trip planning, so it is time for another free, unsolicited advertisement for a travel organization. We love ABC Destinations.

With over 40 years of travel organizing, they know where to go and how to get there reasonably. We know - we have used them for Italy, and our friends and relatives have used their organization for Spain, Portugal and France.

Check out their site, and their sister site, the very reasonable Club ABC Tours, with whom anyone can afford to travel right, anywhere. Just join 'em.

And yes, they are generous donors to our Ducks Unlimited conservation charity, for which we are most grateful. Most importantly, they are good, nice and helpful folks who want to make sure you are delighted with your trip.

The Diebold paranoia is too funny. Michelle.

Yes, Kos, of course we all know that Rove can dial into those voting machines whatever results he wants, from his laptop. Rove lost the Senate on purpose, too, of course - everyone knows that.

Most popular in the US is the Black Angus. This Scottish breed was brought to the US after the Civil War, and soon replaced the Shorthorns and Longhorns.

The white-faced Hereford, from Herfordshire, England, is the dominant beef breed in the western US. Herefords were not imported to the US in large numbers until after 1890. The hornless variety are Polled Herefords.

 The Charolais is often used to hybridize with Angus and Herefords: