Maggie's Farm

...our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective 'scientific method,' with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.

Stephen Jay Gould (h/t, Evang. Outpost)

8-6-06                      Shrapnel

Perched on my knee are two shrapnel, a gift from Yovel, the six year old I interviewed Friday  in Kiryat Shemona during rocket fire.  Two of three he found in his back yard, after the Katyusha hit the bright pastel rose painted kindergarten, catty corner from his house.  One is a sphere fragment, fits my index finger tip. It has an organic-looking or geological studded convex surface, ragged edges; its concave side has a single ridge. It feels unfriendly even as I try capping my finger with it.  The other, perhaps four by one cm, looks like a modern steel sculpture, a  miniature fragment from something by David Smith, from inside his polished globes, with nefarious, studded innards.  It has two sharp edges, striated with glistening, brass striations and a central ridge on each side, like some postmodern arrow head. Or some abstract sculpture of a sturgeon, thickened body, lateral lines, its dorsal and ventral "fins" are knife sharp, ridged; one end snub-nosed, the other its fishtail waving laterally.

The car I saw on Eilat Street looked like a sieve, hit by shrapnel.
Another took a direct hit, was burnt black. Still another took a hit
through its rear window.

Re-posted from January, 2006

Kling at TCS considers a new book by Caplan which addresses world views:

Caplan, in a book that eventually is to be published by Princeton University Press, argues that most people do not work very hard to arrive at worldviews that are logically consistent and factually supported, because the reward for rational beliefs is too small. He writes: "we should expect people to...believe whatever makes them feel best. After all, it's free. The fanatical protectionist who votes to close the borders risks virtually nothing, because the same policy wins no matter how he votes."

Of course, I may be as guilty as anyone of believing whatever makes me feel best. But I believe that I have put considerable effort into examining and correcting my worldview. I am no longer a liberal (in the contemporary sense of the term), because my calendar did not get stuck on 1968.

Kling proceeds to discuss a series of political views, assumptions and biases which were prevalent thirty-five years ago, but which persist in many quarters, despite the facts which have emerged over these years. It's a theme to which we often refer on Maggie's Farm, whether the subject is war, race, economics, freedom, education and academia, etc. Some of us must be of Kling's generation, and, like neo-neocon, went through it but grew past it by responding to overwhelming facts. The comfortable brain is a stubborn thing. The piece is here.

(Image is the famous 1967 Pentagon Flower Child taken by the wonderful photographer Marc Riboud.)

Ronald Reagan

From a piece by Roy Spencer in TCS, A Little Eco-Nomics Never Hurt:

The dangerous illusion underpinning many environmental efforts is that it is both possible and preferable to keep pushing toward a 100 percent clean and safe existence. Those of us who try to point out that there are practical limits to cleanliness and safety are immediately branded as shills for big business. Meanwhile, environmentalists and politicians get to hold the high ground of altruism and concern for the public's interest.

P.J. O'Rourke once said, "Some people will do anything to save the Earth...except take a science course." To that I would add, "...or a basic economics course". If for a reasonable cost we can remove 98 percent of the contaminants in our drinking water and make it quite safe, is it then a good idea to spend ten times as much to push that purity from 98 percent to 99 percent?

In the real world, there are only limited resources to accomplish everything we want to do, and resources diverted to wasteful ends are no longer available to tackle more pressing problems. Only in the imaginary world of the environmental lobbyist, pandering politician, or concerned journalist is it a public service to keep pushing toward 100 percent purity.

Re-posted from August, 2005

I will not defy the copyright to post the New Yorker cartoon in which a scholarly, bored-looking gent in his armchair tosses his half-read book over his shoulder, with the caption "The man who knew enough."

The immediate issue is whether you know enough about cement and concrete. Here are some facts, with some links to read more.

Cement is the glue of concrete, which is a sort of man-made sedimentary rock. When an "aggregate" or "filler" such as sand, gravel, etc is added to cement, plus water, it's called concrete, or mortar when the aggregate is fine sand.

Cement is produced by heating - burning - limestone and clay. The addition of  a little gypsum at the end makes "Portland Cement," which is what all cement is nowadays. The trace of gypsum slows the curing, so it can be worked with more easily.

Water is a critical ingredient of the final product, not just to make a usable mix, but as an actual ingredient of the chemistry of solid concrete, which is a (non-organic) hydrate. Thus, during curing, concrete likes some splashes of water from hose or rain to gain maximum durability. (Thus cement doesn't "dry", it "cures".)

Concrete takes 28 days to mostly cure, but it continues to slowly cure for months thereafter by integrating water molecules into its structure.

Various versions of cement were around long before the Romans, but they were masters of its use, producing theirs with lime and burnt brick or ash. When they wanted to make light-weight structures, as for the roof of the Pantheon, they put empty clay jars amongst the concrete. They didn't think of reinforced concrete.

The art of cement production was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire, and its use only resumed in Europe in the mid-18th C. Reinforced concrete was patented in 1849 by a French gardener who used wire mesh around which to build concrete flowerpots.

A brief history here. Story of Roman concrete here. The chemistry of cement here. Photo of new partially-completed front path leading to a local wigwam, demonstrating a nice foundation of reinforced gravel concrete, with the stones being mortared on top.

Reuters, this time, manipulating the news. It's why we need blogs: The MSM is about propaganda, not news. This is not accidental. The Western MSM is not only anti-Israel, they are anti-Western Civilization. Why? It is a self-hatred disease - a moral, spiritual disorder probably born of decadence: too much comfort, too much wealth, too much security - and too little wisdom. Very strange.

Hey, Attila. We care about your feelings. Let's be friends. We want to understand your feelings, and we know you are a nice, gentle, Socialist, loving fellow beneath that rough, macho, raping, pillaging, warlike, imperialist exterior, and are only pretending to be a meanie barbarian, probably to help your fragile self-esteem. Let's talk it over, over coffee and a muffin or two (no, not that kind of muffin - I had the orange-walnut-pumpkin muffin in mind) at Starbucks (no guns or bow and arrows, please, indoors), and relate to each-other with modern multicultural understanding. Because we care about you, and we sympathize with your grievances against evil, evil, Western Rome. We love barbarians. And you are so much in touch with nature and horsies and stuff.

A prince decides that he is ready to get married. Determined to marry a very smart woman, he sends his pages to scour the kingdom to bring him the three smartest candidates they can find.

When the three are bought to him, the prince puts them to a test. Either a white hat, or a red hat, is placed on each of the ladies - but they cannot see what color their own hat is.

The winner is the first to name the color of their hat. They are given one more piece of information: the prince says: "Everyone who sees one or more red hats, raise your hand." All three raise their hands.

After two hours of deep pondering, one lady finally raises her hand with the correct answer.

What was her answer?

Answer tomorrow. This one is not as tricky as the one last week, but it does take a little bit of thought. The Dylanologist got it in three minutes. When you get it, please do not post the answer on Comments.

Ignore Continuation page below -

What is this Aliyah Diary all about? Click the category on the left and find out.

8-3-06   Kiryat Shemona: The Home Front.

Arriving in Kiryat Shemona with my Hyundai Getz, a reformulated Yugo, I both feel the car shudder and hear the dull thud; I think briefly that I have hit a small animal I did not see -- a horse perhaps, or a gazelle. By the third boom, I recognize rockets.

Within the hour, I learn the difference in sounds between incoming (bad) and outgoing (better, maybe even good).  Incoming, first the whoosh, then the boom as it hits; Outgoing, boom, and maybe a whoosh.

Later, I realize that I really don't hear whooshes before. Also, with incoming we are supposed to get a warning twenty seconds before, to get into shelter.  The warning sounds have been debated in Kiryat Shemona (It's a Jewish town after all; how could they just agree on one warning?).  The standard viuuu-viuuu  is loud, discrete, recognizable; some argue that it causes more panic than needed.

Therefore this morning, we hear the alternative, a kind of bling-blong, followed by a polite, announcer-like baritone requesting that we descend to shelter.  I finished my coffee.  Such a polite voice, does not raise urgency in me; more like an announcement before the symphony to please turn off your cellphones (which some still ignore).

All street lights blink yellow, streets are abandoned by pedestrians, save for the building for soldiers called up: joyfully painted tour buses await them. Inside, the windows are hung with drying towels, shirts on hangers, like guys off for a college trip.  Out of uniform, most wear flip-flops, shorts, T's.  Only the M16 slung diagonally over shoulder, rifle usually on the back, occassionally pointing downwards off the left hip,identifies that they are not off to camp.  How they all top 5 foot 11 inches still amazes me, these Jewish soldiers. Chana Mann, the chief psychologist for Safed Hospital lives in Kiryat Shemona, the largest, most northern town in Israel. (Metulla, abutting Lebanon, is the village futher north.) She's invited me to help out with trauma cases.

First Christ takes us as we are.
He blesses us.
Then He breaks us.
And gives us to the world to bless.

Fr. Henry Nouwen (h/t for quote from Anchoress)

Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, takes on the new medium of the internets in The New Yorker. Yes, he does discuss Glenn Reynold's book. While terming blogs "amateur hour," (surely there is truth in that), he also notes the long history of such sorts of publications. A quote:

The “new media” of later Stuart Britain were pamphlets and periodicals, made possible not only by the advent of the printing press but by the relaxation of government censorship and licensing regimes, by political unrest, and by urbanization (which created audiences for public debate). Today, the best known of the periodicals is Addison and Steele’s Spectator, but it was one of dozens that proliferated almost explosively in the early seventeen-hundreds, including The Tatler, The Post Boy, The Medley, and The British Apollo. The most famous of the pamphleteers was Daniel Defoe, but there were hundreds of others, including Thomas Sprat, the author of “A True Account and Declaration of the Horrid Conspiracy Against the Late King” (1685), and Charles Leslie, the author of “The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing” (1704). These voices entered a public conversation that had been narrowly restricted, mainly to holders of official positions in church and state. They were the bloggers and citizen journalists of their day, and their influence was far greater (though their audiences were far smaller) than what anybody on the Internet has yet achieved.

Read the entire interesting piece. My opinion? No blog, or blog cartel, can put out the material of the Sunday NYT. Bloggers are people who like to write and think but who have day jobs, and they are often people who find their views under-represented, or non-represented, in the MSM, and want to spread them around as best they can. If Murdoch bought the NYT, 50% of the blogs would wither on the vine, and Captain Ed might have a new job in New York.

Ahmadinejad claims today that destroying Israel is the only solution. Solution to what? Oh, I get it. It's the Final Solution, brought to you by the Religion of Death.

But I thought they said "We kill the Saturday people first, then the Sunday people."

I guess these sure sound like reasonable people who can sit down and negotiate in good faith. The French, and John Kerry, say they can get along with them just fine. And the rest of the Left too. Hey - that's mighty encouraging - as long as you aren't an Israeli, or a Jew, or a Christian.

Maybe they'll leave us alone if we give them Austria and Poland  Israel and Lebanon?

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

William Lloyd Garrison (h/t, neoneo)

Ronald Reagan

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
George Orwell, 1984

The very notion of speech "crimes," or "thought crimes," deeply dismays me. It's not a slippery slope argument: we are already on the slope.

If I punch you in the nose due to an irritable mood, it's assault. If I punch you in the nose and call you a "filthy libertarian," they can add a couple of years to my jail time.

While we tend to think of Lefties when we think of proponents of criminalizing thought, no-one's hands are clean with this. From a piece by Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice (h/t, Daily Pundit):

The current view of the Supreme Court, that what you say can add prison time for what you do—in a "hate crimes" case—came down in Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993). The defendant, Todd Mitchell, black, was convicted for "assaulting" a white teenager, and the trial judge added two years to the normal two-year sentence for aggravated battery, making it a "hate crime."

This is what happened in the "assault"—as described in by far the best book on this issue, Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics (Oxford University Press), by NYU law professor James Jacobs and attorney Kimberly Potter.

Todd Mitchell and several friends had just seen the movie Mississippi Burning, about the notorious murders of civil rights workers in the South during the 1960s. In one scene, a praying black youth was beaten by a white man. As Mitchell and his friends left the theater, a white youngster walked by, and Todd Mitchell said to his companions:

"You all want to fuck somebody up? There goes a white boy, go get him." The white boy was beaten so badly that he suffered severe injury. But Todd Mitchell, as Professor Jacobs notes, "did not physically participate in the beating." (Emphasis added.)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the state "hate crimes" law that added two years to Mitchell's sentence unconstitutional because it punished an "offensive motive or thought." But writing for a unanimous United States Supreme Court, William Rehnquist overturned the state court and ruled that "bias-motivated offenses warrant greater maximum penalties across the board."(Emphasis added.)

Rehnquist was way wrong on that one. How about the Bloods and the Crips? Read the whole thing.

Image: Photo of George Orwell (Eric Blair), 1903-1950. No doubt he would be pleased to know that he is in the Maggie's Farm pantheon. 

Update: As if to reinforce the above, I see today at Env. Repub that the ADL wants Gibson charged with hate crimes - purely for speech. Thank God that in America we are all free to be jerks and disgusting idiots - because we all are, sometimes. Which is not a defence of Gibson - what a schmuck. (Is that hate speech too?)

7-31              The Bratzlavers hit the front   
Not to be outdone by Lubies (Lubavitchers in traveling wagons), the Bratislavers hit the front recently.  Only few of you know that I have had personal contact with Bratislavers, having been enlisted by my khaver, Pinchus, nee Patrick, to take a mikva dip in the cold waters of the Bratislaver's mikva, where the slime on the floor is almost as old as the stones of Jerusalem. This mikva is conveniently located overlooking the Western Wall, that is to say, in the Arab Quarter, through which Pinchus and I wandered at 6 a.m. in order to take a dip.

But, this is another tale, not for today. Today, we go to the front line, Bratislaver-reinforced.

The Brats believe in Reb Nachman of Bratslav, that he will return perhaps.  They arrive frontly, so to speak, in high style.  No battered, multicolored rattling Lubavitcher van, with Booming speaker held in place with guy lines. No. The Bratzmobile is like an American RV with reinforced top, metal rails and a logo of "NA, NA, NACH, NACHM, NACHMAN, M'UMAN!"  This translates to : "NA, NA, NACH, NACHM, NACHMAN, IS BELIEVED IN!"

Their booming box atop competes with the rockets overhead.  A reinforced top is necessary, as Bratz stand atop, some dancing as the RV rolls up.  Before the sliding van door opens, like Lubies and circus clowns, Bratz plunge through windows, side locks and tzitzit flying.  These Bratz wear oversized white knit kippot with a spitz atop and, of course the logo circumscribing the brow.  White shirts are untucked, boots or Teva sandals are de rigeur.  Some are ex-IDF, one from Lebanon in 1990.

But, enough visual details; it's the action that counts. They descend upon the reporter first, upon the paratroopers (next), the artillery men (later), the tankists (finally).  The reporter, much to his initial protests, they cap with a spitzy kippah, then paste stickers with -- well you know: "NA, NA, ETCETERA" -- one on each of his cheeks, like Pierrot's tears, around his forehead, on his shirt.  The paratroopers are hugged, and firmly kissed on at least one cheek. The dancing starts before the Bratz leave the van, gets vigorous with arms on paratrooper shoulders.  In the mass, one has trouble discerning bodies, as legs kick haphazardly.  One Bratz grabs his side locks, holds it stretched out to nine and three O'clock, then begins spinning, as if he were a helicopter about to ascend.  (The scene ends before his ascent.)

Yes, a few tefillin are unwrapped and wrapped on soldiers' arms, but the dance is the thing.  And the singing.  One loudspeaker-enhanced singer starts:  "YAHLA, YAHLA, NASRALLAH, DAFOK LECHA!"  Which translates to something like "YAHLA, YAHLA NASRALLAH, F...K YOU!" From a Hasid, such words.  Such Bratz!

"Tell them if you're elected, all of their fondest dreams will come true."

Napoleon Dynamite, to Pedro, in the remarkable indie film of the same name.

We have done a couple of pieces on Pogo, our favorite cartoon strip by our favorite cartoonist, the late Bridgeport boy Walt Kelly. Here's another:

The second answer: place a one- mile circumference around the north pole. Start point - one mile south of that:

Re-posted from Aug 29, 2005

Zulu Time, and Weather Bloggers

In the NOAA and other hurricane and weather reports, they commonly notate Greenwich Mean Time with a suffix Z (or sometimes GMT), and spoken as "Zulu". The military, aviation, and commercial shipping commonly operate on Zulu time.

Why "Zulu"?  The story goes back to the great navigator, mathematician, and Salem, MA sea captain Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of The American Practical Navigator - also known as "The Sailor's Bible" - which remains in use today. He divided up the world's time zones, one hour per 15 degrees of longitude, assigning each one a letter of the alphabet. Longitude 0, running through Greenwich, England received the Z. That story is here. 

Jean Lee Latham wrote the classic Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I remember fondly from 6th Grade, and which, along with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, nurtured my love and respect for the sea and ships.

For weather bloggers, we like Weather Underground, and Stormtrack for big storms.