Maggie's Farm

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Mark Twain

A quote from Dinocrat's piece on the May Day foolishness:

The idea of illegal people ‘demanding’ anything at all is as offensive as the Sun-Times editorial, particularly when you think of all those people who go through hoops and the horrible, terrible labyrinth of lawyers and government bureaucrats, spending years and thousands of dollars trying to get one of the 140,000 green cards issued annually.

There is no ‘middle ground’ between homeowners and home invaders, and to suggest that there is, with an attitude of noblesse oblige, makes our blood boil. By the way, what business is it of the Chicago Sun-Times to suggest that citizens give up the sovereignty of their country just because some people take the day off and walk around with the flags of various nations? Fortunately for us all, there is no ‘middle ground’ in the trend of the MSM as they decline towards zero year after year.

The marchers may not be fully aware of this but their leaders are: they are pawns in a much bigger political chess game. It's about the demography, stupid!

A guy was sitting quietly reading his paper when his wife walked up  behind him and whacked him on the head with a magazine. "What was that for?" he asked.

"That was for the piece of paper in your pants pocket with the name Laura Lou written on it," she replied.
"Two weeks ago when I went to the races, Laura Lou was the name of
one of the horses I bet on," he explained.
"Oh honey, I'm sorry," she said. "I should have known there was a good explanation."
Three days later he was watching a ball game on TV when she walked up and hit him in the head again, this time with the iron skillet, which knocked him out cold. When he came to, he asked, "What the hell was that for?"
She replied, "Your horse called."

This post below stolen from Willisms - his entire piece is here:

Voting With Their Feet-

When it comes to domestic migration (Americans moving from one part of America to another), not all states are created equal. On April 20, the United States Census Bureau released its latest current population report (which has lots of neat maps, if you are interested), detailing which states gained population at the expense of others, and vice-versa (.pdf):

Generally, people are leaving states that John Kerry won in 2004 in favor of states that George W. Bush won in 2004. Again, this isn't immigration from other countries, or even birthrate-based population changes. This is strictly a measure of Americans moving from blue states to red states, from blue counties to red counties, from blue cities to red cities.

Policies matter.

Pro-growth policies, not surprisingly, produce growth.

Indeed, the counties with the most outmigration from 2000-2004 tended to be left-leaning counties (.pdf):

It's clear that people are leaving Democrat-dominated areas to escape tyranny (of taxes, of weird rules and regulations, of higher crime rates, of the higher cost of living, of failing schools, etc.), to find opportunity elsewhere.

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Mark Twain

Quotes from Quadaffi's recent speech, (via Bird of Paradise - can read the whole thing there):

We have fifty million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.

Allah mobilizes the Muslim nation of Turkey, and adds it to the European Union. That's another 50 million Muslims. There will be 100 million Muslims in Europe. Albania, which is a Muslim country, has already entered the EU. Bosnia, which is a Muslim country, has already entered the EU. 50 percent of its citizens are Muslims.

Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims.

April 3, 2005. Back in the USA to say good-bye to my house, etc.

The Berkeley experience was very Berkeley. Will tell you more, but after sitting thru various talks on Lacan (an elusive French psychoanalyst who  uses elusive, ambiguous language as a form of sport), I was matched with a British professor from Leeds; He spoke about Oedipus and Hamlet; I about Jacob and Joseph; He spoke about the Greek words and I about the Hebrew. We were a fine match and the audience enjoyed as we compared words and concepts. Then, we marched past Sproul Hall at noon, where the UC band was performing and the cheerleaders were high-stepping, and pom-poming before them. I thanked one of the UC faculty for arranging for this fine half-time performance for us. He seemed a bit apologetic; that he had not arranged for this, in fact.

Never mind to me, as I enjoyed it thoroughly. Where once Mario Savio stood with throngs in '68, shutting down the University in the name of Free Speech at the patina'ed Sather Gates, now prance cheer leaders. For Savio, there is a photo of him at the Free Speech cafe, where cappucinos, machiattos, frappucinos, pinochiochinos can be ordered and sipped outdoors in the sun.

We found lunch at  a pub with an outdoor garden about three blocks down Telegraph (I think past Moe's).  I left a bundle of dough at Cody's and a bit more at Moe's.

The end of the day, I treated myself to a cigar across the street from the campus, in a tobacco shop where bongs are sold, and cigarette papers. My dallying almost cost me a bundle.

I approached my car parked in the underground garage to ssee a berkeley rent-a-cop in uniformed shorts next to his armed bicycle writing me  a ticket. Or so I thought. I asked, "Am I getting  a ticket." He, having blocked my car with his bike to prevent a fast get away by me, perhaps, answers, "No, you're getting towed."  He pointed outthat my vehicle tag expired on March 12 and it was now the 22nd.  He tells me that I can pick up my car at the pound after paying all fees and the ticket. I implore: I am to be in SF in  one hour to sign papers for sale of my house; I now live in Israel; I am visiting only to give a free lecture (at the Free Speech center of the Universe). He is fiddling with his computerized ticket do-dad. Then says,  he will only give me a $50 ticket for illegal parking. (although I was legally parked and would also have to pay for parking.) I nod gratefully.  He fiddles wtih the machine further. Goes into his back pack for another  machine.

Gets angry. Says I'm lucky: his do-dad computerized ticketer isn't
working. I' m getting off scot free. I thank him, ask if he can give me a written ticket, so I can pay. He gets more irritated: they won't let him do that anymore. He packs his machines, hops on his bike and I watch him pedal furiously up the steep winding exit ramp into the Berkeley night.  Last time I was in Berekely, also to give an unpaid lecture, in January, I got a ticket for parking my motorcycle (which had a special visitor pass posted on it) in a car spot in the garage.

Where the motorcycle parking was, I never found out. Just before getting to my bike, my dear friend PE and I had been walking for some two hours on Oxford and various streets. Engaged in discussion, we found the light turn red as we are mid-crossing. A burly car-driving Berekely cop stops us. Tells us he can give us each a ticket - 130$ -- for crosing on red.  Paul, in his professioral baritone apologizes, grovels  a bit, says the cop is absolutely right and we are absent-minded. We get off with a warning.

An oddity about Berekely : a place allegedly of free speech and great liberties, it feels at times like a fascist state. I recall that the city council debated (and my have passed) a law outlawing perfume-wearers from all public buildings, so as not to harm people "allergic" to perfume. B.O. (body odor), however is not outlawed in Berkeley and can be quite prevalent. Such an oddity: it is both lovely to be there, and irritating.

And last night, a true SF experience. After visiting friends in San Mateo, I was to join a colleague and friend and his family in SF. He asked me to bike from his house (on 30th and Langely) to the Castro to eat at Samovar. He had the bikes, lights, helmets and flourscent vests at the ready adn we descended to the Valley. Met friends along the way, obliging as to stop and banter.  As we ate, cheek by jowl at Samovar, he told me that the brother of a mutual friend had died last month, a young professor at MIT. The girl at the next table asked, "Do you mean Dr. Push?" She had been an undergrad at MIT.  Afterwards, a bit all the more somber, we hopped on our wheels and threaded our way along the sheers of hillsides, to Michael's house.

My house is sold today. This is a bit miraculous to me.  I have had a wonderful ten years in SF.  Looking forward to building a life in Aretz, truly a blessing to be able to do so. Now it's time to hop on a plane back to my new home.

(Editor's note: And to his excellent new girlfriend)

Copyright N. Szajnberg MD, 2006

I am not surprised that the NYT thinks this, but I am surprised that they would admit it.

After all, everybody would like to be above the law, but nobody wants anyone else to be. Hewitt takes a look at Keller's carefully-worded Manifesto, in which he claims that the NYT can break laws if they see fit to do so. Is this "All the laws we see fit to break?"

The arrogance of these scribblers dead-tree bloggers is beyond me.

Ignore the "continue reading" below - a glitch.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Those words were never said by Jefferson, as Driscoll points out. This false quote has been making the rounds, via John Kerry, newspaper editorials, etc.

Not that there is anything wrong with dissent, debate, civil disagreement, etc., of all stripes and colors. But "highest form"?  I would doubt it.

Our Boy Genius Webmeister Chris is getting a new sail this spring. It's a 145% Genoa, a Tape-Drive cruising sail, here being completed at UK Sails' sail loft on still-salty City Island, NYC. Sails are one of the few things which are not mass-produced these days, but instead must be hand-made by master craftsmen - hence their extreme cost. A sail is a wind engine - a wing - an airfoil. The high-tech material adds to the cost, too: the only thing nicer than a see-through jib is a see-through blouse.

Acts 4: 5-12

5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, ⁶with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. ⁷When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ ⁸Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, ⁹if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, ¹⁰let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. ¹¹This Jesus is “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.” ¹²There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.’

Image: One of my House Wren houses

Ever seen John Waters' Pink Flamingos with Devine? Don't bother. We will tell you about it. "Mr. Egg Man, Mr. Egg Man, what kinds of eggs have you brought me today?"

Mommy, where does oil come from: Supply and What? Lib. Leanings

Congress drives gas guzzlers to their offices, one block away. Phony jerks.

Clever piece by Parker in the Charlotte Observer, re Duke:

I know we're not supposed to question a person's character these days. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do and boys will be ... no, wait, that's wrong. Girls are virtuous because they're stripping to feed their children; boys are evil because they will pay a virtuous single mom to strip. It's all so confusing, isn't it?

The new Oslo Peace Process: Bend Over, Europe. Has anyone not yet read Fjordman's piece, posted at Gates of Vienna? If not, do so now.

   On a transatlantic flight, a plane passes through a severe storm. The turbulence is awful, and things go from bad to worse when one wing is struck by lightning. One woman in particular loses it.

   Screaming, she stands up in the front of the plane. "I'm too young to die," she wails. Then she yells, "Well, if I'm going to die, I want my last minutes on earth to be memorable!  Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN?"

    For a moment there is silence.  Everyone has forgotten their own peril. They all stare, riveted, at the desperate woman in the front of the plane. Then an Italian man stands up in the rear of the plane.  He is a drop-dead gorgeous hunk. Tall, slender, well- built with curly dark brown hair and hazel eyes.

    He starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time. No one moves. No one says a thing. He removes his shirt. Muscles ripple across his chest.  She gasps in excited anticipation.

     He whispers in her ear, "Iron this, and get me something to eat."

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

I have read about this before. This is very cool, but quite far from effete fly-fishing. The 60 lb. catfish grabs your fingers, then you shove your hand down his throat while you get into his gills with your other hand. I could not do this sober.

Sounds like changing a fan-belt on a running engine. Perhaps I am a wimp, but the idea of a 50 or 60 lb. fish grabbing my arm in muddy water gives me a bit of a chill.

Story in the NYT. Image from the story, with the winning catfish from a noodling tournament. Fried catfish isn't a bad thing, but does not come to close to cod.

Mark Steyn on climate fear:

Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad.

But what to worry about? Iranian nukes? Nah, that's just some racket cooked up by the Christian fundamentalist Bush and his Zionist buddies to give Halliburton a pretext to take over the Persian carpet industry. Worrying about nukes is so '80s. "They make me want to throw up. . . . They make me feel sick to my stomach," wrote the British novelist Martin Amis, who couldn't stop thinking about them 20 years ago. In the intro to a collection of short stories, he worried about the Big One and outlined his own plan for coping with a nuclear winter wonderland:

"Suppose I survive," he fretted. "Suppose my eyes aren't pouring down my face, suppose I am untouched by the hurricane of secondary missiles that all mortar, metal and glass has abruptly become: Suppose all this. I shall be obliged (and it's the last thing I feel like doing) to retrace that long mile home, through the firestorm, the remains of the thousands-miles-an-hour winds, the warped atoms, the groveling dead. Then -- God willing, if I still have the strength, and, of course, if they are still alive -- I must find my wife and children and I must kill them."

But the Big One never fell. And instead of killing his wife Martin Amis had to make do with divorcing her.

Read the whole darn funny thing.

With all of the new talk about obtaining jet fuel from coal (h/t, Classical Values), it's a good time to review the subject of Town Gas.

At the turn of the century, every town in America had a Gas Works, generally adjacent to, but on the wrong side of, the train tracks.

As the local Gas Works, coal was heated under low-oxygen conditions, producing a synthetic gas which lit town lamps since around 1800, and later stoves and heat. This gas - "synthetic gas" or "coal gas" - was mainly CH4 (methane).

"Town Gas" lit the streetlights and indoor lamps of America until electrification.

The chemist Bergius received a Nobel Prize in 1931 for creating a high-pressure efficient method of coal gasification and the production of liquid fuels from coal. There was worry, at that time, about the imminent depletion of petroleum resources.

"Natural" gas, from petroleum wells, did not become available in the US until after WW2, when the gas pipelines began construction. Prior to that time, the gas was burned off at the wellhead. Natural gas is a mix of varying-length carbon-hydrogen compounds. Today, the longer carbon chain compounds are extracted (eg propane) and sold as pressurized liquid gas, leaving the smaller chain compounds to the pipelines - mainly methane and ethane.

A neat little history of the gas business in a Connecticut town here. Basic chemistry of these compounds and prcesses here.

Image: circa 1920 gas ranges. Gas ranges began to appear at the turn of the century, replacing cooking with wood, coal and charcoal. Hence the expression "Now we're cooking with gas."

There is noone I would rather see as Press Secretary than the affable, warm, witty and relaxed Tony Snow. A superb human.

The administration is in desperate need of a good spokeman and a good salesman. He will be that, and more. I have no doubt that he will speak up at meetings.

FOX's loss will be The White House's gain.

There will be a pay cut, and he'll have to move his family, and he had a nasty bout with a GI cancer last year, but who could turn down such an exciting opportunity? He'll accept the job: his country needs him, and I am sure he'd rather be a doer than a talker.

Let's make him begin working six months ago.

The architect Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377-1446) is the giant of Florentine
design. More than anyone else, he is responsible for bringing Renaissance architecture to the old medieval city.

We claim to be Centrist in outlook - not
"moderate," whatever that means. Your Editor in Chief, pictured on right, took this highly-reliable political-orientation test and came out "Centrist." That is good proof. But if we come out "centrist," then who the heck comes out "conservative"?

Or has the "center" moved a bit, over the past few years?

Take the test and find out what you are.

And stop pushing the button below that photo. The video is disabled. What do you think we are?