Maggie's Farm

We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.

Robert E. Lee

I am taking over The News Junkie's job this afternoon, while he goes pheasant shooting.

In the beginning...Astrophysics, metaphysics, or revelation?

Too stupid to know he's stupid? I do not think that applies to Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom, but it might apply to me.

Mall-Walking, and soaking up the American Experience. Am. Spectator. I am glad he reports on it, because I'd almost rather be dead.

"I didn't touch a girl or alcohol for seven months." Soldiers interviewed.

Another Christian on trial?  Where are the lions in the Colosseum?

A few thousand visits per day. That is all that some excellent blogs get. I guess blogging is kind of like writing poetry - you do it because you have to, and you pray to have any impact. But we won't have much, I fear, because most blog-readers read the blogs that support what they think in the first place. We are politically centrist, but when I read the Lefty blogs, they seem too crude, angry and silly to take seriously - or to respond to.

Academic Bill of Rights introduced to NYS Assembly. Let's support it. It is a counterbalance to academic Maoism.

Mixing Memory addresses the cognitive factors which they believe interfere with the supposedly benighted American population's acceptance of Evolution as Gospel. I make two points: First, as psychologists, and not physical scientists, they lack the humility which the physical scientists possess, probably because they never took Quantum Algorithms and the Fourier Transformation in college - not for lack of brain-power, but lack of interest. Second, they lack metaphysics. They are psyche-centric, which is reductionistic. I enjoy their blog regularly, but everyone has their limited view of the world, as do we, no doubt. Einstein: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." And, Yes, I do think ID is silly. But, on the other hand, I am more interested in the cognitive obstacles to connecting with God than in the cognitive obstacles to connecting with evolution. Heck - which is more important?

And one piece about politics and science: from The Conspiracy:

The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even to bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one—not even the staunchest supporters of science and technology—had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is forecast the weather—for the next one hundred years!

Update: Will have an apology to Mixing Memory coming up soon, for our somewhat frivolous critique...we do enjoy his blog, as I mentioned.

Psalm 19

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
²Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
³There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;
⁴yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
⁵which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
⁶Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.
⁷The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
⁸the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;
⁹the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.
¹¹Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
¹²But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults.
¹³Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.
¹⁴Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

This photo, and more, at Atlas:

On lithe girly-men, from Mr. Free Market:

It is no wonder than dear Albion is sliding inextricably into the mire if men are now spending time in front of the mirror, wondering do these jeans make my bum look big? No, they don’t – its all the Mars bars you eat & if you have a problem with that, don’t eat any more. As one of the 66% of those who don’t have a problem with my burgeoning middle age waistline, this morning I had a full fat boy breakfast, all served up with a side order of extra lard because you know it makes sense.

Mar 6 2006             Lop-idary       
    Lop-idary, I have chosen to call it, this lopping art which is pruning by any other name.  My actions in the kibbutz persimmon orchards, this stand of 8,000 souls with limbs akimbo, askew, I anoint as Lop-idary.  For it is lopping, plain and simple.  Yet, it has a topiary quality to it, sans the fanciful, artful outcome and the aim of good topiary to make imaginary forms, even of imaginary beasts -- unicorns, Sphinxes in the better gardens -- so that the underlying tree-being loses its character. Topiary is like what is done to poodles: changing handsome, proud dogs bred with burr-collecting fur into prancing decorations, with bulbous tail ends and swellings mid-torso, tuberous hair balls above the ankles. 

No, what I do with the persimmons is not topiary, for I am to lop to bring
more fruit, bring more light to the inner, lower limbs, make these trees, well, more persimmon-y.  Yet, lop-idary, I baptize my new discipline, as it shares something with lapidary art: to cut, polish the rough gem, enough to bring out the radiance within -- to capture as much light as possible to make the gem more beautiful -- yet, not make that fatal cut that will ruin a fine gem, make it second rate, even shatter it.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Mark Twain

"War is sometimes better than a bad peace." Tacitus.

A reader challenged us to comment more on the Iraq War. We don't ignore the subject, but we aren't preoccupied with it either, despite our interest in the news of the day. Why not, when it seems like such a big issue?

For one thing, I view it as more of a police action, enforcing UN resolutions, than a full-scale war. Second, once Iraq was fully invaded, it has not been so much of a war as a force-supported effort at democratic nation-building. That is a tough job which has rarely been attempted anywhere. It worked in Japan after WW2, but they already had a strong sense of nationhood, and a strong legacy of civilized behavior - if you exclude their barbarism in wartime which is their legacy of shame.

Was regime change in Iraq a great idea? Time will tell. I hope so. Is it a central theater of the so-called War on Terror? I don't know- I doubt it, but it has certainly brought them to the killing floor, has it not? Surely no-one is weeping for Saddam, and surely the whole world is delighted to see Iraqis voting. But an end to mad bombers we will not see in our lifetime in the Middle East - its the way a small, and increasingly small, number of them amuse themselves. Regrettably, their leaders do not chose to lead by example. 

The real war, I believe, is a war against an expansionist Jihad, which thinks it can convert the world to a primitive and violent version of Islam by intimidation. Anyone who will blow themselves to bits to kill a Jew, or a couple of Iraqi policemen and children, would not hesitate to push a button to nuke France, Denmark, the US, Britain, or anywhere else where the Infidel dwells in freedom. The Anglosphere and the Western World just want to be left alone.

I think Iraq is more of a TV/political event than anything else. Just as the news has to find a fire, a homicide, a baby animal at the zoo, etc, every night, they have to report a bomb in Iraq. It wears people down, and it causes a loss of perspective - which it seems intended to do on the part of the Jihadists and, it seems, on the part of the media whose disingenuous exaggeration of the negative is shameless. It's the "drip, drip, drip" effect.

For some perspective, California had 2400 homicides in 2004, and 4000 motor vehicle fatalities. During the three years that we have been in Iraq, there have been an average of about 650 US casualties per year. And unlike the car crashes and homicides, these are folks who have been willing to do the dangerous work and to take their chances. Heroes, every one.

To put the Iraq effort in comparison to other wars, see this chart, stolen from Instapudit who posted it a while ago:

Along with the political battles that seem to swirl around every military effort in US history, there has been a major effort by the opposition party to paint the war as "another Vietnam". Our reader sent us this essay by Gen. Odom, who tries to draw parallels which I do not see. Just for starters, there is no opposing army in Iraq. Second, there is no world power clash here. Third, there is no civil war, nor will there be, as is convincingly argued by Miller at History News. Fourth, casualties are low.

Thus I am not persuaded by the defeatists and the gloom-mongers, who are politically invested in failure. And I do believe that those who assert that Middle Eastern folks are too backward to handle freedom are not only racist, but plain stupid. These folks can figure out, in time, that being a part of the world community, and political freedom, are good things.

Wisely or unwisely, we have given the Iraqis a great gift. But don't expect the Jihadists to appreciate it: nobody told them that paradise has run out of virgins - same as Massachusetts.

"Scarcely have you descended on the soil of America, when you find yourself in the midst of a sort of tumult: a confused clamor is raised on all sides; a thousand voices come to your ear at the same time, each on of them expressing some sort of social need. Around you everything moves here, the people of one neighborhood have gathered to learn if a church ought to be built; there they are working on a choice of a representative; farther on, the deputies of a district are going to town in all haste in order to decide about some local improvements; in another place, the farmers of a village abandon their furrows to go discuss the plan of a road or a school."

"Citizens assemble with the sole goal of declaring that they disaprove of the course of government. To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure an American knows..An American does not know how to converse, but he discusses; he does not discourse, but he holds forth. He always speaks to you as to an assembly."

From Democracy in America, 1844

How do nations create wealth? Liberating people's minds, and rewarding effort and ambition, seem to be key factors. Coyote at Coyote Blog plays Adam Smith and offers this:

...here is Coyote's First Theorem of Wealth Creation, first expounded in this post on the zero-sum economics fallacy:

Groups of people create wealth faster in direct proportion to the degree that:

1. Their philosophical and intellectual culture values ordinary men (not just "the elite", however defined) questioning established beliefs and social patterns.  This is as opposed to having a rigid orthodoxy which treats independent thinking as heresy.
2. Individuals, again not just the elite, have the ability through scholarship or entrepreneurship to pursue the implications of their ideas and retain the monetary and other rewards for themselves.  This is as opposed to being locked into a rigid social and economic hierarchy that would prevent an individual from acting on a good idea.   

China, for example, just by cracking open the spigot on #2, however inadequately, has gone from a country with mass starvation in three or four decades to one where the worry-warts of the world are scared of juvenile obesity.  To a large extent, this theorem is really just a poor restatement of Julian Simon's work.  Simon's key point was that the only relevant resource was the human mind, from which all wealth flows.  All I have done is break this into two parts, saying that to create wealth a society has to value the individual's use of his mind and has to allow that individual free reign to pursue the products of his thinking.

It's a good succinct piece. Read the whole thing.

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

William Shakespeare

An excellent point by David Warren (my highlights):

The violent audacity of a generation of Muslim neo-jihadis happens to correspond precisely with the self-loathing of a generation of Western post-hippies. Perhaps never before, in the history of interaction between the “Dar al-Islam” (Muslim-ruled world), and the “Dar al-Harb” (the external world with which it is perpetually “at war”), have aspiring Muslim conquerors met such willing candidates for “dhimmitude”.

The definition of a “dhimmi” is one who pays the “jizyah” tax to his Muslim rulers; who, in return for this protection money, enjoys an ambiguous special status. This is, as Islamist propaganda is eager to propagate, exactly what is going on when, for instance, governments of the West send foreign aid to Muslim regimes, in the (vain) belief that this will exempt them from the next round of terror hits, or rioting. More generally, the equation of Western aid and domestic welfare payments with the “jizyah” is common in Arab media. It expresses contempt for the West, and our “so-called freedoms”.

Read entire.

3/14 is naturally World Pi Day. Most good geeks celebrate with a pie or two.

Here's an easy way to remember pi to 22 decimal places. Why "pi"? It's the Greek letter p, an abbreviation for the Greek "periphereia."

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him no good.

Samuel Johnson

A bad peace is even worse than war.

Tacitus

Remember the bumper sticker "The one who dies with the most toys wins"?  That one was popular at the same time as the one that read "When all else fails, lower your standards." Lower that bar, and all shall have prizes.

Diane Ravitch on the deterioration of college admission standards:

The board's first tests were offered in June 1901 to 978 applicants to Columbia, Barnard College, and New York University. Each year more colleges joined the program as they recognized its value.

The examinations — in chemistry, English, French, German, Greek, history, Latin, mathematics, and physics — contained no multiple-choice questions. Students were expected to demonstrate their knowledge by writing extended essays or displaying their solutions to problems. In English, 10 classics were assigned in advance for students, including The Merchant of Venice, The Vicar of Wakefield, The Last of the Mohicans, Silas Marner, and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Students were told that they would be judged more for their powers of clear expression than for their minute knowledge of those works, but they were expected to have closely studied them and to be ready to answer questions in detail. Every two or three years, the standards and reading lists were revised, and high-school teachers knew well in advance which works would be covered.

Most well-organized families already have their summer family trips planned, but all we have is our options nailed down.

But it is already time to plan for hunting season. We have our reservations in at the Miramichi Inn in New Brunswick for October grouse and woodcock season. If you have never hunted these birds, the photo gives a good sense of what the brush is like that you have to bust your way through in hopes of getting a shot off at a distant brown blur.

The Inn is also a good place for salmon.

Mark 9:2-10

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

A solid and enjoyable summary of the music of The Beatles, from Terry Teachout. One quote:

Such an appraisal must begin by taking into account the fact that the Beatles were the first rock-and-roll musicians to be written about as musicians. Elvis Presley, for instance, had attracted vast amounts of attention from the press, but for the most part he was treated as a mass-culture phenomenon rather than as an artist, and so were the other rock musicians of the 50’s and early 60’s (and the swing-era band-leaders and vocalists who came before them). Not so the Beatles. Almost from the time they began making records in 1962, their music was taken seriously—and praised enthusiastically—by such noted classical composers as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Ned Rorem and such distinguished critics and commentators as William Mann, Hans Keller, and Wilfrid Mellers.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
     When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be 
     The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
     Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
     The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
     Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
     In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
     Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings
     Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
     Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
     His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
     And I was unaware.

Hardy wrote 15 novels, 47 stories, and later in life turned to poetry. A fine photographic tour of Hardy's Dorset here. A comprehensive Hardy site from Marist College here.

 One of our favorites. Would like to be that horse. Thanks for the photo, Tammy.