Maggie's Farm

Words are instruments we use to beat out tunes on broken drums for bears to dance to, when all we really want to do is move the stars to pity.

Flaubert

Light Blogging through the Weekend

Many of us at Maggie's are on well-deserved vacation breaks, but we will pre-post some archival items.

First, however, apropos of blogging, I will leave you with a piece in the New Yorker by Holt, concerning the quiddity of bullshit:

Philosophers have a vocational bent for trying to divine the essences of things that most people never suspected had an essence, and bullshit is a case in point. Could there really be some property that all instances of bullshit possess and all non-instances lack? The question might sound ludicrous, but it is, at least in form, no different from one that philosophers ask about truth. Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. Yet there are parallels between the two which lead to the same perplexities.

Read the whole thing.

 Read this, or be willfully ignorant: Caliphate Strategy and Tactics

Protein Wisdom

Summer Reading

Suburban Safari, by Hannah Holmes. Ordered it from Amazon, but haven't read it. But it seems like a great idea, well-executed. It's about Nature in a small suburban backyard. Excerpt from the Amazon review:

When science writer Hannah Holmes decided to spend a year studying the inhabitants of her 0.2-acre patch of ground in suburban Portland, Maine, she went about the task with an ecologist's enthusiasm and a scientist's compulsive eye for detail. The result is an entertaining and effortlessly compelling examination of nature's stubborn (and successful) struggle to exist in the face of daunting manmade challenges. Holmes's lawn, unfertilized and rarely mowed, turns out to be a surprisingly diverse ecosystem of bird, mammal, and insect life--a self-perpetuating, constantly evolving community of chipmunks, ladybugs, spiders, slugs, and crows. These creatures, and the complex relationships between them, are the raw material for Holmes's incisive reflections on natural history, urban ecology, and the ignominious story of the over-irrigated, pesticide-laced American lawn--rolling out, Holmes notes, at a rate of one million acres per year.

excerpt from Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan:

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says "Man, you must be puttin me on"
God say "No," Abe say "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin you better run"
Well Abe says "Where you want this killin done?"
God says "Out on Highway 61."

In his live performances, Dylan and his band rock this song so it soars up to heaven and back - never twice the same way. We must have 15-20 live versions of it. Lyrics here. CD here.

From my grieving, but wine-comforted Connecticut and Ducks Unlimited pal Rick today, re his Lab Buzz, with whom I have hunted - but not often enough. Buzz was an aggressive dog, a true bird dog, but not a natural family animal:

The world lost another four legged soldier yesterday.  At 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday a fine hunting companion whose earlier years of strife were washed away with lots of love in the remaining 4. Buzz lost a battle with Cancer which was unexpected and only found yesterday. I had to put him down immediately  Though he was only in my family for 4.5 years he was a valued and loyal companion. He learned that he could love and be loved in the last 4 years and developed a very nice relaxed way about him after coming to me from the Texas Penitentiary.  A convicted felon who had truly been reformed. He passed in my arms with dignity and never let me know he was sick until this weekend. He will be missed.

All Too True

From WaPo, Big Govt Conservatives:

The nation is at war. It faces large expenses for homeland security. It is about to go through a demographic transition that will strain important entitlement programs. How can this president -- an allegedly conservative president -- believe that the federal government should spend money on the Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana? Or on the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan? The bill Mr. Bush has signed devotes more than $24 billion to such earmarked projects, continuing a trend in which the use of earmarks has spread steadily each year. Remember, Republicans control the Senate and the House as well as the White House. So somebody remind us: Which is the party of big government?

Well, the sad answer is BOTH, ever since they got their hands on our money to buy votes with. If we cannot count on these Repub guys to respect our hard-earned taxes, we cannot count on anyone. The Game is too big, and we voters are innocent pawns in their childish but fundamentally corrupt game, which is why good, decent  people tend to avoid politics. They play their games: We live our lives. And in the final end, they are the suckers, not us. Email article link here.

Photo via StormTrack of
Hurricane Irene, nurtured by the Gulf Stream, being pushed out to sea by the clearly visible cold front which is happily passing through New England. While we welcome the relief from the heat, we are sorry we missed Irene. We like storms. They do not scare us.

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

 
Franklin P. Jones

Thought you all might enjoy a photo of a captive-bred baby Eastern Box Turtle. Captive breeding is done for the pet trade (most of them taken as pets die - they are wild animals with exacting requirements which only their instincts know how to fulfill - you cannot just throw them a mouse once a week like you can with snakes), and for re-stocking of habitat. We do it for the latter. We do not approve of the former. Boxies are charming critters but do not make for responsive pets - stick with dogs and cats unless you are a herp nut. And herp people are strange, isolated, tattooed, eccentric, obsessed folk, like Bird Dog.

The Martin Scorsese Dylan film now available - cannot download the GIF photo but click here for details.

(Posted April 29, 2005)

Pagan Idolatry (!?)

Michael Shermer, in The American Scientist, has written a thoughtful piece entitled "The Soul of Science" about how he claims that he finds fully-satisfying non-transcendent meaning and purpose in his life. My title above is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I have not dropped the dime to the Spanish Inquisition - lost their phone number. Nor do I have any argument with anyone who feels simply that "Life is to Live" - I think that is an entirely wholesome, if willfully unreflective, approach to the miracle of existence. We all have to map our own way of being in the world; that's the burden and blessing of freedom.

You can easily tell from his earnest writing that Mr. Shermer is a very good, decent, likeable, thoughtful fellow. But there is something in his piece, an undercurrent of trying too hard, or protesting too much, that makes me wonder whether Mr. Shermer is resisting something in himself. I am not a religious man, nor - God forbid - a "spiritual" man. But, like most people, I have a feeling about, or interest in a transcendent force. Call it what you will. And I do find an unaccountable joy in singing hymns about Jesus which causes me to imagine that something "out there" is connecting with something "in here."

Some of us Maggie's crew had dinner with The Analyst, Dr. Bliss, last month in Cambridge. She expounded on the theme that "everyone worships something," whether they know it or not. She feels that self-worship - the idolatry of "self-fulfillment" and "self-importance" and "self-realization" is the pop alternative to a deity. At which point Bird Dog tends to crudely interject about his yet-unwritten book entitled "I'm An A-hole, You're an A-hole" - the theoretical counterpoint to that best-seller of the 70s I'm OK, You're OK. I have doubts about whether Bird Dog's title will sell books, but I get his point.

Shermer puts everything in a science frame: "Humans have an evolved sense of purpose—a psychological desire to accomplish goals—that developed out of behaviors that were selected for because they were good for the individual or the group. The desire to behave in purposeful ways is an evolved trait; purpose is in our nature. And with brains big enough to discover and define purpose in symbolic ways that are inconceivable to millions of preceding and coexisting species, we humans are unique"

Despite his welcome humility about it, I guess Shermer "worships" science, or genetics, more or less, since that is how he decides to frame his experience of reality.

Read entire and see what you think. I am out of time. (The ironic choice of photo is of Baal, AKA Beelzebub, to whom live children were sacrificed in Christ's time.)

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. January 20, 1961

We judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions. 

Dwight Morrow

Great minds think alike. The same week we sent out a request for rational and thoughtful liberal blogs,  Rick Moran produces a leftist Moonbat Blog Taxonomy, as does QandO Blog.

So our betters have saved us a lot of work. Review their pieces to see if there are any there that you might enjoy, even if disagreeing. As I have said, we don't want to be part of a giant echo chamber or a Rush dittohead blog. We have reviewed many more than mentioned below - just the highlights thus far:

I find Atrios boring and predictably partisan, but partisan for no principled reason that I can decipher. Tom Paine too - just another Party hack site for their own echo chamber. And don't even talk about Kos - it is bedlam. Yglesias, like most of the Democratic Party Line blogs, has a mean streak with a "gotcha" schtick going which is unattractive to the open-minded. I had high hopes for Washington Monthly but they also seem part of the gotcha game. Waste of time. In fact, the entire angry attack mode is probably unproductive, or even counter-productive in political blogs, because it doesn't make anyone think.

I like Pennywit very much. Also Brendan Nyhan. Will continue to pan for gold in them thar internet hills...developing, as Drudge would say.

Mexican Navy vs. Turtle Killers

Man, is this story disgusting. Real Meal Ministries is right - turtle-lovers separate the men from the boys,  and the moral from the immoral.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on. 

Robert Frost

Our friends travelling in the Amazon emailed us this photo of the point where the thousands of blackwater tributaries merge to form the brown-water Amazon River.

Lobster Pots,  The Lobster Pot, and P'town

Everything you ever wanted to know about lobster pots and lobster-fishing, here. Cool facts, such as the biodegradable escape hatches for lost pots.

Our family's favorite restaurant on Cape Cod for many, many years? The Lobster Pot in Provincetown. Excellent authentic Portuguese seafood - Kale soup, squid stew, stuffed cod or haddock, Sopa Do Mar, etc., - plus all the regular stuff, fresh off the pier a half-block away. They sometimes have bluefin toro. P'town, once known for its fishing fleet and its artist colony, is now probably better known as a gay vacation haven. However, it is still full of Portuguese fishermen, great seafood, and has both the old-time and the new-time local color. Don't miss the Gay Parade, if you like parades - it's unique, the height of exuberant exhibitionism, and definitely not for the "homophobic".

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. 

David Lloyd George

Discovery's return home delayed by a day- read cool details about the ride home they will take tomorrow. Plasma blowing by the windows?

Little Milton Dies at 70

Thanks RRWH, or I wouldn't have known. He never made it too big outside of the blues circuit, but what's wrong with that? All soul and blues fans knew him well. Another loss of one of the wonderful old-time guys. Chicago Sun Times.

Music here. Little Milton Campbell's website here.

Grouper Wars

This kind of story is becoming common: battles between commercial and recreational salt-water fishing interests, and secondarily battles between different state and federal agencies. In this case, the fish in question is the big, fat, delicious grouper, but we have seen this happen with Striped Bass. A sustainable natural resource has to be carefully and conservatively managed. I like the idea of auctioning quotas. But what happened to catch-and-release? How many of these big guys do you need to take home? Story in CSM:

Red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico has become one of the nation's most sought-after fish, coveted both by commercial fishermen and rod-and-reelers in Bermuda shorts. But in an effort to safeguard the grouper, fishery management officials have driven a wedge between the two. In July they proposed closing the Gulf grouper grounds to sport fishermen this winter - while leaving the waters open for commercial operators. Read entire.

Bird of a feather flock together,
and do will pigs and swine;
Rats and mice will have their choice,
And so will I have mine.

(Trad.)