Maggie's Farm

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish
courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

Shakespeare, Othello

Eagle Cam

Looked at those babies lately? You click above to switch from the Eagle Cam to the Osprey Cam.

Back to Work

Weekend is over. Drag your lazy butt and your hang-over out of the old hammock, and get back to earning your keep like a good citizen of a free republic. Hop on board this fine 2005 Massey-Ferguson 492 4-WD machine and you will be able to handle any job that comes your way.
Nobody ever said freedom came easy - ya gotta work.

It's yours for around $70,000. Perfectly classy and appropriate for showing up at the golf club too - put your golf bags on the loader and drive straight across the patio and the lawn to the pro shop. Not to worry - whatever reactions you get will all be inspired by envy. And if the Membership Committee makes a stink, tell 'em Bird Dog said it was OK.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Try This

you flower-lovers:http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=yk24361318&rnd=12%3A10%3A27&btnViewCard=Show+Card

 IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Read the rest, below the fold:

Instead of bronze I will bring gold,
   and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze
   instead of stones, iron.
I will make your overseers peace
   and your taskmasters righteousness.
Violence shall be no more heard in your land,
   devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
   and your gates Praise.

Isaiah 60:17

This long weekend, we at Maggie's Farm will be blogging lightly, but we invite you to click on some of our Categories on the upper left column, to explore what we've been up to for the last five months on the Farm. Some good stuff is buried in there. Pick a category - any category.

And we all wish you a fine weekend of yard work, fishing, sailing, swimming, sunning without weenie sunblock, napping, ice-cream,  watermelon, cold beer, relaxation and good times with plenty of American flags and fireworks in the good old beautiful summertime USA. We do love our Brits, but we'd rather have them as cousins than to be their children - many innocent, brave but terrified Yankee farm boys with slow-loading Kentucky flintlocks risked their lives or lost their lives to face tough Hessian lines of fire to make it so - and speaking of cousins...

As Cousin Brucie (the great DJ Bruce Morrow) used to say on WABC in the summer, "If you're alone, go out and find someone to love. Because someone is out there looking for you, too." (Yes, of course that is Cape Cod - can you name that light?)...Listening to: Son House: Empire State Express.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.

Ronald Reagan

"You make your own luck."

Anon.

Space Fireworks

The Deep Impact spacecraft will collide with comet Tempel 1, a comet about the size of Manhattan, on July 4th. Sadly, most of us will not be able to see the big show. Story in NYT.

Space Lake

And, for other news from around the solar system, it looks like a lake of liquid methane on Titan. BBC. Be careful with your matches if you have a smoke while fishing for walleye, or duck-hunting, on Titan.

Farming Update

A "diversified portfolio of crops"? "Dynamic agriculture"? "No-till dryland crops"? A good update on how farming on the Great Plains is changing, and becoming both more productive and more profitable, in Science Daily

Blogs, Free Speech and the FEC

The Fox News lede:

"WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission says Web logs just might be a threat to democracy and it's considering whether to police them."

Sens. McCain and Feingold should feel life-destroying remorse over what they have done to Free Speech in the name of goo-goo-ism. Hey - this isn't China.  Read entire. 

He's young and on fire
Full of hope and desire
In a world that's been raped and defiled
If I fall along the way
And can't see another day
Lord, protect my child.

There'll be a time I hear tell
When all will be well
When God and man will be reconciled
But until men lose their chains
And righteousness reigns
Lord, protect my child.

Dylan, excerpt from Lord Protect My Child, on Bootleg Series

Dear Editor:

I can see through your game at this blog. You want to dupe the people into thinking your blog is reasonable and intelligent and fun, while you sneak in extreme Right Wing propaganda and Christian mind-tricks to confuse their thinking. I know that the Right Wing game is to fool the people into thinking that there are things in life more important than their material comfort, which only can be secured by a caring government which understands the needs of the little people far better than they do themselves - a government which is not the agent of business.

Sincerely,

Smarter than You, in Boston

Dear Smarter,

Gee, I guess you just blew our cover. We were hoping no-one would notice our tin-foil hats to protect us from the government mind-rays, and our stash of AK-47s to fend off the government mind-control agents and Thought Police. But on a serious note, What qualifies as Right Wing? All I see on this blog is everyday normal American conversation. It is true that we feel that Freedom is a big deal, but is that extreme? Or do you folks just, out of habit, label anything extreme if it fails to advance international socialism? And, by the way, quit walking around Cambridge and sitting in Starbucks with that volume of Kierkegaard's Either/Or in your hand - it won't get you babes. Trust me - I've tried it.

Sincerely,

The dumb (but still learning) Bird Dog

PS: Are you sure you just don't want some of my money?

Dylan at Starbucks

I don't get what the big deal is about this - it gets his music out there, and makes him a few bucks. How bad is that for a musician? Story in Right Thinking. By the way, when does Scorsese's No Direction Home come out?

1968 Farmall, Model 656.
A sonnet in steel and rubber. 

Eve chats with God: "Lord, I have a problem."
"What's the problem, Eve?"
"I know that you created me & provided this beautiful garden & all of these wonderful animals, as well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm just not happy."
 "And why is that Eve?"
"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."
 "Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."
"Man? What is that Lord?"
"A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat & be vain; all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster & will like to hunt & kill things. I'll create him in such a way that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless & will revel in childish things like fighting & kicking a ball about.  He won't be as smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."
"Sounds great," says Eve, with raised eyebrows, "but what's the catch Lord?"
"Well,.....you can have him on one condition."
"And what's that Lord?"
"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant & self admiring..... So you'll have to let him believe that I made him first. And it will have to be our little secret...you know, woman to woman."
 

Adam sees God across the garden and calls out "Yo, Lord, do you have a minute?"
God comes over and asks Adam "Sure, what's up, Adam?"
"I'm lonely, God. I need a companion."
God asks "How would you like someone who would make your clothes, and feed you, do the housework, always love and obey you, and bear little Adam babies for you to play with, and always be cheerful and happy to give you any kind of pleasure, and to take care of you in your old age?"
"Sounds great" says Adam. "What would it cost?"
"Well," says God, "that's a lot to ask for. That will cost you an arm and a leg."
"An arm and a leg!" replies Adam. "Hmm, well, what can I get for a rib?"

It's True about Mosquitoes

Some people repel them, and some attract them. Hmmm.

A huge wildlife management success story - the reintroduction of the Wild Turkey into the areas in which it had been eliminated (by extensive farming, combined with the 1904 chestnut blight). This giant, ever-watchful game bird is now back in huntable numbers in forested areas across the US, even in suburbia.

And with its return, we see the return of the cult of the ancient Indian turkey-hunting techniques. Everybody says they see them all the time, so they should be easy to hunt, but have you ever seen one within 20 yards when you were in camo, sitting under a tree with a shotgun in your hand, at 6 AM? I haven't.

Ben Franklin wanted this guy to be on the National Seal, not the fish-thieving Bald Eagle. And, by the way, this is not the ancestor of the domestic turkey - that ancestor is the white-tailed wild turkey of Central America. Read more about this dramatic bird.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.

Albert Einstein

What's with Google?

CSM covers Google's hopes and dreams. 

The New New Math

The latest Math educational fad is the new multicultural math, as discussed by Diane Ravitch in Opinion Journal. You didn't know it, but your math is a tool of capitalist oppression. (But then why do the kids in China seem to learn it fairly well?) Educational fads, like ebonics and new reading methods, damage kids. I was subject to the "new math" for two years in the 60s and it took me years to get back on track, and I still resent having been a guinea pig for that fiasco.

The challenges of math education are several:

1. It's not "fun": Sure it is, with an enthusiastic teacher.
2. It's rigorous, with right and wrong answers: Gee, too bad.
3. You have to master tedious basics before you can move forward: Just like life
4. Sines and cosines can be too abstract for concrete thinking kids: True. So if you    don't "get it," you memorize it. It's called "learning it by heart."

Read her piece. This New New math is as racist as anything I have ever read: there is no better way to guarantee that "people of color" and women will never master basic life and work skills. You won't know whether to laugh or cry. But I feel sorry for the kids - when they hit trig and pre-calc they won't know what hit them. And God knows, you'll never figure out how to price bonds. Of course, I feel that it is a tragedy that you can graduate from college these days without passing calc and statistics, but I know how it is: They need to fill those seats with "consumers."

The Noble Savage

The romantic sentimentalizing of "the noble savage" has been a bugaboo of the Bird Dog for a long time - despite his own Indian blood (lots more of it than Ward Churchill). Margaret Mead in her later years had shed all of her illusions about primitive peoples - Sandall in Commentary:

“All primitive peoples,” Margaret Mead had said to her young Oxford visitor, “lead miserable, unhappy, cruel lives, most of which are spent trying to kill each other.” She was overdoing it, but she had a point—a point largely lost sight of in today’s systematic sentimentalizing of the Stone Age.

Nevertheless, some people insist on the version of the simple savage living in harmony etc etc. - it's a Garden of Eden fantasy. The story of the Brazilian indians, and their modern-day explorer-admirers, and the discovery of diamonds on their reservation, is fascinating.

"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be...."

John Adams