Maggie's Farm

"There is no cure for stupid."

Anonymous but famous psychiatric quote

Guns and Tort Law

Naturally the WaPo calls this a handout to the gun business but I wonder whether it might be a model for tort reform in general. If you kill someone with a Stanley hammer, can your victim's family sue Stanley, and Home Depot, where you bought the hammer? There are plentiful laws regulating the sale of firearms already, and none concerning the very lethal hammer. What is insane in this country is tort litigation, which has become a gold mine, and not "evil" products. This isn't about justice, it's about $.

Steyn on Broadway

Who is this mystery man, and how does he know everything about everything? Steyn on Spamalot and the Broadway scene.

The Top 125 Political Blogs

Surprising list, compiled by Right Wing News. Don't look for Maggie's there - we are an "eclectic" blog, not a political blog. In fact, we are kinda bored by politics unless something stupid tees us off. Which it does, all too often, alas. 

Tom Lehrer's "The Elements"

As sung by the great Tom Lehrer with charming animation by Private Hand.
Lehrer's CDs here.

It's hard to imagine that in 1972 this large fish-catching water bird was named a species "of special concern" by the Audubon Society. It's numbers have rocketed since the banning of DDT.

Like their cousin Anhingas in the Everglades, they are often seen drying their feathers on rocks and buoys, with wings outstretched. They swim very low in the water - often only their neck and head are visible - and pursue fish underwater.

It has a wide breeding range, both coastal and inland, but instead of welcoming its resurgence, in some areas it is being killed as a competitor to recreational fishing. All animals beware: when it's dollars vs. you, watch out!

 Read more about this unusual bird here.  Photo courtesy of Bill Horn - his bird photography link to the left.

An Observation on Thompson's Piece

Keith Thompson's piece, Leaving the Left: a Free Liberal's Manifesto, which we posted last week, seems to have rapidly made the rounds of blogs world-wide. I guess it resonates. Most of us are ex-liberals who finally realized the truth about the Left.

Read these two sentences - (it's my bold print):

I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

Is he describing ordinary political views, or a false religion? It's honest of him to put it this way, and I think very revealing of whence the ferocity and desperation of the left derives. If political views make up the core of your identity and "sense of the cosmos," you are both lost and dangerous. (Real politicians know it's a game they play to make a living and an outrageously good pension.) Thompson, a fine writer, got found.

He also edited an interesting-looking book - To Be a Man: In Search of the Deep Masculine. Deep Masculine - that has a good sound.

"Generally, in battle, use the normal forces to engage; use the extraordinary to win."

Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

Home Schooling

Our favorite gun-totin' blogger Kim du Toit has been doing it, and has constructed a curriculum. Go for it, Kim. Man, what a big job.

Proud of Buddy

Buddy, the son of my dear friends, has just graduated from his Navy Seals training. From the tales I have heard, it is tough beyond imagining. There are two kinds of men - Seals and regular guys. Buddy is a tough kid. Good going, big guy. America needs you.

Ambulance Chasing

Lawyers converge on Gitmo. This is the kind of thing that gives them a bad name. Who has deeper pockets than the US Treasury? From LGF.

The American Chesterton Society

The best writer, on every subject, of the 20th century that many have never read. We have one reader who is determined to make G.K. Chesterton her summer reading, beginning now. The website has lots of his witty quotes - we'll use them for QQQQ.

Back to work day. This is a 1985
John Deere, Model 60

Would you say that's a Farmall-lookin' machine?  A handy light-weight, like some people.

"At the end, it's not the words of your enemies but the silence of your friends that you will remember."  

 Dr. Martin Luther King

Cinderella Man

See it. Our entire theater clapped at the end. Sure, movies manipulate our emotions, but the story of James J. Braddock was a heck of a story. The real comeback-kid. And a good, old-fashioned movie - pure story-telling, without layers of irony, negativity, propaganda, high-tech flash, or emotional confusion, and with compelling boxing action which will make males sweat and ladies "glow." Thus an honest movie, with neat kids too. Thanks, Ron, for another wonderful movie that puts worthwhile and lasting images in our heads, which few movies do these days.

The Bird Dog father-in-law remembers listening to the Baer vs. Braddock fight on the radio in Jersey City, just like the movie: Braddock - the Pride of the Irish of Bergen County. And the story is true - he did repay his welfare checks when he was able to. The movie makes it all real, including the male indignities and the female stresses of the Great Depression. Braddock could take the punches of life - including the punches delivered below the belt by a sleaze-bag like Max Baer and the punches delivered by fate - for his family, not for himself. Thus a real adult male without excuses - the kind we admire and to which we men aspire - a true father. And that is what the movie is about - American fatherhood.

Best line: "I do it for the milk."

Despite being the end of migration, and despite the leaves being fully unfurled, we were able to find a few good birds Sunday morning in the expansive and lovely East Rock Park in New Haven:

Black and White Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Canada Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow Warbler
Redstart
Red-Eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Solitary Vireo
Philadelphia Vireo
Baltimore Oriole
Wood Pewee
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Red Bellied Woodpecker
Rough-winged Swallow
Red Tailed Hawk
Turkey Vulture
Black Crowned Night Heron
Wood Thrush
Scarlet Tanager

Plus of course the regular stuff. Always good to see woodland robins - we think of them as suburban lawn birds but they aren't - they are woodland thrushes which found our suburban lawns to be an easy source of earthworms. Thanks to Ron Bell, the great Connecticut ornithologist, for joining us yesterday for the final warbler outing of the year, and thanks to M and J for their auditory skills. The Phila. Vireo was a first for the Bird Dog.

My photo of New Haven's Soldier's and Sailor's Monument, which overlooks New Haven and Long Island Sound from its perch on the peak of East Rock. God Bless both our eager and reluctant warriors, who give us the freedom we thrive on.

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 them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
--Declaration of Independence

Proclaimed in 1868, and originally known as Decoration Day,
Memorial Day was slow to catch on in the South, which, understandably, had their own day to memorialize their war dead. We must honor them too - they were fighting for freedom, as they saw it.

How easy it is to forget the meaning of the holiday - the day to remember fallen soldiers, and to decorate their graves - unless you have lost one recently, or saw pals die in battle. In that case, it's easy to remember.

It shames me to think how much of what I take for granted has been bought with blood, sweat, and tears. How do you thank the dead, other than with remembrance and prayer?

A detailed history of Memorial Day here.

Two Stooges, plus Sweden

Just to prove that some of us here have some humility, here's what we did on Saturday:

We took the Ford tractor, with the Dixie brushwacker hooked up, sharpened and ready, to go mow the "back forty" which we missed last year due to the tractor being worked on, and to cut some low branches that get in our way and annoy us by smacking us smartly in the face when we mow. This is a small, not really forty but maybe 25-acre curving meadow adjacent to the beaver marsh, that we only mow alternate years, for the wildlife. (Yes, there are no birds nesting in that field, but we  watch out for turtles, snakes, etc.)

On my foolish advice, and foolishly listening to mine, brother-in-law rests the chain saw on the side of the tractor seat balanced on top of a hill of chain that we use to drag heavy stuff, and I march behind carrying a plastic container of chain saw 50/1 gas-oil mix, and other miscellaneous tools including a shovel and a bunch of bare-root junipers I want to plant to mark the big rocks in the meadow, along with some Gatorade and Ballantine Ale, like the beast of burden that Bird Dog is.

The tractor hits a log hidden by the already 10" hay (thanks a lot, beavers, for dumping that log there), the chain saw jumps, incomprehensively, past the tire-guard and mischievously clips the nozzle off the tire. The water (yes, water-fiilled rear tires) spews out like a fire hydrant, and we have a flat tire on Memorial Day Saturday when no tractor tire places are open, plus the meadow is over a wooden bridge that I doubt any tire guy with his precious shiny Ford 350 pick-up would like to hazard.

Unprintable language spewed from Bird Dog as lavishly as the water did from the tire. So much for the day's planned work. But somehow the Stihl saw still worked after its victorious battle with the tire. 

from Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

What a fine, simple name for a bird.

It is now the end of warbler migration, and migration in general. This common warbler, pictured here in a Larch (remember "The Larch" on Monty Python?), is beginning to nest, although it's still cold this week up here. 

Read more about this handsome warbler., which is seen in the eastern 2/3 of the US.

"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."

Edgar Watson Howe

Well, they're not showing any lights tonight
And there's no moon
There's just a hot-blooded singer
Singing "Memphis in June"
While they're beating the devil out of a guy
Who's wearing a powder-blue wig
Later he'll be shot
For resisting arrest
I can still hear his voice crying
In the wilderness
What looks large from a distance
Close up ain't never that big

Never could learn to drink that blood
And call it wine.
Never could learn to hold you, love
And call you mine.

Dylan, from Tight Connection to my Heart (Has Anybody Seen my Love?) - buy it here

I think this is a Mississippi River Channel Catfish. This is about as big as they get, Captain Ahab.  

Editor: Then tonight I get an email from Curt, saying "Is this a bait fish?"

Are Political Blogs a Waste of Time?

To what extent do the conservative bloggers and readers just talk to each-other? And don't the DailyKos folks do the same? Is anyone influenced or convinced? Doubtful.

But maybe at the margins. After all, Rush gave voice to millions of people who thought the way he did, but had no outside reinforcement for what they felt. The success of FOX news is the same - a crappy news program yet semi-entertaining if you have something else to do at the same time - but folks want to feel represented in the national dialogue. They need validation. Humans always want that - to not feel invisible.

People enjoy information too, or they wouldn't be wasting time online - except for porn, or check-paying, or email, apparently. We are all yentas at heart. But people also want reinforcement - a feeling of community.

The MSM takes care of the liberals, so the conservatives need all of these "alternative" outlets to feel reassured that they aren't out to lunch. There is no comparison between the numbers of traditionalist blogs and leftist blogs - and no comparison in their quality and intelligence (our blog excepted - it's not intelligent and is of low-quality...but ya like it, dontcha?).

So I dunno. One thing I do know for sure - when new info is made widely available by blogs, it makes a difference in the "real news." Powerline has had true power, run as it is by three extraordinary Dartmouth fellows. But how do you reach other folks, to help them open up their closed minds? I do not have the answer to that one.

Wish I did. One idea: Let's do an LBO of the NYT, and bring it balance! We will need a few very big players to do this deal...and the Sulzbergers must be bored with their toys by now.