Maggie's Farm

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man whose writings I have never been able to really understand. Even tried to read his bio. No dice. He was big on the lecture circuit once upon a time. Perhaps I am not smart enough.

Two doofuses:

Cannibalism is for nutrition. But what about flavor?

Friends Disagree Lots

Cubbing in Virginia

On Fermat's Last Theorem:

..there is Andrew Wiles, the frail knight who for seven lonely years pursues the proof that has ensorcelled him since childhood. He announces the proof to the world, is featured on the front page of the New York Times and in People Magazine, he has the respect and admiration of his colleagues and then he discovers the proof is wrong.  He works another year trying to fix it but every time he patches one area another fault line opens up. Even speaking of it now you can see and hear his utter despair.  It is not too much to imagine that he was on the verge of a breakdown. 

Theo: Completely honest first date

 WSJ Editorial on the Democrats’ Attack on For-Profit Colleges

Death by Power Point

It was an old-fashioned tent revival meeting

Hewitt: Where The GOP Goes Next: The Need for Speed

Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later

Via Protein:

Touring American campuses in the mid-1970s, Norman Macrae of The Economist was shocked “to hear so many supposedly left-wing young Americans who still thought they were expressing an entirely new and progressive philosophy as they mouthed the same prejudices as Trollope’s 19th century Tory squires: attacking any further expansion of industry and commerce as impossibly vulgar, because ecologically unfair to their pheasants and wild ducks.”

Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.

WSJ: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated

WSJ: Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes

Prepare for war between taxpayers and public employee unions

Blair: The latest green $ scam

Vanderleun: Tolerance Does Not Require Approval

Frank Rich’s Tea Party Lies

Commentary:  He Really Doesn’t Want to Be Commander In Chief

Image on top, h/t Moonbattery. We juxtaposed before Drudge, but after Moonbattery.

One place we did not get to on our trip was Salzburg. Wish we had had time to visit that medieval city which, as its name implies, got rich selling and transporting salt down the river.

Our guide pointed out to us how important salt was at the time - not as a condiment, but as a food-preservative. "White gold."

I wonder what salt mines were like in 1400.

Hooters and fat waitresses. But lots of guys like Rubenesque figures, don't they? (Venus at a Mirror, c. 1614)

Did anybody see this movie? Enemy at the Gates.

Are Standardized Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

AVI ponders confessing the sins of others

Surber on Beck's rally.

Related: Make Believe Media: WaPo Claims Al Sharpton Brings Thousands to DC

Chris Matthews: Who Stole America? What???

Was Benjamin Whorf partly right? Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Has Gov Schwartzenegger found his inner Christie? Too late. The guy was all hat, no cattle and no cojones.

Blair home number nine. What's that all about? Ans: Lefties love money.

At NRO:

In addition to a big stimulus program, Obama ran on the idea of heaping new taxes on upper-income taxpayers, including those small businesses that he says (correctly) are critical to the recovery. Congress did nothing. And so as 2011 creeps over the horizon, so too does a massive tax hike on middle-class families, upper-income workers, small businesses, savers, family farms, and on and on. Having done nothing about this tax cut for the last nearly two years, all these prospective tax-hike victims can only assume that Congress intends to hit them with the full tax hike from allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax relief to expire.

The tax hike itself is bad enough, falling as it will on a stuttering economy. But the bigger issue is still confidence.

USA Today trying to figure out how to survive

Rick Moran: The O is American enough

Shut down the federal Dept of Education. It's not a federal responsibility, duty, or power - whatever the Bushes thought.

American Muslim leaders are not instilling confidence

Has the MSM lost confrol of the Leftist narrative?

Tax fuel to be green. Then raise taxes to help the fuel-poor so they can use more fuel. It all makes perfect sense.

Luke 14:1, 7-14

14:1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

14:7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.

14:8 "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host;

14:9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.

14:10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.

14:11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

14:12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.

14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

14:14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

We became somewhat expert in locks. When we got to the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, we took locks uphill over the continental divide, then down the other side. An engineering marvel. It's all gravity-driven and, as I have said, you can travel from the North Sea and Amsterdam to the Black Sea, by water, today. That trip would be a fine 30-day vacation.

The width of ships and barges is limited by the width of the locks, and the height is limited by bridges. In some locks, we only had about 6" space between the walls. I asked the Captain how he managed to get into those tight ones without scraping the sides. He laughed, said "You just go straight." (Our ship had a joystick like a Hinckley Picnic Boat, not a wheel. Bow thrusters, but no stern thrusters because the driver could turn the props to 90 degrees.)

I hear you asking what music our Dutch Captain liked to listen to when he had the con. Seemed like he was partial to Mark Knopfler and Van Morrison. Chugging up the Danube, listening to "We gotta move these refrigerators..." was memorable. I thought some Creedence might have been good, but maybe trite.

He had read some Mark Twain, said he liked Life on the Mississippi. Our Captain was a hearty and cheerful bloke who liked his wine and beer when off-duty. It seemed that the crew and staff responded well to his upbeat attitude towards life, making for a happy boat. Good cheer is contagious. Negativity is a plague. He constantly displayed warmth and appreciation towards his crew, but you cannot be a Captain without having a tough and serious core. As Dr. Bliss would say, not everybody is made for that.

Photo inside one of the many locks we went through.

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Lots of pics below the fold -

The Borderline Sociopathic Book for Boys. Example #1:

Ride a bicycle without a helmet. You heard me. And no spandex spangled with lavender and chrome yellow blotches and French words. You'll wear canvas shoes, too. You will not have anything with you that people with helmets refer to as "hydration." Eventually, you can get a blast of rubber-tasting hot water from a garden hose.

More on books: Van der Leun's 330 Word Guide to Writing Book Proposals. I wish I had read that before I wrote my book.

Guarding Your Heart in Marriage

Legal Ins: And These People Want To Run Your Health Care / Update - And Your Kids' Education. With another wonderfully common-sense Christie vid. The guy is a genius.

Steve Forbes on Obama: “He Thinks He Will Change America From a Greedy Nation to a Quiet Socialist Nation That Knows Its Place in the World” (Video)

David Brooks says we should be more like Germany

Am Thinker: President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder

J Post: Back to basics on Israel’s security

It's about time the scientists admitted it: Ogling beautiful women a natural reflex for men.

Fellows just can't help it.

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

H.L.Mencken. h/t, Vanderleun

When govt tries to go into business: Burlington Telecom

Statisticians take on warmists

Not tonight dear, we're married

Rove: Honey, I Shrunk My Approval Ratings

To be "intellectual" today requires knowledge of science and technology.

Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal:

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

From Belmont:

Although there are still some who believe that President Obama’s Keynesian cures will work, the counter-thesis may be that the supposed “cures” are in fact the cause of the disease. That the attempts to create European-style “rights” enforced by Euro-scaled bureaucracies on a Federal tax revenue base has created a bureaucratic monster in Washington sustained principally by borrowed money.

Is Michelle O pregnant?

Dino:

Fixing the economy is a hard slog, but it’s not rocket science. But if you’ve chosen advisors who know nothing about the business of America, as Obama has……well, it’s just too depressing to think about.

More evidence that Head Start does nothing

"The government is pushing these food poisoning events because they want to over-regulate."

Lowry: How the Democrats lost the middle:

Since 1992, according to Gallup, ideological opinion has been roughly constant: Self-described moderates have been 40 percent or a little lower; conservatives in the high 30s (although they've spiked to 42 lately); liberals in the high-teens to low-20s.

Both sides need the center, but especially liberals. It'd be rank foolishness to try to govern on the strength of only one-in-five people. But such has been the Obama-Pelosi project -- with unsurprising results.

You get off the plane from NYC, dump your stuff off at the boat, then hop on the subway and get off at Stephansplatz. Suddenly, you are in a new world, like not Kansas anymore. Even for folks like us who have travelled quite a bit, it was awesome to climb up the subway stairs and to be greeted with this. With a dose of jetlag, it feels hallucinatory:

More snaps below the fold -

Via Jungle Trader, a 155-Year-Old Drum Company Marches On.

The snare drum is basically a military instrument, with an interesting history. Ottoman armies used these drums to communicate orders.

For those who, like me, love that country.

"You have to act like an MD before you can become an MD."

Anon. ("MD" being Managing Director, but you could also insert "Partner" in the same sentence.)

Home ownership vs. renting. Coyote.

Deep thinking:

Global warming is real, it’s caused by human activity that goes straight back to the capitalist energy markets they worship, and it is really bad. None of these things are up for debate with sensible, reality-based people.

A Physics major, no doubt.

Do Cougars exist?

Via SDA:

"Tourism chiefs in Serbia are hoping their annual testicle cooking competition will do for the region what whisky did for Scotland."

Serbian cuisine, the envy of the world. Chow down, Feminazis.

Ace: Obama Administration To UN- Sorry That America Is So Awful. In Fairness, We Inherited This Lousy Country But Are Working On Remaking It

When is a speech code not a speech code? When it’s a “code of ethics.”

Obamacare: Dems’ Fatal Conceit?

Mankiw on Nantucket house prices. Did this study make his summer vacation tax-deductible?

Ebay, Adobe, EA Games Leaving California For Utah Over Confiscatory Tax Rate

Only in New York: Taxing a Cut … of your morning bagel. Just put the shmear on top of my uncut bagel.

Why Nerds Like Games. Games are stories.

New Republic: Moderate Muslims Are Not the Answer

ACORN flies under the radar

This is dumb: E-Cigarettes Spark New Smoking War. This is the safest smoke that exists. What's the big deal? Nicotine is harmless.

Fake tea party candidates

Taxes: The Left and its delusions

The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right

Via Insty:

REASON TV: Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful.

Author of Obamacare did not read it. If it's too long and complicated to read, then...

Michelle: Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre

You go to the home of Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, and so you naturally want to hear some of their music there. That was good.

However, what was most mind-boggling for me (and my son) was the Breughel collection at the Kunst Historische Museum:

It was a long, jet-lagged and befuddled but scenic trek to get there on our first day after a sleepless plane ride, but our Breughel mission was worth it to get close to those pictures. They have a third of the existing Breughels. They are quite large paintings with many small details, and no reproductions can do them justice. Some are oil on board, and some are tempera. You have to go and see with your own eyes. They have comfy leather sofas to sit on, too.

Pictures tell stories. If they don't, they are just "design." That's my opinion, anyway. People sure do love stories, especially when well-designed. I do not mean to disparage design: Picasso was a master of design. Matisse too, and the genius cave painters of Lascaux.

Hunters in the Snow (1565), his haunting hunting masterpiece:

Peasant Wedding, another masterpiece:

A good summary of Breughel's career here. It's interesting to me that the wealthy churchmen and princes of Austria found this Flemish painter's work so collectible. I guess they just had good taste in art.

Via Vanderleun:

Instead, some more thoughts collected from our trip. A Part 2 of my Guten Morgen post.

- Next time I travel with a group of family or friends, I will bring my 5-mile walkie-talkies that I use for hunting trips. A great way to call in and say "Want to meet for lunch?', since each subgroup seems to go off in their own direction.

- I forgot to mention how immaculate the bathrooms are. And, unlike NYC, you can just walk into any cafe and use theirs. They don't mind.

- I was amazed by how many people are crippled, hobbling around on crutches or in wheelchairs. Young and old. It made it clear to me how socialized medicine saves money on orthopedic procedures. In Regensburg I saw a pregnant young lady with, I think, moderate scoliosis, wobbling around town on two crutches, carrying a bag of groceries. That would never happen in America, even if poor. HSS would fix her up overnight - and thank her for the privilege.

- The vast majority of Austrians, and Bavarians too, are Roman Catholic. They go to church. Some Lutherans in Bavaria, and some Evangelical Lutherans too. Their old churches are still alive - not museums.

- If Freud had not been a Jew, he would never have come up with Psychoanalytic theory. Despite being a prominent young Neurologist and researcher/scholar, a Jew could not be appointed Professor in Vienna. The Gentile docs just referred him the wacky patients they did not want to bother with, so he decided to try to listen to them and to try to make sense of what ailed them. Had he not been a Jew, he would have been a wealthy Herr Professor of Neurology. Necessity is the mother of invention.

- Riverboat cruising has become a big deal over the past ten years. It's really a new form of vacation travel. I like it. I love ships and boats in general. No moving from hotel to train to hotel to car, and you always have guides right there when you want them. Our boat cruised back and forth between Budapest and Amsterdam, but most people just did legs of the trip (as we did). The boat had plenty of bikes to use, too. Just sign up for them.

- Wiener Schnitzel: I still don't get what is supposed to be so good about this cardboard-like food. Why do people eat it?

- Kesler reminded me of a thought I had had, regarding our deep Germanic cultural roots. (By "our" I mean especially Brit, Swiss, American, Aussie, Canadian, Dutch, etc.) Even our language is Germanic, not to mention our meat-and-potato diet. German is the easiest language for English-speakers to learn, and these folks live, act, and work like Americans. Quite a cultural contrast with Italians, French, and Spanish.

- One of the things that makes German and Austrian beers so good, over there in the biergartens, is that they are fresh, usually unpasteurized, and often unfiltered. Makes a big difference. Our big brand American beers really are not very tasty - but you knew that. Is Coors Lite or Bud Lite the best-selling "beer" in the US?

- Did we shop and buy stuff? Darn little. Mrs. BD bought a bracelet in Regensburg for 14 Euros. My daughter bought a cheese serving plate. I bought two sets of beer glasses from pubs, and a couple of beer mugs from a biergarten, all for 2-3 Euros each. Oh, also bought an umbrella at Schonbrunn when it started raining, but we left it behind somewhere after two days. Photos and experiences are what I like to bring home.

- Random factoid: The remarkable Marcus Aurelius died in Vindobona (now Wien - Vienna) while touring the edges of the empire. He was always at war with the Germans, but Roman civilization never extended much north of the barrier of the Danube.

Photo: Passau again, from the Oberhaus. I especially enjoyed Passau and Regensburg. Note the rotting mess of a 1960s-era, now-abandoned cafe up there on the left, while the c. 900 castle and fortifications stand strong and proud. Note also, from a high vantage point, how clear the demarcation is between town and country. No sprawl. That's their land use laws at work.

George Weiss died. Who?

Does McMahon have a chance against Blumenthal?

Blumenthal is, so far, running the worst political campaign in Connecticut history.

Does Bielat have a chance against Barney Frank?

Rubio back on top

Via Dino: Bill Ayers: “I wrote Dreams From My Father”

Warmists continue to refuse to debate the science

Stossel: Why businesses aren't hiring

Reb: Rogue President

Credit card debt drops to lowest level in 8 years

A Voegli video: America's Limitless Welfare State

Our pal Nathan emails this cell phone pic from the Hagiwara Tea Garden, San Francisco. He gets around.

A friend returned this week from 14 days in Umbria and then Florence. This family is a high-energy biking group, and the first thing they do when they go anywhere is to rent bikes. They go everywhere on their bikes regardless of terrain or traffic. 20 miles of hills is a warm-up for them.

They told me about biking to Civita di Bagnoregio. Biked over the bridge, of course. I had not heard of this interesting, deteriorating wreck of a place. An image which sticks in the brain, because all of mankind's works come to this except some things that are put into words or math or musical notes.

Surber:

In issue after issue — from drilling for oil to the Bush tax cuts to the stimulus and the bailouts — Washington is out of step with the American public.

Ain't that the truth?

More disorganized snaps from our trip. This is steaming through the green Wachau Valley in early morning fog and drizzle.

More pics below the fold -