Maggie's Farm

A hearty welcome to readers who have been kindly linked over to Maggie's by friendly blogs this week.

A twelve-second perusal of
Maggie's Farm will make it clear
that our approach to blogging is to follow our noses. It is not possible to categorize us, other than as "eclectic."  That's the goal.

To get corny about it, the amazing variety of stuff that life in this astonishing Creation presents to us is our beat, limited of course by time, as we all have plenty of responsibilities: herding sheep, flushing pheasants, being cuddly lapdogs, etc. However, no doubt our "traditionalist, centrist" approach to issues comes through loud and strong.

If you are a new or recently-new reader, click a category to get a sense of the variety of game we fetch for you, every day, for free.

One Year Old. And we act like it, at times. Hoist a pint with us, mateys. It must be cocktail hour somewhere on the planet.

A Birthday Present? Readers: Please bookmark us - show us the loooove. Bloggers: Blogroll us - show us that you care. And many thanks to those of you who have done so. The validation warms our doggy hearts.

And, since you insist, we'll keep on going - but only as long as you read us, and send us to your friends.  We want to grow logarithmically and organically, not arithmetically. Cheers!

 

You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime.

John P. Grier

Unfortunately or fortunately, Bush lacks charisma. But he has other, better qualities. Two good takes on Bush's speech tonite: Althouse, and John at Powerline

Another classic versatile 
hunter.

What do setters do, and why are they called "setters"? They point in a crouching manner - "setting," and they will track, and retrieve too.
That is all very good stuff.

The Gordon Setter Club here.  

If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

Bob Dylan

At the request of Mr. Free Market, we bring you one of
the ugliest birds in North America. These large carrion eaters and scavengers have expanded their range north in recent decades, and now can be found throughout the US during the summer breeding season. They move to the southern US and South America in the fall. Birders call them "TVs."

They find their food by sight and by smell, and are most commonly seen coasting around on thermals, effortlessly searching for dead animals with their long wings at a marked dihedral. They like to nest on cliffs.

Identification: The Black Vulture of the American south is one similar species, and, because of its size, it could be confused with Golden Eagle at a distance.

Why "turkey"? It's not just because of the unfeathered head, but also because they resemble Wild Turkeys from a distance when seated on the ground as they hunker over a dead deer or road kill.

More about this vulture at the CLO site here. Image by Audubon.

Heard Peter Noone (Herman of Herman's Hermits) interviewed on Mark Simone on WABC, Sat. nite. What a charming, unpretentious, and smart fellow. Among other things, he said that "Henry the Eighth" was a pub song that his grandfather was known for singing. He is a third-generation musician. And Peter is still on tour.

The first time that this day hath been yet observed: and Mr. Mills made a most excellent sermon, upon “Lord forgive us our former iniquities;” speaking excellently of the justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors. Home, and John Goods comes, and after dinner I did pay him 30l. for my Lady, and after that Sir W. Pen and I into Moorfields and had a brave talk, it being a most pleasant day, and besides much discourse did please ourselves to see young Davis and Whitton, two of our clerks, going by us in the field, who we observe to take much pleasure together, and I did most often see them at play together. Back to the Old James in Bishopsgate Street, where Sir W. Batten and Sir Wm. Rider met him about business of the Trinity House. So I went home, and there understand that my mother is come home well from Brampton, and had a letter from my brother John, a very ingenious one, and he therein begs to have leave to come to town at the Coronacion. Then to my Lady Batten’s; where my wife and she are lately come back again from being abroad, and seeing of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw hanged and buried at Tyburn. Then I home.

The frazzled Left would like to limit your free political speech, as was clear from Stalin's quote which we quoted in QQQ last week. Now that we no longer have a monolithic leftist media, they are getting very upset about diversity of ideas. However, the Left historically likes to limit available viewpoints. Bad idea, for a country full of thinking, imaginative people. Important piece by Anderson in Opinion Journal. Quotes:

The irony of campaign-finance reform is that the "corruption" it targets seems not to exist in any widespread sense. Studies galore have found little or no significant influence of campaign contributions on legislators' votes. Ideological commitments, party positions and constituents' wishes are what motivate the typical politician's actions in office. Aha! reformers will often riposte, the corruption is hidden, determining what Congress doesn't do--like enacting big gas taxes. But as Mr. Will notes, "that charge is impossible to refute by disproving a negative." Even so, such conspiracy-theory thinking is transforming election law into what journalist Jonathan Rauch calls "an engine of unlimited political regulation."

Uh huh. Yup.

McCain-Feingold, the latest and scariest step down that slope, makes it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups and labor unions to run ads that criticize--or even name or show--members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election, when such quintessentially political speech might actually persuade voters. It forbids political parties from soliciting or spending "soft money" contributions to publicize the principles and ideas they stand for. Amending the already baffling campaign-finance rules from the 1970s, McCain-Feingold's dizzying do's and don'ts, its detailed and onerous reporting requirements of funding sources--which require a dense 300-page book to lay out--have made running for office, contributing to a candidate or cause, or advocating without an attorney at hand unwise and potentially ruinous.

McCain wanted the goody-goody independent image. This is the price we pay for his goo-goo image. 

Not for nothing has Justice Clarence Thomas denounced McCain-Feingold's "unprecedented restrictions" as an "assault on the free exchange of ideas."

For sure. The man speaks the truth.

Campaign-finance reform has a squeaky-clean image, but the dirty truth is that this speech-throttling legislation is partly the result of a hoax perpetrated by a handful of liberal foundations, led by the venerable Pew Charitable Trusts. New York Post reporter Ryan Sager exposed the scam when he got hold of a 2004 videotape of former Pew official Sean Treglia telling a roomful of journalists and professors how Pew and other foundations spent years bankrolling various experts, ostensibly independent nonprofits (including the Center for Public Integrity and Democracy 21), and media outlets (NPR got $1.2 million for "news coverage of financial influence in political decision-making")--all aimed at fooling Washington into thinking that Americans were clamoring for reform, when in truth there was little public pressure to "clean up the system." "The target group for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," said Mr. Treglia matter-of-factly, referring to Congress. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot--that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."

That is what is called "advocacy." This advocacy is performed by the people Horowitz calls "the deep swimmers of the Left."

Mr. Treglia urged grantees to keep Pew's role hush-hush. "If Congress thought this was a Pew effort," he confided, "it'd be worthless. It'd be 20 million bucks thrown down the drain."

Read entire. Everyone, regardless of their politics, should be upset with what is happening. This is infringement of free political speech, and it is an insidious erosion of the Constitution. Repeal McCain-Feingold.

 

I reject your reality, and substitute my own.

Adam Savage (Host of Mythbusters & Visual Effects Creator)

A book: Scotch and Toilet Water,
by Cullum

^{Mark 1:21-28}

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

That was the "intellectual impresario" Brockman's highly-stimulating Question of the Year for 2005. Answers from a number of scientists and thinkers via The Edge website were compiled as a book. The Edge 2006 Annual Question is "What is your dangerous idea?"

My dangerous idea, or one of them, is "What if life is real?" Another is "What's for dinner?"

"The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control."
Ann Coulter

Well, we believe than gun control means a steady aim. Got the idea from Mark Levin to check this out: Here are the folks who write those NYT editorials, with a bit about their backgrounds. If you care. A bunch of lard-asses, as a reader delicately observed.

Have I mentioned lately how much we like The Teaching Company? Check it out, if you aren't familiar with them. Great stuff, and a good alternative to Books on Tape if you spend time in the car. Sign up just to get their catalog - it's an interesting read in itself. This month, a piece on Michael Haydn. Michael? Yes, Joseph's brother, who frequently collaborated with Mozart. The Robert Greenberg music courses are spectacularly enjoyable, entertaining, and educational. But so is most of their stuff.

This turn-of-the-century Austrian artist has millions of admirers of his emotionally intense work. There is now a major show of his work at the Neue Galerie, which specializes in Austrian and German art (86th St. and 5th Ave., NYC).

This is his "The Artist's Wife."

Both Schiele and his wife died young in the flu pandemic of 1918. His bio here. 

More of his work here.

I promised, a while ago, to do something on the Dark Side of God. But it is a tricky, teacherous path to walk, and I am surely not the person to blog on the subject. The Christian's God may be a God of love, but love is not a simple matter, is it? A God of love is no cuddly thing. Life isn't Sunday School, either. Nor did C.S. Lewis select the giant lion Aslan, to depict a divinity, casually.

So I will refer you to this site, with a weighty piece on the Dark Side of God, by Nysse at the Luther Seminary. Be forewarned - he does refer to the "cheap, trivial Grace so often proferred in our midst." Sadly, the site will not permit me to cut and paste some quotes. Powerful stuff for those who are interested.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

John Ciardi

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.

William Shakespeare

Bernard-Henri Levy's new book. He is an interesting and colorful French intellectual and psychoanalyst who considers himself to be "anti-anti-American." The book, his 30th, aspires to follow in de Toqueville's footsteps.

Quoted from the New York Magazine review:

American Vertigo, while somewhat adhering to the “footsteps of Tocqueville,” careers around, allowing him to drag the ironies out of Cooperstown (which he describes as a church), a suburban Chicago megachurch (“neo-paganist”), an anti-Semitic Indian leader, the Mall of America (“a church,” again), John Kerry (“a European at heart”), and a big retirement community (it reminds him of apartheid). He visits with clueless Hollywood liberal Sharon Stone (whom he manages to observe crossing her legs) and finds Las Vegas strippers mechanically standoffish (“the wretchedness of Eros in the land of the Puritans”). In Michigan, he marvels at the solidity of the American identity among Arab immigrants. (The book was finished before the riots broke out in Paris: “We have our crisis there, sure,” he says. “You had your riots in the nineties.”) In Dallas, at the assassination site of JFK, he wonders, “What is a myth that you no longer believe in that still functions?”

And amid all that is what seems to be his conclusion: that America is a curious sort of empire—not at all like Rome at its zenith or decline—with a particular character of individualism that he hopes will cause the country to do the good it could do in the world. He’s disappointed that we aren’t living up to our noblesse oblige responsibilities. “The reason I am so angry against neoconservatives is that they spoiled the very idea of intervention,” says the self-described Wilsonian. And he’s flabbergasted that the American left can be so accommodating to the puritanism of the right. There is, in fact, for a secular blue-stater, little in this book to disagree with: It has, at times, the reinforcement-of-a-worldview pleasures of a well-argued Frank Rich column, or, for that matter, The Daily Show.

Like many French writers, he may have a tendency to imagine that he is smarter than he is - but I would not put de Toqueville in that category. It's worth a minute to read entire review here.

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons ev’rywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on ev’ryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

From Joni Mitchell's Both Sides, Now. You only need to write one song like that in your life.

But this piece is about changing cloud cover, and how it effects heat balance on the earth. It seems to be a changeable thing. Scientists don't understand clouds very well.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.

Bob Dylan