Maggie's Farm

It says 1997, not 1998, on these fine cigars our friend Nathan sent me. Many interesting tart, sweet, funky, sexual, and multi-layered aged flavors in them. I like the 43 ring size, but my humidor is a bit too high on the humidity right now - I think. Stepped on the meter like a complete klutz and broke it a while ago, and I think it is like the Everglades in there right now, judging from the draw.

I did spill some water in there, too - don't ask.

I think I will leave the thing open for a few hours to dry out a bit, and order another crappy $5 hygromificateristicalmeter. Got some fine tobaccy in there: I want it in perfect condition when Nathan visits from Jerusalem next month. 

Jim Kweskin's Jug Band with Geoff Muldaur, 1963. Good stuff, but unfortunately without a video:

Yes, it's another Home Depot morning for me. Black Forest mulch and other stuff.

Political monoculture in the academy. Tiger

FITNA is spreading virally.

Larry Kudlow said today, on the radio, that the Obamas have no retirement plans or savings. They have no investments either, other than real estate, despite making well over a million a year for a while and making de minimus charitable contributions. What's up with that?

The UN's farcical Human Rights Council

The Chronicle of Higher Ed wondered how university presidents do compared to others:

CEO of S&P 500 company—$8.5-million
NBA player—$4-million
College football coach (NCAA Division I)—$1-million
Neurosurgeon—$530,000
President of public research university—$397,000
U.S. Senator—$162,500
NASA astronaut (top pay grade)—$130,000
Reporter—$42,000

The neo-Malthusians in the environmental movement religion. I learned a new word today, in relation to that: "cornucopians." I guess I tend to be one of those - although I would guess that the human race would be better off achieving a sustained human population rather than continued growth. The checkout lines at Costco are too long as it is.

Let them eat cell phones.

Opie tells me that this essay pretty much captures her view of the Iraq war:

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe.

America’s only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks, because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors, because they didn’t have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Read the rest on continuation page below -

h/t, Neatorama

Right Wing Prof likes this place, and I know I would like it too because it seems like a Maggie's Farm sort of joint. Wonder if they deliver to New England states:

Canada's #1 Dating Site: Adult Moose Finder

Roger de H. advises: Make sure you plug in "man" seeking "interracial elk" from the drop down list. And check out the dropdown list for "Country"

The artist Samuel F. B. Morse (Phillips Academy and Yale) is better known as an inventor - and for Morse Code. This is his Niagara Falls from Table Rock (1813), owned by the MFA, Boston.

Mark Twain

I heard one whinny at around 5 AM on Good Friday. It's a treat to hear, and I hope that it means we will have a nesting pair of these pigeon-sized little owls in the area.

Maybe I should put up a Screech Owl nest box, but there are so many trees with holes around here that it's probably not necessary. I have never had to chase them out of any of my Wood Duck boxes, but they are known to occupy them. I had neighbors who had a pair for years using their Wood Duck house on a tiny island in a pond (which seemed reckless of the owls, to me). You could see the owl's face, sometimes, sunning itself in the hole.

It's unusual to see them. Practically speaking, the only way you would know that they are around is by hearing them at night. These owls do not mind suburbia at all, and are probably breeding in all five boroughs of New York City.

These nocturnal birds are not rare everywhere east of the Rockies, and come in Red, Brown, and Grey races. They do not screech; they have a trill and a ghostly whinny. One more of those eery night-time sounds.

Here are their calls.

Read the detailed CLO entry on the Eastern Screech Owl here.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Mark Twain

Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire, 1940. The film is a bit washed out, but it's worth it.

Lies are stubborn things.

The News Junkie of Maggie's Farm

From the NYT review of Anthony Pagden's Worlds at War: The 2500-year Struggle Between East and West (meaning the West and Islam), a quote:

The real value of “Worlds at War” may lie in a secondary theme: the West’s long, tragicomic history of trying to civilize and modernize the East. In the first century B.C., Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Egypt was portrayed by the Romans as the triumph of “a free and virtuous West” over “a tyrannical and corrupt East.” Almost 2,000 years later, in 1920, Shiites and Sunnis were killing each other in Mesopotamia, British officers were dying, and The Times of London wrote, “How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?”

Whole review here.

"I'm a Lonely Man"

Mark Twain

A few samples, from a list at S,C&A:

Weinberg’s Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. (Gerald M Weinberg)

The piece in the National Post begins:

They drift along in the worlds' oceans at a depth of 2,000 metres -- more than a mile deep -- constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, pressure and velocity of the upper oceans.

Then, about once every 10 days, a bladder on the outside of these buoys inflates and raises them slowly to the surface gathering data about each strata of seawater they pass through. After an upward journey of nearly six hours, the Argo monitors bob on the waves while an onboard transmitter sends their information to a satellite that in turn retransmits it to several land-based research computers where it may be accessed by anyone who wishes to see it.

These 3,000 yellow sentinels --about the size and shape of a large fence post -- free-float the world's oceans, season in and season out, surfacing between 30 and 40 times a year, disgorging their findings, then submerging again for another fact-finding voyage.

Read the whole thing and find out what they are telling us.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

Mark Twain