Maggie's Farm

Photo from Anchoress' God is not sophisticated enough

Shut up and dance: Margot Fonteyn’s merry dance through the farce of a failed coup d’état

Read this: FTC proposes federalizing newspapers, killing blogs 

Watts: About those melting ice sheets

Hennessey: Why do so many Americans pay no income tax?

The EU: Blame the Jews

Stem cells instead of implants? Sign me up

Hewitt: The collapsing Obama Presidency

Teachers Need A Teachable Moment About Their Unions

Sea mammals as guards. Cool. h/t, Linkiest

Thompson's idea of hell

Maher: Obama Not Acting Like A "Real Black" President

The elections:

It used to be said — the president before an election had to go to Ireland, Israel and Italy. Well, now it’s Jews, Hispanics, and gays if you are going into a midterm election...

The death of Democratic Socialism: Am Thinker

Refugees From Communism React With Horror to Moonbats

Pethokoukis: 5 reasons why “Son of Stimulus” is a bad seed

Am Thinker: Are Climate Alarmists losing the Mainstream Media?

Top counterterror guy just doesn't get it:

It should be further noted that this tendency to project one’s own cultural norms of right and wrong onto others is the height of arrogance and ethnocentrism — precisely what liberals always warn against. Yet the irony is that “open-minded” proponents of cultural relativism and respect for “the other” are also the ones most prone to westernizing Islam. When Brennan insists that jihadists are really not motivated by religion but rather are products of “political, economic and social forces,” is his position — that jihadists are just like us, they just don’t know it yet — not the height of cultural arrogance?

David Brooks wrote a much-linked piece on the two enlightenments last week. Far better and more amusing is this ripping apart of Brooks' essay. It's tough to get away with BS in the internet era.

That is quite correct that there was no "British Enlightenment." Here's our post, with a good link, on the Scottish Enlightenment.

And another good one: How The Scots Invented The Modern World

h/t, Sipp:

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered?  I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound---
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

h/t, Theo

At Oxford.

Maybe. I think the hardest exam in the world is working a job and keeping a job, but my pup says the hardest exams in the world are the (paperless) rapid-fire interviews at big NYC banks. "What's 18X17?" "What's the square root of 289?" "What's the annualized rate of whatever?" And the damn logic puzzles she told me about, which I have now forgotten. What's the one where they pour the salt and the pepper onto the table, and ask you to quickly separate the salt from the pepper?

Oh, now I remember that one...

I see that VDH is on a trip quite similar to the one we have planned for August. Too bad he didn't wait 'til August.

Photo is the Danube Canal in Austria.

This one's for KAB:

It's an oldie -

The old farmer is late serving breakfast to the animals. Pig says to chicken "So, what will we have for breakfast?"

Chicken replies "I suggest eggs and bacon."

Yer editor at work, editing the heck out of an overgrown 15-acre boulder-strewn meadow. Photo does not capture the height and density of the overgrowth, nor does it fully capture the Yankee red-neck elegance of the world-famous blog celeb Bird Dog.

We were happy to see that there were still struggling grasses underneath the growth, which will now have a chance to thrive again. I think we will need to mow again in September in an effort to thoroughly discourage the saplings and to give the grasses and wildflowers a good head start next Spring.

We carefully gave a wide berth to a huge Painted Turtle who decided to dig a hole and lay some eggs in the field while we were working. Got some photos. This is the meadow adjacent to the beaver marsh.

from Anchoress:

A paradox of faith is that only by giving away (our) judgments and notions can we attain anything like Godly wisdom. Only by saying, “I surrender my notions of what would make me happy, to wholly accept yours,” can we hope to find true happiness and that peace “which defies all understanding.” Jesus went through an awful lot to demonstrate the power (and value) of “thy will be done,” and yet, we still struggle with it; we still resist, and want our own way.

Anne LaMott likes to quote a priest-friend of hers: “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Or, taken another way, “you can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that the plan God has for the world is, by happy coincidence, precisely aligned with your positions.”

Hot day today. I checked the Weather.com temp for my zip code: 84 F. Then I checked Accuweather: 87 F. Then I checked the local airport's weather station: 81 F. How's that for hard scientific data?

How do they get that the earth has warmed 0.6 degrees in the past 100 years from data like this?

Maybe the EU wants to self-destruct, but I am going to continue to borrow my friend's red Dodge truck.

I am not a big fan of pasta dishes anymore (used to be, but have pretty much tired of them - especially with red sauce). Still, a favorite snack for me is pasta with garlic and oil - Pasta Aglio et Olio. Simplest thing in the world.

Tips: For this or any other spaghetti recipe, use thin spaghetti - never the full size. For this recipe, the amount of chopped garlic you use, and the extent to which you brown the garlic, is to your taste. I like tons of garlic and I like it brown. I do it with coarsely chopped Italian parsley, and plenty of it. Plenty of fresh ground pepper too. Lastly, make spaghetti the Italian way, by throwing the spaghetti into the hot saucepan and tossing with the sauce. That's the right way to coat the noodles and heat up the pasta at the same time.

A pal told me at a guys' night out barbecue dinner last night that his favorite pasta is Pasta alla Norma, the hamburger of Sicily. I've never had it.

A view of the farm this weekend -

Had too much work to do to spend much time birding this weekend, but I tend to have outdoor situational awareness:

Yellow Warbler, Yellow Throat Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Mallard, Wood Duck, Canada Goose, GB Heron, B Oriole, Turkey Vulture, Wild Turkey, Wood Duck, Red-Tailed Hawk, RT Hummingbird, Blue Jay, Chickadee, Mourning Dove, Catbird, Cedar Waxwing, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, Bluebird, Robin, Kingbird, Phoebe, Wood Pewee, Wood Thrush, Veery, Hermit Thrush, Song Sparrow, Ovenbird, Crow, Raven, Downy WP, Brown Thrasher, Pileated Woodpecker, House Finch, House Wren, RE Vireo,  Black and White Warbler, and numerous unidentified warblers.

Did not see any Meadowlark, Killdeer, or Bobolink. Probably passed through already, but I wish they would make summer homes here. I do not know why they don't.

Drudge's headline right now:
OBAMA REDISTRIBUTION VICTORY: PRIVATE PAY PLUMMETS, GOVT HANDOUTS SOAR

AVI reflects on Me 'n Limbaugh. 

My only meaningful disagreement might be that I do not see Rush's bragging as genuine, but as radio shtick. Nobody who says "I speak with half my brain tied behind my back, just to keep it fair" is a serious braggart.

I think what drives Lefties nuts about Rush (besides his opinions) are his cheerfulness, infectious optimism, fair-handedness and kindness with callers, and his regular-American (as opposed to elite American) points of view.

The lack of angst and anger is simply not fashionable and is, indeed, repugnant to the elite Liberal mind.

At Pajamas,

Tracy is believed to have smuggled 270 Somalis into the U.S. through Mexico. Let me say it again: An associate of al-Shabaab has snuck in nearly 300 Somalis from where they operate into the country. They remain here and we don’t know what they are up to.

As Dr X recently observed,

Rules, limits and boundaries are critically important aspects of psychological life, necessary to a sense of safety and security.  Even if we don't always appreciate this fact consciously, boundary violations are perceived unconsciously as wrongful, serious threats to our safety.  Without an appreciation for the profound psychological significance of boundaries, we cannot begin to appreciate why it is inevitable that immigrants unlawfully streaming across the border into Arizona are perceived as a menace to safety by many Arizonans.

But not just "perceived," Dr. X. People are getting fed up with flagrant violation of the law. It is not the best way to begin a new life in a new place as an outlaw, and this sort of thing does not help the illegal cause.

Photo in the MA Berkshire woods yesterday morning. An easy one:

Had almost the entire crew working on the farm this weekend clearing out the overgrown meadow. The crew included my 5 year-old nephew who my Greenie sister was teaching to cut saplings in the meadow with clippers.

Says I, encouragingly, to the young lad "Remember, every time you kill a baby tree, God smiles."

Do you think that was the right thing to say?

Name this machine. This one did a lot of rough work for us this weekend, but not without a few annoying mechanical glitches:

Photo is Le Thoronet, one of the three Romanesque Cistercian abbeys in Provence.

When I need a dash of perspective and feel open to a new thought, I check out One Cosmos to see what Gagdad has been thinking about. He reads books that I would not get around to reading.

(I wish he would leave the politics alone - not that I disagree with his - but I find the combination grating and disconcerting.)

A sample of Gagdad's recent musings:

 ...it is hopeless to defer to biology as to the nature of Life as such. As I mentioned in the book, a biologist knows no more about the nature of life than a watchmaker does about the nature of time. As I have noted before, although it is obvious to me that the cosmos manifests intelligent design, I do not rely on this to inductively leap the conclusion that God therefore exists. This is like proving the existence of time by studying watches.

Or something like this, from a more recent post:

Truth must be sufferered... Why is that? Because to know a truth -- i.e., genuine objectivity -- is death to the ego. But once the ego is out of the way, it doesn't hurt at all. In fact, it kind of tickles.

Image: A Hubble photo of a star nursery

This reasonably common migratory bird of the Eastern US is usually located by his loud, piercing calls. I have spent plenty of time tracking down the call, only to say to myself "Oh yeah, of course - I forgot" when I find the guy up in some treetop.

This bird should definitely be in The Handbook of Loud Birds of Central Ohio - or of anywhere.

Info below the fold -