Maggie's Farm

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Winston Churchill

College students’ reading habits ain’t what they used to be, laments Ron Charles, a senior editor at The Washington Post’s Book World.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s monthly list of best-selling titles on college campuses, Mr. Charles notes, has lately been dominated by the vampire tales of Stephenie Meyer and the inspirational stories of Barack Obama. Forty years earlier — amid the passion of civil rights, Vietnam, and the women’s movement — student tastes ran more along the lines of Howl, Soul on Ice, and the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

Today “we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they’re choosing books like 13-year-old girls — or their parents,” he writes. “The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment.”

Not everyone shares his alarm, reports Mr. Charles. Mike Connery, who writes for the Web site Future Majority, says that the top titles are simply what people are reading to escape. They absorb their politics through blogs and social networks, he says.

Mr. Charles isn’t buying that argument. “For the Twitter generation, the new slogan seems to be ‘Don’t trust anyone over 140 characters,’ he writes. “What you see at the next revolution is far more likely to be a well-designed Web site than a radical novel or a poem. Not to be a drag, but that’s so uncool.” —Don Troop

Ed. note:  One more of those "the kids these days" pieces. But if Soul on Ice and Sylvia Plath are anybody's idea of soulful, I must live in the wrong universe.

Mainly in response to Geithner, but to the Admin in general (names removed, obviously):

I am fired up.. uncork a few for me! a little ranting……@*#@**xx.

Geithner looked like a deer in the headlights today.. he bombed in his unveiling. Put some duct tape on him! What an amateur hour-- Obama is in trouble so soon

This moron Geithner doesn't know how a bank loan is made and the fact that mark to market acctg requires the bank to almost surely write a loan down immediately upon making it because its like a new car when you drive it off the lot it is worth less  two minutes later after its made ……like bonds these loan portfolios will swing in value based upon  the interest rate swings and if there isn't someone who wants to buy a new loan at face then you have to write it down,  do you know how many loans are made in conjunction with deposits and relationships etc…?? I am so disgusted these yahoos are really dumb. The Feds/states already supervise the banks.

It's not about just writing down these mortgage securities, CMO's and such,  but these banks are required to write down their customer loan portfolios even if they are performing!!  

I am getting tired of Obama complaining about Wall Street who the F' does he think owns stocks and bonds?? Just fat cats from NYC??

 Almost every person I know has 401K's retirement accts etc that have been crushed and they are measuring their wealth and ability to retire, save and survive on these values  etc..  Nationalizing the banks is so stupid it's laughable.

Mark to market acctg serves really who?? The Govt who want to steal the assets of the financial institutions .. can you imagine ?? while they are at it lets nationalize the oil industry .. can you imagine Barney Franks and Dodd making decisions about where to drill and how to allocate capital ?? The retail RE business is about to drop off a cliff.

These guys are proving every day they have no clue about how business works.

Someone tell me I am off my rocker!!!

Can you imagine if all they did was guarantee bank deposits up to a few million dollars at the banks and modified mark to market acctg the trillion dollars of bank bail out capital would be cut by 90% and they would really get a stimulus plan using those same dollars cooking on worthwhile spending projects!

 Things will turn around but not before enormous private wealth of this nation is wiped out and redistributed and the country starts over but it will be a decade before this happens and I am starting to wonder if it will happen peacefully?

 SAD SAD SAD

We had all sorts of comments on my Joseph Campbell video post, so I thought I'd tell you what following my bliss might entail.

Islamorada. 2 bedrooms, pool, ocean, and only $295,000.

From a talk by Joseph Campbell a few years ago:

These Youtubes are basic, but I like basic.

What is a fallacy? (What's with their spelling? I don't know.)

What is a sound argument?

Look at the ends of aluminum foil boxes. There's a push-in thingy to hold the roll in the box. Thank me.

Winter nature photography, students aged 13-21, at Pixcetera.

Wow.

Over the transom:

What if a Republican president submitted for cabinet confirmation ...

 

1. A Treasury Secretary with supervisory powers over the IRS who failed to report and pay taxes on over $100,000 in personal income?

2. A Commerce Secretary who had to withdraw because of an investigation into "pay to play" allegations in the state where he sits as governor?

3. A Secretary of Transportation revealed to be the king of earmarks while in Congress?

4. A Secretary of State whose husband is an international free-booter collecting millions from many of the very countries and leaders with whom his wife must deal in representing vital U.S. interests?

5. An Attorney General who failed to blow the whistle upon one the most infamous pardons ever granted by a sitting President?

6. A Solicitor General who has never argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court?

7. A Secretary of Labor who refuses to reveal her positions on issues vital to the American business community?

9. A television personality with no public experience whatsoever for Surgeon General?

10. A long-time Congressman and former White House Chief of Staff to head the Central Intelligence Agency?

I am a fan of the young Cuban sculptor Yoan Capote, and have begun collecting some of his work. Here's Lote (Retrato de la masa), 2008:

A quote from an important essay which needs to get around: The Necessity of Mathematics:

Once, we had a troll at Pharyngula who, insisting that only "Theism" could solve the problem of dark matter, displayed some rather confused ideas about "energy" and "gravity." Using the actual physics, energy is interchangeable with mass — that's the content of Einstein's famous equation — and we've known since Newton that mass is the source of gravitational attraction. Of course, we've updated the Newtonian force law to the Einsteinian description of curved spacetime, but still, more energy means more mass which means a stronger gravitational pull. A sealed box of hot helium gas will actually pull very slightly harder on nearby objects than a box of the same size containing the same number of helium atoms at a lower temperature. Yet to our persistent Pharyngula commenter, "energy" and "gravity" were diametrically opposed concepts — because, I think, when you have "lots of energy" you're not "weighed down" but instead "bouncing around the room."

In short, inconsistencies which appear at the verbal level turn out to be illusory when you progress to the actual science.

Looking for Christmas books? Check out Bolano. One quote from the Chronicle review of his work:

Such is the craze around the world for Bolaño's oeuvre that almost everything he wrote is being made available in translation at a dizzying pace. In English, his luminous short stories — Last Evenings on Earth — and his masterful novellas — Distant Star and By Night in Chile — have made it into the canon in Spanish departments and creative-writing programs. In 2007 his magnum opus, The Savage Detectives — which had been awarded the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the highest distinction for a novel in the Hispanic world, in 1999 — was offered in translation. The story of Arturo Belano (the author's alter ego) and another visceral realist, who search for the mysterious founder of the movement, it has been embraced by critics as proof that literature might be losing readers, but it isn't losing its guts.

He's not for everybody.

Wooly Mammoths rumored seen in Louisiana swamps. My brother took this "climate change" photo yesterday in New Orleans:

In Chicago, 1921 and 2008. You can't make this stuff up. Read this bit as he tries to make a deal to sell Obama's seat to Obama's choice.

Between Rangel and Blago, the greedy Dems are in it up to their necks.

Editor's note: Woops. Complaint includes Obama-Rezko land deal. Is this Whitewater Redux? If Dems love money so much, why don't they get a real job and produce something useful, like so many Repubs do?

Also, via Slate:

The person who looks great in this sordid affair, in fact, is Barack Obama, whom Blagojevich refers to by another name. According to the indictment:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants ... are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him."

Also, one Lib: Blago a victim. Some are such insane partisans that it blinds them, or corrupts them. I can see defending pitiful Larry Craig, but not this scumbag, who is just the tip of a huge iceberg.

Also, many posts at Gateway

The Bill Evans Trio with Autumn Leaves

It's been a while since we posted some of Julian Beever's newer pavement drawings. Here's one. Lots more on continuation page below.

A slightly emotional message, which arrived over the transom. I will not say what friend wrote this thing, but I think they got it off their chest by doing so. Very therapeutic for them:

While the election results admittedly make it difficult, I am generally an optimist, and I'm not changing my stripes now. Obama has truly awful, awful ideas for our country, but I do not believe even he can ruin it. So here's what I feel good about right now: The next time someone - perhaps looking up from their Sunday New York Times - tries to tell you we live in a pervasively racist society, you can tell them to just shut the f*** up. Since their services are no longer required, we can send Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson off to their long-overdue retirements, perhaps to Charlie Rangel's place in the Dominican Republic. While we're at it, can we all decide that if blacks can rise to the presidency, it follows that we no longer need affirmative action? Time to put it in the ground. The constructionists on the Supreme Court should be able to hold out another four years before they retire. We wish them the best of health. We won't have to spend four years defending John McCain. Let's face it, he was a crummy candidate who wilted on most issues important to conservatives. It would have been four painful years followed by a lay-up election for...Obama or Hillary. With the economy in the tank, Obama may have somewhat limited flexibility. His plans to turn us into Finland may have to wait. Jimmy Carter was a painful experience, but he gave us (cue heavenly choir music) Ronald Reagan. Will Obama give us a Bobby Jindal? Tim Pawlenty? Rudy? We have a deep bench. Start thinking ahead now. Since the Democrats control both houses and the White House, there will be no one else to blame when they screw up, which is as inevitable as the sun rising tomorrow. While they will try to pin any problems on George Bush for at least the next millennia, the people will know better. The media has now officially been "outed" as in the tank for the Democrat Party. Even liberals know it. MSM credibility has never been so low. The New York Times was just demoted to junk bond status by the ratings agencies. Finally, let's be happy that it's finally just over.

I guess that covers most of it. Go in peace.