Maggie's Farm

Regular readers know that Maggie's Farm is a big supporter of Ducks Unlimited, one of the major conservation organizations in North America. The 1,000,000 members of DU now protect over 12 million acres of wildlife habitat. That is a heck of a good cause.

We like to have fun, too, while raising $ to protect habitat. I took some photos of our annual event (which is mainly a boy's-night-out).

Our raffle girls (with their scary boss on the left who insisted on joining the photo):

More photos on continuation page -

Dino revisits his topic of the "lazy, easy" lives we have been leading in recent years. Can we awaken from the dreams? One quote:

“The American boy of 1854 stood closer to the year 1 than to the year 1900.” Soon, almost no one in America will have a visceral understanding of what 1854 was like, and what the heck Henry Adams was talking about.

Another:

A typical boy of 1854 knew what farming was like and may well have worked on a farm, knew horses and other animals, and learned how to maintain and fix things, from houses to wagons to furniture. A typical young man of 1947 had been in the army, knew people who lived on farms, could tune and maintain his own car, and could change the fan belt on the refrigerator and refill it with Freon. Both the boy and the young man had some feel for the technologies that were developing and changing around them, since the technologies were often sized on a human scale and involved mechanical processes that they had some acquaintance with.

To an important extent, this is no longer true. You can’t fix an iPod the way you can fix a record player; indeed you can’t even easily open up an iPod to understand it, as you could unscrew the turntable cover to figure out how 33 1/3 rpm became 45 rpm. Nor can you fool around with a Toyota Prius the same way you could try to replace a 283 with a 327 in a ‘57 Chevy.

Read the whole thing.

"In politics today, intention, symbolism, and rhetoric are everything; facts, nothing." A must-read. VDH: Parallel Lives.

Barrister emails: Forget politics. Politics is a power and money game, of course, because many humans get a kick out of those things. But how does Rangel keep his chairmanship, much less remain in the darn House, after these revelations? Or am I naive as hell?

Is "success" luck or pluck? Volokh considers Gladwell's book.

Luck or pluck? Well, we all know that we make our own luck...but bad luck is never our fault. I think it's one of those black-and-white pseudo questions, like Nature vs. Nurture. Life is more complicated than that, and everybody has his own definition of success in a free country. And everybody fails, to some degree, in meeting his life goals whatever they may be.

(My life goals happen to be to have a relationship with God, to be honest and honest with myself, to be close with my family and to give them a hand when needed, to read lots of books, to pay my hefty bills, to have some pals I can count on, to have a pleasant and civilized environment to live in, to make some efforts for the things I care about, and to have some good recreation - which includes guns, horses, golf, Scotch whiskey, ceegars, and posting on Maggie's - among other things. That's about it. I am a happy and frequently unhappy product of my culture. Saving the world is above my pay grade narcissism quotient.)

Some people equate being rich (defined how? Some would term me prosperous, and some not) as success. I do not. Anyway, Wilkinson also takes a look at Gladwell and income inequality. One quote:

If you understand that prices convey information about supply and demand, and that a wage is a price, then you understand that differences in wages for different kinds of labor convey information about the supply of different kinds of labor relative to demand. Wage inequalities are how people can know what’s a “high-value profession” and what isn’t. It guides our choices about the kinds of skills to seek. We need that guidance because effort isn’t enough. You can work as hard as you like in a low-wage job, and you’ll still be in a low-wage job.

Roger Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals, revisits the state of the campus, and its ongoing politicization. One quote:

Indeed, it is this failure--a failure to check the colonization of intellectual life by politics--that stands behind and fuels the degradation of liberal education. The issue is not so much--or not only--the presence of bad politics as the absence of non-politics in the intellectual life of the university.

Let me mention a couple of distinctions that I think we have lost sight of in recent years. The first is the distinction between academic freedom and free speech. Every time some wacko like Ward Churchill comes along shouting about the evils of American capitalism and the beneficence of Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Native American Indians, or whoever, his defenders rally round and say, "Well, I may not like what he says, but he is simply exercising his right of free speech."

I say, No he is not. He is violating his obligation as a teacher to eschew politics and impart knowledge. There is an important distinction between the right of free speech--our rights as citizens in a free society to peaceful political dissent--and academic freedom, the more limited privilege accorded to suitably enfranchised members of a college or university to to pursue knowledge. As the sociologist Edward Shils once noted, academic freedom is "the freedom to seek and transmit the truth." It does not, Shils insisted, "extend to the conduct of political propaganda in teaching." In short, academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things: for teachers "to teach the truth as they see it on the basis of prolonged and intensive study, to discuss their ideas freely with their colleagues, to publish the truth as they have arrived at it by systematic methodical research."

Bottom line: Academic freedom is not the same thing as free speech. It is a more limited freedom, designed to nurture intellectual integrity and to protect those engaged in intellectual inquiry from the intrusion of partisan passions. The very limitation of academic freedom is part of its strength. By excluding the political, it makes room for the pursuit of truth.

"In modern America, the market's bounty is assumed always to be there, as if it emerges naturally from the soil, available for us to "redistribute" as we wish."

Boudreaux, posted here yesterday. It's always reasonable for us all to ask what bounty we create, vs. what bounty we take. My work is more or less parasitic, and I have never felt good about that aspect of it, even though I feel pretty good about my expertise.

Just a few labor charges I noted in my wanderings over the weekend:

TV, camera, and electronics repair: $200/hr
Auto repair and maintenance: $125/hr
Gun shop: $90/hr
Computer repair: $225/hr

It's a good idea to have a skill. My firm needs to reconsider our fee structure.

A sign on the door of wounded SEAL Lieut. Jason Redman at Walter Reid Hospital:

"Attention to all who enter here. If you are coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and will make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. Then I will push that about 20 percent further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you are about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere."

If you think that government really wants to, or can, or will, help you with your life problems, just ask yourself this: "Where did I ever get that idea? Who put that idea in my head?"

Rush, paraphrased, on the radio today. Related: Is govt a service or a product? Related: Angst about how hard life is, from multi-millionaire Michelle Obama. Who said life was supposed to be easy? What do we have bones and muscles and brains for? Surely not to play tiddlywinks.

I’ve never seen the attraction of prostitution. If a man wants quick unfulfilling sex with a woman who despises him, he should get married.

That's from Stumbling, with whom we have frequent disagreements. He refuses to consider the possibility that some entrepreneurial women might want to be whores.

It pays well, requires little higher education, and is a "cash business" (ie, no taxes).

We already linked AVI's piece on a related topic, with this quote:

We care very deeply about these expressions of who we are as a society, locally or nationally. Some people don’t want to see strip malls. Some don’t want to see litter. Some don’t want to see sexual advocacy in the children’s section of the public library. Zoning, historical districts, wilderness areas, nude beaches, prayers before football games, public smoking, girlie magazines at the convenience store, transvestites, mosques, loud music next door, ORV’s, communications towers, homeless people, Wal-marts…We don’t want to see it! Or we do. It says something bad/good about us as a people. We want to feel that the place is ours, that it expresses us. I don’t want to live in a society that…

Yes. We get to decide what we want around us, don't we?

Sometimes I think rationalist materialists like Stumbling need to listen more often to this great Supertramp tune and develop a bit of humility about his/their rationalism:

And we wish him, and his comrades, the same. Powerline.

God bless our uniformed guys and gals. They do it for us, and we are unspeakably grateful.

Tax-The-Rich Charlie Rangel will, no doubt, be protected from his behavior, despite daily revelations of his seemingly sociopathic and highly-enriching ($) career in politics. It just never ends.

I have always maintained that politics is far more corrupt than business, and is an attraction to corruptable people who do not like, or can not handle, real productive work. The "public service" thing is a big sanctimonious scam and a cover-up for many feckless, sneaky and glib schmoozers who lack marketable skills (with some exceptions). But we all know that, and I do not think it is cute. (I believe that we recently read that the Clintons - not that they are ever together in the same room - are now worth $100 million bucks. Maybe Socialism works...)

Does Rangel's constituency enjoy the way he gets it over on "the power"? I do not. This is the guy who writes the incomprehensible tax code which I try my best to obey and which I require my clients to obey, but who dodges the rules every chance he sees. I resent that.

Charming rascal or scumbag? You tell me but, if it's OK to be that kind of socialist rascal, can I be one too? I want my free piece of that Socialist Pumpkin pie. Real work is a bummer, ain't it? It's just so hard to do, and competing with others seems so unfair because the others try so hard to get ahead. That's just not fair.

The government should do something about that.

Voters making over $200,000/year (which is upper-middle class, except in NY, CT, and parts of CA) voted well over 50% for Obama. Will Wilkinson discusses the demographics of the election with Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State.

Among many other topics, he attempts to understand how formerly Repub states like NY, CT and California became Democratic. Also, a bit on happiness and "progress."

Video here.

A GOP strategist earlier this year, as quoted via Rick Moran in Will Nationalized Health Care Kill Conservatism? -

“Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that’s it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail.”

Rick disagrees, but opines that further govt entitlement obligations will be catastrophic for the US. There's no doubt that a government grab of 14% of the economy would be a huge shift.

The "beloved" M-14 gets a new lease on life, for "designated marksmen."

Our friend emails:

Forget sniping.  The M-14 doesn't jam in the sand and its bullets go right through masonry (unlike the M-16/M-4).  Its resurgence is the reason surplus 7.62 mm ammo is in short supply and has doubled in price in two years.

A prosperous friend of mine in New York told me yesterday that he was considering giving up his jet share, which was costing him $200,000/yr. Then Mrs. B. tells me that Lord&Taylor is packed with shoppers. 

I was struck by this "hardship case" that Insty linked:

One of the hardest decisions was to tell her granddaughter that she could no longer take horseback riding lessons because they couldn't afford it.

"She loved those horseback riding lessons," Gentile said.

Are we headed for a 3-year global recession?
Are we headed for Dow 7500?
Are people buying things where you live?
Is this a hyped-up ordinary recession, with great stock market buys that will make you wealthy in a few years?
Are we headed towards a long global depression?
Is this all an emotional reaction?
Is this all a Dem/Obama effect?

I've heard and read the conflicting experts. What do our readers think?

"The inside story of how a gang of libertarian lawyers made constitutional history," at Reason.

Handgun photo is an Israeli "Jericho" polymer frame 9mm.

Whether steel or polymer, Santa has plenty of these (used) in stock, so you can put this toy on your Christmas list.

Quoted at Will Wilkerson, re Zombie firms:

...if GM vanished from the earth that would be an opportunity for the other car companies and whichever of them is best-situated to expand to fill the market share void left by GM could profitably some of the capital and labor currently in use. But if a dead firm is kept on life support, that weakens all its competitors’ positions without offering any promise of resurrection.

Think you're smart? That could mean that you are not. Always listen to different view before rejecting them. From a piece with the above title at Overcoming Bias:

...it seems clear that mostly what is going on is that we all misjudge our ability and task difficulty. 

You can say that again.

Will Wilkinson responded to the Posner piece which we linked the other day with the following excellent synopsis and, I think, accurate correction of Posner's views:

Humans are genetically uniform, but one of those uniformities is a capacity for acquiring and transmitting culture, some of which is moral culture, from which comes variation in moral dispositions. Different institutional structures are possible only because cultural variation is possible. And a configuaration of institutions, once in place, exerts pressure on culture, which in turn exerts pressure on institutional structure, and so on. If more peace and prosperity is better, and the institutions and behavior that produce peace and prosperity are mediated by  moral cultured, and moral culture is embodied as emotive and behavioral dispositions by the people within that society, then it seems evasive to deny that those people are “better” in a pretty obvious sense. People who are better at producing moral ends are morally better. It’s not wrong to visit a place rife with corruption, dishonesty, racism and cruelty and remark that “the people are horrible.” It may not be anyone’s fault that they turned out this way, but people do turn out that way, and whole societies, whole peoples, can and do get better.  If behavioral dispositions were in fact invariant, and variations in peace and prosperity were entirely due to variations in institutional structure, Posner would be right. There would be no difference in the people. But since variations in institutions are themselves due in large part to variations in people, Posner is wrong. The evidence points to the conclusion that people in commercial societies are better, which is one of the best reasons to prefer commercial societies.

Comment from Dr. Bliss: Yes, I agree with WW that the always interesting U of Chicago Law Prof and blogger Posner gets it wrong. Institutions shape neither people nor culture: the relationship between people and their culture - and the institutions they produce - is circular and interactive, and an ecological sort of model applies better than a binary or unidirectional one. Funnily enough, I happen to be planning a post on the subject.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

That's the powerfully poetic way John's Gospel begins, echoing Genesis. 

(I am fairly certain I awoke this morning with those lines from John 1:1 in my head because I had been thinking, in my amateurish way, about Bird Dog's post on Monday about Important things that don't exist, virtual reality, and the power of abstract nouns.)

We do not know who this "John" was, or whether the prologue (which scholars believe to be an early Christian hymn) was added some time after the Gospel was written around 90 AD. It's probably the most powerful beginning of anything in the Bible (after Genesis.) The NAD has the first verses thus:

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was in the beginning with God.

3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be

4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;

5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 A man named John was sent from God.

7 He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

8 He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.

9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.

11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.

12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,

13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.

John draws a parallel between Christ's relationship to God (God in a human form) to Creation itself (God's idea, made real and tangible). In doing so, he uses the untranslatable Greek term "logos," which we translated in English to the humdrum "word." While being no student of epistemology, it was clear to me that the author was introducing a note of Platonic Idealism (the basis of all modern mathematics, and lots of other stuff too) to the early followers of Christ. (Here's the Wiki on Christ the Logos.)

"Logos" aside, whenever I wonder what words are all about I tend to go back to Roger Brown's classic Words and Things. Epistemolologic altitudes just make a practical fellow like me dizzily short on oxygen in the same way that contemplating the cosmos does: it makes me want to split some firewood, practice my drives, clean out some stalls, or have a Scotch.

Well, I will leave Logos and Platonic Idealism to the experts and scholars and our better-informed commenters. My preferred image of Christ is William Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World," (image) where I have seen it hanging in St. Paul's Cathedral right down from Bread Street (where John Milton grew up, and where the Mermaid Tavern used to be). That image of the offer of illumination, with Christ knocking at the cottage door, works best for me.

As does Psalm 131, David's song of ascent to prayer:

1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
       my eyes are not haughty;
       I do not concern myself with great matters
       or things too wonderful for me.

 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
       like a weaned child with its mother,
       like a weaned child is my soul within me.

 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
       both now and forevermore.