Maggie's Farm

Because recycling is stupid and ignorant. This fact is widely known, but it's heretical to say outloud. Recycling has become a sacred cow. Penn and Teller tell it like it is, as usual (h/t, LGF).

No, it's beyond stupid - it's a rip-off. Except for aluminum cans, not only is it a fraud, but it makes Iron Eyes Cody cry because recycling hurts Gaia.

But people want easy ways to feel virtuous, which is "nice" but not always wise. But don't take that simple pleasure away from them, right? Even if it wastes oil to recycle? And costs them money - for nothing? Pure self-deception. But people will do anything easy to feel self-satisfaction.

The only thing that benefits from recycling are the garbage companies that feed off the government subsidies.

It's about the same sort of genius concept as biofuels, which require more energy to produce than they contain - and raise the price of staples in poor parts of the world, and destroy forests by subsidizing non-market-based farming in sensitive areas. But it does take money from the Middle East and from Chavez, which is good. I am going to buy a hybrid, but not to please the Greenies.

I will put a bumper sticker on it: Drive a Hybrid: Take a Bomb from a Moslem. Or maybe: Screw Chavez: Drive a Hybrid. Or maybe both. To deprive these folks of income is the least I can do for the earth.

I bundled up tonight in my old, green, moth-holed wool hunting sweater, and went out after dinner and sat on a frosty lawn chair by the tarp-covered pool, southwest of good old Hartford, with the river chortling in the cool, dim Yankee distance, with the hoot owls hooting far, far off over the hill (What owl, Bird Dog? Hoo, hoo, hoo), and drank a very tall, straight-up, weather-cooled Laphroaig while smoking a delicious Cohiba (sorry, Fidel-haters - I hate him too but I am a sucker for an illegal cigar). Only about a balmy 34 degrees outside. Paradise.

Maybe it's my age that led my thoughts to Social Security - not that it will make any difference in my personal life. But it dawned on me why the Dems are so fiercely opposed to private investment of personal Social Security accounts - even as little as 5%.

Of course, we know there is no such thing as personal SS accounts - there is no money there. And of course, the Dems do not want to do anything to risk their Ponzi scheme which would be illegal if any private enterprise tried to build it. But what I realized was this: Even a tiny % of SS investment would make it possible for all Americans, voluntarily, to become  investors. Every household could have a stake in the free markets! God forbid - the pathetic Great Unwashed McDonalds-eaters we care so much about - in our markets? The proletariat, become filthy capitalists? No, no, no: they should know their place.

The US is well above 50% financial market investors already. Anything higher would create a solid majority with a stake in a capitalist economy, beyond their participation in their daily work. That is the Socialist's nightmare. They cannot tolerate the notion of the proletariat, who are supposed to be on their plantation, checking the price of their GE, Exxon, Apple - and their Heinz.

Why? Because how can government take from private enterprise, and over-regulate private enterprise, when a strong majority of folks are invested in it?

The Left cannot tolerate wealth-building amongst the proletariat, because it reduces their dependency on the State. Same reason they support death taxes. (They tolerate it quite well amongst themselves, however - but they are different, because "they care".)

That's my insight. Blame it on the Laphroaig. Or on Mr. Moon. Good night, moon.

Editor's comment:  See comments, but this is the all-American Mr. Great Horned Owl. Typically 3-5 deep hoots. A wonderful creature and a terrifying predator, if you are a weak small animal. Known to take skunks, cats, and young raccoons. Often heard, rarely seen.

It was clear to me that the point Michael Crichton made in his speech we linked was that linear thinking does not accurately describe the world, or predict events.

Indeed it does not. Linear thinking is the domain of dangerous oversimplification and distortion - if not superstitious and magical thinking - most of the time. And especially when organisms are involved.

I am referring to linear thinking of the type that A leads to B. As an example that Crichton might have used, I recently read a medical piece about the illusion that germs cause disease. We know they don't -germs tend to be a necessary but not sufficient cause for infection. It requires the alignment of many stars to get a lung infection with pneumococcus, a germ which is everywhere. Thus the "fallacy of the single cause."

We love simplicity so we don't blow up our brains' hard drives, but simplicity (linearity) renders us vulnerable to all sorts of irrationality, such as the temptations of the fallacy of the single cause, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and, everyone's favorite,  post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking.

The Global Warming fans are especially prone to the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, probably because they know nothing about statistics and graph-creation - leaving them also subject to the ipse dixit fallacy. The Cherry Picking fallacy is another one prefered by those who are more agenda-driven than fact-driven. All of this is boob bait, like that Polar Bear photo.

As we quoted Edward Murrow last week, "Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation."

Update: Working on those links that don't work - a bug in the system.

They do not mix. The UN Report will be another silly exercise, like the Stern Report. Truth is, nobody knows anything, and it is difficult to find opinions which are not emotion-driven, or agenda-driven, or eco-religionist-driven.

When the climate scientists and the paleoclimatologists stop driving and flying on airplanes and eating beef, I will listen...maybe. 

Already, The UN Report is being slammed.

Image via Tangled Web

An echo of Reagan's quote, from Kling at TCS on Plato vs. Milton Friedman:

I call this the Fundamental Problem of Political Economy. How do we limit the power that idiots have over us?

One solution, that might be traced to the expression "philosopher-king" associated with Plato, is to hand the reins of government to the best and the brightest. Since the late 19th-century, the Progressive Movement in American politics has championed this approach. The Progressive vision, which DeLong embraces, is to channel brains and technical know-how through government in order to improve people's lives. One hundred years ago, they sought to prohibit alcohol. Today, they are going after trans fats. One hundred years ago, they favored eugenics, based on the then-new science of evolution. Today, they embrace anti-growth economic policies, based on the contemporary science of happiness. Indeed, we get headlines like 'Tories promise to make happiness a priority'.

The other way to avoid having our lives run by idiots is to limit the power that others have over us. This is the approach that was embedded in our Constitution, before it was eviscerated by the Progressives. It is the approach for which Milton Friedman was a passionate advocate.

Friedman's insight is that a market limits the power that others have over us; conversely, limiting the power that others have over us allows us to have markets. Friedman argued that no matter how wise the officials of government may be, market competition does a better job of protecting us from idiots.

Exactly right. My life belongs to me, and I am smarter than they are - and more humble, too.

Andrew will set up your bee-hive, and maintain it, and you get all the honey - up to 150 lbs/year. Connecticut Honey.

He would probably do Westchester County, too. You could even set up a roadside stand, to supplement your Wall Street incomes.

Honey bees leave you alone - they are good neighbors. Too busy to cause trouble. 

Paul Newman recommends, and that ought to be good enough. 

What's this "imbalances of power and knowledge" baloney? Sounds like Marxist/feminist college faculty Foucault-style horse manure.

And speaking of the late-lamented Foucault, how many boys did the famously promiscuous, AIDS-infected prof lure into his room "to discuss theory"? Just asking..., not judging.

Laws like this (WSJ, by Volokh - h/t, Althouse) which tell you who you can date are what convince people that government has grown not only overly intrusive, but overly arrogant and overly stupid.

Read Volokh's piece, and then tell me whether any of that could not equally apply to lawmakers, politicians, lawyers, bosses, personal trainers, rich folks, veterinarians, co-workers, professors, electricians, colonels, Maytag repairmen, and even Presidents. A quote:

Of course medical relationships offer room for various kinds of abuses. In some situations, it may be proper to interfere with people's right to marry, and their sexual and romantic autonomy, in order to prevent those abuses. We can talk about relationships between psychotherapists and clients (or ex-clients), or relationships between doctors and current patients, or other circumstances in which the risk of subtle coercion or unprofessional behavior is especially high (which is to say materially higher than the risk of subtle coercion and other harms in any sexual relationship).

But the trouble here is that the rules go vastly further than these special situations, and vastly undervalue the countervailing reasons to limit regulation--people's right to choose whom to date, have sex with and marry, even including their dental hygienists, opticians, and the like. So much for the right to marry; so much for sexual autonomy; so much for consenting adults deciding whom to love, without the fear of losing their livelihood.

I see nothing at all wrong with doctors having relationships with patients, nor with therapists having relationships with ex-patients. People are adults, and can use their brains and choose what to do. Such issues are not issues for lawmakers, but for ethics committees of professional boards. (Isn't it odd that such laws never apply to us lawyers, who, rumor has it, are famous for getting involved with clients?)

Look - in any two people, you can find an "imbalance of power" if you want to. And in any desired romantic relationship there will be "subtle emotional coercion:" it's called "trying to win someone's heart" (or at least their company), aka "courtship." All is fair in love and war.

Furthermore, never forget this basic biological truth: a charming female always has mighty, witch-like power over a man's emotions - and she knows it. It's Darwinian. Why do some folks, mainly feminist-types, try to deny this most basic fact of life?

Guys cannot help thinking about new opportunities to play Hide The Salami, and women are suckers for romance. Chosing to act on these things is another matter entirely - or should be, but it's none of the government's damn business.

Image: My witchy dental hygienist during lunch break. What fellow would not want to invite her to dinner, even after she has been a co-conspirator with your dentist to torture you and then to empty your wallet?

Old man rhythm is in my shoes,
No use t'sittin' and a'singin' the blues,
So be my guest, you got nothin' to lose,
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise?

(from Sea Cruise, made famous by Herman's Hermits - corrected)

I recently met an elderly lady who had cruised the Mediterranean on the famous Stella Polaris of the Bergen Line, in the 1930s.

This lovely small steamship was built in 1927 in the early days of pleasure cruising. She continued to work through the 1960s until ending her career as a restaurant in Japan. She sank off China this past September while being towed to a shipyard in preparation for transfer to Sweden as a restaurant/hotel.

The varied history of the Stella, including her time under the German military flag, here. A grand lady and a classic.

Quotes from a new piece in Prospect:

Modern liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation. But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are.

and

Modern identity politics springs from a hole in the political theory underlying liberal democracy. That hole is liberalism's silence about the place and significance of groups. The line of modern political theory that begins with Machiavelli and continues through Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the American founding fathers understands the issue of political freedom as one that pits the state against individuals rather than groups. Hobbes and Locke, for example, argue that human beings possess natural rights as individuals in the state of nature—rights that can only be secured through a social contract that prevents one individual's pursuit of self-interest from harming others.

Read the whole thing.

Image: Maybe Sharon Stone wants you to read this piece.

I read the three-part series in the WSJ by Murray, which was interesting and provocative. Had been meaning to write something on the series, but Kling beat me to it at TCS.

Kling links the WSJ articles. I cannot link them thru the subscription barrier.

Kling believes that Murray is too IQ-centric and elitist, (our piece on IQ here) and is skeptical about the idea of "talent." I lean towards Murray's view, even though I usually agree with Kling on things in general. Furthermore, I think Kling misunderestimates the economic ladder that the trades climb: any plumber in my town makes more money than the average college grad in their cubicle - and has more fun and more freedom in doing so.

I will agree with Kling on one thing: the nature and goals of high school education need to be re-thought - but not re-thought by government. And college? Most American college education is overpriced high-school remediation, with a dose of Marxist re-education thrown in.

Arnold asking for Fed disaster relief for frozen oranges. What a joke.

Is he a girly-man? The ranchers didn't ask for Federal for their frozen cows last month.

Correction. Woops. Thanks, Reader. The Ranchers were girly men too. Are we now an entire nation of girly-men?

When you see this sort of thing, you have to wonder whether we are getting all of the news that's fit to print.

Iraq's Disneyland.

Statistics of global warming: Why Global Warming is a crock. Am Thinker.

I find, as a rule, that whenever one is feeling a bit too good and feels the need for a migraine, or a case of Acute Exasperated Flummoxification, try discussing climate with someone who knows no math or science.

Image: A young palm tree which recently sprouted up in downtown Rutland, VT's Veterans's Park.

I never was a big fan of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am sorry to say that in Yankeeland, King's Birthday means a 3-day skiing weekend at Okemo, Stratton, Stowe, Sugarbush, Loon, or wherever (if Bush-Cheney-Halliburton has not cancelled all snow) - and little more.

I have always been a fan of treating every person with the human respect and consideration they deserve, depending on what they are made of and on how they lead their lives. Being a bit old-fashioned, I still believe that skin color is a matter of no interest or importance whatsoever.

If I were a black guy, which I would not mind at all, I would thank my lucky stars, and God, that I lived in America - Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

However, racial equality is important - freedom of opportunity to be the kind of person you chose to be. King's politics were terrible, and I totally disagree with all of them. Why should black folks want socialism any more than white folks? Other than to get the benefit of the exertion of others? Alas, the lure of easy money crosses all human distinctions and categories, doesn't it?

But segregation was truly wrong, and I give King credit for courageously taking the leadership of the movement to get rid of that dehumanizing tradition in the South. It was long overdue. Someone had to do it. I'm glad he did, and I am very sorry that he, a man of God, was killed by ignorant, low-life rednecks in doing it.

Were he alive today as a grey-haired old guy on Hannity and Colmes (which I wish he were), I think I would still disagree with everything he might say. Still, one heck of a preacher, like his Dad. God rest his soul.

Editor's Note: This post captures a chunk of the essential spirit of Maggie's Farm. Thanks, Barrister. Ya done good, ol' buddy, with Scotch or without. Glad to know that horse did not kill ya yet. We need ye as the Pilgrims needed Miles Standish.

I believe that the Dems want the USA to be Denmark. 

A Dane explains why it's a bad idea. TCS.

My guess is that it's a very good deal for the lazy, the unmotivated, the dysfunctional, the dependent, the feckless, the spiritless, the addicted, and the sociopathic exploiters of the system. I feel badly for all of such folks, except the latter. 

But how is it for strong or energetic adventurous men and women who want to do things and make things and grow and develop their skills and make money and create their own life free from government constraint and intrusiveness - and taxation? And who are willing to take the blows when they fail, as fail they must, sometimes? And for those who want to have the spare cash to support charities and causes you want - and not just those the government wants?

The reason Denmark is not my ideal is that men can never be Men, and women never Women - because the State remains their parent throughout life, while sucking out their lifeblood - just never enough to kill them. Permanent adolescence - or serfdom, as Hayek would term it. Might just as well be laboratory mice with great sex and free food. All needs met, except for the ones that matter most, and which differentiate us from animals.

I do like the Danes, but they can keep their risk-free, opportunity-free Mommy state. It's like life in a government mall: safe, sterile, spiritless, and never quite grown-up. Regressive, as the shrinks would say.

Europe has a feudal history. They have an ancient template for a kind of relationship between the individual and the State. Authority does best, and knows best. When they screw you - hey, that's life. Each year, you thank them for your bowl of porridge. If you're unhappy, you go on strike, like a passive-aggressive teen-ager. But don't expect anything of yourself, like to try something different.

It is bullsh-t. Those "authorities" are just sucking off your own teats, like piglets in a pig sty. What do they produce? What wealth do they create? What products? What services, other than those moved from one person to another? Excepting military defence. Because of love of power and self-love, government always becomes an unfaithful servant. Darn that ol' sinful human nature.

Uppity souls - they forget to stay in the servant's quarters where they belong. They forget their place. Think they are important - and worse, think they are smart. But what can they really do? (Think about it it, If you took away Ted Kennedy's or Joe Biden's or John Dean's trust fund, or Nacy Pelosi's or Jon Cary's husband, or Tony Blair's pension, how would they support themselves? They would starve.)

The average citizen knows far more about life in any country than their insulated leaders. I am certain of that, and even more so in Europe and in the EU, where government is even more of a "profession" - as is prostitution - than it is in the US.

America does not have that. We were founded on the principle of keeping the State off our backs.  We took a lot of risks, and died willingly for that novel notion that placed the individual human spirit at the top of the pyramid. Correction - the individual human spirit as fed, inspired, and led by the spirit of God.

Theirs jes' ain't the red-blooded, well-armed, God fearin', spirited American Way that built this country that the whole world wants to come to. Sure, they want the money - but the legal immigrants mainly want freedom and risk: opportunity, not freebies. And, besides, whatever Robert Reich wants - I don't want it. Give me liberty, etc. I am near fed-up with the EuroWeenies being held up as role models. I prefer John Wayne and Gregory Peck to Mr. Reich. Well, duh.

We native Yankees refuse to be happy mice: that is not the bold spirit our ancestors wanted for us. Free men, free women, on our mentally-disordered psychotic horses, with guns, in a free land, on a grey January afternoon in New England. That is real America, or at least a big piece of it.

But this battle wearies me. No snow on the ground - I have been to church and have had a fine glass of Scotch whiskey with some cheese for lunch, and am ready to go out for an afternoon (horseback)  ride now with the lovely Mrs., to enjoy our glorious free land. With my 20 ga. in the scabbard, in case we happen on a nice grouse cover.

One of these days, this wacky horse will kill me. He is fast, but he never watches where he is going. Great fun. Duck your head for low branches when he feels like a gallop, because the SOB only listens when he feels like it. Gotta love his ornery nature. He would not be a good Danish citizen. He lacks mouse genes. And I do not mean to equate the bold Viking Danes with mice.

Tunagate! Bluecrab sums it up. But does Tunagate have legs?

Do tuna have legs? Given the orientation of the MSM, probably about as many legs as the Sandy Burglar "non-story."

Still, any Yankee has to admire a Cape Cod Bluefin Tuna. It is almost sad that a mere man has the power to kill one of these glorious creatures with just a stick, a string, and a boat. Don't sell them to the Japanese. Grill up that fatty belly meat which is the only thing tastier than a Kansas City steak, and bring the rest to your local fish shop. Americans deserve this good stuff.

Reposted from December, 2005

Scotland was a feudal, corrupt, barbaric land where the warlords had all the weapons, until the late 1600-early 1700s. But when they discovered capitalism and French enlightenment thought (the wild Celts never had much connection with the strange and foreign Brit land to their immediate south), they really ran with it. Along with everything else, they were especially interested in how the newfangled capitalism (which was replacing the concepts of mercantilism at the time) might be consistent with Christian virtues.

David Hume and Adam Smith were just the tips of a giant iceberg that thrived for one hundred years until squelched by a pious Presbyterian religiosity which stifled intellectual adventure.

For a fine synopsis of this splendid period in Scotland's history, read here.

After refreshing your memory with that, let me introduce you to a jewel of an essay by David Denby in the New Yorker from 2004 entitled Northern Lights: How modern life emerged from 18th century Edinburgh. It begins:

"On January 8, 1697, at some time between two and four in the afternoon, an eighteen-year-old student named Thomas Aikenhead was hanged in Edinburgh. Aikenhead had been found guilty of a serious charge: the previous year he had several times told other young men that the doctrines of Christian theology were “a rapsodie of faigned and ill-invented nonsense.” Aikenhead’s friends, testifying against him, told the court that he had spoken of “the Imposter Christ” and had rejected the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. Aikenhead recanted all these sentiments—he said he had fallen under the spell of atheistical tracts—but no one defended him, and the jury voted for death. On the scaffold, Aikenhead declared that he had come to doubt the objectivity of good and evil, and that he believed moral laws to be the work of governments or men. His disastrous misstep—the joshing blasphemies about Christianity—point toward the anti-Christian side of the French Enlightenment, toward Voltaire’s suave pagan ironies and sarcasms. The student’s last statement—that moral laws are the work of governments and men—is one of the assumptions behind the American Revolution. The remark anticipates, as well, the British liberalism of the nineteenth century and the enduring work, and enduring trial, of modernity."

Read his entire piece.

(The flag is the cross of St. Andrew, wherein whose connection with Scotland lies a curious finger and tooth tale.)

While hunting (unsuccessfully) for an online image of Cornelius Vanderbilt's yacht North Star, of which I have seen a painting, I learned that the yacht I was seeking was one owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt 3rd - not the original North Star which was a 270' paddle-wheel yacht built in 1853, and owned by the first Cornelius, aka Commodore Vanderbilt.

I was sidetracked by a brief but excellent bio of Cornelius Vanderbilt  (1794-1877). It's quite a life story. The guy was no push-over, and he wasn't much for philanthropy, although he donated a modest 1 million to start Vanderbilt University.

We associate his name with railroads, but he made his fortune in shipping before he took an interest in railroads in the 1860s. This site has a good outline of all of his entrepreneurial ventures.

In his desire to deliver mail to California faster than his competitor, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, he developed a route across Nicaragua instead of Panama and cut two days off the trip. (US mail delivery was entirely contracted out until 1914.)

A brief survey of the history of US mail led me to the Pony Express, officially known as The Central California and Pike's Peak Express Company, which I recalled only functioned for 1 1/2 years, in 1860/61, until the telegraph went through to California.

Drawn back to railroad history, I decided to refresh my memory of the history of the New York Central Railroad (for which Vanderbilt built the still-glorious Grand Central Station in NYC). And there I learned about Erastus Corning's role in the building of the railroads of the eastern US, before Vanderbilt took over.

While tempted to look into the construction of the Albany-Chicago line, instead I followed a path into Erastus Corning's businesses, one of which was the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company. The St. Mary's River flows from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, and Corning built the locks (known as the American locks), now part of the Soo Lock system - still among the busiest locks in the world. They even have a webcam. In 3 days, the locks close for the winter.

Hope you enjoyed my ramble. The history of America is not the history of its government leaders - it's the history of its doers. I never found the image I was seeking. OK, back to work.

Boyd in The American Scholar has a fine critique of what they call "Theory" in the humanities. Somehow in the 60s, the humanities got terribly excited about having a world-debunking Theory - or a theory at all, without realizing that in all other disciplines theories are a dime a dozen. I think it made them feel rigorous and scientific to have a theory, but I don't think most of them ever took Physical Chemistry or Statistics, so they don't know much about the rigor and the self-criticism which are essential to serious theory-play. A quote:

The position you represent has neither the intellectual nor the moral high ground you are so sure it occupies. Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching criticism of their doctrine, rather than dismissing it as the language of the devil, literature will continue to be betrayed in academe, and academic literary departments will continue to lose students and to isolate themselves from the intellectual advances of our time.

It's not exactly light reading, but it's good. Here.

A reader sent us a piece by Victor Hanson, a long-time prof himself, From the Classroom to the War. A quote:

Why when academia is so critical of other American institutions, from the Republican party and corporations to churches and the military, does it ignore its own colossal failures? The level of knowledge of today’s graduate is the stuff of jokes, exactly what one would expect once a common shared instruction in science, history, literature, languages, and mathematics largely disappeared, replaced by a General Education potpourri of specialized classes in gender, race, class, and politics masquerading as knowledge-based?

Whole thing here.

From Stumbling and Mumbling:

Given a choice between £44,000 for sure and a 50-50 chance of either £3,000 or £250,000, which would you choose?

Risk and risk aversion can be "logically illogical." Read the piece. This is the reason Captain Kirk was the Captain, not Mr. Spock, even though Mr. Spock had a higher IQ.

Brussels - The European Commission on Tuesday criticised the reported United States airstrike against a suspected al-Qaeda cell in southern Somalia, calling it counterproductive to peace efforts for the war-torn African country.

Is that predictable? I call it highly constructive to peace. Ya gotta love that nasty airplane - my second favorite after the A-10. It sounds like the bad guys were driven into a trap. (h/t, Polipundit)

Update: I see our Special Ops came back to the same area today to bounce the rubble. Jolly good show.