Maggie's Farm

Hunting Canada Geese is good fun. Get out in the dark, set up, hide, wait, drink coffee. It can be tricky though, and picking the right spot to set up makes all the difference.

Are they tasty? You bet. Red meat, like steak. Serve rare, sliced thin. A recipe:  Bacon-Wrapped Wild Goose Breasts

Ultimate Goose-hunting tips. 

First, Teaspoon. The expression is one teaspoon of loose tea per cup, and one for the pot. For a single cup, one teaspoon. Thus teaspoon. A tablespoon is three teaspoons.

True colors (or colours). Naval war etiquette required taking down your false flag before initiating battle.

Learning the ropes. Sailing ships had over 300 ropes and lines. Newbies had to learn them all, on the double.

I have recommended this book before: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. 

As someone who mostly learned about the Northeastern tribes, this book holds many surprises.

Do they exist, or are they just humble human efforts to grasp the structure of creation?

That was a no-brainer. Should have shorted the S+P too, but didn't.

My opinion: Too late to sell investments unless cash is needed.

What do you think? 

Some feel that Melville wrote the story to mock Dickens. Who knows? The subtitle was A Story of Wall Street. He was the original "quiet quitter."

30-min Great Books podcast about Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

The arrow of time began its journey at the Big Bang, and when the Universe eventually dies there will be no more future and no past. In the meantime, what is it that drives time ever onward?

 "It is difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding something."

 Upton Sinclair

Via Powerline:

 “When a religious scheme is shattered…it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Quillette: Misunderstanding Equality. If confusion between moral and empirical claims persists, we will find ourselves asked to choose between the truth and our ethical preferences.

The lady who did the stand-up we linked yesterday got me thinking about male grooming. 

Once men reach middle age, grooming becomes more necessary. Aberrant hair growth is not neat. It's unpleasantly distracting. My barber takes care of those things routinely. He was kidding this morning about the guys who like to keep their giant wings of grey eyebrows. I suggested that it might look distinguished, like a member of The House of Lords. It's not for me.

He didn't know what The House of Lords was, but that's OK. He grew up in Sicily, and, sadly, hates both Sicily and Italy. Likes the USA.

As I have noted in the past, abortion is surely a complex political topic. The Dobbs decision returns it to the states of the US and I feel ok with that. It's a big country with many views of morality, ethics, religion, etc. 

The reason I reference the US Constitution's Amendments lX and X is because, in some ways, I agree with Justice Blackmun that there is a "penumbra of privacy." Freedom of the individual is not limited to the Constitution, quite the opposite in fact. The purpose of the Constitution was to give governments only limited and necessary power. On the other hand, is abortion a kind of murder? I do not know, but it's hard for me to view it as medical care. It is medical, yes. Can it be an individual conscience issue?

Predictably, Prof. Tribe in the NYRB wrote Deconstructing Dobbs. He feels it's a religion issue. 

Your views are welcome, whatever they may be except for appeals to convenience. Children are never convenient. Most of life is inconvenient.

I never learned all of this. It seems like it was a minor, unnecessary war, but it changed the relationship between the US and Britain. In the end, it was all about money and banking.

Students cannot pass a basic citizenship exam

I do not know how anyone can claim to be a "good citizen of the USA" without knowing what the organizational structure is all about, from the local to the federal.

This is a question somewhere on the internet. Naturally, most responses suggest Blue sanctuary places like East Hampton, Nantucket, Boston, Albany, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Bennington, Malibu, etc.

Now that up to 40% of the illegals are coming from all over the world via Mexico and the Rio Grande, it might get more interesting.   

Got any suggestions?

"Whether looking for just a day boat or a substantial tender for your larger motor yacht, the Nimbus T-9 excels in quality, design, and usability. "  My italics.

32 Words for Positive Phenomena That Don’t Have an English Equivalent

He bought a 24-acre island in the Seychelles, and transformed it.

A Grain of Sand (2009) DOCUMENTARY from Wandering Eye on Vimeo.

The term has a formal use and a casual use. For nitpickers like me the increasing casual use is annoying.