Maggie's Farm

A lifetime dream: Wing-shooting in Scotland

I love cheeseburgers on the grill. Cheddar. Or even that American artificial cheese-like-substance. Lots of ketchup too, for the vegetable component. Health, etc.

I also love blue cheese on a burger - lots of it. Or bacon. Or blue cheese and bacon.

If you ever bothered to read the back of a John Kerry-Heinz ketchup bottle, they offer an alternative burger condiment. It is delicious, worth trying once:

1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup sweet relish
1 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp chopped garlic
1 tsp hot pepper flakes (I added that)

Let sauce marinate in fridge for a while.

So to our Survey: What do you like on your grilled burgers? 

 Today’s Students and Professors ‘Know Hardly Anything about Anything at All’

That's my experience with the job interviews I do. 

Charlie Martin is a better writer, but I have said all of this in the past. Quote:

 It would take far more than one article to explain how we got here, but at least one of the root causes is the Prussian model of education we adopted early in the 20th century. And no, I'm not using the ad Hitlerum fallacy here — our model of education is literally Prussian, coming from educational reforms instituted in Prussia and eventually throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire long before Hitler. The goal was to teach the masses, who were assumed not to be capable of a more advanced education, to become literate and tractable workers in the increasingly industrialized German-speaking state.

The model is essentially industrial, suited for the times: students are raw materials that progress through a series of work stations ("grades") allocated by age cohort, with their progress and eventual quality judged at each stage. Individual capabilities and interests were largely ignored, and the results were mainly measured by how much of the raw materials passed through the whole factory with at least a marginally acceptable final delivery.

And yes, of course, this is a mildly hyperbolic overstatement, but only mildly. The educational system disoriented not toward successfully teaching individual student, but to pushing a mass of students through as a group...

Scientists Have Figured Out How Ancient Rome's Concrete Has Survived 2,000 Years

Wonderful. The Largest Steam Locomotive in North America Draws Massive Crowds in Midwestern Tour

Besides following the laws, paying taxes, supporting children, and being (mostly) courteous to others, what makes a "good citizen"?

Article here.

 Today, college has become our go-to yardstick for minimal competence. Take a look at almost any job listing for almost any desk job in any city, and you will see “college degree” listed as an essential requirement. The argument in favor of this arrangement is that if a candidate can demonstrate that he has completed such a degree, he can be assumed to be both relatively smart and capable of sticking with things to their end. Which, in some cases, is of course true. But it is telling that none of the other experiences that demonstrate capacity and tenacity tend to make an appearance in the listings. Know what else demonstrates an ability to stick things out? Military service. Running a small business. Working at a charity. Training as a plumber. Working on a farm. Learning to weld. Keeping another job for a long period of time...

All courses $35 or less until mid-August.

That is the cheapest life-enriching, deeply-enjoyable deal that exists on this planet.

Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.

(Some day perhaps we will look back at even this, and smile.)

Virgil, Aeneid 

For anybody who had fun with Chaucer during high school or college, this essay, CHAUCER’S DIVINE SERIOUSNESS, will be a delight.

Chaucer, the Londoner who is credited with the invention of modern literary English, was well-educated and became rich importing wine from France. Writing was his hobby. He invented English iambic pentameter - all credit to him for that gift. He had read Bocaccio too, which probably gave him ideas.

I fondly remember reading Chaucer out loud in class, using the dialect our teacher thought was most likely accurate. Great fun. It still rings in my ears.

Lots of footnotes were necessary. Word meanings change. 

For our readers across the fruited plains, and everywhere in the world: Got a good hike planned?

If so, where? 

And what's your difference between a "walk" and a "hike"? Distance? Difficulty? Need for a hiking stick or pole?

Free-floating, petty gripes are a result of Miserabilism as a world view, the idea that viewing Western Civ as a hellish, gruesome burden destined to collapse of its sins and conceits is the only possible worldview for a Serious Person. Hence the more fault you find, the deeper you are. It comes from being grounded in nothing but the shallow soil of the present, with no sense of history except for a series of pre-approved narratives intended to culminate in an argument against the recent past, which was bad because it prevented the wonderful possible Tomorrow from happening Today. It’s a recipe for life-long alienation.

James Lileks 

At Quillette

Why does it have to be so black and white? 

In the US, it has become an industry.

We attended a garden party last weekend. The hostess is a serious gardener. She had so many poppies in bloom and post-bloom that I told her that I should perhaps call the cops.

Poppies are best considered annuals, but they will self-sow if left alone. In parts of Europe, red poppies are considered roadside weeds. In our wild (no horses) meadow I strewed (?) poppy seeds around many years ago, and many of them took.  Now the meadow in June has some naturalized poppies amongst the wildflowers and hay.

Varieties of garden poppies 

Planting and gowing poppies 

Sarsaparilla Float: Just with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (Root Beer also ok, but not quite as good)

What's the difference between the two? 

A drink we kids enjoyed at cocktail hour was quinine water on ice, with slice of lime. A kids' gin and tonic. Delicious, not sweet, refreshing.

(Photo is good olde root beer, not a float) 

A quote:

 When New York began to build its public-housing system, by far the nation’s largest, it made two ill-fated decisions: not only would the city demolish existing working-class neighborhoods; it would also put into practice a modernist vision of towers-in-the-park architecture. NYCHA residents live in an environment conceived by the city’s political and intellectual leadership, promoted in a famous 1934 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and deeply influenced by the French architect Le Corbusier. “The plan must rule,” Corbusier decreed, and in his designs, it did. “There ought not to be such things as streets,” he wrote. “We have to create something that will replace them.” That something was the superblock...