Wednesday, April 23. 2014
A reader sent that pic of an American Egret in New England, with dramatic breeding plumage.
Nepal's Sherpas Cancel the 2014 Climbing Season
Good riddance. The entire Everest Carnival is plain stupid. Unemployed Sherpas are welcome to apply for work at the Farm.
The 7500 Square Foot Soho Loft That Just Sold For $27 Million
Who makes mysterious rectangular tree holes?
Exploding student debt threatens families
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
Re Piketty: New Book Argues Higher Taxes Needed To End Wealth Disparities
We need more capitalism, not less: Piketty Gets It Wrong - Instead of berating capitalists, we need to make it easier for workers to join their ranks.
One True Cause of Inequality
In the US, it's not the 0.01% of movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, hedgie stars, and NYC heiresses. It's the other end - single parents. Anyway, Piketty is French and thus not worth thinking about.
Video: Best campaign ad of the cycle?
VDH:
...common to all these cases is the notion of a technocracy of better-educated elites who know what is best for their social inferiors. They just know that gas-burning yokels have to be taught to forgo natural gas. For the right people to be in places to affirm affirmative action, then hoi polloi must accept that affirmative-action allowances be made to give them power. They know that tea-party zealots have to be taught that their politics are bad for America’s trajectory and that tax laws must make accommodations for that fact. Women must somehow be persuaded that liberal abortion laws are good for both them and the collective.
Once we go down that road of assumed noble ends justifying questionable means, then anything becomes not just possible but assured.
Voters can bar racial discrimination by their government, for now
Mozilla, Duck Dynasty, Chick-fil-A, and the politicization of everything
Obama planning expansion of clemency for “thousands” of non-violent offenders
I entirely agree with the administration on that. In fact, I would go much further.
Reporter Asks State Dept for One Accomplishment from Hillary Clinton’s Big Review Process. Let’s See What Happens.
Sotomayor Attacks John Roberts' Views On Race As 'Out Of Touch With Reality'
Whoa
Re Sotomayor: "Her argument amounts to an assertion that a ban on racial discrimination
is a form of racial discrimination--that everyone is equal, but some
are more equal than others."
CARSON: When government looks more like foe than friend - Feds who send arms against ranch families betray American values
Tuesday, April 22. 2014
 In the Northeast US, now is the time to clean out, or put out, your Bluebird houses for the Eastern Bluebird. I have no advice regarding the Western Bluebird, but it's probably similar.
If you don't have the sort of habitat that Bluebirds like, the houses will likely be inhabited by Wrens, House Sparrows, Tree Swallows (if there is any water nearby), Chickadees - or mice.
The point of Bluebird houses is Bluebirds. They will only nest in holes, and there's lots of competition for holes because lots of critters who need holes are not able to make them.
What's Bluebird habitat? They do not live in the woods, and they don't live in suburbia unless it's 5+ acre zoning. They like woodland edges, hedge rows, meadows with fences and large (5+ acres) lawns, large gardens, old apple trees. They do not mind living with humans, and often seem to like having barns and sheds around. To make it simple, if you see them hanging around in April, it means it's the right area for them. You can't really attract them - they have to want to be there in the first place. Like their competitor Tree Swallows, they like their nest boxes in open spaces, not so much on trees but on barns seems OK.
Another factoid about Bluebirds is that, if you have one pair around, there are probably more, and they do not seem to mind sharing an area: you can put up two boxes per acre, maybe more. People build Bluebird Trails in exurban, semi-rural, and rural areas because everybody likes to see them.
At the Farm, I have my own Bluebird Trail of around 20 nest boxes, mostly nailed to fence posts, some to utility poles. Generally about half of mine are used by Bluebirds, half by other things. In a good year, Bluebirds can raise two broods. Snakes are the main predators of nestlings, so metal poles are probably best but I don't bother much about that.
I recommend the one pictured, via Best Nest. The extra piece of wood is to deter predators. Easy to make them yourself, though. Just make the hole the right size (1 1/2" diam), and place them properly. When I was young, my brother and I made them on an assembly line, using Dad's table saw and the free pine scraps from the lumber yard. If you do, don't paint or stain them. Birds prefer plain wood, rough and un-sanded preferably.
Monday, April 21. 2014
 When Lenin backtracked on Bolshevism
Hottest magazine right now for young women: Real Simple
Why It's a Big Deal That Half of the Great Lakes Are Still Covered in Ice
Shortest US graduation speech ever? Nobel economist Thomas Sargent’s list of 12 valuable economic lessons
De Blasio vs. carriage horses
What about the Amish horses?
Under The Streets Of Naples, A Way Out For Local Kids
Over the Hill? Cognitive Speeds Peak at Age 24
An Obituary For High Frequency Trading: The Adaptive Genius Of Rigged Markets
I don't think HFT is so bad
Marxism is back, and Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” might be its new Bible. But both
Piketty and the Marxist movement miss the real danger of inequality.
Politics as class warfare
Our Nudge in Chief: How, and why, Cass Sunstein believes laws and public policies should help save us from our irrational impulses
His faith in the sublime wisdom of politicians, bureaucrats and experts amazes me.
Hinderaker: The War On Standards Comes to College Debate
Liberals now love Barry Goldwater, but his 1964 loss won the GOP’s future
Resegregation in the American South - Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, show how separate and unequal education is coming back.
Taranto: "This column probably isn't the first to notice a recent intensification of liberal and Democratic rhetoric about race."
Bundy Family Unearths BLM Mass Cattle Grave
Krauthammer on how campaign disclosure got screwed up
Al Gore dupes 9000 people in Hawaii, insults the rest
WH Counterterror Chief: Parents Need to Watch for ‘Sudden Personality Changes in Their Children’
Dem consultants telling candidates not to use the word 'recovery'
Or the word Obamacare
Warmists explain that skeptics have mental problems
Good grief
The United States of SWAT? Military-style units from government agencies are wreaking havoc on non-violent citizens.
“86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers”
Pro-Labor Media Group Resists Own Staff’s Unionization
Somin: Speed limits, immigration, and the duty to obey the law
Study: Fuels from corn waste
not better than gas
The Middle East War on Christians - Muslim-majority nations are doing to followers of Jesus what they did to the Jews.
Big Revamp of Pentagon’s Troubled Mission to Find Missing Soldiers Looks a Lot Like Old Revamp
“86M
Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers” - See
more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=53371#sthash.ZTFVSwXO.dpuf
Friday, April 18. 2014
Via Am. Thinker, explaining the deep thinking of a Soros employee:
...It’s an outlook that is deeply critical, even skeptical, of systems, models and sedimented language, but is ultimately rooted in worldly faith, rather than skepticism itself.
Letting beings be — trusting them to come forth — it seems to me, is the motivating sensibility of radically progressive activism. It’s a question of faith — in the world, in polar bears, in sea turtles, in pygmy owls, in the authority of poetry and painting, in the rightness of ice that has cooled our planet for 800,000 years and is now coming apart.
What about dinosaurs? And the "rightness of ice"? Ice is never right in a gin Martini but, OK, it is right in a Mint Julip and in a Coke with a lime. The guy sounds psychotic to me. Word salad.
 Duke Porn Star Inspires Other Co-Eds to Become Strippers
Why not become whores?
Adultery site big in Japan where marriage reigns
Best lunch deal in NYC
10 Most Disappointing Destinations in the World
Oh, No, Not Another College Tour! Every school has gone green. How about telling us something interesting?
In the business world, it's called "green marketing." It's gone out of style though.
Wild Horse Crisis - What’s the best way to control an invasive species: Round them up or shoot them?
Hardly a crisis, I think. There used to be bison, before that wild camels and all sorts of ungulates in the American West. The Indians killed 'em all except for the bison. What is best? I don't know. The wild horses are eating the food of the cattle.
Why Crony Capitalist Brats Make Me ILL
Antisemitism Explained From An Objectivist Perspective
There is a lot packed into that essay
Also, a lot in this one: Blame George Washington - The first president and the origins of American corporate welfare - link fixed
Should We Force People to Save for Retirement?
How government medical care in Russia takes care of cancer patients
An amusing Klavan vid here, discussing Libs and Conservatives.
Yes, he is an ex-Lib, like so many of us.
Al Gore Calls Global Warming Skeptics “Immoral, Unethical And Despicable”…
That's me!
Censorship is Coming! New Jersey College Silences a Professor Over a ‘Game of Thrones’ T-shirt
High School Girl Screamed at for Carrying Bible in Hallway
Peter LaBarbera Arrested for Professing Christianity in Canada
Warmist Scot Lehigh: This Democracy Thing Is Bad For Climate Change
Steyn: The slow death of free speech - How the Left, here and abroad, is trying to shut down debate — from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage
Krauthammer Against the Tyrants - It's official: The Left is out of control.
Proposed Common Core standards omit ‘liberty’ from list of America’s founding principles
A voice from an American rebel: The Pig Trap
Selfless Crusader Against Income Inequality to Heroically Accept
$225,000 For Nine Months of Sub-Part-Time Work from State-Funded
Organization to Occasionally Give a Few Quotes About the Scourge of
Income Inequality
White House: “Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change”
When I was a kid, there didn't use to be weather, but I blame the Weather Channel.
Telling ‘Noble Lies’ About Climate Change Will Backfire - Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is a serious mistake
Megan McArdle goes off on suspicious Census Bureau/Obamacare methodology switch
Sultan on Passover: From slavery to freedom
Wednesday, April 16. 2014
 We have snow this morning. How about you?
Image is via Am. Digest
Critics of the SAT and other standardized testing are disregarding the data.
All tests are elitist and racist. The science is settled.
What emotion is driving the market now?
What I learned as a liberal talking head on Fox News
Yet Another New Low In Economic Reporting At The New York Times
Progressive Puritans - From e-cigarettes to sex classifieds, the once-transgressive left tries to criminalize fun.
Rand Paul’s foreign policy extremism
Donald Rumsfeld declares war on IRS
Terrible Tenure - Are 98 percent of California’s teachers worthy of jobs for life?
How the Obama administration turned the latest IPCC report into meaningless gobbledegook
“I just filed my taxes and I’m getting 400 dollars from the federal government!”
Monday, April 14. 2014
Thanks, reader. I didn't realize about GMT etc. Worldwide Times to view.
Around here, it's viewable 3 AM tomorrow morning. Try a triple espresso, or set the alarm. Blood Moon, etc., perfect for tax day.
A new disease? Sluggish Cognitive Tempo
I have that - and ADD. Perfect combination.
Sears is dying. Why?
I think it's more about an obsolete business model than it is about the middle class. Home Depot is packed with people, same with Target, etc.
Total Lunar Eclipse tomorrow
Charles Murray's advice book is out
Canoe thought to be 250 years is 1,000 years old
Should the U.S. Adopt the German Model of Apprenticeships?
Chicago Teachers Union to
Mayor Rahm: Improving failed schools full of black kids is RACIST
It’s not just athletes – college screws everyone
The college degree gap: women earned a majority of degrees at all levels in 2012, and the degree gap for blacks is stunning
Whether it's bikes or bytes, teens are teens. There's a reason teenagers are so reliant on technology: They don't have the freedom their parents did.
NJ Anti-Bullying Law Challenged As First Amendment Violation Over Head Lice Mention
Sharyl Attkisson: When I'd Begin Getting Under Surface of an Obama Scandal, CBS Would Pull Me Off
Where is the feminist anger at Brandeis?
The remarks that the students at Brandeis will not hear
The remarks that the students at Brandeis will not hear - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=53281#sthash.FS49XPfj.dpuf
Why Aren't Public Officials Held to Account for Lying?
Obama Lies about Voter Fraud and DOJ Investigations Before Paranoid Audience
Walsh: I don’t respect the president or his office, and neither should you
George Will: The Obama Administration’s Cries of Racism Are Becoming a Joke:
You go to a campus where this kind of political correctness reigns, and some young person will say looks like it's going to rain. The person listening says, you're a racist. I mean it's so inappropriate. The constant implication of this that it is, I think, becoming a national mirth.
Dis-United Kingdom?
Harry Reid's 'Koch Brothers' Addiction—in Two Charts
A Tale of Two Letters: Why the
Peace Process Went Poof
UN food program inflated amount of oversight it gave to ensuring food really went to the starving in North Korea
Hoping for Asylum, Migrants Strain U.S. Border
The slaves who live and die on Thailand’s fishing boats
What now for European defence spending?
Thursday, April 10. 2014
Coase’s Tortoise - Federal bureaucracy gets in the way of complex ongoing relationships that serve civil society. Most people have heard of Coase's famous theorem, but don't really know it. A quote:
Normal human beings with adult temperaments understand that life is a complex, messy, imperfect business, and that sometimes we have to make accommodation for one another. It is for this reason that modern American English contains the phrase “Don’t make a federal case out of it.” I do not know Mr. Bundy, but, assuming that he is a decent sort, I think it is very likely the case that this story would have gone very differently if one of his neighbors had approached him one afternoon and said, “Say, Cliven, I’m worried that your cattle might step on my tortoises, which are very dear to me. What could we do about that?” Practically every suburbanite with a yard and neighbors with dogs has experienced a comparable situation, as has every urbanite with boisterous neighbors or neighbors who seem to become hard of hearing when their favorite television shows are on. (Ahem.) Our first instinct is not, as a rule, to make a federal case out of it.
If the Desert Tortoise (a fine critter, for sure, and one the Indians liked to cook for supper) survived the buffalo, why not the cattle?
Scientists Seek A Burp-less ‘Cow Of The Future’
 More Moms Stay Home With Their Children - A Pew study claims a decades-long trend has reversed.
Why the Gender Gap Won’t Go Away. Ever. Women prefer the mommy track.
THE WORLD'S LARGEST FLYING MACHINE
Remind me……never, never, never to appear at a function wearing the same dress as Kate Middleton.
Would Legalizing Prostitution Free Men’s Sexuality From Female Control?
Windows XP support officially ends today, still used by over 25 percent of PCs
A Sickness in the Soul - It is time to recognize that academia—including the University of North Carolina—has lost its moral compass.
Craven Cowards at Brandeis Cancel Ayaan Hirsi Ali Honor, Cave to Muslim Thugs’ Demands
Attacking Jews is fine, but attacking Muslims is not, apparently
Hirsi Ali responds. One quote:
“What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles. The ‘spirit of free expression’ referred to in the Brandeis statement has been stifled here, as my critics have achieved their objective of preventing me from addressing the graduating Class of 2014. Neither Brandeis nor my critics knew or even inquired as to what I might say. They simply wanted me to be silenced. I regret that very much."
Jacobson notes: The silence of Western feminists is still deafening
Report: That new $1.6 billion loan-guaranteed solar farm is basically a “mega-trap” for flying wildlife
The Amorality of Overregulation
Guardian: Call climate change what it is: violence - Social unrest and famine, superstorms and droughts. Places, species and human beings – none will be spared.
NY Times: Global Warming Scare Tactics
The Obama Administration Lies About Hurricanes
The Democrats’ Fake Problems - Democrats, flopping on the economy and health care, try to create new issues.
The Democrats Have a Marriage Problem
Taranto: Krugman is complaining that conservatives have "monolithic . . . media organizations"--on the website of the New York Times.
U.S. Navy to test
futuristic, super-fast gun at sea in 2016
Avraham Krispin of Tel Aviv still remembers
how Turkey's prime minister used to walk around school with a copy of Hitler's
'Mein Kampf.'
Craven
Cowards at Brandeis Cancel Ayaan Hirsi Ali Honor, Cave to Muslim Thugs’
Demands - See more at:
http://pamelageller.com/2014/04/craven-cowards-brandeis-cancel-ayaan-hirsi-ali-honor-cave-muslim-thugs-demands.html/#sthash.pEZ9pI5a.dpuf
Wednesday, April 9. 2014
Nice pied a terre: 92nd floor of 432 Park Ave.
I can pretty much guarantee that this will not be bought by an American, but it will be snapped up fast by some Arab prince, Russian oligarch, South American crony capitalist, or some such international low-life. Nice commission for the realtor. I don't really like the layout (no gun room, no servants' quarters, slave quarters, or space for multiple wives/concubines), but the view sounds good.
Related, 50% Taxes When Alive, 50% Taxes When You Die
Consumers Win Big from Growth of Health Care Clinics
Organic Food Does Not Reduce Cancer Risk
4 Manly Lessons from the Minor Leagues
The Lost Sisterhood and the Case for Libertarian Novels - A best-selling writer explains the power of historical fiction.
The mathematical world - Some philosophers think mathematics exists in a mysterious other realm. They’re wrong. Look around: you can see it
We May Never Pass This Way Again. GM at a Crossroads.
Americans Spend More on Taxes Than Food, Clothing, and Housing Combined
Why Obama’s Presidency Has to Be All About Race Now
VDH: What is America's foreign strategy?
The '77 Cents on the Dollar' Myth About Women's Pay - Once education, marital status and occupations are considered, the 'gender wage gap' all but disappears.
Updated list of things caused by global warming
The game is up for climate change believers - Charles Moore reviews The Age of Global Warming by Rupert Darwall (Quartet)
Via Watts:
Isle of Light: A Look Back at the Boat People and the European Left
Chinese descendants of Jews return to
roots with seder - Kaifeng, a once thriving outpost of
Jewish trading families, to have first communal Passover meal in
generations
How do Muslims settle religious arguments with each other? The same way
they settle them with Jews and Christians. That is what we are seeing in
Syria.
Government as political entrepreneur: Thomas Piketty Is A Darwinian Shill:
One of the deadliest threats with which government has ever had to contend, over the entire pageant of human history, was the immense wealth and mass affluence generated by the industrial revolution. The usual metrics point to the exponential growth of goods and services from 1750 until 1914 if not 1929.
Exponential growth of what we call the private or the “real” sector of the economy—everything that is not government—means that government also has to grow exponentially in order even to be detectable. Moreover, one can ask: if exponential real-sector growth occurs over the long run, what possible need could civilization have for government?
Monday, April 7. 2014
If you're looking for a new outlet for the absurdity of Progressive Elitism, it's available now. Vox.com is up and the first article caught my eye because the headline was something I agree with 100%. How Politics Makes Us Stupid.
It's a fun read, if you're up for it. Because Ezra Klein spends quite a bit of time discussing how we willingly delude ourselves into wanting to win battles we can't win. The problem, of course, is that Ezra only spends time using examples of topics that are contentious and don't have clear-cut answers. Ezra deludes himself with politics, becoming increasingly stupid through the course of the article, without even noticing it, and using it to create a stance of moral superiority built upon...well, not much.
Strong start with the title. Pretty pathetic follow through. Ezra doesn't spend a moment questioning himself or his beliefs, or how he could have fallen victim to the accusations he lays against others. Furthermore, he doesn't take the time to analyze some critical philosophical points which are more meaningful than the numbers he claims support his view. Choice, to me, outweighs all the perceived (and I'd say non-existent, though I know the math says otherwise) benefits of forced behaviors. I should have the choice to get a vaccine. I should have the choice to own a gun. I should have the choice to own a Hummer. Even if Ezra feels the benefits of forcing me to believe what he believes, and behave as he behaves makes him feel better about society as a whole, I should still have that choic
It's not about the math he employs, it's about the choices I should be permitted to be able to make.
Sunday, April 6. 2014
Expulsion is the correct response to threats, not "conversation." Oppressed by the Ivy League - What Dartmouth's president should have told bullying students.
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