We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The Burj Al Arab in Dubai is the only seven-star hotel in the world. This roof-top tennis is just one remarkable aspect of this place. This is Agassiz and Federer, but I believe that it is really a helipad. Nice promo, though.
It is a cliche that the definition of neurotic person is someone who keeps doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. There is surely a good lesson in that expression. However, I often find it useful to think about things from the outside, in ... instead of inside, out. Especially with stubborn minds.
What do I mean? Erik Erikson famously said that "Psychotherapy begins where common sense ends." I like that. Despite being a psychoanalyst and thus by definition a happy diver into the human depths, I rarely take anyone deeper than is necessary. You don't want people to run out of air on the way down, or to get the bends on their way back.
This is why I like the idea of Reality Therapy. You may call it God, or Life, or Reality, or Chance, or whatever you chose, but It has a funny of way of teaching, and re-teaching us whatever we need to learn until we finally learn it, or die first. For me, this is analogous to the image of Christ at the door of our heart, knocking and knocking until we open the door.
Life is always trying to teach us something, and we all have problems and weaknesses and blind spots and areas of stupidity and of emotional immaturity where we can improve our mastery of life and of ourselves.
Sometimes, all we need to do is to stop, look, and listen to find what it is that life is trying to teach our stubborn minds. While I would rather piously - but truthfully - say that the red buds now emerging on my antique French Roses are teaching me that God is in his heaven, instead I will offer a timely but trivial example from my own life. I will quote myself:
An area of life in which I do not function well is with paperwork and book-keeping. I could find plenty of excuses for this, and plenty of fancy psychological explanations, but I was raised to never make excuses. The truth is that it is a character flaw, a flaw which is thrown in my face every tax season. I procrastinate - which is precisely what I am doing right now by writing this piece. I love Quicken, but I don't enter my checks. I save business receipts, but they collect dust in piles and drawers and and pocketbooks. I have delivered three Suburban loads of good outgrown kids clothing to Goodwill this year, but God knows where those lists are. In the glove compartment, maybe? And what about cost basis for stocks bought in 1987? The computer those numbers were on died years ago. No clue. And since then, I have changed brokerages and the old guy retired.
I try to pretend that April 15 is an absolute deadline, or I would never get this chore done. And I cannot rely on the hubbie, because he will have nothing to do with my mess, so we file separately.
The lesson is just not the annual miserable last-minute hassle to get everything together. Last year, I had a fine of over $3000 for errors and lateness. Ouch. There is just nothing like reality to hit you over the head and force you to learn.
Life is the real final exam, but you get to take it over every day. I will never forget my favorite Neurology professor in medical school who overheard me and a friend bitching about an exam in the hallway. "This is nothing," he said. "Every patient you will ever have is the real exam. These exams are just for you to find out what you don't know, before it's too late."
Keep knocking, Reality. Eventually, we will get it. Thanks to God that every day is a new chance to learn and change.
A few snippets, which require no comment because they speak for themselves. Our News Junkie posted this piece a day or so ago about the unpopularity of marriage among American blacks:
Marriage is for White People. WaPo, H/T, Instapundit
At the same time, Morse posted a piece at Town Hall titled Marriage: A Social Justice Issue. She points out, as has been done before by others, that most of black poverty is due to the absence of marriage. Marriage creates wealth and social stability, among other things. One quote:
Marriage is a protective factor against social pathologies. Marriage generates and preserves wealth, unlike other family forms which dissipate wealth. A recent publication by the Boston-based Seymour Institute, "God’s Gift: A Christian Vision of Marriage and the Black Family", spells out the case for marriage as the most important next step for the future of black America. The report cites the fact that married families in the black community have twice as much income as unmarried black families.
The founder of the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies is the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, III, the black Pentecostal minister whose work with poor urban youth has been widely celebrated. In the introduction to God’s Gift, Rev. Rivers states his case. "The impact of the decay of marriage among black people has been enormous, resulting in higher poverty rates among black families, school failure among children, and the intergenerational transmission of high teen pregnancy rates and female-headed households. Sociological research has implicated fatherlessness in violence, drug use and criminal behavior, especially among young black males."
To those who might argue that marriage is somehow alien to the black experience, linguist John McWhorter has an answer in the most recent issue of The American Enterprise. McWhorter observes that the high proportion of single parent families among blacks is a relatively new development, and not something that can be attributed to some amorphous "legacy of slavery."
And a comment from one of our readers, re the News Junkie post:
What a depressing article. Marriage was ordained by God for the procreation and rearing of children in the service of God. Spouses are supposed to be helpmates to each other not playmates. Marriage is for grownups, not hedonistic children.
Of all of his great tunes, my favorite is These are the Days from Avalon Sunset. A tear-jerker, and rightly so.
And it happens to be a theme song of the wonderful Rockbrook Camp in NC, where girls learn about independence, courage, endurance, horses, white-water kayaking, rock-climbing, guns, corny camp songs, bonfires, heavy-duty hiking, God, life-long friendship, shaving-cream battles, and everything else that matters in life.
We posted Frederick Church last week. Since we're on a Hudson River School kick, here's a local favorite by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) - View from Mount Holyoke (1836), but often referred to as the Oxbow. That's the Connecticut River. A bit here about Mt. Holyoke. If you drive through Route 91 in Mass., you have been past the oxbow.
The Multiculturalism movement, which has been sufficiently mocked and demolished endlessly, represents cultural suicide.
A very fine piece by Dinocrat on the subject of the encounter of Sharia Law with Western Liberalism. That encounter leads to fire, as it has for over one thousand years. War is the only solution, and inevitable, as long as Islam requires submission from others. War, or submission, but submission is not my cup of tea. A fight is preferable.
For the past week I have been reading about the wars of the barbarians against the Romans. Those barbarians never did quit. Tribal people for whom fighting and expansion of territory was their way of life. Why didn't they just want to make nice villages and farms along the Danube and the Rhine? We call them "warlike," and that captures it. Rome conquered Gaul not to expand empire - there was nothing valuable there that could not be obtained by trade - but for defense. The tribes would not leave them alone.
Today, we are dealing with people of a similar mentality. If you compromise with them, they will only view it as weakness, and will be encouraged to push your limits further. It is difficult for Western Christian people to imagine the mindset of people who truly view us as subhuman, because we try so hard to be humane. Someone forgot to teach them multiculturalism and tolerance, and perhaps we have been over-taught not to respect and love our culture and our civilization.
They can easily take France and Sweden, but they will never take the USA. We are not warlike, but we are proudlycranky.
This Pepsi_Italian_Style.wmv one is as good as the Mercedes advt. If you missed the Mercedes advt we posted a couple of days ago, scroll down. This stuff is Art!
Dear New Visitors to Maggie's Farm: Check out our entire blog - we are worth a couple of minutes of your time - and bookmark us - we are always informative and surprising...
Victims of hoplophobia need help and understanding, along with firearms re-education from sensitive Social Workers who are not only caring, but carryin'.
The "irrational fear of weapons" is a health crisis which must be crushed before it spreads, as it has spread in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Can we call it the Hoplophobia Flu? It is not yet known why women and metrosexuals seem more vulnerable to this debilitating and life-threatening scourge.
One theory is that is spread by contact with infected newsprint, but other medical researchers believe that a loud "Boom" is just innately disturbing to some people with fragile nervous systems.
We need many more highly-paid professional union-member Hoplophobia Specialists in our schools and businesses if we are determined to defeat this plague. Only Government Resources can hope to have an impact on this crisis, but "a substantial national investment is required," according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, before "this thing gets out of hand."
An Epidemiological Psychiatry researcher at the CDC commented "Guns go Boom. This is scarey for some, but they need professional help. This phobia has the power to spread just like the Bird Flu. It is highly infectious to vulnerable adults. This phobia has the power to render honest folk, sportsmen and sportswomen and sports-transgenders, and innocent hunter-gatherers, helpless not only against bad guys, but against food on the wing and hoof. Indeed, it is no different, in effect, than having a weak immune system, or being a de-clawed kitty cat."
Image: A very nice Lady without Hoplophobia, hunting Islamo-fascists on her farm without a license, unlike her weenie son.
Frederick Church (1826-1900). His Heart of the Andes, below, brought him fame. A brief bio of Church here, and a good summary of The Hudson River School, and what they wanted to convey in their work (which was very much out of fashion in the 20th century for being overly-sentimental and unsophisticated), here.
She addresses author Sam Harris' contention that religion concerns ideas which are "patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive." Harris appears to view religion as the prime source of evil in the world:
When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths.
A three-times daily dose of pot, LSD, crystal meth, and heroin ought to work fine - or Soma: That quote sounds more than a little Brave New Worldish for me; as Sisu notes: "find reliable ways to make human beings more loving," "Make them...?" We who?"
Right. I suspect he means more docile towards his view. What if it pleases me to be difficult and controlling and arrogant and cantakerous and opinionated....like Harris? Read her piece.
Two weeks after breast cancer surgery, two days ago my pal lands this 140# Tarpon. Captain Juan Garcia of Indian Key, Fla. helps hoist the big guy on deck. Would make a lovely addition to the den, but they let him go...the right thing to do. If you got hooked by temptation, wouldn't you want God to set you free?
It is no wonder than dear Albion is sliding inextricably into the mire if men are now spending time in front of the mirror, wondering do these jeans make my bum look big? No, they don’t – its all the Mars bars you eat & if you have a problem with that, don’t eat any more. As one of the 66% of those who don’t have a problem with my burgeoning middle age waistline, this morning I had a full fat boy breakfast, all served up with a side order of extra lard because you know it makes sense.
The guys will be ready and drooling, waiting for some fresh meat young things on campus - so Get ready now. Remember, gals: College is all about Boys, Boobs, Basketball and Beer - The Four B's. So don't let yourself get distracted by all of the classroom stuff like Math and History etc, because you will need Straight A's in the Four B's or end up an unstreetable nobody like Charlotte Simmons with depression and anorexia and an un-cool boyfriend - a like Science Loser, instead of a hot Double-D Communications Major with medically-enhanced lips too - wow.
Enjoy college, gals! And if you want a doctorate, let's practice by playing PhD doctor.
Warmest personal regards,
Larry "Long Larry" Summers, VP, Marketing, Plastic Assets, Inc. Former Prez, HU
Psychoanalytic theory isn't really very complicated. We only have three or four basic concepts, from which a myriad of fascinating ideas derive.
One of the key basic concepts is Transference. At the risk of annoying readers who hate fashionable words like "template," I have to use "template". To keep it simple, a transference is a relationship template, usually molded during youth, and mostly unconscious - by which we mean that we aren't aware that it is acting on us.
Transferences distort our relationships as our brains attempt to apply the template of prior relationships, or, more often, our distorted versions of prior relationships, onto current ones.
Most common are paternal and maternal transferences, but sibling transferences, grandparent, friend and avuncular transferences are common too. (What's the female version of avuncular? Avauntuler?)
Because our transferences tend to be beneath our awareness, they are usually only evident to analysts when observing behaviors or feelings which do not seem to fit the real current-life situation. Thus the less transference-driven our relationships are, the more mature and in reality they tend to be.
As psychoanalytic concepts have been integrated into everyday thinking over the past 100 years, there has been a degradation of the technical terms. Thus we can talk about a "maternal transference" towards government, for example, when someone experiences their government as "need-fulfulling", or a "paternal transference" towards government when it is experienced as "opportunity-providing, demanding, and challenging."
Even if such uses of the concept may not fit the technical usage, they are sometimes useful ways of thinking. For example, it is commonly stated that people tend to view the Democrats as the Mommy Party, and Republicans as the Daddy Party. It sounds like a ridiculous simplification when you hear it, but there is something to it: politics is not rational.
I was moved to write this post because of a couple of items on the blog this week. Pieces about Europe: the passivity of Britain and Norway in the face of their enemies within; the economic irrationality of French socialism, etc.
Such things represent what we would term "regressions" to "transferences." In other words, backwards developmental steps to more immature and less realistic ways of experiencing the world. When a kid privileged and smart enough to attend the Sorbonne feels he needs to rebel for job security, you know you are dealing with people who have reverted to a child-like, maternal experience of their government. It does not bode well for a nation whose youth seeks security over challenge, and comfort over life adventure.
Similarly, in Britain, with their willful denial of the social cancer they have welcomed, we see a "regression" to a "nicey-nice" childish view of the world in which evil and unpleasantness do not exist - a Mommy World. They tried that before, didn't they?
Despite all of the push in the direction of the Mommy World since Franklin Roosevelt, the US has never fully succumbed to the fantasy that government can make everything "nice." Thank goodness for that. In the US, many people tend to more annoyed when the government does something than when it doesn't.
Thus the US does, indeed, tend to have less transference towards government - eg a less emotionally distorted relationship with government. Most of us want it to just drive away our enemies and to leave us alone, but we do have our share of those who wish the government could make all of our dreams come true.
Lots more to say but this is getting too long. If you like my ideas, click our Psychoanalyst category and read more and get smart.
Real Irishmen like to have a pint at the pub on the way to work. Every day, not just on the Feast of St. Patrick, which is not a big event in Ireland. To make it breakfast, the barman stirs in one or two raw eggs. Then a fellow is ready for work.
But that is just breakfast. Here is the Irish version of haute cuisine. You cannot have too much mustard to go with it, and the meat has to be falling apart.
How do nations create wealth? Liberating people's minds, and rewarding effort and ambition, seem to be key factors. Coyote at Coyote Blog plays Adam Smith and offers this:
Groups of people create wealth faster in direct proportion to the degree that:
Their philosophical and intellectual culture values ordinary men (not just "the elite", however defined) questioning established beliefs and social patterns. This is as opposed to having a rigid orthodoxy which treats independent thinking as heresy.
Individuals, again not just the elite, have the ability through scholarship or entrepreneurship to pursue the implications of their ideas and retain the monetary and other rewards for themselves. This is as opposed to being locked into a rigid social and economic hierarchy that would prevent an individual from acting on a good idea.
China, for example, just by cracking open the spigot on #2, however inadequately, has gone from a country with mass starvation in three or four decades to one where the worry-warts of the world are scared of juvenile obesity. To a large extent, this theorem is really just a poor restatement of Julian Simon's work. Simon's key point was that the only relevant resource was the human mind, from which all wealth flows. All I have done is break this into two parts, saying that to create wealth a society has to value the individual's use of his mind and has to allow that individual free reign to pursue the products of his thinking.
Greenwich, CT is not a Yankee town with dominant Yankee values. It's a NYC suburb which nowadays partakes more of NYC bling than Connecticut country modesty. But even Greenwich has limits. Mr. Jacobs is getting into problems with his 38,000 sq. foot house. Image from the NYT article:
Most well-organized families already have their summer family trips planned, but all we have is our options nailed down.
But it is already time to plan for hunting season. We have our reservations in at the Miramichi Inn in New Brunswick for October grouse and woodcock season. If you have never hunted these birds, the photo gives a good sense of what the brush is like that you have to bust your way through in hopes of getting a shot off at a distant brown blur.
A solid and enjoyable summary of the music of The Beatles, from Terry Teachout. One quote:
Such an appraisal must begin by taking into account the fact that the Beatles were the first rock-and-roll musicians to be written about as musicians. Elvis Presley, for instance, had attracted vast amounts of attention from the press, but for the most part he was treated as a mass-culture phenomenon rather than as an artist, and so were the other rock musicians of the 50’s and early 60’s (and the swing-era band-leaders and vocalists who came before them). Not so the Beatles. Almost from the time they began making records in 1962, their music was taken seriously—and praised enthusiastically—by such noted classical composers as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Ned Rorem and such distinguished critics and commentators as William Mann, Hans Keller, and Wilfrid Mellers.
This collection of metaphors and analogies are reputed to have been collected from High School essays. Count me a skeptic there, but who knows:
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a Guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:\flw.quid55328 .com\aaakklch@ung but gets T: \flw.quidaaakklch@ung by mistake.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
Read more of these metaphors on Continuation Page below:
A 16 and 19 year-old 
A few snippets, which require no comment because they speak for themselves. Our News Junkie posted this piece a day or so ago about the unpopularity of marriage among American blacks:
High praise for his 
The Multiculturalism movement, which has been sufficiently mocked and demolished endlessly, represents cultural suicide.
Victims of 
Psychoanalytic theory isn't really very complicated. We only have three or four basic concepts, from which a myriad of fascinating ideas derive.
Real Irishmen like to have a pint at the pub on the way to work. Every day, not just on the Feast of St. Patrick, which is not a big event in Ireland. To make it breakfast, the barman stirs in one or two raw eggs. Then a fellow is ready for work.
How do nations create wealth? Liberating people's minds, and rewarding effort and ambition, seem to be key factors. Coyote at Coyote Blog plays Adam Smith and offers this:
Most well-organized families already have their summer family trips planned, but all we have is our options nailed down. 
A solid and enjoyable summary of the music of The Beatles, from 