Tuesday, January 5. 2010
Via Thompson. One of them:
Monday, January 4. 2010
New Year's Eve. Thanks for the pic, BL.
Sunday, January 3. 2010
 At the wonderful Hall of the Fishes at New York's American Museum of Natural History there is a preserved female Anglerfish. Attached to her is a bump with a tiny tail on it, which looks like a parasite.
It isn't. It's the shrunken remnant of a male Anglerfish. The males attach themselves to a female, and their bodies shrink away into nothing but male gonads permanently attached to the females. (You can read about Anglerfish here.)
I was reminded of Anglerfish by Kay Hymowitz's piece at City Journal, "The Incredible Shrinking Father," which takes a look at voluntary single motherhood in America and the role of artificial insemination. It is remarkable that, in one generation, something that had been considered a family tragedy is now considered, by some anyway, a "lifestyle choice."
A quote from her essay:
You’d think that we had enough problems keeping fathers around in this country, what with out-of-wedlock births (over a third of all children are born to unmarried women, and, in most cases, the fathers will fade from the picture) and divorce (the average divorced dad sees his kids less often than he takes his car in for an oil change). But these days, American fatherhood has yet another hostile force to contend with: artificial insemination. This may sound a tad overheated. After all, AI has been around, by some accounts, for over a century. And the number of kids born through the procedure each year, though steadily growing, remains quite small relative to the millions of babies conceived, as we can now say completely without irony, the old-fashioned way.
But aided by a lucrative sperm-bank service industry, an increasingly unmarried consumer base, a legal profession and judiciary geared toward seeing relationships through a contractual lens, and a growing cultural preference for individual choice without limits, AI is advancing a cause once celebrated only in the most obscure radical journals: the dad-free family. There are multiple ironies in this unfolding revolution, not least that the technology that allows women to have a family without men promotes the very male carelessness that leads a lot of women to become single mothers in the first place. And fatherless families are a delicate proposition, as AI families are discovering, since all the scientists’ technology and all the lawyerly contracts can’t take human nature out of human reproduction.
Leaving aside the fact that single motherhood accounts for a large percentage of America's poverty stats (that's another article in itself), I consider voluntary single motherhood to be the height of selfishness, immoral, irresponsible, and no favor to a kid. I do not believe that "it takes a village" to raise a family, but I do think that, for a number of practical and psychological reasons which I will not go into now, it takes two parents to do it - one of each type. A couple of sets of grandparents, and some aunts and uncles, are good too, if you can get 'em. Paid help is no substitute because blood is thicker than money.
Fortunately, we live in a free country, and freedom implies the freedom to make stupid and irresponsible choices. That is why freedom requires maturity, education, intelligence, and restraint for things to work. Being a free citizen in a free republic demands a lot from a person, and all of us have to dig deep to find the strength.
You can read Hymowitz's entire piece here.
Image: A lovely female Anglerfish
Our old English long-case clock rang 12 times on New Year's Eve, as it has for my wife's family here in New England for between 240 and 300 years. There’s a note pinned inside by her great-great grandfather that reads “This clock was buried in the basement of one of our ancestors during the Battle of Bunker Hill” (which you will recall took place on June 17, 1775). History records that the London clockmaker, Devereaux Bowly, opened his shop in 1710 and died in 1773, so the clock had to have been made between those dates. My wife’s patronymic ancestor, a sea captain, was in Boston by 1736, so he could have brought it to Massachusetts any time during that period.
Of all the furniture that the past bequeathed to the current day, most of us have a particular soft spot for the long-case, or grandfather clock (so-named after the popular 1876 song, My Grandfather’s Clock). It is still and no doubt will be for many years to come the most popular form of household timepiece. Clocks give life to a room, but the tall clocks of the peculiar form that is now 300 years old have a special dignity. To the early American colonist, owning a clock was a status symbol. Most people of that time could not afford a clock of their own and had to rely on the church clock on the town common for the time of day. Privately owned clocks were only found in the finest of homes and were certain to be displayed in a prominent place for all to view.
Long-case pendulum clocks were still a new invention in 1736. In 1580 the Astronomer Galileo observed a swinging lamp suspended by a long chain from a cathedral ceiling. He studied its swing and discovered that each swing was equal and had a natural rate of motion. He later found this rate of motion depended upon the length of the chain or pendulum. In 1640 he designed a clock mechanism incorporating the swing of a pendulum, but he died before building his clock design.
It wasn’t until 1656 that Galileo’s pendulum principle was put to use by Dutch scientist Christian Huygens, who was the first to develop a pendulum based clock. Huygens’s invention however allowed clocks to run accurately to the point of three minutes loss or gain per day. Some years later in 1670 the English clockmaker William Clement noticed that a longer pendulum kept better time, so he lengthened the pendulum to over three feet. This of course required a longer case for the clockworks, and so the long-case clock was born. From then on the clocks were variously called long-case clocks, floor clocks, and even coffin clocks because they resembled the shape and size of the simple wooden coffins of that time.
Grandfather clocks were first made for royal families and nobles, but in time their production cost were cut down to where they were affordable for merchant families and became a symbol of socio-economic status and wealth.
Around 1685, long-case clocks were imported into American colonies for the first time and roughly 10 years later their construction in the New World began. New York, New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia became long-case clock making centers, but, until the 19th century American introduction of inexpensive brass movements, English clockmakers reined supreme.
Ed. note: I'm sure most of our readers are familiar with My Grandfather's Clock:
There are lady soldiers, lady cops, lady firepersons, lady mailpersons, lady everything - for better or worse.
Why are there no lady garbagepersons?
(By the way, I appreciate this past week's Dr. Bliss Festival of Reruns. When I read them, I honestly cannot remember having written them. I would write each post differently if I were to write them today - or maybe not write them at all.)
Saturday, January 2. 2010
This morning. If you are deprived by not being familiar, that's the eastern edge of Central Park on the right, around 92nd St - a darn pleasant neighborhood.
Is there such a thing as failure in science? From Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up (h/t, Neptunus):
How to Learn From Failure
Too often, we assume that a failed experiment is a wasted effort. But not all anomalies are useless. Here’s how to make the most of them. —J.L.
1 Check Your Assumptions
Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
2 Seek Out the Ignorant
Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
3 Encourage Diversity
If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
4 Beware of Failure-Blindness
It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.
A melancholy chore to take ye olde tree down. However, it will have an extended life outdoors for a couple of months as the needles slowly drop, providing some cheery outdoor light and a place for the sparrows to hang out in and in which to hide from the Sharpies that haunt our area.
Friday, January 1. 2010
 His wonderful 1936 essay, Shooting an Elephant. One quote:
I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly.
 I have been taking a little time to think about how participating in a website like Maggie's, if you don't watch out, can have the effect of making you run faster and faster to keep up with the latest idea/opinion/reaction etc.
(Here's a clip from Dylan's 1978 No Time to Think from his Street Legal album. Lyrics here)
I can react, but I cannot really think, while looking at a screen - or while reading at all. I can reflect on something when I put down the book or close the page. I can reflect, and perhaps generate a thought, only by getting away for a bit from external input so I can hear some "internal input."
Am I unusual? Almost everybody I know thinks they have some degree of ADD.
I know everybody's mind works differently under different circumstances. My brain tends to think impressionistically, not sequentially and in linear fashion (except when it is demanded of me or, less often, when I demand it of myself - then it kicks into gear), and works best when I am under some sensory deprivation, like in the shower, in the car with the radio off, or with closed eyes. That's when ideas and connections come to me from my pre-conscious.
Giving myself a writing assignment is one way to force myself to think sequentially. Most of the time, no interesting thoughts appear and I end up trashing the piece. Opie likes to say "Those who can, think. Those who can't, link." We link a lot here at Maggie's, but I'd like to try to steer Maggie's away from trying to cover news. Had we the time and the brains, I'd like to post more pieces like neoneo's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Social Justice along with our usual eclectic mix of fun and/or informative non-political stuff.
Having thoughts and ideas is a discipline, like prayer. But disciplines can become good habits over time.
This year, I resolve to think more.
Related, College asks students to power down, contemplate
And here's a Google Tech Talk on the topic from Computer Science Prof. David Levy -
The charming New Year's Babe is via Theo, of course.
Thursday, December 31. 2009
Except for the lift lines one can expect this weekend, I wouldn't mind waking up tomorrow morning in Killington:
So I learn from my post yesterday about HDR that I now have to learn about Ansel Adams' Zone System. Sheesh. I just like to take casual family snaps.
I do not aspire to be an expert in this. Can't do everything.
Wednesday, December 30. 2009
 Probably yes.
While I am quite pleased and content with my own (first) marriage, when I talk with unhappy people, which I do all day, I am often reminded that the nuclear family is a very recent invention, that the notion of romantic love is also recent, that arranged marriages and marriages of convenience or necessity were the norms of the past, and that humans are not "naturally" monogamous - whatever I might mean by "naturally".
When you put the nuclear family together with dreams of enduring romantic love, it's a set-up for disappointment. The nuclear family, unlike the extended family (or the tribe), is isolating and does not provide a broad base of support in life. Intense romantic love, unlike plain old-fashioned strong attraction and desire, is a regressed state of mind - some shrinks half-jokingly call it a form of insanity. Not that it isn't great fun, but it gives way to reality in time, although the best marriages can rekindle the old feeling from time to time.
One thing that is probably not talked about enough is how many marriages are not founded in "true love," but instead are founded on loneliness, desire for companionship, desire for babies, desire for security, fear of becoming an old maid, friendship, desire for a social foundation, etc. This is not a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder whether the contrived and ridiculously costly fairy-tale trappings of the typical American wedding is designed to obscure those facts. Young folks these days often talk about having "friends with benefits" while they await true love, without realizing that "friends with benefits" can be one description of one kind of satisfying marriage.
But to get back on track here, yes, I believe that we tend to wish that a marriage could meet all of our emotional and physical needs. Shrinks term that a regressive, ie childish, wish - not just because it is unrealistic, but also because if emphasizes the "meeting my needs" aspect of a relationship rather than emphasizing "how can I try to give these people (wife, kids) a good life".
It's a truism that people thrive when they have multiple sources for emotional care, and many outlets for love and caring. Friends, colleagues, neighbors, members of clubs or churches, etc, Making and keeping good friends is not really an easy thing to do, and I don't know anyone who doesn't want one, or doesn't want another one. In fact, I suspect that one reason moms want jobs these days is because they feel isolated with their kids.
Althouse noted a NYT op-ed piece by History Prof Stephanie Coontz about the limits of marriage. Althouse comments:
The problem, in Coontz's view, is not only that we deny ourselves the happiness to be found in friendships, but also that by expecting so much from one romantic relationship, we can put so much pressure on it that it breaks. What's worse, if the marriage was our source of happiness, we have nothing.
Quotes from the Coontz piece:
A study released this year showed just how dependent we’ve become on marriage. Three sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University found that from 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters. People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends. The only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage.
In fact, the number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations, with no other person to turn to, almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.
The solution to this isolation is not to ramp up our emotional dependence on marriage. Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty and religion.
Read the whole thing here.
Mr. Nyquist has a post about truth, with abundant cool quotes including this from Nietzche: "Nobody dies nowadays of a fatal truth. There are too many antidotes to them." A quote from his piece:
Truth never grows old, unlike the daily news or petty gossip. The truth, furthermore, requires special handling. Those who bungle had best carry a lie. In this regard, we should think on government and bureaucrats. "It is error alone that needs the support of government," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "Truth can stand by itself." And of course, it usually does stand by itself -- with nobody anywhere near it. "I tell the truth, not as much as I would but as much as I dare," wrote Montaigne. "And I dare more and more as I grow older."
There is also Oscar Wilde's admonition: "If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." Or as they say in Yugoslavia, "Speak the truth and run."
This one came in over the transom a few years ago:
Sales: "You want answers?"
Finance: "I think we are entitled to them!"
Sales: "You want answers?!"
Finance: "I want the truth!"
Sales: "You can't handle the truth!!! Son, we live in a world that requires net license revenue. And that revenue must be brought in by people with elite skills. Who's going to find it? You? You, Mr. Operations? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
You scoff at the sales division and you curse our lucrative incentives.
You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know:
That while the cost of business results are excessive, it drives revenue. And my very existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, drives REVENUE! You don't want to know the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at staff meetings ... you want me on that call. You NEED me on that call!
We use words like upgrades, another round, top-shelf, medium-rare, on-the-rocks, cabernet, Cohiba and foursome. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent negotiating something. You use them as a punch line!
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of revenue I provide and then question the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a phone and make some sales calls. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!"
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?"
Sales: "I did the job I was hired to do."
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?!"
Sales: "You're goddamn right I did!"
Monday, December 28. 2009
I should have known that the line to get into the Guggenheim yesterday would wrap around the block. Thus we just returned the pupette to her apartment with her Christmas loot in time for her to cook a post-Christmas dinner for friends (I think Julia and Julie inspired her), and we banged around town a little. Lousy photographer.
I do love NYC for its vitality. I think this is the Ukrainian mission to the UN on the right:
The walk-up in Yorkville on 85th where Mrs. BD first lived when she moved to NYC. I hiked up those stairs many times to the fifth floor. It was worth the effort.
Very convenient to the dry-cleaners -
More below the fold -
Continue reading "NYC yesterday"
"The Flanker is by far the most extraordinary, high-performance aircraft you can own. Period."
There are two restored Sukhoi SU-27s for sale to the general public here. Military hardware removed, alas. Travel in style and speed - if not in comfort, and no worry about Jihadist bombers.
Why not buy both of them for a matched pair? When one is in the shop, no problem.
Sunday, December 27. 2009
The Holiday Train Show at the NY Botanical Garden runs thru Jan 10.
I am taking the Mrs. down to the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim today. I am a Kandinsky fan.
I can picture delicious Tautog (Blackfish) out there hanging around in the rocks, wanting and hoping to get caught and eaten on a nice warm platter - but Capt. Tom has gone south for Christmas - or maybe for the mid-winter - and I would guess that his boats up here are out of the water.
Update: Snow is melting today
Friday, December 25. 2009
 Our Christmas holiday, or feast day, or Holy Day, is a stew of thousands of years of solstice festivals with plenty of ancient gods in the mix.
Indeed, Christmas' pagan ancestry is just one reason Puritan (Congregationalist) Protestants made it a crime to celebrate it. (Another was that it was a Roman Catholic feast day.)
Here's the history of Christmas tree ornaments.
Here's Is Christmas a pagan holiday?
This Christmas Tree History site recalls:
The Puritans banned Christmas in New England. Even as late as 1851, a Cleveland minister nearly lost his job because he allowed a tree in his church. Schools in Boston stayed open on Christmas Day through 1870, and sometimes expelled students who stayed home.
The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.
That is good marketing.
Readers know that I love Christmas for all of its historical and current pagan, secular, and religious meanings.
I spent Christmas Eve, as usual, with dear friends and family - and candlelight at church. That is all magical for me and my family. We try not to over-spend.
May yours be merry and bright.
A photog friend was skiing at Pico and Killington last week (thanks to global cooling) and took this snap. He didn't see the message until he got home.
The Lord is like that often, in my life. I miss Him and His blessing when he is right in front of me. Blind, but then I see...
(By the way, did you notice the Pileated Woodpecker holes in that tree?)
Tuesday, December 22. 2009
You would think that a farm barn is a farm barn is a farm barn, but it's not true. There are significant differences between regions and even countries.
In colonial New England, farmers naturally adopted the "English" style barn - basically a square framed box with a moderate pitched roof. It was not easily adaptable and eventually the "New England" barn evolved which was adaptable and expandable. Sadly, a lot of these barns no longer exist.
The Brunn Barn was one of the early progenitors of the "New England Barn" and has an interesting history in that it - well, no other way to put it - was "lost" for a while. Originally, the barn sat on the Brunn property which changed hands. The barn was moved to a different location on Butts Road near what was then Annhurst College (now the Woodstock Middle School and Hyde School complex) where it sat for most of the better part of hundred and fifty years. It was used as a general purpose storage building and even then, it didn't get much use. So it effectively was lost as everybody just thought it was an old building left hanging on eventually deemed a "hazard" and subject to razing - the building had fallen into some disrepair and externally was covered with tar paper shingles.
As it happened, Dr. George Looby, a large animal vet was looking for a barn for use as an agricultural exhibit for the antique tractor and farm equipment section of the Fair. This building was mentioned as a possible candidate and when Dr. Looby investigated, he discovered its history. It is built using the "scribe rule framing" post and beam construction technique - every mortise and tenon joint is unique to that joint only - they are not interchangeable as they would be in square rule framing. Scribe rule was the hallmark of New England Barns of the time period.
The Brunn Barn was moved to the Fair grounds and restored to its original condition. It now houses the mechanical and operations agricultural exhibition of the Woodstock Fair presenting the equipment and tools of the time period in which it was built.
Sunday, December 20. 2009
The bulk of the snow fell south of New England, but I think we have enough here to last through Christmas.
Lots more Christmas weekend random photos below the fold -
A tree late last night -
More below -
Continue reading "First half-decent snowfall, plus random New England snow photos"
Author David Foster Wallace (whose books I have never read) talked about Life and Work to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. Mr. Wallace, 46, committed suicide in the fall, 2008.
One quote from his speech:
The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
The speech, it seems to me, is more the cry of a haunted midlife soul than something that eager and freshly-scrubbed college grads could use or even hear. In addition to a shrink, it sounds like the guy lacked God in his life. That quote reminded me of Zevon's Detox Mansion:
...it's tough to be somebody
And it's hard not to fall apart
Up here on Rehab Mountain
We gonna learn these things by heart.
"Norman Maclean, the great Montana writer, had a worse experience. He complained that an editor turned down his masterpiece, “A River Runs Through It,” because it had too many trees in it."
Quoted from the NYT on the 16th
Photo yesterday morning, before the snow.
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