Sunday, August 23. 2009
John McAfee of the famous software company has seen his net worth go from $100 million to $4 million. He is just one of many of the wealthy who have experienced similar things over the past couple of years.
The NYT recounts some of these stories. (h/t, Mankiw). I have seen quite a bit of this happening in clients at the firm - none on the scale of McAfee, but plenty of folks who have dropped from, say, $4 million to $700,000 or $1 million. A few folks who were heavy in Citibank, for example, and a couple of families in Madoff. That hurts if you are 70 and thought you were all set for a comfortable retirement.
The collapse of the value of stocks, real estate, and other investments has led to greater "equality." Achieving greater financial equality in this way doubtless evokes schadenfreude in the envious, happiness in the hate-the-rich populists, and delight in those who erroneously believe that money and wealth are zero-sum games.
But does it do any good for anybody? Probably not. When the rich lose money, government revenues drop, requiring higher taxes on the middle class. When the rich lose money, those who provide the goods and services they enjoy end up in trouble too - like boatmakers, travel companies, landscaping businesses, interior decorators, masseuses, restaurants, furniture-makers, hospital employees, government employees - and lawyers (our firm's income is down 27% thus far this year).
I believe that the Lefty notion of economic equality is insane. If anything, we need more rich people - the more, the better. I want everybody to be rich - if that is what they want in life.
Saturday, August 22. 2009
Since I am on my news sabbatical for a few weeks, here's the real News of the Day (damn fine video, but it doesn't show me riding Target through a stream).
However, if you need to stay an engaged citizen, the Recess Rallies are today. I will show up, to be a good citizen and to present my views.
Friday, August 21. 2009
I take the view that the core tenets of all religions are essentially the same and should guide each individual, and as applicable to what should be governments’ very limited role in our personal lives should guide the role of governments.
The Seven Noahide Laws are found in the same Testament basic to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and are similar to tenets found in Eastern religions:
1. Belief in G-d
2. Respect for and praise of G-d
3. Respect for human life
4. Respect for the family
5. Respect for others’ rights and property
6. Creation of a judicial system
7. Respect for all creatures
To quote my religious guide to the importance of these basics:
Without these laws as a bedrock of government, a society will either have despotism, where individuals’ lives are compromised and possibly abused, or anarchy, where every person pursues his or her own needs without regard for the law.
There are varying views of the relationship of politics and religion. At one extreme, government forbids or represses or dictates the activities of one, a few or all religions. The ideology of the state, and avoidance of any challenges to its sole power, is paramount. We have too many real examples of this. At the other extreme, the dictates of a religion, or of a segment of a religion, dictates or is allowed to substitute for the usual role of government. Islamic Sharia courts and laws are one widespread example. Another is in Israel where the traditional Orthodox maternal lineage to be Jewish, and a traditional Orthodox conversion to be Jewish, is government policy. Although those following more relaxed standards are not persecuted or otherwise, they are still at a disadvantage in some important respects.
At both extremes, sometimes or often the reasonable differences or even the essential rights of individuals may be injured.
In the United States, we more than other nations have taken great care to walk the fine line. Still, in the past few decades, this fine line has been challenged by tensions expressed in two major issues, abortion and marriage, and now we can add health care.
When government requires that taxpayer funds pay for abortion or that private health insurance pay for abortion, and even moreso when government requires that medical practitioners perform abortions regardless of individuals’ conscience or religious scruples, government has crossed the line.
When government requires that the legal privileges and obligations of voluntary union between two consenting adults only be between a man and a woman, government has crossed the line. Civil unions are the role of the state. Sanctification as marriage is the role of religions.
Government has an accepted and important role to play in the protection and furtherance of public health, most particularly as regards pandemics but also in promoting better and more widespread health care. Experience in the United States, and elsewhere, demonstrates this is most accomplished when there is the freer choice and competition in the private sector, to the maximum degree possible, that best serves adaptivity, innovation and individual circumstances.
In the current health care debates, the overwhelming majority of Americans reject that government should take over control of health care. Unfortunately, primarily due to the strong arm tactics and language of its advocates both polarizing and enlarging opposition, we may for now also lose the opportunity to make some far smaller but important incremental improvements.
President Obama has now crossed another important line. His phone calls to garner support from religious leaders of several faiths who lean toward liberal political views is not objectionable in itself. (Neither is it objectionable for religious leaders to have political views, but they should refrain from imposing them on their flock or ignoring the contending justifiable moral, practical and factual considerations.) What is objectionable, far over the line, is that President Obama requested they preach from their pulpits support for his political position.
This is an important issue. It is a completely inappropriate and precedent-breaking overt effort by President Obama to use our religious leaders as his mouthpiece/propaganda "tools." If our religious leaders do, they are "fools." If we tolerate this, we are being badly used, such congregations’ majority political leanings toward liberal indeed being abused, for manipulation by President Obama. Then, are such congregations a religion or a political party? If the latter, it indicates one of the reasons why so many depart from organized religions in the US. Individuals in congregations, and those in leadership positions in congregations and our community, should speak out strongly to our religious leaders how truly inappropriate this is, as well as dangerous, to our communities of faith, to be a propaganda arm of any Washington administration, political party, or policy. President Obama's steering of sermons is far beyond anything that's ever been tried before, and should be recognized for what it is, blatant and disrespectful. At least, do our religious leaders have any self-respect or respect for us in their congregations? If not, they have forfeited respect, and should forfeit their pulpits.
Thursday, August 20. 2009
Via Synth:
MY LIVING WILL
Last night, my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them, 'I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.'
They got up, unplugged the Computer, and threw out my wine.
Photos from space of some of the earth's impact craters. (h/t Thompson's Friday Ephemera.)
If I remember rightly, the Gulf of Mexico was an impact crater. A big collision. Big one in the Chesapeake, too.
But the biggest might have been the one that separated the earth from the moon. Thank God for that one. There would be little romance without it. No romance = no sex = no fun = no babies.
Tuesday, August 18. 2009
My hunting pal has bought an old farm in Schoharie County, NY. He invited me to come up on the weekend and help get the old place ready in time for hunting season. House looks fine - except it could use some plastic nailed over the windows and maybe a coat of paint - but the place could use a little landscaping.
Actually, I think it's a job for ACORN (they do housing, don't they?), or maybe Habitat for Humanity:
Sunday, August 16. 2009
A snap of the Billings Farm in Woodstock. Yes, it's a museum farm, but they do a good job with their Jersey cows. Are mixed farms museums now?
My pal and I stole a couple of apples off their trees from over the fence during a morning hike last weekend: very good Macintosh apples - cold and crisp and spicey at 7 am. (This free ad is our in-kind payment.)
That's their cornfield in the background, and some hayfields behind that.
I thought to myself that no real farmer and orchard-keeper would have such meticulous lawns around their apple trees:
Saturday, August 15. 2009
Now I am talking about Woodstock, NY. I was at that dumb thing. I was young, but I did attend that weekend concert with some friends in their van. We did not have the $18 three-day tickets, like most of the people who showed up. The fences and admission booths were long trampled when we got there.
It sucked. I never understood why such a big deal was made of it. Rain, mud, overflowing porta-potties, stoned teenie-boppers, music you could hardly hear. Some of the stoned teenie-bopper girls took off their shirts and danced in the rain while long-haired sociopathic predators prowled all around for a peek, hoping to get stoned and laid in the mud. "Got any grass, man?" Like, really groovy.
We brought our own cooler of food and beer.
We got out of there after 24 hours or so, as I recall. Maybe 36 hours. It was not easy getting out of there on the muddy, rutted dirt road and, at points, you had to drive off the road onto the soggy pastures, but we finally made our escape. People are impressed that I was there, but they are wrong to be. We were just young and foolish, but we recognized a shit show, as they say on Wall St., when we saw one.
Bob Dylan was wise to stay away. Ritchie Havens, as I recall, was pretty good but I do not know why he did Beatles songs. We did not have any pot, but maybe we did. I don't remember, but I never saw the point of it anyway except once. The guys from Sha-Na-Na were my buds from college, so I did not need to hear them. Jimmy Hendrix? I do not recall whether we heard him in the distance. Probably not, but I also heard him live in Bridgeport, CT one time, on the high school football field right behind the jail.
Yes, he was an exciting performer. No doubt about about it.
I’ve nothing against the Woodstock get-together nor its good music. For those there who enjoyed the rain and mud, and those who addled their brains with drugs – most temporarily and some permanently, you’re welcome to it. What many object to is that Woodstock has been raised to an almost holy event to be honored as symbolic of our generation. Meanwhile, the far many more young people who wouldn’t have thought of attending, and the many more young people who weren’t there because they were serving in the armed forces, the hollow hallowedness attached by the media to Woodstock is seen as, as usual, blatantly one-sided and ignores the real sacrifices faced by others.
The VFW Magazine tells the tale of the 109 Americans killed in Vietnam during those four days in August 1969.
Time gushed with admiration for the tribal gathering, declaring: “It may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age.” It deplored the three deaths there—“one from an overdose of drugs [heroin], and hundreds of youths freaked out on bad trips caused by low-grade LSD.” Yet attendees exhibited a “mystical feeling for themselves as a special group,” according to the magazine’s glowing essay….
Meanwhile, 8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness….
So when you hear talk of the glories of Woodstock—the so-called “defining event of a generation”—keep in mind those 109 GIs who served nobly yet are never lauded by the illustrious spokesmen for the “Sixties Generation.”
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Rennselaer, NY
A college professor friend who is authoring a book about those from NYC who did serve in Vietnam asked me to send him this, below, which I’ve kept in a scrapbook buried in my garage. The photo is me, in the center, leading a June 1968 Flag Day parade around my college campus, just before graduation. Soon after, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. During Woodstock, I was training to go on to Vietnam. The sentiments in the poem are those of another Marine, in Leatherneck Magazine, which mirrored my own.
Hey, Bird Dog. That was not a tornado you experienced on Monday. That, I believe, was a Microburst. Most people have never experienced them, so you are a lucky one.
Microbursts are violent, brief (10-15 minute), very localized downdraft weather events with the power of tornadoes.
As one guy reported on his experience of one of these,
Microbursts are caused by a collapsing thunderstorm. What happens is, a thunderstorm rides up and over some hot dry air. This causes the rain that the thunderstorm is trying to drop to evaporate, which in turn, causes that hot dry air to suddenly cool off. Cool air falls fast, in fact so fast in this case, that it steals all the energy rising up into the thunderstorm. The sudden downdrafts cause all of the storms energy and moisture to drop in place. It would be kinda like placing a bunch of the little green plastic soldiers on your patio and then standing up on a picnic table, pouring a pitcher of water straight down on them. As the water hits the concrete, there is no where for it to go but out sideways with great force. That is what causes all the wind damage.
It is very hard to predict a Microburst. Later, the ABC station showed their Viper Radar loop. Indeed, there were sheer indicators that popped up right over us right as the Microburst occurred. It only showed on radar for about a minute or two and then was gone, but it sure did a bunch of damage in the short time it was here.
Thursday, August 13. 2009
If you missed Part 1, it's here (with a little bit of Vermont history).
In the early 1800s, few towns had architects. They did have builders. And they had Pattern Books.
Pattern books were like blueprints, produced by well-known or entrepreneurial archtects in the big cities, just the same as builders' development houses of today are built from patterns.
I like this one. People up there tend to their front gardens with loving care for their own pleasure and for the delight of passers-by:
More fun photos below the fold - take a minute to feast yer eyeballs.
Continue reading "Woodstock, VT architecture, Part 2"
Tuesday, August 11. 2009
Vermont was settled later than most of New England, in the late 1700s by people from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Pioneers, attracted by cheap land. You could cut down all the trees and raise sheep, and the rivers provided endless power for mills. Woolen mills, stone-cutting marble and granite mills, lumber mills, etc. You could transport stuff down the rivers to the big Connecticut River.
They did cut down all the trees: by 1850 most of Vermont was denuded of forest, whether for lumber, grazing, charcoal, or firewood.
(In the 1700s, Vermont was considered part of the New York colony, but New Hampshire had claims on it. For a few decades, Vermont was the independent Republic of Vermont until they joined the union in 1792.)
After producing the woolen garments for World War 1, Vermont's mills slowly closed down, the Vermont wool biz (Big Wool moved west) dried up and was replaced by dairy for the distant cities when the trains came through. Now, with factory dairy, there isn't even much of that any more, and the trees have grown back (and so have the Moose, Black Bear, and White-Tailed Deer). The milk cows today spend all day in sheds until their productivity drops and they are turned into Mcdonalds burgers.
The wealth evident in the fine houses built in Woodstock from roughly 1800-1840 (replacing shacks, log cabins, and other humble dwellings) was a combination of its being a Shire town - a county seat with court and jail and lawyers - and the woolen mills. Those businesses attracted tradesmen and farmers, roads spread out, and the town thrived for a while. In 1830, this town of 3000 souls (then, and 3000 now!) had five newspapers.
Today, Woodstock is all about tourism, with endless interesting summer and winter events, and skiing, of course, in the winter. The village is preserved in amber by a fierce architectural review board and its designation as a National Historic District. Laurence Rockefeller had a lot to do with that (his Woodstock home is among the photos below the fold).
And, today, Vermont has the distinction of having the lowest per capita income in the US, having surpassed Mississippi a few years ago. The poorer they get, the further to the Left they move. It is not rational and it is utterly self-created (taxes and regs) and self-defeating, but it's a free country and, here at Maggie's Farm, we value the freedom of people to do stupid things if they want to. (I just hate it when people make obviously predictable mistakes on my nickel.)
The Wiki on Woodstock, VT here. Worth a visit. Bring camera.
I took the photos below early on Saturday morning. The temp was 48 degrees F at 5:30 when I typically go out to begin my exploring of a place (hence no people around in some of my photos). By mid-day, the temp got up to a balmy global warming crisis of 73 degrees.
I offer no architectural comments on the details of these structures. I don't have the time, and I lack the eye for detail that Mrs. BD has. My brain tends towards weight, balance, harmony, and emotional comfort - and only notices detail when it intrudes. However, I do know and believe that God is in the details. More on that later (maybe).
Many fun photos below the fold. All of these buildings are in town -
Continue reading "Woodstock, Vermont info and architecture, with some thoughts about old-time New England, Part 1"
Monday, August 10. 2009
This is one of my favorite web characters. He's been doing a weekly show for a number of years and every episode is great. The best thing about him is that he does a very credible job of lampooning both sides equally. Uncle Jay's web site is here.
It's tough to visit Woodstock, VT without focusing on the Federal and neo-Colonial architecture. I will post much of that on later posts, when I can get my act together.
Photo below was the view from the Simon Pearce Restaurant in Quechee (yes, most of the group went downstairs to watch the glass-blowing) on Friday night's dinner). This sight felt like symbolism for the wedding:
More random photos below the fold -
Continue reading "A 3-day weekend in Woodstock"
Sunday, August 9. 2009
 I cranked up my trusty Stihl Farm Boss last weekend to do some jobs, and my neighbor who has some heart problems brought me a cold Rolling Rock and asked me to cut down an old Pear tree which was productive 20 years ago but which has been in serious decline since it has been in the shade of several big trees.
For a cold one, a year's supply of good fruit wood for meat-smoking, and for the pleasure of helping out a neighbor, I was happy to do it. My stock of wild cherry chunks from last year is running low.
As long-time readers know, I always have mishaps with chain saws. Someday the thing will kill me. So be it. The two nuts of the cover blew off somehow and the chain blew off right after we got the big old tree down. Could only find one of the nuts. So it was a case of "pass me another cold one, let's light up some Cubans, and I will finish this job later."
Don't you hate to leave a job half-done?
Saturday, August 8. 2009
 Well, it's not all bla bla bla.
As in this case: Most women are not, in my view, angry bitch psychotic academic victimized mini-monsters. The Retriever's Grandma, for instance (image on right from that post).
Here at Maggie's (Maggie is herself a tough old broad with a sense of humor and doesn't mind getting her hands dirty), we hold strong, cheerful, independent, humorous, tender, gutsy, intelligent, loving women in the highest regard.
More re women: our hero Charles puts Palin in perspective. I think he is right. Nothing to do with her charisma or gender. We like her very much, and hate the contempt she receives for having a non-elite life style.
Disney accused of defending heteronormativity. Not a joke. It does sound perverted, doesn't it? Not by accident.
American women have it worse than any women in the world. Just ask any wife: she'll tell ya all about it if you can get her off the computer for a minute. Always shopping for the latest new colors in burkhas to get stoned in, you know?
How do our neopuritanical Sociologist types discuss such things? Bruce found this, about social stratification on the internet. I learned a new word: homophily. It also sounds like a perversion, but it means that people often tend to hang out with people they feel comfortable with.
Well, golly gee! Smack me with a mackeral and call me Edna! Thank God for the science of sociology to inform us of that. Maybe I am an exception, but I very much enjoy people who are different too, if they bring something to the table. Still, family is family, a paisan is a paisan, and a tribe is a tribe.
Friday, August 7. 2009
Megan McArdle, who has recently been obsessing about what government can do about obesity (A silly obsession, in my view. Why has it become a reflex for people to ask "What can govt do?" about this or that thing, as if government had magical powers to alter reality?), used the Swedish word "lagom" in a piece about Ikea.
The word is not easily translatable into English, because it is such a dispirited, dysthymic Swedish concept.
Want to give it a try?
Useful for the front or back porch, or the deck of your Boston Whaler. You can buy these functioning repros here.
Wednesday, August 5. 2009
 The smaller ones are best for indoors, but the larger helos are good outdoors, as long as it isn't too breezy.
Rechargable lipo batteries, with recharger.
Link here.
Tuesday, August 4. 2009
This classic Abbot and Costello routine (finally, somebody put it on youTube) reminds me of how the Left reacts if you say the word "Palin." Or "Bush," for that matter.
St. James Church, Woodstock, Vermont.
Monday, August 3. 2009
Italian TV talk show host (correction - Argentinian):
American TV talk show host:
Sunday, August 2. 2009
A re-post from June 30, 2008. Sure is hard to believe that was one year ago, because it feels like yesterday.
 With TV, you are more-or-less forced to watch the thing because it tends to grab our passive brains. With blogs and newspapers, you can easily skip stuff you chose to ignore. So if I am boring you with my northern Italy travelogue posts, please skip over them. It's just fun for me to post the photos - and it motivates me to get them organized.
One day last week we took the train up to Domodossola to catch the regular Centovalli train (not the tourists' Lago Maggiore Express which doesn't do much stopping) through the Alps to Locarno, Switzerland, on the northern tip of Lago Maggiore.
It is our travel custom to make things complicated and to plan tight connections - and to thereby create adventures, memorable mishaps, stress, and close calls. The free-spirited Mrs. BD thrives on such things, but I do not. As it turns out, The Dylanologist loves to cut things close, too, and to dash off somewhere when he has a free 3 minutes to spare.
We got off the train halfway at the whistle-stop of Santa Maria Maggiore (nobody else got off) to take a hike in the Alps. We planned to hike up the mountains in a circle through the mountain hamlets of Toceno and Craveggia, and to arrive back down at Santa Maria Maggiore in time for the last train to Locarno, to arrive there with 16 minutes to find and to catch the last boat down Lake Maggiore to where we were staying in the cozy village of Baveno.
We are tireless and intrepid walkers, but we characteristically underestimated the distance of our hike as we always do, and did not expect the heat. No water, and no cafes open. But we did get to stumble into the rarely-visited Alpine village of Craveggia (pop. 730). Eventually, with ten minutes before the train and without knowing our exact location, we swallowed our pride and flagged down a passing house painter who happily and cheerfully got us to the station in his tiny two-door rattletrap car - just as the tiny train pulled into the tiny "Disney Italy" station.
No passport checks, by the way, training into Switzerland. We brought them anyway.
Here's a map showing the northern tip of Piedmont where it pushes into Switzerland. The Centovalli train runs on one track from Domodossola to Locarno, at the tip of the Lake, over fearsome gorges and hairy mountain cliffs.
Let's begin this photo tour, though, with this northern Italian lovely in a cafe on the old square of Domodossola, who our sneaky paparazzi Dylanologist photographed on my dare. I call that "La bella figura." Plenty of real blonds up there.
Travelogue of this side-trip with lots of photos below on continuation page -
Continue reading "The Centovalli Train, re-posted"
Much easier than cement for walkways and pavers: QuikKrete Jointing Sand. Great invention. Sweep it into the gaps, then mist with water and you have a hard sand/polymer bond that won't crack like cement, or grow weeds like stone dust.
It's about time something this easy was invented. I refurbished one of our slate walks with this stuff yesterday.
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