Friday, January 5. 2007
 Shamefully, furtively, guiltily stolen in full from YARGB:
The New York Review of Books: A Mission to Convert: "The reason Dawkins thinks he has something to say about God is, of course, clear: he is an evolutionary biologist. And as we all know, Darwinism had an early and noisy run-in with religion. What Dawkins never seems to consider is that this incident might have been, in an important way, local and contingent. It might, in other words, have turned out differently, at least in principle. Believers could, for instance, have uttered a collective 'So what?' to evolution. Indeed some did. The angry reaction of many religious leaders to Darwinism had complex causes, involving equal parts ignorance, fear, politics, and the sheer shock of the new. The point is that it's far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict between the acceptance of evolutionary mechanism and the belief that, as William James put it, 'the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe.' Instead, we and Dawkins might simply be living through the reverberations of an interesting, but not especially fundamental, bit of Victorian history. If so, evolutionary biology would enjoy no particularly exalted pulpit from which to preach about religion.
There is no conflict, and the whole Dawkins thing is silly. From what I've heard, scientists are just as religious, or non-religious, as the rest of the population. Science and religion exist in entirely different spheres of experience.
Thursday, January 4. 2007
Thinking about Tuscany today. This is the Franciscan cloister of Santa Croce, in Firenze, taken last year. Who is entombed in the basilica? Among others, Michelangelo, Galileo, Enrico Fermi, and Machiavelli. A true Hall of Fame. 
Wednesday, January 3. 2007
A villainously good post from Villainous Company. One quote: Submission. What a stale, moldy, outdated, concept. I cringe, even while I'm typing it because I'm sure it will bring the wrath of God down on my poor head for daring even to suggest that I agree wholeheartedly, unreservedly, with the author on this score. Marriage is a parnership meant to last a lifetime, and it's not easy making a marriage work. It's a serious promise, not just a few silly words you toss off unadvisedly, thinking in the back of your mind, "Well gosh, now I kinda sorta love her, but if the feeling passes I can always get a divorce." I believe you are promising, not to feel love, but to practice it, and that is an entirely different matter when you are looking at a four or five decade time horizon. On the day you marry, if both a man and wife aren't willing to put their marriage ahead of their careers, their children, and most importantly their own private selfish interests: if they aren't willing to submerge at least a part of themselves into this larger thing called "the marriage", it won't survive. Does that mean you lose yourself? Of course not.
Read the entire, thoughtful piece.
Tuesday, January 2. 2007
You have to scroll down. He does it month by month. (h/t, Coyote)
Dalrymple, a retired psychiatrist, takes on the subject of evil through the lens of Rwanda. A quote: The murderers were pleased with their work, they thought of all the corrugated iron roofing, cattle and so forth that they were ‘earning’ by it. They had never been so prosperous as during this period of slaughter and looting. Unaccustomed to eating meat very often (the Tutsi were pastoralists, the Hutu cultivators), they gorged themselves upon it, like hyenas finding an abandoned kill in the bush. Very few were their pauses for thought. Let us not console ourselves with the thought that these were unsophisticated Africans, without the mental capacity to know better: in short, mere savages. Again, I do not know how much Hatzfeld has edited their words, but his perpetrator interlocutors seem to me more articulate than most of the people with whom I have had to deal in Britain as patients over the last decade and a half. Indeed, their language occasionally becomes poetic: though poetic language in this circumstance is mere euphemism.
A mob effect? Or a "Lord of the Flies" sort of thing? The whole piece is at New English Review
Monday, January 1. 2007
"This doesn't define me." The best possible story for New Year's Day, at Villainous. The question is "Can I live with that spirit?"
How did we forget ZZ Top for the Holiday Music Youtube list? Shame on us.
 Ricky Nelson. Hello MaryLou
The Band. The Weight Grateful Dead. Truckin' Van Morrison and Dylan: Crazy Love BB King: The Thrill is Gone Dylan. Like a Rolling Stone (from the MTV Unplugged) Billy Holiday: Strange Fruit Louis Armstrong. I cover the waterfront Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King messing around
Sunday, December 31. 2006
It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "Stella Awards." The Stella Awards, which are not genuine awards but just lists of real cases someone compiles, are named after 81 year old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's (in NM). That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Clever lawyers, or brain-dead juries? We report - you decide. Here are this year's winners:
5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.
5th Place (tie): 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and
medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.
5th Place (tie): Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a
house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able
to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was
malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door
connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The
family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the
garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a
large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming
the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the
tune of $500,000. In my opinion this is so outrageous that it should
have been 2nd Place!
4th Place: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500
and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door
neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard.
The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have
been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who had climbed
over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a
pellet gun.
3rd Place: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and
broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms.
Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an
argument.
2nd Place: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware successfully sued the owner
of a nightclub in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom
window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred
while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies
room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000
and dental expenses.
AND.....
1st Place: This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot
Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football
game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70
mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back & make herself
a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and
overturned. Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the
owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her
$1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their
manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other
complete morons around.
Saturday, December 30. 2006
A man was at the country club for his weekly round of golf. He began his round with an eagle on the first hole and a birdie on the second. On the third hole he had just scored his first ever hole-in-one when his cell phone rang. It was a doctor notifying him that his wife had just been in a terrible accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU. The man told the doctor to inform his wife where he was and that the he'd be there as soon as possible. As he hung up he realized he was leaving what was shaping up to be his best ever round of golf. He decided to get in a couple of more holes before heading to the hospital. He ended up playing all eighteen of course, finishing his round shooting a personal best 61, shattering the club record by five strokes and beating his previous best game by more than 10. He was jubilant.... then he remembered his wife. Feeling guilty he dashed to the hospital. He saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about his wife's condition. The doctor glared at him and shouted, "You went ahead and finished your round of golf didn't you!? I hope you're proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself at the country club your wife has been languishing in the ICU! It's just as well you went ahead and finished that round because it will be more than likely your last! For the rest of her life she will require 'round the clock' care. And you'll be her care giver!" The man was feeling so guilty he broke down and sobbed. The doctor snickered and said, "I'm just messing with ya. She's dead. What'd you shoot?"
Thursday, December 28. 2006
 What is art about? The New Criterion's December art issue is out, and just the introduction is a fine and succinct update on the current state of art criticism. One quote:
At least since the 1970s, efforts to dethrone the aesthetic and short-circuit or marginalize greatness have triumphed in the academy and many other institutions charged with the preservation and transmission of our artistic patrimony. Several of the pieces in this issue discern a possible change in the ideological weather, a shift away from regarding ideology as the proper end of the critical project. It is too early to call these preliminary sightings a forecast or gather them together to make a prediction. But here and there we sense an accumulation of positive signs, a yearning for something lost—a recognition, at least, that something has been lost.
Wednesday, December 27. 2006
 I like this one better than the one Bird Dog posted on Christmas: Pancho and Lefty.
It's from a while ago - before the stunningly lovely gray.
 Some Warren Buffet aphorisms, from Businesspundit:
- You can't make a good deal with a bad person.
- It's easier to stay out of trouble than it is to get out of trouble.
- The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
- My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.
- The reaction of weak management to weak operations is often weak accounting.
- You can always juice sales by going down-market, but it's hard to go back upmarket.
- You have to think for yourself. It always amazes me how high-IQ people mindlessly imitate. I never get good ideas talking to other people.
- In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity because if they don't have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.
- Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
- A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
- If you let yourself be undisciplined on the small things, you will probably be undisciplined on the large things as well.
- The fact that people are full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
- We also believe candor benefits us as managers. The CEO who misleads others in public may eventually mislead himself in private.
- What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history.
We ain't seen any yet this year, and it's a shame. I am sure that Mad River Glen is not pleased either. Photo from December, 2005. 
Meet sexy, 17 year-old farm gal Caroline here. She is lonely and hot, and wants to meet you. Don't act shy - check her out. (sound on)
Monday, December 25. 2006
 It's sad to hear of the death of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, at 73.
It was interesting, but not surprising, to see that he has been on tour. Rough, raw, and a complete showman, it's hard to imagine anyone putting more more of his spirit into a performance. Definitely not white bread. Everytime I listen to James Brown I feel a little bit like the college guys in Animal House who wandered into the wrong bar. He recorded "Please, Please, Please" in 1956. Most of my generation knew him first from "Live at the Apollo" - but he did his best stuff later with his funk bands. Rude, crude, and socially unacceptable? For sure. "Music" that could make a corpse move their body. Here's Sex Machine at YouTube.
We must begin with Dylan doing our theme song, Maggie's Farm, from the Rolling Thunder Review Go Tell it on the Mountain by some Gospel choir Allman Brothers, Blue Sky. How sweet is that? Bing Crosby, White Christmas Grateful Dead, Pretty Peggy-O Emmylou Harris with the Nash Ramblers at the Ryman, Roses in the Snow (with their Nash Rambler intro - remember that one?) Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited Keb Mo, Sweet Home Chicago, with Corey Harris. Another Keb Mo - Angelina. Love this guy. Like him? Here's Every Mornin' Bob Dylan, Restless Farewell, at the Sinatra Tribute. Wow. Hypnotic. John Fogerty, Lodi Dylan, I Threw it all Away, on the Johnny Cash Show, 1969 Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho, Mahalia Jackson Dylan, Highlands Sinatra, My Way
Sunday, December 24. 2006
This year's Christmas card from our friend, artist Elissa Gore:
Friday, December 22. 2006
It is still running. There are some good ones on the comments. Get them out of your head - now or never.
From the Hagerstown Herald-Mail: During the 2005-06 school year, 28 kindergarten students in Maryland were suspended for sex offenses, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual activity, according to state data. Fifteen of those suspensions were for sexual harassment.
The precocity of these Maryland kids is remarkable, is it not? Or would it be better understood as a mass outbreak of a pedophilia epidemic, requiring governmental intervention? (h/t, The Moderate Voice)
 A Christmas diamond idea for wives and/or girlfriends this year: the $30 million dollar diamond bikini.
Gal not included - you have to find your own, but with these trinkets in your hand, it shouldn't be too difficult. Watch for more of her in Sports Illustrated. Please note: If males readers are aware of suffering from Gynophilia, as may be characterized by an undue interest in such diamond photos, contact your local health care professional at once. Attraction to adult females could be a sign of a serious disorder. And hey, Jules Crittenden fans! Thanks for visiting - and check out Maggie's Farm while you're here. We are interesting, most of the time. Is that Maggie modeling the bikini? We will not tell you. (Ignore Continuation page - it's an error)
Continue reading "A special Christmas card for our readers, plus a last-minute shopping idea"
Thursday, December 21. 2006
This is a stupid time-waster. Get Santa drunk. You must use your arrow keys - and don't let Santa touch the train tracks. Turn on the sound for best effect.
Wednesday, December 20. 2006
Graham Owen can tie flies which can fool other bugs - and he can take stunning photos too. Thanks, Synthstuff, for the remarkable blog find - Flies with an Attitude. Sample: 
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