Thursday, August 18. 2005
Light Blogging through the Weekend Many of us at Maggie's are on well-deserved vacation breaks, but we will pre-post some archival items. First, however, apropos of blogging, I will leave you with a piece in the New Yorker by Holt, concerning the quiddity of bullshit: Philosophers have a vocational bent for trying to divine the essences of things that most people never suspected had an essence, and bullshit is a case in point. Could there really be some property that all instances of bullshit possess and all non-instances lack? The question might sound ludicrous, but it is, at least in form, no different from one that philosophers ask about truth. Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. Yet there are parallels between the two which lead to the same perplexities. Read the whole thing.
Summer Reading Suburban Safari, by Hannah Holmes. Ordered it from Amazon, but haven't read it. But it seems like a great idea, well-executed. It's about Nature in a small suburban backyard. Excerpt from the Amazon review: When science writer Hannah Holmes decided to spend a year studying the inhabitants of her 0.2-acre patch of ground in suburban Portland, Maine, she went about the task with an ecologist's enthusiasm and a scientist's compulsive eye for detail. The result is an entertaining and effortlessly compelling examination of nature's stubborn (and successful) struggle to exist in the face of daunting manmade challenges. Holmes's lawn, unfertilized and rarely mowed, turns out to be a surprisingly diverse ecosystem of bird, mammal, and insect life--a self-perpetuating, constantly evolving community of chipmunks, ladybugs, spiders, slugs, and crows. These creatures, and the complex relationships between them, are the raw material for Holmes's incisive reflections on natural history, urban ecology, and the ignominious story of the over-irrigated, pesticide-laced American lawn--rolling out, Holmes notes, at a rate of one million acres per year.
Google Earth Very cool. Thanks, RRWH: See the earth - any location, zoom in, etc., all in 3D. GoogleEarth. It's a free download.
Wednesday, August 17. 2005
 Some excellent misc. sample quotes on Big Topics:
Hansen: Any Western country with open immigration from the Middle East is committing cultural suicide, and for all the politically correct pieties, legislators seem to know it. Right Thinking, on the Islamic bombings in Bangladesh yesterday: Once again the Religion of Peace™ kills civilians because their government refuses to submit to the fascist rule of militant Islam. Beck on Dalrymple and the fragility of civilization, in the New Criterion - Click here: Diagnosis: decadence by Stefan Beck : But the piano, considered as a product and emblem of civilization, is a reminder that to create is the work of centuries, to destroy, the work of a moment. Hence, many of the essays in the present volume are concerned both with great creators (Shakespeare, Turgenev, Gillray, Cassatt) and with thoughtless destroyers (Marx, Lawrence, Kinsey, Virginia Woolf) Barone on Multiculturalism: Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in certain specific times and places--mostly in Britain and America but also in other parts of Europe. Auster, quoting Norman Davies, at View from the Right: Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany of 1933-4 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters. Thomas Reeves, at History News Network, on the temptations of secularism: It is commonplace these days for some journalists and many intellectuals to blame religion for much of the worlds ills. Look at foreign affairs, they say. The Muslim fanatics blowing themselves and others to bits really think they’re going to rewarded in heaven with 40 virgins. Those cowboys and Zionists who are running American foreign policy and endangering the world think they are doing the will of the God. At home, Catholics and others are at work to prevent the research necessary to cure many diseases. Right-wing evangelicals constantly plot to impose their moral restrictions on others. It is only the sober, educated rationalists, we are told, who can see realities beyond the superstitions and bring justice and truth to a world hungering for peace and prosperity. Rid the globe of religion and you free the human mind, at last, to create the wonders of which it is capable.
This is the dogma of the 18th century Enlightenment, of course, later embraced by Marxists who murdered clergy and destroyed churches whenever the opportunity arose. This secular dogma lives still, especially among leftist intellectuals and media moguls who often see themselves as the high priests of knowledge and learning. Woven into their arguments are almost always appeals to end definitions of right and wrong, a move that has the advantage of destroying all moral inhibitions and sanctions. Free sex for a free people. Phelps on God and Science, at Acton Inst, Click here: Commentary: Miracles of God and Miracles of Science : In the minds of many, there is a vague notion that somehow God and science are necessarily in competition. We see this opposition take form in the debates between creationism and evolution, between church and state, where faith is pitted against reason, the secular against the sacred. Why isn’t this opposition more often transferred to our discussions of medicine as well? The reason may be that physicians recognize more readily the relationship between God and science. A recent study by the University of Chicago showed that seventy-six percent of physicians believe in God, and fifty-five percent say their faith influences their medical practice. It seems that the dichotomy between faith and science, while common in popular discourse, is not as popular as among doctors themselves.
Thursday, August 11. 2005
Great minds think alike. The same week we sent out a request for rational and thoughtful liberal blogs, Rick Moran produces a leftist Moonbat Blog Taxonomy, as does QandO Blog. So our betters have saved us a lot of work. Review their pieces to see if there are any there that you might enjoy, even if disagreeing. As I have said, we don't want to be part of a giant echo chamber or a Rush dittohead blog. We have reviewed many more than mentioned below - just the highlights thus far: I find Atrios boring and predictably partisan, but partisan for no principled reason that I can decipher. Tom Paine too - just another Party hack site for their own echo chamber. And don't even talk about Kos - it is bedlam. Yglesias, like most of the Democratic Party Line blogs, has a mean streak with a "gotcha" schtick going which is unattractive to the open-minded. I had high hopes for Washington Monthly but they also seem part of the gotcha game. Waste of time. In fact, the entire angry attack mode is probably unproductive, or even counter-productive in political blogs, because it doesn't make anyone think. I like Pennywit very much. Also Brendan Nyhan. Will continue to pan for gold in them thar internet hills...developing, as Drudge would say.
Tuesday, August 9. 2005
 Lobster Pots, The Lobster Pot, and P'town
Everything you ever wanted to know about lobster pots and lobster-fishing, here. Cool facts, such as the biodegradable escape hatches for lost pots. Our family's favorite restaurant on Cape Cod for many, many years? The Lobster Pot in Provincetown. Excellent authentic Portuguese seafood - Kale soup, squid stew, stuffed cod or haddock, Sopa Do Mar, etc., - plus all the regular stuff, fresh off the pier a half-block away. They sometimes have bluefin toro. P'town, once known for its fishing fleet and its artist colony, is now probably better known as a gay vacation haven. However, it is still full of Portuguese fishermen, great seafood, and has both the old-time and the new-time local color. Don't miss the Gay Parade, if you like parades - it's unique, the height of exuberant exhibitionism, and definitely not for the "homophobic".
Monday, August 8. 2005
Discovery's return home delayed by a day- read cool details about the ride home they will take tomorrow. Plasma blowing by the windows?
Why most shrinks don't take many notes This is why, re Marilyn Monroe. Her doctor is dead, but someone supposedly got notes and/or tapes. Who does tapes? Bad idea. BTW, Atlas Shrugs has a charming photo - art, not porn - of Marilyn, here.
 Little Milton Dies at 70
Thanks RRWH, or I wouldn't have known. He never made it too big outside of the blues circuit, but what's wrong with that? All soul and blues fans knew him well. Another loss of one of the wonderful old-time guys. Chicago Sun Times. Music here. Little Milton Campbell's website here.
Friday, August 5. 2005
Blair Takes on the "Compensation Culture" Same thoughtful speech could and should be equally well given in the US: Samples from his speech on May 26 at University College: It is what I call a sensible debate about risk in public policy making. In my view, we are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life. This is putting pressure on policy-making, not just in Government but in regulatory bodies, on local government, public services, in Europe and across parts of the private sector - to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage. The result is a plethora of rules, guidelines, responses to 'scandals' of one nature or another that ends up having utterly perverse consequences.
and: So, for example, one piece of research into a supposed link between autism and the MMR single jab, starts a scare that, despite the vast weight of evidence to the contrary, makes people believe a method of vaccination used the world over, is unsafe. The result is an increase in risk to our children's health under the very guise of limiting that risk. And before we all just complain about the regulators, the public servants or indeed the Government, let us just pause for a moment in sympathy. A civil servant or regulator who fails to regulate a risk that materialises will be castigated. How many are rewarded when they refuse to regulate and take the risk? Bodies set up to guard the public interest have one-way pressures. It is in their interest never to be accused of having missed a problem. So, it is a one-sided bet. They will always err on the side of caution. It seems to be part of the DNA of regulatory bodies that they acquire their own interests and begin to grow. Max Weber famously noted the tendency of bureaucracies to tidiness.
Read the whole thing here: Click here: Speech on Compensation Culture given at University College London
Thursday, August 4. 2005
Globalism, Thomas Friedman, and Karl Marx John Gray reviews Friedman's The World is Flat in the NY Review of Books: The belief that a process of globalization is underway which is bringing about a fundamental change in human affairs is not new. Marx and Engels expressed it in 1848, when they wrote in a justly celebrated passage in The Communist Manifesto: All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. Read the whole thing. It's about "market utopianism," and makes some provocative points albeit, I feel, against a straw man.
Thursday, July 28. 2005
A Very Good Thing - The London Review of Books - the best book review periodical in the world. You have to subscribe, but its price is fair - $42/yr. Here.
Monday, July 25. 2005
New York, Bloomberg, and A Play Spent the past two days banging around NYC, like a tourist, with visitors from California (who headed off last night to Brazil to tour that famous tourist trap, the Amazon River). All I can do is to offer kudos to Mayor Bloomberg. His polls indicate plenty of people agree (although his assertion that NY will not profile for terrorists is either ridiculous or disingenuous - I hope the latter). I thought Guiliani had done a good job with my favorite American city, but NY now looks and feels as wonderful as it did when I was a kid. NYC requires a world-class manager - not a politician - and that is what it has. There are millions of people on the streets til late at night, happy-looking cops walking their beats instead of prowling in cars, young familes and packed open-air restaurants everywhere, and a feeling of safety and festivity which is pure delight in a place that saw some bad times in recent history. The parks, large, medium, and small - are the most striking change. Rather than being filled with dog and human feces, drug addicts, criminals, winos, and the occasional dead person, with dead plantings and menacing vibes, they all look immaculate, with healthy lawns, musicians, tasteful plantings, great looking people, and a welcoming and civilized atmosphere. My poor shot of the eastern edge of Union Square Park here reminds me of what that park was like in the 1970s when I lived nearby on University Place, when you would cross the street to avoid getting near it. Now it is everything - and more - than Olmstead could have imagined. Interestingly, four of New York's ten most popular restaurants are now in the recently-abandoned Union Square area. Union Square is just a block from the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, where on Sat night we saw the world premiere of Patrick Feigelson's one-act play "World Premiere." Patrick is pals with our California friends, and now Patrick and the French playwright David Valayre have just completed translating their "Edellstein" into English, a dark drama set in German-occupied Paris. We wish them good luck with that play.
Friday, July 22. 2005
 The Met's Own Mona Lisa
Recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for about 45 million, this 11"X8" Duccio, c. 1300, Madonna and Child, is one of the most dramatic and important acquisitions by the Met in decades. Calvin Tompkins explains why, in The New Yorker. A sample: "We are at the beginning of what we think of as Western art; elements of the Byzantine style still linger—in the gold background, the Virgin’s boneless and elongated fingers, and the child’s unchildlike features—but the colors of their clothing are so miraculously preserved, and the sense of human interaction is so convincing, that the two figures seem to exist in a real space, and in real time." And he covers the interesting provenance of the painting. (Sorry - you cannot go and see it - it's undergoing minor renovations right now but will be back on display "soon".) Note the ancient candle burn-marks on the frame - they will remain.
Wednesday, July 20. 2005
A Visit to Roald Dahl's House In The New Yorker
Tuesday, July 19. 2005
Your Inner Geek Dr. Bliss always says "Stop looking for your inner child. Look for your inner adult." What about your inner geek? Take the test.
Monday, July 18. 2005
 How do you like those double rear tires? This is a 2001 Case MX 220. That is one beautiful hunk of machinery. You almost hate to get it muddy.
And, by the way, doesn't that snow look refreshing today?
Friday, July 15. 2005
 I'm Part Indian - Give Me Stuff
Dancing the $ Hula: PC racial politics goes berserk. McNicoll at Town Hall: I’ve been talking to some buddies from high school, and we’re thinking of getting together and forming an Indian tribe. Though most of us have a little Indian blood, we’re not Indians per se. We don’t live together … most of them are still in Louisiana, and I’m 1,200 miles away here in Washington. We don’t share a culture in any real sense. But if Sen. Daniel Akaka’s Native Hawaiian Recognition Act (s. 147) becomes law, we’re going to take our shot.
Go for it! I am in! Waiting for my monthly check from the Indian Nation. And listening to Mr. Charlie by Lightnin' Hopkins, waitin' on the mailman. "Mistah Charlie, your rolling mill is burnin down, and there ain't no water 'round."
Thursday, July 14. 2005
Denial of Evil, Nihilism, and the Left, Part 1 We who try to be reasonable are befuddled by why the American and European Left have a reflex to defend the Jihadists, and to oppose combating them. The fact that they do so is amply demonstrated, endlessly, by the Great Horowitz, among others.
My theory is that the Left is nihilistic at heart. For whatever reasons, they have passed criticism and have come to hate their own civilization, which is admittedly imperfect but which, at the same time, cannot be matched anywhere, anytime, in history in its freedom, opportunity, safety, stability, and idealism. (Yale's famous rejection of the Bass donation was a high-water mark of this self-hating trend.) The consequence is an anti-Western bias, but they refuse to offer an alternative, either because they do not have one, or because any offered would be rejected by voters. My belief is that our civilization is a fragile sculpture, a rare and precious thing, and that our Western Civilization is one of the most amazing things that humans have created, with, at its core, the idea that every individual human matters, as a child of God. That’s the core of it all, and it is at the core of Western medical practice and medical ethics too, since Hippocrates. We care for their injured in our hospitals, and they behead their prisoners. That is a big difference, one which relegates them to the barbarian category. “All men are created equal…”
It is not my brief on Maggie’s to get into politics, but I cannot ignore this one. What is behind the Left’s apologizing for Jihadists? Why does England welcome them? Why does the US welcome them? Why France and Germany and Sweden? Why does Canada welcome them? Why welcome your destroyers into your home?
I wrote a piece on Evil several months ago, but it had no political content. Hatred and destructiveness can derive from hundreds of sources, but most of the time social norms and rules prevent us from acting on such impulses. They are very human evils, or sins, if you will. If you live in a culture, or subculture, which endorses them, many will be pleased to follow – see Nazi Germany, the Mafia, the Weathermen, or any number of murderous, sadistic civilizations and cultures and subcultures throughout history - and relieved to be given a sanctioned outlet for such emotions. Humans are natural-born killers, after all, just like chimps, and it takes a heck of a lot of civilization to keep us on the right side of the road.
It’s clear to me from all that I have read that the Jihadists have long identified Jews and Christians as the “other” – sub-humans occupying potentially Islamic space. We do not do the same to them – on the contrary, we in the West bend over backwards to make them welcome and to accommodate their ways. Their denial of our humanity is their evil, even if it is endorsed by their culture and their religion, and their using our generosity and tolerance for their own purposes is evil as well, though they see it as justified by Mohammed. Fooling an Infidel is not a sin, and we "nice" infidels are too eager to be fooled.
So we quickly arrive at the religious core of morals and ethics, from whence they derive. The Jihadist believes that war on the West is demanded of him by God. I refuse to get morally relativistic and multicultural about that about that - leave that to the anthropologists. To me that is evil. Why does the Western Left like to ally themselves with this? One might imagine that woman-hating, fascistic, anti-human rights, primitively-capitalistic, oil and opium-dependent, hyper-religious movements would be anathema to them.
Continue reading "The Analyst Speaks: Terrorism and the Left, Part 1"
Wednesday, July 13. 2005
Dear Editor: Your blog is just a bunch of gasbags, and I have a suspicion about from which orifice the gas is emerging. Sincerely, JL in Massachusetts Dear JL: Ouch. I think you might be right. At least we don't do it in elevators. Never blog in elevators. Can you offer any constructive suggestions, or do you suggest that we simply shut down Maggie's Farm and spend our time engaged in more productive, profitable, and worthwhile pursuits? Eagerly, nay, anxiously awaiting your reply, Bird Dog
Re-posted from July 5, 2005 "Bush's Calling" Wilfred McCay has written a remarkable essay in Commentary, "Bush's Calling," which is not mainly about Bush - it's about American character and American religion. It is so good and so rich, I will quote a chunk of it to entice you into reading the whole thing: .....................................
The Population Bust The world has come a long way from the "population bomb" that we have been warned about for 50 years. We have already begun to see the effects of population declines in Europe, but the entire world is facing dramatic demographic changes, for better or worse. The subject deserves more attention. Krikorian at Claremont Inst: Although the birthrate decline has begun to have significant effects in the U.S., it is in Europe and East Asia that the consequences will be most dramatic. In demographic terms, a "total fertility rate" (TFR) of 2.1 is necessary to keep a population from declining—the average woman needs to have two children (plus the 0.1 for girls who die before reaching reproductive age) to replace herself and the father. The TFR in the U.S. is just a hair below that benchmark, having bounced back from its nadir in the 1970s. But in every other developed nation it is lower, and falling: Ireland, 1.9; Australia, 1.7; Canada, 1.5; Germany, 1.35; Japan, 1.32; Italy, 1.23; Spain, 1.15. Birthrates this low are unprecedented in peacetime societies. As Wattenberg writes, "never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly." Not only is this causing an increase in the median age of these populations, as in the U.S., but many of these countries will soon see declines in total population. By the middle of this century, we could find a Europe home to 100 million fewer people than today, and a Japan shrinking by one-fourth. Despite their huge and growing populations, the most rapid birthrate declines (and thus the most rapid rates of population aging) are taking place in the Third World. The total fertility rate in less-developed countries as a whole, as defined by the U.N., has fallen by half since the 1960s, to 2.9 children per woman, a much faster drop than anything experienced in the developed world. This is happening almost everywhere: China and India, Mexico and South Africa, Iran and Egypt. Population "momentum" will cause continued increases in these countries for a time, as large numbers of girls have babies, albeit fewer than their mothers, and the Third World will potentially add another 2.5 billion people before population growth stops. This is still a very large increase, but it will come to an end in the foreseeable future (in some countries surprisingly soon). After that, their populations will also start to fall. Read entire.
Tuesday, July 12. 2005
MODERN AMERICA AND THE RELIGION OF DEMOCRACY
Loren J. Samons II teaches in the department of Classical Studies at Boston University and has published a book entitled "What's Wrong With Democracy?" The following is an excerpt and he presents an interesting outlook on the condition of America's supposed democratic ideals. He makes a sound argument on the separation between church and state being moot since Democracy has replaced religion. From Civic Arts Review: "The idealization of freedom through democracy has led modern America to a precipitous position. Implicitly denying man's desire for a society based on beliefs and duties that lie beyond a system of government and the rights this government (democracy) is designed to protect, we have replaced society's extra political goals with the potentially antisocial political doctrines of freedom, choice, and diversity. These words have been made to resonate in the citizens' hearts in a way that God, family, and country once did in America (or gods, family, and polis in Athens). At the turn of the twenty-first century, freedom, choice, and diversity represent America's absolute "moral" goods and have become the would-be unifying principles of American society. They cannot be questioned in polite company, while God, family, and country are fair game. What could more clearly demonstrate America's apparent conversion to this new religion than the fact that basic elements of traditional American society-such as the Pledge of Allegiance or the prayers opening Congress-seem to cause embarrassment to many intellectuals, media figures, and even politicians, who seem at most other times to be virtually incapable of embarrassment (much less shame)? In stark contrast, the classical Athenians never lost the ability to pronounce or enforce their collective standards of morality and thus to produce shame in individuals. Even the democratic icon Pericles spoke of those "laws which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace" (Thuc. 2.37). The negative and positive requirements for Athens's citizens analyzed in chapter a show that the Athenians placed real strictures on one another and could not have endorsed modern Americans' idealization of freedom, choice, and diversity. Respect for the laws, obedience to magistrates, and shame or disgrace for those who violated society's written and unwritten codes always formed a central part of Athenian life, which exhibited significant amounts of freedom, choice, and diversity as a result. In the United States today, the anti-values of freedom, choice, and diversity have become so powerful (and dangerous) in part because-note the supreme irony-they admit of no philosophical opposition. One simply cannot oppose treating these ideas as society's appropriate goals without risking being labeled a reactionary, heretic, or worse, as if it had been empirically proven that only peoples or regimes that worship these deities can produce justice or happiness. Has America seen the amount of social justice and personal happiness increase proportionately with its rising estimation of this trinity? Read entire: Click here: MODERN AMERICA AND THE RELIGION OF DEMOCRACY
Thursday, July 7. 2005
Comment on our McCay Piece Wilfred McCay wrote “But it was not enough for the constraints of this order to be applied externally, like so many fences and leashes. Control, which led to a kind of moral self-sufficiency, needed to be internalized, with the help of institutions like the family, the church, the neighborhood—and the polity. Indeed, in the literature of the era, the relationship between the self-governing soul and the self-governing polity appears as a recurring motif.” This notion was not invented by 19th Century evangelicals; Gwynnie wants to remind you that it is a Biblical promise made by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah and realized through Jesus: (Jeremiah 31:31-34, NLT) "The day will come," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife," says the Lord. "But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the Lord. "I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their family, saying, `You should know the Lord.' For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will already know me," says the Lord. "And I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sins." Throughout our culture, we are being encouraged to break that new covenant as well as the old.
Wednesday, July 6. 2005
Gabriel Garcia Marquez If you have not read 100 Years of Solitude, your brain is experiencing a Garcia Marquez deficiency syndrome, even though you may not be aware of it. However, I want to mention a very short book of his, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Knowing the outcome in advance adds to the suspense of this tale about Latin vengeance: On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit.
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