Tuesday, September 27. 2005
Glenn Reynolds on the Second Amendment and States Rights In 1995, before he achieved renown as Instapundit, Glenn published this piece (Click here: THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND STATES' RIGHTS: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ) in the William and Mary Law Review to examine the Second Amendment from the states' rights (rather than from the individual rights) standpoint, and in the process is critical of casual Constitutional interpretation by talking heads. He concludes the article: The Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, is a package deal: It is all or nothing, and for each of us there are likely to be parts we dislike. Where such parts exist, the answer is either to live with them or to amend the Constitution, not to interpret pieces of it out of existence. There always will be a market for those who feel otherwise just as there always will be a market for "miracle" diets that purport to let people eat all they want and not exercise. But the Constitution, unlike the diet industry or the mass media, is not founded on giving the people what they want. We forget that at our peril, and as the mass-marketing of the states' right interpretation of the Second (p.1768)Amendment demonstrates, we appear perilously close to forgetting it now.
I think the right to bear arms is, or should be, an individual right, but the "thought experiment" was an interesting way to approach the issue of states' rights, and reveals Glenn to be a disciplined thinker.
Monday, September 26. 2005
 What's a Steamfitter?
One of those trade terms I've heard all my life, and sounds antique, but wasn't too clear on. They started out as the construction trade that handled the furnaces boilers and piping for residential and industrial steam heating and other steam-powered equipment, but nowadays steamfitters are the guys who do installation and maintenance of heating, ventilation, and refrigeration equipment. It's an apprenticeship trade, whose unions are generally closely associated with pipelayers, plumbers, and pipefitters. Pipefitters? Not sure how different they are from steamfitters and plumbers, but all kinds of industrial piping. Pipes and welding. Good, honest, physical work, not like mine. Photo of a nice steam boiler and spacious boiler room.
Another offering by Julian Beever, the English street chalk artist. Notice the way the guy steps around the "hole." 
Saturday, September 24. 2005
Why Citizens must be Armed, #2 Part 1 here. Part 2 here - thanks, Instapundit.
Thursday, September 22. 2005
 Darkness at Noon
Hitchins has done us a favor by highlighting Arthur Koestler in Slate magazine. Koestler was a Hungarian Jew who spent much of his life searching for something to believe in: Marxism, Zionism, hedonism, and who ultimately committed suicide. His disillusionment with Marxism resulted in the anti-Stalinist Darkness at Noon which is, or was, on every high school reading list. A couple of quotes from Hitchin's piece: From the first page of Darkness at Noon you become aware that the daily realization of impending execution is a powerful stimulus, both to reflection and to fatalism. Koestler's chief character, Nicholas Rubashov, is modeled on those former Bolshevik intellectuals who made full "confessions" of fantastic and abominable crimes at the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. And, because Koestler had by no means forgotten what he had learned about the dialectic, he decided to place Rubashov in a dilemma from which he himself had escaped. What if the opponent of Stalin is still half-convinced that Stalin is morally wrong but may be "historically" right? He may decide to put his name on the confession and hope that history will one day vindicate him. His last duty to the Party may, in other words, be suicide. Another:
Orwell's more widely read Nineteen Eighty Four, which has many points of similarity with Darkness at Noon, makes the same terrifying point that the fanatics don't just want you to obey them: They want you to agree with them.
One more: Throughout the novel, Koestler is at pains to stress the similarity of totalitarianism to religion and to make the related comparison between dissent and heresy. It was actually his co-editor, Richard Crossman, who came up with the title The God That Failed for the anthology that included the ex-communists Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright, and many others. Memorable though the title proved to be, a better one might have been Another God That Failed. For the rest of his life, Koestler swung between various forms of rationalism and pseudo-science. He was one of those people who is so intelligent and polymathic—and, one suspects, so easily bored—that no topic could detain him for long.
Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, September 20. 2005
Semicolon Wars It seems like a fine thing to have a debate raging which has nothing to do with politics. Where do you stand on the semicolon issue? Some love 'em, some hate 'em, and, difficult as it may be to believe, some people are actually indifferent to the subject. I happen to enjoy colons, semicolons, ellipses, dashes, parentheses, and any other things on the keyboard, but I sometimes wonder whether some of that is pure laziness, or lack of time for editing. From a piece by Butterworth in Financial Times: Big deal or not, there is really only one use of the semicolon that is “more or less mandated”, says Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of About Town, a monumental account of The New Yorker magazine (whose history is marked by fractious debates over the placement of commas). And that is to separate series elements containing commas (for example, “The cities represented were Albany, New York; Wilmington, Delaware; and Selma, Alabama). The other principal uses, says Yagoda, are discretionary: “That is I might, with total grammatical correctness and without changing my meaning in the slightest, choose any one of the following: 1. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; and that is why it is worth examining.’ 2. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash, and that is why it is worth examining.’ 3. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; that is why it is worth examining.’ 4. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash. That is why it is worth examining.’” Deciding which of the four to choose is strictly a matter of sound and rhythm, says Yagoda - that is to say, personal style. “Writers who like (consciously or unconsciously) to stop and pause, and/or who are under the influence of Hemingway, choose 4. Those who like balanced rhythms might choose 3. Those aiming for a ‘transparent’ style might choose 2. And those who are a little bit enamoured with the sound of their own voice might choose 1.”
Read entire.
Guns and Hunting Two sites: An intelligent rifle website. And Deer Hunting.com.
Monday, September 19. 2005
Well Shiver Me Timbers Grab your cutlass, drink some grog and work on your "Aaargh," as today the nation observes "Talk Like A Pirate Day," a great opportunity to indulge your buccaneer fantasies or simply annoy your friends and coworkers. The official site has information on the "history" of the holiday as well as a helpful pirate glossary to inform ignorant landlubbers.
Friday, September 16. 2005
Sensitive Men As a female who enjoys the company of men, I find "sensitive" men unappealingly slimy. They are either weenies, or manipulators. You can care about somebody without wearing it on your sleeve, and real men do not wear it on their sleeve. Real men show things in action, through the way they live, and not in words and show and expressions of emotion and empathy. That's mostly the female department. All that you guys are allowed to do is to listen to us, or to pretend to, and to make occasional noises to indicate that you might be paying attention, or that you are, at least, awake, after we have given you our all and you are at peace. We know you love our magnificent pleasure-filled bodies, and the charming way we turn our heads to glance at your studly selves across a crowded room, or the way we put our hands in the back pockets of our jeans, Bette Davis style, but we'd like to imagine that our hearts and souls matter to you, too. Grant us that fantasy, fellas. It means a lot to us. We are needy souls, and it isn't our fault. God made us this way. Why does this subject come up? Well, Right Thinking has another one of his deeply sensitive and thoughtful reactions to a study of why men die before women - a study which suggests that if men would become sensitive liberals, they might live longer. A sample of his impressive, if anectdotal, scientific analysis: So, in other words, turn men into pussy liberals, and they’ll live longer. What a crock of shit. The real reason men don’t live as long is because women drive us to the grave. Really. Think about it. Our sex lives are over in our mid-30’s if we are married, so we have nothing to live for outside of football, gambling, and strip joints. If a man is not married, then he is chasing young ass around the nightclubs, which includes lots of drinking, which also leads us to an early death. I wonder how much teabag tax money was wasted on this “study.” Any study that doesn’t say its women and their constant nagging and bullshit that drives us to an early grave, is 100% scientifically invalid.
A persuasive case, no? Girls and ladies, take note.
Saturday, September 10. 2005
 From Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie:
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you awake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind, and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on. The J.M. Barrie website is a good source of info on the enormously popular turn-of-the-century Scottish playwright. He had so little confidence in the commercial potential of Peter Pan that he underwrote its production himself, so as to protect investors. After the play became successful, he wrote the book. Like Lewis Carroll and Arthur Conan Doyle, his "minor" work is what he is remembered for.
Thursday, September 8. 2005
 Sir George Martin
Known as the Fifth Beatle, Sir George surely deserved the term. Producer and advisor on all of the Beatle's records (except for "Let It Be," produced by Phil Spector), he also did all of the orchestration and performed on many of the records. Without doubt, he is the guy who took their raw talent and charisma and shaped it into something big. When he first heard their demo in 1962, he commented "Awful," - but he liked the fellows when he met them, and enjoyed their humor. One of his early moves was to replace drummer Pete Best with Ringo, a better drummer from a competing Liverpool band. A grown-up (born 1923), an ex-lieutenant in the British Air Force, a devotee of classical music and an experienced producer who had worked with Peter Ustinov, Peter Sellers, Spike Mulligan and Dudley Moore, it was great luck that he decided to take on the unknown Liverpool and Hamburg bar-band The Beatles. Sir George lent stability and musical sophistication to the band, and he knew his way around a recording studio. Sir George is, sadly, now hard-of-hearing and getting on in years, but Beatles afficionados (and who isn't?) can get a good sense of the Beatles' evolution, and of his role in it, on the 1996 The Beatles Anthology, a fine series to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon while puttering around. (In their brief, very productive 10-year life, it's hard to decide on a favorite Beatles album, but I would have to say that "Revolver" is their best. Not to disparage any of their other stuff. "Rubber Soul" is up there too, but for pure simple wholesome joyful pop, their first American release, which I still have on vinyl - "Meet The Beatles" - is great clean fun and full of memories for me and everyone else of my generation. It holds up well, too, if you don't need ugliness and evil in your pop music. But I cannot get into favorite Beatles - Hey Jude, Penny Lane, I Wanta Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, and the magical She Said She Said...it's endless. Oh, also Revolution, the B side of the single Hey Jude - the tune that corrected millions of impressionable adolescent minds. If you young pups want to Meet the Beatles, listen to all of their recordings - in chronological order. Satisfaction guaranteed.) Frank Houston did a good piece on Martin in Salon in 2000, here. A brief intereview with him here, on his composing the score for the movie Yellow Submarine.There is a brief bio of Sir George on Wikipedia. There is a better and more extensive one here - click on Biography of Sir George Martin and it will appear. And more on him at this website. I am sure that a Knighthood is a fine and very cool thing, but Sir George has a far better reward for his work - the delight and gratitude of millions.
Wednesday, September 7. 2005
 Matisse
However familiar his work is, the man himself has been a mystery. No longer. From Schjeldhal's review of Spurling's multi-volume biography of Henri Matisse, in The New Yorker: How can intellectual potency be claimed for an artist whose specialty, by his own declared ambition, was easeful visual bliss? It’s a cinch, now that Spurling has cleared away a century’s worth of misapprehensions and canards. Take, for example, the popular notion that Matisse was hedonistic. Hedonists seek pleasure. Matisse served it, as a monk serves God. He was a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns.
Read the whole review to learn more about the man who said that art should be like a good armchair.The piece above is Matisse's Seated Dancer - in an armchair. Notice the way he patterned her skin, like upholstery. The website Artcyclopedia has a good Matisse section here, with paintings listed by museums, and links to photos.
Tuesday, September 6. 2005
 LNG Tankers
Natural gas used to be flared off at the top of oil wells, but it has become economically worthwhile to transport and sell it by means in addition to pipelines. Thus liquefied natural gas tankers are a growing component of fuel transport. As of 2003, there were only 151 operating, and more being built. Most, but not all, have the distinctive row of bell-shaped containers. Their construction is double the cost of oil tankers due to the costs of refrigeration and insulation, and only eight shipyards in the world are building them. We can expect to see more of them around in the future, but their construction is limited by the numbers of unloading terminals. There's some good info on the economics of LNG transport here, and a fine gallery of LNG tanker photos here.
Sunday, September 4. 2005
On an early Sunday morning, we like to call this view from the front porch of the hunting and fishing camp "The Church of Azicohos Lake" (Maine). Use your imagination to add the spooky call of the loons, or, for the real thing, click here. Not a bad spot for morning prayer and worship.
Friday, September 2. 2005
A few quotes from Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence "During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize." and "The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on." and
"...it seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans. The people mostly have fled rather than died, but they are gone. Not all of the facilities are destroyed, but most are. It appears to us that New Orleans and its environs have passed the point of recoverability. The area can recover, to be sure, but only with the commitment of massive resources from outside -- and those resources would always be at risk to another Katrina.
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. " I would quote more from the excellent report by Friedman at Stratfor, but it is a subscription site, and a valuable one, so I hope they won't mind our quotes if we provide their site, here.
Wednesday, August 31. 2005
Sunday evening, Long Island Sound, looking for stripers and blues.
Tuesday, August 30. 2005
Translation Re our piece on translating Petrarch posted yesterday, a reader sent in this quote from the Hebrew poet H. Bialek: "Reading poetry in translation is like kissing your mother, through a veil."
Monday, August 29. 2005
 Sail a 12-Metre
Does this sound good? 12metre.com on St. Maarten has five retired 12 meters, and they run several races per day. Yes, they have professional crews, but you can go too and they will put you to work.
Friday, August 26. 2005
 Parker
We reported on the death of Rick's black lab Buzz last week, a reformed felon (Buzz, not Rick, well...hmmm, um) who was a hunting machine. The good news is that Parker has just joined Rick's household.
Thursday, August 25. 2005
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: |
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8th grade or less | 6.3% | 6.5% | 6.1% | 8.2% | 6.6% | 9.6% | 5.8% | 6.4% | 5.3% | 25.1% | 25.7% | 24.6% | 3.3% | 3.3% | 3.3% | Some high school, no degree | 8.6% | 8.7% | 8.5% | 5.0% | 4.7% | 5.4% | 13.6% | 13.3% | 13.9% | 16.5% | 17.0% | 15.9% | 6.7% | 6.8% | 6.6% | High-school diploma | 32.0% | 31.1% | 32.8% | 19.8% | 17.5% | 21.8% | 36.0% | 38.4% | 34.1% | 27.7% | 27.4% | 28.0% | 32.8% | 31.6% | 34.0% | Some college, no degree | 17.0% | 16.8% | 17.3% | 10.3% | 10.8% | 9.9% | 19.2% | 18.7% | 19.6% | 13.2% | 13.3% | 13.2% | 17.6% | 17.2% | 17.8% | Associate degree | 8.4% | 7.5% | 9.3% | 7.3% | 6.7% | 7.8% | 7.8% | 6.8% | 8.6% | 5.4% | 4.8% | 6.0% | 9.0% | 8.1% | 9.9% | Bachelor's degree | 18.1% | 18.6% | 17.6% | 29.9% | 29.1% | 30.6% | 12.3% | 11.4% | 13.0% | 8.8% | 8.4% | 9.1% | 19.8% | 20.8% | 18.9% | Master's degree | 6.7% | 6.9% | 6.6% | 12.2% | 15.0% | 9.6% | 4.1% | 3.6% | 4.4% | 2.2% | 2.2% | 2.2% | 7.6% | 7.7% | 7.5% | Doctoral degree | 1.3% | 1.8% | 0.8% | 3.6% | 5.4% | 2.0% | 0.5% | 0.6% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.4% | 1.4% | 2.0% | 0.9% | Professional degree | 1.6% | 2.1% | 1.1% | 3.8% | 4.3% | 3.3% | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.6% | 1.7% | 2.5% | 1.1% | | Number of adults (in millions) | 186.9 | 89.6 | 97.3 | 8.0 | 3.8 | 4.2 | 20.8 | 9.2 | 11.6 | 21.6 | 11.0 | 10.6 | 134.1 | 64.4 | 69.7 | Note: The figures are based on a Census Bureau survey of 50,000 households conducted in March 2004, and |
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.
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