Thursday, March 27. 2008
 I heard one whinny at around 5 AM on Good Friday. It's a treat to hear, and I hope that it means we will have a nesting pair of these pigeon-sized little owls in the area.
Maybe I should put up a Screech Owl nest box, but there are so many trees with holes around here that it's probably not necessary. I have never had to chase them out of any of my Wood Duck boxes, but they are known to occupy them. I had neighbors who had a pair for years using their Wood Duck house on a tiny island in a pond (which seemed reckless of the owls, to me). You could see the owl's face, sometimes, sunning itself in the hole. It's unusual to see them. Practically speaking, the only way you would know that they are around is by hearing them at night. These owls do not mind suburbia at all, and are probably breeding in all five boroughs of New York City. These nocturnal birds are not rare everywhere east of the Rockies, and come in Red, Brown, and Grey races. They do not screech; they have a trill and a ghostly whinny. One more of those eery night-time sounds. Here are their calls. Read the detailed CLO entry on the Eastern Screech Owl here.
Wednesday, March 26. 2008
As I have discussed frequently here, people in America who fall into the poverty income stats (which significantly do not include govt and charity help - or take assets into account like our Maine blueberry famer with a 200-acre farm) because: 1. They do not function well or adjust well in civilized society, for whatever variety of reasons.
2. They don't care and are content with - or at least not motivated by - their economic condition (eg organic farmers in VT, moonshiners in the Kentucky hills, starving artists and actors, people following their hearts, blueberry farmers in Maine, Maine Guides, Indians on reservations where there is little work, ski bums, real bums (including San Francisco runaway kids), welfare and disability addicts, Vermont farm hands, people who remain in the old town after the jobs have left, old hippies in N. Calif., etc.).
3. They don't report their income (there's a huge cash-only economy in the US - not to mention "real" crime).
4. They are the temporary poor - students, new immigrants, people between jobs or people starting out in life or new careers.
5. They ran into some bad luck or made some bad financial decisions and life choices (eg getting over their heads in debt, crushed by medical problems, being single moms, having no savings and living on Social Security, drug addicts, folks in jail, etc.). Furthermore, as long as poverty income stats are based on the lowest X%, it will never go away - even if, as it appears now, American poor have large-screen TVs, air-conditioned homes, and cars - and tend to be overweight. Somebody - not a sociologist - should go out there and interview some poor people and get their real stories. It would be revealing. I know plenty of their stories and know what poverty is about because I work one day a week, pro bono, at a charity medical clinic in Boston - but I cannot tell those stories here. The subject comes up because Steve Malanga has written the definitive report at City Journal: Getting Poverty Wrong, and it turns out that family structure accounts for the main problem. One quote: The Census Bureau’s study on the living arrangements of American children appeared in mid-February. The data show that the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. After peaking in the 1950s—when about 87 percent of all children lived with two parents—the traditional family went through a rapid decline beginning in the 1970s and has continued to shrink over the last three decades, though the rate of decline has slowed somewhat. As part of this sweeping change, the percentage of children living with married parents has fallen more rapidly, down more than two full percentage points, to 66.6 percent of all kids, in the last 10 years alone. Consistent with these decreases has been a sharp rise in the number of children living with single parents and with unmarried parents. The economic impact of this breakdown has been profound. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. The latest Census data illustrate the problem. Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished.
Read the whole thing (link above).
Tuesday, March 25. 2008
As I put my hunting gear away for the summer, I am reminded of a deep truth: When buying hunting trousers, always buy 'em at least an inch bigger in the waist.  I always forget to do this, and then, when I put on layers, I cannot button my pants, which makes me feel like I don't have it all together, which hurts my shooting.
And if it's a Bluebird day, then I can just use suspenders - braces - to keep my trousers up. They remain, I believe, a much under-appreciated item of clothing. Like hats, suspenders need to be brought back into style because it isn't fair that only bankers get to wear them. Bankers wear them for decoration, but their real purpose, of course, is so your trouser waist can be loose enough for comfortable sitting, without falling down. Image: Nice Filson suspenders, rugged enough to last a lifetime in the woods
Sunday, March 23. 2008
 Oh man, do I love getting my investment advice in the comments section of Maggie's Farm. It's Bretton Woods crossed with the Algonquin Roundtable around here.
If you huddle around our investment topic entries, a virtual hobo campfire, burning hyperinflated banknotes, appears in the comments. Everybody's nervously fingering their Mauser triggers and wondering what will happen if they're the first guy to fall asleep with a pocket full of Spanish Main money in their raggedy (but thank god, not leveraged or made in China) clothing. It's great fun. There are, as they say in the garden, a few hardy perennials. Let's have it one more time, for old time's sake: -There's going to be a run on banks! They'll run out of currency and you'll have to settle for deposit slips and lollipops! Um yeah, sure. There's $150,000 on your average mall ATM. But we're all going to be at the window at Mr.Potter's bank trying to get our doubloons before our neighbor does. Then we'll bury it in the yard! It'll be grand. -Buy gold! Gold I say! Yeah sure; of course it lost ten percent of its value last week, but hey, it recently passed the value it had - in 1980. Fantastic investment, that. You would have done better to hoard Member's Only jackets since then and sold them at flea markets near colleges now. You are laboring under the illusion that you're hoarding a superior sort of money, and all you've done is gone from being an equities investor, or a plain saver, to a commodity futures investor. And with all your money in one material. Profoundly dumb -- unless you're Hillary Clinton posting on the Internet under an assumed name. And the Internet doesn't work that way. Everybody is really a guy pretending to be a hot seventeen year old girl. -I bought loose diamonds! This is my favorite. I remember this one fondly since the first time I heard it on a low-rent golf course in the eighties. A guy wearing hand-me-down clothes telling you he's got all his money in "investment grade diamonds" that he knows how to sell in all the international hot-spots he read about in CondeNast in the dentist's office once. "You know," he says sotto voce while shanking a putt, "for when the really heavy sh*t comes down." Let's do an experiment in "investment grade" diamonds, (snerk) shall we? Buy one. Walk right back into the same place you bought it and talk to another clerk. Offer to sell it to him. He'll offer you 30% below wholesale. You paid retail. Of course, if the world turns to the Road Warrior (snerk) every fat housewife has a diamond, superior in every way to yours, (the skinny wives with big boobs have ten) and holds it simply for sentimental reasons. So in a real pinch, everybody sells theirs and your diamonds are less than worthless. And of course, you're assuming that even with running gun battles in the streets over the last Twinkie in the world, the diamond merchants will still be open. Maybe not. At any rate, it won't be a total loss -- you could make metal cut-off saw blades with your diamonds if you've got enough glue, I guess, and go into plumbing, which is an honest profession. I tell you what: let's test our hypothesis. Go into the same diamond store with a $100 fiat currency bill (oh noes! the debbil's money!). Ask as a favor if they'd break it into small bills so you can get money for the meter. Now go back in and give them all the small bills back and ask for your hundred. I doubt they'll offer you $30. But the doomsayers are probably right. You will save a lot of money on your water bill if you drink your own urine to wash down the Kruggerands you're eating in your bunker. I think we can all agree on that. I'm going to break with a long tradition of never offering anybody any advice. Here's mine: Happy Easter everybody! Use your worthless fiat currency to buy a great big ham and a bottle of wine! Enjoy! And God bless you, every one!
Saturday, March 22. 2008
The snow and ice are melting fast.  Spring must be here! It's the time of year when the rich and famous seek riches from alarmism. My friends and I were starting up a company to sell palm trees to the Eskimos, but unfortunately recent satellite data indicate that warming stopped a decade ago. Dang! Our investment is OK though - we shorted Palm Tree Futures as a hedge, and might get filthy rich with those. Plus the government will pay us handsomely not to grow Palms on our experimental Massachusetts Palm farm. (No problem - all of our seedlings died this winter under three feet of snow.) But even if the earth isn't warming anymore, no warming jokes please - it still isn't funny to those who really care. I am doing my part to save the planet: I will alternate between paper and plastic bags until the experts reach a consensus and the science is settled.
Thursday, March 20. 2008
 I became curious about the Irish beauty Mrs. Gilbert (1821-1861), aka Lola Montez, who was a world-travelling adventuress and dancer who broke many hearts during her short but exciting life. Even Sir Harry Flashman never forgot her, and that is saying something.
 Our friend Dr. Merc invited us to address his piece on the Heller gun control case, titled The Roots of Fear. He believes that the purpose of the 2nd was to balance federal power with state power, including the states' power to raise armies of their own - and that the NRA has instilled unnecessary fear in gun users for their own institutional purposes.
As a humble farmer and no lawyer, my take on the history of the 2nd is that it is a mere reaffirmation of ancient English common law which enshrined the right to self defence to all combined with an affirmation of the military power of each state. Since the Bill of Rights is all about being clear about the rights of the individual and the limits of the power of the Federal government, it makes no sense to me that the authors would have slipped anything in there with a different purpose. We recall that the Bill of Rights was a bit of an afterthought. Many thought it was unnecessary, and that such rights of the people were assumed. In the end, NY and others refused to sign without those basic rights being made explicit. At that time in America, no-one would have even considered taking away anybody's private weapons. In any event, I think that the plantiff Mr. Heller made his case when he observed that he can carry a weapon on his job, to protect VIPs and politicians - but not to protect himself and his family. That makes him a second-class citizen in Washington, because I doubt that Mr. Heller could afford his own bodyguard. Viking, who listened to the arguments on C-Span, says: ...my favorite moment was when Justice Scalia revealed his knowledge of firearms: "You mean you can't have more arms than you would need to take with you to the militia? You can't have...a turkey gun and a duck gun and a 30.06 and a 270..."
Lithwick at Slate reviews the oral arguments here, which makes Dellinger's position clear: Dellinger asks the court to avoid turning every phrase of the Second Amendment into a "libertarian right." A well-regulated militia isn't about everyone owning a gun willy-nilly. The Constitution does not create some kind of sacred, fundamental right to guns. If there's a right here at all, he says, it's at the "penumbra of the periphery" of the Constitution: in a shack behind the river where the other unenumerated rights huddle.
Perhaps Liberty is not high on his agenda? Dellinger is walking proof for the necessity of the Bill of Rights, because that "penumbra" is where most of our rights exist (including the rights to privacy, abortion, etc etc). It seems to me that he comes from the position that, if an individual right isn't made crystal clear and specific, then it doesn't exist. He wants to always tip the balance towards government power, and I think that impulse is un-American and ignores Amendment Nine - which I think says it all: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The outcome will be interesting, but not as interesting as the case would be if some restaurateur would take NYC's trans-fat ban to the Supreme Court. That would be really fun.
Tuesday, March 18. 2008
 One of my many planned gardening projects this spring is to put in a row of three tree hydrangeas behind a low fence on which my climbing roses grow (they are New Dawn. Note to rose fans: those New Dawn roses need monthly fertilizer during the summer. In fact, all roses want regular feeding or they will not do well).
I like the old-fashioned look of the tree form, and they can be pruned to keep them small for a garden. The one in the photo is too droopy for my taste, I think, but it makes for a living bouquet.
Monday, March 17. 2008
 "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Was Immanuel Kant's Categorical (ie absolute) Imperative just a fancy way of coming around to the Golden Rule, as Bird Dog suggested the other day? Kant's ethics fall in the category of deontologogical (ie duty-centered) absolutism: he said that one should not lie even to save a life (but I doubt that he ever found himself in that situation). To my simple mind, teleological (outcome-based) ethics, like Utilitarianism, are not ethics or morals at all: our daily actions need to be teleological most of the time, but that is about practical judgement - not morality. As a foundation for a moral code, teleological ethics are insidious and dangerous. Like most people, my moral codes are not carefully thought through. They are mostly inherited from a long line of Yankee Puritans, and Christianity-based. Thus far, they have kept me out of the clink, but have not protected me from doing my share of stupid, cruel, or selfish things. Like most people, I only focus on morals when presented with a moral dilemma that comes up on the radar, because the rest of the time I am on moral autopilot. I guess I'd have to say that my morality is neither deontological nor teleological, but mystical as G.K. Chesterton would say (Ten Commandments, The Great Commandment, etc) in its origins, with a dose of my personal obsessionalism on top. Still, it's an interesting thought experiment to spend a day thinking about how - or whether - my daily decisions might be different if I consciously and deliberately pretend to adopt a different moral foundation. Image: Immanuel Kant Dr. Bliss comment: You are right that one's morality is not arrived at by deliberate thought. Guilt and morality are quasi-internalized during youth. After that, it's all about just learning the rules, laws, and socio-cultural expectations to avoid a messy life. Maybe I will post a draft of a piece I once wrote on the subject for a lay audience.
Sunday, March 16. 2008
I do not think that I like Eliot Spitzer, but I don't know him as a person. I do know that if he came to me for comfort and help, I would be happy to offer it to him as a fellow flawed, sinful, and foolish human. I would pray with him for himself and for his family, who are surely suffering for his idiot behavior. However, his story got the brain thinking about how, if you do 999 good, charitable, loving things in your life, and one bad, illegal thing (not that Spitzer is in that category - I doubt it, based on how he handled his powers as a prosecutor) - you are screwed if you get caught. Nobody will care about the other 999. That is why cops say that there are only two kinds of people - crims that haven't been caught, and those who have been. One must be careful in this life, because it can blow up in an instant.
- reposted from April, 2005
By guest author Shaun L. Kelly His distinct tenor, reassuring and cerebral, was the second-most heard male voice of my childhood. Only my father’s fixed baritone surpassed his as the soundtrack of my years growing up in the greater Boston area. For thirty-two summers - with discernible sagacity and style - Ned Martin served as the principal voice of the Boston Red Sox. In an age where humility and grace slowly receded from our national character, Martin’s modesty and elegance separated him from a host of other announcers – and people. He never intentionally developed a defined signature call for a homerun. The ball was simply “gone”. And yet, he used words as a composer uses the notes on a scale. He seemed to embrace the notion first put forth by Emerson “that every word was once a poem”. There was nothing ever “programmed” about Ned Martin. Cogent phrases seem to tumble from his mouth like falling stars. Unlike most sports announcers, Ned Martin was able to frequently quote from the most gifted bards of English literature - Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Hemingway - in order to put the narrative of baseball into its proper context. He was a reader, and he brought a reader’s sensibility to each and every broadcast. Ned Martin was also a deeply-rooted theorist and philosopher. Because he had dipped into the bonfires of hell as a Marine at the close of the Second World War, Ned described each game as an inherent existentialist. Like his beloved Frost, he had a lover’s quarrel with the world. But Ned Martin was more than just a Red Sox announcer. To me, he served as a personal captain, steering me through the choppy waters of both youth and adolescence - guiding, nurturing, and instructing me as I listened intently, his most loyal and devoted student.
Read rest of piece below:
Continue reading "Thank you, Mr. Ned Martin"
Saturday, March 15. 2008
 That's what my check-out gal said to me today at Home Depot. I inquired "How do you know to say that to me?" She said "Honey, I can just tell."
"God bless you too," I said, although He obviously already did. She found a hole in a manure bag, and ran off to get some tape to cover it, even though I didn't care. I spent $120 on cow manure, but I can get the bull's stuff "free" from the politicians which will cost me much more in the end...but it won't grow the stuff She Who Must Be Obeyed wants to grow. The BS from bulls - or cows - is far more useful to us, and smells better. I am mixing up a wholesome soil stew for boxes and planters. Pansies first, then the really good stuff in a while, after frost season if global cooling gives us a break.
 The family has always enjoyed The Cloister on Sea Island for cozy, comfy getaways. We will miss the old Cloister which felt like home to us, but the new building has opened and it looks good (photo). Their relatively new "Lodge," where I have also stayed, is splendid, and its bar is huge and plain wonderful for an apres golf gin Martini or two.
Their azaleas will be in their full glory soon, if not sooner. For decompression mental-health short and relatively inexpensive vacations (with great golf), it often comes down to a choice between The Cloister and Cambridge Beaches in Bermuda (assuming you know somebody with a Mid-Ocean Club membership). Both places guaranteed glitz-free zones - leave your jewelry at home - and thus Maggie's Farm types of places. Pearls at dinner are OK, but no tacky gold.
Friday, March 14. 2008
Creative destruction, the economists call it. In an unfettered free market, livelihoods are always in jeopardy from the possibility that other demands or desires might supersede your desire to continue in your job for your entire life. I had a rough and tumble job for a long time: logging. It was hard work, sometimes dangerous, but I liked being out in nature, in the company of those like myself. And I wasn't a Johnny-come-lately to logging. I am the last in a long line of loggers in my family. But technology, and the desire of many people who are concerned about the environmental impacts of my trade, keep such as I from working at the only thing I've ever known. The world has moved on, and I must accept that.
It's not that bad really. I could have fussed and protested. Some of my former workmates still go out and log illegally; partly for their daily bread, but mostly I suspect because it is ingrained in their very being. I've moved on. I submit to the will of the greatest amount of people, who use as their instrument the hidden hand of the market to signal me to do something different now. Please do not judge my efforts too harshly; though it's unlikely I'll ever get much better, I try as hard as I can in my new chosen profession.
 This interesting Viamontes essay might be tough sledding for those without some knowledge of the brain, but it is of great interest to those who try to understand people. Neural Substrates of Psychological Change.
In this paper, Viamontes and Beitman consider their concept of the "default brain" which, it seems to me, is relevant to Freud's notion of regression - and the idea of developmental arrest/delay. The adult executive functions (judgement, information, conscience, decision-making, delaying gratification, learning from experience, weighing consequences, etc.) of the mind, when interfered with, abandon parts of their functioning to their Default Brain, which operates on a more animalistic, gratification-and-survival level. Many things can interfere with the achievement and maintenance of the adult executive functions: bad genetics, bad wiring, fear, low IQ, personality weaknesses, emotional problems, drugs and alcohol, illness, emotional trauma, lousy role models, plain old human frailty, etc. etc.: it's such a long list that it's always a wonder to me that so many folks function pretty well in life, well-above our inner reptile most of the time.
Wednesday, March 12. 2008
Definitely useful for low-life politicians too: The 48 Laws of Power. I was introduced to this book by a lovely but rather innocent and sheltered patient who was seduced away from her husband and three kids by a man who, she realized, lived by the principles espoused in this book. She came to see me for help in rejoining her family, but it was too late for that. (Dr. Scott Peck wrote one of the best popular books about sociopathy and narcissism, People of the Lie, which has helped many to become alert to some of the personality types one might wish to avoid.) Of the 48 Laws book, Publisher's Weekly said in 1998: Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince, espousing principles such as, everyone wants more power; emotions, including love, are detrimental; deceit and manipulation are life's paramount tools. Anyone striving for psychological health will be put off at the start, but the authors counter, saying "honesty is indeed a power strategy," and "genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power." Amoral or immoral, this compendium aims to guide those who embrace power as a ruthless game, and will entertain the rest. Elffers's layout (he is identified as the co-conceiver and designer in the press release) is stylish, with short epigrams set in red at the margins. Each law, with such allusive titles as "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," "Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit," "Conceal Your Intentions," is demonstrated in four ways: using it correctly, failing to use it, key aspects of the law and when not to use it. Illustrations are drawn from the courts of modern and ancient Europe, Africa and Asia, and devious strategies culled from well-known personae: Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Catherine the Great, Mao, Kissinger, Haile Selassie, Lola Montes and various con artists of our century... Although gentler souls will find this book frightening, those whose moral compass is oriented solely to power will have a perfect vade mecum.
In other words, those without a functional moral compass and lacking in human empathy: those for whom people are just tools. Everybody has his dark side, but fortunately most of us are not ruled by it. Books like this can let people be aware of what sorts of people there are out there in the big world - even if it is not the intent of the book. As I have said, I trust people who pursue money more than I trust people who pursue power because, best used, money gives you power over your own life - not the lives of others.
Tuesday, March 11. 2008
 It has nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani's "broken window" approach to restoring civilization to NYC (which is no fallacy - it worked well, because providing latitude in the little things, filth, petty crimes, bums and addicts sleeping in parks, hostile squeegee men, etc. implicitly endorses latitude in bigger things, leading to an atmosphere of anarchy that nobody wants to experience).
The excellent Bastiat QQQ yesterday brought it to mind. Bastiat's famous parable of the Broken Window explains how a kid breaking a window, despite the expenditures to repair it, on the bottom line does no favor to the village's economy. While some Keynesians might argue otherwise, I would make the case that, although maintenance of things we care about is a large part of an economy - cars, houses, boats, gardens, horses, dogs, bodies, etc - the fallacy there is the failure to reckon the opportunity cost of the money on the part of the window-owner. I recently posted on the subject of the pseudo-rationality that ensues when the costs of an event are calculated, but is not compared to the costs of inaction or of alternate actions - or the advantages thereof. If anyone were to calculate the global economic advantages of global warming, for example, I think everyone would be praying for it - but I doubt it will occur in any meaningful way.
Monday, March 10. 2008
Quoted from Mankiw: Since 1998, the U.S. population has increased by over 20 million. Nearly half of that growth has come from immigration, legal and illegal. Overwhelmingly, these immigrants enter at the lowest rungs on the income ladder. Statistically, this immigrant surge not only reduces the income of the "average" household, but also changes the occupants of the lowest income classes. To understand what's happening here, envision a line of people queued up for March Madness tickets. Individuals move up the line as tickets are purchased. But new people keep coming. So the line never gets shorter, even though individuals are advancing.
I think that is true. We are an economically mobile nation, with no permanent underclass. People here rise and fall economically depending on their age, life choices, desires, capacities, and luck. Related: The poor in Europe do the same as in the US - but they lack the American outlets for any ambition they might have because their governments sit on their heads. If you define poverty as the lowest 10% in income, American poor do just fine. Worstall. And, of course, if you define it as the lowest 10% in income, you will always have them, even if they have two cars and wide-screen TVs (and do not include govt assistance as income).
Sunday, March 9. 2008
Reposted from 2005 Believe it or not, that question has been the biggest controversial undercurrent in modern neuroscience, and it remains an unanswered question among brain researchers, many of whom adopt a hard-core mechanistic view of the brain-mind issue. Like Scrooge, they might view dreams as a result of "a bit of undigested potato," but that does not do justice to the depth of their thinking on the subject. There are plenty of good books on the subject written by wise and knowledgeable people. I won't write the essay here, but I am convinced that the idea of "mind," "self", "consciousness", and free will are so useful that they must mean something. In normal language, I believe people, or at least most people, have souls. However defined. The subject arises because of an excellent review by Kenneth Silber of two books in Reason, entitled Are We Really Smart Robots? Mr. Silber has an impressive grasp of an immensely complex subject which involves neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and culture. One quote from the piece: "Mind: A Brief Introduction and On Intelligence are thought-provoking and, no less important, anxiety-reducing. By dispelling overstated mechanistic claims arising from recent trends in neurobiology and philosophy, these books serve to combat public fears and forestall a possible backlash against science and technology. Humans can be part of the natural world without being mere machines, and without being outdone by our own machines. "
I recommend his piece to you as an impressive and succinct overview of the issues.
Saturday, March 8. 2008
This piece by Major Shul came in over the transom: In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111's had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a 'line of death,' a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph. I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world's fastest jet, accompanied by Maj Walter Watson, the aircraft's reconnaissance systems officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance. 
After several agonizingly long seconds, we made the turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean. 'You might want to pull it back,' Walter suggested. It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. It was the fastest we would ever fly. I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily, but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar. Scores of significant aircraft have been produced in the 100 years of flight, following the achievements of the Wright brothers, which we celebrate in December. Aircraft such as the Boeing 707, the F-86 Sabre Jet, and the P-51 Mustang are among the important machines that have flown our skies. But the SR-71, also known as the Blackbird, stands alone as a significant contributor to Cold War victory and as the fastest plane ever-and only 93 Air Force pilots ever steered the 'sled,' as we called our aircraft.
Continue reading "Major Brian Shul: "I loved that jet""
 I am told by those who know such things that Platycodon grandiflorus, a member of the Campanula family, belongs in every perennial flower border.
It is a tough plant, has interesting buds, good delicate blue flowers, and it blooms in late summer. What else can you ask for from a plant? You can read all about this plant here.
Thursday, March 6. 2008
 Our first migratory wave of flocks of Common Grackles and Robins arrived here this week from their winter in the southern US. We have spoken of Turdus Migratorius (Robin) here in the past, but not about the Common Grackle, who has been extending his range from the Mississippi Valley across the US east of the Rockies, and north into Canada.
A flock of these large wetlands-loving (but highly adaptable) blackbirds will empty your bird feeder in a few hours, accompanied by their loud screeching and squawking. Our friend Sippican sends this photo of a migratory flock in his yard on the Massachusetts coast last September: 
You can read about the Common Grackle here.
Tuesday, March 4. 2008
The Washington Post is mocking the climate conference in NYC this week. Here at Maggie's we are skeptical about APW, as we are skeptical about most scientific claims (although we do accept the notion of a spherical earth). The only reason we write as often as we do about climate is because the subject has been hijacked by people with socio-political agendas. Were it not for that, we'd only be mildly curious. In any event, we suspect that some warming would be a boon to the world economy and food production, and we suspect that the coming Ice Age will be the real threat to humanity in the northern hemisphere. A graph from Powerline's piece on the conference, which does not extend back to the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago: 
And, just for fun, here's the big picture. As the graph shows, we remain in an extended cold spell, historically - in a tiny little interglacial which doesn't even make a dent on a graph with this time scale. As every money manager knows, the way to lie with graphs is to select your time frame. The earth is shivering (graph reads right to left in time): 
 The link to neoneo this morning about the religious-like fervor of the Obama "movement" led me to this link: How can I recognize a false teacher? It says it all, but unfortunately does not link to the scriptural quotes.
Uncentered souls are often attracted to "movements" - but I think some of Obama's appeal is simply to Dems who dislike and distrust Mrs. Clinton. The promise of heaven on earth will gain no traction with me because I have been around the block once or twice. If Obama fails, it will be because he will be exposed as a phony: it's beginning to happen. And speaking of phonies, here's one more of these fake memoirs. Why don't these folks just label their books as fiction?
Monday, March 3. 2008
Reposted from 2005 Everything is so scary. You can drown in the bathtub, you can cut yourself with a chain saw, you can choke on a steak, you can spill hot coffee in your lap, you can slice your finger with a paring knife, you can get fat from eating bread, you can get hit by an SUV, you can get heart disease from french fries, you can get blinded by a tennis ball, you can get brain-death from watching TV, you can catch mono from kissing a girl, you can fall down the stairs, you can get hit by lightning playing golf, you can lose your sense of reality by studying astronomy, you can get Lyme disease from weeding the garden, you can get a rusty hook in your scalp while fishing, you can get skin cancer from going outdoors, you can get a papercut from copy-paper. Given how treacherous ordinary life is, it should be no wonder that all medical treatments, including medicines, have side-effects too. The recent pulling of Viox and Celebrex from the market puzzle me, because ordinary aspirin seems far more dangerous due to its frequent ability to cause gastric bleeding. Still, every MD I know takes an aspirin a day, not to combat paperwork headaches but to prevent heart attack. My point is not to specifically discuss medical care - I think almost everyone assumes that physicians know how to balance risk, and, nowadays, how to discuss these with patients. When people exercise judgement in life, they not only balance the risks and rewards of choices of action, they also balance the risks and rewards of action vs. inaction. Inaction always has its own cost - opportunity cost. Every fellow who ever contemplated asking a girl out knows what I mean. Or vice versa. My point is to talk about the expectation that life should be safe, and that someone (the gummint?) could or should magically protect us from that reality. That, I think, is part of the infantile impulse behind the wish for the Nanny State. Or the Mommy and Daddy State. This is not to promote a radical libertarian viewpoint. I like the Pure Food Act, and I am glad kids can't buy guns and dynamite. And I don't want to have to caveat emptor in everything I use or buy...but you kinda sorta have to anyway, don't you? Still, the endless seeking to be made safe from risk is a psychological state - a wish that reality be a certain way - and, as such, it is not amenable to correction by adjusting reality. It can only be corrected by growing up ...and by hamstringing the tort lawyers who have fed off, promoted, and exploited, these childish wishes that sometimes lurk even in the most mature people, including me.
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