Wednesday, November 17. 2010
Is this an antique Colonial or a reproduction? Defend your judgement with details.
Tuesday, November 16. 2010
This morning, my 5th grader Jason asked me to help him choose a handicap for him to write an essay about for “abilities” day. I suggested “idiot savant”, since it demonstrated an advanced ability despite a severe disability.
His teacher had never heard of idiot savant! (Jason had the dictionary definition with him, to enlighten her.)
After school, we went to the annual Scholastic book fair. There wasn’t a single classic of literature, even in a child version. There wasn’t a single biography of a great person. There weren’t any geography books. There were no science books.
Jason reads at a 7th grade level. He read The Count Of Monte Cristo a few months ago. He invented something last term that a patent attorney is looking at now. He is in 6th grade math, doing elementary algebra.
I asked the teacher at the cash register where the classics were. She pointed at Diary Of A Wimpy Kid!
I asked where any books were beyond the 4th or 5th grade level ones there. She pointed at a cook book, saying that is difficult.
I guess that is why she is a teacher. Pablum is easy. And, this is one of the highest rated public schools in San Diego County.
That question is posed by Bryan Caplan on the signaling value of education, here, via our reader Mike's site, here. (Thanks, Mike)
My perspective on the topic is that educational signaling, like dressing well, good manners, or possessing a good pedigree, will only take you so far in life - maybe to your first or even second job, but it alone will not lead to a happy and productive lifetime white-collar career or careers. That requires fortunate combinations of personality traits including social skills, a bit of dignitas, leadership skills, savvy judgement, a quick penetrating brain, good ability to assess others, a cheerful but forceful disposition, integrity, good intuition, etc., of which many folks lack at least one element. (I lack more than one of those, which is why I am a Partner and not an employee. Like many Maggie's Farmers, I am not fit to be an employee but I am a darn good tough but caring boss: if you don't bs me, I'll be on your side when you screw things up - which you will.)
After the first or second job, the only real value of fancy academic signaling is social. The old school tie networking is highly over-rated these days (except amongst the Dartmouth Gang and the prep school kids who help their own tribe no matter what. Yalies? Not much anymore, since Yale went psychotic).
When we interview at my shop, we partners interrogate the candidates first, and glance at their resumes afterwards. We like to size a person up. Get the cut of their jib. We do not like slick, and we do not like negativity. We have a soft spot for vets and/or people with a strong sport because those things matter to us. We see through bs like a laser. We enjoy dry humor as well as raunchy humor, and are bored by conventional thinking and ordinary "nice" personalities. We try to decide whether this is a person we'd enjoy and benefit from having around every day, somebody we can learn from - and have fun with at dinners and parties. We like to be surprised, and we enjoy quirkiness when associated with brilliance and creativity. And we are looking for the beef: "Teach me something I don't know about ____"
(Admittedly, our candidates are screened first by our junior people, and how they do that is not my concern.)
The grand White Oak of eastern North America.
For the past 40 years, as farming has declined in the Northeast, it is not unusual to see one of these gnarly monsters among a woodland filled with younger trees. Sometimes in the midst of the stands of White Pines which often quickly fill abandoned pastures. The old White Oak is the sign that you are walking through an old cow pasture. Squint your eyes in the woods to eliminate all of the younger trees, and imagine dairy cattle chewing their cud in the shade of that old oak.
This is Frederic Church's View Near Stockbridge, MA, 1847:
I was good friends with one of these giants as a boy. Its lower branches reached almost to the ground, so that you could monkey up to 15' or 20' into the tree by going up those low limbs. Getting higher was difficult going - and slippery going from all of the moss growing on those big limbs.
New England is filled with second-growth forests, not too much climax forest yet. It's difficult to realize now, but in the late 1800s there was hardly a tree standing in rural New England other than in farmers' woodlots - and sugarbush.
My pic doesn't capture it, but this one has about a 5' diameter. We were hunting for Woodcock.
At Maggie's, we love the charms of both town and country - when they get it right. The decline of industrial urbanization and the (government-subsidized) rise of the suburbs - with the move of industry and corporate offices to the suburbs, have left many cities as hollow cores of their former selves.
Lively people like to live in cities if they are vibrant, safe, interesting, attractive - and if there is work. For example, much of Manhattan is so appealing that few can afford to live there.
Malanga at City Journal: The Next Wave of Urban Reform - Mayors Cory Booker and Dave Bing fight to save two of America’s most distressed cities. One quote:
Since the mid-1960s, many big-city mayors and Washington policymakers had argued that the problems plaguing America’s cities—rising crime, deteriorating schools, sluggish economies, and social dysfunction—resulted from national and global economic forces that urban politicians were powerless to resist. Out of that period came an array of ambitious federal programs to aid city residents and revitalize struggling urban neighborhoods. Even though the programs—many of them carried out under the banner of the War on Poverty—did little to boost cities’ fortunes, the refrain that urban woes were Washington’s responsibility became commonplace among mayors and remained so for nearly three decades.
But just a few years after the summit, America witnessed the rise of a new group of mayors who rejected the notion that the federal government—or anyone else—should be their savior.
Read the whole thing. Malanga tells the story well. Link above.
Sunday, November 14. 2010
 I plead happily and mindlessly guilty to a habit of watching stupid action and sci-fi movies on my zone-out Saturday Night Stupid Movie cavalcade.
Last night I broke with tradition and watched a critically acclaimed film, one of the best who-done-its I’ve seen in ages, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
A notable theme: the beautiful, brilliant and troubled heroine refuses to be a victim or accept victimology-type excuses, holding others responsible for their actions and taking vengeance on those who commit heinous acts upon herself or others. The film is not for the squeamish.
There are two more films in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. I really look forward to another two Not Saturday Night Stupid Movies.
The films are from Sweden, and if you go to Set-Up on the DVD you can get it dubbed well in English instead of distracting subtitles. You don’t want to miss a second.
The plans for the new National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall in Philadelphia looked good to me. And, my friend, historian Judith Klinghoffer volunteered to be one of its first docents.
But, the newly opened reality, as Judith Klinghoffer describes, is empty of most of the American Jewish experience. As she puts it, “The architects were instructed to make sure that 'there was to be nothing religious in the Museum' and they have done just that.”
The contents of the exhibits:
Jews are indubitably free in America, but just how free do they feel? Or, to put it more precisely, how free do the museum creators feel? Do they feel free enough to assert their deep commitment to their age old religion? Do they feel free enough to acknowledge their ties to the global Jewish family? Do they feel free enough to take pride in their outsized contribution to America?
No. Instead, Judith wrote to the museum's leadership, "the museum almost seems to me an all out celebration of American Jewish radicalism."
Bummer.
Judith Klinghoffer has the credible background to criticize:
I have studied Jewish History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with such eminent historians as Shmuel Ettinger and Saul Friedlander, have a PH.D. in American history, wrote numerous books and articles about a myriad of topics including on American Jewish history, my teaching experience ranges from Hebrew Day school to Graduate school and I currently write an acclaimed historical blog such eminent open minded rabbis such as Richard L. Rubinstein and Arthur Waskow deem worth reading and becoming my efriends.
Thanks again for the invite, dear friend. (If you wondered, it's gents only - and tobacco enjoyment is encouraged. Jacket and tie for dinner, of course. Traditional American, like Maggie's Farm.)
That's Harpoon UFO in the Growler. Their UFO is good stuff.
A fellow hunter at the lodge this weekend had his Spinone with him. (Pic of his pup below) This was a new breed to me. A pointer. They seem to run 70-80 lbs. His owner says that if you want one, make sure you buy it in Italy, not in the US. Relatively slow, methodical, and errorless hunters, it seems, with a style which sounds similar to that of the Munsterlanders: they do not run crazy, but search carefully and relentlessly, at a steady human pace.
It's all in the genes. (You would like this dog, Craig.)
His dog was very well-trained (in Italian commands, eg "Posto!"). He told me that they say in Italy that the face of a Spinone should look like an old philosopher. His dog had that look, and insisted on slobbering me with drooling kisses - perceiving, as any wise philosopher dog would, that Bird Dog is a dog guy.
The breed is said to be an ancestor of all of the pointers, with a pedigree dating to c. 500 AD. The fur is thick and wiry.
I could use a spare Spinone around the place (although they look like tick magnets). A good excuse for another trip to Italia.
Does due diligence need to include going undercover?
Some at the Brooklyn Law School have their panties in a knot about an authorized photo shoot by Diesel, known for youthfully pushing the clothing envelope.
For a fee to the school, Diesel took over the law library, and had fun hitting the books: “what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers.”
The panties uptight response:
"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man.
"Ugh. The library fantasies are now relentless."…
Red-faced school officials said they were duped by Diesel.
"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.
My favorite:
In one shot, a woman crouches over a man lying facedown on a desk covered with legal tomes, with the rear of her pink panties bearing the words, "Today I am your school teacher."
His gray undies answer, "Tonight I am your student."
The law school spokesperson let this slip show:
But she admitted that Brooklyn Law events director Chris Gibbons was in attendance during the shoot, while the nearly nude models crawled all over the library's desks and each other.
The spokeswoman said she did not know whether Gibbons shouted "Objection!" when the ladies got lewd in the library.
See the photos for yourself. Now crack those books, and smiles.
Saturday, November 13. 2010
Our post this week about Grizzlies reminded me of Kephart's 1906 classic, Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness.
It's very much in the Teddy Roosevelt vein, and I have no doubt that he read it.
Is this image via Moonbattery fair, or just a cheap ad hominen shot along the lines of "Bush is retarded"? Name-calling.
As I understand it, "narcissism" covers a spectrum from wholesome self-respect (which must be earned), to dangerous sociopathy (manifested by an inability to care about, or even to deeply recognize, the existence of others except as tools).
The Wiki piece on Malignant Narcissism says this:
"The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism."
That sounds pretty bad. To understand these things, one really needs to understand in detail how a person relates to others and what they mean to him. You can't do that by watching somebody on TV.
Here's a post on the topic: Narcissism in High-Functioning Individuals – Big Ego or Severe Disorder?
Friday, November 12. 2010
President Obama, are you listening? Or, would you rather raise taxes and regulatory costs on smaller businesses?
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports a study by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young that, not only do entrepreneurs create more jobs, entrepreneurs give more to charity than large, established companies.
Entrepreneurs give twice as much of their profits to charity as more-established companies, according to new research released today by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young.
Entrepreneurs, the study found, allocate a median of 3 percent of their corporate profits to charity. That is more than double the median 1.2 percent of profits found in The Chronicle’s latest corporate-giving survey of the nation’s largest companies.
Not only that, but "Nearly 70 percent said they started supporting charities while building their business, before it was successful."
 I have never had bad grits, but some afficionados get fussy about their grits.
Come to think of it. friends gave us a big bag of stone ground grits a while ago. They were very good.
The above is the title of Boortz' post this week. It is indeed plunder. He quotes Bastiat:
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
People are finally waking up to this issue. Lasky at American Thinker: The GOP's First Target Should Be Government Worker Salary and Benefits:
There has been a long-running vicious cycle playing out over the years. Politicians (mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats) have been signing generous agreements with government workers and their unions. In return, the government workers provide a solid voting block, and the public employee unions can use their enlarged dues to funnel money to Democratic campaigns. There was a reason -- beyond their leftist ideological beliefs and animus towards businesses -- that both Barack and Michelle Obama counseled people to go to work for the government. Those government workers become a special interest group in the pockets of Pelosi and company.
Who is greedier: the government unions who want stuff extracted from the taxpayers by their political allies, or the struggling taxpayers who produce the money in the first place?
Thursday, November 11. 2010
New York aristocrat Rosalie Edge was a crank, a Suffragette, and an ardent conservationist. A bio of her came out last year: Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists.
Among the many causes she took up, one was protection of raptors from the mass slaughter of her era. She bought Hawk Mountain in Eastern PA and created the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. A high point on the Eastern raptor migration flyway, Hawk Mountain had been a popular site for the slaughter of raptors by gunners who believed they were going some sort of good while having fun.
Hawk Mountain is now a foundation engaged in conservation education programs. It remains an excellent viewing spot in fall migration season. (Photo from the Hawk Mtn website.)
How tasty does this look? These are the $12 lunches at Republic on Union Square, NYC. We love Asian rice-noodle soups and dumpling soups at Maggie's. We like Union Square too. I could tell you stories about what it used to be like, back when I lived for a while on University Place in the Village (just across from Dylan's old hang-out, the Cedar Tavern). It was really bad. The cops would pull dead guys out of the bushes and off the benches when making their morning rounds. ODs, some stabbings too. That was back, before Giuliani, when the pundits said that NYC could not be governed.
You should see it now. A bar and cafe with live music in the small park, a dog park, great restaurants all around. Two off-Broadway theaters. Park guys picking up litter, and even an unobtrusive police presence - on foot. Not in patrol cars. Putting cops back on the neighborhood beat has worked very well in NYC. Patrol cars should be only for back-up and rapid-response, in urban areas.
Wednesday, November 10. 2010
From Dan Gardner's So is the world predictable or not? The environmentalists' contradiction:
I recently wrote a book called Future Babble (to be released Oct. 12), which is about expert predictions, why they fail, and why we believe them anyway. The experience of sifting through heaps and heaps of failed predictions has made me quite sympathetic to Suzuki's first theme of humility. We truly are awful at foreseeing what is to come. And there's little reason to think we'll get much better. Indeed, key properties of complex systems make prediction inherently impractical or even impossible. We really should be humble. And cautious.
But how can a humble and cautious man say we are "past the 59th minute"?
In a review of Gardner's new book, Steven Pinker says:
“It’s rare for a book on public affairs to say something genuinely new, but Future Babble is genuinely arresting, and should be required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and anyone who listens to them. Mark my words: if Future Babble is widely read, then within 3.7 years the number of overconfident predictions by self-anointed experts talking through their hats will decline by 46.2%, and the world will become no less than 32.1% wiser.”
– Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
 With protection, the Griz populations of Yellowstone and parts of the Front Range have slowly grown, naturally leading to more encounters with humans.
Nobody in the 1800s would go out playing in Griz Country without a firearm.
Grizzlies are not predatory carnivores, but they are mainly opportunistic carnivores, meaning that, if they find a dead, injured, weak or newborn mammal, they will be happy to eat it. Their main foods are grasses, sedges, roots, berries, fish, ants and bugs, etc. They aren't hunters.
Generally, Grizzlies try to stay away from people - unless the people are camping with bacon on the griddle or have other tasty food - bear bait - around the camp.
In Yellowstone, there have been recent incidents of Griz maulings of people. Perhaps many visitors to Yellowstone have a romantic and edenic vision of nature. I have been in Griz Country, and I would never camp in it. I figure that, to a Griz, a human is not much different from a helpless newborn Moose or Elk.
Furthermore, I'd be more comfortable either on a horse or well-armed - preferably both.
Unlike this commenter, I do not think we should kill all the bears. I think we should simply teach people who want to explore wilderness to be prepared for it and to understand the risks. Woodcraft. Same thing with rattlesnake country. Same thing as mountain-climbing. People die.
It's not Disneyland out there.
Tuesday, November 9. 2010
 Yesterday was a good day to pull some favorite field guns - bird and duck guns -�out of ye olde gunne closet for a little pre-season cleaning, check-up, and oiling. That .22? Haven't used it in years so I grabbed it too for a little maintenance. The old single-shot 12 ga. is for the little one to practice with. There was some new rust on the barrel of the beat-up Mossberg pump I use for sleet and mud and salt-water duck hunting, but a little surface rust doesn't bother me.
It's a good thing I checked things over, because I discovered that I have lost the choke tubes for my Beretta semi-auto and for my Browning o/u with the gold engraving that I use mostly for clays. The tubes are nowhere. I think I left them somewhere last year, probably on some hunting club's gun bench when I was changing chokes. This means a costly visit to Briley's website because these guns now all have skeet chokes in them, and I like a little more flexibility. For example, a light-modified choke for ducks (which shoots steel shot like modified - but I am giving up on steel, mostly, except maybe for large flocks of Snow Geese, which, as they say, "go down like a prom dress.").
Not that it really matters - I can't hardly hit anything anyway since I injured my shoulder a couple of years ago.
I store guns in these silicone-impregnated gun socks, always with the barrel down so any loose oil doesn't leak into the wood and weaken it.
Christians are oppressed, persecuted and murdered in many countries. Most of those countries are Muslim. Some are communist, as in North Korea and Vietnam.
There are few who speak out for them. Most Westerners ignore their plight, often in pursuit of trading profits, more often out of the same self-delusions that excuse tyranny but attack minor flaws in allies. Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary's Contentions blog calls it Human Rights Policy Gone Mad. "There is no better example of the cul-de-sac of leftist anti-Americanism — that insatiable need to paint the U.S. as the source of evil in the world — than Obama’s human rights policy, which is, quite simply, obscene."
A new organization, Open Doors USA, is formed to combat the festering ploy by the enemies of free observance of religion to have the United Nations, in effect, endorse their suppression of free observers.
The Defamation of Religions Resolution, introduced in the UN, seeks to criminalize words or actions that are deemed to be against a particular religion, especially against Islam. Although proponents justify the “defamation of religion” concept as protecting religious practice and promoting tolerance, it really promotes intolerance and human rights violations of religious freedom and freedom of speech for religious minorities in these countries.
Why: The Defamation of Religions Resolution has the effect of providing international legitimacy for national laws that punish blasphemy or otherwise ban criticism of a religion.
Here's their introductory video:
Here is the link to the Open Doors USA website. At the site is listed the countries in which the worst persecution of Christians occurs.
My cheerful, voluble friend at our local Cumbie/24-hr gas station has been working the night shift for 8 months. He's about 25, a recent single Jamaican (legal) immigrant who lives with his Mom. He is not a Rastaman. His Mom is a hospital aide who also moonlights as a home helper. She sings in the church choir.
This morning at 6 AM he announced to me "Hey, Boss, good news. They finally agreed to up my hours. Now I'll be able to work a minimum of 55 hrs/wk instead of 45."
"Do they pay you time and a half for OT?" I ask.
"Of course they do, man. Every hour over 40. The good thing is, now I can begin to put some money aside. You watch me man, I'm gonna need an investment advisor soon."
I asked "How about 60 hours minimum? I did that when I was young."
"That's my goal." he replied. "If I keep doing a good job at 55 hours and don't make mistakes, they will let me have 60. I already worked 60 last week with my extra OT."
"Beats selling beads to tourists at the beach?"
"Oh man, I thank God every day that my Mom made me come to America with her. She forced me, man. I had no choice. She is fat and mean. I was a ganja beach bum. Next week, I'll be an investor. I'm thinking of buying some some Apple Computer."
"What's your goal?"
"I'm gonna have my own Cumbie franchise. Be my own boss. Work 100 hours if I want. Hey, do you think I should buy gold or Apple Computer?"
"I think you should buy your own computer first."
"Hey, I already have that. I am online, man. I taught myself. I read everything there. I read Bloomberg news. These old guys come in early, they say 'Are the papers in yet?' Behind the times, man."
A spirited young lad with Jamaican high school and no college, enthusiastically inventing and building a life in America from scratch, with unlimited opportunity in front of him. Ya gotta love it. I want this kid here.
Via Betsy (a teacher herself), in Boo hoo! Start the pity party for the teachers unions:
Considering that the traditional system of near-lifetime employment, degree- and salary-based pay scales and seniority privileges have done little to improve the nation's woeful public schools or attract talented people into teaching, the NEA and AFT will have difficulty defending the status quo.
Unionization is an insidious thing. It trades security for spirit and heart, changes opportunity and a sense of service into time-serving drudgery. In a rougher era, they were needed. They are obsolete now, and dying a slow death - except for the government employee unions. I blame the supposedly-sainted JFK for that dumb move.
Monday, November 8. 2010
My pal, recently of Israel, sends me this email:
The separation fence made a huge difference in civilian fatalities. A good example of when a government responds well to the fundamental safety of its citizens.
When I think about the fence and the screening of Arabs who want to enter Israel, it is a hardship. Just as trying to get onto a plane today is for so many people. It is a hardship precipitated by a small number of murderers that affects millions of innocent civilians. Same for trying to get into the US today: if you're an alien, the process is more difficult. (An Israeli friend described his "reception" in US recently. Very unpleasant. Yet, he does not hold it against the Americans.)
It is shortsighted to blame the government for doing somethings that protect its citizens (and adversely affects both foreigners and its citizens (Israeli citizens go through unpleasant, routine checks of car, body, etc... when entering any public hall or private facility).
The other side of this is how really effective this terrorist tactic is: make the lives of millions miserable with relatively little effort and cost.
Here's the chart of terror in Israel, before and after. - Fixed
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