Maggie's Farm

Two small Fra Angelicos have been discovered. Cool story, at Never Yet melted.

Below is my photo of the convent of San Domenico on the road between Fiesole and Firenze where Fra Giovanni di Fiesole, aka Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro) worked and lived. You walk in there, and the church is dark, dusty, and empty. Not even an old lady to accept a donation for the church.

You turn the switch for the bare hanging lightbulb in each little side chapel, and you see magical stuff like this:

Literally.

The new head of American Episcopalians doubts Jesus' unique divine nature. (h/t, News for Christians).

Maybe she should find another job?

But could she find one? Divinity School does not prepare anyone for anything but help with worship. That is a fine thing indeed, but what if you want to worship anything?

What if everything and anything is sacred? That's not religion - that's something else.

WalMart always needs cheerful greeters.

I have no doubt that she is a bright gal, but I am not sure that she has heard the music.

Image: Yes, that is the golden calf which is, no doubt, a path to God for modern Episcopalians. And all the people said "Moooo." Hey - we do dig cows, but we do not worship them, golden, or otherwise. Hmmm... if those ancients had discovered ice cream from those cattle, they might have had a worthy object of devotion. Just kidding.

From a piece on paleoclimatology in the New York Times (h/t, Owner's Manual):

Skeptics say CO2 crusaders simply find the Phanerozoic data embarrassing and irreconcilable with public alarms. “People come to me and say, ‘Stop talking like this, you’re hurting the cause,’ ” said Dr. Giegengack of Penn.

Read the whole piece. Classic case of abusing science for a political agenda. The scientific debate hasn't ended: it has just begun.

Image: a spectroheliogram image of good old Mr. Sun

Re-posted from Nov 1, 2005. Was that trip a year ago?

Our bird hunting trip to the Adirondacks this past weekend was a delight, thanks to excellent, lively companionship, but no thanks to an unseasonably early dump of 16" of snow on Tues/Weds. Conditions up north were not ideal for grouse, or for walking in the deep woods and gnarly alder patches. Nevertheless, the mix of good guys, birds, dogs, guns, and tough-walking, leg-challenging woods, followed by excellent tobacco and moderate amounts of good alcohol, is always one hell of a fine combination for the average American male. And, as I always say, "Hunting isn't shopping." Especially the way I have been shooting this year.

On Saturday we headed east, close to Lake Champlaine, where there was no snow, and we had the good fortune to run into a couple of migrating flights of woodock (one flush every five minutes), which redeemed our trip, as did our gala game dinner Saturday night at our gracious hosts at The Hungry Trout, featuring trout, moose, woodcock, grouse, Canada Goose, venison and duck, accompanied by witty conversation and good stories, both the lies and the true.

Thanks to a pal's Citation, (next time you are in one, ask the pilot to show you how fast he can climb that machine, and then lean back) the trip was rapid and luxurious, with all necessary adult beverages. NetJets is one way to do it, but there may be better deals if you shop around, or so I am told - but I do not play in that league.

This photo from Friday, up towards the Canadian border, close to Dannemora, NY.

At Maggie's Farm, we are always skeptical when people try to politicize science, whether the subject is stem cells or climate. Rush Limbaugh always says "Follow the money," but here our rule of thumb is "Follow the power." Since politics tends to be more about power than about truth, I believe that we are wise to be skeptics.

Monckton has a series in the Telegraph: Climate Chaos? Don't believe it, which I highly recommend. If I could remember who linked it, I'd give them credit. Quotes:

This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect.

Next week, I'll demonstrate the atrocious economic, political and environmental cost of the high-tax, zero-freedom, bureaucratic centralism implicit in Stern's report; I'll compare the global-warming scare with previous sci-fi alarums; and I'll show how the environmentalists' "precautionary principle" (get the state to interfere now, just in case) is killing people.

Is Mr. Stern a fearmonger? You bet. TCS. Do human activities effect climate? Sure - they have for 10,000 years, at the margins. But we just have to cope with change. Change is always with us, and we humans are clever sorts.

Image: Work garb in the year 2050, as predicted by global warming fearmongers. Image scientifically demonstrates that the crisis of global warming will result in women going around in scanty clothing. The so-called experts never calculate in just how much money we will all save on winter coats and long johns - and winter heating. Plus the ladies can give their seal coats back to the baby seals.

The crisis of depleted fish stocks in the north Atlantic has been slowly evolving for 100 years. The vast schools of "groundfish" - cod, hake, and haddock -are gone; the redfish are gone; the swordfish and big bluefin tuna are in a fight for survival.

The tale of woe is highlighted this week by a piece via the AP here, and another at the WaPo here.

It's the tragedy of the commons. And these commons" aren't really all that large. Most of the Atlantic is very thin in fish. They congregate, during their migrations, on the banks, like George's Bank, Stellwagen, and the Grand Banks, where their food is plentiful.

Government made it worse; federal subsidies for giant trawlers made it possible for fishermen to eradicate entire populations. And the significant commercial fishing lobby in Maine and Massachusetts - with their senatorial allies in John Kerry and Olympia Snow - adopted a "get it while you can" approach, and local politicians take the bait.

Trawlers not only scoop up entire schools, they also degrade the ocean bottom, and catch the bait fish which end up dead in the nets and thrown overboard - along with the dead undersized cod, haddock, and flounder.

The Bush administration, interestingly, has made some real progress towards unwinding some of the anti-conservation regulations in the Atlantic fisheries, but New England politics remains a factor: commercial fishing is "a way of life," despite the fact that it is now dominated by what you might call "Big Fishing." Bush has been a staunch conservationist about fishing in general, also here, most recently. This summer, he signed a bill creating the world's largest marine preserve.

I always have hoped that fish farming would ge a good solution. It's been successful in some ways in some areas - salmon, for instance, oysters and mussels. But problems with disease transmission sunk the cod farming attempts in Canada.

It may be far too late to rebuild the Atlantic fishing stocks. There is a tipping point at which restoration cannot occur. And it is a damn shame, because for us at Maggie's Farm, we care not only on conservation and stewardship grounds - we love to eat fish, and we love to go fishin'. We gain hope from the story of the Striped Bass, which is having a real resurgence since commercial fishing for them has been controlled.

I just finished a book, The Doryman's Reflection: A Fisherman's Life, by Paul Molyneaux. It's not a great book, but it gives a good flavor of what is going on from a guy who has seen the transition from the old to the new ways of fishing, and who understands the regulations, and the science too.

The concern about our fish is not wacky greenie hysteria, it's not crying wolf. It is as real as what happened to the Passenger Pigeon and the Buffalo. There is a role for government here (is that not shocking to hear from us libertarian-minded folks?), and it shouldn't cost the taxpayer a penny.

But, if done right, it will hurt the brave fishermen who daily risk their lives in the rugged and most dangerous occupation in the US. Sad, but necessary: these are not guys who could switch to an office job. The industry has succeeded beyond its ability to sustain itself.

One of the few large Ice Age Pleistocene mammmals surviving in North America, and still in some parts of northern Europe, is the Musk Ox. I am always surprised to remember that there are Musk Oxen in Canada - they are rarely a subject of cocktail party conversation - unless you have the bad luck to be chatting with the dull and pedantic Bird Dog.

They are the Bison of the Tundra - but they are not bovines, despite their appearance and name. They are closer to goats.

Remarkably, there is a group in Alaska which is breeding them for domestication, which does seem 6000 years too late. A bit about these remarkable critters here.

Can they be hunted? Once you get up there, it's too much like shooting a cow in a pasture. The Eskimos kill them, though, but they kill anything, including seagulls.

Welcome to the Farm, all of you friendly visitors from RWNH. Check out ye olde blogge, and visit us again - we are unpredictable, and pretty good.

Everybody else is commenting on Kerry, and our editor wanted something from me, since he is my Senator (although I have never voted for him).

Let me begin by saying that I do not think that Kerry misspoke. I believe he said what he meant, regardless of whether it is what he was scripted to say.

Why do I think that? Because what he said is classic, typical Eastern lefty condescending elitist talk: I hear this kind of thing at every Cambridge cocktail party. It is completely normal talk in the Kerry's circles. And because he is still stuck in 1968.

But, just for the heck of it, let's be generous and give him the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that he made a non-Freudian slip of the tongue.

Say he made a little mistake of wording, but that can be a big mistake for politicians: they are not supposed to ever say what they really think.

And when they make a mistake, regardless of how it occurred, the right thing to do is to say that you goofed.

Everybody makes mistakes in life - mistakes of judgement, impulsivity, recklessness, fecklessness, foolishness, nervousness, over-emotionality, or sheer cussedness. But mistakes stick to a person when:

1. they crystallize something already felt about the person (eg Dukakis and the tank helmet, or Dean's scream).

2. the mistakes are so repetitive that it is clear that they are not anomalous, but personal characteristics (eg Clinton and Monica, or Mark Foley - remember him?).

3. they are mishandled in such a way as to make a smaller goof into a big mistake (eg Clinton and Monica). We recommend self-deprecating humor as the best way to go.

4. it's a key moment, like an election, (or in romance) when every little thing is scrutinized. (eg in a passionate moment with Bill, sighing "Oh, Carl, you're so...manly.")

Kerry's little slip had the misfortune of embodying all of the above.

Image above: Kerry at Yale, where his grades were worse than George Bush's. Believe me - neither of them could get into Yale today.

 Image: from AOL news.

(Editor's note: Dr. B emailed me this incomplete draft to look over, but I figured we'd post it due to timeliness. She can complete it at her leisure. I added the images.)

Thanks to our Aliyah Diary guest author for bringing to our attention Armand Laferrere's essay The Huguenots, the Jews, and Me. Laferrere's piece explains some of the history of the growing links between Protestants and Jews in a hostile world.

The book by Matthew Levitt is Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. Levitt, now deputy assistant secretary for intelligence in the Treasury Department, is interviewed here.

Levitt's "Hamas" (AZURE 26, Autumn 2006, reviewed by Leiter) and Laferrere's "The Huguenots, the Jews, and Me" are conceptually
related.

Laferrere's deeply personal essay describes a worldview established by the Reformation, refined by Calvin, and later articulated by Max Weber.  This worldview, Laferrere writes persuasively, connects the French Huguenot (Calvinists) and himself to the Jews.  Laferrere explains this in terms of the French Catholic persecution of the Huguenots. But Weber teaches us another perspective.

Weber, an economist and sociologist, connected the economic/social rise of capitalism (i.e. the rational group/societal pursuit of economic gain) with  Calvinist revision of a religious worldview, a revision begun radically by Martin Luther in his shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, but refined by Calvin. The latter emphasized worldly gain as a sing of salvation, emphasized group/societal wealth along with individual asceticism and modesty. That is, Weber argued, Calvinist "religious" beliefs influenced the
new economic belief and actions of capitalism. In fact, Weber cites Ben Franklin's recasting of Calvinist values into very secular anodyne proverbs about work.

How is this connected to the book, "Hamas"? Levitt argues that the contemporary Western constructs of "religion," "charity," "political versus militant" wings of an organization do not hold for Hamas (nor for Hezbollah, nor for militant Islam, including the Iranian regime).  Rather, there is a more seamless fabric of beliefs that cross Western boundaries such as "religion" or "politics" or "economy."

A quote from Leiter's review:

"...It is in this context that Levitt makes one of his most important contributions to our understanding of how terror works. Fungible funds, it turns out, are only part of the problem. The crossover between dawa and terror, he shows, extends to works of charity themselves. Ambulances are used to transport suicide bomb belts, schools are used to hide weapons, and charitable organizations are used as recruiting centers for terrorists. Hospitals are used to procure ingredients for bombs, such as the nitric acid and hydrogen sulfide used to produce nitroglycerin explosives, and hydrogen peroxide to make an explosive called tatp, which is favored by Hamas. Dawa-supported doctors use their freedom of travel privileges to smuggle suicide bombers into Israel. Likewise, libraries supported by the Hamas dawa are used for the dissemination of radical sermons glorifying death and murder, and in what is perhaps the most potent symbol of the link between dawa and terror, mosques are used for storing weapons and hosting operational meetings. In short, Hamas offers a holistic religious doctrine that treats good works toward coreligionists and terrorization of the enemy as two sides of the same coin."
Ironically, Weber makes an argument that with the rise of Protestant/capitalism, the societal (Catholic) compartmentalization of religion (otherworldliness) and secular become woven together. In fact, a change in religious worldview results in a change in secular action (in contrast to Marx's argument).

Clairvoyantly, the editor of Ha'Aretz, Carlebach wrote in 1956, shortly before his premature death, that the West did not comprehend the way of thought of Arab societies and how different is this way of thinking from the heirs of Western Enlightenment.  Carlebach did not use the perhaps more precise concepts nor terms used by Weber, but he seemed to get the basic idea.  And, Carlebach argued, if the West didn't get the difference in thinking about human relationships, then it didn't get the great struggle brewing between Islam and the West.

Levitt's book is a conceptual contribution to a Weberian understanding of the worldview of Hamas and related societies. To understand them better is understand the dedicated (mortal) enemies of not only the Jewish States, but also of a way of thinking and being and living together shared in the West.

Nathan Szajnberg, MD
Jerusalem

Any breed of cattle can be - and is - made into hamburger meat, including old Daisy herself, when her milk production slows down. But today we'll just look at two of the historically popular American beef cattle.

The Shorthorn is a relatively minor breed now, but when it was brought from England in the late 1700s it became popular. It had its origins in Roman times. This is a bull:

The Longhorn was brought to the New World by the Spanish, and was the main Western breed until replaced via hybridization, and by other breeds like the Angus and the Hereford, by 1900. Now it only exists on refuges and there are few breeders, but its gene pool might have something to offer today's breeders.

These three dudes are the modern masters of farce, absurdist and semi-black humor. They all have no trouble making fun of earnest silliness, and all of their humor is dead serious.

A friend turned me on to the Brit Tom Sharpe, who has never been afraid of political correctness. But I never knew about his Wilt series, which is on the way to me from Amazon at this moment. I had only read his two which were set in South Africa. The mental hospital staging a Zulu War as a therapeutic theater piece with the patients taking sides with real weapons is just unbelievable. But so are the people with the rubber suit fetishes.

Peter de Vries, a long-time editor at The New Yorker and Editor of Poetry magazine, and long-time resident of Westport, CT now, alas, dead, wrote a number of droll, warmly satirical novels, most of them about life in Fairfield County. He is the most religious atheist writer I can think of. Adultery, social climbing, book clubs, alcohol abuse, horny adolescents, existential crises, wonderful misfits, nouveau riches, do-gooders, old-time eccentric grouchy Yankees, wacky preachers, and hearty golfers are the grist for his mill. Favorite De Vries quotes: "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be," and "It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." One more: "I was baptised, but it didn't take." Can you label this genre "comic seriousness"?

Carl Hiaasen - bio here - prize-winning Florida journalist and co-songwriter with the late lamented Warren Zevon, has a feel for the dark side of South Florida culture (is there a bright side?) which he illuminates with such characters as Skink, the one-eyed ex-Florida governor who lives in the swamp, eats only road kill, and trusts only vets for medical help. My favorites are Skin Tight, Double Whammy, and Tourist Season.

Editor's Note: This is one of a series of occasional reports from our friend Nathan, who is "making aliyah" this year. For more info about this, and for past postings, click the Aliyah Diary category. I have to say that I am both amused and pleased to see Nathan getting comfortable with firearms. Most Jewish, urban psychoanalysts are not - and that is fact, not stereotype.

Aliyah, October 21

Stopping power is a matter of physics: mass times velocity.  A .45 caliber has greater stopping power but is slower because of its greater mass. The Berretta, using a .22, is faster, perhaps more accurate, but has less stopping power.  The 9 millimeter FN (Fabrique Nationale of Belgium), which I also trained with Friday, is in-between in stopping power.

All this learned within about three hours of my first fire arms training Friday. In fact, the first time I have every shot.  Training for the citizen police force I am doing before leaving Ra'anana for Jerusalem next Tuesday.  Went with Russell, who, I learn afterwards, was a firearms instructor for the Jewish community police force in South Africa. In a multi-gated, guarded community, his house surrounded by fencing and electronic alarms, his mother was tortured with a blow-torch while his wife and two children were visiting. Thieves got through the back patio, as the maid opened the doors. The torture was gratuitous, just for the helluva it, as they had already robbed the house.  After this, Russell and his family moved to Israel.

Back to the .30 caliber shell on my desk.

We train first on the carbine. Brief history for those of us who had never before fired nor held a carbine.  Developed in WWII to be a one-handed rifle for paratroopers and such, the carbine can be held one-handed by its fore-shortened stock, or by its barrel.  I sense that the whole matter here is stabilizing the weapon so you shoot where you intend. To do so, as in a bicycle, you work at becoming one with the weapon, so that it feels an extension of yourself; you put yourself around the weapon (don't accommodate it to your body's idiosyncracies).  Reuven -- a bit potty around midsection, shaved head, sound-proof ear muffs with a whistle hanging from them -- shows five steps to shoot straight.  After cocking the first bullet into the chamber: stock to shoulder; right hand on stock, index finger points down the barrel, towards target; left hand cradles the stock; then shifts back to snug the magazine; right cheek firmly nuzzles stock. Then, finger trigger; squeeze.

(Now, I picture most vividly Reuven in profile, whipping the handgun from holster, right elbow 90 degrees gun at eye level, left hand cocks as in-one-motion rotates gun upright, elbow to side, fore finger points to target, then shoots in bursts.  He demonstrates repeatedly, lightening moves, pivots 180 degrees to us from side to side.  Moves precisely, focused, as if nothing exists but his imaginary fatal target.  I want to be at his side, on his side. Always.)

But, Reuven starts with the Carbine.  He is crisp, speaks in bursts, declarative statements. 80% of terrorist attacks in the past year are in this Sharon/Dan region. He will teach us to stop a terrorist, shoot him.  This is not target practice, it is not sport, nor we will not qualify for Madgam, the SWAT team.  He will teach us to load aim, shoot from standing, kneeling and concealed positions.  Russell later tells me that Reuven covers in 3 hours what is generally taught in three days.

The Carbine.  Designed by convicted murderer, David M. "Carbine" Williams, for Winchester arms, it was first delivered  to the US army in 1942; about six million made and is now on its third generation, the second moving from fixed wooden stock, to foldable. A semi-automatic, it works off a clip, is much lighter than the previous M1 rifle. Effective to 300 yards. Image is of an M4.

No, I am not referring to Washington, DC. I am referring to one of the smallest North American birds, the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.

Yesterday was classic New England weather - 50 degrees and clear in the morning, 70 degrees, drizzling and calm at noon, then branch-breaking wind gusts with a 25 degree temperature drop at 4 pm. By night-time, it felt like fall had truly arrived, and today it was clear and crisp, and the maples showed some red.

All day long, small flocks of Kinglets were fluttering around the shrubs, and poking into the sedum, outside my window. Close enough that you could occasionally get a slight glimpse of the red crown, if they tilted their heads in the right way. But, basically, you cannot count on that as an identifying feature.

These drab, tiny warbler-like guys - but smaller than warblers - weigh about a quarter of an ounce, lay clutches of 12 eggs (a clutch can easily weigh more than the mother), and winter wherever the temperatures stay above 25 degrees. The flocks outside my window are working their way south, but I hope they will hang around for a while.

They must have had a good breeding year up in the coniferous forests, because I have never seen so many.

Image borrowed from the excellent CLO site.

Mooooo. Are you tired of our cattle interest over the past couple of months?

Well, just a couple more cattle posts to go, then the final exam.

Today, wild cattle. There are 12 species of wild bovines left. We already learned that the mighty Auroch, the prized game animal of Polish kings and the ancestor of the domestic cow, has been extinct, alas, since the 1600s. We all know the American Bison and the Cape Buffalo - a member of the Big Five great game animals of Africa (image above), but you cannot name all twelve, and neither can I. Here they are.

Note that the Musk Ox is not among them. It's not a bovine, and it is more closely related to goats.

Image of a friendly Cape Buffalo from the very fine wild cattle site.