Maggie's Farm

We may be the only blog in the world who finds slime molds (good photos there of different varieties, including photo below) interesting. The first time you see one on the forest floor, the garden, or the edge of the lawn, you tend to think somebody spilled some poisonous orange glop from a bucket.

They are difficult to categorize: not exactly fungi, and not exactly protista, but probably more like protista - eg animals. Their colony creeps around slowly, munching on bacteria, and when they run out of food, they creep into the sun and form spores, and wait.

There is new science on how this thing adjusts to changing conditions.

That was a huge billboard, many years ago, as you approached NYC from Yankeeland, via the Bruckner Blvd. Levy's rye bread. Good bread, with the whole flavorful caraway seeds in it. The perfect bread, for us gentiles, for ham and swiss cheese, with plenty of mustard!

That old sign was up there for 15 years or more. As a kid, it seemed exotic: I never had met a Jewish person.

Later, they ran ads like the one on the right, in the newspapers. A sort-of precursor of Benetton.

You do not have to be Jewish to find Nathan's Aliyah Diary interesting. Check it out, if you haven't.

Israel is serious about citizenship: it is not a right - it is a hard-earned privilege. Requiring a Jewish doctor/professor from America to work in the persimmon orchards, and to clean the horse stalls, says it all.

Would your doctor do that?

What would you or I be willing to do to become an American citizen?

It just happens that Maggie's Farm has no Jewish staff (except for our guest author Nathan, who posts willy-nilly from various points in Israel). However, we support Israel - not as a US puppet - but as a democratic, free, civilized, peace-loving state which has become the scapegoat of the Middle East, and their favorite hate-object with which they maintain power.

Re-posted from May, 2005

Pacifism

The wonderful Kentucky author Wendell Berry wrote this piece a couple of years ago. There is much in it with which to disagree, but it is a point of view shared by many good people, presented by a fine fellow. I met him one time, and I have to say that I think he's the kind of rugged guy who'd be happy to shoot you if you came onto his farm and messed with his family. But he says not...I think. The view is not far from that of the RC Church, for which Life is the high sacred value, trumping all others. There is a conflict with other sacred values, such as human dignity and freedom. Remember the Brits in the 60's marching and carrying signs reading "Better Red than Dead"? It all comes down to the question of whether anything is worth dying for. The Pacifist might ask a different question: "Is there anything worth killing for?"

"... we cling in our public life to a brutal hypocrisy. In our century of almost universal violence of humans against fellow humans, and against our natural and cultural commonwealth, hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable. Some of us who approve of our monstrous military budget and our peacekeeping wars nonetheless deplore “domestic violence” and think that our society can be pacified by “gun control.” Some of us are against capital punishment but for abortion. Some of us are against abortion but for capital punishment.

One does not have to know very much or think very far in order to see the moral absurdity upon which we have erected our sanctioned enterprises of violence. Abortion-as-birth-control is justified as a “right,” which can establish itself only by denying all the rights of another person, which is the most primitive intent of warfare. Capital punishment sinks us all to the same level of primal belligerence, at which an act of violence is avenged by another act of violence."

This is why I consider Gandhi such an unqualified--you will pardon the expression--ass. The notion that violence is a priori bad or immoral is one of the most pernicious ideas imaginable. As I have said before, it is as immature, stupid and dysfunctional as the idea that your immune system is bad because of the violent manner in which it greets invaders. Pacifism is the moral equivalent of AIDs; it is like equating a compromised immune system with robust health.

Written 8/8/06  

Re-posted from August, 2005

"Redskins": One Indian's View

In a piece by Tucker at Town Hall: "The federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has already ruled that the word Redskins is racially derogatory and offensive." My reaction to such nonsense:

I am Iroquois, by partial but adequate blood. You can see it in my face if you look carefully, but it mainly comes through in my eyes - I can see stuff outdoors that the Paleface cannot. Baby snakes and quiet birds and a rustling leaf and a turtle just thinking and a canvasback hidden in a snowstorm and a red-tail in a cloud. I love the name Redskins. Or Chiefs, or Indians, or anything that reminds us of our ancestry here in the New World.  I do not know why almost any reference to Indians is racist. And I hate the undignified racial and ethnic whining and victim talk from Indians or from anyone else. Everyone should be thanking their God or gods that they are in America. And every human should grant themselves the dignity to not be a complainer. It is childish and reflects poorly on the complainer.

In fact, I don't even mind "filthy savage," which Mrs. Bird Dog has been known to endearingly (?) label me after an unbathed and unshaven weekend clearing brush and drinking Ballantine Ale and covered with sweat and bloody scratches from prickers and branches. It's sort of a badge of pride - our Indian ancestors were not exactly emerged from the Stone Age and we did not bathe and did not change our clothes, and probably smelled terrible, and, compared to Samuel Pepys, we were savages for sure. We were happy to burn people, cut off their genitals and eat them, scalp them, and torture them, and we were always fighting with our neighboring tribes for fun, for glory, for land, or for no reason at all. Our people looked red because of the red-tinted bear fat we anointed ourselves with in the winter to keep warm. We didn't have central heating, or down parkas. Stone Age, although there was a culture worthy of anthropological study, if pre-literate barbarian culture is your bag. So I say quit it with the hyper-sensitive PC BS in our name - I would prefer that the Indian past be remembered rather than erased, stone axes and all.

So Hello Atlanta, Hello Dartmouth - quit erasing us - we were tough deer-hunting, enemy-slaying, stoic, happy-to-die and short-lived braves, and hard-working squash and corn-planting and oyster-picking squaws. Our old ones crawled off into the woods to die when they felt they couldn't keep up. We had a concept of dignity. We learned to handle pain and a difficult life was what we expected. In the Northeast, our greatest discoveries were maple syrup, corn, squash, and tobacco. Good things. We got here first. Probably by mistake, while chasing a herd of Musk Ox across the Bering land bridge and getting lost in a snowstorm, and losing our GPS in the snow, so we deserve no credit for adventurous exploration.

So call us whatever you want, (I prefer being called "Chief") but just don't forget us. We are part of the American heritage, but we were on the wrong side of history. It happens, and we died, mostly from new diseases like colds and flu introduced by the earliest fishermen and explorers long before the Pilgrims, but alcohol didn't do us much good either: Indian Brave like firewater too much. Not your fault, white man - you had your own problems and your own views, and we had no idea what was happening, and in a sense, we are lucky that you English saw us as even human, with souls, thanks to your Christian educations. True Indian braves, like cowboys, never complain.

(Photo: An Ogalala Chief, 1907)

8-6-06                      Shrapnel

Perched on my knee are two shrapnel, a gift from Yovel, the six year old I interviewed Friday  in Kiryat Shemona during rocket fire.  Two of three he found in his back yard, after the Katyusha hit the bright pastel rose painted kindergarten, catty corner from his house.  One is a sphere fragment, fits my index finger tip. It has an organic-looking or geological studded convex surface, ragged edges; its concave side has a single ridge. It feels unfriendly even as I try capping my finger with it.  The other, perhaps four by one cm, looks like a modern steel sculpture, a  miniature fragment from something by David Smith, from inside his polished globes, with nefarious, studded innards.  It has two sharp edges, striated with glistening, brass striations and a central ridge on each side, like some postmodern arrow head. Or some abstract sculpture of a sturgeon, thickened body, lateral lines, its dorsal and ventral "fins" are knife sharp, ridged; one end snub-nosed, the other its fishtail waving laterally.

The car I saw on Eilat Street looked like a sieve, hit by shrapnel.
Another took a direct hit, was burnt black. Still another took a hit
through its rear window.

Re-posted from January, 2006

Kling at TCS considers a new book by Caplan which addresses world views:

Caplan, in a book that eventually is to be published by Princeton University Press, argues that most people do not work very hard to arrive at worldviews that are logically consistent and factually supported, because the reward for rational beliefs is too small. He writes: "we should expect people to...believe whatever makes them feel best. After all, it's free. The fanatical protectionist who votes to close the borders risks virtually nothing, because the same policy wins no matter how he votes."

Of course, I may be as guilty as anyone of believing whatever makes me feel best. But I believe that I have put considerable effort into examining and correcting my worldview. I am no longer a liberal (in the contemporary sense of the term), because my calendar did not get stuck on 1968.

Kling proceeds to discuss a series of political views, assumptions and biases which were prevalent thirty-five years ago, but which persist in many quarters, despite the facts which have emerged over these years. It's a theme to which we often refer on Maggie's Farm, whether the subject is war, race, economics, freedom, education and academia, etc. Some of us must be of Kling's generation, and, like neo-neocon, went through it but grew past it by responding to overwhelming facts. The comfortable brain is a stubborn thing. The piece is here.

(Image is the famous 1967 Pentagon Flower Child taken by the wonderful photographer Marc Riboud.)

Re-posted from August, 2005

I will not defy the copyright to post the New Yorker cartoon in which a scholarly, bored-looking gent in his armchair tosses his half-read book over his shoulder, with the caption "The man who knew enough."

The immediate issue is whether you know enough about cement and concrete. Here are some facts, with some links to read more.

Cement is the glue of concrete, which is a sort of man-made sedimentary rock. When an "aggregate" or "filler" such as sand, gravel, etc is added to cement, plus water, it's called concrete, or mortar when the aggregate is fine sand.

Cement is produced by heating - burning - limestone and clay. The addition of  a little gypsum at the end makes "Portland Cement," which is what all cement is nowadays. The trace of gypsum slows the curing, so it can be worked with more easily.

Water is a critical ingredient of the final product, not just to make a usable mix, but as an actual ingredient of the chemistry of solid concrete, which is a (non-organic) hydrate. Thus, during curing, concrete likes some splashes of water from hose or rain to gain maximum durability. (Thus cement doesn't "dry", it "cures".)

Concrete takes 28 days to mostly cure, but it continues to slowly cure for months thereafter by integrating water molecules into its structure.

Various versions of cement were around long before the Romans, but they were masters of its use, producing theirs with lime and burnt brick or ash. When they wanted to make light-weight structures, as for the roof of the Pantheon, they put empty clay jars amongst the concrete. They didn't think of reinforced concrete.

The art of cement production was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire, and its use only resumed in Europe in the mid-18th C. Reinforced concrete was patented in 1849 by a French gardener who used wire mesh around which to build concrete flowerpots.

A brief history here. Story of Roman concrete here. The chemistry of cement here. Photo of new partially-completed front path leading to a local wigwam, demonstrating a nice foundation of reinforced gravel concrete, with the stones being mortared on top.

What is this Aliyah Diary all about? Click the category on the left and find out.

8-3-06   Kiryat Shemona: The Home Front.

Arriving in Kiryat Shemona with my Hyundai Getz, a reformulated Yugo, I both feel the car shudder and hear the dull thud; I think briefly that I have hit a small animal I did not see -- a horse perhaps, or a gazelle. By the third boom, I recognize rockets.

Within the hour, I learn the difference in sounds between incoming (bad) and outgoing (better, maybe even good).  Incoming, first the whoosh, then the boom as it hits; Outgoing, boom, and maybe a whoosh.

Later, I realize that I really don't hear whooshes before. Also, with incoming we are supposed to get a warning twenty seconds before, to get into shelter.  The warning sounds have been debated in Kiryat Shemona (It's a Jewish town after all; how could they just agree on one warning?).  The standard viuuu-viuuu  is loud, discrete, recognizable; some argue that it causes more panic than needed.

Therefore this morning, we hear the alternative, a kind of bling-blong, followed by a polite, announcer-like baritone requesting that we descend to shelter.  I finished my coffee.  Such a polite voice, does not raise urgency in me; more like an announcement before the symphony to please turn off your cellphones (which some still ignore).

All street lights blink yellow, streets are abandoned by pedestrians, save for the building for soldiers called up: joyfully painted tour buses await them. Inside, the windows are hung with drying towels, shirts on hangers, like guys off for a college trip.  Out of uniform, most wear flip-flops, shorts, T's.  Only the M16 slung diagonally over shoulder, rifle usually on the back, occassionally pointing downwards off the left hip,identifies that they are not off to camp.  How they all top 5 foot 11 inches still amazes me, these Jewish soldiers. Chana Mann, the chief psychologist for Safed Hospital lives in Kiryat Shemona, the largest, most northern town in Israel. (Metulla, abutting Lebanon, is the village futher north.) She's invited me to help out with trauma cases.

7-31              The Bratzlavers hit the front   
Not to be outdone by Lubies (Lubavitchers in traveling wagons), the Bratislavers hit the front recently.  Only few of you know that I have had personal contact with Bratislavers, having been enlisted by my khaver, Pinchus, nee Patrick, to take a mikva dip in the cold waters of the Bratislaver's mikva, where the slime on the floor is almost as old as the stones of Jerusalem. This mikva is conveniently located overlooking the Western Wall, that is to say, in the Arab Quarter, through which Pinchus and I wandered at 6 a.m. in order to take a dip.

But, this is another tale, not for today. Today, we go to the front line, Bratislaver-reinforced.

The Brats believe in Reb Nachman of Bratslav, that he will return perhaps.  They arrive frontly, so to speak, in high style.  No battered, multicolored rattling Lubavitcher van, with Booming speaker held in place with guy lines. No. The Bratzmobile is like an American RV with reinforced top, metal rails and a logo of "NA, NA, NACH, NACHM, NACHMAN, M'UMAN!"  This translates to : "NA, NA, NACH, NACHM, NACHMAN, IS BELIEVED IN!"

Their booming box atop competes with the rockets overhead.  A reinforced top is necessary, as Bratz stand atop, some dancing as the RV rolls up.  Before the sliding van door opens, like Lubies and circus clowns, Bratz plunge through windows, side locks and tzitzit flying.  These Bratz wear oversized white knit kippot with a spitz atop and, of course the logo circumscribing the brow.  White shirts are untucked, boots or Teva sandals are de rigeur.  Some are ex-IDF, one from Lebanon in 1990.

But, enough visual details; it's the action that counts. They descend upon the reporter first, upon the paratroopers (next), the artillery men (later), the tankists (finally).  The reporter, much to his initial protests, they cap with a spitzy kippah, then paste stickers with -- well you know: "NA, NA, ETCETERA" -- one on each of his cheeks, like Pierrot's tears, around his forehead, on his shirt.  The paratroopers are hugged, and firmly kissed on at least one cheek. The dancing starts before the Bratz leave the van, gets vigorous with arms on paratrooper shoulders.  In the mass, one has trouble discerning bodies, as legs kick haphazardly.  One Bratz grabs his side locks, holds it stretched out to nine and three O'clock, then begins spinning, as if he were a helicopter about to ascend.  (The scene ends before his ascent.)

Yes, a few tefillin are unwrapped and wrapped on soldiers' arms, but the dance is the thing.  And the singing.  One loudspeaker-enhanced singer starts:  "YAHLA, YAHLA, NASRALLAH, DAFOK LECHA!"  Which translates to something like "YAHLA, YAHLA NASRALLAH, F...K YOU!" From a Hasid, such words.  Such Bratz!

Re-posted from Aug 29, 2005

Zulu Time, and Weather Bloggers

In the NOAA and other hurricane and weather reports, they commonly notate Greenwich Mean Time with a suffix Z (or sometimes GMT), and spoken as "Zulu". The military, aviation, and commercial shipping commonly operate on Zulu time.

Why "Zulu"?  The story goes back to the great navigator, mathematician, and Salem, MA sea captain Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of The American Practical Navigator - also known as "The Sailor's Bible" - which remains in use today. He divided up the world's time zones, one hour per 15 degrees of longitude, assigning each one a letter of the alphabet. Longitude 0, running through Greenwich, England received the Z. That story is here. 

Jean Lee Latham wrote the classic Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I remember fondly from 6th Grade, and which, along with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, nurtured my love and respect for the sea and ships.

For weather bloggers, we like Weather Underground, and Stormtrack for big storms.

The architectural origin of the steeple lies in the belltower, and the origin of the belltower in the watchtower.

Medieval watchtowers, like this one in Umbria,

 and this one in San Gimignano, the town of towers,

used bells, guns, and fire to signal each other in time of trouble. Church belltowers, at first identical to watchtowers, were often separate from church buildings through the early renaissance. You had to place those bells up high to send out the sound. Here's a famous one, which is the belltower of Pisa's Duomo (c. 1100):

In time, the belltowers were integrated into the architecture of church and cathedral buildings. Without clocks and watches, you couldn't be called to church or prayer - nor would you know what time it was (except for sundials) without the bells sounding across the villages and fields. And they were a regular reminder of Christ's presence during the day. (But how did the bell-ringers know the time? That's another subject.)

Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1300) has the Gothic integration of tower. It took 63 men to ring its heavy bells; six men alone to ring the heaviest:

More modest English parish churches had bell towers on the roof (Holy Cross, Greenford Magna, Middlesex - much of the building c. 1500):

Puritan (Congregationalist) Meeting Houses in the US typically had no steeples, as part of their purifying their congregations from papistry, vanity, and other fanciness (no bells, no stained windows, no singing, 6-hour sermons, etc). They didn't even want to call them "churches, " and you went to "meeting", not to church, where the God of Grace played second fiddle to the God of Truth. This is the Rocky Hill Meeting House (c. 1785) in Amesbury, MA:

By the early 1800s, steeple bell towers came back into acceptance in the US, along with singing. I can imagine the debates between the stodgy old-timers and the young folks in their Building Committees. Many old New England churches are meeting houses with steeples (and pillared porticos too) added generations later, leading to steeple engineering problems in later years. Here's an example of an added steeple in Alford, MA (c. 1740):

Belfries, containing the bells and their mechanisms (and bats), usually have/had louvers to direct the sound up and away from the church itself. Oftentimes a steeple - the tower which supports the belfry, is roofed by an elegant spire, leading to the stereotypical appearance of the 19th Century New England Congregational church - which has since been copied by all sorts of denominations including Catholics - seemingly unaware of the Puritan, anti-Anglican, anti-hierarchical, and anti-Papist theological origin of the architecture:

We always need to be reminded that a "church" is not a building - it's a congregation of people who seek God through Christ ("whenever two or three of you are gathered together"). The building doesn't really matter, but having a special place never hurts. I think the spires are optional. 

Here's a nice piece on church bells.

YouTube of Dylan doing All Along the Watchtower here. (with JJ Jackson, Winston Watson, and Bucky Baxter)

Hostas are often viewed as a junky plant. They are not. When they are in a small clump in the sun in front of a bank, they look awful.

They need to be massed, and in the shade - minimal to no direct sun, and humusy soil. The variety available these days is remarkable. Some people (not us) remove the blooms, preferring them only for the simple and understated foliage.

Once known as the Plantain Lily, their origins are in Northeast Asia. One of their virtues is that they shade out all weeds. Another is that they now come in all sizes, from miniature to giant.

Here's the Hostamania site.  Here's the Hosta Forum at Garden Web. Another good one - My Hostas.

Some very cool Hostas at this nursery. Image is of their Bright Lights. Wayside has a good selection too.

Every type of garden plant has its fans and afficionados. As hobbies go, it's as pleasant and harmless as gun collecting...but cheaper. And guns, alas, do not reproduce.

The dog days of July and August are
slow times for bloggers; reader  numbers are usually down a tad, and often writers feel less inspired, or are busy outside trying to do real life.

Our threat is this: If other bloggers don't blogroll us, and throw us a pity-link once in a while, and if our readers don't forward our blog with a hearty recommendation to all of their friends and colleagues and relatives and enemies, we will go on a Hunger Strike until Labor Day, limiting our diets solely to beer and pizza.

That includes breakfast.

We do make make such threats lightly - so be forewarned. Maggie's Farm is our name, and passive-aggressive is our game. No negotiating: Do what we demand - or else we will damage our health!

Look - I know we aren't the best blog in the world, but we are all proud to be listed in Harmons' World Weblog Review (Copyright 2006) as:

"Pretty good, with a varied and appealing front page. Sometimes interesting and informative, but basically intellectually lightweight and unfunny. Politically centrist, and thus dull. Pedantic at times. Occasional surprises. Plenty of links. A bit Jesus-oriented, but not over the top. They like Dylan, too, but offer little insight.  Highly reliable output, but quantity does not make up for quality.  Minimal T&A; no hunks. Quirkiness and odd interests a strong point. Thinking talent: C-. Research: D. Writing talent: B- to C+. Blog branding quality: B+ (unpredictable and eclectic aspect is good, but lack of focus, and lack of expertise and IQ might be a major flaw)."

If we find this hunger strike to be effective, we just might decide to continue it until war is eliminated from the earth, and all people find happiness. (Hope you enjoyed the Elevator piece - interesting basic info.)

From Nathan, re the battle deaths yesterday:

7-27-06  Two weeks fighting   

A little country counts its dead heavily.   Below Maariv's banner (our N.Y. Times) today runs the photos and names of all nine killed in the fighting over the border: Yiftach, Ohed, Alex, Asaf, Shimon, Idan, Shimon, Ro'i ("my shepherd"), and Amichai ("my naiton lives"): dead. I wish I could show you their photos, these non-soldier soldiers.

A trick one of my soldiers teaches me.  Before each major action, they take a group photo, an odd one. They stand in a row, at arms's length, a good bit apart from each other, unlike the usual group photos of soldiers, crowded together, hugging and mugging.  Once, a mother spied this "group photo" and asked about it.  Here is what he did not tell her:  they stand apart so that should one gets killed, they can cut out his  photo to give to the news.  Practical fellows these are. Death is not that far from their ken.

They make up preliminary teasing obituaries. They know about all the nice things said at the funeral, so they make up their own teasing obits.  For a lapsed Orthodox buddy, who thusfar has hidden his cheeseburger trespasses fromhis  family, they will say at his funeral that he ate tref and looked at Playboy magazine.  He insists that if they tell his parents this now, they will kill him first.  For another, they will state solemnly that they will miss the unique aroma of his feet in the tent.  And another, that they won't notice that he is missing.  Dark humor for dark moments.  In fact, they adore each other, watch each other's back.  Literally.