We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Why "Shepherd's"? Because it is traditionally made with ground lamb or mutton. That's how Alton Brown makes it.
Americans use ground beef, usually. Ground mutton is not a typical supermarket item. Go ahead and use instant mashed potato if you must - the recipe don't care.
I am hoping some Mom will try each of the recipes in this series, and report back on family response.
Readers know my interest in the workings of the human conscience and the structures of human morals. The (our) devils are relentless in pursuit of the low-life, the dark side.
Krauthammer: Return of the Real Obama - The president is dedicated to the expansion of the welfare state:
Now he’s won. The old Obama is back. He must not be underestimated. He has deftly leveraged his class-war-themed election victory (a) to secure a source of funding (albeit still small) for the bloated welfare state, (b) to carry out an admirably candid bit of income redistribution, and (c) to fracture the one remaining institutional obstacle to the rest of his ideological agenda.
The Mommys of America commonly made winter casseroles using cans of Campbell's soups. Mushroom soup, especially. We're getting into Hotdish territory here.
In the good old days, eating in restaurants was not routine as it is now, but instead was a special treat for birthdays and anniversaries. Take-out Chinese, much less Thai or sushi, did not exist. Moms used to have food budgets, but no more because good food has, blessedly, become such a small component of an American family budget.
I sure hope moms still make stuff like this: Easy Creamy Chicken Casserole because it is good, and heart-warming. Ritz cracker topping. Wow. Put it on white rice.
Then home-made chocolate pudding for dessert with Jiffy Whip or Cool Whip on top. Perfection. Thanks, Moms of America!
How's that for a catchy end-of-holiday-season header? (Metazoans is the new name for the Animalia Kingdom - those creatures with differentiated tissues like sponges, earthworms, and people.)
I have been attempting to familiarize myself a little with the rapidly-expanding science of Epigenetics lately. When I took pre-med Genetics, it was a marginal topic. Now that the fundamental workings of DNA are fairly well understood, epigenetics has become a hot field ("epi" because it's the things - heritable things - that effect cell-differentiation, growth and development, etc. on top of the basic DNA template, but are affected by the environment). Shades of Lamarck.
Epigenetics is interesting partly because it's one of the ways that a metazoan species can be affected by environmental influences during growth and development. Molecular tools for shaping the final product. The complexity of metazoans (as contrasted with fungi, bacteria, and protozoans, for example) requires complex epigenetic processes. Heritable things which switch on or switch off gene expression.
Here's the simplest short piece I could find: What Is Epigenetics? Easy to follow if you ever took intro Bio.
The wiki entry is actually a good intro, but tough sledding unless you had a decent college education or are a bio reader.
Al Gore may not have invented the internet or Global Warming, but his name will be forever associated with both. He certainly found ways to profit from these themes.
Now he's found a way to profit from TV, which he never claimed to invent, but hoped to 're-invent' with his Current TV network. An unwatched network airing questionable programming, pursuing a bizarre agenda that was mildly anti-American to most of us. Well, now he's out of the TV business and turning the reins over to another crowd of potentially anti-American broadcasters.
I can see the conspiracy theorists lining up behind this one.
If Al-Jazeera somehow turns the U.S. into a Muslim nation, will Al Gore take credit for being the founding father of Islamic U.S.A.?
Nearly half a century ago, I dropped out of graduate school and enlisted as a foot soldier in America’s War on Poverty. Today, I’m still on the front lines, working to move people out of dependency and into employment. But with an important difference: I’ve become fed up with the useless policies that I once supported, and I’m trying to change the strategy of our bogged-down army...
As a small side note, if you've been thinking about checking out the great Google Earth program, do so now. This Saturday we're going to hold a little GE 'easter egg hunt' which should be both informative and fun. It should, in turn, spawn an interesting post of the collected results. If you want to join in, it'll be helpful if you already know how to use this most intriguing of programs.
I'm surprised I haven't blundered across this before now, but check out this cool Firefox update page. I needed pretty much everything on the list.
Along with Adobe Reader for PDF files and the ubiquitous Flash, I recommend the QuickTime plugin for the occasional QT video and Java for older sites that are using Java instead of Flash for various special effects.
As far as Firefox's various problems with Flash, it appears some of it's been ironed out recently. Both have come out with updates since my post on it a month ago and I haven't seen any snags since then. If you've been having problems, I suggest running the Flash uninstall program before updating.
On the subject, the other common Flash problem is running into a 'Currently unavailable' message when trying to play a YouTube video either from the main site or from a page with an embedded YouTube video. This is YouTube making a little experiment with selected members using a new viewing protocol called 'HTML5', and apparently they don't like you using that old, hackneyed Flash player on their precious videos. The solution is to go here and click on the link at the bottom to opt out of the program.
Our pal Sipp crawled into his well-air-conditioned office in Maine to offer this thought about the blue house pics I posted on Tuesday night:
That's a beautiful house. Front-gabled Greek Revival. Mid-1800s. It was so common it was called the "National Style" back then. After the War of 1812, Americans didn't want to build their houses in the Adam (British) style anymore. They were captivated by the Greek War of Independence from the Ottomans, and got interested in everything ancient Greek because it was considered a chaste, proto-Roman civilization. I can't see all that much in the pictures for evidence of what's going on, but the house in the front is original. The big thing in the back was probably a barn at first. That huge chimney on the barn is pretty modern. It was probably attached to the main house by the ell you see between them. (In Maine, they called something similar Little House, Big House, Back House, Barn, with the little house being the "ell" and being built first) The ell might have been one-story at first. When horses and servants went out of fashion, the barn was turned into more house, most likely, and a second floor added to the ell to have unfettered access back and forth. The wart on the side might have been an open porch, or been missing entirely at first. Nobody ganged windows like that back then.
I doubt that big house in back was ever a barn, but I get the point.
How good is this little patch, up high above the Connecticut river? You have several of your basic old-timey styles, and I'd bet they were all built by the same family on the same lot over time and generations (no estate taxes and no zoning then), middle one first - I'd guess around 1750-1780:
Moms show their love for their families by cooking, especially those gooey, bland, rib-sticking comfort foods in the winter. They make everybody feel loved, and they're all in Fanny Farmer's cookbook if you have one around.
Mommys of America winter foods are cheap and easy to make. Cheaper than McDonald's, but probably less "healthy" than McDonald's. Whatever "healthy" means.
Here's a classic Mommys of America dish, Creamed Chicken with Peas, best (I think) on top of white rice but it works on toast, mashed taters, and egg noodles. Lots of ground pepper on top.
For one extra Mom point, serve it on Basmati rice. For two extra points, on a brioche. For three extra Mom points, use the pheasant Dad shot instead of chicken because she deserves it for marrying a guy who goes out and shoots the family's food.
Got any favorite Mommys of America dishes? This is first of a sentimental, anti-gourmet series this week.
Income inequality, if it is a problem (I do not see why it is) it is easy to fix. Just tax all income over $40,000 at 100% (except for politicians and bureaucrats).
Then confiscate all private assets over $100,000. (except for politicians and bureaucrats), because assets are really more important in life than income. Let's make it fair. Why focus on income? Some people have huge houses and apartments, and small families. The government can provide the manna. It worked great in China and the Soviet Union, so why not here?
Income and asset inequalities are fine with me. Money provides choices. Many people are highly motivated by such things, and they make good things happen. My job, for example, which pays me enough to afford ski trips to Whistler which, in turn, provides jobs for Canucks.
Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University found that each new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent. The home mortgage interest deduction further encouraged suburbanization, because rental units are disproportionately in cities while owner-occupied homes are disproportionately distant from city centers.
Note - sorry, those older links are now behind a paywall. Greedy capitalists at the Boston Globe are messing up our efforts to give them business.
US Marine Pens Viral Letter to Anti-Gun Senator Dianne Feinstein: “No Ma’am”:
I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve.
I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.
And cold, beady-eyed Red-Tails hunkering in the trees.
It's always been a challenge for me to capture the features of a Black Lab's face. How about you?
That "6 and a half" year-old tags along to learn about hunting and dog-handling. He can handle a .22, however. Start them young, and keep the country traditions alive before they become overly-citified, overly-metrosexualized, and overly-computerized.
More Yankeeland architectural pics tomorrow. One aspect of the traditional ethos is to make a home appear humbler and smaller, than it is. One way to do that is to make them narrow in the front, but to run on in the back with endless additions and attachments.
This is not an inn, it's a family homestead. Could have been an inn at some point in history. Here's the full view, behind the trees, Hard to determine which part came first, but Sipp can probably explain the cobbling here. I tend to guess that the Federal front part came second, but I can't be sure:
Good advice, for bloggers and for everyone, from Wizbang:
Never say anything you would not be willing to repeat under oath.
Never say or write anything you would not want to see plastered across the front page of the newspaper.
Never write when you can speak.
Never speak when you can nod.
Never nod when you can wink
Well, I am not a winker but I would add, as lawyers always advise, "Say it in flowers, say it in mink, but never, ever, say it in ink." I'm afraid that I break all of these rules, daily, as I have a perverse tendency to actively resist PC just for the fun of it. Fortunately, I have no employer to object. That's the Maggie's Ideal Way of Life.
We frequently point out, here at Maggie's, the similarities between modern Progressivism/Leftism and Feudalism. Of course, Hayek nailed this years ago.
The changes wrought on the American political economy by progressives have taken us in the unmistakable direction of feudalism. The morphological resemblance between the progressive version of America and the historic feudal regimes of Western Europe and Japan is obvious if one takes a few moments to consider the changes in the proper context.
Remember flying a kite as a kid? It's a pretty simple task, really, in the sense that (1) all you have to do is hold onto the string, and (2) as you proved, even a kid can do it.
And I'm sure you know that there are people who can make kites do some pretty nifty tricks, like barrel rolls and loops and all that.
And what's extra special is when you get three people flying three kites together, performing a beautiful aerial ballet.
"The encouragement of a proper hunting spirit, a proper love of sport, instead of being incompatible with a love of nature and wild things, offers the best guaranty of their preservation."
Theodore Roosevelt
Pic is Emeril's roast pheasants on wild-mushroom bread pudding. A wild mushroom risotto would be good as an alternative, or mashed taters.
I am bird-hunting today with Gwynnie, a real dog, and some friends. 20 ga., not binoculars. Hope our readers have a fine and jolly day too. I am in fine fettle, having only indulged in one beer last night, and early to bed. With a little luck, some pheasants for a late dinner tonight and a little vino.
Where the heck did Bob acquire that phony accent? That's not how people talk in Duluth. OK, I know. He is a self-invention. Our best wishes to ol' Bob, too.
There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners
So you won't be disappointed, this will not be so much a review of the movie Django Unchained as a review of many reviewers. I've read about twenty reviews after seeing the movie. Django is pure Tarantino, over-the-top vulgar and violent, funny at times, the photography excellent and the actors fulfilling their roles well. In short, Django Unchained is a terrific shitkicker.
It is an action-revenge film that takes place in the pre-Civil War South, which along the way grips the viewer with White-on-Black violence and degradation of the worst imagination or fact and Black-on-Black violence (the Mandingo fighting a historical fraud, according to experts) and intra-Black slavery-facilitating discrimination and repression.
Most reviewers and audience polled give the film a high rating at review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. They just take it as Tarentino's outrageous brand of entertainment. Probably most viewers knew that going in to the theater.
Some reviewers, Black and White, criticize the ahistorical emphases within the film or the depiction of some Blacks (I don't recall any of these reviews reflecting similarly about the Whites), or wonder whether the film is a useful ideological guide to today's Blacks. They are entitled to their points of view, and their excesses can be forgiven for having to find enough words to fill their column. Still, most manage to lesser or greater extent applaud the film's execution even if disturbed by its supposed meanings.
Instead, don't look for meanings, or imagine them. Just enjoy a pure Tarantino shitkicker, with Shaft melded with Clint Eastwood and upping the gunplay, and every bad guy blown to spectacular smithereens.
That's the title of Mead's latest. He should have used a more provocative and engaging title, but it's not his style to do so.
Mead is a sort-of open-minded Liberal (I think) and an academic. One quote from this excellent piece, which (take note, BD) deserves to be on our Best Essays of the Year thing. A quote:
...the biggest roadblock today is that so many of America’s best-educated, best-placed people are too invested in old social models and old visions of history to do their real job and help society transition to the next level. Instead of opportunities they see threats; instead of hope they see danger; instead of the possibility of progress they see the unraveling of everything beautiful and true.
and
Since the late nineteenth century most intellectuals have identified progress with the advance of the bureaucratic, redistributionist and administrative state. The government, guided by credentialed intellectuals with scientific training and values, would lead society through the economic and political perils of the day. An ever more powerful state would play an ever larger role in achieving ever greater degrees of affluence and stability for the population at large, redistributing wealth to provide basic sustenance and justice to the poor. The social mission of intellectuals was to build political support for the development of the new order, to provide enlightened guidance based on rational and scientific thought to policymakers, to administer the state through a merit based civil service, and to train new generations of managers and administrators. The modern corporation was supposed to evolve in a similar way, with business becoming more stable, more predictable and more bureaucratic.
Most American intellectuals today are still shaped by this worldview and genuinely cannot imagine an alternative vision of progress. It is extremely difficult for such people to understand the economic forces that are making this model unsustainable and to see why so many Americans are in rebellion against this kind of state and society – but if our society is going to develop we have to move beyond the ideas and the institutions of twentieth century progressivism.
And later in his essay:
The foundational assumptions of American intellectuals as a group are firmly based on the assumptions of the progressive state and the Blue Social Model. Those who run our government agencies, our universities, our foundations, our mainstream media outlets and other key institutions cannot at this point look the future in the face. The world is moving in ways so opposed to their most hallowed assumptions that they simply cannot make sense of it. They resist blindly and uncreatively and, unable to appreciate the extraordinary prospects for human liberation that this change can bring, they are incapable of creative and innovative response.
Do me a favor by reading his whole essay. Better yet, read it and ask your Lib friends to consider it. If Obama is a personal friend, email it to him and Valerie Jarrett too. These Progressives are stuck in the past, and have not had an interesting new idea since Marx, who died in 1883, and who could never have been able to understand modern America where the poorest have wide screen TVs, two cars, washing machines, and the right to bear arms.
You know my view: Liberalism, aka Progressivism, is over 150 years old, and way over the hill - policy residue from the early nasty years of the early Industrial Revolution.
Pic is Walter Russell Mead, who looks the way I thought he would.
Frederick II (26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250), was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous. However, his enemies, especially the popes, prevailed, and his dynasty collapsed soon after his death. Historians have searched for superlatives to describe him, as in the case of Professor Donald Detwiler, who wrote:
A man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability – called by a contemporary chronicler stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche, the first European, and by many historians the first modern ruler – Frederick established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy
So claims Peggy Noonan, and I think it's darn good and enjoyable too: George Will on Religion in Politics at Washington U on Dec 4. (You have to click the link to video playlist for the speech, on the right)
"Do 'natural rights' presuppose religious faith?"
Will is not a man of faith and he is an old-fashioned Liberal. It's not a political speech; it's a wonderful historical-philosophical survey from the Greeks to Woodrow Wilson and the notion of progress, and it goes a long way towards explaining the historical underpinnings of the Maggie's chronically anti-statist and revolutionary view of the world.
Every 6th-grader to high school kid in America should know this basic stuff, but I bet many do not. "Should the State have a monopoly on social and civil authority?"
The Q&A after is excellent too. Family disintegration. Do not skip it. He speaks slowly and methodically, but it still deserves two listenings. George Will, like us, is a Madison and de Toqueville fan. Those guys were smarter and wiser than all of us. Those who think they know better need to beware of hubris: they were wary of all power.
America has indeed been exceptional in world history, and, we hope, will stick with it. I hate the idea of people voting without knowing their history.
2:41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.
2:42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.
2:43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.
2:44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.
2:45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
2:46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
2:47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
2:48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety."
2:49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
2:50 But they did not understand what he said to them.
2:51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
This season, which pulsates with nostalgia, memory, sadness as well as with a deep and abiding sense of profound joy and human meaning – and does it all at once – is a season prompted by the very Incarnation of God’s Love, a love that goes beyond words, but rather is a Word – the Logos – that became flesh.
It is for this very reason that the Christian faith which emerges from this proclamation about God’s entrance into the human condition, could build institutions and cultures aimed at concretely reverencing each and every human person from the very first moment of their existence in the womb, in all their vulnerability and potential, without regard to their ethnicity or some other accidental factor. It is the belief stipulated in that memorable passage from Ecclesiastes (3:11): “He has … set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
The books from the people who know my reading tastes and tendencies but are always trying to nudge me towards a slightly higher fiction ratio. Having been rid of TV for the past few months, my reading rate has not increased at all because I never turned the thing on anyway. Who has time for TV when there is life to be lived, and a website to be edited?
I prefer dead-tree books to digital. Precious things. This is all great stuff to nourish brain and soul:
Mark Helprin: In Sunlight and in Shadow
Leonardo Sciasia: The Wine Dark Sea
Tom Reiss: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Guiseppi di Lampedusa: The Leopard (I can't believe I've never read this classic, but Mrs. BD decided it was time that I did)
Andrew Motion: Silver: Return to Treasure Island
Giles Foden: Turbulence
Orhan Pamuk: Snow
Sandra Benjamin: Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History
Louise Dickinson Rich: We Took To The Woods
Frank Oppell (ed): Tales of Old New England (Who knew that Boston used to export ice to India?)
Paul Driessen reported in the Washington Times that ‘the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese, and other birds every year in the U.S., along with countless insect-eating bats.’ The actual numbers are probably far higher.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," which he based on the philosophy of "Mein Kampf" -- and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
A family friend just returned from a year's posting overseas, and despite massive jet-lag got himself over to the Maggie's HQ to cook up a storm last night.
After a year of southeastern Asian food, he wanted to cook a rustic Ragu. Either rabbit or duck are fine, but he used duck because rabbit was sold out at the market. Lots of Italians around here in Yankeeland. Use Porcini for the mushrooms, or at least the dried mushroom mixes with porcini in them.
There are excellent versions of this without tomato, too. "Italian" does not = tomato sauce. The Italians were cooking tasty dishes for thousands of years before tomato seeds were brought over from Mexico.
(Another great Italian classic is Rabbit Stew - like Veal Stew - which is usually not served with a carb or, if it is, with rice or risotto.)
For a Ragu - or for almost any meat concoction like Beef Bourguignon or Beef (or venison) Stroganoff - the only pasta I like to serve is pappardelle, which is a broad, egg noodle. It's also the best pasta for Pasta al Funghi with Porcinis. Trust me. How much do we love Porcinis? Is there any other mushroom really worth eating?
A Chianti Classico or Chianti Riserva works well with it, too.
I've been preaching this since long before Gary Taubes' books came out. That's because I have a colleague who studies the physiology of insulin. From what I know, Taubes is right. A quote re Dietary Incorrectness at Powerline:
Taubes disputes the connection between dietary fat and high cholesterol. He challenges the thesis that dietary fat is detrimental to our health. He rejects a balanced diet. He advocates a high-fat diet. He opposes dieting. He doesn’t object to exercise, but he asserts that it makes you hungry. It’s almost funny. He is the dietary equivalent of politically incorrect.
Taubes is a serious science reporter, not a crank. As I say here ad nauseum, and as Taubes explains, if you want to get trim, quit the carbs. None. That includes fruit, which isn't any good for you anyway. It's just sugar. As the man says, after 14 days off all carbs they will not appeal to you so much anymore. (There is an addiction-like quality to carbs.) And if you want to be fit, youthful, sexy, intelligent, and vigorous, then exercise or do physical work too. If you want to lower your triglycerides, get better genes or take Lipitor.
It's not complicated. It's a free country, food is cheap and exercise is free. Do what you want to achieve the goals you desire. Don't tell me it's hard to do, because everything in life is hard to do except eating, surfing the net, and watching TV.
I would never recommend purchasing Cuban cigars for use in the USA as it is against some law. However, I did happen to notice that Top Cubans has some appealing Christmas and End of Year specials right now.
By the way, when are we going to take down that dumb cigar embargo? It just hurts the poor farmers - and us scrupulously law-abiding Americanos.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Supposedly handcuffed the government and liberated people. Composed by James Madison, ratified 1791, now often disparaged as "meaningless inkblots" by statists whose hunger for power accepts no bounds