What the Hell Is This?

 The fewer posts I put up, the more views I get.  

I will never understand humans. 

I Should Have Blogged Earlier

 Memory is fallible.  Blog posts are reliable, at least recording the moment.

IIRC when GWB sent our forces into Afghanistan I was dubious, remembering the British and the Soviet failures. Had I been blogging then I might have recorded that opinion, which I could now point proudly to as proof of my prescience.

Of course, had I been blogging a few months later I might have posted my opinion that our easy success in Afghanistan showed we might have learned our lessons from the past and our new technology with  precision bombs would enable us to oust Saddam.  I think that's my memory, though I also think I was still queasy about invading Iraq.  

We'll never know. 

Eight Thousand Posts

 I just noticed I've so far published 8001 posts.  Ann Althouse rightfully boasts of her record of daily posting since she began, which was before me. I can't say the same.  I've missed some days, particularly in recent years, and the pace of my blogging has slowed to a post a day.  Some days I'm pretty dry, as today.  It's been drier since Jan. 20. 

I've probably got another 6,000 draft posts.  Sometimes I get an idea for a post, create one with just the title, then go off to do something else.  By the time I get back, I'm wondering what I was going to write, or at least the energy to write on the subject has dwindled away.  Sometimes I write part of one but don't have even the ghost of an ending (endings have always been a problem) so don't publish.  

A few times I've found the subject too controversial; I didn't want to get into it.  That's usually the case with issues of race.  

One of these years I'll go back and skim my past writings, see whether they've stood up.  Not today. Too tired after gardening and errand running. 

On Reading But Not Understanding

 Bob Somerby today has a post about Godel and Wittgenstein. It seems he got deeply into philosophy in his college days, and he often refers to them, as well as others (like Bertrand Russell just last week).  Douglas Hofstadter wrote a famous book in 1979 on Godel, Escher and Bach.  I was one of those who bought the book but never finished it.

I'm someone whose identity is tied up in their mind--i.e, all my life (almost) I've been "smart", so I don't like to admit there's stuff I can't understand. Bob is a mix of the esoteric, the cranky, and the right-on, whom I find mostly worthwhile to read, but I do skip paragraphs and occasional posts. 

Rural Broadband--in Vermont per Walt Jeffries

 Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm has been a very quiet blogger for a good while, and it's been even longer since I blogged about him.  (I'm sure I did, but too lazy to check.) He and his family have pigs, plus other livestock, on a farm in Vermont. 

He ceased right after he had gotten the necessary inspections to butcher their hogs on the farm and sell the meat across state lines, as well as within Vermont.  Building the butcher shop had been a multi-year endeavor, chronicled in the blog. After that he may have had less material to use in the blog.  Don't know.  I also thought maybe his children might have had problems with his blogging as they grew to adulthood, which would explain his silence.

Anyhow, he's recently returned to blogging, at least a little. His latest post reports the approach of fiber optic cable to his farm. He might go with that way, as opposed to Musk's Starlink system.  He credits the USDA broadband effort.  That's interesting because he's basically a libertarian type, reluctantly dealing with the regulations needed to get his butcher shop and retail sales operation running.

Epstein Dead and Buried (Metaphorically)?

Gregory Cochran is an anthropologist who is very much a contrarian.  On his West Hunter blog he posts occasionally, mostly on the evolution of humans.  He seems to be on the conservative side, at least in that he argues for the impact of evolution on human traits, etc.  In other words, he's not politically correct.

With that understanding of his leanings, I was surprised to read this takedown of Richard Epstein, who recently speculated on the outcome of Covid-19, arguing that concerns were over done. Most notably he predicted deaths in US would be 500 or les.

I only know that predictions vary very widely, and everyone who positively asserts a prediction is overdoing it.

But Cochran's post is a great example of taking no prisoners.

An Example of Problems in Expanding a Farm

Followed Walter Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm (blog) for years. He used to post regularly about the work he and his family did with their farm, raising hogs and selling meat.  He was terribly meticulous as he planned and built his house and farm buildings, with the piece de resistance his own state and federally-inspected butcher shop.  Self-reliance was the motto he lived by, and he did it damn well.

For some reason he never explained, after completing the shop he stopped blogging, except for the occasional post about deals on pork. That's been true for several years now.

But today he had a post into which I can read a partial explanation. He was robbed and his fencing sabotaged.  From the post:

we were robbed on Friday 8/23 at 4:50pm by five people in three vehicles – a small red car, a large black pickup truck and a smaller black pickup truck. The robbery and the fence sabotage may be linked to an ex-employee who had previously stolen a pig that was recovered by the state police. Clearly the robbers had insider information and knew exactly what they were doing and looking for as well as knowing when ...nobody was here

Back in the day there were no employees, just Walt, wife, and two kids.  I'm guessing that the kids have grown and at least the elder, the son, have moved out, possibly for college. (Maybe they had reservations about having their lives recorded in the blog?) But the operation as Walt developed it was more than a 2-person operation, so he had to either retrench or hire employee(s).  Getting good employees in rural areas is hard, and Walt might not have been the best supervisor in the world, being very focused on getting things right.

Occasionally you see reports of cattle rustling or theft of products--while living in rural areas has many advantages, you're far from law enforcement and so dependent on neighbors to keep a watchful eye out. But Sugar Mountain Farm is picturesque, but remote. Vermont has been hit by the opioid epidemic, as seen in this piece.

I'm sorry for Walt and his family for their loss.

Agreeing with Althouse on the Past

I've been following Ann Althouse's blog for years. In the last few years I think she's become more conservative, often defending President Trump.  I also think she tends to find hidden motives buried in people's statements and in news article, explaining things by those motives rather than the simpler explanation offered by Murphy's Law and taking things at face value.

But the other day she and her son collaborated on a post with which I can agree.  Basically they're remembering a past when liberals and the left were vehement in defense of free speech.  Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement come to mind, though definitely before her son's time.

All things being equal, I think I generally lean towards free speech (joined the ACLU back in the days of the Nazis marching in Skokie) and am reluctant to see boycotts, even though they are a part of our American heritage (boycotts of British goods led up to the Revolution).

The Russians Are Coming

Over the last few months I've been mostly absorbed in trying to help my cousin with her forthcoming book, "Dueling Dragons: The Struggle for Ireland 1849-1875".  That work is coming to an end, hence a recent uptick in the words published on this blog.

The lower level of activity has resulted in a decrease in readership.  Never particularly high, it's probably been down by a third or more.  That is, until a couple days ago.  All of  a sudden my daily views have jumped 3-400 percent, all of the increase seeming to come from Russia.

Easy come, easy go, is my motto.

The Value of a Curmudgeon

Bob Somerby is a character.  He writes the Daily Howler, a long lived blog (started last century), critical and skeptical of media.  He was Al Gore's roommate at Harvard, along with Tommy Lee Jones, and taught for some years in a Baltimore school.  His posts are colored by his past, as any regular reader can tell. (The mass media's mistreatment of Gore's candidacy, the failings of young reporters, particularly their math illiteracy, the fact that American education does better than many media reports have it, and the fact that American education fails black students, the willingness of liberals to buy into myths, etc.)  He's long-winded and, an admission, I often skim the first paragraphs and skip the last paragraphs.  But all that said, he's an invaluable corrective who drills down into the depths of an issue.  We could use a couple more like him, as long as they had different bees in their bonnet than he.

A sample--a post on NYC schools points out:

"Good lord! In New York City, a school which is 9 percent white isn't just a "segregated" school; it's intensely segregated, an even worse abomination. 

Meanwhile, a school which is 15 percent white represents the "desegregation" ideal! On such slender distinctions our liberal language now rests."

Happy New Year

Welcoming 2017 with anticipation of many blog-worthy things.

Trump Great for Cable, Not Bad for Bloggers

See this

So Long, Russians

I see by my blog statistics I'm no longer getting Russian visitors to the blogs.  That's good, not that I have anything against Russian visitors, just hackers.

Those Damn Russians

Not content with messing with the 2016 elections (see Josh Marshall at TPM), they're now messing up my statistics for my blog.  I don't quite understand what's going on, but apparently there's an automated process called "referer spam" which hits a blog and increments the pageview count in Blogger Stats, and Russians are using this process, apparently much more in the last 10 days or so than they have before.

If I understand, as long as I don't click on any of those sites, there's no problem.

Travelling This Week

Slow blogging ahead.

Where Does Wisdom Lie

Often between the extremes, is my answer. 

Steven Hayward, a blogger at Powerline (meaning middle right), mentions my favorite blogger, Kevin Drum here:

"Anyway, one of the writers in Mother Jones who is actually worth reading is Kevin Drum, because he does some good original reporting, and sometimes departs from leftist orthodoxy or at least offers some original thoughts. Yesterday on the Mother Jones blog, Drum beat his drum: Over the past few weeks I’ve written five posts making the following points:

1. The acting Oscars are not really all that white.
2. Flint is not a public health holocaust.
3. The 1994 crime bill didn’t create mass incarceration.
4. Photo ID laws probably don’t have massive turnout effects.
5. Social welfare spending has gone up a lot over the past three decades, and welfare reform had very little impact on either this or the deep poverty rate."

Comments

Over the years there've not been many comments on the blog, no doubt a tribute to the validity of the positions I take and the logic of my arguments.  More recently, say over the last few years, I've had a problem with understanding Google's rules on comments and their interaction with Google+, meaning any comments wouldn't show up on the blog.  Hopefully now I've corrected the problem.

Thank You Keith Good--End of Farm Policy

Over the years I've blogged on a lot of pieces from the Farm Polcy daily summary of agricultural news item.  But Keith Good has had to shut it down, with this his last post.

A Praiseworthy Blog Post: On the Failure of Foresight

Credit where due: Will Oremus at Slate has a post, a very meritorious post.  (Have I ever admitted I was wrong? Don't think so.  Then I'm not wrong much.)  Subject: Snapchat.  Some sentences:

And then I wrapped things up by predicting that he'd look back someday in bitter regret at passing up the $3 billion. It was a pretty zingy blog post, if I may say so.
It was also, as is probably quite clear by now, utterly wrong.

Comments

I've been remiss in paying attention to the structure and settings of this blog, meaning comments have been disfunctional for a good while.  Hopefully I've fixed that.