Robert Welch quote Thanks to Jim Capo for bringing this to my attention:

"I am convinced America would be better off with a government of three
hundred thousand officials and agents, every single one of them a
thief, than a a government of three million agents with every single
one of them an honest, honorable public servant."
-- Robert Welch 1958  ¶ 11:12 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Thoreau I've always meant to get around to reading Thoreau, but the taste I had in school was somehow unpleasant - I suspect because at the time I was impatient with anyone who dared to mind his own business. Odd. This is great stuff:

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it...

  ¶ 5:04 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Word of the Day Guttation



My pic isn't quite as cool as Wikipedia's (naturally), but it's not bad. I photographed some of Bill's corn seedlings early one morning a few weeks ago.

Oh, and while I am reminiscing about my days as a biology major, I may as well share some of my spider pictures - I've started shooting spiders again more regularly now that spring is here.  ¶ 11:58 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Proof that Ron Paul is strictly libertarian Libertarians are notorious book-pushers, and Paul can't resist his
moment in the spotlight as an opportunity to 'school' Rudy:

http://tinyurl.com/3xlspl

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Longshot Republican presidential candidate Ron
Paul on Thursday gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a list of
foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic
militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

""I'm giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment," the nine-term Texas
congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the
report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United
States on September 11, 2001."

Ya gotta love a guy who uses his 15 minutes of near-fame to construct
a reading list :)

--
Susan Hogarth

  ¶ 9:43 AM 3 Comments Links to this post

  Two Minutes Hate This morning's TMH is reserved for people who demand double line
spacing in a document.

Yuck! Ick! Ptooey! Dead Trees!! Unreadable content!!

Why do people -do- that!?

(Yes. I know. so they can make notes between the lines. I still say it sucks.)

--
Susan Hogarth
http://www.colliething.com

  ¶ 8:07 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Musharraf update He says he will continue to run for office as military commander.

This would be funny if it was ... funny. Unfortunately, it's not:

The presence of the army in various institutions was rightful, Musharraf said, adding that 'when politicians do not know how to run the country's affairs then the army has no choice but to just step in and put things right.'

But he stressed his belief in democracy and said he wanted to take the opposition along in decision-making but that it was more interested in staging protest rallies.

The only thing more annoying than a dictator set in power by the imperial Britain+USA team (as Musharraf has been) is an obvious set-up for the title of World's Next Hitler - after all, Saddam Hussein's been dead for some time, so it's about time to break out the new Hitler!!!

Pakistan this week protested to acting British High Commissioner Robert Brinkley over his remarks that Britain sought the restoration of 'full democracy' in the country and advised Musharraf to separate the offices of the president and army chief as demanded by the Commonwealth.

We are being set up for the next 'liberation'. A pox on BOTH their houses!
  ¶ 11:46 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Death in the early morning Finally my slackness has caught up with ... an innocent victim. I knew eventually something would take advantage of my loose security in the henhouse, and sure enough, the smallest of my hens, one of the original three, the Phoenix (on the viewer's left in this picture) got carried off early Sunday morning. I guess the cat (I am nearly certain it was a feral cat that roams our area and just left kittens next to the henhouse the previous week) finally figured out how to get all the way up to the high and narrow roost area. I feel terrible about it.

I've been stapling chicken wire over the door every night since then, and Bill is on the prowl with a slingshot to try to catch the cat. I need to get and put out a trap for it, I suppose.

This bird was a sweetie; she followed the rooster around closely and complained when the other birds wouldn't go to bed at the 'right time'. He tail was broad and held rigidly vertical, with a few degrees tilt occasionally - I called it her 'rudder'.

I wish she could have had a less horrible end. I only hope she was still half (or all) asleep when she died. One of the other hens must have been a witness (or near-victim herself), as she was making a horrible fuss for about 15 minutes afterward. Poor things.

  ¶ 5:20 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Typical government response to government failure ... ... more government, of course!

http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates/2007/05/senate_oks_plan_to_give_fda_mo.html

There's nothing not-bad in this pile of crap, which is no doubt why it passed so overwhelmingly in the Senate:

WASHINGTON - The Senate today approved wide-ranging legislation to strengthen the government's drug safety oversight.

Adopted by a 93-1 vote, the Senate bill would expand the Food and Drug Administration's ability to monitor drugs for side effects, and to take quicker action to better protect the public if problems arise.

I wonder who the holdout was, but I don't really care enough to check - probably some loser who thought it wasn't socialist enough.

``This is breakthrough legislation,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill's sponsor. ``This legislation is going to make prescription drugs that our families take safer.''

'Cause, you know, legislation IS what makes the sun come up in the morning. Idiot!!

The bill, which still must be approved by the House, follows a series of high profile cases in the past several years involving FDA-approved painkillers, antibiotics and antidepressants that turned out to have unexpected and in some instances deadly side effects.

How to succeed in Government in one short lesson:

FAIL.

because, you know, if you actually succeed your budget (and power) won't increase. Absent the evil profit motive, there is NO REWARD for succeeding - but money and power galore for failing.

But let us move on:

A key provision of the bill would require the FDA to review the safety of some potentially risky medications at 18 months and at three years after approval, and to conduct active, routine surveillance of large public and private medical databases to better track possible harmful patient side effects of medications.

Thus doing the job of the pharmaceutical companies at taxpayer expense.

The legislation also would empower the agency to require pharmaceutical companies to conduct postmarket studies of new medications, and set deadlines for revision of drug warning labels when problems occur.

Here's the sort of 'regulation' that Big Pharma loves: the kind that cripples small, lean, innovative companies while giving their spinoff  buddies juicy chunks of new make-work.

In addition, the Senate measure would greatly increase the user fees paid by the pharmaceutical industry for FDA review of new drugs, setting forth performance goals for speedy approval of the medicines. Drugmakers said this was a crucial element of the legislation for them.

Huh? The sane among us might wonder why Big Pharma would consider 'greatly increased user fees' 'crucial'. But see the previous paragraph. They LOVE this sort of thing. Another barrier to market entry! Yee-haa! Less competition!

The bill effectively blocks lower-priced drug imports from abroad - a key victory for drugmakers concerned that such a move could lead to an increase of counterfeit medicines and also undercut their profits.

This is actually funny - except for the fact that it isn't. Oh. They are sooooo concerned about the safety of the sheep^H^H^H^Hpublic, and, err, incidentally, the safety of their profits. Please. Why don't you bozos worry about protecting your profits in the old-fashioned way (producing quality at a reasonable price) and let ME worry about 'counterfeit medicines'? Thanks but NO THANKS for that sort of 'protection', you thugs.

It imposes some added oversight on direct-to-consumer drug advertisements, but lawmakers deleted a provision this week that would have given the FDA discretion to ban some ads on potentially risky new drugs for up to two years.

I'll bet. The BP lobbyists probably actually had to threaten to close the re-election purse-strings to get that thrown out (not that I think ads should be banned). How this could be seen as anything but a gang rape by Congress and its frat buddy Big Pharma is beyond me.
  ¶ 5:28 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Stupidest Mother's Day story EVER
Stalin's mom loved her little monster. Well, gee.

But ya gotta love those glasses she's sporting in the pic!!  ¶ 2:10 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Important and important: different scales Small-scale important: One of my hens (a lovely-but-easily-spooked Welsumer variously know as 'red' or 'the chicken chicken' or 'spaz') went broody on us in a 'stolen' (hidden) nest outside the henyard (she carefully laid every day at lunch when Bill let them out). We tracked her down and retrieved hen+eggs, which we moved to the henhouse. We did this last night; this morning she ignored the eggs she woke up on top of and started throwing herself at the netting trying to get back to her (now empty) nest. Dedicated, but irrational. *sigh* I was sort of getting used to the idea of little chicks running around, though god knows what I would have done with the males. I need work on this suburban farming thing :-/

Large-scale important: This piece by Robert Higgs on Scientific Consenseus and why it's not all it's cracked up to be. A quote:

Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that "we must act now" by imposing government "solutions" of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it's a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a genuine scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking?worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists? nevertheless.  ¶ 3:55 PM 0 Comments Links to this post