BLOGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

Here are places I just must go two or three times a week – or as often as new stuff appears!
by Charlie Leck

I have my blog service keep tabs on blogs that I like and they fill me in just as soon as something new appears on any of those blogs. I won’t miss these particular blogs and I’ll try to tell you why.

(*) This asterisk inclusion means the blog is in my top five favorites.

COMEDY & LAUGHS
Laughlines is a NY Times Blog that lets you see some of the nation’s best cartoonists and their latest work all right in one place. I take a daily look and wouldn’t feel good about my day if I didn’t. The blog also points you to funny videos and news about good comedy.

ECONOMICS & STUFF
Freakonomics, (*) by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, is a delightfully continuation of their best-selling book by the same name. I have fun at this blog and I also learn amazing things. This blog goes in my top five.

ESSAY & VARIETY
Talk Show by Dick Cavett is delightful for me and it will be for you, too, if your sense of humor leans toward the dry and witty side. I’ve never been disappointed reading Cavett and my only disappointment is that he blogs only every two weeks or so.

Van Peebles Land, by David Williams comes out of Wales and I don’t know if it belongs in this category or in humor or opinion. I find it helpful to get this perspective on current issues from across the pond. David also occasionally dabbles in theological matters and, so, I could have put him in that category as well. David is very eclectic and writes extremely well.

FOOD & COOKING
BITTEN, (*) by Mark Bittman (a NY Times Blog), gives me really handy, practical help on preparing good meals with a minimum of effort and mess. It ranks with the favorites of all the blogs I read.

Eat Well by Jennifer Leck Miles is a wonderful little blog about cooking easily and eating healthfully and well. Sure the writer is my daughter, but it’s a damned good blog, too. And, she posts something new almost every day. I’ve tried a number of her recipes and they do work well.

Jamie Oliver is a wonderful chef and this is really his web site, but he treats it like a blog and things changed quickly and dramatically and he’s always adding new recipes and cooking techniques. If you like to cook, get to know it.

Reluctant Gourmet Blog is one I won’t miss. I go to it about once a week and catch up on any exciting recipes or advice they might have posted that week.

OPINION & PERSPECTIVE
Domestic Disturbances (*) by Judith Warner gives me both good, solid opinion and information, and really good writing.

Blog of the Moderate Left is pretty much daily reading for me. It tackles issues hard but it never comes off as radical. There’s a lot of good thinking in this blog.

Cluckerfuck Nation (*) by James Kunstler is solid information about America that really makes you think and expand your mind to other possibilities. I found Kunstler three or four years ago and I’ve been keeping up ever since. Many of you will find this blog a bit tedious because it is so thorough, but is well worth the time you devote to it. Top five!

Dailey Dish, by Andrew Sullivan, comes to us from Atlantic Monthly Magazine, which is one of the really great magazines of all times in America. I simply go to this blog everyday for a quick read and to see what the important issues are.

Think Again (*) by Stanley Fish and the NY Times is a very important blog that ranks in my top five. Fish is a real scholar and thinking man and he dissects issues and goes more deeply into them than any other current writer. One blog might be covering Milton, the poet, and another Obama, the President. Have your thinking-cap on when you read Fish because he challenges you to use your brain completely. He’s also a wordsmith and loves the subtly of language and communications. This is on my top five list.

Margaret & Helen by Helen Philpot and Margaret Schmechtman (whoever they are) is a blog by a couple of grannies who claim to be in the 80s. There are a lot of us who doubt that. I think they’re coeds in one of the great, snobby New England or New York colleges – like Vassar, Smith or Amherst. Nevertheless, it is great stuff and almost makes my top five.

Media Matters isn’t really a blog, but I treat it as one. Any of you who are upset with the right wing media – and any of the media that tends to exaggerate and out-right lie to us – ought to be daily readers on this web site. Media Matters is devoted to keeping the media honest and letting us know when its not.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Joe McNally’s Blog is really top-notch and so is the Joe McNally Web Site. If you go take a look at his web site you’ll see just how good he is as a photographer – one of the very best. He’s a master on the subject of lighting.

Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider is about much more than Photoshop. Kelby is an outstanding expert in digital photography and has a number of books on the subject. This blog will lead you to many other fine photography blogs and it’s a great place to start.

Bert Monroy web site is not a blog. I’ll be honest. I wish it was. I and others are trying to convince Monroy to do a regular blog. He is one extraordinary photographer and Photoshop artist. He’s amazing. I list him here for you in case you’re crazy about photography and Photoshop.

RELIGION & THEOLOGY
God’s Politics, by Jim Wallis and Friends, comes out of the Sojourners work. This is a good organization that gives you moderation and sensibility in religious thinking, but it is still very spiritual and committed to faith. Wallis is a good thinker. There’s no doubt about that. He tackles current major issues and puts a faith-bases spin on them. They do pass the offering plate a little too often for my tastes, but they’re worth reading and joining.

Out of Ur comes to us from the Christianity Today Magazine. There’s no fooling around on this blog. It’s dang good thinking and pushes the reader to think also. Don’t go here unless you want to read some serious contemporary theological thinking about current issues in faith.

LOCAL FLAVOR & OPINION
Eric Black Ink on MinnPost, an alternative local on-line newspaper, is a terrific place to keep up on essential Minnesota opinion and commentary. Again, this is one of the blogs I go to every time I’m informed there is something new. Lots of my readers from around the nation are interested in what’s happening in the Norm Coleman – Al Franken battle for the U.S. Senate seat that, sadly, has sat empty for 5 months. That issue will resume in the Minnesota State Supreme Court this week and Eric Black will cover it like a glove. He’ll give you the best information you can get anywhere.

Prairie Ponderings is written by a neighbor, Sam Stern, and he provides really good insight into local and personal issues that is well worth reading for people in the Twin Cities region and especially to people who delight in our own, immediate rural community. The only weakness here is that Sam just doesn’t write regularly and he sometimes lets a month slip by without posting a blog.

In a Quandary about all this Economics Jargon?

I’ve got a web site for you that is just plain fun, and you learn from it, too.
by Charlie Leck

I’ll be short and to the point today. I’m not big into economics and economics theory. So a few years ago, when I stumbled across the book, FREAKONOMICS, by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, I got a new look at economics and liked it. I couldn’t get enough of these guys.

Fortunately, they keep up a very regular and delightful blog: Freakonomics – the Hidden Side of Everything.

Go take a peek at their blog!

On 20 February 2009, for instance, Dubner wrote a very informative blog about Lawrence Lessig and his legal work. This is really worth taking a look at. Lessig, with Joe Trippi, has put together a web site called Change Congress, which simply seeks to keep Congress honest and productive. They recently launched a “donor strike against congressional candidates who don’t support campaign finance reform.” I just took the pledge to strike against candidates who don’t back such reform. You can, too.

The guys at Freakonomics will help you navigate through all the confusion about our current economic nose dive.

Freakonomics Revisited

Why was there such a dramatic drop in violent crime
in the early 1990s in America?
by Charlie Leck

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the last year is Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The two guys maintain a very unusual blog that I enjoy and with which I keep up regularly. In their book they grappled with weird and strange questions of economics and showed how the laws of economics could be applied to such bizarre situations.

• What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?


• Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?


• How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents?


• Where have all the criminals gone?

The chapter on the declining crime rate in America in the 1990s is particularly interesting and, if their logic is correct, it says we could be in for a soaring rise in the America crime rate if a certain very vocal and activist group gets its way. If it does, in about 17 years you should check the locks on your doors, make sure the security system is working, but, for heaven's sake, don't start packing heat. Here' how their thinking goes.

• In the 15 years prior to 1990 the violent crime rate in American had risen 80 percent.


• In the early 90s the crime rate dropped so dramatically that it stunned observers
  who expected the rate to keep rising


• It continued to drop until it reached the level of 40 years earlier

Where, so suddenly did all those criminals go?
That became the question of the day. The experts (criminologists, sociologists, urban sociologists, psychologists and media pundits) began providing answers like the following (most popular are listed first):

• New police strategies


• Better use of prisons


• Changes in the drug market


• Aging population


• Tougher gun control laws


• Strong economy


• Increased number of law enforcement officers


• Others (more capital punishment, concealed weapon laws, gun by-back programs, etc)

Dubner and Levitt decided to apply the laws of economics to the question in order to secure a rational, sensible answer. Dubner wrote the following about Levitt:

"As Levitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions…. Many people… might not recognize Levitt's work as economics at all. But he has merely distilled the so-called dismal science to its most primal aim: explaining how people get what they want… He figures a way to measure an effect that veteran economists had declared unmeasurable. His abiding interests – though he says he has never trafficked in them himself – are cheating, corruption and crime."

The question above, about the early 1990s, is just such an "interesting" question. Levitt (and Dubner, a writer) began to apply the "dismal science" of economics to the question. Chapter Four in their book carefully explains how, by using these rules of economics, they could dismiss any of the answers listed above. What then?

It wasn't Rudy
In New York City, an awful lot of people were crediting the newly elected mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and his personally chosen police commissioner, William Bratton, for the dramatic decreases in New York City's violent crime. We certainly heard Giuliani echoing the claim enough times in the recent Republican Party presidential primary campaign.

The facts, however, show that crime had already begun to dramatically decrease in New York City before Giuliani became Mayor and before he appointed Bratton. Giuliani came to office in 1994. Between 1990 and the end of 1993, the rate had already dropped by almost 20 percent. In addition, the attentive observer would have recognized that the crime rates were dropping all over the United States and even in urban areas where police departments were employing the status quo – even in Los Angeles, which bore the reputation of having an awful police department.

One by one, Levitt and Dubner dispatch all the possible causes, from our list above, for the drop in crime. Their logic is impeccable and it is difficult to disagree with them – impossible as far as I am concerned.

What then?
Perhaps the question should be: "When then?" Leavitt and Dubner date it. The change began on 22 January 1973 – seventeen years before the statistical start of the drop in the violent crime rate.

What? How? Why? Huh!
On that January day in 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Roe v. Wade, that abortion is legal under certain circumstances in the United States of America. Minnesotan, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the opinion for the majority and it included the following reasoning, which is quoted by Dubner and Levitt:

"The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent… Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and other wise, to care for it."

Could it be possible?
Levitt and Dubner's explanation and rationale are difficult to dismiss. I urge you to read the entire chapter. The children who were most likely to become criminals – the unwanted, improperly attended and unloved – were no longer on the streets – or, their number was greatly decreased.

The writers pose the question that all of their doubters and critics raise: "How, then, can we tell if the abortion-crime link is a case causality rather than simply correlation?"

Think about this! There were five states in the nation where this amazing statistical drop in the crime rate began at least two years earlier than 1990. In New York, for instance, the drop beginning in 1988 was staggering. Why? Because New York had legalized abortion two years earlier than the Supreme Court legalized it in 1973. The same was true in each of the other four states – California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. All five states, each of which had made abortion legal at least 2 years earlier than 1973, saw dramatics drops in their violent crime rates at least two years earlier than the rest of the nation.

The next step in this economic trail led Levitt to look at the comparison of rates of decreases in abortion with the rates of decrease in crime. Voila! A virtual match! He also found that there is a similar link in the statistics in Australia and Canada between their legalizing of abortion and the drop in the crime rate some 17 years later.

"To discover that abortion was one of the greatest crime-lowering factors in American history is, needless to say, jarring. It feels less Darwinian than Swiftian; it calls to mind a long-ago dart attributed to G. K. Chesterton: when there aren't enough hats to go around, the problem isn't solved by lopping off some heads. The crime drop was, in the language of economists, an 'unintended benefit' of legalized abortion. But one need not oppose abortion on moral or religious grounds to feel shaken by the notion of a private sadness being converted into a public good."

Does it freak you out? Do you disbelieve it? That's Freakonomics! I'd like to read your comments.

a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi

Thoughts from up near Lake Wobegon
by Charlie Leck

I’m sitting in my lovely tree-loft study, letting a multiplicity of random thoughts play around in the various recesses and accesses of my limited mind.

(1) I fall asleep evenings listening to the public radio. With its range of mono-tones and monotony it is perfect for putting one to sleep. My wife arranged this little speaker that is actually imbedded in my pillow, so I can listen and yet not disturb her. It’s a clever invention. A fellow last night was rambling on about what motivates writers to keep working and producing when they don’t really sell or get read by vast audiences. He thought it was a fear of death – the desire to be as immortal as possible – to leave something of oneself behind. I wondered if it couldn’t just be the sheer love of doing it; yet, I’m aware that I do want my grandchildren to have some sense of who I was and what made me like I am (to mix tenses a bit).

(2) Years ago, perhaps 20 or 25 years ago, a friend gave me a little sculpture that he had created. I keep it proudly near me here in this private place where I write. It’s only about 6 inches high and a few inches across. The base is a piece of roughly hewn hardwood. A thin piece of steel protrudes from it and rises to about 6 inches. Slender tongs at the end of the piece form a resting place for a smooth, egg-shaped rock or stone. He called it: “Between a rock and a hard place!” We were in business together at the time and that’s where we were.

(3) I’m trying to get a closet-full of old photographs – prints and slides – organized, cataloged and, in some cases, digitized to archival quality disks, so, when I shed this mortal coil, there won’t be such a mess for those who will need to go through these things. I find that I pause most often over photographs I took here and there of my wife. They remind me of one of the reasons I fell in love with her and they often take my breath away. They also remind me of the very good times we’ve had together. The photograph that introduces this blog is one of those that I found wasting away on a slide that had never been printed. I took the photograph with a wonderful old Minolta camera that served us well for many years. We were traveling in Germany and on our way to Stockholm for the 1990 World Equestrian Games. Anyway, it brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. I love traveling with her and wish we’d do more of it. A farm and its animals is not conducive to long get-aways.

(4) Van Peebles Land is a blog -- The Shambolic Postings of an Irishman Living in Wales – that I enjoy reading. It’s written and maintained by David Williamson. I want so much to respond to some of David’s meandering thoughts, but he has a complicated defense against anonymous scammers and I can’t leave my compliments without having his email address. David, if you are out there, give me some assistance! I’m one of your fans.

Now this Irishman’s blog isn’t something I’d necessarily recommend to everyone. It just happens to be one of those places I enjoy going for a change of pace and scenery. David seems a solid guy and a clear, uncomplicated thinker. Pay his blog a visit if you want a breath of fresh, Welsh air.

For instance, a few days ago he wrote about the visit of the French President, Nocolass Sarkozy, to England.

“The sharpest knives may have been locked away when French president Nicolas Sarkozy dined with the Queen yesterday.”

(5) I do nearly all the cooking around our house these days and not because I must, but because I enjoy it. I’ve resolved to get much better at it, too, and I’m getting hooked on the concept of better, fresher and more local foods – foods that we know about and whose life-histories we can nearly document. I’m bitten by a blog by Mark Bittman. He calls it Bitten. He also does a weekly column, The Minimalist, in the dining section of the NY Times and regularly produces marvelous videos. I’ve tried his recipes enough times that I know they work extremely well. To accomplish them, however, I find myself having to find new sources for various foods, herbs and spices. So, I’ve discovered the Asian and Hispanic markets in town. What a neat adventure! Next I’ll try one or two of Bittman’s cookbooks.

This resolution about my food in the future led me to discover Moonstone Farm. My, what a lovely place! It’s down in the Minnesota River Valley. Pay them, at least, an on-line visit.

“River-friendly meats...local artisan foods...guest cottage...handthrown pottery...all from the gently rolling bluffland of the Minnesota River Valley. Our 240 acres offers a varied landscape, plenty of trees, and a home to humans and cattle, corn and alfalfa, beaver and coyote, coneflowers and big bluestem. Meander through our site, get to know a bit about us and Moonstone grass-based beef. Be assured that customer visits, electronic or in person, are always welcome.”

The farm has been in the Handeen family since 1872. It’s a joy to feel the deep respect this couple has for the land and what it produces. One can visit their farm store and have a very nice time.

(6) I’m thinking a lot about the Sojourners movement these days. I’ve been so disappointed with the Christian Church in America during my life time –the traditional Protestant Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the fundamentalist, evangelical churches. There’s too much division, finger pointing, claims to exclusive understanding. Scripture has also been badly misunderstood and brutally used as claims to universal and exclusive truth.

Now I’m going to a blog by Jim Wallis, called God’s Politics, and I find it refreshing and hopeful. There’s no finger pointing and no claims to exclusive possession of truth and no guarantees of salvation. Wallis’ latest blog about Pastor Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama gave me some hope. The perspective of Jim Wallis on this incident is unique and strikes to the heart of what’s going on.

I’ll watch this organization (or movement) for a while yet; however, I think I’ve found a vehicle for religious and faith expression. I’m probably going to get involved.

(7) Freakonomics is one of the most delightfully amusing, entertaining and enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. My discovery of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt is one of the best things that’s happened to me in a while. I’m not at all an economics or finance guy, but they made economics come alive for me. They have extraordinary senses of humor. Read their terrific book and also visit their blog of the same name.

(8) Just a few last thoughts about books and then I’ll close. I’m a bit of a John Grisham fan. He’s published 20 books and I’ve read all of them. I just finished his most recent work, The Appeal. It wasn’t too appealing and it was very predictible. I’d put it down near the bottom of my list of his books. My two favorite of his books are A Painted House and The Innocent Man.

I also just finished Bill Bryson’s book about Shakespeare. Bryson has a very readable writing style and his sense of humor makes his books marvelous to read. I’ve never been disappointed with any of them and I think I’ve read them all. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, or if you’d just like to know more about good old Will, this would be a suitable title to pick up from your local library. Here’s a tidy review of the book by the London Times.

I’ve rambled on long enough. I’m off to the Asian market in search of some baby bak-choy.