The Arrow #146

Hello everyone.

Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand. Or Kia Ora as they say here.

MD and I arrived yesterday and are spending a couple of days with Simon Thornley and his wife Emily, who have been most gracious hosts.

The conference in Sydney was one of the best I’ve ever attended. Unlike talks in the US, where I know most of the speakers, many of them personally, I knew only a couple at this conference. Every speaker was terrific, and I’m not exaggerating. I learned from every one of them. Plus, when I did get to know them, they were warm and welcoming to a person. I repeat: it was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.

Kudos to Rod Taylor, who ramrodded the event. And who was our intrepid host for the next few days in Melbourne.

I would highly recommend you purchase the live stream of this conference to watch at your leisure. It is $99 (Australian dollars) which calculates out to about $62 in the US. A tremendous bargain given what you’ll get out of it. And, in case you wonder, not one penny of that will add to my bulging coffers. All proceeds go to underwriting the conference.

Although the conference itself was splendid, it did not pass without my own personal drama.

I was scheduled to speak on days one and two, then on the final day, I was signed up for an Ask Mike Anything segment. I had no idea what I might be asked in a public forum, so I was a little apprehensive. Then, as luck would have it, I came down with laryngitis and a head cold the night before. In the middle of the night, in fact.

I haven’t had a cold or any other health issue since I got Covid back in early 2021. And my Covid experience was almost nothing. A fever and a bit of fatigue for a day and a half, and that was it.

With the head cold, I had no fever, and didn’t really feel bad at all. I just had these intense sneezing and coughing spells and a frog in my throat. That first night I was awaked by some pretty impressive sneezing that seemed to last for an eternity. And which ended up causing me to have a nosebleed. Which, of course, prompted me to worry I might undergo another bout of sneezing and have my nose start bleeding during the Ask Mike bit. Not a pleasant prospect.

I semi-sort-of tried to weasel out of the session, but Rod wasn’t having it. So, I manned up and went on.

I made sure to keep MD right before me on the front row in the event anything untoward happened.

As it turned out, I wasn’t plagued by the cold or a nose bleed, but I did have a helluva time hearing the questions. I have a bit of a hearing deficit thanks to my years of hunting and shooting (without ear protection) during my youth. And that was on top of my ears being kind of blocked from the effects of the cold.

Many of the people who queued up to ask the questions did not hold the microphone close to their mouths. And they all spoke with Australian accents—imagine that?—some of them very rapidly. To me it sounded like G’day, bluh, bluh, bluh, bluh. I couldn’t make a word out. So I would have to ask MD what was said. And she would mouth it to me.

Finally, out of frustration, someone dragged another chair onto the stage and got MD up there with me to repeat the questions in my ear. Or, as was her wont, to answer them herself.

Anyway, the whole thing came off okay. I think the crowd probably enjoyed it as a comedy routine. If you spring for the live stream, you can see it all for yourself.

And, just in case you’re wondering, my worst fear was unfounded. My nose did not begin to bleed. Which was by far my greatest worry. And I didn’t sneeze even once.

The conference ended late Sunday afternoon—in fact, the Ask Mike Anything segment was the grand (?) finale. The next morning we flew with Rod to Melbourne, where he hosted us at his lovely home and beyond for another few days.

He took us on a road trip to Walkerville, a small town on a giant bay, where his family has had a home for decades. We walked the beach and chilled on the deck.

We took a few little side trips here and there, but by far the most interesting—to me, at least—was to an absolutely spectacular 1,000 acre cattle ranch. Or cattle farm, as they call them there.

I found the guy who owns the place to be an absolute font of knowledge. I could have stayed there for a week. His place is kind of the Polyface Farm of Australia, though he manages it differently. One major difference is that he does not use fertilizer.

Joel Salatin, who owns and operates Polyface Farm in Virginia (and whom MD and I have been fortunate enough to spend some time with), uses natural fertilizer from the excrement of the many animals he raises. If you’ve never read about Polyface Farm in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you really should. It is fascinating to learn how Joel completely transformed an overworked area of land and made it the envy of farmers everywhere.

The guy who owns the 1,000 acre farm we visited does not use commercial fertilizer. Instead of allowing his grass cover for cattle grazing to grow, he keeps it cropped to about six inches high. Why? Because it lets the sunlight in so the clover will grow on the bottom.

Why the clover?

Because it fixes nitrogen.

Plants and animals need nitrogen to make protein. Unfortunately, neither we (animals) nor plants can suck the nitrogen out of the atmosphere—though it’s plentiful there—and use it. We have to get it in a different form.

Clover and some other legumes (yes, clover is a legume) form a symbiotic relationship with a specific bacterium that can use nitrogen from the atmosphere and “fix” it, which means convert it to organic nitrogen. Zillions of these bacteria form around the roots of the clover plants and fix the atmospheric nitrogen, which nourishes the clover. When the clover turns over, i.e., dies and decomposes, the organic nitrogen is released into the soil. Meaning other grasses that don’t have the symbiotic relationship with the bacteria can use it to fuel their growth.

By keeping his ground cover relatively short, the rancher (farmer) provides plenty of forage for his cattle without having to use artificial or animal fertilizers.

If you’re anywhere near as fired up about all this as I am, give this old blog post a read. It goes into the entire nitrogen fixing process in a bit more detail.

Along with his horticultural info, I was fascinated by the farmer’s selection process for his cattle.

Before I get into that, there are a lot of different ways to raise cattle. You can have cows that end up with calves that you raise together to a point. You then sell the calves. That’s called a cow-calf operation. It’s not particularly remunerative.

The guy we visited did that back in the day, but what he does nowadays is to buy the calves after they have been weaned and brought to a specific weight. Then he feeds them on his lush grass and watches as they gained weight like crazy. He then sells them for slaughter.

Obviously, the more an individual steer weighs, the better price it brings. He discovered in his 50 odd years of doing this that cattle with large frames can support a lot more meat, so he chooses large framed cattle to purchase. Not only does he look for cattle with large frames to purchase, he also looks for cattle with large mouths. The better to eat with, of course.

He said he had never found a steer with a smaller, narrow mouth capable of putting on a lot of weight despite its being presented with an unlimited amount of fabulous forage. He always looks for wide-mouthed cattle to purchase.

I suppose had I been in that business, I would have figured it out. But since I’m not, I found it all extremely fascinating. I had to be dragged away—almost literally—because I was having such a great time learning from this guy.

The only thing I’m pissed off about is that I was so engaged in the whole experience I didn’t take one effing photo to be able to show you how magnificent the place is. In fact, I didn’t even realize it until we were long gone.

During our stay in Melbourne, Rod fixed me up with some doctor friends of his who are members of The Royal Melbourne Golf Club, so I was able to play a round there. The Royal Melbourne is a sister club to my own club The Valley Club of Montecito. Both were designed by the famous golf course architect (and physician) Sir Alister MacKenzie, who designed many of the most noted golf courses in the world, including Augusta, Cypress Point, Pasatiempo, Crystal Downs, The Jockey Club in Buenos Aires, and about a million others. If you’re a member of a MacKenzie course, you want to play all the others. And The Royal Melbourne is one of the more famous others. Playing it was a real treat despite its beating my brains out.

MD and I bid Melbourne adieu yesterday and flew to Auckland, where we are staying for a few days. The first couple of days we’re holed up with some new friends introduced to us by Rod. We’ll head to a VRBO tomorrow, so we’ll be out of everyone’s hair.

Our gentleman host is an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland, who feels pretty much as we do about Covid and the vaccines. He has published extensively on the evils of sugar and, more lately, on the evils of what the mainstream has done around Covid.

We got picked up yesterday, went to dinner last night, and I’ve been working on The Arrow all morning. Much like last week’s, it’s going to be a short one simply because of time constraints.

It’s Friday here right now, but we’re about 19 hours ahead of US time. People here get The Arrow at about midday on Friday, so I was trying to get it out by midday on Friday, but I’m running a bit late.

We’re making a 14 hour flight back to the US this coming Thursday (NZ date), so I don’t know how that’s going to impact next week’s Arrow.

After this coming Thursday, I’ll be back to my regular schedule.

Israel, Hamas, and Freedom of Speech

The appalling Hamas surprise attack on Israel was followed by yet another attack on freedom of speech. This time it was primarily the people who were demanding freedom of speech during the Covid fiasco who demanded others be silenced.

Many groups popped up all over the place who were filled with folks militating on behalf of Hamas and the Palestinians. And militating against Israel, or, as they called it, the apartheid state of Israel. Many political groups who were vocal about the repression of speech during Covid wanted these anti-Israel groups shut down. This wasn’t all in the United States. Police forces in a number of countries arrested people demonstrating on behalf of Hamas.

In my view, freedom of speech is freedom of speech. We don’t need to protect speech that doesn’t offend anyone. We need to protect speech that is offensive. Or at least offensive to some.

I’m pretty much in the Israeli camp on this one. Especially since they were minding their own business when viciously attacked. But I believe those supporting Hamas should be allowed to congregate and demonstrate peacefully. That’s what freedom of speech is all about.

But with freedom of speech comes responsibility, which many people have forgotten about. You can say whatever you want, but the consequences are yours to shoulder.

I’ve been highly amused at all the Ivy League university and law school students who have gone all-in being pro-Hamas only to have their future jobs rescinded. And having their names, which they proudly appended to anti-Israel proclamations, passed around by law firms, hedge funds, and major corporations on a don’t-hire list. I find it hilarious how quickly they scrambled to have their names removed from these open letters and proclamations they so eagerly signed. It would make me happy if not a single one of them got hired.

You can write it all off to callow youthfulness, but the grandfathers of these kids were in the trenches at their ages. Not off signing petitions they probably didn’t even read to their completion first.

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” —G. Michael Hopf

In terms of how Israel should respond, who am I to say?

I hate to see any innocent people killed…even in revenge. The innocent people had nothing to do with the surprise attack on Israel and the consequent deaths of innocent people there. Given what I know about how the Israelis operate, I would imagine they would try to spare as many innocent people as possible, but would also abide by the dictum that you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelette.

One of my favorite writers—Edward Luttwak wrote a piece on what will be confronting the Israelis as they work their way through Gaza on the hunt for terrorists.

In Gaza, by contrast, there are no visible military facilities, while Hamas fighters can shed their fashionable black outfits and dress like civilians. This will not, however, frustrate the Israeli offensive, which still has fixed, immovable targets. These are the deep tunnels — too deep for aerial bombing — that Hamas has been excavating and lining in concrete for more than 10 years, using construction equipment and vast quantities of cement donated by different governments and international organisations “to house refugees”. As a result, Gaza’s refugee “camps” do not contain a single tent. Instead, they are home to a forest of high-rise apartments, which is undoubtedly a good thing, except for the fact that both machines and cement were also diverted for tunnelling on the largest scale.

These tunnels house relatively sophisticated rocket-assembly lines, motor-assembly works, sheet metal and explosives’ stores, and warhead-fabrication workshops. More tunnels house Hamas command posts and its ordnance stores of small arms, mortars and rockets. Even deeper tunnels house its leaders’ lodgings and headquarters. Finally, there are the exfiltration tunnels, though there is no sign that they were used in the October 7 attacks, perhaps because their exits had been detected and blocked long before.

When Israel’s forces enter Gaza, they will engage any enemies who resist them, but they will not go looking for them. Their task is to escort combat engineers to their job sites — the camouflaged places from which tunnels can be accessed. How do they know where these entry points are? While Israel’s aerostats with cameras, satellite photography and the pictures generated by radar returns cannot reveal tunnels, they have been used to monitor where cement-mixer trucks have stopped over the years. They cannot pinpoint tunnel entrances by doing so, but they can at least identify places worth exploring with low-frequency, earth-penetrating radars or simple probes.

The entire article is worth reading just to understand the obstacles the Istraelis will be facing in an effort to wipe out the Hamas weaponry without killing a lot of innocents.

Speaking of freedom of speech…

Matt Taibbi came up with an hilarious article about that effete prig Thierry Breton, who is the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, telling Elon, Jeff, et al that they had better be good or he would see to it that there were consequences.

I don’t often go on jingoistic rants, but my tolerance for European bureaucrats in smart glasses instructing Americans what to do on civil liberties questions is zero. The Digital Services Act is a grotesque, nakedly authoritarian law written in language so obnoxious in its pompous inscrutability that it would have impressed Orwell or Huxley. Breton’s mention of “qualified sources” is a reference to the law’s most heinous and dystopian portion, the so-called “trusted flagger” program, which puts a clutch of elitist NGO busybodies in charge of poring through content to decide for the rabble what is untrue or “harmful,” as a means of “defending European norms.” 

Does one of those “European norms” involve politicians spending a generation patronizing American-developed Internet technology (including, one presumes, porn sites) before turning around after decades and telling American Internet companies how and by whom they should submit to European-chosen decency committees? Silicon Valley execs should respectfully invite the EU to launch its own fully-policed Deutschebook platform, send a middle finger emoji back over the pond, and spend the rest of the day blowing up IKEA shelf units with M-80s in their office parking lots.

My tolerance for twerps such as Breton is also zero. I hope Musk et al tell him to jump up a fat dog’s ass. Smart glasses and all.

Much as I hate to do so, I’m going to have to cut this off pretty quickly. Our hosts are home, and we’re all heading out. But before we go…

Regulatory Capture

There are two things I hate to see in government. One is regulatory capture; the other is the administrative state. There is much overlap in the two. And, sad to say, our own government in the United States is rife with both.

Here is a marvelous video discussing regulatory capture and its consequences. They are no bueno if you’re the average citizen. If, however, you are one of the connected class, they are a dream come true.

Although this video is a touch over 36 minutes, the meat of it runs about 24 minutes. The rest is a panel discussion.

And speaking of videos, Megan Kelly just says No. Pretty vociferously.

In fact, I can’t believe she says what she says.

I wouldn’t go to Google to do what she suggests in the video. At least not through my own internet service provider. I would go to an internet cafe or something. Or search through a proxy server. Too many people have been convicted of all kinds of crimes because they stupidly googled how to commit their specific crime. As in, how can I get rid of a body? Or what kind of poison kills quickly? Stuff like that.

Plus, with Google being as woke as it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the good folks there don’t keep an eye out for this kind of stuff and report it to their government masters like little school girls listing the names of those who talked while the teacher was out of the room.

Sometimes It’s Great to be Reviled

And I just know I’m reviled by all the right people when I see something like the video below.

Video of the Week

This is a great one. I’m always talking about how tribal we all are about our politics. This is an hilarious example of it. I’ve watched this at least ten times and sent it to everyone on my email list.

This was apparently shown during the Notre Dame vs USC game last weekend as a paid ad by a freedom of speech group.

Perfection!

That’s about it for this week. I apologize for the brevity. I’ll try to do better next Thursday, but can’t promise until I get back and my time is my own. But one way or another I will definitely be back next Thursday. See you then.

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