Maggie's Farm

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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Monday, April 18. 2011

Monday morning links

Business School: Where Education Dies


Translating the Rabbis for Today

The rise of the concierge doctors

One annual fee. Doesn't cover consultants, though, or hospital. Free markets for medical care would solve all of the problems. For example (with apologies to our local Opthalmologist), our family uses the Costco doc for eye care. Nice guy there. You just write him a manageable check, and their eyeglasses and contact lenses are very reasonable (if not high fashion).

Wives who don't want sex with their husbands

Just one more reason for polygamy. Why not have 5 or 6 of 'em? Send them all out to work on jobs on Wall St., and the stud stays home, works out, goes to gallery openings, writes on blogs, practices his trap shooting, goes fishin', makes a venison stew for dinner, and generally conserves his strength for nighttime fireworks.

Volokh: Stripping Congress of its Power of the Purse?

Obamanomics Applied to Grades

Samuelson: The Politics of Wishful Thinking:


Both parties propound brands of wishful thinking designed to make it seem that they're accomplishing more than they are.

I Am Woman- Hear Me Whine: We Can Only Roar With Remedial Help

Eating bugs to save the world (h/t Jungleman)

Look at the photos. "Waiter, there are grasshoppers in my salad."

Cell phones do cause brain damage - from car crashes

Gore: Global-warming fight a lot like the civil rights movement

Hmmm. I don't think so. The civil rights movement was sane and just.

Drinking our milkshake: Cuba’s Deep-Water Drilling Proposal Raises Concern

Pic is a Mark Podwal Passover plate, sold at the Metropolitan Museum's Gift Shop
Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:04 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

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Al Gore is the modern snake-oil salesman.

On a more cheery note, check out these amazing images from the Final Frontier.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html
#1 Pajak (Link) on 2011-04-18 07:32 (Reply)
Did you know that Obama turned down a FREE offer by IBM to provide programming to help rid the Medicare system of fraud, perhaps to the tune of $1 trillion? Search it...it's true.

I say this because, unfortunately, a few family and friends are undergoing healthcare problems and are besieged with statements from various insurers, including Medicare. Having gone through this myself when four "grand/parents" ended up in this system within a few overlapping years and I complained to the above about the problem of tracking care and medications given when you are not there 24/7 (or living many states away from those undergoing care) and finding the opportunity for fraud is rampant. Rampant. Rampant.

My immediate take is: anything and everything should be done to eliminate fraud BEFORE the system is expanded. No profit-oriented company would do less. The problem is the government doesn't understand profit/loss and is NOT responsible for such meager bottomline accountability.

Where is Obama's brain. FREE. Fraud preventing.

Enuf said.
#2 jma on 2011-04-18 10:42 (Reply)
Regarding the polygamy thing, I'm going to have to be a bit uncomfortably honest here in order to ask a question. I know some of you won't be able to answer because your significant other may read this blog.

I've found throughout my long and sordid life that the strong sexual interest lasts maybe two years. (I am married and faithful to my wife, btw.)

What would happen if one had "5 or 6 of 'em" in his harem? Would the interest always be high, or would you grow tired of them as easily, and always want something new? Is it a matter of conquest, in other words, having attained the goal of bagging your woman, that causes interest to wane? Or am I just a sick, twisted freak?

Enquiring minds want to know.
#3 Big___Al on 2011-04-18 12:00 (Reply)
OK, I just bare my soul to the whole blogosphere, and no-one wants to touch this with a ten-foot pole?! Uhh... maybe bad metaphor there...
#3.1 Big___Al on 2011-04-18 18:17 (Reply)
Sounds normal enuf to me, BA.
#3.1.1 bd on 2011-04-18 18:35 (Reply)
LOL. I'm not sure how anyone could respond with a straight face to a naked man who's confessed to having bared himself while posting on this blog. I'm foolish, so I'll try. Except for a particular advantage accorded a married couple when it comes to estate taxes, is there any reason at all for men to get married these days? I've been married (to the same woman) for 45 years, but I'll be darned if I can give you a single reason why a young guy just starting out in life should get married before he's reached the age of, say, 65. There's just so much less hassle when a couple is free to move on, even when there are children involved. And, the bonus is that a man unencumbered by marriage doesn't need polygamy and suffers none of the six-fold grief that comes with having a half-dozen whining wives.
#3.1.2 Agent Cooper on 2011-04-18 22:53 (Reply)
I only bared my soul here, AC. I save the other baring for better sites! ;-)
#3.1.2.1 Big___Al on 2011-04-19 16:12 (Reply)
Translating the Rabbis for Today:

Well there may be seventy but only per day.

Methinks, why Rabbi Jesus Christ suggested needs for toleration to 490.
#4 Leag on 2011-04-18 12:09 (Reply)
"The unmistakable trajectory of Obamacare is towards a two-tier healthcare system."

The NHS (on which Obamacare is modelled) has solved this effectively by making it illegal (yes...) to seek medical care outside the NHS.
If you do, you're banned for life from NHS care, but you will still pay premiums into the NHS.

"our family uses the Costco doc for eye care. Nice guy there"

I usually use the services of my opthalmologist as well, but they lack the equipment and skills to do a full job (by law, again). Service is free in combination with prescription glasses if you order them from them, which I do :)

" Why not have 5 or 6 of 'em? Send them all out to work on jobs on Wall St., and the stud stays home,"

And all 5 or 6 complain that the guy does no work, just lazes around all day and spends all their money.
Oh wait, isn't that what wives are supposed to get find their hubbies complaining about :)

"The civil rights movement was sane and just."

Except for being misappropriated by special interest groups who want (and get) special treatment for "minorities", like laws requiring them getting jobs over the heads of better qualified people because of their skin colour, schools being required to base grading requirements on skin colour so there's no difference in average grades between racial groups, etc. etc.
#5 J.T. Wenting on 2011-04-18 12:12 (Reply)
I likum salami.

Bird Dog yall left out queing up for Jummah prayers in polygamist's list of activity.
#6 Leag on 2011-04-18 12:13 (Reply)
It is about damn time! I am glad to see that other people are noticing that the fast ride on the glass escalator to position of leadership is not the way to "Develop" an individual's skills and consequently it does not prepare them for the full scope of decisions they will have to make once they are in place at the top of the management heap. Ergo, during the last 20 years many companies, governmental agencies and universities have suffered dramatic decline because the women they have moved into power did not do the hard work at the bottom of the ladder. Mentoring is just another cost added onto a social network that has already demonstrated it has limits. Mentoring only gives the individual a solution for this moment's problem. It DOES not provide them with a deep and broad experience base completed on one's own two feet, without support. Once the mentor is out of reach and a "new" problem arises the fast track individual is still not able to analyze the situation fully and design a unique solution.
#7 another one on 2011-04-18 14:20 (Reply)
I Am Woman- Hear Me Whine:

Girl may we help yall leg up?

What's that yall say, honey?
#8 Leag on 2011-04-18 14:38 (Reply)
I've heard the "grade distribution" discussion before. Obamanomics is a little different.
Yes, it starts with the grade redistrubution. But it goes on.
The professors constantly encourage the ones with low grades to feel okay about their poor grades and the ones with high grades to feel bad about high grades.
The dorm managers knock on the doors of the high achievers frequently to make sure they have trouble studying.
The chancellor's staff insists that the high achievers study Aramaic and cuneiform rather than engineering or medicine or even law, so their interrupted studies are unproductive anyway.
Then, when the achievers' grades fall off, the low achievers, the dorm managers, the professors and the chancellors cry loudly that the high achievers are contributing less to the low achievers.
Sound like the last four years?
#9 Geoff Brown on 2011-04-18 20:10 (Reply)
Geoff--you are spot on in more ways than you know!

The stakes are much higher: it is not just about girls getting a job, or gays getting a pass.

IT IS ABOUT ELIMINATING THE STRONGEST FORCE FOR GOOD THAT EVER HAD POWER IN THIS WORLD ! THE AMERICAN CHRISTIAN!!
#10 faculty wife on 2011-04-18 22:13 (Reply)
Prof. Volokh seems to be unaware that Chuck Schumer intends to introduce a bill to get Obama off the hook by REDUCING the number of executive branch appointments that require Senate approval. While it may be true that no current czar is affected by the terms of the budget agreement that Obama signed onto, Obama's signing statement does prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Dems will never negotiate in good faith. The GOP would be fools ever to take them or the President at their word. This makes any agreement on extending the debt ceiling limit DOA. There will be no budget for 2012, and with no continuing resolution as a backstop, this time the government WILL shut down. It's going to be a very difficult spring and early summer for America.
#11 Agent Cooper on 2011-04-18 22:13 (Reply)
Don't mean to hog the comments section, but the concierge doctor arrangement makes a lot of sense to me and I'd be willing to sign on even though I seldom have to see a doctor (knock on wood). You never know.... And that picture in the boston.com article is from a very entertaining summer replacement TV show called Royal Pains, which has a slightly implausible premise but is about a concierge doctor on Long Island. The show has an excellent cast and, along with Burn Notice and Around the Horn on ESPN, is among the very few TV shows that I will watch.
#12 Agent Cooper on 2011-04-18 22:30 (Reply)

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