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.
"As we rode out to Fennario, as we rode out to Fennario Our captain fell in love with a lady like a dove And called her by a name, pretty Peggy-O.
Will you marry me pretty Peggy-O, will you marry me pretty Peggy-O If you will marry me, I'll set your cities free And free all the ladies in the are-O.
I would marry you sweet William-O, I would marry you sweet William-O I would marry you but your guineas are too few And I fear my mama would be angry-O.
What would your mama think pretty Peggy-O, What would your mama think pretty Peggy-O, What would your mama think if she heard my guineas clink Saw me marching at the head of my soldiers-o."
"Pretty Peggy-O," traditional tune covered by Dylan on his very first album, 1962's Bob Dylan, and later played frequently on the Neverending Tour from 1992 until its last known appearance in 1998. Download a live version from September 1992 here, or a Grateful Dead cover of the same song from 1982 here. This website has additional information on the history and derivation of the song.
The H5N1 Bird Influenza is spreading during the bird migration, as predicted. None in the Western Hemisphere, yet. Thus far, this will be a problem for those handling birds, and bird farmers. Be careful with your pheasants this fall, Mr. Free Market.
There is no evidence of a mutation which could endanger human populations on a large scale. Kill your parakeet and parrot and make a nice little soup out of them - and hope for the best. There may have been some hysteria about the Bird Flu - but it remains a risk that hangs over all of us.
(Image: bird-fancier planning Cockatoo Stew for dinner.)
The problem with vaccines is lawsuits. Companies are afraid to make vaccines. And in the current environment when quacks and trial lawyers blame vaccines for everything from autism to ADD to ingrown toenails, the manufacturers don't have a prayer with an Alabama jury.
Why should they bankrupt their companies by trying to help people?
I have been around long enough to remember polio. Folks, getting vaccinated for disease is your choice. But only a true ignorant fool would not have their kids vaccinated in these times.
The problems began with the famous Cutter Case. The all-knowing Dalrymple covers the medico-legal story in a book review in City Journal.
Update: Just stumbled into this piece on the subject on the excellent Overlawyered blog.
"[T]he instructional strategies and learning styles most often favored in the nation's schools," the guidelines declare, "are inconsistent with the cognitive styles, cultural orientations, and cultural characteristics of some groups of students of color."
Not only do I find this racist and demeaning, I find it totally counterproductive and totally defeating the entire purpose of basic education. Not to mention that it is untrue. This isn't benign "multiculturalism" - whatever that is - this is a design to prevent the normal education of those who need it most. This kind of BS makes me nuts.
People in all nations go to school and learn math, reading, foreign languages - esp. English - and everything else - usually in more rigorous and more disciplined settings than the average American High School. And immigrants have been learning and achieving in America forever, without problems. These morons will end that, if they can. Story at Front Page.
The Swamp: a new book about the history of the shrinking Everglades by Michael Grunwald. Do we love the Everglades? We do. One quote from Grime's review in the NYT:
For at least a century and a half, the Everglades wrestled with an image problem. Today, looking at its endless acres of swaying sawgrass, Americans see precious wetlands, home to the egret and the orchid. But for earlier generations, the Everglades was simply a swamp, a mosquito-infested wasteland. "The first and most abiding impression is the utter worthlessness to civilized man, in its present condition, of the entire region," wrote Buckingham Smith, a Harvard-educated lawyer and historian sent by the government to study the Everglades in the 1840's.
"We have recently witnessed something of a debate on the "science gap" between American universities and the rest of the world. We did not witness, however, any debate on the state of humanities in American universities. This is not because "all is well" in the world of the humanities. On the contrary, they are in a much sorrier state than anything imaginable in the sciences. It is just that the humanities have been satisfied with the status quo, and their decline has remained opaque to themselves."
Media Refuses to Report Moslem Violent Events. So thoughtful of them to protect us from truth. Blankley at RCP
This collection of metaphors and analogies are reputed to have been collected from High School essays. Count me a skeptic there, but who knows:
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a Guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:\flw.quid55328 .com\aaakklch@ung but gets T: \flw.quidaaakklch@ung by mistake.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
Read more of these metaphors on Continuation Page below:
Where does the money come from? Blue is Dem, Red is Repub. As Will points out in the piece from which this graph is borrowed, it helps explain why the blue party is out of touch with the country.
More on SpaceTourism. $20 million. I guess nobody considers that the Earth is already in space. Earth is already a Space Tourism destination. I recommend Turkey, Scotland, and Cape Cod as fine destinations on this outer space Life Planet of Solar System #CD-397-4007-29D-300705T.
A tourism boycott of South Dakota? : A law banning nearly all abortions without exception for cases of rape or incest in South Dakota was signed Monday by Governor Mike Rounds prompting women’s groups to call for a tourism boycott of the state. http://www.travelwirenews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000078/007821-p.htm
What is the Dem agenda? They cannot decide. More socialism, plus defeat? Politics is disgusting. Is "Not Bush" enough? Balloon.
Popular Mechanics is becoming a hot magazine. They deal with Katrina myths, via here.
Why do newspapers pretend they have no political agendas? What do they have to lose?
With housing values rising, property taxes rise too. And politicians get to use the $ to buy votes. Then the regular folks feel exploited, and get mad.
India is within the Circle of Fire - the Jihad. The latest.
University of South Alabama stands tall. So much for the elite colleges.
The Admin. is so out to lunch on immigration that it isn't funny. Who are they talking to? Are they really idiots on this subject? Hey, GW - it's our country.
The Trevor Green story captures all of the unreported nuance that is needed about Moslem blood-lust. Normblog.
The problem with the French economy. Teach people to be children, and they will act like children.
Reconstructing American Indian languages. Useless, but interesting.
Davidson College. It's a hot school, but can you get a date there? New campus speech code prevents "inquiries about dating." How about inquires about raw, uncommitted, transgender, gay, or lesbian sex? Is heterosexual dating the big evil? How will this be enforced?
Santorum. No idea why he has been in trouble. He has a tough fight, but he's a nice guy.
Not your father's Britain. Submission in the UK. I ask again - Why does the Left always welcome submission?
And even worse: The Nanny State of the UK will now provide Nannies. We are rapidly losing respect, cousins. What happened to noble Self-Reliance? Is it now a Brit thing to have other people pay your bills? Where is the honor in that?
Yet another good blogger burns out. The blog voice of Tennessee: One Hand Clapping. If the pay were better...like about $700,000 with good benefits and equity, it would be a pretty decent gig, assuming you don't live on the coasts.
We are a couple weeks late on the news, but Overlawyered reports that the tremendously successful website craigslist.org, which hosts individual ads for anything from housing to sports equipment and personals, is being sued by a group of Chicago-based lawyers for violating the federal Fair Housing Act. The site currently advises any would-be posters to avoid "discrimination" in their ads, and removes any postings which have been the subject of complaints, but the lawsuit (see the filed complaint here) would compel craigslist to pre-censor all posts.
The Fair Housing Act is already enough of a blow to the right to freely associate, but this lawsuit would prevent individual tenants from so much as describing what qualities they desire in a roommate. Are you a woman who would prefer to live with another female? A guy looking for someone close to his own age? Or even someone mentioning that their apartment is "across from the Catholic church"? Tough luck - mentioning any of these things in an ad would be considered "housing discrimination" and your carefully crafted ad would be screened out. Fortunately, it seems that the weight of precedent is against the "plaintiffs" - themselves just a group of lawyers, rather than any aggrieved party. Even if successful, such a law would only serve to waste the time of all people involved, as the tenant would be forced to deal with each applicant individually to get the same simple information that an ad would have screened for.
(The psychology of discrimination comes into play here also: if I read an ad that states a preference for blacks as roommates, I am unlikely to be offended since there was no harm done to me, and in fact harm potentially averted since I was saved the emotional distress of having had my request rejected. If the ad instead said "no whites, asians or hispanics or indians, please," there might be more room for offense even though the meaning is more or less identical. Banning preferences in ads altogether will not make them go away, however, and only makes it much more likely that someone will experience individual rejection on sex/racial/religious grounds.)
(Can you identify that unfair house in photo? And who paid the rent?)
Our mighty editor asked me to post this one separately:
Most out-of-control school in the US? Why doesn't somebody call the cops? The thought of good kids in that school, who want to learn, breaks my heart.
It is too damn bad that the kids who want to be left behind, can't be, nowadays. In the good old days, it worked out fine. There was tons of industrial work and good hard farm work. All work deserves respect.
Is there not enough unskilled and semi-skilled work and skilled work nowadays - or do the Guatemalan illegals do all of it for peanuts? Stoneworkers get $30/hr; gunsmiths make $100/hr. There's lots of work out there for kids who hate school. My local camera/TV/VCR etc repair guy gets $175/hr. Most folks aren't avid scholars. Despite No Child Left Behind BS, lots of kids just aren't into it. There is plenty of work out there - good honest work - with a good life, for kids who don't like school. Plus America already has enough kids with college "degrees" which mean about as much as a High School diploma used to mean.
If you hate it, get out of school, and learn how to do something useful. You can have a fine life that way, and most college degrees these days are scams anyway. That's why we call it the Education Industry.
The Right to Ridicule. Ridicule is a cruel, humorous, necessary, often clever, and time-honored form of discourse. Dworkin in the NY Review of Books discusses why we must preserve and protect it.
Why the Dems refuse to acknowledge Saddam-Al Quaida links. Duh. We hardly need Barone's talents to explain this.
Iran came out of the closet over the weekend and revealed that it has played the EU for suckers. Yesterday, Hamas did the same. I think these guys know they have civilization on the run. LGF.
And now we find that Iran is participating in the war in Iraq. Surely they know that the US is not up for one more war in the middle east.
Most out-of-control school in the US? Why doesn't somebody call the cops? The thought of good kids in that school, who want to learn, breaks my heart. It is too damn bad that the kids who want to be left behind, can't be, nowadays. Not enough unskilled and semi-skilled work and skilled workers - or the Guatemalan illegals do all of it for peanuts. Stoneworkers get $30/hr; gunsmiths make $100/hr. There's lots of work out there for kids who hate school. My local camera/TV/VCR etc repair guy gets $175/hr.
"I think the way that you make it in the 21st century is going to be figuring out a way to help a lot of people do what they want, rather than as in the 20th century, trying to figure out a way to make them do what you want."
Western Europeans are, I fear, spiritually exhausted; and they express their "Christian" loyalties only as a means of declaring they are not Muslims. They are afraid of Muslims, but mainly because they are insecure about their own religious legacies. The peoples of New Europe -- Poles, Hungarians, Slovenes, Romanians, and even some other citizens of former Yugoslavia -- survived Communism thanks to their spiritual commitments, often to traditional Catholicism. They are stronger in their Christian belief and are in a better position to view Islam without fear. With these thoughts in mind, as executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, I went to Slovenia and Croatia in February for university and think-tank conferences on European Islam and the "Balkan Muslim model."
Anyone who says looks don't matter is probably not very attractive.
Anyone who says book-smarts aren't the measure of intelligence probably has trouble getting through a comic book.
And anyone who says that political labels mean nothing at all, especially the label "liberal," is probably slightly to the left of Pol Pot's junior economic advisor, the one Pol Pot ignored as "too utopian and impractical."
Camille Paglia is always interesting. FOX should replace the dreary and chronically disgruntled funeral home director Alan Colmes with a live wire like Camille, who has something interesting and smart to say about everything, and who can talk faster than anyone in NYC and could run circles around teddy-bear Sean. We do not always agree with her, but she is a fountain of stimulation. Two paragraphs from her NYT piece Academic, Heal Thyself:
It now remains to be seen whether Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is capable of self-critique. Will its members acknowledge their own insularity and excesses, or will they continue down the path of smug self-congratulation and vanity? Harvard's reputation for disinterested scholarship has been severely gored by the shadowy manipulations of the self-serving cabal who forced Mr. Summers's premature resignation. That so few of the ostensibly aggrieved faculty members deigned to speak on the record to The Crimson, the student newspaper, illustrates the cagey hypocrisy that permeates fashionable campus leftism, which worships diversity in all things except diversity of thought.
If Harvard cannot correct itself in this crisis, it will signal that academe cannot be trusted to reform itself from within. There is a rising tide of off-campus discontent with the monolithic orthodoxies of humanities departments. David Horowitz, a 1960's radical turned conservative, has researched the lopsided party registration of humanities professors (who tend to be Democrats like me) and proposed an "academic bill of rights" to guarantee fairness and political balance in the classroom. The conservative radio host Sean Hannity regularly broadcasts students' justifiable complaints about biased teachers and urges students to take recording devices to class to gather evidence.
Kay Hymowitz reviews Mansfield's much talked-about new book in Commentary. A few paragraphs from the review:
Harvey Mansfield sets off into America’s treacherous sexual wilderness with a clear destination in mind: to rescue manliness from the bear-like clutches of its enemies, in particular feminists and advocates of a gender-neutral society. As he notes, the opponents of manliness have tried to depose the term altogether, in favor of “masculinity.” They want to expose manliness as a mere social invention, a rationale for male power.
But this, Mansfield observes, begs the question of why men have always had the power in the first place. He finds the answer in manliness, which he defines as “confidence in the face of risk,” an “easy assumption of authority” that leads to an abundance of corollary qualities stereotypically associated with the male of the species. If the womanly tendency is to seek intimacy and personal warmth, the manly tendency is to dominate.
Mansfield concedes that the manly man is not always appealing. He can be willful and boastful, and patronizing toward women. But these annoyances are part of a package that makes the average Joe capable of greater heroism and command than the average Josephine. More open to facing risk, he is more likely to gain and wield power and to make his mark in the world. There can be manly women—Elizabeth I and Margaret Thatcher come to mind—but they are rare.
Male power is not a social artifact, Mansfield argues, but a reflection of our nature, as much a part of biological reality as testosterone itself. This explains the failure of the androgynous utopia promised by the 1960’s. Even after decades of re-educating the young, the line between male and female activities has been “blurred” but not erased. Men, he points out, still drive trucks, fly planes, fix cars, and mow lawns. Women still teach kindergarten, empty hospital bedpans, and clean the kitchen.
Truth is, I do none of those particular male or female things, except sometimes clean the kitchen when it gets really bad. But if Mansfield were President of Harvard, instead of a Yale Prof, he'd be fired for writing this book. Entire review here.
The H5N1 Bird Influenza is spreading during the bird migration, as predicted. None in the Western Hemisphere, yet. Thus far, this will be a problem for those handling birds, and bird farmers. Be careful with your pheasants this fall, Mr. Free Market.
The problem with vaccines is lawsuits. Companies are afraid to make vaccines. And in the current environment when quacks and trial lawyers blame vaccines for everything from autism to ADD to ingrown toenails, the manufacturers don't have a prayer with an Alabama jury.
The Swamp: a new book about the history of the shrinking Everglades by Michael Grunwald. Do we love the Everglades? We do. One quote from Grime's 
which is "too sensitive" 
We are a couple weeks late on the news, but 
Camille Paglia is always interesting. FOX should replace the dreary and chronically disgruntled funeral home director Alan Colmes with a live wire like Camille, who has something interesting and smart to say about everything, and who can talk faster than anyone in NYC and could run circles around teddy-bear Sean. We do not always agree with her, but she is a fountain of stimulation. Two paragraphs from her NYT piece 
ticks and stones'''?