Friday, April 27. 2007
Borrowed without permission from a piece on our excellent economy, by Dr. Sanity: 
 I found Dr. Helen's discussion of the psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Friedman, who stated in the New York Times that he made politically-correct referrals, a good one, but I was confused by Dr. Friedman's premises.
Psychiatry is not all about empathy. In fact, empathy is just one of many tools in ye olde toolbox. When patients ask for a certain gender, age, color, etc. for a referral, I like to explore why. Usually it is a "resistance," ie based on the idea that someone might go easy on them and not challenge what needs to be challenged. All shrinks have seen people who search until they find someone who will "support" them rather than shake up their world and challenge their inner problems. Kindly, one would hope, but also aggressively, because life is short. For example, a black patient might chose a black psychiatrist because "he would better understand my life." Nonsense. He just maybe might understand your surface outer life, but we deal with inner life. That is our special expertise. I have been known to say "What you are saying sounds full of shit," and it has been quite helpful - and truly "empathic" - because it was true. Empathy is just a tool for speaking the truth. Depth psychotherapy for character flaws is about the doctor doing battle with a series of resistances. When one is cut down, the next resistance in line pops up. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a high-falutin' game of Whack-A-Mole. I will never forget one consultation I did with a fancy, somewhat condescending middle-aged WASP lady, to assess her appropriateness for psychoanalysis. She mentioned that, if possible, she would prefer a Jewish analyst. Why? "I guess maybe because I wouldn't worry about what I said to a Jew." There was Resistance #1 handed to me on a platter: shame about what she might say or reveal. Thus she told me that shame was one of her surface resistances - part of the easy work before the subtler transference resistances kick in. Neo-neo commented on Dr. Helen's piece, and said that she knew therapists who would not treat a Republican. In my opinion, such a "therapist" is a fraud and not prepared to help anyone, because they are clearly so caught up in their own self that they do not welcome the adventure of trying to enter another person's mental world. Can you imagine a surgeon caring more about your politics than about your appendix? There is a little thing called the Hippocratic Oath.
The consequences of messing up are, well, uncomfortable. Watch it.
The 2006 Campus Outrage Awards are out.
At Pajamas. I have never cooked with White Truffle, but my favorite use of Black Truffle is to shave a bit on top of a plate of Woodcock ravioli. And speaking of Fungi, here's a 20-foot mushroom. I didn't know that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.
 Canada's FLICK OFF campaign, to tell people to turn their lights off. Nobody noticed how those letters appear when written in that curvy neon-style.
Anyway, it's an absurd idea which should leave Canadians feeling like telling their idiot bureaucrats to FLICK OFF. Story is at Dust My Broom. I believe that a far more effective approach to the alarming crisis of global warmening would be federal regulation, or banning, of beans. If Canada really cares, they will do it. They could call it FART OFF.
 Have you noticed, lately, to what extent talk radio relies on blogs for subject matter? Quite remarkable.
This is truly nuts. Is it not difficult enough to live in reality without hallucinogens? May 1 will be a sad day in Caracas. NY Sun Can we have an honest debate on immigration before Bush and the Dems push through their own plan? Blue Crab. As I recall, the last time there was "immigration reform" there was no debate either. Judge is shocked - shocked. Doesn't everyone know how common these frauds are? What career has the highest job satisfaction? Bird of Paradise Why do 90% of blacks vote Dem? The Politics of Fear. A quote from the piece at Am. Thinker: In the United States today remarkable strides have been made in the reduction of age-old hatreds and enmities. The average American is a remarkably tolerant and inclusive person. Why, the average American has even been taught to believe that Islam is a religion of peace.What a pity that liberals have exempted themselves and their political supporters from this advance in human societal relations. But it is understandable. You see, American blacks, gays, feminists, and academicians live in a world assailed on all sides by the menacing "Other:" Fundamentalists, theocrats, racists, sexists, classists, and homophobes. And do they ever hate and fear the fundamentalists, theocrats, racists, sexists, classists, and homophobes that harass and oppress them.
The real cost of SARBOX. It has been a disaster, with financial needs running to London and elsewhere to escape. Luskin. A cure that is worse than the disease. Very damaging to New York City, in particular. A revealing quote about the French Left from Segolene, from a collection of them at My Vast RW Conspiracy: “I’m making policies by looking at what I would do for my own children.”
Evangelicals thrive in England. (h/t, News for Christians) Same story, different takes on it. Done with Mirrors. These kinds of chasms cannot be bridged because they are not about reason. Narcissists cannot apologize, or be grateful. Why? Dr X The Global War Against Baby Girls. Evangelical Outpost. Very disturbing. Depressed yet? Viking on the coming train wreck of entitlements. Photo: Diane Lane, for Ex-Donkey ex-blogger
"A great many of those who debunk traditional values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process." C.S. Lewis
Thursday, April 26. 2007
 "Benign" Authoritarian Populism. Many in America would like to take the same path as Britain's, but not us at Maggie's Farm: we do not believe in the virtue of government. In fact, we believe that governments tend to serve their own purposes, like any other organizations filled with ambitious people who want steady work without heavy lifting.
A quote from "The Virtue of Freedom" by our hero, Dr. Ted Dalrymple, in New English Journal:
I don’t mean that Britain is just like Mussolini’s Italy, of course; history does not repeat itself in this simple way. But the surveillance of the British population is now among the most complete of any population that has ever existed. The average Briton, for example, is photographed 300 times per day as he goes about his normal, humdrum existence. Britain has an astonishing percentage of the world’s CCTV cameras in operation - something like a third of them. We now live in a security state. The wards of public hospitals are locked, and in the hospital in which I worked it was impossible even to get into the lavatories without knowing a secret code. The government has spent tens of billions on mad schemes to collate information electronically about us all, allegedly for our own good, whether we like it or not. None of these schemes has worked, thank goodness, or was ever going to, and the expenditure looks more and more like a giant malversation of funds in favour of the government’s favourite IT companies; but the very proposals, irrespective of whether they were ever workable or not, told us a lot about the government’s attitude to liberty. The latest mad - and extremely bad, vicious, totalitarian - proposal by Mr Blair is that every British child should be screened for criminal tendencies before they have developed. Once the statistical stigmata have been discovered, the child will be handed over to the experts who will carry out their ‘interventions’ to prevent further criminalisation. The state, in short, will repair the damage that the social structure that it has so assiduously fostered and encouraged over the last few decades has done. This would all be beyond satire if it were not for the fact that Mr Blair and his government takes it seriously. Mr Blair is always on the lookout, not for new worlds to conquer, but for new worlds to poke his nose into and to ruin, or ruin further. How are we to explain the obvious assault on liberty in Britain? I don’t think any overall plan has been formed; there is no conspiracy of evil men around a table in the dead of night. It is far worse than that, and more sinister because more difficult to oppose.
Read the whole thing.
Image: Tony Blair at the beach.
Read it and weep. It surely applies to the US also. BBC News.
Pit Bull encounters porcupine. I bet that hurts. This is a job for general anesthesia. 
 Dick Cheney's inner self revealed by mysterious halo. Althouse. Do we like and admire Dick? Yes we do.
A lost world of Britain located under the North Sea. Very cool. Ex NYT Public Editor rips Times' coverage of Duke. Ace. Harvard Liberal Marvin Kalb skewers media coverage of 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. Also at Ace. Bruce Kesler discusses Kalb's comments at Dem Project. Reynaldo Bigone faces trial. Who? He was one of the bad guys. More on the hedgies supporting Dems. Sister Todjah. Are most of these guys Dems, or are they hedging? Hackers Are Us is in trouble. So is a young Mellon. "Stop this awful totalitarian EU legislation." Brussels Journal. Hey, Brits: It's your tax money: As for the former vice president, Gore has been hired as an adviser to the British government, which plans to send copies of his film to schools around England.
WalMart getting into the medical care business. Interesting. Doctors made in China? DEBKAfile: Will AQ intervene in the French elections? (Always take DEBKA with a grain of salt.) Tehran ripping down satellite dishes. Link for story with photo below at Freeborn John. Keep 'em poor and stupid: it's the only way. 
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. Henry David Thoreau
Wednesday, April 25. 2007
 From a piece at Atlas, quoting the excellent Paul Belien in the Washington Times:
"One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows from it," he (de Toqueville) wrote. It is exactly the loss of individual strength that has been the disease of France ever since it inflicted upon itself the totalitarian revolution of 1789. The latter turned this once great nation -- which produced warriors such as Charles Martel, Saint Louis and Joan of Arc -- into what Tocqueville called "a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." In France the Marxist left and the Bonapartist/Gaullist Right alike favor strong centralist, patronizing authority.
Image: Alexis de Toqueville
 A wonderful review of some very funky 19th C. American architectural styles, at Sippican Cottage. Scroll down. Or look at the log cabins too. Good fun.
Keep 'em comin', Mr. S. Cottage: it's a free eddication for me. But what would you call that French Quarter architecture we posted below? "Caribbean Whorehouse"?
 Bombshell cripples Haditha case against Marines. Glad to hear it. Just another example of press giving greater cred to insurgent propaganda than to our guys. h/t, Gateway
Post-Kelo, has there been any real eminent domain reform? Chequerboard says no. Quoted in Thompson in The Right Kind of Prejudice: Jasper has argued that “you have to treat people differently to treat them equally.”
Darn right. Treat me special - or else! Well, I guess I do hold doors for ladies, but I do not slam them in men's faces unless it is warranted.  Mindcrime. Three Danish lawmakers arrested for criticizing veils. Glad I don't live in Denmark - I'd be arrested because I am only in favor of the legally-enforced veiling, or paper-bagging, of the grossly unattractive. Veiling pretty women is a shame, and a crime against male humanity. Come and get me, Danish coppers - but bring an army with you. The photo of the Moslem lady on the right explains why I feel this way, for Danes who don't get it. (Quit pushing that button - doing so sends a direct link from you to the Danish Police Thought Crime Unit.)
An excellent point from Rhymes with Right: The NYT opposes corporate political advocacy. What about them? They're a corporation too. Blue Crab explains to Yale: Theater is imaginary. Just in case you thought it was real. Now, TV is real, of course.
Everyone who wanted to has posted this already. Can you stand it? Kentucky Fried Hillary, #2, on YouTube. I can't believe that I feel embarassed for her, but I do.
Everything about bees, CCD, killer African bees, and the bee "crisis." Classical Values
A guy walked into a bar, sat down, and ordered a beer. As he sipped the beer and lit up a smoke, he heard a soothing voice say, "Nice tie." Looking around, he noticed that the bar was empty, except for himself and the bartender at the end of the bar. A few sips later, the voice said, "Beautiful shirt." At this, the man called the bartender over. "Hey, I must be losing my mind," he told the bartender. "I keep hearing these voices saying nice things, and there's not a soul in here but us." "It's the peanuts," answered the bartender. "Say what?" replied the man in disbelief. "You heard me," said the barkeep, "It's the peanuts. They're complimentary."
 The end of High School sports? You can make a case that kids should do their sports outside of school, but why is that any different from doing their chess, theater, dance, or music outside of school? Fortunately, such things are local choices.
An elegy to mudered England: View from the Right Self-anointed Greenie Laurie David tore up her Martha's Vineyard natural vegetation to put in sod. Without a permit. Driscoll. These people are phonies. The hedgies are lining up with Obama. The truth is finally emerging: Dems do not like Hillary, and so Obama is eating her lunch. They may like her socialism, but they do not like or trust her. Also, Obama states his plan for terrorism: pay the tribute. Moscow's billionaires. They have their own neighborhood. Would you go to a fat doctor? Are eating disorders a spiritual disease? CSM A developing scandal: Academics on boards of banks that want student loans. $600,000/year? Whoa. That's a nice income supplement for a Dean. People are trying to save the South China Tiger. Only 100 left. How come we can build walls in Baghdad, but not to protect our own borders? Linknzona Adding to blogroll under Economy and Economics: Hedge Fund.net. Interesting site.
 The murder capital of the US. A quote from a piece by Gelinas in City Journal:
When New Orleans began slowly to come back to life after Katrina, it enjoyed a respite from violent crime, one that residents and their elected leaders thought would continue indefinitely. New Orleanians had a “sense of euphoria about the city being a new city, that the violent crimes just weren’t there,” says U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who handles federal cases for Louisiana’s eastern district. But after roughly ten weeks of peace, murders—many drug-related and acquaintance-based—started to appear in the headlines again. Then, as the city’s population began returning in greater numbers last spring, violent crime roared back “with a vengeance,” as Letten puts it. The highly publicized shooting death in March 2006 of 28-year-old Michael Frey at the hands of a street robber in the Faubourg Marigny, a funky neighborhood on the outskirts of the French Quarter, seemed to trigger in many New Orleans residents the realization that things were now back to “normal.”
Read the whole thing.
"The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later." William Jennings Bryan, as quoted by Betsy
 Boat designer Skip Etchells, who lived in Connecticut during most of his career, is best known for the International Etchells. That sailboat is no comfortable day-sailer, but a sleek, knife-like racing boat which unfortunately was never chosen as an Olympic class, but which has been a racing sailboat of choice for many of the best skippers in the word.
Etchells are still going strong after Skip's death. 
|
