Friday, May 15. 2009
Charles on Pelosi (h/t, Flopping). As a reader said re another topic, Never bring a waffle to a gunfight.
Cool submarine above via Theo
Most ridiculous story of the year, thus far: Obama warns about federal spending
Shows her true colors: Pelosi now claims CIA lied to her. She is a pol sleaze just like her dad was. Rove: Pelosi an accomplice to torture. Powerline: Can Pelosi survive?
Edward Steichen and Vogue magazine. A darn good photog.
The cocaine in Spain...
Gun-loving, private-jet emitting Oprah now destroying the rain forest dwellers. Let them eat cake.
More on that crazy Intel case. Maybe businesses are supposed to fail to get any understanding.
Take a few photos and knock the damn thing down.
Your kid is fat. Good grief. What the heck is the matter with being fat (altho that kid isn't)?
Prof B on the O's dismantling of capitalism
Those who do not worry about climate change are equivalent to slave traders. I want climate change, so what does that make me equivalent to? Stalin?
A quote from Mediocracy:
...turning to Hollywood for insights into the nature of reality is surely a sign that an academic discipline has declined. It may indeed be a symbol of capitulation: “we now admit** that we have metamorphosed into such a bunch of nonsense generators that we can offer less insight than a popular movie”.
One more reason to argue that Oxford Forum is the only genuine university in Britain today. We may not be able to do much, starved of support as we are, but one thing is certain: we would not stoop to doing media studies and passing it off as academic philosophy.
Is there a health care, ie sickness-care, consensus? Doubtful.
I think we did a good job on this little corner. Nepeta (which won't be blooming for a while), some giant allium and regular allium in bloom right now, Wisteria overhead getting ready to bloom (pruned them so hard this winter they might be disappointing this Spring), low boxwood hedging and a thick row of those dwarf yellow lilies heading up on the right. I forget the name of those clumps of bulbs with the bell-like purple flowers, but they are pleasant.
Thursday, May 14. 2009
Seriously. A friend highly recommended these to me. Good for kids, since the schools teach them nothing about economics. I think the schools assume that money and wealth come from heaven and/or the government.
Probably good for most adults too - and most journalists. Paul Krugman - take note.
I hate studies of happiness because 1) I think happiness is fleeting 2) Everybody's happiness is different 3) I think good cheer and happiness come from within and from a clean conscience - not from without and, 4) I don't think life is or should be all about happiness anyway: I think it is meant to be made of sterner stuff than that...but that's me.
Therefore, I believe that "the good life" is not a one-size-fits-all shoe. For some, it's about being half in the bag on a mountaintop. For some, it's struggling with impossible math problems; for some, it's exerting minimal effort. For some, it's about having good relationships, but many folks don't give a darn about that. "Happiness" is a useless concept and, to me, a "good life" means nothing more than an honorable, responsible Christian life, with minimal jail time, and some golf and tennis and a good man in it but, again, that's just me.
Joshua Shenk has a piece in The Atlantic on the now-72 year-old Harvard longitudinal study. He begins:
Last fall, I spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, hoping to learn the secrets of the good life. The project is one of the longest-running—and probably the most exhaustive—longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years.
Read Shenk's piece, and tell me what you think. David Brooks wrote a commentary on the Shenks piece, in which he says:
The study had produced a stream of suggestive correlations. The men were able to cope with problems better as they aged. The ones who suffered from depression by 50 were much more likely to die by 63. The men with close relationships with their siblings were much healthier in old age than those without them.
But it's the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don't even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and decision-making in ways we can't even fathom. The man who is careful and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another context.
Shenk's treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant's overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key to happiness. "Happiness is love. Full Stop," he says in a video.
In his professional life, he has lived out that creed. He has been an admired and beloved colleague and mentor. But the story is more problematic at home. When he was 10, his father, an apparently happy and accomplished man, went out by the pool of their Main Line home and shot himself. His mother shrouded the episode. They never attended a memorial service nor saw the house again.
He has been through three marriages and returned to his second wife. His children tell Shenk of a "civil war" at home and describe long periods when they wouldn't speak to him. His oldest friend says he has a problem with intimacy.
Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley's description of his parents in the New York Times Magazine not long ago. There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute.
Ed: Related, see some of our previous posts on the topic:
Are we happy yet?
The Aristocracy of the Human Spirit: Freedom vs Happiness
Money and Happiness
Huxley's Brave New World at 75
Do Americans expect too much of marriage?
Happiness for Sale! No brain, no pain.
Grumpy. Are Americans hard to please, or do we just love to bitch?
In over the transom. No wonder the press didn't show this:
TIGER WOODS' SPEECH AT THE INAUGURATION:
Tiger Woods received a special invitation to speak at the inauguration. His inviters were stunned, when he did not deliver the message they expected. You will see why the media swept it under the rug with no further ado. And who and why a certain element is angry with Tiger. Below is the text of his speech, entitled: "You'll Never Walk Alone," as posted on his Web site - check news archives for Jan. 2009):
I grew up in a military family - and my roll models in life were my Mom and Dad, Lt. Colonel Earl Woods. My dad was a Special Forces operator and many nights friends would visit our home. They represented every branch of the service, and every rank.
In my Dad, and in those guests, I saw first hand the dedication and commitment of those who serve. They come from every walk of life. From every part of our country. Time and again, across generations, they have defended our safety in the dark of night and far from home.
Each day -- and particularly on this historic day -- we honor the men and women in uniform who serve our country and protect our freedom. They travel to the dangerous corners of the world, and we must remember that for every person who is in uniform, there are families who wait for them to come home safely.
I am honored that the military is such an important part, not just of my personal life, but of my professional one as well. The golf tournament we do each year here in Washington is a testament to those unsung heroes.
I am the son of a man who dedicated his life to his country, family and the military, and I am a better person for it.
In the summer of 1864, Abraham Lincoln, the man at whose memorial we stand, spoke to the 164th Ohio Regiment and said: 'I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. Just as they have stood tall for our country - we must always stand by and support the men and women in uniform and their families.
Thank you, and it is now my pleasure to introduce the US Naval Glee Club.
******************************************************************
We have never been more proud of Tiger Woods than when I heard of his 2-minute tribute to the military at the Inaugural Celebration in Washington DC. You know he was greatly pressured to be there. Liberals have been mad at him for a decade for not joining their ranks. You know he didn't want to be there. So instead of paying homage to Obama, he paid tribute to our soldiers. Not one time did Tiger mention Obama, the inauguration or the new administration. He knew beforehand that his love for America, and appreciation for our military men & women would anger them further. But Tiger is his own man; his father taught him to be his own man.
Editor's note: A careful reader tells us that this is a bogus story, and that our fact-checkers were in the pub. Tiger did give this speech, but at another time and place. Sorry to purvey a story in error.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world -- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does -- comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:15-17 (New International Version)
NEVER get out of your car or off your tractor without putting the parking brake on. Never, ever, no matter where you are.
Make it a habit.
 Beowulf, and when poetry mattered
Of course it does. Global warming causes swine flu. Yes, the earth has a fever - and it's contagious.
Admission: We do want to re-program your kids. Related, from 2008: Obama and Ayers pushed radicalism on schools.
Norway's socialist/totalitarian system The peasants like it.
Megan: Medicare is going to bankrupt us...which is why we need universal health care?
Insty:
MICHAEL BARONE: Obama offers security at the expense of liberty. Hey, isn’t that what they said about George W. Bush? Though at least Bush delivered on the security part. Obama, so far, not so much.
Judicial empathy and a recipe for lawlessness. Paul at Powerline
Quoted at Dr. Sanity on denial of evil:
At the heart of the denial that afflicts people like Ignatius is fear. They are afraid to believe that there are people in the world who embrace evil over good and death over life. Like many people in denial, Ignatius finds it far more comforting to believe that everyone is just like him -- basically well intentioned and occasionally misguided. However, Ignatius is wrong -- just as wrong as wrong can be -- and the whole of human history stands as witness to his error.
The Arctic is going to melt - any day now. Well, pretty soon. Related: Dems fully aware of economic havoc global warming legislation would cause. They want the havoc.
Everything about entitlement costs. Fun with charts at Q&O
Health care Trojan Horse. Coyote:
I have warned for years about government health care being a Trojan horse for government micro-management of personal behaviors. If government is paying the health care bills, then anything individual action or choice that can conceivably be linked to health are open to regulation.
VDH begins:
Today’s Americans inherited the wealthiest nation in history — but only because earlier generations learned how to feed, fuel, finance and defend themselves in ways unrivaled elsewhere.
Lately we have forgotten that and instead seem to expect others to do for us what we used to do ourselves.
Bill Ayers basking in his new notoriety. It begins:
There he was, Bill Ayers himself, sitting in a Marriott conference room waiting to partake in a session of the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The former Weatherman, "unapologetic" (his own word) fugitive from justice, and hot potato of the far left whose acquaintance with Barack Obama in Chicago during the 1990s and unrepentant boasting about Weatherman bombings at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol in the 1970s, prompted the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists"--and the University of Nebraska to cancel a planned speech by Ayers last October.
No matter: Plenty of other colleges have been happy to have Ayers at their podia in light of his Obama connection and the attention-getting frisson of notoriety that he brings with him wherever he goes. Ayers is now a "distinguished" professor in the education school at the University of Illinois-Chicago and the author of numerous manifestoes and memoirs (his most recent, coauthored with his equally radical wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a law professor at Northwestern University, is Race Course: Against White Supremacy)...
Who pays for employer-provided medical insurance? You, the employee, pay for it. It comes out of your wages. That is why you can make a case that its cost is a taxable wage-equivalent. Quoted in a fine piece on third-party medical insurance at Hennessey:
Employees ultimately pay for the health insurance that they get through their employer, no matter who writes the check to the insurance company. The view that we can get employers to shoulder the cost of providing health insurance stems from the misconception that employers pay for benefits out of a reservoir of profits. Regardless of a firm’s profits, valued benefits are paid primarily out of workers wages. While workers may not even be aware of the cost of their total health premium, employers make hiring and salary decisions based on the total cost of employment, including both wages and benefits such as health insurance, maternity leave, disability and retirement benefits. They provide health insurance not out of generosity of spirit, but as a way to attract workers – just like wages. When the cost of benefits rises, wages fall (or rise more slowly than they would have otherwise), leaving workers bearing the cost of their benefits in the form of lower wages.
Somebody had to spruce up the ole driveway. Gwynnie put a much improved head on my body, but I think it makes me look a bit transexual or metrosexual or mixed frozen vegetable or whatever - sort of like that Boston trolley guy/gal. Which I am not, to the best of my knowledge.
These machines are fun to drive, and it makes the gravel look great until somebody drives on it.
Wednesday, May 13. 2009
 Our p-rn-loving ancestors (h/t, Jungleman). It cracks me up that the anthropologists always talk about "fertility icons" and "fertility rites." Didn't it ever occur to them that our ancestors were enjoying p-orn and sexual fantasies and fun activities as much as we do? How different is it from the Theo Bedtime Totty anthropologically pictured on the right (as part of our Maggie's Fertility Rites Studies Project)?
Cranky when hungry. Beware of armed bulemics.
Moderate President wants to set industry salaries. How about setting lawyers' salaries?
Related: Sleaziest tort case I've ever seen. Import Tort
Related: Auto biz expert O cuts auto biz ad budget. The less a person knows, the more they think they know.
Malawi. I'd love to visit. Also h/t Jungleman
Divorce, Iranian-style
The Luxury City vs. The Middle Class. It begins:
Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong first met in school and then fell in love while living in the same dorm at the College of William and Mary. After graduation, they got married and, in 1999, moved to Washington, D.C., where they worked amid a large community of single and childless people.
Like many in their late 20s, the couple began to seek something other than exciting careers and late-night outings with friends. “D.C. was terrific,” Moncure recalled over lunch near her office in lower Manhattan. It was an extension of college. But after a while, you want to get to a different ‘place.’”
The ‘place’ Ellen and Joe looked for was not just a physical location but something less tangible: a sense of community and a neighborhood to raise their hoped-for children. Although they considered suburban locations, as most families do, ultimately they chose the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Joe had grown up.
There is no room in this country for differences of opinion
Via Insty:
How ya gonna fill that $90 billion hole to buy medical insurance for people who won't get it themselves?
Taliban now targeting Pakistan, removing heads like we eat ice cream cones. It's fun for them. A different culture.
Are all "quiet" people creeps? "They kept to themselves." I like quiet people.
We live in an ugly world, and would like a little more beauty. Hear, hear.
 at Ars Psychiatrica (thanks, Dr X)
 At Am. Thinker:
Human civilization as we know it is only possible in a warm interglacial climate. Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.
Image is Wooly Mammoth in New Jersey, a few thousand years ago, from Moravec
Poster via Theo:
Vanderleun has some of Twain's Corn-Pone opinions
 Intel: the punishment for success
The most Liberal states are the least free
Shades of Herod. Sweden's new abortion rules. This is very advanced and progressive.
Sipp:
It's the seventies again, baby. You wished it on yourself, but now we're all going to get it, good and hard. Been there, done that, got the straightjacket. Trust me, you're not going to like it.
People are scared to run against Harry Reid
Prof Deneen: How campuses became dysfunctional
Hot news: Pols always lie about the costs.
The empty symbolism of hate crime legislation
Tiger:
...your health, and therefore virtually every choice you make in life regardless of its triviality, becomes a problem that justifies government intervention. For example.
Maybe some good news for the fish. h/t Insty
People don't know what a trillion is
Barney Frank wants to rescue muni bonds. Good grief.
WA offers biz tax cuts for newspapers. Which means the taxpayer subsidizes the paper they do not want to buy but which the gummint wishes to exist. But hey, why not a tax cut for me, too?
 Mark Steyn's speech of the above title at Hillsdale College (h/t, Powerline). One quote:
Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." In the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogard is past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and has arrived at a kind of acceptance.
h/t, Theo
From Captain Capitalism: Why I got a vasectomy
Tuesday, May 12. 2009
The FDA goes after Cheerios. So good to know they're on the job, and I always knew there was something sinister about Cheerios.
Bad all over:
Toon above from SC&A
Is Conservatism over? I doubt it.
How Obama's Socialism works. Dick Morris
The problems with an aggressive anti-trust policy. Mankiw
Oprah loves her jet and her guns. But she hates guns and oil. Go figure. I never watched her, even once. I have a day job.
GM plans to leave Detroit
How is the Porkulus working out? Michelle. Related, at Powerline: How is Obamanomics doing?
Why does the US subsidize the defence of Europe? And Canada? Wilkinson
A tax on soda pop for health care? Brilliant!
Via Lucianne:
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.
Did you read Tiger's bit on the coming taxes on all of us? Good piece. A commenter notes:
Did we ever think we would see the day where China has lower taxes than the US? Where China and VietNam are better practitioners of free-market capitalism than the US?
Related: Healthcare numbers don't add up. Of course they don't. Related: Government is broke but keeps on spending.
Related: Medical insurance and autism
Catlin Arctic Project teaches us that the Arctic is cold and icy
Comments from this morning's links:
I've read of this before, but not in such depth. This sentence from the end resonates, the power of humble self-exposure coupled with self-confidence in one's resiliency regardless of outcome.
Vaillant’s confession reminded me of a poignant lesson from his work—that seeing a defense is easier than changing it. Only with patience and tenderness might a person surrender his barbed armor for a softer shield. Perhaps in this, I thought, lies the key to the good life—not rules to follow, nor problems to avoid, but an engaged humility, an earnest acceptance of life’s pains and promises.
Via Coyote:
President Obama says that he wants to nominate a Supreme Court Justice who has “empathy” as opposed to a jurist who makes decisions based on “some abstract legal theory.” Not surprisingly, I’m not the only one troubled by his selection criteria. Thomas Sowell has written an excellent 3 part series “Empathy” Versus Law” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
Justice tempered with mercy is fine with me, but "empathy" is for social workers and phony seducers.
|
